Xion wasn't going to waste any time. Without access to anymore of her cures and knowing what the Maestro could do if given the chance, she planned to go all out right from the beginning. With a roar her body erupted with a brilliance that brought light to the infinite darkness around her. The light solidified over her body and formed armor similar to that of a knight, while her keyblade was wrapped in a blade of rainbow light.
"Interesting," Maestro muttered before he took a light infused keyblade to the side of the head. The blow staggered the metal being, while the blade managed to leave a slash mark in his armor. Xion followed up with a flurry of strikes, each one hitting harder than the last. The sound of metal striking metal echoed throughout the abyss of darkness, before her roar joined the sounds of violence as she thrust her keyblade clean through the chest of the Maestro. The end of her keyblade erupted through the other end of his body, sending sparks showering from his wound.
"Make no mistake Maestro, I'm not the same weak little girl that you met the first time we fought," Xion promised Maestro before she ripped the keyblade from his chest, before twirling it in her grasp and placing the blade right at his throat. "I've reached a new level of power since coming to Equestria, one that even you can't stop. Goodbye."
As she said this she slashed her blade upwards, cleaving through the metal that made up the Maestro's neck and severing his head from his shoulders. His metal head with the animal design carved into it clattered to the ground and Xion's feet. She glared down at it before glancing at his body, which fell to the ground with a metal clang. Xion then let out a sigh of relief before she turned and started to head for the exit.
"Did you really think it would be that easy?"
Fear consumed her heart as Xion spun around just in time to take a metal fist to the face, one that sent her sprawling across the stained glass image of the Maestro. Pain flooded her senses, but her fear and disbelief allowed her to fight through it and rise back up to her feet. Her eyes widened with shock when she saw the Maestro standing before her, but his body was different than the one that she had slain.
This body had armor that looked similar to a knight's, while the metal head had an animal designed carved into it that looked like an owl. A blade made of a deep blue material was clutched in his left hand and he held his right hand behind his back, as if he didn't need it. A second brown cloaked draped itself over his shoulder, while empty eye slits gazed down at the girl.
Xion then looked behind the knight version of the Maestro to see the body that she had slain a moment ago, now just a pile of scrap upon the ground. She summoned her keyblade back into her hand and took up her fighting stance once more, but now her confidence was far shakier than it had previously been.
"I will give you credit for that light form, I have yet to meet a version of you that was able to access such a considerable amount of power," Maestro admitted before he swung his blade at Xion. Xion lifted her Perfect Harmony to deflect the strike, but the moment the two blades collided Xion felt some of the light within her being sapped from her body. She pushed the Maestro's blade off of hers, only to find that the rainbow blade that covered her keyblade was missing a chunk from it. "Yet if that is all you have, than this battle will be over shortly."
"I've survived far too much to be brought down here. I will tear through as many of your suits as I have to so that you don't win!" Xion promised before she lunged forward, aiming for the Maestro's head. He brought up his blade to deflect her strike, but when she saw his blade move she spun in the air and aimed her strike low, knowing that she couldn't let their blades clash.
Her blade clashed against the armored thigh of the Maestro, yet to her horror she found that the blade that had sliced through his previous suit with little issue was stopped cold by the armor of the new suit. She had just a moment to contemplate what that meant for her before a metal fist caught her right under the jaw, ripping her from the ground and sending her flying backwards through the air. She crashed head first onto the ground, where she lay as she tried to regain control of her senses.
"As many of my...ah my foolish puppet, you mistakes these "suits" for just pieces of armor? No, each one of them is me. Each one of them is an extension of my will. They are here so that I can be everywhere," Maestro corrected for Xion, who rose to her feet and leaned against her keyblade for support.
"What are you...?"
"Did you really think that I only go to one place at a time? No, that would be far to inefficient to learn what I wish to learn. There are as many of these "suits" as there are stars in the sky," Maestro told Xion, whose eyes widened at the news. "And my will flows through all of them, allowing me to be in an uncountable number of places at the same time, learning how a world would be if something was changed. You are not the only one who I am dealing with right now. Do not think that you are so special that I would meet you twice in person."
"Of course you wouldn't. Too afraid I bet."
"Too busy, actually. And you should be grateful that I chose to meet you inside one of my forms," the Maestro told her before he lashed out with his blade, forcing the still dizzy Xion to block with her keyblade. Yet again when the two blades met, Xion felt more of her light being drained from her. "Because these forms hold only a small percentage of the power I truly wield. If I were here in person...this would have ended long ago."
Xion broke the blades connection and rolled backwards, flipping to her feet and unleashing numerous balls of fire from the end of her keyblade. The Maestro responded by raising his right hand and allowing the fireballs to strike his extended hand, where they fizzled out without leaving so much as a mark.
