The Champions of Equestria

by DrakoGlyph

In Havoc's Grasp

When Applebloom opened her eyes on the Ponyville side of the portal, she wished she hadn’t. It had appeared that nothing was different, except that the Elements of Harmony and the Princesses lying on their sides, groaning. Applebloom looked back and saw Discord through the rip in Chaos.

“That was the last of my power, now go, save Equestria,” he said with a sad voice, before the continuum healed itself, sealing Discord at the end.

“Wow, I thought it was bad when Discord was in charge,” Scoots said. “This is crazy.”

“Scoots?” murmured a groaning Rainbow Dash. “Is that you?” She barely got to her feet as the Cutie Mark Crusaders charged over to her. “Discord’s gone mad! He shattered the Elements of Harmony, cast the Princesses aside as if it were nothing, then turned the world back to raw Chaos!” She groaned and rubbed her foreleg. “He went straight for the heart of the Everfree, you need to get in there and go after him!”

“But that’s not Discord,” Sweetie Belle returned.

“Or a him…” Applebloom said, still confused about that issue.

“What do you mean, that’s not Discord? It was a perfect image of him,” Twilight groaned, walking over from where she had been cast.

“I think I would recognize my own friend’s face, or ex-friend,” Fluttershy said with malice.

“Fluttershy!?”

“Oh, my, I shouldn’t lose my temper like that…” she went back to the animals who were all cowering in her cottage.

“It was a mirror image of him, Havoc,” Scootaloo said, “that was really another Draconequus from a long time ago named Harmony.”

“You actually paid attention to that story?” Applebloom asked in surprise.

“It may be namby-pamby, but I’m still going to listen to a story when I have to.” Scoots seemed offended that Applebloom was surprised.

“It doesn’t matter now, girls, not with the Elements of Harmony out of play, and all of us drained. There’s no way to stop him unless you three come up with something,” Twilight broke up the fight. “Now I’ll tend to everypony here, you need to get into that forest and stop Discord, or Havoc, or Harmony… whoever it is.”

“Sure thing, Twilight!”

“See ya when we save Equestria!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll do fine!”

“Was that Applebloom?” Applejack asked as they ran off.

“I hope that I chose them well,” Twilight sighed.

“Now, this place ain’t nearly as scary when the rest of the world is in chaos,” Applebloom commented, though the darkness and the omnipresent feeling of being watched was certainly enough to stop her from going as to say it wasn’t scary at all.

The Everfree always held this level of creepy and weird, even when the rest of the world was being turned end for end. The darkness, the various critters, the air itself has something about it that made it different. It was more than just being close to Discord’s magic for a thousand years, it almost seemed to yearn to be chaotic, to be different, to be itself.

Perhaps this was why Havoc chose this to be the beginning of his empire.

Applebloom didn’t know what to prepare herself for, this wasn’t something you could say ‘Oh it’s just like gettin’ a shot at the doctor, brace for the needle prick.’ This was life and death; this was the fate of the entire world.

This did nothing to help Applebloom clam her nerves.

Scootaloo wasn’t much different. She felt deep inside that she was going to do something that would mess this up, that would end the whole gig for the three of them. She was heading into a fight with something that could take out princesses and the powerful Elements of Harmony. Scootaloo asked once to see Rainbow Dash’s Element, but she said that Twilight was keeping it in the library because it was safer there.

If Twilight and the Elements of Harmony were crushed, defeated to the point of no longer working, then what hope did they have as three fillies? True, their bodies were accelerated into full grown ponies, but they were still really just fillies.

Sweetie Belle saw the worry in her friends’ eyes. She knew the road ahead was dangerous, but she also knew that there was something in them that Twilight, and Celestia, saw to make them the ‘Champions of Equestria.’ There was a little something inside her too, telling her that she just needed to try harder. She also knew that being the unicorn was the burden of using magic, and she hadn’t even mastered something as simple as levitation.

There was nothing that could impede their progress into the Everfree, for it seemed that Havoc left a grand wake of devastation even to this, the forest of chaos. Not even a Timberwolf’s howl could be heard as the sun sank; with no Luna conscious to raise the moon, it started a dark night without any stars or moon to brighten it.

The darkness only multiplied in the Everfree, somehow robbing the world of all light. Sweetie Belle was doing all she could to light the way with magic, a spell locked in her mind from Twilight’s passed memories. Her green glow made the already creepy Everfree even more creepy.

“I think we’re almost there, girls,” Applebloom said. Their journey had taken them so far, from just a normal day having fun with their sisters, to trying to save the world from doom and devastation. This was the most dramatic change that she had ever had in one day.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Scootaloo said.

“Afraid… I forgot what it’s like not to be afraid,” Sweetie Belle whimpered.

“Hahah, so the ‘Champions of Equestria’ have made it here, to witness the birth of my new empire. The Dawn of Chaos is upon us, and how befitting that it not be witnessed by Celestia’s Sun or Luna’s Moon. What can three little fillies do against me?” Havoc’s voice came out of the darkness, but the bearer didn’t appear.

“We’re not that little, Havoc!”

“Oh really?” With the feeling of a tap on each of their backs, they shrunk back to their normal size, dropping the memories, and the Elements that they each had worn, which fell to the ground and shattered into pieces. Sweetie’s horn flickered out, and darkness surrounded them. “You look like little fillies to me.”

“Oh yeah? Well… well…” Scootaloo shouted. “What do we have?” she asked frantically, turning to her friends.

“We have… uh…” Sweetie stalled.

“I don’t think we have anything, girls,” Applebloom answered. “But we still gotta try. Our sisters are counting on us!”

“I can’t let Rainbow Dash down!” Scootaloo shouted.

“You silly little foals think that you can defeat me when not even the fabled Elements of Harmony can? The reason I haven’t destroyed you yet is because your endurance amuses me, though I think it is time for you to face the chaos within each of you. I tire of people who believe they can defeat me.” Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Applebloom all watched each other disappear into an even darker sphere, where who knows what awaited them.

Applebloom groaned. She felt like she had the weight of Big Mac on her shoulders, and all these eyes were on her.

“You, dearest Applebloom, afraid that you will never have a special talent, will face the fact that you will never get to discover who you truly are,” Havoc’s voice called out as images of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon came toward her. They couldn’t be the real ones; they were always too preppy to venture into the Everfree.

“Look at the Blank Flank, thinking she’s so special because she leads the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” Diamond Tiara’s voice came from the image.

“She’s so pathetic… even Twist learned her talent before she did,” Silver replied.

“At least Ah’m havin’ fun with my friends and not bein’ a menace to the rest of the class!” Applebloom developed.

“How cute, she thinks that she can change our minds so easily.”

“Yeah, Diamond, cute.”

“Ah have friends who Ah can count on…”

“But you’ll never know who you truly are. You’re never going to get a cutie mark. Perhaps it’s better that way, though, because if you did have a special talent, I’m sure it’s just going to be an apple like the rest of your inbred family,” Diamond Tiara said, though Applebloom had a feeling that it was Havoc’s assault on her.

“Inbred? What does that even mean!?”

“It means that your family only believes in being with family—love, life, the whole bit. Have they not told you about your parents?”

“That’s enough, Havoc! You can be mean to me all you want, but you leave mah family outta this! You ain’t got no room to speak about family!”

“Perhaps I don’t, being a lone ranger and all, but I do know a thing or two about the Apples. Farmers, all of them, without fail. You, silly Applebloom, will be a farmer just like them.”

“So what if I am? If it’s who I was meant to be, then it’s who I was meant to be an’ there’s nothin’ in the world I would trade fer that!” She batted away the images of Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara, watching them dissolve into a black smoke. “I don’t fear not bein’ special because I already am!” The ground around her dissolved into the dark Everfree again.

Sweetie Belle seemed to be sitting in the foyer of Carousel Boutique, though she knew it couldn’t be. She was deep within the Everfree forest.

“Oh, Sweetie Belle, there’s something I must tell you,” came Rarity’s voice, but the image that moved its mouth was not Rarity. There was no charity in her eyes; there was no Generosity.

“What is it, Havoc? Can’t talk to me face to face?”

“Oh, well fine then, I’ll do things your way.” The Rarity dissolved into Havoc, the mirror showing an image of a dying Discord.

“Sweetie Belle?” Discord said from the mirror before Havoc placed his claw to the image and made Discord disappear, leaving a reflection of Sweetie Belle.

“You leave him alone! He’s done nothing wrong!”

“Oh, he did everything wrong. He let Harmony open the Pandora’s Box, releasing me into the world. He should have known the power that he drained away was going to return to haunt him. And so I have, waiting for the exact moment when the world would be weak enough for me to return.”

“Discord only wanted what would make this world better! He tried, and maybe he made some mistakes, but he’s tried.”

“Tried and failed, and now I am free to face the world, to destroy all of it and reform it in my desires.”

“You know nothing of desire, of passion. You can’t even show the slightest bit of true passion!”

Havoc grew cross with the interloping unicorn filly. “And what would you know about passion? A filly who doesn’t even know her special talent!”

“It just means that I can be whatever I want!”

“Keep telling yourself that, Sweetie Belle,” Havoc smirked before disappeared, leaving Sweetie Belle in the Darkness of the Everfree again.

Scootaloo hated the dark. She chose to say hated because she never wanted to admit being afraid. Sure, she had overcome a lot since that campout, especially under Rainbow’s direction, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from jumping at every sound around her.

“I-I know that’s you Havoc… I know it.”

“Very astute, but you don’t have a chance of defeating me. You, Scootaloo, are the reason why.”

“No… it’s not true!”

“It’s very true, and I can prove to you why. You will fail your friends when they need you most, like you have before. You always have, and always will.”

“I don’t always fail them! And as long as I keep true to myself, as long as I never give up… There will be hope for all of Equestria!”

“But you haven’t succeeded at anything thus far in your life, Scootaloo, your parents don’t even love you enough to keep you.”

“That may be true, but I have friends and family now. It’s enough for me. I won’t give up because I have them!”

“Then let your failure be sung across the land.”

The darkness dissolved around Scoots and she was reunited with her two best friends, to watch a towering Havoc above them.

“I have grown tired of you, and I do believe it is time to destroy you.” His paw and claw, grown to giant size, scooped them up and began to crush them. They couldn’t breathe, the pain overwhelming them, but somehow they managed to bring their hooves together.

With a gasp, each was able to say their goodbyes:

“Ah ain’t never met a better bunch a friends than you two, an’ I can’ think of anypony who Ah’d rather face doom with than you.”

“You’re the nicest ponies I’ve ever met. I can’t believe this is the end, and we still don’t have our cutie marks…”

“Well, at least I’m not alone,” Scootaloo said, “and it doesn’t matter, our special talents are nothing if we don’t defeat Havoc.”

“I love you both,” Applebloom said.

“We love you too,” Sweetie Belle said, feeling the crushing pressure crack something inside her.

“Yeah, I love you both…” Scoots said.

There was nothing left to do but let the darkness overcome them and crush them into oblivion.