A Time of Reckoning: Seven Days in Sunny June, Book IV

by Shinzakura

August 16, 3:00 AM: The White Light

In the cave underneath the ruins of Castle Everfree, there was a tree that Celestia had told Twilight about: The Tree of Harmony. Faust had hewn the Elements from this strange tree, and the tree, actually a massive crystal spar in the shape of a tree, spread a healing warmth and comfort as far as it could. Twilight had once asked why such an important item was left in the Everfree, until Luna had explained that it was there mainly to counterbalance the effects of the dark forest. Back then, Twilight wasn’t sure what her answer to that would be.

She knew now.

She recalled a conversation she had a few weeks ago with Sunset, and it frightened her – not just because of what her friend had said, but because of what it meant for herself. Though Twilight had always burned the midnight candle and pushed herself far more than was healthy, when it came to magic, she was the best there was when it came to finesse, of that there was no doubt. But it was surprising to learn that Sunset outstripped her as a unicorn when it came to raw power. At first, Twilight had thought her friend to be mistaken, but when Sunset insisted that the princess look up their individual thaumic readings, it shocked her. As a unicorn, Twilight had been at the top of the scale in control and near the top in power – but Sunset was near the top in control…and over the top in power.

It made no sense whatsoever, and Sunset’s response even less so: “I’ve never really known how to give up,” had been the mare-turned-girl’s response. At the time, Twilight hadn’t quite got that. She’d never given up either on a problem or test or bit of academia that had puzzled her. But now? Now she understood what her friend had meant.

Sunset never gave up. Even at her lowest, she kept on going, because that was all she ever knew. She was the daughter of Princess Celestia, and in the public eye, failure was never an option for the Princess’ personal student – Twilight knew that all too well. And with Celestia having been the sole parent in Sunset’s life, Twilight could see how her friend could take that as a tenet of her life. After all, when Celestia had told Sunset she wasn’t meant to be a princess, Sunset didn’t just accept it – she made plans; foolish plans by her own later admission, but plans all the same. When Twilight’s double – the girl Sunset thought of as a sister – fell ill, Sunset didn’t panic, she instead made plans and bulldozed forward like a minotaur in the Crystal Empire. From the countless missives and talks they shared, it was clear that Sunset was always at something and likely in the middle of it, too. But she never shirked it.

And if she was in this situation, she probably would’ve faced off against Tirek, headed to her death like—

Twilight turned away so she could wipe the tears away. She’d already received the reports and she shuddered to think of what she would say to Ascot and Cashmere. They loved their adopted daughter, and her loss would be felt throughout all of Ponyville. She hadn’t told her friends yet; they were suffering now as is and she couldn’t put them through anything else.

“Twi?” The weary princess looked up to see Rainbow approaching. Like Twilight, she’d seen better days. Several of her feathers were singed and her coat and flight armor were scorched, and the pegasus’ prismatic mane, one of the things she took pride in, looked as though it had been dipped in carbon scoring. Unceremoniously she plopped before her friend, not caring what the visuals were at the moment.

“Are you okay?” Twilight asked gently.

“Clear Skies may never fly again. Neon Blaze….” Rainbow choked off a sob. “I don’t know if he’s alive. I lost Sunshower and Open Skies in the first strafe, and Heavy Rain and Divebomb in the next.” She laughed for a second. “Divebomb was like me. Wild and gunning to be the next flight lead in the main Wonderbolts team. And now? I don’t know if there’s anything left of her.” The mare looked away. “Am I alright? No. Not in the least, Twi.”

“None of us are, Rainbow dear.” The two looked to see Rarity approaching. Her off-white coat was now a dirty gray and her normally perfect manedo was ragged and filled with sweat. The light armor she’d been wearing had also seen use. “Barricade and Construct are gone,” she said, her voice breaking. “Construct pushed me out of the way of a magic blast that got through our shields, and when I looked again?” Twilight looked at the unicorn and saw her eyes were reddened; she’d cried to the point there were no more tears left to shed.

