> Memories of a Phoenix
>  by firefeng
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1:  Rebirth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"How could you?" she whispered.

The man stared at his hands as his fingertips began to dissolve into glowing embers.  This was it.  He’d used up the last of the lifeforce.  He was going to die, finally, and the universe would be unmade in the process.  Then it, and him, would be reborn anew, alone.  

No.

As his hands dissolved into motes of dull orange light, shifting and dancing off into the white sky, he looked at her.  Lucy.  She was beautiful, hair falling across her porcelain features in black ringlets.  Her leathery wings shifted uncomfortably on her back, and her dark brown eyes were wide with shock as she saw him slowly slipping away.  They lifted to meet his gaze, surprise replaced with hurt.  She slapped him, sending off a small cloud of embers as his cheek greyed.  

“How could you?!” she repeated, her voice ragged.  He had dragged her soul back from the edge of the abyss, forcibly, and put it back into her broken body.  He had healed her body.  He had given her back her immortal life.  He had exhausted the last of his power to do so.  And now she was about to die again.  He hadn’t thought that last part through.  She had laid in his arms, growing cold.  He had refused to lose her that way, but now...

No.  

There was another way.  He could feel it, just beneath the surface, pressing against him.  He didn’t have to destroy.  He just had to use the power for something else.  A gamble.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.  Most of his body was gone, now, ash swirling through the white mists of a heaven despoiled.  Her eyes welled up with tears.  He hated that look.  “I’ll make it back.  I promise.”

Her face twisted with grief as she reached out for him, but the last of his corporeal form was gone, and his ashes slipped through her delicate hands.

“Phoenix...”  Lucy slumped to the ground.


*     *     *     *     *


With measured grace, Celestia approached the entrance to her personal chambers.  The two guards standing to either side of the wooden double doors stood a little straighter as they saw her round the corner, and saluted sharply as she approached.  She smiled kindly and nodded her head to each.

“At ease, my little ponies.”

They dropped their salute but kept their rigid posture.  Celestia’s horn glowed and the doors to her chamber opened.  She shut them quietly behind her as she walked towards the server cart next to the dark hardwood table in the center of her bedroom.  As the doors clicked shut, she immediately slumped and trudged over to a grouping of pillows at the table’s edge.  She unceremoniously flopped down and immediately pressed a hoof to one of her temples.  The princess sighed slightly, eyes closed and hoof massaging her head.  

Her Minister of the Treasury had cornered her.  Not that she had been avoiding him, really, so much as moving his written requests for a formal meeting towards the bottom of the substantial pile of paperwork she dealt with every day.  The innocently titled ‘Expenditure Requests for the Grand Galloping Gala’ sheet always ended up finding its way to the very bottom of the pile.  For the past few months.  Without fail.

After her Treasury Minister found her, the day had proven far more wearying than it otherwise would have been.  As was often the case, these days, she found herself more exhausted than she had in her earlier years.  At the very least, she had her suppers to herself.  She levitated the silver lid off of the platter on the server’s tray, and immediately wrinkled her nose.  Steamed whole carrots, alfalfa, some brussel sprouts, all garnished with a few daisies.  Hardly food fit for a princess.  She used telekinesis to slowly push the cart away from the table before she noticed a second, larger platter on the bottom.  

Celestia allowed herself a tiny smirk.  She levitated the second platter to the table and removed the lid, revealing an exorbitant, multi-layered cake dripping with pink frosting.  ‘Ah, Sayla Vee,’ she thought, inwardly thanking the maidservant from Prance who had again snuck her dessert beneath Luna’s nose, ‘you really do know how to show a princess a good time.’  She delicately cut a small slice off of the cake and hovered it before her, twisting it in the air as she examined it carefully.  Celestia paused, her gaze flitting between the slice and the rest of the cake, before the sun princess grinned widely and buried her muzzle into the cake on the platter.  The demure slice she had levitated floated softly in the air, quietly observing the genocide of its progenitor at the mouth of a very hungry princess.  

Even if her Treasury Minister had finally found her, the rest of the day hadn’t been all that bad.  Oh, goodness, Devil’s chocolate!  She truly did enjoy helping her little ponies, and she was able to help quite a few today.  The strawberry frosting!  A light, fruity, fluffy flavor, the perfect counterpoint to the dark chocalate!  The Royal Court was in recess until Luna took up her duties at nightfall, so she should be free to spend the evening in relative quiet.  Must she really chew?  Was it not enough to just drown her taste buds in this sweetened tidal wave of chocolate, strawberry, and sugar?  Yes, not a bad day at all.  Her snout dove more deeply into the cake as her eyes began to glaze over; the day’s worries began to slough off her shoulders and the anxiety began to leave her tired bones as she feasted.  Yes, things weren’t so bad at all.  

Her eyes shot wide as she felt a jolt of chaos magic tear into the harmonious fabric of her kingdom.  Specifically, the harmonious fabric of her bedroom.


*     *     *     *     *


The Void.  The place between realities.  The man didn’t belong here.  Just maintaining his form in this place drained a great deal of his renewed lifeforce.  From extensive experience, he knew that the longer he remained the less power he would have upon arrival.  He hesitated still, searching the myriad pulses of light that glared joyously in defiance of the uncreation between worlds.  He focused on one, the weaves of its worldstream flowing and undulating and overlapping in a symphony of order and chaos.  This would do.  

He pressed towards it, willing his form through the Void.  The reality grew brighter as he pressed into it, doing his best to heal the rifts left in his wake.  His vision grew brighter, almost blindingly so, as he pierced this world.  Even after so long, the human felt giddy.  He had a good feeling about this one.  In spite all odds, could this be it?  Could he have finally made it back?  

His mind was consumed by a searing white light, and he did his best to patch up the weave of the existence he had just pierced.  He smiled to himself as his form materialized into the Universe he had chosen.

He stopped smiling as his head slammed into a marble wall.  It cracked much less than his skull and the vertebrae in his neck and spine.  He collapsed onto the soft floor, twitching.

‘Every.  Fucking.  Time.’

The man groaned.  Well, gurgled.  Groaning was quite difficult when it felt like his crushed larynx shared space with his pancreas.  He instinctively reached inward, attempting to draw on his regenerative powers.  He was able to heal the mashed neurons of his brain enough to remember that his lifeforce still needed time to attune to a new reality.  

If his lungs were working correctly, he would have sighed.  The fact that he wasn’t already attuned meant he hadn’t made it back.  Not yet.  In that case, he should make sure everything made it through intact.  He tried to reach for the hilt of one of his two swords.  His left leg flopped about happily like a beached fish.  Great.  Neurological damage.  Should be healed soon enough.  In the meantime, he tried flopping his left leg around.  His hand immediately reached up and ran across the rough cloth hilt of his katana.  On a whim, he repeated the process with his right leg.  The limb spasmed dutifully at his brain’s command.  Well, now he just felt foolish.  He tried just using his right hand.  It obediently stroked the pearlescent hilt of the zweihander at his other shoulder.

‘Muramasa and Excalibur,’ the human mused.  ‘Of course they’re alright.’  The damn things were obviously more unbreakable than he himself was.  He didn’t bother to check on his two pistols.  Despite the soft carpet beneath him, their bulky forms dug into his ribs, affirming their presence.  He also didn’t bother to check on the black leather duster Odin had given him, either.  Even he couldn’t destroy the damn jacket.

He tried inching his eyes open.  He failed.  Damn world was bright.  Damnably so.  He already hated it.  Even still, he forced his eyes open and began taking stock of his surroundings.

’A bedroom,’ he thought.  Probably nobility or someone who—judging by the room’s size—was far too rich for their own subjects’ good.  Not the ideal place to materialize.  Marble walls, one of which was now slightly cracked.  Regal red carpet.  Oversized bed with sheets that bore a silken sheen.  A large balcony with semi-transparent, waving white curtains on the far side of the room.  A dark-varnished chest of drawers polished to a mirror’s shine, and a huge vanity mirror to its right.  

He was starting to think it was not really looking good on the ‘please don’t randomly dimension-jump into an important person’s bedroom’ front, so far.  Between him and the bed was a dark-colored wooden table, upon which sat a silver platter stacked with various baked sweets.  A metallic server’s cart bore a multitude of unpalatable vegetables to the side.  Aside from the cart, everything in the room had an intricate air of craftsmanship, as if it were all the masterwork of some poor sap that sold his damn soul to create something to curry favor with a greater power. 

Definitely royalty.  He hated royalty.

And then there was the unicorn.

White coat, weird, multi-hued floaty mane that the man figured would probably poison him with gamma radiation if he touched it.  Decorative golden horseshoes.  Aww, its owner even gave it a nice tiara!  He’d never seen one with wings before, but c’est la vie, there was a first for everything.  After this long, he was too used to all those firsts.

The winged unicorn stared at him with open shock, knelt down on its four legs in front of a crumb-addled platter of destroyed cake.  Its wide eyes warily watched his every weary movement as the neurons in his neck finally healed, enough for the man to haltingly stand up with all the grace of a marionette dragged from its wooden torpor and awkwardly forced onto a cardboard stage to entertain children.  He stuttered about with clumsy jitters until something caught his eye, ceasing his movements immediately.  Next to the unicorn's face, a bright yellow aura encompassed a very large piece of cake drowned in pink frosting, no small amount of which had accrued around the unicorn’s lips.  

‘Alright, so unicorns and cake.  That’s new.  Should I just assume the unicorn’s owner is retarded for not feeding her correctly?’    He immediately ran down what little he knew of the creatures from his travels.  Magical animals, and in most of the places he had been, exceedingly rare, and usually violent and powerful.  He could probably assume that he was dealing with a wizard, at the very least.  The bastards loved their mythological pets.  Although they don’t usually feed them cake...Still, a few minutes after a jump, a wizard might actually pose some danger to him.  It wasn’t so much the painful death by lightning and fire he was worried about.  He had become desensitized to pain long ago.   However, being kept as a personal toy in a pocket dimension until he learned how to break out?  He shuddered, vaguely recalling ten years spent in one such prison seven hundred years ago.  He realized he should tread carefully.  But still, why cake?


He paused, a random thought clawing at him suddenly.  Should he leave a note detailing proper equine diet, or just assume that horses in this reality, and by extension, unicorns, subsisted on a different diet than the few worlds upon which he encountered them before?  He might even be thanked for promoting the nutrition of the local crazed wizard’s pets.  Or he could just assume that peasants were going to chase after him with pointy farm implements and torches while their insane Wizard-Lord drove them onward in a harried hunt, cackling madly and shooting lightning from his fingertips as virgin sacrifices fueled the mage’s dark magics.  From his personal experience, the latter option was the most likely one.  The unicorn, meanwhile, simply stared openly at him as the piece of cake began surreptitiously settling on a platter behind the creature.

‘Right, really don’t want to deal with a unicorn-powered Spanish Inquisition.  Ideally, I should slip out of here undetected.  First thing’s first, make nice with the pet so it doesn’t arouse unnecessary suspicion.  And hope to Christ it can’t raise some sort of alarm.’

He stumbled cautiously to the cart with the silver platter of vegetables, his head dancing awkwardly upon his ruined neck like a bobblehead doll, and plucked out a carrot.

“Easy, girl,” he cooed softly, clucking his tongue.  “Easy.  No need to whinny or buck my skull in or gore me with your horn or warn your master that some weirdo just popped up in his private bedchambers.”  His hand waggled the carrot slightly.  “You hungry?  This’ll probably be better for you than that, uh, cake they gave you.”  His voice still emanated softly, but the unicorn’s eyes narrowed slightly, almost imperceptibly.  He was hoping the reaction was just because his sentences were all slurred and borderline incoherent as a result of his cranial injuries.

“No, no,” the man intoned as gently as he could through numb lips, “there’s no need to be defensive, or loud.  Here, you want this?”  He wagged the carrot again for emphasis.  “Here, take it.”

He gently tossed the carrot towards the creature.  It floated slowly through the air, tumbling with untold grace, before smacking the unicorn in her flank in the dead center of what appeared to be a tattoo of the sun.  It bounced off and thudded dully to the ground at her hooves.  The unicorn’s head snapped back, regarding the carrot, before the creature turned its gaze back on him.  Its eyes narrowed further, their vibrant light magenta chilling as surely as the final moments of a cold winter’s sunset before the onset of the night.  As the unicorn stood, its horn began glowing a gaudy yellow color, and the man could only stare in shock as its mouth moved.

The words that it—that she—spoke sounded terribly melodious to the human, in spite of being completely incomprehensible.  He registered the glow of her horn before things clicked.  The man sighed.  He was going to have to figure out a way to jump dimensions without his brain being turned into oatmeal by hardened objects upon his arrival, first and foremost, but he was sure of at least one thing else.

“Goddammit, definitely sentient.”  He gritted his teeth while still trying to smile concedingly to the unicorn, holding his hands up in surrender even as he began to feel tendrils of the her yellow magic attempting to entrap him.

‘Run.’

*      *      *     *     *

Ridge Dancer sighed.  Another day, another ten hours she would have to stand outside of Princess Celestia’s door.  She hadn’t wanted this job, honestly.  It was an unspoken truth among the Guard that Princess duties were no honor, but more a punishment for insubordination.  Anypony worth their salt already knew that the princesses were more than capable of defending themselves, far more than any guardspony could.  She was only here as a result of her...brash behavior.

She shifted her hooves impatiently, the weight of the Celestial Guard armor chafing uncomfortably as her mental processes began to dread another day of banal inactivity, another day without meaning as she merely maintained the status quo and desperately held onto her flagging resolve to do absolutely nothing.  As a filly, the thought of standing around aimlessly for hours on end would have driven her to madness.  As an adult—she forcefully demanded her psyche accept the mantle of “adulthood”—she would suffer any anathema that her superiors thought necessary, chief among them the defense of the Princesses.  She just wished her task was not so painfully monoto-

The gold-trimmed door behind her exploded violently, splinters of wood pirouetting chaotically through the air in her peripheral vision even as she was vaguely cognizant of her own trajectory roughly matching their own.  Years of Guardspony training subdued her shock, however, and her own natural instincts kicked in as she began gracefully tumbling through the air and along the ground, dispersing the force of the impact as she landed firmly on her four hooves without injury.  Not bad for a unicorn, she thought to herself.  At least until something heavy and dark collided with her, sending her tumbling a few more meters, a curse escaping her lips as pain shot through her right hind leg, punctuating the grisly, audible snapping sound of one of her bones fracturing.

She screamed inwardly, desperately quelling a vocal expression of the immense pain that suddenly wracked her hind limb.  She clenched her jaws and willed her instinctual tears back into their wells as she tried to move her leg.  She gasped, the torture shooting through her mangled limb as flagrantly as the hiss that escaped between her teeth.  In some muddled part of her mind she had already begun planning violent retribution against the foe that had spun her into such excruciating torment.

She lifted her head in a desperate attempt to make sense of her surroundings amidst the chaos.  Immediately, she was impacted violently by wave after wave of vertigo, and she again did her best to disregard the lancing pain in her hind leg.  When her focus finally centered, she realized she was pinned to the ground, eye-to-eye with one of the oddest creatures she had ever seen.  It was completely without fur save for a bright shock of a spiky, strawberry blonde mane atop an otherwise hairless head. Its face was flatter than a pony’s, its cream-colored skin accentuating an open-mouthed look of what appeared to be shock, though it was difficult to tell on such an alien face.  For a moment, time froze, and it stared at her as wide-eyed as she probably gawked at it, an otherworldly light seemingly playing behind its pale, ice-blue eyes like a candle fluttering in a mild breeze.  

“Seize the intruder!” Celestia’s voice boomed out from somewhere behind her.  

Her command seemed to startle the creature on top of her back to reality, and he quickly shifted his weight to lift himself up, his left leg brushing against her broken limb.  She yelped briefly before cutting off her voice, trading her vocal sign of weakness for a glare of burning ire.

Glancing at her leg, the hairless monster’s features seemed to soften for a second, before his odd face took on a decidedly sheepish expression.

The strange creature whispered a few guttural, foreign words in a tone she could almost swear was apologetic before his hand slapped down rudely on the flank of her broken leg.  She screamed in agony and embarrassment before she felt bolts of icy-hot electricity flow through her limb.  There was an uncomfortable, though painless, sensation of her leg bones shifting and popping, and then both the pain and the electric current had disappeared.

The monster repeated a handful of unintelligible words, this time more softly, before in a blur he had leapt off her and took down the hallway in a curiously fast streak.   Princess Celestia and a few of the uninjured guards galloped right behind him in hot pursuit.

‘Oh...that thing did not just slap my flank,’ she thought murderously as she stood up, testing her leg.  It felt fine.  She hauled off down the hallway in the direction the monster took.

*     *     *     *     *

Really? a soft voice rasped through his mind.  You can barely channel any lifeforce at all and you stopped to heal the broken leg of one of the things now chasing your primate ass down?

He ignored the voice.  The yellow aura began to surround him again, but he caught the filaments driving the magic and mentally bent the threads one by one, as best he could.  The lifeforce that drove his power was having difficulty adapting, as he couldn’t sense any of the leylines of quantum or relativistic power that had hummed throughout all the other worlds he had visited.  Instead, every attempt to physically manifest a portion of his lifeforce felt...ungraceful.  In lieu of finesse, every droplet of soul he could feel drip into his pool of usable energy he flung mindlessly like a bullet at the magic weaving he assumed was trying to trap him in a telekinetic field, redirecting the threads into nearby walls and causing pufts of dust to shoot into the air as the telekinesis spells impacted into the stone and plaster.

One thousand years and you’re still this soft? Muramasa continued.  	

‘They’re a bunch of weird sentient horses, and me stumbling about with a broken goddamn neck fractured one of their legs.  Did you expect me to just let them ship the poor thing off to the local glue factory just because of my clumsy ass?!’  he argued with the voice as he leapt over a silver-colored server’s cart, abandoned in the middle of the hallway as its original bearer cowered against the wall in the commotion.  He spun midair after clearing the obstacle, connecting with the cart in a roundhouse kick that sent it spinning into some of the guards following him.  They flew into the air like pins at a bowling alley.

How many of those ones did you just send to the glue factory? the voice mused cynically as he completed his spin, landing on one foot and subsequently reintroducing his face to the floor’s red carpet as his neurons took their damn sweet time regenerating.  The carpet genially responded to his face with gratuitous carpet burns before he scrambled crudely to his feet and rocketed off further down the hallway.

‘You can fuck off any time you want, now, Masa,’ he admonished coolly, as more guards poured out of side hallways into his path and the same yellow telekinetic threads began showering around him in increasing intensity.

That’s not my name, you know.  And you’re going out of your way to make things difficult.  Again.  The voice was reproachful.  It often was.

‘Fine, then.  New plan.  You wanna play?’  the man thought.

Well, it has been several decades since you even drew me.  It’s so terribly dark here in this sheath...

‘I’m serious, Masa.’  He juked around a couple more shocked servants that erupted from side halls, drawn by the commotion.  ‘You cut any of ‘em, I’ll feed your ass to Cal.’

Tch, very well, human.  His sword sulked.  He didn’t know how a sword could sulk, he just knew it did.  The large white one is gaining on you, by the way...

The man cursed.  He was still having trouble healing himself.  He drew the katana over his left shoulder haltingly, still running as fast as his maladjusted physical form allowed him in this place, and began landing non-lethal blows with the blunt edge of the katana on the heads of any guard that got too close.  He stopped sending his lifeforce after each magical thread he could sense, and instead focused every ounce of power available to him into the half-healed neurons in his neck, knitting them much faster and vastly increasing his dexterity.  After his counter-barrage ceased decimating the golden yellow threads of telekinesis, they gathered strength and shot forth all at once with a sense of hungry urgency.  He allowed himself a half-grin, letting the magical strands almost reach him before he spun quickly, using the momentum to flash the katana around with blinding speed.  Every golden tendril that had formed suddenly split in half, the recoil of being stopped immediately carrying through the threads straight back into the summoner.  The big white horse screamed in anguish at the sudden backlash of magical energies.  The pursuing guards halted suddenly at the pained cries of what he could only assume was their leader.

He stifled a momentary stab of guilt as he sheathed his sword. Severing threads like that could result in a nasty headache, or worse.  The white unicorn shot a hoof to her head instinctually, trying to stave off her sudden migraine.  Her light violet eyes narrowed as they met his, promising a great many fates worse than death blahblahblah.  Whatever, it wasn’t the first time he pissed off royalty.  He’d be gone in a few days time, anyway.  He twirled around to continue his flight but connected solidly with something dark blue, stunning him slightly.  He spun on reflex to dodge around whatever it was, before the loudest voice he had ever heard assaulted his eardrums.

“CRA’DENEI DE SHEY FAH RA’LUNEI!!!!!”

The force of the voice flung him back against the nearby marble wall, fracturing it far less violently than it did his own spine and skull.  Again.  He’d been at the receiving end of dragons’ roars that carried less force than that voice.  

Quick, cut her!

Through muddled thoughts, the man commanded the sword to remain in its sheath.  Its annoyed sigh echoed through his mind.  

His body twitched uselessly on the ground before being dragged up the wall in a blue aura of telekinesis. Through blurry, malfunctioning eyesight, he managed to make out the vague form of a midnight blue unicorn almost as large as the White Cake Demon who started this chase in the first place.  He focused what little remained of his energy reserves into healing his optic neurons, slowly bringing his dark-colored assailant into focus.

It held a similar form to the white one who had just given him chase—a disgustingly short chase, one of his bitter thoughts chastised—possessing the horn of a unicorn, wings, and a flowing mane that seemed to contain the entirety of a clear night’s sky, twinkling stars and all.  He paused on its mane for as long as he could, staring in fascination and almost hypnotized by its countless constellations, before being rudely interrupted by reality.  The blue winged unicorn-thingy began its unintelligible shouts again, pulverizing his bones against the already ruined wall.  It was only with what small modicum of lifeforce he could muster that he managed to prevent his eyeballs from liquefying, which allowed him to see the white unicorn-thingy stumble up behind the blue one, all pretense of mercy gone from her twilight-tinged eyes.  Then she started yelling in the same incoherent horse-language that the blue one was employing to shatter every bone in his body to great effect.

‘So, here I am.  Again,’ he noted dryly.  ‘Another world, and more pissed off natives that I’ll probably have to end up killing.’

The white one’s shouting escalated, her mouth moving in ever more animated and quick motions to voice her displeasure.  And still caked with frosting.  But, he noticed, one globule of pink frosting made more exaggerated movements than the rest of her mouth.  He snorted to himself as subtly as he could, desperately trying to ignore what were probably chocolate crumbs pelting his face.

You’ve made such a good impression this time that maybe they’ll kill you straight away.  It’ll be funny to see how they respond to  that...  The human wished his sword would shut up.

The chunk of cake frosting continued its animated journey through its pointed denial of physics, still clinging on to the corner of the white one’s lips in spite of her increasingly animated manner of speech.  He snickered a bit, before catching himself.  He’d rather not be tortured along with being put to death.  The blue one caught his temporary outburst of mirth, however, her shouts becoming noticeably more piercing in their intensity.  Honestly, even he didn’t know how every bone in his body hadn’t shattered beneath the shockwaves of her railing, but he was distracted as the frosting on the white one’s lips continued to egregiously violate all physics he was aware of, flailing around randomly with every apparent curse that escaped the unicorn’s mouth.

Finally, as if on cue, both of them ceased talking simultaneously, trading their lecture for stern, regal looks he recognized from a few realities in the past that could be roughly translated as, “YOU DONE FUCKED UP NOW, MANG.”

So crass.

‘Fuck you.’

Case-in-point.  Also, you should have cut her.

’...you say that about everything.’

I’m a sword.  It’s what we do.  The human ignored the katana.  He’d chanced upon thousands of worlds, and was host to experiences the likes of which his kind could only dream about.  He’d still never seen anything like that blob of frosting on the white unicorn’s lips.  How did it remain attached?   

As if sensing the man’s disbelief, the sweetened globule finally released its tenuous grasp on the corner of the white one’s lips, dropping with no small aplomb into the dark blue floating mane of the smaller winged unicorn.  There it simply stuck.  He stared at it intently.  A wholly inconvenient voice barreled through his mind like a freight train crashing through suburban housing.  

His other sword finally broke its silence.  Let them leak cake! Cal boomed, poorly mimicking the feminine voice of the man’s pearly captor.  

He couldn’t hold it in any longer.

He laughed so uproariously that the hardened gazes of every pony present were immediately replaced with looks of dumb confusion, his white and blue unicorn captors trading nervous glances at his sudden outburst.  This, in turn, only made him laugh even harder, as the blue unicorn’s mane seemed to pick up energy from its owner’s bewilderment, flailing the pink frosting blob about even faster.  Tears were forming in his eyes, and even if the unicorn’s lack of focus had made the blue field of telekinesis disappear from around him, he was doubled over, clutching his sides as the laughter further exacerbated the injuries to his ribs, and completely incapable of even contemplating escape.

His laughter was only mildly subdued by what sounded like a ferocious, throaty growl, and in between his halting guffaws he looked up to see that one of the guards was not paralyzed by confusion.  It glared at him hatefully, and as the last vestiges of his laughter played their course, he realized in a sudden moment of clarity that he recognized the pale green eyes glaring at him from behind the centurion helmet on the horse’s head.

You probably shouldn’t have broken its leg.  Just cut it somewhere important and be done with it, Masa lectured as the guard’s horn glowed a dark green.  He pushed the blade’s protests to the back of his mind as he bore the angry equine’s assalts.  He wished he hadn’t remembered being sent through several very thick, very painful marble walls before he blacked out, the guard-horse-thingy glaring at him the entire time through furious, light jade eyes as the blue and white big unicorn-things merely looked on, seemingly amazed by the brutality of the situation. 

‘Another day, another reality that isn’t home,’ he thought miserably before darkness took him.
> Chapter 2:  An Embarrassing Mistake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Not!  Without!  My permission!”  Ridge Dancer punctuated every angry scream by dropping the several hundred pound chunk of marble—taken from one of the newly destroyed pillars—onto the monster’s head.  It had lost consciousness over a minute ago, and by now it’s ugly face was decidedly more misshapen from the constant bludgeoning.  Her voice had taken on a manic, screeching tone.  “NOT!  WITHOUT!  MY PERMISSION!”

“Private Ridge Dancer, We demand that you cease your attacks this instant!”  Princess Celestia’s voice boomed in the Traditional Canterlot Voice, finally shaking the unicorn guard out of her wrathful revery.  She stared down at the broken, unconscious creature that had violated her, barely recognizing its twisted form.  Her head swept around towards the two approaching princesses, her eyes as wide as a doe before a racing stagecoach.  She immediately threw herself to the ground, her false-white guardshooves before her in prostration.

“Please, Princess Celestia, forgive me,” she whined.

“Odd,” said Princess Luna, ambling ahead of her sister as the white alicorn brought a hoof to her forehead, her use of the ancient voice amplifying what was fast becoming her worst headache in years.  “We have been back for just beyond a year, now, yet the guards submit themselves to beg for only my sister’s mercy, rather than the just amnesty afforded from both our royal assent.”  She glared down coldly at the female guardspony quivering at her feet, her deep blue eyes possessing more frigidity than the freezing arctic depths.  

“What say you, child?” she intoned with every bit of the arrogance that her position afforded her.  

“I...”  Ridge Dancer mumbled quietly.  “I am very sorry, Princess Luna-”

“Luna,” came the Night Princess’s flat interruption. 

“I’m very sorry, Luna.  It was not my intent to offend,”  Ridge mumbled in a humbled correction.

“Then, prithee, do inform us as to why thou thought fit to so thoroughly mangle a noncombatant in our royal presence, after this creature had been adequately subdued?” Luna responded questioningly.

“Non...noncombatant?” Ridge Dancer asked in honest shock, her gaze flitting between both Princesses, though Celestia seemed more content to nurse her headache with one pale hoof than she did to pay attention to the conversation.  Slowly, Ridge steeled her resolve.  “It ruined Princess Celestia’s door.  It tackled me.  I saw it striking numerous ponies with its curved sword.  It-”  she cut her sentence short, her eyes dancing wildly at all the piercing gazes in the room.

Princess Luna noted the presence of a great many members of the Royal Guard, glanced at her sister, and caught a slight nod before her Celestia went back to nursing her headache.  “You!” she shot a hoof out to point at one of the gathered guardsponies who had a few more decorations on his armor than the others.  He saluted by instinct.  “Use all the ponies under thy command to gather the injured and see to it that they are treated.  You,” she located another pony with more symbols on his armor than his compatriots, “fetch the Captain of the Guard immediately.  Order the ponies under thy  command to immediately seek out our royal architects, that we might assess the damage.”

Luna glanced at Celestia, who nodded with halting approval before adding, “Sergeant Cloud Smasher, prepare a sky chariot for Ponyville immediately.  I will be sending for the Elements of Harmony as soon as our captive is properly dealt with.  The rest of you, contain the perimeter and ensure there are no further intrusions.”

A pegasus that Luna had previously overlooked immediately saluted and shot off down the hallway.

‘We shall have to memorize all their names eventually.  And probably the symbols on the Sun Guard armor, lest we confuse one of our own officers for a Filly Scout.’  

Luna glanced at the sole remaining guardspony who timorously bowed at her hooves.  She sighed, but temporarily ignored the quivering mass of scared pony and instead turned to the odd creature who had collided with her down the hallway.  Her sister slowly trudged to her side.  Luna prodded the being with one tentative hoof.

“I believe we may have broken it,” Luna stated matter-of-factly, prodding it a bit harder.

It groaned.  Well, gurgled.  “Well, at least it yet lives,” Luna sighed.  “Sister, what could have possibly possessed thee to act on this being in such a manner?  Did thou suffer some form of attack?  ‘Tis rather excessive that we went to such harmful lengths merely to subdue it.”

The lids on Celestia’s eyes flattened in annoyance.  She simply stated, “He’s Discord.”

Luna cocked an eyebrow.  “Oh?  He appears nothing like that particular unsubtle dragonequus.  Do elaborate.”

“He teleported to my room, and the strands of magic that preceded the spatial disturbance that bore him there were clearly Chaos magic.”

“Hmm,” Luna’s mouth quirked as she thought.  “Not necessarily damning, considering dragons and even certain wild beasts like timberwolves also bear such an unnerving magical signature.  I wonder...”

“Luna, he also,” she paused, uncertainty beginning to chip away at her, “he also taunted me in a manner that nopony would know about save for Discord.”

“We question what sort of foul invectives 'he' may have uttered that led thee to that conclusion.”

Princess Celestia mulled over the implied query for a second, finding it difficult to think through the pounding in her temples and her horn.  “He didn’t so much as say anything, aside from complete gibberish—which Discord was fond of doing from time to time—but his actions were clear enough.”

Luna sighed in frustration, but replied gently, “Sister, we...I,” she corrected, “have lived for over ten thousand years, and thou hast centuries more experience and a piercing sagacity that never ceases to amaze us.  However, in certain matters...”

The pause only lasted for a few seconds, far shorter than the pall of a funeral, but carrying no less weight.  Ridge Dancer still quivered off to the side, her face buried in the tiles, hoping she was forgotten.

“We just awoke to fulfill our regal duties an hour ago.  It is about this time thou takes thy retreat in thy chambers for dinner, is it not?”

“Well, yes...”

“Tell us, sister.  How was dessert?”  Luna smiled sweetly, a devilish glow sparking momentarily in her deep blue eyes.  She knew full well that Sayla Vee had been sneaking sweets alongside the strict regiment she had demanded from the castle kitchens.

“Well!  I-”  Celestia choked on the words, a hoarse cough escaping instead as she whipped her head around and stared at her little sister.  A look of pained guilt crossed her face as she brought her gaze back down to the crumpled creature on the floor before them.  The thing gurgled again as if in response, before its misshapen jawbone jerked back to its proper place with a sickening pop!  Its ruined throat followed suit, turning its grotesque burbling into proper groans of agony.

“Gross!” Ridge Dancer exclaimed, before hurriedly covering her mouth with her hooves and continuing her study of the few motes of dust she could find on the floor before her.

Luna now circled both the creature and her sister, a bemused smile playing on her face.  “After all this time, thou possesses as much knowledge of our daily routine as we do of thine’s.  Pray tell, what could we have been up to before we heard the disturbance in the palace and returned to satisfy our curiosity?”  She brought her hoof to her chin in mocking ponderance.  

“You usually take a brisk walk in the gardens before you...”  Celestia’s ears drooped.  “Luna, that’s not funny.”

“We did take note of a particular statue...”

“Really, Luna, I get it.”

“...one that had remarkably not disappeared after the apparent disturbance in our castle.”

“That being appeared while I was stuffing my face with cake, cooed at me like I was some sort of household pet, then threw a carrot at my flank.”  Celestia's blunt explanation came out in one quick breath.  “I swear, I wonder if you go out of your way to try to be insufferable,” she muttered with a mild pout.  “I also sometimes wonder just how you manage to think so far ahead.”

Luna giggled lightly, nuzzling her big sister.  “We had a very good teacher, one far more astute than us, if memory serves.”  She smiled as Princess Celestia’s features gentled.  “Though in this particular instance, we cheated.  Multiple times.”  Her smile turned into a knowing grin, and her flowing mane suddenly changed direction, a dried husk of frosting flitting right in front of Celestia’s eyes.  Celestia hurriedly wiped the confectionery evidence off of her lips with her hooves whereas Luna simply magicked the offending sugar out of her mane.  The night princess turned to the prostrated guard.

“Ridge Dancer, we feel thou hast inspected the floor for any threats upon our being for long enough.  As admirable as your dedication towards the cleanliness of our palace may be, please come join my sister and I for a moment.”  All three ponies grimaced slightly as more of the bipedal creature’s skull bones audibly popped back into place, it’s head returning to what appeared to be “normal”.

A squeaking meep escaped Ridge’s throat as she rushed to join the princesses.

“In what manner did this creature assail you?”

“I had just landed unharmed after he blew up the door.  Then he tackled me and broke my leg,”  Ridge responded with slightly less meekness, her brain treating the line of questioning as more of a debriefing than criticism.  One of Celestia’s eyebrows shot up questioningly as her eyes flicked to each of the guardpony's unharmed limbs, but her sister continued her line of questioning.  ‘When she gets like this,’ Celestia mused, ‘there really is no stopping her.  I wonder exactly how many detective books she’s been reading during her visits to the Royal Library...’

“Yet here you are, walking about with limbs as pristine as they presumably were when you reported for duty...what say you?”

“I...it...” Ridge stammered out.  “That thing,” she steadied her voice, but it was laced with hatred, “slapped me on my flank, and then cast something on me.  Whatever happened while it was copping a feel fixed my leg, then it babbled something and took off running.”

Celestia eyed the young unicorn carefully.  “Ridge Dancer, forgive my intrusion, but there’s something I’d like to see.”  Her horn glowed a bright yellow, and Ridge Dancer shivered as she felt a spell course through her body.  

Celestia brought her head up suddenly, her pupils narrowed to pinpricks, “Is that?!”

Luna had a thoughtful look on her face as she scrutinized the being at their hooves.  “It’s harder to detect now, but I noticed it immediately when the creature ran into me.”

‘Healing magic,’ Celestia thought, her mind racing in confusion, adding to her headache.  ‘More specifically, Harmony magic...’

She looked towards Luna, and was met with her sister’s somber gaze.

‘What manner of creature can utilize both Chaos and Harmony magic?’

The thing on the floor had ceased its moaning and snored peacefully as the three mares looked on.


*    *    *    *    *


“You’re really going to work tonight when it’s your birthday?” his sister asked.

“You know me, Sis.  I’m not a big fan of holidays, even if you all worship the ground I walk on.”  He laughed.  “But really, if you got me a present this year, I’m gonna be pissed.  I’ve forgotten both you and Jessi’s birthdays for the last three years,” he said, wincing as he remembered his little sister’s birthday last month, “and I’ll be damned if I accept something when I can’t even remember what day you all were born.”

She just laughed.  “For as smart as you are, I kinda wonder how you have such bad memory.”

“Practice, mostly,” he said casually, “coupled with a severe distaste towards giving a damn about what day you popped out of Mom’s uterus as a screeching monstrosity.”

“You always had a way with words, Sean,” a male voice piped up sarcastically from behind him.  Sean merely took another drag from his cigarette and expelled it into the early evening air, flitting his gaze towards the sliding glass door.

“And you always had a way with...sucking.”

“I retract my previous statement,” his best friend Mike retorted.  "It was a terrible understatement, in fact.  By Jove, the weight of your grandiloquence could intone the very stars from the heavens by virtue of the gravitational pull of your hubris alone."  Mike grinned, knowing full well that his well-read could run circles around his friend's verbal bluntness.  Every once in a while, Sean might be able to manage a curse that caught him off guard.  That was rare.  

“What can I say?  The simplest of your observations are wrought with ruin and failure the second they spark from your defective synapses.”  Sean took another drag from his delicious, delicious cigarette, not even sure his response made sense.  Whatever, it definitely sounded intelligent.

Mike simply laughed.  “Hey, that one actually made sense this time!  Good job!  Keep up the speech therapy-”

“-I’ll fucking burn you with fire-”

“-and then you might have a girlfriend as hot as mine!”  He grabbed Sean's sister by the shoulder and hugged her close.  “No, really.  Why have you not called in to work?”

“Mike, you know I, uh, can’t.  I don’t want to work today.  I don’t want to work any day.   If I could sit on my ass, drink beer, play videogames, and trade barbs with you everyday, trust me, I'd do it.  But I have to.”

Mike regarded him with amusement from the corner of his eyes, no doubt concocting yet another good reason why he should spend his birthday somewhere other than his soulless job.  A thought flashed through Sean's brain. ‘Oh, don’t you dare-’

“I dunno, what do you think, Sarah?” he mused.

After adding a mental note to burn his life to the ground, Sean sighed and met his sister’s eyes.

“Do you really have to?”  The serious edge in her voice snapped him to attention faster than a slap to his face—and he’d gotten quite a few of those with his...obtuse...personality.  “It's just...”  She paused.  “Something's not right,” she said simply, frowning as though some important item of concern of hers couldn't adequately be conveyed.  "I know it's your birthday and we should be celebrating, but I just have a bad feeling."

Sean regarded her seriously for a second, before bursting out into laughter.  “Sarah, I should count myself lucky.”  She stared at him, confused.  “This is the first time I remember you worried about me in the last five years that didn't involve me asking you for money.”  He chuckled mirthlessly.  “For a while, I almost worried you were more concerned with my financial management than you were with me.”  

Her eyes merely regarded him sadly, deep stirrings of pity playing subtly deep with her shimmering eyes.  Sean hated that look.  He HATED that look.

“Sean-”


*     *     *     *     *


He awoke on a simple hay-stuffed mattress in a graying room of what appeared to be ceramic bricks.  'Oh, good, it appears not everything is constructed with concussion-inducing marble in this reality.'  Popping his back as he leaned up out of the poor excuse for a mattress he had been given, he looked around.  Fairly roomy, so far as dungeon cells went.  A weird, translucent purple sphere encompassed most of the cell.  The forcefield had a complementary purple unicorn with a magenta streak through its purple hair—the unicorn was dozing off just outside the purple sphere, its face planted on a scroll and a quill tangled in its hair.  At the barred door to the cell proper, a light green unicorn with shockingly vivid lime-colored eyes was glaring at him.

‘Oh, a proper dungeon cell.  Serves me right for sucking at being awesome.  I should be out of here in a few hours,’  he assured himself.

He tested his magical reserves.  Still almost nothing, maybe an extra droplet here and there but nothing more substantial than before.  He also noted the absence of his weapons and his coat, which he had expected.  Closing his eyes, he identified their locations relative to his present position.  They were about a thousand yards away, to the far right and at a higher altitude, but they thankfully weren’t being handled.  ‘Good,’ he thought somberly.  He tried summoning them, but between the trickle of power and some sort of muddled interference—probably the forcefield—he couldn't quantum transmute them to his cell.  If he sensed they were being used, he'd just have to think of something.

Blowing out a puff of air in resignation, he reached into one of his blue jean’s back pockets.  The hardened plastic square was still there.  A cataract of relief spilled through him.  He fished the little black box out of his back pocket and navigated a couple menus until the file in question popped up onto its screen.  Pressing play, a video of his older sister and his best friend whirred to life on the small screen.

He wouldn’t...couldn’t...forget them.  And he'd be damned if some fucked up reality with homicidal horses came between him and his family.

The bright green horse-thing was gone as the file replayed the gaiety of the last birthday he remembered.  Tinny laughter escaped the media player's speakers, and as much as he tried to focus on that laughter, a few nagging questions clawed at him.  'Where the fuck am I that my power barely works, and how did I black out long enough to even get imprisoned without waking?'  

On the screen, his friend, Mitch, had just cracked open a beer and was teasing his sister, Selena, about being too quiet.  


> Chapter 3:  The Calm Before The Scorn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“My, my, what a terrible mess.  Completely unbefitting of a room in the royal palace,” a stallion's voice chided in melody to the percussion of his clopping hooves as he entered the devastated chambers.  He spoke with a disturbing evenness, a lilting, artificial enchantment playing subtly through his tone.  “It’s such a dreary fact that all these rooms appear the same to me.  Makes my job quite difficult.  Which one is this?”

“Why hello, Guard-Captain Glancing Shock,” Princess Celestia said with clear disapproval in her voice, “so nice of you to grace us with your presence so punctually.”  Luna had left quite some time ago to raise the moon after Celestia lowered the sun from this room, but had returned and currently laid comfortably on a cushion near the center of the room where the prone creature still slept, a thick tome open before her.  Ridge Dancer’s fear had since succumbed to boredom, her nature finally overpowering her deference to the princesses.  She stood with her face to a wall in the back of the room, trying to find patterns in the dark green veins that ran through the marble.  

Through the threshold of the room entered a cornflower blue pegasus.  He moved with viperous grace from the entrance of the room, and even with her millennia of experience Celestia was left befuddled over whether his agile motions reminded her of the aery lightness of a dandelion’s seeds dancing in a soft mountain breeze, or the sanguine calculation of a jungle cat stalking its prey, its coiled muscles ready to snap and loose death without warning.  He seemed to shift between either mode of locomotion effortlessly and without warning, such that the two blurred together randomly.  Far more off-putting was the aloof calculation behind his half-lidded eyes, an apathy that seemed to contradict his own lithe movements.  The fact that he always had a mild smile on his face, the outer edges of his mouth hinting at an upward turn without ever actually completing the action, further added to his perturbing nature.

He bore a shock of brilliant white mane that was jaggedly disheveled and tinged a darker blue shade at the edges than his coat, and matched the color of his cutie mark: three simple white lightning bolts outlined in a slightly darker blue, forming a circle.  His spartan uniform, if it could even be called that, contrasted sharply with his unreadable physical faculty.  Eschewing the staple armor that enchanted all guardponies with a simple glamour such that they all shared a similar appearance, he instead wore a simple leather brigandine with holes cut in the sides for his wings. Two swords, one a rapier and the other a gladius, were mounted in scuffed black leather sheaths across his back and crossed right where his wings joined his upper back to avoid impeding their movement in flight.  His badge of rank was displayed plainly on his left breast, clearly added to the thoroughly worn—though well-maintained—light armor much more recently.  

Seemingly oblivious to his occupational faux pas and ignoring her implied insult, Glancing Shock merely stared at her for a few seconds, the silence seeming to stretch on longer than it should have as his blank, amber eyes had fogged over with ambiguous anticipation.

Celestia snorted as her regal visage imploded and instead replied flatly to his original query, “It is one of the many waiting rooms for nobles seeking a private audience with myself or my sister.”

“Oh, good.  I do say, you two seem to run yourself ragged attempting to appease that lot,” he waved his hoof errantly.  “Fewer waiting rooms amounts to less nobility, which amounts to less mane-pulling frustration.  I still say that sending them to me first to cull the chaff would be a better option than worrying yourselves with their banal implorations.  I know just how to handle that sort.  Just how to handle them.”  His voice had segued from a musing monotony to a razor’s edge almost instantly.

Celestia's eyes narrowed, and while Luna still appeared to be studiously absorbed in her massive tome, one of her eyebrows cocked slightly.  “Oh?  And how would you handle peaceful petitioners with valid requests, Guard-Captain Glancing Shock?”  the white alicorn asked, a faint threat tinging the edge of her otherwise patient voice.

“With a false smile,” the Guard-Captain replied, his voice reverting back to its tempered evenness.  “I might even suffer their presence for a time.  I certainly wouldn’t destroy their waiting rooms, of course, but that is an ingenious ploy, dear Princesses, if I do say so myself.  What would they do without their soft couches and their refreshments while they waited to harangue the benevolent rulers of our happy little nation with their quibbling, selfish demands?”  Celestia suppressed the urge to flinch as one of his hooves shot up to his chin with shocking speed, landing there and remaining in mocking rumination. 

“Glancing Shock, what took you so long to address what is clearly an issue of palace safety?”

He merely held his hoof to his chin, staring confusedly at the ceiling.

Celestia’s eyes hardened, her brows furrowing in growing anger.  “Captain, I grow tired of your games.  I command you to answer me.”

The pegasus’s eyes almost widened enough to notice, before he shook his head and looked around in honest confusion.  “A thousand apologies, Princess Celestia.  You know...how I am.”  There wasn’t a hint of solace in his voice, he merely stated it plainly.  

He sighed mildly, as though the act of breathing were an almost inconsequential inconvenience.  “I assumed there might be a ruckus when I assigned Ridge Dancer to your personal guard, so when I caught wind of an altercation, but received word from neither you nor Luna, I presumed my assumptions correct, considering her history.”  He shot an accusatory glance towards Ridge Dancer, who was too thoroughly entranced by the patterns in the marble wall to notice.  “When a dozen injured guardsponies entered the castle infirmary, I again assumed that the belligerence of a certain intractable guardspony was the culprit.”  Ridge Dancer traced her hoof along a particularly elegant pattern on the wall.  “I immediately tended to them, ensuring, along with the medical staff, that they would all make a full recovery, and that I would not have to remove a particular Private’s horn with my sword if they did not.  For some reason, none of them mentioned our newest guest, and I’ll have to speak to them about this before I give you a reason for their silence.  I’m assuming they feel shamed at failing to apprehend the intruder, however.”  The glaze behind Ridge’s eyes began to slough off as her focus sharpened on the world around her again.  “Only after their wounds were tended did I make time for the Filly Scout leader who had been requesting an audience with me for the last two hours.”

The sound of ripping paper coming from the center of the room may as well have been a thunderclap for all the attention it gained.  Glancing Shock and Celestia merely cast measured glances towards the sound, but Ridge Dancer jerked her head around violently and gawked at Luna.  

Luna focused blankly at the severed page floating in front of her, willing her features to remain as measured and unreadable as her older sister’s.  Her endeavor only appeared to succeed with the mare private.  

“Hmph.  ‘Tis tragedy that ponies of this day and age are given such amorous refuse as this incompetent filth to read,” she muttered off-hoofedly, crumpling the piece of paper in midair as she violently snapped the book closed, the name “Hemingmane” written in gilded lettering along its spine.  “A thousand years and literature still remains a shallow derivative of Shakespony’s excellence.”  She huffed, but glanced with shameful longing at the book she had just set aside. 

Glancing Shock, unruffled, continued, “The Filly Scout leader had come to petition the royal confectioners to purchase some home-baked goods to support the local chapter.  After being refused, they were on their way out of the castle when they were caught up in what, they described, was an escape attempt by one of Luna’s more exotic pets.” 

To her credit, Luna remained stoic throughout this part of the Guard Captain’s explanation.

“After the animal was subdued, she was apparently ordered to contact me.  She did about 5 minutes ago.  So, here I am,” he chirped indifferently, his voice barely raising an octave with the final sentence in an awkward semblance of cheer.

“...You should have told us,” Luna finally whispered at her sister.

“And further embarrass my sister in front of half the guard after she had just sent a civilian to fetch the Guard-Captain?  Perish the thought, Luna,” Celestia replied warmly, the mischievous flame in her eyes mirroring what had danced through her little sister’s features earlier in the day.

“They really do bear an uncanny similarity...” Luna pleaded.

“No, Luna,” Celestia pressed a hoof to her forehead, “the Guard’s armor and the Filly Scouts’ uniforms look nothing alike.  The latter is not even armor.  I trust that this incident is all the incentive you need to perform your due diligence and acquaint yourself, finally, with the officers outside of the Night Guard?”

Luna simply pouted for a moment, before nodding obstinately and levitating the Hemingmane book back into the air to continue her reading.  Celestia sighed, an act becoming far more common for her as the present day wore on.  ‘Still, I shall have to reward the Filly Scout’s troop leader for their loyalty in fulfilling my sister’s request.  A few boxes of cookies won’t put the royal ledger into the red.  Or a few hundred...’  Celestia mused over the acquisition of more pastries for her daily dessert before her meditations were shaken by a sudden, sharp gasp.

She turned her attention to Glancing Shock, who had relieved the creature of his two swords and now hugged them closely, staring up at Celestia with quivering, pleading eyes as all pretense of his characteristic, strictly moderated control was abandoned.  His hair seemed to stand on end more than usual.

“Can I...” he exhaled in a hoarse whisper.  “Can I keep them?!”

Celestia was momentarily taken aback by his rapid shift of temperament, but her features revealed none of her surprise.  “Absolutely not,” she replied resolutely.

Glancing Shock wilted as a crestfallen despair overtook him momentarily, but in less than a second a physical wave shuddered through his features and he looked back up, the same half-dead glint in his eyes.  He simply snorted and replied with his rhythmic drone.  “Very well, then.  Still,” he wondered aloud, “these swords are no normal weapons.  These are the work of master craftsman.  I’m not even sure I’ve seen their match amid the few examples you keep in your private vault, Princess Celestia, though I don’t know if any sword could hold a candle to your sisters'.”

Celestia levitated the weapons before her, both Luna and Ridge Dancer abandoning their distractions and coming closer to examine the weapons.  “Indeed.  The thin one even managed to temporarily sever the magic from my telekinesis spell.”

“But that’s-  That’s impossible!”  stammered Ridge.

“Hardly,” Glancing Shock smiled wanly for an instant before his mask reformed, “Just extraordinarily difficult.  I imagine in all Equestria, the only two ponies capable of that are Luna and myself.”  He cast a sideways glance towards the sleeping monster on the ground.  “Interesting.”

“And very, very dangerous,” Celestia chided.  'Had it been anything more than a basic telekinesis spell?' she wondered grimly.  She magicked the slightly curved weapon out of its sheath and suppressed a shudder as a dark chill fled through her body.  Glancing Shock shivered visibly for a second, and Ridge Dancer’s teeth began chattering uncontrollably.  Luna seemed unaffected, a small smile even playing across her lips as she studied the blade with an intense curiosity.

“P-p-please, Princess.  P-p-p-put it aw-aw-away?”  Ridge pleaded, staring in fear at the umbral, chilling aura emanating from the sword in waves of Chaos magic.  Celestia noted that, while indeed a work of excellent craftsmanship and possessing a powerful, dark enchantment not unlike King Sombra’s twisted magics, its physical features were quite plain.  She gave the weapon a final cursory examination before assenting to the poor unicorn’s request and re-sheathing the sword.  Ridge dancer exhaled in sudden relief, though Luna seemed mildly dissatisfied.  Glancing Shock merely stared blankly at something in the distance.  

Celestia set the curved sword aside, and levitated its partner.  The long sword’s physical appearance was, at first glance, the antithesis to the curved blade’s.  Its cream-colored, ivory hilt gleamed with the decoration of numerous diamonds, topaz, and zircons, each of which sparkled a bit more than they otherwise should in the light of the room.  The guard of the sword was a painstakingly detailed form of two golden chimera, their mouths facing inward and opening up towards the blade, which was covered by a royal blue sheath decorated by brilliant silver accents.  Celestia unsheathed the sword and repressed the urge to allow an awed gasp to force its way from her lips, her composure maintained but only with millennia of discipline as waves of joy flowed through her.  

This sword shone.  There was really no other word to describe it; the light from the room refracted from the blade with a magnification of intensity that defied even her grasp of magical enchantment.  Its light was brilliant, blinding even, its gleaming only slightly dimmed where arcane characters etched the blade, front and back, but even its physical light could not hold a candle to the warmth and prestige its very aura projected.  Joy, contentment, honor, even love emanated from this sword.  It was a hard love, that of a parent reprimanding a young child for an honest, ignorant mistake, but love nonetheless.  And it flowed forth from this sword in a violent swell of Harmony magic.

Glancing Shock gazed at the long sword with open desire, his neutral temperament again temporarily abandoned.  Ridge Dancer shielded her eyes with one hoof while reaching towards the light pleadingly with the other before planting her face on the floor after losing her balance, trying to steal a glimpse of the blade as she laid awkwardly with her rump still raised off the ground.

“Tis a bit bright for our tastes, we think,” Luna said, staring directly at the blade through squinting eyes.  “Magnificent, however.  Painfully magnificent.”

With a regretful sigh, Celestia sheathed the sword.  The spell that came over the four ponies seemed to drop.

“Are you quite sure you don’t want me to requisition these weapons for use in the defense of Equestria?”  Glancing Shock asked, his robotic composure regained.  His unnerving temperateness had started to grate on Celestia’s patience, but she merely turned to Glancing Shock and shook her head.  He simply stared blankly at her, as though his thoughts had hitched.

She almost sighed, but stopped herself.  “No, Guard-Captain.  These swords are to be confiscated immediately and stored with the Elements of Harmony in the royal vault.  I shall be along shortly to unlock it before I head off to sleep.”

“Very well.  I presume we will also be locking away these?” his hoof gestured questioningly, holding two curious metal items that dangled from corded cloth belts.  They appeared to be handles attached to elongated pieces of blunt metal.  “I’ve never seen their like before, but they appear to be of the same quality as the two swords and have their own odd sheaths.  As such, I can only assume they are weapons of some sort.”  He stared intently at her, awaiting a command.

“Yes, Guard-Captain,” Celestia replied, suddenly feeling very tired.  Her headache had almost subsided to a dull throb, but still added to her exhaustion.  Eyeing the center of the room, her horn glowed slightly as a wave of light passed over the being.  “Also, his dark gray cape is host to powerful magics that I would like to identify,” she added, levitating the clothing off the being, flipping him over onto his back in the process.  ”We shall store it with the rest.  Luna, I trust you can manage the situation from here?” she asked.

“Of course, dear sister.  Please, rest.”

“Ah!”  Glancing Shock interjected.  “There is still one other matter to attend to.”

The two princesses looked at him questioningly.

“Private Ridge Dancer,” he whirled suddenly, moving with a sickening speed that even Celestia had a hard time following.  “Hi!”

Ridge Dancer yelped.  “S-Sir!”  A hoof shot reflexively to her forehead in salute.

“Do you recall why you were punished with Princess duty, Private?”

“P-punished?!”  Ridge forced through her lips.  “Sir, it’s a great honor to defend the princesses, sir!”

Glancing Shock lazily waved one hoof dismissively, “We’re both well aware the Princesses can take care of themselves, and I’m sure they’re sharp enough to have realized long ago that that particular detail is a form of punishment, like forcing a colt to stare at a corner for long stretches when he misbehaves.”  Princess Luna looked upward thoughtfully before shrugging in passive agreement, whereas Princess Celestia gazed down upon the pair regally, neither confirming nor denying the Guard-Captain’s claim.  Ridge Dancer’s jaw just worked silently, seemingly unable to respond.  “You know how I handle unanswered questions, Private.  I expect an answer.”

“A corporal stared too long at my cutie mark,” she muttered quickly.

“Try again, Private.”

Her eyes shot wildly between her superior officer and the two princesses, before she closed them and steeled herself for further embarrassment.  Steadying her breathing, she said, “A corporal stared...no, I thought a corporal stared too long at my cutie mark, and I found it inappropriate.”

“And?” Glancing Shock lilted.

“I...put him through the wall of the barracks.  But I didn’t break any of his bones or anything!”

“And I’m assuming your particular idiosyncrasy resulted in this?” He gestured to the rubble around the room.

“Yes, sir,” Ridge mewled humbly.  “It slapped my flank and then ran off, hurting a bunch of the guard when it tried to escape.”  Something moved deep below Glancing Shock’s amber eyes, as though a mountain had shifted and then settled.  “Now that I think about it, though,” a memory of the monster’s apologetic look flashed through her mind, “it was probably just trying to heal my leg after it broke it-”

None of the ponies present quite registered the full range of the Guard-Captain’s movements in the next few milliseconds.  There was just a flash of feathers and the smell of ozone like a lightning bolt had struck the room.  In one instant Glancing Shock stood next to the princesses, interrogating Ridge Dancer and seemingly bored, and the next he was on top of the creature, his gladius in one hoof and pressed against its throat with barely enough force to draw blood, miniscule tendrils of electricity visibly snaking their way up and down the blade.  He glared down at the creature hatefully, bringing his head around with stuttering, restrained slowness and looking Princess Celestia in the eye.

“Please,” he intoned politely in stark contrast to his quivering muscles, “let me kill it?”

“Sheathe your weapon immediately, Guard-Captain,” Celestia’s voice was so low it almost whispered, but she delivered the sentence with the hardened force of a hurricane’s gale.

“He assaulted my soldiers!  He- he,” Glancing Shock spat, all pretense of control gone from his voice, “he hurt one of my ponies.  He hurt a lot of them.”

“Glancing Shock, I assented to your promotion on the basis of one statement alone.  I had initially expressed dismay and denial when Shining Armor recommended you, and almost vetoed your appointment in favor of Colonel Stone Wall.  You are a violent, dangerous pony, in spite of your tactical and strategic acumen.  When I expressed my concerns to your former Captain, Shining Armor, he agreed fully with me.   However, he also told me, ‘Glancing Shock is far more dangerous than even you realize, Celestia.  Because of his history, he also knows better than anypony how to match violence with violence, and, more importantly, to what degree.  I may be speaking out of turn, but he's about as likely to lose control as you are, ma'am, and his devotion to sparing his soldiers from harm is beyond reproach.  He’s exactly the type of Captain the Guard deserves.’  Am I to assume your predecessor's glowing praise of your self-control is nothing more than a mistake or a lie?”

The Guard-Captain’s left eye twitched uncontrollably, but with a snarl he removed the sword from the ugly creature’s throat.  He shuddered visibly.  He turned slowly to Celestia and muttered in a bored tone of voice, “Very well, Princess,” before trotting towards the exit with his oddly serpentine finesse.  At the door, he paused, no longer even attempting to veil the malice in his voice.  “But, if that thing brings any more harm to my guards-”

“You will do absolutely nothing without first consulting myself or Luna,” Celestia retorted sharply.

He quivered mildly in frustration, but turned in the direction of the vault that housed the Elements of Harmony and cantered off.  Celestia watched him warily, wondering how she had ever been convinced to promote him to the head of her guard, but trusting Shining Armor’s judgment with enough faith to let the situation be.   For now.

“I guess I’m on Princess duty for the foreseeable future,” Ridge Dancer mumbled dejectedly, drawing circles on the ground with her hoof.

“No, my little pony,” Princess Celestia said with a soothing voice.  “I believe I know a more appropriate position, one far more suited to your particular talents.  First and foremost, however, please remove the raiment of the Royal Guard.”  Ridge suddenly felt a surge of dread rise in her chest.


*     *     *     *     *


Ridge Dancer grumbled, twisting her mouth and blowing a lock of her curly, bright orange mane out of her vision as she walked along the dank halls of the oft-disused palace dungeon.  She had already stopped deriving pleasure from the creature’s head bumping rhythmically on the uneven brick floor as she magicked him by his leg across the ground to his cell.  Tossing him in the general direction of the cell's bed, she set up a rudimentary containment spell, and then plopped down on her behind outside the door as she resigned herself to become the first dungeon guard in centuries.  She sighed.

’So bored...’


*    *    *    *    *


Princess Luna gazed out the open windows of the royal throne room, observing the city of Canterlot as it shimmered like a jewel even in the waning hours of the early morning.  From the height of the castle, the myriad twinkling, candle-lit windows in the city below was not unlike her own night sky, were it not for the city's inviting, warm glow; if her masterpiece of brilliant stars upon the night sky conveyed the mystery of a beauty undiscovered and untouched by pony hooves, below her was a canvas of light wrought solely through the familiarity and safety felt by everypony.  Even if its earthly lights did not match the quantity of her distant stars, the soothing illumination of love and acceptance radiating from this city far outpaced her ability to enchant its occupants with the ephemeral machinations of billions of stars floating through the deep blue night sky, try as she might out of reverence to her stars' origins.  

And she did try, because for every pony that could bask in the bustle of a city’s fleeting company, there was one who longed for the quiet enigma, for the implied exploration, that only her night sky could provide.  For everypony that guffawed in the taverns below, clapping other patrons on the shoulder in boisterous, jovial camaraderie before retreating to the comfortable embrace of their own bed, there was a pony out there lying on a soft, grassy hillside, staring with stark sobriety into the expanse of her creation and wondering gently.  

Over ten millennia old, now, she was no stranger to loneliness, and she knew all too well how the same socialization and civilization that comforted some ponies vilified and hurt other ponies, and it was for those that she joyously crafted her grand, celestial effigy, that they might take a retreat from the mindless business of their daytime lives, look skyward, and become lost in the infinite sea of stars.  Her craftsmanship was but a reflection of her desire for their happiness.  

In a sudden flash of self-consciousness, she smiled ruefully at herself.  She spent most nights like this, absorbed in her own thoughts.  That she was still able to do so, in spite of odd mishaps like today, amazed even her.  Tonight, however, she was pleasantly forced to abandon her self-imposed loneliness as a voice jilted her out of her meditations.

“Princess Luna!” the joyous cry erupted from behind her.  ’Even we sometimes forget that my sister is not the only pony that can summon feelings of genial ardor out of our subjects,’ she thought as her inward smile shifted from self-deprecatory to congratulatory at the swell of contentment that the voice conjured within her.

“Twilight Sparkle.  Tis a boon that thou hast graced us with thy presence!”  Luna stated excitedly, none of her enthusiasm feigned.  “And we see thou hast with thee thy five friends.  Most excellent!  Such distractions aside, however, thou knowest full well how we feel about our title.”  She smiled.

Twilight giggled warmly, “Sorry, Luna.  Old habits and all.”  

“All sleights are forgotten amidst the company of friends, Twilight.  We are simply happy thou hast arrived.”  Luna smiled openly, basking in the presence of Twilight and her five friends.  Celestia’s order to summon them had come late, almost at at dusk, and as they arrived finally in the early hours of the morning, they all bore the fatigue she would expect of ponies up past their bedtime.  Except for the pink one.

“Hi, Lulu!”  Pinkie Pie exclaimed with a gargantuan smile, her eyes squinting shut entirely under the weight of her gaiety as she hopped in place.  

“Hello, Pinkie Pie.”  Luna nodded simply, summoning every vestige of control she had learned from her sister.  “We trust thee no longer possesses the urge to flee from us like a screeching filly without the intervention of Twilight?”

“Of course not, silly-filly!  That was just for fun on Nightmare Night!” Pinkie said.  She paused her hopping, floating in midair and placing a hoof thoughtfully at the bottom of her bubblegum jaw.  “At least, so long as you don’t blow up Equestria with your soul or anything.”

Ten thousand years or not, nothing can quite prepare one for Pinkie Pie, so Luna simply stared blankly at her until Twilight interrupted the silence.  

“Luna, I’m sure you remember Applejack?”

“Of course.  We recall dear Applejack had quite the assortment of distractions last Nightmare Night.  We had...fun.”

“Well, shucks, Princess-”

“Just Luna,” the princess interrupted.

“-uh, err, ‘Luna’.  Glad our games were a bit o’ fun fer ya’.” 

Luna simply nodded to the orange earth pony, her smile never leaving her features.  The silence stretched for a few seconds before Applejack’s head dropped and began studying her hoof intently, making a few passive swipes at the ground before her.  “I never know what ta’ say in situations like this.  Sorry, Luna,” she mumbled apologetically.  Luna merely chuckled knowingly.  “Think nothing of it, Applejack.  We often find the company of silence more a comforting salve than a restrictive noose."  The orange earth pony seemed visibly relieved at her words.  Luna turned her head to the quivering yellow mass behind Applejack.  “Art thou in agreement, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy merely curled up into a tighter ball on the ground behind her friend, staring intently at the red carpet, and remained silent.  As the quiet wore on for over 30 seconds, Luna’s bright smile had begun to slowly falter under the weight of maintaining it, like a train derailing in slow motion, and more than one pony began to question the wisdom of her previous statement in the stretching silence.  

“Umm, yes...” the Pegasus finally whispered in a barely audible tone before burying her face in her own wings.  Twilight’s eyes flitted rapidly between the yellow pegasus and the alicorn princess.  Luna merely laughed heartily, striding forth and placing one hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder.  She leaned in close to Fluttershy’s ear and whispered something that could only be heard by the shy pegasus.  Her eyes widened, but her response carried a bit more confidence as she intoned, “Oh, no, Pri-  uhh, Luna.  The pleasure was all mine.  I really am happy to see you again.”  Fluttershy smiled happily before her insecurity tightened its grasp and she began looking around the throne room with undue paranoia.  Twilight forcibly quelled her piqued curiosity at the exchange before remembering there was one pony with whom the Princess had not yet made a proper acquaintance last Nightmare Night.

“Uh, right.  Oh!  Princess, I’d like to introduce you to Rarity, I don’t believe you two have met since...uh, you know, the-”

“Please, darling.  Did you really think I would pass up the chance to mingle with royalty when I heard Luna had arrived in Ponyville?”  Luna’s smile widened perceptibly at the interjection of the white unicorn.  “Luna, dear, I trust my modifications to your costume went over well?  You’re still quite the talk of Ponyville, even after all this time.”

“Indeed they did, Rarity.  We were torn over our ability to adequately represent our...unfortunate alternate persona, and we still owe thee untold amounts of gratitude for completing the illusion.  Our memories of our form during that time still have not wholly surrendered  their secrets, making a simple glamour spell impossible.”

“Princess Luna,” Rarity spoke with sudden gravity even if her voice escaped her throat as a whisper, “it was and always will be my utmost honor to serve the royalty of Equestria.”  Her voice returning to normal, she simply gazed at one hoof and added, “Besides, even a filly could have crafted those false fangs out of ivory.  I can create so much more for royalty, and,” she added without the overtone of melodrama that normally tinged her register, “one of my dear friends.”

“Hardly necessary, Rarity,” Luna replied with a diplomatic, conciliatory tone.  “Thy intelligence and grace is gift enough even to those of royalty.  However, we can’t help but feel that we are missing somepony of import,” she thought aloud with one hoof to her her chin.  “Oh...yes.”

Tendrils of electricity crackled around her wings before dancing through her body and gathering at her hooves.  Under normal circumstances, the manipulation of lightning required the presence of clouds to build up enough energy for the electrostatic discharge, but rare pegasi could manipulate the magic through their wings and even through their own bodies.  Being far more familiar with her own internal magic than everypony in the world save for perhaps her sister, it was a trivial task for Luna, and the small ball of lightning had begun to coalesce where her hooves met the carpet   There, the bolts jittered energetically before firing off through the carpet towards the dozing blue pegasus at the back of the five other ponies assembled before her.  As the weak lightning connected with the pegasi, she screeched and jumped up, all six of her limbs shooting out in every direction.

“Whu-  I’se don’ see- Let me at ‘em!” she slurred as she took up a defensive stance against a nearby pillar before her spinning eyes ceased their rapid orbit around their sockets.  She shook her head, her wild rainbow mane dancing haphazardly with the action, before she shot accusatory glares to each of her five friends.   “Hey, what gives?!  I was having a really awesome dream!”

“If thou truly desires the company of the Wonderbolts, we are certain they have a modicum of free time, seeing as they are presently on leave here in Canterlot.  Spitfire spoke highly of your exploits at the Wonderbolt Academy, Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow whipped around violently with a fierce glare, her mouth already stuttering out, “Hey!  I wasn’t dreaming about-” before she locked eyes with the Princess of the Night.

“I- oh cloud-fooling horse-apples,” Rainbow cursed, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly.  “Hiya, Princess.  Probably shoulda taken Scoots more seriously about that whole dream thing considering how long it took her to work up the courage to talk about it...”  

“Luna,” the dark blue alicorn corrected.

“Nah, I get a lightning shower wake-up call, you get your title, Princess!”  Rainbow teased.  

Luna cocked an eyebrow.  “The entirety of thy mornings and copious daytime naps might all be so pleasant as thy awakening here, if thee desires it?”  A wicked grin played across her face.  “Our little Shadow Bolts have also been chomping at the bit for some action.  We can schedule an appearance every time thy lids close.”

Rainbow Dash’s pupils shrunk to pinpricks before she grinned.  “Alright, Prin-  Luna.  You’re on.  But you better introduce me to the Wonderbolts!”

Luna snorted, “As if they’d easily forget the mare that saved their lives at the Young Flier’s Competition.  Those three are more fickle with their pride than thou art, though we assure thee they are well aware of a certain light blue pegasus looking to earn their graces.”  ‘Most of them are frightened by the volume of fanmail said pegasus has sent,’ Luna thought, but kept it to herself.

“Heh, of course they remember me.  What pony wouldn’t?”  Rainbow beamed, prancing around with her head held high.

All the girls simply laughed at this, although one particular unicorn’s gaiety was short-lived.

“Twilight Sparkle, thy distraction is most obvious.  What troubles thee?”

“Just ‘Twilight’,” she corrected flatly but with a sarcastic grin, which prompted more titters from her friends, their nervousness slowly releasing its grasp.  “It’s just, we were summoned here by Celestia’s letter requesting the ‘Elements of Harmony’ and were even brought here by the Pegasi Guard in a royal chariot.  Yet, you don’t seem all that troubled.”

“While we are troubled with the haste with which thee arrived-” Luna started as she turned her sights out the window, to her night sky-

“Hey, it takes a long time to pack the party cannon!  A mare’s got to be prepared for anything” Pinkie soberly interrupted-

“-the situation has been contained.” She glanced sideways at the six mares, flashing a wicked grin.  “We’ve already trapped the alien in the dungeon “

“A-alien?”  Fluttershy whimpered.

“Oh, yes.  'Twas quite a terrible being,” she mused as she began circling gracefully around the group of shocked mares, already feeling another monologue coming on.  “He invaded Celestia’s private chambers, insulted her taste in pastries-” Pinkie released a horrified gasp at this, “-assaulted her most viciously, with vegetables no less, then eluded her magic long enough to create a ruckus in the castle until he dared to physically assault us.  Having sufficiently subdued the creature, we allowed the guard to exact just vengeance for the numerous injuries they suffered in its attempts at escape.”   Five of the present mares stared with open-mouthed shock.  The orange-colored earth pony’s mouth, however, twisted into a quirk as she desperately studied the nearby walls.  “We saved everypony.”  Applejack’s frown deepened.  Luna merely smiled.

The air near the group seemed to warp and twist, before there was an audible pop and Celestia appeared in a flash of light.

“Dear sister!” Luna exclaimed mockingly, secretly relieved that her sister made her presence known, “Thou requires thy beauty rest!  The nobles will not stand to petition their banal requests to a princess possessing such a disheveled mane.”

“As I recall, our ability to host nobility has recently declined.  I’m certain those with the most pressing desires can endure a princess's bedhead,” Celestia replied, her tone deadpan.

Most of the Elements of Harmony stared at the sudden exchange, the casualness of the royal sisters' sarcastic sniping catching them offguard.  “My little ponies, there’s no reason to worry.  My sister was well-renowned for her pranks in ages past,”  Celestia intoned.  This just seemed to further confuse the six mares.  She sighed mildly, wishing they dropped their propriety in her presence as much as they did for Luna.

“For the most part, what Luna has told you is indeed correct, if a bit misleading.  An odd creature did appear in my chambers at dinnertime-”

“Ooh, what did you have for dessert?!”  Pinkie trilled.

Celestia stared at her coldly for a moment before continuing, attempting to ignore Luna's poorly hidden smile.  “While I initially thought it to be a disguised Discord, further evidence suggests it might actually-”

“He,” Pinkie chirruped, bouncing around the group.

“-it might actually be from another worldstream.”

She immediately held her hoof up, preemptively silencing a particular purple unicorn.  “But, you all have had a long day, and we should all get some much needed rest before the morning.  It’s-”

“He,” Pinkie again tweeted-

“-not going anywhere.”

The girls all nodded in assent, except for Pinkie Pie, who was making obscene faces at patterns in the marble wall, much to the embarrassment of Rarity and Applejack in the presence of royalty.  The two princesses shared a glance, before a guard ushered the six mares out of the throne room.

“Was that really necessary, Tia?”  Luna muttered.

“Not in the least,” Celestia replied.  “I simply couldn't sleep with this awful headache.  Although I was fairly entertained by your summary of today’s events.  In ten millennia, I can now count the times I’ve been 'assaulted by vegetables' on one hoof.”

“Tis the truth," Luna pointed out plainly.  

“Perhaps, little sister.  Even still, the hour grows late, and in a short while I will have to raise the sun.  The act warms me less than your newfound interactions with your ‘friends’, however.”

“We...I...possess no knowledge of your implicatio-”

The lightning bolt struck her squarely on her moon cutie mark and she yelped.  In the Royal Canterlot Voice.  When Celestia recovered from the staggering vocal blow, she couldn’t help but laugh openly at Luna’s vehement apologies, even as a scratchy voice laughed in the background.  Luna whipped her gaze around at the cyan pegasus, who had managed to sneak in a thundercloud so quickly even she didn’t notice, before smiling warmly.

“We trust thee will have sweet dreams for many a night to come, Rainbow.”

“Hah!  Good luck keeping up, even in my dreams!”  The pegasus laughed proudly, then disappeared in a flash of chromatic light.

Celestia snickered.  “Will you really punish her for being the first to ‘get you’ in 3,000 years?  Not even Glancing Shock could manage that...”

“Nay, sister,” Luna responded.  “Though we cannot say how our actions might inconvenience our sister for her part in distracting us...”

For all the day’s chaos, Luna actually felt quite a bit better than she had in a long time.  As the Elements of Harmony headed off to their rooms, and her sister retreated back to her chambers for whatever small amount of rest she could get in the next few hours, Luna looked outside the window again.  Most of the lights of Canterlot had been extinguished in the last hour, but her stars still twinkled brightly.  With a modest smile, she noted they gleamed with quite a bit more warmth than before.

> Chapter 4:  Hi, My Name Is–What?!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Goddammit.

The human held his hand to his forehead.  The purple unicorn across from him hastily scribbled notes onto her scrolls, her mouth frowning in concentration.  She had already accrued a sizable amount of scrolls that were piled into a perilously teetering mountain off to the side.  Upon finishing, she returned her wide-eyed stare to him, a manic grin planted across her face.  

So repeated the pattern of the last five minutes, when his fatigued shuffling had startled his lavender cellmate awake.  She had woken with her face in a pool of saliva on top of one of her open scrolls, groggily looking about in confusion before catching his movement around his pink, spherical prison.  The unicorn's eyes widened considerably as she snapped to attention, fetching a full bottle of ink, a quill, and a blank roll of parchment from the saddlebags at her side.  Her last quill still hung in her disheveled mane, unnoticed, forlornly abandoned to its tangled plum prison.  

She—it was a ‘she’ if the high-pitched voice were any indication—had garbled out some melodious sentence while smiling widely, but he had just ignored her.  He didn't speak alien, and with the forcefield around him, couldn't learn the language enough for her words to matter.  Instead he remained silent and took in her odd appearance.

‘My God, their eyes are huge.  That looks so goddamn weird it’s not even funny.’  He wondered what sort of predators they had here that necessitated such an evolutionary development.  Were they nocturnal?  Wait, their eyes were forward-facing.  Were they predators?  

The man started to bring a hand to his chin in thought before catching a glimpse of something strange.  He held his hands out before him as his eyes widened in surprise.  ’This is definitely a first.  That I can remember, anyway,’ he thought almost bitterly.  His hands were cartoons, outlines and all.  Freakishly detailed cartoons, but cel-shaded appendages nonetheless.  Taking in his surroundings, he noticed the room seemed to shimmer between what seemed “real” and this highly intricate form of art.  He was certain the world hadn’t appeared this way when he first arrived.  Almost certain, anyway, if his memories could be trusted, and more recent events never really gave him as much trouble as his older memories.  

The room continued oscillating between “real” and “animated” with increasing quickness.  After one final, heaving shimmer that sent out a wave of warped surrealness, the setting stabilized and left behind the elegant outlines of the same highly detailed animation that had come to represent his hands.  Glancing at the unicorn, her eyes no longer appeared disproportionately large.  They were still really weird, he decided.  ’This definitely is one of the weirder ones I’ve been to.  Wasn’t even aware realities could be like this, but this means I’m probably becoming more attuned to this place.  I was probably only out for a few hours, in that case.’

He drew himself inward, testing the reserves of his available lifeforce.  It still only dripped out in a meager trickle.  He sighed in frustration and plopped down on the edge of the small bed on the wall of his cell.  He raised one hand off to his side, and wove an all-too-familiar magic through his palm.  A small fireball puffed into existence, floating a few inches above his grasp.  He simply stared at it, running through a mental checklist to attempt to rationalize his powers’...diminutive effects.  The scribbling sound in the background became noticeably more frenzied at his manifestation of the fire.  He turned a tired gaze to the unicorn.  She was small, much smaller than the blue and white winged ones he had seen earlier.  Her head only came up to his chest, whereas the blue one was slightly taller than he was, and the white one towered over him by a foot.  He wondered if this lavender one was a juvenile of the species.

“Hey, kid?”

She immediately stood at attention, her pupils shrinking even as her eyes impossibly widened further.  She rushed close enough to the forcefield that her nose was almost pressed against it, while the last parchment she was writing snapped closed like a spring-coiled window blind wrapping into itself.  She immediately summoned another blank scroll from her bag and stared intently at him.

“Oh, so you like the fact I can talk?  I’m sure you find my gibberish endlessly amusing,”  More scribbling.  He chuckled mirthlessly.  “The stranger aliens always do.  Non-humanoids always seem surprised I’m sapient.”  The purple unicorn failed to conceal her glee at his continued speech.  What the Hell, she couldn’t understand him, anyway.  “Well, then, dearie, lemme tell you a little story.  I’ve been jumping dimensions for a thousand years, now, trying to get home.  There was this mess where I had to kill a certain fuckhead god, the God, and then...well, it’s hard to remember.”  He focused his gaze on the floating ball of flame, which had brightened to a blue as the edges of it flurried in quicker undulations than before.  “So, after I slew the bastard—that part was pretty awesome, killing God—I exhausted the last of my power reviving my friend-”

He paused.

“My friend...what’s her name?”  He stared blankly for a few seconds, attempting to forcefully summon the name of the woman who had thrown herself before him, sparing him a final, surely fatal attack.  Instead what came to mind were a thousand other memories from a thousand other worlds.  She had saved his life.  He vaguely remembered saving her from something once before, some horrible fate, but he couldn’t outline the details.  All he could seem to remember was that she was important to him.  She was a friend.  And he couldn’t even remember her damn name.

“GODDAMMIT!” he raged, balling his hand into a fist as the fireball fluttered out of existence before slamming his hand into the wall behind him.  The ceramic plates shuddered, but held, a web of cracks originating from the center of his strike.  He took a deep breath and resummoned the ball of fire, again regarding the pittance of magic available to him with no small degree of disgust.

The unicorn had blissfully ceased her fevered writing at the outburst, but once he calmed down she lowered her head to her scroll and the maddening scratches of her quills began anew.  ’Quills?’The man cocked an eyebrow at the second quill and parchment she had levitated in his mental absence.  She was writing on two parchments at once, the annoying scritterscratter of pen to paper performing an asymmetrical orchestra of aggravating ambience to the otherwise unsettling quietude of his present surroundings.  

“Whatever.  I revived-” he scowled,  “I revived my friend after I killed the lousy bastard that was the steward of our fucked up creation.  But I used up the last of my power to do so.  And that, Ms. Fuckin’ Horse, was not a good idea.”  He shook his finger at her, chidingly.  He still didn’t know what he meant to acheive by reviving...by reviving his friend, if it meant the destruction of their universe.  But he had.  And now he was lecturing a lavender horse.  Well, why the Hell not?  He had encountered weirder things on his journey.  No harm in continuing.  “Instead, I put all the resurgence of power into...into...”  He paused, one finger on his chin in thought.  “I just forced it into getting away.  I just somehow knew how to do it...And that’s how I made my first jump and had to deal with an entirely new reality that had none of my friends or sisters in it.”

He spent the next 3 hours rambling.  It had been hundreds of years since his story last escaped his lips in its entirety, and it was oddly comforting putting into words what he barely remembered everyday.  Besides, what harm could it do?  She couldn’t understand a lick of what escaped his mouth, and he only remembered fragments, anyway.

“...and that’s pretty much how I spent the last millennia.  At least, so far as I can remember,” he added darkly.    Her note-scratching was his only response.  She paused, her eyes flitting between the two scrolls.  She nodded in confirmation to some internal thought.

“You have no idea what I’m saying, do you?”  More scribbling, then a pause as she looked at him with those wide eyes of hers, some other emotion having been added to the studious interest.  “None of this means anything at all to you.”  He leaned forward, putting on the sweetest, warmest smile he could imagine.  “Would you like me to tear your limbs off and bludgeon you to death with them?”  The sparkle behind his smile could match the gaiety of the night’s dancing stars.  “I could even tie up your family and force them to watch your painfully slow execution before gouging out their eyes and letting their last moments be punctuated by their own tortured screaming,” he added gleefully with a playful wink.

After a few seconds of writing, she looked up from her parchments and regarded him joyously, eyes brimming with warmth and smiling back with the same fervor he had just falsely conveyed.    

He sighed, burying his head in his hands.  “You’re just another floating mote of sentience, a paramecium of fleeting mortality in an endless throng of others, all of them content with their puerile capers through life while they wait to die, until they get to die.  One among billions in this reality.  This reality is but one in a sea of infinite others.  And I’ve only been to a few thousand.  And that handful of random realities?  Fucking horrifying.  People plagued by demons, demigods, monsters, untold horrors numbering far more than the stars in your tiny world’s night sky.  And I kill their nightmares for them.  It's the one spot of happiness I have in this endlessness.  I fucking enjoy it.  I happily fight them, crushing numberless objects of unmentionable terror beneath my feet, overpowering them with gleeful ease.  I still try to save people.  Because that’s what I do.  That’s what’s required of me.  I have to atone for-”

He stared dully though his open fingers splayed across his face.

“I don’t remember.  I don’t remember why I have to atone,” he muttered.  “But I’m so sick of this shit.  I’m so tired of the fruits of my...actions,” he spat, “Of the fields of dead.”  The unicorn had begun to write more slowly, her quills hesitant as she flicked her gaze between her two papyruses and his eyes.  “Scared people who I’ve saved, they always try to thank me.  ‘You’ve saved us from the Destroyer that has plagued our land for generations!’ they shout.  ‘Those demons have laid siege to our kind for millennia, and you routed them in a day!’ they celebrate.  ‘Our virgin daughters will no longer have to be sacrificed to the Dark Gods over yonder to ensure the safety of our village!’ they cheer.”

The scribbling had stopped and the mare gazed at him with moist eyes, simply staring in shock and sadness, but he was too lost in his thoughts to notice.

He took a deep breath.  “And all it does is piss me off,” he grumbled bitterly.  “I don’t care about them, their kind, their daughters.  I never wanted to see their fucked up worldt.  I just wanna see my sisters again.  I just wanna see my best friend...my best friend...Mitchell?  Maddock?  Marco?”

‘No.  NO.  You remember his name, just think.  In high school, you two spent far too much time at childrens' playgrounds in the early hours of the morning, just talking.’  His friend eventually took his sister out on a date—as her brother, he was fucking livid at that, but she was his sister and he brooked no bullshit when it came to seeing her smile.  He had seen the small smile that graced his sister’s lips when she was around his friend, so he had allowed it.  His friend had talked him down from a damn suicide.  Man, was...Marco?  Man, was his friend fucking terrified when he first showed the human the engagement ring.  He had made his friend go through with it anyway, because deep down he knew his friend Mick...?  Mick?  Deep down he knew his friend and his sister were meant for each other.  They loved each other.  They were the only real friends he had in his fucked up, empty world.  But then...what?  What was his name?  He remembered his sister’s name.  It was Salina, right?  Started with an ‘s’, anyway.  No, he was sure it was Salina.  He had called her ‘Sal’ as a nickname.  He liked nicknames.  What was his friend’s nickname?  Michael?  No, that wasn’t right.

“I just want to go home,” he wheezed, his hands clenching the back of his skull as he hunched over, trying for the thousandth time to make sense of this unending life, of this unflinching immortality of constant failure.  

“Just...let it end.  Let it end,” he whispered.

Something warm nudged him gently on the shoulder.  He brought his head up slowly and regarded the deep purple eyes that glistened thoughtfully a foot away from him.  He carefully reached his hand up to meet her head.


*     *     *    *     *


Twilight wrote as quickly as her magic allowed her to without setting the parchment on fire.

The creature had finally begun yammering out his indigenous gab—’its indigenous gab,' she corrected, thinking back to Pinkie from the night before—after pacing through his cell for a few minutes. 

At first ‘it’ seemed taken aback by something in its surroundings, but then it did something that temporarily caused her mind to hitch.  The being had summoned a fireball, which itself wasn’t surprising; most fillies pick up the spell during Magic Kindergarten (she shuddered, repressing the memories) not too long after they learn basic telekinesis.  It was the way the creature did it that caught her interest.  Being the embodiment of the Element of Magic, she didn’t need to cast a scanning spell to see the interwoven threads of Chaos and Harmony magic behind the flame.  The Chaos threads seemed to be creating a constant explosion, whereas the Harmony threads molded the explosions and kept them in balance.  It was a remarkably inefficient way to summon a simple fireball, she noted, but it did confirm what the princesses had told her of the being’s dual nature, and also indicated it could cast both at the same time.  

Shortly thereafter, he had begun speaking.  ’Voice has a deep timbre to it.  I can probably chalk another one up to Pinkie’s frustratingly accurate intuition without requiring a physical examination of him to verify,’ she thought with some regret, remembering the Princesses orders that the being was not to be touched.

The being continued his monologue and she dutifully recorded phonetically every incomprehensible word that escaped his mouth.  There was something oddly familiar about his native tongue, but she couldn’t quite place it immediately.  ’Oh, yesyesyes!  Judging by the frequency of this sound, it’s most likely a preposition or a definite article.  Maybe “the”?’  she thought, levitating a second scroll to record possible analogues between their separate languages.  

He spoke for close to three hours straight, and about halfway through the nagging familiarity of his language finally flowered into a startling realization.  ’He’s speaking a modified form of Ancient Romane!!!’  She was overcome with excitement, as she had taken numerous courses on the language to better translate the older books in the Canterlot Library.  She was a little rusty, but between the pattern she had previously recorded and her memories of the old pony language, she had started to translate his earlier rambling even as her ability to compartmentalize her own thoughts allowed her to continue writing his present speech.  She found some of it highly unlikely, ’So then I punched an Elder God in the face and he exploded in a sea of green blood that smelled like vanilla, sparing the local star system from being consumed by madness...uhh, right...’  Others left her horrified.  ’A shadow magic that turned an entire world into mindless husks that consumed each other, even the innocent fillies...’  She shuddered, due in no small part with how the alien had dealt with it.  She wasn’t even sure she believed any of it, but she continued recording and translating as the being ranted on.

She paused.  ’I’m going to sever....sever...no, that doesn’t seem right.  Cut?  Rip?’  She paused, her hoof to her chin, before smiling wildly.  ’Tear!  You’re going to tear me limb from limb and beat me to death with them!  I understood that sentence completely!  I wonder what other words I can learn from all this?!’  She smiled widely at the creature, her eyes shining with glee at the possibility of learning something new. 

Her mirth was short-lived.  As he continued speaking, she wilted inside more and more.  She had discovered the magic of friendship after 15 years of life, and it had changed the way she had viewed the world.  He had gone hundreds of years without a friend, and yet even still was trying to return to his own worldstream because of the bonds he had made there.  But he was forgetting.  Names, places, events.  How long until he forgot his friends?  His two sisters?  He was already forgetting his best friend’s name.  And the worst part was, he knew it.  He knew he ran the risk of losing the only anchor he had in his life, what precious few memories he had of his friends and family.

Tears glistened in Twilight’s eyes.  ’Nopony should have to suffer this fate,’ she thought bleakly.

She walked calmly forward through the pink forcefield that contained him.  It was an imitation of her brother’s signature spell, scaled down so every guardspony could cast it, and reversed such that it kept things in rather than warding them away while allowing entrance from the outside.  The being had buried his face in his hands and was babbling, now, making it hard to catch everything, but she caught his last utterance like a knife to the heart.

“Just let it end.”

She nuzzled his shoulder gently, leaving his black upper clothing slightly moist from her poorly concealed tears.  He looked up, his large eyes gazing into hers with stark sobriety and resentful surrender, but there was a spark in them, too.  Resolution, she thought.  Even as torn as the being was, its brilliant blue eyes still burned with life and a desire to continue.

It slowly raised its arm gingerly and placed its hand gently on her head.  It was warm.  Hot, even, but with a wild, grinning flame that seemed to dance with the joyous machinations of the stars themselves.  She heard a barely perceptible sigh and instinctively pressed harder against his touch, trying as best she could to comfort him.  His touch seemed to warm even more.


*     *     *     *     *


Had she sensed his sadness?  ’Pfft,’ he dismissed the thought derisively.  ’Just a momentary lapse.  I’m way too fucking awesome to be sitting around and moping.  Hell, this one time I punched fucking Cthulhu in the face so hard the shockwaves from the blow forced its green blood to burst from its skin like it was a damn grape in a microwave.  Goddamn hilarious, if you ask me.  And oddly fragrant.  Getting the bloodsplosion washed out of my armpits took a few realities, that shit got everywhere.  But damn if I didn’t smell like a fuckin’ flower.  I wonder if this reality carries ‘Blood de Cthulhu’ as a cologne.  Mark would wingman the shit outta me if I had that when I got back.  Of course I’ll get home to see...Mark.  Yes, Mark, my bestest buddy ever.  And my sisters Jacey and-  Jacey and-’  He sighed quietly, willing the frustration away as the unicorn before him pressed her head slightly harder against his hand, her eyes closed.

He would make it.  He didn’t know how, but he would.  What else was he supposed to do?  But for now, he was trapped in this reality until he could figure out what ailed his lifeforce.  And in his current state, his inability to communicate did him no favors.  

Deciding it was for the best, he spun a magical weave that had become annoyingly necessary in the last millennium.  The magic traced its way through his fingers into the unicorn’s brain, hunting through its labyrinthine mental complexity in search of the language center of her mind.  As the spell struck home and began mapping her knowledge of language, he smiled inwardly at his success.

He didn’t notice her horn charging up.


*    *    *    *    *


She was so distracted by the softness of his glowing touch that she almost didn’t catch the threads of magic weaving through her own mind.  Almost.  She felt its tendrils arcing through every part of her brain—’Harmony magic,’’—she thought to herself even as the weaves of the magic glistened sickeningly over that thought.

’He’s trying to read my mind.  My thoughts.  MY MEMORIES.’  Her psyche reeling at her brash stupidity at approaching the creature who was currently violating her mind, she responded by instinct, acting to protect herself.  She teleported to the far side of the room, severing the connection he had with her mind immediately.  She moved to lower herself into a defensive position before she saw the tattered threads of his magic whip backwards and implode into his chest with a sharp snap, sending him hurtling into the nearest wall.  She inwardly cringed as she realized not all of the cracking sounds was the wall caving in under the force of his crash.  A majority of them were probably the alien’s bones.  After colliding with the wall, he merely slumped down, his chin on its chest and his open eyes staring blankly at nothing.  A small trickle of blood oozed out of the corner of his slack-jawed mouth.  

’No...’  she thought blankly, immediately scanning his physical signs with her magic.  There was no heartbeat, and his brain activity had utterly ceased.

’I...he’s...he’s dead.  But I didn’t mean-  He was-  I just...what have I done!?

She screamed in fear and confusion, casting a spell to teleport her anywhere but here.  She collided rudely with the forcefield, forgetting that it warded against magic along with physical bodies in her anguish.  She began scratching madly at the field with her hooves, screaming wildly for someone to release her and terrified of what Princess Celestia might do to her for—her eyes reeled in spasms—killing somepony.  

A violent wave of thaumaturgical energy washed over her, far more powerful than the magic she had at her command, and she whipped her head around violently to the source.  The alien’s body was wrapped in gnarled arcs of white lightning as it levitated off the ground, a whirlwind of like-colored fire spinning beneath it.  The fire shot up in powerful gout of flame that knocked Twilight to the ground and completely consumed the corpse of the alien.

She shook her head to clear it after the blast.  The world was still spinning around her when she registered a familiar voice spoken in her own language.

“Hey, kid.”

She looked up from her position on the ground to see the alien crouched next to her, a look of concern on his face, of all things.  Her mouth widened almost as much as her eyes in shock as she began scrambling away from him to the farthest corner of the cell.  She began hyperventilating wildly as she pressed her back against the pink forcefield with as much force as her trembling legs could manage.  The creature merely chuckled at her reaction.

“Heh, yeah, that’s generally how they all react.”  He was still crouched  in the same unassuming position across the room.

“Just so we’re clear: yeah, you did kill me.  And yes, I didn’t stay dead.”

Twilight's jaw worked soundlessly, the lids of her eyes quivering violently in fear, in terror, as she just began to realize that the creature’s translated monologue might actually be true.

“We can get to that later,” the revived being continued.  “In the meantime, I feel introductions are in order.”

He stood up to his full height and pointed a finger at his chest.  “My name is Phoenix, for obvious reasons.  Well, assuming you have that myth here, anyway.”  Twilight simply stared.  “Most ponies- poh-nees-  pee-puh-  pee-puhl- people?  Oh, fuck it.  Most ponies call me Nix.  And you are?”

Twilight simply fainted.

“Oh, Twilight,” a cheery voice giggled from behind him.  “You are so goofy sometimes!”

Nix twisted around with blinding speed at the strange voice, instinctively bringing his arms up to protect himself.  Instead of warding off the prospective threat, he found himself entangled in a pink blob.

“Silly-filly, if you wanted a hug, all you had to do was ask!”





> Chapter 5:  Let Them Eat Cake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Nix immediately dropped to one knee and twisted his upper torso violently, lowering his center of gravity and sending the pink blur sailing through the air.  He instinctively reached for his black pistol to deliver the coup de grace to his now airborn assailant, and cursed inwardly when he remembered his weapons had been confiscated.  In milliseconds, he had charged enough lifeforce through his limbs to leap forward and deal with his attacker by hand, before his concentration was interrupted mid-leap.

“Wheeeeee!”  the pink horse-thing exclaimed as she tumbled through the air, her hooves pressing off the forcefield and sending her into a graceful tumble along the ground before landing on all four limbs, unharmed.  Nix merely collided with the forcefield face-first, and slid down its edge like an insect on a windshield.  

“Goddamn fucking horses,” he blurbed in a muffled voice as he picked himself up off the ground, his broken jaw slowly healing.  The high-pitched tittering behind him made him wince as he turned towards the sound.

“We’re not horses, silly-filly!  We’re ponies!”

His lifeforce sputtering, removing his ability to destroy this entire world in frustration and annoyance, he instead simply regarded the pink thing that mauled him.  She—’again, making gender assumptions, so sloppy’—was, well, pink.  She was host to a poofy mane, with errant strands popping out everywhere like some sort of crazy old cat-lady.  Her eyes were squinted shut and her mouth upturned in the biggest shit-eating grin he had seen in at least 300 realities.  Alright, not a threat, just weird.

“Uh...” he grunted eloquently.

“Oh, hi!  My name’s Pinkie Pie and I’m totally a mare and you’re new here and I normally throw a party for newponies but you’re not a pony so maybe I shouldn’t but I will anyway and we’ll be good friends and omigoddess what are those things at the end of your forelegs they look like Spike’s claws—ooh, are they hands?!  Iron Will had hands!—and you don’t have hair except for a mane and I guess that’s okay because you’re an alien but it’s still weird and this dungeon is pink and that’s so weird and I think ironic but I always confuse ironic and coincidental and just happenstance but I’m sure aliens have completely different ways of looking at things just like it’s okay that you slept for 3 days and-”

'3 days?!' he thought, clenching his jaw.  He was going to have to figure out what was damming his power posthaste. 

The “pony” wheezed sharply as she gathered more breath for her next verbal assault before Nix muttered,  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, no one likes a blatherskite.”  He mentally thanked the passed out unicorn in the corner for the more expansive lexicon of insults he had copied from her brain.  

The pony deflated immediately, appearing as though she had slammed into a wall harder than Nix had just tried to toss her into the forcefield.  ’Oh, Christ.  You will not feel guilty about this.’

To his credit, he really didn’t feel a single lick of shame at all.  ‘Well, that was easy.’Numberless run-ins with all the realities’ locals had acclimated him to the pleading tears of its inhabitants.  Instead, he just stared at the pink pony numbly and said, “So, did you slip an introduction into all that rambling I mostly ignored?  The name’s Nix.”

Pinkie’s sadness immediately evaporated and the squinty-eyed grin returned.  “MY NAME’S PINKIE PIE AND WE’LL BE THE BEST FRIE-”

“Just shut the fuck up, will you?”  Nix sighed.  Deflated Pinkie returned.  “I ask you for a simple name and you already try to go off on some irrelevant fucking tangent that I don’t give two shits about.  And this after trying to fucking tackle me when I’ve never seen you before in my life.  All of you horses, ponies, whatever are fucking crazy.”  He tested his lifeforce again, knowing before he did that nothing had changed.  He needed it, though.  He had to get off this fucking rock and continue his search for his sisters.

“Pinkamena Diane Pie.”  

Summoned from his ruminations over his own predicament, he simply responded blankly, “What?”

“Pinkamena Diane Pie,” replied the pink pony.  “Most ponies call me Pinkie, but that’s my full name.”  Her response was subdued and 11 shades of pensive.  Nix actually started to feel a bit guilty at her rapid shift in emotion.

“Well, that’s more my speed, Ms. Pinkamena-”

“Pinkie.”

“Ms. Pinkamena-”

“Pinkie!”  the mare exclaimed animatedly.

“I won’t remember you after this unless you’re 'Ms. Pinkamena'.”  He jutted his index finger towards his forehead.  “Limited space means I have to get creative with the nicknames.”

“But that makes no sense.  ‘Ms. Pinkamena’ is longer than ‘Pinkie’ and--”  Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks before her mouth split into a crazy grin.  “Oooh, okay!  I’m Ms. Pinkamena!  And you’re Nixxie!”

“Nix,” Phoenix replied flatly.

“Nixxie!”

Nix sighed.  “Fine.”

Ms. Pinkamena squeed.  “We’re gonna be the bestest of friends!”

“No, we really won’t,” Nix deadpanned.  He was considering using the weak manifestation of his lifeforce to set the mare on fire and then cackle madly.  That ‘cackling madly’ thing really worked well during intense thunderstorms, when you raised your fists to the skies amidst the drenching downpour of rain to curse the gods, and the booming of thunder accentuated your exaggerated guffaws.  He had done that a few times.  It was quite cathartic, laughing at gods before you killed them.

“Oh yes we will, you just don’t know it because you’re all sad because you can’t control your memories and it’s making it hard for you to think but we’ll still be besties and do a lot of fun stuff together and I’ll comfort you when you forget your best friend’s name and-”

Poofs of dust shot up as Nix covered the distance between the two in less than the blink of an eye.  His forearm pressed threateningly against her throat as she was thrust against the cell walls.  He glared murderously at her.  “You don’t know the first thing about me, but even if you know what you say you do, you also know I can and will kill you.  Easily.”

“But I...I do know about it.  Twilight wrote it all down here,” she meeped fearfully, holding up one of the scrolls from the still teetering mountain, her eyes wide with innocent shock. A hint of sad reproach tinged her wide-eyed stare, however.  “And you wouldn’t-  I mean...it wouldn’t be easily.”

Nix snatched the scroll from her hoof with his free hand, glancing at it even as he ensured ‘Ms. Pinkamena’ couldn’t escape.  He didn’t understand half the symbols on the sheet, but he recognized enough that he immediately channeled fire through the yellowed parchment, setting it ablaze, before he met the pink pony’s frightened eyes.

’What, no sarcastic jibe about glue factories this time?’ a gentle thought prodded from the back of his mind, cutting him deeply.  He immediately removed his arm from her throat.

“No, I really wouldn’t.  Just...please don’t ever give me a reason to.”

An imperious voice behind him replied, “No, you really wouldn’t.  Our princesses assure the safety of everypony in their stead.”  Nix threw his arms frustratedly in the air, glancing at the growing grin on Ms. Pinkamena’s face before turning around to face the new voices.

Two unicorns, one white, one black, stood just inside the threshold of the pink forcefield.  The light green unicorn he had noticed outside his cell when he woke up stood shyly behind them, trying to make herself appear scarce.  He momentarily wondered how they had made it through the door of his cell without having heard them enter, but was interrupted by their introductions.

“I am Sunny Day,” said the white unicorn, her mane a simple, flowing pink.  Like all the other ponies he noticed, she also had a tattoo on her hind leg, this one of a sun peeking out over white clouds.  

“And we are- *COUGHCOUGH* -I am known as Midnight,” replied the black one, her leg-tattoo that of four stars in the shape of a cross.  Her curly, dark blue mane almost triggered something in his recent memory, but his attempts to zero in on the deja vu was interrupted by the white one.

“And we,” Sunny Day continued, “are ambassadors representing Equestria, its two princesses, and every inhabitant therein.”

“Ambassadors?” Nix replied flatly.

“Indeed!” Midnight responded eagerly.  “We have been sent to establish contact with and-”

Nix turned around, facing the pink mare again.  “Pinks, you wouldn’t happen to know how to levitate large boulders, would you?”

“No, silly!  I’m an earth mare, only unicorns can do that!  But I grew up on a rock farm, and this one time I had to move a boulder that-”

Nix tuned her out, saw the purple unicorn was still out cold, and turned instead to the lime green one that accompanied the two ambassadors.  “Hey, greenie.”  She shrunk at being addressed.  “Can you?”

“Can...can I what, sir?” she uttered in almost a whisper.

“Levitate large boulders of rock?” Nix asked, annoyed.

“I...uh, err...I-  Yes, kind of.  Not that I do it all the time or anything,” she replied, attempting to hide behind the confused black ambassador’s hindquarters.

“Excellent!” Nix exclaimed.  “Tell me, what’s your name?”

Her eyes flicked wildly between the two ambassadors, seemingly seeking permission for something.  The two had turned their heads to examine the object of the alien’s curiosity, but remained silent as their brows furrowed in confusion at the exchange.  Finally, the white one, Sunny Day, nodded slightly in assent.  

“Muh-my name is Ridge Dancer?” she offered meekly.

“That’s great, Dancie.  Look, I have a proposition for you-”

“I, err, no, no propositions!  I have a loving husband and family and am in a loving relationship and I’m not looking for that sort of thing!!!” she sputtered out wildly.

Nix merely stared at her, his mouth slightly open as her outburst had short-circuited his next sentence.

“Uh, no.  Just no.  Nothing like that.  At all,” he replied curtly.  “Ever.”  His eyes flashed her a confused look before he continued, “It’s just that...well.  Bureaucrats.”  He made a point to pause here, gazing at the white and black ambassadors for a couple seconds.  “I can’t fucking stand bureaucrats,” he said cheerfully, throwing on his best smile.  

“I’d actually prefer having my skull bashed in repeatedly by half a ton of rock rather than deal with them.  You know, Dancie, that just happened to me not too long ago, right?  Having my skull crushed violently by large amounts of fucking marble?”

“You...you don’t say,” she wheezed out in a whisper.

“I’m afraid so.  Terribly traumatizing, that.  Appearing in a new dimension, completely lost and confused, and then being assaulted by dozens of horses-” he paused for a second, sparing a glance at Ms. Pinkamena, who had continued her story unabated and whose jibbering formed a chirpy din in the background of the conversation, “I’m sorry, ‘ponies’.  And then I spent the next few moments of my over-long life introducing the inadequate density of my fragile, fragile bones to numerous, much more dense rock walls via some murder-crazed member of your military before having my head crushed repeatedly by a very, very large boulder-”

“I-  I-” Ridge Dancer meeped, her face buried in her hooves.

“-and, to be completely honest, I’d much rather repeat the process a hundredfold than deal with a bureaucrat,” Nix concluded simply.  “So, think you could save me from my dire fate with these two here?”

Ridge Dancer merely cowered, trembling violently under the weight of her guilt while Nix wondered why such a shy pony was brought to the first formal proceedings between two species.

“I...” Sunny Day finally spoke up, as Nix brought his gaze back to her with a cocked eyebrow, a maddening smile on his face.  She took an audible, measured breath.  “I would first and foremost like to extend our princesses’ apologies over their initial misunderstanding-”

“No,” Nix interrupted.

“I-”  Sunny paused.  “I don’t understand.”

“I’m refusing your princesses’ apology over my mistreatment.  Saying you’re sorry by proxy is akin to saying, ‘I would apologize, but I don’t give a damn enough to do it in person.’  It’s more of an insult than simply refusing to apologize.”

