The transporter before the party, with Midnight included, loomed ominously before them. Beyond that rising pillar of light was floor two hundred and eleven, the top floor and the place where Crystal Silicon was likely waiting for them along with the power of the Ethereal Queen prototype goddess at her command.
As they walked over to the elevator, mentally prepared for their biggest challenge yet, Sophia had a sudden realization, one that might spell their doom if overlooked.
“Hey everyone, I just realized something. Crystal is a very skilled hacker, right? Wouldn’t that mean that she might be able to modify her own parameters and create her own monsters? She might even be able to create an unfair advantage using cheat codes or something.”
Thanatas’ eyes widened at this revelation and softly put her palm to her face. “You’re right, I completely overlooked that possibility and figured that this fight would be like the others, but you have a point. We’re dealing with a hacker who will be micromanaging her own form. If she intends to cheat for this fight then we need to call in someone who can destroy such programs.”
“Who do you have in mind?” Sophia asked.
Thanatas didn’t answer and instead turned to Twilight. “Send a message to Celestia, have her place a huge bounty on Crystal Silicon. This figure should do.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her armor and a pen. She wrote down a number and handed it to the mare.
Twilight’s eyes widened as she saw the number. “Are you sure about this?”
“This is meant to lure ‘him’ to this world. Though seeing his sister again would be motivation enough, this bounty should make him come running. I get the feeling that we will need him to emerge victorious in this fight. Now I need to make sure he’s watching.”
As Twilight composed and sent her message to Celestia, Thanatas summoned her screenhead ghoul and began adjusting it to the correct frequency. After a few minutes, Gerald’s face appeared on the screen.
“What’s your status?” Gerald asked.
“Firstly, my cousin’s every bit the badass that I could ever dream for. Secondly, I want to be sure our family business tycoon is watching because we’re gonna need his help with this last fight.”
“Is this foe really too much for both of you?”
“No, but do the words ‘potential data bug’ mean anything to you?”
Gerald cringed at that then shook his head to recover his composure, “Yes, such an adversary would indeed be troublesome. Rest assured, he has been watching and is planning on heading over there soon, just as soon as he finishes the last of his paperwork.”
“Ugh, he really needs to delegate better.”
“You try running an omniversal corporate empire!” shouted a voice from off camera.
“Sure, then I’ll delegate you to do all the paperwork,” Thanatas shot back.
“So how long will that take?” Sophia asked.
Gerald looked aside to look at his granddaughter. “Sophia, my beautiful blue bunny!”
Sophia cut him off, “Happy reunion time after we deal with the current situation, not before.”
“Should only be a few minutes, go ahead and get started without me,” the other voice said.
“Alright, hope your Epitaph Cannon has been properly maintained, because we’re probably gonna need it here,” Thanatas said.
“Will do. Oh, and one more thing before we end this distraction of a conversation, please make sure Celestia has all the paperwork prepared for me to sign so I can set up a franchise in Equestria.”
“Sure thing.” With that, the transmission ended and the zombie vanished.
“He’s setting up a franchise here?” Sophia asked.
“That’s why I requested the figure for the bounty. It should be enough for him to open one of his stores here. I doubt he will stop expanding his business empire until every universe has a franchise.”
“Huh, I never knew my twin brother was such a business tycoon.”
“Yeah, Sigmund has the most business sense out of everyone in the family, so he handles the finances and regulates the conversion rate of currencies throughout the omniverse. Bounty hunting is a hobby of his that ties in to his entrepreneurship. He’s also one of the best studies of his prey so I wouldn’t be surprised if he already has a plan to outwit Crystal Silicon by the time we see him.”
Twilight’s communicator beeped again. Apparently, Azure Lazer had more to say. She pressed the button on her communicator. “Yes?”
<”I just wanted to let you know that one more will be joining in the battle. The elevators have been fully unlocked so she should be there in a minute.”>
“Thank you, we will wait for her before proceeding then.” She ended the transmission.
After a minute, the ringing sound of a teleportation was heard and everyone looked to see a familiar cream colored alicorn with a pink and navy blue mane and tail wearing her tuxedo.
“Bon Bon!” Lyra rushed over to hug her taller marefriend.
“It’s good to see that I’m just in time for the final battle. Are we ready to apprehend this treacherous mare?” Sweetie Drops asked while returning the hug.
Once everyone had said their greetings, they proceeded into the transporter to the top floor. Once there, they proceeded through the empty hallways and back to the place where they first encountered Crystal Silicon, and the site of their showdown.
