Rider on the Storm

by HK-FortySeven

Beast And The Harlot (Bonus)

You suspected something was wrong when Tempest started groaning even louder, and that suspicion was confirmed when her new horn began to spark, a deep glow coming from the spiralling groove on it.

“Something’s wrong,” Tempest hisses through grit teeth, still clutching her head. “My magic, it’s--!”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence before the glow erupted into an explosion of light.

Tempest was involuntarily lifted off the ground by her own horn, screaming in abject agony as a powerful dark purple glow enveloped her entire body, pouring from the new appendage. Lightning coursed all across the amorphous surface of the magical field as the power flooded out from her, but the charge never jumped to any nearby surfaces, and lacked the usual chaotic aspects that her explosive electric magic was known for.

“Tempest!” Twilight cries out, her voice flipping from concerned to furious as she addresses you next. “What did you do to her?!”

“I... fixed her horn...?” you offer, not really paying attention to the pony behind you.

All at once, the field compressed to a single point on her horn before detonating out in a big ring of power that looked ready to slice right through everything in it’s path, and would have done just that if it didn’t hit you first and get subjected to your powers, the whole ring siphoning into your body with a mere thought once you had a lock on it. Tempest collapsed to the ground immediately after, totally knocked out cold.

“What... just happened?” Rainbow Dash piped up.

“You know, I have no idea myself,” you respond, keeping your eyes on the downed pony.

A twinge of doubt - doubt of the kind that’s actually positive - begins to worm through your gut as you walk over towards Tempest.

Did... did that actually work?

Did your ridiculous long shot with the XCOM-tier ninety-eight percent failure rate actually land?

No way. No fucking way it actually worked. Come on, you never get that lucky! Not in this business!

“Hey babe,” you say with a few shakes to her withers. “You alright?”

No response. She’s really out of it. So out of it, in fact, that you kneel down to check if she’s breathing and actually has a pulse, which thankfully she does. But fuck, dude, that’s some advanced levels of being out cold: you only ever get that way yourself after getting hit with magic saturation! If that horn power burst was even half as painful as those get, then she’s gonna be out of it for a while, yet!

“She’s not... dead, is she?” Rarity pipes up all horrified-lady-like.

“Nah, she’s fine,” you sigh. “Somehow.”

“I can’t believe you did that to her!” Twilight yells at you. “You didn’t even anaesthetize her first!”

“Well, excuuuuuse me, princess,” you huff, standing up and finally turning around to face them, “But I didn’t exactly go into... it...”

Oh.

Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

“What in the fuck?” you half-mutter, lip curled up in reflexive disgust. “Who beat all six of you with the ugly stick?”

“Hey!” Dash bleats all offended-like, pointing her hoof at you. “I heard that!”

“You were supposed to hear that.”

“And I’m supposed to kick your tail!”

“I want to kick the ass of whatever shitbag designed your Rainbow Saiyan forms, because God damn, he was using a whole cat o’ nine tails worth of ugly sticks on you gals!”

“Enough!” Twilight yells, complete with a big spread of her wings and a foul-lookin’ scowl aimed your way. “No more games, Anonymous! I won’t let you hurt anypony else! Now return the magic you stole, before you force us to take it from you!”

“Though I ain’t gonna be too broke up if we do have to get rough,” Applejack adds.

Yeah, you know what, you’d better slip back into the game of villainy now, before their godawful colour palettes and fuck-ugly hairstyles and stickersssssh why the fuck do they have stickers tattooed on their hoofsies sap your will to live any longer. Good call, Twilight!

“Hmm, mmm, hummm, mmmnh, mmmmaybe...?” you hum out with complete insincerity, the smile on your face and the twirling of the staff completing the whole act. “Mmmmm-nah. Naaah, I don’t think I will. I’m kinda attached to all this magic, I’ll be honest with ‘ya! I’d rather just keep it, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Have it your way,” Twilight scowls.

Her and the others begin glowing brightly, lifting up into the air with a big bright yellow sphere of magic wrapping around them. Disappointed that they’d open with their charge-up attack, the rainbow laser only just begins to orbit the sphere around them before you make your first move.

With a quick sweep of the staff, a huge shotgun blast of magic missiles fires from the staff’s tip, each bolt detonating in a respectable little blast upon contact and causing their neighbours to chain their explosions off as well. The girls all let out a cry of surprise and pain as they get blasted back out of the palace, leaving smaller Element-shaped holes in the wall as they went that quickly crumble into just one big gaping hole.

With them safely unable to observe you for the moment, you motion for Cid and the other best boys to keep an eye on Tempest, and with their acknowledgement - and the knowledge that he’d be clearing the city pretty soon for your ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny to happen unimpeded - your jet-feet reignite and you soar out of the palace right after the Elements, flying through the hole they’d created and catching them in the middle of righting themselves mid-air.

“No, no, no, no, no!” you chide, wagging a finger at them like they were misbehaving children. “You’re supposed to use the powered-up final beam after the ass-kicking! This is not Dragonball Z, I am not gonna wait patiently for that shit to pop off!”

