TD vs Equestria Girls

by BronyWriter

Less Than Ideal

I sighed and rubbed my temples as I heard Adagio's explanation of everything. Because of course the head councilor had evil artifacts that she was probably going to use to take over the world, or something like that. Might as well. This is, of course, on top of all of the magical powers Sunset and her buddies had suddenly gained.

"So where did she find these, again?" I asked, looking back over to Adagio as she held an ice pack to one of the bigger shiners that Rapids had given her. Adagio sighed and glared over at Sonata, who was still glomped onto her.

"Some cave in the forest. I don't know how she figured out that they were magic, but that's what she'd been using to create all of the problems in the camp. It's like falling dominoes. The more she tries to fix things, the more of them fall down. At first it was harmless. She just used the magic to fix something here or give something a nudge there. As things have gone on, though, she's been using it more. The problems with Filthy Rich and the money she owes him have added a lot more stress, so she's been using magic more and more to create, and I'm quoting, 'a summer experience so good that everybody will want to come here, and the camp will be fine'."

I scoffed. "Yeah, because that's how it works, especially when your head councilor is basically on drugs at this point."

"How much does she owe anyway?" Sunset asked.

Adagio shrugged. "Not like she shared financial records with me, or anything like that. I know the loan was big. As in, bigger than she could possibly hope to pay off. If I've heard right, he pulled a fast one on her with the interest of the loan and instead of fifteen percent, it's like, forty-five, or something like that. He stuffed enough legal-ese in there that she made a mistake."

I grimaced at that. The Filthy Rich back in Ponyville wasn't always opposed to stepping on a few toes if the deal was good, but he'd never pull something like that. He'd be run out of town if ponies knew he did that kind of thing, to say nothing of the deal he'd lose with the Apple Family. Being on the right end of a bad loan wouldn't be worth losing that much of his reputation. That might need to factor into my plans here.

"Well, do we know if she's keeping the geodes anywhere?" Twilight asked. "If we can get those away from her, maybe that will depower her enough that I can calm her down and fix as much as I can here. Depending on the loan, we can look into something there, but obviously the most important thing is stopping the magic that has control over her. Once we get that settled, it should be pretty easy to solve everything. As much as she thinks they're the solution to her problems, she doesn't know what she's playing with, and it's going to get a lot worse from here."

Sunset nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I've studied enough magic to know where this leads. We have to stop her sooner rather than later, or she might get powerful enough that we're in real trouble."

"And it's not like I can get the other alicorns over here to fight her, since we lose our magic once we enter the portal," I said. "You guys seem to have gained powers, so we might need to utilize that, but the main benefit here is Kristen, who..."

Right as I said that, I turned around to see that she'd disappeared. Of course. I loved my sister, obviously, but the chaos god thing could be a bit... inconvenient. If she just stuck around, I could make a plan with her that could solve this thing sooner, but I guess that's not fun enough for her.

"So... we should probably find Kristen," I grumbled turning to the rest of them. "If we can get her help taking the geodes from Gloriosa, we can fix this... not quietly, but quickly. I'll take quickly over quietly." That left the question of what to do with the geodes once I had them, but that was a secondary concern. Right now, I needed to find Kristen as soon as possible, both because she can help fix this, or do something crazy that sets Gloriosa off, possibly on purpose just to see what happened. Not that I think she'd want destruction, but she is the chaos god, and acts accordingly.

"So, we want to find Kristen and get her to help, then at the same time find Gloriosa to keep an eye on her," Rainbow Dash said.

I nodded. "Right. Adagio, any idea where she's keeping them, or if her brother might know?"

Adagio thankfully nodded. "Yeah, she's keeping them around her neck."

Ah, I wondered what those were. At first glance I just thought there were some necklace that she liked, not magical artifacts that she was using to control the camp. Of course. Well, given everything we've done here so far, breaking into her room while she was asleep to steal it wasn't the worst thing. Better than shooting the necklace with a shotgun, not that I'd brought it anyway. It was magical, but I didn't think it was magical enough to withstand that kind of attack.

Heck, I wasn't sure if the shotgun wouldn't have killed the Sirens, but I was on my last option there.

