There is a point where even the most sound and kind minds snap. The sight of the herd’s adoptive father bearing the blood red skin of a Mion, and speaking with the Herald’s voice pushed her far beyond that point. With a feral cry of rage, Alexia flapped her wings strongly once to push the Herald onto his back hard enough that his grip loosened.
That gave her enough blood flow to teleport a few feet away and get back on her hooves. The Herald was the sole focus of her ire, but even with her growing fury at seeing Joe’s body mutate further, she spared a glance and thought to her remaining family members in the car. The house would have locked down the moment the air raid sirens started sounding. With a noticeable dip in her reserves, Alexia teleported Bella and Elizabeth back to Alexia’s bedroom next to the tome.
With the necessary distraction dealt with, there was nothing left to stymie her rage. When she spoke, there was an unsettling shift in tone that she ignored, but the Herald detected. “I’m going to make you regret ever coming to this planet.”
Joe’s body finally climbed to its feet. His form was distorting slowly, but the Herald made sure the face remained that of the human host. He could see a slight orange glow shining through the lenses of her gas mask. “You can try.” He threw his arms forward and launched a volley of nail sized spines at Alexia.
She teleported the moment the spines left his arms and reappeared to the Herald’s left. Charging her horn once again, it tore her heart out to cast the fire ball at Joe. It didn’t help that the Herald turned to face her the instant the spell went off, giving Alexia a full view of seeing Joe’s head burn away.
The fight had been quick and to the point, as Alexia preferred. Joe’s torso and headless body dropped to the pavement with the stench of cooked meat thankfully filtered out. Had that been the end of it, Alexia might have had time to grieve. Yet barely three seconds after Joe fell to the ground, surging muscle and sinew threaded out of the corpse to reform the missing pieces.
Her adrenaline surging again, Alexia bit down on her tears and reared up. “I will not let you desecrate his body any further!” Right as Joe’s body reknitted itself, Alexia slammed her fore legs on the ground, sending a trio of earthen spikes up and impaling the Herald, but in her rage, she missed his head and lungs.
“You don’t seem to grasp reality, Mrs. Tune. This is my body now.” With his body gorging itself of Alexia’s spellwork, Joe’s body bulked and grew to the point where the Herald was able to twist and snap itself off the earthen spears.
“Like hell it is!” Alexia charged her horn with an incendiary spell. “If I have to cremate his entire body, I will! Better that, than let you infest my father further!”
Crimson stood barely five meters away from the jolly abomination that Frank had become. The Mion stood over three meters tall now, its thick skin now a dense layer of scales that stood firm again the five seconds of fully automatic fire roaring from Crimson’s light machinegun.
Frank giggled manically when her magazine ran dry. “You tickle. Horsey play fetch!” He found a mailbox and yanked it off the sidewalk before throwing it at Crimson. The mare barely had enough time to duck behind the truck next to her. Even as the bent blue mailbox sailed past her, Conrad divebombed the mion. He flew within inches of Frank’s face before dropping two grenades at his feet.
The Mion clumsily tried to grab him as the pegasus bolted away, but only managed to brush his tail. Both earth mares ducked behind an upside down truck. Seconds later, the fragmentation grenades exploded, sending shrapnel all over the Mion’s lower body, making him collapse to the earth, yet seemingly without pain. “Not… faaair…” he said in a slow accusatory tone.
Crimson and Loki leapt out from behind the truck and leveled their weapons at Frank’s head. Both mares unloaded a full magazine into the Mion. The concussion of the grenades had dislodged a number of his protective scales, and exposed him to the ponies’ withering fire. By the time the herd stopped firing to catch their breath, all that was left of Frank was a mass of pulped flesh.
Loki just finished reloading her own weapons from behind a telephone pole and ran over to join Crimson right as Conrad landed next to them. “You think he’s dead this time? We really really need to go and help Alex!”
