//------------------------------// // Super Power: The Arc Blade // Story: Light of Harmony // by GjallarFox //------------------------------// The jungles of Venus below the Vex gates was thicker than any area of the Everfree Forest the six had ever seen. Each step they took took double the effort of walking through water. Every few minutes, someone would get tangled in something, and either Rainbow or Pinkie would have to cut them loose, as they were the only ones with knives. It was only after Pinkie had freed Rainbow from a tangle that the group truly saw her frightening talent with sharp objects. She seemed to juggle the knife, treating it like some sort of play thing, but cut all of the vines wrapped around Rainbow without ever also having her hand on it. As they passed beacon after beacon, the anticipation grew. What was it that the Stranger needed to tell them that they couldn't just leave in the message they'd left in the LAX Cosmodrome? What was so important that it couldn't be told to them in the cosmodrome instead of out here in the wild jungles of Venus? The more Twilight thought about it, the more she realized that she didn't know any other alicorns besides the princesses. She'd read about the Lunar War, and knew that thestricorns were more common than alicorns. It was entirely possible that the Stranger was a thestricorn, perhaps even one of Luna's personal guards. But that begged the question of how they got here alive. From the looks of the palace when they'd left their home, there were no hints of any survivors. Every trail of blood led to a skeleton. There was of course, room for doubt there, as they didn't see the entirety of the palace before they left, and there could have been a clue hidden in one of those places they didn't see. Next to a beacon ahead of them, Twilight saw the familiar shape of a Vex Goblin stood. Immediately she raised her rifle, freezing in place and watching it, hoping it hadn't noticed them. Its red eye did not shine, and the white core in its belly was not white. Moss and vines covered and strangled the small Vex unit, alluding to it having been standing there for a long time, dead or forgotten or both. "It's in some kind of stasis..." Rainbow sighed, "For the rest of us?" "It's hibernating," Fluttershy clarified for her fellow pegasus. "My question is why." "Well, if it's asleep, I guess we just keep going," Rainbow suggested. "No point wasting time asking about ancient machine things." The last beacon was in the center of a small clearing just past the Vex Goblin. As the group stepped in, they kept their weapons at the ready. Off to the south side of the beacon was a block of stone that looked to be about one cubic meter. Aside from that block, there was no cover in that clearing. "Where are they?" Rainbow whispered to the rest of the group. "They shoul–" A red laser shot from a Vex slap rifle hit Fluttershy in the back, making her jump and whip around to see the offender. The Vex Goblin they'd left alone stepped through the overgrowth, staring at the ponies with its cold and calculating gaze. A mechanical scream filled the air, and was soon echoed a hundred times over. "Damn it, Dash," Applejack sighed, raising her rifle. "We had to leave it alone." "Egghead said it was asleep!" she retorted, raising her hand cannon and firing at the original Goblin. "Shut up and kill them!" Twilight growled. "Should have known this was a fucking trap!" With that the group just started shooting at the machines. Remembering their mistake in shooting the heads of the robots, the six ponies aimed virtually exclusively for the white bellies of the machines. Rainbow's hand cannon, with ten rounds per clip, took down the wicked machines with only one hit to their bellies. The powerful rounds were enough to shred Goblins into scraps. Whenever she had to reload, she leapt backwards and then left, throwing the aim of the oncoming enemies off. Rarity took it upon herself to watch out for and destroy Hobgoblins. Her weapon was made for precision, and in this enclosed space, those units would have to come within poking range of her rifle. Suddenly a high velocity round sliced passed her, the energy around it grazing her shields and drawing her attention to it. A Hobgoblin glared at her with its angry red eye, challenging her to a duel of precision; organic versus machine in a battle to the death. Rarity accepted this challenge by firing one shot at the machine, hitting it in one of its horns. Glaring at her, it returned the gesture, its shot slamming into her belly with the force of a javelin. The shot instantly pierced the shields and damaged a small portion of her armor. She yelped in pain before switching weapons, her Ghost dematerializing her scout rifle and replacing it with a heavy machine gun. If the Vex could know fear, Rarity vowed to teach it to them, as her wrath turned upon the Hobgoblin that was swishing its tail around like some arrogant cat. She raised the heavy weapon and pulled the trigger, holding it steady as it kicked far more than any other weapon she'd handled. But enough rounds hit their mark to kill the wicked machine, sending it sprawling down to the ground with its fluids boiling out. She then turned to the Goblins, smirking beneath her helmet as her shields recharged. She pulled the trigger again, letting loose a torrent of bullets. The large group of machines fell quickly