//------------------------------// // The end is neigh // Story: Shadow of Evil // by MoonShine //------------------------------// Chapter 11: The end is neigh Last chapter: Soon the machine is running at full power and is no longer draining her as the Fenrir supplies the power to it, the Elements in a metallic tube, they start to glow as they add their power to the machine, outside the ship the cannon starts to fold out and glow as the power starts to energise the gun, soon the noise becomes inaudible and the glowing is bright, the gun does another charge as Thomas presses a trigger, after a few seconds the cannon stops making noises before turning to take aim of Cloudsdale and then firing without noise, a large beam emitting from it, the noise then coming from it sounding like a nuke going off, the beam hits the floating city and causes it to start vaporising while moving down towards the ground, the beam isn’t its usual colour but is instead red and black. The beam stops and the city is just a floating ball of fire left in the sky just off the ground, all the Viperox gone and dead, Thomas then comments, “The tide has certainly changed, in our favour. Now those silly ponies have no why of stopping us.” “Confirmed, all Viperox are dead, the ancients are no longer, we rule supreme.” Mathis comments as he scans the planet, “Scan complete, Human population 20%, Pony population 17% and Fade population at a climax of 63% at the current moment, we need to stop their spread sir.” He warns Thomas who takes off the straps and lets Treacle from the chair. He turns to face Mathis who points at a screen showing the statistics for the populations on the planet, “Bloodshade has certainly been busy, we must stop them, and call all forces back to Alverton and then send them out to start a sweep of the planet to begin extermination of those pests.” He order, Mathis stands straight and facing Thomas, raises a hand to his forehead and salutes, then walks out of the room along with Treacle who is slightly dazed by the recent activity. Thomas stands and looks at the screen which starts to flicker and go static, he looks down on the console and bashes it a couple of times, the screen returns to normal but then suddenly goes fully static only to stops with an image of a pony figure in a dark room sat upon a throne, “Hello Father, I hear you wish to kill me, why must you kill your own kin so? Is that how you treat all of your family? Well I must say that that isn’t a very nice thing to do, killing your family, so for that I must stop you. Expect me coming for you.” The figure says before launching at the screen to be seen as Bloodshade causing Thomas to jump back a little by the fright. He stands as watches the screen to see it turn back to the statistics, “He’s lost it, Kieron I hate you, you brought him to that mirror world and since then he has gone crazy, I blame you for this.” He says to himself only to be startled when Kieron walks into the room. “Yeah, why not, you always blame me...” he replies as he walks up to the Grand Master with an ice-pack held to his forehead, “What are you blaming me for this time?” he asks as he stops next to him and looks at the screen. “Bloodshade, you took us to the mirror world and now he has caused the outbreak of the Fade since then, since you took us, I blame you.” He claims as it seems to the best option to him. Kieron shrugs his shoulders and turns to walk out but stops at the door, looks to the side, “That wouldn’t be the first time you blamed me for something rather dangerous then, but I guess we will have to stop them then, won’t we?” he asks before walking out as he drops the bag of ice and his power armour folds around him, Thomas just seeing the armour fold round him as the doors close. He turns and walks over to the door slowly as he can’t stop thinking about what Bloodshade had said, he stops just before he door to look back at the screen, as he stares it flashes an image of Bloodshade with a huge grin upon his face and blood all over his mouth, he quickly looks away wishing he never saw that and walks out of the room trying to keep calm. “Princess, it looks as though all SEA forces are leaving the area, they might be retreating after the events with the Overseer.” Veronica says to the grieving princess who is sat on her bed while her sister is in the hospital in a critical condition. She gets up as a nurse knocks on the door; she runs over to the door and opens it to see the nurse with a look as if she had bad news. “I’m sorry princess, but it looks as though she isn’t going to make it. Her blood loss was too great and now she is very weak, we have calculated that she’ll pass away within the next few days.” She says with a soft voice knowing that it won’t exactly please Celestia. She walks off letting the princess alone to think about what has happened, she walks over to the bed, “How....how can they do that. My Luna is dying...dying, I’m going to BUCKING KILL THEM!” she says to herself before running out of the room past the nurse and down to the hospital, the nurse taking a second to realise it was her, then running after her. She soon comes to the hospital and opens the door to see the dying princess on a bed with a couple of nurse around her monitoring her vitals to and watching the drip as they survey her to see if they can have any way of saving her. Celestia slowly walks over to the bed but a nurse stops her to tell her of Luna’s condition the lets her over to the bed. “Luna...Luna it’s me Celestia, how are you feeling?” she asks softly, her sister shuffles her head to look at her with eyes half closed and drowsy. She takes a few seconds to focus on the tall pony stood next to her but then finally notices it to be her sister, “Hay sis’, I’m sorry I did that, I really shouldn’t have jumped in there......dying isn’t so bad, I can’t feel anything.....how long, how long do I have?” she asks with a weak voice to the tearful princess now sat on the side of the bed. Celestia keeps her mouth shut for a bit as she can feel herself going to cry if she spoke now, she takes a few seconds to compose herself while rubbing one of Luna’s hooves, “I....I was told you, you only have a few days. I don’t even think magic will stop this, you lost too much blood.” She says before putting a hoof over her mouth as she starts to well up. “Princess, you have a call coming through.” Veronica calls to her, she turns to look over to a screen with Veronica on it which quickly changes to the inside of a ship, a human in power armour walks in from the side to appear on the screen, it was easy noticeable as the Overseer. “YOU BASTARD!!” she shouts as she runs over to the screen as if it were a real person but stops just shot of it, “YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!” she shouts again in anger as a tear runs down her cheek, her eyes welling right up as she stares at the human, her eyes starting to glow with anger. “Inside voices Princess, we don’t want to stress out the patients do we, your precious little sister won’t like having a loud mouth about while she’s dying, would she now?” he replies calmly. She puts her hooves on the screen and stares down the human, “You fucking sadistic bastard. How could you do this to her after all that time when you helped us?” tears start to flow down her face. He lowers his head as he begins to talk, “Yes, I did once help you silly little ponies, but that was all just false, ever heard of pretending, it was all a trap to gain your trust to get close to you and let you allow our main force to come close and then pull you all apart, but our current circumstances are completely different to how I expected them to be.” He lifts his head to look at Celestia as his helmet fold u to show him actually crying, “I love causing death and pain but my trouble is, I was created for this so no matter how much I try to have peace I can’t, everything I touch dies as a result of my mature to kill.” He looks down once more as drips fall from his face and onto the floor below like a shower of rain. She looks at him with a more sympathetic expression as she lowers her hooves to stand and watch as he turns away briefly to hide his feelings, “Kieron......it isn’t too late to stop this, and you CAN still join us and help us stop this madness.” She claims but he quickly turns with red around his eyes and a huge, manic grin upon his face as if he had just cracked into insanity. “Stop the madness? Never, you can’t stop war....war will always rain upon us as that is what us foolish humans are best at, you can’t stop war, war will always come. As for me coming over to your side, HA, I laugh at that, I belong to the side of the lord, not some silly little creature such as yourself.” He comments as if she was a piece of shit on the bottom of his shoe. Her face once more lighting up with anger as he rudely remarks about her. Luna then falls out of her bed as she tries to get out and see who is on the screen, ‘Tia quickly turns to see her on the floor, and rushes over to help her back up along with the nurses, Kieron stood watching from the screen starts to laugh manically while a few tears run down off his face, a mix of emotions showing. Once back on the bed Luna gets a clear view of the figure on the screen and stares, ‘Tia looks at then over to the screen to see Kieron still laughing but then stops to suddenly open his eyes and stares at the dying princess. Both of them at a stalemate of staring at each other, Luna’s stare weak and more of an intrigued look but Kieron’s full of fire and hate. Kieron continues to stare as the screen suddenly cuts off, “I don’t know about you princesses but I would say he looks mad and means business, I would prepare yourselves, who knows when might come and finish the job with Luna.” Veronica comments. ‘Tia kisses Luna on the head before walking out of the hospital to get ready to go on stop Kieron once and for all, her power armour folding around her as she leaves, Luna putting a hoof out to her, not wanting her to leave. “Rylie....RYLIE!” Kieron shouts, after a few seconds a human runs round a corner and skids to a stop just in front of him, “Good, I want to you to come with me, Thomas has pulled all of our forces back to deal with the Fade but I want to finish business in Equestria, we’re going to kill a princess today.” He says with a huge grin on his face before his helmet folds around his head to block out his expression, the eyes then light up as a bright red like fires roaring in the distances. He turns to face the other way and walks off with Rylie following, they both come to a small hanger with a dropship ready for them but this wasn’t a normal dropship, it was a specially designed dropship made for quick deployment for stealth missions. They both enter the dropship to see a pony stood in armour already inside, it sits on a seat then looks over to them, the eyes bright lavender, Kieron immediately knew who it was, “Moonshine, get out, you’re not coming with us.” He orders but she refuses to leave. He stands and stares at her as she turns her head to face the wall ahead of her, he walks over to her and grabs at her armour but she completely ignores him and continues to glare at the wall, he drops her and sits on the seat next to her while still staring at her, he then looks past her over to the cockpit, “We’re in, let’s go!” he shouts to the pilot through the door that cuts the cockpit from the passenger area. The rear door they came in through then closes up, and the engine whir as they quickly fire up, soon at full power they tilt to point forwards, a catapult along the floor pulls it along to a high speed out of the hanger, as it leaves the rails and off the edge the engines fire up and blast it forward to much faster speeds, as it flies off it activates its cloaking which shimmers round it before the dropship disappears and all radars lose track of it. The ship hits supersonic speeds easily, soon coming to a speed of that faster than the SR-71, it passes over the airspace of Chronus where nothing is left but ruins of buildings and a few Fades that have somehow survived and are wondering about. <20 minutes later> The dropship arrives in Equestrian airspace, the dropship not even being seen by eye or radar as it passes right over the border and the guarding Havoc mechs, it quickly comes to Canterlot, the back door opens and ponies below would be able to see inside but due to the dying sun and darkness inside it they can see nothing, Kieron stood at the door holding a rail as he look at the city below. The door opens fully and the castle starts to come into view below, he lets go of the rail and jumps out, Rylie jumping out a second after him, and Moonshine taking a run up then leaping out of the dropship. Kieron dives right for the roof without slowing, he hits the solid rock and blasts right through, Rylie redirects himself so he falls through the same hole but at angle so he lands next to Kieron, Moonshine lands on the roof to remain out of the way until needed. Kieron and Rylie lift up from their small craters in the floor, only to be fired upon by a couple of royal guards that were in the main hall, they turn to return fire as the rounds bounce off them and into the neighbouring walls. Moonshine snipes them from the roof, only having a small area of view on them through the hole, she takes a few shots them makes her way across the roof towards the princess’ room and waits while Kieron and Rylie run off in the same direction inside the castle. One of the guards they left manages to get back up after being severely hurt and limps over to an alarm button on the wall, he slumps against at and the alarms start to blare, Kieron and Rylie stop outside the corridor to the hospital and look at each other before knodding and going into cloak just as some royal guards run out from the staircase leading to the dungeon, they move up against the wall to let them by without being noticed. Once the guards are gone out of sight, they slowly make their way into the hospital as a change of route, not knowing it to be the hospital though, Kieron opens the door slightly to peek inside, luckily nopony notices the door move and he can see nurses walking about with medical tools, he moves to look about and can see Luna laid on one of the beds, he looks back to Rylie and knods, “One’s in there, let’s go.” He says quietly, he then forces the door open quickly; opens fire on the nurses as Rylie moves round the door and joins him, then shuts the door. Luna opens her eyes to see the carnage going on in the room, she tries to get up and get away but Kieron runs over to her and puts a hand on her chest to push her back down, he doesn’t mess about with the situation by pulling out a knife from its sheath and stabs it into her cranium causing her to instantly slump onto the bed with head on the pillow and only a single drip of blood showing from the wound, he leaves the knife there as he turns to Rylie, “One down, time for the other.” They both enter cloak once more and creep out of the room as some guards along with a guard mech rush into the room. They quickly scan the room to see many dead ponies on the floor with blood splattered all up the walls and floor, one guard sees the princess on the bed with the knife in her head, he slowly walks up to her and goes to pull out the knife but can’t from the sadness of losing her, “How can they do this?” he asks the others who all look at the dead princess with sorrow, the mech keeping guard. Kieron listens in then walks off down the corridor with Rylie right behind him, he puts a hand to his helmet and speaks, “Grand Master, one princess down, one more to go, then we reign supreme.”