Human

by DannyJ

Chapter 19: Master Mind

"In darkest depths where there is no sun,
the minds of many will all become one,
But the power of thought in the mental plains,
means they'll never be united under one name.

Assimilation means not the end of you,
Your will is too strong, and you will break through,
The cloud of lies only works for a while;
The truth hides behind a thousand false smiles.

And when it becomes apparent that the world is a fake,
kill the one who defends such mistakes.
The walls will shatter, reality torn asunder,
and you will see the world beyond, in a flash of thunder.

And you will then meet, beyond that veil,
the true mind of madness who the collective hails,
The one who made this mockery of what's right,
And show him no mercy. Show him your might."

-Explodian Psychology, extract from A History of Harmony Part IV: New World Awakening, by Ancient Tome.

***

"Hahahaha! What's the matter, man?! Too much to drink?!"

The gaggle of ponies laughing continued to walk past him down the street, as Gold Coin woke up and pulled himself up out of the gutter.

In the background there was...

"What the fuck...?"

Music. Familiar music too, but off. It took Goldie a moment to recognise it.

"Blue moon...You saw me standing alone..."

Huh?

"Without a dream in my heart...Without a love of my own..."

Gold Coin picked himself up and really looked around, and then realised exactly where he was.

Las Pegasus. City of lights.

This was the Las Pegasus strip. For as far as the eyes could see, there were brightly lit casinos with huge flashing neon signs, some with interesting designs and themes, like one which was basically a giant north Zebrican pyramid, and another which was shaped like a hot air balloon. There was a neon sign with a old Appleloosan cowpony smiling and pointing over his shoulder while casually smoking a cigarette, and another building with a huge fountain display out front, and-

Damn, this city was huge! So many lights, everywhere!

And then there was that music. It took Gold Coin a moment to realise it, but this music was weird. It seemed like a parody of some kind, because it was a lot like another song by Frank Stallionatra, called Blue Moon, but for some reason this version dropped all the references to Princess Luna and was using non-pony specific language.

Actually, the tune was way different as well. The Frank Stallionatra version had longer instrumental sections, and his voice was slightly different, as were the instruments. This one was obviously some kind of remix. The only reason he recognised it at all was because the vocals were the same, but then again, they really weren't. It had a different tune and different vocals. It wasn't like the original at all. It was just oddly similar in some key ways.

Also strange was the fact it was based on Stallionatra in the first place. His music was old now. Why was a modern Las Pegasus casino blasting it out to attract customers, let alone this warped version? He couldn't deny though, it did make the place seem inviting, and gave it a classy sort of look. Though, he was probably offsetting that by laying in the street outside it.

Come to think of it, Las Pegasus did have a sizeable griffin and zebra population. Perhaps this version didn't use pony language for the sake of mass appeal?

Now that he looked down at himself, he realised he was filthy. Had he really got drunk and collapsed in a gutter? That didn't sound much like something he would do. Sure, he did have a few incidents in his youth with the hard apple cider his grandfather used to make, but he never had a night quite as bad as this. He liked to think himself more dignified than that, and getting wasted in a Pegasus casino wasn't like him at all.

"Just what is going on here?"

And then there were those youths from earlier that had laughed at him. Had they really called him 'man'? He wasn't a human! What were they talking about? This whole thing was just surreal, and strange. What was he even doing in Las Pegasus in the first place? He hadn't been here for at least ten years. Last thing he remembered was...

"Softy! Explodey! No!"

The earth pony turned around and looked up and down the strip desperately, looking for any sign of his friends. They were nowhere to be seen.

"Where are they?!" he said to nopony in particular.

"Goldie! There you are, bro! I've been lookin' all over for ya!"

Gold Coin turned around and jumped when he saw Soft Spoken stumbling drunkenly out of an alleyway. This was wrong in almost every way. One, Softy was also more dignified than this. He drank, but he never got drunk, at least from what he had seen of him. Two, no way would Soft Spoken ever call Goldie his 'bro'. Three, he wasn't a pegasus.

"Watcha starin' at? Have I spilt somethin' down me?"

"Uhh...Softy? Is that you?"

"Of course it's me!" the old stallion replied, "Who else would it be?"

"But you're-"

"Hey! Goldie! Come with me. You'll never believe what I found back here."

"What is it?" the earth pony asked curiously.

"Come and see! This is the best shit ever."

Reluctantly, Gold Coin trotted into the alleyway after the stranger that resembled his friend.

***

Chain Mail blinked in confusion.

"Wuuuhhhh...?"

"What are you doing on the floor?!"

The disturbed earth pony scrambled back onto his hooves again.

"Nothing, mommy!" he said frantically, "I tripped and fell!"

The old mare got right up in his face and glared at him.

"...Lazy boy, lounging about the place when you should be working towards your degree."

Chain Mail looked around him and saw he was in a dingy apartment full of discarded clothes and pizza boxes. A pile of books laid in the corner, and there was paper strewn everywhere.

"My degree. Of course."

"Look at the state of this place!" his mother continued, "You insist you need all your time for revision! Can't work a job, can you?! 'Need all the time for study'! Need to get dear old mommy to pay your rent for you while you leave her all alone in a cold, empty house to go off and study at some...fancy schmancy college! And what do you do while you're here?!"

She eyed a particular pile of clothes in the corner of the room. Trotting over to it, she sorted through it by hoof and pulled out some...undergarments.

"Had a mare around, hmm?"

Chain Mail turned ever so slightly red.

"...It was...uhh...she's...just a friend..."

Chain Mail's mother glared at him.

"Clean this place up. Now."

***

"WAKE UP!"

Mystic was startled as he was slapped around the face.

"Wha-?!" he responded in a panic.

"Come on, boy. We need to keep alert. We've only got one opportunity for this, and if we miss it, that's it."

The stallion who had slapped Mystic in the face turned and walked away. Mystic looked around, and saw that they were all sitting around in a dusty, burnt out apartment building. All around them were destroyed and burnt furniture and fresh litter from where the squad had been casually throwing stuff away. There were a few other ponies around the room, all wearing camo-coloured uniforms, and all armed with their own weapons.

Sitting on a crate nearby, a blue earth pony smoked a cigarette as he polished a rifle. Behind him, a yellow unicorn mare leaned against the wall, levitating what appeared to be a rocket launcher in front of her. In the corner, another mare, this one an apple green pegasus, was inspecting a grenade. And just over by the window, the stallion who had slapped him, a white earth pony by the looks of it, was standing on his hind legs and using his forelegs to hold up a pair of binoculars.

"Damn..." he grumbled, "Security looks tight. Our contact wasn't wrong."

His voice was gruff, but clear and authorative. It was the voice of a leader.

"Private Chant, do you think you can make the shot?"

Mystic looked down at himself and balked when he saw that he was in his adult body again, just like Sliske had used back at the Mages' Guild, before he went chasing after Second. Though mercifully he was not on fire this time. Instead, he was wearing a uniform like the other ponies, and he saw a similar rifle to the one the blue earth pony was polishing leaning against the stool he was sitting on. This one had a scope.

"Ummm..."

"Get over here and take a look."

Mystic climbed out of his seat and walked over to the window. Or at least, he thought of it as a window. A whole section of wall was missing there, looking like it had been blasted off. Looking out through it, Mystic saw a war-torn city beyond, with ruined buildings and a grey, cloudy sky above. It was late in the day, as it was very dark out even with the cloud layer taken into account, and a number of airships just like the Prometheus except smaller floated across the city. In the distance, he heard the faint sound of an explosion.

At the other pony's prompting, Mystic picked up the binoculars with his magic and looked down at the street below. There were a few ponies marching up and down. They were in uniform too, though different to the ones he and his squad were wearing. These ponies all had machine guns, and were all exclusively unicorns.

"What am I looking for?" he asked.

"There!"

The other ponies around the room sat up with interest at the pony's tone of voice. Mystic looked down the street a little way and saw a building with the lights still on inside and looking relatively intact, from which emerged a navy green earth pony with a tiny moustache and a short, combed black mane. He looked to be in his late forties, and his cutie mark was some weird red symbol Mystic didn't recognise.

Flanking him either side were a pair of uniformed unicorns, each maintaining a spell that kept a barrier around the mysterious earth pony.

"That's him," the white pony said venomously, "Ol' Adolf, out in the open. We've only got so long. You ready?"

Mystic Chant had so many questions. Why was he here? Where were his friends? Why was he an adult? Who were these ponies he was with? Who was Adolf? What did he need to do? What happened to this city? Where were they? What was going on?

Instead of asking any of these though, the words that came out of his mouth were;

"The barrier's strong but a magic-piercing round should punch through just fine. It'd need to be weakened first though. These ponies' shields aren't ultra strong like the Canterlot barrier, but two unicorns putting all their magic into it in a concentrated effort still makes for damn good protection. We'd need to stun them first, and hopefully take them out afterwards."

The white earth pony nodded.

"Private Smith!" he called.

The green pegasus mare wandered over.

"Sergeant?"

"We'll need stun grenades."

The mare smiled.

"I've got just the thing."

The sergeant broke out into a huge grin.

"We're in business!" he said enthusiastically, "Get your rifle, Private Chant. Today, we're going down in history!"

***

Sliske sat up in bed and blinked.

"Huh?"

A tiny clock sitting on the nearby bedside cabinet suddenly burst into a round of loud ringing.

"AHHH!"

The alien jumped right into the air and landed at the end of the bed, balancing on all four hooves right on the bed knob, the hairs on his back raised and trembling at the unexpected shock of the alarm clock.

"What was...?"

Sliske felt odd. He raised a hoof to look at it. Not Mystic Chant's body, that was for certain. His coat was black.

"Who...?"

Sliske retreated into the recesses of his mind, and tried to dig around to find the original owner of this body. He wanted to know why he had decided to take this pony, and who it was exactly. After minutes of searching though, he came to stunning revelation.

"There's no other mind in here..."

Sliske walked out of the bedroom in a trance. The curtains were still pulled, but sunlight slipped through regardless. He was so confused. Every host body had a mind. What could possibly have caused this? Was he currently inhabiting a brain-dead pony? That was extremely unsettling for some reason.

He marched into the bathroom and walked up to a mirror on the wall above the sink. Looking back at him was what appeared to be a regular black unicorn, with a white mane, and-

"WHERE ARE MY TEETH?! WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY EYES?!"

There were some very basic rules about Sakrassi. One of the fundamental characteristics of the species were that when they took over a host body, they would use inherent magic to temporarily mutate additional features onto it. Those features were the snake eyes and the rows of giant teeth that often did not fit in the mouth. Having neither of those while in a host body was like a pegasus waking up without their wings.

"I am freaking out," he muttered, "...And what's with my voice?"

He felt his throat.

"Feels less...raspy..."

His eyes darted back and forth momentarily.

"Raspy," he said experimentally, "Hissing. Session. Sagittarius. Several. Something. Caesar salad. Oh, by the Overmind, I'm talking like a pony!"

He grabbed his long mane with his hooves and pulled at it. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he was beginning to panic.

"What's wrong with me?!"

He covered his face with one hoof and sat on his haunches. As he did, he stopped, and looked up again.

"Wait..."

He looked at his flank. No cutie mark, even though he was in an adult body, but that wasn't what caught his attention. He lifted a leg, and-

"...I'm a mare."

He looked back at his reflection in the mirror.

"And that's the least strange thing about this."

***

"YAAAAARGGGGH!" one of the pirates screamed gleefully, as he charged off towards the end of the ship.

Soft Spoken smiled from beneath his tricorn hat as he turned the ship's wheel and guided them towards the Equestrian royal navy's vessel. They were approaching the side of the navy ship head on, not giving its crew a very easy shot at them.

His ship was a mighty Equestrian galleon by the name of the Celestia, once the pride of the royal navy until he and his cutthroat crew had commandeered it one fateful stormy night, and sailed it out of Pony Harbour virtually unchallenged. It was easily double the size of the ship it was about to victimise, and with a mostly earth pony crew, their enemy stood no chance.

"FIRE THA FORWARD CANNONS!" Softy bellowed.

The air was filled with the sound of explosions, and the cannons at the front of the ship jumped back at the force of the blasts they unleashed on their rival. The pirate captain cackled as he saw the red coated Equestrian soldiers they hit go flying into the air.

"Captain," said a deep, accented voice, "You was right."