Xion switched up her tactics and raised her keyblade over her head, summoning clouds of thunder and lightning over the Maestro's head. "Well I bet those suits of yours conduct electricity really well!" Xion roared before her roar was drowned out by the roar of the bolts of lightning that came crashing down on top of the Maestro. The Maestro remained rooted in place as the lightning struck him down, yet once more Xion was left dumbstruck when her most powerful spells failed to leave a mark on the metal man.
"I have designed each of my forms to be able to hold their own against any foe. If this body was able to take a strike from your light infused keyblade without so much as a scratch, what makes you think your magic would get a different result?" Maestro asked Xion.
He dashed forward again and thrust his blade towards the girl, who rolled out of the way to avoid being struck. The Maestro caught her movement this time and lashed out with a foot to catch the rolling Xion right in the side of the head. She was sent tumbling away from the Maestro and her keyblade skid across the ground towards the edge of the circle, where it fell over the side a moment later.
"NO!" Xion cried out. Movement to her side made her focus and she just barely managed to move her body to avoid being impaled on the end of the Maestro's weapon. She threw a kick at his leg to try to knock him off balance, but when her flesh struck metal she knew that she had made a mistake. Maestro then lifted a boot and slammed it onto Xion's chest, getting her to cry out with pain as she was pinned to the floor.
"Do not act like the loss of your weapon will be of a detriment to you. I know that no matter where you are you can summon your blade to your side," Maestro scolded her before he drove the tip of his blade through Xion's shoulder. Xion screamed with agony as the blade began to drain all of the light within her from her body. "Not that it will do you any good here. Within moments, you will be stripped of that power you fought so hard to obtain. And then you will lose your life."
"Y-you...think that this is the only power I can wield?" Xion asked the Maestro. He tilted his head to the side in response, clearly curious to see what Xion had meant. Xion allowed a smile to cross her face before an eruption of darkness consumed her form. The darkness hurled the Maestro off of the girl, allowing Xion to get back up to her feet.
She extended her right hand and summoned the Perfect Harmony back to her, channeling her dark power around the keyblade. Instead of forming a sword around her blade like her light powers did, the power of darkness formed an ax like weapon around the key, with an eyeball in the middle of the ax's head. She flipped the weapon around in her hand, glaring down the Maestro with red eyes.
"Your power over darkness. Equally as interesting as your power over the light," Maestro noted before he banished his blue blade from his hand. He then placed his left hand behind his back and extended his right hand forward, creating a blade made from a crimson material out of the air. "And equally as easy to deal with."
Xion was upon the Maestro in a moment, swinging her clawed, left hand towards the face of her foe. Maestro reached up and blocked the strike with the back of his right hand, but in doing so left himself open to Xion's keyblade, which came in from his left. Instead of lifting his left hand to block the blow, Maestro simply allowed the keyblade to strike him in the side of the head. Despite having put all of her power behind the swing, once again Xion found that the metal that made up the Maestro was too strong to pierce.
Maestro's blade flashed through the air and Xion felt the sting of its bite a moment later. A piercing pain ran up her chest as she fell to the ground and when she looked down at her chest she found a slash mark running down the front of it that both leaked blood and darkness. A metal boot slammed into the side of her head and made her forget all about the wound on her chest. Her vision blurred into one big color for a brief moment, before her eyes slowly gave her a blurred image of where she lay on the ground.
"I will give you this much credit, Xion. You did provide to be far more entertaining than most," Maestro told Xion as she pushed herself to her side, unable to find the strength to get back up to a horizontal base. "It is actually impressive how quickly you managed to master light and darkness, especially which such a pathetic excuse of a teacher. You truly do have some talent. Too bad that neither the light or the darkness can save you here."
"Neither the light nor the..." Xion repeated in a daze, her mind starting to work despite all of the pain she was in.
"And even if you somehow managed to destroy this body, I would simply have another one. And then another. And then another," Maestro continued on. As he said this, Xion glanced over her shoulder at the body she had already beaten, wondering why he wasn't using that one as well.
"You were doomed from the moment you stood against me. You sealed your fate," Maestro told Xion as he lifted his blade over her, aiming right for her heart. Xion glared up at the Maestro with a look of defiance on her face, but she wasn't looking just at him. She was looking at the stained image that floated vertically next to one they were on, an image of the planet, with a keyhole in the center of it. "Farewell...puppet."