“Ya want us to beat ‘ya black n’ blue first?” Applejack challenged with narrowed eyes, cracking her neck a bit. “Why didn’tcha just say so earlier, partner?”

“Yeah!” Dash added, kicking at the air in front of her. “You want a tail-kicking that bad? I’m happy to deliver!”

“Oh, this is just fuckin’ precious!” you laugh. “You gals really think you’ll get close enough to make good on that, don’tcha?”

“Wanna bet, greenie?” Dash challenges, her wings flaring out to match.

You shoulder the staff, putting it’s continued feeling of you aside for the moment and extending both of your now brightly sparking hands with a menacing grin, causing all but the two headstrong lasses to recoil. Dash and Applejack jump to each other, the latter riding piggyback on the former as they bolt straight towards you. But the time they took to saddle up was all the time you needed to start blasting.

Dash is forced to adjust course as the two-handed full-course meal of the A-Non Splash® pours from your fingertips in all it’s extra-chunky, gatling-style, and green-tracing glory. However, only your thumbs tracked the two charging girls and kept them off-course and safely at bay; the rest of your fingers were all tasked with lazily and imprecisely tracking the other girls, forcing them to dodge around at first before huddling around Twilight as she erects a powerful shield to take the hits with surprisingly little issue. Dash and Applejack’s luck runs out on the dodging front, but they only take one or two of the exploding bolts with a few yells before they’re warped away in a lavender flash behind Twilight’s shield, which was temporarily weakened to facilitate their safe return. Which was where Rarity came in, erecting some smaller diamond-shaped shields in front of hers to tank the hits while Twilight’s returned to full strength.

And Rarity kept that theme going as you pelted their position with full A-Non Splash® throughput, even altering her shields somehow to reflect shots instead of simply tanking them, which she used to bounce shots right back at you with honestly pretty great accuracy. Which would have been effective, if it were another cypher’s power. But since it’s your own, it simply sinks back into your body without a single protest or explosion to show for it. Twilight uses the lull to lower her shield power again, this time to blast you with a laser beam that you puff your chest out with a grin to absorb--

“Nani?!”

Okay, that magic was not absorbed in the slightest and just sent you flying back through the palace, through the other side, and left you buried in the middle of a wizard tower that collapsed right on top of you from the impact and buried your ass alive.

“What the fuck was that?” you exclaim, unbothered by your sudden entombment. “Of course. Fucking magic of Harmony bullshit, comin’ out to play. Why wouldn’t they have special snowflake donut steel magic? Literal donut steel magic?”

Snorting, your hands ignite with power and create a shinra tensei repulsor wave of power that brings the beautiful sky and some fresh air back into your life, totalling the bases of a few other nearby wizard towers as it goes. Fortunately, you’re airborne again by the time they start crashing down onto where you were buried before, and you get high up into the air to get a bead on the the girls, noting how the airships and the troops were already scrambling to get the fuck outta dodge as quickly as they could.

During this moment of apparent calm, the staff started insistently feeling you again, bringing with it mental images of exasperation, slight alarm, and questions. It takes you a moment to connect the dots and realize that it’s trying to fucking talk to you all psychic-like, and once you figure it out, you whip it off your back and hold it out in front of you.

“Holy shit, you can actually talk?” you exclaim at it, the mental image of a crazy person talking to objects coming to mind and making you smile a bit. “I thought I was schitzin’ out for real there!”

It does the closest thing to an eyeroll that it can get through this telepathic link, and it just hit you that this is fucking telepathy holy shit!

“Okayokayokayokay, first of all, this is fucking radical!” you laugh. “Second of all, is this some secret synchronicity feature that slipped my notice--?”

“There he is!” comes the distant voice of Rainbow Dash on the wind.

Oop, no time for that now. Though it did answer in the affirmative, so definitely putting a pin in that for later!

Rainbow comes soaring up, once again with her buddy AJ riding horseback, and the two close the distance lickety-split with a glowing grass-green lasso twirling around in their wake. But whatever stunt they were thinking of pulling comes to an end real quick once the staff comes up in your grasp and projects a massive neon-green laser death glaive from it’s tip. Dash works hard to adjust her trajectory before you bring the ghosting death blade down in a wide arc above them, her efforts paying off and letting them get away with only the loss of that lasso, both shades of green fizzling violently like lightning-infused acid as they touch. But far from done with that swipe, you keep the momentum going and spin the glaive around a few extra times for good measure, the swings creating an absolutely lovely and almost electronic sounding drone as it travels through the air that more than makes up for not hitting anything else at all.

Because stylin’ on bitches is arguably as important as spankin’ bitches.

Once your spin comes to an end, you decide to change the atmospheric décor up a little bit, the blade’s energy smoothly transformed into an electric-blue rod of storm magic that gets fired way further skyward, detonating after a few seconds into a wave of fresh cloud cover that blots out the sun all above Canterlot. Though you could tell from the lack of any pressure changes that it wasn’t quite strong enough to do more than just that. But that’s okay, it’s a work-in-progress.

