“Are you worried about the away party we sent to the factory,” Cerveau asked Posey.
“Of course I am, but without contact, we can't do anything for them. We don't even know if Zero is any better off.”
“He survived fights with two of the Four Guardians, and beat them. Honestly, I'd be amazed if that stallion's capable of injury.” The door opened, and the red stallion entered. “See? He's fine.”
Posey trotted up to Zero, looking him over. “Y...you're not injured?” It was hard to tell if he was bleeding when his coat was already red. “You fought Spike and came out without a scratch?”
“He was naive, not prepared for a real fight. I suspect he won't make that mistake again.”
Posey jolted back in shock. “Spike, naive? You're crazy, Spike is Twilight's oldest guard, they say his blades have felled hundreds of opponents!”
“Guess he didn't expect to see a ghost, then. That is, if I really died. Any progress on that data I sent?”
Posey hesitated before answering. “We still have to decode it. I'll work on it, it's bound to have some useful information. Until then, if you're up for it, we lost contact with an away party we sent to the factory, and we'd like you to check it out.”
“Factory?”
“It produces a lot of the materials and supplies that Twilight's forces use. To exterminate ponies like us. This seemed to be a good time to strike, but once they got onto the supply train, their signal disappeared. Will you investigate?”
“Unbelievable. I rescue a team you sent into danger, and while I'm helping, you do the same to another group of your followers.”
Cerveau stepped in. “Listen Zero, this is war. Sacrifices have to be made for the victory, and these soldiers knew the risks. They're capable of making decisions without a legendary hero to order them around.”
Zero and Cerveau butted heads. “So you consider it justified to throw ponies at a problem like they're expendable? When you have that hero that can do it by himself? Why go to the trouble of waking me up if you're not going to reduce your death count?”
“Because the reason we went looking for you was solely because of Posey's insistence you existed! I'm certainly not ready to trust you.”
Posey usually had a quiet, calm, almost motherly demeanor, but something in Cerveau's accusation made her snap. “That will be all, Cerveau. You're dismissed,” she aggressively ordered. Unable to disobey his superior, Cerveau merely scoffed and left. She took a deep breath to calm down, and turned back to Zero, back to her old self. “I'm sorry you had to see that.”
“Looks like you're having issues with trust.”
“...yeah. Maybe you have a point about the ponies we're using as soldiers, what we're sending them for. But Cerveau has a point too, that you can't do it all by yourself, that the other ponies are just as necessary. Maybe it was childish of me to go on a hunt for a legend like it would solve all our problems, but we found you. And I trust you, I promise.”
Zero stayed silent for several seconds. “It's not smart to place faith in a stranger. It's the quickest way to get stabbed in the back. So where can I find this train?”
“You're going to go? You don't need to rest first?”
“I'll be fine. Just tell me where to go, when the next supply train leaves.”
She didn't quite believe it, but Posey hurried to the nearby computer, hitting a few keys and changing windows. “Looks like there's one leaving in 10 minutes in the station to the east. You can make it if you hurry.”
“Roger, I'm on my way now.” Zero trotted out, in a hurry to catch his train, but he turned back at the doorframe. “Think about this discussion. You've got good ponies if they're willing to follow you into almost certain death. Don't throw that away.” He departed, leaving Posey confused, but feeling secure as well.
The landscape flew past Zero as he sat on an open cargo car, his ponytail flowing in the fierce winds. The supply train left the loading station just as he arrived, jumping on board as it pulled out, and now he waited among the boxes for the transportation to reach its ending. There wasn't anything to do during the wait, so Zero watched Equestria pass by him.
Honestly, this didn't look like a war-torn landscape. It looked...serene, peaceful, calm and quiet. The sunset was passing below the horizon, dying the sky not a menacing blood red, but a beautiful orange fading fast. “This is the world ruled by a dictator? A world that needs saving?”
“No, this is a perfect world. Master Twilight has brought peace to this battlefield of a country, life where there previously was none.”
Zero jolted up onto all four hooves, frantically looking up for whoever responded to his questions. Everything was empty, even as he ran across the car's floor, checking every corner and blind spot the shipment covered. It was getting harder to see, the sun's light disappearing by the second. The intruder, he sounded close, he had to be on the car. “Show yourself! Are you using an invisibility spell?!”