“You even need to ask after that?” Conrad scoffed briefly before he noticed Loki’s flopping right ear and that nervous twitch in her tail, and then looked to where Alexia’s transponder was located. Even with the dense soup of the cloud, the telltale flashes of light that lit up the whole street worried him. He pressed a hoof to his radio button and called out to his alpha. The other mares looked on in worry, which only deepened when Conrad’s face fell into a frown. “Alexia isn’t responding to comms, but from the looks of the light show, I’d say she’s going all out.”
Sure enough, the soupy cloud further to the west was being constantly lit up by scattered spellwork and small explosions. Crimson didn’t like the look of it. “She knows using explosive spells is forbidden in populated urban environments.” A particular nasty beam of magic swept through the air in a rising arc, slicing through a steel telephone pole as if it were tissue paper.
Crimson’s phone started ringing, causing the mare to nearly jump out of her skin. Loki was quick to pull it out of her herdmate’s bag. “It’s Bella!”
“Give it back!” Crimson cried out as she all but grabbed the phone away. A pit of fearful worry resided in her belly as she answered. “Momma?”
It was actually Elizabeth who responded back. From the sniffling both she was doing and in the background, Crimson tried to mentally prepare herself for the worse. “W-we’re fine, Crimmy. Sis teleported both of us to her bedroom. But... “ Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from crying out the next part. “They got Joe.” She wanted to say more, but that was all she could before her voice gave out.
“Papa…?” Loki and Conrad had pressed their ears over the phone, consequently overhearing the conversation, Their hearts sank right along with Crimson. However, none of them had time to grieve when Conrad spotted the mass of meat that had once been Frank, was almost completely healed.
Only his head was missing and by the looks of the fleshy growth around the neck, even that wouldn’t be true long. Conrad raced over with his last grenade and shoved it in the mion’s windpipe. “Fire in the hole!” The mares’ training kicked in and the three of them dove back behind the mangled truck. After flinching from the explosion, they peered around the red vehicle to find Frank was twitching as his body tried to recover.
Conrad swore under his breath and checked his pistol’s ammunition. “I can’t believe that bastard’s regenerating! What the hell do we need to do to kill the guy?” He jumped back into the air to stand watch over Frank. “Just go help Alex, this thing can’t regenerate forever. I’ll keep it pinned and call in flamer team to burn it.”
The numerous twitches in Loki’s various parts raced to the forefront of her attention, causing her to grab Crimson and bolt towards the mana storm raging around Alexia. “R-right, come on Crimmy, we gotta save Alex!”
Conrad watched them run off as he called in a burn squad. It’s not like Alex to ignore the radio. There’s no way in hell I’m about to let this freak keep me from standing by my alpha’s side. He planted another trio of bullets in Frank’s regenerating body. Within seconds the bullets had been pushed out by the healing muscle. “Damn bastard.” Conrad scanned the area around him, and spotted a storm drain. “That’ll do.”
Taking a door breaching charge of C4, Conrad blasted Frank open again, and then dragged his stump of a body over the drain. “Let’s see you regenerate into that.” Not waiting around to see if it worked, Conrad jumped into the air and sped off after the mares.
The Herald had guided the fight with Alexia into a large commercial car lot, lined with only a spartan few new vehicles. A deep navy blue beam of corrosive magic carved a path through the cloud, and striking the Mion dead center in his chest.
“Get out of his body, you monster!” Alexia demanded as she flew over to land heavily on the roof of a car, denting it with the impact.
Instead of being burned away where he stood, the Herald only felt his scales tingle. His form jerked wildly as the virus further empowered him. Yet his attention was more on Alexia than anything else. An earlier lucky swipe at her face had torn her mask away, so she had a thin layer of magic shielding her eyes and mouth.
What actually interested him was that her eyes had draconic slits. Most of her azure mane and tail had shifted dark forest green and her fur was brightening. Her magic only gets more powerful the more this change in her progresses. Were it not for this strain’s mana absorption, she’d have won long ago. He used his now massive hands to grab a car and heaved it at her faster than she anticipated. Both she and the car collided with a pickup truck.