The other girls come flying or floating up in short order, the two horned ponies of the bunch wasting no time and opening up with barrages of magic attacks: Twilight with salvos of magic laser beams, and Rarity with salvos of magic diamond projectiles, similar to her shields from before. Knowing now that absorbing them was off the table, you jet down to meet them head-on, staff alight with a fresh laser death battle axe this time while your free hand forms a huge, unstable spear of raw magic that you raise overhead, ready to strike.

It was weird to actually be hit with magic instead of just siphoning it into yourself, but unfortunately for them, your magnificent body’s toughness was still quite capable of tanking their smaller projectiles. Still, there was a world of difference between the two kinds: Twilight’s pure magic lasers just felt like getting flicked, while Rarity’s Sapphire Splash© seemed to have a more physical component to it that made her attacks hurt like a goddamn bee sting instead. That makes Rarity your first target, and you jet towards her with the battle axe raised overhead. She forms an entire stack of diamond shields in the path of your swing to complement Twilight’s bubble shield, and all except that latter one gets cleaved straight in two by your swing, the diamonds shattering like glass while the bubble sprouts some pretty gnarly spiderweb cracks, yet somehow remains intact.

With Twilight too busy playing defence, however, she has no chance to react to the crackling spear in your other hand, which you launch at her with a quick swipe of your arm. The air CRACKS as the projectile breaks the sound barrier the moment it leaves your hand, and Twilight cries out with pain as it lands right in her centre of mass with a big BANG and sends her careening off through the air.

And then you cry out in pain as the orange blur of Applejack collides with your centre mass, flung your way courtesy of her prismatic hermana. Her earth pony power was jacked up to a solid 12 thanks to her super-form, and nowhere was that more evident than in her blows, causing actual harm to your body for once!

The surprise of the initial strike caused you to reflexively release the staff, and Rarity was quick to scoop it up and get airlifted out by Dash before you could so much as chuck a bolt of power at her. But interestingly enough, you could still pick up on it’s feeling remotely. So that’s an interesting developm--

Ow, okay, right, angry apple horse still hitting you!

With both hands free, you respond to her strikes by taking full advantage of the one glaring weakness in her assault: her total lack of training and technique. This gal was bringing barroom brawling tactics to a CQC fight, and your own strikes back didn’t just hit as hard as hers, but were applied more tactically than ‘hit it until it dies’. In less than a dozen strikes, you not only pushed her back, but yanked her right back in with a full nelson hold, and activated your jets to propel you straight down towards the ground with the struggling mare in your grasp, intent on delivering a monster suplex to make even Sabin envious.

Well, okay, it was pretty good. But it’s not suplexing a train. So you guess Sabin’s record still stands.

While Applejack lays dazed in the centre of the monster crater you’d created in the middle of a random street near the ledge of the city, you take flight back up towards Rarity and Dash, intent on getting your magic death stick back in your hands. Except it’s only Pinkie and Rarity up there, and they’re both on the offensive again with their respective fireworks and diamond shards, doing their best to keep their distance. Both of your hands come out to return fire, one hand loosing a fresh A-Non Splash® while the second builds up some power for a hitscanning laser beam--

Okay, that bubble shield definitely wasn’t around you a second ago.

Neither your fire nor your laser charge cease as you crane your head around to see it’s obvious source. Sure enough, there’s Twilight riding shotgun atop Rainbow Dash, the gal dumping monstrous amounts of power into the shield with pretty obvious difficulty. She made the bubble big enough to trap you, but now that you were enclosed, she began shrinking and intensifying the power of the barrier until it gave you only just under a foot of breathing room above and below you. Your attacks still didn’t cease, since your own power can’t really hurt you, but you do smile and point the laser-charged hand at her and fire it off, the chunky beam of energy causing Twilight to cry out as it created a big spiderweb crack in the barrier that she has to work overtime to fix before you can swing your ongoing A-Non Splash® at the weak point. She pulls it off in time, but only because you were moving slowly and weren’t trying at all.

“So,” you laugh, ceasing fire as she and her gal pals form up and float you on down to ground level. “Tryin’ your hand at SCP, are we? What, are your purdy pink powers not quite as effective as you were hopin’?”

Nobody answers, but Twilight’s eyes widen when she sees you dumping power into your hands.

“See, that’s what you get for starting shit with a Keter-class.” you tut, balling your hands into fists. “Now how about we inspect how good that shield’a yours really is?”

Twilight cries out again as one hand explosively impacts against your lavender containment cell, creating another big spiderweb crack. But rather than follow up with the hit that’ll grant you freedom, you decide instead to fuck with her and hit the opposite wall instead, delighting in her struggle to keep you inside as if it weren’t already a lost battle.

“He’s just messin’ with us now!” Applejack half-exclaims and half-pants through the workout you’d given her prior.

“What the hay are we supposed to do?!” Rainbow also exclaims, sounding mighty uncertain of the odds.

