//------------------------------//
// A Real Rarity 
// Story: The Girl That Never Was 
// by Onomonopia 
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"So Rarity is like Pinkie and Fluttershy, huh?" Xion asked as she leveled her blade and prepared for the fight to begin, not liking the amount of light that the mind controlled Rarity was giving off. She felt her body screaming at her to back away with Rarity just standing in front of them. She didn't want to know what being hit by the light would feel like. "One of the six that the Maestro wants me to unlock."

'Yeah, but this one is all rainbowed up. Stay mobile and don't get hit,' Sombra instructed Xion, who nodded her head and turned her attention back to the opponents before her.

Not wanting to allow either the Heartless or the pony to make the first move, Xion kicked off the ground and launched herself towards the Heartless. With a scream she lifted her blade over her head and prepared to bring it down on the Heartless's ringed head, yet with a flash of movement Rarity placed herself between the key and the Heartless. A burst of magic erupted from Rarity's horn, which struck Xion in the chest and knocked her out of the sky.

"GRAH!" Xion yelled as she crashed into the amphitheaters seats, slamming her body into solid concrete. The girl fought through the pain and pushed herself back up to her feet, just in time to watch Rarity fire more divine looking magic towards Xion. "Barrier!"

A sphere of light constructed itself around the girl just in time to deflect the blast of magic, yet Xion still had to dig her keyblade into the ground to avoid being pushed back by the force of the multicolored magic. Xion canceled the barrier and aimed her keyblade at the Heartless, firing a blast of ice past the pony and towards the being of darkness. Yet to her annoyance Rarity appeared at its side once more, using her rainbow power to destroy Xion's magic.

'You're not going to beat a unicorn like Rarity in a magic battle,' Sombra advised from Xion's coat pocket as Xion rolled out of the way of a pillar of rainbow that erupted where she had been standing. 'If it was her regular self, maybe. But this is the rainbow power, the second strongest source of magical power in all of the world. Behind mine, of course.'

"I'm amazed that even in a situation like this, against a source of light like this, your ego is so big that you still can compliment yourself," Xion said to Sombra as she lifted her keyblade and sliced giant gemstones out of the air. "Hoe about you give me some advice that would help us both make it out of this alive?"

'If your opponent is a mage, that means that they have crap physical stamina. Get up close and cave Rarity's head in. That'll put a stop to her real fast.'

"I'm not going to kill her! She's being mind controlled!" Xion roared at Sombra before the ground underneath of her feet exploded and she was tossed into the air. Xion rolled in the air and landed hard on her back, knocking the wind out of her sails and leaving her vulnerable. The Mastermind Heartless pointed a finger at Xion and Rarity channeled all of her magic into her horn, aiming it where Xion was laying.

"Not today"! Xion roared as she rolled to the side and leapt to her feet, thinking of her most horrible moments in the organization. With a roar of fury her body channeled a dark aura around her, including the keyblade that she pointed at the rainbow pony. "Dark Blizzaga!"

A giant chunk of dark ice erupted from the end of Xion's keyblade and sailed through the air towards the mare, who unleashed her rainbow light in a concentrated blast into the advancing ice. The two powerful magics struck each other and resulted in the dark ice being shattered into thousands of pieces. But instead of being upset, Xion smirked before she slammed her blade into the ground and summoned a barrier to deflect the shards of ice that flew everywhere. 

The Mastermind let out a shriek of pain as icicle shards tore into its form, while Rarity's rainbow power prevented her from being struck by any of the shards. Rarity looked towards the Heartless with worried eyes, while Xion lowered her barrier and smiled at her handiwork.

'Clever. You knew that Rarity would destroy your magic, so you used a spell that would just as dangerous if not more if shattered,' Sombra complimented from the side. Rarity then toward her head back to the puppet, who brought up her blade in response. Rarity's horn flashed and she summoned dozens of gems that were bigger than her, all of which were pointed at Xion. 'So, have any idea on how to stop this from killing us?'

"Yeah. Dodge," Xion muttered right before the gemstones were sent hurtling towards her, forcing Xion to hurl herself out of the way to avoid being crushed. She rolled to her right to avoid one gem that imbedded itself into the ground, before flipping into the air to avoid another one. She landed on the gem and kicked off of it, leaping from gem to gem as they flew by her in an attempt to close the distance between Rarity and her.

Rarity let out a roar and slammed the two gemstones that Xion was between together, but to her horror she found that Xion had been expecting the move. Xion grabbed the edge of the gemstone she was on and vaulted herself over the side of the gem right before it collided with the other, before she slammed the blade of her key into the end of the gemstone and sent it hurtling towards Rarity. Rarity's eyes went wide right before the gem slammed her out of the air, sending the mare and the giant gem crashing into the edge of the amphitheater.