There was no reply as the last illumination vanished. Now, it was dark, only making the search more challenging. Zero reached for the blade on his belt for some amount of glow, when something appeared in the black wall of night before him. Two golden circles piercing his gaze. Not perfect circles, more like...eyes. Just as he realized this, they moved forward, as their owner stepped out of the black. A matching dark purple coat, he was almost a pony, but his body was off. His wings were thin and sharp, no feathers on them. His ears had tufts of fur on their tips. “A bat pony? Twilight sure likes to keep her guardians diverse.”
“My name is Ei. As you deduced, I am one of the Four Guardians of Master Twilight, a phantom of the shadows. And I am loyal to the death, so you'd better prepare yourself. I won't let you interfere with out plans!”
“Plans?! What are you going to do,” Zero demanded as he ignited the blade of his Z-Saber.
“Enough talk! It's time I showed you, exactly why a lost legend should remain lost!” Ei reached a hoof to his haunch, pulling out a pile of metal stars. Zero stood in a battle-ready stance, prepared to react at a second's notice. The eyes of the warriors locked, neither moving a muscle. As soon as one of them did something as small as twitching, the fight would begin.
Zero saw it, just as the train car bounced on the track, Ei jerked to throw a star, and he took the chance, dashing forward to confront the guardian. Ei's shuriken flew at the crimson hunter's head, before being swatted out of harm's way by his saber, swinging it back around just as he reached the space a few feet before his opponent. However, at the last second and so fast Zero didn’t see it, the guardian unsheathed his own silver sword and intercepted the swipe.
Ei smiled at Zero, though with a demeaning sense to it. “A fellow user of the blade, I see. However, you use the same uncivilized sword as Spike, a sparring opponent I can defeat with ease.”
“Well then, we have that level of skill in common.” Hopping an inch off the floor, Zero thrusted his sword forward. Without the leverage to force himself closer to Ei, he instead pushed himself away, landing a few yards back. Taking the room to breathe he gave himself and throwing it away, he charged back into the fight, and clashed with Ei once more.
No matter who was on the offense or defense at any particular split-second, every swing was perfectly parried by the other. The sounds of metal clashing against energy echoed across the empty night, only drowned out by the roar of the train speeding to its destination, imposing a time limit on the battle. And no matter how many times Ei pushed Zero away, the red stallion kept getting back up and attacking. “Why won't you stay down,” the ninja shouted. “Why keep approaching your opponent with a sword?!”
“You Guardians can't keep a cool head in battle, can you? All that time thinking you're the best has softened you up, same as it did with Spike.” If Zero could play Ei to his advantage, he could get out of another fight easy.
As the words sunk in, Ei stopped fighting. “...you're correct, I've gotten unnecessarily worked up. My mission is to kill you, and until I accomplish that, I will be a cold, ruthless killer.” He sheathed his sword and threw it off the side of the train car. “You were staying close because you were afraid of my shuriken. Now I have no reason or temptation to fight you on your terms.”
Crap, he saw right through me. The one star Zero deflected earlier was a lucky hit, if Ei went all out with projectiles, he wouldn't be able to survive for long. In an attempt to fix the situation, he charged in close again. Against a sword with only stars, Ei wouldn't stand a chance. Just as before, he bolted forward and, off the ground in a leap, sliced at Ei's position, straight through his body...hitting nothing. In fact, where Zero saw an enemy seemed to dissipate.
“Too slow, Zero!” He looked up at the source of the yell, finding Ei high in the air, not using his wings but instead at the apex of a jump. He filled his front right hoof with stars glistening in the moonlight. Before Zero could even blink, they were all spread out and flying towards him, forcing him into dodging backwards by jumping, multiple times. It worked, as he saw the projectiles lodging into the metal floor before him with a small shower of sparks, until his back hit something hard. The boxes being moved, stopping his dodging for a critical second. Nowhere to go, the final star stabbed through his armor, piercing his skin with a shallow wound.
“Nowhere to run,” Ei shouted as he descended. “Face me with honor!” He began preparing another hailstorm of attacks, forcing Zero to hide behind the shipment.
He's right, Zero realized as he pulled the blood-tipped weapon out with a grunt of pain. He's got the definitive advantage here, so long as he has range on his side. Frustrated, he punched the wooden box he was using as cover, splintering the side as its contents slid out, and he noticed, picking it up. “What the hell is this thing?” It was a completely foreign object, a bulbous cylinder that appeared to fit over a hoof. “A buster?” Why did I call it that? He had no idea, why he had a name for it, or why he put it on. He even had an assumption of its function, enough to formulate a plan.
