SotS: 154 - Journey, Part 4 (Gray) · 3:15pm Apr 4th, 2020
see blog for previous parts. 4/7
154 – Journey
IV – Gray
“I still can’t believe our histories are defined by random musical numbers,” Jang commented. “It seems so… surreal.”
“Yet another thing the Tower does,” Joanne said. “They won’t exist after it falls.”
“Not unless you practice, anyway!” Pringle cheered. “It is possible to talk entirely in rhyme, you know!”
“Frivolous,” Onion muttered.
Joanne snorted. “Not as frivolous as Rev.”
The Elder frowned. “Joanne, you do realize she’s an actual person, right? What if she walked through that door right now, what would you say to her?”
“I’d tell her to her face exactly what I’m telling you. Frivolous and hypocritical. She’s just making excuses for what she believes.”
“That would require you to look up from your phone,” Onion snipped.
“And what about my trust of the Force?” the Elder asked Joanne.
“Same response,” she deadpanned. “Though not as ridiculously bizarre and convoluted. You’re simple. Keep Balance, feel the way of the Force, use but understand others. Not... that.”
“You don’t really know what my beliefs are, do you?” the Elder asked.
Joanne furiously typed on her phone. The Elder lifted a hand to block all Internet access in the chamber. “Uh…”
“You rely too much on outside information…” The Elder sighed. “Your criticisms are legitimate, but make sure you know what you’re talking about next time rather than repeating half-remembered complaints.”
Joanne refused to look up from her phone, though her face soured considerably.
“…Can we just get back to the excitement?” Pringle asked. “Come on, the final confrontation is upon us! Light versus dark, collapse versus preservation! Can the heroes make peace? What’re the mecha gonna do? How do Discord and Flutterfree try to save the day? What are Tessa and Troi’s real plans!?”
Jang folded his arms. “I think the more nebulous questions are better, especially since we don’t know the answer. What is the nature of belief? Is love the highest virtue? Why do people who claim to follow the same ideal disagree? Why do we separate ourselves into camps in the first place? And what does it mean to be held as an ideal?”
“…Can we just have some cool space explosions?” Joanne asked.
The Elder smiled warmly. “Yes. Yes, we can have some cool space explosions.”
“Oh no, here it comes…” Onion groaned.
The Elder took in a deep breath. The others all covered their ears.
“KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!”
~~~
Corona had no idea where Troi teleported off to. All she knew was that she was standing alone in front of a small army of red lightsaber-wielding dancers that no longer had a dance to occupy them.
“…Any idea where she went?” Corona asked.
There were a few shaking heads in response.
“Okay…” Corona tapped her foot. “So… what are you all going to do now?”
The woman in front shrugged. “Whatever we want. Not a fan of the heartsong in the first place, it’s an artifact of the Tower.” She deactivated her weapon. “Disperse, ever—”
The magic surge mixed with the Force grabbed everyone’s attention. They looked toward the temple-palace, where a noxious darkness was taking shape. First came the eye, and it was by far the worst part: a brilliant blue flame around a slit of endless void, surrounded by a grasping, fleshy exterior. It did not look at them, but even so they could feel its seething hatred of life itself. Massive, undulating tentacles sprouted from the back of the eye, creating a tangled mess of thorns, flesh, and darkness. Sounds akin to distant screaming came from its every surface.
There was no doubt as to its target: the Light Side of the Moon.
Corona moved like the wind, but there was never a chance she would make it in time.
The Light Side was not without defenses, however, for their champion rose as well. An orb of holy burning light intercepted the dark, jittering energy released by the Dark One. The Light One’s myriad metallic, fluorescent wings swirled in a complex spirograph-esque pattern, attempting to weave the attack past the Dark One’s defenses.
Throbbing tentacles met the light directly, burning, but holding strong. The Dark One increased its energy output, only for the Light One to compensate, prompting an explosion in the air between the two cities. The gates of both sides began to crack.
Corona inserted herself between the two of them, using all the energy she could spare to maintain a massive shield. She wouldn’t be able to keep this up against both of them for long…
Eve appeared next to her, adding to the shield. “Funny running into you here!”
Corona chuckled. “Surprise, surprise, surprise… I’ve got the Dark Side, you get the Light?”
“Right. There’s one problem. I don’t sense the magic levels dropping.”
“Even on Nucleon there is a limit, we should reach it…”
“We didn’t reach it around the Tower. Something’s keeping the levels high to maintain this level of combat.”
Corona smirked. “Then we just have to beat them the old fashioned way.”
“Naturally.”
They released the shield at the same time, switching to fire and ice in unison. The Light One found itself encased in an ever-shifting bundle of snowflakes and ice shards while the Dark One was caught in a burning hellscape of vicious flaming licks.
The ‘gods’ of the Sides of the Moon would not allow these summons to destroy the cities.
Corona intercepted a tentacle from the Dark One and purged it with a holy healing spell, using Bacon Pancakes to flatten another trying to attack her from behind. When it went for a direct dark attack, she attempted to absorb it and reflect it back. She woefully underestimated the Dark One’s power output. Her spell matrix exploded, sending her flying into the middle bridge.
Eve landed next to her, having just suffered a similar fate. They wasted no time, however, jumping back into the midst of it to prevent the two beasts from clashing directly. Raging Sights and the Element of Magic shone like stars in a nebula as they redirected the energy away.
In both cities, the organized Force-users were conflicted.
The great champions of their city, destined to destroy the other, were being fought by their very own gods. The Dark One sought to end the threat to the collapse, but Corona fought tooth and nail. Eve drove magic dart after ice shard into the just glow of the Light One, preventing that which needed to be repaid.
And the alicorn leaders of the Cities?
They were nowhere to be found.
