In a time when the Bloodbath was still fresh in the memory of all Merodi, Renee, Daniel, and Pinkie met together in one of the Hub’s offices.
“What’s up?” Pinkie said, leaning back in her chair. “Oh, wait, before that, congratulations on the promotion, Renee!”
Renee smiled. “Thank you, Pinkie. It happens that my promotion is why we’re here. Since I am now the Head of the Expedition Division, I will no longer be on your team. It wouldn’t be proper to place myself on a team that I oversee.”
“Of course not. So you get to stay here! With Daaaaaniel!” Pinkie wagged her eyebrows up and down.
Daniel smirked and rolled his eyes. “True. Though it would be nice if you could remember I’m her Second, not just her husband here.”
“I know that, silly!” Pinkie chuckled. “So, Renee, you can’t be on the team anymore. Sad, but we all knew it was coming.”
“You know what we’re doing, don’t you?”
“AUDITIONS!” Pinkie grinned. “Can we get Aradia? Aradia would be awesome.”
“Aradia works on her own for the most part,” Renee declared. “And we have some limitations on who can be selected.”
“Oh.” Pinkie deflated.
“Pinkie, your team is team one. The first team, the primary all-purpose team. There’s a focus on exploration and first contact, but you do a little of everything. You need to be an image of the unity of Merodi Universalis. Right now you don’t represent a large portion of us.”
“Hey, we’ve got Vriska! She can… You know what I’ll just stop talking right there, having Vriska represent you – heh.”
“That’s not it,” Renee said. “Vriska can definitely represent the more unique races – like the Gems – but the most common race in the multiverse has no member on your team.”
“Oh, we just have to choose a human? Pff, that’s easy.”
“A man,” Daniel said. “Having all of you be female gives an impression of gender-dominance to new worlds.”
“…Slightly harder, but we can do it. Hrm… You’re here, and O’Neill’s Head of Military, so… Nobody comes right to mind.” Pinkie grins.
“You already know who you end up choosing, don’t you?”
“Yep! But let’s run through auditions anyway. I assume you have lots of capable men just sitting to be put on a team?”
Renee nodded. She tossed Pinkie a data pad. “This contains all the individuals we think would be suitable. Take your pick.”
Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “Hrm… Director Storm applied?”
“The AID has become defunct at this point,” Daniel explained. “If you don’t take him we’ll put him with Tempest.”
Pinkie kept scrolling. “Well I couldn’t take Mike without Ike… Or vice versa.” She narrowed her eyes. “Hrrrrm…”
“Pinkie…” Renee said. “Can you just pick the one you already know you’re going to take?”
“Oh, they’re not in here,” Pinkie said. “Rohan’s morals are too questionable. McKay is a little bit of a smart mouth, Micro doesn’t exactly do well with people. Plus, him and Sugarcoat are soooo cuuuute. John Sheppard is okay, I guess, I’d take him if I didn’t have another idea.”
“Who would that be?”
Pinkie smiled. “He’ll be coming through that door in three… two… one.”
Jotaro Kujo walked in the door to the room. He glanced at Renee, Daniel, and Pinkie. “What did you want me for?” he asked Pinkie.
Pinkie grinned. “Go along with it for a minute. Behold, Overhead and Second of the Expedition Division, the Jotaro Kujo model!” She appeared on top of him and began gesturing at him like a car salesman. “Look at these impressive muscles, that impassive poker face, the deep hero’s heart. He’s an excellent addition to any team – the strong, silent type, always watching everything closely for the right moment. He has great experience with adventures, combat, and bizarre powers. He has the ability to stop time and, and, is a fully certified marine biologist with a PhD and everything.” Pinkie grinned.
Jotaro raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.
Renee blinked. “While he’s certainly an excellent choice Pinkie… He hasn’t submitted an application.”
“Oh, he’ll want to come.” Pinkie turned to Jotaro. “So how about it? Wanna join my team Jojo?” She blinked rapidly and expectantly.
Jotaro grabbed his hat. “Yare yare daze… Yes. I would.”
“WOOHOO!” Pinkie hugged him. “You’re the best!”
Renee held up a hoof. “Hold on a minute. While I do accept this… Jotaro, are you certain? You have a wife, a daughter. This will keep you away from them a significant amount.”
“It will not be as bad as you think it will be. I’ll be able to come home most nights.”
Renee remembered when she had met Jotaro – how he was neglecting his family for weeks at a time. “…I see. Well, I see no problem with this.” She pulled out a card and gave it to him. “You’re now on Pinkie’s team. I’ll get you in the records later.”
Jotaro nodded.
Pinkie sat on top of Jotaro’s head and grinned. “Yes! Come on big guy, let’s introduce you to the team!” Pinkie twisted herself so she was under Jotaro, lifting him up like he was made of Styrofoam. She ran out of the room, giggling.
“…That’s going to be an interesting dynamic,” Daniel observed.
“No kidding,” Renee said. “It works though. It never hurts to have some extra muscle.” She looked at Daniel and raised an eyebrow.
“Are you judging me?”
“No. Just making you squirm.” She chuckled to herself.
~~~
All the way in Trixie and Discord’s arcade, Vriska, Nova, and Flutterfree crowded around a console. Flutterfree was watching as Vriska and Nova went at it in a fighting game based on famous Merodi explorers. They were playing the versions of themselves.
“This is stupid,” Nova muttered. “I can’t stop your flow of time.”
“Can it pointy, I can’t force you to a heart attack, so shut up.”
Nova’s character unleashed a beam of energy that Vriska’s jumped over. Vriska’s character rolled her dice and exploded a dozen bombs around Nova.
“I’ve gotten that attack what, six times this fight? That never happens!”
Flutterfree slurped noisily on a slushie. “Be easy on the programmers, they worked hard to give you a variety.”
Nova’s character pounded Vriska’s into the ground with a magic diamond, achieving victory. “Woo!” Nova cheered.
Vriska glared at Flutterfree. “Let’s see you fight as yourself, see if you like it.”
Flutterfree shrugged, handing Vriska her slushie. She took Vriska’s position and selected the Flutterfree character.
Nova smirked, clearly thinking this would be easy.
Flutterfree’s character unleashed the bow of light and drove a super-combo into Nova’s avatar, using the unique mechanic of Lolo’s extensions doing no damage but moving Nova’s character around for Flutterfree to shoot more arrows and initiate bites.
It was over in a few seconds.
Flutterfree took her slushie back and obnoxiously slurped.
Vriska and Nova stared at her in disbelief. “How in the…”
Flutterfree offered no explanation. She only smirked mischievously, straw in her mouth.
Pinkie ran in at that moment, dumping Jotaro on them. “Say hello to our fifth member! The team is now complete!”
Jotaro stood up and dusted himself off, nodding curtly to his three teammates.
