After destroying Hell, Doomguy tries to go back home, but ends up in Equestria.
He had done it. The giant demon that had masterminded the invasion of Earth was dead, and Hell was in shambles. All that was left was to backtrack through Hell and go home to help rebuild the ruined planet... But of course, it's never that easy. Just one wrong turn, and he arrives from Hell itself into a land filled with pastel-colored ponies. How will the man who had just destroyed Hell adjust to the sudden peacefulness after all he had been through? And is Hell really destroyed for good?
As the giant demon's horrendous visage crumbled away, the man stood still. He had done it. The invasion was over. Earth was safe from the forces of Hell. Taking one last look at the carnage, he removed his helmet and wiped the sweat and blood from his forehead before starting the long trek back home. The whole way, he used his trail of death and destruction as a form of morbid breadcrumbs in order to find his way back.
'I wonder where bad people will go when they die now,' he absentmindedly thought to himself. He then lost himself a bit in his internal debate, occasionally shooting some straggling hell-spawn without so much as a second glance. He still had plenty of shotgun shells and bullets left, as well as his entire assortment of death-dealing weapons, and he barely even felt the weight, thanks to the Quantum Storage Unit on his back, standard for all UAC marines. He could probably manage to do this whole thing over again right now, if he wanted to.
He was so caught up in his thoughts that he almost didn't notice that he was going a different way than the one that he came through. He was on a stone outcropping, with a path leading down. Below him, he spotted a lot of demons milling about, with what looked like a large sealed gate some distance off. Behind him, the way he came closed up. Sighing, he placed his helmet back on his head and reloaded his shotgun.
'Looks like one last party before I'm home free.'
"Will somepony please explain to me why I am going with you two again?"
"Because, Rainbow, we need somepony like yourself in case the cerberus runs off."
"But couldn't Fluttershy just get him back the same way she did this time?"
Twilight Sparkle's patience was wearing thin with the rainbow-maned pegasus. They were bringing the cerebus (who recognized Flluttershy from last time) back to the gates of Tartarus again, and were pretty close to their destination.
"W-Well, I'm not as fast as you, Rainbow," the yellow pegasus said so quietly that it almost wasn't heard.
"Besides," Twilight interjected, "it's not like you had anything better to do anyway."
Rainbow Dash just fumed in silence, floating along with her travel companions. Although she would never admit it, she was actually a bit afraid of Tartarus, and never went anywhere near it if she could help it. The fact that it was pretty far into the Everfree Forest didn't help matters. She began to shiver uncontrollably when they finally got to the cave leading to the gate of the forsaken place. When they came to the gate, Fluttershy turned to the giant cerberus.
"Now, now, don't go running off like that again, okay?"
All three of its heads nodded in response, making Fluttershy break into a small grin. Meanwhile, Rainbow's curiosity got the better of her, and she peeked over the gate. It was pretty creepy, with the rocks glowing a faint red, and a green thing killing a bunch of demons.
"Wait, what?" She did a double take, staring in disbelief at the sight of this green thing killing the demons of Tartarus with some sort of weapon. It was quite a ways away, but it was gradually getting closer, a trail of corpses leading behind the entourage of death. She didn't know what to think of this at all.
"Rainbow, you coming?" Twilight's yelling broke her trance, and she looked down, fear in her eyes.
"Uh... you guys may want to see this." Her curiosity intrigued, the purple unicorn asked for the cerberus to crack open the gate a bit. It does so, and the three ponies trot over to view whatever has Rainbow so worried.
It had been about 5 minutes, and there still seemed to be no end in sight to the horde of hell-spawn. As his supply of shotgun shells ran low, he switched to his chain gun, cutting down more demons until that ran out. He didn't want to waste his plasma cells, in case there was something bigger later on, and using rockets was suicide. That left only one option. One messy, gas-powered option.
Grinning behind his helmet, he pulled out the chainsaw while the demons circled him, waiting. He pulled the cord a few times before it finally caught, the blood-stained chainsaw roaring to life. His grin turned into a sadistic smile. Turning, he saw that the demons had him surrounded now. He called out a challenge to them before diving in.
"Come and get some of this, you motherfuckers!" The thing was close enough to the trio that they could hear it, and the shout caught them all off guard. The following carnage caused two of the three ponies to lose their lunch. The third, however, slowly floated forward obliviously. Rainbow Dash was oddly entranced by this display of blood and gore. The thing never stopped, shouting various taunts to the demons the whole time. He was hit a few times, but didn't seem to pay much mind to his injuries, instead focused on inflicting them. Suddenly, one of the demons popped up in front of her, scaring her to the ground. She was paralyzed with fear, and she saw nothing but hate and blood lust in the creature's eyes. She knew that this was it; the moment of her death. She closed her eyes and waited, but instead felt something hot splashing on her, followed by the sound of pained growling. Opening her eyes, she saw a series of rotating teeth tearing through the creature. The demon roared in pain before being lifted up, revealing the green thing behind it, holding the rear end of the chainsaw. It brought it back around, slamming the demon to the ground before sawing the rest of the way through. Rainbow then realized that it was blood that splashed on her. The green thing then turned to her, its face obscured by a helmet.
What the hell was this? He had just killed every demon in the immediate area, and suddenly he found a small, blue horse with rainbow hair and wings. Part of him wanted to go ahead and saw it like he sawed the demons, but he had the feeling that, whatever this was, it wasn't from Hell. Seeing no threats nearby, he put the chainsaw away, looking to try and talk with the creature. However, when he opened his mouth to speak, blood came out, even dripping out his helmet. Without the adrenaline from danger, he was now painfully aware of multiple injuries to himself. Looks like he was hurt more than he thought. Soon after, he felt consciousness fading. Before he was gone, he had one last thought: 'I swear to God, if my guns are missing again when I wake up...'
Twilight and Fluttershy had just finished emptying their stomachs when they saw the thing save their cyan friend from a demon. They didn't even know what to think. Then they saw the creature wobble a bit before falling over, seemingly unconscious. Rainbow didn't waste any time in flying away, a trail of rainbow and some blood in her wake. Turning back to the creature, Twilight used her magic to pick it up. Well, it was more 'drag' than 'pick up'.
"Come on, Fluttershy, we should help... whatever this is, even if it did," she gagged, "do all that."
Fluttershy simply nodded weakly as the two exit the cave, leaving a confused cerberus at the gate.
There seemed to be no way out. He had been running for what felt like forever, and he never got near an exit. The constant laughing from the archviles didn't help matters. His shotgun was still holding out on ammo, but with at least 6 shells needed for each demon, they'd run out soon enough. This maze was built solely for him to suffer, and he knew it. The sadistic laughter just wouldn't stop, and he feared that they'd pop out at any corner before roasting him alive. Finally, he reached a teleporter that took him to a completely different place. Before he can sigh in relief, however, a wall opened up, revealing dozens of chain gun-wielding zombies. To make things even worse, there was no cover in the room at all. He cursed loudly moments before the zombies took aim...
He awoke with a start, instinctively reaching for his pistol. Pleased to find it still in his holster, he started to assess his current situation. The first thing he noticed is that, instead of waking up on the floor, he was in a bed (that was a bit too small for him). He was also not wearing his helmet, finding it placed on a bedside table. He focused, trying to remember what happened.
'Let's see, I had stopped the invasion... Then I got sidetracked, had to fight through some more demons... That was pretty fun. Anyway, then I-'
Freezing up, he remembered the small blue horse he had found, as well as the injuries he had sustained. There were bandages on various injuries on his arms and face, but he still was hurting quite a bit. And that still left the mystery of that blue horse. Namely, just what exactly was it?
His questions were interrupted by the realization that he didn't have his QSU on his back. He almost flipped out before he saw it on the ground next to the bed. Sighing with relief, he started to reach for it-
"H-Hello? Are you- Eep!"
Startled, the man pulled out his pistol just as the door slammed shut. Cautiously, he got up, noting that he still hurt a lot and his nose was bleeding. Having no idea what to expect, he headed to the door-
"Are you awake?"
-nearly getting it slammed in his face. He brought his gun up to aim, but didn't shoot. The largest reason for this was because of pure confusion over the fact that it was a purple unicorn at the door. While he was confused, the unicorn jumped across the room out of fear. "What are you doing there? And why are you up? You're still hurt pretty badly!"
Holstering the pistol, he weighed his options. He could just kill this unicorn right now with his bare hands, or he could try to talk to it, since she (at least it sounds like a 'she') seems to speak in his language.
"Are you listening to me? Why don't you answer-"
"No." With that one word, the unicorn shrank back, shutting up. "First, you're gonna answer some questions of mine. Understand?" She nodded weakly. "Okay then. First up: Where. The fuck. Am I?"
"Y-you're in Fluttershy's cottage, just outside of P-Ponyville, in Equestri-"
"Who is this 'Fluttershy' person?"
"She's the one who t-treated you..." The unicorn was trembling quite badly by now. Not saying another word, he went to his QSU. As he went through it, the unicorn's eyes went wide. "What are you-"
"Relax." He finally found what he was looking for: a white-cased syringe with a medical red cross on the side. "I'm just helping myself." Removing the cap, he injected it into his arm, making the unicorn wince. As the needle was removed, he felt some of his wounds closing up, and he gained back some strength. He placed the syringe on the table, also grabbing his helmet and QSU. Once properly equipped, he turned to the creature. "Now," he started, "who exactly are you?"
Her fear from earlier almost completely disappeared. "Twilight Sparkle, prize student of Princess Celestia," she says with pride.
"Well then, Twilight, we should go see Fluttershy, shouldn't we?"
"B-But-"
"But what?"
Suddenly, there's a loud noise from across the room. Turning around while pulling out his shotgun, he faced a large white horse with both a unicorn horn and wings, as well as wearing a crown. The two of them stared at each other for a while, neither one of them making a move, Twilight nearly hyperventilating the whole time.
The horse is the first to speak. "I am Princess Celestia. Would you kindly put down that weapon?"
"I don't have a good reason to."
"That's a shame." Her horn starts glowing, and his shotgun is wrenched from his grasp, covered in the same glow. "Now, you are the creature that my student has written me about?"
He was pissed, but played along. "I guess I am."
"In that case, first thing's first." She placed the shotgun on the bed. "We are a peaceful community here in Equestria, and I would like to ask you to relinquish all of your weapons."
"And if I don't?"
"Trust me, you will either way. Rest assured that they will be locked away safely where nopony can get to them."
Against his inner judgement, he complied. He started by removing the pistol from its holster, setting it next to the shotgun. Then he took out his other, double-barreled shotgun. As he placed his chainsaw, chain gun, rocket launcher, and plasma gun, along with all his ammo for each, on the bed, Celestia was dumbfounded. There was just no way that anything could hold that much stuff!
Finally, only a single weapon remained. Reluctantly, he pulled it out, struggling with the weight. Both Twilight and Celestia stared at it, wide-eyed in shock. It didn't even fit on the bed with the other guns (and chainsaw), so he was forced to put it on the floor.
"Alright, that's it."
Celestia was silent for a few seconds before she regained her composure. "Right." Her horn glowed again, and all the weapons and ammo disappeared in a flash of light. "With that out of the way, it is with open hooves that I welcome you to Equestria. However," her voice lowered, "if you do anything to harm my subjects, just know that I will make your life a living hell."
"Oh really? Because I just got done blowing the shit out of Hell. There's not much you can do to me."
Celestia hesitates for a brief moment before continuing. "Don't be so sure." Just as quickly as before, her voice changed back to the regal tone she had before. "Twilight?"
"Yes, Princess Celestia?" She was still sweating from the stand-off the two had just moments before.
"Take this... unusual... guest and introduce him to your friends."
"What?!" Twilight was caught completely off guard. "But... What he did to those... he KILLED them!"
"Yes, but he hasn't killed us yet, has he?"
With his helmet now on, Twilight couldn't read the thing's expression. "I... No..."
"Then I trust he won't in the future." Celestia glared at him. "Right?"
"I don't think they could do anything to me, after all that I've fought and killed, but alright."
"Good." With that, Celestia teleported out of the room, leaving a flabbergasted Twilight and a slightly pissed marine.
"Now then," he spoke up, "about meeting this 'Fluttershy'?"
"Oh, right. She's out here." She starts out the door, but stops and whirls around to face him. "Say, what's your name, anyway?"
For a moment, he was silent, thinking it over. Nodding to himself as he made a choice, he looked back at Twilight. "John Grimm."
Grimm followed Twilight out of the room into a living room of sorts. He couldn't help but notice that the place was packed with all kinds of woodland critters skittering about. When they caught sight of him, they all hid behind something.
'Glad to see that I'm being welcomed warmly,' he thought to himself.
Noticing that a nearby couch was shivering, Twilight walked over to it and checked under it. Sure enough, Fluttershy was there, cowering and covering her eyes.
"Fluttershy?" she whispered, trying not to scare the pegasus. "Don't worry, he won't hurt you."
"R- Really?"
Part of the unicorn's mind was a bit skeptical, but she ignored it. "Really."
Cautiously, Fluttershy got out from under the couch. When she saw him, she nearly ducked back under it, but Twilight stopped her. Taking deep breaths to calm herself, she greeted him. "H-Hello... I- I'm Flu..." She trailed off, her voice too quiet to hear.
