Mega Pony
(This loop was essentially entirely the brainchild of Crisis. As it's ridiculously long, I've not got the time to proof read it. As such, things in this loop should not necessarily be taken as canon-OK. Sorry.)
My Mega Pony
Twilight Awoke this loop in the middle of the familiar library tower, reading a book she was actually unfamiliar with. She decided to take a moment to review her memories to figure out just why she was reading it in the first place.
"Geez, Twilight," Spike's voice cut into her thoughts. "What's got you so excited?"
"The princess assigned me to oversee preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration!" Twilight heard herself exclaiming with very uncharacteristic eagerness in her voice. She'd originally been annoyed at the assignment because of focusing on the return of Nightmare Moon, and while it had become a higher point since then, it was fairly routine due to the Loops. "In Ponyville!"
"Uh, yeah," Spike said suspiciously. "She does that almost every Loop. It's more exciting when that's not what happens, remember?"
'Okay, looping Spike confirmed,' Twilight thought to herself as her mouth took over again.
"But Spike," she heard herself say on autopilot, like this was a familiar rant for this version of her, "it's Ponyville! The home of Light Labs! The most advanced and innovative technomagical research and development company in the history of ever!"
'Dear Tree,' Twilight thought in dismay as she found her mouth was fully on Loop memory autopilot and she couldn't stop it, 'I'm a fanfilly.'
"Huh?" Spike said intelligently. Twilight could sympathize. This was rather out of left field.
"Founded by the earth pony genius Dr. Light and his partner Dr. Wily, Light Labs is at least a thousand years ahead of anyone else in the field of technomagical development. The two doctors' discoveries on how earth pony magic can be channelled through solid mediums such as crystals and metals revolutionized magical studies around the world, but they weren't satisfied with that! They went on to show how one race's magic could be converted into another's through controlled processes, not only allowing earth ponies and pegasi to power unicorn devices, but they've broken the monopoly that pegasi have had on large scale weather manipulation and earth ponies have possessed on quality produce since the time of the founders! They've even made fully autonomous mechanical robots for commercial and industrial usage that further revolutionized Equestria's economy! And they're all set to unveil their latest inventions the day after the Summer Sun Celebration! I'll be able to get front row seats! And maybe they can autograph my cloud boots! *SQUEEEEEEEEE!*"
'Holy chlorophyll,' Twilight thought as she lined up the involuntary rant with her now-examined memories for this loop, 'two Unawake earth ponies did all that in what seems like an Equestria baseline? Fanfilly tendencies have been justified.'
Checking in on the preparations for the summer sun celebration had gone smoothly. Of the usual Elements only Dash wasn't Awake this time. A teen Spike had stayed with Rarity to absolutely no shock and overall, no real surprises had occurred save that Fluttershy had decided that she was going to be singing along with her bird choir. The yellow pegasus may have become more confident over the course of the Loops, but what amounted to a solo public performance, even knowing it would likely be interrupted by Nightmare Moon, was a big step for her.
And now she finally had some free time to check out this "Light Labs" place. Such an establishment most likely meant new loopers visiting for a fused Loop, but there was always the slim chance the Loop was just a particularly esoteric variant of Equestria. Those did happen from time to time.
But in any case, she'd get to meet the brilliant minds behind all of those inventions she recalled from her Loop memories, talk with them, exchange ideas. She was so excited she...
...Was apparently doing the happy hoofy dance in the middle of the street. Pine, but these fanfilly tendencies she'd gotten for the Loop were deeply ingrained.
"Well, hello there. Who might you two be?" Twilight greeted the two fillies, well one filly and one robot in the form of a filly, that had answered the lab's door. She knew the first to be Scootaloo and the second looked surprisingly like Silver Spoon, but she had to play ignorant just in case they weren't Awake.
"I'm Scootaloo Light," the orange pegasus filly beamed, "and this is my friend Silver Spoon! We both Awoke real early this morning miss...?" (#1#)
"Twilight Sparkle," the so-named unicorn beamed back, catching the subtle inflection signaling that the two were Awake. "How has the L–"
Twilight cut herself off with a cough when Scootaloo and Silver made the 'not here' signal. Right. Explaining might be awkward if the wrong person overheard.
"Sorry," she apologized. "How is life at the lab? I imagine it's very exciting! Do you ever have any other friends over?"
"Nah," Scootaloo answered, letting her know that it was just the orange pegasus and Silver of the expanded CMC that were Awake, "not many are too interested in this kind of stuff so my adopted family and I don't get many visitors. Though I've got the coolest older brother and sister by 100%!"
Twilight raised an eyebrow. Only 20% lower than looping Rainbow Dash. High praise from Scootaloo indeed. "Well, do you think anyone would mind if I came in and met the doctors?"
"Not at all!" Scootaloo chirped. "Well, uncle Wily might be a little irate, but that's because he's really protective of the stuff he and dad invent."
"Yeah," Silver added, "he takes a little getting used to." (2)
"I promise not to steal anything," Twilight made the Pinkie Promise gestures as the two led her inside. 'Apple Bloom will never forgive me if I don't get her in here somehow,' Twilight found herself thinking. Even if Apple Bloom wasn't Awake this time, the looping version would never let Twilight live it down if she didn't find some way to get her inside Light Labs. "I just want to meet the two most brilliant stallions in all Equestria!"
"Fanfilly much?" Silver arched a mechanical eyebrow as the purple mare #squealed with glee#.
"I thought I had that under control," Twilight blushed as Scootaloo snickered.
As it turned out, she got the full tour. Dr. Wily was somewhat abrasive, but some liberal compliments of his intelligence and a bit of buttering up brought him around rather quickly. Dr. Light, by comparison, seemed embarrassed by such attention but was very enthusiastic about sharing his love for science and invention. Neither of them seemed like they were trying to reconcile any memories that conflicted with their lives in Equestria.
Along the tour, she'd met Dr. Light's twin children, his son Rock and his daughter Roll, who were two of the friendliest ponies she'd ever met. Though for some reason Scootaloo and Silver snickered when she told them this and even the twin earth ponies had given her an amused look.
Towards the end, she even got a sneak preview of the doctors latest inventions. A series of six cutting edge industrial robots with personalities programmed to be so close to a real pony that they could react and make decisions like one, in addition to being able to issue commands to lesser industrial robots to facilitate a more efficient work environment. It looked to be the start of a technological revolution the likes of which Equestria usually didn't see outside the discovery of an alien spacecraft, and as she bid her hosts farewell she was excited to see what direction it would go in.
The whole thing was causing her memory to tickle a little bit too, which probably meant this was a fused Loop after all. But she'd perused so much of the Hub's fiction that it was #hard to place a new Loop setting immediately#, especially if it deviated significantly. Like, say, being dropped in Equestria. Plus she had a backlog of fiction she still hadn't gotten around to reading even after all this time. The Hub had a lot of published works after all.
Even so, she probably could have identified the visitors in a few moments using the search engine she’d developed to sift through the vast Hub media she had digitally stored. However, she found she was enjoying the feeling of newness and the challenge of figuring it out for herself.
"Miss Twilight?" Scootaloo caught up with her a short ways off from the lab. "My brother and sister this Loop wanted me to tell you to meet them later. I told them you'd probably be at the library, so they said they'd meet you there after Pinkie's party."
"Thanks Scootaloo," Twilight smiled. So, the Light siblings were the visiting loopers? She looked forward to meeting them properly then.
Pinkie's typical welcome party was in full swing. Twilight had been mildly surprised that it wasn't a 'welcome new loopers' party as well, but she hadn't brought it up in case she set the party pony off and ended up with Ponyville buried in confetti or something stranger. (3) Currently she was talking with Rainbow Dash when something the other mare said caught her attention.
"Wait," Twilight's found herself interrupting what the current variation of Rainbow Dash had said to her, "you're the 'subject' who volunteered for the 'Rainbooms: The Nature and Capabilities of Pegasus Magic' study?! Ohmygosh! It's so great to meet you! Can I get your auto–*ahem*"
Twilight blushed furiously as the Unawake version of her friend began laughing her head off. 'Tree damn this Loop and the fanfilly tendencies that come with it!' she yelled mentally. She idly wondered if her natural tendency to get excited over intellectual pursuits was making it harder to resist the impulses that came with her Loop memories. It could be the nearness of the native personality variant to her baseline was making it harder to suppress, which would be an interesting study come to think of it.
"Sorry," she apologized, "I don't know what–"
"Forget it!" Dash waved her off. "The docs were about the only ponies who gave my claim of doing a Sonic Rainboom back then any credit at all, and they were nice enough to help me get set up in Ponyville when half of Cloudsdale blamed me when the docs broke the weather monopoly. For eggheads, they're really cool, and it's great to know somepony actually appreciates what we did together. Besides, Scoots told me that you were a little excitable over that kind of stuff." (4)
"I'll bet she did," Twilight blushed again. "Say, do you know about the pegasus harmpph?"
She'd been about to say 'harness' when Dash shoved her hoof into Twilight's mouth.
"Shhh!" the rainbow-maned pegasus hushed her and glanced around the party to see who'd overheard before removing her hoof and continuing in a whisper. "That's supposed to be a secret! Scoots told me you'd gotten the special tour, but that project's hush-hush! And, yeah, I know about it. I'm the one they're testing it against. Rock, and sometimes Roll, strap the thing on and pretty much try to keep up with me. It's not nearly ready, but when it is it's gonna make Cloud Boots obsolete."
"Wow," she whispered back. "They must be pretty brave ponies. Have they always been like that?"
"What do you mean?" Dash blinked.
"Well, what were they like when they were younger?" Twilight asked, fishing for some information on the visiting loopers before they met up after the party.# "Did you go to school with them?"#
"Did I go to–?" Dash started before cracking up again.
"What?" Twilight inquired, thoroughly confused.
"Oh, no!" Dash giggled. "Not spoiling the surprise! Rock and Roll would be pissed if I did that! In fact, I should probably go grab Scoots before she slips up, later!"
Twilight twitched as the twin ponies laughed and refused to let her and her looping friends in on the surprise they had in store. It was after the party and Rock and Roll had joined her, Spike, and the other four Awake Elements for a quiet meet and greet. They were indeed loopers and they'd already had the 'welcome to the multiverse' speech so that sometimes awkward hurdle was cleared. The only hiccup was Pinkie having to be regularly restrained from turning it into a full-blown welcome party for the brother and sister pair.
"Sorry, Twilight," Rock grinned as he tapped his boots on the floor. The earth pony stallion's blue metal boots matched his coat and his brown mane was, as Rarity might put it, 'stylishly unkempt'. Topping off his appearance was a tool box cutie mark. "But if you can't tell then we're not letting you know before dad gets a chance. He's been planning this for a while."
"Gah!" Pinkie yelled suddenly. "I can't take it! You've gotta let me throw a 'welcome to Equestria's Loop' party for you!"
"But we already had one of your 'welcome to Ponyville' parties," Roll, the cream-coated and yellow-maned earth pony mare with a cutie mark of a metal broom and red metallic slippers over her hooves, placated. "And it was a lot of fun."
"But it's not the same! You weren't Awake for that one! None of us were!" Pinkie insisted, pulling out a party petard and starting to arm it.
"Not without the whole family," Rock insisted. Surprisingly, Pinkie stopped and sighed as she disarmed her party munitions.
"Sorry, Pinkie," Roll apologized, "but we'd like to have our brother here for that."
"Yeah, okay," the party pony moped for a moment before straightening. "But I get to throw you a huge 'family getting back together' party on top of it when that happens."
"You have another brother?" Twilight asked after the two had agreed to Pinkie's condition.
"Our older brother Blues," Roll nodded.
"He's... estranged at the moment," Rock told them.
"Oh," Twilight blinked. "How long has it been that way?"
"Since our baseline," Roll informed them as her brother sighed. "He's stubborn like that."
The Equestrian loopers blinked as one.
"How...?" Rarity started.
"It's complicated," Rock told them. "And he's repeatedly asked we not say anything more on the subject."
"Well," Twilight decided to change the subject before the atmosphere got any more depressing, "as you may or may not have heard, we like to consider ourselves a sanctuary Loop. We can handle all the native problems just fine, so you two can feel free to take a vacation and relax if you like."
"Er..." Rock hedged and Twilight realized that her offer had apparently not served to reduce tension. "How enforceable is that?"
"We've had some pretty good success using the Elements of Harmony to keep the peace even when visiting loopers don't want to play nice," Twilight told them.
"Oh, yes," Rarity chimed in. "A nice time out on the Moon works wonders for troublemakers."
"No," Rock shook his head, "I mean..."
"What my brother's trying to say," Roll filled in, "is if that's backed up by your Loop's nature or your local admin?"
"Ah, no," Applejack looked confused. "Why would it be?"
"Sorry," Rock apologized, "but our Loop is... well 'anti-sanctuary' probably fits. You see, our Loops usually start out peacefully, just like this one, but no matter what we do to forestall it, a war happens."
The room went silent for a moment.
"We haven't been looping too long, but we've tried a lot of things," Roll continued for him. "The closest we've come to succeeding was becoming villains ourselves, which ended up causing our normal villain to be the hero. Sometimes we join forces against a larger threat, but then it's back to business as usual with us on one side and him on the other. The one time that someone, not us mind you, killed him before he could start his bids for world conquest the situation ended up worse."
"Uh, if you don't mind me asking, who–?" Twilight cut her question off when the siblings shook their heads in unison.
"Not telling," Rock stated with finality. "Just in case it doesn't happen this time. We don't want to end up tainting your opinion of him and inadvertently causing it anyway."
That... made a lot of sense actually.
"What we're getting at," Roll picked up, "is that we're starting to think something about our Loop is setting things up so that conflict is inevitable. The initial cause has ranged from perceived slights, to well-intentioned extremism, to accidents that induce madness, to the individual in question having been secretly evil the whole time. Our Loop is pretty messed up on top of it too, with bugs, viruses, and a pretty corrupted baseline. So there's often no indication of which way events are going to go either. Some threats come and go between Loops, and every so often something bizarre crawls out of the variants."
"And in every single one," Rock intoned gravely, "at least one of us has had to fight."
"Wait," Spike interrupted. "Which one of you is the Anchor again?"
"Um... both of us, actually," Rock admitted sheepishly.
"You're Co-Anchors?" Spike inquired.
"Not exactly," Roll shook her head. "We're not... 'soul-bonded' or whatever Hephaestus – he's our admin – called it. He says we're 'Joint Anchors', or that we jointly share the position while not being otherwise connected. We understand it's not exactly common."
"Goodness, no!" Rarity twittered. "Why, I've never heard of such a thing!"
"Yeah, the Crash from a while back musta hit yer place pretty hard, huh?" Applejack contributed.
#No one missed the double wince from the two visiting loopers when that was mentioned.#
"Wait..." Twilight's face scrunched up as she thought before widening her eyes in revelation. "You...?"
"Yeah," Rock admitted heavily, "our Loop is sort of responsible for what everyone calls 'The Crash'. Lucky us, we got chained to front row seats for the event."
"I..." Twilight's mouth worked up and down in shock. Sure, she'd expected to eventually meet whoever was from that Loop where trying to get it online caused the arguably worst event in the history of the Loops, but having them here in front of her...
"Wow, um..." Spike wasn't having any better luck. After all, it couldn't have been their fault. Yggdrasil wouldn't start anyone looping who had a part in destroying an entire reality, so they were just as much victims as the Loop that was lost.
Pinkie's hair had started to go a bit straight as she teared up in response to the revelation and Fluttershy had somehow gotten even more quiet than usual as she sniffled silently.
"...gosh," Applejack tried and failed to offer something. What did you say in a situation like this? "That's....."
"My word," Rarity managed to recover first. "And you witnessed the whole thing?"
'Wait a second,' Twilight's brain latched on to that particular tidbit as the siblings nodded in response to Rarity's question. "You remember it?! You... You actually have memories of the Anchor who was lost?! Then you could..."
She trailed off at the dual shaking heads.
"All we remember about them," Rock told them, "is a hole in space where a person should have been."
"Hephaestus told us recently that he's been examining our memories for any data that could aid the possible recovery of the branch they lost," Roll continued, "but..."
The room got quiet again for a bit, and then Pinkie sprang up suddenly.
"No!" the pink party pony declared forcefully. "No more moping on sad stuff we can't change! We have new friends to get to know, stories to tell, and games to play! Oh, and we have to get ready for Nightmare Moon showing up at what would otherwise be dawn to try and cast everything into eternal darkness. You know, business as usual."
Rock and Roll blinked and looked at each other before turning back to the ponies and dragon.
"Are you sure this sanctuary thing of yours works?" they asked in unison.
"It's done pretty well so far," Fluttershy smiled serenely.
Save for Rock and Roll insisting on accompanying them for the adventure, the whole thing with Nightmare Moon had gone pretty darn close to baseline. In deference to giving their visiting loopers the 'Equestrian Experience', Spike had volunteered to sit out as an Element of Loyalty and allow the local Rainbow Dash variant to fill her usual role.
The interactions between everyone had been rather enlightening. Their visitors clearly had Loop history with Unawake Rainbow Dash, and had asked her if she'd heard from their older brother lately. Apparently Blues had been convinced to keep in touch with the daredevil pegasus even after his estrangement, and that managed to intrigue Applejack enough to get into a conversation with Dash about the mysterious member of the Light family. Roll had then gravitated to Rarity and Fluttershy and the three had gabbed away on the trek about animals, fashion, housekeeping tips, and medicine of all things. Rock had proved to be quite the intellectual, clearly taking after his father, and he and Twilight had gotten along like paper and ink. Interestingly, he also seemed to take to Pinkie Pie pretty well. He was far less random than the premier party pony, but Twilight could tell that like her hyperactive friend, Rock was somepony who genuinely desired to see everyone happy.
Heck, Twilight had even felt some resonance between the two and some of the Elements as they were activated and bonded to her and her friends like in the baseline. It was something that might bear looking into at a later time.
But for now they had a 'Welcome back' party to attend for Luna. And she had a mysterious orb that had been formed when Luna was purified of Nightmare Moon that felt really darn familiar for some reason to examine later.
"What doth rocks and rolling have to do with music?" an Unawake Luna asked of the twin earth ponies. Twilight had to marvel again at how quickly the two had gotten Luna down to a normal speaking volume.
In reply, the two grinned and called out to a nearby Ponyville resident. "Hey Vinyl! You got the karaoke machine hooked up yet? We need to introduce Princess Luna to our namesake!"
"All ready!" the DJ in mirrored shades piped back, gesturing the two onto an impromptu stage.
"What is this... karaoke?" Luna puzzled as the siblings began to sing.
"Dad likes that old time rock and roll!
The kinda music just soothes the soul!"
"Doctor Bright Light, your majesty," the bearded labcoat-wearing earth pony inventor introduced himself to Princess Luna. "And may I say you dance divinely."
"We thank you, good sir," Luna blushed. She had no idea what had possessed her to get up on stage and dance beside this stallion's children. It was just... that music... It called to her.
"And this is my good friend and partner, Doctor Wily Plan," the white-maned earth pony introduced his frizzy gray-maned and mustachioed earth pony companion, also in a labcoat.
"A pleasure to meet you Princess!" the other pony inventor gushed. "May I say that I have always loved your night sky!"
"Hail and well met!" Luna greeted the scientist. "It pleases us greatly to know how well ponies have taken to intellectual pursuits these days! We have heard tell of the many marvels you both have produced and we would like to hear more!"
"Well, if you don't mind staying until tomorrow," Dr. Light enticed, "you can witness the unveiling of our latest inventions."
"We would be honored, good sirs!"
"Mares and gentlestallions," Dr. Light proclaimed from the podium as a curtain rose, (5) "I present to you the latest invention from the minds at Light Labs, the robot masters!"
Upon the stage stood six robot ponies of various types.
"To oversee forestry management and logging excursions, DLN-003 Cut Mare!"
An orange and white earth pony model with a pair of scissors atop her head jumped off the stage and threw the scissors at an unwieldy log set aside for demonstration purposes. In moments the limbs had been sheared off and the log neatly quartered.
"I also do some mane-styling in my spare time," the robot winked at the impressed crowd.
"For construction, particularly in hazardous conditions, DLN-004 Guts Stallion!"
A truly massive earth-pony model, standing a bit taller than even Celestia, lumbered down off the stage and picked up an I-Beam as easily as a normal pony might heft a baseball bat.
"Built strong to build strong!" the robot rumbled in a deep baritone that complemented the crowd's applause.
"Built for arctic and cold climate exploration, DLN-005, Ice Mare!"
A short pegasus model in a stereotypical parka flew over not to the demonstration area, but to a table of refreshments holding so-far untouched cups of warm lemonade. She then blew a mist over the cups, turning them frosty in an instant.
"I'm also built for cold storage capacity," she smiled as the refreshment table was suddenly swarmed.
"For demolitions and excavation, DLN-006, Bomb Stallion!"
A portly unicorn model bounded to the other side of the stage to a new demonstration area where a shack had been hastily constructed the other day. The robot then whooped as he conjured some explosives and tossed them into the shack. A moment later and all the walls and supports were blown out, leaving the fully intact roof to fall straight down.
"So," Applejack whispered to Twilight as the crowd applauded loudly at the display of precision control, "ya think introducing him ta Trixie would be a good idea or a bad-un?"
"I love my job!" the robot cheered.
"Bad," Twilight whispered back, "definitely bad. Doesn't matter that she's not Awake."
"For waste management, DLN-007, Fire Mare!"
"Hey, look, it's you when you're angry," Pinkie grinned at Twilight as the second unicorn model suddenly produced a flaming mane as she strode over to the second demonstration area. The female robot stared at the debris for a moment before rearing up and blasting flames from her forehooves that reduced the debris to ash.
"No muss," the robot drawled much like Applejack tended to as the reporters' cameras flashed even faster, "no fuss."
"And finally, to rewrite the book on Equestria's growing need for power management, DLN-008, Elec Mare!"
The final pegasus model strode to the front of the stage and spread her wings. Arcs of lightning emanated from her and suddenly the perimeter of the stage was lit up with previously unnoticed lights like Hearth's Warming Eve.
"I knew you'd get a charge out of me!" the robot declared to enthusiastic cheers as a set of pyrotechnics went off along the stage's edge.
"Oh, dear," Rarity giggled demurely. "It's a robot Rainbow Dash. How ever shall we cope?"
"Guess we'll have to practice ducking and covering," Spike shrugged.
"Oh, you'll help me practice, won't you Spike?" Rarity fluttered her eyelashes.
"Get a room you two," Twilight groused.
"Pardon us, master Light," Luna spoke up from where she and her sister sat observing the unveiling, causing the crowd to quiet down. "We know we have been gone from Equestria for a... long time, but surely ponies still begin their counting with the number 'one', do they not? Wereforth are the first two of your creations?"
"An excellent question your majesty," Dr. Light beamed, "and one I'm afraid I must let somepony else answer."
With that, Dr. Light beckoned towards backstage, and his two children stepped out to stand before the now confused crowd.
"Hello everyone!" Rock waved cheerfully. "I'm DLN-001, dad's tool-using lab assistant."
"And I'm DLN-002," Roll curtsied before the slack-jawed audience, "housekeeper, and the one who makes sure this motley group of goofs takes proper care of themselves."
"Yeah," Rock rubbed his mane sheepishly, "she's good at that."
#"YOU'RE ROBOTS?!"# somepony yelled incredulously. 'Huh. Well that explains a lot. They're certainly a lot more life-like in appearance than Silver ended up,' Twilight thought as she looked around for who had yelled. It took her a moment and seeing half the crowd looking straight at her to realize she'd been the one who'd yelled it. 'I'm going to need to put a leash on my subconscious this Loop, aren't I?'
"YES!" a butter-yellow pegasus elated as she involuntarily rose into the air. Fluttershy suddenly realized what she'd done and floated back down, blushing the whole way, but still clearly excited. "I won the pot!"
"Awww," Twilight heard Lyra pout nearby, "I was sure they were humans in disguise!"
"Oh, dear!" Rarity fanned herself dramatically, "My money was on them being his illegitimate children by a summer love he met while on an exotic vacation!"
"I think I had mine on them having stayed with another member of the family until their dad got himself properly set up with his business here," Applejack sighed.
Twilight spotted Rainbow Dash rolling on the ground and laughing as more and more ludicrous disproven theories about the origins of Dr. Light's children were passed around. At least she hadn’t been the only one fooled, even among her looping friends. Then again, none of them had exactly checked their magical signature or anything.
"Truly, your children are a marvel of ingenuity," Luna could be heard complementing the good doctor.
"I'm just happy to have them in my life," Dr. Light smiled back while his son and daughter fielded a deluge of questions from the gathered reporters like pros.
Later after the unveiling, Twilight managed to track down Dr. Light and show him the strange orb that had been dropped when Luna was cleansed of Nightmare Moon. Dr. Wily had passed through earlier looking typically sour of him, but she and Dr. Light were too engrossed in studying the object to pay him any mind.
"My goodness, this is extraordinary," Dr. Light proclaimed fervently as he took readings. "It's clearly a power source, but I can see mental patterns inherent in it as well!"
"You mean, that's a pony in there?" Twilight blinked.
"Or some other sapient race," Dr. Light clarified. "Perhaps even one we've never encountered before. We'd have to give it a body capable of communicating with us to know for sure. Would you like to learn how?"
"Me? You want to show me how to build a robot like Rock and Roll?" Twilight blinked, feeling her fanfilly tendencies rising and trying to stamp them out before they embarrassed her again.
It was harder than it sounded. Especially since was starting to get an idea of why the orb had felt familiar, which meant her maternal instincts were backing up her fanfilly tendencies.
"I managed to help my adopted daughter build her friend Silver," the roboticist smiled, "so it shouldn't be too difficult to teach somepony of your clear capability."
"Yes!" she cheered and began bouncing around the room. "Yesyesyesyesyesyes!"
She was gonna have her daughter around for the Loop! Wheeee!
The positive atmosphere of the previous day seemed so far away now, Twilight mused. Ponyville wasn't feeling the effects directly, but they'd gotten the news on the televised news broadcast the doctors' technomagical advances had allowed to become widespread.
The events they were showing were not heartening. For some unfathomable reason Dr. Wily had stolen the six robot masters and used them to commandeer robots in the techno-savvy city of Manehattan and hold the entire metropolitan area hostage. He was demanding... actually he was sounding a lot like Nightmare Moon come to think of it. Lots of jealousy, some legitimate, some sorely misplaced, and all blown way out of proportion.
The princesses apparently had their hooves full trying to calm a panicking populace to give the situation their full attention and the guard had already been defeated trying to take the city back.# No fatalities yet, and Dr. Wily’s forces actually seemed to be taking care to incapacitate rather than kill. #Currently, Shining Armor was using his barrier spell to contain the hostile forces inside Manehattan, which was taking up all his concentration.
And Dr. Light had just nixed the proposal to use the Elements of Harmony.
"The Elements might work on Dr. Wily, perhaps," the stallion lamented, "but we have no idea if they will have any effect at all on robots. You would all be put in grave danger if they failed, and Wily would likely gain control of the Elements as a result, and #who knows what he could do with such artifacts in his madness#?"
Twilight thought back to the baseline incident with Sunset Shimmer and concluded that such a thing could be very bad indeed. She was debating ascending to take care of the problem when Rock and Roll stepped forward and determinedly asked to be converted into fighting robots. In deference to the fact that they clearly seemed to know what they were doing, Twilight decided to let them handle things for now. But if it became necessary, she would step in.
Twilight and Dash were both tapped to help with the conversion while the rest of the looping Elements looked on silently, understanding that this was something their visitors did regularly and respecting their decision. The two armored figures stepped out of the final conversion capsules looking every inch the heroes they clearly were used to being.
"I built the two of you as Rock and Roll, after my love of music," Dr. Light smiled sadly as he looked upon the results of his efforts, "you are something very different now."
"You said the hoof-cannons you gave us are called 'Mega Busters', right?" Rock asked.
"Well then you can call us Mega Stallion and Mega Mare!" Roll finished.
#
Twilight felt like facehooving at the ponified title of a popular video game series from the Hub. That's why their names sounded familiar!#
My Mega Pony, My Mega Pony,
Ahh ahh ahh ahhh ahhhhhhhh~~~
My Mega Pony,
I used to wonder what robots could mean,
To a world that's all so serene.
Hooves of Iron.
Tails of Steel.
But with a heart that's kindly and real.
Those corrupted,
They'll defeat!
They won't stop till they have ol' Wily beat!
You have My Mega Pony,
Do you know you're all my mechanical Friends. (*)
Rainbow Dash went through her routine for the upcoming Best Young Flyer competition for the umpteenth time. Who'd have thought so much would happen in such a short time?
Right after Nightmare Moon was beaten, old Doc Wily had gone nutzoid a lot like Luna had a thousand years ago and hijacked a whole city. A city! According to Twilight, when Luna went Nightmare Moon a thousand years ago, she'd just gone after her sister and busted up their old place in the Everfree. And because he was using robots to hold everyone hostage, no one could be sure the Elements would work as advertised.
So Doc Light's robo-kids had stepped up to the plate and turned themselves into freaking superheroes! They'd marched right into the city and saved everypony! Yeah, they came out a little banged up, but they did it with the fully-restored-to-their-right-minds robot masters marching right out with them, Doc Wily in hoofcuffs, and not one flesh-and-blood pony injured. Not even Doc Wily. Holy snap.