The second Xion saw the blade start to come down she summoned whatever strength she had left in her body to roll out of the way, causing the Maestro to drive his blade down right into the center of the platform they were on. She moved to her right a little before she summoned her keyblade to her side and aimed it right at center of the Maestro's chest. A circle of light formed around the end of the blade, before she shot a light ray into the Maestro. The ray went clean through him and out the other side.
'That's...all I have,' Xion thought before she collapsed to her knees, the pain and exhaustion finally catching up with her. Maestro glanced down at himself to see that his metal body hadn't suffered any damage from the attack. He ripped his blade from the ground and pointed it at Xion, who didn't react to the motion.
"And what, pray tell, was the point of that?" Maestro asked. His answer came when the sound of something being locked echoed throughout the area and the Maestro spun his head around to see that the keyhole behind him was glowing with light. A moment later the light, along with the keyhole, vanished and an even louder locking sound could be heard. "No...no...no."
"Good thing...you don't like...to dodge," Xion said weakly as a smirk crossed her face. Maestro was upon her in an instant, wrapping his fingers around her throat and hoisting her into the air.
"What have you done?"
"I locked the keyhole. From the inside," Xion replied, smiling as she did so. "And once a keyhole is locked, it can't be unlocked. Which means that you can't hurt the ponies anymore...because you're trapped in here with me."
"Do you truly believe that just because the way I entered is sealed means that I am trapped?" the Maestro asked her with a chuckle. "I can be wherever I wish to be. My will is what makes this body move, not my true form. All you have done is cause me to waste a body."
"Then go ahead. Leave. If you can."
The Maestro's form flickered for a moment, only to cease a moment later. Slowly, the Maestro lowered his head to look down at his metal form. His form flickered once again, but just like before nothing happened. Then the Maestro lifted his head to Xion, who smiled at him knowingly.
"What have you done to me?" he asked her.
"I used my keyblade to lock the keyhole...and anything else that was in it's path," she replied with a smirk. "That's what the keyblade does when you fire it at a keyhole. It will lock it. But I also fired it through you, meaning that you were locked as well."
"I am not a keyhole. This is not even my real form. It is nothing more..."
"Catching on? It may not be your real form, but it is you in a way. See, I was wondering why you didn't just swarm me with bodies if you wanted me dead so badly. Surely it wouldn't be that hard for you. But then, after remembering what you said, it dawned on me. You're everywhere. You're in a bunch of different bodies in an infinite number of realities. Which means that even your incredible will is stretched to its absolute limit, isn't it?" Xion asked. When the Maestro didn't respond, Xion allowed herself to laugh.
"Thought so. And with your will stretched so thin, that means you can only manage to possess one of your bodies at a time in each reality. That's why you had to jump from the damaged one to the one you're in now. That's why you always use one at a time. You're at your limit," Xion explained while the Maestro seethed.
"And now I've found a way to lock you, in a way that keeps you trapped in that body. You can't escape from that body. And now you can't escape from here either. I've locked the only way out. This is where you'll stay...for the rest of this world's eternity."
"This will not stop me."
"No, it won't. There are still an uncountable number of you out there. But it will stop you here. In this reality. On this Equestria. Because as long as you try to be here...this place shall be your prison," Xion told him in a quiet voice, before she closed her eyes and let out a sigh. "This battle is over."
"Yes, it is. You, as much as I hate to admit, have bested me," the Maestro replied, before he brought his sword back. "And in doing so, you have damned yourself to a fate worse than death. I wonder how long it will take to break you this time, puppet!"
The Maestro thrust his blade forward, yet before the blade struck an eruption of darkness caught the Maestro square in the chest. The blast was so strong that it sent the Maestro flying backwards while also forcing him to release his grip on Xion, who collapsed to the ground. She weakly lifted her head to try to see what had happened, only for her eyes to go wide when she realized that there was a pony standing in front of her. A pony with a black coat and a horn with a red tip at the end.
"Sombra?" she asked in disbelief. The dark king looked over his shoulder at her and smiled, before he turned his gaze back towards the Maestro.
"So this is what the heart of a world looks like? Honestly, I thought it would be bigger," Sombra muttered aloud as the Maestro got back up to his feet. "And I thought you would be more intimidating, but to be outsmarted completely by Xion? Whoo, that has to hurt."
"It will not hurt nearly as badly as what I shall do to the both of you," Maestro promised before glaring at Sombra. "How did you even get here? The keyhole was sealed! No one should be able to enter or exit!"
"Ah Maestro, despite thinking you know so much about the worlds it's clear that you know nothing," Sombra replied, infuriating the Maestro. "Xion thought she sealed the keyhole. And she did. But not entirely. For some asinine reason, somepony thought it would be a good idea to keep a small connection between this place and the outside world, just incase they needed to get somepony out of there."
