//------------------------------// // In Which Friendships are Forged (1/2) // Story: The Usurper King of Equestria // by UsurperBronyZant //------------------------------// *Location: Outside the Castle of the Two Sisters, Everfree Forest, Equestria, Equus, now…* Two days had passed since Twilight had introduced me to the citizens of Ponyville. I’d managed to make nice with the locals and had gotten to know a few of them, and they’d adjusted to my presence pretty well. Argorok had kept mostly to himself. I checked on him every day just to see how he was doing. After a couple days I’d gotten bored and, with nothing else to do, I figured I might as well go back to the castle to see if I could find any clues about the nature of my arrival here in Equestria. I was about to go inside when I noticed something strange up against the wall of the castle. It was a very strange black and green cylinder. It looked very high-tech and almost alien in origin. Quite curious, I picked it up and was shocked to hear a voice in my mind. It said, “I am the changer of shape, seeking to understand the many forms of life. Call for the man of many shapes during your hour of need and I will come, a one man army. Activate the cylinder and in a flash I’ll be ready to clash.” This was an interesting and thoroughly confusing development. “Dafuq?” I thought. “What even is this thing? Might as well activate it…” With no further delay, I pressed the dial on top of the strange object. Nothing happened, so I figured maybe it was establishing a telepathic link. Acting upon this thought, I focused intensely on the cylinder and thought, “Um, hey, if anyone is...I guess, receiving this transmission, then I found this weird cylinder thing and it said I could summon someone with it, so if you get this message, then come to me and we can hang out or whatever.” At first, nothing happened. Then, without warning, a hole in reality started to form before me. Remembering what happened the last time something like that happened, I hastily backed away from the portal. Luckily, it wasn’t trying to suck me in. Rather, it was spitting someone else out. Specifically, it was a human of all things! “WHAT!” I cried out. I was thoroughly shocked at this point. It was only then that I noticed the other being. It was a young purple and lime-green colt. Strangely enough, he had two horns, and if I didn’t know better I’d say he was part changeling. “What- who- how- who are you?!” I spluttered. The man stood up with a groan, rubbing his head, “It’s always at the worst times man, seriously...” he lookied at the colt, frowning. “You okay?” “Yeah I’m o- my hoof! My hoof has been chipped!” the colt stared in horror at his hoof. “Oh for the love of...damn you Rarity...” the man said, facepalming a little at the colt’s freak out. He looked at me, his stare flat. “I swear to Yggdrasil Zant, if you summoned me here to screw Equestria over we will have problems.” “Crap!” I thought to myself. “I don’t need this guy suspecting me of shenanigans too!” “Uh…” I said to him, eloquent as ever. “No...I just found this thing and it said something in my head and then I summoned you here…” “Nice going moron,” I thought, mentally berating myself. A second later, I was pinned to the wall, a spear to my throat, “Don’t lie to me,” he said, his eyes turning red. “I’m not someone you want to lie to.” “Whoa, whoa!” I said, my mood rapidly shifting from confusion to fear for my life. “Easy bro! I’m not trying to screw anyone over, hell I love the ponies! They’re even building me a house as payment for saving them from a dragon! Granted, all I did was tell it to chill because apparently it’s my dragon, but still, I wouldn’t screw them over!” Apparently I wasn’t very convincing, as he only seemed to get even more pissed. “FuckfuckFUCK!” I thought. “Dude, I haven’t even been here a week! How could I even have time to think of a way to screw Equestria over?!” “You’d be surprised,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “I will warn you now,this may not be my Equestria, but I won’t let anyone defile any version of it if I can help it. Please don’t insult my intelligence, I can see it in your eyes idiot,” he said, releasing me, “But you can relax, I’m not going to attack you, I don’t need another paranoid jackass trying to go to war with me.” I hit the ground hard. He’d managed to lift me a good couple of inches off it. After brushing myself off, I said to him, “Well, thanks for finally putting me down if nothing else. I suppose we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over. Hi, I’m Zant.” Trying to maintain a cordial attitude while suppressing my fear of the bigger one, I continued, “Pleased to meet you. What’re your names?” I asked them. “I’m Jason Hughes and this is my son Elusive,” he said, picking up the still panicking colt and shushing him. “And no, I know what you’re thinking, I’m not human.” Any fear I’d had was immediately replaced with the same confusion as before. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t see the resemblance. Care to explain?” I asked. “Of course, Omnitrix, Alias,” he said before vanishing in a bright green flash, now replaced by an orange coated unicorn with a blue mane. “As you can see,” he said, speaking with the voice of Bob Dylan, “I am a shapeshifter.” “Sweet,” I said, thoroughly impressed. “I think I have some pretty good powers myself, I just don’t know how to use them yet. I came here to see if I could find out anything about how I got here, or maybe some great clue that will explain everything,” I said to Jason. “Simple: you’re Displaced.” he said, reverting to normal. “Okay, sorry, I know the exact definition of the word, but not in this context,” I said to him, even more confused than before. “What do you mean exactly? And what did you mean before when you mentioned ‘your Equestria’?” I asked him. “Simple, you went to a con, bought something from a shady guy and got sent here. Happens to about.... 99% of us. That makes you a Displaced.’ I stared at him in shock. I’d heard the stories, but I had no idea they were true! “And there are a lot of us, for example, Majin Buu, Gilgamesh, Kat Shifter, Nemesis, a few Overlords, that idiot Wade, and Team Rocket.” Jason said, patting his son’s head, with the frowning colt crossing his arms. Still I stared. Even more? “So if there’s so many more people like us, where the hell are they?” I asked him. “Are they in other towns or something? Or is this what you meant by this being ‘my Equestria’?” “Kid, how much do you know about the multiverse?” Jason asked, “‘Cause this will blow your mind.” “I know it’s been theorized that there are infinite parallel universes that are identical except for a few differences,” I answered him. “Infinite universes, infinite possibilities," he said. "My Equestria is part of Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology, that’s more than a small difference. As for the rest of the Displaced, most are in different Equestria’s though there are some Equestria’s with more than one Displaced.” This was all a massive shock to me. There really were alternate universes? And there were apparently others in the same situation as me? As I tried to process it all, I looked away from Jason and Elusive for a moment. Looking in the general direction of the castle, I saw something unusual. Just inside the entryway, one of the torches on the wall was hanging loose. Now, normally such a thing wouldn’t beg my attention as much as it did, but something just seemed off about this. Turning back to Jason, I said, “Hey, you see that?” as I pointed at the strange torch. “Yes I see that,” Jason said, putting Elusive down, walking over to it. I teleported next to him to get a better look at the torch. Surprisingly enough it didn’t phase him. “Sorry about that,” I said. “For what?” he asked, not looking at me. “Teleporting isn’t that big of a deal. Any ideas what this is?” “One way to find out,” I said as I pulled it. It gave no resistance. When I’d pulled it to the point where it was resting at about a forty-five-degree angle, a portion of the wall recessed and slid back to reveal a secret passage. I looked to Jason and said, “I do believe this begs investigation.” Gesturing to the passage, I asked him, “Shall we?” “Come on Elusive,” Jason called, looking back at the colt. “But it’s dusty!” Elusive whined, slowly trotting over to them. “Suck it up. Yggdrasil, you’re worse than your mother,” Jason said, stepping into the passage, conjuring up a fireball in his hand to light the way. Before long, they’d come to a wider area that had two doors on either side of it, with a rather large door at the far end. This door was also sealed with an almost intimidating, and also very large lock. I looked back at Jason and asked, “So how do we wanna do this?” “Flare,” Jason said simply, launching the fireball at the rock, the resulting explosion blowing it to pieces. “Any other questions?” “Well, I was thinking maybe there might be a key or something that we could use to open that door, perhaps in one of the other rooms,” I said, somewhat surprised that his magic was that powerful. “This whole situation feels very familiar. We may want to have a look in the other rooms before going through that giant door down there,” I continued. “Maybe we split up or something?” “I take it we’re in the old castle in the forest?” Jason asked, looking around the passage, his hand on his chin. “Yeah, but I don’t think anyone knew about this part,” I answered. “It doesn’t look like it’s been used in a while. Maybe there’s something in one of these rooms. How about I check in there,” I said as I pointed to the closest room on the left, “And you check in there?” I continued, pointing at the room directly across from it. “I got ya,” he said opening the door I’d indicated, walking inside. Elusive followed after him, not happy about the little adventure. “Okay, I’ll meet you back out here in a few minutes,” I called as I headed through the left door. Once I was through it, I found something I’d never expected to find. They looked like normal bats, but I knew they were anything but, due to how they tried to sink their fangs into my face. “Gah, I hate Keese!” I