Bound by Scales

by FrostTheWolf

37- Vantablack

        “I am Chroma… and I am the first of the Onyx.”

        The moment I heard that, all I can do was stare at him in disbelief. Personally, I had several questions that I wanted to ask. But I believe that was the same with practically everyone else that was here too. Yet, before I was even able to formulate a thought, this guy returned back to the form that he was originally in and not as the dragon overlooking all of us and spoke. “If you want to speak to me, then go ahead and speak.”

        With that, I took a deep breath and also let out a deep sigh. “Okay… let me ask this… Why are you here?” This question was based on what I remember from interacting with not just Time Spinner, but also Guardian back in Hunter’s world. “If you were the one who displaced me, wouldn’t you just be traveling around the void like any other displacer?”

        “That would be what you would presume,” Chroma then spoke. “But to understand how it happened, you must understand my story. Back when I was younger, I was just an onyx dragon like any other that would come after me. I helped organize my kin, bring them together and teach them the values of a dragon. I lived, loved, lost… but on the day that I died… my soul was sent to the void… and with it, I was given form to watch my kind from above the plane of mortals… However, when Nightmare happened… and when I saw the devastation that was brought upon my kind over the years as they grew divided, I couldn’t afford to keep watching. So, I searched for someone who could help not just the Onyx… but also all of dragonkind survive… Yet… being in the void has an effect on those who travel through it.”

        That had me look back at Applejack and Revaan for a moment before I spoke up. “Effects?”

        “Extensive exposure to the void is able to drive even the strongest of souls insane. For me, I used my own soul and power in order to fend off the void. But I knew this wouldn’t last long.”

        That… had Coryena soon speak up. “B-but that would mean… you would be slowly destroying yourself!!” All Chroma did was nod his head, before looking back at me now as he walked closer to me. I was personally unsure what was he talking about given the fact that I heard him say so many things I was still trying to wrap my head around. “How are you still alive?”

        “Because I am a part of Ken…” That answer… was something we were all honestly not prepared for. Nor were any of us prepared for what followed afterwards “The energy released from his powers, his abilities… that’s from having myself combine with that of Ken. I am the reason for his powers… I am the reason that he is a Scalebound… and I am the source of his strength… There is an old teaching I once taught some of my students that would apply to this.”

        Before he continued on, that was when things began to darken all around us, to where it looked like the stars and constellations were everywhere as Chroma began to recite what was on his mind. “If you can trade, would you? Surely… but all miracles require sacrifices… for their life, yours.” As he said that, that was when the flashback’s started coming back and the headache that soon returned afterwards. Not to mention the fact that I also saw what looked like Chroma on the day that I met him… and moments afterwards, seeing his old form turn to nothing but ash.

        When things began to come back to normal, that was when I heard my Displacer began to explain everything. “I traded and sacrificed my freedom of travel through the void… the power that I had and everything that I learned in my life so that you could be able to give the Onyx a chance… and with it, the more that you grow as a person, the more that your powers grow as well.”

        Now it was all beginning to make… some kind of sense, I guess. “So that’s why…”

        “That is why you were able to shed the pelt of your armor to create an effigy. One in which is the only body I can now ever have…” He said, taking a deep sigh. “There is much more for you to learn in time, but for now… You may have a different pressing matter on your hands other than what remains of Nightmare and her creations.”

        Okay, what the hell does he mean by that exactly? “Care to explain what you mean?”

        “Well, I don’t know much on it myself… but when you wake up, there’s one thing you should do.” When I heard that, that was when everything began to glow as a blinding light shined in my face. All while we heard one last thing from him. “Check your ECHO.”

Obsidian Hollow

        When I was able to open my eyes again, I found myself lying on my bed in my quarters at the Temple back in my world. My body didn’t feel sore anymore and I didn’t have a headache, but it took a while for my eyes to get adjusted. And by the time that I was able to see again, I found Applejack not far from my bedside as I got up to check on Revaan before walking over to my closet to change clothes. By the time I got a new shirt and pants on, I then heard her speak up and talk to me. “So… what do ya think that guy was talking about?”