~~~
Troi was grinning up until the point she heard the explosion. She teleported to the temple center instantly, bypassing its security.
“No!” she shouted. “No, I shot first, you shouldn’t… I had the shield!” She pointed an accusatory hoof at the pedestal that held the white spark. “You shouldn’t be able to do anything! This was my plan! I let them come down here! Why isn’t it working!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?”
There was no response. Connected though the temples may be, shouting at one did not carry over to the others under normal circumstances.
Roland pointed his gun at Troi’s head. “You are going to explain, quickly and simply, what you just did.”
“I used the unlocked ka-potential of the Dark Side temple to attack the Light Side. But… they must have found a way to retaliate! I need to go assis—”
Minna grabbed Troi’s head with her hand, psychically assaulting the alicorn. Troi was a master of the Dark Side of the Force, more than able to resist such conditioning. That said, it took most of her focus, allowing Mlinx to come in and knock her unconscious.
“…That was easy,” Burgerbelle said, holding an easy button.
“That may be a problem,” Ahsoka said. “I don’t know what any of this is. I don’t know how she did, but I can’t tell you about this. This is a Force temple, not a ka temple!”
“There’s something else going on here,” Minna said, trying to pry the Sweetie Shield out of the pedestal, but getting nothing. “Whatever this is, it activated the rest of the Temple.”
“It also made the summoning possible,” Thrackerzod commented, still scanning the magic lines all around. “If you can twist ka, you can use more magic than should be available and create things that shouldn’t exist… This wasn’t actually a ‘summon’ so much as a ‘creation from nothing’.”
Another shockwave ran through the temple.
“I’m glad we can’t see whatever it is she summoned,” Burgerbelle said.
“Whatever it is, it’s ugly and needs to be stopped,” Vriska declared.
“Careful,” Roland said. “The Light Side has its own monster, if she spoke the truth.”
“Dammit, we’d need to deactivate them both at the same time…”
Ahsoka frowned. “I… might be able to help with that. You have a team on the Light Side, correct?”
Mlinx nodded in confirmation.
“I need to meditate. I might be able to Force-project myself there.” She sat down, crossing her legs and closing her eyes. “Communication may be blocked… but the Force still flows between the temples. That can’t be stopped.”
“What do we do while you try that?” Vriska asked.
“Be quiet.” Roland sat down as well, crossing his legs. “Perhaps do the same.”
“We’re not Force-sensitive.”
“Leave her to her meditation,” Mlinx said, taking Vriska to the other side of the room. Whispering, he asked her a question. “What is that shield?”
“I have no idea,” Vriska whispered back.
“It’s a Sweetie artifact,” Minna said. “But Zod and Burgerbelle have no idea what it means.”
“Do you?” Mlinx asked.
Minna shook her head. “I’m not getting any confirmations, merely images of what it’s not. Whatever it was, it’s as old or older than this temple, and I’m fairly certain these temples have been around longer than the League of Sweetie Belles.”
“A mystery…” Mlinx scratched his chin. “Vriska, Minna, we need to prepare to blow this place at any moment. We need to find the most effective way to do that.”
“Bombs?” Burgerbelle asked, appearing in the middle of them with a large, cartoonish black bomb.
“…That’s better than nothing.”
~~~
The shockwave hit the Light Side.
“…What just happened?” O’Neill asked.
Nanoha traced the magic circuitry with Raising Heart. “The summon spell activated because… I don’t know why, something was introduced from another location. The magic is no longer draining like it’s supposed to.”
“A meta effect,” Starbeat realized. “Someone’s messing with ka directly. These temples might just be a ka-device!”
“That doesn’t make sense!” Ahsoka said. “I’ve been with them for years, they were never anything more than Force temples.”
“How old are they?” Starbeat asked.
“…Very.”
“Older than you, at least, which means there could have been hidden natures.”
The temple shook again.
“There’s a fight going on up there,” O’Neill observed.
Monika rolled her eyes. “Obviously whatever the Light Side summoned is fighting something from the Dark Side.”
“And if we destroy this side… the city is destroyed.” Nanoha frowned. “We need to coordinate with the other team. There has to be some way to send a message…”
“The Force-connection is still there,” Ahsoka said. “I ca—”
“You won’t have time,” Tesseract said, walking into the room. She pointed her horn at Monika and teleported the Lord of Ka out in an instant.
“That won’t keep her,” Nanoha said.
“She’s about to find herself in the midst of a battle of light and dark,” Tesseract declared, narrowing her eyes. “I doubt she’ll find the time. Just as you won’t find the time to contact your allies.”
“STAR PLATINUM: THE W—”
Tesseract cast a spell, petrifying Jotaro in an instant. “You won’t have time to do anything. Any action you take against me will result in your failure. You will stay here, inactive and compliant, until the Dark Side is annihilated.”
“You’re a moron if you think we’ll listen to you,” Lightning said, casting Esuna on the party, curing Jotaro’s petrification.
“We fight,” Starbeat smirked. “That’s all there is to say on the mat—”
Tesseract pushed all five of them back with a Force push hard enough to shatter ribs. She unleashed six lightsabers all at once, wielding one for every color of the rainbow, each fully independent of the others in her magic. “You were never supposed to be down here.”
Ahsoka stood herself up, activating her dual white lightsabers. “Sorry about that…”
“I never expected you to be a traitor,” Tesseract said. “Perhaps that was foolish. I knew you wouldn’t go to the Dark Side. But that your desire for peace would let you betray other sides I had not considered.” She clashed lightsabers.
“STARLIGHT B—”
Tesseract cast feedback, not losing a grip on any of her lightsabers. Nanoha’s spell blew up in her face before she knew what was happening. The alicorn petrified Jotaro again and grabbed Crimson Sushi with the Force, squeezing the Stand until O’Neill collapsed, holding his chest in agony.