Softy looked over his shoulder to see their resident zebra shaman sitting in the middle of a circle of salts and powders, marked in some places with rare herbs. He opened his eyes and looked at him coldly.

"The commodore you seek, he be on the ship."

Softy broke out into another evil grin and turned back to the wheel. As his crew rushed about below, getting gunpowder and preparing cannons, or helping to adjust the sails, he shouted out his next order.

"PREPARE TA BOARD! KILL THA CREW, BUT REMEMBER WE'RE TAKIN' PRISONERS! WE MIGHT JUST GET SOME NEW RECRUITS OUT O' THIS!"

He took his hooves off the ship wheel and pulled out his cutlass.

"Ze!zar," he said, "Can I trust ye to take the wheel?"

"Aye, captain."

"Ram that ship head-on," Softy instructed, "Give me an' the crew a good chance ta board."

***

Chain Mail's eyes were stinging. He trudged into the classroom in a daze and swayed on his hooves as he made his way over to his desk. He had not had any sleep last night. The ponies he was unfortunate enough to share an apartment complex with had thrown a massive party, and the music had been thumping in his ears until three AM. He was barely even able to get up this morning. He had though, of course. Thanks to his dear old mother.

"Why are you late?"

He looked up and saw the teacher sitting behind another desk near the front of the class next to the white board. The teacher was a fifty year old mare with a straight, white mane and reading glasses. She held a neutral expression for the moment, but Chain Mail seized up as he remembered who she was.

Mrs. Bittersweet.

He was momentarily confused. He could have sworn he remembered celebrating when he read her obituary in the Equestria Daily, some seven years ago now. That was just silly though. He was only seventeen now, and he had only met her at the beginning of this year. How absurd.

Still though, this naturally led him to remember why this was a mare whose death he felt cause for celebrating in the first place. With that in mind, he brutally beat to death the little pony in his mind that told him to stand up for himself and defend what he believed in. He knew from experience that if you were anything other than meek and submissive around Mrs. Bittersweet, it was grounds for her to call for your expulsion.

"I...Well, all the books fell out of my locker, so I-" he began, keeping as calm and even a tone as possible.

"Not good enough," Mrs. Bittersweet interrupted, her voice and expression remaining neutral, "Show up to my lesson on time, or I'll have you removed from the course entirely."

This was only the second time he had been late for a class all year, and it was only two minutes since the bell! She hadn't even started the lesson yet! Hell, she didn't even let him finish explaining! How did she know the excuse wasn't good enough if he couldn't even give all of it?! This was unfair, and if it were anypony else, he'd have pointed that out. Still though, this wasn't anypony else, so instead he answered;

"Yes miss."

"Sit down."

Their minimal required interaction over with, Chain Mail trotted over to his place in the back, between his two closest friends. They were a pink pegasus mare named Cloudwing, and-

"Broad Sword?"

The other white earth pony grinned at him.

"Hi cappy!"

Chain Mail just stared at him for a moment.

"Don't call me cappy."

Why would you even? My name sounds nothing like cappy.

"NO TALKING IN THE BACK."

***

"Check DIS shit out!"

Gold Coin moved around the dumpster in the secluded alleyway behind the casino, to see what it was that this bizarre pegasus version of Softy wanted to show him. As it slowly came into view, he realised what it was.

"IS THAT A DEAD BODY?!"

"Sure is!" Bizarro Softy replied, "And even bettah, 'e was a junkie! Check him! He's got a whole satchel of drugs on him!"

This version of Softy's accent was hard to pin down. More importantly though;

"THAT'S A DEAD BODY!"

Soft Spoken rolled his eyes.

"You're too uptight, bro. Loosen up! Chillax! Come smoke this shit with me."

He sat down and leaned against the wall next to the dead pony, and leaned on his shoulder like they were old friends hanging out.

"Hey, buddy, give us some, eh?"

He reached into the dead pony's satchel and pulled out a bag of white powder.

"Awwwww yeah..."

"SURE IS FUCKING VEGAS IN HERE!"

Gold Coin looked up at the rooftops, and saw that almost directly above them, a human in a suit and tie stood at the edge of the roof, glaring down. Without another word, he jumped off and landed right next to them. Up close, the yellow earth pony could see that it was in fact Lord Second...except...

"Why has your skin changed colour?"

Second cocked an eyebrow.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, "I've always been black."

"But that's not-"

"ANYWAY!" Second shouted over them, "I'm here to announce that I finally finished my ultimate weapon! BEHOLD!"

There was a thumping in the distance.

Gold Coin's jaw dropped and his eye twitched as a giant robot appeared on top of a nearby roof, climbing over it as a pony would climb over a wooden fence. It stepped into the same alleyway they were in and stomped past them. It was a bipedal robot, designed after a human obviously, with a heavily armoured chest and no face, save for a single blue visor where the eyes should be, and it had a case attached to its back filled with a lot of round, metal objects.

"DESIGNATION: LIBERTY PRIME. MISSION: THE LIBERATION OF LAS VEGAS, NEVADA FROM EQUESTRIAN PONY FORCES."

"OH YEAH!" Second shouted, "THAT'S RIGHT! WE'RE ABOUT TO AMERICANIZE YOUR ASSES!"

He broke out into maniacal laughter again and ran down the alleyway after Liberty Prime.

"Come on!" Gold Coin shouted to Softy.

The earth pony charged off in pursuit of the human with the Bizarro Soft Spoken stumbling along behind him. The two ran out of the alleyway and emerged back onto the Las Pegasus strip. Or was it the Las Pegasus strip? Second and the robot had both called this place Vegas. Either way, they emerged onto the strip.

In the ten second head start he had on them, Bizarro Lord Second had climbed onto Liberty Prime's head and was now clinging onto a huge pole flying a red, white and blue flag, which he waved about as the giant robot ploughed down the strip, crushing some ponies under its giant feet and killing others with lasers which it shot from its eyes. Visor. Whatever.

"SUCK ON MY TRUTH, JUSTICE AND FREEDOM!" Second shouted.

"DEMOCRACY, IS NON NEGOTIABLE," Liberty chimed in.

"Daaaaaaaaaaayum son," Bizarro Softy commented, "I'm not even American, and that still brings a tear to the eye."

There was an explosion in the distance. Gold Coin looked back to see that Liberty Prime had blown up a casino, and now money was flying everywhere. There were pegasi darting about in the smoke cloud above the blaze trying to catch it all.

"...Yeah, I agree actually," he confessed, "This is the single most amazing thing I've seen in my entire life."

***

Sliske walked out the front door and looked up at the sunny sky. He, or more accurately she now, recognised the small houses, thatched roofs and cobblestone streets that often characterised Ponyville. Around the place, ponies of all races and colours were milling about, on their way to work or errands or whatever else they did to kill time and help their miserable, pointless lives pass slightly faster.

The alien took a tentative step forward, reluctant to actually go out and do anything. He...she...had no real goal in mind. She was lost, confused, and had no idea where her friends had disappeared to or what had happened before. There were vague memories of Explodey slowly dying and a bunch of dragons landing on top of an airship, but everything after Canterlot was just a big hazy blur.

Almost unconsciously, Sliske began to sing an old tune under her breath.

"Calm, little prince, don't cry for this shame; one day you'll be king, and they all will know your name..."

A pair of foals skipped by. Sliske followed them with her eyes as they passed.

"Your dark days will be over, but for others they'll start anew....One day you'll be king, and the tyrant will be you..."

She sighed.

"Hey! There you are! I've been looking all over for you!"

I recognise that voice anywhere.

Twilight Sparkle trotted over to her wearing a pair of saddlebags. She looked almost relieved. Sliske automatically went into a defensive combat position, ready to do battle. Last time she and Twilight came face to face, she had been in Applejack and was being tossed against walls while Princess Celestia readied the exorcism spell.

"Woah! Calm down, Sunny!" said Twilight, "Are you alright? Did you have another late night?"

Sliske awkwardly returned to normal stance.

Sunny?

"Umm...Sorry. It's been a weird day..."

"Uh-huh," the other unicorn replied, "Well, I needed to come and see you! Spike's been acting really weird all morning."

Sliske tilted her head.

"How so?"

"Well, for one, he's really clingy right now. He keeps hugging everypony he sees until they kick him off or he finds somepony else. He's broken out into tears a few times now, and occasionally he starts shouting and talking about bad dreams. I've tried to get him to explain, but he won't say anything to me. I just keep getting hugged again."

Really? How interesting...

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

Twilight placed a hoof on her chin as she thought about it seriously.

"Well...You always did know a lot more about psychology and the mind. I was hoping you might be able to give some insight on this. Maybe talk to him? I think he needs a decent therapist, and since he doesn't know you as well as the others he's been annoying, I'm hoping maybe he won't...you know...hug you."

Sliske just looked at her blankly.

"Uhhh...Sure?"

"Great!" Twilight replied, breaking into a smile, "Come on! I left him at Rarity's."

Without another word, Sliske followed after.

***

Two flash bang grenades hit just at the base of the shield and exploded. They did their jobs. The unicorns maintaining the shield were blinded, and this moment of distraction caused their magic to falter. Mystic Chant raised the rifle and aimed precisely at the horn.

BLAM!

The magic piercing bullet tore through the shield and made contact with the unicorn's horn. He screamed in pain as it shattered and crumpled to the floor in a quivering heap. The shield dropped. Mystic immediately turned on the other surprised unicorn, who had just regained his sight.

BLAM!

The second shield unicorn went down too. Just like the first one, his horn exploded into tiny pieces, and the rest of him was left unharmed. Part of the mission directives of course. When nonlethal force could be applied, use it. Mystic gritted his teeth as he turned the rifle on Adolf.

BLAM!

The bullet made a clanging sound as it impacted the confused earth pony's forehead. A tiny bit of skin peeled away where it struck, and the sniper caught a glimpse of silver.

No way!

"CODE GREY!" the sergeant shouted, "CHAMELEON! GET OVER HERE!"

The yellow unicorn mare broke into a huge grin and ran over with a bloodthirsty look on her face. She unceremoniously booted Mystic out of the way and raised her rocket launcher. She fired it, and the missile went flying into the street below. Neither of the other two unicorns were able to get clear before the projectile slammed right into its target and went up in a huge fireball.

A miniature mushroom cloud formed where it happened, but eventually the dust cleared, and the sergeant, Chameleon and Mystic all stared in disbelief as they saw a shiny chrome pony android with glowing red eyes pull itself back up, a suit of burnt green flesh falling off it as it rose.

"OH MY GOD, HITLER WAS A ROBOT THE WHOLE TIME!" the sergeant screamed.

Mecha Hitler looked up at them, and his reaction was immediate. The menacing robotic dictator charged towards the building they were in and jumped at the wall. The ponies looked down in horror as his hooves hit the wall and stuck to them, and Mecha Hitler began running up the side of the building towards them.

"ANTI-MACHINE ROUNDS NOW!"

***

Soft Spoken hit the deck of the navy ship and dodged to the side as an earth pony barrelled past and failed to kill him with his own sword. He swung around and buried the cutlass in the pony's back.

"YAAAARRHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Two more earth ponies in red coats charged at him with their muskets drawn, but they were shot down by magic from his unicorn crewmates, who jumped onto the ship behind him.

"Come on boys!" Softy shouted, "It's ours for the takin'!"

The boat rocked and spun in the water. After the navy ship was rammed by the Celestia, it went spinning out of control, foiling any attempts to get a clear shot with the cannons. Not that these ponies could shoot them anyway with all the pirates running around on deck and slicing them up.

In the chaos, Soft Spoken ran across the deck towards the cabin at the far end. He smashed the door down and charged on in, drawing his flintlock as he did.

"Where be ye, commodore?"

There was a clicking sound behind him.

"Right by the door, Mister Spoken."

Softy turned around to see Commodore Apple Cider of the Equestrian royal navy holding a flintlock of his own, and giving him a smug, self satisfied grin.

"Cider, ye stinkin' squid! Ye'll not live another day longer!"

"Oh, Mister Spoken...Always so angry...Are you still upset I stole your woman?"

"She be more than that! Maple was-"

Softy paused.

"'Woman'?" he said quietly to himself, "Shouldn't that be mar..."

He stopped, and went back to staring angrily at Apple Cider.

"She be more than that! And ye be a treacherous snake, for driving an old man to piracy!"

He shook his head.

"Stallion! I apologise."