        “You mean before we woke up just now?” I asked for clarification, causing her to nod her head as I took a deep breath. “Well-”

        Before I could say anything else though, we heard the door to the room slam open so hard that it almost sounded like it was knocked off it’s hinges as both of us saw Rainbow Dash burst into the room… with Aaron walking in behind her. “Oh thank Celestia we found you!”

        “Sugarcube, calm down for a second…” Applejack told her, causing Rainbow to slowly breath in and out for a moment before looking back at us. “Now, why were ya looking for us?”

        “Well, that’s a bit tough to explain…” We then heard Aaron speak up. “Primarily because in the time that you guys were gone, Ken’s uncle has done a few things that would either probably be of no surprise to you… or throw you off guard all the same.” Okay, just from that statement alone, I was not liking how this was going to turn out. Yet, from his answer alone, it didn’t provide any context at all as to what exactly happened.

        “Aaron, what did my uncle do?”

        “Several things,” Oh god, just by that alone, I was not liking how this was going to turn out. “One, with the help of Tiny Tina, he was able to figure out how to make explosive weapons. Two, with the help of your Aunt Moxxi, he was able to fully fund and establish his own TORGUE corporation… Third, he sent out a message to all of us about something that he personally is going to do. Athena told me that the message is on your ECHO.”

        And now I’m having even more of a bad feeling about how this whole thing is going to turn out. Especially if he’s doing what I think he’s trying to do. Taking a couple of moments, I had the chance to find my ECHO. But it was also in that time that Twilight had raced on over here and began firing off numerous questions regarding some of the things that we had just asked Aaron. Applejack and Rainbow had her calm down for a bit… and as for me, I soon found out what we were getting ourselves into once I looked at my ECHO.

        One new video message from MR. TORGUE HIGH-FIVE FLEXINGTON.

        I took a deep breath for a moment, before deciding to set down my echo device and have the message that was sent appear as a projected holographic screen so everyone could have a chance to see it. Yet, moments after I began to play the message, we all saw somepony that had Twilight, Aaron and Rainbow Dash collectively respond in disbelief.

        “Daring Do!?!”

        “Uh… Daring Who?” I asked them, sounding confused.

        “It’s a lot to explain… Just trust me…” Aaron told me, so I decided not to press further on the matter and just continue to watch the ECHOcast message.

        “Alright, so this is working? Okay…” The Pegasus started off as she looked back towards whoever was recording the message. “Hello everypony and all of the ponies that don’t believe in my existence! This is Daring Do and my archeology team and I have what some may call a vault.” Wait, hold the f*cking phone… There are vaults here!? Since when?!! “For those who don’t know, ever since the changelings have become allies with the Equestrian Kingdom, a sudden surge of magic has-”

        “BOOOOOOOOORRRING!!!” That was when what we were on screen soon faded out and soon, it now showed Mr. Torgue instead of this… Daring Due? God, I can’t remember some names to save my life. “YOU DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT NOW, DO YOU TREASURE HUNTER! YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT LOOT, PECS AND EXPLOSIONS!! I’M TORGUE AND I GOT ONE QUESTION AND ONE QUESTION ONLY…… EXPLOSIONS?!!”

        That… had one of eyes personally twitch as we saw an explosion on screen. “That wasn’t even a question!!”

        “Twi, please calm down. You’re shouting may wake up the kids.” Applejack reminded her for a moment, placing a hoof on her shoulder to get her to calm down. Just as she was getting back to normal though was when Daring Do took control back.

        “Get off this frequency, you overgrown furless minotaur!” Okay, does this pony have like some kind of Tannis personality or something? “I’m trying to convey-”

        “THAT SENTENCE HAS TOO MANY SYLLABLES!!! APOLOGIZE!!!”