He fully expected her to have survived, and braced him for a counter attack. “I don’t know why you’re so upset, princess. I preserved his mind, you know.” A flash of navy blue magic blasted the car off of Alexia. “This Joe Anderson, as you call him, says he loves the gifts I’ve bestowed to his body, and only wants to share it with the rest of mankind.”
A surge of hatred heralded the growth of short fangs in Alexia, but she was far too furious to notice. “Liar! He would never want that!”
The Herald taunted her forward with a curled finger and a cruel grin. “He does now.”
Alexia screamed with hatred, but her next assault was cut off by heavy gunfire from the street. Alexia barely possessed enough mental awareness to seek cover behind a car to protect herself from ricochets off the mion’s scales. While the rounds were too small to penetrate his dense scales, the force of impact was enough to stagger him to one knee and then onto his back. When the earth mares drained their magazines, Alexia summoned her earth magic and slammed her forelegs down, sending a square meter thick pillar of earth slamming straight into the Herald’s back, sending him airborne, and clear into the next city block.
Loki nudged Crimson towards Alexia, “Come on! We gotta save her!”
“Save her? But she just tossed him across town!” Crimson watched her herdmate bolt for Alexia, only to shake her head and join in.
Loki found Alexia forcing a dislocated right hind leg back into its socket. Loki did a double take at Alexia’s changing features, which only served to spur her on even faster. Loki reached Alexia right as she gave a test flap of her wings. “I’m fine, get over there so we can…” Her permanent angry glare focused on her fellow mares longer than she intended after noticing their frightened looks. She assumed it was from the Herald’s increasingly monstrous appearance. “Well? Get moving! We have to kill that son of a bitch!”
Alexia tried to take to the air, but Loki bit her tail, earning a growl from the irate alicorn. “What now!?”
Both earth ponies cowered before the heat of Alexia’s mounting fury. Crimson took in Alexia’s altered appearance, and became acutely aware of the source of Loki’s fear. “Alex, what’s going on with you? Are you using transformation magic or something?”
“Transformation?” Alexia parroted. Loki noticed the shift in the alicorn’s coat hesitated at her confusion. “I don’t need to. Once I burn out his metabolic energy, that parasite will regret coming to our planet!”
Loki jumped forward, dragging one of Alexia’s hooves to the ground. “I knew it. You’re going all Darth Nightmare! You gotta take a serious chill pill or this crazy streak you’ve been on all year’ll mess you up.”
“You never used to be like this, Alex,” Crimson pleaded while grabbing Alexia’s other hoof. The alicorn found it difficult to stay in the air, and promptly landed. “Let someone else take out that guy, you got our family out, and that’s enough.”
“How can you say that!?” Alexia boomed. “The Herald claimed your father’s body!” Crimson went wide eyed with her legs falling out from under her. “He’s the only father figure any of us have ever had or could accept what we’ve become! I’m not going to let Joe suffer that curse a second longer.” Alexia snorted and shook Loki off her hoof and took to the air. “I’ll expect you to back me up on this.” Before either mare could reply, Alexia flew off towards where she sent the Herald.
Crimson’s training tried to kick in, and make her follow orders, but her father’s fate weighed her down. Loki however, was able to bounce back much quicker. I already grieved the loss of one father, I can wait on the second. She shook Crimson’s withers to snap the mare back to the present. “You saw her, come on, we need to save Alex!”
The image of Alexia’s horribly altered face flashed before Crimson’s eyes. It was like staring into a nightmare… that explains a few things.
The sound of feathered wings heralded Conrad’s arrival. “Found a way to keep our old friend locked down for a few hours, hopefully. What’s the word, and where’s boss mare?” Marshalling all of her courage and willpower, Crimson steeled herself and gave him the abridged version. His already sour demeanor worsened considerably to match the wrinkled scowl plastered on his face. “This is bad. We need to get her out of the combat zone now before anyone else can see her.”
