//------------------------------// // (Weiss Report) Bribes [Master Sword and Vampire Killer] // Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic // by Shadestyle //------------------------------// Entry Whatever, Day Whatever I'm so pissed. The royal sisters just blasted their way into my throne room for the third time. Turns out, after they defeated Discord, they did some snooping around, and accused me of colluding with the bastard. You try to make one measly set of Chaos Emeralds by legally designating a room for ponies to raise a cacophony in whenever they feel like it, and they think you're trying to beef up the one person in Equestria whose attention I absolutely do not want. It took some quick talking, and I basically had to promise them backup Elements of Harmony, but they left without just beating me into a pulp. After the second time, I started literally leaving the skylight of my throne room open for them twenty-four-seven, and they decided to go through a wall instead when they saw that. I'm so god damn angry. I'll get over it though. I might be pissed at them for a lot of reasons, but it's a petty anger, and the best cure for that is indulging in the delights of using magic to make things ones consigned to fiction. Not that I even know how to make relics as good as The Elements, anyway. Good thing I have dudes for that. Good work dudes. What those posh bitches don't know is that I know where the tree is too, bet they weren't expecting that. My quest to make them some spare world-saving goodies will start there. Still too annoyed to mark the entries proper, use your imagination, codebreaking dorks. My first problem emerged when I entered the forest. That place has a feeling of safety that I bet really doesn't make ponies happy when there's actual predators lurking around. Long story short, I found the tree. My second problem emerged when the tree basically asked me with like, sappy magic feeling waves if I wanted it to just MAKE more elements with some of it's remaining energy, that tree is too generous for it's own good. I managed to convince it not to because of the plunder vine seeds, and instead hunkered down, broke out the portable lab, and got to work enlightening myself. That didn't fucking work, but it did give the tree enough time to lowkey read my mind, and it helped me figure out something kinda huge. The Everfree Forest is the harmony capital of the world. Everything works on it's own because ponies are supposed to work alongside it instead of having to lead nature along by the nose just to make it function. It's gotten pretty shaggy though without anyone giving it that little touch of guidance, since there aren't any ponies willing to pony the fuck up and try. I think that kinda bums the tree out, but I don't exactly speak arbor. I wonder why the princesses never tried to tame the forest, I mean, they're living there, do they just think it's cursed? It's around day five that me and the tree painstakingly come to an agreement after some embarrassing attempts at higher-order communication. It has figured out that I fucking love quid-pro-quo, and it's got a self-preservation instinct like the rest of us mortals, even if it ignores it a bit too often when it's trying to be nice. I didn't figure out that it was onto my plans, though, until a patch of ground near the roots started glowing, and the tree basically ordered me to dig up that spot. I was amazed when I found a huge chunk of ore that practically made my teeth itch. The glittering titanium ore had spent so long in the Everfree that it had become charged with the power of Harmony. Not as good as the tree's big-boy powers, but holy shit it's a start. I had been kinda getting worried I wasn't going to get anywhere with this, and those princesses seriously freak me out. When's Celestia going to get all nice and pacifistic like in the show? I swear she wants to go all Bane on me every time we meet. Oh yeah, I bet you wish this entry was marked correctly With what I'll call Master Ore in hand, I made my first trip back home to drop it off with the R&D Dudes. I gave em a simpleish goal. Make me a sword blade out of the stuff that's as magically hollow as an empty bottle, because I'm planning on packing this fucker with features. The Master Sword has a few key features that I wanted to include for authenticity. The first and most important is the ability to repel evil. Now normally, this would be the part where someone struggles to define what evil is, but I'm fucking Weiss Noir, I've got a pretty good definition. I also know that that Master Ore puts me on fucking eggshells standing near it, so it's a good start for repelling dark magic in general. I just need a way to give it the capacity to intelligently differentiate between who's evil and who isn't, and give the weapon the punch it needed to defy evil completely. I'd like to thank the modern day legal system for my solution. I simply ran some extremely well documented offers that were as ethical and took the matter as seriously as possible through the Arcana Liber. I didn't get many takers to offer their soul's up for Equestria's greater good after death, but I only needed two. I made absolutely sure that