In his cell at Canterlot Prison, Sombra laid on his bed. His mind was a mess of terrible thoughts: how to payback Tirek for the beating he gave him, what to do about Pharynx for reappearing into his life. Most of all, he was thinking of a way to escape his cell.
He had felt something only moments ago. Something terrible that was far greater than anything he had experienced in his life. Whatever it was, he knew only bad things could follow in its wake. Worse than anything Pharynx would ever rein upon the world.
Pharynx stared at his father, fear and awe warping within him. This was the man who had taught him the greatest and most terrible lessons in his life. Whether or not he was real, the madman could barely fathom that he had returned.
“Well...What do you say, boy? Help me...Help me put this world out of its misery…” his father urged him again.
It was becoming too much for Pharynx to handle. He felt his temperature rise, and his head swim. He put one hand to his forehead, and used the other to prop himself on his desk. Flashes the the visions he saw of his past whorled through his mind. No matter where he went in his mind, there was Sombra, Tirek and Chrysalis. Nowhere was his father found, but in the darkest, farthest recesses of his mind. A man who was never there for him, but laid out the plans for his terrible course in life.
“I don’t know if I can,” Pharynx said.
“Of course you can...You have everything you need...The power of a god...the knowledge of our sick world...the will to follow through...Do it, Pharynx. Do what must be done…”
“If I did, then what would happen to all the others?” Pharynx wondered aloud to himself.
“What others? There are no others...Only you and I, the only two who are able to save this world from itself...Now, do what I say…!” his father shouted.
Pharynx stood with his hands trembling. Half of him wanted to obey his father without question. The other half wanted to destroy him on the spot. His hand crept to his chest, and hovered over the stone hung around his neck.
“I said, do it, boy!!!” his father shouted, before welling up mass of black aura in his hands, and throwing it at Pharynx.
That was it for Pharynx. Something in the madman’s brain snapped, and made him retaliate.
He disappeared momentarily, then reappeared in the exact same spot when the magic passed by. When he did, he fired a massive stream of magic from his hands, slicing downward to cut his father in two.
His father dodged, and retaliated by making the ground explode beneath Pharynx.
Pharynx was blown to the ceiling, then fell through the hole in the floor. Shortly after, his father jumped down to continue their fight.
Back in his cell, Sombra shouted loudly when a beam of what looked like some kind of red light sliced right through the center of his living area. When it passed, there was a hole cut through the ceiling, and a gaping hole in the bars of his cell.
This was what he had been hoping for. Not in the way it had happened, but now he was free. Taking no chances of staying in his cell, Sombra quickly ran out the open bars and out of his block.
Pharynx continued his battle with his father. He rolled to the side when he saw the old man come plummeting down from above.
When his father landed, he struck the ground with a force that made a crater around his magically glowing shoes.
Pharynx magically conjured a stiletto into his hand, and sliced downward at his opponent.
With every swing, his father appeared on one side or the other without blinking an eye, so much as ducking or dodging.
Pharynx summoned more stilettos, which slashed through the air without his hand, and disappeared whenever they missed.
One last lunge, and his blade was heading toward his father’s chest. He could feel the tip of the blade touch his opponent’s shirt.
His father disappeared completely. All that remained was his grey raincoat draped over Pharynx’s arm.
“Here I am…” his father said, as Pharynx felt his hands on his shoulders.
The man lifted Pharynx from behind and threw him at a wall.
Using his magic, Pharynx passed through the wall unharmed.
In the next room over, Pharynx crashed into the death chair, breaking it from its base and toppling it and its occupant over.
The arm of the chair broke against the ground, and Tempest was able to undo her restraints, starting with her other wrist.
Pharynx’s father flew through the wall, breaking it with the sheer force of his power and tackled his son through the next wall.
Tempest took the hood off of her head and looked to see what was happening. She saw a smoking hole in the wall, and Pharynx was making the hallway beyond twist itself to crush a very tall man he was fighting.
“Holy hell!!” Tempest shuddered, before she quickly started undoing the rest of her restraints.
