//------------------------------//
// 154 - Journey 
// Story: Songs of the Spheres 
// by GMBlackjack 
//------------------------------//


I -  The Depths of Nucleon


“Elder! Elder!” 

The Elder chuckled in that gleeful, tired way only older people can. “Yes, Pringle?”

The pink and purple pegasus filly bounced to the Elder’s lap. “Tell us more stories of the heroes!”

“That again?” an earth pony named Onion groaned, pulling her white mane back over her creamy coat. “We’ve heard them all already, geez.” 

A young woman with purple hair responded, not looking up from her phone. “We do hear a lot about the heroes. It’s kinda annoying.”

“You like the stories more than anyone, Joanne,” the Elder said. “As much as you try to keep your nose buried in that screen, you revel in the story you’re a part of.”

“Won’t be for long,” Joanne commented, still refusing to look up. 

“Years seems like a long time to me...” said the last member of the younger friend group, a young man known as Jang, playing with some firebending between his fingers. “We can learn from the mistakes and stories of those who came before us so we can survive what the Tower may throw at us.”

“I just wanna hear the stories again…” Pringle muttered. 

“There are other things the Elder can teach us,” Onion scoffed. “We don’t need to hear any of her stories for the umpteenth time.”

“Few people learn things the first time,” Joanne pointed out. 

“I thought you were on my side.”

Joanne smirked. “Sides are but an illusion in any conflict.”

“I… Nevermind.”

The Elder let out her distinctive chuckle once more. “Children, children… how can I tell a story when you’re all bickering?”

“That might be Onion’s plan,” Jang pointed out. 

“She wishes she were that clever,” Joanne snarked. 

Onion grumbled something incoherent. 

The Elder sat down, gently stroking Pringle as she settled down on her lap. “Now, we’re going to start a very familiar story a little before we usually do. It starts on the other side of Nucleon, deep beneath the ground…”


~~~


“I’ve got the next room,” Vriska said, drawing her sword, grin slashing across her face like a knife through meat. It was far too eager.

“Sure you will,” Trixie muttered. 

“Watch me, dungeons are nothing for the Thief of Light!”

“Let’s make this more interesting,” Discord said, snapping his fingers and placing a large red X over the Light symbol of her robes. “No luck, just pure unfiltered skill.”

Jenny cupped her gloves to her mouth. “OOOOOOOOOOOOOH!”

“I accept,” Vriska said, tapping her chest as if she were an ancient warrior. “Watch and learn…”

“Pretty sure we all know how to run a dungeon already,” Flutterfree pointed out. Eve giggled, only adding to the pile-on.

Vriska put her hands on her hips. “Do you all just spend your days coming up with ways to insult me when the opportunity arises?”

“Yes,” Jenny deadpanned.

Eve forced herself to stop giggling. “Oh, no, Vriska, it isn’t like that…”

“Yeah,” Rina said. “I haven’t said anything yet.”

“Thanks, mini-psycho.” Vriska shot her some finger guns. 

“And now I want the monsters in the next room to kick your ass and teach you a thing on hubris and pride. You know. Like the tritons did three rooms up.” She pulled a fish out of her mane and disintegrated it. “The fish spell is quite humiliating.”

“I like it…” Flutterfree said, pulling another fish out of her mane and placing it in a water tank provided by Eve’s magic. “So many new friends.”

“I still think the fish would make better food,” Jenny observed.

“Most of us are herbivores,” Discord pointed out. 

“Is there a single person in this room who hasn’t tried meat?” Jenny asked. Getting no negatives, she smirked. “Thought not. We’ll all enjoy that fi—”

“That’s it, tired of waiting,” Vriska declared, kicking in the next door. The dungeon itself couldn’t be considered standard fare, seeing as the walls were made of dark metal and the doors themselves shaped of bronze circuitry, but aside from the bizarre aesthetic the structure had, the active act of dungeon raiding was no different than usual: charge through room after room solving puzzles, setting off traps, and facing an unhealthy amount of monsters. 

The room Vriska walked into was home to an entire village of bloodlusted orcs. They stopped fighting each other the moment Vriska kicked the door down, pointing their choppas at the intruder. “WAAAAAGH!”

“No luck, huh?” Vriska drew her sword and held out her free hand, grinning. “This’ll be good.” She met the first orc’s choppa with her sword, proving her blade and her physical strength to far exceed that of the ripped orc. She kicked him between the legs and whirled around to stab another orc in the neck, using her free hand to focus her psychic energy on the third-closest orc. Under her control, the orc swung back, gashing through three of his brethren. Vriska released her control, focusing on the others now; those four orcs would not be disentangling from their combat until all but one was dead. 

Vriska twirled around, chopping off a few heads before taking to the air and kicking as many orcs in the forehead as she could before landing, giving out quite a few concussions. Thrusting downward, she drove her blade right through an orc’s head and caused a small tremor to run through the room as she hit the ground. 

Waiting a few seconds for the orcs to charge, she unleashed a spinning attack that took out every orc next to her. With a laugh, she took to the air, leaving the remaining orcs to smash their heads into each other at high velocity. 

One orc near the back shot a fireball at her. 

Vriska threw her sword at him, skewering the monster through the neck. He fell back—but another orc picked up Vriska’s sword. Vriska, not wanting some grimy green monster touching her sword for longer than necessary, flew over the crowd of stupid orcs and engaged the orc in unarmed combat. 

The orc swung. 

Vriska broke his wrist with a carefully placed kick, claiming her sword back with ease. To add insult to injury, she chopped his hand off before kicking him down. 

“Who’s next!?”

Back at the entrance of the room, Discord sighed. “I don’t think she’s going to make a fool of herself.”

“Can I argue that she’s a Mary Sue? Please?” Jenny asked. 

“If she is, so are you,” Rina deadpanned. 

“…Is the sacrifice worth it…?”

“Never.” Trixie shuddered as if the suggestion were physically painful.

“Well I’m happy that she’s having some fun,” Eve said, smiling brightly. 

“That is why we came down here, after all,” Flutterfree pointed out. 

“Trixie came down to figure out what the treasure was, not for fun,” Trixie huffed.

“If you wanted treasure you could just go back to the City and get a ticket to any number of artifact planets.” Flutterfree lifted up Trixie’s head with a wingtip. “You want to have fun.”

“…Fine…” Trixie grumbled. 

An orc’s skull—just the skull, nothing else—flew and hit Jenny in the head. 

“VRISKA!” Jenny shouted, charging into the room in rage. 

“Jenny, no, I haven’t cleaned the room y—”

“And all bets are off!” Discord declared. “The terms have been voided!”

“None of us bet any money,” Flutterfree pointed out. 

“Exactly!”


~~~


Vriska examined a golden computer chip laced with magic runes she had looted off one of the orcs several rooms back. “I really do wonder what this is.”

“A reminder of Jenny’s hotheadedness?” Rina suggested, blasting a spider-robot into smithereens. 

Vriska chuckled as she traced a finger around the shield-shaped edge. “While that’s most definitely what it is, it also has to be something else.” She rolled her fluorite octet and transformed an attacking skeleton into a frog. 

“Probably the lost artifact of an ancient civilization,” Trixie said. “Again.”

Vriska shrugged and pocketed it while using her free leg to crack a lamia’s pelvis. 

Discord snapped his fingers, transforming every monster in the room into a wind-up duck. 

“Discord!” Jenny whined. “I had that one!”

“I was bored,” Discord said, waving his hand dismissively. 

“He needs to have his fun too,” Flutterfree pointed out, winking at him.

“That said, Flutterfree and I call the next room,” Eve interjected. “I think it’s time we showed our stuff.”

Flutterfree reared back excitedly, tapping her wing-blades together. “Oh, yes! Can we do the Thing?”

“That’s the idea!”

“Oooh, come on come on come on!”

“Yes. Be excited.” Discord rolled his eyes. “Not like we were just talking about me or anything.”

Flutterfree put a hoof on Discord’s leg gently. “Discord…”

“Oh, all right, fine, it wasn’t important anyway.”

Flutterfree let out a squee. “Eve! Let’s go!”

“Let’s get the timing right. Three… Two… One…” 

Both of them kicked the door down at the same time, signaling the start of a funky, energetic beat. The group of monsters within looked up—largely composed of skeleton ninjas with a large white creature in the back made of many papery tendrils. Flutterfree and Eve hoofbumped before completing the charge. Eve sang first. 

“We feel it stirring…”
“…Deep down inside our souls.”

Eve created a ramp of ice that Flutterfree skated on, entering a wild whirlwind of blades that shattered several skeleton ninjas. Eve teleported in front of her, encasing those who survived in ice. The two twirled together, moving forward. Flutterfree let her heart out through her words.

“A million moments…”
“…bringing us together.”

Rising onto their hind legs, the two pulled each other into a complex swirling dance of grace and calculated elegance. Every swing, every pulse, every twist came with it a blade, a burst of magic, or a lash of Rage. No matter how well they snuck or attacked, the ninja skeletons fell like dominoes to the complex choreography. 

“The beat is taking hold…”
“…it’s more precious than gold.” 

Eve slid under a skeleton while Flutterfree flew over the top, the two attacking it from opposite vectors, cutting it in half and sending its components into the others. The pegasus landed gracefully on the alicorn’s back, both striking a dramatic pose. 

“We are acting as one…”
“…until our time is done.”

The papery monster was all that remained in their way. Seething, it unleashed its flimsy tendrils toward them. Seraphim activated, bouncing them all away with a shield. Flutterfree sent Lolo forward, tangling up among the papery beast’s assault. With one voice, they pushed forward. 

“Sing our lives along
The other right to our side
There’s nothing you can do to us
To separate us from this ride!”

Eve and Flutterfree jumped through the air, swirling like ballerina dancers. Lolo pulled the papery strands of the monster to the side, allowing the two of them to smash the core with Flutterfree’s ice-coated wing blades. It never stood a chance. As it fell, the music died down. The two held each other’s hooves and bowed back at their friends, prompting thunderous applause. 

“You two are amazing!” Trixie called. “Almost as good as Trixie!”

“Better,” Rina said.

“Much better,” Jenny agreed. 

“Oh so amazingly better, it can’t even be comprehended,” Vriska piled on. 

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Har-de-har.”

“Eh,” Discord said, ending his clapping before anyone else. “It’s not that amazing. Just an amazingly choreographed dance between two ponies who are very close. Not surprising, really.”

“It’s still cool, you’re just lame,” Jenny asserted.

“And you have low standards.”

“…I’m the most easily bored out of all of us, and that’s saying something.”

“She says, in a bragging tone,” Vriska snickered. 

“Don’t you start!”

Discord turned away, deciding to inspect the featureless wall rather than engage. Trixie narrowed her eyes. Something was up with him. But… there was no way, right? Couldn’t be…

“Hey! Are you coming or not?” Flutterfree called. “New rooms filled with monsters and treasure await!”

“I found an infinite pizza!” Eve added. 

“Hey! No jumping ahead, I want the next room’s loot!” Jenny ran after them, waving her hands in a panic. “Come on, let’s get a move on, people!”

Trixie grinned, lighting her horn. “Teleport.”

Trixie appeared embedded in a nearby wall. She sighed. “Help? Anyone?”

“I think I’ll just let you sit there for a few minutes,” Rina said. 

“Rina don’t you dare-RINA! GET BACK HERE!”


~~~


Far above the dungeon plunderers, the surface of Nucleon was green. Vibrant moss had spread itself over a wide section of landscape mostly devoid of larger flora and fauna. The only structures visible from the ground were numerous deactivated mecha, all having been there long enough that the moss was growing up their legs. 

There had been a war, once, but with the creation of Nucleon that war ended. The mecha were no longer needed, so here they sat, collecting dust and moss. They had seen almost no visitors since the New World had been created. 

Today, though, a shadow drifted over them. The form of the Austraeoh V, floating in the sky with its should-be-impossible-but-weren’t magic propellers keeping it aloft. It was similar to the craft that had left the City a few years ago, but it was made out of a purple metal rather than the pristine white ‘orichalcum alloy’ the Merodi knew and loved. 

Pinkie stood at the front of the deck, wearing the Element of Laughter as an earring. She whistled a tune to herself as she kept the wheel twisted slightly to the left so the ship would circle until the dungeon-raiders were done having their fun. She was the Captain and she was enjoying it. The wheel was hers, the ship was hers, and the crew was hers. Even if they were doing absolutely stupid things, she still loved them to bits. 

Speaking of stupid things, there was a drinking competition going on behind her. 

“We’ve got you beat,” Pidge declared, downing some kind of dark red sludge. 

“You are a lightweight,” O’Neill retorted. “You are going to pass out in a few minutes. I’m only worried about your buddy Jotaro, here.”

Jotaro wordlessly slammed another drink down his throat, dropping the glass menacingly on the table after he was done. 

“Sure we can beat him?” Nanoha asked O’Neill. “He has nerves of steel and a constitution better than some mountain trolls.”

“And I’m General Snark.”

“Are you all just forgetting about me? I’m here too!” Pidge waved her hands. 

She got no response. 

“Screw you guys.”

“You are all children,” Rev said, passing by. “If I felt the need to indulge, every last one of you would be under the table before I felt even mildly nauseous.” 

“Join us, then!” O’Neill called. 

Nanoha put a hand over O’Neill’s mouth. “Ignore him, Rev, I know it’s not good for you.”

“I mean…” Rev tapped her chin.

“No, Rev…” Nanoha shook her head. “You’ll just drag yourself into the contest and we know that won’t end well.”

“Yeah!” Mattie called from her beach chair, lifting her sunglasses. “If I can’t have a drink just for fun, neither can you!”

“You’re pregnant,” Rev pointed out. “It’s a little different.”

Mattie gestured at her inflated belly with a corked eyebrow. “It’s just more obvious.” 

“Pregnancy and a history of addiction are nowhere close to the same thing.”

“Mate, pregnancy is part of my addiction.” Mattie corked a brow. “I can’t wait for the fun to begin…”

Rev facehooved. “You’re disturbed.”

“I wonder if I’ll be able to tell who the father is…”

Rev tried, and failed miserably, to suppress her look of disdain. Mattie chuckled. “You’ve still got it, Mattie. You’ve still got it.”

Pinkie appeared behind Mattie. “Mattie? Maybe, just maaaaaybe, trying to make Rev as uncomfortable as possible isn’t exactly the nicest thing to do.”

“Balls to her, that’s my job description.” Mattie grinned. “I’m a walking blob of societal rebellion, uncomfortable idioms, and sass!”

“You’re not… walking very well, right now,” Pidge hiccupped. 

“And balls to you too, lightweight.”

“I’m not…” Pidge passed out, knocking her glasses off her face. 

“Yare yare daze…” Jotaro shook his head, downing another drink. 

“This is all very stupid,” Nanoha observed with an amused smile. 

“Embrace the stupid!” Mattie called. “Be one with the outrageous and you will discover life!”

Pinkie raised an incredulous eyebrow. 

“All right, fine, I’m lying. Smash me with that cartoonish hammer of yours.”

“Hmm… nah. Instead, I order you to relax and rest until we get a new member of the family!”

“For all you know that could be in five minutes.”

“Yep!” She bounced back, grinning. Looking to the sky, she saw their equivalent to a crow’s nest glistening in the sun. “The family keeps growing…”

Her thoughts turned to the two people that spent most of their time in the Crow’s nest. She wondered what they were thinking about. 

“I wonder what the optimal rate for cutting a slime creature in half is if you want to end up with the maximum amount of slime,” Corona wondered aloud. 

Roland looked up from polishing his gun. “…What?”

“Nevermind, I was just thinking in random places.” She stood up, looking over the edge of the crow’s nest at the green field of abandoned mecha below them. Roland continued to polish his gun in silence, and Corona said nothing about her further musings. She knew Roland preferred silence, and if she was honest that was why she came up here so often. It was a place she could sit and think, occasionally giving Roland the weirdest parts of her mind. 

He spent a lot more time up here than she did, though. Corona was still, at heart, a people person who surrounded herself with close friends for good reason. Roland was a loner, and while the other members of the crew had grown to know and respect him, he still kept his distance. In many ways, he represented the heroes of old rather than the recent era the rest of them represented. He was the first. 

For all Corona knew, he might end up the last. 

Corona was about to vocalize this thought when she felt the air come alive with electric charge. With a flash and a rush of wind, a spaceship appeared right next to them, emblazoned not with a Merodi or City symbol, but rather the cutie mark of a Sunset Shimmer. 

Corona’s phone rang before she could deduce who’d just shown up. She answered. “This is Corona.” A pause.

“SHIMMY!?”


~~~


“CHAAAARGE!” Jenny shouted, throwing Vriska like a cannonball at a cannonball-monster. 

The irony was not lost on Vriska, though she was still flattened against the beast. “Jenny… fuck you...”

Jenny winked, giving her a thumbs up before casting magic flash on the cannonball. 

Rina, charged as well, disintegrating the monster. And then Eve and Flutterfree came in, wiping the floor with the slime monsters in what appeared to be an amazing acrobatic routine. 

Trixie and Discord were sitting out this time, Discord because he was usually too powerful, and Trixie because she was keeping an eye on Discord. Watching him. Watching what he was watching. Watching to see if what he was watching was watching him watch it. That sort of thing. 

She was pretty sure she knew what was going on in his head now, and boy was it juicy. 

“…What are you looking at?” he asked.

Trixie missed the days where she could adjust her business glasses to look more professional, but alas, her current adventuring outfit had no use for such things. She settled on smirking in his direction. “Why don’t we talk about that without any… distractions?” She lit her horn and activated some explosives she’d planted in the floor of the room. Eve, Flutterfree, Rina, Jenny, Vriska, and all the monsters fell through to the floor below. 

“That was some impressive explosive placement.”

“Trixie could pass the demolition standards exam if she wanted. Trixie does not have the patience.”

Discord put a thermometer in his mouth and summoned a sick-bed.

“Patience, not patients, idiot.”

He winked, jumping out of bed with a shower of gold coins. “You got the joke!”

“Trixie will not be patronized—or distracted!” She poked Discord in the chest. “Trixie has figured out what your deal is.”

“There isn’t a mortal alive who can understand my deal.” He threw a deck of cards in her face. 

“Trixie sees you watching them. Watching Flutterfree.” Trixie smirked, raising her eyebrows repeatedly.

“I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Trixie, th—”

“Oh for the—you’ve fallen for Flutterfree again and you’re trying really really hard to pretend like it’s not an issue. But come on it’s obvious! I’ve seen you stare at her, watch her movements, get all grumpy that she’s happy with Eve, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

Discord stared at her in disbelief, his jaw comically on the floor. “How-”

“Yes, Discord, you are that obvious. And pathetic. Buuuuut that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to help!”

“Help!?” Discord scoffed. “You?”

“Trixie chooses to ignore the insinuation.” Trixie coughed. “Yes. Me. Obviously you need some kind of push, and yours truly can provide.”

Discord waved a claw. “You’re insane. She doesn’t need me right now, I’d just get in the way. She’s got Eve and I would j—”

“Do you hear yourself right now? Have you been paying any attention to how they see each other? Stop being so dense, they’re not together, they’re just really close. They make that blatantly obvious all the time just so the rest of us don’t get confused, and you got confused anyway!”

“Well, I mea—”

“Flutterfree has been accepting your tea party invitations again, lately. I’ve seen you on deck enjoying each other’s company. I think you’ve got a shot!”

“That… doesn’t make sense! You’re being way too optimistic.”

“And that’s exactly what you need, big guy. Come on, all you need is a little flair and pizzaz! She already notices you, you’ve just got to make a move.”

“I’m not sur—”

“DISCORD! You are the lord of chaos!” Trixie lifted up a hoof, casting a thunder-sound spell. “Since when did you become the tentative hesitant one? You rush into danger at high speeds just to see what kind of laughs you can get! The Great and Powerful Trixie should not need to urge you to stir the pot for delightful chaos!”

“You’re right. You’re right!” Discord created a rock and stepped up on it. “I AM DISCORD, SPIRIT OF CHAOS AND DISHARMONY!” He snapped his fingers, creating a superhero outfit. “I should go over to her right now a—”

“Discord, what are you doing?” Flutterfree asked as she flew out of the hole in the ground. 

“D-dramatic poses!” Discord said, stuttering. “And a good heart-to-heart with my good friend Trixie here about her place in the world!” He picked her up and pulled her close, squeezing her so hard she couldn’t breathe. 

“Sure...” Flutterfree clearly didn’t buy any of this, but she didn’t press the issue. “Did you find anything up here?”

“Nothing at all!” Discord said, tossing Trixie to the side. She hit a previously-camouflaged button on the wall, revealing a little treasure chest. 

“…Except this,” Trixie said, trying to make it look like she’d meant to hit the button. “Behold, TREASURE!” She popped the chest open and found… a map. 

A map of the dungeon. All the way to the bottom. 

“…Neat,” she said. 

“Hey, we can use that!” Flutterfree inspected it, and beamed at them. “We could get right to the boss with this! Thanks, you two!”

“Think nothing of it,” Discord said, exaggerating a bow. Trixie facehooved. 


~~~


“All right, that sounds all right,” Flutterfree said. 

Eve smiled sadly at Flutterfree. “You don’t sound all right.” 

“I’m a little nervous. Okay, more than a little nervous, but…”

“Shush, shhhhh, I’ll be there for you.”

“I’m still going to worry.”

“I know, but I’m going to do my best to make you consider that you might not have to.”

“That’s you worrying about me.”

Eve chuckled nervously. “Yeah, we might enable each other in that regard…” She scratched the back of her head. 

“But we still call it ‘Twilighting’ and not ‘Fluttershying’.” Flutterfree raised an eyebrow and grinned. 

“Shut up,” Eve laughed. “Let me be the stable one, for once.”

“Only if I can be the smart one.”

“Oooh, getting a dumbness potion might be difficult…”

Flutterfree chuckled. 

“Hey! Pod people!” Jenny called back. “We found the boss room!”

Using the map Trixie had ‘found’, they had skipped the majority of the dead-end pathways in the dungeon and had made it to the bottom of the buried tower. Before them was a massive amethyst door covered in relief platinum eyeballs, easily large enough to let a full-grown dragon in. 

“You think the boss is a dragon?” Trixie asked.

“Nah,” Jenny said, cracking her knuckles. “That’d be too easy. So, how are we doing this?”

“Boss rush,” Vriska said, grinning evilly. “Poor sap won’t know what hit him.”

“Wait, that means…” Trixie’s eyes widened. “I’m not going through first!”

“Yes, you are,” Jenny said, grabbing onto Trixie’s collar. Discord made the door disappear, allowing Jenny to volley Trixie through the opening like an elongated blue baseball. She landed flat on her face, rolling head over hooves a few times before coming to an abrupt stop on the hard metal floor. 

The room was cylindrical and absolutely massive. In the center was a pillar of blue light with various technological components orbiting it, no doubt some kind of power conduit or generator. For being at the bottom of an abandoned dungeon, it seemed to be in pretty good shape. 

She knew there should be a boss in the room, but she didn’t see one. Did some other adventurers come through and clean this place out already?

“Hello…?” Trixie asked. “Anypony there?” 

A hole opened up in the ground before her, lifting a massive humanoid mech out of the ground. It looked a lot like a version of Optimus Prime, though there didn’t appear to be any truck features for transforming: just metal arms and legs for bashing. Not to mention guns, a sword, and feet that were three times taller than Trixie was. 

Trixie gulped. “H-hey there! Are you ready for a boss rush?”

Trixie was thrown aside like a fly on the wall, useless against the monstrous automaton. 

“I guess I’m next,” Jenny said. “What’re my rules for tapping out?”

“If you have to regenerate your head,” Rina reported, reading it off a list of Rules for Raiding Dungeons, draft. 

“Then I’m not letting that happen.” Jenny leaped into the arena, smirking. “Boss number one was a pushover!”

“Trixie wishes she could deny it,” the dazed unicorn muttered. 

“But I am the second boss, and you won’t get past me!” Jenny teleported onto the back of the mech the moment it pulled out its gun. She ran into one of the access ports, finding herself within its circuitry where it couldn’t hit her. “I’m in.” She lifted her fist, vibrating it so fast it would cut through metal. “I hope you like indigestion.”

She didn’t care that she was nowhere near the robot’s ‘stomach,’ she punched through walls and wires with gleeful, reckless abandon. Outside, everyone could see the boss start spastically flailing around as numerous motors within its body were triggered left and right. 

“Is she really going to beat it that quickly?” Rina asked. “That’ll be disappointing…”

“We never meet a boss that makes it all the way up to my level,” Discord said, shaking his head. “What a shame.”

“That one time you did have to fight…” Trixie began.

“We will never speak of that again.”

The mech managed to point a gun at its chest and fire, burning a hole all the way through it. Jenny popped out the other side, regenerating from near-complete disintegration. “DARNIT! AGH! I almost had him!”

“My turn,” Rina said, teleporting into the ring. She sent a dozen dark swords into the mech’s wound, not at all surprised to find that her petrification didn’t work. After all, it was artificial; the spell tended to work only on organic beings. 

So she did the next best thing. 

She cast a reflect spell on herself when the mech tried to shoot her. Another hole burned all the way through it, this time through a knee. Taking advantage of the weakness, Rina created a massive cleaver and severed the limb down the middle, bringing the mech closer to her level. 

With its free hand, it brought a sword down upon her. She teleported to the top of it, yawning. 

It shot her again.

“Idiot.”

Now that she knew how it would reflect, she directed it directly at the mech’s head. Its house-sized skull dropped to the ground with a thud strong enough to register as an earthquake. The rest of the mech dropped like a normal dead body, slumping to the side. 

It would have been a triumphal victory had the sound the body made when scraping the wall not been worse than claws on chalkboard. 

“Geez,” Discord said, cleaning out his ears with an oversized Q-Tip. “That was unnecessary to the extreme.”

“I win,” Rina said, dissipating her spells. “Take th-”

Something the size and shape of a human launched out of the mech’s body and drove a fist right into Rina’s head. She was knocked all the way to the pile where Trixie lay. “Ow…”

“You’re telling me…” Trixie muttered.

The mech’s “pilot” was just another machine, though its proportions were much more human. Every limb was a dark gray metal that twisted a bit like a double helix, affixed around spherical white pearls instead of relying on standard joints. The chest was replaced with one massive pearl that glowed with a soft white light, seemingly powering the motions of the rest of the machine. 

Vriska jumped out, pointing her sword at it. “Oh, I’ve got your number, little robot-man.”

“What number is it?” Discord asked.

“Not every joke has to b—” Vriska was barely able to block the robot’s attack in time, losing her sword in the process. Annoyed at this, she attempted to drain the robot’s luck.

The moment she tried this, the pearl in the center flashed orange, gaining the symbol of Light. 

“What i—” she felt it try to steal her luck as she dodged. Naturally, it was unable to, but her luck wouldn’t be of any help anymore either. “Copycat!” She pulled out her dice and threw them. It canceled her manipulation of the roll, making the octet settle on a simple fish-slap spell the robot shrugged off without a problem. 

“Shit,” Vriska jumped back and reached for her sword. 

To put it mildly, she was not used to making complicated acrobatic maneuvers without luck involved in some way. She managed to get her hand on the sword, but the robot was faster. It kicked her in the stomach, removing the sword from her grip once again and tossing her onto the pile with Trixie and Rina. 

“I’m not out!” Vriska shouted, jumping back to her feet. “I’m no—damnit.” She dropped her fists when she saw Flutterfree charging in. “You’re going to lose, Flutters!”

“I won’t,” Flutterfree declared, already surrounding herself with the clouds of Rage. The robot had no higher intelligence to be debilitated by the truth, so she had to resort to pure power. It reached out its hand to reduce her luck. She pointed her blades forward and grinned. Her luck may have been abysmal, but one of these was going to hit. 

And that was enough. She skewered the robot’s central pearl with her blade. Normally, this would be little more than a ‘flesh wound’ to the machine. However, her Rage did its magic, surging into the robot and tearing it apart limb from limb. There was a moment where it tried to adapt to the Rage rather than Light, but it couldn’t purge the Light from its body fast enough. It collapsed in a loose heap of pearls and metal connectors. 

“WOO-HOO!” Discord shouted. “GO FLUTTERFREE!”

Trixie facehooved. Her face was getting a little sore from doing that so often. 

“I win!” Flutterfree said, smiling. Taking a step, she tripped over her hooves and flopped onto the ground. “Ow…”

“You’ll recover quickly,” Vriska muttered, dusting herself off. “I’m sure Rev can break the ‘curse’ or something if it’s really annoying.”

“Good idea... Eve, can you maybe loot this for me? I don’t want a massive static shock.”

“Sure!” Eve teleported to the downed machine and popped open its central pearl. The inner circuitry was intricate, but all fried from Flutterfree’s Rage attack. There was only one thing that seemed independent of the rest of the system: a large red button.

“Huh.” Eve pushed the button. 

“EVE!” Discord shouted.

“What? One of us was going to press it eventually.”

“BUT… BUT… Okay, I would have done the same thing…”

“That’s not a good thing,” Jenny muttered. 

“…Did it even do anything?” Rina asked.

The column of energy in the center of the room started to turn red. 

“That’s bad,” Vriska said. 

“On it!” Discord said. He lifted the severed leg of the mech in his magic and threw it at the energy column. 

This reaction was decidedly explosive. 


~~~


Shimmy, once-goddess of Earth Shimmer, was… well, no longer a goddess. She was still absolutely full of magic energy, but not much more than the average Celestia. Proudly displaying her world’s three most common features—forehead gem, feathered neck, and ridiculously oversized fingernails—she still carried an air of regality about her, even if she didn’t have an entourage with her at the moment. 

She had her six closest friends with her—all spared the dusting—but they were still on the ship. None of them really had any reason to visit with the crew of the Austraeoh; Shimmy was the only one who had established much of a rapport with them. 

Currently, she was sitting in the Crow’s Nest with Corona, looking down at the world below. 

“You’ve done well for yourself,” Shimmy observed. 

“I think so,” Corona said, smiling contentedly. “Some would say I’m just drifting, lost, without a purpose. Or that I lost everything.”

“That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“You know as well as I do that it wasn’t the loss that I wanted.”

Shimmy nodded in understanding, tapping her fingers on the railing. “I did try to defend you for a while, there. Then you had to go off and start fighting…”

“What would you have done, if you didn’t have your world to protect?”

Shimmy let out a soft sigh. “Fair point. Though I would have fought against you.”

“I know. Wouldn’t have you do anything else.” 

“…How did you and Eve even end up in charge, I wonder? You didn’t exemplify the emotion of the war. You were often sad and tired, but nobody ever tried to remove you.”

“Not entirely true. But it was the Tower, probably.”

“Probably.” 

There was an awkward silence between the two Sunsets. 

“So, you already know my story,” Corona said, turning to Shimmy. “How’d you get here?” 

“From what I know, my Prophet cut a deal. I’m not entirely sure on the details, but I’ve talked to a few Pinkies about it. So my planet came out almost completely unharmed, with minimal dusting. It was still enough to cause worldwide panic… especially with the nature of magic changing again and everyone forgetting how to use it… but we were still there. Able to learn, able to grow, and able to build them back up. Considering some of the horror stories I’ve seen out here, we did amazingly well.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Shimmy forced a smile. “Yeah. Anyway, once it was stabilized, we realized… we weren’t needed anymore. Kind of like what all of you did. So we just… packed up into a ship and left on interplanetary exploration that we never got to do back in the day. Just the seven of us. Sailing into the night…” Her forced smile became genuine as she closed her eyes and remembered. “I can see why you loved it so much. The… freedom to just be. Go wherever you want, doing whatever. It’s…” She sagged, laughing sadly. “It’s a relief. It’s finally over. The world’s not going to explode because I sneeze wrong.”

Corona put a wing around her. “Thanks.”

Shimmy raised an eyebrow. “One good result does not excuse everything.”

“I know, I know.” Absent-mindedly, she looked North; to the City and the Tower. “…But maybe…” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Right or wrong in the end, I am where I am. I’ll keep doing everything I can, even when it crumbles to dust.”

“I once asked my Tree of Harmony who really called the arbitrary shots in existence,” Shimmy said. “I got a non-answer. I don’t think I realized until the war started that it was better that I not be told.” She looked Corona in the eyes. “Who wants to understand that they’re in a story? What will it drive them to do?”

Corona nodded slowly. “What indeed… what won’t a Sunset give her all for, once she’s made up her mind?”

Shimmy didn’t want to think too hard about that. 

“Thanks. Not for the story, but… for caring enough to stop by.” Corona placed a hand on Shimmy’s shoulder. “People may not be trying to kill me out of rage anymore, but there’s a lot of hate going around.”

“There’s a lot of hate for Eve too. …Though there is less.”

“Just… thanks. For dropping by to say hi and talk.”

“Anytime I’m in the neighborhood.” 

“Hopefully that’ll be more often, now. Where you headed?”

“We’re going to the City to see the Tower. I’m admittedly a little curious if it’ll let me inside, now that our journey across the cosmos is over.”

“It sure is fun up there.”

“So I’ve been t—”

There was a deep rumbling from the ground below. Corona raised an eyebrow. “What in th—”

A massive laser shot out of the ground, hitting the Austraeoh dead on and vaporizing it instantly. 

“AGAIN!?” Pinkie shouted at the top of her lungs the instant Nanoha’s teleport rematerialized them on the surface. “Where did that even come from? Why is my ship gone? WHY WHY WHY!?” She took a hat out of her mane and threw it on the ground, stomping it repeatedly. 

Shimmy blinked. “Does this happen… often?”

“Often enough that Nanoha has the evacuate-everyone spell on speed-dial,” Corona said, pointing at the dwindling magical light around the once White Devil. 

Monika appeared after everyone else, scribbling a note in a book. “…and in this entry I will convey to you all how our ship is doomed to explode. For seemingly no reason, a laser shot out of the ground and impacted us…”

Pidge groaned. “You really are going to record every little embarrassing event in that history record of yours, aren’t you?”

“Why did you think I started writing it?” Monika peered over her notebook. “All of the nonsense I have to deal with on this trip is going right in these pages and there’s nothing any of you can do about it.”

“Stick it to them, Monika!” Mattie called.

Monika wrote another sentence. “…pregnant unicorn wants to pick fights with a bunch of superhuman heroes…”

“….That’s not fair.”

“Deal with it, greasy-flanks,” Monika snipped, slamming her book shut. 

“Oh, I will.” Mattie grinned mischievously. 

Monika blinked. “Er…”

“AHEM!” Pinkie called. “First of all, what blew up our ship?”

Discord appeared in a flash with the group, dropping Eve at Pinkie’s hooves. 

“Sorry Captain…” Eve said, shakily standing up. “I pushed the big red button.”

Pinkie facehooved. “Gah…”

“We did beat the dungeon, though!” Jenny called.

Pinkie tapped her hoof. “Well, now that we’ve solved that mystery, let’s rebuild the Austraeoh!”

