Rarity analyzed their enemies before a single shot was fired. Beings of cloud, likely created from magic, wearing dark Runic armor with powerful enchantments on par with Fluttershy’s own. Their Runes were alarmingly similar to the Runes of the Crystal Sea but Rarity didn’t have time to think about what that meant right now.
Twilight’s first response was to create a defensive bubble around the six of them, deflecting the incoming attacks. Beams of darkness and light surged forth, impacting the barrier from many different angles.
“Ergh…” Twilight grunted. “Playing defensive isn’t going to go over well…”
Rarity nodded, taking the opportunity to ready her swords. She grabbed two weapons from the frozen Fluttershy—a warhammer and a gun. Rainbow readied her pulse cannon and one of Fluttershy’s swords.
“Strategy?” Rainbow asked.
“Keep the others safe,” Rarity said. “Then w-“
The cloudy soldiers didn’t give them any more time—they opened a dimensional portal inside Twilight’s bubble shield. A small, spherical device came flying out of the portal, beeping softly. Rarity had no idea what it was, but Twilight did. In a half-panic, the alicorn dropped the outer shield and focused all her energy on containing the spherical device. Its explosion was contained within the new shield.
Twilight let out a sigh of relief.
“Look o—” Pinkie began, but the warning came too late. One of the dark, black lasers hit the ground right under Twilight, crumbling the earth beneath in a massive explosion.
All six ponies went flying in different directions, each landing with varying degrees of success on the loose sand. Rarity, to her credit, managed to land squarely on her hind hooves and deflect a red laser with a quick shield spell.
She winced. Fluttershy hadn’t healed the wound on her leg yet. She could still fight, but that was going to be distracting.
Twilight unleashed a massive burst of energy, tossing most of the soldiers to the side. One of the black lasers passed right by her, orbited her body, and flew back at the soldier who had fired it—disintegrating both him and his armor. Twilight teleported out of the way of a second attack, launching a magical explosive into the center of the soldiers.
Rarity was in awe at this display, even as she was fighting for her own life—vibration hammer on armor worked wonders on these cloud people while swords were all but useless.
Twilight clearly needed no help facing off against them. The other ponies, however…
Pinkie was cowering behind Fluttershy, fumbling to remove the safety on one of her guns while Applejack took a bolt to the side and was now dripping blood down her stomach.
“Rainbow!” Rarity shouted. “Defend them!”
Rainbow stopped slicing soldiers in half with the blade of “impossibly long reach” and flew toward the other three without hesitation.
Rarity teleported in front of Pinkie and Fluttershy just in time to cast a shield spell, absorbing a smaller, red laser. She had no idea what the colors meant, for the most part, but black was certainly worse than red given Twilight’s reactions.
“W-what are we going to do!?” Pinkie shouted, holding her hooves over her head.
“Fight,” Rarity said, focusing her magic. It was hard, but she could levitate four items at once. Hammer, gun, and swords cycled around her in a swirling cycle, attacking soldiers all around them. The swords did little more than stumble them, but the hammer outright shattered their armor while the gun…
…shot meteors?
This definitely hadn’t been one of the guns Fluttershy had briefed her on.
“You’re really good with that thing…” Pinkie said, examining the smoldering crater that had been a soldier a moment ago. “Y-yeah… good…”
Rarity recognized the haunted look in Pinkie’s eyes as she hammered another soldier into the ground. She’s not truly seen death before.
“Rarity!” Rainbow shouted, shaking the unicorn out of her pity. The pegasus dropped Applejack next to her—the earth pony barely able to stand with her injury. “We need healing, stat!”
“Cover me!” Rarity shouted, dropping both her swords to get some extra magic for healing purposes. Rainbow did as asked, swinging her sword and cutting into armor several meters away. Her pulse cannon had proven to be all but useless against the magic armor.
Rarity swung her hammer and shot meteors while channeling what excess energy she had left into Applejack’s wound, sealing the hole without too much difficulty.
She felt one burn right through her chest. Rarity gasped, but maintained her hold on hammer and gun. With an agonized yell, she pulled the trigger, vaporizing the soldier who had shot her.
“We… need to get them out of here…” Rarity hissed through the pain. “We’re too open, defending them…”
Rainbow nodded, tossing the dimensional device to the newly revitalized Applejack. “Press the screen to open the portal, get them out of here!”
