"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me..." Filly thought as she and some of the others stood in attention in front of the two unicorns in the viewing room.
"Sir, are you sure it's a good idea for E to fight so soon?" Cloud voiced her question, although Filly would have probably added few adjectives that could describe her opinion of this idea. "I mean, he just woke up after a month, and..."
"You're concerns have been duly noted, soldier Cloudsdale." the Director replied, turning his head to regard ponies within the Simulation Room.
"But sir, why is it three on one?" Hoof asked.
Filly also wondered the same as she looked at Los, Mane and Trot facing E.
"The Director and I think it would be the best way to evaluate soldier Eastin ability." the Counselor answered. "Soldiers Manehatten, who was in the Recovery room with solider Eastin, was kind enough to volunteer himself and soldier Trottingham, and so did soldier Los Pegasus when we came across him."
"How come you didn't volunteer?" Filly heard Crystal ask Canterlot in a hushed voice.
"I did." the stallion replied in a whisper, glancing at the Director. There was a strange hint of dislike in his voice. "The Director said that I can't, because E should have opponents that are more or less on his level."
"Los is on his level?" Balti, who overheard him, snorted.
"Well..." Crys whispered, looking uncomfortable."... I'm sure the Director has his reasons."
E was really not looking forward to this.
Not only he had to fight Los, but Mane and Trot as well.
"Let’s get it over with." he sighed.
"Five, four, three, two, one:" the voice of Counselor sounded. "Round begin.”
Immediately, Los launched at him.
Mane looked dismayed as Los flew straight at E. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised by it, but still...
His eyes went wide.
"What? Where is he?" Mane asked as he looked around.
Just when Los was about to punch E, the young colt disappeared.
"Um..." he heard a voice behind him.
He quickly whirled around and saw E standing behind him, no less surprised than Mane, or anypony else.
They looked into each other’s eyes and E shrugged, and his eyes glowed with dim yellow light.
Suddenly, something hit Mane and Trot with great force, sending them flying.
"So I can do something like this as well..." E thought as he managed to hit both of the earth ponies with his... magic?
He shook his head as he felt another pang of headache, noticing that he probably shouldn't overuse his new abilities. He also needed to focus. Los was attacking again.
This time, instead of teleporting, he simply dodged him and bucked him with his hind legs. That did nothing.
"Well, buck." he thought as Los whirled to hit him back in similar manner.
This time he barely managed to teleport himself in time. He stood now few meters away from Los. He levitated a small boulder and throw it to Los’s head, causing the sturdy pegasus to stumble.
At the same time he heard Trot trying to take a swing at him. He lowered his head, avoiding the strike, and headbutted him. While he dealt with Trot, Mane attacked from behind. E lifted the back side of his body and tried to buck him, only to have Mane phase through his entire body. As soon as every part of him moved out of him, Mane shifted back and whirled around, bringing his hoof close to his face. E managed to block it with his own hoof.
They both jumped away.
"I think I know now why the Director insisted for three on one match." Mane stated, slightly amused.
E replied, for the first time ever, with a grin that would make Filly proud.
They attacked again, with a plan to punch the other in the face. E, however, turned around and kicked dirt into Mane, making the other to stop for few seconds to wipe it out of his eyes. The younger colt was fast to seize the opportunity and punched him... only to have his hoof go right through his skin.
Mane smiled as his other hoof swiftly shoot towards E's face, while the latter's hoof was still going through his. E quickly calculated that at this rate, his hoof would move out of Mane's body right when the other earth pony's hoof would be few inches away from his nose, giving him the chance to materialize. Instead of panicking, E simply waited.
At the right moment, when neither of them was touching the other, he teleported, appearing right above Mane. Almost in the instant his punched him with his left hoof, causing him to back away, and when he landed, he bucked him for good measure, sending him flying.
Mane landed on the ground next to Trot and Los, both still a bit dazed, cursing at himself for forgetting about E's ability.
"Which ability?" Mane thought as he picked himself up.
For some reason, the Augmentation Process has granted E more than one ability. Granted, Los was both strong as hell and his body was extremely sturdy, and he heard from Balti few days ago that once her spit instead of melting her target formed around it, hardening, like some sort amber, which could mean that all soldiers got secondary abilities, but E managed to use them all in one day, and Mane wouldn't be surprised if he had more tricks in his arsenal than what he showed so far.
"Teleportation, telekinesis, energy blast, improved reflexes." he counted, making sure he took them into account.
Since his training with Trot and E with a dragon, he improved his skills as a team leader, and he was ready to show it to E.
"Okay guys, this one should be easy, as long as we work together, so let’s just play it by the book." he told the others. "Los, how about you flank left and then..."
Before he even got a chance to finish that sentence, Los charged at E, who hit him with his energy blast, throwing the pegasus back to them.
"... or you could just charge in and get immobilized first." Mane told lying on the ground to his right pony. He switched his attention back to the fight. "Okay, Trot, let’s stick together and...
Trot, most likely due to being offended by Mane 'volunteering' him, also charged in but was quickly knocked down by the combination of telekinesis and hoof-to-hoof combat.
"What’s the story?" Mane asked in annoyance his teammates, both who were now behind him and on the ground, so he had to jerk his head to talk to them. "Am I the only one on this team that knows how to talk?"
"I don't think talking is your problem." E, who was suddenly right in front of him, smirked.
"Oh no!" Mane shouted as an energy blast hit him.
E was surprised how easy this all seemed. He was actually winning. Three-on-one and he held the upper hoof.
His thoughts were brutally interrupted as Los charged in again. E moved swiftly out the way of his punches and kicks, as he gave few of his in return. Despite the difference in strength and size, he was more effective. During one of the trainings prior to his surgery, Canterlot showed him how he could beat Los in one-on-one fight, by concentrating on hitting vital spot on his neck or his joints, and that's what he was doing right now.
Noticing that Trot was raising, he grabbed Los right hoof with his magic, that was about to strike at him, and pulled it into different direction and twisted it, along with Los' entire foreleg, throwing him at Trot.
The other soldiers watched all of this from the viewing room, with their jaws hanged dangerously low.
"Wow!" Hoof, the first to regain his voice, said.
"Okay, that was pretty impressive!" Balti admitted.
"Is that really E?" Filly thought, a bit concerned...
... and turned on.
Mane rose to his hooves once again, along with his teammates.
"Okay guys that obviously didn't work so well." he said, trying once again to coordinate their efforts. "How 'bout this time we stay in formation and instead of like..."
He stopped when he noticed that they run ahead, completely ignoring him.
"Damn it! I can't believe I actually volunteered for this crap." he said to himself as he run after them.
Few minutes and bruises later, Mane finally managed to talk some sense to Los and Trot (or, more likely, E's constant streak of kicking their flanks did him a favor in this matter), and they managed to surround him. They also got an eye on for each other’s backs, in case he teleported again.
E must have noticed things didn't looked good for him for the moment.
"I guess that fighting three at once is rather problematic." he admitted.
He closed his eyes, as if thinking about what to do. Mane frowned at that. E was too smart to do something as stupid as closing eyes during a fight.
"He's up to something..." Mane warned the others, and at that moment, E disappeared.
They didn't have to look far. He appeared next to them. Next to each one of them, surrounding every single pony.
There were nine Es, three for each soldier, all smirking.
"He can do illusionary copy of himself like Cloud, too?" Mane thought, noticing one obvious difference between the earth pony's and pegasus's trick.
So far, Cloud was able to make only one copy, and for a short time.
And, as he saw three surrounding Los jump on him, he realized they weren't just illusions.
"Duplication?!?" he thought as he turned intangible and moved to help Los.
As he reached him, something strange happened. All nine Es grunted as if in pain and grabbed their temples.
"He still has a migraine." Mane realized as he they all disappeared, causing the original one to appear few meters away, still holding his head.
Los at once flew at him and hit him with his body, throwing the younger colt away. Despite being a bit worried about E's headache, he felt satisfaction at seeing his team finally landing a hit on him.
"Don't get overconfident!" he warned Los and Trot, noticing that E was rising to his hooves. "Let’s surround him again."
He began to see a pattern. Every time Eastin used one of his abilities, it caused his head a migraine attack. That explained why he simply didn't keep blasting them. Guessing that this time he didn't managed to get a hold of himself in time, Mane suspected that those migraine attack were getting worse the more he used his powers, and that meant E probably wasn't going to use them now, or at least, not as often.
They circled around him, preparing for the right moment. E growled, either from annoyance or from pain, Mane didn't know which. He wouldn't be surprised if he had a shattered rib. He was after all, hit by Los, even if the brutal pegasus didn't have time to put all of his strength to that strike.
E lifted his head towards Mane and their eyes met. His were glowing.
Before he had a chance to react, he found himself in a dark room. E, Trot and Los were nowhere in sight.
"What in the name of..." he thought, and at that moment, he heard some cute noise behind him.
He twisted around to see a small, dragonfly-like creature, except its body was curly. He recognized it immediately from his tour around the compound few days after he joined the Project. He recalled the name of the creature he saw in the part of the lab section he was allowed to come into.
"Parasprite."
A small, cute creature the Director created as a side project. The purpose for that was to create a way to eliminate the problem few bigger cities had, namely - a huge amount of trash. There was also an issue with addled food. Parasprite were supposed to be a solution to both problems. Those cute little things could eat everything (provided, of course, that it wasn't alive), making even the largest pile of trash disappear within a matter of seconds.
The experiment, while brilliant, was a failure. While the Director succeeded in commanding what parasprite could eat and what couldn't by casting a simple spell, he never managed to find a way for making them stop eating, or to stop them from reproducing. Due to that, the experiment was put on hold. Crystal once mentioned to him that Director lost interest in it completely.
And now, one of those creatures was hovering in front of him. It looked different, however. The parasprites he saw had coats, or skin, in very bright colors. This one was completely dark, and when it smiled, he saw a bunch of sharp teeth.
Mane backed away as he suddenly got the feeling that perhaps nopony told this particular parasprite that he wasn't allowed to eat living beings.
Once again, a cute noise sounded behind him. Mane turned around and saw another parasprite, identical to the first one. And another one, and another one, and another...
Mane realized that he wasn't standing in a dark room.
What he thought was darkness, was in fact a swarm of parasprites.
They all flew at him, and Mane screamed as he felt them biting every part of his body, chopping his flesh, bit by bit...
He was being devoured alive.
Trot looked surprised as Mane's eyes began to glow, similar to E's, but where his had yellow glow around them with his ruby-like pupils, Mane's glowed green. Trot wondered what it could mean, while his partner collapsed, shaking.
He quickly turned his head back to E, guessing that he probably did something to Mane's mind, as Los attacked him again on his own. What made Trot wonder, however, was why the protection spell didn't react. Mental damage could be very dangerous, as his Augmentation Process proved.
Trot frowned. Now that he thought about it, the protection spells didn't activate even once during that fight. Granted, none of them got seriously hurt, but still, it seemed strange.
He shook his head as he saw Los being once again thrown away. He could think about it later. Deciding to finish this fight here and now, he activated his ability.
Everything around him stopped. Los was hanging in mid-air, and E's hoof stopped rubbing his temple. Knowing only too well that he didn't have much time, he jumped at younger colt, planning on knocking him out cold.
E twisted his head and smirked as he regarded him.
"What?!?" thought Trot, his eyes wide as plates. "That's impossible!"
His time distortion ability was still active, so what the hell?!
E moved away from under Trot, and as the gray pony landed, still astonished, the younger colt pressed his hoof to his chest. All of a sudden, everything around Trot seemed to speed up drastically.
And he couldn't move.
E moved away from Trot, regarding his temporary-frozen in time friend.
Well, perhaps that was a bad term to use. E didn't as much froze him, as he reversed his ability for few moments. He suspected it to end within few seconds.
E grabbed his head, the pain becoming unbearable. He was more than surprised with what he could do. Teleportation, telekinesis, energy blasts, duplication, invading minds, and to top it all, he somehow tapped into Trot's time distortion. He didn't know how, all he knew was that when Trot used it, it affected him as well.
He wondered how exactly he managed to reverse his ability without the reverse effect affecting him, but brushed that off for later when he noticed Los attacking him again.
He grinned to him as he moved away from frozen Trot for his safety. How great it was, to be this strong! While those migraines where literally a pain, for the first time in his life he felt that he was in control. Even those three soldiers, all being above him on the Leaderboard; one of whom he lost so pitifully in one-on-one match, couldn't beat him. He felt invincible!
He kept moving away from Los, avoiding his punches, knowing how this must infuriate him. He, who was the weakest, was winning against a pony that was without a doubt the strongest one physically. He finally stopped when he saw Los turn around with intend of bucking him. He smirked as he allowed pegasus' hindhooves to grazes his skin, and he teleported.
He appeared next to Los, firing an energy blast straight at his face, knocking him out cold. A split second before that, however, he noticed something that made blood in his veins turn cold as ice.
Behind where he stood a second ago, Mane was laying. Finally managing to get a hold of himself after the nightmare E treated him, chose the exact moment when Los attacked to stand up, getting bucked in the face.
E watched as his friend was shot through the air, falling down many meters away. He teleported himself next to him and gasped.
The entire left side of Mane face was... caved in. E couldn't even tell where his left eye was, everything looked like big red mush.
"How easy it would be to kill him..."
E widened his eyes as he realized just what the hay he thought, and that his hoof was above Mane's neck. He quickly shook his head and shouted:
"A medical team is needed on the training floor, stat!"
He put gently his hoof on his friend’s neck to check if he was alive. To E's relieve, he was. As a second later a medical team appeared, he could only think about two things:
"Is he going to be okay?"
And:
"Why did the protection spells didn't activate!?!"
"It wasn't your fault." Filly told him as he continued to cry on his bed.
"How can you say that?" E asked, his eyes even more red now.
They just returned to their quarters. They've spent last few hours within infirmary, waiting for the medical team to finish fixing Mane. As it turned out, it was impossible to heal him completely.
Mane would never again see from his left eye.
The extent of damage from Los kick was too great for even the best healing spell to fix. His brutal strength caused not only Mane's eye to be squashed into a state beyond repair, but also the nerves that connected said eye to the brain. The medics couldn't, to put it simply, heal something that practically no longer existed. They said he should consider himself lucky to be alive.
Filly, in a rare moment of syphaty for others, offered to have her eye transplated into Mane, seeing as it would simply regrow, but that too proved impossible, due to the two of them having different blood types.
E couldn't believe it. Because of him, one of his best friends nearly died, and was half-blind.
"For pony's sake, E, even Mane told you it wasn't your fault." Filly told him, brushing him with her wing.
That was true. He came to Mane soon after he regained consciousness, apologizing over and over, until Mane stopped him.
"He didn't blame Los, either." Filly said, nudging him. "If anypony is to be blamed, it would be the Director for making you fight, or for not realizing how your powers could affect the spells in the Simulation Room."
Her voice sounded bitter as she reminded him the explanation they were given. Apparently, E's power caused some of the runes embedded into the Simulation Room to malfunction, turning off the protections spells.
"But still..." E said, still trying to put the blame on himself.
"No." Filly interrupted him with stern voice, grabbing his shoulders and turning him around so that they could talk face to face. "Listen to me. You are the most caring, sympathetic, kind pony that there ever was. You would never be the cause of anypony suffering, let alone your friends. Got that?" she asked in much gentler tone, changing the hold into a hug.
Looking into her eyes, E couldn’t find within himself the strength to argue.
"Yeah. Sorry." he murmured.
"Don't apologize." Filly replied, kissing him on the cheek.
"Still, I didn't expect to finally move up on the Leaderboard because of such circumstances." he said as they broke the hug, recalling the current score.
1. Crystal 51, 982
2. Fillydelphia 49, 445
3. Canterlot 48, 879
4. Eastin 43, 600
5. Los Pegasus 39, 111
6. Manehatten 38, 091
7. Trottingham 36, 980
8. Cloudsdale 35, 157
9. Baltimare 35, 073
10. Hoofington 34, 618
"When did you moved ahead of Cant?"
"About three weeks ago." Filly replied, and a smile passed her lips, only to quickly disappear. "I didn't celebrate it much." she added and looked into his eyes. "I missed you."
"Sorry." he said, to which he got hit gently with her wing.
"How many times do I have to tell you to not apologize for everything?" she scolded him.
"Right, sor-" he immediately pressed his hooves to his mouth before finished that word.
Filly giggled, dropping the mask of annoyance.
"I really missed you" she repeated, and shook. "How's your head?"
"Fine, medics gave me some pills as we waited for Mane." E replied.
"Good." Filly said, glancing at him. "Do you recall how I told you about something fun the two of us could do?"
E raised his eyebrow, searching within his memory their last conversation before his surgery. A smile crossed his face.
"I recall the 'scary' part." he told her, causing her to smile as well.
"Well, wanna do it?" she asked, looking a bit... anxious?
"Um... sure, but wouldn't it be better to do that tomorrow?" he asked her, wondering what could it be that made her appear anxious. "We were given all given three days free, after all."
"Yes, well..." Filly stammered; now E knew something was wrong. "... it would be best if we could do it as soon as possible."
"Filly, is something wrong?" he asked her, concerned.
She looked into his eyes, her moderate cerise meeting his now-ruby, and asked:
"Do you trust me?"
E nodded.
"Then close your eyes." she told him quietly.
He listened to her, wondering what she wanted to do.
"Is she going to kiss me? Like, REALLY kiss me, with tongue and stuff?" he thought, blushing.
Something heavy hit the back of his head and he lost consciousness.
"Maybe I should consider visiting psychiatrist few times." Filly thought as she looked at her coltfriend, that she just knocked out cold with a nightstand.
She was almost relieved when he started to cry after the match. While she found his new fighting attitude hot, she was afraid than the Augmentation process somehow changed completely the pony she knew. But no, he was still the same shy and kind pony she liked so much.
And she just knocked him out with a nightstand.
Rolling her eyes, she jumped down to take from under her bed a rope that she long prepared a month ago.