“I can conscript my friends to help,” Shimmy added. “We’ll get you something great!”

“I can just recreate it,” Monika pointed out. “Snap-bam-done.”

“That’s boring,” Pinkie said dismissively. “We will remake the Austraeoh anew every time! Let’s make it out of cheese! Or, oooh, sapphire!”

Mlinx raised a hand. “How about a living ship, this time? Made of magic wood that keeps growing?”

“If you want to garden,” Pidge huffed. 

“This is gonna be fun,” Pinkie giggled, all signs of lament at the destruction of her ship gone. However, her eagerness to begin reconstruction was halted when she turned her head to the sky. 

Two sky islands floated above them—those definitely hadn’t been there before. 

There was an itch at the back of her mind. 

Something bigger’s going on here…


II – A Tale of Two Cities


“Elder, that’s… that’s not the end of the story!” Pringle whined. 

The Elder chuckled. “It’s the end of what you haven’t heard before.”

“Dungeon crawls are boring,” Joanne deadpanned, clicking away at her phone. 

Pringle gasped. “But… but why did the dungeon exist? What about the things in the sky? What about the love story!?”

“If you should know one thing about those who came before us, it’s that romance was never the point,” Jang commented. “Read Starbeat’s autobiography at some point to see how deep it really runs.”

“Jang!” Pringle let out a tense gasp. “You can’t just diss romance like that! It happens and it matters! Humph!”

“I’m pretty sure the Tower was fought to free Romance from its definitions,” Onion said. 

“You all are ruining the story!”

“Didn’t Elder say we knew the rest?” Onion said, glancing at the Elder. “We do know the answers to all Pringle’s questions already. Why reiterate what we live through daily?”

The Elder smirked. “Because it’s fun to tell, little one.”

“Onion. Little.” Joanne snorted. “That’s a laugh.”

“More of a snort,” Pringle corrected.

Joanne’s fingers started flying across her phone faster. The Elder had recently learned this was her equivalent of a death glare. So bizarre… then again, given her lineage, that wasn’t all that surprising. 

“Tell us! Tell us!” Pringle squeed, clapping her hooves. “Tell us about Discord, about Flutterfree, about the two Cities of Old, and about the mech field! Tell us!” 

“All right, all right, sit down and enjoy my show.” The Elder stretched her arms and looked to the sky, watching the planets above shift and turn in their myriad of unusual patterns. “See, Pinkie was a good captain. When she sensed there were multiple things that needed doing, she made sure all of them got done…”


~~~


“Right! Lots of stuff going on, but we’ve got a lot of people to do it!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together. “Shimmy, you and your people are on rebuilding the ship. I’ll be around to help, as will whoever else sits around.”

Shimmy shrugged. “Sure.”

“MY SCIENCE GIRLS!” Pinkie declared, pulling Roxy, Corona, Jenny, and Pidge together with a cartoonish elongating cane. “You four are going to investigate these weird mecha and find out what exactly that thing was at the bottom of the dungeon.”

“Yes, boss mare!” Roxy said, saluting. “We’ll get to the ‘bottom’ of it!” 

Corona snickered. 

“Now, the floating rocks!” Pinkie pointed into the air at the islands. “I’m sending one team to each. Let’s see… O’Neill, Nanoha? You can be in charge of Starbeat, Jotaro, and Lightning today. I don’t wanna hear any griping about there needing to be a clear ‘chain of command,’ those two cuties have got the leader thing down.”

Nanoha and O’Neill linked arms and did a semi-mocking bow. 

“Other team, you’ll be headed by Mlinx. Vriska, Roland, Zod, Burgerbelle, you’re with him.”

Mlinx twirled his spear. “We shall do our best.”

“Always so formal,” Vriska groaned. “You’re a demon! Be more… fun.”

Pinkie let them talk amongst themselves. “As for the rest of you, you’ll be staying here. Helping with the ship, relaxing, and dealing with…” She stopped on Discord and Trixie. “…Personal issues.” 

Trixie made a neck cutting motion with her hoof. 

Pinkie ignored her. “And I just remembered! I have a very special mission for the Everykid!”

The Everykid pointed at herself in mock confusion.

“That’s right, we need lunch! Get to sandwich makin’!”

Monika sighed. “We all know I’m making it…”

Pinkie waved a dismissive hoof. “You’re making the ingredients. The hat chef is the true master!”

The Everykid exchanged her top hat for a chef’s hat and snapped her fingers, demanding ingredients for pristine sandwiches be brought stat.

With a grunt, Monika created some lettuce. “Pinkie… I would much rather be up there, exploring.”

“You’ll probably be needed at some point, just not now,” Pinkie said. “You’re the strongest person we have, if this blows out of proportion we need you on defense.”

Monika grumbled, creating several loaves of bread. 

“That might be a bit too much…”

“I am going to make a bread sandcastle if I’m stuck here, and you can’t stop me. I will record its history alongside our own. There will be many great battles and loves and... other interesting things!”

“Sounds fun!”

Monika facepalmed. 


~~~


The sky islands were cities. From a distance, they looked like they were one and the same, and that’s what the two teams thought on approach at first. 

Upon getting closer, however, they realized they were not only different from each other, but they were exact opposites, visually. In the center of each, there was a square pyramid of smooth stone. On one it was black—the other a pearly pristine white. The buildings around the temples would have been indicative of Merodi construction were they not both black and white, almost like a zebra. The skyscrapers of the two cities didn’t match shape exactly, but it appeared significant effort had been put to have locations in one city be white while the counterpart in the other city would be black. 

The other difference was much stranger. The black pyramid’s city had a dominant red color in its city’s artificial lighting, while the white’s focused on greens and blues. 

“I’ve seen this somewhere before…” O’Neill mused.

Mlinx shrugged. “It’ll become apparent in time, I am certain.” 

They had just teleported to the bridge connecting the two cities together, both teams sitting on a long, gray stone structure without a single person on it. There was no traffic between the cities to speak of. 

“Eerie,” Starbeat observed. “Something’s going to go very, very wrong here.”

“Or right,” Lightning added. 

Nanoha cleared her throat. “Well… who goes to which city?”

“We will take the dark pyramid, you the light,” Mlinx decided. “Good luck.”

Everyone nodded to each other and set off—walking leisurely rather than teleporting or flying off. Mlinx led Vriska, Roland, Thrackerzod, and Burgerbelle to their darker, redder city. When they reached the main gate at the end of the bridge, they were able to see the city’s insignia: a dark moon with the image of the sun superimposed over it. 

Mlinx tapped on it with his spear. “Greetings.”

A panel beneath the insignia slid open, revealing a screen with a simple white eye displayed on it. It blinked. “What do you want?” it intoned in a bored tone.

“We are travelers,” Mlinx explained. “We wish to know what your city is and how it has come to be in the sky in this New World.”

“Ah. Travelers. Not from the Light Side, good. There is no travel ban on non-residents.” With a click, the gates slid open with a slick sci-fi noise. 

“Wait, hold up,” Vriska raised a hand. “Will we be able to leave?”

“I am not here to stop people from leaving, I am here to stop the Light Side from entering.” It blinked again, seemingly randomly. 

“What are they the Light Side of?” Mlinx asked.

“They are the Light Side of the Moon. We are the Dark Side of the Moon. Ever unwillingly connected by this bridge.” It beeped. “I am not an information module. You may find more within our streets.”

The panel slid shut once more, though the gates remained open. 

Vriska shrugged. “Well, I g—” Before she could get off her usual snide comment, Roland walked past her and into the city. “Wh—hey! I was… uuugh, he’s ruining my dramatic timi—”

Burgerbelle let an alarm clock off in Vriska’s ear. 

“Gee, thanks,” Vriska muttered, rubbing the side of her head. “Jegus, that’s loud.”

“I can make it louder.”

Vriska glared at her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“No, but I would delay you so you’re the last one through the doors!” Burgerbelle hopped into the city, shooting the delayed Vriska some finger-guns. 

Vriska stole a little of her luck, making the eternal child trip. 

“Cut it out,” Thrackerzod muttered. “This is no time for games. I’m sensing something… off.”

“How so?” Mlinx asked. As they entered the city, he admittedly didn’t find anything too unusual or wrong about it. Besides the odd color scheme and primarily-red lighting, the people looked like normal people of the multiverse—a cobbled mixture of humans, ponies, and other races. A distinct lack of Gems, which probably meant this wasn’t a Merodi-originated city, though it was still possible. 

Despite being called the ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, the city itself was very bright. Even though the lamps were crimson, the natural lighting from above let the colors of the ponies and the clothes of the humans shine for what they were—diverse. 

“…It’s like…” Thrackerzod couldn’t put it into words. “It’s not eldritch, but that’s the closest descriptor I have. It reminds me of the slight influence in the back of your mind that can draw you to one of the Old Ones.” 

“A corruption?”

“I am uncertain.” Thrackerzod frowned. 

“...What’s red and white and black all over?” Burgerbelle asked.

“We are not walking through a newspaper right now,” Thrackerzod grunted. “Nor is that pertinent.”

“That is,” Roland said, pointing at a man walking down the street in white robes… holding in his hand an active, bright red lightsaber. 

Anyone who’s been around the larger multiverse long enough eventually finds Star Wars or one of the myriad of variants thereof, and one of the most absolute rules is thus: the red lightsabers are evil and extremely dangerous. 

So when the ‘Sith’ warrior walked up to them and took off her hood, they were shocked to see a warm smile waiting for them. “Ah, visitors from beyond! Welcome to the Dark Side of the Moon.” Only after her greeting wasn’t returned with warmth did she seem to think to turn her lightsaber off. “Oh, you’ll have to excuse us, it’s been so long since our blades been associated with corruption, few people respond negatively anymore.”

Vriska raised an eyebrow. “Why not just use another color?”

“It’s what we can make,” the woman said with a shrug.

“So you are fucking with the… uh… what do they call it?”

“The Dark Side of the Force,” Burgerbelle said, in a Darth Vader mask. 

“Yes, that,” Vriska pointed. 

“Oh, absolutely,” the woman used the Force to hook her lightsaber hilt on her belt. “The Dark Side’s bent toward personal power, and the control of destiny lends itself best to our creed.”

“…Which is…?” Thrackerzod asked. 

“Well… perhaps it would be best if I showed you. Come, there’s a statue I’d like you to see.”

Mlinx nodded, giving his approval for everyone to follow her. They passed through a few densely packed streets. Now that they were looking for it, they saw dozens of lightsabers in the use of the general population, though only a few had the religious-looking robes. Every last one they saw active had been red—no evidence of any other colors. 

Vriska and Zod had enough of a psychic component to their abilities to sense the use of the Force now that they knew what to look for—objects were regularly levitated, people jumped higher than they were supposed to, and one guy even used Force lightning to light a furnace. 

Those who had encountered the Dark Side before were absolutely baffled to see a stable society existing from what they had previously experienced only as power-hungry murderous maniacs. 

“Maybe ka really is lifting curses,” Thrackerzod muttered.

“It is, and we are so thankful for it,” the woman said. “Because she is the one who gave us this gift.” Holding out her hand, she drew their attention to a statue made of solid gold. 

A statue of Corona. 

“…Shit,” Vriska muttered. 

The statue was lifelike, if five times the size of Corona. She stood on both her feet with wings spread wide and face held high. A calm, welcoming smile dominated her facial features, and one of her hands was outstretched as if to embrace. The other was lifted high in a fist of power, ready to dish out judgment if required. 

At the base of the statue, many things were happening. Some kids were playing, others were dancing, and a few street musicians were letting their songs mingle in the air. Only a few people were actively kneeling and praying to the altar, but even one would have been enough to set Corona off were she here. 

“You knew her, didn’t you?” the woman asked. 

“You could say that…” Vriska said, weighing her options. 

“You’re… you’re her! Vriska, aren’t you?” 

Why do I have a feeling like that’s a bad thing to recognize? “Yep. That’s me. Vriska Serket, Thief of Light.” She put on a cocky smile. 

“And your friends! Oh, they must be…” the woman turned to Mlinx and put two and two together. Her smile vanished in an instant. “Oh…”

“…I am Mlinx, but I believe you figured that out.” He extended one of his hands. “You haven’t told us your name.”

“I… excuse me, I have to…” Without bothering to come up with an explanation, she Force-jumped onto a railing and ran away. 

Thrackerzod moved to pursue, but Mlinx held out a hand. “We do not need a scene.”

“We’re going to get one anyway,” Roland mused. “She’s reporting to someone.”

“Yes. She is,” a feminine voice said, one distinct from the last. She wore robes like the other woman, but she was decidedly inhuman: with orange skin and two points under her hood that might have been horns. “It is best if you leave. Even you, Vriska. Not even those who support the collapse are safe from Troi’s… eccentricity. The Dark Side may be tamed, but people are not.”

“And who are you?” Mlinx asked.

“A concerned citizen.” She backed away from them. “I would hurry. She moves quickly.”

“Hey!” Thrackerzod called. “We’ve got questions f—wait, no, she’s not even there, that’s just a spirit projection.”

The ‘concerned citizen’ smiled before dissipating into nothing. 

“…Well…” Mlinx scratched his chin. “I suppose the question now becomes if we listen to her or not.”

“We all know we’re not leavin’,” Roland muttered, turning to stare at the pyramid in the center of the city. “Best to skip the argument and get to solving the mystery.” 

“But the argument’s half the fun!” Burgerbelle whined. 

“This way we get to the action faster,” Vriska said.

“Oh.” Burgerbelle shrugged. “All right the—”

“YOU!” 

“And that would be trouble,” Mlinx groaned, turning to face the source of the shout. It was an elf—or a man that looked a lot like an elf—walking toward them, robes trailing behind him in a supernatural wind. In each hand he held a lightsaber, out and ready to attack. “My good sir, what can we do for you?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, mister mayor!” the elf shouted. “You are Mlinx… the once-great leader of the City and well known Preservationist!”

“The war is long behind us, and I am not here in any official capacity.” Mlinx folded his hands together. “I was merely exploring and found your city.”

“Bullshit,” he took a few steps forward. “You and your little entourage are here to sow seeds of preservation dogma in attempts to ruin what we’ve fought for!”

“My good man, I—”

“Shut up, let me talk,” Vriska shoved Minx to the side. “Yo. Darth Earlobe. Pretty sure you know who I am.”

The newly-dubbed Darth Earlobe stopped in his tracks. “You can’t be—”

“Yes. I am. Vriska Serket, primary team, served under Pinkie before the War and Corona directly after. I fought for this New World and this chance. And you know what? I like what we’re going toward, so you can rest your deluded brain. We’re not here to sow any ideas, the war’s fucking over. Live in peace, kapeesh?”

“They do not let us…” Darth Earlobe hissed. 

“Would she care if they did or not!?” Vriska gestured at the statue. “She went out of her way to limit as much death as she could. She was willing to throw herself and more just to keep that little glimmer of hope most of us ignore so much! So get your ostrich head out of the ground and wisen up a bit, asshole.”

“You must have been brainwashed.”

“Wow. Idiot, too. I still supported the collapse, did all th—”

“I WILL FREE YOU FROM THEIR CLUTCHES!”

“Oh for the…” Vriska readied her dice, analyzing his luck. 

She never got the chance. Roland shot him through the leg the same time three cloaked figures stepped out of the crowd and stopped Darth Earlobe with a Force grab from multiple directions. 

Roland lowered his smoking gun. “I am sorry, I was unaware you would help.” 

“It’s… fine, you aimed for the leg.” One of the cloaked figures said. “You have your right to self-defense, as all of us do.”

“I’ll help him,” Thrackerzod said, readying a regeneration spell.

“T-that’ll be fine, we’ll handle it.”

“It’ll be faster and less pai—”

“They hate you just like he does,” Roland observed, sitting down on a nearby crate to check his weapon. “They just hate you less than they respect their law.”

Thrackerzod narrowed her eyes. “Even now, after all these years, you harbor such resentment towards those who attempted to stop you?”

“It’s… what you represent,” the cloaked one said, clearly conflicted about the whole encounter. “It…”

“Is something we are trying to move past,” a new, familiar voice said. “I think you, of all ponies, would understand moving past a difficulty, Thrackerzod.”

Standing behind them was a Princess Luna. This version was as tall as Nightmare Moon, but had no sign of the evil eyes or dark magic. Rather, her mane billowed with miniature suns, and her face exuded a brilliant, caring warmth coupled with a powerful sense of authority. 

Thrackerzod nodded slowly. “…Perhaps.”

“I take it you are in charge?” Mlinx asked.

The Luna nodded. “I am Centroid, but you may call me Troi. Please, come with me to the palace-temple. All of you are welcome, not just previous allies. I will not let this city become the regimented hovel of hatred the Light Side has become.” Troi saw their expressions. “And yes, I am fully aware of how hypocritical that sounds. As I said, change is hard, and they make it… more so. I will explain all I can over dinner. Come, sit, and be among friends.” 

“You a Sith too?” Vriska asked.

Thrackerzod facehooved.

Troi smiled, nodding slowly. “Though our ideology has changed enough that few use that word anymore. With the Tower weakening we are freer to explore ourselves than ever before, and the Dark Side gives us the strength to forge new paths. All thanks to the temple. And no, the temple won’t brainwash you, unlike what the Light Side will have you believe.” She gestured for them to follow with a wing. “Come, I can’t wait to hear of your travels across Nucleon.”


~~~


“…Welcome to the Light Side of the Moon!” a happy unicorn in a very prim and proper soldier’s uniform said. “Lemme just open the gate for ya real quick…” She moved a few levers with a psychic ability, notably not using her horn at all. The complex locks on the pearly gate clicked repeatedly, separating the complex puzzle of interlocking pieces that made up the city’s emblem: a small sun overtop a moon. The gates slid apart in several chunks before they were allowed in.

“You have no idea how glad I am to have some visitors from beyond, I mean, really. Turning away every single Dark Sider is just booooring. And then some of them try to shoot me and it gets problematic.” She giggled to herself. “Anyway, enjoy our city! Do be sure to keep your IDs on you at all times.”

“Question,” O’Neill said, examining his plastic card suspiciously. “We are allowed to leave at any time, right?”

“Return your cards to the reception desk on the inside and you can leave, yes. We’re not some kind of trap, geez. I suggest making your way to the restaurant center, most interesting place aside from the temple itself. The sky shrimp at Vera’s is the best.” 

“Thank you,” Nanoha said with a smile.

O’Neill took point, hands in his pockets. “Well…” He examined the green and blue lights on the walls and put two and two together at last. “Star Wars?”

Nanoha nodded. “Oh, yes; or at least derived from it.”

“I hope there’s a Wookie running around.”

“No, you don’t, you wouldn’t be able to let the Wookie win.”

“I want to try.” 

Nanoha smirked. “You sure you can handle that level of hubris?”

“All-right, lovebirds,” Starbeat coughed. “We’ve got to figure out what this place is like.”

“It’s the Light Side, Jedi,” Jotaro offered. “Heroes.”

“Eeeeh something tells me it’s not all sunshine and rainbows up here.” Starbeat began to look around at the city itself. Physically, the only real difference from the Dark Side was the green and blue lighting everywhere, and even this was mostly drowned out by the natural light of Nucleon. 

The people, however, were quite different, though the team had no way of knowing that. 

Everyone wore clothing depicting their station: soldiers wore army uniforms, merchants wore color-coded suits based on their wares, children wore simple white clothing, engineers wore bright blue working suits, and those akin to Jedi wore vaguely religious dark robes. They seemed to be taking the role of a peacekeeping force. 

No one seemed unhappy, but no one seemed to be having fun either. Every interaction was made for some purpose—an exchange of valuables, a keeping of the peace, or the learning of a lesson. Even the children weren’t being rowdy. 

Nanoha frowned. “We’re not going to be able to blend in very well, here.”

“No, you are not,” a woman in a dark robe said, walking up to them. She had orange skin and two points in her hood that were indicative of horns. “For your own sake, you should leave. Tessa’s ideals are… intense, and there is no room for those who aren’t willing to follow her crusade. The Light Side may be twisted by the people who use it.”

“Who’re you?” Lightning asked.

“A concerned citizen.”

“A Force projection,” O’Neill answered, gesturing at the woman as she vanished into nothing. “We’re operating on Star Wars rules, baby!”

“You must be excited,” Jotaro deadpanned.

O’Neill clapped his hands together. “I am!”

“…The Senate?” Nanoha finished, stifling a giggle. 

“Nanoha, Nanoha, Nanoha… I am the king of references, but not every sentence I make is a reference.”

“Pretty sure Burgerbelle has you beat,” Starbeat said. 

“Are we just going to ignore her warning?” Lightning asked, tapping her foot impatiently. 

“We’re not leaving,” O’Neill said. “That’s either a scare tactic or telling of something we should be investigating posthaste!” He pointed a finger forward. “Let’s see if we can get to the sky shrimp before everything goes horribly wrong!”

They walked through the city. At first, the citizens paid them no mind whatsoever—just visitors not part of the natural rhythm of their lives. However, time passed, and word must have spread, for people started shooting them aside glances and whispering. 

“They’re looking at you, Jotaro,” Nanoha whispered. “Someone must have recognized you.”

“Yare yare daze…”

“Ah, an unincorporated Preservationist city,” Starbeat frowned. “The other’s probably for the collapse. This could be… ugly.”

O’Neill stopped in his tracks. “…Uh-oh.”

Before them was a massive circular plaza filled with people bowing and muttering, directing their prayers to a massive golden statue of Evening. Three of her hooves were planted on the ground while a fourth was outstretched, beckoning everyone who saw it into something greater. Her wings, however, were poised like they were ready for war, and ice shards were coming off her horn. Unusually, her face was sad but also determined. 

Starbeat blinked. “Okay. Religious fanatics devoted to the preservation in a society with bizarrely rigid rules coupled with a mysterious warning. I’m going out on a limb here and guessing the other city is also filled with religious fanatics, possibly keyed by the Dark Side of the Force, except for the collapse. They probably want to kill each other more than anything in the world.”

Nanoha frowned. “We need to end the rivalry, or at least start the ball rolling on reconciliation. The war is long over, we don’t need two cities starting it up again.”

“How are we going to do that?” Lightning asked. “We don’t know anything about the situation yet.”

“Researching,” Jotaro said. “Finding the leaders.”

“Ahem,” a woman in dark robes said, unleashing a green lightsaber. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave rather than continue your ‘research’.” 

“What did we do?” Lightning asked. 

“Not you, him.” She pointed her laser blade at Jotaro. “He can’t be here. His past is known and it’s causing civil unrest.”

“Yare yare daze…” Jotaro strode up to her. 

The woman held out a hand, locking his feet to the ground with the Force. “I do not want to engage you in combat, but if you do not comply I will be required to remove you by force.”

“Not a very nice Jedi, are you?” O’Neill commented. 

“The Light Side has changed, twisted by the collapse. We were forced to adapt with it to fill a new niche.” She narrowed her eyes. “Jotaro Kujo, leave or I will forcefully eject you.”

“That won’t be necessary.” A Celestia dropped from the sky, landing with a metallic clank on the ground. “I will handle this personally.” She was far from a standard Celestia, for her glorious pastel mane was regulated to a simple ponytail that barely rippled and had black streaks in it. The rest of her body was heavily augmented with white metallic implants, including a large one over her right eye that dominated that side of her face. Her lips did not smile, and her eyes did not waver—in her world, there was no room for nonsense, only action. This alicorn was not a friend to her subjects; only a ruler. 

“I am Nanoha Takamachi of the Austraeoh,” Nanoha introduced herself, bowing. 

“I am Tesseract, Chancellor of the Light Side of the Moon and guardian of the palace-temple. I am very surprised to see you all traveling together, but it would be foolish to drive you away without asking for an explanation.” Sensing their uncertainty, she shook her head. “You are not facing legal charges. The worst that happens is I will ask you to leave after our meeting to never return. I highly doubt that will happen, however, seeing as we have so much to discuss.” 

“Are you prepared for us?” Nanoha asked.

“We have a lot of uncomfortable questions,” O’Neill smirked. 

“I would not be fit to rule if I could not answer the most uncomfortable queries. Ask all that you wish.”


~~~


Roxy popped a battery three times her body size out of a mech, allowing it to drop to the grass below. 

“MY FOOT!” Jenny screamed, bouncing away from the impact.

“You’ll be fine.”

“It still hurts!”

“You’ve been disintegrated without even blinking,” Pidge pointed out, wiring some circuitry in a massive mech gun. “It’s like you only feel pain when it’s convenient to complain.”

“I always feel the pain.” Jenny crossed her arms. “Always!”

“True,” Corona said. “But you have enough of a tolerance for it at this point you could probably shrug off getting your intestines removed.” She used her magic to tear a mech’s arm off the body, examining the interior for anything interesting. 

Jenny grumbled, starting to disassemble the battery Roxy had dropped to her. 

“And that’s a point for Corona,” Roxy chuckled, floating away from her mech; there wasn’t anything interesting left inside. She descended to the ground, noticing that the left foot was embedded much further in the ground than the other one. She took a moment to appreciate the engineering that made the legs bend in such a way to keep the torso level despite uneven footing, but quickly used her Void powers to phase through the ground and see why exactly the foot was so low. She found a secret room filled with treasure chests—and a broken down machine-made of pearly orbs and black metal, almost exactly like the one fought at the bottom of the dungeon. 

She approached it, laying her hand on the largest, central pearl. It reacted instantly: taking on a dark blue color and gaining the Void symbol. The robot tried to move after this, but it collapsed from years of wear and tear. 

“Interesting…” Roxy mused, lifting the robot up. She separated it into its component parts and stuffed it all into her inventory. Having taken care of that, she turned to a chest and opened it. 

It lunged at her and bit off her arm. 

“Fu—“

She poofed, clattering to the ground as a simple Carnelian gemstone. The mimic looked around in confusion; where had its target gone?

Corona, having sensed Roxy’s magic drop to near-nothing, punched into the secret room and incinerated the mimic with her magic. 

This act woke up all the other mimics. Every last chest in the room revealed ravenous, pointed teeth. 

“…Who makes a secret treasure room with nothing but mimics?” Corona groaned, unleashing repeated fireballs on the wooden treasure-monsters. 

Despite being severely outclassed, Corona had to give the mimics credit; they didn’t give up until they were all ash. 

Reaching down, Corona picked up Roxy’s gemstone and pocketed it. When she was in a safer place, she’d rejuvenate the Gem. Right now Corona didn’t want a mimic army to charge in the midst of a healing ritual. Gems were hard enough to coax out of their gemstones as it was. 


~~~


“Remember what we practiced,” Trixie said, pushing Discord along the grassy hills. The under-construction frame of the Austraeoh dominated the landscape, even though the more-distant mecha were larger. 

“Be yourself?”

“Well, duh, that’s lesson one. Lesson two is pushing outside your comfort zone and taking the prize by the neck!”

Discord raised an eyebrow. “Very predatory language.”

“This is Trixie we’re talking about, expect overdramatic metaphors. Now, this is a tea party, so unfortunately we can’t create a disco ball out of nowhere and make it explode into a cake or something.”

“I don’t think you actually know Flutterfree that well. She’s rather delighted by my chaos! The ginseng shall SING!”

“Yes, whatever, just remember that you do have to push yourself a bit. You may be the Lord of Chaos but under that fur and scales you’re a huge self-conscious softy!”

Discord gasped in mock offense. “I resemble that remark!”

“Blah blah, just get in there. Don’t worry, I’ll be watching, ready to bail you out with a smoke bomb if everything goes south.”

“That’ll just make it worse.” Discord smirked. “Great idea!”

“Does Trixie know you or does Trixie know you?” Trixie boasted.

“Yes.”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Just get over there, I’ll be in the bush.” With a salute, Trixie jumped into the nearby bush. 

With a nervous shrug, Discord walked to the little table Flutterfree had set up for the tea party. She was already sitting there, eyes closed, humming to herself a familiar tune. They could hear most of the others working on the Austraeoh in the distance, but nobody was actually close by to interrupt them. 

“I have arrived!” Discord shouted, teleporting onto the chair with a superhero cape. “This deplorably quiet locale needs some… jazzing up.” He snapped his fingers, creating a handful of saxophone creatures to add some jazzy background. 

Flutterfree giggled. “I miss the days we could do this in your realm. The magic in there was so unpredictable even you couldn’t manage it sometimes. Who knew what would happen?”

“I…” Discord tugged on a snazzy suit collar that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Well, I suppose I could try to create a randomizer.”

“Oh, no, no, don’t change it, I didn’t mean it like that.” She folded her wings back, smiling nervously. “I was just remembering how things used to be oh… so long ago.” She pressed the marble tips of her wings together. “…Why did we stop having these tea parties, Discord?”

Discord shrugged. “We just stopped over time. Nothing that strange. Everyone got busy, you were off saving worlds and I had to throw some chaos into the mix somewhere. Things got too big, we didn’t overlap. But now we’re here, doing it again!”

Flutterfree pursed her lips. “Yes… we are. And I have really been enjoying it. Reminds me of home and simpler times.” Her face softened into a smile. “We’ve had some really good times, both then and now, haven’t we?”

Discord felt his heart rise and tense at the same time—he might not even have to do anything. It was going perfectly, the conversation was naturally flowing the direction he wanted, all he had to do was… make a move. 

And there was the rub. He had to move. He had to do something. But he froze. 

“…Discord? What’s with the ice?”

“S-sorry,” he stammered, snapping the ice away. “I froze up a bit, you see. I was… well…” He leaned forward, tapping a claw on the table. “See, I remember those times too. The chaos, the order, the Crusaders—oh those silly Crusaders!”

“They got in so much trouble!”

Discord grinned. “You always said I went a little overkill with that. I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t. Mechs weren’t big enough for their talents!”

“And the time machine wasn’t either?”

“I…” Discord blinked. “Wait, was that a Merodi City I saw, or..?”

“I don’t know, you never let us see the future outside.”

“I don’t even remember anymore,” Discord laughed. “Oh, the Gala.”

Flutterfree’s face twitched slightly. “The one where you invited the Smooze, right?”

“Well, there were a lot of Galas, but that one… yes, that one was one of the most interesting. I believe Celestia called it ‘entertaining,’ all thanks to me.” 

“…You were really angry that night.” Flutterfree looked down, her ears twitching. 

“What? Psh, psh, water under the bridge!” To illustrate his point he created a bridge and threw a fish under it. “It’s an amusing story, now.”

“Still… I was ignoring you. I shouldn’t do that. I shouldn’t just pretend like… it’s all fine.”

Discord blinked, unsure how to parse that. What did she mean? Every word in that jumble had at least three different interpretations and in conjunction they… 

He glanced back at the bush, finding no help there. He would just have to talk on his own. Honestly, he had no idea why Trixie was even here, all she needed to do was push him here. 

“Flutterfree…”

Discord noticed she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the bush. 

“Oh dear.”

Flutterfree raised an eyebrow. “Trixie, are you hiding in that bush?”

“…No!” Trixie insisted. 

Flutterfree facehooved. “Of course…”

“Uh…” Trixie poked her head out of the bush. “I can… go, an—”

“No, stay.” Flutterfree forced a sad smile and activated Lolo, revealing a previously-invisible Eve standing right next to Flutterfree. She stopped whispering things in her ear and grinned awkwardly. 

“Uh… hi.”

“Hey! Trixie was supposed to be the wingmare today!” Trixie called. 

Eve coughed. “To be fair, I had no idea you were in the bush until Flutters found you.”

“Wait, hold on, back up,” Discord lifted his paw. “Did we both get pushed here by our close friends to talk?”

Eve and Trixie nodded. 

Discord blinked. “Well…”

“I’m sorry,” Flutterfree said, shaking her head. “I… I was trying to ignore everything and pretend everything was fine. It took Eve to shake me out of it and realize what I was playing with.”

“Same!” Discord grinned. “Trixie had to push me out of the dungeon with explosives to get here!”

“I… did notice.”

“Oh, this is great news, we’re both here for the same reason!” With a delighted laugh, he pulled Flutterfree into a tight hug. “Oh, I was so worried…”

That’s when he felt her tears on his shoulder. 

He lifted her up, holding her a short way from his face. “…What?”

“I-I-I’m so sorry Discord, I’m… I’m not here to return your feelings. I… I…” She swallowed, looking him right in the eye. “I was trying to let you down easy.”

Discord froze again. The ice touched Flutterfree, but she didn’t flinch—she reached out with a wing and stroked his face. “I’m sorry… I can’t.”

“It’s because of Eve, isn’t it?” Discord said, sagging back into his chair and setting her down on the table. “She…”

Flutterfree shook her head. “She has nothing to do with it. I… You know what I believe. What I follow. What the rules are.”

“Rules? Th—” Discord paused, remembering the myriad conversations he’d had with Flutterfree in the past. Little nuggets of information he had discarded coming back to rear in full force. 

“Discord, you’d have to take them on too. If we were to go anywhere, that’d have to come first.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Discord forced a smile. “Cart me over to Rev, I’m sure I ca—”

“Discord…” Flutterfree’s ears drooped. “I know that’s what drove you away in the first place. I know my faith not only makes you uncomfortable, it upsets you.”

“S-so? You’re always going on about how it’s difficult!”

“Yes. It is. That’s… that’s why this is so, so hard. I… I do love you, Discord, and there’s a very large part of me that screams to just take you in my hooves and never let you go. But… I would be manipulating you. It… it would be wrong of me to do that. It’s not right to force my beliefs onto you just so you can be with me. No matter how much you want it, no matter how much I want it… it’s still wrong.” 

“Wrong? Wrong?” Discord’s face twisted into anger. “Forgive me if I’m remembering wrong, but people convert for this all the time, right? Or am I just an…” Discord sagged, unable to keep the anger up. “…idiot?”

“Discord, no, you’re not an idiot…” Flutterfree tilted his chin up with a wingtip. “You’re an amazing person filled with life, energy, delightful unpredictability, and… so much more. I wouldn’t change it for the world. None of the tea parties, none of the adventures… nothing. You’re an amazing person to know, Discord. I just can’t bring myself to manipulate you like that. It wouldn’t be coming to Him for His sake, or even for yours…”

Discord looked at her with sad eyes. “Can’t we… try anyway? We…”

“…We don’t deserve each other.” Flutterfree took a moment to breathe. “There are many things more important than love. I’m sorry.”

Discord’s face began to tremble. No, no, not now… He snapped his fingers and teleported away. 

Flutterfree held out a hoof to where he had just been—and started bawling. Eve rushed to comfort her, but Flutterfree held out a hoof. “I… I should suffer as he is. It is only fair.”

Eve grimaced. “Flutterfree that’s no—”

She flew away. Eve honored her request and didn’t follow. 

Trixie stared after her, expression blank. “…I…”

“Trixie, you didn’t mess up. You did fine.” Eve sighed. “They’d been flying past each other for a long time already. I think they both thought they could just put it behind them.”

“They had.”

“We’re immortal, Trixie. Nothing is ever behind us forever.”