Applejack nodded, scooping up Fluttershy.
“W-wait!” Pinkie shouted. “You shoul—“
“We can take them,” Rainbow and Rarity said at the same time, despite both mares sporting obvious injuries.
Applejack wasn’t one to question what she was told to do. She opened a portal – the device was set to New Alice City—and threw Fluttershy in. She waved to Pinkie…
…But Pinkie had frozen in fear the moment she saw the city on the other side of the portal.
Rarity sucked in a breath. They didn’t have time for this, who cared if Pinkie could sense the wrongness on the other side somehow? It was safer than here!
Rainbow had the same idea—she flew to Pinkie and kicked her through the portal. “CLOSE IT!”
“How!?” Applejack asked.
Rainbow jumped back, dodging a loose laser. “TAP IT AGAIN!”
Applejack did, though not before a single soldier managed to jump through. There was a pop, leaving Rarity and Rainbow Dash in the desert.
Twilight was around to help, of course. She landed between the two of them, spreading her wings once again. “You got them to safety. Good.” She enveloped them in a white aura, mending their wounds and ending the pain. “I’ll need to heal you better later, but right now… let’s show these farts who’s boss.”
“Farts!?” Rarity said, aghast.
“She calls her old alien enemies ‘fuzzfaces’,” Rainbow said, chuckling. She twirled her blade in her wing. “Ready.”
Twilight teleported out of the way of another black laser. Rarity teleported herself on top of the soldier holding the offendingly dangerous weapon, cutting the thing in half with one of her swords. She roundhouse kicked the soldier’s head from above—going right through the cloud and impacting the neck lining of the armor, forcing it to the ground. She whirled around, dodging attack after attack before bringing the hammer down on the ground itself, triggering a minor earthquake.
Rainbow flew in, taking advantage of the opportunity and cutting through several of the soldiers at once, their fancy magic armor unable to handle a weapon of such quality.
Rarity created a few more smoldering craters, but her efforts were easily dwarfed by Twilight’s own attacks. Purple specks of light hit a single soldier and then would explode, sending a dozen of their companions flying and melting the nearby sand to glass.
The fight suddenly felt… easy. Who cared that these soldiers were trained specialists with magic armor made of Runes? They were clouds, weaklings, and they fell like dominoes. Rarity, Rainbow, and Twilight all knew how to fight without hesitation and with the others in a much safer location they had few weaknesses to poke at.
There was no doubt that Twilight far outclassed the two of them in sheer power output, and Rarity was sure she could win on her own, but the Empress was making use of Rainbow and Rarity nonetheless. Letting them take enemies trying to attack her from behind, allowing for her attacks to be more focused and deliberate.
Rainbow proved to not only be very resourceful, but also partially magical. Rarity had caught the Pegasus creating tornados and gusts of wind to accentuate her swordplay which was working really well in keeping the enemies on their toes.
Rarity herself had plenty of weapons and spells at her disposal to keep the enemies at bay, with enough left over to raise a small shield to defend Rainbow every now and then.
They were going to win.
The—
“Do I have to do everything myself!?”
Rarity froze.
That was her voice.
Luckily for her, freezing didn’t result in her demise, since the voice made all the soldiers freeze as well. All combatants looked up into the sky where the voice had come from.
Rarity didn’t know what she was looking at. It was huge, mostly black, and coming out of a huge portal. Determining the exact size was nearly impossible given the blank backdrop of the sky, but it was large enough to cast a shadow over the entire battlefield. It was shaped vaguely like one of the bullets Fluttershy had shown Rarity, though divided into six segments and marred with spikes on the flat end. Almost every surface of the ship was covered in immense, brightly glowing Runes, none of which were the standard Amber color.
“…Crud, the ship…” Rainbow muttered.
The voice of Rarity came from the ship once again. “You let some of them get away. I just… I can’t even. Goodbye.”
“TWILIGHT! SHIELD!” Rainbow shouted at the top of her lungs.
Twilight wasted no time in reacting—creating the thickest barrier of energy she could over the battlefield, sheltering both her and the enemy combatants.
The Runes of the ship flashed red, and then Rarity couldn’t see the sky anymore. There was only crimson energy pelting into the barrier above them. Less than a second passed and Twilight already had to shrink the barrier, dooming many of the soldiers to incineration.
“She’s… killing her own people!” Rarity shouted.