What really blew her mind was just how life in Ponyville managed to continue like it was all no big deal. Gilda had dropped by in a visit that had nearly set her old friend and her new ones at each others throats, and she still had no idea how that sorted itself out. Applejack had nearly killed herself trying to pull in the whole harvest solo, and, oh yeah, they all had tickets for the upcoming Grand Galloping Gala!
If only she could get this darned routine to go the way she wanted it. The competition wasn't that far off!
"Still having trouble with the Sonic Rainboom, are you?" a familiar voice cut into her thoughts.
Rainbow whipped around to see a familiar gray-coated earth pony stallion with a cutie mark of a shield superimposed over a sword. His brown mane was styled into a pompadour that would have looked ridiculous on anypony else, but he managed to make look awesome. With the ever-present shades and his trademark yellow scarf, he was quite the welcome sight.
"Hey Blues!" she greeted Doc Light's wayward son and runaway prototype cheerfully. "How's life been treating ya?"
"So," Rock collected his thoughts,# "this Trixie character tends to come in, boast about some feat she doesn't even realize the true scope of, challenge everyone that she can beat them at their own special talent, and all because she's convinced it's the best stage persona she could use?"#
"Pretty much," Twilight nodded. "And after alienating half the town by humiliating them onstage, a pair of impressionable colts get it into their heads to go into the Everfree and wake up an ursa minor so they can see the impossible feat for themselves. And since I like Ponyville un-stomped I try to head that off if I can, usually by nudging her in a more productive direction. And it's 'everypony', not 'everyone'."
"Dad programmed us for political correctness in regards to the myriad of sapient species that inhabit the world. That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Rock insisted. "Wait a second. This Trixie is an over-the-top ham, right?"
"Every time I've met her," Twilight agreed. "Why?"
"Has anyone seen Auto?"
"Oh," Twilight blinked as she recalled the goofy stallion-bot who ran Light Lab's storefront and mechanic shop in town. The hammy robot who liked to build ridiculous over-the-top contraptions in his spare time. "Oh, dear."
"No, Dash," Blues sighed, "I'm saying that you being naturally suspicious is part of what makes you such a good fit for the Element of Loyalty. Some might say that the opposite of loyalty would be betrayal, but that's along antithetical lines. Suspicion is the opposite along complementary lines. You've heard of the Yin-Yang theory, right?"
"Duh," Dash rolled her eyes. "It's part of my martial arts classes. The whole 'everything in balance' thing."
"And 'balance' is synonymous with 'Harmony'," Blues completed the thought. "The Elements couldn't work with ponies that embodied only positive traits, because that's not very harmonious, is it? Like night balances day, there needs to be a shadow aspect that balances the light. Suspicion is the logical shadow aspect of Loyalty. Because you are loyal to your circle of friends and the community at large, you are suspicious of anything that might jeopardize them."
Dash was quiet as she mulled that over while the two walked into town. Huh, it looked like there was a show or something getting started.
"The same should be true of the others," the rogue prototype continued. "Honesty works along with Deception, for to uncover truths one must grasp how they can be hidden. To be truly honest, one needs understand the ways in which they can be dishonest. This is especially true in the matters of self-deception."
"I dunno..." Dash hedged doubtfully.
"Plus you'd be surprised how easy it is to deceive some with nothing but honesty," Blues smirked. "As for the others, like many parents show Kindness to their children, they also display great Ferocity in their defense. Generosity often goes hoof in hoof with Ambition, for one must have before one can give. Laughter connects with others in order to spread joy, which opens the possibility for great Sorrow when those connections are severed."
"And what about Magic, smart guy?" the stunt pegasus and part-time lab assistant challenged. "Magic's not exactly a personality trait, is it?"
"You'd think that," Blues smirked, "but you'd be wrong. The secret lies in the origins of the word. Long before Celestia or Luna, there was an order of unicorns known as the Magi. They were the ones who moved the sun and moon and turned the seasons, and none outside the order understood their secrets. The secret knowledge of the Magi came to be known as 'magic' long before even other unicorns referred to the effects generated through their horns as such. The Magi were the only ones in those days that could be called scholars, and in a time when few others could even be considered educated. They were the seekers of knowledge, and the ones who always seemed to know what to do when mysterious events occurred. That is what 'Magic' is: Things the Magi know."
"Wow," Dash blinked. "Yeah, that's Twilight all over. How do you know stuff like this? I thought you were, ya know, developed for the Royal Guard."
"You don't honestly think my father would program a potential son without a thirst for intellectual pursuits, did you?" Blues returned flatly.
"No," Dash rubbed her head sheepishly. "You're still not gonna talk with him are you? Look, I know whatever it was that happened between you two probably sounded bad, but–"
"Not..." Blues interrupted her. "Not yet. I'm not ready. But... thanks for not giving up anyway."
"No problem," Dash smiled as the two inserted themselves into the crowd around the traveling stage, even as she cursed the stubbornness of Doc Light's eldest son.
"Well then, I hereby challenge you, Ponyvillians," an Unawake Trixie dared the crowd. "Anything you can do, I can do better. Any takers?"
"I'll take that challenge!" a portly metal and mostly-green stallion with large red bubble-shaped eyes, a literally square jaw, and a large bolt in the top of his head declared as he jumped up on the stage and dramatically opened a paper fan designed like Equestria's flag while pointing at the showmare. "Auto is in da hooouuusse!" (6)
"Okay," Twilight facehooved. "The good news is that I think we've avoided the Ursa Minor incident. The bad news is that your friend still managed to destroy Trixie's stage and damage the town."
"Yeah," Rock winced as he surveyed the damage caused by Auto's last one-up on Trixie. That had escalated a lot faster than he'd been prepared for. "Sorry about that."
"And seriously, when did he convert the shop into a pseudo-mecha?" Twilight asked. How would be a good question too. No one in Ponyville had noticed him doing it. Though perhaps the renovations turning the store front into a giant replica of the upper portion of Dr. Light's mobile suitcase Eddie should have been a clue that Auto was up to something wacky.
"He's native to my Loop, not Awake, and I'm still trying to figure him out," Rock shook his head as he stepped up to offer his help rebuilding Trixie's wagon-stage. After moving 'Big Eddie's' hydraulic foot off of it. Maybe he should just offer to have Light Labs invent her a whole new one.
And he also needed to rescue Auto from the enraged showmare's assault. Maybe.
Things had been going more-or-less according to the general 'Equestrian Experience' plan she'd put together for visiting loopers since the capture of Dr. Wily. In essence, the plan involved the Awake Elements sticking relatively close to the baseline while doing their best to minimize collateral damage.
But a few derailments were to be expected. For example: Fluttershy had gotten praise for her 'new level in badflank' from the Unawake Rainbow Dash during the snoring dragon incident.
A big one was how the Gala tickets had proceeded. Both Applejack and Pinkie Pie had convinced the Apples and Cakes to put in catering bids which had netted both business and complimentary tickets. Furthermore, Light Labs had such celebrity status that they'd apparently been down for Gala invitations since before the Loop began. Dr. Light was still getting over the betrayal by his friend and colleague, and so had gifted both his and Wily's tickets to Spike (who he'd never known as a 'baby' dragon) and Rarity. Rock and Roll, and even Dash, in her capacity as part-time assistant, had gotten tickets as well. Which left no problems with Twilight letting Fluttershy have her extra. It was rather interesting how well it all worked out to be honest.
Then there was the parasprite incident. They'd been hashing out how to handle it without damaging Ponyville, or just skipping it altogether, when the reports came in that parasprites were already loose in the town.
Apparently it was Auto's fault (big surprise, the bot was like a mad scientist/Pinkie-light/Trixie-ham/fan colt mish-mash at times) and they'd quietly agreed not to use any quick-fixes. The nutty mechanic needed to learn that his actions had consequences.
The mad scramble for instruments had been harder than they recalled though. They'd forgotten how difficult fighting their way through panicked Ponyvillians could be at times, but in the end they'd gotten the swarm back into the Everfree with minimal overall damage and a deal with Dr. Light to let him study one under controlled conditions to see if non-musical countermeasures could be developed.
And then Celestia had shown up early for her scheduled visit, surprising the heck out of Twilight. Differences like that didn't tend to be innocuous.
"Hello, Princess," she greeted. "You're early. I'm afraid we aren't quite ready to receive you properly."
"As much as I wish this visit was social, my pupil," Celestia replied, all business, "I'm afraid my visit will need to be cancelled. I am stopping by to give you warning of a matter most grave before I return to emergency duties."
"What matter?" Twilight asked, getting a sinking feeling.
"Dr. Wily has escaped custody and is currently loose in Equestria."
"You don't seem all that surprised," Twilight observed how the two visiting loopers were taking the news.
"We really aren't," Roll shrugged. "We've discussed trying to convince someone to send Wily to the moon, with enough supplies to build a self-sustaining habitation for one of course, but we're pretty sure he'd come back in a lunar-built skull cruiser or something. There just isn't any prison we've come across that can hold him indefinitely."
"Is something wrong, Silver?" Scootaloo asked her currently mechanical friend who seemed to be crying. Or at least as good an imitation as her body allowed for.
"No, it's nothing," Silver insisted. "It's just–"
You're not even a real pony!
I am so! I even have my own cutie mark!
And it's just as fake as the rest of you! Fake pony! Fake pony!
"It's Diamond Tiara," Silver sighed. "She... How did you three ever put up with us?!"
"We kinda didn't," Scootaloo admitted. "Not in the baseline, and not when we were new loopers. It took us all a bunch of Loops before we managed to mature enough to deal with it. And not being your friends kinda helped with not taking it personally I guess. I can't imagine how hard it must be for you since, you know..."
"I kinda wish I couldn't either," Silver Spoon sighed. "I had a hard time getting used to the 'new' Diamond at first, but I think we're closer now than we ever were. Closer than our baselines ever could have been, I think. And it hurts because I know now how awesome my best friend can be and I have to watch this stubborn, petty, little rrrggh... just waste her potential! How the leaf did you three manage to get through to her again?!"
"It was all Applebloom, remember?" Scootaloo reminded Silver. "They told you how Discord stranded them together on a desert island, 'Bloom had already taken all her useful stuff outta her subspace pocket and decided not to use her looping abilities so it would be fair to DT meaning they'd starve if they didn't work together."
"Sorry," Silver moped. "I just keep hoping that something less... life threatening could work."
"Well..." Scootaloo rubbed her chin, "You know how she likes to suck up to her dad's rich business partners, right?"
"Of course," Silver sniffed. "How do you think we knew each other originally?"
Scootaloo shrugged the retort off before replying. "Well, 'poppa Light' runs a pretty successful business..."
Silver blinked and began to grin as wide as her metal face would allow as a plan began to come together.
"Looking good, Dash," Roll grinned seeing the nervous pegasus in the gala dress Rarity had designed for her.
"Seriously?" Dash questioned, looking uncomfortable. "I was kind of imagining something..."
"20% cooler?" Roll and Rarity deadpanned together.
"Ah-heh..." Dash rubbed the back of her head sheepishly.
"Rainbow Dash," Rarity admonished, "I have seen what you would consider 'cool' and it is not proper gala wear!"
"Besides," Roll added, "with the laced sandals and the laurel wreath, you look like you just stepped out of the winner's circle from the ancient Equestrian Games."
Dash blinked as that sunk in and turned to look herself over in the mirror again, striking a few 'victory' poses. "You really think so?"
"Do give me some credit, dear," Rarity sniffed. "I do not merely design fabulosity in this shop, I also match that fabulosity to the personality of the intended wearer and you are nothing if not an athlete. To suggest that I would allow anything unsuited to that trait to grace your frame," 'at least when I'm not deliberately embarrassing you for a prank,' she added silently, "is an insult to my profession."
"Yeah, well..." Dash fished for something to redirect the conversation, "what about Roll's dress? Not a whole lot to that one."
"Miss Roll is a very simple mare," Rarity huffed. "Excessive adornment just does not suit her. And red is quite her color, would you not agree?"
Indeed, Roll was currently modeling what could be termed a stereotypical 'little red dress' were it not for the subtle circuitry highlights that shimmered when the light hit them just right.
"I am more curious as to who the stallion is you requested the suit for," Rarity decided to strike back.
"Dash!" Roll declared with acute interest. "Do you have a date? Who is it? Where did you meet them?"
"And how did you come by the extra ticket, dear?" Rarity inserted.
"Whoa!" Dash backed up from the sudden assault. "He's just an old friend! No one you'd know," 'and I'm trying to fix that, stubborn Blues...' she cursed mentally, "and the lab got an extra ticket for some reason! Honest!" (7)
"Hmmm... yes," Dr. Light mused at the idea his adopted daughter and her friend Silver had suggested. "A business arrangement with Mr. Rich could be quite the boon for Light Labs if done properly. I'll see about making an appointment after Twilight and I finish up here."
"Thanks dad!" Scootaloo and Silver chirped as they raced back out.
"Ah, to be young again," Dr. Light chuckled as he turned back to the project he was helping Celestia's prized student put together. Had the filly not insisted on making such a complex model, they'd have already been done. But he'd been so intrigued by the prospect of making a properly functioning alicorn model that he'd let himself be talked into it. Why, the advances they'd made in cross-race magical conversion just to get this one robot working the way it needed to alone...
"Focus doctor," Twilight's voice cut through his musings. Ah, how far she'd come from the hero-worship she'd started with. But familiarity and the informal air they strove to create around the lab had a way of tempering such things.
"Yes, of course," he replied. They were in the most delicate final stage, the connecting of the strange orb Twilight had procured from the mystical discharge the cleansing of Nightmare Moon from Luna had produced to the robot body's processors. Done properly, the orb should function like an IC chip. "Okay, you should connect the thaumic actuators to the..."
Twilight worked as the good doctor gave general directions. He'd shown her how to build and connect everything, but the one who had done all the physical work on this robot was Twilight herself. This was to be her child after all, not his.
Save for the race model difference, the body was like Silver Spoon's, a filly with the capacity for later updating to a more mature model. Scootaloo may have wanted a friend her own age back then, but he knew she'd want that friend to grow with her eventually.
He watched as Twilight made the last connection and closed the outer shell while the systems booted up for the first time. The robot filly blinked and looked around in confusion before fixing her gaze on Twilight.
"Momma?" the robot filly asked confusedly. "Where did I Wake Up?"
'Interesting inflection on that question,' Dr. Light mused. Apparently Twilight's handling of the orb had created some manner of imprinting. No sign of the corruption Nightmare Moon was known for, thank goodness, and the robot filly hadn't even needed to be told who had built her. Absolutely fascinating.
"Right where you were supposed to, Nyx," Twilight's eyes watered before she enveloped the so-named mechanical filly in a hug. (8)
Dr. Light promptly decided that this was a private moment and proceeded to make himself scarce.
'Okay Dash,' the pegasus mare psyched herself up, 'you've got this. So, maybe you've been having some trouble doing a Sonic Rainboom on command, but everything else you've got down pat. So what if your old classmates from Flight School are still jerks? So what if half of Cloudsdale's still giving you dirty looks because you helped some smart guys break the weather monopoly? So what if Rarity just wowed everyone with that flutterwing spell Twilight cast on her? So what if Roll's debuting the pegasus harness right after your turn? It's like Doc Light said, no matter what you try to do, there will be ponies right there telling you you can't. If you really want to be the best no one's going to just hand you the title. You gotta make them believe you deserve it.'
She stepped out to cheers from some, boos from others but let it all wash over her. Her only focus was on her routine. Nothing else mattered.
And it went amazingly. The shifts and turns were perfect. The crowd oohed and aahed in all the right places. She could tell that even her detractors were impressed. And then it all went south.
The blast of wind had come out of nowhere and ploughed her straight into the stands. Her head was ringing when she heard a trio of impacts hit near her and she extracted herself.
"I'll let that one slide," an unfamiliar voice boomed over the stadium, "but if any one other than the Mega Mane or Mega Mare step forward then my seven brothers and their armies will destroy the areas they control."
"Oh Celestia!" a stallion was panicking near her. "My buds! They tried to catch Spitfire and got knocked off! They're not flying! Help!"
Dash didn't even think twice. A quick glance around showed the other Wonderbolts weren't conscious enough to make the rescue, so she opted to go after the falling ponies instead. She leapt off the stands and rocketed downwards towards the three as fast as she could, but the lead they had was too far for her to make it at subsonic speeds.
She pushed harder and harder as she heard Roll fight against the attacker and the familiar barrier of air formed in front of her.
"You cannot defeat Air Tercel!" (9) boomed the attacker above as she struggled against the air resistance, desperately trying for more speed. Three ponies' lives were counting on her, and Rainbow Dash didn't let others down if she could help it.
*BOOM*
And suddenly the resistance was gone. She'd broken the barrier, but she didn't have time to celebrate as she grabbed the three unconscious pegasi and began to pull up as sharply as she dared to avoid the ground.
Whew. They were safe and she even had enough momentum going to get them back up to Cloudsdale. On the way back up, she passed the falling body of a buff blue metal griffon with a huge fan in its torso and shortly after she was depositing a recovering Spitfire and two familiar stallions on the clouds.
Of course it would be Hoops and Score that she just saved. Along with their aptly named pal Dumb-Bell, they were the worst bullies in all of Cloudsdale. But... she had to be honest. She'd have gone after them even if she'd known. They were jerks, but they didn't deserve to die for it.
"Miss Dash!" some reporter shoved a microphone in her face out of nowhere. "Is it true that the power of friendship is what allowed you to do a Sonic Rainboom?"
"Huh?" Dash blinked. Where the hay did they get that idea? "No. I mean, Spitfire's my idol, but we're not friends."
"Is it true that you're in an illicit three-way relationship with the two stallions you saved?" the reporter didn't even seem to have heard her.
"Like buck!" she yelled loud enough to bowl the idiot over. "I hate these jerks! They're my worst enemies short of Doc Wily!"
"Then, why did you save them?" someone else asked. Dash blinked and seriously considered the question for a moment.
"Because if working at Light Labs has taught me anything, it's that we're here to help everypony," she told the more reasonable pony, "not just those we like. And, yeah, you can quote me on that."
"Blast it," Rock muttered in the stands as the commotion started to die down, though not quietly enough for Twilight to miss overhearing.
"What?" she asked curiously.
"You heard Air Tercel before Roll engaged him, didn't you?" Rock began rhetorically. "How he referred to me as 'Mega Mane' instead of 'Mega Stallion'?"
"Yeah," Twilight mused. "That was odd... It's inaccurate of course, but nonetheless closer to your baseline title."
"Which means there's a good chance Dr. Wily's Dreaming again," Rock sighed, before noting Twilight's puzzled expression. "I'll explain later, but right now Roll and I need to go and get the other seven before they get tired of waiting for us and do something we'll all regret."
Roll took cover behind some factory machinery as her opponent blasted fire at her. Of course Heat Man's local variant would be dragon-based.
"First Flash Mare, then Crash Mane, and now Heat Drake," Roll muttered as she did her best to avoid damage and find the best opening to retaliate. She and her brother were being led on a scripted series of battles that seemed designed to ensure they got almost all of the master weapons they needed after they'd be useful. It was almost like Dr. Wily was daring them to use weapons they couldn't have gotten yet. Yeah, he was definitely Dreaming.
Rock swore as he dodged another timberwolf. He'd taken down Bubble Mare and Quick Mane already, but the local variant of Wood Man had holed up in the Everfree and had taken control of the resident timberwolves. All of them. Or at least what looked like it.
"Attack my loyal pack!" the feral wooden robot growled, "Attack in the name of Wood Alpha!" (10)
'Leave it to Dr. Wily to make the local hostile flora even worse,' Rock cursed as he blasted a few more of the wooden wolves and tried to get a bead on their leader. He stopped as he spotted movement from the defeated timberwolves. Were they reforming?
Dr. Light was helping direct his son and daughter's movements, with the enthusiastic aid of the Elements of Harmony, when a proximity alert went off. As more of the interior defenses, a necessary precaution since his former partner's attempts to conquer Equestria, went offline, he tapped a few buttons on the console.
And then the door to the room was cut from its frame.
"Hello doc, ladies," the robot that strode in greeted with sinister cheerfulness. His armor was patterned in red, yellow, and black with saw blades in the place of his mane. He formed a circular sawblade in a slot on each forehoof and set them spinning ominously. "Now if you all would back away from that computer nice and slow, you can all get out of this with your limbs still attached."
Rarity stepped forward, scowling. "Now see here, you–"
The blade that launched at her from the robot's hoof came so fast and sudden that Twilight almost didn't get a shield up in time. She'd later realize that the trajectory was a warning shot meant to leave her fashionista friend with a bad mane-cut and possibly short an ear, but not dead. And in the end, she needn't have bothered, because the blade was intercepted by a glob of liquid adhesive and pasted harmlessly against the wall.
"Who are you?" the invading robot asked the one who'd intercepted his shot.
An orange and black robot pony with a head that looked like a paste dispenser stepped in and stared at the invader. "DLN-009: Bond Mane," he declared.
"What a coincidence," the invading robot glared back, "I'm DWN-009: Metal Mane."
"And then the nasty robot was all like 'grr! I'm gonna cut ya up'!" Pinkie related as Rock and Roll both listened over the communications channel, "and Bond Mane was all like 'not on my watch pardner'! They fought like kung fu ninjas back and forth, trashing everything in sight for miles and–"
"Actually, Bond Mane blasted Metal Mane with some hefty adhesive and left him plastered against the wall," Twilight interrupted, rolling her eyes. "Your dad immediately disabled his communicator and mobility, but he's still otherwise functional."
"Good," Rock replied over the com. "We're coming back to get his data and correlate it with the rest so we can find out where Wily's holed up."
Twilight watched as Rock and Roll in their 'Mega Pony' armor bumped hooves before entering the lab. It was interesting how little fanfare occurred to indicate what she knew was happening when they did that. The ability to scan and download information from a subject so thoroughly by just touch...
The looping student of Celestia stamped down her rising fanfillying. This was not the time.
Think about something else... Like how they made use of the teleport network Light Labs had set up to transport non-biological items and was even now being refined so it could be used on living subjects...
'Down girl,' she ordered herself. The two robot heroes were talking with Dr. Light. Apparently their shared data just needed one more piece to be complete and allow them to track where Dr. Wily had gone. The piece Metal Mane had.
As one, the two robot ponies went over and touched Wily's robot, and then everything went to Tartarus.
#SERVE WILY!
Rock recoiled as dark electric arcs ran over his and his sister's systems alike. This was even worse than that malware Dr. Wily had snuck into the second set of robot masters in the baseline. He thought there might even be a mystical aspect to it...
OBEY WILY!
It was only their long experience with fighting off reprogramming and other forms of mind control that meant they weren't rushing to fulfill Dr. Wily's bidding right now. As it was, it was taking everything they had just to remain immobile.
LOVE WILY!
"T-twi...light..." he heard Roll grate out. "Help..."
"Please....." he managed to add.
#
FOR THE GLORY OF WILY!!!#
The whole lab was frantic when something hit the two after downloading Metal Mane's data. Wily's robot had shut down from the backlash, but the damage was done. Bond Mane had needed to glue both heroes to the wall so they could be examined without risking them harming anypony, and the news was anything but good.
"They're contaminated with an energy similar to that of Nightmare Moon," Dr. Light gave the prognosis to the gathered Elements. "It's really quite insidious. I couldn't tell it was even there until they had all the pieces that Wily placed in each of his robot masters."
"It's different too," Twilight added, all business. "I've been talking with Luna and she likened her corruption to a whisper in the back of her mind so subtle it was hard to differentiate from her own thoughts. One that poked at her insecurities until the dark thoughts it put forth began to sound like good ideas and any other options were obscured by the constant repetition. What they've got is more like a voice screaming at them, making it hard to think period."
"My attempts at developing an anti-virus have failed," Dr. Light admitted. "I am unable to remove this darkness from my children."
"Which means it's up to us, girls," Twilight told her friends. "If we had more time, we could research other methods, but Dr. Wily needs to be stopped now and only these two have the information needed to find him. I've already had Spike send a message to Princess Celestia requesting the use of the Elements of Harmony for this and they should be arriving shortly. Are you ready?"
Five determined nods were her reply.
Rock felt the wave of Harmony wash over him and sweep away the dark pounding in his processors. Later, he would describe it like getting wake-up slapped with a revelation wrapped in a humbling sense of peace and acceptance.
The sudden absence of the dark malware was just as jarring as its activation though, and he slumped where he was pasted to the wall next to his sister. However, a quick assessment of the remaining data had his head whipping right back up.
"I know where Dr. Wily is!" both he and Roll declared together.
Twilight stared at the video feed from the robot heroes showing Wily's Skull Fortress.
"How the hay did nopony notice this?!"
"Hahahaha! Feeble Equestrian robots!" Dr. Wily laughed as his form twisted and bent in a manner depressingly familiar to his twin opponents. "You cannot stop me! I possess the power of the stars!"
The room dissolved into an endless night sky as Wily turned from an earth pony into a vaguely pony-like alien form.
"Oh, come on!" Roll shouted in disbelief as she and her brother dodged a beam of energy directed at them. "No way you're really an alien!"
"What you think is of no consequence!" the alien-thing-that-was-supposedly-Wily retorted. "Flee and warn Equestria that I am merely the vanguard! Doom is coming! HAHAHAHAHA!"
Rock ignored the taunting. This kind of thing was old hat for him by now. Roll had agreed to keep Wily-alien busy while he checked the perimeter.
'Good,' he thought as his hoof bumped the wall right where it should be. 'He's still using a hologram for this. Not sure what we're going to do if we ever end up in a variant where Wily really is an alien like he keeps trying to claim, but this we can handle.'
Rock turned his Mega-Buster to where he recalled the field of stars began to appear and fired, ignoring Wily's sudden call for him to stop.
The twin robot pony heroes stood side by side as the hologram faded to reveal a metal room empty save for the control panel the real Wily Plan was operating.
"Er... pay no attention to that pony behind the hologram?" Wily sweated as both Mega Ponies glared at him.
"Dr. Wily," Rock stated, "you're under arrest."
"You have the right to remain silent," Roll continued before Wily slammed a hoof on his control panel.
"Bah!" the mad doctor declared, suddenly energetic. "You fools understand nothing! I am the chosen vanguard! Nightmare Moon was chosen, but she couldn't hack it, and so the stars decided to give the job to a real genius! They shall take this world for their own and I shall pave the way! Then none shall be able to deny that I am truly the greatest!"
Rock and Roll were so busy parsing this new rant that they almost forgot that Wily often had a secret escape route. They had barely started moving when the doctor dropped through a trap door that closed after him.
"WARNING," a mechanical voice rang out. "SKULL FORTRESS SELF-DESTRUCT IN FIVE MINUTES."
The rant may have pointed to something different going on behind the scenes of this Loop, but the rush to outrun the castle's self-destruct was so familiar by now it could have been done with their optics off.
The reports had been filed, and the two heroes were now resting from their ordeal as they regaled their collected friends, both Awake and not, of their battles.
"And then Ditzy Doo drops right out of the sky and collides with Bubble Mare, smashing them both into a nearby wall," Rock told the gathered ponies. "They both go like this," Rock took a moment to cause his eyes to circle aimlessly and spoke the next line in a falsetto, "'I just don't know what went wrong' before falling unconscious together."
Laughter chorused through the room at Rock's impression.
"All joking aside though, she probably saved my life," Rock continued seriously. "Or at least prevented serious injury. I'm going to set up a tab with Sugarcube Corner to give her free muffins every day in perpetuity as thanks."
"He really said 'the stars' had chosen him?" Twilight asked pointedly once she'd managed to get the two into a more private meeting with only Awake individuals present.
"Not those exact words," Roll clarified, "but yes."
"That's... troubling," Spike mused. "The prophecy of Nightmare Moon said 'the stars shall aid in her escape, but..."
"But it's normally just an alignment of planets and moons and such," Twilight finished for him. "Still, we've had a bunch of variants where 'the stars' were more than that, but there's no real pattern to who or why."
"And Wily's not normally known for working with anyone," Rock added, "much less for anyone. The first is a short list that frequently ends in betrayal, and the second is practically nonexistent and has so far never been a case of Wily doing so both willingly and knowingly. Safe money's on either Wily, 'the stars', or both using the other."
"Could he be infected like Nightmare Moon was?" Rarity asked.
"It's possible," Roll admitted.
"But the fact remains that he hasn't really been acting any different from what we're used to," Rock added. "If he is corrupted by the nightmare, it didn't have to work too hard."
"Which would explain why he went sour so durn fast," Applejack added.
"No more than usual," Rock clarified. "Corrupted or not, neither theory is outside the realm of possibility."
"Okay, that's going nowhere," Twilight cut off debate. "You promised me an explanation on what you meant by Wily 'Dreaming'."
Rock sighed before launching an explanation. "As you know, our branch is pretty damaged. Inconsistent baseline, bugs, viruses, the whole nine yards. There's apparently a relatively stable bug that's occurred in both Dad's and Dr. Wily's Yggdrasil codes that allows them to randomly access memories from previous Loops they existed in. They tend to think of it as deja vu, a flash of brilliance, or premonitions, but they occasionally do things that can only be explained by Loop memories, however partial."
"I've heard of something like that before," Twilight pondered. "A bunch of people in the Loop the Norns spend their time in ended up being able to retain Loop memories by way of consistent exposure to their divine auras, but no trained physical skills like a looper would. At least that's the most plausible theory I came up with. But their memories are much more coherent."
