Rider on the Storm

by HK-FortySeven

Sudden Death

“Whoa,” you hear Rainbow Dash comment from behind, “Not gonna lie, that was actually pretty cool. You know, for a bad guy.”

You pay the heroic mare and her cohorts no mind and instead keep your eyes on Tempest, knowing the rules of superhero engagement kept you nice and safe for the moment. Steam gently wafts up from her freshly refurbished horn as she groans in pain, her teeth clenched together and her eyes shut tight. Keeping your expression neutral to match your restrained expectations, you regard her new appendage with a careful, discerning eye, intent on finding out from a distance if it’s more than just a showpiece.

Sure, the restore process looked sick as hell, and the whole ‘core creation’ part of it gave you at least some hope that it worked. But you also noticed that the staff didn’t open up the existing horn core before it made the new one, which drove a big ol’ staple into that hope. You click your tongue at the same time that you hear Twilight hum with concern, and the convergence of your conclusion and her tone all but assures you of what the outcome is.

Still, can’t rule it out just yet. And you can’t just up and crush the gal’s hopes to dust like that, either. Not when you could still use her help.

“You alright?” you speak up, wearing a tiny, semi-strained smile.

She responds with a groan, cracking one of her eyes open to look at you.

“I take it back,” she groans again, rubbing her forehead. “I can’t take it.”

“Well, I did warn ‘ya.”

“You did,” she nods, opening both eyes and standing up to her full measure, her legs somewhat shaky. “How do I look?”

“You always look good,” you wink, your tone turning serious after that quip. “But I’m more concerned with how it works, not with how it looks.”

As usual, your serious intonation works to sober the gal up, giving her new and fairly long pointy bit - much longer than Twilight’s, let the record show - an experimental poke with her hoof, as if testing to see if it even existed. Then, taking a deep breath, she closes her eyes and experimentally lights up her horn.

Or rather, she tries to.

The base of her old horn glows just fine; hell, it even looks normal, lacking it’s usual unstable fizzle and lighting up with an aura that was a very similar shade of purple to Twilight’s magic. Unfortunately, the glow remained confined to said old horn, with the new material remaining inert. She was also visibly struggling with casting, wincing as she fed it power.

“Come on,” she grunts, forcing an eye open to look up at her still mostly unlit horn, “Work, damn it!”

That same eye shuts again as she strains to funnel more juice into it, sweat beading across her brow and tears stinging the corners of her eyes, through whether they were from pain or desperation was an open question. More alarming, however, was the sudden appearance of cracks across the new horn, glowing the same colour as her magic and with the beginnings of her usual fizzle to them.

“Whoa there,” you pipe up, “Tap the brakes, Tempie. Horn’s starting to--”

“No!” she cries out, straining even harder. “I can do this!”

The big, audible crack across the new horn with her typical Sith lightning leaking out of it spoke to the diametric opposite of her doing it.

“No, seriously,” you warn, staff already alight, “I ain’t fucking around. Stop right now.”

“Tempest, listen to him!” Twilight adds, voice laden with concern. “You have to stop now, before you--”

In the split-second moment before her horn detonated like a lightning-filled grenade, you enwreathe Tempest’s body in a protective barrier, shielding her from the blast. Twilight, having a similar idea to you, opted instead to grab her in a TK field and prevent her from flying back, setting her down gently once she’d come to a complete stop.

The remaining nub of her horn seemed like it was pretty much unchanged from where it had started, but it’s exact condition was hard to make out through the two-toned glow it was sporting: half red from heat, and half purple from her own magic aura. As for the mare it was attached to, all she could manage was to look up to where her new horn used to be with a heartbroken groan and some fresh tears before slumping to the ground, the exhaustion of the failed restore process taking it’s toll and rendering her unconscious.

“God damn it,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Y’know, I was really hopin’ that was gonna work.”

“Yeah, so was I,” Rainbow Dash pipes up, though you didn’t need to see her to know her girlfriends were all giving her the stink eye for that remark. “What? It’s true! Nopony should lose their horn like that! That’s as bad as losing a wing!”

“It was never going to work,” Twilight says, hints of sadness and pity in her tone. “Once a unicorn’s horn is broken, it can’t be restored.”

“Well that sounds like dumb fucking rule to me,” you interject. “Pretty sure reindeer grow theirs back, and they can do magic with ‘em, too.”

“Hey, that’s a good point,” Rainbow agrees.

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity snaps. “Why are you agreeing with him?!”

“Because he’s right?” she snorts. “Just because he’s evil doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Even if we do need to kick his tail.”

Huh. You may have misjudged Bluefast there.

“They’re also very different from ponies,” Twilight huffs, getting things back on track. “The outside of our horns does grow back. But the core doesn’t. In fact, any kind of damage to the core causes permanent magical damage, nevermind losing the entire horn. It’s a miracle she could even use the magic that she did!”

Ah well shit, that more or less confirms it, doesn’t it? Seems like the staff gave it it’s best effort, but it’s autopilot restore spell didn’t know to open up the old core to mate the new one to it. Still, now that you know that, wonder if you oughta try again? Y’know, open the old core up first, and then try it? Of course, no guarantee that that would work either. Hell, it’d probably make things worse. But--

“You can’t restore her horn, Anonymous,” Twilight intones, picking up on your train of thought. “It doesn’t matter how much power you steal or how hard or often you try. If Starswirl the Bearded couldn’t do it, then neither can you.”

“Ahh,” you retort with a finger-waggle as you slowly turn around to face them at last. “But the important thing is that I did try. Which is more than I can say for--”

Your words die in your throat as you finally take in...

Oh, God.

“Euurgh!” you blurt, recoiling in disgust with your lip curled up to match. “Oh my sweet Christ, what the fuck happened to you girls?!”

“I know! It’s hideous!” Rarity despairs, clutching her new out-of-place hair curls as she lets loose some melodramatic sobs, quickly pivoting to jabbing an angry hoof at you. “This is all your fault, you monster! You forced us into this!”

You have to concur with the fashion horse on the ugly stick front. Sweet merciful Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, they look like something a Tumblr artist would come up with, and not a good one, either! Their hairstyles, the eye-bleeding colour palettes, oh sweet Allah are those fucking stickers tattooed on their fetlocks? By all that’s holy, the pictures did not do this particular mahou shoujo transformation justice, by which you mean that it did not at all adequately prepare you for the sextet of technicolour abominations that once were fairly good-looking mares.

“It’s not that bad,” Fluttershy offers, demurely brushing through her mane.

“Yeah!” Rainbow cheers, complete with boastful hoofsie-kicks. “We look awesome!”

“It doesn’t matter how we look,” Twilight declares, legs and wings spread out in a hostile stance as she glares at you. “We’re going to stop you, Anonymous, and return all of the magic that you stole!”

You spare one last look at Tempest, a frustrated frown creasing your features. It’s bad enough that she’s definitely gonna feel that horn damage in the morning. It’s bad enough that you aren’t on track to feel her in the morning, let alone on a royal bed. It’s certainly bad enough that Plan A’s success rate continues plummeting like the subprime mortgage crisis. But the worst part of it all, by several nautical miles, was the lingering uncertainty. You thought for sure you’d definitively know by this point if she’d flip to the Light Side, or stay on the Dark Side. But no. You have absolutely no idea. And that lingering question was fucking murderous on your gut instinct, the oh-so-venerable sense in a very rare state of conflict.

It’s around about that moment that you really start to grok the hatred for superheroes. And with that newfound understanding, comes newfound commitment to fully seeing your plans through.

Curious, though. Now that the glow on her horn had faded, it actually looked kinda healthy. No cracks or jaggies in sight.

No, can’t get distracted now. The ceasefire’s about to end.

So with that final thought, you push Tempest out of mind for the time being and refocus, literally and figuratively, back onto the six girls, a fresh smile on your face as your fingers drum against the staff’s body, small arcs of power following them back up.

“So wait, that’s it?” you ask, eyebrow raised. “Not even gonna offer me a chance to surrender?”

“Would’ja take it even if we did?” Applejack deadpans, her own eyebrow raised.

“Not at all,” you shrug. “But it is tradition! And it’s the little details that matter the most!”

“Pretty sure it’s also tradition for us to win,” Rainbow remarks with no shortage of smug pride.

“Ah, but you started the break from tradition by not offering me a chance to give up,” you grin, waggling both a finger and your eyebrows in her direction. “That’s gonna cost you the traditional victory!”

Her mouth flops open to retort, and continues flopping as she tries and fails to find a counterpoint. Twilight, thoroughly done with all of this shit, cuts her off before she can respond.

“You want a chance to surrender? Fine,” she snaps at you with a surprising yet entirely pleasing quantity of sass. “Give us the staff, remove your forces, surrender yourself now, and we won’t turn you into a statue. Please.”

“There we go!” you laugh. “But I’ve got a counter-offer. Give up your new magic, surrender yourselves now, and not only will I not turn you all into statues, but I’ll give you all presidential suite jail cells and world-class pets, scritches, and tummy rubs at least three times every week! Pretty please with triple-whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top.”

“Monster!” Pinkie screams, cutting off Twilight’s attempt at interjection. “Don’t you double-dare invoke the triple-whipped cream with a maraschino cherry on top!”

“I just did, and I’ll do it again,” you smirk. “Pretty please with triple-whipped--”

With weapon-switching agility that would make even the most elite Call of Duty quickscoping clans jealous, Pinkie whips out her Party Cannon and blasts your ass with an entire bag of sugar before you can so much as blink. Once you did blink, you found yourself fired out of the throne room, through the wall, and sailing high into the air across the cityscape, the airtime allowing you to briefly marvel at how the sugar had perfectly caramelized across your chest from pure friction alone. Which wasn’t long, sadly, as you immediately snap back to the pink pony that gave you that carbohydrate bukkake in the first place, rocketing straight towards you atop an oversize firecracker with a trail of confetti and a look of absolute fury and hatred.

Which, as established, remained absolutely adorable on the faces of ponies.

Taking a moment to put on a show of reclining back while breaking a piece of caramel off and chewing it - which was fucking delicious, by the way - you wait for the further aggravated Pinkie to close the distance with a big, Looney Tunes-looking anvil raised overhead before making your move. A single pinky finger came up to meet the anvil head-on with a dainty plink, causing the entire thing to light up with green fracture marks all throughout before detonating in a massive BANG. The blast caused Pinkie’s momentum to do a complete 180, throwing her straight back from where she came. Your feet light up again with the power of magic bullshit ion propulsion, but Rainbow Dash’s namesake contrail swoops by to snatch Pinkie out of the air before you could properly mount a retaliatory move, taking her back to her flying or otherwise autonomously floating group of friends.

Which left you with plenty of time to rocket over towards a nearby wizard tower, launching into a fancy somersault mid-air before you land with enough force to crush the no doubt very expensive roof tiles to dust underfoot, kicking a bunch more of them up like dominoes in a decent radius around you. And as much as it pains you to see good confectionery go to waste, you brush off the caramel coating while you were at it.

The staff feels you again, the strange sensation evoking images of questions. You raise a curious eyebrow to it as the images continue to flow in, the sensation becoming less alien-feeling as the imagrey that floats through your mind becomes specific questions: questions that chiefly revolve around you and your intentions. It's not hard to deduce that the staff itself is evoking these mental images as some form of communication, and your eyebrow raise is joined by a small smile with that understanding.

But there’s no time to ponder that further, seeing how the Elements have caught up and landed as a group a fair distance away from you on the same tower. The images and the sensation cease as well, as if it knew to shut up and focus on them, too.

Heh. ‘As if’.

“You know, I’m really hoping this won’t be a theme for the entire showdown,” you sigh, rubbing the back of your neck with your free hand. “I mean, comin’ at me one at a time? It’s like you want me to hold back! Nevermind not learning the lesson her royal highness here learned!”

“Why, you foul little--!” Rarity tries to accost with some summoned diamond spikes to match, her tirade and assault held back by Twilight’s outstretched foreleg.

“Last chance to give up, Anonymous,” Twilight frowns.

“Wait, I’m already getting my second chance?” you question with a tilt of your head. “A bit early for that, ain’t it?”

“I know,” she sighs, fixing you with an absolutely incredible look of pure sass and condescension that you can’t help but grin at. “I just thought I’d get it out of the way now, so I won’t feel bad about walking by your statue in the royal gardens once you refuse.”

Everyone but Fluttershy cheers and whoops at her proclamation, and you can’t help but cheer a little yourself.

“Yeow!” you exclaim, complete with a clap of hands. “Hot damn, now we’re gettin’ spicy! That’s what the fuck I’m talkin’ about!”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then.”

“Hell yeah, it’s a ‘no’,” you preen, flexing your ill-gotten muscles before giving your bicep a little kiss. “If you want a beautiful piece of classical art, you’re gonna have to earn it the hard way!”

A small snort and a little smirk precedes Twilight and her party floating up into the air and lighting up with a fresh flood of power, a bright yellow sphere of magic enveloping the six as a high-capacity assault rainbow snakes around and orbits the sphere in preparation to strike.

And with a smirk of your own, you thrust the ever-handy staff skywards to rebut their little attempt.

“Trēs!”

A heady mix of both storm magic and stolen alicorn magic rockets into the sky in a marbled green-blue pillar of arcane might, and with a sweep of the staff in their direction, it explodes into two massive novas of power. The first was an extra-dense, neon-green energy wave that tore through the air with a harsh, bass-filled drone, knocking a very surprised Twilight and friends out of their Dragonball power-up phase and sending them careening off without much issue. The second nova radiated all throughout the upper atmosphere, blanketing the skies once again with a thick cover of freshly made and very dark storm clouds, dropping the light levels all across the city and bringing a rapid and unnatural drop in pressure that popped your ears almost immediately. The wind began kicking into high gear mere seconds after the light-obscuring cloud cover settled in, blowing much more violently than the ex-King’s first attempt.

“Oh, come on now!” you jeer down at the Elements, scrambling as they were to regroup. “Don’t tell me you thought I was gonna stand here and wait politely for you to power up! Naw bitch, you’ve gotta earn those power-up rights in this house!”

Slowly propelling yourself up in the sky with the power of jet-foot propulsion, you allow an evil cackle to rumble through your throat as you give the staff a quick flick off to the side. And just as if you were in possession of your very own crucible blade, a huge, crackling green laser death sword springs out from the staff’s tip. Standing at two yards long and a solid foot wide, it leaves behind a glowing trail like an old, badly-ghosting CRT as you give it an experimental swing, the very sight of it causing Twilight’s pupils to shrink and her ears to flop back a bit.

“Now, enough expository banter!” you laugh like an asylum patient. “Now we fight like men! And ladies!”

Without even needing to look, the joint flanking lunge by Applejack and Rainbow Dash was batted away in an instant by the flat end of your laser death sword, the deflecting strike sounding like a lightsaber fed through a crackling, grungy Russian synthesizer as it cut a wide, electrified arc through the air with equal speed to Dash’s own movements. The two cry out as they get flung off into the distance, the apple-flavoured attacker crashing through two wizard towers before being caught by Fluttershy while Dash rebounds quickly from getting the Team Rocket treatment.

“And, of course, ladies who act like men!” you continue unabated, hand initially waving at the two tomboys for emphasis before changing to pointing a finger at the princess. “You shoulda accepted my offer, Purplesmart! Now lemmie give you a demonstration on why I’m a certified twelve-point-oh on the ten-point-oh scale of badness!”

In an instant, you jet towards Twilight at extreme speeds, and she barely has time to erect a powerful shield before your laser death sword hits it like a hammer to an anvil.

Things were not proceeding at the speed that Cid would have preferred.

His master’s specific instructions were to evacuate all personnel and prisoners from the city once the ‘final showdown’ began, specifying that it would not be between himself and the former Storm King, and that he would know it when he saw it. And in advance of this, he had instructed the lieutenants loyal to him to begin the proceedings either upon receiving his signal, or upon using their own better judgment to make that determination.

It was a testament to that judgment that they recognized the signs the second the Element bearers became empowered with prismatic magic seemingly out of nowhere, and took the initiative without needing to see his flare signal.

From his vantage point at the somehow still standing palace balcony, he could already see the airship transports flying in and out with their usual high degree of skill, helping to ameliorate the large line-ups at the ramps of the two massive carrier ships by landing alongside the lines and ferrying troops to the docking bays on said vessels.

Yet the fact remained that the proceedings were too slow for his liking, in spite of his knowledge that there was nothing he could do to further hasten him. And his master’s battle with the empowered Element bearers would not care one wit about their timetable; in spite of his attempts to lead the battle away from his forces, they both knew there was no accounting for the unpredictability of the forces of good.

His specialized command vessel approached from nearby, having detached from it’s hidden docking station upon the former Storm King’s carrier to honour Cid’s call for a pick-up. While the crew busied themselves with docking at the balcony, he turned around and returned to the ruined palace interior, both hands clasped behind his back in a professional manner as he inspected Commander Tempest, carried on a makeshift stretcher by Biggs and Wedge. On one hand, he was quite pleased to see her awake and relatively unharmed after his master’s attempt to repair the damage done to her. On the other, it was clear her fighting spirit had taken it’s leave of her, as evidenced by her curling up in on herself and trying in vain to choke back her sobs.

The two beasts, at a loss as to what they should do, appreciated Cid’s direction to board the vessel immediately, and he followed behind the pair as they carried their broken commander aboard the ship, which wasted no time in detaching and taking to the skies once he had finished boarding. The higher in the stormy skies they could get, the better: it was unlikely that the Element bearers would penetrate the storm cover, and their vessel was more than fit to weather whatever his master would do to enhance the storms. He had seen to that personally.

In any case, his two named cohorts took Tempest Shadow directly to the medical bay of the vessel, while Cid himself went straight to the fully enclosed bridge of the ship, filled with advanced navigational and radio equipment and manned by well-trained and trustworthy members of his inner circle. They all stood to attention as he entered, snapping him a salute, and his first orders to them were for the ensign to both activate the ship's camouflage device and to take them into the sky just below the cloud cover, while the radio operators were ordered to aid in the retreat efforts. The latter order was something Cid himself also aided in, marching towards the front of the vessel to observe the environment while taking a nearby radio transciever for himself.

Cid would only attend to the Equestrian commander once all of his forces were airborne and out of danger, and the process took many minutes to complete. And all the while, his master and the Element bearers fought down below, loosing incredible amounts of magic and using a similarly incredible amount of physical power in the process. Strangely, his master did not seem able to absorb whatever magic they were using against him, but it did not seem to faze him either way. His master loosed both powerful hailstorms and enormous beams of magic from both his hands and the Staff of Sacanas alike, used an enormous energy blade projected from the staff, and at times even tore entire wizard towers in half with his bare hands to use as either a bludgeon or a projectile. The destruction he was causing was immense, and he knew it would only become worse the more he began to enjoy himself.

And he always enjoyed protracted battles.

Once the two carrier vessels were finally airborne, Cid replaced the receiver and allowed his team to finish the work, ordering the ensign to take the vessel above the clouds. Now that his forces were out of immediate danger, he left the bridge and made his way to the medical bay, where Biggs and Wedge were standing guard outside of the doorway to it. The two nodded to him as he entered, and as expected, the Equestrian commander was waiting for him inside.

She seemed much calmer than before, with only a few light sniffles and some heavier than usual breathing to show for her troubles. She slowly turned her head to see who had entered, and upon seeing Cid, simply turned back around and slumped further against the medical bay’s bed. Knowing she did not understand their tongue, he grasped a nearby sheet of paper and a pencil and began to write a note to inform her of their situation. It was halfway through the process of writing that she began to speak, in a strained tone of voice fitting for one under such duress.

“I don’t know why I expected anything different,” she says, her tone appropriately sad yet with a small trace of bemusement, bizarrely enough. “It’s always gone this way for me. Whenever I find anything that could restore me, it only makes things worse.”