“How are the others?” Rainbow asked.

“Ah’ve been better.” Applejack walked in, leaning on a disquieted Fluttershy. The farmmare’s left front hoof was heavily bandaged, as was half her face. Her armor was dented and battered and she had numerous small cuts on her. Her scabbard was empty, the sword likely lost. “They got us good, Twi. But we Apples done did our duty. But we lost too many – both my kin and th’ guards with us.”

“Braeburn?” Twilight asked.

“He’s in the medical tent,” Fluttershy spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “He’ll live. But he may never walk without a limp again and he may never be strong enough to buck apples ever again.”

“I’ll do what I can, Applejack. You have my word,” Twilight promised.

“Twi, with all due respect, to Tartarus with your words right now,” Applejack hissed. “We still don’t know how Pinkie’s doing.”

“I sent Angel out to look for her,” the butter-yellow mare said.

“You sent your pet rabbit out to look for her in the middle of a war?” Rainbow asked, incredulous.

“She sent a ridiculously violent bunny out to look for her in the middle of a war,” Applejack reminded her friend. “He may fare better than any o’ us.”

“He did.” They turned to see Pinkie and though the party pony was surprisingly unscathed, the look in her eyes made it clear that things had not gone swimmingly for her, either. “Sometimes I think he should be a pony, the way he’s so smart.”

“I think Sunset said that Angel’s counterpart is human and is actually that Fluttershy’s brother,” Twilight pointed out. “I’ve never met him.”

Pinkie, still shell-shocked, continued. “He…he scared off some of the crystalline creatures that were about to kill me. They devoured some of the others that were with me, and they took out my party cannon. He saved me.”

“Where is he?” Fluttershy asked.

Finally, Pinkie reacted, wincing. “I don’t…I don’t know. We got separated. He might be still out there.”

“Then we need to take the fight to Tirek,” Twilight told them.

“The fight?” Rainbow asked. “Twilight, we are losing this war! This isn’t a typical fight like we had against Chrysalis or Sable Loam – ponies are dying, Twi! Dying!”

“I know,” Twilight told her. “But we have to take the chance. We won’t survive the war if we don’t do something!”

“But darling, we no longer have the Elements,” Rarity pointed out. “We simply cannot use equipment that we do not have!”

“Maybe,” Applejack said, “we should consider throwing in the towel.”

“No.”

The five other mares looked at the princess, seeing her once again, not just as their friend, but as their ruler and liegelady. They were part of her court, and though she loved them like family, ultimately there came a time when that had to be cast aside for the sake of the realm.

“We are not giving up. I realized something – Sunset Shimmer never gave up…she never gives up.” The alicorn then shared her revelations with the others, everything she had understood and theorized, and that when the chips came down, Sunset always stood.

Rainbow sighed. “Look, I get that she’s cool and all, but she’s not here – and she’s hyoomahn—”

“Human, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity corrected. “But I’m afraid Rainbow’s right. We have no Elements, and we have no humans to fight for us. Twilight, dear, we need a way.”

Twilight looked at all her friends, and there was a look in those violet windows they had never seen before, not on her. “She doesn’t know how to give up. I won’t give up either.” She looked at the Tree of Harmony, intent in her eyes. “I won’t let it end this way.”

Twilight walked over to the Tree, and sat down before it. Within them, now a part of it, were the Elements of Harmony, their individual colors bleeding away as they fused with the crystal structure. Soon, there wouldn’t be any indicator that they were separate items, much less incredibly powerful artifacts. Once, she’d worn the amethyst and used it to further the course of harmony and friendship in Equestria, wielding its power to work wonders.

That wasn’t going to happen now.

“We need this power once more,” she told the Tree. “I am an alicorn, but I am only one mare. This is a solution that requires powers above and beyond even what I can do. My ponies are suffering and out there is a monster without comparison, destroying us – and soon after he will go after our allies and every living being on Equus. I don’t have the power or the courage to stop him.