In any case, we needed to find Kristen and Gloriosa. If we were lucky, maybe we could have this all settled in a few hours. We just needed to get the geodes.

"Alright, Blaze, Rapids and I will try to find Gloriosa. Obviously if she does get set off we can't do as much to stop her, but I'd rather risk us than any of you guys."

Rainbow Dash scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah right. As if. I think you're forgetting that we all have magical powers now, dude. If she attacks, who's gonna be better at taking her down? The girls with super strength, shields, explosive sprinkles and super speed, or..." She motioned to me. "You know, I get that you guys were in a war and all, but if it comes down to a fight, who's gonna have an easier time of things?"

Eugh. I guess... she was technically correct. Not gonna lie, the locals using their powers to defend the camp was the easier option. All I could really do to fight her was... not all that much. Again, didn't bring the shotgun.

Man, why couldn't I have kept my powers on the other side of the portal? I could have solved all four issues I've come over here for in minutes. I was used to having the ability to vaporize any enemy in seconds if I wanted to, so being a weak non-magical human again never got any easier since ascending. However, it just wasn't an option now. I had to work with what I had, and right now that was seven super-powered teenagers.

"Alright, just..." I sighed and shook my head. "Just be careful. I don't know exactly how she's going to react when we actually confront her, so I don't want you all to get hurt. I'm not even sure how powerful she's is."

Pinkie flopped onto me and fake sniffled. "And you just couldn't bear to see any of us hurt! You'd never forgive yourself!" she said in a voice that sounded more like an exaggerated Rarity than Pinkie. I scoffed and pushed her aside.

"All joking aside, yes. I came here to help everybody, and if I ruin things enough that she goes on a rampage and you get injured or god forbid killed..." I grimaced. "Yeah. Pinkie's right. I'd never forgive myself. Other than Adagio, her crew and Sunset, you all have doubles on the other side of the portal. Every time I saw one of your doubles, I'd remember how I'd messed up."

"Aww shucks, you don't gotta worry about that," Applejack said. "With the power of friendship, we're unstoppable!"

"Yeah, we're totally gonna stop Gloriosa and save the camp and be the most popular girls in school!" Rainbow said, snapping out a few boxing punches.

"We'll be alright, Your Highness," Rarity said with a nod.

Ugh. Well, until we found Kristen, we didn't have any better options. I nodded and turned to the door. "Alright, let's get going, then. Blaze, Rapids, Applejack, Rainbow, Adagio and Sunset with me. The rest go try to find Kristen and get any intel you can about any of the magic going on. If we can find where exactly she got the geodes, we might be able to stop her."

"Got it!" Pinkie said before bouncing out of the room, tossing a can of sprinkles up and down in the air in a way that I didn't particularly like. One drop...

Pinkie being Pinkie, I guess.

As we all walked out of the room, Sunset started walking beside me with a grimace on her face. Okay, odd. I turned to her and raised an eyebrow.

"You okay?"

Sunset sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "I guess..." she muttered. "Just... you aren't. I don't know how you can be."

I stopped in my tracks and gave her a confused frown. The rest of the group stopped when I did, but I motioned for them to keep going. Once it was just Sunset and I in the room, I fully turned to face her.

"Look, I know I don't have my magic right now and I have to risk you guys, but my ego isn't so fragile that I'm gonna mope and be emotionally destroyed because of it."

Sunset shook her head and rubbed her arm. "It's... it's not that."

"Then what is it about?"

"It's..." She took a deep breath. "I got powers, too. When I touched your shoulder, I felt... you, I guess? Your emotions. Your feelings. I think I got empathy powers."

My look of confusion turned into a grimace, and I slowly nodded, clicking my tongue. "Ah. Yeah, I guess I can see why that would have been a bit of a shock for you."

Sunset nodded and leaned against the wall, looking to the floor. "Yeah. It just... hurt. All I could feel was pain and pressure, like a huge weight was dropped onto my shoulders. I wanted to scream and cry, but it only lasted a few seconds." She looked up at me. "How do you live with it? We all have burdens to bear, but some of the stuff I felt was more than I ever thought was possible. I felt what it was like to lose everything, to have ponies die for you, to feel the pain of the weapons you were wounded by, to..." She took another deep, shaky breath. "K-kill someone, then force that pain down as you do it over and over again until you're a shell."

