Sunset glared up at the predawn sky overhead. Equestria was big enough to have time zones, even if they were dictated by the whims of the Princess a bit. Right now Celestia, or rather Twilight as Sunset needed to remind herself, had just raised the sun and set it on course, but here they’d need to wait a bit. She could still see a bit of the moon heading down in the other direction.
Unlike the previous time she’d been prepared to fight in defense of Equestria, Sunset wore a uniform rather than metallic armor. It contained many inset plates of metal and ceramic to hold enchantments and protect her from physical harm, but it looked like cloth. A copper circle adorned her head, ready for its future task.
The terrain around her was flat for the most part, gently sloping toward the coast, but cut with many gullies. Apparently during the fimbulwinter of the windigoes, a glacier had built up to the Northeast. After the Hearth’s Warming, water had built up behind it until it burst through, carving a giant river delta into the land as it slowed down. The buffalo that lived to the South of the event told stories about it, calling it the “Stampeding Waters.”
In front of Sunset, at a good distance, stood “the tank”. Sunset’s netherworld contacts had provided muscle and material, and the prognostication department had provided a detailed survey. When the Ice Skate emerged, it’d be inside a tank of chlorine trifluoride. Sunset hoped that would be sufficient to disintegrate it, but she wasn’t expecting to get lucky. Still, she’d filed the appropriate paperwork to have the area remediated by Equestria’s environmental agency. She’d learned that in government, having the bill delivered after you’d left was the way to go.
A little ways away, on one of the few really high patches of ground, a spur line of the railway had been constructed. Two large machines sat on railcars, each of them braced to the ground with outrigger legs. The machines themselves each consisted of a boxy body with a rotating “turret” on the top, out of which poked a large arm ending in what Sunset could only describe as similar to the satellite dishes of the human world. A few of Charge Carrier’s house guards fussed over them, with a pair of them having gone inside each of the turrets to operate them.
Charge Carrier herself stood behind Sunset, gazing out at the tank and adorned in shining golden ceremonial armor. She’d completed her preparations, and now merely needed to inform Sunset about them. Whenever she got around to it, that is.
Stellar Flux was with Sunset as well, fussing over the crystal and its housing bracket, casting spells on the latter. Sunset had gone through EUP records and had grabbed all the spare tungsten sitting in strategic metals stockpiles. It was just barely enough.
Ghost Pepper was there too, although there weren’t any useful skeletons in the area. Everypony was disappointed by that. He’d been designated the medic, despite an urge on the part of certain unnamed ponies to make off-color jokes about a “conflict of interest” in that.
“It’s done, let’s get this in the air and then the ground.” Stellar closed the final panel on the housing, leaving the crystal encased within the enchanted bullet-shaped metal.
“Right. I’ll get this nexus pylon dropped into position unless Ghost’s earth pony senses tell him something the geological survey didn’t.” Sunset smirked a little at the stallion in question.
“No ma’am, I don’t do minerals. They’re not alive or dead.” Ghost shook his head to emphasize the point.
“Okay then, the spot I marked.” Sunset’s horn lit, and wings of fiery energy extended from her back.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to do that?” Charge Carrier asked with an eyebrow quirked.
“I don’t think you can lift it.” Sunset shook her head, then lit her horn to lift the assembly into the air. “Tungsten’s very dense, which is why I used it.”
“Ah, quite. I can’t imagine a wing spell is good for that, still.” Charge looked skeptically at the fiery wings.
“Yeah, but this is designed for short-term power. Get back.” The ponies scattered as Sunset clenched her muscles and the fiery wings expanded, turning into sheets of roaring flame like twin rocket engines. Sunset rose into the air gradually, then shot forward. After spiraling up a bit, she saw the fork in the ravine she was looking for, then pushed over into a dive, the tungsten bullet paralleling her. She veered off a bit too low for comfort, but the bullet flew straight as her aura cut out, passing through lesser minerals as if they were softened butter.
Deep below, Sunset could sense the nexus pylon activating. It would begin its work, but even with the logistic growth of the system it’d take a while to produce results. The area’s mineral composition, which had been one of Sunset’s main worries. She hadn’t picked the battlefield, after all.
Ten minutes remaining. The edge of the sun came up.
Sunset flew back and began doing some stretches, followed by some horn exercises. The ponies setting up Charge Carrier’s support cleared out, heading to a bunker that had been assembled in the next gully over. Sunset’s friends would be joining them, but each wanted to give her some words of encouragement.
