//------------------------------//
// Catastrophic Warfare, Part 2 
// Story: The Pony Of Vengeance 
// by BradyBunch 
//------------------------------//

Ironheart whirled his white blade to the side, and spread his metal wings like a conquering god sent from the heavens above to destroy all life below.

Princess Cadence and Princess Luna had stumbled out of the hole in the brick wall, Luna supporting Cadence. The spell Luna had intended for Ironheart was a heavy-hitter spell, and it had struck Cadence in the chest hard. Cadence still looked weak, but she seemed to be getting to her hooves.

And the Lunar Guard, who had stood idly by before, rushed at him with spears and swords bristling. They crashed into Ironheart from the rear, pushing him forward, as pony after pony pushed their spears into crevices in his body and attempted to crush his skull with ugly lead maces.

Ironheart merely fired his arm out in a wide sweep, and dozens of body parts littered the floor as the blazing white arc finished its rotation. He reached out his left hand and grabbed a grey batpony in armor from behind the head, and held him to his chest like a shield.

The forces assaulting him stopped instantly; the quivering captive was in the line of fire.

Ironheart’s face was hard as a rock. “Don’t you dare assume that you can save him.”

Ironheart, holding his head in his hand, began to squeeze. Two of his fingers were digging into the top of his eye sockets. The batpony captive winced and made cries of pain as his helmet squished inward under the inexorable force.

“NO!” Cadence cried, and ignited her horn. The war pike, embedded in the ground, shot towards Ironheart’s head and embedded itself in his temple. The pike shattered into pieces, however, and harmless slivers of metal showered down the side of his head.

“No,” Ironheart whispered in rage. “No, don’t even try that.”

He clenched his fist even more. His fingertips were all the way inside the batpony’s eyes, and a horrible crumpling noise came as the helmet he wore collapsed into his flesh. The batpony was really screaming now, and blood poured from the sides of his head and eyes, meeting at the point of his chin.

Ironheart’s face contorted in rage, and roared as his fist fully clenched at last.

A horrible mix of a squelching and cracking noise came as his skull caved itself in and his left hand erupted in a fountain of horrid blood that got all over his arm and splattered on his face. The stump of the batpony’s head was now only dripping blood and clear brain fluid on the ground.

Ironheart shook his hand callously, flinging bits of brain and skull bone off his sticky fist. The sounds of someone retching was lost among the gasps of horror and heartbreak at his ignominious death. Even the princesses were still and silent.

Twilight, however, ignited her horn, scowling with resolve. Ironheart saw this, and shook his head no. “Twilight. You tried before. You will not kill me now.”

“I’m not trying to kill you,” Twilight snarled through clenched teeth. “I want to hurt you!”

Ironheart’s skull was temporarily enveloped in a lavender aura. But Ironheart fired a single shot up into the air, and Twilight stopped the pressure instantly.

“You think you want to hurt me. But you do not possess the only power that really matters.”

“Yes I do!” Twilight cried back, firing a bolt of energy at Ironheart. He deflected the explosive bolt back at her, however, and she got thrown back as it impacted her in the chest.

“So exercise it.”

“Lies!” Celestia cried, igniting her own horn, which was so long it appeared that she had a long yellow sword atop her forehead. She charged at him horn-down, and her thrust was met by Ironheart’s downward strike, throwing her face-down to the pavement.

Ironheart pressed a metal talon down on her skull before she could get up. He bent his knee, amplifying the intensity of the pressure. Celestia winced and tried to wiggle away, but Ironheart was too strong to allow her any room.

“Lies,” Ironheart repeated, bending his neck. “The lie of love. The lie of tolerance. I was taught to adopt those. But I was better than that.”

He raised his sword high above his head slowly, like an executioner’s axe.

“Help me!” Celestia pleaded to the other princesses. Her hoof tried to point at the other princesses, but it was at such an awkward angle that it only rose a little off the pavement. “Sister! Help me!”

Ironheart was enveloped in a dark blue aura and was almost moved backward by the furious tilt of Luna’s horn. But he simply twitched his wing, and a bladed feather shot out and embedded itself deep in Luna’s chest armor.

Luna cried aloud and stopped the magic. Cadence, supported by Luna, gasped and almost fell down as Luna became weaker. The feather hadn’t penetrated far, but it had done enough damage.

The atmosphere became colder and colder as Ironheart got ready to strike the blow. The air became different, charged with electricity tension building up in the atmosphere as something, small but traveling at an unimaginable speed, hurtled down to Ironheart’s position like a meteor of many colors.

When he was finally ready, he swung with all of his might.

The sword, however, was out of his hands by then. It clattered across the pavement and lay in the side of the street, splashing in a shallow puddle of blood streaming from multiple dead bodies in the center of the road.

“Oh, no, buddy! You want her, you go through me first!”

The small pony that had struck Ironheart settled down in between Twilight and Ironheart, flapping her wings. Rainbow Dash adjusted herself to a firmer stance. “I ain’t letting you harm anypony else, Ironheart!”

“Rainbow Dash.” A malevolent smile spread across Ironheart’s face. “I knew you would come. You shouldn’t have.”