Loki nodded and looked at the line of cars they were closest to. “I hear you, but…” Loki reared up and leveraged her tribe’s innate strength to punch one car’s driver side mirror a few times until it broke off. Once she tucked it into her harness, she did the same with the adjacent car’s passenger mirror. She picked them up a moment later. Good, they didn’t break after falling to the ground. “Come on, we’ll need these to get Alex to back down.” Crimson took one of the mirrors and led the full on gallop to where Alexia ran off.
The Herald was still flying through the air from Alexia’s attack, and did a backflip to land on his feet. He dug his right claws into the road as he landed near a gun store. His momentum propelled him into the sidewalk where he grabbed the curb to halt his movement. He heard a slight clop behind and to the left, and spoke with a pleased tone as he rose to his feet.
“This plan of yours is working quite well.” He turned to spy Tina Star approaching to stand underneath the nearby streetlight. “The princess is getting sloppy, and hasn’t figured out that every spell she sends my way only makes this body stronger.”
“It’s a shame I won’t have the honor of killing the goddess personally.” Tina raised a dramatic hoof to her forehead and swooned in place. “But at least I can say I had a part in it.” She looked to the Mion’s face, and saw it still perfectly matched Joe’s human form. “I see you adapted to the plan in your own devious manner.”
“It’s proven effective.” The Herald saw the gun store’s door was actually open. A man in a gasmask was lying dead in a pool of dried blood with three bullet wounds in his chest and one in his arm. His body was propping the door open. Perhaps a firearm will work where raw muscle has failed thus far. Seeing that Alexia was taking her time in pursuing him, the Herald marched over to the gun shop and slid through the relatively narrow door frame to take stock of the wide selection of weapons.
Tina followed in after the hulking red behemoth. “Stores like this would probably have the whole shop floor covered in an AM array in the event of a robbery.”
The Herald skipped the pistols and rifles, and ultimately found nothing that would fit his oversized hands. Only a planet full of primitives would think to rob a weapon’s store. Eventually, he found a shotgun and ripped off the trigger guard. He went looking for shells while speaking. “You may yet get your chance then, assassin. Take a weapon and hide in ambush. When I lure her here, activate the array and kill her. With the AM field up, I doubt the princess’ magic could save her a second time.”
Tina’s heart pounded at the prospect of being a godslayer, and she leapt at the chance. “By your will, Herald.” The noise of someone landing hard on the roof of a car brought the Herald’s eyes towards the street. He spoke in a hushed tone. “Even if we fail to kill her here, breaking her mind will be enough.”
Alexia scanned the abandoned gloomy street. Damned cloud should just dissipate already. A feral grin crossed her features as she charged her horn. A blast wave of navy blue magic rattled windows and pushed a wide swath of the cloud away for a whole city block. The cleared air revealed the shallow gouges in the pavement where the Herald landed, but the clearing was to be short lived as the cloud closed back in. Alexia briefly wondered why her magic was different. It felt off, like it was slightly acidic as it coursed through her horn. However, she was too far gone for revenge to care. The Herald revealed himself by standing in the doorway of the gun shop with a double barreled shotgun.
Experience and training kicked in faster than conscious thought, and Alexia formed a kinetic absorption field scant seconds before being fired upon. Half expecting his attack to fail, the Herald was quick to retreat deeper into the shop. Alexia’s first response was to carve a line of molten mana all across the front of the store, slagging the glass and steel bars alike.
The beam caught the Herald in the shoulder before he could react in time. After hearing a yelp of pain, and watching him fall out of sight, Alexia teleported inside to stand on top of a counter, and slipped a little before finding proper footing. She found the Herald trying to prop himself up on a wall, seemingly exhausted. Alexia immediately started channeling a spell to finish this when the Herald spoke in Joe’s voice. “Don’t do it, Alexia, I don’t want to die!”