"Then I am not trapped. I shall be free!" Maestro roared as he lunged forward, slashing at Sombra. Yet to the Maestro's bafflement, Sombra deflected the Maestro's strike with a blade of his own. A blade that had a circular guard made of chains, chains that wrapped around two pony heads that formed the guard. A black blade shaped like a tower made up the blade and at the top of the blade, making up the teeth, was a crystal heart wrapped in darkness.
"You...wield a keyblade?" Xion asked. "How?"
"Like I told you, Xion. I won't steal your blade. I don't need to!" Sombra cackled before his horn glowed with power, blasting the Maestro in the chest with his dark magic and pushing the metal man back. He turned his gaze towards Xion as he continued to pin down the Maestro, a warm smile crossing his face as he did so. A cure spell then descended onto Xion, who felt her wounds heal themselves.
"You need to get out of here," Sombra told her.
"No! I'm not going to leave you!" Xion roared at him, but then her roar was drowned out by the sound of the Maestro ripping through Sombra's magic to get to him.
"There's no time to argue. And no more time to talk. I wish I could spend hours telling you how much you impressed me or how you're the greatest student I've ever taken on, but all I can say now is...thank you." Sombra's horn then glowed once more and a sphere of darkness wrapped around her. Xion called out to Sombra within the sphere before she was hurled into the sky, vanishing in a flash of light. Sombra watched her go before he turned his gaze towards the Maestro, who seethed with hatred.
"How did you come to wield a keyblade? You do not have a strong enough heart nor have you held the keyblade of a master before!"
"Quite contraire. My heart is incredibly strong, perhaps one of the strongest in the world. As for holding a keyblade...let's just say that Xion allowed me to unintentionally grab hers, even if she didn't realize it. Of course, even I didn't know I needed to do that until I figured it out. That's the reason I "left" Xion alone. I was figuring out how to work this thing. I figured she was safe enough with the Ambassadors until I made my grand return. And I was right."
"I shall slay you Sombra and then I shall follow that path you created to my freedom. And then I will make sure that I kill Xion slowly and painfully, just to thank you," Maestro promised.
"See, there's a problem with your line of thinking. That pathway that I created? You need a keyblade to open it," Sombra said to the Maestro.
"That is of no matter to me. I will force you to use yours to open the path!" Maestro roared.
"Uh-huh. I see where you're coming from and it's honestly not a bad plan, but there's only one problem regarding the keyblade in question," Sombra said as he looked down at his keyblade, the weapon that he had strived so long to make his.
"And what would that be?"
Sombra's horn glowed with a power that eclipsed the two princesses and a beam of light shot from his horn, right into the center of his keyblade. Cracks formed all along the blade before it shattered into thousands of pieces, all of which were consumed by the darkness. Maestro stared in disbelief at where the keyblade had shattered while Sombra gave him an innocent smile.
"It's broken."
The floodgates opened within the Maestro and a flood of rage and hatred washed over him. He slowly lifted his head to glare at Sombra, who smiled back up at him with no regret on his face.
"Think we should try looking under the mat? Might be a spare key there?"
Maestro grabbed Sombra and lifted him into the air, driving his sword through his chest all the way to the hilt. "You have just damned yourself to eternal torment, Sombra. You will suffer for as long as I remain trapped within this place!"
"Still not as bad...as having to be ruled be...the princesses," Sombra spat back.
"Why do all of this?! Why sacrifice yourself for Xion?! You are Sombra and Sombra never helps anyone but himself!"
"True. But Xion is my prized pupil. She's smarter than me, more adept at magic than me...and honestly a far better pony...person than me. Still have her beat in the looks department though," Sombra coughed out. "So if it was for anypony else, I would have said screw em. But you chose to mess with my pupil. And I couldn't forgive that."
"Very well, you shall suffer in her place," the Maestro promised. "And throughout all this suffering, you will know that it is all because of your choices. You chose to oppose me. You chose to aid that puppet. Know that your suffering is on you."
"You're in here. She's out there. And she outsmarted you. That's all I need to know," Sombra replied with a smile. Maestro then tightened his grip before he dropped his blade to the ground. He channeled all of his power into his left hand and took aim at Sombra's face, preparing to unleash a pain upon him the lies of which Sombra would have never felt. But then Sombra's entire body began to glow with light, a light that caused cracks to form all along his form.
And now I'm going to blow myself up and take everything in this realm with me, including that little pathway I made to get here. So you can't out, but more importantly, she can't get back in," Sombra replied as his body reached critical mass, allowing him to smile one last time at the Maestro. "There's nothing you can do. The great, omnipotent, travel of realities will be defeated by me."
"How's that for a C level villain?"