“AGH!” Rainbow shouted. “We have to get out of here, she’ll find some way to breach this…”
“I don’t have… extra… magic…” Twilight winced. “I need to open a portal…”
Rarity dropped all her weapons and focused her energy into a shield—one barely large enough to cover the three of them and two cowering soldiers. “Try… now…”
Twilight dropped most of the support she was placing in her shield and began work on the portal spell. Immediately, Rarity felt as though one of the meteors she’d been shooting had hit her in the face. She fell to the ground, holding her sparking horn in agony—but she did not lose focus on the shield.
To her credit, Rainbow tried to help, pushing as much wind as she could against the barrier. Physically, it had no effect whatsoever, since it was just air. However, Rarity felt something… else in the wind, a subtler magic that was worming its way into her horn, easing her pain.
Curious…
Twilight tore the portal in the ground, dropping the three of them, their weapons, and the two remaining soldiers onto a hard, metallic floor. The portal above popped closed.
Rarity canceled the spell, breathing heavily.
Twilight shot a glare at the two soldiers who had survived. “Drop your weapons.”
They did. They didn’t even resist when Twilight tied them up with magic.
“Plan?” Rainbow asked.
“We can’t beat the ship ourselves,” Twilight said, breathing just as heavily as Rarity was from the spent effort. “So we’re going to win here. We’re going to re-take the station.”
“How?”
“Carefully.” Before Rarity could figure out why she could see stars in every direction out the nearby window, Twilight teleported all of them to another room, this one sealed off by solid metal doors on all sides. There were three ponies in the room, all wearing labcoats and sitting in front of flat glass that shone with many bright colors. Rarity didn’t care about the bizarre technology at the moment; she cared much more that two of the ponies she was looking at were unicorns. Unicorns that shared an odd connection to Twilight…
Now that she was looking at them closely, the third pony—an earth pony—also had a magic connection to Twilight. Odd.
“Report!” Twilight ordered.
The earth pony stood up quickly, steeling herself. “They’ve taken the station! Those of us left are being held hostage! We’re pretty certain they’re rigging the place to blow!”
Twilight let out a curse Rarity didn’t recognize under her breath. “You two,” she pointed at the unicorns. “I need some extra charge.”
The unicorns didn’t waste a second—they bestowed as much of their magic energy to Twilight as they could, channeling it via a rippling laser from their horns to hers.
Twilight nodded. “Thanks… I only hope it’s enough.” She turned to Rarity and Rainbow. “I’m going to save as many ponies as I can. They will be teleported here. Your job is to protect them.”
Rarity and Rainbow nodded in understanding. Rarity once again grabbed hold of the hammer in her telekinesis—opting not to use the meteor-gun inside.
There was silence aside from the soft beeping coming from all the… things in the room. Rarity didn’t have any context for any of the items around. In the Mesh, she had at least understood what gears were—amazed by the sheer magnitude of their application, but at least it was understandable. Here… she had no idea what those glass things were, or how they displayed words and images. How was this entire building shaped out of metal, and what was the deal with all those noises? Everything was too smooth and foreign.
Had this been any other day, she might have been bothered.
But today…
“Who is she?” Rarity asked, barely breathing.
Rainbow set her jaw. “Scarcity. Yes, she’s a Rarity. And yes, she’s our enemy.”
“She attacked her own ponies… people.”
“She’s a bitter mare who declared war on the Stars themselves. She won.”
Rarity had no context for that statement, but it sure sounded impressive. She made no response.
“I know it’s getting to you, but try not to let it. All of us have an evil version out there somewhere. You’re not her.”
“I don’t even know her. How can I be sure?”
“Just trust me on this.”
A troop of six Starcross soldiers appeared in the room through a teleport. Rarity wasted no time vibrating the first one’s armor to dust with her hammer, firing a magic laser at a second while she did that. She may have been taxing her magic, but she was far from out.
Rainbow followed this up with a gust of wind that knocked the other four down, making them easy pickings for the long-distance blade.
Though she also cut through one of the metal boxes in the room, shattering the glass on the front, revealing several sparking wires.
“CAREFUL!” one of the unicorns shouted.
“You want to live or not?!” Rainbow asked.
“…Just don’t hit us.”
“I’ll try.” Rainbow winked.
Rarity let out a pained groan. “Focus, Rainbow.”