His writing stopped as he paid attention to her, watching her closely as she proceeded to ventilate her feelings to what she no doubt assumed was a random beast.

“Figures that the closest I ever got to being fixed for real would hurt me the most, too,” she laughed, the expression devoid of joy. “I really thought I’d had it that time. That everything would finally be all right. I can’t believe how stupid I...”

She trails off, saying nothing for a few moments as she first sat in silence, then righted herself to a lying position with a small smile, the expression appearing genuine.

“But you know, at least he tried to help me,” she hummed. “Even gave it his best shot, like he said he would. But I guess even his bragging has it’s limits.”

She reaches up to touch her broken horn. However, now that he was paying attention to it, he could not help but notice that it appeared to be in a much healthier condition than it was before: there were no cracks or fractures left in or around it, and the jagged edges where it had been broken had been smoothed down by a considerable amount with little compromise made to their original shape, almost as if it had been carefully filed into a better condition.

“At least it feels better,” she notes. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time it felt this nice. So at least some good came from this. Too bad it’s not what I wanted.”

Cid could not help but wonder if she was referring to just it’s physical appearance, or if the staff had indeed repaired some aspects of it’s magical function.

“But you know what the funniest part is?” she continues, this time with a noticeably more pleased tone. “I really don’t think he’d mind. In fact, I... I don’t think he ever minded, truth be told. Everyone I’ve ever met was hung up on it in some way, but he never even cared that something was wrong with me. Hay, he even called me...”

Noting her resurgence of confidence and the brief reddening of her cheeks at her words - and idly hating that Biggs’s crass theories on her and his master’s activities was proving more and more correct - he simply stood still and watched as she began to raise her head and slowly push herself to a standing position.

“Maybe... Maybe I’ve been doing this all wrong from the start.” She stumbled over her words for a moment. “Maybe all I really needed was...”

She cuts herself off with a bittersweet laugh as she finally looks at Cid properly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be saying all of this.” She looks around, aware of her surroundings for the first time, and her brow creases with concern. “Where are we, anyways?”

Crumpling the sheet of paper he’d been working on into a ball, he began writing out a terse breakdown of where she was and what had happened onto a fresh sheet. Once finished, he grasped a nearby clipboard and affixed the sheet to it along with a few extra blank sheets and hand-delivered it to the commander, idly flicking the pencil to and fro and he watched her read it.

Her eyes widen near the end of the text, no doubt due to her reading the section on the ongoing battle between his master and the Element bearers. They soon narrow again, however, once she finishes.

“Those damn ponies,” she hisses. “Of course they’d find a way to get that kind of power out of nowhere.”

She hops down off of the bed, stretching and cracking her neck and limbs, settling into a combat-ready stance once she was finished.

“I need to get down there,” she declares. “There’s no way I’m just letting him do this alone.”

On one hand, Cid was quite surprised to see her so ready to return to battle. He was certain that his master’s failure to restore her would cost him her loyalty, but she was showing no signs of this being the case. Of course, it was also quite possible that she was not loyal to him, as much as she was enamoured with him, the very idea of which annoyed him to no end.

On the other, there was no guarantee she would remain on their side of the battle: he and his master had briefly touched on her motivations during their pre-invasion discussion, and he had noted that it would be incredibly easy for her to be swayed to the cause of the Equestrians, especially if her restoration failed. As it had indeed failed, there was nothing beyond the master himself to keep her on their side, and the forces of good had an aggravating tendency to take full advantage of this type of weakness.

Whatever his thoughts were, it was also true that refusing her request would not be beneficial for his health, or that of his crew. With that said, delaying her request to land is absolutely within his ability to do, and he intended to do just that. There was simply no way he was going to land the overseer airship into an active battle zone, so he would have to convince her that landing safely would be the best option.

Seeing the carnage his master could cause with that staff, and knowing that the worst was yet to come, he believed that simply showing her the carnage first-hand would be all the convincing he would need to do.

And so, with masterful restraint, he motions for her to follow, leading her to the bridge. Biggs and Wedge followed behind her without any further prompting, acting as their escorts. Though he did indeed wish to take his time in landing her safely, he also had a very pressing matter in the form of conducting his command and coordination duties, and he simply would not risk doing so with even a single untrustworthy creature aboard his ship. Striking a fair balance would be critical to ensuring his and the master’s joint plans would be executed to the letter.

Once aboard the bridge, she halted for a brief moment to take in the environment. But before she could so much as bark an order, another great pillar of marbled blue and green magic rocketed into the sky from a fair distance away, the light drawing all attention to it and heralding yet another upgrade to the storm’s intensity. Slamming his fist onto the alarm button, he grunts out an order to brace themselves over the sound of the klaxons. The beasts comply immediately and duck for cover as Tempest opts instead to gape at the beam, only bracing herself when it expands into a full nova of immense storm magic. The wave itself only rattles the ship slightly; the true threat was the exceptionally violent, rapidly rising, and lightning-filled cloud cover that followed in it’s wake, rising up to greet them like the waves of a tsunami.

“Duo!”

The following sweep of your staff, aside from generating another green shockwave that repelled the attacking girls yet again, also juiced the stormclouds up almost as much as you were; already dark clouds turned even darker and almost looked like they were boiling from all of that fresh new power. A torrential downpour began spilling from the clouds in short order, hosing down the entire city around you as the odd flash of lightning punctuates the rainfall, the reflection of the flashes off the water-covered surfaces giving you lovely little flashbacks to Storm Island.

Twilight yelled something at the nearby Rarity and Fluttershy, but with the rain and wind working together, you couldn’t make out what they were saying. You take that as your in to get involved with the discussion, jetting straight towards them with your laser death sword freshly reformed and ready to do some ripping and tearing, a cloud of steam cloaking it as the raindrops vaporized instantly with super-satisfying hisses. The lower light level not only brought the death sword’s menacing glow out even more, but also allowed you to more easily keep track of the also-glowing Elements, which let you take notice of Pinkie and Applejack being fired from one of the former’s cannons straight towards you. Dash began circling around at a long distance as well, clearly trying to keep you guessing about when she’d next strike again, as if you didn’t already figure out it was gonna be a joint strike once Applejack was close enough.

But, subverting expectations, it was actually Pinkie that made the first strike, with one of AJ’s ropes tied around her barrel as she fishes an honest-to-God hot pink zweihander out of her mane, loosing a battle-cry of “freedom” as she launches at you in straight-up Braveheart warpaint. And as you make to raise your own death blade to repel the strike, you see Dash’s contrail dart by to snatch Applejack, the blue pony holding her friend steady as she prepares to do something with the length of rope still tied to Pinkie.

Smiling, you let the staff fall from your hand, the laser death sword fizzling out as it descends.

A chorus of gasps sound out from the three at your subversion of their subversion, allowing you to parry Pinkie’s very real sword into the stratosphere with a swift backhand. You go for the visceral attack as she reels from the counter, hand plunging straight into her mane and fishing around for the eldritch hammerspace she keeps pulling random shit out of. All you get for your efforts is the sensation of mousetraps latching onto your fingers and a huge bear trap crunching against your arm.

“Nyahahahaha!” Pinkie laughs, and with a surprising amount of villainy at that. “Betcha thought I’d leave my Pinkie Space unprotected, didn’t--”

Bemused yet disappointed in her failure to follow the ‘never monologue during a fight’ rule, you take full advantage of the opening and knee Pinkie off towards a nearby building, your arm pulling out of her mane as she goes while still covered in her ineffective yet still obnoxious traps. Her rapid velocity was arrested a little bit by the rope around her pulling taut, which worked to both yank Applejack from atop Dash’s back and throw the latter’s trajectory off-course, causing her to crash face-first into the ground instead of catching your staff.

One hand opens up and fires a concentrated beam of green lightning that snakes towards the staff, while the other hand shakes off the traps. And once the beam makes contact, the staff rockets back towards you like Thor’s hammer, surfing up the serpentine lightning stream as it returns to it’s rightful place in your grasp. The death sword returns once your grip does, and you resume course towards Twilight and the others, who sadly seem to have concluded whatever discussion they were having. Fluttershy and Twilight take off somewhere in the distance, leaving Rarity to pivot around and face you, preventing your immediate pursuit of her friends by summoning a hailstorm of magic diamond projectiles, all of which track your flight path perfectly.

Snorting, you reform the laser death sword into a laser death shield to take the blows, each dart creating a ripple against it’s surface like a drop of water in a pond. One of the unknowns you had to work with going into this fight was whether or not you were capable of cyphering their special-sauce Harmony magic, and unfortunately, the answer to that was “no”. As you learned the hard way by trying to face-tank a cheeky laser beam from Twilight and a follow-up shower of diamond shards from Rarity.

That said, you could still deflect and shield against them, and they didn’t do a whole lot of damage to your juiced-up frame either way. But still, it was weird not being able to W+Mouse1 through their magic attacks like you normally could. Weird in a fun, extra challenging kinda way that you took to with aplomb aplenty. And so, learning your lesson from last time, you extend the fingers of your other hand and respond with some magical projectiles of your own.

Extra-chunky shards of green energy fire from your fingertips with similarly green streaks of magic trailing behind as they shoot straight towards the white pony, alternating between fingers like a make-believe Gatling-gun. And with the sounds to back it up! And unlike her small and elegant yet fairly weak high-precision bolts, your bolts came out with the precision and grace of a rusty sledgehammer, and the power and appearance of the Emerald Splash.

The OVA Emerald Splash.

Rarity’s graceful weaving out of the way of your attacks came to an abrupt end once the bolts started detonating against the building behind her much more violently than she’d been anticipating, forcing her to erect some rear-facing shields and reposition herself as the tower she’d been revolving around gets sawed in half by your power, the buildings behind the tower riddled with craters and sometimes just outright reduced to rubble. She’s forced to fully shift from offence to evasion and shielding as your hand lazily tracks her movements, laying absolute waste to everything in it’s wake.

Right up until Dash successfully catches you off-guard, slamming against your back and propelling you face-first into a nearby tower. But rather than fight her momentum, you actually speed up along with it before you crash, dispelling the staff’s shield right before you punch straight through the building and continue your descent towards the ground. She reeled from the joint impact but refused to let go, continuing to kick away while still latched onto your back. And so, you extend your free hand forward in the Superman pose, your fist alight with power and forming a compact, pointed envelope of energy in front of you.

And that envelope allows you to scythe right through the stone of both cityscape and underlying mountain alike, keeping your momentum going as you carve a perfectly Anon-sized hole right through the terrain. So perfect, in fact, that there was nowhere near enough room for Dash to join you on your little Amigara Fault express line - something your Superman angle saw to - so she wound up faceplanting bad and getting left in the dust within the first second of your manoeuvre. And in the space of a few more seconds, you punch right through the other side of the mountain, your downwards angle bringing you a dozen or so yards above a nearby river. The same river, in fact, that they first escaped from you in. Smiling and shaking your head at the memory, you rocket straight back up towards the city.

Or at least you do, until you pause halfway there on account of noticing the distant glow of Twilight Sparkle, way off at her similarly distant hometown of Ponyville. Though in fairness, the giant, fugly crystal tree castle thing she calls home should probably have drawn your attention before the bright n’ shiny did. Bad ADHD, bad.

With a sudden moment of downtime on your hands, you seize the opportunity to think things over. It really doesn’t surprise you to see that they’d want to return to Ponyville: they must be itching to get their hoofsies on whatever other macguffin they’ve no doubt got kicking around there. Intuition dictates that said macguffin is probably the Elements of Harmony, since their current powered-up state isn’t working quite as well as they’d hoped it would against you, and they knew it as well as you did.

You figure that their plan is to scoop ‘em up, return to the city, dole them out, and proceed to stop you. Assuming, of course, that you let them nab those Elements in the first place. Which you have absolutely zero intention of letting happen. So yeah, you’re definitely making that village your next battleground in a minute or two.

Right after you arrange for a little diversion. You know, to keep the other four from pursuing you on your way to Twilight. And pondering for a beat on how easy it was to scythe straight through that solid rock gave you just the bastardly idea for that.

So, tasking the staff with building up some mucho power, you fly up high and in the open to grab the attention of the other Elements, and make a show of pretending to see Twilight and preparing to dart towards their position. And right on cue, Dash comes bolting out of the city, only this time with a rope around her barrel and dragging along her entire local friend group with similar ropes on them in a big chain of flying ponies. With a smirk, you fly straight towards her, and narrowly pass her by on purpose as you bolt straight back towards the city, an arm flicking out at the perfect moment to toss Rarity up into the air and send the whole pony train into a brief tailspin. Dash recovers with the aid of her levitating hermanas, and gives chase right away.

Dust, debris, tiles, and whole rocks are flung every which way in your wake as you fly as close to the ground as possible, and you even skim the surface of one of the rivers feeding it’s many waterfalls at a few points, adding some extra mist to your wake. Dash plus friends followed very closely the whole time, with Pinkie and Rarity trying their best to shoot at you from range, to no avail. While you’d be the first to admit that you ain’t got shit on Rainbow’s speed, you did have a whole mountain’s worth of shit on her in the batshit insane and malevolent flyer department: your circuit throughout the entire city had you turning at sharp, near-ninety-degree angles on a regular basis, darting and weaving between buildings, towers, and other such fixtures, all while using your own power to either punch right through or shred the shit out of the scenery as you went to create shrapnel, roadblocks, and other obstacles for your pursuers to deal with. Given that both you and Dash were creating your own magic contrails, it no doubt looked like some extreme ghetto light-cycle bullshit from a bird’s eye view, the thought of which amused you to no end.

The point of all this, however, was not to actually engage them. Your plan was two-fold: to buy time for the staff to charge up some more for your diversion, and to keep them from rejoining Twilight and Fluttershy. After all, if you’d sat on your ass, hid away, and waited for the staff charge like a boring person, they’d have assumed you dipped, and they’d wanna link up with their pals again.

And letting these friends link back up was a very poor play, indeed.

Well, that and you had to make sure Cid got everyone outta the danger zone safe n’ sound, Tempest included. Which, of course, he did. Since the dude is a consummate professional at everything he does.

Your final move, once the staff was charged to satisfaction, was to fly back down the trench of one of the rivers feeding the waterfalls, and dart directly down said fall once you passed by it’s lip, flying close alongside the aqueous curtain. Besides the water being very refreshing and cleaning your post-chase mud layer off in ways rain simply couldn’t, it also drew the ire of your pursuers. Especially Rainbow Dash, who looked very pissy about you evading her for as long as you have.

“Just give it up already, ‘ya varmint!” Applejack hollers.

“You can’t run forever, dude!” Dash hollers with her. “Sooner or later, I’m gonna catch you!”

“It ain’t me you’ve gotta catch, sister!” you laugh.

All sets of eyes go wide when you turn around, displaying your very glowy, fully armed, and operational staff, right at the tail end of charging it’s ultra laser death ray.

“Hard right!” Pinkie screams. “Hard right!”

Dash’s speed plus her friends’ autonomous flight kicking in helped them clear the firing arc of the staff before they could be caught in the massive green laser beam, the diameter of the death ray about as wide as you were tall. But when they don’t see you pointing the death ray in their direction, their expressions morph to confusion, followed swiftly by utter shock and horror when they see what your real target has been all this time.

With a swift, seven-second swipe of the death ray, you sliced clean through the mountaintop just below the entire city of Canterlot, with the beam packing enough power to carve clean through the stone and shoot out the other side of the mountain, the beam vaporizing the stormclouds it came into contact with. The mountaintop began to sag and half-crumple onto the cut-out side at the halfway mark, and by the time you’d completed slashing the majestic landmark, the entire tip had begun the thunderous, unimaginably destructive process of sliding straight towards you, aided by gravity on account of the upwards angle you had cut at.

And as you finish marvelling at the crepuscular rays filtering through the hole you’d also carved into the still-violent stormcloud up above, you turn towards the four girls, still frozen and gaping in absolute disbelief. Though they come to their senses real quick once you start talking.

“Y’know, I’ve made a funny lil’ observation over all my time doin’ this,” you open, fighting to keep from laughing. “So often, the work that the heroes do also happens to be the same work that janitors do.”

Their looks turn downright hateful as you gesture towards the slowly approaching mountaintop with the biggest shit-eating grin you could muster.

“So good luck cleanin' this one up, jannies!” you boom.

“Yew unbelievable...” Applejack opens,

“Horrible...” Rarity continues,

“No good...” Dash continues,

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious...” Pinkie adds,

And then, in unison, came your favourite part of all:

“BASTARD!”

“In the flesh,” - you take a bow - “Trashing your place, and bidding you sayonara, suckers! Nyahahahahahaaa!”

And after forming your free hand into an L on your forehead as you laugh at them, you once again shunt all power to the foot-engines and blast off towards Ponyville. True to her impulsive nature, Dash briefly gives chase, stopping only when her friends call for her help. Doesn’t stop her from lettin’ out a primal yell of rage.

“You’re gonna get yours, greenie! You hear me?!” she screams at you, shaking a hoof your way for good measure. “You’re gonna get yours!”

“Yeah,” you yell back, complete with extra laughter. “Like I’ve never heard that one before!”

She almost re-enters pursuit right then and there, but her friends calling for her again forced her to head back and help her galpals keep the city from being totally obliterated. Another perfect diversion, executed to the numbers. And with one final look back at them, and observing how the giant storm cloud was following you at a decent pace, you enter cruise speed in short order and begin your minute-or-so-long flight towards Ponyville.

During the flight’s moment of relative calm, the staff resumed feeling you again, the images of questions and slight exasperation coming right back. Only this time, you decide to answer it.

“Yeah yeah, all right,” you smile, holding the staff before you and speaking to it like a total schizoid. “We’ve got a free moment now.”

The staff ‘replies’ with images of relief, as if it were saying ‘oh, finally’.

“First things first, I’ve gotta ask,” you proceed, “Is this whole way of talking a synchronicity thing?”

It ‘tells’ you that it is.

“No shit?” you laugh. “I thought it was only good for tradin’ juice! I had no idea it could do psychic bullshit like this! That’s sick!”

You know, for a method so weird and minimalistic, it sure was expressive, you’ll give it that!

“Well I’ll definitely keep that in mind! Oh, pleased to meet’cha too, by-the-by.”

Boy, this thing sure was polite for an evil, living artifact.

“Thank ‘ya kindly! Honestly, I didn’t know how I was gonna hide how I wasn’t actually stealin’ your power back there, but you seriously came in clutch! And man alive, were you ever tearin’ shit up back there, too!”

It’s around the midpoint of it’s more serious metaphysical reply that it occurs to you that most of your evil-aligned conversation buddies are mostly nonverbal, or speak in ways you can’t understand and have to intuit instead. Funny how that works, huh?

“That obvious, huh?” you sigh. “Yep, hate to say it, but I don’t think we’re gonna be able to spend too much more time together after this. Hell, I’m not even sure we’ll be able to hook back up again, well ever.”

For a staff, it was surprisingly understanding about your highly probable upcoming failure. Even mentioned something about it’s mother - Sacanas, no doubt - going through the same thing.

“Hey, I’m no quitter. If I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna do it pushin’ back! If Sisyphus could do it, so can I!”

And then it tenders some surprise knowledge on something that really threw you for a loop.

“A tree? Really? In the heart of the Everfree somewhere? What about it?”

A wicked grin spreads across your face as it reveals what it knows.

“So the Elements came from it, huh? And you figure that they’ve been returned there?”

The affirmative metaphysical touch is all you need to formulate your new attack plan.

“Well well, then I know what we’re hittin’ up next. Don’t suppose I can count on you for some more indiscriminate mass destruction?”

It was just as into the idea as you were.

“Oh no,” you smile, juicing your hand up with some power, “The pleasure is all mine.”