to the overwhelming force of the unicorn's weapon. A harsh roar split through the jungle, followed by more. Another wave of Goblins stepped out from all sides of the clearing, a total of six Minotaurs among them with a pair of Harpies on either side of the giants. A Hobgoblin fired a shot, nearly hitting Rainbow. "Fuck," Twilight cursed. "Now would be a great time for some super powers..." "Can't feel it yet, Twilight," Pinkie replied, popping a pair of shots into one of the Harpie pairs. "Sorry." "I can't either," Applejack added as she let loose a burst of fire from her auto rifle. A pair of Harpies on the north side of the clearing stabilized and began firing a barrage of laser rounds, many of them hitting the ponies. Pinkie turned around after the first shot hit her and threw one of her knives, the sharp instrument twirling through the air. The tip pierced the eye of the left Harpie, short-circuiting its stabilizers and making it explode with a mechanical yip. By the time anyone could notice, Pinkie's second knife had done the same to the right Harpie as well. It was only when she turned back around and threw a third knife into another Harpie that anyone really started getting confused as to where she'd gotten the third knife. But there was no time for questioning Pinkie, as the Minotaurs had charged up their weapons and were now firing. The slow arc of the torch hammer rounds was easy enough to avoid, but the blast radius was a bit larger than the ponies had anticipated. The explosions of the void rounds brought down everyone's shields to about half charge, but the radiation from those rounds lingered, slowly draining even more of the shields' energy. Warnings flashed on their heads-up displays in their helmets, urging them to move away from the radiation. "Shit," Applejack cursed as she dropped a clip from her auto rifle and switched it out for a fresh one. "Focus on the big ones." Just in that moment, Rainbow was forced to take to the air, firing her hand cannon into the Minotaur that had nearly bashed her head in with a hammer fist. It took the entire clip to bring down the beast's shields, and two point-blank shells from Applejack's shotgun to bring the machine itself down. However, another Minotaur had ample opportunity to get behind Applejack and thrust its knee into her back, knocking her face first onto the ground. As soon as her grunt of pain was heard, Rarity slapped a grenade to its body and raised her palm, a magic she never knew she had coming out and sending the Minotaur flying back. A group of Goblins was bowled over as their larger and stronger comrade was forced back into them. With a quick spell, Rarity lifted her Titan friend to her feet just in time to watch the grenade explode against the Minotaur's hull. Luckily for them, that was enough to destroy it and the cluster of Goblins it had knocked over during its short flight across the clearing. Fluttershy screamed with rage and blasted away the shields of the third Minotaur with her shotgun before winding up and punching the machine. Its armor crumpled like aluminum foil around a baked potato, the force behind her punch enough to nearly impale the thing. She then lifter her leg and shoved it off of her arm, letting the enemy fall lifelessly to the ground with its circuitry sparking and fizzing. She bent down as the fourth Minotaur tried to slap her, grabbing the ankles of the recently felled enemy, and swinging it around as she stood back up. She brought the thing down like a sledgehammer, using the corpse of the dead machine as a bludgeoning weapon against its still living counterpart. The Minotaur, unable to process what had just happened, did not have enough time to evade the attack, and was bashed down into the ground by the winged Titan. The assault was not enough to kill the machine, as it only made the problem worse by busting its face-plate. Now in a rabid frenzy, the mechanical beast disappeared from where it had been smacked in the head with the corpse of a fellow Vex unit. It reappeared in the center of the group, and fired a shot into the back of Fluttershy, decimating her shields and sending her sprawling forwards away from her friends, where she was easier to target for the other Vex units on the perimeter of the clearing. Just before Rainbow could end the life of the maddened machine, it let loose another round from its torch hammer, the high-explosive void projectile arcing down into Fluttershy's back just as she brought herself to her knees. She screamed in pain, her entire chestplate shattering from the hit, the only thing keeping the armor on her body being the form-fitting leather layer the armor was bound to. Twilight shrieked and broke formation, leaping over to her and covering the pegasus' body with her own, taking the barrage of Goblin and Harpie fire for her. "You'll be okay!" she stammered out, holding the Titan close, paying close attention to her breathing. She took off both of their helmets and looked into her eyes. "Your Ghost can heal you! You're going to be fine!" "Twili–" The pegasus' feeble attempt to reply was interrupted by a harsh cough, one that spattered blood onto the ground. "Shit." Meanwhile, Rainbow had seen her best friend since she was a filly damn near die, and another of her friends about to sacrifice herself to protect her. While it wasn't uncommon for her to feel protective of her friends, the