//------------------------------//
// A New World 
// Story: Bound By Spades 
// by NewToThis 
//------------------------------//

	It was a cool night in Equestria, a soft wind blew through the trees and surroundings. The wind on his face stirred Ace from his rest, his eyelids fluttered as he stretched where he lay. Being a logia, not feeling pain wasn't to surprising, but what did surprise him was the soft grass underneath. From what he remembered of the fight with Blackbeard he hadn’t expected anything but hard ground and rubble to survive, if it had been lucky. With the fight in mind he finally decided to sit up and give his body a once over for any major injuries. Ace didn’t like how big an advantage Blackbeard had held during their fight, the ability to negate the logia effect of the mera mera no mi had been surprising to say the least. After re-evaluating the fight, he took a second to look at himself. His body held no bruises, scratches, or even dried blood to his slight shock, he figured after such a battle, even as a logia, he’d have some form of marks on his body. With that out of the way Ace stood up and took a look at his surroundings, it was nighttime with the moon standing smack in the middle of the starry night sky. He turned his head to the left and saw an old wooden bridge that lead into an eerie looking forest, between him and the bridge though, Ace spotted something that brought a small smile to his face. As he walked up to the object to make sure he wasn’t mistaken he looked in the other direction and saw the ruins of a building long ago abandoned. As soon as he reached the object he knelt forward and picked it up, his smile turned into a smirk as he confirmed that it was indeed his hat, bluesmileys, beads and all. Without a seconds’ hesitation he put it on and debated where he should head. On one hand he could take the bridge into the forest and follow the path wherever it might take him, a village or town he hoped, or he could sate that adventuring sense of self he’s always had since childhood and explore the ruins. Before deciding where to go though, Ace spared a glance at his Log Pose to find it completely still. But before he could bother asking himself about that his attention was taken away as flash of blue light came from within the ruins. ‘Well, I guess it’s settled then.’ He thought to himself, and with that he began his walk towards the ruins.

It only took him a bit over a minute to clear the gap between him and the ruins, once close enough he spotted a place where the wall had crumbled and decided to just go through there. Once inside he looked around to find dust, darkness, and tattered tapestries. The tapestries divided the room in different colors and design. On his left, all the tapestries followed a blue and silver color scheme, depicted what looked to be a blue horse with wings and a horn, and the moon. While the side on the right held a white and gold color scheme, with depictions of a white horse with the same appendages as the blue horse, and the sun, and at the front of the room two thrones stood in shambles, on the left a midnight blue throne stood with a tattered banner depicting a crescent moon that hung above, while on the right was a radiant golden throne with a slightly less worn banner that depicted the sun. Ace would’ve kept exploring had a voice filled with anger not caught his attention. “Blast! They’re almost upon us and none of our efforts have had the desired effect!” the voice shouted unaware of his presence within the ruins. Ace tried to find the voice but it was made somewhat more difficult by the fact that it was echoing all around the ruins. “If this is truly their destination then we shan’t allow them to arrive. For there is only one thing worth of note left in this despicable castle. If they are after the Elements of Harmony, on the off chance they actually could wield them, we must not allow them to use them against us.” The voice went on talking to themselves, Ace could’ve sworn the last corner he had turned was where the voice had been coming from, but to his displeasure all he found was another empty room. ‘Where is that voice coming from?’ Ace wondered, looking around the room. As he eyed along the wall his gaze fell on a spiral staircase heading upwards. Without a second thought Ace went up the stairs with some caution in his step. He stayed as quiet as possible staring ahead at what stood in the middle of the room. The first thing Ace noticed was the ethereal cloud coming from the helmet that the pitch black horse wore. It wore silver blue armor that covered most of its body, from the helmet also protruded a black horn. If it had blue fur instead of black he would’ve assumed it was the horse from the tapestries, aside from the armor. “We will wait for them to get close to the elements and that’s when we’ll st-“ it stopped mid-sentence and whipped its head towards where Ace still stood processing what he was seeing. It snarled at Ace in fury as its reptilian eyes locked with his. “Who dare sneak up on us!” it shouted.

As Ace finally broke out of his stupor he kept his eyes on the horse in front of him and slowly went up the last of the stairs. Now he could properly get a look at what was before him, it stood as tall as he did and held extreme malice in its face. He kept his guard up just in case but took his normal aloof stance. He didn’t say a word as he sized up the thing in front of him. It snarled a bit more fiercely and Ace could tell it was losing its patience. So finally he decided to speak, “What are you?” he asked in an even tone.

It howled into the night sky with a manic laughter at this, “We are Nightmare Moon and we are here to plunge the world into an eternal darkness where the night will last forever!” she howled. “Now tell us, is thou foolish enough to stand in our way?” she asked with a hint of mirth in her voice. 