“I’m gonna kill you, Ironheart!” Rainbow Dash screamed at him, her face peeled back in rage. “You hear me? When I’m done with you, you’ll be a pile of scrap metal--”

Ironheart fired at her outstretched wing, and Rainbow Dash screamed in pain, clutching the side of her wing. Blood haloed the edges of her hoof as she pressed against the gunshot wound on her wing.

“Oh, shut up,” Ironheart snapped at her. He outstretched his hand again, and the sword flew to his grip.

Clutching Celestia’s head tightly in his toe talons, he hurled the body at Twilight, and the two of them collapsed and hit their heads hard on the pavement of the streets. Both of them shuddered as the involuntary spasms ran through them upon contact.

Ironheart, faster than even Rainbow Dash’s reflexes, hurtled forward and clutched her around the neck as he ran past her. Spreading his wings as he ran, and ignoring the spears clattering on his back that had been thrown by the Royal Guard, he ignited thrusters and spiraled off into the air, with Rainbow Dash bellowing behind him.

Twilight pushed Celestia off of her. “No!” she croaked as she saw Ironheart’s smoke trails above the skyline of Manehattan. “Rainbow!”

Celestia moaned in pain and gasped, “Go after her.”

“Me?” Twilight asked incredulously, turning to face Celestia.

“It must be you,” Celestia groaned, rubbing her head. “If you do not, Rainbow Dash will die. Do not let her die, Twilight!”

And Twilight knew that Celestia was right. Ironheart was going to kill Rainbow Dash!

Twilight should have felt scared then. She should have felt terrified that the life of one of her closest friend was in danger.

But instead, a red haze developed at the fringes of her vision. A single command overrode all preexisting emotion.

Kill Ironheart.





Hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air, where the atmosphere was even colder than before, Ironheart threw Rainbow Dash outwards. Rainbow Dash involuntarily rightened herself after being thrown; she had trained for this before on the Dizzitron in Wonderbolt Camp.

What she had not been trained for, however, was the excruciating pain in her wing with each flap to merely keep her upright and in the air. With each stroke downward, it felt like her wing was being partially severed by a knife. It hurt more than Rainbow Dash could imagine; she was doubtful if even the damned in Tartarus felt as much pain. Weak cries came with each flap, and she tilted to the side as she struggled to stay airborne.

“FIGHT ME, RAINBOW!” Ironheart bellowed at her. He fired a shot above her head, making her shake. “Prove your power!”

Rainbow, spurred by the words, gritted her resolve and shot forward at what she thought was a good pace, but the hole in her wing halted the speed she was going at. Ironheart was under no such constraint, however, and he swiped his fist forward as she came nearer. She went sprawling in the air and dropped a dozen or so feet before doing her best to righten herself.

Ironheart wasn’t done with her, however. He gripped her head and hurled it down, throwing her through the air and directly through a glass window in the side of a nearby business building. The glass shattered instantly, and Rainbow Dash tumbled on the marble flooring as glass clattered all around her and lodged in her legs and face and chest.

Ironheart landed on the edge of the shattered window pane, gazing upon Rainbow Dash’s crumpled form in front of him. The body was still for a few seconds, but Rainbow Dash’s defiant spirit compelled her to rise once more on her legs weakly.

Slowly, slowly, she rose up on trembling, torn legs. Transparent glass shards, some of them as small as a grain of sand, were lodged in her face and in her forehead. Blood covered the manifold wounds and dripped in tiny rivulets over her eyes and on the edges of her mouth, but she was scowling in pain and defiance at Ironheart’s invincible frame.

“I truly am sorry,” Ironheart said.

“Come at me, bro,” Rainbow Dash whispered. She was too in pain to say anything loudly. She winced as the motions to speak made the glass embedded in her face jostle. “Prove that you have the power to kill.”

Ironheart, without hesitation, lowered his arm at her chest. A long gun barrel extended like a telescope, and the triceps on his forearm grew thicker as it converted to a powerful sniper. A bullet the size of a small carrot loaded itself into the firing chamber with an echoing click, and a slow whine began to build up as power diverted from his heart’s power source to his arm.

From this range, and with so powerful a projectile, there was no doubt of anything. Should he fire at Rainbow Dash, she would only be blown into miniscule pieces of damaged tissue and broken bone. Her gore would be painted across the walls and floor and ceiling of the office environment. Her head would be clean gone, should he choose to fire between her eyes. Ironheart processed this and adjusted his aim to fire at her head. A quicker and more painless death.

Rainbow Dash’s vision consisted of the long black barrel she was now staring down. Never before in her life had she felt more scared than she did at that moment. She had been in some tough spots before, but none as inescapable as this one right here. Memories floated back to her, swimming through the haze of pain that clouded her vision. Memories of her friends, laughing and eating at cafes and helping each other out with work. Memories of them stopping problems from getting out of hoof before, and of them showing their honest love for each other.

It was that love that made her stand upright, shaking from the pain coursing all over her body, to face down her death. The cold end of the gun barrel sticking not two feet from her face seemed to imperceptibly vibrate as her vision pictured it jerking back. It would be the last thing she would ever see.