Once she was freed of the death machine, Tempest quickly ran from the room, using the exit furthest from the two fighters.
She ran to the police armory, finding the door unlocked. She had been hearing gunshots in the prison for weeks since it was taken over, and knew that the chances of her finding a weapon were slim.
She was in luck, there was a single shotgun available for use. Wasting no time, she checked if it was loaded.
Empty.
“Dammit!” she said.
She checked for ammunition, only to find the lockers were bare.
“God dammit!!” she shouted.
This was all she would have with her. As long as she was in his hell house, she would need anything she could use to defend herself.
Tempest burst out of the armory, unloaded shotgun in hand. It wasn’t long before she came across a couple of brawling inmates.
As soon as they saw the officer, the first inmate slammed the other’s face into a corner, and raised his fists to finish off Tempest.
Tempest blocked his swing with her weapon, clubbed his gut, and thrusted her elbow down on his collarbone.
She felt a tiny crack upon impact, and knew she had inflicted a hairline fracture. With the inmate incapacitated, Tempest ran on her way.
It was pandemonium. All the prisoners had begun rioting, likely from the violent explosions they heard.
There would be no pacifyin these prisoners. Tempest knew she would have to power through them.
Quickly, Tempest ran past a group melee, only using her shotgun to block a chair that was swung at her.
Past them, she was knocked over by an inmate who was pushed into her.
Her legs were pinned under the weight of the other man.
The inmate got up, only to be clubbed in the teeth by Tempest’s shotgun.
Once he fell over, Tempest pulled her legs out from under him and continued running.
Unfortunately, she had run into a firefight.
Bullets mowed down the inmates before her, forcing the officer to take cover behind an overturned table. Tempest crawled as far as she could to the table’s edge, and found what she needed.
A dead inmate had his hand in an ammunition box, where two shotgun shells were strewn on the floor.
Over the sounds of fired shots, Tempest could hear the gunners shouting. She quickly reached her hand out from cover, took the shells, loaded her weapon, and shouted loudly as a shot went through the wooden cover next to her head.
After chambering her shot, Tempest used the bullet hole next to herself to peer through and see what was happening beyond her cover.
There was one gunner she could see, firing a machine gun at all in his path.
After waiting for his aim to divert, Tempest burst from her cover and fired her weapon.
The gunner went down, and Tempest continued on her way.
She leapt over cover that was occupied by others, knocking down another inmate in her way.
Tempest knew that it was unlikely she would find more ammunition. She would have to conserve her last shot.
The officer shouted loudly as she felt a familiar stinging hot pain in her back, which made her fall to the floor. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw Chrysalis come jumping down on her, holding a taser in her hand.
Tempest rolled away, as Chrysalis slammed her electrical weapon to the ground.
“Thought you’d get away from this?” Tempest said, as she charged up her weapon to maximum voltage. “One way or another, you’re getting fried!!!”
Tempest scrambled to her feet to avoid the next attack. She aimed her shotgun at Chrysalis, and readied her trigger finger.
Before she could fire, the officer was knocked away by Tirek, who was wielding dusters on his fist.
“Never bring a gun to a fist fight! It’s the surest way to lose,” Tirek said, as he picked up the dropped shotgun, and dismantled it with his bare hands.
Now, Tempest was unarmed against two armed opponents. And her odds of winning were quickly plummeting.
Tirek’s leg was clubbed with a pipe, making the man-mountain stagger.
Chrysalis was next, with a blow to her weapon arm, making her drop her taser.
Tempest didn’t even watch to see what happened to Tirek. She grabbed the taser, grabbed Chrysalis by her hair and jammed the electrical weapon under her chin. She held the taser there, until Chrysalis dropped to the floor. Tempest threw the taser down hard at the waif’s head, making the weapon bounce away.
“You like that, Chrysalis!!?” Tempest yelled.
The inmate who saved her finished attacking Tirek. After one last hit, he looked straight at Tempest. The officer wished she had kept the taser, now that she was face to face with Sombra himself.
“Come with me!” Sombra said, urgently.
Tempest wasn’t about to do anything with Sombra, until he flashed a set of silver car keys to her. Placing her trust in the lesser of two evils, the officer followed after the inmate.