With a quick jolt, you share some of your power back to it, infusing the lower regions of it’s body that it told you it wanted to power up, but couldn’t by itself thanks to deliberate design. Once it was properly juiced, however, the staff floated from your grasp by it’s own free will, nestling against your back as if you’d holstered it. It tenders it’s thanks by way of a fresh jolt of magic shared right back, boosting your already considerable charge and allowing your flight to pick up even more speed.

And just in the nick of time, too: Twilight was in the middle of levitating all of your occupying forces out of the town, airship and all. Altering course, you jet over to intercept them, and the staff picks up on your intentions and acts on it’s own, overpowering Twilight’s telekinetic field with it’s own. The glow surrounding them changed from purple to a harsh, electric blue, the beasts deposited safely aboard the airship that was itself righted, repaired, and restarted.

You land aboard the vessel, and give the scrambling and confused lieutenant a little smile as he drops everything he’s doing to salute you.

“You boys might wanna run,” you wink.

He needs no further prompting, and is heard grunt-shouting orders to his boys as you once again peel off and head straight for Twilight, who glared at you before taking off towards the Everfree to try and lure you away from the town.

It’s cute that she thinks that’s gonna stop you from trashing the place.

You carpet-bomb the everloving shit out of the village with a two-handed A-Non Splash® as you fly above it, rendering her efforts to protect it completely pointless. The act itself was completely casual, so much so that you didn’t even bother to look down at the carnage you’d caused. It was probably that utterly carefree performance that hurt Twilight the most, if her subsequent harrowed look from the town back to you was any indication; you didn’t even pause or slow down the entire time, either!

Though the ongoing absence of Fluttershy was starting to worry you.

“Why’d you dip on me back at Canterlot, queen?” you cackle. “We weren’t finished!”

Mentioning the city brings her attention back to it, where she finally takes stock of what you’d done to the place. As a fun coincidence, the storm cloud finishes catching up at the same time her expression becomes even more wounded and angry, blotting out the light in perfect sync that you suspect was the staff’s doing. Said suspicion is more or less confirmed when she sheds some teeth-gritted tears by the time the rain came by to say hello, the staff feeling entirely pleased with itself.

“How can you do something so awful?!” she angrily wails at you.

“With a little swish of my magic staff, of course!” you reply, wearing a winning smile. “I mean really, this is magic 101 here!”

Hah, looks like that quip was one too many. She gives into her anger, yelling as she blasts at you with a big laser beam. The beam bends to track you as you swerve to avoid it, prompting you to stop mid-air and thrust both hands out to match it with a laser beam of your own. The two giant rays collide in a full-bore wizard duel, her perfectly formed and orderly magic creating a big, blindingly bright ball of power right where it clashed against your unstable and chaotic magic. Burning white liquefied mana sprays out from the big contact point ball in all downward directions, causing flashes of spontaneous combustion wherever it happened to land, assuming it didn’t first evaporate as it boiled in the air around it.

You hadn’t gotten to know the real Staff of Sacanas for very long, but it was already pulling it’s weight somethin’ fierce: it gave you a spark-loaded warning that a threat was approaching at high speed. That gets you to turn your head towards the direction of Canterlot, where you see the telltale prismatic nova and the following BOOM of a Sonic Rainboom, it’s originator bearing straight for you.

With no time to waste, the staff coordinates with you to shift all laser power to one hand, while the other hand grasps the staff as it flies into your hand by itself. You thrust it skyward barely a half-second later, but can’t even get the words out in time before the mare hits you with the impact force of a railgun shot.

And it turned out that, as usual, she wasn’t alone: Applejack was riding shotgun, and quick as a whip, had lashed you up with some extra-special glowing green ropes: a bright grassy green to your neon green. She wasn’t done there, either: she kicks you away with sufficient force to crack the air like a bullwhip and actually hurt - bad enough to knock the wind outta you - and the two work together to spin you around by the rest of said rope, centrifuging your ass for a solid second or two before you go flying off towards the ground.

Honestly, AJ’s kick hurt more than hitting the ground, huge debris plume notwithstanding. Wasting no time, Twilight darts into view and looses yet another lavender ion cannon down where you’d landed, blasting you even deeper into the ground.

But as you are wont to do, you turn that into an advantage. The millisecond her beam stops firing - and very conveniently vaporizing those ropes while it was at it - your arms get to work, channelling your inner Diglett as you shovel through the stone and dirt as easily as parting water until you were out of view, taking advantage of the smoke plume from the beam to mask your tunnelling. Once you were sure you were out of sight, you power up your hands and start scything through the ground again, feet alight with low-intensity jet propulsion to dull the light they gave off.

Even though you were blasted four or five yards underground and dug around in total darkness, you were far from blind; the staff had been knocked from your grasp during Dash’s counterattack, and was now in the hooves of said pony. You know this because the staff is actively telling you, snitching on the group through your newfound kinda-sorta-maybe-telepathic link. All you have to do is listen to it’s intel, and do some very rusty silent communication of your own back at it, getting the angle just right to snatch it out of her grasp.

Well, you could just recall it whenever you wanted. But maintaining the illusion of it’s inanimate nature was more important. Plus, there was no way you were letting Bluefast off without a one-liner for her efforts! It was just a matter of waiting for the right moment.

“What did I tell you?!” Dash yells down at the hole, strutting her stuff. “I told you you’d get yours! How’s all that dirt taste, huh greenie?”

Eh, that’ll work.

She squeals in shock and terror as you erupt from the ground at full throttle, propelling both of you high into the sky with one hand on her throat and the other on the staff. And as the staff returns to your back, both hands grapple onto Dash: one behind her head, the other around her back. Despite her thrashing and yelping, she can’t fight you off, and is pulled straight towards you until...

Whatever brain-halting shock she felt when your lips met hers was quickly eclipsed by brain-halting disgust as you swap the mouthful of dirt you took beforehand straight into her craw, like a mother bird feeding her chick. She gags, coughs, and aggressively spits it out once you pull back, desperately pawing at her tongue to get as much off as she could.

“Kinda tastes like that,” you grin.

Understandably, she was in no position to stop you from swiftly booting her back down to terra firma, complete with her own crater and everything. And with the other mares too slow or distracted to respond, the staff returns to your grasp, thrust skyward to properly complete the spell this time.

“Ūnus!”

For the third time, the pillar of storm magic sweeps the land, the Everfree’s reputed weather-negating powers doing nothing against the staff’s enforced storm cover. The entire storm system begins to slowly spin as the atmospheric pressure drops to a new low with a fresh ear pop to show for it, the wind becoming extremely violent and tousling the forest’s thick foliage in big waves of downdrafts and microbursts as the rain begins turning into hail. The lightning graduated to a steady bolt every two-odd seconds, with a constant and chaotic arpeggio of thunderclaps following suit thanks to their varied and diverse distances. And there was also a new addition to the meteorological carnage in the form of several twisters roping down from the clouds above, each ripping up nice, decently chunky lines in the forest as they made landfall.

That’s not all the staff did: it even went out of it’s way to summon some water for you to rinse your mouth out with! How nice can you get?

You narrowly dodge a purple laser beam fired up at you, the blast turning your impromptu mouthwash to steam a split second after you’d spat it out. And from off to the side, you see Pinkie and Rarity finally catching up, flying as fast as their non-pegasus levitation will allow and opening fire with their respective flavours of projectiles as they enter the forest. As you swoop down to the forest to break line of sight, you spare a glance over at the distant Canterlot to see what they did to save the city.

Turns out they grew a big-ass tree to catch it, and tacked it in place with giant gift ribbons and chunks of glimmering magic diamond. Neat!

Let’s see if they can patch your next round of damage up so easily!

This was a terrible idea, and Cid was certain that she knew it, too.

And yet, despite his attempts to dissuade her from interfering in the battle between his master and the Element bearers, she remained resolute in her desire to find him. Indeed, the only measure of success he found in swaying her decision was convincing her that it would be best if the overseer ship could land only where it was absolutely safe to do so, stressing the vital importance the ship had in directing the air forces. And though she agreed, she was not pleased with it.

Cid was displeased as well, though moreso in himself. He had severely miscalculated in his work to ensure the overseer airship was as weatherproof as possible, and unfortunately, reality had found that work wanting. He simply could not have predicted that the intensity of the storms generated by the Staff of Sacanas would outstrip even the very worst of the tropical hurricanes he had both designed the ship around and had tested it in. Making the vessel take the brunt of that cloud tsunami from earlier had been a mistake, the impact compromising enough of the weatherproofing and stability of the vessel that he had to make the decision to leave the cover of the cloud and take to the stratosphere in order for the beasts aboard to make repairs. It was a testament to the magical colour-camouflage device he had specially commissioned for this vessel that it remained undetected from the Element bearers that saved the city of Canterlot from total destruction, even as said vessel hung nakedly in the open air.

But even stratospheric flight would not provide them with safety from his master’s work on the weather now. As it stood, the cloud he had summoned now towered up to the stratosphere as well, compressing and flattening out against that layer of the atmosphere into a domed shape evocative of an anvil. And even this outermost layer of the slowly rotating supercell system was unnatural; these outer clouds were as dark outside as they no doubt were on the inside, and lightning freely coursed through it and lit it from within as the entire formation boiled with raw power. One would need to have a death wish to fly a ship into that.

And given how Tempest Shadow was openly gaping at the supercell, she too was questioning the wisdom of flying into that system.

“Land as close as you can outside of that... thing,” she finally orders, the nervousness in her voice quite palpable. “I’ll approach on hoof.”

Cid restrained a sigh of relief. With a small nod to the ensign at the wheel, the ship began it’s descent towards the outskirts of the battlefield. The very air became more and more charged with the malevolent energies of the staff as they drew near, which while pleasing to Cid and his cohorts, was utterly disturbing in it’s sheer quantity. Tempest, neither used to said energies, nor their quantity, was having a notably difficult time maintaining her composure as the vessel neared it’s destination.

“Sweet merciful Faust,” she whispers under her breath, “How much is he planning to destroy?”

With the vessel now as close as he was willing to get it, Cid gave the order to begin landing procedures. Tempest was already moving for the loading bay by that point, and within a few short minutes, the ship rose into the skies once again, this time without her aboard. Satisfied, Cid pulled a nearby lever to raise his personal operations desk from it’s hidden location in the floor: a C-shaped workstation complete with his own personal switchboard, the matching microphones and earpieces, two cutting-edge black-and-white cathode ray tube displays, a typewriter, and no shortage of paper and stationery. The nearby switchboard operator wasted no time in setting things up, pulling a disguised bundle of cable from the ceiling and plugging it into the workstation to give it much-needed power and connectivity. The displays emitted their characteristic high-pitched whine as they came to life, and small lamps came to life above each jack on the switchboard that was active.

Cid seated himself in short order, eager to fully commit to his work in earnest without untrustworthy eyes around. In one corner of the switchboard, he plugged in one of his earpieces to the furthermost active jack to tap into the radio surveillance device he had surreptitiously planted on Tempest Shadow during her time at the bridge. Said device achieved it’s tiny size through a complex and deeply integrated hybridization of technology and magic, and he had needed to make a custom order for it at the black market, making his supply of said devices very limited indeed.

Biggs and Wedge crowded around Cid’s station as he donned the other earpiece, set up the microphone, and went about coordinating all of the storm beast forces, executing the protocols he had co-developed with his master to the letter. Though Wedge offered to assist with his work, Cid had flatly declined; another beast aiding him directly would serve to splinter his concentration. He found much more success with aiding the other operators, fortunately enough. Biggs, on the other hand, was content to simply stand back and watch the two displays with awe: a move that suited Cid perfectly fine, as he would not interrupt him that way. One of the displays frequently flipped between the analogue broadcasts of the other airships as he worked. The other was fixed on an aerial view of Tempest Shadow and her escort, the image captured from one of the many video capture devices affixed to all of the manned telescopes and periscopes across the ship; in this particular instance, from the bottom-most scope he had tasked with surveilling her.

Cid paused only to wipe his brow, unwilling to slow his efforts. Not when they were this close. Not when one of his master’s two plans were this close to fruition. Already, he was mentally reciting the two to keep his mind from being lost in the minutia and focused on the larger picture.

The first of the plans was also, conceptually speaking, the most simple: achieving total victory. All his master had to do was win the battle, as he had done numerous times before. And from there, the usual process of conquering the outliers and taking possession of any and all resources and assets would begin. It was the plan he was most familiar with, and indeed, before this moment, was an unspoken certainty that did not require delineation in the first place.

Until, however, the time came to lay plans to conquer Equestria. Further amplified by the reception of Wedge’s detailed dossier of Equestria, and the magnitude of what they were truly facing.

Cid remembered his bafflement at his master laying such long-term, intricate plans for Equestria. In his ignorance, he had assumed the peace-loving land was merely yet another mark for the former Storm King to claim. But somehow, long before Wedge’s dossier had even been commissioned, Anonymous knew of the danger that Equestria posed. He could not explain it when questioned, and professed total ignorance of the land, yet somehow he had a sense that it would prove to be their greatest challenge yet: one that would make or break the entire empire he was keen to forge. In Cid’s shame, he discounted it as a blemish of true madness, though executed his preparation plans all the same out of respect for him. Discounted, that is, until the dossier crossed his desk. It was then that he knew his master’s sense had been correct all along. Indeed, according to that selfsame master, things were much worse than he feared.

The time he spent debating and arguing with his master over the second plan spanned weeks of accumulated conversation, and was laden with his trademark controlled madness and sharp wit. His every rationale, response, and reason, seeming quite mad and outlandish at first, was slowly proven right over time during the planning stages. There was an odd calculus to it all: a strange constant that bore it through to truth, much like the value of pi did to the theories of circles and waves. Cid would never claim to have a firm grasp upon the mathematics of it, but he could certainly grasp the pattern, especially when his master so kindly demonstrated it’s many occurrences.

It did little to ablate the shock of hearing the true requirement of the second plan, but it certainly did help him to come to terms with and understand it’s importance. Indeed, it was precisely because it defied all conventional reason that it had such a high chance of success.

His thoughts were interrupted by the final confirmation from the outlying invasion vessels. All prisoners and significant spoils had been secured and prepared, their ultimate fate hinging on the order he would have to issue. An order that depended on if the first or the second plan succeeded.

Whether or not to proceed with enslaving Equestria, or abandoning it.

He allowed himself to sigh, the lion’s share of the hard work now behind him. Indeed, the reduced workload now allowed him to refocus not only on observing the progress and outcome of his master’s battle, but also on the ongoing observation of Tempest Shadow. He tuned the first display to the image provided by one of the few remaining ground crews left, tasked only with surveilling his master from a safe distance. The fuzzy yet still viewable telescopic image came into view, showing the ongoing battle and the carnage it caused in but a mere fraction of it’s glory.

Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say it was a mere fraction of it’s terror.

Unfortunately, the moment was not to last. A call from the lower observation deck informed him of the appearance of some kind of enormous creature, bearing straight for his master and the Element bearers. Once again, he changed the feed of the first display to get a good look at what this creature was.

He had expected a dragon. But the odd creature that he beheld on the screen, though decidedly not draconic in nature, projected a presence of power and threat all the same. It was an enormous bear, of all the things, but unlike any bear he had ever seen before. In place of flesh and fur was instead a volume of semi-transparent mass, with what he was certain were stars floating within, linked together with small trails evocative of a constellation and moving in accordance with it’s limbs, as if in imitation of a skeletal structure. In the centre of it’s forehead sat an eight-pointed star, and the expression it bore betrayed it’s anger and a clear desire to cause harm. There was also something else riding atop it he could not make out, and upon calling the crew to zoom in on it, he was met with the uncharacteristically hostile expression of the bearer of the Element of Kindness.

Confused, Biggs called his companion Wedge over in order to identify the creature. The bad reaction the latter had to seeing the creature on the screen was far from reassuring, as was his subsequent explanation of what the creature was. This creature was called an Ursa Major, distinct from it’s smaller and more commonly encountered yet still dangerous offspring, the Ursa Minor. When provoked, these enormous magical creatures were capable of an incredible amount of destruction, rivalled only by the destruction caused by large and aggressive dragons. With this new information, Cid ordered the overhearing beasts on the bridge to advise all forces to stay clear of the creature and to not engage if at all possible, silently hoping his master would be able to contend with it.

One of the nearby operators, manning the magical detection equipment, spoke up to inform Cid that he had detected a spike in the Staff of Sacanas’ magic, predicting yet another surge in the already enormous storm cover. Cid immediately ordered the ship to put a large distance between them and the massive thunderhead. And as the ensign began the retreat at maximum burn, the operator further clarified that this surge was much more powerful than previous recorded surges, and advised extreme caution.

And then, as if also sensing the surge in power, the Ursa Major below let loose a massive roar audible even at their current altitude, and began charging straight towards his master’s location, ripping through terrain as it ran while paying the storm no mind. Cid flicked the first display back to the team surveilling his master, witnessing the staff creating an enormous electrical corona around him as he empowered it.

“Nihil!”

The girls all scream as they’re flung away by the huge, expanding column of lightning that explodes from the mother of all skyward-firing staff beams. The cloud itself is no exception: a hole going straight up to the lovely sunny skies is carved open as well, the ‘passage’ so long it must be reaching the stratosphere by now. All while the lightning wave ripples through the cloud, reaching the ends of the system before it rebounds like a radar ping and causes lightning to criss-cross through the skyward opening like it’s the goddamn Death Star reactor. You feel the staff pulling on the monstrous cloud mass, causing the entire thing to spin around the cloud opening in a cyclonic fashion that you instantly recognize as the spin of either a hurricane or a tornado.

It gives you the signal to proceed.

“Nihil!”

The cloud roars - literally roars like a lion - as a massive tornado pulls down from the opening to surround you. A thin and white lightning-laced cyclone is spun from the tip of the staff, making up the absolute centre of this meteorological leviathan and keeping you nice and safe in the eye of it all as literally everything else around you is a violent, rapidly spinning wall of roaring death clouds. And the staff was telling you all about how this monstrous twister was gonna expand out to the diameter of the entire Everfree with it’s third and final infusion, with the death stick’s pure glee at the idea nothing short of infectious for a rotten sonuvabitch like you.

Well, no time like the present! You raise the staff once more time, and--

Even after your hearing goes pop and stops working abruptly midway through that roar, you still feel the sheer might of the damn thing through your bones. Clouds were swept away and the tornado was dissipated by the selfsame mighty roar, the weather clearing force extending up and around you in a sizable area.

“Ow,” you think you say, but aren’t quite sure on account of your shot ears.

The staff, bless it’s black little core, threads a quick healing spell through your ears, your hearing returning with a pleasant little pop.

“Thank you,” you smile, said smile fading when the hand touching one of said ears comes back red. “Now who’s the asshole that stopped my screen nuke and made me bleed my own blood?”

“I did,” came the angry voice of the very last gal you expected to say such a thing.

With an inquisitive eyebrow raised, you turn around to look towards Fluttershy, and...

Huh. So that’s what she was doing all this time. She brought an entire goddamn Ursa Major with her to fight you. How about that? Between the sheer physicality, magical might, and the extremely pissed off glare, this thing’s got all the makings of an intimidating mofo!

But sadly for them, intimidation doesn’t work on you. Even if it does work on the staff, weirdly enough, which busies itself with urging you to get the fuck away from it as soon as possible.

“Man,” you whistle up at the big critter, “You are huge!”

You placate the staff with an idea, shared silently over your novel new link. Fluttershy makes herself known mid-exchange, standing atop this monstrous critter’s head with zero traces of her namesake shyness as she glares at you with undisguised hostility and malice.

“You listen to me, mister!” she hollers like an angry mother, “You’ve got to the count of three to put that staff down and give up, before me and Mr. Startuft here make you wish you were never born!”

Wow, that’s a dumb move if you’ve ever seen one. And they were doing so well, too!