“♪ They call me Cuban Pete, ♪” you sing, using your fists as make-believe drumsticks against the very cracked shield. “♪ I’m the king of the rumba beat, ♪”

“Fluttershy!” Twilight cried as she shielded against your barrage of death. “Go! Get help!”

“♪ When I play my maracas I go chick-chicky-boom, chick-chicky-boom! ♪”

Ahh, so that’s why she bubble-shielded your ass: to cover for her friends as they called for backup! And if she’s sending her out, then she’ll be coming back with some giant fuckoff animal or another which has the potential to cause some issues. Fluttershy looked reluctant to leave Twilight, but gained the confidence to leave when Rarity came over to reassure her, and the two took off towards the direction of the distant Everfree Forest.

Or at least they were, until a surprise stream of lightning, very much not from the sky above, stopped them dead before they could clear the city’s lip. The others gasped in shock as the two ladies cried out in pain, the magic lightning’s dark purple luminous intensity eclipsing the glow of their own powers and making their manes stick out at crazy angles, and at several points you swear to God that you could see their skeletons like you were watching a goddamn Tom and Jerry episode.

Until, after several seconds of that treatment, the power’s flow terminates, and the two gals drop from the skies and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, left groaning, immobile, and for all intents and purposes, out of the game.

“Oh, man,” you laugh despite yourself. “There’s no fucking way!”

Whatever Twilight was about to demand of you was interrupted by an all-too-familiar round of that oh-so-delectable bedroom voice chuckle, drawing terrified gasps out of the girls and drawing their gazes to the source of the sound.

Stepping out around a corner near to and slow-walking over towards the duo of downed white and yellow beauties was the dark purple beauty everyone knew on an adversarial level, and that you also knew on the Biblical level. Only this time, she was sporting a long and pointy, glowing and crackling, totally restored, fully armed, and operational unicorn horn.

“Going somewhere, you two?” she hummed at said two, their only recourse being to cower in sheer terror.

“Tempest...” Twilight whispers, half horrified and half disbelieving. “How...? But...!”

“Yeow!”

With Twilight distracted, your powered-up fists broke the spherical barrier around you like glass. Twilight was at least quick enough on the draw to pelt you with magic laser fire, but you didn’t even care at that point, and allowed the bolts to impact against you as you jetted straight towards Tempest, the hits unable to send you off-course.

Tempest’s eyes lit up upon seeing you, and a genuine smile split across her face. Still, she kept the slow-walk going as she went to meet you halfway, adding a little extra sway to her motions she knew very well that you’d notice and appreciate. Dash enters pursuit after you, but you don’t even need to do anything: Tempest reacted right away by blasting at her with lightning that failed to hit yet succeeded in shooing her away, never once breaking her stride.

You land a few feet in front of her, all smiles at your ridiculous, unbelievable stroke of luck that just pushed Plan A into the highest success rate in the Wild West.

“Hey, babe,” you wink. “You’re up earlier than I--”

She silenced you with her lips, the gal on you in a split second with both fetlocks on your shoulders. Now, this was the kind of guaranteed, recognized-by-good-and-evil ceasefire you could absolutely get behind and take full advantage of, so with a little chuckle, both hands seize upon her and pull her in close, and she expresses her enjoyment at the move with a hum and one of her hooves shifting up to grab you behind the head and mash your face closer in to hers.

“Are you serious?!” Dash hollers from way up on high, the sheer fury in her voice causing the two of you to break out into laughter that prematurely breaks lip contact.

“How’re ‘ya feelin?” you ask your plum-coloured paramour.

“Amazing,” she sighs, touching her snout to your nose. “Though it sure hurt getting to this point.”

“Not much I coulda done about that.”

“I know. Which is why you’re very lucky that it worked.”

“Oh, you’re very mistaken there, babe,” you growl, one of your hands shifting southward and drawing a toothy smile from her. “I’ll be gettin’ very lucky once we get to those beds.”

“Well,” she half-chuckles, half-giggles, “How can I argue with that?”

“Oh for pony’s sake!” Rainbow screams in frustration and rage. “I can’t take anymore of this! You’re both going down!”

“Need a hoof?” Tempest intones with a knowing smile.

“Wouldn’t mind,” you wink.

The two of you time your separation just right, pushing apart before Rainbow could collide with you two and causing her to miss and hit the building over yonder instead. Tempest’s shiny new magic lightning laser beam powers pour from her horn and slice up the ground she was standing on in a circle before she changes to a TK hold and levitates her improvised platform, allowing her to float through the air at least as fast as the wingless Element bearers did. Nodding to one another, your feet ignite once more and put you into the air beside her. Your gaze fixates onto Twilight Sparkle, who still looks confused and terrified, just in greater amounts.

“Now then,” you hum out loud, giving the remaining girls the ‘come hither’ gesture, “I believe you ladies have something of mine.”

You hold the humming note as your gesturing finger changes to a pointer which you use to scan across the remaining girls for your staff. None of them had it on their person, and you noted that the spirited remote feeling of the staff had abruptly stopped a short time after you were bubbled up. And knowing that none of these girls would ever want to let your sharp n’ blasty out of their safe hooves...