“I am focused!” A soldier teleported right behind her, blasting her in the wing with one of the small, red lasers. She dropped the sword with a wail.
The soldier celebrated too early, because he left himself open to a hammer strike from Rarity.
A half-dozen other soldiers teleported in as well.
“Really could use some backup!” Rarity shouted, swinging the hammer wide.
Her prayers were answered—in a burst of purple light, the first of the saved crew appeared. Most of them were ponies, but one of them was a tall, purple reptilian creature with smoke coming out of her nose. Despite wearing a labcoat, she looked ready for battle.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” one of the ponies shouted.
Rarity understood the meaning quickly enough—ducking out of the way. The reptile opened her mouth and unleashed a torrent of purple fire. The soldiers fell back from the attack and were subsequently blown forward by wind summoned with Rainbow’s free wing. Some of the new unicorns fired laser spells of their own, beating the soldiers down.
“Thanks for the assist,” Rarity said, trying to keep her wariness off her features.
The dragon nodded. “Name’s Jet.”
“Rarity.”
“I thought pony names were supposed to be literal or something?”
Rarity smiled softly. “…It is.” She trotted over to Rainbow and healed up her wing. “I’m almost out of magic.”
Jet flexed her claw. “Then we’ll defend ourselves.” Another set of the crew came in, this time with more reptiles, and another creature that looked like a noodle with an eye on top. “Thanks for holding out while you could.”
Something exploded in the distance. Suddenly, the room was upside-down, and everything was spinning. “WHAT!?” Rarity shouted, unsure what was happening.
“Space station!” Rainbow shouted back.
“You’re assuming I know what a space station IS!”
“Uh… a flying building, kinda like the ship you saw earlier?”
“Got it! We’re tumbling! Good to know! How do we stop from crashing!?”
“We’re so high off the ‘ground’ crashing wouldn’t happen for hours!”
Rarity didn’t have time to process that right now. Seemed to be a pattern as of late. “Okay! Let’s just… survive!” She hefted her hammer. “They could still try to come in!”
But they didn’t. No more soldiers arrived. A few more people were teleported in as the room kept spinning, but none of them were enemies.
Eventually, Twilight herself returned with the two soldiers they had captured earlier. She floated in the middle of the room, looking at everyone plastered to the walls with disdain. “Just… give me a second…”
She lit her horn.
And the spin of the station began to slow.
Rarity gawked. Is she… holding the entire building in her telekinesis!?
Eventually, the rotation came to a standstill. Everyone peeled themselves off the walls and the floor, breathing sighs of relief.
“Thanks, Empress!” one of the unicorns said, grinning.
“You’re… welcome… my child…” Twilight’s eyes rolled into the back of her skull and she fell to the floor, out cold.
There was silence in the room of survivors.
Rarity cleared her throat, walking up to Twilight and performing a quick scan. “The Empress is fine, she is just exhausted from overwork! Forgive me if I sound ignorant, but what do you do in this situation?”
Jet raised a claw.
“Yes, Jet?”
“I say wait for the fleet to arrive. It shouldn’t be much longer.”
“Are we certain we have secured the… station?”
A tall, monkey-like creature with a beard nodded, pointing at one of the shining pieces of glass. “Scans show that their ship has left and all of their strange magic has vanished. They’re gone.”
“Good.” Rarity didn’t have any idea how he knew that, but he sounded confident. “We should all examine ourselves, make sure there are no heavy injuries. And th—“
A booming voice came from all directions. “THIS IS THE UNITY HELIX, BROADCASTING ON ALL FREQUENCIES! TWILIGHT, WHAT DID YOU DO THIS TIME!?”
Rarity looked around, bewildered. “Wh… hello?”
“...You’re new.” The voice wasn’t booming anymore, but it was still coming from everywhere. In an instant, every single glowing-glass thing in the room displayed the same image—a soft blue eye made of simplified geometric shapes. “I do not know who you are…”
“I am Rarity,” Rarity said. “And… I’m from another world, brought here by your Empress. There… is a lot going on I don’t understand, and a lot going on I don’t believe you know.”
“As is to be expected. Twilight’s own fault for insisting her station be off the grid… I would say I hope she learned her lesson this time, but she never does.” The eye focused on Rarity from all directions. “I am the Unity Helix, the intelligence behind everything within Unity itself. We have much to discuss, Rarity.”