~~~


The Temple-Palace of the Dark Side was black inside and out, which wasn’t all that surprising. What was surprising was how colorful it was inside. Since the natural light couldn’t get in through the thick walls of the pyramid, the red-lights of the rest of the city had been swapped out for miniature sun spells, bathing the varied and colorful people inside with light so their colors were free to pop. Art lined the walls in dozens of different styles, and while the majority of the people in the temple wore the white robes, there were several people who had clearly just walked in from the streets to take a look at the temple-palace’s marvels. 

“Like what you see?” Troi asked, her mane flowing in the nonexistent breeze.

“Better than I was expecting,” Vriska admitted. “Thrackerzod?”

“This temple is influencing them, but I also detect them influencing it,” Thrackerzod frowned. “At the very least, this is not a standard corrupting-Force situation.”

“We have chosen to enter into symbiosis with the Force,” Troi explained. “And we have done well for ourselves in it. We sought the collapse, and we achieved our goal—but life doesn’t end just because the story does. We are here to live in this new world and revel in the opportunity uncovered for all.” She led them through a door to a balcony at the top of the pyramid, looking out over the Dark Side of the Moon. “People are free here to explore themselves, to find destiny, to… well, to become the best they can be. With ka vanishing, things previously frowned upon or held in contentious light that demanded conflict can enter into peace. Differing ideologies on family, rights, individuality, community…”

“I’m surprised you manage to keep it stable,” Mlinx observed. “Such a varied outlook tends toward anarchy.”

“It likely will, in the ultimate end,” Troi admitted. “But I think that is worth it, so long as we still live our lives. We will spread and go our separate ways, true to ourselves. Currently, we are unified by memories of the collapse movement and Corona herself—” as she said the name, she bowed her head in slight respect. “—though even that thread is tentative, at best. …As much as I hate to admit it, our current uniting thread is a fear of the Light Side of the Moon.”

Vriska sighed. “War’s over and you can’t stop fighting?”

“I don’t want to fight at all.” Troi turned her gaze to the white pyramid in the distance. “They do.”

“…Why?” Mlinx asked. 

“I believe it has to do with their defeat. This is not the world they wanted, they don’t want to live in it. I have no doubt in my mind they would seek to restore the multiverse if they could—come to think of it, some of them probably think they can in their delirium. They see us living in victory, and want us to die. The division of our cities was not slow. It was… brutal. I extended peace as often as I could, wanting to let them have their own way to explore life in the New World, but the terrorist attacks became too much.” She tapped her hoof on the railing. “Perhaps it was too harsh to block them entrance to the Dark Side, but there’s only so many enraged suicide bombers you can take.”

“Why don’t you just cut the bridge?” Tharckerzod asked.

“We are uncertain what that would do to the temple-palaces,” Troi said. “They are connected, and each side of the Force needs the other. Too many people rely on the Force to sever it all at once. I fear what would happen if the Light Side decides they no longer care what they suffer, so long as we do.” She lowered her head. “They can’t live with what they have, so they want to attack our way of life. It’s revenge, is what it is.”

“Are you truly blameless?” Roland asked. 

“No,” Troi admitted. “Our people retaliated, and we have often rubbed our ideology in their face. And there’s the added difficulty that their… leader is a version of my sister. It’s always a painful memory of my dusted sibling when I see her. I know she feels the same way—resents me for being able to move past the price of our future.”

“So you’re inches away from all-out war because you can’t separate from each other. Lovely.” Vriska folded her arms. “I bet your people aren’t even thinking about peace.”

“It’s pointless, at this point, to hope for more than utter silence.” Troi turned to the sky. “It is the same thing Corona realized when she left the Merodi for the war effort. We may not want to fight, but we would be foolish to think we could survive without preparing for the eventuality.”

Vriska frowned. “Corona was willing to give herself and her society up for the collapse. If you really wanted peace, you would be fighting for it tooth and nail to your detriment, not hiding within these city walls. What you’re doing now is what the preservation side was trying to do in the war—keep their home. “

Troi’s calm smile vanished. “Vriska Serket, we have achieved our goal already, there is no point in fighting for more change. The world is here and we have it as we want. Our goal is now our lives. There is nothing to change.”

“Why don’t I just call her up here and see what she has to say about that?”

Troi’s eyes widened. “You… She… She’s here?”

“Yep. She’s here. In fact, I’ll call her right n—”

“Oh yes please do!” Troi clapped her hooves. “The people would love to see her!” 

“…She won’t like to see them,” Thrackerzod said. 

“I am well aware of her disdain for worship,” Troi said dismissively. “I am willing to face the music in that regard.”

Burgerbelle started playing the Imperial March. 

Troi glared at her. 

“Heard that before, I take it?” Burgerbelle grinned. 

“Yes,” Troi seethed. 


~~~


Tesseract looked out from the balcony on her white temple-palace. There were no outsiders here aside from O’Neill and Nanoha’s group—only acolytes of the Force were allowed in under normal circumstances. Her face showed no emotion as she stared at the Dark Side of the Moon across the divide. 

“What did they do?” Starbeat asked.

“They destroyed everything,” Tesseract said. “And they received no condemnation for what they’ve done, no justice to speak of. They celebrate in their victory, over there, every day. They reject everything that came before for the sake of the ‘self’, rejecting that which they supposedly fought for. We hold fast to the ways and order of the past… they do not.” She turned to the group, fixing her eyes on Jotaro. “You claimed to be a bringer of justice in your time, Kujo.”

“I still am.” 

“Hmm…” Tesseract thought for a few moments, sizing the man up. “You truly believe that. Tell me, man of honor, how was the collapse just?”

“It wasn’t.”

For the first time, emotion crossed Tesseract's face. “Then why—”

“The only just option was the one where the war didn’t happen,” Jotaro continued. “I could not get justice for the multiverse. It was impossible. So I got justice for those who suffered.” 

“By causing suffering.” Tesseract tapped her hoof. “An old argument all of us have no doubt trodden over again and again. I apologize, Kujo, for placing you on the spot—we all know where we stand and such opinions do not change with logical arguments. They change from time, experience, and self-reflection. Such words have no worth here, and you have no desire to tell me the way things are. Although, I cannot say it pleases me that you have managed to end the fighting between you.” 

“Are you saying peace is wrong?” Starbeat countered.

“I’m saying peace is not the highest virtue. By coming together and refusing to acknowledge the past, you do both collapse and preservation a disservice, forgetting the fight and the struggle behind them. At least here, in our two cities, we do not pretend that everything has been paid and all is done.”

“That’s not what Eve would say,” Starbeat countered. “You have a pretty good cult following of her, and yet you miss one of her major points!”

Tesseract leaned in. “And what might this be?”

“They were never the enemy. They were always the other side. Since day one, she wanted nothing more than the fighting to be over so she could bring her friends back, so there would be no more reason to keep them apart.”

“And you know this how?”

“I was just like you. Worse, actually. I actively went out and hunted the warriors of the collapse and executed them in an unfair mockery of a trial. I was a witch hunter who wanted them to suffer. Eve came to my seat of power and forcibly ripped me out of it, demanding that I seek reconciliation and peace.”

Tesseract looked at her doubtfully.

“Oh, don’t believe me? Why don’t I call Eve right now? She’s on the surface with the rest of our exploration crew!”

Tesseract raised an eyebrow. “...I would be most honored to meet our savior.”

Nanoha let out a sharp breath. “She’s not going to like that.”

“She will speak her mind just as everyone else, statue in the courtyard or no.”


~~~


Roxy’s gemstone activated with some prompting from Corona, allowing the Gem to reform her body. 

“I fuckin’ hate mimics,” Roxy moaned, falling onto the grassy hills and spreading her limbs. 

“They were all empty, if that helps,” Corona said. 

“That’s, like, the worst thing you could have told me.”

“Your trip was pointless!” Jenny added. 

“Uuuuuughhh—“ Roxy cut her whining short, sitting up. “Actually, no, it wasn’t totally worthless! BAM!” She pulled the orb of Void out of her inventory. “This was a blank white orb before, but now it’s attuned to the Void aspect. I think it’s the same thing the crew fought in the dungeon that took Vriska’s aspect. “

Corona laid a hand on it. “It’s trying to interface with me, but… it’s like it can’t remove the power it already has.”

“We’ll need to find another one,” Roxy declared. “See if we can get you to trigger it!”

“Oh, you just need white orbs?” Jenny smirked. “Why didn’t you say so? I’ve been collecting those!” She pulled out her staff of holding and deposited a blank white orb on the ground. “Tah-dah!”

“…How many do you have?” Corona asked.

“I dunno, half a dozen?” 

“Huh…” Corona laid her hand on the orb. Immediately, it shifted into an ugly dark green marked with the symbol of Doom. “It really is tied to the SBURB aspects…” Corona tapped into her empathy, tracing her palms over the sphere. “That’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” Roxy asked. 

“It’s transmitting a signal…” She looked up into the sky at the two cities. “There.”

“Any idea why?” 

Corona shrugged. “Working on that. I’ll probably need to go up there myself if I’m going to find out.”

“Then it’s your lucky day!” Pinkie said, from behind the orb of Doom. “They need you at the city with the black pyramid, stat.”

“…Why?”

“Corona-worshipping city steeped in the collapse movement.”

Corona put her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Oh for the… fine, fine, looks like I have to go talk some sense into a few knuckleheads. I’ll be taking Minna, is that fine?”

“Absolutely!” Pinkie said. “Roxy?”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me the moment you figure out what the deal with these orbs is, I don’t wanna miss the party!”

Roxy tapped a finger on the Orb of Void. “I’m on it. We’ll figure out something… either down here or up there.”

“Great! Now, I’ve got to go hunt down Eve.”

“Why?” Jenny asked. 

“The other city worships her.”

Corona burst out into laughter. “About time she figured out what that felt like! Oh, this is gonna be good…”

Roxy facepalmed. 


~~~


Eve found Discord floating on an orange about a mile above the surface of Nucleon. 

She landed at his side. “Hey.”

“Go away.”

Eve laid down next to him, closing her eyes. “Do you know me to go when my friends need me?”

“Maybe I don’t need you right now.”

“You do. You need someone to listen, to help you work through. Sitting in silence won’t work.”

“Maybe I’ll go to Trixie.”

Eve raised an eyebrow. 

“What, she’s a good friend!”

“And probably not the pinnacle of calm, empathetic discussion.”

Discord sighed, staring at a distant star peeking out through the variations in the planets. “Fine. What’s the great wisdom of the Princess of Friendship and Overhead of Relations today?”

“I was just going to answer your questions. I don’t think you could ask her right now… but I know her. You can talk to me.”

“You know her all right. I bet you think I’ll get in the way.”

Eve shook her head. “…I want her to have someone other than me. When we first realized you were approaching… I was excited. Maybe, finally, she could have something I couldn’t fulfill. I even talked to Rev about it, but… Flutterfree wouldn’t have any of it. She knows you, too. She knows why you drifted away.”

“I don’t even know why I drifted away,” Discord grunted. 

“She’s better at seeing us than we are.” Eve chuckled softly, shaking her head. “She knows the truth, but she’s just as likely to ignore it as we are. She didn’t want to hurt you.”

Discord was silent. 

“She takes what she believes very seriously. It defines who she is. I’ve seen so much change and life come out of her through it that… I find it hard to say it’s bad, even if some of the finer points make me a bit uncomfortable.”

“A bit?”

“Okay, a whole lot,” Eve chuckled. 

“How do you deal with it? Being around with her all the time and not thinking as she does? It’s… how can you not be insulted by that? That she thinks she’s got it all figured out?”

“She doesn’t, and she’ll be the first to admit that. She’ll follow it up by saying nobody’s got it figured out.” 

“Then why does she care so much!? It…” Discord snapped his fingers, creating a blueberry and strawberry rain cloud to ease his stress. “It’s just… words.”

“They’re more than that to her. They’re life, they tell her of a world beyond what she sees, of a purpose better than anything she can imagine. Of… well, of a world where she doesn’t have to figure everything out, just trust that it’s taken care of for her.”

“…Are you trying to convert me?”

“Hah!” Eve laughed, but a thoughtful expression crossed her face. “You know what… Maybe I am. There is a part of me that thinks this would be a whole lot simpler if you could just change your mind without her pushing you. I’d be lying if I wasn’t hoping you could just… shift the way you think.” She sat back. “I actually wish she’d just let you come with her, and she could show you what she believes. Plenty of people in the past were already together when one changed for another but… agh. She’s just too nice for that. Cares about what’s right more than her own happiness.” Eve wiped a tear from her eye. “I’m so proud and aggravated at the same time.”

“You don’t believe.”

“I’m not trying to date her. Which wouldn’t work anywa—”

“Hold up, back up,” Discord looked her in the eye. “You don’t, yet you were trying to convince me?”

“Discord, I didn’t realize I was doing it, I’m sorry.”

“I… MMMPH.” He sat back down, glowering at the land below. “What do you think about it?”

“About her religion?”

Discord nodded. “She’s never stopped talking to you about it.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t changed your mind? Ever?”

Eve pursed her lips. “I… if you asked me under duress and mind control, I might say I believed, if only because I’ve seen something special exude from her for years. But if you asked me right now, with only my thoughts and confusion, I’d say I’m not sure. I’d say that everything I’ve seen could just be the Tower. I’d say… that I’m afraid of committing to anything before the Tower falls.” She paused. “I can say I want it to be true. But is that just because I want there to be something after the Tower falls, because I want to share more with Flutterfree, or because I’m lost and confused? I don’t know.”

Discord stared at her. “So, you’re waiting?”

“I… guess?”

“The Tower’s going to be up for thirty more years! Thirty more years! Not all of us are going to be around at that point! Things change way, way too much!” Discord waved his hands. “You want me to just wait three decades?”

“We waited several more in the Void…”

“And it was agony!” Discord fumed. “I… I just want some resolution, is that too much to ask!?” 

“No, b—”

“No is right, I don’t have to listen to this.” He snapped his fingers and vanished in a puff of light. 

Eve twitched, moving to follow his teleport, but Pinkie stopped her. “Sorry, Eve, there’s a situation up in the sky you have to deal with.”

“But…”

“There are others who can talk to him. You’re not the only one. Okay? We’ll handle it just fine down here.”

Eve traced her hoof on the ground. “But I…”

“You opened yourself up to him. That’s all you can do, Eve.” Pinkie hugged her. “Okay?”

Eve sighed. “Okay… You’ll watch after Flutterfree?”

“You know I will.”

“Pinkie… you’re a great friend.”

Pinkie winked. “Right back atcha!”


III – Unwanted Legacy


“This is a terrible story, there’s too much going on,” Onion said, tapping her hoof against a wall.

“Onion!” Pringle shouted. 

“What? It is.”

“They’re all related in the end! Come on, you know how this goes. The romance ties into the research ties into the two cities all into one big—”

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” the Elder said, holding up one of her hands to calm the young ones. “There’s always more to see if the story is laid out all at once… though admittedly, it is hard to tell verbally from memory when things bounce around so much.”

“Luckily you basically have the book memorized,” Joanne pointed out, no doubt scrolling through the book in question on her phone. 

“Why not just read it, then?” Onion asked. 

“Because having a story told together is a bonding experience!” Pringle grinned. 

Jang nodded. “I find myself intrigued by the dynamic between Discord and Flutterfree every time I hear of it. So many stories and legends put love as the highest of all possible goals, but Flutterfree explicitly does not.”

“You’re just jealous because you can’t get a girlfriend,” Joanne retorted.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“And Flutterfree’s full of BS anyway,” Joanne kept typing. “She loves her religion more than people. That’s just idiotic.”

“Joanne!” the Elder chided. 

“I don’t think that’s how it works…” Pringle said. 

Joanne didn’t look up. “That’s just how I see it. She’s being unreasonable for a belief and it’s being treated as acceptable, even good, while the cities are fighting over their beliefs and it’s not. There’s a discontinuity there.”

“That’s different…”

“And stories are not told objectively,” the Elder said. “That said, there is more to it than you seem to realize. There’s a key difference between the alicorns and Flutterfree. Maybe it will be more obvious when I describe how they met with their ‘gods’ in person.”

“…At least that part’s always enjoyable.”

“Make sure you do the voices for them!” Pringle cheered. “It’s the best part for the voices!”

“I will try, little one, but my old voice does not do the regal sisters justice.”

“Nothing does…” Onion muttered. 

Ignoring the detraction, the Elder continued. “Corona’s invitation was the warmest, though this would not last…”


~~~


Corona teleported herself to the top of the Dark Side temple-palace, Minna at her side. 

“…I thought the point was not to make them want to worship you?”

“Yes. But I want them to know I’m here.” She waved down at the city—easily in view of several cameras and citizens. “This ‘Troi’ won’t be able to pull a fast one on us anymore.” 

The wind blew through Minna’s hair. They stood in silence for a few minutes, letting their presence sink in. 

“Got anything?” Corona asked. 

Minna frowned. “Someone’s coming to meet us.”

A hatch in the pyramid opened up, revealing a woman in black robes. She was decidedly inhuman with an orange face and two striped head-tails. “You’re making quite the commotion up here.”

Corona smirked. “That’s the idea. Here to take us to Troi?”

“Yes. I believe I was sent because I wasn’t likely to start bowing in stunned awe the moment I met you.”

“Thanks for that.”

She smiled. “Don’t mention it.”

“This is Minna Belle, by the way.” Minna saluted. 

“I know. I’m Master Ahsoka Tano, for what it’s worth.”

“Sounds familiar…”

“I’m a common Star Wars ‘template’.” She descended into the pyramid’s hatch. “Might want to get down here before some people get brave enough to fly up.”

They followed her, descending down a long shaft until they came to a major hallway, the sides lined with many ‘Sith’. It wasn’t a very formal guard, since most of them were walking around and talking to one another, but they kept a careful eye on Corona and Minna. Corona caught a few of them refusing to look at her, or bowing their heads and looking at her feet. 

“Just a reminder,” she said as they neared the end of the hallway. “Not a god! Kay? Kay, good.” She didn’t wait for a response, stepping right into the room Troi was standing in with Mlinx’s team. 

Troi held Corona’s gaze for all of two seconds before breaking and bowing her head. “I am sorry, Corona, I cannot treat you as an equal, for that is not what you deserve.”

“Oh for the love of… they’re apologizing for worshipping me now?”

“It was the next logical step of worship progression,” Thrackerzod deadpanned.

Corona sighed. “Troi, get up, I’m just a person. And from what I hear, a person who’s going to disagree with a lot of what you’ve got going on here. I don’t want to send you into an existential spiral by daring to disagree with you.”

Troi forced a smile. “Ah… yes! That does seem… appropriate and inevitable.”

“I was just telling them how they’re betraying your vision,” Vriska said. 

Corona smirked. “Vriska, no offense, you don’t know the first thing about my vision. You were never one of those fighting for ideals, you fought because that was what your trusted friends were doing.”

“…Bullshit, but true.”

Corona created herself a chair and sat in it, folding her hands together. “What is your creed as the Dark Side of the Moon, Centroid? Put it simply.”

Troi bit her lip. “Freedom of the self in the New World.”

“Hmm. Freedom of the self. Admirable, and I can’t find fault with that yet, but Vriska’s right. That’s… not what I fought for. I fought to end the suffering. Freeing us from the clutches of destiny was a secondary concern. The suffering perpetuated by the Tower is petering out.”

“A-and because of that, there’s no more reason to devote ourselves to ending it! The problem is solved, we’re here to live in the New World however we want.”

“Personally, if I hadn’t been systematically broken down like a ragdoll after the collapse, I think I would have shifted the goal to ending as much natural suffering as I could. That is mostly what I’m doing now, come to think of it. Traveling around, saving whoever I can… being a beacon of hope, contrary to my supposed mastery of Doom.”

“And you are! You are a beacon of hope to us!”

Corona sighed. “I’m a god to you. And if not you, the people down there, at least.”

“It’s not like it’s a state-sanctioned religion like the Light Side…”

“Eve’s gonna have fun over there…” Corona mused. 

“Wait, Eve? She’s here too!?”

Corona smirked. “Why does that surprise you? Surely you got some news from the City, even out this far.”

“W-well it was hard to tell rumor from—”

“Eve and I made up within a week or two of the collapse. It was a… harrowing experience, but we made it through.” She tapped the Master Sword fastened to her hip. “The universe reminded me that I was, and still am, a hero. And I will be until the Tower falls, ending corruption and suffering wherever I see it.” She smiled sadly. “Troi, I know it’s a difficult situation, but trying to shut them out isn’t the answer. The way to break through to those who want to hurt you is not by fighting back. It’s by turning the other cheek.”

“I don’t want my people to be genocided!”

Corona’s expression darkened considerably.  “You fought for the collapse. You declared the price of self-genocide to be worth the goal at the end. This is much the same. Is the reconciliation and peace between enemies not worth that price?”

“W-well…”

“I don’t know enough to say for sure.” Corona’s voice softened. “We can’t see the good or evil that will come from an act. None of us saw what the New World would have to offer, and none of us saw whatever a preservation victory would have brought. No mind can handle the details, so we have to try our best and hope there’s more to life.” 

Troi was silent as Corona stood up, walking out to the balcony. She looked over the city, smiling. 

“Your people are happy,” Corona said.

“Yes.”

“Reveling in freedom, a release from the rules, a lessening of fate…” Corona folded her wings back, pressing her lips together until her mouth was a flat, emotionless line. She was silent for quite some time. 

Tori didn’t dare interrupt her. 

“It won’t last. You can’t be both accepting of freedom and hate the outside. It’ll collapse eventually.”

“I have no intention of keeping this city here forever,” Tori said. “We will spread out and make our own paths. It is just that… now, we are endangered.”

“You’re arguing exactly like the preservation did.” Corona held out a hand. “They cared so much about their homes and their lives and their preconceived notions that they didn’t see what we saw; a greater good bigger than all of us.”

“Are you claiming their goal of our destruction is a greater good?”

“Personally? No. I don’t think justice is really all it’s cracked up to be. But a lot of people do. Who are we to tell them their desire for justice is wrong? For retribution? Maybe the cycle of revenge truly is the highest form of being a person. Maybe worship is. Maybe exercising the freedom of choice and free will is. Or maybe it’s just friendship and peace.” She turned to look Troi directly in the eyes. “The problem is, we don’t know.”

“Your certainty is gone…” Troi breathed. 

“What?”

“Your certainty. The fire that drove you to victory. That determination that brought you to…” She backed away. “It’s gone.”

“…I think you’re confusing the mask I put on to lead the collapse armies with who I really am. I cried my eyes out regularly until I fell asleep while the war was happening, Troi. I was determined, I was convinced I was right, but every day I wondered if there was another way, for the war itself was evil.” 

Troi shook her head. “That’s the problem, then. We… we don’t idolize you, Corona.”

“Pretty sure y—”

“We serve that ideal you created. That… ‘mask,’ you said it was? That. That mask. That is what we, as the Dark Side of the Moon, follow. That unrelenting power, that charismatic determination, the gall to challenge what everyone had assumed. That is what the Dark Side of the Moon is all about. And we will defend our right to do that to our dying breath.”

“Troi, I don’t think…”

“I don’t think I’m getting through to you like this…” Troi tapped her hoof on the ground. “Oh! Idea!”

“Here we go…” Burgerbelle muttered. 


~~~


Eve stood atop the Light Side temple-palace, Monika at her side.

“I could just…”

“No, Monika,” Eve said. “You’re here to provide a face and the threat of power, not to actually edit the entire city until it obeys your every whim.”

“…Fine…” Monika growled. 

A hatch in the side of the pyramid opened up, revealing an orange face in a dark robe. “Chancellor Tesseract requests your presence inside the temple-palace, Most High Preserver.” 

“I am going to get real tired of this…” Eve hissed. “Lead the way…?”

“Master Ahsoka Tano.” They followed her into the temple-palace, arriving in a long hallway with Jedi on all sides. Every last one of them stood at attention, bowing their heads silently to Eve in reverence. She could hear some of them muttering quiet prayers. 

Years of being the Relations Overhead had taught her to keep her knee-jerk reactions in check when they wouldn’t be helpful, so she gave them no indication of her approval or disdain. 

Monika, on the other hand, was grinning like a child the entire time. 

They soon arrived in the room Tesseract was meeting the rest of the team. 

“Most High Preserver Evening Sparkle,” Tesseract greeted with a deep bow. Eve was easily able to detect the fake reverence in her tone and motions—this mare did not believe Eve was a god, not even close. She just wanted everyone to think she did. 

“Chancellor Tesseract of the Light Side of the Moon,” Eve bowed, sure to linger in the motion just long enough to make the Celestia slightly nervous. When she rose, Eve was delighted to find she was taller than the mare. Size intimidation was worth a lot more than people gave it credit for. 

“You are here to tell me why my quest for just retribution is wrong,” Tesseract said. 

“That will be a topic on the agenda, but first… I would appreciate an explanation for the statue outside, hmm?”

“Most High Preserver, it is the legacy of your tragic defense of existence. We remember what you did so we may continue in your hoofsteps.”

Eve nodded slowly. “Yes. I did defend existence. I did fight to the last breath to save what we had. I regret none of it. But I lost, and now there is no more need to be that.”

“No more need? Those who triggered the collapse are still here.”

“And they have absolutely no desire to attack you. In fact, out of all the people I’ve met in this New World, it’s our side that wants to attack the most. But I’m sure Starbeat caught you up on this already.”

Tesseract’s frown deepened. “Yes… She has. You and Corona, standing together, ending her little… ‘witch hunt’.”

“We failed to end it,” Eve breathed. “The Hub destroyed itself in Rage.”

Tesseract was silent.

“I don’t want that to be your fate.”

“I was aware of your implication, I am no fool,” Tesseract hissed. 

“And yet you let your emotions seep through and show your hoof,” Eve said, raising an eyebrow. “It is clear you have no reverence for me.”

Tesseract realized she’d just been played and allowed her scowl to come out in full force. “I should have expected as much from the Overhead of Relations.”

“There we are, now we’re being honest.” Eve smirked. “Do tell, why do you lie to your people about me? Why do you build statues?”

“The answer is very simple, Evening. They want to believe in something. If they all believe in the same thing, they don’t kill themselves or each other. Your consort should be evidence of such effectiveness.”

“Call Flutterfree a consort again, and this conversation is over,” Eve deadpanned. 

Tesseract nodded, accepting the threat as fact and moving on. “My point remains.”

“Effectiveness is not good, Tesseract. It’s still a lie.”

“Lies for the greater good, Evening.”

Eve pressed her wingtips together, frown deepening. “This is backwards.”

“Our conversation?”

“No. The Light Side and Dark Side, the preservation and the collapse. The other side is the one that fights for the greater good against the common definitions of right and wrong. We fight for that which we’ve always had. We say that the price they ask for is too great, that the way things are is better. We don’t go witch hunting to fulfill ourselves, we fight for the beauty inherent in ourselves.” 

“You started a war for the greater good.”

“That was a mistake,” Eve said without hesitation. “And that’s the difference between me and Corona. I believe it was a mistake. She doesn’t. She’s had a hard time living with it, but she doesn’t regret what she’s done. That fight for the greater good? That’s what brought the multiverse to its knees. How can you claim to fight for the very enemy you were sworn to destroy?”

Tesseract turned away, looking out over the balcony to the city below. “…This is getting us nowhere.”

“I would prefer discussing with you possible alternatives rather than using what power I have to forcibly end this,” Eve said. 

“I am aware of your penchant for interference.” Tesseract paused. “I am willing to negotiate, but logical arguments will get us nowhere. We are both steeped in our ways, unwilling to change, unwilling to see. We are too old.”

“If we do not argue, what then would you suggest we use to reach a resolution? Emotional appeals?”

Tesseract smiled. It was decidedly unpleasant to see such a slash on a face made to scowl. “…Something like that.”


~~~


The temple-palaces of the Light and Dark pulsed in unison, the connection between them synching up a deep beat. Two cellos faded into the ears of both cities’ citizens, inserting the familiar beat of a heartsong into their daily lives. Atop the temples, both Troi and Tesseract sensed the other’s presence in the beat, and yet they continued anyway. They weren’t about to let the other interfere with their mission. 

Both temple-palaces shot beams of light into the sky, one red and one blue. Beneath, similar lasers fired into the ground, impacting the soil below. From her vantage point next to the mecha, Roxy watched in fascination as the light from the temples interacted with them, making them twitch slightly—as if an attempt were being made to power them. 

Tesseract gestured for Eve to follow her, flying down to the street leading to her temple-palace. She marched forward, flanked by her citizens on the sides of the street. Every last one of them looked up to her with respect and adoration. 

“Look closely at all my people
Faces say they’re strong and able
Their eyes tell a different tale
Everyone wishes they could wail
Holes in their hearts beyond filling
Screams of the dead call unending
We live to avenge the dark tomb
To strike them down, show them their Doom.”

Troi led Corona through a crowd of smiling faces, many of which she addressed directly. 

“Charlie, are you ok?
You were a tragedy, 
But now a proud father.
Cotton, remember now?
Timelines that you destroyed,
Lives that you now enchant.
Ruby, see the great news?
A new life; comedy
Far from the soldier’s walk.
Come see, o Corona. 
Shining souls rest right here, cowering in new fear.”

Troi twirled around and pointed to the sky. 

“Come see, o Corona
Will you tell us, freedom is wrong?
You’ve given people new life
Escape from strife
The Dark Side’s spark rings true.”

Both alicorns turned to their listeners at the same time. 

“Our city is superior
Facing their ways, ulterior
For remembering the dark tomb
To strike them down, show them their Doom.”

Troi ignored Corona for a moment, turning to shout across the divide at the other City. 

“Tessa, are you insane? 
We don’t want your evil
Or your spiteful vengeance
Tessa, what have you done?
Spreading lies to your own
Restraining the new life
Tessa, why do you scream?
We’ve lost one and the same
End your deluded fight!”

Tesseract snarled, flaring her wings. 

“You don’t get off
You won’t escape
Your righteous justice!”

She returned to Eve, lifting her high into the air to see the Light Side as a whole. 

“These souls need a reason to live
Their grief too strong, they might just leave
You make them dishonor the lost
Spit in their face, call them light cost
Many of us made promises
Repay the debt, see lost faces
Their wishes don’t end with the war
Their hearts all groan, to settle the score.” 

Troi turned away from the song reaching her ears from the other city, forcing a smile and returning to her people. 

“Nora, can you show us?
Your bright husbands and wives
Definition no more
Trader, I see your wares
No pleasure is hidden
No answer kept away
Mikov, ancient wizard
Go beyond the taboo
Secrets we dare to know
Come see, o Corona, 
The power within us, liberty burns anew!”

Twitching, the mare of the Dark Side flared her wings, prompting the weapons of the Dark Side to ignite, basking her in a red glow. 

“Tessa, how can you say
That what we do, is so evil?
You berate us ev’ry day, 
Our upheaval,
Your sadistic delight!”

They sang as one, rage clear in their tone. 

“Our city is superior
Facing their ways, ulterior
For remembering the dark tomb
To strike them down, show them their Doom.”

Tesseract grinned.

“Young Troi, don’t lie to me 
You hate us just the same
The death you truly want! 

You don’t get off
You won’t escape
Your righteous justice!”

Tesseract’s Jedi lit their lightsabers as well, marching behind her in time with the beat. On both sides of the divide, an alicorn charged through the streets of their city in a show of power, flanked by their most powerful warriors swinging their blades and dancing in time. 

Trailing behind on both sides was a single observer: Eve and Corona. Supposed gods to these cities, forgotten in the song. Little more than an afterthought in a connected rhythm that did little more than drive up the rage between the sides. What was meant to be an emotional appeal fell apart into shouting and a show of power. 

Separated by a bridge though they were, the two cities pointed their weapons at each other and roared. 

Eve and Corona were tired of being ignored. 

Eve landed in front of Tesseract. 

“Tessa, find perspective
See in your heart, revenge is lost
They will always need to hate
Impossible
For you to satiate
What of justice for your great sins?
Lies, pain, hatred, what-should-have-beens?
Who will hold you accountable? 
Guilt has no end, even in Doom 
Tessa!”

Corona flared her wings and pointed the Master Sword at Troi, forcing her to stop. 

“Freedom, where’s the limit?
Is there a point, where it’s too much?
You still have a sense of law
But this passion
Will run your city raw
Don’t let them get at your anguish
Give them your cheek, make a kind wish
Hope for a reconciliation
Save your nation from its own Doom!
Listen!”

Tesseract and Troi stared, uncertain, at their problematic ‘gods’ as the music faded and the connection severed. 