“You,” you say with smiling finality, pointing straight towards Pinkie Pie. “Be a dear and fish my stick out from that hairdo of yours?”

“Never!” she bellows back, fishing out a huge bottle rocket with fucking TNT duct-taped around it instead.

“Would it help if we said please?” Tempest coos.

“No!”

“Shame,” she sighs, smiling all the while. “Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

The lightning shot she aimed at the pink one was deflected by another hastily erected bubble shield from Twilight, and she flew in front of her friend with her forelegs outstretched in an attempt to body block any further assaults.

“Tempest, please!” Twilight begged, “Don’t do this!”

“Already doing it,” she shot back, horn blazing with power.

While Tempest fills Twilight’s quickly summoned wall shield with lightning, you jet off towards Pinkie, intent on pulling your stick of ultimate doom from her eldritch hammerspace with your bare hands. Dash intercepts you with Applejack again, and the time it takes you to boot the obnoxious pair away is all the time that Pinkie needs to fish a big firecracker from her mane and send it flying away, the gal riding on top of it like a horse, saddle and all. Grinning, you double-check that Tempest has everything handled before rocketing off after Pinkie, hands alight with power that you channel into fingertip laser beams that dance all around her escape craft and scythe through the scenery below her.

“Run, Forrest! Run!” you cackle. “Muhuhuahahahaaaah!”

It only takes a few more seconds before your very own duo of Master Hand and Crazy Hand hit their mark, a few of the beams cutting the tail end of the firecracker off and causing the whole thing to explode in a big, colourful BANG, complete with the lingering crackles that you love to see in these pyrotechnic marvels. Pinkie screams as she flies down into the city, the slightly singed pony crashing butt-first into an office building. You follow her right on through the Pinkie-shaped hole, and slam into her before she had the chance to pull something else out of her hairdo, your impact sending the two of you right through the other side of the building. Angling yourself downwards, you hit the street with a meaty CRASH, putting her out front to make her take the brunt of the impact. And you don’t stop there, keeping your thrusters at a hefty burn and dragging a big gouge through the stone of the street for a few yards before you were satisfied with how she looked: covered in dust and half-dazed.

Now that she’s right where you want her, your plunge your hand straight into her mane.

And immediately, you can feel mousetraps latch onto your fingers and bear traps clamp around your arm.

“Nice try, you big meanie-pants!” she laughs triumphantly. “But I never leave my Pinkie Space unprotected!”

You smirk down at her, and she only gasps in horror when she feels good ol’ Crazy Hand resuming his laser assault from inside the hammerspace.

“No!” she shrieks, struggling in vain against the one-two pinning combo of your free hand and a knee. “Nooooo no no no no, not the beams! Not the beams! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Hmm? What’s that?” you ask insincerely, craning an ear towards her. “More beams? Sure, I can do that for ‘ya!”

“Nooooo they’re in my flour!” she wails, tears flooding down her face. “My flour! Aaaaaaaagh! Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“That’s all up to you, girlie,” you loudly whisper, nose pressed against her cheek as you look her dead in the eye with malicious glee. “You know what daddy wants.”

“My marzipan is all ruined and the sprinkles are all disorganized and the butter is all melted nooohoohooooooooh!” she bawls breathlessly. “I’llgiveitbackI’llgiveitbackjustpleasestooohooohoooop!”

And just like that, the staff returns to your hand, bringing an end to the laser show inside her slightly smoking mane. But not the end of your interdimensional destruction, as you promptly make the staff create a huge fuckoff nova of power inside of her hair that presents only as a light poof as her mane briefly expands, followed by billowing smoke and the smell of burning sugar and cheap Shenzhen plastics pouring out of the hairdo. Slowly and carefully, you pull the staff from the space, it’s feelings of relief almost as amusing as Pinkie’s uncontrolled ugly crying.

“Thanks, boo,” you coo, giving her a parting kiss on the cheek before pulling back and standing back upright. “Now, about your friends...”

You turned around just in time to see Tempest parkouring across some rooftops towards a rapidly approaching Twilight, only to be slammed mid-air by Dash. Getting airborne again, you meet Twilight halfway with a laser death sword swing that she teleports away from before it could hit, but she did not teleport far enough away behind you to miss the backswing, which you kept going on purpose in the fulfilled hope that it would catch her. Which it did, causing her to cry out in pain as the flat end smacks her right under the chin and sends her flying up. You waste no time, following the strike up with a salvo of magic missiles from your off-hand while the staff reforms the laser death sword into just a death laser, both it and your projectiles hitting her in perfect sync and creating a big BLAM, the gal plummeting to the ground right after the blast.

The death sword comes right back out when you see AJ binding up Tempest with those green ropes of hers, and Dash’s attempt to stop you is blocked by a quick slash of the death sword before it comes down for another slash that undoes the ropes and frees your girl. She pulls the small glowing rope coil around her horn off, and blasts the shit out of Applejack with Sith lightning while the laser death sword reforms into a swarm of fast homing magic death missiles that chase after Rainbow Dash. She could probably have lost them in the buildings if she didn’t see you gut punching AJ, her instincts to protect her friend overriding her tactical sense and causing her attempted dive towards her to end in the missiles converging and blasting the shit out of her, her smoking body falling from the skies and hitting the stone of the street like a sack of potatoes.