“But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here, because if things had been different, a friend of mine – a mare far more courageous than I – would be standing here, telling you that she not only needs your power, but that she would fight fiercely with it, because that’s the kind of mare she is. But I’m not her. I’m not Sunset, or my brother or anypony else that knows how to be courageous when the chips are down. All I can do is just be the best mare I can.

“And so I ask you: I need your power. We all do. We need to make this right. And while I won’t admit it to my friends, yes, I am afraid – deathly so. But too many are counting on me not to fail. Too many are counting on me to not give up.”

She looked at the Tree. “Please help us – because it’s the only way I can think of to not stop.”

Twilight stared at the Tree for what seemed like the better part of eternity.

And then…

…a flicker.

Looking at the smiling crater that had been a portion of south Ponyville, Tirek chortled, the stolen magic burning around him like charcoal flames. He had all the power in the world, and the creatures standing before him were scattering. In the distance, he could see as a contingent of yaks, all the way from Yakyakistan, charged into the fray. They would be nothing before him, of course and they would suffer the same fate as the ponies, the griffons, the kitsune, the minotaurs and all that opposed him. Even his brother, with his power, failed to change the course of the inevitable.

He was Tirek.

He was a god.

And he—

The centaur never finished his thought as a massive column of purple energy slammed into him, knocking him off his hooves. Undeterred, the beam continued on, burning through the air and annihilating the very molecules of the atmosphere as it blasted through, finding a stopping point in the mountain chain several hundred miles away, literally carving the top off with its power.

As he got back to his feet, he roared, “WHO DARES?”

The answer to that was the very earth roaring and shaking, tearing asunder. In the ground behind what had been the Golden Oaks Library, the very bones of the earth gave way and a massive tree made of crystal tore into to the sky, growing with unnatural speed. Within its branches, leaf-like structures began to form, becoming fruits of sorts, then changing to become hollow and square, still gleaming with the energy given to it by the very core of the world within. Within seconds, where there had been nothing but a field, was now a towering castle of crystal, a shimmering arboreal spire of power and a symbol of who was its mistress.

And standing atop it were six mares, now dressed in sparkling, shimmering crystal-like armor, each the color of the gems they had given to the Tree of Harmony and had now bequeathed them with something much more. This new armor blazed with prismatic power, a sort of rainbow force, catching the dying rays of the sun and magnifying it until the world knew that Ponyville had now become the nexus of Something Special.

A hoof, clad in violet crystal armor harder than mithril, lightly tapped as it took a gentle step. And in that hooffall was power, unmitigated and unbridled, roaring out and become a sonic wave of force that slammed into Tirek, bowling him over again. This time, however, he was faster to recover, and launched a blackfire missile at the origin, only to see it shredded by a titanic shield of blue diamond.

“WHO DARES CHALLENGE TIREK, THE GOD!?” the centaur roared, uttering his challenge.

“I DO!” came the response as Twilight Sparkle took to the air. “I WILL END YOUR TYRANNY, TIREK!” she shouted.

“You are nothing, little creature. Tirek will destroy you, as he has the other alicorns.”

But Twilight laughed. “How cute. Do you know what power is, Tirek? Let me show you.” Upon the castle, five other massive flames of power reached into the sky, singing with authority and command. Twilight sneered at him and gave a boast she never thought she would ever utter: “I will introduce you to the fucking wrath of a pissed-off-as-Tartarus alicorn. Your ass is going to be Discord and I’m going to be all six fucking Elements of Harmony. I’m going to rampage on you like the Princess did against the Minotaur Invasion of 957. I WILL BREAK YOU LIKE SHE BROKE THE ENTIRE CHANGELING ARMY AT SADDLEBACK RIDGE AND I WON’T FEEL A SINGLE OUNCE OF REMORSE DOING IT!”

Twilight Sparkle looked at the two creatures of mythology facing off against one another: a demon of hatred and bile…and a bright, shining unicorn, standing there, watching the demon warily. That was in and of itself something well beyond what she had ever been prepared for. The teen considered herself a woman of science, the scion of her mother and father’s disciplines, in some ways their heir. Science was a tenet of her life, a guidestone and keystone and as natural to her as breathing.