"You're Fluttershy?" Grimm asked. Cowering back at his voice, she nodded quietly. "Well, I'm John Grimm." He held his hand out to shake hands/hooves. She cowered back from it, but then saw the intention behind the raised appendage and nervously shook the hand.
Out of nowhere, Grimm felt something hit him on the back of the head. Turning around, he saw a small rabbit throwing various things at him, most of which are easily dodged or swatted away.
"Angel!" Fluttershy scolded, hovering over to the bunny. "Don't be rude to our guest! He wasn't doing anything wrong!" She still wasn't that loud, but this was the loudest that he had heard the pegasus speak this whole time. The rabbit made some noises to Fluttershy, pointing at him a few times. "Yes, I know he's something different, but that doesn't mean you can throw things at him." The rabbit lowered his head. "Now apologize."
Angel hopped over to Grimm, head still down. He said something unintelligible to everyone but Fluttershy, who smiled. "He said he was sorry for what he did."
Looking down at the rabbit, he felt slightly moved; he reminded him of his own pet rabbit... "Apology accepted."
Angel brightened up a bit at this, and hopped out of the room. Fluttershy sighed. "He's a good bunny, but he can be so short-sighted at times."
"Well, in that case," Twilight spoke up, "we should probably get going. The princess told me to introduce Mr. Grimm here to all our friends."
"Oh, well, goodbye then!" As Grimm and Twilight left the cottage, Fluttershy couldn't help but worry about what the creature could do to her friends if he really wanted to...
Outside, Twilight began walking down a path, with Grimm following her. "Sweet Apple Acres isn't that far from here, so we can see another friend who lives there, Applejack, next." She glared at him. "For the record, I still don't think this is a good idea."
"I don't either, but this isn't the first time I had to follow orders I didn't like." Uncomfortably, the marine noticed that he subconsciously formed plans to kill Twilight and any nearby creatures with his bare hands.
'Relax, you're not in Hell anymore. Don't kill anybody,' he told himself. As he did this, a nagging question he had since he got here resurfaced. "Say, Twilight?"
"What?"
"What exactly do those marks on your backside mean?"
Twilight looked over her shoulder, spotting her cutie mark. "Oh, these are cutie marks. Everypony has one. It represents that pony's special talent. Mine shows that I'm good with magic, Fluttershy's shows that she's good with animals, and Princess Celestia's shows that she controls the sun."
'Cutie marks? It's like I came from Hell and landed in a cartoon for little girls.' Glancing at the midday-sun, he returned to his questions. "So what exactly is the history of this 'Equestria' place? Is everyone a pony?"
Twilight then dove into a lecture on the basic history and customs of ponies, explaining the three kinds of ponies there are, and the differences between them. As the history lesson went on, Grimm felt himself get more and more confused. Thankfully for him, they soon got within view of a farm, Twilight stopping just as she started explaining "The Helements of Armory" or something. Approaching the farm, he spotted an orange pony with yellow hair and a cutie mark of apples hauling carts of apples to a barn. From what little he listened to from Twilight's explanation, he knew she was an earth pony.
"Hey, Applejack!" the unicorn called out. The orange mare turned her head.
"Heya, Twi', what're you doin' out he-" She stopped when she saw Grimm, a confused expression entering her face. "Um, sugercube, ah don't mean t' be rude, but who's that?"
Grimm gave a short nod of his head. "John Grimm, marine."
"Marine? That like a soldier 'r somethin'?"
"You could say that, yes."
"Well, then, howdy!" She rather excitedly shook his hand. "Ah'm Applejack, and this here," she motioned outward to acres of apple trees, "is Sweet Apple Acres, home of the best apples in Ponyville!"
"Well, now that we're all acquainted," Twilight broke in, "where's everypony else?"
"I reckon Big Mac's out buckin' apples, Granny Smith's takin' her afternoon nap, and ah think Applebloom said she was goin' with her friends t' do somethin'."
"Oh. Well, I'm under the princess's orders to take Mr. Grimm here and introduce him to our friends. So I'll guess we'll be going."
"Alright, see ya'll two later!" While the two left, Applejack resumed her work of bringing in more apples. For some reason, that Grimm person seemed a bit... off.
Now traveling again, Twilight resumed her lecture, much to Grimm's dismay.
While Grimm was being instructed on what the "Elements of Harmony" were by Twilight, neither of them noticed some of the bushes on the edge of the path rustling, and didn't hear the whispering coming from it.
"Quiet, you! You'll give us away!"
"Ah'm bein' perfectly quiet! It's Sweetie Belle makin' the noise!"
"What! No I'm not!"
"Both of you shut up! We're gonna lose him, and I want to see what he is!"
"Why are we doin' this again?"
"Because, aren't you curious about what he is? Besides, we might get our cutie marks from this!"
"If you say so, Scoots..."
"Wait... Aww, drat, he's gone!"
"Well, ah'm sure we can find him again."
A cry of "CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS NINJA FOLLOWERS! YAY!" broke out of the bush, followed by more frantic rustling, which was then followed by silence.
"...only used the Elements of Harmony twice, and both times they were used to defeat formidable opponents..."
Twilight had been going on for about 5 minutes now, and Grimm had all but tuned out. Thankfully, years of being in the military trained him to look like he's actually listening while he really wasn't.
"...wanted to lock Equestria into an eternal night, but we managed to stop..."
He was all for learning the local customs and such, but he didn't expect to be bombarded with a full-blown history lesson. It was like high school all over again, only without the benefit of going out with the cheerleader.
"...and then Discord began creating chaos, generally by doing things like making the cotton candy clouds that were filled with chocolate rain..."
'Wait, chocolate rain? Wasn't there some really old song about that?'
"And that's what the Elements of Harmony are used for."
Hearing the end of the speech, Grimm snapped back to reality. "That was... interesting, to say the least."
Twilight's expression became a bit annoyed. "You don't sound very enthusiastic."
"Well, truth be told, I didn't solve my problems with 'The Power of Friendship' or anything like that. I had to rely on good old-fashioned firepower, or, sometimes, even these." He held up his gloved hands, giving a small flex of his arms. "You would not believe just how many things I ripped apart with these hands..." While the unicorn looked horrified, the marine looked as if he was fondly remembering a fun memory.
"Right... That reminds me, you said you... umm... 'Blew up Hell.' What do you mean by that, exactly?"
"Exactly what I said: I went to Hell, fucked some shit up, then left, and I wound up here. That's the short version of that."
"So... there's more?"
"Yeah, but given how you reacted to my comment of ripping things apart, I probably shouldn't tell you the details."
"Well... you see, I'm like a scientist, so I like to record any kind of history or facts I can find, and you seem to have some... history."
"I've dealt with scientists before, I understand what you mean."
"So... that's a yes?"
"Seems like it." During the conversation, the two had arrived into a small town. Grimm noted that looked almost primitive.
'This must be Ponyville.' He noticed that the streets had other ponies milling about, and they all stopped and stared as he walked by, some of them even running away. He didn't blame them; he was essentially an alien to them.
Twilight led the way to a round building with a silhouette of a pony mannequin on a sign over the doorway. Twilight walked in the door and Grimm followed, having to duck under the door frame. Inside, there was a white unicorn with blue hair bustling around, carrying various sewing tools and materials with her magic.
The unicorn turned around while speaking. "Welcome to the Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and mag...nif..." Predictably, she stopped and stared when she saw Grimm. She then let's out a small scream, but instead of running away as he expected, she runs straight towards him, dropping everything she had. "Oh, that outfit is hideous!" She began running around Grimm, inspecting his armor. "It has no fashion at all! It looks like it's falling apart, and worst of all, it's such a sickly shade of green!" She looked up at him. "Do you really consider this fashionable?"
"Not-"
"Never mind that! I must fix this problem!" The unicorn ran off, grabbing more fabric and tools before going into a work room, shutting the door behind her. Twilight sighed and looked at the ground.
"Typical Rarity," she whispered, before turning to Grimm. "Will you excuse me for a sec?" She went into the room Rarity went into, also closing the door behind her. Without even moving, he could hear them from the other side of the door.
"Twilight, don't interrupt me when I'm correcting a crime of fashion!"
"That's not important! There is somepony new out there, and you're completely ignoring them!"
"Twilight, darling, have you seen his ensemble? It's positively a crime, nay, a declaration of war against fashion!"
"Rarity, you can worry about this later! Right now, come welcome him!"
The two unicorns seem to get in a small fight, followed by Twilight leaving the room, dragging Rarity behind her by her tail. When she was in front of Grimm, Twilight lets her go, and Rarity turned to face him, looking disgusted at him (or more accurately, his armor). "Right. I've been told that you are somepony new here. I am Rarity, and I run this boutique. Despite your... interesting... attire, I feel that I should welcome you to Ponyville." She extended a hoof, and he shook it. "And you are?"
"Grimm. John Grimm."
"Well then, John, the first thing we should do is fix that... problem... with your outfit."
"This 'problem' has saved my life more times than I can count. It doesn't need fixing."
"Actually," Twilight says, "you should probably get some normal clothes if you're going to stay here, since everypony might get freaked out when you're wearing that armor."
"Yeah, it's not the six-foot beast walking around that scares them, it's the armor."
"Just a suggestion."
"Well..." He turned back to Rarity. "I guess it won't hurt-"
"Wonderful!" She turned to run into the work room again, but he caught her by the tail.
"Wait. First, some basic guide lines: I want something simple. Nothing gaudy, just plain clothes, in any color you want."
Her expression dropped. "What? Something plain? Do you know who I am?"
"No, really, and I don't care what you usually do. Something plain, or nothing at all."
She pouted. "Fine. I'll accept this as a sort of challenge." She picked up a tape measurer and started measuring Grimm for his clothes before running off into the work room. Twilight sighed again.
"That's Rarity for you... Now, on to the next friend."
"I'm brimming with excitement," Grimm dead panned.
Back outside, the two headed off in a different direction, soon coming across a building that looked like it was made from gingerbread. Before they enter, however, there was a large gasp from beside them. Turning, they saw a pink earth pony with a pink mane hanging in the air while doing the exaggerated gasp. Landing, she started hopping up and down.
"Ohmygoshohmygosh! I just knew there was somepony new here, because my Pinkie sense told me so, andIjustwantedtoseeifitwastrueanditwas! We're gonna have a party, and there'll be cake and cupcakes and muffinsandprobablysomemorecakeandchimicherrychangas-"
"Stop." The pink pony stopped immediately. 'It's like she's wired on cocaine, sugar, and Red Bull all at once.' "Okay, I take it you're another of Twilight's friends?"
"Yep! I'm Pinkie Pie, party expert extraordinaire! What's your name?"
"John Grimm."
"Grimm? That's a funny name, but a lot of names sound weird when you think about it, really."
"...Right."
"Anyway, Pinkie," Twilight said, "you wouldn't happen to have this party planned for tomorrow, would you?"
"I sure do!"
"Well... Do you think you can... delay the party?"
Somehow, Pinkie's hair actually deflated. "Delay the party?"
"It's just that... Mr. Grimm here is kinda new to Equestria, so we should probably hold off a party until he's more used to it here, okay?"
Pinkie's hair inflated back to its former bounciness. "Okie dokie lokie!" She hopped into the gingerbread building, and Grimm and Twilight headed off.
"Well, the only one left to meet is Rainbow Dash, but nopony's seen her since... we found you." She gagged slightly at the memory, but holds her composure. "I guess you'll have to meet her later."
"Fine by me."
"Now, about the scientific research..."
"Research?"
"Well, you are kind of a new creature, so it's in the best interest of science that I see what I can learn about you."
"...alright, I guess." Following her to a library in a tree (He didn't even bother being surprised anymore), he entered behind the unicorn, ready for what would pretty much be an interview.
Inside the literal tree house was a library, with bookshelves running wall to wall.
"Since you don't have a place to stay yet, you're free to stay at the library for now, despite my better judgement."
"Alright then." Grimm took off his QSU and started looking through it.
"Wait, I thought you gave all of your weapons to the princess?"
"I did." He placed a syringe similar to the one he used earlier on the table. "Despite what I said, I don't carry only weapons." He placed three other syringes on the table, along with two that had a black case instead of white. Next, he simply held the QSU upside-down and shook it, causing a large amount of skulls and cards to fall out, all of which were either red, blue, or yellow.
Twilight looked both scared and confused. "How exactly do you hold all of that?"
"The wonders of modern technology," he said, holding up the now empty QSU. "Every marine in the UAC has one of these."
"Which reminds me, what's your story? What is the 'UAC'?"
Grimm then gave a fairly basic explanation of how he got into the military, only for him to start explaining the history behind humans in general at Twilight's request. He did his best to tell the history, keeping it as basic as possible. Much to Twilight's suspicion (and horror), the human race had so many wars that most people just stopped caring about it. Grimm used this explanation of war to start talking about how his family had been in the military for generations, leading to him joining when he got out of high school. A spot was open in the United Aerospace Corporation, so he took it. There was no war going on at the time, but there were protests due to the recent rapid advances in technology. Because of this, he found himself in a situation where he was ordered to fire into an unarmed group of civilians.
Twilight gulped. "So... did you..."
"Shoot?"
She nods.
