//------------------------------//
// Dive!  Dive!  Dive!  - With Original Dialogue 
// Story: Short Scraps and Explosions 
// by shortskirtsandexplosions 
//------------------------------//

	I've had the idea to do a fic like this for a long time.  Take a stereotypical anime bullshiet scenario, give it trite and meandering dialogue, then go back over it and force-feed that same dialogue through an English-to-Chinese online translator and back.  The potential for hijinks was too big to pass up.  For months, I drooled over the idea of a oneshot where the off-center dialogue richly contrasted the intense seriousness of the actual narrative.

Did I end up executing this idea well?  Well... no.  I think not.  The story is far too dayum long.  If it was only 5k words of this, then *maybe* it'd be funny.  But did that stop me from posting?  Did HIV stop Magic Johnson from doing television sports commentary?

There are times when a train wreck has to exist just because.  This is an example of one of those.  Right now, I type this before the actual finished product goes up.  What I suspect will happen is that it's going to receive 50% downvotes.  A chunk of that will be from the usual gaggle of marsupials who downvote my stuff immediately upon seeing it.  Another chunk will be those frightened by the cover art and the description.  The rest, most likely, will be those who read barely one quarter of the way through the fic, stumbling over the dialogue that's put together like jigsaw intestinal pizza, and then decide to brand the story for the textual abomination that it is.

But what, then, of those who read all the way through, who begin the story and end it, who go so far as to even (gasp) comment on it?  And still they give it a downvote?  After the entire slog?  It makes one wonder if there are those out there who hate themselves even more than I hate myself.  I should feel proud of such masochists, for we bond together on a layer far deeper and inkier than even the lowest rung of the Deep Web ladder.  Inasmuch, I take the incoming downvotes as compliments, for you have given a fraction of your time to bathe in the agony, as I have given several hours to cook this atrocity up.

And I will say it before the fleeting desire leaves me:  "Never again."





        Sirens rang out while a second Sun burned brightly over the glorious fields of Equestria. In galloping droves, citizens filed into bunkers and safehouses, their frantic pace quickened by the voices booming over loudspeakers positioned on every street corner. Across multiple building fronts, red banners hung with the glaring visage of Luna and Celestia, their iron-wrought gazes instilling fear and courage in every equine whose eyes darted towards the shimmering sky. With each limping hour, the bright patch in the atmosphere grew brighter, spelling apocalyptic doom and misery.

        Far away, in Canterlot, six ponies were being escorted to the center of the Royal Palace. Twilight Sparkle trotted at the front of the group, flanked by well-muscled pegasi in metal-laced riot gear. She glanced left and right, catching glimpses out the palace windows at the vacant avenues of Canterlot. What few ponies were still left had collapsed in the middle of the street, clutching their loved ones and sobbing while enchanted crystals broadcasted animated directions to evacuation centers across the pale brick walls.

        A loud rumble reverberated through the sky like thunder, causing the Palace to quiver on its foundations. Rarity and Fluttershy shivered with suppressed yelps. Pinkie Pie's blue eyes blinked wide while Applejack and Rainbow Dash remained silent.

        At last, the guards had led the six equines to their destination. Two soldiers planted their hooves against a seemingly blank wall. The partition split down the middle, opening up to reveal a large service elevator with over forty buttons along the console. The Princess and her Elemental companions trotted directly in. They stood in the center, swiveled around in formation, and nodded their heads in a coordinated fashion.

        The guards nodded back. Some of their helmets fogged from stallionesque tears as they stood back and minded their post around the elevator doors, resolved to their fate. At last, the doors slid shut, and the car rattled down the long, long corridor, taking the six Elemental ponies several miles underground.

        With a deep breath, Twilight Sparkle turned around and spread her wings wide. She faced each of her friends with a strong and resolute expression. Then, once enough seconds had sunk into the depths of Equestria along with them, she finally spoke.

        "My six pony friends, the fate of Equestria hangs in the balance. Now is the final test that awaits the Elements of Harmony. This is the greatest crisis our land has faced since the War of Waves with the evil Empire of Oatlantis ten thousand years ago! We must not let fear consume us in this hour of destiny! Nor can we fail the happy ponies of Equestria! Do you have the courage to assist me in destroying the Burning Angel of Oatlantis?"

        "Yes, Twilight! Yes!" Pinkie Pie hopped in place. "You can count on us, silly filly!"

        "It is a dreadful task, but most certainly it must be done," said Rarity with a brief air of disgust.

        "I was born ready," uttered Applejack.

        "Me too!" Rainbow Dash slapped her hooves together, snarling from where she hovered near the roof of the elevator car. "Let's turn this Burning Angel of Oatlantis into Burning dust!"

        "Uhm..." Fluttershy meekly raised her hoof. "Is it too late to vote for a peaceful solution?"

        Twilight sighed, rolling her eyes. "Fluttershy, we've been over this! There is no other solution other than retrieving the Demon Lance of the Depths and throwing it into outer space to skewer the Burning Angel in half and prevent the infernal destruction of Equestria!"

        Fluttershy squeaked and shivered as she stammered, "I know that's what everypony says, but, couldn't we at least try talking to the Burning Angel or maybe even hugging it?" She smiled nervously. "Hugging is a good, peaceful thing, isn't it?"

        "Grrrr!" Rainbow Dash hovered over Fluttershy, sticking her face in the shivering pegasus' muzzle. "What's with you, Fluttershy?! Do you want Equestria to explode in burning chunks or what?!"

        "Well, no! Of course not! But... but..."

        "It is settled, then!" Twilight Sparkle spun towards the elevator doors and slashed the air with a saluting hoof. "The destined demise of the Burning Angel by the Demon Lance of the Depths shall commence shortly! Everypony knows their roles! Let us not fail Celestia, Luna, or any of the Equestrian citizens who trust in our honor and integrity!"

        "Honor and integrity!" The other four ponies shouted and mimicked Twilight's salute.

        Fluttershy sighed and gazed sadly towards the far end of the elevator.

        Fluttershy knew better than to doubt Twilight's wisdom and authority. After all, since becoming Princess, Twilight has been in charge of Equestria's security. And now, when the entire world was being threatened by the prophesied return of a Burning Angel, Fluttershy was to abandon her most beloved and honorable friend? Surely she was a foolish pony to think that there was any other solution to this scenario, much less a peaceful and kind one.

        The doors opened to a large underground chamber, full of ponies in jumpsuits running from computer station to computer station with clipboards and microphones attached to their muzzles. Through the subterranean echoes of chatter and the flicker of electric lights, the six Elemental ponies spotted Princess Luna.

        "Welcome, Blessed Saviors of Equestria," Princess Luna said, "To the NEIGHRV Headquarters."

        Twilight nodded as she trotted out of the elevator doors. "The Nether Equestrian Industry for Galvanizing Heroism and Resisting Villainy." She took a deep breath and struck a pose, her wings glinting brightly in the computer light. "It is our deepest honor and integrity to protect Equestria in this time of need!"

        "Honor and integrity!" The other five posed and saluted. Fluttershy joined late.

        Luna took a deep breath, her eyes hard and scrutinizing.

        The Princess of the Night could hardly contain her pride, and yet she had to put on professional airs around these lowly equines—Twilight included—lest she show a hint of fear or emotion and such were the things that led to her demonic alter ego, Nightmare Night, which Equestria could not afford to face at this present moment in apocalyptic time.

        "Very well," Luna said gravely, then pointed at a metal chamber across the way. "Put on your Suits of Righteous Tightness! Your hour of messianic glory awaits!"

        Obediently, the six ponies turned about face and marched heroically down the metallic corridor. Several uniformed equines paused to stare at them, most of the workers misty-eyed as they struggled to contain their applause.

        Several feet away, on a floating platform, Cheerilee saw the march of the six heroes and swiftly spun towards a choir consisting of Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and several more tiny foals—all standing in tight black uniforms with matching berets. After tapping a metal stick, the teacher waved her hooves before the children, conducting their righteously prepared ballad:

        We sing of our Six Heroic Elements
        In their time of destiny!
        As they eliminate the Burning Angel
        That ghost from the War of the Waves!
        We sing for the Six that bring us glory!
        For Kindness with a Heart that knows no frost!
        For Loyalty with a guile that knows no cowardice!
        For Honesty with integrity that knows no decay!
        For Generosity that knows no hesitation!
        For Laughter that knows no fear!
        For Magic that knows no death!
        We worship you, oh heroic ponies
        We worship you, skirts of the Princesses!
        We worship you and await the hour of destiny!

        Inside the lockeroom of heroes, where the choir's song was but a dull hum, the six ponies slid into their tight, tight suits, each color coordinated to match the hue of their coats. Rarity was the first to get suited up. She pressed the bulky spandex ribbon around her left fetlock, and the rest of her outfit pulled tighter with an undeniable "Schluckkkk" sound.

        "Brbrbrbrbrb!" Rarity shivered. "I'm not entirely fanatic over the way it rides up the plot, but I must admit that I do love the colors!" She hummed pleasantly as she looked back at her tail-less rear end in the suit.

        "I know, right?!" Pinkie Pie giggled. "I feel like my doctor's glove on my birthday, only I'm not hot and moist! Not yet, anyway!"

        "Enough talking about plots and moisture, pony girls!" Twilight barked over her shoulder, already suited up from wing to hoof. "We have a job to do! Let's meet up at the loading center in four hundred seconds!" She marched off with Rarity right behind her, followed by a giggling, bouncing Pinkie Pie.

        Fluttershy sighed, slipping into her suit and tightening it up with an embarrassed "Eep!" She limped out of the lockerroom, waddling awkwardly from the tightness of the suit.

        In the meantime, Rainbow Dash fumbled to slide her hooves into her tight-blue sleeves. "Damn it!" she cursed. "Damn this suit to hell and damn it for being so tight! Why does it have to have so many damned plugs anyways?"

        "Sugar cube!" Applejack drawled in Rainbow's blue ear.

        "Aaaaugh!" Rainbow Dash fell back, accidentally slapping the switch on her fetlock. Her breath left her as the suit constricted around her body like a rubber band. She blushed furiously, crossed her lower legs, and frowned up at the mare. "Applejack, what is it?! I'm busy getting ready for the epic fight with the monsters of the depths!"

        "I know that, darling," Applejack said with a sigh as she hung her hat along the wall, perhaps for the last time. "But I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. We haven't had a chance to talk in a long, long time."