“Oh!” Flutterfree said, smiling. “Jotaro! I wasn’t expecting you. It’s a pleasant surprise though! I’m sure you’ll make a great addition!”
“Double the time hax,” Nova chuckled.
Vriska looked up at Jotaro and narrowed her eyes. “Hold it, I’m not just going to accept some guy.”
“We defeated Algernon to-“
“Shhhhhh…” Vriska said, putting a finger to his mouth. “Shoosh.”
Jotaro remained silent.
“As I was saying, I’m not just accepting some guy. You need to prove yourself!” Vriska grabbed a nearby table, slamming it down between her and Jotaro. “Arm wrestle. To prove yourself.”
Jotaro raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.” She sat down and put her arm on the table, poised for battle. “Bring it.”
Jotaro sat down and extended his arm.
“GO!” Vriska shouted, getting the jump on Jotaro and pushing his arm a bit. This initial lead was lost in an instant. Jotaro didn’t even need to activate Star Platinum. He clenched his jaw slightly and used his raw strength to flip Vriska’s arm and break the table.
Vriska laid on the ground, dazed. “I… like him… Wheeee…”
“Yay! Everyone’s friends now!” Pinkie said, clapping. Then she was next to the arcade console. “Hey, Jotaro, I challenge you to play as me, I’ll play as you.”
Jotaro accepted. Pinkie still won.
~~~
Castle Bleck became Celestia City. It was an exceptionally slow process.
It started out as a horrendous, evil looking castle of flat blackness. Blumiere ordered every room of the original castle destroyed, save two. The one that held the dimensional nexus core, and the white room where he and Timpani had professed their love for each other – and been lost to the Nexus universe. Then construction could truly begin.
The first month was all infrastructure – dozens of tremendous dimensional drive cores, power structures, and magical generators. The Castle was gone, replaced with an ugly mess of glowing spheres and metallic supports. The Core.
With the Core complete, Blumiere decided it was time to move it. Everyone was unsure what would happen when the dimensional nexus left the universe it held up, but they figured it was empty so it didn’t really matter. The Core appeared in Equis Cosmic space without incident, but the universe it had been in ceased to exist.
Blumiere would miss the misty expanse. But now the Core was fully mobile, able to travel across universes and create portals hundreds of times larger than itself. Exactly what they needed.
Equis Cosmic engineers moved in and reinforced the core over the next month. The third month, the Core was in Gem Vein, where the Gem engineers coated it in their crystal alloys, turning the ugly cobble of machine bits into a white crystal. The energy fields activated and an atmosphere was pumped into the area surrounding the crystal.
It was only then that construction could begin in earnest.
The worlds of Merodi Universalis began to build; each one using designs originating from their home. The crystal ground was lost to the construction in the months to come as the actual city took form. One district would be made entirely of simple Elemental Nations structures, while the one built overtop of it would be a Gem cut combined with unicorn magical constructions. Skyscrapers rose from one end, meeting the wall of a zone flooded with water for seaponies and sirens. The full AI from Equis Cosmic created computer towers for their kind to inhabit, and the Asgard added their own smooth, simplistic constructions. Spaceships that were about to be decommissioned were worked into the body of the city, and on Lai a few of Armonia’s temples were uprooted and placed in the city.
Blumiere, as head architect, took the role of mayor. He knew that the construction of Celestia City would never end, long before he took official charge of the vast expanse. Once he did, he knew he actually had no control. Celestia City was an entity with a mind of its own, a mind that was eternally changing, shifting, and adjusting as new people added to it. It was so beautiful.
It had now been two years since construction started. They were currently outside of Merodi Universalis space, visiting the USM universe known as Earth-MH1, Froppy’s homeworld. A world where natural-born superpowers, called quirks, were present in over 90% of the population. It was curious to have so many unusual abilities visiting Celestia City.
Which meant that, of course, there were going to be a few problems.
In a hybrid district composed of Gem and Equis Vitis griffon constructions, a woman was causing significant trouble.
This woman had blue hair that moved like limbs. This was not the extent of her power, however – this hair could coat itself in ice and create freezing blades.
She spiked a Lapis Lazuli in the side, poofing her and collecting her gemstone. The woman let out a laugh. “You’re quite the pretty one, aren’t you?” She placed the gemstone in her bag, along with a half-dozen others. “Such beauties…”
“All right girl- er, everyone, let’s see what you can do,” a voice said from behind a crystalline door.
The woman aggressively pointed her hair-blades at the door. “Who’s there?”
“The League of Sweetie Belles,” a male voice declared. A magic spell went off, tearing the door from its hinges. The woman cut it in half with her hair and thrust forward, expecting to surprise whoever was on the other side.
The young unicorn stallion on the side just grabbed her hair with his telekinesis. “Gotcha. Get her, Snappy.”
A raptor of a similar white-and-purple color scheme to the stallion leaped from the ceiling, grinning. “You got it, Silver!”
The woman pulled the Lapis Gem out of her pouch and pointed one of her swords at it. “I’ll shatter it! I will!”
Snappy and Silver pulled back, faces suddenly full of uncertainty. The woman sneered. “Good. Now, you’re going to let me go. Don’t worry, these Gems won’t die, I assure you.”
A third appeared – a ‘human’ with brilliant white wings coming from her back and a holy scepter in her hand. The angel twisted the staff just right to knock the Lapis Gem out of the woman’s grasp. Silver acted quickly, grabbing the woman’s bag with his telekinesis.
“Great work Servitude!” Snappy gnashed through her reptilian teeth.
“THOSE ARE MINE!” the woman shouted, diving for Silver.
Servitude thwacked her across the head with the scepter, knocking her out cold. “Mission success,” she declared, before offering a small blessing to the downed woman.
“Great job everyone!” Allure said, strolling into the room. “Nobody got hurt, even though she pulled a nasty trick.”
Snappy and Silver cheered. Servitude simply bowed and spoke with reverence. “Thank you, Allure.”
Allure’s smile widened. “You’re all promoted to full agent status! Let’s get back to the League, tell everyone it went well.”
“NO!” the woman shouted, somehow aware again. She rushed Allure with her icy knives.
Allure twisted around, ducking under the icy blades. She carefully pushed a hoof into the woman’s shoulder, empowering the strike with magic. The shock of pain made the woman reel back into exactly the position Allure needed. She grabbed the woman’s neck with one hoof and an arm with the other.
She was pinned in an instant.
Silver gaped. “Wow… That was impressive.”
Snappy whispered to Silver. “Have we ever actually seen her do that on a bad guy?”
Allure smiled sheepishly. “It’s the same stuff I do in training.”
“But you’re never serious. Unless you’re sparring Thrackerzod. Then you always lose.”
Servitude bopped Snappy on the head. “Show some respect.”
“It’s okay, Servitude,” Allure insisted. “I do always lose against Zod. But raw power isn’t everything. Sometimes you don’t have much and have to make all of it count.”