"Nope. Punched my CO in the face, instead. Got transferred to Mars because of it. And let me tell you, it was boring as hell. All we'd do is stand around and guard various scientists from nothing, since only the UAC currently had access to Mars. Some of the things they worked on were weapons programs, as well as a teleportation project." He sighs. "One day, the teleportation labs on Phobos, one of the moons, sent a distress signal. In response, they sent a team of marines, which I was a part of." While he was telling his story, he inspected his helmet, seeing a faint red light just above the visor. "Hey, I forgot about this. We had to start our helmet cams every day, as part of regulation. Mine had been going this whole time, and I just forgot about it." Fumbling around with the helmet, he found a button for playback. The visor started up a holographic screen, much to Twilight's wonder. Fast forwarding, he started it again at a certain point, the screen showing the inside of a ship.
"Ten seconds to touch down!"
The screen moved to a window, showing the surface of Phobos. The ship flew close to a hanger, landing outside it. Nine marines, dressed in similar armor and helmets to Grimm, started to file out, each grabbing a shotgun from a rack. A hand emerged from behind the camera, but the last shotgun is grabbed before the hand can get it.
"Sorry, Grimm, looks like you're on guard duty."
"Screw you, Jackson."
Twilight recognized the voice as Grimm's, and realized that the video is from his point of view. The marines filed out of the craft, all but Grimm going inside a nearby building. While he just stood at the door with his pistol, the others talked over the radio.
"What the hell happened here?"
"I don't know, stay alert."
"Wait, I got movement."
"Hold your fire, we don't know if it's hosti-SWEET JESUS!"
The sounds of gunfire and screams came through the radio, eventually stopping with a final gurgled "Send help..."
Grimm entered the building, the walls covered in bullet holes and blood. As he ascended some stairs, he was attacked by zombies wielding shotguns, which he dispatched quickly. Taking the guns, he continued through the area, killing more zombies and a few demons.
As the video went on, Twilight became more and more sickened at the bloodshed. In the video, Grimm sounded shaken up at first, but then it starts to sound like he enjoyed it. A couple of times, she had to stop to empty her stomach again, Grimm stopping the video until she returned. Despite this, she insisted on watching the rest of it. Grimm fast forwarded the video past the more repetitive parts when needed.
Eventually, the video arrived at the point where Grimm had came to Equestria, at which point he stopped it. "Well, that's my story." Looking over to Twilight, he found her just sitting in shock. "Umm... You okay?"
She shook her head, breaking out of her stupor. "Y- Yeah, I'm f-fine..." She was shaken up from the video, and it showed.
"I warned you it was a bit... graphic..."
"I'll just... go to bed now..." Shakily, she walked upstairs and got into bed, falling into an uneasy sleep. Meanwhile, back downstairs, Grimm started looking through the books, wanting to learn a little more about the local area. He glanced to the pile of keys he had, thinking.
'Where am I gonna put all those...'
Outside the window, a tower made of three fillies toppled over.
"Ow! Why'd you drop me?"
"Ah dropped you 'cause o' your fat flank!"
"You two stop fighting! Did you see anything?"
"He made some light come out of his helmet, and him and Twilight watched it for a while. Twilight looked kinda distraught by something-"
"'Distraught?' What're you, a dictionary?"
"Let me finish! She went upstairs, and he just started to read."
"Weird, usually Rarity has something for me to do..."
Spike was just leaving the Carousel Boutique, confused about why Rarity didn't need his help. Usually, she let him help in some way, even if it's only to act as a pincushion. This time, however, she was busy working on some kind of outfit. When he asked her about it, all she said was that she was "correcting a horrible mistake in fashion!"
Walking through the streets of Ponyville, he was getting closer to his tree home. Twilight should've been back from that errand she said she had to run by now. The three fillies comprising the Cutie Mark Crusaders ran by, none of them paying the dragon any mind.
Going up to the door of the library, he opened it before entering and calling out.
"Hey, Twilight, I'm back. How did that-" When he saw a strange creature sitting in a chair, he stopped in his tracks. "You're not Twilight."
Grimm looked up from the book he was reading. "And you're a dragon."
Spike just silently shut the door. "And what are you, and why are you here?"
"Long story, I'm basically a guest here until further notice."
The dragon just shrugged; this wasn't the weirdest thing to happen to him. His eyes fell on the pile of keys on the ground. "Those yours?"
"Yeah, I guess. Why?"
Spike picked a skull-shaped one up, finding it to be a gem of some kind. "Mind if I have 'em?"
"Knock yourself out, I have no need for them."
Picking up more of the keys, he began popping a few into his mouth. They tasted like normal gems, but these were a bit different. "Say, where did you get these, anyway?"
"Picked them up while I was in Hell." Grimm just went back to his book.
Spike stopped chewing the gems and put them back in the pile slowly. "So, mind telling me the full story behind you?"
The marine let out an annoyed sigh. "I would just show you the same thing I showed Twilight, but she didn't take it too well, so I figure that we just leave it at 'I saved the world' and call it a day."
"Speaking of which, where is Twilight?"
"She's upstairs, said she was gonna sleep for a bit."
Spike just shrugged again and went off to kill some time before Twilight woke up, and Grimm continued reading.
Rainbow Dash was curled up into a ball on the floor of her cloud home. Dried blood from that incident still covered her here and there. She was shivering uncontrollably, not able to cope with what she had been through just yet. The events kept replaying themselves in her head:
The first sighting of the creature.
That creature killing everything in Tartarus.
Her drifting too far forwards and being attacked.
The creature from earlier tearing the demon apart right in front of her.
That creature just standing there, looking at her, before falling over.
Ever since she had flew home after that, she hadn't left. Her mind was filled with questions, none of them being answered. Finally, she managed to push herself on her hooves, standing shakily. She was still horribly confused, but she remembered that Twilight and Fluttershy were with her when that happened, and she saw them on her way out. She had to make sure they were safe, and if they weren't...
Rainbow Dash flew from her cloud home, going as fast as her wings could take her. She had to make sure that her friends were alright. If they weren't, she'd find that thing. And she'd kill it, personally.
Up ahead, she saw Twilight's library. Slowing down, she went to the window to look inside. Instead of finding Twilight reading about something, or maybe Spike working, she saw something else. On a nearby table, she saw a helmet. She recognized that helmet. Not too far from that table was the creature she saw, leaning against a bookshelf while reading. Dash was filled with rage. Obviously, this creature had killed Twilight and was now reading all of her books! She wasn't going to stand for this.
Grimm was just finishing the book he was reading, when a nearby window shattered. Jumping into a fighting stance, he saw the rainbow-haired pegasus that he saw when he first got here. She still had spots of dried blood on her, and she looked pissed.
"You!" she spoke. "You killed Twilight, didn't you? And now you're reading her books!"
"What the fuck!? No! I didn't kill Twilight!"
"Don't you lie to me!" She jumped forward, aiming a hoof for Grimm's face. He dodged and grabbed her leg, using her momentum to swing her away. She let out a roar from pure rage, and jumped again. This time, he was caught off guard, and she pinned him to the ground, ready to start beating his face with her hooves. Thankfully, this wasn't the first time something like this had happened to the marine. Grabbing the hoof in mid swing, he used his other arm to punch Dash off of him. Not wasting any time, he went over and got her into a headlock. He nearly broke her neck, out of force of habit, but he restrained himself.
"Listen to me! Twilight's fine! She's upstairs, sleeping!"
"Why should I believe you?" No matter how much she tried, she couldn't escape from his hold on her.
"Because, quite frankly, I could kill you in one movement right now, if I wanted to."
"No, I did not kill any ponies! What's it gonna take for you to get that?" Just then, Spike walked back into the room.
"What are you doing in he-" He paused for a few seconds upon seeing the scene in front of him. "Dash, why are you here, and why does he have you in a headlock?"
"Hey, you!" Grimm said to him. "Could you go wake up Twilight? We have a bit of a dispute here."
Not saying another word, Spike went upstairs. Dash kept trying to escape his hold, but he never relented. Soon, Spike returned with Twilight following him. Upon seeing Dash and Grimm, she gasped. "Grimm! What are you doing?!"
"Self-defense, she thought I killed you and Fluttershy." He finally lets the pegasus go, and she almost charges at him again, before she sees Twilight.
"Wait, so, if you're not dead... Then..." She looked back and forth between Grimm and Twilight, before lowering her head. "Oh, horseapples..."
"Why would you think he killed us, Rainbow? Was it because of what he did-" She remembered not only what happened there, but everything else he went through, causing her to stop for a second before continuing. "-what he did back there?"
"You saw what he did! He killed those things! And I was right there!"
"And you're forgetting, I saved your ass." Everyone looked at Grimm, who was leaning on the bookshelf again. "That thing that had you pounced? It wouldn't have thought twice about simply eating your face off." Dash was terrified, Twilight was horrified because she knew he was right, and Spike was just confused.
"Wait, so what exactly am I missing, here?"
"Nothing, Spike." Twilight recomposed herself. "Well, Rainbow Dash, you should apologize to Mr. Grimm here."
Begrudgingly, she complied. "I'm sorry for... attacking you..."
"And I'm sorry for... wait, I didn't do anything wrong, here." Twilight glared at him, but he just shrugged.
"Well... as long as nopony was seriously hurt... But now you two need to clean up this mess."
Groaning, the marine and the pegasus begin picking up books and chairs.
One of the cerberus's heads yawned. Guarding the gates of Tartatus was a dull job, but it was still an important one. It considered running off again; it would be less boring, and it liked Fluttershy.
Suddenly, it heard a hissing noise from above. All three heads looked up, and saw a pair of big mouth... floating... things floating over the gates. The cerberus immediately got into a battle stance, all three heads snarling. The things opened their mouths, and bluish fireballs flew out, striking the cerberus, who roared in pain while swiping at them.
As they fought, another flying thing, this one with arms, went to the gate, pulling it open as much as it could. It was enough, and all manner of demons and hell-spawn funneled out. The cerberus was soon overrun and killed, the lesser demons feeding on the corpse. A large demon, looking like a pink minotaur, walked past them, intent on finding out just what this new world had to offer.
As Grimm and Dash cleaned up the library, he told both her and Spike an abridged version of what he went through, leaving out the bloodier details. Both of them brought up occasional questions, but otherwise they stayed silent. Soon, the mess was cleaned up, and Dash went ahead and flew off. Grimm went back to reading, before he realized that he was actually pretty bored. For the last few days, he hadn't gone a moment without either something trying to kill him or him killing something. As strange as it was, he quite enjoyed that constant sense of danger, the feeling of a demon's vertebrae in his fist...
But he was getting off track. He was bored, and he needed to find something to do. At that moment, Twilight walked into the room. "I'm sorry about what happened with Rainbow Dash, Grimm. She can be a bit... hasty... in her decision making."
"No worries, I honestly don't blame her. By the way, is there anything I could do around town or anything? I'm not used to nothing trying to kill me for more than a few minutes, and I'm getting kinda antsy."
"Umm... well..." She tapped her hoof on her chin, trying to think. "I think... Honestly, I don't know if there's anything you could do."
"In that case, I'll just take a walk, maybe see if Rarity's finished with that outfit." He loaded all the syringes back into his QSU, along with his helmet, then walked to the door.
"Wait! The town's not used to you! They might-"
"Overreact? Let 'em." With that, he exited the library. Outside, more ponies were milling about, and they reacted predictably to seeing the armor-clad human. Shrugging, Grimm headed towards Rarity's boutique. On the way there, he was sure he heard one of them yell "I told you they were real!"
'Probably nothing,' he thought to himself. Now at the boutique, he headed inside, not seeing Rarity- or anybody ('Anypony?') else. "Rarity?" he called out. He heard hooves heading his way, but instead of Rarity, it was a small filly that looked a bit similar to the white unicorn he was looking for. Upon seeing him, she stopped and stared.
"Umm... hi," Grimm started. "Is Rarity here? I want to see if she's finished with my outfit yet."
Without saying anything, the small unicorn pointed a hoof towards a door. Grimm thanked her before going up to the door and knocking.
"Not now! I am busy!"
"Rarity? It's me, Grimm."
There was silence on the other side for a few seconds, followed by the door opening, showing Rarity. "What do you need, Mr. Grimm?"
"I was going to see if my outfit was finished yet."
Her jaw dropped. "But it's only been a few hours! I haven't even started putting the gems in yet-"
"Gems? I thought I said I didn't want it to be gaudy."
"I know, but I can't stand to make something so... simple!"
"Just let me see it." Despite Rarity's protests, Grimm forced his way into the door. Inside, he saw the beginnings of a tuxedo on a stand. "This is still a bit too high-class."
"Well what do you want me to do? I make outfits for high-class ponies!"
"Just let me modify it to my tastes." He began ripping parts of the outfit away, much to Rarity's horror, until all that was left was a basic undershirt and trousers.
While Rarity was panicking, wondering why anypony would dare defile one of her works before it was even done, Grimm managed to get changed quickly, placing his armor on the ground. "This'll work." Suddenly, something else came to mind. "Say, how am I gonna pay for this?"
"I... But... J-Just take it." The unicorn slumped to the ground, still in despair over the loss of one of her outfits. Grimm put his armor in the QSU, then left the boutique. Outside, he still got plenty of curious looks and ponies running away in terror, but there seemed to be less of those reactions now. Now outfitted for causal life, he continued on his walk.