And now none of it made sense. Sunset Shimmer was a demon and was facing off against Sunset Shimmer, who had died, come back to life, spewed magic and abilities that one usually only saw in fantasy…and now she had become a unicorn.

But not just any unicorn, either – Twilight had seen this one before. Back when she’d had the horrific nightmares, she’d told Sunset of the dream she had about the weird horse creatures: one of them a unicorn with Sunset’s hair color. Then came the unicorn plushie Sunset had given her before the trip to Italy…and the fact that the doll carried the same colors as the real-life unicorn now in front of Twilight couldn’t have been coincidence.

Other things came to her mind: back at the Christmas dinner where that little girl had gone missing, Sunset had never really explained how she’d put on that lightshow in her magic act, a set of tricks even Trixie claimed she wasn’t familiar with. Nor did she explain how the unicorn in the story had resembled her either.

Had Sunset been telling her who and what she really was all this time? Had she tried to pass the story of who she really was through seeming legerdemain, because the truth was so far beyond the pale Twilight didn’t know how to react? But now Twilight saw the obvious: somewhere in the tangled web of everything was the sister that Twilight knew loved her dearly. The same sister that Twilight had recently all but disowned, had treated like shit and had ostracized over a secret that Sunset had hidden from her family. The same sister that their cousin Octavia had sided with after having been unreasonably jealous over Sunset’s place in their lives. And now Octavia had gotten over it…

…and Twilight couldn’t.

She loved her sister. There was no doubt of that. It pained her to have treated Sunset that way, and now she was regretting everything she’d done and said. If she could take it back – if she could take every single word and action back – she would do so without hesitation. But real life didn’t work that way.

But then again, I didn’t think real life worked this way either, she said, looking at the stalemate between the two fantastic beings.

“Ya lied, didn’t you?” Twilight turned to see Applejack looking at her. Odd that the blonde would choose those words to say to Twilight. Sunset had once told Twilight that Applejack was the most honest person she’d ever known. And all this time, that had born out to be correct. If there was a spirit of honesty, Twilight wondered, maybe Applejack was its patron.

“I lied?”

Applejack nodded. “You said it didn’t matter to you, but it does, doesn’t it?”

“This…this was her secret, wasn’t it? Sunset isn’t human. I always wondered why some things that seem so natural to us came hard to her, but I thought it was because of the way she was raised by the kidnapper. But there was never a kidnapper, was there?”

“No, no there wasn’t.” It was Rarity that spoke up this time. “No. Sunset is a runaway, but…there was no kidnapper. If anything, that was something that you all imagined. Sunset was never—”

“Imagined?” The tone of shock coming from Velvet was nearly a shriek. “Rarity, are you trying to tell me—”

“Velvet, that’s enough,” Celestia said, interceding on her student’s behalf.

“Fuck you, Tia. You knew about all this and you didn’t tell me!” her friend seethed, and Celestia wilted under Velvet’s glare.

“Vel, what did you want us to say? You heard what Night told you – what in any part of ‘your daughter is an alien from a race of unicorns’ sounds like something normal?” Luna asked. “Night, talk some sense into her.”

But Night wasn’t listening at all. Instead, he was silent as he watched the two Sunset fight each other, the protective need to step out there and defend his child being blocked by the complete disbelief that the girl he had comforted and grown to love over the course of the year wasn’t even human. And that was just the first aspect of that. The second was the other girl, bearing a demonic, twisted version of Sunset’s face…because somehow, she was Sunset as well. Not a twin – Sunset herself. Just as, presumably, so was his daughter.

As a man of science, he knew about the theory of alternate realities and the multiverse. But to have it shoved so intimately into his life, so front and center, he stood helpless before the whole of it all. Part of him, given all the inexplicable violence between the two that was occurring, wondered if this was a good thing. The rest of him just helplessly worried.

Velvet moved to his side. “Night?”

