Doing the waltz through the castle gardens, Xero was having a good time, after finding out that he was not only royally enlisted, which WOULD have SUCKED SHIT, and then finding out he was immediately promoted to Class 4 General, which was exactly like a 4 star general, but ponies, and they were allowed to do whatever they wanted, pretty much.
That was the case, as Xero had just spent an hour playing Hide&Seek with Aran and Derek, Mogar napped a lot, he was probably either half-dead or used sleeping charms on himself, and Xero really wasn't sure which one was correct.
Waltzing into the statue section of the Royal Gardens, he looked at all the stony structures.
Soldier ponies, a flag-bearer, stars, various painters painting stuff, he noticed that the painters were apparently either making self portraits or the sculptors had a sense of humor.
It had to be the latter, because the former was too fucking hilarious to Xero.
Continuing his waltz, he wished to visit the hedge maze garden and parkour along the walls.
He stopped suddenly, and turned to the statue he was about to pass.
It was the weirdest-ass creature he had ever seen, he read the small plate.
"Alright, let's see, Discord, blah blah blah, draconequus, bleh bleh bleh, God of Chaos?" Xero asked rhetorically, he straightened up, looking at the supposed God of Chaos, who looked more like a really weird opera singer.
"That's convenient, I was wondering about other deities' powers that I could steal, I'm already the Master of Darkness (Nightmare Spirit), now, I can also be the Master of Chaos." he thought aloud, summoning his weapons.
"GIMME UR POWARZ!" he demanded, shouting like an angry gamer, shaking and attacking the statue with extreme force and speed.
"I WANNA DO CHAOS, GIMME EM!" he raged, the stony surface of the statue was cracking.
"I WILL DESTROY U M8, U WOT? Y U NO BREAK!" he threatened, his chronic-yet-suppressed insanity losing its suppression.
The statue cracked open, Xero didn't notice as he was too busy shaking the form.
Discord plucked the raging ninja from his torso, holding him by the sides of his head.
"You can stop now, idiot." Discord informed, shortly before receiving the Plasma Pincer up the nose.
"It's time to kill you and steal your powers of being the God of Chaos, I shall be INVINCIBLE!" the bluish-black haired man proclaimed.
"Oh yeah? You think you can handle the POWER of MY JOB? You think you can DO IT BETTER THAN ME? I'll tell you something, 'M8', you can't even begin to imagine the sheer control I have over the uncontrollable, the powers of CHAOS run through my veins, I challenge YOU, puny mortal." Discord paused.
"Y'know, you're really starting to PISS ME OFF, GET ON WITH IT!" Xero demanded.
"You think you can handle my power? That you would SURVIVE IT? I challenge you, puny mortal, to a bet, I bet you, all of my Chaos God power, ALL OF IT, EVEN THE POWER TO GIVE IT AWAY AND TAKE IT BACK, if you can survive the absorbtion process." Discord was cocky.
"So what? Is this like a 'Deal with the Devil' sort of thing? Do I have to give you part of my soul or something?" Xero analyzed.
"You could call it that, so, wadda ya say?" Discord offered.
"I say, GIMME THAT SHEEEEIIIIIIIIIT!" Xero accepted harshly.
"Alright, but I must warn you," Discord started, he was actually summoning all of his power into a solild spell of tranfusion, "No being that I ever did this to survived. Absolutely 0% survival rate." he warned.
"What are you? C3PO? Never tell me the odds." Xero chastised, his devotion to media gave him a LOT of reference power.
"Alright then, THINK CRAZY!" Discord shouted before launching the ball of concentrated Chaos God power at the human.
Xero, much to Discord's HEART-ATTACK did not die, he knew what was coming, he knew exactly what was coming, he had experienced pure chaos in his last 2 missions, the ones that didn't take his life, but left him an emptier man, the energy flowed around him, he absorbed all of it without a single sign of difficulty.
Discord was panicking, Xero was ACTUALLY SURVIVING, he had kept his word, too, he had put every ounce of Chaos God power into that orb, and Xero was about to take it all.
Xero, though not showing it, was using all of his willpower to not die, fighting the fatigue, darkening of the vision, and all that.
His vision turned negative, his ears were ringing, he stayed standing, he was mentally exhausted from fighting the physical exhaustion.
Suddenly, it all clicked into place, the power was fully absorbed.
Xero, the new Master of Darkness (Nightmare Spirit) and Chaos (Discord), felt back up to normal.
He looked at Discord, the former God of Chaos stared at him.
"It was great doing business with you, ya stupid bloody twat." Xero insulted, he landed briefly, flexing his wings, which were not much larger, about 6 feet 8 inches, a small growth compared to a 3 foot difference from Form 1 to Form 2.
Form 3 was still pretty cool.