intensity with which she was feeling it now was through the roof. Back home before any of this had taken place, she would be there for her friends, through thick and thin. She would back them up if anyone dared pick a fight or bully her friends. She would kick dragons in the nose for hurting her friends. Hell, she'd damn near gotten kicked out of flight school for beating the living daylight out of some stupid colt that made Fluttershy cry. Without thinking about it, she let herself down and knelt before her best friend just in time to see her cough up a little bit of blood and curse under her breath. When Fluttershy looked to her, she could see strength left in her, but at the same time, fear. Not the kind of fear she got when a leaf fell on her when she wasn't expecting it, nor the kind she got when she tried to talk to ponies. Nay, this was true fear. This was the look of the fear of death. When she saw that, she saw the little Fluttershy she'd met when she was young. She saw that same brave filly who cried herself to sleep at night because she needed to be awake enough to do well in school, even with the constant bullying. She saw the filly who battled depression every day because her wounds weren't left to heal, the bullies throwing dirt and salt into them every day, making it fester into something far worse than it had to be. She saw the friend that she held in her hooves praying to Celestia that she'd never have to lose her to the wounds only she could see. She unsheathed her knife, putting her hand cannon back into its holster. She didn't know why she did it, but she felt her knife calling out to her, begging her to use it to protect those dearest to her. The blade promised, "Leave the fire to others. Wield me, and we shall deliver death to the monsters, swiftly, silently, and without mercy." She leapt up into the air, holding her knife behind her back. With the acceptance of the knife's pact, the air cracked, and a bolt of lightning struck it. Her tired muscles felt no resistance, as though the lactic acid building up in them had suddenly just stopped existing. Her vision sharpened, letting her see three hundred and sixty degrees. Her blade, where once it was only about ten inches, was now twenty six inches of lightning given shape. Tendrils of sharp arc energy chirped like birds and stabbed at the air around her, daring enemies to approach. Setting her eyes on the last two Minotaurs, she dove down from the air, landing in front of the fifth. It tried to punch her, but her knife was faster, slicing its legs out from under it. As it fell to the ground, it screamed in pain and tried to fire a round from its torch hammer at the ground to take her out with itself, but never got the chance. Rainbow sliced through its arm at the elbow, the electronic signal to fire not making it through the circuitry in time to be acted upon. The last Minotaur fired its weapon, the low-velocity projectile flying towards Rainbow in a slow arc. As it approached, her knife told her to trust in its edge and her own light. Once it was close enough, she slashed upwards with the Arc Blade, slicing the Minotaur's explosive projectile in half and making the two resulting halves fly off to destroy a pair of Harpies and a Hobgoblin that had not seen that possibility coming. When another shot came her way, she smirked to herself beneath her helmet. She and her blade were a team like no other. They were not weapon and wielder; they were a retaliation. They could speak to and understand each other on a profound level that could rival that of the royal sisters. She spun herself in a circle, her blade held out to cast a wall of arc energy. The heavy void round bounced off of the wall of cackling energy and light, flying back at the Minotaur faster than it had thought the round could travel. With no way to dodge the incoming explosive in time, the Minotaur simply screamed as it was destroyed by its own weapons fire. Now without the impending threat of the Minotaurs, Rainbow relinquished conscious thought in favor of a more trance-like state she usually saved for her flight training. She lunged forth, targeting a Hobgoblin that was too close to back away. The hardened chassis of the Vex offered no resistance to the Arc Blade. She cut it in half, the two pieces fizzling out of existence in a bright blue light. The same fate befell several dozen Goblins, her knife devouring them all with a seemingly insatiable hunger. She twirled around in her dance of death, evading every shot fired her way, and she got closer and closer to the last group of Goblins remaining. With one final burst of energy, she spun herself with her knife, and let the last of the Arc Blade's energy galvanize into a hurricane around her. As the storm of arc light grew around her, the Goblins began to freeze up as their circuitry was overloaded by the electricity. Piece by piece, the machines were ripped apart, those parts of them fizzling out of material existence and becoming nothing but energy. Rainbow stopped spinning, bending down and placing her left hand on the ground to stabilize, her right hand holding her knife above her behind her back. She exhaled. Her blade was back to its usual metal composition, as well as its normal length. Her cloak settled, and the tendril of arc energy jumped out to the ground. When she brought herself back to a standing position, a clap rang out through