He shook again.

"I mean, how dare ye, scurvy dog?!"

Apple Cider raised an eyebrow.

"Mister Spoken, are you feeling quite alright?"

The pirate captain looked down at his hooves for a moment, and then looked back at his bloodied cutlass.

"...Dear Celestia..."

CRASH!

"What was that?!" the previously confident commodore said in a panic.

"I don't know," Softy said in his usual voice, "But whatever it was, it was big. Larger even than the Celestia, and that's a damn big ship."

Cider blinked.

"Mister Spoken, what happened to your accent?"

Softy threw off the tricorn hat and dropped all his weapons.

"I think I was sick with something. Never mind that now though, there's something going on!"

The two earth ponies charged out of the cabin and onto the deck again, and found both the original crew and the pirates running around in circles screaming like idiots, as huge monstrous suckered tentacles bigger than the mast of the Celestia rose out of the ocean, water dripping off the giant appendages.

"IT'S A KRAKEN!" screamed one of the pirates.

"WORSE!" shouted another.

Softy and the commodore stared as one of the tentacles coming out of the sea rose to the same level as the ship's deck, and balancing atop the very end of it was-

"'Sup bitches? My name be Lord Second, fo' shizzle."

And he was a goddamn alicorn now.

***

Chain Mail had decided that he really hated Mrs. Bittersweet. There was being fussy, there was being pedantic, there was being an outright bitch, and then there was threatening to get him expelled because he sighed after she gave him his workbook. After that he had walked out of the class, and now he was going to the coffee place to get a drink and blow off some steam before he started raging.

Actually, this sort of thing had happened before. He couldn't really say he was surprised by any of this. Mrs. Bittersweet had a history, but everypony put up with her regardless. Sure, she was enough of a nuisance that even the other staff were willing to admit it, and the teachers NEVER talked negatively about each other aside from her, but she was also the only teacher whose entire class boasted straight 'A's through the whole year.

You couldn't deny, she got results.

"...Still a bitch though..." Chain Mail mumbled under his breath, clearly not bitter at all.

"Hey cappy! Are you alright?"

Chain Mail looked up to see Broad Sword approach.

"...How are you-?"

"It's the mid-lesson break," the earth pony said cheerfully.

"No...I mean..." Chain Mail sighed, "Broad Sword? Can I be honest with you?"

"Sure!"

"...I think the world is wrong."

Broad Sword frowned and sat down at a nearby table. Chain Mail joined him.

"Wrong how?"

"I don't know. I keep having flashes of memory, but...they're things that couldn't ever happen. I feel like...I'm not even sure. Like this already all happened, ages ago, but I'm living through it again, and I'm living it differently."

"'Differently'?" Broad Sword repeated.

"Like this didn't happen like this last time...You! You're different! I never went to college with you! We didn't meet until years later!"

Broad Sword scratched his chin.

"Hmmm...Sounds to me like this is an illusion created from your memories that didn't translate well into an actual setting. Maybe I'm here because you met me later in life, but you're trying to fit everything important about your life into these years specifically?"

Chain Mail blinked.

"You believe me?"

"Uh-huh."

"Even when I'm saying that the whole world is a fake including you?"

Broad Sword shrugged.

"Eh, I'm only thinking of you here. If I am real, I'd know it beyond all doubt, but I'd never be able to prove it to you. On the other hoof, if I am some kind of illusion meant to act like the real Broad Sword, I'd do everything he would, including acting like I am certain I'm real, but it'd all be an act to fool you. It's like, what's the point?"

Chain Mail raised an eyebrow.

"So...you don't believe you're real?"

"Oh, I know I'm not real. I'm just a construct created by Explodey to talk to you and make you feel better. But, at least tell me I'm doing a good job of it?"

The captain sighed in defeat.

"Explodey. He assimilated me."

"Yep. Sure did."

He glared at the Broad Sword construct.

"Why?" he said icily.

"I dunno. Because he's fucked in the head? Because he's got weird alien biology? Because he thought it'd be good for a laugh? You'd really have to ask him."

"How do I even find him?"

"This place exists inside Explodey's imagination. You're in his mind. As is everypony else he absorbed. You have to find a way to move through the rest of the brain. Find the dominant Explodey consciousness. Maybe if you find him and give him a little support, he might be able to get the legion under control?"

Chain Mail sipped his coffee.

"This is fucking weird."

"You're telling me. I'm an imaginary pony based on a dead guy. How do you think I feel?"

"I think you won't be feeling anything, because you aren't even real."

'Broad Sword' slapped Chain Mail on the back.

"Now you're getting it!"

"Hmmm..."

"What?"

"So if this is all taking place in somepony's imagination, does that mean I can use my thoughts to influence the world? Like...say...get my captain's armour back and return to my normal age?"

The construct shrugged.

"Anything's possible."

The captain looked to his side and found himself wearing the traditional armour of his station, and once again carrying a sword by his side. He picked up the sword with his teeth and held it in front of him.

"Ohhh boy...I've always wanted to do something like this consequence free..."

***

"Spike! Darling, I'm happy to see you too, but isn't this a little...much?"

Sliske walked into the Carousel Boutique to find a familiar white unicorn mare trying to move across the shop, but being weighed down by a blubbering baby dragon latched onto her back leg. She looked back at Twilight, who just shrugged.

"Oh, Sunny!" said Rarity, perking up as she saw Sliske, "Finally somepony qualified to deal with this! Could you help me here? Please?"

I'm qualified now? In what, exactly?

Sliske nevertheless trudged over to Rarity's side and yanked the baby dragon off of her. She held him upside down in the air and glared at him. Spike had stopped crying, and now just looked confused.

"Wait, who are you?" he asked.

"Spike!" Twilight chided, "Don't be rude! You know Sunny!"

Spike raised an eyebrow. It looked extremely comical when he was still being held upside down.

"I do?"

Sliske leaned in closely.

"Yessssss."

Now that she was doing it deliberately, she realised how stupid the hissing sounded. Spike seemed to get something else entirely from it, as he immediately went white as a sheet.

"Could we get some privacy please?" Sliske asked, "This poor dragon is quite obviously traumatised. He will need some speaking to."

Twilight smiled and nodded.

"Of course."

Rarity looked uneasy, but followed Twilight out of the room anyway, sparing a concerned glance back in Spike's direction as she left. Once the two ponies were gone, Sliske turned around and addressed Spike.

"You! Dragon! What the fuck is going on?!"

"Sliske? Is that you?" Spike asked.

"Of course it is! Now what's going on here?! What the hell are you even doing?!

Spike bowed his head in shame and began awkwardly wringing his tail.

"I...I just...It's been like nine hundred years since I saw any of them...When I woke up here..."

Sliske sighed.

"This isn't real," she said, "You do know that, right?"

Spike frowned at her.

"Why are you a mare now?"

"Is that seriously your biggest question right now?"

"I know what you're trying to do, and no. I will not blindly accept this. I've been alive for over a thousand years now, and even with everything I've seen, I am proud to say that I'm still not as jaded as you and those strange ponies you hang around with. Now explain why you're suddenly a mare, right now."

Sliske tilted her head.

"I think I liked you better when you were large and intimidating. You talked less often then."

"Explain. Now."

"Well, I don't know for sure, but my best guess is..."

The proceeding explanation continued for twelve minutes, and Spike remained floating upside down the entire time, occasionally nodding or interjecting with the occasional question. Eventually though, Sliske came to the end of her story, and Spike was mostly satisfied with it.

"Okay," he admitted, "I guess that's as good an explanation as any. Although, I didn't get parts of it. Like why did you have to hide in a sugar plantation in the first place?"

Sliske rolled her eyes.

"Weren't you paying attention? Because the ice cubes were cracked! Duh!"

"Oh right. Sorry, I forgot. Now this whole thing makes total, total sense."

"Yep. This is now a rational occurrence, and in hindsight it's pretty obvious. Why, you'd have to be a complete dumbass to think this doesn't make sense!"

"Yeah!" Spike agreed, "But who wouldn't get something this simple, right? You'd have to be a total moron to not understand what's going on right now!"

"And that's why I'm glad we live in a world as sane and logical as we do."

***

"'MURRICA FUCK YEAH!" the black version of Lord Second shouted from atop his giant robot as it fired radioactive lasers from its eyes and melted another casino.

"DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO PONIES," Liberty Prime agreed.

Sane and logical as fuck.

"We really need to do something," Gold Coin sighed, "Awesome as this is, he is killing ponies out there."

"Yeah..." Bizarro Softy answered, "Mebby we can...I dunno...fuggen...drive a car into his legs, like? And...like...knock over the robot?"

"Your accent keeps changing! I don't care what it is, but pick one and stick to it! This is confusing enough as it is!"

Down the Las Pegasus strip, another casino was melted into glowing green slag, along with all its inhabitants.

"AMERICA WILL NEVER FALL TO PONY INVASION."

Gold Coin began to tear up.

"I can't help it!" he cried, "It's a giant robot rampaging down the Las Pegasus strip! This is the best thing ever. How can anyone bring themselves to stop something that gloriously beautiful?! It's a crime against art!"

It was true. Even the police and military ponies who were supposed to be fighting Liberty Prime just stood in place gaping at it, even as it melted their comrades and destroyed buildings and roads around them. The spectacle of it was just...amazing.

Then suddenly...

"GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!"

A blur of red, white and blue flew through the air and smashed into Liberty Prime's chest. The robot staggered back, but did not fall. Lord Second in contrast tumbled off the thing and landed in the street below, seemingly breaking his spine. Of course, he had a healing factor, so that wouldn't keep him down for long, but in the meantime, the confrontation of the century was about to take place.

"IS THAT FUCKING PRINCE BLUEBLOOD?!" Gold Coin shouted.

Yes it was. And he was wearing the most ridiculous outfit ever conceived by a pony. It was a full body suit with a primarily blue background and was covered all over by a red and white cross. Or two red and white crosses. Or a red and white asterix...red and white star...? What the hell was that?!

...Oh, and he could fly now too.

"Alright you bloody yank! Now we finally decide the oldest argument! This battle right 'ere will determine once and f'rall who's bettah! Giant robots, or ponies!"

"TACTICAL ASSESSMENT: PONY VICTORY, IMPOSSIBLE."

And then they started wrestling.

No, not punching each other. Liberty Prime actually put Blueblood in a headlock even though he was tiny compared to him, and Blueblood kicked out Prime's legs from under him. The giant robot and the tiny but brightly coloured pony began rolling around across the strip, throwing each other into things and fighting.

And then Prime started the hair pulling and Blueblood bit one of his fingers, which somehow the robot not only felt, but wailed in pain over. It was less like an epic battle between bitter rivals, and more like two teenage girls having a catfight.

"...I'm so confused," Gold Coin muttered.

"About what?" asked Bizarro Softy.

"Everything! What the actual fuck is going on here?! Why the giant robot?! Since when was Blueblood a superhero?! What happened to Second?! Why are you a pegasus?! Why is the language ponies are using so different?! What's with the Stallionatra-but-not-quite songs?! "

"I shall never be defeated!"

Gold Coin turned around to see Lord Second stumbling onto the sidewalk.

"You ponies will never overcome-"

"Yeah, yeah, shut up. Listen, Second, maybe you know what's going on? What the fuck is happening here?!"

"Fool! Blueblood and Liberty Prime's confrontation is going on as we speak! The battle of the century! And you're asking me inane questions?! I should-"

"Oh wow," said Softy, "The fight just suddenly turned into a make-out session."

"WHAT?!" Gold Coin and Second said in unison.

Blueblood and Liberty Prime were now...doing things...

"SAY YOU LOVE DEMOCRACY!"

"I love democracy!"

"SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT! DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE!"

"I LOVE DEMOCRACY! WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SO MANY ELECTIONS TOGETHER!"

Gold Coin curled up in a ball on the floor.

"I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

***

Meanwhile in nazi-occupied Stalliongrad...

***

Mecha Hitler jumped through the window and skidded across the floor on his hooves. At the right moment, the robotic dictator swung around on his fore hooves and bucked Chameleon into the wall, seemingly breaking her skull open. He then turned to Private Smith, and his laser eyes immediately turned her into ash as well.

The sergeant ran forward with a knife in his teeth and slashed at Hitler, who dodged and backed away as he swung. Mecha Hitler began to charge his eye beams again, but then he jumped back as something struck him in the side.