Sweetie Belle ran as fast as her legs could carry her to the CMC clubhouse. The thing not only paid a visit to her sister's boutique, but he asked for clothes from her! This could be a breakthrough for the Crusaders to find their cutie marks!
Stumbling into the clubhouse, she found Applebloom and Scootaloo lounging around, doing nothing.
"Girls.. I... that... thing... Rarity... clothes..." Sweetie Belle was completely out of breath from her run here.
"Spit it out!" Scootaloo was impatient to hear whatever it was Sweetie had to say.
"Did that thing visit your sister's place?"
Sweetie nodded. "He... even asked for... an outfit from... her!" The young unicorn collapsed on the ground, catching her breath.
The other two didn't react much. "So?"
"So? It means we could get our cutie marks from this!"
Applebloom shrugged. "Can't hurt t' try."
The three fillies filed out of the clubhouse, planning yet another hair-brained scheme.
This new world would be perfect. It was so... pure. So... untouched. It would make it all the more satisfying when they took it over. And best of all, he wasn't here. They lost him back in Hell, but they figured he had went back to his own world. Taking this place would be too easy.
The pink minotaur headed back to the gates of Tartarus, leaving the corpses of many woodland creatures in its wake. Even if this world was defenseless, there was still planning to do...
Heading out of town, Grimm took in a breath of fresh air. It had been a while since he could smell the world without the constant edge of blood and ash. It was relaxing, but at the same time, it was... unnerving. He still had occasional urges to rip and tear, but he was able to suppress them. He knew he wasn't exactly right in the head, but he figured that he couldn't do much about it. The fact that he felt like he was being followed didn't help much. He wondered if it was possible that something could've followed him out of Hell...
'Nah, if it was a demon, they would've attacked me already.'
Still, he checked behind him every once in a while, always being answered by just some bushes rustling in the wind. This continued until he came across what he recognized as Fluttershy's cottage, where he decided to head back into town. But when he turned around, he saw a flash of purple ducking into a bush. Looks like he was being followed.
"Alright, whoever's there, you can come out now."
At first, nothing happens. Then, three fillies walked out of the bush. Grimm recognized one of them from Rarity's boutique, but the other two were new.
"So, mind telling me why you were following me?"
The yellow, red-maned one spoke up. "We jus' wanted t' know what you were..."
"Well, I can answer that for you right now. I'm a human." He began walking back to Ponyville, and he heard the three following him.
"A human? Didn't Lyra keep goin' on about 'em?"
"I think so... So, how are we supposed to get our cutie marks from this?"
"I dunno, maybe he'll have an idea." Grimm felt his leg being tapped, and he turned to see the orange pegasus filly looking up at him. "Would you know any way we could get our cutie marks?"
He read about how ponies got their cutie marks, something about discovering their natural talents, but that was as far as his knowledge went on the matter. "Nope, not at all." The three look disappointed at his words. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get them one of these days."
By now, they had arrived back in Ponyville, and the three young ponies went off to try yet another idea for cutie mark acquisition. Grimm, meanwhile, headed back to the library. All of the shades were drawn over the windows, and it was very dark from what he could see. Partially out of habit, he took his helmet out and put it on before turning on the night-vision function. Opening the door, he saw the silhouettes of about seven ponies, all of which seemed to be looking in his direction.
Suddenly, the lights bursted on, and the helmet's night-vision automatically kicked off. He now saw that the seven ponies included Twilight and her friends, as well as a green unicorn that he hadn't seen before. Above them was a banner reading "Welcome to Ponyville, Grimm!", written in very festive lettering. All at once, the ponies yelled:
"Surprise!"
Removing the helmet, he remarked, "I thought the party was delayed."
Out of nowhere, Pinkie Pie jumped in front of him. "Oh, it was! But then Twilight said that you'd like it if we had it today, although not many ponies wanted to come, except Lyra here," she points to the green unicorn, who waved, "because I think you scared the whole town, kinda like how Zecora did a while ago, except this is different, because you'reoneofthose'human'thingsandnotazebra,andI'msuretheauthorwantedtomovethissceneupsohecouldgetitoutoftheway,and-"
Holding up a hand, Grimm silenced the pink pony. "Calm down, it's fine." He looked at all the ponies present, all of which were looking at him expectantly. "I guess I don't mind if we have the party now."
All of them let out a cheer, before they separated. Applejack and Pinkie went to one of the tables set up with food, Fluttershy did her best to simply sit and talk with Rarity, Dash went over to Applejack, and Twilight and Lyra approached Grimm.
"Grimm, I'd like you to meet Lyra, another friend of mine." Lyra offered a hoof, and he shook it. "She's rather... interested in humans, and she said she wanted to meet you." The whole time, the green unicorn in question had a wide smile on her face. While Twilight headed off to do something else, Lyra looked at Grimm more. It was a bit unsettling.
"So... uhh... you were interested in-"
"Humans?" Lyra's outburst nearly makes Grimm jump out of his skin. "Yeah, I always knew they- err, you, were real. Nopony ever believes me, though, but now that you're here, they have to believe me!"
"Umm... yeah, I guess." She then proceeded to assault the human with questions, most of which are very mundane ("How do humans stay balanced on their hind legs so well?" "What do you use your hands for?" "How do humans survive without magic?"). Funny, he had went through Hell and back, twice, and yet this unicorn made him feel more unsettled than anything he ran into there.
Eventually, the mare arrived at a question that Grimm had figured would end badly. "So, what exactly do humans eat?"
By this point, he was more annoyed than unsettled. "Vegetables, fruits, meat, grains-"
"Wait." Lyra's expression went dark. "Did you say humans eat... meat?"
"Well, yeah." He then became aware that everyone had stopped talking amongst themselves and were looking at him. Most of them look horrified. After a few tense seconds, he understood why.
"But we don't eat ponies." Half of them sigh with relief, while Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy still looked uneasy. He took this opportunity to excuse himself from the barrage of questions, heading to a table with various bottles and cups on it.
'I need a freaking drink...' Grabbing a bottle, he doesn't even look at it before chugging it down. It burned his throat like he expected, but it wasn't an alcoholic burn. Looking at the bottle, he saw a label reading "Pink Brand Hot Sauce". 'Huh. Hadn't done something like that since I was in college.'
Behind him, Pinkie Pie saw Grimm down the entire bottle of hot sauce, and he barely even reacted! She hopped up to him, pointing at the bottle. "Did you just drink all of that?"
"I guess I did, yeah. Why, were you planning on having that bottle?"
"Nah, it's okay." She rolled a mini-fridge full of bottles of hot sauce out of seemingly nowhere. "I've got plenty where that came from! I love this stuff!" she said before popping the lid off a bottle and chugging the whole thing.
"It is pretty good stuff." The two looked at each other, and their expressions turned serious. In that moment, an unspoken challenge was issued between them, and with one last look of confirmation, they both start grabbing bottles of hot sauce and downing them in one gulp. Everyone else at the party soon saw the duel between pony and human, followed by ponies rooting for both involved. But the two didn't notice this. All they noticed were the bottles of hot sauce, and each other. They were battling for honor, and nothing would break them out of it.
"Okay, ready?"
"I don't think this is such a good idea..."
"C'mon, Sweetie Belle, you want t' get your cutie mark 'r not?"
"Fine..."
The Cutie Mark Crusaders were ready to start running through a patch of trees tied to each other, in a "9-legged race" of sorts. They somehow hoped to get their cutie marks from this, despite the fact that they were all trying for the same thing at once.
"Go!"
The three fillies started running at once, leading to all of them tripping and falling over their own legs. After they untangled themselves, they began placing blame on one another, none of them noticing the bushes rustling. Except for Sweetie Belle, who only managed to get the attention of her friends after hitting them over the head.
"Ow!"
"What'd you do that for, Sweetie Belle?"
"Look!" She pointed a hoof at the bushes, and the trio started getting up. After five seconds of rustling, a very tall... creature of some kind walked through. It looked like one of those minotaurs that they had read about in school, only pink. They stared at each for a while, neither one moving, until Scootaloo broke the silence.
"...Hi?"
The creature roared in response, causing the three fillies to scream and run in the opposite direction. Looking back, Applebloom shrieked again before ducking as a green fireball hit a tree behind her. They continued running, wanting desperately to escape this monster.
After three tense minutes of drinking, Grimm and Pinkie had both managed to empty the entire hot-sauce fridge. The impromptu contest between them was called a draw as a result. "Hey, it was all in good fun, right?"
"But look at the mess you two made!" Twilight motioned to all the empty bottles of hot-sauce littering the ground of the library. Pinkie bounced up to her and rubbed her head.
"Oh, don't worry, Twilight! I'll have this cleaned up in a jiffy!" In a whirl of movement, she picked up all the bottles faster than eyes could follow.
"How did she do that?" an incredulous Grimm asked.
"I find it much easier to maintain sanity if you just ignore most of what Pinkie does," the purple unicorn responded.
Shrugging in response, the marine watched as the party began to wind down. Suddenly, there was a series of rapid knocks on the door, followed by the three fillies Grimm met earlier tumbling through. Applejack, Rarity, and Dash were the first to react, going up to the three.
"Good heavens, Applebloom! What's wrong?"
"Sweetie Belle! What ever is the problem?"
"Scoots? You okay?"
The fillies began talking rapidly all at once, making it impossible to understand any of it.
"Girls!" Twilight silenced all of them. "One at a time, what's wrong?"
The orange one started explaining. "We were near the Everfree Forest, and-"
"Now why in the hay were y'all near the Everfree Forest?"
"We were trying to get our cutie marks, and this big... monster came out and roared at us!"
"What kind of monster was it?"
Sweetie Belle spoke up. "It was big... and tall... and it was kind of pink... it looked kind of like those minotaurs we read about in school."
Applebloom interjected. "And it threw green fireballs at us!"
The whole time, Grimm was taking in the description of this 'monster'. Suddenly, a bolt of recognition hit him. Without saying a word, he walked quickly out of the library.
"Grimm?" Twilight asked. "Where are you going?" She chased after him, the rest of the ponies following.
"Solving this problem." He began putting his armor and helmet back on, soon fully outfitted.
"But you don't know where it is, or even what it is!"
"Oh, trust me, I'm sure I know what it is." The mare suddenly remembered that tape, and fell back with the rest of the group, explaining the situation to them. As they exit the town, Applejack trotted up to Grimm.
"Ah ain't lettin' you do this alone. That thing nearly hurt mah sister, and ah ain't lettin' it get off scot free from that."
"It's probably better you let me do this alone. I know what it is, and I know how to take care of it." He then sprinted off in the direction of the forest, ready to deal some death. Applejack still followed closely behind, intent on helping whether he needed it or not.
Soon, Grimm came across a burnt tree, a trail of heavy hoof-steps nearby. He followed the trail slowly, ready for anything. Ducking into a bush, he saw what he feared: Up ahead in a clearing was one of those pink bastards, accompanied by a slightly smaller, tan, minotaur-esque demon, and a flying red one. Behind him, Applejack creeped into the bush.
"Just what the hay are those things?" she whispered.
"Demons." Grimm pulled out one of the black syringes. "Now, I need you to stay out of my way." After thinking, he added, "And keep the little ones from seeing this."
"What? Why?"
"Because it's about to get real messy," he replied, removing the cap on the syringe. "Now go!"
Reluctantly, Applejack obeyed. Now alone, Grimm injected himself, instantly feeling the chemical's effects. His vision turning red, he stepped into the clearing, getting the attention of the hell-spawn. Staring them down, the marine cracked his knuckles and his neck, before saying, "Looking for me?"
The demons roared in response, before throwing green and blue fireballs in his direction. He sidestepped them before running forward, heading for the flying one first. It hissed at him before shooting another blue fireball, which he dodged with ease. Now in striking distance, the creature flew forward, hoping to catch the marine in its massive jaws. At first, it seemed like it succeeded, but it realized too late that was what he wanted, as Grimm tore the top half of the demon from the bottom while letting out a roar of his own, coating him in its blue blood. Turning to the other two, he saw Rainbow Dash flying around them, easily dodging their fireballs while occasionally landing a hoof on their heads.
"You two are pathetic! I've flown through clouds tougher than you! I thought you were supposed to be some kind of big bad de-" Her insults were cut short as the tan one lands a claw on her, sending her flying into a nearby tree. Before they can finish her, however, Grimm ran up and punched the tan one square in the face. Regaining their attention, Grimm dodged more fireballs with ease. He started to focus on the pink one, but barely spotted the other lunge at him. He rolled under the creature before turning around and punching through its back. Laughing maniacally under his helmet, he retracted his hand, now holding the spine of the demon, head still attached. Now facing the sole remaining enemy, he started using the spine as an improvised weapon, wailing on the pink demon's hide until it literally crumbles in his hands. Not wasting a single moment, he plunged one hand through the chest of the creature. His other hand does the same, and he liberated the creature's left half from its right. Now completely coated in blood, the marine felt the rage wearing off, replaced by exhaustion.
'I can never get used to that...' Turning, he saw the group of ponies, minus Applejack and the three fillies, looking at him. All of them were horrified and repulsed, save for Rarity, who had fainted, and Twilight, who was busy attending to the injured Rainbow Dash. Grimm ran up to the two, seeing the damage: her wings were bent at what he thought to be unnatural angles, as well as two legs. There were cuts all over her body, the largest one being on her forehead. She, like the marine, was covered in blood, the main difference being that this was her blood. Twilight kept using some kind of spell on her, but the unicorn's expression kept getting more and more distressed.