the clearing, followed by more. Fluttershy, now healed up and with freshly repaired armor, stood with Twilight's help, looking around. Rainbow looked towards the block of stone in the clearing, just in time to see a flash of teal light just above it. When the flash of light dissipated, they saw a hooded figure with a horn standing atop the stone. It wore armor that looked like a fusion of the Lunar Guard's and what Rainbow and Pinkie were wearing. The Stranger stopped clapping, and crossed their arms across their chest, which looked to be flat and broad. "They were right to have me cast that spell over your bones," the Stranger said as the ponies approached warily. "You are hope given form." "We are just ponies," Twilight replied modestly. "Would you care to explain why we're here?" The Stranger looked at her, and then chuckled a bit to themselves. "They wanted me to show you something you already know. You've just forgotten." "Who are you talking about?" Rainbow inquired, irritated. "Who sent you here?" "Silence, Loyalty. All shall be explained in due time. But for now, They must stay hidden to avoid the Darkness." The Stanger stepped down from the rock and reached up to their helmet. "They are faceless, but I am not Them." "Show us what we need to see, then," Applejack huffed impatiently. "Are you certain you are ready for the past to start clawing at the present once again, Honesty?" The Stranger turned to face the Titan. "The information you need is buried beneath grief and wreckage." "No," Applejack answered. "But if we wait until we're ready it'll be too late." "A fair point." The Stranger held their arms out in a manner one would use when unveiling some grand masterpiece. Their wings unfurled from behind them, the first glints of light coming from them seeming metallic, as though they were armored. But then Twilight noticed something odd. The metal was too thin to be holding any wings. She stared at them as they continued to unfurl and light began to emanate from the Stranger's horn. They still expanded like normal wings, and seemed to have a layout similar to the bone structures in thestral wings. Perhaps, Twilight speculated, they were prosthetics designed to imitate the real wings they may have lost somehow. If they were a member of the Lunar Guard, it was entirely possible, as Luna treated her guards like her own children, and would go out of her way to keep them healthy and able. She had even, at one point, adopted a colt who she'd taken in when he was a she. That colt went on to be one of the greatest military engineers and alchemists of his generation. The Stranger raised a hand, a teal aura like that around their horn surrounding it. With a flash of light, the ponies fell to the ground unconscious. ------ Up in orbit, Shirska watched his clock carefully as the one hour timer he set ticked down towards zero. When that timer hit zero, he punched the throttle of his Arwing model fighter, praying in his native tongue that his friends were okay. As flames began to obscure the view through the canopy, he checked the radar, seeing where the ponies were and if there were enemies nearby. Misfortune was something that Shirska dealt with on a regular basis. To be fair, he had been on the dealing end of it most of the time, but he knew loss and grief all too well. He'd seen great friends and comrades die in battle, get their arms docked by other Captains, even seen Captains slain for a misplaced word by a Kell or Archon. He dared not grieve over such losses, as it was seen as a weakness, and Captains were held to a higher standard of strength. But that did not mean he felt nothing. On the contrary, he felt even more pain, as his wounds were never truly allowed to heal and become scars. For the first time in countless cycles, Shirska felt fear. To him, it was odd. He feared no enemy, and at this moment there was no enemy to pin his fears upon. Yet he felt fear. That new sensation that made his heartbeat quicken and his mind race only served to temper his resolve to get to his new friends in time to keep them out of harm's way. As soon as he hit the clouds, he hit the air brakes, slowing his craft to handle the pressure he was about to apply to the wings. He pulled on the controls to level out the ship, the G-forces in the cockpit negated by the effects of the "G-Diffuser" systems. He set the ship down in the clearing, jumping out as soon as the canopy lifted. Rushing to their sides, only their Ghosts were moving. "They're alive, but we can't wake them up," K-Rah informed the Fallen. "Enemy ship incoming. Looks like Cabal," O-Ron groaned. "What in the name of the Traveler are the Cabal doing on Venus?" J-Ami muttered to herself. "What are Cabal?" Shirska asked, readying his weapons for a long fight. "To make it simple: eight hundred pounds, highly militarized. They blow up moons for getting in the way," G-Evs answered. "So idiots with guns?" Shirska concluded, plucking Applejack and Rainbow by their collars and dragging them behind the block before turning to do the same with the others. "This fight will simple." "Rockets and shields," the butler-voiced Ghost finished. "Don't get close and aim for the head." In his native tongue, he spoke to himself, "Today I prove if I am worthy of becoming a House. Do I have ten thousand arms?" "Can I catch ten thousand stars?" "Would my friends support me as a House?" "I believe so."