• Published 2nd Mar 2012
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A Dream - totallynotabrony



A not so standard human-in-Equestria story including but not limited to: democracy, tequila, and robots.

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The Ending of the End - part 2

I sat in the salon chair and preened for the paparazzi cameras for quite a while. Having a beaten Blueblood lying on the floor before me was just icing on the cake. I literally could not fathom how everyone saw him being in physical pain and at my mercy and still ate that shit up. Whatever, I was making money on it. I loved my job. You nice folks want me to bitchslap him again? I’ll do it, just for you.

However, at a certain point all the reporters were distracted by something outside my control. The top half of Canterlot Castle blew apart in a giant laser beam of magic.

Huh. That was new.

As broken chunks of stone began to rain down outside, Twilight teleported in. She yanked the curtains shut and turned around, breathing hard.

“So...I take it your plan didn’t work,” I said.

“I hadn’t counted on Discord inadvertently making Tirek, Cozy Glow, and Chrysalis more powerful than usual!” she shouted. “At least I think. That was only Cozy Glow in the castle.”

“Oh.”

“She’s an alicorn now.”

“Oh.”

Twilight waved a hoof. “And I heard that Tirek singlehandedly defeated the Pillars. This is bad!”

“I always wondered about Tirek. At any point, did someone think about deporting his ass back to wherever he came from? I vaguely remember something about him and his brother Scorpan coming to Equestria and then having a difference of opinion.” I shrugged. “But I guess if Tirek committed the crime here, of course we would want to punish him ourselves. How many life sentences is he probably up to now? This is at least the second time he’s escaped Tartarus, right?”

“Right, but at least Tirek is a known quantity. A superpowered Cozy Glow is something else.” She pointed up at the castle, or what was left of it.

“Damn, that looks like it’s going to be expensive.”

“Your security didn’t work.” Twilight glared.

I held up a hoof. “You asked me to make the castle secure, and I did. You didn’t ask me to also make the castle invulnerable.”

“Technically, we didn’t even ask you, you just did it.”

“You really want to split hairs with me now, Twilight?”

She winced and shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. We know Cozy Glow is manipulative but she’s never had this much raw power before! She ca-”

Twilight’s voice broke and she had to stop for a moment. She swallowed hard. “She captured my friends. They held her off long enough for me to escape and find help.”

Her head dropped. She took a breath and then raised her eyes to meet mine. “You’re the worst pony I know. Sometimes I can’t believe how bad you are. But Equestria needs saving.”

I smiled. “Am I a bad enough dude to save Equestria? Not sure, but I’ll give it all she’s got, cap’n.”

“More of your stupid otherworldly references at a time like this?” She shook her head and got back to business. “Tirek isn’t here yet and we haven’t seen Chrysalis. I’m guessing she probably went after Starlight as revenge for the last time they fought. If Discord’s plan worked and the three of them learned to work together...we’re in trouble. The three of them can’t be allowed to link up.”

Twilight’s face twisted as if the next words tasted bad. “I need you to kill an alicorn.”

“One child murder, coming up.”

Twilight had closed her eyes, unable to even face my chipper attitude. “Are you going to rub this in?”

“You know, normally yes. I would absolutely take pleasure in telling you that I told you so. And I still think you kind of deserve it for ever trusting Discord. However, because I really want to stick it to him more than you, I think I can put aside my criticism for a while.”

I stood up from my chair and started limbering up. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“When this is all over, I get to deal with Discord.”

“It...it won’t even be sporting. He doesn’t have his power.”

“What, you think it’s going to be sporting what I do to the others?”

Twilight grimaced and looked away. “I just want to put this behind us and I promise you, Valiant, I will put all my effort into becoming a better leader for Equestria.”

“That’s nice.” I picked up the sledgehammer, hit the bell on Blueblood’s head a couple more times, and walked out of the salon.

Twilight hurried after me. The city was strangely calm. The sun was parked overhead, but glancing at a nearby clocktower, I saw it was pretty late. I guess I relied more on the sun for keeping time in the day than I thought. Screw you, Celestia, making me act like a bird.

Aside from the castle being mostly destroyed, there didn’t seem to be a lot going on. Ponies were concerned, sure, but didn’t seem to be freaking out like three major villains were attacking.

Maybe they didn’t know. Sure, there had been sirens, but if I didn’t know what they meant, maybe the general public didn’t either. Wouldn’t surprise me.

I shook my head. Villains whose attack had been just another disaster, nothing flashy enough to be noticed, no sense of style. Twilight was right, this wasn’t going to be sporting at all.

We walked into the castle. The guards, at least, seemed to be well aware that something was happening, though paralyzed what to do about it.