Mystic levitated his rifle up again, now loaded with the anti-machine rounds, and shot another round right into Mecha Hitler's face, but the robot just absorbed the damage and charged his eye beams to attack Mystic instead this time.

The sergeant then jumped in the way and plunged his combat knife into Mecha Hitler's right eye as he charged the laser. The red light immediately died, but in return the sergeant was electrocuted through the knife by the robot's circuitry, and this gave Mecha Hitler time to shake him off and throw him into a wall as well.

This told Mystic all he needed to know though. Those eyes could be taken out. He looked through the scope of his sniper rifle, aimed right at Mecha Hitler's other eye, and fired a perfect shot right through it. No easy feat at such close range.

The lasers disabled, the despotic android went for melee, and blindly charged at Mystic to buck him into a wall. Fortunately, he was able to sidestep the attack, and Hitler crashed into a wall and stunned himself.

"Gotcha!"

Mystic moved aside as the sergeant grabbed ahold of Mecha Hitler while he was temporarily out of action and lifted him into the air with his hooves. Those earth ponies were damn strong.

"You're going down, fuckface!"

He staggered backwards while carrying Mecha Hitler with him still, and once they reached the window, he leaned over and threw him out of it. Mystic ran over to the window and looked down just in time to see him hit the ground and break. The legs were bent out of shape and small parts flew off the head as it shattered. Most of all, the thing finally stopped moving.

"We did it!" Mystic cheered, "We killed Hitler!"

"Mecha Hitler even!" the sergeant added, "Damn, this is like, the best day ever!"

The sergeant felt a pony poking his shoulder. He turned around to see the blue earth pony, who had somehow kept out of the earlier fight.

"I don't mean to hurt your mood sergeant, but the rest of the squad are dead."

The sergeant was about to speak, when an automated voice echoed through the streets.

"ADOLF-1 DISABLED. ACTIVATING BACKUP HITLER."

"...There's a backup Hitler?" the sergeant asked.

CRASH!

The three surviving ponies looked out the window across the dusty grey city, and saw that one of the many airships flying above it had just dropped in another Mecha Hitler. This one just happened to be roughly as big as most of the buildings in the city, and it was coming straight for them.

The sergeant could only sigh.

"The things I have to put up with. Honestly, fuck the military."

***

Alicorn Second stepped onto the deck of the ship and casually used his magic to pick up the ponies who got in his way, be they pirates or navy, and toss them overboard or in the direction of one of his Kraken's tentacles.

He was a very different sort of creature now. He had a dull white coat, like a less radiant version of Celestia, and a grey mane of the same shade he had in his human form. He retained the moustache he used to have before the explosion, and he had also acquired a pony-appropriate version of that damn long coat. His cutie mark appeared to be a stylised '2'.

He smiled at Softy and the commodore as he sauntered over to them.

"Why, hello there my good sirs!" he said in an exaggerated posh accent, "I've got good news and bad news! The bad news is that you're all going to die, and until you do, you'll suffer horribly. The good news is that I actually do not control the Kraken. I just woke it up, and now it's doing whatever the fuck it wants, meaning I can't stop it if it does something I'd rather it didn't."

He paused.

"No wait. Wrong way around. Reverse those."

Human or alicorn, you could always count on Lord Second to be unpleasant.

"Well, what are you here for?" the commodore asked.

"To kill you. Obviously."

The commodore looked sideways at Softy.

"Last I heard, alicorns are invincible. Got any ideas?"

Softy looked side to side for a moment. The screams of sailors continued in the distance as Second and Apple Cider both waited patiently for him to think of a response.

"...Wait, I think I got it."

He walked off back into the captain's cabin behind them, leaving the two other ponies behind. Commodore Cider coughed awkwardly as they both waited.

"So...You're an alicorn, huh? What's that like?"

Second looked down at him blankly.

"My God, you look delicious. I wonder what you'd taste like spit roasted..."

Apple Cider looked back towards the direction of the cabin nervously.

"Captain Spoken? A little help? Please?"

"I'm back! Don't worry!"

Softy emerged from the cabin holding the flintlock pistol in his teeth. He walked over and gave it to the commodore.

"Guns can kill alicorns for some reason. We still don't know why, but it works. Go nuts."

Commodore Cider shrugged and pointed the pistol at Lord Second. He fired a single shot right through the alicorn's forehead, and then he dropped dead. Second didn't even try to move out of the way. He just stood there and waited to die, like he was bored. Clearly, this was natural selection in action. Cider was so surprised by how effectively he had just killed a god that he didn't even bother to point out to Softy that he still had his own pistol.

"Well, what now?" Cider asked as he threw Softy's gun aside.

A gigantic tentacle came down on the boat and smashed through the deck. The entire ship rocked violently as it got torn in half. The Celestia was not under direct attack by the Kraken and seemed to be holding up better, but it wasn't helping out in the fight. Ze!zar and a few other crew members were content to just run around like idiots and and let the smaller ship die, seemingly missing that the Kraken would then come after them.

"Well, this ship's going down. I suggest we flee to the Celestia and try to organise my crew. Maybe we can blast this thing to death with the cannons."

"Lead the way, captain."

***

Gold Coin clutched his head as if in pain.

"No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO, FUCKING NO!" he screamed.

The earth pony jumped up again and pointed and accusing hoof at Second and Bizarro Softy.

"I've had enough! YOU PONIES ARE CRAZY! This is NOT how the world works! Actions are supposed to have reasons and consequences! Ponies and humans do not randomly change their race! Modern fucking Las Pegasus does not play sixty year old music! ROBOTS AND PONIES CANNOT. HAVE. INTERCOURSE!"

He turned around and shouted down the street at Blueblood and Liberty Prime.

"NO, SERIOUSLY. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?! PRIME IS LIKE- LOOK AT THE SIZE OF- HOW DOES THAT FUCKING FIT IN THERE?!"

Bizarro Softy whispered to Second discreetly.

"What's his problem?"

Second shrugged.

Gold Coin slowly turned to look over his shoulder at them.

"...I see what this is!" he laughed, "I get it now!"

Softy and Second exchanged a worried glance.

"This is all a conspiracy to drive me insane! You're all trying to throw so much random shit at me that my mind breaks! And then when I've become accustomed to the insanity of the world around me, then you're going to make me like you!"

"Like us?" Second repeated.

"Yes! LIKE YOU! A fucked up, weird, pseudo-parody of myself living in some la-la land version of Equestria that only barely resembles the real thing!"

He grinned at them.

"Well, it's not going to work! Fuck that noise! Do you know who I am?! I am Gold Coin, mighty alicorn hunter! I worshipped the real Second as a god for most of my life, and then when I found out he wasn't who I thought he was, I bucked my god in the face! YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN DO OVER THE TOP SHIT?! WELL TAKE A GANDER AT THIS, CITY FOLKS!"

Gold Coin turned and charged at them. Softy and Second tried to back away to get out of range, but then the earth pony leapt into the air and spun around. The world seemed to slow to a standstill, as he flew through the air towards them in slow motion.

"FLYING...APPLEBUCK...SPIN...ATTACK!"

He kicked out with his legs mid-air and hit the pegasus version of Soft Spoken. He was much more lightweight than his earth pony counterpart and went flying backwards, smashing into the brick wall of a building. The impact was so hard that his skull split open and his brains flew out and spread themselves over the wall like so much mushy paste.

Gold Coin hit the ground again, and he broke into a huge smile when white beams of energy began to emerge from the corpse.

No, not energy. Those were cracks. Not in any kind of surface though. He had cracked reality itself, and like a window, the world around them seemed to be slowly weakening as the cracks spread out in all directions, in a three dimensional manner. Gold Coin backed away, while Second just stood in place gawping.

The cracks turned out to be dangerous. A straight white line of light that was part of one of the cracks came within arm's length of Second, and then when it split again into yet more cracks, they actually impaled Second as if they were solid and drew thick red blood. The human pulled himself off them and staggered back for a bit before collapsing.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Gold Coin cackled, "I WAS RIGHT!"

The centre point of the cracks near the corpse of the mock-Softy collapsed in on itself. Rather than just cracks, soon it was a blank void. A hole in the fabric of space and time beyond which there was nothing but an empty whiteness. The space beyond was a vacuum, and the winds began to blow as it sucked the air in towards it. The hole began to expand.

Gold Coin stood his ground against it, hooves planted firmly on the floor even as the other ponies on the Las Pegasus strip, alive and dead, flew threw the air past him and into the ever expanding abyss. The pull strengthened. Some ponies were even more unlucky than the void's victims, and were impaled on the still spreading cracks coming out of the edge of it, just like Second was.

Blueblood came flying past Gold Coin.

"PRIME! NOOOOOOO!"

He vanished into the aether. The earth pony continued to hold his ground. There was a clanking sound, and he barely moved aside in time as Liberty Prime was also slowly dragged past him into the emptiness.

"I DIE...SO THAT DEMOCRACY...MIGHT...LIVE..."

Bricks began flying off the buildings. Puddles of glowing green plasma and neon signs were sucked through. The road began to tear up and trees were uprooted. The whole city began to disintegrate into dust and vanish through the void. As he watched the false reality die around him, Gold Coin just continued to laugh.

"I AM GOLD COIN, WORLD BREAKER!"

With a final maniacal cackle, he ran forward and jumped into the rift.

***

Chain Mail bucked down the door to his classroom and marched in proudly.

"I am Captain Chain Mail of her majesty's royal guard, and Mrs. Bittersweet, you are under arrest! For bitchiness!"

The classroom stared blankly at him. In the corner, his friend Cloudwing buried her face in her hooves, and Mrs. Bittersweet just blinked.

"Mister Chain Mail, this is most unorthodox," she said haughtily, "Take off that ridiculous armour, sit down, and do not disrupt my lesson or dare threaten me again, or else I will be speaking to your tutor."

Now it was Chain Mail's turn to blink disbelievingly. She had threatened to have him suspended for using sarcasm in her presence once, and now he had burst through the door waving a sword around, called her a bitch and said she was under arrest, and she just told him to sit down and get on with his work. This mare had some serious consistency problems, no doubt about it.

"I said you're under arrest!" he shouted, "Get down on the ground now!"

Mrs. Bittersweet raised an eyebrow, and then immediately reached under the desk and pulled out a sticky note. She scrawled something hastily on it and beckoned Chain Mail to come over, whereupon she reached out and gave it to him. The note read;

"Mr. Chain Mail has been disruptive in lessons and used threatening language and behaviour. Time out of lesson and phone call home recommended. -BS."

"Take that to Mr. Breaker's office and let him see it. You're out of this lesson for the rest of the period."

"But-" Chain Mail spluttered.

"Out."

Chain Mail sighed and hung his head.

"Yes miss..."

And so, Captain Chain Mail of the Equestrian royal guard passively walked out of the room like a spineless little wimp.

***

"We need to find a way out of here," Sliske said, more to herself than anypony else.

"How though?" Spike wondered, "Obviously this has got to be some kind of false reality...We're caged in this place. How do you get out of a prison like this?"

"By rejecting the reality," Sliske replied, "I'm a creature of consciousness. Sakrassi bodies are made out of the same ethereal material as pony souls. We exist in a mental state all the time. This is a mental landscape...I made places like this before. When I trapped the consciousness of a host body in a kind of false reality, to prevent them from distracting me or fighting back to regain control..."

Spike looked at her.

"So, rejecting this reality? How do you do that? How do we get out?"

Sliske looked around Carousel Boutique.

"There's an avatar. A tiny, almost insignificant portion of the mastermind behind everything, who takes a form of an individual in here and acts to reinforce the fantasy. It's an extension of the consciousness of whatever being controls this place, but it isn't exactly. The master in this case probably being Explodey, the avatar of our world isn't really a piece of Explodey's mind, so much as an agent of his created using Explodey's mind as a kind of template...if that makes any sense."

"Not in the slightest," Spike replied.

"The avatar though is the one who holds the world together. The more physical proximity you have to the avatar, the more chance the world has of suckering you in, making you ignore the inconsistencies between this place and the real world, and getting you absorbed into the fantasy. The avatar was nowhere near me when I awoke, so I knew something was wrong right from the get-go. You however seemed to be more affected."

Spike looked ashamed.