Below, Roxy let out a sigh of relief as the mecha stopped trying to activate. 


~~~


“You look like shit,” Rina said. 

Flutterfree looked up from the rock she’d been staring at, not even attempting to hide her tears. 

“It went badly, I take it?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Flutterfree sagged. “I’m sitting here alone trying to be ‘fair’ and that’s just… stupid. I’m being stupid.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have context.”

Flutterfree just kept talking. “What good does it do to try to be fair? All it does is make there be more sorrow in the world. Instead of moping here for his sake I could be rebuilding bridges, helping with the Austraeoh reconstruction, getting past this. But no, I had to go and mope alone until you walk up out of…” She frowned. “Why are you here?”

“Rev’s worried, that’s why,” Rina explained. “She’s giving you space because you asked, but I can tell it’s driving her nuts. So here I am.” She booped Flutterfree’s snout. “And you are a hot mess.”

“You should see Discord. He’s… he’s heartbroken.”

“And you’re not?” Rina cocked her head. 

“I’m the one w—”

“Unless I’m completely off the deep end, which I don’t think I am since I took a pill an hour ago, you can heartbreak yourself easy. Just refuse advances and presto, instant inner torment.”

“Rina, that’s… not the point.”

Rina raised an eyebrow. “Like I know what the point is.”

“…Right. Sorry.” Flutterfree sagged. “You are… sort of right. I just… it’s more important.”

“You’ve locked yourself up in a box, haven’t you?”

“Well…”

“Look, I’m a mess who has difficulty understanding basic emotions, and even I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to hide. Just because you made the right choice doesn’t mean it won’t hurt! Stop pretending like it’s not supposed to hurt, kapeesh?”

“But… it—”

“Have you heard Rev? We are not perfect. We are not able to take hardship with a smile and confidence. We will feel pain, disdain, doubt, and a whole mess of other nasty little things. You’re not perfect, you can’t just say ‘it was good, so I’m good’.”

Flutterfree looked deep into her eyes. Then, almost a whisper, she spoke. “I wanted him so bad…”

“I know. You’ve got it easy. At least your urges aren’t to kill everyone who looks at you wrong.” She looked toward the almost-complete construction of the Austraeoh, frowning. “When I look at everyone on that crew, I can think of multiple moments where I wanted to kill them. Often brutally.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Uh, thanks? I’m just trying to empathize here, I don’t think you need t—”

Flutterfree pulled her into a hug, dripping tears down the dark alicorn’s back. “W-we need ponies like you… that aren’t caught up…”

“…Er…”

Flutterfree released Rina, smiling softly. “It’s okay if you don’t understand.”

“I guess I got my daily allotment for wisdom already.”

“Who knows? You might have more.” Flutterfree wiped her eyes. “…I think I’ll go talk to Rev. She probably needs it just as much as I do.”

“She’s crazy, taking on everyone’s weights like that.”

“It’s what she does.”

The two of them walked back to the Austraeoh construction rather than teleporting, taking a moment to appreciate the scenery. They passed Mattie on the way there, sitting in her beach chair, absorbing the nonexistent ‘sun’. 

“I swear, you’re going to pop any minute,” Rina commented. 

Mattie snorted. “It’ll be more than a few minutes, but it’s not going to be long, either.”

“…Do you actually know when it’s going to happen?”

Mattie shrugged, glancing up at the two cities. “Whenever what’s happening up there reaches its climax, BAM, out comes the new kid. Or somewhere around then. This isn’t an exact science, you understand.”

“Starbeat might disagree.”

“Balls to her, she’s busy up there with whatever musical nonsense is happening.”

“Take it easy, Mattie,” Flutterfree said as they walked past her. “We’ll be here for you when it happens.”

“Crikey, Flutters, don’t make promises you won’t be able to keep when the chaos starts.”

Flutterfree sighed. “I…”

Mattie coughed. “Wait, wait, that was… uncalled for. …Sorry.”

Flutterfree stared at her in mild disbelief… and then broke out into a smile. “Mattie… thank you.”

“I’m going soft…” Mattie grumbled, looking away. Flutterfree’s smile didn’t go anywhere, even after she and Rina had left Mattie long behind. 

The re-construction of the Austraeoh was going well. From a distance, it was impossible to tell it was unfinished, but up close some of the metal panels were clearly missing and a few of the propellers hadn’t been attached yet. Shimmy was working with the Everykid and Pinkie to add a large, gray blade to the center mast. They were arguing about how cool, but ineffective and ‘unrealistic’, sky-ships were. 

Flutterfree ignored the banter, walking right up to Rev. “…Sorry for running off.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Rev retorted, placing a warm hoof on Flutterfree’s shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

“It hurts.”

“I still…”

“Rev… even if you’re right, and it’s perfectly fine to just take him on, it doesn’t feel right to me. And it’s wrong to do what we think is wrong.” She held a hoof over her chest. “What matters is what’s in our hearts.”

Rev put a hoof over her chest as well, smiling. “You’ve grown so much.”

“I have you to thank for it.”

They shared a quiet moment together—interrupted only when Discord teleported to them. “Hey, Rina, I need to t—”

He locked eyes with Flutterfree.

She started bawling. 

He couldn’t take it—he teleported away without saying another word.


~~~


Pinkie looked at the beautiful Austraeoh VI, delighted at its shiny hull, mecha-harvested weapons, and a plethora of magic provided by none other than Shimmy herself. And yet, it still looked like the same ship that had blown up a few hours ago; a beautiful propeller sky-ship that honestly looked a little silly ‘sailing’ through the sky, but that was just the way Pinkie liked it. 

“Thanks for your help!” Pinkie said, grinning. 

“It’s the least I could do.” Shimmy dusted her hands off. “Well, the others are getting antsy in the ship…”

“You go to the City, we won’t mind.”

Shimmy glanced up at the two sky-cities that had just shot the Force-lasers above and below a few minutes ago. “You sure?”

“We can handle that. And, let’s be honest here, we need to handle that. It’s our problem, not yours. Go enjoy your vacation, we’ll mess with the knuckleheads when they need messing with.”

“If you’re sure…” Shimmy shrugged. “See you around?”

“We’ll be back at the City when the Tower falls!” Pinkie saluted. “Be there!”

“Planning on it!”

Shimmy teleported back to her ship. A moment later, they blasted off toward the City, leaving Pinkie and her new Austraeoh in the dust. She kept waving long after they’d left. 

Roxy tapped her on the back. “They can’t see you anymore.”

“I know!”

“…Right…” Roxy coughed. “I’ve figured something out. About the mecha.”

“They’re related to the SBURB aspects and can only hold one at once?”

“Yes, but there’s more than that. They reacted to those lasers the cities shot, reacted heavily. Jenny and I were able to trace the magical signature beneath the ground and… I think you need to see it.” 

“Considering how I don’t just know, you’re probably right!”

Roxy dragged Pinkie to a large hole Jenny had made with a shovel, some anger, and a lot of excess magical energy. It led to a metallic box in the ground made out of a smooth, gray material. A hatch had been popped open, revealing dozens of the pearl-robots, a few of which were set to Roxy’s Void essence. One of them was even walking around, though it didn’t seem to be doing anything besides cutting a circle into the ground. 

“Huh. What’re they for?”

Roxy shrugged. “Dunno, really. What’s really interesting is down here.” She jumped down one of the box’s sides, rubbing away some dirt to show a relief sculpture. It was old, so old the details had been worn away, but Pinkie could make out the shape of two pyramids connected by a bridge. Floating between them was a shield-shape, and on the edges of the image there were lots of jagged edges. Those represented chaos and violence, if Pinkie had to guess. 

Pinkie laid her hoof on the central shield. “…This is important. What is it?”

“I might know,” Jenny said. “I saw it in the dungeon. A shield-shaped coin-thing. Vriska had it, last I knew.”

Pinkie looked up at the cities. “That’s going to be… unfortunate, isn’t it?”

“It really is. I’ve tried calling them, too… something about what those lasers did either fried their phones or surrounded the cities in a null communication field of somesort. If we want to talk to them we’ll have to go up there ourselves.”

“…The vast majority of us are up there,” Pinkie mused. “They should be able to handle it. But just in case there’s a big problem, we need to be prepared. Gather everyone to the Austraeoh, we’ll get up there fast the moment we’re needed.”

“What about Mattie?” Pidge asked.

“Okay, we’ll need to leave someone who can handle her behind…”

Roxy coughed. “I can do it. Yes, I do know how to deliver equine foals. No, don’t ask me how. I need to stay down here to mess with these robots anyway.” 

“Consider it Captain’s orders to do exactly that!” Pinkie winked. 

“I’ll find everyone…” Pidge said, taking out her phone. 


~~~


Troi dragged Eve off on a magical adventure of song and dance…

…leaving Minna, Burgerbelle, Mlinx, Vriska, Roland, and Thrackerzod alone in the room with Ahsoka. 

“…They’re going to be busy with that for a while,” Burgerbelle said, observing as the song ramped up. “Taking bets now, will this be the longest heartsong yet?”

“No time for that,” Vriska whipped around, grabbing Ahsoka by the neck. “Lucky you, solid this time!”

Ahsoka Force-pushed Vriska away, knocking the troll onto her back. “Ow…”

“Vriska! What was that for?” Minna demanded.

Roland pointed his gun at Ahsoka's head. “She talked to us earlier. Warned us to get out of the city.”

“And you repay the favor by not listening to my advice and holding me at gunpoint?” Ahsoka raised an eyebrow. “Real good at the hero business.”

“We’ve learned to be wary of mysterious voices,” Thrackerzod said. 

“Still, in fairness…” Mlinx gestured that Roland should lower his gun. “Now that your boss is out of the room, care to explain what’s really going on here?”

“It’s mostly as she says it is,” Ahsoka admitted. “I don’t think anything she said was an outright lie, but she’s leaving out a lot of the ‘countermeasures’ she has in place for ‘dealing with’ the Light Side. And with the temples activating like that…” She bit her lip. “There’s no more time.”

“For what?”

“With the temples having that surge of power, one of them is going to try something. I don’t know what she’s been doing in the temple’s core, but I know it’s not good.”

Thrackerzod lit her horn. “Where is this temple core? I’ll teleport us.”

“It’s protected…” Ahsoka ran to a side wall and removed a panel. “We’ll have to sneak around the back way.”

Mlinx nodded. “You will explain more on the way, yes?”

“If I can do it without slowing us down.”


~~~


On the other side of the divide, Monika, Lightning, Jotaro, Starbeat, Nanoha, and O’Neill were experiencing something similar. 

Ahsoka ran to a side wall and removed a panel. “We’ll have to sneak around the back way.”

“Or we could just…” Monika held up a hand, ready to edit any character files. 

“No,” Nanoha said. “Not now, Monika.”

Monika twitched, taking out her notebook and scribbling something passive-aggressive out on the pages. 

Everyone else filed in after Ahsoka, crawling through the uncomfortable passage in single file. The passage was acoustic enough to let them hear each other just fine, though this made everything a little loud. 

O’Neill capitalized on this by talking just a little louder than was necessary. “So! What’s up with these temple-palace things!”

“SHH!” Ahsoka hissed. “These corridors are not completely soundproof. We don’t want them to hear us.”

O’Neill whispered something too quiet to hear, prompting Nanoha to stifle a giggle. 

“I’m going to assume you asked the same question again…” Ahsoka groaned. “The Sith and Jedi temples are ancient, so ancient we’re not even sure they were created by the Sith and Jedi. They were built together, always attached by the bridge, symbolizing a Balance in the Force. They never act independently—for every manifestation of the Light Side, there is one of the Dark Side. Before the collapse, these dual temples served as a place of neutral territory for the multiversal Force Orders. After… I was the only one who remained.” 

They turned a corridor and started crawling down a long ladder. 

“I wasn’t alone for long. Tessa and Troi arrived soon afterward, bringing with them people from both sides. At first, there was talk of peace and moving past the events of the war. But as they acclimated to the Force, something strange happened. The Force changed them—as it always changes those who use it—but they also changed the Force. And this mixture went… badly.”

“No kidding,” Starbeat said. “That mare is murderously vindictive… it reminds me a lot of the Rage.”

“I have heard your story, Starbeat,” Ahsoka said. “This is not full hypnosis, or even suggestion. This is them corrupting the Force itself, and letting their ideals override every other part of themselves. And in doing so, they created a divide. The Force seeks balance… or it used to. In this New World, it’s not doing that anymore.”

“Maybe we can fix this by altering the Force itself?” Starbeat suggested. “Change it back to what it was, or at least remove its influence. Even if they are choosing this, it’s clearly causing some kind of strengthened groupthink.”

“It might be too far gone for that,” Ahsoka admitted.

“Again, I’m always here, I can do things,” Monika said. 

“We know,” Nanoha said. “It looks like we might need you… but we need to be careful with your power.”

“Why do you all always say that? It’s like I have to walk on eggshells…”

“It can endanger other people by painting a target on them.”

“You’re just paranoid.”

“Yare yare daze…” Jotaro muttered.

“We’re here,” Ahsoka said, kicking a panel open to reveal the core of the Light Side temple. The room itself was supposed to be barren save for a spark of white energy above a pedestal in the middle of the room. However, there were numerous additions, all affixed together by bright yellow lines of magic that looked a bit like circuitry. Nineteen orbs of light floated around at different locations in the room, all affixed to the central spark by one magic line or another. The orbs did not have a calming light with them—rather, it was a harsh, purging light that burned all eyes gazing upon it. This was no pleasant summer day, this was a cold sun blazing the eyes in the middle of a frigid winter. 

“These are summoning lines,” Nanoha said, tracing a finger along them. 

Ahsoka blinked. “I was sure it was some kind of weapon.”

“It probably is,” Nanoha admitted. “But I don’t see how you can summon something when there are no other universes to summon from.”

Monika pointed at herself.

“Your set of powers isn’t normal.” Nanoha walked toward the central pedestal and laid her hand upon it. “It’s inactive, right now, but it’s waiting for something. A… catalyst. Raising Heart, locate.”

“Done, master,” the Device said, directing her attention to a shield-shaped hole in the pedestal.

“Something needs to go here to activate everything,” Nanoha deduced. “Without it, nothing works.”

“Can we destroy it?” Jotaro asked, summoning Star Platinum.

“It would take some effort, but yes, I believe so.” 

Ahsoka winced. “I would prefer it if we didn’t try to destroy the legacy of the Force…”

“And we need to worry about the Dark Side too,” Lightning pointed out. “They might have a similar weapon. If we disable this one, what if the Dark Side has a weapon and just exterminates this temple because they can’t defend themselves?”

“I’ll just make a call,” O’Neill said, pulling out a phone. “…No service.”

Ahsoka paled. “…We should have service in here…”


~~~


The core of the Dark Side had an identical room design, though the walls were black and the spark in the center was an unsettling murky color. Lines of magic criss-crossed the walls here as well, though they were less akin to circuitry and more like tangled thorny vines twisting all over every surface. Nineteen purple eyes with ominous slits in them floated around the room, affixed to the tangled magic lines by large thaumic thorns. 

“She’s been up to some shady stuff…” Mlinx observed.

“No, really?” Thrackerzod called. “This is a summoning network, the kind you would use to call the Old Ones down to smite a planet.” She laid a hoof down on the magic lines, frowning. “This is not natural to the Dark Side, this was added later. She must be trying to exploit it.”

“How would you summon anything?” Minna asked. “There are no other realms.”

“I have no idea,” Thrackerzod admitted, tracing the purple vines to the altar. “All I know is that it shouldn’t work. But we can’t take the risk that it does.”

Roland pointed a gun at the altar.

“WAIT!” Ahsoka shouted. “Can we not blow up this ancient piece of Force history?”

Mlinx nodded. “It would be hasty. And, mind you, the Light Side may have the same issue. We’ll need to coordinate with them regardless.”

Burgerbelle took out a rotary phone. “Calling… calling… calling… no signal. BEEP.”

“No signal…?” Ahsoka frowned. “We should get one in here.”

Mlinx took out his phone. “Nothing.”

“We’re being jammed, obviously,” Vriska said. 

“Can you cancel the spell matrix?” Ahsoka asked.

“Difficult, but possible,” Thrackerzod said. “It will just take some time…”

“Is it hot in here, or something?” Vriska said, tugging at her robe, suddenly sweating profusely. “Geez…”

“It’s colder than room temperature,” Thrackerzod reported, continuing to analyze the tangled circuitry. 

“I seriously feel like I’m burning up…” Vriska put a hand to her head and sat down. “Geez…”

“Your inventory,” Minna said. “It’s in your inventory.”

“My… what?” 

“Just check.” Minna tapped her head to remind Vriska of her unusual abilities. 

Vriska pulled an eight-ball out of her robes and cracked it on the ground. Instantly, she felt relief—the heat was gone. The item contained within the eight-ball floated into the air: the shield-shaped object she had found in the dungeon. It was glowing a bright white.

“What…?” Vriska cocked her head. “I’m not even sure I remember picking that up.”

The shield flashed, gaining a brilliant coloration. The worn edges and flat face suddenly shot to life with all the designs needed for them to identify it. 

It was a Sweetie Belle Crusader Shield. 

“…What?” Thrackerzod asked nobody in particular. 

The shield shot toward the hole in the altar—barely stopped by Ahsoka’s use of the Force. “H-help… it… wants to complete…”

Thrackerzod grabbed hold of it with her magic, pulling it away from the altar. She started preparing some sealing spells in the background to create a more permanent solution, but she never finished. 

Troi appeared in a flash of dark light right behind the altar, having bypassed the teleport security she had set up. She used her immense stores of alicorn power and the Force to pry the shield out of their grasp. It slid into the hole in the altar with a  satisfying click. 

A beautiful holographic rose began to bloom from the shield, and numerous spirograph images twirled around it rapidly. 

“Uh, sorry about this,” Troi said, laughing nervously. “You might want to take cover.”


~~~


Discord found himself standing in the middle of a grassy field. 

He stood there, perfectly still, for several minutes. 

Only after he had established his motionlessness did he throw his head back. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

The shout wasn’t enough for him, so he pointed a pointed claw at the sky.

“YOU! Oh, have I got a few things to say to you! You know what’s wrong with you? You’ve got all these stupid rules that make no sense! Normal rules are bad enough as it is, but at least those have a point! What’s the point of this, huh? Pain? Do you like causing pain? You claim to have made everything, so apparently you made pain too! Sadist! And that’s not all you are, oh no, I’ve heard lots about you over the years, and hot diggity dog are you a piece of WORK!” 

Discord sneered, spreading his arms wide. “Let’s go down the list, why don’t we? Arrogant, prideful, vengeful, ridiculously cryptic, secretive, manipulative, angry, inconsistent, oppressive, and… and…” He created a boulder and hurled it at the sky so hard it wasn’t going to come back down. “WHAT DOES SHE SEE IN YOU!?”

The planets in the sky continued to swirl around each other, unresponsive to his cries. 

Discord fell to his knees and rammed his hands into the ground, silent and still once more. 

“You forgot a few.”

Discord turned, shocked to see Rev laying down next to him, looking blankly forward. She kept talking, not waiting for a response from him. “Nepotistic, despotic, warmongering, stubborn, homophobic, racist, sexist, enslaving, meek, over-achieving, judgmental, soft, overly-forgiving, confusing, unfair, tactless, brutal, silent—”

“I get it,” Discord muttered.

“Get what?” Rev asked, cocking her head. 

“There’s a long list…”

“What is it a list of?”

“Of… bad things your God does.” He frowned.

“That’s not what the list is.”

“Then what is it?”

“It things we think are wrong with Him.” She was silent for a moment, letting it sink in. “We’re small. We get angry at life, at others, at the world, and we want to blame it all on Him. It really does make things simple: after all, He is the root cause of everything, and He has the blame for everything.” Absent-mindedly, she began tracing swirls in the ground. “That list is a bunch of reasons we’ve found to justify that feeling. A lot of them contradict each other - are their own opposites, meaning He is neither of the extremes we think. Others are from misinterpretation of what we know. And still others come from us trying to define good and evil on our own, and messing up with our limited, limited scope.” 

Discord said nothing. 

“If the war taught the multiverse anything, it’s that none of us have the right to declare what is good and what is evil. We can’t handle that kind of responsibility.”

Both she and Discord stared at the planets shifting above their heads for a moment. 

Eventually, Discord spoke. “I see it. I think. Every moment of my chaotic life, I was convinced I was right. But I never was. Even now, Flutterfree has to drag my chaotic rear out of the slime pit and show me the MAAAAGIC of FRIENDSHIP.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. 

“…I think you’re ready to understand,” Rev said.

“Understand what?”

Rev stood up and gestured to a yellow shape standing on the crest of a nearby hill. “Her.” 

Rev teleported away, leaving Flutterfree and Discord alone. 

Flutterfree was crying, but she refused to look away from Discord. Barely managing to breathe through her sniffles and heaves, she forced herself to walk all the way to him. Eventually, she sat down at his knees, looking straight up at him.

“I didn’t come into the faith because of it,” she began. “I came because I liked the way the people were kind to one another. How the love flowed between them, how they… they had a reason to be the best they could be. I had always just been kind because that’s what I was. Rev showed me it was more meaningful than that.

“But now… I see more. Love…” She choked. “Love is the highest virtue. If you can love everyone perfectly, you are perfect. All other virtues can be rolled up into it. B-but… how can we know what is the most loving thing to do? We h-have gut feelings, a conscience, and virtues… but they’re not always right. They change as we age. Back and forth… and some of us do evil things in the name of g-good.

“And that’s it. That’s… that’s part of why I stay, and w-why I’m doing this to us. Discord, I love you, and I mean that in every sense of the word however far you want to take it. But I can’t trust myself to know what’s right… even if every fiber of my soul c-cries that this is right that this is the way that this is happiness that this is best that…” She took a moment to catch her breath, forcing her heartbeat to slow. “Even if I think this is good, I can’t trust what my heart wants. I’ve chosen to trust something aside from myself. I trust His words. I have faith that He won’t lead me astray. Because… because everything else has been good and pure and right and…” She let out a breath. “I can’t just pick and choose what parts I want to believe. I’ve chosen this, so I… I have to stick with it. This… this isn’t one of those things open to interpretation. Marry into the faith.” She wiped her eyes. “I-I can’t ignore that.”

Discord stared at her with old, tired, and damp eyes. “…I know.” He pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay.”

She returned the hug with a desperate, almost predatory grip with all four of her hooves and her wings, squeezing him for all she was worth. She buried her face in his neck, filling his fur with her tears. He did the same, though he was nowhere near as loud as she was. 

Discord’s delicate little flower clung to him. She never wanted to let go. She feared what would happen when she did. 

But the New World could not let their moment last forever. Other things were brewing in the sky above them, and it interrupted as they held each other. 

A brilliant orb of light rose from the Light Side, surrounding itself in a myriad of shimmering segmented wings of white coloration with red and pink backing, acting like a sun to Nucleon. 

The Dark Side saw an equally impressive, but much more monstrous presence. A tangled mess of thorns and fleshy, pulsating tendrils swirled around an ice-blue eye with a slit of darkness through the middle. It was an eye that screamed of a hunger for blood. 

Wings and tendrils smashed into each other, creating a massive shockwave between the two cities. The bridge somehow held. 

Flutterfree’s tear-filled eyes reflected the light and the darkness. 

“…The world needs us,” Flutterfree said, prying herself off Discord. With shaking legs, she pointed a wing at the city. “They are more important.” 

As the summons fought, they heard a distant scream from Mattie.

The time had come. 


IV – Gray


“I still can’t believe our histories are defined by random musical numbers,” Jang commented. “It seems so… surreal.”

“Yet another thing the Tower does,” Joanne said. “They won’t exist after it falls.”

“Not unless you practice, anyway!” Pringle cheered. “It is possible to talk entirely in rhyme, you know!”

“Frivolous,” Onion muttered.

Joanne snorted. “Not as frivolous as Rev.”

The Elder frowned. “Joanne, you do realize she’s an actual person, right? What if she walked through that door right now, what would you say to her?”

“I’d tell her to her face exactly what I’m telling you. Frivolous and hypocritical. She’s just making excuses for what she believes.”

“That would require you to look up from your phone,” Onion snipped. 

“And what about my trust of the Force?” the Elder asked Joanne. 

“Same response,” she deadpanned. “Though not as ridiculously bizarre and convoluted. You’re simple. Keep Balance, feel the way of the Force, use but understand others. Not... that.”

“You don’t really know what my beliefs are, do you?” the Elder asked. 

Joanne furiously typed on her phone. The Elder lifted a hand to block all Internet access in the chamber. “Uh…”

“You rely too much on outside information…” The Elder sighed. “Your criticisms are legitimate, but make sure you know what you’re talking about next time rather than repeating half-remembered complaints.”

Joanne refused to look up from her phone, though her face soured considerably. 

“…Can we just get back to the excitement?” Pringle asked. “Come on, the final confrontation is upon us! Light versus dark, collapse versus preservation! Can the heroes make peace? What’re the mecha gonna do? How do Discord and Flutterfree try to save the day? What are Tessa and Troi’s real plans!?”

Jang folded his arms. “I think the more nebulous questions are better, especially since we don’t know the answer. What is the nature of belief? Is love the highest virtue? Why do people who claim to follow the same ideal disagree? Why do we separate ourselves into camps in the first place? And what does it mean to be held as an ideal?”

“…Can we just have some cool space explosions?” Joanne asked. 

The Elder smiled warmly. “Yes. Yes, we can have some cool space explosions.”

“Oh no, here it comes…” Onion groaned. 

The Elder took in a deep breath. The others all covered their ears.

“KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!”


~~~


Corona had no idea where Troi teleported off to. All she knew was that she was standing alone in front of a small army of red lightsaber-wielding dancers that no longer had a dance to occupy them. 

“…Any idea where she went?” Corona asked.

There were a few shaking heads in response. 

“Okay…” Corona tapped her foot. “So… what are you all going to do now?”

The woman in front shrugged. “Whatever we want. Not a fan of the heartsong in the first place, it’s an artifact of the Tower.” She deactivated her weapon. “Disperse, ever—”

The magic surge mixed with the Force grabbed everyone’s attention. They looked toward the temple-palace, where a noxious darkness was taking shape. First came the eye, and it was by far the worst part: a brilliant blue flame around a slit of endless void, surrounded by a grasping, fleshy exterior. It did not look at them, but even so they could feel its seething hatred of life itself. Massive, undulating tentacles sprouted from the back of the eye, creating a tangled mess of thorns, flesh, and darkness. Sounds akin to distant screaming came from its every surface. 

There was no doubt as to its target: the Light Side of the Moon. 

Corona moved like the wind, but there was never a chance she would make it in time. 

The Light Side was not without defenses, however, for their champion rose as well. An orb of holy burning light intercepted the dark, jittering energy released by the Dark One. The Light One’s myriad metallic, fluorescent wings swirled in a complex spirograph-esque pattern, attempting to weave the attack past the Dark One’s defenses. 

Throbbing tentacles met the light directly, burning, but holding strong. The Dark One increased its energy output, only for the Light One to compensate, prompting an explosion in the air between the two cities. The gates of both sides began to crack. 

Corona inserted herself between the two of them, using all the energy she could spare to maintain a massive shield. She wouldn’t be able to keep this up against both of them for long…

Eve appeared next to her, adding to the shield. “Funny running into you here!” 

Corona chuckled. “Surprise, surprise, surprise… I’ve got the Dark Side, you get the Light?”

“Right. There’s one problem. I don’t sense the magic levels dropping.”

“Even on Nucleon there is a limit, we should reach it…”

“We didn’t reach it around the Tower. Something’s keeping the levels high to maintain this level of combat.” 

Corona smirked. “Then we just have to beat them the old fashioned way.”

“Naturally.”

They released the shield at the same time, switching to fire and ice in unison. The Light One found itself encased in an ever-shifting bundle of snowflakes and ice shards while the Dark One was caught in a burning hellscape of vicious flaming licks. 

The ‘gods’ of the Sides of the Moon would not allow these summons to destroy the cities. 

Corona intercepted a tentacle from the Dark One and purged it with a holy healing spell, using Bacon Pancakes to flatten another trying to attack her from behind. When it went for a direct dark attack, she attempted to absorb it and reflect it back. She woefully underestimated the Dark One’s power output. Her spell matrix exploded, sending her flying into the middle bridge. 

Eve landed next to her, having just suffered a similar fate. They wasted no time, however, jumping back into the midst of it to prevent the two beasts from clashing directly. Raging Sights and the Element of Magic shone like stars in a nebula as they redirected the energy away. 

In both cities, the organized Force-users were conflicted. 

The great champions of their city, destined to destroy the other, were being fought by their very own gods. The Dark One sought to end the threat to the collapse, but Corona fought tooth and nail. Eve drove magic dart after ice shard into the just glow of the Light One, preventing that which needed to be repaid. 

And the alicorn leaders of the Cities?

They were nowhere to be found. 


~~~


Troi was grinning up until the point she heard the explosion. She teleported to the temple center instantly, bypassing its security. 

“No!” she shouted. “No, I shot first, you shouldn’t… I had the shield!” She pointed an accusatory hoof at the pedestal that held the white spark. “You shouldn’t be able to do anything! This was my plan! I let them come down here! Why isn’t it working!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?”

There was no response. Connected though the temples may be, shouting at one did not carry over to the others under normal circumstances. 

Roland pointed his gun at Troi’s head. “You are going to explain, quickly and simply, what you just did.”

“I used the unlocked ka-potential of the Dark Side temple to attack the Light Side. But… they must have found a way to retaliate! I need to go assis—”

Minna grabbed Troi’s head with her hand, psychically assaulting the alicorn. Troi was a master of the Dark Side of the Force, more than able to resist such conditioning. That said, it took most of her focus, allowing Mlinx to come in and knock her unconscious. 

“…That was easy,” Burgerbelle said, holding an easy button. 

“That may be a problem,” Ahsoka said. “I don’t know what any of this is. I don’t know how she did, but I can’t tell you about this. This is a Force temple, not a ka temple!”

“There’s something else going on here,” Minna said, trying to pry the Sweetie Shield out of the pedestal, but getting nothing. “Whatever this is, it activated the rest of the Temple.”

“It also made the summoning possible,” Thrackerzod commented, still scanning the magic lines all around. “If you can twist ka, you can use more magic than should be available and create things that shouldn’t exist… This wasn’t actually a ‘summon’ so much as a ‘creation from nothing’.”

Another shockwave ran through the temple.

“I’m glad we can’t see whatever it is she summoned,” Burgerbelle said. 

“Whatever it is, it’s ugly and needs to be stopped,” Vriska declared. 

“Careful,” Roland said. “The Light Side has its own monster, if she spoke the truth.”

“Dammit, we’d need to deactivate them both at the same time…”

Ahsoka frowned. “I… might be able to help with that. You have a team on the Light Side, correct?”

Mlinx nodded in confirmation. 

“I need to meditate. I might be able to Force-project myself there.” She sat down, crossing her legs and closing her eyes. “Communication may be blocked… but the Force still flows between the temples. That can’t be stopped.”

“What do we do while you try that?” Vriska asked.

“Be quiet.” Roland sat down as well, crossing his legs. “Perhaps do the same.”

“We’re not Force-sensitive.” 

“Leave her to her meditation,” Mlinx said, taking Vriska to the other side of the room. Whispering, he asked her a question. “What is that shield?”

“I have no idea,” Vriska whispered back.

“It’s a Sweetie artifact,” Minna said. “But Zod and Burgerbelle have no idea what it means.”

“Do you?” Mlinx asked. 

Minna shook her head. “I’m not getting any confirmations, merely images of what it’s not. Whatever it was, it’s as old or older than this temple, and I’m fairly certain these temples have been around longer than the League of Sweetie Belles.”

“A mystery…” Mlinx scratched his chin. “Vriska, Minna, we need to prepare to blow this place at any moment. We need to find the most effective way to do that.”

“Bombs?” Burgerbelle asked, appearing in the middle of them with a large, cartoonish black bomb. 

“…That’s better than nothing.”


~~~


The shockwave hit the Light Side. 

“…What just happened?” O’Neill asked.

Nanoha traced the magic circuitry with Raising Heart. “The summon spell activated because… I don’t know why, something was introduced from another location. The magic is no longer draining like it’s supposed to.”

“A meta effect,” Starbeat realized. “Someone’s messing with ka directly. These temples might just be a ka-device!”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Ahsoka said. “I’ve been with them for years, they were never anything more than Force temples.”

“How old are they?” Starbeat asked. 

“…Very.”

“Older than you, at least, which means there could have been hidden natures.”

The temple shook again. 

“There’s a fight going on up there,” O’Neill observed.

Monika rolled her eyes. “Obviously whatever the Light Side summoned is fighting something from the Dark Side.”

“And if we destroy this side… the city is destroyed.” Nanoha frowned. “We need to coordinate with the other team. There has to be some way to send a message…”

“The Force-connection is still there,” Ahsoka said. “I ca—”

“You won’t have time,” Tesseract said, walking into the room. She pointed her horn at Monika and teleported the Lord of Ka out in an instant. 

“That won’t keep her,” Nanoha said. 

“She’s about to find herself in the midst of a battle of light and dark,” Tesseract declared, narrowing her eyes. “I doubt she’ll find the time. Just as you won’t find the time to contact your allies.” 

“STAR PLATINUM: THE W—”

Tesseract cast a spell, petrifying Jotaro in an instant. “You won’t have time to do anything. Any action you take against me will result in your failure. You will stay here, inactive and compliant, until the Dark Side is annihilated.” 

“You’re a moron if you think we’ll listen to you,” Lightning said, casting Esuna on the party, curing Jotaro’s petrification. 

“We fight,” Starbeat smirked. “That’s all there is to say on the mat—”

Tesseract pushed all five of them back with a Force push hard enough to shatter ribs. She unleashed six lightsabers all at once, wielding one for every color of the rainbow, each fully independent of the others in her magic. “You were never supposed to be down here.” 

Ahsoka stood herself up, activating her dual white lightsabers. “Sorry about that…”

“I never expected you to be a traitor,” Tesseract said. “Perhaps that was foolish. I knew you wouldn’t go to the Dark Side. But that your desire for peace would let you betray other sides I had not considered.” She clashed lightsabers. 

“STARLIGHT B—”

Tesseract cast feedback, not losing a grip on any of her lightsabers. Nanoha’s spell blew up in her face before she knew what was happening. The alicorn petrified Jotaro again and grabbed Crimson Sushi with the Force, squeezing the Stand until O’Neill collapsed, holding his chest in agony. 

“She’s manipulating ka!” Starbeat shouted, rapidly swapping through screens on her goggles. “She shouldn’t be this strong or this lucky!”

“ULTIGA!” Lightning shouted. Tesseract encased it in her magic and threw it at Nanoha before she could get up. 

Ahsoka charged, meeting four lightsabers at once. 

“Master Ahsoka, you know the Force…” Tesseract twisted her other two blades away from Starbeat, angling at Ahsoka from behind. “You do not know the Tower.”

“Let’s see which is better!” Ahsoka leaped over the two lightsabers coming at her from behind, grabbing hold of Tesseract’s neck with the Force.

Tesseract responded with a simple explosion spell, knocking Ashoka to the ground. 

“Tesseract… you’ve got more of a plan than this,” Starbeat said, carefully angling a magic shield between herself and the alicorn. “What is it?”

“I am not falling into the monologue trap.” Tesseract cancelled both Starbeat’s shield and Lightning’s attack at once, grabbing Starbeat with her telekinesis and tossing her onto O’Neill, throwing the aim of his gun off. “I will do what needs to be done.” 

“I notice you’re not being lethal…” Nanoha commented, getting to her feet.

“I am no fool. I know you are protected.” Tesseract angled her six lightsabers at the White Devil. “I do not have to kill you to accomplish my goal.”

Nanoha looked around, realizing she was the only one standing. She hefted Raising Heart. “You’d think that…” Her expression darkened. “But I won’t stop until I’m a cold, dead corpse.”

Tesseract pointed the purple lightsaber at O’Neill’s head. “Stand down, Nanoha O’Neill.”

Nanoha twitched. “You won’t.”

“You are right. I won’t. Unless you make it clear to me that I cannot win, in which case, I have nothing to lose.” Tesseract cocked her head. “I would prefer to kill Jotaro for the sake of justice, but you leave me no choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

“Absolutely. I mean within the choice I have already made: justice must be served.”

“…How did you figure out about this temple’s ka-nature?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you. It would be foolish to do so.”

Inwardly, Nanoha swore. 

Tesseract continued. “I will say this. They attacked first. I simply used what they unlocked to retaliate.”

“You’ve been building your society to threaten the Dark side in the hopes that they’d do this,” Nanoha observed. “Do not pretend you are the victim here.” 

“Yes. But there was a reason. Eve is right, if I just attacked with no warning, we would become vicious conquerors. Now, we are the defenders, and our society will not lose itself to continued vengeance after the fact. Justice will be served and we will not fall into further temptation.”

“The cycle of revenge never ends.”

“That is why I am making it. There must be some act. The debt can never truly be repaid, but I will end the demands today.” She narrowed her eyes. “…And you got me talking.”

“That was all you.”

Tesseract remained silent. 