“You got this! You’re a lot stronger than most unicorns, and even stronger than you know.” Stellar Flux hugged Sunset, and as she leaned in gave her a wink as well. She stepped away to give Ghost Pepper some room to come in.
“Ya got this. Ah’ve got no doubt in you. Besides, Ah’ll put you back together if you fail.” Ghost extended his leg for a hoofbump, which Sunset obliged.
Finally, Charge Carrier saluted Sunset. “Good luck, and may the Fire of Friendship be with you, Chief Master Sergeant Sunset Shimmer.”
“You’re not supposed to salute me, I’m an NCO.” Sunset returned a brisk, breezy analog of a salute and Charge Carrier nodded and turned around. After a few moments they began trotting away.
Tick tock. Sunset lit her horn up again and two reddish, crystalline, objects that resembled low-polygon dragonflies began to orbit her. She took a deep breath to stabilize. Not much longer now. She stood and waited. It’d happen when it happened.
After a couple minutes, it happened. Sunset could sense a large buildup of mana right before the tank exploded. The materialization of the Ice Skate had probably caused the tank to break, either that or its reaction to the chlorine trifluoride. Regardless, the tank burst in a ball of yellow fire that a streak shot out of.
The Ice Skate did a lap around the dissipating fireball and cloud of poisonous vapors to shake off any lingering contaminants, and Sunset took the opportunity to get a good look at it. It had deep gouges and pits in its surface now, having taken real damage from the oxidiser bath she’d given it, but they seemed to be slowly regenerating, or re-freezing their way closed.
Sunset bellowed a war cry and charged her horn, then fired a spell at the beast.
A flower grew out of the Ice Skate’s head as it hovered in place.
She fired a few more copies off the spell at it, but only two more flowers grew.
Ok, so it can be affected by any given spell three times. Good to know.
Sunset’s wings flared as she took to the air.
The Ice Skate moved forward, recognizing Sunset as a threat. She banked hard to her right as the Ice Skate barreled through where she’d been, then turned her head and fired off a beam from her horn into its back. One of her constructs matched the beam with one of its own.
Both shots hit with enough force to shake the canyon walls, but the Ice Skate continued on as if nothing had happened, then pulled up, over, and around in an Immelmare turn. She could see a few new chips taken out of it; she’d gotten some damage in.
The Ice Skate retaliated with blasts from the stalks at the front of its head, but Sunset’s other construct produced a shield plane in front of it that the blasts bounced off.
The Skate charged, forcing Sunset to dive almost to the ravine floor to escape. Once again she and the construct fired paired beams of energy towards it. Both struck home. Ok, so the third and fourth attacks hitting at the same time means they both go in. Too bad I didn’t have enough time and energy to make a second attack bit.
Turning around and leveling off, Sunset aimed for another try. Let’s see what this does. Her horn glowed, as well as the offensive bit, and two swarms of purple meteors rained down onto the Ice Skate. This did have a noticeable effect, smacking into the Ice Skate and forcing it down to the ground, causing it to skid across the flat area between the ravines. Gotcha.
The Ice Skate didn’t stay down for long, however, rocketing vertically into the air instantaneously and turning back towards Sunset. She banked left to evade, but as the Ice Skate passed her it burst forth a pulse of whitish energy, dissipating her bits and her flight spell.
Crap crap crap crap! Sunset teleported to the ground to avoid giving gravity any further time to accelerate her and was rewarded for it with only moderate pain in her legs as she skidded on her hooves down the ravine. I can’t let it get near me again.
She respread wings of energy and took off again right before the Ice Skate belly-flopped onto the ground right where she’d been.
Close one! Sunset circled behind the Ice Skate and prepared her next trick. A giant stony arm shot out of the rocky ground and wrapped around the Ice Skate in an awkward sort-of chokehold.
Summoning a lance, she dived down and buried the enchanted weapon in the Ice Skate’s head.
Unfortunately, the Ice Skate, being a construct, wasn’t particularly bothered by the destruction of where her central nervous system would be. It struggled against the arm, shaking it to pieces, and Sunset was forced to teleport out.
My damage is still outpacing its regeneration. I just have to make sure it doesn’t do the same to me.
She sent a mental command to recall the lance that was still sticking out of the top of the Ice Skate, then once again dodged out of the way of its attack, although this time it seemed to be a little closer than before.