Servitude nodded slowly, admitting Allure to be correct.
“Think you can teleport us back?” Allure asked.
Servitude nodded, spreading her wings and raising her scepter. The five of them were teleported to the ‘street’ outside the League of Sweetie Belles. The building was situated between four different districts, a unique white pillar of quartz that stood out among the more standard constructions. The Gems had helped the League make the building, but the design was nothing like the geometric patterns the Gems favored. It was the shape of a tapered cylinder that went from floor to ceiling of the district, about four floors tall. The windows held stained glass designs of important ponies and people of the multiverse, while the doors were intricately engraved with the letters “SB” in a Crusader shield.
Allure moved the woman to the building next door – a police station – and placed her in a ‘dropoff area’. To say the police were used to them turning in criminals was an understatement.
The four Sweetie Belles trotted through the front doors of their base, entering a world filled with Sweetie Belles. Most were unicorns, and most of them were adults at this point, though a few fillies could be seen walking around. Even those that weren’t unicorns had the signature color scheme – white, purple, and pink with green eyes – with the exception of Sanguine, who was blacker than any normal shade of black. Looking at that particular Sweetie Belle was like looking into an abyss that always stared back.
“Hey every-Sweetie!” Allure called. “Snappy, Silver, and Servitude have full agent status now!”
The Sweeties erupted in applause and cheers. Snappy and Silver bowed, while Servitude nodded curtly.
“Sarsaparilla, get them some celebratory drinks.” The Sweetie Belle that was part plant nodded and ran off to get some.
The three new League Agents were congratulated by a small crowd of Sweeties. Allure smiled, thinking of what they would be able to do now. Membership in the League was completely free, and virtually everyone was equal, but Agents had the authority to go on missions at the bidding of Mayor Blumiere or the Expeditions Division. The League generally served the role as Celestia City’s personal guardians. It was a purpose that pleased Allure to no end.
“BEEP BOOP!” Sweetie Bot’s voice came from a speaker. “Allure! Your presence is requested in the meeting room! We’ve got a talking cat.”
“This sounds fun,” Allure said to herself, walking up the stairs to the higher floors of the League. She eventually opened the door to the meeting room, finding the other three of the core four Sweeties there – Thrackerzod, Sweetie Bot, and Squeaky Belle. She waved at them in greeting and sat down in the nearest seat.
Across from them, sitting on the table, was a gray housecat. It was so small compared to them.
“Uh… Hello,” Allure said.
“Hi,” the cat said, looking at her with wise green eyes. “My name is Graymint. And I need your help.”
Allure was overcome by the cuteness of Graymint. She promised to herself that she was going to help this adorable creature with whatever problems he had. Maybe he’d let her pet him. That was probably wishful thinking though.
~~~
It had been agreed that the addition of a new world into Merodi Universalis was too momentous of an event to leave for just a singular Division to oversee. So there were two intimately involved in the process – three if you counted the Cultural Division, but their involvement was less about actually admitting the world than ensuring the world wasn’t just snuffed out as unimportant.
The two Divisions in quesiton were the Relations Division and the Expansion Division. The two Overheads currently sat at a table in Iroh’s Teashop, talking the procedures over with some representatives of other worlds. Eve was the mare of Relations, while the individual that had been chosen for Expansion was Maud Pai of Lai, chosen for her expertise in the future and care for the future of her people. She had already colonized over a dozen previously uninhabited universes.
“So… your two’s worlds are next on the list,” Eve said, putting down a checklist to give the guests a warm smile. “Equis Concrete and Binar. You are ready to begin the procedures, right?”
Chancellor Fluttershy and Mistress Luna nodded. “We’ve been waiting for a while,” the Mistress admitted.
Eve nodded. “I know. We expected to get to this sooner… but you know about the chaos.”
“None of us could have foreseen that,” Maud said, her eyes shifting in that way oculus’ did when they were trying to look to the future. “A prediction of a multiversal nature is always uncertain…”
Fluttershy held up a wing. “We should not dwell on the past. That is behind us now. The future calls.”
“Right,” Eve affirmed. “Luna, let’s start with Binar.” She pulled out a large sheaf of papers. “Your government’s structure has been approved, and your people have met the standard of living. What we are unsure about is your people’s desire to be part of Merodi Universalis.”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Your people are a mixture of remnant Gerudo, red demons, and Binaries. The red demons are known to naturally have a distaste for what we’ve done, the Binaries fell indirectly because of us, and I don’t think I need to say why the Gerudo take issue with us.”
Luna nodded. “I am aware… I can vouch for my people and say the approval is high. The demons always wanted to be part of something greater, and this is a way to do it. The Gerudo are similarly tired of the way things have been. The Binaries…” She pondered for a moment. “They’re rather apathetic.”
“I thought we resolved their lethargy problem?”
“Oh, they’re working and living, yes, they’re just perfectly happy not knowing anything that happens ‘above’ them. Their old culture remains, at least in part.”
Maud nodded. “It means our efforts were successful.”
Eve sighed. “Technically not against the requirements… Still. I’m not sure I like a society that promotes willful ignorance.”
“It isn’t as if we’re a democracy,” Maud pointed out.
“Good point. Regardless, Luna, we’ll need more than your vouching. Expect a group of my people to come and perform a poll of sorts. It will take some time – a few weeks perhaps – and then we can move to the step of integrating your government. Assuming the results come back positive.”
“I have confidence they will,” Luna asserted.
“Good. How’s Mlinx doing, by the way?”
“He’s taken a liking to education as of late, asking all the demons who weren’t born in the last few years to go through school anyway. Not everyone is listening to him, but there’s not any hostility about the suggestion. Well, not more than you’d expect from the demons.”
Eve smiled warmly. “Yeah… Fluttershy, your world has a different set of problems.”
“I’m aware,” Fluttershy said, nodding slowly.
“Your government definitely meets the criteria, your ponies have come out of the stupor and hit a good standard of living, and there’s great approval from most of your nations to join. The issue is…” Eve tried to think of a way to phrase it.
“Everyone’s a colossal racist asshole,” Fluttershy offered.
“Well I wasn’t going to be that harsh…”
“It’s really the only accurate way to put it,” Maud said.
Eve sighed. “Right, yes. The racism. Despite your culture’s willingness to join ours, it’s decidedly unwilling to treat everyone like equals. It’s worse than the Gems, who were mostly just apathetic about us; there have been many reports of active malice within your universe.”
“Joining is, I think, the way to stop it,” Fluttershy suggested. “Right now, the only ponies they know who aren’t racists are those who lead them. They don’t have much respect for us in that department, even if they respect us in others.”
“Sounds like a shaky foundation,” Maud pointed out.
