//------------------------------//
// The Bat 
// Story: The War of Champions 
// by Onomonopia 
//------------------------------//

Batmare tried to not take any pleasure in the loud crack that came from her foe's jaw as she drove her electrified hoof into his mouth.  But, what she did take pleasure in was that the words that had been spewing from Undra's mouth were silenced by the blow to the mouth. She could almost see his skull in the dark room, once the electricity in her gauntlets coursed through his head, creating one of the few sources of light in the room.

Despite knowing that there was enough electricity within those gauntlets to drop a rhino, she remembered that Captain Marvel had unleashed all of his magical might upon Undra and the "pony" had kept getting up. So she cranked the dials on her gauntlets up to eleven, before she lunged forward once again and drove her hooves into the skull of her foe.

"You know, for somepony who's supposedly a part of Adam's great fighting force, you sure do a great job of standing still and getting punched in the face," Batmare taunted as she spun and drove the side of her back hoof into the side of Undra's head, snapping it to the side before she leaped over his head and delivered an elbow to his back. He staggered at the blow and was unable to retaliate as Batmare landed, yet the Bat's eyes narrowed with confusion after she had delivered her blow.

"What's the matter, Bat? You almost seemed as if you're confused about something," Undra harshly said with a chuckle as he slowly turned to face Batmare, who thought for a moment that she saw his body squirming beneath the cloak. 

"Yeah, I'm confused as to why the End of Days would let somepony as weak as you into their organization," Batmare retaliated with a snarl while reaching into her utility belt and whipping out a pair of batarangs that she then hurled at Undra, who said nothing as the sharp, bat-shaped weapons dug themselves into his cloak. She managed to keep her surprise hidden when Undra reached up and yanked the batarangs out of his cloak, which he then turned over in his hoof with a small chuckle before he hurled them to the floor.

"Ah, that is a question that has a simple answer, Bat. I could get close to Adam. No other pony could do that," Undra replied as the veil that covered his face parted for a second, allowing Batmare to see a squirming smile while he slowly tilted his head to the side. "You must really love bats if you dress yourself and model your weaponry after them. I love bats too. In fact, let me show you some of my favorite bats."

As he said this, a circle of light materialized on the floor, getting Batmare to jump back as she squinted her eyes at the sudden circle of life, wondering for a moment what game Undra was playing before a black, leathery arm reached through the light and grabbed hold of the stone floor. Batmare slowly backed away as a massive, shadowy bat pulled itself free from the circle of light, its red eyes the only part of it that was visible in the blinding light. Yet Batmare could still tell that it was much larger than she was.  The eyes hovering at least two feet above her told her that much.

"Yes, bats are such wondrous creatures," Undra rasped with a smile as the bat began to advance upon Batmare, who began cycling through the gadgets and items she had upon her belt to see if she had anything that could bring her cousin down. "They have such unique abilities, such as the ability to find any prey in the dark." As he said this, the circle of light vanished at the same time as the torches on the wall, leaving the three in total darkness. "Now tell me, one who dresses herself like a bat, can you do what a real bat can do?"

The bat screeched as it hurled itself forward, both arms extended as it prepared to bite down upon Batmare. Yet Batmare was able to react with ease, for not only had she been trained to fight in the dark, but the cowl also had a night vision feature that allowed her to see with even more clarity than she had been able to when the lights were on. She leapt back as the bat brought its fangs down into the floor, right where she had been standing, and she hurled a batarang at the creature's skull, watching it bounce off of the bat without leaving much of an injury.

'This bat seems to have traces of magic running through it, but they aren't strong enough to convince me that it's a creature of magic,' Batmare thought as the cowl fed her information about her nocturnal foe. She then slightly turned her head so that Undra was within view as well and a small frown crossed her face, because she read what the cowl brought up on him. 'He's the only thing in this room currently that's a mystery. I can't see his form beneath the cloak, but the cowl says that there are nearly a thousand life forms in this room and most come from him. What the heck is he?'

She couldn't focus on that train of thought for long because one of the bat's wings shot up at her and she had to use her own wings to avoid the blow. 'Priorities Batmare, focus on the bat before the pony.' With narrowed eyes Batmare reached into her belt and pulled out a small device, clutching it in her hoof as she angled herself just right, so that when the bat took another swipe at her with its wing, she was able to duck under it and land herself right next to its head.