        "Look, Applejack, I'm fine!"

        "Because you are the operator of the tail and you are most important to this submerged adventure in currents unknown."

        "Like I don't know that?! Pfft!" Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes as she stood up, fidgeting in her tight suit. "Everypony is counting on me to pilot the Vessel of Destiny into Oatlantis. It's hard enough trying to not be nervous without you breathing down my neck. Beside, you're the one everypony should be worried about. You were comatose in the hospital for how long?!"

        "I've gotten better, sugarcube. I missed you an awful lot while I was asleep, darling. Did you miss me?"

        "What are you talking about?" Rainbow stuck her head up with a proud scowl. "No different than the other Elemental friends of destiny missed you!"

        Applejack hung her head with a sigh.

        It is true, Applejack had been comatose for several days after the last time they allowed her inside the Vessel of Destiny. The phantom of the Burning Angel had entered her mind most maliciously, and she could have sworn in her most shivering dreams that she had become reacquainted with her long lost mother which was impossible because her mother was dead, wasn't she?

        "I just feel like we haven't spent enough time with each other, Rainbow," Applejack said. "Which is funny, because I could have sworn I heard your voice around me the whole time, even when I was asleep."

        Rainbow Dash suddenly went pale. "Guaaaaah?!" She spun about, fighting with a giant sweatdrop as it crept down her blue skull. "With you?! While you were asleep?! What could you possibly mean by that, Applejack, you silly pony who is totally just my friend?!"

        "I could have sworn I heard you, sugarcube," Applejack said. "You were crying awfully hard. In fact, it almost sounded like you were grunting."

        "Nonsense! Who would make such a disgusting perverted noise around you?!" Rainbow Dash spun around, bringing a hoof to her muzzle as she laughed and laughed to the ceiling. "Hah hah hah! Only a crazy perverted idiot would grunt while standing over you in a coma on a hospital bed!" Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth as hard black lines formed over her squinting eyes.

        In truth, Rainbow Dash had immeasurably deep feelings for Applejack, deeper than the depths that the Elemental Six were about to plunge to, but she couldn't bring herself to expose the warm squishy depths of her own heart to the country farm pony girl, because doing so might expose her to her emotions much like Princess Luna was vulnerable to her own feelings, and with Rainbow Dash being the operator of the tail of the Vessel of Destiny, this simply was not the time to confess how she felt to Applejack, even if all she wanted to do was slam the mare to the floor and make magical pony love to her on the tile and the tight suits and the sweating.

        "We must be off to join the others in the saving of the destiny of Equestria!" Rainbow Dash said, pointing forward with a slicing howl of wind from her swinging hoof. "Onwards to the retrieval of the Demon Lance of the Depths!" She galloped forward, limbs flailing. Applejack sighed and trotted slowly after her.

        Outside, in the heart of NEIGHRV, dozens upon hundreds of ponies gathered at their computer stations, brushing hooves across crystal diodes and chanting mathematical commands into their short-wave microphones.

        Towering above the operation center on a metallic platform was Princess Celestia. Broad billowing banners of royal crimson stretched from the subterranean ceiling on either side of her, bearing the monochromatic visages of Celestia and Luna. When the Princess of the Night trotted up to meet her, Celestia turned and nodded. At last, she spun about and shouted towards the crowd that was gathered, along with several pegasi floating with crystal-powered cameras aimed at her exquisite muzzle.

        "Ladies and gentlecolts, the Burning Angel is now upon us! After ten thousand years—the time of the Second Impact that created the Demon Depths to begin with, it has returned to rain fire and agony on the innocent ponies of Equestria! We must not stand for this!"

        As she spoke, a satellite image appeared, showing a cosmic figure descending from outerspace towards the blue-and-green sphere that was Equestria. Ponies gasped and murmured all across the land, for this animated image was broadcasted across buildings and bunker walls all across the land. Mothers held their children and fathers contained their shivers as they saw the flaming equine shape with aquatic fins stretched—alien and threatening—towards the stars blurring past it.

        The image was soon replaced globally by the live broadcast of Princess Celestia's face.

        "Do not give into despair, my little ponies!" she said, her voice magnified a hundred million times in every household with a crystalline projector. "For we have a righteous solution for this unfathomable evil of infernal hatred plummeting from the heavens! We will destroy destruction with the very tools of malevolence that it had previously imparted us during the Second Impact!"

        Celestia's broadcasted face was replaced by an ancient artist's rendering of a gigantic polearm shaped like a slender cross with jagged edges.

        "This is the Demon Lance of the Depths! Left here by the incubi of old who sought to take over our luscious landscape! The War of the Waves brought an end to their invasion, but it did not entirely vanquish their putrid presence from our sphere! They situated themselves within the Mareiana Trench where their Lance lays, and there they have festered for thousands of years in the sinful city of sodomy that we have come to know as Oatlantis!"

        Celestia's teeth glinted in the electric light as she spoke loudly towards the reverberating rafters of the place.

        "Well, the time has come for us to return to that submerged battleground beneath the forbidden ocean! The demons' second weapon, the Burning Angel, now approaches our world! If not stopped, it will cause Third Impact, and nothing that lives will live anymore, for all that lives will be dead, and dead is a great deal different than being alive! It is much colder, I assure you!"

        Ponies trembled and whimpered in their homes. Nevertheless, Celestia's booming voice crackled over the speaker systems, solacing the hearts of equines cowering in bunkers world-wide.

        "But we have a most righteous and honorable operation that will both retrieve the Demon Lance of the Depths and simultaneously stop the approach of the Burning Angel most vile! And it is through this, our secret weapon, the Vessel of Destiny, that the Six Elemental Ponies shall pilot to glory and justice!"

        Celestia turned towards what looked like a big black wall and spread her wings. A beam of light shot from her horn and into an array of crystal diodes situated within the chamber's subterranean framework. With a loud clanking sound, the ginormous scaled face of a sea serpent appeared, standing upright and rigged to a complex web of criss-crossing platforms, catwalks, and metal gantries. Spotlight swam around its vacant eyes, orange mane, and even oranger mustache.

        "The Stephen of the Magneting!" Princess Celestia proudly shouted. Her hoof knifed through the air in a dramatic pose. "Once a neutral bedfellow to the swimming demons of Oatlantis, his body now serves our righteous and holy cause! The husk of the Stephen of the Mageting was acquired at great expense, and his internal organs completely excavated so as to fit the mechanisms of glory, not to mention the breathing chambers for the Elemental Saviors of Destiny who shall operate as his heart, brain, and messiah musk!"

        As if on cue, the spotlights caught six bodies trotting across the metal walkways and towards the gaping mouth of the dormant sea serpent.

        "Even now!" Celestia exclaimed, pointing majestically towards the holy half-dozen. "Princess Twilight and her fellow crusaders of ecstasy approach the mouth of the great beast whom we have converted into a golem of affirmation! Where they go, we cannot follow, but our hopes and dreams certainly can! Let us sing praise and worship of their heroic plight, so that we may speed them on their journey to acquire the Lance from the depths and launch it with the mighty muscles of the Stephen of the Magneting into the heavens where it will surely skewer the Burning Angel down the middle and dissolve it to demon dust!"

        Fluttershy's figure could be seen shuddering upon hearing that. Nevertheless, she struck a pose beside Princess Twilight as the crystal cameras focused on her and the other suited ponies.

        "For honor and integrity!" Princess Twilight shouted.

        "Honor and integrity!" the other five chimed.

        Princess Twilight saluted the ceiling, her eyes glistening as shadows formed in dark angled beams behind her from the converging spotlights. "To the depths and beyond shall we carry the glory of Equestria, so that it will know Harmony Eternal!"

        "Harmony Eternal!" The ponies chanted, flexing their forelimbs.

        "And in the name of the Sun and the Moon, we will punish the Burning Demon!"

        "In the name of the Sun and the Moon!"

        "Goddess speed, you princesses of purity!" Celestia murmured, misty-eyed. "You deliverers of salvation! Equestria's only hope!" She saluted in a pose that matched her effigy in the rippling red banner besides her. "The fate of all ponies rests in your valiant beautiful hooves."

        Cheerilee signaled the foals, and they all cooed in a melodic tone, filling the subterranean headquarters with harmonics. Meanwhile, Princess Twilight and her five companions could be seen entering the gaping mouth of the purple sea serpent. All across NEIGHRV, ponies murmured into their mics and clopped away at their stations.

        Meanwhile, just as Celestia was starting to catch her breath, two figures trotted up in her peripheral vision.

        One of them was Princess Luna, who cleared her throat and bowed. "Dearest sister. We have a visitor."

        "Right now?" Celestia remarked. "In our heart-stopping moment of triumph?"

        "It is the pony known as Lyra Heartstrings, your Majesty. None other than the Seventh Pony, the Green Crusader, and the pilot of the Zero Unit Model."

        Celestia craned her neck to see.

        Lyra bowed low, her mint-green coat shining in the crystalline glow. "Princess Celestia, alicorn eternal, I beseech you."

        "Stand and talk firm, righteous horned horse lady."

        Lyra stood tall, clenching her jaw. "With all due respects, your Highness, the Stephen of Magneting is not enough! It is just one Unit Model! Please, send me as well! Let me summon the Zero Unit! I can assist the Six Elemental Saviors and assure the glorious future of Equestria!"

        "Your courage and dedication is not to be denied, Lyra Heartstrings, the Green Crusader," Princess Celestia said. "However, fate has already been met. The Stephen of the Magneting must accomplish this task alone. Besides, you and I both know that the Zero Unit Model has proven to be too unpredictable in the field, not to mention awkward and fat."

        "Yes, but with me swimming in proximity to summon it by remote—"

        "Enough, Lyra Heartstrings." Celestia rested a hoof gently on Lyra's shoulder. "You have proved your loyalty. However, even in the best case scenario, it would not do well to expose the nature of your essence to all of Equestria. You are an exception to the demonic taint, Green Crusader, but even still we would not wish to dirty your image after all the good service you have given to Equestrian ponies everywhere."

        Lyra sighed, her ears drooping heavily. "As you wish, your Highness." She looked melancholically to the side.

        Lyra knew that it was righteous to respect the wishes and commands of her Princess most high, but even still there was a part of her—heroic as well as rebellious—that sought to prove her worth despite the insistence of others, no matter how authoritarian and mighty. Maybe it went beyond that, Lyra thought, for above all she wanted recognition. At the end of the day, she just wanted some pony to hug her.