"Well, I hope you also felt the joy and happiness I feel when I'm around my wife and daughters," I replied with a small smile. "The fun of pulling pranks with my sister, the friendship I feel when Blaze, Rapids and I are around each other, the feeling of accomplishment when you know you've done something that improves the lives of the ponies you've been tasked to take care of, and things like that. Yes, I've gone through things that nobody should ever have to, but at the same time, I've experienced some of life's greatest joys. Yeah, you have to force yourself to become numb to killing thousands of people with the moral justification of 'us versus them,' but the alternative is much, much worse. You just adapt and look a the positives."

"I guess," Sunset muttered. "I still can't imagine, and I don't like how close I came to it."

I shrugged. "You didn't know, and neither did I. Now that you know you have those powers, you can probably control them, otherwise you'd have to go through your entire life never having any physical contact with anybody ever, and that just sounds like a miserable thought."

"It definitely does," Sunset said. "Anyway, we should probably catch up with the others and..." A slight frown crossed her face. "Hopefully not need to save the world, but at least camp. Gloriosa going nuts would probably do more than hurt us if she was set off."

"Probably," I agreed. "Let's go save camp.

The two of us walked outside where the rest of the group that was going to look for Gloriosa was waiting for us.

"You guys okay?" Blaze asked.

"Oh, yeah, we're good. Just needed to... talk about some stuff," I said. "Nothing too important."

The rest of the group exchanged uncertain looks, but they seemed to decide to drop it. I'd probably have one or more of them ask me about it later, but they didn't need to know. Right now the important thing was finding Gloriosa and stopping her. We could deal with more later.

"Alright, so the last time we were in the forest, that's where we felt the most magic, so my guess is that wherever she's getting these geodes from is in there. We should have plenty of daylight left to search for the source. There might be more, or there could be a way of depowering them completely. If I had to guess, without the geodes, she's just a normal human who's not a real threat."

Adagio shot me a glare so quickly that I thought I might have imagined it. Weird. Sunset, Blaze, Rapids, Twilight Adagio and I decided to explore the forest, while the rest who weren't looking for Kristen went to find Gloriosa. Hopefully this wouldn't turn into a fight, but I wanted to be ready in case it did. And hey, if we found more geodes, I might actually be able to fight her myself without the rest needing to be in harm's way. I had much more experience dealing with magic, so if it came to a straight fight, I could probably beat her with no problems.

Probably. My life never went as easily as I hoped it would, except for this one time about six months after I ascended. I ordered an audit of a business that I thought might be up to some shady stuff, and it turned out I was right, and we got it all settled in a couple of days. As far as I can remember, that... that was it. I think it was a Tuesday.

Sigh.

We passed by the rest of the campers who were all up to their various activities, completely unaware that their lives may all very well be in danger. Stopping Gloriosa might not be completely worth it if we leveled the camp and got a bunch of people hurt in the process. We weren't trying to reenact the end battles of the average superhero movies.

It wasn't more than a few steps into the forest before we started feeling a bigger concentration of the magic in the air again. That probably meant we'd find something. If Gloriosa had all of the geodes and whatever held them was depowered, we probably wouldn't be feeling anything.

"This all gives me the creeps," Rapids muttered, looking around as if expecting something to jump out at us. "Is this how a tuning fork feels when I flick it?"

"Whatever it is, it's getting worse the farther we go into the forest," I said before turning to Twilight and Sunset. "Do you two feel anything? You have powers now."

Sunset nodded, and Twilight shook her head. "Nothing," Twilight said. "Just a little bit of wind."

"Same," Adagio said. "Which..." She grimaced and shook her head. "Nothing."

"I feel it," Sunset said, rubbing her arms. "I'm with Rapids: I don't like this."

"I almost feel like we should have brought some weapons or something," Blaze said, picking up a stick lying next to the path. He gave it a few small swings before shaking his head and tossing it on the ground. "But if we showed up armed, that would definitely make things so, so much worse."