“It’s midnight, why is the sun still up?” I heard one muttering as he glanced skyward.

“Daylight savings,” I replied.

“More like daylight slavings,” a voice called.

I squared my shoulders. He we go.

Walking into the demolished throne room, we found Cozy Glow. Sure enough, she was an alicorn. She saw us come in, and hovered closer.

“Where are my friends!?” Twilight shouted at her, apparently forgetting that she’d already turned over the reins to me.

“Oh, I locked them in the dungeon.” Cozy waved a hoof. I noticed she was wearing a necklace. It looked kind of like a friendship crafting project and I wondered if she’d made it herself. Maybe she, Tirek, and Chrysalis had figured out how to create an artifact that transferred magic. Interesting. I wonder if it was based on the idea of Grogar’s bell.

“Who is this?” Cozy asked, pointing at me.

“I’m a certified badass.”

“Was that the certificate on the wall of the salon that was also signed by you?” Twilight asked out of the corner of her mouth.

“Oh really?” said Cozy to me, smirking.

“Yeah, I’m the guy Twilight brought in to kill you so she maintains plausible deniability of her involvement when the history books are written about how she came to power.”

Twilight looked at me, surprised.

Even Cozy looked a little taken aback. “Kill? Not some friendship lesson?”

I pulled my knife. Twilight knew it was coming, but still I’m not sure which of the two of them gulped harder.

I wasn’t figuring Cozy for a tough fight. Sure, she was manipulative and an alicorn, but she was also a child and had been able to shoot magic beams for less than a day. Not that being an alicorn was that impressive. I’d heard that in this universe, Starlight Glimmer had fought alicorn Twilight - the Element of Magic - to a standstill. Plus, we all know what happened to Celestia when she fought Chrysalis.

The point was, I expected subterfuge from Cozy, and when she just came at me firing magic willy-nilly, I thought it was a trick. Sure, I still deflected the magic beam with my obsidian knife, but I was waiting for something else.

There wasn’t, just Cozy getting frustrated as I swatted away her attacks. They chipped stone away wherever they hit, but it wasn’t like the castle could be any more ruined.

Well shit, if she was just going to be an annoyance, I decided to see if I could hit one of her attacks directly back at her. It took a couple of tries, but I finally got the swing just right. Cozy took the blast straight to the chest and it knocked her end over end into the rubble at the corner of the room.

Since I had a second to breathe, I decided to see if Grogar’s bell worked. I’d been carrying it with me since I’d heard about it on the tape recorder. I still hadn’t figured out how blackout-me had recorded that conversation, but I was glad he had.

Cozy was just lifting her head when I pointed the bell at her. It seemed pretty easy to use. There were literally no controls. Sure enough, it sucked her magic right out. She shrank an inch in height, the horn on her head faded away, and a certain sparkle left her mane. The bell also seemed to suck out whatever magic was in her necklace, too. I assumed that may have been some of Discord’s juice. While she was down, it seemed like a good idea to confiscate that. I cut it off.

“Golly, mister.” Cozy summoned a weak smile. “I guess you won. I learned my lesson.”

“I don’t believe you, but that isn’t the point. Don’t do a crime if you aren’t willing to do the time.” I waved the knife. “Well, or in this case, die.”

Twilight came rushing over. “Valiant, you got her, there’s no need-”

“Relax, Twilight,” I said, bottling the tears Cozy started crying just then. Never know when something like that might come in handy. I corked the bottle and said, “I’m not going to kill her.”

“Oh good, that’s-”

“Yet. Once I catch up with and defeat the others I’ll have a group public execution.”

I grabby Cozy by the throat and dragged her out of the throne room, ignoring Twilight’s protests. I dragged her out of the castle and down the street, back to where I had parked the B1R.

“What are you all looking at?” Cozy squeaked at the townsponies staring at us. “Are you going to just let this earth pony sully my pegasus honor?” She pointed at Twilight. “While that unicorn watches?”

“Oh yeah, I meant to say something. Racism is bad.” I dragged Cozy to the holding cell I’d built in the B1R’s hold and tossed her in, locking the door. “I mean, yeah, I know, ponies are racist as hell, but that’s why it was easy to see what you were doing and enact incentives to not be so racist.”

All I had done was make some death threats, but that was a hell of an incentive.

“Chrysalis is still out there spreading discontent among the unicorns!” Cozy spat.

“I doubt that. But we can tell her she’s racist too, when we find her.”

“She’s not even the same species so therefore technically not racist! She was just spreading racism to tear your stupid society apart!”