A tear rolled down her eye, mixing with the blood and painting a streak down her face as it came to her jawbone. She closed her eyes tightly and gritted her teeth, preparing herself for the inevitable death to come. “Do it now,” she whispered. “I’m ready.”

Ironheart breathed through his open mouth as he stood stock-still, pointing the sniper at her. He still did not release the mental trigger in his mind to fire at her. It only worked when he commanded it to, and Ironheart had not commanded it yet.

Rainbow Dash was still tensing up, waiting for her martyr. She was trembling on her legs and wincing quietly. She hesitantly opened one eye to see that Ironheart had not yet fired. The whine of the gun was building up to a crescendo.

Ironheart stiffened his stance and realigned his drooping gun to aim back at her face. Rainbow Dash did not close her eyes this time, but instead looked back into Ironheart’s eyes. They were the only thing that was not blurring for her.

Ironheart kept his gun aiming at her for exactly five more seconds.

Then, after he decided, his arm fell to his side, and the whining gun fell silent. He let out an exhale he didn’t know he was keeping, and he panted.

Rainbow Dash collapsed on her stomach in exhaustion, and that pushed more glass shards deeper into her chest. She cried aloud and rolled over, getting small glass shards in her rainbow mane.

“I can’t,” Ironheart mourned. “I can’t.”

Shame overwhelmed his mind. Not the shame that he was about to kill the broken, helpless pegasus, but the shame that he professed to have the power to kill, but refused to exercise it. His claims were meaningless.

Neither side made a move.

And then Ironheart heard the flapping of feathers from behind him, and he curiously turned around to see Twilight Sparkle flapping her wings in the air. Her face was angry at first, but when she spotted the bleeding, broken pegasus lying on the floor in front of Ironheart, she gasped aloud and almost stopped flapping her wings. Her hooves were brought to her mouth in despair, and tears welled up in her eyes.

Then she regarded Ironheart, and her demeanor had flown, in an instant, from heartbroken to furious.

“Twilight,” Ironheart said conversationally. “I trust you don’t--”

Ironheart was hit by a purple laser beam so strong he flew all the way across the business building, crashed through the window pane on the opposite side, and maintained his speed after his flight. It had all come so quickly that even Ironheart’s lightspeed reflexes were unable to respond in time, and Ironheart, flailing helplessly through the air, realized that yes, Twilight had, in fact attacked him.

Twilight’s form barrelled from the broken window at a speed normally unattainable for most other pegasi and crashed directly into Ironheart’s body as he flew. The two of them slammed into the roof of a concrete mall nearby, cracking the roof and creating ripples like he had landed in water.

But Twilight wasn’t finished. Igniting her horn once more, she fired down at Ironheart beneath her, and Ironheart plowed down through the roof of the mall. And through the floor beneath that, and the next floor, and the next, in a cacophony of booms as he impacted each floor, until he hit the foundations of the mall forty feet beneath.

Twilight peered down through the hole she had created, trying to see Ironheart and what he was doing. The hole was so deep, however, that she couldn’t see the bottom.

And then, through the layers of the holes, a whine could be heard and a red tint could be seen.

Twilight put her head back just in time, as Ironheart rocketed out of the hole, his bladed horn jutted out and a murderous look in his eyes. Had Twilight not thrown her head back, her face would have been impaled by the thin horn.

“TWILIGHT!” Ironheart bellowed at her. “THIS ENDS NOW!”

He collided with her and flew off into the sky, holding her neck in his hand.

Twilight twisted her head around and fired at Ironheart’s face, making him drop her. Still hurtling through the air, she reared his head back and fired down, throwing Ironheart fifty feet down to smash into the pavement.

Twilight landed right in front of the crater Ironheart was lying inside. She pawed the ground angrily as Ironheart stood up once more. After all she had done to him, no damage could be seen on him, and he stood without any sign of injury.

“Twilight,” Ironheart said once more. “The project will detonate in fifteen minutes. You need to get out while you still can.”

“Not with you still alive!” Twilight screamed back. “You almost killed Rainbow Dash!”

“But I didn’t kill her.”

“I’ve had enough of you!” Twilight bellowed at him. “I’ll never surrender to you!”

“And I in turn will never surrender to you, Twilight. Which of us will bow? The one made of flesh, or the one made of metal?”

Twilight fired at him once again in defiance. Ironheart whipped one wing in front of his face, and the purple beam deflected off the wing and exploded on the side of a hotel to their right, throwing rubble and glass into the air and shattering on the ground.

“Twilight!” Ironheart roared at her. “I do not want to harm you!”

“Then what was all that big talk about killing whoever stood in your way before, then, huh?”

“You were the closest thing in the world that I could call a friend, Twilight!”

Twilight’s expression softened visibly, now displaying shock and worry.

“You still mean something to me, small though it may be.”

“I believe you,” Twilight said to him. What was she doing? Why were those words coming out of her mouth? “But I still cannot let you get away.”

“Save yourself now, Twilight! The project will detonate thirteen minutes from now. Will you die now, trying to save your friends? Get them out of the city, and prove that friendship matters to you.”

“No, Ironheart! You’re my friend as well!”

“So why attempt to kill me?” Ironheart roared, trying to ignore the jolt in his stomach at Twilight’s words.