shouted as I dodged one of them. They were annoying in Twilight Princess, and they were annoying now. Eventually I managed to dispatch them with a few well-aimed dark magic blasts. Afterward, I looked around the rest of the room. There wasn’t much--some torches on the wall, a desk with some papers on it, some jars. Figuring they might be important, I went over to the desk and examined the papers. It was order forms for something called Orichalcum. If I recalled correctly, it was supposed to be incredibly strong and light. There were also orders for crystals that were usually added to weapons and armor to allow for long-term enchantments. “Something’s not right about all this,” I thought. Figuring they were indeed important, I teleported the papers back to my room in Twilight’s castle and headed back out to wait for Jason. ~Meanwhile…~ Jason and Elusive went in the door closest to them on the right and were greeted with a strange sight. There were what looked like two bipedal lizards wearing leather vests and loincloths, just standing in the middle of the room. They were also wielding cruel shortswords and had shields on their left arms. They even had axe heads attached to their tails, which was a bit excessive. “Sup?” Jason asked, looking at them, “You guys live here I take it?” In response, the lizard-men simply let out a high-pitched roar, and charged, swords held out in front of them. Jason darted forward, grabbing the swords, freezing them solid. “You’re pissing me off. I’d rather not have to hurt you in front of my son, don’t make me,” he said menacingly. The lizard-men, apparently not taking the hint, tried to yank their frozen swords away from him and, failing that, spun around in an effort to hit him with their tail-blades. He rolled his eyes, blasting them away with a burst of wind. He shifted into Big Chill, freezing them solid with his ice breath. “I warned you,” he said reverting to normal. “Can we go home yet?” Elusive asked rather boredly. “I don’t know why I bother...” Jason said with a sigh, searching the room for anything useful. Eventually, his gaze settled upon a desk with some papers on it. Intrigued, he went over and picked them up. It was a journal entry. The date had faded away, and there was no indication of the author. “Those blasted ponies!” it began. “They’ve ruined EVERYTHING! I had it all planned PERFECTLY! My Mistress would return, those miserable fools would be powerless against her, eternal night would come at last, and demonkind would rule the world once more! But no, that idiotic mare Sparkle just HAD to interfere! Well I’ll show her. I’ll show ALL of those miserable ponies! They will learn the true power of the Cult of Nightmare!” “Welp, that’s something they should know about,” he said, placing the note inside of his cube, “Come on, Zant’s waiting,” he told Elusive, walking out of the room to find said Displaced waiting for them. ~Now…~ “Find anything interesting?” I asked Jason as I walked to meet him in the center of the chamber. “Just a few notes, nothing important,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “And some lizard guys.” “Wait, lizard guys?” I asked. “Were they covered in pointy things?” I was getting a strange sense of nostalgia from all this, in a very confusing good-but-also-bad way. “Ah, almost forgot about that. You’ve become Zant, which means things from Zelda will be in your Equestria.” Jason said, brushing some hair out of his face. “So that explains the Keese,” I said, half to him and half to myself. Looking at him, I said, “Those things you saw were Lizalfos. Mindless creatures. They don’t know much more than ‘attack whatever moves’.” I looked to the door next to the one I’d just come out of, then said to Jason, “We may not want to split up for these next doors, given what could be inside.” “You should stay behind me,” Jason said as he moved up to the door. He pushed a bit, easily pushing the doors open. Once inside, we saw something that instantly filled me with rage from my experience playing Zelda. More specifically, five somethings. Each was about three-foot-six, and had arms that hung all the way to the ground. What we could see of their skin was an unhealthy-looking shade of green. They were dressed identically in what had to be bandit gear, and they all had quivers full of arrows on their backs, despite the fact that only two of them had bows. The other three had clubs that looked like they could pack quite a punch. Their beady red eyes were the only part of their faces we could see--the rest was hidden by a mask. Thoroughly pissed, I equipped my helmet and teleported behind them. Once I was behind them, I conjured up two scimitars, each as long as one of my arms, and proceeded to stab the archers through the back before they could even pull out an arrow I already knew would be on fire. As I’d expected, there was no blood--they simply dissolved into an ominous black mist. Instantly, the other three creatures spun around to face me. They readied their clubs and started to bum-rush me, but in their haste they’d completely forgotten Jason. “Idiots,” Jason said