The open field was littered with scorched patches of grass and small craters all throughout as the platoon of soldiers continued to fight the immortal duo. Despite the fact that Blitz and Blaze caught the one mask by surprise with their silent arrival, they had not been able to land a single attack directly on the others now that they were noticed.
Lightning Flash and Neon skidded to a halt as they turned to face the lightning mask that had been following them. They simultaneously charged their horns and blasted several quick volleys of magic in its direction. Flying up in the air, the dark shape responded by shooting a stream of lightning in their direction, the blast tearing a small fissure in the ground. Lightning shoved Neon out of the way and focused his energy up, using himself as a beacon. Neon watched in horror to what he was seeing. "What are you doing!?"
Lightning Flash felt the surge of voltage strike his horn and course through his body. While he had the special talent of working with electrical style magic, he wasn't prepared for this amount. He could feel his muscles locking up from the overload of power. As the stream stopped, he dropped to his knees, lines of electricity pulsing around his frame as he attempted to regain his thoughts. "That *huff* wasn't too smart of me." He sneered to himself.
Cloud Top was engaged with Hidan once again, desperately trying to block the rapid swings of the scythe. His body was beginning to feel the result of fighting for too long. Muscles were beginning to cramp all over, and his breaths were coming in more quickly. To his shock, Hidan didn’t even seem in the bit tired from his whole ordeal, acting as if he could continue to attack for days. The crazed pony clutched the scythe between his hooves and rushed the tired Pegasus. “Come and join Jashin in the netherworld!”
Before his scythe caught flesh, Rock Kicker’s blade connected with the large red weapon and reflected it away. The earth pony could barely keep himself up as the akatsuki member charged his tired body with a flurry of swipes. After several more hits, the sword was knocked out of his grip and sent through the air. Rock Kicker froze out of fear as the end of the scythe came around again and slashed across his throat. The surprising thing to him was that he actually didn’t seem to feel pain, but instead a loss of all feeling in an instant. He dropped down to the ground as the blood seeped out of the deep gash in his neck, cleansing his body of life.
Cloud Top felt his blood run cold as he watched his comrade die in front of him. Before he could do anything, his eyes met Hidan’s, who had a look of bloodlust as he grinned to his next victim. “You should allow me to end your suffering and just die already.
Blitz and Cross Bow flew through the air, trying to lose the flying black shape behind them. Looking over his shoulder, Blitz watched as the white mask opened its mouth and blasted what looked like a swirling mass of air in his direction. Banking sharply downward, he barely dodged the incoming vortex as it shot by. Weaving down onto the ground, he turned back and forth as the air attacks came in faster, each blast ripping out chunks of ground and grass, shredding the material into minuscule pieces. “Crap, we have to do something other than just running. These things are going to get us at some point if we keep fighting like this.” He said to himself.
Shining Armor and Blaze faced off against the final fire mask. Now that the mask was working on its own will, the fire that came out of its mouth were smaller condensed balls of flame. While still dangerous, they were much less threatening than the massive wall of fire that had erupted from the mouth earlier. Shining turned to Blaze and explained the plan. “Alright, you can conjure your own fire spell to help counter the incoming attacks to distract it. While you engage it for several hits, I will try to restrain it and allow you to finish it off.”
The yellow unicorn nodded in agreement. “Let’s give it a shot, captain.” And with that, he charged up his horn and created a small ball of flame at the tip. After a second, it shot out from him, growing to a burning mass about a foot across. The mask responded by shooting its own ball of fire out to meet the opposing attack. The two blasts collided, creating a burst of hot flames out in all directions and smoke billowing upward.
The two fire conjurers exchanged a mix of fire blasts as they moved parallel with each other. Shining Armor saw that the mask was completely focused on Blaze and didn’t even notice him. “Alright, here is my chance.” He prepared to shoot his magic out, but gasped as he felt something grab his back leg and yank him backwards. He was dragged across the ground until coming to a sudden stop. Flipping around, he saw a hoof wrapped around his ankle, and attached to that was a line of tendrils leading up to Kakazu.
“You are fighting me.” The masked pony growled.
Blaze continued to try to counter all of the fire attacks, but had to resort to dodging as the opposing fire began to overcome his own in terms of speed and power. “Shining, what are you waiting for!?” he screamed out. In the corner of his eye, he saw his captain on the ground under the gaze of the dark stallion. He felt fear grip his heart as he realized he was fighting this thing on his own now.
Shining Armor bucked out and kicked Kakazu in his chest to get him away. As the hoof slipped off from around his leg, the captain crawled off the ground and shot a beam of magic at his challenger. Kakazu jumped to the side and charged the white stallion. Shining conjured up a shield wall in front of himself to stop the incoming pony that crashed into the magic barrier. Kakazu punched at the barrier several times before stopping. “Impressive technique… but I believe flawed.” He snickered as he suddenly shot his hoof off his right foreleg and crashed it into the ground.
Shining stared confused as the tendrils continued to snake downward into the ground. He prepared to get back, but was suddenly struck expectantly in the chin by the hoof that ruptured up out of the ground beneath him. Kakazu laughed as he watched the shield disintegrate in front of him, leaving the dazed captain unprotected. “Your shield only protected you from directly in front of you, but failed to guard from all other directions, including below the ground.” as the tendrils sucked the one hoof back up, his other foreleg shot out and grabbed the captain by his throat.
Shining gasped as he felt himself lifted up into the air, and then brought down hard into the dirt with sickening speed. He yelped out in pain, but was then lifted up again and slammed back down in the same spot. He then had the experience of being launched in the air forty feet and bouncing across the dirt like a rock on water. Skidding to a stop, the captain shook in pain as he tried to crawl up, but he couldn’t sit up for more than a few moments before dropping back down. “Gah! I think he broke my leg with that!” he winced to himself.
Looking up to the others, the captain stared in horror as he watched Cloud Top knocked to the ground by a strong shove, and then being impaled in his side by the red blades of Hidan. The crazed ponies laugh carried across the battlefield, imprinting on the captain’s mind, watching in horror as the Pegasus dropped to the ground, blood leaking out his mouth as he grimaced in the loss of defeat. After another moment, his eyes rolled white and shut for good.
Not far away, Shining saw Cross Bow drop out of the air as his wing was clipped by an air blast. The Pegasus wailed out in pain as he crashed into ground with a hard landing. Before he could crawl back up, the black mask positioned itself over his body and shot out another air blast on top his helpless form. Shining turned his gaze away as the screams of torture and death echoed out, not wanting to see what the attack did to the body of a pony. As he began to grieve of his fallen comrades, however, he felt a hoof grab him by the shoulder and flip him onto his back. A second later, another hoof came down and began crushing his windpipe.
“Hmhmhm, you thought you could actually defeat us?” Kakazu said as he pushed down on the captains throat, “You never stood a chance against our powers.”
Shining struggled to breath as he tried to push the hoof off of his neck, but the ponies hold on him was strong as steel, not budging a single inch. He felt his mind beginning to slip into darkness as Kakazu lifted his other hoof up. “I am upset that your group did destroy one of my hearts, but I believe yours will make a wonderful replacement for me and- AGH!”
Kakazu was shot back by a blue blast of magic. Coughing as he regained his air, Shining rolled over to see where the attack came from, but was shocked by who he saw. “P-princess Luna?”
---
Inside of the wonderbolts main changing room, Rainbow Dash stared in awe at herself in the large wall sized mirror. Wearing the standard blue and yellow wonderbolt uniform, she turned to see a side profile of herself, admiring how the outfit complimented her sleek and athletic figure, actually seemingly more than when wearing nothing. She couldn’t help but giggle in excitement at finally reaching the dream she had always wanted ever since she was just a filly. After years of hard training, she was part of the team consisting of the greatest flyers in all of Equestria. “This is so awesome! I can’t believe I’m actually wearing this!”
“Enjoying the new look?”
Rainbow yelped out of shock from the sudden voice. Turning around, she relaxed when she recognized the light blue Pegasus mare with a silver spiked mane leaning against the doorway, her wonderbolt outfit pulled down off her head. “Hey Fleetfoot.”
Fleetfoot smiled as she stood up straight and trotted over by Rainbow. “You deserve it. You are faster than most of the flyers on this team. Well… other than me.”
Rainbow chuckled at her comrades ego. “I think we should have a race sometime to test that out. You need to get knocked down a couple notches.”
Playfully rolling her eyes, Fleetfoot turned and began walking out of the room, “come on, we have to get to the meeting.”
Grabbing her pair of wonderbolt goggles, Rainbow followed her flying ally out of the changing room and down the hallway towards the main wonderbolt sitting room. Already inside the room consisted of the six other head wonderbolt members. Up in front of the others were Spitfire and her partner Soarin. Sitting on the ground to the left was Fire Streak, a white stallion with an orange and tan mane. Sitting right by his side as usual was his younger brother, Lightning streak. Looking identical in style, the only difference between them was his light blue coat and two toned yellow mane.
To the right sat Misty Fly, her radiant two toned aqua blue mane brightly contrasting her cream colored coat. By her sat High Winds, her white coat matching with her curly blue mane almost matching Pinkie Pie’s in wildness. All of them looked up to see the two incoming members. “Alright, we are all here. Now, we have a lot to discuss.” Spitfire said.
“Uh, I got a question…” Lightning Streak asked with a raised eyebrow, “Why are we the only ones here? Why didn’t you want the others here? Also, where is Rapidfire?”
“I had the others go to Cloudsdale to pick up a special request the princess made. I had him lead the others since he can coordinate them well.”
“By the way, what is this special thing the princess wants?” Soarin questioned as he turned to his captain, “I don’t even know what it is.”
“You will all see soon enough.” Spitfire answered before turning her attention back to the others. “Now, I will explain the mission that we are assigned. We are to act as the air defense team for Canterlot in the risk of those ponies coming here.”
“And what exactly can all of these ponies do?” Misty Fly asked.
“We don’t know about all of them. What I was told by the princess was one pony had a massive sword on him, and he was able to create water out of nowhere and use it as an attack. His partner is supposedly able to shoot fire out of his mouth and has a strange magic technique as well. Somehow he can cause a pony to fall into an almost comatose state.”
High Winds shook her head in disbelief, “How does an earth pony even do magic in the first place? It just doesn’t sound possible.”
“I don’t know how they would. Now the other pony from that group which we know his powers is that Pegasus Dash and I ran into. He is the one with mouths on his hooves and can spit bombs out of them.” Out of nowhere, Fire Streak started snorting in laughter, bringing a frown across Spitfire’s face. “Did I say something funny, Fire?”
“Actually, yeah…” Fire took a breath to talk clear, “Just the thought of a pony with mouths on his hooves. You know if he is good with his tongues, he would surely know how to please a mare in bed.” Soarin and Lightning Streak had to stifle a laugh that came out of their throats. Lightning turned and gave his brother a hoof bump, both brothers chuckling to themselves. As Fire turned around to the others however, the glares from all the mares caused his ears to flatten on top of his head. He rubbed the back of his head with his hoof as he felt like an idiot now, “I uh, was just saying.”
Spitfire glared over to Soarin, who in turned looked away and began whistling to act innocent. Looking back to Fire Streak, she grabbed a water bottle and chucked it at the immature pony. “Ow!” he yelped as the bottle struck the side of his head. Rubbing the now sore spot, he looked up to his angry captain, “Alright, I’m sorry! I was just making a joke.”
“You think this is a joke!? This is serious, Fire Streak. This pony nearly killed Rainbow and tried to get me too. We are facing ponies with powers that we have never seen before, and we must be ready for anything.” Spitfire looked around to the other faces in the room as she continued her speech, “I know this is odd for us to prepare for danger like this since that is normally just for the royal guard, but we have been asked by the princess herself because our razor sharp flying talent and abilities. We will serve the princess to our very best ability.” Slipping the headpiece of her uniform over her head, she then reached down and put her goggles on. “Now, we are going to be doing partner patrols around the city. Soarin and I will be around the main castle. Fire and Lightning, I want you two to cover the western perimeter. High Winds, you and Misty Fly have the front. And Rainbow, you and Fleetfoot watch the east.”
Nodding, the rest of the wonderbolts put on their equipment and followed Spitfire and Soarin out of the room.
---
Luna and her battalion stood battle ready in front of the others on the field. The soldiers dark purple armor seemed to glitter brightly despite their hardly being any light left in the sky. The group had created a perimeter around the solar guards, who by now were too exhausted to fight on anymore. Their reptilian like eyes stared menacingly at the three black shapes that floated nearby. From the ground Shining Armor crawled up to his feet as the princess of the night approached him. “P-Princess, what are you doing- agh!” he was cut off as he collapsed back down to the dirt.
Luna put a hoof over his back, signaling him to stay down. “Rest, captain. Thou have fought bravely against these monsters. Allow us to fight and take the weight off thy tired back.”
Kakazu shook the dirt of him as he glared at the intruder. “This is becoming a pain now, more of these damn ponies are showing up. I am not taking this easy anymore!” Standing on his hind legs, he clasped his hooves together and took control of the lightning mask. “Lightning Style: Mock Darkness!”
The mask shot out its powerful blast towards the group. Simultaneously, three lunar unicorns shot their magic up and created a shield. The dark blue barrier shook as the lightning strike hit it, but remained steady and strong until it stopped. Using their chance, they deactivated the shield and went on the offensive, three unicorn and pegasi partners each going for a separate mask. The rest stayed back and kept guard around the recovering soldiers.
Being new arrivals, the lunar guards had the advantage of speed over the masks as they dipped and dived under the attacks that were shot at them. The masks were also seeming to be weaker than before, their attacks consistent but not as impactful as before because of use for so long. They retaliated by shooting their own magic or throwing their daggers at the tall masses.
One pair which fought the lightning mask were doing well, the unicorn levitating large rocks and throwing them at the form. The lightning blasts were shattering the stone, but were distracting the mask long enough for the pegasi the fly above it and dive bombed it from the air, striking it directly on the white face. The black mass wobbled weakly as the small crack began to spread across the mask. Seeing their moment, the Pegasus grabbed his partner and spun him around in the air before launching him through the air. Charging his horn, the unicorn magically slashed the mask down the center, splitting it in half. The body immediately dissolved into a flowing mess down onto the ground after that.
Neon watched in awe as the night guards did battle with the masks, but his admiration was cut short when he heard movement behind him. Turning around, he saw Hidan charging an unsuspecting guard and going for the kill. “Look out!” he screamed.
The lunar Pegasus turned around at the warning, and barely had enough time to pull his own sword out and counter the fast swinging scythe. Hidan laughed as he continued to strike, “I wonder how Jashin will like you bastards as sacrifices!” Leaping up into the air, he attempted to drive his weapon down into the back of the Pegasus, but was cut off by another who flew up to him. Smirking, Hidan engaged in a midair battle for several strikes before using his leverage to knock the weapon out of the ponies grasp. Losing grip of his scythe, he quickly grabbed another black spike from his sleeve and brought it out. “DIE!”
SPLAT!
The guard cried out in pain as the spike rammed straight through the armor plating on his chest and skewered him through his back. Both Hidan and the mortally wounded guard fell to the ground with a hard thud. The Pegasus spit out a mouthful of blood, his vision beginning to become hazy as he laid his head onto the dirt. A moment later, his heart stopped beating, ending the life of the guard.
The remaining lunar guards on the ground felt their blood boil seeing their comrade dead. Rushing forward, two pegasi began throwing a barrage of small daggers that they carried in their belts at the white pony. Hidan flipped backwards in the air, swinging his spike to block the incoming projectiles. Dodging the now incoming blasts of magic, he tried to make his way for his scythe, but was blocked by a yellow flash of light. “What the hell?”
Out of the teleportation flash, Neon and Blaze blasted their magic into a combined stream of orange magic and struck Hidan in his chest. Flying backwards, he was knocked flat on his back as another bat Pegasus jumped on him. Thrashing around, Hidan was able to buck upwards and knocked the pony off of him. As he tried to stand up however, three different beams of magic struck him from different angles, enveloping his body in aura. “What the fuck is this!?” he yelled out as the unicorns magic locked him in place.
One of the lunar Pegasus pulled out steel cuff from his belt and tossed them to one of the unicorns. “Put these on him, we will take him back to Canterlot with us.”
Hidan tried to escape, but the magic around him held tight. “Kakazu, get your ass over here and help me out!”
Kakazu looked back and forth between the different guards and the remaining two masks, fire and wind style. He knew that he had never allowed the masks to operate this long on their own before, and he could tell their chakra supplies were running low. Realizing he had to end this, he decided to up the stakes. “Do you wish to see my true level of power? I will show you.”
The two masks abandoned their battles and flew back towards Kakazu. The shapes collided into their owners back, ripping open the stitching once again. Then, his entire body began to shift and grow before the different lines of stitches on his legs and sides burst open, the tendrils extending his ligaments and stature. Large masses of tendrils extended out of his back, the two masks sitting on top and facing forward. A moment later, his mask ripped off his face, more tendrils hanging out of his mouth.
All the different guards and Luna took a step back out of shock from the new sight that they beheld. The monster in front of them laughed as he spoke, “You should realize that you don’t have the power to kill me in this state. Now that they have fused with my body, our chakra flows together and makes me much more powerful than before.”
Luna’s face went from shock to determination as she trotted ahead of the others. “I will handle this one.”
The lunar unicorn to her right turned his head towards her as he started to approach his princess. “We shall assist you.”
“No Night Shine, guard the fellow soldiers and let the princess of the night do her work.”
Night Shine held his tongue back as he wanted to speak up more, but nodded in approval before trotting back to the others as they held the restrained Hidan down. “Make sure he doesn’t get out of those.”
Hidan thrashed about on the ground, but the four clasped cuffs held all of his hooves tight together. “You dumb little fucks are dead when I get out of here! I will make sure Jashin torments your souls for all of eternity once I am through with my rituals!”
Luna stopped thirty feet from the mutated Kakazu, staring him down with eyes set as stone. “You should not challenge me.”
Kakazu lifted an eyebrow in confusion to the small statement. Seeing him in this form, knowing the power that he possessed and simply saying not to fight was all she could come up with!? Kakazu felt like she was simply trying to bluff. “Hmm, that is a statement coming from a pony that hasn’t even shown her own powers. And more importantly, you are a female, which already tones the idea of you as a threat down, heh heh heh. I know few women who ever posed a challenge to my abilities.”
“Thou believes me to be weak simply because I am a mare? Thou will regret ever accusing one of the princesses of this land of weakness.” Luna grinned as her horn began to glow. “I have not been able to use much of my spells since they can be lethal to most. Perhaps I shall test some against a pony who has harmed the royal guard.”
A cold laugh escaped Kakazu at hearing that. “You certainly talk big for a-
He stopped talking when Luna disappeared in a bright blue flash. To his right, he caught sight of another flash as she reappeared. He jumped backwards as she shot a beam of magic at him, barely missing him by a foot. Kakazu landed on the ground and focused his fire mask out and blasted a large fireball towards the princess. Luna focused her magic and shot the ground in front of her, causing a thick wall of rock to erupted upward and block the fire, sending out sputtering flames in all directions.
Seeing that wouldn’t work, Kakazu then used the wind mask and formed a powerful condensed air shot out, shattering the stone wall. To his shock, the princess was not behind the rock anymore. “Where the hell did she go?” Eyes scanning back and forth, he tried to locate his target. As movement above him caught his eye, he looked up to see Luna diving downward and releasing a shot of lightning from her horn. Extending his elongated legs, he pushed out and evaded the attack as it crashed into the ground where he just was. Glaring, he manipulated the long lines of tendrils from his back and shot them upwards into the air.
Luna charged her magic, creating two separate blue masses. They lengthened out until becoming her conjured dual curved swords and began slashing her way through the purple masses as they rushed towards her. As a thick strand tried to strike her underside, she quickly used both blades to slash downward, slicing a wide opening for her to pass through in a split second. As another mass snaked its way up, she realized fighting these was pointless as they just kept coming. Spinning her blade in the air, she threw it outward towards the center of the incoming attack, cutting the majority of the purple length off and causing it to drop on the ground. Flying out, she stopped and landed on the ground and faced the brown pony once again.
Kakazu sneered as he reattached the cut off portions of tendrils back together. “She is really fast and talented…” he said to himself, “Much more than the others from earlier. It seems like she cannot only perform useful defensive techniques, but her offensive is balanced as well. This is more challenging than I thought it was going to be.”
Luna deactivated her conjured swords and stood up straight. “While it does feel good to stretch once in a great while, I have no intention to continue fighting. Surrender now or I shall end this.”
A growl escaped Kakazu’s throat at the new threat. “You think you can kill me!? I may be surprised that you are quite talented, but I won’t die to someone like yourself!” Both masks then opened up, pointing at the princess. “Now die!”
Both fire and wind erupted out at the same time, forming a massive blast of heat. The combined attack launched outward faster than any previous attack, ripping up large chunks of dirt as it rushed at Luna. Focusing her magic, she created a blue shield around herself, bracing for the attack. Striking the shield, the fireball exploded outward, enveloping an area thirty feet across. “Hm, now I would like to see your powers withstand that blast.” Kakazu chuckled.
The sudden blue flash in front of his face startled him, then shocked him as Luna stood right before him with her horn pointed directly at his chest. “Goodbye.” She whispered.
A stream of magic erupted from the tip of the princesses horn, arcing outward into a massive blast ten feet across as it enveloped Kakazu. The akatsuki member screamed out in pain as he felt the attack launch him backwards, being pulled along with the current as the magic began tearing through him. Both of the remaining masks shattered into fragments before completely disintegrating. Large amounts of his purple tendrils ripped free of him, spiraling through the beam until they slammed into the ground next to their host. Kakazu’s mind blacked out immediately, not allowing him time to comprehend that he had just been defeated.
