For the second time in only a few hours the Mechataur saw sunlight. As the massive vehicle exited the gaping hatch erupting from the streets of Canterlot, Bunsen Burner surveyed the ruined skyline around him from his command chair. He had expected that he would have been furious at the sight of seeing the city he had practically called home destroyed around him, but he was surprisingly at peace. Peace, he realized, wasn’t the exact state of mind he was experiencing. The calmness that had settled on him as he had driven the hulking mass of metal he sat in to the surface was not a happy stillness: rather, it was one that galvanized the anger inside him towards a proactive, methodical goal, like a coolant system to a heat engine. He was a weapon, but not large like a sword or clumsy like an axe. He was a scalpel: surgical, cutting deep to the origin of any given problem, and excising it without a second thought. The next problem he intended to address was Discord.
Just as he was prepared to roll out towards the center terrace, he heard it call out to him, Wait!
Bunsen Burner’s eyes widened and he slammed his back hoof down on the brake plate, bringing the Mechataur to a lurching stop.
The Maiden exclaimed in surprise at the shifting of vehicle before she yelled out from the machine’s internal workings, “What’s wrong? Why are we stopping?”
Princess Cadence may be in grim danger.
“You again,” Bunsen Burner murmured to himself, then he yelled out to the voice, “What do you mean? We’re all in danger so long as that accursed draconequus is loose!”
He will be taken care of soon enough, the voice replied, but just as equally soon Queen Chrysalis will make an attempt on the Princess’ life.
“Bunsen, are you alright?” the Maiden asked from the gunner’s seat, but the old stallion didn’t hear her.
He ground to a halt as his steel trap of a mind went over a projection of the situation. He had to choose, but which option: long term success at the cost of his goddaughter, or an emotional, short term course of action that took him out of the situation of greater importance?
Put aside your need for revenge, the voice prompted him, I need you where you were always meant to be: the lone gunpony between the monsters and those who need protecting.
Vengeance: an emotional response to equalize an arbitrary set of scales. Both situations were clearly not without their irrational roots then. Which was of greater value? Save a princess, or slay the dragon?
The seconds ticked by as he thought impatiently on which he should choose. Finally, the moral quandary boiled down to a simple question: which was more important in the end: family, or duty to the realm? Lily, the true Lily from his memories, flourished in his mind. Suddenly the answer seemed so simple.
He slammed the Mechataur back into gear with a snarl and began the transformation into its bipedal mode, “You’d better be able to handle this, whoever you are.”
Rest easy; I’ll be able to.
Dust clouded everything. The cobblestone beneath him was broken and gouging painfully upward into his legs and back. Flashes of red and green light burned through the air just beyond the heavy veil of powder in front of him. Groaning softly, Adam strained his body forward to sit up, and then he noticed the towers spiraling above.
Canterlot.
With a rush he almost laughed at the realization that he really was back in Equestria. Things were very different from when he had last been in the once shining city, and that was as big of an understatement as he could think of. He felt something resting in his right hand, and he brought it up to look at it. It was a vial full of a lavender fluid, encased in some sort of hand clamp activated hypodermic needle. The dust cleared as he gazed at the pneumatic syringe, and he saw before him the most bizarre thing in the world. A creature of some sort, composed of the fused body parts of many other animals, stood with its back to him, its attention drawn to a pillar of blue light roaring down from the skies.
“Well, no mistaking it,” he murmured to himself as he started to get up and thought about the description that had been given to him, “that’s definitely the guy I’m looking for.”
It only felt like it had just been a few minutes since they had entered the Void through the portal from Adam’s Earth. When he had become conscious of the world around him again, the mixture of the black and white insanity had been replaced by a crystal platform suspended in a dark abyss. He shook his head to clear out the drowsy feelings that clouded his thoughts, and quickly took in the details of the surrounding event. Lying not far away from him was Lyra, who was also in the act of rising from the hard floor with a grunt of discomfort. Adam jogged over to help her up, and was about to ask her if she was alright.
“Welcome, Adam,” a voice called out to him.