they were willing to do this instead of going on to Elysium, but the two that ended up signing up for this thing were hardcore Crystal Pony vets from the Crystal War, who wouldn't take no for an answer when I started getting second thoughts. I've made sure that I will give them a Monument when the time comes, a really big one with their names plastered all over it in the toughest materials I can produce. I still fear that I had gone too far, and will fail to do enough to honor their decision. With the core of my two weapons slated for use, I had my dudes begin production and assembly of the Master Sword. A blade made of Crystallized Master Ore, Harmonic and Sacred, with the strength and magical potency to repel evil. A Hilt and handle made from Timeshift Crystal, my answer to time manipulating magics, tuned and attuned to the blade to allow it to rewind away any damage dealt to it, no matter how grievous, and keep it as pristine and powerful as the day it was made. I also included a bunch of lesser charms in the space left over in the blade, such as a recall spell, first and foremost. Seriously, fuck the idea of some villain getting one up over the good guys because they made the sane choice to not keep the damn things on them twenty-four seven. Now with a simple, intentional shout, the weapon will just pop right up when you need it. I bet they could do some Kingdom Hearts Strike Raid shit with that, but then, I'm not going to be the user, so whatever. But one weapon does not a duo of warrior princesses satisfy. I knew for a fact that it wouldn't. So I wracked my brain trying to consider what else to produce with the remaining Crystal Soul, after bringing the Master Sword to the Tree of Harmony to have it blessed. The tree seemed to have picked my brain enough to offer something substantial of it's own, and I was guided to one of the places where the plunder vine seeds had taken root. The tree fighting them off had turned a few of the corrupt, chaotic seeds to harmony, and I knew then what I had to do. I carefully dug up one of the Harmonic Plunder Vine Seeds, and took it back to the Shadow Realm in my most powerful sealing arrays. There was only one person, or rather, Zebra, I trusted with the production of the second weapon. Entry Whatever four out of four Malusi, my muse, my inspiration. Literally the only zebra I know, and also the best zebra of all time. When she saw the Gifted Vines, she attempted to knock me out with sleeping gas to take them for herself. After an intense discussion, she was more than happy to join me on an expedition to the Everfree to help me produce the second weapon. She refused to explain what exactly she was going to do to achieve that, but after three weeks meditating next to the Tree of Harmony, she scoured the Everfree, demanded I basically pander to her whims, and dug up plant after plant after plant, brewing them in a pit dug into the ground. She went on to toss everything in, spat in it, and after some minor hallucinations on my part from being too close to the fumes, she had the completed whip. I asked her if she left room for the rest of the features, but she just sneered at me and said that nothing I add by this point could improve upon it. After I woke up tied to a bear the next day thanks to her amusing prank of drugging my food, I convinced her to allow me to look it over when we returned to the Shadow Realm, only to find she had my dudes perform the final enchantments on the whip already, which acted almost as though it were alive. It would change from form to form every time I looked away, being a leathery whip at one moment, and thick metal chains tipped with a heavy weight the next. As best as my R&D Dudes can tell me, it will resolve into a "true form" when it's user claims it. I sent the princesses a letter saying that the newly christened Master Sword and Vampire Killer would be sent to them when they were complete ("When the two ponies who signed up to inhabit them kicked the bucket" was carefully not included in that letter), got drunk, and docked Malusi's pay for spiking my drinks the next day. Letting her exist in the same country as poison joke was clearly a mistake on my part. I couldn't help myself afterwards. I went to the tree and inquired if it wanted me to help remove the plunder vines, or find some way to destroy them. It made me feel strangely bad when the tree expressed a desire for me to not make the attempt to preserve the timeline it had been working towards. I guess the tree had grown to understand my need to repay kindness with kindness, though, since it instead wished for me to spread what Malusi had learned of the Everfree forest's bounty. Probably to tempt future ponies into braving it. Malusi agreed, but demanded that she first teach it to her own offspring, when she opted to have one. It made me feel a bit wrong to agree to her demand, considering she had been trying to develop an immortality serum for years on my payroll after her banishment, and therefore, it could be a long time before the tree's wish could be granted, but ultimately, I had no choice, since she was the only one who received the tree's wisdom, and by extension, the only one who could share it.