“Then mayhaps thy desirest no redress of thy grievances at all?”  Midnight finally spoke up, her voice icy.

“Yeah, actually, that’d be about as great as you probably were in your high school drama club.  Thanks, Shakespony,” he retorted, wincing inwardly at the equestrian slip of ‘Shakespeare’.

“An indecorous cur is unworthy of such a sacred boon as the remorse of our irreproachable princesses’ amnesty,” Midnight hissed.

“Oh, dear.”  He placed his hands melodramatically on his cheeks as his gaze wandered skyward.  “How shall I ever fall to sleep again under the weight of my own guilt?”

Midnight looked like she had been physically slapped, to Nix’s great delight. 

“What my assistant means-” Sunny Day began with a conciliatory tone in her voice, but Nix interrupted her.

“Spare me the details, please.  I popped up in your universe unexpectedly, made some sort of social faux pas that pissed everyone off, and you all overreacted.  Now your princesses are sending you two after me to ensure I don’t summon an army of my interdimensional compatriots to conquer your little world because you’ve realized your mistake.  Am I close to the mark, because stop me if I diverge from the narrative here?”  He paused.  Both ambassadors remained silent.

“Right.  There’s no invading army, and if I were at a fraction of my normal power, not only would I have happily crushed your world and all its inhabitants to dust, your 'irreproachable princesses’ meager power wouldn’t have been enough to capture me in the first place, thus making this conversation useless.”  He forced every reserve of lifeforce he could muster into his right hand, and fire subsumed his arm.  Orange flames enveloped his right forearm and shaped into the form of an eagle’s talons where his hand would be.  He looked at the manifestation thoughtfully.  “Just release me, and I’ll be out of your hair immediately.  Your subjects will not be harmed, your princesses will not have to...debase themselves by apologizing in person, and I will be on my way out of your reality at my earliest possible convenience.”  

“No,” Sunny Day replied simply.  “I’m afraid that’s not good enough.  You leave our world now, or we enter into negotiation to better realize relations between our two races.”

Nix snorted.  “This isn’t a negotiation between two races, some grand contract of non-hostility.  I came here alone.  The same as I arrived at every other reality; alone.  If another of my kind had had somehow managed to arrive here, and survive the trip, you all would have killed them about 11 times over with your actions.”  He nodded flippantly to the unconscious purple unicorn, “Judging by her reaction after she accidentally killed me, you all aren’t really keen on the act.  That almost makes it a blessing to you all that I’m unique among my species.  However, for the time being, you still have to deal with me,”  he forced as much magic as he could into making a fireball, and one poofed into existence in his right talon of flame.  He glanced lazily at them through the corner of his arrogant, lidded eyes as a blue, tremoring ball of flame twice the size of his head began floating in the air above his summoned, fiery claws.  The flickering light in his bright blue eyes seem to grow in intensity as he magicked the fireball into existence, before settling back to their unearthly glow.  “And you really don’t want to deal with me.”

The atmosphere grew chilly in spite of Nix’s summoned fire, and in spite of the fact that Pinkie’s cheery ranting still droned on in the background.  “A lesser pony might take that for a threat,” Sunny Day spoke, a dangerous tone in her voice.  Sunny Day’s horn began to glow a bright yellow color, whereas Midnight opted to roll her eyes between the two helplessly, the situation clearly growing out of hoof.  Nix merely flashed a predatory smile, and made to respond before a groaning in the corner of the room interrupted his thoughts.  

The two ambassadors were temporarily distracted at the sound, though the white unicorn did not release her horn’s aura.   Nix just flicked a glance in the direction of the purple unicorn as she stumbled awake before returning his stare to the two ambassadors.  

“You have no idea,” he growled challengingly.  


*     *     *     *     *


“Wuh-  What happened?” Twilight muttered in a slurred voice, her hoof instinctively meeting the side of her head to steady her world.  Her normally quicksilver thoughts felt like they were traversing a sea of molasses before ever achieving conscious realization.  Blinking dumbly, her eyes wandered around the room before focusing on the white unicorn.  Blearily, she thought, ’Hey, that’s the form Princess Celestia used when she taught me glamour magic.  But why is she...?’  Her eyes wandered over to her companion, a black unicorn with blue hair that Twilight instantly deduced as Luna, utilizing the same magic.  She was in some strange room that she felt she should remember, and both princesses were here in disguise for some reason, yet remembering felt difficult, as though the memories might dare be...irrational.  Her gaze continued wandering until she noticed the alien across from them, his arm ablaze and levitating a much larger fireball than he had before.  The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place for her immediately as she remembered the circumstances; the creature, ‘Nix’, felt threatened and was attacking the princesses!  For the second time today, she immediately acted on instinct, casting the first spell that came to mind to amend the situation.  A bright white light immediately exploded from her glowing purple horn.   

It was one of numerous “fail-safe” spells she had at her disposal.  (She had prepared several, just in case.)  This one in particular dispelled all magic within a 100-yard radius.  Unfortunately, Twilight was poorly versed in the negation of Chaos magic, so her spell merely acted upon the threads of magic with which she was most familiar; all traces of Harmony magic disappeared instantly.  

Nix’s manifestation of a burning talon on his right arm merely winked out of existence without so much as a puff, but the fireball he was levitating immediately exploded.  It was a small explosion, it’s muffled whump barely louder than most firecrackers, but its effects were immediate.  Nix slowly turned his slightly singed head in her direction, smoke tendrils snaking off his now ruined shirt.  “12 times,” he uttered simply.  “I’m immune to fire, for obvious reasons.  But another of my kind?  That’d be 12 times they died.”  He glared at the purple unicorn with as much reproach as he could muster.  “You’re really not too good at the whole contr- OH MY GOD MY FUCKING SHIRT!  YOU RUINED MY SHIRT!”

He immediately grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it forward to examine it.  It was filled with singed holes, and his right sleeve was missing.  Twilight cringed.

“I...I’m sooooooorry!” she wailed, her hooves embracing the back of her neck as she tried to hide her face on the floor.  “I didn’t...I didn’t mean to-“

“It took me ages to figure out how to enchant clothing so I didn’t pop up naked save for my weapons and my coat every time I was ripped from one reality to another...I had this shirt for the last 60 years.  I cared for it.  Stroked it softly to comfort it during thunderstorms.  Washed it lovingly in cheerfully burbling mountain springs.  Was there for it through thick and thin.  I even named it, ‘Rocky’.  Rocky the Dimension-Traversing T-Shirt.  And his genial, loyal polyester threads have been slain before your vengeful wrath, kid.  How can you, the most murderous of murderers, console me?”

“I-  I-” Twilight stammered in shame.

“-and that’s the story of how my pet rock Tom quelled the Diamond Dog rebellion and saved my family’s rock farm!  Oh, hey, the princesses took off their costumes!”  Pinkie finally finished her story.

“Wait, what?”  Nix whipped around, his gaze meeting Princess Celestia and Luna in their true forms.  Dreadful recognition burned behind his eyes as he regarded both his captor and the one whose voice could crush worlds.  Righteous indignation burned in his chest as he steeled himself for what he knew was necessary.  His muscles coiled suddenly, precipitating his just vengeance upon these two for everything they had just put him through.  He released the tension in his being all at once, his movements becoming a barely discernible blur of unmatchable speed.  The two princesses, still recovering from their sudden unmasking, never saw it coming.


*     *     *      *     *


Nix moved with as much velocity as he could manage, his trickling lifeforce still impeding his proficiency in augmenting his abilities.  Wrapping his arm around Ms. Pinkamena’s torso just below her front legs, he picked her up and leapt explosively from the center of the room onto the ratty bed in the far corner.

“Look out, Ms. Pinkamena!”  he shouted, releasing her.  She plopped down on the bed, a manic smile across her face as her head bobbed between Nix and the Princesses.  Nix planted his left foot on the headboard of the bed and rested his right fist on his hip.  “‘Tis the Dread Pirate Cakebeard, stealing upon us in the dark of night-” bright sunlight poured in through the barred window to his cell, “to rob us of our lives, and more horribly, of our cake!”

“Not the cake.  NOT THE CAKE!  No!  Noooooo!  How could you, you monster?!”  Pinkie leveled a hoof at the white princess, whose eyes had practiced widening more since Nix’s arrival than it had in the previous 2000 years.  The blue princess was trying, poorly, to suppress a grin as she studiously examined a nearby wall.

“Tell me, Captain Cakebeard!  How many seas of pastries succumbed to your gluttonous genocide on your rapacious buffet to my cell?”  Nix impugned as his accusatory finger flung out at the clearly nonplussed Princess Celestia.  Luna failed to suppress a chuckle.

Nix’s focus immediately whipped towards her at the sound.

“I dunno why you’re laughing, Ms. Angry Housewife.”

Luna’s mouth snapped shut at the title, her brain seizing.

“We...we do not understand?  Dost thee desire to consort us?”  The gears turning in her head, her eyes narrowed angrily.  “‘Twould be a warm day in Tartarus ere a wretched creature like thee could beckon our fancy.”

“I-”  It was Nix’s turn to have his brain hitch.  “No, wait...ewww, gross!  No, no, no, no!  No!  Never with a horse-!”

“Pony!” Pinkie leapt happily in the air to punctuate the correction.

“-that was not what I meant at all.”

“Do tell,” Luna lowered her head threateningly.

“It’s just that the only ponies who have to suffer a voice as annoyingly loud as yours are usually married to their assailant.”  Celestia’s mouth quirked for an instant.  Nix’s eyes flicked momentarily back to her.  “I totally saw that,” he said with a tiny smirk and a sideways glance.

“I believe I liked you better when you were making a mess of my palace, before you could speak,” Celestia said plainly.  “Although you do have an...interesting way with words.”

“Blame her,” Nix responded, pointing at the purple unicorn who was still desperately trying to bury her face in the floor.  “I copied her language center, and she is probably the first pony I’ve met with a more sordid lust for the written word than my old buddy, Mitch.”  He glanced at the mountain of scrolls in the corner.

“We believe you mean ‘Mike’,” the blue princess corrected.

Nix’s features immediately darkened.  “Don’t you even dare.  And how would you even know?” he asked threateningly.  

“We’ve been here since shortly after you awoke.  Little Ridge Dancer alerted us immediately the moment you regained consciousness.  We concealed ourselves and teleported directly to your cell.”

“Huh, so that was that nagging feeling at the back of my head.  Next time you should consider concealing your lifeforce along with your physical presence,” Nix said thoughtfully, before his voice hardened again.  “That still doesn’t explain how you know of my friend.”

“My dear student is a brilliant scholar,”  the purple unicorn on the ground twitched at her apparent mention, “but she is not the only one capable of impressive feats of intellect.  My sister and I almost immediately recognized your tongue as a modified version of an ancient language that was once common on our world...”

Nix remained silent, not-so-patiently awaiting a straight answer.

“We would know why thee struggles with names in the stead of simply summoning them from thy small black box?”  Luna asked openly.

Their knowledge suddenly clicked in his brain.  So that was it?  He fished the small black media player from his back pocket, and flicked it on.  The last file he chose immediately spurted to life on its small screen, confirming the blue alicorn’s correction true.

“Alright, I’ll tell you.  But first, isn’t it a bit rude that you haven’t even introduced yourselves?  Not too good at this whole alien diplomacy thing, are you?”

The dark blue princess blushed mildly as her gaze flicked back to the wall she had earlier studied, before she caught herself and met Nix’s eyes.  The white alicorn merely raised her head and gazed down her nose at him.  

“I am Princess Celestia, Steward of the Sun, and ruler of Equestria along with my sister.”

“And we are Princess Luna, Mistress of the Moon, Diarch of Equestria.  Please, call us ‘Luna’.”

“Right, Tia and Lu.  Gotcha.  Name’s Nix.”

“I-  I’m-” Ridge Dancer stammered out, clearly confused by the last 10 minutes.

“Already know, shut up,” Nix replied bluntly.  Ridge Dancer slumped sullenly.  He turned toward the purple unicorn still cowering on the ground and knelt down, poking her on the shoulder.  “Hey, kid.”  

She yelped, her eyes shooting open.  “Omigod I’m sorry I killed you and came in your cell and made contact and ohnoIdefiedPrincessCelestia’sordersI’llbesentbacktomagickindergartenthisisterriblewhathaveIdone-”

Nix jabbed her with his finger again, interrupting her neurotic exclamation.  “Calm down.  You kinda fainted before telling me your name, if you recall?”  he reminded her.

“I...” she started, bewilderment fading from her eyes as her gaze sharpened and she turned to meet Nix’s regard.  “My name is Twilight Sparkle.”  She closed her eyes and nodded her head in satisfaction, as if finally completing a difficult task.

Nix snorted and shook his head.  “Cool beans, Sparky.”

“No, I said my name is-”

“No, Twilight, Nixxie has this weird memory thing where he won’t remember unless he gives you a really fun nickname but you wouldn’t know that because you were taking a nap when he explained it and that’s why he has a magic box that has memories in it and why would you be taking a nap in the middle of a dungeon anyway-”  Nix shot an annoyed frown her way and her mouth snapped shut with an audible smack, a self-effacing grin appearing on her face as her hoof drew across her mouth in the universal “zip it” motion.

“Right, then.  My little black box.  It’s a recording device.  I had it enchanted a little over 800 years ago by a stallion-” ’Christ, that’s annoying’ “-named Merlin, it stores data in subspace, effectively infinite memory.”

“Marelin?” Celestia asked, with what passed for mild surprise on her normally measured features.

“No, ‘Merlin’.  You wanna know about this or not?”  The princess merely nodded slowly for him to continue.  “I say I have trouble remembering, but the truth of the matter is, I remember everything, I just can’t summon the memories like a normal pony can.  When I try to remember really old memories, I might get the one I’m looking for or any one of a thousand others.  That’s where this thing,” he motioned with the box, “comes in handy.  It’s sort of a prompt for all my very old memories that I’d rather not lose.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you keep trying to remember names when you could just load up the memories on your box.  Isn’t it more pragmatic to use the latter method?”  Twilight asked.

Nix looked at her soberly.  “This machine is a reminder in more ways than one.  Tell me, what do you think would happen if, one day, I were to load up this moving picture I have of my last birthday on my homeworld, see the gaiety and the friendly faces, and wonder to myself, ‘Huh, why do I have these random people on here?’  What if I deleted the file?”

“I...don’t know.”

“Yeah, neither do I.  I’m in a race to make it home before I forget what ‘home’ even is, and being reminded of that is why I don’t like using this thing.  And that’s also why it angers me that I can barely use any of my lifeforce on your world.”

“I don’t know,” Princess Celestia said with a small smile, “I imagine evading capture by the resident Goddesses for as long as you did must be a fairly impressive display.”

Nix gave the white alicorn a cursory examination before waving his hand dismissively.  “Were I at my full strength, I would have just swatted you aside like a buzzing insect.  Probably without accidentally killing you, but who knows?”  

“Your bravado is...immense, to say the least, but I think you’ll find it’s somewhat difficult to kill an immortal,” Celestia chided gently, her smile widening slightly.

“Hmmm.  I wonder?”  Nix placed one finger on his chin in ponderance.  “Actually, there is something I wonder.  What’s with the tattoos on the legs?  That a tribal thing?”

“Ooh, I know!”  Twilight exclaimed, waving her hoof wildly in the air over her head.  Nix stared at her for ten seconds while she repeated the motion.  He turned to Celestia.  “Is she always like this?”  Celestia gave him a hard look, still meeting his gaze when she said, “By all means, Twilight.”

Nix turned back to Twilight.  “It’s called a cutie mark.  It’s a visual representation of a pony’s special talent, the thing in life they’re best at, that appears magically after they discover said talent as a filly or colt.”

“So,” he pointed sideways at Celestia, “her special talent is having an ass as big as the sun?”

Twilight gaped so widely her lower jaw could have swept the floor, her mouth working soundlessly as her eyes shifted rapidly between Nix and her mentor.  “What can you-” she sputtered.  “How can- but-”

“That is enough!” Celestia’s voice seethed with rage.  The other ponies all turned to her, dismayed at the suddenness of her outburst.  “Since making my royal presence known, you have done nothing but insult me, make puerile remarks, and sow discord with every utterance that leaves your vile tongue!”  She punctuated the statement by prodding him in the chest with her hoof.  He cocked an eyebrow and gave her a bemused grin.

“Yes, because it’s the height of propriety to blast guests through your bedroom door and chase them down with a troop of guards, before shattering every bone in their body with the force of one's shouting, and let's not forget the prim'n'proper torture sessions with large chunks of marble.  Still waiting on that apology, princess,”  Nix flashed a smarmy sneer and jabbed her in the chest with his finger.

“You first assault me with food, and now you dare place your hands upon me?!” Celestia spat angrily.

“Yes, how terrible of me.  I happened across a strange unicorn, didn’t know they were sentient, and tried giving them something healthy to eat-”

“-a task that has absorbed a great many of our own hours over the millennia,” Luna muttered offhandedly.  But she was giving her sister a strange look.  Celestia cast a furious glance at Luna before focusing back on Nix.

“-only to be suddenly attacked when all I was trying to do was keep things quiet so I could slip away unnoticed.  Honestly, how many personal trainers have you sent to the guillotine for implying Your Corpulence--I’m sorry, I mean Your Majesty--has a bit of an eating problem?”

Celestia’s horn began to glow as her eyes blazed furiously.  “I am the ruler of all Equestria,” her voice boomed.  “YOU WILL RESPECT ME.  YOU WILL FEAR ME.”  By now the other ponies in the room were terrified and cowering, but Luna’s eyes were wide with sudden realization.  “Sister, we believe thee to be overstepping thy bounds...ruler of all Equestria or not,” she suggested gently.

“SILENCE!  I WILL NOT BE ADMONISHED BY AN INFERIOR BEING.  THE VERY SUN MOVES AT MY WHIM.  ALL SHALL BOW BEFORE ME.  KNEEL!!!”  Throughout it all, Nix’s arrogant grin grew wider and wider.  

“My, my.  Someone thinks they’re the center of the world.  But methinks they’ve just grown so obese that the world has begun to orbit them, eh, fatty?”

A bolt of magic shot out of Celestia’s horn, straight at Nix’s face.  ’If Sparky’s blast was enough to kill me, this little beauty is enough to turn me into a red paste on the wall behind me.  Can’t let that happen and leave Tia here free to roam about with her...condition.’  He deftly flicked a hand up and caught the blast in his palm, stopping it in place.  All the ponies eyes, including Celestia’s, widened to dinner plate proportions.

“Awww, who’s a cute deathball?  Who’s a cute deathball?  That’s right, little guy,” Nix cooed softly at the compressed magical energy, tossing it from hand to hand before stopping and pointing at it, “you are!  Precious lil’ deathball, so cute I could d’awww!”  He d’awwwed.  His voice took on a firm tone, that of a father firmly but lovingly disciplining a toddler.  “But what’s this dark magic I sense on you, lil’ buddy?  Have you been playing with Papa Nixxie’s mean old sword?”

He languidly brought his gaze up to Celestia, his arrogant grin gone and flickering lights of a wild blue flame glowing in center of his pupils.  He slowly clenched his fist, still staring straight into her eyes, and crushed the orb of magic, sending out a small shockwave that made both princesses brace themselves and knocked Twilight, Ridge, and Pinkie off their hooves.

“Well, at least now I know who confiscated my swords from me.”

“Your parlor tricks will do you no good, you disgusting ape!”  Celestia hissed through clenched teeth.  She charged her horn again, lowering her head at Nix’s chest.  He merely looked at her, a small, sad smile on his face.  “I shall show you what happens to fools who dare cross-”

No pony in the room saw him move.  One second, Nix stood relaxed, almost bored, one hand in his jean pockets, and the next he was right before Celestia, his right hand on her forehead.  Her eyes widened in surprise before a circle of white flame erupted from the point of contact, bathing the room in a blinding flash.  As the spots cleared from everypony’s vision, they saw Nix still standing in the center of the room, his palm still held near the base of Celestia’s horn.

He gazed gravely into her eyes.  “Y’alright there, Cakebeard?”

She stared at him for a second with dread seriousness, before replying, “I...yes.  I am fine, Phoenix.  Thank you.”

He jerked his hand off her forehead.  “Good.  Not sure what I woulda done if I had to take more drastic measures.  I don’t even have enough magic to do that from a distance.  Have to do it by physical contact.  Still not sure how I managed that with what little power-”  He crumpled on the ground.  

“Mmmmmmfmmm mmmm!”  Pinkie Pie said through her closed lips, before moving her hoof along them in an unzipping motion.  “Nixxie, noooo!”  She dashed towards him and cradled his upper body, lifting her head and wailing to the ceiling.  “NOOOOOOO!”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, his voice weak.  “Also, put me the fuck down.”

“Okay!”  she chirped happily, dropping him unceremoniously to the floor.  He grunted angrily.
Slowly, he brought himself up to a sitting position, still groggy.  

“What, exactly, was that?”  Celestia asked coolly, but offering a conciliatory hoof to him.  He stared at it for a second, before grabbing hold and letting her help him up.  He trudged to the bed, Celestia balancing him upright if he stumbled, much to his chagrin.  He sat down heavily.

“That...was a side effect of handling one of my swords.”  The four ponies in the room stared at him in confusion, but Luna merely listened contemplatively.  “The katana I carry?”  More confused looks.  “The slightly curved sword, the one without all the gaudy jewels?”  

“Ohhhhhh!” the three non-alicorn ponies replied in unison, before a heavy silence settled over the room.

“Wait, did you really say you could move the sun, Tia?”  Nix asked.

“I raise the sun every morning.  Why?”

Nix chuckled grimly.  “Man, it would really dislike you.”  He looked at Luna.  “That moon on your ass mean what I think it does?”

“We should think our hindquarters a bit more slim than the trillions of tons of rock we magick into the sky every night,” she said warningly, narrowing her eyes.

This brought an honest laugh out of Nix.  “Wasn’t implying that.  I had to piss Tia off to get it to manifest, after something about her lifeforce seemed...off.  Besides, I’m sure I can find better ways to aggravate you.  That katana would love you to death and wouldn’t try corrupting you.  I’ve forgotten it’s proper name a long time ago,” he tapped his forehead for emphasis, “but roughly translated, it means ‘10,000 Cold Nights’.  Most people on my homeworld merely called it by its creator’s name, Muramasa.”  

He slowly began to curl up on the bed.  He was beyond tired.  The world slowly started to darken around him before he bolted upright.  “The swords!  Don’t let anypony else touch them.  The zweihander would probably be pretty genial to most who come across it, but best not take chances.  They can be exceptionally dangerous to any who have not mastered them, which means pretty much everypony but me.”  He looked pointedly at Celestia.  “I’m actually surprised you resisted it for as long as you did.  Most begin exhibiting symptoms after a few hours, but ponies under immense psychological strain would fall in minutes.  Did anypony else handle them physically or with magic?”  

“Only myself and my Guard-Captain, Glancing Shock.”

“And did he exhibit any odd behavior afterward?”

“Not ‘odd’.  Just a bit more extreme than normal.”

Nix mulled over this information.  “Might wanna bring him to me, just in case.  In the meantime, I’m fucking exhausted.  Girls,” he tipped an imaginary hat to the three non-princesses, “it was absolutely dreadful meeting you and your world is awful and filled with marble-tainted violence.”  Ridge managed to only cringe a little bit at this.  “But you are slightly less awful than the rest of it.  And one more matter of utmost importance.”  The five of them gazed at him expectantly.  He picked up his pillow and tossed it dumbly towards Celestia.  It bounced off her flank even as a confused look crossed all their faces--except Pinkie, whose brain was engaged in a contest of wills between trying to avoid annoying the grumpy ape-thing and taking his action to mean a declaration of pillow-fight war.

“Pretend that...” he muttered tiredly, collapsing onto the small bed, “...was a carrot. You still owe me an apolo-”  He was snoring softly before he finished the sentence.  The five ponies made to leave him in silence.  Celestia immediately went off to locate Glancing Shock, while Twilight and Pinkie headed off to their rooms in the castle.  Ridge Dancer began a manic trot up and down the dungeon hallways to work off excess energy.  Luna paused at the threshold, gazing upon the sleeping creature with a curious eye.

“Queer creature,” she intoned in a low, thoughtful voice.  “Thy mastery of thy sword is commendable, but not entirely unique in this world.”  She paused, a small smile playing across her lips.  “Perhaps one day we shall introduce this ‘Muramasa’ to its sister sword, and let them both dance across my night sky.  Until then, rest peacefully.  We shall ward thy dreams from any unpleasantness.”


> Chapter 6:  This Is My Boomstick
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	When Nix woke up, the sunlight that had poured through his cell’s iron-barred grate was absent, instead replaced with a flickering, muted illumination from the candles placed at each corner of the room.  He summoned a brilliant white ball of flame and levitated it to the center of the room.  He had always been a night owl and would spend many a lightless night simply staring at starry skies, but the flickering shadows across utilitarian brick walls was too great a reminder that he was in a dungeon, and the bright source of light reminded him of the civilized, well-lit rooms of his homeworld.  ’Not quite 120V AC quality, but preferable to an atmosphere that’s better lent to the Spanish Inquistion.’  

Testing his lifeforce’s flow, he found it to be at a meager trickle instead of the diminutive droplets it was before.  A hair’s breadth more power than he could access for most of his time here.  He was still annoyed by the severe dampening of his abilities; they were nowhere near the level they needed to be to get to a safe location, lightyears away, and expend all his energy in one go.  

He may have been alive for a thousand years, but he had made several thousand jumps in that time.  He only tried to stay in one particular reality long enough to teleport deep into empty space, burn off all his lifeforce, and then jump onto the next reality.  The first 200 years, that’s all he had done, searching fanatically for his home reality.  Of course, then he met Merlin, and things had changed a bit.  He buried what little he remembered of the wizard.  Of all things, this was one of the few memories he’d rather not recall.  Not now.

He took in his surroundings now that they were bathed in a brighter, more sterile light.  ’It appears my suite has been upgraded from medieval torture chamber to sanitarium.  Glad they bought my defense by reason of insanity.’  His room had also been upgraded to the presidential prison cell in his slumber.  Before, there was only an uncomfortable bed stuffed with hay in one corner, and a bucket for bodily needs in the other.  While he slept, a table had been placed in an unoccupied corner, complete with a chair that was entirely too small for his frame but would probably suit its purpose as a sitting implement.  On the table, a quill, ink, and numerous blank parchments rested, along with a twine-wrapped parcel and a wax-sealed letter. 

They piqued his curiosity, but not as much as the lack of the pink forcefield that had previously sequestered him into one half of his cell.  He immediately made for the cell door.  It was made of iron bars that ran the height of the doorway, though attempts to summon fire to melt them fizzled out.  He assumed they dropped the physical forcefield but left anti-magic spells in place.  Made sense, after his previous display of power.  Outside the door, a light green lump was curled up on a wooden bench, it’s chest heaving softly in its sleep.  He assumed it was Dancie.

On a whim, he tried simply opening it.  The door swung open almost soundlessly, to his great surprise.  He poked his head out the doorway.  The light green lump on the wooden bench outside shifted slightly but settled, lockes of a fiery orange mane concealing most of her features.  ’Yup, Dancie.  Is she supposed to be my guard or something?’  Nix’s eyes caught her cutie mark--a dandelion growing out of a gray stone, half its seeds blowing in the wind--before he withdrew to his cell, returning to the table in the corner.

He eyed the letter, first.  Breaking the wax seal, he unfolded the parchment and began reading.

Dear Phoenix,

As you may have noticed, we have removed the forcefield and unlocked your cell.  While we no longer wish you a prisoner in our land, we ask that, should you wish to leave your room, you be accompanied by Ridge Dancer.  She is a guardspony above reproach, and while you may chafe under her supervision, she is there moreso for your own safety than others.  She has been directed to guide you to the royal throne room first, wherein I or my sister, Princess Luna, will be holding court depending upon the time of day you awaken.  Afterwards, you will be free to roam our palace at your whim (though still supervised).

Furthermore, having located our Guard-Captain, we have run a complete battery of magical tests and found him devoid of any trace of the Chaos magic inherent in your sword.

Finally, on a more personal note...thank you.  I will refrain from phrasing any apology (which you most certainly deserve) until you may receive it in person from both myself and my sister.

Again, thank you,
Princess Celestia

Nix mulled over the letter for a few seconds before concluding it was a trap; the age-old trick of bludgeoning one’s foe into a pulpy mass of blood and flesh and then inviting them to one’s royal court was a rare ploy, but one he was all-too used to.  Kind of.  In that it had happened this one time 500 years ago, and the denizens of that reality were all sadist demons that expressed their generosity by non-lethal--though thoroughly painful--violence and were trying to curry his favor so that he would take care of a certain sect of theirs that utilized a slightly more death-inducing form of violence.  Said kind demons did so by abusing him brutally in a manner that didn’t necessarily result in his untimely death.  They were a weird bunch, but they weren’t all that awful once you got a few drinks into ‘em.  The details were a bit fuzzy, but he was pretty sure he ended up killing all of them indiscriminately.  They were demons, after all.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and tossed the letter aside flippantly.   He hefted the paper-wrapped package in one hand.  It felt light and soft.  Undoing the twine, he removed the paper wrapping to find a simple letter atop a brightly colored cloth bundle.  He sighed, but opened the second letter.  He really wasn’t a fan of reading.


Dear Nix,
I am so, so, sosososososo sorry about your shirt, Rocky the Dimension-Traversing T-Shirt. At my insistence, the princesses approved a plot in the Royal Canterlot cemetary for its proper burial. Thankfully, I had a reference on the fashions of sentient non-ponies in my saddlebags, and having researched the material extensively, I had my good friend Rarity craft a shirt that should meet the needs of a primate that can wield fire magic.  

Sadly, my friends and I have other responsibilities and will have returned to Ponyville by the time you read this.  As soon as you get your bearings, please try and visit.  I have some of the best friends a pony could ask for, and I’d love for you to meet them.  Also, I’ll probably need your help convincing Pinkie Pie to stop stashing eyepatches in random places “to prepare for the Cakebeard Rebellion” at some point.  I also have a lot of questions I’d like to ask you, but I understand if you’d rather not answer.

Don’t get into too much trouble!  I’ll see you soon.

Your friend,
Twilight Sparkle

He pinched the bridge of his nose in mild annoyance.  ’Not friends.’  

Unwrapping the shirt, he laid it out on the hay-stuffed mattress in the corner.  It was bright canary yellow, the collar would have extended halfway up the back and sides of his head, and the sleeves terminated in a frilly white lace.  Sequined on the left breast were a multitude of rubies and jacinths.  Picking the shirt up and pacing slowly around the room, he nodded once in final appraisal.  The ashes that danced ephemerally to the ground after he set the godawful thing on fire brought him no small degree of inner peace.  The various gemstones made a tinking sound as they hit the floor, where they were ignored as Nix began focusing his paltry lifeforce into a malleable form.

There were scalable degrees in the difficulty of manifesting his various abilities.  Summoning fire and regeneration came easiest, for obvious reasons.  So, too, did electricity.  The three were the simplest expression of the energy that coursed through his cosmic symbiont’s lifeforce.  Next up on the difficulty tier was spatial manipulation, as energy had to be converted to mass to replicate gravitational fields, without actually summoning objects of mass.  He still couldn’t wrap his head around the explanation Odin had tried to drill into him, but he could do it.  It allowed him a great variety of skills, from telekinesis to brief alterations of time as a direct result of the relativistic physics behind gravitational wells.  The most difficult was the manipulation of quantum fields.  Simply trying to modify something on a quantum level changed it, which, without forethought, might lead the manifestation of his lifeforce on a wholly unintended path.  Compound this with the fact that even something as simple as teleportation required discrete mathematical calculations for the trajectory of every single one of the atoms that composed his being, and numerous modifications to correct for changes to his molecules simply from him being aware of them, and this level of manipulation quickly became a mess for someone with his attention span.  

It was like trying to drive a car at 150 MPH on a road no wider than the car’s own width when, every time the driver realized he was driving it, a wrecking ball slammed into the side of the vehicle.  For smaller items, like his weapons, it was either easier or harder, depending on the nature of the reality he was in and how those weapons’ energy signatures were affected.  Even if he was in an existence with which he was highly attuned, he didn’t think he’d even have enough lifeforce right now to summon his pistol, Umbra--probably his weakest weapon, much less powerful than his other three.  And after 1000 years, he still couldn’t wrap his brain around the energy of that duster Odin had given him before his assault on Heaven.

He let out a frustrated huff, annoyed at being sidetracked.  He still wasn’t entirely sure how he had managed quantum transmutation to teleport himself in front of Tia with his lagging reserves.  But, he hoped he could manage a bit of spatial manipulation, because he really needed a new shirt that wasn’t likely to be seen in one of Elton John’s stage performances.

Shaping the threads of his lifeforce into something of a tunnel, he sent the tendrils of his “magic” to a section of subspace that existed outside of all realities.  Merlin hadn’t the power to create such a space himself, but he had shown Nix how to do it.  Even now, attempting to access it sent waves of numbing fatigue through his entire body and caused him to greedily suck air in ragged breaths while connection was made.  The tendrils of his wormhole finally made contact with the warped surface of his subspace storage and hungrily latched onto it.  With a bit of manipulation of the gravitational fields within it, Nix summoned two small items and sent them through the dimension-defying portal.  They popped into the present reality almost instantly and plopped to the ground.  With a gasp he released the portal and immediately mirrored the items’ action as he collapsed to the stone ground, both both palms shooting out to steady him as a wave of dizziness hit.  


*     *     *     *     *


“-and that is why, Princess Celestia, Agricultural Tax Act 1037B should logically result in an immediate decrease in agrarian subsidies to Appleoosa, Fillydelphia, and perhaps even Ponyville,”  the grey earthpony concluded banally, but putting on a pleased grin nonetheless.

Celestia sighed inwardly as she carefully levitated a teacup to her lips.  The coffee it held probably had enough caffeine in it to kill one of her subjects, but when you wake up before dawn for 10 millennia, something with a bit of extra kick was required.  She momentarily wished she could sleep through most of the morning like her student before quashing the thought and focusing on her treasury adviser’s suggestions. 

“You make a very good argument, Adviser.  However, while your suggestion would largely not affect the three biggest farms in Appleoosa, 18 other homesteads would fall into bankruptcy.  While the numbers are different in Fillydelphia, they tell a similar tale, and the change would drive prices up in Ponyville even if the primary apple farm there were largely unaffected.  I’m afraid I’m going to have to deny your request to cease or decrease subsidization of the apple market that keeps our little ponies well-fed.”

“But, the royal coffers-!”

“-are still well in the black when it comes to the ledgers.  We can simply tone down some of the pomp of this year’s Grand Galloping Gala in lieu of letting thousands go hungry.  Is this not an agreeable exchange?”

“I-  ...yes, Princess.  I’m sorry to have bothered you at such an early hour.”

She doubted that.  Even when she didn’t take up throne room duties this early, her treasury adviser always managed to hunt her down and nag her over some quibbling detail in the royal accounts.  As annoyed as she was by his persistent intrusions, it was why she hired him.  Over the years, keeping Equestria’s budget balanced aggravated her about as much as it aggravated her guardsponies to stand outside her bedroom door for hours on end, so she had finally relented to Luna’s suggestion for the creation of a Royal Treasurer’s position.  

She managed a practiced warm laugh.  “Not at all, Fiscal Slip.  You know I always value your input even if we don’t always ag-”

She felt the gnarled twisting of her own essence as a gout of Chaos magic manifested even before she realized it had threatened to displace her sun below the horizon’s edge.  She quickly corrected the celestial body’s course even as her mood darkened slightly.

“Uh, my Princess?  Is something wrong?” Fiscal Slip asked meekly, confused by her sudden silence.

She flashed a practiced warm smile.  She had spent far too much time over the millennia 'practicing'.  “Not at all, my little pony.  That will be all for today.”

As the grey earth stallion stumbled awkwardly out of the throne room--muttering to himself something about irrational nobility--Celestia motioned for Guard-Captain Glancing Shock.  He waltzed over in his normal off-kilter fashion from his station off to her right, near one of the side entrances.

He immediately cocked his head at the departing adviser.  “You know, the best way--I’ve found--to grant a pony some life perspective is to put them in mortal danger.  Few ponies can so thoroughly distract themselves with quibbling bureaucratic details when they have an instinctual understanding of their own mortality.”

“Oh?” Celestia patronized, rolling her eyes slightly.  “What is the best way to enlighten all your fellow ponies, then?” 

“I hear there is a resurgence of Diamond Dogs just south of Las Pegasus.  Slogging through miles of grimy, darkened tunnels under constant threat of death could be just what Fiscal Sleep needs to reaffirm what’s important in life,” Glancing Shock smiled widely, the mirth never reaching his distant eyes.

“For the last time, Guard-Captain, I will not authorize military action against the Diamond Dogs on the basis of rumor alone, and the fact that my little ponies are even capable of forgetting about their own mortality in their day-to-day lives is evidence of my success to bring a modicum of peace to my kingdom.”

“Very well,” he agreed plainly, his features unchanging.

“Have you ever considered that, occasionally, your actions are every bit as annoying as that of the bureaucrats you deplore?”  she asked honestly.

“But of course.  I know for a fact that you find me aggravating.  I, however, serve a purpose,” for once, the appearance of smugness on his grin appeared to be genuine.

“Those ‘bureaucrats’ you despise are part of the reason why my orphans are fed, my homeless are sheltered and educated, and my ponies no longer remember the horror of war.  I assure you, they serve just as much purpose as you, bland as their stations may be, and detest them though you do.”

“Of course, Princess,”  his smile faltered a bit.  “I just sometimes wonder if they’ve lost sight of the importance of their fellow ponies in pursuit of their forms, laws, paperwork, occupation, anything but what matters.”  He was perilously close to actually expressing emotion, Celestia noticed.  She immediately interjected.

“Of course they remember such things, even if they aren’t readily apparent.  But there is a more important matter at hand.  Our ‘guest’ has awoken and appears to be up to something.  Can I trust you to investigate the matter without turning the situation into the Third Pegasi Crusades?”

“Of course, my Princess.  I don’t have nearly enough swords for that anyway,” the pegasus stated evenly.

“Glancing Shock,” she added warningly, halting him in his canter.  “I mean it.”

“But of course, m’Lady.  I am, as always, in complete control of myself.  Complete control,” he replied, hoping that his guard, Ridge Dancer, was unharmed so that he wouldn’t be made into a liar.  ’Complete control.  Complete.  I have to be,’ he thought grimly as he exited the room, not noticing the small tendrils of electricity flicking between the feathers of his wings.


*    *    *    *    *


In the center of his room, a crumpled piece of cloth and an elongated white and red box had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.  He wheezed in exertion as he crawled slowly towards the pile.  ’This is so goddamn emasculating,’ he thought angrily.  Having reached the pile, he tore the top off one end of the box, his hands tremoring violently, and extracted one of its occupants:  a smaller white and red box, ‘Marelboros’ plastered across every edge of its exterior.  He stared dumbly at the name for a second before deciding the present reality had forced a change to integrate the item into the weave of its existence.  He uttered an annoyed curse about horses before crawling back to the edge of his cell bed.  Leaning against it, he slowly tore off its plastic shell, throwing the detritus errantly over his shoulder somewhere, before solemnly flipping the lid on the box to reveal it’s contents: 20 cylindrical tubes of highly addictive pleasure warmly met his joyous gaze.

’Oh, cigarettes, how I have missed thee.  The melodious oxymoron of your cancerous influence and my own perpetual immortality ‘twould scribe a story of blissful reverence that would drown out all other prose.  He wasn’t entirely sure what it was he just thought because he used some of Sparky’s vocabulary, but he ignored his own stupidity for the moment and instead plucked one of the paper tubes from the box, placing it between his lips.  Raising his hands to the tip of the cylinder, he summoned fire, but instead was met with red sparks and a puff of black smoke.  He tried again and met the same results.  He dropped his hands and sighed.  Looking at the nearest candle in the corner, impossibly high up the wall, he judged his ability to stand up and traverse the grueling 5 feet without blacking out.  Finding his chances too slim for his liking, he gazed blankly at the wall opposite to him in his cell, his unlit cigarette hanging limply from his lips.  ’Figures.’  

“Performance issues?” an upbeat, if slightly slurred, voice sounded with a mischievous undertone.  He whipped his head around to the voice.  Dancie stood in the open doorway to his cell, looking a little groggy.

“I don’t suppose you can manage a little fire magic.  It appears I’ve exhausted my god-like reserves.”

She snorted.  “Fire is one of the first things a filly learns in Magic Kindergarten.”  As her horn began glowing a dark green, a small lick of fire poofed into existence a few feet from his face.  He leaned forward and touched the tip of his smoke to the flame.  “The painful burns are actually a large part of why unicorns don’t like remembering the class.” 

The flame caught on the paper immediately, and he inhaled deeply, the orange embers racing satisfactorily down the white cylinder as it burned.  He tilted his head back and exhaled the smoke.  ’My God, I would have never been such an ass if only I had my delicious, delicious cigarettes and...’  He paused.

“I don’t suppose you have beer here?” he asked the pale green mare suddenly.

She held a hoof over her nose as she scowled at him.  “Beer?”

“Yeah, malted barley.  Ethanol.  Alcoholic beverage?”

“Oh, alcohol? You mean hard cider, wine, and whiskey?”

He thought for a second.  He supposed he could stomach whiskey, maybe hard cider.  The wine was a no-go, though.  

“What about vodka?”

“You’d have to ask the griffons about that.  They’re the resident potato farmers,” she said, scrunching her nose up.  “God, that smells awful.”

He took another heavy drag of his cigarette, delighting in the deep burn in his lungs, before exhaling his smoke at Ridge Dancer.  She coughed violently, glaring daggers at him.  He just grinned and opened his pack.  “Want one?”

“Absolutely not!  The dangers of tobacco smoke have been well-researched by unicorn doctors all over Equestria!” she exclaimed.  “It’s bad enough when Canterlot citizens smoke their pipes in public, but that smells even worse.  I’m in danger just being around you!”

“Come ‘ere for a sec,” he replied, his cigarette dancing in his mouth as he spoke, tendrils of smoke twisting chaotically around his brilliant blue eyes.  She simply stared blankly.  Nix sighed, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth with his index and middle finger.

“Seriously, come here.  I’m not going to hurt you.  If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it while you were dozing off on that uncomfortable-ass wooden bench outside my cell.”

Ridge Dancer shifted slightly, sending shooting pains through her lower back from sleeping on the damned wooden thing, before trotting cautiously forward.  Nix kept his cigarette at arm’s length, away from the both of them, as she approached.  She seemed uncertain and nervous, so rather than asking for permission, he just palmed her forehead and shot a tiny wave of his lifeforce through her, which was all he could manage.  She shuddered at the electric warmth as it flowed through her, feeling the pain in her back vanish immediately, but couldn’t help herself at the unwarranted contact and immediately used her magic to toss Nix into the nearby wooden table, shattering it.

“I-  I-” she stammered, but was interrupted by his laughter.

“Yeah, when you can’t die, and you love drinking as much as I do, being tossed into a table every now and then is no big deal.”  Nix dusted himself off after standing on shaky feet, collected his lit smoke off the floor, and plopped back down against his bed.  “Also, I wouldn’t worry about the health effects of my bad habit.  You’re kinda immune now.”

That was understating things a bit.  He had such little control over the expression of his lifeforce that he may or may not have made her immune to all bacteria, viruses, and genetic defects.  He hoped she wanted a long life...He tried to repress thoughts about certain physical scars in her that he inadvertently sensed in the process.  Gazing sadly at her, he realized that wouldn’t be all that difficult, given his condition.

“...what did you do to me?!” she scowled.  

“Uh, spared you from being sick for a while?”

“YOU PUT YOUR DAMN HANDS ON ME WITHOUT PERMISSION!”

“I know,” Nix replied.  “But given that there is no marble here, and the fact that I’m practically immortal, I figured I’d take my chances.  Although now that I’m technically free, it seems a bit foolish to goad you into tossing me through my cell’s walls so I can escape.  So, my machinations of escape terribly dashed, I suppose I just did it because I’m a bastard.”

She looked at him piercingly, her jade eyes shimmering with anger.

A wild thought appeared in his head.  “You wouldn’t happen to have a sister in the guard?” he asked innocently.  Her anger dispelled immediately, which she quickly replaced with shame as she dropped her gaze to the floor.

“The guardpony uniform is enchanted with a glamour that makes all of us appear the same,” she muttered quietly.  “It was me.  I’m the one that ‘tortured’ you.  I’m sor-”

“No,” he interrupted curtly.

“You have a problem with accepting apologies or something?”  she frowned.

“I’m normally not around long enough to warrant them, but that’s not it.  I broke your leg and boorishly placed my hands on you without permission.  You shouldn’t be the one apologizing.  I am sorry.”

Her mouth gaped in surprise.  He mockingly aped her shock and sarcastically blurted, “Jesus H. Christ, the scurrilous alien can be civil when he wants to.  Your world is shattered!”

“I...no, it’s just,” she paused, searching for the right words, “apology accepted, I guess.”  She was silent for a moment.  “What’s a Jeezus Aytch Kreist?” she asked suddenly.

“That’s-” his statement was interrupted by a sudden flash of a very old memory.


*     *     *     *


The Nazarene was nailed brutally to a golden cross set on a pedestal in the center of the pearly white hall, thick spikes puncturing his arms from his hands to his shoulders, like some sort of trophy on display.  The gilded crown of thorns dug into his skull, penetrating much deeper than his skin as more than just blood leaked out onto his gaunt face.  A spear was run through his abdomen and poked out of his lower back.  As if responding to Nix’s entry to the large room, he suddenly shuddered. 

“I AM THE SON OF GOD!” he bellowed loudly, his booming voice filling the room as he rolled his head, his eyes focused on something far too distant for anyone but him to see.  His chin dropped sullenly to his chest as his gaze seemed to draw far inward.  ”No I'm not please release me please please please I won't hurt you please yes please,” he rapidly whispered.

“FOR THIS IS MY BLOOD.  IT IS SHED TO FORGIVE THE SINS OF THE MANY!”  he shouted, his head jerking around the room, his blank eyes searching an audience of specters as he spoke.  ”Please please yes please just let me go I’ll be good this time I promise I won’t act against you please yes release me please,” he rushed out in a hushed mania.

Nix cringed at the state of his predecessor, the old Vessel of the Phoenix.  He knew the man had wandered a different, more peaceful path than he himself now walked, and that he had tried to illumine the minds of man against their sadistic creator to weaken the being over time.  But, Nix had never discovered the ultimate fate of the Nazarene, nor the Vessel that came before him, Mithras.  It appeared that Sammael had opted not to outright kill him, even if the cosmic lifeforce abandoned him.  Instead, the Nazarene was cruelly put on display in the Halls of Heaven as a reminder to the other Gods.

”Pleaseplease release me please release me.”

Nix drew his silver pistol, Lux, and slowly leveled it at the Nazarene’s head, a lump growing in his throat.  “I will...I’ll release you,”  Nix whispered grimly.

“NO ONE CAN COME TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME!  Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-”

The deafening report of Nix’s gun echoed throughout the hall, fading rapidly as a repressive silence settled upon the chamber in its stead.


*     *     *     *     *


Ridge Dancer waved a hoof in front of his face as his eyes came back into focus and he shook his head.

“You alright?  Lost you there for a second.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, wondering if it were actually true.  “Right, ‘Jesus H. Christ’.  It’s just...an expression we used back where I’m from, usually in surprise or exasperation.”

She mulled thoughtfully for a second, before replying, “Oh, like ‘Oh my Goddess’?”

“Close enough.”  

Silence fell between the two as the well of conversation dried up.

“Oh, dear, I meant to check on a prisoner, but instead I have wandered into a wake.  Who died?” a flat, lilting voice suddenly uttered.  Nix whipped his head to the door, where a light blue pegasus in a leather brigandine now stood, head wandering between him and Dancie expectantly.  Nix took special note of the sheathed swords crisscrossing his back.  

“I’m Nix.  Pleasure to meet you, too,” Nix replied dryly, extinguishing his cigarette on the stone floor of his cell.  Looking around the room errantly, he shrugged and tossed the butt towards the corner that held the broken table.

The pegasus simply stared, his gaze still flitting between the two of them.

“I-” Ridge Dancer started.  “No one died, Guard-Captain.  Just nothing to talk about.”  His question answered, Glancing Shock eyed the spent cigarette butt, and then the trashed table.  He flashed an angry eye towards Nix.  Ridge Dancer, understanding Shock’s mistaken presumption, spoke immediately.

“There was a misunderstanding and I put him through the table,” she rushed out.

“Ah, I see.  Wholly unsurprising, coming from you,” he paused.  “I trust that, during this ‘misunderstanding’, you were...unharmed?”

“He didn’t lay a hand upon me,” she lied.  “He even healed my sore back from sleeping on that awful bench outside.”

Glancing Shock chuckled emotionlessly.  “Yes, not the best resting spot for one of my soldiers.  Why don’t you report to the barracks and get some decent rest?”

“But Princess Celestia-”

“Now,” he uttered simply, quietly.  Ridge Dancer's eyes flew between her superior officer and Nix, unsure, but she had just been given an order from a commanding officer.  “Yessir!” she replied, a hoof drawn to her forehead in salute.  She pranced towards the doorway, Glancing Shock entering and stepping to the side to let her pass.  She paused as she entered the hallway, turning around and blowing a lock of orange hair out of her eyes with the side of her mouth.  “It was nice talkin’ to you, Nix.”

“No, it wasn’t.  But thanks, anyway,” the light-skinned primate waved her off.  She turned, a look of concern crossing her face and giving her pause, before she galloped off down the hallway.

“So, alien,”  the pegasus said with synthetic cheer dripping from his even voice, “I hear you hurt quite a lot of my guardsponies in attempting to escape.”

“Is that so?  I heard they were attacked by a rampaging server’s cart.  Nasty things, those.  Completely understandable how such well-trained guards could be taken by surprise.”  Nix himself was surprised by the speed with which the sky-colored pegasus closed the distance between them.  He had almost even missed the pony drawing his sword, which was now placed gingerly against his own throat.  He began pouring his lifeforce into his muscles, inwardly cursing at how long it took.  It didn’t help that he was perplexed at how the pegasus ‘held’ the fencing sword to his neck.  It just appeared to be a regular sword, handle and all, but it seemed firmly attached to the flat bottom of the pegasus’s hoof. 

“How are you even holding that?  Magnets?”


*     *     *     *     *


Princess Celestia trundled slowly down the hallway toward the palace kitchen, a scowl on her face, her mane a drooping shimmer that almost reached the floor.  Every time a servant would pop out of a doorway or some hidden side hallway, she would instantly straighten her back and her gait took on an outward expression of regal authority; her brilliant mane floating airily in the cosmic winds, she would smile warmly and nod approvingly at each one until they rounded the next bend in the course of their manic tasks, whereupon the visage would immediately drop and Celestia would continue her trudging march.  ’Need.  More.  Coffee,’  she thought dourly.

“Princess!” a high-pitched voice yelled off to her side.  She swung her head sluggishly to the direction of the sound even as she tried to hastily to resurrect her authoritative facade.  She barely had time to register the blur of green before Ridge Dancer slammed her galloping hoofs to the ground and skidded along the smooth marble floors, hitting the deep red carpet and tumbling forward with no small amount of momentum.  She crashed into Princess Celestia’s side, barely eliciting a twitch from the Goddess, before bouncing off and landing deftly on her own hooves.  

“Private Ridge Dancer.  A pleasure to see you.  I trust our guest is not too far behind?” she asked, arching her head down the empty hallway from which the unicorn had raced, frowning slightly at his absence.

“Pri-  Princess,” Ridge huffed, out of breath.  “It’s Guard-Captain Glancing Shock.  Something’s wrong with him, I know it!”

Celestia’s brow furrowed in concern.  “Come, my little pony,” she uttered hurriedly, and took off down the hall, Ridge Dancer hot on her heels.

Meanwhile, at the juncture they just exited, a nearby door opened and an orange pony popped out, a pot of coffee in one hoof and a pre-filled cup in the other.  “Preencess?  Eez zat you?  Ze royal coffee eez done!”  The mare looked around, greeted only by silence.  “Preencess?” she offered again timidly, again receiving no response.

“Well, zat eez zat,” she sighed.  Glancing at the cup in her hoof, her eyes glanced warily from side-to-side before she lifted the cup to her lips and took a small sip.  She scowled at the bitterness.  ’Ze princess should not be drinking zis swill,’ she thought before a heavy pressure hit her chest.  She clutched her heart grimly before collapsing, thinking, ’I never got to see Pari-’  She blacked out before completing the thought.


*    *     *     *     *


“I find it difficult to believe my guards could be bested by such a bumbling fool,” the Guard-Captain stated emotionlessly, though uneven currents wavered slightly in the depths of his uniform tone.  Nix noticed small arcs of electricity dancing between the feathers of his wings.  He also noted an all-too familiar presence niggling in the back of his mind.  ’Full medical scan, my ass, Tia.’

“Let’s start over.  Hi, my name is Nix!  What’s your name?  Also, do you like swords?”  The pegasus’s eyes slowly began to fill with anger, replacing the shiftless neutrality that had occupied them when he entered the cell.  “I’ve got some pretty nice swords.  One of ‘em can be a real bitch, though.  It’s quite a bit different than your rapier and,” he eyed second sword, still sheathed on the blue pony’s back, “a short sword, is it?”

“Gladius.  You may call me Glancing Shock for the short time I’m going to allow you to live,” Shock stated bluntly, the electricity in his wings now seeming to dance across the surface of his entire body.  He applied more pressure to Nix’s neck with the rapier, summoning a rivulet of blood.

“Damn.  Already gave the name ‘Sparky’ to another pony.  I’ll have to think of a nickname for you, later.”

“You will not distract me with your fool games,” Glancing Shock stated, a hint of malice finally bubbling to the surface of his voice.

“Ah, Christ, this is getting old,” he deftly swatted the blade of the rapier away from his throat.  “Let’s just-”  

The speed with which the pegasus flicked his blade surprised Nix, even as he felt it sever the arteries in his own neck.  Glancing Shock looked at him with open disgust before sheathing his sword.  It was pathetic that such a lowly creature could make a fool out of his own guard.  He’d have to discipline them.  Discipline all of them.  The alien’s knees bent as he began to collapse, his blood spilling out over his hole-ridden shirt.  Snorting derisively, Glancing Shock turned to leave.  The sudden pain in his flank, followed by the much greater flare of agony as his face impacted the cell wall, completely destroyed his self-control.  He stood up, quivering with fury, as arcs of electricity jumped around his form and into the floor.  He whipped around, his lips drawn back in a snarl.

Nix stood across the room, crouched down after his kick had landed squarely, with a small grin on his face.  The last licks of white flame petered out across his throat as the mortal wound Glancing Shock had just dealt disappeared from existence.  He stood slowly.

“A wolf is not afraid of a barking dog,” Nix uttered quietly, his grin widening to show all his teeth as his tongue played across one of his canines.  Glancing Shock snarled and charged.


*     *     *     *     *


Celestia galloped down the hall for all she was worth.  Insufferable aliens may crack jokes about her figure, but she was no slouch when it came to staying in shape.  She would not allow herself to decay, mentally or physically, so long as she remained steward over her many ponies.  In truth, there were few ponies in Equestria who could match her stamina, a fact all too obvious when she heard Dancing Ridge collapse behind her, weakly gasping out, “Sorry...princess...” before Celestia rounded the next bend and started her descent down the stairs to the dungeon.  

She winced slightly.  No time to pick the poor unicorn up.  She was mollified by what the Guard-Captain might do, or even worse, what Phoenix may do if he really possessed the powers he claimed he did.  The image of a burning Canterlot and charred pony corpses flashed across her mind briefly.  She pushed herself faster, ignoring the surprised looks on the faces of the guardsponies as she sped past them into the entrance of the dungeon.


*     *     *     *     *


Shock flashed from his corner towards Nix, his two swords blurring out of their sheathes an instant before he made contact.  He brought the gladius down in a vertical swipe, causing Nix to dodge to the side as he fell back on one leg.  Shock immediately lunged forward with the epee, taking advantage of his opponent’s change in balance.  Nix pushed off the floor with his back foot, shooting himself forward as he grinned wildly.  Glancing Shock overextended the blow as his back hooves slipped on a few gems on the ground.  The lunge sailed harmless past Nix's back as he spun, grabbing Glancing Shock’s left hoof with his right hand and ducking under a quick horizontal swipe from the pegasus’s short sword.  Still holding the mad Captain’s hoof, he thrust his left palm towards the pony’s flank, twisting his torso to add momentum to the blow.  As it landed, he released his grasp on Shock’s hoof and the pegasus shot across the room, slamming into the wall again with impressive force.

“You know, you’re pretty quick,” Nix stated plainly as Glancing Shock immediately recovered and renewed his attacks with the manic fury of a berserker.  Nix weaved and dodged around numerous slashes and lunges, finding it difficult to fully predict the sanguine motions of the clearly well-trained Guard-Captain.  Difficult enough that, after 10 seconds, there were a multitude of small white flames dancing across the surface of his skin over nicks that he wasn’t able to fully dodge.  

He began molding his lifeforce into the charge that would purify Murasama’s taint on the pony even as he still desperately dodged the deadly pony’s strikes.  A wild swing by the gladius that was awkwardly off mark by the deadly pegasus momentarily confused Nix before he felt the charge of his spell wink out, the expended energy recoiling back violently into him like a shockwave.  He stumbled backward, and was immediately lanced with Shock’s rapier in his left shoulder.  ’Did he just-?’  Shock brought his gladius around horizontally in a decapitating blow, but Nix leaned into the rapier, gritting his teeth and getting close enough to the Guard-Captain to grab his left hoof with his right hand, stopping the mortal strike midair.  Glancing Shock snorted in frustration, a puff of steam shooting out of his nostrils, before the lightning that coursed over his body focused into the hoof that Nix held and shot through the human’s own body from the point of contact.  Nix twitched at the electrical current, then leaned forward until he was inches from Glancing Shock’s face.  “Teehee, that tickled,” he said in a sing-song voice.  

Glancing Shock bellowed in rage, rapidly withdrawing his rapier, before thrusting forward with a flurry of lunges that even Nix had a hard time following.  Not that it would matter, seeing as the human was being perforated several times per second by a very fast, very pissed off swordspony.  The white flame of his regeneration magic pretty much consumed his entire upper torso at this point, but he was beginning to feel tired.  ’Well, fuck.  Plan B, anyone?  Anyone?’


*     *     *     *     *


Luna trotted down the august hallways of her and her sister’s palace, a nondescript parcel bobbing happily behind her in tune with her steps.  As tempting as it had been to claim Phoenix’s darkly enchanted ‘katana’ to compare it to her own collection, she wasn’t one to ignore a blatant warning without cause.  Instead, she had taken one of the two small, angular weapons; he had said to leave the swords alone, which she had.  Moreover, she was every bit as driven as her sister to protect her citizens, and she was not content to allow alien weaponry sit unattended alongside the most precious relics of their kingdom without first assessing whether they were a threat.

She rounded the corner and saw a group of ponies gathered in a circle around an orange unicorn on the ground, all of them speaking worriedly.  She immediately picked up her pace, the group of ponies separating and bowing to her as she came upon the fallen pony. A cracked teacup and an upended coffee pot lay nearby.  A grey pony in a white outfit had his hoof placed gently on the fallen pony’s throat, but removed it upon Luna’s arrival.

“We would know what ails one of our little ponies?” 

“Hullo, Princess.  T’appears tha’ poor dear had a mild heart attack, but she’s still breathin’.”  Luna lowered her horn, touching it to the orange unicorn’s side, before closing her eyes and sending a surge of magic through the pony.  She sensed minor scarrification on the heart, and...poison?!

“‘Tis no mere heart attack, physic.  Take thee the stock of her age, and of the chemicals in her veins.  ‘Tis attempted murder, plain and true.”  

“Aye, s’what I thought at first, too.  But tha’ coffee pot over yonder was yer sister’s brew, see?”

A diplomatic air replaced Luna’s concerned features.  “Oh, ‘tis merely simple folly, then.  Fare thee well,” she continued her journey to her lab, a couple nurseponies loading the hapless creature onto a stretcher behind her as she rounded another corner and began climbing a circular staircase up into one of the towers.


*     *      *      *      *


Celestia had begun panting as she twisted around into the hallway containing Nix’s cell.  ’My kingdom has almost no crimerate, why did I make this dungeon as large as I did?! she thought exasperatedly, shortly before she remembered that she constructed the castle shortly after Luna’s rebellion.  ’As soon as the royal budget allows, I will remodel this section entirely.’  She scowled as she thought about how much the nobles would protest if she redirected the funds for the Grand Galloping Gala to such a task, but banished the thought and pressed forward to Nix’s cell.

She could hear peals of Glancing Shock’s triumphant, maniacal laughter echoing from the open door as she neared her destination, sending icy tendrils of worry through her heart.  ’No.  No,’ she thought numbly as she reached the door.


*     *      *     *     *


Nix redirected all his lifeforce from healing into the fibers of his muscle, and into the neurochemical reactions that processed his thoughts and physical responses.  He immediately coughed up a mouthful of blood, but as he made the switch Glancing Shock’s blows transitioned from blindingly fast to moving with the consistency of molasses across a flat surface in subzero temperatures.  Ignoring the searing pain in his chest, Nix released the hold he had on the hoof wielding the gladius and artlessly slid to the side, boredly regarding the rapier as it inched closer to his previous position.  He simply reached out and grabbed it, mildly amused by how it slowly began bending before his magic expired and time sped up again.

There was a flutter of shock in Shock’s eyes as his opponent seemingly teleported a couple feet to the side, but he seized upon his freed arm immediately and swung the gladius at Nix’s head.  Ducking well below the strike, Nix jerked his hand over his head and the epee was loosed from light blue pegasus’s hoof with an audible popping sound.  ’Really?’  Nix thought as he rolled under another attack, landing him about six feet away from Glancing Shock.

He immediately leapt to his feet, his opponent glaring at him in sudden frustration, before he waved the rapier around blindly in the air.  

“Haha, monsieur!”  he said in the worst fake French accent he could mangle.  “Now I have ze sharp ting zat does ze hurty stuffs!”  He waved the sword around randomly again, mockingly.  “En garde!”

Glancing Shock, far beyond the point of reason at this point, would have only heard incoherent gurgling as more blood than words escaped Nix’s mouth.  He charged forward, flailing his sword at his hated foe, small bolts of electricity dancing around his body, weapon, and the floor around him.  Nix channeled all his available lifeforce into his reaction speed-


*      *      *     *     *


Luna finally arrived at the door to her laboratory.  She nodded to the guards at the entrance, before deciding it might be safer if they were elsewhere should her experiments go awry.

“Abandon thy posts and make haste to thy commanding officer without delay.”  They nodded promptly, galloping off down the stairs.  Closing the door to the lab behind her, she turned and immediately fought the wellspring of nostalgia that washed over her as she entered her old bedchamber.  One half of the entire tower structure was simply glass wall, an array of telescopes of various shapes and sizes pointed at different targets in her night sky.  The other half of the room’s architecture was comprised of a midnight blue moonstone she herself had brought back from her own celestial creation.  She vaguely remembered the deeply primal act that led to the creation of her moon, a mirror of her sister’s source of light and yet not, but she expelled the distracting thoughts and instead focused on the task at hand.  

Sitting down on a black-painted bench before a table holding various alchemical tools, she placed the parcel and immediately unwrapped it.  The small, dull black metal weapon glinted softly in the light of her moon as it shone through the windows.  Luna levitated the odd piece of metal, turning it around with her magic to get a closer view.  Her brow furrowed in confusion, but behind her eyes played a dangerously curious light.


*     *      *      *     *


-Nix deftly parried or blocked every single one of Glancing Shock’s harried blows.  By that point, he had whipped the Guard-Captain into a fury; he did it more out of necessity--the little bugger was faster than he was with his impeded lifeforce, and pissing the pony off made his attacks easier to predict--than he did to confirm the pony had been infected by his demonic katana.  Of the latter, Nix was absolutely certain.  

He stifled a yawn with one hand while the other whipped around in a blur, deflecting all the crazed pegasus’s attacks.  Gazing lazily at his palm, still deflecting every strike and shoving Glancing Shock back whenever the pegasus tried to overpower him, he mindlessly plucked a cigarette from the pack in his front right jean pocket and placed it lazily in his mouth.

“Hey, do you think you can hurry it up a bit?  I could really go for a smoke right about now...not to put you out or anything,” Nix’s intoned flatly.  

“Raaararararraaaaghg!!!!” Glancing Shock responded, his form now manifesting physical shadows as he was completely subsumed by the dark essence of Nix’s katana.

“Cool story, bro,” Nix summoned a small ball of fire and lit his smoke, inhaling deeply.  Removing the cigarette from his mouth, but becoming quickly annoyed by the clanging of sword against rapier as his foe attacked ceaselessly, he began charging up his lifeforce with the purification spell that the little pegasus bastard had previously fucking cut.  ’And I seriously thought only I could do that.  Gonna have to lift weights or pick up hot chicks or something to restore my masculinity, now.’  He took another drag of his cigarette, abandoning the smoke in his mouth as his right arm dropped limply to his side.  Glancing Shock leapt back, the tendrils of lightning that had been coursing through him all focusing into the short sword he wielded.  He jumped high in the air, the weapon raised over his head, and with blinding speed brought the weapon down towards Nix’s skull.

For his part, Nix lazily brought the epee up to block the attack, inhaling deeply on his smoke.  Off to his side, blocked from the pegasus’s vision by his own body, white flames danced along his fingertips.  Right before Glancing Shock’s weapon impacted with his own rapier, Nix simply dropped the weapon and twisted to the side, dodging the blade and using the motion to bring his fist around to connect with the rabid, light blue pony’s skull in an explosion of white light and scattered embers.  Shock flew across the room, his jaw cushioning his impact with the hardened ceramic plates.

He lied on the ground in silence for a few moments, before slowly standing up.  Holding a hoof to his jaw, he shook his head.  Turning around and scanning the ground, he located his gladius and promptly sheathed the weapon.  He turned his head up, noticing his rapier at the feet of Nix.  Nix raised an eyebrow as the Guard-Pony met his gaze and said, modestly, “Garofflguh splungnuh deluadsgifl,”  his broken jaw flailing about uselessly in his attempt to communicate.  His eyes immediately dropped to the cell floor in shame.

“You want your sword?”  Nix asked.

The pale-blue pegasus jerked his head up and nodded rapidly, his useless jaw flapping about uncontrollably with the motion.  Nix flicked the blade into the air with quick motion of his foot, caught the handle, then dextrously flipped the sword in the air, catching it by the blade and offering the hilt to Glancing Shock.  The small pegasus took the epee with a grateful glance and sheathed it, stating with an air of gravity, “Rogaghagh dafahafhanaga.”

Nix burst into laughter.  “Hold still.”  As he reached his hand out to Shock, the Guard-Captain recoiled, his eyes widening in fear.  “I’m not gonna fucking hurt you, hold the fuck still,” Nix reiterated, annoyed.  The pegasus cowered further into the corner until Nix’s hand finally made contact; Glancing Shock squinted his eyes in terror. A warm, tingly current ran through Nix, but he ignored it and sent out a small burst of regenerative magic.  Glancing Shock’s jaw popped into place immediately.

“You...you can touch me?!  And your body isn’t immediately ravaged by my energy?!” Glance asked, surprised.  

“Usually takes dinner and a movie to get me to that point, sailor,”  Nix deadpanned tiredly, trudging over to the bed in the corner and plopping down, his legs stretched out before him as he leaned his back against the wall.  One hand wicked the sweat from his brow as the other dropped limply onto the bed, the cherry of his cigarette resting on the flammable material.

The pegasus floated after him, a wide-eyed look of shock glued to his face.  It was such a common expression on the faces of the horse-alien-things with which he dealt that Nix was quickly becoming annoyed by it.  He lifted his cigarette to his lips, noting the bright orange embers on the bed where his smoke had just rested.  “But, you should be dead!”

Nix laughed bitterly, his cigarette rollicking about his lips even as he swatted absent-mindedly at the embers that glowed on his mattress.  He met the gaze of the guardpony who had just spent the last three minutes trying to kill him, the glowing light blue in his eyes a flickering, icy reflection of a glacier on a cloudless winter day.

“If I had a nickel for everypony who said that,” he grimaced at the unintentional ponification of his statement, “I could buy every reality in existence and simply schedule a nice cruise back home.”  He sucked deeply on his cigarette.

Glancing Shock prodded him in the arm with one hoof, arcs of electricity shooting into hairless skin at the contact.  The pegasus burst out into gleeful laughter.  Nix merely scowled at him, taking one last drag off his smoke before flicking the butt into the pile of broken wood that was once a table in the corner.  ’Hope that catches on fire and burns this house of crazy to the ground.’  Nix was quickly becoming annoyed by the light blue pony’s loud outpouring of mirth when Celestia appeared in the doorway.


*     *     *     *     *


Luna rotated the strange device before her.  Formed of matte black metal, and possessing a bit more sharp angles than its chrome counterpart in the alien’s arsenal, she couldn’t help but feel as though it served a special function even if her tendrils of magic came back blank from her initial probes into its magical nature.  Phoenix’s two swords bore the clear magical signs of sorcery, schismatic though their nature may be, but the curious thing about the L-shaped weapon before her was that such sorcery was completely absent.  Instead of alighting at the touch of her magic, all attempts to scan the weapon evaporated into the thaumaturgical aether, as though the item housed a great void that swallowed all magic.

She pursed her lips in thought.  Perhaps the item was not necessarily a conduit of magic and instead operated on mere mechanical principles?  She stared thoughtfully at the shorter section of metal, the one that was most probably the handle given the way the weapon hung in its sheathe.


*     *     *     *     *


“I...what is going on here?!”

“I’ve been wondering that since my first felony charge of assault with a deadly vegetable, honestly.  He one of yours?” Nix motioned to the tittering blue pegasus.

Glancing Shock’s eyes rolled fearfully at her voice, but his manic relief overcame his sense of duty.  “Princess?  Look.  Look!  I can touch this one!”  he jabbed his hoof at Nix, tendrils of electricity shooting from his limb into Nix’s crossed arms, a cross look playing upon the alien’s face.

“That is really, really getting old.  Seriously, Tia, get him some chocolate pudding and toss him back into whatever nursing home he escaped from.”

“Guard-Captain Glancing Shock, is this behavior becoming of the leader of our Royal Guard.”

Something flickered behind the Guard-Captains eyes, a brief flash of familiarity. 

“But,” he interjected, confusion weighting his furrowed brow, “I...I touch him and yet he lives?  That- that isn’t possible...”

“Guard-Captain,” Celestia added warningly, “I trust I won’t have to contact Shining Armor on this matter?”

At the mention of the previous Captain, something shifted in the blue pegasus’s eyes, as though they were hardening and becoming more distant in the same instant.  He slowly turned his head towards Nix’s aggravated glare.  He immediately removed his hoof from the hairless alien’s arm, shades of revulsion and shame both playing momentarily across his features before they were banished and replaced with a grating evenness.

“Oh, dear.  It appears I’ve up and made a fool of myself.  A thousand apologies, Princess Celestia,” the tone of Glancing Shock’s words had the consistency of something manufactured en masse.  He hopped off the bed, his walk to the door equal parts utilitarian march and carefree dance.  Nix’s thoughts over how he managed to do that were interrupted as the blue pegasus turned at the door, stating simply, “It would be glorious to spar with you again.  Simply sublime.”  He spun and shuffled off down the hallway.

“Well, Phoenix...” Celestia searched every avenue of diplomacy she had picked up over the years.

“He’s a barrel of fun,” Nix responded dully.  

“I suppose someone with such a brusque personality might appeal to you, though I must add that he was not in his right mind,” Celestia replied tentatively.

Nix picked up a crumpled piece of parchment next to his bed and began reading aloud.  “'We have run a complete battery of tests blahblahblah.'  And what the Hell is ‘Chaos magic’?"

Her eyebrows raised a millimeter in poised surprise.  “What is Chaos magic?  I assumed you knew what it was, as you utilized both it and Harmony magic in tandem numerous times since your arrival.”

“I don’t use ‘types’ of magic.  I shape the lifeforce of the universe into tangible effects.  I summon pure energy and shape it to-”

He paused, a nauseous thought passing through his consciousness.

“I thought I told you to leave my weapons alone,” he whispered quietly.

“Your weapons are untouched-”

“No they aren’t!” Nix shouted angrily.  “I can ‘feel’ someone manipulating one of my guns!”  His swords were dangerous enough, but his guns drew from his very lifeforce.  If somepony tried using one of them, their lifeforce, their very soul, would evaporate, killing them instantly.  The  resultant discharge would only result in a small explosion, but from what little he knew of the population density of the castle’s servants and guards...his eyes flickered wildly with urgent blue flames.  

He attempted to summon the weapon to his person, but the same muddled field of the present existence impeded his efforts.  He desperately tried teleporting himself, the fire behind his eyes dimming as the exertion failed more wretchedly than his first option.

“You have to teleport me to my gun, Tia.”

Her brows furrowed. “You want me to take an unknown, possibly dangerous being to a weapon said being swears is too volatile to handle?”  She thought for a moment, a wave of relief crossing her face.  “The only other pony besides myself who could possibly access your weapons is my sister,”  she chortled knowingly, “and I think you’d find it difficult to harm her, seeing as she is every bit as immortal as I am.  At the very least, we should-”

“This isn’t a fucking joke!  The fucking thing was designed to slay immortals!” Nix spat furiously, Celestia’s eyes widening in sudden realization, before he fully comprehended what she had just said.  ’An Immortal?!'  If a normal pony utilized his weapon, it would suck their soul from their bodies and discharge the energy into a small explosion, possibly taking out a few rooms in the palace.  But if an Immortal-?


*     *     *     *     *


Gilgamesh stared dumbly at the man-child whose heart he had just pierced with his blade.  Manifestation of the Eternal Fire notwithstanding, the boy should be dead.  Instead, his body levitated before the swordsman, white arcs of lightning shooting out around him even as a swirling gout of flame gained velocity around the corpse’s feet.  A brilliant white light erupted from the man-child’s eyes as he slowly drew the sword from his chest, a white tempest burning where his blood should instead flow.

Sean looked at the demi-god with revulsion.  He could feel so much power coursing through him that Gilgamesh’s meager soul was an insulting imposition before the raw force of his burning life.  He couldn’t die.  Sean cackled madly as the white flames of all creation  consumed him, the cataract of energy building deep within him as he resurrected back to life.  As his summoned soul impacted violently with his mortal manifestation of being, a shockwave shot out, instantly flooring Gilgamesh and flattening the surrounding buildings in an explosion of dust and force.  But the energy kept pouring in, filling Sean to the brim with untold amounts of potency.  He felt giddy at the influx of power, as though he might burst.


*     *      *      *      *


Luna frowned as she turned the item over again in her magic, a blackened hole at the end of the elongated piece of metal meeting her gaze.  Her telekinesis tracing over the odd weapon, she accidentally moved a curved piece of metal that protruded from the weapon near the top of the handle.  Her satisfaction at the tangible click the motion made was immediately deflated by the sudden icy ball that grew in her chest.  She felt a hungry fatigue expanding in her breast at the action as she wavered on her hooves, desperately trying to keep her balance even as she saw motes of energy being drawn into the open hole of the weapon bared before her.  Her knees buckled as she felt more energy stricken from her, the barrel of the weapon a foot away from her face and glowing more with every second.


*     *     *     *     *


“No,” Nix breathed out in a whisper, almost gently.  “Oh ye Gods, no, not that.”

His mind reeled as a thousand years of failure railed against his consciousness; a thousand years of trial, thousands who had perished under his guard; so many dead, so many hurt, so many he was powerless to help, all dancing to the macabre dirge of his very first manifestation of power.

“No,” he whispered again harshly, something loosing violently deep within his soul.  He swung a melancholic gaze to Celestia even as yellow flames burst forth from his shoulders into majestic wings, the individual ‘feathers’ gathering heat until they were furious, blinding, light blue flares.  “I’m sorry,” his mouth wrenched in sorrow.  With a wave of his hand, the area around Celestia seemed to warp inward before settling back to its original appearance.  She was shouting something, but it was for ears that were millennia away.  Nix flared his burning wings, illuminating the room in blinding light, before flapping them downward and bursting upwards towards Luna’s tower.  A violent explosion rocked the room as Celestia shuddered, her horn glowing as she instinctively erected protective magic around her.  

The silence that fell after his departure was immediate.  Motes of ash from the completely incinerated bed in the corner danced peacefully through the air, outlined in silver in the light of the breaking dawn, before softly coming to rest on the blackened glass of what had once been the stone floor of the cell.  The ceramic walls that hadn’t been outright destroyed in the shockwave of his departure had begun to sag viscously, partially melted.  In the center of the room stood Princess Celestia, a perfect circle of virgin stone around her amidst the obsidian glass and ash that comprised the rest of the room.  She numbly walked forward, one hoof coming to rest atop a piece of black cloth on the floor, the other placed on the invisible forcefield that had protected her from Nix’s explosive exit.  Gazing at the smoldering hole Nix had left in his passage straight through her palace, she frowned.  This...was beyond her.


*     *     *     *     *


’I.'

Nix twisted and dodged to the left and right as he exploded through the numerous floors of Canterlot Castle, making a beeline for a distant tower.  

’Must.’

A couple servants wandered the hall a hundred yards before him.  He could sense their lifeforces without seeing them, and modified the angle of his breakneck race to Luna’s tower almost instantly.  He burst through the floor of the room directly next to them, wincing inwardly as the door of the room exploded violently, showering them with splinters of wood.

’Atone.’

He tore through the floor of Luna’s tower and immediately shot towards her kneeling form at the far side of the room.  She was gazing placidly into the barrel of Umbra even as it was almost fully charged and about to fire.

Flying between her and the pistol, Nix immediately grasped the handle.  It was too late to abort a discharge, now, so instead he began pumping as much of his own burning, chaotic, white lifeforce into the pistol to displace the silken, soft blue soul that had charged the weapon.  He had displaced most of the soul that was gathered in the weapon, much of it returning to the prone alicorn, before something flashed in the weapon and the brightly glaring gathering of energy at the tip of its barrel reached critical mass.   With what little power he had left over after displacing the Night Princess’s substantial investment into his world-destroying weapon, Nix tried desperately to put her into subspace to spare her what came next.

The gun emitted a high pitched whirring sound as Nix’s vision was suddenly replaced with blinding light.  

’Well, fuck you too, Fate.’


*    *     *     *     *


“But 6 bits per carrot is simply too much!”  Flowing Needle huffed in exasperation.

“I’m sorry, miss, but given the current taxes, I really can’t sell for any less,” the stall vendor replied with no small bit of exasperation.

“I have two colts!  How am I supposed to feed them at such outrageous prices?!”

The merchant merely shrugged.  

Flowing Needles slumped, her eyes glistening sadly under the weight of her own inadequacy  as mother, before she calmly met the carrot vendors eyes.  “Very well,” she said with subdued resolution to the dark orange vendor.  “My boys can’t go hungry, after all.”  She smiled wanly, reaching in her saddlebag for the bits.

The deafening boom struck her ears at the same time as a violent concussive shock wave knocked her off her feet, spraying the contents of her saddle bag across the stone pathway.   Her few bits, having finally gained freedom from her bag, rolled merrily across the ground in a race for freedom.  Every window on the market’s street had shattered under the force of the blast, peppering fleeing ponies with shards that glittered in the early morning sunlight.  

Her ears ringing violently, she didn’t register the confused shouts of the other marketgoers;  instead her panicked gaze drove her frantically lolling head to find the source of the chaos, seeking some foundation in the sudden confusion, before she noticed the beam of light piercing skyward  from Canterlot Castle.

One of the towers that had been there for as long as she could remember was simply gone, consumed instead in bright yellow flames as the stone and glass debris of its corpse showered down all over the city.  A few bricks smashed close to where she sat, dazed, before the carrot vendor grabbed her and dragged her underneath his cart.  The clouds had parted widely where the blinding beam had sundered the heavens.  

As the ringing in her ears subsided, she became dully aware of an entire city's screams of panic.  She closed her eyes tightly.  ’My boys.  Please let my boys be okay.’


*     *     *     *     *


’FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK.’

Eloquence was the last thing on Nix’s mind as he sailed through the air in egregious amounts of pain.  He noticed Lu falling right next to him and immediately tried to grasp her with his right arm, but somewhere between his brain and his arm, something short-circuited.  Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.  He calmly turned his head to his right arm, as if to engage it in conversation and ask if everything were alright.  What he saw where his arm should be was empty space--cauterized skin, a few blackened ribs, and a splintered, exposed collarbone were all that remained of his right side.

Weird runic patterns of interlocking white and black began forming at the corners of his vision.  He flipped in the air and grasped the dark blue pony with his remaining arm, noting grimly the several thousand foot drop below them as they both sailed past the boundaries of the city.  Nix’s wings sputtered uselessly as whatever reserve he had suddenly tapped dried up.  He maneuvered himself underneath the lunar princess to absorb the brunt of the fall, and dumped whatever paltry lifeforce he could muster into creating a gravity well to soften the landing.

As the interlocking patterns of darkness and light washed over his vision completely, he suddenly recalled the tinny laughter of his two sisters.  He fell through the air, unconscious, the valley several thousand feet below him hungrily gobbling up the distance between him, Lu, and the hardened earth below them.
	




> Chapter 7:  Firestarter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Luna’s eyes wandered frantically as she tried to place her surroundings.  She could only vaguely remember examining the alien’s strange weapon in her old laboratory before her memory blanked out.  She had opened her eyes to a darkened room seconds ago, her brain roiling in confusion before her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden giggle of a foal.  

Her eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness, she found herself in what appeared to be a simple bedroom.  Nearby, a child-like primate with platinum blonde hair sat up on a small bed, reaching both its hairless hands towards her. ’Pretty!’  a youthful voice exclaimed in her head.  Her brow furrowed as she wandered up to the creature and tried prodding it with her hoof, but her form wavered as the limb merely passed through its arm.  The child’s eyes enlarged in sudden enthusiasm as his mouth spread into a wide, innocent grin.  Tiny bright sparks of light began fluttering into existence in the air around him.

The door to the bedroom creaked open, the hallway light silhouetting a tall shadow in the doorway.  The child turned its bright eyes to the doorway, the tiny, floating sparks erupting exuberantly into small flickers of fire.  “Look, Mommy!  Fireflies!”  

The shadow bore down on the child as something dark pressed against Luna’s mind and the world around her seemed to blur.  

Blinking rapidly, the room was gone, replaced by another bathed in bright sunlight. 

“Mommy, wake up!  Wake up!”  The voice of the child cried happily, and focusing on the sound, Luna saw the same sunny-haired young being from before, though it appeared to have grown a bit.  ’A boy.  It’s a young boy,’ a voice chided gently in the back of her mind.  The ‘boy’ was shaking another creature atop the bed vigorously; the larger creature had dark, long hair and more refined, elegant appearance than the soft, undeveloped features of the child.  ’I’m going to tell Mommy all about school and my new nice teacher and how I drew a dinosaur!  I was afraid to go but school is fun!’  The voice echoed cheerfully in her brain.  ’But I have to wake her up, first!’ 

Luna frowned.  The random thoughts, the shifting landscape, it all seemed a bit too familiar for her liking.  Her eyes lingered on an amber glass bottle on the nightstand next to the bed, near a smaller, similarly colored plastic bottle with a white label on it.  Both were empty.  Luna eyed a piece of paper next to both, reading the sloppy scrawls that had been hastily scribbled on its surface.

‘I couldn’t.  I tried my best.  I prayed to the Lord everyday.  But I couldn’t exorcise my son’s demonic hellfires.  I failed both my boy and my God.  I can’t-’  Luna’s reading was interrupted by the child.

“Mommy!  Wake up, sleepyhead!  School was fun!”  The larger being on the bed remained silent, its chest no longer rising with breath.  “Mommy?”

“Oh, God, Jean, no!” a voice with a deep timbre suddenly exclaimed from the doorway.  Luna turned, and as she did the world blurred again, everything shifting and melding as though the paint that colored all existence began running.  She was in a new room, one that appeared to be a kitchen; another old memory.  Though the circumstances differed, something about all of this seemed too disturbingly familiar to her.

An orange-haired ‘girl’ with light brown freckles laid her hand softly on the shoulder of the young boy.  She smiled, then winced as the expression disturbed her swollen, cracked lip.  Her eyes shimmered sadly as she ducked her head to meet the boy’s expression.

“It’s okay, Sean.  Really, it’s fine.  You don’t need to worry about me.”

The boy pouted.  “It’s not okay.  Dad shouldn’t hurt you like that!  And I hate that look!”

The door to the kitchen slammed open, their father bursting loudly into the room like a wild boar crashing through a drought-tinged forest’s underbrush.  His eyes wandered sluggishly between the two of them.  They dimly reflected the mute light of the room as his face contracted slowly in anger.

“Oh?!  Big man, now, you have something to shay?!”  His voice slurred drunkenly as he gesticulated wildly with his one free arm, the other grasping a brown glass bottle with an iron grip.  “A real smartass, huh?!”

“No, Dad!  Sean was just telling me about how he got an ‘A’ on a book report?”  the girl pleaded.

“Booksh?”  The man regarded the young boy, Sean, with sudden confusion, his eyes slowly glazing over as he retreated into memory.  “Yer Mom always loved the things,”  he muttered quietly.  His gaze immediately darkened, staring at the boy with sudden fury as he took another swig of his glass bottle.  “I loved her...”

“Dad, no-”  The girl ran up to her father, hands out before her in conciliation.  The man raised his free hand.  “DON’T YOU TALK BACK TO ME, SARAH!”  

Luna’s world twisted again as she was ferried down further memories.  By now, she was almost certain of her current predicament.  The washed out colors of her perceptions again came into focus.  

“-and that, lil’ chillun’, is how you memorize your multiplication tables,” a warm voice intoned.  Luna swore she could recognize it from somewhere.  A young ‘man’ was leaning over the shoulder of a small girl, their hair color near perfect matches.

“I don’t like math.”  The young girl frowned.

“Yeah, neither do I, but that’s no excuse not to be good at it.  Besides, when you get older, you’ll probably have to teach me a thing or two, Jess.”  The young man smiled warmly.

“You really think so, Sean?”  the small girl asked incredulously.

“Oh, but of course, m’lady,” the adolescent, ‘Sean’, said with mock gravity as he prostrated himself before the young girl.  She giggled.  “You’re a lot better at math than I was at your age, and don’t get me started on Sarah and her violin, or Mike and his books.  All of you are way too smart for me, I think,” he said, a finger ponderously placed upon his chin.  

The girl’s giggling subsided and her eyes immediately took on a curious light.  “But, Sean?”  He brought his deep blue eyes down to meet his little sister’s.  “If I’m good at math, Sarah’s good at music, and Mike’s good at writing, what’re you good at?”

Sean’s eyes widened in shock.  “You mean, you really don’t know?!”  His little sister, Jessi, merely shook her head in confusion.  He smiled and ruffled her hair, to her annoyed satisfaction.

“If you and Sarah are good at some things, then obviously my special talent is being the best brother ever.  And Mike is just good at being annoying,”  he muttered affectionately.  The brightness of his smile could have powered a large city, due in no small part to the mention of his best friend.  She giggled again.  “Thanks for the help on my homework, Mr. ‘Best Brother Eve-’”  Shouting and the shattering of glass in another room made Jessi wilt.  Sean’s head whipped around, concerned, before meeting his little sister’s terrified eyes.

“Hey, you stay here and keep working on your homework, ‘kay?”  

“O-okay,” she replied numbly, looking up at him with hurt eyes.  Sean hated that look. 

Luna found it slightly difficult to maintain her own being as the world shifted again.  There was no doubt what was transpiring, and she couldn’t afford to lose herself in Nix’s memories.  Her personal history with this spell was all the evidence she required to shield herself from the onslaught of his soul.  

The world came into focus again; an endtable lay broken next to a ratty couch, and Sarah held a hand to her cheek in resigned shock as her quivering eyes gazed up into her father’s angry glare.  Luna hated that look, that simpering gaze of sadness and submission.  Her father raised his hand even as his voice boomed angrily.

“You got accepted into Juilliard?  Music school?!  You think you can make a damn honest living playing that fucking violin?!”  His raised arm twitched downward before it was stopped in midair, a white-knuckled fist clenched around his wrist.  He swung his head around in angry shock.

“Dad, I think that’s about enough of that.”  Sean stared into his father’s eyes, his deep blue gaze matching the iciness of his voice.  His father’s mouth twisted in rage.

“Boy, you think you’ve grown up enough to be man enough to take me?  You really are stupider than shit.  Your own mothe-”

Luna’s world twisted violently again.

“The judge was actually pretty understanding, in spite of the extent your father’s injuries,” his lawyer chirped.  “He’s a father himself, so bringing up the matter of the abuse immediately struck a chord with him.”

Sean stared numbly at the public defender.  He didn’t remember much about that night.  One second, he was helping his little sister Jessi with her math homework, and the next he was being dragged off of his father’s mangled body by police officers, Sarah huddling with Jessi in the corner, the smell of charred human flesh cloying heavily in the air.  He learned after the fact that his father would never raise a hand against anyone again; hard to do that when you’re paralyzed from the neck down, after all.  The police still didn't know where all the 3rd degree burns had come from, and Sarah and Jessi claimed they didn’t see much in the confusion.

“Also, as of today you and Sarah are officially legally emancipated-”

“What about Jessi?” Sean interrupted, snapping his eyes into focus sharply on the lawyer’s.

“She’ll...she’ll be taken into the custody of the state and relocated to a foster home- Now wait, I know it sounds bad-”

Anger sparked in Sean’s eyes.  “You can’t take my little sister away from me, from Sarah, like that.  Not when we’re finally free of that fucking monster!”

The world shimmered and darkened.  Luna stood atop a hill, Sean lying down nearby and staring into the night sky.  ’I wish I could go out there.  Nothing ever seems to go right here.’  The thought echoed hollowly through her mind.  Regarding the deep blue, moonless night and its cascade of stars, Luna found nothing particularly special about it; she felt she had done a much better job with her own sky.  Sean took a long swig of the bottle next to him, and Luna could feel a slight burn in the pit of her stomach.  She modified the field keeping her consciousness separate from Nix’s soul, and her body’s reaction to the hard liquor vanished.

“Figured I’d find you out here, all maudlin and aloof.  Honestly, you should look into variegating your emotional spectrum.  I hear smiles are what all the counterculture kids are into these days.  That and rainbows.”

“Hey, Mike.  Nice of you to stop by.”

“I have a sixth sense that alerts me to the best times to interrupt your melancholic reveries.  Can’t have your lascivious trysts with despair progressing beyond a few one-night stands, now can I?”

“English, Mike...”

“You’re too damn mopey,” he responded plainly.  A quiet silence fell.

Sean broke the quietude after a few moments.  "I’m moving to Tucson.  Sarah will have you up in New York since you’re going to NYU, and I’ve already talked to Jessi’s foster parents.  They seem nice, and they don’t mind if I drop in to visit her.  Wouldn’t be right to leave her alone in Arizona.”

“I see you’re still always the last to know about the decisions you’ll make.  I’ve already been schooling Sarah on the intricacies of the ‘it’s only dry heat’ joke for the last week, now.  She just rolls her eyes at me, though,” Mike said with mock sadness.  Sean allowed himself a meager smile for the first time since the altercation with his father.  He wasn't the only one who was the last to find out about lingering feelings.  He was sure Sarah would be fine at Juilliard with Mike around to keep her company.

The world rolled once more, billions of flashing images, sensations, emotions fluttering through Luna’s consciousness with ephemeral abandon.  Luna didn’t steel herself against them—she had learned that lesson the hard way—she merely felt her soul calm until it was as motionless as a clear pond on a windless day, and allowed them to flow across the surface of her being before moving onward.  Some memories lingered on the surface for longer than others.

“Sean,” Sarah said softly, a mild tinge of pity playing across her deep green eyes.  “You know I-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”  Sean interrupted suddenly.  “It’s my birthday, I won’t have you ruining it with such a sad face!  Even if I have to work tonight, I demand that everyone have fun and be happy!  Speaking of which, Jessi should be here soon, right?”

“Yeah, she texted Mrs. Morose over there about 30 minutes ago saying she had just entered town.  You might even get to spend an hour with her before you drag your obstinate ass off to work,”  Mike prodded.

“I’ll have plenty of time to spend with her tomorrow.  And ‘missus’?  Funny, I don’t remember the wedding ceremony.  I guess you could have always just used your editor as the best man in my absence, though.”  Mike cringed a bit at this.  Sean knew he hated his boss at the local newspaper even if he loved his job.  “He might cut out some of your more flowery tangents on the vows, though.”  Mike stared dumbly at him for a second before bursting out in his warm laughter.  Sean couldn’t help but get caught up in the amazing infectiousness of his friend’s laugh and soon followed suit.  Sarah merely watched the both of them with a smile on her face before even she started chuckling.

Sean’s eyes caught the blazing colors of orange, yellow, and purple across the undersides of lazily floating clouds as the sun inched closer to the horizon and the day wore closer to its end, a few brave stars meekly twinkling through the darkening purple to the east.  He could swear that every evening in this place was a burning pyre of brilliant, stark beauty; Tucson really did have the best sunsets in the world.  ’I’m happy.’  His laughter caught in his breath as the simple thought drove through his heart.  A shitty retail job, no life goals, no impact on this world, no power whatsoever...and he didn’t care, so long as his meaningless life was spent with these amazing bastards, his family to the very end.  ’I’m really fucking happy.’  His convulsing guffaws rolled harder across his chest even as the lump grew in his throat.

Luna allowed a small smile across her face as the joyous memory of friends floated along her perception, the surface of her astral façade rippling mildly at the brief, benevolent emotional perturbation.  A jagged memory caught on the ripples and she immediately felt her world gnarl violently as she was forcibly dragged into another glancing experience.

Sean’s breath heaved deeply, bright yellow flames flickering madly in his eyes as he crouched low to the ground, a psychotic grin across his face.  The store where he worked at crumbled in ruin behind him, spurts of flame flaring amidst the rubble.  His grin deepened as he remembered just how much of the place he had personally destroyed.  His opponent merely gazed arrogantly at him, his arms crossed lazily as his deep red cloak floated aimlessly in a non-existent wind.  

“You are host to more spirit than your banal mortal counterparts, boy,” an imperious voice boomed from underneath the red cloth hood that concealed most of his features.  He slowly drew a sword from the dozen that were strapped to his back in plain leather sheaths.  “I am known as Gilgamesh.  ‘Tis honor enough that you even know my name before your death.  However, your fool bravery has inspired me.  You cannot hope to match me with such middling weaponry as that,” he spat, pointing at the machetes Sean had taken from the sporting goods department.  Sean merely smiled, the flames growing slightly brighter.  “You may have dispatched the lycans I set upon your homestead, but I am but the first of many in the coming days.”  He regarded the sword in his hand briefly, before meeting the man-child’s burning eyes.  “You stand no-”

Sean disappeared in a flash, licks of flame tracing the ground of his path as he brought his cheap machetes down towards the red-cloaked being’s face.  The being simply disappeared in shimmering red smoke as Sean’s machetes buried into the melting asphalt.  He growled in frustration.

“You move quite well for a mortal.  I wonder if you might be so bold had you realized the countless immortals I have slain in service to my Master.”  Sean moved to pull his cheap machetes from the asphalt, but they shattered.  His head twisted towards the sound of a metallic clang that impacted inches behind him.  He whipped around quickly, licks of flame punctuating the motion.  Buried in the ground at his feet was a grand greatsword, its hilt pearl and decorated with numerous gemstones.  Grasping it with his hand, the sword seemed to gleam brighter, the runes on its blade flickering with a deep orange light.  Giglamesh smiled grimly.  “Perhaps, boy, you can give me a bit more entertainment than I’ve had in millennia.”

Luna watched numbly from a thousand years hence, shaking her head sadly.  She immediately recognized Excalibur, Nix’s weapon.  She also recognized that this ‘Sean’ was woefully outclassed.  He moved with amazing intuition, but his opponent was simply too skilled.  It took less than 30 seconds for Sean to fall on his opponent’s blade, Gilgamesh staring at him with a disgusted look before jerking Excalibur from his grasp and burying it deeply into Sean’s heart.  

“Tch.  I even lent you my best sword.  Such a disappointment, but to be expected from your pathetic ilk.  I shall enjoy laying waste to your world.”  Sean’s eyes glazed over as his brain became oxygen starved.  “Everyone in this city will be purified by the flames of the Lord Most High.”  Sean’s final thoughts wavered on Mike, Sarah, and Jessi as they celebrated his birthday without him.  There was always tomorrow, wasn’t there?

’You will not lay a hand on them.’  Sean’s thoughts boomed so violently in Luna’s head that her calm visage evaporated as the depth of his fury sent her own soul into violent paroxysms.  

’We could have handled this with more finesse,’ she thought dimly to herself as a particularly voracious memory of Nix’s impacted the roiling surface of her soul’s projection, dragging her viciously into another shift of her reality.

Sean hovered in midair, his form consumed by brilliant white flames as he jerked Excalibur from his own heart.  The buildings around the pair seemed to have been flattened by some force.    Gilgamesh merely stood wide-eyed before him, his sword hanging limply in his grasp.  

“You threaten my sisters?  My friends?!”    The burst of primal power he felt rushing from his heart consumed him in a maelstrom he found impossible to control, but he didn’t care.  He had power, pure, unrestrained, immense power, enough to save his friends and his family and fix everything that had ever wronged anyone in this fucked up, vile existence.  And the red-cloaked swordsman cowering before him was going to be the first thing he fixed.  The fiery pandemonium that encircled his being picked up pace in a rapid whirlwind before focusing into a whirring, brilliant dot that floated inches from his forehead.  His consciousness seemed to evaporate into a mist that scattered throughout the entire city, and he could suddenly sense a million souls going about a million tasks.  He brought three such souls to the fore of his expanded consciousness.  They were outside, celebrating his birthday for him.  This Gilgamesh, this lowly thing, would not lay a hand upon them.  

“You’ll do nothing!”  

The small sphere exploded violently in a flash of brilliant white light as Sean brought his forearm to his eyes to shield his vision.  He could feel a gargantuan chasm take hold in his lifeforce in place of the burning fire, as all the power he could muster flowed into the blast.  The earth around him unfurled violently as a shockwave discharged from the torrent of energy he released.


*     *     *     *     *


The artificial wail of sirens sounded all across the city as blue and red flashing lights zipped down the road behind Sarah and Mike’s house.  Jessi merely smirked.

“You see, this is why I don’t live in the city.  Far too much crime.”

Sarah had a concerned look on her face; she hadn’t missed the fact that every emergency vehicle seemed to be heading towards Sean’s store.  “It’s not usually like this, Jess...”

“She’s right,” Mike stated in simple agreement.  “Hell, if there were fewer sirens I’d say your brother got himself into trouble, but this many?  Not even he is capable of screwing things up that much.”  

Jess leveled a light-hearted punch to Mike’s shoulder.  “Easy what you say about my brother.  You’re not family just yet.”

“Even still,” Sarah said, pulling out her phone.  “I think I’m gonna try-”

She stopped midsentence as something brilliant glowed on the horizon.  She shared a worried glance with Mike before gazing back at the blinding light that came from the direction of Sean’s workplace.  “Is that-?”

A white wave of light passed over Jessi, Sarah, and Mike, not giving them a chance to scream or shout, or register each other’s shock; they barely felt any pain at all, really, as the blinding fire turned them to ash almost instantaneously.  Barely any pain at all.

Luna’s eyes widened in horror.


*     *     *     *     *


Sean collapsed to the ground on his knees.  His brain felt weird, as though each thought was trying to force its way through churning molasses.  He looked around sluggishly, bringing himself to his feet.  In every direction, the ground was simply a black, smooth glass, extending with utilitarian uniformity no matter which way he looked, save for a sword buried in the ground nearby, its haft pointing with exacting finality towards the shimmering night sky.  The full moon bathed the world around him in quiet blue light with mute solemnity, reflecting brightly off the sword’s blade.  ’I...weren’t there mountains over there before...?’  He paused.  ’Before what?’  He racked his brain as he stumbled forward.  It was so hard to think.

“Sarah?”  he yelled.  “Jessi?  Where are you guys?”  His gaze found a blackened pile of bone, still smoldering with licks of fire and enshrined in a deep red cloth pockmarked with burns.  Tongues of flame lazily intertwined across the fabric’s surface.  Sean’s brow furrowed deeper.  He dug in his pocket for a cigarette, drunkenly placing the filter between his trembling lips and lifting one of the flaming bones to light his smoke.  “Mike?  Come on guys, it’s my birthday.  It’s my birthday...”  He took half a drag of his smoke before he collapsed to the hardened glass earth.  His cigarette tumbled across the ground and came to a sudden rest as its embers slowly dulled, the last of its blue smoke dancing laconically in the cool night air before dissipating.  

Luna fought back the tears in her eyes as she forced her soul to be as flat and smooth as the steaming glass on which Sean now lay.  A thousand years of subsequent travesties played across her immortal mind as his memories flowed forth in a torrent.  Sean’s adoption of the name “Phoenix”.  His first love, Athena.  Her death.  The deaths of countless comrades as Nix tried desperately to right the wrongs his actions had triggered.  His passage through countless dimensions as he resolutely fought to return to a world that he no longer remembered served as naught but a graveyard for everything that mattered to him.  

The runic patterns of light and dark began dancing at the corners of her vision as the spell began to resolve, and as her vision began to fade to a murky white she collapsed.

She wept.
	


> Chapter 8:  These Burning Stars
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	’Wait, I wake up from being knocked unconscious and I’m not in severe amounts of pain?’  Clearly a trap.

Nix sensed a mellow warmth blooming across his face, and heard the melodious chirrup of songbirds all around him.  He could feel a gentle breeze sighing contentedly across his skin as he lay on the ground on something that was amazingly soft.  ’Never has something ever existed that wasn't such an obvious trap.  Maybe I should just pretend to be unconscious and hope they forget to spring it...’  Peeking through cracked eyelids, certain his vision would be subsumed by a gigantic chunk of marble hurtling towards his handsome, handsome face, he was met instead with a brilliant blue sky.  Gossamer white clouds hung almost motionlessly in a carefree scatter across the cerulean tapestry of the buoyant afternoon sky.  The sun beamed down cheerfully above him, extending welcoming rays of light that didn’t hurt his eyes even as he stared directly into the burning celestial body.  Instead of a wincing pain in his optic nerves, he rather felt a firm reproach reminding him that looking at the sun was bad for him, as if his senses were kindly asking him to direct his gaze elsewhere instead of sending screaming alarm signals to his brain demanding he instinctually focus on anything but the fiery ball of fusion-y death in the sky.  

’Well, this is...nice,’ he thought with a small frown.  

He had come to atop a cozy bed of blue flowers that seemed to glow delicately with an ethereal azure light, in the center of a meadow crowned by lavish trees with broad, verdant leaves exploding from every branch.  Except where the sun’s warmth directly caressed his skin, the temperature outside was perfect, for lack of a better word.  It was like that rare twilight in spring or summer, once or twice a year, that felt neither warm nor cool but rather matched the perfect equilibrium of temperature between a person and the waning hours of the day.  Even the breeze seemed flawlessly paired to the irreproachably temperate clime as it ticklishly ruffled the short-cropped blonde hair on the back of his neck.  

White streaks of light shimmered down upon the ground around him as a leisurely floating cloud engaged in a lazy dance with the benevolent sun overhead.  As he slowly sat up, a flurry of white butterflies erupted from the flowers around him, catching one of the radiant waves thrown off the waltz between the sun and the cloud as it illumined them into a brilliant sparkle of bobbing, gleaming fae in the quiet afternoon light.  One briefly alit on his nose, tickling it a bit, before it fluttered after its brethren.  And all around him, the meadow and the sparse woods seemed alight in song; hundreds of songbirds cried joyously in rapt contentment.  If he singled out a particular bird’s gleeful chirping, its singular melody ached with an innocent beauty and an unchained soul that reverberated to to the very core of his being, but all the birds singing at once in a celestial orchestra of mirthful elegance, amidst the astonishing beauty of his surroundings, made his heart clench in his chest and his throat tighten in disbelieving sorrow.  It was so perfect.  Too perfect, and he at once wanted to reach out to it and recoil from it to protect it from his impure touch.

’Did I...did I really die?  For real, this time?  Is this heaven?’  he wondered to himself.  He had died a lot of times in the past.  Sometimes there was a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it, sometimes he floated over his own corpse as an astral projection, and other times still he felt his consciousness waning as angelic whispers gently shredded his very concept of individuality as he slowly melded with an infinite number of voices that all cried out in welcome even as he lost himself.  Every time, however, he felt those same glorious, destructive burning talons at the base of his soul, dragging him back and replacing him in his tired mortal coil.  

However, he had just taken the glancing blow of a blast that he knew should shatter an entire planet.  It was an attack he would normally laugh at, coughing up some blood in the process before healing, but between his waning power, and the fact that the energy from the shot was mostly his own, he began to hope he had been freed from his Sisyphean travels even as he regretted not making it back to the family he was forced to abandon centuries ago.  After all, he had never tried shooting himself with...himself.  Maybe that caused some sort paradoxical short-circuit with the lifeforce that sustained him?  Even considering that jumping dimensions left him with but an infinitesimal fraction of an entire Universe’s lifeforce, he had never really understood the intricacies behind his powers.  It was always possible...