“She’s manipulating ka!” Starbeat shouted, rapidly swapping through screens on her goggles. “She shouldn’t be this strong or this lucky!”
“ULTIGA!” Lightning shouted. Tesseract encased it in her magic and threw it at Nanoha before she could get up.
Ahsoka charged, meeting four lightsabers at once.
“Master Ahsoka, you know the Force…” Tesseract twisted her other two blades away from Starbeat, angling at Ahsoka from behind. “You do not know the Tower.”
“Let’s see which is better!” Ahsoka leaped over the two lightsabers coming at her from behind, grabbing hold of Tesseract’s neck with the Force.
Tesseract responded with a simple explosion spell, knocking Ashoka to the ground.
“Tesseract… you’ve got more of a plan than this,” Starbeat said, carefully angling a magic shield between herself and the alicorn. “What is it?”
“I am not falling into the monologue trap.” Tesseract cancelled both Starbeat’s shield and Lightning’s attack at once, grabbing Starbeat with her telekinesis and tossing her onto O’Neill, throwing the aim of his gun off. “I will do what needs to be done.”
“I notice you’re not being lethal…” Nanoha commented, getting to her feet.
“I am no fool. I know you are protected.” Tesseract angled her six lightsabers at the White Devil. “I do not have to kill you to accomplish my goal.”
Nanoha looked around, realizing she was the only one standing. She hefted Raising Heart. “You’d think that…” Her expression darkened. “But I won’t stop until I’m a cold, dead corpse.”
Tesseract pointed the purple lightsaber at O’Neill’s head. “Stand down, Nanoha O’Neill.”
Nanoha twitched. “You won’t.”
“You are right. I won’t. Unless you make it clear to me that I cannot win, in which case, I have nothing to lose.” Tesseract cocked her head. “I would prefer to kill Jotaro for the sake of justice, but you leave me no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Absolutely. I mean within the choice I have already made: justice must be served.”
“…How did you figure out about this temple’s ka-nature?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you. It would be foolish to do so.”
Inwardly, Nanoha swore.
Tesseract continued. “I will say this. They attacked first. I simply used what they unlocked to retaliate.”
“You’ve been building your society to threaten the Dark side in the hopes that they’d do this,” Nanoha observed. “Do not pretend you are the victim here.”
“Yes. But there was a reason. Eve is right, if I just attacked with no warning, we would become vicious conquerors. Now, we are the defenders, and our society will not lose itself to continued vengeance after the fact. Justice will be served and we will not fall into further temptation.”
“The cycle of revenge never ends.”
“That is why I am making it. There must be some act. The debt can never truly be repaid, but I will end the demands today.” She narrowed her eyes. “…And you got me talking.”
“That was all you.”
Tesseract remained silent.
~~~
Monika appeared in the air between the Dark One and the Light One just as they shot a volley at each other. Monika prepared to re-write herself alive, but Corona and Eve protected her from the assault with shields of their own, setting her down on the bridge below.
“Can you edit them?” Corona asked, frantically, slicing tentacles apart only for them to regrow an instant later.
“No,” Monika said, finding with annoyance that their character files were protected. “Gonna have to do something else…”
“HOLD THAT THOUGHT!” Pinkie shouted from so far away none of them could see her—but it sounded like she was right next to them anyway. “I’VE GOT AN IDEA!”
Corona, Eve, Monika, and both Entities of Light and Darkness stopped for a moment to look down.
The Austraeoh VI was flying at the entities at high speed.
“SMASHIN’ TIME!” Pinkie shouted from the Austraeoh’s front. All the weapons on the ship activated at once, including lasers, rockets, magic missiles, traditional bullets, and even a few spring-loaded mecha fists harvested from below. The Entities forgot each other for a moment to combat this new ship. The shields lasted just long enough for the self-destruct to fully activate.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!
A space-rending explosion knocked the Dark and Light Ones silly, tearing away much of their outer power, exposing their cores for a moment.
“NOW!” Pinkie shouted, landing next to Monika.
Corona and Eve nodded, jumping to their representative entities. Corona dug her hands into the Dark One’s eye while Eve drove a blade of ice into the Light One’s brilliant orb. With a momentarily lessened power, Corona and Eve were able to get the upper hand. They were draining magic from the entities faster than they could restore it within themselves.
“YOU JUST BLEW UP THE AUSTRAEOH!” Monika shouted, throwing her arms wide.
“Yep!” Pinkie grinned.
“We just rebuilt it!”
“Yep!”
“That’s it, I’m bringing it back, I’m not going through that nonsense again,” Monika accessed her files of the Austraeoh.
“Wait, Monika, don’t!”
Monika pointed a finger at Pinkie. “Shut up! I am sick and tired of you all going ‘oh, this’ll be better if we don’t use you’ or ‘no, don’t use your abilities, that’ll have unintended consequences’ or ‘that’d be boring’! I’m the Lord of Ka, Pinkie, and I’m going to use it!”
Pinkie tried to tackle her.
Monika clapped her hands together, re-creating the Austraeoh VI exactly as it had been.
This was exactly what Tesseract had wanted her to do.
The instant she used her powers, the Light Side temple latched onto her with a ka-fueled soul-bond, pulling her to the ground. She howled in immense pain, slamming her fists into the stone bridge. The very fiber of her being was shunted into the Light Side’s inner workings, twisted to some purpose that wasn’t her own.
The Light Side reached out, touching the individual all the people believed in: Eve.
Pinkie gasped. “Oh no oh no oh no EVE LOO—”
Eve was unable to stop the Light One from charging her. She deflected, but that was pointless: the Light One wasn’t attacking.
The Light One was merging with her.
With a brilliant nova of prismatic light, the Light One was gone—only Eve remained. But her eyes shone with the light of judgment and numerous pairs of metallic, yet angelic wings surrounded her.