“We’re going to lose her, aren’t we?” The tone of his voice was a man broken, a vocalization she had never before heard from her husband. “We’ve done so much for her, so much to gain her in our lives…and now we’re going to lose her, aren’t we?”

She went over and embraced him. “We won’t.” She felt that she was lying to herself, but she had to believe. She had to believe in her daughter.

Because in the end, that was what Sunset Shimmer was to her, regardless of species – her older daughter, one she had grown to love and would look forward to having her in her life for decades to come.

Spike watched on with part terror and part fascination, like watching the best TV show in the world up close and personal and at the same time realizing that said imagery was far closer than he liked. At this distance, even behind the relative safety of the bent and twisted metal bars, he could see the incandescent power the two Sunsets had as they faced off against one another. And probably for the first time in a bit, he was worried about his family.

Including Sunset.

He felt guilty, and he knew why: he really didn’t treat her like she belonged. He was spoiled about it, and other than the few times they got along, he treated her badly. Why? He wasn’t really sure. He didn’t treat Octavia that way, but he’d grown up around her and she was as much a sister to him as Twilight or Cadance was.

Why not Sunset?

If he had been a decade older, perhaps he could’ve answered that question. But for now, he was a child with a child’s mind and a child’s grasp of the world and its warps and weaves. And right now, he could not picture the mortal terror that was wrapping him – all of them – as Sunset fought against Sunset for the fate of everything.

He turned to look at his older brother, hoping that there would be some answer there. But there wasn’t. There was no way to have an answer that didn’t exist. “Shining?” he spoke.

Cadance went over and hugged him, tears in her eyes. “It’s going to be okay, Spike,” she said, holding him close. “We’re going to make it out of this.” Her tears soaked the top of his head as she held him to protect him. “We’ll be safe.”

He didn’t want to be safe.

He just wanted it to be all over.

Twilight looked again at the fantastical scene before her, then closed her eyes and began to pray. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it didn’t make sense. The former had no validation, and the latter had no argument. She believed in something out there, after all – but what that something was? That was the unknowable part.

Maybe her mother was right: that Sunset was a God-given gift to them when they had least expected it.

If so…Twilight prayed that the gift didn’t have an end. Not when she had so much to say to her sister, an apology being the least of it.

The unicorn and the demon looked at one another, Sunset facing off against Sunset.

“So, the animal shows herself for what she truly is. Now the world knows what you really are – a thief. An identity thief. You stole this Sunset’s identity and lived as her, thinking she would never be back. You’ve never changed.”

“I have always been myself, the good and the bad,” Sunset said, pawing the ground angrily. “And if you think you’re going to make me angry, well…tough shit. You’re going to have to do better.”

“I WILL!” Chernabog launched another fireball the size of a minivan at the pony. The world warped, wavered and shimmied with the amount of energy burning its way through reality, the sound of hellfire screaming as it impacted against a target. A shockwave lashed out, knocking everything in the room either off its feet or off balance, as one of the ancient pillars in the room finally succumbed to damage and crumbled into rubble.

From above, as the energy haze began to clear, Chernabog laughed, knowing she had destroyed the pony utterly—

—that is, until she saw the vehicle-sized ball of energy mere inches away from the unicorn, who held it in an aqua sheathing of power.

“Here is the part where I point and laugh at you,” Sunset sang in the tone of the famous Toreador Song, both from an opera here – and, strangely enough, from a minotaur symphony from her homeworld. “Sucks to be you, sucks to be you.”

Chernabog sneered. “You bitc—” The demon didn’t say anything further as Sunset simply took the massive sphere of energy, split it into smaller parts and threw it right back at her. The dozens of basketball-sized energy blasts sent the demon slamming against the wall, screaming in pain.

“So, the idiot shows herself for what she truly is,” Sunset seethed, throwing her opponent’s words right back at her. “Now the world knows what you really are – worthless. Absolutely fucking useless. You stole that Sunset’s body, but guess what? She doesn’t know magic because she’s human.” The unicorn narrowed her eyes. “Ready to get your ass kicked a second time?”