“One--”

Fluttershy shrieks as she goes flying backwards from your quick little cypher lightning bolt, bouncing off the big bear’s very comfy looking star fluff and landing in a dazed heap atop it’s head again, all while the bear looks on in shock, followed by incandescent fury.

“All right, I surrender,” you grin, blowing on your two extended fingers like a gun and mockingly raising your hands. “Move a little closer!”

Even the staff is struck dumb at your sheer audacity.

The bear roars again as it charges towards you, and in spite of the staff’s protests, you launch a fresh salvo of the A-Non Splash® at it to halt it. Unfortunately, you learn two things in the process. One, that your magic did a whole lot of nothing against it. And two, that it was both way stronger and way faster than it let on.

The Ursa’s swipe felt like getting hit by a mack truck at full speed, catapulting you right across the forest and hurting like a motherfucker. And you thought Applejack’s kicks were painful!

Your jet propulsion ignites to escape it’s follow-up attack, but you don’t fly up into the air where it can catch you. No, you fly down, scything through the ground once again and escaping right before it cratered your previous position with a massive CRASH. But just before you can circle around to get the drop on it, plants and thick roots swell and grow all around you, glowing a familiar grassy green and halting you in your tracks before completely boxing you in. A second CRASH erupts all around you as your environmentally friendly cell is dug out by the same bear, who proceeds to sit back and hold onto your enclosure with it’s paws while it opens it’s mouth and creates a huge, star-filled magical sphere that becomes brighter and more twinkly as it dumps more power into it. Until finally, it chomps down on the sphere and spits a very big and blindingly fast laser beam of that same starry energy at you with pinpoint accuracy.

Unfortunately for the Ursa, it also learned two things. One, that you were also way stronger and faster than you let on. And two, that you were still a cypher. And unlike his handler, this bear didn’t have cypher-proof Harmony magic.

The bear lurches forward in pain as you effortlessly face-tank his laser beam and steal every bit of it’s power, and it howls and thrashes as you flex your power to siphon more of that arcane goodness from it, a stream of that starry energy forcing it’s way out of it’s mouth and nostrils and into your fingertips. It’s forced to let go of you, and you take immediate advantage by blasting out of your all-natural container and zooming towards the Ursa, where you deliver a magic-infused punch right to the star on it’s forehead that detonates with a loud, neon green BANG. That impact draws a fresh howl of pain from it, forcing it to grab it’s head to protect itself and allowing you to whip around to take stock of the six Elements, all huddled close together and holding onto your staff.

Oh. They’re holding onto your staff. Huh. They must’ve grabbed it while the bear was distracting you.

Good.

Through their powers combined, they believe that they use the staff to fire a big beam into the sky of a similar variety to yours, only this time it detonates in a big, iridescent white nova that clears all of the weather above the Everfree forest instead of making it worse. In an instant, the sun shines down upon the still pretty fucked-up looking forest, the wind dies down to a cool breeze, the pressure returns to normal, and the rain, hail, and lightning all get swept away.

You also weren’t paying enough attention to the Ursa, and it took full advantage.

Next thing you know, you’re pinned between it’s two front paws. And despite all of your power, it remained both stronger than you, and resistant to all of your magical attempts to repel it. It kneaded your ass around in it’s grasp like a tiny lil’ ball of dough, causing no shortage of hurtin’ that it was absolutely taking pleasure in inflicting. It only stops once your head pops up out of it’s grasp, the rest of your body pinned down under it’s iron grip and remaining immobile despite your struggles.

Kinda inconvenient, you’ll be honest.

“Hey there, greenie,” Rainbow Dash comments, her tone full of smug satisfaction.

The sound of her voice draws your attention back to their little sextet, Twilight holding onto your staff while the other five floated around her in a star pattern, all of them looking down their snouts at you with expressions ranging from pure cathartic schadenfreude to plain ol’ seething anger.

“Wassup, big girl?” you wink back at Dash. “Back for a little more mouth-to-mouth?”

Dash’s bravado cracks at the comment, and splits right down the middle to make way for spluttering anger when you start making kissy faces at her.

“Dude, that was nasty!” she hisses. “What the hay is wrong with you?!”

“What’s right with him?” Applejack mutters. “That’s the shorter answer...”

“D’aww, admit it, Bluefast. You love it when I fight dirty.” You turn to AJ, not bothering to wait for Rainbow’s spluttering to become a reply. “And you. ‘Tain’t nice to talk behind folks’ backs like that. Let’s hear what y’all’ve got to say.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to say,” she states flatly. “Yer a bad apple through n’ through, and yew oughta be right ashamed’a yerself.”

“Ahh, but I’m not, am I?” you smile. “In the words of my personal idol, ‘I regret nothing’.”

All she does is shake her head at you. As does Rarity, who offers no words. As for Fluttershy, however?

She’s got some fight to match the words!

“You’re worse than bad!” she yells right into your face. “You’re horrible! You’re despicable!”

“Y-you really think so?” you ask, cheeks turning rosy. “Golly, that’s so nice of you to say!”

Tempest slaps harder. Get on her level, Yellowquiet.

“Look at what you’ve done to Equestria!” she continues, gesturing at all of your damage near and far with tears in her eyes. “Do you have any idea how many ponies and animals you’ve hurt? Or how many have lost their homes?”

“I don’t know,” you smirk. “How many loaves of bread have you eaten in your life?”

That comment broke her brain for a moment and drew gasps out of the other ponies in attendance. Before Twilight could make her thoughts known, Fluttershy embraced her anger and went back at you with an impossibly adorable cry of tearful rage.

“You monster! You monster!”

“Yes, yessss!” you cackle in your best Palpatine impression. “Strike me down now, but it won’t do anything to fix your pwecious widdle animul fwiends! Muhuhahahaha-haaah!”

“Enough!” Twilight calls out, pulling Fluttershy back with her TK and hugging her as she weeps into her shoulder, the royal glaring entire longswords at you. “He’s not worth it.”

“Aww, c’mon! I just totalled your whole country by myself, how is that not worth it?”

Rarity takes possession of Fluttershy, holding onto and comforting her as Twilight spreads her wings out all threatening-like while holding your staff in her forelegs.

“You didn’t destroy all of this,” she fumes, jostling the staff for emphasis. “This did.”

“Oh, so now we’re blaming the stick for the damage the person holdin’ it did?” you scoff. “What is this, California?”

“You can stop deflecting and playing dumb anytime you want, Anonymous,” she deadpans. “I know the staff is both conscious and aware of itself and it’s surroundings.”

Said staff seems panicky and called-out, and you silently tell it to calm it’s metaphysical titties as you raise an eyebrow in response to Twilight.

“Oh? And how did’ja nerd that one out, book horse?”

“Because I just so happen to know a thing or two about dark magic artifacts,” she frowns, evidently not a fan of the nickname, “Enough to know that all of them are sentient. They have--”

“Sentient, or sapient?” you interrupt with a shit-eating grin. “You’ve gotta make that crystal clear if you don’t want lit nerds declaring a jihad--”

“They have to be by design,” she yells over you, snorting in annoyance afterwards. “Because there’s no other way for them to hold the amount of power that they do! Magic requires intelligence, and there’s only so much an inanimate object can do before it needs the ability to think!”

Tsk, tsk, tsk. She still thinks it’s just a normal legendary evil staff. So close, yet so far. Sensing your satisfaction, the staff does indeed calm itself, and you use the opportunity to plan your next move with it while you keep Twilight blabbering.

“Cool exposition, sister,” you chuckle before raising an eyebrow. “I assume it’s got a point besides making you look smart in front of your friends?”

Twilight uses a wing to keep Dash from tackling you right then and there, though she looks about on the verge of tackling you herself.

“My point,” she snorts, grinding her teeth together in frustration, “Is that you’ve been using it as a crutch this whole time! Not just it’s power, but the vast library of spells it has access to. Spells that I know for an absolute fact that you don’t know the first thing about!”

“My my, aren’t we full of assumptions?” you chortle.

“There’s nothing to assume! You’re a cypher; you don’t need to know any magic, because you can’t use any magic! All you know how to do is steal it and throw it around like a cave pony throwing rocks! What, are you really going to tell me you know anything about storm magic? Or that you actually knew the healing spell for your ears? Or--”

“Or how to fix Tempest’s horn?” you butt in with a smug smile and a darker, more self-assured tone of voice.

“You didn’t fix her horn,” she glowers, very unhappy about you bringing that up.

“You’re right, I didn’t,” you continue, letting her slip-up slide for the moment. “I tried to fix her horn.”

“I’m sorry, is there a difference in there somewhere?”

“Yeah, the difference being that it’s more than what you did for her.”

Ooh, she really didn’t like that! Even her friends are ooooh-ing at the two of you!

“Oh-oh,” Dash whispers to Pinkie, “He went there...”

“This is gonna get super ugly,” she whispers back.

“You listen here, mister,” Twilight extra-glowers, getting right into your face. “I already told you, there’s no way to fix broken unicorn horns. We’ve already tried. I’ve already tried.”

“Wrong again, purplesmart,” you grin. “Princess Celestia already tried, and all you did was watch her.”

Her eyes widen slightly as she gives a shallow gasp, soon followed by her teeth grinding together in renewed anger.

“Ahh, so you haven’t forgotten about that little lesson!” you laugh, smile changing to a smug grin as your tone lowers. “So it really is just you being lazy.”

Whoo lawdy, she’s definitely one-third earth pony! That one smarts! Rarity and Applejack pull her back away from you as she looks down at her trembling slapping hoof with a mix of fury and surprise, as if even she didn’t know she’d do that. Said hoof continues shaking as she looks back at you, mostly just furious this time around.

“If I remember my report correctly,” you continue unabated, pausing only when you taste the nosebleed she’d given you and smiling wider in response. “I believe the event I’m talking about was at, oh, I’d say your fifth or sixth year of being the sun horse’s protégé?”

“How the hay do you know about that?!”

“If you’re wondering if I was checking your past out, the answer’s no,” you smirk. “I learned about this tidbit from checking Tempie’s past out. Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re nowhere near important enough for me to background check; I had a minion do that for me.”

“Wait a minute,” Rarity interjects before Twilight could blow up at you again, “You ran a background check on your partner? I didn’t think villains were the type.”

“Most villains aren’t the type, sweetheart,” you wink at her. “It’s also no coincidence that most villains are raging dipshits. Exhibit A, the Storm King.”

“I... can’t really argue with that,” she admits. “But that doesn’t explain why you even bothered in the first place.”

“I always do my research, darlin’. Especially when it comes to two things: the places I invade, and the people I work with. Now, I’m not about to spill all the tea I’ve got on her, even though I paid a ton for it at the black market. Just what pertains to our little princess here.”

“You can buy background checks on the black market?” Rarity mutters.

“Sure can! Totally anon, too! Want me to recommend a good dealer?”

“No, you sure can’t!” Applejack interjects, covering Rarity’s muzzle before she could give a spirited affirmative and huffing all lady-like when interrupted. “Now if ya got a darned point, just shut up and make it already!”

“All right, fine,” you snort. “Celestia brought--”

“No,” Twilight interrupts, facing her galpals. “I’ll say what happened.”

Nodding your head her way, you allow her to proceed.

“It was in my sixth year of study,” - she briefly turns around to glare at you, adding “Not my fifth,” - “And the princess wanted to teach me that even magic couldn’t fix everything. She had me take notes with some other researchers while she tried to restore not only unicorns with broken horns, but pegasi with missing wings. But even when she used the spells the researchers developed, nothing worked. All it really did was hurt them.”

“Wow,” Dash comments, hugging her own wings close out of reflex. “That’s rough.”

“Ah’ll say,” AJ agrees.

“What I don’t understand,” Twilight huffs, turning to face you again, “Is why that would--”

Aha, she figured it out!

“Oh, no,” she gasps.

“Oh, yes,” you grin. “You remember one’a those subjects now, don’tcha? Cute little filly around your age? Dark purple coat? Purple mane? Lovely light blue eyes?” Your smile deepens and your tone darkens. “Scar across the eye? Dismembered horn? Sound familiar?”

A fresh round’a gasps ring out from purple’s comadres.

“Buh-b-but her name...!” she splutters. “She was called--!”

“Wow, almost like she’s using an alias to do evil with or something,” you deadpan. “It’s also exceptionally rude to drop her real name too, so I’d appreciate it if, y’know, you didn’t.” You shrug. “Or do. I’m not your dad.”

“So that’s why my Pinkie Sense wasn’t ringing when I heard her name!” El Ponko exclaims. “That pony needs 50ccs of emergency parties, stat!”

“I’m sure she’d appreciate that,” you wink.

“You’re not supposed to agree with me!” Pinkie screams as she goes snoot-to-nose with you.

“You can’t stop me!” you mockingly scream right back.

Twilight magicks Pinkie’s muzzle shut before she can try to out-scream you, pushing her away.

“So what, Anonymous?” she yells. “What’s the point of even bringing all of this up? Are you trying to make me feel bad for acting on what I already knew?”

“No,” you sigh, “I just kinda wish you’d put in some effort.”

“Oh, don’t you even start--!”

“After all,” you grin, cutting her off, “She knew it was impossible too, didn’t she? And yet she still tried all the same. And not just for my girl’s sake, either!”

You continue after Twilight’s jaw flaps in place of a verbal response, and her ears begin folding back as the realization sets in.

“I just figured with you being the Element o’ magic and a pretty purple princess as well, that you’d have a better chance’a pullin’ it off or something. I mean, good guy magic usually defies the rules in that kinda way all the time! But you didn’t even give it a thought? Nothing? A big, steamin’ goose egg?”

You laugh it up a little as she now looks downright ashamed of herself, your mirth growing by leaps and bounds the longer you keep talking.

“I mean, I know the intelligentsia are the laziest sacks of shit around, but god damn, girl! You’re slackin’ off on the fucking Make-A-Wish Foundation kinda shit here! I mean, look at me! I’m the grimiest motherfucker to ever walk this not-Earth! I knew it probably wasn’t gonna work! In fact, I planned everything around it not working! And I still gave it a shot, anyways! Because really, what do I have to lose from tryin’? Fuckin’ jack squat! And you couldn’t even be fucked!”

“That’s not...!”

But she doesn’t have the heart or the fire to get anything in edgewise over your raucous, El Risitas-tier laughter at her expense.

“Oh Lawd help me,” you wheeze, gripped by the throes of the giggles as you were, “That’s brutal even by my standards! And I’m supposed to be the villain in this story?”

“Hey!” Rainbow exclaims, pulling Twilight back all protective-like and staring you down. “You leave her alone, you jerk!”

“Or what, Bluey?” you laugh, slowly coming down off of your giggly high. “You’ll make Purple there feel better by sharing a relatable anecdote on how you’ve also screwed up in the same way before? Golly, I’m literally shaking over here!”

“Oh my gosh, do you ever shut up?!”

“Well I might, if you gals stopped pissing around and trying to gloat!”

“Land’s sake,” Applejack huffs, floating over and making Twilight look her in the eye. “Listen Twilight, Ah think Ah speak for everypony here when Ah say we’ll talk about all this later. After this black hearted varmint gets put out to pasture!”

“Black hearted,” Rarity agrees, “And foul-mouthed.”

“Yeah,” you agree, shooting a wink at Dash. “She’d know.”

“That’s it!” Rainbow explodes, prevented from socking you in the mouth only by Twilight’s magic tugging on her tail. Though it doesn’t stop her from thrashing at you either way. “Lemmie at him! Lemmie go!”

“You’re right, Applejack,” Twilight sighs, giving her friend a big ol’ hug. “I’ll discuss this with you all later, I promise.”

And as expected, the friend group devolves into a big hug pile which actually looks mighty cozy to be in the middle of. Though Dash has to get floated over to join them, her anger melting away in the cuddles with an eye-rolling scrunchy snort and with one eye glaring at you all the while.

“Y’know, that’s real comfy looking and all,” you interrupt after a while, “But can we get this over with? My balls hurt.”

And just like that, the magic is gone, each of them giving you unamused glares.

Works every time.

“First things first,” Twilight declares, brandishing the staff while her friends return to their star positions around her. “I need all of the magic you stole from the princesses back.”

“And how do you plan on gettin’ it, honey?” you smirk. “You already know that cyphers can’t steal each other’s magic, and Equilibrium does all of jack and shit to me. So what’re ‘ya wavin’ the stick around for?”

Of course, you already know what her plan is: she’s gonna try and use the staff to pump you full of magic until you hit saturation, which’ll deplete all of your stolen magic in a very painful and explosive fashion. Honestly, you were expecting them to turn you into a statue with Harmony bullshit first, but you guess they figured they should saturate first before the stoning, or else they’d risk unstoning you. Which, hey, fair enough: you’d assume the same thing, too!

Unfortunately for her, there’s a serious problem with that plan that she hasn’t accounted for: the staff itself.

“I’m very aware of that fact, Anonymous,” Twilight frowns. “And you’re right, your lack of magical pathways makes Magical Equilibrium a non-starter. But there is one other way to make you give it all up.”

You feign nervousness. “And, ah, what exactly would that be?”

She smirks, falling for your act. Pointing the staff straight at you, she has the staff begin to dump power into it’s tip. Or at least, she thinks she’s making it power up.

“Whoa there,” you faux-nervously laugh. “That’s uh, a lotta juice you’re slingin’ there, gurl. Careful where you’re pointin’ it!”

“Erm, darling?” Rarity inquires, somewhat nervous itself. “I thought you said he absorbs magic to become stronger? So why are you, well, giving him more?”

“Simple,” Twilight smiles. “Unlike centaurs like Tirek, cyphers have limits on how much magic they can steal. And once they hit that limit...”

“They explode?!” Dash chirps, clearly excited about the idea in relation to you.

“Their magic explodes,” Twilight clarifies. “It’s like popping a balloon: all of the magic inside has no choice but to come rushing back out. And once it does, I can take it all back!”

Hook, line, sinker, and the whole fucking rod while we’re at it. Suppressing your maniacal laughter at their folly is probably the hardest part of play-acting your panic over your ‘imminent defeat’.

“Oh my,” Fluttershy murmurs, giving the Ursa holding you a worried look. “I hope that won’t hurt Mr. Startuft...”

The bear gives her a grunt you roughly translate to ‘I’ll be fine’, the first thing it ‘says’ the entire time it’s been pinning you.

“Don’t ah, don’t suppose there’s a third chance you’re willin’ to offer me?” you faux-nervously laugh, struggling against the Ursa’s iron grip once again. “You know what they say, right? Third time’s the charm?”

“Too late for that, Anonymous,” Twilight smiles, her and her friends unashamedly pleased with how you’re ‘struggling’. “Now be good and hold still.”

You don’t, of course, continuing to play-act at panic as the staff powers up more and more. Once it hits it’s charge limit, you make one last ‘plea for your life’:

“Noooo no no no no no, c’mon, don’t do this, now! You have any idea how much that’s gonna hurt?”

“It better hurt, greenie!” Dash cackles. “Let’s do this!”

Twilight needs no further prompting.

“Nooooooooooo!” you dramatically exclaim, holding the note.

A brilliant white beam of pure magic comes pouring out of the staff’s tip, bearing straight for you. It comes right up to your face, and...

“Sike!”

Swerves directly upwards an inch away from said face, rocketing straight into the Ursa’s face instead.

The beam detonates once it hits the poor widdle force of nature, the impact of all that magic strong enough to lift him off the ground as if it were hit with an Ursa-sized Shoryuken. The impact also forces it to let go of you, and your foot-jets were already engaged in advance for this moment, allowing you to continue floating in the air right where you were as he hits the ground with a fittingly loud and apocalyptic CRASH, the oversized critter out like a light.

Though it’s hard to stay floating on account of the uproarious laughter that you finally allow to come spilling out of your pie hole.