Startled, he whipped around to see that the one who had spoken was an older white stallion dressed in dark blue robes. The stallion smiled warmly, and teleported to the two humans.
“Our meeting has been long delayed,” he declared as he offered his right hoof in friendship to the both of them, “but at long last it is very nice to meet you in person.”
Lyra shook his hoof readily, a somber expression on her face.
Adam hesitantly took the outstretched hoof and shook it weakly. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “Are you God; because if you are, there’s going to be a lot of confused and upset people where I’m from!”
Lyra looked at him strangely, and asked, “Wait, what?”
The stallion froze, and then burst into a fit of laughter. “No, I’m not the Composer of the universe,” he replied, a chuckle still in his throat, “I’m merely its Conductor.”
“Oh, ok,” Adam said with a quick exhalation and a wipe of his brow, “So, we’re not dead then?”
“Not in the least,” he replied as his horn lit up, “Could you back up a little, please?”
Confused, Adam felt Lyra tug him backward by the arm, and realized that the floor where their feet had just been was rising up. Columns sprung up from the crystal and formed a domed roof, and a basin ascended in the center.
“It’s time, isn’t it,” Lyra asked with an anxious tone as she stared at the Conductor, “It’s time to stop Discord?”
“Events have unfortunately not transpired as I had hoped,” the white stallion commented, while Adam silently looked back and forth between the two in bewilderment, “but now is the time that I have planned we will all strike together.”
“Woahwoahwoahwoah,” Adam said as he frantically waved his hands and glanced back and forth between the two, “Can someone explain to me what’s going on? All I knew about was getting the Princesses back and maybe by a shot in the dark make it to Equestria again with them. What’s this about Discord?”
“My apologies,” the Conductor replied, and his horn lit up.
Instantaneously, Adam’s mind was flooded with the memory of a full conversation between the three of them explaining the events in Equestria, one which they had never had. Reflexively, he stumbled backward and sputtered as the newly acquired knowledge flooded his mind.
“I’m alright,” he said as he raised an arm at Lyra to reassure her, “I’m alright.” Blinking rapidly, he shook his head and muttered, “That would have been so useful for the school years.”
Lyra’s eyes widened as she too received the memories of a conversation she’d never had, and she verbally exclaimed in surprise, “Aaaaah! Watch it! My childhood memories are in here!”
“My sincerest apologies,” Janus bowed his head slightly, “but I thought it best that we all be on the same page to avoid an overly long conversation.”
“Ok, so Discord’s free,” Adam thought aloud as he rubbed his forehead, which then evolved into a question, “How do we stop him? Actually, hang on, why is there even a ‘we’? Can’t you take him on by yourself? Why do you even need us?”
“I can equal him, that is true,” Janus replied, “but I cannot destroy him. We are two parts of the same spectrum, and our status quo is in a delicate, easily destructible balance. As a being of Order, I’m only in a position to influence Discord because he has made plans, albeit very open, vague ones. Still, it is an order that I can manipulate. If I were to try and strike him down, no matter how emotionless or rational I was would matter against the fact that I would be trying to end the greatest source of improbability in the universe. That course of action, whether it actually succeeds or fails, is by its nature improbable. Discord could then have the potential to influence me, and unravel every past, present, and future strategy I have leverage in.”
“So why pick us,” Lyra asked, “I mean I’m just a regular old unicorn- No, I was a unicorn, but was transformed into a human.”
“I’m a regular old human,” Adam commented as he threw his hands up, but stopped when he looked at the Dominion Gauntlet where his left hand used to be. “Well, OK, we are pretty extraordinary,” He exclaimed as he brought his arms back down with a flop, “but what qualifies us over anyone else to be slayers of beings that represent the forces of the universe?”
Janus looked at them both contemplatively for a few moments as he analyzed his thoughts.
“I’m not completely sure how to explain it,” he admitted with a quick exhalation, “All I know is this: humans, of all the races I have observed, have the greatest amount of potential to be anything they want, whether they wish to be moral, immoral, orderly, or chaotic. Humans make war and spill blood, but they also bind up wounds and offer healing. They’ve destroyed planets and star systems over petty wealth or belief, but they also offered others, like Equestrians, a chance to share in a world they helped to restore. Perhaps that’s why Discord wiped out this timestream’s population: your nature is so great a paradox that not even he can control you, and neither can I. This is why I’ve helped you to survive the trip across dimensions: you can be my force of change for order.”