“It’s been over a decade, it’s held fast. They respect us as capable leaders, and are willing to admit that legally speaking race shouldn’t hold much of a difference, but that doesn’t change their opinions. They know that what they think is wrong at this point, but they keep the cognitive dissonance anyway. I think the solution is to expose them to ponies who aren’t like them, and who exemplify the correct way to live. …Without being their leaders.”
Maud turned to Eve. “Do you think the Cultural Division will take issue with us allowing them in so we can remove their racism?”
Eve thought for a second. “I don’t think so. Cultural won’t try to protect something so blatantly wrong. If they do I’ll have to have a discussion with Enna… I’ll have to bring this up with her first before continuing, Chancellor.”
“Understood. Do you need any of the studies we’ve performed on our cultural attitude?”
“I expect Cultural already has all those, but it couldn’t hurt to give us them personally,” Eve answered. “There is another issue to discuss, a lesser one. Your version of King Sombra.”
Fluttershy nodded. “He’s… been ejected from the Concretion by force, as I’m sure you’re aware. He’s currently brooding in the Crystal Empire.”
“The sooner we incorporate you, the less time he has to make a move on you,” Maud pointed out.
“I would appreciate it if we could get added sooner rather than later, yes,” Fluttershy admitted. “At the moment I doubt you’d assist us in a war that is mostly of our own making.”
“I’d have to ask O’Neill, but that’s probably true,” Eve said. “I’ll try to work as fast as I can.”
“I actually believe you when you say that,” Fluttershy said. “Such a rare thing when talking to governments…”
“Yeah,” Eve laughed awkwardly. “Maud, can you see anything?”
“Multiverse predictions are like pumice. There one day, gone the next. Now, I see nothing good or bad. I believe they will be adopted into Merodi Universalis, though as for the quality of that I can say nothing.”
Eve nodded. “Well, that’s what we’re going with. I’ll go call up Enna and organize that survey for you Luna. I’ll put it as a priority. I don’t actually have too much on my plate at the moment. Things are quiet right now.”
Maud’s eyes flexed. “…Something’s just shifted.”
“Huh? Are the-“
“It’s not about these two. Their path appears the same, as far as I can see. Something else shifted. I don’t know what…”
Eve sighed. “Great… Now I’ll be second-guessing myself all day. Excuse me, I’ll be making that call.”
“Thanks, Evening,” Chancellor Fluttershy said.
“Don’t mention it.”
~~~
Graymint looked at the four core Sweeties expectantly.
“Let’s hear your problem first,” Squeaky said, gesturing for Graymint to go on. “It’s clearly a big one, since you asked for us.”
“Yeah…” Graymint said, shaking his head. “I… I guess I’ll start with explaining my world. It’s a planet, an Earth, and we share it with twoleg- er, humans. The humans built their big cities and towns, and we lived in the forests in differing tribes of sorts. We weren’t very organized. Every tribe was different in terms of customs, beliefs, ways of life… Very few cats ever picked up tools. I heard there were a few clans that had built dens out of wood and created things, but nothing like what the humans had. And then the USM arrived.”
“How long ago was this?” Allure asked.
“I was born around the time it happened. About… six years ago.”
“Not very long…”
Sweetie Bot shook her head. “Cats have a lifespan average of twelve years.”
Graymint blinked. “How old are you?”
Thrackerzod opened her mouth, but Squeaky shut it with her magic. “Those of us who are not eldritch beings from another plane of existence are in our twenties and thirties.”
“Wow… Old…”
Allure smiled sadly. “Not really. Ponies can live to an upper limit of about two hundred.”
Graymint looked like he couldn’t comprehend that number.
“Hey, we’re nothing compared to Gems,” Squeaky said. “They don’t age at all. Thousands of years old.”
“Wow…” Graymint shook his head. “Gah! I’ve gotten off track. …Anyway, they came, and they realized that we were intelligent creatures. Because of the USM, the clans started connecting together. We began to come together because of the USM. We even got ourselves a king and everything!”
“That’s great!” Allure encouraged.
“Yeah… It would be. But… The king was deposed recently by insurrectionist cats. They claim to want to bring about an era of cats for cats, or something like that. But they don’t treat us like the proud felines we are – they treat us like objects that need to be put in a box!” Graymint looked to the ground. “They’re killing cats who disagree, forcing their will on the united tribes. There are those of us who are trying to fight, but they’re the ones with access to most of the dimensional portals and technology. It can’t even be considered a war at this point…”
“That seems unfair!” Bot blurted. “They get to use the technology against you? Beep!”
“It is,” Allure said. “…But I don’t see what exactly what you want us to do.”
“I… I just heard you were heroes,” Graymint said, shaking his head. “I slipped through a portal and came here, looking for anyone who’d listen. You were who I was directed to.”
Allure nodded slowly.
“I suppose I could take you back to my world. Introduce you to the king and the underground, so you can see yourself what you might do to help.”
Bot beeped. “Deal!”
Squeaky shook her head. “Bot, we can’t do that yet. We can’t just say that we’re going to help.”
“I think we should check it out though,” Allure said.
“Agreed,” Squeaky confirmed.
Thrackerzod narrowed her eyes. “I don’t trust this. Reeks of interference.”
“The other side is using technology,” Allure pointed out. “It means we’ll have more freedom. I will check with Renee first, though. I’m sure she’ll say yes.” She pulled out her phone and started dialing. “Do you mind waiting a while, Graymint?”
“I’m not really in a hurry.”
“Good. Bot, start generating a report.” Allure excused herself from the room to talk to Renee.
~~~
Pinkie and company stood in an arid, desert city street, surrounded by enemy humans. Enemies that were passed out on the ground, more than a few of which had broken bones.
Vriska dusted off her hands. “Man, who did these guys think they were? Not a single one was any challenge.”
Jotaro looked down at the largest of the men, one who had rivaled his own size. He had gone down in one hit. Jotaro was decidedly disappointed by this.
“That wizard was interesting,” Flutterfree commented.
“He only knew one spell,” Nova muttered.
“The frog spell is great though!” Pinkie giggled.
“Not if you’re the frog,” Nova muttered, shaking her head. “So, I take it big bodacious bossy bastard baddie wasn’t here?”
“Nope!” Pinkie declared, pulling out a telescope. “B5 has eluded us once again. Team, we need a plan.”
“Walk in the doors of the building we know is his base?” Vriska suggested, pointing at the giant brick house in front of them with two red double doors.
“Good idea!” Pinkie blurted, tossing Vriska a cookie.
“Yay me,” Vriska said, taking a bite of the baked treat.
Pinkie zipped up to the door and knocked on it with her head. “HEEEEEEEEY B-B-B-B-B! Can we come in!”
No response.
“Oh come on, don’t be ruuuude!” Pinkie pulled a button out of her mane and slapped it to the side of the doorway. She pressed it, activating the world’s loudest doorbell. “Let us in pleaaaase? We won’t bite!”