        As she walked away, Princess Celestia stared quietly, her face emotionally neutral.

        She felt terribly sad for the plight of Lyra, a lone pariah of both land and sea. Even still, there were far more dire things to occupy her rigid contemplation, such as the monitoring of the Vessel of Destiny as the Elemental Six piloted it into the depths most black. There would be time to give Lyra and other ponies their moment in the spotlight, but they had to deal with the Burning Angel and its fiery wrath first.

        "What weighs upon your mind, sister?" Princess Luna asked.

        "Nothing that bids saying something." Princess Celestia turned towards the operators of NEIGHRV headquarters. "Commence with the counting of the down!"

        Overhead projections splashed vibrant numbers on the wall as a mare in a tight black uniform spoke loudly into a microphone: "T Minus Ten... Nine... Eight... Seven... Six..."

        All across the world, ponies held their loved ones and murmured silent prayers to the air.

        "...Five... Four... Three..."

        Cheerilee dabbed her eyes and readied her baton before the chorus of colts and fillies.

        "...Two... One... Zero!"

        Luna and Celestia boomed at once: "Launch Unit Two: Stephen of the Magneting!"

        The entire cave shook as the launch chamber filled with flames. Burning exhaust out of every orifice, the long slender purple sea serpent rose up out of the depths of the earth. It burst through a thin translucent dome of soil, exploding chunks of rock and grassroots everywhere. Then, in a burning orange plume, Stephen of the Magneting rocketed its way in a sharp arc, hurdling towards the nearest ocean.

        Cheerilee waved her baton as the thunder faded from the NEIGHRV Center, and the foals before her sang their righteous chorus:

        We wish you glory in the depths of the sea
        Oh blessed six, our little ponies
        Even if the sky was to burn
        And the earth was to dissolve
        Our love for you remains strong and resolute

        In houses, public squares, and bunkers, a live broadcast of the flying sea serpent was being projected on various walls. At the bottom of the projection, the words of the song stretched in golden font, and the emblem of a solar crest bounced across every lyric from left to right. Ponies dried their tears, hugged each other, and sang to the hauntingly majestic melody, lifting their voices to the shimmering sky.

        Honor and integrity, honor and integrity
        For the valiant six we hold on
        Honor and integrity, honor and integrity
        For the valiant six we live or die
        Honor and integrity, honor and integrity
        For the valiant six we hold on
        Until time everlasting
        And vacuum ever freezing
        We hold on, we little ponies, we hold on

        The pilots of the Stephen of the Magneting would have heard the echoes of Equestria's collective singing, if only they weren't too busy being jostled by the impact of the vessel of destiny with the ocean waves. The slender reptilian husk quivered from head to tail, its bulkheads and support beams groaning from the sudden pressure building up around it.

        Nevertheless, the disguised craft plunged, knifing its way through the darkening currents as it set course for the Mareiana Trench far below.

        Flipping a switch, Princess Twilight bathed the cranial compartment of the vessel with a dull crimson light. Her valiant eyes peered ahead through the two gigantic glass plates that served as the forward portholes of the Stephen of the Magneting.

        "Every pony, report in quickly!" she exclaimed.

        Down below, a dull light bathed Pinkie Pie's giggling features. "Heehee! Auxiliary controls are squeaky clean!"

        Further below, Applejack was illuminated besides a series of thick metal levers and pulleys. "Left arm reporting in!"

        Opposite of Applejack, a red light shone over Rarity, positioned next to a set of mirrored instruments. "Verily, I am here," she sniffled. "Reporting for the right arm apparatus!"

        Further down, a large chamber flickered to life, in the center of which sat Fluttershy in a plush chair, surrounded by pumping pistons and metal turnstiles. "This is Fluttershy. I am in control of the heart!"

        Finally, down below, in an extremely cramped chamber, Rainbow Dash lay suspended from multiple wires, each connected to a separate plug of her tight, tight suit. "Awwwww yeah! Rainbow Dash here! The tail is fully functional!"

        "Very good, girls!" Twilight throated, twisting a few crystalline diodes by her side. "Then let us commence with the mission! Is every pony ready?"

        "I... I..." Rarity choked back on a sob. "I need a moment to compose my frail heart!"

        "What's the matter with you?" Applejack asked with a surly squint.

        Rarity fanned her suited self. "It's just that, the last time I crossed paths with this most fabulous sea serpent, it was on the outside, and I was bequeathing him a mustache instead of gutting him like a purple pumpkin!" She shed tears onto her console.

        "Awwwwww..." Fluttershy gazed up from her steamy chamber. "There there, Rarity, it wasn't your fault that the Royal Council decided to eviscerate the sea serpent's organs and convert its insides into metal cockpits! Just because the country we represent does unkind things does not mean that we have to be—"

        "Enough!" Twilight grunted. "We have a job to do! We must navigate our way into Oatlantis, recover the Demon Lance of the Depths, and use the power invested in the Stephen of the Magneting to launch the weapon of Second Impact into the impending Burning Angel of Third Impact! Do I make myself crystal clear?!"

        "Aye, Princess!" Rainbow Dash growled, flexing her wings. As a result, the wires connected to her body sparked, and the tail of the sea serpent started thrashing outside, propeling the Vessel of Destiny deeper and deeper into the depths. "Let's do this!"

        "For Honor and Integrity!" Twilight said with an air-chopping salute.

        "Honor and Integrity!" Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and a sniffling Rarity echoed.

        "Mmmmm..." Fluttershy nervously, limply saluted to the steam. "Honor and... mmmmm... integrity."

        "Left arm and right arm!" Twilight shouted down the quivering, serpentine corridor beneath her. Bubbles flew past the twin portholes, causing rippling light to dance across her serious lavender face. "I need you in motion! Help Rainbow Dash push us deeper!"

        "Aye, Princess!" A loud buzzing whoop filled the chamber as Applejack pulled and twisted at her levers. "Rowing us now!"

        "Keep all systems calibrated, Pinkie!" Twilight bellowed, pulling on several chains. "Dive! Dive! Dive!"

        Rarity gritted her teeth, muscles sweating beneath her plugsuit as she struggled to rotate the arm lever in regular motions. She ultimately resorted to channeling magic through her horn to further accelerate the instruments. With a sigh, she glanced away from her work, rubbing her muzzle in thought.

        It wasn't just the husk of her former serpent acquaintance rotting all around her that bothered the unicorn, but also the fact that this mission had to be accomplished with such speed and specificity that it necessitated the moralistic compromise of all that she once thought Equestria—and herself included—held dear. Even still, she couldn't help but think selfishly about Sweetie Belle and how safe she may or may not actually be in that bunker all on her lonesome. Even still, Cheerilee and the other foals were there, not to mention Celestia and Luna. Even if the world did go completely dark, there'd be something alive long enough to knit a sweater, or a scarf, maybe.

        "How you doing down there, Dashie?!" Pinkie Pie asked. "You still being best pony or what?! Heehee!"

        "I'm trying my damnedest to move the damned sea serpent but it will be a lot easier without ponies breathing down my neck!" Rainbow Dash grunted.

        "Oh, be easy on her, sugar cube," Applejack droned while pumping the left arm. "It's her job to check on all of the systems working with one another all fluid like!"

        "And it's my job to make sure we get to the Depths and back in one piece, thank you very much, you silly farm filly!" Rainbow Dash held her breath.

        Could Applejack have figured out Rainbow's feelings from that last spastic utterance? Rainbow Dash wasn't certain, nor did she know how Applejack could have known anything about the many times she came to visit her comatose country girl friend in the hospital. Rainbow Dash felt as if the walls were closing in, not that she was claustrophobic, but rather that she was feeling pressure of an emotional sort in addition to the multiple cubic tons of water trying to crush in the husk of the Stephen of the Magneting at all times.

        "Can I get a bit more juice down here?!" Rainbow Dash grumbled.

        "I am pumping out as much as the healing life fluids as I can!" Fluttershy stammered from where she sat in the heart of the sea serpent. "Oh, if only I could also restore love and joy to the vacuum that's become the chest of this once mighty beast!"

        "Fluttershy, please, now is not the time to be double-questioning the nature of our mission!" Twilight Sparkle grumbled. "Celestia and Luna have sent us on a quest, and we must not fail! The fate of Equestria—nigh, even the whole universe—rests on this moment of triumph and this moment alone!"

        Fluttershy sighed, gazing lonesomely into the steamy depths of her chamber.

        She felt sorry most of all for Twilight, because Twilight was slowly becoming a beast, much like the monsters that they were being sent to fight for the Demon Lance of the Depths. What was the reason for this? Had a piece of the hellish darkness tainted the soul of the heroes' most esteemed leader? At least Rainbow Dash had a reason to be easily angered, considering that most of the movements of the Stephen of the Magneting relied on her adorably cute body in a suit, but on Twilight? Twilight had become all brains and no heart, and it felt very black and lonely and scary. Fluttershy just wanted to cuddle with Angel again—Angel the bunny rabbit, not demonic Burning Angel from the Burning Cosmos.

        "Hey guys!" Pinkie Pie sing-songed. "Guess what I have to do!"

        Applejack groaned. "Really? Now?"

        Twilight spat, "You should have done that hours ago before we took off on the glorious mission of honor and integrity to save the whole of Equestria from the plummeting body of a Burning Angel!"

        "Awwwwww..." Pinkie Pie pouted, her ears folding.

        Pinkie Pie really loved blueberry cinnamon toast, the type that you could spread jam over and still not lose its sweet taste. When nibbled before an open fire on a cold winter's day just before Hearth's Warming, it made the tips of her hooves tingle, and she giggled inwardly like a little filly about to ride an electric hippopotamus for the first time. Hippopotamuses were stupidly fat, perhaps it was because they didn't have tiny toothless alligators to play with, Pinkie Pie thought. Then again, pigeons didn't deserve to be called "winged rats," seeing as they didn't like to eat cheese. If everypony in Equestria jumped all at once, would the world wobble? Her left eyebrow felt itchy. When was the last time she ate something?

        "I'm hungry. Do we have any strawberries?"

        "Shhhh!" Twilight Sparkle's hissing voice reverberated down the serpent's inner chambers. "Silence, every pony! We've reached the Mareiana trench!"