"Well, Wily's has been a recurring headache for us," Roll informed them. "It may be inconsistent, but we've noticed that if we use certain tactics too much then he prepares for them more often. And then there's the fact that even without Dreaming he's smart enough to improve his inventions to match us if we start off too strong or overcome obstacles too easily."
"It's only going to be a matter of time before the stuff he's learned here ends up in something he makes back home," Rock finished wearily.
"Oh, dear," Fluttershy sympathized.
"Um... sorry?" Pinkie grinned awkwardly.
"Not your fault," Rock dismissed their worries. "We're used to Wily pulling strange things out of nowhere."
"So long as no one uses anything dangerously potent, we should be able to deal with it with no more problems than usual," Roll clarified.
"We could still blast him with the Elements," Spike offered.
"Let's table that option until we actually find him," Twilight told her assistant/little brother before turning back to the visiting loopers. "Sorry the whole sanctuary thing isn't working out like it normally does."
"Are you kidding?" Rock grinned suddenly. "This has been great! We can actually walk around town without being mobbed by hero worshipers!"
"Yeah," Roll agreed happily. "And we haven't had to deal with one anti-robot terrorist organization, robot worshiping cult, or paranoid government agent since we got here!"
There were synchronized blinks from the Equestrian loopers as they processed that.
"Hey, Blues!" Rainbow Dash greeted her wayward friend at the edge of the Whitetail Woods. "I got your message! You finally ready to go talk things out with your dad?"
"No," the prototype robot decisively smashed her hopes. "I just wanted you to know that I'm leaving for a while."
"What?" Rainbow Dash blinked. "But..."
"I'm sorry," the shades-wearing robot stallion told her truthfully, "but there's something I have to go do."
"You're going to look for Wily, aren't you?" Dash asked him flatly.
".....Yes," the wayward brother of Equestria's heroes admitted. "He's up to something bigger than anyone knows and someone has to find out what."
"Okay, I guess I can accept that," Dash rubbed the back of her head. "On one condition!"
Blues's eyebrow raised above his shades curiously. "And what would that be?"
"That you're back in time to take me to the Gala," Dash stepped forward and tucked a golden ticket into his scarf. "No excuses! Your dad's not going, and I don't know what the hay's up between you two in the first place, but you owe it to your brother and sister to at least meet them. And a formal setting's as good as any!"
Blues stared back at her emotionlessly before turning away, his scarf rustling in a sudden breeze.
"No promises," he told her as he walked away. After a few steps, he turned his head back. "But I'll do my best."
rIn the past few weeks, Diamond Tiara's world had been turned upside down. Her father had met with Dr. Light to make a business arrangement, a lucrative business arrangement, which meant that the bla–pegasus that was his adopted daughter had suddenly jumped from peasant to equal on the social scale where she was concerned. Which meant she needed to play nice or risk her father's contract since the odd but brilliant stallion thought the world of his children.
It had been an... interesting experience.
The fa–robot pony Silver Spoon has proven to be very cultured and refined once she'd begun actually paying attention to her. As... she'd... put it: 'Someone has to make sure Scoots behaves herself properly'. And then Scoots had taken mild offense and the two had gotten to arguing.
That had been an eye opener. She'd thought Silver Spoon was some sort of personal servant that was created to be even more obedient than the hired help and there she was arguing childishly with the one she supposedly served.
Even the pea–Applebloom and Sweetie Belle that Scootaloo liked to 'hang out' with had proven good... friends in the end.
It had been a rocky start at first, and mostly due to her she could now admit. For one, they'd wanted her to do things, not just talk about things. And they were very insistent about that. Doing things herself had been scary after a life of having everything done for her by other ponies, but despite the dirt, the low-brow activities, and the tree sap that seemed to follow the group it had been... fun.
And then the robo-alicorn 'daughter' of Twilight, Nyx, had joined them. Diamond hadn't known what to make of her. She looked like... a filly Nightmare Moon for one, an alicorn for another, and yet acted like neither unless she was joking around. And she'd been made without a cutie mark.
The last part had become important recently. Diamond had thought Twilight was still deciding on one to give the robot filly when a sleepover at Fluttershy's had turned into a scramble for survival in the Everfree with a cockatrice. Nyx of all fillies had held the thing off, her metal body seemingly immune to the creature's petrifying stare, until Fluttershy pacified it.
And had earned a cutie mark of a shield emblazoned with a crescent moon in the process, her talent being defending others.
The phenomenon had floored her. According to miss Cheerilee, cutie marks were something unique to ponies (and pony-like races like zebras), which meant that Nyx could only earn one if she was really a pony.
It was... intriguing to her to say the least. Plus, spending time around the bla–three who had yet to earn their cutie marks had caused her to start wondering about what her own meant. Surely it meant more than being a pampered princess and looking regal in the well-crafted look-alike tiara her father had commissioned for her..... right?
Of course, that train of thought could wait until after she and the rest finished putting together their skit for the talent show. Honestly, the other three non-robotic 'crusaders' were Tartarus-bent on taking on roles they were singularly unsuited for, and the other two weren't calling them on it for some reason.
Maybe it was time somepony took charge...
"My Mega Pony, My Mega Pony
Ahh, ahh, ahh, ahhh...
(My Mega Pony)
I will stop your wily plans Doctor Wily
(My Mega Pony)
Saving the world from your villainy
Big adventures
Tons of fights
A determined heart
Faithful and strong
Saving the world!
It's not an easy feat
But I and my family will not retreat.
I am Mega Pony
And I will not fail all my very best friends!" (11)
"ARGH!" the frustrated cry of Diamond Tiara interrupted Scootaloo's composition of the song for the group's talent show entry. "That does it!
"Something wrong DT?" Scootaloo asked the rich filly. 'As if I couldn't guess.'
"Scootaloo," Diamond glared at her, "your song is... not bad to be honest, but you are not a musical composer! A filly with your natural acrobatic ability should be on the choreography! Not song-writing!"
"Hey!" Applebloom protested from nearby. "I'm tha one doin' tha dancin'! Kung-fu style even! Hi-ya!"
"No!" Diamond vetoed the thought. "Scootaloo is the better dancer! And the better martial artist!"
"Ah know that!" Applebloom shouted back. "Her pa's one a' tha assistant instructors after all!"
"Dr. Light is an accomplished polymath," Silver observed from where she'd been tapped to help Sweetie with the disastrous decorations.
"What's math got ta do with it?" Applebloom looked confused.
"It means he's good at lots of stuff," Nyx told her.
"Which doesn't matter right now!" the pink tiara-wearing filly insisted. "Applebloom, you should be doing the set design instead of the choreography!"
"Hey!" Sweetie Belle protested.
"Why?" Applebloom backed up at Diamond's fierce expression.
"Because you are the most qualified!" the irate filly yelled. "Look what you did with the treehouse!"
"That weren't anythin' special..." the farm filly looked down.
"Not anything..." Diamond gaped. "That is nearly professional quality work! Exactly what we need for our set! No arguments!"
Applebloom shut her mouth from where she'd been about to protest.
"What about me then?" Sweetie sulked.
"You will be rewriting the music into a proper song!" Diamond ordered. "No complaints! Don't think I haven't seen you giving our resident daredevil advice on how to improve her attempts! You are the song leader! Now hop to it!"
'About time,' Scootaloo rolled her eyes. She wasn't bad with singing after all the Loops she'd been through, but Sweetie was simply a natural at it. Heck, if this worked out alright, all three of them could earn their cutie marks at the same time. They'd arranged it amongst themselves a few times when all three were Awake, but it tended to be hit-or-miss. The more they focused on earning their cutie marks instead of the task that would earn it for them, the less likely it was to work.
"What are you two talking about?" Diamond had rounded on the two robot fillies.
"Oh, we'd had a bet going on when you'd snap and take charge," Silver told the pink earth pony filly. "I won."
"I don't know whether to find that flattering or insulting," Diamond glared at the two as Scootaloo chuckled and began hashing out a choreography routine for the six of them.
"My Mega Pony, My Mega Pony,
What are robots all about?
My Mega Pony, My Mega Pony
Robots are magic!
My Mega Pony,
I used to wonder what robots could mean,
My Mega Pony
To a world that's all so serene.
When you were built your tasks around the house you'd tend,
No robot masters to fight and no shining cities to defend
But My Mega Ponies, that old Wily had to try,
He took those made to improve things, turned their tasks into a lie
And you could do nothing but stand by.
My Mega Pony,
I used to wonder what robots could mean,
My Mega Pony
To a world that's all so serene.
Now you face danger when it comes around, you were remade in the Light,
You won't let the Blues take hold, you always take another try,
Demands for surrender, Automatically denied, Wily's lies you refuse to buy
Your metal hooves are grounded, a Rock-steady ally
Still you keep the laughter Rolling, to hold your spirits high.
My Mega Pony,
I used to wonder what robots could mean,
My Mega Pony
To a world that's all so serene.
Your copy chip gives power, and it's growing all the time.
A new adventure waits for us each day is yours and mine.
We'll make it special every time!
We'll make it special every time!
My Mega Pony
What a beautiful ballad robots sing
My Mega Pony
How I hope your story never,
Ends
Even as more robots Wily,
Sends
you're my very best
Friends,
you're my very best friends!" (*)
Rock and Roll idly wondered how hard it would be to sneak out of the talent show's audience. The song their adopted sister and her five friends (three biological and two mechanical) were performing was flattering and all, but this kind of fame was embarrassing dang it!
Diamond Tiara snuggled into her bed and gazed at the Best Show ribbon she'd won with her friends. First place and three earned cutie marks in the process. That had to be some sort of record.
Applebloom had gotten an actual apple bloom for hers, except one could see it was made of wood by the not-quite-finished paint job on it. A mark for how she was at her best when making things.
Sweetie Bell had gotten a heart-themed musical note, and Nyx had said something about how a heart motif on a cutie mark was often an indication of the high level of love and care a pony put into their particular talent. Sweetie had blushed crimson at the praise.
And Scootaloo had ended up with a shooting star on her flank. Even Diamond knew that star-themed marks denoted a high level of practical ability in the talent, and a shooting star was particularly impressive.
But even that achievement paled in her personal estimate with how proud her parents had been. Over something she'd done herself, not just ordered or paid others to do. Her father had gushed about how every great leader knew when to 'roll up their sleeves' and do the dirty work. He'd even given her a whispered confession that he'd had to buckle down and do nearly every job in his own company at least once.
Her dad thought she had the makings of a great leader. Because she'd helped her friends achieve something great by 'rolling up her sleeves' and helping them herself.
With that thought and a smile, she drifted off to sleep.
Blues came back online in a cave. He'd gone wandering and found what seemed like a promising place saturated with the dark presence he'd identified from remote access to the lab's computers as similar to what had attacked his brother and sister this Loop. And so he'd headed straight into it to find the source and see if Dr. Wily was involved, only to collapse as it started interfering with his systems.
Even now, he could feel it surrounding him, but he was somehow immune. A quick check of his systems showed that he'd actually been treated with the energy in a way that protected against its disruptive influence. His experimental thaumic energy core had been adj–
A repair to his faulty power core would end up erasing his personality.
–usted even. Fixed. Improved no less. A familiar helmet rested on his head, and the kind of shield that had become his trademark in his home Loop was strapped to his foreleg. Those two things hadn't been there this Loop. Not yet. His original shield from his home Loop was both not properly weighted for his pony form and still in his subspace pocket.
There was only one possible culprit.
"Dr. Wily I presume?" he asked the shadows around him, and was rewarded when the mad scientist stepped forth.
"Why, yes, my dear colt," the earth pony looked impressed. "How did you guess?"
"Only two ponies have this kind of ability," he stated flatly. "And of them only you are on the run and hiding out."
"Still a keen mind on you, I see," Dr. Wily observed him calculatingly. "What brings you out here in the first place?"
"I needed a break from things," he said simply. "And I am indebted to you for rescuing me."
"I see..." Wily pondered. "Then perhaps in breaking away from your former self, you can help me break my enemies? Be my Break Mane."
Blues remained silent and let the stallion draw his own conclusions.
Welcome back to the dark side.
"Well, you will make a fine addition!" Dr. Wily took the silence as agreement and led him into another room.
Only his full-face helmet and shades prevented Blues' expression from giving away his total shock at what was in that room.
"A fine addition to the stars indeed!"
#He had to get out of here and warn the others. He had to escape and tell them what was coming. Tell them of the he–
A living hell of his own making.
–ll that had followed them to this fused Loop.
Oh, come on. Stay a while. You'll learn to like it.#
"Now, I have heard the Apploosans' side of things. The land is the only flat arable area appropriate for growing the trees which are their primary food source. Complete removal of the trees would mean their starvation. However, I have not heard your side Chief Thunderhooves and I would like to so that I may see if we can come to some manner of agreement."
"It is simple. The path for our traditional stampede is sacred to us. It is unthinkable to stampede elsewhere."
"Hmph. Typical tribal nons–"
"That is enough Sheriff Silverstar. Chief Thunderhooves, I can tell that you and your buffalo are fair, mighty, and wise. And it is my experience that such beings do not simply create traditions from nothing, especially not sacred ones. So, please, tell me why this path is so sacred."
Something about that way the older pony, this 'Doctor Light', spoke, with intelligence and respect, had told him that he would not be dismissive of his tribe's beliefs. And so he had told the pony the origins of the stampede and why it was such an important tradition to the buffalo.
When he had finished, the pony hadn't derided him for 'backwards' thinking or dismissed his concerns as those of a 'savage'. Instead, he'd spoken fondly of a tradition from his own home. A 'running of the leaves' that sounded so much like his tribe's sacred stampede that he could almost believe the pony was really a buffalo at heart.
And then Sheriff Silverstar had added a tradition of his own from before he'd come out to this area to settle with the other ponies, with none of the rancor or condescension he'd shown before. He'd responded with a tale of his tribe's spring celebrations, to which Light responded with a story of the Hearth's Warming winter 'holiday', followed by the sheriff's telling of his last 'family reunion'.
It had been a grand story-telling that lacked only an equally grand fire, but instead topped off with those delicious apples.
At some point, two of the farming ponies who were in charge of the trees had joined them and he was showing them on a map just where the stampede's path went. Most of the orchard could actually be kept with no disruption, but it was not an insignificant amount of trees that would have to be moved.
But Light seemed to have answers for everything. He'd asked questions regarding the needed traits of the land for the trees and before the chief knew it he'd been telling them of an area not prohibitively far away that could serve to grow those trees that were moved. It was less flat, but the quality of the soil and nearness to water would serve.
He'd even found himself telling the ponies of plants native to the region that were perfectly good sources of food for his own buffalo and could be more easily grown in the arid region than the trees the ponies prided themselves on. And the farm ponies had listened, even offered a share of the apples to his buffalo for the use of the remaining land. It was nothing short of a miracle he'd witnessed.
Not to say that his tribe conceded nothing in the exchange. For one, he'd ended up volunteering the tribes services to help move the trees from the stampede path to their new grounds and promised to help teach the pony farmers how to grow and prepare the native food plants his own tribe normally subsisted on. For another, the ponies seemed quite interested in trading for tribal goods the buffalo made.
But the most interesting one was what Light himself had requested. He wanted the chance to join the tribe in their sacred stampede. Such was hardly forbidden, but none outside the tribe had ever asked.
And now here he was, about to start the traditional sacred stampede with his tribesbuffalo, and over a dozen of the ponies mixed in among them.
"It has been my observation that no matter how true traditions remain to their origins, some change is inevitable," the pony known as Light spoke sagely next to him.
"Yes," he agreed. His grandfather had liked to rail against the inclusion of tribal adornments in the stampede, claiming that true buffalo would never run while wearing such frivolous things. "Not always for the better, but sometimes."
"Perhaps this is one such time?" Light inquired as the stampede began.
"Only the future may tell," he replied as the thundering of hooves grew in volume with the advance of the mixed herd of buffalo and ponies.
The CMC might not be trying for cutie marks anymore, but they still went out and tried some crazy stuff to see what else they might find fun. Scootaloo's adoptive father was good at plenty of things outside his own cutie mark of a lit bulb, and so they'd decided to try and see what else the six of them could learn how to do. How their current outing had led to getting stories from other ponies about how they earned their cutie marks was something Diamond wasn't too clear on, but she had to admit that some of them were shaping up to be pretty interesting. Just like the marks themselves, no two ways of earning them seemed to be exactly alike.
"You really fought off a chupacabra with a broom?" Diamond Tiara asked Roll incredulously after she and the other crusaders heard her cutie mark story.
"He was making a mess," Roll stated simply.
Huh. No wonder her cutie mark looked the way it did. It was a combat broom. Diamond wouldn't have believed such a thing possible before then.
"Thanks for helping me get out of there," Blues told his current companion.
"I should be thanking you," the beige-coated pegasus mare with a mane in various shades of gray, a compass rose cutie mark, and wearing a pith helmet, known to most as Daring Do, replied. "I've dealt with most of that crowd before, but never all at once."
"Bet it gets rather repetitive," Blues observed carefully.
"You have no idea," Daring rolled her eyes as they put as much distance between themselves and the temple as possible.
"Ever go back in time?" the robot stallion decided to fish a bit.
"Thankfully, no," Daring told him with no indication that the question meant anything out of the ordinary to her. "I've heard of some things that are supposed to do that but all the ones I've found have been either duds or broken, assuming their abilities weren't outright falsehoods to begin with."
"I suppose we should take our blessings where we get them," he allowed. 'Not looping. Though she didn't seem to think anything was off with that group, so no big surprise.' He'd recognized parts of the group's appearances as being from his Loop, which meant they were significantly different from whatever this place's baseline had. So if Daring was Awake, she'd have seemed a lot more surprised than she had been.
"Right now, I'd be happy with the blessing of some faster transportation," Daring grumbled. "We need to get word to the princesses about what that lot is up to and you're the only one who can offer proof."
No one will believe it.
"Sorry," he told her sincerely, "I'd give you the data but we can't risk whatever they infected me with spreading to other devices."
Pinkie's mane fell straight as the hairdryer lifted from her head, only to immediately poof back up.
"I swear," Rarity huffed as she watched the phenomenon happen, "you do that on purpose."
"Aww," Pinkie grinned cheekily, "but the poofy mane look is just me!"
"I dunno," Rock said from where he'd been roped into getting groomed with the rest by his sister. "You look pretty good with a straight mane too."
"Yeah, but it doesn't really go with my gala dress," Pinkie admitted with a smile.
"Ah'm still trying to wrap my mind around tha two a' ya going ta tha gala together," Applejack interjected from where she was polishing Fluttershy's hooves. "How'd that happen?"
"I asked, she said yes," Rock shrugged nonchalantly.
"I think Applejack meant 'why Pinkie?'," Twilight elaborated.
"Why not?" Rock looked confused.
"I think it's cute," Roll insisted from where she was taking the opportunity to style her brother's mane in a ridiculous fashion she knew he would adjust to something more sensible once she and the others were finished having fun.
"Says the sister who'd ship me with anything female and not family," Rock shot back.
"I would not!" Roll looked offended. "There's an age and beauty requirement too." She thought for a second before adding: "And a sanity one." (12)
"You sure?" Daring asked Blues as the two came within sight of Ponyville.
"Yes," Blues replied. "My father can get you in touch with your contacts while I head to Canterlot and inform the princesses."
"And the gala?" the adventurer mare continued.
Oh, that sounds fun! All those nobles and other ponies trampling each other to de–
He watched, horrified, as Rock fell lifelessly to the ground.
–ath in a panic when you break the news! You should totally do that!
"I'll tell them after the gala," Blues informed her. "That way they can give the matter their undivided attention. We have that much time at least. Besides, I have a promise to keep."
Dash sighed as she trotted over to her dress so Rarity could get her done up in time for them all to make the carriage Twilight arranged for them. No word from her 'date' for the evening. No letter, no message, no noth–
She stopped when she saw the stallion mannequin next to the one that had her dress bereft of the tuxedo it had held, a damp towel and a note in the garment's place.
Meeting you there. Sorry if I worried you.
- Blues
P.S. How's my stealth?
Dash shook her head in amazement. Only Blues would treat getting into his gala tux as a spy mission.
"I must say, this is quite the pleasant surprise Daring," Dr. Light smiled as he led the adventurer to the communications array, both of them politely pretending not to notice the six starry-eyed fillies who thought themselves well-concealed. "How many years has it been since that unpleasantness down south?"
"Too many to justify not keeping in touch and not nearly enough to get over what happened," Daring admitted as she began entering something into the panel. "And I wish it was a social call that brought me here."
"Who is–" a young female voice answered the call Daring had made, only to cut off in an excited squeal. "Ohmygosh! It's Daring Do!"
Dr. Light chuckled as the golden-feathered griffon child on the vid-screen went full fanhen over his now flustered guest.
"See?!" the child insisted to an older griffon hen whose feather coloration was more 'bald eagle' than 'golden eagle'. "See cousin Gilda?! I told you she was real!"
The griffon friend of Rainbow Dash who had visited earlier that year simply stood there gawking at his visitor.
"I do apologize for any impoliteness," Dr. Light told the older griffon, "but we need to speak with your uncle. It's quite urgent."
"Yes," Gilda shook her head in a daze as she focused on the task given to her. "I'll go get him. Come on, squirt."
"Okay!" the younger griffon chirped as she followed the other. "Bye Miss Do!"
"Who was the younger one?" Daring asked once they had left.
"Did you forget that he had a daughter?" Dr. Light raised his eyebrow.
"But... he said she'd just hatched!" Daring sputtered. "Has it really been that long?"
"I'm afraid it has," a male voice came over the communicator as a stern-looking adult male griffon with golden feathers and eyeglasses stepped into view. "Bright, Daring," he greeted amiably. "What seems to be the problem?"
Twilight blinked as she stepped out of the carriage and spotted an unfamiliar stallion in a pompadour and sunglasses, at night no less, waving to her and her friends. Or rather, to a specific member of the group.
"You made it!" Rainbow dashed over to what was apparently her escort, she'd been rather insistent that it wasn't a 'date' to all of them, for the evening.
"I promised, didn't I?" the stallion smirked.
"Well," Rarity walked up to the two hoof-in-arm with teen-form Spike, "aren't you going to introduce us to your coltfriend Dash?"
"I keep telling you, it's not like that!" Dash insisted, "but this is–"
"DLN-000, Blues Light," Roll cut in as she and her brother, with Pinkie in tow, joined Rarity. "Nice to finally meet you, brother."
"I'm surprised you managed to get him here," Rock added. "He certainly hasn't been returning any of our calls since we found him in the Lab's database."
"You never said they'd been calling you!" Dash poked the prototype pony-bot with her hoof accusingly.
Twilight noted the dirty look Blues shot his siblings as Pinkie began going into full party planning mode regarding the older robot's getting-the-family-back-together party.
"I'm not talking to my father," Blues cut her off so sharply that Pinkie halted in mid-air and slowly drifted to the ground. "This isn't just a social call either. I'm here to speak with the princesses immediately after the gala. I have important information regarding national security for them."
"How important is it?" Twilight found herself asking, taken aback by how serious he'd sounded.
"Not so important that I want to risk causing a panic with the gala in full swing," he told them. "But it concerns Dr. Wily. And a group called The Stars."
"I'm glad you could come over so fast," Dr. Light greeted the griffon as he stepped out of the Lab's teleporter. #The #long distance teleportation network was a recent development in unicorn magical emulation and still limited in regards to who had access to it, but significant strides in the technology were being made.
"Think nothing of it," the griffon scientist said as his daughter came through next, followed by his niece Gilda. "If this is as serious as Daring claims, we can't waste any time."
"Who are you?" the voice of a young filly cut into the conversation as Scootaloo entered the room.
"Hi!" the youngest griffon scampered eagerly over to the pegasus filly. "I'm Kalinka! Who are you?"
"I'm Scootaloo," the adopted daughter of Dr. Light answered, "and these are my friends Applebloom, Silver Spoon, Sweetie Belle, Diamond Tiara, and Nyx."
"Oh, wow!" Kalinka oohed as she spotted the black pony robot. "You're an alicorn!"
"Yes, indeed," Dr. Light chuckled. "Many of you recall Kalinka's cousin Gilda," he gestured to the older griffon female who waved half-heartedly before turning to the male griffon. "And this is her father and a good friend of mine, Dr. Mikhail Cossack of the Griffon Empire."
"Well, well," Spitfire arched an impressed eyebrow, "you're Light's guard prototype? I remember him claiming that you'd be the equal of any wonderbolt once he got you up in the air."
"That's because he's been testing the pegasus harness against Dash here," Blues gestured to his companion who was doing her best not to hyperventilate at holding a conversation with her idol. "She's been setting the gold standard for the device since day one at the lab. There's still a few kinks to work out from what I hear."
"Really?" Spitfire turned her attention to the rainbow-maned pegasus. "I saw the footage of that thing in action against Air Tercel. It's a fine piece of work as it stands, and it still doesn't measure up to you?"
"Well..." Dash began sheepishly, feeling oddly embarrassed by the praise, "Doc Light insists on it being the best, which means I've got to give it my best, so..."
"I see," Spitfire hmmed. "Well, you're already invited to our training camp next spring for your performance in the young flyers' competition, and after hearing this, I expect to see great things from you then."
Rainbow Dash almost contained the resulting squee of joy.
Daring Do stared intently at one of Mikhail's robots that had come through the lab's teleporter after him. "Who are you supposed to be?"
The sphinx model robot stared back at her just as intently. "I am Pharaoh Sphinx, developed after extensive research on the kinds of temples you yourself tend to come across. I am fully equipped for trap detection and disarmament, my solar-energy Pharaoh Shot is both a light source and a defensive weapon, and I am tempered to withstand the dark magic of the vilest and most malevolent curses with little issue. The pharaoh theme is mostly aesthetic, though I won't complain if it means a few curses think I'm supposed to be there."
"You made a robot to do my job?" Daring turned her stare to the robot's creator.
"I made a robot who could withstand the dark magic saturating those ruins we all visited back then," Dr. Cossack defended himself.
Daring winced at the reminder of one of the few places she'd gone that didn't appear in the books she'd written as A.K. Yearling. Not because it was uneventful, most of those at least got mentions when they became relevant, but because it was her biggest failure. None of them had gained anything from that place, and suffered losses instead. She wondered if the diamond dog Pedro had ever recovered from his injury.
"I any case, I think we should share what we know," Dr. Light reminded his colleagues of why they were here as the giggling voices of the seven children emanated from another room.
"Of course," Daring admitted. "I went back to the Lanfront ruins after a series of rumors regarding some of my old adversaries reached my ears. I managed to sneak in, barely, and discover that they were all part of the same cult group. I only escaped due to the help of your eldest 'son' Bright, but not before I found out that they're all planning something big. Have been for some time."
"You said they were part of a cult," Dr. Cossack pushed his glasses up his beak. "Which one?"
"They call themselves 'The Stars'," Daring told them to sharp intakes of breath. "The same ones who were predicted to be responsible for the return of Nightmare Moon. Not sure how accurate that part is, but the cult's been around at least a thousand years under that name. But it's been around even longer under other names, their goal for ages to plunge the world into 'eternal darkness'. Originally, it was called the Order of Le Mu, or depending on who was translating, the Order of Ra Moon."
"Is it ready?" a voice in the shadows asked.
"Yes..." the gleeful voice of Dr. Wily responded. "With my enhancements the device is now ready to fire. No need for those inefficient baubles hidden is crumbling temples you used to go after."
"Then let the darkness fall so the Stars may reign supreme."
A wave of dark magic spread out from the area south of Equestria known as the Lanfront ruins, affecting everything in its path. All animals not born of dark magic stumbled and collapsed as it swept over them and trees began to lose color. The shadows choked the sky and stifled all light above so it could never reach the ground.
As the dark wave passed over Equestria, magical devices ceased functioning and ponies everywhere stumbled and fell where they stood. Unicorns blacked out completely and many pegasi were injured from the crashes that resulted when the weather magic they relied on to aid flight was disrupted.
In a power plant, Elec Mare shorted out and fell to the floor.
Guts Stallion collapsed on stage at a karaoke bar he'd gone to after his shift, his backup singers Bomb Stallion and Cut Mare fell beside him as well.
Fire Mare's flames went out suddenly while she was on the night shift at a Manehattan waste disposal plant.
Ice Mare fell face-first in the snow far in the frozen north.
Cloudsdale shuddered as the wave passed over it and began to lose cohesion. Those pegasi that retained consciousness would manage to push the clouds towards the ground afterwards in an effort to evacuate the city before it lost form completely.
"Scoots?" Nyx asked her unconscious friend worriedly. "Bloom? Silver? DT? Sweetie? Kalinka? What just happened?"
"So what's the big important secret you need to tell the princesses?" Dash asked as she danced with her escort for the evening. She'd figured that she'd spent so much effort getting all fancied up that she might as well at least once.
"You'll find out in due time," Blues smiled secretively. "Just relax and enjoy the night until then."
"You love doing that, don't y–" she cut off as she felt her connection to the Element of Loyalty, the one Twilight had been training her and the others in developing, flare hard enough to give her a headache before going dark. She had just enough time to wonder what that meant before she lost consciousness as well.