No response.
“Fine then! No more mister nice Pie!”
“You’re a mare,” Nova deadpanned.
Pinkie Pie ignored her, ramming into the door. She flattened into a pink disc, bouncing off the door like a spring. She wobbled back into her default shape, narrowing her eyes. “What a complex puzzle…”
Flutterfree rolled her eyes. “Pinkie…”
“Okay fine. Jotaro!” She pointed at the giant man. “Give this door the ora special with a side of ora ora ora.”
Jotaro strode to the door, hands in his pockets. He took a second to examine the structure of the door before summoning Star Platinum. The Stand let out a yell of “ORA!” with its first punch, smashing through the frail wood of the door. Each subsequent punch came with another shout of “ORA!” until there was no door left.
The five of them filed into the interior space, ready for a fight.
The large entry hall was covered in red carpet on every section of the floor, wall, and ceiling. The space was bizarrely bare, with only a single wooden chair within it. In the chair was a man with a long, wiry black beard.
He looked at them and smiled. “Welcome!”
“Why didn’t you answer the door!?” Pinkie shouted.
“Oh, were you knocking? Sorry, I must not have heard.”
Pinkie twitched, walking toward him. “Smart guy, huh? Okay. So, what’s the trap, and where’s B5?”
The man was startled. “W-what trap?”
“Trap. You know…” Pinkie pointed a hoof to the left. “There’s explosives lining that wall… A poison dart over there… and I see a hidden camera in the roof.”
“There were also windows outside,” Jotaro commented. “A sniper could shoot through one of them, puncture the carpet, and hit us.” Even after he said this, he continued walking into the room.
Nova smirked. “Nothing personal, it’s just we’ve been through this a lot and none of it fazes us.” She checked the scans on her leg-screen and performed a quick sequence of spells, removing the explosives and poison dart trap from the walls and depositing them in front of the man. “Tah-dah.”
A bullet whizzed through one of the wall carpets, missing Vriska by a hair. Jotaro stopped time, turned the bullet around a hundred and eighty degrees, and then let it go flying back out the hole. He heard a satisfying shout an instant later. “Sniper was too close. Had he been much further the momentum would have cut out.”
The man stood up from his chair, trembling slightly. “Y-y-you monsters!”
Flutterfree walked up to him. “I guess you could call us monsters… But really, we’re just ordinary people and ponies.” She bared her fangs. “Trust me.”
The man tried to take a step back, caught his foot on the chair, and knocked himself out in the resulting fumble.
Vriska facepalmed. “I didn’t even steal any of his luck. Moron.”
“Now now, let’s be nice to the enemies,” Flutterfree said, checking to see how badly the man was injured. “He’s fine. We should go check out that sniper now.”
“You won’t be doing that,” a deep, dark voice declared. The doorway sealed up with a thick, sludgy substance, plunging the hall into darkness. Nova used her horn to provide a light.
Pinkie whooped. “B5! You made it! I was beginning to wonder! Now show yourself so we can fight you!”
“I won’t be doing that…” ‘B5’ declared. “I’m just going to talk.”
“Oh. Nice!” Flutterfree smiled. “There need to be more people like you.”
“And less like you,” B5 spat. “You think you’re so great, don’t you? Saving worlds, uniting them… But all you bring is DEATH! You draw the attention of powers greater than you can imagine, every time beat back by horrendous power, only to FIGHT BACK and bring MORE DEATH! We will not stand for this. We, the anti-Unioni-“
“Oh good gog not another one of these fucks,” Vriska muttered. “YO! WE KNOW YOUR MESSAGE ALREADY!”
“Y- what?”
“Let me follow it for you. One: Merodi Universalis is the worst idea in the history of ever that only brings more death the further we go. Two: You will return us to the way things are meant to be. Three: You plan to kill insert-target-here to bring about the fall of everything. Do I have that right?”
“…If this complaint is so common we must have more power than even I realized!”
Vriska sighed. “No, no you don’t. Every last one of you twats falls like a domino.”
“WE SHOULD UNIFY AND FACE YOU!”
“Do you not see the irony in that statement?” Nova blurted.
“I… I… Oh.” B5 fell silent for a moment.
“I think we broke one,” Pinkie said. “That’s new.”
Flutterfree smiled. “It’d be nice if we could get them to stand down for once.”
“I’M STILL GOING TO KILL YOU!” B5 declared, suddenly. “YOU ARE ALL EXACTLY WHERE I WANT YOU! NOW DIE!”
Magic circles appeared on all the walls, firing magic bolts at the five of them.
Nova teleported them out of the building. It collapsed in on itself from the force of the attack.
A human with a black magic gauntlet on his left arm stared in disbelief at them. “H-how! They would have hit you faster than reaction time!”
Nova raised an eyebrow. “I… Did you do research? Two of us have time manipulation, and Pinkie could have dodged before you even shot it.”
B5 roared. “I WI-“
Flutterfree shot him in the knee with the bow of light, cutting his rant short. He keeled over, wailing.
Flutterfree lowered the bow and sighed. “Another one down.” She shook her head. “You think they’d start to get creative…”
“C-CREATIVE!?” B5 blurted. “I’LL SHOW Y-“
“Stop talking,” Flutterfree ordered, Staring right into his eyes. He shut right up.
Vriska whistled. “You must really be losing patience with these guys.”
“They have a point, but they never implement it with spirit,” Flutterfree said. “I almost want one of them to actually fight us with real, solid reasoning behind their actions. Like…. Isn’t there an intelligent person who agrees with them? It’s not that much of a stretch to think that being unified brings about troubles, but no, we just get these idiots.”
Pinkie gasped. “Flutterfree! You called someone an idiot!”
“Oh!” Flutterfree grabbed her mouth like she’d just said a dirty word. “I’m sorry!”
Vriska shrugged. “It was an accurate description. I’m more concerned about you asking for them to get intelligent.”
“Not going to happen,” Pinkie said. “Not from these types, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“It’s the irony,” Nova said. “In order to fight the unification, they’d have to unify. It goes against what they want. All we have to watch out for is someone finding a superweapon of some sort and using it. And I’m pretty sure Aradia’s on that.”
“You too,” Vriska pointed out.
“I will never travel through time, merely bend it,” Nova asserted for the millionth time. “No matter how many times you or she ask.”
“Hey! Wasn’t insinuating anything!”
Nova rolled her eyes. “Riiiight.”
Jotaro suddenly punched B5.
“What the – Jotaro!” Flutterfree blurted.
“He was moving,” Jotaro said. “Now he’s not. Besides breathing.”
Nova sighed, lifting B5 up and placing him in temporal stasis. “Flutterfree, check the sniper. If he shoots you, uh… don’t die.”
Flutterfree winked. “I won’t!” She flew off to check for the sniper.