’Nah,’ he concluded cynically.  'This is just an illusion.  Any second now, some catastrophe is going to hit this place, and an army of frightened townsfolk will emerge from the trees screaming for help and I’ll have to use the last of my cosmic lifeforce to save them before I’m booted rudely from this world into the next one, before I can even buy a safety helmet for the trip.  Any second now.  Demonic rift opening in the ground, wilting the flowers and setting the pretty butterflies on fire in 3...2...1...’

The idyllic existence about him continued without the interruption of evil forces.

’Okaaaay.  So this is Actual Heaven?  How in the Hell did I manage to make it here?  And what in Monad’s name am I supposed to do now?  Frolick about like a damn Disney character?’

He surveyed his surroundings, finding no one.  ’Got nothing better to do...’  He began to skip aimlessly through the flowery field, his newly restored, charcoal-toned duster flowing behind him gaily as he pranced.  “This is so stupid it hurts.”  He was distracted by a sharp gasp, and his foot got caught in a particularly thick tangle of the glowing blue flowers.  After kindly introducing his face to the soil, which again brought no pain but merely a chiding niggling in the back of his brain, he turned towards the sound.  A small, dark blue alicorn stood at the treeline, staring at him.

“Oh, goddammit.  You motherfucking horses followed me to the afterlife!”  Nix started to seriously consider whether this was actually Actual Heaven, or if he was in Actual Hell.  He also wondered if he could destroy both like he did Fake Heaven and Fake Hell a long time ago.  An overreaction?  This place had made him prance, it must pay for its sins against his ego.  His thoughts were interrupted by the blue alicorn cantering into the center of the field, passing straight through him and causing his form to shiver.  She acted as though she didn’t see him.

“Yeah, that’s weird, don’t do that,” he warned the small pony.  She ignored him, her head continuing its confused swivels about the meadow.

’Odd.  ‘Twas a queer presence emanating from this place ere I arrived.  Methinks I’m too far removed from my sister to think evenly.’  The feminine voice lilted through his thoughts.  

“Oh, God, stay the fuck out of my brain.  You goddamn horses have kicked my ass six ways from Sunday since I got here, and you are not gonna start in on the mindrape now.”  The blue unicorn continued to ignore him, scanning the field of blue flowers one last time before turning to leave.  

“Helloooo?  Nix to unicorn-thingy?  Do you read me?”  He tried summoning a fireball to grab her attention, but reaching for his lifeforce, he felt...nothing.  ’Oh, right, dead means no lifeforce.’  She passed through him again, causing his form to shimmer.  “Oh, goddammit, so annoying- wait...I’m a ghost?”  He grinned evilly.  “I’m going to haunt the crap out of these God-forsaken ponies.”

He began skipping after the blue alicorn.  “Get back here, I can’t frolick fast enough!”  ’First thing’s first, I’m gonna have to learn how to levitate vegetables.  And then, the nightmares will never en-’

The world around him twisted and he was suddenly in a completely different area.  His foot caught mid-leap on a downed tree and he flipped forward onto his face.  ’Even the ground tastes good.  Huh.’  

“Sister, dost thou believest our parents will return today?”  Nix whipped his head around and found the blue alicorn perched on the log that just assaulted him, sitting next to a white alicorn with pink hair.  ’Wait just a goddamn second...that’s-!’

“Mayhaps, Luna, mayhaps not.  ‘Tis better to enjoy the harvest of a day’s joys than to worry thyself without need,” the white alicorn replied.  The blue alicorn bowed her head sadly.

“As thee wishes, Tia.”

“Tia, you get me the fuck out of this illusion right now!  I know I blew up part of your castle, but you have no fuckin’ right!”  The white alicorn smiled softly and closed her eyes, enjoying the light breeze as it made her pink mane dance slightly.  “Lu, this isn’t funny.  I was a long ways from liking you guys before I blew my arm off trying to save your stupid ass, and you screwing with my head isn’t helping matters.”  The blue alicorn merely kept her head bowed, her mouth pouting in thoughtful ponderance.  “Jesus H.-” he interrupted himself, shuddering slightly.  “Goddammit all.”  He tried smacking Celestia but his hand passed through her, wavering slightly.  He was about to try kicking her off her wooden perch before the world twisted and warped again. 

He was standing at the edge of the idyllic forest, before a gigantic wall of swirling blue mist that seemed to extend infinitely into the blue sky.  

“Lulu, thou mustn’t!”  He turned to see Tia at the treeline, a horrified look on her face.  Child-Lu was a few paces to his left, staring curiously at the wall.  “Father forbade us from traversing beyond the grove!”

“We tire of waiting, Tia. Our parents are out there.  Wouldst they not desire our company as much as we desire theirs?”  the blue alicorn uttered blankly, her mind elsewhere.  She gingerly reached out a hoof to the swirling blue mist, and Nix’s world tumbled violently as he was assaulted by a billion sights, scents, sounds, and sensations all at once.  He steeled himself against the onslaught, but insodoing the rush of unmitigated sensory data seized upon his brain with increasing hunger, shattering his hardened mental shell and driving deeply into his mind.  

The clockwork harmony of the grove shattering.  The sun beginning its descent from the heavens, and Celestia using her magic to hold it up in the sky in a panic.  The breaking of the Grove’s harmonic magic, resulting in the formation of thousands of confused ponies, each one similar to the two sisters but ultimately flawed copies; some with unicorn horns, others with pegasii wings, others still without either.  Celestia discovering pain for the first time.  Luna first feeling the full brunt of sorrow from the absence of their parents.  Celestia collapsing after months of holding the sun up, sending the world into darkness and the ponies into a terror.  Luna scrambling to raise it for them, and forming the moon from the soil of the earth instead.  

Nix grabbed the back of his head and buried his face into his forearms as he hunched over, gasping deeply.  ’What the fucking fuck?!’  The imagery stuttered to a sudden standstill, and lifting his head, he found himself next to a slightly larger Lu, who was sitting and gazing at a bonfire in the distance.  It was nighttime, and her moon bathed the landscape in a pleasant blue glow; however, Nix noted that the sky was without a single star.  Tia danced with reckless passion about the pyre, surrounded by a throng of laughing ponies who joined along in her reveries.  Luna merely smiled to herself, content to observe her sister’s happiness.  She knew her sister had felt enchained by the sudden responsibility to keep the world bathed in light after she herself had disrupted the harmony that maintained it, and being able remove the yokes from her shoulders for half the day had restored to her a certain amount of vigor and joy.  Tia had taken immediately to the multitude of strange ponies that had been born by Lu’s shortsighted actions.

Her sister trotted up to her.  “Dost thou desirest to join in our reveries, Lulu?”  Her coat had a thin sheen of sweat and she flashed a bright, open-mouthed smile.  The tips of her pink mane had gained a multicolored hue to them. 

Luna smiled subtly.  “Nay, sister.  Warmth aplenty alights in our bosom for thy renewed vigor and the love thee feels for our new brethren.”

“Dost thou possess no such love, Lulu?”  Celestia asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

Luna considered the question carefully.  “Remind us though they do of our mistake in disrupting the Grove fashioned for us by Father and Mother, we remain fond of them.  ‘Tis just...” she paused, “we find their energy tiring.  It pleases us to see joy on their faces from afar, however.”

“So?”  Tia cocked an eyebrow, the tips of her mane seeming to suddenly vibrate in anticipation.

“Providing them a light in the darkness brings us greater warmth than thine’s capers about the fire, Sister.  Never doubt this.”

Tia smiled and nuzzled Luna affectionately.  “And our expression of affection to our little ponies need not require a bath to cleanse the odor of physical exertion,” Luna muttered dryly.  Tia nudged her sister with her hoof playfully and retorted, “At the very least, our new friends have inspired thy humor.”  

“Oh, yeah, she’s a veritable damn fount of hilarity.  About as funny as whatever the Hell you two are doing to me right now,” Nix muttered cynically to no one in particular.  Not like they could hear him anyway.  Celestia smiled and turned back to the fire as Nix’s world turned violently along with her, sending him hurtling again through a cataract of memories.  

The barrage stopped as a scream pierced his ears and the stream halted, plopping him outside of a simple canvas tent.   Lu, almost her full size, now, rushed past him and into the open flaps.

“Calm down.  It was Colonel Mustard with the wrench in the library!” he shouted after her.  He looked around, and seeing nothing of interest going on outside, he sighed and phased through the tent flaps.  Celestia held the prone form of a light grey pony in her arms, her face twisted in terror and confusion, as Luna stared dumbly at the scene.  Nix waltzed up, prodded the still pony with a shimmering finger that never made contact, and swung his gaze soberly to the two alicorns in the room.  “He’s dead, Jim.”  

“Mist Floater.  Mist Floater!  Wake up!  We know of thy exclamations of intense fatigue, but thou must awaken!”  Celestia’s voice pleaded.  Nix found her exclamations odd; she didn’t really seem like the yelling type.  Celestia turned her head to her sister.  “Luna, why won’t he wake up?  We still feel the magic within him.”

Luna approached her sister and the motionless pony, her horn glowing as a blue light passed over Mist Floater’s body.  ’Odd.  His body teems with the magic of harmony, yet he moves not.’

“Sister, his magic binds to him still, yet his vessel appears...broken.”

Celestia’s eyes searched Luna’s hopefully.  “Then we can fix him, yes?  Our magic was repelled when we tried our healing.  ‘Twas as though some sort of chaos muddled the ebb and flow of our healing weave.”

Luna recoiled slightly as her own attempts to heal the grey unicorn’s body dissolved and snapped back wildly.  “Nay, sister.  ‘Tis but one course left to us.”  Rather than attempting to fix the vessel, Luna instead began severing the connections of Mist Floater’s magic to said vessel.  As she tried snipping the final cord, it instead snapped of its own volition, causing her magic to recoil as she shielded her face with one hoof.  A brilliant light erupted from the room.  As the light faded, an ethereal form resembling the grey unicorn floated above his old body, smiling happily.  He regarded both of the alicorns with a contented gaze before floating towards the exit.

“Wait!  Mist Floater, where art thou going?!”  Tia chased after him, Luna following cautiously.  Outside the tent, he turned and again regarded the two sisters.  

“Celestia,” he said with a silken voice, “we have danced many a night away into the early hours of the morn, have we not?”

“Yes, Mist.  And I hope thee will dance a great many more nights with me.”

The apparition shook his head sadly.  “Nay.  Though our interactions were the wellspring of so much joy, I both fear and rejoice that I may and must dance with another, now.”  He turned towards Luna.  “The steps you take are a quite different dance than I am used to, and though I may falter I hope you find the experience as amazing as I know I will.”  Luna’s brow furrowed in confusion, before Mist Floater shot skyward, emanating a brilliant light.  The searing luminescence of his soul’s magic finally came to rest a few degrees from her moon in the night sky, twinkling mirthfully as Equestria’s first star.

“But...Mist Floater...” Celestia uttered mutely.

Luna's mouth gaped with a sudden realization.  She wrapped one wing over her sister comfortingly.  “His vessel having reached its limits, he chose to share his light with all our ponies rather than remain bound to this world.  Wouldst thee abuse thy friend a congratulatory smile on his final arrival after such a long journey?”

Celestia’s eyes welled up and shimmered in the moonlight as she regarded the mote of light in the deep purple night sky.  She turned to her sister.

“We know he’ll cherish thy company every bit as much as we ourselves have, Luna.”

Luna smiled.  “Aye, dear Sister.  Though thou might have to accustom thyself to such affections from afar.”  Celestia met Luna’s grin with a sad smile of her own.  “Aye, sister, we suppose we might.”

Nix remained silent, pondering the birth of the first star in the night sky.  


*     *     *     *     *


Nix shuddered violently as he curled into the fetal position on the ground.  The memories gnawed at him, seeking out every crevasse of sanity that cracked his mind and invading violently.  Upon gaining purchase, they expanded explosively and pierced his meager attempts to maintain some semblance of reason.  They temporarily halted their assault, but he didn’t care.  He remained curled on the ground, muttering quietly to himself.  Thousands of years scored his psyche deeply, punctuated by the most recent horrors of the slaver Sombra and the twisted, violent machinations of Discord.  Through a fearfully lidded eye, he shot a glance to the night sky and saw it populated with an impossible numbers of stars.  ’So many dead...’ the thought died even as it formed, instead replaced with the nagging voices of two princesses.

“Sister, thou desirest both communion with those that have passed, and our own vested involvement with those still in our midst.  We believe this spell might provide both of us our due.”  Luna had pleaded with Celestia for the last few weeks, and her sister finally seemed on the verge of acceding. Too many of their close friends had perished in their attempts to restore harmony in the last few years—most of them in the creation of the Elements of Harmony—and their benevolent glow as the newest celestial bodies in the night sky had not escaped the white alicorn’s notice.

“Very well, Luna.  If thou believest this the best course of action, we trust thy judgment.  We hope this ‘Soulmeld’ spell works as thee intends.”  Celestia seemed very tired at this point.

Luna merely nodded excitedly.  “Indeed it shall, Tia!  ‘Twas a masterwork of Starswirl himself before-”  she cut herself off even before she noted her sister’s drooping features and tearing eyes.  “‘Twas what he would have wished,” Luna finished in a subdued tone.  She charged her horn.

’Can’t block it out.  To many images.  Just make it stop.  Just let it pass.  Let it flow...flow...’  Nix ceased his attempts to resist the flow of memories and abandoned himself in their current.  The assault on his mind ceased almost immediately.  ’Huh...’ he thought, pleasantly surprised, ‘had I known not giving a fuck would have worked this entire time-’

A vivid memory impacted with the pleased waves of his relief and dragged him into another experience.

’-oh for fuck’s sake!’

Celestia stood with a look of horror and despair on her face, an entire city burning behind her.  Nix could still hear the wails of ponies in the distance as the city burned; he wondered how many were mourning the loss of loved ones in the blaze, and how many were the cries of anguish from those directly caught in its devastating path.

“Luna...LUNA!  HOW COULD YOU?!”  Celestia screamed, fury tainting her normally regal voice.

Her rage was met with cruel laughter. “Luna?  Luna died the second she tasted the adulation of your little ponies, dear sister,” a voice spat cruelly.  Nix turned his attention to the harsh voice, seeing it belonged to a large black alicorn with a flowing blue mane that screamed in similarities to Lu's own hair, though the stars that flitted between its flowing emanations seemed...dim, synthetic.

“For 9,000 years, the poor girl slaved away in your shadow, never realizing just how much those vile little ponies adored you.  Well, the gig is up, Celestia.  I shall make them adore me with all the love you’ve stolen from me over millennia.  I shall make them love my night as much as they pine for your warm days.  They shall join with the stars as I bring them to their end and free them from the shackles of their limited existence on this flawed plane.  I shall bring them night eternal; I am Death Incarnate.  I am Nightmare Moon!”

Nix held a hand to his forehead.  “Jesus, could you be any more fucking melodramatic?”  He stumbled forward, attempting to balance himself against the flank of the evil megalomaniac before his hand sailed harmlessly through her and he found himself balancing his face against the scorched earth of his surroundings.  “Guys, this shit is getting really old,” he muttered, puffs of blackened earth shooting about as he wheezed the words out.  

“Perhaps it is thee who need be reminded of the plight of thine own stars, Sister,”  Celestia replied quietly, her gaze blank as she tried to maintain her composure.

“Hah!  I am the Night itself,” Nightmare Moon bragged, cantering forward towards her defeated sibling.  “As if I would need to be reacquainted with-”

Prismatic arcs of lightning and fire shot forth from the rubble around the two princesses as a small thunderclap shattered the evil alicorn’s monologue.  The Elements of Harmony floated in the air, summoned from their hiding places in the rubble and surrounding the two princesses.  They hummed and whirred, seemingly incapable of fully containing their unbelievable power.

Celestia brought her gaze up to meet that of the twisted being that was once her sister.  “Goodbye, Luna,” she whispered, barely audible, before the Elements shot forth with blinding light, impacting against Nightmare Moon with immense force.  A brilliant pillar of light erupted where she stood, connecting with her moon.  

“No!  NOOOOO!” she screamed as her form dissolved into condensed shadow and rocketed towards her beloved night sky.  Nix felt himself being dragged along with her.  “Wait! I don’t want to go with Miss Monologue-”  His world whirled and he braced himself for the incursion of more unwelcome memories.



*     *     *     *


Loneliness.  That was all Nix could feel.  He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel.  His entire world was one black seed that blared aloneness, separation from others.  He found it comforting.  ’Ah, solitude, my old friend,’ he thought wistfully.  

After his run-in with Merlin, he had tried to involve himself more deeply in the realities he visited, had tried making friends.  Those friends perished because he failed to save them, or even worse, survived long enough to stare at him with sorrowful eyes as he was forced to leave their world forever.  He hated that look, those sad eyes.  They reminded him too much of the look Sarah gave him every time she stood up to their father for him.  He had sworn that he would save her, and himself, from that look, and-

-and what?  He mentally sighed.  Instead of the memory he was looking for, he instead received a memory about Ayla and her mother.  They were the first people Nix had tried to befriend after he left Merlin behind, and he didn’t want to remember that.  He banished the thought and basked in the isolation of this present memory.  After about nine millennia of this accursed slideshow, he certain he was seeing all of Luna’s life.  It started out nice enough, but the last 2000 years or so had been awful for her.  He honestly felt more than a little sympathy for her, and was actually a bit glad that he hadn’t appeared this reality’s timeline a thousand years ago; she had been turned into the very sort of defiled god that had plagued numerous realities his own past.

And he had killed every last one.    He wondered how many of them had been corrupted from innocence as she had...and if they could have been saved instead of slain.  His thoughts quieted as they were replaced by the seed of loneliness that was Luna’s prison, and he let the memory of her time there flow past him.  Overlapping runes of light and dark began forming at the edges of his mind as the spell came to an end, but his thoughts were elsewhere.  


*     *     *     *     *


Nix sat on the floor of a white room that seemed to expand infinitely into the distance.  Lu was seated a few yards away on lustrous, red-cushioned couch.  Swinging his head around, and seeing the vast expanse of nothing he shared with the princess of the night, he shrugged.

“Tank, we’re gonna need guns.  Lots of guns.”  Nothing happened.  Nix frowned in disappointment, but Lu merely raised a questioning eyebrow.  He noticed her reaction immediately, and cocked his head to the side.  She matched the motion, a small grin forming on her face.

“Oh, so you can hear me now.”  She nodded.  “Mind explaining to me why I just got assaulted by 10,000 years of your awful life?”

“Our thoughts traveled a similar path to thine own.  ‘Twas an incomplete Soulmeld spell, but one nonetheless.  We would know thy reasoning for casting it.  What say you?”  

“Uh, Soulmeld?”  Nix responded dumbly  

Luna nodded, replying, “Aye, ‘tis an old spell, one that intermixes the experiences of two souls into one.  What thou just experienced was incomplete, however.  Experiencing the life of another without an actual melding of souls.

Nix thought back.  He had been able to expel most of Lu’s lifeforce from his gun, Umbra, before it discharged, but not all of it.  “I’m assuming it has something to do with you toying around with my weapon,” he postulated, sending a quick glare her way and causing her to frown slightly, “since it uses one’s lifeforce, or their soul, as an attack.  I wasn’t able to completely expel your soul from the gun before it discharged.  Honestly, that’s my best guess.  I’ve never fired it with more than just my own lifeforce, and when others tried it generally ripped out their souls and they died.”

“Yes, that much we do remember.  Ayla, her name was?”


He scowled at her.  “Just leave it alone.”

“Very well,” she said carefully.  “Though we are interested in how thee maintained thy sanity.  An onslaught of ten millennia could very well have shattered your mind.”

“I’m a thousand years old.  Do I act like it?”

“Thy behavior is more akin to a child than one with such years.”

“Well, let’s just say that the same force that keeps me alive physically also regenerates mental scars.  Psychologically, I’m effectively the same as I was when I was 27, not 1000ish years old.”

“We don’t recall thy behavior as quite so insufferable in thine own memories.”

He paused, eyeing her warily.  “You know, the thought of you knowing all my memories when I can’t, not in their entirety, is pretty damn perturbing.  But if you must know, my psyche might be the same, but I’m not suddenly bereft of what’s happening around me or what has happened to me.  My situation is ludicrous and insane, and I tend to fight fire with fire.  Ya’ know, since I’m Phoenix and all.  And just because I haven’t become all sagely and wise doesn’t mean I don’t remember the ride, even if I get confused now and then.  I still have a thousand years of battle experience, for example, which means I’m a lot better at wielding my armament than most.  Or rather, I was, before you and your sister stole my weapons and then you tried blowing up your small little world with one of them.”

Her eyes leveled with his as they wavered with seriousness.  “We know that thou dost not require thy weapons to lay waste to large swaths of creation.  But that’s not you, is it, Sean?”

He clenched his jaw.  “Sean died a long time ago,” he growled, his voice taking on a dangerous edge.  “If you’ve seen my memories, you know full well why.”

“...Nix, ‘tis been a millennium.  Dost thou truly believe thy family yet lives?”

“Of course.  It’s been a thousand years, relative to me.  Think back.  I’ve revisited one reality once, mostly because of Merlin’s meddling, but I appeared a couple weeks after I had previously left.  But, it had been 30 years since I originally left the place.  I make it back to my world, I pop in not too long after I was forced to leave.  Easy-peasy.  Honestly, you just sat through an encore of my entire life, you should know how things play out...including why you should never call me ‘Sean’ again,” he finished darkly.

Luna hopped off the bed and paced towards him, meeting his gaze a few feet away.  “‘Tis true.  We know why.  But do you?”

His gaze blanked over and he frowned.  It was quickly replaced with a grin.  “Nope!  But instead I just remembered this one time that a fire demon was haranguing some village, and all the villagers were running around, screaming, all terrified and shit.  Honestly, the demon, I think they called it a ‘Balrog’, he was a small fry compared to what I normally go up against, so I figured I’d have a little fun.  Instead of killing him outright, I began sending lightning bolts through his limbs, causing him to twitch all over the place.  Eventually I was able to target his nerves well enough that he just began dancing around in the town square.  So here this village was, in the throes of fear over some bloodthirsty demon, and then all the sudden he broke into a happy jig in the center of their town.  He could cut a rug better than most I’ve seen in hundreds of realities.  

“The townspeople were still terrified, but then a young girl with blonde hair, a lot like mine, pointed at him and started laughing.  All the people in that town soon caught on to how crazy the whole situation was, and it wasn’t long before they were all on the ground, tears in their eyes as they died with laughter at the waltzing demon.  His expression was priceless, really.  Equal parts confusion and pleading that someone, anyone, would save him from his graceful dance.  And then I dismembered him.”

Luna frowned.  “That’s not...not how things played out, Sean-”

“Nix,” he interrupted, shooting the princess a dangerous glare.

“-yes, Nix.  The townspeople were all dead, and the Balrog stomped atop a small girl that reminded thee of thy little sister-”

“-stop-”

“-amidst its rampage, and thine hours that day were spent torturing the demon-”

“-please, Lu, stop-”

“-before thee tore off its limbs and bludgeoned it to death with them.”

“You think I don’t know that?!”  he shouted furiously.  “You think I don’t remember every single one of the fucking blank stares on the faces of those villagers’ bodies?  That I don’t remember the scorched corpses of mothers hugging their dead children as they tried to protect them?  That I don’t remember how much I hated myself that some lesser fucking demon I could kill with a snap of my fingers just slaughtered an entire town and I was too late to do anything about it?”

“‘Twas beyond your control-”

“NO IT WAS NOT!”  he raged.  “I HAVE THE POWER TO END UNIVERSES, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAVE A GODDAMN TOWN OF SCARED VILLAGERS, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAVE CORRUPTED GODS INSTEAD OF WIPING THEM OUT MINDLESSLY, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO RETURN HOME AND HUG MY FUCKING SISTERS AND HAVE A BEER WITH MY BEST FRIEND.  I SHOULD-”  Luna approached him cautiously.  “-but I don’t,” he finished with a hoarse whisper. 

She draped her wing over him, drawing him close.  He shoved her away roughly.

“Nix-”

“Get your fucking wing off me, you goddamn monster, and just end this ‘Soulmeld’ bullshit already.  It’s bad enough you nearly destroyed your own fucking world, again, without you dredging up things that you know nothing about,” he hissed.  

“We possess all the knowledge thee does,” she whispered quietly, “and mayhaps a bit more.”

Nix slapped her, before jerking his hand back and staring at it, dumbfounded.  “I-  I-”  She merely kept her head bowed from the sudden blow for a few seconds, before looking up at him with sad eyes.

“I...hate that look.”  He bowed his head in shame.  “I’m sorry.”  She merely gazed silently at him, the look remaining.  “If it weren’t for the fact that my sisters and my best friend were waiting for me, I don’t know what I’d do.  I force myself through it all, and try to put on a grin because I still want to be Jessi’s big brother, and I still want to never see that look,” he pointed at her, “on Sarah’s face again.  Or any other face.  And I still wanna be able to laugh with Mike.”  He paused.  “And I know you know what it’s like.  I know about your stars, and the four that took pity on your plight and freed you.  ‘Soulmeld’ with your sister may have changed your nature, but even before, when you still kept your distance from your ponies, those four still managed to inveigle themselves into your life.  You were saved from your loneliness and your corruption by those four souls.

“My...’three stars’, my family, are worlds away.  But they save me every day, every day!  And one day, I will get back to them,” he finished, meeting her gaze once again.  Luna’s eyes glistened.  Her melancholy had deepened the longer he spoke.

’God, I hate that look.  I would do anything to never see it again.  Anything.’  He threw his arms around her neck, noting with satisfaction that the pain in her eyes was replaced with surprise.  Mission accomplished.  He just had to hug a damn horse to get it done.  Her memories still flitted across his consciousness.  

“You know,” Nix felt a hoof on his back, matching his embrace, “they always did love your night sky, and they never stopped adoring you.”  

“Yes,” she whispered.  “We’ve known that from the start.”

“Excellent!” he exclaimed suddenly, pushing her away from him and melodramatically motioning to the spotless white pocket dimension around him.  “This place is a mess, how do I leave?  Also, I still hate you and your bulimic sister.  Although thank you for not crushing me to death with your blaring voice.  You’d think a thousand years of silence would have taught you a thing or two.”  He wore a manic grin better than most ponies she had known in her ten millennia.

She scowled.  “Thy ignorance ‘tis every bit as grating as thy impropriety.  The spell hath ended days ago.  Thou art dreaming, we merely paid thee a visit through them  Thou shalt awaken within the hour, but first we must inform our sister of thy impending consciousness.”

“Good, good, I imagine she’ll need a bath after you dredge her up from her vat of frosting before appearing in public.  And the sooner I wake up the sooner I can get my powers back, and continue on home to Sarah, Jacey, and Mike.”

“Jessi,” Luna corrected.

“I hate you, leave now,” he waved her off, hiding a grin.  


*    *    *    *    *


The white room faded as Luna came to in her royal chambers, the glass of her balcony doors still unreplaced since the blast had shattered them.  Levitating them open, she stepped out into the cool night air and gazed upon her sky.  Her sky, and the sky of everypony that had every lived.  She took particular note of four stars that seemed to be shining with unnatural brightness, and smiled sadly to herself, remembering her old friends.

Her smile faded, and a somber look fell across her face as her horn began to glow.  In one far corner of the night sky, three stars winked into existence.  One shone with a subdued but constant light, its softness betraying its quiet strength.  Another gleamed gleefully with humorous vigour, as though it possessed a mischievous smile.  The last twinkled regularly with a mellow light, its yellow tone closely matching the mane of a certain vile alien.  

She gazed mournfully at the three stars before she sighed and returned to her room.  The stars glittered gleefully at their new brethren, and all shone down upon Equestria with their exuberant light.
	

> Chapter 9:  Royal Machinations
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Even before his eyes opened, Nix began his checklist of things stallions—’Fuck you, pony language!’—of things hoo-  hyoo-  hyoo-mahn-  human!  He began running through his checklist of things human males do upon waking before even opening their eyes.  There was actually just one thing on the list.  He tried reaching down to relieve an itch below his waist, but his right arm didn’t respond.  He grumbled crankily to himself and opened his eyes slowly, wincing at the light as he fought off the urge to go back to sleep.

As his eyes grudgingly accustomed themselves to his annoyingly bright surroundings, he quickly surmised he was in a hospital room.  He turned his head to look with a disappointed glare at his right arm, it being woefully lacking in the task of scratching the itch in his nether regions.  Unfortunately, it appeared to be absent, and in its place was an excess of white bandages blanketing his entire upper torso.

’Oh, right.  It got evaporated into ash.  Somewhere, some colt is on his way to school, and a scorched part of my fucking arm is sneaking its way into his nose right now.  And he’s sneezing.  Sneezing out my arm.  And the sneezing fit is so violent he’s stuck on the side of the road for several minutes, making him late for school.  He’ll get reprimanded by the teacher when he arrives, only he’s been a bit lax with completing his homework, so his tardiness will be the final straw and a letter will be sent home to his parents.  They’ll get into an argument over who’s to blame for their colt failing at school, culminating in their eventual divorce, which will devastate the poor thing.  He’ll grow up torn between the conflicting ideals of his separated parents, and as a young stallion will be completely incapable of responding rationally to the world around him, leading him to drown his anxieties in drugs and cheap mares.  One day, 30 years from now, he’ll wander into this castle in a drug-induced haze, all hope in his life lost, and he’ll stagger up to Tia and clock her right in the jaw with an unwashed carrot, and she’ll turn him into a pasty splat on the floor of her throne room then and there.  And it will be your fault, Right Arm.’

“That pony will die a terrible death, suicide by princess, all because you couldn’t be assed to be here to scratch my balls, you ungrateful bastard of a right arm,” he slurred, pointing at the space where his right arm should be and still trying to wake up.  He gazed dumbly at his left hand’s accusatory finger.  “Oh...”

He began relieving the itch before a polite cough interrupted his blissful revery.  His embarrassed gaze shot to the sound.  Princess Celestia sat patiently to the left of his bed, one of her eyebrows quirking so high it aspired to join her sun in the day’s sky.  He stared at her for a second, before uttering a relieved sigh.  “Oh, good, it’s only you.”  He continued his furious attack on the itch between his legs.

“You know, my hospitals do have salves and medicines for certain afflictions brought about by extensive licentiousness,”  she stated bluntly.

“Ah, no, I’m good,” Nix responded, having finally quelled the irritation and removing his hand.  He looked at it for a second and wished Tia were sitting a bit closer, before brushing it off on his bedsheets.  “It’s fairly normal for my kind to have a good scratch in the morning.  The males, anyway.”

“Are you positive?  I’m sure I could have a few mare orderlies assist in the relief of your-”

“IT WASN’T THAT KIND OF ITCH!”  Nix stared at the white princess in revulsion, before she let out a measured chuckle.

“Oh, so now you have a sense of humor.  Wonder how much of this clusterfuck could have been avoided had you possessed such levity over a goddamn carrot.”

“I am very, very sorry about my overreaction to your arrival and your subsequent, innocent faux pas.  I thought you a very old enemy of mine and my sister’s.”  She seemed sincere.

He tried to wave off her apology dismissively, but lacking his dominant arm, he mostly just twitched on his bed.  Celestia took on a concerned look and moved to help him, but he shot an annoyed glare her way and she stopped, her head drooping slightly.

"You know, I found you cradling my sister in a crater on the ground.  You had suffered extensive injuries whereas she was mostly unharmed.  I just wanted to thank you, and also offer my sympathies over the loss of your arm."  The gaze she leveled was the most gracious she could muster.

"Extensive injuries?  Oh, you mean this?" he gesticulated to his ruined right side before poking it with his left hand, white fire momentarily consuming half his body.  As the flames faded, his scorched bandages dissolved into ash floating through the air, and he brought a serious gaze upon his newly restored, uplifted right palm.  "Though my sacrifices were great in my heroic salvation of your sister," he said with an air of immense gravity, suddenly clenching his right hand into a fist and meeting Celestia’s eyes, "I was only performing my duty, and I gave of myself freely, knowing I'm goddamn immortal and that even if I failed I would have survived and still been really awesome.  Such is the extent of my selflessness."  He even managed to fake eyes quivering with manly tears towards the end.

“Oh, bravo,” a flat voice echoed plainly through the room, accompanied by the clockwork clopping of hooves upon the ground.  Nix regarded the blue Guard-Captain at the door to his hospital room flatly.  “Truly a performance worthy of Equestria’s greatest court jester.”  His clopping ceased.

“Princess Celestia?”  Nix asked, managing to correctly remember her name even as he leveled a look of quivering innocence her way.

“Yes, Nix?”  she asked gently.

“Shouldn’t we check those tiles there for a heartbeat?  I’m pretty sure Hannibal Lecter over there just killed them with his shocking display of applause.”  Nix frowned sorrowfully, and pointed to the one underneath Glancing Shock’s left foot.  “That one there is married to one of the pillars your guard used to turn my jaw into jelly.  I imagine it should at least be notified of the death of its spouse.  Bonus points if you get Dancie out there to speak at the wake.”  A voice outside the door uttered an embarrassed eep! before Ridge Dancer peeked her head through the door.

“Honestly,” Nix sighed, “the amount of violence in your world frightens me.  I pine for the more innocent realities I’ve visited.  Like the one where I blew up an entire planet.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed.  “My sister has told me of your many exploits.  That didn’t happen.”  

Nix grinned at her.  “Oh, it most certainly did.  There I was, floating in the orbit of this one colonized planet, taking swigs from a bottle of cheap vodka.  All the inhabitants were grouchy and single-minded, and they annoyed the crap outta me, but I could tolerate ‘em with enough vodka.  But then!  Horror of horrors!  My vodka ran out!  A quick scan of the planet revealed I had imbibed the last of their backwards society’s booze, and in a furious rage, I smote them like an angry god bereft of delicious alcohol, cackling madly with glee as I wiped out a million years of civilization.  Perfectly reasonable for me to do so, too.  Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and sugar had ceased to exist, Tia?  

“Anyway, all the realities I visited after that were quick to proffer copious amounts of happy-juice after I told them of my rage.  Speakin’ of which, got any beer?”

The smell of ozone overwhelmed Nix’s nose as one corner of the room wavered and a blue, electric explosion momentarily shook the other ponies out of their flustered shock—all except the blue Guard-Captain whose name currently escaped Nix, who simply allowed his blank gaze to wander from Nix to the outburst of magic.  Luna stood in the center of a blackened circle on the ground, her head lowered and her eyes piercing Nix with an annoyed glare.  “Bullshit,” she uttered simply, before her left hoof immediately shot to her mouth.

Nix gawked mockingly and pointed at her, “Language!  You said the Soulmeld spell was incomplete, you have no excuse for adopting my barbarous tongue.  Also, fuck fuckity fuck-fuck-McFuckerson.”

“Language aside,” Celestia interjected diplomatically, regarding Nix with a skeptical glance, “I’m inclined to agree with my sister’s rebuttal.”

“Nay, Sister, the foul ape speaks the truth.  He truly destroyed an entire planet, and all its inhabitants.”

Celestia stared at her sister with a look of horror.

“Every living thing had been corrupted by an evil shadow, and had died inside long ago.  He saw one monstrous shell of a creature that reminded him of his little sister, and in an act of kindness, released the entire world from its curse.  Only he laughed not; his cheeks had already pruned from his immense sobbing insodoing-”

“I have no idea what you’re blabbing about, Lu-”

“-‘Twas akin to a throng of a thousand weeping school-fillies, all loosing their sorrows at once upon his face-”

“-but I’m pretty sure I still hate you and I regret ever hugging you.”

Glancing Shock’s mouth sputtered but somehow managed to twist out a mangled, “You what?!”

“Easy there,” Nix comforted.  “I promise I only molested your Night Princess in my dreams, and it was a total accident.  My heart belongs solely to you, blue-pony-whose-name-I-can’t-be-assed-to-remember, even if you stabbed me a couple hundred times.”  Arcs of electricity began to shoot through the Guard-Captain’s primary feathers even as the glazed look in his eyes wavered.  

Princess Celestia’s eyes shot wildly between the three other ponies in the room as things spiralled out of control, before she leveled her mind and stated with every ounce of her authority, “That’s quite enough.  All of you.”

“Oh, God, she’s threatening me again!”  Nix continued.  “Save me, Swordspony!”  He immediately leapt from his bed and dove behind the confused blue pegasus, grabbing his wings and spreading them out like a shield between himself and the two princesses.  The lightning fluttered wildly between the pegasus’s wings with reckless abandon, and rather than attempting to subdue the rampaging alien, he focused on an interesting spot on the hospital floor’s tiles.  A deep red blush painted his cheeks.

“My, my, we have underestimated thy forwardness,” Luna teased.  “We must have missed your memories of erogenous pegasus anatomy.”

“Ero-what?”  Nix asked confusedly, trying to summon Twilight’s vocabulary from his memories but instead only remembering the time he slapped a king across the face with an ice cream sandwich.  He glanced at Swordspony and caught his embarrassed look.  Nix manipulated his wings randomly, and each motion seemed to send the Guard-Captain into deeper throes of shame, his face reddening to a darker shade of red with each of Nix’s confused acts of wing-puppetry.  

“P-please don’t touch my wings.  Please,” the blue pegasus pleaded in a whisper quieter than a feather hitting the ground.

“P-pervert!” Ridge Dancer exclaimed, leveling an accusatory hoof at Nix.

Nix dropped the Guard-Captain’s wings, but they continued jutting out from his sides stiffly.  The human ran a hand through his blonde hair, his gaze wandering dumbly to the other ponies in the room.  “I don’t get it.”

A weaselly laugh echoed from seemingly everywhere around him, before its owner’s voice piped up, “So you’ve assaulted a princess with health food, temporarily took a piece of another princess’s soul, destroyed numerous sections of Canterlot Castle, and now molest the Guard-Captain himself?  Oh, such chaos, it’s simply glorious!”

Nix sensed motion to his right and whipped his head to the source.  Bright yellow eyes with red irises matched his icy blue gaze.  The grey face of a dragon peered at him over his right shoulder, its head crowned by a deer antler on one side and the horn of a goat on the other.  The creature flashed a lopsided smile that emphasized his single, oversized fang, and his equine ears fluttered contentedly.  “You, I like!”

Recognition flickered through Nix’s eyes as one of Luna’s memories surfaced briefly.  ’Discord!’

“Although, mah boy, I’d have gone about things a bit diff-”  the dragonequus was unable to finish his sentence as a pale, hairless fist interjected rudely, pummeling his face and sending him flying through the outer wall of the hospital.

Tendrils of lightning danced along Nix’s arms and his eyes flared with light blue flames.  “Everyone get out of here, now!  I’ll hold him off for as long as I can while you evacuate the hospital!”

Celestia sighed.  A ghost of a smile danced across Luna’s lips.  Glancing Shock merely stared blankly at a nearby wall, his gaze intermittently flicking to the arcs of electricity along Nix’s upper limbs.  Ridge Dancer’s brain appeared to have seized up as she gawked at the serpent-shaped hole in the wall.  

“Or don’t?”  Nix’s lifeforce fizzled out.  “Seriously, someone expla-”  He was cutoff by something big and red smashing into his face.  He flew across the room and bounced off the wall like a ragdoll.  He stopped himself from impacting face-first into the ground with both hands before bouncing up to face his opponent.  Discord danced in place on the other side of the room, now wearing shorts and an oversized pair of boxing gloves.  He shuffled his feet as he sent out a few practice jabs, his head held low behind his fists.  

“Come on, Boss!  Lemme at ‘im!  Lemme at ‘im!”  

“Discord, that’s quite enough,” Celestia warned menacingly.  She was having trouble wielding her disapproving gaze on both the human and the dragonequus at the same time.

“Tch, fine,” Discord muttered, crossing his arms in consternation, “but he started it.”  He snapped his fingers—err, his boxing glove?— and his shorts and gloves disappeared.  “I coulda been a contender,”  he sighed morosely before plopping down on the ground next to Ridge Dancer and resting a bear’s paw on her back. She stared at him in terror.  “Heya, toots!” He winked at her.  Her jaw stammered in quiet dismay.  Discord lifted his bird’s claw and regarded the back of his fingers arrogantly.  “Yes, I have that effect on mares.  Right, Tia?”  He smiled sweetly, the mirth in his yellow eyes more than drowning out his grin.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed, but she maintained her composure.  “Discord, please remove your paw from my guard.”

Discord sighed, and removed his appendage.  He glanced down at Ridge Dancer and put his bird’s claw up to his head, his thumb near his ear and his pinkie near his mouth.  ‘Call me,’ he mouthed silently, winking again.  Ridge Dancer tremored violently before zipping away from the crazed dragonequus.  She huddled behind Nix, holding on to his shin with a deathgrip.

“What the fu-?”

“You’re scarier than he is, s-save me!” she stammered out, staring at Nix with pleading eyes.  Glancing Shock’s eyebrow twitched, and he leveled a passionless glare her way.  

Nix shook his foot with a look of mild disgust on his face, trying to dislodge her.  She dragged across the ground with the motion.  Nix shifted his gaze to Glancing Shock.  “Hey, Swordspony?  I know controlling yourself is hard enough, but you think you can at least manage your guards for once?”

Glancing Shock stared at him blankly.  “My distaste for my guard’s actions is outweighed by the personal discomfort it causes you.  Ridge Dancer, please continue your attempts to apprehend the alien’s leg,” he replied in monotone.

“Y-yessir!” she exclaimed, squinting her eyes shut and squeezing his leg harder.  Discord’s grin continued to widen.

“Hate you,” Nix muttered in a low voice.  “Hate all of you.”

Celestia cleared her throat loudly.  Glancing Shock immediately stood at attention, and Ridge Dancer snapped her head in the direction of the white alicorn.  Discord snapped his fingers and disappeared, reappearing instantly with his mismatched arms wrapped around Nix’s other leg.  “S-save me, Phoenix!” he cried sarcastically, his yellow eyes quivering with feigned emotion.  “She’s scarier than you are,” he added in a whisper.

”ENOUGH!!!”  Luna shouted using the booming hammer of the Royal Canterlot Voice.  Everyone staggered from the force of the volume, and the hospital room’s window cracked.

Nix recovered first.  “Really, another broken window?  Didn’t we shatter enough of them to sate your bloodlust-”  he stopped abruptly, remembering the explosion.  He turned slowly to Princess Celestia, a grave expression suddenly chiseled across his face.  “How many...?  How many died?”

“None,” she replied with open relief.  

“And injured?  How many did I...did I hurt?”  All pretense of mischief had evaporated from Nix’s demeanor as he remembered the destruction of the tower.  Luna tossed him a sympathetic gaze, but he was too focused on Celestia’s eyes to notice.

“A few dozen of my ponies suffered minor injuries, nothing serious.  A half dozen were...more seriously injured.  They’re here in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.”

“Oh,” Nix mused, his eyes dropping to the floor as he stared blankly into the distance.  “Your hospital has an ICU?” he asked errantly.

“Well, yes,” Celestia replied hesitantly, not quite sure where Nix was going with the tangent but still wanting to distract him from his actions, and those of her sister.  “The floor below this houses all the serious medical cases we have in Canterlot.”

“Cool beans, Cakebeard.” He abruptly abandoned his maudlin air and flashed her a smug grin, his eyes glowing brightly before he blurred out of existence, licks of blue flame tracing across the floor to the room’s exit before winking out.

“Shall I go after him, Princess?” Glancing Shock queried lazily.

“Not yet,” Celestia responded with a slight smile.  “I have certain matters which I must attend to, and I'm sure my sister would like to finally get some rest.  You three are to remain here for no less than 15 minutes, then you are to locate Nix.”

“And what then?” Ridge Dancer asked.

“Bring him to the throne room.  It’s high time I introduce him to the Canterlot nobility,” she smiled slightly, nodding to Princess Luna, before they both disappeared in the bright flash of a teleportation spell.

Discord stroked his beard thoughtfully.  “Hmm, how odd of them,” he wondered aloud before a prescient smirk crept onto his face.  He snapped his fingers and disappeared in a similar flare of light.

“Well, then, Ridge Dancer,” the light blue Guard-Captain said mildly, passively wiping a lock of blue and white hair from his amber eyes, “mind telling me where you learned how to detain a bipedal creature by embracing its leg?”  He sat down and stared at her expectantly.

The princesses gone and her competence called into question, the bright green unicorn abandoned all pretense of meekness and stood at attention.  “Sir!”  she saluted sharply, before proceeding to explain to her superior the reasoning behind her actions.  What little reasoning there was, anyway.  She was beginning to regret becoming a guardpony for the umpteenth time this week.

Glancing Shock merely regarded her explanation dully, the seconds ticking away in his brain.


*     *     *     *     *


“Art thou certain this is the best course of action, sister?”  Luna asked, eyeing her sister oddly as they cantered down the palace halls towards the throne room.  It was unlike Celestia to merely pass an open threat—like the one Nix posed—to her subordinates.  ’Unless they possess the Elements of Harmony,’ a sudden thought flashed across her mind before she quashed it.

“Absolutely, Lulu.”  Celestia smiled knowingly to her sister.  “Everything that’s gone wrong in the last two weeks has resulted from our own actions, has it not?”  Luna frowned, but couldn’t disagree with her white-coated sister.  “From what you have told me of Nix’s memories, he possesses an odd sense of honor that drives him to protect the weak, much as his own sister protected him as a child, and in spite of his distaste for their weakness.  Since his childhood, those holding positions of authority, be they his own parents or rulers on worlds he’s visited, have abused their authority to the detriment of those beneath them.  As such, he rankles under the yoke of their control and is spurred instead to act against against them.  For better or worse, he deeply distrusts those possessing power, so much so that he slew the creator of his very existence for its offenses against his fellow creations.”

They rounded a corner, drawing closer to the throne.  Luna mulled over her sister’s words.  “Is that not reason enough to monitor him more closely?  If he regains his full power...”

“You possess his memories, Lulu.  What do you think?”

Luna snorted.  “The ape is more likely to come across a pony that reminds him of one of his sisters, and be brought to tears, than he is to bring harm upon innocent civilians.  Unless those he feels fall under his purview come under threat, in which case...”  She looked outside a nearby window, its glass recently replaced after the incident a week ago, and examined the reconstruction of her tower in the distance.  

“Is he so different than us, then?”  Celestia questioned.

“...but, sooner or later, be it the next second or years from now, the true memory of the death of his sisters at his own hands will surface,” Luna uttered quietly, unable to hide the melancholy in her voice.  “The very thing that has given him purpose the last millennia will vanish, and the despair will corrupt him.  Acquainted though we are with tragedy, even we don’t know how he might respond.”

Celestia paused at the junction just before the throne room’s doors, outside of the hearing range of the guards posted there.  Luna halted and turned, regarding her sister with dread seriousness.  Celestia matched her sister’s expression.  “I believe I do,” she said simply.  Luna shot her a querying look.

“Do you remember how long we remained in the Grove?  No, no, of course you don’t.  Not even I remember that, and I am your senior by several centuries, at the very least.  Our years are counted by the millennia that passed since its disruption.”  Luna cast her eyes downward, but Celestia threw a comforting wing over her midnight blue sister and drew her close.  “It was no mistake that you eventually shattered its harmony.  I believe it was Father and Mother’s intent from the very start.  I believe the birth of our little ponies was meant to give us purpose in their absence, salves for the wounds of our loneliness.”

Luna met Celestia’s gaze evenly.  “We...I, too, possess such thoughts, and have since well before our Soulmeld.  Perfect as it was, the Grove was...stagnate.  We could not stand idly by, hoofing the ground.  ‘Twas unbearable.”  

“And so you didn’t, and it was through your actions that I came to understand that I was no more capable of quiescence than you.  With all my heart, I love all my little ponies, and this place has become more a home than some idyllic cluster of trees, no matter how blissful it may have been.  I cannot imagine what I would do were I stripped of my subjects, my home, my...my own sister.”  She forced herself to meet Luna's eyes.  "Were they all taken from me in an instant, I doubt even banishment to the sun would be sufficient punishment for what I might do at their loss."

"Sister, thou art the most intelligent, reasonable pony of this world, save for myself."  Luna paused, shooting her sister an amused smile.  "Dost thou truly believe thee would be driven to madness were thee stricken of thy surroundings?"

"I do, Luna," she uttered quietly, her whispering tone belying the churning of molten metal in her voice.  "I really do.  Can you really say any different?"

“I...I can,” Luna muttered quietly.  "Having tasted madness and solitude once, I could never imbibe its crazed, sorrowful swill again."   Celestia’s eyes softened and she nuzzled her sister.  Luna eyed her sister sadly, “But we know well enough our own history.  We both know full well how a being such as Nix might react were he abused of his one hope.”  Luna quieted.

“All too well, Luna,” Celestia responded, bringing herself to her full height and exuding a regal bearing before she continued her trot to the throne room doors.  She placed one hoof on them and stopped, turning her head towards her sister.  “I gave him some measure of freedom because of his distrust of authority, but that's simply a temporary measure, and doesn't address the issue of his memories.  If he suddenly realizes that he has no home to return to...then I hope he may have since realized he has another, one a bit closer than his previous life."  Her tone suddenly hardened. "However, even if our worst fears come to pass and Nix is consumed by despair...we awoke Discord for a reason, in spite of the hardship his reformation may have caused.”  She pushed the door open and walked with majestic grace towards her throne, a throng of nobles kneeling before her as she officially opened her court for the day, the mid-morning sun already spilling through the hall's stained glass windows.

Luna stood in quiet thought for a second, before turning from the court and cantering in the direction of her own chambers.  She was exhausted; she had stayed awake for five days perusing Nix’s dreams, waiting for him to exit the Soulmeld spell.  As her mind warmly welcomed thoughts of sleep, she frowned inwardly.  This was her home, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything.  She thought she could convince Nix of the same truth in time, but she hedged her bets on a different group of her subjects that resided in Ponyville instead.  


*     *     *     *      *


’Ohnononono!  I’ll be demoted if he escapes!  And I’m just a Private!  What’s lower than a Private?’

Ridge Dancer stopped her galloping and held a lime green hoof to her chin, interrupted by the thought.  The words ‘magic kindergarten’ hit her like a train, and her eyes widened in sudden pyrophobic fear as she renewed her sprint down the halls of the hospital, sending harried glances through the door of each room as she zoomed past.  

It had been 30 minutes since Guard-Captain Glancing Shock had interrupted his lecture on propriety mid-sentence and ordered her to begin her search for Nix.  She could have sworn that his words were punctuated by the clicking of the hospital room clock’s second hand, but when the Guard-Captain requested something, you didn’t leave his queries unanswered.  Her chest heaved violently as she struggled to gasp air, her manic pace outstripping her martial training.  ’An earth pony would be laughing at my stamina right now,’ she reprimanded herself, redoubling her drive to maintain her pace, before light giggling from one of the doors interrupted her thoughts.  She slammed her hooves to the ground even as her horn fired up, increasing the coefficient of friction of the floor.  She skidded to a halt outside one of the hospital rooms, her hooves smoking lightly after her sudden stop.  She crept up to the edge of the door as the laughter continued.

“And it was then that the brave knight Phoenix slew the evil Queen Marble, presenting her fiery orange mane to the kind Princess Petal as a reward for his service.  And Princess Petal ruled the kingdom for many a decade after, a kind and generous ruler.”  More giggling ensued.  Ridge Dancer recognized Nix’s voice immediately, but approached the threshold of the door cautiously.  She peeked around the edge, and saw the human sitting on the edge of the room’s bed, his hands in his lap and a stupid grin on his face.  His attention seemed focused on the bed’s occupant, a young orange filly with a yellow mane whose features were outshined by the wide smile on her face.  The young pony fell into giggles again before she was overcome by a fit of coughing.  She drew the bed’s blankets closer to her neck before shooting a funny glance towards the human.

“I dunno,” she said.  “Princesses don’t get sick like me.  And I’m just Wind Petal, not a princess!”

“Pfft,” Nix waved a hand dismissively.  “Of course they do, Princess Petal.  They just get better after a while.”

The filly stopped her cheerful laughter and gazed awkwardly at her hooves.  “But the doctors say I won’t get better, and I don’t think I’d be very good at ballroom dances.  I’m still dizzy.  I wish I wasn’t always dizzy.  They say it’s because of the tumor...”  

“Dizzy?  Tumor?!”  Nix’s voice was steeped in mock confusion.  “Afflicting my hallowed princess?  I think not, my liege-lord!”  He patted her head roughly; the earth filly merely smiled patiently.

She looked at him with wide eyes.  “Do you think you can come back and tell me more stories.  Before...before I-”

He leapt from the bed.  “Princess Petal, I’ve so many tales to spin that I’d be remiss if I didn’t.  So many stories, in fact,” he paused in apparent thought, his hand on his chin, “that I don’t know if I have the time to tell you.  Unless...”  His hand shot out to the young orange filly, russling her hair again.

She giggled, her eyes closed in glee.  “That tickles!”  She didn’t see the white flame playing about her head even as she started to feel a little bit better.  She looked up at the weird alien through her now-tousled mane.  “I...I guess don’t feel as dizzy now.”

“But of course not, my dear Wind Petal!”  Nix bowed deeply before her bed, a small smile on his face.  “A nice princess always gets better!”  She tittered again.  Nix rested his hand momentarily on the filly’s head, using a subtle expression of his lifeforce to ensure he had wiped out all traces of her illness.  “But let’s find a nice doctor to double check, okay?”

“Okay!”  she nodded cheerfully.

“Well, that was quite heart-warming.  Alright, ape, time to go.”  Glancing Shock passed by Ridge Dancer, still crouched outside the room, without a passing glance.  Nix swung his gaze lazily towards the light blue pegasus, a smile splitting across his face.

“Princess Petal, it’s the captain of the guard, come to persecute me!  Please save me!”  Nix jumped over the bed and peeked his eyes over the top at Glancing Shock.  The filly immediately burst from underneath her covers and stood defiantly on the bed, glaring at the Guard-Captain.  

“Captain, I am Princess Petal, and you stand down right now!” she pouted, pawing one hoof across the bedsheets in an open challenge.

“P-princess?!  My goodness, I had no idea!”  Glancing Shock immediately prostrated himself on the ground.  “Please, forgive me!”

The filly glared down her nose at the pegasus, before her resolve faltered and she looked off to the side.  “O-okay.  So long as you promise to play nice!”

“Of course, my princess,” a funny tone intermingled with the light blue pony’s monotone evenness.  “If I may be so bold, may I borrow your knight for a bit?  A terrible creature has appeared at the outskirts of your kingdom, and only he has the power to protect your ponies.”

The orange filly glanced questioningly at Nix, still half-hidden behind the bed.  Nix immediately stood and waved his arm melodramatically.  “But of course!  A knight will always lay his life on the line for his princess and her ponies!”

Wind Petal looked between the pegasus and the funny alien that had been telling her stories for the last half hour, and smiled.  “Okay, go ahead.  You just have to promise to visit me in Ponyville!  Your Princess demands it!”  

Nix’s mouth gaped in shock.  “What manner of knight would I be if I wouldn’t even visit my own princess?!”  She giggled again, and with a last ruffle of her mane, Nix joined Glancing Shock outside of her hospital room.

“You know, it’s funny,” the Guard-Captain said mildly.  “While Ridge Dancer here ran around blindly, I checked up on every patient that had been injured in your...incident.  And yet none of them remained injured.”

“Huh,” Nix pondered.  “And here I was telling a small filly tall tales the entire time I’ve been missing.  Discord’s magic sure is weird, right?”  He smiled smugly at Glancing Shock.  The pegasus merely shook his head and cantered down the hall.  “Follow me,” he commanded.  

Nix trudged along behind him, navigating the labyrinthine hallways towards the exit.  Ridge Dancer fell in beside him, an odd look across her face.  After some thought, she leaned her head towards his ear and whispered, “That was very sweet of you.” 

Nix put on a false smile, his gaze still focused in front of him.  “Tell anyone about it and I’ll beat you to death with your own limbs, Dancie,” he whispered back.  Her gait halted, but she shook her head and let out a wry snort before catching up with the human and her superior officer.

> Chapter 10:  Much Ado About Something
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The gilded, ceiling-high doors to the royal throne room burst open, colliding into the walls with a violent bang and startling many of the important ponies Celestia had assembled.  ’Here we go,’ Celestia thought grimly, levitating a cup of coffee primly to her lips.  A serpentine shadow, hidden high up in an isolated corner of the ceiling, snapped his fingers quietly, summoning a bag of popcorn.  ’Dis goan be gud!’ he thought, tossing a handful of unpopped kernels into his mouth, a few bouncing off his one oversized fang and sprinkling to the ground below.  He cracked a wicked grin as the human made his entrance.

“Hi everyone!” Nix shouted with manic glee as he sprinted into the room, causing the nearest pony aristocrats to immediately shy away.  “My name’s Phoenix, I’m a dimension traveling alien that’s more powerful than both your princesses combined!  This one time, I blew up an entire world!  It was all, *boooom, skrooooow, shakoooom*, and then most of the pieces flew into the sun, which was a probably almost as big as the royal hindquarters!  I don’t think it had as much cake in it, though.”  He was zipping around at random, jerking ponies’ forehooves off the ground and shaking them wildly.  He made a point to gawk crazily in the shell-shocked faces of everypony whose hooves he shook.  

He paused in front of a light yellow unicorn mare.  A white stripe ran down the middle of her light blue mane.  He snatched her hoof off the ground and began pumping it so vigorously that Celestia half-feared he might dislocate the pony’s shoulder.  “Do you like cake?!  I love cake!  So sweet and fluffy and yummy!  You look like you like cake, even more than the princess!  I wish they would give me cake here, though!  They haven’t actually given me any food for two weeks, and I’m starting to feel a bit woozy!  That’s okay, though, ‘cuz-”

His head wavered dizzily for half a second before he collapsed on top of the mare, mingled looks of disgust and horror contorting her features as they both slammed into the ground.  She laid there with her mouth yammering out silent pleas for help, tremoring violently under the burden of the strange alien’s prone form.  The weight of the silence that permeated the room seemingly held enough pressure to crush the many diamonds that adorned most of the attending mares.  Everypony simply stared at the strange being on top of the deeply confused unicorn mare—a bare few even recognized her as Upper Crust—before they cautiously began trading glances with their neighbors, unsure of how to react.

Celestia resisted the urge to facehoof.  She had known Nix would make a scene, which is partially why she hadn’t told him he was reporting to the throne room to be presented to the local aristocrats; the less time he was given to scheme for his chicanery, the better.  Glancing Shock, however, had known.  She scanned the back of the room.  Ridge Dancer stood with a tired, exasperated look just inside the door’s threshold.  Glancing Shock was squirreled away in an isolated corner, putting as much distance between himself and everypony in the room as he could.  In what counted as a look of unabated glee for the dispassionate pegasus, the corners of his mouth tilted upwards almost imperceptibly, and dancing in the golden flecks of his half-lidded eyes was a dully amused spark.  Celestia’s eyes narrowed.  She was going to have a very long chat with her Guard-Captain as soon as she had contained this situation.

“-I’m technically immortal, so even if I died of starvation I’d immediately revive!”  Nix finished his previous tangent as his head jerked up.  He looked down at the unicorn mare he had knocked over.  “OHMYGODDESS I AM SO SORRY LEMME GET UP OH NO THIS IS SO BAD I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY!”  He plopped both hands onto the champagne-colored unicorn to brace himself.  His left hand, placed squarely over her cutie mark on her back flank, gave the mare a light squeeze as he pushed himself up.  Her eyes widened so far that Nix wondered how they still remained behind her eyelids.  Instead of falling out, they simply rolled back into her skull and—with a moan—the mare immediately fainted.

“Huh.  I hope she’s alright.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t just eat her soul.  I ate a part of Luna’s soul the other day.  It was quite delicious, but it gave me terrible gas.  Sorry about blowing up that tower, by the way, but my spiritual bowel movements are pretty legendary.”  An anxious murmur rose up in the room at the mention of Luna and the tower.

“Nix,” Celestia warned coldly as he ascended the dais at the head of the throne room.  He cut her off, raising his hands in a placating gesture as he turned to the ponies.

“Woah, woah, you guys are way too nervous.  Way too nervous.  I’m harmless, really!  Look, when I get the heeby-jeebies about something, I find that having a good smoke calms my nerves.  Anyone mind?” he asked, already summoning a pack of cigarettes from his pocket dimension.  As the red and white box of Marelboros dropped from thin air into his open palm, the light pouring in from the windows suddenly dimmed.  

Nix heard Celestia’s annoyed, “Tch!” and glanced at her, a look of confusion on his face as her horn glowed brightly and the light returned to normal.  The murmur in the room rose considerably.  He gave his smokes a questioning look before shrugging.  He deftly plucked one from the pack and perched it in the corner of his mouth.  Beads of sweat had begun to form on his forehead as he raised a closed fist in front of the white tube and began flicking his thumb upward against his curled index finger, shooting sparks into the air.

“Huh, guess I’m at my limit, again,” he mumbled, aggravation tinting his voice.  “Hey, Dancie!”  He passed a pleading look to Ridge Dancer at the back of the room, who rolled her eyes as her horn fired up.  A small puff of flame ignited the end of his cigarette.  He drew deeply on it, leaning his head back in the air and exhaling an acrid cloud of smoke.  “Aaah, that’s the stuff!”  Celestia’s patience had worn paper-thin, and she opened her mouth to admonish Nix before a warm chuckle silenced her.

“My, my, quite the energetic lad, I see!”  Nix’s head snapped towards the sound.  “Reminds me of a certain pink mare I met some months ago.”  A white unicorn stallion with a carefully styled, curly blue mane approached the dais.  He stopped before Nix, a playful glint in his eyes and a pleasant grin on his face—the latter expression was framed masterfully by a meticulously maintained mustache.  He extended a hoof towards the suddenly silent human.  “My name is Fancy Pants.  It is an absolute pleasure to meet you, Phoenix!”

Nix took the hoof cautiously and gave it a ginger shake.  “Call me ‘Nix’.  And you mean Ms. Pinkamena?” he asked, regarding the unicorn with a sideways look.

“Ah, yes!  Pinkie Pie was her name.  Please forgive me, my memory is simply dreadful as I get on in years,” Fancy Pants intoned, before asking, “I assume you’ve made her acquaintance?”  Nix observed the sharply dressed unicorn more seriously, taking a drag off his cigarette as he did.  He was met with a patient gaze as Fancy Pants waited quietly for his response.  While the subdued conversation between Nix and the highly-esteemed unicorn had quieted the room to some extent, quite a few frigid murmurs had taken up their place at the mention of the pink earth pony.  More than a few ponies present had remembered her actions during last year’s Grand Galloping Gala, and her prestigious position as one of Princess Mi Amora Cadenza’s bridesmaids had done little to quell their distaste for her.

“Yes, actually,” Nix smiled subtly, not seeing the Sun Princess surreptitiously match his expression.  “And I wouldn’t worry about the memory thing,” he said with a dismissive wave, “I can’t even remember the last time I had dessert.”  He shot Princess Celestia a smug glance; she immediately smoothed her features, but otherwise ignored his askance gaze.

“That, my good sir, is tragic,” Fancy Pants stated simply, levitating a monocle before his mouth and breathing on it softly.  “I know of a nearby eatery that makes divine pastries, and anypony who is anypony would be remiss were they to avoid Donut Joe’s delectable desserts.”  He wiped the monocle on the breast of his sports jacket and levitated it to his eye.  Nix noted the intent stares of the other ponies in the room.  A few had unabashedly begun taking notes on pieces of paper before returning their awed stare back to the white unicorn before him.

Nix’s eyes glazed over suddenly, but cleared with a small shake of his head.  He looked down at Fancy Pants, and quickly snatched the monocle from the unicorn’s eye, replacing it in his own.  “Do not pass go!  Do not collect 200 bits!”  he jibed in a voice seeping with synthetic smarm, his gaping mouth moving exaggeratedly like a beached trout gasping for air.

Expecting a vexed huff out of the unicorn, Nix was instead disarmed by a hearty chuckle.  “I think you would be quite a fun individual to play in a game of Monopony.”  Nix twitched at the ponification.  Fancy Pants leaned in and lowered his voice conspiratorially.  “Although I think it best if you weren’t the banker.”  

Nix snorted, relinquishing the monocle to its owner.  “Alright, but I get to make up a few rules.”

“My good lad, it’s not a proper game of Monopony if it follows the rulebook to the let-”  The chalk-colored unicorn was interrupted by a rude bump from the side, sending him flying out of sight with an exclaimed, “Oh, my!”  In his place stood a similarly colored unicorn stallion with more masculine features.  

He flicked his flowing blonde mane dramatically, his eyes closed in the smug ecstasy of his own superiority.  “I am Prince Blueblood,” he said in a deep, nasal tone that oozed viscously with unbridled arrogance.  “And I am sure you are no doubt charmed to make my acquaintance,” he continued, finally opening his light blue eyes.  “Not that we’re acquaintances, of course.  I am, after all, royalty,” he said with a flourish of his hoof, resting it finally on his puffed out chest.

Nix stared at him.  Blueblood maintained his insufferable pose.  Nix glanced at Celestia, and she met his gaze, nervously levitating her standby cup of coffee towards her lips.  The human’s eyes flashed suddenly, and he snatched the cup of coffee from her telekinesis.  

“Nix, wai-” Celestia tried warning.

“I’m going to need all the whiskey your dear princess puts in these teacups of hers to tolerate your annoying ass,” he spouted before chugging the black contents of the glass.  Blueblood’s eyes shot open and he sputtered loudly.  Nix merely coughed a little, hammering his chest with the back of his fist and turning to the princess.  “Damn, Tia, what do you put in this?  I was joking about the whiskey, but this shit burns ten times more than that.”

“You are an annoying cur, wholly unfit to bask in my royal presence!”  Blueblood spouted angrily, his hoarse voice wavering slightly.  Nix tittered as he noticed the moistening around the unicorn’s eyes.

“And you can go slurp down a used bag of douchewater.  Where’s Mr. Tuxedo, that one unicorn with the cool mustache I was talking to?”  Having retreated to the crowd, Fancy Pants merely smiled ruefully and bowed his head, shaking it sadly.  Meanwhile, Nix did his best to ignore the incoherent protestations of the retarded white unicorn prince, even as a burning pain leapt through his chest and left arm.  He rubbed his collarbone slowly and turned to Celestia with an odd look on his face.  “I don’t feel so goooo-”

Celestia abandoned her throne and rushed to Nix as he crumpled to the floor.  The room erupted in a nervous buzz as she placed the soft pad of her front hoof over the carotid artery in his neck.  She didn’t detect a pulse.  

“Oh no!  Princess Celestia killed the alien!  Now his comrades will invade to avenge him!  We’re all doomed!” a small, weaselly voice sounded above the room’s din.  Everypony immediately began chattering in horrified anxiety.  Discord, still hidden in his corner on the ceiling, did his best to stifle his giggles.  

“No!  That’s not-!”  Celestia’s voice fell on deaf ears as the worried muttering amidst the gathered ponies escalated into a more panicked roil.  A bright light interrupted their fearful revery as white flames flashed at the head of the room, their brilliant luminescence a furious torch that temporarily blinded those unfortunate enough to have gazed in its general direction.  

As the flames began to die down, the black silhouette of a bipedal creature began to take form in their center.  It leaned calmly against the back wall of the room, seemingly disregarding the dying fire about it.  As the last licks of fire winked out of existence, Nix took another cigarette out of his pack, flicked his thumb against his index finger, and lit his smoke with the tiny orange flame that emanated from the tip of his shortest digit.  He regarded the ponies of the room plainly.  “‘Sup?”

“Nix, are you quite done with your personal entertainment?” Celestia asked threateningly. “My patience only extends so-” 

“How rude of you not to invite me to your soiree, Tia!”  The random voice was punctuated by a loud snapping of fingers.  With a flash, Discord appeared lolling on Celestia’s throne, his legs hanging over one armrest and his back supported by the other.  His yellow eyes scanned the gathering of ponies flatly.

“D-d-d-” the light yellow unicorn from earlier stuttered as she raised herself off the ground with quivering legs.

“Oh, my!  It’s Discord!  He’s escaped!”  the grey unicorn next to her exclaimed.  A blanket of numb silence washed over the gathered nobles, aristocrats, and otherwise important ponies.

Discord waved one talon exuberantly at the crowd, the expression starkly contrasting with his subsequent deadpan greeting:

“Yo.”

A cacophony of piercing screams shattered the stillness as everypony became terror-stricken and stampeded away from the dragonequus.  It was every pony for themselves as the dismayed mob thronged towards the door and became throttled by its narrow passage.  Mares scrabbled desperately over other mares, trampling their carefully crafted manes with reckless abandon.  Countless Fall ensembles were tattered, torn, ripped, and otherwise ruined as panicked ponies perilously propelled themselves through the exit.  A few reckless stallions abandoned their attempts to escape through the door—they shrieked shrilly as they tossed themselves through the far windows, making the dizzying plunge from the windowsills to the softened grass a yard below before they galloped off. The few pegasi mares in attendance zipped out of the openings created in the broken windows, attempting to keep their painstakingly tailored, precariously balanced hats atop their heads with one hoof even as they held another to their rapidly hyperventilating chests.  Prince Blueblood latched himself onto the hindlegs of one of the passing pegasi, screeching, “Save meeeee!” in a tortured whine before both disappeared out one of the windows.

As the last of Canterlot’s elite made their harried escape from the dragonequus and the atmosphere finally settled, Celestia stared blankly at her throne room.  A dead silence settled ominously in the hallowed hall.  Out of the hundreds of ponies she had invited to introduce Nix and assuage their growing fears about “Luna’s new pet”, only five remained, and two of them weren’t even ponies.  Ridge Dancer peeked her head meekly around one of the hall’s marble pillars.  Fancy Pants still stood where he was at the start of the panic, his monocle in place and a curious eyebrow raised towards Discord, who lounged lazily on her throne.  And Glancing Shock...

One of the damaged wooden boards on a broken window frame swayed limply, creaking slightly in the mild breeze.  The clockwork clop of hooves on marble provided percussion to its groaning melody as it desperately clung to the frame of the window.  She regarded the approaching sky blue pegasus numbly.  As the sound of his hooves contacting stone ceased, Glancing Shock swung his head from left to right, boredly examining the fallout from hundreds of stampeding nobles.

“Well,” he said suddenly, the blandness in his voice providing the perfect counterpoint to the chaotic state of the throne room, “I think that went swimmingly.”  With a rapid flick of his eyes to ensure nopony was nearby, he centered his gaze on Celestia and smiled broadly, his grin punctuated by the mercurial crackle of blue electricity along his wingtips.

“I think she’s gonna need more teacups of death-whiskey after this,” the wiry human grunted, taking one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it to the ground.  The squeaking board chose that moment to cease its windborn melody as it separated from the window.  It clattered loudly to the floor with a deafening echo.  In the ensuing pall of silence, everypony leveled expectant looks at Celestia.

’They’re...they’re all insane,’ Celestia thought quietly to herself.


*     *     *     *     *


Nix calmly took in the damage to the throne room: a few broken windows, the main entree way’s doorframe was scuffed, a few banners had fallen off the walls, and the scarlet carpet leading to the dais was a bit wrinkled.  All in all, pretty tame compared to the damage he had caused in the rest of the palace, inadvertently or otherwise. It was about the level of destruction he had planned to create after Swordspony demanded that Nix behave himself, using Ms. Pinkamena as an example of what not to do in the presence of nobility.  Obviously, he had done his best to imitate the annoying mare.  

For the most part, it had worked as intended, the sole remaining aristocrat in the room being the exception.  What he hadn’t expected was Discord’s intervention, and he was a bit disappointed that it was the Chaos god’s introduction that sent the blue-blooded bastards fleeing instead of himself.  Ah, well, at least he had escaped a firm lecture from the dumbfounded Tia.  It wasn’t his fault, after all.  The princess seemed too absorbed with staring into her death-whiskey teacup at the moment, anyway.  

A snap of fingers roused Nix from his thoughts.  Discord had teleported next to Tia, clad in full butler attire and a teapot in hand.  “More tea for m’lady?” he asked, his voice taking on a refined, haughty tone.  As the stream of black liquid hit her cup, her eyes came into focus and she turned her head to glare at the dragonequus.  

“You,”  she whispered gutturally, the accusatory tone dripping off her voice in a violent deluge of disdain.

“Hmm-hmmm-hmmmmmm,” Discord hummed cheerily, topping off her teacup and retracting the teapot.  “Yes, I am me.  Probably.”  

“You knew that word of your reform was to reach Canterlot naturally, by word of mouth, from Ponyville.  That my little ponies might respond badly were you to suddenly appear without warning.  You knew that what you just did would cause a panic.  And yet, in spite of Fluttershy’s influence as your friend, you did it anyway.”  The glare the white princess leveled at the hodgepodge dragon could melt stone.

With a snap of his fingers, Discord returned to normal, and held an open talon over his chest innocently.  “Well, I couldn’t just let the new guy over there cause all the chaos.  Why, I’d lose my membership in the Council of Crazy!  I’m a card-carrying member, after all.”  He snapped his fingers and a small, plastic card with his photo appeared in his bear paw.  “I pay 20 bits a year for that membership.  Have you any idea how costly that is when you haven’t had a job for 1000 years?”  With another snap, the card disappeared.  Nix watched the exchange intently, whereas Celestia merely continued scowling at the mismatched creature.

“Ah, princess, if I may?”  Fancy Pants cleared his throat.  Princess Celestia turned to the grey unicorn, her face reforming into a calm mask, and nodded slightly.  “As you well know, Canterlot ponies do tend to be a bit smitten with melodrama.  I posit that this event has gone better than it might have.  Why, it’s not nearly so disastrous as last year’s Grand Galloping Gala!”  He punctuated this last point with a soft chuckle.

“Be that as it may, Fancy Pants,” Celestia replied, “that affair was one of pomp and gaiety.  I assembled the upper crust of Canterlot society here today to assuage their fears over the incidents that occurred in the last two weeks.  The effects of this panic will be disastrous as the rumors sieve into the commonpony community.  And that doesn’t even include how Canterlot might respond to the mob of frightened nobility stampeding from the palace.” 

“May I interject?” a mild voice requested.  Celestia brought her gaze upon her Guard-Captain, who had apparently regained control of himself and stared blankly through her.  She snorted mildly.

“By all means, Guard-Captain.  You can also explain how this qualifies as ‘maintaining the peace’, as I’m seriously considering rescinding your rank at the moment,” the princess stated firmly.  Discord snapped his fingers and appeared next to Glancing Shock, dressed in baggy shorts, a sports jersey, gold chains, and a backwards cap.  “Aww, snap, son!  She messin’ wit’ yo’ paper!  Homie don’t play dat, right?!”  Everyone ignored him.  Except for Nix, who looked at the dragonequus thoughtfully as he rubbed the slight stubble on his chin with his index finger.  ’Huh, I need to shave.  Also, weird chimera is weird.’

The sky-colored pegasus’s sight came into focus and his lazy gaze wandered to Celestia’s fuming, light violet eyes.  “I full well expected something like this to happen,” he admitted bluntly.  “I actually prepared for something worse, given the last couple of weeks.  Your fears of a rampaging mob of fashionistas and snobs, as hilarious as I must admit that would be, are wholly unfounded.  I had a detail of guards posted just outside the door, and surrounding any possible point of egress from this room.  Even now, that crazed mob of petulant foals are being calmed by the assurances of my guard, who have all been detailed on Discord’s reformation and the circumstances surrounding the ape’s arrival.”  A hint of sympathy flicked behind Glancing Shock’s eyes as he added, “Honestly, my guard are probably more demoralized from dealing with your nobility than the nobles themselves are from this hilarity—err, from this disaster.  Terribly disastrous, this.”  He forced a fake, placating smile, unmatched by his emotionless eyes.

“And if I might add,” Fancy Pants chimed in with a decorous tone, “it would be no trouble to assuage their fears.  I daresay that, with my influence, a large number of important ponies in Canterlot might very well want to be this ‘Phoenix’,” he said, nodding towards peach-colored biped.  Nix felt his mouth open involuntarily in shock, spilling his lit cigarette to the ground.

“No!” he shouted in unison with Tia, sharing a surprised glance with her.

“Very well, then.  I shall still attend to the situation, if my princess permits?”  The blue-maned unicorn raised a questioning eyebrow to Celestia.  She nodded gratefully.  “And, Nix, I am looking forward to a good game of Monopony.”

“And I’m wondering why you didn’t run off with the rest of ‘em,” the human grunted bluntly.

The chest of the grey pony’s sharply tailored tuxedo heaved in tune with his soft chortles, but Nix noticed that Fancy Pants’ blue eyes glinted sharply, a glaring reflection of the sun off hardened ice.  “My dear alien, while you are, without a doubt, one of the more entertaining beings I’ve met in quite some time, neither you nor Discord are quite as clever as you deign yourselves to be.  I knew from the very beginning what you both were attempting to do.”  His hard look softened and he smiled warmly.  “And that’s why I would rather enjoy a game of Monopony with you.  A match of chess would simply be too boring.”  With that, he turned and cantered casually out of the ruined doors to the throne room.

“Huh.  A noble talks down to me and I find myself hating him less.  First for everything, I guess,” Nix submitted.  “That I can remember, anyway,” he added in a grumble under his breath.

“A noble?”  Celestia said softly.  “He’s not nobility.  He grew up in poverty, his parents barely able to keep him fed most days.    What he is?  Unbelievably, irrevocably brilliant.  With but a few investments, he catapulted himself from destitution to opulence and inveigled himself in the highest echelons of society.”

“A pair of down-to-earth working ponies named their son ‘Fancy Pants’ and suddenly he becomes rich and everyone likes him.  A storybook ending,” Nix replied dubiously.

Tia turned to him and smiled.  “They were every bit the optimists that the stallion himself has strived to become.” 

After a snap of his fingers, Discord teleported before Nix in a checkered apron and clung to his jeans, his schismatic forelimbs sheathed in yellow rubber cleaning gloves.  Tears welled up in his eyes behind his square-rimmed glasses, his face framed by the grey curls of his poofy, matronly wig.

“We’s jess so proud o’ him.  Our lil’ Fanshy Pantsh,” the dragonequus intoned dramatically.  Nix stared at him, a random thought coursing through his consciousness.  The human raised his hand before his face, regarding it thoughtfully, his thumb pressed against his middle finger.  He spared a downward glance to the patchwork serpent clutching his pants before applying more pressure to his middle finger with his thumb.  The two slid by one another suddenly with a satisfying crack!, and a bundle of dark grey leather popped into existence over Nix’s head.  He caught it deftly with his left hand and unfurled it.  

It was the leather duster Odin had given him.  His hairless face began to split into a grin even as he donned the knee-length jacket.  Discord teleported to the throne silently and leaned forward, steepling his fingers.  “Yes.  Yesssss,” he muttered in a husky tone.

“Oh, dear,” Glancing Shock groused emotionlessly.  “As if he didn’t cause enough problems as is.”  Nix twisted swiftly towards the pegasus Guard-Captain, the tails of his coat flourishing dramatically behind him.

“Just you wait, Swordspony,” he warned between fits of maniacal giggling.  “Gimme a second to get my weapons and then you can see what a proper swordsmuh-  swordsmayuh-  swords-may-uhn-”

“There, there, my little hyu-mahn, sound it out,” Discord taunted derisively, one talon resting on his cheek as he posed arrogantly on the throne.

“Swordsman,” Nix muttered irritably, before pointing at the dragonequus.  “And after Swordspony, you’re next.”  Nix inverted his outstretched arm and formed his hand to snap his fingers again, while Discord merely smiled silently, his face completely devoid of worry.  With a pop!, Nix’s fingers performed the motion to mold chaos magic, a simple flick of digits against one another, and he immediately felt a satisfying, familiar weight on his back.  His hands a blur, he moved to draw Excalibur and Muramasa from their sheaths and...leveled a broom and a mop at the dragonequus.

“What the fuck?” Nix exclaimed, immediately dropping the cleaning implements.  He snapped his fingers again.  A potted flower appeared in the air and impacted the ground near Ridge Dancer, who had been slowly creeping up the red carpet towards the group since the dispersion of the Grand Galloping Grovelers a few minutes before.  She squeaked and zipped behind her superior officer, latching her forehooves around the hindleg of the blue pegasus.  He turned his head slowly and leveled his numb eyes on hers.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?  You could die, you know,”  he stated simply, his words devoid of any emotional fluctuation.  She immediately retracted her hooves and hugged herself instead, shooting paranoid glances left and right as she lay on the ground.  “Hmmph.  Answer enough, I suppose,” Glancing Shock mused distantly.

Meanwhile, Nix continued snapping his fingers.  Glasses of chocolate milk materialized from thin air and dropped to the ground in a splash.  A horde of mice appeared and suddenly transformed into deer before bounding out the windows.  A wreath of roses suddenly crowned Ridge Dancer’s head, causing her to blush furiously.  A murder of crows fluttered from the shadows in the corners of the room and burst through the open doors with an ominous explosion of fluffed feathers and macabre squawks.  Glancing Shock’s leather brigandine momentarily transformed to chainmail before changing back to his standby uniform.  Throughout it all, Nix’s frustrated cursing punctuated the sudden chaos.

“Nix, it’s impossible.  I cast a spell preventing the teleportation of your weapons, the same one I used for the Elements of Harmony to prevent Discord from hiding them,” Celestia revealed.

“Ho,” Discord lilted, “looking for these?”  With a snap of his fingers, the goat-headed serpent blurred from existence and reappeared; he was now garbed in a scarlet trenchcoat, and his scraggly mane was replaced by snow-colored hair, a few errant strands falling over one of his yellow eyes stylishly.  An assortment of golden necklaces adorned his upper chest, and a tiara with a large violet gem in its center perched precariously atop his head.  Nix didn’t bother concealing his enthusiasm over his own swords that now crisscrossed the serpent’s back.  The transformation complete, Discord raised his bear paw languidly, Nix’s chrome-plated pistol in his grasp, and stared soberly into the distance.  

“Now that I have a comically large assortment of weapons,” the dragonequus said in a deep, gravelly voice, raising a pair of sunglasses to his face slowly, “I, too, can overcompensate for my inadequacies by pretending to be a hackneyed, one-dimensional badass.” The tails of his red trenchcoat began flowing behind him dramatically in a sudden gust of wind that only appeared to affect the chimera.

“The Elements of Harmony?!”  Celestia dropped her regal composure entirely.  “But, how did-!”

“Shush, m’lady,” Discord intoned softly, pressing one clawed digit to her lips and closing his eyes for dramatic effect.  “I stereotypically possess a  pair of black and white pistols now.  Your concerns are invalid before my unadulterated amazingness.”  He dexterously holstered Lux and brandished Umbra in its place, a small grin playing across his features while his eyes remained closed and his bird’s talon still stuck to the clearly flustered Sun Princess’s face.  Nix snapped his fingers at the pair, trying to reclaim his armaments, but only succeeded in giving Celestia a mustache.

Discord ran his talon across the bushy growth on her face, and his eyes immediately popped open.  “I knew it!”  he cried, his garments and Nix’s weapons disappearing in a flash, much to the human’s disappointment.  The Chaos god leveled his gaze squarely on Celestia, who was staring down her own nose in shock at the mustache.  “Father was right!” he wailed, holding the back of his bear paw to his head in mock horror.  “I have come to embrace a love that dare not speak its name!”

An amused snort tried to escape Ridge Dancer’s mouth, but was quickly stifled by both her hooves shooting to her face as her eyes widened guiltily.  “I’m sorry,” she wheezed out in terror, prostrating herself before the princess as low as she could manage, her mass becoming a quivering puddle of light green on the deep red carpet of the throne room.  

Celestia huffed in mild frustration, the tips of her mustache alighting at the sudden rush of breath before her horn glowed and a translucent pair of scissors snipped them from her upper lip.    Nix quashed his desire to see the princess’s face painted by cake frosting, and focused as hard as he could on his weapons before leveling his snapping fingers towards the dragonequus and Celestia again.  The interaction of his digits sounded a mild report, which only resulted in a frozen tuna colliding with his head.  He ignored the frozen fish’s blow and met Celestia’s eyes.

“Alright, that’s enough.  How do I get my damn weapons back?” he grumbled.

“You don’t,”  Celestia responded plainly, calmly regarding the human over the brim of the teacup she had just levitated to her lips.

“Look, just give me my damn swords and my guns, and I’ll be out of your mane forever,”  Nix grumbled, suddenly motioning to the throne room.  “This was all a...fun...distraction, but I can’t stay here.  You obviously don’t have anything for me to deal with, and I’m still trying to get home.”

“I know full well about your plight.  You’ve brought it up several times already, not to mention my own sister regaling me with your quest after you absorbed a fraction of her soul, and she, yours,” the white alicorn pointed out bluntly.  “That said, so long as you lack control over your capabilities, it would be more dangerous to allow you your weapons than it would be to deny your request.  The one you call Excalibur is particularly dangerous with your middling control of magic.”

“Then at least give me Muramasa,” the human replied.  “I’m more than capable of controlling its demonic urges, even without being able to utilize my lifeforce.”  He paused, a small fireball levitating in his palm as he lit another cigarette and sauntered up to her.  “And even you have to admit that it’s safer in my own hands than in anypony else’s.  You know firsthoof what it can do.”

“Which is precisely why my sister will be its steward until you regain your power, as I will chaperone Excalibur.  For better or worse,” she seemed to stutter over this part, “Discord will oversee Lux and Umbra.”  

As if on cue, the dragonequus teleported between Nix and the pale princess, clad again in a red trenchcoat and sunglasses.  He held the human’s two pistols in both hands.  “I am the bone of my gun,” he intoned seriously as a small flock of white doves took to the air from behind him.  Umbra discharged with a loud blam!, and masonry from the now-damaged ceiling showered down around around Nix, the white Alicorn, and the patchwork dragon.

“Oopsie?” Discord shrugged innocently as Celestia leveled a wilting glare at him.  The weapons disappeared from his claw and paw with a pop, and he shoved both appendages into the front pockets of his trenchcoat, whistling innocently.

“Oh, good idea.  Leave a pair of weapons that have the power to level everything in 10 light-years with a god of chaos.”

“10 light-years?” Celestia cocked an eyebrow.

“The gun that nearly splattered your sister’s entrails across her own stars is a prototype made by my old government.  They developed it based on the energy given off by a few of the gods and my own lifeforce after...” Nix’s eyes glazed over, and an image of him sitting in a dinky bar next to a king—in a drinking contest, no less—slammed into his consciousness.  “Uh, after something happened, anyway.”  He rubbed the side of his head in annoyance.  “The silver gun, Lux, is far more powerful, seeing as it was made by the god Haphaestus, and isn’t just a piece of experimental weaponry.  And you want that psycho to hold onto ‘em?  Why’d you even release him, anyway?  I may not remember exactly what he did, but from your sister’s own memories, I know it wasn’t good.”  

“Because of you, obviously,” Tia stated bluntly.  “In spite of your boasts, you do not possess that much more power than myself or Luna do individually.  Luna believes us both to be about on par with the one you call Yaldabaoth.”

Nix’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion before a wry grin split his face.  “So, you think you’re as strong as Sammael was, eh?” he chuckled, exhaling a cloud of smoke at the princess dismissively.  “Bit full of yourself, don’t you-”

An immense pressure crushed the air around Nix as he was forced to one knee.  Behind him, Ridge Dancer mewled on the ground and Glancing Shock sprawled on his stomach, his chest straining to draw in breath and beads of sweat forming near the base of his white mane.   The polished stone beneath Celestia’s hooves had cracked, and small chips of rock began levitating about her.  Arcs of electricity danced across her form, the expression of energy necessitating Nix to notice just how chiselled her equine muscles actually were when she wasn’t forcibly relaxing them.  The white alicorn’s expression had hardened viciously, as if the bone of her skull had suddenly been replaced with tempered steel, and her eyes were replaced by a blazing inferno that contested with her own sun in brightness.  Discord took a step back from Celestia, his eyes widening slightly at her change in appearance.  She glared down her nose at the forcibly prostrated human, and her eyes flashed brighter as though the very core of her sun had taken seat in their sockets.  She flared her wings arrogantly, and the outward force of her magical energy sent Discord sprawling to the end of the platform, an annoyed look quirking his features.  

Nix clenched his jaw and forced himself to his feet with excruciating slowness, refusing to bow under her sudden expression of force.  “Point.  Taken,” he hissed between gritted teeth, his lips drawn back in a defiant snarl.  As quickly as the violent magic pandemonium had stricken the room, it vanished without fanfare as Celestia sat regally before her own thrown, gazing coolly at Nix over the brim of her teacup.

“Our abilities notwithstanding,” she continued as though nothing had happened, closing her eyes as if her thoughts were taken by distracted ruminations, “I could not be certain we could put a stop to you before you brought harm to my subjects, even if you would eventually fall before Luna’s and my own combined powers.  That is why we freed Discord.”  The dragonequus smiled widely and waved his paw at Nix at the mention of his name.  “Insufferable though he may be,” Celestia added in a low mumble.  The mirth on his light grey face deflated.

Nix paused, gathering his thoughts as best he could and fighting off the intrusion of a few random memories from several centuries ago.  “Fair enough,” he said finally, “you have power enough to stop me even after I figure out why this reality is constraining my abilities.  But you’re overlooking two things.  First, I don’t have my normal level of power.  I should have regained it within a few days, at most, upon arriving here.  It’s been two weeks and I can barely draw more than I could after my first few seconds here.  Secondly, assuming I did suddenly regain my powers, why the fuck would I level them against you or your subjects?  The first thing I’d do is teleport out of this galaxy into empty space, and expend all my energy safely so I could force a rebirth and move onto the next existence.  You have absolutely nothing to fear from me, and your sister could have told you as much.  I don’t like you or your annoying ponies in the least, but I’m not a monster.”

“Neither was Luna,” the alicorn said quietly, her eyes focusing on something far beyond the boundaries of her throne room.  Nix recoiled at her hushed words before quickly regaining his composure.  ’I’m not a monster,’ he reminded himself.  “However,” she stated firmly, her eyes centering on the human once more, “I am sympathetic to your plight, and though you might not believe me, I wish to assist you in restoring your powers, that you may continue your journey home.”

“So I can’t be trusted with my own weapons, and you woke up that,” he said, jabbing a thumb towards Discord, “to subdue me if I all of the sudden become crazy and decided your world would look better as a meteor field than a planet, yet you’re gonna help me get my powers back.”  The human tossed both his arms up exasperatedly before planting one hand in the front pocket of his duster and clasping his cigarette with another.  “Makes perfect sense,” he finished, inhaling the last few dregs of his smoke before flicking it into the corner.

Celestia eyed the smoking butt on her polished stone floor disapprovingly before returning her attention to Nix.  “Yes, I’m going to help you, and insodoing, ensure the protection of my subjects.”  She walked calmly past him, towards the door to her throne room.  He shrugged his shoulders and took pace next to her.  “You already have a basic understanding of Chaos magic, judging by your performance here,” she said simply, before Discord interrupted.

“Took long enough, too,” he muttered while he massaged the palm of his talons.  “If I had to snap my fingers one more time they would have fallen-” He was cut off by his clawed thumb and middle digit separating themselves from his talon and plopping to the floor.  “See?”  Nix and Celestia ignored him, and the princess continued her explanation.

“However, this world is comprised of two kinds of magic.  Chaos,” she said, nodding her head towards Discord before continuing her measured walk, “and Harmony.  Your inability to focus your powers is due primarily to the magical energies of my world, and your incongruence with them—so much so that even summoning your tobacco, or a simple article of clothing, offsets the trajectory of my sun.  You’ve a passing understanding of Chaos magic, now-”

“-although you’re far from a master, young padawan,” Discord interrupted, now garbed in a monk’s outfit and extending his right paw.  “When you can snatch this kazoo from my hand, you will be rea-”

“-but you do not yet grasp the manifestation of Harmony,” Celestia continued over the dragonequus.  The three of them had exited the throne room and were pacing down the hallway of her palace, now.  Ridge Dancer and Glancing Shock followed a short distance behind them.  Up ahead, a group of frazzled nobility—clad in emergency blankets—babbled incoherently to a small platoon of guards, most of whom were nodding their heads patiently even as they tried to conceal their utter lack of sympathy.

“So, what, you want me to meditate or something?”  Nix asked, recoiling inwardly after he managed to remember his training with Muramasa.  His small group walked by the members of nobility, who had suddenly become very quiet at the reappearance of the resident God of Chaos.  Discord smiled and waved at them before continuing his trek with Celestia and Nix.

“Not quite,” the princess said with a smile, sparing the human a knowing glance.  “Here, harmony is something quite different from inner peace, though the two go hoof-in-hoof.  To know harmony is to be at peace with others, not just oneself.”

“Yeah, get to the point already.”  Nix twirled his index finger in a small circle, mild annoyance tinging his voice.  

“To understand the magic of Harmony, you must first make friends,” the alicorn explained with a small smile.  “I suppose you could say that, here, friendship is magic.”

Nix stopped immediately, staring dully at the princess before wandering around the area, opening doors and lifting the rug on which they had walked.  He lifted up a bench and scanned its underside before letting it drop to the ground with an echoing smack.  Celestia didn’t attempt to mask her confusion.

“Looking for something?”

Nix ceased his search and met her gaze, his lips flattened in annoyance.  “I’m looking for the hidden cameras.”  The white alicorn arched one of her pale brows, remaining silent.  “You know, cameras.  Recording devices.  This is obviously some sort of prank.  Any second, some stallion is gonna come out of one of these doors,” the human waved his arm down the hall, “clap me on the shoulder, and tell me, ‘You’re on Gullible Gallopers,’ or some other stupid horse-related shit, and you’ll all have a good laugh at my expense.  Really?  ‘Friendship is magic’?”

“This is not a joke.  In my kingdom, friendship quite literally manifests as magic.  You could even ask Discord, if you choose not to believe me.”

The dragonequus muttered something incoherent about yellow pegasi, rubbing his bird’s claw against the back of his neck sheepishly.  Nix, however, kept his focus squarely on Celestia, mulling over her words.  

“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, and in a thousand years, I’ve suffered a great many examples of mind-numbing retardation,” he uttered finally, his aggravation flickering wildly in his glowing blue eyes.

“If you truly wish to believe so.  I may not be able to convince you, but I’ve no doubt Twilight and her friends might show you the errors of your ways,” Celestia intoned.  She closed her eyes and shook her head ruefully, before turning to one of the doors and opening it.

“Wait, what does Sparky have to do with this?” the human asked as he entered the room behind Celestia.  It was furnished with several desks.  Substantial piles of paper climbed towards the ceiling on each wooden surface, concealing, for the most part, the pony inhabitants toiling away behind the paper skyscrapers.  Clicking, clattering, and clanging chimes rang out from each desk as Nix and Celestia passed them by, their destination a slightly bigger desk at the back of the room.  Behind it sat a matte grey pegasus, one hoof rubbing his chin as he ran his eyes over a piece of paper, repositioning his square-rimmed glasses every few seconds.  He didn’t appear to notice appearance of the princess and the alien at his desk.

“Fiscal Slip,” the princess said after clearing her throat, “how wonderful to see you.”

The pegasus immediately tossed the piece of paper behind him as his jaws worked randomly, spewing out an incoherent mess of worried sound.  “I, err, I mean, yes, Princess.  To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“I’ve come to make a withdrawal from the royal coffers.  3,000 bits, to be exact,” she responded.

The pegasus’s pupils pinched to pinpricks.  “B-but between the the repairs to the castle, and the preparations for the-”

“Effective immediately, the Grand Galloping Gala is cancelled.  Please fetch the aforementioned sum,” she stated firmly, brooking no argument from the bookish pegasus before he immediately flew through a door at the back of the room.  He returned momentarily, brandishing bulky burlap sacks in each hoof.  He heaved them onto his desk with a muffled thunk as Celestia turned to Nix. 

“Several trains leave Canterlot daily, many of which pass through Ponyville.  You are to use these bits to purchase a ticket and travel there, whereupon my student, Twilight Sparkle, will personally oversee the reclamation of your powers.”

“So you take away my weapons, tell me I’m a danger to your nation, oh, but here, have a bunch of money and also hang around one of my most important national assets and one of the few ponies you allow past your own psychological defenses,” the human retorted dryly.  Celestia’s eyes narrowed.  “What?  I at least remembered that much from Luna’s mindrape.  Ms. Lavender Schoolfilly is important to you, her, and all of Equestria,” he paused, his thumb on his chin, “although I forget why.  You’re seriously tossing me a coupla bags of money and sending me on my way?”

“Not quite,” Celestia retorted coolly.  “You are to be supervised at all times by Ridge Dancer, to ensure that you bring no harm to my citizens.”

Nix and Ridge Dancer shared an annoyed groan before the human caught himself and plastered a fake smile across his lips.  He jabbed her shoulder a few times with forced enthusiasm.  “You hear that, Dancie!  We’ll be besties in no time!”  The lime green unicorn merely glared at him.

“Private Ridge Dancer, you are to escort Phoenix to the train station immediately, and remain with him until the point in time he has power enough to continue his travels.  My student will give you further instruction as I see fit,” Celestia commanded, her voice exuding the icy steel of her dominion.

“Yes, ma’am!” the light green unicorn exclaimed, her hoof shooting to her forehead in an exacting salute.  “I won’t let you down.”  

“Then go, my little pony,” the princess said, smiling warmly.  Nix ignored the exchange, having grabbed the two bags of bits and slinging them over his shoulders.  He trudged quietly out of the room, an annoyed scowl on his face, before Ridge Dancer turned and followed him out.  Her features were set with determination.  

Glancing Shock exhaled a sigh of relief almost inaudibly, finally free of two niggling problems that plagued his position.  Celestia turned to the pegasus with a cold stare.

“As for you, Guard-Captain,” she stated evenly.

“Hmm?” he responded blandly, switching his half-lidded gaze from the door to the princess.

“You are to transfer your command to Colonel Stone Wall.  As soon as the transition of your command is complete, I hereby order you to Ponyville to oversee the safety of my ponies posthaste.  You are also to ensure the restoration of Phoenix’s abilities in an auxiliary manner, providing support to Ridge Dancer and Twilight Sparkle in whatever capacity they require.”

The Guard-Captain’s legs shuddered under the order, and his eyes began tearing up involuntarily even as his iron-hoofed control began to collapse.  

“But I-  my guards- you can’t-  wasn’t I good enough?”  he sputtered out, licks of electricity dancing down the wet paths on his cheeks forged by his tears.  “I tried to be good enough.  Shining Armor told me I could, so I tried-” He was interrupted by a hoof on his shoulder.  He had lost control, completely lost control, and he almost recoiled in horror at being in contact with another pony in his state before a brilliant white wing wrapped around him and drew him close.  The electrical impulses native to pegasi danced through his body feverishly and into the white alicorn as she embraced him closely.  “No, you can’t!  I-I-!” he protested.  Celestia merely drew the light blue pegasus closer.

“You’ve done an excellent job as Guard-Captain, and you will do an excellent job as the captain of my Royal Guard in the future,” she reassured the pegasus, ignoring the numbing sensation of electricity in her wing and hoof as they embraced Glancing Shock.  “Right now, however, I need you to help Nix, for the safety of Equestria and your guards.  Can you do that for me?”  

The sky blue pegasus gently pushed away from the princess, his eyes glazed over.  He regarded her numbly before his monotone voice systematically trampled the silence of the moment.  “Yes, princess, I can do that.  Also,” his amber eyes shot worriedly to the other ponies in the room, all of them seemingly ignorant of the Guard-Captatin’s display, “I’m very sorry that I endangered the ponies around me   It won’t happen again.”

“I know, Guard-Captain Glancing Shock,” she replied warmly, setting a reassuring hoof on his shoulder.  She calmed inwardly when she couldn’t sense any electrical impulses as she did so.  “But right now, Nix needs you, even if he doesn’t know it himself.  Can you be there for him?”  

Glancing Shock nodded grimly, sharply, the blue tips of his mane dancing in contrast to the seriousness in his eyes.  Celestia watched him as he exited the room with his peculiar grace.

“Do I get a hug, too?”  The weaselly voice penetrated her thoughts and she sighed, lifting herself up and heading towards the door.

“What?!”  Discord cried after her.  “Was it something I said?”

Princess Celestia paused at the threshold of the room, sparing him an annoyed glance.  “Just...go see Fluttershy.”

“Yesss!” The dragonequus pumped his bear paw victoriously.

"Just make sure to keep an eye on Nix," Celestia commanded harshly, before amending her tone to something a bit more gentle.  "If he remembers the fate of his sisters..."

"Yes, yes, tragedy, tears, wailing, rending of clothing, etcetera, etcetera," the Chaos god rambled dismissively before he winked out of view with a final derisive wave of his bird's claw.  

The Sun Princess allowed herself a small smile and a shake of her head.  ’They’re all crazy,’ she thought, her grin widening.  She weaved a small glamour spell, instantly altering her appearance, then teleported into a small alleyway in Canterlot to ensure Nix and ‘Dancie’ caught their train.


*     *     *     *     *


Ridge Dancer cantered through the crowded marketplace on the way to the train station.  The disaster earlier in the week had done little to quell Canterlot’s vibrant optimism, and she danced around a veritable throng of chirping ponies who were out and about, performing their daily activities with the same carefree aplomb they possessed for centuries before the human’s destructive intervention.  The human merely followed closely behind her, sulking.  The two bags of bits hung limply over his shoulders, and bounced off his wiry frame with every forced step.   Their dull, metallic chink punctuated the towering biped’s distracted trudge through the crowd.

The light green unicorn did her best to keep her shimmering emerald eyes focused forward, blocking out the din of the crowd.  She thought back to the harsh, mountainous spires of her fillyhood. She was so distracted with her memories of dancing through the verdant meadows and constricted canyons hidden amidst the towering peaks of her old home that she completely missed the point when the ringing toll of the human’s bits stopped clamoring in her ear.

“Okay, here’s the ticketmaster.  We should be able to make the last train out of Canterlot,” she said, her brain forcibly abandoning thoughts of home and focusing on the cityscape around her.  She flicked her eyes towards the gorgeous sunset before she turned around, finding herself alone at the tollbooth.

“Ma’am, would you like a ticket?” the pony in the tollbooth asked politely.  She turned to him slowly, her jaw hanging loosely in a sudden, horrified realization.

She had lost the human.


*      *      *      *      *


Nix marched behind Dancie, a thousand grumbles voicing their malcontent in his head at once.  He knew that Tia was jerking him around, somehow.  She had thrown money at him and turned him loose with only one pathetic unicorn pony as his guard.  He suddenly remembered said guard tossing him effortlessly through a great many very hard stone walls before he banished the memory and tried to remember something more pleasant. 

Ayla clasped his gun, Umbra, in both hands, a look of terror and rage on her face as she pointed business end of the weapon towards the attackers at the door, her finger trembling on the trigger-

He squashed the thought violently and focused on his surroundings instead.  Stereotypical marketplace, only a bunch of damn horses instead of people.  He mentally patted himself on the back for remembering how to think “people”.  Lots of chattering, most of ‘em bartering and such, when they weren’t gawking awkwardly at him as he walked by.  Not that he cared.  They were all annoying as shit, and-

“But Ma, I’m hungry!” a colt’s voice penetrated his thoughts.  He slowed his pace, cocking his head towards a mare and the two young ponies sitting at her hooves, looking up at her expectantly.  

“Don’t you worry, what kinda Mama would I be if I couldn’t keep my own colts well-fed, so they could grow up to be nice, strong stallions?”  She smiled down at her colts, but tears began to well up at the bottom of her quivering eyes as she remembered the loss of her bits during last week’s disaster.  “One tiny lil’ explosion won’t keep Flowing Needles from feeding her boys.  Just give me one second to ask the nice ponies for something.”  

The young colts cheered, one of them leaping in the air triumphantly before punctuating his celebratory leap by shouting , “My mom is the best mare ever!”  

The mother of the two colts looked like she had been slapped across the face, but the cauliflower-colored earth pony quickly recovered before her two children noticed her despair.  But not before Nix noticed.

’Oh, goddammit, it’s that look.  Again.  And it’s your fault.  Again.’   It always was, wasn’t it?  He sighed to himself even as he shifted both bags of bits to his left shoulder.  He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.  He gallivanted through the rest of the market lightly, as though a weight were removed from his shoulders.

Celestia failed to suppress a grin as she watched the bags of money disappear from the human’s shoulders and plop down in the distraught mare’s lap, to the amazement of the two colts who sat before her.  She backed slowly into the shady alleyway behind her, the twilight’s darkness subsuming her solar cutie mark even as she heard the mare tearfully ask her colts if they’d like to go to Donut Joe’s.  The princess shook her glamor-disguised head in quiet amusement before teleporting from her capital city’s streets, back to her castle.


*      *     *      *     *


’Oh no oh no oh no,’ Ridge Dancer thought in a panic.  She rushed around the foyer of the train station, lifting up random objects hoping vainly that they might be concealing the human.  She unsurprisingly came up empty-hooved, but she continued her manic hunt.  ’How will I explain this to Captain Shock and Princess Celestia?!’