“Mr. Startuft!” Fluttershy shrieks.

“What?!” Twilight exclaims, along with the other girls. “Buh--?! H-how?!”

“You fuckin’ dizzy bitch!” you wheeze, trying desperately to keep your sides from flying into low Equus orbit. “You actually thought that was gonna work, didn’t you? You were so hyped for it and everything!”

“What did you do, greenie?!” Dash demands.

She has to wait until you stop laughing to get a response, all while Twilight tries in vain to use the staff on you again, finding that it no longer obeyed her commands.

“Haaaah,” you sigh, fixing the girls a suave yet wolfish evil grin. “I’ll give you a hint.”

You snap your fingers, an entirely stylistic gesture, and the staff does it’s thing.

A massive swarm of electric magic chains, identical to the ones that came out of the gauntlets Cid and Biggs were using before, come pouring out of the staff’s tip like a waterfall, seizing the six girls before they could so much as blink, Dash included. They all start screaming as the staff starts tazing, rendered utterly helpless against it’s overwhelming power.

“Ahh, what a grand and intoxicating innocence,” you intone with a deep chuckle. “Thinking that you can use the tools of evil for good. Really, how naïve can you get?”

The staff stops tazing after a while, the magic chains pulling taut and mashing the girls together around the staff. Their characteristic glow was now missing, and with it, their ability to fly, causing them to plummet to the ground. They only avoid getting pasted by the staff generously kicking in some feather-falling at the last second and slowing until they gently levitate above the ground, but with the staff busy as it is binding up your foes, it can’t clear out the forest beneath it. Fortunately, that’s what you’re there for, and you carve a nice opening out with the A-Non Splash®, landing slowly and gently for effect in front of them.

Try as they might, they can’t get out. The chains around their respective wings and horns cause instantaneous tazing to the entire group the second it detects any activity, and the same goes for the extra chains on the earth mares’ legs, and the chains around Pinkie’s mane and tail. Because you do not trust that pony’s hair worth a lick. Other than that though, they’re free to struggle and thrash about as much as they can, all for your entertainment.

“I should have known,” Twilight half-glares, half-pants at you, “The staff isn’t just sentient, it’s alive!”

“And you’re fashionably late at realizing it once again,” you smirk, slow-clapping for added effect.

“So back at the palace, when you said it was an artificial cypher, you lied to me!”

“Of course I lied to you!” you laugh. “Do I look like that Chrysalis cat to you, honey? You really thought I was gonna tell you what the cards in my hand were?”

Truth is, there’s no such thing as an artificial cypher. You’re either a full cypher or you’re not, no in-between. And you’ve gotta be alive to join the magic vampire club, meaning that even before you’d gotten your hands on the staff and it started communicating with you, you figured it would therefore have to be alive, too. And sure enough, it was. And it referring to Sacanas as it's mother only helped to confirm it!

“But I don’t understand,” she cries. “If that’s true, if it’s a real cypher, how did you take the staff’s--?”

“Ah-ah-aaah,” you cut her off, silencing her with a finger over her lips. “What did I just say?”

“But--” she attempts.

“Even if I told you,” you grin, “Would it really be the truth?”

That line gets her to stop talking, struggling in her bindings as she looks all around, desperately trying to think of a solution to this problem.

As for the secret of your sharing? Well, that’s easy. True, cyphers can’t steal each other’s magic. Sharing it, on the other hand? Not only is that possible, but there’s a specific phenomenon through which it happens called synchronicity. And from the very limited info out there on the phenomenon, it basically boiled down to two or more cyphers making contact and getting on each other’s wavelength in the most new-age hippie sense of the word, sans the crystals and the bad smell. But all the written stuff ever talked about was the power sharing part; you had no idea it went beyond that into fucking magic telepathy as well! But boy howdy, was that ever a useful trick!

Heh, wonder how long it’ll take for Twilight to figure out the sharing part? After all, when you first took the staff’s power back at the palace, you indeed couldn’t steal it’s magic, causing it to deflect all over the place despite bare-handing it. But once you two ‘made contact’ and the synchronicity happened, it was easy enough to fake stealing it’s juice and fool all involved parties, a plan it picked up on immediately.

Better keep their guesswork prolonged, then! And accomplish more objectives while you’re at it!

“You know, instead of trying to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house,” you chuckle, “The smart thing to do would have been to hit up your little Tree of Harmony and bring those Elements to bear, just like you were all planning to do from the beginning.”

The group stiffens and gasps upon hearing you mention the tree.

“Oh yeah,” you continue, pacing around them nice and slow like a wolf circling it’s prey. “I know all about it. All about it, that is, except for where it’s hidden.”

“We’re not telling you where it is!” Dash barks, thrashing in her binds again.

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” you sigh, faking disappointment. “Guess that means my only real recourse is to go looking for it, huh?”

“You’ll be lookin’ for a while, partner,” Applejack glares. “Y’all have any idea how big this here forest is? You’ll be pickin’ through trees n’ caves for months!”

“Oh? That’s strange,” you hum, tapping your chin.

“Er, what is?” she replies, now much more nervous about your change of demeanour.

“I don’t remember saying anything about searching the forest the old-fashioned way.”

All sets of expressions droop at the sudden crackle of green magic between your fingers.

“No,” Fluttershy gasps. “Y-you wouldn’t!”

Flashing her a savage grin, you turn around and kneel down, plunging an electrified hand into the ground with a meaty SMASH. Fingers curling into a claw as your arm alights with power, you swipe it up through the ground in front of you.

Five curved claw-like pillars of destructive neon-green magic, reaching a good three or so yards into the sky, tear through the ground from where you’d swiped, radiating outwards in a cone as they rocket through the earth and into the tree cover. Foliage ignites and vaporizes and trees are blown into splinters and twigs as the pillars touch them, the ground in their wake pulverized into huge gouges of steaming and smouldering loose dirt and gravel without a single trace of surviving plant life left behind. And all the while, a veritable dragnet of lightning arcs between each claw-pillar, incinerating whatever is caught in their web that the pillars themselves miss and leaving nothing but the glowing, pyrolyzed skeletons of trees behind. The death wave continues for a solid fifty-odd yards until the pillars finally lose their cutting power, but the destruction doesn’t end there; the pillars then detonate in a big expanding pillar of lightning - the same kind as the lightning arcing between them - that incinerates everything around them in a very large area, with each interstitial circle of destruction overlapping like a lovely little Venn diagram and easily adding another thirty-ish yards to their damage range.

The entire attack takes no more than seven seconds, and leaves behind scenes straight out of Fallout in it’s wake.

“Bam!” you exclaim, clapping your hands as you hop back to your feet and face the horrified girls. “Whaddya think, ladies? How’s that for searching? A good week, probably even two, done and dusted just like that! And AJ, you said I only had months of searching in front of me?”

A Cheshire-esque grin splits across your face as you hold your fizzling hand up for a pale-faced Applejack to see, and an evil laugh comes tumbling out of you not long after.

“So anytime you ladies wanna tell me where your macguffins are, I’m always here to listen! But until then...”

Slowly and deliberately, you bury your hand back into the ground as you kneel down, looking the girls dead in the eye the whole time.

“I’ve got a whole alicorn’s worth of magic to blow on searching,” you smile, voice laden with menace.

Fluttershy breaks down into tears as the second A-Non Claw® rips through a different arc of your little clearing. Twilight remains tight-lipped and defiant, but her composure is clearly cracking. At this rate, her or another girl in her entourage will spill the macguffin beans in no time!

“Twilight!” Fluttershy begs. “Do something!”

Ooh, startin’ to think the first breakdown’s gonna be in the yellow corner!

With a nice semicircle of doom ringing your clearing so far, you brush past the struggling girls and get to work scouring all life from the other half, putting both hands to work and speeding things up as you sing a little ditty to yourself, loud enough for them to hear.

“♪ Dig through the ditches, and burn-- ♪”

“♪ --through the witches, I slam-- ♪”

“♪ --in the back of my, dragulaaa~-- ♪”

“Stooooop!” Fluttershy cries out, just in time to stop your next A-Non Claw® from doing it’s work.

Turning to face her with a simple smile nets you the sight of her tear-streaked face, ears pinned right back as her eyes stay screwed shut on account of all that crying she’s doing. Those who haven’t joined her on the sobbing train instead continued to glare at you with total hatred, though not without tear streaks of their own.

“Well?” you ask of your yellow captive, raised eyebrow and all. “You’ve got five seconds before I start blastin’ again!”

“I’ll tell you!” she begs, her eyes as pleading as her voice. “Just please, leave the forest alone!”

“Flutters, no!” Dash exclaims.

“Don’t tell him anythin’!” AJ implores.

“Yeah, what she said,” you agree, clasping your hand under Fluttershy’s chin and pulling her gaze up to meet your own. “You’re not gonna tell me a thing.”

“Wha--?”

Jetting skyward with the ladies, you reach a good height to take stock of the very fucked up looking yet somehow still visibly healthy forest, knocked out Ursa very much included. Throwing an arm around the pegasus’s neck, you sidle on up to her and take one of her forelegs in your hand, pointing it forward.

“What you are gonna do,” you smile, “Is show me where it is.”

“Leave her alone!” Dash continues to holler.

With an eyes-closed whimper and a gulp, she shakily opens them back up and slowly points her way over towards a tiny little clearing a fair ways away.

“Now,” you whisper right into her ear, “Is that really where it is, darlin’?”

She shuts her eyes again and gives a whimper-laden nod of her head in response.

“Now!” Twilight exclaims.

It’s cute that they thought the staff wouldn’t hear them planning to lure you in to share an electric shock, but it absolutely did. You let the staff know to turn off the tazer for Fluttershy only, keeping the two of you safe and sound as the other girls vocalize just how regrettable that decision of theirs was.

“There, there,” you coo, cheek-to-cheek with the mere as she weeps. “It’s all right. You can’t win ‘em all.”

Leaving the girl be with a parting hair ruffle, you fly on over towards the clearing with the gang in tow. It turns out to be a decent-sized little canyon-crater-thing, and once there, the massive cave opening with a soft glow coming from it is a pretty immediate giveaway as to the tree’s location. You swoop down to land, not quite able to make out the tree yet on account of the light it’s radiating.

“This isn’t over yet, Anonymous!” Twilight declares, plenty of fire still in her. “One way or another, we’ll stop you!”

Unfortunately, you don’t doubt that one bit.

“I’m sure you’ll give it your Sunday best,” you hum, fishing a group of three Spheres from your somehow still surviving pouch. “But right now, I’m afraid your services are no longer required.”

All of the girls cry out or scream once they see the Spheres, and you chuck them at them with pinpoint accuracy. They thrash and struggle all over again as they rapidly solidify, leaving behind a sextet of high art pieces, saddled with the curse of depicting their still-hideous modern art forms.

You allow yourself a little sigh, and the staff retracts it’s chains in favour of good old fashioned TK as it inquires as to what it should do next.

“This ain’t good any way you cut it,” you frown, looking over at the distant light of the tree. “They’ve got both the home field advantage and the bullshit hero advantage. I doubt either one of us could do very much to that tree.”

The staff agrees wholeheartedly, about as displeased as you were.

“Don’t suppose your mama had any bright ideas involving this thing, did she?”

Of course not.

“Fuck,” you curse. “Well, nothing for it but to learn more about my enemy before Plan B kicks in.”

It inquires about said Plan B, and this time you experiment with your silent link to give it the full picture, it’s very handy tips and tricks on how to communicate silently and express everything fully steadily falling off as it began openly exclaiming how utterly insane your plan was.

“Ahh, but that’s why it’s gonna work,” you chuckle, tapping your nose all Edgeworth-style. “Because it’s so bugfuck insane.”

It doesn’t believe you for a second, but your silent query for any better ideas goes unanswered, prompting you to smile at it. With the closest thing it can get to a huff delivered over the link, it changes the subject and demands to know what your immediate next step will be.

“I think I’m gonna do a little inspection,” you hum, looking back towards the Tree. “See what I’m dealing with. I’ll keep you posted. You think of anything that can hurt this thing, let me know on the double. Until then, stay out here and high up. And keep those girls with you. I don’t want that tree gettin’ to them that easy.”

In full agreement, the staff complies, floating a good distance up above the canyon with it’s Elemental booty in tow, it’s tip remaining charged and ready for anything. Once satisfied with it’s distance, you make your way over towards the Tree proper, guard kept right up and prepared for anything.

You had to admit: the big, crystalline tree was a real looker, and was almost certainly alive in some capacity, given that you could feel a kind of pressure in the air, as if it were regarding you with, well, maybe not quite full-on hate, but definitely a few inches away from it.

“All right, I know you’re alive,” you call out, “So bring up some kinda avatar or something so we can talk like normal people, why don’tcha?”

The tree complies, and a cloud of magic sparkles phases through the trunk section where the Element of Magic was obviously entombed, swirling around until it reached the ground and coalescing into what you swear to God is the Force Ghost of Twilight. Sure, okay, that works you guess.

“Uh, hi?” you wave at it’s creepy, ever-present neutral smile at you.

“So the third has arrived with the child of the first,” it echoes, not even opening it’s mouth. “Would that this had not come to pass...”

Oh fucking Christ on a magic stick, it really is a goddamn Force Ghost, opening right up with cryptic Eldar-tier bullshit.

“Yeah no,” you wave, hands forming into the universal gesture of ‘time out’. “We’re not doin’ this. You either talk in plain English like a normal person, or I’ll just destroy your ass, straight-up. That’s strike one.”

“And he comes with malice and an appetite for destruction even the first of his ilk did not possess,” it continues, clearly not listening to you. “Would that the second were still here to end this madness.”

“Strike two,” you warn, cracking your knuckles.

“You cannot prevail here, O third child of the stars,” it continues. “For you have come unprepared, lacking that which could grant you victory.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere! Well, Mrs. Exdeath, I’d say my nuclear armageddon magic death powers beats your creepy Force Ghost tree schtick any day of the week. Feel like puttin’ it to the test?”

“Your powers will not avail you here,” it proceeds. “They cannot.”

Putting the tree’s little boast to the test, you fire a little jolt of power from your fingers right between the ghost’s eyes. Right away, your fingers sting like a motherfucker, the magic frozen in mid-air right before the ghost’s head and looking as iridescent as gasoline spilled out onto the floor as it steadily evaporates into the air.

“Yeouch, okay,” you hum, rubbing your zapping fingers. “Glad I tried a tiny bit first.”

The staff asks if you’re all right, and you share the events with it. After describing to it how the sting felt, it said that what you felt was the same thing magical beings feel when your kind sucks their magic out, and extrapolates from there that the Tree is somehow unbreaking the laws of magic that your cypher powers break in order to work.

Well, that’s obnoxious.

“Alright, I’ll admit, that’s a neat trick,” you chuckle at the tree’s still-silent avatar as you walk over towards one of the cave walls, “But if you think magic’s the only thing I’ve got to throw at you, I’m afraid you’ll find you’re sadly mistaken.”

Pulverizing the wall is a simple matter, and it turned out that the walls were jam-packed full of big, twinkly gemstones as well. It gives the boulder you pick up from the debris a certain pizzazz that most of your usual caveman projectiles lacked. The Force Ghost doesn’t react when you launch it towards the tree, and it had every reason not to react, seeing how the whole boulder just collided with a pretty meaty invisible shield around it, crumbling to gravel that sank into the solid stone ground like quicksand.

“There is no need for further violence,” the tree ghost intones. “Please, do not make this difficult for yourself.”

“Oh, please,” you scoff. “What’s life without a few tiny challenges?”

The staff, after getting the play-by-play, begins theorycrafting with you on how to best tackle this. Evidently, attacking it with your own repertoire isn’t working out, so the question soon becomes about what will penetrate it’s defences. Right away, your mind goes to hostages, but the staff advises against that, making the very good point that showing it one of the girls’ statues will just make it unpetrify them and Element them up, drawing attention to the distinctly Element-shaped spots on the Tree.

Off to your side, the wall you’d pulverized to get that boulder begins reforming itself, the pieces of broken rock and scattered gemstones sinking into the ground again and travelling underneath the stone surface like raised bumps swimming underneath skin towards the impact point. Each individual shard of the wall’s original rock formation is pushed out from behind the crater’s exposed stone, the hole rapidly reassembling back to normal like a big 3D puzzle.

Guess the Tree really likes to keep it’s home in order, which you guess isn’t all that surprising. Still doesn’t get you any closer to figuring out how to hurt it. Frustrated, the staff idly wishes it’s mother was still here, convinced it would know what to do.

Your reply was cut off by the sudden ding of inspiration.

Order. Good. Mother. Caring. Tree. Offspring. Protection. The dossier. Twilight. Her home.

Her Tree of Harmony styled home.

You let loose a sinister cackle as you share your idea with the staff. It, too, realizes the gravity of your discovery, and emphatically tells you to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, good guy bullshit strikes right then and there, the Tree evidently doing more behind the scenes than just staring at you with it’s Force Ghost.

The staff breaks the metaphorical silence by sounding the alarm bells, which gets you to turn your head around to see the source of it’s complaint. A root of the tree shot up from the ground under where it was floating, blossoming into a crystalline flower in fast-forward and building up a beam of rainbow power within. You tell the staff to get out of there, but it’s not fast enough to escape.

An aurora-style rainbow laser fires up from the flower, enveloping the staff and the girls in it’s power. The staff cries out to you through it’s link, telling you that it could neither move nor cast spells. And the development worsened when it relayed that the girls were rapidly becoming unstoned. Knowing it’s time was running out, it urges you to take all the power you can get from it so you could give your idea a try, something you’re all too keen on doing.

With no time to waste, you rocket out of the cave and straight towards Ponyville, but not before the two of you reach out through your link as you pass by to let the staff give you a huge jolt of magic to help you pull this stunt off. The huge blue-green bolt rips right through the Harmony rainbow bullshit laser to get to you, the jolt putting you damn close to full magic capacity in an instant. You have to suppress a groan as the rarely felt feeling of fullness takes hold, the pleasure of all that power muted somewhat by the uncomfortable stretching sensation in your spiritual extremities, leaving your entire body tingling and sparking with might. Once the refuel was done, you put the pedal to the metal, rocketing towards your destination with all-new speed.

Not the Hail Mary you’d expected to do near the end. But then again, the most fun and effective plans are often the unexpected ones! And while you were at it, you double-check that the spiked little macguffin Cid gave you was still there and ready to roll.

It was.

Cid’s eyes narrowed as he observed the path that Tempest Shadow was taking.

The pony had held back and waited not only until the weather had ceased, but until the colossal Ursa Major had been neutralized before moving again. Tempest’s composure had cracked by a noticeable degree upon first seeing the bear, complete with lots of whispered assurances to herself. This was hardly a surprise, however: his master’s background check noted that an Ursa Minor had caused her horn injury, so a trauma response was to be expected once the creature entered the battlefield.

As his master continued his battle with the Element bearers in the clear skies, verbal or otherwise, Tempest elected to take the path that led her through Ponyville. And it was this path - more specifically, her reaction to this path - that caused the analytical beast no shortage of consternation. Something about the ruined village was bringing out remorse in the pony, her drive to proceed and find his master steadily weakening the more she took in the sights around her.

Once again, his master had been right: she was incredibly susceptible to their rhetoric. She was evil by circumstance rather than nature, and this good nature was finally beginning to show itself, with defection sure to follow. Once within the centre of the village, she stopped for several moments to regard the Castle of Friendship with a sense of longing.

Biggs and Wedge, all the while, continued to hover just behind Cid, eyes glued to the displays.

Shaking her head, Tempest huffed and turned to make for the Everfree again, muttering assurances to herself that only finding his master mattered. At the same time, Wedge began exclaiming at the other monitor, which indeed warranted immediate attention. The Staff of Sacanas had been seized by a stream of rainbow light, and his master was forced to retreat from his location without the staff. Ordering the current camera to stay focused onto the staff, he changed the display to the feed of another overhead camera that had already begun following his master’s retreat.

