The tunnel curved and led down another slope and as they proceeded on, the air was getting mustier and smokier. Likely the engine of the drill below, Sunset Shimmer surmised. That would mean they were getting close now and that would mean facing Cinch’s Stand again. They hadn’t been able to see much of it when it attacked Applejack, but from what they had caught glimpses of, it seemed to be a swarm of little organisms that could form into something bigger, or smaller when it needed to. This was going to be a tough Stand to defeat, but that was what they thought about every single enemy Stand on the way here. They would find a way around Cinch’s Stand and beat her, Sunset knew they would.
“Lights ahead.” Rainbow pointed as Running on Ice continued to skate them lower.
“We gotta be close. Get ready for a fight.” Pinkie tied a blue bandana to her forehead.
Rainbow and Running on Ice had only just taken another step forward when a swarm of little particles darted off the walls on either side of her, and if not for her Stand’s timely walls of ice forming around her, they would’ve found their mark. Rainbow dropped and rolled down the icy slope as her Stand waved its arms around, encasing the particles in blocks of ice before sending tendrils out to the walls, keeping them in place.
“Forward!” Sunset sent Pegasus Fantasy past Rainbow to punch a cloud of particles coming towards her. They exploded against Pegasus’ fist and dissipated. “Eyes up!”
More came from behind, but Jojo had White Buffalo spin around and breathe fire back up the tunnel, melting the particles coming down at them. Pinkie and Golden Ticket ran around, opening a door and closing it behind more particles, while Fluttershy did her best to keep out of their way, unable to do anything at the moment.
“You think you can beat me and my Stand just like that?” Cinch’s voice rang across the cavern, even amid the sounds of the drilling. Somehow. “I’ve already killed one of you. I can do it again.”
“You’ll never win, Cinch! Not today!” Rainbow waved a fist into the air before Running on Ice froze the air around her, encasing another swarm of particles in it.
The ice cube shattered almost immediately as a Stand in brown armor formed together from within and reached its arm out, grabbing Rainbow’s Stand around the neck. Before it could squeeze or do anything else, Pegasus Fantasy was already there, punching it in the face with a left hook, then a right. Cinch’s Stand dropped Running on Ice and sidestepped Pegasus’ next punch with speed that shocked Sunset. She hadn’t expected it to be able to move so quickly.
“Surprised?” Cinch’s voice echoed around them again. “Superorganism is made of tiny organisms and each of them can act on their own. That means that there are millions of eyes on it and it can read your moves a mile away. Oh, and also…”
Sunset had her eyes on both their Stands when a fist suddenly connected with the side of her face. She fell back and hit her head against the rock wall as she tried to figure out what was going on. The right wall seemed to move in her vision now and she wasn’t sure if it was because she had hit her head so hard. Once her vision began to clear up, she could see that the wall was indeed moving, but because there were swarms of Superorganism’s particles all over it. A fist stuck out of it and as she watched, Principal Cinch walked out from the wall, the brown armored fist over her own arm.
“Why yes, I can use Superorganism’s powers like my own. I can move myself through its particles and I can use its body parts.” Cinch gloated over her smugly. “Oh, and it looks like I bought enough time too.”
“Enough time for what?” Sunset pushed herself off the wall and rubbed at her bleeding head. It throbbed under her hand and a lump was forming where she had hit herself against the wall.
Cinch only smiled before she heard the sound of gunshots. Golden Ticket suddenly dashed in front of Sunset and opened one of its doors as two bullets flew into it. It removed its hat and held it up to Superorganism as the two bullets flew out of it, hitting it in both eyes as it wrestled against Pegasus Fantasy.
“They’re baaack!” Pinkie called as she picked up a rock and chucked it towards the entrance.
A bullet hit it in mid-flight as Sugarcoat’s blue Stand pulled back the bolt of its sniper rifle, its barrel still smoking.
“Behold, the Stands return!” Cinch laughed maniacally and then formed another armored fist over her other arm. “You could not manage against my Stand. Now with the Stands here, you will surely fail!”