He started flying with his immensely powerful and now somewhat longer wings.
Soaring high into the blue expanse of air and moisture, he flew to his heart's content.
Turns out Discord could fly with those mis-matched wings of his, he raised himself to meet Xero face to face.
Xero flew away from the former controller of chaos, moving a mile a second, Mach 5, he still couldn't control magic as he had neither a magical well nor a magical outlet.
Archmage-level magical power, and no way to use it, he cursed his Battle Mage in DnD, that shit was rigged.
He looked around, Discord was too far away to matter, and Ponyville was below.
Going straight up, desiring to see his own sonic boom again, the bluish-black haired man broke the sound barrier with extreme force.
He looked back down to see his boom.
He stopped, his wings would have been ripped clean off of his body (if they weren't magically reinforced) from stopping on a dime at that speed.
He froze, unblinking.
He hovered there, breathless.
He couldn't breath, he couldn't move, just stay suspended in the air.
He was terrified, every millisecond bringing him a kilometer closer to shutting down and dying for no natural reason besides fear-induced-heart-attack.
He stared at the symbol of death, of the harbinger, the destroyer of worlds.
He was scared, it made him fear for everything as he knew it.
It was hell, it was hell on earth, the Vileness God.
It shat on the face of the laws of time, turning the day into nighttime, just to accentuate the amount of 'Everything is Fucked'.
What was it? Well, just take a Luna-damned look.
Xero prayed to the creators of everything that had to do with fatness, for help, and spicy foods.
He liked spicy foods.
Slowly descending, the shit had been wiped from the face of the laws of time, and it was daytime again.
Touching down on the ground, he could feel the change just by the odd coldness of the ground, but the sun came and warmed the cobblestone streets up again.
He was probably over-reacting, his first boom had been an X, so a more powerful version would either have more legs to that formation, or add a circle.
Right?
That made sense, right?
Xero hoped to both Luna and himself that it was.
<<worried transition>>
Several days passing, no signs of anything abnormal.
Xero calmed down more and more each day, he had almost forgotten what he had worried about.
Scootaloo walked through the door, flicking her head to remove her hood from it.
"Hey bro, what's up?" the not-so-little filly asked casually.
Xero turned to face his sister, away from his table covered in wine bottles, wine glasses, and dry ice.
"Not much, just enjoying some wine, how about you?" Xero answered.
"Not much, Twilight is acting pretty wierd, like, insane weird, she keeps talking about how she needs a friendship problem to fix." Scoots replied.
"Uh huh, I see that's probably an issue, an issue that I don't want to concern myself with." Xero dismissed the oddity.
"Right, so, hey, can I get some of that?" Scootaloo requested.
"You're, like, how old now?" Xero had lost track of time.
"I'm almost 12." Scootaloo answered.
"What? Holy shit, I had no idea, you look like you're 16." Xero observed.
"Okay then, so, how about that sharing, eh?" the orange pegasus re-asked.
"I don't give a shit, wine is actually good for you, so go ahead." Xero allowed.
Scootaloo took a glass in her hoof, filling it, she took a big whiff of the stuff.
"Smells like rotten fruit and fresh juice." the filly analyzed.
"It basically is, fermented grapes, so technically they ARE rotten, I think, I'm no professional, but that is the basics of it, grape juice left to ferment and form ethanol, or liquor alcohol, actual alcohol is much different, and drinking it would be egregious." Xero explained, taking another swig of the dark red fluid.
"Using the word egregious doesn't help me understand the effects of normal alcohol, and thus, using the logic of the crappy school system, I am tempted to drink it." Scootaloo mocked, taking a long drink of the grape-y drink.
"Hey, 1; we are a proper speaking household, use the term 'shitty', and 2; egregious means both highly good and highly bad, so it could help save your life, or hurt you really badly, maybe even both." Xero listed educationally.
"Right, so, logically, again: according to shitty school logic, now that I know the effects, I don't want to drink it, but I know that that isn't the truth, I don't want to drink it because I don't want to, what's the phrase? 'Risk it for the biscuit'." the pegasus filly re-assessed.
"Heh heh, yeah, I hated school, only good part for me was when we left, did I ever tell you how I dropped out of school?" Xero querried.
"Yeah, you killed your parents with a kitchen knife, and escaped, I can assume that the school-board called in concern to repeated absences, and the neighbors probably called the cops, by the time an investigation started, you had long since gotten the hell out of dodge." the orange pony extrapolated.
"That is... exactly correct, I'm proud that you know enough about laws and government to know about stuff like that and how to figure out what happened, it speaks wonders for your future." Xero complimented.
Scootaloo's face fell at the last part.
"What's wrong?" Xero immediately picked up on the change of attitude.