        "Well, that was certaintly expedient!" Rarity exclaimed.

        "Careful now, Rarity," Applejack murmured. "Slow strokes. We don't want to disturb the water too much and give away our heroic position early."

        "Applejack is right, every pony!" Twilight exclaimed. "Rainbow Dash, slow your swimming motions!"

        "Aye, Princess!"

        "Pinkie Pie, be prepared for emergency energy transferrence! Bring weapons at the ready!"

        "Okie dokie lokie!"

        "Fluttershy..."

        "I'm already on it, Princess," Fluttershy said in a wilted voice. She reached above herself and pulled at a lever or two. "Lowering our heartrate. Preparing the artificial crimson adrenaline."

        "Run silent. Run deep," Twilight cooed, her purple eyes squinting through the portholes as bubbles, bubbles, and more bubbles wafted across the scaled snout of the diving serpent.

        For minutes, the Six Elemental pilots of the Stephen of the Magneting clung to their posts, listening to the silence between the ghostly pings of the vigilant sonar. When nearly an hour had drawn by, it was Rainbow Dash who spoke up first.

        "Enough waiting around, already!" her voice cracked. "Let's make with the thrashing and the lance-grabbing!"

        "I'm not sure there's anything that we can rightly thrash or grab onto, darling," Applejack said.

        "Shhhh!" Twilight Sparkle leaned forward and flipped a switch. "Get ready, every pony, I am switching on the Leviathan Light!"

        With a metallic clanking sound, the eyes of the Stephen of the Magneting turned on, shining two bright beams in front of it. Through the murky depths, the spotlights illuminated coral reefs, craggy rock clusters, and—finally—an arrangement of marble columns.

        "Good heavens!" Rarity gasped, staring at a flickering monitor broadcasting the footage above her. "Is that...?"

        "Affirmative," Twilight said with a nod. "We have reached the outskirts of the Forsaken Demon City of Oatlantis. We must proceed now with caution if we are to righteously procure the Demon Lance of the Depths."

        "And then launch that baby up into the sky to intercept the Burning Angel, I reckon," said Applejack.

        "Indeed. Rainbow Dash, proceed with the swimming. Get us as deep into the Mareiana Trench as you can muster."

        "Hold on, guys!" Pinkie Pie chanted, gazing up at her blinking instruments. "I think I detected some movement on this spinning green light thing!"

        "The sonar?!" Twilight gasped from inside the serpent's skull. "What kind of a shape is it?"

        "I don't know!" Pinkie Pie squinted. "It looks a little bit like a giant grape fruit with an even tinier grape fruit floating in front of it! Hey, Twilight! Do grape fruits swim in schools? I'm afraid I was too busy hoof-painting during that lesson in kindergarten to remember!"

        "Uhm... girls?" Fluttershy panted harder and harder as the steam built up to a burning point in her chamber. "I can't control the adrenaline flow!"

        "Every pony, just calm down!" Twilight grabbed her controls and tilted the head of the Stephen of the Magneting down. "I am pivoting the cranial unit of the Vessel of Destiny and brightening the Leviathan Lights to get a better view!"

        Not long after she uttered that, a stupidly huge lantern fish appeared from the depths, its iron-thick jaws lunging towards the Elemental Six's vessel.

        "Aaaaaugh!" Twilight shrieked. "Evasive actions! Quickly!"

        "Whoah nelly!" Applejack shouted, swinging her arm to punch the gigantic fish.

        The monster took the brunt of the massive purple knuckles. Its lantern dangled back and forth, built up heat, and fired a burning stream of energy at the scaled husk of the Stephen of the Magneting.

        "Ouch!" Fluttershy yelped as bursts of steam erupted all around her. "Pain! That is most definitely pain!"

        "Oh blessed silk worms! Look at the thing!" Rarity stammered as she compensated with titanic dog paddles on her end of the vessel. "It is big and it is hideously ugly!"

        "It's hideously dead!" Rainbow Dash growled. "Bring it closer to the tail so I can whallop it!"

        "No! We do this by the book!" Twilight shouted. "Pinkie Pie! Weapons!"

        "Here come the flaming death skull missiles!" Pinkie giggle-snorted as she slapped her hoof over a glowing red button. "Yaay! Explosions!"

        With whirring noises, the nostrils of the sea serpent opened with twirling apertures, and a pair of torpedoes flew out, propelled forward with a burst of bubbles. They flew into the side of the gigantic lantern fish, exploding the beast from the inside out. Streams of blood and coiled intestines rocketed past the piloted serpent's Leviathan Lights.

        "Woo yeah!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Eat that salad with some croutons, you Friday Afternoon dinner special! Yeah!"

        "Did... did we do it?" Rarity stammered, her mane a frayed mess.

        "I see no sign of it," Twilight said, gazing out the twin portholes. "At least, no part that's living!" She smiled down the twisting, churning chamber of the mechanized serpent. "Congratulations and righteous fury, pony girls! We've survived the first demon! For honor and integrity!"

        "Honor and integrity!" the others chanted.

        "Wait..." Pinkie Pie squinted at the sonar. "Hey, Twilight?"

        "Yes, Pinkie?"

        "Remember that school of grape fruit—both big and small—that I talked about earlier?"

        "What about them?"

        "Well, looks like the rest of them have shown up, unless the entire sonar screen is supposed to be green! I mean... snkkkt—heeheehee—imagine that!"

        Twilight's portholes filled with gaping jaws from the darkness. The Princess sunk back in her seat and shrieked. "All hooves, brace for impact!"

        The school of gigantic Lantern Fish converged on the Stephen of the Magneting, biting onto whatever piece of the purple scaled hull their teeth could find. They collectively weighed the mechanized beast down, no matter how hard Rainbow Dash shook and thrashed to loosen their grip with the Vessel of Destiny's tail. At last, a giant barricuda emerged from the murky depths, tore through a marble column or two, and hurled itself like a missile towards the upper chest of the Stephen of the Magneting.

        "Ooooh! Look at that one!" Pinkie Pie pointed at the sharp spike that was slicing its way across the sonar screen. "It's shaped like a quill feather! Heehee! I wonder if it's come to tickle us!"

        The thing's jaws bore straight through the hull, ripping its way into the auxiliary compartment where its teeth clamped over Pinkie Pie's bloody rag of a body. It then dragged itself back out, pulling the earth pony's twitching pink limbs with it, as frigid cold seawater gushed into the compartment. Swiftly, thick metal sheets slapped shut to contain the flood, silencing the chaos and giving way to the startled shrieks of the ponies above and below.

        "Pinkie Pie!" Rarity sobbed. "Electron chaaaaaaaarge!"

        Twilight Sparkle shuddered as the flood barricade slapped shut beneath her. Stifling back a sob, she spoke into the radio intercom to her right. "NEIGHRV headquarters, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle. The Element of Laughter is down. I repeat. The Element of Laughter is down, and I am separated from the rest of the compartments of the Stephen of the Magneting!"

        Inside the underground control center, Princess Celestia slumped to her haunches, her features pale as a cold shiver ran across her rippling mane. "Pinkie Pie is the first to die."

        Luna gulped. "But will she be the last?"

        "Elemental Six!" Celestia boldly shouted, her jaw tight. "Proceed with your mission most righteous and retrieve the Demon Lance of the Depths!"

        Back in the Stephen of the Magneting, Applejack and Rarity looked across the dripping wet space between them.

        "Did you hear that?" Applejack stammered.

        Rarity sniffled. "You mean Pinkie Pie's blood curdling cries of pain and drowning?"

        "No, I mean our mission is still a go!"

        "But how can we continue?!" Rarity shrieked. "We're cut off from Twilight!"

        "Pinkie Pieeeee..." Fluttershy sobbed into her hooves. "She was my most favorite idiot who was pink!"

        "Will you guys knock it off?!" Rainbow Dash frowned, struggling with her wires and sparks and wires. "In case you didn't notice, we still have those stupid demon guppies chomping us to bits! Let's power our way through to the Lance already!"

        "Damn straight!" Applejack nodded with a growl. "Come on, Rarity!" She yanked and pulled and shoved at her levers. "Nnnngh! Let's get these arms moving!"

        "I'm trying as hard as I can!" Rarity wailed, stuck between sobbing and vomiting.

        "Grrrrrgh!" Rainbow's eyes glowed as she summoned more of Fluttershy's adrenaline juice. "Yeah, Fluttershy! Just like that!"

        "It isn't too late to try and reason with these creatures—"

        "Fluttershy, I don't want to hear it! More adrenaline! Grrrrr-raaaaugh!" Veins popped in Rainbow's neck as she powered the tail with all her might and concentration. "Mmmmf! I feel like it's my birthday and wasps are hatching in my lungs! Yeah!"

        The courageous pegasus' work didn't go unnoticed. The tail of the Stephen of the Magneting thrashed harder, shaking the lantern fish off as it pushed the gigantic serpent deeper and deeper towards the depths. The Leviathan Light of the cranial unit's eyes flickered on and off, and yet the arms continued swaying, tossing off fish and eel as the Vessel of Destiny approached a wide oceanic plain full of marble columns and alabaster temple ruins.

        "My little ponies..." Twilight Sparkle murmured, hugging herself and shivering. The temperature of her compartment had dropped dramatically since being cut off from the steamy heart. Still, that didn't stop her from peering out the portholes in amazement. "We're doing it! I can see the Lance! You're powering us to the horizon of destiny and righteousness, oh Blessed Six!"

        "I think I see something!" Rarity exclaimed, her bright blue eyes locked on a gigantic silver cross embedded in the center of a swirling, cement courtyard laced with seaweed and reefs. "Ooooh! Notice how it shines, even in these depths!"

        "Rarity, pay attention to what you're doing, sugar cube!"

        "I... can't help it..." Rarity let go of her levers and cupped her plush, white face as she drooled with awe. "It's... so mesmerizingly beautiful..."

        "Rarity!" Applejack hollered from where she pumped at her levers and sweated into her orange suit. "Stop gawking! You're being infected with the Demon taint of Oatlantis!"

        "Wait!" Fluttershy cooed, her eyes wide as she flung a hoof over her instrument panel. "That's not Demon taint! It's something else!" A soft cry escaped her yellow lips. "It's... it's life energy! From another world!" She sniffled. "A world... that simply wanted to meet us from across the cosmos and give us all hugs..." She smiled painfully. "A world of angels."

