As bizarre as it may sound, it was watching Ambrose play video games that finally made King Sombra decide that Ambrose Rey was the right person to select for the task ahead.
Sombra's spirit had wandered the ether between worlds for weeks, from the very moment when he'd first felt the tremors that signaled his body's revival. It was a signal that moved both forward and backwards in time, and while it might not have been detectable or measurable in the living world, it was as loud and unmistakable as a fire alarm in the realms of the deceased.
However, there was a small problem: A Death Pulse was racing through the multiverse, one that King Sombra, both inadvertently and indirectly, had caused.
The Elements of Harmony were also partly to blame: Those ancient relics of unimaginable power were far too much, even for a being of Sombra's power. Using them to defeat him had been like using a cannon to swat a fly. Once used, the relics had set off a magical event that crossed time, space, and barriers stranger still. They had released a ripple in the cosmos that was steadily 'harmonizing' every entity who carried an affinity for King Sombra in every alternate universe in existence, bringing those beings into synchronicity with the Prime King Sombra...
And since the Prime King Sombra was no more, synchronization was a literal death sentence for every alternate version of King Sombra on every world in the multiverse, and nothing could stop it. Good, evil, it mattered not, if they were King Sombra, or even just slightly Sombra-esque, their fate was sealed.
Sombra had journeyed far, well away from the worlds of talking equines, the dimensions where magic and myth walked brazenly under the sun, to a place so far that it would be almost half a year before the pulse reached this strange, magic-less realm populated by strange bipeds called 'hyoo-mans', and found the closest thing that this world had to, well, himself.
King Sombra was not all that impressed.
The 'hyoo-man' in question was, on the surface, almost painfully ordinary. Pinkish white skin, skinny as a rail, with black hair and blue eyes, and about six 'feet' in height, to use the local measurements. If judged just on the exterior, he was nothing special. The only thing hinting at any sort of a connection to the human and the tyrant was in the name: Rey, a word in the Spanish language meaning 'King', and 'Ambrose', a name containing all the letters of 'Sombra', plus an 'E'. It had seemed, during the initial hours of evaluation, that there was no worth to this individual. Yes, he was intelligent, given that he was a student in some sort of university, but brains alone would do nothing to help in weathering the coming storm, now that the fiends were loose. If brains was all it would take, Sombra would have been chomping at the bit, ready to go. No, it would take more than just mental acuity. It would require something more, something that Sombra himself could not yet put a name to.
To be fair, Sombra did not have much information to go on: While Ambrose's room did hold a dozen books relevant to his current college courses, the majority of the tomes in the college student's room comprised of western graphic novels, Japanese manga, as well as fantasy and scifi novels. There was also his collection of 'games', strange discs that he placed into various devices that caused a thing called a 'Television' to display some manner of interactive narrative. However, he seemed intensely focused on a device called a 'computer' at the moment. Sombra could not determine what it was that Ambrose was working on, but it seemed to be connected to probability in some way...
Ambrose's work on his 'computer' was halted by a ringing sound. After fiddling briefly with the computer, he picked up a device on his desk, which Sombra later identified as a 'cell phone', and after pressing a button, said, "Hey, Hope. How goes it?"
*Hope? No, it couldn't be... could it?*
After a moment, Ambrose nodded, and said, "Alright. I'll boot up my PS4 now. I'll be on in a few minutes: I've got a character camped out at the boss entrance already. I'll join, and then we'll do a pincer attack, and meet in the middle. Naw, I wasn't doing anything important. Just working on a little idea I had. Heh, yeah. Alright. You're loaded for bear, right? Good. Same password as before? Right on. See you in ten."
A short time later, Sombra watched in something akin to awe as Ambrose began playing a game called 'Bloodborne'. For an individual who had existed in a world whose level of technology was mostly medieval, something as simple as Super Mario Bros would have been impressive, but the current generation of games was as far above those as The Last Supper is above a child's stick figure. As Ambrose put on a headset and joined a 'party' with Hope, Sombra couldn't help but feel humbled: For all his mastery of magic, he understood that what he was seeing now was a thousand years or more beyond anything he could ever manage, even using magic...