Ei was sneaking closer, ready to strike with a mortal blow. “Come out, Zero. Greet death with dignity. You won't feel pain for long, I will deliver a quick end for you.”
This'll be my only chance to pull this off, Zero acknowledged, pointing the buster at the floor beneath him. Despite seeing this for the first time just now...possibly, he somehow instinctively knew how to use it, mentally willing it to fire a bolt of plasma out, melting through the metal car as soon as it touched it.
From Ei's perspective, all he could see was a sudden flash of light, coupled with a crashing sound, similar to an explosion. It was enough to make him hesitate, stop in his tracks to question what was happening back there. Relaxed for that brief second, he could only watch as Zero jumped out from hiding, leaping away like he was being propelled by the blast. He perfectly landed on the end of the adjacent car, igniting his Z-Saber in the same motion as using it to cut the coupling between the cars. Now the engine was separate from the load, drifting further apart, Zero was still traveling to the destination while simultaneously leaving their supplies and Ei behind.
The guardian wasn't having that. “You're not getting away that easily!” The gap between the two cars was still minimal, so Ei ran forward to catch it. Zero put his saber back on his belt and pulled up the buster again, firing at the spot where Ei's hooves were about to hit. The resulting shock, dust and debris sent flying, made the ninja unable to simply leap over or around it. And Zero kept the assault up, forcing Ei back just long enough to make his escape.
Their divide increased to the point that a simple vault wouldn't make it. In a last-ditch effort to succeed in the mission, Ei did another jump high into the air, silhouetting himself against the moon. “No, you're not getting away, Zero! This train shall be your tomb!” He had lost his sanity again, he would do anything to not fail his master. Readying his hoof full of shuriken again, he was just about to throw a wall of stars, one that would be impossible to evade.
For a final time, Zero held the buster up, pointed straight at Ei in the sky. “Unfortunately for you, guardian, there's something else we have in common.” An orb of glowing yellow energy fired from the barrel, rocketing towards the airborne ninja, giving him no chance to make even the minimal leg motion to throw the stars he was holding. The plasma struck Ei straight in the chest, knocking him back and out of his attack. “Our shots never miss.”
Ei fell, stunned from the hit, on a path straight to the tracks below. The fight was over, Zero relaxing the buster as he watched Ei descend. However, just about to hit the ground, he changed course, canceling his midair momentum and landing on the edge of the same train car. Wings. Of course. Zero readied his saber again, not ignited yet, in the hopes he could survive another round without the element of surprise.
Ei only faced Zero, making no motion to draw any weapon. He was leaning forward, breathing hard and clutching the spot on his chest where the plasma hit. “…well played, relic. I now understand how Spike and Wavebreaker fell to you. You truly are extraordinary.”
It was clear the guardian wasn’t going to attack anymore, so Zero stood at ease. “Then maybe you should tell your fourth to stay out of my way, lest you come before my saber when I’m not feeling so merciful.”
“Mercy?” Ei chuckled sinisterly. “Then you are weak. Anyone not strong enough to survive a fight is not strong enough to lead the world to its ultimate destiny.”
“No, I’m not like them. I will not be responsible for anypony’s death. Senseless killing is not how we advance.”
“Naïve…Then consider this my parting gift. You won’t have to learn this lesson painfully in the future.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Without a killer’s instinct, you won’t last in this war. So I’m taking your future! You won’t live to see Master Twilight!” Ei pulled out…something, an orb completely unlike his previous weapons…
“A bomb?!” No time to run further into the train (if any of it would survive the explosion), Zero did the only possible escape by jumping off the edge into the surrounding wilderness. But the timer on Ei’s bomb was short, it was only meant to be a suicide blow, and it exploded while Zero was in midair. His armor protected him from the heat, but it had nothing for the impact, sending him barreling away, the intense white light and deafening ring blinding him.
Most of his senses were knocked out, but he could still feel himself rolling down a decline, crashing through all manner of fallen branches, leaves, large rocks, the shattering of his armor and bones all the way. Finally, he hit something, probably a thick tree trunk, all motion entirely stopped as he couldn’t move himself either. Zero was fading out of consciousness, alone in the cold night, blood pooling around him chilling quickly. He couldn’t fathom why, but the bitter bite of freezing was the part that hurt the most, his final observation before descending into certain death.