Alexia’s spell fizzed as she reeled from the voice, but she gritted her teeth and reformed the spell. “Bastard!”
The Herald used the split second hesitation to jump forward, grabbed a counter for leverage, and tackled the alicorn in midair. He slammed her against the wall near the cash register. Feigning defeat. Such a childish ploy to fall for. “Let’s see you cheat death twice.”
Tina was leaning against wall opposite of the register and held an earth pony adapted rifle in her forelegs. With a dark chuckle, she aimed it at Alexia at point blank range while the Herald only acted to pin the alicorn down with his sheer mass. The impact forced Alexia’s sheathed runesword against her spine, eliciting a pained scream as her back bent slight against the scabbard. Tina waited just long enough for Alexia to go wide eyed at the sight of the rifle and start charging a teleport. The moment her horn started glowing, Tina kicked the alarm switch with a hind leg, piercing the air with a harsh ringing bells and the oppressive weight of antimagic fields blanketing the room.
Tina took a moment to make sure her aim was true. Right as she pressed the trigger, Alexia’s magic returned in full force and she telekinetically shoved the Herald into her would be killer.
“Did you honestly think those fields can stop me,” Alexia growled. She pulled her sword out, finding the runes were glowing bright red as it was having a violent reaction to her warded magic and the AM field, draining her mana at an alarming rate, causing the whole sword to quickly heat up from red to white hot in a matter of seconds. As the Herald scrambled to his feet, Alexia swung the sword in an overhead arc, planting the blade in his skull. Alexia’s vision had narrowed to Joe’s reddened face being cleaved in half by her sword.
The blade cut too deep for him to be conscious of any pain. Between the heat and the runes now draining his body of mana away from regeneration, the Herald went still before dropping to his knees and then keeling over dead. His head was nothing more than a mass of burning meat and half molten steel.
Tina’s heart skipped beat at the sight of Alexia, the Nightmare of Life lording over a dead Herald. Tina tried to bring her magic to defend herself, but the AM fields disrupted any attempt and left her with a splitting headache. “H-how can you use magic!? It’s not-urk!” Tina’s throat was caught in Alexia’s magic and constricted enough to keep her from talking.
Alexia levitated the unicorn over to be nose to nose. Much to the alicorn’s confusion, Tina started crying tears of joy. I should have expected a goddess to be immune to a paltry AM array. To see my goddess take her true form, and be her first sacrifice. What an honor.
“You try to kill me twice, and then went after my family!” Alexia could hear that infuriating song of her worshipers in the back of her mind that only served to piss her off even further. “I think after reduce your body to cinders, I have a preacher to… Reeducate.” She tightened her magical grip, causing Tina’s eyes to redden and bulge. Her assassin’s pain brought a predatory snarl to Alexia’s face. “Maybe the whole damned congregation before moving on to—.”
“Alexia Tune, stop!” cried three voices.
The mare in question turned with a raised eyebrow, still choking Tina in her magic, to find Conrad flying over to her while Loki and Crimson bounded over to reach her. “Better late than never,” she replied in a fuming tone.
This was the first time Conrad had a good view of Alexia’s altered form, and was dumbfounded. He barely maintained enough sense to keep hovering as Loki ripped Tina to the ground, freeing her from Alexia’s magic. “Alex, there’s no need to kill her like this.”
Crimson interposed herself between Tina and Alexia, stopping the alicorn from forming a more lethal spell. “We take her into custody.”
“Fuck that! She’s responsible for infesting Joe, your father! I will not suffer the bitch to live!”
Alexia studied Crimson’s face, trying to find the other mare’s backbone. Crimson couldn’t find the words. Her heart roared at her to let Alexia have her way with Tina. Hell, I want to join her. Yet the longer she stared into the furnace of rage that marred Alexia’s face and the corruption that was over taking her, the more she saw that revenge was the last thing anyone needed. “Alexia, my alpha, please.”
