//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Secret Soldier 
// by computerneek 
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When he absorbed the Alicorn magic from Princess Twilight, Tirek believed that hers was the last he’d need to gain omnipotence.  That’s what he’d been told, in that ancient prophecy- if he could take the magic of every pony in Equestria, he’d become omnipotent.
Only, he’s not becoming omnipotent.  While the powerless ponies and draconequus in front of him do their thing- he really doesn’t care what, it’s not like they can fight him- he scans the area around him.  He doesn’t feel so much as a smidgen of active power anywhere other than himself- but he also doesn’t feel his pending omnipotence.  Seriously, it’s supposed to be instantaneous!  He spends just a few more seconds analyzing this, uses his newly acquired alicorn magic in a wide scan for any pony he missed, and briefly vents his frustration on the forest in front of him.  The ponies- and the draconequus- have left, but no matter.
Now that the first piece of his ferocious temper is satisfied, he turns back towards Ponyville, and places his concentration into a powerful magical scan fit to identify every pony in Equestria, check them for magic, and tell him if anypony is missing.
This scan takes him a few minutes, spent impatiently crushing trees, but it eventually completes with a rather disappointing result.
One pony.
One, single unicorn, the spell couldn’t find.
He compares the number of unicorn magics he’s absorbed to the total number his spell reports should be found…  Yep, that one unicorn still has magic.  And he can’t find it!  He lets out an enormous roar, and resumes venting his frustration on the leafy eyesore around him.  He drops scan after scan into the atmosphere, searching, searching for that one survivor.

Unbeknownst to him, there existed too many layers of stone and spellwork between him and his faraway target.  Had he known where she was, getting to her would have been easy.  Had he been looking for just any pony, he would have seen the standing enchantments and looked closer.  However, he’s looking for a specific pony, so the enchanted objects in the desert aren’t worthy of his attention.  He doesn’t sense anypony near them, so it’s more worth his while to examine everypony else’s signatures more closely.

Very suddenly, he senses a massive surge in magical energy very close to him, and whirls to face.  It’s those six mares!  With rainbows!  How?
Oh, they’re responding.  He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud.
“...ost powerful magic in all of Equestria:  The magic of friendship!”
Even as he feels their magic- friendship, apparently- building to similar power levels as his own current state, he feels an even greater surge elsewhere.  No, two of them- one in that desert, and one hardly fifty miles away…  Wait.  That was two ends of the same spell; the enchanted objects in the desert have disappeared.
More importantly, he can now sense the missing unicorn- though only vaguely, and only in the vicinity of the closer surge.  Must be behind a lot of rock or something to be hiding its signature that well.  Part of him forgets about the mares in front of him and starts turning towards it, simultaneously generating a more focused scan to find a more exact position and building up for a teleport.  Part of him stays focused on the charging Elements of Harmony in front of him- how the mares activated them without their magic, he doesn’t know.  The rest of him is indecisive in what course of action he wants to take.
Unfortunately for him, this proves to be his downfall.  His stolen power is split between three different tasks- and the one that would have saved him, defense against the Elements, gets the least power directed towards it.  Most of the rest was directed to indecision, leaving about thirty unicorns worth of power to locate the final pony and jump him closer.
And what the combined magical power of almost every Equestrian soul might deflect with dismissive ease, two unicorns’ worth of power will be swatted away by with similarly punitive ease.  The quantity of magic directed to his indecision is then looking absolutely nowhere when the powerful magic strikes his form- and strips him instantly of his stolen magics.  Except those two unicorns’ worth- that takes a quarter second to strip out, thanks to its direction towards his defense.
As the magic of the Elements burns through his form, reducing him back to the powerless centaur he had left behind, memories flash through his mind…  including his brother’s last words, before he departed back home.
“Your attention span will be your undoing,” he had said.
And so, Tirek the Omnipotent once again failed to come to be, while Tirek the Banished once again arrived in Tartarus.  He was so close…  Maybe next time.