Twilight couldn’t respond to that. Not in any way she could think of right away, at least.

She was spared the agony of making a decision, however, by the flap of wings behind her. She craned her head to see the shining, ethereal form of Princess Celestia land behind her. “Because you are a killer, Ironheart. And you have no intention of changing it. You will never see the light of the sun after this day is over. I swear it as the princess of the sun.”

“I kill because who else must?”

“Nopony must!” Celestia cried. “But the circumstances permit me to destroy you without blame.”

“Do not lie to me at this time, Celestia. You as good as killed me all those years ago by your inactivity and indecision.”

“You will not blame your actions on me, Ironheart!”

Ironheart, without warning, poked the twin nozzles out of his wrists and, igniting them, swept them down in a diagonal motion.

Just before the lasers began their arc, however, Twilight’s quick-thinking mind reflected on a way to minimize his damage. Igniting her own horn, she remembered the exact layouts of Ironheart’s underground lair. The couches in one corner. The vats and machines in another corner. The research center in yet another corner.

And just before the lasers hit, Twilight’s teleportation spell sent Ironheart back to his lair in a small pop. Where he once stood, now there was nothing but crumpled pavement.

Celestia’s own horn was ignited in a shield, but it had come too late. Gazing down at Twilight in relief, she smiled. “Well and cleverly done, my student. Where did you send him?”

“To the place where he came from. Hundreds of feet beneath the city’s sewers.”

“We must go after him.”

“Excuse me?”

“Our job is not yet finished. In a mere ten minutes, his bomb will explode. Where is it located?”

“In…” Twilight faltered. “In the place where I...sent him…”

Celestia’s face was expressionless now. She gazed at the ground. “You and I must go to him. Shining Armor is already on his way to recover Rainbow Dash.”

“Shouldn’t Cadence and Luna come along as well?”

“They are both injured. They would be only a hindrance.” Celestia took a deep breath. “I know not the interior of his surroundings. You must lead me to him, Twilight.”

“I’ll do the best I can, Celestia.” Twilight charged her horn, and Celestia ignited hers as well, alleviating the pressure of teleporting two alicorns to the place where Ironheart would die.

Twilight’s thoughts, for just an instant, screamed at her to stop it, to stop going after and hurting Ironheart, to think for just a second. If Ironheart was truly a friend, why was she trying to kill him? Twilight shook those doubts out of her mind, however. And when the charge was ready, she and Celestia disappeared.





When they arrived, Twilight and Celestia jumped back from scorching their hooves. A long, flaming gorge was in the floor, walls, and ceiling, as a result of the laser strike Ironheart had been about to inflict on them. The scar had barely missed the pedestal the uncovered Manehattan Project was sitting on, only centimeters away from a premature detonation. There was a little pedestal on the bomb that was displaying the number 10:49 in red glowing lines.

Then 10:48.

Then 10:47.

Ironheart was standing directly in front of it, wings spread wide and open like arms waiting for a hug. His arms were folded behind his back, like he was waiting for them. The flame flickering behind him lended an unnatural aura to his presence, and shadows danced like demons for their master in hell.

Twilight charged her horn, ready for another strike at him, but Celestia stopped her with a hoof to the side. “You may hit the bomb,” she cautioned. “Hold your fire until he’s not in the way.”

“Ah. You are wise, Celestia. That’s surprising, actually.”

He was enveloped in a yellow aura, and, with a furious fling of Celestia’s head, was thrown across the room into the turquoise elevators leading up to the surface. The glass shattered all around him as he slumped to the floor, landing on his hind legs in a crouch. Through the raining glass falling around him, he fired the lasers at Celestia again.

Celestia evaded the red streams of energy and latched on to several overhanging fixtures attached to the ceiling with her magic. Without hesitation, they broke free and fired themselves at Ironheart, trailing yellow energy.

Ironheart’s sword whipped out and cut down the debris as they fired at his face. They erupted into sparks and shards of smoking metal that clattered behind him. Holding his sword out to the side, he rushed at Celestia, swinging his sword for a strike as he flew.

Celestia’s horn extended like a yellow sword of sunfire just as the sword crashed down like the wave of the sea. Between the two bars of pure energy, sparks flew off and dripped between the point of contact.

Between the crossed bars, both powerful entities stared each other in the face, with Twilight preparing her own spell off to the side. It was not a mighty clash between the forces of good and bad anymore. It never was from the start.

It was just Celestia, Twilight, and Ironheart.

Just them, and the damage each of them had done to the other.

Ironheart’s sword dropped its resistance to Celestia’s own sword, and he ducked under the sudden swing to collide his fist with Celestia’s face. Twilight’s spell came all of a sudden, and Ironheart’s knee joint, enveloped in a violet aura, bent backwards the wrong way, making Ironheart stumble.

Celestia swung her head down, and this time it was Ironheart who had to block the unstoppable strike with his own matchless power. Bent on one knee, holding the white jagged sword in front of his face, he slowly, slowly began to press back Celestia’s bright, shining yellow sword.

Their strength was perfectly matched; once they were even, neither sword moved more.