"I'm on," Ambrose said, then chuckled. Sombra, curious, tapped into Ambrose, being as subtle and as gentle as possible, and listened in on both sides of the conversation.
"So," a feminine voice said in a cheerful tone, "you've got the downstairs handled?"
"No sweat," Ambrose said, a feral grin on his face. "I'll handle the puppies. You just work your way forward, and we'll meet in the middle."
Sombra tapped into Ambrose's memories, hoping to get an idea of what was going on. It seemed, upon analysis, fairly simple: Hope, a long-time friend of Ambrose's, played this game, and had an overwhelming fear of large dogs, due to an incident in her childhood. Ambrose, being a nice guy, was helping her out by scouting ahead, and when he reached a boss area, he would stop, wait for Hope to call, and the two of them would execute a sort of pincer attack on the area, allowing Hope to proceed with fewer problems that she normally would. Since some of the enemies in the game were oversized canines, Ambrose would take care to ensure that those were wiped out before she arrived. Having beaten the game once, he had what he called the 'low-down' on enemy locations. After a certain point, the canines would stop being a common occurrence, and Hope would be able to proceed on her own without Ambrose holding her hand.
Of course, the boss in this area, a fiend called 'The Blood-Starved Beast', being a canine, was almost guaranteed to cause Hope to have a panic attack...
But first, she'd have to handle a number of savage beasts, an enemyin an elevated position with a weapon Ambrose called a gatling gun, and a fearsome hunter on the ground. For most, a harrowing task, but for Ambrose and Hope, it was just a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Sombra watched, slowly yet steadily becoming impressed, as Ambrose's character moved from a gateway blocked by fog, and made his way through several areas, hunting down and slaying monsters as he went, with a level of confidence that spoke of long hours of practice and great natural talent at one's hobby. All along the way, he and Hope chatted amiably, neither one seeming to be even the slightest bit concerned with the horrific monsters that they both were combating. Back in Equestria, a pony trying to do the same would likely be impossible: Ponies lacked something that these... humans possessed. However, it was still something that Sombra could not put a name to...
Within a few minutes, Ambrose had made his way to a ladder, set against a clock tower. Grinning like a wolf, he said, "I'm in position now. Are you almost to the Monster Mosh?"
Giggling, Hope said, "I think so. You said there's, what, ten guys out here?"
Nodding, he replied, "About that, or maybe a few more. I didn't bother to count. Just be glad you didn't have to deal with the one I just went through. At least yours won't all get up at once. There's also a hunter there, but he's not as tough without his overwatch. Just keep an eye on those blind spots: Those smoke clouds tend to hide something nasty waiting to pounce."
Sarcastically, Hope asked, "Really? I hadn't noticed."
Ambrose barked a laugh, and said, "Right, sorry. Alright. Wait until I've gotten the gunner's attention, and then start your way through."
"Roger roger," Hope answered back.
Ambrose climbed the ladder, making his way to a hunter stationed upon its roof. From his memories of the battle, Sombra could see that the adversary in question was incredibly dangerous, being both fast and cunning. As such, he had expected a fast, ferocious battle...
...Instead, Ambrose fired a pistol three times in rapid succession, knocking the enemy off of the roof and causing him to plummet his death. Call it draconian or pragmatic, but either way, it was a surprisingly effective tactic. Sombra fully approved.
"My guy is down, but you'll need to quit and reload in order to make his drop appear." Ambrose announced, casually. "How are you?"
"This bastard is kicking my ass," Hope replied, clearly annoyed. "I can't get a hit in. Can you help me out?"
Ambrose's memories indicated that the hunter in question was frustratingly fast, and Ambrose's method of dealing with him had involved using the fact that other enemies would attack the other hunter if properly provoked to assist in weakening him. It seemed that Hope, having cleared out the other monsters, couldn't use that strategy.