“Wait, Sugarcoat’s Stands are called the Stands?” Pinkie shot up and cocked her head to one side. “That’s so… awesome! It can really mess with you when you’re asking! Hey, Sugarcoat, what’s the name of your Stands? The Stands. Yeah, your Stands. The Stands. Yes, what are they called? The Stands. Yes, them, what are their-”
“Enough!” Cinch yelled and charged at Pinkie with her armored fists.
“Woah!” She threw herself aside as the principal swung a fist. She just barely missed it and rolled around, grabbing another rock off the floor. “Have this!”
She threw it, but Cinch swung an arm backwards and smacked it into dust, then grinned as Superorganism sprang through her, rearing up to release a punch. Golden Ticket flipped itself between it and its master, grabbing both fists before lashing out with a kick.
There were more gunshots, but Running on Ice intervened and created walls of ice between them.
“We’ve got to do something about this!” Rainbow raced to Sunset’s position and helped her up.
Sunset nodded and looked down the tunnel where the drill was working in the huge cavern. “We need to stop Sugarcoat and the drill. We can’t let her get to the geode while we fight Cinch.”
“I’ll hold the Stands back.” Rainbow slid a leg forward, then arced one arm over her head and pointed to her ice walls that were already cracking from the Stands’ bullets. “Sugarcoat’s yours.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Cinch appeared beside the two of them and grabbed them both around the throats with her armored arms. “Today, your little team ends here with you. You tried, but you won’t stop me.”
“Not yet.” Sunset reached an arm up. “Fantasy armor!”
Pegasus Fantasy looked over to her, then did a flip in the air and blasted right for Sunset. As it slammed into her, its armor began forming around her, and Sunset cut down with one arm, breaking Cinch’s grip on her before flapping her wings, blowing the principal back as she made her way to the drill and Sugarcoat.
The Shadowbolt caught sight of her in the drill’s rearview mirrors and turned to face her. Sunset grabbed her by one ponytail and yanked her out of the vehicle.
“O-Ow, that hurts!” Sugarcoat winced.
She reached up and pulled at her hair, tearing it from her head, dropping her to the ground.
“The Stands!” she called.
Immediately, her two Stands emerged from behind her and stepped to her sides, their rifles already pointing at Sunset. They began firing and one clipped Sunset in the head, but with a reset, she managed to recover enough to fly down and scoop up the blue Stand. Now that they were close enough, she figured Sugarcoat would be able to feel what happened to her Stands and throwing it into the air, Sunset ripped its rifle from its hands, then flipped it around and began smacking it in the face with its own weapon.
“Neigh! Neigh! Neigh! Neigh!”
Lifting it high, Sunset brought it down hard atop the Stand’s head, cracking its helmet and smashing it hard into the ground. Sugarcoat’s glasses flew from her face along with some teeth and she fell on her chin and groaned in pain.
“P-Principal Cinch…!” she managed out of her ruined mouth.
Her yellow Stand began firing at Sunset, who lifted her arms to block them. She still had forty seconds left of her fantasy armor and she had to make it count before she ran out of time.
Sunset flew at it, ready to beat the devil out of it, but the Stand rolled aside and flipped around and dropped to a knee, lifting its rifle up. It fired three rounds, hitting Sunset in the back and the right wing, but her armor protected her for the most of it, though it felt a little bruised as she came around, lifting her arms in front of her face to protect herself as Sugarcoat’s Stand fired more rounds at her.
“You’ll never win. Principal Cinch will win and the whole world will be hers.” Sugarcoat wiped at her bloody face and held her nose. “She’s the greatest leader anyone could ask for and all you’re doing is ruining the world and what she’s worked so hard to achieve.”
Her blue Stand got back on its feet and picked up its weapon. With a wave of its hand, the weapon repaired itself and spun it in the air before grabbing it by the grip and barrel before loading one round into its chamber. Sunset had just grabbed her yellow Stand and lifted it into the air when she had heard the now familiar sound of a bolt being pulled back.
Before she could punch it, she readied herself and as she heard the gunshot, Sunset glided down like a comet and the bullet missed her, hitting its counterpart square between the eyes.
