Benjaman pushed himself off the dirt floor and looked up at his goddess, Mind, smiling devilishly. In the corner of his eye he saw the great mountain and the clock on top of it. The world clock had only four minutes left, but he was determined to make sure that when everything ended, it would end with a bang.
"You already received the highest honor. Why do you continue?" His goddess asked him in monotone as she floated to the ground.
"Because I love this!" He yelled without thinking. When he did think, his eyes widened in surprise. Yes, it really was that simple, wasn't it? But whatever the answer, that wasn't what he should have been concentrating on then.
The crowd in the Colosseum around him didn't matter. The air outside didn't even matter at that moment. All that mattered was him, his opponent, and everything else inside the boundary.
"What about you?" he yelled as he raised his arm. Suddenly, a missile appeared and flew towards Mind. It collided with a wall of reinforced steel, but instead of exploding, it began to drill its way through. Unfortunately, the steel wall turned in midair, so when the missile burrowed through the other side, it launched right at him. He re-positioned the exhaust pipe, sending it into a tail-spin.
"For my sister." Mind answered back. Was that a small involuntary smile on her face? If so, that would be the first in hundreds of years!
She snapped her fingers and created two gravity rings, one just inside the boundary, and one around herself.
Benjamin frowned as he slammed into the ground. Of course, that was all she cared about, wasn't it? The rest of the world was only facts to her. So everything he heard about her was true... Or was it?
He smiled. Why did he love this sort of thing in the first place? Was it not because his family and friends always cheered him on? After all, without them, who would he be? Would he be anyone?
"Then this is for my family too." He didn't know what frequencies of light Mind was using for her modified light-tweezer, so he simply built a ring around him that blocked every frequency. Then he mounted turrets on top to destroy the outer ring.
"You've blinded yourself." He heard his goddess speak. "That was foolish."
She was coming.
Benjamin turned the walls around him into steel, then sheets of layered graphene. He quickly remembered the top and closed that up too. It was dark, but only for a second.
Then everything went red.
Of course. She was smart. She would use whatever he built against him, just like she'd been doing the whole time. Carbon and steel could burn. All it would take was a short-lived rusting bacteria. That was nothing for someone who had supposedly finished finding the correct folding of every human protein twenty years ago.
Before he suffocated or incinerated, he desperately made an oxygen canister.
It exploded.
Benjamin blinked. The first thing he noticed was that he was in a kneeling position, with his goddess's hand on his head. The second thing he noticed was the scorch marks around him and his bunker thrown to the side.
"It appears I remember you well." Mind smiled. He swore he could even see the tell-tale crinkles around her eyes that meant actual happiness. Then again, she probably would have learned how to fake a smile better since ancient history.
He smiled dumbly back at her. How could he not? His goddess had just given him the highest praise that anyone had ever received!
Benjamin turned his head. The world clock counted ten seconds...
Fuck it.
He stood up and hugged his goddess, taking mischievous pleasure in the look of surprise on her face and the tensing of her muscles. After a couple seconds, she hugged him back.
The ground shook. Distant lands could be heard crumbling.
He hugged her tightly, now more afraid for his life than ever before.
The colosseum crumbled around him. He could see the people in the stands praying before fading out. The shielding around the boundary dissipated and everything inside faded in less than a second.
Benjamin was gone.
"I didn't know you were one for theatrics." Heart laughed. "Was that really necessary?" She had let herself fall from the stands once they dissipated, and now she was about 5 o' clock from mind.
Mind turned as a ballerina would and faced her sister. She didn't even try to hide her cheshire grin anymore as she held her hand to her forehead. "I'm sorry," she said in a lilting tone reminiscent of someone mad with power. "I just can't wait."
Heart stepped back in surprise. "Jesus! You look like a fucking monster when you do that, you know."
Mind frowned. "I don't have to hide my feelings around my own sister too, do I?"
"No." Heart sighed. "Of course not." She smiled wryly. "And I understand where you're coming from. I've done a lot of training myself, and I'd love to test out my ideas in reality. I'd also like to stretch my arms for once." She swung her right arm in a circle, then her left arm, and smiled giddily. "And now we can finally have friends that don't live in our heads."
"Uh-huh," Mind replied absentmindedly. She looked like she was concentrating on something else. Suddenly, she disappeared.
Heart frowned. That girl never seemed to care about relationships at all. The only thing that made her smile was learning, and the only person she really smiled around was Heart. Even then, she probably just liked being around Heart because she could compete with her.
Heart sighed and opened her eyes to the world outside, fading from the shared mind-space.
Mind looked at the cracking statue of Discord. 'I think we should wait,' she thought.
'uugh...' Heart thought back. 'At least make some cameras or something. I'm not just gonna watch the same place for several hours.'
'Already done,' Mind thought. 'I also added a layer of stone around us so there will be less chance of them resealing us. You're looking through a monitor now. Blink to switch views.'
Heart sent the emotion of satisfaction over the mind-link before blinking a few times. In her main view, she saw that Discord's statue was no longer full of cracks.
'And you did the same for Discord,' Heart thought. 'What are you planning?'
'Nothing.'
Heart could hear the lie in her sisters voice. 'If you're not going to tell me, why show me at all?' She felt a feeling of frustration come over. Finally, it changed to satisfaction.
'Think of it like a game you play to learn and increase your skills,' Mind thought.
'I'm not your test subject.' Heart tried to frown.
Then sadness came over. That was new. The only thing that should have made Mind sad was the prospect of there being nothing to learn about once she understood everything.
'No,' Mind thought, 'you're my opponent,'
'You're not planning on--!'
Heart felt Mind's hand slip from hers.
The statue of love stood in Canterlot gardens. Two female stridetaurs held hands, desperately trying not to be separated. It somehow fit the current stormy weather, even with its unheard of chocolate rain.
The statue exploded. Shards of cement flew everywhere, and a single stridetaur stood in the remains, hot tears trailing down its face.
Heart grit her teeth as she shook some cement dust off. But her grimace faded into a look of disbelief when she looked at the hole beside her. Where Mind should have stood, there was a circle filled with broken rocks and dirt. So, Mind burrowed away.
She contemplated chasing her, but she knew she would never catch up when her sister could just make some drilling machine, or a jet. But... Mind was the only one she knew! She didn't even have a statue like Celestia did!
...Everyone else was dead...
Heart collapsed to her knees and screamed.