“That sounds like a contradiction,” Lyra pointed out flatly.
Janus looked at her with a knowing smile, “And in no other race’s nature can we find so grand or simple of one than in humanity’s.”
Adam furrowed his brow as he thought, and then a suspicion crossed his mind, “So with all your talk of manipulation and conducting events, how do we know you’re telling us the truth? How can we be sure you aren’t using some sort of mind control on us like Discord's been known to do?”
“I could if I wanted to,” Janus replied matter-of-factly, “but then you’d be in the same situation I am with our enemy; turning you to his side and upsetting the status quo in his favor again. No, I can’t force you to do anything, but I can appeal to you with my words instead. Discord wants to end the world that we both cherish, and he will not stop unless he is destroyed.” A flash erupted in front of Adam and Lyra, and a vial of purple liquid appeared, hovering in the air. In another flash, the small container split into two identical copies. The two ampules turned ninety degrees, waiting to be held by an outstretched hand each. “Will you help me to end his threat to existence once and for all?”
Lyra reached for her vial first, but then hesitated as she thought about what Adam had asked: how did they know they weren’t allowing themselves to be used? She had been quick to trust the Conductor’s word, but all they had to trust him was his own word and what might happen if they didn’t do as he asked. Still, the alternative was too high of a cost to not take seriously. With greater care than she had initially displayed, she took the vial into her hand.
Adam was lost in his own train of thought on the subject, but he did notice Lyra had taken her ampule of purple fluid. His concentration on the matter visibly increased. With great effort on his part, he finally came to his choice and swiped up his own vial.
“Alright, I’ll help,” he exclaimed to Janus, “but I’m not doing this because I trust you.”
“We are all getting something out of this,” Janus nodded grimly, “and that’s all that matters.”
With the acceptance of their task accomplished, the Conductor shunted the two humans to the space and time he wanted them in Canterlot. He stared down into the basin he had spent immeasurable eons looking at.
“Now it’s time to make my own entrance,” he murmured, and he disappeared from his pocket dimension with a blue flash of light.
A shockwave of deep blue magic spontaneously appeared on the battlefield of the middle terrace, drawing the attention of everypony away from the melee between the various powerful beings at play. Discord’s mismatched eyes turned to the disturbance and narrowed: this was the source of power that had seemed so foreign and hostile to him. Before he even knew what it was he tried to strike at it with all his might with a pointing of his finger, but all that happened was the appearance of a little strip of paper from the tip that said BANG! Discord looked down at his finger and scoffed, “Cute.”
“Discord,” a voice called out from the waning cloud of energy. A white stallion appeared from the dying light, his forelegs, back, and wings covered in orangish gold armor that gleamed in the sun’s midday rays. On his head sat a regal four-pointed crown made of pure gold through which his deep blue hair flowed out. A steely look was in his eyes, and his voice boomed across the field of battle, “Face me. I challenge you to physical combat. Beat me, and you can continue to terrorize this world freely without my interference on your magic. Lose, and I withhold the right to banish you from this world forever.”
Discord was legitimately surprised by such a blunt challenge, but he strode over to the stallion with confidence all the same.
“That’s a pretty interesting bet you’re wagering: very high stakes,” he commented as he stopped in front of the mysterious fourth alicorn, “but if you plan to fight me, I expect that you’ll at least be sporting enough to tell me who you are.”
The alicorn’s eyes appeared as if they were charged with energy as he looked up at the draconequus, and it almost seemed as if each cornea was the container for an entire galaxy.
“I am your antithesis,” he declared as he spread his wings wide, “I am Order given form. I am Equestria’s Guardian and Conductor, and I am your judgement.”
Discord mockingly whistled and clapped his paw and claws together, “Those are quite the descriptions! You must have worked on those for a long time. You even gave yourself the wholesome appearance of a heroic knight, come to save his kingdom by slaying the dragon.”