"There's a terribly shortage on perfect asses," Ambrose said, jokingly. "I'm on my way." He promptly led his character down the ladder.
"You're a perfect ass," Hope exclaimed, half-jokingly.
"The perfectest," Ambrose agreed, reaching the fracas, and throwing a pebble at the hunter. Upon impact, the hunter immediately stopped paying attention to Hope's hunter, and moved directly towards Ambrose's character. As the assailant began to swing his weapon, Ambrose's character fired a single pistol round, knocking his foe off balance, and followed the attack up with a powerful blow. When the hunter rose, Hope's hunter swung a powerful blow with her axe at the rising nemesis, and sent him flying off the edge of a roof slaying the nemesis without any further problems.
"Done and done," Ambrose quipped, then said, "Shall we?"
"Why do you insist on wearing that top hat set?" Hope asked, some of her irritation from the previous fight bleeding over into the conversation, as the two of them walked down a path littered with the corpses of monsters.
"Swag, my dear lady," Ambrose responded promptly. "This set, combined with the Threaded Cane, is undeniably stylish."
Giggling, Hope admitted, "True. But it has lower defense than the Hunter set. You could get pretty messed up if you get hit."
"'All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies,'" Ambrose said, seeming to be quoting something, "'and when they catch you, they will kill you... but first they must catch you.'" A search through Ambrose's memories told the tyrant that the quote was from a book called Watership Down.
With another giggle, she said, "Right, right. Defense doesn't matter to you, since nobody here can touch you. But even you still trip up, now and again."
Ambrose shrugged, and said, "If I do, then I do. Nobody's perfect. But I have confidence in my skills. Something that, sadly, you still lack. If you'd fought a bit more aggressively, you'd probably have won without my help."
Hope didn't respond, but grumbled a bit. The two proceeded in silence until they reached the barrier of fog that Ambrose had started at.
"This is it," Ambrose stated, flatly. "We'll have to do this together, Hope. If I could go in on my own and beat him for you, then I would. However, I can't. Are you prepared?"
There was a loud gulp over the headphones that Ambrose wore, followed by a nervous, "I'm ready." Hope's character moved through the fog, Ambrose's following right behind. Almost instantly, Hope began shrieking in terror. If Sombra had still possessed a throat, he'd likely have joined her: The... thing that quickly advanced upon the pair of hunters was a ghastly abomination, flaps of skin hanging off of a gigantic canine carcass that should, by all rights, be dead, and yet still moved. For all his wickedness, Sombra had led a somewhat sheltered life in the Crystal Heart Foal Center, watched over by Chestnut Falls and raised in the Crystal Empire. As such, nothing he'd ever seen could have prepared him for this... this... aberration. Not even the most dreadful of the fiends in Tartarus could compare to this thing...
...And yet...
And yet to Ambrose, it was just an asshole who was threatening one of his friends. As Sombra watched, Ambrose confronted the beast, using another pebble to draw the beast's attention, then drawing it away from Hope, using a combination of pebbles and pungent blood cocktails. Once it was far enough away from Hope that she could regain her composure, Ambrose went to work, using a combination of gunshots and critical attacks to quickly eat away at his enemy's health. Within a few short moments, Ambrose had the beast down to where just one more critical attack would end the battle. And then... he stopped. "Uh oh."
"What?" Hope asked, surprised.
"No more bullets," Ambrose answered. "You'll have to finish him off." Ambrose's character began dodging, nimbly, keeping well ahead of his foe.
*What is he talking about? He's got six bullets left!*
"I can't! You know I can't!" Hope exclaimed, fear, worry, and anger mixed together in her tone.
"You'll have to. All you have to do is throw a pebble, then shoot him while he's attacking, follow up with a Visceral Attack, and he'll drop." Ambrose continued his dance with the vicious monster, still one step ahead...
