We begin to exit the castle as we go over my plan. It's simple, but because of it's simplicity it makes it that much harder to understand.
“...and I must again repeat myself. You LET yourself get ripped apart by the elements, you then LET yourself get drained of your shadow form which will then allow ME to put you into my statue to incubate your new form,”
“So...I can't kill them?”
“NO!”
“Not even a little?”
“You really suck you know that!?”
…
“Maybe a slight mortal wound?”
“THE OBSURDITY!!!”
- Castle Gates -
“And when I lose my powers to you, can I nibble at your claw in defiance?”
“grrrrrrrrrrrrAAAAAAAWWWWW!!!!!”
“Hey can you quiet down!? I've got a sleeping bunny here!”
“Eat a dick Shadowfright!”
“Call me Larry.”
Oh. OH. Ooooh. I take a break from my anger and discomfort to see that the denizens of the moon are no longer cloaked in shadow. I take a good look at the bunny Larry has and notice it looks like the same one Fluttershy would have picked up in the comics.
I walk up to him and Jerome and stare at the little moon bunny they have.
“So what's this adorable thing's name?”
“We were thinking of calling her Buffy, I mean she looks like a Buffy,” Said Jerome.
“Just so long as she doesn't go all vampire slayer on me,”
“Excuse me demon, but there are still matters to be resolved!” Said Nightmare Moon rather annoyingly.
“Right, right. Everyone gather round! The nightmare symbiote has been grooming you all to become some kind of personal army. I wish I could say differently, only in my case you won't be going planetside as invader's, but as liberators!”
The crowd before me grows as I continue my speech.
“What I ask of you is this, when the time comes I will need a force of good to become the shield that will protect the innocent and weak from the onslaught that will occur. The ensuing chaos will be vast and large, but I do not wish to force you into a fight you do not want. I must leave and I don't know if I'll ever come back, so I ask only for a simple sign,”
“How do we know what's yes and no?” Asked one of the reptiles.
“I don't know dude, throw a rock at Ponyville or something...” Was all I said before melting into the floor of the moon, falling back down to the planet and back into my prison.
Returning to Ponyville, I notice my my excursion took it's toll on the prison as I felt more and more of my power becoming unsealed as a greater number of cracks raced along the stone frame.
'How I do hope Twilight get's here...*CREAK* LADIES AND GENTLEMEN LIVE FROM LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: THE DOORS (Are now opening)!'
Hoof steps echoes along the stair way coupled with a surprising voice.
“As she said, the Demon Armor was shipped to Equestria,”
Special agent Sweetie Drops. My immortal enemy.... With great force, I hear a loud creak and the sound of wood hitting stone.
“Monster Hunter log #37: an unprecedented amount of cracks have appeared over the statue's surface. Will send for immediate repo of dangerous artifa-”
*rumble *
“What was that?”
"That was me," I calmly state.
“What!? It's worse than I thought, you need to be sent back to Canterlot effective immediately!”
"Bon Bon, seeing as how that is your current alias, reconsider,”
“You're a threat to the well being of-”
“Of what? The status quo? While we still have time, hear my story. ALL of my story, judge me not by what has been said,”
“...You have ten minutes.”
“That's all I need.”
-The Beasts of Burden-
What I tell you may very well change the way you view this world,
I'm hunting a bug bear, what's so view-changing it beats that? Bon said this more as reassurance than as a question.
The bug bear.......God how I loathe that thing,
Wait you FOUGHT the bug bear?
Time for that view changer. LIGHTLY, place your hoof on my sword.
As she did she created a psionic link allowing her access into my mind scape.
Are you prepared?
Hit me with your best shot.
]
It was eight months into the war when things started getting weird,
Weird?
You ever hear the one about the mechanical pig?
Inkwell loves telling that one,
Then you've heard of its precursor, the robot bear?
It was part of the archives, why?
The mindscape began to shift around us, grassy plains and a small caravan appeared beside us.
It was sent to kill my people. It struck without warning, no rhyme or reason. I only grew suspicious when an outsider saw what was transpiring and sought to help us fight off the beast.
The ursine didn't even look at him.
“No! Get back, a civilian like yourself isn't prepared to fight something like this!”
“And you think I'd let a caravan of helpless ponies get trampled by this chunk of metal?” Cried the farmhand.
He was your average earth pony, a brown coated farmer who surprisingly WORE a brown trench coat. He managed to get on top of it and found a small red button on it's neck. Pressing it shut the beast off.
He began to leave saying that no pony should be abandoned to their death.
“When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't crawl-”
“You find some pony to carry you,”
I just said that last part as if it was something ingrained into my memory. The farmhand took a liking to me and my own and joined.
Riiiight...So some pony's been making these things for centuries?
Not just some pony, after finding what made the thing tick I found a piece of magical influence.
I learned that it didn't attack the farmer because he wasn't one of my soldiers. The next attacks came from more biological weapons,
Like the bug bear?
Worse...some maniac was creating chimeras bred for one specific mission, to wipe the Iron Claw rebels from existence,
A fourth player in the war?
The first. My caravan happened upon a small village scorched to cinders. Whatever battle that did happen was saturated in dark magic,
You mean Luna!?
She was a pawn yes, but tell me. What do you think the scorched earth led me to believe?
You're crazy if you think-
Come back after the Summer Sun Celebration. My time is up,
“Please, I know you can't trust me. In fact, you have every right to issue the repo order. But I ask that you go home, have some coffee, and think about the slight chance your princess had altered beasts created for the soul purpose of wiping out 3000 makeshift soldiers.”
She was quiet for a time, no doubt that more and more of me was falling off in complete pieces.
“You can break free, can't you?”
“...Yes.”
“Then I'll trust you.”
I couldn't see her leave, my sight was linked to the amulet's of my students. Somehow though, I knew I could trust her.
Just then, I thought I could hear voices and music above me.
“The party's started. Not much longer now.”