She felt something prod her shoulder rudely, but she swatted it away with her hoof, continuing her search.  The same feeling jabbed her shoulder more forcefully, almost painfully, and she retreated from her nervous fears to address the sensation.

Nix stood next to her, his arms crossed and an annoyed look on his face.  “Scavenger hunts can be a lot of fun, I know, but we’re gonna miss the train at this rate,” he explained plainly.

“I, err, oh, yes, let’s get tickets.”  The two of them approached the toll booth.  The red-maned stallion inside gawked at Nix before shaking his head and reassuming his professional air.

“Tickets are 12 bits apiece, 20 bits for two,” he stated boredly. 

“You heard the stallion, Dancie.   Pay him and let’s both go to Ponyville,” the human said dismissively.

“But, I thought you had the bits?” she offered meekly.

The human turned his cold blue eyes on her, glaring foully.  “I thought you had them,” he stated sharply, jabbing an accusatory finger her way.

“No, I- I-  It’s just,” she dropped her gaze to the ground and voiced a schismatic string of stammering.

The pony in the ticket booth just rolled his eyes.  “No bits, no ticket!”  he said brusquely before slamming the booth’s blinds down.  Ridge Dancer stared numbly, realizing she had failed yet again in her assigned tasks.  

Her chest wretched as she began to sob.  She wasn’t a good guardpony.  She couldn’t guard the Princess.  She could barely keep track of the human.  She couldn’t buy a simple train ticket.  Her eyes began to water.  She couldn’t even make her Dad-

She felt a slight sting on the back of her head as something swatted her.

“Hey, Dancie, you gonna water the cobblestones here or are we gonna catch a train to Ponyville?”  Nix asked with more than a little irritation in his voice.  

“But, the tickets- I- no bits-” she stammered out.  The human just rolled his eyes before dropping to one knee and grabbing her jaw, forcing her eyes to meet the flickering blue flames behind his own.

“I’m a reality-breaking godslayer who scares even your princesses,” he spoke soberly, “and you’re the unicorn who kicked the everloving shit out of my ass when I got here.”  She jerked her head away and looked back to the ground shamefully.  Nix dragged her face back to his and forced her to meet his eyes again.  “I’m pretty sure we can manage to catch a train,” he intoned wryly.  “We just need to get a bit...creative.”

Ridge Dancer stared at him with wide-eyes, unsure whether to feel sad, hopeful, or afraid.  Her face absolved her ambiguity for her, spilling out an optimistic grin as her eyes began to match the mischievous glint of the alien’s ice-blue gaze.


*     *     *     *     *


Ridge Dancer screeched in terror as a hairless, peach-colored hand slammed her face into the metal roof of the train.  The brightness of the world winked out as they entered another stone tunnel.  She began to tremble uncontrollably, even under the firm grasp of the human who now held her face down on top of the racing train.  Her horn glowed frantically, desperately increasing the coefficient of friction on her hooves to keep her in place atop the speeding train.

As they exited the tunnel and a shock of sunlight assaulted her eyes, she shot a terrified look towards the human next to her.  Chaotic gusts of wind assailed his dark grey leather trenchcoat as its tail buffeted violently behind him.  Light blonde locks of his hair twisted harriedly in the rushing air around them, the last of the day’s light illuminating his mane with fluttering, golden-orange fire. And his face, his ugly primate face, it was resplendent with a look of manic, innocent glee, even as he swung it towards her and shouted. 

“You should be more careful!  I don’t think big fucking rocks mix with your face as easily as they do with mine!  Last tunnel for a while, though!”

“You’re crazy!” she shouted back, wondering how he had convinced her to do this, before she remembered he had just grabbed her and leapt atop the train as it started to move.  “Trust me,” he had said.

“Completely, utterly crazy!” she reiterated loudly as the train rounded a bend, bringing it out of a canyon and onto the outward slope of the mountain on which Canterlot rested.  They were thousands of feet in the air, and the whole of Equestria expanded in her view.  The sun twinkled at the horizon, spilling its pleasant glow across the world before her and setting the clouds above aflame in an impassioned cascade of violet, sienna, and goldenrod.  The landscape below bristled lively under countless winds from every direction, grassy meadows paralleling their forested sisters as they quivered amidst the sun’s dying light, shimmering with equal splendor as every tendril of grass and every swaying branch offered up the twilight’s last light in selfless reflection to those rare few who abandoned their selfish plights long enough to accept its warm oblation.  Splitting through the middle was a river transformed by the eve into molten gold, gingerly separating the verdant landscape with the shimmering mirror of its waters.

The green unicorn’s breath caught in her throat.

“Just wait until I remember how to fly!”  The human shouted suddenly, bursting into laughter.

’Crazy,’ she thought to herself again, holding onto the roof of the train for dear life.  ’Utterly crazy.’

Ridge Dancer couldn’t help herself, and laughed wildly with Nix as the train continued its descent down the mountain and sped towards Ponyville.

> Chapter 11:  A Nice Place To Live (But I Wouldn't Want To Visit)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Now remember,” Twilight lectured as she paced on the platform of Ponyville’s train station, her eyes closed as she recited her premade speech.  The sun had just started peeking over the horizon in the early hours of the morning.  “Nix is still new to Equestria, so he might be a bit...rough around the edges.  But Princess Celestia has entrusted us with teaching him the magic of friendship, and I’m sure with our combined efforts, we’ll all be the greatest of friends in no time at all!”  

“Heck, yeah,” Rainbow Dash mumbled with a slur, desperately straining enthusiasm through her sleep-addled voice.  The sound of a distant train horn’s keening roused her from her drowsy stupor, and she forced a façade of alertness.  “We reformed Discord in, like, two days!  This new pony won’t know what hit ‘im!”  Twilight spared the blue pegasus an optimistic smile as her friend’s eyelids slowly began to droop again.  After receiving the princess’s package last night, she had been too excited to sleep herself, but she knew just how well her friend handled waking early.   Shaking her head sympathetically, she swept her gaze beyond Rainbow to the crowd that had gathered to greet the honored guest.  

A large assortment of ponies had congregated to the train station to welcome their new arrival. A very large assortment.  Twilight’s mouth pursed in mild annoyance as she realized most were here to shirk work duties.  A request by Princess Celestia herself made the perfect excuse to skip out on their daily tasks so they could instead “warmly welcome this new being with Ponyville hospitality”, as the royal decree had put it.  She quelled the cynical thought and refocused on her own task.

“Alright, girls,” Twilight said, levitating a scroll in a purple field of magic.  “We need to make sure his welcome goes off without a hitch.  First off, banner?”

“Check!”  Pinkie Pie chirped, a pair of townsponies behind her raising a sign that read “Welcome Nyxxy” in a poorly scrawled script.  A quill appeared in Twilight’s hoof from seemingly nowhere and flicked across the checkbox on her scroll.

“Welcoming gifts?”

“But of course,” Rarity’s voice sounded sonorously.  “Although I do still question your judgment on the fashion tastes of this ‘Nix’,” she added skeptically.  “The shirt design you gave me in Canterlot was, honestly, quite dreadful...”  Twilight eyed her marshmallow-colored friend flatly.  “Although I’m quite sure he’ll be enamored with the ten new shirts I made him, based off your extensive cross-studies of primates and, erm, fire?”  the mare offered tentatively, flashing a conciliatory smile towards the purple unicorn.  Twilight narrowed her eyes, her quill slowly dragging across the checkbox with dubious lethargy.

“Fireworks?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie will bedazzle him with a show the likes of which he has never-”

“Right!  Check!”  Twilight interrupted brusquely, smiling sheepishly at the frowning townsfolk who were glaring daggers poisoned by manticore venom at the blue unicorn’s sudden vocal reminder of her own existence.  Twilight had found her at the edge of the Everfree Forest, sleep-deprived, ragged, and weeping.  Her heart had twisted at the showpony’s wrenching sobs over the fact that, even though she regretted her actions, she had no way of making a living outside of rock farms—after her second embarrassment before Twilight, she had stealthily lingered around the outskirts of Ponyville, raiding dumpsters and even venturing into the dangerous Everfree Forest for food.  The violet unicorn was beginning to wonder whether the reassuring hoof she had placed on Trixie’s shoulder at that moment, with a promise that she’d help the mare, was a misstep of cosmic proportions.

As the baritone caterwaul of the train’s horn sounded through the chill morning air again, this time much closer, Twilight was reminded of the task at hand.  Her eyebrows furrowed in the effort of her renewed focus.

“Relax, Sparky-warky!”  Pinkie warbled cheerily.  “Nix is really nice!”

Twilight cocked a dubious eyebrow at her pink friend, who merely smiled more widely at the attention.  “That’s not...uh, how I would-”

“Pinkie’s right, Twah,” Applejack twanged as she approached the nervous unicorn, pausing briefly to adjust the brim of her hat.  “If anypony’d know how hard it is ta’ make new friends, it’d be you.  And yer an expert, now.”  She placed a reassuring hoof on Twilight’s shoulder and smiled warmly.

“Yeah, Twi, you got this, no problem!” Rainbow exclaimed, having sloughed off the shackles of sleep-deprivation now that the train was on its final approach.

“If...if you’d like, I can cheer for you?”  Fluttershy offered.  She had rejoined her friends after abandoning her efforts to quietly stamp her hoof on the ground at the edge of the platform, uncomfortable near the large throng of townsfolk.

“That won’t be necessary, Fluttershy,” Twilight assured sweetly, a warm smile suddenly flashing across her face.  “You all have been cheering for me, for us, since I first came here.”  She closed her eyes suddenly in thought, a mild break entering the conversation, before inhaling slightly.

”If any search for joy’s behest,” she began singing, opening her eyes and angling them skyward in sudden reverence.  ”For those who long for friendship’s quest-”


*     *      *      *      *


Nix swung his legs against the side of the train as he sat on the side of the traincar’s roof.  He hoped the muffled impact of his shoes against the car’s windows unnerved the passengers inside.  He was bored.  Bored out of his mind.  The initial rush of the cool mountain air buffeting his face at high speed had worn off after he remembered that he could usually move close to the speed of light.  Granted, when he did that he had to take certain precautions to ensure that the force of friction between the air and his body didn’t ignite the entire atmosphere of the planet in a genocidal explosion.  Still, he wondered why he had enjoyed the start of the journey so much.

It was probably the intermittent thuds of Dancie’s head as he slammed it into the roof.  Obviously, he had done it to prevent her untimely death, as he didn’t particularly desire a stint on the moon when he wasn’t sure if he could escape.  On the off chance Celestia’s words rang true, being imprisoned on the moon would allow him precious little chance to, ugh, ‘make friends’.  He was, understandably, none too keen on a lunar vacation simply because the Sun Goddess had to inconvenience herself with scraping the chunks of Dancie’s skull off the lip of a train tunnel.  

It was also for that reason that he had taken to gently holding her in place on some of the sharper curves; she had passed out from exhaustion halfway through the night and could no longer stick to the roof with her magic.  He had made doubly sure that his light touch hadn’t stirred the sleeping mare, as she probably would’ve freaked out over the physical contact and introduced his terribly handsome face to many large, hard, painful fucking rocks.  He frowned at the lightly snoring mare, curled up next to him like a cat.  He consoled himself by again remembering the satisfying smack of her cheek against metal before turning his attention to the approaching town.

As the train rounded one final bend, he elbowed the bright green mare in her ribs.  Her head jerked up even as she began to slide across the roof.  Nix quickly grabbed her tail before she sailed off the edge behind him, and she let out a pained yelp as the hair drew taut.  Nix rolled his eyes and released her as she stood up, one hoof rubbing the back of her neck in embarrassment.  

“Sleep well?” he asked flatly.

“I, uh, yes.  Thank you,” she replied, missing the sarcasm in his voice.  His attempt to be annoyed was interrupted by the sounds of singing coming from the platform as the train rolled to a stop with a final hiss of its brakes.  There appeared to be a mob of brightly colored, smiling ponies on the platform with their voices raised in song.  Dancie plopped down next to him.

“What the Hell are they doing?” he muttered to her under his breath.

“I...I don’t know,” she replied, matching his subdued tone.

“If your princess exiled me to a broadway musical, I fucking swear to Me that I’m going turn her country into a glass crater.”  Ridge Dancer’s shoulders slumped slightly at the threat.

”As friendship’s magic shines through darkest night!  We hope Nix finds his warming liiiiiiiiiight!” the mob of ponies finished, all leveling welcoming hooves towards Nix as a brilliant display of fireworks shot into the air over the train station.  

He stared mutely at them while they held position, their eyebrows raised expectantly.  It was with no small expression of self-control that he avoided finding them a warming ball of explosions and fire.  In spite of his violent urges, the human managed to remain still as the ensuing silence wore painfully into the cheery expressions of the ponies below him.  After about a minute, a multitude of the gathered ponies began trading nervous glances with one another, their outstretched hooves beginning to tremble in anxiety over his refusal to acknowledge their presence.  A few toothy grins started to falter as the gravity of the silence tugged at the corners of their mouths.  A single cough echoed through the station from somewhere near the back.

Nix hopped up and turned his back to the ponies.  “Come on, Dancie.  This place is fucking dumb, we’re going back to Canterlot so I can get my weapons.”  The fiery maned unicorn flitted a worried gaze between the clearly confused townsponies and his back as he began to saunter down the roof of the train, away from the platform.

“Nix, wait!”  The familiar voice halted his lazy exit and he sighed, raising his face to the sky in exasperation.  “I know this is a little hard for you, but I just want you to know that we’re-”

“Sparky!” he exclaimed cheerfully, backflipping off the train and twisting in the air before landing deftly in front of the purple unicorn.  “Long time no see!  I trust you haven’t killed anypony lately?”  He ruffled her mane playfully as her pupils shrunk in shock.

“‘Killin’ anypony?’  Twah, what in the hay is he talkin’ about?”  an orange pony in a cowboy hat asked Sparky.

“Well, she introduced herself to me by ruthlessly slaying my good friend and loyal upper torso garment, Rocky,” Nix explained as Twilight’s head began tremoring rapidly back and forth, in refusal of the current situation.  A nearby unicorn with a purple mane gasped.

“He ain’t lyin’,” the cowgirl mare breathed out in quiet alarm.  Twilight’s eyes debated furiously whether to focus their pinprick pupils on Nix or her friends. The eyes of the gathered ponies were pregnant with shock, spiced liberally with disbelief and a dash of horror.

“I-  It’s just that-  I didn’t-” Twilight rushed out in a confused jumble, before Nix cut her off by resting a hand on her back.

“Hey, don’t kill yourself over it, okay?  It’s not like I stayed dead after you killed me, too.  If you hadn’t been there I’d still be dying of boredom in some dungeon, a bunch of annoying ponies butchering me with their nonsensical language, right?”  Her dark violet eyes seemed to draw back from some distant precipice as she refocused on the present situation.  “Now that I can actually understand everypony, I’m simply slain by the cheerful antics of you all.  Better that than to succumb to loneliness.  That’d just be murder.”  Nix chuckled exaggeratedly as Twilight swung her face towards his and her eyes narrowed.

“That isn’t funny, Nix,” she told him with a reproachful tinge in her voice.

He stroked his chin thoughtfully, his mouth pursed in thought.  “Yeah, you’re right, Sparky.  I’m gonna have to work on my material before I go on my comedy-slash-destroy everything tour.  But my humor can’t be as bad as that banner over there.  ‘Welcome Nyxxy’?  What is that, my porn name?”

Twilight’s dissatisfaction was suddenly displaced by her scholarly curiosity.  “Porn?  I don’t recognize that word...” she implied questioningly.

The bottom of Nix’s jaw dropped.  “You don’t have porn here?!  As in pornography?”

A knowing snicker poured from the light blue lips of a nearby pegasus, her wild, rainbow-streaked mane dancing in tune with her scratchy laughter.  “I think he means ‘ponyography’, Twi.”

“Huh.  Wonder why that wasn’t part of your lexicon when I absorbed-”

“Like I would know what ponyography is!” Twilight blurted suddenly, her cheeks trading their purple tinge for a deep scarlet.

“Ah.  You must have that filed in a different part of your brain, then.  Perhaps the area dealing with shame?” Nix mused.  “If you’d like, I could check,”  he offered, stretching his palm towards her forehead.  She flinched away from the contact, zipping with surprising speed between the orange cowgirl pony and the blue pegasus, the latter of whom was still taken by a fit of giggling.

“Hmm, fair enough.  But I appear to have forgotten your manners.  Fancy Pa—err, Mr. Tuxedo would no doubt gawk at your gaff.  I trust introductions are in order?”  He smiled curtly.  “You go first.”

“But, you already know-” the purple unicorn started.

“Not you, Sparky,” Nix said, taking great pains to emphasize the dull apathy in his voice.  “Your friends.”

“I’M PINKIE PIE!”

Nix stared at the pink thing like she had the same memory issues he did—clearly retarded.  “Ms. Pinkamena, have I ever told you I hated you?”  

“Nope!  And even if you did I wouldn’t believe you!” she tweeted.  “Oh, hey, look!  A bird!”  She zipped out of sight around the edge of the platform faster than even Nix’s eyes could follow.  His brow adopted a form of unyielding perplexity at her escape.  ’How in the Hell did she move that fast?’ he wondered to himself.  His ruminations were interrupted by the aghast huff of a white unicorn.

“Well, all manners aside,” the mare with the huffing problem snorted, her nose aimed skyward even as her voice took on a conciliatory tone, “we have been a bit rude in delaying our introductions.”  She summoned one hoof to her forehead, surgically displacing a few locks of her perfectly maintained purple mane, and closed her eyes theatrically.  “I am Rarity.”  She held the position for a few seconds, basking in the tepid light of Nix’s annoyed glare.   

“Really?”  the human uttered dryly.

“What?” Rarity responded innocently, removing her hoof and meeting the human’s eyes.

“Canary yellow and lace?”  The intonation of his voice had done its best impression of sulfuric acid.  But he did cheer inwardly at his successful recall of Twilight’s letter and this unicorn’s terrible creation.  

Rarity laughed nervously even as the light blue glow of her magic enveloped the ten parcels behind her and forced them unceremoniously into the nearest trash bin.  “Yes, well-” she stuttered, “I didn’t really have a lot to work with, what with you being my first bipedal customer and...Twilight’s recommendations.  What did you do with that shirt?”  She had noted the absence of her and Twilight’s fashion abomination the second she saw him oddly perched atop the train.

“Burned it,” the human responded listlessly.  She let out a sigh of relief before a logical thought burgeoned rudely through her consciousness.  

“That...that shirt was supposed to be fire resistant,” she forced out.  The human merely grinned in response.

Twilight regarded this exchange with growing worry.  The nagging thought that itched at the back of her mind was less concerned with the dissonance between the human and her friend than it was with the deviation of her scheduled introductions.  She was summoned from her compulsive neurosis by a single yellow hoof placed gently on her shoulder.  She turned towards the owner of the limb, and was greeted by benign teal eyes.

“Yay?” the yellow pegasus whispered with a slight smile.  She nodded once slowly to her unicorn friend before turning towards Nix.   She planted her hooves firmly on the ground as she steeled herself for social interaction with a complete stranger.

“Hi, I’m...Fluttershy,” she breathed out mildy.

“What?” Nix asked, cupping a hand behind his ear in the universal geriatric sign of annoyed deafness.

“Oh, um, Fluttershy.  It’s my name.  If that’s okay?” she offered meekly.

“I can’t hear a damn word you’re saying,” he clarified.  “Up until they were eaten by a pack of Mauthe Doogs a coupla centuries ago, I always went into battle with heavy metal blaring over a pair of enchanted headphones.  It’s really done a number on my hearing.”  He left out the part where the headphones were just the appetizer before the main course of his head.  He’d save that bit for later, if he remembered.

“Oh, dear!”  Fluttershy exclaimed with the force of a ladybug’s legs impacting a leaf at no velocity.  “I’m so sorry about your hearing!” 

“Huh?”

“Her name is ‘Fluttershy’,” Twilight interjected, leveling a skeptical glare his way, “and don’t you have regenerative capabilities?  What’s wrong with your hearing?”

“Psh, no one likes a cynic, Sparky.  And her name is ‘Bob’ from now on.”  Nix redirected his attention to the pink-maned pegasus.  “Got that, Bob?”

“I, oh, yes, I guess Bob is okay.”  She smiled innocently at him.

“So yer hearing’s bad, is it?”  the orange earth pony with the Stetson interjected.

“Oh, I dunno,” Nix replied ambiguously.  “It has it’s good days and its bad.”

“Yeah, Ah bet,” she replied, a puddle of doubt forming at her hooves as it dripped off her voice.  “Ah’m Applejack, bah the way.” 

“Darn tootin’, Hillbilly,” Nix responded sarcastically.

“Whoo-ee, Ah’ll say!”  she responded, suddenly lurching forward and grasping his hand with her hoof and shaking it vigorously.  His eyes goggled as he felt the base of her hoof attach to his palm before jerking it up and down.

Managing to control his gaping mouth for a few seconds, Nix was able to force between his lips an awed, “How did you do that?!”

“Aww, shucks, that’s just a bit o’ the ol’ Apple family hospitality, sugarcube!” she replied, stifling her natural aptitude for veracity and feigning ignorance at his confusion.  He jerked his hand away.

“Right, Sparky, this is getting old.  For the love of Celes- Gaw- Gawhd-.”  Nix scowled.  “Just...tell me you don’t have anymo-”

“NOT SO FAST!” a boyish voice cracked from overhead.  Nix looked up, trying to trace the source of the noise that had just annoyed his perfectly functional ears.  His eyes naturally targeted the rainbow trail that severed the middling blue of the early morning sky.  Following the prominent urging of its polychromatic pathway, his eyes focused on the cyan blue pegasus at its head.  He watched with reluctant awe at her amazing display of dexterity and speed as the blue pegasus from earlier twirled and flipped in the sky overhead in a hair-raising choreography of aerial technique, her impassioned flight arrogantly trampling upon the common sense of g-forces and wind resistance.  After a particularly beautiful maneuver that sent her twirling towards the earth at mind-numbing speeds, a blinding rainbow continuing to splay behind her as she blazed a furious trail through the early morning light, she landed suddenly on the train platform with a flair of her wings.  A small shockwave shuddered through the air with her landing and several old wooden boards cracked beneath her hooves.  She smiled smugly at Nix, her magenta eyes ablaze with unspoken challenge.  “I’m Rainbow Dash, fastest flier in all Equestria!”  Her grin deepened even as the glint behind her eyes hardened.

Nix stared at her blankly for a second, before turning to Twilight.  “You know,” he intoned matter-of-factly, motioning to the planks of the train platform, “you should get these examined.  It’d be tragic if a pony fell through a few because some of them were cracked or old.  Or because some of your flying ponies couldn’t make a landing to save their own life.”  The speed with which Rainbow Dash’s grin was replaced with a dismayed jaw-drop was a damning disservice to her normal physical alacrity—the expression’s manifestation was much faster than her normal speed.  

“Hey!  You can’t just show up here and-”

“Right,” the human continued, interrupting the clearly flustered pegasus with a wave of his hand.  “So, Bob, Snob, and Hillbilly,” he said, pointing to Fluttershy, Rarity, and Applejack to punctuate each of their newly assigned misnomers.  “Now that I’ve got names to match the faces of ponies that are sort of important-”

“Hey!” Rainbow shouted.

“-AND I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE!  Few can comprehend the arcane magics behind my amazing abilities.”  The dark blue unicorn’s interruption struck with all the aplomb of a homeless pony begging for spare bits so they wouldn’t starve, to the apathetic dismissal of passing working ponies.  Nix leveled his upturned fist at Trixie and began snapping his fingers.  Her cape and hat made several shifts through cloth varieties with each salvo of the human’s animated fingers, finally settling on a nice plain burlap.  The show unicorn gawked in horror at the plainness of her new garb.  Nix just frowned at his outstretched finger-snapper.

“Damn, I was trying to set you on fire.  Welp, guess I’ll just have to use the old fashioned way,” he said in defeat.  His outstretched forearm was immediately consumed in flame, and a small ball of blue flame began whirring loudly in the palm of his summoned fiery talon.  As he grinned mirthlessly and leveled his phoenix talon towards Trixie, the spinning ball of fire in its palm whining hungrily for its target as it picked up rotational speed, his concentration was interrupted by a light brown pony with a grey mane.  She had stepped between the two of them and adjusted her small glasses subtly before shooting a hard glare towards the human.  

“I’m Mayor Mare, steward of this town.  I will brook no harm upon the ponies within its boundaries, regardless of their past actions.”  

“Is that so?” Nix lilted insultingly.  He suddenly drew the fiery claw to his chin to scratch it ponderously, hovering the whining ball of blue flame over his head as he smiled and examined the light brown mare.  Mayor Mare lowered her head as she took on a defensive stance and stamped her hoof challengingly.  Nix’s smug smile deepened, before he suddenly uttered, “Oh, dear, where are my manners?”  

The ball of flame above his head exploded with a loud boom, causing the ponies on the platform to cringe and shield themselves from the rush of heated air.  As they recovered, they noticed that where Nix had stood was instead a burning white tornado of fire, which emanated a loud roaring as it increased in speed with every passing second.  Its waves of oppressive heat forced the closest ponies back even as it throbbed with increasing intensity, every new wave of its destructive throes blackening and cracking the wood at its base with its destructive force.  As the roar reached a crescendo, the tornado suddenly hitched and exploded outward in a harsh rush of searing heat, knocking several hundred ponies off their hooves and making the train shudder violently on the tracks.

Twilight picked herself up off the ground slowly, her face twisted in desperation and horror; how could she report to the princess that the Mayor was crumpled in a pile near a platform bench, dumbly searching for her dislodged glasses?  Or that Nix was...hovering in the center of the platform, his arms crossed imperiously as his brightly flaming eyes cast a disapproving glare across the mob of ponies around her?

“I have many titles,” his voice boomed suddenly as he floated slightly forward, his mouth glowing with the seething intensity of an erupting volcano.  The crowd of gathered ponies cowered at his slow advance.  “Substitute Aesir of the All-Father, Odin.  Slayer of the Head of Heaven’s Armory, and Swordmaster, Gilgamesh.”  His eyes began to grow brighter with every word even as licks of flames appeared on his shoulders, and the wind picked up in a swirl a yard beneath his levitating feet.  “Inheritor of the Kingsword, and Wielder of the Blade of 10,000 Cold Nights!  Devastator of Hell, and Liberator of the Goddess Lucifer!”  He was shouting, now, his commanding voice reverberating with minor shockwaves that shot up tufts of dust between the planks of the station’s platform.  Dark thunderheads had begun gathering overhead and shot out threatening fingers of lightning with every one of his words.  The whirlwind of heat at the base of his floating feet had burst into flame and begun to spin wildly even as tendrils of fire exploded from his shoulders and took on the form of wings, each of its feathers a blazing inferno unto itself.  “I am the Traverser of Universes, the Arbiter of Aeons!  I am the Destroyer of Worlds!  I am the Slayer of Gods!”  

The tempest of flame and wind seemed to calm for a second as the glowing fire in his eyes and open mouth dimmed.  “I.  Am.  Phoenix!”   At this, his mouth and eyes flared brightly and a violent torrent of heat and force exploded from behind him as the whirlwind at his feet twisted skyward, banishing the storm clouds over head as it impacted the heavens.  He brandished his flaming wings, thrusting them out to their full length and cowing all the gathered ponies.  He hovered audaciously before the mob, crossing his arms and regarding them as a God does the insolent ants of his own creation even as they tremored violently in terror at the force of his dissatisfaction.  As he swept the glowing orbs of blue flame that had replaced his eyes over the crowd, he made a point to pause for a second as he met the mayor’s eyes, and grinned widely.  His arrogant glare had missed Twilight Sparkle in the crowd, whose eyes merely regarded the human with pity.

As abruptly as they appeared, the pyre surrounding Nix and the painful pressure of his manifested magical energy disappeared with a muffled whump!, and he plopped to the ground, grinning wildly at the terrified ponies before him.  He half-heartedly searched for a cigarette in his trenchcoat’s breast pocket, and after errantly producing one of the white cylinders, he bowed his head to meet the butt and summoned a tiny ball of flame to light its tip.  His head unmoving, he glanced lazily at the terrified mob of ponies through the corner of his eyes as the flame caught purchase on his smoke, and he took a deep drag before raising himself up and exhaling a cloud of carcinogens into the air.  

“Most just call me ‘Nix’, though,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk, the last tendrils of smoke laconically seeping through his split grin.  He was interrupted from his boorish satisfaction by a subdued whimpering from behind him.  He promised inwardly that he would not get angry and set the interruption on fire and get banished to the moon for all eternity before turning around.  The fearful mewling appeared to be coming from a terribly familiar orange filly with a blonde mane.  All cruelty in Nix’s grin suddenly evaporated. 

“Princess Petal!  At your request, I’ve made haste to the seat of your kingdom!  I calmly await your-” His words slammed abruptly into an anxious embankment as he noticed the filly cowering at his every word.

“Whoa, hey, Princess Petal.” Nix suddenly knelt, doing his very best to appear unthreatening.  He hadn’t expected her to catch wind of his theatrics.  “Sometimes knights have to-”

Wind Petal’s eyes twisted in terror at the human before cowering behind the hind legs of what he could only assume was her mother.  The dark yellow mare’s violet eyes stared at him with a curious mixture of anger and fear before she set herself defensively before the human and her filly. 

“Aww, come on, Wind Petal, I was only-”

With every word that escaped his mouth, a fearful whine escaped the young filly’s mouth, and she redoubled her terrified efforts to hide behind her mother.  Nix stood suddenly and turned away from the young pony, thrusting his hands into the front pockets of his dark grey duster with a scowl.  Twilight moved to intercept the human, her eyes bearing a confused maelstrom of fear, disappointment, and, oddly, sympathy.

“Nix, you-” she started.

“Come on, Sparky,” the human interrupted in a subdued, deadened tone that was so low she and her friends could barely make it out.  He kept staring straight ahead as he trudged past her.  “Show me your stupid fucking town.”  Twilight and her friends followed as he disappeared around the corner of the train station.

The mass of townsponies stared blankly at the rude creature’s exit, not a one paying attention to the train behind them.  A pair of light green fore-hooves suddenly appeared over the edge of the train’s roof.

“Umm, c-can somepony get me down?”  Ridge Dancer asked meekly.  “Please?”  The townsponies seemed too distracted by the weird alien’s outburst, and subsequent exit, to bother hearing the mare’s pleas.

Her heart leapt in her chest as the train’s whistle rang out and the train started moving.

> Chapter 12:  He (Probably) Won't Forget Her
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Nix rounded the corner of the train station and walked with guilty haste, the soles of his shoes seizing on a well-trod dirt path.  He commanded his feet to follow the meandering course even as he tried to subdue the cornucopia of troublesome thoughts welling up at the base of his consciousness.  To his surprise, he was successful at this latter task.  To his aggravation, it was only because he was suddenly distracted by the crushing waves of fatigue that now assaulted him.  He collapsed a few yards into his grand trek through what appeared to be a small park that laid on the outskirts of the village proper.  He was all of fifty yards away from the back of the train station.  Wheezing weakly, he assumed that this was as good a time as any to again berate his impotence in this awful reality.

’Really, Nix?  Really?  Those flames weren’t even hot enough to singe the brightly colored coats of all those ponies—NOW IN FULL TECHNICOLOR—and even that tiny little display left you exhausted?  Jesus...err, fuck, I mean “insert exclamatory, non-traumatizing idiom here”, if something that was actually dangerous came along, you’d be fucked.  Not as much as everypony else, though...

‘At least she didn’t cry.’

He willed his brain to shut its whore mouth and did his best impression of an awkward, stumbling foal as he pushed himself off the ground.  He was still wavering on his feet, gasping for air, when he felt a gentle pressure on his left arm helping him balance.  He looked towards the sensation and caught a yellow hoof before deep blue eyes filled his vision, twinkling with concern.

“Are you okay?!” she exclaimed as loudly as silk sliding off a tabletop.    

Nix slowly pushed Flutterbob out of his field of view and held the hovering pegasus at arms length.  “Don’t,” he uttered coldly.  

“Oh, umm, I’m sorry.  I thought you might have have been hurt, and...” her voice petered out as she landed, and became suddenly fixated with the well-landscaped lawn beneath her hooves.

“Do I look hurt?”  he asked, clearly annoyed.  He turned to the four other mares.  Sparky, Snob, Hillbilly, and the rainbow-maned, showboating platform-slayer were all lined up a good distance from him.  A bit further behind, the blue unicorn in the wizard hat eyed him warily for any signs he might toss a fireball her way.  “Hey, Hillbilly.  Your thing is honesty, right?"  Applejack nodded in assent, confirming the jumbled memories he had gotten from Luna.  “Do I appear injured?”  The orange mare merely frowned at the human.  

Nix turned back to the pink-maned pegasus.  “I’m fine.  And even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t need your help,” he spat the last word out arrogantly and began to stalk past her, deeper into the park.  “I can heal myself just fine.”

“Then why haven’t you healed the hurt in your eyes?”  Fluttershy’s voice could barely even register as a whisper.  Nix’s gait seized.  

He turned suddenly, said eyes replaced by fiery blue orbs.  Licks of flame danced around his eyelids as he smiled and demurely flicked a lock of golden hair from his forehead.  “Tell me more about my eyes,” he lilted huskily.  The pegasus cowered at his fearful visage as he turned and began stumbling along the path again.

’Oh, that’s brilliant, let’s use even more lifeforce when we can barely stand.’

‘Brain, have I ever told you I hated you?’

‘Numerous times!  Your hatred of something that actually thinks really comes as no surprise.’

‘Just shut the fuck up and fix my memories, you useless thing.’

He stumbled up to a half-occupied park bench, barely taking notice of the other occupant as he collapsed into its wooden embrace.  His six brightly colored stalkers had remained where they were and appeared to be in the middle of an animated discussion, shooting furtive glances his way at random intervals.  He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning back and resting his head on his two clasped hands

“You alright, there?”  A mare’s cheery voice blissfully interrupted his brain’s rude attempts to inject reason into him.

“Long day,” he responded flatly, keeping his eyes closed and slouching deeper into the bench.  

“Must be a short life for your kind if the day rudely decides to wear on to six-thirty in the morning,” the mystery mare next to him responded dryly.  Nix breathed out a cynical, half-hearted chuckle.  He leaned forward slowly and began massaging his temples.

“That fire tornado was pretty cool.  For an illusion, anyway,”  the mare added.  Her bubbling tone seemed to have a permanent, if subtle, sarcastic tinge to it.  Nix opened his eyes slightly and scrutinized his benchmate with an askance gaze.  He was mildly disappointed that she was a bright aquamarine, having briefly hoped she might be a nice, macabre grey or black, or anything that suggested a physical manifestation of sardonic humor.  Something that wasn’t candy coated and likely to inveigle him in the horrors of tea parties and rainbows.  The brilliant white streak through her mint mane further invigorated his sudden distaste, and he frowned slightly.  A single eyebrow immediately arched over one gold-rimmed eye at his negative expression.

“Damn,” he replied suddenly, dropping their mutual sideways gaze as he focused instead on the dirt path at his feet. “I was going for, ‘Oh, God, our benevolent princesses have thrown a psychotic, power-mad alien at us and we’re all gonna die unless we bow and scrape at his feet and try to avoid arousing his ire’.  Guess I fucked up, huh?”

His party of pursuant ponies had seemingly come to some sort of agreement and ambled amiably towards his wooden perch, Sparky spearheading the group.  Their faces all alit with hesitant smiles as they came within hearing distance of Nix and the aquamarine unicorn.

“Nah, you didn’t-” she paused, mulling over something for a second, “-you didn’t buck up.  Could’ve used more lightning bolts, though.  Maybe make the clouds a bit blacker.  More fire tornadoes?”  she offered.  Nix grunted in assent, but exacted no small amount of joy at the horrified faces of his newfound babysitters, who silently witnessed the exchange from a few yards away.  “Oh!  And tentacles!  Reminds ponies of hydras.  It would really freak them out if they suddenly appeared poking through clouds.”

“Please don’t give him any more ideas-” Twilight began.

“You mean tentacles like these.”  Nix’s finger-waggling would have put the most prominent jazz hands to shame.

“Uh, those’re just hands,” the unicorn deadpanned.  “And they’re not even scary hands at that.  Could at least have claws at the ends of ‘em, like dragons and griffins do.”  Fiery talons of dark orange flame subsumed both of Nix’s forearms in an instant, and he brandished them at the mare.  “Yeah!  Like those!”  Nix wore a satisfied grin even as the flames disappeared and his chest began to heave with noticeably greater effort.

“Performance issues?” The unicorn smiled wryly.

“Shut up, die in a fire,” the human responded with articulate grace.

“Now, now.  I’m sure all those ponies at the train station were terribly frightened by your display,” she comforted.

“Whereas you’re perfectly fine with a towering twister of fire extending to the the heavens not fifty yards from where you’re slouching on a park bench?” Nix asked dubiously.

The mare studied him for a second, her eyes veiled slightly by a few stray strands of her mane’s ivory highlight.  “You...really do have a lot to learn about Equestria.  Better a fire tornado that lasts all of thirty seconds than the world being heaved into utter chaos for a day, or the sun not rising because a dark goddess conspires to vault the world into eternal night.”  She paused, passively raising a hoof towards the human with a half-smile.  “I’m Heartstrings, by the way.”

Nix flicked his gaze to the mare’s eyes—the dancing yellow flecks in her irises reminded him of a sunset in its infancy—before his eyes wandered to the mark on her flank.  A golden lyre.

“Careful, champ,” she warned, a mischievous light playing in her gilded eyes.  “Stare too long and a mare might get the wrong idea.”  

“I’m just gonna call you Lyre,” Nix blurted out.  “See, I have this thing with remembering names, and-”

“Lyra,” she interrupted, a cavalier tone in her voice.  “And don’t strain a muscle as you pat yourself on the back for your creativity,” she added.  “That nickname predates your mental sprain by a decade.”  A genuinely warm smile replaced the seemingly ever-present ornery twist of her lips.

“I suppose that’ll have to do,” he grudgingly admitted, taking her forehoof with his hand and giving it a single shake.  “Name’s Nix.”  He dropped the grasp and the pair fell into silence.  He was starting to feel unnerved by the confused attention of his group of handlers when Lyra suddenly spoke.

“Cat got your tongue, all of the sudden?” she asked.

“Hmm?  No, I-”  

His eyes glazed over as a murky memory limped to the fore of his consciousness.


*     *     *     *     *


The gateway to Hell was a towering black monolith, smelted from the bones of the dead and the corpses of twisted creatures whose very appearance rent the sanity of those unfortunate enough to gaze upon them.  Held within this grim portal was the realm of eternal pain itself; the vile landscape stretched on infinitely, its roiling, revolting, gnarled geography pockmarked with the leprous sores of bubbling lava pools and rippling marshes of plague.  Disfigured obsidian stalagmites clawed skyward with their despairing digits towards a swirling, pulsing sky of blood red smoke.  

Minos hissed and angrily flicked a nearby stone at the large doors with his scaly tail.  Another day, another interminable expanse of time standing guard at Hell’s gates.  He hadn’t wanted this job, honestly.  It was an unspoken truth among the Archons that the task was little more than banal punishment by way of rote boredom.  Hell didn’t even need a gatekeeper—defiled souls seemed to just let themselves into the terrifying realm in large number, and with a gawking enthusiasm for their eternity of torture at that.  He was only stuck here because he had foolishly sided with Mount Olympus two thousand years ago.  

He shifted his clawed feet impatiently, the weight of his boredom slumping his shoulders as his forked tongue flicked aimlessly, desperately, at the fetid air about him.  It hadn’t always been this way, this insufferably dull.  However, as an Archon—he forcefully demanded his psyche accept the title granted unto him by Sammael—he would suffer any anathema forced upon him by his superiors, until some other patsy of the holy pantheon royally screwed up, took his place, and he got a promotion.  He just wished the millennia weren’t so insufferably monoto-

Snikt!  Snakt!

Minos cocked his head at the odd noises, drawn out of his gray meditations.  He turned around to examine his charge, lifting his slitted eyes to fully examine the tall gates.  Rays of a searing blue light in the form of a cross had vivisected the befouled barrier.  Odder still, a slight whirring sound seemed to emanate from the other side.  He placed his ear gingerly on the door shortly before it exploded inward.

Chunks of bone, eldritch abominations, and generally horrible things that had once formed the door to Hell pirouetted chaotically through the air as the airborne demon’s thoughts curiously matched his trajectory with that of his old charge’s detritus.  ’I am gonna get in so much fucking trouble for this,’ he thought errantly before slamming into the ground and brutally tumbling to a stop.  

Minos groaned, unable to single out any one source of pain from the symphony of anguish that played throughout his body.  The demon rolled over, wheezing weakly, and ran his scaled digits over himself in sudden amazement that he was still capable of even drawing breath.  The welling thoughts of relief that bubbled at the fount of his mind were rudely smashed by the several ton statue of Celine Dion that crushed his skull as it slammed into the ground—the once-doorknob to Hell’s gate slowly canted to the side before coming to rest, a tombstone hovering over Minos’s twitching, serpentine bulk.

Two blurred shadows wavered at the entrance, barely visible through the dust.  As it settled, the two specters coalesced into decidedly more human shapes.  One was a lanky, dark-haired man with playful green eyes.  His impeccably tailored suit hung off his frame with effortless casualness; black dress pants, a simple white shirt, and a permanently unbuttoned black sports jacket that swayed lightly in the aftermath of the destruction.  The other man flicked a lock of blonde hair from in front of his blue eyes.  At first—and last—glance, he spurned more subtle tastes of refinery, and was garbed simply in blue jeans and a black t-shirt.  Two black leather bands criss-crossed his chest, each bearing the two sheaths that peeked out from behind his shoulders.  Strapped at his hips were what appeared to be two automatic pistols, one a shining chrome, the other a dull gunmetal black.  The plainly garbed individual planted a single black combat boot on a particularly large chunk of debris, striking a pose.  He propped the unsharpened edge of his katana on one shoulder and grinned.

“Ho Lucy!  You got some ‘splainin’ to do!” the man lilted gleefully, his blue eyes flaring slightly before dying down to their customary glow.

“Phoenix.”  Nix stuffed Muramasa into its sheath on his back and turned to his companion.  Loki was rubbing his forehead with deliberate annoyance.  The god sighed, straightened his suit jacket, and met Nix’s confused gaze with his sharp green eyes.  “We’re going to have to work on your one-liners.  That was terrible.” Loki ran one hand through his short brown hair.  The excited murmur of distant, angry demons were a chittering annoyance, far removed from the pair for the moment.

“What?  We can’t all be vaunted ‘Old Gods’ with a clever tongue and a trick up our damn sleeve for every situation.”  Nix sulked.  “Honestly, what would you have done?  I just destroyed the gates to Hell, for fuck’s sake.”

“Yessss, and insodoing, thou hast doomed thy brethren to an eternity of demonic torment!” a bat-like demon growled as it scurried from behind him on all four of its leathery limbs, towards the open portal back to Earth.  Nix drew Umbra from its holster on his hip and shot the creature in the back of its head casually, not breaking his gaze with his immortal friend.  The nameless demon didn’t even twitch as its head exploded and it crumpled to the ground.

Instead of replying, Loki merely raised his index finger.  He walked calmly over to the statue of Celine Dion and flicked its considerable marble mass aside effortlessly, revealing the severely malformed face of Hell’s soon-to-be ex-gatekeeper.  Ignoring the rising shrieks of an increasingly infuriated demonic horde in the distance, he bent over and began addressing the shattered face of the demon.  

“Hello!” he chimed warmly.  What remained of Minos’s face gurgled out a non-committal response, shooting a small spray of his demonic innards through his malformed mouth as he desperately tried to expel air through his ruined features.  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I am a missionary with the Church of Latter Day Saints.” Minos’s viscera-gushing death throes took on a decidedly more annoyed tone, his one intact eye rolling wildly, desperately seeking escape.  “I was just wondering if you had heard the good news-”  The demon’s skull immediately exploded, splattering Loki’s face with no small amount of the demon’s brain.  The trickster god turned slowly towards Nix, who had nonchalantly leveled the smoking barrel of his black pistol at the smoldering crater that once housed the gatekeeper’s head.  Loki glared at his blonde-haired compatriot as he wiped the entrails from his face.

“What?” Nix asked innocently, deftly plucking a pack of smokes from one of his pockets and planting a cigarette firmly in his mouth.  His upturned hand immediately burst into a flaming talon, and he lit the tip with one of its burning claws.  He glanced back at Loki, who inwardly wished his hateful gaze might physically harm the blue-eyed human.  “I’m morally opposed to the practice of torture.”

Nix holstered his gun as the Norse god stood and summoned his own cigarette from his breast pocket.  He lit it on a nearby gout of flame that spewed from the defiled soil beneath them.

“Besides, I’d need to be wearing a suit for that joke to work.”

“Phoenix-”

“Oh, we could buy bikes!  Start riding them around to various dimensional pockets-”

“Phoenix-”

“-passing out pamphlets before we slaughter entire pantheons of immortals-”

“Phoenix!”

“Fine,” Nix groused.  “But one of these days you’re going to regret not having a totally cool bell on your pimpin’ missionary bike.”

Loki sighed, and drew deeply on his smoke.  Friend or not, he was beginning to wonder why he had agreed to tag along on the newbie’s crusade to destroy Hell.

“Cat got yer tongue?” Nix prodded.  “That’s a first, for you.”

“My thoughts are just absorbed in thinking up creative ways to punish you for your utter lack of tact.”

“Obviously.”

“Although you really should buy a suit.”

“I think a trench coat is more my speed,” Nix pointed out.

“You already carry around too many weapons.  A trench coat on top of that would just be...gaudy.  Maybe something a bit more subtle?”  Loki mulled over something for a second, before plucking a pair of sunglasses from his jacket pocket.  He tossed them to Nix.

“Really?  A trenchcoat is just oh-so-garish,” the human mocked, “but sunglasses, those’re okay.”  He donned the dark shades in spite of his protests.  

“Baby steps, Phoenix.  Baby steps.  You can’t become one-dimensional all at once if I’m to continue tolerating your presence.  Sunglasses now, and maybe later you can traipse around in a glorified cape without triggering my gag reflex.”

“Hmph, fair enough.”  The ground began to thunder under the charging feet of millions of demons as they crested a nearby rise in the landscape and hurtled towards the pair.  Nix eyed the horde lazily.  “So, blow ‘em up in one big fucking blast, or...?”

“Absolutely not,” his friend reprimanded.  “We should conserve our energy for Lucifer.  The Lord of Hell is...quite a bit beyond the foes you’re used to facing.”

Nix snorted.  “It’s not like I can die, anyway.”  The statement earned him a swat to the back of his head.

“I know you’re thick, but have you forgotten what will happen if you resurrect?  Sammael will trace the energy from the Source to you, you’ll get the lifeforce ripped out of you, and then we’re all fucked.  You die, the world dies.  Try and pay more attention to your elders next time, newbie.  It was bad enough when the Nazarene ignored our warnings,”  the trickster god grumbled angrily.  “Besides.” Loki paused, summoning a metal bo from thin air with a snap of his fingers.  He ran one hand distractedly along the intricate carvings on its black surface before focusing on Nix.  “Sometimes, a more personal touch is required.”  He twirled the weapon in the air before leveling it horizontally behind him, smiling maniacally at the charging mass of demons before them.  

Nix just shook his head and drew his two swords.  “I still don’t see the point. I can finish all these guys in seconds.”

“Yes, you’d be a big hit at quite a few Eastern European bathhouses.”

“I hate you.”  

Loki grinned and nudged Nix with his elbow.  “Come on, Phoenix.  It’ll be fun!” 

Hey.  Hey!  HEY!  


*     *     *     *     *


“HEY!” a purple unicorn screamed in his face.  He stared dumbly at Sparky, refocusing on the world around him.

“We kinda lost you for a second there, sport,” Lyra explained.

“I lost those sunglasses in space five hundred years ago,” he said gravely to no one in particular.

“That’s, uh, interesting?” the aquamarine unicorn offered, confusion furrowing her brow.  Nix’s head snapped up and turned towards the mare with a bright smile.

“In space, no one can hear you scream!” he exclaimed happily.

Lyra’s frown deepened.  “Yeah, uh...that’s certainly...something.”

“Actually,” Nix lectured glibly, “it’s nothing.  Utter bullshit.  This one time, I was orbiting a planet, and I blew it the fuck up.  Seriously, chunks of rock flinging out into dead space everywhere.  I totally heard billions of screams as they were flash fried by the atmosphere when I lit it up, or when the oxygen dispersed and they started to flash freeze.”  Nix paused, a finger placed thoughtfully on his chin.  “It was awfully quiet after that, though.”  

Lyra stared at him in shock for a moment.  “I’m- uh- I’m just g-gonna go over...over there.  Yeah, there.  Away,” she stammered out in a rush, before hopping off the bench and walking briskly down one of the park’s many dirt paths.

“G’bye!  It was nice meeting you!” Nix shouted cheerfully.  The light green mare tossed a panicked glance over her shoulder at him before picking up her pace.  Twilight, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Trixie all stared openly at him, horrified looks across their brightly colored faces.

“What are you doing?!” Twilight shouted at him, breaking the empty silence.

“Sparky!  Good news!  I made a friend!  Her name is Lyra!”  Childlike mirth seeped from his voice as his ice-blue eyes flared a bit brighter.

“Twah, what in the hay is wrong with him?”  Applejack whispered to her friend.  Nix had leapt off the bench and was skipping down the path towards Ponyville, his black leather trench coat billowing behind him gaily. Twilight merely turned her head slowly and stared soberly at the orange earth pony.

“Girls, we’ve...we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

> Chapter 13:  Just Dropping In
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“And this is the center of Ponyville, the town hall!”  Twilight chirped excitedly.  The human grunted apathetically in response.  The purple unicorn and her friends had caught up to him shortly after he had pranced into the town proper, and ceased his frolicking after noticing some of the locals shooting him approving smiles.  Nix had temporarily forgotten what sort of world he was in; he had immediately traded his joyous traverse for a jilted trudging.

Her friends, meanwhile, had all traded in their previous looks of confusion, fear, and distaste for openly saccharine ones of acceptance and happiness.  Except for the orange one with freckles.  From the corner of his eye, he occasionally caught her upturned mouth wavering before suddenly reforming, her eyes flickering suspiciously to either side.  And the blue one in the cape and wizard hat had an expression more closely akin to the glib satisfaction of a villain finally seeing their machinations come to fruition than one of warm joy.  He was gonna have a lot of fun with her.

“Hey, Hillbilly,” he said out of the blue, pointing in a random direction.  “What’s that building over there?”

“Ah, oh, err,” she gulped, attempting to slough off the effect of his sudden attention.  “That’d be Sugarcube Corner, sugarcube.  It’s where Pinkie works.”  She paused, pressing a hoof to her chin thoughtfully as she glanced upward and to the left.  “Now ah wonder where that mare has gotten herself off to?”

Nix abandoned his trudging and sauntered with surprisingly lithe grace over to the earth pony, his black duster swaying slightly, before he dropped into a slight crouch to match his face with hers.  His piercing, light blue eyes regarded the pony’s face solemnly from behind the few strands of straw-colored hair that draped across his vision.  Rainbow Dash and Rarity shared a small look–for quite different reasons, they both noticed the sudden change in his movements.  Rainbow felt herself coiling up, steeling her muscles for any sudden movement out of the human.  Rarity pondered putting him onto a walkway wearing the finest bipedal ensemble she was already in the process of thinking up.  

“You know,” he said softly, tilting his head.  Applejack’s nervous eyes met his in a few quick glances before finding something else to focus on.  “Lies work best when you meet the eyes of the puh-person you’re lying to.”

The orange mare suddenly focused her full attention on the human with a glower.  “Ah wasn’t lyin’!  Pinkie really does work thar!  Ah mean, lookit the darn thang!”  She swung an accusatory hoof towards the building. 

“That wasn’t what I was talking about,” he said, his eyes following the direction of her hoof.  “You know-”  The sight of what looked like a damned gingerbread house threw off his train of thought.  His mouth dropped in shock and mutely attempted to form words. The group fell into silence.  

“Uh, I don’t see what’s so special,” Rainbow finally uttered.  “I mean, yeah, it looks a bit weird, but-”

A small cloud of dust shot up where Nix had been crouched.  In an instant, he had covered the ten yards between Applejack and Rainbow Dash without anypony registering his movement.  He appeared right before the hovering pegasus, surprising her and causing her to instinctually shoot up both her hooves in a boxer’s stance.  He snaked his hands between her hoofs with sickening speed and grasped her cyan shoulders, shaking her roughly.

“Don’t you see, Scratchy?” he pleaded, his voice suddenly desperate.

“Scratchy?!” her voice scratched out in dismay before her brows began to crease in aggravation at the uninvited contact.

“Yes, Scratchy!” he interjected with a gruff whisper.  “It’s all so clear to me...”  

Rainbow Dash flicked Nix’s hands off her shoulders and crossed her hooves as she hovered over him, one of her eyebrows slowly raising in an implied query.  “Well?” she asked in a not-so implied manner.

The human’s arms dropped limply to his sides.  “I...I’m already dead.”

“Oh, dear, no!  If you were dead, you probably wouldn’t be moving,” Fluttershy offered helpfully with her softly subdued voice. “Unless you were a zompony-”

“AND THIS IS TARTARUS!” he interrupted with a shout.  Twilight abandoned all pretext of civility and began a grumbling, quiet self-oration about crazy primates and pleasing the Princess.  Nix simply continued.  “A candy coated, insufferable Hell, concocted as an eternal punishment for that one time I stole a lollipop from that kid that sat next to me in fourth grade!”

“That never happened,” Applejack pointed out plainly.

“Alright, maybe it didn’t, but I wouldn’t remember it anyway,” Nix retorted.  He jabbed a finger towards his blonde-haired temple.  “But it could ha-”

In Equestria, meteors are rare, far more rare than in other realities.  There was, of course, the annual Dancing of Souls night–newly reinstated after Princess Luna’s return–that entailed a prismatic shower of shooting stars glancing across the twinkling night sky in great, beautiful number to celebrate the passing of those lost.  Rarer still were the occasional feisty stars that took it upon themselves to cut an arc through the dark blue evening canvas after sensing particularly powerful emotions in the family and friends they left behind.  And yet more rare were the spaceborne chunks of rock and metal that escaped both princesses’ notice and burned up harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.

But by far, the most rare meteor was the live pony one.  In Equestrian history, there were only two recorded instances of this phenomenon.  ln the first instance, a certain white unicorn’s rocketing descent towards the ground was allayed in the second recorded occurrence of another phenomenon, the Sonic Rainboom.  The second instance–having just occurred a few seconds ago–involved a lime green unicorn impacting violently with a certain human’s chest from great height, and at great velocity.  

The two beings stared dumbly at each other from the crater of impact, neither immediately realizing either their situation, or the gravity of meteoric impacts upon Equestria.

“Sorry about that, Rib Dasher!” a grey pegasus called out from a few dozen yards overhead.  Her lazy eye bobbed nonchalantly beneath the straying hairs of her blonde mane.  “My hooves were thinking real hard about holding onto you, until they weren’t!”  Her head lolled to one side distractedly, and she floated off through the air, leaving the human-unicorn pair to their personal crater.

Nix rubbed his ribs dejectedly, slowly healing them, before his squinting eyes caught a pair of bright green irises through the cloud of dust.  A poisonous slug of a smile lurched slimily across his face in sudden recognition.  His sky-blue eyes glowed mischievously.

“My, my, Dancie, so forward,” Nix goaded.  “Although it’s nice of you to drop in.”

“No...no flying,” she whimpered out in a voice that even he had a difficult time hearing. The light green unicorn clutched at the human more tightly and buried her head in his shoulder.   His eyes widened in temporary shock before he refocused himself on the task at hand–making Ridge Dancer feel ten times more awkward than she ever had in her life.

“Dancie-”

“She just landed on the train and I thought she could get me back to Ponyville-”

“Dancie-”

“-but there were clouds and the spinning and-”

“Dancie-”

“And the muffins.  Oh my Goddess, the muffins!”  Ridge Dancer mewled and buried her head deeper into the human’s shoulder as her eyes scrunched up more.

“Dancie, do you mind, uh, pulling your damn horn out of my collarbone?” the human asked finally.  Her eyes shot open and she jerked her head back.


*     *     *     *     *


“Did you see that?!  She was all fwoosh through the air, then she tackled him and stabbed him in the shoulder!”

“Shhh, Scootaloo!  We’ll get caught!”  Applebloom hissed in a whisper to the light orange pegasus before peeking her head above the bush that she and her two friends had hid behind.  

News about an alien coming to Ponyville had made an overnight splash in the small town, most of which had turned out onto the train platform to greet his arrival.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders were no exception, and had even happily gone to bed early the night before–to the great shock of their assorted siblings and parents–so that they could be there for the train that bore him to the tiny village.  

Saw him, they did.  Sweetie Belle had commented that he seemed really scary, but it was Scootaloo who suggested that he might actually be Evil, with a capital ‘E’.  One idea flowed into another as they chatted excitedly about it; however, Applebloom beamed with no small amount of pride over coming up with the idea to get their cutie marks in alien hunting (just in case the alien actually was Evil with a capital ‘E’).

They had thus been shadowing the weird creature and the group of five friends–plus Trixie, who Applebloom was fairly certain didn’t count–for the entire day as it stretched on into the late afternoon.  This led them to their current spying.

“Maybe we can-” Sweetie Belle started, before lowering her voice to a whisper, “Maybe we can ask the orange-maned unicorn about alien hunting?”

“Ah dunno, Sweetie Bell.  She doesn’t really look all that ‘cool’ right now...”  Applebloom muttered.  The alien was currently chasing the bright green unicorn around the plaza, shouting wildly.

“Just hold the Hell still, Dancie!” it bellowed loudly.

“I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!” she screeched desperately.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, I’m just gonna wipe the blood off your horn!  It’ll freak out the damn locals!  And that’s my job, so hold the fuck still!”

“Nonononono don’t touch my horn!”

The girls watched in amazement as the alien suddenly became a streaking blur, shooting up puffs of dust at his feet as he overtook the unicorn and grabbed her head.  

“It’s fast!” Applebloom whispered harshly.  She was beginning to have doubts about a career in alien-hunting.

“Psh, no way,” the pegasus filly said dismissively.  “I bet Rainbow Dash is way faster than that thing is.”

“You would say thaht,” the earth filly retorted flatly.

“Uh, what is it doing to her?”  Sweetie Belle suddenly squeaked.  The three fillies snapped back to attention.  

The alien had the unicorn in a headlock, and was straining to clean her horn off with the end of his shirt while grunting at her to hold the Hell still.  Applebloom briefly wondered just what “the Hell” was and how one would go about holding it down, before dismissing the thought as something only aliens knew about.  Instead, she remembered something else.

“Ah think ah’ve seen somethin’ like that before.”  Her two friends looked at her questioningly.  “Mah sister has a coupla picture books she keeps under her bed, and it’s got some stallions doin’ thaht to unicorn mares and some such.”

“I could ask Rarity about it later?”  Sweetie Belle offered helpfully before returning her attention to the alien and its prey.  A dark green aura enveloped the lime mare’s horn.

“Meh, whatever.”  Scootaloo’s mouth quirked into a frown.  “And she isn’t a very good alien hunter.  Guess she’s not so cool after all.”

“Don’t.  Touch.  MY HORN!” the unicorn shouted as her telekinetic aura suddenly surrounded the alien.  The creature shot like a bullet through the air, it’s odd black cape flailing crazily behind it, before it slammed into a nearby vendor cart.  It was thankfully unoccupied, as the cart exploded violently into a shower of wooden splinters upon the alien’s impact.

“Oooh!” the three fillies cooed in unified awe as their eyes widened.

“That.  Was.  AWESOME!”  Scootaloo screeched as she jumped out of the bushes.  Applebloom shared a glance with Sweetie Belle before they both hauled off after their friend, towards the incredible alien-slaying mare.


*     *     *     *     *


Twilight’s mouth worked soundlessly, flexing crimson cheeks, as she suddenly looked away from Nix and the green unicorn.  She had easily deduced that ‘Dancie’ was one of the two Royal Guards identified as stewards for the human in Celestia’s letter, based off of the human’s familiarity with the mare.  What she hadn’t been prepared for was, well, the human’s familiarity with the mare.  He was currently doing something to Ridge Dancer’s horn that quite a few of her romance novels failed to openly describe on their circuitous path to subtly hinting about.  Even Trixie seemed aghast about the human’s ‘showmareship’.  A brief glance to her friends confirmed that they shared her embarrassment.   Well, all except for one of her friends.

Rainbow’s chest shuddered violently as she began to snicker.  The fit quickly morphed into a full-blown seizure of laughter as the multihued-maned pegasus collapsed to the ground, clutching her stomach.  

“Man...he...” she wheezed out in between fits of mirth.  “He really doesn’t...haha...know anything...snfff...does he?!”  The blue mare shortly abandoned all attempts at further communication and submitted herself wholly to the maniacal fit of giggling.  Twilight merely frowned down at her friend.

She was interrupted from her short pedestal of righteous reproach by the very loud sound of someone’s personal property being destroyed.  Twilight jerked her head towards the noise.  A pair of denim blue leggings poked out from underneath a pile of wooden debris and the cloud of dust that had once been somepony’s livelihood.  She sighed loudly to herself, even as she was inwardly thankful that Princess Celestia had gifted her a surplus to her monthly stipend to ‘offset the cost of Phoenix’s intractability, and keep the Royal Accountants on the tips of their hooves’.  Even still, she now had to explain to some innocent pony that their personal property was destroyed by an interdimensional traveler under her charge.  She frowned temporarily before her lips quickly morphed into a thoughtful purse.  She could at least leave out the “how” and “why” and spare herself some embarrassment.  

Her thoughts were dashed viciously by the terrifyingly familiar sound of a shrieking trill.

’Oh.  Oh, no.  Not them.  Not-’  Reality crushed the lavender unicorn’s hopes with cruel efficiency as three small fillies burst out of a nearby bush and sprinted towards the lime green unicorn in the center of the plaza–Ridge Dancer, Twilight corrected herself, remembering the mare’s name from her time in Canterlot.

The fiery-maned unicorn looked taken aback by the three squeaking blurs as they bounced around her, peppering her with an endless, incoherent babble of lightning fast questions.  One of her forehooves lifted itself timidly as she shied back in confusion, her emerald eyes flitting between the flurry of fillies with growing panic.

“Girls,” a soft voice called out, “I think, uh, maybe you should calm down a little.”  The eyes of the three fillies widened considerably, and they immediately zipped away from Ridge Dancer before sitting obediently before Fluttershy.    

“Yes’m,” snapped Applebloom with a tone of sharp discipline.

Twilight shot her friend a grateful look, earning her a shy smile from the yellow pegasus.  Rarity and Applejack canted forward slightly.  

“Come on now, girls.  Ah think it’s high time we got you fillies home,” the orange earth pony stated.

“Yes, Sweetie Belle.  Even if you were given the day off of school, I greatly doubt you’ve had time to complete your homework, what with you following us around all day.”  A knowing smirk graced Rarity’s pale lips.

“Aww, do we hafta?”  Applebloom whined.

“Yes!” Rarity and Applejack snapped in unison.  The orange mare turned momentarily to Twilight and uttered in a hoarse whisper, “We’ll be back later, fer thaht thing at thaht place.”  She punctuated the sentence with an exaggerated wink.  Twilight suppressed a wry smile.

“Fine,” Sweetie Belle muttered dejectedly.  

As the four headed off, Scootaloo glanced furtively to her right and left, trying to avoid notice.  Her emotions ultimately betrayed her as her gaze eventually met a pair of violet irises beneath a multicolored mane.

“Hey, don’t look at me, kid,”  Rainbow Dash said with a grin.  “As cool as you are and as much as I like ya’, this Nix guy is way too funny.  No way am I gonna miss a second of his screw-ups.”  Scootaloo pouted, summoning a conciliatory smile from her idol.  “Hey now,” Dash comforted, “that look is so totally not awesome I may just have to hang out with you all day tomorrow to show you how coolness is really done.”

“You mean it?!”  Scootaloo beamed.

“Sure thing, squirt.  Wouldn’t miss it for the world, even if there is an alien invasion.”  She playfully ruffled Scootaloo’s magenta mane with one hoof.

Rarity paused before the corner of a side street and swung her head over her shoulder.  “Come along, Scootaloo.  Your parents’ house is on the way to my old home.”  Scootaloo spared Rainbow one more shining grin and a gleeful flutter of her wings before romping off after the keening white unicorn.

“And you can tell us about unicorn horns on the way!”  Sweetie Belle chirped excitedly.  Rarity nearly tripped over her own hooves.  Twilight heard grumbled muttering, something about “when you’re older”, before the trio rounded the corner.  She turned back to the green unicorn in the center of the plaza.  


*     *      *      *      *


”Conserve energy, you said.  It’ll be fun, you said,” Nix complained as he continued flashing his blades mindlessly in front of him.  The glint of their repeated slashes formed a steady half-sphere of silvery, arching whips lashing haphazardly through the air before the human.  An endless throng of demons threw themselves at the human blender with reckless abandon.  A veritable cornucopia of severed demon limbs littered the ground at his feet.  He considered pushing out of the narrow ravine that harbored him and Loki so the damned things he was cutting could at least flank him, giving him something to dodge to allay his boredom.

“You’re doing great, newbie!” Loki called out from behind him.  He was leaning on his bo staff, a bemused look on his face as he took intermittent puffs on his cigarette.  “One thousand demons down, about a hundred and thirty million to go!”

“You’re not even helping!”

“I’m on break,” the god said simply.  “Labor laws, and such.”

“Stop screwing around!”  

“Hey, your mother came to me.”

“And yours came on top of me.  That’s not the point!”

“Ooh, ouch.”  Loki faked a wince.  “Point one for the combustible birdy.”

“I’m fucking serious, Loki, we have a mission!”  The throng of demons were slowly pressing Nix back as he swiped his swords with increasing speed.  The unending onslaught of the defiled beings was less a factor in Nix’s slow retreat than the growing pile of bodies at his feet.  Demon corpses smelled bad.  Really bad.  The demons had to crawl over a heaping levee of their own dead to even get at him, but the human was still slowly backing away from the growing stench.

“Not even I’m crazy enough to defy labor laws.  Have you ever even met a government lawyer before?”

“Loki-”

“They’re like skinwalkers, only they absorb your soul through paper forms and fine print-”

“Loki-”

“And don’t even get me started on wage garnishment.  Do you know how little gods make-”

“Motherfucking goddammit Loki!”  

“We are one,” a dark voice intoned.  It didn’t so much speak as it did buzz through Loki’s and Nix’s skulls, like flies circling rotting meat.  “We are many.  We are-”

“WE KNOW!” the two of them shouted, exasperated.  The damn thing had been tooting its own horn for the last half hour or so.

At the outburst, Nix’s swinging swords slowed, and a miraculously unamputed demonic limb found its way through his blows and caught him squarely in the face.  The inhuman force behind the strike sent him sailing backwards as his rudely dislodged sunglasses arced high through the air.  He rolled backwards and planted both his swords into the blackened rock beneath his feet to slow his reversed momentum.  Bright sparks shot out from his swords’ marriage to the ground below as he continued sliding backwards.  Loki’s pale hand–poking out of a curiously well-tailored black sleeve–caught his shoulder and immediately stopped him.  Nix remained crouched, swords buried half deep in the earth.

He glared at the demons, taking particular note of the darkly tinted eyepieces soaring high in the air towards him.  “Those motherfuckers knocked off my sunglasses.”

Loki’s opposite hand gently planted itself on his other shoulder, and the god lifted his face somberly to the reddened sky.  “Oh, Lord, please heal this fashion emergency,” he said sarcastically.

“That’s it,” the human declared, his knuckles whitening around the hilts of the half-buried weapons before him.  His eyes became a furnace of multihued flames, flicking rapidly from red to orange, yellow, white, and finally blue.  He quickly swept the blades through the ground at his sides, the tips of the weapons finally escaping the surface a meter behind him.  The wound they dealt the ruined earth ruptured in a circle around him and his immortal friend, releasing a flickering blue light from the circular fissure at their feet.  His eyes sparked more brightly and burning wings erupted from his shoulders with a glaring flare as he drew his swords up and stabbed them violently into the earth.  

The glowing light of the carved circle tremored momentarily before shooting upwards into the sky, barely missing the pair of floating sunglasses as they passed the threshold of the outburst of energy.  In the blink of an eye, the ravine housing Nix and Loki began to crumble before the light blue energy exploded outward.  The ravine, and the horde of demons closing on the pair, simply evaporated.  The light spread from the epicenter with unimaginable speed, tearing mountains of rock from the soil below at its passage and hurling their gargantuan masses high into the air with sickening ease.  Those demons not immediately turned to ash by the explosion of light found their innards immediately liquified by the cacophonous shockwave that followed shortly thereafter.  

As the light dissipated, the human casually sheathed his swords.  The twisted earth beneath his feet shuddered from the impact of trillions of tons of rock slamming back into the ground.  As the tremors settled, he lazily tossed a hand behind him, the appendage swirling through the surrounding dust and catching his sunglasses as their downward trajectory passed his waist on their way to the ground.  Nix brought the dark glasses slowly up to his face.  He was then interrupted from the horrors of thinking up a witty one-liner by the slow clap of a certain intolerable Norse god of trickery.

“Bravo, Phoenix!  Bravo!”  Loki clapped him on the shoulder.  “But, why didn’t you do that to begin with?”

“You said to conserve our energy and-” Nix cut himself off.  The god merely pointed at his own chest and shrugged, a very wide grin planted across his face.  “Oh, fuck you, Loki.”

“Wait, were you really gonna cut through a hundred million demons by hand?”

“Fuck you.”

“Just swing your blades around until everything died a few thousand years from now?”

“I’ll swing my blades around until you die.”

“Is that you offering to flail your tiny ‘blade’ around until I die a little death?”  The god winked.

“Fu-” Nix stuttered.  “I hate you.”  Even still, his lips fought the urge to curl upwards at their corners.  He’d be the first person to admit that Loki was a bastard, maybe even a bigger prick than he was.  But he’d also be the first person to leap to the god’s defense.  He barely even noticed that his face had lost the battle against his futile stoicism as he grinned openly at the old Norse god, his friend, before he gave a rueful shake of his head and began to turn around.

He was abruptly, forcibly shoved to the side by said friend without warning, and skipped a few dozen yards across the blackened glass soil before coming to a rest.

“Loki, what the fuck?!”  Nix stood angrily and turned back towards the god.


*     *     *     *     *


Darkness.  And splinters.  Darkness and splinters.  Nix groaned, more out of annoyance than from physical damage.  Closing his eyes exasperatedly, he tested his lifeforce, and found the meager trickle had recovered from his morning display.  He spat a short curse over his lack of power before channeling his lifeforce.  Fire immediately consumed his entire body, burning to ash the numerous shards of wood that had pierced him.  White licks of flame immediately danced around his wounds as he shot a fist through the quickly burning debris that covered him.  Blackened chunks of wood exploded outward from his blow, and he stood slowly amidst the pyre of the ruined cart in the dying orange light of the imminent sunset.  

His eyes glowed with a harsh blue light as dark orange wings burst from his shoulders.  “I am Phoenix, and it will take more than weak attacks to stop one such as me!” he shouted, channeling his inner energy through his voice in the best façade of the Royal Canterlot Voice he could manage.  “And also, you ruined another one of my shirts,” he added quickly in the same booming tone.  His wings disappeared and the glow in his blue eyes retreated from a wild spark to a meager flicker.  He gazed disgustedly at the bonfire around him, and with a flick of his wrist the flames immediately winked out.  He turned his attention to Dancie, who was standing in the center of the plaza with Sparky.  The two looked at him like they had been caught with their hoof in the cookie jar.

“Seriously, Dancie,” he said in his normal voice, splaying his arms widely.  “What the fuck?”

“I-I’m sorry!” she whimpered, looking away and pawing one hoof at the ground.  A lock of her deep orange hair fell over her eyes as she awkwardly examined the granules of dust at her feet.  Nix merely sighed.

“Whatever, at least it wasn’t marble this time,” the human said with a dismissive wave of his hand–Dancie winced–before snapping his fingers.  Ten canary yellow shirts, encrusted with jewels, appeared in the air above him and began to fall.  His eyes widened.

“Agh, Demon Fashion!” he exclaimed.  “Kill it with me!”  His fiery, dark orange wings immediately burst from his shoulders again, and every airborne product of posh, primrose polyester paused perilously in place for a second before their cloth turned to ash.  The multitude of gems previously embedded in the fabric of the awful things clattered dully to the earth below.  Twilight suppressed a grimace over the death of her first, and last, foray into interspecies fashion design.

Nix, meanwhile, focused on his clenched hand.  The skin of his thumb and his middle finger whitened as they pressed against each other with unimaginable force, and he stared intently at the pair of digits as he focused sharply.  He grinned in sudden victory, and the coiled spring of their mutual pressure finally sprung; a loud snap! rang out across the center plaza of Ponyville.  

Nothing happened.

Nix’s pleasure evaporated, and he palmed his forehead.


*     *     *     *      *


“Remember, your heart is still in a delicate condition.  Don’t do much to strain yourself,” the Canterlot Hospital doctor admonished.  

“But ohv course, doctor.  I weell do no such ting,” she intoned soberly, raising a glass of cranberry juice to her lips.  Shortly before the liquid met her lips, the dark red juice swirled into a deep black and began steaming.  She swallowed a mouthful of the new fluid hungrily before her eyes shot open widely.  The strange drink tasted oddly familiar, scalding as it was.

“Sacrebleu,” she muttered miserably; the motion of her hooves clutching her pained chest summoned a sense of deja vu from the orange-coated serving mare.  Her heart monitor started chirping excitedly as the doctor’s eyes widened.


*     *      *      *      *


“Fuck it.”  Nix surrendered to his nature, and forcibly ripped a wormhole to his pocket dimension.  The sun dipped perilously on the horizon before righting itself as a black bundle of cloth winked into existence before him.  He snatched it out of the air, removing his dark grey trench coat and hanging it off of Dancie’s horn.  A furious glower appeared on her face before she stamped down the urge to introduce the human to the myriad mineral veins that ran deep below Ponyville’s surface.  Nix quickly traded out his singed top for the newly summoned one before tossing the burnt shirt aside and plucking his duster off of Dancie’s face.  

“Thanks, coat-rack,” he muttered before turning to Twilight.  “So, next stop is the field where you all go cow-tipping to allay your boredom?”

“Oh, no.” Fluttershy summoned the words from the depth of her very shallow pool of courage.  “That was outlawed centuries ago so our bovine friends could get some sleep.”  She smiled up at the human, who simply stared blankly at her.

A knowing smirk appeared on Twilight Sparkle’s face.  “No, I think it’s time to show you to the library-”

“I hate reading.”

“-where you’ll be staying until you find your own place.”  Twilight paused.  “Hopefully sooner rather than later,” she groused inaudibly.

Nix lit up a smoke.  “Fine.  Lead the way, Sparky.”
> Chapter 14:  In Vino Veritas
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“It’s a tree.”  The human blinked.

Twilight steeled herself for Nix’s next puerile outburst.  Her psychological bastion was assailed by silence.  After a few seconds, she peeked at the human cautiously; he now seemed torn between the library before him and some old, rotting, broken thing he had come to consider a memory.  The early Fall sun had begun to set, its orange light bathing the yellowing leaves of her home and making them shimmer a wild gold as they wavered in the slight breeze.

“That’s actually kinda cool,” he said finally.

“Cool?  Pfft, please, I live in a house made out of friggin’ clouds.”  Nix leveled a flat stare at Rainbow Dash.  

“I was always more fond of Yggdrasil than Olympus,” he said.  “The former’s gods were more awesome and less prone to bestiality.”

“Bees-chee-what?” the pegasus asked.

“You don’t wanna know,” Nix replied in unison with Twilight.  They shared a short glance.  “Anyway, this is no Yggdrasil, but it’ll do.”

“Until you get your own place,” Twilight added in a rush, before wincing at her own words.

“Yeah, trust me, I’m not any more fond of this arrangement than you are,” Nix replied dryly.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant-” she said rapidly.

“Sure it is.”  He grinned down at the purple unicorn.  “And it’s one of the most agreeable things you’ve said since I got here.  Keep it up and we’ll be the bestest buds in no time at all!”  He pinched her cheek and shook it like her Great Aunt Gertie used to do when she visited the family in Canterlot.  His fingers were thankfully softer than a pair of hooves, but Twilight still shot the human an annoyed look.  His painful pincers released her face and he motioned towards the door.  “Shall we?”

Nix followed the group into the suspiciously darkened interior.  Bright lights immediately flared and a barrage of gaily colored paper assaulted the airspace of the room around him.

“SURPRISE!!!”  said a curiously small amount of ponies.  He stared blankly at them, most of his drab focus on the manic-maned pink pony in the conical party hat that formed their vanguard.  He had been afraid of this.

“Oh.  My.  I am so surprised,” he droned robotically.  “Who could have guessed.  That Ms. Pinkamena would throw me a party.  After she said she was going to in Canterplot.”  He turned back towards the exit.

“Wait!” a sweet voice rent with turbulent ravines of maniacal glee demanded.  Nix’s shoulders’ slumped, but he continued walking.  “I remembered what the letter we got from Princess Celestia said about worlds going boom!, and alcohol, and then I was worried about how Gummy might adjust to me being gone if I exploded with the rest of the world!”  Nix began to step outside.  “So I brought booze,”  the voice concluded plainly.  He spun on his heel and turned back towards Ms. Pinkamena, who sat near the center of the room next to a large table, its oddly shaped contents hidden by a tablecloth she had draped over the setting.  

“Lots of booze,” she lilted slyly as she whipped the tablecloth to the side with the flourish of a bullfighter facing their imminent death, and wanting to make the best show out of things.  A hundred different bottles of different shapes and different sizes, each containing a fluid of slightly different colors, glinted and glared brightly as the dying day’s sun flared through the alcoholic beverages from the window.

A keening mewl escaped Nix’s slightly parted lips.  It was the sound that a colt or filly might make after their first day of school, having been finally reunited with the warm embrace of their mother after a torturous eternity.  Nix’s lower lip trembled slightly.

“I could...” he stuttered in a voice several octaves above his normal register.  “I could hug you!”  He flung his arms out widely and began barreling towards the pink pony.  

“I love hugs!” Pinkie squeaked, taken suddenly by the throes of friendship.  Her deceptively powerful hind legs coiled before she shot through the air in a blur.  She spread her arms wide and aimed at the imaginary bullseye in the center of the human’s chest.  She gave the best hugs, and this one was gonna be a doozy!

A moment before she made contact and wrapped her pink hooves around Mr. Nixxie in a warm embrace, the human seemed to shimmer like the horizon of an arid desert before disappearing.  Pinkie sailed right through where Nix should have been and impacted with the back of the couch in the library’s main entry hall.

Nix’s body refocused right before the alcohol, and he wrapped his long arms around the large assortment of beverages on the table.  They greeted his warm embrace with cheerful tinkling as he gathered them together in his longing hug.  He snuggled his cheek softly against one of the cool glass bottles, and smiled.  “I missed you all so much.”  He gingerly let the bottles settle, before quickly plucking out one that contained a clear liquid.  Its label read ‘Stolichlion’—it was apparently an import from the griffin lands, a place called Pawland.  His other hand shot out randomly towards another clear bottle of liquid, and returned with a drink called ‘Ketel Fun’.  Both were vodkas. 

Pinkie Pie stood up, a little woozy, before she shook her head and grinned widely at the human.  “Couches need hugs, too!” she pointed out happily.

“Pinkie...” Twilight had a frown on her face as she examined the liver-destroying quantity of alcohol spread across the table.  “How did you even get all of this?  You can’t even legally purchase it for another year.”

“Ah,” a voice interjected, with a slight cough.  A mint-colored unicorn stepped forward from the background, a white streak of hair hanging loosely over one of her golden eyes.  “I may have purchased them for Pinkie Pie after I felt bad about ditching you guys in the park.”  Her gilded eyes examined the ground at her hooves sheepishly.

“You!”  Nix cried.  A multitude of bottles jostled in his left arm arm even as he fought to unscrew the cap of Ketel Fun in the other.  “Ms. Lyre-unicorn-thingy!”

“Lyra works, too.”

“So does Ms. Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy, but I digress.”  Nix paused for a second, having finally liberated the cap from the bottle of vodka.  He drew heavily from the bottle, a bit of the clear liquid escaping the prison of his lips and dripping down his chin.  He withdrew the bottle and wiped the stream off his face with the same arm, before shooting an affectionate gaze at the multitude of bottles cradled in his other arm.  “You,” he started, smiling widely, “are a goddess among horse-aliens.” 

“Oh, you charmer, you.”  She chuckled flatly.  “I suppose I’ve spared my kind the unfortunate fate of screaming to death as their world explodes?”

“That depends,” Nix said, his eyes narrowing.  “Who paid for all this?”

“The Princesses did!” Pinkie cheered.

Nix stared soberly at Lyra—it was one of the last sober looks that painted his features that night.  “You,” he intoned gravely, “are the savior of your world.  Goddess-speed, Lyre-”

“Lyra.”

“-whatever.”  

Twilight’s brows furrowed.  “Wait, the princesses paid for this?  How?”


“Oh, silly,” Pinkie chirped in a patronizing tone that nopony ever actually felt was actually patronizing, “I borrowed the money from the package Princess Celestia sent to Nix!”


“Wait, so this all came out of my pocket?” Nix asked.  “Sorry, Minty.  World destruction’s back on.  Ain’t no one mess wit’ mah paper, yo.”


“I’m gonna pretend I understood that,” the unicorn responded.

Nix frowned sadly.  “Yeah, me too.  I was never one of the cool kids.  Or retarded.”

“Would you two be quiet!” Twilight groused.  Nix held his arms up in surrender—the bottles he had under one arm clattered to the floor, all miraculously unbroken—and waved his hands around in mock indignation.  He had kept a vice grip on the open bottle of vodka.  The violet unicorn turned back to her pink friend as the human took another long drink.  “Pinkie Pie, that was so he could find a place to stay,” she lectured.  

Nix stood behind the purple mare and pantomimed her words with one flapping hand, his head bobbing side to side as his mouth downturned in an exaggerated grimace.  Pinkie suppressed her case of giggles.  Which is to say she only snorted a little bit while giggling openly.  Twilight’s voice dropped suddenly to a harsh whisper.  “You know, so that way the grumpy, fire-obsessed alien would have to spend as little time as possible in the big flammable tree around a thousand volumes of highly valuable tinder?!”  She turned her head sharply to look at the human.  He had an innocent smile on his face, his raised hand waving absentmindedly to her before he rested it thoughtfully on his chin.

“I think I’ll set the philosophy section, authors T through Z, on fire first,” Nix stated mildly before taking another draw on his bottle.  “To show that Voltmaire fucker the best of all possible worlds.”

“Don’t worry, Twi,” Pinkie said.  “I already asked around town and found him a place to stay with the left over money.”

“Oh,” Twilight replied, taken aback.  “That was remarkably responsible of you...”

“It’s in the Everfree Forest!” Pinkie chirped contentedly.

Twilight’s face sank.  Nix proffered her his now half-empty bottle of Ketel Fun.  “It’ll take the edge off, Sparky!” he said with a grin.  She scowled at him and slowly pushed his hand away with a hoof.  “What?  It’s not like you’ll catch a disease from me, and there’s only a little backwash.”

“I don’t drink.”

Nix scowled back at her.  “Well, if we’re supposed to make ‘friends’,” he made air-quotes with his hands before he continued, “you had best acquaint yourself with the magical friend-making powers of alcohol.”  He shoved the bottle back at her.

“How can you even get drunk?” she asked.  “You’ve regenerated from having your skeletal system pulverized by the Royal Canterlot Voice and your entire right side being incinerated in a blast that destroyed almost an entire wing of the castle.  The metabolic processes involved when ethanol is consumed by a mammal shouldn’t even come close to affecting you.”

“Same way I could die from a cup of Cakebeard’s coffee when other grievous injuries saw me still breathing,” Nix replied simply.  “I suppress regenerative effects when it comes to drinking stuff so I can get drunk.  Now’re you gonna take a swig or not?”

“Maybe later,” she replied doubtfully.  Nix’s frown deepened and he narrowed his eyes.  He withdrew the bottle in defensive reproach.

“Uhm, I’ll be okay to try that...if it’s okay with you?”  Fluttershy managed to whisper out.  “I’ve never drank before, but if I need to so we can be friends...”  She offered the human a conciliatory smile in lieu of finishing her sentence.

“Knock yourself out, Bob.”  He passed the bottle to her outstretched hoof.  She sniffed at the vodka, wrinkling her nose a bit, before a look of determination came across her face.  She took a dainty sip.  Her mouth immediately twisted in dissatisfaction as she hurriedly passed the bottle back to Nix’s hairless hand.

“It tastes awfu-”  She didn’t finish her sentence before her face slammed into the ground.  She began snoring softly.  Nix gave the yellow pegasus a rueful smile before suddenly smoothing his features.  

“Five minutes in and already the first casualty-”

“Casualty?!” Twilight cried before rushing over to check Fluttershy’s pulse.

“-of the night.  S’not looking good, Ms. Pinkamena,” he said to Pinkie.  He pushed Twilight aside and tossed Fluttershy over his shoulder.  “Ladies,” he said with a mock curtsy before walking over to the nearby couch and laying the pink-maned pegasus gently on Pinkie’s immobile hug-buddy.

“No worries, Nixxie!  My party has yet to even begin fighting!”

“So long as you keep the alcohol running, I could give a fu-”

“Maybe a little music!”  Pinkie’s grin extended beyond the boundaries of her face as she zipped behind a platform in the corner of the room.  In a second, she had summoned a pair of very large speakers and a turntable on the stage from somewhere beyond Nix’s ken.  ’One of these days I’m gonna figure out how she does that,’ he thought.  Pinkie smiled with a glowing sense of self-satisfaction.

“Uh, and?”  Nix stared at the manic earth pony.

The pink mare’s eyes popped open.  “Oh, I almost forgot!”  She disappeared behind the turntables, only to appear a second later with a white unicorn.  Magenta shades hung casually on the bridge of the unicorn’s nose, and her multi-shaded blue mane shot wildly from the crown of her snow-white head.  A pair of deep purple headphones hung loosely around her neck.  Her head swung around in confusion before she raised a hoof to her goggles and brought them down a few degrees.  Crimson irises peeked out from over top their edges as she flicked her eyes around nervously.  

“Uh, what?” the unicorn said finally.  “Where am I?”

“Hi!”  Pinkie squeaked.

The unicorn gave the excited mare a surprised look, before her features hardened and she slowly nudged her shades up over her eyes.  “Oh, it’s you,” she said dully.  “Same deal?”

“Yeppers!”

“Fine.”  Her motions sluggish with regret, she brought out a few brightly colored sleeves of vinyl records and placed two of them on her turntable.  She didn’t bother donning her headphones, she just hit a switch and cringed a little as saccharine song seeped from her stage.  She sighed and leaned back, crossing her hooves and willing herself to tolerate the music as its sickening sweetness spilled out into the room.  Nix frowned, looking first at his bottle of vodka, then to Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy.  Her glimmering eyes tore themselves away from the horror that was unfolding before them to meet his own.  They pleaded desperately.  Nix took a long swig from his bottle, before passing it to the mint green unicorn.

“It helps,” he said simply.

“Maybe after you’ve had enough to black out,” she muttered, shooting a longing gaze at the golden lyre on her flank.


*     *     *     *     *


An hour later, Nix was beginning to wish he had a hundred bottles of princess coffee as his ability to tolerate the bland melodies began to wane.  Hillbilly and Snob had arrived not too long ago, a bit after the sun had set.  He, of course, ignored them.  He was too preoccupied with trading off various bottles of liver-slaying liquid with Ms. Minty-Lyre.  The human and the unicorn shared a drunken slouch on the couch in the entryway; they stared catatonically into the distance and desperately downed the hard drink to drown the dancing din in the room behind them.  Fluttershy still snored peacefully, lying between them.  The ponies behind them continued their celebration to the tune of everything awful emanating from the room’s speakers.  

Nix hated them.

A pink blur materialized in front of his face.  “Hiya Nixxie!  Are you having fun?!  I hope so because I threw this party just for you and it would be terribadful if you weren’t and then I would have failed my Cutie Mark and that would make me sad and I’d probably have a mental breakdown and start having tea parties with inanimate objects again and mmmmffhhar hfhafffffmmmmmhhmm-”  Nix’s hand closed around the pink pony’s snout.  

“Hey, Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy, two hundred ccs of happy juice, stat.”  He reached a beckoning hand over the sleeping pegasus while looking boredly at Ms. Pinkamena; her lips protruded from his clenched fist, opening and closing like the mouth of a beached fish.  Her blue eyes glittered with amusement.  After a few seconds, his drinking hand remained empty.  “Uh, Lyre-Horse?”  He looked over at his equine drinking buddy and found her curled up next to Fluttershy, her hooves wrapped around the bottle of what Nix could only assume was supposed to be whiskey.  He frowned in aggravation and made to snatch the bottle from the mare before his hand stopped in midair.  Not even he was cruel enough to rouse the mare back to this...this Hell.

“Mmmmffmf!  MMMMFHMFFF!” Ms. Pinkamena’s fish-lips squirmed against his fingers.  He released her mouth.  She took a deep breath of air and raised her head.  Right before she could let out a shout, Nix’s hand imprisoned her mouth again and her lips flapped and squeaked like a balloon releasing air.  He held a finger to his lips before jutting a thumb at the two sleeping mares on the couch.  Her eyes widened and she nodded slowly.  

He released her again.  She took a deep, gasping breath again.  And whispered softly in his ear, “This is my jam,” before disappearing around the edge of the couch—nearly colliding with Ridge Dancer as she did so—and joining the main throng of the party.  Nix tried to differentiate this newest song with the ones that preceded it, and failed.  Tinny drums, cheerfully cheap synths in the melody of major, the works.  At least the party ponies hadn’t broken out in song themselves.  He gave up and looked at the lime green unicorn curled up next to the couch.

“Finally get tired of the party, Dancie?”

“I-I’ve been here the entire time,” she stuttered.  

“Oh, I guess I didn’t see you there.  Really, the entire time?”  Ridge Dancer’s face wilted and she drooped her head.

“I’m not very noticeable, am I?” she asked after an awkward silence.

“Not particularly.  But that’s not a bad trait to have,”  Nix said sympathetically.  The unicorn looked up at him curiously.  “Ponies don’t pay attention to you, so they never see the carriage-sized hunk of marble you’re hurling at their faces.  You’re like stealth artillery, Dancie!”  The mare rolled her deep green eyes at the human before bowing her head dejectedly again.

“I just...don’t do well in large groups, that’s all.”  She sighed.  

“That’s okay, Dancie.  You have a condition.”

“I do?!”

“Yes,” the human intoned gravely.  “You’re what we in the medical field like to call a ‘goddamn dullard’.”  The light green unicorn gave the human a withering glare.  “But not to worry!  We can fix this.”  He dug through a pile of bottles on the coffee table in front of him, knocking half of them to the ground loudly, before he retrieved a miraculously unopened specimen of high quality alcohol.  He gazed seriously at the unicorn guardpony.  “Take two bottles of these and call me after the hangover.”

“But, I’m on duty and-”

“Shut up and drink the damn swill, Dancie.”

She gazed up at the human with glistening eyes.  “You really- you really think this will help, Phoenix?”

“Yes.  Now stop asking questions and fucking drink,” he whined breathily.  “You’re so goddamn repressed it’s annoying.”

“Well,” she started timidly, “if it’ll help with the crowds...” Her eyes rolled to the scene behind him, welling panic apparent in her contracting pupils.  She squeezed her eyes shut and lifted the bottle to her lime-green lips, chugging its contents hungrily.

“Attagirl, Dancie!  You’ll learn to deal with crowds in no time at all!  And most of ‘em make good liver donors!”  He elbowed her shoulder before turning his head towards the object of her fear.  There were, at most, a dozen ponies gathered in the library’s main room, all twitching spasmodically to the travesty emanating from the bored DJ unicorn’s speakers.  The DJ’s mouth hung loosely and a drawn-out bit of drool dripped dangerously from her lips, its length almost reaching the deep purple headphones draped around her neck.  Something clicked inside his fragmented mind, and he exploded of the couch.

“Hey.  Hey!”  he shouted.  “Wait just one Goddessdamned minute!”

Lyra awoke with a start and a small, cute snort.  “Wuzzah?  I jusht what?”  The half filled bottle of whiskey fell out of her hooves and the floorboards began imbibing the rest of its contents.

Nix grimaced at her.  “Uh, sorry.”

She looked up at him blearily and summoned a lazy smile.  “S’okay.  Jusht blow the Equeshtria up quick, ‘kay?  And the shpace screams world.  And the-”  She was unable to finish her sentence as her head was too busy reintroducing itself to the soft, unconsciousness-inducing cushions of the couch.

’God, that’s adorable.’

Nix shook his head and refocused on the task at hand: the headphones.  He rushed with the drunken grace of a paraplegic ballerina towards the DJ, drooling apologies across the horrified faces of those who interfered with his chaotic choreography of physical incoherence.  Finally stumbling up the stage, he steadied himself on the mix tray.  

“Hey!  Can I see those for a second?” he slurred over the subdued music playing neatly through the oversized speakers, sort of pointing in the vague direction of the headphones.  The white unicorn manning the station snored slightly.  Nix frowned.  Sane volume or not, this close to the source, Ms. Pinkamena’s ‘jam’ wedged itself thoroughly in the parts of Nix’s brain that dealt primarily with annoyance and excessive violence.  Without a second thought, he ripped the vinyl records from the record player and snapped them in half, then in quarters, violently.  A blissful white hiss escaped the speakers as all eyes in the room turned towards him.  Moreso than they had been, anyway, as he had been the drunk, hairless, extradimensional gorilla in the room the entire evening.

The blue-maned DJ snapped awake, head searching the room wildly.  “Whu-  Izza-  The party’s over?  Am I released from my vile task, my liege-lady?” she gasped out in a rush of words.  From the back of the room, Pinkie frowned and shook her head, tsking to herself.  

“Hey, welcome to the world of the living,” Nix said.

The DJ considered this for a moment, remembering what sort of music had blared through her sacred instruments for most of the evening, and concluded she very probably didn’t exist in the world of the living.  At least she hoped she didn’t, if that was the tripe they listened to.

“Can I see those?” Nix asked, prodding her headphones.

The white unicorn recoiled.  “Whoa, man, hooves off the merchandise!”

“No, no, I just wanna see something.”  He summoned a small black box from his back pocket and pointed to a small portal at its base.  “Could those connect to something like this?” he asked.

She stared at the ‘portal’ for a second before she lifted her goggles to her forehead and stared at the human.  One of her eyes had developed a tic.  “No, genius-”

“Oh, okay,” he said sadly.

“-headphones can not be connected to a headphone jack,” she finished sarcastically.

“Bitch,” Nix muttered.

“That and a lot of other things, plothole.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to find my mas—my paying customer’s—spare records for the party?”

“I have a better idea.”  The DJ raised one of her eyebrows.  “You have a male-to-male connector for headphone jacks so I can plug this little box into your rig?”

“No, no I do not.  I have a sound set up worth thousands of bits, but it can only play vinyl records,” she deadpanned.  She shot a searching glance at Pinkie, who merely shrugged and nodded slightly; the DJ summoned a cord from behind her turntables, plugging one end into her mixer, and the other into Nix’s little black box.  

Her goggles plopped back into position and she smiled greedily.  “So, what’s yer poison?”

“Gimme a sec.  Just need to find my theme song.”  His fingers danced across the screen for a few moments before he drew his hand back.  He stared at his little black box for a few seconds before his eyes rose in horror to unicorn’s the magenta shades.  “I can’t read.”

“If you’d like, I can find you a nice box of crayons to chew on?  Right after I get some tunes spinning.”  Her hoof moved towards the cord connected to his device.

“No, wait, I can read, it’s just in a different language than I remember!”  His eyes shot daggers at a certain lavender unicorn at the far end of the room.  Twilight winced.

“Uh-huh.  Hold on, I’m sure the nice librarian has a cute little book with pretty pictures in it that you can slobber on for the rest of the party.”

“Pictures!  That’s it!”  Nix’s cry was perhaps a tad too victorious.

“Yeah.  Maybe even some with shiny glitter on them.”  Her hoof moved towards the cord again but was swatted away quickly by an annoyed set of hairless digits.

“Just need to find the album cover...and ‘Hell’ and a pair of parentheses...got it!”

“I’ll be sure to talk to Cheerilee about a whole page of golden stars just for you, champ.  Now if you don’t mind?” Her hoof paused in its third attempt to disconnect his device as sound erupted from the speakers.

”Sangre Sani.  Sangre Sani~”  The Gregorian chant began to fill the room, it’s beautiful, melancholic melody dancing slowly through the stilled air.  It wailed softly of desires unmet; of sorrow dancing through the calm midnight air, gently swaying and swirling ghost-like clouds at its softly urgent passing; of brushing against the very heavens themselves, yet never gaining entry; of those lost, and their loving, confused, wanton taunts from the other side of the vale.  ’Join us,’ they implied, hoped, whispered.  Everypony in the room became enraptured by the merciful bereavement, the horrifying comfort, that filled the room in sonorous tone.  Even Rainbow Dash and the white unicorn DJ, who had both looked more than a little let down at the melodious song at its start, stood in quiet contemplation, even approval, as the song wore on.  The party had, for the moment, become a funeral parlor basking reverently in the glow of those passed.

Then the song spoke of fury.  The simple, chugging distorted guitars hit at the one minute mark like a freight train impacting a concrete barrier, and like Death tolling its gnarled, discordant bell for every pony in the room.  Their eyes forced themselves comically wide as the hissing growl of a voice spat out the first lyrics.  Nix frowned; he no longer understood the lyrics.  But something gleamed in Rainbow’s eyes.

As the song passed the two minute mark, the weird, horrifying song seemed to be winding down, and the gathered ponies had almost telepathically decided to utter a collective sigh of relief.  

Then the rapid staccato of the distorted electric guitars fired off like a shrieking bullet, punctuated and matched in violent velocity by the urgent percussion.  Rainbow Dash’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks and her mouth begin to widen in a manic—a psychotic—grin.  This was better than the rock music she used for her routines.  This was energy, power, force distilled into a searing, piercing essence.  This was the wind battening against her face as she tore through it and screamed through the sky.  This was the world disappearing from beneath her in an instant, in the sudden flap of light blue wings pining to ascend the heavens  and beyond. The chorus hit, twisting, drawing, forcing the tempo and fiery charge of the song upwards, ever upwards into soaring heights of climactic release.  This was...

“Speed,” she mouthed breathlessly.  Her wings flared and she shot across the room towards the stage, the force of wind coming from her wings bowling several shellshocked ponies over.  She slammed into Nix, staggering him, and grasped the shoulders of his black trench coat with her hooves.

“This.  Is!  AWESOME!” she shouted, punctuating every word with an increasingly enthusiastic  shake of his shoulders.  His light blue eyes seemed to flicker for a moment before igniting brightly.  He shot his hands up to her shoulders.

“No shit!  It’s my theme song!” he shouted back, his voice barely registering over the blaring speakers.  He withdrew his hands and snapped his fingers.  Two bottles of Ketel Fun appeared in the air above him.  He drunkenly swiped at one and caught it, barely, between two fingers.  The other sailed through his hand as it rocketed towards the floor.  Rainbow rocketed faster and caught it inches from the ground.  A wry grin plastered her cyan face as she cocked an eyebrow and shook the bottle scoldingly at Nix.  His mouth quirked and his eyes narrowed.  She held the bottle out to him primly, mockingly.

“Oh, Hell, no!” he yelled right as the quiet, acoustic bridge of the song hit.  He glanced around the room and coughed awkwardly to ward off the numerous stares leveled his way.  All thirteen of them, by his count.  Or was it nineteen?  He’d had a lot to drink.  He refocused on the blue pegasus in front of him and pushed the bottle back towards her.  “Catch and release, Scratchy.  You catch it, you have to release the contents.”

She frowned slightly and cocked her head.  He smiled.  “Like this.”  He cracked his bottle open and began releasing the contents into his mouth.  A quarter of the way down, he stopped.  The pegasus was just looking dumbly at her bottle.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I-” she started.

His hand erupted in flame and he flicked a burning blue talon across the top of her bottle.  The cap and some of the glass sailed into the nearby wall.  A perfectly smooth opening at the top of the bottle remained.  

“Drink, dammit!  I’m already a quarter of a bottle ahead of you!”

Her ruby eyes flashed and a wicked smile grew on her face.  Nix ignored her and began chugging the rest of his bottle.  Rainbow Dash crossed her arms casually and waited.  The human was halfway through his bottle by the time the epic outro of the song hammered through the speakers.  The rainbow-maned pegasus smiled wanly, before upending the bottle into her mouth.  She was done before the outro began to fade.  The human wasn’t.  He gawked at her.

“That isn’t- that shouldn’t be-” he stammered out.

Rainbow snorted derisively.  “For you, maybe.”  She tossed the empty bottle at his chest.  He fumbled but caught it.  His fingers were starting to rebel against the commands of his brain under the weight of his inebriation.

“So, are you guys, like, done with the demon screaming and anger issue music, then?” the blue-maned DJ asked.

“You done being a sarcastic bitch?” the human retorted.

“Hey, I’m just here because I owe the Pink One.  What’s your deal, anyway?”

“What’s your name, DJ?”

“Vinyl Scratch.  You Hockrates now or something?”

“Right, ‘DJ’.  Here’s the deal: you sell me a pair of your headphones so I can listen to my music all the time, and you can play whatever the Hell you want.  I’ll smooth things over with Ms. Pinkamena.  It is my own damn welcome party after all.”  He mentally crossed his fingers.

“Tell ya’ what.  You let me play my music and not that pink abomination’s, uh, abominations, and you can have one of my spares.”  She stared at him plainly, no emotion detectable through her opaque magenta goggles.  Nix almost thought he caught a slight tic in her cheek, maybe a tensing of her shoulders.

“Deal,” he said, extending an open hand.  

“Right on!”  She spat on her hoof and slapped it across his hand.  She disappeared beneath her rig and popped up a moment later with a pair of white headphones detailed with intricate, deep blue accents.  She tossed them over to the human, and he brought his gaze sharply to her goggles.  She gulped under the searing intensity of glimmering blue heights that she beheld in his eyes.  He smiled warmly.  

“Thanks!  Blast away, DJ-Pony!”  

The satisfaction on her face contained more happiness than in all the contrived, revolting songs that had assaulted his ears that night.  Nix kinda felt good about that.  He took another swig of his bottle only to find it empty, and stumbled off to find a replacement.

“Alright, everypony!” Vinyl shouted.  “Are you ready to party?!”

She was met by a confused murmur by the small gathering in the library.

“Just say ‘yes’ at the top of your lungs, and we can get this started.”  The DJ massaged her forehead exasperatedly with one hoof.

“Y-yes!” the demi-crowd hollered hesitantly.

“Close enough,” she muttered, jamming her headphones on, smashing her goggles into place, and slamming a pair of records onto her turntables.  She rammed a big red button on the corner of her table, and steam hissed from the metal contraption as towers of multicolored lights began rising from their hidden compartments.  The solid metal front of the mix table began to segment and fold into itself, revealing two gargantuan subwoofers.  Her face split into a wicked, toothy grin, and the floor began to vibrate as her hoof hovered over the master switch.


*     *     *     *     *


“Hey!” Scratchy called after him.  Nix turned away from the table of booze, two bottles in hand and swaying in a manner that a repressed socialite might call ‘slight’, and that a normal pony might call ‘Holy heaping horse-apples, let’s get you to the hospital!’  He fumbled at one of the liquor bottles caps before staring dumbly at its sibling in his other hand for a moment.  He set the second bottle down and twisted the cap off the first.

“Whattaya want, Scratchy?”  His eyes closed blissfully as the bottle closed the distance to his mouth.  “I’m busy.”

“Busy?  What, giving your liver a stress test?”

“Something like that, only it’sh lesh of a test and more of a...stress...thingamabob...thing...”  Nix paused.  “Fuck you, I’m drunk.”

“Whatever you say, tall, dark, and ugly.  I just wanted to borrow your music box to set up a new flying routine.”  She hovered next to him, sending a few hoof-jabs into the air.  “It was so intense I could fly something incredible with it spurring me on!  So whattaya say?”

“Maybe you should get through puberty before bothering me, colt,” he said in a higher pitched voice littered with cracks.  “Sheriously, leave me alone.”

“That’s a shame,” she replied.  “And here I was gonna give you a bottle of the finest Cloudsdale Rainbow Brew, circa 1193, if you let me borrow your music box for a bit.”

“Rainbow Brew?  You’re not gonna take me into a bathroom shtall and ashk me to do things to embarrass your politician father, are ya’, colt?  ‘Cuz I only putsh one thing between these lipsh, and that’s...”  Nix stared numbly at the bottle in his hand before shoving it towards the sky-colored pegasus.  “...That’s this thing!  Whatever it says on the label.”  