Great, that dumb thing is taking my measure too.
Sunset groaned as it came around again for another ramming attempt. I’m not actually sure how many moves it has, so far it looks like trying to ram me is its clear favorite. Or default.
As the Ice Skate bore down towards her, Sunset didn’t dodge. Instead, she summoned forth another stone arm, this one ending in spikey talons rather than blunt fingers, which was just solid enough to stop the Ice Skate in midair.
With the Ice Skate temporarily immobile in midair, Charge Carrier’s gunners brought their weapons to bear. The turrets turned until the satellite dishes were pointing at it, then energy crackled inside the dish and shot forward like bolts of lightning, slamming into the Ice Skate’s wings. Chunks of ice fell free as the electromaser cannons drilled into it, but it once again shook its way free of the arm and sped away.
The turrets lit it up for a little while longer, but it soon accelerated to such speed that they were no longer able to track it effectively.
Sunset watched it flee and wondered what would happen next. Starswirl wrote that the thing would sometimes flee his attacks if he was doing too much damage, but sometimes it’d come back at him. He couldn’t see any pattern to its behavior.
She hoped it wouldn’t fly off, since they had the benefit of having set up here, and began re-summoning her offensive and defensive bits.
As she’d wished, it soon became apparent that it was turning around coming back in for an attack run. The Ice Skate was surrounded by a blue-white glowing shockwave as it bore straight to her.
Ah right, Starswirl wrote that it’s really fast. I didn’t believe it’d be THIS fast though.
Sunset teleported at what she judged to be the last moment, and the Ice Skate barreled through where she’d been. Wish I’d had time to put up something for it to hit. At least it went for me instead of the turrets.
The Ice Skate had slowed down to pivot around, and Sunset (and her attack bit) charged up a spell she’d devised. As the red energy built up, the Ice Skate turned towards her again, only to be met with twin streams of superheated metal to the face.
Sunset banked gracefully to the side as the reeling Ice Skate careened past her. I guess that is as deadly as the games make it out to be. Too bad I’m not an ancient galactic predator. She and the bit charged up a repeat of the attack.
The Ice Skate began accelerating away again, but Sunset’s aim was good and once more the twin shots pierced its icy form, showering the landscape with chips of ice.
Come on. I’ve done enough damage to that thing to put a battleship on the bottom. The Ice Skate once again climbed away, with the cannons putting in a few blasts once again.
It continued its pattern of zooming away, then banking around for a high-speed attack run. Sunset took the time to check on the progress of her nexus pylon. It reported that it was still in its second ramp-up phase, but that it was almost to the third.
Sunset moved a bit forward, to try and make sure it’d go for her over the turrets. The Ice Skate’s predictable pattern continued, but she decided to try something different. She conjured three illusionary copies of herself, and they each flew away in different directions. The Ice Skate tracked in on one of the copies, blowing right through it.
Huh, so it can’t sense illusions, that’s good to know. Also, looks like it puts up an inertial barrier right before it’s gonna hit something to protect itself. It’s got a high capacity, but it’s not impervious.
Sunset fired off another repeat of her prior spell. The streams of superfast molten metal did much less damage to it than before, but still did something. Huh, so because the spell conjures a “real” object it can’t fully adapt to it. Good to know.
She regarded the Ice Skate as it came around for another pass. It looked more ragged, with a noticeable gap where chunks had been blasted free near the right wing. I can do this, but I have to be careful. I still don’t want to try getting hit by it.
The Ice Skate finally revealed a new trick as Sunset sensed it emanating a magical field. Teleport dampening? Does it think I’m teleporting out of its way. It–ohcrap!
Sunset threw up a planar shield spell in front of her as the Ice Skate accelerated far faster than she’d thought it could in its closest attempt yet to ram into her. Her defensive bit added a second layer to the shield, and combined they were just enough to deflect it from hitting her and into the ground.
Crap. I only got one more shot at using the shield to save myself like that, and it’s blocking teleports. Getting more aggressive and revealing new abilities at lower health, does this thing run on boss monster logic?
She gained altitude with fiery flaps, then went in with the purple meteors again. Gotta buy time to think here. The Ice Skate staggered under the hits, but accelerated out of the path of the last few.
When it executed its next attack run, Sunset took a steep dive as soon as it began accelerating. It tracked her down, but she suddenly banked away, easily leaving its path. Energy management, sucka!