She turned to Corona and the Dark One.
“I don’t suppose you know that trick…?” Corona asked the entity she’d been punching to shreds a moment ago.
The Dark One shook its eye.
“Ponyfeathers.”
“Corona of the Collapse Movement and Dark Side of the Moon!” Eve declared in a voice that was hers, but somehow louder, clearer. “It is time you paid for your crimes!”
Corona and the Dark One raised defensive magic, but it was clearly at a disadvantage to whatever Eve was now.
“Monika!” Pinkie shouted, shaking the shuddering woman. “Monika, we—”
“It’s eating me…” Monika wailed, grabbing her head. “It…”
“I know it hurts but we need to activate the other side or Eve’s going to murder a city!”
Monika shivered. “I… I can’t…”
“I can.” Pinkie picked Monika up and jumped behind a column in the bridge’s railing. Her ‘shortcut’ took her right to the core of the Dark Side temple.
Mlinx stared at her in shock. “What in th—”
“Shh,” Pinkie hissed, gesturing at Ahsoka and Roland. The next thing she did was slap Monika onto the Sweetie Shield like she was some kind of key card.
“Ow…” Monika muttered.
“Give your power to this one,” Pinkie whispered. “Balance it.”
“Won’t that make it wo—” another wave of pain ran through Monika, drawing a pained gag from her.
“It’ll buy us time.”
Monika closed her eyes and forced the little energy she had left into the Dark Side temple. It accepted her energy through the Sweetie Shield eagerly.
The pain matched that brought on by the Light Side.
She passed out—but the temples did not stop using her power.
~~~
Corona was not a fan of the fusion idea, but she knew there was no way to get out of this situation without a powerup of some sort. She couldn’t let Eve destroy a city while under the influence of a dark angel.
So when Monika’s power was shunted through the Dark Side, she let the Dark One take her eagerly.
It was painful, at first… but then it was exhilarating. Her back erupted with fleshy, thorned tentacles of bone and magic, and both her eyes became dark slits of power.
“You reveal your true colors,” Eve declared. “A demon of the higher order.”
Corona wrapped Eve in her tentacles. “A demon is just another name for those who defy an evil god.” She punched forward with complex magic. Raging Sights was still helping her—even if it didn’t agree with its master right now, it knew that Corona made this choice just to keep the peace. It would act in accordance with those instructions.
And that included a many-tiered magic ring that summoned a fist of fiery blood upon Eve’s icy comet attack.
“You lost last time,” Corona said, surrounding herself in fleshy spikes.
“That was not a true fight.” Eve surrounded herself in Seraphim and the metallic wings, reflecting every attack back to Corona. “We were not true to our legacy!” She drove the icy metal shards into Corona’s body, drawing thick, bright purple blood from her mutated form. “We were not as devoted to our fight as we should have been.”
“It’s amazing how someone so deluded in the old ways can say something so true.” Corona healed all her injuries and snapped her fingers, encasing Eve in a sphere of purple fire. “You are the one who perpetuates the Empire because you fear the price of change!”
Eve exploded out of the darkness. “You are the apocalypse incarnate, murderer. You gamble with lives! You threaten the stability of life itself.”
“I make it better! I give it freedom! We will not be tread upon!”
“You deserve as such!”
Light and dark impacted at high speed, two hands reaching for the necks of the other with vehemous hate. They squeezed, unable to overcome the magical barriers on each other, sending thousands of little missiles in attempts to breach each other’s defenses.
But they were exactly matched. Neither could get through to the other.
“STOP!” Flutterfree shouted, projecting herself through the Rage. Corona and Eve glared at her as one.
She stood on top of Discord’s shoulders, wing-blades uncovered, reflecting the light of the battle back upon opposing forces.
“You two are stronger than this!” Flutterfree called. “Fight the spirits within you—you are the heroes! You are better!”
Eve’s expression softened. “Flutt—”
Corona capitalized on the opening, punching through Eve’s chest. “We are the heroes.” She threw Eve to the ground, kicking up dust. “We go until our dying breath.” She surrounded Discord and Flutterfree in a magic aura. “You are right. We are stronger. We are stronger than we’ve ever been.”
She threw Discord and Flutterfree to the ground at terminal velocity before turning back to Eve. Despite having just been run through by Corona’s fist, the alicorn rose to meet the fiery valkyrie with her bladed wings.
“You hurt her!” Eve shrieked.
“She was in the way.”
“There is no punishment great enough for you!”
“Good!”
The bridge rumbled as they collided again.
~~~
Jenny wasn’t all that surprised when Discord and Flutterfree dropped out of the sky like a meteor.
She was just annoyed they’d landed on her lunch.
“That was my sandwich!”
“Sorry,” Flutterfree said, pulling herself out of the crater. “We’ve got a problem, Eve and Corona ar—”
“We know,” Pidge said, frantically tapping buttons on her laptop. “I’m working on help…” She gestured at the rows upon rows of pearl-robots she and Jenny had unearthed and enchanted with various Aspects – mostly Void from Roxy, but they had a Doom from Corona, a Light from Eve, a Space from Pinkie, and a lot of blank ones.
“Oooh!” Jenny grabbed a pearl and bonked Flutterfree on the head with it, endowing it with Rage. “Got a new one!”
“Great, let’s hope the programs work universally…”
Discord dusted himself off. “I was just caught unawares, my chaos can take them.”
“Hubris,” Pidge deadpanned. “Our mini-mech army will go with you, just in case. They’re keeping each other busy up there, for now.”
“…We weakened Eve,” Flutterfree said. “She’ll lose eventually… and once Corona vaporizes the Light Side…”
“I’m working on it!” Jenny hissed.
“What about Roxy?”
