As soon as the power in the building went out, everyone knew they were in trouble. Now they couldn’t see Sparky or the masked unicorn. In fact, they could hardly see at all, especially due to the smoke that filled the room they were in. They felt the building shake and assumed it was because of Sparky.
“We’ve gotta find him before he brings this whole place down!” Rainbow Dash calls out and everyone agrees while trying to avoid breathing in as much smoke as possible.
“Well first we’ve gotta find a way out of this room!” Hitch responds and Fluttershy gets an idea.
“I can help with that. Just give me a second.” She says and while she’s recovering, everyone else tries keeping an eye out. Soon, a few of them start seeing things as if someone’s moving through the smoke. Then something or someone starts attacking them and retreating faster than they can react. A lot of them end up receiving burns from magic or scratches from a blade but to Zipp, they could be from… claws. She remembers when Ragnar and her were alone during the battle in Maretime Bay years ago and how she located him when he was using this same strategy. She closes her eyes and lets her hearing do the work.
Soon she starts to hear the footsteps of their attacker… then hears another set of footsteps, these ones not being as silent as the others. Once she knows for sure that these footsteps belong to a second attacker and she hears them heading in the direction of her and Pipp, she blasts behind her little sister, hitting the second attacker which turns out to be the unicorn that attacked Canterlogic.
“Gotcha!” Zipp says before she hears another set of footsteps coming towards her from behind but before she can turn around and react to it, a blast of wind knocks away her attacker and the smoke clears, practically being forced outside by Fluttershy’s amazing powers of nature. Everypony sighs in relief as they’re finally able to breathe fresh air again.
“Come on y'all! Let’s find the little guy!” Applejack yells and they all make their way out of the room, but only Zipp notices that their attackers had already left so she warns them to be careful since they don’t know what they’ll find. As they seem to be getting closer, they could hear explosions and angry growls and roars that were presumably from Sparky or… whatever that spell the unicorn put on him had turned him into. As they ran, they came across unconscious and injured Alicorns who had been victims of Sparky's newfound rage. If he was powerful enough to injure this many Alicorns and STILL be going on a rampage… they feared how powerful he would get the longer he was exposed to the spell.
They stop right in front of a massive hole where a door used to be. Past the whole was a dark room with a bunch of flickering lights and chilling sounds coming out of it. Everyone looks nervous as they slowly get closer to the room.
“Sparky buddy…? You in there…?” Hitch calls nervously as he gets the closest. They all hear a monstrous growl and instantly back up a bit, getting ready to react. “I-It’s ok buddy. We’re not here to hurt you… we just wanna help.” He says and for a bit, they don’t hear anything from the transformed baby dragon… until they hear a roar, then an explosion that causes the tower to shake violently and start collapsing. Everyone gets their balance but then Sparky charges out of the room through them and bursts through walls until he ends up outside, knocking everyone aside in the process.
The tower starts leaning towards the direction he ran in and the others start sliding the further it tilts. Sparky runs off after he lands in the city, making his way out and demolishing a few buildings as he does. Before the tower can lean way too far, everyone feels it stop, not yet realizing that Sunny had caught it using both her magic and her strength until she speaks up.
“Some of you need to go after Sparky! The rest need to help with this army of clones or help keep this tower from falling!” Sunny says and everyone nods before Izzy and Rarity jump out and make ice slides all the way to the bottom before starting to use their magic and their ice powers to help keep the tower steady. Fluttershy, Hitch, and Pinkie Pie decide to go after Sparky. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pipp, and Zipp decide to help with the invasion. Sunny takes a glance at Solaris and Sky Blazer, seeing they’re still with Brightburn. She tries deciding if she should trust Izzy and Rarity to support the tower while she helps those three or if she should stay and continue to hold it. Before she can come to a decision, she feels less of the tower’s weight leaning on her than before and looks to her right to see Solar Flare helping her.
“Go. They need you. I can hold this up until they’re done.” She says and Sunny nods before landing in the building and before she gets too far, Solar Flare speaks up once more. “Lunar Frost is helping to evacuate so tell them to keep an eye out for her.” She says, the slight amount of struggling she was experiencing while holding the tower a bit evident in her voice. Sunny nods again then goes to help them move Brightburn.
“Come on. Let’s hurry and get her out of here. I can carry her. You two start helping other Alicorns who may need it. Just be careful while you do, those two unicorns could still be around here.” Sunny warns them and they nod and split up to start helping Alicorns and encouraging them to help who they could and before long, the tower is evacuated. Ragnar sees the Alicorns being safely escorted to safety and he roars angrily and a lot of his clones start targeting them. Sunny notices and quickly gives Brightburn to Lunar Flare then defends the Alicorns and giving those who can fight the chance to start attacking the clones as she does the same.
Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Zipp, and Pipp were helping to deal with the army of clones but Pipp instantly noticed how with every attack, Zipp went for a killing strike and she was being so aggressive and wasn’t responding whenever she was saying something. Zipp isn’t just fighting or taking her anger out on the clones… she’s looking for the real Ragnar. The way she could tell was because whenever a clone was defeated, it would disappear in a puff of smoke. Pipp sees one of the clones about to sneak in a shot on the Alicorns and she quickly throws one of her ring blades, hitting it in the face and redirecting it's shot which causes a building to explode and smoke to start spreading. Pipp calls back her ring blades but just as she grabs them, she gets tackled by a clone.
They crash and she reacts just fast enough to use her legs to keep its jaws from crushing and devouring her. It requires a lot of her strength and she struggles to keep it up so she blasts lightning into the clone's mouth, making it recoil and start choking. She takes the chance to get up and knock it through a building with a sonic scream. Pipp then goes back to fighting and checks on Zipp every few seconds. They all hear another explosion and a scream and look just in time to see Twilight fly out of a fiery cloud of smoke and crash across rooftops before tumbling into the street. She slowly gets up and Rainbow goes to help her but then a bunch of clones tackle and pile on her.
She’s struggling to fight them off of her, the others continue fighting and trying to help until Zipp realizes that the real Ragnar is one of the ones that was just fighting Twilight. She quickly goes to help and fires a powerful blast of lightning that destroys one and bounces to another, continuing to do so until only one remains. He growls and glares at her and she lands between him and Twilight. She slowly walks closer and Titania starts running at her so she blasts her with lightning and it only manages to slow her down a bit until Applejack punches her out of nowhere then proceeds to start fighting her. Zipp doesn’t stop.
Stormcutter runs past her and towards Twilight and jumps towards her. Twilight manages to block her attack with a shield just as Rainbow Dash breaks free before proceeding to blast her and knock her away from Twilight. However, Zipp still doesn’t stop. Pipp notices all this and starts moving to go and stop her.
“Zipp, no-!” She tries to call but she gets grabbed from behind by a clone that proceeds to cover her mouth so she can’t do a sonic scream… but this is also making it impossible for her to breathe along with the arm that’s wrapped around her neck. She struggles to get free, even going as far as trying to electrocute the clone but the gauntlet it has on absorbs it and she starts panicking. Twilight notices and tries standing up and going to help, only to find out that her right wing and her left leg are injured from the battle. Her leg was injured from a particularly mean swing of Titania's hammer and her wings was hurt from Ragnar or at least one of his clones jumping her and taking a chunk out of it.
She tries blasting the clone without hurting Pipp but then another clone tackles her and it, along with another one, starts attacking her and keeping her pinned and distracted. She looks around, trying to see if anyone else could help but the only one she sees as the least distracted is Zipp.
“Damnit… Zipp Storm! Your sister! She needs help! Now!” Twilight says, actually struggling with how injured she was and how strong these clones were. She looks at Zipp again and sees that she hasn’t stopped yet and lightning is wildly radiating from her body. “Zipp! Go help your sister! Don’t sacrifice her just to get revenge!” Twilight pleads, hoping Zipp would realize that the very thing she was trying to kill Ragnar for was about to happen again and this time, there might be no fixing it.
Zipp; however, was blocking everything else out, tunnel vision keeping her focus on Ragnar. She stops when she’s at a certain distance away from him and continues to glare at him as she starts charging up a powerful blast.
“You… should’ve just stayed dead.” Zipp growls with a huge amount of venom in her voice. Ragnar smirks and chuckles as he starts preparing to fight.
“And you should get better at making sure your opponents do just that. You should also get better at being a sister.” He says and Zipp's eyes narrow and she almost attacks him right then and there until a clone tackles her and she kicks it off, blasts it into a wall and then speed kicks it through the building and just as she turns around, the unicorn that attacked Canterlogic lands behind her and kicks her into what's left of the wall.
She feels her back hit the wall and before she can recover, the unicorn pins her against it by her throat with one hand against the side of her face, causing her head to turn and that’s when she finally sees Pipp starting to go limp as one of the clones are choking her out. Her eyes widen as she realizes that’s what Ragnar was talking about. Zipp screams angrily and blasts the unicorn away from her then takes out a blade and jumps at her, bringing the blade down and managing to slash the left side of her mask, breaking it and making her tumble away before she flys to where Pipp is and knocks the clone away from her. She then flys down and catches Pipp before she hits the ground.
After landing, she checks on Pipp. “Pipp…? Pipp?! Come on sis, you’re ok. Wake up…” Zipp says, sounding scared and a little desperate but can you blame her? “Come on… this is nothing. We’ve both taken worse than that. Right? Right…? Sis…?” Zipp asks, starting to get even more scared when she realizes Pipp hasn’t opened her eyes yet. After a few more frantic attempts to wake her up, pleas for her to wake up, and a few muttered teary-eyed apologies, she notices clones coming at her from all around and her first instinct is once again to protect Pipp as she covers her body with her own, anger, grief, and sadness fueling her powers as her body starts glowing. She screams as the power comes out of her in the form of multiple lightning bolts, killing all the clones and also causing Pipp to wake up as it gets her heart going again.
Zipp notices and instantly pulls her into a tight hug, afraid to let her go again. “Z-Zipp?! Wha…?” Pipp says, confused as she hugs Zipp back as best she can. Zipp shushes her and assures her that she’s ok… even though she basically was a few seconds away from dying for real. She sits up a bit and notices that both her and Pipp are slightly glowing and her magic feels… stronger. Based on the confused look on Pipp's face that slowly morphed into a smile, she was feeling the same thing. They both suddenly use their powers to zoom around and destroy most of the clones and everyone smiles as they slowly realize that they’re starting to win and Rainbow Dash especially smiles as she realizes that they’re both moving almost if not just as fast as she is and their attacks seem much stronger.
After about 20 seconds, most of the clones are destroyed and the rest are left to Sunny, the others, and the battling Alicorns. Zipp lands on a rooftop and looks down to the battle in the streets. Twilight was back up and helping to battle the villains and Zipp notices that the unicorn with the bladed whip was hanging back a bit and half her mask was broken. Zipp could kinda see a few details about the unicorn but not many. The first thing she saw was that her fur was a light blue, she had barely visible freckles and… some of her mane peeked out from the hole in her damaged mask. Those colors… is that… it couldn’t be…
She’s broken out of her thoughts when they hear a roar and see Ragnar ram into Twilight from behind, taking her straight through a building then throwing her back through it. Twilight quickly recovers but then a purple lightning blade goes through her leg and she screams in pain, falling back down. She’s about to pull it out until she’s blasted in the side by magic. She refuses to stay down though. Titania notices and pulls a pretty sneaky trick on Applejack which results in a mean swing of her hammer badly injuring the Earth Pony's right arm and leg and trapping her under a collapsed building. She then throws the hammer at Twilight and she manages to block it but Titania quickly makes up for it with a punch that sends Twilight back.
Zipp and the others intervene and try keeping the villains away from Twilight… but no one notices the unicorn with the broken mask doing her own thing, about to pull a very risky maneuver. She rushes forward and presses a button on the handle of her blade, sending it into it's whip form and she swings it, sending a wave of magic at everyone and they all scream in pain, especially Twilight, who feels a sharp pain in her back. After a few seconds to recover, they all get up and look at her and she smirks under her mask, causing Twilight's Alicorn empathy to start going off. She reaches to the part of her back where the sharp pain was and feels something. She winces and yells as she pulls it out, revealing it to be one of the blades from the unicorn's whip… and it was glowing very brightly.
She quickly realizes why and tries throwing it but when Nightshade fires a magic blast towards it… it’s too late. It causes a massive explosion that’s a mix of both Midnight's magic and Opaline’s. The explosion damages the street, the buildings, injures the heroes and villains… and majorly injures Twilight. Sunny sees the explosion from where she is and her heart drops. “No… No!” She shouts as she flys towards it and lands, running to where here friends are and immediately checking on them.
She’s relieved to see they’re all alive… until she sees the state that Twilight’s in.
“Twi!” Rainbow Dash yells as she runs to her and Sunny does the same, not even noticing as Izzy, Rarity, Solar Flare, and Lunar Frost arrive with Solaris, Sky Blazer, and Brightburn. Twilight doesn’t open her eyes or respond when Rainbow Dash moves her. “Twilight… Twi, please! Talk to me! Say something! Anything!” Rainbow pleads desperately, starting to get flashbacks of Light Hope's death the more injuries she saw on Twilight. No. Twilight wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. Not after everything she’s been through, every challenge she’s faced, every foe she’s conquered. Twilight couldn’t die… not like this.
They all hear laughing and look to see the villains all standing away from them with triumphant looks on their faces. “Well well well. Looks like she’s not as invincible as everyone thinks she is, huh?” Titania taunts and everyone grows angry looks on their faces and Sunny slowly stands up as the temperature starts picking up.
“It goes to show. Heroes fall, their deeds going unnoticed until it’s too late.” Stormcutter says, and with that, the ground starts shaking but they continue talking and taunting them. It’s not that they didn’t notice Sunny's reaction to their taunts, it was that they did… and they wanted to get her to her breaking point for the next part of the plan to work.
“In the end, heroics will only get you so far… until they land you right where all heroes belong,” Ragnar says, causing Sunny's breathing to pick up and her eyes to glow. When he continues, it brings so many things to the forefront of her mind. “A graveyard.” He says, and that causes Sunny to remember the first funeral that had been held for her father… then the second… and she imagines the same thing, but for Twilight… and that just sets. Her. Off.
She screams as magic and power burst from her body, causing a shockwave that knocks everyone away from her and starts literally melting the ground under her and some buildings surrounding them. Her alicorn form was out but her magic was orange with red accents and she had a fire-like aura coming off her. Her eyes were orange and red as well and they burned with a rage that rivaled even that of Midnight's. This slightly worried all the villains as she gazed at them all. As everyone else recovered, they all watched in both awe and fear at this new form of Sunny's and the power it was emitting.
Suddenly Sunny screams again as she charges forward and starts attacking the villains with everything she had. A single punch caused a shockwave that knocked them and everything or everyone behind them back. A kick would send a wave of magic at them that burned them and knocked them even further back. Basically everything she did delivered a devastating attack, both physical and magical… and her power and rage just continued to grow. She knocks Nightshade into Stormcutter which sends them both through a building. She blocks attacks from Titania and Ragnar and sends them both high up into the air before dragging them back down with her magic and slamming them hard enough to send them deep into the ground.
She senses a few things coming at her and catches them without even turning to look and sees their blades from the unicorn with the bladed whip. She growls in annoyance and crushes the blades, letting them melt afterwards. The unicorn seems to back up in fear a bit when she sees that. Sunny turns to face her, glaring at her before charging forward and the unicorn just barely manages to dodge but she ends up rolling backwards and when she stops, she sees Sunny walks towards her and she crawls backwards to try and get away. Sunny still gets closer and raises a fist, charging it with magic and getting ready to incinerate her. The unicorn raises her hand in front of herself in fear and preparation for the punch. Just as Sunny’s about to deliver it, the unicorn does something… unexpected.
“Sunny, wait! Please!” She says and Sunny freezes up. That voice… it couldn’t be.
“No way… Mist-“ Sunny tries to say but she’s cut off when the Unicorn's eyes glow again and she kicks her feet from under her then follows up by kicking Sunny as hard as she can, making her slide back. The unicorn then grabs her blade, walks back to the others and cuts open a portal, most likely back to their lair.
“Get up! Our job here is done! We'll go after the dragon later!” She says and the rest of the villains get up and start going through the portal. The unicorn gives them all one last look before walking through and it closes right as she does. Sunny gets up and sees the team that was going after Sparky coming back… but he’s not with them.
“We tried as best we could to catch him but… he’s gone.” Fluttershy explains, helping Pinkie limp her way over to the others. Hitch had a sad look on his face as he held his left arm which was bleeding a lot from a pretty deep gash he received while chasing Sparky. Halfway to the others, he fell to his knees and hung his head.
“This is all my fault… I should’ve kept a better eye on him… I’m his guardian. He’s my responsibility… now he’s all alone out there, going on a rampage…” Hitch says, his voice low and broken. Zipp frowns and lands in front of him, getting on her knees and pulling him into a hug that he gratefully returns.
“It’s ok… we’ll find him and fix this. I promise Hitch.” She says and Hitch nuzzles her and she nuzzles back. Sunny frowns as she watches them before turning to Izzy who walks up to stand next to her and grab her hand. Sunny looks around at all the destruction that she had caused in her rampage… and she feels awful. She sees all the Alicorns staring at her in fear, keeping their distance, some of them having angry looks as they’re most likely blaming her and the others for all this. She looks at Twilight and sees that she still hasn’t woken up, even as Dash continued trying to wake her…
“Pipp… call Violet back…” Sunny says as she starts walking forward. “Tell her what happened. Tell her we may need help tracking Sparky. Have your fans and hers keeping a lookout.” Sunny tells her, getting a nod from Pipp who instantly pulls out her phone and gets started. Izzy walks to Sunny and asks her the question that they were all thinking.
“What’s our next move?” She asks and Sunny doesn’t respond for a bit, but when she does, she sighs and looks at Izzy.
“We’re gonna help them clean this place up, tell everyone what happened… and find a way to end this mess… if these ponies want a fight… then that’s exactly what we’ll give them.”