"It's no fault of your own. It takes extraordinary strong will to overcome the avatar face to face with them. But we have an edge now. We've already figured out that the world is a fake, thus our will is strong enough to overcome it. If we can find the avatar and kill it, the world with shatter around us, and we can drift freely into the rest of the mind, where I hope we can find the others."

That seemed to help the little dragon perk up a bit.

"Yeah!" he said confidently, "We'll find your friends, and Blueblood and the princess too! I'd rather have the real Luna than some fake copies of my old friends anyway."

He sighed.

"Still..."

Sliske swallowed her dignity and walked over to Spike's side to give him a quick hug.

"I've lost friends too. You're not alone."

***

Mystic, the sergeant and the blue earth pony soldier all stood still and waited for their deaths as the massive lumbering form of Super Mecha Hitler marched down the street towards them. Unlike regular Hitler, this one didn't bother with the skin suit, and was quite clearly just a giant metal pony with glowing red eyes, though it still had the little moustache and the short mane.

"Gentlecolts, it's been an honour," the sergeant said sincerely.

Mystic and the other private saluted in response. As the robot came for them, they all took off their hats and held them to their chests, closing their eyes and waiting for the inevitable.

Then, there was a loud booming sound, like a strike of thunder. Their eyes shot open and they looked up above them at the cloudy sky as a large white disc-shaped hole in the universe appeared. From within this strange portal, another large mechanical being dropped in. They all cringed as it crashed in the street below them, tearing up the asphalt and causing a shockwave that collapsed a bombed out building across from them.

They looked down to see that this new robot was human-shaped, standing upright and sporting a pair of arms with hands and fingers. Its head had no face other than a blue visor, and it had some sort of storage device on its back, full of what were probably bombs of some kind.

It had landed on its feet, and was crouched on the ground, crackling with electricity after just recovering from a malfunction. Soon though, it stood proud and tall before Super Mecha Hitler, coming up to the same height as him. It pointed at him with one of its fingers.

"LIBERTY PRIME, ONLINE. NEW MISSION: THE DESTRUCTION OF ANY AND ALL NAZI FORCES IN STALLIONGRAD."

"Oh, HELL yeah!" the sergeant cheered, "That's Liberty motherfucking Prime! The boys back home have come to help!"

"Back home?" Mystic repeated.

"Yep! I knew the good ol' U.S. of A wouldn't leave us hanging!"

"Wait, are we Americans?" asked the other soldier, "I thought we were Russian?"

"What the hell is Russia?"

"I thought we were Equestrian," said Mystic.

"Well we're not," the sergeant explained, "We're here on behalf of the American military. The Americans fought the nazis. Nopony else."

"Is it nopony or no-one? And hey, wait a minute! There were loads of ponies fighting the nazis! Russians for one, and the British for another."

"What the hell is Britain? Soldier, I'm beginning to think you're just making up countries now!"

"You know the British! They speak in posh accents, drink tea, have their own royal family and all of their successful wealthy businessmen turn out to be secretly evil and in the possession of nuclear weapons or space lasers, and most often find their plans foiled by suave secret agents with impractical gadgets."

"Oh, you're thinking of Trottingham. Which is not a country by the way. It's a city in Equestria."

Mystic raised an eyebrow.

"Wait...Are we living in a world where Britain and Trottingham both exist simultaneously? Russia and Stalliongrad? America and Equestria? And are we still talking about Second's America here? I have so many questions."

"Who's Second?"

Out in the street, Super Mecha Hitler's mouth opened up and revealed that inside his jaw was a cockpit, with a large control panel and a chair for the pilot, in which sat a familiar human.

"YO, Mystic Chant, homie! I heard yo needed an epic battle in dese giant robots an' shit. Dontcha worry, man. Your boy Second got it covered!"

Mystic didn't even know how to respond to that.

"Oh yeah! That's right!" Second continued, "I was really Hitler the whole time!"

"OHHHHHHHHHH SHIT! GODWIN'D SON!" the sergeant shouted.

Liberty Prime turned around and grabbed Mystic with his giant robot hands and pulled him out of the building. The confused and terrified unicorn went stiff with fear as Prime placed him on his shoulder.

"PILOT PROTOCOLS INITIATED. CURRENT DIRECTIVE: DESTROY SUPER MECHA HITLER."

***

Soft Spoken and the commodore leapt from the crow's nest of the rapidly sinking navy ship and just barely caught the edge of the Celestia. As they scrambled up onto the deck, Ze!zar came bounding over towards them to assist his captain.

"Sir," he greeted, "The Kraken is going to come for us next. What's your recommended course of action?"

Softy clutched his head. He felt a brief headache coming on, joined by a sudden urge to talk like a pirate, but he resisted for the moment and quickly recovered all his mental faculties.

"Load all the cannons and fire when the tentacles get in the way of them. We might be able to blast some of them off. This old ship may hold out a little longer than the other one, so we've got some time. Commodore Cider, try to get your ponies to help out as well!"

Cider nodded and ran off to go organise his crew, and Ze!zar headed back towards the ship's wheel. Softy was about to bark out some orders to his own ponies, but then there was a sound like a thunder strike, and a hole was torn in the sky. He looked up in confusion as a bunch of neon signs fell out of it and crashed into the ocean around them, splashing large waves of water over the deck of the Celestia and rocking the ship.

One particular sign fell into the water over by the other ship's wreckage and seemed to land right on top of the Kraken. The sign got caught in the monster's giant gaping maw and the beast began to thrash about to try and remove it, churning up more water around them. The waves began to carry the Celestia slowly away from it and placed it directly under the portal, from within which fell another pony.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!"

Gold Coin hit the deck hard. There was a sickening cracking sound, and tears welled up in his eyes. He didn't scream again though, and instead bit his tongue and nursed his broken leg.

"Somepony please kill me..." he whimpered.

"Goldie?!"

The yellow earth pony looked up to see Soft Spoken, and any traces of pain or discomfort vanished from his expression and were replaced with relief and gratitude.

"Softy! Thank Celestia I found you! The real you! You have no idea what I've been through! There was a pegasus version of you, and a black version of Second, and a giant robot, and I was in Las Pegasus, and Prince Blueblood became a superhero, and then Blueblood and the robot had sex in the street, and then-"

"STOP!"

"But-"

"NO! STOP THERE!" Softy ordered, "Look, I don't care. I stopped listening after you told me Blueblood fucked a robot. And in case you haven't noticed, I've got problems of my own. I woke up as a pirate, attacked a royal navy ship, and then an alicorn Second showed up with a Kraken, and me and Commodore Apple Cider-"

"Apple Cider?!" Gold Coin shouted, "Grandpa's here?!"

Softy paused.

"Ohhhhh...yeah...you're related...I forgot that..."

"You forgot that we were related? How? You only know about him because of me- Oh wait. Yeah, you said grandma left you for him...Oh. And he was a commodore...and you were a pirate raiding his ship...This is all kinds of awkward..."

Gold Coin scraped a hoof on the decking.

"Hmm...Actually, you're looking a lot younger than normal. Your mane even has colour! Is this...Is this based on real life?!"

Softy's eyes darted from side to side.

"I was in Las Pegasus because I actually went there before! Don't tell me you were a pirate Softy?!"

"Of course I wasn't!"

"Then why the maritime fantasy?!"

"I...Because..." he sighed, "My dad was a pirate. Okay? There. I said it. I grew up in a pirate port, lived on a pirate ship, my dad did pirate things, and I was adopted and taken back to Equestria by a very nice gentlecolt, who made a career of killing shitloads of pirates. There, that's the story of my childhood."

Gold Coin stared at him disbelievingly.

"You know, when we first met and you were shouting at Ancient Tome outside Sparkle Manor, I thought you were one of the normal ones. Especially after meeting freaks like Sliske and Explodey, and after Chain Mail became a cyborg and Mystic got possessed. I thought for a brief while that you and I were the only normal ones. But between you turning out to be a hundred and thirty years old, the power armour, the stare, and now this, I just don't know what to think of you anymore."

Commodore Cider jumped in to interrupt the conversation.

"These ponies aren't listening to me!" he shouted, "We've only got a few minutes before the Kraken kills us all! Captain Spoken, please, think of something!"

Gold Coin was briefly immobilised by the sight of a younger version of his grandfather, but quickly shook himself out of it, reminding himself that none of it was real.

"Softy!" he shouted, "I escaped the Las Pegasus world by killing the messed up version of you and breaking the universe! Maybe if we kill some bizarro version of somepony else you know here, it'll break this pirate world too and take the Kraken with it!"

The other stallion turned his attention to Apple Cider, who backed away nervously. Neither of the two ponies could bring themselves to attack him, to murder in cold blood, even if it was just an illusion. To Gold Coin he was family, and to Softy, now back to his usual self, the idea of doing such a thing was just wrong. He couldn't shake himself out of it. The world was too real for him to convince himself that it wouldn't be just as wrong to kill here as it would out there.

Not to worry though. They were spared their moral dilemma as one of the Kraken's tentacles reached out of the water, wrapped around him, and crushed his head.

"Ewwww..." Softy shuddered.

"Who else is there on board that we know?!" Gold Coin demanded.

"Ponies we know from real life?" Softy asked, "Let me think...Uh..."

"Sir! Orders?!" Ze!zar shouted as he ran over to Softy's side again.

Gold Coin took one look at him.

"AHA!"

He immediately rushed around behind Ze!zar, twisted in place and bucked him as hard as he could. The zebra was launched through the air and over the side of Celestia. Softy ran over to the side of the ship and stared as Ze!zar plunged right into the open mouth of Kraken.

Beneath the water, the ponies could see white cracks piercing through the skin of the monster. More came out of its mouth, and the cracks soon breached the surface and began to crawl through the air. Then the beast seemed to shrink and distort, and if it was being compressed.

The portal this time had opened inside of the Kraken's stomach, and it was being sucked into it from the inside out. It was a gruesome sight to see, but eventually the eldritch sea horror disappeared into the void, and then the giant white emptiness began to expand, sucking in more and more sea water as it grew.

"That's the way forward!" Gold Coin shouted, "Sail into the abyss! Full speed ahead!"

***

There was a thunderclap above. Spike and Sliske both looked at the ceiling of Carousel Boutique, wondering what was going on outside.

"What was that?" asked Spike.

Sliske was about to answer, but then was cut off as she heard a distant scream that was slowly getting louder.

"AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

CRASH!

The roof shattered and bits of timber and miscellaneous items stored in the attic came tumbling down on top of the two of them. A body hit the floor before them, and laid in a heap. Sliske and Spike were knocked back into the far wall of the room, where they laid for a moment before shakily climbing to their hooves again.

"What in Equestria just- WHO BROKE MY ROOF?!"

Rarity had just come through the door, and was now staring incredulously at the hole that somepony had punched through the upper floors of her shop. Her eyes darted over to Spike and Sliske, who both shrugged, and then homed in on a unicorn in red, white and blue who was coughing and slowly standing up again.

"Who are you!? And what did you just do to my roof?!" she demanded.

Prince Blueblood looked up at her and smiled.

"Cap'n Trottin'am at your service ma'am, supersoldier, 'ero, an' all around dashin'ly 'andsome stallion."

Rarity blinked.

"YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU! I haven't forgotten you from the gala you- you- "

"TACTICAL DEFENCE!" Blueblood shouted.

The prince pulled a big round shield emblazoned with the same symbol that was on his uniform out of nowhere, and raised it in front of him to hide from Rarity's fit of rage.

"Oh, don't think you can hide from me by-"

The ponies all looked around them in confusion. There was that sound of thunder again. What was-

CRASH!

Everypony jumped out of the way just in time, as a huge slimly tentacle smashed through the side of the building and nearly crushed them. It landed right on top of Blueblood, but fortunately he was able to use his shield to protect himself and crawl out from underneath it.

"What the 'ell?"

There was a primal roar coming from outside. An entire wall of the boutique had been destroyed, and the damage was spreading. Sliske and Spike looked up, and saw that the cracks in the ceiling were moving over towards them.

"Uh-oh," said Spike.

Blueblood made a dive in their direction, landing on top of the both of them. He angled his shield upwards just as the roof caved in, and the rubble bounced off the top and protected the two other from harm. Stone rained down and dust was kicked up everywhere, and soon they were all choking in the dust cloud, but they were alive. Blueblood pushed up with his shield and shoved another load of rubble off them, and the three both stood up to see the damage.