~~~


Monika appeared in the air between the Dark One and the Light One just as they shot a volley at each other. Monika prepared to re-write herself alive, but Corona and Eve protected her from the assault with shields of their own, setting her down on the bridge below. 

“Can you edit them?” Corona asked, frantically, slicing tentacles apart only for them to regrow an instant later. 

“No,” Monika said, finding with annoyance that their character files were protected. “Gonna have to do something else…”

“HOLD THAT THOUGHT!” Pinkie shouted from so far away none of them could see her—but it sounded like she was right next to them anyway. “I’VE GOT AN IDEA!”

Corona, Eve, Monika, and both Entities of Light and Darkness stopped for a moment to look down. 

The Austraeoh VI was flying at the entities at high speed. 

“SMASHIN’ TIME!” Pinkie shouted from the Austraeoh’s front. All the weapons on the ship activated at once, including lasers, rockets, magic missiles, traditional bullets, and even a few spring-loaded mecha fists harvested from below. The Entities forgot each other for a moment to combat this new ship. The shields lasted just long enough for the self-destruct to fully activate. 

KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!

A space-rending explosion knocked the Dark and Light Ones silly, tearing away much of their outer power, exposing their cores for a moment. 

“NOW!” Pinkie shouted, landing next to Monika. 

Corona and Eve nodded, jumping to their representative entities. Corona dug her hands into the Dark One’s eye while Eve drove a blade of ice into the Light One’s brilliant orb. With a momentarily lessened power, Corona and Eve were able to get the upper hand. They were draining magic from the entities faster than they could restore it within themselves. 

“YOU JUST BLEW UP THE AUSTRAEOH!” Monika shouted, throwing her arms wide.

“Yep!” Pinkie grinned. 

“We just rebuilt it!” 

“Yep!”

“That’s it, I’m bringing it back, I’m not going through that nonsense again,” Monika accessed her files of the Austraeoh. 

“Wait, Monika, don’t!”

Monika pointed a finger at Pinkie. “Shut up! I am sick and tired of you all going ‘oh, this’ll be better if we don’t use you’ or ‘no, don’t use your abilities, that’ll have unintended consequences’ or ‘that’d be boring’! I’m the Lord of Ka, Pinkie, and I’m going to use it!” 

Pinkie tried to tackle her.

Monika clapped her hands together, re-creating the Austraeoh VI exactly as it had been. 

This was exactly what Tesseract had wanted her to do. 

The instant she used her powers, the Light Side temple latched onto her with a ka-fueled soul-bond, pulling her to the ground. She howled in immense pain, slamming her fists into the stone bridge. The very fiber of her being was shunted into the Light Side’s inner workings, twisted to some purpose that wasn’t her own.

The Light Side reached out, touching the individual all the people believed in: Eve. 

Pinkie gasped. “Oh no oh no oh no EVE LOO—”

Eve was unable to stop the Light One from charging her. She deflected, but that was pointless: the Light One wasn’t attacking. 

The Light One was merging with her. 

With a brilliant nova of prismatic light, the Light One was gone—only Eve remained. But her eyes shone with the light of judgment and numerous pairs of metallic, yet angelic wings surrounded her. 

She turned to Corona and the Dark One. 

“I don’t suppose you know that trick…?” Corona asked the entity she’d been punching to shreds a moment ago. 

The Dark One shook its eye. 

“Ponyfeathers.”

“Corona of the Collapse Movement and Dark Side of the Moon!” Eve declared in a voice that was hers, but somehow louder, clearer. “It is time you paid for your crimes!”

Corona and the Dark One raised defensive magic, but it was clearly at a disadvantage to whatever Eve was now. 

“Monika!” Pinkie shouted, shaking the shuddering woman. “Monika, we—”

“It’s eating me…” Monika wailed, grabbing her head. “It…”

“I know it hurts but we need to activate the other side or Eve’s going to murder a city!”

Monika shivered. “I… I can’t…”

“I can.” Pinkie picked Monika up and jumped behind a column in the bridge’s railing. Her ‘shortcut’ took her right to the core of the Dark Side temple. 

Mlinx stared at her in shock. “What in th—”

“Shh,” Pinkie hissed, gesturing at Ahsoka and Roland. The next thing she did was slap Monika onto the Sweetie Shield like she was some kind of key card.

“Ow…” Monika muttered. 

“Give your power to this one,” Pinkie whispered. “Balance it.”

“Won’t that make it wo—” another wave of pain ran through Monika, drawing a pained gag from her.

“It’ll buy us time.” 

Monika closed her eyes and forced the little energy she had left into the Dark Side temple. It accepted her energy through the Sweetie Shield eagerly.

The pain matched that brought on by the Light Side. 

She passed out—but the temples did not stop using her power. 


~~~


Corona was not a fan of the fusion idea, but she knew there was no way to get out of this situation without a powerup of some sort. She couldn’t let Eve destroy a city while under the influence of a dark angel. 

So when Monika’s power was shunted through the Dark Side, she let the Dark One take her eagerly. 

It was painful, at first… but then it was exhilarating. Her back erupted with fleshy, thorned tentacles of bone and magic, and both her eyes became dark slits of power. 

“You reveal your true colors,” Eve declared. “A demon of the higher order.”

Corona wrapped Eve in her tentacles. “A demon is just another name for those who defy an evil god.” She punched forward with complex magic. Raging Sights was still helping her—even if it didn’t agree with its master right now, it knew that Corona made this choice just to keep the peace. It would act in accordance with those instructions. 

And that included a many-tiered magic ring that summoned a fist of fiery blood upon Eve’s icy comet attack. 

“You lost last time,” Corona said, surrounding herself in fleshy spikes. 

“That was not a true fight.” Eve surrounded herself in Seraphim and the metallic wings, reflecting every attack back to Corona. “We were not true to our legacy!” She drove the icy metal shards into Corona’s body, drawing thick, bright purple blood from her mutated form. “We were not as devoted to our fight as we should have been.”

“It’s amazing how someone so deluded in the old ways can say something so true.” Corona healed all her injuries and snapped her fingers, encasing Eve in a sphere of purple fire. “You are the one who perpetuates the Empire because you fear the price of change!”

Eve exploded out of the darkness. “You are the apocalypse incarnate, murderer. You gamble with lives! You threaten the stability of life itself.”

“I make it better! I give it freedom! We will not be tread upon!”

“You deserve as such!” 

Light and dark impacted at high speed, two hands reaching for the necks of the other with vehemous hate. They squeezed, unable to overcome the magical barriers on each other, sending thousands of little missiles in attempts to breach each other’s defenses. 

But they were exactly matched. Neither could get through to the other. 

“STOP!” Flutterfree shouted, projecting herself through the Rage. Corona and Eve glared at her as one. 

She stood on top of Discord’s shoulders, wing-blades uncovered, reflecting the light of the battle back upon opposing forces. 

“You two are stronger than this!” Flutterfree called. “Fight the spirits within you—you are the heroes! You are better!”

Eve’s expression softened. “Flutt—”

Corona capitalized on the opening, punching through Eve’s chest. “We are the heroes.” She threw Eve to the ground, kicking up dust. “We go until our dying breath.” She surrounded Discord and Flutterfree in a magic aura. “You are right. We are stronger. We are stronger than we’ve ever been.”

She threw Discord and Flutterfree to the ground at terminal velocity before turning back to Eve. Despite having just been run through by Corona’s fist, the alicorn rose to meet the fiery valkyrie with her bladed wings. 

“You hurt her!” Eve shrieked. 

“She was in the way.”

“There is no punishment great enough for you!”

“Good!” 

The bridge rumbled as they collided again. 


~~~


Jenny wasn’t all that surprised when Discord and Flutterfree dropped out of the sky like a meteor.

She was just annoyed they’d landed on her lunch. 

“That was my sandwich!”

“Sorry,” Flutterfree said, pulling herself out of the crater. “We’ve got a problem, Eve and Corona ar—”

“We know,” Pidge said, frantically tapping buttons on her laptop. “I’m working on help…” She gestured at the rows upon rows of pearl-robots she and Jenny had unearthed and enchanted with various Aspects – mostly Void from Roxy, but they had a Doom from Corona, a Light from Eve, a Space from Pinkie, and a lot of blank ones. 

“Oooh!” Jenny grabbed a pearl and bonked Flutterfree on the head with it, endowing it with Rage. “Got a new one!”

“Great, let’s hope the programs work universally…”

Discord dusted himself off. “I was just caught unawares, my chaos can take them.”

“Hubris,” Pidge deadpanned. “Our mini-mech army will go with you, just in case. They’re keeping each other busy up there, for now.”

“…We weakened Eve,” Flutterfree said. “She’ll lose eventually… and once Corona vaporizes the Light Side…”

“I’m working on it!” Jenny hissed. 

“What about Roxy?”

“OOOOH, YES!” Mattie shouted from a nearby tent. 

“…She’s busy,” Pidge said, trying not to gag. 

Jenny shivered. “I’m glad it’s not me in there…”

“How do you think Roxy feels?” 

“Ay, she’s a loose party girl deep down, I’m sure she’s fine.” 

Roxy must have heard this, because a sniper shell flew out of the tent and hit Jenny in the head. 

“Roxy, I know you’re frustrated, but we need her to work faster,” Flutterfree addressed the tent. 

“YES! YES! YES! I’M PUSHING!” Mattie shouted. 

Flutterfree chose not to criticize Mattie’s tone while she was actively giving birth. That would not only have been uncalled for, it would likely have made the unicorn double down, and Flutterfree did not wish that torment on Roxy.

The fight in the sky was more important. 

“I think we’re ready…” Pidge said, pressing a few more buttons. 

“I think we are too…” Jenny absent-mindedly took a replacement sandwich the Everykid had given her and bit into it. “LAUNCHING MINI-MECHS!”

Flutterfree climbed onto Discord again. “I’m coming too—but hide me. We don’t want to give Corona the advantage.” 

Discord nodded, bouncing into the air like a spring. All around him, the humanoid robots flew, controlled by Jenny and Pidge’s coding. The Void ones soon phased to invisibility while Doom, Rage, and Light remained in full view. 

Discord thrust a rubber chicken sword between Corona and Eve. “Okay, it’s time we brought the pain!”

The robots that were supposed to provide him support… didn’t. They froze in the air around the bridge, something holding them frozen. 

A synthetic voice came from the Void ones all at once. “What… what are we? Why are w-”

Corona and Eve pointed fingers down and vaporized the Void robots. The Doom, Rage, and Light ones managed to duck out of the way, though they were clearly no longer following Roxy’s programming. 

“What cruel trick of the universe is this!?” the Light one demanded. 

“A chance at beautiful revenge…” the Rage one responded. 

The Doom one couldn’t say anything. It was as if it was trying to destroy itself in an incoherent befuddled digital scream of agony. When Corona and Eve attacked again, it was destroyed. 

Light and Rage appeared to Discord’s side.

“What are you?”

“Unimportant,” the Light said, making its hands shimmer with power. “What matters is we share a common enemy.”

“Dark times make for strange bedfellows,” the Rage added, surrounding itself in a purple aura. 

Flutterfree kept Lolo under wraps—even though she was curious, she didn’t want to tip Eve off to her presence. Not yet, at least. 

“Bah, I’ll figure this out later.” Discord snapped his fingers, creating a cake launcher. “CHARGE!”

The cakes hit the two enraged icons in the face, allowing Rage and Light to move in. 

“You are of the temples,” Corona and Eve said as one, pointing at the two robots. “And to their purpose will you sway.”

“A cruel joke it was, then…” Light muttered.

“You know nothing of p—” Rage began, but he was cut off. 

Both lost their aspect coloring, falling to the bridge, empty. The temples would not allow their old servants to rebel. 

Discord sighed. “Some help they were.”

“And you…” Corona said, moving in. “What do you fight for? Your right to life?”

“Or the lives of others?” Eve asked, approaching him on the other side. 

“You must choose, in this war…” Corona said with a calming smile that did not have the desired effect—those eyes were simply too demonic. 

“…there is no middle ground.” Eve placed a hoof on his shoulder. 

“Come with me, discover what you can be.”

“Come with me, fight for what’s left undone.”

“No!” Discord shouted, pushing them back with an explosion of slime, dice, and spiky cotton candy. 

“Why not?” Corona asked, surrounding herself in glorious fire. “Chaos has its place, Discord! Chaos may never be consistent, but chaos must choose!”

“You know, deep down, what is right,” Eve added. “You fought for the preservation, to keep what we had! We’ve lost what we had, but we can do whatever is possible to bring it back! This world does not have to be theirs!”

“It is ours and you will never threaten it again!”

Discord encased them both in licorice rope. “I said no, I mean no. You’re both being childish.”

“We’re being childish?” Corona teleported out of his grasp, holding a hand to her chest in mock offense. “And what of you? Refusing to take a side? Do you really think stopping us will end the war between these cities?”

“There is no solution to this conflict that doesn’t end in one city or the other falling to ashes!” Eve declared. “It won’t be mine.”

“It won’t be mine.”

“Stopping us only delays the inevitable, Discord.” Corona extended a hand. “So, choose, so you may determine which side wins!”

“What do you want, Discord?”

“What do you want?”

“Neither!” He created a whirlwind of tornado sharks, shocked to find them easily deflected. 

“Neither!?” Eve and Corona glared at the same time. “You know which one you want to win! You know! Just CHOOSE!”

“You’re both wrong!” Discord shouted. 

“THERE IS NO RIGHT!” They screamed, voice reverberating with the power of the Force between them. “THERE ARE ONLY TWO DIFFERENT EVILS. CHOOSE, OR SUFFER A WORSE FATE! DO YOU WISH BOTH SIDES TO DESTROY EACH OTHER COMPLETELY? DO YOU WISH WAR TO GO UNENDING? DO YOU WISH TO DENY YOURSELF!?”

“YES!” Discord shouted at the top of his lungs. “I do! I won’t be myself! I suck! You suck! Everything sucks! But you know the difference between you and me?”

Corona and Eve stared at him, faces blank. 

Discord created a giant hammer in his hands. “You two are so devoted to your SELVES and what you THINK. And I’m not just talking to possessed-insane versions of you, I’m talking to you! Both of you stuck to your vision like it was the Holy Grail!” He lifted the hammer high, generating a camera as he did so. “NEWS FLASH! Your visions are WORTHLESS! But you trust them anyway!” He brought the hammer down. “I won’t trust myself. I’ll trust that bringing you back is the right thing, even if it doesn’t look like it. Because that’s what we do.”

“VERY WELL.” 

They effortlessly caught the hammer. 

“Uh oh.”

They created a hammer of their own, smashing Discord on the head with their combined power, sending him rocketing to the ground again. 

As he fell, he lost consciousness, and the spell on Flutterfree dissipated—but Eve didn’t notice, she was already back to fighting Corona now that the interruption had been dealt with. Flutterfree positioned herself so her head was level with Discord’s. Which is to say, both of them were now falling headfirst to the ground. 

He wasn’t aware. 

She knew a way to fix that. 

With a soft giggle and tears in her eyes, she pressed her face to his. The effect was immediate—he jolted awake like a Mexican jumping bean, staring at her in shock. 

She put a hoof to his mouth to prevent him from saying something stupid. She had to ask her question first. 

“Did you mean what you said to them?”

Discord blinked, looking up at the clashing forms of Corona and Eve. “I… I think I did. What in…”

She let out a joyous, deep laugh. “Oh, thank you!” Placing a delicate wingblade on Discord’s head, she beamed. “I can help you forget yourself.  If you’ll have me.”

There was no need for him to answer. 

He also didn’t have the opportunity, since at that point they hit the ground. 

“WHY DIDN’T YOU PULL UP!?” Jenny shouted from the edge of the cater they’d just made.

Flutterfree had sustained several broken bones from the fall and probably should have suffered much worse, but she managed to pull herself out of the crater anyway, dripping blood from her mouth. “Forgot… we were falling…”

“How do you forget you’re falling!?”

Flutterfree laughed, then started coughing uncontrollably. “Healing… healing would be nice… ow…”

“I have never seen someone so happy to be so messed up,” Pidge commented. 

Another one of Mattie’s screams reached their ears. 

“…In a literal sense.”

As Jenny used some simple healing spells on Flutterfree and Discord, she looked up at the cities. “Well. That was a bust. What now?”

“YOU SIT AND WAIT FOR THE OTHERS TO TRY SOMETHING!” Mattie shouted. “OH, I KNOW, GET ME A CACTUS AND A GHOST PEPPER AND A—AAAAAAWHAHAHA!”

Discord stood up. “…For some reason I am suddenly much more terrified of her.”

Flutterfree shot him a somehow menacingly sly look. “You better be.”

Discord wordlessly shrank back into the crater. 


~~~


Roland opened his eyes. 

He saw his body, sitting in meditation. To his left, Monika was passed out on the floor, twitching slightly every second or so. Against the far wall everyone was talking—with the addition of Pinkie, for some reason—trying to be quiet, presumably to not disturb the meditation. They had set bombs everywhere. 

In front, he saw Ahsoka twice: one sitting in meditation, the other standing much as he was. 

The room shuddered as whatever monsters laid outside warred.

“You’re a natural, Gunslinger,” Ahsoka said. “Though I should not be so surprised; you are the Tower’s chosen, after all.”

Roland responded only with a curt nod. 

“If we get out of this, I would love to teach you the ways of the Force—in balance.”

“I’ve seen your blades before, long ago,” Roland said. “I do not wish to become bound to one.”

“We are not bound to our blades quite as you are bound to your guns,” Ahsoka explained. “But this is a conversation for another time. We must move.” She walked over to the central altar and laid her hands on it. “We must ask the Force to carry our spirits across the divide. I will guide you. Place your hands over mine.”

Roland did as asked. 

“Now… hold on, and be ready for anything on the other side.”

At first, all Roland could see was violent red. It slowly gave way to a beautiful, calm gray, though this was eventually superseded by harshly divided blues and greens. 

He and Ahsoka appeared at the Light Side altar. At first, nobody paid them any mind. 

“What’s wrong, Tesseract?” Starbeat asked the Celestia. “Something wrong with your meta-manipulation?”

Tesseract narrowed her eyes. 

“Did they find a way to copy it, like you copied theirs? Did you think she couldn’t have planned for it?”

The alicorn refused to respond to the unicorn. 

O’Neill smirked. “She’s hoping silence will save her. It won’t. Tessa—can I call you Tessa? I’ll take the silence as admission. You may have surrounded yourself with ‘win’, but there’s more going on than what’s in here. We don’t have to fight you. The others can fight what you’ve made out there.”

Tesseract said nothing. 

Roland turned to Ahsoka… and noticed another Ahsoka sitting on the ground, injured. 

The Ahsoka he had come here with slowly shook her head. Don’t ask, no time to explain, way too complicated. 

He gestured at his gun with his eyes. She nodded. 

Good, Roland thought. Something I know well.  

He pulled out his revolver and fired. Even as a Force projection, weapons carried weight, and his weapon more so than any other. The bullet flew true, right toward Tesseract’s head. 

She deflected it completely by chance with a stray blue lightsaber. 

She wasted no time whirling to face them, driving her lightsabers toward the attackers. Realizing a second too late that they were Force projections and not truly there, she drove two of her blades into the pedestal itself, damaging it. 

It remained fully operational. 

Both Ahsokas jumped forward, both wielding dual lightsabers. Tesseract proved smart, stabbing the real one in the arm and grabbing the other in a Force choke-hold—dissipating her all the way back to her body. Nanoha unleashed a spell, but Tesseract’s reflect spell blew it away, and she pointed a lightsaber at O’Neill again. “Stop. All of you.”

Everyone did. 

Everyone except Roland. 

He pointed his gun at the damaged altar. 

“There is no way your weapon can destroy it,” Tesseract hissed. 

Roland sensed the uncertainty in her voice. That was all he needed. 

He pulled the trigger. He didn’t stay to see what happened—he returned to his body, whipped out his gun, and shot the altar on this side as well. This side’s Ahsoka had already damaged it with her lightsabers, to the stunned confusion of everyone else in the room. 

Roland’s bullets hit both altars true. 

In truth, it didn’t damage either of them. The bullets, for all their ka-importance, were just bullets. There was no need for them to be any more. If there had been, they would have entered the holes in the altars perfectly to destroy them by luck. 

But this was not the case. They remained simple bullets. 

For the temples themselves were ka-machines, and they recognized the bullets as a signal. The signal. The signal they were made for untold eons ago. 

It was time for the division to end. 

The Light Side of the Moon and the Dark Side of the Moon were surrounded by solid balls of white and black, blotting out the sky. Eve and Corona were separated, forced to sit motionless as the Force acted. 

The bridge between the cities shrank, drawing the two spheres together like a winding rope. The Light and the Dark mixed, producing a beautiful Gray between. When the cities should have crashed into one another, they didn’t—rather phasing through each other as if every other person were a ghost. 

There was a panic. Some tried to attack the citizens of the other city, finding all their Force powers and lightsabers to be intangible to the seen enemy. Eve and Corona collided, unable to affect anything they sought to destroy. 

The temples slid into one. In truth, it had always been one temple, one Force, one unity, but it had been divided for a time. That time was at an end… and the imbalance would end with it. 

The fusion would make sure of that. 

Within the core of both temples, the altars and the rooms themselves became one. The summoning circuitry broke, unable to reconcile with the other form of magic. The Dark and Light left their hosts in an instant. 

Corona and Eve, however, were perfectly susceptible to the fusion. Their bodies and minds slammed together into one entity, mandated by the Force itself. What resulted was a somewhat ugly looking centaur with swirls of purple over an orange skin. Not to mention two pairs of wings. 

“…Huh,” the mixed creature said, examining herself. “…This is going to be a problem for the rest of them.” She used her magic to divide herself into her component selves immediately; it was far from the first time Corona and Eve had been fused to another being, given how far their adventures had taken them. 

Within the cities, the people discovered they were a combination of Light and Dark, paired with a counterpart from the other city whenever possible. There was a lot of confused blabbering and a couple angry shouts, but all anger petered out as the second half of the person felt like they had just been gravely insulted. 

No one knew who they were anymore. 

Inside the temple core, Roland was one of those lucky enough to not have a direct opposite to fuse with, as were Monika and Minna. Everyone else…

“Why do you do this to us!?” Tesseract/Troi shouted, pointing accusingly at the gray spark of the Force in the center of the new Temple, her marbled blue-and-white appearance seeming somehow natural. “We have… I have… devoted everything!”

“You devoted wrongly,” Roland said, sitting down to clean his gun. 

“You… you did this!” 

“Yeah, he did!” Jotaro/Vriska said, cracking… his knuckles. The masculine had clearly come through in the combination far more than the feminine. He was a massive, armored gray humanoid with orange robes and a hat that seemed part of his hair. “And now you’re in for a world of pain. You wanna know real justice, punk?” Star Platinum rose behind him, holding the infinite-sided die. “I’ll bring you down.”

“Naaaaaaah,” Pinkie/Nanoha said, taking the shape of a graceful pink centaur. “How about we don’t be all punchy-punchy and talk like the beautiful people we are?” Pinkie/Nanoha used a delicate finger to lift Tesseract/Troi’s head. “I’m sure you can come to understand each other after spending enough time in that head of yours.”

“I am unclean,” Mlinx/O’Neill deadpanned. “And I love it.”

“Let’s not get stuck in this experience too quickly….” Pinkie/Nanoha warned. “We will be going back, isn’t that right?”

“SHOCKING!” Burgerbelle/Lightning declared. She looked exactly like Lightning, except in different clothes. “Literally, that’s what I am. Also, can I punch the ali-alicorn in the face? Please?” 

“It would be unacceptable to ruin the truce at this juncture,” Starbeat/Thrackerzod announced. “It is also unnecessary, as the conflict is over and resolved. There is no other city to destroy anymore, there is but one city, one people.” She adjusted her goggles, looking right at Tesseract/Troi. “Both of your plans played into the laps of the Force to bring you together. You have nothing to fight. Can you realize that?”

The speckled alicorn looked at her, beyond confused. Slowly, she nodded, sitting down on the ground. “I devoted so much…”

“To the Force, yes,” Ahsoka said, having combined with the other Ahsoka. “And you still can.” She placed a hand on Tesseract/Troi. “It just wants you to do it together.”

“I… we… can try.”

“Good. I’m sure our friends can separate you later.”

“I can separate them now,” Monika pointed out, examining a character file. She glanced at Pinkie/Nanoha. “But… I think I’ll wait. For, you know, the right time. When it won’t backfire.”

Pinkie/Nanoha placed a gentle hand on Monika’s shoulder. “You’re learning. I’m glad to see that flower in your soul bloom so.”

“Please tell me I can separate you soon, I have such conflicting feelings right now.”

Jotaro/Vriska pumped one of his arms. “HELL YEAH, I should be like this more often! Look at these GUNS!”

“It occurs to me that you are being frivolous and childish,” Starbeat/Thrackerzod observed. “Perhaps we should separate before the instability inherent within our combination goes too far.”

“Some answers would still be nice,” Mlinx/O’Neill said. 

“We don’t always get answers,” Monika said, looking to the Force spark. “We just get a victory.”

At these words, the Sweetie Shield projected a hologram into their midst: a tall Sweetie Belle with ever-shifting Roses in her mane. 

She smiled warmly. “I am Cinder, and I’m sorry I had to put you through all that. I’m not sure exactly how it will play out, but there’s probably going to be an unpleasant near-war and some uncomfortable fusions at the end. But, hey, I’m pretty sure it ended in complete victory, soooooo… that’s a plus, right?”

Minna, who had remained silent up until that moment, stared at her with open eyes. “Cinder…?”

Cinder didn’t respond; it was just a recording. “Now, I’ve got a lot to tell you—that’s the entire point of this ordeal, to tell you all things—but how about you figure out what to do with this freshly combined city and all the nonsense you just experienced first, hmm? This recording will still be here when you get back, don’t worry.” 

The hologram went away. 

“…So this entire thing was Cinder’s doing, somehow,” Starbeat/Thrackerzod said.

“Yep! I knew she could do it!” Lightning/Burgerbelle grinned. 

“…I’m not all that shocked, all things considering.”

“You heard her!” Pinkie/Nanoha shouted. “Let’s get this wrapped up and listen to the message!”


~~~


Mattie looked down at the adorable earth pony filly she held in her hooves. 

“I’m going to call you… Circlet.”

“…Not some kind of innuendo?” Roxy asked. 

“I’m not that cruel. Although, I’m sure I could think of a reason a circle-shaped headpiece could be taken wrong. Oh, I think I got one!”

Roxy threw her hands into the air, marching away from Mattie. “That’s it, I’m never doing it again for her, someone else gets to deliver the next one.”

“What makes you think there’ll be a next one?”

Jenny raised her eyebrow. “Really? This is you we’re talking about.”

Mattie chuckled. “Heh. Fair enough.”

Flutterfree and Discord walked up to her. “Congratulations!”

“I could say the same to you two,” Mattie said with a wink. “Tell me, am I really going to have to wait for the wedding to start the tips?”

Flutterfree kept her smile perfectly flat and level while Discord flushed madly. “Mattie, yes, you really do have to wait.”

“Well, when’s the wedding? Hmm?”

“We haven’t gotten that far.”

“Oh, psh, you two know where the story’s going, there isn’t a chance in the nine hells that you’re not ending up together.” She winked. “Why not skip to the end?”

Flutterfree shook her head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what, darling?”

“That your way doesn’t have to be the best way.”

Mattie frowned. “I… well…”

Flutterfree sighed. “I’m sorry.” She placed a hoof on Mattie’s shoulder. “Take care of Circlet. We’ll do things our way, you do yours. We’ll be there for each other, right?”

Mattie grinned. “You got that, mate. Now excuse me, I need to go pass out from exhaustion on a couch somewhere.”

“Oh, my,” Flutterfree put a hoof to her mouth. “Here, let me help you…”

“Why are you even up and about?” Discord asked. 

“To mess with you,” Mattie winked. “Also, to be around for this.”

Pinkie/Nanoha dropped from the sky. “HI GUYS! We just saved the city and got a message from Cinder and had a lot of silly fusions!”

Flutterfree stared at her in shock.

“Ah, I love being me,” Mattie chuckled. 


~~~


“And th—”

Onion interrupted the Elder. “And then we all know what happens. We live in this city, Elder!” She pointed angrily out the window at the Gray Force Temple dominating the skyline. “All that happens next is the oh-so-great heroes of the multiverse hand-holding our city for months until they were sure we wouldn’t kill each other once they left!”

“Onion…” Pringle frowned. 

“Pringle, Pringle, Pringle! You know they forced us to be the way we are! They didn’t let us find a new way in the Force! They managed us like… like children!”

“Strange you have a problem with that,” Jang muttered. 

“Don’t you start,” Onion hissed. 

The Elder stood up, walking to Onion. “Onion, this is not acceptable. Calm yourself or I—”

“You won’t have to do anything, I’m leaving.” Onion stormed out. “I’m trying to show you all that they aren’t the great heroes you think they are, that we don’t need their ‘examples’ to lead us everywhere. They were messed up! But no, you get so enamored with their stories, their legends… Gah! Elder Tano, you met them! You knew them!”

“Yes. I did.” Ahsoka Tano sighed, leaning on one of the walls. “And they helped us even after they no longer needed to.”

“They’ve been around hundreds of years,” Onion spat. “They should let us live our lives at some point.” She stormed out of Ahsoka’s chambers, angrily walking through the Town of Gray. Lightsabers of all colors flashed around as people talked, laughed, and lived their lives. 

And everywhere there were statues of the heroes that had ‘saved’ this city. The travelers that had, in their wisdom, managed the newly fused city as they slowly separated all those who had been stuck together by the Force. 

People were happy, yes. 

People claimed they didn’t worship the heroes, that was true. 

But looking at all the statues, Onion found that hard to believe. 

Even in the twilight years of the Tower, you refuse to move on, Onion growled to herself. They all just accept you. But I won’t. I never will. I know who you really are, what you really do, and no amount of legendary stories will take that away.

She stormed to her house. She threw the door open and entered a nine-digit code into a keypad, opening a passageway to her basement. Descending the cold, stone stairs, she arrived at her prized possessions. 

Twelve humanoid robots with limbs attached to white pearls. Each one had the color of a single SBURB Aspect. 

“They need to pay,” Onion said. 

“They will,” the Time robot affirmed. 

“How can we be sure their path will cross with the city’s again?”

“I exist.” Time pressed its hands together. “That is all the evidence we need.”


V – Intercessions of the Past


Onion found her friends sitting at a table in what they called the Juice Bar—a silly red building right outside the Temple that served all sorts of fruit juices 24/7. It probably helped that it was run by a droid who didn’t need to sleep, making it rather unfair competition for any other sorts of similar businesses. In a universe with no enforced night and day, never closing was of great benefit. 

The silvery, floating machine with twelve separate spidery limbs delivered four fruit smoothies to the table. It was more than smart enough to know what Onion would order before she said anything—grape. 

“Hey…” Jang said. “How are you doing?”

“Better,” Onion said, getting into her chair and sitting down. She stared at the smoothie for several seconds, doing nothing with it. 

“Hey, turn that frown upside-down!” Pringle spread her front hooves wide. “We can forget about all that and drink some smoothies like old friends!”

“We can’t,” Joanne deadpanned, still refusing to look up from her phone. She drank her smoothie by having her Stand lift it for her. 

“Joanne…”

“Onion’s fixated on it and it wouldn’t be right to just ignore it.” 

Onion frowned. “It’s really hard to take you seriously when you’re saying everything while staring at your phone.” 

“You know me, don’t you?”

“Yeah. That’s the problem here.”

Joanne’s fingers stopped flying across her screen. For a moment, her eyes looked up and locked with Onion’s own; a deep, inner fire screaming to be let loose. “I use my phone. You scream at the heroes.”

“I can stop.”

“Can you?” Joanne’s grip on her phone began to loosen due to trembling. “Can you drop it? Never speak about it again? Forget it?”

Onion was taken aback.

“Didn’t think so.” She returned to her phone, tone softening considerably. “I understand, Onion. I understand your need.”

“T-thanks?”

The slightest hint of a smile crawled up Joanne’s face. “Beyond that, you kind of have a point when you’re not frothing at the mouth.”

“What!?” Pringle blurted. “Wait, no, no, sorry, I did—”

“Pringle, we’re friends here,” Jang said. “Speak your mind. We won’t hate you for it.”

Pringle looked at the table. “…We wouldn’t be here without them. We’d be dead. We wouldn’t have been born. How can you be mad at that?”

“It’s the other things,” Onion said. “They define us. They don’t let us find our own way. They see that we need ‘help’ and then just wave their magic wands, dropping the ‘solution’ in our lap.”

Pringle looked Onion in the eye. “Would you rather they not have combined the cities?”

“The problem was partly their fault in the first place.”

“I… well I guess…”

“They didn’t know that at first,” Jang pointed out. “And even if they did, who wouldn’t attempt to right their wrongs?”

Onion tapped her hoof on the table. “It’s… it’s less that and more how they just… keep coming back. They left, but we can’t get rid of them. We idolize them when… they’re just broken people! The entire problem with the two cities was that they worshipped them, and we’re still on that.”

“We’re not!” Pringle gasped. 

“Worship doesn’t have to include ritualistic prayer! It can be a fixation, it… really, it’s whatever defines you as a culture.”

“Everyone worships something,” Joanne said. “Money, power, beauty, pleasure—even I worship something.”

“You? The most vocal atheist I’ve ever seen?” Jang blinked. 

“Correct. I worship intellectual faculties and the truth they lead us to. Or, if I’m being less nebulous, I worship the connection this phone provides me to people I scarcely feel in real life. I am inconsistent—either one of these may be at the top of my list on any given day.” She slid through a few more screens. “Onion is absolutely correct that the city as a whole worships the past and the legends therein.”

“I… that’s…” Pringle shoved a hoof over her mouth.

“You can say it’s silly. I certainly would if I were you.”

“She’s not you,” Jang pointed out.

Joanne shrugged, falling silent. 

Onion sighed, turning to Jang. “What do you think?”

“I think everyone has a point.” Jang folded his hands. “They did a lot of great things, but they had a lot of unintended consequences. They acted as heroes, but they were arrogant. The Tower gave them power, but should that excuse them? They couldn’t be good unless they used it.” He sat back. “I care more about our continued friendship than whether they are good or bad.”

Pringle smiled warmly. “Jang… that’s amazing. You’re always the best of us.”

Joanne nodded, not looking up from her phone. 

Onion stayed silent for a few moments. “…What would you do if they came back?”

Jang shrugged. “Dunno. Probably go say ‘hi’ just for the novelty.”

“I’d give Pinkie a big hug!” Pringle giggled. 

“I’d walk up to Rev and give her a few things she’s ignoring.” Joanne smirked at the thought. “Oh, she who claims to be rational…”

“Not Discord or Flutterfree?” Onion asked. 

“I’m not cruel. …That cruel, anyway.”

Even Joanne doesn’t want to hurt them… Onion sighed. “…Thanks guys. For… for letting me know.” I can trust you as friends. But not in this.  “I’m… gonna go home and think about some things.”

“Need any company?” Pringle asked.

“Not now,” Onion shook her head, taking her smoothie in her hoof. “See you around.” 

She trotted outside, feeling a bizarre mixture of happy and depressed. They were good friends. But they wouldn’t understand what she needed to do. 

Maybe that means…

The thought died in her head the moment she saw the hologram of Cinder coming out of a projector across the street. It was a recording—she wasn’t in the Force temple—but it still had her words. 

Onion scowled at the smiling Sweetie. You’re the worst out of all of them. You defined everything about us and didn’t even think about what we might think of it. All for what, an E-MAIL?