"I... I..." Hope's breathing was panicky, close to hyperventilating...
"Hope, you'll never be able to surpass me if you can't surpass your fears," Ambrose stated, flatly.
There was a change in Hope's breathing, and after a gulp, she said, "Alright."
And with nothing more than that, Hope's hunter threw a pebble, drawing the beast's attention. The slavering beast advanced upon her, yet she stood her ground, and as the beast made to attack, she fired a perfectly timed pistol shot, stunning the beast, and followed it up with a finishing blow, slaying the beast.
'PREY SLAUGHTERED', proclaimed a message upon the screen. Ambrose's hunter gave a bow, one returned by Hope's, and with that, Ambrose was removed from Hope's game.
"Well done," Ambrose said with a chuckle.
"Thanks," Hope replied, her tone thoughtful. After a moment, she asked, "Were you really out of bullets?"
Ambrose chuckled, and said, "Maybe, maybe not. But if I did all the work today, I'd be doing it forever, and as cute as your ass may be, I can't keep covering it for you. You're a big girl now, and you'll be going to college in a few months. If you can't handle something as simple as an enemy on a video game, how can you hope to get all the way through med school? The way will be long, and hard, and it'll include examining corpses and dissecting animals. If you can't do something as basic as overcoming your greatest fear, how can you ever become a great doctor?"
Hope didn't answer right away. While waiting for her reply, Sombra looked into Ambrose's memories, trying to see why Hope might have been afraid of large canines. Admittedly, the one that the pair had just faced had been terrifying, but Ambrose's thoughts and memories implied that there was more to it than that...
What Sombra saw was incredible: Hope had been attacked, in her youth, by a rabid pit bull while walking home from school with her mother and father. While he had bravely tried to fend off the beast, the rabid dog, later discovered to have been used in illegal dog fights and as such both bred and trained to be unspeakably vicious long before it had contracted rabies and slaughtered its owner, Hope's father had died trying to fend off the monster, and her mother was lost shortly after. Terrified, she had fled, the slavering hound on her heels. She had made straight for a tall tree, hoping to climb it and escape the beast's jaws, but the lowest limbs were just beyond her reach.
It was then that fate had taken a hand.
In the branches of the tree, Ambrose, a young orphan, had been playing by himself. The older boy had, upon seeing Hope trying to scramble up the tree, had reached out, grabbed the younger girl's outstretched hand, and pulled her up. The branch had creaked, on the verge of breaking, so Ambrose had pushed her onto a higher branch. A second before the branch had given way, the young boy jumped...
And landed, feet first, right on the rabid dog's head. The blow had not been strong enough to kill the beast, but it had proven enough to knock it unconscious. The police, having been drawn to the sounds of screams that the rabid animal's attack had elicited, arrived soon after, and did the only thing that could be done for a rabid dog.
After that day, Hope and Ambrose were inseparable. Even if the young girl had not been placed in the same orphanage as he was, she would have gone to any length to stay by his side, the side of her champion and protector. As the two grew up, they'd developed a... complicated relationship. More than friends, not quite brother and sister, but something else entirely...
However, Ambrose going to college had separated the two, and while the young man planned on becoming a creator of video games, Hope was much more interested in the field of medicine, planning to become a doctor. They both, due to their high grades, had received scholorships, but their respective schools would be on opposite sides of the country, so it would be unlikely that they'd see each other again for years and years.
"Thanks, Ambrose," Hope said, after a moment. "Thanks for looking out for me."
With a chuckle, Ambrose said, "Any time, Hope."
Sombra finally understood the quality that seemed to separate humanity from ponykind, a quality that Ambrose seemed to have in abundance. It was a quality that would cause a person to risk his life for a complete stranger, and then, immediately afterwards, leap from a tree branch and essentially drop kick a rabid dog in the face. It went as far beyond courage as courage went beyond abject terror.
The only name that Sombra had for it was insanity... but it was a useful insanity. It was one that the tyrant could use...