//------------------------------//
// 45. 
// Story: 8-Bit Pony 
// by Dawn Flower 
//------------------------------//

“…and while the mime did survive, I’m afraid he’ll never walk again.” Black Mage continued reading off his list of atrocities.

“Black Mage!” Twilight exclaimed, getting him to stop reading aloud, look up and towards her. “I don’t believe that’s what Princess Celestia meant when she asked you to ‘bring her up to speed on everything’.”

Meanwhile, Princess Celestia simply sat on her throne, her mouth hanging open, apparently struck silent by BM’s open, unapologetic evil.

“How do you know that?” BM retorted.

The simple response made Twilight snarl and start shaking with rage. However, before she could lose it, she gave an exasperated sigh to try and calm herself down before continuing. “Look,” she began, trying hard to remain calm. “After what has felt like months of my life having to deal with your constant tangents (twitch), unspeakable acts of evil, sarcastic, nonsensical quips of response that have almost destroyed my ability to think rationally, and more distractions and delays that should exist by any universe’s logic, we have finally made it to the one pony in all of Equestria who might possibly be able help us, and are now potentially minutes, or even seconds away from sending you and Fighter back to your own world and finally being done with all this. So could you please just shut up for one moment in your life and focus on…”

*BOOM*

Suddenly, the doors of the throne room exploded outwards, in a spectacular explosion of marble stone, dust … and black smoke.

As everyone in the room naturally turned around to see what had just caused this, the smoke began to part, and the silhouette of a figure began to form, which stood out even through the cloud of dust and smoke. Everyone simply stood by with baited breath, for the cloud to part and reveal…

Fighter.

“Hey, guys!” The red haired warrior announced as he stepped into the room.

The momentary distraction cut off Twilight’s rant at Black Mage, but was only long enough for her rage to have abated a little. Now in a slightly better frame of mind, she placed her hoof to the side of her head to try and steady her thoughts further. “Fighter, you haven’t quite reached the levels of annoyance that Black Mage has yet, but…”

“By the way, I’m here two,” Nightmare Moon announced.

“Audible gasp!” Pinkie Pie yelled out. “Who could have possibly seen this coming except everyone because the author spoiled it in the character tags.”

Everybody else in the room immediately facepalmed/facehooved in response, despite the situation.