"I... I don't think she's gonna... make it!" she stammered out. Not saying anything, Grimm removed one of the white syringes from his pack, getting ready to inject it. Twilight moved aside as he inserted the needle, the chemical contained inside nearly working instantly. The cuts started to fade away, although the wings and legs were still broken. Taking out another syringe, he injected it as well. The wings started to crack back into shape, followed by the legs. She was still bruised badly, but she was in much better shape now.
Backing up, Grimm sighed. "I said to let me do this alone."
"I- I'm sure she j-just wanted to.. help..." Fluttershy spoke up. "Is- Is she gonna be... o-okay?"
"She should be fine. That stuff I gave her is pretty heavy duty, although she's not used to it, so she might be out for a few hours." The group started to hug him, then stops when they remember that he's drenched in blood. Twilight, meanwhile, investigated the now-empty syringes that the marine had left.
"We should get back to Ponyville," Grimm broke Twilight out of her study. "We have some business to deal with."
The group began walking back to the town, Grimm carrying Rainbow and the still-fainted Rarity. Taking one last look at the carnage behind him, he sighed.
'As much as I love using my fists, I will need a gun. A big gun. Maybe even the really big gun.'
If the citizens of Ponyville were scared of Grimm before, then they were terrified out of their proverbial pants when he came back into town, covered in blood and carrying two unconscious ponies. It was only the presence of Twilight Sparkle that kept them from assuming the worst. That didn't stop them from running away from the human as they walked back to the library, though.
Back inside the tree home, Grimm placed the two mares on the floor. Almost immediately, Rarity started waking up. She looked around, but when she saw the marine, still covered in blood, she nearly fainted again.
Now that he was back here, Grimm looked over the ponies present: Lyra seemed to have broken off from the group at some point, and all the others were still quite disturbed. Of them, Twilight was slightly less affected, due to seeing what Grimm had done before. Spike walked into the room, then did a double-take when he saw both the blood-drenched human and the unconscious Rainbow Dash. "Okay, just what the heck did I miss?"
"Spike," Twilight commanded, "send a letter to Princess Celestia. We have some urgent business to discuss."
Spike was confused, but wrote the short letter anyway. He then rolled it up and sealed it, before burning it with his fire breath, sending it to the princess.
Normally, Grimm would have been impressed, but right now he was only thinking. 'It's possible, but how much longer do they have? And will it be just like Earth?'
His thoughts were interrupted by Celestia teleporting in the room. "What was it that was so urgent, Twi-" When she saw the marine, as well as Dash, her eyes widened. "Just what has happened here?"
Before the purple unicorn could speak up, Grimm cut her off. "There's a bit of a security issue. A few of the nightmares that I faced followed me out of Hell. I took care of them. But that's not the issue."
"Then what, pray tell, is?"
"If those that I just killed could get in, then all of them could get in. The same thing that happened to my world could happen to this one. Unless..." He removes his helmet and stares eye to eye with Celestia. "...I get all my guns back, and you let me solve this problem before it becomes a problem."
In her head, she weighed the pros and cons of both courses of action. Eventually, she reached a verdict. "I politely decline."
"What?"
"I'm certain that my royal guard can guard the gates well enough. And besides, if you managed to best those creatures with literally no weapons, then you might not even need them."
Grimm felt his rage rising, but he kept it in check. "They'll be torn apart if you do that, trust me."
"My decision is final." Celestia turned to Twilight and her friends. "I'd like you all to be ready. The Elements of Harmony will be ready to use at the castle, just in case." With that, she teleported out of the room, leaving a steaming marine, five ponies, and a dragon. Applejack walked through the door.
"Those three are back at mah house, so they should be sa-" She stopped when she sees Grimm. "You weren't kiddin' when ya said it'd be messy, weren't you?"
Ignoring her, he leaned on the wall. "Can't believe she'd just let them come like that. She may be the ruler of everything here, but she's overconfident."
After they got Applejack up to speed on the situation, Twilight walked up to Grimm. "I'm sure she's doing the right thing. I have no reason to doubt her."
"Of course you wouldn't. You're her student."
All of them were appalled by his blunt remark, but he just shrugged before going into another room. The other ponies filed out after that, Fluttershy carrying Dash, leaving just Spike and Twilight. She followed the marine into the other room, finding him sitting at a desk, thinking to himself.
"Grimm?" Twilight started. She got a "Hmm?" in response.
"I do think that those... demons could come through, but why would they?"
"Beats me. I just know that they tried to take over my world, but I stopped them. It doesn't help that a few of them posses some kind of innate magic, mainly for killing things or-" A bolt of realization hit him, and he slammed the palm of his hand into his face. "...teleportation. Of course, how could I forget that! So even if Celestia's guards do their job, and block off the gate, they can still get in!" He nearly flipped the desk over in his rage at the situation.
"Teleportation? But nopony has ever perfected long-range teleportation spells except the princesses!"
"Well, they did. And they're going to be coming here pretty soon. Not anything we can do but wait for Celestia's plan to fall apart, then hope she'll come to her senses and give me my guns."
They both went silent after that, Twilight studying the three syringes Grimm dropped that day. Suddenly, she remembered a certain spell. "Grimm, could you bring me a thing of that medicine you have?"
He didn't understand this request, but gave her one of the white syringes anyway, as well as the last black one. She quickly inspected the chemicals inside with her magic, then, when she got enough, enchanted the two white syringes, then repeated the process with the black one. Now full, she replaced the caps on them, before giving them back to Grimm. He simply looked at her, confused. "What did you do to them?"
"I placed a regenerative enchantment on them; now, when you use them, they'll be full and ready to use again in a few minutes."
"Huh. Thanks," he said, putting the syringes back in his QSU With that out of the way, the two simply sat in silence, waiting for what Grimm described as "everything going straight to shit".
To put it bluntly, the demons were pissed. They thought they had escaped from him, but he was already in this new world, ready to repeat what happened at Earth. This complicated things greatly, but they hoped to have different results this time. They had just finished mapping out and researching this world, and the only other thing that could possible pose a threat to them was the "Elements of Harmony", which they found out had defeated two great villains recently. They then learned that the most recent one defeated wasn't killed, only imprisoned. They hoped that, whoever or whatever it was, that it'd be glad to help out their cause in return for freedom. At the very least, they hoped to rid themselves of the marine who had single-handedly bested their forces on many occasions. He'd get what's coming to him...
Both Grimm and Twilight stayed up late into the night, waiting for an attack by the demons. Around midnight, Twilight fell asleep, leaving the marine the only one awake in the library. He knew that the demons would attack, there was no doubt about that. The only question was when.
After a couple more hours of waiting, Grimm began to feel fatigue wash over him. 'Who knows, maybe I was wrong. Maybe the demons aren't attacking.'
Suddenly, there was a loud noise from the other room. He recognized it, much to his dread. 'That was one of their teleports...'
Springing up, he headed into the room, expecting to see some kind of monstrosity born from the depths of Hell. Instead he saw... nothing. Not a single thing was moving in the room. Maybe he was hearing things. He turned around, but realized slightly too late what had happened. In a single moment, there was a growl behind him, and then Grimm was knocked to the ground. Turning around, he still saw nothing, but now he heard a portion of air growling a short distance away.
'Invisible son of a bitch!' Scrambling to his feet, he punched in the direction of the growling. He missed, and got a scratch on his arm for his troubles. Cursing, he kept swinging, hoping to grab the demon. From the doorway, Twilight trotted in to see what woke her up, and saw Grimm seemingly punching the air.
"Uhh... Grimm? What are you-"
"Kinda busy here!" he said while looking for the invisible demon. Eventually, he got a hold on something, and the image of a transparent demon appeared where his hand was. Grinning, he threw it to the ground before bringing his foot down on top of the creature's head, ending its life with a sickening splat. Compared to what happened in the forest, this barely had any blood spilled, but it didn't leave the mare unaffected.
"Wha- What! Why is there a demon here? Where did it come fr-"
"Teleportation," Grimm cut her off. "And they hardly teleport alone." He cracked his knuckles. "It's starting."
In the castle located up in Canterlot, Celestia was nervous. She had stayed up all night with the nagging fear that, maybe, the human was right. Maybe those demons could only be stopped by him. Regardless, she planned to send some guards to the gates of Tartarus the next day. The door to the throne room opened, and a dark blue alicorn walked in.
"Tia? What are you doing up so late?"
Celestia gave her sister a weary smile. "Sorry, Luna, it's just that I've been thinking. I can't help but get the feeling that the human was right about this."
Luna nuzzled the elder sister. "Don't worry, Tia, I'm sure everything will be fine."
"I hope you're-" She was interrupted by a greenish flash of light and a loud noise in front of the throne. After the light faded, standing there was a large, grotesque creature, with some sort of devices attached to where its arms should be. Its face is mostly obscured by body fat, and dry blood runs from its mouth.
"Halt!" Luna yelled, breaking out the Royal Canterlot Voice. "Who are you, and why do you intrude on us in our throne room?"
In response, the creature brought the devices up to point them at the princesses, and uttered out an unintelligible cry before fireballs shot out of them. Luna flew away in time, but Celestia took one head-on. Thankfully, dealing with the sun for over 1000 years has perks such as "being less combustible than other living things". That doesn't mean it didn't hurt, though. When she regained her senses, she lashed out with her magic and burned the thing alive.
"Tia! Are you alright?"
"Yes... I'm fine." She didn't know what the thing was, but it was dead now. "Let's... go and clean this up." Before either of them could do anything, however, more of the creatures appeared in the same manner the first had, all of them launching pairs of fireballs at the princesses. They took to the air and dodged them, but were soon forced to leave the throne room. Celestia was planning to kill them the same way she killed the first, but something was blocking her magic. Luna had the same problem, so they were both forced to fly away. In the hallways, more creatures appeared, some of them wildly different from each other. Upon seeing the princesses, they all launched fireballs at them, but most of them missed. As they reached the entrance to the castle, Celestia was pleased to see that the guard had already managed to evacuate everypony. At least, everypony who wasn't killed outright, either from the attacking demons or being unlucky enough to have one of them appear right where they were at the time.
"Guards!" Celestia shouted, making all the guards stand at attention. "What is going on?"
The captain spoke. "We- We don't know! They just appeared out of nowhere, and we had to get everyone out! Not all of them made it..."
The princess would mourn the loss of good ponies later; now was the time for action. "Take them to Ponyville, and make sure they're safe. Those... things are somehow blocking magic, so we'll have to fly there." All of them broke into action, earth ponies and unicorns getting into chariots while pegasi got ready to fly them. After they had all departed, Celestia could have sworn she saw a very large demon with machinery on one arm and one leg...
Back in Ponyville, things were marginally better, although it was still bad. Grimm had taken to the front, killing demons either with his bare hands or using whatever might be nearby. The entire town was up and panicking, although some would say it was for good reason. Only a few of them actually fought back, helping the human out. After 10 minutes of punching, stomping, and stabbing, the town was littered with corpses, the ponies completely shell-shocked from the ordeal. Miraculously, none of the ponies were killed, and only a few casualties were sustained. Most of this was due to Grimm taking the initiative, killing a majority of the demons and getting their attention. The property damage, however, was substantial.
The entire town gathered in front of the ruined town hall, their voices all being panicked and scared. The mayor tried to calm them down, but her attempts were in vain. Finally, Grimm went to the front of the crowd, in front of the mayor.
"SHUT UP!" All of the ponies suddenly went silent, and the only noises heard were the wind and the crackling of one or two fires scattered around. "Look, I'm not gonna sugar-coat it; Hell has come here, and they want this place for keeps." The crowd began to start up again, but he silenced them again. "I would be out solving this, but I'm a bit under-armed at the moment. If only Celestia would give me back my fu-"
"Look!" One of the ponies pointed out the convoy of chariots coming their way. They landed, groups of royal guard ponies and various castle staff getting off of them. Following close behind them are Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, causing all the ponies of the town to kneel in respect, save for Twilight Sparkle.
"Princesses!" she exclaimed, trotting up to the two. "What are you doing here?"
"Our castle came under attack. We were forced to evacuate, and I wanted to come here for a couple of reasons. To make sure the Elements of Harmony are okay," she looked at Grimm, "and to apologize."
The marine's face wore a smug "I told you so" look. "What's done is done, now we need to work on fixing this. So, if you'll kindly give me my guns back?"
"About that, the demons seem to be able to block out magic, even for ponies as powerful as me and Luna, so we can't get them for you."
"Unless someone goes up there and gets them themselves."
"Yes."
"Figures."
Celestia began to speak to the crowd again. "Now, please don't panic; we shall have this situation under control. However, be alert at all times, as we do not know when another attack will happen here. If you need us, we shall be at the library." She walked away, the six Elements of Harmony, Grimm, the guards, and the castle staff following her.
Preparations were being made for the ritual. The yellow, spell-casting demons had found the correct statue, and were now beginning to cast the spell to free the one inside. While they stood there casting, the statue of a certain draconequus begins to crack...
The princesses, Grimm, and the six Elements of Harmony went inside the slightly-damaged library, while the others stayed outside. Once they were all inside, Grimm didn't waste any time.