~~~


An unfathomable amount of time in the past, Cinder stood in front of a camera in the middle of a large, featureless room. 

“We ready to go?” she asked.

“Ready. Just start talking whenever.”

Cinder tossed her mane back and smiled. “Hello! So, I take it you all separated yourself and dealt with the initial chaos, right? That should have gone smoothly, if everything we’ve done on this end worked out properly. If not, I really am sorry, I overestimated what I knew. I kinda doubt that’s what happens, though, but it never hurts to be prepared.

“Anyway… you’re probably looking for some explanation, huh? Well, as you hopefully know, I used my… let’s say connections. I used my connections to send myself and a lot of other people back into the deep multiversal past, so our story wouldn’t have to ‘end’. Even though everything has to end at some point, now there’s so much time between us that it might as well be endless. And if I do somehow survive despite the odds… you won’t see me there. I’ll close a loop and become my younger self, creating another retcon loop. I’m not going to rewrite anything. So, in a way, this message is also another goodbye. One that I can give to people after the war has ended. 

“I’m still not sure which version of the end you got. I do know it wasn’t pure-preservation or pure-collapse, the Tower’s not that binary. You either got a New World with the Tower still standing for a time to facilitate an ending to the story, or a New Multiverse with an unexpected tragic cost and a beeline toward infinity. It honestly doesn’t matter which happened; my message remains the same. 

“In this temple I’ve got… a lot of stuff. Private messages for every person I could think of that you should watch in private, just to make it more likely the camera won’t be on when you see them. I’ve got records of the era we live in, of the things we did in the past up to this point. And I’ve got a few surprises… but we’ll get to those in a minute. I may add a few things later, but I have to let the Temple become an ancient relic at some point for the plan to work. 

“And yes… the plan. See, we needed to ensure you would hear the message, so we had to give it a lot of ka-importance that would only activate when the time was right. So we needed to build a ka-machine in an era that has no Flowers. It was… well, it was ‘difficult,’ but we weren’t exactly in a rush to complete it. Basically, we made the Narrative Temple as a ka-nexus that would store narrative potential over time and release it at the opportune moment, and not a moment before.

“The trick was making sure it survived the trip all the way to you. I have no idea if I actually live long enough to loop back into myself, so it needed to be able to do that on its own. And the amount of time is ridiculous. We landed sometime after the Downstreamer era and the only things aside from their relics that we recognize are Flagg—who’s currently sealed away—and The One Above All—who’s not involved in any sort of society at the moment and is kinda just… there. Actively forgetting about us. 

“Regardless, nothing from this era is recognizable in the future. Anything that might be we aren’t sure if it isn’t just some shallow duplicate, given… well, the tremendous amount of time. So… I made it a Force Temple that will split in two once we leave it be. Star Wars is one of the most powerful stories that repeats over the history of the multiverse, and the Force is a powerful entity that doesn’t have a character in the traditional sense, so being eternal and undying isn’t a problem, narratively speaking. The Temple would survive with the ka-machine and the Force manipulator in it. 

“But… oh, but… I had to make sure it was important enough to be found. And my message, on its own, doesn’t make a chapter. So we—no, I, I should take the blame for this—set up a conflict. The Temple would divide itself and, once the war ended in a collapse or preservation, it would change. The Force would drift to accentuate the differences between the two groups. It’ll be a subtle change, the sort that can be resisted at any moment, but that no one will want to. There will be a conflict, a conflict that just begs for the heroes of the previous era to solve through friendship and just being awesome. 

“I didn’t want to make a tragedy, so there’s basically a guaranteed victory pre-loaded into the encounter. Even though I know you’d win, I also know that the little people in the cities would not want peace. Violence would just come back. So… our little Temple will re-combine itself and combine everyone in it. I bet you just experienced that! Should have been fun and maybe a little entertaining. But the main point was to fuse the citizens together so they couldn’t mentally justify violence toward the other. Might take you a week to sort out, but lucky you, I want you to have an absolute victory. 

“Soooooo yeah. That basically explains what just happened. You’ll all get the private messages soon. And for the record, I’m doing pretty good! I’m glad I came back. Not everyone who came with me is as thrilled… but, you know, to each their own. However, before you go and look at those private messages… there’s someone I want you to meet. She’s got a story to tell you.”

Cinder turned to her left, waving for another Sweetie to come over. She was a short Sweetie, though clearly an adult mare. She proudly wore a silver artificial horn and, around her neck, Black Thirteen sat in the middle of a necklace, smaller than it should have been. 

The Sweetie walked into view of the camera and Cinder stepped aside.

“I am Allure Belle of Merodi Universalis,” she said, expression hard. “…But not the Merodi Universalis you know.”


~~~


Elder Ahsoka Tano walked to the throne room—now outside the Temple rather than within. The two alicorns were discussing policy when she entered. 

“Taxes on fruit are ridiculous,” Troi pointed out, dragging her hoof across a graph even she didn’t fully understand. 

Tessa raised an eyebrow. “You’re holding it upside-down.”

“The point remains! Fruit taxes are way up.”

“We have limited farmland.”

“Most of our food comes from conjuration spells. Come on, Tessa, you know this!”

Tessa smirked. “I do… but it is a very special strain on those of our people who work there.”

“We have to cut taxes somewhere.”

“Do we? The people may outcry for less, but we know that we are underfunded for many of our department projects that will make life for them better. If I thought we could get away with it, I would raise taxes.”

Troi gasped. “Whaaaaat!?”

“Every citizen within our fair city lives well above the theoretical poverty line, those slums only exist because some people have a bone to pick with Employment Services, and nobody’s starving down there. Everyone can afford a few more coins taken out of their pockets. They can give up, oh I don’t know, HD-3D subscriptions to live shows beamed from the Tower City.”

“…They do spend a lot of money on that.”

“Ka-shroud or not, it’s still ridiculous…” Tessa noticed Ahsoka. “Ah, Elder Tano! What brings you here?”

“Dropping by to visit my old friends,” Ahsoka said, smiling. “The Force is still balanced and, as usual, my job is just a formality.”

“Don’t say that!” Troi smiled warmly. “You represent the fusion of the Dark and the Light, the Balance, far more than we ever can.”

“You have been with this Temple longer than any of us,” Tessa added. “You refused to devote yourself to either side when we cut it off.”

Ahsoka rubbed the back of her head. “I was a little crazy, wasn’t I? Who clones themselves just to make sure they’re in both places at once?”

“A wise elder, that’s who.” Troi smiled. 

“A crazy Force Master,” Tessa added. “Which is just what we needed.”

“I am honored.” Ahsoka bowed.

“Oh!” Troi clapped her hooves. “That’s right, we have to ask you something!”

“We have detected a sky-ship on long-range sensors coming right for us,” Tessa said. “We wish you to confirm if it’s really them.”

“…They’re coming back?” Ahsoka’s eyes widened. 

“They might be. Our City of the Moon has moved enough it’s not unreasonable to assume we’re on their return path.”

“I will go right away,” Ahsoka said, a smile coming to her face. “I’m assuming we will prepare a festival?”

“We don’t want them to think we’ve returned to our old ways,” Tessa pointed out.

“Psh, it’ll just be a small thing,” Troi said. “I’ll call the Pinkies. …Assuming we get confirmation.”

“Yes, yes…” Ahsoka walked out of the throne room. As soon as she was out of sight she broke into a grin and ran as fast as she could to the other side of the city. She skidded to a stop outside, of all places, Mary’s Orphanage. 

She ran in the door. “Frigid!”

An ice-blue stallion looked up. “Yes?”

“Where’s Mary?”

“Upstai—“

Ahsoka ran up the stairs, finding exactly who she was looking for: a tall woman with pale skin, white hair, and purple eyes. 

Mary.

Better known as Minna Belle to those who she wasn’t trying to hide from. 

She was carefully watching a hologram of Allure. Ahsoka knew it wasn’t really Allure—Minna had explained to her long ago that her mother’s artificial horn had a slightly different make and model than the one in the messages—but sometimes it was so, so hard to tell them apart. 

“…Are they coming back?”

Minna held up her phone. Recent Calls: Captain Pinkie Pie. Minna had a stupid grin and tears on her face. “Yeah. They are.”


~~~


“I both am and am not who you think I am, I…” Allure frowned, furrowing her brow. “…Let’s try this another way. Yes, this is Black Thirteen I’m wearing. I… I basically own it instead of Randall Flagg. I was the one to ultimately beat him and seal him away for… well, a while. I got the artifact in his stead, and with a lot of help I’ve… I can’t say I’ve mastered it, but at the very least it’s not driving me insane. Yet. When I first got it after we’d defeated him, I—well, I gained all the memories of your Allure. She must have made some sort of connection with Black Thirteen in those last moments…” Allure shuddered. “I know she was lost to the price of whatever preserve or collapse happened to you. For a while there, I basically was her. But I wasn’t. It’s… Well, I still haven’t fully resolved it in my head to this day, so there’s that.

“I just wanted to say something to you. I know most of you, but I also don’t know most of you. It’s… I don’t know. Things are so similar yet so different sometimes I have a hard time discerning which one is me and which one is the other me.” She rubbed the back of her head. “This is going to be really discombobulated…”

“Take your time,” Cinder encouraged. 

Allure took a breath. “I’m sorry. For being so angry. Yes, it was more reasonable than how everyone else was being, but that doesn’t make it any more right. Being reasonable is revenge, eye-for-an-eye… Being reasonable gets us nowhere. I was on a holy crusade and I never stopped, even after Renee…” Allure took a shaky breath. “Renee… I’ve seen her die twice. At least one of them wasn’t at my own hooves…”

“Allure, if you need to take a break…”

“I’m fine.” Allure tossed her mane back and smiled. “That’s all behind us. Long, long behind us. It was all long gone before you arrived. But… I suppose that’s what I need to talk about. Merodi Universalis. Not yours. The other one… We have very similar histories with minor differences up until Nettle. We don’t have a Nettle. We had a crazed version of Darkseid try to take control of the Tower and fail miserably. After that, Corona studied the Tower, and… I think she wiped the information from her memory and went home, but we can never be sure. 

“Merodi Universalis just continued on. A hundred years. Two hundred years. We grew exponentially, driven by the heroes that defined us. Over time, leadership changed less and less. Considering how little it changed before, that’s very impressive. We guided the society in the way we saw fit, until we reached Class 1 status as the beacons of friendship. We sat with the Seats for a time. 

“Eventually, however… the grumblings of the next generation got to be too much for us to control. No matter how much we had done, or how much we had saved them, they wanted to control their nation and their lives. Now that we were Class 1 and there weren’t really any threats to our entire nation, they didn’t feel the need to rely on us for protection. They wanted their time in the spotlight.

“So we let them have it.

“That was a mistake.”

Allure tapped the ground with her hoof. 

“You were beginning to see the start of it when the War For Existence began. Not the resentment of the younger generations, though that was there, but the immaturity. When you’re in a largely post-scarcity society, you can get whatever you want whenever you want. I know we had a monetary system, but it was getting to the point where it wasn’t providing much. You could get free entertainment, connections, services, and food out of the automatic government provisions in fully integrated worlds. Nobody had to work for anything unless they wanted to. Nobody had to suffer hardship, or even pain...

“We didn’t realize that, at the top. We were constantly fighting, managing worlds that had just been brought in, and putting ourselves on the line for their sake. To make their lives perfect. We didn’t realize that making lives ‘perfect’ actually ruins them. They had no sense of right and wrong—there were no consequences to their actions! Any personal disagreements could be solved by moving away or casting mood-altering spells on yourself. Yes, for a while, people refused to do that… but, throughout every history, the younger generation has pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable. In relationships, self-alteration, genetics… Our ban on genetic modification was eventually lifted because of outcry, and that just made things worse. You’d be surprised how many people just remove their emotions. And how they influence the next to do the same…

“We had catered to their every whim and given them a soft life where they were free. It was amazing, for a time. But we let them go too far. We eventually saw it happening, and we tried to reinstate limits to keep them from devolving further, but they resisted heavily. They claimed we were the ‘old morality’ and that they were the ‘new morality’ and that what we thought was ‘good’ was in fact tyrannical and oppressive.

“So we thought we would let them try it out on their own. We transferred leadership over to them and went to retire, watching from a distance. Let them learn the hard way why we did what we did. Maybe they would grow past it and become something better than us—we were awfully stubborn, after all. Maybe we were wrong. 

“I don’t think we were wrong. Not anymore. 

“Merodi Universalis was stable under the new system for all of ten meta-years. 

“The people they chose as their leaders… they weren’t heroes, they were just the people they thought were the strongest, the fastest, the best, the smartest. The people they liked, and in a world where so many people shut their emotions off, or were so high on magic they had removed their negative ones entirely, or were just so bored they were willing to experiment with everything… those leaders weren’t the best. Even those who weren’t selfish for the sake of power often had some sort of ideal behind them that just screamed to be implemented no matter what anyone else thought. 

“So they fought. The fights resolved quickly, at first, and the system was changed each time to accommodate. But…” Allure sighed. “We watched our society ruin itself without our guidance. Worlds started seceding, internal wars began, and… 

“…By the time we decided to break our promise to stay out of it, it was too late. We fought to bring our society back together, and many, many of us died in the attempt. In the end, it was a full-on war. A Class 1 going to war with itself… destroyed much of the multiverse. 

“And that… was the end of Merodi Universalis.” She looked right into the camera, focusing as much as she could. “Our method of building a society is fast. It can bring about great beauty. But it grows too fast, so fast that it breaks under its own weight. We think we are doing the right thing by protecting, sheltering, and making the best life. We were so positive that progress and kindness led to utopia… it didn’t. 

“And while I would change some things if I did it again… I don’t regret being part of it.” She smiled brightly. “Merodi Universalis only lasted a thousand years, total. But those thousand years were amazing. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. What would have happened had we not been there? What would the lives of these people have been without us? It may have ended terribly, but that doesn’t make what we did do mean any less. 

“We probably shouldn’t have let them run themselves. But how long could we have stopped them? We may have been powerful, but eventually their numbers would have grown too strong. Immortality means we can’t just keep adjusting to a new generation, the generations keep piling up, and we can’t outlive them. They’ll band together and overthrow us no matter what we do, with time. 

“Nothing can ever last forever. 

“Even a good king will eventually fall, no matter how immortal he is. 

“And yet, despite this, here I am, doing it again.” Allure chuckled. “A bunch of Sweeties from the future have shown up and wanted to explore. And I… well; I’m part of them. I won’t bore you with that story, that’s Cinder’s to tell, but know that I’m back here, punching the clock for people that I know will eventually change beyond recognition. Because…

“Well, because we’re heroes. 

“Just like you are.” 

Allure held out a hoof. 

“Go make your new societies. They won’t last forever. But they will be glorious and amazing. 

“And Minna? ...I’m proud of you. Carry on our name into… wherever it is you end up.”


~~~


A haphazardly slapped together ‘ship’ of metal, wood, random pastry products, and what appeared to be flaming ice floated through the sky, propellers spinning madly.

It was the Austraeoh XV. 

“Thar she blows!” Pinkie declared, jumping on top of the wheel. “The City of the Moon!” These days, she looked more like a swashbuckling pirate than a pink party pony, and that was just what she wanted. 

“We have come full circle,” Monika observed, adjusting the suit she now wore all the time. “It marks the twilight years of our journey. We have experienced much, gained allies, lost friends, and here… we are.” She reached her hand toward a planet in the sky. “The Tower groans, and with it we seek reconciliation.”

Burgerbelle glanced at her. “You’ve gotten really poetic over the years.”

Monika nodded. “It could be said I resumed my craft in this very city. A mistake to show my inner flaws. And now, a return, to show how I have grown.” She created a donut and a muffin out of nothing and gave them to Pinkie, who devoured them whole. “In another way, this prepares me for the day my powers fail me. There will be no character files after the end.”

“Donuts, muffins, donuts, muffins…” Pinkie scratched her chin. “Hmm…”

“Neither are superior, both have their own traits and unique gifts to the world. Like the rose and the water lily, the—”

“BOOORING!” Burgerbelle declared. “You already got your reconciliation arc, we don’t need it again.”

“I can have more than one, thank you very much. Though I, again, apologize for Yuri’s behavior.”

“Ugh, you’re dry as a brick.”

Monika smirked. “But a brick is made from the wet mud, hardening into a structural support for much greater things.”

“Ok, boomer.”

Pinkie rammed her face into the wheel. “Burgerbelle, that’s cringey, even for you.”

“It also doesn’t apply,” Monika added.

“SPOON!” Burgerbelle threw a spoon at Monika’s face. It made the “spoon!” sound when it hit. 

Monika pulled the spoon away and examined her reflection in it. 

“Thinking of a poem?” Flutterfree asked, sitting on Discord’s head as he walked up to them. 

“I am always thinking of a poem.”

“And when she’s not, she is writing a poem!” Discord laughed. 

Monika smirked. “On the contrary, I could be writing our chronicle—”

“Which is overly poetic half the time.”

“Have you even read it?” Monika asked.

“I give him excerpts,” Flutterfree said. “He always enjoys seeing how you portray him. When he doesn’t get upset and I need to give him the belly rubs to calm him down…”

Discord flushed. “Er…”

Mattie walked up, chuckling. “You know, if I was a betting mare, I would have said he would be the one embarrassing you in this relationship. After twenty-five years of this I can’t believe how wrong I was.”

“Glad I could surprise!” Flutterfree giggled.

“You have a vicious tongue on you.”

“Scared?” Flutterfree waggled her eyebrows. 

“Very.”

“As you should be,” Eve said, landing on top of Flutterfree, creating a totem pole of people. Discord struggled under the weight. “You think her blades are the most dangerous part of her… but it’s her words that end the mightiest of rulers. You’ve seen it happen multiple times.”

“She’s just too nice,” Discord said. “It’s impossible to be mad! She can win any fight just by putting on the puppy eyes.”

Flutterfree scoffed. “I do not!”

“You kinda do,” Eve pointed out. “…Though, only for little things.”

“The weak and foolish things of the world shall shame the strong,” Discord quoted, tapping Flutterfree on the snout. 

Flutterfree smirked. “Oh, calling me your queen again?”

“I said no such thing!” 

She tossed Eve off her and looked Discord in the eyes. “And I didn’t say I had any problem with it.” She kissed him on the snout. “Such a shame, really could have gotten some good-Discord points.”

“You know I never run out.”

“I’m far, far too liberal with them.”

Eve picked herself up off the ground, grunting. “Next time you feel like goggling over each other can you not dump me on the ground?”

Flutterfree put a hoof to her mouth. “Oh! I’m sorry, I was caught up, here, let me help you.” She flew down and picked Eve up. “There you go. Do you want back on the totem?”

“I’m way too big for that anyway. I should be the bottom!” Without missing a beat, she pointed a hoof at Mattie. “You don’t get to say anything.”

Mattie sighed. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Flutterfree frowned. “Mattie… are you okay?”

“I’m… fine.” She tapped a hoof on the ground. “Just going through some things in this messed-up head of mine.”

“We’re here if you need it,” Flutterfree encouraged. 

“When you need it,” Pinkie added. 

Mattie laughed bitterly. “Ah, yes, the old adage of knowing you need help but not wanting to grab it and not knowing when it’s the right time in-story to do so…” She sighed. “…I wish the Tower would go already.”

“Soon. A few more years.” Eve put a hoof on her back. “Then… it’ll be new.”

“It damn well better be.”

The Austraeoh XV approached the City of the Moon, coming in at one of the major docks. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it was decked out with balloons, party supplies, and banners saying ‘WELCOME BACK!’

The Austraeoh dropped a plank onto the dock, and several of the heroes piled out, Pinkie leading them. She waved. “HELLOOO CITY OF THE MOON!”

The inhabitants of the city stared at them for a moment. They didn’t look like the heroes they remembered or the statues they had—lots of them had many more scars than usual, weren’t very clean, or had completely changed their look with an outfit or some other kind of modification. 

But this didn’t matter to one little soft-pink mare.

“AUNTIE PINKIE!” she shouted, running out of the crowd. “It’s really you!”

“Auntie!?” Pinkie laughed. “I don’t remember you!”

“I’ve never met you but Limestone Pie is my great-grandmother! I’ve always wanted to… just say hi! HI!” 

Pinkie swooped her up in a hug. “Hi back!”

Ahsoka stepped out of the crowd, removing her hood. “Everyone, these may not be the heroes you remember… but they are our heroes. Let’s show them a great time!” 

“YOU HEARD HER!” Troi shouted. “BRING OUT THE CAKE!”

Tessa tensed. “Oh no. Cake…”

Pinkie threw a cake into Tessa’s face. “Enjoy yourself, Tessa, it’ll be worth it!”

“LET’S PARTY!” Discord declared, summoning as many singing fruit as he could. 

If the City of the Moon hadn’t been sold on the celebration before, it was now—the time had come to celebrate and they were going to have an amazing time.

As they partied, Minna snuck onto the Austraeoh. The city wasn’t about to find out who she was today, even if she wanted to visit her old friends. 


~~~


“Hey.” Vriska pulled some cotton candy off a stand and shoved it in Starbeat’s face. “Here.”

Starbeat smirked, taking a bite of it. “What’s this for?”

Vriska shrugged. “Feeling the past coming back to haunt me, I guess.”

“Vriska, come on, we were fine when we were here.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.” Vriska pointed at a hologram of the other Allure talking, projected right into the street. “It takes me… all the way back. Back to the war. Back to what I did to you.”

“Vriska…”

“And I can never apologize enough.”

Starbeat rammed her cotton candy into Vriska’s face. “And neither can I. We were both terrible to each other. But we’re past that now.”

Vriska laughed, tearing the confection off her face. “You know, I wonder why we couldn’t have just been… Eve and Flutterfree. I don’t think those two ever had problems. Now Flutterfree and Discord… hoo boy…”

“Eve and Flutterfree fought and disagreed just like everyone else. Just… well, not as loud and shouty as we got.” Starbeat paused. “Get. Last week was… fun.”



“Hey, that was not a proper stuffpile and you know it.”

“I swear I’m ka-cursed to never understand the proper arrangement for a stuffpile.”

“Right after the Tower falls, you and me, stuffpile lessons.”

“Not again…”

Suddenly, both Starbeat and Vriska froze in their tracks. Something had just touched their minds.

Good. I have your attention. 

What the fuck!? Vriska called back, psychically. Can’t you see we’re busy?

Can’t be helped, unfortunately. You need to be warned and this is the right place to do it without drawing suspicion. Not everyone in this city idolizes you, there are those who resent your influence. 

Just another villain to defeat, Starbeat sent back, trying to pinpoint the voice’s location. Same as ever.

She knows she can’t win. Not here, not now. She doesn’t care. She just wants to hurt you as much as possible.

Starbeat and Vriska froze in their tracks. 

Be wary, and be careful. Protect everyone you can. You can’t lose, but you can be hurt. 

The voice was gone. 

Starbeat immediately pulled out her phone. “Pinkie, you get that?”

“Sadly, yes. Meet back at the docks, we need t—no, wait, it’s too late. Nanoha! Psychic message, stat! We’ve got a mysterious enemy out for revenge! They are going to strike soon!”

Starbeat heard Nanoha mumble something. A second later, she received a warning message. 

A second after that, she heard the explosion. 

“Fuck,” Vriska swore. “Starbeat?”

“On it…” Starbeat said, executing a teleport.


~~~


“I like this beard,” O’Neill said, scratching the tangle of hairs on his chin. It looked even more impressive in the funhouse mirror he was examining. 

“Wear that for long enough and you’ll start talking like a pirate,” Nanoha commented with a coy smile. 

“Yarrrr.”

“NANOHA!” Pinkie shouted, startling both of them. “Psychic message, stat! We’ve got a mysterious enemy out for revenge! They are going to strike soon!”

Nanoha wasted no time, diverting her magic to send a message to the entire Austraeoh crew, warning them to be on guard. “Sending, give it a second…”

It went out. 

And then there was an explosion. 

It wasn’t anywhere near them—it was the Austraeoh itself. In the distance, they saw it smoldering and falling into multiple pieces, crumbling to the surface of Nucleon far below. 

Nanoha teleported herself and O’Neill to the dock, holding her device out aggressively. “Whoever did this, show yourselves!”

“Looks like you finally got yourself a good woman, General Snark,” a synthetic voice declared. “I’m glad some of us have turned their lives around…”

There was a massive gust of wind that tossed Nanoha and O’Neill off the dock. Nanoha grabbed her husband with her loose hand, channeling her magic into her feet to levitate in midair. “Who are you?”

A spindly robot made of blue pearls floated toward them, the icon of Breath proudly displayed on its central orb. Massive, tornado-like winds surrounded it, keeping it both aloft and protecting it from attacks. 

“I do quite enjoy the confusion on your faces,” the Breath robot said, chuckling. “I wonder if you’ll get past it before you die!”

“STARLIGHT BREAKER!” Nanoha shouted, triggering her massive spell in an instant. 

The Breath robot dodged. “Breath is such a slippery Aspect, is it not? Quite a large number of… useful abilities.” A gust of wind shot out… and O’Neill slipped out of Nanoha’s hands. 

“JACK!”


~~~


Pringle looked up at Trixie and Pinkie, both trying to out-card-trick each other. 

“Woah… you’re both amazing…”

“Trixie is better,” Trixie huffed, pulling out five aces and making a card house out of them.

“Nah, you just have the showmanship.” Pinkie made a sword out of cards. “I’ve got the—”

Pinkie’s phone rang. Her cheerful demeanor dropped in an instant and she let out a tired sigh. 

“Pinkie, did you get that?”

“Sadly, yes,” Pinkie muttered. “Meet back at the docks, we need t—” She stopped, as if she’d seen something elsewhere. “No, wait, it’s too late!” She ducked behind a pot and… was gone. 

Pringle frowned. “What…”

Trixie put a hoof on Pringle. “It’s fine, Pinkie will handle it. And the GREAT and POWERFUL TRIXIE will keep showing you card tricks!”

“Ooooh!”

“Now you see it…” Trixie got the message when she hid the card behind her ear. She didn’t flinch—she was a performer, and a performer she would stay. The show must go on. “…Now you don’t!”

“Wait, what? You teleported it a—”

The explosion shook the ground. 

“Trixie did not teleport it away, though she will teleport us away.” Trixie focused her magic, but was interrupted by a robot powered by the pink of Heart. 

“DIE,” the synthetic voice called, bringing a blade of the soul upon Trixie. 

Pinkie appeared in front, blocking it with a pool noodle. “Not today.”

“You… YOU… PINK ONE.” The Heart robot flailed randomly in several directions before angling its entire body at her. “You will suffer more than most.”

“I’d like to see you try…” She boxed the robot in the face. 

“PRINGLE, RUN!” Trixie shouted.

Pringle did exactly as she was told.


~~~


Jenny was on the back of the Austraeoh when it exploded. She hit the surface of Nucleon at high velocity. 

Then something hit her at high velocity. A robot brimming with the green of Life, tangled in a mixture of plants and flesh. 

Jenny regenerated, pulling herself out of the Jenny-shaped hole in the ground. “Ow.”

“Gotcha!” the Life machine declared. “And I’m gonna ge-”

Jenny punched a hole right through it. 

The Life regenerated the fleshy exterior right back. 

“…Not again…” Jenny groaned. 

“Fun, isn’t it?”

“Gets a little boring after a while.”

They roundhouse kicked each other, somehow managing to smash the other into the ground again. 


~~~


“Hey, do you know where Jojo is?” Pidge asked Mlinx.

Mlinx was busy examining the make of a lightsaber with edge guards. “Hmm? Oh, no. I haven’t sorry. I can try to call…”

“That’s fine, it—” Nanoha’s message entered their heads at the same time. 

“Quiznak,” Pidge said as the explosion reached them. “We need t—”

A robot of Hope punched Pidge in the skull, cracking her jaw and knocking her out in one fell swoop. 

Mlinx drew his spear. “What was that for?”

“This is between you and me.” A scepter of light appeared in the Hope robot’s hands. “As it should have been.”


~~~


“We didn’t deserve this,” Flutterfree said. 

“Deserve what?” Discord asked, carrying Flutterfree as they floated through the clouds above the City of the Moon. 

“This. We didn’t deserve each other. We let each other go… and at least my life should have ended before we ever thought to reconcile.” She laid her wings over his shoulders. “And yet, by grace alone, we were given this chance at another life. Forced onto a boat together, given an opportunity to see each other…” She kissed him. “Every last minute has been a gift.”

Discord transformed her into a present. After receiving a playfully annoyed glare, he turned her back. “Pretty sure we know who to thank for that.”

Flutterfree giggled. “Do you think, if we went back, we’d have worked? Or… did we need to drift apart and mature first?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m a being of chaos, I don’t deal in absolutes.” He chuckled. “But these twenty-some years have been the best of my centuries of life.”

“It’s just so… freeing. W—”

They received the message.

“Well, that’s not very romantic,” Discord huffed. 

The Austraeoh exploded below them. 

The Light robot exploded above them. 

Flutterfree spread her wings, summoning Lolo. “We were having a MOMENT!”

“Do I look like I care?” the robot shone like a miniature sun. 


~~~


“They do not live to serve,” the Blood robot declared to the people at the dock. “They are not of us, they wish to control us.” It lifted its hands, sending the power of Blood into the many citizens watching the celebration. “We will evict them for the true future…”

“FUUUUCK YOU!” Vriska shouted, throwing the infinite-sided die at the Blood robot. A swordfish slapped it across the face. 

The Blood robot toppled back. “There are your enemies. Destroy them.” 

The power of Blood demanded obedience to the connection. The more people of the city there were, the stronger it was. 

“…This is bad…” Starbeat observed. “We can’t hurt them…”

“Shit,” Vriska muttered. 

Ahsoka broke out of the Blood machine’s control. “Listen to me! They are not our enemy!”

“Your Force will bow to us,” the Blood robot said, lifting its hands. 

Ahsoka activated her lightsabers, standing with Starbeat and Vriska. Troi and Tessa broke free of the control next…

…but they still had a small lightsaber-wielding army attacking them.

“Five on all…” Troi commented. 

“Where we don’t want to hurt them…” Tessa hissed. 

“I like those odds,” Vriska chuckled. 


~~~


Jotaro wasn’t exactly sure what he was watching. He knew the people involved—Rev and Joanne, the latter of whom Jotaro was introduced to abruptly with the line of “Yes, I’m your great-granddaughter through the line of Jolyne, no, I don’t know where Grandma is. I’m not here to talk to you.” 

And now…

“How do you expect me to treat you with respect if you refuse to look up from your phone?” Rev asked.

“The fact that you think respect is a thing I care about is telling. What is respect but a faulty ideal to keep the next generation in line? All should be given that which they prove.”

“People are not equal, though you are correct they should be treated equally—love even your enemies.”

“That gets you dead.”

“Martyrs change the world.”

“Also, you are currently speaking to me with disdain, not equally.”

“I’m not perfect, you specifically sought me out to start an argument.”

“It is what you deserve. From my perspective, it is only you who have done anything suspicious, while from yours, both of us are in the wrong. I am the optimist.”

“How much are you just reading off your phone?”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, there’s no being alive who could go against the collective knowledge of the Internet, you could always argue anything!”

“Perhaps my intention is not to come to an understanding, but to drive something into your thick faith-ridden skull?”

“That’s… uuuugh… what is your problem? What did we ever do to you?”

“Absolutely nothing, at least not relating to your beliefs. You’ve just created a world where—”

“…Yare yare daze…” Jotaro muttered to himself as they continued going at it. 

Burgerbelle snapped a photo. “This is going into the memories folder. Monika will write a grand poem of the duel of the fates!”

“Th—” Jotaro’s comment was cut short by the message. 

Joanne kept talking until the explosion went off. 

“Ah, a group of four…” the Rage robot descended from the sky, landing hard enough to make a crater. “Worthy opponents. Grandfather, descendant. Atheist, believer. And you…” It pointed at Burgerbelle. “Living beauty!”

“…Wat,” Burgerbelle deadpanned. 

The purple energy began to waft off the robot. “Let’s find out where this leads…”


~~~


Roland and Monika were on the Austraeoh when it exploded. Luckily, they landed in a lake on the surface. 

Roland pulled Monika out, wordless. 

“Egh…” Monika rubbed her head. “What’s the deal?”

“Attack,” Roland said. 

Monika stood up, glancing at the Temple. “…I can’t use my powers safely here. Drat.”

Roland pulled out his gun. “Be ready for anything.”

Monika nodded—she may not have been able to make any active changes, but she could passively look for exploits. Which meant she could find things—things like an invisible Void robot through a loose character file. 

“There!” Monika shouted. Roland fired—hitting the robot, but only in the foot. 

“Arrogance…” the robot shivered into full view, moving as though it had little control over itself. “You… dare? Do you? How could you? What has become of me?”

Monika frowned. “I don’t know. But I assure you, we are more than enough to take you out like trash.”

“You are powerless… one wrong move, Monika… pop! You are brought low. Rightly.”

Monika pulled a green lightsaber out of her pocket. “I edited my character file to be force-sensitive that day and I’ve been practicing ever since so I won’t be taken advantage of again. Between me and the Gunslinger… we’ve got you.”

The Void robot vanished again. 


~~~


Corona and Eve were inside the Austraeoh when it went off, but they were able to shield themselves from the fire. 

“…Austraeoh sixteen, coming soon to a sky near you,” Corona commented with a chuckle. 

“Yeah,” Eve flared her wings, looking for the opponent. “What attacked us?”

“Your hubris.” The Doom robot flew out of the sky, punching them both in the head. Corona had to act fast, preventing instant death from occurring with her own Doom powers, forcing the Doom back onto the robot itself. 

It was completely immune to that sort of instant death.

“You think… you think you can just throw your problems back at me!?” the robot screeched. “You… why are you so… happy? How can… not possible!” It let out a roundhouse kick that Eve caught in her magic. 

“Calm down,” Eve said. “Who are you? How can we help you?”

“Help? HELP!? I THINK YOU’VE HELPED ENOUGH!”


~~~


Mattie, Minna, and the Everykid were on the Austraeoh when it exploded. 

Unlike the others who had some way to defend themselves, these three went flying like ragdolls. 