The demon floated away from the wall, a rivulet of glowing purple blood oozing out of the corner of her mouth. “Oh, I’m not nice to pets. Better say your last words, horsey, because you won’t live to see tomorrow.”

Sunset laughed. “Are you that fucking stupid? I might be good at magic as a human…but that was self-taught. As a unicorn, I was taught by my mother. I am the Daughter of the Sun. And I don’t fucking lose.”

Without warning, the creature divebombed at Sunset, moving so fast she created a sonic boom in the air. She hit the ground on impact, shaking the earth and sending dirt and broken stone to the four winds from her blow—

—only to be blasted again by another machine gun volley of small energy spheres as Sunset appeared from where she’d teleported, directly behind Chernabog. Chernabog lashed out and scored a blow against Sunset, raking her claws against her side and making the unicorn scream in pain but Sunset focused and turned, lashing out with the most natural of pony attacks. Both of her hindhooves hit Chernabog square in the chest, knocking her through one of the few pillars left standing with a brutal-sounding crunch.

As the demon skidded to a stop, Sunset teleported above her and summoned an energy blast from her horn, firing a massive beam of energy tearing down onto the ground. However, the beam faded and Sunset fell to earth, painfully bouncing against the ground, her teeth jarring in her skull.

Chernabog got to her feet and laughed. “So, that’s the best the itty-bitty pony can do?” She kicked Sunset in the barrel, making her scream in agony. “Flew a little too close to the sun, huh? Daughter of the Sun my ass!”

Sunset felt triple blows: the physical impact of Chernabog’s kick, followed by the energy that she pushed into each blow. Jags of eldritch energy coursed through the whole of her body, lighting her up like a candle and making the unicorn shriek in pain that much more. But the worst part was that she knew that her family and friends – her loved ones – were watching.

“Had enough?” Chernabog taunted. “Ready to die?”

“SUNNY!” Sunset vaguely heard her name being screamed. She wasn’t sure who shouted it, but it sounded like pure, utter terror. The kind of thing that Chernabog feasted on. Sunset had been stupid, so stupid, to let this thing into her life, even though she hadn’t expected to. But she’d been so wicked, so without redemption that she’d practically opened the doors for this thing. An irony, because clearly it had been hunting her counterpart all this time – what had she done to deserve this?

As the edges of her vision began to darken into a tunnel, the unicorn wondered if she’d ever find out.

The hallway smoked like a chimney, bulletholes and black carbon everywhere. One part of the floor tiling was completely gone, both shattered by explosive and melted away from the blast heat. A fluorescent ceiling light dangled from its wiring, flickering on and off, giving the corridor a creepy, horror vibe. That wasn’t helped by the torn and gutted bodies, both human and transformed SIRENs, laying in various pieces.

The group continued through, Sunny Side taking point, looked horrified. “Uh, folks, we did not come through here earlier, right?”

Sable scanned the room, looking for potential traps. “Looks like this place has seen some action lately. Another group?”

Zephyr slung his rifle and bent down to look down at one SIREN, still human and whose face was a mask of terror. “No. Something scared the shit out of this one,” he commented. He sniffed the air. “Enough to make her void herself, too.”

“Thought bodies did that naturally when they die,” Adagio asked.

“They do, but that’s hours after brain cells start decomposing,” the man explained. “For this to happen so soon – and yes, soon, given that the corridor is still smoky and everything looks fresh – she died shitting her pants.” He then focused on the large puddle of blood against the wall. “Not sure I want to move the body. This much blood…something’s missing from the back.”

“We’re all big boys and girls, Zeph,” Sable told him. “We’ve seen enough of this stuff before.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I want to keep this record-setting pace, if you get my drift.” He pointed towards each end of the passageway. “Greenie, take Aria and Sonata and cover the corners. Anything that isn’t identifiable – and by that I mean any of us here in the group – you make holes where holes are supposed to go, got that?”

“Roger that,” Pine responded, looking at the younger two teens; the younger triplets nodded and immediately followed the older SIREN.