‘So it’s a fight you’re looking for then’ Ace mulled over in his thoughts, “I’m pretty sure eternal night wouldn’t work out well but aside from that, what if I was? What makes you think you could harm me?” Ace challenged. The anger she held in her face did not go unnoticed by Ace as he prepared himself for what she might be planning.

Nightmare snarled as her face grew into a condescending smirk. “Very well then, it seems tis up to us to give thou a reason to fear us." 'Our full power should not even be necessary to deal with this nuisance.'

'A fight it is then.' Ace told himself, “Just know this all could’ve been avoided.” Ace stated still aloof as ever.

With a yell Nightmare Moon sent a blast of magic towards Ace that he simply stepped to the side to dodge. Within a second of the side step he lunged towards Nightmare and sent a fist flying for her head that she ducked under and proceeded to send a surge of magic forward that forced Ace to slide backwards as she simultaneously leapt away. At the creation of space between the two Nightmare took a second to reevaluate her opponent as he stood to his full height. ‘He’s faster than we thought he’d be. We’ll have to be on guard for when he attempts another attack.’

As Ace worked his way back up to standing at full height he started thinking of ways to neutralize his opponent to hopefully talk some sense into her, but whatever force he just felt was going to make that more difficult. He may not know what it was but he knew for a fact that Nightmare controlled it, her horn started glowing before that first attack and again when he was pushed back. ‘Were those devil fruit powers?’ he thought to himself. ‘Even if they’re not this fight just got more interesting.’ “If that was all you’re capable of then I’m afraid this fight might as well be over with.” Ace said trying to goad Nightmare to see exactly how much power she had. Ace smiled internally as her scowl grew, with a growl she reared her head back and shot a beam of pure magic at Ace but he dodged to the side with a roll. Ace was taken by surprise when he saw Nightmare turn her head towards him and the beam followed, he forced himself to his feet as he ran from the beam that trailed behind him.

Nightmare’s head followed her opponent around the room trying to hit him with her magic but he was proving to be too fast for it. With a particularly violent turn she shut her eyes and sent the beam ahead of Ace hoping to end her opponent or at least inflict some damage when the beam passed him. As her head finished its turn she stopped the flow of magic and surveyed the area, she had completely obliterated a good portion of the wall of the ruins. However, when she didn’t spot her opponent she let out a light chuckle in assumed victory. With that annoyance out of the way she let her mind wander back to the much bigger problem at hoof, she closed her eyes and focused on the ruins and the surrounding area. Her eyes snapped open when she felt five presences outside and a sixth in the chamber that held the elements. Her grin grew into a full blown smile in that instance. If these were truly the bearers of the elements of harmony, then this would be too easy, for the elements of harmony were still unresponsive. As she was preparing her teleportation spell she hadn’t heard the thud that came from the other side of the wall.





Ace grunted with effort as he shot to his feet and started running with the beam trailing right behind him. He chanced a glance back and saw the beam leaving a small trail in the wall and Ace still not risking the chance that his abilities weren’t back up to par didn’t want to risk getting hit by that. His running went on for a few more seconds before he heard Nightmare grunt and shout as the beam seemed to grow and get intense enough to blast through the wall completely. At this revelation Ace slid to a stop, turned around, watched as the beam got closer and jumped over it as it swept by him in a much faster speed than it had been going. The second Ace’s feet touched the floor he looked at Nightmare and saw her facing where her beam had ended with eyes closed. He took this time to jump out of the hole made by the beam and held on to the ledge of the wall. He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and listened intently. He heard Nightmare laughing, assuming that she thought she won he'd wager. Ace opened his eyes and pulled himself up enough to get a glance at what Nightmare was doing now. He saw her with her eyes closed, concentrating almost, maybe she was trying to sense if she had truly beaten him. Not long after that thought entered his mind did he have to duck as Nightmare’s eyes snapped open. He waited for a few seconds wondering if she had seen him but when the room started glowing blue again he let himself fall to the ground assuming she was going to attack again. As he hit the ground a bright blue flash went off in the room and all was silent. ‘Huh, guess she didn’t see me. That could’ve gone better, but still it wasn’t worth getting caught off guard in a fight again.’ He said to himself but his thoughts were interrupted when he heard screaming coming from his right.