Discord’s tail, unbeknownst to the Conductor, slowly began to reach around his back right hoof.
“I’ve unfortunately got some news for you,” Discord declared as he cinched his tail tightly around his foe’s legs and tossed him into nearby some nearby rubble, “this dragon’s not so easily beat!”
A familiar scene unfolded not too far away. A burning Princess of the Sun had raised her sword to strike down the Queen who had tried to end her life. In the last moment before she would have done the deed, she had stopped at the pleading of her student. A bright light had consumed the area. When that light faded, a Princess Celestia, much more collected and sane than she had appeared only a few seconds before, stood above the whimpering, pathetic form of the Changeling Queen.
Time felt as if it were going at a snail’s pace for the Princess. Perhaps the crawling of the seconds was a blessing of some sort, because in the time she was given, the Princess thought about the last thing Janus had told her.
There are always more than two options for every choice we make.
Princess Celestia had lived over 1400 years of life. She had seen kingdoms rise and fall, some of them even her own. Across that seemingly enormous abyss of time she had learned one very crucial fact: everyone makes mistakes. Discord, as omnipotent as he claimed to be, had made them and allowed himself to be imprisoned. She had made the mistake of not paying more close attention to her sister when she had needed her help the most, and consequently Nightmare Moon was born. She had tried to see her sister’s dream of social equality accomplished by claiming divinity, and the colossal error of Sol Invicta was born. If they had all been so equally capable of fallibility as any mortal, then it was indeed possible that Janus was no exception. For all his supposed plans and machinations, even he could be wrong. What if there didn’t have to be bloodshed? Perhaps even now there was still a glimmer of hope of reconciliation between Equestrians and Changelings.
In those few seconds of thought, something new was born. A realm of new possibility was being opened. Princess Celestia didn’t believe in fate, and so she tried to change the world with two simple words: “No. More.”
As time seemed to return to normal, the Changeling Queen’s tears and shivering came to end, and she looked up in confusion at the now calm Princess before. Nightmare Moon, Princess Cadence, Twilight Sparkle, and everyone who watched seemed to be involuntary holding their breath, as the air hung thick with destiny.
Princess Celestia looked down at the Changeling Queen with her practiced diplomatic demeanor, and stepped away, “The battle is no more. Surrender.”
Her opponent blinked in surprise as she stared up at her.
“I want peace and healing for the both of our herds,” the Princess continued with an imploring tone, “We can do that together. The future can be a bright one, just please yield to me!”
The Queen looked up at the Princess, visibly mystified by this sudden change of heart. Then comprehension quickly came down on her about what this situation meant: this ‘peace offering’, even if genuine, would only be a means for her Hive to be oppressed by the common rabble of Equestria. They would be outcasts, not conquerors; starving and dying when they had just had a future of guaranteed prosperity. She had failed.
No. So long as her enemies didn’t get their victory unscathed, she could always claim victory.
“I will never accept your terms,” she hissed. Spawning her chainsword once again, Queen Chrysalis stabbed up and through Princess Celestia’s ribcage.
The Princess choked, her eyes widened, and she slowly fell onto her back hooves.
“Tia,” Nightmare Moon screamed, as she ran to her sister’s side. The Princess of the Moon’s eyes grew from their draconic shape to a normal equine set, her black coat changed to a phthalo hue, and her astral mane and tail turned into silvery azure as she galloped toward her sister. Her concern for Celestia’s well-being her most immediate priority, a weakened Princess Luna had reasserted herself over her darker counterpart.
“Princess!” Twilight Sparkle yelled in horror as she too teleported to her.
“I will have my vengeance on you all,” the Queen shrieked as she ran towards the nearest edge of the city, ready when there to take flight back to the Hive’s temporary home in the North and call a full retreat.
Princess Cadence, being the only one standing in the Queen’s path, summoned her ethereal bow, quickly notched an arrow, and fired on her. The magical projectile soared through the air and plunged into the Queen’s shoulder, who screamed in pain and fury.
The Queen’s horn began to glow, ready to target the Princess of Love, and unknowingly her unborn child, with a powerful hex.