But Ironheart was alone. Celestia wasn’t.

Twilight remembered the way Ironheart had created the element of Infinisteel in the first place. He had played with transmutation: rearranging the way atoms were created. What if Twilight was able...through some miracle...to turn Infinisteel back into steel?

It was skeptical if she could, but it was intriguing nonetheless. She had proven before that she could turn one thing into another. Apples into oranges, however, seemed paltry in comparison to what lay ahead of her.

Can I? Will I?

Twilight ignited her horn, resolving to try.

Celestia and Ironheart’s power struggle was reaching a crescendo. Both were pressing against the other with all the strength either of them could muster. Sweat poured down Celestia’s face, and Ironheart’s forehead was pleated in rage and his teeth were bared.

Suddenly Ironheart’s knee, bent the wrong way, straightened automatically to its normal way, then Ironheart brought it up to slam it into Celestia’s chest. Startled, Celestia got thrown onto her back with a resounding crash, and her magical yellow sword dissipated until it was only her horn on her head.

Ironheart raised the sword above his head once more as Celestia stayed on the ground, clutching her chest.

As Ironheart brought the sword down, Twilight’s spell fired at Ironheart’s hand.

Ironheart felt his right thumb go incredibly stiff, and he fumbled the sword just as he almost struck Celestia. Holding the sword in his left now, Ironheart observed his thumb to find, instead of a thumb, a carrot.

Ironheart blinked, then squinted at the carrot. He could have sworn that he had a thumb on his hand before, but apparently this carrot had decided to replace it, for whatever reason. He glanced at Twilight, who smiled sheepishly when she saw him glaring at her.

Twilight had the power to turn his invincible frame into nothing more than a crude imitation of steel! Ironheart would not be immobilized now! Ironheart would not be become a vegetable at the hooves of Twilight!

So to speak, of course.

Observing it more, he discovered the wiggling that he could normally do with a thumb and discovered, to his relief, that the carrot on his hand was actually an imaginary vision. Twilight hadn’t actually transformed his thumb into a carrot; she had only given the illusion of it. Twilight, for all her magical prowess, hadn’t actually mastered transforming something as complicated as Infinisteel into a root vegetable. So he shook his fist to get rid of the carrot image, transformed his fist into another laser emitter, and fired at Twilight.

Twilight could only answer by firing another beam back at equal power.

The two beams collided in midair, and the impact made a concussive sound as both ponies tried to push the other’s beam back. Where the beams met, there was a bright, shining bulb of light that moved depending on who was pushing harder.

Twilight, planting her hooves hard in the ground, took a marching step forward.

Ironheart saw this and took another heavy step forward as well.

The beams increased in power the closer together they got. The power coming off of them shimmered in the air, making it hard to see the other combatant.

Twilight took another resolute step forth. Ironheart did the same. The power between the two of them was getting to dangerous levels as the beam length shortened.

Another step forward. And another.

The distance between Twilight’s horn and Ironheart’s bent wrist now was only a handwidth.

And Ironheart closed that distance by jamming his hand forward so his fist connected with the top of Twilight’s horn.

A shockwave of pure force erupted between them with a sonic concussion, throwing both of them back with equal force. The air rippled as it followed their paths through the air.

Twilight skidded on the ground, gaining a massive burn on her thigh as it tore into her flesh and ripped away skin. Ironheart collided with a wall, sending out a shower of debris. And the Manehattan Project trembled on its foundations so hard that it rocked back and forth like a drunken sailor.

Twilight cried aloud as she examined her upper thigh. A large patch of skin had broken off, and grainy pebbles had lodged themselves in her tender flesh, making blood speckle on her leg and run down her hip. Standing upright once more, her leg was shaking so hard that she had to steady her hip with another hoof, wincing. Her horn felt like it was burning on the tip by how hard Ironheart’s fist had connected with it.

She saw Ironheart, across the room, stand weakly up on his two legs, trembling on his support. His face displayed both shock and rage at Twilight’s prowess.

But before he could do something to react to Twilight, he was rammed back against the wall by Celestia’s horn, puncturing the armor in his lower stomach. Celestia was roaring at the top of her lungs as she pushed into Ironheart’s stomach with all the force an immortal Alicorn could muster.

Ironheart gripped Celestia’s head around the horn and pushed back against Celestia’s force with titan-like strength of his own. His face contorted in powerful agony and rage, he slowly pushed Celestia’s horn out of his stomach.

Holding Celestia’s head in his hands, he took one hand off of it and swept it behind his back. Then he threw his clawed hand above his head.

Celestia’s face was in the way.

A long trio of scarlet furrows raked themselves across Celestia’s face, throwing her head back and sending blood flying through the air. Throwing his foot outward with a hard kick, Ironheart launched the inert princess flying through the air, and Celestia hit the side of the Manehattan Project with a clang, spun to the ground, and slammed into the concrete. The Manehattan Project teetered once more, but did not fall, and Celestia was immobile as she simply lay on the ground near the bomb’s surface, bleeding from the three scars on her cheek.