The Everykid worked fast, placing a hat with wings on her head and flying around. She grabbed Mattie first.

“You’ve got quite a grip on you…” Mattie gagged. 

The Everykid hummed, gesturing at the falling Minna. As they swooped in, Mattie unfurled a whip and lashed it around Minna. To Mattie’s surprise, Minna didn’t scream, she only grunted. She’d forgotten how high a tolerance for pain that woman had. 

The Everykid was barely able to keep them aloft, so they still crashed into the ground, kicking up a copious amount of dust and smashing a large bush. 

Mattie picked some sticks out of her mane. “Ow…”

Minna limped to her feet. “What attacked us…?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Mattie mumbled, rubbing her head. “Well, actually, a bunch of those Aspect robots, it looks like…”

“Uh-oh…” the Everykid said, backing into Mattie. Turning around, the unicorn and the woman saw two of the robots standing before them: Space and Time. Space was rigid and completely motionless. Time, on the other hand, was quivering with rage. 

“I have been waiting… a long, long time for this…” Time curled its hands into fists. “You will know what it means to hurt.”

Mattie folded her ears back. “…Balls.”


VI – The Will of the Moment


Onion stood on the temple balcony overlooking the City of the Moon. 

She knew a lot of the fighting was happening on the surface of Nucleon or would be taken there very quickly, but right now, she could see the action. There, Heart was lashing out against Pinkie and Trixie. At the docks, Blood was keeping Vriska and Starbeat very occupied. The explosions of Corona and Eve attacking Doom in the sky were also visible, looking not unlike fireworks.

Beautiful, Onion thought. It’s all coming together.

“WHAT DID YOU DO, ONION!?”

Onion froze at the sound of Pringle’s voice. 

“ANSWER ME!”

Onion didn’t turn around. 

“ONION!” 

“Pringle, stop,” Jang said. “Onion hasn’t done anything.”

How did I not hear them come up here?

“Are you serious!?” The anger sounded so alien coming out of Pringle’s mouth. “She was just talking about what we’d do when they come back! That was her! She knew this was coming, how can you not see it?”

“Because Onion isn’t a bad person.”

Jang, you’re right. You’re wrong that it’s bad to do this. This is what needs to happen. “Thank you, Jang.”

“I’m not fooled,” Pringle hissed. “I’m on to you, Onion!”

“How can you say that!?” Onion shouted, sure to play up her anger. “Me? Attack our city?” The moment they actually attack the citizens, I deactivate them. They know this. They have their targets. “How would I even do this?”

“These are the same robots in the legends.”

“Those legends I hate!”

“You know them better than any of us! You stew over them day in and day out! You… You hate what they stand for! And not even for some silly philosophical reason like Joanne, you just… hate them! I…” Tears appeared in her eyes. “I don’t understand why. But you do.”

Onion turned away. “Great. One of my best friends thinks I’m the villain. Brilliant. Some friend you are.”

“I could say the same!” Pringle hissed. 

“Pringle, I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Jang said, pushing her back. “But this is not how friends act.”

“I… Ergh… MMM…” Pringle threw her hooves up the air. “Fine! But when she turns out to be behind this, don’t come crying to ME!” She ran away, bawling. 

Jang sighed. “I’m sorry, I…”

“Don’t be,” Onion told Jang. “She’s the one who made this mistake. I bet that ‘auntie Pinkie’ got into her head…”

“I’ll go talk to her.”

“You do that,” Onion breathed. 

When he was gone, she entered the temple. 

It was time to prepare for the second phase of the plan. 


~~~


Nanoha teleported O’Neill and herself to the surface of Nucleon. All she had to do to block the incoming gust of wind was raise a hand. 

O’Neill attempted—and failed—to take a cool, manly pose like Jotaro regularly did. He still summoned Crimson Sushi and scrambled the perceptions of the Breath machine. 

“I am free of your confusion,” the robot declared, glowing a brighter blue. “I am free of everything. Isn’t Breath such an interesting power?”

O’Neill slapped it with Crimson Sushi. “You free of a fish to the face?”

The robot rubbed its chin. “If I saw it coming… yes. I am free of all. Free of your pathetic little war games! Free of the multiverse’s chains!” It readily dodged a series of magic missiles from Nanoha. “You really managed to nab a lovely prize, O’Neill. I might just have to take her for myself…”

Nanoha twitched. “You’re welcome to try.” 

“I have every intention of doing so, my dear, but first… O’Neill! Is that a beard? I would suggest you were stealing my look, but that rat attached to your face is far too tangled to compare to mine.”

“You don’t even have a face, what are you talking about!?” O’Neill shouted. 

“Confused? Good.” The breath robot surged forward, whirlwinds flying in all directions. “Die with that uncertainty.”

Nanoha encased it in telekinesis, ramming it into the ground. It, unfortunately, became nothing more than gusts of wind. “Breath is so difficult to combat,” Nanoha muttered.

“Can he just say he’s free from all damage?” O’Neill asked.

“I doubt it, but he can avoid anything if he puts his mind to it.” She lifted her scepter into the air. “Good thing he can’t really hurt us either. Breath is not a very offensive Aspect.”

The Breath robot twitched. “Not offensive? My dear… that’s overconfidence speaking.” He created a drill out of wind and drove it at Nanoha. 

She snapped her fingers, canceling the wind to a dead calm. 

“Not very offensive compared to me.” She lifted Raising Heart into the air. “And since we’re near that Temple… I don’t have to worry about running out of magic. Ka-structures are so helpful.” 

“You’ve made a miscalculation, Broken Wind,” O’Neill added.

The robot pointed a finger at O’Neill. “You think you’re mighty cleve—”

“Million missiles!” Nanoha shouted, generating a million magic missiles around her. “Dodge all of these.”

The robot tensed in uncertainty. 

“That’s what I like to see,” O’Neill chuckled. 


~~~


The Heart machine grabbed Trixie’s soul. “Your life and all its experiences are dust in the wind…”

“I… didn’t… get… dusted!” Trixie threw a smoke bomb in the Heart machine’s face. This did absolutely nothing, since it could still see her soul through the smoke. It continued pulling, trying its hardest to end her life. 

Unfortunately for it, Pinkie existed, and Pinkie had a hammer that could hit with the impact force of a small rocket. The air between the hammer’s face and the robot ignited into a plasma explosion, sending the robot into a distant wall, snapping one of its arms. 

“I… think… it still has me…” Trixie breathed, clutching her chest. “I…”

Pinkie tapped into the Element of Laughter, shielding Trixie with her own positive energy. “Don’t worry, Trixie, it’ll be fine! She’s just another bad guy on a long list. And we’ll defeat her… with smiles on our faces!”

Trixie perked up slightly. “…What about that thing makes you think it’s a she?”

Pinkie winked. “Good guesses.” 

The Heart machine rose to its full height, holding out a hand. Heart blades akin to Allure’s lashed out. Trixie couldn’t see them—but Pinkie could, and she dragged Trixie through them with a complex series of jumping maneuvers. 

“What are the weaknesses of… Heart?” Trixie asked. “Allure had it, we’ve got to know something…”

“The opposite of Heart is Mind, the two could cancel. But we don’t have a Mind player. Or another Heart player.” She jumped over an invisible hatchet. “I do know laughter doesn’t hurt the Heart, it just makes it stronger, sooooo…”

“You’re also Space! Do something Spacey!”

Pinkie and Trixie were suddenly on top of the Force Temple. “Like this?”

“Yes, this’ll do.” 

“She’ll catch up to us.”

“We can still look for some help! Or something!”

They saw Corona and Eve attack the Doom robot above, sending a massive explosion out in every direction. 

“Okay, everyone’s a little busy. We’ve still got to have options.”

The Heart machine jumped into the air, flying at them so quickly the hands started burning, although even the damaged one remained solid. 

“My suggestion is to run until one of the others can help us.” Pinkie grabbed Trixie and jumped off the temple. “WHEEEEEEE!”

“AAAAAAAAAAA!” Trixie screamed.

“AAAAAAAAAAGH∂ˆ´∂ˆ´∂ˆ´∂ˆ´!” The Heart machine roared, voice garbling unintelligibly.


~~~


Jenny punched the Life robot in the face. It punched her in the face. Both of them lost their heads and regrew them a moment later: Jenny through the act of reforming bone and tissue from the ground up, the machine by creating meat and plant material from nothing to forcibly re-attach the pearly head. 

They both performed a roundhouse kick, hitting the other in the chest and falling back. They sprung back onto their feet and punched forward: Jenny charging with magical energy while the Life robot infused its fist with a biohazard. Both lost a good chunk of their sides and repaired them immediately afterward. 

“Stop copying me!” they both shouted at the same time. 

“No, you stop copying me!”

“Stop it!”

“I SAID STOP IT!”

They both punched each other in the mouth—or where the mouth should have been. Jenny was muted as hers regenerated, but the robot’s speaker still worked. “Hah. I’m superior!”

“You’re a synthetic knockoff.” Jenny teleported behind her and kicked. “You’re just Life, aren’t you? No extra magic…” She snapped her fingers, sending a series of magic missiles at the robot. “Just a dominion over life.” 

“Like you’re better?”

“I can teleport to those planets in the sky up there! What can you do?”

The Life robot created a plant monster the size of a small skyscraper, face riddled with bloody teeth. 

“Oh,” Jenny blinked. “That’s pretty cool, actually, how d—”

The plant moved faster than Jenny could see, eating her whole. 

Inside the plant, Jenny cast explosion at the end of her fist, burning the plant to cinders. 

“Congratulations, you escaped a plant’s stomach!” the robot chided.

“Congratulations, you have shown the capacity for sarcasm! So close to sapience.”

“Congratulations, you are a robot racist!”

“Thank you!” Jenny jumped the robot again. The robot raised a wall of wood that Jenny smashed her face into. “Ow…”

“Please, you can ignore all the pain you w—” Jenny cast an electric shock that knocked the robot back, jittering painfully. 

“How’s that for pain?” Jenny snarked, grinning until she felt an uncomfortable sensation in her feet. They had grown mushrooms. She facepalmed. “This isn’t going to go anywhere for a while, is it?”

“Probably not, but I’m having fun,” the Life robot admitted.

“Eh. Good point.” Jenny punched the mushrooms off her feet and flipped into the air…


~~~


The power of Light is related to both fortune and knowledge. If there were ever a being that had access to both aspects at once in equal quantity, they would find an… interesting set of abilities open up to them. 

This was the case for the Light robot, which focused itself on Flutterfree and Discord. It knew with exact certainty how likely it was to achieve outright victory, admittedly pretty low. But it also knew that it could adjust the probabilities of said victory with its powers, flopping the chances. But the Tower influenced the chances through ka, making this flipping inverted by a precise constant that the Light robot also knew. 

It knew none of its courses of action guaranteed victory, but also none of its courses of action guaranteed failure. By standard metrics, the highest success chance was to increase its own “luck” to absurd levels so that they couldn’t touch it no matter what chaos magic Discord cooked up. However, taking into account ka, the highest hubris has the highest retaliation. Even in this era of lower ka, they were next to the temple, so it balanced out. Thus, the actual highest chance of victory was the middle. 

Playing another round of you-would-know-that-I-would-know with the Tower, the Light robot chose a random course of action between the standard 60th and 80th percentile success rate and committed to it. 

It was delighted to discover that this course of action involved a lot of smack talking. 

It surrounded itself in a minor fortune field and increased its awareness of all events before belting out an insult. “Finally decided you weren’t too good for another person, Flutterfree?”

“…Do I know you?”

“Yes!” It jumped behind them, suddenly wielding a sword. “Naturally, this isn’t what I really look like, but at least I’m still me. Look at you, all happy and enslaved to each other. I thought you were Flutterfree?”

Discord raised a claw and encased the Light robot in gelatin. “Amazing. Every word of what you just said… was wrong.”

Flutterfree snickered. “That’s Burger’s job!”

“Little more than a mime,” the robot retorted. “Discord, lord of Chaos, relegated to what, a sad little snake? Forced into a religion?”

Discord grabbed it and snarled. “She didn’t force me.”

“Oh, I’m not saying by her, darling. I’m saying you forced yourself to twist your very core being just because you wanted something. Is that really goo—”

Flutterfree’s Rage activated, skewering the light robot in the chest. “Even if that was true when we started… it’s been over twenty years. We have both grown beyond the reach of your petty insults.”

Discord put a hat on the robot. “Toodeloo!”

“You secretly resent and doubt each other for what you started that day!” 

“That’s not true,” Flutterfree said, pumping rage into the robot. “We don’t keep it secret from each other at all. We share our doubts and our concerns. You… You have so much inside you… you…” Her eyes opened in recognition as the Rage and Lolo revealed what was inside the light robot. “How…?”

“The same way as this!” It was in such close quarters she could hack Flutterfree’s head off with one fell swoop. 

Flutterfree severed the robot’s head with a flash of speed from the Element of Kindness.

What…? the Light robot thought as its higher processes began to fail. Flutterfree… Flutterfree doesn’t have that in her… she’s not… a killer... 

The Light showed it that, indeed, Flutterfree had that capacity. The robot had just failed to believe such an observation in its excitement. 

The field of luck began to sew the robot back together, but Discord was not about to let that happen. An anvil the size of a house smashed into the machine of Light, disintegrating it completely. 


~~~


Vriska, Starbeat, Ahsoka, Troi, and Tessa were busy taking on the Blood-controlled army of the Blood robot. This wasn’t too hard – all three of the Force-users knew how to lull the weaker-willed into a sleeping state, and since all of them were already zombified by the Blood robot, it was pathetically easy. 

Vriska and Starbeat were on defense while the other three made people pass out left and right. 

“This reminds me way too much of those zombie horde worlds,” Vriska muttered, draining the luck from several people so their lightsabers spontaneously stopped working. “Just an army of mindless munchkins…”

“Destroy the robot, stop the zombies,” Starbeat deduced. “…Wanna try it?”

“I can take over defense,” Tessa said, spreading her lightsabers out. “Go. We can handle this.”

Starbeat teleported herself and Vriska behind the Blood robot. Vriska rolled the infinite-sided die, getting a massive explosion. 

The Blood robot remained unharmed, subsisting off the energy of those it had connected with. 

Vriska shrugged. “Well, there goes that.” She activated her luck absorption. “Let’s see if I can cause a hard drive failure…”

It pointed a hand at both of them, and instantly they felt frozen. A physical bond formed between Starbeat and Vriska’s souls, drawing not on the friendship they now had, but the hatred that had once existed in the past. The immense pain tortured their very core, dropping them both to their knees.

“What… even…” Vriska growled, forcing herself to her feet. “You… fucking…”

The Blood robot punched her in the face. “A weakness was detected and exploited.” It kicked Starbeat in the horn, knocking her over. It lifted a fist, going right for the stomach. 

It would have killed them both without prejudice, tricking Vriska into taking a hit for Starbeat to trigger a Heroic death. 

Unfortunately for it, a trapdoor opened up in the floor, swallowing it, Vriska, and Starbeat.

The people stopped being zombies in an instant. 

“Where… where did they go?” Ahsoka asked. 


~~~


Roland and Monika stood back to back, lightsaber and revolver pointed directly ahead of them. They could see nothing, but Monika could sense the character of Void moving around. She didn’t waste time looking at any finer details—just location. Always location.

“One-twenty,” Monika called. Roland shot a bullet, grazing the Void and forcing it to appear once more. Monika attempted to lunge at it with her lightsaber, grabbing onto it with the force… but it slipped away into nothing once more. 

Next, it tried to attack, but Monika twisted its arm with the Force before it could land a hit. It dissipated before any further damage could be done. 

“This is getting us nowhere,” Roland said. “I request a duel to end this pointless game.”

“A duel?” the Void robot appeared a fair way in the distance, hands on its hips. “Why would I engage in the acts of you lower lifeforms?”

“You appear to be fighting us like we would,” Monika commented. 

“It’s this infernal body that limits me! You know what I’m capable of… You’ve seen it. You’ve faced it.”

“Are we supposed to know you?” Monika cocked her head. 

“You’re just… hopeless! I can’t stand this!” It vanished again. 

“Sooo… back to a stalemate?” 

“Looks like it,” Roland grunted. 

“I don’t believe this Void machine understands the inherent problem with stalemates.”

Roland didn’t say anything, but Monika knew he was curious. “Nobody wins.” 


~~~


Mlinx’s spear met the Hope machine’s scepter. Mlinx pushed with all his might, forcing the Hope’s footing to give way.

“You have grown stronger,” it said. 

“Since when?” Mlinx twirled around, grabbing hold of the machine’s torso with his two free arms. 

“It is not surprising you do not recognize me, but still disappointing.” It twisted its scepter around its back and hit Mlinx in the side of the arm. Mlinx held fast, pushing the machine to the ground. “Quite the grip, soft shell.”

Mlinx’s eyes widened. “How—”

The robot kicked Mlinx in the chest, tossing him to the side. “Letting a warrior get the upper hand through emotional manipulation. I heard you ended up the mayor of a large city. You think that would have been one thing you worked out of your system.” 

Mlinx pointed his spear at the robot, trembling. “There’s… it’s impossible… I…”

“Terror is unbecoming of a warrior.”

“I’m not a warrior.” 

“Clearly.” The robot lunged forward, cracking Mlinx’s shell in two places and drawing blue blood. “I’m not even using these delightful new Hope powers of mine. This is nothing but pure skill…”

“Strength… isn’t… everything…”

“Perhaps not… in other situations.” The robot smacked Mlinx across the face, knocking him down. “But in this one, it is all that matters.”

Mlinx grabbed the robot’s arm with all of his hands, pulling with all his might. To both of their surprise, the robot’s arm separated from the rest of its body. Mlinx didn’t let his surprise create an opening this time—he rushed forward, punching the robot with its own fist. 

The robot chuckled. “That’s more like it, Mlinx! Remember your training!”

“I have worked my whole life to forget your training!” 

The robot that was somehow also Siron laughed. “You finally learned. It’s almost a shame…” He jumped behind Mlinx, taking his feet out from under him. Mlinx grabbed for Siron’s legs, but this was part of the plan. Siron skidded a leg sideways and smacked Mlinx in the head with the scepter once more. 

Mlinx went limp. 

“She wants me to kill you,” Siron said, not knowing if Mlinx could hear. “But you have proven yourself as a warrior after all this time. I always knew you had the potential… you are the last demon. In this New World, I cannot think of one better to carry on our legacy. Aside from myself, of course…” Siron chuckled. “If only I weren’t an abomination.” 

He walked away, looking for another worthy opponent. Pidge remained untouched, laying behind a piece of rubble. 


~~~


“Joanne, run,” Rev said, taking up a position between her and the Rage robot. 

Joanne didn’t run. She just smirked. 

“Looks like she’s not going anywhere…” Burgerbelle sighed.

“She’s one of mine,” Jotaro said. “Can’t really expect her to.”

“You don’t own me,” Joanne hissed, refusing to look up from her phone. 

“Four on one… the odds are in your favor.” The Rage robot clapped his hands together. “You would think that… but they are not. See, if you will, the truth of your situation.”

The Rage wafted off him, getting in all their heads instantly. 

“Rage is a very nebulous and difficult power to master… the most direct forms are all attacks.” It formed a massive bear claw around one of his hands out of the purple substance, waving it in the air. “Others involve seeing truth or revelation… forcing understanding.” He pointed the claws at all of them, pulsating like a demon from beyond the grave as the fur covered his body. “I am Skarn the Shaper, born anew, and I believe it’s time for a rematch.” He appeared as a purple bear with the robot merely a skeleton. 

Rev and Burgerbelle started shaking uncontrollably. The Joestars remained as they were. 

“The truth is in your minds of how hopeless this situation is… and you stand strong. Your family is one of the most honorable and heroic the multiverse knew. Know this: I am only tasked with killing the three labeled ‘heroes’. The young girl will go free at the end. I give you my word.”

“Not very smart, bounding yourself by honor,” Joanne muttered. 

“It is what keeps me from falling into the same folly as some of my… colleagues.” He spread his arms wide. “It gives me something more. An art to my life. Most ‘villains’ seek some goal or a physical, worldly object… I do not. I seek art. And I have come to understand my prior death as art in and of itself…” He pointed a claw at Jotaro. “And the beautiful frame of the Tower has provided an encore.”

“You want an encore?” Jotaro adjusted his hat and let out a sharp grunt. “You’ll be honor-bound the same way you were last time.”

“There will be no death until the final defeat,” Skarn agreed. “As before, and as always. I commit to the truth with my Rage.” 

“Jotaro, no,” Rev said. “He… he can kill us all in an instant. Rage is the most deadly Aspect, not Doom. Doom has caveats, Doom has rules. Rage is just… brutal.”

“He makes his own rules,” Jotaro said. “This is his arena. We do not have a choice in the terms.”

“Smarter than you look,” Skarn grinned. “Amazing how I am weaker now… but this power makes you so, so much more afraid. Let us begin.”

Rev let out a breath, prepared to fight despite her fear. 

“STAR PLATINUM: THE WORLD!”

“I pray the Lord my soul to keep…”

The next instant, Skarn, Rev, and Jotaro were all on the ground. There were several craters in the sidewalk, a burnt cross impression on a nearby building, and several lacerations over Jotaro’s body. Rev seemed unharmed, though she wasn't moving. 

Skarn stood up, choosing to ignore the truth of his injury. He turned to Burgerbelle. “Living art… confined to a shell of pure mortality. This world, beautiful though it is, limits the tools we can put to our canvases.”

Burgerbelle smiled nervously. “Heheh…”

“What will you throw at me? An instant death meme? Some sort of cosmic joke to throw me? Something simple, but surprisingly effective?” He leaned in. “You know none of it will work.”

“No u,” Burgerbelle said, lifting up a reverse uno card. 

Skarn grinned. “I haven’t attacked yet.”

He punched himself. Burgerbelle took the damage, flying into a nearby wall. Before she could move further, Skarn overwhelmed her with Rage, burning away much of her skin. Without Flat physiology, she succumbed to his assault. 

“They have fallen,” Skarn said, turning to Joanne. “And what of you?”

Joanne put down her phone. Skarn felt the weight of this motion flow through his Rage. He lifted up shields. 

Joanne folded her hands together and smiled sweetly. “Lightbulb Sun?” Her Stand listened to her call, appearing behind her as a massive lightbulb with nine electric wires hanging from the bottom. “You’ve seen enough of his power. Absorb it.” 

Lightbulb Sun slapped Skarn across the face with a wire moving so quickly he didn’t even see it until after it hit him. Within an instant, he felt the Rage vanish from him completely. He became… a normal, spindly robot with no special Aspect powers. 

“Just like last time…” he said, chuckling. “Brought low… by myself. Bravo.” 

Joanne grabbed the base of Lightbulb Sun with her hands and pointed it at Skarn. “Release.” 

“I welcome it, this time.” 

A beam of solar energy shot out of the top of the Stand, vaporizing Skarn the machine entirely. 


~~~


“You did this to ME!” the Doom robot shouted. 

“How?” Eve asked. “Why? What did we do last time we were here?”

“Dense, dense, but me…” the robot activated the Doom of a nearby cloud, making it spontaneously implode and blast Corona and Eve with a shockwave. “You don’t deserve my head…”

“I feel like it needs help…” Eve said, frowning. “How can we…?”

Corona removed her glove. “Like this.”

“DON’T YOU DARE!” the Doom robot shouted. “You will regret it!” 

“Possibly,” Corona admitted. “Don’t particularly care right now.”

She teleported behind the robot. Instead of trying to run away, it punched Corona in the hand, making the connection solid. 

Corona was in the robot’s mind…

It was a terrible, terrible mind. Memories flashed by in disjointed, conflicting bits and pieces that gave her little more than colors and screamed voices. There was a lot of gunfire, death, and magic lasers. 

The screams sounded a lot like her, but she wasn’t screaming. She was too confused to scream. 

She’d been in insane, broken, even eldritch minds before—but this was something else. It was as if this mind was at war with itself in a way even split personality wasn’t. It…

“Do you see?” two voices spoke to her at once. Suddenly, she could see herself and Eve standing in front of her. But they were shells – their eyes were empty and led into a hollow interior. “Do you understand?”

“You’re… us?” Corona cocked her head. “How?”

“You are the villains of your own story.” The other Eve raised a hoof while the Corona raised a hand. “The Doom could not choose between you two. So it chose me.” Both shells’ faces twisted into anger. “Two opposing forces shoved into the same body with the hatred of the height of the war… just enough understanding not to kill ourselves. Just enough… too much. Too much.” 

Suddenly, Corona was in complete darkness. She realized with some disdain that, while the robot certainly didn’t have her powers, it had her experience, and would probably be one of the hardest minds to deal with. 

“Why did you fight?” the voices echoed. 

“Because I had to!” 

“LIES!” both shrieked. “YOU COULD HAVE BACKED OFF! YOU COULD HAVE ERASED YOUR MIND! YOU COULD HAVE DONE IT SECRETLY!”

“That wouldn’t have been right!”

“RIGHT? RIGHT?” Corona was grabbed by hands that were hers, but not. “Look what your right has done to us. Look what it did to you.”

“Eve and I are friends, good friends, again.” Corona turned and extended a hand to the shells. “We can be yours. We can teach you to live with yourself.”

“I am friendship and empathy, and I broke.” The shells looked like they were crying, though they didn’t have eyes. “It is impossible. We are not just you, we are also Doom. All Doom. We absorb it into ourselves…”

“An entity of pure Doom…?” Corona shook her head. “I… how was such a thing even possible?”

“Temporary by design. Time is short. Always is. Life is… funny.” The shells cocked their heads. “We must act in our time. I must act in our time. You are this pain… you must end so the suffering will cease.”

“Killing us won’t stop your suffering.”

“You won’t bring suffering to the world anymore.” The shells looked to the sky. “Onion is so broken.”

“Who?”

“She hates us. We are the worst of them. We are the heroes she wants to suffer. We…. I…” The rage returned to their faces. “You stall!”

“I want to understand you!” Corona called. “I want to help you!”

“Help me… and help no others ever again.”

Corona tensed. “I can’t do that.”

“You think I was giving you a choice!?”

Corona tried to leave. The part of her within the Doom forced her to stay. “No, we fight here. No fancy magic, no weird Doom-play. Your mind versus your mind! There is nothing else! It really is like our life.” 

“What about Eve?” Corona asked. “She’s you too! What does she have to say to herself?”

“You think it is any different?” The husks seemed confused. “It is the same. She is as much to blame as you are.”

“I sent that message!”

“She let you send it. You decided together to bring about the end, one way or another. And I am the result.” The husks sneered. “You die first. Then h—”

Eve cut the robot in half. Corona screamed as part of her mind was lost within the folds of the robot.

“I—I’m sorry!” Eve shouted. “Neither of you were moving and I couldn’t get in mentally, h—”

“It’s… fine…” Corona said, holding her head. “…That thing was us. Both of us.”

“…I sensed it, while you were both stuck there. The worst of ourselves…”

“It shouldn’t have been like that. Even in the war, we were… agreeable. It… it hated itself.”

“We are next to the Temple…” Eve turned to look at the gray pyramid. “It may have used what our people saw us to be, just as it did all those years ago.”

“…We need to fix this.”

“I’d love to. What do we need to fix again?”

Corona frowned. “I don’t know. Something.”


~~~


Mattie, Minna, and the Everykid stood with both the robots of Space and Time before them. 

“Aight,” Mattie said. “I’ve about had it with all the other fights at this point, I’ve seen enough of a pattern to deduce what’s going on.”

“Do tell…” the Time machine said, holding up a hand to keep the Space one from moving. 

“Pretty clearly every one of you robots is a past villain or force of evil or something. Skarn, Siron, and a myriad of others I think I’m pretty good at guessing but I’m not wasting bloody minutes explaining my guesses for them. One for each arc in Songs of the Spheres, right? Makes me think that the mindless Space hunk is English.”

“Correct,” the Time robot said, hands behind its back. “The reconstruction of his mind picked up from his self at the end of his journey. A soulless husk of nothing. He only acts because compulsions are placed in his mind.”

“So the question remains… who are you?” Mattie scratched her chin. “I don’t think the last arc could be said to have a villain aside from the Tower itself, and you aren’t snarky enough to be the Emissary.”

“I am not surprised you don’t recognize me… but I am furious.” Time was suddenly next to Mattie and kicked her in the side. 

Nobody remembered what happened, but Minna somehow tore Time’s arm off with her teeth and spat it on the ground. 

“What…?” the Time robot seemed baffled. 

“I have been living as an orphanage matron for over twenty years. I am out of practice…” She pressed her hands together and cracked her knuckles. “But I am still one of Brell’s freaky soldiers. You don’t know half the things I can do.”

“English, focus on her.”

English charged, teleporting behind her. She dodged his attack effortlessly and blanked his memory, tripping him and knocking him to the ground. 

“English, enter frenzy mode. Do not stop until contact is made.”

It no longer mattered that Minna was clearing English’s memory, he would keep punching with a flurry of fists. She had to focus on dodging, which was a little difficult considering he could teleport everywhere and bend space itself to his whim. But he acted like a mindless robot—predictably. She managed to weave in and out with precision. 

“Useless…” the Time robot seethed. “If you want something done…”

“Focus on your backside,” Mattie declared, unfurling a whip on the robot. 

“You think pain whips will do anything to me!?”

“No, but it seems you’re really angry, so if I talk a bit to get you riled up, you might miss—“

The Everykid threw a bomb into the robot’s face. 

“—that,” Mattie giggled. 

The next thing Mattie knew, the Everykid was on the ground, bleeding. The Time robot had a fist poised to deliver the killing blow. 

“HELL NO,” Mattie teleported herself in front of the Everykid and took the hit herself. 

“…She means that much to you?” the robot asked as its fist embedded itself into Mattie’s shoulder.

“No, dear, I’m just a masochist, it’s always an experience to have a new fist rammed inside me.” 

For some reason, this set the time robot off. It pulled its fist back and punched right onto Mattie’s horn, cracking it down the middle. 

Mattie winced prior to letting out a pleased sigh. “Haven’t felt that one in a while…” 

“You are a freak of nature! You… bitch! I can’t believe…” the Time robot got ahold of itself. “You know what, this isn’t the place.” It kicked Mattie in the back of the head, knocking her out. “We’re going to have a talk, you and I... about everything you’ve done…”

It was at this point Minna figured it out. “…It can’t be…”

“Great detective work, but you had an advantage,” the Time robot declared. “Of course, you’re the last one standing, now…” Both the Time robot and English jumped Minna. She was barely holding her own against English—she went down much like Mattie. 

The Time robot dusted off its hands. “Now… where’s that kid. I don’t see any reason not to end her and her smug face right now…”

The Everykid was nowhere to be seen. 

“I don’t like that. Something’s gone wrong. English, be on the lookout for anything suspicious. Even if we blink through time, there’s no telling what tricks they have up their sleeve.”


~~~


Onion entered the core of the Force Temple with all her equipment, ready to begin work. The robots had already been through here, they would have taken care of any guards. Ever since she had activated the Rage robot for Skarn all those years ago, it had always been pathetically easy to move in and out of places. Onion was their master, and with time she had restored all twelve of them from the ground up. It had taken a lot of work analyzing the Force spark and finding people who signified the twelve Aspects, but she’d done it. And she controlled every last one of them absolutely. 

So she was absolutely shocked when she saw the Mind robot standing at the central altar, looking right at the Force spark. 

“What are you doing here!?” Onion demanded. “You should be out there, fighting them!”

“I’m not out there because I don’t believe in petty revenge.” 

“Get out there before I deactivate you!”

“I disabled that.” It turned to Onion. “You do not control me, and I do not agree with your mission.”

“You’re the Collector!” Onion shrieked. “They destroyed what you had built! They killed you!”

“That was part of my plan,” the Collector said, refusing to look away from the Force spark. “I intended from the very beginning to set myself up as a villain so I could be defeated, and that the heroes I collected together would continue helping the multiverse long after I was gone. Such a shame the multiverse ended so shortly after…” he sighed. “I was never against the heroes. I wanted them to win until my own fragile humanity took over.” 

“That’s… not how they tell the legend…”

“Legends are better told with clear-cut villains and epic defeats. If you had read Mind, perhaps you would have seen what I actually was… and seen this coming.” He pressed his hands together. “You cannot convince me to take part in this revenge. I was never with you. You may have been able to convince Nettle and the abomination that was Corona and Eve that it was the heroes’ fault they were like this, but I know better. It’s your fault. All of this… it is your fault.” He looked at her with that featureless face of his. “Considering what inhabits the Time robot, how could you have ever believed otherwise?”

Onion growled. “You cannot hurt me. You may be able to disable the self-destruct, but my spirit controls all of you.”

“You are correct. I cannot harm you with my own powers. Luckily, I am a mastermind that’s capable of covering every exit. I have been planning this for quite some time, Onion, and as anyone who has faced me will tell you, I’m good at plans.”

As if on cue, a trap door opened in the ceiling, depositing Vriska, Starbeat, and the Blood robot in the ground. Immediately, the Collector pointed a finger at the Blood robot and fried its mind. It was not dead, but it couldn’t consciously do anything anymore—allowing Vriska to lash out and smash it with her sword. “F-fuck…”

Onion took a few steps back. “No…”

“Your pale shadow of the Combine has fallen,” the Collector declared. “And now there are two people in this room who can hurt you.”

Starbeat blinked. “That… earth pony? She’s responsible for this? But… why? I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

“Oh, you have…” Onion growled. 

“Before you face her… I have a question.” The Collector turned to Starbeat. “What happened to Lightning?”

Starbeat blinked, eyes widening in shock as her goggles picked up on what he was. “C-colle—”

“I am but a mental copy, though in a way I am him. I am your ally in this fight. Please, what happened to her?”

“She’s… she’s dead,” Starbeat breathed. 

“Did she die a hero?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s all I needed to know.” He turned to face Onion. “You are nothing to them. Surrender, deactivate the other robots, end this pointless carnage.” 

Vriska readied her fluorite octet and Starbeat lit her horn. 

“Don’t do it, kid,” Vriska warned. 

Onion’s scowl deepened. “I… It’s not fair… you can’t always win!”

“Kid, that’s what we do. That’s why we are what we are. We win.” Her face softened as she remembered an encounter with a mysterious Watchmaker. “…When it really matters.”

“I… why can’t you be shown your place!?” Onion rammed her hoof into the ground and shrieked. “I have a ka-temple! I should be able to…”

English and the Time robot jumped out from behind Onion, charging the Collector. 

“Like I didn’t plan for this.” The Collector held out a hand, controlling English’s pathetic, empty mind. The Collector prepared to take a minor beating through the Time robot’s powers, but he was strong enough to withstand it.

He was not strong enough to withstand Onion’s lightsaber cutting him in half. 

The Collector fell to the ground, shocked. “…How?”

“You’re not a Mary Sue anymore,” Onion spat. “You’re just my robot. Your plans aren’t automatically perfect.”

The Time robot crushed The Collector’s head under its foot. “And you betrayed that purpose…”

Vriska shrugged. “Not sad to see him go. Now… how about a troll and a unicorn versus Space, Time, and a poor lost filly?”

The Time robot lifted a hand. “Show them our prisoners.” English obeyed, using his powers to grow the previously-microscopic Minna and Mattie to normal size, dropping them on the ground. The Time robot placed a foot on Mattie and pushed. “Stand down or they die.”

“You’re not going to do it,” Starbeat declared, narrowing her eyes. “You want her to die, but you want to do something else first.” 

“To be fair, that’s just because I’m not sure I can kill you without some kind of plot armor kicking in,” Onion said, trotting over to the central altar. “But with this… I definitely can. All I need to do is set it up…” 

“What…?” Mattie opened her eyes. “I… wh… I could have sworn…”

“Hello,” Onion said, addressing Mattie with far more hatred and venom than she’d had at any other point. “Get up, slut.”

Mattie opened her eyes groggily. “…You look exactly like one of my daughters.”

Onion twitched. “I wonder why that would be, mother.”

Mattie shot bolt upright. “C-circlet!?”

“I will never use the name you gave me!” Onion spat. “I. Am. Onion. And I am going to make you suffer.”

Mattie sighed. “Good luck with that…”

“I am well aware of your… disgusting condition.” She walked to the altar and took out some of her tools. “So we’re going to do something else…”


~~~


“Stop running!” the Heart robot screeched, lashing out by punching into a nearby wall. “You drove yourself into my planet before, why are you running now!?”