'Most impressive,' Sombra praised as Xion hit the ground and turned her momentum into a roll. 'Her magic was too strong for your magic and you didn't want to strike her with your weapon, so you use her own magic to stun her for the moment. Clever, puppet, I must be rubbing off on you.'

"Or maybe you haven't been giving me enough credit," Xion replied before she narrowed her eyes at the Mastermind, which was floating above her with menacing eyes. The creature lifted both of its arms and fired twin beams of energy towards Xion, who rolled in-between the blasts before she hoped back up to her feet, hurling her keyblade at the Heartless and smacking it dead in the face.

"Crazy ponies with magical, rainbow powers are new to me. But striking down Heartless? That's something I can do with ease," Xion smirked as she summoned her blade back to her as she approached the Heartless, which had fallen to the ground. She pointed the blade at the Mastermind, which looked up at her with blazing red eyes. "Time to put an end to you."

Xion lifted her blade to strike the Heartless down, before she caught a flash of light go off in the corner of her eye. She spun around and lifted her blade to deflect whatever was coming towards her, only for a raging pain to course through her body as a beam of rainbow light tore through her left shoulder. Xion screamed in pain as she was thrown to the ground, gritting her teeth as she clutched at her shoulder, which was now a whispy, shadowy smoke.

'XION!' Sombra roared before he used his darkness to yank Xion out of the way of a second blast, hurling her body behind the cover of some of the stone seats and erecting a barrier of darkness around the both of them. Rarity unloaded with rainbow light upon the barrier of darkness, which nearly buckled under the first onslaught of light. 'Puppet, speak to me. Are you alright?'

"Do I...look alright?" Xion spat in reply as she glanced down at her shoulder, which was only just beginning to retake the form of her shoulder, though her coat was completely gone near her shoulder. "T-that blast of light...tore right through me. If that had hit me anywhere else, I'd be gone. How...could that hurt me so badly?"

'Damn Celestia and her ponies to hell, it's because you're a being of darkness,' Sombra revealed to Xion before another salvo of darkness bombarded the barrier, causing cracks of rainbow light to form along the barrier. 'The rainbow power is specifically designed to deal with beings that get their power from the darkness. Normally it's just negative emotions, but whatever Maestro did to re-create you means that the rainbow power will tear you apart. A direct shot from the rainbow power will kill you, and by extension me.'

"So...what do we do?" Xion asked. For longer than he was used to Sombra was silent, racking the intelligence he had brought with him into the horn for a plan. But as another round of rainbow power decimated his barrier and shattered the darkness once more, he found that his unmatchable brain was unable to think of a way out of their predicament.

Xion forced herself back to her feet as she turned to look up at the rainbow pony, her right hand clutching at her shoulder while her left hand weakly held onto her keyblade. Rarity glared down at Xion, horn glowing with so much rainbow power that Xion was certain she would disintegrate on the spot if she took a direct hit. Xion let out a small sigh and banished her blade, figuring she was finished. She pulled Sombra's horn out of her pocket and held it tight, taking comfort in the fact that she wouldn't die alone. Then she stared a little longer at Sombra's horn and an idea came to her.

"Hey Sombra, remember when you joked earlier about planting yourself on my head and taking control of me?" Xion asked Sombra, who glowed his horn in reply. "Think you could do it to a pony that's being controlled?"

Xion swore that after she voiced her idea that Sombra was smiling, but whether he was or not she would never know as Rarity took that moment to unleash her rainbow power down upon Xion. With some hope left alive within her, Xion hurled herself out of the way of the rainbow power and rolled to her feet. She took aim with her good arm at Rarity's forehead before she threw Sombra's horn with all her might.

The horn sailed through the air and latched right onto the side of Rarity's head, getting the mare to roar with fury as she started to use her magic to pry off the horn of darkness. 'None of that now dear, we've gotten too close for you to push me away!' Sombra's voice echoed throughout the theater as he used his darkness to break into her mind. For a brief moment Rarity's eyes flickered white and black, before she closed them and ceased to glow. 'Puppet! I've got her locked down for the moment, but I won't be able to hold back the rainbow power for long! You've got to beat that Heartless and do it quick!'

"Don't worry, Sombra," Xion began as she turned herself towards the Heartless, who slammed his hands into the ground and summoned two wand looking weapons. Xion reached out and summoned her blade once more, casting cure upon herself before she took up a fighting stance she shared with two others. "Slaying Heartless is what I was trained to do."

Xion threw herself at the Heartless, who swung one of his wands towards the key bearer as she approached. Xion dug her heels into the ground and blocked the strike from the wand, gritting her teeth as she used her might to push back against the Heartless's strength. With one last push she bounced the wand off of her key and caused the creature of darkness to stagger, giving her an opening to attack. 

"Right there!" Xion called out as she struck downwards at the Heartless in a one handed strike, before gripping the handle with both hands and swinging the blade horizontally across the Heartless. She then rotated to swing the blade over her head, before bringing the blade crashing down onto the head of the Heartless. The Mastermind staggered backwards under the combo, causing its ring that had been floating around its head to fall off of its body.