"Sorry about this, but at worst you'll just have a splitting headache," Batmare apologized before planting the small device right next to the bat's ear before she leapt off and turned off her cowl's audio sensors. While she couldn't hear what was going on, the moment the bat began to roll around in agony while clawing at its head, informed her that the device had worked. 'Those sonics are designed to bring down criminals, but with a creature that uses its ears more than its eyes, a slight tweak will hurt even a bat as well.'

Undra shook his head as he watched his creature roll around in pain for a moment longer before light began to shine underneath of his hood, a light that Batmare noticed was like a dark green. The bat slowly began to dissolve as the green light touched its form, leaving it as nothing more than a pile of darkness on the ground that slowly faded away a moment later.

"Well, I would expect a bat to know how to defeat a bat," Undra said with a creepy laugh before he stepped forward this time. "But I supposed that the same would be said for any monster or creature that I tried to summon against one such as yourself. So, I shall be the one to kill you, Bat, just as I have killed other bats before."

"Well, this bat has a few tricks up her sleeve," Batmare responded before letting fly a number of spheres containing paralysis gas. A gas mask shot out from the sides of her cowl to cover her face as the green gas began to envelope the room, getting Batmare to expect her foe to drop over at any moment. But to her surprise, the pony simply laughed before he thrust one of his legs forward, sending out a torrent of darkness towards the bat. Batmare once again took to the air to avoid the blow and she looked down to find that the blast of darkness that slammed into the wall had just barely missed her.

"It matters not what tricks you have; I will still pluck your wings from your body before I am done with you," Undra threatened as he thrust his other foreleg towards Batmare and unleashed another swarm of darkness towards her. Batmare managed to get to the side to avoid the attack, but she quickly realized that while the room may have been large enough for a giant bat to fit in it, the room was still too small for her to use the air to her advantage. She'd be doing most of the actual fighting on the ground.

'But now I'm just totally confused, ' she thought to herself as she saw through her cowl's "detective vision" feature that the dark room was nearly covered by florescent blue lights. Yet in detective mode the only time things would appear as florescent blue was when the cowl was identifying living beings. 'So why is everywhere he just shot blue? Is the darkness a part of himself?'

She had no time to analyze the new information as a moment later Undra was unleashing his darkness in waves that forced Batmare to use all of her focus to keep herself just out of reach of his attacks. 'Can't stay on the defensive forever, got to start trying some offense soon.' She reached into her belt and hurled an exploding batarang right at the ground in front of Undra, rolling down and covering herself with her cape as the batarang went off with a loud explosion. Yet when she lowered her cape to see what had happened to her foe, she found him still standing upright with a smile on his face, completely unharmed.

"Just what are you?" Batmare asked with some trepidation as she began to formulate her next plan of attack, getting a dry chuckle from her foe as he began to move towards her.

"I am a monster, a creature that has long since been cast out of this land. I am a servant of Star-Swirl the Bearded," Undra explained with another chuckle before he tilted his head towards Batmare, as if curious about her. "Yet what about you? The bat pony...the Dark Knight...the blank flank." No amount of training could have prepared Batmare for those words and for a brief moment she was too stunned to even mask her shock. In that moment, another surge of darkness shot forth from Undra's arm and it slammed into Batmare's chest, hurling her across the room and pinning her to the wall. Batmare struggled to escape as she strained against the darkness, but when she looked down the cowl showed her that it wasn't darkness that pinned her to wall.

"Bugs?" Batmare asked with sheer confusion in her voice as she looked down to see that it was not darkness that made up the tendrils, but it was instead hundreds of insects that held her against the wall.

"Well, so much for you being your world's greatest detective," Undra said with a laugh, as he lowered his hood to reveal that his "face" was instead thousands of bugs that were crawling all over each other, with two glowing red spheres peaking out from under the swarm of bugs while a red gem rested upon his head. "Surprised? I cannot say that I blame you...most ponies are shocked when they see my real form. Shocked to death, I suppose you could say."