from behind them, a rather elegant sword in his hands. The creatures staggered forward before they dissolved. “Never turn your back on an opponent.” “Fucking Bulblins,” I muttered under my breath as I dispelled my helmet. “Come on, let’s see if there’s anything noteworthy in here and move on,” I said to Jason. The most obvious thing in the room was the rather large blue chest up against the wall. It was easily as tall as Elusive. Jason and I looked at the chest, then to each other. “You wanna open it?” I asked him. “Gladly,” Jason said, moving over to it. He knelt down, lifting the lid up, looking inside. “That’s a lot of bits,” he said. “Mind if I take a look?” I asked. “Keep it, I don’t really need it,” he said returning his sword to his pocket. “Really?” I said to him, astounded by his generosity. “Thanks bro! Just gimme a sec, I’ll be right back.” In a flash, I’d teleported the chest and myself back to my room in Twilight’s castle. Satisfied with the chest’s position next to my bed, I teleported back to Jason and Elusive. “Well, one room left before what I can only assume is the big guy in charge,” I said to Jason. “Let’s go have a look.” “Lead the way,” he said, motioning toward the door. We went back out to the main area and into the door directly across from us. As we emerged into the new area, a metal grate came down over the door behind us. Inside it was a sight that made my blood run cold. “Shit,” I said under my breath. We’d come into a large circular chamber, perhaps about fifteen feet across. In the center was a massive figure clad in black armor. It had to be at least ten feet tall. It had its back turned to us, but I could picture its gigantic sword and shield. A strange plume-like metal attachment ran down the middle of its helmet. “What is that thing?” Jason asked, “I didn’t play a lot of Zelda,” Suddenly, the behemoth turned toward us. “A Darknut!” I shouted in response, re-equipping my helmet as I did so. The behemoth turned to face us, each step producing a massive *KLANK*. It gave a couple of boasting swipes of its sword, then held the blade over its head, the business end pointed at the three of us, its shield in front of it. It was clearly a challenge, and not the friendly kind. It took a swipe at us with its sword and just barely missed. “Move!” I shouted. I teleported behind the thing and conjured up my scimitars again. I slashed at it in an attempt to do...I don’t know, something, to it, but to no avail. Immediately, it turned back to me and brought its sword with it. I teleported away just as the blade that was easily as long as its wielder cut into the air where I’d just been. “Easy, you stay with Elusive,” Jason said, pulling out his sword again. “Omnitrix, Four Arms,” he commanded before shifting into a large red skinned four armed creature. I did as he said and hung back in the entryway, keeping myself between the colt and the armored hulk. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I said to him. “One thing though--you can’t harm it directly just yet. It can block any and all attacks. You’ve gotta wait until just after it attacks to hit it,” I said, doing my best to help him beat this thing however he could. “Heh, watch me,” Jason said as he rushed forward, slamming his fist into the Darknut’s shield, the sound of screeching metal filling the air as the shield buckled from the blow. Immediately, Jason moved around his opponent and slashed a wide arc with his sword. The Darknut let out a pained grunt as its shoulder pauldron and arm guard fell away. “Wait, the hell am I doing?” Jason asked, reverting to normal. “You’re not worth the effort.” Jason put two fingers to his forehead, energy starting to build up at his fingertips. “You may want to shield your eyes from this.” Figuring this might get bad, I did as he asked. I covered my face with one hand and Elusive’s with the other and shielded his body with my own. “Special Beam Cannon!” Jason shouted, extending his arm, a spiralling beam of energy firing out from his fingertips. It shot through the Darknut’s shield, piercing its armor and erupting out of its back. Jason cut the blast off panting a little, “Note to self...don’t use ki attacks outside of Niktu and Keel.” As the dust settled, I uncovered myself and the young colt and looked around. The Darknut was no where to be seen, most likely having already dissolved into mist and dissipated, and Jason looked very much drained. I stood up and asked him, “You okay bro?” “Yeah I’m fine, that stuff just takes a lot of energy. Works better in a DBZ universe,” he replied. It was clear the attack had taken a lot out of him. “You need a sec?” I asked him. “I was gonna look around in here anyway if you just wanna chill for a bit.” “Nah, I got it,” he said as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a potion. He uncorked it, downing it. “Okay, I’m good,” he said, looking a lot better. “Just in time,” I said to him from across the room. “Look what I found.” “What?” he asked, walking over, tossing the empty container over his shoulder. “Another one of these,” I said as I pulled the loose torch.