Twilight saw this with alarm, and whipped her head to view Ironheart with newfound fear. The deep puncture in his stomach was already having a new layer reforming on top of the wound, through Ironheart’s covered fingers. Twilight took this opportunity to further examine Ironheart’s appearance. Blackened with soot, marred by miniscule debris, and covered with dark dried blood on his arms, chest, neck, and face, Ironheart truly was an indestructible master of war, and the appearance of him was enough to petrify Twilight’s movements.

Twilight hurriedly tried to reimagine the way to destroy Ironheart: to take the elements making up his armored body and to rearrange them into something harmless. Trying her best to concentrate in the face of the devil standing before her and marching towards her, Twilight fired another spell at Ironheart’s legs.

Ironheart’s legs didn’t turn into any kind of vegetable this time, but Ironheart did notice that as Twilight’s magic aura surrounded his legs, he felt weaker than before. Oh, he was still standing on Infinisteel legs, but he was aware of them changing, the electrons surrounding the individual atoms in his legs shifting around. It was as if the genes in a living being’s body was being manipulated into something alien, something unnatural to their normal state.

And Ironheart hated it.

His wrist poked a miniscule missile out of his arm, and it fired at a space directly in front of Twilight’s hooves, making her stumble and lose her target. With his legs now free, Ironheart was still made out of the elemental metal that made up his body, but it was still unnerving to have it come so close to losing who he was.

But, Ironheart reflected, hadn’t he already lost part of who he was when he decided to transform himself into a monster? He had lost his love for others. His passion. His will to believe that other ponies were naturally good. His will to continue down the path others were going down. His belief that he could continue in life at all with any hope.

Hope. What hope? What hope had he ever had?

Why was he thinking like this? Why now, of all times, must he reflect on his weaknesses? On those he hated?

No. The one he hated.

Who was the only pony he ever hated? The only one he truly hated, above all others?

Who?

And the answer came to him in an astounding burst of clarity.

It was himself.

The only pony he ever truly hated was himself.

He hated himself because of who he was before, and of the consequences he suffered as a result of simply being who he was. He had wanted to become better than who he was before, and that drive, that ambition to improve his lowly, worm-like state, had become his own self-destruction.

Ironheart let out a bellow of defiance at his own terrible thoughts and, in his rage, made his fist become hollow. Chattering out of it was a long, barbed whip that clinked on the ground. He threw his arm forward and it caught Twilight square across the chest. She spun to the ground, blood flying in all directions, and let out a cry of pain as she crashed to earth.

Ironheart raised his arm up once more to finish her, blinded by rage and artificial adrenaline running through his cabled veins. But before the whip could fall completely down, however, Twilight was already up again with a glowing horn, and Ironheart was lifted up into the air and smashed into the ceiling so hard a light came loose and dangled by only a cable, throwing its light around drunkenly as Ironheart smashed down once more, behind the Manehattan Project.

Twilight, bleeding from her flank and her chest now, carefully picked herself over to where Celestia was also getting to all fours. The timer behind her read 5:14, and was counting down much too quickly for Twilight’s liking.

“I will take him,” Celestia groaned, blood running into her mouth from the three scars on her cheek. “You must find some way to stop this, Twilight.”

“No!” Twilight refused, ignoring the burning in her flank and on the top of her horn. “Celestia, I can do this! I can stop him on my own--”

“No, Twilight! You’re too injured! I will hold him off enough for you to disable the bomb. Above all else, Twilight, the bomb must be disabled before it can be fired. Promise me.”

“But Celestia! What if you die?”

“Then you will have enough time, at least.”

“But-”

“Twilight. There’s no time. You’ve read the journal telling how the bomb works. If anypony knows how to disable it, it’s you. I must hold him off long enough for you to save the city.”

“Celestia-”

“Twilight. Look at me.”

Twilight looked into the weary eyes of her worn-down mentor, her face smudged with dirt and caked with blood.

“I would not command you to do anything unless I know you could do it. Can you obey me?”

Twilight risked a glance at the timer. 4:06.

“Twilight. Promise me. Can you do it?”

Twilight, with a herculean effort, swallowed her doubt.

“Yes, Celestia.”

Celestia turned around. “Then help me save Equestria. And remember, Twilight. No matter what happens to me, I love you.”

And she spread her wings and took off in flight over the bomb to Ironheart’s position.

Twilight looked at the timer helplessly. After a moment of analyzing, she came up with a sort of half-baked plan. Selecting one of her more advanced spells, she fired a freezing spell at the timer, coating it in shimmering blue ice. The timer, after the ice had gotten inside the cracks in its outer layer and into the wiring, froze the time on the display to 3:44. Whether it was just the timer that froze, or if the bomb’s detonation itself was frozen, however, Twilight could not say.

Which meant Twilight had to hurry.

She heard a sonic concussive boom from the other side of the bomb, and she craned her head up to see Ironheart, battered and speckled with dirt and other ponies’ blood, be tossed into the air by Celestia’s magic aura. Ironheart rightened himself in the air with his wings and threw his arm forward, sending the whip on the end wrapping around Celestia’s horn tightly as Celestia flew into the air as well.

Then he yanked on it with all the force he had, and Celestia screamed in pain as she grabbed at the whip connecting to Ironheart’s fist. Celestia’s hooves bled as she pressed hard into the wiry barbed whip, but she could make no difference in her condition.