Pinkie grinned. “I have such an amazing team!”
Jotaro’s mouth curled into the smallest hint of a smile.
~~~
Graymint led the core four Sweeties through one of the forests of the world designated Earth-W47 by the United States of the Multiverse. From what the Sweeties had seen, this was a fairly standard Earth with a minimal level of dimensional awareness. Disclosure (or something similar) had clearly happened, but there wasn’t much in the way of extra-dimensional technology, nor evidence of ships in orbit. Just a world with humans and cats.
The forest itself was devoid of development. Squeaky had been able to identify cat prints among the other wildlife tracks, realizing with some satisfaction that the cat tracks were laid in such a way so as to confuse anyone trying to track them. Impressive how they did that, considering they didn’t have magic to remove trails like Squeaky did.
“We’re almost there,” Graymint said, ducking under a bush and sniffing. “Scents are still fresh and recognizable, so everything’s fine. This way.” He padded through a few more trees until they came to a large outcropping of rock. Hidden behind a few bushes was a small fissure in the rock that led into a cave. Graymint could fit in easily, but the four ponies had to squeeze to get through.
“Can I give us light?” Allure asked.
“Sure,” Graymint said. “Though… if the guards attack you, you know ‘shield spells’ right?”
Squeaky and Thrackerzod nodded. Allure lit her horn, giving them all light as they descended. After a few seconds the cavern opened up into a significantly larger passageway, allowing them to move with freedom. There were signs of cat habitation from claw marks and loose hairs, but no actual cats.
“WHO GOES THERE?” a booming voice yowled.
“It’s Graymint! I’ve brought help!”
“WHAT KIND OF HELP?”
“Help from another world! …Bronzefin, just let us in.”
The voice sighed. A large, brown cat dropped from an above outcropping and sniffed the ponies. “These two smell the same.”
Allure and Squeaky looked at each other. Allure smiled. “We are sort of the same pony.”
“I don’t like your smell,” Bronzefin told Thrackerzod.
“No sane being should,” Thrackerzod confirmed. “The fact that you find my scent unlikeable is a confirmation of your continued mental health.”
Bronzefin turned to Graymint. “…Did she just insult me?”
Graymint cocked his head. “I’m not sure.”
“Great...” Bronzefin turned around, flicking his tail at Thrackerzod. “This way. The king will want to see you.”
Bronzefin led them further into the cave. After they turned a corner, they found a much larger cavern that had light in it. Hundreds of cats padded around the folds of the earth, moving in and out of holes they used for their dens. The lights of the cavern came from a mixture of lanterns and artificial lights, presumably stolen from the humans at one time or another. Every cat turned to stare at the ponies as they passed. The expressions were mixed – most were fearful, some were angry, some were curious, and a couple looked like they had been waiting for the moment for a long, long time.
They were led to the center of the cavern, where a decent sized pile of technology stood. Allure saw a few energy weapons, generators, and a handful of other metallic things that were being torn apart to make cat armor. Sitting at the foot of this pile was a large, slender cat with golden fur.
Bronzefin and Graymint bowed.
The king detected this motion with his ears, turning around to face them with a somber expression. “Rise, my subjects.” They did. “What have you brought?”
Graymint cleared his throat. “Help from another world.”
The other cats that had gathered began to pass whispers around.
Allure glanced behind herself, a sour expression forming. “Is there a place we can talk privately, mister… king?”
“Goldsire,” he said. “And yes, there is.” He led them to a hole that came out in a room-sized extension of the cavern. In the center was an artificial blue light sitting on top of a flat, highly refractive crystal.
Goldsire put his paw on the crystal and closed his eyes, letting out a breath. “It feels so wrong to have a twoleg light in this sacred place. But none can see otherwise.”
“…Should we be here?” Allure asked.
“Possibly not,” Goldsire said, sitting down. “But at this point I… I wonder if any of our traditions still mean anything.”
“The crystal has power,” Thrackerzod said.
“I had heard you unicorns might be able to sense that sort of thing,” Goldsire said, smiling softly. “This is the glintstone. It has a connection to our ancestors. All ancestors of all cat tribes, since all of us are here now.” He turned to them. “These are rough times for us. Graymint seems to think you want to help us, and I see it in your eyes. But I also see doubt in others.”
Thrackerzod nodded. “We are here to determine if we can help, or if we should.”
“We want to,” Allure emphasized, “But… We need to examine the situation before we’ll know if we can or should.”
Goldsire nodded slowly. “And that’s why I brought you here. I, even as the king of all cats of the old way, do not have the authority to tell you that.”
“The crystal does?” Thrackerzod said, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes. Our ancestors speak through it to those who are willing to listen.”
Thrackerzod craned her neck and lit her horn. “Then let’s see what they have to sa-“
“Not you,” Goldsire said. “Your essence is too dark.” He gestured toward Allure. “You touch the crystal. Let them speak to you.”
Allure nodded, touching a hoof to the crystal.
She felt herself enter a shifting dream-state. Sensations blurred, but her mind was sharp.
In front of her was a rusty, almost flame-colored, cat.
“…Hi,” Allure said.
The cat smiled. “Hello, Allure.”
“Ah. You know my name. Y’know, it’d only be fair if you told me yours.”
“I… am Firestar.” The cat stared into the distance, his face telling of one deep in thought. “I am a cat from the far distant past to the cats you see now.”
“He wasn’t kidding when he said ancestors, was he? What are you, a ghost?”
Firestar smirked. “What I am is not important, curious one. I am here to help you make a decision.”
“Uh… Okay? How?”
“I can show you the cats,” Firestar said. “The cats of this era on the other side.”
The background shifted into focus. Instead of a deep cavern, they saw hundreds of cats standing in a field of grass around a dimensional portal, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Three cats stood on the edge of the portal, the blue one on the left giving a speech.
“The old ways are that of a warrior,” she said. “Violent, shortsighted, and built on strength more than anything else. It is a cruel system, one that has forced us to lose many young ones. Clans of cats live together, further dividing themselves with bursts of war. Others live alone, in mountains, in dens, never looking beyond. Better than violent death and rage, but it still stagnates… And then there’s the ‘new’ idea of a king. Of a ‘sire’.”
She shook her head. “Goldsire has a powerful lineage, and is an honorable cat. But he is attached to the old ways. He wants to bring the cats together, but also keep them prepared to fight, to divide. He claims to desire change and unity… But all he wants is to keep the old ways. That is why we banished him. We should instead take on a new culture in this new age – not one of warriors, but one of workers. Of thinkers. Of Seers.
“I encourage you not to fight with your neighbors who love the old ways. Treat them with respect and love. Get them to understand. We will not survive in this new world with the factions the old ways encouraged beyond all else.” She paused, and there were yowls of approval. There was more to the speech, but the scenery shifted instead of letting Allure hear the rest of it.