Crystal Silicon stood in the center of the room with an unamused look on her face. Her new form had three pairs of wings made of white light. She wore a short black dress that opened enough in the chest area to show cleavage. Underneath the skirt of the black dress was a white half skirt lined at the bottom with gold. Her gloves were black to match her dress. Floating above her head was a golden halo that had runes inscribed along it. She wielded a staff with a silver crescent at the top.
“You idiots certainly like getting sidetracked a lot,” Crystal noted. “You really thought you had time to make holiday jokes to a green render, stomp all over the heart of some hopeless vampire, have conversations with two failure mercenaries and conduct an impromptu job interview with my failed AI program? I could have gone to Canterlot and killed Celestia and Luna and been back here in time to greet you fools in the time it took you to get here.”
“So why didn’t you?” Sophia asked.
Crystal gave Sophia a condescending stare. “I am a mare of efficiency. I will not waste my time on two trips when I can kill all of you and the other princesses with one.”
Sophia smirked, “Seems to me that you lost your chance to kill any princesses because you tried to be efficient.”
“Hmph, foolish leporid, do you actually hold hope that you can stop me? I will crush that hope here and now!” Crystal raised a hand in the air and an orb of light appeared in her palm. The light expanded and enveloped everyone in the party. Once the white in their vision subsided, the party saw that they were above the roof of the tower. A white magic circle appeared on the floor of the tower and extended beyond it. The platform appeared to cover over half of the Everfree Forest.
Sweetie drops looked around her then turned her attention to Crystal and growled, “What’s your game here?”
“It’s simple, you criminal, all of Equestria shall witness your fall as you so justly deserve. I shall avenge my ancestor and do away with the needless diarchy that should have dissolved centuries ago. As we speak, images of us are appearing in every city in Equestria.”
Thanatas rolled her eyes, “Figures that a vain villain like you would broadcast this fight nationwide. I can name hundreds of different villains off the top of my head who have done something like that.”
Crystal gave the undead a deadpan stare. “Are you through making me look like a common villain? Honestly, I don’t care anymore. Since that stupid insect gave away our insurance policy, you all know that whether I win or lose here, it will not have a negative effect on the future of the Equestrian Liberation Front. Now, let’s give this new form a test run.
“Oh, and one last thing, don’t fret over the thin air up here. The magic circle provides a proper atmosphere up here.”
Crystal began by causing swords of light to rain on the field, skewering the platform and creating a forest of swords. The party managed to evade the blades with some receiving a few scorch marks from being too close to the blades. As the party drew closer, Crystal called on more swords to launch at them. The party timed their attacks and shattered each blade that got close.
Before she could launch another wave, Fayt and Thanatas blocked her staff with their blades while everyone else struck her with weapons and magic from the front, sides and back. The bombardment of attacks quickly overwhelmed the former noble and left countless cuts and bruises on her body.
Strangely, Crystal merely grunted a little with each blow that she took but she never expressed any real pain, In the least, Sophia, Thanatas, Lyra and Sweetie found it suspicious. “Everyone, back away!” Sophia called out. Everyone did as she said and gave Crystal some room.
The collapsed form of the alabaster pony fused with the prototype goddess laid there for a few moments before the party heard some giggling coming from her. Suddenly, as if the world around them glitched, she was back to standing up as if nothing had happened. Any wounds that she had sustained had all disappeared in that instant.
Once she was finished laughing, Crystal gave the party an amused look. “Did you have fun taking your frustrations out on me?”
Twilight ran a scan on Crystal’s new form. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw the results. “What the buck!?” she called out. “These results make no sense!”
“What’s the matter?” Maria asked.
“My scans are telling me that the overall value of her physical and mental stamina are in non-numeric characters.”
“So our hunch was right after all,” Thanatas growled. “She hacked her own character with codes to give herself infinite health.”
“So what can we do if we can’t even hurt her?” Fayt asked.
“We need to hold out until Sigmund gets here. He’ll have something that can bypass her cheat codes.”
“Can’t we just delete her?” Maria asked.
Twilight shook her head. “Administrative spells won’t work on her because she has access to administration codes like I do. She will just block the spell if I try it on her.”
“Since we can’t face her the conventional way, we need to bypass her defenses by hacking them,” Sweetie said.
“Knowing her, she likely has a number of defensive programs protecting her from such means,” Midnight said. “It will take some time to get through them all.”
“We’ll buy you and Twilight all the time you need,” Fayt declared before he took up his combat stance against Crystal.