"Without a doubt," I agreed. "Right now we have to find everything, then we'll go from there."

The group was silent as we trekked further into the forest. Every now and again we'd find a split in the road, but the feeling of the magic would be stronger down one of the paths, so we took that trail. Every step closer made me wish that I still had my magic. Then I might be able to add a second thing in my life that went exactly as planned.

It wasn't more than a twenty minute walk before we reached what I was certain was our destination. The path ended in a large cave, and the magic inside was so strong, I almost felt like it would knock me over. Each step closer to the cave seemed more an more difficult, but this was to save the camp here. I'd been in worse situations.

"You okay, Antares?" Twilight asked. "You look like you're about to pass out."

"Ne.." I cleared my throat. "Never better. I think we're here." I turned to Sunset and my soldiers. "You guys having an easier time than me?"

Clearly, but it's getting harder to go on," Sunset said, looking back to the cave.

Rapids shrugged. "I feel it, but it's not like flying through a blizzard, or anything like that."

"We must be getting affected based on our inherent magic," I guessed. "As an alicorn... yeah, no fun. Flying through a blizzard doesn't feel like the worst analogy for me."

"If you need to lean on me or something, let me know," Blaze said.

"Thanks, but I'll be okay." I'd definitely need a nap after all of this, though. It briefly made me wonder how Kristen would be doing right now. If a little of the pixie dust caused her chaos magic to go haywire, the magic in this cave could cause her to level the entire forest. Given that thought, maybe it was a good thing that she wasn't here.

Or it could be fine. Chaos is, you know, chaotic.

Somehow I made it to the cave and managed to walk inside with the rest of the group to see Gloriosa standing in front of some kind of rock formation with two geodes sticking out of it. That explained why the cave was still active. She must have heard us come in, not that we'd be good at hiding it, and turned to face us, a nasty glare on her face. This wouldn't be fun.

"I wondered when you'd come to stop me," she snarled through gritted teeth. "Adagio has told me all about you. You're the 'god of war' from some alternate dimension who can't keep his nose away from where it doesn't belong!"

"Hey, I'm not here to hurt you," I said, raising my hands to chest level in in a likely futile attempt to calm her down. "We're just here to help the camp and you. Adagio was right: you don't have any idea what you're dealing with."

"I got this!" Gloriosa snapped. "If you really wanted to help me and the camp, you'd stay out of my way!"

"I can't do that," I replied with a shake of my head. "I've seen what your magic through the geodes is doing to the camp. You know as well as I do that it's not working. You're falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy. You think you're in too deep, so the only way to fix it is dig the hole deeper." I took another tentative step forward. "It doesn't have to be that way. Let me help you. Me, your brother, Adagio, we all just want to make sure you're okay."

"He's right," Adagio said, stepping beside me. "I know what this camp is like. I love it here just as much as you do. There's a better way to do this."

Gloriosa chuckled and turned around to, unfortunately, take the last two geodes out of the formation. Well, so much for that. "You're right, Adagio. I've been holding back. That ends now." She whirled around and brought the last two geodes up to her neck, where they flew over to her necklace and fused themselves to the strap. "But you all don't have to worry about that. I GOT THIS!"

With that, her eyes went black with a single white dot, and her raspberry hair shifted to an earthy green. Her outfit, previously fit for camp activities, began encasing her in a green dress with leaves and stupid things like that on it. Flowers and stuff. Fitting. Also fitting was her throwing her head back and laughing like a maniac to let us know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'd lost it.

I knew this wasn't going to go well. Boy do I hate being right all the time.

Thinking fast, Twilight started lifting rocks to fight her, but Gloriosa or whatever evil name she wanted to call herself now, shot vines out of the ground that wrapped themselves around the six of us, which did a pretty good job of making sure that we couldn't move very well. That got us another evil laugh.

"You can't stop me now! Soon I'll make Camp Everfree the best camp in the world! It'll be so good, that nobody will ever even want to leave!"

"But we can check out anytime we like, right?" I asked.

Gloriosa let out an evil chuckle and used the vines to lift me into the air until I was face-to-face with her. She clicked her tongue and lightly slapped my cheek. "God of war indeed. You're not so impressive."