"What the hell are you?" Batmare asked as she slowly reached behind her into her utility belt once again.

"My true form is this little gem upon my head," Undra explained with a smile as he pointed to the gem that rested amongst all the insects. "It allows me to control simple-minded creatures such as these bugs that make up my form. My people are just the gems, Batmare, gems that rely on controlling other creatures to survive."

"Funny. First time I've heard of you." 

'That's right, Bats, keep him talking. Don't let him see what you're doing,' Batmare thought to herself as she began to cycle through her gadgets once again.

"No surprise. The other members of my race were idiots and as such they chose to control dragons or ponies or griffons, and then used those bodies to attack villages or cities and invoke the wrath of the princesses, thus getting themselves destroyed," Undra said with a cold sneer before a red smile broke out on his face. "But insects? Who would care if one insect or a thousand of insects were taken control of? Let me answer that for you, by saying that I've been around for nearly five hundreds years, so the answer is no pony."

"So what you're saying is, that no pony will miss you when you're gone!" Batmare whipped out the plasma torch and, as the cowl's visor switched to its darkest tint, flipped on the blue flame and drove it into the column of bugs that held her against the wall. Undra roared with surprise as Batmare sliced his arm from his body, allowing her to free herself with a quick effort. "It was also pretty stupid of you to tell me what your weaknesses were, since now I know that if I get the gem, I stop you."

"Do you think me such a fool that I would tell you my weakness, without the knowledge that there is nothing you can do about it?" Undra smiled at the look of confusion that bled through the mask, getting him to laugh after a moment. "I know you. You're a hero, one of those fools who always does the right thing. So that's why I told you my weakness and why I'll tell you this. These insects are my body now and this gem is my brain. So I hope I don't need to spell out what would happen if you tore my brain from my body?"

"You could be lying," Batmare snarled after a moment of thought, but Undra smiled in reply as he created a finger and wagged it.

"Ah, but is that a risk a hero like you would make?" 

Batmare roared in rage as she activated her shock gauntlets again and hurled herself forward, but this time the tendrils of insects erupted from his back and slammed themselves into Batmare. The force of the blow knocked her upwards, leaving her open to being drilled from the side and slammed into one of the walls. The insects wrapped around her midsection and lifted her off of the wall before slamming her into it once again, nearly breaking her bones while Undra's voice assaulted her ears.

"But enough about me, let's talk about you," Undra chuckled as he whipped the bat across the room and into the floor. "You are Scootaloo, a blank flank, a pony that even after thirty years has been unable to find her cutie mark, her destiny." As he said this, the bats wrapped around her cowl and tore it from her head, revealing her orange face as her purple mane tumbled down. "I did some digging into the multiverse myself and found only a number of times a bat pony had been created. And there was only one where a certain silver mare was involved."

"You going to make your point, or are you trying to talk me to death?" Batmare scowled in reply as she let two more explosive batarangs fly from her hooves, yet the horde of insects swallowed both the batarangs and the explosions, leaving Undra to unleash a second and third swarm of insects that slammed into her.

"You pegasi and earth ponies may be inferior to unicorns in nearly every way, but there is something that all ponies share no matter what race they are. And that is they all have cutie marks," Undra said with a snarl as a fourth tendril shot out from his body and grabbed her leg, the other three tendrils following suit as they each grabbed one of Batmare's limbs. "Yet, you don't have one. Not because you do not have a destiny, but because you refuse to accept your destiny! That makes you even less than the inferior races!"

"No, it makes me a master of my own fate!" Batmare roared in reply as she struggled to escape, yet her years of training weren't enough to overpower the thousands of insects working together to tear her apart limb from limb. "I chose my own fate! I didn't let destiny chose for me! I stayed true to the lessons of my father and what I believed, and because of that, I found out who I wanted to be without a cutie mark!"

"Heh, so you are just somepony who ran from their destiny. How pitiable," Undra said with disdain as he shook his head before looking back up with a smirk. "Now look where that 'following your own path' has taken you. It has taken you to your death!" As he roared this, the insects began to pull, getting Batmare to roar in pain as he felt herself beginning to be torn apart...until everything came to a stop. Batmare looked around to see that everything in the room was frozen in time and that, with a small effort, she was able to free herself. The moment she was free, a blinding silver light appeared beside her and when the light subsided enough so that she could see, she was shocked to see a silver Diamond Dog standing before her.