Janus slammed into another pile of rubble, his body already between broken and mending as the energies that powered him restored his physical being. Discord loomed over him, ready to swipe at his exposed underbelly with his claws. Instinctively, the alicorn kicked with all his might against the serpentine body of his enemy, which sent the draconequus flying back. Discord hissed as he felt pain for the first time, his traumatized organs already healing and returning to their normal place. Mortality, he quickly determined, was very unwelcome and not advantageous to him. Janus rushed him even as he was sprawled on the street, and slammed down on his ribs, stamping on him with all his might. Wrapping his lower body up and around the alicorn, Discord returned the favor by trying to crush Janus’ bones with his constriction, even as he slashed away with his claws. Janus bit down into the draconequus’ fur, drawing out his red regenerative energies even as his own blue ones seeped out of him.
“You can fool them all you want with your ‘defending the realm’ shlock,” Discord sneered, “but we both know what you really are. I’m Chaos incarnate! I was the Big Bang! I’m the life of the universe itself!”
“You’re the reason pain, suffering, and decay exists,” Janus snapped.
“So what does that make you, Mr. Order? Stasis, inertia, the end of all things! Death! We may have a difference of opinion on a cosmic scale, but if I’m taken away, all that leaves is a darkness that never starts or ends!”
Discord flew upward and tossed Janus free, who recovered his balance and immediately flew up to piledrive the draconequus straight back into the ground.
“Look at us,” Discord said with a laugh as his body reconstituted into its usual asymmetrical form, “the powers of the universe at our disposal, and we spend our little battle acting like common, uncivilized beasts! Really though, we are very much alike: using spider’s webs to ensnare mere mortals into our bidding, more ability to shape reality around us than most can dream, but where does Chaos stop and Order begin They’re practically the same thing in the end!”
Janus was about to respond when his attention was ripped to somewhere nearby. Through his view of the potential divergent timelines, he saw Queen Chrysalis about to strike his mother with a bolt of energy. There were only 7 of 1046 universes where he would survive. His heart gripped with horror as he realized the Princess may have failed her choice.
Reaching back in time to just a few minutes previous, he tugged on one of the minds he had predestined in the past. Wait! Princess Cadence may be in grim danger.
Through a set of similarly knowledgeable eyes, Princess Celestia watched in what felt like slow motion as the horrific future she had witnessed was imminently about to become true. With a wound gaping open and magic pouring out of her body, the Princess sprang off the ground, crumbling the stone beneath her. As she soared through the air, the seconds ticked by like years. Turning into a beam of light, she swooped down. The Queen’s horn was glowing emerald, milliseconds from unleashing a bolt of lightning on Princess Cadence. Reappearing in her normal equine body just above the Queen of the Changelings, the Princess yelled a great “NO!”
Her golden sword slowly appeared out of thin air, its usual wavy construction present once more. With a twirling fall and a swing of her blade, Princess Celestia cut through Queen Chrysalis’ horn, shattering the tip.
A small but vibrant green explosion erupted out of the point where the horn had once joined its head. Princess Celestia landed on all four of her feet, coughing heavily and collapsing to the ground as her wound and the exertion of the act overtook her. Princess Cadence had been prepared to fire another arrow, but rushed over to her aunt’s side to see if she was alright. A deep rumbling sound filled the air as titanic hoof falls approached from behind her, and a deafened thud echoed across the battlefield.
The voice entered Princess Cadence’s mind with an uncharacteristic yell, Teleport yourselves away now!
Wasting no time on questions, Princess Cadence clutched Princess Celestia in her hooves and caused them to disappear in a cyan flash of light.
Stunned and oozing green gel from her chest wound, the Queen of the Changelings didn’t notice what was happening until it was too little, too late. A canister landed next to her, and purple gas spilled out of it. The mist filled her lungs, which felt like she was getting frostbitten from the inside out.
The Mechataur sprinted towards the dazed Queen and snatched her up into its palms.
“Thrusters,” Bunsen Burner roared to the Maiden.
