I knew Twilight came to hurt me. It didn’t bother me. I wanted to hurt her even more. “Ponyville isn’t big enough for the both of us, Twilight!”
Dust flew between us as we stared at each other. Not even the crossing of a tumbleweed could break our gazes.
“You seem concerned.” I smiled and kicked a stone at her.
Without batting an eye, she cocked her head, letting the projectile pass her. “You are my concern, Sweetie Belle.”
“Exactly!” I charged my horn. “Here’s my proposition, Twilight. You hold still for just a moment.” When I pointed my horn at her, she charged up her own. “And I’ll spare you the suffering!” I launched an energy ball at her.
In an instant, she blasted it apart with a ray from her horn. “Sweetie Belle! What did you just try to do?”
I clenched my teeth. Dealing with Twilight might not be as easy as I had hoped.
“I can see you are angry with me, Sweetie Belle. We’ve all made mistakes in the past few days—some of us more than others” She waved a hoof at me in an explanatory manner. “What you’re doing isn’t going to make anything better. You’re just worsening the situation. Fighting me and the rest of the ponies is not the way to fix your problems. You need to stop right now before you start something you’ll regret. We can still fix it; together. Just give me and the ponies of Ponyville a chance.”
“Ugh!” Her babble only fueled my frustration. I prodded at the ground with a hoof. My tail whipped from side to side.
“Whatever’s wrong with you, I know we can mend it with our friendship and some rudimentary medical procedures. We can start anew.”
A grin embellished my face.“Yes, Twilight, you’re right. I do need a new beginning.”
She smiled and nodded at me.
“I'll mark it with your battered corpse under my hooves!”
Her face tensed. Her eyebrows lowered. “I was really hoping you’d come to your senses.” She bowed her head. “They’ve been right all along, but I refused to see what was before my muzzle. I can’t deny it any longer, though. You’re dangerous. You need to be stopped—I need to stop you! It’s my duty to do so...”
“You can only try to handicap me, Twilight. I’ve been brushed aside for long enough, and I won’t be put down on top of that. Not by you and not by anypony else. I’m no background pony! I’ll become more than you could ever dream of.”
“Can’t you hear yourself, Sweetie Belle. This isn’t you!”
“You’ve put yourself in my way, Twilight. I’ll push you aside; permanently!” I flung one channel toward Twilight and one behind me, spreading it over a wide area on the ground as a counterpart for any kinetic forces that the forward channel would create on impact. A thick shield formed on the endpoints of my first channel as they closed in on her for a slam.
At the moment of impact, I redirected the forces to a large area. Focal points drifted along the ground, ripping out all the grass behind me. The endpoints dug in the earth, and held, but so did Twilight! She hadn’t moved at all, despite my forward channels impacting on her with full force.
I cut off my channels to free my focus for another strike.
“Sweetie Belle, you could have really hurt me with this! Do you even understand what would happen if I hadn’t countered your focal points with mine?”
“You’d be dead!”
“And you’d be fine with that?” She narrowed her eyes.
“One less problem in my mane.”
She sighed and bowed her head. “This is it then, you’re dead set on fighting me? I really hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” Her horn glowed brighter as she pierced me with her gaze. “You leave me with no other choice, Sweetie Belle!” She sighed and bowed her head. “Enacting plan C.” Her eyes pierced me. “I’m putting an end to your indecent rebellion here and now, whether you like it or not.”
“Bring it on!” I snickered as I aimed my horn again.
“I won against Tirek and numerous other threats to Equestria! What chance do you think you have against me, filly? Give up now; I don’t want to see you getting hurt—more than necessary.” She glanced back over her croup.
“Hehe,” I smirked at her. “You talk an awful lot for someone thinking of winning. Why don’t you show me your magic, and I’ll show you a glimpse of the power inside of me!”
At that moment, Twilight suddenly turned around and broke into a gallop. She gained ever more distance from me as she ran toward the center of the ravine.
“Hey!” I hit a hoof against the ground. “Come back here and die like a mare.”
She kept moving further away from me.
“Ugh!” I launched myself forward, charging my horn. It needed to be as still as possible upon firing, or I’d miss her. At the same time, I needed to catch up to her. I slowed down to a steady pace while aiming with my horn.
I fired, but my energy balls flew too high, missing her.
She stopped in her tracks, turned around and fired a barrage of small energy balls in an arch toward me.
Their trajectory would be on point if I stood in place, but I was on the move. As long as I didn’t stop, the energy balls presented no danger.
I fired two more energy balls, which were even thicker than the previous ones, then plunged myself into a gallop.
They crashed left and right of her just as her barrage bombarded the ground behind me. I swiveled both ears to the side and ran through the dust that was lifted by my earlier blasts.
She turned her head but focused past me. Her legs slid on the ground as she abruptly stopped. She slowly turned and focused her eyes on me.
“You either face me now or I’ll knock on your door tonight,” I yelled at her then gasped for air. “And this time, I won’t be gentle when I let myself in.”