A quick second suplexing of her apple-flavoured friend down to street level takes care of her, the lass out like a light. Tempest hops down right next to you as Twilight flies up from wherever she had fallen, charging up a monstrous low-orbit ion laser that she wastes no time in firing your way. The staff comes up to deflect the strike, the beam scattering all around you and destroying everything in it’s wake while Tempest smartly ducks behind you.

Keeping the staff front and centre, your off hand builds a giant laser beam of it’s own up, firing out in short order and locking her laser into a gnarly wizard duel. Though her own laser had more chooch than yours did, you only needed it to shove it back for a couple of seconds: enough time for the staff to add it’s own giant death laser to the mix and start pushing back against her, the two beams converging into a single marbled death ray.

“Keep her busy!” Tempest calls out over the noise. “I’ll circle around behind her!”

“Done and done,” you call back.

Since lasers don’t have recoil, you start flying towards Twilight as your end of the wizard duel gains ground, a big evil smile breaking out across your face.

“♪ Gripping the wheel, his knuckles went white with desire, ♪“

The laser from your hand stops firing and changes tactics, instead pointing up high and loosing continuous swarms of magic missiles that lazily arc towards Twilight at random speeds. While this grinds the wizard duel itself to a standstill, the missile hail forces her to multitask into shielding, ceding some progress to you and distracting her quite well.

“♪ The wheels on his Mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45, ♪”

Seeing her opening, Tempest takes right off, going full Rise of the Triad with floating platforms to dramatically speed up her parkour efforts.

“♪ True death, ♪”

She flies the rest of the way up to her on a floating platform once she reaches the tallest building nearest to Twilight.

“♪ Four hundred horsepower of maximum performance, piercing the night, ♪”

She leaps high into the air for a good old fashioned drop kick, but not before charging her platform with lightning and hurtling it straight towards her in advance of her own strike.

“♪ This is Black Sunshine! ♪”

Twilight’s cry of pain is heard from here as Tempest drops her right outta the sky, slamming her down through a building at a 45-degree angle until she hits a nearby street. You’d timed your missile fire and death ray such that they’d stop right as her laser stopped to avoid any friendly fire, and with that taken care of, you saunter on over towards the downed Twilight and the icon of hotness pinning her down.

But your shenanigans senses tingled, and you readied the staff with the electric chain spell that your boys’ gauntlets used against the Storm Dipshit. And those senses proved to be accurate, with Twilight somehow managing to fling Tempest off and taking flight before she could catch her. She didn’t even get two yards into the air before the chain fired from the staff lashed around her barrel.

“Get over here!” you holler in your pitch-perfect Scorpion impression, yanking Twilight straight towards you.

She screams as she comes in hot, and it comes to an abrupt stop when she flies straight into a gut punch, driving out most of her air. Though the chain around her stays, it goes slack to allow her to collapse to the ground and curl in on herself, coughing and gasping in pain.

“You know, if it makes you feel any better,” you chuckle down at her, “I’m just as surprised as you are that things ended this way!”

The staff fires your ‘situation handled’ flare signal sky-high in numerous directions, and a set of five more chains snakes out of the staff, flying high into the sky to gather up the other downed girls. All while the chain around Twilight extends into a set of magic shackles, just like the ones on the late Storm Dipshit and mirroring what would be clampin’ around her hermanas when they also get Scorpion’d over here.

“’Course, I ain’t complainin’, not by a long shot!”

“Tuh-T-Tempest...” she wheezes, reaching out for the approaching mare. “Don’t do this...! Don’t let him win!”

“Oh? Why shouldn’t I?” she asks with a smirk. “After all, he did give me what I wanted.”

“And I got a whole lot more to give after that,” you hum, waggling your eyebrows at her.

That fucking giggle of hers is a national treasure, you swear.

“And as for you, princess?” you hum down at her next, poking her right on the snoot. “I think I’ve got a second denouement to hand out today! And all of your friends are invited!”

“Last time I’ll offer, ladies!” you coo. “You’re missing out!”

None of the securely chained six ponies takes you up on the offer of surrender, choosing to struggle in their bonds and yell at you instead. Well, most of them do; Pinkie just kinda lays there with her hair all flat and with a thousand yard stare, while Fluttershy just weeps quietly.

“Uhm, I-I’ll take it--!” Celaeno tries to chime in.

“The only thing you deserve,” you hiss with the boiling hatred of at least seven Black Templars, “Is to be plucked like a chicken and spit-roasted over an open bonfire. In Hell.”