Crystal looked at everyone and waited patiently for them to finish their strategy meeting. “Are you all done? Anywho, since I would rather not get ganged up on like that again, I think I’ll give you another distraction.”
As she said that, the sound of transporters warping in was heard all around them. As the party looked, they were soon being stared at by a huge army of monsters that had surrounded them. The monstrous menagerie was composed of every type of monster that they had encountered on their adventures. They also noticed that the monsters that were seen in the arena were also present. Twilight’s quick scans showed that they were not being controlled by players.
“Oh, and just for extra measure,” Crystal summoned, to everyone’s horror, what looked like recolored versions of Freya, Gabriel and Lenneth. “They may not be as powerful as the actual prototypes, but they will work here. This platform was made this large so I could call an army to crush you all.”
The copies of the prototypes appeared much more horrifying than before. Gabriel’s hair was black and his wings emitted black lightning. He had the same demonic eyes as the proclaimers and convictors on the lower floors. His armor was tattered and blackened. The same could be said about Freya and Lenneth. Both wore black armor with tattered white skirts and had black hair. Lenneth’s spear had a purple jewel in the center that radiated malice.
As the monsters closed in on the party, Crystal slowly floated away from the group to watch the massacre from a safe distance.
As a group of monsters got close to Fayt, he bombarded them all with air blasts from his Air Raid technique before powering up his sword with light magic. The imbuement made his slashes more effective against some of the armored monsters.
Albel, feeling like a child in a candy store, went on his own rampage as he cut through the monsters in droves with his katana and claw.
With the battlefield being open space, the denizens of the Eternal Sphere no longer needed to hold back. Maria fired a Gravity Bullet and altered it to increase its effect, creating a singularity that pulled in many monsters and compacted them to the size of a marble. Roger was able to use his Star Fall device to rain space debris all over the battlefield. Cliff and Mirage pummeled larger monsters while using their bodies to crush the smaller monsters. Adray jumped up high and crashed back onto the platform like a meteor over a cluster of monsters while blowing them away with a fiery vortex in the form of his Sirocco technique. While he recovered, Peppita warded off any opportunistic monsters with a giant orbiting star while she summoned her Faerie Friend to smash any larger monsters. Nel took note of the monsters she learned about before and made sure to exploit their elemental weaknesses with surgical strikes.
As they fought, Fayt called out to the others who weren’t fighting the monsters, “We’ll handle these monsters, you guys focus on defeating Crystal.”
Twilight and Midnight nodded while Lyra, Sweetie, Sophia and Thanatas cut a swath through the monsters between them and Crystal Silicon.
The alabaster mare in question caused swords of light to rain down on the ground in front of her, skewering a few of her own monsters in the process. As the group of six ran through the forest of blades, Lyra and Sweetie stepped on a small magic circle and became unable to move. As Crystal pointed a light sword at them, Sophia levitated a dozen swords that were in the platform, pointed them at Crystal and hurled them at her. The swords skewered her in a dozen places and caused her to abandon her attack. However, the swords buried in her disappeared along with her wounds. Twilight and Midnight took that time to break the other mares free from the stasis spell.
Gabriel and Freya appeared between the six and Crystal. Gabriel summoned a number of lightning dragons that charged at the group, but Sweetie countered that by throwing an electrically charged orb into the swarm which detonated and unleashed an electromagnetic shockwave that caused the dragons to disperse. Freya followed up after that by elevating herself into the air and prepared to fire her Ether Strike. Sophia and Lyra rushed in and fired powerful blasts of psionic power at the undead prototype. The three ended up in a beam clash, but since Freya was not the original, she quickly found herself overwhelmed. Freya abandoned her attack and dodged the templars’ blasts.
Lenneth appeared behind the party and filled her spear with her malice before hurling it at Twilight. Thanatas saw this coming and quickly summoned a large mass of bones that took the form of a giant bone monster with four skulls, giant skeletal wings, a legless torso with arms and wielding a giant bone ax.
The bone monster struck at the incoming spear with its ax and filled the bony weapon with its own malice. As the two forces clashed, the quality malice of Lenneth’s spear could not overcome the combined malice of the many souls that went into the skeletal construct and sent the spear flying away.
Lenneth was stunned by the display which resulted in her getting impaled from behind by Thanatas’ sword.
Meanwhile, Gabriel was throwing balls of electricity at Sweetie who dodged the attacks gracefully. The demonic prototype copy focused too much on what was in front of him and failed to notice that he had company behind him in the form of flying banelings fit to burst with potent acid. By the time he heard a buzzing sound behind him, he turned just in time to get a splash of acid in his face immediately followed by many more bursting and splashing him from every direction except below. Gabriel screamed in agony for only a brief moment before he melted into green goo.