He rushed along hugging the wall of the castle, ‘I know I heard someone scream, but where did it come from.’ Ace sped up his pace as he came to a different entrance to the castle he hadn’t seen. He got close to the entrance and put his back to the wall as he peaked into the room. At this point he was less surprised than he would’ve been earlier but he still didn’t expect to see another five colorful horses in the room all looking around in a panic. ‘Oh great more of them?’ he silently cursed wondering if these were as hot headed as the other one. He did notice that these were actually smaller than the one from earlier, he also noticed that two of them, the pink and orange horses didn’t have wings or horns. A yellow one with a long pink mane and the blue one who somehow had a rainbow mane had wings, and the last one, was white with a purple mane and had a horn. ‘Two pegasi, a unicorn, and two normal horses. What have you done to me Blackbeard?’ Ace asked himself. As soon as he left his thoughts to get eyes back on the situation before him, all he saw was an empty room. Slowly he crept in just in case they had seen him and were planning an ambush, but when nothing had been sprung by the time he made it to the center of the room he heard gasps coming from a stairwell to his right. He followed the stairs to the second floor once again and his sight was greeted to Nightmare Moon standing tall and laughing like a maniac with a purple unicorn that looked like it had just lost all hope in winning. He shot forward and delivered a swift punch that knocked the wind out of Nightmare, the defeat out of the purple unicorn who lay on the ground, and every other horse there out of their stupor as they rushed forward to the unicorn’s side.

Ace stood there with a smirk and his hand extended in a fist that was pointing towards Nightmare as he watched her pick herself up as soon as she stopped coughing and gasping for air. All it took was one second of a glance at Nightmare’s eyes to see the amount of rage she held in that moment, which seemed to double as she laid eyes on Ace. “You should really pick on someone your own size.” He said with mirth in his voice as he let up on his stance in favor of standing straight up.

“You.” Hissed Nightmare with palpable venom in her voice, “You’re supposed to be dead!” She yelled as she launched herself at him.

Ace launched himself towards Nightmare at the same time, he reared his hand back again going for another punch but this time Nightmare stopped dead in her tracks as his arm burst into flames. He saw the shock register in Nightmare’s face as he let out a shout.

“HIKEN!”
(FIREFIST)

A giant fireball shot out from his fist as he sent it flying towards Nightmare, he only had a split second to see her shock turn into anger before it made contact and exploded. After all the time he’s had the abilities of the mera  mera no mi the shockwave let out by the explosion didn’t bother him anymore. His attention was pulled away from the fight a second later as he heard screaming coming from behind him. He turned around to find the six horses all huddled around each other with their hooves over their heads. He let out a smirk as he turned his attention to his front again. As the smoke settled he kept his eyes alert in case Nightmare had somehow managed to avoid his attack. To his surprise not only was Nightmare unharmed she was standing in the exact same place she had been with a smirk on her face. Ace narrowed his eyes but chose to remain silent.

Nightmare started laughing, quietly at first but gradually rising in volume. “Did thou really think such a pathetic attempt would truly harm us?! If thou were capable of such feats, why had thou not used them against us before?! Didst thou believe we were inferior in power?!” Nightmare snarled the last bit. “Thou shalt meet your end today along with these pretend bearers! NOW DIE!” Nightmare reared her head back and unleashed the strongest blast Ace had yet seen.

Ace was about to jump to the side when he glanced behind him and to his displeasure found the ‘pretend bearers’ paralyzed with fear. Fear of him, fear of Nightmare Moon, and the fear that they were all about to die. Ace steeled himself and dug his feet into position, he looked over his shoulder at the six behind him and gave them a smirk. Facing forward again he braced himself for the attack.





Twilight had been in shock since Nightmare Moon had shattered the elements, there she was lying on the ground trying to figure out some way to win. Nightmare Moon stood before her cackling, her friends stood behind her with mixed faces of shock and worry. Right when it all seemed lost she had an epiphany. She looked up at Nightmare Moon with defiance in her eyes that quickly turned into confusion as she stared up at a bipedal creature with a purple skull that had a giant white crescent mustache on top of a cross made of another two purple bones on it's back. The creature stood there with one of its limbs outstretched and Nightmare Moon lay gasping and coughing on the floor a slight distance from where the creature stood. ‘What is this thing?’ A lot of questions raced through Twilight’s mind but this one was the one on the front lines, that is until she heard Nightmare Moon hiss and yell at the creature at the top of her lungs. Twilight hadn’t even noticed her friends at her side until they started shaking her from side to side. But as soon as she had registered the presence of her friends they disappeared just as quickly when she noticed the creatures arm get engulfed by flames. She was about to cry out in warning when the fire flew off his arm and towards Nightmare Moon, not a second later a huge explosion rang out. Twilight and her friends were buffeted by the shockwave and were forced to cover their heads until it passed.

Once it was over Twilight was the first of the group to stir and the first thing that greeted her eyes was the creature looking over its shoulder with a smirk as the area in front of it grew brighter and brighter. She took her eyes off of it to see a huge mass of magical force barreling towards the seven of them. With so little time to act all Twilight could do was bring up the strongest barrier she could muster around her friends before the magic hit the creature and everything went white.