        "Well, they had a fine way of showing it ten thousand years ago during that Second Impact hogwash!" Applejack turned once more towards Rarity. "Rarity, for Pete's sake, will you start rowing again?! Rainbow and I can't do this on our own!"

        "So... pretty..." Rarity shed a tear. "They should have sent a poet!" She blinked, sniffing. "Hey, uhm, do you all smell fish?"

        CLAMP! A ferocious set of shark jaws bit into the hull, tearing it off its hinges. The right half of the Vessel of Destiny imploded with a spray of bulkheads and purple scales. Rarity flew into the tempest, shrieking.

        "Aaaaaaaaiiiieee—blblbllblbllbbllbb!"

        "Rarity!" Fluttershy wailed.

        "What the hay happened?!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

        "A big old fish done took Rarity to the depths!" Applejack hollered.

        "Darn it! Is she still in one piece?!"

        "Fluttershy!" Applejack shouted down the body of the Stephen of the Magneting as another metal barricade blocked off the flood of water from the right compartment. "Open a channel to Rarity! Tell her to activate her suit's armor!"

        "Rarity! Rarity! Can you hear me?!" Fluttershy yelped into a dangling microphone. "Wherever you are, you have to turn on your life support systems!"

        Fluttershy's voice came in a muffled, warbling pulse to Rarity's freezing ears. Spitting out bubbles, Rarity nevertheless interpreted the utterance, and she flung both hooves to the collar of her tight suit. A bubble of magic formed around her head, expelling all the water and giving her breathable oxygen.

        "Guaaaaaaah!" She inhaled with eyes darting in opposite directions. After a sharp shiver, she gnashed her teeth and swam upright over an abandoned Oatlantean temple. "Ungh! How garrish!" Her voice echoed into her magic helmit. "Didn't they believe in banners and pressure washing ten thousand years ago?"

        "Rarity! This is NEIGHRV Central Command!" a speaker built into the unicorn's collar crackled. "We heard that you got dislodged from the Vessel of Destiny! Are you alright?"

        "I could certainly use a coat down here. Just what did you mathematically educated ruffians make this suit out of? Garbage bags?" Just then, the mare's ear twitched towards a shrieking sound from below. She turned around, only for a massive barb of exoskeleton to reflect off her magic air bubble. "Oh, now that's just plain absurd."

        THUD! The claw of a giant crab enclosed over her. Shrieking up a vomit of bubbles, the oversized demon crustacean slammed Rarity to the ocean floor and grounded her tiny body to a bloody pulp against the jagged reef.

        All of this, of course, Twilight saw from the frigid confines of the Stephen of the Magneting's cranial unit.

        "Rarity!" she stammered, shivering violently. "You are fabulous and you are dead and not even the minnows will sing of your bloodletting!" With a snarl, she turned her face from the frosted windows and pushed a numb hoof against a big red button. "I know now what I must be doing swiftly for the righteousness of our glorious mission of salvation!"

        The entire chamber shook. Alarm sirens went off, but Twilight ignored them. Pulling at a pair of levers, she activated multiple thrusters all at once. KaPOW!

        The grinning skull of the Stephen of the Magneting flew off the hinges attaching it to the sea serpent's shoulders. With a trailing swath of bubbles, it drifted away from the Vessel of Destiny and floated lifelessly before the incoming rush of demonically possessed ocean life.

        "We've lost a great deal of weight!" Fluttershy exclaimed. Her eyes searched the console in front of her, and she gasped at a tell-tale strobe of light. "Oh no! Twilight's detached herself from the rest of the Stephen of the Magneting!"

        "She did what?!" Applejack exclaimed.

        "I feel it too, girls!" Rainbow Dash grunted into her wires. "The tail's moving faster! The damned Stephen of the Magneting has greater mobility!"

        "And now..." Fluttershy sniffed, bringing a pair of hooves up to her quivering muzzle. "Twilight has activated the self destruct mode of the cranial unit!"

        "Scrkkk! That is right, girls!" Twilight's voice chanted over the intercom of the remaining sea serpent mech. "I will destroy the waves of demonic monsters blocking your path to the Demon Lance of the Depths! In my death, I hope to maintain the Honor and Integrity of our Most Righteous Mission!"

        "Oh Twilight..." Applejack sighed with a melancholic smile. "You brave, brave unicorn woman. You're a loyal servant of Equestria to the end. To think that you would give your life for glory and bubbles."

        "It's been an honor to serve with you, my soldiers, my crusaders, my friends." Twilight's voice sobbed for joy. "When you return to Princess Celestia, tell her that I love her more than I love anything else—"

        "Enough talk!" Rainbow Dash snarled, bucking at her web of wires. "Zoop!"

        Under her administrations, the Stephen of the Magneting spun around, twirled towards the cranial unit, and kicked the orange-maned head with a swift slam of the tail. The thing rolled along a curtain bubbles—carrying along Twilight's scream—until it landed dead-center in the heart of the marauding school of murderous sea creatures. Two seconds and a flash of light later, the skull of the Vessel of Destiny exploded in a brilliant pulse of nuclear energy. Water evaporated in a pure sphere, then immediately refilled the super-heated vacuum. The resulting thunder sent ripples of distorted liquid soaring in every direction. The headless Stephen of the Magneting thrashed and paddled until it floated upright, staring down an unimpeded path towards the bright Lance.

        "Sugar cube?!" Applejack snarled down the chambers of the hollow sea serpent. "Couldn't you have waited for just a few more moments of speech and adoration?"

        "Does anypony forget that we have a world to save?!" Rainbow Dash yanked at several wires so that the tip of the tail pointed at the Lance. "Our target is right there, you sexy horse chicks! Let's get to the grabbing and the tossing!"

        Fluttershy sniffled. "Yes. We might as well." Tears ran down her face. "For Twilight..."

        "Yeah yeah! Gimme more adrenaline! Come on!"

        Fluttershy did as ordered. As the life juice flew down the inner Stephen tubings, Rainbow thrashed the tail while Applejack pumped the remaining arm for counterbalance. It didn't take long for them to navigate the floating field of dismembered fish heads and amphibious entrails and reach their destination. As soon as they arrived, however, a bright golden glow emanated from the patch of rock where the Lance had been lodged for ten thousand years.

        "Land's sakes!" Applejack exclaimed, gasping at the sight being broadcasted to her on the monitor. "What is with the glowing and the sparkles?!"

        "Are you girls seeing this?!" Fluttershy exclaimed, breathless. "I... I feel something in the air when I so much as look at it!"

        "Yeah, so?!" Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Let's grab the lance and launch it into the heavens already!"

        "Grgggrrgggh!" Applejack snarled, fighting her controls as sparks jumped from her console. "I'm trying to grab it! But the sea serpent's darn hand won't get close enough!"

        "What do you mean it won't get close enough?!" Rainbow Dash's voice cracked. "Is the golden light stopping your or what?!"

        "Scrkkk! Vessel of Destiny, this is NEIGHRV Headquarters! What seems to be the problem?"

        "Are you getting these energy readings, Princess Celestia?!" Fluttershy exclaimed. "A source of energy is cocooning the Lance and preventing us from grabbing it! I know that it sounds crazy, but I feel as though I have felt it before!"

        Back at NEIGHRV Headquarters, Princess Celestia gasped.

        Luna looked at her. "What is it, dearest sister?"

        "That is no mere golden light," Princess Celestia said, bowing her head so that her serious eyes were obscured by serious shadows. "That is nothing less than the spirits of the anguished ponies slain by Second Impact ten thousand years ago!"

        "Scrkk—The Anguished souls of ponies?!" Fluttershy's voice stammered over the gasping voice of dozens of equines at their computer stations. "You mean..."

        "Yes..." Celestia raised her face with glinting tears in the electric light. "They have clung to the weapon of their terrible destruction and made it their new habitat. We cannot grab the lance so long as they are still bonded with it."

        On board the Vessel of Destiny, Fluttershy gasped with an epiphanous flicker of lucidity in her eye. "They... they need to feel love." She gulped. "Only with love with they loosen their spirit limbs!"

        "What are you trying to say, sugar cube?!" Applejack asked.

        The pegasus was already unbuckling from the plush seat from the center of the Stephen of the Magneting's heart. "I must go out there and give them a hug! A spirit hug!"

        "What?!" Rainbow Dash cackled. "Fluttershy, no! You are spirit ill!"

        "It is not craziness! It is destiny! My destiny!" Fluttershy grinned with a golden sheen as her tears reflected the aura outside. "The solution of kindness that all demons and angels need!"

        "But you'll be dead if you stay out there for too long!" Applejack's green eyes flashed to a monitor on her left. "Readings show that another school of demon creatures are swimming this way!" She gulped. "It's the last surviving army of Oatlantis!"

        "Then here's what we do!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "We let Fluttershy give the Lance a spirit pep talk, and if it works, Applejack and I will shove the thing up into space with what's left of the Stephen of the Magneting!"

        "Sounds like a plan!" Applejack grunted with a nod. "Fluttershy, sugar cube, you move away when it's time to do the tossing!"

        "I am making no promises!" And Fluttershy slammed the air hatch door shut behind her.

        Seconds later, she propelled herself from the chest of the Vessel of Destiny, spreading her suited wings out so that she glided effortlessly towards the temple floor of Oatlantis where the Lance lay in wait.

        As she made her submerged flight, the rest of the sea serpent twirled to face the incoming wave of monstrosities.

        "Okay, Applejack, it's just you and me, girl!" Rainbow Dash flexed her limbs in the center of the net of sparkling wires. "Let's do this!"

        Applejack took a deep breath. "For the future of Equestria and apples. But mostly apples."

        "Yaaaaaaaaaugh!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

        With a burst of water, the Stephen of the Magneting soared towards the aquatic legion of demons. The two ponies thrashed the Vessel's remaining limbs about. Purple claws and scales slashed the throats out from beneath giant pirahna. They kicked holes in the chests of killer whales and ripped the tentacles off of giant squids. At last, they ripped out the spine from a plesiosaur and used it as a whip, ripping apart enormous mollusks and spilling blood and ink everywhere.

        "It's no use!" Applejack shouted, sweating amidst the sparks and intermittent sprays of seawater. "There's too many of them! The hull is breaking!"

        "Nuts to the hull!" Rainbow Dash snarled. "They're totally going to reach Fluttershy and the Lance at this point!"