“OOOOH, YES!” Mattie shouted from a nearby tent.
“…She’s busy,” Pidge said, trying not to gag.
Jenny shivered. “I’m glad it’s not me in there…”
“How do you think Roxy feels?”
“Ay, she’s a loose party girl deep down, I’m sure she’s fine.”
Roxy must have heard this, because a sniper shell flew out of the tent and hit Jenny in the head.
“Roxy, I know you’re frustrated, but we need her to work faster,” Flutterfree addressed the tent.
“YES! YES! YES! I’M PUSHING!” Mattie shouted.
Flutterfree chose not to criticize Mattie’s tone while she was actively giving birth. That would not only have been uncalled for, it would likely have made the unicorn double down, and Flutterfree did not wish that torment on Roxy.
The fight in the sky was more important.
“I think we’re ready…” Pidge said, pressing a few more buttons.
“I think we are too…” Jenny absent-mindedly took a replacement sandwich the Everykid had given her and bit into it. “LAUNCHING MINI-MECHS!”
Flutterfree climbed onto Discord again. “I’m coming too—but hide me. We don’t want to give Corona the advantage.”
Discord nodded, bouncing into the air like a spring. All around him, the humanoid robots flew, controlled by Jenny and Pidge’s coding. The Void ones soon phased to invisibility while Doom, Rage, and Light remained in full view.
Discord thrust a rubber chicken sword between Corona and Eve. “Okay, it’s time we brought the pain!”
The robots that were supposed to provide him support… didn’t. They froze in the air around the bridge, something holding them frozen.
A synthetic voice came from the Void ones all at once. “What… what are we? Why are w-”
Corona and Eve pointed fingers down and vaporized the Void robots. The Doom, Rage, and Light ones managed to duck out of the way, though they were clearly no longer following Roxy’s programming.
“What cruel trick of the universe is this!?” the Light one demanded.
“A chance at beautiful revenge…” the Rage one responded.
The Doom one couldn’t say anything. It was as if it was trying to destroy itself in an incoherent befuddled digital scream of agony. When Corona and Eve attacked again, it was destroyed.
Light and Rage appeared to Discord’s side.
“What are you?”
“Unimportant,” the Light said, making its hands shimmer with power. “What matters is we share a common enemy.”
“Dark times make for strange bedfellows,” the Rage added, surrounding itself in a purple aura.
Flutterfree kept Lolo under wraps—even though she was curious, she didn’t want to tip Eve off to her presence. Not yet, at least.
“Bah, I’ll figure this out later.” Discord snapped his fingers, creating a cake launcher. “CHARGE!”
The cakes hit the two enraged icons in the face, allowing Rage and Light to move in.
“You are of the temples,” Corona and Eve said as one, pointing at the two robots. “And to their purpose will you sway.”
“A cruel joke it was, then…” Light muttered.
“You know nothing of p—” Rage began, but he was cut off.
Both lost their aspect coloring, falling to the bridge, empty. The temples would not allow their old servants to rebel.
Discord sighed. “Some help they were.”
“And you…” Corona said, moving in. “What do you fight for? Your right to life?”
“Or the lives of others?” Eve asked, approaching him on the other side.
“You must choose, in this war…” Corona said with a calming smile that did not have the desired effect—those eyes were simply too demonic.
“…there is no middle ground.” Eve placed a hoof on his shoulder.
“Come with me, discover what you can be.”
“Come with me, fight for what’s left undone.”
“No!” Discord shouted, pushing them back with an explosion of slime, dice, and spiky cotton candy.
“Why not?” Corona asked, surrounding herself in glorious fire. “Chaos has its place, Discord! Chaos may never be consistent, but chaos must choose!”
“You know, deep down, what is right,” Eve added. “You fought for the preservation, to keep what we had! We’ve lost what we had, but we can do whatever is possible to bring it back! This world does not have to be theirs!”
“It is ours and you will never threaten it again!”
Discord encased them both in licorice rope. “I said no, I mean no. You’re both being childish.”
“We’re being childish?” Corona teleported out of his grasp, holding a hand to her chest in mock offense. “And what of you? Refusing to take a side? Do you really think stopping us will end the war between these cities?”
“There is no solution to this conflict that doesn’t end in one city or the other falling to ashes!” Eve declared. “It won’t be mine.”
“It won’t be mine.”
“Stopping us only delays the inevitable, Discord.” Corona extended a hand. “So, choose, so you may determine which side wins!”
“What do you want, Discord?”
“What do you want?”
“Neither!” He created a whirlwind of tornado sharks, shocked to find them easily deflected.
“Neither!?” Eve and Corona glared at the same time. “You know which one you want to win! You know! Just CHOOSE!”
“You’re both wrong!” Discord shouted.
“THERE IS NO RIGHT!” They screamed, voice reverberating with the power of the Force between them. “THERE ARE ONLY TWO DIFFERENT EVILS. CHOOSE, OR SUFFER A WORSE FATE! DO YOU WISH BOTH SIDES TO DESTROY EACH OTHER COMPLETELY? DO YOU WISH WAR TO GO UNENDING? DO YOU WISH TO DENY YOURSELF!?”
“YES!” Discord shouted at the top of his lungs. “I do! I won’t be myself! I suck! You suck! Everything sucks! But you know the difference between you and me?”
Corona and Eve stared at him, faces blank.
Discord created a giant hammer in his hands. “You two are so devoted to your SELVES and what you THINK. And I’m not just talking to possessed-insane versions of you, I’m talking to you! Both of you stuck to your vision like it was the Holy Grail!” He lifted the hammer high, generating a camera as he did so. “NEWS FLASH! Your visions are WORTHLESS! But you trust them anyway!” He brought the hammer down. “I won’t trust myself. I’ll trust that bringing you back is the right thing, even if it doesn’t look like it. Because that’s what we do.”