After Freya dodged the twin templar blast, Sophia instantly appeared behind her and wrapped her arms around her. She then proceeded to flip herself upside down with her prey and suplexed the undead prototype into the platform.
Freya managed to recover from the attack and got back on her feet in time for her movements to be halted as she found herself paralyzed by a dark aura being emitted by Sophia. The bunny templar had one arm across her body which took the form of a sharp chitinous blade. The undead prototype tried to escape, but the paralysis had fully taken hold of her body so she had to helplessly watch as she got slashed by an imitation of Fayt’s Dimension Door technique.
The slash cut her in two but the final blow was another Psionic Shockwave from Lyra.
Crystal sighed as she witnessed the failures of her creations. “Why must minions always be so pitiful?” She asked nobody.
“Because villains typically hate having underlings who rival their masters,” Thanatas answered anyway.
Crystal groaned in exasperation, wishing that she could be rid of the pest who kept annoying her. “Guess it’s my turn, I’ll make better use of the attacks used by those imbeciles.”
Crystal began to modify herself. Her crescent staff transformed into a spear that looked like Lenneth’s except the metal was jet black and it crackled with black lightning. The top and bottom wings on her right turned black and the middle wing on her left side followed suit.
Everyone could tell that Crystal meant business this time. Sweetie didn’t take her eyes off her foe while addressing her fellow alicorns, “Any luck on hacking her data?”
“It’s going to take some time,” Twilight said. “She has ten layers of data protection on her and we have to crack through it one layer at a time.”
“One layer will take us half an hour to break on our own,” Midnight added. “There’s also the risk that she might restore the layer before we can crack the next.”
“So basically, attack and don’t let up because while we can’t harm her directly, our attacks will help weaken the data protections,” Thanatas instructed.
“How do you know this?” Sophia asked.
“Because Crystal is using features that mirror a certain universe. Though the extra layers are a nice touch. Anyway, I’ll show you a few universes later.”
Unfortunately for Twilight and Midnight, Crystal wasn’t willing to let the two stand around and hack into her form so while she was fighting off Sophia, Thanatas, Lyra and Sweetie, she was putting pressure on Twilight and Midnight by launching black swords at them, forcing the two to dodge.
“Figures that we would be fighting a villain who was actually competent at this point,” Sophia growled. “Lyra, Sweetie Drops, focus on defending Twilight and Midnight. Thanatas and I can handle the offense ourselves.” Lyra and Sweetie nodded and positioned themselves in front of the two purple mares.
Crystal fired more black swords at Twilight and Midnight only for Lyra to blast the blades meant for Twilight with a Psionic Shockwave while Sweetie grabbed the blades meant for Midnight with a number of tentacles. She then threw the blades back at Crystal who shattered them with her spear.
The glitched mare immediately found herself impaled by five tentacles that erupted from the platform below her. She looked down to see Sophia with her extended fingers piercing the platform in two places where they could be traced through the platform and up and through her abdomen. The rabbit retracted the tentacles and left her to bleed a little before Crystal glitched back to normal before being impaled again by a dozen copies of Thanatas’ Evermourne blade.
As the alabaster mare in black began removing the blades one by one, Sophia rushed up to her face and spat acid on her which burned through her skin. Crystal growled and glitched herself back to normal again. She then teleported in front of Twilight and attempted to impale her with her spear only for her to be grabbed by the hoof by one of Sweetie’s tentacles and slammed onto the platform next to Sophia who thrust one of her energy blades into the mare’s chest.
When Crystal glitched again, a loud shattering sound, like broken glass, could be heard from her. The fighters looked and saw a number of green hexagons breaking off of her. Midnight noticed this and continued typing with renewed vigor. “Keep it up, we just broke one of her protection barriers,” Twilight called out.
Crystal snarled at the party before she raised her spear into the air and unleashed a storm of black lightning all over the area around her. Lyra and Sweetie put up barriers to protect themselves and their friends. Thanatas created a shield of bones to weather the storm while Sophia quickly raced under a nearby four-armed demon and let him take the bolts in her area.
The alabaster mare then flew high into the air and pointed her spear toward the platform. A ball of energy grew from the tip of the spear, intending on unleashing a blast that would devastate the area. She ended up firing it toward the horizon when she was suddenly assaulted by the rabbit templar delivering a powerful uppercut to her gut. The mare was reeling from the blow as she began to fall toward the platform only to be punched into the air repeatedly.