It did put me in a little bit of an awkward position, me of all people being the glue holding society together. Then again, if bell hair was all it took, it was a pretty low bar.

Going back topside, Twilight joined me to be away from Cozy Glow. “Alright,” I said. “Let’s go find the other two.”

“What about my friends?” she said. “We need to rescue them.”

“If we do, we’ll have to drag Cozy along to keep an eye on her because I think you’ll agree she needs constant supervision. That sounds annoying. Plus, when we do find your friends, they might protest at me doing what I’m doing. You’ll either have to lie to them about what you asked me to do, or let them fight Tirek and Chrysalis instead of me, and I don’t think they can. They’ll be just more targets.”

I spread my hooves. “So either you go rescue them alone, or come with me and we’ll go round up Tirek and Chrysalis first.”

“You really thought of everything,” she muttered.

“You know, it’s only when I’m killing people and saving your ass that I really get in the zone. Maybe it’s my special talent.”

“I thought you weren’t going to rub it in.”

“Sorry, sometimes I monologue.”

Twilight sighed. “Fine, I’ll go with you.”

I had actually been hoping that she wouldn’t. I don’t like supervision any more than the next guy. Maybe I should have just killed Cozy straight away. Since I hadn’t, maybe Twilight thought what I was going to do wouldn’t be so bad.

So it left the question whether I should continue to be a little theatrical, instead be more pragmatic, or be extra theatrical.

“Since you’re here, Twilight, get me a vector to Tirek. I’m guessing he’ll be in the direction that you sense a major disturbance in the world’s magic.”

Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated. After a few seconds, she said, “South, I think. He’s still coming from the border where the Pillars were.”

I turned the airship that way. With Twilight’s guidance, it seemed like we were headed vaguely towards Appleoosa. I kept my eyes on the horizon.

The attack, when it came, originated as a huge beam of angry red energy. Fortunately, over-the-horizon magic attacks are hard to aim by eyeball, and Tirek missed.

I took evasive action and pulled out my spyglass. If he hadn’t been so big from sucking magic, I probably wouldn’t have seen him. Fortunately, the desert around Appleoosa was pretty flat and Tirek cut a tall silhouette. Shame I didn’t have any artillery to shoot back.

I put the B1R into a dive and leveled out at as low as I could. I was kicking myself now for putting in an engine that had the power to drive such a huge propeller, because the size of the prop limited minimum altitude. I steered towards the buildings and buckball stadium of Appleoosa to use as cover.

Maybe I should have expected that Tirek wouldn’t care and instead just level the town with magic. At any rate, he was still pretty far away and with some guesswork and artful dodging, I managed to keep us from getting pulverized. Can’t say the same about the town, but that’s not really my fault, is it?

Twilight thought it was, but nobody listens to her.

Still, I couldn’t keep this up forever. The town would be leveled, if nothing else. I mean, God seemed to hate Appleoosa - again not my fault - but that would start being a problem when there wasn’t anything left to hide behind.

I remembered the crater outside of town where the remnants of the Saturn V had crashed. That could work. Getting there was going to be a problem, though.

Fortunately, I had a sixty liter diesel in the back and the simple act of dumping in more fuel created a very nice cloud of black smoke.

“Why didn’t you just do that to start with!?” Twilight shouted. Nobody listens to her.

Under cover of rolling coal, we managed to make it outside town in one piece. The crater was pretty big, and I set the airship down into it. It was completely hidden from view, and as the smoke dissipated, Tirek’s attacks seemed to taper off. Good, the ruse had worked. Had blackout-me planned this, too?

I crawled to the edge of the crater with my spyglass, taking care to keep it from glinting in the sun. Tirek was still far enough away that he didn’t spot my movement.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get close to him. I had pretty much been playing the battle with Cozy by ear, but this guy might actually be dangerous, and out on the flat plains, there was no cover.

I just had to get close enough to kick him in the dick. Or something. That was what I had done last time. I had also taken a giant ship on him. I guess I could afford to be creative.

Remembering the bell, I pulled it out and looked at it. It seemed to have a little glow of energy, probably what it had sucked from Cozy and her necklace. I took another look at Tirek. He wasn’t wearing a similar piece of jewelry, probably because he could naturally suck magic. It had worked on Discord the last time they had fought, which was also the last time I’d kicked Tirek in the dick. He still had a convenient arrow in his crotch fur pointing the way.

I was going to have to approach him, and I doubted he was going to make it easy. I lifted the bell, and stood up.

Tirek saw me, but it took him a couple of seconds to determine who I was and what I was doing. I had galloped a few dozen yards before I saw the ball of red magic above his horns start to glow, and dodged to the side.