“Must be bad if you don’t want them to see it,” Adagio suggested.

Zephyr continued to look at the cadaver, though he responded to the teen: “Look, if I had my way I’d have you out of here as well, Adagio. You three lost the closest thing to mothers you had and the fact that you’re still standing is kinda worrisome. So forgive me for acting like an adult for a few moments and worrying about what all this will do to your psyche.”

Side put an arm around Adagio. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of them. Sis and I aren’t going to let them suffer.”

“Works for me,” Sable commented as he and Zephyr turned over the body.

“Okay, this is not good,” Zephyr stated as he inspected the body. “Her entire backside is gone – you can see the spinal cord. Someone – or rather, something – chewed off her back. Literally.” He got back up and looked at Side. “What the hell kind of freakshow is going on here?”

“I don’t know. But as soon as we’re done killing Cantata, we’re getting the fuck out of here,” was Side’s response. “Whatever turned these girls into mincemeat got through their defenses and tons of weapons. That means that it’s something I really don’t want to run into down here, don’t you think?”

“We don’t have much of a choice if we’re going to end this,” Adagio reminded her. “I’d rather get out of here as well, but we have to clean up the mess we’re partially responsible for. Besides, we have to save everyone – I owe them that, and we need to figure out a way to restart time again.” She smiled grimly. “Never thought I would ever make that kind of statement.”

“Yeah, well, there’s been a whole lot of shit that I didn’t expect to happen this time around,” Zephyr responded. “Both bad and good. ‘Sides, I owe that Cantata bitch for taking Soli and Shimmer. And I pay my debts.”

“She has Tia,” Sable said coldly. “You had better kill her first, because if I get my hands on her, I’m going to beat her to death.”

“Wow, what happened to professionalism?” Side asked.

“It went out the window when my gal was taken,” Zephyr said coldly.

“Yeah, I hear that,” Sable agreed.

Aria called down the hall. “We have contacts around the corner! Better do something about it!”

“Pull a retreat for now – if it’s the same things these poor souls went up against, we’re no match,” Sable advised. “We’d better find Sunset or Raspberry.”

“Roger that,” Zephyr replied, pointing to the other end of the passageway. “Let’s go this way.”

Queen watched as the prey moved away. She was tempted to attack, but her pack had already fed on the other prey, and now it was time for Mate to do what he was supposed to do. She and Sister lifted their tails, signaling to Mate.

Queen and Sister looked at each other and yawned; there would be other chances to hunt. But for now, there was just instinct and survival – both for them and their species.

Steel rang out against razor-sharp crystal, the gong-like clang resounding through the air. With it came a shockwave that knocked Tirek off-balance, and a second crystal saber came in for the strike, which he barely managed to dodge.

“You will not beat Tirek, pony,” he spat. “Tirek is a god and Tirek will rule this world supreme!”

“Tirek is about to have his plot handed to him,” Twilight snarled, her crystalline blades dancing through the sky like air ballerinas. She effortlessly summoned her fifteenth sword, striking true and drawing blood. “I can keep this up all day!” she crowed.

“You cannot if you die!” With that, Tirek sucked in air and spat out a black beam of energy as thick as a tree, the beam heading straight for Twilight without any chance of her stopping it. While she knew she could live through it, it wouldn’t be something she wanted to deal with.

It was then that a giant diamond shield reappeared, deflecting the blow. From the castle, a figure in blue crystalline armor called out, “And that’s what you get for being so uncouth!”

Twilight laughed; leave it to Rarity to rebuke Tirek for lack of manners, of all things! She looked down at the ground to see how her other friends were faring and it seemed that her pep talk with the Tree of Harmony had given them much more than they had ever expected.

Fluttershy raised her wings and green, crystalline feathers could be seen interspersed with her own. The feathers radiated a verdant energy, healing all that came within its grasp. Ponies that had been grievously wounded were starting to recover, and those who needed a second wind got it.