I did my best to shrug. "To be fair, that's a title my subjects gave me after I slaughtered untold amounts of our enemies. I didn't ask for it. Maybe I'll put it on a t-shirt though, or something. I can send you one if I do. What size evil outfit do you wear?

"ENOUGH!" she screeched, slapping me a bit harder this time. "I'm going to rip you to pieces!"

"I'd tell you to start with my appendix, but I already had that out," I said.

"As fun as that might be for you, you might want to get back to camp," Sunset said. The two of us looked down to her, and Gloriosa's eyes widened when she saw that Sunset had her phone out. "I've sent some really interesting pictures out to my friends, and there's no way that Pinkie isn't spreading them."

Gloriosa gasped and threw me down to the ground. She began flying out of the cave, but stopped and turned to us just before she reached the mouth and glared at me. "I'll fix it. I'll fix everything. Once I do, I'm coming back and I'll make you squeal first."

I scoffed and gave her an indignant look. "But I'm already married!"

That got me a rock that barely missed my head before she flew out. Before I could say anything, I heard a rumbling noise, followed by a dozen rocks falling in front of the cave, trapping us inside. Thankfully there were a few cracks in the barricade, so we still had a little light. I managed to slowly get to a sitting position and tested the vines. They weren't going anywhere for the moment. Great.

"So, that went well," Adagio groaned.

"Not as bad as I thought it could," I admitted. "At least she left before she really hurt somebody." I turned my attention to Sunset. "I didn't know you got service in here."

Sunset scoffed. "You kidding? That was a total bluff. If she wasn't so mad at you and mentally messed up by the magic she can't even really control, you might have been in real trouble."

"Well, either way, we have to find a way out of this cave, which means Twilight using her levitation powers. So really we're just trying to get free." I paused as a thought crossed my mind." Huh. Weird. Now that there aren't any geodes here, I'm not feeling magic."

"That probably means that it'll be insane back at camp," Sunset pointed out. She scooted over to a rock and began trying to cut the vines off. "We need to get there first."

The cave was silent for a few minutes as each of us tried cutting away the vines. I was making decent progress on mine when Rapids spoke up.

"You know, if the stakes weren't so high, this would be kind of fun." I could almost hear the giant grin on her face.

Sigh.

Comments

[KnightOfZaku]

Thanks for yet another awesome chapter!

That actually went better than I thought it would. I was thinking Gloriosa would say or do something stupid enough to put Antares into a blood rage strong enough for him to use his magic.

Also, will we be seeing a new chapter for Resurgence in the near future or are you planning on finishing this arc of Equestria Girls first?

[Misi_Jinjahl]

Yey!

[redandready45]

Glad this is back.

[Lotharin]

Ugh, Kristen, forgot how much I hated her as a character. Lovin' the rest of it though, hoping Adagio gets a "Big Damn Hero" moment!

[BronyWriter]

11079165
What don't you like?

[harts fire]

awesome a new and grate chapter.
yep things are going to get interesting back at camp.

[Mr_Some1]

I was hoping the pictures on the internet thing would've been true, I love the whole "I cast gun" trope of instantly taking out a villain. Hearing mention of Antares whipping out a shotgun on the sirens still cracks me up. Oh well, means we get more chapters of this, and we get to see what shenanigans Kristen gets up to.

[Twisted Code]

Good chapter. No nitpicks, other than I think you missed a closing quote at one point (I forget where, sorry)
11079408
I don't know what Lotharin's issue is, but I have also been wondering about her lately. She feels kind of... I don't know... underutilized? I mean you have this human-turned-pony-turned-reality-warper... and most of what we see her doing is "cheap tricks" and pranking ponies like Twilight and Monkey Banks. Is she still even doing the "parent trap" thing she planned to pull with her double? I assume that's why she keeps disappearing randomly, right? It doesn't seem like it's having any sort of meaningful impact on Antares, so...?

[blawrg]

"Alright, just..." I sighed and shook my head. "Just be careful. I don't know exactly how she's going to react when we actually confront her, so I don't want you all to get hurt. I'm not even sure how powerful she's is."

how powerful she is is