//------------------------------//
// Chapter 11: The Storm 
// Story: From the Ashes 
// by Keeper of time RD 
//------------------------------//

Four ponies lay hidden in the bushes, looking over the ridge before them. The once white walls of Canterlot were now covered in graffiti, and most of that was varying shades of red, often depicting skulls or flames or other less than welcoming things. Two ponies could be seen manning the watch posts overlooking the city’s southern gate. Once gold, the gate was still scorched black from when the city had fallen to the demons all those years ago.

“So, ready to tell us how you’re going to deal with the city shield?” Spitfire whispered.

Scootaloo nodded and then said, “First have a wing of Wonderbolts show themselves so they’ll raise the shield. Then duck back behind this ridge and I’ll deal with it. When the shield brakes the feedback shock should keep them from recasting the spell anytime soon, so we’ll be free to storm the city and you can use your battle plans to your heart’s content.”

“Okay…” the captain of the Wonderbolts said, while pounding how one deals with a city shield after it’s been cast. Although the silver device strapped to Scoots’ front right leg seemed a decent guess.

Either unfazed or unconcerned by Spitfire’s clear doubts, Scootaloo turned to her fellow Crusaders and said, “Are you two sure I can’t talk you into sitting this one out?”

“And why would we do that?” Apple Bloom asked back rhetorically.

Scoots answered anyway. “Because as far as I can tell this is the last time anypony will have to fight to fix Ponyville. And I’d rather you two weren’t putting yourself at risk now that an end is in sight.”

Sweetie Belle just patted her pegasus friend on the shoulder and said, “Aww, are you actually starting to feel things again? That’s so sweet!” After a quick laugh from herself and Bloom, Sweetie added, “But Crusaders stick together! Right?”

“Right!” Bloom answered.

Scootaloo just sighed. Then she looked to Spitfire and nodded. And with that the four ponies crawled back down the hill and out of sight of Canterlot.

Once they were back with the main force, Spitfire went over to the Wonderbolts. Diamond Tiara stood at the front of the Ponyville forces and stepped forward to speak with Spitfire. After a moment of whispered conversations, Tiara relayed orders to the Ponyville ponies.

From among the Ponyville ranks, Light Seeker stepped forward. Not only was he wearing his spacesuit turned combat armor, but he also had on a set of metal wings strapped to his back that had gaps at the base just big enough for his natural wings to flap. In addition to that, the wing pack also had several cylinders attached to the underside of the metal wings. Cylinders that were easily identifiable as rocket launchers.

He walked over to Scootaloo and gave her a nod. She raised an eyebrow. Clearly he didn’t realize she was out of the loop as to any plans beyond ‘brake the barrier, improvise’ but she didn’t see any need to voice that observation. Regardless, Light then gave a nod in Diamond Tiara’s direction as well. With that Diamond gave a nod to Spitfire and she signaled three other Wonderbolts, who took to the sky in response.

With that, Scootaloo motioned for everypony else to stay back and made her way back up the hill to overlook Canterlot.

It didn’t take long before the raiders posted above the gate saw the Wonderbolts and started shouting warning calls. Once that happened it only took a few seconds before a pink glow shimmered from the ground and grew upward to become a shell of protective magic around the city.

Scootaloo continued to watch the Wonderbolt pegasi until they’d circled around and rejoined those gathered behind the hill. With one last look to confirm all friendly ponies where behind her, Scoots turned back to Canterlot.

Sitting up she pointed her front right leg at Canterlot. The device wrapped around her leg had silver rings, frames and shoe that made it looked halfway between a boot and a knee-high leg brace. And a fancy one at that, given the metal it appeared to be made of. On the bottom of the boot part of the device was a clear crystal lens. The supports that went up the sides of her leg also had a long thin crystal embedded in the silver that revealed a chamber with liquid rainbow was housed in the supports. Near the top of the inside support was a white button. The device ended in a silver ring that fit around the leg just below the knee.

Adjusting her aim, she pointed her leg slightly high and off center of the city, but still well through the sphere-like shield protecting it. Then, with her other front leg, she pushed the white button.

A beam came from the silver device and was easily twenty feet across. The beam itself was made up of seven colors of light, pure white plus the six colors of the rainbow. They were weaving through each other like ethereal streamers blowing in the wind, yet contained in a clearly defined cylinder of their own light.

The city shield spell shattered the instant it was struck by the prismatic beam, giving no apparent resistance to the shot. The beam continued through the sky, sailing ever straight into the heavens as the curve of the world pulled the ground away below it.