She snaps her fuck-ugly beak right shut and cowers back into her gaggle of similarly chained bird pirates. All of the participants of Twilight’s failed city attack were present and accounted for in this deluxe sized cage, placed down at the ground level a few yards away from the Canterhorn mountain with your loyal forces all present and accounted for. And Tempest, of course. Though she was more occupied with getting her ears scritched by yours truly than keeping guard, unlike the rest of the boys.

“Going once,” you announce. “Going twice. Aaaaaand gone!”

And here you thought the offer of thrice weekly ear scritches would be enough to win at least one of ‘em over. Oh well.

“Good,” Tempest mumbles as she nuzzles against your side. “More for me.”

Laughing a bit at her words, your free hand extends to snap your fingers twice before opening up to grasp the fully powered Staff of Sacanas, which floats off from your back under it’s own power thanks to you juicing up all of it’s special spots. It was real thankful for the chance to get some autonomy!

“Damn, that’s a cryin’ shame, girls,” you smile, shaking your head. “I’da liked to walk by your smilin’ faces in my lovely gilded cages every day! But if it ain’t in the cards, I guess there’s nothin’ for it but to just take care’a you all now.”

“This isn’t over!” Twilight barks back, still clinging to her inner fire. “We’ll be back to--!”

“No, you won’t,” you smirk.

A few storm beasts land on top of the solid ceiling of the cage and open the hatch, and work along with the crew of the airship up above to lower the statues of the other three princesses down into the cage. When it dawns on her what her impending fate’s going to be, she turns around with a look of horror to see your girl idly jugging one of her Spheres. All while Biggs struts on up with the specially prepared record player on standby.

“Not sure what you thought was going to happen,” Tempest hums. “After all, we both saw how he dealt with the Storm King.”

“And when I say goodbye,” you state plainly with the same smirk still in place. “It’s for good.”

“Wuh-wuh-w-w-wait!” Twilight begs. “Can’t we--?!”

“Ah-ah, nope,” you tut. “It’s too late for that now. You’re done.”

“But I thought you valued tradition!” she tries to argue all desperate-like. “You know, offering your enemies a sporting chance to--?”

She can’t finish on account of you breaking out into uproarious laughter, contagious enough for Tempest to start chuckling alongside you as she offers up her Sphere to you. Taking it in your hand, you impale it onto the staff’s tip, injecting it with power aplenty and causing it to glow brightly.

“You did get a sporting chance!” you laugh. “And ‘ya blew it!”

Pandemonium breaks out within the cages as the others clue in to what’s about to happen, all parties thrashing anew in their bonds and begging you not to do this. You, meanwhile, gently switch the record player on as you continue to laugh, guiding the arm into place and being rewarded with the entirely fitting cheery tune. Well, maybe not so fitting for them, but who cares what they think?

Twilight begs and cries a little more, and by the time the staff was ready to rock and the music was getting to the right spot, your laughter had calmed down. And after a nice, relieving sigh, you regard them all with a simple smile.

The only thing missing from this scene was the Mortal Kombat announcer saying “Finish them”.

“Buh-bye,” you wave.

The lyrics kick in.

Twilight screams a loud, protracted “no”.

And the staff points their way.

A huge cone of green, iridescent magic floods out from the pierced Sphere, drowning out the lamentations of the mares and covering not just the entire cage, but an entire 30-degree cone of fire that was stopped only by it’s impact against the face of the mountain, the stream of power perfectly capable of travelling for miles if you had let it. Almost ten seconds of conical laser fire are sustained before the Sphere loses it’s green colour and shatters, crumbling to dust that gets blown away in the wind before the shards could even get halfway to the ground.

Left in the wake of the power blast was not just the statues of all of your captives, but the statues of every living thing in the area, right down to the blades of grass. Iridescent smoke, just like the breath of the basilisks, wafts up off the petrified surfaces for a bit before it gets blown away in the breeze as well.

And the crowd behind you erupts into thunderous cheering and applause.

“Alright boys,” you cackle, turning around to face them proper. “Get your armour tucked away and the beer kegs rolled out, ‘cause we’re gonna party like it’s 1999!”

The reference may be lost on them, but the invitation to get down certainly isn’t, judging by the uptick in noise.

“Now go on ahead and get things set up without me,” you smile, nodding over to Cid on the side. “I’ve got a few more things to take care of real quick. Don’t have too much fun without me, now!”

You throw an arm around Tempest’s barrel and jet off into the sky, the staff returning to your back mid-flight. Your flight path takes you straight back to the middle of Canterlot, and your destination is the balcony of Celestia’s now-old bedroom. The staff, wanting no part of this, flies off on it’s own to wait outside, while you switch to carrying your giggling girl bridal-style and boot the screen door in, marching right on over towards the bed. Her giggling ceases on account of another bout of lip-locking, something she’s all too happy to lean into as you lay her down and loom over her, never breaking contact all the while.

Now, you still have every intention of changing your official title to emperor. But while you’re still technically king...

“Hail to the king, baby.”

“Speak, minions,” you boom to the small delegation of Zebrican mercs kneeling before you.

“My lord, your will has been done,” the head merc declares. “The southern dragon lands are now ours.”