He missed, but only barely. I took a leap of faith and raised the bell. His next attack was dead-on, but it went straight inside the bell as if a piece of lint into a vacuum. Hey, this might actually work.

I kept charging at him. He fired a couple more magic blasts, but was quickly realizing that it wasn’t working. As I got close enough, he saw the bell and must have realized what it was, because he suddenly turned and started to run. It was a long shot, but I hurled my knife after him.

It was just a spruced-up kitchen knife, not really great for throwing, but it struck true - right in his asshole.

Not surprisingly, that really hindered Tirek’s ability to run. As I caught up with him, the bell started to pull magic away and he began to wither away back to his ancient, wizened form. That just made his asshole smaller, while the knife didn’t change size at all.

Well shit, I had been going to kill him anyway, but execution-style with his friends. This was just awkward, him bleeding out the ass in the middle of the desert.

I gingerly pulled out the knife, which caused his guts and a lot more blood to spill out. I wiped the knife off on his butt and quickly walked away.

The bell seemed to be glowing more brightly now. I looked at it as I walked back to the crater. I glanced up and saw another airship coming in. It looked like a Guard model, and as it landed, I realized it was all Twilight’s friends, the Princesses, and Discord.

“We managed to escape,” said Celestia. “Cozy Glow, while powerful, has very little experience in shackles and bars.”

Pinkie came bouncing over. “Now that we’re free, what are we going to do, Twilight?”

“The same thing we do every time, Pinkie: try to save the world,” Twilight replied. Her friends brought it in for a group hug.

I chuckled and shook my head.

“What’s his problem?” said Rainbow.

“You say ‘managed to escape’ as if I didn’t leave a how-to-escape-the-castle-dungeon guide scratched on the wall the last time I was there,” I said. “It was like one sentence because your security sucks.”

“I thought you improved it?” said Twilight.

“I made it harder for people to enter. You never asked me to keep people in.”

“Back on subject,” said Celestia. “Where is Tirek?”

“Bleeding out over there.” I gestured. “He might be dead by now. I’m not sure the loss rate of ass blood.”

Celestia cringed, but went on. “And Cozy Glow?”

I started to turn towards where I had left her locked aboard the B1R, but suddenly saw Cozy zoom into the sky.

“Uh, oops,” said Discord, his face appearing over the edge of the crater.

My hoof flicked in the direction of Cozy. Surprising myself again, I got another hit - two for two. As it spun, the obsidian blade lopped off both Cozy’s wings. She screamed as she fell out of the sky, until her face slammed into a small boulder at terminal velocity. Based on the crunch, I wasn’t sure if her skull or her spine had broken. Based on the results, it looked like both.

“Well, two out of four isn’t bad, I guess. Just need to find Chrysalis now.”

“Four?” said Twilight.

I looked at her. “You know what you promised me.”

“I-I what?”

I pulled out my tape recorder and hit play. “I promise you, Valiant.

“That was out of context! I was promising to be a better leader of Equestria! I was not promising you Discord’s head if you helped me save everypony else!”

“You did what now?” said Discord. “Would you really sell me out like that? To him!?” he gestured at me.

I glanced at him. “You mad?”

Discord looked at Twilight, who didn’t meet his eyes. He turned towards the Princesses and the others, who also did not seem to want to come to his defense. I smirked and walked towards him. “I kept saying you were an asshole. I don’t think I’ll stab you in it like Tirek - not even sure if a draconequus has one to be honest - but I’m still going to enjoy this.”

He dropped to his knees, hands clasped and actual tears in his eyes. “Hey now, that wouldn’t be fair. I’m helpless without my magic right now! Please!”

Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Instead, I’m just going to take something away from you. Something that will hurt, and you’ll wish you were dead. Something that will make the world a better place for everyone else.”

I pulled out the bell. Discord’s eyes focused on it, and he immediately knew what it was. “Does that have-”

“You took all the magic from Tirek and Cozy - who took it from Discord?” said Luna.

“Valiant, no, we need to-” Twilight started to say.

I ignored her. I stared Discord down, as an expression that I’d never seen him use before crossed his face: regretting his own actions.

“Please,” he said.

“Fuck you, Discord.”

I crushed the bell under my hoof.

I probably should have expected the magic explosion that followed. It didn’t really do anything or go anywhere, just fizzled away all at once in a blinding flash.

A small cloud of desert dust hung in the air. I blinked the spots out of my eyes. I seemed...taller?

Everyone was looking at me, eyes wide, mouths agape. Did something happen? Was there something on my face?

“What are you all looking at?” I said. Something seemed to be wrong with my voice.

Chrysalis!?” Twilight shouted.

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