Alexia’s fury blinded her and she forcefully shoved Crimson out of the way just strong enough to clear a path to Tina. Even in her current mental state, she found it extremely difficult to bring harm to a herdmate. “She escaped once already, I won’t allow her a second chance.”
Dropping the unconscious Tina, Loki joined Crimson in holding their murderous alpha back. It was only then that Conrad snapped out of it and supported the earth mares’ efforts by physically blocking Alexia’s view of the unconscious assassin. Along the way, he grabbed the two mirrors the mares had discarded in their haste. “Alexia, look at yourself! This is jacked up to hell.”
When Alexia caught her reflection on both mirrors, she stopped dead in her attempt to magically remove the mares. The fangs, the slitted orange eyes, the ethereal, starkly green mane, dancing about as if wild grass in the wind. The addition of the pure white coat paralyzed Alexia’s mind. Loki used the hesitation to give Alexia a bear hug, pouring all her love into the act. “The dark side isn’t stronger, Alex. Don’t let these creeps win. You’re so much stronger than this.”
Crimson joined in on the hug with Conrad dropping the mirrors and lent his weight to the embrace. He gently rubbed Alexia’s mane and slowly nuzzled her. “You’ve done enough, my love, more than enough.” He could feel Alexia’s tension start to sag. “We all promised to be your anchor.”
Loki held onto her alpha as if the world depended on it. The promise she made so long ago was screaming in her mind. “This isn’t you Alex. You’re not some nightmare, you’re a wonderfully kind and ball’n party animal.”
The bad joke derailed Alexia’s internal struggle enough cause her anger to melt away into a sobbing depression. The group sort of collapsed on top of the alicorn as Alexia backed down. She hugged them back with hoof and wings alike for all their worth, while weeping shuddering tears into Conrad’s shoulder. Her mane and coat slowly faded back to normal as her anger bled away.
Loki smiled broadly at Alexia’s mane returning to a rich, if not dirt riddled, azure. “You’re going to be fine, Alexia. You’ve got my word on that.”
The mote of magic that had been fading beneath Alexia's cutie mark surged anew, and was joined by those of the herd. Conrad had been keeping one eye on Tina, and subsequently noticed Loki and Crimson’s glowing marks. He separated from the hug, which grabbed the mares’ attention. “What’s going on with your marks?”
Crimson’s eyes widened at the red glow coming from her flank. “Hey, the same’s happening to you as well.”
The group’s confusion only mounted when Alexia’s azure glow, Conrad’s brown, Loki’s green, and Crimson’s motes of mana departed their respective flanks. Alexia's bewilderment put a halt to her sobs. The herd was mesmerized by the odd lights as they floated up to be eye level with Alexia while remaining between each pony. The motes circled each other as they slowly closed the distance and fused with each other. The combined mote of mana started glowing a gentle forest green light. Almost on instinct, Alexia brought a hoof underneath the green magic as it coalesced into an acorn. The seed was awash with the mane colors of the four ponies.
Alexia lowered her hoof and everyone crowded their heads over the seed with wonder in their eyes. “What is it?” Crimson asked.
“I don’t have a clue…” Alexia said at length. She tucked the object into her harness. “But I bet Sensei Twilight knows something about it.”
The radio crackled with the Section Nine mission commander. “Sensor array operators report all Mion signatures neutralized. I want all agents maintaining overwatch until the cloud decays.”
One by one, the field operative leaders reported their acknowledgement. With the bewilderment surrounding the acorn fading, the mental and physical exhaustion of the night’s events caught up to Alexia and she suddenly felt as if her bones weighed a metric ton. “I can’t keep doing this, guys. It’s too much. I don’t want…” The reflection of her mutated features haunted her, stinging her eyes and heart. “That to happen again.”
Conrad was busy tying up Tina Star with some thin rope he found under the clerk’s counter. “Only if this plan of yours with the navy works.”
“It has to work,” Alexia muttered to herself. Her fellow mares remained close to lend support. “I can’t afford it otherwise.”