“Finally,” Tempest mutters, tapping her hoof against your knee. “They certainly took their time.”

You say nothing, gesturing to the mercenary to continue.

“Per your orders, the rest of the continent will soon fall before our might.”

“I do like me some good news,” you chuckle. “Well done. Deliver the rest of your report to my chamberlain. Your payment will be ready for you by then.”

“My thanks, my lord,” he bows once more before he and his group follows after Cid, who was already moving before you’d finished speaking.

Once they’re gone, it’s nothing but you, Tempest, the Staff of Sacanas, and a handful of elite guards in your big and intimidating imperial throne room on Storm Island. A long red carpet stretched from the foot of your throne to the main doors over yonder, lined with braziers that burned with green flame. Green banners with your insignia draped down from the side walls every so often, with an imperial storm beast guard posted between each one, every one of them wielding the most powerful magic equipment in the lands thanks to the staff’s assistance. And the big space behind your throne was filled with the statues of each and every do-gooder and hero who ever tried to stop you, arranged just so that everybody entering knew exactly what your body count was, and what you were liable to do to them should they try to fuck around with you.

As for the staff itself, it rested behind your throne, content to hide itself and it’s true nature while working behind the scenes, which suited Cid and friends perfectly fine. You opted to have your seat of power kept on the floor level instead of being on a raised section to really emphasize the statues, and a ring of the same red carpet circled the throne as a visual indicator of where guests should not cross, unless they wanted to fuck around with the two armoured-up basilisks resting on each side of the ring, each of the gals always happy to stone a bitch on the spot if you order it. The throne itself was also unusual, too: most of it was an ordinary throne, but the right side of it where the armrest would be was instead extended out into a luxurious, fully backed bench, perfectly sized for a pony to lie across.

Which is exactly what Tempest did, her forelegs draped across your right leg as you used her neck and shoulders as your armrest, much to her continued pleasure. And while you sat in your chair with a full set of villainous royal black clothes on, she forewent even her usual bodysuit from before, wearing nothing but the golden ring at the base of her horn. The big chamber was kept fairly chilly to keep guests on edge, but she kept nice and warm with a combination of you, the heated seat, the braziers ringing the throne, and the small blanket covering her slightly swollen midsection.

“Gotta hand it to those zeeb mercs,” you smile, brushing the hand with the matching ring through her long, grown-out mane, “They sure are awful polite n’ punctual.”

“But they’re not very fast,” she counters with a hum. “They should’ve taken those lands a month ago.”

“Probably. But it ain’t a high priority anyways. Besides, this way our boys are all freed up to prep for conquerin’ whatever’s across the ocean.”

“Still.”

“Is this gonna be another episode of ‘Fizzy wishing she could do it herself?’” you chuckle.

She fixes you with some mighty fine bedroom eyes, then brings a hoof up to move your hand from her lovely voluminous mane, across her lovely toned body, until it finally slips under the blanket and rests on her lovely rounded tum-tum.

“And who, exactly, should I blame for that?” she purred, her voice holding no actual annoyance.

“I think we both know there’s only one person capable of such evil,” you grin.

She goes in to boop noses with a throaty giggle, and as per usual, it doesn’t take long for things to graduate into full-on kissing.

“It’s all your fault that I’m stuck here like this,” she breathes, diving right back in once she finished speaking. “You awful,” - smooch - “Horrible,” - smooch - “Despicable man.”

“You keep that up,” you intone with a wicked smile, “And I may just keep you like this for longer.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No, I’d love that.”

The guards didn’t even try to hide their annoyance at this point, and you continued to not give a single front-flipping fuck. This was far from the first time you started making out with your wife on the job, and it sure as shit wasn’t gonna be the last.

And why should you give a fuck anymore? Things have been fantastic since the conquest of Equestria. Your boys swept across the lands like an evil flood and brought both adversarial states and innocent countries alike to their knees, most with barely any need for you to intervene. Y’know, outside of parting the oceans like Moses for Seaquestria and slapping the shit out of the Four Princes of Zebrica. Everything outside of that was all gravy.

Unsurprisingly, after the extensive testing to determine that Luna’s bed was in fact the best one, Tempest - or rather, Fizzlepop - decided she wanted an upgrade from the position of commander. And after forcing Queen Novo to make things official at multiple different knifepoints before she joined the statue crew, she settled quite nicely into her new role as empress. Of course, she wasn’t the only one who had some terms and conditions to set. One of those conditions needed a few more months in the oven before it was ready.

You were well and truly on top of the world, now. Most of the lands were under your thumb. Your forces were efficient and happy. The subjects kept everyone fed and supplied. The all-furry gulags were churning out slave labour products at record rates. You had a smoking hot wife who had nothing but love for you. You even had a little harbinger of the apocalypse on the way!

And you’re not even close to done yet. There’s still so much more of the world out there to take. So many more possible furries to persecute.

And you weren’t stopping until the whole world was in your grasp.

Who knows? You might even go beyond the world once it’s all yours.

After all, it’s still an open question if whatever brought you here can also bring things back there...