Carousel Boutique was gone. The whole place had collapsed, and they were now just standing on top of a pile of broken stone. Laying half buried under some of it was the tentacle that caused the damage, and following it to its source, the ponies saw that it belonged to a gigantic Kraken that laid in the middle of Ponyville, roughly where the town hall used to be. From the glassy look in its one visible eye, it was already dead.

"...Huh..." Sliske muttered, "I have no idea what actually just happened."

Then, an ominous sound began to fill the air...

"Oh no, what now?" asked Spike.

Sliske tapped his shoulder and pointed over to the other side of the wreckage of Carousel Boutique, where a bunch of cracks were growing out from underneath a piece of roof.

"What's going on?" asked Blueblood.

"Kill a world's avatar, we can escape the world and move to a different one," Sliske explained quickly, "Guess that means Rarity was it."

"I think that happened to me," Blueblood replied, "Tha's how I got separated from Prime and Goldie in Las Pegasus."

"Well, let's not get separated from each other again."

Sliske put her hooves around Spike and Blueblood's necks and held them both close. A white portal began to emerge from beneath the wreckage which was slowly expanding, and they began to feel a light pull as they were drawn towards it.

"Hold on everypony, we're in for a bumpy ride!"

***

"I'm very disappointed in you, boy."

Chain Mail cringed and marched along behind his mother obediently. Across the street, another pony waved sympathetically at him.

"Yes mommy."

"Getting suspended! For shame! I thought you weren't the kind to mess around in class! I thought you were taking your studies seriously!"

Chain Mail sat up and glared at his mother.

"I am!" he shouted, "Mrs. Bittersweet is a bitch! She can and will suspend you for anything! I don't even have to do something wrong for her to demand my suspension!"

"You threatened her with a sword and told her to get up against the wall."

"...Oh yeah."

The mare rolled her eyes.

"Honestly, Chains, I'm not angry. I'm just very disappointed. You were doing so well! What even brought on this business anyway? Look, I know you're very happy that you finally got your cutie mark. If it took me seventeen years, I know I'd be enthusiastic about it too, but sweetie, there's a time and a place for this sort of thing, and this is no way to-"

"It's not about that!" he protested, "It was about...It was Broad Sword! He made me do it!"

The mare blinked once, and then sighed.

"Seventeen years old, and still doing stupid bets with your friends? Chains, you need to grow up. Start taking things seriously. I'm not going to let all that money I saved so you could go here go to waste. When we get home, you and I are going to have a proper discussion, and sort this whole business out. And we're going to start with getting you focused back on your studies. You want to be a royal guard so bad? Prove it. Because I'm not letting you go for tryouts until you can impress me academically."

The two ponies continued to walk along in silence uninterrupted for about twelve minutes. Eventually though, they passed by a bush, and Chain Mail stopped as he heard somepony hiding inside it trying to catch his attention.

"Psssssst."

He looked over at the bush. It momentarily parted to reveal Broad Sword's face. Chain Mail went over to talk to him as his mother continued on ahead, not noticing that he had stopped.

"What is it?"

"If you want to escape this world, I need to die, and you can't bring your mother with you."

Chain Mail looked back down the street at his mother, who continued to be oblivious that he had hung back.

"But-"

"She's not real. None of us are. What is real, is your friends. And they're coming to rescue you, just like back in the Mages' Guild. Remember?"

"No! I don't remember! And I don't want to! That was...I was in that suit...And you and Explodey and me were...And then you...Second...he..."

He fell down on the sidewalk.

"Why would he do this to me?" he sobbed quietly, "I thought Explodey was my friend..."

"He is your friend," the Broad Sword construct said comfortingly, "He's just not himself right now. It's the zombies. He's part of a legion of thousands of other voices. Go and find him. Out there, somewhere in the labyrinth of thoughts, is a unicorn that badly needs some help from his friends. That's you, Softy, Sliske, Gold Coin, and Mystic. Find them, find him, and get out of here."

Chain Mail looked back down the street once more and nodded tearfully. Broad Sword reached deeper into the bush and drew his own weapon, which passed to the other stallion and pointed at his own throat.

"Ready when you are, cappy."

***

Liberty Prime and Super Mecha Hitler rushed at each other and collided full force. The metal pony reared up on his back legs and crashed down on Liberty, while the more humanoid robot wrapped his arms around Super Mecha Hitler's neck and pushed back. The robots wrestled in the middle of Stalliongrad, with Second still in the cockpit laughing maniacally, and Mystic barely clinging onto Prime's shoulder and shouting instructions into his ear, which the robot seemed to listen to.

"Blast him!" the blue unicorn ordered.

Prime's eyebeams activated, and Super Mecha Hitler was thrown back. There was a massive scorch on his armour where the green plasma beams hit, and both he and his pilot seemed none too pleased about that.

The despotic dictator activated his own eyebeams as Prime countered again, and the lasers met in the middle of the air. Liberty Prime's green rays and Hitler's red ones both began to form a ball of pure energy in the middle ground between them, which built up and exploded, demolishing several nearby buildings and slightly damaging both of them, but also taking out several nazi patrols on the street below.

"Mini-nukes!" Mystic shouted.

Prime reached into the case on his back and pulled out one of the bombs he was carrying. With a well placed throw, he launched it like a grenade over to Super Mecha Hitler, who closed his jaw just in time to prevent Second being hit by the blast. There was nothing he could do to save his eyebeams however, and just like with regular Hitler, his eyes were blasted out and his laser functions were disabled.

"Now punch him!"

"FASCISM IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF FAILURE."

Liberty Prime ran full pelt towards Hitler, pulling back one arm and readying a mighty punch. He jumped as he got in range and smashed the massive metal monster right in the face. The jaw flew off, and so did the cockpit with Second still inside. The human screamed as he fell and landed in the street below.

"That's Second down there!" said Mystic, "Kill him with radioactive lasers!"

"FREEDOM IS THE SOVERIGN RIGHT OF EVERY AMERICAN!"

Prime blasted the ground where Second landed with laser and plasma weaponry. The ground was melted into glowing green mush before long, and Second was disintegrated by the unparalleled force of the attack. However, much like Prime was capable of acting independently, so was Super Mecha Hitler.

"ACTIVATING AUTOPILOT," Super Mecha Hitler announced.

Liberty Prime tried to ready another mini-nuke, but Super Mecha Hitler caught him by surprise and charged into him, smashing the patriotic hero into a wall and crushing one of his arms under a giant metal hoof.

Prime glared at his assailant through his visor.

"DEMOCRACY WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED."

His eye beams blasted Super Mecha Hitler in the face again, and the furious fuehrer staggered backwards, seemingly in pain. He let out a rage-fuelled scream and prepared to attack again, but the damaged but still functional Liberty Prime rushed forward and grabbed his head in his good hand.

"THE LAST DOMINO FALLS HERE."

His fingers tightened around the giant metal pony head and Liberty Prime squeezed for all he was worth. The metal began to bend out of shape, and Super Mecha Hitler gave one last cry of terror as Prime crushed his head in his hand.

The giant robot thrashed about for a few seconds more before going limp and still. Liberty Prime let go of Super Mecha Hitler, who fell to the floor unceremoniously. Just to be safe, Prime blasted him with lasers once more, and didn't let up until the whole robot was nothing but highly radioactive slag.

"...I can't believe we actually did it!" said Mystic, "We killed TWO Hitlers!"

There was a thunderous boom, and Mystic looked up at the sky to see a gigantic portal opening above them. At first, nothing came from it, but then suddenly it started raining tonnes and tonnes of water. The streets around them quickly became flooded, and Stalliongrad filled up with water until it was up to Liberty Prime's neck.

Mystic climbed onto the robot's head to get clear, but then a huge Equestrian galleon fell out of the hole too, and crashed into the flooded street near him. The impact created a huge wave of water, which splashed over him and Prime. The robot seemed fine, but Mystic was drenched by the wave, and nearly fell off.

"Wha...?"

"Hey, is that Mystic?" said a voice, "HEY MYSTIC! OVER HERE!"

The unicorn looked over at the galleon, and was surprised to see that it was being sailed by Soft Spoken and Gold Coin. Softy was dressed a pirate and had taken the ship wheel, while Gold Coin was preparing a rope to throw to him.

"Softy! Gold Coin!" he shouted, "Please get me out of here! This place is freaky, and I just fought a giant robot with another giant robot!"

"I saw a giant robot too!" said Gold Coin, "What are the chances, amirite?"

Mystic grabbed onto the rope and pulled himself through the water and over to the galleon. Once he was near, Softy and Gold Coin came over to the edge to help hoist him up and get him on board.

"Okay, basically, we're in Explodey's mind," Softy explained, "To get out, we need to kill a specific pony. That's how Goldie escaped Las Pegasus, and that's how I escaped the pirate world. Is there anypony here who's still alive?"

Up above them, the sergeant stuck his head out the window.

"Hey, Private Chant! You did good, kid! There'll be a promotion ready for you when we get back home!"

Softy looked at Gold Coin.

"Fire the cannons."

***

Three portals burst open at the same time. Through one, an unclothed prince, a now fully-sized purple dragon and a dark unicorn mare fell into the place and landed in a heap on the floor. Through another stepped Captain Chain Mail in his traditional royal guard armour. And through the third, Soft Spoken, Gold Coin and Mystic Chant, back to being a colt again, sailed in on a pirate ship.

The three groups had emerged onto the surface of the moon by the looks of it, and looked above them simultaneously to see the beautiful sight of Equestria hanging in the sky above. The ponies on the pirate ship climbed off and cantered over to the others, and the seven of them all met as one.

"Sooooo..." Softy said awkwardly, "What happened to you guys then?"

"I revisited my old college," Chain Mail answered.

"I woke up as a unicorn mare and still haven't changed back," Sliske replied.

"I got to see all my old friends again, before they were crushed by a falling Kraken."

"I became a super'ero, and then fucked a giant robot."

Gold Coin cringed.

"I sadly was there to watch him fuck the giant robot."

"And I piloted a giant robot to fight another giant robot," Mystic chimed in.

They all looked to Softy.

"I became a pirate and fought a Kraken, with no giant robots involved."

"Hmm..." Spike pondered, "Coincidences keep piling up."

"I'm sure all these incidents are unrelated," said Gold Coin, "What's important right now, is where the fuck are we?"

Good question. Yes, it did appear to be the moon, but that was only a guess. They'd never been to the moon before, after all. And they seemed to be able to breathe here just fine, which according to every physics class every one of them had ever taken, should not be possible. Then again, by this point they were all very much aware of the fact that this was a dream world, so the laws and physics and logic didn't necessarily apply.

"I think..." Spike began, "I think this is Princess Luna's dream."

"That makes sense," Chain Mail agreed, "The princess did spent a whole thousand years of her life on the moon. Or in the moon. I'm not sure which. It isn't really clear."

"But where is she?" asked Softy.

Spike loudly shushed the group, and held still. Everypony was silent, and for a moment, they could hear the very faint sound of crying. Spike shifted looking around the desolate surface of the moon in search of the source of the noise. Eventually, he pointed them in the direction of a crater a short walk away from where they'd parked the pirate ship.

The group approached the crater as stealthily as possible, and once they reached the edge, they peeked over the side.

In the centre of the crater below, two alicorns held each other softly. Luna looked far smaller and younger than they normally knew her, with a plain blue mane made of normal hair far removed from her usual style, which looked like a piece of the night sky itself and rippled as if being blown by invisible cosmic winds. The other mare who they assumed to be a younger Celestia was much the same, with a regular if unusually long pink mane instead of the rainbow of colours usually associated with her.

"I'm sorry, sister...I'm so sorry..." Luna cried as she embraced the illusion of Celestia.

The illusion meanwhile just continued to hold her close and comfort her. It didn't speak any words or even move much. Evidently, Luna had been repeating those words to herself over and over again for a while now, and the two had spent the whole time so far just laying here.

Soft Spoken looked at the others sadly. They all looked somewhat sombre right now, but he noticed that Spike was the only one actually shedding a tear. They were trying to silently decide among themselves whether to go down and confront them, but Spike didn't wait for them to decide on anything, ignoring them entirely.

This had nothing to do with them.

The dragon crawled down on all fours and slid into the crater and over to the two alicorns in the middle. Luna briefly opened her eyes between bouts of crying and looked up at Spike in confusion. He picked the princess up in a single clawed hand, despite her protests at being separated from Celestia, and held her up to his cheek.