        "This is impossible!" Applejack hollered. "We need help! We can't do this on our own!"

        The earth pony's green eyes as she shivered in a brief moment of lucid fear.

        The first thing she thought of was her mother and the touch of her mother and the breath of her mother and pretty much anything that had to do with anything that wasn't her father. There were long walks down the orchards and popping popcorn and nuzzling by the fireplace and maybe a trip to the rodeo or two. Her mother was always with her and yet she was never with her, that's how she knew she was with her. Always. It was because of love. Also apples.

        Just then, Applejack's ears twitched, for a strangely familiar voice was crackling over the intercom.

        "Scrkkk! You're never alone, ponies! Nor are you forgotten! For the Green Crusader is here!"

        Applejack gasped, her emerald eyes flying open. "That voice! Is it..."

        Rainbow gawked at a monitor suspended above her wires. "...Lyra Heartstrings?!"

        "When did music begin? Was it with a missile launcher?"

        KABOOM! A patch of demon fish exploded into murky blood as the green unicorn swam her way from behind a mountain of coral. Only, she wasn't a unicorn...

        "Lyra!" Applejack exclaimed, squinting in shock at the monitor feed. "Yer legs are gone!"

        Rainbow gulped. "Then that means the Green Crusader's a—"

        "That is an affirmative!" Lyra flicked her translucent fins as the fully exposed seapony made its way towards the edge of the underwater battleground. "This is not even the form most final!" She loaded another missile into her bazooka and let it fly.

        P-POW! A blue whale took it straight to the chest, leaking blood and sinew. Lyra swam through the hole in its guts and posed dramatically in a pair of crossbeaming lights.

        "Lyra Heartstrings! Unsung Hero of Land and Waves no more!"

        Deep in NEIGHRV Headquarters, Luna and Celestia gasped at the staticky imagery that the Stephen of the Magneting was broadcasting.

        "Lyra Heartstrings!" The Princess of the Night smiled in both awe and shock. "It is just as the prophets foretold! The product of angels and demons has brought light to the cursed depths!"

        "Yes..." Celestia nodded, wiping a tear from her pale muzzle. "But will it be enough to accomplish the most righteous destiny?"

        "Your Highness!" A pony shouted. "Ten minutes until Third Impact!" The computer operator pointed at a satellite image of the burning projectile approaching the upper atmosphere. "Global turbulence is in effect!"

        As a low rumble filled the subterranean headquarters, startling Cheerilee's foals into yelping out of tune, the alicorn sisters saluted the screens above them.

        "For Honor and Integrity, Lyra Heartstrings!"

        Along the fringes of the battlefield, the transformed seapony took a deep breath, her gills rustling. "Yes! Honor! Integrity! And now..." She pulled out a golden harp. "...Melody!"

        "What in tarnation are ya doing, you crazy, crazy horse fish?!" Applejack shouted.

        "Lending you the hand! The ultimate hand!" Lyra's teeth showed as she yelled bubbles into the void. "With this music, I summon Unit Zero! Your partner in this time of adversity! The key to our salvation!"

        She played a few simple notes. The music penetrated the depths, causing the rampaging demon fish to pause in momentary terror. The coral reef shook as a mound bore through the upper layers of the earth's crust. Then, with a violent explosion of rock and crystalline sediment, a gigantic figure burst out from the ocean's floor, dislodging marble temples and other chunks of Oatslantean architecture.

        Once the golem was summoned, Lyra gestured towards the emerging, bipedal figure. "Ladies and gentlecolts, I, the Green Crusader, present to you the Neckbeardzord! Champion of the depths!"

        "EXALIBUR!" The giant naked golem thrashed his arms through the warzone and yelled, his red whiskers flailing beneath a pair of glowing green eyes. Bubbles strategically frothed around his crotch as he then stomped forward, running underwater at literally breathless speed. "PAIN AND RAGE AND CHEESE!" He flew fist first into the demonic school of fist, tearing several razor-finned groupers into chunks and then biting into the flesh of a flailing tiger shark.

        "That works for me!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Applejack?!"

        "There's no getting off this train we're on!" Applejack blurted with a smirk.

        Schiiiiing! With a glint of holy light, both the golem and the Stephen of the Magneting posed back to back in the center of the twirling fish army.

        "Yes!" Lyra shouted, giving her harp a final strum as she gestured towards the scene. "It's as the goddesses intended! Bipeds and ponies and fish! Fighting side by side! Bring glory to the grave of ages!"

        "Go time!" Rainbow shouted, kicking at the wires.

        "FRIENDSHIP IS DRAMA!" The Neckbeardzord launched into the fray with a warlusting cry.

        The ocean floor had become a bloodbath. The Stephen of the Magneting smashed several jellyfish together while the Neckbeardzord piledrove a sperm whale into the reefs. The sea serpent uppercutted a giant sawfish, dislodged its barb, and tossed it to the golem who then used it to decapitate several saltwater crocodiles with a single swing. The Neckbeardzord kicked a narwhal in the groin and joined the Vessel of Destiny as both titans collectively suplexed the whimpering demon beast through a collapsing temple.

        Meanwhile, at the Demon Lande of the Depths, Fluttershy had finally pony-paddled her way to the base. She swam into the golden aura, her helmeted eyes following the incandescent trails of each pixie-like strobe of light.

        "Oh, you poor, poor spirits," she cooed. "Speak to me. Tell me of the pain you've felt..." She spread her arms with a gentle smile. "And I shall ease your suffering."

        The golden orbs collected around her far swifter than she had anticipated. But, instead of gasping, she felt a sense of calm. She cooed, closing her eyes with a gentle flutter as the aura transferred from the giant slender cross and into her equine body. After a few seconds, she gasped, and her eyes began glowing with alien luminosity.

        "Of course, it makes so much sense now," Fluttershy chanted in a voice that was her own and yet wasn't. "The angels and the demons are one in the same. They came to earth long ago, and they built it. That was First Impact. But then the spirits of the creators left, having given their descendants probationary leave on this sphere. But when they returned, the children had forgotten the parents of the stars, and the resulting confusion gave birth to the War of the Waves, and the Second Impact."

        She floated upwards, spreading her arms as her body swam the length of the giant silver Lance.

        "I am filled with luminosity and understanding! The spirits only wish to be free from this prison! They do not want to have the same thing that's happened to their forefathers happen to their sons and daughters. The only beginning is the end and the only end is the beginning. The demons and the angels must become one, or else risk a Fourth Impact, because the Third Impact will be the end, and the beginning, and the end and the beginning and the rebirth and the death of the end and beginning!"

        "Hey Applejack!" Rainbow Dash shouted, sweating into the forest of wires as she thrashed the purple tail through wave after wave of attacking demon spawn. "Do you hear anything that Fluttershy is babbling about?! The radio's gone all staticky!"

        "I don't know, sugar cube, but it's getting hard to concentrate with all these bubbles and blood bubbles—" She suddenly gasped and yelled at the monitor. "Neckbeardzord! On your six!"

        "NO MORE CEASE AND DESIST!" The golem spun, only to have a giant mouth-frothing sailfish skewer its neck down the center. "BLARRGHGLLGHGLLG—DOES NOT LOVE AND TOLERATE THIS!" It was too late. All it took was a single flick of the massive sailfish's neck, and the skull popped off at the beardline. KRAACKK!

        "Unit Zero!" Lyra gasped from where she swam just above a coral ridge. "You were so faithful and fat..."

        "Great! Now what do we do?!" Rainbow Dash snarled. "Fluttershy's spouting gibberish and our beat 'em up buddy's down for the count!"

        "Not entirely!" Lyra shouted with a teeth-gritting expression. "Stephen of the Magneting! You must perform fusion with the body of the Neckbeardzord!"

        "What?!" Applejack gasped.

        "It is the only solution!" Lyra exclaimed. "Only with the Vessel of Destiny and Unit Zero combined to form the Magnetzord will you have the energy to toss the Demon Lance of the Depths back into the galactic reaches!"

        "She may be an apple short of a barrel, sugar cube, but she's got a point!" Applejack said.

        "But how can we even do that?!" Rainbow Dash flung her forelimbs in disbelief. "Look at the damn thing! I don't think we have any part of the Stephen of the Magneting that can fit!"

        Applejack took a deep, deep, deep, deep breath. "We're about to..." She flipped a lever, slamming shut a metal slab between the arm compartment and the rest of the vessel. "So long, sugarcube..."

        "Huh?!" Rainbow Dash instantly whimpered, gazing up the hollow of the sea serpent with glistening eyes. "Applejack! No! Don't be a hero!"

        "I was born a hero..." She sniffled and put on a smug smirk. "I'm fixing to die a saint!" Slam! Her hoof flew over a red button.

        KAPOW! The left arm of the Stephen of the Magneting flew off its purple host body. It sailed towards the quivering torso of the Neckbeardzord, punching several drooling dolphins along the way. When at last it approached Unit Zero's body, it spun around so that its wrist-socket approached the gaping hole at the golem's neck.

        "Lyra, darling, you're going to have to talk me through the next part!"

        "Understood!" Lyra turned to look at the thrashing torso and tail of the Stephen of the Magneting. "Rainbow Dash! You still have the heart and tail of the Vessel of Destiny! Go to the Lance where Fluttershy is!"

        "But... wh-what is that even going to do?!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

        "Reckon it's gonna have to be the Magnetzord that tosses that damn thing into the heavens to stop the Burning Angel, sugar cube!" Applejack returned over the radiowaves as she used the purple fingers of the robot hand to swim into position. "I need you and the tail wrapped around the lance to give the golem something to grip onto!"

        "But Applejack...

        "You and I both knew what we signed up for, darling!" Applejack sniffed. "As did Twilight."

        Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth as her eyes turned misty. "It's not that, you stupid, silly pony..."

        "What was that?!"

        Rainbow Dash growled, replacing her tears with a pulsing temple. "Just make sure you've practiced your pitching arm!"

        Applejack closed her eyes.

        This was the last thing she was going to say to Rainbow Dash and in so many ways she wanted to make it sweet and fragrant like apple orchards in the summer breeze only they were deep under water and the only wind to be had was the exhalations their sobs produced as they whimpered in the inevitable absence of one another.

        "Darn tootin'!"

        Rainbow Dash sighed.