She saw the same cat, shouting at another cat. “Goldsire did WHAT?”
“He’s gathering followers.”
“W-does he want me to kill him?” she shouted with tears. “He was supposed to go and live his life! Not… Do this! Agh!” She pounded her paw into the ground. “I thought I could…” She shook her head.
“Drystar…?”
“His leaders are still here,” Drystar sighed. “If they find that he’s still doing this… We’re finished.”
“What are we going to do? We can’t go back…”
Drystar pulled a gun out of a box and handed it to the other cat. “Take care of them. Remember, nine times, just to be sure.”
“…All right.”
Drystar wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Goldsire… You needed to admit defeat… You needed to let the world move on…”
The scene shifted again, this time to a place where it was raining and thunder boomed. Drystar was there, shooting Goldsire with the energy gun strapped to her front paw. It was touch-activated, so she could use it easily.
Goldsire got back up, grunting.
“HOW MANY LIVES DID THEY GIVE YOU?” Drystar shouted.
“I… have no idea,” Goldsire admitted.
“Goldsire! Just… If you keep going like this, there won’t be any cats left! No clans or nation!”
“I can’t let us forget our tradition!”
They clashed again, the image shifting back to Firestar.
Allure sighed. “This is a sad story, isn’t it?”
Firestar nodded. “We turned Goldsire into the king of cats to face against the incursions of other worlds. That was needed. But then… Then the cats themselves divided after they had a paw under themselves. Something we could never have foreseen. Goldsire turned to the old ways, but many turned to the new ideas coming from other worlds.”
“Which side do you think is right?”
“Neither of them,” Firestar admitted. “There’s a middle position that no cat is thinking of. But there’s a false dichotomy, and if you’re not with either side you’re just a powerless loner.”
“Ah…” Allure said. “I see.” She sighed. “But if they keep going… Was Drystar right? Will they destroy each other?”
“Something always remains,” Firestar said. Allure got the impression he was speaking from experience.
“Right…” Allure shook her head. “Goodbye then, I guess?”
“You’re a good… person, Allure. I’m sorry you’re in such a difficult position.”
Allure nodded. “Thanks.”
Then she was back in the cavern.
Goldsire saw the look in her eyes. “Ah. …So I was right.”
Allure looked at the ground. “…We can’t help. We shouldn’t help. This question… This is a question you need to answer for yourselves. I can’t tell you if the old or new ways are better.”
Bot beeped. “We’re… not helping them?”
Allure shook her head. “No… I saw the other side. They… It’s complicated. Either side we back will just create a tragedy.”
Goldsire nodded. “I understand. I shall take you out of the cavern. You should leave quickly before the other cats discover you aren’t actually helping.”
Squeaky nodded. “Good thought. …Thanks, Goldsire, for understanding.”
“I think I always knew it was a cat problem,” Goldsire admitted, beginning to move out of the cavern.
Thrackerzod lit her horn. “I have a faster way out.” She teleported all of them to the edge of the cavern.
“Such power…” Goldsire said, laughing to himself. “If we had your strength… We wouldn’t be able to lose.”
“Yeah…” Allure said. “Sorry.”
“I understand,” Goldsire said, bowing his head. “May we meet again.” He turned around, walking back to the cavern.
Allure, Squeaky, and Bot turned to leave. Thrackerzod stared after Goldsire for a moment. “…Screw it. We can give you something. To make the fight a fairer one.”
Goldsire turned and blinked. “What?”
Thrackerzod summoned an eldritch entity from the earth – a short, blue creature made of a few dozen spinning squares. “This creature is bound to your soul and will do as you order. Use it wisely.”
Goldsire nodded. “Thank you, Thrackerzod, for this gift.”
Thrackerzod smiled. “You had a strong heart, and a lower position. The gift is something.”
The two parties nodded to each other – and then left.
“You’re a big softy,” Allure nudged Thrackerzod.
“I can, and will, turn your mind into muffins if you continue to prod me about that. The muffins are metaphorical by the way, I will really be turning your mind into something you don’t have a word for.”
“Softy.”
Thrackerzod huffed and teleported the four of them out of the cave.
To their surprise, they weren’t alone when they came out. What was even more surprising was that three human men stood there – all clearly alternate versions of the same person.
The front version had spiky blonde hair and wore an outfit that made it look like he had grenades on his arms.
“MERODI!” He shouted, opening his palm at the four of them. This motion triggered an explosion, sending the League of Sweetie Belles flying.
~~~
O’Neill and Iroh sat in the back of Iroh’s Teashop, just enjoying life.
“We’re getting old,” Iroh observed, suddenly. “I’m almost eighty.”
O’Neill flexed his wrist. “Seventy-somethin’-or-other.”
Iroh chuckled. “You don’t look a day over sixty-somethin’-or-other.”
O’Neill looked down at his cup of tea, contemplating.
Iroh raised an inquisitive eyebrow at this response. “Something bothering you?”
“No.” O’Neill said. After a two-second pause he spoke again. “Yes.”
Iroh set his tea down and fixed O’Neill with a warm glare. “It’s just two old men here, General. Nobody going to judge you for having late-life crazy thoughts.”
O’Neill looked at his arm. “Something happened during the fight at the University,” he said. “I was injected with machines of some kind. Nanobots. They’re still in me. Nothing we did could remove them, and they didn’t seem to be hurting anything.”
Iroh furrowed his brow. “They’re doing something, though.”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’m aging.” He looked at a piece of calligraphy Iroh had hanging on the wall. “The doctors aren’t quite sure yet, but I’ve gotten a few of them to at least take me seriously at this point. I really should be falling apart at the seams, but nope! Still as sprightly as ever.”
“And snarky.”
“What a nice word,” O’Neill mused, chuckling.
“If you are immortal, you have good company,” Iroh observed. “And, to be frank, we humans could stand to have a leader who never has to go onto the next world.”
“I got that,” O’Neill said. “I’m mainly upset that I got stuck with a sixty-somethin’-or-other body! Do you have any idea the kind of back pain this body has?”
Iroh laughed heartily. “I think I have a pretty good idea, Jack!”
“You’d think immortality nanobots would at least fix back pain, but nope, sorry, no can do! Keep that back pain to remember us by!”
“You’re quite the old coot, Jack.”
“You’re one to talk. I hear you move that figure of yours like a liquid whenever you need to get serious!”
Iroh chuckled. “The last time I needed to get serious… That was a long time ago. I haven’t exerted myself that much since I trained Corona.” He frowned.
“…Memories?”
“Of all those I ever trained, even in part. Zuko. Azula. Lu Ten…” Iroh shook his head. “Maybe I should train Izumi… But she’s still young. And I have Corea to watch out for.”
“How’s the little bundle of power?”
“Showing a lot of promise. I’ve seen small manifestations of all four elements already. I wonder if it’s because her body is one more naturally suited to power…”
“Any magic-y stuff?”