"You still haven't forgotten, have you?"

His voice was still powerful, particularly in the dead silence of space, but he spoke softly as he could.

"I...I could n-never forget," the princess sobbed, "I t-turned my back on my sister...and I hurt her...and...I was so alone for so long...I thought I was lonely before...b-because nopony appreciated my n-night...but I never realised how m-much she m-meant to me..."

"She took you back. She forgave you for everything."

"I know. It just...hurts..."

Luna sniffled and dried her tears.

"She did though...She took me back, even after everything I did to her, and it was like it always used to be...and now she's...gone...I don't know what I'm going to do without her, Spike...She wasn't just a sister to me. She was my best friend too. Without her...Or...with her, out there as one of those...things..."

"...I miss her too."

The others suddenly felt like they were intruding on a very private moment.

"Ah-hem."

The group turned their attention to the Celestia construct. Luna and Spike hadn't even noticed that it had wandered away while they were talking. Now it came to them, and seemed to want to speak.

"You're here to see the master," it said matter-of-factly.

Being the one most experienced dealing with the princess, Captain Chain Mail stepped forward to address her ghost.

"We are," he answered.

"Luna's world is the last barrier," the fake Celestia said softly, "When this place crumbles, you'll meet him."

"You're the one tied to this world," Chain Mail observed, "Like Broad Sword in mine."

The construct nodded.

"If you wish, I can end it now."

Chain Mail looked over at Spike and Luna. The dragon was staring in their direction, and he gave an affirmative nod.

"Do it."

'Celestia' spread her wings, and everything went white.

***

"...Okay," said Gold Coin, "NOW where are we?"

Somehow, the group had moved from the moon to an even more barren and featureless environment. Before, they had as many as five different colours around them. White for the moon's surface, black for the space around them, yellow for the distant sun and blue and green for Equestria above. This place...everything was just fog.

Luna was back to her normal form as well, and looking down at her hooves as if seeing them for the first time. She had only just realised that she was in the company of the other Elements of Harmony and Blueblood, and was now feeling a little self conscious about her emotional display earlier.

Actually, her change was the latest in a noticeable trend. After everypony left their respective world, they all changed into more immediately recognisable forms, except Blueblood who wasn't normal until leaving Sliske and Spike's world.

Soft Spoken was old again, Gold Coin was no longer filthy from sleeping in a gutter, Chain Mail...still was not a cyborg, but was no longer college age at least. Mystic was a colt again, Prince Blueblood no longer looked like something out of a gay pride parade, and Spike was once more twice the size of your average hydra.

And then there was Sliske, who despite everypony else's changes, remained a regular dark unicorn mare. It was starting to get more and more noticeable to the others. At first they had dismissed it like all the other strangeness they'd come across, but Sliske's form was the one persistent remnant of their dreams.

"I'm not sure..." Softy replied, "Let's have a look around. Everypony stay here..."

The old stallion began to walk off into the mists, but before he could take more than a single step forward, a tall dark figure came barrelling out of the empty whiteness and tackled him to the ground.

"SOFTY!"

"GAH! GET OFF ME!"

Soft Spoken scrambled away from the figure, who then stood up to his full height, revealing himself to be a young human wearing a big yellow hardhat. He grinned at them.

"Guys! It's you again!" he said happily, "You have no idea what I've been through the past few hours! Check this out! I have hands! You gotta feel this, guys. I am tripping balls right now."

Softy raised an eyebrow.

"Explodey?" he asked.

"Yep!"

Gold Coin's expression darkened, and he growled in anger.

"You..." he seethed.

Explodey stopped smiling.

"Uh..."

The yellow earth pony leapt forward and knocked Explodey over onto his back. Once he hit the ground, Gold Coin immediately jumped on top of him and pinned his arms to the floor.

"Goldie!" Explodey cried in surprise, "Look, isn't this a little sudden?! You haven't even taken me out for dinner yet!"

"YOU!" the business pony raged, "YOU ASSIMILATED US, YOU BASTARD!"

Explodey blinked.

"Oh. Did I?"

"YES YOU DID!"

"Uhh...Sorry?"

"SORRY?! IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?! YOU PRACTICALLY FUCKING ATE US!"

Explodey's face screwed up in disgust.

"Eww...Goldie, trust you to think of that."

Gold Coin slammed Explodey against the ground again.

"GET US OUT NOW!" he demanded.

"Alright! Alright!" the transformed unicorn yielded, "Sheesh Goldie, anger issues much? And can you please get off me?"

The earth pony reluctantly climbed off, still fuming. Explodey sat up again cracked his fingers.

"Alright, let's do this."

He held out his hands in front of him for a moment, and remained completely still. For a moment, the others didn't interrupt him, thinking it was part of the ritual. But then Explodey began to look more and more concerned, and stared at his own hands.

"Uh...Guys? Bit of a problem. I don't really know how to get us out. As in...any of us. I think I'm trapped too."

"How?!" Chain Mail asked disbelievingly, "You're the one who brought us here! This is your mind and body! How can you be trapped too?!"

Explodey shrugged.

"Hell if I know. I wasn't even aware this wasn't real until about a few minutes ago."

"What? This place?" said Gold Coin, "How can you think this is real? It's a goddamn empty misty mind land. What about this place at all resembles real life?!"

"I thought I'd died again," Explodey answered, "As I recall, the afterlife looked a lot like this..."

"Leaving aside the massive theological implications of a real actual afterlife for a moment," Chain Mail interrupted, "I think we need to address why you aren't in control."

Explodey looked at him blankly.

"In my own world, there was a construct of some kind that took the shape of Broad Sword, who said he was partially based on your own mindset. He talked about the legion. The legion of voices from the other zombies you absorbed. But he said you were a part of them. Where are they? Are they in control right now? How does this whole hive mind thing actually work? I certainly don't feel like I'm part of some greater collective."

"Hmm..." Explodey pondered, "Well...I remember I exploded...And then I was a sludge monster...After that, I reached out and grabbed all the zombies I could and started assimilating them...I just wanted to put them all out of sight and out of mind, so I quarantined them."

"'Quarantined'? The hell is that supposed to mean?" Gold Coin demanded.

"I found them all their own mind space and stuffed them in there. Just as a place to hold them while I figured something out. As far as I know, all that biomass is still in my actual body, just compressed. I should be able to eject them all completely whole again, but that assumes I'm actually in control, and I have somewhere to dump a couple thousand zombies.

"But...I think I may have made a teeny tiny little mistake, because the little bit of mind space I set aside from them was bigger than the one I'm in, which is this. Control of the body goes to whoever has the most control over the brain. The zombies were already a hive mind when I absorbed them, so they act like a single indvidual. If we occupied the same space, they'd just be voices in my head while I would be in control.

"Thing is though, they're not. I separated us, and most of my mind is being used to host them. They've got the majority of the brain under control, and that means I'm no longer in control, and no longer able to bring down the barrier by myself to take back control. And what's worse, being partially merged into my own mind seems to have lended the zombie hive mind some degree of intelligence. And I may be mistaken, but I think that they think that they're me."

"You think...that they're thinking that they're them and..."

Gold Coin trailed off and just stared into space looking confused.

"The zombies think they're Explodey," Sliske summed up.

"Yes! Exactly!" their friend exclaimed, pointing at Sliske, "By the way, why are you a mare now?"

"Why are you a human now?"

"Touché."

"No, that was a legitimate question."

"ANYWAY! So the collective of zombies is basically the mastermind behind this. It's a legion of zombies, who think they're me, except a me who is also a part of a collective of zombies, if that makes sense."

"It doesn't."

"The zombies all believe that they are Explodey," Sliske translated, "but they also believe that they are part of the zombie hive mind, so they believe that they are Explodey, and that they absorbed the zombies and now are in control of them."

"And they are who put you all in your personal fantasy worlds," Explodey continued, "which were based on what they interpret your wants and desires as from your memories, which both they and I have access to. Like for example, they placed Gold Coin in Las Pegasus because that was where he lost his virginity, to a changeling hooker."

Gold Coin's cheeks burned and the others all turned to stare at him.

"SHE WAS NOT A HOOKER. SHE QUIT THAT JOB."

"Goldie!" Chain Mail chided, "I can't believe you! Really? A changeling? You know they don't really mean anything they say right? You NEVER get intimate with one of them. I know they try to sucker you in with that whole 'I can be anypony you want me to be' schtick, and promise to love you forever, but really all they do is suck you dry, in every possible sense of the term."

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience, cappy!" Gold Coin snapped.

Chain Mail was taken aback.

"I am not!" he replied indignantly, "I just happen to be a little wiser than you apparently."

"Nope. He is," Explodey added helpfully.

Chain Mail glared at the former unicorn.

"This doesn't matter!" Gold Coin shouted, "The point is, the mastermind fucked up, because I hate Las Pegasus and I never went back there again for a reason!"

Explodey looked crestfallen.

"Oh," he said, "Well, at least tell me the rest of you liked your fantasy worlds? It was a version of me that created them after all, and I like to think I'm a good judge of character. What about you Softy? How was the pirate world?"

"It's going to haunt me forever."

"But...It was based on your childhood! Memories of your father, and other such things!"

"Explodey?"

"Yes, Softy?"

"I hated my father."

Explodey looked around at the others. He settled on Chain Mail, who answered immediately.

"You made me relive going to Mrs. Bittersweet's classes. Fuck you."

He turned to Mystic.

"I'm now terrified by the thought of ever daydreaming again."

Then to Blueblood.

"You made me realise I'm sexually attracted t' robots. I 'ope yer proud of y'self."

"Mine wasn't so bad..." Sliske mumbled, "At least until the Kraken showed up and killed everypony..."

Chain Mail cleared his throat.

"Explodey, weren't you explaining something?"

"Oh right! Yeah. So...ahem. So, point is, the legion of zombies that has convinced itself that it is led by me currently controls my body. The rest of us are all stuck in my headspace, in which there is no avatar to kill to break the walls down. The legion is unaware of my existence or what happened to the rest of you, and we've got no way of escaping from my mind or my body either."

Sliske gasped.

"I...I know how we can get out!" she announced.

"How?!" Chain Mail demanded.

Sliske turned to Princess Luna and Spike.

"Princess! Do you remember the exorcism spell? Developed during my original arrival in Equestria, and used most recently when you prevented me from taking over Spike's mind?"

"...Of course," Luna answered, "I don't see how it will help us though. It's meant for-"

"-Forcibly removing a Sakrassi from a pony host body. Use it on a pony in here and their very soul would be torn out of Explodey, separate from their body, which would remain absorbed. It'd likely kill them. But Sakrassi like myself are practically ghosts! We're beings of energy, and thought, and spirituality. We're disembodied souls already! Use that on me, and I can break free in my normal form and confront the legion-controlled Explodey in the outer world!"

Luna looked back over her shoulder at Spike, who just shrugged at her.

"How do we know this will actually work?" she asked, "I'm using magic in a dream world! What if it just rips you out of the imaginary host body that you're inhabiting in here?"

"That's the thing, princess. I'm not in a host. It took me a while to fully grasp it, but this is my natural form in here. Haven't you all noticed it when you went between worlds and snapped back to the way you are now? We're all taking the forms of our own perceptions of ourselves! That's why Chain Mail isn't a cyborg in here, but he still has his royal guard armour! It's an integral part of his identity!"

Soft Spoken blinked.

"So...You...Think of yourself as a unicorn mare?"

Sliske looked about awkwardly.

"...I guess I do. Truth be told...I have spent most of my life on this planet. Little over two thousand years now. And when I came here, I was only slightly older than Softy is now. Too much time around ponies...Yeah. I think I've gone native. What can I say? You've all rubbed off on me."

The group then turned their attention to Explodey.

"And he thinks of himself as a male human?" Softy asked.

"I have a head full of weird leftover knowledge about humans from Second," he explained, "It gets so confusing at times. I think I inherited more from my creator than I thought I did."

"Yes, your random ability to turn into a sludge monster and absorb pony souls would seem to indicate that."

"Everypony! Focus!" Sliske snapped, "Princess, ready the spell."

Luna sighed and stepped forward.

"You'd better be right about this."

***

"Agggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!"

The creature that thought itself to be Explodey McGee staggered back as what appeared to be a black cloud of smoke burst out of its chest and swirled around the room. It fell onto its knees, and the new entity looked up at Sliske as his simplistic but distinctive teeth and eyes formed on the outside of the smoke cloud.