Her blood pounding in her ears as adrenaline coursed through her fearful body, Twilight turned her attention back to the bomb’s outside. She tried to pry a piece of the bomb’s exterior skin off, but it was bolted to it too tightly. She tried to remove the bolts with magic when it failed and saw, to her success, that the bolts could be removed easily enough with magic.

Finally taking a large patch of metal off the bomb’s layering hull, Twilight could see the wires crisscrossing and connecting, in at least five different colors. Trying to ignore the pain in her bloodied chest and flank, Twilight activated her horn once more to analyze the pattern of energy in the cables.

Celestia’s horn burned with yellow plasma as the powers of the sun coursed into her horn, and the cruel wiry whip smoked and melted off upon contact. Now free from the restraint, but her horn aching from the abuse, Celestia sliced her horn downwards, and a curve of yellow plasma whipped out and slashed Ironheart across the face, spinning him in the air. Celestia flew like a bullet at him before he could righten himself, and the two of them crashed into the lab space where he did his calculations. Glass shattered and liquid splashed everywhere as they slid across the black desk holding vials and beakers, and the blackboard split in half as Celestia’s horn, missing Ironheart, carved it right down the middle.

Twilight, with the aid of her magical abilities, could almost see the energy running through the wires and where they went in the bomb. The red wire directed the energy to the main ignition chamber, in the core of the hollow bomb. Yellow wires held the bomb stable until the time of ignition. The green wires connected the timer to the bomb and released the energy in the yellow wires when the timer was at zero, making the energy in the red wires more free to direct themselves to the ignition chamber and press the two sides of the chamber together, smushing the Uranium in the middle and causing the chain reaction that would destroy the city.

Twilight wasn’t sure of which cable to cut first. There was nopony to help her or give her guidance this time. She was on her own once more.

However, she didn’t have forever. The flames all over Ironheart’s lair was making the ice covering the timer melt quicker than she would have liked. She needed to find out a way to stop the bomb’s countdown process completely, or else the timer would continue from where it left off. Already there was a small puddle of water at the base of the bomb as the ice dripped off.

Celestia and Ironheart grappled with titanic strength on the lab desk, hooves and fists colliding into each other’s face. Ironheart’s fists did more damage to Celestia’s soft flesh, but Celestia’s hooves were imbued with a glowing yellow aura as her horn lended its power to her front legs. Each strike made Ironheart recoil, and Celestia, though bloodied and bruised, was not about to surrender anytime soon.

Ironheart slammed both of his fists down on Celestia’s chest at the same time, making her double over as a breath escaped her. Ironheart’s fists wrapped themselves around her horn once more and began to press to the side like he was moving a lever. Celestia’s glowing horn was making his hands heat up like a cherry-red stove, but he continued to press with unnatural strength. Celestia was screaming in pain, closing her eyes so tightly tears forced themselves from the corners. She grabbed on to the arm holding her and pulsed her horn in a blast of power, blinding him temporarily and making him let go.

The glare polarizers in Ironheart’s eyes cut the glare by 78 per cent. His vision cleared in plenty of time to see Celestia slice the physical tip of her horn across his face diagonally.

It actually opened up the skin; Ironheart could give her credit for that. That amount of tightly-concentrated heat on the tip of her horn was actually above the melting point for Infinisteel. But it was a mere graze; nothing he couldn’t handle.

What concerned him was that he felt no pain at her touch. He was confused at that; since his talk with the girls the night before, he couldn’t feel senses as well as he could before. He couldn’t smell the smoke of the flames raging around his home. He couldn’t feel the pain of the horn slicing into his face. The only thing that worked, that responded to his commands, was his eyesight. He could see clearly enough.

He had always seen clearly enough.

He could always see the truth.

And it wasn’t that he wanted to feel pain, but somehow, being disconnected to your senses was even more tortuous than being in pain. Because at least with pain, you were tethered to something. Here and now, however, he could feel nothing around him. He could barely make out the contours of the desk he was lying on, but there was no taste in his mouth now, no smell that he could make out. Noises seemed muffled as his mind withdrew itself.

He straightened out a leg, kicking her back. She skidded alongside shards of glass and fell onto the ground, full of sharp edges and corners. Ironheart unfurled his wings like a banner and swished them at Celestia’s frame. Celestia caught the feathered blades with her magic and shot them back at him. They skidded along his face in sparks, but nothing could be felt. Ironheart pounced on Celestia, slamming the back of her head against the back of the concrete floor. He pressed a fist against her throat, pushing inexorably with the tips of his knuckles. Celestia’s face was turning as purple as her eyes. Gasps for breath came quickly and weakly, and her struggling grew weaker and weaker.

The control panel counting down to detonation had by now entirely lost its ice and the countdown was resuming. Twilight desperately tried to refreeze the panel with another spell, but the panel was too hot to allow any ice to stick to it. It just melted again and resumed from where it was.

I’m wasting time, Twilight thought as she turned back to the bomb after her second attempt to freeze the panel. 3:06 left. She quickly tried to examine the energy’s roots that was making the Manehattan Project ready to detonate, but there was nothing to do. If she cut off energy to the bomb, would it automatically detonate? Ironheart was definitely smart enough to install a fail-safe lock on it, just in case. Twilight didn’t dismiss the notion.