"So, what the hell are we gonna do?"
"The first thing we should do," Celestia explained, "is to retake our castle. Your weapons, as well as the Elements of Harmony, are there."
"I mean no offense, Princess, but what are the Elements going to do here? I've fought through Hell twice, and I sure as shit didn't have anything like that while I was there."
"The Elements are our most powerful weapons, and have been used to defeat great threats to Equestria before, as I'm sure Twilight has told you already."
The purple unicorn smiled sheepishly, while Grimm continued. "Onto another subject, how long ago did they attack?"
"Only thirty minutes ago. Why?"
"The longer they have that castle, the more it reforms into what the demons want it to be. Which isn't pleasant in the slightest. Now, in about thirty minutes..." He started muttering to himself, thinking of a plan. Meanwhile, the ponies discussed their own plans for the battle that would undoubtedly ensue.
The statue fell to the ground, the stone completely breaking away, leaving the god of chaos sprawled on the ground. This was quite early for him to be released from his prison again, and he suspected that he had some help in the matter. Sure enough, as he rose to his mismatched feet, he saw two quite grotesque creatures staring at him. Judging by the markings nearby, they were the ones who freed him. One of them stepped forward and chattered in something that couldn't be deciphered in the slightest. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, Discord understood it perfectly.
"Yes, I am Discord, the god of chaos and disharmony." He loved to hear the sound of his own voice again. "And I must say, thanks for breaking me out a bit early."
The demon continued chattering, pointing at the draconequus.
"I did try to take over Equestria recently, thanks for reminding me of that failure." As the demon chattered more, Discord's face brightened a bit. "Really? Sounds too good to be true."
The creature motioned for Discord to follow it, and he does. It went on to explain who they were, and what they were planning on. As they moved through the distorted halls of the castle, they came across various bodies, both human and pony, strung up from the walls and ceilings. The demon ignored them completely, but Discord couldn't help but stare. These guys were certainly gruesome, if nothing else. Eventually, they had made their way to the front of the castle, most of which was destroyed. The demon chattered one more thing to Discord.
"Wait, so just one human... single-handedly destroyed all of your home?" The demon nodded. "Twice?" Another nod. "And you want me... to kill him for you." It nodded one more time. "What do I get out of this?" The demon faced out towards the rest of Equestria and motioned with its hand, chattering the whole time. "While that is a tempting offer..." Discord eyed the entrance to the castle. "I don't do part ownership." Before the demon can react, the draconequus flew through the entrance, looking for something. The other demons inside threw fireballs at him, but none of them hit their mark. Just to spite them, Discord spawned a few cotton candy clouds in his wake, doing nothing but confusing the pursuing creatures. Eventually, he found what he was looking for. Just before he left, he sees a peculiar sight, even by his standards.
"That could prove useful..." His scheming was interrupted by more demons showing up, so he took the opportunity to teleport out in front of the castle. Down below, he saw Ponyville. He headed there while carrying his cargo, hoping this plan will actually work.
"...and I'm sure they have plenty after that, but I should be fully armed by then." Grimm had just finished going over his plan with the ponies. The term 'plan' was used lightly, because it boiled down to little more than "I go in, kill the demons, and get the things." Still, it was something to go off of. "So, that's it. Any objections?"
"Will you guys be quiet! I'm trying to sleep!"
Grimm couldn't hide his laugh. 'Spike could sleep through the world blowing up, probably.'
Since none of the ponies in the room objected, he headed to the door. But before he opened it, the handle disappeared. The room was filled with laughter, which all of the ponies tensed up at. A light fog began to swirl through the room, gathering at a single spot. Everyone started backing away from it, followed by a flash of lightning. Standing where the fog was gathered was... nothing.
"I think I'm losing my touch at dramatic entrances." Grimm whirled around and faced a... thing. It had different body parts from various animals, and it was smirking at him. "What, never seen a draconequus before?"
Celestia recovered almost immediately. "Discord!" She ran up, nearly face to face with the villain, her horn glowing threateningly. "How did you escape your prison?"
"Those demons were kind enough to release me, in return for me killing their main enemy or something." He looked at Grimm. "Oh yeah, they want you dead."
"I figured as much."
"But back on the subject, no, I did not help them."
"Then why are you here?" Celestia demanded.
"I have a few plans of my own. But first," he took out an object, and Grimm could feel his smile growing. "I believe this is yours?"
Discord tossed the shotgun to the marine, who inspected it. The draconequus also gave him a few boxes of shells he found, much to Grimm's delight.
"I'm simply going to sit back and watch this unfold, but I also have a little piece of knowledge that could serve you well."
"Which is?" Grimm cautiously asked.
"They seem to have a direct portal to their place opened up in the castle. If what they told me about you was true, then you could use that to go and cause trouble for them again."
With this new piece of knowledge, Grimm started rethinking his plan. In the end, though, it still boiled down to "kill everything". Meanwhile, Discord let a few cotton candy clouds float freely in the room, letting them rain chocolate milk.
"Sorry, force of habit."
"No need to be sorry!" Pinkie Pie was laying under the clouds, trying to drink as much of the chocolate rain as possible.
After the pink mare was finished, the group headed outside, Grimm at the front. Seeing the castle in the distance, he noticed that the front of it now sported a skull-shaped entrance.
'They never were ones for subtlety.' "Okay, everyone know what to do?" The ponies all nodded, and Discord just shrugged. "Alright then," Grimm pumped his newly reacquired shotgun for emphasis, "let's take back a castle."
The entire trip to the castle was tense. Celestia kept a watchful eye on Discord, who saw fit to swim through the air. Everyone else was awaiting the inevitable bloodshed that Grimm would bring about. Eventually, Celestia broke the silence.
"Tell me, Discord, why are you helping us?"
"To put it simply, dear Tia, I don't do shared ownership of places. And besides, why I'm all for chaos, I'm not into the whole 'kill everything' idea that those guys are doing."
The princess was still wary of the draconequus, but she remained silent. Signs of the demons' presence littered the ground, mostly showing in burnt-away grass and the occasional 'decorative' skull. None of them said anything, although Celestia wore a look of outrage upon seeing them. Soon, they had reached the entrance to the castle. Grimm walked up to the large door and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge.
"Ah got this, mister." Applejack trotted up to the doors, turned around, and gave it a swift buck. They swung open, showing a pair of decomposing ponies outfitted in armor vaguely similar to the kind that the guards wore. Grimm shot one immediately, leaving just enough time while he pumped for the other one to turn and growl at the intruders. Shortly after, its brains painted the floor behind it.
"Okay, stay close, and try to stay out of my way," Grimm ordered. The ponies obliged, staying behind him, while Discord did his own thing. More demons came at them from various doorways, hissing at the marine. They were dispatched within moments. The entourage continued through the halls, the ground being littered with spent shells and corpses. The marine continued, blood occasionally splattering onto his visor. The princesses tried to direct him to where the Elements were kept, but the castle layout had changed, so neither of them knew where to go.
After finding his other shotgun, Grimm started coming across bigger and bigger demons. They were taken out with minimal effort, but they did cause the group to spread out a bit.
"Wait, I recognize this part," Luna spoke up. "This is the dungeon." Sure enough, cells lined the walls. Most of them were either empty or housed a morbid display of both pony and human bodies, making the ponies cringe. A few invisible demons attacked the group, but they soon were splattered on the walls. As they moved forward, Grimm suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" Twilight asked.
"This wall... It's a bit different from the rest." The wall in question was a sickly shade of dark green, while the rest of it was black. The marine pushed on the off-color wall, and it moved outward before lifting up. Behind it was a small chamber with a light brown, glowing sphere floating above the ground. A face of some kind was displayed in it. Grimm chuckled to himself. "They never change, do they..."
"What do ya mean?" asked Rainbow Dash. "What is that?"
"That, my friend, is the demons' biggest weakness." He entered the chamber and reached out to the sphere. Once his hand touched it, it dissipated and swirled up his arm. The human was enveloped in a bright light, forcing the ponies to shield their eyes. When the light faded away, they looked again, and saw Grimm standing where he was before, now wearing a new set of armor. This one was blue in color, and it had a few decorative spikes on the shoulders. Otherwise, he looked the same.
"While I do enjoy this color a bit more," Rarity spoke up, "just where exactly did you get that?"
"From that thing I picked up. Now come on, we still have those Elements to find." They got moving again, only stopping when another monstrosity rears its ugly head. This continued on for a few minutes, before Celestia noticed something.
"Where has Discord gone?" Sure enough, the draconequus was nowhere to be found.
"Why, that no-good varmint abandoned us!"
"I should've known he would have tried something like this!"
"Yes, he is such a bad guy for going out and trying to help, the fiend."
"And I thought he had changed! I was going to throw him a 'Congratulations for being good now!' party!"
While the ponies started berating Discord, only Grimm actually noticed that he was there now. He couldn't help but crack a smile under his helmet at the situation. "You know, he's right here."
All of them turned and saw the draconequus floating next to the marine. "Yes, I am here, and I must say, I am hurt by all of your accusations." He put on a mock sad face, much to Grimm's amusement. It was dropped just as suddenly. "But anyway, I was busy finding these." He dropped the majority of Grimm's arsenal on the ground, and the marine scooped the weapons up and put them away in his QSU. He couldn't help but notice that he was missing the big gun, though.
'Oh well, I'll find it somewhere in here. I hope.' "Now that I got those, we can get moving again." They headed off again, hoping to finally get somewhere near the Elements.
It was during this search that Grimm happened upon one of his least favorite denizens of Hell. 'That fast, yellow bastard...'
He and the rest of the group were huddled behind a wall, out of the creature's line of sight. Rainbow was struggling to get a good look at it.
"I don't see why we're hiding from it, we could take 'em just fine." Suddenly, a fire appeared just below her body.
"Get back here, dammit!" Grimm grabbed her by the tail, pulling her back behind cover just as a small explosion erupted where she was hovering. Taking out his plasma rife, he got ready to leap out from cover. "All of you stay here, I'll take care of this." He jumped out and started firing the gun, the blue projectiles causing the demon to screech with pain. After a couple seconds of constant firing, the creature died with a whimper, melting into a pile of blood and burnt flesh. "Now that that's taken care of, let's go." As they moved on, all of them took a look at the burnt corpse, shuddering as they pass. They knew that there would only be more and more violence as they went on, so they steeled themselves and continued, Discord still swimming idly through the air.
Grimm, the ponies, and Discord had wandered into a large courtyard. There were various boxes of ammo scattered around, and some kind of key on a pedestal in the middle, but Grimm tread cautiously around them. He knew how the demon's played. The moment he grabbed that key, all manner of things would appear.
"Oooh! I found a key thing!" Of course, Pinkie Pie didn't have such knowledge.
"Pinkie, no!" The marine's warning was unheeded, and the pink mare removed the key from the pedestal. Sure enough, just as she did, a large group of demons spawned. They were all spider-like, and they began firing their own plasma guns at Pinkie. She scrambled back to the group, key in her mouth, while the rest retreated back to the hallway where they came in.
"So what in the hay do we do now?" Applejack asks.
Grimm took out his rocket launcher. "Easy." He almost had to shout over the noise the mechanical parts of the demons were making. "If no one else ignores me," he glared at Pinkie, "I'll be able to clear them out." With that, he charged back out into the courtyard, meeting about seven of the arachnid hell-spawn. Each of them let loose with their plasma gun upon seeing Grimm, but he dodged the shots while returning fire with his rockets. Eventually, all but one was left, the rest being splattered for several feet. Being too close to use rockets safely, he switched to his double-barrel. He jumped over another barrage of plasma before landing right on top of the demon. Grimm could see fear in its eyes just before he caved its brain in with a pair of shotgun shells. The courtyard now clear, he was about to call to the others when there was another teleport noise behind him, followed by an ear-piercing roar. Turning quickly, the marine spotted a very large spider demon at the other end. More distressingly, he saw the chain gun mounted on its chassis spinning up.
"You can't be serious!" Grimm started running to the side, just barely dodging the bullets. He fired rockets at the creature, causing it to stop attacking when it flinched from pain. Grimm used this time to run right for the demon, passing under its legs. Now directly underneath it, he blasted plasma into the underside of the base of the machine the demon was mounted on. After several seconds of constant firing, a hole was melted clean through the metal. The machine started to emit a noise, and Grimm ran out from under it. The demon fell over, exploding into a cloud of blood and guts upon hitting the ground. Wiping his visor clean, the marine waited a few more seconds for any more late arrivals to the party. When nothing else appears, he turned to head back to the group. All of them, even the princesses, wore looks of shock, awe, and some nausea. Even Discord seemed to be impressed.
"I see that the demons want you dead for a reason."
"Well, I guess they'll have to keep trying." He turns to Pinkie. "Now, I'll take that key."
Pinkie handed it over, and he placed it in his QSU within easy reach. They started down the hall again, soon coming across a large door.
"These are the doors to the throne room," Celestia said. "The Elements are kept in here."
When he tried to open it, the doors wouldn't budge. Spying a key hole, Grimm used the recently acquired key. The doors swung open, revealing something Grimm hadn't hoped to run into just yet.
"Oh fuck me..."
A rocket flew straight into the marine, sending him flying to the back wall. The entire group recoiled back, shocked.