"Sliske," it said, "How Did You Escape? Why Did You? Did We Not Do It For You? We Sought To Bring Eternal Bliss. A Paradise For You And Our Friends To Enjoy, In The Mental Landscape We Devised. We Could Have Been Friends Forever."

The ghost-like alien replied telepathically, just as the legion were.

"No, Explodey. We will never be friends. Because you're ugly, and you smell. Also, the others said your fantasy worlds suck and are poorly designed. Did you know Softy hated his father? I certainly didn't. I suggest you break down the walls in your mind and go find them. They want to talk to you."

Legion-Explodey looked cross.

"How Dare They! I Shall Go Give Them A Piece Of My Mind Immediately..."

The unicorn thing squinted its eyes as it concentrated for a second. Sliske waited. Then, the eyes snapped wide open again.

"NO!"

Then it began to cough and fell over onto the floor.

"AGH!" Explodey screamed in his regular voice as he began rolling about, "OH FUCK I'VE GOT A HEADACHE! IT'S LIKE I WAS JUST HIT WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER!"

"Explodey!" said Sliske, "Can you hear me?!"

"Just a second...UMPH..."

Explodey laid down on his side again, seeming to rest easy.

"Okay..." he sighed, "I'm good now...I've got them under control...They're locked away in isolation again...And this time, I have a majority stake in the brain."

He slowly stood up again and looked around them curiously. They appeared to be locked in the cargo hold of the Prometheus. Clearly somepony knew what they were doing. Trapping him in here probably saved all of Ponyville. They probably had the Brotherhood of Man to thank for that.

"Well, what now?" asked the alien, "Are you going to get the others out yet?"

"Oh, right. Yeah. They're still inside me, aren't they?"

He shrugged.

"Alright. Let's do this. Sliske, fetch me some toilet paper."

END

Author's notes:

...Jesus.

Anyway, that was Master Mind. This fucking chapter...So many ideas all the way through, and then when I got to the final scenes my creative process just ground to a halt. You can blame that for the delay, and I apologise for it. I'll make it up somehow. Gonna try not to take this long again, though no promises.

I've never suffered a lack of inspiration before, but there's a first time for everything. Maybe the rest of the chapter just drained me. You've seen all the weirdness I threw into this, right? Maybe my imagination just suffered an overload. Especially after I got the idea to put Liberty Prime in this. I like to think of his and Blueblood's sequences as a metaphor for internet racists. Ever go to a Youtube comments section or a forum thread, and see a Brit and an American arguing over which country is best and shouting racial slurs at each other? I've seen that, and my first thought was always, "Just fuck already!"

Well, onto other things. First of all, Shades of Grey is still ongoing and Draven's coming along nicely with it. For those of you that have not yet read it, I suggest you do. Even people who disliked this story liked that one, and some readers of both have said they actually prefer it. Take the hint, people.

And secondly, spoiler alert, I had a look at some of the song previews for season three. Crystal ponies? Goddamn does that sound awesome. And I heard another mention of Cadance in there. Sounds like she's going to be a recurring character. Fucking called it, and so psyched for it too.

Sadly, the way Human's universe is set up, I probably won't be able to adapt the story to season three canon the way I adapted it for the season two finale, at least not without creating large plot holes and making it feel really forced. Looks like the story's shaping up to become AU, with the timeline branching off after the royal wedding. Then again, that was the plan anyway, so nothing's changed really.

Lastly, I went out a few days ago to see the new Spiderman movie. It's amazing, and you should all see it.

Next Chapter: I get back on my meds, and things get more sane.

Comments

[Lithl]

Woo-hoo!
More of my favorite crackfic.

[Leather]

REAPER? MASS EFFECT? RUHN FO YO LAYVES!

[Esme]

I was honestly just about to go to bed. It's 1:30 here, you know.
Oh well, time for humans!

[Br2nd66]

toilet paper? oh god

[Whiteeyes]

Thanks for the warning. The teaser sounded really good, but once I read it wasn't serious...anyway thanks for the heads up.

[DannyJ]

928444

S'all good.

[DavidPony]

thisisthefunniestthingiveeverread

[DannyJ]

928505

I used to play when I was younger, up until I eventually gave away my account. I heard him referenced and such and used the name for this as a kind of homage, though I had already stopped playing before Sliske was actually in the game for any of the quests, so beyond the snake tongue thing, most of the similarities are accidental. I didn't know my version's namesake could also take over bodies until you just told me.

Parallels have been drawn between Sliske and a lot of other characters though, if you look through the comments. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what my inspiration was, (one guy accused me of stealing the idea from Red vs. Blue, a series I never even watched until after he brought it up, and honestly I still don't see the comparison), but truth is he's basically just something I came up with mainly on my own. Though I will say I probably borrowed more from the Runescape character than any other source, or at least what I imagined him to be like since he wasn't in the game until after I stopped playing.

[mrturtlebobington]

If a portal opened inside the kraken's stomach, it would emerge inside out, likely bursting its stomach in the process, splitting it apart and leaving an awful mess

[mrturtlebobington]

If a portal opened inside the kraken's stomach, it would emerge inside out, likely bursting its stomach in the process, splitting it apart and leaving an awful mess

[DannyJ]

928601

Probably, yeah. My Kraken has magical ignore continuity powers though.

(Also the original intention was that the Kraken wasn't sucked inside so much as the portal expanded around the Kraken and engulfed him, but I done fucked up.)

[King Trollestia]

For all that random shit, it was definitely worth the wait.

[Xuncu]

cdn.derpiboo.ru/media/BAhbBlsHOgZmSSIdNGYyMjc1YTQ5NDViNzA0YzFmMDAwMDAxBjoGRVQ/2397__safe_sweetie-belle_reaction-image_image-macro_artist-uc77_that-is-beautiful.png

[warpd]

I read it, but I don't understand.

[stringtheory]

my mind is full of what

[SingABrightSong]

Britain and America fucked, and gave birth to Canada!
this chapter is just full of mind screw.

[Cades]

I still think Broad Sword should come back. Just saying.

[LogitechPony]

Best chapter ever.

[ymom2]

Toilet paper... O SHI-

[DannyJ]

929331

Exactly.

[Jack Ass Knife]

929053 He's dead... Just saying.

Excellent as always.

[JCraig589]

Broad Sword must return. NAO!!!please?

[BrotherConsus]

What was written: Krakkens tentacles
What i read: krakkens testicles
I really need to sleep.

[Poducken]

I'd like to see a scene about Broad Sword talking with Lord First, just to get some closure on his (seemingly permanent) death.

[Nexodas]

I would have thought it mildly obvious that this was an AU. Probably when you went ahead and named several future season villains.

I mean if Sliske turned out to be the Season 3 finale/premier villain then I think a lot of people would shit themselves, myself included. I...think you had him slated for the fourth season or some shit though from what my vague memories can dig up.

Fuck it. Crystal Ponies.

[WeirdBeard]

Uncle Sam salutes you, ya magnificent beast.

[User name]

Luna has been a whinny little crying baby so far. She didn't learn how to lead properly in a thousand years? Would celestia fail to maneuver the situation just as much if luna had died?

[StyrofoamPie]

I salute you. For the first time in this glorious tale, you have managed to fill my mind with fuck. A rare feat.

Also, I almost died reading the fight seen with Blueblood and Liberty Prime.

[The Gargoyle]

Well... Holy Shit... That has got to be the MOST MIND WARPING CHAPTER EVER!!!!!!!!
Great job at pulling everything together, and we even learned more about the characters pasts to boot,
You put a metric TON of great lines into this chapter and did a marvelous job at making it flow while stilll maintainng a very high crazy level.

Though I feel like i missed something important when Sliske was talking to spike about cracking ice cubes...
And i'm suprised at slikse, never imagined it as a girl, well whatcha gonna do ya know

Looking forward to what comes next, at least more then the characters probably are, i wonder if Explodies ass will hurt? especially with Spike
Wishing you all the creativity you need in the future.

[InsaneCat]

On last chapter I commented that this fic reached it's Mindfuck Threshold and it's time to Release the Kraken... And then YOU RELEASED THE F*CKING KRAKEN!
*sigh*

"This is all a conspiracy to drive me insane! You're all trying to throw so much random shit at me that my mind breaks! And then when I've become accustomed to the insanity of the world around me, then you're going to make me like you!"

This sums up my thoughts just right.

[Silver Wind]

So Explody is gay right? At the very least, extremely bisexual?

[DannyJ]

930430

Kinda what I was going for actually. I always imagined post exile Luna to be more dependent on Celestia than she knew. Both being practically immortal, the idea of her sister dying when she was the one pony who was always around sort of breaks her. Celestia I would imagine wouldn't be like this if the situation were reversed, but I think that because having already lost Luna once before and being the older and wiser one, Celestia would be able to better keep her composure, at least in my interpretation.

I've only got a few minutes of canon to base their entire relationship on, and what I got from it was that they mean a lot to each other and that being separated hurt them both. One of them outright dies, I take that to its logical extreme. Maybe not a characterisation you'd agree with, but it's what I imagined would be appropriate. And don't worry too much about it. It's all building towards something, and I have no intention of leaving her in this state for the entire fic. What sort of comedy would it be if she was constantly miserable and blubbering?

930654

Explodey makes a lot of gay jokes because he finds them funny, but his real preferences have not been explicitly defined so far. But this will be a question we'll be exploring later.

[Silver Wind]

930904
I personally wouldnt mind if he was, but I'm alittle biased since i like m/m. I still miss Broadsword >:
I had a teacher like Like Chainmails... cept it was a guy in science class....guy was a total douche..

[StatusQo]

Robot Hilter, Liberty Prime, Lord Second as an alicorn and pirates.
This is the crazyest damn chapter I have ever read.

[WrathOfGod519]

My brain... is so full of fucks right now. I don't know how you managed this, but from chapter one it goes from completely believable human in Equestria... to this... and it makes perfect sense. how u do dis?

[Gypsy]

United as one
Can't be undone
Our forces combined
In one single mind
You'll be the hardest
We'll be the smartest
Consider our life form
As one of a kind

in response to the beginning quite

[DannyJ]

931279

I just write what the voices in my head tell me to.

[WrathOfGod519]

931316
Oh and another thing, I'm quite exited about 'The King Machine' you and your friend are working on, roughly how long til that comes out?

[DannyJ]

931463

Long way off yet, but we're getting there.

[Nasty Mister Monket]

Damn, this is more fucked up than what I write.
Bravo, good sir. Good to see someone else with an overactive imagination.
And flintlocks are badass. I'm so happy there was one in this.

[Glassed]

I'm...

I'm speechless...

My jaw fell to the floor and I facedesked, leaving my jaw very uncomfortable.
This chapter... Christ, I love you DannyJ... I don't think I could closed my jaw the entire time it took me to read it. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Soarin_dayum.png
-Glassed

[Seoman]

"...but for some reason this version dropped all the references to Princess Luna..."

This made my day.

Good work! This story has nearly everything imaginable, and i'm sure that the rest will follow soon. :)

[meme-asaurus]

"I AM GOLD COIN, WORLD BREAKER!"

And so, Captain Chain Mail of the Equestrian royal guard passively walked out of the room like a spineless little wimp.

One of these things is more awesome than the other. Rainbow Dash would not approve of Chain Mail.

[TMH]

You my good sir are a true genius of randomness. I salute you.

Carry On

[EgoDraconis117]

My mind has just been fucked by something resembling a jackhammer... Hammer...... Hammer......... Haaammmmer.

Da Fuq Did You Do To Me???

Unbeleivably funny chapter as always

[Unwitting Brony]

This isn't the first time I've thought this while reading this story, but...

WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!?! I understand (somewhat) the stuff about having to break out of Explodey's isolation, but all of the rest of it with Liberty Prime?! I will most certainly be having the most fucked up of dreams tonight. Not that that's a bad thing- I'm still loving this story. It's just too damn good.

[Bottlecap]

da fuq did i just read? anyway, great chapter as always

[lepinkiepie35]

Seriously, this is one of the funniest fanfics I have ever read.
With the raw action scenes and mind-fuckery, my head has now exploded.
Good god man, MMMMMMOOOOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!

[Rezival]

Good work as always.

[hmmmmhmm]

couldhavetakenitsolo.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/shit-just-got-real.jpg