“Alright, alien, let’s get one thing straight,” Rainbow commanded.  Nix held both arms up mockingly.  “I just drank an entire bottle of that crappy griffin swill.  Do I look even the slightest bit drunk?!”  Nix shook his head.  He wasn’t sure if he was replying to the mare or just staving off the creeping black at the edges of his vision.  “That’s because I’m not.  But two shots of this Rainbow Brew, and I start acting dumber than you are right now-”

“Hey-”

“-and I can get you an entire bottle.  All you have to do is lemme borrow that black box for a coupla days.”  She finished her argument with a winning smile.

“Oh.  Well, when you put it that way...”  Nix snagged the black media player from his back pocket and tossed it her way.  She caught it deftly in her mouth, and zipped over to a pair of saddlebags next to Fluttershy’s sleeping spot.  Ruffling around inside one pocket, she produced a pair of earbuds, slapped them into both ears, and plugged them into the black box.  Donning her saddlebags, she zipped back towards the human.  

“Okay, how do I get it to play?!”  She was trembling with far more excitement than the human’s double vision really wanted to deal with, but he snatched the media player from her hoof, fiddled with the screen for a bit, and passed it back to her.  

“Presh-” Nix stumbled slightly.  “Press that to play music, and that button to skip to the next shong.  I put...I put a few more on there than you heardsh tonigh-”  He scowled and nearly fell over.  “Urgh, hold on a shecond.”  His deep blue eyes flared the color of a midafternoon sky for a second before dimming down.  His head shot up and he immediately looked around the party, seemingly refreshed.

“Ah, much better,” he said to no one in particular.  “What I was trying to say is that I made you a playlist of pure, unadulterated awesomeness, with lotsa cool songs.  All you have to do is...did I really just give you my memory storage unit?”

“Heheheh,” Rainbow chuckled, scratching at her sky blue chest with one hoof as her eyes pointedly avoided the human’s.  “Well, it’s been real.  Gotta go!”


*     *    *    *    *



The pegasus flashed out the door of the library in a blur of color and wind, and began her ascent towards the night sky.  As she climbed, she hit the play button on the human’s media box and let herself fall into the speed and power of the music that crashed forth out of her earbuds.  Her adrenaline rose instinctually at the aggressive thrum of electric guitars and pounding drums, and she didn’t even notice the cone of air forming in front of her as she pushed herself faster, harder, through the cool night’s wafting breeze.

She grinned madly, her eyes tearing up as the cone of air began to crackle with multicolored bolts of electricity.  As the song reached its climax, she snarled with glee and tore apart the night sky with a cacophonous explosion of multihued color and light.  A loud boom rattled the foundations of every building in Ponyville; a shrieking rainbow trailed the cackling pegasus as she streaked away from the epicenter of her signature move.

All across Ponyville, curious lights flickered to life in the previously lifeless windows of the town’s many houses.  In more than a few of the newly glowing abodes, doors slammed open, proffering grumbling ponies in nightcaps and nightgowns and all manner of garb suggesting nighttime and sleep.  These ponies were now not asleep, and clearly aggravated by that fact.  They mostly glared towards the center of town, where an overly large tree was thrumming under the assault of an addictive bassline as flashing lights escaped its numerous windows.  A great lot of them grumbled to themselves and began stumbling towards the tree to give the lavender librarian a good verbal thrashing, and have the unicorn explain all the noise.  Halfway there, the half-somnambulist throng of pony zombies began slightly bobbing their heads to the growing beat that shuddered through the ground, beneath their hooves.  By the time they reached the door, nightcaps, nightgowns, and all manner of nighttime garb had been discarded, and the ponies were all openly rocking their heads to the aural assault.  

As the first of them reached the door, they shoved it open, not bothering to knock, and the pulsing of electronic bass exploded in violent escape from the chambers therein.  A brilliant rainbow of lights strobed and flashed across the large hall in the center of the tree, which contained a dozen dancing ponies lost in the thrall of the music.  Then two dozen.  Then half a hundred.  Then a few hundred, their revery spilling out of the tree and into the plaza surrounding it.  Somepony started a large bonfire in the middle of the group.  Then everypony awoken by Rainbow Dash’s impromptu Sonic Rainboom, grumpy and angry at being roused from sleep, found themselves dancing, laughing, and drinking large quantities of alcoholic beverages, within the tree and without; over half the town found themselves eschewing sleep for dance as the clock approached midnight.

In the far corner of the main room in the tree, her hooves a senseless blur as they spun records and flipped switches and slammed down on a synth keyboard, a white unicorn unleashed a crazy smile and bobbed her head harder to her own beat.

Vinyl Scratch was very good at her job.


*     *     *     *     *


Nix was distracted from the surging crowd of dancing ponies in the room by a slight tugging at the leg of his pants.  He looked down at the trembling light green and dark orange mass of pony at his feet.

“Dancie!” he shouted over the music with a wide smile.  “How’s the crowd treatin’ ya?”

The unicorn’s deep green eyes rolled wildly in panic over the mass of ponies before centering on the human’s glittering blue gaze.  “Please,” she wheezed out.  “Help me.”

“What?!  I can’t hear you over all the...this,” he shouted, flailing his arm towards the growing party.  He bent down, one side of his head cocked nearer to the light green mare’s mouth.

“Help...me!” she whispered harshly into his ear.  He drew his head back and looked into her shimmering, desperate eyes.  She was terrified and appeared to be on the verge of tears.  She mouthed something else that he couldn’t hear, but pony lips or not, he recognized her pleading appeal clearly.

Please.

“Fine,” he sighed.  “Come on.”  He started walking towards the stairs that led to the second level of the tree before stopping and looking back.  Ridge Dancer remained in a crumpled pile on the ground, her eyes flitting crazily between the multitude of ponies that surrounded her.  Nix sighed and dragged his hand across one side of his face in exasperation.  He walked back to the guardpony and picked her up, cradling her in his arms, before turning towards the stairs.  

“Honestly, Dancie,” he said as he climbed towards the second story, “you’re almost as big as I am.  This is fucking embarrassing.”

“I- I’m sorry,” she said, hiding her face in the lapels of his black duster.  He headed towards a door that Twilight had pointed out to him earlier in the night.  Kicking it open, he tossed Ridge Dancer unceremoniously onto the nearest bed.  She bounced off and landed on the floor behind it with a thud as Nix closed the door behind him.

“There.  You’re saved.  I’m a veritable fucking knight in shining armor.”

The mare’s head popped up from behind the bed, her curly sienna locks flopping down over her eyes before she blew them aside with pursed lips.  She regarded the human at the door calmly before looking away.

“Th- thank you,” she said finally.  “I grew up in the mountains, a-and was never really around large groups of ponies and-”

“I don’t want your damn life story, Dancie.  And don’t thank me,” Nix replied flatly.  “Apologize that it was necessary in the first place.”  Ridge Dancer’s head drooped dejectedly.  “Honestly, you have a problem with large crowds and they made you a goddamn Royal Guard?  Are the military officers here fed a steady diet of paint chips and hallucinogens or some shit?”

“I am...there are,” she paused, steeling herself.  “There are extenuating circumstances behind my admission to the guard.”  She clamped her mouth shut.

“Whatever, I don’t care.  I won’t be on this world for long, anyway.”   He sat down on the edge of the bed opposite to hers and plucked a smoke out of his pocket.  He easily summoned a fireball and touched the tip of his cigarette to its fiery fringes before dismissing it with a half-hearted flick of his fingers.  Ridge Dancer canted around the foot of his bed and sat down before him.  She stared at the human thoughtfully.

“What?” Nix asked in an annoyed tone.  He blew a puff of smoke into the unicorn’s face.  She coughed violently for a spell before turning back to the human.

“Why?” she asked plainly.

“Congratulations, you finally got through a sentence without a single stammer.  Why what, Dancie?  I’m not a fucking mind-reader, despite what Sparky downstairs may think.”

“Why do you go out of your way to treat others horribly even if it hurts you to do so?  You’re not a bad pony, Nix.”

“Hurts me?”  Nix laughed bitterly.  “I don’t give a single flipping fuck about your feelings, brat.  Maybe you should work on your own issues before you start pretending you know a single thing about the dimension-traversing godslayer alien, huh?”  Ridge Dancer remained silent, matching the human’s gaze.  Nix stared into her vibrant jade eyes.  There was a light behind their emerald sheen, a flicker of knowledge, perhaps sympathy.  Nix leaned towards the mare.  “I don’t care about you.  I don’t care about your princesses.  I don’t care about your shitty little world.  I just want to leave and go back to my own.”  He stood and headed towards the door.  “I.  Do.  Not.  Care,”  he reiterated over his shoulder.  

The human stalked out of the room and headed towards the balcony, snapping his fingers to summon a bottle of alcohol on the way.  He posted up next to the railing and looked out at the throng of ponies dancing in the courtyard below.  They annoyed the shit out of him, so he instead looked up into the sky, and tried to forget Ridge Dancer’s piercing, vigorous green eyes.

He tipped the bottle back and washed his throat with the alcohol, chugging it desperately.  The world around him disappeared in the haze of the past.


*     *      *      *      *


”Loki, what the fuck?!”  Nix whipped around as he rose from the ground, and his eyes widened.  A twisted reptilian thing, its skin pockmarked with burns and one of its bat-like wings a blackened, skeletal husk, had burst through the rubble right behind where he had just been standing.  The gnarled, obsidian blade it wielded was buried to the hilt in Loki’s chest.  

Nix howled in rage and drew Umbra in a blur.  He fired off numerous shots so quickly that their report sounded as one.  The demon evaporated in a shower of blood and ash.  Loki looked confusedly at the thing in his chest, then at Nix, before collapsing on the ground.  Nix rushed over to the god and tore the sword out—Loki screamed.  Nix shoved his hands onto the red stains spreading across the trickster god’s white shirt and channeled everything he could into the wound, willing it to heal.  The white threads of his regenerative force danced around the smoky blackness of the puncture.  He forced the healing threads harder into the wound—Loki looked up at him sadly—but they slipped along its edges like oil across water.

“I have to-  I have to-” Nix stuttered out in shock.

“Ha...” Loki wheezed before choking up blood.  The crimson fluid painted his clean-shaven chin.  “Cursed...blade...kid.  Haven’t learned...to, ha...heal that.”

“Hold on, Loki!  We’re getting out of here!  I’ll get you to Odin!  He’ll know-”

Loki’s arm tremored as he fought to lift it.  He rested it on Nix’s shoulder and shook his head.  “Too late... for, ha, that...newbie.”  More coughing, more blood.

“No, fuck you!  Fuck you!!!  I’m saving your stupid ass!”

The god smiled warmly, suddenly.  The sarcasm, the cynicism that flitted behind all his mirth for as long as Nix had known him, had evaporated.  His jade eyes rolled around quizzically before settling on the human’s piercing blue eyes. He calmed suddenly, and his contented smile widened slightly.  “But...you’ll...save us...all...”  The mischievous glint in Loki’s eyes flared once, then faded forever into the infinite pools of his empty stare.  His hand slipped from Phoenix’s shoulder.  

Phoenix stared into the god’s glazed eyes.  “No,” he whispered.  He grabbed the god’s shoulders and shook.  “Get up,” he whispered, begged, hammered on Loki’s chest with a whitened fist.  ”Get up!”

The ground had begun to shudder as the forces of Hell recovered from Phoenix’s attack.  They massed and were charging forth.  Phoenix laid his friend to the ground, and stood unsteadily.  The shudders of his rattling breath didn’t reach his face—his mouth hung open limply, and his eyes were empty and dull, still focused on Loki’s pale face.  His hand fumbled at one of his holsters.  Something slick and warm covered his palm, and his hand kept numbly slipping off of the chrome surface of the weapon before he sluggishly wrapped his fingers around the handle.  He drew his silver pistol listlessly, deliberately.  He still stared at Loki’s face, the flickering glow of both their gazes having abandoned the two completely.  His arm twitched as it struggled to raise the gun to the horizon, to the rampaging horde of Hell’s minions.  Phoenix was lost.  Lost in the murky bog of his friend’s dead green eyes.  

For the first time, Phoenix charged Lux to full.  Seconds later, Hell ceased to exist.


*      *      *      *      *


Nix took a heavy swig off his bottle of liquor.  It tasted vaguely like rum, with a hint of apple cider.  His lips broke its drunken kiss with the alcohol and he let it hang limply from his grasp as he leaned onto the deck’s wooden balcony.  He stood in silence for a time.  Time enough for the the thrumming electronic music below to peter out and trade places with muted silence.  Time enough for the revelry below to flicker and fade as ponies slowly filtered out of the plaza in exhausted contentment, back to their homes for a few hours rest before their day began anew.  Time enough for the large bonfire in the center to flame, flutter, and finally wane into a pile of glowing orange embers.  Time was one thing he had in great abundance, so he waited quietly.  Finally, he released an annoyed sigh, and craned his head skyward.  Countless pinpricks of light glimmered gleefully in the velvet blue darkness of the night sky.

“Well, you at least got something right, over the millennia,” he said abruptly, his eyes lost in the myriad streams, patterns, and organized chaos the endless sea of stars.  “It’s beautiful.”

“We thank thee for thy kind words, Phoenix, though we wonder how long thou hast been cognizant of our presence,” Luna replied.  She rested easily above the wooden deck, on the roof behind him.

Nix continued staring out over the wooden banister.  He pointed towards Canterlot.  “Celestia is about a hundred kilometers that way, a few thousand meters higher in elevation than here.”  He pointed a different direction, past the outskirts of town.  “Discord is holed up about two kilometers away, same elevation as us.”  He pointed behind him.  “Dancie is a few meters behind me, hiding around the corner of the doorway and trying to eavesdrop.”  He grinned to himself as he heard a sharp gasp, felt a flash of magic, and felt her lifeforce receding deeper into the tree, presumably to their guest room.  He doubted she’d rejoin what little remained of the party below.  

Luna floated down to the deck beside him and furled her wings.  “‘Tis an impressive feat thou possesses.”

The human gave the princess an annoyed look.  “Not all that difficult, once I’ve memorized your respective lifeforces.  Now, enough with the ‘Ye Olde Equestrian’ speak, Lu.  If you can slip in a ‘bullshit’ instead of whatever analogue you all use here-”

“Minotaur-patties.”

“-right, that, you know enough of my dialect to speak normal.”

Luna paused.  “I...I had actually been practicing the common tongue for quite some time before your arrival.  I still feel more comfortable with the old speech, however.”

“That’s more my speed.  Although a bit prim for my tastes.  I don’t suppose you could curse like a damn sailor any time soon?” Nix asked.  “No?  Oh, well.”  He plucked a cigarette out of his duster’s breast pocket, and lit the tip with a single claw of flame he summoned from his index finger.  “So, what brings you here?  The goof troop down below, the painfully awkward unicorn guard, and the annoying patchwork serpent nearby not babysitters enough for the irreverent flammable god?”

“You’re not a god, human,” Luna corrected.  “Or would you prefer ‘godslayer’?”

“Oh, you do so flatter me, princess,” Nix mused sarcastically.  “Though it’s hard to inflate an ego that’s as large as the Universe itself.”

“One can only fit so much hot air into one place, no matter how hotly one’s fires burn,” Luna retorted.  Nix’s witty response consisted of burying the bottle of apple-rum in his mouth.  A few minutes passed in silence as the human continued gazing towards the stars, the souls, glittering in the sky.

“‘Tis been a great while-” Luna said, piercing the blanket of quietude, “I mean, it’s been awhile since I last saw my little ponies dancing quite so happily.  It certainly brings back memories.”

“You think of a way to let me bring back memories at will, you let me know,” the human retorted dryly.  “Actually, there is something you can help me with...you said you recognized language I spoke when I first arrived?”

Luna cocked her head to the side.  “Yes, it’s considered a dead language, now, unspoken for thousands of years.  ‘Tis a small wonder my sister didn’t recognize it at first, even still.”

“Good.  Hold still.”  He placed his palm on her forehead and her eyes widened as she felt a tingle course through her brain.

“You dare?!”  She flinched away from him and focused magic through her horn, but the tickling sensation in her mind faded away.

Nix grunted and turned back to the balcony, staring out over the throng of dancing ponies.  “Least I can understand my own damn memory box when I get it back from Scratchy, now.”

The glow in Luna’s horn sputtered out, and the pair sat in silence for a few moments, the alicorn regarding the human curiously.

“What’s the deal with all the dancing and singing, anyway?” Nix said suddenly, motioning to the mob below.

“These ponies are,” Luna paused, considering her next words, “harmonic fragments.  The Grove into which my sister and I were born was one of perfect harmony.  When I broke that harmony to search for our parents, it didn’t disappear, it merely split into slivers, and those pieces took the form of imperfect copies of my sister and I.  Not that my sister and I are perfect, mind you.”

“Yeah, I caught that.  If I recall correctly, and I probably don’t, your curiosity seems to have gotten you into quite a bit of trouble over the years.”

“Oh?”  Luna smiled enigmatically at the human.

“Well, you did kinda break the paradise your parents made for you.  That much I remember.”  Nix drew on his bottle of apple-rum.

“Over the millennia, I began to think that maybe that was their original intent.  As deeply as I cherish my sister, and prone though I am to flights of solitude, passing the years alone with only her for company strikes me as...depressing.  I don’t think our parents ever wanted Celestia and I to live out our lives like that, in truth.”

“Hmm,” the human grunted.  Silence fell again.


“I trust your first day in Ponyville was a good one?”

Nix snorted and shook his head before motioning back to the inside of the tree.  “You know, right now they all think I’m a real bastard, and they’re absolutely right.  So yeah, I’d say it went about how I planned it to.  Although those ponies out there, they have no idea how callous their princesses really are.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed.  “Do tell,” she demanded icily.

“No, you tell me.  You know full well I have no intention of making nice with the locals.  Hell, you know I’ll go out of my way to make sure they never wanna see my face again.  Yet your sister has issued some royal decree that six of those mares down there are supposed to help me make friends here?  And you went along with it?  Really?”  Nix shook his head disgustedly.  “How do you think Sparky’s gonna feel when she has write her idol, and tell her she’s not only failed, she’s failed miserably, and everypony in happy little sing-song Ponyville hates the everloving shit out of the alien visitor?”

Luna regarded the human calmly.  Nix swung his head towards the alicorn and stared at her coldly.

“It’s going to crush her.  It’s going to tear her friends apart with guilt because they’ve failed Sparky.  It’s going to destroy Dancie, because she’s failed in her mission as a guard. ”  He dropped his gaze and took another drink.  “And you knew this would happen and requested the impossible out of each of them, anyway.  Some fucking royalty you are,” he concluded darkly.

“My, Birdy, could you perhaps be...sympathizing with the little ponies you so despise?”  Luna asked with a ghost of a smile.

“Don’t waste my time with pointless questions.”

“Are you suddenly running short of time, Phoenix?”

“No, just short of patience.  With you and your ponies.  They’re just going to end up hurt, either by me or...” Nix trailed off.

“And yet hurting them is what you intend to do to achieve your own selfish ends?” she shot back.

“Hurting them is what I intend to do to keep them alive!” Nix shouted suddenly.  “You tell me, you fucking smartass.  You’ve apparently got a better grasp of my memories than I do.  How many of the ones I’ve allowed into my trust, I’ve stupidly allowed close, how many of them are still breathing?  Hmmm?  I might be able to remember fuck-all of my past, but what I do seems to suggest a curiously high mortality rate for anyone who happens to be near me for an extended period of time, so you fucking tell me, you arrogant bitch!”

“More than you give yourself credit for.  More than you know how to give yourself credit for.  Phoenix, you have saved more souls than you can possibly imagine, literally and figuratively, and it saddens me that you are incapable of realizing this.”

“Bullshit,” Nix growled.  He flicked his cigarette off the balcony and took one last drink from his bottle before tossing it after the butt.  It shattered with a flat echo on the ground below.  “Just give me my damn weapons back and let me leave.  I’m sick of playing along with your big sister’s little charade.”

“‘Tis no charade, Phoenix.”

“You had better hope it isn’t, because if it is and I regain my powers, I’ll get my weapons back, anyway.  And I won’t be asking nicely, Lu,” Nix said coldly.  “And if your subjects get hurt as a result of you refusing to listen to me...”

“Are you threatening my subjects, ape?” Luna asked with a diamond-hard edge in her tone.

“No, Princess,” Nix responded.  “I’m threatening you.”  He turned away from the balcony and headed towards the door.  “Good night, Luna.”  

“You don’t have to face your life alone, Phoenix,” she called after him.  “There are those who would happily, lovingly share your burdens with you if you would allow them, who would be there for you when you needed them, and not just them you.”

He paused at the door to the tree.  His thoughts were displaced by a single image barreling through his mind.  Empty green eyes stared blankly.  “Yeah, right up until they aren’t,” he breathed out almost inaudibly.  Luna cocked her head, having missed his final sentiment. The human stomped inside, slamming the door behind him.

Luna stared after him for a moment, before the edges of her lips rose slowly.  

“There’s hope for you yet, ape,” she whispered quietly to herself, before spreading her wings and taking to the night sky. 


*     *     *     *     *


After half an hour had passed, Ridge Dancer quietly slipped from behind the curtains next to the balcony door; she had overheard everything, including the human’s parting words.  She crept up to the guest room where she and Nix were sleeping for the night, and found him in bed, apparently asleep.  She breathed a relieved sigh, and released the magic concealing her lifeforce from detection.  She was quietly thankful she had happened across the spell in her...extracurricular studies, though she never imagined she’d be using the thing in a situation like this.

She inched her way towards her bed—the last traces of her soul’s signature had vanished from the pillows she had stuffed under the blankets when she dispelled the magic’s effects—before a pained moan sent icy tendrils of terror through her chest.  Nix was groaning and thrashing numbly beneath his covers.  ’Night terrors,’ she thought grimly.  She had suffered the same for years before she had found her purpose and joined the guard.  With a concerned frown, she trotted silently to the side of his bed and hesitantly rested a hoof on his shoulder.  He slowly seemed to calm.  Her mouth quirked as she pondered something momentarily, before she nodded to herself and gingerly crept onto his bed.  She gently curled up next to him on top of the blanket, and rested her head on his chest.  She’d just stay here for long enough to calm him, she told herself.  Just long enough to give him a moment’s peace.

Her head rose and fell slowly with his even breaths as he finally seemed to settle.  He was so warm, and the slow, calm rise and fall of his chest was hypnotic.  Ridge Dancer’s eyelids slowly began to close.
	
> Chapter 15:  Shiver Me Timbers
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Wooden limbs dragged along her coat and chill, damp leaves sighed in protest beneath her as Lyra crawled through the underbrush.  Ahead, lying prone at the crest of a small rise in the forest, the human and his Royal Guard companion were staring intently through the thick foliage.  Lyra inched beside them and slowly parted a few boughs, revealing a wide clearing below the small knoll from which they spied.  Something about the clearing seemed wrong.  Its brown vegetation rolled like an ocean of trees, roiling and turning in on itself in lurching waves.  Lyra tried to make sense of the strange mass before she gasped sharply.  

Nix’s hand muzzled her mouth in an instant.  She brought her terrified eyes to meet his, but he merely stared back and shook his head slightly.  He returned his gaze to the clearing.

“So, what are they?” he whispered.

“Timber wolves,” Ridge Dancer replied grimly.

Rainbow Dash had slowly crawled up on the other side of the group.  A shivering ball of goldenrod and magenta trembled beneath her outstretched wing.  Scootaloo’s pupils had shrunk to pinpricks at the sight.  “But they only hunt in small packs,” the cyan pegasus said in a similarly hushed tone.  “There are dozens...no, over a hundred here.”

“It’s a breeding horde,” the lime green unicorn replied.  “They gather to mingle their chaotic energy and imbue dead wood with their combined life-force, creating new timber wolves in the process.  It’d happen occasionally in the mountains where I grew up, but...”

“But what, Dancie?”  Nix asked.  There was something indescribable in his focused eyes that frightened Lyra, a hardness that oscillated between melancholy and predatory eagerness.  From the side, she could barely see the glow that emanated from his furrowed brow.  What she could see was the reflection of fire glancing across chilled sapphires.  The musician shuddered.

“Every few years or so we’d hear of a remote town that just...disappeared.  Hunters would happen across them occasionally.  Towns they had bartered in just last year, almost gone.  The only thing left of them were the metal tools, the clay roofing tiles, the food stores, things of that sort.  Nothing made of wood to be found.  Finally, one year a group of hunters happened across a town they’d left not a week before.  Same thing.  But there were tracks everywhere.  Hundreds of them.  Timber wolf tracks.”  Ridge Dancer paused.  “And corpses.  What was left of them after the wolves had their fill...”

Scootaloo mewled, but Rainbow Dash shushed her gently, stroking her shoulder with her outstretched wing.  

“Dancie, Scratchy, get these two back to Ponyville safely,” Nix whispered.  Ridge Dancer’s gaze broke with the clearing and caught the tail-end of the human’s glance before he refocused on the horde.  

“But-”

“No ‘buts’, Dancie, just do it.  Warn the town, whatever, but you get to safety, now.”  Lyra’s head recoiled slightly at the harshness of the human’s tone.  “That means all of you, Lyra.”  He pressed her gently back with the palm of one hand and turned to meet her gaze.  Whatever lie in wait behind the coldly burning orbs that replaced Nix’s eyes had ceased to be the doddering, unsuccessful chick she had inelegantly forced her perceptions to erect as a metaphorical cage around a being that far exceeded her cognizance.  Behind those eyes lie something darker, and far more dangerous than her tender sensibilities wanted her to realize.  A hunger.  An aching.  A yawning emptiness.  A despairing violence.

She wondered where the ashes of the childish, brash human she had met yesterday had blown, and what foolish winds might dare to come close enough to this portentous creature to carry them away.  She backed down the hill through the bushes slowly, still staring into the being’s fearsome blue eyes.  

Her hypnosis was shattered by a sudden, loud crack, and she jerked her head to the noise.  Scootaloo stared in horror at the sundered branch beneath her hooves.  A sharp intake of breath hissed through Rainbow Dash’s clenched teeth before silence took the Everfree Forest like rigor mortis falls upon a corpse.  No sound escaped from the clearing beyond their small hill.  Lyra held her breath, her eyes flicking every direction—everywhere but towards him—trying to detect motion.  After a few moments, she quietly huffed out a sigh of relief.  

The deep growl to her immediate right was interrupted by a flash of light and a thundering boom.  She screamed as she was showered in a cataract of smoldering splinters, leaves, and twigs.  The ensuing, mortally brief calm afterward was interrupted by several more guttural growls, and then a vicious roar.

“Go, now!” Nix shouted, his eyes two flaming blue suns and his charcoal duster dissolving into twisting, liquid shadows around him.

Lyra sprinted through the forest, gasping for air.  Why did she ever agree to come to the Everfree Forest, of all the accursed places in Equestria?  What was he?



*     *      *     *     *

Earlier


A stomach that lurched with nausea.  A dry tongue caked to the roof of an arid cavern of a mouth.  Cold sweat a slick sheen over feverishly hot skin.  Eyes that winced and retreated from the morning light behind the inadequate blinds of sleep-caked eyelids.  The worst, though, was aching pain that hammered through the depths of the mare’s mint-colored head.  Lyra groaned in agony, trying hard to pretend the pained lamentation might dispel her egregious discomfort by some undiscovered miracle of guttural vocal magic.

When her massive hangover persisted against her vain hopes for divine intervention, Lyra groaned louder and put a hoof to her forehead.  Through her misery, she sensed a beacon of salvation, a celestial aroma wafting up from somewhere downstairs.  Her eyes forced themselves to brave the mocking brightness of the sun filtering in through her bedroom window, and she sluggishly rolled off her bed onto her four hooves before trudging carefully downstairs.  The blissful aroma led her to the kitchen, where her roommate was cooking breakfast and, most importantly, brewing coffee.

“Raaaagh,” Lyra grunted out artfully, stumbling towards the pot of caffeinated nectar as her horn sputtered to draw a cup from the cupboard.  Her cream-colored roommate turned and smiled.

“Well, looks like someone had a lot of fun last night,” she said with a knowing chuckle.  Lyra grunted again and began spilling coffee into the cup, her bloodshot eyes staring emptily into its growing black depths.  “Whoa, no, no, no, Lyra.”  A look of mild dissatisfaction flicked across the unicorn’s golden eyes as the cup was snatched out of her hooves and replaced with a frosted glass of ice water.  “Drink this first,” her friend commanded.  “It’ll do you a lot more good.  Rehydration, then caffeine.”

“You seem to know a lot about this, Bon Bon,” Lyra grumbled.  

“Well, if you hadn’t spent college with your nose buried in music sheets and had actually gotten out a bit...”  The unicorn ignored her roommate’s implied jibe as she chugged the glass of ice water.  

“So, how was it?”  Bon Bon asked with a mischievous smile.  One of Lyra’s eyebrows raised questioningly as she grabbed the mug of coffee from beside her friend with her telekinesis.  She took a measured sip from the sienna cup.  “Oh, don’t be coy.  We were at the largest party this town has seen since the Summer Sun Celebration two years ago.  Surely you found some stallion to keep you company?”

“That another thing you know a lot about from your college years?”  the unicorn asked wryly.  Bon Bon swatted her on the shoulder.

“Well, I certainly didn’t spend the night alone,” the mare finally admitted, half-heartedly flicking a lock of her hair’s pink streak out of her eyes.  “But enough about me.”  Bon Bon flashed a toothy grin.  “Who’s the lucky stallion that finally dragged your attention away from those music sheets?”

“I didn’t spend last night with a stallion, I spent it with Nix,” Lyra replied, gulping down the coffee as quickly as her pain threshold could tolerate the heat.

“‘Nix’?  Ooh, those one-syllable names get to me, even if most of ‘em are fake.  So mysterious!  So deep!  So—” Bon Bon’s pleasant face was momentarily twisted by mock revulsion, “—please tell me he wasn’t wearing a fedora.  Just how drunk were you?”  Bon Bon bit her tongue with a smirk and playfully prodded her friend’s shoulder. 

Lyra smiled and rolled her eyes.  The ocular acrobatics sent a muddled jolt of pain through her forehead.  ’Too much hard cider,’ she thought.  ’Never again,’ she promised herself insincerely.  After the pain subsided, she winced and shook her head.  “No, his name is actually ‘Phoenix’, he’s just a bit slow and insists on nicknames for some reason.”  

“Wait, like the bird?  Like Princess Celestia’s pet?”  Bon Bon giggled.  The name did sound a bit familiar to her, though.

“Something like that.”  Lyra’s lips twitched upwards momentarily at the thought of the human, collared and put on display in the Canterlot zoo.  “Although I don’t think he’d be too keen on the idea of being kept as a pet, alien or not.”   

Bon Bon gawked at her friend as the familiarity of the name collided roughly with revelation.  How could she have already forgotten the being’s brazen introduction at the train station?  “W-wait.  Last night, you-?!  With the- with the alien?” she exclaimed.  The mare’s eyelid twitched slightly.  “Is that even, err, anatomically possible?!”

Lyra groaned.  “Ugh, no.  Not like that.  I just hung out with him at his welcome party.  Nopony else really seemed too intent on actually welcoming him.”

“Well, I doubt they would after his display at the train station.”  Bon Bon continued giving her mint-colored roommate a weird look.  “I was there.  He threatened the mayor.  Lyra, he’s, uh...kinda scary.”

The mint-colored unicorn chuckled before meeting her friend’s eyes.  “Please, Bon Bon.  He’s a big baby.  A tantrum here or there, but harmless and kind of adorable.”

“He didn’t look so adorable,” the earth mare said flatly.

“Neither do newborn chicks.” Lyra laughed.  “Ugly as sin and bumbling about so awkwardly you can’t help but feel bad for them.”  

“If you say so,” Bon Bon said doubtfully before deciding to steer the discussion to more pleasant avenues.  “Well!  I was just about to head to town on a few errands,” she said cheerfully.  “Wanna come with?”

“Ugh, Goddess, no.  I’m gonna need another hour at least to kill this hangover, and I really should get started on those music sheets Cheerilee wanted for the school’s talent show.”

“Your loss, Heartstrings,” her friend teased.  “But, since you’ll be here anyway, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind cleaning up the breakfast dishes.”

Lyra levitated a sopping dishrag and chased a giggling Bon Bon out the front door with it.  The mint unicorn sighed, but smiled to herself before shutting the front door and attacking the morning’s dishes with the soaking weapon of not-so-mass purification.


*     *     *     *      *


Lyra scooted her chair closer to her dark wooden desk.  She carefully arranged the blank music sheets in front of her, aligning them in the center of a quill-filled cup, a blotter of ink, a paperweight, and various trinkets that were haphazardly spread across the desk's surface.  She took a deep breath and snagged a quill from the cup with one hoof.

She was a classically trained musician.  She had attended the prestigious Canterlot Royal Academy of Arts—alongside the renowned Octavia Philharmonia, no less.  Her innovation and brilliance with stringed instruments of many varieties, be they lyres, harps, guitars, and even a banjo once, were lauded by her professors as sublime.  Iconoclastic, even.  Composing a few simple ditties for a simple school show should be foal’s play.  She took another deep breath, exhaled slowly through pursed lips, and smiled to herself.  She could do this.

She dipped the tip of the quill into the ink well, and pressed the tip of the feather to the top of the page.  And waited.  An instant turned into seconds.  The seconds turned into a minute.  The quill stubbornly refused to dance across the page; its point remained firmly planted at the start of the composition, a growing black pool of nothing emanating from its tip across the lines of the music sheet in place of the notes that should have sung from her mind onto the paper.  She stared into the blot, willing it to transform into melody.  The stain met her gaze apathetically, no longer growing across the page as the ink that gave it life was exhausted from the tip of the quill.

With an angry snarl, her hooves swept violently across the wooden surface, scattering the numerous items on the desk through the air.  They pelted the various musical instruments laid to rest against the room’s wall, a shrapnel hail of ink, feathers, and curios kicking up a small cloud of dust as they struck their targets.  Lyra buried her face in her hooves before tiredly peeking over them at her lyre.  The disturbed dust was a constellation of gently dancing stars in the single ray of light that snuck through the room’s slatted blinds, pirouetting softly through the thick silence before coming to rest again on the golden threads of her namesake.  She pressed her eyes back into her hooves, relishing the dark veil of blindness that rushed over her.  She tried to ignore the moisture that grew from her closed lids.

’Buck this,’ she thought, pushing herself away from her desk and ignoring the mess around her room.  ’I’m going for a walk.’  Lyra trudged out of her room and down the stairs for the second time that morning.  The front door to the house slammed shut behind her as she headed into town.

Back in her room, the overturned inkwell gravely submitted its contents to the floor, another blotch uniting with the countless other stains that had been born across the wooden surface the last few months.  The dust had already comfortably settled again on the numerous instruments laying quietly against the wall.


*     *     *     *     *


Lyra trotted through town at random, letting her hooves lead her where they may and lost in the thought of trying not to think.  She knew it was only a matter of time before she ended up in the park, sitting on a bench—the bench—which is where she would waste most of her day, both remembering and trying to forget the stallion she had met there a year ago.  So she trotted, a blank smile painted across her face’s mask, and she tried not to think.  To her surprise, her hooves stopped moving at a plaza near the center of town.  She ignored the group of ponies diligently cleaning up the blackened husks of wood that had fed the bonfire the night before and instead took in the massive tree that served as Ponyville’s library.

’Huh, that’s odd.  Well, I just take a right at the next road and the park should be-’

There are few interruptions so rude as buildings being demolished without warning, cacophonous explosions without warning, and airborne aliens without warning.  Needless to say, the interruption of Lyra’s thoughts was terribly rude as a certain alien exploded through the side of a room high on the tree and sailed through the air towards her, the airborne vanguard to a great many wooden chunks that also escaped the structure of the town library.  Nix slammed roughly into the ground a few dozen yards before the golden-eyed unicorn and rolled rapidly across the ground, his charcoal duster flailing around his tumbling body, before coming to rest at her hooves, his face buried in the hard-packed earth.  

Lyra looked from the alien to the gaping hole in the side of the library’s trunk.  A light green unicorn with deep red hair scowled down at the human from the newly aerated room, before huffing angrily and retreating back to the deeper recesses of the tree.  Ridge Dancer, was it?  She returned her attention to the alien at her feet.  He groaned and lifted his head.

“Ugh pffft pffaaaght!” Nix spat out a considerable amount of dirt, grimacing as chunks of soil spilled out over his chin while his tongue worked to expel the earth from between his vacillating lips.  Coughing up the last of the earth, he slowly propped himself up on his elbows.  His eyes traced up the mint-colored limbs of the pony before him, finally meeting a pair of amused, golden eyes.

“Problems on the home front?” Lyra asked nonchalantly.

“Nah,” the human responded gruffly.  “Just a bit of a disagreement on interior design.”  

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  I seem to think two beds are fine.  Apparently she decided one would suffice.”  Nix scowled at the hole in the tree.  

Lyra giggled.  “That’s...not a bad problem for a stallion to have.”

Nix glared at her.  “I’m not a stallion,” he said harshly, pushing himself slowly off the ground.  “Besides, my kind have a storied history of intense interior decoration via putting our faces through walls,” he intoned solemnly.

“Right,” the unicorn lilted sarcastically.

“You would dare mock my p-people’s hallowed traditions of renovating fucking walls with our faces?  Your world will lie in ashes at my feet for your insolence, Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy.”  Nix managed to push himself into a kneeling position.

“Or just ‘Lyra’- OH MY GODDESS WE HAVE TO GET YOU TO THE HOSPITAL!”  She immediately rushed over to the human and tried to help him to his feet.  A large chunk of wood jutted out from the right side of his chest, and blood dripped down his dark trenchcoat in laconic rivulets.  He frowned at her and pushed her back before looking down at the wound.

“Tch, no need, ‘Lyra-Oh-My-Goddess-We-Have-To-Get-You-To-The-Hospital’.  Splinters are so annoying.”

The mare watched in shock as the human jerked the wood from his chest and lazily tossed it aside.  The flesh underneath was consumed by a white fire for a few seconds before its final wisps evaporated into the early morning air, leaving behind a patch of pale, unblemished flesh.  She watched in further amazement as the rent hole in the duster began knitting itself back together until it, too, was whole again.  The human drew the coat’s lapel to the side for a moment and prodded the gaping hole in his black shirt before sighing.  He grabbed a cigarette from an inside pocket and flicked his thumb against his index finger, summoning a small flame from it.  

Lyra’s thoughts refused to fit together logically after what she just observed, and so she just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  “That’s a pretty handy thing to have,” she said with a small, distant grin.  She shook her head quickly and tried to salvage the conversation.  Her smirk abandoned the fugue afforded by distance as she adopted a familiar, warm sarcasm in its stead.  “Probably saves you hundreds of bits a month on tailoring bills.”

“Oh, you have no idea.  This coat can do a lot more than just that,” he replied.

“Do tell.”  They were walking slowly back towards the library.

“Nah.  If you find out what else this coat is capable of, then something’s already gone wrong.”  The human leaned against the door to the tree, drawing deeply on his cigarette.  The glow in his eyes flickered briefly as he smiled.  “I’m just glad Tia didn’t get all of my weapons.”

Lyra cocked her head to the side in confusion, but shook it off and sat down in front of the blue-eyed alien.   She denied an awkward silence by quickly changing the topic of conversation.

“So, you can-”

The human momentarily disappeared with an unceremonious thump as the door he leaned on opened inward, sending him crashing to the floor.  The human’s head came to rest between two purple hooves.  He smiled cheerfully.

“Mornin’, Sparky!”  The tip of his smoke danced on his lips as he greeted the librarian.  She scowled down at him.

“Nix, there is a hole in my library.  A large hole.”  The lavender unicorn paused, breathing evenly in an effort to calm herself.  “Why is there a hole in my library?!” she shouted loudly, her eyes clamping shut in a wince and her hooves leaping a few inches off the ground.  Lyra saw the human stifle, as best he could, his mild amusement at her expression.

“Sheesh, Sparky-”

“Twilight!  My name is Twilight Sparkle!” she continued shouting.

“Twily?” the human offered meekly at the outburst, flicking his cigarette out the open door as he stared up into her furious glare.  

“Ugh!” she grunted in exasperation, turning on the human and heading back into the recesses of the tree.  “At this rate, even the stipend Princess Celestia is sending me to cover, uh, you, will be exhausted in days.  There’s no way I can possibly-”

“Do you ever, you know, have fun?” the human interrupted dully.  Twilight whipped around.  “Or, maybe just stop bitching every now and then?”

“I was not bit-  I was not complaining, Nix!” she said sharply.

“Phoenix!  My name is Phoenix McAshyflames!” Nix whined mockingly.

“You just-  you’re-  agh!”  The purple unicorn released an angry hiss between her teeth before turning away from the human and retreating to her library.

“Well, aren’t you just the little charmer,” Lyra uttered disapprovingly after a few moments of silence.

“Oh, I’m quite the motherfuckin’ gentleman,” Nix responded in an annoyed tone, hopping to his feet and extending one arm to the door frame.  “But at least I don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.”  He closed his eyes, and Lyra saw a faint white glow surround him before the light gathered at his shoulder and shot through his arm, into the tree.  Lyra heard a loud, dry groaning and various cracks above her.  She leaned back and looked up at the wound on the tree, only to find it quickly growing over with new bark.

“Tree’s still alive,” Nix explained.  “Which means I can just ‘heal’ the tree.”

“That’s convenient.  There’s a lot of living things in Ponyville’s hospital, while you’re at it.”  

Nix opened his eyes and met her own level, golden stare.  Something dark flitted behind the ice-blue depths of his regard.  “Maybe later,” he said ambiguously.  He looked away, refocused on pulsing his healing magic through the tree.

“You know-” Lyra started.  

A bright rainbow of color slammed into the slowly healing hole, sending splinters in every direction in a loud explosion.  Nix sighed and redoubled his efforts to heal Twilight Sparkle’s home.

“Nix!” a mare’s voice cried angrily from within the library.

“That wasn’t me!” he yelled back.  “Not this time, anyway,” he muttered  He met the mint-colored unicorn’s eyes.  “You see the shit I have to deal with, Lyre-Thingy?”  

“Oh, you poor thing,” Lyra said flatly, her eyes threatening to roll out of their sockets. She turned her head towards the crash site in the tree again, a look of mild concern on her face.  “Maybe we should-”

“Yeah, yeah,” the human cut her off.  “I’ll be there in a second.  Tell Scratchy not to bleed to death before I get there.”  

’Scratchy?’  Lyra shook her head and ducked through the door.  Nix returned his attention to the tree, wondering just what in Tartarus he was doing with his overlong life that he had suddenly become a glorified gardener.  


*     *     *     *     *


Nix completed healing the annoying librarian’s tree and entered the door with a slight hunch.  He mentally thanked his good fortune that the ponies’ furniture wasn’t quite as scaled down as the entrances to their garish abodes, recalling the decently sized bed he’d slept in last night.  He then remembered the beds were large enough that he woke up to a lime green unicorn snoring and drooling slightly onto his chest, and revoked his thanks.  

He walked listlessly towards the stairs leading to the upper level of the library, his pace picking up slightly as he began to wonder if the cyan pegasus that slammed into the tree was actually injured.  He was distracted from his concern, and his annoyed attempts to convince himself that he wasn’t concerned, by the sing-song humming of a youth coming from the kitchen.

Nix stopped and looked at the door as the humming increased in volume.  The door flung open and a purple reptile with green frills atop his head burst into the library proper, carrying a tray filled with steaming foodstuffs and assorted beverages.  It wore a white apron with frilly pink lace around the edges, the words ‘Stallion of the House’ printed in delicate, purple cursive across the front.  The thing’s merry humming ceased immediately at the sight of the human, who he greeted with an alarmed stare.  The purple lizard’s pupils slowly widened in tune with its eyes as Nix matched its stare.  The creature quickly and awkwardly set the tray of goods aside and ran up to the human with a graceless waddle, stopping a few feet before the human and extending a splayed claw upwards with a cheerful look on his face.

“Hi!  My name’s Spike!  You must be Nix.  Pleased to meet you!”  Nix just stared silently, ignoring the greeting.  The thing’s bulbous head barely reached his waist.  As the silence wore on, the enthusiastic twinkle in the lizard’s eyes became slightly muted, even as his arm stretched slightly forward and his fingers spread open in a more exaggerated welcome.

Nix planted his hands on his hips as his mouth aimed an annoyed sigh at the ceiling.  “First talking ponies, and now talking chubby iguanas.  I think I liked this dimension-jumping gig better when the denizens were mostly humanoid.”  The human glanced downward at the purple reptile.  He immediately felt bad as he saw the thing deflate with a sad sigh, its arm flopping back to its side.  

“I’m not an iguana, I’m a dragon,” he muttered inconsolably.  

“Oh.  Well, in that case, I should probably just kill you.”

The dragon’s head shot up from its cursory examination of the floorboards and his eyes shrunk to pinpricks.  He gulped loudly.  

“Nix, stop it!”  Twilight descended from the top level of the library next to a still clearly angered Ridge Dancer, a slightly dazed Rainbow Dash bringing up the rear as she leaned against Lyra.  “He’s just a baby dragon,” she explained.

“Just a baby?”  Nix asked, his eyes settling on Spike.  The dragon’s brow creased at the title.

“I am not a baby!” he insisted, crossing his arms as he tipped his nose upward arrogantly and closed his eyes.  “I am an adolescent dragon,” he said with a harrumph.  

“Alright, Mr. Adolescent,” Nix said with a bemused grin on his face, “tell me, do dragons in this place grow up to burn villages and consume maidens and do all sorts of terrible things?  Because that’s been my experience...”

“Nix,” Twilight said with an angry tone of warning.  He silenced her with his hand, shooting her a small wink.  Her features softened slightly, if only from momentary confusion over the human’s uncharacteristic behavior, before they both turned back to her assistant.

Spike looked rapidly between the human and Twilight, a look of horror playing across his features.  “N-no!  No way!”  He paused, scratching his chin with a lavender claw.  “Well, some dragons can be real jerks.”  He shot a paranoid glance at the human.  “But no way would they do something like that.  Not unless...”  His face hardened and he tried his very hardest to mold his child-like features into something resembling determination.  “I would never allow my friends or other ponies to be harmed.”  Nix did his best to ignore the slight pout on the dragon’s face.

“Very well, Sir Spike, protector of pastel equines and defender of the mildly annoying innocent.”  Nix reached a hand towards the dragon.  “I, Phoenix of...uh, a planet whose name I’ve temporarily forgotten-”

“Earth,” Twilight interjected, watching the two with a sudden interest.

“Right, I, Phoenix of Earth, extend my greeting to you and promise not to harm you so long as you don’t turn into a crazed, overgrown monstrosity that terrorizes villages and kidnaps maidens.”

“Heh, I think I can manage that,” the dragon said with a guilty glance to the side.  One claw rubbed the back of his neck nervously before he forced it stiffly to his side.  He used the other claw to grasp two of the human’s fingers and gave as firm a handshake as his stubby digits allowed him.  

“Well, then, grand dragon,” Nix said, dropping the handshake first, “I do believe I’ve rudely interrupted a noble soul’s important tasks with my bumbling presumptions.”  He placed one hand on his chest and bowed slightly.  “Please excuse me, Ser Knight.”  

Spike’s chest momentarily puffed with pride.  The dragon even managed to hold his stature for a second before he wheezed out a fitful, perturbed breath.  “Oh, no!  I forgot about breakfast!”  He ran over to the nearby tray, hefting it confidently and turning to the rest of the room.  “Your breakfast,” he said with patrician reservation, “is in the kitchen!” he rushed out afterward.  He hurriedly buried his face into the tray in his hands, slurping and gnawing noisily at its contents before sweeping his gaze across the ponies and the human in the room.  “If’s rilly guhd,” he said with a grin, crumbs spilling out from his mouth.  

Twilight’s jaw hung loosely as she tilted her head, one eyelid drooping lazily to counteract the arch twin's sky-high eyebrow.  “Wha?” she mouthed soundlessly, the bewildered mass of her features temporarily ignoring her baby dragon’s table manners as she focused intently on the human.

“Just like a baby bird,” Lyra whispered to herself with a chortle.  She nudged the light blue pegasus.  Rainbow Dash’s glazed eyes focused and she wiped the grin off her face.  

“Oh, yeah!  Hey, tall, dark, and ugly?”  Nix coughed out an annoyed grunt.  “Pinkie took care of finding you a house yesterday, but she’s gotta watch the Cake’s squirts today-”

“I don’t even wanna know why your cakes squirt here, or why their pastry ejaculates need to be observed,” Nix interrupted.  "Although that might explain why Tia likes cake as much as she does."  An amused snort escaped Twilight before she caught herself.

“What?  No.  Mr. and Mrs. Cake have a coupla foals and Pinkie babysits ‘em.”  The pegasus’s magenta eyes shot Twilight a searching look, but the purple unicorn just shook her head slightly, guiltily trying to conceal her grin.  “Well, anyway, she showed me where it was, so I figured since I didn’t have anything better to do, I could show you and what’s-her-face over there where your new digs were.”

“Uh, Rainbow, weren’t you supposed to hang out with Scootaloo today?” Twilight pointed out, inwardly patting herself on the back for tactfully phrasing the statement as a question.

Rainbow’s eyes widened.  “Oh, horseapples!  I completely forgot!  Stupid Pinkie, waking me up this early with her flying machine,”  she grumbled.  "Completely threw off my day."  Her hoof pressed thoughtfully to her chin as she flapped her wings and floated in the center of the library.  “Hmmm.  The house is only a little ways into the Everfree.  I guess I could take the little booger along for the ride.”

“Sure, take a small filly to the Everfree,” Twilight stated bluntly, her lids flat and wooden across her eyes.  “That seems like a good idea.”  

“Hey, it’ll be with some alien that has saved entire worlds and one of Celestia’s personal guards!  And Applebloom visits Zecora all the time.  She’ll be fine!”

“Uh-huh.”  Twilight’s tone ushered in a new pony paradigm of cool verbal dubiousness.

“Twi, I’m the fastest flier in Equestria, and I can carry four full-grown ponies in flight.  Worse comes to worst, I’ll get her out of there.”  Rainbow rested a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, her visage abandoning her normal brashness as she stared soberly into her friend’s eyes.  “Trust me.  She might be a squirt, but she’s like the little sister that I was too awesome to have.  No way in Tartarus would I ever let the filly get hurt, on my honor.”

Twilight gazed at her hooves.  “Well, I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said dubiously.

“Snkkt-heheh, that’s how I know it’ll be fun!”  She zipped towards a nearby window before turning.  “Hey, tall, dark’n’ugly, I’ll meet you at the edge of Ponyville after fetching the squirt.  Probably best if Scoot's parents don’t see you, anyway,” she muttered this last bit before zipping out the window.

Twilight reinforced her sober examination of her hooves, biting her lip in deep thought.  She was snapped out of her revery by a rude finger jabbing into her shoulder.

“Relax, Sparky.  I’ll take care of things,” Nix said in the closest tone to ‘comforting’ he could muster.  

Twilight's eyes narrowed.  "That doesn't sound very comforting..."

“Hey, like Scratchy said, I’ll be there, the socially awkward unicorn that’s kicked my ass seven ways from Sunday numerous times since I arrived will be there, and, most importantly,” Nix paused, “we’ll have a bard, just in case.”  He pointed at Lyra.

Lyra smiled.  “Right, you’ll have a bardeeergh what?!  I’m not going to the Everfree!” she blurted out.

“Why not?” the human asked.

“It’s dangerous!”

“I’m more dangerous.”

“Yeah, but, it’s just-  it’s-  it’s the Everfree Forest,” Lyra concluded unconvincingly.

Nix frowned at the mare before shrugging.  “Look, Lyre-Thingy, you wanna post up on your boring little park bench in your boring little park-”

“It’s not boring,” she interrupted icily, leveling a cold glare at the human.

“I...right.”  Nix waved his hand dismissively.  “I’m sure you have your reasons.”  He bit his tongue and smirked slightly.  “I’m also sure that doing the same thing day in and day out wears on you, and that a bit of change does everypony some good.”

“And how are you so sure of that?”  The mare attempted to swallow her frozen fury over the human’s presumptuousness, but continued glaring.  That bench was not boring.

Nix blinked at the mint-colored unicorn before plucking a cigarette from one of his duster’s pockets.  He planted the smoke in his mouth and met her frigid gaze.  His eyes flared dimly for a moment before the tip of his cigarette puffed to life with an orange glow.  Light blue tendrils of smoke began a laconic dance from the smoldering tip, twirling and swaying between the human’s pale, sapphire eyes and Lyra’s own hurt, gilded stare.  The cigarette twitched slightly between his lips as his mouth grew slowly into a sad smile.

“Because I’m old, Lyra.”  

He turned quietly and walked out the door.  She looked numbly after him before trading gazes with Twilight and Ridge Dancer.  She exhaled softly before following the human at a distance; the fiery-haired guardpony matched her gait as they followed behind the human's lithe saunter towards the edge of town.

> Chapter 16:  Monster
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“You look like a weirdo,” Scootaloo said finally.  Nix stared at the filly with a neutral expression, two green unicorns and one light blue pegasus forming a loose perimeter around the human and the filly at the edge of the Everfree Forest.  He had remained still while she circled him cautiously for half a minute, a discerning look in her youthful features, before she planted herself before him and voiced her final appraisal.  “Definitely weird.”

“Well, I doubt I’d make a very good alien if I didn’t look weird,” he stated plainly, drawing on his cigarette.  He exhaled the cloud of smoke towards the sky, away from the filly.  “Although I’m not so weird that I stalk around things in silence without first introducing myself.”  The orange filly’s mouth gaped before snapping shut.  Nix stuck his tongue out at her.  She glared and mirrored the human’s action, before she withdrew her tongue and glanced awkwardly towards the ground.  

“I’m Scootaloo,” she muttered quietly.

“And I’m The Alien,” Nix responded.  “I make most of these lame-o’s call me ‘Nix’, though.  Pleasure to meetcha, Scoots.”  He extended a hand to the orange pegasus.  She flinched, and Nix resisted the urge to frown as his hand dropped.  

“Are you...evil?” she asked hesitantly.

“Only to librarians and princesses,” Nix replied quickly.

“And the Royal Guard,” Ridge Dancer muttered under her breath.

“And guardponies,” Nix added gleefully with a quick glance to the sienna-maned unicorn.  “Why, you’re not a princess, are you?”  

Scootaloo stood up and leveled a defiant glare at the human, flaring her diminutive wings threateningly.  “No bucking way!”

Rainbow Dash burst out laughing.  The filly looked at the rainbow-maned pegasus in shock, before the slight red creep of humiliation began to paint her cheeks.  From the corner of her eyes, Rainbow caught the shift and quickly added, “Like she could be some namby-pamby princess!  She’s way too cool for that!”  The filly’s chest puffed out with pride.  “Although don’t let your parents hear you using that sorta language, squirt.”

“Sorry, Rainbow Dash.”  Scootaloo rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly, before her gaze crept back to the human.  He flicked his cigarette to the side.  It slowly melted into ash in midair as he raised his hand again.

“So, we square, Scoots?”

The filly looked at him through squinted eyes for a long time, before finally spitting on one hoof and slamming it into his palm.  “Just no funny business, or I’ll sic Rainbow Dash and the Alien Hunter on you!” she added as an afterthought.

Nix wiped his palm on his blue jeans.  “So long as you promise not to sic your saliva on my hands, I promise to behave.”  He grinned.  “Princess.”

Scootaloo groaned.  Rainbow Dash zipped behind the filly and bounced her into the air with her muzzle.  She landed squarely on Rainbow’s back, a giddy smile quickly replacing her dissatisfaction.

“Now that you’ve met Mr. Tall-Dark’n’Ugly, here, can we get on with the house thing?  My wings are itching for some sky.”

“Yeah!” the filly exclaimed.  “M-mine, too!”  

Rainbow gave the small orange pegasus a quick, warm smile before she turned to the edge of the Everfree, leveling an iron leer at the thickly overgrown border to its depths.  “Let’s rock this joint!”  

Lyra stared at them as they breached the wall of trees leading into the harrowing forest.  “I must be crazy,” she mumbled as her hooves moved of their own volition after them.

“So, about this ‘Alien Hunter’,” Nix started as he strolled carelessly into the foreboding green foliage.  The edges of his mouth curled upwards subtly as he pointedly ignored meeting Ridge Dancer’s eyes.


*     *     *     *     *


A simple flick of his hand.  A tiny, meager motion.  But Lyra saw it with the burgeoning horror of sudden revelation; one twitch of his wrist, a small flash of light, and the timber wolf that bore down upon her exploded into ash and a glowing cataract of bright red embers.  Just one innocuous motion and one of Equestria’s most fearsome predators simply ceased to exist.  

She was too stunned to move.  She simply stared up at the human as his knee-length duster began to dissolve into oily smoke around him, small tendrils of liquid shadow growing out from the darkness and framing the violent blue flares that burst from his eyes.  This wasn’t like at the train station.  He wasn’t grandstanding, summoning illusions of light and color to frighten the naïve inhabitants of some backwater.  No.  As the black smoke tendrils danced around his looming form, twisting and curling with a horrifying, viperous grace, Lyra realized with a chilling clarity just how wrong she had been about the human.  She barely registered the growls, the bone-shaking roars, of the gathering timber wolves as a handful of them began converging on the group’s position.  Instead she simply stared up at Nix, into his freakish, blazing sapphire eyes, frozen in place.  He was Death and Life given form, power and murder and the blackest depths of the night sky melding with the fiery explosions of stars he allowed to be born, and planets he allowed to coalesce out of cosmic dust.  She trembled, her hooves frozen in place as she realized she was little more than an insect to the being, to the thing, the monstrous, glorious thing that grew before her.  She didn’t hear the mewl that escaped her own lips.

“Go, now!”  the alien snarled.  She turned to flee.  She ignored the handful of timber wolves that moved to flank her escape.  She had to get away from here.  Away from him.  She barely registered her own scream as dark tentacles of velvet ink slammed into the ground on either side of her, impaling the five pursuing timber wolves with a sickening thud.  Her hooves were a mint blur as she sprinted past the predators, leaving them nailed to the ground in unearthly crucifixion to the murderous god behind her.  She thought she heard him—no, it—laughing as a shadowed form fell upon the fallen creatures.  She squinted her eyes shut and forced herself to run faster as the wolves’ yelps began.  She was almost out of hearing distance when she heard the pained cries of the creatures cut off.

A rainbow blur shot between her and a similarly sprinting Ridge Dancer.  The blue bullet paused in mid air ahead of the two, an orange filly desperately clinging to the pegasus’s neck.  

“You slowpokes don’t hurry the buck up, you’ll be compost piles for those rotten sons-of-birches back there!”  she cried.  Lyra wheezed and willed herself faster.  Willed herself away from the shadows.  Ridge Dancer, however, began to slow, falling behind the golden-eyed unicorn.  Rainbow Dash let out a frustrated growl before zipping behind them and snagging each unicorn under her two front hooves.  She shot off into the sky, breaking the forest’s dark canopy.  

“N-no!”  Ridge Dancer shouted.  “Put me down!”

“No time for that!  We’re gettin’ the buck outta Dodge!”  Rainbow Dash’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she increased her speed.

“No!  I have to go back!  He’ll be hurt!”  the unicorn pleaded.  

“He’s half-universe or something!  His mutant powers will heal him!”  Rainbow struggled to keep her hold on the lime green unicorn as the guardpony began to squirm.  “H-hey, cut it out!  You’ll get yourself killed!”

Something hard entered the lime green unicorn’s voice.  “I am Private Ridge Dancer of Celestia’s Royal Guard!  I command you to put me down this instant!” she roared.

“Your funeral,” Rainbow muttered, diving down into the trees and placing the unicorn back onto the darkened earth of the forest.  Ridge Dancer immediately tore off in the direction of the human.  Rainbow merely shook her head and took off into the blaring cerulean expanse of the midday sky.  

Lyra looked back timidly at the darkened shadows of the forest below as it slowly shrunk beneath her.  Was that guardpony crazy?  Didn’t she understand?  That alien, that twisted thing, he was no chick, no awkward, ugly, endearing babe in an unfamiliar situation.  

He was a monster.  


*     *     *     *     *


“Whistle while you work!” Nix belted out cheerfully, joyfully sauntering with unrestrained pep towards the seething brown mass of timber wolves in the clearing.  They lurched toward him in a sickening wave of bark and claws and teeth.  Nix smiled before pursing his lips.  The roiling cloak of black shadows that enveloped him began to thin and harden into inky, sharpened filaments at its edges.  With every bar he whistled of the song as he continued his relaxed walk towards the throng of predators, a blackened tendril shot out from his form and shattered through the skull of one of the horde’s vanguard.  The horde trampled their fallen packmates underpaw and continued rushing towards Nix.

’Hmm, seven down,’ Nix thought, pausing his advance and placing a thoughtful hand on his chin.  The blue suns of his eyes flared a bit more brightly as he sent out an invisible wave of his lifeforce, sensing and tagging the soul signature of every timber wolf in the clearing.  ’117 to go.’  

He grinned wildly as the horde closed in on him.  Thirty yards.  Twenty.  Ten yards between him and the edge of their savage wave.  The black shadows of the ominous cloud that hovered around him arced high in the air before slamming down across the front lines of the wolves in a forest of black spears, slowing the horde’s advance.  A dozen of the wooden monsters immediately burst into a shower of dead timber.  A single wolf thrust itself through the thin pillars of liquid shadow and lept at Nix.  A pair of shadowy tentacles intercepted the creature, wrapping around its torso from either side and halting it in midair.  Nix approached the suspended wolf casually as the rest of the timber wolves began to warily surround him.  His hand shot forth in a violent blur, grasping the throat of the snarling beast and ripping its head from its body.  A viscous, iridescent green liquid leaked from its twitching bulk before it dissolved into chips of bark and wooden sticks.  

The thundering, snarling mass of timberwolves halted their approach entirely and circled him with more caution.  He ignored them.  He held the severed head of the timber wolf to his ear and shook it.  Its teeth clattered together macabrely as its slackened jaw flapped at the motion.  Nix’s eyes widened and he gasped, holding the head before him at arm’s length.  Its glowing green eyes were rapidly fading.

“What’s that, Lassie?!”  Nix asked with mock shock.  “Timmy fell down a fucking well?  Again?!”  The waves of wooden wolves were slowly inching closer to him.  “Well, fuck him.  The little bastard should be up for a Darwin Award by this point.”  With a flippant fling of his arm, he tossed the skull behind him.  He dropped to one knee and stretched an upturned palm to the sky.  “Alas,  poor Yorstick!  I knew him well.”  The wolves mistook his lowered form for weakness and seethed upon the human.  By this point, Nix’s maniacal smile was a permanent fixture to his face.  As the wolves closed the final yards to their bipedal prey, his smile deepened and darkened.  

Tendrils of flame danced gingerly at his elbows before flaring and shooting along his arms, transforming into searing yellow talons that subsumed his hands.  The first two wolves that were dumb enough to assault him came in low, snapping at the kneeling human’s legs.  He slammed his fiery claws through their skulls.  Another closed from behind.  He shot off the ground in a forward flip, his heel catching the beast underneath its chin, shattering its face with a wooden crack before the creature’s various components exploded and showered its packmates behind him.  As he tumbled forward towards more snapping jaws, his claws brightened to a blinding blue and he slashed down with them laterally.  The wolves at his landing were immediately turned to ash and the ground exploded violently, leaving a deep furrow a few yards wide at the human’s feet.  

’Hmm, only 98 left.  Too easy.  Too boring.  May as well just end it.’  The timber wolves leapt back from the human.  A few of the creatures at the fringes of the horde began backing into the forest.  Brilliant wings of bright yellow and blue flame burst from Nix’s shoulders, flaring out widely from his form.  His eyes fell on the dead center of the horde before flickering brightly.  The shadows of his coat mixed with the flame of his wings and formed a massive, twirling arrowhead of fire and night in front of him.  

He shot through the gnashing mass of wooden beasts with blinding speed, towards the center of the horde.  The timber wolves in his path were flung high in the air, alit with sparking blue flames and being torn apart by severed segments of shadow as they yowled in pain, hurtling back towards the earth.  Nix impacted the center of the timber wolves with a rumbling shockwave of heated air that sent the monsters reeling.  

He levitated off the ground, arcs of electricity shooting from his fingertips and writhing coyly up his forearms, across his shoulders, and into his burning wings.  They infused the blue jets of flaming pinions as his wings shot out to their full length.  Motes of sparking, dazzling light began flitting away from the feathers, robbing them of their luminescence even as the lights began coalescing into turbulently gyring dual orbs in front of the human.  They whirred faster and faster as more glowing stars of power joined the spinning spheres, a keening whine shrieking ever louder through the air of the clearing.  The crackle of electricity thrummed deeply from the rapidly gyrating balls of energy as the shadowy smoke  of Nix’s duster gathered into a perfect black sphere at his chest.  The light seemed to warp around the fell orb’s existence, and with a sickening lurch it began dragging the now-terrified timber wolves toward it, toward the human. 

The fierce green light in the eyes of the dozens of wolves that remained now flickered fearfully, sensing their imminent end as their claws scrabbled uselessly across the ground in their attempts to escape.

“Welp, it's been fun.”  Nix’s voice boomed across the clearing.  The timber wolves began yelping pitifully as they drew closer to the increasingly sparking orbs of energy in front of the human’s flaming wings.  “But as the old saying goes, time flies when you’re about to die!”  

The shriek of the spinning spheres of energy cut out suddenly, and a deathly quiet permeated the air.  Their light sputtered, darkened, and—with a muffled thunderclap—they winked out of existence.  Nix’s eyes widened.  The black hole in front of his chest lost its form and slowly filtered back onto his shoulders in the shape of a trench coat.  His wings flickered once, twice, before dissolving into thin air.  The human fell from the air and collapsed onto the ground, wheezing.  His head shot up, meeting dozens of angry green eyes that had turned upon him as his lifeforce left him.  

An angry roar shattered the sudden calm.  More followed as the wolves turned onto the newly weakened human.  He reached for the cosmic lifeforce that gave him power, and found nothing.  A crashing swell of wooden teeth and growls trotted towards the weakened human.  He rose slowly to his feet.

One of the wolves behind him struck first.  It darted in, trying to close its jaws on his right leg’s hamstrings.  He spun, bringing an elbow down onto the back of the creatures neck.  Another jumped at him from the side, going for his throat.  He jumped back.  The animal’s razor sharp teeth snapped shut in the empty air.  He rammed a closed fist into the bottom of its throat, an assortment of leaves and sticks thumping down onto his head and shoulders as the beast collapsed.  Two more closed from the front.  He dodged the first.  Flecks of salival tree sap landed on his face.  Time seemed to slow down and he felt the creature’s hot, fetid breath on the side of his face.  He uppercutted the wolf, sending its broken form into a backwards cartwheel that shattered into more of its closing packmates.  The second clamped its teeth into his shoulder when he was too slow to dodge.  He rained blows on its wooden snout even as the the rest of the horde surged onto him, the sharpened spikes of their teeth finding purchase wherever they could as they tore into him.

“Fucking goddamn pony uni-” the rest of the sentence was lost in a bloody gurgle as a pair of jaws clamped down on his throat.  He reached desperately for some lifeforce, any lifeforce, his summons glancing off the vast barrier of emptiness that this reality had erected.  Without the power to heal himself, he’d soon blackout from bloodloss.  The creatures would tear him apart.  He’d survive.  But they would grow bored.  They would breed.  They would fall upon Ponyville.  But he’d survive.  He always did.  He’d survive just long enough to sift through the pieces.  To sift through the body parts because he failed.  He failed again.   

A gurgling scream escaped Nix’s lips, spilling blood across his face, as he struggled with his arms to lash out at the growing, hungry jaws that were tearing at his body.  He failed.  He twisted in vain under the barbed paws that held him down.  He failed.  The light in his pale blue eyes flickered and died, their glossy sheen reflecting the uncaring pale sky as another pair of jaws closed over his face.  He barely felt the wooden pikes puncture his skin as his skull fractured with a dull crunch.  He failed. 

He stopped searching for the power that would allow him his freedom.  Even if he could access it, what good would it do?  The power of gods, and the smatterings of memory he was allowed only painted one grim picture.  He had failed. He’d tried for a thousand years.  Had tried to...had tried to what, exactly?  He was vaguely cognizant of his left arm being torn off of him.  He had tried to atone.  Atone for what?  The snarling buzzsaw of teeth and claws that tore at him, fed on him, had become a distant reality as he desperately flicked through a thousand years of experiences, senses, and abandoned thoughts.  He couldn’t remember why he had to atone.  He couldn’t.  He could no more access his memories than he could his lifeforce.  And now others had to die, because he couldn’t save them.  

Because he had failed.  He had failed to atone.  He was a monster, and monsters can’t atone.  They can only be monstrous.  He didn’t deserve to succeed.  He was a monster, and he was being torn apart.  

’Just let it end.’  He abandoned himself to slashing teeth.  It’s what he deserved.

A hail of rocks slammed into the horde of timber wolves around him; the rocks hammered against the soft wooden bodies of the creatures in a pelting symphony of cracks, splinters, and wafting leaves.  He felt the pressure on his chest lighten as the creatures flaying him alive began to dissolve under the barrage of rocks.  The brilliant cyan heights of the sky opened up to him again as every timber wolf that hovered over him, gnawing on his broken form, detonated in a shower of dry brush and dead leaves.  He pushed himself onto his knees with his one remaining arm, his head searching the clearing dumbly.  He knelt in a small circle of dead wood, confusion and despair contorting his bloodied face.

“N-no,” he mumbled, the flesh of his throat slowly knitting together.  “Come back.  I have to die.  I have to...”  The wolves closest to him rapidly shifted their gaze from him to the edge of the forest’s clearing.  Nix regarded them with a dead sheen over his eyes.  He numbly patted the ground around him, searching for his other arm.  He held the appendage up, staring at it for seconds, empty moments that stretched into a lonely eternity.  “I was human once,” he whispered to himself.  He held the severed arm up to his shoulder, grimacing as the limb began to reattach itself to him.  

His muddled vision of the clearing was subsumed by a dark green glow.  As the wolves turned their attention back to him, what was left of his stomach lurched as he was jerked through the air.  He landed harshly on the ground, sliding across his back for a few meters before coming to rest next to a pair of lime green hooves.  He struggled to stand before one of them came to rest softly on his shoulder, gently holding him down.  He looked up into the glimmering emerald eyes of his savior.  Ridge Dancer gazed down on him as calmly as she could.  She failed to keep her eyes from welling up after seeing the extent of his injuries.  No healing white flames danced across his bloodied form.   He saw more hurt in her eyes than he felt in his gnarled, undying body.

Nix hated that look.

“Dancie...” he wheezed.  “No.   N-no, you have to...you have to get...out of here...”  The unicorn looked away from the tattered remains of the human at her hooves.  Her face became a stoic mask, as unbreakable as the stones she wielded, and her horn began to glow a green deeper than a calm ocean’s depths.  The earth began to rumble around the pair as three bulging masses grew from the soil behind the unicorn.  

“Do you know why I took the name Ridge Dancer?” she asked almost casually.  Three dull grey boulders, each weighing several tons, erupted from the ground, black soil spilling off of them into the yawning sepulchres of earth from which they were summoned.  They rotated threateningly in the air behind the green mare, encompassed by a dull green aura, as the few dozen remaining timber wolves closed in on the broken human and his companion.  A few beads of sweat formed on her brow as her face scrunched in concentration; the dark green glow of her horn grew in size as bright green sparks began shooting from its tip.  The levitated boulders stopped their rotations and shuddered, releasing a loud, deep groan from their centers.  Ridge Dancer looked back down upon Nix, all pretense of sympathy in her eyes replaced with an imperious fury, her eyes harder than jade.  

“Because even mountains crumble beneath my hooves.”  

An apocalyptic roar cracked through the clearing as her levitated boulders shattered into a thousand little pieces before shooting into the mass of timberwolves, sending up a shower of dust and broken limbs as the rocks hammered home with cacophonous thunder.  Every last timber wolf in the clearing was torn apart beneath the shredding barrage of the unicorn’s meteor storm.  Ridge Dancer stared coldly into the distance, panting heavily.

“D-Dancie?” Nix whispered out quietly, shocked, as the dust slowly settled.  The mare collapsed next to him.


> Chapter 17:  Only You Can Foment Forest Fires
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The dying day’s final light sifted through the wavering, twisted limbs of a solemn assortment of ancient trees.  The elderly constructs of wood and leaves stood with quiet austerity around the clearing, mute sentinels gazing with timeless judgment upon the deathly quiet that permeated their open charge—a forest meadow that lay in defiance of the thick bramble of vegetation that all but defined the Everfree Forest.  Settling dust gave the piercing twilight’s last rays the illusion of physical form as they alit upon the clearing’s shattered detritus, gently running their luminescent fingers across the myriad piles of broken wood and shredded leaves that littered the ground.  

His chest still heaving with exhaustion as he lied on the moist soil, Nix twisted his head slowly towards the collapsed unicorn next to him.  She stared back at him.  Her emerald eyes shimmered with self-conscious embarrassment.  

“Dancie?”  the human gasped out in between rattling wheezes.  The lime-green mare’s mouth moved, but only incoherent air escaped from between her lips as her eyelids began to droop.  Nix placed one hand gently on her shoulder and shook her when her eyelids threatened to close entirely, startling her enough that she avoided passing out.  He moved his face closer to her, staring harshly into her eyes.  She could have been killed.  “You’re a bucking idiot,” he seethed.  She met his stare, and he thought he could see a flicker of anger dance behind her deep green eyes before it faded, replaced by nervousness.

“I-I’m sorry.  I just wanted to...I just wanted...”  The mare sniffled.

“It’s alright,” Nix muttered quietly, lying back down but catching her with a sideways glance.  “We’ll have to work on your aim, though.”  The mare turned her head to look at the human, her features contorted quizzically.  Nix smiled into the fiery evening sky.  “You didn’t manage to hit me in the face with even one piece of marble that time.”

“But I- I-”  Ridge Dancer’s mouth gaped before it morphed into a weak grin.  “Your face is a much smaller target,” she finished with a rush of breath.

Nix’s subdued, hitching coughs could almost have been confused for chuckles were it not for his fatigue.  The mare, similarly vanquished, had no such issues.  She chuckled breathily, the locks of her sienna mane bobbing slightly.  In between her gasps of exhaustion, her snorts transformed into open giggles.  Before long, loud peals of laughter blared from the gleeful unicorn, reverberating with melodious revery throughout the clearing.  The deeper timbre of Nix’s own uncontrolled laughing fit echoed alongside hers.

As his guardpony’s mirth finally began to die down, he pushed himself slowly off the ground.  Most of his wounds had healed, but he was still exhausted, and attempts to reach for his lifeforce came up empty.  He couldn’t even detect the barest few drops from the soul essence with which he was bonded.  He rose slowly to his feet, stumbling to either side before finding his balance.  He lurched the few meters over to Ridge Dancer, carefully bending over and wrapping his arm around her trunk as he helped her to her hooves.  He then collapsed atop her, sending both of them to back to the dusty embrace of the clearing’s dark soil.  

“If you say ‘performance issues’, I’m leaving your ass here, Dancie,” the human grumbled as he rolled off the mare and stuttered to his feet again.

“I’m just so...so tired...”  Her eyes began to close.

Nix snapped his fingers in her ear to keep her conscious.  The unicorn’s eyes shot open as the sound echoed through the clearing, 

“N-no!  You can’t...” She paused to catch her breath.  “You can’t use that here!”

The human stared at her, dumbfounded.  “Use what?” he asked innocently.  He turned to see a wavering green glow flare up across the meadow, enveloping the largest piles of scattered dead wood with increasing luminescence.  “I’m...gonna assume that’s not good.”  She responded with a terrified glance.  He didn’t need further convincing.  

He wrapped his arm around her once again and tried to pull her to her hooves.  They both collapsed to the ground.  Nix shot a glance at the clearing, and at the various piles of wood gathering together again.  Over twenty animated bundles of twigs were basked in the sickening green glow he recognized all too well from the timber wolves’ eyes.  

“We have to get out of here.”  The human was a master at stating the obvious.

“I...I-I’m just so tired,” the mare responded, her eyelids flickering as she fought the human’s grasp so she could lie down.  He tightened his grip on her bright green body and began stumbling towards the edge of the clearing, ignoring the trail her hooves left as they dragged across the ground.  “J-just go on without me.”  

Nix faltered, his face reintroducing itself with the fertile soil of the vile forest around them.  He tried as best he could to ignore the rustling clacks of wood impacting wood—a headsman’s percussion to the whine of the vile magic that subsumed the clearing—before he clutched the mare tighter to his side.  

“Dancie,” he grunted, pushing himself off the ground even as he began dragging her closer to the trees that lined the meadow.  “You’re a fucking dumbass.”

“P-please,” she begged.  Phantom growls began twisting through the early evening’s air as wood whirred to life behind the pair.  “I’m...not worth...the effort...”  He frowned as he felt her breathe out these last few words before going slack in his arms.  He heard the faint patter of paws on the soft ground behind him.

“I’ll abandon your worthless ass tomorrow, then,” he replied grimly.  “Today, though...”  The thudding of sharpened, wooden paws on earth grew louder.  He looked over his shoulder.  Twenty of them.  Twenty timber wolves had reanimated, and were converging with sickening speed on him and Ridge Dancer.  He searched for some lifeforce, for something, for anything, he could use to protect her.  He found nothing, and in despair his free hand dug into the ground, clawing at its depths for purchase that he might drag the fading mare to safety.  But he moved so slowly, and they so quickly.  They had closed the distance so effortlessly, and they would fall upon him, upon Ridge Dancer, in seconds.  Nix crawled along uselessly, stumbling and wheezing out prayers to all the gods he had slain.  ’Fate, please.’  

The malodorous stench of the wolves’ fell breath filled his nostrils.  The thrumming drumbeat of the beasts’ paws dimmed slightly as one creature left the ground and leapt through the air, its glistening jaws bared hungrily as it sailed towards its target.  Nix dropped Dancie—no, Ridge Dancer—and turned to face the beast head on.  His hands clenched into fists and he coiled one arm-

-and immediately shielded his face with it as a booming spear of lightning hammered into the clearing, subsuming the leaping timber wolf in bright blue light and temporarily blinding him.    As the human lowered his arm and the spots cleared from his vision, he saw the pack of wolves low to the ground in a semicircle surrounding the blackened crater where the bolt struck.  

The bark of their snouts rippled back in threatening snarls as they glared at the light blue pegasus stallion, standing nonchalantly in the smoking hole where their packmate had once been and clad in a beaten leather brigandine.  He seemed to regard the rapier that impaled the blackened earth with almost philosophical ponderance as small crackles of electricity sparked along the length of its blade.  As the glowing embers that littered the ground around him flickered and died, releasing one final puff of acrid smoke, the pegasus raised a pair of bored amber eyes to the human.

“Hmm.  A wolf may not fear the bark of a dog,” he said in monotone, lazily withdrawing the sword from the ground and running one hoof along its edge, “but does the wolf’s bark fear a dog’s bite?”  His half-lidded eyes regarded the human dully, but Nix could have sworn he saw a mischievous glimmer flit through them briefly.

The stallion stared in silence at the human as a wolf at his side burst forth, its rows of sharpened teeth leveled at the blue pegasus.  The pony flicked his rapier at it, and the wolf was impaled through its gaping jaws.  A flicker of electricity shot down the blade, and the beast’s head exploded in a shower of splinters.  The pegasus’s eyes never left the human’s.

“Swordspony, I could almost hug you if you weren’t a walking smartass of a defibrillator.”

Glancing Shock’s mouth twitched subtly before he turned towards the wolves with a lazy grace.  “Answer enough, I suppose.  While I do wonder how simple mongrels laid low a vaunted ‘Godslayer’, I imagine I can ask after I’m done weed-eating the garden.”  He slothfully drew his gladius and slid his fencing sword back into its sheath.  He floated a few inches off the ground, short sword in hand and sky-blue wings flapping slowly.  His head lolled as he examined the snarling timber wolves, the deep blue tips of his wild, mostly white mane wafting slightly with the motion.  

“Well, then.”

With a violent burst of air that smelled strongly of ozone, the pegasus hurtled towards the outer edge of the wolves.  With sickening speed, he seemed to float straight through the farthest wolf, trailing lightning and twisting back towards the rest of the pack even as the beast fell apart, cloven in half perfectly through its center.  The wolves fell on the whirring blue ball of energy and steel, already tasting blood as they outnumbered their opponent.  The foolish pups were met by a dancing dervish of blades, his sword glinting a blood-red color in the evening sun as he flashed it in wide, sweeping arcs all while dodging every ineffectual lunge meant to end him.  

Where teeth snapped, he had already rolled away with a lurching, drunken agility; the heads behind the teeth thumped to the ground as his blade lashed out.  The timber wolves were a seething locus of chaotic violence as they scrambled over each other to get to the swordspony.  He merely waltzed between their surging wooden masses, his sword spinning with mathematical calculation and seeming to strike multiple opponents with every sudden sweep.  

It was over in seconds.  Looking at the chunks of wood at his feet, Glancing Shock released a derisive snort before sheathing his gladius.  He ambled up to Nix and Ridge Dancer, his odd grace fluidly shifting between razor precision and a rolling dance at random.

“Would you kindly tell me why you allowed my guard to be hurt, alien?” the pegasus asked blandly, though Nix detected the hint of a threat behind the melodious drone of his voice.

“I-I’m not hurt, Guard-Captain-” Dancie started.

“I’m not ‘Guard-Captain’ anymore,” he interrupted, no trace of bitterness in his voice as he eyed the green unicorn blankly.  “Just Glancing Shock.”

“Y-yes, Gua- uh, Glancing Shock.”  The name felt wierd coming from the guardpony’s lips.  “I’m just a little tired.”  She glanced at the rocks littering the clearing.  “I...I did it with three boulders this time instead of just the one.”

The swordspony’s eyebrows raised half a millimeter in shock.  “Well, that’s quite an interesting feat...either way, the sun’s almost set, and I could sorely use a cup of tea.  Hopefully without some brash rainbow pegasus interrupting it with crazed shouting about ‘sons-of-birches’ and shadow gods and some such.”  He paused, turning towards the frontier of the empty expanse nestled in the forest.  “It’s been so long since I’ve had time to catch up with Shining Armor’s little sister, after all.”

A whining hum filled the clearing as it was subsumed by the sickening green glow of magic.  Glancing Shock released a slightly heavier breath, poorly mimicking a sigh.  “I forgot what annoying pests these timber wolves could be,” he said, exasperation almost penetrating his bored tone as he drew his short sword and turned back towards the clearing.

The numerous bits of bark, leaves, and sticks levitated off the ground for a few seconds before flying to the center of the clearing, whirling high in the air in a tempestuous cyclone of wood.  The whirring gyre increased in speed before every errant piece shot inwards, coalescing with grisly efficiency into a single, massive form.  As the green glow died down, a gargantuan wooden claw slammed down onto the earth and the ground shuddered.  Swirling green eyes the size of dinner plates glared furiously at the trio as the towering monstrosity inhaled deeply—a violent gust ripped at the three.  A deathly quiet fell upon the clearing as the wind settled before a skull-rattling roar shattered the precarious peace.  The colossal timber wolf raised itself to its full height—at least three stories tall—and took a thunderous step forward.

Glancing Shock gazed ponderously at his diminutive blade, then at the approaching monster.  With uncharacteristic quickness, he drew his rapier.  His eyes flicked between the two swords, then back at the gigantic timber wolf.  He pursed his lips and blew out a puff of air.  “I’ll make it work,” he muttered to himself.  His wing muscles tensed briefly before he shot through the air towards the lumbering beast, wings flared and swords held wide.  He abandoned all pretense of control, and his mouth sneered with maniacal glee even as lightning trailed off his wings.  He rocketed forward, bringing his swords to bear in front of him and becoming a living spear aimed squarely at the monster’s head.  

The uberwolf’s paw moved faster, colliding with the light blue pegasus and smacking him aside.  He tumbled through the air, slamming into a tree and sending cracks along its trunk under the force of his impact before crumpling to the ground.  His limbs spasmed as he dropped his swords, his head lolling to the earth and his paroxysms dying as he blacked out.

“Big goddamned hero moment, my ass,” Nix grumbled to himself, reaching for Ridge Dancer so they could both escape.  His hands grasped at empty air as he found the spot unoccupied.  His eyes swept his surroundings quickly. He saw her light green mass stumbling towards the wooden leviathan.  He lurched after her, cursing under his breath and fighting off his fatigue as he saw her horn begin to sputter dull green sparks.

The timber wolf’s every step thundered as it approached Glancing Shock.  It leered down hungrily at his broken form, viscous globules of sap dripping off its massive fangs.  It stooped to claim its prey before a large rock slammed into its head, bouncing off harmlessly alongside a few flecks of bark.  Its green eyes narrowed to luminescent slits as its head whipped around.  Ridge Dancer stood before it, legs wavering like jelly as she forced herself to stand.  A few more tiny rocks glanced uselessly off the beast’s side.  It unleashed a chilling roar and turned on the unicorn.  

Nix stumbled between the monster and the mare, searching desperately for his power, for any power.  A single smoky tendril extended from his coat towards the lumbering creature and dissipated on impact with its hardwood skin.  It squinted one eye quizzically at the human before a lazy sweep of its paw sent him tumbling across the earth. 

With quivering arms, Nix pushed himself off the ground and turned in time to see one enormous paw come down onto Ridge Dancer’s lower half, pinning her to the ground.  She shrieked in pain, her shrill cry piercing the clearing.  As the wolf’s massive jaws loomed over the sobbing unicorn, Nix began to panic.  He did the only thing he could; he snapped his fingers at the behemoth.

Its jaws immediately slapped shut, entangled with a couple black cords of cloth that appeared from thin air.  It drew its head back in confusion, shaking it violently and pawing at its nose to tear off the restraints.  Small pieces of metal glinted dully in the orange light of the evening before it managed to free itself of the knotted bands.  They sailed through the air before thudding to the ground at Nix’s feet.  The human glanced at them, and his eyes widened.

The hulking mass of wood and leaves refocused its gaping maw on Dancie, setting its jaws to snap shut on her shivering form as her eyes glazed over in fear.  She blubbered and spasmed underneath the crushing weight of the massive paw, looking up in terror at rows upon rows of sharpened wood bearing down upon her.  

A shower of splinters and chunks of wood exploded from the side of the beast’s head and it recoiled, roaring in surprised pain.  It turned slowly, towards the source of its torment, one lip raising in a guttural growl that thundered through the clearing.  Its enraged eyes fell upon the strange biped, standing cocksure and holding a small chunk of black metal that emitted a small tendril of smoke from its tip.

“Do you wanna know the best part about weaponry that uses one’s fuckin’ soul as a power source?”  Nix asked nonchalantly, reaching inside his duster’s breast pocket even as he kept his black pistol, Umbra, leveled at the face of the ugly fucking wood monster.  He pulled a cigarette from the pocket and placed it between his lips.  He tried summoning a fireball, but still found no lifeforce.  With a shrug, he aimed his gun at the tip of his smoke and fired.  The tip of the cigarette frayed, but a few orange embers burned at the half that remained.  He pointed his gun back towards the behemoth timber wolf and drew deeply on the butt.  His sapphire eyes regarded the monster coldly as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.  

It roared and charged, every lope towards him sending dull quakes through the earth.  Nix stared dully at its approach, drawing his silver pistol, Lux, and letting both arms fall to his sides.  As it closed on him, the beast lowered its massive jaws and twisted its head to bite him in half.  The human twisted and dropped onto his back as the sharp wooden pikes snapped harmlessly around empty air.  The gigantic timber wolf’s four thick legs crashed around him as he slid underneath it.  His twin guns flashed upwards and he fired off a quicksilver barrage of shots at the beast’s limbs.  The air around him was a deluge of splinters, searing embers, and the cracking booms of his weapons as he fired away with inhuman ferocity.

The uberwolf’s legs evaporated in less than a second, and it heaved forward.  Its head and body slammed down with a deafening crash.  Its handicapped torso slid across the ground for a ways, digging a massive furrow through the dark, fertile soil and kicking up a cloud of dust.  As the air began to clear, it began thrashing and snapping its head about, its considerable mass stirring desperately in spite of the loss of its legs.

Nix walked calmly around the fallen leviathan, his legs stuttering every few steps.  He raised his twin guns at the gnashing face of the beast before him, glaring down on its broken form with imperious fury.  His lips curled back into a feral snarl.

“Rechargeable batteries, you overgrown bitch.”

He emptied the batteries of his guns into the shrieking monster’s face until there was nothing but a smouldering pile of ash and smoke where it once lay.  He awkwardly forced his weapons into the black bands of the holsters that once again criss-crossed his chest.  One hand numbly grasped at the cigarette between his lips but only managed to dislodge it.  It twisted dully through the air, its ashes joining unceremoniously with the rest of the blackened, smoking mass that crunched beneath Nix’s feet.  He ignored it and stumbled dully towards the lime green mass that whimpered on the ground.

He dropped to his knees before Ridge Dancer and gently placed his hands on her.  She looked up at him with shimmering eyes.

“I c-can’t feel my legs, Phoenix,” she sobbed.  She coughed up a large chunk of phlegm and flesh, her twisted chest heaving under the effort.  “Why can’t I...can’t I feel my legs?”

“Shh-shh-shh, Ridge Dancer,” Nix cooed as gently as he could.  “It’ll be alright.”  He looked down calmly at the mare—as calmly as he could with her rattling, labored breaths drilling through his mind.  Her lower half was crushed, a misshapen tangle of bones underneath torn flesh.

’No.’

“I know it hurts, but I can heal you.  Remember?”  She looked up at him, her eyes wavering.  “Just like when I broke your leg,” he forced out hoarsely.  He tried to draw from his lifeforce, his efforts coming up empty.  He stared into the mare’s jade eyes.  He tried harder, but every attempt to access his lifeforce glanced off a smooth, uncaring barrier.  

Ridge Dancer sniffled and she forced a small smile.  “Y-you...remembered...”  She coughed up more blood.  More viscera.  Nix’s psyche scratched uselessly against the barrier between him and his healing magic.  Hammered at it.

’No.’

“Performance...issues...?” she wheezed softly.

“I...I c-can’t find- my power, it’s-”

Dancie’s lime green hoof twitched and wavered as it fought to rise off the ground.  She stroked the human’s cheek softly.

“Shh...I finally...made...a friend.”  She stared happily into his dull blue eyes.  A warm smile graced her lips.  “B-but I’m tired...so tired...”  Her eyelids began to close.  

’No.’

Nix rejected this.  He rejected Ridge Dancer’s injuries.  He hammered on the barrier.  He rejected this happy world of singing ponies and levity.  He struck harder.  He rejected that this world could see his guardpony—his guardpony—suffer such a fate.  The barrier warped.  Nix struck at it viciously.  Her beautiful jade eyes were almost completely hidden by the downward march of her eyelids.  Nix rejected this.

He rejected this entire reality.

Fiery claws tore at the barrier that separated him and this mare’s life.  The barrier wavered, but Nix dove deep and buried his mind’s talons into its shimmering, perfect surface.  Fueled by a thousand years of failure, his burning limbs flared brightly, and he rent the harmonious barrier in two, in four.  He slashed and hammered and eviscerated the wall between him and Dancie’s salvation, ripping it to shreds.  The cosmic lifeforce of the universe, his universe, his home, glowed warmly beyond its bounds.  He reached for it, and drank deeply of its power, unconstrained at last.  

As the barrier broke, a blinding pillar of light burst from the ground of the tiny clearing in the Everfree.  It shot upwards, piercing the heavens.  The dusk’s orange sun, hovering precipitously on the horizon, dropped from the sky.  The blinding pillar of light replaced its glow, flaring brightly as the human at its base breathed in its power hungrily.  As Nix’s hands were subsumed by the delirious flurries of white fire that danced across Ridge Dancer’s fading body, eggshell cracks began to form across the newly darkened sky, spilling white light along the fractures as reality began to crumble.

’I reject.’  

A white sphere consumed the small clearing, swelling slightly before imploding with a cataclysmic explosion, sending off a shower of glowing sparks to the surrounding forest.  

The gleaming pillar of power wavered and dissolved.  The cracks in the night sky healed.  The sun gingerly peeked out over the horizon.  Reality refocused, returning to its natural state.  As the barrier separating him from his lifeforce slammed home once more, the human stared down at the unicorn mare.  He felt nothing of his lifeforce, but it didn't matter.  Her injuries were gone.  She was alive.  She blinked up at him, confused.

“Did we...did we make it to our new home?”

Ridge Dancer’s eyes widened as the human collapsed on top of her, unconscious.  He felt so warm.   The limbs of the ancient trees surrounding the clearing crackled as yellow flames began to consume them.  Burning, they continued their watch over the small meadow, steadfast in their charge even as fire ravaged them.  If they screamed, their cries were silent.  Their trunks had only just began to blacken as the mare heaved the human onto her back.  A light blue pegasus limped along beside her as the three headed away from the flames and towards the edge of the Everfree Forest.  The clearing melted behind them in a torrent of flame and ash.

> Chapter 18:  Prelude
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Rainbow Dash alit on the edge of the cloud, the orange light of the evening bathing her cyan coat in fire.  Her magenta eyes flicked rapidly across the forest below, searching desperately.

’Shoot, shoot, shoot!  Where was it?!’  

Her first stop had been at Twilight’s.  There had been some weird blue pegasus in brown armor that seemed to just stare through her.  Halfway through her babbling explanation, he just walked out the door without a word.  Frickin’ weird.  Then the mint green unicorn just sorta stumbled off through Ponyville after that, muttering to herself about chicks and dark gods and Goddess knows what else.  After that, Twilight had gotten all serious and began running around her library.  Dash knew the unicorn well enough by that point to leave well enough alone, so she rushed Scoots home to her parents.  They looked a lot more afraid than the filly–she was almost as fearless as the cyan pegasus was, an awesome lil’ squirt–but after a few courageous words that were mostly honest and seemed to mostly calm them, she had shot off back towards the Everfree.

That stupid alien, staying behind to face an entire horde of timber wolves by himself like he was half as awesome as she was.  No buckin’ way was she gonna just leave him back there to get all the glory for himself.  Besides, she still had his little black box, and even if she gave zero bucks about ol’ Tall-Dark-n-Ugly, she’d be damned to Tartarus if she didn’t at least try to get the thing back to him.  It stopped working after the first few hours, anyway.

She grumbled to herself, lifting a blue hoof to her forehead and squinting as she continued her search.  In the distance, she thought she saw a cloud of dust, maybe a slight green glow.  A-ha!  She crouched down and flared her wings, focusing on the spot in the distance.  Her muscles quivered as she became coiled steel, a distant clearing in the forest below her unwitting target.  She grinned wildly.  And fell through the cloud.

’What the hay?!’  

Her wings flapped uselessly at the tearing wind as she plummeted towards the earth.  Her flight having failed her, she barely noticed the pillar of white light that pierced the evening sky.  As the ground rushed to meet her, the rainbow-maned pegasus let loose a decidedly uncool scream.


*     *     *     *     *


“Spike, I need everything written about timber wolves, ever!  From Mane Goodall all the way back to Equicurus!”  Twilight’s hooves were a purple blur as she raced along the lengths of the wooden shelves that lined her home.  Spike appeared from behind one of the wooden monoliths, his small chest heaving and his arms laden with a towering pile of dusty tomes.  The unicorn promptly collided with the small purple dragon, sending the books shooting through the air–papyrus meteorites that crashed down around the tangled limbs of the two lavender creatures.  

“Ack!”

“S-sorry, Twilight,” the dragon stammered, hurriedly rushing about to collect the fallen tomes.  He abruptly paused, standing straight up.  “I- I feel kinda good all the sudden.”  He looked over at the lavender unicorn.  She was holding a hoof to her head, groaning.

“I...feel dizzy.  Th-the magical weaves on the leylines, what are they-” Twilight looked up suddenly, her pupils narrowing to pinpricks.  “N-no, not-”

She collapsed to the ground.  With a frightened squeak, her green-frilled assistant ran to her side as a bright white light flared through the windows of the library.


*     *      *      *      *
 

“Are you sure it’s alright?” Fluttershy breathed out softly, staring pointedly at her own light yellow hooves.  She looked up suddenly with a small smile.  “If you’d like, you could make the house spin again,” she offered.

“What, and ruin the tea?  Perish the thought, Fluttershy!”  the dragonequus protested half-heartedly, smiling warmly at the shy pegasus in spite of himself.  “Besides, last night was probably enough excitement to last you a few years.”

“I- oh, yes,” she admitted, her gaze reintroducing itself with her hooves.  “But really, I was asleep for most of it.”  She shuddered at the memory of her first encounter with...booze.  “Oh, dear me, I almost forgot the tea!”  Her exclamation echoed through the small living room of her cottage with the force of a napkin impacting its wooden floors.  “I- I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Oh, but of course, m’lady!” Discord bowed deeply, his smile deepening.  As she left room to tend to the teapot, he snapped the digits of his bear paw.  He snickered to himself as every inkwell, quill, and blank scroll in Twilight’s library was offset by a few inches.  

’Oh, how the mighty have fallen,’ his brain prodded.

’Quiet, you.  No point in needlessly upsetting Fluttershy with something more bombastic,’ he demurred.  

’Bombastic, you say?  Like a certain alien retrieving certain weapons that a certain lord of chaos was supposed to certainly guard?’

’Exactly- Wait, why’re you replying to me?  It’s against the rules.’

’Rules?  Oh, how the mighty have fallen,’ the internal voice taunted again.  ’At least one of us still remembers ourselves.  Or is it all of us?’

’I forget, too.  Let’s just roll with it.’

’Works for me.  Twilight’s gonna be livid.’

Discord quashed his snickers as Fluttershy re-entered the room empty-hooved.  He felt like he was missing something.  Some things, possibly.  One a dull black, and the other a searing silver, perhaps?  Whatever, things usually worked themselves out.  Or didn’t.  He was particularly fond of the latter.  He was fond of a lot of things.  Actually, in the last coupla seconds, he was much more prone to fondness.  The dragonequus felt pretty good, all of the sudden.  At least until he saw his pink-maned friend crumple to the ground, her yellow coat lightening as it reflected a bright light that flared through the window.

“I...I feel wrong,” she mewled as the patchwork serpent rushed to her side.

He paused halfway to the fallen pegasus, his yellow eyes narrowing.  “Hmm, can’t have that,” he muttered with a snap of his fingers.  “Fool boy has no idea what he’s doing, does he?” he asked no one in particular, and everyone in his brain.

’Of course he doesn’t.  He’s an idiot.’

’A dangerous idiot,’ a voice added.

’Not necessarily,’ another interjected.  ’Mostly just a helpless idiot.’

’The sisters won’t be happy...’

’Bah, they’ve been too drowned in doldrums ever since Sunny stopped dancing and Lu did her prison stint.  They can serve to lighten up a bit.’

’They can, and should, but will they?  You don’t think he’ll be sent to the moon, maybe imprisoned in stone after this?’

‘Not if I run damage control...’  The dragonequus sighed to himself.  ’Such an idiot...’

’Him, or you?’  Discord ignored his brain’s question and flashed out of the room.  The white light piercing through the cottage’s windows died down, replaced with the orange glow of the setting sun.  Fluttershy trembled groggily as she got to her hooves.

“I...oh, dear, I hope I didn’t ruin the tea,” she meeped, shooting back into the kitchen.


*     *      *      *      *


“Mm-hmm,” Celestia murmured distractedly, sipping lightly from her levitated tea cup.

The Royal Canterlot Accountant stood before her in the Royal Throne room, appearing far more haggard than he did a few days ago.  He nervously readjusted his glasses under his tousled mane as he flipped through the massive tome of the kingdom’s ledger before him.

“S-so, you see, Princess,” he stammered out, “due to the sudden influx of sales tax from a single Canterlot mare, and if we adjust some other departments’ budgets-”  He buried his nose more deeply in the moldy book–Celestia’s eyes widened imperceptibly and her throat gulped more hungrily at her coffee at his distraction.  Holding her tongue about the mare that had gone on a spending spree for her two colts was much easier this way.  “-we actually do still have the funds for the Grand Galloping Gala this year!”

“Hmm,” she responded indifferently.  She briefly considered using the excess funds for the turgid, boring ball as insurance for the human’s continued stay in her kingdom.  Slowly standing, she mentally vetoed this, favoring instead the idea that the bits go towards Canterlot’s various orphanages.  Reaching her full height, she smiled warmly at the Royal Accountant–her face revealing none of her malcontent that the title was capitalized–and she spoke.

“Excellent work, Fiscal Slip.”  She regarded the grey pegasus calmly even as he tiredly beamed from her praise.  “I shall look into this-”

She fell to the ground, her eyes widening over the sudden disturbance that wavered through her kingdom, through her world.  She felt her sun fall from the horizon, and the soothing leylines of harmony bend and crack as her world–her world–began to shatter.  

“P-princess?!” the accountant gasped, stumbling dizzily.  Celestia forced herself off the ground.

“Fetch Luna.  Immediately,” she commanded.  As the bookish pegasus galloped from the room, wavering drunkenly, the Sun Goddess’s horn exploded in searing gold, and her eyes became twin flares of white light.  The burning stars of her eyes fearfully regarded the blinding white pillar that burst forth from the south, bathing her throne room in a shock of light, before she redoubled her efforts, her horn glowing impossibly bright as she fought to restore order to her kingdom, to her existence.  The million threads of magic her immortal horn weaved wrapped desperately around the cracks in her world, the sudden imperfections, and struggled in vain to hold them still, to heal their fissures.  As every thread she wove in desperation snapped, she cried out in pain and failure.  Each one recoiled with world-shattering viciousness back into her horn, and through her soul.  As she lost consciousness, time seemed to slow, and her regal white body floated slowly towards the hard marble of Canterlot’s royal chambers.

Her torpid descent was halted by a pair of mismatched limbs.  Her immaculate white coat fell into the open digits of an eagle’s talons and a bear’s paws as the dragonequus cradled her gently.

“Tsk, tsk, dearie,” Discord muttered quietly.  “I’m sure I’ve told you before that you can only fight chaos with chaos.  You and lil’ Lu never did defeat me after all.  Just postponed me.”  His yellow eyes gazed somberly out the palace windows, upon the darkened sky and the piercing white cracks that lacerated its form.  Soon, the cracks would shatter all reality.

’Now, where’s the fun in that?’

’It’s definitely chaotic.’

‘But so terribly short-sighted.  I may as well have snapped my talons and made the two alicorn fillies that appeared in my realm so long ago disappear.’

‘You still can.’

‘Can I?  Perhaps.  But they’ve made things so interesting since the dissolution of the Grove.  I don’t think I will.’

‘Then?’

‘We do what I’ve always done.  Sit back and enjoy the ride!’  Discord grinned widely, gently laying Celestia on the ground.  The patchwork serpent glowed dully as the cracks in the newborn night’s sky began to heal.  He frowned slightly to himself as a barrier of harmony slid home, separating a certain human from the force that kept him alive.  ’It must be done,’ he reminded himself.

“Now, my little filly, don’t you dare disappoint me!”  he admonished.  His features became serious for a moment.  “Oh, and please don’t banish the human.  He’s an idiot.  Not too far removed from a recently unpetrified chimaira, if you ask me.  But he’s got moxy!”

Celestia’s chest moved evenly, her eyes closed.

“Oh, right, you’re unconscious.  Silly me.  I’ll...get back to a certain yellow pegasus.”  Discord frowned down at the unconscious Celestia.  “She worries far too much.  A lot like her metaphorical momma.  Good thing ol’ deus ex snappina was around to fix things up, eh?”  He smiled at the unconscious Sun Goddess.

“Although the boy really should have gotten a nice suit to replace my sunglasses after he lost them,” he muttered to the empty air before disappearing from the throne room.   Its towering doors crashed open, revealing a small contingent of dark-colored ponies.  A midnight blue alicorn stepped warily into the throne room, before seeing her sister and abandoning all caution as she rushed forward.  


*     *     *     *     *


“Sister!” Luna cried.  The contingent of guards at her side shied away at the volume of her voice.  Luna ignored them and galloped up to the pale form that littered the throne room’s floor.  She embraced the white alicorn fiercely, lifting her off the red carpet and drawing her close.  “Sister, please!”

Celestia’s eyes fluttered, and she confusedly drew her head back.  “L-Luna?!  But where-  how-?”  Her frazzled responses were momentarily silenced by Luna nuzzling her neck deeply.  

“Sister, thou art in good health...” Luna murmured.

Celestia suppressed a chuckle.  “Well of course I’m fine.  It’s just, I don’t...” she paused, pressing one hoof to her forehead.  “What just happened, Lulu?  I feel tired and-”  Her eyes widened,  and she brought her face down to meet her little sister’s concerned gaze.  “The human.”

Luna nodded, reluctantly breaking her embrace with her sister and turning back to the guardsponies at the door.

“My chariot,” she demanded.  “Now.”   The guardsponies gulped and disappeared as Luna turned back to Celestia.

“Rest, Tia,” she said, authority saturating her voice.  “P-please,” she added after a pause.