"You better hope that's not a weak point that fell off of you," Xion told the Heartless before she lunged towards the ring and brought the keyblade down onto ring, shattering the ring into thousands of little pieces. The Heartless reeled back from the destruction of its ring and collapsed to the ground, where it held a hand out to where the ring had been. A blue and red light erupted from the rings pieces, lights that ascended into the sky while circling each other before they collided in a ray of light.

Xion lifted her head to the sky to see the white light raining down upon the city, bathing it in color and light. She smiled to herself as she pieced together what had happened, before she turned her gaze back down towards the fallen Heartless. 

"Seems that your days of controlling ponies are done. Now all that's left is to banish you back into the darkness from whence you came," Xion told the Heartless, which rose back up to its feet with the two wands in hand and its full attention of Xion.

It hurled a wand towards Xion and, as she wasn't expecting the Heartless to throw its weapon, barely managed to move out of the way of the projectile. The want tore through the side of her cloak, which suffered a large gash in the side of it as the wand tore through it and then embedded itself in the ground behind Xion. Xion glanced from the wand that had almost impaled her to her torn cloak, before she glare at the Heartless with rage filled eyes.

"That was my favorite slash only coat. And you went and ruined it," Xion growled as a dark aura flooded around her body, causing her eyes to glow with an eerie light as a dark orb appeared in her left hand. "Oh yeah. You're in for it now." 

Xion hurled the ball towards the Heartless and struck it clean in the face, getting the Heartless to stagger. Xion ripped open a corridor to the darkness behind her and dove into it, appearing above the Heartless from a portal of darkness. With a roar she drove the tip of her keyblade into the head of the Heartless, getting the being to writhe back and forth as Xion pushed the blade deeper and deeper into its skull.

The Mastermind lashed out at her with its other wand, but Xion was within the darkness once more before the wand could strike her. She appeared at the ankles of the Heartless and slashed through its feet in a single strike, getting the creature of darkness to collapse to the ground once more. As the beast fell to its knees in front of Xion, Xion clutched her left hand with her right, summoning the darkness into her left hand and giving it form.

"I can take a lot of punishment. I've had my mind messed with, I've been beaten by friends and foes alike and even had my memories ripped apart and pieced back together," Xion snarled at the Heartless while her eyes flashed with a feral fury, while a black claw formed around her hand. "But that light that you made Rarity shoot at me, that light that has the power to banish the darkness...that REALLY hurt!"

Xion bellowed with rage as she drove the claw into the chest of the Heartless, driving it clean through to the other side. She then lifted the Heartless with the clawed hand, before channeling her dark power into her keyblade and pointing the tip of it at the side of the Heartless's head. "Dark Firaga."

The blast of fire detonated on the side of the Masterminds head, sending the Heartless crashing into the ground where it didn't move again. Xion glared down at it with a dark gaze, before she closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Slowly, as if it was hesitant to go, the darkness faded from the girl, returning her emotions to a normal state. Xion then opened her eyes and looked down at her hands, smiling when she saw that she wasn't covered in darkness anymore.

"Okay, may have gone a bit too far there," Xion said, before she shrugged her shoulders with a smile, only to regret her decision a moment later as pain arced through her left shoulder. Xion bit back a curse as she held her hand to her shoulder, glancing over at it to find that a small chunk of her shoulder was missing and darkness was seeping out of it. "Crap, that's not good. Whatever that rainbow power did to my shoulder isn't going to heal easily. I need to find Sombra and-"

An explosion of energy went off behind Xion and she spun around to see the Heartless lunging towards her, wand aimed right at her head. Xion's eyes went wide as the watched the weapon approaching her, trying to summon her keyblade but her body was too slow to react. The Heartless was right in top of her, only to be struck down as a blast of rainbow light tore a hole through the Heartless.

Seeing the rainbow light snapped Xion back to reality and she summoned her keyblade in a flash of light, gripping the handle with both hands and slashing through the head of the Mastermind in a single stroke. The Heartless ceased to move and slowly faded away into darkness, before a large, glowing heart emerged from within the Heartless and slowly floated into the sky.

Xion watched the heart ascend into the sky until it disappeared, before she turned around to see Rarity, still in her rainbow form standing behind her. The two stared each other down for a moment, Xion looking at her rainbow mane and Rarity looking at Xion's missing shoulder, before Rarity held up a hoof. A hoof with a red horn that was covered in darkness clutched within her grasp.

"So tell me darling, does this belong to you?" Rarity asked Xion as she shook the horn, whose eyes flashed from the horn to the look Rarity was giving her.

'Yeah, so fun fact: Rarity's got a far stronger mind than I thought,' Sombra admitted weakly. 'Who knew?'