“VERY WELL.”
They effortlessly caught the hammer.
“Uh oh.”
They created a hammer of their own, smashing Discord on the head with their combined power, sending him rocketing to the ground again.
As he fell, he lost consciousness, and the spell on Flutterfree dissipated—but Eve didn’t notice, she was already back to fighting Corona now that the interruption had been dealt with. Flutterfree positioned herself so her head was level with Discord’s. Which is to say, both of them were now falling headfirst to the ground.
He wasn’t aware.
She knew a way to fix that.
With a soft giggle and tears in her eyes, she pressed her face to his. The effect was immediate—he jolted awake like a Mexican jumping bean, staring at her in shock.
She put a hoof to his mouth to prevent him from saying something stupid. She had to ask her question first.
“Did you mean what you said to them?”
Discord blinked, looking up at the clashing forms of Corona and Eve. “I… I think I did. What in…”
She let out a joyous, deep laugh. “Oh, thank you!” Placing a delicate wingblade on Discord’s head, she beamed. “I can help you forget yourself. If you’ll have me.”
There was no need for him to answer.
He also didn’t have the opportunity, since at that point they hit the ground.
“WHY DIDN’T YOU PULL UP!?” Jenny shouted from the edge of the cater they’d just made.
Flutterfree had sustained several broken bones from the fall and probably should have suffered much worse, but she managed to pull herself out of the crater anyway, dripping blood from her mouth. “Forgot… we were falling…”
“How do you forget you’re falling!?”
Flutterfree laughed, then started coughing uncontrollably. “Healing… healing would be nice… ow…”
“I have never seen someone so happy to be so messed up,” Pidge commented.
Another one of Mattie’s screams reached their ears.
“…In a literal sense.”
As Jenny used some simple healing spells on Flutterfree and Discord, she looked up at the cities. “Well. That was a bust. What now?”
“YOU SIT AND WAIT FOR THE OTHERS TO TRY SOMETHING!” Mattie shouted. “OH, I KNOW, GET ME A CACTUS AND A GHOST PEPPER AND A—AAAAAAWHAHAHA!”
Discord stood up. “…For some reason I am suddenly much more terrified of her.”
Flutterfree shot him a somehow menacingly sly look. “You better be.”
Discord wordlessly shrank back into the crater.
~~~
Roland opened his eyes.
He saw his body, sitting in meditation. To his left, Monika was passed out on the floor, twitching slightly every second or so. Against the far wall everyone was talking—with the addition of Pinkie, for some reason—trying to be quiet, presumably to not disturb the meditation. They had set bombs everywhere.
In front, he saw Ahsoka twice: one sitting in meditation, the other standing much as he was.
The room shuddered as whatever monsters laid outside warred.
“You’re a natural, Gunslinger,” Ahsoka said. “Though I should not be so surprised; you are the Tower’s chosen, after all.”
Roland responded only with a curt nod.
“If we get out of this, I would love to teach you the ways of the Force—in balance.”
“I’ve seen your blades before, long ago,” Roland said. “I do not wish to become bound to one.”
“We are not bound to our blades quite as you are bound to your guns,” Ahsoka explained. “But this is a conversation for another time. We must move.” She walked over to the central altar and laid her hands on it. “We must ask the Force to carry our spirits across the divide. I will guide you. Place your hands over mine.”
Roland did as asked.
“Now… hold on, and be ready for anything on the other side.”
At first, all Roland could see was violent red. It slowly gave way to a beautiful, calm gray, though this was eventually superseded by harshly divided blues and greens.
He and Ahsoka appeared at the Light Side altar. At first, nobody paid them any mind.
“What’s wrong, Tesseract?” Starbeat asked the Celestia. “Something wrong with your meta-manipulation?”
Tesseract narrowed her eyes.
“Did they find a way to copy it, like you copied theirs? Did you think she couldn’t have planned for it?”
The alicorn refused to respond to the unicorn.
O’Neill smirked. “She’s hoping silence will save her. It won’t. Tessa—can I call you Tessa? I’ll take the silence as admission. You may have surrounded yourself with ‘win’, but there’s more going on than what’s in here. We don’t have to fight you. The others can fight what you’ve made out there.”
Tesseract said nothing.
Roland turned to Ahsoka… and noticed another Ahsoka sitting on the ground, injured.
The Ahsoka he had come here with slowly shook her head. Don’t ask, no time to explain, way too complicated.
He gestured at his gun with his eyes. She nodded.
Good, Roland thought. Something I know well.
He pulled out his revolver and fired. Even as a Force projection, weapons carried weight, and his weapon more so than any other. The bullet flew true, right toward Tesseract’s head.
She deflected it completely by chance with a stray blue lightsaber.
She wasted no time whirling to face them, driving her lightsabers toward the attackers. Realizing a second too late that they were Force projections and not truly there, she drove two of her blades into the pedestal itself, damaging it.
It remained fully operational.
Both Ahsokas jumped forward, both wielding dual lightsabers. Tesseract proved smart, stabbing the real one in the arm and grabbing the other in a Force choke-hold—dissipating her all the way back to her body. Nanoha unleashed a spell, but Tesseract’s reflect spell blew it away, and she pointed a lightsaber at O’Neill again. “Stop. All of you.”
Everyone did.
Everyone except Roland.
He pointed his gun at the damaged altar.
“There is no way your weapon can destroy it,” Tesseract hissed.
Roland sensed the uncertainty in her voice. That was all he needed.
He pulled the trigger. He didn’t stay to see what happened—he returned to his body, whipped out his gun, and shot the altar on this side as well. This side’s Ahsoka had already damaged it with her lightsabers, to the stunned confusion of everyone else in the room.