"I, well, I don't know what my future holds, I don't even have my cutie mark yet." Scootaloo lamented.
"Break things." Xero suggested simply.
"What? Why?" the younger sibling was confused now.
"Whenever I get really frustrated, I break things, it helps calm down, and if you plan it, you can get rid of junk you don't want." Xero revealed.
"That makes sense, what should I break?" Scootaloo pondered aloud.
"Break trees, then, break rocks, THEN, break CLOUDS, AND THEN YOU BREAK THE SOUND BARRIER WOOOOOO!" Xero ascended in enthusiasm with each word for no discernible reason.
"Alright, I'll do it." Scootaloo accepted, exiting the house and taking to the sky, Xero not far behind.
They had work to do.
<<aerious transition>>
The siblings flew fast and agile, doing professional moves with ease at several hundred miles per hour.
Tonight was a night for watching the night sky, it was legitimately night now, Xero wondered that if he did his boom, it would turn to daytime, nonetheless, everypony was out and about, they could see the pair from the light trails they made.
Scootaloo had a orange-yellow-white trail with stars, Xero had an electric blue trail with lightning.
Xero stayed at the same speed his younger sibling did, keeping at least 20 meters behind her, however.
She sped up, he sped up, she made a turn, he made that same turn.
They were in perfect sync.
Making a light-show, the pair flew with deadly velocity.
Xero slowed down some.
Scootaloo was faced with the visible Mach-cone, she flew faster and faster to destroy it.
The cone narrowed, she flew faster.
Time seemed to slow down, the Mach-cone compressed into a single line of energy, it flashed out in a very anime-like fashion.
"Great fucking SCOTT, this is SO DAMN HEAVY!" Xero shouted to himself.
It was a mystery how nothing was broken, maybe it was because the boom was about 5 miles up in the sky.
That just made the ponies see it much longer.
Everything seemed to become a thousand times more beautiful.
It was....
....
.......
.........
.............
...................
..................................
......................................
....... The Sonic Starboom.
Nothing could have been more glorious than that moment.
Except the moment that occured several moments after.
Scootaloo landed with the infinite grace that only somepony who just did their Sonic Boom could possess.
Everypony else was still amazed at the blast.
Xero landed beside her, putting on a pair of sunglasses, he poked his sister on the flank.
"Dat plot, look." he pointed out.
Scootaloo looked back at her flank, emblazoned over the originally orange fur was a 5-pointed star, slowly fading from red, to orange, to yellow, to green, to blue, to purple, to black, to gray, to white, to grey, to red again, then repeating the process again.
It was adorned with a pair of orange wings, indentified by the black outlines, and a comet-like trail of light, bright gray with small rainbow colored stars mixed in.
It was her cutie mark, which displayed her ability to fly like a comet, even through space, no doubt, and her special sound-barrier-breaking effect was the Sonic Starboom.
It was the greatest cutie mark either of the sibling ever laid eyes on.
Scootaloo cried tears of joy, she looked up and down the symbol, the star placed squarely upon her flank, the gray light trail tapering all the way to a point, running down her leg, stopping mere inches above her hoof.
Same on both sides.
The not-so-little orange pegasus filly was ecstatic.
Xero poked it again, it let off a small burst of sparkles.
"It's still got residual formation magic going on, it'll keep shining for about a week." Xero theorized.
Scootaloo pushed from the ground to get up on her hind legs, she hugged her big brother tightly.
"Thank you SO much for helping me, bro." Scoots gushed, the joy-provoked-tears still flowing.
"Anything for you, sis, anything for you." Xero patted the happy pony on her back, half-way hugging her as she was almost crushing him, though his armor could take 1 ton of force before giving way, so he was fine.
The 2 shared the happy moment.
At this point, nothing could make this better.
Xero got a notification that the upgrade for the Executioner's Mask, which amplified the energy efficiency and stat boost to 5 times more, and reduced the energy consumption raise to only 2 times, rather than 3, plus an aesthetic bonus of a demonic, tooth filled mouth design instead of blank, un-threatening mouth holes.
It almost made it better, but fell short.
This was the perfect moment.
'Maybe not perfect, a different scenario with different circumstances could be even better.' the thought crossed his mind, he wasn't sure how to feel about it.
Walking the tear-exhausted young mare back home, he decided that would be too far, the power of taking over the Chaos God energy had drained him somewhat, and the eye-orgasm of the sound-barrier-breaking special effect was enough to tire him out.
Flying up to a cloud, laying next to Scootaloo, who had unconsciously curled up into a circle, he closed his eyes.
Sleep came with the complete darkness, and his dreams were filled with chaos.
The following days would hold new adventures, new excitement, events, all the good and all the bad that came with life.
Xero was as prepared as he could imagine.
Things were going to be fun.
Hopefully.