She monitored the damage they’d done so far. It still looked pretty beat up, but it was likely still more intact than not. The electromasers got in a few more licks, but the Ice Skate turned hard and they lost their tracking.
The Ice Skate fired a pair of beams of energy from its antenna, not at Sunset, but down towards the turrets. Stellar Flux put up a shield in time, but Sunset knew the tenor of the fight had changed. Dang, he’s not locked on me anymore. I gotta get his attention back.
Sunset burned for altitude, firing off her next spell, a set of conjured greenish bolts that flew from her lit horn and her attack bit. Eat acid sucka! The bolts landed home, and she could see smoke coming off the Ice Skate.
Now above the Ice Skate, even at this high altitude, Sunset reversed the dynamic and dived on it. Let’s try this now. A crackling tornado of lightning appeared in front of the Ice Skate, sucking it in. Sunset knew that wouldn’t hold it for long, so she scanned the ground. Seeing some boulders here and there, she yanked them into the tornado. The sound of them smacking into the Skate was audible even over the winds, but when it burst free, dissipating the tornado, the Ice Skate still seemed fully operational.
The turrets got in a few more hits, but the Ice Skate dived hard and evaded fire. Sunset followed it down towards the ground, preparing her move. Her last use of the stone hand spell fired off, once again grabbing it with a giant clawed hand.
Having it held still, Sunset decided to unleash something she’d come up with out of the blue in the past few days. She knew what had inspired it, but couldn’t remember how that had turned into a viable spell.
“Triple finish!” Sunset seemingly split into three ponies, a unicorn, an earth pony, and a pegasus with fiery wings, and each unleashed their magic on the temporarily immobilized Ice Skate. The earth pony skidded over the ground, then stomped and fired off a huge set of earthen spikes. The pegasus fired off a storm of lightning from its “wings”. The unicorn fired off a beam of red energy, mirrored by her faithful attack bit.
The three sets of attacks hit simultaneously, creating a huge shockwave that shattered the stone hand and flung the Ice Skate into the air, flipping end over end. As Sunset reformed herself back into one pony, she glared up at the Ice Skate, which had regained its proverbial footing and began flying forward. It’s still operational? Come on.
The turrets fired on it again, but it seemed more interested in Sunset again. She gained altitude even as it did, and when it turned towards her she was still somewhat above it.
Instead of trying to rush her down as it had been doing ad nauseum, it pitched up, then opened the “mouth” on the bottom of its body and fired an intense beam of energy at Sunset.
With no time to dodge, she conjured a shield (plus a second one from the defense bit) angled to divert the beam away. The beam struck the shield and streamed across it, scattering into splatters of intense energy.
Despite the success of the shield, Sunset could see it slowly blacken at the edges and shrivel up. I didn’t even know shields could do that.
The Ice Skate kept coming forward, and Sunset had to dive and roll out of the way. Great, now it’s got a combo.
At that moment, the turrets got in a set of good hits, causing chunks of ice to fall from the Ice Skate. It pitched over and began to dive on the turrets.
Ah great. Nexus pylon, anything for me? As it turned out it did. Ok, got a few charges up and some resources to do something with them. Ok, let’s…
The Ice Skate barreled down on the turrets, when several blue glowing cubes appeared near it. The cubes reverberated and then disappeared, leaving behind hovering, round, golden metallic filigree objects. Each of them projected a bubble shield around itself, and together they covered the entire area.
The Ice Skate’s mouth beam slammed into the shields, but the ornate metal devices fired off streams of energy into the struck shields, reinforcing them.
Ok, gotta get his attention back on me now. Sunset dug into her metaphorical bag of tricks. Let’s try this one.
Sunset fired off a Gravity Well spell in front and a little to the side of the Ice Skate’s path, causing it to flip over and dragging its beam off target.
Teleportation was still locked down, but up in the air Sunset had an alternate option. Sunset fired off a Compressed Space spell, distorting space rather than moving herself. With the Ice Skate now only a few ponylengths from her, she turned the tables on it and dived down into it, casting a momentum spell on herself.
The Ice Skate reeled under Sunset’s attack, unable to control its course and plunging down towards the ground.
Sunset disengaged the momentum spell and leveled off a few hundred ponylengths above the ground, but the Ice Skate slammed into it. As it levitated up to right itself, the turrets got in yet more shots on it.