"What are we gonna do? Nopony could survive something like that!"
"We'll have to get the Elements ourselves. And face... whatever it is that did this to him."
"Are you crazy?! If he couldn't handle it, what chance do we have?!"
"We will have to at least try. I will not allow these beasts to take over our land."
"So, what's the plan, do we just- Hey, he's moving!"
Grimm did not like taking rockets to the face. To be fair, most living things don't. Regardless, he was just thankful that the blast swung the doors shut again, preventing another rocket from hitting him.
As he got up, the ponies watched in total awe. His armor was quite damaged now, but the only injuries showing on him were a few odd bruises. His visor was cracked slightly, but it was easy to ignore. "I'm not dead yet."
Twilight was at a loss for words. "But that... and you... explosion..." While she strained to find an explanation for what just happened, Grimm got in position near the door. Soon, he had a plan formulated for taking out this behemoth.
"Rainbow, got a question for you."
"Huh?"
"How well can you out-fly missiles?"
"What?! What do you want me to do?"
"You'll be a distraction for that thing, while I try to take it down myself. I already took one rocket to the face, I don't need another."
"I don't know..."
"You wanted to fight these things, right?"
"Yeah, but-"
"Well, this is probably the closest thing you could get to that."
"I... I'll help too."
Everyone, even Discord, was shocked by Fluttershy's words. "I mean no offense, Fluttershy," Rarity started, "but you aren't near as fast a flyer as Rainbow Dash."
"I know, but I can't stand to have those things hurting innocent ponies and animals. I want to help end this as soon as possible." Her determination suddenly gave way to her usual self. "I- If that's alright..."
Grimm shrugged. "I won't stop you if you want to help." He got ready to open the door again. "Now, when I open the door, you both go in there and start flying around. Keep moving, don't let it get a good shot at you, and stay away from the walls. Okay?"
"Yes sir!"
"Umm.... okay..."
"Alright..." Grimm tightened his grip on both the door handle and his plasma rifle, while the others looked on worriedly. "Let's do this." He swung the door open, once again greeted by the ugly visage of one of his more hated foes.
Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy began flying around the room, drawing the beast's fire. Fluttershy was indeed slower than her cyan friend, but she was still fast enough to dodge the creature's rockets. This didn't stop her from nearly hyperventilating, though.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Grimm was circling the large demon while pouring plasma rounds into it, taking care not to hit either of the pegasi. However, he soon ran out of ammo, forcing him to simply avoid the rockets. While running, he noticed an alcove with more plasma cells inside. Ducking in, he planned on reloading his plasma rifle, but he stopped what he was doing when he saw what else was in there.
'Oh, yes...' It was the device that Hell had come to fear; the same one that killed their toughest warriors.
The BFG 9000.
Picking it up, he was almost reduced to joyful tears. He contained himself and found a figurehead switch on the wall. Pressing it, it made a deep, echoing click, followed by a nearby section of wall lowering. As its contents cast a green glow on Grimm, he smiled sadistically.
'Oh, this is just too perfect...'
Fluttershy and Rainbow had been dodging rockets for a few minutes now. Rainbow had seen Grimm head into the hidden room, but she stayed focused on flying. Fluttershy, meanwhile, was completely filled with mortal terror. It took all of her willpower, and then some, to not simply fly back to the rest of her friends.
"C'mon, you big jerk! You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!" Rainbow, meanwhile, was being her usual self. "Those fancy rockets ain't so hot when they don't hit nothing, are they?"
Almost as an answer, a rocket hit the wall just behind her. A piece of rubble flew out and hit her on the back, sending her to the ground in front of the door. The others pulled her to safety quickly, finding that one of her wings was broken.
Fluttershy witnessed this, and it did nothing to calm her frayed nerves. Regardless, she kept flying, hoping that Grimm would finish up whatever it was he was doing.
Suddenly, a rocket hit the wall right behind her, also knocking her to the ground. However, now the Cyberdemon was between her and the other ponies. Twilight, Rarity, and the princesses tried as hard as they could to use their magic to help the fallen pegasus, but whatever magic prevention the demons had was still in place. They all watched in horror as the behemoth stomped over to Fluttershy and raised its mechanical hoof, prepared to bring it down on the helpless mare.
Out of nowhere, Grimm sprinted up to Fluttershy and shoved her towards the door, where the ponies brought her to safety. In under a second, the demon's hoof came down right on top of the marine, sending his helmet clattering over to the ponies, the visor now shattered. None of them could believe it; this man, who had helped so much in taking back the castle, was just stepped on. He may have survived a rocket to the chest, but none of them thought he could've survived this.
The giant demon turned to the cowering ponies, menacingly walking forward, each step echoing loudly in the expansive throne room. Even while filled with fear, Twilight noticed that, once again, Discord was nowhere to be found.
While they were preparing for the inevitable, Luna spied a look behind the demon. Amazingly, she saw Grimm getting up yet again. She saw his eyes, and they were glowing an unnatural yellow. His face not changing, he took out his rocket launcher and started jogging towards the Cyberdemon. Instead of firing at the demon, however, he aimed it at the ground and fired, propelling himself high into the air with seemingly no damage done to himself. This got the attention of all the other ponies, whose jaws dropped.
Faster than their eyes could follow, Grimm put away the launcher and took out a massive weapon, one that both Twilight and Celestia recognized. Holding it with one hand, he used the other to grab one of the demon's horns, swinging around so that they were face to face. The gun began to emit a noise, sounding like something charging up. Over that noise, they could hear Grimm say just one thing:
"Miss me?"
Immediately after speaking, he shoved the gun into its eye and lets loose with a huge flash of green. The ponies all looked away, only hearing the sound of pained roaring, an explosion, and electronic humming. When they looked again, the Cyberdemon is no more, a pair of blood-covered stumps in its place. Standing between them was an equally blood-soaked Grimm. Turning around, his glowing eyes were noticed by all of them.
"Woah! Your eyes are all glowy!" Pinkie Pie was the first to speak.
"Yeah, that'll happen. It should stop soon."
At the sound of clapping, everyone looked up to see Discord sitting in a floating theater chair, a bag of popcorn in his lap. "I knew I was right to bet on you! Oh, if only I could use you for some of my plans..."
Celestia shot a glare at the draconequus, but the others seemed to pay the comment no mind.
"Anyway," Grimm said, his eyes now returning to normal, "you wanted those Elements? Let's go get them."
After giving Rainbow another med-syringe and bringing Fluttershy back into consciousness, the group walked around the stumps that the Cyberdemon had left and headed to the back of the throne room. There, a panel in the wall was decorated with various pictures, most of them meaningless to Grimm. A single hole was on the wall, and Celestia went to put her horn in it, but stopped. "Oh, right, no magic..." She trailed off, sounded slightly defeated.
"Then we'll use the magic of heavy ordinance. Stand back," Grimm ordered while taking out his rocket launcher once more. The ponies all stood back as he opened fire. After three rockets, the marine stopped shooting, letting the dust clear. When it did, the panel was destroyed, revealing a room behind it. Celestia went up to the rubble, but was distraught upon looking inside the room. It wasn't as simple as the box containing the Elements being there, ready to use. Instead, it was across the room. In between the entrance and the box, was a lowered floor, spots of dried blood here and there. The princess went to retrieve the Elements, but Grimm stopped her.
"It's a trap, I just know it." Cautiously, he walked in, looking all around. Sure enough, there was a path for getting to the Elements on the ceiling. The marine wasn't certain what would happen if he strayed from that path, although it was a safe bet that it wasn't anything good. He began following the predetermined path slowly, each square of floor he moved over raising up to the level the floor which the box sat on was. Eventually, he got to the other end, and picked up the box containing the Elements of Harmony. Grimm was making his way back, following the same path, when he tripped and placed a foot on a part of the ground that wasn't raised. Suddenly, the room started shaking.
'Oh shit.' Foregoing caution, Grimm sprinted back to the entrance, careful not to trip over the raised floor. Just as he made it back out, the ceiling came down loudly inside the chamber, sealing it off. Grimm dusted himself off, before holding out the box. "Those Elements you wanted?"
Celestia opened the box, not used to using her hooves. Inside, the six Elements of Harmony sat. Out of habit, she tried to pick them up with her magic. When that failed, she looked to Grimm. "Could you... put them on Twilight and her friends?" She was grinning sheepishly, while the human sighed.
After outfitting the ponies with their Element, Grimm decided to sit back and see what they'd do. Discord did the same, still sitting in that theater chair. Convinced that they were out of earshot of the ponies, Grimm spoke.
"You can still use magic, can't you?"
"Yes, actually, although not much. Just basic teleportation and chaos-making."
"So you could've gotten the Elements yourself this whole time, and saved us all this mess?"
"I could have, but where's the fun in that? Besides, you seemed to enjoy yourself when fighting."
Grimm wanted to get mad at Discord, but he couldn't. The draconequus was right. "Well, I do seem to have a perverse enjoyment of killing demons. Guess it goes well with what I do."
"After that slaughter, even I feel nervous around you.
Grimm chuckled. "You should've seen what I was doing when I first got here. Let's just say that that chainsaw of mine saw some pretty heavy use."
The two drifted off into silence, watching the Elements of Harmony at work. Somehow, they still had magic in them, and a giant rainbow-colored beam of light shot up and through the ceiling. Soon, the entire castle was bathed in light, and Grimm had to shield his eyes. When he looked again, the area was decidedly less demonic looking. Even the Cyberdemon corpse was gone. The throne room was still heavily damaged, however, with multiple holes in the walls.
Celestia lit up her horn, and smiled. "We have taken back our castle. It will have to be repaired, and there are still the deaths of good ponies to mourn, but we couldn't have done this without you, John Grimm."
"We're not quite done yet." Despite the uplifting mood, Grimm's face was still serious. "The demons are going to come back, and keep coming back, until they win. Unless I go to the source and chop it off there." He turned to Discord. "You, you said that they had a portal here, right?"
"Yes, they had one."
Her horn growing brighter, Celestia frowned. "Yes, I sense it... It's the last trace of the demons left in the castle."
"Then show me where it is."
The other ponies were a bit shocked by Grimm ordering Celestia, the ruler of Equestria, around, while Discord was amused. Regardless, she led the way.
They entered into a separate room, not that far from the throne room. It was slightly damaged, yet normal, save for the glowing, red pentagram on the ground. It crackled with a sinister energy, causing even the princesses to back away a step. Grimm, instead, chose to walk towards it. Just outside it, he turned.
"Now, I understand you wanting to tag along here. After all, it was your castle. But here's where I say goodbye. I'll be going through the worst that those demons have, and I'll go it alone, same as always. Good luck on that whole 'rebuilding' thing. Maybe I'll see you again. Maybe I'll die in there. Heh, who knows?" Before any of them could stop him, he leaped in, disappearing in a green flash of light. Not a trace of the human was left in the room. The pentagram still glowed ominously.
"I can't believe he just left like that..."
"I won't get to throw him a 'Thanks for saving Equestria' party..."
"Ah'll say one thing, he's braver than any o' us."
"Quite chivalrous, even if it might be a bit... bone-headed."
Twilight looked around. "Wait, what about Discord?"
She was answered by another teleportation from the pentagram. Just outside it was a small note, reading:
BRB, went to Hell. Discord
The note was attached to a small cotton candy cloud, which Pinkie snatched up quickly. The princesses looked at each other.
"What do we do now, Tia?"
"I may have an idea... But for the most part, we can only hope."
They all looked at the pentagram, only wondering what the marine could possibly be going through now...
The marine did not like what he was going through right now.
The moment he teleported into Hell, he was attacked by what he could only describe as a cybernetic cerberus. Chunks of flesh in its heads was missing, replaced with robotics that, naturally, shot plasma. Grimm was forced to duck and weave between the green projectiles, trying to get close enough to plant both barrels of his shotgun into the beasts' heads. Grunting in pain, he took a few shots of hot plasma to the chest, but he ignored it. Finally, he managed to get on top of the cerberus. He shot one head in the back, before doing the same to the other two. It finally fell dead, and Grimm finally got a good look around. This part of Hell seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place the reason why. He just shrugged.
'Probably tore through here before, nothing much.' Reloading his shotgun, he started yet another trek into the depths of Hell. When he was alone, he could hear some voices in his head. He ignored them completely; they were there the last couple times he went to Hell, too. He didn't mention this to the ponies for fear of sounding insane. 'Yeah, like ripping demons apart with my bare hands didn't do that already.'
While he was thinking to himself, smaller demons were dispatched with barely any thought. Grimm only stopped thinking when he came across either something too big to kill mindlessly, or one of the many traps set throughout the place. He never understood why they had so many traps; what kept them from crushing the demons who called this place home?
After clearing yet another room, the marine saw a key that was out of his reach on a pillar. Searching the room for a switch, he came across a grotesque sight: a pony body was hanging on the wall, its limbs stretched in opposite directions, the thick chain attached to poles on the wall. It was gutted, the entrails still hanging out. It seemed to be a unicorn at one time, but the horn was violently removed. Upon closer inspection, Grimm found something else.
They were still breathing.
The pony couldn't seem to say or do anything, only able to give a fearful look at the marine. On the nearby wall was a switch. Looking back at the poles, he confirmed that they were made to rotate away from the center, wrapping the chain around them.