"SISTER!" Blues heard a terrified voice bellow as he did his best to keep his 'date' for the evening from hitting the floor. All of a sudden everyone at the gala had swayed and collapsed. The unicorns all looked to be unconscious, and the pegasi and earth ponies were at best too disoriented from whatever had happened to stand. A quick check showed that his brother and sister were completely offline.
The only ones still standing were himself and an angry alicorn of the night now stomping up to him. Behind her, he could see a very much knocked out Celestia.
"YOU!" Luna bellowed loud enough that he had to brace himself in order to ensure he didn't fall over. "EXPLAIN WHAT SORCERY THIS IS THAT LAYS OUR LITTLE PONIES LOW! EXPLAIN WHY THOU STAND WHEN THEY DO NOT!"
"Princess," he said respectfully, "I suspect I'm still standing for much the same reason you are. We've both played unwilling host to a dark force like the one that did this."
Luna's eyes widened in terror as she processed that statement.
Nyx took several deep breaths, which she'd later admit didn't really do anything for her mechanical body, and tried to calm down and remember what her mom had told her to do when situations like this cropped up in the Loops.
First step in this kind of situation: Check the victims.
The other Crusaders, Awake or otherwise, were unconscious but not injured. That at least was a relief.
Second step: What could she do about it?
Without knowing what had caused their sudden collapse... not much. Her robot form this Loop wasn't capable of channelling the full range of magical abilities she was used to, but she could still take most opponents with the contents of her subspace pocket if nothing else. But there wasn't any villains to fight right now, or at least none that she could sense...
Third step: Who did she know who could help?
Her mom had told her that, for the most part, Loop memories and instincts could be trusted. Because many Loops seemed to subscribe to narrative causality to some extent, Loop instincts could at least be trusted to 'advance the plot' as it were. It wasn't a bad fallback strategy in any case.
And according to Scoots and Silver, Dr. Light generally either knew what to do or could figure something out. Her experiences around the lab certainly hadn't contradicted that. He was a lot like her mom in some ways.
Which was how she found herself racing down the halls as fast as her hooves could carry her, shouting for the older stallion.
"Dr. Light! Dr. Light! Come quick! Hel–EEEK!" She yelled as she barrelled around the doorframe into the lab where she knew he was entertaining guests, and almost ran into a pony-like figure done up in modern zebra voodoo stereotype with bones and skulls and a just downright spooky and scary demeanor.
She was so keyed up by the situation that she let out a bolt of magic at the sinister figure out of sheer reflex, and gulped as it dissipated on a shimmering sinisterly-shaped barrier.
"Twilight?" Rarity asked wearily as she returned to consciousness.
"Yes, Rarity?" said unicorn inquired as she shook the cobwebs out of her mind.
"Why are we on the floor of the palace ballroom?"
"I'm not sure..."
"Did someone leave the gag running?" Pinkie queried blearily from nearby.
Twilight ignored her friend's non sequitur as she took stock of what was going on. She'd been enjoying the gala as it was meant to be enjoyed for a change of pace, she and the rest of her friends had somehow been coaxed onto the dance floor, and then her brain at the base of her horn had metaphorically exploded resulting in the loss of consciousness.
'Okay, I think this Loop just crossed the 'non interference' line,' she thought to herself as she noted the completely offline forms of the visiting Anchors amidst ponies in varying states of recovery from unconsciousness. Idly filing away the fact that unicorns seemed the worst off, she got to her feet and began to list out a course of action.
Step one: Figure out what just happened.
She made to cast a few scrying spells, and blinked when nothing happened.
"Let's try that again," she muttered to herself and tried to put some more effort into it, only to promptly stop as pain shot through her head near her horn and her vision swam.
'Alright, bad idea...' she managed to remain standing. 'Let's skip a few steps and go straight for the Elements then.'
Twilight stood there for a few seconds before the fact that the Element of Magic was refusing to manifest sunk in.
'How...?' she thought as she examined her connection with the soul-bound artifact. 'Okay, it's still there, but it's... weak or something.' Whatever happened was somehow interfering with the Elements. It wouldn't be the first time something managed to shut them down, a few Loops with the Smooze came to mind, but it wasn't exactly a common occurrence.
Twilight decided to cut straight to the chase and go full alicorn. She'd explain later, maybe use excuse 3Q this time. She hadn't tried that one in a while.
When she regained consciousness again, Twilight would liken the attempt to trying to manually turn herself inside out. Without pain killing effects of any kind.
"I'm so sorry!" Nyx apologized for the umpteenth time as she and the voodoo zebra figure finished moving her friends someplace more comfortable.
As it turned out, the griffon scientist had brought more of his robots, eight in all, through the portal with him. Skull Mane was the zebra-like model done up with stereotypical voodoo accessories like an equine skull-shaped helmet, bones (both real and fake) braided into his mane and tail, and the power to make barriers in the same shape as his helmet.
Plus he was one of only two of Dr. Cossack's robots that hadn't been shut down by whatever it was. Even the lab's systems, mostly running on magic generators, were offline.
"It is fine," the robot replied politely. Again. "As I keep telling you, I was designed as a guardian. A fearsome appearance is one of the oldest methods of defense that any intelligent race has practiced. By appearing frightening, I cut down the number of hostile creatures that wish to test my abilities in the first place and make many more unsure about attacking what I defend. Scaring allies and potential friends is an unfortunate side effect I have learned to live with."
"But I still shouldn't have assumed–" Nyx protested.
"What?" the zebra-bot cut her off. "That an unfamiliar figure in your home might be responsible for the attack that harmed your friends and family? While my appearance might not do me many favors in regards to misunderstandings, it was hardly the only strike against me in this case."
"Yeah, okay," Nyx finally relented. "How are you moving around still anyway?"
"Like Pharaoh Sphinx, I am tempered to resist the disruptive influences of dark magic," Skull Mane explained as the two headed back to the lab. The doctors had recovered relatively quickly and had requested to see her after her friends were secured. "It would be very inconvenient in my duties if my defenses could be circumvented by any sinister party with basic knowledge of malevolent curse-style magic."
"Ah, there you are Nyx," Dr. Light's voice greeted warmly, if a bit weakly. "I must again say I am pleased to see you unaffected by whatever has befallen us. With your permission, I and Dr. Cossack would like to study how you resist this influence. His method of shielding against dark magic should prove enough to get parts of the lab up and running in a few days, but I think you may be able to help speed that timeframe up."
'Tree damn this Loop and whoever did this!' Rarity growled as she massaged her aching head and continued walking down the palace hallway. 'When I find the rooter responsible I will buck them straight into the sun!'
She'd watched as Twilight fell to the floor of the ballroom in a seizure mere moments after recovering from the unexpected disaster that had rendered them unconscious in the first place. She had yet to regain consciousness since.
Nor was Twilight the only one adversely affected. Celestia also had yet to awaken, and Shining Armor had reported that Cadance was in the same state. It was thus little surprise that the panic incited by Celestia's forced indisposal meant they hadn't noticed what had become of their newest looping friends Rock and Roll until somepony literally tripped over their inert forms.
The robots, along with all other electronics or magical devices, had been shut down by the event and remained utterly inoperable. That their brother Blues was unaffected was a mystery.
Speaking of those mysteriously unaffected, Luna had done her duty and taken charge of Equestria while her sister recovered, and was being run into the ground by the constant demands on her time and attention.
Reports had come in of the effects on other areas of Equestria and they hadn't stopped since. The shroud of darkness over Equestria made high noon no brighter than a moonlit night, and nighttime... It was dark enough to give even the bravest ponies shivers. Panic ran rampant in all cities and towns and civil services everywhere were stretched beyond their limits. Cloudsdale in particular had been completely destroyed as the magic holding it together came undone, and only the brave efforts of many of its citizens had saved the rest. It was a miracle and a testament to Equestria's solidarity that there had been no deaths.
'Gah!' Rarity swore internally as another sharp pain lanced through her head. 'It's so hard to think these days... And nothing makes it any better!'
Then there were the effects on the ponies themselves. With the notable exception of Luna, magic had all but left the populace of Equestria. The most anypony of the three races was capable of performing were the most basic of cantrips. Unicorns like Rarity herself suffered from severe headaches at the base of their horns and even basic telekinesis for many (though not Rarity herself for some reason) became impossible. Pegasi had lost their ability to use weather magic and those like Rainbow Dash who used it almost all the time were effectively grounded as a result. Even earth ponies were finding out how much magic they used subconsciously as their daily tasks became that much harder and many complained of aching limbs. Perhaps the most telling of all was that Pinkie's mane had gone razor straight and she couldn't re-poof it without exhausting herself.
She and the remaining Awake Elements, including Spike even though he wasn't 'on duty' this Loop, had convened to discuss their options for dealing with the situation while the Unawake Rainbow Dash had been asked to see if she could get anything out of Blues as to why he wasn't affected. The options were... not encouraging.
With Twilight down, the Elements of Harmony would have been off the table even if they hadn't gone dormant. They'd given reactivating them a decent effort, but the results had been along the lines of 'diddly' and 'squat'. Then they'd tried pulling things out of their subspace pockets to make an assessment, only for technological devices to fritz and magical ones to cease functioning the moment they were brought out. After the second 'energetic' failure they'd unanimously decided not to bring out anything else.
They'd debated for a while until Pinkie had apparently had enough and declared that she was going to go 'full chaos goddess' and fix everything, and then throw a party for all of Equestria to help them recover. She'd pulled out a lump of cosmic spectrum, one that Twilight insisted every member of the alicorn club carry ever since that Loop where the Smooze nullified the elements and by extension their preferred method of ascending, and focused. The magical stone had pulsed and then shattered into dust, Pinkie's eyes had rolled back in her head, foam formed at her mouth, and she began convulsing uncontrollably.
It was exactly what had happened to Twilight back in the ballroom while their attention had been elsewhere. Down to the small pile of magically inert dust Rarity then realized must have been Twilight's own backup cosmic spectrum.
After they'd gotten Pinkie squared away, Spike had suggested that he scry with the Force and see if he could learn anything. Since it wasn't really magic, native to the Loop or otherwise, it shouldn't be affected by whatever had happened.
Except that it was... somehow. Spike had been able to use the Force just fine, but the moment he opened his mind everything had gone wrong. He'd gone limp and vacant before beginning to mutter nonsense, and he hadn't stopped since.
Fluttershy had lost her temper about then and tried to wildshape and go flying off in a blind rage to find the one responsible, except... Well, Luna had been needed to undo the result and put Fluttershy back to rights. Applejack had readily agreed that further experimentation with non-native Loop abilities should be put on hold until they learned more.
'If only our best scholar in all things magic would wake up so we could get on that. Or if whoever did this would at least make themselves known so we can kick their flank and get on with things!' she sighed as she prepared to round an upcoming corner. 'Honestly, I haven't felt this helpless since–'
"You need to tell them," Luna's voice shook the dressmaker out of her musings right before she rounded the corner. Many Loops of experience in cloak and dagger type scenarios prompted her to conceal herself as best as possible and eavesdrop.
"I will," the voice of Blues responded, "eventually."
"That is what I used to tell myself in regards to the jealousy I felt towards my sister," Luna retorted. "I would tell myself that I'd let her know how I felt 'soon' and before I knew it I was blasting her through a wall in rage. You are tainted with the Nightmare just as I was. Its dark whispers will wear down your defenses as they did mine, until a dark parody of yourself is all that's left."
'Well,' Rarity thought to herself, 'that certainly explains why they weren't affected. Luna probably built up a tolerance from playing host for a thousand years and anyone currently infected is likely exempt from the effects. Which probably means little Nyx isn't affected either. Twilight will be happy to hear that. I guess my occasional stint as 'Nightmarity' is why I can still use some of the basics too.'
"I can handle it," Blues insisted. "I'm not hearing whispers or words or anything. Just a barely perceptible prodding to act on some of my darker thoughts."
"And that is how it starts," Luna returned just as stubbornly.
"I've been dealing with these thoughts for longer than most think," Blues retorted. "The Nightmare isn't bringing anything new to the table."
"For your sake, I hope not," Luna relented as a messenger ran up to the two with news.
Zecora owed the Light family much, even if they would claim otherwise. She was not ignorant of the ways in which the world worked, and she had seen the suspicious looks the townsponies had thrown her when she'd arrived years ago. They had never seen a zebra before, knew nothing about her ways or traditions, and they feared what was different and unfamiliar.
Except Dr. Light. He looked at the strange and unfamiliar with interest and wonder. He didn’t look upon her setting up residence in the Everfree, a place rife with rare and potent ingredients for her potions and studies, as proof she was to be feared. No, he looked upon it with interest and sought to learn why. He came to her, braving the dangers of the Everfree, and sought to learn who she was and why she lived there.
She knew he hadn't needed to do that. Nor did he need to accompany her into town and vouch for her to all of the vendors. He certainly hadn't needed to put in an order for regular potion supplies and pay her so well for them.
And so, when the Nightmare had fallen over Equestria, she'd wasted no time. Magic may have been stifled, but there was a potion known to her that would counter the effects of such a curse upon the drinker that could still be brewed by one under the dark influence. The primary downside was that the ingredients were not only rare but also dangerous to work with. Not to mention when improperly brewed, the potion was quite hazardous.
She'd had just enough for two doses. One for her to chase away the dark aches so the forest did not catch her unawares and one for the good doctor so he would be at his best.
She hadn't expected him to already be at work on a solution though. It had made her efforts seem... pointless. At least at first. Even though they already had the makings of a solution, the doctors had jumped on her brew and gotten the griffon's toad-like robot, newly shielded and made to analyze and reproduce liquids, to duplicate her brew. If what they claimed was true, her contribution had cut several day's work down to one.
And now they had come to Canterlot in the hopes they could restore the stallion's mechanical children, and any others who needed it.
"Thou art certain this shall work?" Luna looked at the contraptions dubiously. "As we understand it, artificially made potions are... magically inert."
The princess of the night hoped she didn't look as ragged as she felt. Raising both the moon and sun, even if their light was stifled by the curse of darkness, was tiring enough. Dealing with Equestria in a crisis without her sister to help was taking its toll though.
"The process by which we make this brew, makes it impotent that is true," the zebra mare, Zecora if she recalled correctly, replied as she placed a hoof on the shoulder of a black metal alicorn. The one made from the remnants of the Nightmare energy that had corrupted her. "But add the power of dark benign, and you will find it works just fine."
"I just put magic into it, that's all," The artificial alicorn filly looked like she would have blushed were she capable.
"Well, magic's what we need to make it work, so you do a bang-up job, ribbit!" the metal frog-thing, Rain Toad made by the griffon scientist Dr. Cossack as he had been introduced, chimed in. Some contraption originally meant to do the job of a pegasus by seeding rain during droughts, and adapted to analyze water composition and then reproduce it for later analysis. Currently adapted to mass produce Zecora's darkness protection potion.
"We're ready," Dr. Light announced as he finished activating the miraculously working cylinders. He'd been busy it seemed adapting the chambers to work under this infernal curse and then getting his creations and his companion's running so they could haul them here. All to save his metal foals. That it could be used to cure ponies was a welcome addition, but Luna wanted to see it work first.
"Alrighty everypony!" Applejack, bearer of Honesty, called to the others. "Let's lower them two in nice and gentlelike!"
As Luna watched, the metallic saviors of Equestria two times over were lowered into the clear cylinders, hooked up to various devices that went way over Luna's head, and then submerged in the artificial potion over their heads.
"You're up Nyx," Rainbow Dash, the bearer of Loyalty, told the robot alicorn filly.
"Right," the named filly, and metal daughter of the bearer of Magic, stepped up and began infusing the liquid with her power.
Rock came back online in a way that was much more familiar than he liked to admit.
Submerged in a vat of liquid after being unexpectedly forced offline.
'Damnit, I was sure we wouldn't have to deal with Ra Moon this Loop!' he cursed Equestria's current lack of a centralized database he could readily access. The Lanfront ruins didn't exist every Loop, and their existence was sometimes classified, but he'd gotten used to knowing about the possibility in advance.
"This is most promising," he heard Luna muse as he was extracted from the tank by Guts Stallion and... was that an Equestrian variant of Ring Man? He looked like a griffon. Off to the side Roll was being helped out by Elec Mare and some sphinx-like version of Pharaoh Man. And... yep, that looked like the griffon Dr. Cossack over there with his niece Gilda and Rock's dad. Blues was giving him the 'we need to talk soon' signal over by an equine Bright Man, his head-mounted bulb illuminating the room. And over there was a beaming Nyx with Zecora, some version of Toad Man, and what looked like Skull Man imagined as a zebra.
It worked for him.
"Ye must prepare to repeat this treatment immediately," the lunar princess continued. "First the bearers so that we may possibly regain the Elements of Harmony to turn against this mysterious and dishonorable foe, and then my sister if possible.
"Princess!" a frantic guard scrambled inside. "There is someone claiming responsibility for this catastrophe outside! He is demanding to speak with you and your 'champions' immediately!"
"Pray, tell us," Rock heard the titanium alloy in the princess's voice, "what is the name of this brazen knave?"
"He calls himself Ahuizotl Terra," the guard responded.
'Well,' Rock thought in shock, 'that might be what Blues wanted to tell me.'
Applejack swore as she listened to this odd version of Ahuizotl gloat over what he'd done. If she still had full control over her earthbending, she'd have been happy to give the varmint a round of applause. Him and his giant green headdress right between a pair of granite applauders, eeyup.
"Don't princess," she heard Rock warn Luna off from trying to vaporize the smug... whatever he was. "He looks too confident. He's got something up his sleeve."
The problem with her earthbending was that this shroud of darkness, or whatever it was, was interferin' with her control. If she tried something it could easily be too weak and do nothin' or too strong and turn him into a smear. And while the latter option was soundin' better with every sound outta his smug mouth, her aim wasn't all that hot either at the moment. She could just as easily smash one a' the ponies who'd come to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
"Oh, come princess," Ahuizotl grinned in his blue and white regalia and red helmet that sported the massive green headdress. Had ta be enchanted the way he was flauntin' it. "You aren't... frightened, are you?"
"Of thou?" Luna scoffed. "A coward who hides behind magical toys? Not at all. Thou art simply not worth sullying ourself over. Thou shalt face our champion instead."
"Why, that sounds thrilling!" Ahuizotl laughed. "In fact, why not send two? In fact, I'll allow three if you can find that many who aren't crippled! It won't make any difference!"
Luna scowled at the pompous something-or-other while Applejack made a mental note to ask Twilight what his dang species was when she woke up.
"Don't worry princess," Roll assured her. "We can handle him."
"Nevertheless," Luna began before turning back to Ahuizotl. "If thou art so confident, ye shall not object to us bestowing a blessing upon our champions."
"I'd have it no other way," the villain grinned.
"Very well," Luna nodded and lowered her horn to the two robots and whispered to them, low enough that Applejack had to strain to hear, as she cast a spell. "This protection shall shield thee both from anything the foul miscreant can bring to bear. End this quickly so that we can restore peace to our little ponies' lives."
"We will," they both promised and strode out to meet their opponent.
"Well," Ahuizotl mused pleasantly as he rubbed his chin, "since your dear princess is allowed to grant a boon to her champions it seems only fair that I begin this contest, wouldn't you say?"
The robot pony siblings looked at each other before replying together. "If you must."
"Perfect," Ahuizotl's grin threatened to carve the top of his skull away from his body as his hand-tail thing, sporting some red glove gauntlet doohicky, rose up over his head and pointed two fingers at the duo. "Spark Chaser."
It was over in a horrifying instant. The lasers that fired forth punched straight through Luna's protection spell and their metal bodies. And then it cornered in midair to hit them again. And again. And again. The sparking and smoldering forms of the twin heroes of Equestria hit the ground before what had happened had finished registering for anypony watching.
"Victory!" Ahuizotl laughed. "And now you all see just how powerless you are against just one of our little group of Stars! Even the magic your precious alicorn princess is no match for our new strength!" The monster chuckled sinisterly. "And there's more of us. Surrender to the Age of Eternal Darkness. Or wither away slowly."
Applejack noted that Luna looked darn near ready to charge the piece of trash regardless of the fact that he'd carved through one of her best protection spells like it was made of warm butter. Hay, she was ready to join her.
But then the music started. (13)
Quiet at first, barely noticeable, but it slowly increased in volume. A somber melody came forth and Applejack found herself rooted in place as a familiar feeling washed over her.
'Who the buck is triggerin' a Heartsong now?!' she thought incredulously. Trying to break the spell of a heartsong was technically possible, but rarely ended well. 'What, is the stinkin' varmint gonna gloat ta music now?' And then she saw Rock and Roll begin to stand up. 'You gotta be kiddin' me... They're tha ones doing this?'
The impact of getting the last of their hooves under them coincided with a pulsing drumbeat that ended the instrumentals and Rock began to sing.
"I think we've played this song before
The melody is different, but I hear the drums of war."
Drum beats heralded the return of the instrumentals as Applejack realized what was happening as Roll stepped forward. Those two were trying to trigger a heartsong to turn this fight around... Was that even possible?
"So it seems our mission is the same
What always ends in bloodshed, begins as just a game."
Applejack blinked at the somber tone of the song as the two robots prepared to sing together. That wasn't typical Equestrian heartsong material.
"History repeating...
Who do they call when villains need defeating?
History repeating...
Who do we call when we're broken and bleeding?"
It dawned on her that this must be something from their home Loop. They clearly had experience with music as well as fighting. Maybe they'd had both at the same time before. But then Ahuizotl smiled and stepped forward. Chlorophyll... He was going to try and turn the heartsong against them...
"What have we here, you two want to be the ones?
But what you must realize is... that you're the only ones!
So here we are, beginning a new age
Get the players set; it's time that war we wage."
Applejack watched, bound by the heartsong as a spectator, as Ahuizotl lowered his tail-hand and the laser gauntlet with it. The varmint was so confident he wasn't going to use his alicorn-busting superweapon. He was intendin' to show them all that he could beat the heroes of Equestria with his bare limbs!
"History repeated...
Who can they call with the heroes defeated?
Our dark story completed...
What hope will they have with you two deleted?"
Applejack grit her teeth as the instrumentals swelled in volume and then began to increase in pace. Faster and faster as the combatants stared each other down across the courtyard.
And when the music shifted, they were off like shots. They met in the center, trading unarmed blows. Ahuizotl's fist cratered the marble as the twin heroes dodged and counterattacked. They moved so fluidly and struck so solidly that it would be hard to believe they had really been injured so badly if the wounds were not plainly visible.
Ahuizotl swept the area around him and the two jumped clear and fired their weapons before Rock picked up the song again.
"We stand before a moment of truth,"
He sounded much more determined now. The feeling of sadness was gone, replaced by determination as Roll continued for him.
"With all Equestria's fate in our hooves."
She had to smirk as Ahuizotl snarled at them and they sang together.
"Today, the end begins..."
Then the villain smirked and began to try and twist the song again as the two charged him.
"Come and let the battle be born
This war that we fight is a thundering storm
Today, the end begins..."
She saw Rock gritting his teeth as blows were exchanged again and he tried to wrest the flow of the song back.
"If it was up to me
I'd rewrite history
And change our destiny
One last time"
The two robots began peppering Ahuizotl with buster shots from range and staying out of his reach until he got frustrated and leapt at them. He missed, but the blow from his boosted strength created a shockwave that knocked them back anyway. They managed to land on their hooves and dug grooves into the ground and picked up the song before renewing their assault.
"Betrayed our promise of peace
This is the last time we're the Mega Ponies
Today, we change the end"
Applejack noticed Ahuizotl getting frustrated at how this fight wasn't as easy as he'd been expecting and he raised his tail-hand with the laser gauntlet again. It was clear he was intending to fry them completely, heartsong influence or no. She was about to try and shout a warning when Ahuizotl's gauntlet was struck by an energy blast out of nowhere and a red-armored earth pony with a shield, scarf, and shaded visor landed between the two heroes and joined the song.
"Hey, Rock. My weapon is hot
It's time to throw down; Let's show what we got
Today, we change the end..."
Ahuizotl snarled in rage and pain as all three charged him again and rejoined the song in anger.
"Now you listen to me!
You can't stop this story!
No changing destiny!
Not this time!"
Blows were traded fast and furious, and Applejack noticed Ahuizotl's armor building up energy. Just as she realized he had another trick up his durned sleeve, a wave of energy burst forth from him flinging all three of his opponents back. Rock and Roll landed badly, but the red-armored pony, who had to be Blues she figured, had managed to block with his shield and land on his hooves.
And strangely, Ahuizotl seemed to calm down suddenly and sang at Blues in an almost friendly manner.
"Come now, why do you fight?
You know that only we are right!
They cannot win, they can only fall,
And no choice you can make will
Change that at all!"
Blues glared back at the villain and didn't even miss a beat before retorting defiantly.
"I know they can win, They’ve done it before
Now put up your dukes, and let's settle this score
One last time!"
As the two charged and clashed, Applejack heard the whispers rocket through the crowd like Rainbow Dash breeching the warp barrier. And as one, practically everyone reached the same conclusion and cheered:
"HE'S THE PROTOTYPE MANE OF MEGA MANE!!"
And then she heard Luna of all ponies join the song.
"It shall be up to thee
To rewrite this story
And change thy destiny
One last time"
And Applejack found she couldn't help repeating that last line as Blues clobbered Ahuizotl with an uppercut from his shield, making him stagger back and clutch his face in pain.
"One last TIME!"
Ahuizotl growled as he moved his hand and everyone could see his eye bleeding as he began singing again.
"You can't stop this you'll see
You'll face our dark story
And meet your destiny
Come next time!"
And as the music began to draw itself out for the end of the heartsong, Ahuizotl was bathed in magical light as he prepared to teleport. But not before tossing out a farewell line.
"Yes.. next time..."
Twilight blinked as she came to in a vat of liquid.
'Another Star Wars Loop starting in a bacta tank?' she thought groggily. 'No, wait, I'm awake with a small 'a', not a capital one. Last Loop's still on. Tree, my everything hurts.'
"Welcome back to the land of the living miss Sparkle," an unfamiliar griffon in glasses and a labcoat greeted her.
Twilight blinked again as she was hoisted out of the tank by a semi-poofy-maned Pinkie and took stock of the unusually dark palace room, lit primarily by an equine robot with a bulb on his head.
"Can anypony tell me what's been going on?"
rDaring Do didn't look it, but she was frightened. Many would be surprised to find that this was a common state for her. After all, she'd faced death traps, dastardly villains, and magical doomsday devices. Sometimes all in the same day. But like she always reminded herself, it wasn't the fearless who succeeded in life, it was those who could face their fear. And at that she had long practice.
"Ahuizotl isn't the only one of my old foes who has gained new power," she informed the gathered Elements. She'd missed her arch nemesis's arrival and duel partly due to being tapped with locating quarters for the arrivals from Ponyville in the midst of near oversaturation of refugees in the palace. The group of fillies (and one griffon chick) 'helping' hadn't sped the process up any.
Daring still had no idea where the tree sap had come from.
"Blues and I counted no less than eight other faces familiar to me from my past adventures as well. Each with their own new enchanted regalia and self-proclaimed titles. If you would please, doctor?"
"Of course, Daring," Dr. Cossack adjusted his glasses with a talon as he motioned for his light-bulb themed robot, Bright Mane, to operate the projector. A pegasus mare in cult attire appeared on the screen.
"For those of you who don't know," Daring began, "this is Desert Rose, an alternate version of a good friend of mine and the leader of a former cult whose purpose was to ressurrect the Smooze."
There was a sharp intake of breath from Princess Luna.
"I'm afraid the news doesn't necessarily get better from there, Princess," Daring told the lunar diarch as the image shifted to show a different image of the same mare. Only this time she had an acid green coat color as well as a pink chestplate and helmet connected by a pair of tubes and her coat looked rubbery. Or gooey. "She was supposedly killed by the very Smooze she sought to control, dissolved into its mass, but apparently she merged with it instead and... yes, miss Pie?"
"Why would anypony want to do anything with Smooze?" the pink mare put down the hoof she'd been frantically waving while going 'ooh! ooh! ooh! pick me!'. "It's like no fun at all! It's negative fun! Heck, I'd go as far as to say it's anti-fun!"
"Honestly," Daring replied with a roll of her eyes, "I'd guess that every member of this group has something against others having fun. They're not exactly a nice bunch. Desert Mercury, as she has now chosen to call herself, is just the tip of this iceberg."
The slide changed to show a zebra mare and this time it was Zecora who hissed.
"By my righteous burning fury," the potionmaker growled angrily, "is that the ever hated Zuri?"
"You know her?" Daring blinked in surprise.
"Only of the traitor do I know," Zecora admitted, "but home her face she dares not show. Foul betrayals she once committed and forever her name is now omitted."
"Complete erasure from Zebrican records?" Luna looked astonished. "That is a punishment most extreme! Even our actions as Nightmare Moon did not warrant being wiped from living memory! What villainy didst she commit to deserve such a fate?"
"Whatever it was," Daring replied as the slide switched to show the same zebra mare in yellow crab-like armor, "I suspect it was for money. She's Ahuizotl's favorite mercenary. She now goes by Zuri Venus and whatever power her armor gives her, it's explosive. Then there's this fellow."
As the image of a red dragon appeared, Luna rose in fury. "That foul miscreant hath escaped his eternal bonds?!"
"Sadly, yes," Daring, like most of the room, rubbed her ears. "I thought you might remember the time Inti tried to steal the power of Nightmare Moon before your return. Unfortunately, it seems that with your restoration the dark power you used to imprison him was similarly undone. He's going by Inti Mars now."