Finally, Sophia grabbed Crystal by the left hoof and hurled her back onto the platform where she landed with a sickening thud. As Sophia landed next to Thanatas for the next round, Crystal glitched herself back to normal. The sound of shattering glass was heard once more.
The fight continued this way for a few minutes. Crystal continued picking targets and unleashing her attacks on her opponents, only to be countered and discovering firsthand a number of ways that someone could die that she had never realized could be possible. Over those few minutes, three more barriers were shattered, leaving only five more.
Unknown to everyone, while Crystal was causing more black swords to rain on the area, a large number of marble-sized machines were also falling along with the swords. They scattered around the field but took care to avoid getting in the way of the combatants.
Lyra and Sweetie used psionic blasts to destroy the blades aimed at them. Sophia easily dodged her blades and Thanatas used her skeletal construct to block the blades aimed at her.
Crystal then attempted another strategy by plunging her spear into the platform before more black blades began to erupt from the platform. The eruptions spread evenly outward from her position to turn the immediate battlefield into a spike field. Sweetie grabbed Midnight by the waist while Lyra grabbed Twilight by the waist and jumped upward before landing on the tips of two blades each on the battlefield. Their psionic abilities allowed them to stand on the blades without getting their hooves pierced.
Sweetie looked at Twilight, then at Midnight and sighed. “When this is over, Lyra and I are going to put both of you through intense combat training. It’s one thing to focus on magic, but you are both lacking in hoofwork.” Both purple mares cringed at that.
Meanwhile, Sophia survived the attack by using her psionic power to float above the spikes while Thanatas spawned her skeletal wings and took flight.
“We need to break through the rest of the barriers fast before she tries to do something worse than this,” Thanatas said. “Any ideas?”
“If there weren’t friendlies on the field, I would suggest a nuclear strike to do some serious damage to her. But I might have an idea that could work just as well. Keep me covered for a few seconds.”
Thanatas nodded and turned her attention back to Crystal. Meanwhile, Sophia used her speed and precision strikes to shatter the black swords around her. She channeled her psionic power into the spell she was chanting in her mind.
Crystal attempted to attack Sophia while she was channeling but her attacks were blocked by a wall of large bones. Crystal glared at the undead and hurled a spear at her. The spear was knocked away by Evermourne.
Once the chant was finished, Sophia opened her eyes to reveal two bright blue lights. “Psi Meteor Swarm!” she called out.
Immediately a large number of rifts opened and a large meteor emerged from each rift covered in a blue aura. Each meteor flew straight at Crystal who used her spear to shatter one meteor, only for the fragments to halt in midair and fly back at her to pummel her while more large meteors slammed into her and exploded. Again and again the meteors blasted into the helpless mare who flinched with each rock that struck her. One shattering sound was heard, followed by another and another and another. The attack subsided after the ninth protection was shattered.
Midnight was typing on her interface screen furiously, almost ready to execute her own plan.
Once the dust settled, Crystal emerged from the rubble without a scratch on her. She gave the rabbit and undead a furious glare. “My patience has officially run out! Time to kill your friends and topple your precious research facility in one go!” She then raised her spear high into the air. A massive black void appeared in the air above the platform and a colossal black sword slowly began to descend toward them. Crystal put on her best gloating smile. “You may be able to dodge this attack, but your digital friends most certainly won’t and that tower will not withstand this. Say goodbye to the friends and the things you care about!”
“I’m afraid I must cancel this demolition project.”
Before Crystal could react to the new voice, a blast of compressed air struck her in the wrist of the hand that was holding her spear, forcing her to drop it. The ominous blade in the sky faded away.
“Who dares!?” Crystal demanded before another sphere of highly compressed air stuck her hard in the gut and exploded violently, unleashing a blast of wind all around the point of impact. The blast shattered the final defense and sent Crystal flying into a pack of nearby monsters.
Sophia, Thanatas and the others looked in the direction the attack came from and saw a lone figure standing there. The figure was a blue rabbit like Sophia, except the hair on his head was shorter and slicked back. Judging by the baritone voice earlier, the figure was definitely male. He wore a purple and green striped shirt and a pair of long black pants. His shoes matched the pants and he wore a black trenchcoat. Sophia could feel space warping around his coat. He was also wielding a strange looking cannon in his hand that Sophia guessed was what allowed him to fire those shots of compressed air.
“Sigmund? Is that you?” Sophia asked.
“Hey sis, it’s been too long. I mean, we were only a year old when we last saw each other,” Sigmund said.