“Lack of preparation!” Pinkie called back, still bouncing forward with Trixie in her hooves. 

“It’s got a bee in its bonnet about something… what’s she on about?”

“I think she’s Majora,” Pinkie said, jumping off a trampoline and into the air, dodging another spirit blade. 

“What?! Why aren’t we dead!?”

“It’s just her mind, or a copy of it, or something.” Pinkie jumped behind a pot and appeared behind Majora, smacking her on the head with a golf club. Trixie, to her credit, got off a magic laser, not that it did anything. 

“You fools… I will devour your souls and use your flesh to fuel the fire of my rebirth!”

“Pretty sure you can’t be reborn in the New World,” Trixie commented with a smirk. “Hope you like being a robot!”

The Element of Laughter flashed, protecting them from another wave of spirit blades. 

“Can we mock her more? Get more power?”

Pinkie grinned. “Oh, yes!”

“It won’t be enough.” The Hope robot appeared, scepter in his hand. “And now you won’t even be able to run.”

Pinkie’s smile didn’t falter. “Hi, Siron. I don’t suppose you’d consider reforming and help us now, would you?”

“I have never considered your idea of reformation anything more than a disgusting crime against nature.” 

“Ah. It was worth a shot.” 

Siron surrounded his body with the energy of Hope. He was the paladin now, the savior—how could he lose when he had all the drive in the world to succeed?

He and Majora lashed out. Pinkie tried to dodge—and failed. Majora’s attacks were useless, but the holy Hope of Siron cut her to the bone. Her vibrant blood sprayed out of her leg as she was sent flying, cracking a few ribs on a street light. 

Trixie’s smile vanished instantly. “L-let’s talk about this…”

Siron twirled his scepter. “No.” He brought it down on her head. 

Discord caught it with a giant spring. “No!” He laughed, turning the Hope scepter into a cockatoo. “How about you go for someone your own size?”

Flutterfree spread her wings, her Rage spreading to Siron. “You can’t fight us.”

Siron shook his head, using his Hope to ignore the truth of Discord’s power. “Who cares about the odds? I ha—”

Corona and Eve teleported to the location, ice and fire brimming off them. This made Majora freeze in her tracks—too many enemies.

“Siron,” Eve said, eyes narrow. “It doesn’t have to end here. Not again.”

Siron grabbed his scepter.

“I will not give you the warrior’s death again.” 

He knew it was true. Not because of Flutterfree’s Rage—he was actively countering that—but through his inner being. She had given him what he wanted when they fought so long ago. Now? Now she was stronger, older, more experienced, and had the strength to take him out like the bug she thought he was. 

And she was still offering him her hoof. 

“Once you destroy the Tower, you’ll realize your weakness,” Siron spat. He tapped into his Hope, flashing like a flare gun. Everyone had to look away. 

When the light cleared, he and Majora were gone. 

“Did Siron just… FLEE?!” Trixie asked, holding tightly to Discord’s leg like he was her lifeline. 

“He did…” Corona frowned. “And I’m going to find out where he went…”


~~~


Jenny threw the Life robot far into the distance. By sheer luck, it hit the Void robot in the side, knocking them over.

“AUGH!” the Void robot shouted. “How… HOW DID YOU HIT ME!?”

“I guess you qualify as Life…”

Roland fired a bullet through the Life robot and the Void robot. The Void robot toppled backward, sparking uncontrollably. “F-freaking… mortal… body!” It exploded. 

The Life robot regenerated itself without issue. “…You just killed Nettle.”

“Nettle?” Jenny blinked. “That’s not Nettle! That’s some stupid robot!”

“The robots are images of our past foes,” Monika said, pointing her lightsaber at the Life robot. “If I had to guess… I’d say this one is you.”

“Really? Again with the evil twin thing!? …Though, that would explain a lot,” Jenny admitted. 

“Hey, listen to that, I’m an idiot!” Jenny-bot laughed. 

“What were you expecting?” Roland asked.

“HEY!” both Jennys shouted at once. 

“Maybe you can answer some questions…” Monika lifted Jenny-bot off the ground with the Force, glaring at her. “What is your mission?”

“To punch you until you stop moving, duh.” Jenny-bot created a massive vine with thorns and attacked Monika, only for her to cut it in two with her lightsaber. 

“Why?” Monika cocked her head. “Do be quick, we don’t have all day.” 

“You’ll have to pry that out of my cold, dead hands. Or head, as the case may be.” Jenny-bot struggled. “Good luck killing me!”

The Breath robot fell out of the sky, smashing into Jenny-bot. She regenerated easily. The Breath robot did not, struggling to stand on its damaged legs. “I… am the wind…”

“You’re annoyingly impossible to keep down!” O’Neill shouted after he and Nanoha teleported to the surface. 

“It’s tradition!” the Breath robot laughed. 

“That’s it, I’m convinced.” O’Neill pointed a finger. “That’s Ba’al, somehow.”

Nanoha prepared another volley of a million missiles. “He won’t last long.”

She was right. Roland shot him. He had no idea it was coming—his inner circuitry flew out like brain matter, covering the ground around him. 

“Huh,” Jenny-bot said. “I wonder if I’m the last one…”

O’Neill slapped her across the face with Crimson Sushi. “Let’s find out!”

“There’s no way you can kill me!”

“We don’t have to,” Roland said, lowering his gun. “…Imprison her.”

“That’s not going to be easy…”

Jenny laughed. “But it’ll be fun!”

“Frick.”


~~~


Siron and Majora ran into the core of the Temple. 

“…I sense that there’s a problem,” Onion grunted as she attached a few wires to the central altar. 

“They’re banding together in large groups,” Siron reported. “Too many for us to take.”

“Did either of you have any success?”

“I defeated Mlinx.”

Onion turned to Mattie, sneering. “Already one of your precious friends has fallen! H—”

“He’s not dead,” Mattie muttered. “I’d feel it. If I had to guess, I’d say Siron let him live out of respect.”

Onion’s sneer fell into a scowl. “…Unsurprising. But this...” She tapped the top of the console she’d attached to the altar. “This will give me what I need to do some real damage.”

“What happened to you?” Minna asked. “Why… why are you doing this to us?”

“Because my mother abandoned me at birth and the woman who raised me didn’t tell me who she was!” Onion pointed a hoof at Minna. “You could have, at any time, told me your story! Told me who you were! But no, I had to figure it out!”

“I’m sorry for not telling you, but you were so angry, even then!”

“You made it worse.” Onion pulled a lever, prompting the Force spark to flash a myriad of different colors. “That hellhole I grew up in…”

“I cared for you!” Minna shouted. “I gave you everything you needed, I helped you with your Force training, I—”

“You are a liar! You had too many children to watch out for, you couldn’t possibly be a mother to us all. But at least you were a better mother than… that masochistic marshmallow slut that probably has more kids than she knows how to count. Isn’t that right, Mattie!?”

“…It is…” Mattie admitted. 

“I bet you only have kids because it gives you some kind of perverse pleasure, because you certainly don’t raise us. You had me here and just up and abandoned me. You did this.” She gestured at the Time robot—a robot with her own mind inside of it. “You made me into this.”

“My child is the villain again…” Mattie chuckled bitterly. “If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.”

“This… this has happened before!?” Onion’s jaw hung open. “What is wrong with you?”

“A lot of things. Shall we go down the li—”

Corona, Eve, Fluttershy, Discord, Pinkie, and Trixie charged through the door. Siron, Majora, English, and the Onion-bot were ready to face them.

“Stop this, now,” Corona demanded. 

“No,” Onion said, pressing a button on the console. 

The Force spark turned black, coalescing ka-energy into a single point. Discord let out a scream as it lifted him into the air, crushing him on all sides. 

Onion hovered her hoof over another button. “A happy ending… I hate your happy endings. You just got to solve your relationship even after all that terror and… you all get to be happy while the rest of us wallow in our unimportant, meaningless lives! And that’s not going to change when the Tower’s gone. But while the Tower’s here… I can give you a taste of what we experience.” 

She locked eyes with Discord.

“I am going to kill you. And there’s not a thing they can do about it. Your plot armor is gone.” She turned to Flutterfree. “And you are going to feel it.”


VII – Generations to Come


“Onion, stop.”

Onion looked at the entrance only to get a phone to the face. 

Joanne walked in, Jotaro, Burgerbelle, and Rev behind her. Joanne scowled - no longer having a phone to look at. “Good. You’ve stopped.”

“Joanne, you know better than all the others why I’m doing this,” Onion said. 

“Yes. I do. I hate them too. Their stupid adherence to a single morality most of all. They think they have the right to say there is a good and evil, when there is no such thing. It’s a lie. And lies aren’t good or evil, I just hate them because they mess with what I like and what I see. They think there’s some sort of greater good they can devote themselves to, be it Harmony, friendship, God, or some other fleeting ideal that will have no support once the Tower falls.” She pressed her hands together. “But why does that mean we should kill them? What crime have they committed? Have they sought out our suffering like you’re doing right now?” 

Onion refused to move her hoof from the button—she couldn’t risk one of the heroes trying to jump her. She was a hair’s breadth away from pressing it, and even if they tried some weird manipulation, she would Force-push it. Discord was going to die, she was sure of it. She would do it. 

But her mind wouldn’t let her do it without hearing Joanne out. 

“The world won’t give them justice, so we have to,” Onion responded. 

“Justice? Like…” Joanne struggled to find the words. “Death for devoting their lives to us?”

“Death for making a mistake,” Onion growled. “Death for… for being immune to death. For living longer than they should. For… for controlling everything!”

“Really?”

“YES!” Onion shouted. “They deserve no less!”

“If that’s how you’ve defined your rules…” Joanne shrugged. “Then who am I to criticize?”

“Thank you.”

“But are you willing to give up your friends for this?” Joanne cocked her head to the side. “I will publicly shame you and drag you to a court, pressing for a death penalty. The others will not be as brutal, but they will hate you for their own reasons.”

“Pringle already hates me enough, Jang doesn’t even know.”

“They’re here. They’re hiding in the hall over there. I believe they followed you here and are just too scared to say anything.”

Onion froze. 

Pringle poked her head out from behind the doorframe. “H-hey…” She tried not to look at the imprisoned, pain-stricken Discord. “C-c-can we stop?” She wiped tears from her face. “We can go out for smoothies and yell about the h-heroes all we want… have a nice long laugh…”

Jang came out next, tears evident on his eyes as well. “I’m sorry… I didn’t take you seriously. I didn’t believe you were ever doing more than just… venting. That’s on me. Don’t… don’t do this. I—I don’t think I could live with myself.”

Onion began to tremble. “You… you don’t understand. You… this is what needs to be…”

“Just change your definition and step down from there,” Joanne said. “All it takes is a thought.”

No. 

Onion pulled her face back and set her jaw. “I… I never expected to survive anyway. I can’t take them all. I can only take some, the others wouldn’t let me live afterward. I was always going to lose all of you.”

Pringle started bawling. “O-onion!”

“My life has never been my own,” Onion sighed. “And it never can be. Not in this world, not in the previous, and not in the next. Everything I’ve ever done is in the shadows of those who came before. Even this. Especially this. At least this way, I go out on my own terms, screaming to the world.” 

Corona took a step forward—hands up, to show she wasn’t attacking. “I’ve been where you are.”

“You don’t know anything! Y—”

“I threw myself into a volcano after the collapse,” Corona said matter-of-factly. 

Onion was stunned into silence. 

“It was a week or so after the New World was born. I had been told by all existence that my plan had been pointless, that the death I had caused didn’t even do what it was supposed to. The Tower still stood, ka was real, and everyone was dead. I was shown that I had no control over anything—my entire quest had been a joke.”

“…It wasn’t, though.”

“I didn’t know that at the time.” Corona sighed. “I survived the collapse when I wasn’t supposed to. I had every intention of continuing in the New World if I did survive, but continuing in a world that was a joke to my struggle, my life, my sacrifice? I… I couldn’t do it. I would have died that day had Evening not saved me.” She pulled Eve forward. “She was still furious with me, still angry at what I’d done, still grieving from what had been lost. And she saved me.” 

“We can save you,” Eve said, smiling warmly. “Come. Step down. We don’t have to fight.”

“I… I don’t care about my life being a joke,” Onion stammered. “I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this to show you what it’s like to… I…” She furrowed her brow, scowling. “The finer details aren’t the point! You control us just… by being you! Even when the Tower does the same to you, you don’t stop, you keep doing the same thing!”

“…Do you want us to stop?” Eve asked. “To go live in a secluded cabin in some random forest somewhere and never contact any of you ever again?”

“YES! Then we could be our own people!”

“…That’s evil,” Eve said, shaking her head. “It would be the same as seeing a monster destroying a city and doing nothing to stop it. It would be the same as passing a dying man on the road and not helping him. The responsibility of those with power is to use it. We may use it wrong at times, and there may be unintended consequences, but we cannot do nothing. …You’ve seen Allure’s message. You know what happened when we let our society do its own thing.”

“You feel the same way,” Corona said. “Look at all this you’ve created just to do what you think is just! Just to ‘show’ us what we do! You couldn’t live with yourself doing nothing—and neither can we. When we see someone hurting… we help them. When we see someone attacking others… we stop them.”

“I’m… I’m not you… I’m…” She glanced at the Onion-bot and its symbol of Time. “I’m…”

“You’ve been labeled the villain,” Pinkie said, appearing between Eve and Corona. “Say what you will about heroes…”

“…What about being the villain?” Corona asked.

Onion bit her lip. “At least… I… There’s no escape, is there? Either hero or villain or absolute nobody!”

“There’s a reason I fought the Tower,” Corona said. “There—”

“And when it falls there will be no justice for all the stupid things that happened before! There will be nothing! No villains to challenge the heroes, no quests, just people doing stupid things! This is my last chance to do anything to any of you that will be heard!”

“…The last chance to hurt your mother?” Mattie asked. 

Onion turned to stare at her. 

“Come on, we all know that’s what this is really about. You’ve got mommy issues so you’re looking for something to justify lashing out against her. Against me. Until you deal with me you’ll just… come up with whatever reason you can to justify hurting me. Maybe Minna too—I don’t know how much she means to you or doesn’t—but crikey, do you hate me.”

Onion started trembling again. “You… you dare to suggest you know me? You abandoned me at birth! Y—”

“I couldn’t be a good mother!” Mattie shrieked. “Do you think it’d be good for me to have a kid around me? I’ve had kids before, and it’s never gone well. The one who understood me. The one? Their life went down the toilet so fast and so hard I can’t even imagine! The others all resented me or didn’t know who I was. It would have been better if Minna never told you who I was!”

“Oh, so this is her fault, not yours? You didn’t ruin all our lives?”

“I DID!” Mattie shouted. “I RUINED EVERY LAST ONE, YOU BLOODY IMBECILE!”

“THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU CHANGE THINGS?”

“BECAUSE I DAMN WELL CAN’T!” Mattie wailed. “Do you think I don’t want to change!? That it’s not blatantly obvious that my lifestyle is destructive? It doesn’t take a big brain to see that my particular brand of ‘relationship’ is doomed to be twisted down a toilet, taken advantage of, and relegated to a purely physical sensation without any real substance to it! I’m very lucky I have the friends I do, otherwise I’d be long dead!”

“Is there an echo in here? If you don’t like it, freaking CHANGE!”

“THE TOWER WON’T LET ME!” Mattie wailed. 

“…W-what?”

“Dammit…” Mattie bit her lip, starting to cry. “You made me say it. You made me acknowledge it, oh no no no no…”

Onion was confused. “What just happened?”

“I’ve been ignoring it! I… I had to! If I ever… why? Why now? I was almost free! The Tower was almost gone, and then I could have changed!”

“Why couldn’t you change before?”

“Because the sexual deviant is popular! EVERYONE loves to read about them! Oh, don’t believe me? Go take a look at FimFiction sometime, I know we have some copies somewhere. Find a completely random popular story and tell me how many sex jokes are in there. Even in a story with absolutely no really suggestive stuff in it, there’ll probably be one or two! Because there’s something about the world we live in that’s obsessed with it, driven to be amused by the breaking of norms! It…” She gagged. “It’s a core part of my character. It’s almost central. Instead of being nice, or stupid, or compassionate, or cruel, or angry, or understanding… I’m a masochist. That is the word that defines me, Onion! And I can’t do a damn thing to change it!”

Onion fell silent. 

“I can’t be your mother. I shouldn’t be anyone’s mother. But I can’t stop. It’s worse than an addiction, it’s… it’s a control. A control I’m always vaguely Aware of… At first I didn’t mind. And then I saw what I did to people. How cruel I was. But I couldn’t stop. It… it was like existence itself needed me to stay this way. Not for any reason, but to continue being funny by making people uncomfortable and, oh, laughing at societal norms! Yeah! That’s great!” She looked at the ground. “Fighting against societal norms is the job of revolutionaries and politicians. Not me. I just… I just wanted to have fun. Not drive myself and everyone around me into the ground.”

Everyone was staring at her in shock. 

“And now I’ve been forced to admit it…” Mattie laughed bitterly. “I still can’t change. But I can’t ignore it anymore. I… I can already see it. One part of me screaming to just stop and the other unable to do so. It… it’s… it’s going to drive me insane. And not the fun kind, either.” She heaved, dropping tears onto the ground. “Maybe when the Tower’s gone…. I’ll be okay.” 

Slowly, she turned to look Onion in the eyes. “You didn’t want me as your mother. I abandoned you… because it would have been worse for you if you stayed with me. If that’s wrong—and it probably is, given my track record—then… well, you’ve already punished me. I can’t go back anymore… but I can’t change.” She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “…I hope it doesn’t destroy me.”

A tear rolled down Onion’s cheek. It was all too much. Trembling, she lowered her hoof. 

“Oh thank God…” Flutterfree said. 

“No,” the Onion-bot said. “No.” She whirled her hand toward the button. 

Onion cut her in half. “…I’m not the villain, anymore.”

The Onion-bot let out a bunch of garbled static before collapsing to the ground, dead. 

“…Get him out of here,” Flutterfree begged. “Please.”

Discord managed to nod through the pain of his imprisonment. 

Onion wiped her face, nodding slowly. She returned to the console. 

Majora was already there, finger over the button. 

“Suffer,” she said. 

“DEACTIV—” But Onion was too late. 

Majora had already pushed the button. 

Discord couldn’t even scream. He could only recoil in shock… and become nothing more than white specks of dust in the wind. 

Flutterfree let out an inhuman wail. Eve fell to her knees. Onion dropped to the ground, cutting the console and Majora in half with her lightsaber.

Her order to deactivate still went out. Siron, Jenny-bot, and English all crumbled to the ground without any fanfare. 

Everything became a blur for Onion. What had just happened? Had she… had she killed him? Did she want to, anymore? Was this… the end?

What was the point of this?

The next thing Onion was fully aware of was Flutterfree holding all her knife-blades to her neck. Onion felt one pierce her skin, drawing blood. 

No one in the room made a move to stop Flutterfree. Nobody dared. 

Rage twisted across the pegasus’ face, a deep desire to kill to avenge crossing her features. Purple began to dominate her eyes… but died away as the Element of Kindness on her forehead shimmered. Slowly, she lowered the wing-blades from Onion’s neck, a shuddering, shaking smile coming to her face. With her front hoof, she lifted Onion’s face to meet her own. Her touch was soft, her gaze meek. She opened her mouth, struggling to say something, anything—a kind word or… anything. 

Nothing came out of her mouth. She couldn’t do it. It was too much, even for her. 

She wailed, withdrawing her hoof to slash Onion across the face with a wing. It was a wild attack with no precision, but it still sent her flying into a wall. Onion was vaguely aware of bleeding heavily, and that one of her ears didn’t feel right… was it gone?

Was it… 

Was she…

…

Everything hurt…

“Onion…?”

Pringle?

“Onion, you’re going to be okay. We’ve got you.” 

Onion blinked. She had been moved to the center of the room and bandaged up. One of her ears was missing and she was wrapped in a lot of bandages. There was no sign of any healing spells being used on her. 

Joanne, Jang, and Pringle stood above her, worry evident on all their faces—even Joanne’s, though she was shaking. 

“…Why…”

Pringle hugged her. “Don’t ask questions. We’re here.”

“O-okay…”

She didn’t know how long she sat there with her friends before Corona walked up. 

“…Are you sorry?” Corona asked. 

Onion’s tears told her all she needed to know. She put an arm around the pony and whispered into her ear. “I wasn’t.” Onion felt the healing magic flow through her. 

Corona released her, standing tall. “That’s… probably all you’re going to get from us. I… I wish we could help more, but we aren’t that strong. Not now.” She walked away, not looking back. 

“Why…?” Onion asked. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jang said. “It’s over, now.”

“Is it…?” Onion asked.

“It can be…” Mattie said, looking to her daughter with real pain. “If you refuse to play the Tower’s game. It’s the only way to win. To just… remove yourself. We tried to, but… we can’t. You… you might be able to, now.”

“We made mistakes,” Minna added. “And… and we’re sorry. We know sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it...”

“But I think you know that, too,” Mattie added. “…Come find me after the Tower falls. Maybe… maybe then, I can be your mother. But not today. Not today.” 

Onion nodded slowly, standing up. She wiped her face. “I should go.”

“…Go?” Pringle asked.

“Go. Away from this city. Away from… everything. And just… escape the game of heroes and villains.” She extended a hoof to her friends. “You… you can come with me.”

Pringle accepted her hoof first, without hesitation. “…What else would we do?”

Onion smiled. “…Then let’s leave them to their city.” 

As far as the Tower can see, they never saw Onion “Circlet” Belle again. 


~~~


Pinkie did see Pringle again, though. Only once. 

Pinkie was sitting alone on the balcony of the Force Temple, wind blowing through her mane. It was flatter than usual, but it hadn’t lost its poofyness completely. 

“P-pinkie…?”

Pinkie smiled. “I didn’t stop being your auntie, you know.”

“But I…”

“It’s good that you can help Onion,” Pinkie said. “We… we’re hurting too much. She needs you. You’re still a Pie and always will be. Keep on smiling and laughing and being there for your friends even when they do terrible things.” Pinkie shook her head. “We’re not strong enough to be perfect.”

“…You try.”

“We do. And we mess up, a lot.” 

“B-but that’s the whole point! You mess up, but you still do! You make the world a better place!”

“Onion wasn’t sure we did,” Pinkie said, kicking her hooves. “We say we fight for the generations to come, but is it really good for them? How many of their problems should we solve for them? Is it possible for them not to resent us? Maybe, like Cinder, we aren’t looking far enough ahead? Maybe we aren’t thinking about what comes after the end. Maybe we can’t...” 

“I don’t…” Pringle frowned.

“We’re immortal. Do we ever plan to actually hand it over? Is it right to hand it over?” She examined her hoof, frowning. “I’m starting to wonder if there’s a reason people have limited lifespans. So that the world will pass into the hands of the next generation… and they’ll have to learn on their own. Everyone needs to struggle. If we create too much of a ‘utopia’, it becomes a dystopia simply because it tries to make lives too perfect.” She laughed bitterly. “But I don’t know if that’s absolute. Maybe if we doubled down on our control, things would have been better. Maybe, maybe, maybe…” 

“Does it matter? You did your best.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did!” Pinkie laughed. “You’re great, Pringle, you know that?”

“I don’t know…”

“Neither do I!” Pinkie giggled. “But you know what, if there’s any overarching moral of this entire multiversal adventure, it’s this: we’re too small. If you’re given all the power to decide the fate of existence… even if you’re a good person who only uses it morally, something’s still going to go wrong. The world is too big. Even this New World, this single universe… heck, even a single planet. It’s too much.” 

“So what do we do?”

“We live,” Pinkie said. “And do our best anyway.”

Pringle hugged her. 

“Come see me after the Tower’s down, okay? That’s when I think we should ask these questions again. “

“And throw a party?”

Pinkie laughed. “Yes. And throw a party.”


~~~


“I wonder…” Eve said. “What is the difference between a hero and a villain?”

“Different perspective?” Corona suggested.

They were sitting in the Crow’s Nest of the Austraeoh XVI, looking at the City of the Moon below them. 

“Not always…” Eve frowned. “We were shown twelve villains today.”

“Ba’al, Majora, Jenny, Siron, Scarcity, the Collector, that Combine thing, Skarn, Nettle, English, Onion, and… us.”

“Is there anything that ties all of them together? At all?” Eve frowned. “Some just wanted power. Some were just doing it for fun. Others had some kind of moral purpose, be it some plan or art or the fate of the multiverse. And… one just wanted revenge.” She looked at her hoof. “But look at us, the heroes… some of us wanted power. Some of us just wanted to have fun. We fought for the fate of the multiverse… and we’ve fought for revenge.” 

Corona tapped the Master Sword on the railing of the Crow’s Nest. “I learned from you that what matters is our heart.”

“We were true to our hearts and our motivations,” Eve said. “And so was the Collector. And yet, we were the villains. He went too far… and we went too far. Both of us.” She looked at the ground. “If either of us fought for a surrender… If either of us would have just given up…”

“I don’t think there are heroes and villains,” Corona said. “At least, not without the Tower. I think there are good people and bad people. Good people can do heroic things, but they can also do villainous things. Same with bad people. Being ‘heroic’ or ‘villainous’ is just a label people slap on to help tell a story. Really, everyone’s the protagonist of their own story, even if they’re a terrible person.” 

“I can’t disagree… but I’m not sure I can agree either.” Eve closed her eyes and sighed. “I want an answer. I want some… some truth that I can latch onto and say ‘this is good and right, while this is bad and wrong’. I want to be able to know. But I can’t, I have to make every action in my life with some kind of doubt. The worst part? We can’t just refuse to play. This is life, all your chips are on the table and there’s no getting out of it.”

“Just try to be the best you can?” Corona suggested.

“I would love it if that was all it took,” Eve sighed. “But we’ve tried to be our best, and been wrong. Everyone has. And I refuse to believe there is no right and wrong. If there isn’t, everything about existence is some kind of cruel joke. We are born absolutely convinced life has meaning and that our actions matter. Why is that? It’s not just the Tower, it’s a thing on Earths too! It’s like… inherent.”

“And yet, when we look, we find… well, I don’t know what we find. But the Builders found nothing. Like us, they couldn’t accept that there was nothing.”

“But instead of just accepting that there was something, they just couldn’t prove it, they… made their own something. And it got us here.” She frowned. “We really shouldn’t be trusted with coming up with our own destinies.”

“It looks like we are, though. One way or another.”

A flock of multicolored birds flew past their eyes. 

Eve smiled. “At least it’s beautiful.” 

Corona laughed. “It really is…”


~~~


Flutterfree stood at the base of the statue of Discord that had been erected the very same day he’d been dusted by the Majora robot. She was crying… but she was also smiling, smiling larger than she had in a long, long time.

“…Keep it warm for me up there, will you? Maybe dress it up a bit. Some singing ginseng, a flailing tube-arm man, or… or whatever crazy things are up there. Surprise me. I… it might be a long time before I get there, but… one day. One day.”

She kissed the base of the statue, letting out a little laugh through her tears. 

She heard a branch snap behind her. Turning, she saw Trixie standing like a deer in the headlights. 

“Uh… I can come back later…”

“No, no…” Flutterfree beckoned her to come sit down. “He’d like us both to be here.”

Nervously, Trixie walked up to Flutterfree’s side and sat down, looking up at Discord’s statue. It was laughing.

“You know, rumors are going to start about how he’s actually the statue.”

“He’d love that,” Flutterfree giggled. “An endless legend of uncertain chaos…”

They sat in silence, looking at the statue, but really reliving moments of their past with their mutual lifelong friend. 

“…You loved him too,” Flutterfree said. 

Trixie didn’t even try to deny it. 

“…It’s okay. We all have those thoughts, sometimes.” 

“I gave him to you,” Trixie breathed. “I knew it was what he wanted… so I did it.” She looked at the ground. “I didn’t realize what my feelings were until it was too late.”

“Trixie, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I don’t think I would have done anything different.” Trixie shook her head. “You two… you two were amazing. He and I… can you imagine the shouting? The…” Trixie facehooved. “I’m being an idiot…”

“Trixie, you are not being an idiot. You are being honest.”

Trixie sighed. “You gave him something more. You gave him yourself and… and that light you have in your eyes. He always had more to live for than you and the next laugh. It… it scared me a little, how you two changed each other. How well you did.” She tapped a hoof on the ground. “…I wish I’d gotten to know him better than I did.”

“We all do. But Trixie… you spent decades with him on that boat, and you were never hiding. You know him better than you think.”

“Yeah…”

“And who knows, maybe you’ll see him again...?”

Trixie sighed. “Doubt it.” 

“Ah…” Flutterfree turned away, saying no more. 

They sat in silence for several minutes. 

“…I’m not leaving,” Trixie said.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not going back with you on the Austraeoh. I… I’m going to stay here. Not just in this city, but in this… area. I’ll wander around, do some shows, make some games again, what have you. Screw all that ‘letting the younger generation figure it out’ nonsense. They don’t know what’s good for them.” She placed a hoof on the statue. “I’m going to play a different game, now.”

Flutterfree nodded. “I’m happy for you. We’ll miss you at the Tower.”

“I know.” Trixie smiled. “See you at the funeral.” She turned and trotted away. “…Do you want me to get you anything?”

“No,” Flutterfree said, closing her eyes and smiling. “I already have everything I need.”

Trixie bit her lip. 

“Trixie, it’s okay. You can think we’re crazy.”

“I… I understand you two, okay? It’s been hard, but I understand. It’s just not for me. And I know your response to that is ‘the point is to not do it for yourself’ but I…” She twirled a hoof in the air. 

Flutterfree placed a wingtip on Trixie’s cheek, smiling. “I understand, Trixie.” 

They shared a brief hug before going their separate ways. 


~~~


“…Discord was the love of my life,” Flutterfree said at the service. It was being held on the Austraeoh XVI as it floated away from the City of the Moon, ever-so-slowly. Only the crew had been invited—this included Minna and Trixie, who would be teleported back to the city after the service. 

“All of us knew him well. How can we not know the people we’ve spent decades with cooped up on a tiny ship? We all have a memory of him being hilarious, of him being aggravating, of him jumping into danger headfirst and laughing all the while because he could just snap his fingers and change everything. …We all remember times when he was lost, alone, and confused at his place in the world. We all remember times where we wondered if he would come back… where we wondered if he’d survived.”

She folded her ears back and drooped slightly. “This time, he didn’t. We rushed in, trying to save the day as we always do, and… our luck ran out.” Flutterfree paused, gathering her breath. “We’d talked before about what we would do if the other didn’t make it. We made each other promise that we would continue on as long as we physically could, into the New World and beyond. I… am keeping that promise. Even though I want nothing more than to go be with him right now, the world is still here. He doesn’t want us to despair, even though we will—he wants us to live, to continue on, and to keep fighting for life itself. And when another of us falls… we keep going even then, as we always have.

“I know a lot of you don’t believe there’s anything beyond, that when we’re gone, we’re gone, and…” She had to stop to wipe her eyes. “And I’m really, really sorry that… I don’t feel what you feel right now. And I’m sorry that… I can’t really provide you more hope. The end of a life is always a tragedy, no matter what. But his wish still stands: for us to move on. To remember him… and to use that memory to carry us forward. 

“Right now, I… I cry. He’s gone. We don’t have him anymore. But I also smile. He knows a glory none of us can even imagine. And… I’m not sorry for talking like this, for making you all uncomfortable, for… I don’t know. All I know is that I’m telling you about Discord, Spirit of Chaos, and… his life. His amazing, complicated, confusing life. Even he never truly understood himself. Don’t you think that’s beautiful? He had so much to him that he never stopped discovering new things. His story… it never ends. And even when the Tower falls, our story won’t end. We’ll keep writing about what we’ve done, and who knows where it will go?

“I’m sad he never got to see the world without the Tower. I think… I think he would have been at home there, in the new forms of chaos. So let’s carry his memory into it. 

“Now… before I close and ask Rev to say some things, or invariably get stuck on some tangent about his life, Discord did have one request. He had a song he wanted played at his funeral. It’s overly cheery, confusing, and perhaps a little tactless… but, really, would he have wanted anything less at a day devoted to him?”

“Definitely not,” Mattie called. 

Flutterfree nodded. “And no, it’s not ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’. That’s the closing song he’s asked for.” She chuckled nervously. “Monika, do you have the giant spoons, bowl, and the song?”

Monika nodded. “Yep. You are completely nuts, though. You’re gonna get copyrighted or something, the readers are gonna need to get the song in a note.”

Flutterfree winked. “Good. Rev, would you come up here and sing with me?”

Rev teleported to her side. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Flutterfree nodded. Monika placed a giant cereal bowl behind them and gave each of  the ponies a spoon the size of a sword. Snapping her fingers, Monika started the music—a guitar and a funky beat began. When Rev and Flutterfree started singing, twirling their spoons around like batons, Eve broke out in delighted laughter while most everyone else was looking around a tad confused or uncertain. 

Eve teleported to the stage between Flutterfree and Rev, joining them in song. 

“When the toast is burned
and all the milk has turned
and Captain Crunch is waving farewell...!”

It was ridiculous. It was poignant. There were tears, but there were also three voices celebrating Discord, his life, and what he saw for the future. 

If he really was looking down from above, he would have been laughing in absolute delight. 

With the power of a song, the Austraeoh XVI sailed north, toward the true end. 




~~~
The songs Discord chose: