One week after Crystal’s attack…
Sophia and Thanatas entered the Sphere building and asked the Protoss receptionist where Fayt and the others went. The receptionist directed the pair to floor five. They took the nearest elevator to that level and searched the floor for the rest of the group.
They located their friends in a room that was used as an Eternal Sphere terminal. Sigmund and Sweetie were not in attendance as they had their own duties to attend to. Once the duo entered the room, everyone acknowledged their entry.
“Alright, now that everyone’s here, we can begin,” Twilight said. She cleared her throat. “I’m hoping that everyone has thought carefully about what they want to do. Once you decide, there’s no taking it back once I send you back. I’ve given all of you a week to decide. Once Grape Vine comes back with the memory crystals, we’ll begin.”
Adray went first. “I still have plenty of vigor in me for plenty of adventures. But as much as I would love to see what other sights this world has, I have to accept that I’m simply too old to be exploring a culture as advanced as this one. Besides, I would miss my little girl finally finding a man to marry her and that’s the biggest reason why I’m returning home.”
“I understand,” Twilight handed him a crystal the size of his hand. “Place that crystal on your forehead for a minute then hand it back to me.” Adray did as instructed.
“I’m afraid that I must go back as well,” Nel said. “As fun as it’s been, my loyalty is to Aquaria. It may be an artificially created world, but Elicoor is still my home.” Nel received a crystal.
“Not much is waiting for me back home,” Cliff said. “If Twilight is planning on taking better care of how the Federation works, there will probably not be a need for Quark anymore. I don’t wanna imagine what life would be like without the excitement, so I’m gonna stick around. Besides, with this planet’s four to one babe to dude ratio, I’d be a fool to leave that behind.”
The females in the room shuddered at Cliff’s reasoning.
“I’ll stick around as well, to keep Cliff in line,” Mirage said. “Like Cliff, I would prefer to be where the adventure is.”
“Sorry guys, but I think this is it for me,” Peppita said. “It’s been an amazing adventure with you all, but I can’t imagine life without the circus. What would Gonnella or Ursus do without me?” Twilight smiled and handed her a crystal.
“Yeah, I’m sure my boys have gotta be worried sick about me by now,” Roger said. He then looked at Peppita. “Still, I am gonna miss you, Peppita.”
“Me as well, Roger.” She crouched down and gave the Mennodix a hug while Midnight handed him a crystal.
“Hmph, as if there’s anything exciting waiting for me back home,“ Albel snubbed. “There are no real challenges on Elicoor. I want to be the strongest there is and if that means abandoning Airyglyph, then so be it.”
Sophia smirked, “That and you want to–” Her smirk was unaffected even as Albel pointed his katana at Sophia’s throat.
Fayt thought for a moment and Maria looked uncertain as well. Twilight looked at the two, “Have you two decided?”
Fayt stared at the mare, “Before I decide, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, go right ahead.”
“If our time does reset to before we were born, that’ll mean that my father never conducted his experiment on us, right?”
Twilight nodded, “You two will live normal lives as regular humans as if the experiments never happened.”
“Then, I’d like to stay, if you don’t mind.”
Twilight tilted her head in confusion, “Why? Don’t you want to be free of the burden that Doctor Robert Leingod placed on you?”
“My father gave me this power for the purpose of facing and defeating the Creator of our universe, but after all we’ve been through, I get this feeling that this power will play an important role one day, beyond what my father intended.”
Maria smiled and placed her left arm around Fayt’s right arm. “I agree. This power may have been given to me without my permission, but it’s my power to wield as I see fit. And if Fayt’s intuition is correct, then all the better.”
Midnight didn’t appear satisfied with their answers yet and assumed the posture of a professional secretary, even putting on a pair of glasses for effect. “Have you five given any consideration to your futures? You are allowed to help us in dealing with the ELF, but that’s no excuse to deny yourselves a career.”
She looked at Fayt and Maria. “You two will be attending Canterlot University pending an evaluation on your skills. You are both young and intelligent so you still have a chance for a higher education. Before that though, you will both be taking courses in order to gain a proper understanding of our society and technology, as well as other important topics such as history.”
She then looked at Cliff and Mirage. “You two will also be taking basic education courses before you may pursue a career. Knowing your skills around piloting a ship, I suspect that you two will be making deliveries to other worlds we’ve colonized at least. At most, who knows.”
Midnight then looked at Albel. “You will have your knowledge evaluated and we will tailor your education plan around the results. Since you came from a medieval world, we expect that you will be needing a lot more time than the others to catch up to their level of technical knowledge.”
“And what makes you think that I will sit down and listen to one of your boring lectures, worm?” Albel growled.
Sophia stood in his face with a sickly sweet smile on her face. “Because if you don’t you won’t be able to participate in the arena anymore and you will be barred from combat until your technical knowledge is sufficient.”
Albel looked at Midnight again who shrugged, “If that’s what it takes…” Albel didn’t like that answer and turned away to grumble.
Cliff shrugged, “Seems fair, wouldn’t wanna cause any problems ‘cause of our lack of knowledge.”
“Guess it’s back to being a college student for me,” Fayt said.
With that, Twilight, Midnight, Lyra, Sophia, Thanatas, and the five who chose to stay exited the room while the other four stayed.
A few minutes later, a black summoning circle appeared in the room and Grape Vine appeared from it, struggling to carry a large crate that made clinking sounds as she walked out of the room. She put the crate down in front of Twilight and placed her hand on a wall while breathing heavily. “There…got…cry…tals…as…req…ues…ted,” she said between breaths.
Twilight smiled at her employee. “Great work, Grape Vine. I will leave you a nice bonus in your next paycheck, as well as a big raise.”
Grape’s eyes lit up and her smile broadened. “Oh thank you, boss! I just know that this project will succeed!”
“Yo Twilight, the backups are ready to install. We’re ready to reboot the system at any time,” shouted Lemon Puff as she approached them.
With that, everyone said their goodbyes to Nel, Roger, Peppita and Adray. After a few minutes of telling their final wishes, Twilight activated the terminal and the four vanished in a bright light.
“Alright, let’s reboot the system,” Twilight ordered.
After time in the Eternal Sphere was brought back to a safe point, events proceeded much differently than before. Those who were not reformatted were instead replaced with characters who were every bit like the originals, from physical appearance to personality. The only difference being how they were raised.
The Leingods and the Esteeds were neighbors like before while Fayt and a young brunette named Sophia became childhood friends who played together and went to school together. Fayt became a mechanical engineer while Sophia took up medicine. Every now and again, they would be visited by the Traydor family who lived on Federation Station Five. Their young daughter, Maria, would grow up to join the Federation military academy. Maria wouldn’t find out what happened to her real parents until she was in her mid thirties.
With the Federation government behaving themselves by being more diplomatic than hostile toward other races, there was never a need for Quark to exist. Cliff, being unable to gain any decisive victories over his rival, Mirage, in martial arts competitions, had gone into seclusion to hone his skills. Every now and again he would turn up in a restaurant somewhere to sexually harrass the waitresses.
With her mastery in martial arts proven, Mirage would take over her family’s dojo where she would teach the next generation how to fight and give extra lessons for the girls to learn how to “properly dispose of trash” such as perverts.
Whenever he was in the area, Adray would always pay Clair a visit and ask her if she had her eye on any men yet. Her answer would continue to be the same for several years. Some of her responses came with the old man getting defenestrated out a second floor window. Ever since a mysterious stranger handed him a crystal and told him to push his forehead against it, he would sometimes reminisce about the greatest adventure he ever had.
Albel held his position as the Dragon Brigade captain after his predecessor had been assassinated by a mysterious individual. He later became bored and quit the military altogether to live the life of a wanderer, seeking out a worthy opponent.
The assailant was never found.
Nel continued her duties to the Kingdom of Aquaria, going on dangerous missions with Tynave and Farleen. After a mysterious individual gave her a crystal, she figured that she needed some time for herself and visited the Kingdom of Greeton. While the people there liked to boast about their technological superiority, Nel simply chuckled as she knew there were civilizations out there that would make Greeton look primitive.
Roger took Dribe and Melt through the Mosel Dunes to look for any unexplored ruins and search for treasure. What they didn’t expect was for a flying metal vehicle to land near them. The trio was surprised that the people who emerged from the ship were a whole circus troupe. A certain girl ran up to Roger and gave him a big hug, confusing him at first. She then pressed a crystal on his forehead and things became clearer as he returned her hug. Dribe was confused about what was going on while Melt smiled knowingly. The rest of the circus troupe looked on at the two hugging each other and smiled.
The inventors recruited by Twilight and Grape Vine were all given memory crystals by cloaked individuals and remembered their contracts. The contributions of their knowledge to Grape's project would become the base for future item creation features on other worlds, including the galaxy that would to facilitate Twilight's Zereth project.
Back in Equestria, Fayt, Maria, Cliff, Mirage and Albel were given lessons about Equestrian culture and technology as well as any subjects that they were not taught in their old school. Fayt and Maria quickly learned the material and caught up to today’s standards of education.
Fayt also taught the Equestrians how to temporarily imbue elemental energies into weapons. Lyra learned the technique quickly and experimented with it to create a wide variety of possible imbuements for numerous purposes. She then started teaching the method to her fellow templars.
Years later, Fayt and Maria graduated from Canterlot University with degrees in symbological studies and mechanical engineering respectively. Fayt accepted a position among Sphere’s symbological research department while Maria enrolled in the Ghost Academy where she went through several treatments to develop psychic powers. She endured plenty of hardships until she emerged from the academy as a fully trained Ghost.
Cliff and Mirage completed their education a little slower than Fayt and Maria and took on jobs as delivery people to the various colonial worlds. They were paid well for their efforts since they also delivered to some of the seediest establishments and stations in Equestrian space. They would often get into fights with aggressive locals which only made the job exciting for them.
Albel was the last of the five to complete their education since he had the most ground to cover and lacked the attention span for anything that wasn’t related to fighting. While he looked forward to fighting in the arena again, Midnight made sure that the warrior pursued a career. Albel decided to become a mercenary for hire while remembering the mistakes made by Swift Burial. Because of that, he chose which jobs he took while working on the side as an apprentice to a Protoss weaponsmith.
Sophia eventually met Gerald face to face. Knowing what he was about to do, she decided to simply go with it and let him take her to the station that served as the headquarters of the Starcraft Navy. Gerald had already gotten the ceremony prepared and after a number of speeches that bored Sophia to tears before delivering a speech of her own while pointing out the many flaws of the fleets while giving her own ideas on how they will be improved in the future. Some ideas were seen as controversial, but she made a promise that the navy would become the most terrifying adversary throughout the omniverse and a symbol of victory to all who the fleets side with. Sophia never knew how charismatic she really was until she heard the loudest roars of cheer and applause she had ever heard. Thankfully, her eardrums quickly adapted.
After the ceremony, Gerald hightailed it to some distant world in the omniverse. However, Sophia made sure to stick a tracker on her grandfather before he left. She was not about to let him run out on the family so easily.
Sigmund opened his store in Canterlot and drew the attention of many noble collectors and others who were curious about the wares. Since he couldn’t be running the shop forever however, he hired a few ponies who were disgruntled with the nobles and explained his plan to them and that as long as they stuck to it, they would have their revenge in the end. Sigmund returned to his corporate headquarters to resume his paperwork.
Thanatas headed off to another universe somewhere and only told them that she was taking a vacation. The only clue to her whereabouts was Sophia seeing an image in a rift that appeared to be an endless white japanese-style city with the central section surrounded by a circular wall. The wall and roofs of the buildings were all light brown. The central building was the tallest of them all and was overlooked by a tall plateau.
Midnight accepted the position as Twilight’s personal secretary. Twilight had always done well to organize the company but she understood that her organizational skills had their limits. Midnight was programmed to think like Twilight, but she added in her own personal touch of having a professional facade so she could help Twilight to focus whenever she started to panic. Between the two of them, productivity within the company jumped fifteen percent by the end of the fiscal year.
Meanwhile, in an undisclosed location…
A certain mare was running around screaming while fully engulfed in flames. She tried rolling around, dumping the contents of several potted shrubs on herself, and dowsing herself several times with water, one of those times turning out to be a bucket of gasoline that was conveniently placed there by one of her cohorts for a cruel prank. Much to her frustration and agony, none of them worked.
In the end, the mare decided to rip open a wall paneling and pull on wires until she electrocuted herself to death. The lights went out for a few moments until the backup lighting system came back on. The mare’s world faded to black as she embraced the mercy of death.
A few minutes later, another mare emerged from a nearby stasis pod. She took a few minutes to inspect herself. “So far so good,” she thought. Once she was done looking over herself, she exited the pod and grabbed the set of clothes that were placed next to her pod which was standard for all pods.
Once she got dressed, Crystal growled as she glared at the red unicorn filly wearing a purple gothic dress. The scarlet filly had a sky blue mane and tail. The filly was on her back laughing helplessly on the floor.
“Are you just about finished laughing at my misfortune, Gemini Star?”
The filly continued laughing but managed to give a “Nope.” when she could manage it. As her laughing fit began to subside, she managed to speak, “I still have another half of a laughing fit to go.” Suddenly, the filly’s colors shifted, her dress remained the same, but her coat turned indigo and her mane became bright pink. After the transformation, her laughter continued, though Crystal was thankful that her laughter was more subdued in that form.
She was a strange filly, Crystal could understand why her cutie mark was a series of red and blue stars. It was even stranger that the visible parts of her cutie mark changed whenever she shifted. One could see the blue part when she was red and vice versa.
Crystal continued to glare at the filly. “I suppose you think it was funny to trick me into dumping fuel onto myself.”
Gemini’s giggles continued. “It was a little funny, it was like something out of a cartoon.”
Crystal rolled her eyes and walked out of the room. Gemini followed after her. The two traveled down a hallway in silence until Crystal broke it. “Did you ever consider how I felt when I ended up either boneless, skinless, misshapen or prone to combustion when exposed to oxygen? It hurts like Tartarus!”
Gemini turned red. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud. It’s bad enough that there’s not a lot to do when it comes to entertainment. It wasn’t my fault that nobody bothered to check the materials for defects. It was hilarious that you had to go through five whole bodies and off yourself five times until you could wind up in a body that actually worked.” Gemini started laughing loudly again.
Crystal rolled her eyes and grumbled. “When I get my hands on that insect, I will rip her chitin off and hurl the rest of her into a bug zapper,” she thought.
The two entered a meeting room with a circular table and eight chairs. Each one was marked for each member to sit in, including the leader. Crystal took her spot in the chair to the right of the leader’s chair while Gemini sat two chairs right of Crystal.
Over the next half hour, the other lieutenants started coming in. The next one to enter was a sand-colored male pegasus with a green mane wearing rags. Crystal recognized him as Desert Wind and despite his appearance, he was actually a very successful businesspony with small retail chains all over Equestria. For some reason, he just liked dressing like a beggar. He had a chain around his neck with an icon that resembled his cutie mark of a shimmering desert oasis. He sat two chairs to the left of the leader’s chair.
Next came a yellow pegasus with a white mane swept over her left eye while the other eye had an eyepatch. She wore a yellow robe that had holes in the back for her wings. Despite not being able to see however, she found her seat to the right of Gemini.
Everyone knew about Windwhisper’s clairvoyant abilities by picking up on the subtle messages that the air around her brought her. This was a talent that no other pegasus had, let alone any pony. Her cutie mark was an eye with a pair of wings.
The next lieutenant sauntered into the room. This one was a rose-colored female pegasus with a voluminous yellow mane with white streaks whose very appearance made Crystal grind her teeth in envy. Being a supermodel, Misty Wing had access to only the best beauty products and equipment to keep her figure well toned.
Misty’s ability activated whenever she flapped her wings. Mares and stallions alike would be drawn to her and then fight one another over her. She playfully flapped her wings once. Windwhisper saw it coming and covered her muzzle with her robe while Gemini was left confused since Misty’s ability had no effect on foals. Desert looked at Misty like a lovestruck fool while Crystal focused her hatred to conquer the wave of lust.
Misty giggled at their reactions as she took her spot between Crystal and Gemini.
Two more ponies came in, both stallions. One was a blue earth pony with a yellow mane. He was shirtless and his shorts looked like something woven together from jungle plants. The other was a black earth pony with a scarlet mane. By profession, he, Steel Edge, was a blacksmith who crafted his own armor and weapons. His real talent though was being able to use any weapon with at least moderate skill. More so than an amateur anyway.
As for the blue pony, Greenpeace, his oddity was that he was always mellow and always high on something. His affinity for plants was one of the best on record throughout Equestria’s history. Plants behaved with sentience while he was around. As great as his power was though, he was still an idiot. Greenpeace would often forget his missions because he was baked most of the time, so Gemini would have to pin his missions on his shorts whenever she was blue or stab him in the arm with it when she was red.
Steel sat to the left of the leader’s seat and Greenpeace sat between Desert and Windwhisper.
After ten minutes of waiting and enduring Gemini’s mockery of everyone in the room, who knew when they were mocked, the leader finally arrived.
For some reason, the leader never revealed his true self, keeping his color scheme hidden in a blackening spell. Everyone knew his name but were forbidden from uttering it because of the spell he placed on everyone that triggered whenever anyone attempted to utter his name.
Still, everyone followed him because they all had one purpose: the removal of the Alicorns from Equestria.
“Firstly, I wish to congratulate all of you for a job well done,” the leader began, his voice concealed with a robotic voice spell. “Everything has gone according to plan, despite some hiccups.”
“Yeah, but Crystal still failed to kill even one princess,” Steel Edge said.
“That is irrelevant. Crystal’s mission was not to eliminate any of the Alicorns, that was an optional objective. Her mission allowed the rest of you to map out the Eternal Sphere without arousing suspicion. At the same time, she also ensured the deletion of several of the Eternal Sphere’s most troublesome defenses. With the Executioners and Valkyrie Goddesses gone, we will have more freedom to move about in the Eternal Sphere.”
“So, are you going to explain why we needed to do this while Crystal ran her distraction?” Misty asked.
“At this stage, I can now explain what we must do to execute our plan. But first, a little background. Some time ago, the Eternal Sphere was visited by an AI from another universe. However, the Executioners detected her and attempted to delete her. Instead, she split her very being into eight powerful fragments that have scattered throughout the Eternal Sphere. Neither we nor Sphere are able to locate the fragments. It’s thanks to Windwhisper that we discovered the method to bring one of the fragments out of hiding. It’s thanks to Gemini for crafting the plan needed to expose the fragment and capture it without Sphere being any the wiser.”
“So what are we supposed to do with these fragments?” Crystal asked.
“For now, we study it and learn what we can from it. If we can weaponize it, we might have something that would make the Valkyrie Goddesses seem obsolete by comparison.”
“So when do we get to the action?” Steel demanded. “I didn’t make all these weapons just for them to rust.”
“Dude, chillax, ya gotta like mellow your vibes dude,” Greenpeace said. “Bad karma comes to those who harsh their own vibes man. Let’s just kick back and munch on some chamomile while we wait.”
“I’ll show you vibes!” Steel growled.
“Steel Edge, enough!” the leader ordered. “Greenpeace is right, we can’t act recklessly. Equestria has gained some powerful allies. If we act too quickly and they notice our activities, we will be forced to deal with their allies before we are ready. I doubt we would be able to handle them as we are now.
“For now, we wait and we study the changes in the Eternal Sphere. We must locate and secure the other seven fragments before Sphere finds out what they are.”
“Do we know anything about the fragment we have?” Desert asked.
“The winds speak of a name,” Windwhisper uttered. “It identifies itself with one word: Rebirth. It calls to the hearts stained with malice.”
“So the thing is looking for bad people or something?” Gemini asked. “Well, whatever, are we done here? If we’re gonna be sitting around for a while, can we at least get some entertainment here? Maybe set my room up with some video games?”
Crystal rolled her eyes. “We’ll get you something to keep you entertained. Anything to keep you from pulling your ridiculous pranks on the rest of us.” Gemini stuck her tongue out at Crystal.
“Until we know our next move, all of you are to remain on standby,” the leader ordered. “Remember, our grand mission is to bring about the birth of a nation free of Alicorn influence. We must not let anything jeopardize that. This meeting is now adjourned.”
With that, everyone rose from their seats and exited the conference room.