'How curious,' the dog said in an ancient voice, yet his voice also sounded a little bit like Batmare's. 'Even now, do you still continue to refuse to face the truth of your destiny? That is what defined everypony since the very first pony was born into existence.  Do you refuse to kill this foe, even when it is the only way to stop him?'

"No. I've come to face the truth that destiny is nothing more than a crutch that ponies lean on when they don't want to decide who they themselves want to be!" Batmare roared back, not knowing why the dog's words made her so angry, but she felt as if she had to unleash the full truth before the being. "I will not allow something like destiny to decide who I am; to decide my life for me! I choose who I am and I will choose my own life! And I chose to stay true to my father's teachings and find a way to beat Undra without killing him! That is who I am!"

The Diamond Dog leaned back his head and let out a small laugh before he looked back at Batmare, his eyes radiating for a moment before he vanished in a flash of light.  Yet, he left behind one last message for Batmare. 'You have spoken true about yourself, Scootaloo.  Neither Destiny, nor any being, will decide who you are, for only you can do that. Now go save this world, my Champion of Integrity.'

A massive explosion of energy went off that blasted away all of the insects near Batmare, forcing Undra to shield his eyes as the divine force generated from the explosion illuminated the dark room and blasted away the walls that kept in the shadows, letting in the light. 

Yet when he could see again, he found that the bat that stood before him was not the bat that he had fought a moment ago. Batmare's black suit was replaced with a beautiful silver and gold suit that shone like the sun, with a golden cowl that replaced the one that Undra had torn off.  The only color on her that wasn't gold or silver, was the black bat that rested upon a golden necklace that rested around her throat, showing Undra who she truly was.

"So, it is true. You are the chosen champions of the Elements," Undra muttered as Batmare turned her now golden eyes towards the swarm of insects, her eyes narrowing as he unleashed all of his power at the pony. She watched as the waves of insects came rushing towards her before she spread her wings and flapped them once, creating a massive burst of golden magic that washed over the insects. Yet, instead of hurting the insects, the waves of golden magic washed away the red energy that had been controlling them and a moment later, Batmare watched as thousands of insects began to fly into the sky above.

"Be free, little ones. No one should ever have their life decided for them by another, not even insects," Batmare said with a warm smile before she looked back to where Undra had stood.  Yet to her moderate surprise, she found that the last few insects that were still loyal to him had already carried him far off from the ruined room and were now flying him over the grassy fields upon which the room had been resting.

"No Undra, you will not escape." Batmare rocketed forwards as she said this and quickly overtook the insects in a flash of golden light. It took her a second to catch the insects and less time than that to free them from the influence of the gem, which fell into her hooves as the insects dropped it to fly off. "So, it seems that if your host's willing to let you go, you don't die. Good for you."

'So then, Bat, you have caught me. What will you do with me now?' Undra asked her through her mind, getting Batmare to think for a moment before a smile crossed her face. 

"I think I'll bury you on the moon," Batmare responded with a small laugh as she saw the light from the gem dim a little at the threat. But then the light came back as Umbra let loose a small laugh.

'Sorry, Bat, but it seems that I am still needed. But do not worry, we shall meet again very soon.' The moment Undra said this a torrent of true darkness surrounded the gem and consumed it, revealing that the gem was gone when Batmare blasted the darkness apart with her light.

"Damn it, he got away," Batmare said with a growl as she turned her head back towards Canterlot, the magic within her telling her that something was amiss in the city. Without a second thought, she then rocketed herself towards the city, flying at speeds that Rainbow Dash could hardly imagine. 'I need to get back and help the others. If this feeling is correct, than the darkness that shall swallow this land is nearly upon us,' Batmare thought to herself before a dark thought overtook her mind. 

'And we are still down a champion; still down the final member that will allow us to unleash the full power of the original Elements,' Batmare worried as she flew. 'For as strong as the Elements, are individually, only together can they fight back this darkness. Any less...will spell the end.'