With only a second’s delay, the behemoth’s Arcanium thrusters ignited, and the Mechataur slowly began to ascend up and away from the city.
Discord took advantage of his opponent's distraction and slammed him into the ground, ripping away at the stallion’s chest with a visceral glee. After a few vindictive addition swipes of his claws, Discord needed a chance to breathe. Standing straight up, he watched as the slashes and tears in his mortal enemy’s coat slowly mended back together with flashes of his magic. Having passed out from the pain, Janus’ eyes flew open as he began to recover. He could sense that Adam and Lyra were not far off, so he needed to make his performance last. Gasping in pain like he never had before, he took in deep gulps of air as he waited.
“I think you’re wrong about something,” he said through an exaggerated cough of pain.
“I've been hearing something like that all day,” Discord said with bemusement, then he shoved one of his talons into Janus’ stomach, “Enlighten me at your own risk.”
Janus gave a very real shout of agony before he continued on between gasps of pain, “Order and Chaos…”
“Yeeess?” Discord twisted his claw in the wound.
Silently, Lyra stalked behind the draconequus, syringe in hand. Adam appeared not too far away from the opposite side of the pile of rubble Lyra had emerged near.
Making sure to not give them away, Janus looked straight into Discord’s eyes, “We’re two sides of the same coin, but we are separated by a very fine line; sharp as a knife’s edge.”
“And that fine line is?”
Janus smiled, “The still moment, a very singular pause in all things: the existence of Potential.” With a small grunt of pain, he then shouted as loud as he could, “NOW!”
Discord was surprised by two very distinct battle cries coming from behind him. As a force of habit, he snapped his fingers as he turned, but nothing happened.
Lyra slammed her needle into Discord’s lower abdomen, and released the solution into his body.
With a flying jump Adam stabbed his into the draconequus’ chest.
Discord looked down at the two needles puncturing his body, and he felt the serum flowing through his physical form: it was like a nothingness was creeping through him, swallowing up everything that he was. His eyes grew in surprise, and then he looked at the ones who had done the deed.
The woman he recognized from the little talk they had mentally had many months ago, though she had obviously traded in her old unicorn body.
The man! He was the one he couldn't remember when he had sent Celestia away. As he continued to look at him, some sort of hallucination made the way the human appeared to be change. He seemed so bright, shining like a star of pure undiluted white light, only his outline was the deepest black.
“I…” he tried to speak, but the words he wanted to say felt like they were being sucked down a drain which he couldn't climb back up, “I…don’t understand.”
Adam had thought about what this mismatched creature represented, and he looked up at the draconequus, “Even though they never got the chance to be here, humans still beat you.”
Discord wanted to be furious, but the concept was leaving him. He lost balance and fell backward, landing in a haphazard mess on the shattered masonry beneath him.
“This was for the Maiden,” Adam declared as he turned and walked away, “and for all the rest.”
Lyra stayed, still shocked that the being who she had always known as the source of all disharmony was now dying before her.
Discord looked up at her as he began to breathe erratically, and he pointed to Janus. With great effort, he muttered, “Watch him.” He then looked over at Janus and chuckled softly, “Good luck without me.”
With one last great spasm, Discord lurched forward and bit down on his own tail. Lyra instinctively leapt backward with a gasp at the sudden movement. Discord’s eye’s became grey and sightless, and in one last bizarre act he chewed his way up his tail, then to his legs, his torso and arms. When he reached his head his prominent fang fell out, and his jaw, almost like the pattern of a Mobius strip, wrapped around and ate his own skull.
As he finally realized the goal he had planned for nearly 1500 years was accomplished, the death of Discord entered Janus' mind. As he processed what this meant, a door into the future he had never before seen opened in front of him. All the timelines he could see, each like an elegant strand of color in a rainbow pattern, was violently sucked down into a singularity: one general outcome that united all of them in their futures. After it, nothing. A darkness deeper and blacker than he had ever seen consumed the vision of his mind.
“No,” he whispered to himself in abject terror, “by all the sacred stars, this can’t be possible!”