“My, my, they grow up so fast, little sisters,” Celestia murmured to herself quietly before nuzzling the princess before her.  The Sun Goddess drew back, and her eyes hardened.  “Let him know that I have words for him in the morning, would you?”

“Of course, my sister,” Luna responded.  She had words enough for the human after he had just broken–almost broken–the harmony of their world.  Her sister ambled tiredly out of the room as Luna moved to intercept the captain of her Night Guard at the door.  He smiled at her openly and bowed towards a pair of doors that led to a nearby balcony.  She ignored his mirth, feigned or otherwise, and trotted imperiously towards the obsidian air chariot that awaited her.

Night-Captain Moon Glade snorted, shook his head slightly, and followed after his Princess.


*     *      *      *      *


“Twilight!”

The lavender unicorn winced at the volume of the squeaking cry.

“Ugh, maybe take it down a few notches, Spike?  This is a library...”

“S-sorry,” he whispered.  “It’s just you collapsed and I was scared and-”

“It’s alright, Spike,” she muttered softly.  The leylines of harmony magic that formed the foundation of the world’s weaves had seemingly repaired itself, but she wasn’t convinced.  She met the quivering, worried gaze of her small assistant.  “But we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

The dragon gulped, but nodded bravely.  “Right.  Tell me what I need to do.”

Twilight’s eyes narrowed.  “Pull every book we have on Chaos magic, the Elements of Harmony, and,” she paused, “...and Discord’s origins.”


*     *     *     *     *


“AAAAAAAAUUUUUGH-”  Rainbow Dash’s scream cut off as her wings bit into the air, and she leveled off a few meters above the tree line.  The white fractures had disappeared from the evening sky, and the warm glow of the sun danced across her cyan feathers as it made its final, ponderous descent beneath the horizon.

“That was...definitely uncool,” she said to no one with a self-conscious cough.  Her bright blue wings flared and she glided towards the clearing in the distance.  She scowled slightly at the glimmering flames and growing smoke at its edges, but pressed on.


*     *      *      *      *


“My dear Fluttershy, not to be a bother, but is the tea ready?”

“Oh, yes, Discord.  I’m very, very sorry about the wait,” the yellow pegasus breathed quietly from the other room.  Discord steepled his discordant appendages, leaning back into the green couch contentedly and basking in the soft melody of the pegasus’s gentle voice.  

’I really should thank the newbie one of these days,’ he thought to himself.

’Shh, against the rules,’ his brain warned.

’Rules?’ he thought back.  His grin widened as the red pupils of his eyes almost flashed green.  ’Was never a big fan, to be honest.’
	
	
> Chapter 19:  Truth or-
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Grit.

That was the only way he knew how to describe the sensation dragging across his knuckles as he slowly came to.  Something gritty dragged against the backs of his hands, occasionally interrupted by something harder and wooden.  Then came the realization that he was rocking slightly, something warm pressing against his chest.  Then, the voices.  He kept his eyes shut, and listened.

“He’s a harebrained foal for thinking he could take on that many timber wolves!” a scratchy mare’s voice complained.

“Oh, he’s definitely an idiot,” a voice replied in measured monotone.  “The fact that we still draw breath, though-”

“Oh, come on!”  the mare interjected.  “He like, can’t die and stuff!  Twilight said so.”

’So I’m told,’ the human thought to himself.  ’Never saw much reason not to test out the idea, though.  Constantly.’

“You misunderstand,” the bland voice spoke up, the stallion’s droning inflection almost expressing emotion.  “It’s probably more telling to say that we’re alive.  A breeding horde of timber wolves?  That, I can handle.  That, I try to make sure that even a unicorn Private like Ridge Dancer can handle.”  Nix felt the warmth beneath him stop rocking for half a second, the back of his hands resting on cold earth, before the motion stuttered and continued.  “But, when the horde feels threatened enough to combine their individual strength like that?”  The stallion’s bored voice paused.  “Short of a fully grown dragon or an alicorn, I can think of no foe else I’d rather avoid.  And that one was much larger and faster than the first one I killed,” he muttered quietly.

The scratchy voice burst out laughing.  “Spike beat one of ‘em single-hoofedly—err, ‘single-clawedly’?—by himself not too long ago.  So you’re sayin’ Tall-Dark-n-Ugly—”  the mare’s silence extended for a few seconds,”—so you’re saying TDU back there is almost as strong as a baby dragon, then?”

“How many timber wolves were in the group Spike ‘defeated’?”

“Uh, three, I think, why?”

“There were over a hundred timber wolves in that one back there.”  The voice paused.  “Spike would have had a chance if he were fully mature, though, I think.”

“Snkkkt-hahaha, so you’re saying he’s more powerful than a fully grown dragon?  I don’t buy it.  Seriously, he passes out like every 10 minutes.”

“I think it has something to do with his brain cells short-circuiting,” the stallion’s voice responded blandly.  “Honestly, he’s spent most of his time here unconscious.  Terribly unnatural.  Or lazy.”

“H-he’s not lazy.”  A second mare’s voice entered the conversation, pitched slightly higher than the first scratchy voice and much more melodic.  “He’s just n-not used to Equestria and needs a little help.”  

“No, I actually am lazy,” the human piped up, raising his head off the lime green barrel of the pony that was ferrying him through the forest.  “I just figured the least you could do after stupidly putting yourself in danger was give me a ride home.”  

His unicorn ride squeaked anxiously and zipped out from underneath him, sending him crashing to the ground.  He frowned slightly and pushed himself off the cool earth, his head raising in time to see a pair of fearful, jade eyes peek out from behind the trunk of a nearby tree.

“Goddammit, Ridge Dancer,” Nix growled, regaining his feet.  Her emerald eyes shimmered and widened, and her head peeked out a little further from the tree’s trunk.

“W-what did you call me?”

“Uh, your damn name?”  Nix dusted the black soil from his black duster distractedly.  “Honestly, I save one of your damn villages and I still have to hoof- have to walk my own lazy ass back to town.”

“Oh, the horror,”  Glancing Shock muttered, his amber eyes almost rolling.  Rainbow Dash snickered.  The two continued their trek towards through the forest, the light blue stallion limping slightly and keeping his distance from the rainbow-maned pegasus.  Nix looked back and saw the unicorn giving him an odd look, her curly, dark orange mane falling in sienna ringlets over one eye.  She abruptly shook her head and blew the locks of hair from her vision.  ’Whatever, she’s weirder than Swordspony, anyway,’ the human thought as he turned away, quickening his pace slightly to catch up with Scratchy and the white-maned sociopath.  He took special note of the Guard-Captain’s uneven gait, and one of his wings seemed bent oddly, hanging limply at his side.

“So,” Nix said, “took a nasty hit back there.”

Glancing Shock kept his eyes forward.  “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before...though I do feel remorse for the poor tree that broke my fall.”

Nix glanced back.  Even though the sun had set, a small orange glow enveloped the forest behind the group.  “That’s okay.  I think the forest fire I set will put it out of its misery soon enough.”  He summoned a cigarette from his breast pocket, lighting it with the fiery claw that consumed his forearm.  He examined the claw for a second, somewhat surprised that his ability to draw on his power seemed akin to a small brook, compared to the trickle it had been before.  He stowed the thought away for later, probably to be forgotten, and the flames that covered his arm changed color from a fierce yellow to a gentle white.  The fiery appendage shot out and grasped Glancing Shock’s bent wing.

The pegasus stallion’s eyes went from half-lidded to dinner plates in milliseconds, and electricity arced through the air from his blue back to the arm of the human.  Nix recoiled immediately, glaring down at him.  The pegasus stretched his wing to its full length, regarding it curiously, before he continued walking, his limp gone and his eyes surrendering to their characteristic apathy.  “You’re welcome,”  Nix muttered.  He looked over at the other light blue pegasus, and on a whim, jabbed her in the wing with a finger.

“Gah, what the hey-!”  She spun and clocked him on his jaw with her hoof, before her eyes widened and she drew back.  “I-  oh, horseapples, I didn’t-”  She blushed furiously, the hoof rubbing the back of her neck moving faster than the speed of sound.  “I forgot you’re kinda new here.  Heheh.”

Nix blinked at her.

“Pegasus wings are...you see, when two pegasi like each other a whole lot...I mean, it’s like bees, and, uh, pollinating and stuff.  And I think there are birds somewhere in this.”  She continued floating backwards through the air in front of the stallion and the human, her face a deep crimson.

“What she’s trying to say, alien, is that wings are erogenous areas for pegasi.  Same as the horn for unicorns,” Glancing said plainly.  Nix scanned through the words he had learned from Twilight’s brain.  The only thing he recalled was that one time he arm-wrestled a dragon.  Except the dragon hadn’t asked for the contest and Nix accidentally ripped the reptile’s arm off.  Heh, ‘accidentally’.  Hard to burn down villages when you’re bleeding out from a severed limb.  

“What’s an ‘erogenous’?”

Glancing Shock sighed mildly.  “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m a thousand years old, what do you-”  Nix stood stock still, the subtext catching up with him.  “Oh, hell no.  Have I been-”  His head whipped around to Ridge Dancer.  She was blushing furiously.  “Did I-”  He ran his fingers through his golden hair.  “Suddenly I want to be somewhere very far away from here.”

“That’s funny, I’ve been thinking the same thing since you first arrived,” the light blue stallion grumbled.  

The four of them walked to the rest of the way to the edge of the forest within the not-so-soothing embrace of awkward silence.


*     *     *     *    *


They breached Ponyville’s perimeter well after darkness had fallen.  The full moon bathed the quaint village in cool blue light.  

Rainbow Dash yawned loudly.  “Well, now that we’re outta the woods, I think it’s time I get some shuteye.”

“I don’t think beauty sleep will do you much good at this point, Scratchy,” Nix said, casually examining his fingernails.  Rainbow froze in midair for a moment before clutching her stomach as a fit of laughter rumbled through her light frame.  

“Heh, as if!” she said with a dismissive wave of her hoof.  “Who do you take me for, Rarity?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind,” Rainbow shook her head slowly, amused.  “But, oh, hey-!  That little black box you lent me stopped working.”

“Well, it probably ran out of batteries.  Just use your freaky pegasus electric thing to recharge it.”

She cocked her rainbow-framed head to the side.  “My what to the what-what?”

“You know, what he’s always doing,” Nix replied, jabbing a thumb back towards Glancing Shock.  The mare looked at the swordspony with more confusion than a quadriplegic at a square dance.  The stallion cleared his throat awkwardly.  “He’s always got those weird arcs of electricity running through his wings.”

Rainbow Dash’s pupils shrunk smaller than the head of a needle, and she took a fearful step away from the Guard-Captain.  “Y-you’ve g-got lectrosy?”

“That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard,” Nix mumbled under his breath.

“What I have,” Glancing Shock said evenly, “is a disorder.  A disorder I took great pains to learn to control, I might add.”

Rainbow Dash took another step back, shaking her head back and forth.  She looked up at Nix.  “You don’t understand!  His weather magic, it- if he touches anypony, they’ll-”

With a crash of air, the white-maned stallion exploded towards the rainbow-maned pegasus.  She was too distracted by her explanation to the human to notice until it was too late.  She stared, terrified, into Glancing Shock’s emotionless amber eyes as he rested a hoof on her shoulder.  

“Like I said, I have it under control.”  After a pause, he added, “Always under control.”

With a sharp intake of breath, Rainbow yelped loudly in his face and shot off through the night.  “Gottagoseeyagoodbye!!!”  

The light blue stallion’s head drooped imperceptibly before he righted it and looked back at Nix with his empty eyes.  “It’s a genetic disorder.  I can’t control a pegasus’s natural weather magic quite so easily as-”

“You have no idea how little I care, Swordspony.”  Nix thought he saw the Guard-Captain’s eyes narrow slightly.

“Yes, I doubt very much something like that would concern you.  Shall we continue?”

Nix jabbed a finger into the emotionless pony’s shoulder and a small bolt of electricity shot down his arm and into the pegasus, causing Glancing Shock to leap a few feet off the ground.  He glowered at the human with the force of a sloth examining its own three toes, but Nix ignored his gaze, his eyes distracted by something ahead of them.

“Payback for earlier.  Let’s go, looks like something’s up over at Yggdrasil Jr.”  All the lights were on in Twilight’s tree, and a black chariot, unattended, stood outside the door.  Nix’s scanning eyes revealed a few dark-colored ponies lounging against the second-story balcony outside.  As the trio entered the plaza, one of them pointed a hoof in their direction and shot off inside.  The other merely turned lazily to face them, resting on the balcony and grinning openly at them as they passed underneath, towards the door.  Nix opened it and took a step before a blue glow surrounded him and he was dragged violently beyond its threshold, an insect disappearing into the den of a wolf spider.

Ridge Dancer shot a paranoid look towards Glancing Shock.

“Oh, dear,” the stallion muttered to himself, his odd grace flowing through his body as he followed after the human projectile.  Ridge Dancer’s legs trembled before she rushed hurriedly through the door, reappearing after a second to gently close it carefully with her magic before the sound of her hooves echoed away from the stoic wooden barrier.

*     *     *      *      *

“Dost thou possess the slightest inkling of what thou hast wrought?”

“Hiya, Lu!  Always good to see ya’!  But you keep dropping by after dark like this and the townsponies might begin spreading untoward rumors.”  Nix smiled smugly, enveloped in the blue field of the lunar princess’s telekinetic magic and pressed against one of the shelves that bordered the library.  The wood behind him had begun to crack under the force that held him against it.  

Luna remained silent.  Her forelegs bowed slightly and her horn lowered threateningly, an azure glow dancing along its spiralling edges.  Her pupils were lost in a sea of white—light blue lightning crackled about their edges almost as much as around her glowing horn.  A malicious scowl matched her deeply furrowed brow.  Nix smiled warmly at her.  

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure, Lu?”  The tendrils of lightning around her horn danced more quickly as she stalked imperiously towards the human.  She paused a foot away from his face.

“Thy reckless actions nearly unmade all existence, and harmed our beloved sister,” she snarled.

Nix pressed against her telekinetic forcefield and leaned forward, inches away from her face.  His cold blue eyes stared humorlessly into her own, and his smile became decidedly less warm.  “Put.  Me.  Down.”  Her eyes narrowed and the blue aura around her horn glowed more vibrantly.  “Now,” he whispered out the last word of the command as a hiss.  

Luna bared her teeth challengingly.  Nix’s eyes flared a bright blue as his smile melted.  The magic holding the human warped and twisted around him.  The blue aura wavered before shattering into myriad geometric shapes and a collection of glowing threads.  The redirected telekinetic tendrils hammered around the human, impacting the books behind him forcefully and showering debris around him and the alicorn in a blizzard of paper.  

Luna’s horn began shooting off sparks as she lowered it towards the human’s chest.  Her magical fireworks immediately sputtered as she felt something cold pressed against her chin.  Nix stared into her eyes as their white flaring faded, and her hurt blue irises reappeared.  He held Lux steady, its barrel thrust against the bottom of her pouting mouth.  A single finger rested threateningly on its trigger as the human lost himself in the alicorn’s enraged eyes.

“We continue this in private,” he said evenly.  Luna merely glared daggers back into the human.  He withdrew his weapon and holstered it, stepping around the princess and towards the stairs leading to the second floor.  He kind of liked talking to the lunar berserker on the balcony, all things considered.  He reached for a smoke-

A blue aura enveloped him and Princess Luna flared her wings violently before the two shot through the nearest window, sending a cascade of glittering glass tinkling gaily to the floor of the library.

Twilight, Ridge Dancer, and Glancing Shock all stood numbly, avoiding each others’ gazes and trying not to look at the hole in the wall where their night princess and the godslayer disappeared.

“Well,” an even voice suddenly interjected.  Glancing Shock turned towards the two mares.  “Who’s up for a cup of tea?”  Twilight Sparkle turned her head slowly towards him, her left eye twitching slightly as she gawped at him blankly.  
	


> Chapter 20:  Consequences
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Twilight’s tree-home shrunk from Nix’s view as he was flung away from it with terrible velocity.  The orange glow of the light from the room he had just hastily, unintentionally exited formed a distracting counterpoint to the overwhelming palette of blue that consumed his vision.  The leafy boughs of the tree’s considerable heights glowed azure under the soft murmur of the late evening moon’s otherworldly light, framing the lunar princess’s rage-contorted face perfectly as she hurtled after him.   She bared her teeth angrily, adding a flash of white to the human’s present color-coded distractions.

“You know, I’ve got the strangest sense of deja vu right now!” he called out before slamming into the ground, rolling a few times before skidding to a stop.

Luna’s hooves pounded into the earth at his feet shortly thereafter, kicking up a small cloud of dust.  “Silence!” she snarled.  Her horn lit up.

“No, wait-”

The bolt of magical energy caught him squarely in the chest, the force of the attack driving him into the ground before his mostly intact organic components rebounded forcefully.  He bounced a few more meters.

“Would you just-”

Another bolt struck home, sending him cartwheeling through the street.

“Listen, just let me-”

Luna continued playing kick-the-can with the human’s body through Ponyville’s streets with her magic, her normally delicate features chiselled into a mask of uncontrolled fury.  After his first few volleys of attempts to reason with the alicorn, Nix remained silent, which may or may not have been a side-effect of her continued assaults on his chest impeding his ability to breathe.  All throughout the princess’s rampage, lights began to adorn the windows in the rustic houses that littered the town.

A particularly strong blast of her horn caught him in his chin, snapping his head back.  Time seemed to slow, and all at once Nix perceived the end of the road, the brightly colored house at the end of that road, and the filly staring wide-eyed at Luna’s assault of the human from the house’s second story window.  Her mouth and her pale green eyes widened considerably when she saw the human meteor sailing directly towards her.  

Nix’s mouth remained motionless, but his eyes did begin to glow.  Gouts of flame burst from his shoulders and formed into makeshift wings that hammered at the air once, stopping him in place and righting him.  He turned the inhuman, glowing blue orbs back to Princess Luna, who halted her pursuit immediately.

“Elsewhere,” he said softly.

“Agreed,” Luna replied coldly.  Her horn sparked, and Nix felt himself ripped apart by the threads of harmony magic that tore at every cell in his body as he immediately disappeared.   The filly gaped at the abruptly empty street below her window as both Princess Luna and the alien disappeared in a flash of light.


*     *     *     *     *


“So, no one for tea?” Glancing Shock asked in monotone.  “No one?”  He paused, looking around the room.  After a few seconds, his head stopped wavering and he merely stared off into empty space.  The awkward stare thankfully didn’t last much more than a minute before Twilight snapped out of her shocked revery.

“I...I think we’re good on that front, Shock,” the purple mare replied, finally.

“Very well, then, Twily.  If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to borrow your kitchen for-”

He was interrupted by wheezing laughter.  His eyes attempted to widen before barreling into his self control.  Instead, his eyelids drooped slightly in exasperation.  He turned towards the source of the laughter.  A deep blue pegasus with the wings of a bat held a hoof to his chest, his eyes squinted shut as he laughed.

“Why, Night-Captain Moon Glade.  It’s always a pleasure, and what a terrible surprise to see you here,” he uttered boredly.

The pegasus stifled his mirth and looked up, his eyes as golden as a clear sunset’s birth.  While his laughter had ceased, a small part of it seemed to dance permanently behind his slitted pupils.  His ever-present smile widened slightly.

“Sparky!  Glad ta’ see ya’ still have that Canterlot tower-sized stick up yer bum!” 

“I have what?!” Twilight exclaimed.

Glancing Shock sighed.  “Not you, Twily.  Me.  The Night-Captain here exercises almost as much restraint as the primate meteorite that just vacated the premises.”

“Less, hopefully.”  The Night-Captain winked at Ridge Dancer as he trotted towards Glancing Shock and Twilight where they stood near the kitchen. The green unicorn’s features darkened before she regained control.  “Though rumor has it he could drink one o’ me guards under the table.”  Moon Glade’s smile widened.  “I’d like ta’ see that.”

“Well, then, I should hope your princess at least leaves the alien’s digestive tract intact.”

The Night-Captain snorted at this.  “From what I ‘ear, shan’t be a problem.  Boy-o’s gotta knack for healing, amirite?  Besides, the lass has taken a shinin’ to tha’ thing.  ‘Aven’t seen ‘er this off ‘er rocker since I started this job, ta’ be honest.”

“I fail to see how Luna losing her temper is a good thing.”

Moon Glade draped a hoof over Glancing Shock’s shoulder.  The light blue pegasus flinched, but the dark blue pegasus merely shook his head ruefully.  “She’s an ice queen, tha’ princess.  No two ways about it.  Err, I mean ‘Luna’.  Never lets ponies get through ‘er shell.”  He nodded slowly to Twilight, who was absorbing the conversation with no small amount of confusion.  “Present comp’ny excluded, ma’am.”

“R-right,” she stammered back.

“But this new guy-”

“-please remove your hoof before I stop your heart with my condition-”

“-he’s a real character, yeah?  None o’ me guard could find ‘er last night.  Later I find she’s out gallavanting across some backwater, spending ‘er time chattin’ it up wit’ some alien instead of tending to ‘er duties.”

“A Night-Captain besmirching the actions of his charge,” Glancing Shock muttered drily.  “Why am I unsurprised?”

“Prolly ‘cuz yer not a Cap’n anymore, Sparky.”  

Glancing Shock’s head whipped around ferociously and he shoved his face into the Night-Captain’s golden eyes, his mouth slowly twisting into a cruel smile.  Moon Glade’s hoof catapulted off the back of the previous Guard-Captain’s shoulder, and his smile faltered as he made every attempt to avoid touching the ex-Guard-Captain.  The light blue pegasus’s smile deepened slightly, and Moon Glade retracted further.

“Well, I’ve put off tea for long enough I think.”  Glancing Shock’s features immediately went blank.  “It’s terribly soothing.  I can’t imagine how I could maintain control without it.”  He shot Moon Glade an evil glare before trotting casually through the kitchen door.  

Moon Glade snorted once.  Twice.  Finally, he shook his head.  “Might a’ gotten that stick removed after all, Sparky,” he muttered to himself.  He looked towards the two mares.  “Any o’ you lasses thirsty?  May as well, while we wait.”

“N-no, I’m fine,” Ridge Dancer replied, immediately returning her concerned gaze towards the hole in the wall.  

Twilight stared blankly at the Night-Captain of the Lunar Guard.  “I think I should see if there’s any alcohol left from yesterday’s party.”  

A smile painted the night-pegasus’s face again as he disappeared into the kitchen, after Glancing Shock.


*     *     *     *     *


His skin felt like it was burning—an odd sensation to him, given his immunity—but it felt like a chunk of ice had been wedged squarely in his gut.  His regenerative powers worked overtime on the cells in his body.  

“Jesu- Holy Hell, woman, I feel like I’ve been microwaved.  What did you do to me?”  Nix muttered, looking up in time to see Ponyville off in the distance.  And Luna’s horn charging up.  “Oh, for fuck’s-”  Her magic shot exploded across his chest, and he hurtled through the base of a nearby pine tree.  The tree wavered slightly with a few cracking groans, before teetering and slamming into the ground.  

“Thou wouldst dare threaten us?”  Another shot from her horn.  “Thy vile weaponry daring to touch our royal flesh?!”  Nix was flung deeper into the trees.  Luna walked slowly towards him as she spoke.  The human, meanwhile, seemed to be taking her fury in stride.

“Lu, you’re doing the Shakespony thing again!”  The air left him as another magic bolt found its mark.  “Alright, I’ve had about enough of-”  Another bright blue bolt of energy screamed through the air at him.  He shot his hand up and caught it, palming the whirring blue orb deftly as he stood.  Luna’s forward march paused, her horn still glowing.  Nix looked at the focused magical energy in his palm, shrugged, and tossed it over his shoulder.  The blast leveled a few trees behind him, but he was already stalking towards Luna.

“Look, I know I fucked up.”  He limply batted away a few more shots with the back of his hand, sending them sailing through the night sky.  Luna stood her ground, glaring violently.  “But I had no idea that would happen.  You know I had no idea that would happen.”

“When our sister expressed her doubts, we vouched for thee!  We, possessing thy memories, convinced our sister not to banish thee in spite of the danger!”

“This- this fucking thing inside me didn’t come with a fucking instruction manual,” he spat viciously.  “A thousand fucking years and I still can’t enchant my own damn clothes half as good as a waning old god back on my homeworld.  I didn’t know, Lu!  I was just some fucking guy working a shit job before this!  I’m not a fucking god!  I didn’t know that would happen!”

“Ignorance is no excuse!  Thou nearly flayed our world to pieces, and for what?” Luna spat back.  “So thy violence would have an outlet!  So a handful of mongrels might tremble before thee as thou trampled them underhoof!”

Nix stopped suddenly a few feet away from Luna, looking away guiltily as his shoulders slumped.  “Ridge Dancer was going to die,” he managed to croak out.  She gaped as if she had been slapped.  He looked back at the princess angrily.  “And I’d do it again, too,” he growled.  “I’d break your little fucking existence just so one more innocent girl doesn’t die, bleeding to death in my hands, pleading, begging me desperately with her goddamn tearful eyes to save her from the pain, and the darkness.  I’d do it a thousand times over until those eyes stop looking up at me in pain, in fear.”  Luna jerked her head back, her eyes widening as she glared imperiously upon the human.  He glared back, his blue eyes flaring brightly and his face set in stone.

It’s the small things, really.  First her eye twitched.  Her eyebrows unfurrowed.  Her scowl softened into a pained grimace.  Before long, every feature on Luna’s face cracked and fell apart, and her breath came out in shudders as she began to sob.  Nix’s eyes widened and he drew his head back.  Out of nowhere, the Princess of the Night was bawling and fighting to avoid his gaze.

’Great going, asshole.  You made the pretty mare cry.’  Nix frowned.

“We just...I just...there’s so much loneliness in your memories,” she hitched out between sobs.  “It hurts.  It hurts me to know.  I wish I didn’t have them.  I wish you never regain them.”  She squinted her eyes shut and turned her head away.  “I just wanted to help you.  Why won’t...”  she paused, her deep blue chest hitching, “...why won’t you let me help you?”

Luna gasped as she felt warmth press against her chest and wrap around her neck.  She opened her eyes in shock as Nix hugged her.

“Because it would be too cruel to ask you to do something you can’t,” he murmured into her ear, his face pressed against hers.  “This is something I have to deal with on my own, but...”  His voice trailed off as she pressed down on his shoulder, drawing him closer.  He tightened his embrace.  “...but thank you.”  

Luna sniffled and the human’s arms remained wrapped around her.  She wasn’t cold at all.  “I mean, unless you know a spell or something to send me home.  That would make all this drama seem pretty dumb.” 

Her chest wretched again.  Nix couldn’t tell if it was a sob or a chuckle.  He held on.  “I’ll look into it,” she finally managed to utter hoarsely, one hoof wrapping around his back.  Her flowing mane danced around his charcoal duster.  He contented himself with remaining still, his eyes closed and his arms wrapped around sapient pony royalty.  

“Not that it’s any consolation, but I know at least one way to get my powers back, now,” he intoned softly.  “And so long as it might break your reality, I’ll stay here as long as it takes to find another way.”

“Good to hear, ape,” Luna chuckled.  Her tears had mostly dried.

“Besides, I doubt I could face my sister after all of this if I knew a bunch of pastel-colored horsies were unmade on my trek back home.”  Nix laughed.  Luna held her breath, and slowly drew away from the human.

“Sisters, Nix.”  The human dropped his arms and stared at her in confusion.  “Your sisters.  You had two of them, Jessi and Sarah.”  He slowly began to back away from her, shaking his head.   His hand shot to the back pocket of his denim jeans, finding it empty.

“Sisters?”

“Please, Nix, wait,” she begged.  “Don’t-”

His eyes flared brightly and wings of flame reappeared upon his shoulders.  With a gust of wind and heat, and a mighty flap, he shot off through the sky, away from the Princess of the Night.  Her sapphire eyes shimmered in the moonlight as she stared after the fiery comet soaring through the night sky—through her night sky.

“-leave me here alone,” Luna finished in a whisper.


*     *      *     *     *


Nix arced through the cold night sky towards an odd outcropping of clouds, towards a particular lifeforce.  The night’s frigid, biting winds didn’t touch him.  He was beyond that.  He was the embodiment of fire, of energy, of power incarnate.  He did his best to ignore the icy winds that tore at his face as the construct of clouds loomed in his vision.

He shot through the cloud wall and zipped straight to the top, the light of his wings painting an otherworldly golden glow upon the walls of the foggy room.  A cyan pegasus with a rainbow streaked mane snored loudly in the center, upon a fluffy white pedestal.  Nix floated towards her and jabbed her in the shoulder with his finger.

“Scratchy, wake up.”

Her snores increased in volume.  The human’s hand darted through the clouds of her bed and flipped her into the air, sending her limp form to the puffy white floor.  A few misty vapors erupted from its surface as she impacted.  The mare groaned, and shook her head.

“Urgh, what gives?  It’s not even noon yet...”

“Scratchy, where’s that black box I gave you?” Nix growled.

“Huh?  What’re you-” she yawned loudly.  Nix shot across the room and grabbed her roughly by her shoulders.

“Whoa!  Calm do-”

“Shut the fuck up,” the human interrupted harshly.  “Where.  Is.  My black box?”

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow at him.  “It’s in my saddlebags over in the corner.  Sheesh, no need to-”  Nix dropped her and flew over to the canvas sacks in the corner.  After rummaging through them, he produced a thin black box.  Small tendrils of electricity danced through his forearm and into the device.  Its screen powered on, and his fingers flicked across its surface.  As Rainbow hovered over the human’s shoulder, a video burst to life on the black box’s screen.


*     *      *      *      *


”See, toldja you were good at math,” Sean managed out between a few chuckles.  “Brat,” he added in a lower voice.

A prim fist caught him in the shoulder.

“Such violence,” he gasped.

“Are you done yet, Sean?”  Mirth twinkled between her light blue eyes as she assaulted her brother’s shoulder.  Locks of curly blonde hair leaked out from beneath her black graduation cap.  

“Well, I guess you did earn it,” he grudgingly admitted.  She withdrew her arm, and Sean took a step back, smiling ruefully at his little sister in her little black gown.  “Although I wonder how you’re gonna make a living with a doctorate in mathematics.”

“You have a job in retail,” she retorted.

“I know, I can actually make money every two weeks,” he jabbed back, smiling at his little sister.  “You have no idea how proud I am right now, Jess.”

“Yes, I imagine your heart swells every time you remember how you spent countless sleepless nights on your dissertations and proofs,” she said drily.  “Oh, wait, that was me.”

Sean socked her in the shoulder.  “I’m serious, brat.”

“I’m 24 and I already have a doctorate, I’m hardly a ‘brat’.”

“You’re my little sister, you’ll always be a brat.”

She smiled up at him.  No degree in the world she could have gotten would make him seem any smaller.  “You promise?”  He chuckled and grabbed her shoulder, drawing her close and placing a peck on her temple.

“Your graduation cap just poked me in the eye.”

She shoved him away, giggling.  “You’re such an ass, Sean.”

Sean smiled back, rubbing one eye with his hand.  “Yeah, but you’re stuck with my dumbass.  Congrats.”

Jessi sighed and shook her head.  “Somehow, I think I’ll manage, even if you’re helpless.”  The man choked back laughter at this.  “Come on, let’s get something to eat.  While I can still afford it before I try to find a job with my degree, anyway?”

“I knew all those years playing nice would finally pay off.  My little sis can finally afford to feed me.”  He glanced at her with a grin as they exited the field.  “For now.”

His little sister smiled up at him innocently.  She leaned into her big brother as the video cut out.


*     *     *     *      *


Nix stared dully at the black screen as the video died.  His brain raced, searching for something, anything.  A thousand memories of a thousand unimportant people greeted him in place of the girl he had just seen on the screen.  “Jessi,” he muttered to himself.  “Nice to meet you, sis.”

Rainbow Dash looked at the slumped form of the human on the floor of her bedroom.  She had no idea how to react in situations like this.  “Uh, hey, she seemed pretty cool?” the pegasus offered.

“Say another word, and I’ll hurt you so badly you’ll never taste the skies again, Rainbow,” the human murmured softly.  Rainbow Dash gulped and floated away from him.  He stared at the black screen for a few seconds more, before his eyes glowed and he floated through her floor, disappearing amidst tendrils of wafting clouds.

Rainbow Dash gulped to herself, wondering how she could get back to sleep, or if she even should.  She glanced out her window, into the sea of stars populating the night sky, and her gaze hardened.

She shot out her window, her magenta eyes scanning desperately for his fiery wings.


*     *     *     *     *


In the cold early morning hours, shortly before sunrise, Nix ignored the sudden flutter of wings behind him.  Instead, he slumped further against the tree trunk behind him, and lost himself further in the reflective black screen in his hands.  He stared at it dully, wantonly as he heard hooves thump the ground as they approached.

His voice didn’t want to escape his throat.  It was a subdued, garbled mess.  “Please punish me quickly.  I have to get back to losing everything else.”  The hooves stopped.  A white wing rested softly on his shoulder.

The human stared into the blank screen of his little black box, wishing he still remembered the family it contained.
	


> Chapter 21:  Lest Ye Become One Thyself
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Celestia removed her wing from Nix’s shoulder, folding it back and staring down upon him.  He wilted further, clutching his media player more closely to his chest, still refusing to meet her eyes.  She sighed and stared off into the distance.

“You know, when she was younger, Luna always liked to help hurt animals.”

“I wouldn’t know.  Her ten thousand years are jumbled together with my paltry millennium.  Trying to even think about it just brings up her discovering nuclear fission on accident when she first tried to control your sun.  Man, were you pissed.”  Nix allowed himself a weak smile, still avoiding Celestia’s eyes.

“Yes, I was.”  She chuckled.  “Thankfully she only tested it out away from land.  The coastal carrion birds fed well that year.  And she caught on soon enough.  Even if she still hasn’t quite mastered the actual colors that go into a sunset.”

“And how well did you manage her burning stars, I wonder?”

The princess snorted.  “I didn’t.  For a thousand years, they fell to the night sky at random, sometimes far away from the constellations of those they knew and loved in life.  I can’t tell you how many times I almost released my sister over their cries.  Because of the soulmeld spell, I had an entirely new set of subjects to attend to, ponies that had passed beyond the veil and that I had no ability to guide.”

“To guide, or to control?” the human mused.

“To guide,” she said sternly.  “The only thing Luna truly controls is the moon she herself created.  The stars...”  Celestia paused thoughtfully.  “Though their light is small, their presence is eternal.  Luna cannot control their positions, so much as kindly ask that they comply.  And my little sister is nothing if not kind.  And the stars?  They are enamored with her.  In as much as they spurned her in life, and she them, they adore each other in death.”

“How very macabre,” Nix muttered.  “Although a bit ironic, since my immortal ass just got curb-stomped by the pony version of Death.”  

“And ‘Death’ was embraced warmly by ‘Resurrection’, if I recall my sister’s retelling of the night’s events correctly,” she added with a small smile.

“Meh, your sister’s pretty old at this point,” Nix said, waving his hand dismissively.  “When you get older, the memory’s the first thing to go, trust me.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Celestia said.  The conversation lulled for a few moments before Nix spoke up.

“So she liked to take care of hurt animals, then?”  

“Yes,” Celestia replied.  “A very, very long time ago, back when we were both still young.”

“She does realize I’m not a pet, right?”

Celestia smirked.  “I’ve seen the obsidian cage she’s having built to place in her new castle wing, you know.”

“That’s not very funny.”

“It’s much larger than the one I have for Philomena.  She might even let you out every couple centuries or so if you’re a good enough song-bird.”

Nix thought for a second.  “I think she’d let me out sooner if I was a bad song-bird.  I doubt she’d last a few hours with me shrieking in her ear, to be honest.”

“It’s comforting to me that my sister is every bit as immortal as I.  I doubt she’d allow herself to remain alive for that long with you locked in the same room.”

“Nor you, were you locked in a room devoid of pastries,” Nix remarked drily.  

“I could always cage you in with me, you know,” Celestia said, amused.  “A pretty cage, painted pink, and glittering with purple hearts.”

“You would have me caged in a fucked up Valentine’s Day prison,” he retorted.  “Although pony or not, those flanks aren’t doing you any favors.  I’d at least hope for a steady supply of carrots to remind you of that, throughout our eternity together.”

“That could be arranged,” she said enigmatically.

“What, the love cage, or your diet?”  Nix smiled innocently.

“I’m beginning to see why my sister decided to renovate Ponyville’s roads with a primate,” she replied flatly.

“And I’m beginning to see why I prefer being a makeshift bouncy ball skipping across the road over trying to outwit a 10,000 year-old princess.  Honestly, it’s a bit out of my pay-grade.  I just stab or shoot things that bother me too much.  Usually without unmaking entire realities...”  Nix met Celestia’s gaze finally.  “So?  What’ll it be?  A gilded cage?  Banishment?  Death- oh, wait, ha ha.”

She frowned down at him.  “Honestly, Nix, I have no idea what to do with you.  I could imprison you in stone, but history suggests you’d merely break out after a time.  You have more than you know in common with a certain other individual.  I could imprison you in the moon, and there’s little chance the souls up there might break you free as they did my sister, but I worry what might occur were you to break yourself free.  I could do nothing...but I won’t.  You endangered countless lives today, Nix.”

“She was going to die,” Nix mumbled quietly.

“Was her life worth more than those of all Equestria?”

The human remained silent for a time.  “To me?  Yes.  I’m not sure I can handle any more blood on my hands.  I didn’t know that would happen, but to be blunt, it was either break reality so I could heal her, or break reality to turn back time so I wouldn’t have to.  I’ve only tried to turn back time once, and if it weren’t for Odin, well...my world would have been much more short-lived.”

Celestia cocked an eyebrow at that.  “I was honestly not expecting that answer, Nix.”

“What were you expecting?”

“A sarcastic remark.  An insult.  Maybe, some tiny part of me expected you to agree with me.”

“I get it.  I’m an ass.  I’ve known that since long before I started sprouting fiery wings from my back and blowing up worlds and unmaking existences.”

“No, no,” she cooed, smiling a bit to herself.  “I’m well-versed in dealing with...‘asses’.  I trust you remember my nephew, Blue Blood?”

Nix looked up harshly, a reflective blue sheen over his eyes.  “Lady, I don’t even remember my own fucking little sister at this point.  What makes you think I’ll remember some pastel-colored fucking horse?”

Celestia continued smiling.  “But you do remember ‘Dancie’, yes?”

The human’s eyes narrowed.  “Of course I remember Ridge Dancer.  Kinda the whole reason we’re having this conversation, unless you’ve forgotten.”

The white alicorn’s smiled deepened.  “I...yes, of course.  How silly of me.”

Nix’s gaze fell back to the dull black screen in his hands.  “So what happens, I wonder?”  Celestia’s face tilted slightly.  “When I’ve forgotten my other sister?  When I’ve forgotten Mark?”  The princess held her tongue, her pink eyes somber.  “What happens when I’ve forgotten that I’m...that I’m human, that there are others like me?  That I have somewhere to return to?  When a million years pass?  A billion?”  The human concentrated fiercely on the media player in his hand.  His knuckles began to whiten.  “Do I just become some...some thing, wandering about aimlessly between worlds, killing monsters and evil gods and anything that crosses me?”  He paused.  “What happens when I forget the difference between a monster, and its victims?” Nix looked up soberly, the glow gone from his dark blue eyes.  “What happens then, Tia?”

“I can’t answer that for you, Phoenix, not completely.  Your predicament  is a bit outside the range of my expertise, I’m sad to say.”

“Honestly, I was an idiot to think I could ever make it back.  There are an infinite number of realities out there, and the likelihood of me randomly finding the right one?”  Nix chuckled bitterly.  “But I had to have something to hold onto, didn’t I?  You wanna know something fucked up?”  Celestia regarded him silently.  “There for a century or two, I thought about what might happen if I happened across a reality with my sister...sisters...but where I also still existed.  I wondered if I had it in me to kill the ‘me’ in those realities, to take his place.”

“And?”

The human sighed.  “It would be a lie.  My sister’s personality might be the same, but her soul would be different.  Funny thing; an infinite number of realities, an infinite number of people, and yet every soul is different.  Every last one.  Sarah would talk the same, act the same, and so would Mick.  The boss at my job would still be an ass.  7 billion people would still be almost exactly the same, the only difference in that world being that someone picked up a pair of socks with their right hand instead of their left 700 hundred years ago.  Less change than that, even.  An atom zigs instead of zags.  Out of a single atom’s different path through the atmosphere of my world, which is itself nothing more than an atom in the expanse of the universe, an infinite number of realities are born.

“And yet, every Sarah in every world?  They all harbor a soul that’s uniquely their own.  Even the lifeforces of identical bacteria differ.  If I made it to a world that was functionally identical but not the same, not home, made it back to my ‘sister’, I’d laugh with her, cry with her, live...whatever life I could with her if I managed to go back to being human, but...”

“...it wouldn’t be the same,” Celestia finished sadly.

“No, it wouldn’t.  I’d always know, deep down, that somewhere, my real sister was alone.”

“Then I trust abandoning the search is...?”

“And abandon what few family and friends I have left?  I’m...I’ve gotten pretty fucked up over the last millennia, but even I can’t imagine doing that to them.  Somewhere out there, my sister is waking up to a bright and happy life, until after a few seconds she remembers that, one day, I just up and disappeared for no reason.  No note, no goodbye, no closure, nothing.  And she’s going to start her day in tears, crying over me after I worked so hard to make sure she never had to again.  

“No, I really do have to make it home somehow.  My chances of success are so small they might as well be fuckin’ zero, but the only thing keeping me sane is that I have to try.  If not, they’ll always wonder what happened to me, why I abandoned them.  What kind of monster would I be to just allow my big sis to be heart-broken, and Mike, and the other...my little...FUCK!”  Nix snarled and drove his elbow into the tree at his back, sending cracks through its thick trunk as its heights shuddered.

Celestia ignored the outburst.  “Which do you think might hurt worse, Nix?” she asked gently.  “Not knowing, or being reunited with someone who had become...someone else while they were away?”

The human glared up at her with so much hurt she nearly dropped the even mask it took her millennia to perfect.  She remained quiet for a long time.  “From what I know of your past, your sisters and your friend are very, very close.  It would be hard for them, yes, but they still have each other.  They could move on, and eventually find peace.  Eventually, your family would overcome their grief.  Your absence would never be forgotten, but after a time that absence would no longer deny them happiness.  I am...no stranger to grief.  Nor my sister.  Nor any of my ponies, as hard as I’ve tried to spare them from it.  Do you really think your family wants you to torture yourself like this?  To know that they’re the reason you’ve gone through so much hardship?”

“That’s not how it works, Tia.”

“No, it isn’t.  But it is how they’ll see it.  You know guilt, Nix.  It drives you, because you feel responsible for your family’s happiness and feel you have failed them.  Grief may lessen, and eventually be forgotten.  But guilt?  It can be ignored for a time.  Lessened.  Atoned for.  In rare cases, even healed by time.  But in most cases, guilt is a seed buried deep inside that blossoms into a despair far greater than the grief of loss.  Would you rather your family grieve, or feel guilty?”

“That’s not fair,” he said.

“Difficult situations rarely are,” Celestia replied.  

“Well, then, you’ve lived ten fuckin’ millennia.  Spare me some of the wisdom you’ve no doubt picked up along the way.  What do you think I should do?”

After a long pause, she murmured, “You could just stay here, Nix.  My sister and I are immortal, as are a few others in this world.  You would never want for companionship.  And Equestria is-”

“A paradise, and I its looming serpent.”

“Poetic, coming from you, though I miss the reference.”

“It’s unimportant, Tia.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“It’s an old creation myth from my,” he paused, “from my home.” He scowled.  “In the beginning there was a paradise.  Much like your ‘Grove’, I suppose.  A snake led to its downfall.  Of course, knowing Sammael, it’s far more likely that the snake died trying to prevent the dissolution of such a paradise.  God knows Lucy would have never corrupted a place like that.”

“Lucy?”

“I...she...”  The human paused, his palms massaging his forehead.  “I don’t remember.  But that’s beside the point.  Luna has shared my...experiences with you, yes?”

The alicorn nodded slowly.  “She gave me the summarized version.”

“How many times have I entered a new universe in empty space?  Or an unoccupied planet?”

“To my knowledge, none,” Celestia replied carefully, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“Nor to mine.  I...it’s pretty chaotic when I make a jump, Tia.  I have almost no control.  The infinite spread of the universes before me is, quite honestly, breathtaking and belittling.  There are so many.  So many glimmering, shining weaves spread out in defiance against the empty abyss of nothingness, of the absolute, blackened harmony that forms their backdrops.  Universes protest chaotically, musically against the black velvet silence that bears them.  When I die...no, when my soul—when the cosmic soul inside of me—is exhausted, I am flung into this unfeeling oblivion, and I use almost all my power to scrabble desperately towards the nearest source of light, of warmth, that glitters within my...well, not ‘sight’.  Within my perception.”  The human took a breath.  “I hurtle towards these ever-changing lights of threads and weaves, press against them, and break through into their embrace.  Statistically speaking, I should end up in empty space somewhere within them.  But I never do.”  Celestia drew her head back slightly, her eyes widening.  The human sloughed off his distracted revery and looked up at her.

“Everywhere I’ve appeared has been populated.  Everywhere, Tia.  And they’ve all had problems.  Bad problems.  World-threatening monsters.  Mind-flaying gods.  Demonic crusades against the innocents of the world.  But problems.”  His eyes seemed to be pleading with her.  “Every one.”  He looked around fearfully.  “And now I’m in your world.”

Princess Celestia stared at him neutrally.  

“Please banish me,” he said simply.  He dropped his gaze and cradled his media player on his chest.  “I’m dangerous.”

“You’re assuming that you are the cause of these problems,” she said.  “There’s always the chance that a greater power is guiding your path to the places that require your presence most.”

“I’ve considered that.  After due consideration, said ‘greater power’ should hope I never get my fucking burning talons on it,” Nix said darkly.  “Gods that have tried to jerk me around in the past have met decidedly unkind fates.  That thing about souls I told you?  Doesn’t apply to ‘em.  They only get one soul across all worlds.”  He stared off into the distance.  “I kill a god in one world, their physical manifestations die in them all.”

“That’s...horrifying.”

“It’s what they deserve.  I’ve only been back to a reality once, and then only because Merlin meddled with things he wasn’t supposed to.  I let Morgana go the first time as a mercy.  The second time, I was too late to save him from her.  Never again, Tia.”  He glared up at her.  “And you should be glad I didn’t show up a thousand years ago, or your sister, Discord, and that motherfucking slaver you had up north would have met decidedly less kind fates at the end of my swords.”  

“You say this, knowing full well how Luna and Discord have turned out?”

“Discord is so annoying I might still kill him, and from what little I remember of Lu’s memories, he’s probably playing a larger game than you suspect.”

“A thought that had crossed my mind.  One of the main reasons I left the Elements of Harmony with Twilight, actually.  For now, however, he seems content to merely be in the presence of his friend.  But the point remains.”

“And my swords are still sharp,” Nix said dully.  “I would have killed them all without question.  As Lu and Discord are now, I would not.  I only get snapshots of each world’s history.  The past rarely matters to me, because I will invariably leave these worlds as soon as I can.  What matters isn’t the personal history, but the crimes they commit that are within my power to stop.”

“And the punishment for these crimes is always death?”

“Not necessarily.  You and your sister are still alive, despite the abuse you put me through.”

“You could barely move when you ran from my room, Nix,” Celestia said teasingly.

Nix blew out a puff of air through pursed lips, then plucked a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.  He was much more satisfied when he blew out a puff of smoke.  “Muramasa can cut through anything.  Including the threads holding your soul in place.  Granted, there are a lot of threads, and in my weakened state it would be very, very difficult to cut them all, but there’s a chance I could.  And if I would, your body wouldn’t die, not immediately.  Your soul simply disperses into entropy and your mind would cease to exist.  Your body would remain a soulless husk, still technically alive biologically, but mindless and comatose until its cells simply starved to death and you wasted away.”  The human drew Umbra, ponderously examining the dull sheen of the moon’s light on its surface for a few seconds.  “Lux is a good weapon for weakening gods.  So far as guns go, it’s a damn warhammer, a veritable weapon of mass destruction.  But Umbra, here?”  He shook the black pistol for emphasis.  “Precision work.  If I wanted to I could dump enough shots into your body’s concentrated magical centers, fast enough that you wouldn’t even see my hand draw my weapon.  And that’s with what little power I have available to me.  I’d start with your horn, then hit the rest.  Properly disabled, it would be small matter to shoot your damn soul until nothing remains.  This black jacket you let me keep when I accidentally resummoned it?  You don’t even want to know what it does.”

Nix holstered his gun and stared Celestia in the eye.  “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.  You are very, very powerful, but you don’t shield yourself against simple attacks that might end you.  Maybe it’s because you and Lu have been relatively alone for your lives without much conflict, but you have no idea how to protect the very soul that keeps you alive, nor does she.  I’m surprised you weren’t both killed outright by Discord; he has defenses against those sort of attacks, somehow.  I’d need a lot of my power to weaken him before I killed him, as is usually the case with immortals.  I’d been meaning to ask you about that, but considering my recent actions, it’s no longer relevant.  I’m a greater threat to your world than he ever was.  Please, Tia, just use your magic to put me somewhere I can’t hurt anyone, even inadvertently.”

Celestia closed her eyes, rubbing a hoof on her forehead.  “This conversation has been...enlightening,” Celestia said after a time.  “I have decided upon a suitable punishment for you.”  She gazed down her muzzle at the human, her light pink eyes flecked with molten steel as her horn began to glow.  “Until further notice, you are confined to Ponyville and its surrounding areas.  Any attempts to leave the township or the land past Cloudsdale and the Everfree will result in your immediate expulsion to a place I didn’t even have the heart to send Luna after her crimes.”  The yellow glow of her horn extended and subsumed the human before fading into the background.  “Furthermore, you are tasked with one thing, and one thing only.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Nix said, staring at the ground.

“Make some friends.”

“But I just told you-”

“This isn’t up for negotiation, Nix.  You nearly broke my world, my home.  To save a life, for certain, but the act cannot be forgiven, nor your own nature.  You are host to a...terrifying amount of power.  Yet your control of said power is questionable.  Out of apprehension of that power, of what it might do to my little ponies, I’ve gone so far as to release a very old god from imprisonment.  As much as Discord’s actions spelled disaster for my world, I believe them to be little more than the expression of loneliness before a host to such a terrifying omnipotence such as you possess.

“You asked what you might become when you lost everything?  As I said, I cannot answer that question completely.  I can say with reasonable certainty, however, that what you become might be akin to Discord.  Unbridled power coupled with a despairing boredom and a lack of purpose.  So, as much as Discord has discovered—or perhaps rediscovered—the magic of friendship, I task you as well with such an endeavor:

Make some friends.”

“What does that even fucking mean?” Nix said, frustration twisting his voice.  “You talk about it like it’s some fucking switch between poni- between people that can be flipped on, and then suddenly everything is hunky-fuckin’-dory.  One second, they’re talking to each other, and the next a light bulb lights up over their heads and, fuckin’ yay, they’re friends now and they can go fucking skip through flowery fuckin’ meadows.  That isn’t how that shit works, Tia, and you know it.  It’s a childish oversimplification of social interaction.”

“How does it work, then, Nix?”  

“You’re asking the wrong guy.  So far as I remember, last person I actually called a friend was Merlin.  That was 800 years ago.”

“So far as you remember.  How do you not know you’ve had friends since then?”

“...I don’t.  But I also know, judging from the fragmented mess I can remember, that things are pretty fucked for people I hang around too long.”

“And what if that is merely a result of your subconscious inclination towards guilt?  What if all your bad memories are a result of your loneliness?  What if you feel as though you’re betraying those you left behind by finding others you enjoy being around?”

“I’m betraying those I haven’t yet left behind by growing close.  A month, a thousand years, a million?  In the end, they’ll be taken from me.  They’ll grow old and die.”

“Everyone dies, Phoenix.”

“I don’t.  You don’t, unless you really piss me off.  And even when I happen across other immortals, I eventually have to leave to another existence.  Mortal, immortal, it makes no difference.  In both cases, they’re torn from me, and I from them.”  He frowned fiercely.  “And they always give me the same damn look, every fucking time.  Pity.  Sad pity.  And I fucking hate it!” he snarled, swinging his forearm into the tree behind him.  A section of its trunk exploded in a shower of splinters and bark, and the tree crashed to the ground away from the pair.  Nix slumped against what was left of the stump.

Celestia shook her head sadly.  “You’ll never be able to leave Equestria without regaining your power, and you’ll never regain that without getting close to others.  Without trusting them.  Without laughing with them.  Without accepting their generosity, and being kind in return.  Without-”

“Being loyal to them blahblahblah.  Yeah, I heard the kid’s speech when her purple ass was leading me around that boring ass village.  I even kind of listened when she kept blathering on about the Elements of Harmony.  You and her both talk too much, Cakebeard.”  Celestia stared down at the human emotionlessly.  He sighed and his hands flopped to his sides.  “I’ll try.  No promises!” he warned.  “But I’ll at least try.”

“That’s all I ask, Nix.”

“Oh, and one more thing?” he asked, his eyes focused again on the black screen in his hand.  

“Yes?”

“I’d like to be alone for a while.”  

Princess Celestia cantered up beside the human and sat down.  Her wing shot out and wrapped around his shoulder as his eyes widened.  She drew him close.

“I’m old,” she intoned.  “Old enough to know when one has been alone for long enough.”  

Nix was quiet as his head rested tiredly against her shoulder, wrapped protectively in an ivory wing.  The two remained that way until it came time to raise the sun.  Grudgingly standing up and wincing at the rays of morning light pouring through the forest, he stretched and told her, “I’ll try, Celestia.  I still think it’s stupid, a lot more stupid than I am, but I’ll try.”  He looked back only to find himself alone in the forest.  He snorted to himself.  “Fuckin’ teleporters.  Hate it when they pull that mysterious disappearance bullshit.”  He felt her lifeforce from a very great distance.  She might well have been on the far side of the world, depending on the planet’s size.  He shook his head ruefully.  

“Ya’ know, I really do like you, Tia,” he said to the empty air, “so I almost feel bad about lying to you.”  His mind reached out until he located a handful of familiar lifeforces to the south.  ’Sparky.  Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy.  Swordspony.  Lu...’  He assumed this cluster was located in Ponyville.  He turned his back to them and took a step before rustling in the underbrush nearby halted him.  

As he stopped, a creaking wooden form exploded from a nearby bush, shooting out a puff of leaves, and sailed through the air towards him.  Its green eyes glowed victoriously as its wooden fangs sank into his arm.  In a blur, Nix drew his silver gun with his free hand and jammed the barrel into the creature’s snout.  The pistol was bigger than the wolf’s head.  It growled at him with the tinny ferocity of a chihuahua, glowering up at him through the tiny, luminescent green marbles in its face.  He holstered his weapon and held his arm up.  The small wolf’s jaws held firm, hanging limply in the air from his forearm.  The tiny thing probably wouldn’t have stood taller than his knees.  He loosed an annoyed sigh.

“That’s probably not the best idea, pup.”  It stared back at him, shifting its jaws slightly as it made a slight suckling sound.  Nix could feel a miniscule amount of his lifeforce leaving his body into the wolf pup’s jaws.  It growled cutely at him.  “You do know I killed your mom, right?”  Another growl.  “Whatever, eat your fill.  I won’t be here for much longer, anyway.”  Tiny rivulets of maple syrup dripped from the timber pup’s mouth around his arm.  Nix simply stared and waited patiently as the young one fed on his lifeforce.   

After a minute or so, the pup released his arm with a pop and landed lithely on the ground in front of him.  It immediately fell onto its back, its tongue—a single orange leaf—lolling contentedly as it stared up at him with half-lidded eyes.  Its wooden belly bulged comically after its meal.  A few nearby twigs rattled slightly before flying towards the pup and integrating into it.  It cooed happily.

“Well, glad my lifeforce was useful for something other than just keeping me alive.  Hey, pup?”  It swiveled its head up and met his eyes.  

“Ragh?” it garbled out questioningly.  

“Don’t stick around here for too long.  You might run into a sociopathic walking battery, or a living battering ram of a mare with issues.”  The wolf merely continued looking at him as it lay on its back, its front paws drawn up to its chest.  Its twig of a tail began wagging slowly.  “Don’t get any ideas.  I’m leaving.  Alone.”  Its tail stopped wagging.  “I just figure the local timber wolf population has been thinned enough, at this point.  Go back to the forest, pup.”  

“Ragh?” it repeated its questioning whine.  Nix ignored it as flame burst from his shoulders.  He gazed ponderously at the light orange pinions in his flaming wings.  “I would’ve preferred blue, but this’ll work,” he muttered to himself before flapping his wings and bursting into the air, aiming towards the gold-tinged clouds and not looking back.  The wooden wolf-pup sat up and stared after him with green eyes that momentarily flashed teal before settling on their original color.  It shrank with the forest as Nix broke through the early morning’s clouds.  He hovered in the air for a moment before setting off through the pink and yellow sky away from the sunrise, and Ponyville.


*     *     *     *     *


Nix glided above the clouds and wondered how long it would take for him to pass the threshold of his prison.  Tia swore she would send him off to somewhere terrible if he violated the boundaries she set for him, and he intended to hold the princess to her word.  She could blather on about friendship and togetherness all she wanted, but he knew how dangerous his presence was.  He wasn’t going to chance endangering innocent ponies if he could help it, even if most of them were annoying and naive as fuck.  

While he didn’t like it, he’d just have to go back for his two swords after regaining most of his powers.  The princesses would hardly be an obstacle, then.  Tia would be in for a rude awakening when she realized that just because she was almost as powerful as Sammael was, Nix had defeated the god while Sammy was supercharged with the hijacked souls of billions.  Her display of force back in Canterlot would have just made him laugh piteously  were he able to wield the full force of his own lifeforce.  He wondered why Lu hadn’t given her sister the full scoop.  Whatever, this world was just a stepping stone on his way home.  No point in thinking too much about its inhabitants.  He flew west, away from the rising sun, for a few more minutes before he began hearing something odd.  

It was...music?  His flight slowed until he was simply hovering in the air above the clouds.  A dull, repeating whump-whump could be heard in the distance.  It sounded familiar to him, for some reason, though he was more intrigued by the song that seemed to emanate from everywhere around him.  It was symphonic music, and the urgent strings that made up its intro tugged at his memory.

“Is that...” he muttered to himself, looking around for the source, “is that Ride of the Valkyries?”

The clouds beneath him darkened as a large shape loomed in their wispy embrace before the shadow burst through their whitened edges, spilling off the large machine like dancing smoke as an Apache attack helicopter burst into the morning sky.  The ashen face of the pilot, hidden mostly by a helmet and aviator sunglasses, cracked a toothy grin, revealing one fang that was disproportionately large.

“Dun-dun-dun-dun-duuuun-dun!  Dun-dun-dun-duuun-dun!  Dun-dun-dun-duuuuuuuhn!” Discord sang cheerily.  Nix was somehow able to hear him perfectly through the cockpit and the whumping thunder of the helicopter’s rotors as the warmachine leveled off even with him.  He stared at the Apache, severely confused, before the gatling gun underneath the craft’s nose slowly whirred to life.

“Oh, fuck me-”  Nix dove as the shattering report of the gun shredded the air where he just exited.  With a flap of his wings he leveled off just above the cloud’s surface and tore through the sky, rolling and zig-zagging as best he could as the attack chopper’s gatling gun continued its barrage, tracer rounds shrieking through the spaces he had just occupied before dodging away.

“Dun-dun-dun-dun-duuuun-dun!  Dun-dun-dun-duuun-dun!  Dun-dun-dun-duuuuuuuhn!”  Discord continued singing, the Apache angled forward in pursuit of the fleeing human as its machine gun continued hammering the skies.

“Shut the fuck up already, you fucking psycho!”  The report of the machine gun immediately cut out.  Nix almost allowed himself a sigh of relief before he noticed a bright green targeting reticle hovering in the air near him.  It flew towards him, and not wanting to know just what the fuck would happen if it centered on him, he did his best to dodge.  His powers, though having grown since he arrived, weren’t enough to allow him to alter space-time just yet.  As such, his dodging was in vain as the reticle finally centered on him.  It flashed a couple times and began glowing red.  

Nix sighed.

“What’s the rush, Nixxie?  Stick around a bit!”  The dragonequus began to cackle madly as his thumb flicked up a red safety switch on the throttle and he jammed the talon’s digit home on a big red button.  The cockpit beeped a couple times before the Apache rocked back as two humongous rockets fired off from its wings.  Discord squinted his eyes shut and laughed even harder as the human stopped trying to escape and stared in horror at the winding missiles as they bore down upon him.

Nix drew both his guns and started firing blindly at the approaching missiles.  Almost immediately one exploded violently in the morning sky, sending a wave of smoke and heat over the human.  He trained his weapons towards the last spot he had seen the missile before something big, cylindrical, and white slammed into his chest and exploded.  He gaped when he found himself coated in an amber, sticky substance.  He tried bringing his arms up only to find the viscous fluid rubberbanding them back to his sides.  The stuff even seemed to coat his flaming wings, impeding their movement and folding them up against his back.  ‘That’s not even fucking possible,’ Nix thought as his flight was stolen from him and he rocketed through the clouds, towards the forest below.  He crashed through several trees, tumbling painfully through the canopy and wincing as his wings blackened more than a few of their limbs.  He came to rest after a few hundred meters, half-buried in a blackened ditch of melted glass and soil.  


His bones began popping into place as he started healing.  He was rudely interrupted in his efforts by a pair of hands belonging to a bear and an eagle as they grasped his shoulders and dragged his face into a serpentine form.

“Goose!  Goose!  Noooooo!” Discord wailed.

“Put me the fuck down right this second before I end you.”

“Ah, ah,” the dragonequus chided, patting the human gently on the back.  “Manners first, my good sir.”

The barrel of a silver pistol found itself jammed into the snout of the patchwork serpent.  Discord’s lips twitched towards a smile before Nix pulled the trigger, releasing a violent blast point blank into the chaos god’s face.  His eyes widened as his muzzle twirled around his head, finally settling down at the back of his skull.

“Hmph, how rude,” Discord muttered as he reached behind his head and dragged his snout around, resetting it on the front of his face.  “You do know I could have made that sticky substance something white, salty, and trauma-inducing, right?”

Nix stared back dully at the dragonequus, Lux still leveled at his snout.  “Put.  Me.  Down.”

“Fine,” Discord harrumphed, flippantly tossing the human to the ground.  “You know, an endless eternity of cynical boredom is so much easier if you have fun every once in a while.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Nix grumbled as he tried to wipe the maple syrup off his wings and arms.  With the snap of a bear’s paws, the sticky fluid disappeared, and Nix stood, dusting himself off.  He glared at Discord.  The dragonequus smiled back at the human.

“If you’ve had your fun, I think I’ll be leaving now.”

“Wrong direction, newbie.”

“What the fuck did you just call me?”  Nix whipped around violently, an angry snarl on his face.

“Uh, ‘newbie’,” Discord responded from over Nix’s shoulder.  The human shot a glare at the pair of yellow and red eyes staring back at him from a few inches away.  Discord leaned back, his head resting in two mismatched arms, and began floating through the air around the human on his back.  “You are new here, aren’t you?  I mean, I think I would have noticed, even if my mental faculties aren’t quite what they used to be.”

“Look, I just spent the night talking to two immortals, I don’t need another conversation that retreads the same ground.”

Discord snorted.  “Immortals?  Those two?  Hardly.  They’re just a few millennia old.”

“And you?”

“I stopped counting the years after the first sun died and I found another habitable world, boy.  And then another.  And another.  I’m older than you can possibly know.”  

Nix waved a dismissive hand.  “I’ve heard the ‘Ooh, I’m an immortal possessing wisdom the likes of which your mortal mind is incapable of comprehending’ speech countless times.  It usually preceded me ripping out their immortal souls and tearing them to shreds while they begged for their lives.”

“Oh, no, no, you’re going about this all wrong, Nixxie,” Discord said disappointedly, gazing down at his talons in mock ponderance.  “This is the part where I repeat ad nauseum everything you’ve been told by the princesses and relate to you about how a certain pink-haired mare led me to change my ways.”

“To change your ways.  Right.”  Nix stared at Discord flatly.  

Discord smiled back at him.  “Look, son-”

“-you’d have to be a bigger alcoholic than I am to call me that-”

“-you’re not wrong, but you don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet.  Avoid the ponies for as long as you like.  I won’t stop you.”

“You shot me down with maple fucking syrup.”

The dragonequus ignored him.  “Eventually, though, you’ll come to your senses.  Tia might be insufferable.  And a little chubby.”  The chaos god scratched his chin thoughtfully.  “But she isn’t wrong.  You won’t leave this place without mastering Harmony.  And I would know.  I’ve been here for quite some time.”

“Blah blah make some friends blah blah.  Look, I get it.  Are you done?”

Discord smiled at the human, who shifted uncomfortably under the false innocence.  “Yes, I suppose I am.  For now.  And I’m also going to help you.  For now.”  His smiled deepened as he snapped his talons.  The forest disappeared from around the human and he was again hovering in the air above the clouds.

 ‘I swear to fuck that I’m getting really sick and tired of gods and their veiled messages.’  He turned to continue flying away from familiar lifeforces—this time, they felt much further away—before his body froze and a golden light seized his every limb, paralyzing him.  The air before him crackled with yellow electricity as he bumped against some kind of barrier, before a black hole ripped open and shadowy tendrils dragged him through.  A second later, the open sky wavered and sent out a gentle ripple of golden energy before settling; the human was nowhere to be found.


*     *     *     *     *


Nix awoke in a black cave, obsidian stalactites oozing out from the blackened glass of the cavern’s ceiling as a sickly, blue-green fog whisked dully around his feet.  His surroundings were dark, but the pale mist seemed to give off enough ambient light for him to catch his bearings.  He couldn’t see more than a couple dozen meters in either direction, even with the light, as a repressive darkness seemed to force itself on his perceptions, dulling his senses and emotions.  If he could sum up his surroundings in one word, he’d probably choose ‘depressing’.  ‘Ominous’ would have been a close second, he guessed.

The one break from the landscape of the cavern were the looming, black double doors behind him.  

He shrugged and pushed them open.  And came face-to-tooth with a pair of salivating canine jaws that could swallow him whole.  The jaws were attached to a head that dwarfed him in size, which was attached to a large, darkly furred body of a wolf with two other heads.

“Uh...Cerberus?”  Nix asked.

All three heads released a roar which shook his bones and flecked his face with no small amount of canine saliva.  With a disgusted look, he wiped the dog slobber off his face and began backing away slowly, reaching for his pistols.  As he backed away, however, the dog stood down, and he abandoned his draw.  

“So, a three-headed guard dog, huh?”  The creature’s hateful eyes merely watched the human carefully, waiting.  “Which would make this Tartarus, back on my world.”  The gargantuan dog continued staring.  “Kind of a weird coincidence, but I did want to be banished.  Good enough, I suppose.  Don’t worry, boy.  I’d rather not escape any time soon.  Safer that way for everyone else.  And when I do have enough power?”  The lips of the dog’s three heads began to peal back in a snarl.  “You couldn’t stop me, anyway.”  Nix’s eyes flashed a bright blue as he tried to meet the gaze of Cerberus’s three heads before he realized they were focused on something behind him.

He froze, hearing the rasping sound of scales dragging across soil.  He gingerly sent out his lifeforce, recoiling severely when it touched a soul he recognized all too well.  He drew his pistols in a flash and whirled around, burying their barrels in the throat of a beautiful, pale-faced woman.

“Now, Sean, is that any way to greet an old friend,” the woman lilted, one of the snakes that made up her hair stroking his wrist softly.

“You bitch-” Nix started, trying to squeeze the triggers of both his pistols.  He found himself unable to move his hands, as they were suddenly encased in stone.  He glared angrily at Medusa as the petrification spread upwards from his hands and feet, overtaking his entire body.  He snarled, “This isn’t-” before the stone engulfed his face.

“Hmm, fool boy,” the snake-woman said dismissively.  “You never were one for tactics.  It’s almost shameful to have you as part of my collection, Godslayer or not.”  She ran one clawed finger down the stone face of her newest statue.  She turned away.  “No matter.  Welcome to Tartarus, boy.”

Small cracks began to emerge in the statue of Nix, each emitting bright orange rays of burning light.
	



> Chapter 22:  An Unfortunate Realization
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Some still pray to us and the others, you know,” Loki said quietly.  “I don’t know why your kind still wastes their time.  We never answer them.  We never can answer them.  But, even after all these years, when raiding parties have been replaced with lawyers and ruinous pillaging takes place behind closed doors in towering office buildings...people still pray.  To us, and to the others, and even to Him.”  He snorted in disgust.  “‘Please, just let my factory stay open.  I have two kids.  I need this job.  Money’s tight.’  Or, ‘Just one more john.  Just one more and Papí won’t hit me again.  I know I’m getting older, and those pretty young things over there are so much slimmer, even if they miss their parents, but just one more john.  One more, so I can feed my son proper.  I hope Papí’s not angry.  My boy is old enough to notice the bruises...’  Or the zealots.   ‘May my wrath kill many in the name of whatever-the-fuck god I’m pretending to worship.’”

Nix held his tongue.  Loki stared blankly into the distance.

“The worst, though,”  Odin said from the door, having entered halfway through the conversation.  “The worst are the children.”  He paused before Nix, looking him up and down.  “‘Mommy got angry again.  I don’t know why.  The fireflies are so pretty.’”  Nix’s eyes narrowed.  “‘I keep asking Daddy when Mommy’s coming back, but he just looks at me funny and goes into the kitchen.’”

“You’ve made your point, god,” Nix said, spitting the title like it left a bad taste in his mouth.  Odin and Loki had taken his pistols and his sword, perhaps wisely.  He still felt antsy without the familiar weight of Excalibur over his shoulder.  But the longer he stared at Odin, the more repulsed he felt.  The All-Father had been useless.  He’d done nothing.  

“I don’t think I have, boy.”  Odin stared at the human, his eyes flecks of shattered granite.  “All the violence, all the death, all the souls, they go to Sammael.  But us old gods, we still hear them...”  He paused.  “The prayers.  The people.  The abandoned.  We hear every one.”

“And we’re sick of not being able to answer,” Loki hissed, his knuckles white as his fists clenched up at his sides.  “This isn’t about a few pantheons of gods annoyed that someone bigger put them under their thumbs.  It’s about a few pantheons of gods annoyed that someone bigger put all creation under his sadistic yolk and fucking ignored its people!  Used them!  We still hear them, and yet we can’t lift a fucking finger to help!”  Odin placed a hand on Loki’s shoulder, calming him. 

The trickster shook his head, sloughing off his anger and smiling slightly as he met Nix’s gaze.  “And that, Newbie, is where you come in.”

“Even if I trusted you, I don’t see how I can help you with this,” Nix responded honestly.  

“Oh, but we do.”  Loki’s smile broadened.  “You’re going to kill the one preventing us from answering your kind’s pleas.  You’re going to kill God.”

Nix stared at him dully.  Instead of seeing Loki’s green eyes, however, his mind was consumed by the memory of Athena’s piercing cerulean gaze.

Phoenix looked at the two gods.  He simply said, “Gladly.”


*     *     *     *     *


Luna cantered through a large stone tunnel, its crudely carved walls black as soot but sharply mirrored like obsidian.  The way was only lit by the occasional torch of green flame, lending the glassy, twisted walls the appearance of sickly green apparitions where the light reflected.  As Luna exited into a cavernous room with a ceiling that extended beyond the reach of the torches’ pale green light, she failed to repress a sigh.

“Hiya, Lu.  A bit soon to spring me from my eternity of imprisonment, don’tcha think?  It’s only been a coupla days.”

“You...look terrible,” she blurted out.

Nix snorted.  He lounged between the prone paws of Cerberus, nestled between two of the beast’s heads and lazily stroking one of their noses.  The guardian appeared to be sleeping, oblivious to the presence of one of its masters.  The central head snuffled peacefully, no doubt sleeping more easily under the gentle ministrations of the human’s hand on its snout.  Nix’s black duster and his two holsters were draped over one massive paw, seemingly unharmed.  The rest of his outfit, however, was torn to shreds.  His tattered black shirt hung loosely off his shoulders by a few threads, barely concealing deep red gashes twisting across the unhealed skin of his lithe frame.  Similar wounds could be found on his upper thighs, and his blue jeans ceased to exist past his knees.  His face was a mess of bruises, cuts, and scrapes.  He was little more than a construct of rags, dried blood, and scars.  

Except for his eyes, which shone brightly with their own gleeful blue light.  They flared briefly as he greeted Luna with a maddening smile.  

“Yes, well, your prison here had quite a few unsavory individuals.”

‘Had?’ she thought, before she was distracted by a sudden stab of fear.

Luna shot a glance towards the thick stone doors shielding Equestria from the horrors of Tartarus—they were wide open—and flitted another look at its sleeping guard dog.  Her horn began glowing, a defensive measure lest any dark shape appear in the mists beyond the threshold of the doors.  “Ape, this prison holds some of the most vile creatures that have ever plagued our lands, yet right now its doors would fail to hold back a gust of wind, and its guardian is sleeping.  I have your memories, primate.  I know you, and I know you wouldn’t loose these evils upon us out of spite.”

Nix blinked at her, and the princess looked at him for a long time.

“Have you gone mad?” she asked finally.

Nix covered his mouth as he broke into a wheezing fit of laughter.  Cerberus stirred slightly before settling back into his slumber.  Luna’s eyes narrowed, and her horn began to glow more brightly.  Had he finally realized?  Had he finally lost himself?  She might have to stop him here, if that were the case.

However, Nix’s mirth tapered off, and he shook his head.  “Didn’t you hear me the first time?  And you should give this mongrel more credit, Lu.  He’s doing an excellent job guarding your prison.”  His hand dropped from the beast’s nose as he stood and collected his trenchcoat and pistols.  He began strolling towards Luna, and the exit.  He paused when he heard a rumbling growl and glanced back.  The center head glared at him through one opened eye.  

Nix met her eyes again and motioned to the guardian.  “See?  He’s guarding the entire population of Tartarus.”  He turned back to the hound.  “He’s such a good boy!  Yes, he is!”  Cerberus’s tail wagged lazily, flicking a few errant boulders across the room.

Luna took in a few measured breaths, attempting to calm herself, before continuing.  “My sister and I imprisoned hundreds of vile creatures here.  This prison, by design, was never a permanent measure.  It was meant to hold those incompatible with the Harmony of this world until such a time as they could be reintegrated.  Its denizens were a population-”

“That I depopulated,” Nix interrupted.  “Completely.  You’re welcome.”

“-that ultimately might come to understa- YOU DID WHAT?!”  Luna whipped her head towards the door, then back to Nix, her eyes wide.  

Nix shrugged.  “They were evil.  I just saved you the headache of dealing with them.”

“They were nefarious, but they had the capacity to change their ways, given enough time!”

“Then I saved them the headache.”  Nix hadn’t stopped smiling. 

“You...find this funny?  This wanton slaughter?!”  Luna started towards the open door.

“Not at all.  Mostly just annoying.”  He paused for a second.  “You’re not gonna beat the shit out of me and then break down sobbing because you can’t fix me, again, are you?”  She halted and shot a glare his way.  “Seriously, that’s some abusive serial killer shit right there.  ‘Why won’t you let me help you?!’ as your magic blast cracks all my ribs again.”  Her frown deepened.  Nix’s smile brightened and he spread his arms.  “You look like you need a hug.  Would you like a hug, Luna?”

“No, Nix, I would not like a hug.”  Her eyes narrowed and she peered at the open door.  Her horn flared for an instant and she seemed to relax.  “Thank goodness, you only breached the first circle.”

“Are you sure?  I wouldn’t even mind hugging you this time.”

She glanced back at the human, who bore a manic grin on his ruined face.  “You minded the first two times?”

“You smell like livestock and wet dog,” he said flatly.

Luna gaped.  “We most certainly do not possess so base a scent as thou implies!”  

“Pretty sure I did more than imply it.”  Small tendrils of glowing white steam emanated from his wounds.  And still, his maddening grin.

She raised her head and stared down her nose at the human.  “Apologize for thine insolence immediately!”

Nix plopped down against one of Cerberus’s paws.  The guardian grumbled and shifted slightly before settling back into its slumber.  Nix cocked his head, resting a finger on his cheek ponderously.  “Also, you talk funny.  Thought we went over this, Shakespony?”

Luna opened her mouth, but paused.  Then, in a measured tone, she continued.  “What are you doing, Nix?  You lied to my sister-”

“Again.”

“-choosing banishment over the path that would eventually see you on your way.”  Luna focused on the open doors, and began to walk towards them.   “At every turn, you defy us.”

“Yes, bad business, that.  Defying royalty.  I’d make a terrible merchant, given my fondness for bad business.”  He was toying with her, she knew.  Dancing around some issue and stubbornly avoiding something that should be obvious.  She reached the threshold of the prison.  “I, uh, wouldn’t do that, Lu.  It ain’t pretty.”  She ignored him, peeking her head through the doors and into the inky blackness they guarded.

She immediately recoiled and her face blanched.  She did her best to repress the waves of nausea that overtook her.  

The human plucked a cigarette from his breast pocket and summoned a fireball.  He frowned at it, the whirring ball of light and heat being barely larger than a teardrop, before touching the end of his smoke and dismissing the paltry fire with a disgusted snort.  Luna fought her gag reflex as she tamped down the images from the prison beyond.  So much blood.  The human glanced at her.  His smile had disappeared.

“I tried warning you.”  

“How...how...what are you?”  she stammered out. She flicked through his memories, searching for some reason, some justification, for his violence.  His past was horrible, as he was fond of pointing out, but it was equal parts beautiful, and loving, and...did he really think he was alone all those centuries, that he never made a friend?  In realities he was in for longer than a few days, she saw that he almost always ended up befriending someone.  Usually several.  He had always been blunt, she knew.  But he was never this...intractable.  This outwardly violent.  

“By my reckoning, Princess?  I’m a monster, I guess.  I seem to only be good at hurting things.  I’m still trying to figure out why those things I hurt in there are so horrible that your sister refused to put you with them.  They were pretty squishy.”

“There are ten levels to Tartarus, ape.  You merely slaughtered the first.”

“Oh, good, it appears I’ll have something to do with my eternal imprisonment.”

“You have yet to heal from the first level.”

“Yeah, but I can’t die.  I’ll figure something out.”

“You don’t understand.  Every being from the second circle onward possesses power of much greater magnitude than those before it.  You can’t even heal yourself after having...murdered the first circle.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”  The white mists around his wounds had coalesced into tiny flames, slowly knitting together his flesh.  It would be days before his wounds were fully healed, she realized.  “I had quite a bit more power when I came here.  If I’d had it before, I probably could have even handled that breeding horde of timberwolves without my pistols.  But all that power just seemed to evaporate.  It was...terribly inconvenient.  Especially considering I still had three foes left.”

“And why did you even attack the others to begin with?”

Nix broke his gaze with her, suddenly intrigued by the glowing tip of his cigarette.  “They were evil.”

“Bullshit.”

Nix cocked an eyebrow.  “Alright, then, they attacked me first.”  

Luna slowly approached the human.  Cerberus shifted and raised its three heads, regarding the small princess in a stupor as she stopped before him. Her horn glowed as she magicked the cigarette out of his mouth and tamped it out on the ground.  Her cold blue eyes never broke his gaze.  He seemed annoyed that he was deprived of his cigarette, but he remained motionless as he stared up at her.  She stood silent for a time, looking down upon him.  He really did seem broken, in spite of his eyes.  Luna always felt her gaze drawn back to the strange, blue orbs that glowed behind his eyes.  They seemed separate from his eyes, those glowing orbs.  Flares buried in hallowed grounds but awkward and out of place.  She tried to ignore the glowing orbs so she could search his eyes, and failed again.  Those wavering circles of light were like jewels embedded into a ring of gold; they were two parts of a whole, yet separate.  If only she could separate the man from the power, get a good look into eyes unpolluted by strength, she might be able to understand him.  Memories were not—were never—enough.  But seeing into untainted eyes?  

The human’s stoic features cracked as a smile reformed onto his face and he spread his arms wide.  “Sure you don’t want a hug, Princess?”

She glowered down at him.  “Don’t call me ‘Princess’.  And what has gotten into you?”

He bit his lip, and the light behind his eyes seemed to fade.  For a brief second, there was only her blue eyes locked with his.  “You sure?  I mean, if you didn’t want to hug something like me, I’d understand...”

She bowed her head and sighed.  “If you really must, I suppose I wouldn’t-”

“Excellent.”  Nix clapped and shot up from the ground.  She steeled herself, waiting for his arms to wrap around her.  The seconds drew on as her bare neck continued unembraced.  Her hooves shifted slightly before she brought her head up and noticed the human standing a few yards away, his back to her and his fists on his hips as he stared at the doors with an odd look on his face.  What was wrong with him?

“Nix,” she started apprehensively.  He held up a hand, glancing back at her over his shoulder.

“I asked if you wanted a hug.  Never said I’d go through with it.”

Luna scowled at him.  “Right.  Livestock and wet dogs.”

Nix waved his hand dismissively.  “Nah, I was only fucking with you.  You smell like you bathe in perfume.”  He shot her a sideways glance.  “Too much perfume, actually.  Just as off-putting, though, to have a horse that smells like a flower.”

“We are no-!”

“Pony, horse, whatever.  Look, at this point, I’m so damn happy I could plant a kiss on those hairy horse lips of yours.”

“What?!”  Her sudden outburst sent the human flying across the room.  She immediately shot a hoof to her mouth as Cerberus’s three heads shook off the last of their lethargy and the beast drew up its massive form.  Luna immediately pointed a pleading hoof at the human’s crumpled form against a nearby obsidian wall.  “No, wait, we meant thee no-”

Nix burst out laughing, slowly pushing himself off the ground as luminescent tendrils of white mist continued to dance around his slowly healing wounds.  “S’alright, Luna.”  His mouth quirked for an instant.  “Err, ‘Lu’.”  Cerberus’s panting heads created a mild breeze as they glanced laconically between the alicorn and the human.  Nix gathered himself up, and let out a puff of air.  “I have...something I’d like to ask you.”

She drew herself back subtly, regarding the human with a sideways glance.  “What?” she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“I’d like you to summon my sword, Muramasa,” he said, the otherworldly lights behind his eyes flaring up again.  “It’s important.”


*     *     *     *     *


Nix waited calmly, standing before the Princess of the Night with his hands clasped behind his back.  

‘Please work, please work, please work,’ his thoughts begged to no one in particular.

“Absolutely not!”  Luna said.  His hope deflated under her wilting glare.

“But-” 

“No ‘buts’!  Upon arriving, thou hast been a whirlwind of chaos.  Thy bumbling actions have created naught but discord.  Dost thou truly believe we’d surrender our charge, giving thee another tool of destruction, thereby making thee more dangerous?”

Crap.  She was reverting to Shakespony speech again.  This would make things more difficult.

“It isn’t,” he started, his smile faltering.  “It isn’t just a tool of destruction.  I just need to ask it a question.”  He held his hands up.  “Honestly.”

“You need to ask your sword a question,” Luna replied, her tone droll.  

“Yeah.”

“Your memories have nothing about conversations with a weapon.”

“I doubt they would.  Soulmeld spell only kinda mixed our souls.  Masa kinda has his own...”

He dropped his smile as her blue eyes narrowed.  “Fine.  But, ape, we do this my way.”

“I- okay?”  Luna’s horn exploded with sudden light, temporarily blinding him and shooting streaking stars through the darkened room.  Cerberus growled and recoiled from the sudden display.  With a final flash, the embers of her horn’s sparks shuddered and fell from the air.  As his vision slowly recovered, he at first only saw blue flames floating in the air where the princess once stood.  As the pain began to recede from behind his eyes, those flames resolved into a mane and tail that fluttered in a nonexistent breeze, flaring brightly around the black, armored form of an imposing equine.  It wasn’t wearing armor; it was armor, its numerous segments and plates seeming to flow organically as the being drew breath.  Pale blue light leaked in a laconic mist from its many segments, and from the multitude of runic shapes seemingly carved into its onyx plates.  A pair of cold blue eyes in the armor’s head flared suddenly, licks of lightning dancing around its harsh glare, before the metal-sheathed horn flared brightly and a plain-looking katana in a scuffed black sheath popped into existence in between the human and the pony, hovering motionlessly.

“Damn, Lu,” Nix said, still holding his hands up submissively, “if I’d known you were gonna go final form on my ass, I’d have asked for a safe word beforehand.”

The glowing eyes behind the reflective black helm narrowed, and the horse-armor shot out a tuft of steam.  “Thou surely does not believe thy Aeon armor unique?”

“Well, uh,” Nix dropped his hands and buried them in the front pockets of his duster, looking away.  “I kinda did, actually.  You’re the first to...” He paused, biting his tongue.  “No, actually, this would make a lot of sense, if I’m right.”  He reached for his levitated sword.  The imposing, armored pony stamped her hoof, shooting cracks along the blackened stone and causing Cerberus to slowly begin backing away, the huge beast’s tail tucked between his legs.  Nix held still, and locked his gaze with the glowing orbs of Luna’s armor.

“You can trust me, Luna,” he said quietly.

“Prove it.”

“Allow me to.  Please.”  

Nix gingerly reached for the hilt of his katana under the watchful glare of the princess in her armor.  If her older sister had access to this level of magic, if she could summon the Aeonic armor like her little sister just had...He wasn’t so certain Luna had lied to Tia about being as powerful Sammael had been when the human had slain him.  The waves of power crashed off of the mare in a violent squall, battening against his soul.  He never broke contact with her ‘eyes’, though.  The orbs of light in her black helm were different from the princess’s true eyes.

They always are, aren’t they? a voice lilted through his head as he closed his hand around Muramasa’s hilt.  Humans.  Gods.  Monsters... it continued, the eyes truly are the window to the soul.  But when there’s more than one soul?  I wonder...  Nix fought off the voice, same as he always did.  He noticed the burning eye sockets of the black, armored mare narrowing slightly as he clasped onto his sword.

“Masa, speak out loud so the nice princess knows the resident godslayer hasn’t gone mad and decided he suddenly dislikes hugging living goddesses, please?”  Nix said cautiously, staring at the being who was Luna, and was also not.  

”Oh, so you admit it?  I always knew you were soft, Sean,” a metallic voice rang out through the cavern, echoing and muddled as though it spoke from a great distance.  The flaming blue mane of Luna’s armored form seemed to dim slightly.  

“I told you not to call me that, Masa,” Nix grumbled angrily, breaking his gaze with Luna’s awakened form and stabbing the sheathed sword at the ground.  It stood, perfectly balanced, on its very tip as Nix released it.  

“Don’t get me wrong, boy,” the sword continued.  “I was really, really annoyed when you abandoned me-”

“Didn’t abandon you, Masa,” Nix said, exasperated.

“-but I felt the soul of the one I was given to, felt how utterly gorgeous the valleys and mountains of her lifestream were, and, well, I wasn’t angry at all.  Actually, could you give me back to her?  Her soul is so much more beautiful than yours.”

“Yes, I know.  Part of the reason I left her alive.”  Nix glanced at her.  He was surprised that his admission that he still allowed her to live hadn’t caused more luminescent ether to leak from her armor; she knew how to use it.  Mostly.  Though he wondered how well...  “Although you should cool your jets, Romeo.  I doubt she’s much into swords.”

“Oh, she is.  Though her sword is kind of an arrogant bitch,” Masa replied sullenly. “No matter how nicely I try to talk to her, she refuses to respond.”

Nix sighed.  “Masa, we’ve been through this.  Most swords don’t talk.”

“I talk.”

“You’re not most swords.  Think about it.  How many swords have actually talked back to you over the years?”

“Well, not many, but I just figured that was because I was making their masters dead...”

“You obviously didn’t gut Lu, here, and her sword didn’t speak to you...seriously, talking swords are pretty damn weird.”

The sword let out a grumpy, metallic huff and fell silent.  The glaring blue orbs in the black pony’s helm narrowed slightly.

“To what end did thee request we summon thy sword, ape?” Luna demanded, lowering her head threateningly.  The blue mist seemed to blur from the segments of her armor more rapidly and the runes began glowing slightly more brightly.  “Our patience is already a hair’s breadth away from its limits.”

Nix rubbed his forehead slowly.  “Masa, you like her, right?  I barely have the strength for this right now, you know.”

“She’s the most gorgeous advent of the night I have ever felt, Master.  Are you sure you don’t want to give me to her?”  The sword seemed to lean towards her.  “I promise I’ll behave.  I wouldn’t dare twist her thoughts to something other than what formed betwixt her own cute, floppy blue ears.”

The man nodded to himself, but Luna simply stared at the two.  Her glowing armor creaked and popped as she shifted her front hooves.  Good.  She was uncomfortable.  She wouldn’t see this coming.

Nix disappeared, streaking towards the sword in a blue blur.  Luna gasped sharply and immediately began charging her horn.  The weaves of protective magic immediately winked out, cut at the source of her horn almost instantly.  Her weaves were a molding of extremely high level magic—if she had actually finished forming them and began casting them, their severance would have struck back at her with enough force to incapacitate, or possibly even kill her.  She twisted her head around, the arcane glow of her ‘eyes’ widened in fear, as she attempted to get a bead on the human.  Nix, however, had been doing this for a very long time, and this wasn’t the first opponent gifted armor of the Aeons he had faced.  Hell, she wasn’t even an opponent.

It was over in less than a second.  First, the human seemed to disappear, and the next, he reappeared in front of the night princess, idly cleaning out his fingernails with the tip of his unsheathed blade.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Muramasa complained.

“Hmm, yes,” Nix responded, gazing at his fingernails.

Luna growled and put one hoof forward.  She failed to place the other hoof forward as all of her armor fell to the ground in a loud clatter.  She looked at the plate mail with shock before her eyebrows furrowed and her gaze whipped towards the human.  The human was faster at whipping his sword to her neck, however.  The razor sharp blade hovered there, motionless, as the human continued regarding his fingernails.

“If I really wanted to, I could have killed you at least seven times,” he stated plainly.  Luna glared at him, the power of her Aeonic armor evaporating into the air in a whisping mist from the numerous pieces of plate mail at her feet.  “Today, anyway.”

Nix dropped his free hand and turned to look her in the eyes.  There was no glow behind his pale blue irises.  Luna felt the katana at her throat relax slightly.  One of the human’s eyes twitched and he dropped the sword from her throat.

“Coulda killed you the first day, actually, instead of running.  I’d just rather not,” he said, before stalking off to an outcropping of rock.  He reached his hand behind the black stone and tossed a lump at her feet.  Luna’s stomach twisted as she recognized it as a severed head, its feminine features draped limply with numerous dead serpents.  A thin, steel blade immediately drove itself through one of the head’s eyes, and Luna’s eyes traced up the silvery blade, past the clenched hand, to a pair of cold blue eyes hiding behind a few golden locks of hair.  

“Masa, there’s a pretty good chance I might have gone insane over the years.”  Nix maintained eye contact with Lu.  She almost looked afraid.  He ignored this, successfully holding together the ragged bits that remained of him.  Again.  “I need you to verify something.”  He looked down at the severed head of Medusa.  “Feel familiar?”  

“Err, Sean?”  the sword offered.

“Don’t call me that.  Ever.”

“How long have you held onto Medusa’s head?”

Nix withdrew the sword and stared into its reflective blade like it was retarded.  “Uh, never.”

“Then, why is this the exact same Medusa I remember beheading a thousand years ago?”  Nix regarded the katana carefully, before he wiped off the blood that had stuck to its tip on his pants.  

“Best of luck to ya’ with the lady sword.  I’ll see you again in a bit.”  The human smiled and ignored Muramasa’s muffled complaints as he jammed it back into its sheath and offered it back to a clearly shocked Luna.  “All done, got what I needed to know.”  He gave the night princess his warmest smile.  Her gaze flicked between his eyes and his proffered blade.

“You attacked me!”  she shouted, thankfully not with the force of a dragon’s roar.

“No, I didn’t,” Nix said matter-of-factly, waving the katana’s hilt at her slightly.

Luna scowled at him and motioned to the remnants of her black plate mail, most of which had dissolved into a soupy blue mist by this point.

“Oh, that?  Never could resist the chance to get a princess out of her clothes, you know.”  He winked.

Luna’s eyes shot wide and she sputtered out a cough.  That was weird.  He wondered how she caught the subtext, considering the horses—ponies, whatever—walked around naked most of the time anyway.  The princess’s brain seemed to have hitched up, and she just gaped at him awkwardly.  Alright, maybe he had gone a bit too far with the poor mare.  Considering recent events, he should probably stop going out of his way to try to alienate the ponies.  He was gonna be here for a while.  

“I’m just fucking with you, Lu,” he said, and Luna’s paralyzed uncertainty seemed to be replaced with anger.  ‘You were?’ Masa asked him with an amused tone, speaking directly to his brain again.  ‘Shut up,’ Nix thought back.  ‘She’s a damn horse.’  His sword just tittered at him.  He refocused on the mare, who was glaring at him with a small pout.

“That wasn’t funny, Nix.”

“I agree.  It was hilarious.  You should have seen the look on your face.”  His eyes glowed mirthfully for a second, then faded.  He paused, then continued honestly, “I had to know if you had ever fought another immortal before.  To confirm something.”

“And that was?”  she said, regarding him suspiciously.

“You’re not responsible for bringing me here.  Ergo, I can trust you.”  He thought back to her outburst in Ponyville.  “Probably.”

“Brought you here?  You said you came here with your own power.”

“I did.  Same way I went to every other reality.  Do you even talk to your sister?  I just told her my fears a few days ago, before I got myself banished here.”

“You think something’s pulling your strings?”

He pointed at her.  “Bingo.  Which is why I’m also gonna have to train you to actually use that armor, just as soon as I have the power to summon my own.”

She gazed at him sternly, finally removing the katana from his tremoring hand.  “Ape, I’ve had the use of that armor for longer than you’ve been alive.  I assure you, I know how it works.”  She gave his sword a longing look before shaking her head.  With a small flash of blue light, it vanished. 

Nix shook his head and sat down, his back against a jagged black rock, and took out another cigarette.  He almost seemed out of breath.  He summoned a fireball the size of a marble and lit the tip, then held the levitated orb of red flame.  “See this?”  Luna rolled her eyes.  “This is the largest I can make it with the power I have access to.  And it’s dark red.”  The alicorn sighed and twirled her hoove exasperatedly, motioning for him to get to the point already.  “My flames, particularly those of summoned wing feathers, burn a certain color depending on how strongly I can access my lifeforce.  Goes from red, to orange, to yellow, to blue.  There’s also white, but that involves something else entirely.  I’d summon my wings to show you, but I don’t have the power to even do that.  Hell, I can’t even heal my own wounds, and I’d almost gotten to the point where I could do that instantaneously.  You, on the other hand, were just wielding enough power to destroy stars.

“And I still stripped you.”  He finished with a satisfied smirk, the tip of his smoke dancing gaily in the muted light of the black cave.

He was dancing around the issue, he knew.  He wasn’t entirely sure why, but the sudden optimism he felt at encountering Medusa—not a Medusa, the Medusa with the exact same soul as the one from his world—was tempered by sheer terror over what that could mean.  He was, as he suspected, being manipulated.  Something larger was going on, here, and he intended to find out.  But until he did, until he fixed the problem...Hell, he was under no illusions about what that entailed.  He was going to find the thing that had been guiding him to all these awful realities, and he was going to kill the everloving shit out of it.  

This reality wasn’t like those in the past, for the most part.  He actually liked Lu and Tia, even if he’d never admit it to their faces.  He knew this world had had its problems, some of which were similar to ones he ‘solved’ in other realities.  No matter what he might have told Tia, he was deeply, deeply relieved he didn’t show up here a thousand years in the past.  He flicked a glance at Luna, who seemed to be mulling over his words, and allowed a small smile to escape onto his lips.  She may be ten thousand years old, a princess, and a damn winged unicorn, but she was a lot like him.

She was a bumbling fool whose brashness got her into too much trouble.  And that’s why he needed to train her, and her sister, how to use that armor of theirs and how to guard themselves better.  They may be ageless, but they weren’t immortal.  And so long as his power remained so pathetically meager, he was incapable of protecting them.  

He flicked his cigarette into the shadows and stood on shaking legs.  He had used up the trickle of power he felt when he saw Luna barreling through the prison’s entrance, but at least its use  had been able to make his point to the princess.  He walked slowly up to her, his stumbling arousing her from her mulling.  She deserved the truth.

“Lu, I’m sorry for killing, err, everything in your prison.”

“T’wasn’t everything, ape.  Only the weakest,” she paused, “but also those most likely to have turned from their ways.”

“She was from my world, Lu,” Nix said, motioning to Medusa’s severed head.  Luna paled, trying not to focus on the ragged tears on the head’s throat, on what Nix had done to her.  Nix slowly rolled the head behind him with his foot, and gingerly lifted Luna’s chin until she met his gaze again.  “She wasn’t a copy, or this dimension’s version of her.  Her soul was the same.  In a thousand years, I’ve seen no sign of my home, and yet suddenly, here she is, in the very prison I was sent to?”

Luna jerked her head slightly, out of the human’s grasp, and stared at him.  “So you’ve decided to stick around a bit longer.”  Nix nodded.  She sighed and looked away.  “I’ll talk to my sister.  I believe you may have hurt her feelings when you lied to her.”

“Nah,” Nix said, waving her off.  “Your sister’s a bigger ice queen than you are.”

“You might be surprised how off the mark you are, ape.”

“I doubt that.  I at least know I’m an idiot, after all.”

“One would hope that was common knowledge, at this point.”

“Hey-” Nix cut himself off and drew his black pistol.  The alicorn tensed up, but with a flourish, Nix held the gun out to her handle first.  “Here, go play with this a bit.  I hear a coupla planets around here could use some accidental pruning.  Starting with this one.”

The pony sighed and rolled her eyes, but gave him a small smile.  “I have never really been known to possess a temperament as even as my sister’s.”

“That’s okay, us fools have to stick together.  Strength in numbers, and if worse comes to worst, we can pool our slack-jawed drooling together and drown the smart ones.”

She snorted with mild amusement, and turned towards the exit.  “I shall speak with my elder sister.  She will not be happy, but I am certain she will see the reasoning behind your actions.  She also must know of your concerns.  I will contact you when she agrees to release you from your banishment.”

“No need.”  

Luna twisted her head back around to the human, who had holstered his pistol and walked towards the large doors leading deeper into Tartarus.  “I have to check out the lower circles to see if there’s any more from my world,” Nix called over his shoulder.

“Cease thy movement immediately, human!”  she shouted in a harried tone, teleporting in front of him.  “Thou art to remain here until we return!  The beings contained within are beyond you in your current state.  The fiends in the lowest levels rival even my own power!  Thou art- you are not even healed!”

“Meh, I’ll live.”  He moved to walk around her but was enveloped in a glowing blue aura and lifted from the ground.  

Nix sighed.  “Look, Lu, I don’t even have the power to break this spell.  Just please put me down.  I’m closer to my goal now than I have been in a millennia.  I’m not gonna stop.”

Her head whipped towards the entrance for a second before she turned back to face him, her head cocked to the side.  “Would you be willing to wait until you have more of your power?”

He shook his head.  “Look, I need answers before something bad happens, and my power isn’t cooperating.  If I can’t get it back as quickly as I need to, the very least I can do is arm myself with more information.”

“I’m not letting you go, ape,”  she said.  A cruel smile flashed onto her face.  “Oh, dear, I may even feel another spell of violence coming on.”

“Very funny, Lu.  Put me do-”

“Yes.  Yes!  I told you, we’re almost there,” a voice echoed from the entrance to the cave.  An incoherent response, a mumble, floated off the walls of the cavern.  Nix glanced down at Lu.  She hadn’t stopped staring intently at him, but she had dropped the evil smile she had on.  Mostly.  He could swear the edges of her mouth almost formed a smile.  “Of course I know where it is!  I told you before that I had to bring Cerberus back here after he got out.”  Oh, that was definitely a smile forming on Princess Blue Butt’s face.  What was she planning?

Nix suddenly decided that being cooperative was not the best of his ideas.  The damn horse princess was royalty, after all.  He should have just kept everything to himself.  The way he always did.

He hated this world.


*     *     *     *      *


Twilight Sparkle rounded a bend and cantered into the room, looking back over her shoulder with a smug grin.  “See?  I told you I knew the way.”  She paused, adding in an annoyed, muted tone, “I should have never told you about Celestia’s letter.  How are we even supposed to get him out, anyway?”  She turned back and nearly tripped over her own hooves.  Halfway across the large room, Luna held Nix several feet off the ground with her magic.  The human was a mess of lacerations and bruises.  Cerberus sat on his haunches against a further wall, two of its heads watching with boredom, but the center head gawked at the pair with a ludicrous expression of concern painting its features.  Her five friends burst from the entrance beside her, Rainbow Dash hovering anxiously and shooting her head around sharply, searching, until she, too, saw the pair.

Finally, the rearguard, the poor mare who had been fooled by the human and had pestered her to lead a rescue mission, barreled through her friends.  Rarity loosed a small yelp and grumbled slightly as the light green unicorn barreled past her, almost knocking her off her hooves.  The unicorn darted between the rest of them, followed closely by Pinkie Pie as she sang a small limerick about slaloms, before breaking through the front and seeing the Princess of the Night levitating Nix in the air.  

She froze, the bright orange curls of her mane jostling at the sudden stop before a thick lock of hair settled over one of her eyes.  She pursed her lips and blew it from her vision distractedly, staring at the pair.  

“At a time of 3.1 seconds, the winner of the living pony slalom challenge is-”  Pinkie collided with Ridge Dancer’s rear, sending both of them tumbling the rest of the way into the room.  The jumbled, multicolored mess of mare hair and flailing limbs came to a rest a few yards before Nix and Luna.  

Twilight pressed a hoof to her face.  She had postponed writing next week’s book-shelving schedule for this?

“Oh my Goshess!”  Pinkie squealed loudly, having easily untangled herself from Ridge Dancer, who stumbled to her feet slowly.  The pink mare had leveled an accusatory hoof at Luna.  “Princess Luna is eating Nix’s soul again!”

The bright green unicorn exploded with shocking speed, charging at the pair.


*     *     *     *     *


‘This...isn’t going to end well,’  Nix thought.  Dancie stood with her back to him, staring down Luna and clopping one hoof on the cave floor threateningly.  Her horn glowed and whirred with a deep green energy, shooting off a shower of bright green sparks that flared and reflected off the glassy black surface around the three.  Luna glared down darkly at the lime green pony, her eyes chiselled glaciers.  ‘I have to help her.’

“Uh, hey, Lu, what say we just forget-”

“Silence, vile primate!”  Luna bellowed in the Royal Canterlot Voice.  Ridge Dancer wavered under the force of the blast, but held her ground.  “Thy very presence incites treason in the hearts that thou infects!  Thou believest we would allow thee thy freedom to spout thy twisted invectives against my sister and I?!”

A cyan blob blurred to Ridge Dancer’s side and grabbed both her shoulders.  “Uh, heya, Pri-  err, Luna!  Long time no see!  Ridge Dancer here got, uh, jungle fever from all the...jungle out in the Everfree on the way here.  She’s probably half-crazy or feverish or something, eheheheh,” Rainbow Dash said in a scratchy rush.  She turned her attention to Dancie and whispered hoarsely, “Are you completely insane?!”

Dancie pushed Rainbow Dash away slowly with one hoof, never breaking away from Luna’s icy stare.  “Let him go,” she whispered, her breathy tone a rasping dagger being dragged from its sheath.  

“Thou wouldst dare command thine own princess?  A Royal Guard would dare stand in the way of our divine Justice?!”

Two of Cerberus’s heads barked with muffled, gleeful thunder, guffawing in the beast’s own way at the tiny mare that dared challenge its master, a goddess.  The center head, however, just flicked his eyes to his neighbors and began staring at his feet, abashed.  Ridge Dancer whipped her head to the gargantuan beast, her lip curled back in a snarl.  Nix saw that her pupils were gone and her eyes glowed with shrieking white light.  The two amused heads on the savage dog-monster immediately cut their laughter and gulped, the guardian doing its best to subtly shuffle its tail between its sitting legs without outwardly appearing to do so.  Ridge Dancer turned gaze back to Luna.  A swirling black mist had begun forming behind Luna as her horn began to glow as well.  The expression of malevolence and distaste on the princess’s features were plain.  

“Kid-” Nix started.  

“Silence!” Lu and Dancie interrupted simultaneously, never breaking each other’s gaze.

‘Dancie, no,’ Nix thought.  ‘I’m not worth it.’  He was a godslayer.  A killer.  He killed beings of untold power, things beyond the ken of mortal understanding.  Hell, even he didn’t understand most of it.  But he had power, disgusting, beautiful, raging power, twisting realities and entire galaxies to his every whim, laughing in the face of arrogant gods even as he ripped out their eternal souls and tore them to shreds for hurting the beings they were supposed to protect.  He wasn’t a protector, he was a killer, he just mostly killed those who deserved it the most.  But above all else, he was power.  Gods cowered at his feet.  He would not—could not—be bowed by force.  His current issues and his incomplete mastery of the lifeforce he held notwithstanding, he had truly never encountered another entity possessing the amount of raw force he was capable of.  