But it turned out to be an unnecessary action, as his destination, oddly enough, was Ponyville. He landed before the castle with a considerable amount of force, drawing the attention of Tempest. She quietly exclaimed his master’s name before taking off towards him at a full gallop, but was unable to make it to him in time before he began to...

Even Cid was taken aback at what he was doing to the Castle of Friendship, and the room settled into a shocked silence as they could do nothing but watch him work.

Twilight allowed herself to sigh in relief once the staff had been encased in the crystal flower’s petals.

The Tree of Harmony had really come through for them again, freeing them from stone and saving them from that horrible artifact. But their work was far from done: the staff’s wielder, that somehow even more horrible Anonymous, was nowhere to be found, and her and the other girls were all busy trying to figure out where he had gone.

“Ah figure that yellow-bellied coward jest tucked tail’n ran!” AJ exclaimed with a clop of her hoof.

“Yeah!” Dash agreed. “He knew he couldn’t beat us!”

“I rather disagree,” Rarity fretted, a heavyset frown on her face. “I think he must be planning something else. Or rather, making something up as he goes along.”

“Come on, Rares!” Dash scoffed. “I doubt he could come up with something to take us on now!”

“Unfortunately, I think he could,” Rarity disagreed. “That stallion is pure evil, yes, but his frightening intelligence makes things so much worse.”

“Intelligence?” Applejack frowned, doubtful of that claim. “He only ever struck me as clever.”

“He’s all of that,” Twilight confirmed, slowly walking towards the Tree of Harmony while she spoke. “Powerful, intelligent, clever, and pure evil, all in one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen somepony put us on the back hoof so many times in a single fight before!”

“Tell me about it!” Pinkie huffs, hopping alongside her and matching her pace. “We got super duper close to winning so many times, but he just kept flip-turning the odds upside-doodley like an Evel Knievel Ace Attorney!”

“Darling, I hate to ask,” Rarity chimed in, her and the other girls trotting over and matching Twilight’s pace, “But how much did you learn about him from your captivity?”

“Rarity, he’s even worse than what you all saw today,” Twilight replied with a slight tremor to her voice. “He’d been planning a coup against that Storm King for months, and used this entire invasion as an excuse to pull it off.”

A round of gasps were heard in response to that.

“He stabbed his own boss in the back?” Applejack exclaimed. “Why would he do somethin’ like that?”

“In his own words? He wasn’t evil enough.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dash also exclaimed, crossing and uncrossing her forelegs in rapid succession. “Time out. He took out his own boss because he wasn’t evil enough? The guy that actually took over Equestria with a giant airship army, and put everypony into cages, wasn’t evil enough for him?”

“He took over Equestria,” Fluttershy murmured, still mad at the very thought of Anonymous. “But didn’t destroy it. But that meanie, he...”

Pinkie delivers a tactical hug to her yellow companion before she could start crying again, the gesture working to calm her down.

“That’s not all,” Twilight continued. “He planned for every little detail. He went out of his way to turn the Storm King’s troops to his side, well in advance of this all happening. He even had a new logo prepared for them and everything!”

“The long con, huh?” Applejack frowned. “That takes a special piece'a work.”

“And the worst part is that I still don’t know why he’s doing it all!” Twilight huffed. “He keeps lying or deflecting about his real reasons for it! It’s not for territory, it’s not for resources, it’s not for... Gaaah! You all heard him at the beginning: he said he was doing this because he had to! But then he kept on doing it when he could have--”

Pinkie’s mane deflates, the balloon-like sound cutting Twilight off.

“Oh-oh,” she squeaks. “No, Twilight. He did tell you the truth, right from the start.”

“What?” she recoils.

“The part after he said he was doing it because he had to. About how he’d do this anyways, just because he thought it was fun.”

“And I’m afraid it goes even deeper than that,” Rarity chimes in. “I think that colt is an artist.”

“Say what, now?” Applejack deadpans.

“An artist?” Dash exclaims in pure disbelief. “Rares, he has to be the worst artist I’ve ever seen!”

“Not an artist in the way you’re thinking, darling,” Rarity clarifies. “An artist in the sense of his motivations.”

It was in that moment that the truth of those motivations finally hit Twilight like a brick.

“He’s doing evil for it’s own sake,” Twilight gasped. “Oh, no! I-I thought he was doing it for a specific reason! I kept thinking that--!”

“He was too smart to do otherwise?” Rarity finishes with a knowing tone.

“Yes!” she blurts back.

“I loathe even making the comparison, but unfortunately, him and I are cut from a very similar cloth,” Rarity continues, holding everypony’s attention. “We are both deeply passionate ponies, and that which we are passionate for is not merely a means to an end, or even a career. For us, it is everything; it is the flame that drives us forward, the thing that pushes us to do our very best, to be our very best. But above all else, we hold our passions to be nothing short of art. But where I choose dressmaking and generosity...”

“He chooses mayhem and evil,” Twilight finishes, her own knowing tone much harder than hers.

“And he’s makin’ our home his canvas,” Applejack frowns, the new understanding of their foe bringing with it a mutually shared wave of disdain.

“I’m afraid so,” Rarity confirms with a solemn nod.

“Well his art sucks, and he can’t take the hint!” Dash huffs. “Which means it’s way past time we show that loser the door!”

Nodding her agreement, Twilight reaches out with her magic, imploring the Tree of Harmony for aid. In response, it relinquished the Elements from their spots on the tree, the magical items returning to their rightful places on the ponies who wielded them. For Twilight, she could feel her Element replenishing her natural magic, replacing the power that was stolen from her by the staff.

The fact that it was doing that already gave her an idea as to how they could take on Anonymous.

“Aww, yeah!” Dash whoops. “Let’s go kick some green monkey tail!”

She zooms towards the mouth of the cave, Twilight and the others rushing to catch up with her. It was strange, though: the light outside seemed darker than she’d expected.

“Be careful, darling,” Rarity warns. “We have no idea what he’s planning. For all we know, he’s come up with a way to destroy the Tree.”

“How in tarnation does he plan on doing that?” Applejack inquires. “Ain’t the tree impernious to everythin’ but Discord?”

“Impervious, darling,” she corrects. “And you’re right, it is. But knowing our enemy, he’s already thought of some mad way to try and harm the...”

When Rarity trails off, she draws the attention of everypony else, who follow her slack-jawed gaze skyward.

It doesn’t take them long to join her in losing jaw control at the sight.

“L-like that?” Applejack stammers.

“Oh my gosh,” Twilight squeaks, recovering from the initial shock the quickest. “Girls, come on! We have to stop him now!”

For the second time today, you get to do something else you’ve always wanted to do.

“Yūjō shiro da!”

Demented, superlative laughter spills from the very bottom of your soul as you propel your weapon of choice right towards the Tree of Harmony like a stake to a sleeping vampire. And your weapon was none other than the entire fucking Castle of Friendship itself, pulled out of the ground like a weed with your ridiculous, overflowing power and thrust towards your target with the pointy root bit facing forward.

“Who’s a man and a half?!” you cackle like a true unmedicated basket case. “I’m a man and a half! Castle-packin’ man and a half!”

But the girls, now bearing their Elements on top of rocking their fugly super-forms, had enough time and plenty of power to shore up a defence against your final assault.

First came Applejack, with big grassy-green lasers shooting out of her hooves and into the ground. The ground alighted with big ‘veins’ of that same magic, and moments later, giant glowing green roots came spilling out of the ground to intercept the castle, taking the brunt of your gravitationally assisted improvised weapon. A huge shockwave rippled through the castle upon impact, cracking and splintering it in multiple places with bits and pieces flying off. And she wasn’t done there, either; on top of the roots buttressing against the impact, lots of runners snaked their way around the big crystal root structure and grew into thick, coiled supports to further prevent it’s descent.

Credit where it’s due, it actually does work! But you were far from done.

“Ha-haaaah, there’s nothing wrong with this that I can’t fix! With my feet!”

Your foot-jets ignited with blinding might, quite literally multiplying the castle’s downward force and shattering many of AJ’s roots into magical wooden splinters. It hardly stopped her from forming more and more to try and counteract you, but it was clear to everyone that it was a losing battle.

“Oh yeah, I’m cookin’ with gas now, hillbilly girl!” you holler like a complete lunatic.

But as per usual for these gals, they don’t do anything alone.

Dash had put herself to work busing ponies around, starting with taking Fluttershy out to where the Ursa was, then Usain Bolting back to pick up Pinkie and Rarity, putting them into position behind you where they could start opening fire. Pinkie was bringing out five-gallon bottle rockets and firecrackers with green dynamite sticks labelled “NITRO” duct-taped to them, while Rarity’s diamond spikes were more like diamond spears at this point.

But with your body at it’s absolute maximum charge, their projectiles were doing absolutely nothing against your alpha-plus-hyper-mode skin-tanium armour. Even the explosions weren’t moving you!

“You want a piece of me?!” you laugh, head craned over to them. “Yeah, come on, come at me with it!”

Your thrusters alter quite significantly in response to their aggression. With the addition of more power...

“Dynamite!”

The engines erupt like twin neon-green volcanoes, spewing forth pony-sized magic death missiles that travel up and into the air in random directions and velocities, lazily arcing their way back down to the ground with only a few heat-seeking their way to the attacking mares. Rarity’s interception of a few reveals their explosive potential to be on par with a fucking mini-nuke, and the two realize with horror that your target was never them in the first place, but the entire forest.

“Ooh, yeah!” you half-scream, half-cackle, “Dig the prowess, the capacity for violence! I’m the man! I’m superbad!”

The diversion works perfectly, the girls targeting the projectile rain instead of you to prevent the forest from being nuked into the stone age. But your feet continue to belch out missiles well past the initial eruption, giving the impromptu jannies a never-ending tide of work to do.

And breaking into a fresh Sonic Rainboom with barely any effort, Dash once again launches herself at you like a pride-flavoured railgun shot.

And still fails to budge you!

“Oh yeah,” you laugh, head craning to show the shocked pony your crazed, power-mad expression. “Do you get it now, Bluey?! Papa’s got a brand new bag!”

You think this might be the first time this pony’s been properly afraid of someone else before.

Abandoning the idea of directly attacking, she instead opts to join Applejack down below, directing her numerous root growths into the prime positions to shore up against the castle and help prevent it’s descent. Which actually does pretty well for itself, buying them several more seconds before the end.

Aha, there’s the Ursa!

The giant bear, with a similarly giant and very comical bandage wrapped around it’s head, seizes upon the castle with it’s front paws and digs it’s hindlegs in, doing it’s very best to keep the castle from touching down. But even it is straining against the sheer downward force you’re projecting onto the crystalline building, that strain borne out in the cracks spiderwebbing out across where both you and it were holding onto. And it certainly didn’t help that your magic death missiles were hitting it like a swarm of angry bees, further distracting it’s efforts.

And all the while, Fluttershy rode shotgun atop the bear’s head, glaring entire claymores at you.

“Whooooo, baby!” you scream, “I’m burnin’ outta control!”

But even with all of this combined effort, it still wasn’t enough to stop you. For each new measure keeping you from driving your impromptu stake home, all you had to do was give more power to the engines, increasing both your applied amount of force and generating more magic death missiles. To their increasing horror, the pointy end of the Castle of Friendship gets closer and closer to it’s target, eventually staking into the earth above the cave the Tree was in.

“Ooh, here it comes!” you cackle, fist powering up for the final strike. “Here comes the night train!”

Within seconds, your hand was empowered to deliver an apocalyptic haymaker, ready to drive this stake through the beating heart of Harmony itself.

And with one final, primal, and superlative cry of sheer, adrenaline and magic fuelled delight, your fist rockets forward...

And hits nothing.

You only just register the castle being teleported off to your right side in a big familiar purple flash before the ridiculous forward thrust of your feet transforms you into the meteor strike.

Your body remains unharmed as it penetrates right through AJ’s root cover, misses the Tree, and punches deep into the ground, travelling what must be half a goddamn mile through solid dirt and stone and with God only knows how much utter destruction caused topside by the impact. You didn’t even need any magic to penetrate through all of that; only the simple mechanics of Sir Isaac Newton being the deadliest son of a bitch in the known universe was required in this instance.

“Well, that was a load of shit,” you huff to yourself as you wait patiently for your momentum to cease, more joking than serious. “Guess that’s what Twiggles was up to!”

Once the ride had come to a complete stop, you wrap yourself in more digging magic before spinning around and rocketing back towards the surface. You erupt with a meaty BOOM a fair distance from the Friendship Castle, which was currently being held steady by the Ursa while the Elements grouped up around it, with AJ Miracle-Gro’ing some roots to anchor it in place for the moment. The giant crater you’d gouged out with your impact near the tree was already starting to get reassembled with it’s obsessive-compulsive orderly magic, though notably slower than you were expecting, no doubt thanks to the lack of Elements in the tree.

Speaking of Elements, the girls get alerted to your presence right away, and you see Twilight piggybacking onto Dash to get the speed advantage. You were already bolting towards them by then, hands extended to loose the ultimate twenty-metre radius A-Non Splash®, the volleys of magic death missiles kept at bay only by the continued intervention of Rarity and Pinkie plus the Ursa body-blocking the rest of the hits. Dash zooms by you without even trying to hit you, immediately sending your Spider-Senses a’tinglin’ and making you cease fire and pull up high into the sky to get a good look at what she and her purple plus one were plotting. You could see Twilight’s horn alight with power, and a moment later, she fires a laser beam aimed straight for you. The beam is trivially easy to avoid, and you rocket towards the two to intercept, your maximized power allowing you to actually keep pace with Dash for once.

You charge up a ‘little’ Dragonball laser beam in your hands as you pursue them, intent on sniping them right out of the sky. Twilight’s laser manages to graze you mid-chase, the glancing hit sucked right into your body without breaking your stri--

You absorbed her magic.

Oh, shit!

Realizing what her game was, you slow your pursuit to put some distance between you two, but Dash was clearly in on the game as well, and matched your speed to allow Twilight to continue firing. It was only then that you realized that she was only wearing her Element; her magical-girl super form was gone, robbing her magic of it’s Harmony properties and making it fair game for cyphering on purpose. And to make matters even worse, that edge hit from her beam was evidently part of some bullshit lock-on spell, because now the beam was curving towards you to maintain contact, striking true all the time.

Shit, shit, shit, this is bad! Her magic is still potent; she only needs ten or twenty seconds to push you over, and you just wasted precious few trying to dodge! But what if...?

Aha, of course! Fuckin’ lasers! Two can play at that game, bitch!

The laser you had been charging comes rocketing out of your hands, taking advantage of Dash’s speed-matching to improve your accuracy. She dodges, because of course she does, but she almost gets clipped when the beam splits into two halves to curve quicker towards her. She maintains that vigilance as the laser splits more and more until it looks like a laser light-show of death, a whole buckshot spread’s worth of lasers firing in a decent cone towards her and dancing about in random, unpredictable patterns.

More importantly, you tuned the attack to drain as much power as you were getting filled with, bringing your charge rate to a net zero.

That was one hell of a trick she pulled there, you have to admit! And it’s a serious testament to that girl’s focus that she’s still casting despite the pain of the drain! But unfortunately for her, you can completely sidestep the danger as long as you keep casting right back!

Dash darts and weaves all about but never slows her roll down, continuing to try and fly fast enough to shake you, something she should have done before you hit max level and became able to match her speed. Her circuit takes her right back towards her friends and the Ursa, the latter of which just bit down onto a starry sphere of magic held in it’s mouth, no doubt to--

Laser you in the face.

No chance to dodge thanks to the approach angle. No time to strike back. No time to think of a better solution.

Welp, that’s Plan A officially flushed down the shitter.

You groan. “Oh, this is gonna hurt--”

The pinpoint accurate giant laser blast was more than sufficient to push you over the edge.

All of your magical output, be it attacking or flying, came to an abrupt and painful stop once the threshold of saturation was reached, and you fell from the sky like a rock while clutching your chest, hitting the ground with force that you’re in no state to quantify at this moment. The uncomfortable stretching pressure from before had ‘ruptured’ the moment the overload happened, and your insides burned with pain that steadily became worse and worse as the symptoms manifested, feeling as if a muscle was being pulled every single second, one after the other.

“There it is,” you groan. “The superhero bullshiiiiiiiit--!”

The droning sound of tinnitus builds in your ears as the pain increases, your groans of pain quickly morphing into protracted yelling. From the middle of your chest, green magic lit up along every major vein and artery, steadily filling the vessels out and building in intensity. Their vascular tributaries soon joined them, the smaller veins and arteries filling out after a certain point until even the smaller blood vessels were alight with stolen power, clamouring to break free from it’s prison.

You barely register Dash picking you up and flying directly up into the sky as even the blood vessels in your eyes begin to glow, tendrils of neon green snaking into your vision as the glow on your skin expands from the blood vessels to just covering the entire surface with green, your vision following suit. A swelling sensation deep within your gut builds rapidly, spreading up through your chest and into your throat and leaving behind an agony that even after so many overloads, remains indescribable.

The feeling builds to it’s final crescendo.

A brief snap is heard conducting through your bones.

And everything goes white.

Cid and the rest of the crew shield their eyes against the blinding light of his master reaching his magical saturation point, with Biggs helpfully offering some sunglasses to him and Wedge to help them observe the sight more closely. He was no stranger to seeing his master reach saturation - he had reached it no less than two times during endurance training, and Cid was responsible for providing the necessary after-care - but each of those events paled in comparison to the sheer magnitude of power being released from his unwilling body at this moment.

With said body glowing brightly like a miniature green star, a veritable eruption of enormous green orbs of raw magic came flooding out of his body in far-flung, randomized arcs, exiting his facial cavities in a wide cone aimed into the sky with each orb bearing a long trail of magical fire and lightning. The magic, unlike his normal stolen magic, did not remain green for very long after being ejected: the spheres broke apart into shards of magic that each glowed in the unique colours of each alicorn’s individual magical aura before being drawn towards a central point within the Everfree Forest he could not as of yet make out, but suspected was either the Staff of Sacanas or Twilight Sparkle herself.

The power erupted from his body for an entire minute and a half, well in excess of the twenty second maximum Cid had observed from him before. In that time, he was able to pull himself away from the sight and flick through the displays before him, seeing Tempest Shadow regarding the explosive display with horror before redoubling her efforts to sprint through the forest to reach him. Another camera view revealed the glowing body of Twilight Sparkle, sinking all of the ejected magic into herself, and he noted right away that her movements suggested familiarity with this type of magical absorption.

As the glow terminated, and the body of his master fell from the skies, Cid shook his head and hailed the ships awaiting his orders. Once again, his master had been right; they did need to enact the second plan, despite all of their efforts.

A groggy, zombie-like groan was the first thing to leave your pie hole after returning to the living.

“Fuuhuuhuuuuck,” you moan, unable to fully control your arm and failing to brush your face with it’s attached hand, “Fucking shit Christ, that never gets easier...”

Every symptom of post-saturation exhaustion was all present and accounted for; the dull pain everywhere, both outside and in; the leaden, almost fully asleep limbs with the absolute worst pins and needles around; the splitting headache; the blurry as shit double vision; the laboured breathing; it was all there, and at it’s absolute worst point.

Vision and movement were the first two things to start their slow return, though you could certainly do without the prickling sensation left behind as your moving parts came back on-line. Though your body lacked it’s usual muscle-boosting stolen magic, even in a nominal sense, your good, all-natural physique still allowed you to pull yourself up to a sitting position after a few attempts.

Which nets you with the sight of the Element Bearers, all assembled before you and lacking their super-forms, just like Twilight. Only Dash looked pleased with the outcome: the rest were all stone-faced and angry.