        “As I was SAYING!” This Daring Do pony snapped again, wrestling control of the broadcast back from Mr. Torgue. “We’ve discovered that this vault is buried in the center of the badlands in the middle of a crater that’ll only open… and I quote, once the champion of Equestria feeds it the blood of the ultimate coward… don’t know why it would say that, but who knows-”

        Before she could finish her sentence though, Mr. Torgue took back control of the broadcast and continued to shout. “AND I ALONG WITH THE REST OF THE SELF MADE TORGUE CORPORATION SINCERELY BELIEVE THAT THIS IS MOTHERF**KING AWESOME!!! SO WE SET UP A TOURNAMENT TO FIND THIS… NUMBER ONE BADASS!! IF YOU WANT IN, COME TO WHERE THE VAULT IS BURIED. IN THE BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE!!!”

        “That’s not what the area is called-!!”

        “BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE!!!”

        That soon caused the archeologist to end the message… but on Torgue’s end, he went even further. Trying to advertise to any ‘blood enraged badasses’ to come on down to the Badass Crater of Badassitude for his campaign of carnage. Which honestly makes me question whatever kind of marketing strategy he’s using in order to get the word out. After all of this ended though… that’s when something hit me.

        “Wait… didn’t that pegasus say that this was going on in the badlands?” I asked… which soon lead to all of us a few minutes later racing outside in order to come across something that definitely wasn’t there before. It turns out while I have been away at Hunter’s world… Torgue had been busy setting up shop here in the Badlands to the point that it looked like an exact replica of the Badass Crater of Badassitude that Aaron and I remembered from Borderlands 2. Which only meant that he was being very serious about doing this… and that I think we needed to have the kids stay in Ponyville for the time being until things settled down.

        Which only left Aaron to say this. “Holy…”

        Followed by me. “Sh*t…”

        But the ending of the sentence was said by someone else entirely. “EXCLAMATION MARK!!!” That… caused us to turn around and see Shayne and Aurox as they walked on out here to see what we were seeing.

        “Holy sh*t, is that… what I think it is?” Shayne asked, which lead to both Aaron and I nodding simultaneously. “That is so F**KING AWESOME!!!”

        Before any of us could correct her though, that was when we heard Rainbow Dash soon speak up. “Okay, can somepony please explain a few things. One, what the buck is this all about? Two, what the buck is going on? And three…… WHAT THE BUCK IS GOING ON!!?!”

        “You said that last one twice.” Aurox pointed out to the pegasus, which didn’t really help out things right now.

        “Not helping me out here, Roxy!” Rainbow snapped, which only caused Aaron to facepalm himself, Shayne to giggle and for Aurox to grumble a bit.

        “Uh… Can someone please tell me what’s going on with Rainbow first before we figure out what’s going on?” Twilight then asked. “She’s being more… brash than normal.”

        “Well, if you must know, we had just come back from the Hollow after having a ‘date’ in Ponyville… where Rainbow drank two mugs of Apple Family Cider and tried to go for a third before I decided to pay for the check.” Aaron explained as he grabbed hold of Rainbow for a moment. “As for what this is all about… well… let’s just say that perhaps you guys should possibly stand clear of it.”

        “Why man? It just seems like a replica of the Thunderdome in Mad Max. Is something else going on?” Shayne added on.

        “Campaign of Carnage.” Was all I had to say… and soon, Shayne had the look in her eyes like she had been waiting for something like this to happen.

        “I want in! Where do I sign up?!”

        “Hold up, partner…” I now finally heard Applejack speak up. “I think there are a few things that you three need to tell us about this so we are all on the same page here. Let’s get back in the hollow first.” Oh great… more explaining. And I thought we already had gotten through a bunch of that with Chroma just now. At least this one may be a bit easier for us to tell them about since it seems that Aaron, Shayne and I all know what exactly we would be getting ourselves into this time around.

        “Well, to put it simply… What was found in the Badlands was a vault, which we know it as some kind of ancient cache of treasure, artifacts or other items that can be inside,” Aaron first started off. “We only know about them through a particular video game series we play back home called Borderlands, where players play as ‘vault hunters’ that are searching for those vaults and open them up with something called a Vault Key.”