He hovered a few feet off the ground in a blue haze of magic, helplessly incapable of movement, as a small green unicorn mare who was terrified of crowds and who was scarred by her childhood stared down a pissed off Goddess.  She was small, wasn’t she?  Funny, how easy it was to skim over the small details.  She was smaller than even Sparky.  Positively tiny.  Her head barely even reached his chest.  And she was staring down the fuckin’ Pony Goddess of Death.  For him.

Something twisted in his chest.  He felt...

“What say you, Ridge Dancer?”  Luna spat, dropping her booming voice to a mere shout.  “Will you really abandon the kindness shown to you by my sister when she allowed you to join the Royal Guard?  Will you really forsake your search for your father, for justice, for this...this hairless ape?”

Ridge Dancer bowed her head, the glow on her horn dimming.  She sniffled, shifting her hooves uncertainly.  “My father destroyed my life,” she whimpered.  She slowly raised her head, meeting Luna’s eyes again.  “This hairless ape saved it.  Let.  Him.  Go,” she growled.

Nix felt...


*     *     *      *      *


Luna stared down at the small mare, her ageless heart tearing in her breast at the sight of the poor mare leaking tears down her light green cheeks.  Ridge Dancer was little better than a Private in the Royal Guard, and that was mostly just a kindness, a bare nicety, that Celestia had shown the orphan she had found wandering the mountains years ago.  She willed her features to remain the same, an emotionless mask much like the one her sister was fond of employing.  A bit too often employed by her sister, she thought, but useful nonetheless.

Her eyes didn’t twitch in the least when the magical field that she had summoned to hold Nix exploded.  Millennia of practice, and no small amount of suffering from physical pain, stilled her hoof as the human severed her threads forcefully.  They recoiled back and slammed into her consciousness, a tsunami of pain and psychic force that hammered at her mind as her vision dimmed slightly.  She almost blacked out.  She remained still, showing nothing.  She was going to have an awful headache.

The ape had teleported in front of the mare, blue and white flames dancing all across his form.  He glowed.  Emanated warmth, not heat.  The glow didn’t touch his eyes.  No light glowed there, just the light sapphire rings of his own eyes.  No brilliant light, she thought, but much more forceful than the flames dancing around his form as he stood, arms wide, in front of Ridge Dancer, protecting her from her ‘angry’ princess.  The human really did have a beautiful soul, even if he hardly realized it himself.  So long as there were others around him who did, however...

“Hmph, very well.”  Luna tossed her head up arrogantly.   “You’ve convinced me.”

Nix’s blue flames and Ridge Dancer’s horn immediately winked out, and they shared a confused glance.  The white flames still danced across his wounds, the cuts healing much faster.  He glanced at the white flames, then at Ridge Dancer, then at Luna, then back at Ridge Dancer.  Luna smirked.  His raised arms flopped to his sides.

“Oh, this is so stupid.  So fucking stupid,” he said with a tone of resignation, glancing between his almost-healed wounds and the lime green unicorn at his side.  He looked back at Luna, whose smug grin stretched wide across her face as her eyes squinted shut with glee.  He stared for a second.

“Oh, shut up.  No one asked you.  Bitch.”  

“Ape.”

The human snorted, but something flicked behind his eyes.  A glow that wasn’t born from the burden of his lifeforce.  He grinned and raised his middle finger at her.  Was this an expression of joy for humans?

Probably not, but she saw enough honest mirth behind those eyes that she didn’t much mind.

The human turned away from her and patted Ridge Dancer on the head.

“Come on, kid.  We have to go.”

The green mare shot her gaze between Luna and the man.  “I- I don’t understand.”

Nix rested the back of his head in clasped hands and looked towards the ceiling, letting out an annoyed grumble.  “It occurs to me that I might not get my powers back, ever, unless I...make some friends.”

Ridge Dancer stared up at him with a confused look, an expression shared by Twilight and most of her friends.  Except for the pink one.  Luna could never quite wrap her head around that particular pony, though Celestia assured her that Pinkie Pie was one of their more savvy subjects.  At least, Celestia thought she was.  She never said for certain.  Nix waited for a few seconds before glancing down at the mare at his side.  

“We’re going back to Ponyville.  I have a few apologies I have to make.”  His eyes flitted to the six brightly colored ponies at the entrance to the prison.  “And also, plans.”  He swatted Ridge Dancer’s shoulder.  “Come on, we’ve got things to do.”

“I don’t believe my sister ever released you from your banishment, Nix.”  Luna said simply.  She dearly wished she had one of her sister’s tea cups to sip on at the moment.  Ten thousand years, and she still hadn’t figured out where Tia was hiding them to summon at a moment’s notice.  

“Yeah, but if you leave me here I may get bored and kill your guardian.”  Two of Cerberus’s heads let out threatening growls.  Nix cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered loudly, “No, I wouldn’t.  Center head is awesome.”  The beast’s growls subsided and the central head panted with a stupid grin on its face.  If Luna remembered training the three-headed pup correctly, centuries ago, the center head was the dullest of the trio.  She liked it best, anyway.  

“Hmph, very well.  I’ll have my sister deal with your transgressions, again, at her earliest possible convenience.”

“Yay, no consequences for being banished at all!  It’s like I’m all-powerful again without actually having the power!”  Luna rolled her eyes as the human and Ridge Dancer approached the shell-shocked Elements of Harmony, who, for the most part, had viewed the entire exchange with quite a bit of confused shock.  Except for Pinkie, of course.

“Private Ridge Dancer,” Luna said sternly.  She noticed Nix tense up immediately and the fiery-maned guardpony began to tremble.  “You were an admirable example of the friendship of magic, today.”  Both seemed to calm.  “But we’ll still need to have a talk about the lifeforce manipulation magic you used to conceal your presence as you approached.”

Twilight’s mouth gaped.  “I knew it!”  

Ridge Dancer merely bowed her head.  “Yes, Luna,” she said quietly.  

“Uh, right.  So, we goin’?  Wait...wait!”  Nix turned back and walked up to the alicorn.  “Why walk back when you can just teleport my lazy ass?”

Between concealing her splitting headache and the insufferability of the human, her eyes were beginning to ache with the amount they had been rolling.

“Please?”  The human put on a fake pout and widened his eyes.  He really was quite ugly, when she chose to dwell on their physical differences.  She rarely did.  Still, he was annoying.  The human spread his arms wide.

“I’ll even give you a hu-”

Luna teleported him immediately.


*     *     *     *     *


Nix flashed into existence in a dark, musty room, feeling like his intestines had been frozen.  At least when he quantum transmuted himself, it didn’t feel like he had done a three year stint in a running microwave.

He quickly scanned his surroundings.  No demons, evil gods, or all around nasty things to kill.  Which was good.  He only had a steady stream of power feeding into him.  He’d need an ocean of the stuff to deal with gods.  This was just a bar, anyway.  There was a pony behind the main counter, lazily polishing a gleaming pint glass, and a few other equine patrons sat in darkened booths at the edges of the bar’s dim light, engaged in hushed conversation.

Well, at least Lu had the presence of mind to send him straight to some booze.  He walked lithely from the entrance towards the counter.  He really did like the princess, even though he was convinced she was batshit crazy.  He shuddered as he remembered just how hard he had hit the ground in Ponyville as she bounced him effortlessly through the town.  Nothing a quick drink wouldn’t fix, though.

He plopped down on a stool.  The bartender pony didn’t look up.  “What’ll it be?” he said, his deep voice rumbling boredly.

“What’s on tap?  I could really go for something-”

Nix exploded off his stool, knocking it to the side.  His eyes flicked wildly through the room.  Something wasn’t right.  He reached slowly for his pistols.

The bartender stopped his compulsive polishing of the single pint glass, and his gaze crept up to the human’s.

“I wouldn’t.  Not the place for it.”

Nix glared back at him and abandoned all pretext of subtlety as he whipped his twin pistols out.  The bartender continued staring dully, one of his eyes matched to a silver gun, the other to a matte black barrel.

“Where am I?”  Nix growled.

He couldn’t feel the worldstream of Equestria at all.
> Chapter 23:  All's Well That Ends Swell
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The bartender stared down the lengths of Nix’s two pistols, a pair of bored eyes beneath a sandy mane.  The stallion loosed a laconic snort before dropping his gaze and returning to his ministrations on the polished glass stein in his hooves, the white rag working tirelessly against any perceived imperfections in its glossy shine.

“I’m not fucking around.  This place doesn’t have a worldstream.  Where the fuck am I?”  Nix had, after a thousand years, just gotten his first real lead in his quest to return home.  Then, he had been ripped from said world, and sent here.  Had Luna sent him here?  No, couldn’t be.  He was certain he had read her correctly.  

He was terrible at reading people, but lifeforces—souls, as most other sapient species recognized them—those he could do.  And her’s was amazing.  He felt a nagging sense of familiarity from it, but he brushed that feeling off.  She was a goddess, and there was a pretty good chance he had come across her soul in the past in a different reality.  He hadn’t lied to Celestia about that; different personalities, completely different circumstances, but between realities, certain gods shared the same soul.  The soul-sharing gods themselves usually shared certain characteristics.  A kind soul made for a kind god, even though each god may manifest such a trait differently.  Sometimes they were cognizant of the link, but more often than not they were completely ignorant of the infinite other physical manifestations of their soul across realities.

Tia didn’t seem to realize that she shared Zeus’s soul, for example.  Never mind the fact that Zeus had died on his world.  Nix hadn’t killed him, after all, so the god’s soul was still intact.  There was a pretty good chance Zeus had remanifested back home, actually.  Unless you kill the soul itself or sever its connection to its host, the corporeal form of gods always seemed to restore themselves eventually.  Usually.  He had a few friends who hadn’t.  He wished he could remember their names.

Zeus.  Funny he should remember that now.  Tia shared a soul with some angry, bearded god who still walked around in a toga even after his cohorts had moved on, adapting to the modern age.  He imagined Tia with a fluffy beard of frosting, and stifled a smile as his fingers begged him to pull the triggers on his weapons, aerating the skull of this smug dullard behind the polished, dark wood counters.  He denied the digits their desire.  The dead tell no tales.  He was still mildly annoyed that he had lost his temper with Medusa.  But stone.  He hated being turned to stone, being trapped.  No, he needed this pony alive.  And this pony was apparently more interested in polishing a damn glass to a mirror’s shine than paying attention to him.

“I’ll give you to the count of three, and-”

“The Eight Bits bar,” the bartender said dully before shooting him a dispassionate glare.  “Ain’t no reason for those here,” he said, nodding to the pistols inches away from his face.  “Put ‘em away.  Please.”  To Nix, the last word smacked of an unspoken threat.  If he were at his full strength...

...he wasn’t at his full strength.  Whatever.  He warily holstered his pistols.  He couldn’t sense a lifeforce in the bartender, which meant that it was either an artificial construct—a homunculus—or that he was skilled enough to conceal it.

“There’s no worldstream here.  What world is this?”

The bartender merely shrugged.  “We get all kinds here.”

Anger flared in Nix’s chest, but he resisted the urge to pull his pistols out again.

“Look, I’m in no mood for games.  How do I get back?”

The bartender pony arched one of his brows slightly, then placed his glass behind the counter.  He set both hooves on the counter and met Nix’s eyes.  “Most just use the front door,” he deadpanned.  Oh, Nix was gonna shoot the everloving shit out of this sarcastic motherfucker.  His eyes flicked towards the door, and around to the few patrons who sat in shadowed booths.  They were all ponies.  ‘All kinds my ass,’ he thought, but the fact he was surrounded by equines gave him some modicum of hope.  Even a month ago, such a sentiment might have made him laugh.  Maybe.  He hadn’t done much laughing in the last century.  But now he had a lead.

He stalked to the large wooden door at the head of the bar, shot a glance behind him, and stepped through the murky black shadows beyond the door frame.  He felt a lurching sensation before his face slammed into a few slats of wood.  


*     *     *     *     *


Lyra sat on the bench and took a deep breath, the chilled Fall air washing through her like a cold shower.  Cheerilee had been so polite.  ‘Are you going to be participating in the Running of the Leaves this year?’ she had asked.  No, Lyra had told her.  ‘How’s Bon Bon doing?’  She’s doing fine, she had responded.  ‘The school pageant is coming up...’ the schoolteacher had slipped in towards the end.  Even now, Lyra thought her attempt at a confident laugh utterly transparent.  Cheerilee could see through her.  They all could.  She was a fraud.  She couldn’t even write a bucking song for some school pageant in some backwater town.  To think she one day dreamed of performing alongside Octavia in some grand hall...no, at the Grand Galloping Gala, no less!  The nerve.  Had she ever been so confident?

No, the music had left her.  The only thing her instruments seemed good at these days was collecting dust.  They were almost as good at it as her floor was at collecting the contents of ink wells.  Bon Bon knew her well enough not to ask about the sudden commotions that sometimes erupted from her bedroom.  Her patient silence when Lyra stumbled from her upstairs room, towards the door to their house so she could find her bench—her bench—was both gratifying and insulting to the mint-colored musician.  After that first time, Bon Bon hadn’t asked where she was wandering after her fits.  

The keening whistle of an arriving train jolted her from her thoughts, and her head whipped instinctively towards the train station just outside the park’s bounds.  She waited for a couple minutes, numbly regarding the bare numbers of ponies that trickled from around the wooden building towards Ponyville.  Not many found reason to come here, she knew from her year of penitent waiting.    That insufferably arrogant pegasus with dark brown eyes still hadn’t found the time to make it back, after all.  But he had promised, so she waited.  

‘You can just write one for me when I get back,’ he had said.  Yeah, right.  She hadn’t written any music in months.  She was so worthless.  Worthless, and surprised when a heavy thump on her bench shot her up a few inches.  She whipped her head around and her pupils narrowed to pinpricks.  ‘Him.  No, it.’  Her jaw worked soundlessly as panic bloomed in her chest.

“Goddammit, why the face?  Pocket dimension, different reality, sometimes even walking into a fucking room, it’s always right in the goddamn face,” the dark god next to her muttered in a slurred voice, his jaw mashed into cracked slats of wood.  He toppled over and hit the ground on his back, and simply lied there for a few seconds.  Her heart thudded sharply in her chest.  The human looked over at her, and though the light was gone from his eyes, she knew that it was just hiding behind those pale blue irises.  His features erupted with a giddy smile.  Oh, Celestia, no!

“Hey, Lyre-Thingy!  How ya’ been?”  he said cheerfully.  The being was mocking her before he ended her.  But they said he was gone!  She flicked her gaze to his black jacket, waiting for the shadowy tendrils to shoot out and nail her to her bench.  

“I-it has returned!” she whispered through her clenching throat.

“Well, now, that’s just offensive.  I can handle being called ape, or primate, or tall-dark-n-ugly.  But ‘it’?  Really?”  She...she had offended the dark god.  He was already reaching for something in his breast pocket, some weapon of torture to harry her end until her last breath.  Her life was over.  She clenched her eyes shut and ran from the bench blindly, wailing in despair.


*     *      *     *      *


‘Huh, that was fuckin’ weird,’ Nix thought.  He finally latched onto a smoke in his pocket as she bolted, plucking it out and lighting it with a small fireball.  He winced a little when she slammed face-first into a tree and bounced off.  Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy immediately regained her hooves, but wavered shakily as her head slowly turned towards him.  Her golden eyes were widened in terror, and she had a nasty gash above the left one.  He immediately took a step towards her to heal the wound, but she yelped and tore off through the underbrush towards the town proper.  

What the Hell was wrong with her?  She acted like he was some sorta monster, like she had...never...His eyes widened.  ‘I’m gonna make that fucking bartender’s death as painful as I can,’ he thought grimly as he felt for familiar lifeforces.  ‘Huh, or not.’  He felt what was clearly the correct Harp-Butt’s lifeforce moving with surprising speed away from him.  And another familiar soul towards him at much greater speed.  He turned around and immediately drew power to quicken his reactions.  A rainbow-maned, cyan pegasus was diving straight at him in slow motion.  

He grinned.  If his facial features suddenly flashing to a different expression in real-time threw her off, she didn’t show it.  Showing off a new trick, eh, Scratchy?  He doubted there was much maneuverability in that cavern that led to Tartarus, and she really did try so hard to impress others.  Her wings were moving downward, their feathered tips racing molasses dripping down a wall and losing.  Flapping to increase the speed of her dive?  In other realities, she’d be tucking her wings to decrease air drag, but things seemed to work a little differently here.  Nothing he wasn’t used to.  Things change.  What was important was what was happening right now.  

The blue pegasus’s eyes seemed hard, her brows scrunched down with concentration.  So, what’ll it be, then, a last minute barrel roll?  He didn’t think she had time to pull up at this distance, but she was a helluva lot faster than Swordspony, so maybe...

Hell, he’d just let the mare do what she wanted to.  Maybe it’d even surprise him.  He released his hold on his lifeforce and time rubberbanded back to its normal speed.  Rainbow Dash became a rainbow-trailing cyan meteor hurtling towards him again.  His arms twitched forward.  He had meant to cross them, so he could pose in an appropriately appraising manner for her trick.

She slammed into him like a freight train before his arms had even moved an inch.  They tumbled a couple dozen yards before coming to a stop, a pair of cyan hooves planted into his shoulders.

“Alright, Rainbow, what the fucking fuck?!”  Shit, he forgot to use her nickname.  Oh, well, only Dancie seemed to notice.  “I could have been seriously injured!”

“You’re back!”  she yelled.  

“Exactly, my back!  It’s killing me.  Is this how you treat honored aliens around here?”  He had barely felt a thing.  

“But, you disappeared!”

“That’s generally what happens when something teleports...”

“No, you don’t understand!”

“Look, as exciting as all this is, we can continue this conversation after you quit straddling my shattered legs.”

With a sudden blush, she looked down to see she was, in fact, straddling the human.  She immediately burst off of him.

“Oh, thank God.  Now that the heavy ass fucking flying horse isn’t crushing my legs, I may one day heal enough to walk again.”

“Heavy?!”

“Seriously, is Princess Celestia’s Diet for Diabetes a thing?”  She seemed unsure how to respond, flicking her gaze rapidly from his eyes to her flanks, and back again.

“Pounds for Ponies?  Fruitcake for Flanks?”  He narrowed his eyes at her.  “How much cake has she been feeding you?”

“What?!  What’re you-”

Nix channeled his lifeforce again, increasing his reaction speed.  Rainbow’s lips moved at a hundredth of their original speed, and he noted with no small amount of amusement that one of her eyebrows had begun its painfully lazy ascent towards the sky.  He waltzed calmly over to the mare and bent down a bit, grasping her by the shoulders.  From her perspective, he knew it probably just looked like he had disappeared.  He released his power and the blue mare’s eyes widened.  

He began shaking her shoulders.  “Was it consensual?!  Did Cakebeard force you to eat it?  SHOW US WHERE ON THE CAKE SHE TOUCHED YOU!”

A cyan hoof clocked him squarely in the jaw.  “Nix, what the hay is wrong with you?!”  she shouted at him.  He barely felt the blow, and his broken jaw almost immediately popped back into place.  Man, he felt good.  “You’ve been gone for a week!”

He suddenly felt less good.  His eyes widened.  That bar.  Different subspace than this reality, different temporal rules.  He had been banking on the same rules to make it back home while his best friend Malcolm was still alive, even though he’d been working at the task for a thousand years.  So, a coupla minutes in some bar, and a week goes by in Equine Hell.  It made sense, to him.  But to the ponies...

“Oh, shit, Dashie, where’s Ridge Dancer?!” he asked hurriedly.  He immediately began scanning through familiar lifeforces.  He almost wished he didn’t make a habit out of memorizing every one he came across.  He’d met quite a few ponies in his short time here.  A certain timberwolf pup’s lifeforce was a few kilometers away.  If he had a location, he could narrow the search.

The pegasus drew her head back slowly.  “What...what did you call me?”

“Dashie, Scratchy, Rainbow Dash, look, I just use that name shit to aggravate others and because thinking up nicknames staves off the boredom!  Where is Dancie?”

Rainbow Dash took a few steps back and dropped his gaze, pawing the ground uncertainly.  “When you didn’t come back, she went back to Canterlot.  She seemed pretty torn up, to be honest-”  

“Fuck.  Hey, Scratchy,”  Nix said, “if you could do me a favor and get your friends together at the library, I’d owe you one.”

“Uh, okay.  Shouldn’t take me long...except for Pinkie, if she isn’t with the Cakes.  Why?”

“I need to have a little chat with everyone, is all.”  He flashed her a small grin.  “Just something I need to take care of, first.”  He had zeroed in on the lime green mare’s lifeforce a considerable distance away.  It would take quite a bit of his power for the round trip, especially since he couldn’t use a wormhole, but by his estimation he figured he could make it.  Things were so much fuckin’ easier when he was damn-near omnipotent, but he’d make do.

“Oh, and also, my evil alternate personality is going to take over and I’m going to destroy all of Equestria, Hell, probably your entire reality unless the Elements of Harmony turn me to stone.”

Rainbow Dash’s mouth dropped.

“Fucking with you.  I just really need to talk with you all.  But first, I really do need to find Dancie.  For some damn reason, I get the sense she needs some comforting.”  That was an understatement.  Even he wasn’t dumb enough to miss how attached his orange-haired unicorn had become.  If he had truly been gone for a week...

The pegasus’s mouth slowly formed into a smirk.  “Well, hopefully us ‘Element Bearers’ won’t have to wait too long.  But still, it’s probably her first time.  Be gentle.”  She disappeared in a flash.

“Well, that was fuckin’ weird,” Nix muttered to himself.  “Wait...oh, goddammit.”  He set the thought aside as he focused inward.  Teleporting wasn’t so much about focusing on the area you were teleporting to, so much as it was focusing on the matter to be teleported.  He deeply wished he could manipulate gravity wells to make a simple wormhole, which was much more energy efficient,  but it always seemed to fuck with Tia’s sun.

So instead he opted for the much more rational conclusion:  calculating the route of the trillions upon trillions of the subatomic particles that made up his very existence about a hundred kilometers towards the northern mountains that sheltered Canterlot, the slightest mistake in his racing mind’s desperate attempt to fulfill his request being no less than abrupt assimilation with an inanimate object like a chair or a bed.  He was reasonably certain of his abilities to know he wasn’t teleporting into a living creature, at least.  He steeled himself as the quantum transmutation took effect.  His myriad atoms shifted through this world, leaving an empty area in the park where he once stood with a muffled pop as the air rushed in to fill the suddenly vacated space.


*     *      *      *      *


Ridge Dancer stared blankly at the marble wall across the hall.  She didn’t bother trying to find patterns in the deep green striations that scored the molded rock outside of Princess Celestia’s bedchamber.  For all she cared, the wall was as blank as the muted white of her coat under the effect of the guard armor glamification spell.  She didn’t bother shifting her hooves.  She didn’t care that she would grow stiff after so long holding still, she simply stared at the wall, motionless, a hollow stone statue.  An ornament outside of the chambers of a goddess, a functionless husk that served no purpose outside of some banal obsession with tradition.  Princess duty was a punishment.  She deserved worse.

He had abandoned her.  

The second Luna had teleported the human, she felt his soul wink out of existence.  Magic that affected souls, be they detecting spells or those that concealed one’s own lifeforce, were strictly forbidden after Nightmare Moon’s banishment, for obvious reasons.  She had a very large repertoire of said magic because of her father’s twisted ministrations.  One spell she always kept up was the ability to sense the souls of others.  And as Luna’s horn flashed, her eyes rolling sarcastically, Nix’s lifeforce had disappeared.  Luna had done something with her friend, her only friend.  She immediately attacked the Princess of the Night.

The princess had easily overpowered her, and after both parties calmed down, she had convinced Ridge Dancer that she had merely cast a simple teleportation spell.  Luna seemed confused, and oddly hurt, when she too used her magic to confirm the absence of the human on their world.  Either he had gone, or he was masking his soul from detection.  After they returned to Canterlot, Ridge Dancer was assigned Princess Duty again, and nopony had seen hide nor hair of Luna since.  Princess Celestia had been raising the moon for the last few days.  When the Sun Goddess had left her chambers this morning, she paused for a moment and rested a wing on Ridge Dancer’s shoulder.  Ridge—no, ‘Dancie’—had ignored her, continuing to stare emptily at the wall across from her.  She ignored the princess’s wing.  She didn’t deserve comfort.

Because she was useless.  Her friend abandoning her was all the proof she needed.  He had simply flitted away from this world at his first possible convenience, like he always said he would when he got his powers back, leaving her behind.  Alone.  Without a second thought.  She was glad the enchanted guard armor didn’t reveal the user’s emotions.  Her eyes refused to stop watering, and the enchantment was the only thing that allowed her to be an emotionless ornamental statue outside of Celestia’s room.  

She didn’t bother to take her eyes from the wall when the clopping of hooves down the hallway stopped.  The slate grey stallion in front of her cleared his throat and stared down his snout at her.

“Private Ridge Dancer, is this how you greet a superior officer?” he asked.

Her hoof raised numbly to her forehead in salute.  “My apologies, Guard-Captain Stone Wall,” she replied in monotone.

He frowned at her and looked away.  “Tch, no surprise from a charity case like you.  Why the princess thinks allowing ponies to play guards rather than shoring up her defenses with qualified candidates is beyond me.”

She should have wilted.  Should have been ashamed.  Instead, she just didn’t care.  She deserved it.  “I’m sorry, Guard-Captain,” she mumbled out unconvincingly, still staring through him towards an empty spot on the wall behind him.

“Hmph, as well you should be.  I swear, Shining Armor and Glancing Shock were entirely too soft on their-”

His lecture was cut off quite rudely by the door to Celestia’s bedchambers exploding behind her.  She felt herself flung towards the far wall, sailing through the air as her glazed eyes focused sharply.  She tried tucking herself into a roll such that she would impact the wall in front of her with her hooves, but an invisible force seemed to hold her steady as she hurtled forward.  A meter from the wall, she seemed to stop in midair and felt herself repelled away from it, unharmed.  Her back thudded dully against something and she felt two limbs wrap around her barrel, underneath her two front legs.  She vaguely noted the Guard-Captain ricocheting off the wall, his face grimacing from the force of the impact.  She felt a dim sense of satisfaction at this, before her apathy scurried in to replace it.  Whatever had caught her turned towards Stone Wall, and one of the limbs holding her released its grasp to motion towards the kneeling Guard-Captain.  Dancie’s eyes widened as she saw a peach colored hand at the end of a dark grey sleeve.

“Seriously, Dancie.  The fuck is with this asshole?”  

She squirmed, attempting to twist around.  The arms set her on the ground and she immediately whipped around, staring up into a familiar pair of pale blue eyes beneath a short-cropped mane of dishevelled, strawberry blonde hair.  This...this couldn’t be real.

“Private Ridge Dancer!” her Guard-Captain forced out, coughing and struggling to get to his hooves.  “Apprehend that monster immediately!”

She remained motionless, staring into those blue eyes.  

“Useless, bumbling charity cases,” the grey unicorn mumbled as his horn lit up.  Nix snickered to himself as he easily bent the telekinetic threads around him.  They impacted harmlessly in the wall and floor behind him, shooting up a few pieces of smoking debris left over from Celestia’s door.  The stallion huffed and his horn glowed brighter.  A perfect square section of stone was cut from the wall and sent hurtling towards the pair.  Stone Wall didn’t like it, but his special talent didn’t allow him to manipulate a smaller section of stone.  As much as he disliked Ridge Dancer, he felt slightly guilty about her being collateral damage in his capture of the monster human.  

Nix rolled his eyes and with a flick of his wrist the wall bifurcated and swept past him and the shell-shocked unicorn mare in front of him.  The two pieces slammed into the opposite side of the hallway, their inside edges glowing orange and bubbling with magmatic heat.  

Guard-Captain Stone Wall gaped for a moment before coming to his senses.  “Private Ridge Dancer!  I command you to apprehend the human immediately!”

Nix pressed a finger on the bottom side of her helmet and lazily flicked it off her head.  She shimmered for a second before her coat flashed to its familiar lime green, and a locke of burnt orange hair fell over her left eye.  The helmet clattered to the ground at the hooves of an increasingly flustered Guard-Captain.  The act seemed to summon Ridge Dancer from her shocked fugue.  She lept forward and wrapped all four hooves around the human, squeezing him tightly.

“Help!”  Nix shouted.  “I’m being apprehended by an exemplary member of the Royal Guard!”  Dancie drew her head back and he looked down at her with a grin and a wink.  She buried her face in his shoulder and hugged him more tightly.  

Nix wrapped his arms around her and glanced towards the unicorn stallion with a smirk.  “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to foalnap her.”  The light behind his eyes flared up briefly with a cold flame and his features deadened.  “And if you ever endanger her life with an attack like that again, I’ll rip out your fucking soul and devour it.”  

Nix broke his icy glare with the gray stallion and sighed.  “You know, Dancie, kidnapping females from horrible situations is a lot more gratifying when they have boobs.”  

She immediately jerked her head back and glared at him, a blush creeping through her cheeks.  “But-” she started, before, with a muffled whump! and a rush of air, the two blinked out of existence.

Tremoring slightly, Guard-Captain Stone Wall fell back on his haunches.  In a daze, he fumbled clumsily until the helmet fell from his head and clattered to the ground next to Ridge Dancer’s.  There, he simply sat, staring blankly and trembling.  

‘Those eyes,’ he thought.  The two parts of his severed stone wall creaked and crashed to the ground, making the debris that had once been the door to his Princess’s personal chambers shudder and shift.  He hugged himself and began rocking back and forth.  


*     *     *     *     *


“-I do have mammary glands!” Ridge Dancer shouted into a dusty silence.  Six pairs of eyes, each a different color, stared in shock from a few couches set around a coffee table in the center of a library.  Her eyes took on a blank stare as she desperately tried to avoid meeting the gaze of the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, her legs trembling as she slowly lost her four-limbed grip on the human.  She slid to the ground, her cheeks glowing as red as her hair.

“Ahem, well,” Rarity said after a few short, awkward seconds.

“No, no!  It’s not-” Ridge Dancer cut herself off, and glared up at the human.  “...You did that on purpose.”

Nix merely shrugged and shot her a grin.  “Maybe...”  She scowled at him.  He turned to the other six mares in the room and clapped his hands together.  “So, first order of business-”

“Where the hay have you been?” Twilight demanded angrily, hopping off her seat and stalking towards him.

“Well, funny story-”

“Funny?!” she growled.  “Princess Luna has holed herself up in her chambers for a week because you tricked her into thinking she botched her teleportation spell.”

“The Hell I did-”  The purple mare stopped in front of him, her mouth twisted in disappointment as her eyes glared daggers and venom and everything bad she could muster up at the human.  As his shoulders drooped, he loosed out an annoyed sigh.  He really needed a smoke, but he couldn’t afford to summon another pack.  Not now.  He was already exhausted from his two teleportations, enough that he could sleep for a day.  And now this shit.  He ignored the purple unicorn and turned to Dancie.  He crouched to meet her at eye level.

“Do you trust me?”

The mare seemed a bit taken aback by the question, but nodded sternly.  

“You have my word that I will not leave this existence without your express permission.  But right now, I need to take care of something.”

With a sniff, she nodded.  Most of the other mares flitted confused looks between the two.  Pinkie Pie and Rarity shared a small glance and regarded the human with curiosity.

Nix stood.  “Sorry, ladies, gonna have to postpone this meeting for now.”  He paused and glanced to the side.  “But it’s important that we have it.  I’ll be back.”  Snob and Ms. Pinkamena were giving him small grins, now.  He doubted they’d be grinning if they knew what this next teleport was gonna do to him with so little power.  He sighed, and winked out of their sight in an instant with a small crack and a rush of air.


*     *     *     *     *


Pain.  Pain was the only sensation that was allowed to him.  It rippled through him, through every limb, every organ, every cell, and screeched its scorching punishment from every atom in his being.  He was resistant to physical pain.  He had suffered attacks that would level entire solar systems with a grin.  But what he had just done had torn apart his very being down to the subatomic particles.  

The act of teleporting didn’t require too much energy.  The energy intensive part was making sure all his atoms got put back together correctly.  And, when he teleported to Princess Luna’s personal chambers, he didn’t have the energy to put himself back together again, not completely.

He would have screamed if the atoms in his throat had caught up with the rest of him.

He landed on something soft in a room that was almost pitch black.  He immediately collapsed onto a slightly darker, harder lump in the center of the softness, wheezing and trying to hold his atoms together as his regenerative powers worked overtime to put him back together.  The lump immediately jolted and Nix felt his mostly regenerated face mash into something solid, cold, and wet.

“Who dares?!” it cried, a pale blue light suddenly emanating from a dark blue horn, illuminating the room.

Nix stared into a pair of hollow, glum blue eyes a few inches from his own sapphire orbs, nose-to-snout with Princess Luna.  Her eyes were bloodshot and slightly puffy.

“Hi,” he croaked out with a wheeze, before his head collapsed into the soft fur of her neck and he blacked out.
	


> Chapter 24:  Awkwaaard
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Nix came to on something soft and warm, and slowly opened his eyes.  He was in a dark blue room, face down on a black cloth pallet filled with what felt like feathers.  He flopped over on his back and his breath caught.  The ceiling was a mirror of the night sky, billions of flickering stars winking happily at him.  His home had one leaking streak through its darkness, a single arm of the spiral galaxy in which it was situated.  This starry visage had several arcing through its purple depths.  Nearby galaxies were clearly visible in their myriad forms, breaking up the countless glowing pinpricks with spiral patterns and discs and shapes of all manner.  A particularly large nebula grew from the edge of the ceiling to the left, an immobile blossom of luminescent oranges and greens and blues, parent to sudden flashes of light within it that signalled the birth of new stars.

To take it all in at once...he felt like he was in the Void again, gawking dumbly at an infinite number of realities shortly before one drew him in.  It was beautiful, painfully beautiful.  He didn’t even care that it wasn’t remotely familiar.  An awed sigh escaped his lips.

“I agree,” a tender voice uttered to his right.  He snapped his head towards the sound.  “It’s my sister’s ‘work-in-progress’ wall,” the white alicorn sitting nearby stated simply.  “She finds it soothing to lie back on her bed and look into her ‘sky’ as she works.”  Nix couldn’t help but notice the obsidian black bars between himself and the Princess of the Sun.  A quick scan of the rest of his surroundings confirmed his suspicions; he was in a black cage in one corner of what was clearly Luna’s bedroom.  There was an oversized birdbath—glazed in black—in one corner of his ‘cell’.  He wheezed out a chuckle.

“Very fuckin’ funny, Tia.”  Nix immediately began relieving an itch between his legs.  

“Luna thought so as well,” Celestia replied evenly, sitting on a cushion near the cage before calmly levitating a teacup off of the deep blue table next to her. 

Nix hopped off the bed and stalked to the edge of the bars.  Sun Butt’s tea set was just out of reach.  He gave her a flat look, which she reciprocated.  “Sun,” he said dully, and one of the tea cups on the platter levitated to his hand even as Celestia let out a small hiss of frustration, her horn glowing as it corrected the course of her sun on the far side of the planet.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said, taking a measured sip from her cup.

“I really wish your coffee didn’t taste like liquid meth,” the human responded with a retaliatory sip.  So much of his available power had gone into his ill-sighted jump that it had reset his healing suppression against imbibed beverages.  He’d have to remember to calibrate the parameters of his regeneration before he tried getting drunk, again.  Rather than kill him, the princess coffee merely made him slightly more alert.

“Well, not all us Millennials have the benefit of sleeping most of the time.”  Another sip.

Nix’s teacup paused halfway to his mouth, and he bit his cheek before saying, “Right.  How long was I out?”

“Oh, about twenty hours or so,” Celestia replied, swirling her tea cup with her magic.

“Well, that’s a relief.  Considering I was worse off than that time I blew off my own arm, I’m getting a little better at this place.”  

Tia raised an eyebrow questioningly.  “Luna made no mention of you being injured.”

“Well, according to Sparky, Luna thought she had messed up a spell.  I doubt she would have taken it well had I shown up missing half my body, so I prioritized the transmutation of my visible exterior.  Having most of my liver in my left foot was...not a pleasant experience.”

“Hmm, I doubt not,” Celestia said, her nonchalance suggesting they could be discussing the weather instead of severe physical disfigurement.

“Not as bad as getting completely vaporized, though.  That shit hurts.  Hate it when that happens to me.”

Celestia arched her brows in mild surprise.  “You can survive even that?”

“I’ve had every atom in my body ripped apart into subatomic particles, and then those ripped apart until there was effectively no physical trace that I existed.  My lifeforce isn’t corporeal and can’t be attacked directly, so it merely forces the reconstitution of my body from surrounding matter, or by converting its vast energy into matter if there is none on hand.”  Nix paused.  “I can’t die.  Trust me, I’ve tried.”  He took another sip out of the cup, emptying it.  He frowned at it, and tossed it over his shoulder before falling back onto the feather pallet in his cage.  “Honestly, though, this is all a bit dark, and I’m in a pretty good mood.  Although I could use a nice nap, I suppose.”

“Again with the sleeping,” Celestia said with a tut, refilling her cup.  

“Not sure how it works for ponies, but with my kind sleep keeps us sane.  Normally my lifeforce heals psychological rifts, or else the constant battering of random old memories against my consciousness would make me schizophrenic.  But I don’t have the full use of my power, yet, and when you’ve lived ten times longer than you should have, the random memories start to pile on and you start to sleep more.  A lot more.  The first century, I didn’t need to sleep at all, really.  Now, even without getting injured and at full power, I probably sleep more than I did before I gained my powers.  Do you not have the same problem?”

“Hmm, no,” she replied, but there was a pregnant pause.  “Not really, anyway.  I still recall everything with almost perfect clarity.  But I am more tired than I used to be.”  Celestia thought for a few moments before shaking her head, banishing her revery.  “Between having my latest Guard-Captain placed in a mental institution-”

“Good, fuck him,” Nix interrupted.  Celestia scowled at him.  “What?  You should have heard some of the shit he was telling Dancie.  Fucker would do well to choke on some humble pie for a bit-”

“He was terrified, Nix.  His guards found him in a pool of his own urine.”  The human started snickering.  The princess’s eyes narrowed.  “It isn’t funny.  You have again put me in a difficult position.  As both Glancing Shock and Night-Captain Moon Glade are off in Manehattan attempting to locate...you, I’ve had to request the previous Captain, Shining Armor, back to Canterlot to run the guard in their absence.  Which of course meant you would reappear in my sister’s bedchambers an hour before his train arrived, making my request ultimately pointless.  I find myself yet again tending to the dangerous mischief of a certain biped rather than the task of governing my own nation.”  She spoke in a measured tone, but something in the look she was giving Nix made him cautious.  So of course, he decided to open his mouth anyway.  

“You mean you and your sister’s nation?”  He failed to conceal his grin when her eyes widened, breaking her carefully held mask of neutrality.  In that he didn’t try to conceal his amusement at all.  

“Luna, she…” Celestia paused, examining a restless forehoof as it languidly pawed at the dark blue floor of Princess Luna’s bedchamber.  “She is...not well-suited to the task of managing the nobility in a manner that benefits all ponies.”

“But, Luna and Celestia, Diarchs of Equestria?”  the human prodded.

“A thousand years ago, she performed certain functions that were necessary at the time, but have since fallen out of favor…”

“And a thousand years from now, you might get to the point,” Nix stated bluntly.

Celestia drew herself up and spread her wings, casting an imposing pale figure that contrasted with the blues and blacks of her surroundings, and stared down at the human.  “War.  Subterfuge.  Interrogation.”

“So the kindly equine princess that liked to nurse small animals back to health in her younger years became the Goddess of War, Death, and Information.”  Nix rolled his eyes.  Celestia continued looming over him, staring coldly through the black metal bars of his cage.  After a few moments, she sighed and sat, tucking her wings a bit too quickly at her sides, and broke the human’s gaze.

“We’ve both had to make certain sacrifices over the years.  She has her place in this new land she returned to, Nix.  Even if she hasn’t quite found it yet.  But after a thousand years, and as tired as I am, sometimes even I forget that it’s not just me looking out for my little ponies.”  She paused and her features hardened.  “Though I suppose I’m probably more exhausted from dealing with all the damn bureaucrats than I am from living alone for so long.”

Nix stared at her, not even attempting to conceal his shock.  “That is no way for a princess to talk, m’lady!  The serfs would be scandalized to hear their sun goddess utilize such barbarous language!”

The alicorn snorted and levitated her crown off her head and through the black bars.  It settled gently on Nix’s brow.  “Being a princess gets old after a while.  You can be princess for a while.”  

Nix sniffled and regarded Celestia with stark sobriety.  “I always wanted to be a princess,” he said, voice wavering.  “I feel,” he said hoarsely, glancing upwards at the tiara that graced his forehead, “I feel so pretty, now.”  

The two stared at each other for a few seconds before they both broke down, their giggles quickly turning into wheezing peals of exhausted laughter.  

“You,” Nix breathed out in between his guffawing fits, “you...made me giggle.  Bitch!”

“You,” Celestia managed between her amused chortles, “you...pretty?”  Her white chest heaved, trying to catch her breath in between laughs.  “Oh, goodness,” she chuckled, “my stomach is going to be so sore tomorrow.”  Her mirth was was interrupted when she realized the human had gone silent and was staring at her with a hurt look on his face.

He looked to the side, drawing his legs up and hugging his knees as he pointedly avoided her eyes.  “I’m pretty,” he muttered sullenly.  

She suddenly felt a heavy weight in her chest, and her voice took on a grave, sympathetic tone as she said, “I...yes, of course you are, Nix.  I didn’t mean-”

Nix collapsed to the floor, laughing twice as hard.  Celestia’s eyes narrowed.  “Oh, the hairless ape is just so funny.”  

“You...haha...I can’t...ha...believe you just called...me ugly!”  He clutched desperately at his heaving sides.  “You...you fucking bitch!”

Eventually their laughter waned to restrained chuckles, and then only when they met each other’s eyes.  Nix finally sat up and reached inside his duster, producing a white and red box.  He scowled when he opened it.  “Aww, this sucks.”  His eyes flitted towards Celestia’s.  She arched an eyebrow.  “Sorry, Tia.  Sun,” he warned.  She rolled her eyes and her horn lit up, holding the sun steady in its trajectory.  A few seconds later, an area next to the human seemed to waver before a long box popped into the air and clattered to the ground.  He gave her a sheepish smile.  “Okay, all good.”

“Yes, ‘good’,” the princess responded drily.  

“Look, I’ll talk to Sparky about it.  For some reason, it only happens when I try to play with gravity-”

“Or just break existence in general,” Celestia interrupted coolly.  Nix grimaced.

“Look, I didn’t mean-”

Celestia’s soft giggles interrupted him.  He hoped his flat stare through the obsidian bars of his bird cage were punishment enough when she managed to stifle her snickers.  He plucked a pack of smokes from the carton he had summoned, opened it, and dragged out a cigarette.  He summoned a small fireball to light his smoke, the tiara on his head glinting in the blue light of its flames.

“It’s fine, Nix,” she told him.  “The closest it came to actual disaster was in Cloudsdale.  None of the pegasi were asleep, yet.  After a certain incident a few years ago, pegasi young that can’t fly adequately are housed on the ground until they can.  As miraculous as it sounds, nopony was injured during your...fit.”

The tip of Nix’s smoke flared brightly for a moment.  He drew the cigarette away from his face and blew a cloud of smoke to the side, towards the balcony that opened up to the night proper.  “But?” he asked questioningly.  

“Both the griffons and the dragons are asking questions,” she said.  “The morning after your rescue of Ridge Dancer, I spent the day assuaging the fears of the Griffon Republic.”

“Griffons?  As in the flying sort?”  

“Yes.  And no, there were, somehow, no casualties among their citizens.”  Celestia noted the human’s muted sigh of relief.  “Nor among the dragons.  However, both nations have...requested further deliberations to assess the nature of the danger.  To assess your nature.”

“Well, that should be easy enough for ‘em,” Nix said, puffing on his smoke and staring into the starry ceiling.  “‘This alien is a total jerk, but we can’t do shit about it, so we’ll defer to the freakishly powerful pony goddess that controls our sun for us.’”

“How glad I am that I am deemed the de-facto steward over yet another catastrophe.”  Celestia smiled thinly.  “I must be doing something right for them to all have such faith.”

Nix glanced at her as she took another measured sip of her coffee, her gaze blank as the inky blackness of her drink absorbed her full, quiet attention.  Her cup tinkled softly as it settled back on its platter, but she never broke from her silent ruminations as she stared into its depths.

The human cleared his throat, distracting Celestia from her death-coffee and drawing her gaze.  He tapped the tiara on his head impatiently.  “I do believe that I am now the princess, and you are just a regular pony I’ve allowed to attend to me.  In my gilded cage.”

Celestia’s wan smile dropped, replaced with a neutral, guarded expression.  “Oh?” she asked.

“Indeed,” Nix continued, taking a final drag off his cigarette before he flicked the butt through the bars.  It erupted in flame and evaporated in a puff of smoke before hitting the ground, and he sat up to face the alicorn as he began to stroke his chin thoughtfully.  “Perhaps it is best if this ‘Griffon Republic’ doesn’t think of the dangerous alien as a jerk, but rather a monster on a short leash?”

Celestia snorted.  “Not to undermine my...princess’s...judgment, but I hardly think of this ‘alien’ as a monster.”

“Oh?” Nix lilted sarcastically.

“More of a pet—a hatchling chick, maybe—that needs to be housebroken.  Or reality-broken, as it were.”  She smiled wryly.

The door to the room opened, spilling a garish orange light into the soothing midnight blues of Luna’s chambers from the doorway, a dark figure silhouetted in its intruding luminescence.  “Whereas we believe training pets to avoid reality-breaking the best course of action.”  The door clicked behind the midnight blue alicorn as she walked calmly forward, banishing the harsh orange glare and returning the room to its soft, twilight glow.  “Do you not agree, Sister?”  Luna asked as she drew up beside the white alicorn, levitating a cup of coffee from the platter and taking a sip.  She immediately grimaced, swallowing with a reluctant gulp.  “How dost thou even imbibe such a bitter brew, Tia?”

“Centuries of practice, Lulu.”

“And a repressed gag reflex,” Nix suggested helpfully.

“That, too,” Celestia affirmed blandly.

“From sucking so much-”  the human continued before a dark blue pillow enveloped in a bright yellow glow slammed into his face, knocking him back onto the soft black pallet in the corner of his cage.  He growled as he dug the pillow off his face, coughing out a few dark blue feathers insodoing, before glaring at the openly amused white alicorn.  “You.  Me.  A carrot garden.”

Celestia’s smile widened.  “Well, I suppose a picnic date every century or so isn’t outside of my means.”  The beginnings of a smirk began forming on Luna’s lips.

“Fuck that.  You’re going down, Sun Butt.”

Celestia sauntered towards the the cage, her eyes suddenly drooping as her head leaned through the obsidian bars.  “Well, I imagine I would.  As a Diarch of Equestria, I’d be remiss if I didn’t make use of all of my...talents.”  Luna couldn’t hold back her snickering at Nix’s horrified look.

“From his memories,” Luna said between giggles, “we think it safe to conclude that the ape’s next words will be, ‘Fuck that.  You’re going down so hard.’”

“Hmm,” Celestia growled throatily, her eyes narrowing as she leered at the human.  “I certainly will be.”

A look of revulsion flashed across Nix’s features before his expression deadened.  “Oh, ha, ha.  Congratulations, you’ve weirded out the alien.”  He plucked the tiara off his head and tossed it at Celestia.  She caught it in a glow of yellow magic and settled it on her brow, adjusting it until it was comfortable.  “You can be princess again.  A lot less awkward that way.”

The white alicorn drew herself up in a regal stature, regarding the human coolly.  “Very well, Nix.  I shall be the Princess again.”  With a small smirk, she winked at him.  “Your princess.”

Nix merely stared at her dully, trying to piece his broken brain together.  After a few seconds, Luna burst into a fit of giggles, followed shortly by the melodious laughter of Celestia as she broke his gaze and pressed a hoof to her chest.  Luna’s laughter was hitching with occasional snorts when she said, “We think the ape took you a bit too seriously, sister.”

“Indeed, Lulu.  Perhaps an apology is in order?”

“Nay, sister.”  Luna grinned at the human, whose frown had slowly deepened as he reached for another cigarette.  “‘Tis justice that Nix be as broken as the reality he almost destroyed, we believe.”

“Fuck the both of you,” Nix said in monotone, levitating a small fireball to light his smoke.  “Jesus Fuck, I hate gods,” he muttered.  “Always so bored off their damn asses they can do nothing but toy with others.”

“Oh, please, Nix,” Celestia said, a bit of glib warmth lingering in her voice from her laughter.  “Surely you wouldn’t disabuse a couple of old mares a bit of innocent fun every once in a while.  Not all gods are evil, you know.”

“Nah, fuck gods.”  The lit tip of his cigarette danced as he spoke, sitting on the edge of the black pallet with his forearms resting on his knees.  He plucked the smoke from his mouth.  “Really, really can’t stand ‘em.”

“And what of Goddesses?” Luna asked, tilting her head.

“Not much difference between the two, if you ask me,” Nix replied.  “Although I do tend to tolerate goddesses that are hot more than the others.”

“Oh?”  The lunar princess focused on the human with an intensity he found discomforting.  “And are we ‘hot’?”

Nix burst out laughing, spilling his cigarette onto the black marble floor and erupting into a fit of coughing, expelling smoke from his lungs violently.  He hammered his chest with his fist before meeting Lu’s questioning gaze.  “Fuck, no, Horseface.”

“Is that so?” she replied huskily, her eyes half-lidded.  She sashayed closer to the bars slowly, her hips swaying hypnotically as she locked her eyes with the human’s.  “My sister and I are paragons of pony beauty, after all.”  She paused right before the bars to his cage.  “Can you really say you disagree?”  she breathed out in a low whisper.

Nix collapsed onto the floor, cackling wildly.  “You...You just…”  his words were lost in his mad laughter for a time, before he finally regained control.  “Unless those- snkkkt! -unless those hips of yours can swing wide enough to smash that snout on your face, I-”  The human lost himself to a fit of giggles again.   

Luna pouted, her gaze suddenly focused on a few motes of dust at her feet.  Nix fought off the urge to tell her she looked fucking adorable like that.  This was war, after all.  

“Well, as...fun as this has all been, I do believe it is time for some sleep,”  Celestia said, her gaze flicking between the grinning human and her withdrawn sister.  

“You can sleep after drinking all that crap?” Nix asked, quickly muttering, “Fuckin’ weird ponies.”

“I can, Nix,” Celestia replied, walking towards the door.  She paused at the threshold and turned her head back, regarding him calmly.  “Staying awake is the hard part.”  She smiled sweetly at him.  “The next time you misbehave, I’ll have no choice but to remove Ridge Dancer from the Royal Guard.  Good night, you two,” she said as she closed the door behind her, the room again embracing its gentle blue lunar light.  An awkward silence fell between the remaining two.  Luna seemed to be avoiding the human’s glowing blue eyes.

“Your sister’s a bitch,”  Nix finally offered.  Silence reigned still, though the human thought he glimpsed a flash of anger in the night princess’s blue eyes.  “I should really be getting back...you know, before I do something that makes your sister ruin the life of an innocent pony.”  Luna flinched slightly, but quickly erected her stoic composure.  She found an interesting constellation on the wall to study.  Nix rubbed his jaw, pretending he didn’t see her pensive frown in the vanity mirror across from his cage.  “Can I ask you a favor?”

Luna’s head whipped around and her mouth formed a grin a little too quickly.  “Of course, Nix.  We would help thee with any task thou required of us!”

“Uh...weird speech.”

Luna’s head drooped.  “Sorry…”

“Nah, it’s fine, Moon Butt.  Just wanted to see if you could send a letter to the girls asking them to gather in the library tomorrow morning.  Got something I need to talk to them about.”

“‘Tis my sister that possesses the link with the dragon Spike, though we shall pose thy query when she first wakes, Nix.”  She smiled brightly at him through the black bars.  

“Uh, one other thing?”

“Of course!” she nearly shouted, nodding.  She opened the gate to his ‘cage’ and trotted towards him.

“Teleport me back?” he asked.  She nearly tripped over herself as she halted in place.

“I-  Certainly, Nix,” she replied calmly.  She pawed at the ground for a second.  “But first, with thy permission, we would ask of thee a small favor.  We know of a spell that might make thy time here less unfavorable, if thee simply allows us to sate our curiosity.”  Her voice petered out with every word, and ended in a bare murmur. 

“Tit for tat, I get it.  I’m used to dealing with gods, remember?” Nix said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“‘Tis not as you say-” Luna started.

“Just get it over with, Lu,” the human said, aggravation tinting his voice.  “Hopefully your curiosity doesn’t destroy a chunk of your own castle this time,” he grumbled out in a rush.  

The alicorn ignored his comment and approached, pressing the tip of her horn to his forehead.  She readjusted her position after he flinched, and her horn began to glow.  He felt waves of ice and fire tearing through his body, and was suddently cognizant of every cell as they all squirmed under the intrusion of the magical force that flowed through him.  It lasted less then a second, then subsided.

“Lu, what the fuck was-”  He was interrupted by a blue hoof shushing him.  Shooting the human a chiding glare, Luna closed her eyes to focus as a blue glow enveloped her horn.  The aura of her magic extended from her horn and surrounded her entire body, its cornflower blue brightening with each passing second until Nix could only perceive a vaguely pony-shaped vessel of brilliant, blinding white light before him.  A violent flash of light made the human bring his hand up to shield his eyes as a shrill, keening tone assaulted his ears before immediately cutting off.  Nix blinked, trying to clear the spots from his eyes.  He dropped his arm.

“Lu, what the-” A pale-skinned index finger pressed into his lips.  His eyes flitted across the unblemished, peach flesh of a woman, wrapped in translucent blue sheets of silken cloth, before he met a pair of bright, ocean-blue irises.

“Well, what do you think?” Luna’s voice asked cautiously.  Nix’s eyes focused on something a thousand light-years away, and the transformed Lunar Princess’s query went unanswered for seconds, for moments, for eternity.  Nix was vaguely aware of her blonde eyebrows furrowing in concern, but something tugged at him from deep in his mind, and the world around him seemed to darken, leaving only the woman’s cerulean eyes as twinkling, glistening stars amidst the cascading blackness of the encroaching night.

“Well?” she asked again, her voice wavering almost imperceptibly.

The darkness drowned out the light of her eyes as Nix’s consciousness faded, succumbing to the morose onslaught of his rudely insistent past.


*     *     *     *     *


“What the Hell were you thinking?!”

Oh, great, she was yelling at him again.  Nix sighed and rolled his eyes, taking in the small, darkened clearing in the pine forest before settling on the nagging bitch in front of him.  The goddess frowned up at him, jabbing an accusatory finger into the Kevlar barding of his chest.  Her normally wavy, golden hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and her gorgeous blue eyes bore into him with unrepentant fury.  Nix almost found it cute that a girl of her diminutive height was trying to intimidate him.  Almost.  She may have been a head shorter than he was, but in martial combat training she always kicked the everloving shit out of him.  Painfully.  

Short or not, in her intricately detailed silver breastplate and with her massive obsidian spear on her back, she somehow managed to still be imposing.  He didn’t doubt she was a bonafide Goddess of War.  Well, one of them, if what the United American States’ government had told him was true.  It probably wasn’t, knowing them.  They were a bunch of corrupt, lying fuckers.  Oh, and he was their slave now.  Wake up from a 50-year coma and all of the sudden you get drafted into whatever new war they decided was necessary to secure ‘freedom’, which usually entailed him and his team hunting the plethora of monsters that appeared after the Great Cataclysm struck the Earth.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?!” she shouted.

“Uh, don’t you mean ‘what in Tartarus’?  Greek pantheon and all,” he offered in a droll tone.  The first time he saw her, he could do nothing but stumble over his own words and try to avoid looking at her.  Her nonpareil beauty, her red, pouting lips, the locks of brilliant blonde hair that fell over the shimmering, playful ocean-colored eyes.  He was in love.  That was, at least, until she opened her damn mouth and dispelled the illusion.  She was an annoying nag, and the fact that she was his squad leader was a constant motivator to put the barrel of his new, experimental black pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger.  That would be weird.  Shooting himself with his own soul.  Or whatever it was that gave him his powers.  He had ignored a lot of what the UAS scientists had tried to tell him about his powers.  He just killed monsters with his sword and his new pistol with fire and pretty explosions.  

Even with his two weapons, Midget Goddess could still beat the crap out of him.  Like she probably would end up doing—again—considering he had just usurped her authority and violated direct orders from command.

“This isn’t a fucking game, you mouth-frothing ingrate!”  Man, were her teeth a brilliant white, and perfect.  He could tell because she was snarling at him.  “You just endangered the lives of the entire fucking squad!”  Nix looked to the only other member of the three-man squad, and smirked.  Alexander’s eyes widened and he motioned a flat hand across his throat, mouthing, “No,” silently.  Nix’s smile widened as he decided to ignore him.

“So, by going in alone and wiping out a nest of vampyrs single-handedly, I endangered the lives of an immortal human hero and an immortal goddess.”  Nix paused, fingering his chin thoughtfully.  “Oh, and me, I guess.  No, wait-”  He pulled the sleek black pistol from its holster on his hip, pointed it at his head, and fired.  As his ruined skull reconstructed itself in a flash of white fire before he could even crumple to the ground, he noted with a victorious sense of satisfaction that the Greek goddess was staring at him in shock.  Wait...he probably should have blown his head off a bit further away from her to prove his point.

“Err, you have a bit of, well, me on your forehead.  Here, lemme just-”  He tried to wipe the bits of brain off her forehead, but she just swatted his hand away.

“Are you insane?!”  Oh, man, she was pissed.  He was definitely getting his ass kicked for this.

“Uh, yes?”  His remaining entrails glowed a sickly orange on her otherwise unblemished face before dissolving into ash, the stirring breeze floating the last of, well, him off the goddess’s face.  The dark grey motes disappeared amidst the green needles of the pine trees that surrounded them.

“This was just a surveillance mission!”

“You know, for a Goddess of Wisdom, you sure do yell a whole fuckin’-”  He was interrupted by her flat-handed blow against his sternum.  The shockwave of the impact sent out a burst of wind and shot up a cloud of blackened soil, sending him flying.  Nix felt himself crash through several trees before his back slammed into a large grey boulder.  It cracked and collapsed around him from the force of his impact.  He grudgingly got to his feet and swiped at the dust of his tactical armor, checking the prototype firearm in his hand for any damage.  Finding none, he-

‘That hurt, my king.’  Christ, of all times, now his damn sword started talking to him again.

‘Shut up, Cal, swords don’t have nerve endings, and you’re damn near indestructible,’ Nix thought at it, hoping the retarded King Sword would retreat back to its dumb silence soon.

‘Oh, okay.  Can I swallow her spear?’

Nix sighed. ‘No, Cal, you cannot swallow Longinus.’  The goddess and his other squadmate, Alex, were stalking toward him as he swiped at the last of the dust on his black tactical gear.

’Aww.  Hey, wait, that’s not my name.  Are you sure I can’t…?’

‘No, Excalibur, you cannot consume Athena’s fucking spear.  She’s already gonna kill me.  Well, try to, anyway.’

‘I’m sorry, King Sean.’

‘I’m not a king, Cal.  And don’t call me Sean.’

‘Okaaay,’ the sword replied in his head with a defeated voice.  ‘I’ll just be here in my sheathe, thinking up a name for your new soul-shooty hand cannon thingy.’

‘Yeah, you do that.  I’ll be here getting my ass kicked by a pissed off Greek pigmy goddess thingy.’  

Said goddess stepped up to the man and glowered.  Glowered harder than she normally did, anyway.  God, those sky blue eyes of hers.  If he didn’t already hate her, those eyes…

“You know, you look pretty damn adorable when you’re pis-”

The last thing he saw was her fist sailing towards his face.


*     *     *     *     *


“Well, well.  It appears my regal beauty has stricken the great human mute.”

A voice.  Her voice.  The hallucination cleared, and his eyes refocused on the dark blue room.  She was here, right before him.  The blonde hair.  The blue eyes.  Her full lips.  But she wasn’t.  He looked down at the short goddess before him.  She wasn’t.  He began to tremble.

“Take it off,” Nix whispered softly.

The woman...the thing in front of him pouted.  “My, my, so forward.”  A faint smirk played across her lips as she looked up into his eyes.  “Though I suppose I should expect nothing better from my little huma-”

“Take.  Off.  Her.  Face,” Nix hissed, his fists clenching tightly as his whole body shuddered, barely restraining himself from reaching towards his pistols and ending this thing before him.  He tore his gaze away from her, scowling grimly at the floor.  The...woman cocked her head in confusion, before turning towards the mirror above her chest of drawers along one wall.  Her eyes widened.

“Oh, by Fate, no, I didn’t mean-!  Nix, ‘twas not my intent to-”

“You have no right, Luna.”  The human’s voice was barely loud enough to escape his lips.  He still refused to look at her as his arms stuck stiffly at his sides.  “Please.  Now.”

“Y-yes, of course.”  With a flash of light, the false-goddess disappeared and a familiar blue alicorn stood in her place.  She immediately rushed forward and placed a hoof on Nix’s shoulder.  “Nix, we...I had no idea that would occur.  ‘Twas a simple transmogrification spell and-”  He swatted her hoof off his shoulder and finally brought his gaze back to her eyes, his irises glowing in a flickering blue.  

“It’s fine.  Just please teleport me back, now.  I’ve got a lot I need to do.”

“But thou must understand-”

“It’s fine!” he said, a bit more loudly than he intended.  He strangled his conflicting emotions into a semblance of measured control and said more evenly, “I’m sure you didn’t intend to appear before me as...her.  But I really should get back.  Please.”

Luna nodded slightly, her eyes regarding him sadly.  Piteously.  Christ, he hated that fucking look.  He wished she would just fucking teleport him alrea-

With a shuddering blink, the room disappeared from around him and he was sent hurtling through a tunnel of darkness.  His entire body screamed in icy fire for a brief second before the world reappeared around him.  He sighed.  This wasn’t Ponyville.  She had teleported him to a fucking forest.  He really hated gods.  And goddesses.  

Mostly.


*     *     *     *     *


Luna lay on her back, staring into the swirling mists of light and darkness that battled across her royal chamber's ceiling.  A great many of the glowing pinpricks of her future night’s possible sky stared back, twinkling gaily, begging for their goddess’s wisdom and guidance.  She changed nothing.  Given time enough, her world would have enough pony souls to craft her final masterpiece.  As if she could forget that her greatest contribution to the ponies still living was a memoriam of the dead.  It was early enough that the lights of Canterlot below the castle still twinkled warmly as the mirth of the living trickled out from pubs and houses—a fitting juxtaposition against the icy gems that crowned her pregnant moon in the night sky.

“I bucked up,” she said to the empty room.  “Royally.”  She was met with silence.  She sighed and looked towards a particular corner of the room.  “Thy presence has not escaped my attention, sister.”  

The corner shimmered and faded, revealing a white alicorn.  Her pink eyes bore a sad look for her sister as she trotted towards the dark bed in the center of the room.  Without hesitation, Celestia climbed onto the bed and dropped to her stomach next to her sister.  She remained silent as Luna broke her gaze and turned her attention back to the celestial bodies adorning her ceiling.

“Is that what I am, sister?  A reflection...a shadow of the good in life, turned around and thrown back at ponies as a reminder of what they have lost?”

“Of course not, Lulu,” Celestia said softly.  “You are so much more than that.”

Luna snorted cynically.  “You know, Tia...After all these years, the jealousy still cuts, still digs at me.”  She turned to to meet her big sister’s calm eyes.  “No matter what good I do, it never seems good enough for our little ponies.  They lose the ones they love, I give them the stars.  But the light of the taverns down below glow with more warmth and happiness than the luminescence of those departed in my sky.  My moon, my light in the darkness, is but a reflection of your brilliant sun.”  Luna turned her head away from her sister.  “I tried to give him something familiar.  A form that would soothe his loneliness, another human so he wouldn’t find it so easy to shut himself off, but instead my form was-”

“Shhh, Lulu,” Celestia whispered.  “You couldn’t know the effects of the transmogrification spell.  Nix is an entirely new species.  Remember that time I turned my form into that of a minotaur?”

“But-”

Celestia wrapped an ivory wing around her midnight blue sister and drew her close.  “No ‘buts’, little sister.”

Luna turned her head away from her big sister’s comforting nuzzle and pouted.  “We are not little.  We are the Princess of the Night, Divine Diarch of Equestria.”  

Celestia laughed warmly and drew her sister closer with her wing, nuzzling her in the neck.  “Of course you are, Lulu.  As I am the glorious Princess Celestia, Steward of the Sun and the Elements of Harmony, Daytime Diarch of Equestria, where the buck stops here when cataclysm strikes.”  She paused.  “And yet the only thing I can think about is dancing around a simple bonfire with a handful of smiling ponies.  With not a care in the world.  Sister, you might think yourself a mere reflection of my grandeur, but...my authority is a mere chunk of metal I wear on my head, little better than the bars of a cage.  You...are not the only one who is jealous.”

Luna remained silent for a time, but a small smile creeped its way across her lips.  “Not a care in the world.  So no bureaucrats, then?”

“Goddess, no,” Celestia replied with a huff.  She drew her head back and gave her little sister a flat look.  “Although I believe I have you to thank for my Treasury Secretary.”

“And thy dietician.”  Luna smirked.

“Don’t remind me, Lulu,”  the white alicorn said flatly.

“‘Twas merely a result of Nightmare Moon’s twisted influence, no doubt,” the blue mare replied, smiling innocently.  

“Yes, of course…”  Celestia hoofed her little sister in the shoulder.  

Luna’s smile widened and she leaned into her sister’s side.  She closed her eyes and rested against the Sun Goddess’s shoulder.  “Can you just stay here for now?  For the night?  Like the old days?” she murmured.  

Celestia sighed.  “And what of Night Court?”  

“Mrrrrm, doesn’t matter.  The two Diarchs of Equestria can take a day off every now and then.”

“Luna…”

“And I miss my big sister.  Not the Princess of the Sun.  My sister.”  

Celestia sighed and rested her head on her sister’s midnight blue shoulder. “Fine.”  She closed her eyes.  She was so tired these days.  But Princess Luna-  But her little sister snuggled close, and the bed was so soft.

Luna mumbled softly, “We should tell him the truth.  About his sisters, I mean.”

“We will,” Celestia whispered.  “We will.  As soon as we give him someplace to call home.”

“Mmmm,” the dark blue alicorn replied as she readjusted herself against her sister, her breaths becoming even as she dozed off.  Celestia wrapped one hoof around her sister’s chest and quickly followed suit, winking off into dreams of dancing, smiles, and sunshine.
	
> Chapter 25:  Depth (Perception) Charge
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	In the dim moonlight filtering through the forest’s canopy, Nix was a formless shadow crouched atop a featureless boulder.  The underbrush below him was a tangled mess of brown vines and brambles, interspersed with random patches of a bright blue flower that swayed in the cool night breeze.  The plants danced in tune with the eddying currents of a thick mist that bloomed and receded in random spurts across the forest floor, the pulsing heartbeat of the untamed wood that strangled the paltry rays of light the boughs above allowed past.  The edges of his trenchcoat hugged the top of the boulder, wavering only slightly in the soft breath of the wind.  

Of course she sent him back to the Everfree Forest.  He made a mental note to never trust alicorn teleportation again. A formality, mostly.  He just appended the internal conclusion to his distrust of deities in general.  He closed his eyes and sent an invisible pulse of his lifeforce outward.  A translucent wave emanated from him and rippled in every direction, warping the landscape it traversed almost imperceptibly before the illusion settled.  Small, flickering lights lit up in his mind, a thousand candles all around him with more sparking to life as the wave travelled further.  

There.  A few kilometers to the south, the wave washed over a few shimmering orbs that he felt more than saw.  Familiar souls.  That’d be Ponyville.  Nine lifeforces in particular were closely concentrated in one location, probably the same building.  He had just arrived in the forest—he absentmindedly cursed Lu’s teleportation skill again, for good measure—so it was unlikely the letter had been sent to Twilight Sparkle’s drake assistant so soon.  

Nix sighed and rubbed his forehead.  He hoped they hadn’t all been waiting for him for the twenty some-odd hours he had been gone.  Kind of.  It would be a bit funny if they had.  Dancie and Scratchy would probably be tearing their manes out in boredom.  Sparky, Ms. Pinkamena, and the other two would...well, he actually didn’t know the others well enough to predict their responses to his absence.  So he just pretended that Sparky would have a nervous breakdown, the Pink One would throw confetti everywhere and bake cupcakes, that one pony with the cowboy hat would blather on in some Southern drawl about farms and honest work or some shit, and the drama queen would faint melodramatically at evenly spaced intervals over the harrowing trial of being stuck without a pedicure for so long.  Or was it a manicure?  Hooficure?  Nix winced.  Such a stupid naming system in this reality.  Whatever.  

He hopped off the rock, sending up tendrils of mist as his boots made a muted thud on the ground.  A few errant petals of the blue flowers around him fluttered through the air.  He stood and began walking towards the small pony town in the distance, grimacing as he waded through several patches of the blue plants to the edge of the clearing. 

There was something about this place, this reality, that stood out from every other reality he had been in.  Namely, the fact that something from his world made it to this world intact.  Even though said snake-bitch was most assuredly fuckin’ dead before she made the trip—he had seen Masamune behead her himself, and with his old rival’s own blade, no less.  Or he thought he had.  He frowned as the exact memory slipped away from him.  He decided to focus on the present instead.  If Snake-Bitch could get here, then he could get back...there.  With Lucy and...the others?  Fuck the others.  ‘There’ meant ‘his sisters and...’.  His frown deepened as he stalked through the forest.  His sisters and who?  Was there someone else?  He shook his head as though he could slough off his thoughts like water, and cut through a thick draping of barbed vines with a fiery claw, pressing on.  

He was almost glad he didn’t remember every detail of his thousand years of searching.  Fate forbid he have access to all his experience and become an aloof prick like most of the gods he met.  Still, though, thousands of realities, and he happened across the one that seemed to have some link to his past?  Lucky.  There were an infinite number of lucky realities like this one, probably.  The fact that he found one in an infinite sea of realities, though...yeah, he decided “lucky” was a woeful understatement.  “Impossible” fit better, unless something was pulling his strings from behind the scenes.  If it was, he’d just have to find it and kill it.  Fucking gods playing...well, God.  Even still, Nix had a good feeling about this place.  He wished it had been a reality where he wasn’t being forced to make nice with the natives just to use his own damn powers.  Mostly, the human just wished that one of the resident goddesses knew a simple teleportation spell from their midnight blue asses.  He hated walking, especially when it got into the way of his naptime.  Seriously, Lu was one for three on teleportation that didn’t end up screwing him over.  And then there was her transformation abilities.  Nix shuddered.

His head jerked to the side, distracted by the flickering of a familiar lifeforce that flared up nearby.  How had he missed that one?  The souls of the animals, plants, and even bacteria glowed all about his perception, twinkling stars against a backdrop of deadened earth and cold air, but this one in particular at least distracted him from his internal monologue.  A small flame that glowed slightly differently than the others in the back of his mind.  He glanced through the tangled mess of vines and trees that led towards Ponyville, cursed to himself, and set off perpendicular to his intended destination, towards the pulsating light that indicated a familiar soul.  

An hour later, he crashed through a set of thorny bushes, his chest heaving under the effort of keeping up his lifeforce detection.  So embarrassing.  It was such a low level use of his lifeforce that he normally kept it on all the time in other realities.  Regardless of the strain it was causing him, he kept it on.  The familiar soul should be nearby.  But the only thing he saw was the orange-furred back of a very large cat, a light yellow mane exploding around its neck and concealing its facial features.  The insectile stinger where its tail should have been twitched anxiously, and it raised one large paw in the air as massive, curved stilettos shot out of its paw-tips.  The soul Nix was searching for was just beyond the creature, probably its prey.  

The rippling coils of muscles in the manticore’s shoulders tensed and its claws shot downward.  An explosion of soil and heat interrupted the strike and sent the beast flying backwards from the crater at its feet.  It slammed into a tree and flopped to the ground, a fall blizzard of brown soil, bark, and orange leaves waltzing through the air around its bulky form, before slowly regaining its feet on shaky paws.

The barrel of Umbra smoked as Nix regarded the manticore coolly, slowly grabbing a smoke out of his front pocket while never breaking his gaze from the creature.  Planting the cigarette between his lips and lighting it with a small fireball, he waited until the monster turned towards him and met his eyes.

He sucked deeply on the cigarette, his gun unwavering, before he slowly lowered his weapon and blew out a thick cloud of smoke.  “That was a warning shot.  No fuckin’ idea which of you fuckers in this Hellhole are intelligent or not.”  His eyes glimmered a brighter color of blue briefly.  “Next shot will include slightly less warning and slightly more death.”

The manticore’s throat rumbled in an aggravated growl, before it took a step back and its tensed muscles appeared to loosen.  The human calmly holstered his black gun and took another drag off his cigarette.  The beast’s eyes flicked towards a tree to their side, but Nix kept his eyes on the dangerous creature.

“The...woodkin,” it said in a harsh, gravelly rumble, returning its slitted, luminescent eyes back towards him.  “They...hunt.  No food for tribe.  No food for mate.  Is best if woodkin not hunt.  Is best if woodkin die.”  The manticore turned its hateful gaze back to its prey.  A small timberwolf crouched defensively against a gnarled, ancient tree, its tinny voice snarling as threateningly as its juvenile form allowed.  One side of its face was a ruined mess, the bark and wood scored by deep ravines of a clawed blow.  One of its eye sockets harbored an ocean green light, an angry orb of magic that glared at the manticore—the blackened hollow where the second should have been was instead crushed and lacked all light, three deep lacerations drawing across it and the timberwolf pup’s cheek.  A viscous, clear fluid leaked out from the claw marks scarring its face. It trembled as it tried scrunching closer to the ground, attempting to back further against the ancient tree at its rear.  

Nix broke his gaze from the pup, examining the glowing tip of the cigarette between his fingers ponderously before looking back at the manticore.  “Do you have a name?”

The beast hesitated, its paws flexing and unflexing anxiously in the soil.  Nix planted the cigarette in his mouth, waiting patiently.  “Flower,” it mumbled under its breath.

The human’s smoke dropped from the corner of his mouth as he gaped at the mass of muscle, poison, and teeth before him.  “Wait, seriously?”

“I are called ‘Flower’!  Pride-Mother gift me name!”  The manticore puffed its chest out defiantly and leveled a wilting glare at the human.  It drew itself up to its full height, which was just barely high enough to reach Nix’s eyes.  “You make fun?!”  

Nix sighed.  “Whatever.  No, I’m not making fun of you.”  His eyes flicked to the edge of the small clearing and his lips formed into a thin smile.  “And you can tell your ‘mate’ to stop trying to flank me.”  The underbrush to his left rustled slightly before a second figure burst from the foliage, the large orange form stalking towards the human through a cascade of falling leaves.  It was at least a few heads taller than he was. 

The manticore known as Flower flicked his eyes between the new manticore and the human.  “Now, Death-Shard.  We no need hurty time without foody time that follows!  We no can eat him, we no kill him, please?”  The huge manticore ignored Flower as its paws thudded dully into the forest floor, drawing ‘her’ steadily closer to the human.  She stopped a few feet from him and roared.  Flecks of spittle splashed across Nix’s face, and the spikes of his blonde hair shuddered from the rush of fetid breath.  The female manticore’s roar died out as she settled for simple glowering at the human.  

Nix regarded the huge manticore boredly and took another drag of his cigarette.  “You done yet?” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the beast’s face.  “I’ve got places I need to be.”

The she-beast opened her mouth and her chest rose deeply as she readied another roar.  Her eyes crossed in confusion and she let out a mewling, confused gargle as Nix shot his hand out and grabbed her tongue.  Her mate twitched, but Flower made no movement towards him.  He pulled the manticore’s tongue down and forced the creature’s slitted, feline eyes to meet his own.  A blue spark erupted in his irises and he gave the manticoress a cruel grin.  

“Look, I’m not gonna let you hurt the little guy over there, and if you press me on this, both you and Flower over there are gonna end up several shades of fucking dead, do I make myself clear?”

“Hugggh,” the large manticore replied, her tongue twitching in his grasp. Her heavily muscled forelimbs and her scorpion tail remained motionless, and she simply stared in confusion at the small primate before her.

“What was that?”  Nix asked.

“Hugggh!” she replied, shooting a sheepish look to her mate.  For his part, Flower had adopted a position halfway between attempting to rescue his female from the grasp of a weird primate, and cowering in abject fear.  

“We thinks-” he started in a hoarse voice.  Flower coughed and tried to puff his chest out.  “We thinks Mate Death-Shard speak bad without tongue.”  Nix glared at him, and the runtish manticore cringed, before shaking his head and standing up as tall as he could.  “We thinks ape release Death-Shard tongue now!”  Nix cocked an eyebrow at him, his free hand lazily reaching for one of the guns in his jacket.  “Err, if it okay with ape, that is?”  

Nix shared a glance with the female manticore.  She rolled her eyes, her breath hot over his hand as she sighed.  He released her tongue and took a step back, wiping her saliva off his palm.  “Err, sorry.”

“Is okay.”  She shot a frustrated look at Flower before her attention returned to the human.  “Said ‘huggggh’, but meant ‘her’.”  The manticoress nodded to herself in seeming satisfaction, her lips curled upwards in what he hoped was a beaming smile and not an ugly snarl.  Well, not an intentionally ugly snarl, anyway.  Those sabretooth tusks jutting out of her carnivorous maw wasn’t doing her any favors.

“Uh, what?”  Nix asked as Flower loped forward to join his large mate.  Nix subconsciously backed towards the timberwolf pup behind him.  

“Woodkin pup, ape,” the larger female manticore said exasperatedly.  “Is ‘she’.”  Nix glanced back at the lupine construct of wood behind him.  ‘She’ growled back at him in her tinny voice.

“Uh, okay…”  This would be a lot easier if he just pulled his guns and shot the two manticores.  But that would make him no better than a god, abusing his power to-

A heavy paw thudded into his chest, notably lacking the piercing machetes these manticores could summon at will from their fingertips.  Err, “paw tips”.  The larger manticore female frowned down at him.  “Why you protect woodkin?  Woodkin bite prey, prey-meat spoils.  Is no reason for woodkin to live.”

That...was a good question.  Why the fuck was he protecting this pup?  He had pretty much massacred dozens of the damn things not too long ago.  The pup trembled as he glanced over it, its glowing greenish eye meeting his before it looked away.  Its small form trembled violently against the tree as its limbs gave way.  It collapsed, letting out a small mewl as it surrendered to its fate.  It shot Nix one last look of pained confusion before closing its good eye.

‘I’m such a little bitch,’ he thought.  ‘Athena would be making fun of my ass so hard right now.  And Loki.  If they both weren’t dead, anyway.’  

“Err, I kinda killed its mom,” Nix mumbled.  The wooden pup behind him let out a small whine.  “And pretty much all of its...err, all of her brothers.”

“Is blood oath then,” the female manticore said gravely.  “But blood oath or no blood oath, is still woodkin.  Is still competition…”  Her claws slowly slid out of their sheaths in her paws.

“No,” Nix said, his eyes flaring blue.  “No competition.  I take her from the forest, you leave her alone.”

The manticoress frowned down at him for a time, her insectile tail twitching.  With a nod, she merely turned and disappeared into the foliage around them.  Nix cocked an eyebrow at Flower.

The small male manticore grinned at him.  “She distant at first, but have big heart!”

“Uh, right…”

“You see.  You visit, she like you.  We talk!”  he said, nodding enthusiastically.  Nix couldn’t be assed to care.  The male manticore shot him one more grin before disappearing into the forest.  Nix frowned and turned towards where the timberwolf pup lay against the old tree.  The timberwolf pup that was no longer there.  Damn thing had suddenly disappeared.

“Oh, great,” Nix said, spreading his arms in exasperation.  There was a crash of underbrush, and a second later, a pair of wooden jaws latched onto his right bicep.  He frowned down at the timberwolf latched onto his arm.  He felt a small trickle of his lifeforce leaving him even as nearby brush and leaves shuddered and attached themselves to the suckling timberwolf.  

“You know,” he said, motioning to his apathetic features with his free hand, “if I could make my eyelids any flatter right now, I really would.”  The timberwolf shifted its jaws on his arm and latched on tighter, staring at him evenly with its one good eye as it hung in midair off his appendage.  “I save your damn life, and this is what I get.”  The timberwolf growled in response.  Her one good eye closed defensively as Nix brought his free hand up and rested it on her snout.  The glow in his eyes flashed for a moment and white fire erupted across the pup’s form as the wood crackled and reformed around her face.  The ruined socket of her left eye shifted and popped into place, and the viscous fluid of the timberwolf’s lifeblood lurched backwards into the wounds across her bark as they mended shut.  A milky white orb throbbed to life in her left eye socket, its color matching the three pale scars that raced over her eye, from her brow down her cheek.  

As the light in his eyes faded, he blandly regarded the timberwolf pup latched onto his arm.  A pair of dimly glowing eyes, one teal, the other a smoky, dull white, stared back at him.  With an audible pop! and a satisfied yelp, the wooden wolf let go of his arm and plopped to the ground on her back.  Her eyes squinted in satisfaction as a sizable collection of underbrush rustled and dragged itself across the ground, integrating into her form as her twig-tail wagged wildly.

“You done yet?”  Nix asked.  He flicked his cigarette through the air.  It evaporated into a puff of ash before hitting the ground.  The timberwolf next to him let out a happy bark and hopped to her paws, her shoulders now slightly higher than his waist.  

He frowned and set off towards nine familiar lifeforces, the timberwolf hopping behind him as a green leaf lolled happily out of the side of her mouth.


*     *     *     *     *


“I dunno, Twi,” the orange mare said, carefully adjusting her hat.  Twilight’s head snapped a bit too vigorously towards the earth pony, the manic grin splaying more widely across her violet lips at Applejack’s interjection.  Applejack flinched, trying to avoid meeting the pinprick pupils beneath the frayed plum and pink bangs of her best friend.  Her crazy friend.  But still her best friend.  “He asked us all ta’ meet here.  I don’t reckon he meant for us to stay here.”

Oh, lordy, what the hay had she gotten herself into this time?  Her four other friends were giving her looks of commiseration.  Mostly.  Dash’s expression seemed tinted by mild amusement.  At one point or another, they’d all been at the receiving end of Twilight...well, being Twilight.  

“Don’t be silly, Applejack,” Twilight said, trotting up to the mare and plopping down on her rear a tad bit too close to the orange earth pony.  She cracked a wide grin, the edge of one side of her mouth twitching slightly.  “Princess Celestia said we should do our best to lead Nix to the magic of friendship,” she said, one hoof gesticulating wildly, “and like Fluttershy proved with Discord, the best way to do that is with acceptance!”  Her hoof shot towards the yellow pegasus, who bowed her head to the side and took a sudden interest in her pink bangs.  “And what’s better than acceptance?  Utter obeisance!”  The purple unicorn began rubbing her forehooves together and grinding her teeth.  “Brilliant, right?!  I thought of it myself!”

Applejack shared a concerned look with the other Elements, before shaking her head and resting an orange hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder.  Twilight flinched at the contact, but seemed to settle afterward.  Her manic grin faltered slightly.  “Now, Twi, I know you got a lot ridin’ on this, but don’tcha think ya’ might be takin’ things a bit too far?”  She hugged Twilight a bit closer.  “You know no matter what you decide, all of us will support ya’.  I’m just not sure that means coopin’ us all up for a, uh, marathon slumber party.”

“You...you don’t like my slumber party?”  Twilight asked, her grin evaporating and her lips quivering slightly.  A book immediately appeared in the air before her as she tore away from Applejack’s hoof, burying her nose in the dry paper folds.  “We haven’t done everything yet, though!  We could- we could give each other hooficures while we wait!”

A blue blur shot through the air and settled by her side, opposite Applejack.  “Woah, woah, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash blurted out, “As big a fan as I am of-” the pegasus gulped, “hooficures, I’m preeetty sure Applejack just means there’s no point running yourself ragged.  She learned that the hard way, remember?  And besides,” she snatched the book away from Twilight’s face, her upper lip curled in mild disgust as she flipped to another page, “you wouldn’t actually expect me to let you gals curl my mane, right?”   

Applejack snickered.  “We could always play another round of Truth or Dare, if ya’d like?”  

“Why yes, Rainbow,” Rarity interjected, ambling closer to the three mares.  “Given your fondness for choosing ‘dare’, I would think it but a matter of time before I’d have to retrieve my curling irons…”  Applejack took special note of the cyan pegasus’s pupils narrowing to pinpricks at the suggestion.  She was going to have to remember this for the next time they all got together.  She was unable to conceal her confident smirk as she shot the pegasus a wink.

“I...I think your mane would look very nice curled, Dashie,” a quiet voice said, almost whispering.  Rainbow Dash hovered in the air and put her forehooves on her hips as she shot a disapproving glare at the butter yellow pegasus.  Fluttershy immediately began examining the whorls in the wood beneath her hooves.  “That is, um...if you want to.”

“Dashie would look great with curly hair!” a passing pink cartwheel squeaked.  “I give the curls of my mane curls, and sometimes second curls!”  Pinkie Pie paused, resting upside down on one hoof.  “Can curls have second curls?  Or is only one allowed?”  She rested one hoof on her chin, rubbing it thoughtfully.  It had been the hoof holding her off the floor.  She remained hovering there for an instant.  “And why do they sweep the ice, anyway?  Is the stone afraid of being dirty?”  The other six mares present stared in silent shock at the hovering pink earth pony.  

“H-how do you do that?”  Ridge Dancer asked, off to the side and separated slightly from the Elements of Harmony.  

Pinkie’s blue eyes shot to the green unicorn with a look of confusion before she unceremoniously crashed to the ground.  She was on her hooves in an instant, zipping up to the shy guardpony in a blur of speed.  Ridge Dancer shrunk away from the sudden invasion of her personal space, her brilliant jade eyes rolling wildly to the side.  “Do what?  Curling?  First, you need a stone and a lot of ice!  We grew curling stones back home, they were really fickle.”  Pinkie scrunched her face up.  “You have to feed them just the right amount of diamond dust to really make them take root.”

“W-what?!”  Ridge Dancer took a step back.  “You can’t grow rocks!”

Pinkie snorted.  “Of course you can, silly-filly!  You just need a rock farm.”  She rolled her blue eyes and smiled piteously at the green unicorn.  Ridge Dancer merely stared blankly at Pinkie for a few seconds before shooting a confused glance at the other Elements. 

Applejack trotted up to the lime green mare and rested a hoof on her shoulder.  “Ridge Dancer, meet Pinkie Pie,” she said with a small smirk.

Pinkie frowned.  “What’re you talking about, Jackie McJackapples?  I mean, I’ve met Ridge Dancer here at least seven times in the last two months.  It’s not like-”  Pinkie’s eyes shimmered sadly.  She slowly turned her head to the unicorn Guardpony.  “Do...do you have Alzheimare’s?”  She rushed over and grabbed the green mare’s hoof.  “Pinkie!  Pie!  My name is Pinkie Pie!” she shouted, inches away from the wide-eyed face of Ridge Dancer.  “Can you remember that?!  You are in Ponyville!  Pony!  Ville!”

“I- I-” Ridge Dancer stammered, lurching to get out of the pink mare’s grasp.

“Now, what is my name?  What.  Is.  My.  Name?!”

Applejack shook her head ruefully.  “Pinkie, I think yer scarin’ her.  She don’t have Alzheimare’s…”

“Oh, okay!”  Pinkie chirped happily as she released the light green unicorn.  Ridge Dancer scooted a few feet away from the poofy-haired earth pony, eyeing her warily.  “That’s really good news!  Grandpa Pie got Alzheimare’s once, and-”  The pink mare regaled the others with her tale in such a hurried rush that it was impossible to understand her.  After a few seconds of the verbal cataract that poured from her lips, Pinkie’s friends all shared a knowing look and tuned her out.  Ridge Dancer merely stared at her, a look of pained helplessness on her face as she nodded intermittently and tried to follow the party pony’s story.  Applejack chuckled a bit.  Pinkie was...something else.  A good something, but still something else.

The orange earth pony turned her attention back to Twilight.  The manic gleam in her eyes was gone, and as the purple unicorn’s gaze flitted between all her friends, a warm smile crept onto her face.

“Feelin’ better, sugarcube?” Applejack asked with a slight smirk.

Twilight turned towards the earth pony.  “I...uh, yes,” she replied, a faint blush appearing on her cheeks as she looked to the side.  “I’ve been...I’ve been acting foolish, haven’t I?”

Applejack just chuckled and brought her into a side hug.  “We’ve all been there, hon’.  And ta’ be honest, it’s right understandable for you to be a bit stressed considerin’ who we’re dealin’ with.”

“Right, a ‘little’ stressed,”  Rainbow Dash muttered.  Applejack shot a disapproving look at the pegasus.  “What?  She was gonna give me a hooficure, A.J.  A hooficure.”  The cyan mare punctuated this by emphatically gesticulating with her forehooves as she hovered in the air.  Applejack merely rolled her eyes.

“Besides,” Rainbow continued, “it’s not like Nix is that bad.”  A pall of silence interrupted the conversation as Applejack noted six pairs of eyes on the pegasus.

“Not that bad?”  Twilight asked.  A purple glow surrounded a scroll that she pulled out from behind her.  She unfurled it and levitated a quill from a nearby table.  “He assaulted numerous members of the guard.”  The quill made a scratching sound as it made a mark on the papyrus in front of her.  “He blew up Luna’s tower.”  Another mark.  “He threatened the entire town-”  

The quill started to move before Applejack interrupted.  “Really, Twi?  A list?”

“He threatened almost the entire town,” Twilight continued, ignoring the earth pony as her quill dragged slowly across the page with emphatic force.  “He nearly broke existence.”  She stared at Rainbow Dash, her eyes narrowing slightly, as her red quill made another painfully slow mark on the papyrus.  “Broke.  Reality.  All of it.  But, oh, no, he’s not that bad.”

Rainbow Dash pouted and crossed her forehooves, staring at the ground.  “Alright, alright, I get it.  No need to rub it in,” she grumbled.

“Honestly,” Rarity started, her tone equal parts melodic and exasperated, “I simply don’t know how the princesses expect us to reform him.”

“We...umm, we don’t need to reform him,” Fluttershy’s soft voice corrected.  “We just need to help him make friends.”

“Well, dear, that’s simply foolishness,” the white unicorn said with a toss of her purple mane.  “We reformed Discord, but how many friends has he actually made since then?”

“Umm, well...one,”  the butter yellow pegasus whispered, her eyes entranced by the patterns on the wood beneath her feet.  “Just me…”  After a second, her head shot up and a bright smile appeared on her face.  “But he’s been making great progress with Angel Bunny.”  The other five elements gave her flat looks.  “No, really!” she forced out breathily.  “Discord hasn’t punted him out of the window in at least five days-”  Fluttershy wilted under the force of the five mare’s groans.  

Applejack noted that Ridge Dancer was remaining oddly quiet.  The orange-maned unicorn seemed to be lost in thought, staring at nothing.

“He’s horrible,” Rarity said finally with a sad shake of her head.  “A rude, selfish, disrespectful creature.  Why, we’d have an easier time getting King Sombra to make friends...”  

Silence fell across the gathered mares, five of the gathered Elements all sharing nervous looks with one another.  Pinkie Pie sat with a look of intense concentration on her face, her lips quirked to one side.  

Applejack sighed.  “So, what do we do?  Write Princess Celestia, and tell her we just couldn’t do it?”  Something sick squirmed in the earth pony’s chest as she uttered the words.  She had been given a job, and she was considering conceding failure.  She scowled.  She was forced to admit that they had been given an impossible task.  She didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Rarity, but the unicorn was right.  Everything about Nix just screamed in opposition to friendship.  She pawed at the floor aimlessly as the lack of response from her friends fed the overbearing silence of the room.

“He’s not horrible,” came a ragged whisper.  Applejack looked up to see Ridge Dancer still staring into the distance, her eyes moist.  The unicorn slowly drew herself back from her distant thoughts and looked around the room, meeting each of the Elements’ eyes.  “He’s not horrible.  He’s just afraid.”

The other six mares shared a confused look.  The green unicorn blew a puff of air between her pursed lips, blowing away a locke of her fiery mane from her eyes, and continued.  “I heard him talking.  With Pri-  With Luna.  On the night of the party.  He’s afraid.  Afraid that his presence will hurt those around him.  He…”  Ridge Dancer paused, pawing the ground uncertainly.  “He’s lost a lot of friends.  And he thinks if he makes new ones they’ll get hurt, too.”

“Well, now, that’s just silly, hon,” Applejack said softly, trotting up to the green unicorn and moving to rest a hoof on her shoulder before Ridge Dancer flinched away from her touch.  “Now why would makin’ friends bring harm to ‘em?”

“I-  I don’t know,” the guardpony admitted.  “But Nix thinks just being here puts everypony in danger.  At least, that’s what he told Luna.  That’s why he’s been so awful.  He said he would make the entire town hate him if it kept them safe, but…”  She sighed and her head drooped.

“Well, dear, don’t keep us in suspense,” Rarity said gently.  By now, the Elements were focusing intently on the green unicorn mare.  “But what?”

Ridge Dancer—what was it the human called her?  Dancie?  That was it.  Applejack nodded slightly to herself with a sense of self-satisfaction.  ‘Dancie’ inhaled a breath sharply through her nose, and blew it out slowly in a puff of air.  “Nix assaulted a lot of guards.  He broke my leg.  But despite the fact he was being pursued, he paused to heal my leg.  He seemed...sad.  Apologetic.  He also didn’t mean to blow up Luna’s tower.  She had gotten ahold of one of his weapons and mishandled it.  He redirected the blast away from Equestria so it wouldn’t be destroyed, putting himself in between the weapon and Luna to prevent her from being hurt.  After that, he healed all the ones who were injured by the blast.  Secretly, of course, because he’d rather we all shun him so we...remain unhurt.  Then, he healed a small filly named Wind Petal.”

“Ooh!” Pinkie exclaimed.  “That’s Orchid and Sunflower’s filly!  They seemed so sad when they took her to Canterlot for treatment.  Is that how she got better?”  

Dancie nodded slowly.  “I found Nix telling her bedtime stories before the panic in the throne room.  He...didn’t seem happy that I caught him doing that.  Then, I lost him on the way to Canterlot’s train station.  It turns out he had slipped away to give a mare with two colts the entirety of the bits Celestia had given him to get started in Ponyville.  When we arrived here, he tried to scare off all the ponies in town, but ended up scaring Wind Petal in the process.  It shook him up enough that he didn’t really want to deal with anypony, but he still went along with your tour of Ponyville.  

“When he...when he shattered this universe, it was on accident.  He was just trying…”  Ridge Dancer’s chest heaved and her voice wavered.  “He was just trying to save my life.  After hearing what he told Luna on the balcony that night, I just didn’t want him to be hurt.  I just didn’t and I did something foolish but- but Nix, he...he saved my life.”  Her cheeks were wet with her own tears as she stared at the ground, her features twisted by sorrow.  The six Elements shared an awkward look.  Fluttershy inched closer to the lime green unicorn before Ridge Dancer looked up, her puffy, red-rimmed eyes belying a sudden obstinance.  “He saved me.  He,” Ridge Dancer’s voice became rigid.  Hard.  “He was just trying to help.  He just didn’t know how.”  Her harsh façade collapsed and she dropped her head once more, the curly ringlets of her deep orange mane hanging off her shoulders and hiding her eyes.  Her chest heaved a few more times, but in a whisper she managed to force out, “He’s not horrible.  Not horrible.  He’s my friend.”  

“Okay, okay, so maybe he’s not as bad as he seems,” Rainbow Dash said, before leveling an annoyed glare at Twilight, “like I just said not two minutes ago.”  The pegasus looked back towards the crying green unicorn.  “But how in the hay do you know all this?”

Ridge Dancer looked up and wiped a hoof across her eyes.  “When Nix disappeared last week, I thought he...I thought the first friend I had made abandoned me.  I put in my resignation and tried to quit the Royal Guard,” the mare said sullenly.  “Princess Celestia refused my resignation, and told me everything.  It...helped.  B-but he had still left me, after everything he had done and after I finally started to like him and- and-”  She broke down again, collapsing to the ground and trying to hide her embarrassing tears with both forehooves.  

A rush of air battened past Applejack, offsetting her hat, and before the earth mare could process it, a blur of pink and yellow impacted the lime green unicorn.  Fluttershy all but tackled Ridge Dancer, her forehooves and wings wrapped around the green mare in a fierce embrace.  Dancie struggled halfheartedly against the physical contact for a few seconds before slumping into the yellow pegasus’s hug.  Her body trembled as she sobbed, while Fluttershy cooed softly and rubbed her back with her hooves.  

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” the pegasus whispered softly tightening her grip around Ridge Dancer’s shoulders.  “Everything’s gonna be just fine.”  

The unicorn mare sniffled into Fluttershy’s chest, and was quiet for a long time.  The six other mares simply stared in shock at the revelations.  Applejack rubbed a hoof thoughtfully on her chin.  Everything the guardpony was saying was honest.  Or at least she thought it was honest.  Applejack had never really delved into the small things, the tiny boons, that her status as Element of Honesty had granted her.  Even assuming everything she had just heard was true, did the human’s motives excuse his actions?  She fiddled with the brim of her hat as she thought.  Finally, Twilight broke the group’s silence.

“I...I think you’re right, Ridge,” she said, mouth downturned as she sifted through her own memories.  “When I was translating his language when he first woke up, he made no attempt to be vicious, mean, or threatening.  He just talked to me, probably because he assumed I couldn’t understand him.  The second he gained the capability to socially interact, though, that’s when he started...aggravating everyone.  Most everyone.”  Twilight bit her lower lip.  “But not me.  Not at first, when he tried introducing himself.  He just seemed tired.”  Twilight’s reflection was broken by a bouncing pink blob that was hopping around the group in the center of the library.

“I tried to tell everypony that Nixxy was nice,” Pinkie Pie chirruped cheerfully as she pranced around the room, “but did anypony listen to me?  Noooo.”

Rarity, meanwhile, hummed to herself thoughtfully.  “Nix behaved simply atrocious, but he was only trying to act in our best interests even if it put himself in a difficult position…”

Applejack’s frown eased.  Nix had spent his time here lying to all of them.  She could forgive that...if the human asked for forgiveness in the first place, and made a visible effort to change his ways.  And yet he probably wouldn’t, not because he wished harm upon her and her friends, but because he thought it was the best way to spare them from tragedy.  Her orange hoof rubbed her forehead as she tried to massage away the headache.  She wished she was off in the west field of Sweet Apple Acres, bucking trees right now.  Farm work, she could understand.  Friendliness, that she could do.  Heck, her family was renowned almost as much as Pinkie Pie for their hospitality.  But good intentions that made her friends and the rest of Ponyville feel awful?  That seemed an awful lot like deception to her, and she didn’t cotton well to that.  Even still, had it been Apple Bloom instead of Wind Petal in that Canterlot Hospital…

Applejack focused on the rest of the mares in the room.  Fluttershy was rocking Ridge Dancer back and forth, patting her back reassuredly with one hoof.  Rarity was quiet, her mouth forming a crooked frown as she thought.  Twilight and Pinkie Pie kept shooting each other hurried glances before dropping their gazes to the wooden floor.  Out of all the mares in the room, only her and Rainbow Dash’s eyes were dry.  Rainbow remained stoic, hovering in one corner of the room, her magenta eyes glaring daggers into a nearby wall.  The earth mare snorted, and moved to speak before the creaking of the library’s front door interrupted her.  

Nix hunched over as he entered before standing up straight and planting his hands in his black trenchcoat’s front pockets.  He cocked his head to the side with a small smile.  “You all weren’t waiting here this entire time, were you?”

Applejack managed to conceal her amused grin after Twilight let out a ragged, frustrated growl.


*     *     *     *      *


Nix released his lifesource scanning spell with a relieved breath, and looked around the main room of the library.  He would need sleep soon, and didn’t wanna hunt everypo- everyone down for what he had to say.  Thankfully, all of ‘em were here, though none of them bothered to answer his initial question.  Unless Twilight’s guttural grunt and scowl was an answer.  Things felt a bit weird, though.  The ponies were all staring at him with their huge eyes.  Most of ‘em had tears leaking down their faces for some reason.  All except for Scratchy and that pony with the southern accent, actually.  Not saying anything.  Just staring.

These ponies were fuckin’ weird.  

“Uh…” Nix started, causing all of them to flinch slightly, “Did, uh, did somepony die or something?”  They all continued to regard him silently.  His eyes widened and he snapped a finger energetically before pointing at all of them.  A potted rosebush fell from nowhere at the sound of his fingers and he inwardly cursed before it was caught between Pinkie Pie’s hooves.  Her eyes widened and her lips trembled as she looked back towards the human.  

“This is a funeral!  Somepony died, didn’t they?”  Nix said cheerfully.  “Oh, please tell me somepony died...wait…wait!  Was it Tia?  Sun Butt died while I was gone, didn’t she?”  The atmosphere of solemnity amidst the mares began to evaporate as they all shared confused looks.  “Oh, happy day!  But wait!”  Nix rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “We’ll need, like, ten Luna’s just to levitate her massive ivory ass onto the funeral pyre…actually, you can show me to the body, I’ll just set it on fire where she choked on her last piece of cake.”  Nix couldn’t help but grin at the mares’ shocked expressions.  

Pinkie Pie sniffed and glanced at the red roses between her hooves.  “He’s doing it again.”

Rarity nodded solemnly.  “Yes, the poor dear.”

Nix’s eyes narrowed.  “What the hell are you-”  He was interrupted by seven sets of multicolored hooves flying at him.  He hissed, cursing his lack of power in the millisecond before they impacted him.  Wincing, he felt seven bodies impact him.  Softly.  Huh, weird.  He cracked open his eyes and saw all of them embracing him.  Not hammering him to death with their hooves. 

“What the shitting shitstain?!” he bellowed, trying to shake them all off.  They merely held on tighter.  “Get the fuck off me, you Technicolor freaks!”  

Pinkie sniffed.  “He tries so hard.  I should throw him a trying party!” she said, tightening her one-hoofed hug of his left leg even as she protected the vase with the roses in her other foreleg.  “Plus he gave me roses!  So sweet!”  The rest of the mares let out a communal, “Awww!”

And that communal “Awww!” quickly turned into a communal “AAAAAAAAGH!” when the timberwolf loped into the door behind the human.  


*     *      *     *     *


Nix looked down at his ruined shirt, a defeated expression on his face as his gaze returned to the sheepish, ashamed expressions of the six mares lined up in front of him.  Dancie was still wrapped around his waist from behind, a look of childish glee adorning her smiling face as she looked up at him with shimmering eyes.  Whatever, she was fuckin’ weird.  And there was still his shirt.

“This…” he started, his voice quiet but expressing barely contained emotion.  “This was Rocky the T-Shirt’s grandson!” he shouted.  The multicolored mares in front of him all winced.  “And in your quest for senseless violence, you have slain him!”  He leveled an accusatory finger at all of them. 

“Now look, sugarcube, I know yer a bit angry-” Applejack started.

“I am looking, Hillbilly,” Nix interrupted.  “And all I see are thousands of polyester threads with their lives cut short by ALL OF YOUR RACISM!  How could you do that to gentle Eyetard, here?”  He gestured from his ruined shirt to the timberwolf sitting at his heels.  

When the one-eyed timberwolf entered the library’s front doors, most of the mares had scattered.  All but Dancie, who decided that hugging his waist more tightly and clamping her eyes shut was the best way to face her impending wooden death.  He would have rolled his eyes, but a couple of the girls had decided that offense was the best defense and began their attacks.  

Pinkie stood atop a bookcase and began assaulting his new pet with books, raining down a constant meteor shower of what his brain told him were really fucking heavy reference manuals.  Which his brain knew because his face broke their fall, and that pink pony had a pitching speed that defied reality.  That lasted up until Twilight had snapped out of her revery, stopped sending explosive magic projectiles at him from her horn, and chastised the party pony sternly for using reading materials as weaponry.  Nix, in spite of his exhaustion, had managed to catch each one of her magic blasts and had compressed them all into a small ball, which he could see greatly frustrated the purple unicorn.  When she turned away to lecture Pinkie PIe, he had quickly pocketed her magical force into one of his duster’s pockets.  Didn’t know what he could use it for, but it was bound to be good for something.

Then there was the damn cowpony.  Err, cowboy pony.  The one with the cowboy hat.  Hillbilly.  Most of his wardrobe’s destruction was due to her.  Namely, her bucking a lot of furniture his way.  Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem.  But for starters, he was really damn tired.  And secondly, the last thing she bucked at him was a table with a chemistry set on it.  