“Yes, I’m sure you wouldn’t be, Sweetie Belle. It won’t come to that, though. Our quarrel is between you and me. I was the one who admitted you to the clinic. If you want somepony to blame, I’ll take on the entirety of the guilt. Nopony else, or books, have anything to do with our strife. I’m the one you want, and we’re ending it here and now, just like you want.”
“I’ll end it!”
I launched my main channel directly toward her while spreading the counter channel on the vast area.
“You’ll try.” Twilight’s horn glowed brighter. “You’ll fail.” The grass behind her flattened.
My channels impacted hers again. Endpoints glowed in the air in the middle of us.
I focused more flow through the horn right until the point when my primary channel buckled from the pressure. She was pushing her channels through mine. I could see the merger of my and her shield approaching. Her magic was stronger, but it wasn’t as flexible as mine was. I launched three more channels. Left, right and above. I lengthened them in an arch toward Twilight but didn’t charge them too much, so their glow at the endpoints wouldn’t be apparent at a glance. She wouldn’t see them until they’d be upon her.
“That won’t help you, Sweetie Belle. I can sense your channels, and I’m able to wield several of my own to counter yours.”
Three shield slices formed left, right and above Twilight. My focal points brightened when they impacted the magic barriers.
All four of her countering channels approached when she pushed against my own channels.
Twilight’s body wasn’t as calm as it was before. Her legs spread, body shook. Sparks sprayed from her horn.
I wasn’t in any better shape. Except for the sparks part. My channels were weakened but stable enough.
“Twilight! Do you remember when you told me that six was the upper limit of channels you can form?”
“The insurmountable biological limit of everypony. It takes a talented pony a lifetime of training and meditation to reach it.”
“I’m happy to tell you I’ve surpassed that limit!”
“No, you couldn’t have. Nopony could!” She shook her head. “There’s a hard limit to our physiology. That barrier cannot be broken. It’s the limitation of our very soul.”
I clenched my teeth and launched another channel; then another one. And one more after that. I extended them toward her.
“Seven energy channels—That’s... unnatural!” All of her focal points against mine dissipated.
“That’s right. I’m not just some regular filly. I’m supernatural!”
She disbanded her shields and arched a small transparent dome around her.
I spread my counter channel behind me in the wider area while speeding up extensions of my five active channels in the air. They approached her from the frontal directions. “Twilight, brace yourself, I’m about to give you a powerful hug!”
A bright light spots appeared on Twilight’s shield when my channels impacted with all the force I could master behind them.
Her hind legs buckled, and she drifted back across the ground on her flank. “Argh!”
“Pff… I thought you’d be smarter than that, Twilight. You can only form your counter channel inside your little dome. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Remember that lesson? You should because you’re the one who taught it to me. The little patch of ground you have in there is not enough surface to absorb the force I can push against you.”
Half of the dome behind her dissipated. As the wave of flattening grass expanded, her flank ceased sliding on the ground.
I giggled. “That’s right, Twilly; make an opening for my channel to get you from behind!”
She stood up. I could see her scratched cutie mark through a rip in her fur-tight clothes. “That’s assuming you can reach the opening, Sweetie Belle!”
The front half of Twilight’s dome morphed into a flat, translucent wall in front of her.
I sent a channel above it.
The wall extended in all directions, and cut off my upper channel when it touched its arch.
A wide area of grass behind her flattened when she pushed on my remaining five offensive channels with her shield.
“You think you can stretch it far enough, Twilight?”
“Try me!” she snarled at me.
I redirected three channels from the shield in paths parallel to her glowing wall. The remaining four on her shield merged into one, which freed my focus for what I was about to do next. I stretched the channels out and moved them away from her so that the approaching shield wouldn’t cut them.
Her wall expanded as fast as my channels. The upper one already reached the lowest clouds, but so, too, did her shield.
I couldn’t send my channel around it yet. I needed to stretch it even farther.
Her shield thinned and became translucent. The light emitted from my impacting channel grew ever brighter.
She spread all four legs and took a deep breath. Her shield ceased extending. It was still vast, but its power waned, losing the majority of its purple glow to it.
I send all my three channels around its edges. I already had them stretched far out, but I still had enough focus to reach Twilight with them.
“Did you really think you could spread your surface more than I could extend my channels? You underestimate me, Twilight. I’m not your filly student anymore. I’ve outgrown you!”
“Being grown up is not about the power you wield, Sweetie Belle!” A burst of sparks rushed from her horn. “Ngh…” She pressed a hoof to her head. “It’s about maturity that you don’t seem to possess at all.”
Her wall dissipated, and she formed a magic dome once more.
She drifted back again as my forward channel impacted her. I cut off the three extended ones to produce more force on my main channel.
Twilight opened the back side of her dome again and turned around. The rest of the magic construct dissipated as she flapped her wings and flew into the air.
“You’re flying away from your problems? Really? Some princess you are! You don’t deserve the wings you were blessed with.” I spread out my channels, arching them toward her.
“Oh, Sweetie Belle, you’re not getting rid of me so easily! Be assured of that. I’m just warming up. Plan C doesn’t end until you lose your horn.”
A blast of energy near me exploded. The shock wave swept me off my hooves. When I crashed face-first on the ground, the world went black.