Lyra didn't hear what the alicorn was saying, but squatted down to pick up the fang of Discord, the singular remnant to mark his passing. Suddenly, she noticed a large mass moving through the sky away from Canterlot towards the Northwest, and she couldn't help but exclaim aloud, “What in Tartarus is that?!”
The Mechataur ascended steadily away from the city. Bunsen Burner flipped open the glass case of an overhead button and slammed it upward. The canopy of the forward compartment was filled with red light, and a small counter to the far right of the console activated and began to tick away.
Sixty seconds.
The old stallion wrestled the controls to try and maintain a steady altitude, and so he didn't notice the Maiden had left her post possessing the gunner’s seat to meld with his mind.
“What are you doing?” she quietly asked from inside his mind: she hadn't taken full control of his senses, but only enough that she could understand and speak without interfering.
“The Queen and I have too much blood on our hooves,” he yelled over the internal noises of the tank-golem, “We have too much to answer for to not receive the highest sentence possible. Besides, I’d rather die than live to rot in another cell without a purpose.” He realigned course to allow for detonation over an unpopulated forest near the capitol, “You’d better go. There’s not much time left.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” the Maiden replied simply.
Bunsen Burner unconsciously flinched in surprise at her choice, “Why?”
“Because there’s still fifty seconds left to convince you there’s a life worth living out there.”
Bunsen Burner was silent, so she pressed on, “I was forced to become a scientist because my society dictated so. I lived that life even after I become the last human, because Discord needed to be countered. I spent all of your world history guarding the secrets of human technology. Even in death and having the patience of a machine, this purpose driven life has offered me nothing but misery.”
Three precious seconds of precious silence ticked back.
“What did you want to be, if you had been given the option,” Bunsen Burner asked, his voice betraying his cracked image of control and self-assurance with a tiny waver.
“I wanted to be a storyteller,” she replied softly.
Bunsen Burner glanced down at the counter: thirty-five seconds.
“When I was a young colt, the mysteries nature offered and that science answered amazed me. I always wanted to study them, but at my leisure: not looking for a means of weaponization, or an anti-toxin, just observing the passing of a grand and marvelous universe.” His eyes migrated downward as he thought, and he murmured, “I never got to do that.”
“But you can now,” the Maiden responded, “I can offer you knowledge like you've never dreamed. I want to give you something I never had: a second chance to live before you die.”
Twenty-five seconds.
“Were you too afraid to face death,” Bunsen Burner asked with an accusatory tone, “Is that really why you stayed after the creation of my world?”
“No,” she replied, “I stayed because I still had too much to atone for.”
Bunsen Burner looked up and out to the world outside his metal coffin. A blue sky greeted him, and rich green trees. Puffy white clouds were on the horizon, and a beautifully yellow noon sun sat in the sky. It seemed like any other day, but at the same time there was no better day than the one before him. Lily had loved rainy days, but a day like this…These were the kind of days she absolutely adored. Tears began to bead near the center of his eyes.
“I don’t deserve this,” he said in a cracking voice, “I don’t deserve a second chance.”
“I know,” she replied soothingly as eleven seconds ticked to ten, “That’s why, if you take this, you should make it count the most that you can.”
Queen Chrysalis, beginning to awaken from her poisoned daze, tried to shapeshift out of the Mechataur’s grip, but found that she couldn't. “You can’t hold me forever,” she screamed, and tried to struggle against the hydraulic pistons enclosed around her, but to no avail.
Seven seconds.
Bunsen Burner slammed the eject lever at his side down. The bolts around the forward compartment exploded, but the canopy remained in place. A light signaling an ejection fault flashed.
Bunsen Burner quickly glanced at the countdown.
Four.
Three.
Two.
Sitting back in the pilot’s seat, he closed his eyes and whispered to himself, “Lily.”
With a mighty roar and a burst of flashing colors, the Mechataur violently exploded. The distant thump of the detonation took a full second to reach Canterlot after the spectacle ended.
From his perch in the clouds above, Mr. Black bowed his head and began a prayer, “Oh Elysia, goddess of the warriors slain, send your valkyries to lift up the soul of this honored foreigner. Bring him to a place of peace and happiness now that his fighting days are done.”