She queried the nexus pylon again. Tier three operational. More glowing, reverberating cubes appeared around the ice skate, these much bigger. The golden objects that emerged from them were correspondingly larger, with four segmented legs positioned evenly around a central core, and each shoulder sporting pairs of cannons rather than an arm.
The Ice Skate took off again, but Sunset had planned for this. These models were perfectly capable of shooting up. I got you now.
Antimatter existed. It was out there in space, produced by high-energy solar reactions, left over from the big bang, or just otherwise existing.
Therefore you could summon it, if you were crazy enough to.
Sunset’s annihilators were made with built in magnetic storage systems. Their arcane cores were shielded behind lead, tungsten, and silver layers, preventing the Ice Skate from draining them.
The magnetic acceleration and soliton confinement systems in the guns were entirely nonmagical, merely powered by electricity generated in the arcane core. Sunset would have to thank Twilight for it.
The annihilators took aim and fired as the Ice Skate tried to gain altitude, sending waves of brilliant energy at it.
The Ice Skate shook with the hits, even tiny amounts of antimatter evidently more than its designer having reckoned with. It glowed brightly and seemingly shattered in a wave of ice shards, but Sunset could see what was actually happening from her vantage point above: the Ice Skate had reformed itself into a smaller, sleeker shape.
It had chosen to run.
Sunset watched in amazement as the Ice Skate gained further and further speed, heating up like a rocket as it zoomed away at incredible speeds. That thing’s beyond hypersonic! I had no idea it could do something like that. And the annihilators can’t exactly fly after it. Wait, it’s no longer projecting the anti-teleport field. I’ve still got a shot at finishing it. I just need a spell that can finish it in one hit, but what could reliably… Oh yeah, of course. Let’s see if it handles this any better than I do. Gotta tweak the angle a bit and we’re good to go.
It was difficult to estimate how far away the rapidly-receding Ice Skate was, but Sunset was able to teleport herself ahead of it, and far enough in front to have a shot at pulling her plan off. First, she cast a spell that seemed to have no visible effect. Ok, now let’s see if you still want to ram me.
Sunset and her faithful bit fired light rays towards the onrushing Ice Skate. Its new form being simply too fast for most normal spells to hit it. The damage wasn’t too great, but it did seem to get its attention, and she could tell it was coming for her.
She made no move to dodge.
The Ice Skate came right for her. If one could slow down time, one would see the Ice Skate approach Sunset in a fiery cone of plasma produced by its immense speed. One would see Sunset hovering in place with a smirk on her face.
And one would see the front of the Ice Skate suddenly halt against a flat object. As it did so, more of the Ice Skate would bunch around it, the ice not shattering but flowing, as its internal rigidity was nothing compared to the forces at work.
The object in front of it would resolve into a block with question marks on it, rotated to point in the Ice Skate’s direction of travel. The molecules that had been the Ice Skate flowed over and around it in glowing streaks, making a cone of light that Sunset hovered unharmed in the center of.
As the light faded and the Ice Skate’s remains dissipated, a floppy, pony-sized mushroom popped out of the box.
Sunset caught it with her magic. “Kaizo blocks claim another.”
Sunset teleported down to the area around the turrets, where everypony else had gathered. “Mission accomplished, time for mushroom stew!”
“You got it, then?” Charge Carrier stared quizzically at the mushroom.
“Yeah.” Sunset levitated it over to Ghost Pepper. “The spell makes a block that makes a mushroom when something hits it. I’d actually made it for a prank I was going to pull on Twilight, but I realized the dang thing was totally immobile and pretty much impervious to impact.”
“I… see. Congratulations, your unorthodox spell has carried the day. Along with all our help.”
“Yeah.” Sunset looked around at Ghost Pepper, digging in his saddle bags for the appropriate spices. Stellar Flux, still a little shaky from shielding the turret crew from the Ice Skate’s attacks. Charge Carrier and her house guard, standing proud and happy to be of help. More or less.
“Sunset, whatever are those devices you employed?”
“Oh, those are some things Twi– Human Twilight and I came up with at some point. Magic-powered robots have been generally a bad idea on our side of the mirror, but magic here is much better behaved, so she’d come up with a few designs based on a video game we play sometimes. I just turned the lethality up to the maximum I was comfortable with.”
“Hmph, give my electromasers some real competition.” Charge shook her head.
“We can talk business later. I got a report to give.” She looked over at Ghost Pepper, who seemed to have procured a cooking pot from somewhere while she wasn’t looking. “After we have a nice lunch of course.”