        Her whole life, the pegasus didn't know how to put into words the feelings that she had for Applejack. If only she could talk with her feathers instead of her tongue, then maybe she would have produced a thousand poems, and all of them gold-star winning exaltations of the freckles and the sweat and the red hair ribbons that she had fallen head over hooves for after one too many sweaty nights of tossing and turning and guilty sobs in the corner of the shower stall.

        "Stupid farmer hick!" Rainbow Dash growled as she spun the tail and heart around. "I'll be thinking of you as I die in Fluttershy's arms!"

        "I wouldn't have it any other way!" Applejack grunted. "Lyra?"

        "Think happy thoughts!" The seapony gestured with her fins from afar. "Now lower! Activate gravitational couplings!"

        "Like this?" Applejack pulled a lever. Several metal clamps merged with the gaping throathole of the Neckbeardzord. "Graaaaaaaulghulguhghglghl!" the earth pony's freckles lit up with sparkling energy.

        "I said happy thoughts!" Lyra shouted above the bubbly expanse. "You are fusing with Unit Zero's central spirit spine! The pneumatic motors of neurosis will bash your brains to bits if you don't perform fusion precisely!"

        "No..." Applejack heaved, her gaping mouth strobing with bolts of electricity as they bounced between her molars. "...no, this is precisely what I need. I see with the clarity of a million falcons. I feel with the hairs of a billion mole crickets! I see between the walls and the ghostly beams beyond!"

        Her eyes flickered wide.

        Those frolicking walks through the orchard. Butterfly kisses. Dumplings fresh out of the oven. A bedsheet flouncing over a mattress in spring sunlight. Bubble baths after a day at the fair. Blue eyes laced with perspiration and singing songs of the windy mountains.

        "Mother..." Applejack's eyes lit up.

        Outside, the hand of the Stephen of the Magneting closed into a fist.

        "Mother... I feel you! You are with me!"

        The golem's body lifted up and up, standing with locked limbs before the looming cloud of angry fish incubi, succubi, and minnows.

        "You were always with me!" Applejack giggled like a filly, her eyes lighting up. "You never left my side! Grnnnnghhh! Ponyyyyy overwhelllmiiiiiiiinnng!"

        Lyra slumped on her fins at the edge of the coral reef. She watched as the cranial fist of the serpent hand glowed brighter than the sun. Her eyes teared a saline solution into the rippling currents around her. "It's so beautiful..." She cooed. "Do you see it, NEIGHRV? The Magnetzord has been born."

        "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" Applejack piloted the golem with a berserk yell into the cloud of fish. Every punch produced blood and every kick produced organic effluence as she tore the amphibious army limb from limb. "APPLE SAUCE!" She grabbed fists full of sea creatures and grinded them to a pulp against the ocean floor. "RAAAAAAAUGH! EVEN WITHOUT THE APPLE STEM I HAVE ENOUGH POWER TO KILL ALL OF YOU VARMINTS!"

        She dive-kicked through a school of devil fish, backhanded a hammerhead shark, and did a spinning lariat on an oversized sea cucumber.

        "HRAAAAAUGH! TWENTY SECONDS PER FLOUNDER! YOU AND ME, MOTHER! LET'S MOSEY!"

        She headbutted an elephant seal, tore its skin off, and used it to drape several demon penguins into a net, pounding them against temples, marble columns, and jets of thermal mud.

        In the meantime, Rainbow Dash was swiftly tail-thrashing her way from the fray, controling what best resembled a giant squirming sliver of purple scales.

        "Stupid damn underwater fart mission, I swear to goddess," she griped.

        At last, she stopped bucking against the wires, gasping at a sight before her.

        "Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash's yelped with quivering eyes. "What have you become?!"

        "I am kinetic!" Fluttershy hollered, her body reaching the criss-cross of intersecting silver at the tip of the lance. "One with the dead and the living and the soul fluid in between!" Her body drifted back, forelimbs spread in the golden glow like a Neighvana album cover. "The Third Impact is me! Blistering kindness activate!" The pulsing orbs flew into her as she became one with the spirits. Her suit exploded, exposing her to the frigid depths.

        "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" Rainbow Dash screamed in abject terror, causing the monitors around her station to crack.

        In the meantime, Fluttershy smiled her last smile... before her muzzle melted. Her skin peeled away as her muscles spread out, ballooning into a giant white mass of angelic ectoplasm that was immediately crucified to the giant Lance. Seven eyes peered out from her skull, rolling back as they danced between thoughts and burps of bloody agony.

        It was her destiny, she thought with seven minds, descended from the heavens and spit out from the earth, a seraphim in heart but a nephilim in body, fused to both the weapon of ages and the sacrificial slab of destiny. She would be the final hoofprint of equines everywhere and the final bloodstreak of burning angelic hosts carried aloft the atmospheric rim of Eden.

        "Fluttershy! Do not become that which should not be becoming!" Rainbow Dash thrashed at the controls, but as soon as she made contact with the lance, the purple scales of the Vessel of Destiny wrapped several times around its silver stalk, turning into a handle. The pegasus gasped, danglingly awkwardly in a black void as her compartment expanded and expanded. "Stop it, Fluttershy! There is still a piece of you in there! Do not mistake kindness for the tempting kiss of oblivion! You do not need to be the Third Impact! You can be our friend! You can be our friend forevermore!"

        A heavenly song entered the bulkheads of the Stephen of the Magneting. Ghostly naked pegasi in the yellow form of Fluttershy drifted down from every black pocket of the metal womb. They swam towards Rainbow Dash, bunching around the sticky-webbe'd pony as their grins lit up the electrical miasma enveloping her. With birdlike shrieks, they cooed repeatedly, their eyes like loose marbles over pale white muzzles.

        "Yay!" "Yaaay!" "Yaaaay!" "Yay!" "Yaaaay!" "Yayyyy!"

        "Guhhh! Fluttershy! Get back! Get backkkk!" Rainbow Dash flinched as the feathers and the limbs and the smiles and vaporous breaths crowded all around her. She clenched her eyes as she fought with the control wires now binding her to the blackness. "Mustn'tflyaway!" she chanted. "Mustn'tflyaway! Mustn'tflyaway! Mustn'tflyaway! I am no coward! I do not fear death!" Her eyes flew open.

        Past the crowd of smiling Fluttershy clones, she saw the faint image of a monitor broadcasting the Magnetzord in its last bloody battle.

        "Applejack!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Applejackkkk! Toss it! Toss it now!"

        Meanwhile, the Magnetzord had an orca in its grip and was slamming it repeatedly against a temple ceiling. "APPLES!" Thud! "TO APPLES!" Thuddd! "TO APPLES!" Thuddddd!

        "Applejaaaaack!"

        The Magnetzord spun around. Chiiing! Its polished skull-knuckles reflected the Demon Lance of the Depths—now transformed by the golden aura into the Angel Lance of the Depths.

        "HUTT!"

        The massive golem leapt over the remaining legion of demon fish, gripped the purple-shaped handle, spun, and threw the razor-sharp cross skyward, carrying it, Rainbow Dash, and the nebulously crucified blob of Fluttershy up into the depths. Immediately afterwards, every surviving leviathan of the battlefield pounced on the bipedal mech, ripping it to shreds pulling out its synthetic intestines.

        Lyra gasped, covering her face as she shuddered all over.

        "Nooooooo!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Applejaaaaaaack—" Soon, all she could see was bubbles and yellow feathers.

        As the Lance sailed beyond sight, the demon fish spread apart, dragging the entrails of Unit Zero along with it. Alone in her cockpit, and wincing all over with electrical energy, Applejack covered one side of her wincing face as she reached a single hoof towards the fading monitor looming above her, flanked with invading seawater.

        "Buck... you all," she hissed, spitting up blood and foam. "Buck you all... b-buck... you all... b-buck you all... b-buck—"

        Her forelimb suddenly split down the middle. Milliseconds later, Unit Zero exploded, sending chunks of metal and synthetic life juice spilling all over the floor of Oatlantis.

        Lyra shuddered, gazing towards the swirling bubbles that marked the trail of the Lance's throw. "All hope now rests with the final toss of destiny..."

        With a mighty splash of water, the projectile in question exited the ocean surface. Several gasping ponies on the decks of an Equestrian naval armada turned to watch its mighty ascent. The sky had become a burning red canvas at this point, and the Lance sailed towards the highest, hottest point. Soon, from the perspective of everypony watching along the shorelines of the continent below, the thrown object had become one with the flicker of the incoming astronomical body.

        "Princess Celestia!" a pony shouted in the heart of NEIGHRV as one by one the computers went static. "The navy has sighted the Lance sailing skyward! They report a large organic mass clinging to it!"

        "What is this you speak of?!" Princess Celestia shouted.

        "We can no longer keep track of it, Your Highness!" the pony whimpered as the entire headquarters went black. "The energy resonating from the thing is off the charts! All technology is ceasing to function!"

        "It's just as it was ten thousand years ago, at Second Impact," Luna said. "All we can do now is wait."

        Princess Celestia took a deep breath and bowed her head. Everypony was silent, save for the whimpering of foals and the subsequent lulling shush of Cheerilee's voice.

        All the while, Rainbow Dash saw nothing but golden light. She felt the wires dissolving around her. Her consciousness drifted back and forth, as did her body. The black womb around her took form, and soon the remaining hull of the sundered Stephen of the Magneting had become a cocoon. With glowing yellow light, the Vessel of Destiny merged with the crucified mass of the Lance. By the time it exited the earth's atmosphere, the silver cross had become the spinal column to a gigantic bright gold pegasus.

        An eternity drifted by in an instance.

        When Rainbow Dash's eyes opened, she saw a sheen of fog from her very own breath. She sucked her lungs in, and the fog cleared, revealing stars from beyond the translucent curve of her suit's magnetic helmet. She figured that it must have erected itself while she was unconscious. But that had to mean that there was a hull breach of some sort.

        Operating her suit's thrusters, she found that she was floating weightlessly between two masses. Rotating about, she stared at burning equine statue heading straight towards her.

        "The Burning Angel," she muttered.

        But then she twirled around...

        A giant, three-hundred story naked Fluttershy with golden flesh and platinum feathers grinned straight into her face.

        "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!" Rainbow Dash hollered in pure terror.

        Titan Angel Fluttershy's teeth grinned beyond the limit of her jaws. Her wings spread, blotting out the blue and green swirls of the terran sphere beneath her. She flew in to embrace the Burning Angel, and Rainbow Dash was caught in the middle.