As soon as they left, the entire room rumbled. The floor bulged and the ceiling sagged, making it seem as if the room were collapsing toward some center of gravity. Everything snapped back into place as Pharynx and his father appeared in the room.
With a wave of his hand, the table behind Pharynx melted into a malleable brown mass and reached to attack his father.
The table burst into embers from a single punch of the stranger.
Pharynx threw everything he had at his opponent. Every spent bullet was pulled from the walls and dead bodies in the room, then magically thrown at his father. The bullets all morphed into living creatures, which snapped and bit like lead piranhas.
Pharynx’s father put up a magical shield around himself, which closed and enveloped around the magical bullets, and crumbled them all to dust.
Whichever inmates weren’t killed by the battling father and son ran from the room. Tirek limped over to Chrysalis, helped her up from the ground, and the two ran as quickly as their battered bodies could carry them.
Pharynx rushed into the fray, flaring his magic to create a sinkhole in the concrete beneath his father.
His father stood atop the whorling ground as if it were perfectly solid, and retaliated by making four massive spiked pillars rise from the ground around him.
Pharynx saw his chance and took it. Using his magic, he made the spikes from the pillars grow outward and impale his father from all sides.
The stranger hung suspended in the air, his body warped and contorted by the spikes penetrating him.
“Dirty fool, boy…” he said, as blood dripped from his wounds. His eyes flashed from gold to red, then back again, as the spikes in his body burst out of his front, and impaled Pharynx through his chest.
Pharynx was sent backwards, until he was slammed into a wall. There, he was pinned by the very spikes that had impaled his father.
The stranger walked along the length of the spikes that impaled them both, his blood dripping from them as he walked. After what seemed a hundred steps, he was face to face with his son.
“You’re infected...We all are...Remember, it’s never too late to make things right...I hope that in time, you will see the world the way that I do…” the stranger said.
Pharynx tried to answer, but his reply was stifled by a mouthful of blood.
As if a switch were thrown, the world reset itself to as it was before the chaos in the prison broke out.
Pharynx dropped to the floor, finding he was now alone in the room. He breathed deeply as he looked around for any sign of his father. But, he was nowhere in sight. Not even the wounds he had sustained were on his chest. In fact, his shirt wasn’t even torn.
On the highway beyond the prison, Tempest and Sombra were making their way to Canterlot city in the police car they had commandeered. As was their agreement, Tempest was driving while Sombra sat in the back.
“Again, I must thank you for agreeing so readily to let me come along,” Sombra said.
Tempest didn’t even nod. She was still holding a grudge against Sombra for gouging her eye out.
“Don’t think I’m doing you any favors. I just needed to get out of that place,” Tempest answered.
“So did I. And I think we can still help each other,” Sombra said.
“Help how? I don’t need you evening out my eyes for me,” Tempest said, as she gripped the steering wheel more tightly.
“It’s nothing like that. I can keep you safe from the scum that walks this city. And in return, I want your help to find my son,” Sombra said, leaning more closely to the driver’s seat. “You remember him, don’t you?”
Indeed, Tempest did remember him. The one visitor Sombra ever had during his sentence. The boy she tried and failed to save from Pharynx.
“Yeah. I remember him. And I’m sure as hell not taking you to find him,” Tempest said.
“Why not? Don’t you want to do your civic duty as a officer?” Sombra asked, flashing his fanged smile.
“That’s exactly why I’m not taking you to him,” Tempest said, as she adjusted the rearview mirror to not focus on Sombra’s smile, “There’s no way that I’m letting you, a deranged killer, go anywhere near a kid like him.”
“Then you’ll be disturbed to know that Pharynx has targeted him.”
Tempest didn’t answer immediately.
“You’ve seen my boy. You know he has a better chance than I ever did to lead a normal life. As his father, I feel like it’s my job to insure that. Take me to him, and the two of us can end Pharynx and save my son.”
Tempest said nothing. Instead, she slowly depressed the gas pedal on the car, making it speed faster toward Canterlot city.