Sophia sighed, “We can catch up once we take this bitch out. I hope you have a way to get around her cheat codes?”
“Sure do!” Sigmund then opened his trenchcoat and pushed his weapon against it. A small amount of light was seen as the weapon disappeared. Keeping his coat open, he reached into it and in the same flash of light, a different weapon appeared.
The new weapon was as long as a rifle but was as large as a cannon. The barrel was as thick as Cliff’s muscular arm and the handle and trigger were normal for a rifle, the strangest parts of the weapon were the flash drive on the back of the weapon and a large, sinister, red-glowing eye that appeared to be holographic was at the end of the barrel. The eye itself had red sclera and the iris was green and yellow with a black-slitted pupil.
“As long as her protections are down, this baby will bring this fight to an end,” Sigmund declared.
“Oh really,” Crystal suddenly said. She had a furious look in her eyes but her smirk looked ominous. “Then I need to make sure not to get hit by that thing.” Suddenly, to everyone’s dismay, ten more layers of defense appeared around the hacker.
Twilight ground her teeth in frustration. It was hard enough to remove the layers of defense before, but now they were back to square one. Worse, was that she was sure that the Eternal Sphere fighters were likely beginning to feel the fatigue of their many battles up to this point and she was certain that Crystal was simply going to focus on wiping out the entire battlefield instead of focusing on targets.
“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” Midnight mentally broadcasted to her allies. “Just make sure mister rabbit has his weapon ready to fire and make sure she can’t dodge whatever he’s planning to hit her with.”
Sigmund nodded and began charging up his Epitaph Cannon, waiting for an opening.
Crystal had a bad feeling about the newcomer’s weapon so she created a huge number of light and dark swords and pointed them at the male. As the blades flew toward him, Sigmind smirked as he pressed a button on his coat. When the blades got close, they somehow disappeared as if going into some spatial sheath. The blades exited from the other side of the spatial distortion he surrounded himself with. He then collapsed the distortion which shattered the blades.
The alabaster mare’s next move was to move in and strike him with her spear, but that proved futile as several of the tiny marble-sized drones from earlier jumped up and attached themselves to Crystal before they exploded and sent her flying back to Sophia and Thanatas, both of whom grabbed her by one hoof each and slammed her face into the platform before lifting her and slamming her on her back, ending the combo attack with an elbow drop on her chest from both of them at the same time. The mare coughed up blood as a result.
Crystal glitched back to her hooves, only to have her legs held tightly in place by Sophia’s tentacles and her arms restrained by Thanatas behind her. “You think you can hold me forever? You still have to get through my protections,” she growled.
“And this is checkmate, my beloved creator,” Midnight declared, putting plenty of venom into her words. She then pressed one key on her interface screen and in the next moment, all ten barriers shattered simultaneously. Crystal’s eyes widened in horror before she quickly turned her head to Sigmund.
“How!?” Crystal demanded.
Midnight smirked, “For each barrier shattered earlier, I planted a virus that would attack the respective barrier from within.”
The male wasted no time as he fired his fully charged cannon at Crystal. The shot was a scarlet sphere with several tiny data packets inside that barreled toward the mare and struck her in the chest. Crystal suddenly found herself unable to move at all, as if the sphere had disabled all of her motor functions. The despair in her eyes showed that she had no cards left to play.
Once the shot made its impact, the eye on Sigmund’s cannon deployed an array of green hexagons and branches as it entered its drain mode. A torrent of coding flew out of Crystal’s body and shot toward the eye, devouring the prototype data byte by byte, focusing on the coding that held the entire program together. After a few seconds, Crystal began to feel pain and agony as data was ripped out of her body. Her pain tolerance had quickly reached its limit and she screamed as the pain became too much for her to endure.
The screams lasted only a few seconds before the sphere removed itself from her body and returned to the eye. Crystal fell to her hands and knees as the two cousins let her go.
The mare breathed heavily before noticing binary escaping from her body and disappearing, as if her form was evaporating. After a minute of this, the last of the data left her body and left behind a physically and magically exhausted alabaster mare with a sparkling silver mane and tail and wearing a gown that matched her mane.
As Crystal tried to lift her head and say something that Thanatas would likely find cliche, Sophia channeled a bit of electricity into her right index and middle fingers and slightly jabbed her on top of her head. The electricity passed through her skull interacted with Crystal’s brain to trigger certain brain functions which suppressed her consciousness.
Crystal Silicon’s world turned white as her consciousness left the waking world.