        “And some of my family members ended up as characters from those games,” I added on. “Most notably, Tina, Moxxi, Athena and in this case, Mr. Torgue. However, what we’re dealing with here is a vault that isn’t opened by a key, but by following through on a challenge that’s inscribed on there.”

        “So, since the Vault says that it can only be opened by ‘feeding it the blood of the ultimate coward’,” Shayne then added on, adding air quotes to it and sounding like she was trying to impersonate Patricia Tannis. “It looks like Torgue’s opened up a tournament to find what he calls the ‘Number one Badass’ that would follow through on this.” That… just had all three ponies look at us in complete and utter confusion and bewilderment.

        That was, until Aurox spoke up. “Unless you want to die horribly, stay away from there.”

        “Aurox!!”

        “What? I’m being honest.” The Djinn added to that, which only in turn made Shayne facepalm in response. Applejack herself looked concerned for a moment as she looked at me. Personally, I can understand why she might be concerned. After the little… incident that happened back at Hunter’s world, I thought I would have some rest at least before I get myself thrown into anything batsh*t crazy again.

        Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this time. “Well crap… Looks like we got something new to handle now… I guess I need to take care of some things then.” I said, before heading back over towards the walkway that connected this part of the badlands to the Obsidian Hollow.

        “What things are ya talking about, Ken?” Applejack then asked me, causing me to sigh in response.

        “Well… this seems like something that’s a lot bigger than we thought and something that the three of us can’t tackle on our own,” I pointed out, before grabbing my ECHO device. “Luckily though… I think I might know a few people that can help us out.”

Some time later

        “So who exactly are you requesting to help us out now?” Aaron asked me as I was finalizing the message that I was going to send out to those I was asking for help.

        “Well, I got a few people in mind that could work out for this kind of situation,” I replied back to him. “Asphyxious is one… Another Displaced I know named Gregar is two… and pretty much anyone else in which I think can potentially lend a hand.”

        “And who do you think would reply to that?” He then asked as both of his Death Weapons, Fire and Thunder, joined him while he leaned against the door.

        “That we are about to find out.” I replied, sending out the message with the original message that I received involving the conversation with Daring Do and Mr. Torgue earlier. “I could only send it to a few people because of the fact that it wouldn’t seem appropriate in order to send all of the Displaced in the world and also Beacon Academy an invitation to an all out death match-”

        “Wait, hold up… there’s an Academy for all this?” Aaron replied back, folding his arms as I turned to face him. “That’s news to me. When did you find out about it?”

        “Like before I knew that there were other displaced that I actually knew about that were either friends or family that somehow ended up here too. Which means before you, Shayne & Aurox, Athena, Tina, Moxxi and Torgue. The reason why I didn’t say anything about it was because even know some of us could be able to go there and help out from time to time, some people like that of Mr. Torgue or Tina would just cause chaos,” I explained to him fully before getting up out of my chair and setting my ECHO aside. “And with what’s going on now, I think that’s even more of a reason for it.”

        “You… make a rather valid point actually,” The meister replied back. “So how are we going to do this? Are we going to wait on them or-?” Before I could hear the rest of what he’s saying though, that’s when we noticed Shayne racing on over here like she just uncovered something horrifying.

        “Guys… We got a problem. A big problem…” She panted, before taking a moment to fully catch her breath and speak. “Tina’s not here. Her room’s empty.”

        And just when I thought things were beginning to settle down. Fantastic… “I’m betting you fifty bits that she went off to go with wherever Torgue is.”

        “Well, she did leave a note on her door saying that she was going to take a family vacation with her ‘explosive’ sugar daddy,” That was when Shayne handed me a piece of paper, which I was lead to believe was the note in question. Right away, I could tell that this was definitely Tina’s handwriting, meaning that this wasn’t some kind of fake or anything… but why would she take off as soon as this situation came up? “So I’m going to assume that it’s likely that she is going to be with Torgue?”