The brief moment that Scootaloo held down the button came to an end and the moment she released it, the beam of magic stopped flowing out of the lens just beyond her hoof.

Silence followed. In her mind she counted off three solid seconds of absolute silence in the wake of the beam that tore through the city shield like it was tissue paper in the way of a firehouse. Crickets, birds, raiders, even those behind her who’d only really felt the release of magic at the ridge of the hill stood silent.

Then Scootaloo ducked back down behind the ridge and the sudden movement seemed to wake the raiders stationed on the city wall and remind them that maybe they should shoot at where the unknown magic beam had come from.

The sound of gunfire was quick to wake the Wonderbolts from their awestruck pondering and they leapt into the air en mass. Once the Wonderbolt had engaged, Diamond Tiara and Light Seeker ran to the top of the hill. From there Light fired several of his rockets. It took five shots, but the city gates where quickly thrown from their hinges and fell to the ground.

And with the way open, Tiara shouted, “Charge!”

By then Scootaloo and the crusaders had joined the mayor of Ponyville and charged forward. And that lead the Ponyville forces to follow in kind.

With the Wonderbolts and E.U.P. attacking from the air and the Ponyville forces taking the ground level fighting, the raiders quickly fell back form the city walls to secondary lines of defense. Just as Scootaloo and her friends found themselves pinned down by a raider machinegun nest, the ground rumbled and screams came from the raiders. Diamond Dogs emerged, tore the raiders apart, flipped the guns around and turned them on other raiders.

While it was news to Scootaloo that the Diamond Dogs had agreed to help, it wasn’t hard to guess that they wanted to remove the raider capital of Equestria from their doorstep just as much as Ponyville did.

With that barricade dealt with, Scoots and friends move onward. Although it didn’t take long before Spot found his way to the side of his former queen and started coordinating the Dogs’ efforts with Ponyville’s through Sweetie Belle.

It didn’t take long for Diamond Tiara to fall behind as she directed ponies to search every building they came across for any captives that the raiders might have had. All the while the Wonderbolts had rushed forward, not really bothering to take ground that they didn’t see as relevant to taking the castle.

And so three ponies and a diamond dog soon found themselves on point in the ground battle pushing down the main street. Granted Rumble did his best to fill the wake and keep Scootaloo and friends from being attacked from behind. But with the mayor splitting the ponyville forces, he couldn’t really keep up.

Although given that Sweetie continued to advance with Scootaloo, they soon found the Diamond Dogs to be their most common support as they made their way through the south district and toward the central distract.

They had made it about two thirds of the way through the south district when a raider jumped out of an alleyway with a missile launcher and fired it at them. In a heartbeat Scootaloo flapped her wings closed with one, powerful motion in front of her. Not to stop or slow her self, as she didn’t even lose a stride, but to create an airburst that knocked the missile up and to the side and sending it into a nearby tower.

A shot rang out from Apple Bloom’s rifle at the same instant that a lightning bolt shot from Scootaloo’s cloud puff and the raider pony fell.

But unlike her feathered friend, Apple Bloom had been startled into halting her gallop when she first saw the missile launcher. And a sudden cry of, “Look out!” came from Sweetie Belle, who was even further behind.

It only took and instant to find the sight that had alarmed Sweetie. The top half of the tower that had been struck by the deflected missile was crumbling down, and falling right toward Apple Bloom. Then a green glow wrapped itself around the yellow mare and she was pulled back by Sweetie’s magic.

The tower had once been six stories tall, and so when the top half fell into the main street, three floors worth of rubble slammed down right behind Scootaloo. She stumbled and fell, coughing in the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by the falling rubble.

“Apple Bloom! Sweetie Belle! Are you alright?” she managed to call out between coughing bouts.

The dreadful second afterwards felt like an eternity. But then Sweetie’s voice called back, “We’re alive! Just give us a minute to heal up and climb over this mountain of rubble and we’ll be right with you!”

Somewhere in the darkness, a fortress crumbled, leaving a little orange filly down on her knees. “That was way too close! I have to save them! I have to end this fighting before they get themselves killed!” the filly begged.

For the first time in years, Scootaloo’s body trembled with fear.

“No,” she whispered and she turned her back to the rubble pile and back toward the gate to the central district.

Jumping into the air, Scootaloo flew low and fast. And with her legs freed up, she pressed the broadcast button for her helmet’s radio and said, “New plan! Everyone who wants to live to see tomorrow, get as far south of Canterlot Castle as you can!”