Grimm sighed; the pony was beyond help, and he knew what would happen if he hit that switch.
Moments after his departure, Celestia had cast a spell that allowed them to see and hear whatever the marine saw or heard, projected so the others could see. They were a bit less shocked when they saw him slaughtering demons by the dozen, but nothing could prepare them for seeing the pony tied to the wall. Both Celestia and Luna recognized one of the royal guard when they saw them, even without their armor or most of their entrails. As Grimm looked between the switch, the pony, and the out-of-reach key, it dawned on them what would happen. Regardless, he put his hand up to the switch. They could barely hear him whisper something before hitting it.
"Sorry 'bout this."
They would have covered their eyes, but Grimm seemed to do it for them, looking away from the pony and focusing on the lowering key. They could still hear the ripping of flesh, though, and that may have been just as bad as seeing it.
'Got to hand it to those demons, that was kinda clever.' Grimm now had a blue skull key in his possession. He remembered seeing a blue door a few rooms back, and went to leave. On his way out, he shot one last glance at the pony, or what was left of it. Were they hoping that he wouldn't continue? He'd never mention this to the ponies, but if there was no way around it, he wouldn't mind a bit of collateral damage.
Going back to the blue-outlined door, Grimm used the key. He was quite glad for the demons' need to color code everything, even if it didn't make any sense. Inside was another large room, with a lowered area full of lesser demons. Wanting to save some ammo, he took out the black syringe and injected himself with it. Putting it away, he cracked his knuckles. He knew there was a big, messy fight ahead of him, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Letting out a war cry, Grimm jumped right in.
The ponies had recovered from seeing the mutilated pony just in time to watch Grimm start tearing into demons with his bare hands. Twilight and her friends had seen this already, but it wasn't any better for them. This was the princesses' first time seeing this, however, and they couldn't help but wince. Celestia couldn't believe that the same person that was doing this was the same one who lived among the ponies for a day.
"Oh, man, that's gotta hurt."
"Is he...? Oh no, he's not going to-"
SQUELCH
"He did."
"Oh my... I wasn't aware spines could bend like that..."
CRACK
"Ah don't think they can."
"I think I'm gonna be sick..."
This went on for nearly ten minutes, with no two kills from the marine being exactly the same. Twilight couldn't help but notice that he was seemingly holding back earlier; with no civilians to worry about where he was, he didn't have to worry about harming anypony he didn't want to. She didn't want to, but she lingered on the thought of how easy it would have been, even without his weapons, for Grimm to simply kill everypony...
The room was filled with nothing but blood, guts, and one marine. The effects of the chemical were wearing off, and he started looking around. It was hard, with the blood covering everything, but he eventually found a switch that lowered a staircase. Heading down, shotgun at the ready, he found a lone imp. He prepared to shoot, but was interrupted by the imp getting crushed by a large grill. Confused, Grimm looked up to find Discord lounging in the air.
"What brings you to this corner of Hell?" the marine asked.
"Quite a few reasons, really, the most pressing one to me being 'not wanting to be sealed in stone a second time.'"
"Yeah, I was told about that." While Grimm moved ahead, Discord lazily kept floating near him, only moving to dodge the occasional fireball. "Something about wanting to spread chaos?"
"Exactly that. Tia and them just don't understand the fun in a bit of chaos."
Grimm just shrugged, shifting his focus to the hell-spawn ahead.
Celestia wanted to know what Discord was planning. He wouldn't do this if it didn't benefit him in the long run, and it most likely had something to do with Grimm. Still, the most she could do right now was wait and watch. She'd figure out what to do eventually.
Grimm could tell that they were close. Close to what, he didn't know; he just knew it was something big. The ground steadily got hotter under his feet, and demons were becoming fewer in number. Even Discord had stopped talking, also sensing the upcoming danger. The pair approached a large door, which had the image of a demonic skull on it. Readying himself, Grimm opened the door. Behind it was a wide open area, half of which was filled with lava. He started moving forward, but stopped as the ground started shaking. The lava began to ripple, and a huge demon, bigger than even the demon that masterminded the Earth invasion, rose up. It was covered in spikes and scars, and its horns glinted menacingly. Like the one in charge of the previous invasion, it spoke:
All of the ponies recoiled away from the magical projection with shock. This new creature was bigger than any they had seen, and Twilight noted that it was bigger than the giant demon Grimm killed shortly before arriving in Equestria. They watched as Grimm barely evaded the creature's attacks, mostly consisting of a lot of fireballs and throwing lava. Lesser demons would appear around the giant chamber, forcing the marine to mop them up before focusing on the big one again. None of his weapons seemed to harm the creature at all, though; even his largest gun barely left a scratch. Upon seeing this, Celestia made up her mind.
"We are going there."
Everyone else let out a collective "What?!" at this.
"But Princess," Twilight said, "You've seen how dangerous that place is! What if-"
"And you've seen that creature that Grimm is fighting. He has no hope of defeating it alone, and Discord doesn't seem to be helping much. So we will have to go there and use the Elements of Harmony on the beast."
One by one, the six ponies agreed. Luna joined them, but the elder sister stopped her.
"Luna, I want you to stay here."
"What? But we- I mean, I want to help!"
"Yes, but I'm not entirely sure if I will be coming back. We need someone to rule over the kingdom in case I can't, and that someone is you, dear sister."
Luna was about to argue, but she nodded. The two sisters shared a hug. "Please... come back."
"I will do my best." The two separated, and Celestia went to the Elements. Grouped together, she began casting a teleportation spell, before they all vanished in a bright flash of light.
"God damn it! Just die already, you son of a bitch!"
Grimm had been shooting at the giant demon for a few minutes, and it didn't show any signs of tiring or even being hurt. There was ample ammunition available around the chamber, thankfully, but it didn't change the fact that this thing was nearly invincible. It was quickly grating on the marine's nerves. The constant spawning of other, much more killable demons did nothing but waste his time, ammo, and patience. Even the BFG, the holy grail of armaments, did seemingly nothing to this beast. Discord was doing almost nothing useful. He tried his magic on the thing, and it didn't work, so he simply took it upon himself to act as an "eye in the sky" for Grimm. This was hardly needed, though, because Grimm could always tell where the demons were.
Wanting to reload his guns and take a breather, Grimm dashed behind a rock, safe from the constant barrage of fireballs- For now, anyway. While reloading, he looked to the side and spotted a rock wall that looked climbable. Looking at the ceiling, it looked traversable, too. 'Maybe if I can climb up there, I can get close enough to that bastard without burning my-'
His thoughts were interrupted by a bright flash of light behind him. Whirling around, shotgun raised, he came face to face with Celestia and the Elements of Harmony. He lowered his gun before speaking. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"We're here to help you out," Celestia replied. "The Elements of Harmony can be used to help defeat this vile creature."
"I'm not gonna ask how you knew I was in trouble, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume that magic was involved."
Lazily, Discord floated down. "Oh, what joy, the Elements of Harmony are going to save us all," he deadpanned. "What, are you going to lock it in stone? Because that worked so well with me."
The princess glared at the draconequus, before turning back to Grimm. "Just let us try this, unless you have a plan."
"As a matter of fact, I do. I'm gonna climb up there," he pointed to the wall, "and get close enough that I can shoot it point-blank. Now that you're all here, maybe you can run interference for me."
"I'm sorry, I don't catch your meaning."
"What I mean is, you can all distract it long enough for me to get in place." Celestia looked appalled for a second, but she nods.
"Very well, I suppose." She turned to Twilight behind her. "You know what to do."
While they were preparing, Grimm ran off towards the wall. He mowed down any demons in his way with his chain gun, trying to get there as fast as he could. As he started climbing hastily, he overheard Twilight speaking fairly loudly.
"Okay, you... er... beast! We will not let you hurt anyone, pony, human, or whatever else, ever... again!" She didn't seem to be good at delivering dramatic speeches, or at least not in this situation. The heat probably wasn't helping matters. Thankfully, just as planned, the behemoth focused on the ponies. At first, it didn't do anything, probably from sheer confusion. While Grimm kept climbing, Twilight went on to name her friends and what Element they were: Applejack, Element of Honesty; Fluttershy, Element of Kindness; Pinkie Pie, Element of Laughter; Rarity, Element of Generosity; Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty; and Twilight herself, who was the Element of Magic. Grimm would had laughed at the corniness of this, if he wasn't being attacked by those damn flaming skulls. He couldn't use his guns effectively while climbing, so he used his free hand and smashed them on the rock face, bone fragments raining down below. As he made it to the ceiling, the giant creature regained its senses, and started tossing fireballs at the ponies. Celestia was one step ahead, though, and put up a shield around the Elements.
Thankfully, the ceiling had a series of small caves in it, so Grimm didn't have to cling to the ceiling by his hands. He got into place just above the behemoth, and Discord warped right beside him.
"Don't mind me, I'm just here to see what it's like when the Elements are used against someone who isn't me."
Grimm shrugged and got a rappel cord tied to a sturdy rock and attached it to his belt. He sat and waited for the Elements to hit, in case it actually did do something. Twilight finished her speech, and another giant rainbow beam shot out from the group. It headed straight for the demon, who was obscured by the light. When the beam faded, the demon stood there, now with a large hole in its head, exposing brain. Realizing this opportunity, Grimm took out both his BFG and chainsaw, revving up the latter.
'Here goes nothing.'
He jumped out of a hole in the ceiling, swinging towards the giant demon. Just as he was about to hit it, he brought the chainsaw forward. It hit, embedding itself several inches into the skin of the demon. It roared in pain, trying to buck the marine off, but he held on. Before it could bring its claws up, he aimed his BFG at the exposed brain. As it hummed to life, he said:
"They forgot me, the Element of Ass-kicking."
The gun fired, making the demon let out an ear-splitting screech before toppling over. Grimm hung onto the chainsaw for dear life, until the demon's impact with the lava sent both him and the power tool flying back to the rocky ground. The entire chamber began shaking, chunks of rock falling from the ceiling, demons swarming all over the place.
"Grimm! Come on! We have to get out of here!" Twilight yelled.
"Just go!" Grimm shouted back, in the middle of combat. "Don't worry about me, just get out of here!"
It had been hours since Grimm had killed the giant demon, and now the rest of them were dead. He knew what he had chosen, and he knew what it meant. He was going to stay here in Hell, and make sure that they don't invade Earth, Equestria, or anywhere else, ever again. A couple of magic letters appeared to him, from the ponies he had met, and he had to use the burning corpse of an archvile to send back that he didn't want to be "saved", and to tell them what he planned to do. Because of the lack of letters in response, he figured that they accepted that. And even if they didn't...
One month has passed since the invasion. The damage done by the demons had been repaired, and the corpses disposed of. The ponies killed during the invasion were mourned, and life returned to normal, for the most part. However, the psychological effects still deeply impacted the population. They still had peaceful lives, but they occasionally had mild flashbacks to the destruction the demons brought in the very brief time they were there. Some, like Spike, didn't even see the demons themselves, and only found out about it later.
Grimm did stay in Hell as he planned, living off of the food that the princesses courteously sent him daily. Celestia and Twilight both kept in touch with the marine with magic letters, meant to return to the princess upon being burnt by any common fire. It was through these letters that they learned that Discord just seemed to disappear completely; Celestia didn't sense him anywhere in Equestria, and Grimm confirmed that he wasn't in Hell. This made her nervous, but, somewhat selfishly, she figured that he was someone else's problem now; her duty lay in that of Equestria, not of other dimensions.
Still, even as Celestia raised the sun once more, she couldn't help but dwell on the thought of Discord, and where he could possibly be. Grimm said that he was nowhere to be found, but she still had a small amount of doubt in the back of her mind...
Grimm did not know how long it has been since he left Equestria. He still could remember the faces and names of the ponies he met, even if only for a day, but as time went on, they had started to slip his mind.
At some point, the rage had overtaken him, and he lost himself entirely to the bloodlust. However, he allowed himself not to be blinded by it, but to embrace it. To use it as a tool, rather than a hindrance.
Of course, Discord working a large portion of his chaos magic into a suit of armor specifically for him helped matters.
While the spirit of chaos had seemingly vanished after the armor's creation, Grimm had also stopped contact with Equestria. This was largely because he found himself much too engorged in purging the fires of Hell of anything and everything demonic.
Time started to blur as his one-man crusade continued. He wasn't sure what exactly Discord did to the armor, but he felt better than he ever did while rampaging. Somehow, he could find himself drawing strength from every demon he crushed underfoot, and he was capable of taking more punishment than he could before. Not only that, but it felt like he never had to satisfy bodily needs, such as hunger or sleep.
As long as he kept killing, he could keep going.
Of course, the demons didn't take this lying down. They started attacking in far larger numbers, seemingly redirecting every denizen of Hell towards the goal of taking down the unstoppable force that was John Grimm.
Days dragged into weeks, weeks dragged into months, and months stretched into countless years of slaughter, the fires of Hell starting to die down from the blood of its inhabitants.
Even the demons' ultimate warrior, standing over 12 times the size of the marine, proved to be no match for the marine.
The killing lasted so long that the demons themselves began to fear Grimm. Everywhere he went, death and destruction followed.
He was feared.
He was unstoppable.
His thirst for demon blood was unquenchable.
The demons could only agree on a single name for him:
