We Shall go on to the End

by Wheller

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Twilight froze with fear as Legion stared her down. She nervously pulled out her revolver and pointed it at the god like Pegasus before her, stepping in front of Rainbow Dash. Legion had said in the past that he ‘remembered’ Rainbow Dash. Clearly, he had come for her. ‘Stay... stay back! Don’t you dare touch her!’

Vinyl Scratch too, stepped in front of Surprise, brandishing her revolver as well, knowing full well that it wasn’t going to do squat against somepony as powerful as legion. Surprise couldn’t look at him, she buried her eyes into Vinyl’s flank.

Legion looked blankly at her for a moment, cocking his head slowly from side to side as he took a step forward.

‘S... stop!’ Twilight cried again weakly. ‘I... I won’t let you hurt her!’

‘We have not come to hurt them’, Legion said plainly, causing both Twilight and Vinyl to take a step back in shock.

‘You... you haven’t?’ Twilight asked in confusion.

‘No’, Legion said as he turned and looked out the window towards the smoking Ponyville as it slowly disappeared into the background as the train moved away from it. Everyone sat quietly for a few moments, waiting for Legion to continue speaking.

‘Well, what do you want then?’ Vinyl Scratch snapped at him, getting tired of waiting. ‘And what happened to Whirlwind?’

Legion’s ear twitched slightly at the mention of Whirlwind’s name. The Pegasus looked somewhat... sad for a moment, if only a moment, before his face returned to normal, and then he turned towards Vinyl Scratch. ‘During the Battle of Ponyville, Whirlwind’s consciousness was separated from the Unity, we can no longer hear him, and we are worse off for it’.

‘The fuck is the... “Unity?”’ Vinyl asked.

‘We are the Unity’, Legion responded simply, as he turned back towards the window. ‘The Unity is made up of a hundred voices, thinkers, dreamers, wanderers, artists, scientists, magi, leaders... despots. We are enriched by them all, the loss of just one of the Unity is... devastating. We ache for the loss of Whirlwind, we strive to achieve unity for all, individuality does not allow them to reach their full potential, only through the Unity can we become truly great, we join them all in this body, once all have joined the Unity, we shall transcend the plane and take our rightful place’.

‘Sounds like a pipe dream to me, you can’t possibly know how to do that even if you wanted to’, Rainbow Dash piped up, subconsciously flapping her wings and rising into the air.

‘Oh?’ Legion said. ‘We know many things, including the knowledge of a Royal AND an Other’.

‘That’s nice’, Vinyl snorted in annoyance. ‘You didn’t answer my question, what did you come here for?’

Legion turned back to face Vinyl Scratch. ‘We have come to propose an alliance’.

‘You... what?’ Twilight asked. That statement was just as, if not more shocking than Legion’s return.

‘The Māo Xióng of the Peking Republic have an old adage. ‘The enemy of our enemy is our friend’, we have an enemy, and you have the same enemy. It is the Cultus Mechanius of the Fillydelphia chapter’, Legion said.

‘What’d they do ta ya?’ Applejack asked as she poked her head up from the crowd.

‘They are an affront to the Unity! They must be destroyed!’ Legion said passionately, in what may have been the only display of emotion that they had seen from the god like Pegasus throughout his entire existence.

Twilight looked at Legion for a moment, blinking slowly, and then, a smug look formed on her face. ‘I think I see what’s going on here’.

‘Excellent, then you see wisdom in our proposal...’ Legion began.

‘I’m not finished yet’, Twilight snapped back, causing Legion to shut his mouth tightly. ‘Here is what I have deduced about you, you feel that the Unity is superior because you have the collective knowledge of multiple people making up your consciousness, and that you have the ability to unite the world under the Unity because of that knowledge, correct?’

‘Yes’, Legion said, cocking his head slightly.

‘But, you’ve come to us asking for help against the Fillydelphia chapter. Doesn’t that go against your ideology?’ Twilight asked.

Legion looked blankly at Twilight, ‘We... acknowledge that the Cultus Mechanius is a powerful foe that is of much concern to us. We are not the Alicorn Overdrive, we are not immortal, this body can still die, and should it, the Unity would go with it’.

‘So then, what you’re basically admitting to is that your ideology is wrong, that you can’t defeat the Fillydelphia chapter on your own, and you need us’, Twilight said with a triumphant smile, she had him on the ropes, and he knew it. ‘Face it Legion, you need us far more than we need you’.

‘We do not need you!’ Legion snapped back in a voice that sounded upset. ‘We can kill you all where you stand in the blink of an eye!’

Twilight’s revolver snapped back up, as did Vinyl Scratch’s. Rarity drew out her submachine gun, likewise, Caramel and three other Cultus Mechanius Templars raised their Heavy Machine Guns towards the Pegasus. ‘You’ve already admitted to us that your body is mortal, your death would be the end of the Unity. Now, we also know that your telekinetic ability is quite good, you’ve shown your ability to catch bullets with your minds is good, but... would you like to test just how good it is?’ Twilight said smugly.

‘... We take it our offer of alliance is rejected?’ Legion asked with some hesitation.

‘On the contrary’, Twilight said raising her head high with pride. ‘We accept your offer. BUT... we shall be the ones setting the terms of our alliance, NOT you’.

Legion was quiet for a moment. His eye turned up and to the right, as if he was thinking. ‘Very well’, he said eventually.

‘Excellent’, Twilight said proudly. ‘I’m glad to see that you’re a reasonable... individual... after all’, Twilight added, putting significant emphasis on the term individual, knowing that it bothered Legion to be addressed as such. If it annoyed him, he showed no signs of it. Twilight had put him on the defensive. They were in charge, not him, and he knew it.

...

Dinky Doo sat quietly on the floor of her home, her head buried deep into the Book of Nephi. She finished the page she was on, and struggled to turn the page with her magic. Dinky was still quite young, and didn’t have very good control over her magic yet. In ordinary unicorn homes in the rest of Equestria, it was the mother’s responsibility to teach her child how to use magic.

That was the problem for Dinky Doo, her biological mother never loved her. Dinky knew little about her biological mother. Her biological mother had been incredibly young when she had had her by normal standards. She had barely been considered to be a mare when she had become pregnant with her. Not even out of secondary school. Her biological mother had given her up almost straight away because she didn’t want her easy going, care free, fun loving lifestyle to be interrupted. In other words she didn’t want to take responsibility for her actions.

Whatever.

Dinky didn’t care that she had been abandoned by her biological mother. She knew she was better off without her. She had been adopted by Ponyville’s pegasi mail mare, Derpy Hooves, and she had raised her as her own. As far as Dinky Doo was concerned, she was her real mum. Mum had always been up front and honest with her about her adoption. She never once held the truth from her. Dinky loved her for that.

But, from a technical standpoint, they did not live in Equestria anymore, while she and her mum lived within Equestria’s de jure borders. New Maneaan was its own de facto state, New Maneaan, being the home of the Nephites, which her mum and she had joined several months ago. The Nephites had not always lived in New Maneaan, their old home, Ashville, had been destroyed by a ballistic missile strike before they had joined the Nephite society. The Nephites, along with their long time allies, the Cultus Mechanius, had constructed New Maneaan as a replacement home for their old residence of Ashville, in a place called the Divide.

Dinky had never been to the Divide, she knew her mum had, she had told her it was a dangerous place, rogue weather patterns popped up out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast, often times causing a lot of damage. Mum never sugarcoated things for her.

Dinky liked being part of the Nephites, though she technically wasn’t part of the community yet, as she had not been baptised, but that was okay, because the same could be said about the other children her age. The Nephites believed that a pony must choose whether they want to actually be Nephites for themselves. Most did choose to be baptised, but a fair number (relatively speaking, the Nephite population isn’t particularly large, only about two thousand) do choose not to be baptised, and leave their home for other places in Equestria, usually cities like Las Maregas or El Paso Fino.

Dinky had to wonder the population was rather small, how could the Nephite leadership allow them to leave? In fact, she had asked this of Graham Cracker, who might as well be New Maneaan’s mayor.

‘How can we make them stay?’ had been his response. Dinky had thought about it, and the more she did, the more it made sense. Forcing them to stay would leave a percentage of the nephite population unwilling to do the work that needed to be done to make New Maneaan thrive as a community. That was far more dangerous.

She turned the page of the Book of Nephi with her magic. It was a simple act that most unicorns in Equestria took for granted. For Dinky, however, it was a miracle that she was able to do it at all. Aside from her, New Maneaan had only one other unicorn resident. Moses Marening, the town gunsmith. He had taken it upon herself to tutor her in exercising her magical ability. Dinky was sure he was doing it out of a sense of obligation. After all, he was the ONLY other unicorn in town, if not him, who else?

Dinky and her mum had been incredibly grateful for Moses Marening’s help. Dinky could tell that her mum felt guilty that she couldn’t do it herself.

The door to her home opened. ‘Mum!’ Dinky called out as she looked up.

Her mum said nothing, but smiled warmly at her. Dinky got up and ran over to her, giving her a tight hug. ‘Hello little one!’ she said.

Ditzy Doo smiled at her daughter. She felt guilty that she couldn’t be at home with her, but she also knew that she had other responsibilities that needed addressing, Responsibilities that were about to take her away from New Maneaan. ‘Dinky...’

Dinky looked up at her mum in disappointment. She knew what was coming next. ‘You’re going away again, aren’t you?’

Ditzy Doo looked down at her daughter and nodded. ‘Yes, Graham Cracker wants me to accompany him to Vermillion Mesa’.

Dinky frowned. She knew her mum loved her, but that didn’t change the fact that it hurt when she left.

‘How would you like to come with me?’ Ditzy Doo asked with a smile.

Dinky looked up in surprise. ‘R... really?’ she asked.

‘Of course! I mean, you’re certainly old enough, and I think you would enjoy a trip to Vermillion Mesa. Seeing the Cultus Mechanius home is really quite a sight, I already asked Graham Cracker, it’s just a routine trip, so he said it was okay’.

‘I... I can really go with you!?’ Dinky asked, making sure this was real.

Ditzy Doo smiled brightly at her daughter. ‘Of course! Start packing little one’.

Comments

[DreadedCandiru2]

Oh, goody. Dinky gets to (as the Yanks say) tear her biological mother a new arsehole in this one. That's two more ponies that want to beat the shit out of Vinyl now.

[Fallen Knight]

Would be "funny" if Vinyl was the mother... and she doesnt even recall it with all the drugs and parties she had.

It would be a miracle that Dinky is normal then though.

[Wheller]

In hindsight, I can see why you lot would think that Vinyl is Dinky's biological mother.

However, she is not.

[Darksymphony777]

Her biological mother had given her up almost straight away because she didn’t want her easy going, care free, fun loving lifestyle to be interrupted. In other words she didn’t want to take responsibility for her actions.

My mother in law in a nutshell.