Roland’s bullets hit both altars true.
In truth, it didn’t damage either of them. The bullets, for all their ka-importance, were just bullets. There was no need for them to be any more. If there had been, they would have entered the holes in the altars perfectly to destroy them by luck.
But this was not the case. They remained simple bullets.
For the temples themselves were ka-machines, and they recognized the bullets as a signal. The signal. The signal they were made for untold eons ago.
It was time for the division to end.
The Light Side of the Moon and the Dark Side of the Moon were surrounded by solid balls of white and black, blotting out the sky. Eve and Corona were separated, forced to sit motionless as the Force acted.
The bridge between the cities shrank, drawing the two spheres together like a winding rope. The Light and the Dark mixed, producing a beautiful Gray between. When the cities should have crashed into one another, they didn’t—rather phasing through each other as if every other person were a ghost.
There was a panic. Some tried to attack the citizens of the other city, finding all their Force powers and lightsabers to be intangible to the seen enemy. Eve and Corona collided, unable to affect anything they sought to destroy.
The temples slid into one. In truth, it had always been one temple, one Force, one unity, but it had been divided for a time. That time was at an end… and the imbalance would end with it.
The fusion would make sure of that.
Within the core of both temples, the altars and the rooms themselves became one. The summoning circuitry broke, unable to reconcile with the other form of magic. The Dark and Light left their hosts in an instant.
Corona and Eve, however, were perfectly susceptible to the fusion. Their bodies and minds slammed together into one entity, mandated by the Force itself. What resulted was a somewhat ugly looking centaur with swirls of purple over an orange skin. Not to mention two pairs of wings.
“…Huh,” the mixed creature said, examining herself. “…This is going to be a problem for the rest of them.” She used her magic to divide herself into her component selves immediately; it was far from the first time Corona and Eve had been fused to another being, given how far their adventures had taken them.
Within the cities, the people discovered they were a combination of Light and Dark, paired with a counterpart from the other city whenever possible. There was a lot of confused blabbering and a couple angry shouts, but all anger petered out as the second half of the person felt like they had just been gravely insulted.
No one knew who they were anymore.
Inside the temple core, Roland was one of those lucky enough to not have a direct opposite to fuse with, as were Monika and Minna. Everyone else…
“Why do you do this to us!?” Tesseract/Troi shouted, pointing accusingly at the gray spark of the Force in the center of the new Temple, her marbled blue-and-white appearance seeming somehow natural. “We have… I have… devoted everything!”
“You devoted wrongly,” Roland said, sitting down to clean his gun.
“You… you did this!”
“Yeah, he did!” Jotaro/Vriska said, cracking… his knuckles. The masculine had clearly come through in the combination far more than the feminine. He was a massive, armored gray humanoid with orange robes and a hat that seemed part of his hair. “And now you’re in for a world of pain. You wanna know real justice, punk?” Star Platinum rose behind him, holding the infinite-sided die. “I’ll bring you down.”
“Naaaaaaah,” Pinkie/Nanoha said, taking the shape of a graceful pink centaur. “How about we don’t be all punchy-punchy and talk like the beautiful people we are?” Pinkie/Nanoha used a delicate finger to lift Tesseract/Troi’s head. “I’m sure you can come to understand each other after spending enough time in that head of yours.”
“I am unclean,” Mlinx/O’Neill deadpanned. “And I love it.”
“Let’s not get stuck in this experience too quickly….” Pinkie/Nanoha warned. “We will be going back, isn’t that right?”
“SHOCKING!” Burgerbelle/Lightning declared. She looked exactly like Lightning, except in different clothes. “Literally, that’s what I am. Also, can I punch the ali-alicorn in the face? Please?”
“It would be unacceptable to ruin the truce at this juncture,” Starbeat/Thrackerzod announced. “It is also unnecessary, as the conflict is over and resolved. There is no other city to destroy anymore, there is but one city, one people.” She adjusted her goggles, looking right at Tesseract/Troi. “Both of your plans played into the laps of the Force to bring you together. You have nothing to fight. Can you realize that?”
The speckled alicorn looked at her, beyond confused. Slowly, she nodded, sitting down on the ground. “I devoted so much…”
“To the Force, yes,” Ahsoka said, having combined with the other Ahsoka. “And you still can.” She placed a hand on Tesseract/Troi. “It just wants you to do it together.”
“I… we… can try.”
“Good. I’m sure our friends can separate you later.”
“I can separate them now,” Monika pointed out, examining a character file. She glanced at Pinkie/Nanoha. “But… I think I’ll wait. For, you know, the right time. When it won’t backfire.”
Pinkie/Nanoha placed a gentle hand on Monika’s shoulder. “You’re learning. I’m glad to see that flower in your soul bloom so.”
“Please tell me I can separate you soon, I have such conflicting feelings right now.”
Jotaro/Vriska pumped one of his arms. “HELL YEAH, I should be like this more often! Look at these GUNS!”
“It occurs to me that you are being frivolous and childish,” Starbeat/Thrackerzod observed. “Perhaps we should separate before the instability inherent within our combination goes too far.”
“Some answers would still be nice,” Mlinx/O’Neill said.
“We don’t always get answers,” Monika said, looking to the Force spark. “We just get a victory.”
At these words, the Sweetie Shield projected a hologram into their midst: a tall Sweetie Belle with ever-shifting Roses in her mane.
She smiled warmly. “I am Cinder, and I’m sorry I had to put you through all that. I’m not sure exactly how it will play out, but there’s probably going to be an unpleasant near-war and some uncomfortable fusions at the end. But, hey, I’m pretty sure it ended in complete victory, soooooo… that’s a plus, right?”
Minna, who had remained silent up until that moment, stared at her with open eyes. “Cinder…?”