Twilight’s sweat was making her wounds sting. Sweat from the blazing flames around her, yes, but also the sweat of anticipation. 2:45 left. If she couldn’t find a way to stop the bomb in that time, everyone that she was close to would die. Nothing but flying ash in the warm wind would be left of the city.

2:40 left. Twilight tried to refocus on what she needed to do. The bomb. The energy connecting it to its detonation sequence. But which cable should she cut? Which one would stop the bomb?

Red was normally a bad color, and the right indicator to get rid of, but if the energy to making the bomb explode in two and a half minutes was cut, then would it explode prematurely? And the energy making the bomb stable, in the yellow cable, couldn’t be cut either. Which one would stop the countdown and the detonation at the same time?

2:19. Twilight was as hopeless as she was when she started. She didn’t know anything about how bombs worked. The lab journal only explained so much, after all, and she wasn’t focused on how the bomb worked back then. They were more focused on Ironheart instead.

Twilight had to make a decision. She took a risk and fired her horn at the green wire, cutting it cleanly. Then she closed her eyes and winced, bracing for death.

There was no tremendous explosion. There was nothing that Twilight could ascertain at all, actually, and she opened her eyes in relief. But the wire wasn’t useless. Now that the green wire wasn’t supplying power to giving the yellow cable, was the yellow wire next? Or had she made it safe for the red one to be cut now?

Regardless, the timer was at two minutes and counting, so Twilight didn’t try to waste time. Fiddling with the yellow wire, she tried to pull some length of it out in order to examine which one it was connected to.

And then a dark shadow covered her head, blocking the heat of the flames, and it suddenly got much, much colder than she remembered it being.

Twilight turned around in dread.

There he was. There was Ironheart, towering over her small frame, with his powerfully built arms folded behind his back. His eyes burned more than the flames at his clawed feet.

“Oh, Twilight. I applaud your tenacity.”

Twilight, without thinking, fired at his head, but he merely dodged to the side and used his momentum to kick her away from the control panel. She rolled through some scraps of broken debris and some hot coals, making her body cry out even more. She came to a stop lying on her stomach, bleeding afresh from new scrapes on her face and body. The long gash on her stomach, while not deep, was bleeding enough to cake the surrounding area of flesh, and made her body sticky.

She looked up to see Ironheart bearing down on her, striding forward on his two monstrous legs. She was too weak to stand up again. She lifted her head up off the ground, but that made her almost black out.

“Trying to stop my little project? Your resourcefulness is to be admired, but that is where the awards stop. You have no chance, Twilight. You should have gotten out when I ordered you to. Now you and I will die, and there is nothing any of us can do to halt the bomb’s countdown.”

And Ironheart was right. There was only a minute and a half left until the project exploded. Celestia was overpowered, Twilight was overpowered, and her vision was becoming blurry.

Twilight tried, desperately, to reignite her horn and get his internal atomic structure to change. But she was so weak, so helplessly weak, that no matter how hard she tried, nothing could come to her horn. Twilight didn’t know what she could do.

Pop

And it wasn’t Twilight that did anything.

Instead, it was Cadence, who appeared out of nowhere to ram into Ironheart with all the force of a freight train and send him skidding on his back into a wall. Appearing above him, Princess Luna, recovered from the spearheaded feather that had sunk into her chest armor, threw her head down while igniting her horn. A blast of pure white energy drilled into Ironheart’s inert body and pushed it towards the steps of the Project, on the timer’s opposite side. The indestructible Ironheart was now lying out cold in a puddle of ruptured cement near the base of his Project.

Luna scowled at the unmoving form of Ironheart for a moment more, then turned around to see her sister lying out cold in her own blood, bruises sprouting from all over her body. Crying in distress, she landed next to her and set the tip of her horn to Celestia’s head. Her form glowed blue, and life seemed to pour back into her body, slowly but surely.

“Twilight!” Cadence exclaimed, landing next to her sister-in-law’s body. “Are you all right?”

“The...bomb…” Twilight gasped, raising a bloody hoof. Her body was numb from all of the wounds all over her. “Got...to...stop...it…”

“Right!” Cadence remembered, and turned her attention to the bomb’s timer on the side. There were less than fifteen seconds left on the timer.

“Do it, Cadence! Do...it!”

Cadence, thinking wildly, did the first thing that came to mind.

Enveloping the whole bomb in her magical aura, she located the source of the generator supplying power to the project, and with a pulse of her mind, shut it down. With 9 seconds left on the timer, the timer halted its progress.

Twilight, still lying on the floor, took a while before she accepted the fact that yes, the timer was actually off. The tension in the room had disappeared rather abruptly.

Too abruptly for Twilight’s taste.

Twilight waited some more. There was no deafening boom, no flash of white, no sudden disintegration of her limbs and body. After she counted to nine in her mind three times, she finally accepted it. The bomb had been stopped.

Twilight rolled over on her belly and took several deep breaths. “It's over,” she gasped. “It’s done.”