The image changed to the same dragon in heavy armor mounted with cannons. One was mounted on hos head, one each on his forelimbs, and the shoulder pauldrons appeared to have several. He was a living war machine. While the room took that image in, the slide changed to a menacing-looking griffon. The kind who made Gilda at her worst look cute and cuddly.
"Is that Copperbeak?" Rainbow Dash gulped. The villain of Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet had been one of the scarier ones in her opinion.
"Yes it is," Daring nodded as the image changed to show the griffon clad in green and yellow armor crackling with electricity. "Copperbeak Jupiter is the sky commander of this group and his armor has power over storms. Even if pegasus magic wasn't being shut down by the dark curse over Equestria, Copperbeak would be able to overpower any pegasi's control over the weather. I'm sorry, but even though the doctors' treatment restores the ability to use magic, I doubt any of us will have the raw strength to wrest control of his storms from him. As Ahuizotl's demonstration showed, their powers are alicorn tier."
"There are still other options," Dr. Cossack interjected. "While we may lack raw power, we have other resources. I'll be happy to go over them with you all once Daring has finished her briefing."
"Thank you doctor," Daring nodded as the image changed to show a bipedal tiger thing. A Rakshasa. "Anyway, this is Khara, a rakshasa who previously kidnapped elephants to feed on their pain and misery. Not a nice fellow, especially now he's been upgraded."
The image shifted to show the same being in brown armor with ring-like weapon so large he was standing in the middle of it.
"As Khara Saturn, he has even more terrifying powers than before and I didn't exactly stick around long enough to figure out what they were exactly," Daring admitted as the image switched to a positively immense minotaur. "Moving on, this guy is formerly known as the insane King Hammerhoof. And another foe I'd thought was dead. He looks like this now."
The image of the minotaur clad in red and yellow armor so thick as to double his body mass appeared.
"Good gracious!" Rarity gasped. "And I thought he looked like a brute before!"
"Brute is right," Blues answered for Daring this time. "That armor boosts his strength to unbelievable levels as Hammerhoof Uranus. When Daring was getting me out of there he tried to crush us with a several hundred tons of stone structures. Fortunately his aim is terrible."
"Not that it'll make a difference if he gets his hands on you," Daring reminded the group as the image changed to show a diamond dog. "This is Commandant Rex, a militant diamond dog who used to run a very successful slave trade." The image changed to show him in white fur garb with claw-like weapons at his wrists. "Now going by Pluto Rex, he's more dangerous than ever."
"He looks so cruel..." Fluttershy teared up.
"Up next is this bastard," Daring ignored the emotional pegasus as the image of a sea pony with a scraggly beard and pirate attire came up. As Applejack yelped and dove under the table, the rest noted that he seemed oddly transparent. "This guy is the formerly deceased pirate Blackmane, now Blackmane Neptune." The image changed to a definitely corporeal entity in blue and green armor with large white fins. "Among the other abilities his new armor grants him, he also apparently has a fully living body. Or at least a reasonable facsimile." (14)
"And we all know the next member of this group," Blues continued as the picture of the thing that had dueled he and his siblings not even an hour prior appeared. "Ahuizotl, now going by Ahuizotl Terra. One of the more persistent and prolific villains in the world with a penchant for seeking out mystical artifacts of power to aid his delusions of conquest. But even worse is who he seems to have recruited for his latest scheme."
The image of Dr. Wily appeared, causing a round of nods from some and winces from others.
"Dr. Wily Plan has proved to be an Equestria-wide threat with nothing more than his own intelligence and inventions before," Blues reminded the group. "And now he's enhancing a group of alicorn-level villains with that same warped genius to unknown ends. Ends involving the phrase 'Eternal Night' and this:"
The image was now a giant black orb with red markings that made it look like a closed eye.
"The artifact of Le Mu, or Ra Moon according to some translations," Daring took over. "Housed in the Lanfront ruins, ancient texts believe it to be the source of dark magic. Thanks to Blues I can now confirm that this artifact is the source of the Nightmare Force that once corrupted Princess Luna and now fuels the curse of darkness that shrouds Equestria."
"Order, order!" Twilight proclaimed as she presided over the meeting of loopers. Celestia had been treated, but instead of recovering completely the solar princess was barely conscious. She was weak and constantly tired to the point where staying awake was a feat in and of itself. Luna was currently doing her best to get Celestia back to as much health as possible. Dash had been taken care of rather fortuitously when Daring had asked her about her work at Light Labs and Gilda had tagged along to catch up on old times. The three had last been seen deep in energetic conversation with no end in sight. As for the doctors, they had tapped the expanded crusaders (Kalinka apparently having been inducted at some point) to help distribute the cure to the guard, which left the loopers to their own devices.
"Oh, honestly Twilight," Rarity rolled her eyes in exasperation. "We're all here and hanging on your every word. There's no need to call us to order."
"I think she just likes saying it," Pinkie chirped as she idly tried to get her mane back to its normal poofiness. "Kinda like you still use that couch of yours even though–"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Rarity sniffed. She was still feeling a little out of sorts. Spike hadn't responded to the treatment as well as the rest. Sure being unconscious was technically an improvement over the delirious ramblings he'd been on since opening his mind to the Force had been warped by the curse, but he was still not back to normal. She'd gone Loops without her husband Awake before, but having him here but incapacitated was just... worse somehow. To be so close yet so far...
"Oh, whatever," Applejack huffed. "Let's just get on with it."
"Fine," Twilight huffed as Rock and Roll grinned and Blues smirked.
"You seem happy," Fluttershy whispered as Twilight shuffled her notes and prepared to speak.
"You just seem like really good friends is all," Roll smiled.
"Okay," Twilight declared. "To recap: Thanks to the doctors and Zecora, we have our magic back, but not all of it. Our non-Loop native abilities are also sort of working again as Applejack kindly tested out, but our power levels are still not a hundred percent. Essentially, we're all back to the upper end of baseline for us rather than the accumulated power we've become used to. Ascending to alicorn is currently not an option. Whatever this curse is, it really doesn't like alicorns. Celestia's current state after anti-curse treatment is proof enough of that. In addition, the Elements themselves are inert for the foreseeable future, removing that option as well. And if that wasn't enough, pretty much anything useful in our subspace pockets is rendered technologically and magically inert, or worse, the moment we remove it so we can't count on any of that either."
The unicorn Anchor took a deep breath before continuing. "According to Rock and Roll, the foes from their Loop being emulated are called the Stardroids and each is incredibly powerful. Enough to possibly give us a run for our money even if we were at full strength. On our side of the equation, each member of the group is a foe of Daring Do from her adventures which could be real or fictional depending on the variant. They're all highly ruthless and very dangerous. Rock, if you would please?"
"No problem," the newly repaired robot agreed as he took the floor. "In our Loop, Ra Moon is an alien supercomputer dedicated to wiping out all life on the planet to pave the way for its 'children', the Stardroids. It's one of the less pleasant events we go through but fortunately it doesn't happen every Loop. We did our best to check for indicators that it existed, but we didn't find any until now. Anyway, the current variant appears to be an ancient artifact to fuel 'Eternal Night' and Blues says there's no indication it has any form of awareness. The ultimate goal is to enter the Lanfront ruins and destroy the artifact. As it's the source for the dark shroud over Equestria, that should remove its influence and restore magic to all of Equestria, including the Elements of Harmony."
"Assuming there are no complications," Blues added.
"Complications?" Twilight cocked her head inquisitively. "Like what?"
"Like Sunstar," Rock intoned as Roll nodded gravely. "He's normally the true leader of the Stardroids and a doomsday weapon that we can never get around fighting. The only good news is that 'Eternal Night' really doesn't fit his style, so we may not have to face a version of him."
"Well, here's hopin'," Applejack voiced what the rest were thinking.
"Sister....." Celestia wheezed from her bed as various ponies fussed over her. "You can....... not be............. serious..."
"We have never been more serious, dear sister," Luna insisted gently. "This foul magic is an attack not only on Equestria and her sovereignty, but upon all the world as well. Magic has been stripped from the populace and the land. Most all fantastic technological advances made since our banishment lie inert. The Elements of Harmony themselves hath been rendered dormant. We cannot in good conscience send our little ponies to face this threat when we ourselves are unwilling to go."
"Eques...tria...... needs.......you," Celestia coughed. "Our..... little...... ponies need.... their... princess of the night.......... to lead them.... in dark times.........."
"Our little ponies need the sun," Luna nuzzled her bedridden sister affectionately. "They need an end to the darkness. And we shall see it done."
"Even protected from the dark influence of the shroud that emanates from it, and before these 'Star Druids' are taken into account, the Lanfront ruins are a dangerous place," Dr. Cossack explained to the task force that had been assembled for the purpose of infiltrating the ruins and taking out the source of the dark curse over the land. In addition to the Elements of Harmony, Daring Do, and the Light siblings; Zecora and Gilda had volunteered to join the expedition. He wasn't particularly happy about his niece going to fight opponents who could apparently cut through alicorn magic with little effort, but he couldn't reasonably stop her.
He could, however, send help.
"Which is why Dr. Light and I have enhanced my series of robot masters to strengthen this group," he continued. "Each of you will be paired with one of them. The mission is to engage the various StarDruids and keep them occupied while Daring Do and the Lights infiltrate the ruins and destroy the artifact of Le Mu. I've put together teams to best compliment each pair's individual abilities. Miss Pie, you are with–"
"Rain Toad!" Pinkie interrupted cheerfully.
"Ah, actual–"
"Gotta be him!" Pinkie cut the griffon doctor off again.
".....May I ask why?" Dr. Cossack sighed.
"Because if I'm gonna rain on their parade, I should have somefrog who can use actual rain!" Pinkie smiled. (*)
"Er..."
"Just go with it," Twilight told him. "Knowing Pinkie, it'll all work out."
"But..." the griffon scratched his head, "then who shall I pair up Zecora with?"
"Your robot with the skeleton mane, shall suit me better than the rain," Zecora informed him, before smirking. "It shall be good voodoo that we do."
"Ah..." the griffon scientist looked even more lost. "I was going to have him protect Fluttershy. And I still have no one to pair with Dust Bunny."
"A BUNNY?!" the sudden yell caused everyone present to turn and look at a now blushing Fluttershy. "Er..... I mean, I'll volunteer to go with him. If that's okay with you..."
"I... suppose that works out then," Dr. Cossack adjusted his glasses. "Moving on... Applejack, I understand your connection with the Elements has allowed you to develop earth moving powers?"
"Somethin' like that," Applejack carefully didn't reveal where she'd really gotten such abilities from.
"Yes," Cossack nodded, "that will make you a good partner for my tunnelling model, Drill Dog. I understand miss Rarity has an affinity for enchantments and gemstones?"
"And fabulousness darling, don't forget that," the unicorn looper winked to let the room know she was trying to lighten the mood.
"Of course," the griffon nodded. "Well, Bright Mane should help you dazzle and daze your opponents. Rainbow Dash, my niece tells me you're quite the flyer."
"Best in Equestria!" Dash boasted.
"That remains to be seen," Dr. Cossack smirked. "Regardless, she also tells me that you're an accomplished martial artist. Thus you'll be paired with Ring Tercel, my contribution to the Griffon Empire's National Guard. You will be the primary combat pair. While all of you will likely be engaged with the StarDruids in combat, the two of you will be the ones most up close and personal. Hit hard, hit fast, and get the buck back out of range before they can retaliate."
"Yes, sir!" Dash saluted seriously.
"Twilight, you and Dive Serpent with his homing munitions will be long range support," Dr. Cossack continued, getting a nod from the unicorn. "Which brings me to the last pair."
"You better not have me sidelined uncle," Gilda growled indignantly.
"Far from it, my dear Gilda," Cossack sighed. "You and Pharaoh Sphinx have perhaps the most dangerous job of all. While the rest draw out the StarDruids, you will be following the main strike team in for the purpose of engaging any remaining defenses while they continue on ahead. It will be only the two of you against whatever remaining opposition there is so the strike team isn't delayed, with no chance for backup."
Gilda swallowed a bit nervously, but managed a salute in reply.
"Rock, Roll, Blues," Cossack addressed the Lights, "your father and I managed to cobble together an upgrade for your copy chips. You should be able to replicate, at least partially, the enchantments on the StarDruids' regalias in addition to an expanded active weapon memory and the master weapons of my own creations. Hopefully, this will give you any extra edge needed. Your father's reactivated creations will be staying behind to protect Canterlot along with the Equestrian Royal Guard in case the StarDruids attack here. I only wish we could afford to send more help. These are, after all, enemies with strength comparable to an alicorn each."
"You may not, noble doctor, but we shall," the regal voice of Princess Luna joined the group. "If these blackguards bring strength equal to the alicorn race, then ye too shall have the strength of an alicorn to aid ye! Your princess of the night is joining you to put an end to this curse of lightlessness!"
"Wait, so you've heard about this 'Le Mu' thing before?" Rainbow Dash inquired of the princess as the group rode the royal air yacht to the Lanfront ruins.
"Indeed we have," Luna admitted, "though the tale was ancient when we and our sister were but fillies ourselves and we thought it nothing more than an old tale to frighten young ones. It appears that is not the case."
"You know," Twilight mused as she examined her Loop memories more closely, "I think I came across the legend myself once. Something about the first alicorn?"
"Indeed," Luna replied as the others, of flesh and steel alike, gathered around her to hear the tale. "Le Tor was his name and for thousands of years the tellings of his deeds caused the alicorn race to be viewed as cursed. It was only when Celestia and ourself vanquished the spirit of chaos with the Elements of Harmony that opinion shifted."
Rock and Roll in particular listened closely. If Le Mu was the current variant of Ra Moon, then Le Tor was obviously meant to be Ra Thor. A super robot who had never had a personality that they'd encountered. It would be interesting to hear how he had been different this time.
"It is said that Le Tor was once a noble and just ruler over all ponykind in the ancient past, even before magic was well understood or the rift between the three tribes formed," Luna began. "But he grew greedy and selfish and his heart turned to darkness. He delved into dark magics and became cruel and unforgiving, forged armor of terrible dark power to wear, and eventually created the artifact of Le Mu and used it to imprison the sun. The entire world was seemingly cast into darkness eternal until, as the legends say, an order of unicorns known as the Magi came together to pool their mystical abilities and raise the sun by sheer force of will."
"What happened to the bastard then?" Gilda asked, intrigued.
"The legends say that the Magi then led all three tribes and chased the wicked alicorn out of their lands by force, the might of the unicorn order rendering his dark powers useless. He fled with the artifact of Le Mu to a distant land never to be seen again. And the ponies, thankful for the return of the life-giving sun, made the unicorn order their rulers. The pegasi swore to their defense and the earth ponies to the production of their food so the unicorns could forever focus on maintaining the cycle of days. And of course, the tale of Hearth's Warming tells us how that eventually worked out."
"Yes," Twilight turned that over in her mind. It sounded a little off in some respects and she wondered if the unicorn nobles of the time had... tailored the tale to inflate their own sense of importance. But it would be impossible to know for sure.
-----
"Heeheehee!" Desert Mercury cackled as she saw the Equestrian airship in the distance. "Looks like the doc was right. They are foolish enough to come right to us!"
"More fools them," Zuri Venus scowled intently. "Copperbeak? You're up." (16)
"Heh-heh-heh..." the armored griffon chuckled as he rubbed his gauntlets together, electricity sparking between them as storm clouds formed in the sky around the airship. "This is gonna be fun... And Venus? Call me Jupiter."
A massive bolt of lightning split the sky and the ship, sending it to the ground in a flaming wreck.
"Well," Pluto Rex grinned. "I'm sure a few of them survived that. Let's go hunting."
"Smash them all!" Hammerhoof Uranus agreed enthusiastically.
"Yes," Inti Mars rumbled in anticipation. "It has been too long since I had decent sport."
"Ye and me both landlubber," Blackmane Neptune smirked from the river.
"Is everyone okay?" Rock and Twilight asked at the same time. The storm had come up unnaturally quick, making it an obvious attack. However, while most had believed that it was meant to aid incoming hostiles, and had thus gone on watch for them, Princess Luna had divined that the storm was, in fact, the main attack and had teleported the entire group to the ground and out of harm's way before the air yacht was destroyed.
"A little shaken sugarcubes," Applejack replied from where she was scanning the surrounding area.
"But not stirred!" Pinkie grinned despite the fact that not everyone present got the reference and even fewer appreciated its use at the moment.
"Tis not the time for frivolity," Luna admonished the Element of Laughter. "Our foes shall not believe us so easily dispatched. We must make haste to our goal."
"We need to spread out," Gilda told them. "Big groups are big targets and we're probably not gonna have much warning when they find us."
"Gilda's right," Rainbow agreed. "Strength in numbers isn't gonna mean much when they can toss around big moves like that one. We need to pair off and split up."
"Keep your communicators hot," Blues added, tapping his helmet and reminding the non-robots present of the devices fitted to their ears. "Contact the rest if you engage the StarDruids. Do your best to take them out one by one and keep the way clear for the strike team. Luna, you're with Rock and Roll in Strike 1. We're probably going to need you against whatever's waiting for us in there. Daring and I will be close by as Strike 2 with Gilda and Pharaoh Sphinx covering us."
"Everyone got your partners?" Roll checked, getting a round of nods.
"Then let's move out!" Rock declared and began galloping towards the Lanfront ruins.
Dr. Wily cackled as he observed the view of Canterlot in his video feed. Ahuizotl had been sent back from the seat of Equestrian government with his scorched hand-tail between his legs despite his gloating that he could conquer the city on his own in its weakened state.
Wily, however, knew that his old friend and colleague would have been able to work something out. That's what Bright Light (and why did some part of his mind want to call the stallion Thomas? What a strange name...) did after all. So he'd joined in the bet the rest had done over how Ahuizotl would fail, the prize being command of the next phase of the plan. Inti bet he'd lose to Luna, Zuri had wagered he'd fall to Daring as was usual for him, Copperbeak had bet on a timely griffon intervention, Rex claimed the guards would emerge victorious though with losses, Hammerhoof had bet on the longshot of the royal guard with no losses, Blackmane insisted on the slightly less longshot of a ragtag bunch of misfits, Khara thought he'd somehow manage to do himself in, and Desert believed that the Equestrians would whip out some forgotten and forbidden dark magic. But he'd won by wagering that Dr. Light's creations would be Ahuizotl's undoing on that errand. After all, he knew firsthoof how capable they were.
It was why he'd insisted on restoring and enhancing the armors and regalias that had been found here. The ingenuity of the ancient order that had made them was astounding, make no mistake, but it was nothing he couldn't improve upon.
Even if he'd needed a little help from the master artifact to do it.
In any case, he had a genius plan. The nine outfitted members would remain at the ruins to meet the forces that would be sent against them. While he? He would send his latest and greatest project, an artifact at least as ancient and powerful as anything his nine partners now wielded that he had restored and improved upon, back to Canterlot while its most capable champions were away. All under his direct control.
Should these 'heroes' defeat their group, he would already have the ultimate collection of hostages to secure their unconditional surrender.
Luna nearly forgot the plan when the dragon, Inti Mars, burst out of the treeline, scattering several trees with his size. But when her two companions, rather than stand and fight, merely dashed past the beast (17) she recalled their words:
"We can't stop to engage unless there's no other choice. I know you'll want to protect the others from danger. We will too. But there's a time for protecting others and a time to realize others are capable of protecting themselves. This is the latter. So we don't stop unless there's no other choice."
"Cowards!" the war dragon yelled after them as they raced away from him. "Come back and face me!"
"Hold it right there, mister!" the stern voice of Fluttershy could be heard behind them before the three were too far away to make out words.
Pinkie and Rain Toad were advancing through the jungle when a blast of energy tore through Pinkie's mane. Strangely, it didn't seem to do any harm. Instead it grabbed one of her party petards that she always kept handy and carried it back to the shooter.
"Well, well," the shooter's sinister voice made itself known, "if it isn't the ever-so-happy Element of Laughter. I was hoping I'd run into you."
"Really?" Pinkie asked cheerfully as Desert Mercury stepped into her view. "Did you want a party? I'm kind of busy right now, but I think I can squeeze you in for a quick small one!"
"I hate parties," Desert Mercury punctuated the statement by crushing the party munitions she'd stolen with her weapon.
Pinkie's mane almost deflated again as her shock broke her concentration. "W-what?"
"You heard me," the acid green mare glared at Equestria's premier party pony. "I hate parties. I hate laughter. I hate seeing the clueless brain-dead masses happy go about their happy way. Why do you think I wanted to revive the Smooze? So I could erase that inane pointless happiness once and for all!"
Pinkie took a step at the insane look in the armored mare's eyes and bumped into her companion. Turning to look at him, she saw him nod reassuringly. He had her back, no matter what.
"And now I am the Smooze!" Desert Mercury laughed as her body rippled and flowed menacingly. "And I will destroy all happiness!"
"Hey, Ringer, hold up," Rainbow told her wing-bot. "I know we're supposed to support the others, but that storm cloud's not sitting right by me. I think we should make it our priority."
"The idea is sound," Ring Tercel allowed before pointing at a figure in the sky, revealed only by the lightning. "But what about the storm's master?"
"Hmmm..." Rainbow mused for a moment. "Okay, here's the plan..."
"Come on out and I'll make this quick!" Zuri called to her hidden quarry as she stalked ever closer. "Honestly, it's nothing personal, but you shouldn't have involved yourself in things like this that are way over your heads."
The brush rustled a bit and she smirked.
"And now you're going to lose them," the zebra mercenary smirked as she unleashed the exploding bubbles her armor's magic allowed her to create.
The brush blew apart impressively as expected, but there was a distinct lack of remains left behind.
"That is how you track one like me?" the metered voice of a shaman mare taunted from behind her. "Who lives in the forest ever free?"
"So," Zuri retorted in a low voice, trying to hide the innate fear that revelation instilled in her, "they sent a medicine mare after me?"
"Nay," the unfamiliar zebra replied as she stepped from the brush, "you were punished for your crime. To seek you out is not worth my time. But the reality now is stark. The world chafes under eternal dark."
"Sanctimonious holier than thou..." the mercenary growled.
"It matters not who is wrong or right," the zebra replied calmly. "We must purge the dark and return the light."
"I'll purge you!"
Twilight, by virtue of her aquatic companion, had taken the river.
"Avast ye weakling bilge rats!"
As should have been expected, they were stopped by the aquatic member of their opponents.
"I hate pirates," Twilight grumbled as she and Dive Serpent prepared to face off against Blackmane Neptune.
"Can't say I'm all that fond of them me'self lass," the robotic river serpent agreed.
Hammerhoof Uranus bellowed as he pried his helmet off of his face and back atop his head. The blue robot pony would pay for that humiliation! Turning frantically to seek his opponent, he spotted him nearby and charged.
"Tarnation!" The pony in question wasn't blue. Nor a robot. Heck, she wasn't even male.
The enraged and empowered minotaur really didn't care at this point.
"Well, well," Pluto Rex grinned as he traced a claw over the captured unicorn's face, "aren't you a pretty pony? Yes, you'll fetch a fine price when this is over."
"Why do I always attract the unwashed brutes?" Rarity sighed to herself, trying to not think about the unclean feeling.
"Insult me all you want, pretty pony," the diamond dog grinned sadistically, "you'll change your tune soon enough."
"Ugh!" Rarity spat and closed here eyes. "I don't think so. Any time Bright Mane!"
"And just what do you think your useless companion can do?" Pluto Rex taunted, before promptly being blinded by a bright flash of light.
"Oh, nothing much," Rarity simpered condescendingly as her opponent howled and clutched his eyes. Honestly, what did he expect with eyes so adjusted to darkness meeting the brightest bulb in all the lands?
Blues cursed under his breath as he grappled with Khara Saturn. The Rakshasa had ambushed them as they drew close to the ruins and knocked Daring to the ground. Even the fact that he'd copied the felinoid's weapon wasn't improving his mood. The felinoid was strong and had all the leverage right now, which meant Blues was in a bad position.
And then all of a sudden the weight of his opponent was slammed off of him. Turning to look, he saw Gilda roll off of Khara Saturn right as Pharaoh Sphinx unleashed a charged Pharaoh Shot.
"Go!" Gilda called to him and Daring, who was now returning to her feet, "we've got this loser!"
Blues simply nodded and ran for the entrance to the ruins, Daring close behind him.
Ahuizotl Terra grinned as he watched the three intrepid explorers pass by without noticing him. He wasn't going to engage them. No, he had a score to settle with the red one who was even now approaching as well. And an older score to settle with the hated Daring Do with him.
These three he'd let the doctor deal with.
Humming cheerfully to himself, he pulled a lever that caused a wall to slide closed behind the three. Now they couldn't return to interfere, and Daring and the red one could proceed no further.
Dr. Wily scowled as he saw Ahuizotl let his nemeses and the princess through his checkpoint. It was... not unexpected to be honest. Far from ideal, but not unexpected.
"Well, my brain damaged friend," he addressed a special variant of his Devil Core, "it looks like you will get to have revenge on one of the ones responsible for your state after all."
The Devil Core was constructed around the most fascinating magical artifact. One that could summon an otherwise bodiless presence to be interrogated. And with his improvements and melding with his Devil Series technology, the presence would have both a body and the ability to defend against intruders.
"Yes, you shall have your revenge..." he chuckled. "You shall have revenge for both of us."
Celestia's blood ran cold as her captain of the guard used his newly restored magic and displayed an image of the figure approaching Canterlot. It was tall, taller than her, covered in armor over every inch of its body, and most tellingly of all it was an alicorn.
One she recognized from the stories and legends her mother used to tell her and Luna.
"It... can't...... be........" she gasped out. But her eyes, tired as they were, told her otherwise.
The legendary first alicorn, Le Tor, the evil being who had once imprisoned the sun, a figure that had featured prominently in her foalhood nightmares since the day she earned her cutie mark, was advancing on Canterlot.
On her.
Rock and Roll had jumped when the section of wall slammed closed behind them, honestly expecting that they'd accidentally tripped a trap of some sort. Even with long experience raiding the Lanfront in their baseline, they still tended to miss some of those things every so often.
"T'would appear our regress is barred to us," Luna observed as she finished scanning the wall. "It is no matter as our goal lies ahead and not behind."
"True," Rock allowed, though in his experience having exits barred always meant something nasty was ahead.
And as they entered the next chamber, he wasn't disappointed.
There before them was a Devil Core, etched in runes that first began to glow and then emit black smoke that positively pulsed with dark magic. As the mystic smoke began to form the standard body shape for the Devil Series, Rock reflected that this was the first version he'd seen that had a gaseous body. The body finished forming and the eye opened menacingly...
And Princess Luna gasped in shock at its appearance.
The single eye had a sickly green sclera, an angry red iris, and a sinister purple aura that seemed to bleed power from the eyeball itself. "Crrr....rrry....yyss...sstt....taa.....aal...lss....?" the thing rumbled slowly and unsurely.
"Sombra.....?" Luna whispered in recognition and disbelief. "Sombra DarkMoon? How?"
The evil eye then focused on Luna and the beast seemed to gain a measure of clarity.
"LLLUUNNAAAA!!!!" It roared with hate and rage.
Inti Mars was utterly flummoxed. He was used to ponies and other small creatures either cowering in terror or engaging him in battle. He wasn't used to small winged soft-looking ponies trying to stare him into submission as if he was an unruly hatchling.
The strange creature next to the pony that looked like the union of a rabbit and a vacuum cleaner wasn't even a contestant in how unnerving the experience was.
"You should be ashamed of yourself!" the pony scolded him. "Just because you're bigger than everyone else is no excuse to bully them! What would your mother think?"
That last part snapped him out of it. The reference to his mother… (18)
"My mother..." he growled at the pony, who seemed surprised that he was acting like the grand dragon he was rather than a mere stripling she was treating him as, "was a vile old lizard. And my only regret..."
The pony took an instinctive step back as the cannons the mad doctor pony had added to his magic armor began to glow with power.
"Is that I didn't kill her myself!"
Zuri Venus brayed in fury. The shaman's illusions were infuriating! She'd thought her power had obliterated the uppity zebra mare the second time, only to see the tell-tale magical mist float away instead of a mangled body as the dust settled. Same with the third, and then the fourth, and so on.
"Show yourself!" the empowered mercenary screeched.
"You should try to temper your rage," the smug voice sounded from behind her. "Too much could further advance your age."
"Did you just call me OLD?!" the enraged beyond belief zebra roared before firing more of the exploding bubbles at the mare.
Gilda grit her beak as her armored opponent held his ring weapon in front of him. The interior swirled with darkness and she suddenly felt really weak. Like she was about to fall over. The ground was looking like a better place to take a nap by the moment regardless of the imminent danger her life was in.
Then her partner blasted Khara Saturn's weapon off course and she felt a heck of a lot better. Shaking off how frightening that experience had been, she pounced on the rakshasa, determined that he wasn't getting another shot at her with that thing.
Ring Tercel darted up towards the armored griffon who commanded the storm. He threw a few rings ahead of him and noted with satisfaction that they successfully diverted the path of a lightning bolt that would have struck him otherwise.
"Not bad," Copperbeak Jupiter smirked and flexed his talons, "for a wind-up toy!"
As Ring Tercel engaged his opponent in melee, he hoped that his role as distraction would prove enough for Rainbow Dash to do her part. He only had to last long enough.