“Dang it, Scootaloo! This is the best chance we’ve had to take out the raider queen! We’re not going to fall back now!” Spitfire’s voice argued back over the radio.

“Then you’d better do exactly what I say when I get there! Don’t hesitate! Because I won’t!”


When she entered Canterlot’s central district she laid eyes on the castle… and about a dozen raider defensive positions along the main road between her and it.

Then rockets began to rain down on the raiders en mass. Looking over her shoulder Scoots spotted Light Seeker as the source of the bombardment. The entire road in front of Scootaloo was bathed in explosions. With the way clear, and the last of his rockets spent, Light gave a quick salute to Scoots and turned to fly back south as fast as he could.

As Scootaloo entered the castle grounds, several Wonderbolts grabbed their wounded and retreated back down the path she’d just come from.

The courtyard had acquired several craters and corpses in the recent fighting. Inside the main keep the gunfire, lightning and explosions could still be heard and only got louder the closer Scootaloo got to the throne room. In the halls along the way, the raiders had added spikes and skulls to many of the ornaments. But other than that and minor details like the banners had been changed and the stain glass windows having been replaced with normal ones, it was still the same castle she’d remembered from years ago. Granted it had been blasted and scorched by guns and lightning in the last few minutes.

In the throne room Spitfire and a few Wonderbolts were hunkered down behind some pillars near the entrance to the room. They took shots when they could but return fire never gave them more then a second before forcing them to duck back down. Over by the throne, raiders were doing much the same from behind the throne.

But there was one exception. A pink unicorn mare with a red mane who stood in front of the throne, wearing what looked like royal guard armor that had some extra gemstones added to each piece. Every shot she took only made the gems in her armor shimmer and a pink shield spell would briefly revealing itself around the raider queen. No one was quite sure how a raider got a hold of a set of fully enchanted demon war armor. Although the obvious guess was that the demons didn’t destroy all the armor in the Canterlot when it fell as previously believed. However it had happened, the rumors that the raider queen had top-of-the-line enchanted armor were clearly true.

And then there was the mini-gun attached to her armor. With it she sprayed down any movement she saw from the Wonderbolt with a hail of bullets. Which usually made the blue shield spells of the Bolt’s armor shimmer before they could duck back behind cover.

As Scootaloo galloped toward the throne room, the sounds of battle told her more or less what was going on inside it. She also found the throne room doors had been blown off of their hinges and were laying in the hallway just outside. And there were two Wonderbolts fighting from outside the throne room and just peaking in from the doorway to return fire.

Reaching up, she pushing the radio button on the side of her helmet and said, “I’m coming in. Get behind me! Nowhere else will be safe!”

The Wonderbolts stopped firing, and several of them even darted out of the room. The raider queen was more than happy to take that reprieve to swap out the ammo drum of her mini-gun with her magic. She even smiled when she spotted the orange pegasus in repainted E.U.P. armor and a crusader cape entered the room.

With a sinister grin the queen began, “Ah the legendary hero of Ponyville! I was wondering when I’d finally get to face a worthy op-”

She never got to finish, because as soon as Spitfire and the other Wonderbolts had lined up behind her, Scootaloo fired the silver weapon strapped to her leg.

A massive explosion of pure light consumed Canterlot. Although had there been a distant observer they’d have noticed that it was actualy three explosions, the first centered on Canterlot Castle. The next from a tower in Canterlot’s north district and happened to be directly behind the castle’s throne room. And the last blast coming from the mountain ridge north of that. And finally, a beam of prismatic light punched through the chain of three explosions and sailed northward into the sky.

Canterlot’s western balcony distract began to crumble and fall away as the magic that once held it faltered under the force of the nearby blast. And even so the spheres of light seemed to consume the whole of the city.

When the light faded a massive gorge had been cut in the mountain ridge north of Canterlot, the most of the city was in ruins, and the castle was gone. However the circle of destruction that had enveloped the city had a large wedge cut from it. A wedge that had left the south district largely untouched. And although it grew narrower the further north it went, that had also spared the main street of the central district. Although even in the ‘safe space’ any towers with more than three floors had lost any floors above that. Finally the wedge of safe space came to a point only a few feet in front of where Scootaloo was standing.

Quite followed the light. Wonderbolt, E.U.P., raider, Ponyville, Diamond Dog, it didn’t matter, all who had survived the blast were held in awed silence. And even when it was broken it was only from the clatter of the remaining raiders dropping their weapons and holding up their hooves in surrender.