“That looked like it hurt,” Dash snorts, quite happy with your misery.

“You know that awful pain you get when you stub your toe on the wall?” you mumble, fumbling to get to a kneeling position. “It’s like that, but... Oh wait, no toes. Right. Duh. Can’t brain right now.”

You lose your balance and fall back down, the pain of the fall still paling in comparison to the ongoing cypher-ache. Nothing for it but to try and stand up again. Dash laughs, of course, but she’s the only one.

It takes a few tries, but you manage to stand eventually, the leg shakes making it tricky to stay upright. You meet Twilight’s tired and disappointed frown with an exhausted smile, causing her frown to morph into an angry scowl.

“How can you still be smiling at a time like this?!”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” you attempt to chuckle, breaking out into a coughing fit instead. “That was the greatest fight of my life, bar none!”

Twilight stops herself before she can start yelling at you, snorting angrily instead.

“Forget it,” she huffs. “I am so done with you.”

The Elements start glowing and the girls start levitating, heralding what’s about to come next.

“Aww, yeah!” Dash whoops. “Time to finally get yours, greenie!”

Your reaction throws her for a loop: you strike a magnificent pose, hiding the spiky metal object from Cid in one of your closed hands.

“What the hay are you doing?” she asks, visibly confused.

“Making sure you get my good side,” you wink.

Her jaw drops, she splutters, and just when she thinks she’s past getting angry, she gets angry.

“Unbelievable!” she hollers, forelegs thrown up in the air. “We finally get to finish him off, and he’s still gonna get the last laugh?! Where does it end with this guy?!”

Her words are more true than she realizes, and you can’t help but grin in spite of your pain. True, Plan A was an expected failure, but everything was in place for Plan B. The rest was all up to both Cid and Lady Luck now, and you had absolute confidence in the former. But wouldn’t mind if the latter called you every now and then.

Her ravings are cut short by the magic rainbow arcing between the Elements, and moments later, the low-orbit ion rainbow comes streaming right towards you, the Harmonious magic prickling your skin yet still failing to match your monstrous cypher hangover on the pain scale.

The spikes of the specially crafted Arcane Collector burrow into your palm in reaction to the magic.

For the second time today, everything goes white.

“Does the big feller really have to leave so soon?” Applejack asks Fluttershy.

“I’m afraid so,” she nods, looking down at the Ursa Major with concern. “Concussions are no joke, and Mr. Startuft needs plenty of bed rest after this!”

The bear groaned as if to imply that it was fine, but the small wince it gave told a different story.

“No buts, mister!” she sternly told the much bigger creature. “Once you’re done moving the castle, I want you to head right home, okay?”

It reluctantly groaned an affirmative, the Castle of Friendship still draped across it’s back with the rest of the girls riding atop it’s head along with Fluttershy. Fortunately, it didn’t have much further to go, arriving at the badly damaged town of Ponyville in no time at all and stopping in front of the hole where Anonymous had somehow managed to pull the castle from. But once the Ursa had ‘replanted’ the castle, a pulse of prismatic power welled up from the bottom of the hole and rippled through the structure that not only repaired the damage that had been done to it, but filled the hole back in and rooted it firmly into the ground once more, as if it had never been removed at all.

The bear took it’s leave once the mares all disembarked, the two parties waving goodbye to one another as it returned to it’s abode far in the distance.

“Now that that’s done with,” Twilight frowned, “We need a way to keep watch over this.”

Twilight had been holding the statue of Anonymous in her magic this whole time, and had finally allowed herself to put it down for a moment. She hated the way it looked, with his form locked into that simultaneously menacing and majestic pose, evoking images of pillars for whatever reason. She had half a mind to knock him over before the Elements had done their work, but restraint had prevailed. She was starting to think that was a mistake.

She also had the crystal-encased Staff of Sacanas draped across her back, safely neutralized and ready to have it’s stolen magic returned.

“Well we can’t just leave him here,” Dash pouts, jostling her Element of Harmony. “We all need to be together to do our thing, and there’s no telling if his freaky soldiers are still creeping around!”

“And it ain’t like there’s anypony left in town, neither,” Applejack ponders, rubbing her chin in thought.

“And we’re certainly not taking this brute with us,” Rarity frowns.

“And this is way too much for Gummy to handle on his own,” Pinkie wonders aloud for a moment before gasping loudly. “Ooh, ooh ooh ooh, Fluttershy! Can your animals keep an eye on him?”

“Ohh, I don’t know,” Fluttershy frets, “I want them to stay out of this...”

“Oh, they just have to watch a statue! They’ll be fine!” Pinkie presses. “Besides, with Harry-bo standing around, nopony’s gonna be crazy enough to pick a fight!”

“We can keep them inside the castle,” Twilight offers. “And have them lock the door. That way they’d be kept safe.”

With the weight of every expectant friend’s looks, it doesn’t take long for Fluttershy to cave.

“Oh, o-okay,” she sighs. “I’ll be right back.”

With that, she flutters off towards her cottage, the building far enough away to avoid Anonymous’s path of destruction through the rest of the town. The mere thought of that drew Twilight’s gaze back towards the township, her discerning eye able to pick out what damage was caused by him, and what was caused by his occupying invaders before then.

“Don’t you worry none, sugarcube,” Applejack hums, patting Twilight’s withers. “This ain’t the first time Ponyville’s been worse for wear. We’ll get it right as rain in no time!”

“Right after we get Canterlot back on the mountain,” Dash proclaims, once again jingling her Element.

“It’s odd, though,” Rarity notes aloud, eyes flowing across the skyscape. “Where are all of the airships?”

Blinking, Twilight spun around to confirm her observation, finding that yes indeed, there wasn’t a single airship in sight.

“You’re right,” she quietly notes. “Where did all of his soldiers go?”

“Okay, that’s like, all kinds of wrong,” Dash agrees. “I’m gonna look around real quick, be right back!”

She was off before anypony could protest, leaving the girls both annoyed and bemused at her usual impulsive antics. However, the mood fell when all eyes gravitated towards the statue of Anonymous.

“This whole thing ain’t been sittin’ right with me,” Applejack says with a frown. “How does a colt like him just lie down n’ take it like that?”

“He wouldn’t,” Rarity agrees, giving the statue a suspicious glare, “Unless he was planning for that.”

“He definitely strikes me as the type to plan around losing,” Twilight huffs, joining Rarity in glaring at the statue. “But the question is, what did he plan? His eventual freedom?”

“Possibly,” Rarity speculates. “But I don’t think this is the last we’ve seen of this colt, nor his detestable forces.”

All remaining ponies hummed their agreement.

“How do ‘ya reckon a feller like him could break outta that, anyhow?” Applejack wonders. “Ah mean, Discord managed with just chaos ‘round him, so what’s his secret?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say getting some magic in him would work,” Twilight replied with a frown.

“But how? Yer magic didn’t get sucked out the whole time y’all were liftin’ him, and ‘ya said he can’t control what he takes.”

“I’m wondering about that myself. But I think it’s for the same reason he was able to take magic from the Staff without any trouble.”

“Hmm, what if those two vamperoonies didn’t steal each other’s magic?” Pinkie hummed, having retrieved a thinking cap and a bubble pipe at some point. “What if they shared it instead?”

Twilight gasped a little at Pinkie’s insight. “That’s it! He must have shared it with the staff!”

“He didn’t strike me as the sharin’ type,” Applejack frowns.

“I don’t think it was sharing among friends, as much as it was sharing as a kind of business transaction,” Rarity hummed. “If that horrid staff is really alive like you say it is, Twilight, then it’s possible it was just as happy to destroy everything around it as he was.”

“That does make a lot of sense,” Twilight admits. “I’ll have to do a lot of research on this later, but I think we can safely say that we should keep other cyphers as far away from him as we can.”

Whatever Rarity had to say was interrupted by Rainbow Dash’s sudden return, the mare looking very agitated.

“They’re gone!” she exclaims, continuing after everypony’s surprised exclamations. “The ships, they all just left!”

“A full retreat?” Twilight gaped. “Why?”

“I dunno, but it gets even weirder!” Rainbow continues. “You know all of those ponies they captured? They left them all behind, too!”

“They what?” Rarity exclaims.

“And all of their loot! They just dumped it all off with everypony and ran for it!”

“Sounds like they were mighty afraid’a us chasin’ ‘em down,” Applejack smirked.

“It does,” Twilight frowned, eyes once again flicking to the statue of Anonymous. “In fact, that’s probably exactly what he wanted to prevent.”

“T’ain’t gonna work, though,” she continued. “No way the Royal Guard’ll just let this all slide.”

“It wasn’t the guard he wanted to keep away from his fleet,” Rarity says with another glare to Anonymous’s statue. “It was us.”

“Of course it was,” Twilight huffed, rolling her eyes. “He dropped all the prisoners off so we’d have no choice but to take care of them instead.”

“Augh, just like when he cut Canterlot off of the mountain!” Dash exclaimed, giving the statue a quick kick to the head. “Why does this guy have to be so good at being bad?!”

Fortunately, the mood doesn’t stay sour for much longer, thanks to Fluttershy returning with her sizable group of animals. Nodding to them with a small smile, Twilight grabs the statue in her magic and leads the group and their caretaker indoors, placing the statue on top of the Friendship Map table. The animals all took up position around it, some even looking after the doors and patrolling the hallways. Though she did have to pull Fluttershy away after she took just a little too long trying to reassure her animals. Once they were out of the building, the animals locked the door behind them, and they could be seen shutting and covering the windows from the inside out shortly after.

With the matter settled, the girls were finally ready to fix the most egregious damage done to the land. With her magic amplified considerably through holding onto the magic of her fellow princesses, it was simple enough for Twilight to levitate all of her friends while she rode atop Rainbow Dash. It wasn’t long at all before they arrived in the shorn-off city of Canterlot, the palace somehow still intact despite the horrific damage inflicted to the rest of the city. And within it were the statues of the other princesses, still in their places.

All Twilight had to do now was remove that throne from the middle of the circle and place the encased staff down in the middle. Once again, the Elements of Harmony overflowed with power, and the rainbow of magic shot forth from them, washed over the staff, and flooded into the ground.

The rest of the stolen magic was extracted from the staff, flowing back into the princesses it had been stolen from. Twilight offered the magic she had reclaimed from Anonymous back to their respective monarchs as well, and the princesses in question were also freed from their stony prisons as a result, returning among the living with a few shocked gasps.

And the Elements did not stop there, the rainbow flowing out from the palace and scooping up the carved-out city, gently floating it back atop the mountain and affixing it back into place. That was, however, the extent of what it could do: the rainbow lost it’s power and receded back into the Elements once it had finished repairing the mountain, leaving the ruined city for them to deal with themselves.

“Twilight,” Celestia began, gaping with the other princesses at the damage done to the palace, “What in Equestria happened here?”

Twilight groaned. She was not looking forward to explaining all this.

The sun was beginning to set by the time Twilight and the others began their return to Ponyville, with their first stop being the Tree of Harmony. With all of the princesses helping, they made it a priority to find everypony that had been abducted and bring them back to Canterlot, including the ponies that had been taken from the outlying towns. It was fairly easy to find everypony, since the invaders had all unloaded them in one big spot, and with the princesses and some powerful unicorns working together in a big chain of teleportation, it was simple enough to return them to the city, however taxing it may have been. What followed upon their return to the city was perhaps the biggest, most organized reconstruction effort that had ever been seen in Equestria, with even the young colts and fillies chipping in to help fix everything that had been destroyed or damaged in the city. Though there was only so much they could do in a single day, there were already talks of plans for everypony to spread out and help fix the outlying towns as well once Canterlot had been finished.

Despite everything, the spirit of Harmony was as strong as ever, and it had brought Twilight to tears. On several occasions. As did her reunion with Spike, who was among those captured. The other creatures who had helped - Celaeno and her pirates, Capper, and Princess Skystar - had all stayed to help as well, and Skystar expressed her desire to return to Seaquestria and get the help of the hippogriffs in fixing everything, something Celestia and Luna had agreed to help out with tomorrow.

But right now, all Twilight and her friends wanted to do was get some much needed rest, after they finished returning the Elements to the Tree. And so, with the winged girls carrying their non-winged friends, they glided across the Everfree and towards the Tree’s location, with Spike in particular nestled against Rarity as the two rode on Twilight’s back. As they flew, the group took notice of how the forest was already beginning to heal itself of all the damage that had been done to it, and the sight brightened Fluttershy’s spirits the most of anypony.

Before long, they arrived at their destination, quickly offering their Elements back to the tree so they could get back to Twilight’s castle and take full advantage of it’s wonderful suites.

But then, right as the last Element gets returned to the Tree and it lights up with the magic of Harmony again, the cutie marks of the six girls begin flashing.

“Aww, come on!” Rainbow complains to her own flank. “I just wanna go to bed already!”

Twilight frowned in confusion, wondering what friendship problem the map could be calling them for. And then, in an instant, her stomach sank.

“Anonymous!” she gasped, the name alarming all of her friends. “Is the map warning us about him?!”

“It better not be!” Dash scowls, punching her hooves together. “Come on girls, let’s go!”

The tiredness of everypony was banished in that instant as they flew as fast as they could back towards Twilight’s castle, the Everfree forest showing them mercy and not getting in their way during their flight. Once they were clear of the Everfree and were well on their way to the castle, they could already see the front doors to the castle wide open. Not just open, but blackened with scorch marks.

“Oh, no!” Twilight cried.

“Oh, hay no!” Rainbow fumed. “Not on my watch, you don’t!”

Landing quickly, the Elements plus Spike rush in through the doors, ready for the worst. The path to the map room was left wide open and littered with similar scorch marks, and they fully expected the statue of Anonymous to be gone once they made it there.

But just as confusing as the statue still being there, was the pony who was huddled up next to it.

All of Fluttershy’s animal friends cowered in the corner as Tempest Shadow lay curled up atop the knocked-over statue of Anonymous on the map table, her forelegs wrapped tightly around it’s neck as she pressed as much of her body as possible against it’s chest. Scorch marks from her magic peppered both the statue itself and the entire tabletop around it, a clearing in the soot layer marking when the statue had once sat upright. It looked as if she was trying her absolute hardest to break him out of his stony prison, but had failed.

Knowing what she did about Tempest after her capture, Twilight couldn’t help but feel bad seeing her as she was now. She has passed out, clearly suffering the symptoms of magical exhaustion, with small bags under her eyes and her mane left a scraggly, matted mess. Old, half-dried tears were streaked down her face, and her ears remained pinned back as she whimpered every now and then in her fitful sleep.

“Uhh, girls?” Dash piped up, visibly confused. “What am I looking at?”

“Oh, the poor dear,” Rarity sighs, sounding genuinely sad. “She ran herself ragged trying to set him free.”

After seeing it was safe, Fluttershy immediately flew over to her animals, who welcomed her with wide open arms and rapidly spoke to her in their animal language, no doubt telling her all about what had happened while they were gone.

Twilight slowly approached the unconscious commander, her mind a mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Chief among them were the words of Anonymous, replaying through her mind over and over again and making her feel progressively worse.

“... it’s more than what you did for her ...”
“... just wish you’d put in some effort ...“
“... all you did was watch her ...”
“... that’s brutal even by my standards ...”
“... you didn’t even give it a thought ...”
“... it really is just you being lazy ...”
“... and I’m supposed to be the villain? ...”

She felt awful, the guilt mounting more and more the closer she got to Tempest’s fitfully sleeping form. Even if he was only saying those awful things to get a rise out of her, he had still been right: she never tried to help Tempest and instead only tried to stop her, even after she told her about her past struggles when she had been captured. It was a painful parallel to how she had treated her friends during the entire attack: she had let her focus on stopping the enemy take priority over listening and communicating with her friends, and it nearly cost her everything.

Her eyes drifted down towards the map table, drawn to her and her friends’ cutie marks orbiting the projection of her castle. She knew right then and there what the map wanted them to do: it wasn’t to stop him from coming back, it was to help put Tempest back onto the right path, and make sure she never felt rejected or abandoned by her fellow ponies ever again.

Gently, she wrapped both her and the statue in her magic, making sure to not disturb her as she levitated them up into the air.

“What are you gonna do with them?” Spike asked from beside Twilight.

“He’s going to the royal gardens tomorrow,” Twilight replied with a frown at the statue, her look softening as she turned her eyes to the pony in her grasp. “She needs a good night’s sleep.”

They all did.

Twilight felt both elated and frightened once she saw Tempest walk into the map room, following Spike’s lead. Though she was quite clearly exhausted and more than a little nervous, she was still together enough to clean herself up and still carried herself with that intimidating poise she was known for, refusing to let her true feelings show in her movements. Her eyes flicked all across the room, taking stock of Twilight and her friends all in their seats, but it was clear by the way she was scanning all around the chamber that she was looking for the statue of Anonymous, which Twilight had managed to pull from her grasp when she put her into one of the guest rooms. When she couldn’t find it, she let out a frustrated sigh and strode past the small dragon and towards the empty seat at the table clearly meant for her.

“Good morning!” Twilight greeted. “Are you hung--”

“Look, just get on with it already,” Tempest interrupted, moving past the chair and planting her forelegs onto the map table, glaring right at the princess. “Spare me the speeches and just get to my damned punishment.”

Twilight managed to restrain her flinch at her aggressive and forward behaviour. Her friends had warned her that she could act like this, and their preparedness was paying off.

“Punishment?” Twilight asked with a small tilt of her head.

“I’m not some innocent victim that needs to be saved, your highness,” she continued, her performance evidently meant to put on a strong front. “I attacked Equestria knowingly and for my own selfish reasons, I caused you and your friends a lot of pain and trouble, and I’m not sorry about it. So just hand down your sentence. Banishment, jail, a statue, I don’t care! Just do it!”

Twilight saw the faint nod of Rarity’s head off to the side, and knew what she had to do next. Putting a strong front on herself, she rose from her seat with her wings spread out, and stepped out onto the table to walk directly towards Tempest with a stern look on her face and a stern posture to match, taking inspiration from how Celestia carried herself when handling mouthy petitioners at day court.

“Fine, then,” Twilight answered, a hard edge to her voice. “Have it your way.”

The small flick of Tempest’s ears was the only indication that she was surprised by her action. But far from backing down, she stepped up onto the table as well to meet her halfway, eyes locked with hers. It was a good front, a great one even, but the cracks were starting to show: there was a small tremble to her lip, and her eyes lacked the hard edge from before, using false anger as a poor substitute for the determination she held prior to the fight with Anonymous.

Twilight’s horn ignited with magic, glowing brighter and brighter as the seconds went on with the sounds of magical energy growing in time with it, the power tousling her mane as it caused her to begin floating slightly off of the ground. There wasn’t any real threat or power to the spell: it was only there to give the appearance of her charging up a powerful spell, and it was working as intended. Tempest shut her eyes and bowed her head slightly, Rarity correct again in her prediction of what she’d do next. Smiling to herself, Twilight quietly floated over towards her, but kept building up the light and sound of the fake spell. Tempest’s ears slowly pinned back and her eyelids squeezed even tighter as the performance went on, clenching her jaw and sweating when she heard the sound get closer.

It gave Twilight the perfect opening to pull the ailing pony into a hug.

She heard Tempest gasp at the contact, going rigid in her hold. The power in the fake spell faded quickly after she started hugging her, and by the time it had faded, she began to tremble in her hold.

“Why...?” she murmured, her voice strained with emotion.

“Because this is what friends do,” Twilight replied.

She said nothing, choosing instead to try and vain to get her shaking under control and steadily losing that battle with her own feelings. Twilight’s heart leapt when she felt her raise one of her forelegs up, expecting her to return the hug with it. She didn’t, choosing instead to press her hoof against Twilight’s withers for support, but it was absolutely a step in the right direction as far as she was concerned.