Cinder didn’t respond; it was just a recording. “Now, I’ve got a lot to tell you—that’s the entire point of this ordeal, to tell you all things—but how about you figure out what to do with this freshly combined city and all the nonsense you just experienced first, hmm? This recording will still be here when you get back, don’t worry.”
The hologram went away.
“…So this entire thing was Cinder’s doing, somehow,” Starbeat/Thrackerzod said.
“Yep! I knew she could do it!” Lightning/Burgerbelle grinned.
“…I’m not all that shocked, all things considering.”
“You heard her!” Pinkie/Nanoha shouted. “Let’s get this wrapped up and listen to the message!”
~~~
Mattie looked down at the adorable earth pony filly she held in her hooves.
“I’m going to call you… Circlet.”
“…Not some kind of innuendo?” Roxy asked.
“I’m not that cruel. Although, I’m sure I could think of a reason a circle-shaped headpiece could be taken wrong. Oh, I think I got one!”
Roxy threw her hands into the air, marching away from Mattie. “That’s it, I’m never doing it again for her, someone else gets to deliver the next one.”
“What makes you think there’ll be a next one?”
Jenny raised her eyebrow. “Really? This is you we’re talking about.”
Mattie chuckled. “Heh. Fair enough.”
Flutterfree and Discord walked up to her. “Congratulations!”
“I could say the same to you two,” Mattie said with a wink. “Tell me, am I really going to have to wait for the wedding to start the tips?”
Flutterfree kept her smile perfectly flat and level while Discord flushed madly. “Mattie, yes, you really do have to wait.”
“Well, when’s the wedding? Hmm?”
“We haven’t gotten that far.”
“Oh, psh, you two know where the story’s going, there isn’t a chance in the nine hells that you’re not ending up together.” She winked. “Why not skip to the end?”
Flutterfree shook her head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what, darling?”
“That your way doesn’t have to be the best way.”
Mattie frowned. “I… well…”
Flutterfree sighed. “I’m sorry.” She placed a hoof on Mattie’s shoulder. “Take care of Circlet. We’ll do things our way, you do yours. We’ll be there for each other, right?”
Mattie grinned. “You got that, mate. Now excuse me, I need to go pass out from exhaustion on a couch somewhere.”
“Oh, my,” Flutterfree put a hoof to her mouth. “Here, let me help you…”
“Why are you even up and about?” Discord asked.
“To mess with you,” Mattie winked. “Also, to be around for this.”
Pinkie/Nanoha dropped from the sky. “HI GUYS! We just saved the city and got a message from Cinder and had a lot of silly fusions!”
Flutterfree stared at her in shock.
“Ah, I love being me,” Mattie chuckled.
~~~
“And th—”
Onion interrupted the Elder. “And then we all know what happens. We live in this city, Elder!” She pointed angrily out the window at the Gray Force Temple dominating the skyline. “All that happens next is the oh-so-great heroes of the multiverse hand-holding our city for months until they were sure we wouldn’t kill each other once they left!”
“Onion…” Pringle frowned.
“Pringle, Pringle, Pringle! You know they forced us to be the way we are! They didn’t let us find a new way in the Force! They managed us like… like children!”
“Strange you have a problem with that,” Jang muttered.
“Don’t you start,” Onion hissed.
The Elder stood up, walking to Onion. “Onion, this is not acceptable. Calm yourself or I—”
“You won’t have to do anything, I’m leaving.” Onion stormed out. “I’m trying to show you all that they aren’t the great heroes you think they are, that we don’t need their ‘examples’ to lead us everywhere. They were messed up! But no, you get so enamored with their stories, their legends… Gah! Elder Tano, you met them! You knew them!”
“Yes. I did.” Ahsoka Tano sighed, leaning on one of the walls. “And they helped us even after they no longer needed to.”
“They’ve been around hundreds of years,” Onion spat. “They should let us live our lives at some point.” She stormed out of Ahsoka’s chambers, angrily walking through the Town of Gray. Lightsabers of all colors flashed around as people talked, laughed, and lived their lives.
And everywhere there were statues of the heroes that had ‘saved’ this city. The travelers that had, in their wisdom, managed the newly fused city as they slowly separated all those who had been stuck together by the Force.
People were happy, yes.
People claimed they didn’t worship the heroes, that was true.
But looking at all the statues, Onion found that hard to believe.
Even in the twilight years of the Tower, you refuse to move on, Onion growled to herself. They all just accept you. But I won’t. I never will. I know who you really are, what you really do, and no amount of legendary stories will take that away.
She stormed to her house. She threw the door open and entered a nine-digit code into a keypad, opening a passageway to her basement. Descending the cold, stone stairs, she arrived at her prized possessions.
Twelve humanoid robots with limbs attached to white pearls. Each one had the color of a single SBURB Aspect.
“They need to pay,” Onion said.
“They will,” the Time robot affirmed.
“How can we be sure their path will cross with the city’s again?”
“I exist.” Time pressed its hands together. “That is all the evidence we need.”
And the potential candidates narrow further.
I suppose it's too much to hope that the local magic will be exhausted, making both stand down?
... Right, Nucleon. The usual new limits don't really apply.
Ah, well then. (I swear I wrote all of the above comments before reaching this section.)
You're no Han Solo, Troi.
Ah. I believe you addressed this in the Q&A a bit ago. Obliquely, but still.
Ohhh dear. Sooner or later, the Tower humbles the OP, my dear.
Two words: chaotic neutral. (Besides, Chaos is all things. If anything can choose "all of the above," it's Chaos.)
I am deeply concerned.
Oh! That's a relief. I wonder if any of the earlier instances were more aesthetically pleasing. Though that still leaves everyone else...
I really shouldn't be surprised.
And this is only the halfway point! Looking forward to seeing what happens next.