Pinkie tried to listen to the villainous rant for important information, she really did, but it was just blah, blah, blah, I hate seeing others happy, blah, blah, they all laughed at me, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm invincible, blah, blah, blah, blah, who's laughing now, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
"Okay, bored now," she declared, mostly to herself, before her wandering eyes latched onto the tubes connecting the oozy pegasus's helmet and chestplate. "Ooh, this looks important!"
"What? How?" the meanie-mean-ooze-head sputtered in surprise. Honestly, it was like she'd never had someone suddenly and inexplicably appear right next to her. "No, don't!"
Pinkie unceremoniously yanked the tube out of their connections.
"You fool!" the meanie head yelled at her as her form began to droop. "Those were necessary to keep control of my form! Now I can't keurb blurb blub blub....."
"Whoa..." Pinkie stared in horror at the puddle of ooze and empty armor that used to be her opponent before slinking back over to her froggy partner in a daze. "I... I didn't mean to melt her! I just... she was being mean and scary and talking about destroying all happiness and turning Equestria into Depressedria and can we not tell Twilight that I melted somepony by accident? Please? I didn't mean it and it was an accid–"
She was cut off when her froggy partner abruptly shoved her away from him, causing her to skid across the ground.
"Hey!" she yelled as she got back to her feet. "What was that... for...?"
She stared at the mobile acid-green-in-the-process-of-turning-purple ooze now engulfing her amphibious robo-friend. Had she really been so out of it that she missed her Pinkie Sense?
"Error," Rain Toad sputtered as he was engulfed by the mass, "Emotional processing unit offli–"
The ooze seemed to turn and look at her. It wasn't a nice look.
"Ah-heh..." she chuckled nervously and pulled out one of her party munitions from her mane. "Party petard?"
The ooze blurbled in a way that sounded like laughter and began to form a face. This was why she didn't like this stuff. Most ghosties could be laughed away, the Smooze just laughed right back.
"Smmooooozzee........" the blob groaned and started in her direction.
"Oh fun," Pinkie swore before running as if her ability to enjoy life depended on it.
"Bowbowbow-bowbowbow..." (19)
Guts Stallion grunted as he did his best to hold the armored alicorn back. Behind him, Elec Mare crashed into the ground after being hit with a massive blast of energy. Blasts from Cut Mare and Bomb Stallion didn't even seem to slow him down.
He and the other Light numbers had been recalled and restored to functionality shortly after the docs had devised a cure, though Ice Mare and Fire Mare had been too far away to reach quickly. They'd remained behind to help keep Canterlot running in the midst of this disaster while Rock and his pals took the Cossack numbers to deal with the source. When they'd gotten word of the attack, they'd mobilized against the bastard advancing on Canterlot and were doing their best to buy time for the guard to prepare a response.
He'd prefer they take the lump out on their own, but they were getting their flanks kicked left and right.
Luna swore as she narrowly dodged another blast of dark magic. This foul one-eyed incarnation of the banished tyrant was infuriating! The eye seemed only vulnerable when open and the rest of the body was as harmable as the smoke it appeared made from! And even when it was open, only the mightiest of attacks seemed to deal the beast any harm! At this rate...
"Noble children of Light!" she called to her battle companions. "Thou must go on ahead and destroy the foul source of the curse that plagues Equestria! We shall deal with this beast Sombra has become!"
"Small problem, princess!" noble Rock called back as he evaded the beast's attack.
"There's no exit!" the usually gentle Roll finished for her brother.
Luna charged a spell and blasted away the wall opposite where they entered. "There is now! Make haste and end this plague of darkness while I do battle with this nightmare!"
As the two reluctantly forged ahead, Luna stared down her opponent.
"Now it is merely thee and we," she declared as she readied another spell.
"YYYEEEEESSSSSS....." the Sombra-devil rumbled in vile glee.
Applejack mused that earthbending tended to be a lot more effective when her opponent didn't barrel through boulders like they were wet paper. As it was, she was doing her best just to slow the varmint down and dodge the shrapnel.
Honestly, if it hadn't been for Drill Dog and his pit traps, she didn't think she'd have lasted this long. Her opponent being in a blind rage and ignorant of even obvious traps helped too. Still...
"We're gonna need a plan here soon I reckon!" she yelled to her partner. "We're only slowing this fella down and I don't think we're gettin' reinforcements any time soon!"
"I could do something," Drill Dog yelled back as he wasted a couple more of his bombs on Hammerhoof Uranus's armor, only serving to make the berserk minotaur angrier, "but you'll need to keep him busy by yourself while I get it set up!"
"Done and done!" Applejack yelled back and pulled a lasso out of her subspace pocket. First was to get tall dark and ugly focused solely on her. She whipped the lasso over the thick helmet covering and pulled.
Hammerhoof stopped for a moment and felt the top of his now unarmored head before turning slowly towards Applejack. His eyes began to turn red as the blood vessels swelled and veins in his forehead bulged ominously. The minotaur's nostrils flared and Applejack could have sworn that smoke blasted out of them as he snorted in anger.
"You want it?" she taunted him. "Come an' get it!"
Hammerhoof Uranus bellowed incoherently and charged after the fleeing farm pony.
"And don't let him leave the area!" Drill Dog called to her as he dove underground.
Applejack didn't reply. She was too busy running for her life.
"FORGET THE SALE!" Pluto Rex frothed as his claws tore through everything in reach as he dashed around blindly. "WHEN I'M DONE WITH YOU NO ONE WILL EVEN BUY YOU AS MEAT!"
He hated the unicorn more than anydog he'd ever met! And her little bulb too!
"AND YOUR TOY WON'T EVEN FETCH A PRICE AS SCRAP METAL!"
Every time his eyes began to clear, that damnable light would flash and blind him again! And the unicorn had sprayed some atrocious scent all over the area that burned his nose! She'd die just for that!
"Oh, such a foul mouth you have!" the unicorn tittered, causing him to turn towards the sound.
"BE BROKEN AND DIE!" he screamed as he charged the source of the sound with all the enhanced speed he could muster.
I#t was too bad he couldn't see the high tensile strength thread strung across his path.#
Twilight nursed a chemical burn on her shoulder as Dive Serpent's missiles intercepted another blast of the corrosive liquid from the not-as-dead-as-he-should-be seapony pirate.
Why wasn't she dead yet?
That fact was bugging her more than even the burn or the fight. These were supposed to be alicorn level opponents. She may still be on the high end for her baseline non-alicorn self despite the power dampening, but she still shouldn't have been able to mount as effective a defense as she had.
Her shields actually held under the power of this member of the StarDruids when Luna's had been cut through like they weren't there. Her only injuries had come from the splashing of missed shots. Dive Serpent's missiles were actually keeping up with Blackmane's water blasts, rendering them much less dangerous, and allowing him to remain mostly undissolved. Plus their opponent seemed more frustrated and less smug than she'd been expecting.
Her thoughts were interrupted as she raised another shield, which held quite firmly. It was like the water was solely chemical after being manifested, and unable to corrode magical force like it did her companion's armor.
Honestly, even accounting for possible overconfidence, she and her partner shouldn't be doing nearly as well as they were. After all, Ahuizotl had...
Ahuizotl had played them for chumps.
Twilight wanted to slap herself when she realized what was going on. Their opponents were powerful, sure, but they weren't necessarily alicorn tier. At least not in all respects. They were focused. Specialized. Ahuizotl's laser power allowed him to pierce barriers, even alicorn ones, which made him the perfect choice to catch an unaware defender off guard and kill whatever was left of Equestrian morale. They were supposed to believe the StarDruids were all alicorn-level opponents and that resistance was hopeless.
But as his original duel with the Lights showed, and they'd failed to pick up on, his other enhancements fell a bit short. He was strong, no question, but he wasn't as strong as he wanted them to believe.
After that realization, the rest fell into place. Blackmane's water weapon didn't corrode her shields because it wasn't magic at all. It could only corrode physical substances. And if it wasn't a magical liquid...
Well, she'd never beaten an opponent with a 'purify water' spell before. But in the Loops, there really was a first time for everything.
'Damn,' Blues swore internally as he gave the room he and Daring had ended up in a cursory scan. 'Dead end.'
He was about to backtrack and find a different way when he noticed Daring staring at some of the ancient writing that circled the chamber.
"Blues," the pegasus explorer's breath hitched, "do you know what this says?"
"Ancient languages aren't exactly my specialty," he reminded her.
"It says here that Le Tor wasn't the enemy of the Magi," Daring turned to him with wide eyes. "He–"
"Was its leader," finished the voice of Ahuizotl from the room's entrance right before it slammed shut.
"Alright, get those canisters ready!" Shining Armor commanded what little of the guard force was currently battle ready. "Let's see how this 'Le Tor' likes knockout gas!"
"Belay that!" the frantic voice of Dr. Light intruded into the preparations while the older stallion waved around some device that he seemed to think was important.
"Why should we?" Shining glared at the doctor. Brilliant or not, the stallion was not in command and his nerves were frayed enough as it was without having his judgement called into question without sound reason.
"Because your foe is not an alicorn!" Dr. Light panted. "He's not even alive!"
That sounded like a sound reason. "Explain."
"These readings here," Dr. Light thrust the device into Shining's face, "show that under the armor is nothing but metal, wires, and electronics! The armor may be the genuine article, but what lies inside it is not!"
'Sweet mother of Celestia damn it!' Shining cursed mentally and rubbed his face with his hoof. There went his entire battle plan. "What now?"
"These readings here," Dr. Light pointed to something that to Shining could have been written in Bushwoolie for all he understood it, "show that the thaumic core is powered by the same Nightmare Force that shrouds Equestria! If we can just douse it with the cure, we may be able to render it inert!"
"How much do we have right now?" Shining asked.
"Enough for one good attempt since I doubt he'll go willingly," Dr. Light admitted. "With Rain Toad on the mission, Dr. Cossack and Nyx won't have another batch ready for hours."
"It'll have to do," Shining admitted. "Okay everyone! Listen up! Change of plans!"
None of them noticed a filly eavesdropper sneak away.
'ANALYZING SUBSTANCE...'
Zecora resisted the urge to smirk as her opponent's jaw dropped when she was revealed unharmed behind a shimmering skull-shaped barrier.
"Closing your mouth would be wise," she stated, "unless you care to capture flies."
"Impossible..." the traitorous mercenary growled. "You should be a smear! No barrier is strong enough to defend against my power!"
"Of course it is," a new voice interjected as a third zebra, the robotic Skull Mane, entered the clearing. "Provided you know how to modulate it properly. And since you're so free with demonstrating your power on phantoms, it gave me ample time to study and adapt."
"I'll give you a demonstration!" Zuri yelled and flung more of the exploding bubbles at them both. Like the ones before, they detonating harmlessly on Skull Mane's shields as Zecora walked calmly forward.
"Good night," she said when she was practically nose to nose with the mercenary, right before blowing a powder in her face. "Sleep tight."
The mercenary was unconscious before she hit the ground.
Fluttershy was no stranger to being shot at, nor was she a stranger to life or death battles. She'd raised Lehman Russ after all. Still, trying to fight anything that outmassed and outgunned you tended to involve a lot of running. And with the power she'd amassed over the Loops taking a hit, she was very outgunned at the moment.
Still, she'd managed to make a good showing right up until she tripped over an exposed root. And with a murderous dragon bearing down and her druidic magic still on the fritz, things weren't exactly looking up.
"You leave Miss Fluttershy alone you great brute!" the voice of her robot partner yelled as he jumped in front of her and began sucking in air and debris for all he was worth. The mechanical lapine obviously meant well, but the strength of his vacuum was, well, laughable next to the immense war machine that was the armed and armored dragon Inti Mars.
"You cannot be serious..." said dragon blinked as he tried to process the action. "You are a glorified vacuum cleaner! I am a god of war!"
The main cannon on his head took aim at the two as Dust Bunny stared defiantly back. The robot's suction died down and Fluttershy saw something working its way back up her companion's only weapon.
"You are nothing before my might!" Inti bellowed as he prepared to fire.
Dust Bunny was faster. The compressed ball of debris fired back out his head-mounted vacuum and right down the barrel mounted on Inti Mars's head. The munitions about to fire at them both detonated in the barrel and the dragon roared in pain.
But he did not fall.
"FOR THAT YOU DIE FIRST!" the dragon roared and prepared to crush the robot.
Even after countless Loops, Fluttershy still had issues defending herself from those who were hostile towards her. She could, of course, but it wasn't her first instinct. Protecting others though? That was second nature to her.
Suddenly her opponent was looking much more her size as she roared her own challenge back and slammed her yellow-scaled claws into his torso. Flicking her flowing pink hair out of her face, the now draconic Fluttershy focused on rending the one who would hurt her friend in two. (20)
Twilight spat water out of her mouth as she finished helping Dive Serpent haul their defeated opponent out of the river. As predicted, with his corrosive weapon turned to pure water, he was essentially harmless. Tough, sure, but offensively not much of an issue.
At least not with a larger combatant on her side who had ranged weapons.
"Huh," she blinked as she realized the 'body' in the armor was now nothing more than a clay statue. "I'd heard about these things, but I'd never seen them. (21) I thought they were all destroyed. Well, Rock and Roll just need a piece to copy the enchantment so let's take the gauntlets and go find the others."
Ring Tercel grunted as his opponent jolted him with electricity again.
"How do you still live?" Copperbeak Jupiter snarled in frustration.
"Oh, come now," the national guard robot snorted as he threw several of his rings at his opponent. "I was made for aerial combat. Of course I'm insulated!" 'Though not enough to take too many more of those. Any time now Rainbow Dash...'
Rarity dusted herself off as she finished stripping her opponent of his enchanted armor and tying him up with some of her special threads.
"Honestly," she sniffed, "this regalia is far too fabulous for a ruffian like you. Oh, Bright Mane...!"
"Y-yes ma'am?" the timid robot replied from where he was standing a fair distance away. Honestly, she didn't see what he had to be afraid of.
"Do be a dear and carry this for me, would you?" Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. "We simply must be on our way."
"Er..." the robot hesitated in confusion, not understanding the tone. "Of course."
"Ah-ah-ah!" Ahuizotl Terra tsked as Blues pointed his hoof cannon at him and pointed his hand-tail laser weapon right back. "I wouldn't do that if I were you..."
"I've seen your weapon in action," Blues returned confidently. "I can handle it."
"Perhaps," Daring's old foe allowed before turning to point the weapon at the archaeologist, "but can she?"
Blues continued glaring, but lowered his weapon.
"What's your game Ahuizotl?" Daring asked defiantly.
"Just taking what's rightfully mine," the creature explained. "What's always been rightfully mine according to these writings."
"Explain," Daring demanded.
"Everything you Equestrians have ever heard about the Magi is wrong," their opponent declared smugly. "They were not the enemies of Le Tor, they were his most loyal followers. Members of every race dedicated to seeking out knowledge and power and using it to rule the world. This armor I wear? It's no coincidence it fits me so well. It belonged to my ancestor, Le Tor's second in command with the title of 'Terra'. They were the best of friends and the most loyal of allies, developing the artifact of Le Mu together to control the sun and stars. At least until the unicorn members decided they were done sharing mystical knowledge with the other races and turned on the rest of the order."
"You can't possibly be claiming–"
"Oh, but I can," Ahuizotl Terra grinned fiercely. "All the names you know us by are merely labels used to keep the truth to ourselves, and no longer necessary. We are the new Magi, and the rightful rulers of all the world."
And without warning, he lunged at them both.
'ANALYSIS COMPLETE...'
'OPTIMAL SOLVENT DETERMINED...'
'SYNTHESIZING SOLVENT...'
Rainbow was currently having to reevaluate her plan. Going above the storm to try and dissipate it with a Sonic Rainboom had taken her too close to the main shroud of darkness and the proximity had made her light-headed.
Right now, she was lining herself up for Plan B. Because she'd only get one shot at it.
It was a lot like Plan A, just with a different target.
Rock and Roll surprisingly managed to make it to the artifact chamber without incident. It took them a few moments to fully realize that, yes, there really were no more defenses or obstacles between them and the current version of Ra Moon.
The only thing that bothered them as they stepped inside was that they had yet to hear from Dr. Wily.
But as they entered, there seemed to be no sign of him, or of any surprises. Even the artifact, the familiar giant obsidian orb ringed with intricate designs and emblazoned with a red eye design, looked completely undefended. The two mechanical heroes traded looks and shrugged before taking aim at the artifact of Le Mu.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the voice of their recurring foe interrupted. Strangely, it came as a bit of a relief. Known Dr. Wily quantities were almost always preferable to unknown ones.
"Why not?" Roll asked politely.
"Because if you don't..." Wily's voice declared as a large monitor on the other side of the room lit up showing a familiar scene.
It was a video feed of Canterlot. From the eyes of an attacker.
"...well, I'm afraid Ra Th–*ahem* Le Tor will stop playing nice."
All she knew was rage. This insolent hatchling had dared to harm her precious treasure and now he would pay. With blood and pain and–
"–iss Fluttershy stop!" a voice snapped her out of the red haze. "Our foe is defeated! You don't have to do any more!"
She paused and looked at the other dragon beneath her. He failed to move or retaliate. Was he dead? Did it matter? Why did her head hurt so much?
"You must change back Miss Fluttershy!"
Right, she was supposed to be a pony, not a dragon. As if the thought was the trigger, she began to shrink back to her normal form.
"Oh!" she gasped as her head cleared. "Yes, that's much better. What happened?"
"I'm not sure," Dust Bunny replied. "I'd imagine that your transformation into a dragon changed how the curse affected you even with the treatment in place, but without further information I can't be sure."
"Is he...?"
"He'll live."
"Oh, good. I couldn't bear it if... We should find the others now."
"Of course Miss Fluttershy."
The guards waited until the right moment as the mechanical alicorn strode calmly towards the palace. When it was in the spot, they all sprung out and flung the anti-dark magic potion at the robot.
Only to watch it slide off a magic barrier, never reaching the target.
'Any time now,' Applejack thought furiously as the super-strong minotaur drew ever closer.
"Done!" Drill Dog popped up nearby.
"Ain't nothin' happenin'!" Applejack yelled back.
"It just needs a trigger!" the robot caninoid replied. "The ground is as porous as a sponge now! Anything will collapse it!"
"You want me ta bury him?!" Applejack dodged another swipe.
"You got a better idea?"
Well, no she actually didn't. She pushed her earthbending into the ground hastily and jumped for all she was worth.
The ground caved under her like it was hit with a meteor and Hammerhoof Uranus bellowed in confusion as he was buried in rock and dirt.
"He gonna live?" Applejack asked worriedly.
"I was more concerned with you living to be honest." her companion answered.
Applejack thought that over for a moment. "Fair 'nuff."
Jupiter, formerly known as Copperbeak, scowled as his foe's eyes widened and he disengaged hastily. As if anyone would fall for that old tr–
His world exploded in pain and light as something slammed into his back.
As the sky exploded in rainbow light, Pinkie chanced a look behind her.
The Smooze looked like it had gotten bigger again.
She ran faster.
'SOLVENT SYNTHESIZED...'
'ARMING...'
"YYOOUUU TOOOOOKK MMYYY CRRYYYSSTAAALLLSS..." the Sombra-devil accused. He was getting more coherent by the moment. Luna needed to end this fast.
"They were never thine to begin with," she retorted as she began charging a spell more powerful than she'd used in a long time.
"MY CRRYYYSSTAALLLLL EEMMMPIIIRRREEE..." Sombra fired bolts of dark magic that Luna narrowly avoided.
Luna's horn glowed brighter with raw magic. Almost...
"YYOOUUU TOOOK MMYYY MMIIINNNDD..... MMYYY BOODDYYYY.... MMYYY CRRYYSSTAALLL SSLLAAAVVESSS... NNOOOOWW II SHHAALLLLL TAAAKKEE YYOOUUURR–"
Whatever threat the foul creature would have made was cut off when her bolt of power lanced through his single foul eye and shredded the runes maintaining his presence in this place.
"There you are!" Twilight greeted Rainbow as she and Ring Tercel flew down with an unconscious Copperbeak Jupiter held between them. "What happened to him?"
"Sonic Rainboom to the back," Ring Tercel explained. "It appears Miss Dash broke his spine. He'll live, thanks to his armor, but it is uncertain if he'll ever walk again."
"I was expecting him to dodge and be knocked out by the shockwave!" Rainbow insisted. "Not take a direct hit!"
She was prevented from reassuring Dash that it was alright, she'd probably have to arrange counseling after they got back to Ponyville, when the rest began showing up. First Rarity and Bright Mane with Pluto Rex's regalia in tow, then Zecora and Skull Mane with both a restrained Zuri and her own armor, Applejack and Drill Dog with Hammerhoof Uranus's helmet, and finally Dust Bunny and Fluttershy. The latter who had apparently beaten Inti Mars to a bloody pulp. All that was left was to find Pinkie and Rain Toad and then go meet up with Gilda and Pharaoh Sphinx and see if the strike teams needed reinforcing.
Before she could even suggest searching for her, Pinkie burst into the clearing like the terror of a thousand Loops was after her.
Then the Smooze broke through the treeline and Twilight admitted that wasn't far off.
'ARMED...'
'RAIN FLUSH: FIRE'
Before anyone could react, a rocket broke through the Smooze's body and rocketed into the clouds above and burst. For a few long seconds nothing else happened. Even the Smooze's attention was on the sky, apparently puzzling out what had just happened.
Then the first drops of rain fell, increasing to a downpour in moments. The Smooze writhed as if in pain as the rain pummeled it mercelissly and it began to dissolve and thin. More and more the Smooze melted into harmless liquid the soil drank greedily until the group could make out a form contained within. As the Smooze melted off of it, Rain Toad stood and stretched.
"Emotional Processing error corrected," the robot monotoned. "Reinitializing... Damnit Pinkie, pay attention next time!"
Pinkie stared at the restored robot and sniffled. And then began to tear up. And then she tackled the robo-amphibian in a hug.
"I'm sorry!" the party pony bawled her eyes out. "It was an accident! I didn't mean to melt her into a gooey eldritch abomination and get you eaten!"
Apparently Rainbow wasn't the only one who might need therapy.
Blues grit his teeth as he struggled against Ahuizotl's grip. He'd barely managed to deflect one shot of the faux Spark Chaser weapon with his shield (the thing really was just about indestructible) and he needed to disable it before Daring's old foe got bored and decided to stop toying with them.
It might help if Daring would stop staring at whatever new glyph she found so interesting on the damn wall after being thrown into it.
The armor he had was very energy resistant, so he switched to the Dust Crusher and fired at the laser gauntlet.
"Gah!" Ahuizotl cried out as the offensive piece of his armor sparked wildly. "You'll pay for that you little..."
"Ahuizotl, stop!" Daring warned suddenly.
Rock and Roll watched impotently as the view of Le Tor's video feed approached the Canterlot gates and a bedraggled looking Celestia limped out to meet it.
"What.... do..... you...... want.....?" Celestia gasped out.
"Oh, nothing much, princess," Dr. Wily's voice sounded from both ends of the feed. "Just your immediate and unconditional surrender."
"Never!" a young voice yelled defiantly as the dark form of the robot alicorn filly Nyx interposed itself between Dr. Wily's creation and the ruler of Equestria.
"Took you all long enough," Gilda greeted the group as they approached the ruins, sitting atop a bound, gagged, and de-armored Khara.
"Gilda?" Rainbow blurted out at the sight of her friend. The griffon was covered in cuts and bruises, plus she was missing fur and feathers in several places. "You look terrible." (22)
"So about the same as you then?" the griffon smirked playfully.
"Sounds like they've got everything in hoof Scoots."
"Well, yeah, but you know how these things go. Plan A never works."
"And just what do you expect me to do?"
"You run on that Nightmare Force stuff too, right? Couldn't ya just, I dunno, take it back or somethin'?"
"I don't think it works like that Applebloom."
"Actually DT... It just might..."
Magic retrieval was a skill that saw little use among the magically adept. For one, you couldn't 'retrieve' somepony else's magic that way, just your own. For another, it was a pretty darn sloppy way to undo spells and sometimes had unforeseen consequences. And finally, if you took too much back at once, you could give yourself a really bad headache.
The first one could be circumvented in this specific scenario only because Nyx was a robot that ran on the same wavelength of dark magic as the attacker. The second was a non issue right now because, whatever happened, it could only improve the current situation. The third was the tricky one. Nyx couldn't take in the whole curse because she just couldn't store that much. But the power driving a single robot?
That she could do.
Concentrating, Nyx connected easily with the dark magic powering the robo-alicorn before her and pulled.
"What are you doing you insolent whelp?!" Wily's voice protested from the robot. "I demand you stop this at o–"
The robot's eyes dimmed as the last of its power was removed and it collapsed like a puppet with its string cut.
Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was 'professional courtesy'. Perhaps it was the fact that he'd never heard quite that tone of seriousness in her voice. Whatever it was, Ahuizotl did stop.
"And why should I do that Miss Do?"
"Because of what this passage says!" Daring pointed insistently at the section of the wall next to her.
"Oh, that?" Ahuizotl rolled his eyes. "That just tells how the artifact of Le Mu was used to imprison the sun and stars. Much like it's doing now. A little vandalized perhaps, but what old ruin isn't?"
"Are you ever going to learn to read these things properly?" Daring snarled at her foe and pointed to a particularly complex glyph with a crude line carved through it. "This doesn't mean the actual sun and stars! Written like this, an accurate translation is 'one who is as important as the sun and stars', or the ancient symbol for a ruler. The line through it isn't vandalism, though scholars say the practice may have begun that way. It means that the individual being referenced was despised. A tyrant in this case."
"Are..." Blues blinked, Ahuizotl Terra mirroring the action, "are you saying that the artifact is an actual prison?"
"Yes!" Daring confirmed. "A 'prison of darkness to hold light most foul'. And if I'm reading this right... Whoever it is is still in there. And alive."
Blues took a moment to process that before reaching the same conclusion Daring had.
"We have to stop my brother and sister from destroying it!"
When the video feed went down and Wily began cursing and railing about it, Rock and Roll charged their Mega Busters and took aim at the artifact of Le Mu.
"NO!" Dr. Wily yelled when he noticed them. "STOP! DO–"
The two charged shots tore through the artifact, causing it to explode and dust to fill the room. In the center of the dust cloud, where the artifact used to be, and orange glow pulsed to life.
"Oh, no..." Wily moaned in dismay. "What have you two done...?"
The pulse grew stronger and seemed to stand. As the dust cleared, the Light twins and Dr. Wily could see a figure begin to take shape.
The hooves came into view first. Clad in royal blue armor and more massive than any known pony's. As more was revealed, it became clear that the equine body was larger than even Celestia's, with a masculine bulk that would have put Big Mac to shame, and covered in the same armor. And then the head started to come into view, only it wasn't a head. It was a second torso. Covered in the same armor as the rest of the body, this second torso was revealed to have ape-like arms and hands attached.
The figure was a centaur.
Then the real head was revealed. The helmet covered the entire face save the eyes, which blazed with light, and atop the head were a pair of massive wicked-looking horns. Like a demon. The icon of the sun was attached firmly to the forehead.
"Aaahhh," the figure stretched in its newfound freedom. "After ten thousand years, I am free."
Rock and Roll did their best to keep calm at this new development, but it was hard.
"It is time for the world to recognize the unforgiving light of it's true master."
In the back, Dr. Wily tried his best to sneak silently away.
"It is time for all to bow before Tirek Sunstar."
Right as they agreed on a plan of action to back up the strike teams, Twilight and the others felt the spark as their Elements began to regain power and the dark curse began to recede. The fading red and orange of sunset became visible as the sky cleared.
"All right!" Dash cheered. "They did it!"
"Gracious, but that was quite an adventure," Rarity fanned herself dramatically.
"So I guess Rock and his sister won't be needing these armor bits anymore?" Pinkie questioned as she idly spun the helmet from Desert Mercury on her hoof.
"When did you...?" Rain Toad looked at the pink earth pony strangely.
"Oh, I went back and got it during one of those moments nopony was watching of course!" Pinkie grinned.
"Best not to think about it, sugarcube," Applejack advised sagely.
"Well, the Elements are regaining strength and the curse is lifted," Twilight smiled. "I'd say this has been a good day's wo–"
Twilight was cut off when, right as the last rays of sunlight vanished over the horizon, a new sun seemed to explode out the top of the temple before them.
(A little earlier)
"Mega Mane! Mega Mare!" Blues yelled for his siblings as he, Daring, and Ahuizotl tore down the hall towards the innermost chamber where the artifact of Le Mu rested. While their ultimate goals were different, even Ahuizotl had agreed to a truce to stop whoever was imprisoned in the artifact from being released. "Don't–"
All three skidded to a halt at the sight in the chamber. The artifact lay shattered and standing in the rubble was a massive armored centaur. The royal blues of the armor contrasted with the bright sun-like flames that licked out of every seam and the heat that rolled off of him was more unbearable than the hottest summer.
"Ah, more supplicants to bow before the world's rightful ruler and his most holy of light," the centaur mused at them.
"How do you know our language?" Daring stared wide-eyed. "The words of our eras should be incomprehensible to the other!"
"Your ignorance will be permitted this once," the centaur stared back. "For how could you in your imperfections know of the gift of tongues that I in my holy righteousness possess? It matters not. Come and swear your lives to me so we may purge the rest of the world of its taint."