“I want to see him,” she says after a few long moments.

Twilight was afraid she would ask for that, but Rarity had once again coached her through this possibility.

“Okay,” Twilight agreed, nodding slightly into her neck.

Tempest relaxed slightly at hearing those words, and Rarity took care of the rest, opening a nearby door and levitating the statue into the room, setting it down onto the tabletop nearby. Tempest pulled away from her to face his statue, but Twilight didn’t let her go that easily, turning with her while still leaving a foreleg wrapped around her withers.

“You know,” she began after gazing up at his face for several seconds, “I didn’t just lose my magic when I lost my horn.”

Everypony else left their thrones and joined the two atop the table, keeping a respectable distance away from them while still letting them know they were close at hoof and always ready to help in any way they needed to. Applejack threw a wink to Spike, prompting him to return a salute and take off towards the castle kitchens and get something made for them all this morning.

“I lost the chance to just be normal again,” she continued, paying the small crowd around her no mind as she kept looking up at Anonymous’s face. “Everypony looked at me differently after that. Some took pity. Some were scared. Shocked. Disgusted, even. Didn’t really matter which. At the end of the day, I just... stood out. Stood out as the broken filly nopony wanted to be around anymore. And as the years went on? It hurt even more than the actual loss did. At least losing it was a one and done deal. At least that didn’t get worse the longer things went on.”

Applejack and Pinkie closed in upon hearing that, each resting a comforting hoof on her back.

“I was desperate to fix it. I went between wanting the magic or the normalcy back more. The final straw for me was when Celestia tried to fix it.”

Twilight’s hold tightened a bit upon hearing that.

“You were there too, princess. I remember.”

“What?!” Twilight blurted, retracting her hoof and splaying her wings out in surprise. “Y-y-you did?!”

“It was hard to miss you,” she deadpans, finally looking away from the statue to meet her gaze with a raised eyebrow. “You followed her everywhere with a big stack of notes, and they had to drag you into the observation room before she began.”

That tiny, almost imperceptible smile on her lips was all that kept Twilight from breaking down herself. But as soon as it came, it fell away as she closed her eyes and turned her head away, sighing softly.

“So you already know that she didn’t succeed. Me and all those other ponies. And that was it for me. If Equestria couldn’t help me fix things, I had to find my fix outside of Equestria instead. So I saved up, read about the lands outside, and learned to fight once I finished reading about them. And once I was old enough to leave, I never looked back. Honestly, things were better for me out there than here; with so many races running around, and plenty of them with scars of their own, most of them only noticed that I was a pony. But I was still an outsider. I still wasn’t normal.

“And then,” she scowled, snorting with anger as her eyes open up to glare at the base of the statue. “That damned Storm King showed up. I found a magic gem they had lost, and they tried to attack me over it. And lost. Then he came down himself and offered to restore my horn. Just dangled the offer right in front of me. Sweet Luna, I hated him, even back then. But I couldn’t just refuse, not when I was so desperate to be normal again. So I said yes, and put up with him.”

She snorts again, this time with amusement. Her eyes soften as she looks back up to the statue of Anonymous, a smile breaking out across her face as she looks at his.

“That, and put up with him,” she remarked, chuckling to herself slightly. “You know, at first, I could never decide if I hated him more than I hated the Storm King.”

“He’s a very hard character to like,” Rarity mutters.

“You don’t have to be nice to him for my sake,” Tempest sighs. “He’s always been insane, a tailhole, and a complete and utter bastard. And he not only knows and admits it, but revels in it.”

“And you still worked with him?!” Rainbow exclaimed, visibly mad about the discussion moving to the biped.

“I didn’t exactly have a choice,” she replied evenly. “We were both his commanders. Though we kept to ourselves as often as we could. And as much as I hated admitting it, he was good at what he did. Really good. He loved being evil and causing carnage, like it was his calling in life. Looting, pillaging, terrorizing: you name it, he enjoyed doing it. If he were a pony, I’m sure he’d have a cutie mark in pure evil, or something.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Rainbow huffed.

Twilight would have admonished Rainbow Dash for her outbursts, if it weren’t for Tempest’s mood improving at all of the discussion of the strange alien biped. She and the others had to bite back what they really thought of him, too, lest they ruin her ongoing attempt to pour her heart out to them.

“It’s funny,” she laughed to herself, the expression bittersweet. “I had no idea we could just loot our own furniture before he’d pointed it out to me. I’d always wondered how he could get his quarters as nice as he did before then, but now it seems so obvious in hindsight.”

“What, so you both were gonna steal things for yourselves?”

“That was the idea,” Tempest continued without skipping a beat, clearly amused with Dash’s antics. “In fact, we were going to try out the princesses’ beds, and find out which one was the best. A shame that didn’t work out.”

Everypony realized the implications of her words right away, and ranged the embarrassed expression range between blushing, a few awkward coughs, a few steps back, and even a light ‘eep’. Everypony, that is, except for Rainbow Dash.

“What do you mean, ‘try out’?” Dash demands, jabbing an accusatory hoof her way and remaining oblivious to what she meant. “The palace isn’t some furniture store, you know!”

“Didn’t I just tell you why?” she smirked. “How else were we supposed to find the best one, without conducting a very thorough test of their--”

“Yes yes we get the idea,” Rarity quickly squeaks out, very much flustered and red in the face along with the others. “You needn’t expound further!”

“Horseapples, she doesn’t!” Dash complains back at them before going back to glaring at Tempest. “Did this guy have a freaky evil habit of stealing beds?”

“More like replacing beds,” she hummed, clearly enjoying the situation.

“So this monster just destroys perfectly good beds?” Rainbow recoils, horrified at the very idea. “For fun?!”

“Rainbow, Ah swear...” Applejack cursed under her breath, hiding her face with her stetson while Fluttershy threatened to curl into a singularity of embarrassment beside her.

“Only with me,” Tempest nods, struggling to keep from sniggering.

“Only with you?! Why? What do you sick weirdos have against beds?!”

Twilight was repeatedly facehoofing, and Rarity was barely able to keep from screaming.

“Do I really have to spell it out for you?” she replies with a more sensual tone and a raised eyebrow, doing just that when Rainbow Dash continued to show how thick she was. “When an evil commander hates her supervillain partner very, very much, he sweeps her off her hooves and has his way with her.”

The sound of a kettle whistling could be heard as Rainbow’s face filled from the bottom with red, her wings turning stiff as a board with a sudden pomf once her face fully reddened and causing her to fall to the ground unceremoniously as it finally dawned on her what she’d been talking about this entire time. She stared wide-eyed up at Tempest, whatever stammering sentence she tried to get out cut off by her leaning down towards her and continuing to speak.

“Repeatedly,” she half-whispers. “For days. Sometimes until she could barely stand, and--”

“Stooooooop!” Twilight shrieks, yanking Rainbow Dash back towards her with her telekinesis while Tempest just laughs to herself, with Pinkie flopping over atop her back and laughing as well.

“Oh, I needed that,” Tempest giggles.

“Me too!” Pinkie giggles back. “Whoo, that was some joke, Tempie-wempie!”

The two’s giggling eventually comes to a stop, giving the other girls plenty of time to collect themselves. Though Pinkie’s expression does become a bit nervous after she spends a few moments looking at Tempest.

“That, uh, was a joke,” Pinkie nervously laughs. “R-right?”

When Tempest’s simple knowing smile to her drags on for several seconds, Pinkie fishes a towel from her mane to pat herself down with as she slowly slides her way away from her and rejoins her friends, now very much as red-faced as the others had been.

“Wowzers,” she whispers to herself.

“Why is it always the bad ones?” Rarity bitterly mutters under her breath.

“Anyways!” Twilight exclaims with her wings extended, thankful that Spike was absent for all of this. “No more of that, please!”

“Ah don’t even rightly know how you’d go from hatin’ his guts to, well, y’know,” Applejack chimes in, looking away at the end with a light pink tint to her cheeks.

“Funny you should ask,” Tempest grins. “It happened right after I had enough of him, and decided to kick his sorry tail once and for all.”

“Please tell me ‘ya won.”

“No, we tied. But not before we destroyed the entire tower we were in. The metal tower.” She paused to wait for AJ to finish whistling. “And at the end, he still had that damned smile on his face. I don’t think I’ve ever been that mad at somebody in my life. In fact, the first thing I did after getting cleaned up was go straight to his room to try and kick his teeth in.

“Except that time, I lost,” she sighed, almost dreamily. “The good kind of loss, though.”

“’Fer land’s sakes,” AJ muttered, hiding her face with her stetson again. “Can’t a filly win ‘gainst a colt like him fer once?”

“And I learned something else about him after all of that,” Tempest continued, more contemplative than before. “He just... never cared about my horn. And not because he was ignorant: he knew damn well I was... damaged, but he barely seemed to notice, let alone care. To him, I already was normal. Wanted, even.

“So when he betrayed the Storm King and offered to try and restore me instead, I... There was no way I ever could have said no to him, not to the first stallion who actually cared about me in years. And yeah, he was as good as his word.” Her hoof brushes over her broken horn. “Of course, it didn’t work. Just my luck that even the power of four alicorns didn’t work. But the funny thing was, I... just didn’t care as much as I thought I would. It mattered way more to me that he at least tried to help me. No strings, no deals, no judgment, nothing. He just did it.”

Twilight could hardly believe what she was hearing. After that gruelling battle with Anonymous, after seeing him lay waste to everything she knew and loved with nothing short of childlike glee, hearing Tempest describe him as genuinely kind to her was a shock.

“... because really, what do I have to lose by trying? ...”

And just like that, the guilt returned. In the end, it didn’t matter whether or not he was manipulating her, or actually had a soft spot for her. In the end, he still tried. And she didn’t.

“He still had his problems, though,” she sighed, looking back to the statue with sadness in her eyes. “Look, I’m not going to blame any of you for doing what you had to do. I saw your fight, and everything he’d done to the city and the forest. Heck, I knew he had this coming even before we landed to conquer Equestria. I guess I just... didn’t think he’d be gone so soon. I thought we’d have more time to...”

She trails off, opting instead to rest a hoof on the stone of his leg instead.

“I really wasn’t cut out for the whole evil thing,” she continues after a while. “At least, I don’t think I could’ve gone as far as he did. And I think he always knew that, too. He always had a habit of just knowing things he probably shouldn’t. I swear, that man’s intuition was like a superpower all by itself.”

Several more moments of silence passed before she sighed again, let go of the statue, and turned back around to face Twilight and the others.

“Sorry,” she half-mumbles, looking bashful and semi-embarrassed. “I... probably rambled on there too much. I never was very good at the whole ‘feelings’ thing.”

She didn’t recoil nearly as much when Twilight hugged her again, but she was taken aback by how hard she decided to squeeze her.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that,” she nearly cried. “I should have done more.”

“Done more?” Tempest replies, confused. “There wasn’t anything you could do.”

“No, there was,” she continued, feeling the tears building up. “I gave up too quickly. I should have tried harder to help you. I should have at least tried to fix your--”

“Stop.”

Twilight was taken aback by her stern tone, especially when she pushed her away to look her dead in the eye.

“But--”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Tempest interrupted. “You were there when Celestia tried, you already knew it wasn’t possible, and you even tried to tell me that.”

“But things were different, I--!”

“They weren’t, and you know it.” Her hard look gave way to a wince as she briefly looked away. “Listen, I... appreciate the offer. But that ‘fix’ he tried hurt like you wouldn’t believe, and I’m not exactly eager to try again.”

She was about to continue protesting, but the surprise move of Tempest pulling her into a one-foreleg hug silenced it from that point onwards, the alicorn reflexively holding onto her with both forelegs. It was then that she remembered not only how painful Anonymous’s fix looked, recalling what she had said, but also remembered how heartbroken she had been when the inert new horn had been destroyed by her attempts to use it.

Just like that, she was back to chastising herself for being stupid, but for a different reason.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight murmured.

“I thought you were supposed to make me feel better?” Tempest remarked, the humour in her tone causing Twilight to snort and fail to repress the smile on her face.

The others found that moment to be the perfect time to join in the hugging party, making both mares the centre of the pony pile. They all shared a few laughs, and fell into a comfortable stretch of silence that was broken only by noticing the successful flashing of their cutie marks, followed by the sound of the door to the room opening.

“Ahh, if it isn’t Spike,” the little dragon remarked smugly as he pushed in a cart full of food, still wearing his apron. “The master of good timing.”

The girls shared a round of laughter, though Tempest’s was more half-hearted, and they all pulled away to take their places at the table, the statue set down to the side as said table was set.

“So wait a minute,” Tempest remarks. “Am I just... not going to get punished for any of this?”

“If you really want an official punishment,” Twilight snorts, rolling her eyes a bit, “I hereby sentence you to help us rebuild everything.”

“Hmm,” she smiled. “I suppose that will have to do.”

“Get back here!” Strife hissed at the departing creatures. “I am in charge here, and I sssssay you will ssssstay!”

The basilisk queen and her ensemble of fellow female basilisks did not listen, the queen instead flashing a hidden wink to Cid as she left the meeting chamber. He did not give an outward response to that: she already knew what the long-term plan was, and like himself, had only to wait for the right time to come.

The same could not be said for the other mercenary beasts that his master had managed to summon for this meeting, all with places at the round table. They were there for appearance’s sake, and nothing more: indeed, many of them were paid actors, whose only purpose was to stage a walkout at this first large meeting in order to sow doubt in Strife’s abilities to lead the remains of their forces, prompting the very real mercenary malefactors to walk out on him as well.

Were his master to somehow survive the Equestrian campaign and make it to this meeting, only the actors would be allowed to leave on good terms. The mercenaries, all of which were the same nebulous ‘furry’ creatures his master had an odd yet incandescently bright hatred for, were to be turned to stone and dumped into the ocean at the meeting’s conclusion. After Strife was made into an example, of course.

He was dearly wishing he had made it back, just for that latter aspect alone.

“Very well then,” Strife hissed, floating to the middle of the large round table. “We do not need sssssuch fickle alliesssss in the firssssst place. Only the might of the ssssstorm beasssssts isssss needed!”

Said storm beasts did not look very happy to be working under him, having only recently been shown what better leadership looked like under Anonymous. But alas, though it was easily within the power of Cid and his agents to destroy the annoying cloud creature and take possession of his master’s forces, doing so would paint a target on his back for the foreseeable future. He and his master had discussed this stage of the second plan at length: whoever takes charge after his intentional loss at the hooves of the Equestrians must ride the lines between stupid, predictable and malicious. Stupid, so they would not notice Cid, nor his management of his master’s armies behind the scenes. Predictable, so they were incapable of jeopardizing the plans Cid and his master had laid out with only a few major stupid moves. And malicious, so they would be sufficiently evil enough to ‘order’ their forces to do evil throughout the world, rather than simply sit and stagnate at the island base.

Appearances were everything. And this illusion needed to be carefully maintained, lest his master have no forces left to use upon his return.

Strife dismissed the guard beasts from the room, no doubt to follow in the Storm King’s footsteps and jibber like a madman to himself; he had already started showing the signs during his planned ‘return’ a week prior. Cid immediately made for a tower at the island that had been under construction and remained devoid of lights, hiding the overseer airship docked onto it from the sight of less trustworthy beasts. Once he and a select few had come aboard, including Wedge and the late-running Biggs, the vessel surreptitiously took off with most remaining islanders none the wiser.

Biggs and Wedge stood with obvious trepidation behind Cid as he returned to his workstation on the bridge, ensuring his hidden surveillance devices throughout the island - both audio and visual - were all functioning correctly, and that his agents were all in place. He shared their basic fears, however, even if he worked hard to hide it under his professionalism. The upcoming months without their master, and indeed, with that fool Strife ‘leading’ them, would prove to be very difficult, especially if the predictions of a military reprisal upon the island proved to be true. But it would be a pain they would have to endure until the proper time, assuming nothing came up that placed the plan into jeopardy.

For the first time in quite a while, Cid hoped that luck would bring their master back to them sooner.

“The Four Princes?” Celestia asked Twilight as both them and Luna walked through the royal gardens.

“Yes!” Twilight chirped, the letter from Zebrica still held in her magic. “Anonymous mentioned that the Storm King had tried to attack Zebrica before, and those Four Princes managed to fight them off with their cypher powers!”

“A cypher working for the cause of good?” Luna said with a frown, disbelieving the very notion. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I have heard of them before,” Celestia hummed, “But this is the first I’ve heard of their powers.”

“One of the first letters Prince Zakurai sent me said that nopony outside of their royal family is supposed to know how their powers really work,” Twilight continued. “So I told him a bit about how I found out, and we’ve been exchanging letters by dragonfire ever since!”

To prove the point, she teleported a fair few scrolls worth of their correspondence above her head, but she didn’t wrap them in telekinesis in time, causing them to cascade down across her head and onto the ground. The showing makes Celestia stifle a small giggle and Twilight to give a sheepish smile, while Luna retains her frown.

“These Princes did not exist in my time,” she spoke up. “Back then, a single king clad in the magic armour of his station ruled the nation, complete with a harem of consorts.”

“A what?” Twilight squeaked, almost dropping the letters in her grasp again.

“They were still ruled by a king, until a few hundred years ago,” Celestia informs her sister. “The country fractured due to a problem I am not well apprised of, and as far as I am aware, that was when the Four Princes reunited the land under their rule. It is difficult to know for sure, though: Zebrica and it’s people have always been rather insular.”

“I mean, I could always ask him...” Twilight offered with a wide smile after she finished teleporting the extraneous letters away.

“Maybe later,” she smiled back. “Now, you were saying?”

“Oh, yes!” Twilight cleared her throat before continuing. “He’s been really helpful with fleshing out my understanding of how cyphers work, and he even told me that they have a special bond between them all that not only lets them share magic, but also lets them communicate mentally with one another! They have real, working telepathy!”

Celestia shook her head slightly with a small smile at seeing her squeal in delight, and Luna was intrigued by her words, yet still cautious.

“Then he asked if Anonymous and the staff ever talked to each other,” she continues, her excitement toning down upon mentioning the human and his sentient weapon, “And even though I don’t know for sure if they did, the dots just kind of connected from there.”

“Yes, the Staff of Sacanas,” Luna said with a small shiver. “To think that Grogar of all beings would take an apprentice. She must have been of a particularly vile stock to rouse even his interest.”

“Did you two know Grogar?” Twilight asked.

“No, he was ancient legend even during our youth,” Luna replied, both her and Celestia shaking her head. “Not even Starswirl knew much of him, and certainly not that he had taken an apprentice.”

“What else did the good prince say, Twilight?” Celestia chimed in.

“Well, he--”

“Nooooooo!”

All royal eyes turned to the source of the sudden scream: some of the guards pushing Lyra away from their circle formation around the heavily guarded statue of Anonymous. Bon-Bon was doing her best to pull Lyra away as well, her teeth clamped around her tail.

“Precious!” Lyra cried. “Give back my precious!”

“He’s not worth it, you idiot!” Bon-Bon growls through her mouth hold.

“Yes he is! Yes he is!”

The princesses held their tongues and regarded the scene with varying degrees of pity as the mint-green unicorn was dragged out of the royal gardens.

“Ahem,” Celestia piped up moments after Lyra was out of sight. “You were saying, Twilight?”

Twilight frowned as her eyes went forward towards the pillar-esque statue of Anonymous in the middle of the garden, locked into a pose that was at once intimidating, powerful, and beautiful. The ring of guards saluted and made way as she and the other royals walked up to the sealed human, the mood falling more and more the longer they stayed close to it, an unnatural, impacable, and entirely menacing pressure exuding from the statue.

“He says he’ll need to talk it over with the other Princes first,” Twilight finally said with a small frown, “But they might have a way to lock him away forever.”