        "HAAAAAAA-AAAAUGHHH!" Rainbow Dash's eyes pointed in opposite directions as she clambered and clawed at the magical barrier preventing her from killing herself before this moment could complete itself.

        At last, the golden spirit of the living and dying Fluttershy hugged the Burning Angel, and both Agents of Impacts came together at a celestial point of finite being, with Rainbow Dash in the center.

        FLASH!

        Rainbow Dash winced, curling tighter under the sleeping bag in her apartment. Her ears twitched against the classical music wafting out of the speakers of her Pony Walkmare. She reached the end of an orchestral symphony, and silence reigned between her lingering tinnitus and the perpetual hum of the night.

        Just then, a toilet flushed, and a door creaked open. Hoofsteps sounded across the bed, followed by the artificial wind of a body heavily thwomping onto the sleeping bag next to her.

        Rainbow Dash opened her eyes. She gasped, her jerking body movement prematurely shoving the Walkmare's casette into rewind.

        Applejack lay across from her, half-asleep, her eyes fluttering shut as her fuzzy orange lips made pursing motions.

        Rainbow Dash stared at her—wide-eyed—as blood vessels pumped hotly in her ears. She gulped. As the casette finished rewinding, she leaned forward, daring to brush her lips against Applejack's.

        No more than five seconds later, the earth pony's jaw flapped open, and a million Lyras swam out, grinning crescent moons.

        "Honor and integrity!" "Honor and integrity!" "Honor and integrity!"

        "AAAAAAAUGH!" Rainbow Dash clutched bloodily at her skull as rigid red lines danced from her head and pierced the black walls of her obsidian sphere. She punched in a bathroom mirror, jumped into an oncoming train, and strangled a half-naked penguin, all the while screaming and yelling into the swirling black void. "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"

        With her undying breaths, as in the breaths beyond dying, Rainbow Dash wondered if it was all worth the pain and the heartache just to feel the love of a mother again, as Applejack must have felt the love of a mother, though it was ripped from her bowels in the center of a quivering bipedal neckbearded beast of destiny.

        Rainbow Dash played the bass fiddle with a deadpan expression. As the trolley rolled and rattled its way towards NEIGHRV headquarters, she gazed dully across the car at goldfish and seaweed drifting past the watertight windows.

        Maybe Princess Luna was wrong, and it was okay to feel one's emotions, if even for the sport of it, since life is a giant sport, even if it ended with a really bloody field goal that nobody was expecting except for the prophets and the angels and the demons of the Second Impact ten thousand eons ago.

        "Wait, they expected this to happen?!" Rainbow Dash gasped, tripping over her pleated skirt. She landed on the street corner, spitting out the slice of toasted bread from her mouth. "What was it,then?" She folded her skirt back in place, blushing, and scrambled for her book bag. "The religions or the sciences or the cultural societies in between?"

        It is none of them, and yet it is all of them. This day of blood and gold was foretold to have happened since the beginning of the seeing sight of sight seers. You are but a pawn, but you will not be just a memory. We have come to clean and destroy and dirty and pirge. It was inevitable since the first day of night. You knew this before you were born, for you are part of the goldening death life, my little pony.

        "So wait..." Rainbow Dash crawled out of the tent and stood in the shadow of two tall stallions in government black suits. "It all revolves around me? Only not in the awesome way?"

        What is a pony? Nothing but a miserable pile of oats. But misery is worth experiencing if you can experience joy and friendship all the same.

        "Yes, but that is the magical part of it." Rainbow Dash hugged herself as she sat on a folded chair in the middle of a dark, dark room. "But what if I'm afraid of magic? I'm a coward, and I fly away from the stuff that truly scares me."

        That is impossible. There is nothing to fear if you have destroyed all life. And there is nothing to live if you have manifested all destruction.

        "That's it!" Rainbow Dash gasped, standing up from the folding chair with wings spread. "I have to destroy the death through life in order to live the life through death so that destruction and construction is all golden and alive and dead as prophesied by the living dead to be dead and living!"

        Misery and joy will become one, and you can keep the happy with the sad as the sorrowful is to the joyful, for you cannot have a seed without the earth and the earth is naked without the water and the water is dry without space. We shine in the void, like things that shine in the void, but only if we choose to shine in the void.

        "Then I will choose to do both, and yet to do neither. To shine and be the void and to be awesome."

        When did the mission of righteous destiny begin? Was it when we reached into the heavens and took a slice of Faust?

        "The Second Impact and the Third Impact will become the Awesome Impact in twenty seconds flat."

        And so long as one pony lives it will be a testament that Equestria has ever existed in the universe. Spread the friendship, my little pony.

        "I am the magic," Rainbow Dash cooed. "I am the awesome." And with that, the glass broke all around her.

        A blue sky with swirling clouds flanked several ponies as they clapped and stomped on their hooves.

        "Congratulations!" Pinkie Pie chirped.

        "Congratulations!" Cheerilee smiled.

        "Congratulations!" Princess Celestia and Luna chanted at once.

        "Congratulations!" Rarity elegantly cooed.

        "Congratulations!" Lyra grinned like an idiot.

        "Congratulations!" Twilight Sparkle said.

        "Congratulations!" Applejack and Fluttershy sing-songed.

        "Thanks." Rainbow Dash smiled with her eyes shut. "Thank you, everypony." A beat. She blinked her eyes open, and her ears folded. "Buck. I'm forgetting something, aren't I?"

        FLASH!

        "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" Rainbow Dash howled in torment as she, Titan Angel Fluttershy, and the Burning Angel become one. The trio burned alive in a horrifying inferno... then continued their plummet towards earth.

        As soon as they impacted the mesophere, the essence of Fluttershy exploded completely. Her golden form spread like a molten metal, covering every inch of the planet. It sank into oceans, valleys, mountains, and countrysides. It poured into villages, cities, maretropolises, and even subways.

        As the golden essence came into contact with living things, they swiftly screamed—then exploded into matching platinum goo. Trees turned to organic lemonade in an instant. Grass added to the sloshing volume, sending tidal waves to every inch of the geological sphere.

        When the solution reached Lyra, she swam backwards, blushing, surrounded by a phantom herd of hands that crawled all over her ambibious body, finally giving her a much-needed ear scratch.

        "Oh...!" She yelped, and exploded into golden mist that drifted with the deep ocean current.

        Finally, in NEIGHRV headquarters, the essence of Fluttershy reached the bodies of ponies and computer operators everywhere. The cavern filled with screams of mixed horror and delight as the equines exploded one after another.

        "Gaaaaaaugh!" Luna shrieked, clutching her skull as she was crowded tightly by a phalanx of stupidly grinning Fluttershy's.

        "Yaay! Yay! Yaaaay! Yayyyy! Yay!"

        Luna burst into goo, her splashing essence joining with Fluttershy's as it wafted around Cheerilee.

        "No! Not now!" Cheerilee sobbed hysterically, flinching away from an army of Big Macintoshes with loving smiles on their freckled faces. She backed up into a wall and let loose a high-pitched screech. "I'm not ready! I'm not—Aaaugh!" She burst into goo, along with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.

        Scootaloo had retreated to the top of a table, jumping and panickedly flapping her tiny feathers as the ocean of gold kindness pooled up all around her.

        "No! Please! Work, you stupid feathers!" the filly shrieked, sobbed. "Work!"

        Just then, a pair of strong blue arms held her from behind.

        Scootaloo gasped. She looked up. "Rainbow Dash!"

        The pegasus smirked at her with a devilish grin, then winked.

        "Oh Rainbow!" Scootaloo sang with a bright warm smile. She reached back and nuzzled the pegasus as she was carried high above the spectral essence. "Rainbow! Rainbow Dash!" Both exploded in a patch of splashing gold liquid that rained down on the submerged depths of the NEIGHRV Center.

        The gold ocean surface rose higher and higher, finally reaching Princess Celestia as she calmly awaited her fate upon a looming platform, cupping two hooves beneath her chin.

        "And so the world ends, not with a bang, but with a neighing whimper..."

        "But at least it ends..." Princess Twilight Sparkle flew down and nuzzled Celestia from behind. "That is a kind thing for you, yes?"

        Celestia shed a single tear. "Would you forgive me, my student?" She turned towards her with a quivering jaw. "My love...?"

        Twilight smiled, then answered her with a kiss. Both melted, becoming one with the golden depths as it filled every last square inch of the subterranean control center, dousing the red banners of the alicorn rulers and saturating their effigies with organic life fluid.

        All across the globe, the golden spirit of life sloshed and settled, forming new oceans and new continents. Soon, every remaining scrap of land was bathed in a waterworld of liquid kindness. The Angel Lance of the Depths had embedded somewhere on the surface, its cosmic weight shifting the globe's entire axis as it spun a new course across the twinkling stars.

        Several hundreds of miles off shore, the giant grinning decapitated head of Fluttershy sank into the depths, one half sliding after the other.

        Rainbow Dash saw this with twitching eyes from where she lay on the sandy shore. For a brief moment, she thought she saw Fluttershy standing like a messiah on the waters in her Galloping Gala gown. One blink, and she was gone, replaced by endlessly crashing waves of gold life magic.

        The good bye of most finalization.

        Rainbow Dash sat up, breathing slowly. She brushed her manes back, blinked, then glanced aside.

        Applejack lay a few spaces away, her orange body bandaged from head to hoof.

        A minute later, Rainbow Dash was standing over the mare, her hooves at Applejack's throat, strangling her. She clenched her teeth, her lungs quivering with the vicious effort.

        At some point, Applejack's eyes blinked wide as she came out of her coma. Unable to breathe, she simply gazed up at Rainbow Dash as the pegasus continued to strangle her, scarring her throat with heavy blue hooves.

        Seconds limped by, and Applejack raised one of her own hooves up—trembling—and lovingly brushed the edge of Rainbow Dash's face.

        Rainbow Dash froze. Her muzzle scrunched up. One by one, tears fell from her face, littering Applejack's freckled cheek. Sobbing quietly, Rainbow Dash rolled off her, curled up into a fetal position, and shivered into the night.

        Tiredly, Applejack turned her head aside, gazing at the golden ocean beyond the crying pegasus. Her lips finally moved, her voice raspy and monotone.

        "Adjacent the feeling it disgusts..."