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Finally, she made it!  It had taken weeks to build up enough power in her enchantments to move the thing.  Then, she’d moved it.
But that was the simple part.  There had been a cave by one of the doors back in that desert; nevermind that she had constructed the cave in the sandstone.  Now, however, that cave leads to a rather large quantity of rather unremarkable dirt and rock.  Nevermind that it’s the kind of dirt and rock that one normally doesn’t find in a desert in any quantity.
Now, there is no such cave.  Whatever it is, it’s still underground- and she now has to tunnel her way out of it, with no convenient excess of atmospheric space to fill with the refuse.  Fortunately, this thing is enormous…  Unfortunately, she can’t exactly navigate her way through it.  She turns to look down the strange passage.  Her remaining supplies lie against the wall just behind her; this is where she’s camped for the last month or so, charging her teleport spells to move it to its new location.  The door at the other end of this short passage stands open, revealing another passage she’d only started exploring.  She’d stopped quickly, fearing getting lost; every passage within this thing looks just about the same.
She tilts her head, turning back to the rock now obstructing her exit.  An idea, if she were to carve herself an exit tunnel through this, back to her main experimentation area…  And place the refuse rock on the left side of these passages as she explores them.  That way, not only will she get out of this thing, but she’ll also be able to explore it!
She looks at her supplies once again.  She’s got enough food left for about a week…  So, she shrugs, she’s got that long to dig her new tunnel.  Shouldn’t be that hard, unless this thing has comparatively little empty space- at which point she figures she’d just fill the passages furthest from her entrance, until she breaks free.  She can always cart the rock out later.
She sighs, drawing on her nearly-depleted magic reserves just a little more to take a chunk out of the rock, closing off the open door with it before she settles down to rest.  If she allows herself to completely deplete her reserves, she’ll be in the dark- and effectively magicless- for at least a couple days!
There are exactly two spells she doesn’t cancel as she rests.  Combined, they don’t draw nearly as much from her reserves as her natural regeneration replenishes.  The first is the light spell, keeping this passage illuminated and staving off her fear of the dark.  The second…
Oh, she remembers when she started the second one, back when she left Ponyville for this thing.  This one is the main reason she’d have to wait so long before casting magic again; she’s been holding it non-stop for close to a month and a half.  By the time she runs out of supplies in here, assuming she doesn’t get out first, she’ll be pushing at her personal thaumic endurance limit with it.  If she burns herself out, either by thaumic exhaustion or by running into that endurance limit, she has to wait for her horn to rest up before she can start casting once again.  She still doesn’t know why this same mechanic does not come into play if she simply stops using magic for a few minutes, allowing her horn a moment of rest.
But this spell is the reason why nopony in Ponyville thinks she ever left.  As a matter of fact, this spell is the reason she knows about Tirek.  She’d been rather surprised that hiding out in her house had worked; unlike everypony else, he hadn’t even tried to take her thaumic projection’s magic.
Not that it would have worked if he had tried; it is just a projection.  He probably would have just disrupted the spell, causing her projection to disappear…  and rather effectively eliminating any possible problems with endurance-related burnout.
This projection, despite being such a minute drain on her magic she can overlook it with impunity, requires an enormous power surge to deploy, demanding close to half of her entire magic reserves every time.  It takes a few days for her to recover that much power, though, so she usually keeps it running for a long time.  As a matter of fact, this projection- or her ‘alibi’, as she calls it- is the main reason her thaumic endurance limit is so high.
It’s almost like she has two bodies.  One mind, four eyes, two heads…  At least she actually has the processing power of two complete brains, while it’s deployed- makes it far easier to avoid slowdowns caused by problems on one end or the other.  Or, if either she or her alibi are simply resting, she can make herself out to be some sort of super-thinker, by focusing all of that brainpower on a problem presented to one side.  It had taken some significant practice before she could operate the two as if they were independent entities.
She rather wishes it was actually like having two bodies, even if her alibi’s lack of physical needs- like food- is rather convenient.  If it was, her alibi would also have its own magic reserve and so on- rather than being forced to channel magic from her real self, at the miniscule rate it’s capable of.  Her alibi also wouldn’t have that little thaumic signature Twilight can probably sense, whenever they get too close.  She’s made sure not to get close enough to Twilight for any aura-sensing whenever she’s actually in Ponyville, allowing her horn to rest up.  That difference could be…  difficult to explain, at best.
Especially to Starswirl the Bearded’s biggest fan, considering she got the spell from a book she found in the hidden basement of Starswirl’s tower.
So, while she rests her real self, she walks her alibi out to the front window, peering out at the street.  Even her alibi, restricted as it was to a weak unicorn’s abilities, had felt the power surge from her teleportation.  Ponies with no magic, thanks to Tirek, shouldn’t have felt a thing.  This would include Princess Twilight and just about everypony else- she’s pretty sure Ponyville was Tirek’s last stop, and that he got everypony before she released her teleport.
Regardless, though, she’d felt that massive energy surge, to match previous invocations of the Elements of Harmony.  Still feel it, actually, spreading out like a shockwave from Tirek’s estimated position.
She reaches the window in time to watch the cutie marks return to the few ponies visible.
So, Tirek must have been defeated, and her alibi still having its mark shouldn’t be suspicious.  She heads outside; perhaps she can help deal with the aftermath at the town hall?