“Not yet. I fully expect it to appear with time, however. I just… I hope I’ll still be around to teach her when she is finally old enough.”
“I’m told Equis Cosmic has fancy age-extension medicine,” O’Neill pointed out.
“Yes… That only does so much, you know.”
“I could get Thor on the phone. Clone bodies are all the rage, I hear.”
Iroh chuckled. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll decline. I will know when my time comes. I will journey to the Spirit World of my universe that day. I’ve already got a device with direct coordinates. I will become one with the spirits.”
“…You’ve been planning that for a while, haven’t you?”
“Indeed.”
“Now you’re just copying Teal’c.”
Iroh smirked. “…Indeed.”
“Dammit.”
Iroh chuckled. “Regardless, the day I join the spirits is not here yet. I will stay a mentor to Corea and the Elemental Nations as long as I am able. I suggest you do the same for yours.”
O’Neill nodded.
Iroh took a sip of his tea – only to find it empty. “…Wh…”
O’Neill snapped his fingers, revealing that Iroh had been holding a napkin ring, not his teacup. O’Neill had the teacup in his hand, drinking from it.
“…Crimson Sushi…” Iroh said.
O’Neill smirked, scratching the head of his Stand. “Gotcha. Do you have any idea how hard it is to catch you off guard?”
“Extremely. It is quite an achievement, what you just did.”
“Awww, thanks,” O’Neill chuckled.
“Such a strange power… to switch the perception of objects. For all I know, right now, you are actually in another chair…”
As it turned out, O’Neill really was in another chair. He saluted.
“That’s it, I challenge you to a game of Pai Sho. Now.”
“You’re on.”
~~~
Katsuki Bakugo had a curse.
That curse was that no matter what he did, he would always run into alternate versions of himself in the multiverse. Alternate versions of himself that annoyed him to no end.
Almost all other Katsuki Bakugos he had met had the same exact curse.
Most notably, this the time the curse had manifested when, somehow, three of them had been assigned to a single USM unit. They had taken to aggressively calling each other Splodey, Shardey, and Boring.
Then they’d been told to go capture a golden cat.
And then they’d found that Merodi Universalis was involved, in the form of four cute, adorable horses.
Splodey had been the one to unleash the initial explosion that sent the four horses flying.
“We could have taken a simpler route,” Boring said in his trademark deadpan voice. He wore a suit and his hair was combed like some stupid pretentious office worker.
“Screw you, we don’t get enough action,” Shardey said, his hair just as spiked as Splodey’s, but of a light blue color. Shardey leaped into the air and thrust his hand forward, creating one of his signature frostbomb explosions, coating the unicorns in a sheen of ice.
Bot didn’t care about the ice. She deployed her rocket launchers. “TARGET ACQUIRED!”
Boring used the cover provided by the immensely noisy rockets to move unseen behind Bot. He unleashed an explosion identical to Splodey’s at point-blank range. Bot’s thick metal casing kept her alive, but she took heavy structural damage.
“WAIT!” Allure shouted. “WE DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT!”
“Coward!” Splodey and Shardey shouted. Then they turned to glare at each other. “I SAID IT FIRST!”
“Imbeciles,” Boring muttered.
“DO YOU WANNA GO?” the other two shouted.
“Yes,” Thrackerzod declared, punching the two aggressive men in their faces with eldritch ropes. “I grow tired of your antics and it hasn’t even been a minute.”
Boring adjusted his suit. “I find myself agreeing with you. However, I do believe they are correct in assuming we must fight.”
“Why?” Allure asked. “…Why are you even here?”
“We need to capture or kill a golden cat!” Shardey sputtered. “You seen it?”
Splodey facepalmed. “Ugh… How are you so stupid!? Don’t tell the enemy the mission!”
“I’m going to stick this frostbomb so far up yo-“
“Gentlemen,” Boring interrupted. “I believe you’ve angered the adorable unicorn.”
Allure shot a glare at him. “So, can you all tell me why you need to kill the ‘golden cat’?”
“Oh, so you have seen him?” Shardey grinned. “I got informaaaaaation!”
Splodey slapped him enough to shock him, but not enough to lower his fighting capacity. “Tell us, pointy.”
“What is with that insult today?” Allure muttered. “No, I don’t think so. In fact, I think we’re going to stop you from interfering.”
“OH REALLY?” Splodey shouted. “You don’t want to go up against the USM, unicorns…”
“Watch us,” Squeaky said, casting a sleep spell on Splodey.
He didn’t pass out immediately – but he felt it coming. So he grabbed Squeaky’s face and unleashed an explosion, sending the two of them flying – both out cold.
Allure and Thrackerzod remained against Shardey and Boring. Allure jumped at Boring while Thrackerzod menacingly stepped toward Shardey.
Thrackerzod began tracing designs in the ground with her horn. “You’re going to enter a world of unimaginable pain, freezing guy.”
Shardey leaped toward Thrackerzod, only for her to use telekinesis to toss him into a nearby tree.
Allure entered close hoof-to-hand combat with Boring, taking advantage of the fact his explosions needed at least an arm-length to pack a full punch. For once she was glad she was small. She used her magic to add little touches of speed here, a little extra power there. She could tell she was wearing him down.
Shardey jumped toward Thrackerzod again, this time using his ice explosions to push himself forward. “DIE!!!!”
Thrackerzod continued drawing circles in the ground, using only the slightest bit of magic to divert Shardey to the side and into a tree.
Boring was smart, Allure discovered. His explosions had begun to point toward the ground, where the heat would spread toward her back hooves. The burns were getting more aggravated over time – eventually she was going to succumb to the pain and make a mistake. She knew it.
“Done,” Thrackerzod declared, lighting her horn. “Time for a Ga’evnuoewah. Side effects may include a sudden desire to lick trees for sustenance.”
She tried to complete the summon – and nothing happened.
She saw that Boring and Allure’s fight had moved right next to her, breaking the edge of the circle.
Thrackerzod realized with alarm that Boring had led Allure there.
Boring smirked, pointing a palm at Thrackerzod. “Gotcha.”
The explosion tossed the eldritch filly into a nearby tree. She would have gotten up and burnt Boring to bits, but it just so happened to be the tree Shardey was thrown into previously.
“Double gotcha.”
Thrackerzod swore in eldritch as she was frozen in an explosion.
Allure managed to deliver a fully-enhanced roundhouse kick to Boring’s skull, knocking him out and probably giving him a concussion as well. She breathed heavily, in and out. She was out of energy…
So was Shardey, though.
The two of them ran at each other – and passed out from Shardey’s freezing explosion.
The fight was a draw.
Unfortunately Boring had a transponder on him, and had sent a signal to the USM a few minutes ago.
A ship arrived and teleported them all away before leaving the universe.