        “It’s a possibility…” I shrugged, looking back to her as I gave her back the note. It was also then that I noticed Applejack and Twilight soon trotting back to the courtyard of the temple. Surprising us as I looked back at them. “Applejack? What are you doing here? I thought I said-”

        “Ah know what ya said and also, ah’m ignoring it.” She boldly stated as both of them looked back at us. “If ya going back out there with these two in tow and more to help ya out later on, than the least we can do is help from afar.” That… had me raise an eyebrow for a moment as I looked back at Aaron and Shayne, who also seemed rather puzzled by what she’s trying to say.

        “How do you plan to do that?” I asked, waiting to hear a follow up response of some kind.

        “I know a remote observation spell that could allow for us, as well as Revaan and a few others, to see what you’re doing.” Twilight told us. Yet, even with that, it leaves out another factor that would be beneficial to helping us and that was communication.

        “Okay, but how would you try to contact us if there was something you needed to warn us about?” I asked them. Though, I did not anticipate the next response to actually come from Shayne. Who soon turned to me after getting something out of her back pocket.

        “I have an extra ECHO device that Tina gave me when we originally met. My guess is that she assumed that I needed two of them; one for myself and one for Aurox. So they can use that for the time being. I can even show how it works before we head off anywhere.” Okay, I have to admit… that was pretty helpful. Especially with everything that’s about to take place and the fact that communication is one of the essential parts to this that we would need to make sure that we all knew what in the world we were exactly doing.

        “I like it… Though, just as a warning before we go in… as soon as we get there, a lot of things are going to get crazy straight out the gate given that my uncle is running this.” I reminded them as Shayne was walking over with the spare ECHO device.

        “How crazy exactly?” Twilight then asked out of curiosity.

        “Think about what would happen if Tina invited you to a tea party that was also a sleepover,” I said, which in turn had Twilight’s eyes widen immensely to the point that she stared at me in utter disbelief. “And that’s the tip of the iceberg.”

        It took about an hour or so before we were all ready. Mostly because Shayne was making sure that Twilight and Applejack had everything set up on their ECHO device and also tweak it to make sure that it was something that they could use rather easily. Even going as far as to make sure that communications were working just as we were approaching the outer edge of the area that Torgue had sectioned off for this… campaign of his.

        “So…” Twilight lightly spoke up. “Are you suppose to get some kind of greeting or-”

        “WELCOME TO THE BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE, FELLOW BADASSES!!!” That announcement had us hear Twilight… or somepony else fall over on the other end of their ECHO device as the person who was talking continued to speak. “THIS IS MR. TORGUE, BROADCASTING TO YOU FROM THE TORGUE ARENA IN THE CENTER OF ALL THIS BADASSERY!!! IF YOU’RE HERE, THAT MEANS YOU WANT TO TAKE PART IN OUR TOURNAMENT, OPEN A VAULT AND BE THIS WORLD'S NUMBER ONE MOTHER F**KING BADASS!! BUT IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE, YOU FIRST NEED TO SIGN OUR LEGAL WAIVER.”

        That had the three of us (four if you counted Aurox) walked over to the waiver station that didn’t seem to be far from us. But it had the two ponies on the other end of the line question what Mr. Torgue just said. “Wait… If this is suppose to be a fight to the death, why would you need a legal waiver?”

        “Give it a minute…” Shayne told her, just as we walked over to where the legal waiver station was… and when it blew up in our face.

        “Just Kidding, F**K THE LEGAL WAIVER!! YOU’RE IN TORGUE LAND NOW, SUCKAS!! JUST GET TO THE ARENA WHILE I PERFORM FOR YOU A SICK GUITAR SOLO!!!” We heard him shout… and just as Shayne said that something like that wasn’t necessary… he did it anyways. “MEEDLYMEEDLYMEEDLYMOW!!!!!!!!”

        This… was definitely going to be a LONG day.