Blood flew from its head as the bullet cracked out the back of its head and hit the wall behind it. The Stands twitched in their places before dropping to the ground. Sugarcoat screamed and flailed her arms around and collapsed against the side of the drill, blood now trailing from a hole in her head as her eyes rolled back.
“Takes care of that…” Sunset dusted her hands.
Before she could turn around, something hard rammed into her back and she was dragged across the ground as Superorganism threw her into the spinning drill head.
“You’ve killed my last Shadowbolt.” Cinch stepped out beside her as her Stand picked her up again, pressing her against the rotating drill. “But she’s served her purpose.”
As Sunset winced against the drill slowly shredding her fantasy armor apart, the wall continued to break from the drill’s excavation and all of a sudden, a whole portion of it collapsed, revealing a new wall of silvery rock. In the center of it was a shiny blue gem, shaped like a four-sided diamond with an otherworldly gleam emanating from its core.
“At last. My ultimate prize.” Cinch’s eyes reflected the geode’s brilliance.
Superorganism tossed Sunset aside as her armor reached its limit, fading from her body as she crashed against the cave floor away from the drill. She struggled up on one arm, but all she could do now was watch as Cinch stood before the geode, armor forming over her right arm as she reached towards it.
She punched her arm into the wall, then ripped the Stand Geode from it; the silvery wall instantly lost its shimmer and dulled in color as she held it between her thumb and index finger.
“At last. It is mine. It is mine.” She held it towards one of the lights they had set up in the cavern. “Do you know how long I have searched for the power to spread my influence and my achievements across the world? Even before the emergence of Stands, I have wanted the world. Imagine all the good I could do. There would be no more bumbling leaders, no more poverty, no more criminals, no more drugs. The world would be mine to rule and everything would be as I see fit. Mine to control.”
“N-No, you can’t do that…” Sunset weakly pushed herself to her feet. Blood ran down her face, neck and left arm, but she couldn’t find the opportunity to reset herself just yet. She needed to get that geode away from Cinch, or it was truly over. “People’s lives aren’t yours to control.”
Sunset spotted a door appear in the cave wall behind Cinch, then she averted her eyes and didn’t say a word. She needed to buy some time.
“Do you think I care about what other people think?” Cinch laughed. “Think about it, Sushi. Everyday, humans bring themselves one step closer to self-destruction. It's human nature to destroy everything. I, on the other hand, see a way to become a race that history has never once seen. A race of humanity that will prosper and live without issues. Can you not see that only through my rule, my legacy will be for all? Everyone will love me and give me the adulation I so deserve.”
“That’s what this is about. It isn’t about helping humans prosper.” Sunset breathed as Superorganism began to stalk closer to her on its narrow insect-like feet. “What you want is the cheers of the masses, the praises of the people. You don’t care about helping them.”
Superorganism grabbed Sunset by the shirt and hauled her up to meet its beady eyes.
“Yes, I want my name to go down in history as the most powerful and the best leader anyone has ever seen!” Cinch stretched her arms out. “And when I make the world prosper, all would see me that way! All I need to do is touch this Stand Geode to my Stand, and my dreams will all be fulfilled.”
“That’s a dream… I cannot allow you to see through.” Sunset grabbed Superorganism’s arm, but she wasn’t strong enough to pry herself from it at the moment.
“I know.” Cinch tilted her head down, casting a shadow over her eyes. “It’s a pity you won’t live to see my perfect world. Perhaps then you would be able to see how great I truly am. Superorganism, finish her off.”
As her Stand raised its other arm and curled its fingers into a fist, the door behind Cinch popped open and Pinkie launched herself out of it in a spin, aiming for the geode in the principal’s hand. Cinch, however, had heard the creak of the doorknob and spun to the side before Pinkie’s hand even came close. She smacked into Superorganism and slid to the ground, stars in her eyes.
“Kill them. Kill them all!” Cinch swiped a hand to the side.
Superorganism kicked Pinkie in the chest, then raised a foot over her head, ready to end it once and for all.
“Pinkie!” Sunset reached for her friend.