The ensuing explosion that blew out the library’s windows was a rich royal blue color that went well with the sparkling shards of glass as they tinkled through the night air.  The flames were actually very pretty.  The frustrated librarian wore a frumpy scowl after she put the fire out and ensured all the books were unharmed—her assistant was a dragon, of course she had mostly fireproofed things...probably.  It was an expression of deep malcontent only matched by the human after he discovered the explosion ruined his shirt.  Granted, he still had a bunch of weird blue sap on his clothes from those flowers back in the Everfree, but those could be washed out.  You can’t wash out gigantic fucking burns.  You just had to summon a new shirt from a pocket dimension and risk angering the world’s Sun Goddess enough that she ruined your only pony friend’s life by depriving her of a job.  

“Nix, while I’m sure we’re all really, really sorry about yer shirt,” Applejack offered humbly, “that there’s a timberwolf.”  Her hoof shot towards the small construct of wood and leaves behind him.  The timberwolf—he had decided on the name ‘Eyetard’ for her after realizing she was still blind in one eye—ignored the earth pony and scratched behind the bark of one ear with the sticks comprising her hind leg.  “One bite and it could take years offa pony’s life.  Ain’t no reason to keep somethin’ like that around, even if she seems...uh, different from tha’ other ones.”

Nix rounded on the half-pup and pointed at her imperiously.  “Do you hear that, wolf-demon-vampire thingy?!”  he said with a harsh tone in his voice.   Eyetard looked up at him and yapped enthusiastically.  “No feeding on ponies!  Only me and shitheads who try to hurt ponies, is that understood?”  The timberwolf’s good eye narrowed and it shot one paw to its forehead, letting out a bark in a deeper tenor than its normal vocalizations.  

“Good girl,” Nix said, patting her on the head as she relaxed, her leaf-tongue again lolling lackadaisically from the side of her mouth.  Nix turned back to the mares with a satisfied smirk on his face.  “See?  Perfectly harmless.”  The timberwolf bit down on his hand, breaking the skin and causing him to utter a string of expletives before he replaced his forced smile on his face.  “Perfectly...harmless.”  

The color began to drain from his face as the exertion of maintaining a widescale lifeforce detection spell and feeding his new pet began to catch up with him.  The timberwolf detached from his hand and one of her eyes furrowed in concern.  The milky orb on the scarred side of her face remained motionless.  He began to lean to one side and almost fell before a lime green unicorn nuzzled herself between his arm and his chest, holding him up.  He looked down and saw his helper’s wide, glistening eyes and joyous smile beaming up at him.  Nix snorted and shook his head, patting the Ridge Dancer softly on her soft orange mane.  

“Bedtime already?  I’m game,” he muttered as he stumbled towards and up the steps of the library to the second floor and the guest bedroom.

“Wait!”  Twilight called after the pair, doing her best to avoid focusing on the timberwolf trotting up the stairs behind them.  

“Yes, Twilight?” Nix said tiredly, meeting her eyes with his exhausted expression.

Twilight took a few meager steps backwards, as though seeing the human’s gaunt, fatigued features threw a weight on her shoulders.  She looked away from him with an abashed expression tugging at her features.  “It’s just, well…”  She pawed at the ground with one hoof before looking up at him.  “Why did you call us all here?”

Nix’s eyes widened slightly and his mouth quirked to one side.  “Can’t believe I forgot about that.”  He pointedly met all the mares’ eyes for a few seconds before focusing on Twilight.  She seemed to shudder as his blue irises flickered slightly.

“I’m sorry.  To all of you.”  He paused, still looking at Twilight as the flames in his eyes died down, leaving a pair of normal, ice-blue irises in their stead.  “I really am.”

He turned away and stumbled into the guest bedroom, his guardpony following close behind and his timberwolf curling up just outside the door.


*     *     *     *     *


Ridge Dancer ran her eyes over the charcoal duster and ruined black shirt on the floor next to the bed.  Even in the pale moonlight that filtered in from the window, bathing them in a shaft of muted blue, it was plain to see that something was off about them.  They were coated in some weird, spotted blue substance.  She prodded at them with one hoof, jerking it back when the human on the bed next to her took a sharp breath.  

Nix had thrown off the two garments and immediately collapsed onto the bed, roughly dragging the covers over himself before immediately falling to sleep.  Ridge Dancer had begun to crawl into her own bed before she noticed something off about his clothing.  She quickly moved to investigate, but knew nothing about the weird blue substance that coated them.  She let out a frustrated huff, and was about to turn back to her own bed before Nix’s bed rattled.  He was shuddering mildly, bunching the covers up and clasping them to his chest.  The human let out a small groan, his eyes moving rapidly beneath his closed eyelids.

Ridge Dancer rolled her own eyes.  Her human friend—her only friend—was really, really high maintenance for someone who had the power to destroy entire worlds in the blink of an eye.  Even she could get over her nightmares, given time.  He’d had a thousand years, though...another of his groans interrupted her thoughts, however, and with an exasperated sigh, she maneuvered her snout under the covers and crawled up next to the human, resting the side of her head on his chest and throwing one green hoof across his bare stomach.

He seemed to calm almost immediately.  It was all too easy for her to fall to sleep, listening to the comforting thrum of his heartbeat.
	
> Chapter 26:  Pink Isn't Your Color
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Nix peeked over the windowsill, into the courtyard beyond.  Its once beautiful green lawn was pockmarked with small craters, some still emitting an unnatural black smoke that twirled slowly into the air, twisting with a sickening grace as the light seemed to warp around the edges of the numerous obsidian tendrils before they evaporated.  Cursed rounds.  The bastard UAS government had actually completed them.  He almost reconsidered his decision to go back for her.  Almost.  The two heavy mechs facing the concrete barrier on the far side of the courtyard would give most anyone pause.  Thankfully, he was not most people.  He was just an idiot.  Not as retarded as her, though.

He watched with a frown on his face as one of the Mk. III Angel Slayer’s twin gatling guns whirred to life.  The barrier erupted in black flame as the explosive rounds shredded into Athena’s cover.  The bits of concrete that didn’t explode from the impact of the bullets began to melt in the black flame.

Fucking cursed rounds.  Designed to slay things that were...more than human, the damn things would chew through the Goddess of War’s cover in the next few seconds.  Nix doubted the goddess’s physical form would last much longer than the concrete after that, and he couldn’t chance her prematurely restructuring.  Not her.  With a whispered curse, he dropped below the windowsill again and double-checked his black pistol.

‘I named it Umbra!’ a voice sang cheerfully in his head.

‘Shut up, Cal,’  Nix thought back at his sword.  His normal shots wouldn’t work against the defensive matrix of the mechs, so he had to charge up a shot.  Just like she had trained him.  Or tried to train him.  He usually lost his focus.  He could hopefully take one out before the other one turned and evaporated him with its soul-destroying munitions.  The human let out a puff of air, and began slowly feeding his lifeforce into the gun.  Motes of light began spiraling around its tip, feeding into the endless abyss of its barrel.  An audible whine picked up as the arms of the galaxy that orbited the gun’s barrel began to pick up speed, and the rubble around Nix’s feet began to shudder and bounce as the still air in the room was whipped into a cyclone.

The sound of the Angel Slayer’s gatling guns cut out.  Fuck.  They had sensed him charging his gun.  He stood and leveled the pistol through the window, aiming for the mech closest to the barricade.  When he pulled the trigger, every window in the room exploded outwards and the door blew off the hinges, clattering to the ground in the hall outside.  A beam of light erupted from the barrel of his black gun—Umbra—and screamed through the air, slamming through the mech’s spherical defensive matrix and impacting the machine in one shoulder.  There was a blinding flash of light an instant before a thundering shockwave destroyed the walls of his cover, sending a hurricane of torn wood and splinters towards him.  The debris warped around him as it passed, impaling the wall behind him.  

The entire outside wall of the room he was taking cover in was gone.  He merely stood there, tiny fingers of smoke dancing from the tip of his black gun.  Nix stared blankly at the ruined husk of heated slag and angular shards of metal that he had just destroyed in the courtyard.  

“Cool,” he whispered under his breath.

Several moments later, he was running for his life in the courtyard as the second mech’s machine guns ripped through the wall a few inches behind him.

“Not cool!  Not cool!” he shouted, juking and rolling under the line of fire as he zigzagged his way towards the towering mech.  “Cal, I need swords!” Nix commanded, manic desperation making his voice crack as he sprinted towards the towering death machine in the center of the courtyard.

‘But there’s just the one...’ Excalibur whined.  

Nix sent a wave of pure, frustrated emotion through the sword.  ‘Durandal.  Now!’ he thought towards Cal, somehow managing to stifle his panic as a few rounds clipped the edges of his body armor, easily fraying the carbon-60 composite and leaving lingering trails of black smoke.  

‘Okaaaay,’  Cal relented.  Sometimes, Nix really hated his sword.

A dozen yards before the hulking metal monolith, Nix’s foot dug into the moist grass and he leapt straight towards the Angel Slayer’s glowing optics unit.  Excalibur flashed out of its blue sheath in his right hand.  As the blade arced off his back, the area around its silver edges began to shimmer, and a translucent sword seemed to shift outwards from the blade.  It flipped several times through the air over Nix’s shoulder before solidifying in a pattern of progressive, geometric tessellations.  Nix’s leap arced downward towards the machine—a beastly pair of gatling guns rasped hungrily as they refocused on him and began to whir to life—while he snatched his left hand out and grasped the golden hilt of the newly materialized broadsword, the edges of it’s crimson blade pulsing with an unnatural red light.

As the Angel Slayer’s heavy weapons opened fire on the dive-bombing human, Nix’s form seemed to waver before it blurred through the mech in an instant, materializing and kneeling on the ground behind it with both swords held behind his back in a reverse grip.  Sparks of electricity danced around the war machine’s shoulders before both of its arms slid from its frame and smashed to the ground with heavy thuds.  

Nix turned and, with a graceful flourish, leveled Durandal at the metallic behemoth.  “Hah, not so good at killing immortals now, are ya’?!”  The lumbering mech turned on him with a hiss of its leg hydraulics, and the panels on its chest opened up to reveal a multitude of rocket tubes.  Both hilts of the human’s swords thumped lifelessly at his sides as Nix’s arms fell limp.  “Well, fuck,” he mumbled to himself as a battery of missiles exploded from their firing tubes and shot towards him, leaving spinning trails of smoke in their wake.  

He felt a sharp tug on the neck of his armored tactical vest as he was abruptly dragged behind the concrete barrier.  An instant later, the world around him erupted in a flash of white light, heat, and sound.  Flecks of superheated concrete scored his unarmored face before tiny white embers erupted at the source of the wounds, healing him almost instantly.  He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to clear the spots from his vision as the rockets’ flames faded.  A tinny whistling keened evenly in both of his ears as he tried to make sense of the muffled sounds of battle around him.  Through his damaged eyes, he saw a blurry figure standing guard over him.  

As his vision fully healed, he realized Athena stood with her back to him, her shoulders flared back imperiously as she held her golden shield high.  She slammed the butt of her spear into the ground, planting it and freeing one hand.  Releasing a vicious snarl, she raised the hand towards the towering mech.  Arcs of electricity raced along her forearm like sidewinders across desert sand, coalescing into a small ball of light before a booming arc of lightning exploded from her palm, piercing the Mk. III Angel Slayer and leaving a smoldering hole in the center of its armored chestplates.  The machine shuddered for a second before exploding violently.  Nix gaped at the goddess as she turned back to glare down her nose at him, the orange flames of the explosion behind her bathing her silhouette in a golden light.  

“Where in the Hell did you learn to do that?!  That was fucking awesome!”  

Athena snorted.  Nix almost thought he saw her blush.  Probably just his imagination.  “I may have picked up a thing or two from my father…”  Her features immediately darkened.  “And I was supposed to be covering your escape, you insolent troglodyte!”

Nix grinned at her and hopped to his feet.  “Will you shut up and let me rescue you, already?  That whole ‘sacrificing yourself so others can live’ thing is sooo two thousand years ago.”

“Rescue me?”  She shoved the human before grabbing the straps of his tactical vest and drawing him into better shouting distance.    “You fool!  There’s an entire UAS Seraphim Guard battalion at this base that’s trained to kill those like us!  That I trained personally!  We’re both going to die here, now!”  

“We are?”  Nix said cheerfully.  “Welp, guess I won’t get a better chance to-”  His lips crashed into hers fiercely as his arms wrapped around the small of the goddess’s back.  The kiss lasted only a second before Nix pulled away with a satisfied smirk.  

To her credit, Athena only held a shocked appearance for an instant before her beautiful blue eyes began to glow with unrestrained fury.  “You dare?!”

Nix laughed as he released her and turned towards the courtyard.  A dozen Angel Slayers slammed into the ground from the dropships above and slowly turned towards them.  He planted Excalibur and Durandal point-first into the earth, and shot Athena a sideways glance.  “Yep, I do.  And we’ll both have to live through this if you’re gonna kick my ass for it.”

Athena narrowed her eyes at him before angrily snatching her spear and turning towards the growing number of machines.  She tensed and raised her golden shield as she noticed a handful of them spinning up their gatling guns.  “I’ll make sure you live to regret that, human,” she said icily, not breaking her gaze from the foes before them.  He could have sworn he saw the edges of her mouth twitch upwards for an instant.

“I look forward to it, goddess,” he said mockingly.  “Now, let’s see if I can pull off that trick of yours,” Nix murmured to himself as he leveled his open palm at the mechanical constructs in the courtyard, the snaking, snapping tongues of electric arcs spiralling around his forearm and focusing in his hand as a whirring ball of energy.


*     *     *     *     *



As Nix slowly surfaced from the abyss of sleep, he realized that something didn’t feel right.  There was something wrong with his body, a warm pressure across his torso.  When the murk spreading through his mind evaporated as he awoke, he felt a soft rush of warm air flowing across his chest in slow, methodical bursts and something prodding into his side.  He slowly cracked his eyes, his vision filling with the soft golden light of the sunrise dancing in through the uncovered window.  Some of it, anyway.  The parts of his vision that wasn’t filled with the large green head and erratic, burnt orange ringlets of hair—scratch that, mane—that currently occupied his chest.  He pursed his lips and let out an annoyed puff of air.  

“You know, Dancie, I would think you, of all ponies, would know the importance of respecting personal space.”

The mare mumbled something incoherent and pressed into him harder, nuzzling into his neck.  Nix just rolled his eyes.  He tried to free his right arm from beneath the sleeping mare so he could jab her in the shoulder.  His hand felt weird, though.  Numb.  Must’ve fallen to sleep under the heavy ass pony laying on his side.  

Wait.  Since when did his limbs fall to sleep?  He could heal severed limbs almost instantaneously.  At least he could in most places.  Equestria was weird, and he wasn’t anywhere close to being at full power.  Maybe a side effect?  He shifted slightly, trying to jostle the mare enough to free his arm.  He felt weak as Hell.  Dancie murmured in protest but slowly raised her head, smacking her lips discontentedly as the curls of her mane fell across her eyes.  The human finally freed his arm and tried to prod the mare in her shoulder.  A light pink hoof brushed across the hairs of her light green coat.  A light pink hoof where his fucking hand should be.  Nix froze.  

“Urrgh, too early,” the mare grumbled before blowing the strands of hair from her eyes, cracking her eyelids and looking up at Nix’s face.  In an instant, her eyes shot open all the way and her pupils narrowed, her mouth working soundlessly.  

The stalemate of surprise ended almost immediately.  “WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE A FUCKING HOOF?!”  Nix shouted, immediately raising his left limb and finding it matched the right.  

“WHO ARE YOU?!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY BED?!”  Dancie shouted back.

“TWO HOOVES?!”  

“HOW DARE YOU PUT YOUR HOOVES ON ME!”

He looked at the spot on his chest that Dancie’s head had just occupied.  It was covered in pink fur.  “AAAAAH!” he screamed.

“AAAAAH!” the mare screamed back at him, scrabbling her forehooves across his chest as she tried to back away even as her horn began to glow a dark green. 

‘And here comes the part where she tosses me through a wall,’ Nix thought dejectedly.  The green unicorn’s magic cut out, however, after her fearful thrashing entangled her in the blankets and she crashed off the side of the bed closest to the room’s door.  Nix tried to roll to his feet—err, “hooves”—so he could escape the unicorn’s wrath before she freed herself, but his legs felt weird and constrained.  He stood and tried to run before his blue jeans, ill-fit and oversized for his new form, caused him to trip off the same side of the bed as Dancie.  He crashed into the roiling maelstrom of blanket and fiery orange mane on the floor.  

The pair became an entangled mess of cloth, fur, and shouting as they rolled along the floor.  The door to the bedroom opened with a small creak, a bleary-eyed lavender unicorn standing in the doorway and rubbing her eyes.  “Ugh, what’s going on heAAAAAGH!”  The blanket tempest crashed into Twilight Sparkle and rolled out onto the library’s inside balcony, the librarian unicorn’s surprised exclamations joining the other pair’s in a cacophony of confused shrieking.  As they tumbled  past, the timber wolf pup curled up on the floor outside the door cracked one glowing cerulean eye at the trio before snuffing and curling up tighter, dozing off again almost instantly.  The rolling ball of ponies and blanket came to a sudden stop with a dull thud before Twilight’s bedroom door, Nix’s head slamming into the hardwood floor.  He groaned in pain as the door opened, revealing a small purple dragon yawning and rubbing his eyes.


*     *     *     *     *


“What’s the big idea?  It’s barely dawn-” Spike groused, his voice cutting out and his eyes going wide at the sight before him.  Three pony heads poked out of the top of the blanket that was wrapped tightly around the trio on the floor.  Twilight and that unicorn guardpony mare were both screaming and twitching atop a bright pink unicorn stallion, who was rocking his head back and forth while moaning loudly.

Spike blinked a few times before slowly shutting the door.  With a quick shake of his head, he turned away from the door and waddled back towards his basket at the foot of Twilight’s bed.  Clambering over the edge and crawling under the blanket, he shifted a few times before bringing it up to his chin, his purple claws gripping the edge of the blue covering tightly.  He stared blankly at the whorls in the ceiling’s wood grain as the muffled screaming outside the door reached a crescendo before cutting out.

“Well,” he said, with a derisive snort, “that didn’t last nearly as long as Twilight’s stories said it should.”

When more loud cries began to erupt outside a few moments later, he grumbled, bunched his pillow over his ears, and closed his eyes, trying to retreat into a deep slumber.


*     *     *     *     *


“GET AWAY GET AWAY DON’T TOUCH ME AAAAAAAH!”  Ridge Dancer wailed.

“Why does it hurt so much?  Argh, my fucking head...”  the pink stallion complained.

“Everypony be quieeet!” Twilight shouted at the top of her lungs.  Her voice cut out and she ceased her struggles against the blanket and the two ponies trapped with her.  Her horn spurted to life with a purple glow and, with a discharge of magic and a muffled bamf!, she disappeared from the cloth prison and reappeared on her hooves, glaring down at the lime green unicorn and the strange, pink unicorn stallion.  The stallion removed his hooves from his head and glared up at her with cold, blue eyes.

“What the Hell did you fucking ponies do to me, Sparky?!” he bleated.  Ridge Dancer kept up a stream of high-pitched, incoherent yammering as she futilely continued her attempts to escape from the blanket.

Twilight opened her mouth hesitantly, cocking an eyebrow.  She briefly ran her eyes over the pink stallion’s face.  Seeing the wild blonde mane and the piercing blue eyes in tandem with the familiar voice led her to the most natural conclusion.  After a short pause, she found her voice.  “Nix?  Is that you?”

“The fuck else would it be?”  the stallion groaned.  “And what the fuck is poking me in my goddamn ribs?!”  Ridge Dancer’s complaints immediately cut out, and she turned her head slowly to regard the pink stallion pressed against her. 

Twilight loosed an annoyed growl as her horn lit up with a purple glow.  An instant later, the two unicorns in the blanket disappeared in a flash of white light, and reappeared on their hooves in front of her.  Nix’s legs trembled for a second before immediately buckling.  He struggled momentarily on the ground before his hindhooves became entangled in the ill-fitting blue jeans he still wore.  With an aggravated snort, he collapsed back to the wooden floor, staring over his bright pink forehooves.  “Fuck this world,” he muttered.

Twilight flicked her eyes between the two unicorns, and said, “Alright, there’s got to be a valid explanation for this.”

“Yes, Sparky,” Nix huffed drily, “the explanation is, ‘Your world is fucking fucked, so fuck you.’”	  Ridge Dancer stood next to the prone pink pony, regarding him with a curious look and a cocked head.  

“Nix, this is quite clearly the effect of a magical curse-”

“Yes, a ‘fuck you, Nix’ curse.  I get those a lot.”

“-so if I can get to the root of the magic behind this, I think changing you back-”

“-to my non-fucking-pony, magnificent simian form-”

“-should be a simple matter,” Twilight finished, completely ignoring Nix’s interruptions.  “Now, do you remember encountering any hostile unicorns, or dark, glowing tomes, or magical stones with glowing runes, or...pretty much anything that glowed, period?”

“Your horn seems to glow a lot around me, Sparky,” Nix said, his eyes narrowing.  Ridge Dancer continued staring at him unabashedly.  Her cheeks were tinged a slight red.

Twilight rolled her eyes before they settled on him with a flat glare.  “I did not turn you into a pony, Nix.”

“Of course you didn’t,” the former human replied, his eyes luminescent blue slits.  He raised his head and slowly pushed himself to four hooves.  “I mean, it would be completely illogical for you to assume I might socialize easier in the same form as every. Other. Fucking.  Horse-thing in this sanity-forsaken reality.  What better way to make friends than as an emasculated, brightly colored fucking quadruped?”

“I only would have under controlled circumstances and not without extensive scientific measurements to record the effects of a sudden transpecies transmogrification on the harmonic leylines and thaumaturgical frequencies that resonate naturally from indigenous ponies,” the purple unicorn said matter-of-factly, her eyes closed.  

“Uh-huh,” Nix deadpanned.  Ridge Dancer’s blush deepened and she scooted an inch closer to the pink unicorn stallion.

“And only with your permission, a right granted to all sapient creatures under Article 7, Clause 3, Corollary Subclause 2.17b  of the Year 843 Magic Propriety Act, which states in no uncertain circumstances that intelligent creatures may only be the subjects of magical transmogrification with their express, written permission,”  Twilight finished, her eyes still closed and a satisfied smirk on her face.  Her grin faltered for a second.  “I probably would have, anyway,” she muttered under her breath.

“Uh-huh.  Change me back,” Nix growled.  “Now,” he added, taking a step toward the lavender librarian and pawing at the floor threateningly.  Before he lost his balance and his jaw hit the hardened wood beneath his feet.  “Oh, this is just fuckin’ great.”  

Twilight sighed, trotting up to him and extending a hoof.  “Look, I didn’t turn you into a pony, and without a few tests I won’t know how to turn you back.”  Nix glowered at the mare for a second, before reluctantly taking her hoof and drawing himself back to his hooves.  

He took a few shaky steps, then turned and smiled widely at Ridge Dancer.  “See, not so hard at-”  His mouth snapped shut.  The lime green unicorn’s eyes had glazed over as she stared through him.  “Uh, Dancie?”

“So...hot…” she whispered to herself before the fog sloughed off from her eyes.  With a quick shake of her head, her gaze became fierce as her eyes bored into him.  “I’m sorry, Nix.  What did you say?”

“Oh, I said Twilight wants to experiment on me with painful needles and electricity for the sake of science,” Nix replied with a dismissive wave of his hoof.  His sudden lack of a fourth hoof sent him tumbling to the floor again.  Ridge Dancer shot a furious glare towards the lavender unicorn, who was ignoring the pair and had one forehoove firmly planted on her chin as she stared into space, muttering to herself intermittently.  The guardpony’s horn lit up with a vibrant green glow before suddenly cutting out.  She whirled around and took a step closer towards Nix.  

“You said ‘Twilight’.  Not ‘Sparky’.  Twilight,” the orange-maned unicorn state simply.

“Yush,” he lisped, not even trying to remove his face from the floor.  “Yer pointh?” 

Ridge Dancer took another step towards the pink godslayer.  “Why am I still just ‘Dancie’, and yet she’s now ‘Twilight’?”  the mare asked neutrally, a dangerous light playing behind her eyes.  

Nix planted his bright pink forehooves squarely on the floor, staring at them with intense concentration.  “Well, you see, Ridge Dancer,” he said after a few seconds of attempting to stand, bringing his head up to meet her eyes with as much confidence as he could muster.  “Nicknames are actually a WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!”  Nix’s blue eyes widened as he shot a hoof towards the green unicorn, flailing it wildly in her general direction.  Twilight remained relatively quiet, her mouth moving silently off to the side of the pair.

Ridge Dancer’s eyes narrowed.  “I may not be a city pony, but even I’m not inept enough to-”  Nix shot off the floor with a powerful spring from his hind hooves and he crashed into her, resting his hooves awkwardly on her shoulders as she let out an embarrassed meep!  He brought his face uncomfortably close to hers, staring directly into her eyes.  She gulped audibly as she felt Nix’s soft, warm, measured breath meander its way across her blushing cheeks.

“What,” Nix growled, “is that thing between your legs?  And why were you jabbing me with it?”

Ridge Dancer cocked her head to the side in honest confusion.  She glanced downward for a few moments, then back up with a horrified look on her face.  She repeated the motion several times.  “I-is that-  Is that a-  AAAAAAAH!”   

Nix was immediately subsumed by a forest green glow and tossed to the side.  His equine form slammed into the balcony railing and cartwheeled over the side.  “For fuck’s sa-”  He crashed into the first floor with a sharp thunk.  

“Get it off get it off get it off!”  Dancie wailed as she ran in circles on the balcony above, frightened tears spraying from her closed eyes.    Her hoof caught an uneven board in the floor, and her eyes shot open as she sailed through the air towards the stairwell.  She impacted with the curved wall bordering the stairs and curled into herself as she began tumbling downward.  As she hit the first floor, she unfurled herself and landed on all four hooves.  Glancing back at the stairs, she nodded at some internal thought and a satisfied smirk bloomed on her face.  She confidently took a step forward.  She yelped as pain shot through one of her forehooves and it crumpled beneath her.


*     *     *     *     *


Bon Bon did her best to focus on the steady black drips coming from the coffee maker.  It gurgled angrily at her intermittently, before falling silent after a particularly protracted spell of animated burbles.  She shot a furtive glance to the stairwell.  The slight hissing of the coffee machine completing its task and shutting itself off was the only sound in the house.  There was no familiar sound of hooves trudging down the stairs from above.  Bon Bon frowned, tearing her eyes away from the stairs and snatching the coffee pot with an annoyed huff.  

As she poured herself a cup of coffee, her eyes wandered back towards the stairwell.  She hadn’t seen Lyra in the last two days.  Ever since the day after the party, when the mint-colored mare had stumbled home in the evening, muttering incoherently about the Everfree and dark gods, she had seemed different.  Then, a couple days ago, Bon Bon heard the front door open, reminding herself to oil its hinges as it chirped out with a small squeak.  She turned around from the steaming pots on the oven to see a green blur racing up the steps before hearing a door upstairs slam shut.  

While Bon Bon was always an early riser, her best friend was usually awake early enough that they could chat for a bit before the earthpony mare headed to her job at the family confectionary.  It was one of the things she looked forward to, every morning.  But these last two mornings…

The earth mare sighed and set her cup down.  She wandered up the stairs to Lyra’s door, her hoof hovering for a second before she knocked quietly.  

“Lyra?”

There was no response.  Bon Bon exhorted an annoyed snuffle, and turned to leave.  A barely audible noise halted her hooves.  She stopped, turning and putting one cream-colored ear against the door.  She heard muffled mewling from beyond and scowled.  With a deft flick of her forehoove, she turned the knob and the door slowly creaked open.

A horrified gasp escaped her lungs as she recoiled from the musty odor that assailed her.  The walls were covered in tattered sheets of papyrus, all coated in black ink save for two glaringly empty spots of bright beige on each page.    They all fluttered slightly at the slight rush of air that came from the opening door, a sea of shadows murmuring silently at her intrusion.    An assortment of empty inkwells, trinkets, and ratty quills—their feathers splotched with a clotted black ink—carpeted the floor.

“Uh, Lyra?”  Bon Bon asked shakily.  Her query was met by a sharp gasp, and the earth mare flicked her gaze to the noise.  Her green friend was hunched over her desk, seemingly frozen.  Lyra’s head turned slowly, a terrified gaze regarding the cream-colored intrusion into her room.  A frightening amount of crusted blood matted her mane and the fur around a seeping wound above one of her eyes.  

“Shut.  The.  Door,” Lyra whispered raggedly, one of her eyelids twitching.  

“Uh, Lyra, are you oka-”

“Shut the door before it finds us!”  she shrieked before immediately shooting both forehooves to her mouth.  Her eyes rolled wildly about the room, scanning fearfully for any malevolent intrusion.  Bon Bon cocked her head to the side, a look of sad concern on her face, before Lyra zipped passed her and slammed her bedroom door shut.  She leaned against it, hyperventilating deeply for a few seconds, before meeting her friend’s light blue eyes.  “If you leave it open, the Dark One may find entrance!” she hissed.

“Okaaay, Lyra,” Bon Bon replied dubiously, before cantering forward to get a closer look at Lyra’s head injury.  She drew her head back and focused on Lyra’s shimmering golden eyes.  “Hon, this looks infected.  We should really get you to a hospital.”

“No!  The Dark God lies in wait out there.  They say he—it—left, but then it found me in the park...It’s not safe out there, Bonnie.  Not safe to sleep, either.  He might eat dreams.  Haven’t slept for days.  He won’t get me, hahah!”  The aquamarine unicorn slid down her bedroom door into a pitiful heap at the bottom.  She slowly raised her head and settled two pleading, amber irises on her deeply confused earth mare roommate.  “Please...please don’t make me go out there again.  It’s always watching!”  She shifted her gaze to the numerous papyruses tacked onto her wall, cringing slightly at the myriad ‘eyes’ on their fibrous surfaces.  She flinched when a cream-colored hoof rested softly on her shoulders before Bon Bon pressed her forehead softly into her friend’s.

“Lyra, hon, what are you talking about?” she murmured softly.  “You’ve been acting strange the last coupla days, and you really should get this cut looked at.”  She drew her head back, scrunching her nose.  “It smells infected.  You can’t just hole up in your room like this with an infection.  You need to see a doctor.”

“But-  but-”  Lyra protested.

“No buts,”  Bon Bon interrupted.  “You’re going to see a doc if I have to drag you there myself, and we both know I’m more than capable of doing it.”  She smiled slightly.  The smile evaporated when Lyra’s hooves shot to her shoulders and began shaking her.

“You don’t understand.  You don’t understand!  We are nothing before it!  We-”

Bon Bon rubbed her friend’s shoulders soothingly.  “Shh-shh.  What don’t I understand, Ms. Heartstrings?” she asked with soft smile.  “What is this ‘Dark One’ you keep whispering about?”

Lyra’s eyes shifted from side to side for a few seconds, before settling on the calm blue orbs of her best friend.  She rushed out a hurried, hushed explanation, Bon Bon’s eyes growing harder the longer the unicorn mare continued her tale.  After Lyra finished and slumped further against the door, Bon Bon nodded once to herself before nosing underneath one of the unicorn’s legs and throwing it over her shoulder.  

Propping the mint-green unicorn up, she slowly led Lyra to her bed, whispering comforting words to her along the way.  With surprising ease, she lifted the mare up into her bed and gingerly tucked her in, nuzzling her gently and holding her in a hug until her friend’s breath became more even, her aquamarine chest rising and falling deeply as the unicorn mare slept.

“Now don’t you worry, Ly,” she said softly.  “Your best pal Bonnie is gonna take care of things.”  She slowly released her friend and slipped off the bed, trodding silently to the door.  She gave one last wayward glance to her sleeping friend, a look of haunted pity on her face, before she clenched her jaws and exited the room.  She locked the front door to her house as she set off towards the center of Ponyville, her features a hard mask of granite and fury.

Nopony hurts her friend like this.  Not even an alien.  



*     *     *     *     *


Nix frowned as he tore another length of denim off of his blue jeans with his mouth, his forehooves fumbling the strip of fabric as he tried wrapping it around the swollen green limb.

“I have no idea how in the Hell you use these damn things,” he muttered.  His piercing blue eyes lifted from Ridge Dancer’s leg and bored into hers angrily.  He imagined being a bright pink fucking unicorn lessened the sheer amount of aggravation he was trying to convey to his guardpony.  “Tossing yourself down a set of stairs, Dancie?  Really?”

“S-sorry,” she mumbled.  She was lying on her back on one of the sofas in the library’s main chamber.  Dancie’s left leg was wrapped tightly with torn denim strips to immobilize her sprain.  Nix was fumbling with one last strip between his mouth and his forehooves, before it slipped from his grasp and his hooves grazed across Ridge Dancer’s shin.  She winced and hissed a breath of air between her teeth, inviting an apologetic gaze from the bright pink stallion tending her sprain.

“Shit, sorry.  It’s been a while since I had to field dress a wound like this…”  Nix chuckled mirthlessly before he looked away.  “Sorry I can’t heal your injury correctly.”  He had tried.  He had drawn from his lifeforce and formed healing weaves the second he was able to pick himself up off the ground and make it over to Ridge Dancer.  They rebounded weirdly and seemed to bounce around in his skull before dying an ineffectual death.  Nix did the next best thing, and began tearing strips from his blue jeans with his teeth..

Fucking pony world.  God-like power and here he was tearing shreds from his pants to set a sprain.  The irony did little to mitigate his searing headache from slamming into the wood floor earlier.  Figures.  A curse gives Dancie a damn phallus, and he can’t even heal his own damn headache.  He made a mental note to hate this world even harder than he already did before clamping down on a bit of denim with his teeth and pulling it tight with his hooves, readjusting Ridge’s forehoove and eliciting a pained hiss from between her lips.

“Shh-shh, you should be good after that last one,” Nix intoned softly.  The mare beneath him met his eyes for a moment before glancing away, blushing more deeply.  Nix drew his head back slowly.  “Oh.  Oh, no.  Not gonna happen, Dancie.”

The mare glanced back at him with a confused gaze.

“Look, I’ve been around enough to know...what it’s like to ‘be around’,” he said, slowly withdrawing from the prone mare.  “I have no intention of staying in this form longer than I have to, and I really don’t find ponies’ physical forms all that enticing.”  

Ridge Dancer’s eyes widened.  “N-no, it’s just that-  I mean, you were-!” she sputtered out.  With a frown, she broke the former human’s gaze and sulked.  “Stupid stallions.”

Nix snickered slightly before he caught himself, and prodded the unicorn mare on the couch with one hoof.  She glanced back at him, and he shot her his most winning smile.  She blushed again, and Nix immediately dropped the smile.

“Look,” he said, “you wanna have this discussion again when I’m back to being a flat-faced primate, we can do that.”

“Really?” Dancie asked, her excitement poorly concealed.

Nix regarded her curiously for a moment.  “Uh, sure, kid.”  The unicorn mare beamed up at him.  He did his best not to frown back.  “But you should know things...probably won’t change in the least.  Most especially my sensibilities.”

Ridge Dancer cocked her head to the side at that, but was interrupted from her thoughts by an excited exclamation from the lavender librarian off to the side.

“That’s it!”  Twilight trotted over to the pair from the foot of the stairs, Nix’s charcoal duster held between her teeth.  “Probably,” Nix thought he heard her mumble.  

“First, don’t touch my fucking jacket.  Second, how can you even talk with that in your mouth?”

Twilight spat his trenchcoat out and cocked her head in momentary confusion, before shaking it off and smiling.  “I’m pretty sure I know what happened, but there’s just one thing I need to check, first.”

With a scowl, Nix raised one forehoof and twirled it in small circles.  Weirdly enough, in pretty much every reality he had visited, the ‘get-to-the-fucking-point’ gesture seemed almost universal.  Almost.  Part of his aversion to non-bipeds came from a reality where twirling his fingers in a circle like that meant, roughly, “Me love you long time,” to the resident tentacle monsters.  Things quickly became awkward.  Things were becoming awkward here, too, but at a much more lethargic pace, as a pained grimace formed on Twilight’s face and her cheeks flushed crimson.

“Well?”  Nix asked impatiently.

“Well, you see, I just need to verify something.  If this is what I think it is, there will be an easily identifiable physical symptom.  It’s just, well...err…”  Twilight examined one hoof as she pawed the ground anxiously.  “I need to see Ridge Dancer’s, uh...her ‘it’.”

“Her ‘it’?” Nix deadpanned.

“It’s just...there should be blue spots...I don’t mean-”  Twilight forced out.

“It’s a damn penis, Sparky,” Nix interrupted bluntly.  “Ridge Dancer woke up with a cock.”  The ex-human didn’t bother registering Dancie’s reaction.  He already knew her cheeks were probably a darker red than her hair.  “Seriously, what are you, five?”

Twilight scowled at him, before her features softened and she gave Ridge Dancer a sympathetic gaze.  The bright green mare was understandably horrified.

“N-no,” Dancie stammered out as she attempted to rise, before wincing and falling back onto the couch, clutching her wrapped hoof to her chest.

“If it’s any consolation,” Twilight said apologetically, “this is just as embarrassing for me as it is for you.  If it’s alright with you, it’s best if we get this over with quickly.”

The guardpony rolled her panicked eyes from Twilight to Nix.  The pink unicorn shrugged his shoulders.  “Look, I know it’s bad, but if Sparky here is gonna fix it, you’re just gonna have to deal.  Sorry.”

Dancie pursed her lips and blew out a puff of air in resignation, her features sagging with sudden exhaustion.  “Fine,” she mumbled out quickly.  

As they were wont to do, things took it upon themselves to happen.  But it is rare for things to happen separately, for it is in their nature that they occur at the same time.  Usually the worst possible time, but always at the same time.  Whether it is that Fate has a sense of humor, or just an acutely honed taste for sadism; or whether Princess Celestia had just chosen that moment to finish her missive and send it to Spike; or whether the mares had decided the previous night that Nix should spend a few days with each of them, and this morning was Pinkie Pie’s day; or whether a silently snickering dragonequus tugged a few strings while summoning a bag of popcorn to watch the aftermath, the end result was the same.

Twilight peered between Ridge Dancer’s hind legs, a horrified grimace on both unicorns’ faces as the purple mare inched slightly closer to get a better view.  A potted plant on the edge of the room spurted out a shower of black soil as a pink head popped up, a manic grin forming a gleaming gash on the mare’s features as the unfortunate plant found itself rudely evicted from its home and relocated atop a poofy pink mane.  

“I love this game!” Pinkie Pie squealed.

A pair of glittering blue eyes formed the vanguard of a magenta streak through the air as the pony zipped out of the pot, towards Nix.  A cluster of hapless flowers spun in the air before plopping down into their original home.  The pink blur slammed into Nix, and the pair tumbled a few meters before coming to a stop, Pinkie Pie’s head placed squarely between the ex-human’s pantsless legs.  She glared with frightful intensity at his lower abdomen, her features sharpened in razor concentration.  

“Pinkie, what the fucking fuck?! What are you-” 

“Shhhhh, this part requires the most concentration,” Pinkie Pie hissed, her features scrunching up.

A polite cough echoed through the library’s main room from atop the stairs, where a small dragon observed the four ponies below.  He clutched a sealed scroll in his left claw.  “Uh, Twilight…” he started, his slitted irises flicking between ponies below.  

Twilight jerked her head from between Ridge Dancer’s legs and slowly turned her head towards her assistant.  “Spike?!  I-  I-  What are you-?”  A grin started forming on Nix’s snout at the horrified look on the librarian’s face as she met her dragon’s eyes.  He grunted when a pink hoof slammed into the side of his ribs, and shot a glare towards Pinkie.

“You have to maintain your concentration,” the pink mare chided.  “Almost there…”  She bit her tongue, focusing harder.  The pink stallion beneath her just cocked his head.  Ms. Pinkamena had either finally snapped and was going to rape him with her eyes, or she had finally snapped and was currently engaged in something not even he wanted to consider.  He glanced at his duster on the ground nearby.  If he could get to it, summon the power of shadows…

“Aren’t you all doing this backwards?”  Spike asked nonchalantly as he waddled down the stairs, motioning towards them with his free claw.  

“What?” Twilight gagged out in a high-pitched whine.

“Well, in those stories you’re always writing, normally this part comes before the part where the mares and the stallions get underneath the covers together.”

“What?”  Twilight managed to wheeze out in a ragged whisper, rounding on the violet dragon as he approached.

“You know, those stories you keep in the chest at the foot of your bed?” Spike prodded.  “When you pass out on your desk I usually have to put ‘em away before you drool on them.  They’re really good!”

“Wha…”  Twilight’s eyes had glazed over at this point, gazing at a point in the wall well over her small assistant’s head, and her mouth worked soundlessly.  

“I even sent a coupla the good ones to Princess Celestia,” Spike explained, his eyes closed and the parchment held out towards the purple unicorn.  Pinkie Pie wore a frustrated grimace as Nix failed to halt his heaving chest, plagued as it was by an unrelenting spell of snickering.  

Twilight shook her head and her eyes focused on her assistant.  “You what?” she muttered in a barely audible whisper.

The dragon arched an eyebrow.  “I sent some of your really good stories to the princess?  Like the one with that guard, Captain High Staff?”  Spike paused, rubbing his chin.  “Or was it Hard Staff?”  He sighed.  “I forget.  It was the one with the three mares in maid outfits, though.  That much I remember.  It wasn’t nearly as good as The Art of Plowing, though.  I even made a copy for Applejack since I figured it would be right up her alley!”  

Spike beamed up at Twilight.  The unicorn stared through her small assistant as her mouth gaped.  A tinny squeak escaped from her constricted throat like a strangled mouse attempting song.  Nix threw his blond-maned head back and roared with laughter.

“Be.  Quiet!”  Pinkie shouted harshly, her eyes narrowing on Nix’s pink lower abdomen.  “If you don’t, I’ll-”  Nix’s stomach gurgled loudly, and the earth pony’s eyes widened immeasurably.  She immediately leapt into the air, squeezing her eyes shut at the apex of her jump as confetti shot forth from her mane.  “Yessssss!”  She landed next to Nix, and immediately shot out a pink hoof to help him up.  He grudgingly accepted, slowly pulling himself to his four hooves.  

“I’m the Grand Gastrointestinal Gurgle Glaring Champion,” the pink mare explained in a rush of breath.  Her eyes suddenly narrowed.  “It’ll be a warm day in Tartarus before a mare can make a stallion’s stomach grumble before me.”

“Oh…” Spike said with a hint of dejection in his voice.  “I thought you were doing something else.”

Twilight jolted, shot her head to the gathered ponies, and squealed, “THERE’S BLUE SPOTS IT’S POISON JOKE I’LL GO FIND THE CURE’S INGREDIENTS!”  Nix watched with a grin as the lavender unicorn zipped through the door to the kitchen and, presumably, out the back door.  

Spike waddled up next to him, eyeing the departing mare with confusion.  “Huh.  I wonder what’s gotten into her.”  

Nix clapped him on the back with one hoof, eliciting a small, proud smile out of the dragon.  “Well, Ser Spike, she’s probably just humbled by her own talent as an author.”  He wrapped his pink hoof around the dragon’s shoulder and a grin bloomed on his face.  “Tell me more about these stories she’s writing.”


*     *      *      *     *

Canterlot, Several Months Prior


“What?!” Lieutenant Stone Wall blurted out, his expression incredulous.  “Guard-Captain Glancing Shock is advocating military action against the Diamond Dog quarry near Fillydelphia?  Is he mad?!  They’re technically Equestrian citizens!”  Stone sat down on the soft, red velvet carpet, and shook his head sadly.  “Princess Celestia, I trust your judgment unconditionally-”

“But?”  Princess Celestia interrupted blandly, only half paying attention to the Royal Guard stallion below.  Her eyes scanned a few more lines of Twilight Sparkle’s hoof-scribed book, The Art of Plowing, before she closed it and set it aside with small tendrils of a telekinetic weave from her horn.  She met the lieutenant’s eyes and arched one eyebrow slightly.

“Well, Princess, it’s just that…”  Stone Wall let out puff of air, breaking her gaze and pausing, no doubt thinking carefully of how to best call into question Captain Glancing Shock’s competence without openly making himself seem a better choice for Guard-Captain.  He brought his eyes up again and said, “It’s just that some of the Guard is talking.  They say that whatever happened in Bayrut changed the Captain.  That he has it out for diamond dogs because of it.  And, this is just between you and me, but they’re also saying he, well,”  Stone paused here, for dramatic effect, no doubt.  Celestia noticed that the lieutenant pointedly left out mention of Shining Armor, who was party to the same military debacle as Captain Shock.  The stallion before her had already inadvertently called into question her choice of Glancing Shock as Captain of the Royal Guard, and probably dared not suggest her mental faculties had proven apparently inadequate twice, now.  Did all of her subjects truly think her so vapid?  Stone stared straight into her eyes, his features stone.  Again, another deception.  It was too easy to see the signs of his inward nervousness. Celestia took a sip of her ‘tea’, meeting his gaze evenly, and passively waved one hoof for him to continue.

“They believe he is violent as a result of his...condition.”  Stone Wall quickly raised one hoof towards her and shook it slowly, as if to ward off any rebuttals.  “Not that I agree, mind you.  While Shining Armor was an exemplary Guard-Captain, almost iconoclastic, Glancing Shock’s competence and experience cannot be denied.”  If Stone was as idiotic as she feared, she hoped she wouldn’t have her fears confirmed by the next words out of his mouth.  The stallion prostrated himself before her, and she mentally groaned.  Surely she couldn’t have been considering Stone Wall as captain of her Guard if he were this intent on undermining his own commanding officer?  

Unfortunately, Stone managed to slightly surprise her by continuing, “Therefore, I think it is good to place at least some merit in my Guard-Captain’s estimation of the situation, even if I believe his solutions to be a bit...hyperbolic.”  If she still allowed herself the ability to express her emotions to her little ponies overtly, she might have raised an eyebrow at his admission.  Particularly because of Stone Wall’s treatment of his own subordinates being somewhat hyperbolic and unrealistic.  However, the fact that even Stone was willing to admit that Captain Shock’s concerns held weight lent credence to the new Guard-Captain’s efforts to defend Equestria, even if he appeared to have some difficulty in obtaining the loyalty of his own lieutenants in the process.  Given his short tenor, the latter was to be expected, and his perceptivity in the matter of the disappearances in Fillydelphia suggested the situation might be more delicate than she realized.

She let out an almost imperceptible sigh, both because of the conversation and because of her student’s recent literary exploits—The Art of Plowing was most decidedly not about farming techniques.  Could she, in her near ageless wisdom, even begin to broach the subject to Twilight without fragmenting the young unicorn’s sense of propriety?  She shook her head slightly, banishing the thought.  She cared for her student, but a greater issue deserved her attention.  She moved to take another sip of her tea, and feigned imbibing another drink after suddenly finding her cup empty.  Celestia fought off the urge to let her tired eyes droop, but spared a wistful glance towards Twilight’s book.  

“Your highness?” Stone Wall asked hesitantly.

Her student’s book was crass and uncultured, and quite what she’d expect from the youth of her kingdom.  But it was also free, its words twirling fae twitting through the breeze and ruffling skirts and offsetting scholarly glasses, its bindings mute to conflict beyond the safe confines its author scribed.  She glared at the book’s impetuous bindings, resenting its freedom and ignoring the stuffy guardpony not a few hoofsteps away.  Was that music she heard?  Such beautiful music, such pining sorrow in its lilting melody that she couldn’t help but-

A side door to the throne room slammed open, crashing through her fugue, and her sister’s blue head poked through the entrance with a wide grin.

“Sister!”  Luna cried.  “This latest one from thy faithful student features tentacle monsters!  Tentacle monste-”  Her voice cut off, a mortified expression on her face as she noticed Stone Wall staring at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Lieutenant Stone Wall,” Princess Celestia said levelly, regaining the soldier’s attention, “your report here has been immensely informative.  I thank you again for your enduring service to Equestria.”

Stone Wall knelt and bowed his head deeply.  “The honor is, as always, all mine, my Princess,” he replied gravely, slowly raising to his feet and turning to go.  He paused halfway to the grand double doors of the throne room, and turned his head back.  “Tentacle monsters, my Princess?”

“Oh, yes, Lieutenant,” Celestia said with frigid sobriety.  “Terrible creatures.  My student sent me a report that mentioned they prefer to make their homes in dark, moist crevasses.”  She levitated the tea cup to her lips and gazed over its edge at him neutrally.

Stone Wall grunted and held himself straighter.  “Then have no worries, Princess.  I shall make doubly sure that our stallions take extra care near such treacherous canyons.”

“Wise words for any time, and for any stallion, Lietenant Stone Wall.”  She lowered her cup and nodded slowly towards him.  “Dismissed.”

Luna and Celestia shared a glance as the doors shut behind him, making sure to wait a few moments so that the departing Lietenant could not hear their peals of laughter.


*     *     *     *     *
Ponyville, Present Day


“And that’s how my great-great-great-great-greatgreatgreatgreat grandma Gruel Pie got Gastrointestinal Gurgle-Glaring banned from the Equestrian games!  It took two weeks to clean it all up!”  Pinkie squealed as she hopped around.

Nix pointed a hoof at her.  “How is she making those squeaking noises when she jumps?”

“Dude,” Spike said gravely.  “Pinkie is Pinkie.”  He waved one claw dismissively, but bit his lip.  “We all try not to think too much about it,” he muttered.  “Whatever.  I should go help Twilight hunt down the ingredients for Poison Joke’s cure.  It seemed like something was bothering her…”  

As he waddled closer to the front door of the library, Pinkie Pie suddenly froze.  “Ear-flop, eye-flutter, knee-twitch,” she whispered hoarsely before diving for the floor.

Spike turned, eyes wide.  “What did you just-”  There was a loud crash as the door behind him  exploded off its hinges, sailing straight towards him.  Without looking, the purple dragon crumpled to the ground faster than Paris before an invading force.  The door spun through the air over his head.

“Oh, for-” Nix mumbled as the airborne door shot at him.  It paused a few centimeters from his sullen, defeated unicorn features, caught in a dark green glow.  “...the sake of my awesome, pyschotic guardmare,” he finished with poorly concealed relief, shooting Ridge Dancer a small glance.  The glow around her horn vanished, and the door clattered to the floor at his feet.  She turned towards him and flashed a bright grin.  

“Where is he?!”  a demonic voice howled from just outside the door.  Dancie’s grin faltered and she looked worriedly towards the entrance.  It came towards them, then, a pale pony on four thundering hooves, the pink and purple whorls of mane on her head rippling like bruised, welted flesh, framing a scowling mask of murder, hatred, and adorably cute blue eyes.  The demon-mare stopped and stamped her hoof, sending a jagged crack through the hardwood of the library floor.  Her sapphire eyes glinted coolly around the room.  

“Where’s the human?” Bon Bon hissed.
	
> Chapter 27: In Vino Not-So Veritas
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The clockwork clacking of light blue hooves on the concrete sidewalk provided rhythm to Glancing Shock’s flicking eyes as he trotted through the towering, haphazard jungle of concrete and glass that sprung up around him.  Throngs of ponies surged to either side of him, coming, going, jostling past one another, touching.  His twitching eyes memorized the gaits of ponies coming towards him, and those to either side, and his brain raced predicting their movements even as he adjusted his motions precisely.  He passed through the crowded streets like a living ghost, always a hair’s breadth away from grazing up against anypony despite the thick, swirling crowd running to and fro, oblivious to the pedestrian tustle as they brushed past one another on their way about the city.

Glancing Shock would have grimaced if he could.  Instead he kept his eyes forward, searching, ever-moving in spite of the numbness behind them.  He focused on the steady clopping of his hooves, their percussion never erring in spite of the small changes in his trot he made to avoid touching the others around him.

He hated cities.  He hated Manehatten.  And, as a few dried crumbs of bread bounced off the side of his head, most finding a home in his spiky blue and white mane, he hated his companion.  An inaudible snort of disgust escaped his nostrils.

Control.

“Tho ith luhk thiff,” Night-Captain Moon Glade said, holding half a haydog in his hoof as he hovered in front of the light blue pegasus, his leathery wings flapping slowly as he moved backwards over the crowd.  A few more crumbs sprayed from his mouth, new tenants in Glancing Shock’s mane.  The pegasus’s lips thinned slightly.

Control.

Moon Glade gulped loudly, his brilliant white smile returning to his face as he raised the half-finished morsel in front of him.  “Ponies don’t take ta’ meat, right?  Yet ‘ow in the everlovin’ darkness o’ Luna’s nethers did they come up with…” he frowned, scrunching his eyes at the haydog in his hoof, “‘textured vegetable protein’?”  

The ex-Guard-Captain remained silent, subtly flinching away from errant shoulders and flanks as he navigated the flowing corridor of oncoming ponies with his odd, mechanical grace.

Control.  

“Not kiddin’ ya’, boyo.”  Moon Glade brandished the small food item a few centimeters from Shock’s face, motioning towards it with his free hoof.  “Jus’ like the real thing, I tell ya’.”  His smile faltered for a second.  “Not as good as tha’ hotdogs in Pawland, tho’.  Heard they was made from actual Diamond Dogs.  Tasty lil’ things, them.”  He glanced down at his haydog before leaning forward and taking a large bite.  His eyes squinted shut and he chewed happily, spraying a few more crumbs at Glancing Shock’s face.

The pegasus stallion trotted forward evenly.  

Control.

The Night-Captain’s wings froze as his eyes shot open.  He started sinking towards the sidewalk throng Glancing Shock was busy avoiding.  Accursed cities.  So many targets to dodge, so many things that could go wrong.  His clockwork hooves clopped ceaselessly, before his entire form froze as he felt a hoof clock him on the shoulder.  Passing ponies ran into him, brushing past and muttering annoyed curses about the Celestia-damned tourist.  Shock’s eyes became distant.

Control.

The hoof impacted his shoulder again, and his eyes focused on the dark blue night pony prodding him.  As he met Moon Glade’s eyes, the Night-Captain thrust the remainder of his haydog towards the blue pegasus.

“I ‘eard all about that nastiness over in Bayrut.”  Glade leaned closer, revealing his sharpened canines as his grin widened.  “Wanna see what the mangy bastards taste like, boyo?”

Glancing Shock swatted the bat-pony’s hoof aside and, with a flap of his shuddering wings, tore straight up into the air.  A crack of thunder roared out and the nearby city ponies drew back in surprise, before shaking their heads and continuing with their tasks.  Glancing Shock could swear he could see Moon Glade’s slitted, yellow eyes following him skyward, that Celestia-forsaken grin plastered all across his face like some kind of mask, before he broke past the skyline of the buildings around him and released a howling, visceral shout.  The electricity in his wings arced violently in the air all around him as his chest heaved in and out, before both evened out and the last static sparks died amidst his feathers.

He slowly floated back down to the street, his amber eyes blank as he rejoined the throng.  They resumed their ceaseless flicking as he took one step, then another.  Before long, his hooves struck with even intervals as they carried him closer to the river, and Manehatten’s sprawling wharves.  

His wings tingled as they felt a small rush of air brush against them, and his searching eyes pointedly ignored the small grin on the Night-Captain’s face as he kept pace beside the trotting pegasus.  

“Ya’ know, boyo,” Glade said, shoving the last remnants of his haydog into his mouth and swallowing loudly with a smack of his lips.  “If I’da known that removin’ that stick from yer bum made ya’ squeel like a damned banshee...I’da done that a lot sooner.”

Glancing Shock’s left hoof slammed into the sidewalk as he ground to a stop.  He slowly turned his head to his unwanted companion as his dull eyes narrowed a fraction.

“I hate you.”

He turned his head slowly back towards their destination, and began his mechanical canter again.  He did his best to ignore the amused snort he heard behind him.

Control.

A short while later, the pair trotted forth from the constrictive grasp of granite and glass onto the rolling expanse of Manehatten’s port.  As a fluttering mass of gulls cawed irreverently overhead, Glancing Shock repressed his desire to wrinkle his nose at the increasingly acidic brine of the ocean spray assaulting his nostrils, instead opting to flick his eyes towards either horizon.  Situational awareness was almost as vital to his control as was personal avoidance.  He made sure to nonchalantly dodge those entering and exiting from the port and the nearby warehouse district, his gaze flicking to the nigh-ancient roads growing from the natural bay into the sprawling metropolis behind him, a pulsing, dissonant heart of supplies and ponies feeding a clockwork monotony he’d just barely escaped with his own conscience intact.

A great multitude of wooden seafaring vessels were docked, their sails folded and bound, and the ships tied securely to stone decks.  The cacophonous melody of an endless throng of seagulls was interrupted almost constantly by the shouts of earth ponies, pegasii, and minotaur sailors as they swarmed the ships, unloading freight, loading crates, and raising their voices in boisterous, productive instruction.  Off in the distance, in a cordoned off section of the harbor, airships made their lazy descent into the calm waters of the bay, slowly tracing a path to stone piers in an orderly fashion as directed by pegasiii overseers in the sky.  There were even a few griffon airships in the throng, their sleek, armored shapes contrasting sharply with the Equestrian aircraft.  

Glancing Shock still could not understand why ponies insisted on their helium or heated air balloons being structurally separated from their carriages.  Didn’t they realize that all it would take is a pass from a pair of griffons, with their razor sharp claws—or even a sneeze from a dragon—to separate the carriage from the very thing keeping them airborne?  It was thoroughly illogical.  Stupid, even.  All it would take from one oversight is a slight accident, then all the supporting ropes snap and a horde of retards suddenly found themselves fatally incapable of reproduction…

Control.   

“Look, mate, about earlier…” his hated companion started.

“I don’t care,” Glancing Shock replied in monotone.

“No, seriously, there’s a lot o’ misconceptions ‘bout us thestrals, an’ I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least put your fears ta’ rest, boyo,” Moon Glade insisted.  

The light blue pegasus still didn’t care.  His eyes still twitched around him, assessing threats and possible leads, even while his lids remained flat.  “We were given a mission.  Given recent perturbations in soul magic in the region, it remains likely that this location possesses the highest possibility for locating the human, given the nature of his magic.”

“Look, mate, I know you pony-types can be flighty about meat, and us thestrals are just-”

“I still fail to see the tactical value of what amounts to a wild goose-chase after a being whose primary contribution to Equestria was extensive property damage.”

“-but honestly, boyo, weren’t my intent to set you off any,” Moon Glade continued, mostly telling the truth.

“This task could be performed by any unicorn of sufficient ability, and the fact that the princesses insisted on sending both captains of their guard-”

“Ya' mean the one remaining captain?”

Glancing Shock paused, slowly turning his head towards the bat-winged pony next to him.  Moon Glade merely smiled back at him. 

“Do you know the first precept required of griffon Bladehunters, Moon Glade?”  Shock asked.

Glade’s smile faltered for a millisecond.  “Well, a little birdie ‘ere and there told me a few things that were right useful, but-”

“A Bladehunter neither wears nor wields that which he does not kill, collect, or craft himself,” Shock interrupted calmly, taking half a step towards the Night-Captain.  He paused, raising a hoof and gazing at it nonchalantly.  He buffed it a few times against the front of his scuffed brown brigandine, before setting it down and meeting Moon Glade’s eyes.  “My armor is leather.  All of it.”  The pegasus stallion narrowed his eyes.  “Griffon leather.  Do you honestly believe I give two shits about your tiny little fangs?”

“Now, boyo, tha’ss just unfair-”

“I spent ten years with a griffon Bladehunter and a dragon.  I am one of the only two non-griffon Bladehunters accepted into their ranks.  Do you honestly think I give a damn about your place in the food chain when I can kill you ten times over before you blink?”

“Now I wouldn’t say that-”

“I would.”  Glancing Shocking eyed Moon Glade levelly for a few seconds, before snorting and turning back to the docks.  As he turned, he flicked his tail and a dagger slammed into the wooden deck at the Night Captain’s hoofs.

Glade’s eyes widened slighty, his hoof poking at the hilt of the knife.  “Is that-?!”

“One of yours?”  Glancing Shock paused, and smirked over his shoulder.  He quickly schooled his features back to his lazed, stone-faced mask after a small arc of electricity leapt from his hoof and struck the wooden deck, leaving a small black mark..  “I figured you were fast enough to recognize the Guild’s imprint on your own blade…”  

With a snort and an arrogant toss of his white mane, the light blue pegasus turned and began prancing down the boardwalk.  And slammed headfirst into a red, elderly stallion, sending the pony sprawling.

“By Celestia’s saggin’ tits, boyo!  You tryin’ ta’ kill innocent bystanders, now?”

Glancing Shock quickly shook his head and clenched his jaws, willing his internal magic into a focused sphere in the center of his being.  After a few controlled breaths, Shock looked up to see the blood-red stallion stumbling to his feet.  He was an older pony, with a few strands of greying hair sneaking into  his meticulously styled, straightened charcoal mane.  A pair of candy canes, almost forming a heart but never touching, adorned his flanks.  On shaky legs, he stood and took a few tentative steps with a noticeable limp in his left forehoof.  

The edges of Glancing Shock’s lips creased downward for an instant.  “I’m very sorry about that, sir.  You appear to be injured.  I will send for medical attention immediately.”

The older stallion looked up, surprise painting his features, before letting out a small snort and shaking his head vigorously.  “That won’t be necessary, young one.  The limp’s an old injury from my time back in the guard.  Although if you could help me find my spectacles…”

Moon Glade was next to the pony in an instant, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses held out with one dark grey hoof as he hovered next to him.  The stallion glanced over in mild surprise before recovering his glasses and donning them.  The Night-Captain’s eyebrows were furrowed and his lips barely curled upwards.  

“Ah, many thanks, good…”  The red stallion’s gaze danced across Glade’s armor before his eyes widened.  “...Oh, the Night-Captain of the Royal Guard himself!  This is quite the pleasant surprise!”

“Until you get to know him,” Shock muttered under his breath.

“So,” Moon Glade said, trotting around the older stallion, sizing him up.  “Mister…?”

“Sweet Treat,” the older stallion replied, nodding his head towards the candy canes on his flank.  “I own a candy store nearby.”

Glade arched his brows.  “A candy store in the shipping district?”  Glancing Shock held his tongue, even if this was a diversion from their mission.  He, too, was a bit curious.

Sweet Treat just chuckled mirthlessly and adjusted his spectacles.  “You have no idea how long it took me to convince a bank to give me a loan for my business.  When one finally relented, they were surprised at how quickly I paid them back.  As it turns out, my initial intuition that sailors returning to port might want to get their fillies and foals a small treat played out extremely well.”

Moon Glade mulled over something for a moment before flashing the red unicorn his bright smile.  “Makes a bit o' sense.  Oh, and sorry for taking up yer time, Mr. Treat.  You sure yer not hurt?”

Sweet Treat smiled wanly and shook his head slightly.  “Just an old training injury, Night-Captain Moon Glade.  I’m almost glad I got it.  Ended my time in the Guard, but left me the free time to open up shop here in Manehatten.  Now, I really must get back to my shop, unless you had another question…?”

Glade’s smile broadened and he clapped the elderly unicorn stallion on his good shoulder.  “Nah, boyo, yer good to go.  Nice meetin’ ya’!”

“Likewise, Night-Captain,” Treat replied, nodding his head slightly before turning and limping his way towards the city proper.  Glancing Shock watched him leave, and shook his head slightly.

“I didn’t even see him,” the pegasus said softly, shamefully.  His master would be disappointed in him at the slip-up.

“Yeah, neither did I,” Glade responded, his tone wierdly distant.  He shook his head and turned towards Glancing Shock.  “Well!  Anyway, all distractions aside, think we should probly get back ta’ the task at hand, eh, boyo?”

Shock stared at the Night-Captain levelly.  “‘Celestia’s sagging tits’?  Really?”

The thestral shrugged his leathery wings.  “What?  The princess has gotta be gettin’ up there in tha’ years, right?”  

Glancing Shock merely snorted and began trotting towards the warehouses.  “You can take the urchin out of the streets, but you can’t take the streets out of the urchin,” he mumbled to himself.

“No, really.  What?”  Glade called after him, a grin plastered across his face.


*     *     *     *     *


The sunrise in Ponyville painted the sky in a swirling mess of orange, red, and gold, the rays of light from the sun peeking over the horizon seeming to dance on the underside of sleek clouds hovering somberly in the fading, purple sky.  If Nix stopped to think about such things, he might be taken by the beauty of the early dawn.  Instead, he found himself distracted by the company of a hyperactive pink pony, a small dragon—who was nervously breathing repeated sighs of relief and muttering something about open doors—and a bright green unicorn with a tangled mess of burnt orange curls for a mane.  The mare had donned his charcoal trenchcoat in an effort to hide her...well, in an effort to hide the results of a magical curse by the name of “Poison Joke”.

And then, of course, there was the Scion of Death snorting steam from her cream-colored snout in the doorway, the early light of the day silhouetting her clearly pissed off form with an ominous, blood-orange glow.

“Where is the human?!” the adorable harbinger of pain snarled, cracking the wood of the door frame as she pawed her hoof threateningly.  

Nix regarded the mare for a second, considered the aching pain in his head and limbs and his seemingly total lack of regenerative power, and turned his pink unicorn head to Pinkie Pie.

“I don’t see a human anywhere.  Do you?”

The pink earth pony met his eyes for a few seconds, their deep blue depths seeming to twinkle for a second before she gave him a grin.  

“Nope.  I don’t see any humans here!”

Bon Bon’s eyes narrowed.  “Minotaur Patties!” she screamed.  The cream-colored mare began zipping around the room, lifting up random pieces of furniture with disturbing ease.  “He’s gotta be here somewhere!”  She darted over to Nix, and he felt his unicorn body hefted effortlessly off the ground as her light blue eyes scanned the carpet he had previously occupied.  Nix stared at the bouncing curls of pink and dark blue of her mane for a second before clearing his voice.  She flinched and jerked her gaze up, her eyes widening as a blush formed on her cheeks.  She immediately set Nix down.

“Uh, sorry there, hot stuff,” she said with a meek chuckle, examining a few interesting whorls in the wooden floor.  “It’s just this human guy really scared the stuffing outta my best friend.”

“Did he, now?” Nix asked, tilting his head to the side.  “And how did he do that?”

“They were apparently attacked by timberwolves and he went overboard.  Like, glowy eyes and shadow tentacles overboard.”

“Hmm, I can see why that might be a problem.  Do you mind if I talk to your friend?”

Bon Bon’s head snapped up, her mouth pursed tightly and her blue eyes freezilng over in a harsh stare.  “And why would you need to do that, Mister...?”

Nix met her glare for a few seconds before dropping his gaze and laughing.  The mare’s pout slowly turned into a scowl before Nix met her eyes again, his dark blue irises twinkling mirthfully.  “You can call me Bennu.  And it’s nothing bad, I promise.  It’s just that I’ve got a bit of experience with hunting monsters, and helping out the survivors.  I might be able to help your friend.”

Bon Bon drew her head back slowly, her eyes narrowing.  “What kinda experience?”

Nix coughed.   “Well, I’m visiting here from, uh…”

“Saddle Arabia!”  Pinkie chirped.

“...Yes, Saddle Arabia.  I was there for years hunting-”

“Gigantic sandworms!”  Pinkie interrupted cheerfully.

“Yes, those.  And-”

“But,”  Bon Bon interjected, “the Eluvian Sandworms have always worked in harmony with ponies, and are historically benevolent!”

“Yes, well-”

“Except when they aren’t!” Pinkie finished ominously, leaning forward and coming uncomfortably close to Bon Bon’s face.  

The cream-coloured mare drew back, her eyes flicking between Pinkie Pie and Nix.  “Well, if you say so…”

“So it’s settled!” Pinkie cried happily.  “It’s a Make Your Bestie Not Be Afraid Of Ridiculously Powerful Dark God-Slash-Awkward Hatchling Thingy Party at your place!”

“P-please don’t,” Bon Bon murmured.

“Too late,” Nix said drily.  

The earth pony mare sighed slighly.  “Alright, fine.  At the very least you might be able to convince her to see a doctor.”  

Pinkie let out a loud squeak and leapt into the air.  Bits of confetti exploded from random crevasses in the library.  Nix stared ahead dully, ignoring the bits of brightly colored paper that peppered his pink coat from the Young Adult shelves, and trotted outside, followed by Pinkie Pie and Ridge Dancer.  

Spike looked around at the party-themed mayhem now littering the floor.  “No way I’m gonna clean all this up,” he grumbled to himself.  He followed the mares and the human-turned-unicorn out into the light of the early morning.  The library was silent for a few seconds before Pinkie zipped back inside.

“Almost forgot~!” she sing-songed, grabbing the broken door and slamming it back into its frame awkwardly with a loud bang!  She hammered her hooves around its edges, bending the wood in ways that wood should not bend and effectively wedging it into place at a 45-degree angle.  She pulled back, cocking her head and appraising her work, one hoof raised and her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth in deep concentration.

“Perfect!”

She leapt out of a conveniently open side-window and caught up with Nix and Bon Bon shortly before a crash erupted from upstairs.

“Enough!” a ragged voice screamed after a loud bang erupted from upstairs.  Trixie Lulamoon trotted up to the balcony and reared up, placing her hooves on the balcony as her guest room door still tremored from its impact with the wall.  “Trixie demands some peace and quiet for her beauty rest.  How else will I make my grand Comeback Tour if the constant noise at early hours of the morning-”

Scritchscritchscritchscritch.

“-what is…?”  Trixie turned and found her vision subsumed by two mismatched eyes, one a glowing teal, the other a milky, dull white.  She jerked her head back and found herself snout to muzzle with a timberwolf that matched her in size, staring at her with its leafy tongue lolling out of the side of its teeth-lined maw.

Trixie let loose a bloodcurdling scream and sprinted back into her room, slamming the door shut behind her.  The timberwolf frowned and whined, before trotting up to her door and lying down, it’s tail still lazily wagging and dragging across the floor. 

Scritchscritchscritchscritch.


*    *     *     *    *


As the timberwolf’s unsatisfied whining died down, a few of the darker whorls of wood on the far side of the ceiling shimmered, then began undulating as they coalesced into vaguely serpentine form.  A few malevolent chuckles reverberated through the empty library before the lines in the wood began to pulse out from the wood.  A talon grew out from the wood itself, and a paw burst out beside it in a small explosion of splinters.  The two appendages tensed, their sharper digits digging into the wood before the wood rippled like water and a dragonequus burst from the ceiling with a loud pop!

Discord floated down from the ceiling, ignoring the timberwolf on the upper floor who had completely missed detecting his presence.    His limbs held his stomach as he let out a few more laughs, before he hissed and his talon found itself cradling his forehead.  The red in his eyes flashed green for a second, two seconds, before settling back to their normal blood red.

‘We need to talk.’

“Tch, against the rules.”

‘Well, so are you.  Never stopped you before.’

“Fool boy,” the dragonequus growled.  “You don’t understand.  If they hear-”

‘-the ‘Lord of Chaos’ talking to himself in a building the Newbie just left?’

Discord frowned.  He was beginning to regret freeing this particular consciousness.  Even if said consciousness had managed to trick Death itself.  Much as he loved a good romp, the being’s constant nagging was proving to be more of an annoyance than entertaining.  He sighed to himself.

“Fine, fine.  But we do this in private,” he said with a wave of his paw.  “Mostly,” he muttered, disappearing in a flash of light with a snap of his fingers.  


*     *     *      *     *


As the bell hanging over the thick hardwood door at the entrance clanged with a dull chime, the bartender barely glanced up through his pair of thin-rimmed spectacles before returning to polishing the beer mug in his hooves.  After a brief moment, he paused his ministrations, and slowly looked back towards the entrance.  Discord stood in the entry way, a lopsided grin on his face as he swayed lightly from side to side.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the pony growled out.

“Oh, bartender,” the dragonequus slurred out in a thick tone, swaying slightly more as he stumbled towards the bar.  “I could *hic* really use a drink right about now…”

The bartender’s eyes narrowed and his spectacles seemed to gain a white glow.  “You.  Are not.  Supposed to be here.”

Discord cocked an eyebrow.  “My, my, such intensity.”  He made a dismissive wave with his paw, turning away from the pony and leaning back against the bar.  “I’m not here about that, trust me.  And the ‘me’ in that reality doesn’t even know about this place existing.”  He craned his neck backwards until his head was upside down and met the bartender’s eyes.  “Honestly, do you have any idea how annoying it is to shut off most of my personalities when I come here?  It gets far too quiet for my liking up here,” he said, tapping his forehead with his talon.

‘Not quiet enough for my liking,’ an errant thought burned through the chaos god’s mind.  The dragonequus let out an annoyed hiss as his eyes flashed green again.  

The bartender stared at him evenly for a second, before frowning and returning his attention to cleaning the glass in his hooves.  “Whatever.  What’ll it be?”

“Hmm, I’ll take a glass of cotton candy and-”  He paused and hammered on his chest for a second, coughing a few times.  “Sorry, this’ll only take a-”  Discord wretched twice before a human with dark brown hair and an impeccably tailored suit slid out of his mouth and onto the next barstool.  More than a bit of saliva followed suit, drenching the man in a goopy mess.

The human slowly raised his hands and looked down at himself, his mouth twisting in revulsion as he took note of the fluid that coated him.  He slowly turned a pair of vibrant jade eyes towards the dragonequus.  “Disgusting,” he hissed.

“Now, now, Loki.  You know how I get when I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

“You haven’t drank anything, yet,” the bartender said in a gravelly voice.  

Loki continued to glare at the chaos god until Discord rolled his eyes and snapped his talons.  The saliva disappeared in an instant.  “Like I was saying, I’ll take a glass of cotton candy, and my dear confidante here will probably want mead or something.”  

Loki’s scowl lessened.  “Shot of tequila, actually,” he stated, earning a raised eyebrow from the dragonequus.  “What?  I’m not some Norse trickster god, anymore.  These days, I can’t even sense what was supposed to be my godsoul.  To be honest, I’m half convinced I’m some sort of homunculus you created for shits and giggles.  And even if I were Newbie’s Loki, no way in Hel would I do something as predictable as, ugh, mead.”

Discord eyed the trickster god warily for a second before shrugging.  The pair grabbed their drinks of choice and headed over to a secluded booth in the corner, where the shadows bloomed far more prominently than the already dimly illuminated interior of the 8-Bits Bar.  Once they were seated, Discord clapped his paw and his talon together, smiling broadly.

“First off, to the best of my knowledge, you are very much the same Loki that your good pal Nix knew and failed to save.  Your presence in Tartarus before I freed you is proof enough of that.”

“Yes, ‘freed’,” Loki replied, deadpan.   

“No need to pout.  Your presence in my noggin is almost a necessity to maintain certain levels of Harmony in this reality, to avoid the attention of beings both you and I would probably rather avoid.  Honestly, they’re annoyed enough already that I’m on one of their so-called ‘keystone worlds’,” Discord said, making air quotes.  He leaned forward and his lips split in a toothy grin.  “If I could get away with it, I would love to turn you loose and see what sort of shenanigans you got up to.”  His grin quickly faded, however.  “But again, between Nix arriving here and nearly shattering existence as the denizens here know it, I’m afraid for now you’ll just have deal with being a bit cramped up with the trillion or so other Discords that are in my head.”

Loki sighed.  “Fine.  What’s another ten thousand years with a tactless fool, anyway?”

Discord’s smile returned.  “Splendid!  I’m so glad we got that nasty business out of the way.  So, now that we’re safe from prying ears...relatively speaking...” the chaos god said, shooting a glance towards the bartender on the far side of the room, “what was it you wanted to talk about, exactly?  Surely you didn’t insist upon this little soiree because of an existential crisis.”  

“Right, that,” Loki said, pausing and meeting the dragonequus’s eyes with a serious gaze.  “You’re going to piss him off, and it isn’t going to end well.”

Discord merely arched an eyebrow.

“Nix.  You’re going to piss him off.  And, trust me, that is probably the last thing you should do.  You have no idea just how powerful he was when I knew him, and if he truly freed the lifeforce that Sammael had imprisoned and has it at his beck and call, I’m not even sure I know how powerful he is, anymore.  ”

“The ‘lifeforce’ Nix possesses?”  Discord smirked, resting his elbows on the table in front of him and steepling his fingers.  “And how, pray tell, would I anger the resident godslayer with my actions, enough to get him to bring his,” Discord coughed, “fearsome power to bear?”

Loki grabbed the shot glass of tequila in front of him and brought it halfway to his lips.  He gazed at the amber liquid for a moment before looking up.  “You’re underestimating him.”

Discord chuckled.  “I don’t think I am.”  He grabbed his glass of...cotton candy, eyed it for a second before—with a wink towards the ex-god across the booth—tossing the entire thing into his mouth and biting into it with a crunch.  “Still, most of the reason I bother to keep you around is to help me facilitate Nix’s...naturalization into Equestria.”  A few more mastications, a few more tinkling sounds, and Discord swallowed the glass of pink cotton candy.  “He did create the place, after all, even if most of its inhabitants showed up after a few of the Greater Aions found out about it.”

At this last bit, Loki’s eyes widened slightly and he cocked his head to the side, but Discord waved off his confusion.  “It’s irrelevant.  How are my actions going to anger Nix?”

Loki’s eyes flicked back to the shot glass in his hand before he continued.  “If Nix realizes he’s being manipulated, he’ll probably become violent.”  Loki met the dragonequus’s red and yellow eyes, his own emerald irises hard as glittering gemstones.  “A large part of the reason he became a quote-unquote ‘godslayer’ in the first place is because seeing the numerous immortals around him preying upon the mortals drove him into a fury.  He recognizes on an intellectual level that, sometimes, the intervention of gods into mortal affairs is necessary.  That’s probably why your two pony princesses are still alive.  At the same time, though, if he thinks he himself is being manipulated?  I can’t say what he’s been through in the years after I ‘died’, but the last time Nix was treated like some sort of marionette, he went to war against the most powerful god of our reality, one that had already beaten every other pantheon of gods on our world into submission.”  Loki paused, swirling his tequila a bit and frowning.  “And from what you’ve...allowed me to know…he not only killed Sammael, but he utterly destroyed the godsoul itself.”

“I’m sure you’ll get to the point eventually, but I’d rather not spend my eternal life to get there,” Discord groused.

“You keep shielding him from his power.  From the lifeforce.”

A black mustache and curly black hair flashed into existence on the dragonequus.  “You keep using that word, ‘lifeforce’.  I do not think it means what you think it means,” he said in a heavily accented voice.  “Also, have you seen a six-fingered man?”

“Look, Discord.  I know you’re the god of chaos, and this is kind of your schtick, but this isn’t a fucking joke,” Loki said.  “Nix was trained by a goddess of war, the greatest swordsman to have ever existed in my world, and my own father.  Even without the use of his full power, he’s probably the most dangerous thing you’ve ever encountered, and the second he figures out it’s you shielding him from the lifeforce of our reality, and that you’re pulling his strings for shits and giggles, he’s gonna come after you, and there’s a good chance this world is going to suffer for it.”

Discord gasped, his appearance returning to normal.  Well, his version of normal, anyway.  “As touched as I am by your concern, I fear you misunderstand.  I’m not shielding his power at all.  His lack of attunement with this reality is the root of the problem, but his current inability to utilize his power is mostly due to his physical form.  Ponies are, by nature, only capable of utilizing Harmony magic.  There are exceptions, usually due to outside interference, but creatures the likes of, say, King Sombra, are the exception, not the rule.”  

He folded his hands and leaned forward, his grin widening.  “Nix is the only one of his kind that draws upon both Chaos and Harmony, but in his present physical state he’s only capable of channeling Harmony, like any other average pony.”

Loki’s eyes narrowed and he set his tequila down.  “His...kind?”

Discord chuckled and leaned back.  “I think after a bit of story time, you might be a bit less inclined to oh-so-rudely inveigle yourself in my actions.  Just listen.”  The dragonequus closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

“In the beginning-”

“In the name of the fucking All-Father, don’t ever start a story like that,” Loki interrupted harshly.  “Hated that book,” he added in a low grumble.

Discord gave the well-dressed trickster an amused glance before closing his eyes and continuing.  “Before time existed, there was One.  With a capital ‘o’, mind you, for dramatic effect.  This being, I suppose you might call it, was perfect beyond comprehension, be it of a mortal mind or a god’s.  I suppose, if you like, you could call it God, with a capital ‘g’.  Put another way, it was everything your old buddy Sammael aspired to be, but never could.  It didn’t have imperfections not because it was too good for them; ‘good’ or ‘bad’ were below this particular entity.  Because the very concept of imperfection was foreign to this God—let’s call it the Monad—imperfection was incapable of existing in its presence.

“Time did not exist for the Monad.  Existence didn’t exist for the Monad.  The Monad simply was, a Harmony greater than any you could find in any existence, including the present one with terribly harmonious, prancing little equines.  A being for whom the word Harmony was merely a sloppy facsimile of its perfection.

“Well, you’re getting the summarized version, here.  Suffice to say that the Monad created the Aions, or more specifically, emanated them out as a result of its own nature.  And from the Aions and the innocence of one in particular by the name of Sophia, all creation was born.  All creations except for one, in fact.  Every reality.  However, Sophia was not the Monad, and her actions, her white sin, resulted in every reality being flawed.  Complicating the matter was the creation of life.  On every reality, there were beings that were neither of the Monad nor of the Aions the Monad had sired.  They were souls encased in physical shells, trapped on a lower plane of existence.  Furthermore, in many realities they were beset by powerful beings that only possessed fragments of the godsoul of an Aion—you, Loki, know of them as Archons.”  Discord paused for a second, before muttering, “As annoying as you are I’d be surprised if you weren’t one of them, but I digress.”  

The dragonequus continued.  “To the Monad, imperfection was anathema to its very existence, but at the same time it was, well, perfect.  Of course infinite mercy was part of the package.  These mortals could not exist next to a perfect being, nor could Sophia suffer punishment for her errors.  Infinite mercy, and all.  However, such actions flied in the face of the Monad’s very being.  It could either abolish all imperfection, and return to it’s immutably perfect state...or it could indulge its mercy.

“When the Monad broke itself to preserve the existence of mortals and the life of its adored daughter Sophia, the paradox of its perfection versus the suffering of an infinite number of flawed existences splintered it into countless fragments.  That was also the day I came into being, or rather, was given a consciousness, in case you’re curious.”

“I wasn’t,” Loki replied drily, but Discord ignored him.  

“Over time, these fragments have been slowly gathering, joining, melding together.  The Monad is perfection beyond words, Harmony without restraint.  In the act of effectively destroying itself, I was created from the desire that said perfect Harmony is never acheived, lest all mortal souls cease to exist and Sophia suffers punishment for her crimes.  The Monad knew of the inevitability that it would gather itself again if all realities were left to their own devices, and thus I was...emanated...into existence to intercede and prevent such a fate from occurring.

“To that end, I took a fragment out of the countless that had splintered from the Monad, and I imbued it with a piece of my very nature.  I imbued it with chaos.  Then, I split my mind and spread out across all realities, watching and nudging here and there as I felt necessary.”

Discord sighed heavily, and his features seemed to sag.  He gave Loki a tired look.  “That was...quadrillions upon quadrillions of years ago.  I’m sure you know more than most how irrelevant time is to an immortal, though.”  

Loki considered it for a moment before nodding slowly.  He had spent ten millennia locked in this chaos god’s head after escaping from Tartarus, but he had spent most of the time dormant, sleeping away the years that he found unimportant.  If he had possessed the mental faculties of a mortal, he would have gone insane a long time ago.  He shuddered, and wondered briefly how Nix had managed.  He shifted the shot glass of tequila on the table a few inches and fumbled in the breast pocket of his jacket for a smoke.  He placed the cancer stick in his mouth and brought his palm to the tip before frowning after a few seconds.

Discord grinned.  “Performance issues?”

“Fuck off,” Loki said dully, the unlit cigarette dancing around from the corner of his mouth.  “I forgot, no godsoul.”

“Well then, allow me!”  With a snap of his fingers, Discord made the first half of the cigarette explode like a firecracker.  With a measured breath, Loki ignored the display and drew deeply on the smoke.  Eventually, the few errant embers that remained on the frazzled tip of his cigarette caught, and his lungs dilated with the familiar, heavy burning of nicotine and smoke.  

“That’s a nice story, and I’m sure one of those limbs of yours finds its way to your back when you wake up every morning for saving all creation.  Still doesn’t answer my original question,” Loki said, blowing out a puff of smoke and adjusting his glass of tequila again.

The dragonequus chuckled mirthlessly.  “At the start, there were countless fragments, but over time, and timelessness, there’s now only four fragments left.  The one I originally imbued with Chaos presently resides in a mutual acquaintance of ours.  Nix isn’t utilizing the ‘lifeforce of the universe’ or some hippy nonsense.  Honestly, if you actually believed that, you might as well start praying to Gaia and trying to heal people with crystals or some nonsense.”  

“Hey, I knew Gaia.  She was a really nice goddess,” Loki said, unable to repress a small smile.  “And if you saw her rack, you’d probably start praying to her, too.  But again, answers?”

Discord frowned.  “You know, for a trickster god, you’re really not that good at piecing things together.”

“It was a lot easier when I had access to my godsoul to augment my intellectual capabilities, to be honest,” Loki admitted, his shoulders slumping slightly.  “Look, I get Nix is one of these four fragments.  What of it?”

The dragonequus sighed and muttered, “Why did I ever bother freeing you?”  Loki pretended not to hear.  

“Look,” Discord said pointedly, “if I tell you, will you promise to stop interfering with me out there?”  The chaos god motioned towards the bar door.  “We’ve already probably raised a few red flags with the Aions that came in and renovated the place after your friend Nix accidentally created it.  If one of the other fragments catches on, as well…”  Discord pursed his lips and let out a sigh.  “Well, let’s just hope it isn’t Byakko.”  He leveled a sober stare at Loki.  “Look, you’re here mostly for consultation.  We need to get your fiery friend back to full power before some of the nastier things that are after him catch up.  You interfering physically with Equestria itself may as well be like firing signal flares into interdimensional space bringing a great many powerful beings here, and if Nix loses this place, there may as well just be three fragments left instead of four.”

“Stop fucking with you to protect the newbie.  Got it.”  Loki lifted his glass of tequila to his lips.  “Although it’s hard to stay dormant with all those other voices.”

Discord chuckled.  “You get used to them after an interminable eternity or so.  If it really bothers you that much, you’re welcome to stay here, for a while.  The 8-Bits Bar is a bit under the radar, and I can enchant the door to send you back to my noggin the second you decide to head back to Equus.”

Loki raised his eyebrows and dropped the still-full shot glass from his lips.  “Really?”

The dragonequus nodded.  “So long as you behave, that is.”

Loki flashed a bright white smile and placed his right hand over the breast pocket of his perfectly tailored, black suit coat.  “Scout’s honor.”

Discord’s eyes narrowed slightly at the display, but he nodded once and pushed himself away from the table and through the back of the booth behind him.  The objects wavered like water, and he began backstroking through the bar towards the door.  Every time a limb brushed against a physical object it sent liquid ripples through the item’s surface before they settled again.  The bartender scowled at the display, but remained quiet.  Loki ignored the antics, gazing quietly into the amber spirits in the shot glass on the table.

The second he felt the dragonequus’s essence disappear from the pocket reality of the 8-Bits, his face shot up and the irises of his eyes began to glow a bright green.  He grinned at the familiar surge of power.  He immediately scanned the door exiting the bar, and let out an annoyed huff.  The weaves that would entrap him and send him back to the dragonequus’s mind were sloppy, and childish.  He clucked his tongue.  The poor god of chaos had no idea who he was dealing with.

He looked back to his full shot glass of tequila with a grimace, and slowly pushed the awful drink to the corner of the table.  He clasped his hands together and drew more deeply on his power, grinning to himself.

Whether it’s stealing expectations, dignity, or physical items, a good trickster is a good thief, and a thief is only as good as their ability get away with it.  Loki had gotten away from Death a long time ago—that much Discord knew.  But the dragonequus wasn’t a trickster, he didn’t have the nature for it.  He never asked what Loki stole in the first place…

As the well-dressed god began to pull his hands apart, a bit of his black bo staff appeared from between his palms, the edges of it crackling with arcs of electricity before Loki clapped his hands shut, sending his preferred weapon back to a pocket in subspace.  He looked up at the bartender, who was still polishing his glass, but giving him a cautious look nonetheless.

Loki was a very, very good thief.  Escaping Death was fairly easy.  But doing it while stealing his own godsoul?

As he plucked another smoke out of his pocket and placed it in his mouth, the trickster god’s smile widened.  He raised a hand and a small ball of green flame ignited the tip of his cigarette.  God, he loved his job.

“Bartender!” he barked.  “A glass of your finest honeyed mead, if you will.”
	
> Chapter 28:  A Hoof Full of Sugar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Do you like muffins?”

The blueberry muffin sat between a pair of pink hooves on the cheap linoleum tabletop, fresh out of the oven and steaming lightly.  If someone had condensed every carnal pleasure into its basest form, had taken licentious nirvana and weaponized it into a pastry, it would probably have been this single muffin.  The blueberries on the surface still glistened with the promise of the tangy, fruity nectar of abandon.  Upon wrapping one’s lips on its edge, the overwhelming, comforting heat it emanated would send anyone into the wildest throes of abandon.  The light, barely detectable crispness of its outer layer would fall to that first, fullest bite, releasing its meltingly hot interior into the welcoming lips of its newest thrall.

Nix stared at the useless fucking muffin between his goddamn pink horse hooves sullenly, trying to drown out the noise of the cheerful patrons of Sugar Cube Corner.  He didn’t eat, the fuck use would he get out of a damn piece of bread?  His eyes dragged upwards until they met—sort of—the eyes of the walleyed, grey pegasus sitting across from him.

“Sure,” he said.  “Love ‘em.”

A blooming smile spread across the mare’s face, and she began to tremble slightly and shift her hooves back and forth.  Again.  Before long, her open excitement breached the event horizon of unadulterated jubilee, and she began to stand up in the booth.  Again.  Nix winced inwardly as the mare shifted her position until her chin was on the back of the booth and her posterior was aimed squarely at his face.  Again.  The pegasus mare began to shake her rump back and forth.

“Do you like my butt?” she asked.  

Again.

Nix frowned and tried to bury the sight in his retarded pink pony hooves.  The visit to Bon Bon and Lyra’s place hadn’t gone well.  Lyra was clearly delirious, and her stories of “the Dark God” and how he was going to eat all ponykind’s souls was perturbing enough.  Not to mention how uncomfortable it was when he suddenly found her pressed against him, imploring the ‘brave stallion’ to stay by her side so she could protect him.  The fact that she hadn’t bathed in days and that her fetid breath revealed she probably didn’t brush either didn’t help.

Mostly, it was because she had called this Dark God a monster.  He wasn’t.  Nix wasn’t.

“Err, my butt’s gettin’ pretty tired here, Mr. Unicorn…”

Nix sighed.  “No, Derpy.  I do not like your butt.”

The mare’s flanks immediately froze, and she slowly turned and sat back down in the booth.  She looked at him with one forlorn eye before turning away.  Before she accidentally met him with a second forlorn eye, and turned away further.

“O-okay, Mister.  I’ll just...I’ll…”  She frowned and her head drooped for almost a minute.  Then, she slowly looked up, one of her eyes catching the slowly cooling muffin and the other meeting his exasperated expression.  A happy grin spread across her face.

“Do you like muffins?”

Nix ignored her, silently waiting for Dancie, Spike, and...he shuddered.  And for that freakishly strong earth pony mare to return.  What was her name, again?  She had gumdrops on her cream-colored flanks.  Probably something related to sweets.  Candyass?  Sweet Cheeks?  He racked his brain trying to think of a nickname he could use that wouldn’t end up with her overpowering and raping him.  Like the flower shop mare had tried.  Like the mare with the carrots on her flank had tried.  Hell, even the Stetson-wearing orange mare that Twilight knew, Hillbilly, had given him enough appraising glances to last him a lifetime.  

Thankfully, Pinkie had been around to curtail their—wait, did he really just think that?  He pursed his lips and resignedly blew out a puff of air.  This would be over soon.  He could get back to being a human, and most of these ponies would probably run from him, screaming through the streets to escape the horrible god-ape that their princesses inflicted upon them.  Well, except for Lyra, anyway.  He’d have to set things straight with her.  She was a pony, sure, but at least she wasn’t annoying.

And at least he wouldn’t be naked and hot pink.

A few clopping sounds drew him from his revery as Derpy decided to forego his answer on muffins and began the next cycle of their repetitive conversation.  She swung her head around to look back at him with one of her eyes, and grinned.

“Do you like my-”

“Are you fucking retarded?”  Nix asked dully.

The grey mare flinched, her crooked eyes widening.  She collapsed back into the booth and her eyes began to water.  Nix pointedly examined the blueberry muffin, his pink ears flattening against the side of his head.  He wished he had his headphones to drown out the sobbing that would inevitably come next.

Silence reigned for a moment as even the background din of the bakery seemed to halt, and for a second the only thing Nix heard was the synthetic creaking of the plastic padding beneath his flanks as he shifted uncomfortably.  Alright, maybe he shouldn’t have-

Nix jerked his head up at the sound of a loud crack! and the clattering of glassware.  The mare, Derpy, was shivering and tensing seemingly every muscle in her body, her hooves occupying cracked dents on the table in between a few empty plates.  Her eyes were closed and her jaw clenched and unclenched as her chest heaved with exertion.  After a few seconds, her tremors seemed to reach a pinnacle and she slumped slightly.  Slowly, the pegasus mare opened her eyes and raised her head.  Both of her golden eyes focused on him, and she softly exhaled.

“I was the head researcher at the state-funded Quantum Transmutation Laboratories,” Derpy said in monotone.  “A prodigy, they said.  They happened to be wrong.  I made a terminal miscalculation.  Turns out one equation was supposed to be non-linear, instead of the sloppy discrete function I had in place.  As complex mathematical systems are wont to do, this minor deviation culminated in a result that was quite different from the hypothesis of our experiment.  When accounting for Hoofsenburg’s Uncertainty Principle, it’s no small surprise that the resulting accident scattered my conscious perception across multiple realities, simultaneously.  As such, I find it difficult to maintain my full attention span on this plane, or on the others, for any substantial amount of time.”

The mare’s muscles seemed to tense again as she squeezed her eyes shut, and she snorted sharply a couple times.  When she looked back up at him, her eyes were still level, but her breath had taken on a ragged quality as her sides expanded and deflated rapidly.  On shaky hooves, she stood, rotated, and aimed her rear right at his face again, her tail swishing wildly.  She brought her head around in a series of jerky motions and stared him straight in the eye.

“I find your physical form arousing, and request that you engage in coitus with m-,”  her voice died off and her muzzle scrunched up.  Her left eye started to sink in its socket, and the focus of her right eye seemed to glaze over.  She began to shake her gray flanks again as her mouth bloomed into a wide grin.  

“Do you like my butt?”

Nix slowly raised his hoof towards the window next to them.  

“Oh, look, the muffin train is coming to town,” he said blandly.

“I-It is?!” the mare exclaimed.  “Omigoddess, mister, I’m so sorry, I just hafta go!”

Derpy stumbled over her wings, stepping on a few of her primary feathers, as she scrambled to extricate herself from the booth.  She rolled off the edge before flapping her wings and shooting towards the entrance to Sugar Cube Corner.  The wooden door frame only cracked a little bit when her shoulder slammed into it, sending her spinning through the door and out into the plaza like a rag doll.  She lay for a few seconds before her head jerked up and her eyes began scanning two directions at once.  She muttered a few words to herself as the ponies outside began to scatter, before clenching her jaw, furrowing her brows, and shooting off into the sky.

Nix peered out the window to make sure she wasn’t coming back.  

“Aww, where’d your new friend go?”

Nix fought the urge to spin and strike out as he felt a warm weight press itself against his back.  The unamused slits of his blue eyes glared at the tabletop.  He somehow managed to narrow them further when he felt a pair of pink hooves wrap around his chest from behind.

“Pinkie, you have three seconds to get your fucking hooves off of me and explain why all you ponies have turned into nymphomaniacs in the span of one morning, or I’ll go snap my own leg off in a chair and shamble around here spraying blood everywhere, scaring all the foals.”  

The hooves around his neck tensed momentarily before sliding off his shoulders.  A poofy pink mane and a pair of bright blue eyes slowly rose into view behind the edge of the table across from him.  Her head finished its lethargic emergence from whatever subspace existed beneath the table, and she rested her chin on the aged, laminated surface between the two of them with a manic smile.  

“The fuck-?”

“You called me ‘Pinkie’.”

“That’s your fucking name.”

“Not ‘Ms. Pinkamena’.”

“‘Pinkamena’ is a stupid fucking name.”

“First Luna, then Dancie and Rainbow Dash, and now me!” Pinkie squealed.  “Toldja we’d be besties in no time!”

“Fuck off.”

Pinkie cocked her head to the side, squinted her eyes, and poked her tongue out at him.  Nix scowled.  He was fairly certain his face as a pony was frozen into a permanent frown.  

The pink mare’s gleeful visage seemed to deflate for a second and she leaned back in the booth, sitting normally for once.  Or what the ponies around here considered “normal”.  Nix tried to avoid thinking about a certain mint-colored unicorn splayed out awkwardly across a park bench.  

Pinkie’s bright blue eyes scanned around Sugar Cube Corner.  The place was packed.  Pretty much every booth and table in the bakery was filled.  The constant melodious ringing of the tiny bell above the door was accompanied by the raucous, energetic conversations of countless foals and fillies as they streamed in from outside.  Nix guessed school had let out not too long ago.  

“Look, Nixxy,” Pinkie started pensively.  “Twilight had this entire week planned out, and I was kinda supposed to spend the day with you, but there’s so much of an afternoon rush here I really did have to help out the Cakes.  I don’t want you to think I’m trying to avoid you, or that I don’t want you as a friend.”

“You’re goddamn annoying, and I hope you avoid me in the future.”

A contented smile slowly bloomed across Pinkie’s face, and she leapt across the table, strangling him as she wrapped her hooves around his neck.  “I knew you’d understand!  See?  Besties in no time!”

“I...fucking...hate you…” Nix gurgled out.  

She released him and hopped down beside the table.  Nix rubbed his throat with his hoof.  His stupid, stupid pink pony hoof.

“Sorry about that, Nixxy.  But my break’s almost up and you really looked like you needed a hug.”

“I don’t,” he replied.  “Ever,” he added coldly.  “Also, the second I get turned back into myself I’m setting your godawful pink afro on fire.”

Pinkie giggled and shook her head ruefully, before meeting his eyes with her own twinkling, sky-blue irises.  “No, you won’t.  And thank you for finally calling me ‘Pinkie’,” she said with more evenness in her voice than Nix thought possible.  “Now!” she shouted, the hyper squeak returning.  “My break’s over, but my friend here can keep you company until I get off work!”

She reached under the table and pulled out a familiar white unicorn mare with purple-lensed goggles, plopping her on the bench.  The mare had a wild grin plastered across her face as she spun the glass plates on the table with her hooves and bobbed her head to an imaginary beat.

“Okayseeyoulaterbye!” Pinkie squealed, disappearing deeper into the restaurant in a pink blur.

With tired eyes, Nix stared at the unicorn mare across from him as her smile twitched and faded in tune with her slowing hooves.  After a few seconds, her hooves stopped spinning the plates and her brows creased visibly above her magenta goggles.  She clenched her jaw, reared up, and slammed her hooves down on the plates, shattering them and sending ceramic shards tinkling across the table.

“DAMMIT, PINKIE!  I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING SET IN PARIS!”  Vinyl Scratch shouted.  The myriad sounds of gaiety in Sugar Cube Corner sputtered and died, and a couple dozen pairs of eyes stared towards Nix’s table in shock.  The DJ tittered a little nervously and sank back into the padded booth.  

The edges of Nix’s annoying pink pony lips twitched upwards for an instant.  “Thought you ponies used the word ‘bucking’,” he said as Vinyl pointedly examined a piece of broken plate on the table.

“You travel as much as I do, you pick up on the vernacular of non-pony races,” she replied, glancing at him and waving one hoof dismissively as the sound in the room slowly lurched back to its previous harried din.  Vinyl dropped her gaze back to the tabletop for a second before her head jerked back up.  She leaned forward intently, her goggles filling up a large part of Nix’s field of view.  “Ho.  Lee.  Shit,” she said with a wide grin.  “You are fucking hot.”

Nix sighed.  “No, I’m fucking hot pink, for Chrissakes.”

“No shit.  Don’t find too many stallions in that color,” Vinyl said with a smirk.  “Pretty exotic.  I kinda have a thing for purple or pink stallions.”

“Great.”  Nix leaned his head back against the top of the booth and muttered a small string of expletives about goddamn ponies.

Vinyl Scratch removed her goggles and set them aside on the table.  She fixed him with a sultry stare, her half-lidded eyes partially concealing her deep red irises.  “So, you’re hot.  I’m amazingly hot.  Wanna go back to my place?”

“Where the fuck do you ponies get your pick-up lines?  Autistic Rapeology 101?”

“Uh, what?”

“No, I don’t wanna go back to your place.  Seriously, I barely know you.”

The unicorn mare mulled over his response for a second, and her shoulders slumped.  “Is it because I’m white?” she asked softly.

“What?”

“It’s because I’m white, isn’t it?”  Vinyl clenched her jaws and glared at Nix.  “You’re just sitting there thinking about all the pretty colored mares a cut stallion like you could bed on a whim, but oh, no, you aren’t gonna touch the ugly albino, are ya’?” she said, her voice slowly rising in volume.  

Nix pointed a hoof at her mane and said, “Uh, I don’t think-”

“It’s a dye job,” the DJ interrupted, crossing her hooves and pouting petulantly.  “But whatever, you wanna be a colorist fuckhead, I wouldn’t want to share a bed with you, anyway.”

Nix stared at her flatly.  “It’s not because you’re white.”

She brought her head up and narrowed her red eyes at him.  She held the glare for a few seconds before her eyes widened and her mouth gaped.

“Oh.  Ooooooh!”  she said, her bitterness dissolving in an instant.  “Oh, Goddess, I am so, so sorry!”

Nix cocked an eyebrow.

“Look, much as it sucks that a stallion as sexy as you are is, uh, batting for the same team, I just wanna let you know that I completely support same-stallion relationships if that’s really what you’re into.  Tartarus, I could even hook you up with a friend of mine in Appleoosa if you’re looking for a faghag friend.”  Vinyl grinned innocently.

Between all these goddamn ponies and Nix’s apparent lack of regeneration in his pony form, his face was really starting to feel sore from the amount of frowns he was flashing in the last hour.  He clenched his jaw.

“I’m not gay-”

“Oh,  you’re not?!  Well, shit, my bad.  Wanna go back to my place?”

“-I’m the fucking alien who you called retarded at that tree party a few days ago.  I came into contact with something called ‘poison joke’ and it turned me into a stallion, and apparently made every fucking ugly-ass snoutnose within ten yards of me want to jump my bones.”

Vinyl considered this for a moment.  “Wait, the party at the big tree library in the center of Ponyville?”  Nix nodded slowly.  “Dude, that was, like, two weeks ago.”

“Whatever.”

“So, if you’re actually that illiterate retard trapped in stallion’s body…a sexy, cut body rippling with muscle...” she mused with a small shudder before leaning forward, nearly pressing her snout against his.  “Would you like,” she stated, enunciating every word clearly and slowly, “to go to my house...and stick your stallion parts…into my filly hoohoodilly?”

Nix slammed his hoof into the table, cracking it.  “I’m not an idiot, and no!”

Pinkie Pie let out a small squeak as she popped up beside the table.  “Is something wrong here?”  

“Nah,” Vinyl said, waving a hoof.  “Just trying to get this guy here to go home with me.”

“Ooh, sounds like fun!  Can I come?”

The white unicorn grinned.  “Tell ya’ what, Mistress-”

“Just ‘Pinkie’ in public!” Pinkie hissed, glancing towards the door as the bell rang and a familiar light beige mare entered.

“-Pinkie...you promise not to pull me offa my tour for a month, and I’ll make damn sure you come.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened, her blue irises sparkling like the small waves of a lake reflecting the afternoon sun.  “Really?!”

“Tartarus, I’ll make sure you come multiple-”

“That’s it,” Nix interrupted, throwing his hooves up before tapping the table a few times in surrender.  At his gentle taps, the numerous cracks in the table spider-webbed out and, with a clinking shudder, the table collapsed, spilling silverware, plate fragments, and a still-cooling blueberry muffin to the floor.  With a shake of his head, Nix pushed a few remnants of the table off of himself.  “I’m out.”

He hopped out of the booth and started walking towards the door.  He was approached by the cream-colored mare as he made his way to the exit.  Bon Bon, was it?  Nix couldn’t be assed to remember.  

“Nixxy, come back!”  Pinkie wailed.  “Our day’s not over yet!  There's still plenty of tables!  And other, more bedroom-like furniture we could break through repetitive, concussive motions!”

Bon Bon put up a hoof to stop him as he tried to pass by.  “‘Nixxy’?  Thought your name was Bennu?”

“Nah,” Vinyl said, sidling up to the two of them, her goggles back in place over her eyes.  “Dude’s name is Nix.  I remember that much from that badass party a couple weeks ago.”

“Wait, ‘Nix’?”  Bon Bon asked, frowning slightly.  

After a moment, her eyes narrowed and earth pony mare fixed him with a glare of unrepentant hatred.  The next thing he knew, Nix had a heavy, cream-colored hoof flying towards his face.