"No," the twin voices of Rock and Roll cut the tableau. The centaur turned slowly towards them, as if incapable of comprehending the word.
"And who are you to dare speak this way to I, Tirek Sunstar, the true ruler of this world and embodiment of all light?"
"Rock, known as the Mega Mane, son of Light," Rock stood his ground defiantly.
"Roll, known as the Mega Mare, daughter of Light," Roll answered with just as much steel in her voice as her brother.
"A son and daughter of light?" Tirek Sunstar's voice gave the impression of blinking. "Then you of all beings should support my holy cause to purge the dark taint that infects the world with my holy fire."
"No, because we know what results from that kind of talk," Rock returned.
"Needless pain and suffering, heaped the most on those that deserve it least," Roll agreed.
"Death of any who would dare to consider ideas counter to your own," Daring added.
"Even should they be right," Blues finished.
"And you?" Tirek turned to look at the last member of the group staring him down.
"I am Ahuizotl Terra," Daring's continual foe declared himself. "Heir to the Magi and the real inheritor of the world's rulership! I will not allow some millenia-old thief to steal that from me!"
Tirek stared at him before beginning to chuckle, which deepened into a booming laugh that shook the walls even as the light and heat pouring from his form pulsed in time with his mirth. "The pitiful misshapen heir to the treasonous Magi dares to claim me a thief?! How amusing and appropriate with the way your companions spout the same ignorant tripe that arrogant gathering of fools did! Very well! We shall end this the same way as before! With righteous holy battle!"
And with that, Tirek Sunstar rose into the air and rocketed through the ceiling.
"Interesting," a voice from the sun-bright being spoke as the night sky around them lit up like daytime. "It would appear these new Magi have prepared an ambush for my holy return. Clever of you. Cowardly, for which you must be cleansed in righteous flame, but clever."
"Thou speakest of things thou know not heartless miscreant!" a new voice interposed itself as Luna teleported in between the new being and the group below. "We sensed your foul presence and have arrived to protect our little ponies from your wrath! No harm shall befall them while their princess of the night draws breath!"
"A follower of darkness?" the being mused as his light dimmed just enough for those below to make out the armored form of a centaur.
'Holy roots and leaves...' Twilight's eyes widened. 'It that Tirek?!'
"Your taint shall be the first to be cleansed."
"We shall see villain!" Luna yelled as she unleashed a massive blast of magic from her horn. The centaur was hit directly, not even bothering to move or even block it seemed. But then, he'd only let out a grunt when struck and hadn't even been pushed back all that much. Luna, however, had followed up the blast by charging the figure right behind it. Twilight could feel the way Luna was using her earth pony magic to enhance her strength for the physical blow all the way from where she stood without even trying.
Luna struck true and the centaur's armored head snapped back from the blow and there was a scream of pain.
Luna's scream.
The alicorn of the moon plummeted beck in their direction, holding the hoof that she'd used to strike her opponent to her and hit the ground hard. She skidded to a halt a short distance away and Twilight got a good look at the hoof. Or rather, the charred stump where it used to be. She could even see the fine charcoal powder marring Luna's coat and realized what had happened.
You're telling me that this fortress somehow managed to charcoalize an alicorn's hoof?
'Great exfoliation,' Twilight thought in horror, 'he's a living sun!'
"Twi?" Applejack looked at her friend.
"Elements, girls," Twilight replied, summoning hers. The time for playing around was officially over.
Five more flashes of light heralded her friends, Awake and not, summoning their own Elements. The six glowed with magical power and the Rainbow of Light burst forth and shot towards the glowing centaur above...
...and shattered into multi-colored motes of magic that swiftly faded.
"...What just......?" Twilight stared at the shining form of Tirek with his fist extended after a contemptuous backhand.
"Fools," he spat. "You seek to use light magic against me? The embodiment of all that is Holy and Just?"
"And where do you think you're going?" Blues asked as he grabbed Dr. Wily trying to sneak away.
"I'm trying to get to my contingency plan so I can fix this mess you created!" the mad scientist fumed.
"Fix Ahuizotl's weapon first," Blues ordered as his brother and sister jumped up the opening Tirek Sunstar had made when he left. "We're going to need all the help we can get."
Twilight was currently having an internal argument with herself.
'The Elements didn't work...'
'Brilliant observation, me, but this isn't the time.'
'Why didn't the Elements work?'
'No clue. Can I perhaps try to think of something else that would?'
'The Elements always work!'
'Not this time they didn't. Look, can I stop–'
'I mean, unless one of the six aren't in harmony with the others, but we all were, so it should have worked and–'
'CAN I STOP FOCUSING ON THAT AND THINK OF A PLAN B NOW?!'
'Like what? Going alicorn? Worked out real well for Luna, didn't it?'
'I can cast spells to protect myself and the rest of us from harm, duh.'
'Oh, sure, and then he starts taking all of us seriously.'
'Yeah, and I've got power to spare. I've been in Dragonball Loops and kicked flank before, remember?'
'Yeah, but the odds of taking out someone as powerful as he is quickly aren't promising, meaning I'd get into a full knock-down-drag-out and how long would Equestria last under that kind of fight?'
'Huh?'
'I said it myself, I've been to Dragonball Loops before. Surely I remember what happens there when two uber-powerful fighters square off. Especially when one cares nothing for collateral damage. So, again, I ask myself: How long would Equestria last under that kind of fight?'
'Er... I... Uh... ARGH! I HATE IT WHEN I'M RIGHT ABOUT THESE THINGS!'
Rock and Roll exited the top of the ruins, busters blazing. Tirek Sunstar didn't even seem to notice. At least at first.
"Pathetic," he scowled and formed an orb of solar flame in one hand larger than either of them. "And to think you claimed to be children of light."
The blast didn't hit them. However, the shockwave from when it hit the temple and exploded threw them off their feet and sent them tumbling down the outer walls. After several seconds of seeming to hit every ledge and decorative carving, they landed near the group of their friends and allies.
"You are not worthy of such a claim," the voice of Tirek Sunstar called after them.
"Hey there," Rock smiled at the others weakly. "You having as much fun as we are?"
"Probably," Pinkie chirped. "Because I'm not having any fun right now and that didn't look fun at all."
"You are weak and insolent," the armored centaur continued, seemingly so confident in his power that he saw no need to follow up his attack.
"We brought you a few things," Rarity told them as she set the bundle of Pluto Rex's armor before them. It was followed by pieces of armor from Desert Mercury, Khara Saturn, Zuri Venus, Hammerhoof Uranus, Copperbeak Jupiter, and Blackmane Neptune.
"Sorry," Fluttershy apologized from where she was trying fruitlessly to see to Luna's injury. "Inti Mars's was a little big to carry."
"Defiant of your betters," Tirek continued, uncaring for the tableau below him.
"No worries," Roll told her as she and her brother proceeded to scan the enchantments on each armor for their variable weapons systems as quickly as possible. "I tagged him as I ran past. Rock got Hammerhoof's as well."
"Just like my ungrateful son, Le Tor."
"Wait, what?" Daring and Twilight whipped their heads around to stare at Tirek.
"Blast!" Dr. Wily swore as he tried to fix Ahuizotl's weapon. "What did you do Break Mane?!"
"I defended myself," Blues retorted curtly. "Now hurry up. Tirek Sunstar deciding to monologue his history is giving us some time, but that's not going to last."
"So, you have heard of the ungrateful spawn," Tirek Sunstar rumbled.
"Well, yeah, but his parentage is lost to history!" Twilight replied, her nature for seeking knowledge driving her mouth. "All we know about him is that he imprisoned the sun! Which, come to think of it is probably you, so..."
"I see..." Tirek's sneer was audible. "This is the thanks I get for my life of Holy service? This is all my years of firm and Just leadership is worth? This is what the vanquisher of the mad Queen Majesty is granted? Forgotten and erased? Intolerable. The taint has spread its roots deeper than I imagined."
"But..." Daring's eyes were wide. "Queen Majesty is a myth!"
"Oh, the mad queen was quite real," Tirek told them. "As was her vile and unholy power to wish for anything, including the enslavement of the hearts and minds of all under her domain, save those she thought 'unworthy' of her 'protection', instead wishing for them to be the monsters she saw them as. How all the races cheered when I slew her at last, their minds finally their own. And how naive I was to allow her misbegotten spawn to live afterwards. How foolish I was to raise him as my own."
Twilight began to feel ill. She'd had one run-in with a version of Queen Majesty and this one sounded even worse than that one. How bad did someone need to be until Tirek of all beings was seen as a hero by comparison?
"Le Tor had not the madness of his dam, may the heavens be praised for such small favors," Tirek continued, "but he had ideas unworthy of his position. All under the sun have their place, and to step outside it is unthinkable and a perversion of all that is Just. But he insisted on the misguided notion that all, even the lowest of the low, deserved enlightenment. As if higher callings were meant for any but those chosen to rule. To grant such to those unworthy to possess it is the greatest folly of all, and I forbade him to do so. But the one I called my son, even after I shed my weak form of flesh to better enable my holy crusade, could not find it in himself to be obedient. And so, behind my back and against the will of the heavens, he formed the treasonous Magi."
As he spoke, Ahuizotl clad in his repaired Terra armor exited the temple, followed by Blues and both turned to face the blazing figure above.
"He welcomed all into his fold," Tirek turned to Daring's recurring foe. "Including the most unworthy of misshapen demons like your ancestor. Truly, I regret that my efforts to erase your despicable kind were not more successful."
Ahuizotl's face showed shock, and then rage. For the first time Daring Do could remember, her nemesis forewent gloating or taunting and simply attacked, the laser weapon of his Magi armor lancing through the armored centaur again and again.
Tirek Sunstar remained unmoved.
"Very well," he spoke, even as Ahuizotl fired again. "If battle is the end you crave, then you shall have it!"
The group of robots, ponies, zebra, and griffon hadn't been idle. While some listened to Tirek Sunstar's monologue, others had been arranging a plan of battle. Bright Mane had begun with the revelation that even though he appeared unharmed, Tirek was taking damage from the attacks.
"It's hard to see because of the light he puts off," the light-generating robot had said, "but each impact is leaving a mark."
"Yon Bright Mane speaks true," Luna had gasped as she got to her remaining hooves, her horn glowing with some spell. "The villain's armor hast an ancient and seemingly incomplete form of protective enchantment on it. Almost all force from any assault is sent to his immortal body of flame, leaving the armor to take what little is left. All strikes, no matter how mighty, deal his armor the same manner of harm. But the armor also seems to sustain his form. If it is lost, then his body wouldst be lost in kind."
"Then we use the 'Death of a Thousand Cuts'," Daring nodded firmly as Dash finished strapping Copperbeak Jupiter's gauntlets to her forehooves as best she could and Applejack strapped Hammerhoof Uranus's helmet to her head.
"Heh," Gilda smirked, gripping the ring she'd kept from Khara Saturn. "So we're using the griffon way to end this. Traditional, no less."
"The ancient griffons would pardon any crime if only the perpetrator could survive one thousand cuts from the wronged parties," Ring Tercel explained quickly as the rest of the Cossack numbers finished preparations.
"Darling," Rarity rolled her eyes as she finished hastily adjusting Pluto Rex's regalia to her form. It wasn't her best work, but it would just have to do. "I don't think we're going to be keeping count." (23)
"I certainly hope not," Drill Dog snarled.
"Everyone know the plan?" Rock checked quickly, getting a chorus of nods. "Then break!"
Dr. Wily grumbled as he furiously finished adjustments to his contingency plan and began the siphoning of remaining Nightmare Force into its power core.
"Heh..." he chuckled. "The ancient Magi were geniuses for their time, but only I could have perfected their arts into this ultimate creation! When the activation sequence is complete, even this 'Tirek Sunstar' will not stand before its power!"
Fluttershy regretted that there didn't seem to be any way to deal with Tirek Sunstar without involving death, but she knew that often times that was the way of life. Sometimes things must perish so that others can live. It was the way of nature, and over the Loops she'd become ever more in touch with the cycles of nature and life through her druidic practices and made it her way as well.
Right now, she was doing her best to support the others in their efforts. Some nature charms to boost the protective efforts of the others as they unleashed everything they could upon the genocidal centaur above them.
Twilight and Luna had both warded everyone as best they could, but even so they were all trying their best not to get hit. On the offense, the purple unicorn and the princess of the night were foregoing their normal magical prowess to simply unleash raw magical bolts upon their common foe; Rarity dashed around with incredible speed from the 'borrowed' regalia she wore, sniping her solar foe from every angle; Applejack used her earth-bending and the strength boost from her pilfered helmet to heave rocks and stones upwards; Pinkie was using her pink lantern ring, though its power seemed weakened from its wielder's loss of good mood; Rainbow Dash was using the gauntlets she'd acquired to summon intermittent bolts of lightning; Gilda stood off to the side, aiming the draining effect of the ring she's won from her opponent at Tirek, even if it seemed to do little; Zecora was mixing her potions with the exploding bubbles her own acquired armor produced to decent effect; Cossack's robots leveled support fire from every angle they could along with the Lights; Daring Do had accepted the gauntlets of Blackmane Neptune from Twilight, allowing her to occasionally manifest a ball of water that she shot at the centaur above; and Ahuizotl kept shooting Tirek in rage.
This had been going on for minutes and, in retrospect, it couldn't have lasted.
"Your valor is commendable, even if your allegiance is not," Tirek Sunstar spoke up suddenly. "But I tire of this distraction."
There was little warning. None of the gestures he'd been using to telegraph his blast up until now. He simply pointed his hand at Ahuizotl and unleashed a gigantic beam of light.
Ahuizotl was already trying to dodge, and he half managed it. But that still left the other half blasted by a beam of heat that turned the ground below into molten stone. It was only the combined protections of his armor and the wardings of Twilight and Luna, backed by Fluttershy's druidic magic, that saved his life. But even then the stench of burning flesh reached them all as Ahuizotl frantically ripped off his orange-hot armor amidst pained howls.
'This guy could land in a Dragonball Loop and no one there would think him out of place,' Twilight thought numbly. That blast had burned through her wards, Luna's, and the forgotten magic of an ancient order enhanced by mad magical science and still nearly killed Ahuizotl.
'I know Rock says he's never lost to this Sunstar guy Tirek's fused with in his home Loop, but if he tries to unleash another one of those, I'm going alicorn, consequences be damn–'
"ARRGGHHH!!" Tirek's pained cry cut off her thoughts as a massive blast of dark magic ripped into him.
'Or I could let the obvious deus ex machina do it for me,' she admitted as the newest combatant climbed out of the hole in the temple. It was a massive black devil-series robot with glowing runes on its body, and the eye had apparently been designed as a one-pony cockpit containing none other than Dr. Wily.
"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!" The mad scientist's voice boomed out from the machine as an armored covering slid over the cockpit. "Yes! Fall before the power of my ultimate Wily Machine: Le Devil!"
Rain Toad had been mostly using his ability to produce water to put out the numerous fires Tirek Sunstar had been making. Thus he was the first on the scene to douse the burned Ahuizotl and his red-hot armor before further damage was done.
The second on the scene was Daring Do, feeling something she would fervently deny was concern.
"Take it..." Ahuizotl hissed through the pain as he handed the one piece of his regalia that wasn't warped by the heat of Tirek Sunstar's blast, the laser shooting gauntlet on his tail, to his long-time foe. "Make him pay..."
Daring was all too happy to ditch the current gauntlets she had as the water weapon they shot wasn't doing much more than creating steam when it hit the solar villain. She was also willing to honor her nemesis's request, since none should ever be the victim of the kind of systematic genocide Tirek Sunstar claimed he'd attempted against Ahuizotl's species. Unfortunately, she didn't see how it was going to improve things any.
"Good," the voice of Proto Mane startled her. "His weapon is intact. We'll need that."
"Why?!" Daring sniped at the robot. "It's not doing any more damage to Tirek Sunstar than anything else we throw at him! Only that... thing... of Dr. Wily's even hurt him!"
Even now, they could see Tirek Sunstar on the ground, flames burning the undergrowth and the dirt and stone melting and warping from the heat he put off. Wily's Le Devil creation was indeed occupying Tirek Sunstar's full attention, but the way the centaur kept incinerating large pieces of its form, that wasn't going to last.
"He targeted Ahuizotl for a reason," Blues replied. "The laser he shoots isn't hurting him more with each hit that anything else, but the way it changes direction in midair means it hits several times with each shot. It's the best weapon we've got after Wily's latest project. I've already transferred my data on it to Mega Mane and Mega Mare and they're getting in position. As soon as we get an opening, we're going to let him have it with all four barrels."
"Okay," Daring nodded. "Let's do this."
"Foul servant of darkness!" Tirek Sunstar cursed Le Devil as he endured another blast of dark magic. "My holy light shall never be extinguished!"
"Insolent relic of a bygone era!" Wily shouted back as Le Devil crashed to the ground after its leg was blasted off.
"You shall be the first to be cleansed!" the enraged centaur gathered power and unleashed a massive blast at the downed monstrosity.
The machine exploded with enough force to dissipate the energy wave and when the dust settled, Dr. Wily sat amidst some broken bits of machinery. A bit scraped and bruised, but alive. It was clear to those who knew how such things worked that he'd designed shaped charges into the cockpit to negate any force that breached its protections while not harming the pilot.
"And thus your taint is purged," the voice of his blazing opponent intoned with all the finality of an executioner.
But just before he unleashed the fatal blast at the doctor, Mega Mane tackled Wily out of the way.
"Argh!" Rock screamed as the end of one of his hind legs was clipped by the blast and melted clean off.
"A futile ges–"
"NOW!" Roll yelled and three lasers like Ahuizotl's weapon, the Spark Chaser, lanced through Tirek Sunstar repeatedly. For several long moments it appeared as if the powerful foe had been impaled by an entire cage of pure crackling light.
"ENOUGH!" the enraged bellow was accompanied by an explosion of flame that rushed over the entire battlefield.
Rainbow Dash tried her best to get her heart back under control after the wave of solar flame dissipated. She hadn't had time to analyze the pull on her Element when the centaur guy had lost it and had just thrown everything she could into the connection.
She'd forgotten that Twilight had told her and the others about her research into other ways to use the Elements. Most importantly at the moment, using them defensively. But as she looked down and saw everypony, and every non-pony, alive and well (24) she thanked whatever had possessed her egghead friend to do the research in the first place.
"So, you live," Tirek Sunstar, the great and holy light of all the world, observed as the so-called 'son of light' got to his remaining hooves. "It shall–"
He paused as he observed the way the stallion's leg terminated. It was not charred and blackened like flesh would be, but melted the entire way across. Even if the pretender did wear armor, it would not have done that.
"So... you are naught but a golem of metal pretending to be a pony," he mused. "One who can not help but run to the rescue of his dark master."
"Actually, Dr. Wily's my worst enemy," the golem replied calmly.
.....What?
"Hey, Twilight?" the voice of Roll interrupted the local Anchor's thoughts again.
'Honestly, I'm starting to think this Loop likes shooting down my decisions to solve the problems it sends my way with my incredible alicorn powers,' Twilight mentally grumbled as she turned to hear whatever plan the robot mare was bringing to her. And with that tone, it really couldn't be anything else. "Yes?"
"How much protective magic can you send my brother's way?" the Mega Mare asked. "Discretely if at all possible."
"Quite a bit," Twilight replied, becoming more intrigued by the second. "Why?"
"Because Mega Mane's done analyzing how our opponent fights," she replied succinctly. "My brother's intending to end this as decisively as he can. One-on-one."
"Wait, he's going to challenge a living sun to a duel?" Twilight blurted incredulously.
"It's not like it would be the first time," the mechanical mare shrugged in a resigned fashion.
The looping unicorn blinked a few times as she processed that. "We'd better hedge our bets and get Luna on board."
"Already done," Roll replied. "Blues says she sounds rather enthusiastic about it."
"Of course," Twilight rolled her eyes.
"What manner of being would save a mortal enemy from death?" Tirek sounded confused. Good. The less sure he was of things, the less dangerous he became.
"One who is living proof that your son was right," the Mega Mane replied calmly as he noted Dr. Wily inching away as unobtrusively as equinely possible. Even better. The further Wily was from this, the less likely he'd get hurt.
The strange and unique variant on his recurring foe Sunstar seemed to narrow his perception menacingly. "Do explain."
"Your son believed that all, no matter what station in life they were born to, deserved to be educated," Rock explained calmly as he began preparations for what he had planned. He could probably do it faster, but this would work so much better if he took his time. "This has already come to pass."
"What you speak of is madness."
"Maybe," he allowed as he began siphoning the magical energy from the wards placed on him into his weapon systems and linked them to a specific weapon in particular. "But it still works. If it didn't, I wouldn't exist. My creator is an earth pony. Without your son's philosophy in place, he'd have been just another farm worker toiling away in the fields."
"It would have been his place," the centaur glared. "Those meant for growing food have no need for scholarly pursuits."
"The fact that our farmers now can produce more food, of higher quality, and with less farmers, than anyone from your time would have believed possible suggests otherwise," Rock grinned as new magical energy began to flow into his systems. He'd need everything he could get. "But beyond that, your son believed that everyone, regardless of species or station, not only deserved a chance to learn, but a chance to live and prove themselves."
"A folly," Tirek Sunstar scoffed. "Once the taint of darkness has taken root, only the purifying flame can cleanse it."
"And there's our impasse," Rock nodded calmly. "You believe in no chances to anyone who doesn't fit your definition of 'pure'. I believe that everyone deserves not just a chance, but often also a second chance. It's why I'll risk my life even for a mortal enemy. We may falter into darkness along the way, but with a little faith and the help of friends we can come back into the light. It's the kind of world your son spent his life trying to create."
"My son was a fool. As are any who place their faith in his folly. Such madness can never be Just."
"And I say that such 'madness' is what creates Justice!" Rock shot back. "So I'm here to challenge you, Tirek Sunstar, last of an outdated and obsolete philosophy! A duel! Your Justice against mine! You take your best shot and then I take mine!"
"That's all I can give him," Twilight let out a long breath. "I hope your brother knows what he's doing."
"Twilight, since we started looping, Rock has faced various versions of Sunstar hundreds of times," Roll replied calmly.
Twilight blinked and reminded herself once again that for some loopers such opponents were the norm rather than the 'once in a weird variant' exception.
"He hasn't lost yet."
'Light's boy is out of his mind,' Dr. Wily thought numbly as he abandoned stealth in favor of putting more distance between himself and the showdown. Only to run face first into Break Mane.
Standing next to the lunar diarch herself.
"Not so fast, doc," the renegade prototype smirked. "We've still got some things to discuss after this."
"Indeed," Luna agreed as she absently restrained the doctor with her magic.
Rock didn't normally engage in psychological warfare, but as a pragmatic tool-using model, he naturally considered everything at his disposal when presented with a problem. That his goading had not only secured Tirek Sunstar's undivided attention, but his agreement to the duel he'd proposed was just step one. The easy step.
'Cross-wire with the Magnet Beam... Adjust frequency to optimal dispersal of enemy's energy weapon... Initiate thaumic energy boost from existing wards and infused magic...' he performed the final adjustments as Sunstar took his time dramatically gathering energy. 'Energy readings stable... Backup contingencies in place... Yes, I want to override my blasted safeties already... Pray like heck this guy's as superstitious as he sounds like...'
Tirek Sunstar leveled his hands and the gathered energy between them in his direction and fired.
'Skull Barrier.'
Tirek Sunstar experienced a feeling of vindication as the insolent blue golem was consumed by his holy flame. There was, after all, only one true Justice an–
He stared in shock as a shimmering glow of power not his own became visible as his flames died down. The shock grew as the shimmering became clearer to show it had a shape. The shape of an equine skull forming a protective barrier over the metal golem. His holy flames licked at the energy hungrily, but it held firm.
'Impossible! None may possess the favor of Death! Even I in my Holy and Just cause was refused!'
"H-how do you possess the favor of Death?!" Tirek demanded. "HOW?!"
"Maybe because I go out of my way to not make work for him," Rock retorted as he took stock. The forelimb he'd used to generate the barrier had blown almost every circuit it had to pump power into the shield, but it had worked. Even better, Tirek believed it was some divine favor from the local equivalent of the grim reaper. The damaged forelimb, while otherwise useless, could still support his weight and his other forelimb was still in good working order. He could work with that. "Anyway, that was your best shot, right?"
"Your contest is the dishonorable rambling of a tainted mind!" Tirek fumed as Rock raised his remaining forelimb, formed it into a hoof cannon, and took aim. The centaur began to form energy in his hands, sloppily from his anger. "Even were you able to harm me, I am not bound by your treasonous barg–"
He was cut off by an explosion in his face and lost control of his flame, but even Rock could see he was more dazed than hurt.
"That is your best shot?" Tirek Sunstar challenged.
"No, that was just to get your attention," Rock stated flatly. "My best shot... is everything."
And with that pronouncement, the robot known as Mega Mane proceeded to, in fact, shoot everything at his opponent.
Twilight stared at where Rock, the Mega Mane was blasting everything at Tirek Sunstar. He switched weapons so fast that his color-changing armor looked like a rainbow having a spasm (25) as it tried to match each one for the instant it was in use.
Bombs flew after fire flew after ice flew after blades flew after water flew after lightning and on and on creating a giant blur of elemental violence that pummeled the living sun.
"How...?" Twilight tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Tirek Sunstar had seemed almost invincible before, but now he was looking like an amateur. Every shot he tried to fire back was countered before it even left his hand or flew so wide that it seemed the safest place to stand was directly behind the robot firing on him.
"Because that's what my brother does," Roll replied next to her. "Blues may be military and I may take to fighting styles better than Rock, but this is what he's the best at. He analyzes everything about his opponents. Their powers, their patterns, their tells, their attitude, the way their armor moves and fits together, all of it. He studies them as he fights, and then when he's got everything he needs, he uses it to take them apart."
"Huh," Twilight mulled that over. "I wonder what goes through his mind at times like this?"
'I swear, one of these days I'm going to end up copying a weapon that shoots kitchen sinks,' Rock mused as he monitored the armor integrity of his opponent. His ability to control and direct his solar flames should be reaching bottom right about...
Tirek fell to his knees.
...now.
Rock stopped firing.
"It... appears that victory is indeed yours," Tirek admitted reluctantly from where he knelt involuntarily. "I almost feel remorse that for you it shall be a bitter one."
Rock could hear the smile in the centaur's voice and it sent alarms blaring through his mind.
"Almost."
Luna went rigid as she felt the magic of Tirek Sunstar shift and teleported herself, her companion, and her captive directly to Twilight's side.
"Twilight Sparkle," she rushed, "it appears we have made an error most grave, our foe's power–"
"Isn't dissipating safely, I know," Twilight was starting to go pale. "It's going critical." 'If he blows, it'll ignite the entire atmosphere!'
And if her scan was correct, they had a little over fifteen minutes before the world ended.
"You don't have to do this!" Rock pleaded. "The world your son dreamed of can be yours too! We can give you a second chance! A chance to live in peace and harmony!"
"He he he..." Tirek chuckled. "I was wrong. You are not tainted. Merely hopelessly naive. Like my son. But I would not stop my holy quest for him and I shall not for you. I swore an oath to cleanse this world, one that I ensured I would be able to keep even with my dying breath."
A rainbow light from the Elements of Harmony chose to strike him at that moment, but even now Tirek Sunstar proved unmovable to the supreme expression of light magic.
"It is over!" the centaur laughed madly. "There is nothing you can do to stop it! The world shall be cleansed!"
'Damnit!' Twilight fumed as her telekinesis failed to grasp the centaur every bit as the last use of the Elements did. And even if she could fling him away, would she get his high enough fast enough? "ARGH! I don't know what to do! Tirek's going to blow sky high and burn the whole world to a cinder and I can't stop it! Why are the Elements not working?!"
"What if we reversed them?" Rainbow Dash suddenly spoke up.
"I don't think putting them on backwards will do anything, darling," Rarity was close to hyperventilating and trying to hide it.
"Well, we gotta try somethin'!" Applejack started fiddling with her necklace, clearly intending to do what Rarity had claimed was pointless.
"No!" Rainbow shook her head. "I mean, why don't we reverse us? Like instead of focusing our positive traits through the Elements, we focus our negative ones? This guy is all light, right? Well, Blues was telling me a while back that all light isn't very harmonious." She pointed her hoof at Luna before continuing. "Like day needs the night to balance it out, we all have darker shadowy sides to ourselves to balance out the traits the Elements represent. So why can't we use those to blast him?"
"I..." Twilight stopped herself from saying that it wouldn't work as she realized she hadn't actually tried that in looping memory. There hadn't ever been any need to. She racked her mind for everything she knew about the Elements for a few seconds and concluded that none of it would render the action impossible. Difficult and unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible. "What negative traits were you thinking of?"
"Well, Rarity's clearly got Ambition," Rainbow Dash began.
"But of course, darling," Rarity huffed. "Nothing wrong with wanting to be the pinnacle of fabulousness, is there?"
"No, of course not," Dash agreed, "but that's not the point. Where Generosity is all about others, Ambition is all about yourself. But they're linked, see? Generosity wants to give and Ambition wants to have, but you can't give what you don't have."
"I see..." Rarity hemmed a bit, before brightening. "Oh, my. I do see!"
"Fluttershy's normally kind," Dash continued, "and that's great, but it's not what we need right now. We need Ferocity. Not the gentle healer that mends hurts, but the angry mama bear that stops them by ripping the hurter a new one."
"Of course," Fluttershy's gaze hardened as she thought to her adopted son of another Loop and the trials he regularly underwent. "If that's what's needed."
"Pinkie, you gotta give up Laughter for a bit and do Sorrow instead," the blue pegasus continued.
"But Dashie, you know I don't do sad!" Pinkie smiled, a bit confused.
"Pull the other one, Pinks," Dash retorted. "You're the friendliest mare I know. You care about pretty much everypony. So how would you feel if we just... weren't there one day? If we were dead, or we'd left without saying goodbye, or–"
"Okay, you're right," Pinkie admitted as her mane deflated and her eyes teared up. But she was still smiling, sadly, but smiling. "I'd be really sad if that happened. So, yeah, I can be sad for a friend."
"And what about me?" Applejack snorted. "Honesty don't do well with lyin'."
"No, but valuing the truth means understanding Deception," Dash folded her forelimbs. "And self-deception counts miss 'Sure I can buck the whole field, I just gotta give up on little things like eating and sleeping'."
"Okay, I deserved that," Applejack admitted. She'd honestly thought she could pull that off without her fancy looping powers this time. She hadn't counted on waking up in the hospital with Nurse Redheart giving her a nasty look and no memory of when and how she collapsed. Maybe this 'deception' wasn't lying outright, it was understanding how what was true and what wasn't could get muddled up in someone's head. That she certainly had experience with. "Looks like ya got my number after all. But what about you?"
"Me?" the Unawake Element of Loyalty rolled her eyes as if it was obvious. "I've got Suspiscion out the wazoo. I don't easily trust anypony outside my group of friends. It's part of how I look out for all of you."
"And me?" Twilight asked. "How do you reverse Magic?"
"Heh," Dash chuckled. "You know that Magic used to be referred to as what the Magi knew?"
"Well, yeah," Twilight's Unawake self had known about the legendary Magi unicorns for a while, "but I don't... Oh. Oh! Duh! You're saying my Element's not just about friendship, it's about knowledge!"
"Yeah, you love learning all that egghead stuff Twi," Rainbow poked her with a hoof. "But where the positive is learning new things and discovering stuff, the negative is keeping it all to yourself. And don't tell me you don't play it close to the chest sometimes."
Twilight blushed as Rainbow hit the nail on the head. How many times had she told her friends, Awake or otherwise, to trust her, she knew what she was doing? She didn't share everything with them. And she'd gotten really good at keeping secrets. "I... I think this could actually work. Okay, places girls! We've got a world to save!"
They got into formation one more time, this time doing their best to focus on the not-so-bright parts of themselves that they were often loath to admit to. The Elements didn't respond at first, but slowly they began to darken and then radiate a shadowy 'light'. Each of them rose up in turn as the shadows grew in strength and intensity, the Elements shaking in protest.
'It's working, but the Elements weren't designed to do this,' Twilight observed. She almost told the others, but stopped herself. 'Telling them won't improve our chances. They don't need to know yet.'
With that re-affirmation of her darker personality trait, the Elements reached the peak of their power and a Rainbow of Shadows burst forth and struck the downed Tirek Sunstar and began to struggle with him.
'Ergh!' Twiligth grunted. 'He's still resisting! Turning to stone... Yeah, what body? He's a living fusion reaction! Cleansing of his overly light nature and madness? Ngh... No, we aren't putting out enough force with this setting. Banishment...? Moon's refusing a connection. He's too solar. Gotta be the sun... Gah!'
"Luna!" Twilight managed to force out as she maintained the Rainbow of Shadows under the protesting Elements. "We need to banish him to the sun, but the connection's... not strong enough at night! You gotta raise..."
"If thou needst the sun to rise, then it shall be so!" Luna declared and focused all of her might on forcing the newly-set sun back over the horizon. Slowly, the western horizon changed color as the sun reversed course, and as the first rays peaked over, the connection was made and Tirek Sunstar was blasted off the planet in a trail of shadows. Straight for the sun.
Tirek Sunstar, the most Holy and Just being in all the world, raged as he was deposited in the sun's fiery furnace. It didn't harm him, any more than the sea would harm a bucket's worth of water, but it also didn't stop his armor's containment from failing. He was Holy! His cause was Just! The world needed to be cleans–
Within the sun, Tirek Sunstar exploded with a fury that would have ended all life on the world he just came from and burnt what remained to cinders.
The sun didn't notice.
"We... We won..." Twilight heaved from the exertion forcing the Elements to perform in a way never intended had put her through.
The trip back to Canterlot had happened much faster then the trip out. With Dr. Light's teleportation network back up, each of the robots was able to take a passenger back with them. Dr. Wily was firmly in custody, but Ahuizotl had somehow slipped off in the aftermath despite his injuries. Daring was certain he'd turn up again. He always did.
Rock had been rushed to the makeshift lab Dr. Light had set up for repairs, with Roll and the Cossack numbers patiently awaiting their turns. Blues had claimed that he could manage his own repairs just fine and had promptly vanished.
Luna had stubbornly refused a regeneration spell for her hoof, claiming that battle scars were to be worn with pride. Celestia had managed to at least talk her into begrudgingly trying one of the latest prosthetics in lieu of healing after much worrying and shedding of tears.
As for the Elements of Harmony and co, they were taking some well-earned relaxation time. Or at least as much relaxation as could be had with Dash and Gilda retelling the adventure to an insistent CMC, and their griffon guest Kalinka, with increasingly ludicrous embellishments on each retelling. Twilight had ten bits on their narrative having the planet explode within the next five revisions.
Daring Do on the other hoof was holed up translating a holographic scan of the writings in the temple. She seemed very excited about it. Excited enough that Twilight was on edge waiting for her to finish and tell the rest of them.
Dr. Wily Plan... was awaiting trial.
"Forsooth, yon skills are most impressive Master Light," Luna complimented the scientist as she idly flexed the gleaming cybernetic prosthesis now replacing her incinerated hoof. "Were it not for the loss of touch, we wouldst be incapable of perceiving the difference."
"Well, your body does already know what your limb is supposed to be doing," Dr. Light tried to deflect the praise. "It's just a matter of making it so the device lets it."
"Thy humility does thee credit, Master Light," Luna smiled. "But one shouldst not understate their own skills ei–"
"Hey, Doc!" Rainbow Dash sped into the room and halted for a moment at the sight of the lunar diarch. "Er... Hey, Luna. Sorry to interrupt, but Daring says she's got that ancient writing stuff translated and wants to invite everypony to hear it!"
"That sounds most intriguing," Dr. Light rubbed his bearded chin thoughtfully. "What do you think, princess?"
"We do think we would like to hear the ancient tale of the Magi and the tyrant sun as written by the Magi themselves," Luna replied eagerly. "Let us make haste!"
"Thank you all for coming," Daring nodded to the room. The Elements of Harmony, all three princesses, the Light family, the Cossack family, a few of the guard (including the captain), some assorted robots, and a group of fillies tagging along filled the meeting hall. Behind her, a hologram of one of the walls in the Lanfront appeared. "As you know, I have been working to translate the writings of the Lanfront ruins for the past few days. Just so you know, this is an ancient written language, so mistakes tend to be made. One of the problems with them is that they're all nouns and verbs, and are just starting to grasp the concept of adjectives. Things like pronous, adjectives, connecting words, and all the other little things we take for granted are supposed to be gleaned from context and word ordering. So I hope you'll forgive me for embellishing a little."
"This is the fate of the tyrant Sunstar, whose light consumes all it touches. Once, he was a good and noble being, but the trials of leading the world's races and the dying curse of the mad queen turned him into a mockery of himself. And so I, Le Tor, his son in heart if not in body, formed the Magi to save the world from its savior."
"The Magi were dedicated to the idea that all have a right to seek enlightenment and so I invited members of every race to come and study the deepest reaches of power and wisdom. To gleen hidden knowledge by which we could both protect the races of the world and teach them to protect themselves."
"We mastered the forces of nature first. The storms in the heavens, the cleansing power of the seas, the strength of the earth, and the flames of the world's core. We even learned to move the sun and moon by our own might and to contain the most dreaded of beings."
"But the tyrant Sunstar shed his mortal form and became a living sun, declaring himself the only light the world needed. He declared entire races tainted and began to hunt them down without cause. He had to be stopped, but his form was proof against light magic. And so the Magi created a prison of darkness to hold light most foul. Its power shall endure as long as the tyrant Sunstar's immortal flame burns."
"I, the alicorn Le Tor, led the force that defeated him, and he fell cursing us all for eternity. Myself most of all. In his words, my life was one of the mad queen's last foul wishes, and I had proven myself her son at last. I am troubled by this."
"This is where the writing style shifts," Daring explained, breaking the narrative. "Le Tor's entries end and someone else continues for him."
"The Magi have been betrayed. The great alicorn Le Tor, may his spirit rest in the boundless heavens, brought us together under the banner of equality and friendship, but it seems not all wished to share the secret knowledge we have gained. Lord Silver and his wife Platinum were invited as the represetatives of the unicorns for their ability to channel mystical forces through their horns, but now it is clear they never thought of the rest of us as equals. We were merely tools to be used and then discarded when no longer of use."
"With the tyrant Sunstar imprisoned, they grew bold. Le Tor, the only one who would claim we demons of Ahuizotl as friends, was slain in his sleep. Spykoran of the dragons fell to pyrite poisoning. The others were killed most cowardly one by one until only I, the nameless demon of Ahuizotl, remained. I have used the power of the prison to seal this place against intruders. The lust for power that Lord Silver, Lady Platinum, and their unicorn followers possess is endless and their selfishness regarding the knowledge meant for all is beyond reasoning. They have taken everything, including the name of the Magi, for themselves. There is naught I can do but leave this record in the hopes that one day the truth will be known."
The room was silent for several moments after that.
"What does the 'nameless demon of Ahuizotl' mean?" Dash asked first. "I mean, that guy can't be that old, can he?"
"No," Daring shook her head. "Though the symbol Ahuizotl always uses for himself is the only reason I recognized the word. My guess is it's a place that his species was originally from. As for the 'nameless' thing, it doesn't translate well. The word would more literally mean 'one who has given up his name to serve his fellows', an honored title for the time, but that's a bit of a mouthful."
"Indeed," Celestia agreed. "This would be quite controversial in many circles, I'm sure you all understand, but the events fit what we know to have come after."
"The tale of Hearth's Warming," Twilight supplied.
"Quite so," Celestia nodded. "Speaking of which my student, I was meaning to ask if you and your friends would like to perform in Canterlot's annual production of the tale this winter?"
"WOULD WE?!" Pinkie's instant agreement drowned out any other replies.
The trial had been surprisingly swift despite the complicated nature of the events. Dr. Wily had been incredibly subdued after being caught in the backwash of the Elements when Tirek was banished. He had remained that way since their return from the ruins and he sat through the court proceedings seemingly resigned to his fate. He hadn't even attempted to defend himself, pleading guilty right off the bat. Rock and Roll allowed as to how it was very uncharacteristic of the stallion.
Even now as the sentence was being hoofed down, his head hung despondent and barely responsive.
"Dr. Wily Plan," Judge Scales proclaimed from the bench, "after reviewing the evidence and the testimony of all involved parties, this court does hereby accept your plea of guilty to the crime of assault upon the sovereign lands of Equestria. However, due to the influence of the dark magic known as the 'Nightmare Force' upon your mind and the precedent set by The Ponies of Equestria vs Luna Equis several months prior, leniency has been granted in sentencing. You are hereby on probation for a term of no less than five years. You will be remanded to the custody of Light Labs and are not to be unsupervised at any time. Do you understand?"
"Yes, your honor," Dr. Wily stated without emotion. "Thank you, your honor."
"Dismissed!"
"It's weird," Rock was telling Twilight later when they were away from non-looping ears. "I've never seen Dr. Wily like that. Usually he's clinging to the possibility of his innocence with all the fervor of a raccoon with its hand stuck in a bottle because it won't let go of the thing it reached in to get."
"That's a pretty long-winded metaphor," Twilight snorted in amusement.
"Yeah, I need to work on those," Rock rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "But still, Wily likes to take any avenue to protest his innocence. Sometimes while he's plotting his next scheme at the same time. But sometimes he really is the innocent victim of manipulation, at least initially, and usually I'm right there getting the evidence to help prove it."
"About that," Twilight interrupted, "Why?"
"Because of all the ways we keep trying to reform him, this second chance is the one that's repeatedly come the closest to working," Rock lamented.
"Well, he did get the backwash of the elements this time," Twilight theorized.
"And I'm hoping that does the trick," the blue bomber nodded. "But, well, we'll see."
"I suppose we will," the purple unicorn agreed. "Also, I've been meaning to ask you about that last stand against Tirek Sunstar. How did you know it would work?"
"I didn't know for sure," Rock admitted. "That's why I had the Chaos Emeralds in my subspace pocket on standby so I could go Super just in case it didn't."
Twilight stared at her fellow Anchor for a long moment, her eye twitching. "And precisely when were you going to tell me you had those?!"
Rock blinked. "I thought I had... Right after... No, not the parasprite incident... It was after Wily's second attack... Let's see, there was the thing with Philomena... Why is this encrypted...? Ah! Right after you and the other Awake loopers took us into the Everfree to show off your alicorn forms."
Twilight facehooved. "Rock, we were drunk off our plots that day. We were lucky we remembered anything that happened then."
"Oh, right, that's why those memories were encrypted," Rock made a face. "I did not need to remember Rarity and Spike doing that."
"I am so jealous of you right now," Twilight grumbled. "But still, if you had those, why didn't you use them?"
"Because while the Super form is cool and all, it's still one of the 'nuclear' options and I don't like using those if I don't absolutely have to," Rock explained. "I don't particularly like fighting to begin with, really."
"Yeah, that," Twilight latched into the fact about her new friend that had been bugging her all Loop. "That's what I can't quite figure out about you. You know our offer of sanctuary is on the table, but you never want to take it. You've insisted on handling Dr. Wily your way and we've honored that so long as it doesn't get too far out of hoof, like this last time. But you're not an adventure junkie like some loopers we get who like to be 'hooves-on'. You're more like the crowd who get thrust into wars they don't want and desperately need a respite from all the craziness and fighting in their home Loops, a place to rest where they don't have to rush out and save the world every time a threat rears its head. Honestly, it might have been harder than usual, but I think we could have taken care Dr. Wily, his robots, the StarDruids, and even Sunstar without you. Probably even without giving your antagonistic Dreamer knowledge of anything more dangerous than he already has. So why don't you take it?"
"I've tried it a few times," Rock admitted. "A few Loops when my sister was Awake and I'd felt weary of the whole thing we agreed that she'd be 'Mega Woman' and I'd be just the brother who stayed back and supported from the sidelines. I wasn't too bad at it either. I got to develop some neat stuff for my sister with dad during the Loop too, but every time Roll went out, I'd worry. I know she can take care of herself, especially now, but staying back while someone else did all the hard and dangerous work just... felt wrong. It still does. I... I can't not save the world when I have the power to do so, Twilight. It just isn't in me."
Twilight didn't reply for several long seconds. Rock's attitude was one she could relate to. It was why they'd offered their Loop as a sanctuary in the first place. It was why they went above and beyond the original offer when those like Leah Clearwater and Kakashi landed in Equestria. They couldn't not help others who needed it.
"I... I guess I can understand that."
Dr. Wily watched listlessly as Dr. Cossack and his daughter bid farewell before teleporting home. Nothing seemed to matter anymore since he'd had that moment of clarity. He'd allowed jealousy to overcome his reason and lead him down a foolish path, and for what? To drag what little good name he had through the mud? To prove to the world that genius like his came with dangerous madness?
"Wily Plan?" the voice of his long-time friend, did he even deserve such a thing?, cut into his thoughts.
"What is it, To-Bright Light?" he responded without feeling. Nothing seemed important anymore. He'd failed as thoroughly as it was possible to fail.
"There's something I want you to see, my friend," Bright Light smiled warmly. "A project I need your help on."
"What kind of project?" Dr. Wily asked despite his depression as he followed his friend and colleague. "What could you possibly... Why do you have an elevator in a one-floor lab?"
That hadn't been there before...
"It's part of what I need to show you," Dr. Light smiled as the doors opened. Dr. Wily felt something like a ghost of his old spark. Curiosity. The driving force of all discovery. What did this lead to?
He followed.
"After your first..." Light began before stopping himself.
"Invasion, Bright Light," Wily huffed as the elevator began to descend at a slow pace. "Call it what it was."
"Yes, that," Light agreed without actually saying the word. "After that, Celestia approached me with a proposition. Tell me, are you familiar with the legend of the Lord of Chaos?"
"Discord?" Wily wrinkled his nose in disgust. "A cautionary fable about disharmony with no basis in fact."
"Yes, much like Nightmare Moon," Light smiled. "Or Tirek Sunstar. Apparently he's quite real. And the seal keeping him imprisoned is weakening."
"Because of me, right?" Wily sighed.
"Your actions didn't do it any favors, no," Light admitted, "but it would have weakened all the same. Anyway, the seal cannot be renewed without breaking it first, and only the Elements themselves can do so deliberately. And while Celestia has faith in the current bearers, she neither wishes to disrupt their lives with the knowledge nor does she wish to place all her faith in one solution. So she commissioned Light Labs to create an anti-Discord countermeasure. She has even allowed the use of normally forbidden magical artifacts, specifically ones supposedly designed to counter Chaos magic, to ensure it succeeds."
"What kind of countermeasure?" Wily asked as he noted the elevator was still descending. Even it it was slow, they should have reached their destination by now. How far down did this go?
"Well, I was hoping the support units could be those robot masters we designed together," Light smiled at him. "Which I would of course need your help to build."
"Of course," Wily agreed, beginning to feel a small portion of his old enthusiasm. "And the main unit?"
"Well," Light started, only to be interrupted as the elevator finally stopped. "Ah, we're here. How about you see for yourself?"
Wily stepped out of the doors and looked up. And up. And higher up still. At the frame of a truly gigantic robot. How had his old friend found the time to make this?!
"Wily, my friend," Light introduced happily, "meet Project Gamma."
*) Theme song plus extended lyrics version by kajisora.
1) Pansy had decided to take a nap for the Loop instead of getting put into a body of her own. Though Scoots put a few notes into her subspace pocket to help with the 'mobile armor of the founders' project next time she and Applebloom were Awake together.
2) Silver-Bot apparently got the 'understatement' upgrade.
3) Like Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Don't ask.
4) Rainbow Dash: Light Labs assistant. She helps put the pony-oriented inventions through their paces. If she were Awake, she'd probably rate the coolness of the job somewhere around 'Mythbusters'.
5) Dr. Wily was backstage. Loop memories would show that mixing Dr. Wily with the media tended to prove... volatile. But that reporter stallion's mane and tail eventually grew back.
6) Ham To Ham Combat.
7) Plus she hasn't told him he's going yet.
8) This isn't the first time Nyx has Awoken to a mother that's missed her terribly and it likely won't be the last.
9) Tercel = Male eagle. Figured it was a good 'man' equivalent for a griffin.
10) Yep, Wood Man got translated into a robot timberwolf. With control over other timberwolves. Yikes.
11) Alternate theme song by conceptulist.
12) Sanity requirement for Rock's potential girlfriends: No homicidal maniacs. Basically, Pinkie passes, Waltz does not.
13) The lyrics are adapted from History Repeating part 1 and 2 by The Megas. Seriously, if you haven't heard their stuff go check it out.
14) The first eight villains mentioned are from the TvTropes 'just for fun' section regarding the Daring Do series. I rather had fun searching them all out to match the Stardroids.
15) Pinkie Pie logic. Not for the uninitiated.
16) I consider rhyming a Zecora thing rather than a zebra thing.
17) Roll tagged his armor to scan and copy his weapon on her way past.
18) Wait, that’s not how this normally works...
19) Insert "Nothing Can Stop the Smooze" from the MLP Gen 1 movie here.
20) Flutterdragon is best pony.
21) Not this Loop anyway.
22) You should see her opponent.
23) Neither did some of the griffons enacting this punishment.
24) If a little on the crispy side in a few cases.
25) Like Mario with one of his stars.
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...140K words of update?
*spittakes*
Ooo, so close to a million words.
HOLY SHIT TON OF WORDS, BATMAN!
Almost a million words.
(and 100. chapter)
4372105 Now you know why I've been moaning on the thread all weekend.
4371998
4372277 Done. It's in the long description, right near the top.
4372477
Primary elements - Mane Six.
Secondary elements - Trixie as Magic, Chrysalis as Kindness, Spike as Loyalty, SPOILER as Generosity, Berry as Laughter, Gilda as Honesty.
Filly elements - Applebloom as Magic, Silver Spoon as Kindness, Scootaloo as Loyalty, Diamond Tiara as Generosity, Sweetie as Laughter, Nyx as Honesty.
4372548 He's the only known anchor to date who has always managed to outrun whatever's trying to kill him. (Or, on rare occasions, outwit.)
4372596 Ah, see, the problem there is you're expecting an Element of Loyalty to be interested in interest.
4372913
I think that's all correct. Nyx and DT might be switched on the Element list though.
Golly, 50,000 words in just one chapter! That's a new Academy Record!!!
4372913 Nyx is Honesty, DT is Generosity. Otherwise pretty much right.
And here's the list:
Twilight
Rarity
Fluttershy
Dash
Pinkie
Applejack
Spike
Celestia
Luna
Cadence
Shining Armor
Applebloom
Sweetie Belle
Scootaloo
Diamond Tiara
Big Macintosh
Gilda
Trixie
Angel Bunny
Discord
Nyx
Chrysalis
Magical object versions of the Founders
Berry Punch
Mayor Mare
Silver Spoon
Cheerilee
Zecora
Ditzy
Lyra
Vinyl
Sunset
4373360 She served a literal interpretation of her purpose. "A" literal interpretation.
When orders have multiple interpretations, and the computer is sentient, deliberately twisting every single order to have a certain interpretation (e.g. interpreting multiple xenocide as being perfectly within the values of the original creator) is behaviour not intended for, and as such "faulty".
Interesting inversion here. Tirac was all about "The Night That Never Ends," while this Tirak is a Knight Templar of Light who was defeated by using the Elements of Harmony to cast a Rainbow of Darkness! Tirac's weapon. And it took Blues (and Dash, sorta) to point out the possibility.
I'm kinda hoping that the Dark Harmony technique comes up again sometime in the Loops.
4373463 Well spotted, except that Shining technically overlaps with 2 through 7, of course, the CMC overlap between 4 and 5, and Lyra between 9 and 10.
That setting may be returned to in the future if I or any other writers want to run with it. The list you made isn't complete, by the way- it's only the ones I cast myself. ALL the Pony Loopers except Berry Punch were in that one, so one of the others might be Sarah Jane or Steven or Turlough or Peri or Mickey.
(But please not Mel. GOD I cannot stand Mel.)
4374212
Minor Addendum: I also made note of (but forgot to say) how Tirek was made into what was essentially a Solar Exalt, including corruption brought about by the being he defeated (Queen Majesty, rather than the Primordials, but still).
4373070
I see, thanks, it's be interesting to see what would happen from a combined blast of all 3 sets of Elementas of Harmony.
4376766
Yeah, the problem with that is it'd take One Metric Butt-Tonne* of work to do that for every single loop, as we're approaching a million words' worth of loops, with thousands of different settings and nearly a hundred chapters. Back-referencing them like that would, I suspect, be more time than our dear author would like to put into this project (we're talking full-time-job scale). But hey, if you're volunteering...
Wow, Sombra as the Devil Core, how unsurprising, he is supposed to be literally pure evil, like Sauron, more powerful offscreen than onscreen, and here, he is very dangerous, never played Mega Man, but this was awesome, the Elements failed, wow, Tirek Sunstar is probably the only villain who's an actual threat to the Equestrian Loopers, even if Rock and Roll have beaten him before, wow. I really like the idea of instead of someone being beaten byt he Rainbow of Light, it was the Rainbow of Darkness, I suspect that it isn't evil in itself, G1 Tirek simply used it for evil purposes, like most things aren't inherently good or evil, it depends on how you use it, like the Force. On the previous chapter, I have to say Twilight isn't the only one who wanted to yell Kamehameha, I wanted to and I suspect many people who like DBZ and MLP FIM wanted to as well. i suspect some did.
4378101 I blame my workload.
Please wait...
4378931 One foreleg and one hindleg. Like Edward Elric.
4377592 I take pride in being able to write intellectually interesting crackfic snippets. Like a later one where I mention the "Treaty of Westfillia".
4379366 The main problems are arguably her interpretation of "Friendship", "Values" and "Human". And, of course, the catastrophic lack of oversight. Even the most tyrannical, dictatorial earth ruler had contact with people who had the same level of informational access as him. CelestAI doesn't, and as such any mistakes she makes are never corrected.
4376818 I do have the time (and desire) to reread it and mark it down but there's the problem that we get new chapters often, I'm uncertain how uploading on this site works and if you can add more material to an old chapter and if the author would consent to adding the page if I do create it. Also there's the occasional fandom I don't recognize and to little keywords -or to vague- to look up, I can most likely find out from comments if I ask, but I imagine I'll get the occasional one wrong.
Other than that If I can get verification from the author I can start working on it and post it at Spacebattles thread to be uploaded.
I... don't know how to feel about this loop. On the one hand, I like the storyline, but ... in the loop fics... A villain that nerfs their loop abilities... It makes me kinda sick.
4380680 What I might do, if you do do it, is have it in a google doc that's linked in the description. That work?
But when I personally want to find a certain loop, I just download the whole fic in .txt format and search that.
Wait, the Megaman universe was the one that caused the Crash?
... Did Zero get divided or something?
I look forward to the day Megaman Legends is Looped into. Tron Bonne was awesome!
4384450 The CMC are taking the place of the closest thing Erfworld has to a Player and there's no Narrator as such.
4368098 I've read a few of them, but I do not feel confident with setting it up. (Also, I don't take especially well to demands - requests are far less likely to irritate me...)
4382747 The Megaman universe was one of the two universes crossed over at the ground zero of the crash. The other one got wiped from existence, thoroughly enough that we do not know what it was, nor can we.
Wow.
That's one heck of a milestone chapter.
(And I don't even like Megaman.)
Awesome work.
4386379 Not as such, she's just bored.
4391369
Relevant Loops:
45.11, 45.12, and the Mega Man Loops
4393357 I always say to people, if you turn the loop-stories into standalones, just let me know so I can read it.
And S.S.F does continue the X-Communication loop... very occasionally.
I think I understand the part of the problem with the stability for the sonic and Megaman Lines, They have a spiral Branch like most cables instead of a single Line like more tree branches
Multiply beginnings, same or similar story. the Zelda branch probable had the same problem right up until the official Zelda codex was released.
a very amusing story, i am looking forward to more, Hopefully a little shorter, large scale crossovers.
4382747
It's Explained in more detail in Megaman's Loops (I think Crisis provided the locations already) located here, but I'll give you the short version.
Basically Hephaestus the Admin for the Megaman loops was trying to get that universe to start looping but the process kept failing. So he attempted to use another loop to stabilize it and with that fused loop launch the megaman loops. Something went terribly wrong in that loop and the end result was The Crash which resulted in an entire universe being wiped out of existence. After another risky gamble Hephaestus was able to get the Megaman loop running properly but the Light children still have memories of many of the failed start up attempts including the one where the crash happened. But as they said all they remember is a person shaped hole in the place of whoever was lost in the crash.
4397177 Yeah, I read the Megaman Loops after I read this.
4382747
Besides, Zero gets divided all the time in the X baseline. It's not exactly anything new.
I have many issues with these looping megamen&company.
Mainly what is covered in this:
I'd say my piece, but this channel's video explains it too well.
Personally, I prefer the Battle-Network series of megaman games over the original robots any day.
When I saw the length of the finale loop, I was pretty excited. I felt it made sense and was done very well. Then I saw the length of this chapter. When I realized it was a single loop (which I really enjoyed reading by the way), my reaction can best be summed up with this:
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw1004_131963112147.gif
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw2665_medium.jpg
Warning: Massive spoilers ahead!
Intriguing... Headcanon accepted!
Aaand here's where it gets turned into a Chekhov's Gun and fired.
Brilliant foreshadowing, and the connection with G1 MLP is amazing. How do you come up with these connections?! Love this stuff! 
...How come the spoiler tag doesn't work?
Am I writing it wrong?
4407387
Honestly, the conversation was an interesting little personal theory I've had for a while and wrote before I even fully planned out the 'StarDruids'. And when I found I needed an appropriate climax, I remembered it and realized it fit perfectly.
4414179 I think fixed. They didn't just prevent Hitler-the-Fuhrer, they also prevented the Great Depression. It's an overall happier world.
4425249 The person behind that particular snip never continued it. I think the implied course of events is that Twilight beans NMM with the elements (in solo mode) before anyone actually dies. (They just get really big boo-boos.)
4444220
Yes - this was a variant which happened.
Although the whole vision makes no sense itself, in Twilight-verse canon, because Alice can't see the future around hybrids or werewolves/shapeshifters. And that battle scene involved about seventeen werewolves and one hybrid.
Rock be like IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR SHOOOOOOP DA WOOOP
Not one Protomen reference that I could spot. Not one. Disappointed.
I liked this. Good crossover.
My response to this chapter.
What's with the #?
Any relation to Armsmaster?