Dressed in orange and light-blue armor, Applejack and Pinkie were destructive forces on the battleground, the rage of nature themselves. The farmmare caused shockwaves wherever she stepped, using them to devastating effect, while Pinkie practically danced around the battlefield, tapping her enemies and moving on. That wouldn’t have been effective, save for the fact that a few seconds later, said opponents exploded in a shower of confetti, the blast knocking them out cold and destroying any inanimate objects.

But Rainbow, dressed in red armor, was far and away using it to brutal effect. Now moving easily a magnitude faster than she ever had before, she was burning through any enemy that she came across. The dragon-like crystalline golems Tirek created were no match for her; even as they launched fire at her, she was already well beyond the location they were aiming by the time the fiery projectile was there.

Twilight smiled, then looked coldly at Tirek. “This is where you lose everything, Tirek. You will lose to Equestria!”

“The pony cannot defeat Tirek,” he hissed. “Nothing can defeat Tirek, for he is invincible!” He raised a hand and the ground behind him, already pockmarked and filled with the detritus of destroyed buildings within Ponyville, shattered as more crystalline golems arose from the ground. “Tirek will take the lives of everything! Only those who bow before his greatness will live!”

“THEN WE WILL NEVER BOW!” That roar did not come from Twilight, but instead behind her. The alicorn turned to see the Princess’ Hooves in force, more than she had ever seen in her life. They all stood there, armed to the teeth just behind their Castellan, ready to do battle.

“FOR THE PRINCESS!” the host of ponies roared as they rushed forth, a ride of Valkyries that served as a living wall of punishment.

And that’s when the rumble started. Everypony not already focused on the fight turned in the direction of the sound, seeing a great cloud of smoke and dust rise from the direction of Canterlot, headed towards Tirek’s rear forces.

Then the smoke cleared and a titanic combined force of Army and Guard forces stormed forward at top speed, enough in number that the ground could not be seen.

“FOR EQUESTRIA!” Shining Armor roared as he charged into battle, the two sides colliding. The stallion used his barrier magic to create a battering ram that slammed into the enemy host, sending bodies flying everywhere. He then summoned his swords with his magic, striking at anything daring to challenge him.

Tirek looked up at Twilight Sparkle as her swords danced around her in a circle, ready to begin the next action.

“Looks like you’re a little confused about what’s going to happen next,” Twilight taunted. “Let me make it simple for you: you’re going to lose.”

Tirek roared with rage and summoned magical blasts of energy that shot towards Twilight, who artfully moved past them as if they were nothing. She then threw her blades at him, the storm of crystal shards stabbing at him repeatedly like deadly mosquitos on the hunt. He would shatter one with his great swords, but for every blade that fell, she simply created another, as if it were the most natural thing.

The centaur fell, collapsing against a building, knocking it towards the ground in the process. Twilight could hear the screams of innocent ponies within, and her heart stopped – she couldn’t get to them in time! She dove towards the building, ignoring the blasts coming at her, hoping she could beat the clock before the structure came down on innocent lives.

But then there was storm and wind and from nowhere, gargoyles and smaller centaurs rushed in to help the ponies. Standing there using his magic and looking worse for wear, but not giving up, Scorpan glared at his brother. “You would take innocent lives?” he roared. “You are no brother of mine!” he turned to Twilight. “Princess, end this monster for all our sakes!”

She let her heart settle; the king that had come to her aid was still willing to help ponies. She looked around and saw the renewed armies present gather courage for another blow. Even now, she wondered if other nations were still coming to Equestria’s aid after so many times that they had done for others. Even before she was born, the Magic of Friendship was paying dividends for Twilight.

Rushing into the sky, Twilight soared and shouted, “GIRLS! FORMATION!”

Elemental armor, infused with the power of Harmony itself, began to supercharge, ready to do what it was created to do.

Within the depths of the beyond, a mare awaited the next move in the chess battle against her ancient foe. She was already acting too much into a realm that wasn’t her own, and her opponent knew that – it was why he had prospered in this location, even though she had sentenced him here. She was already risking too much by being present here, pulling the threads of fate in places that she didn’t have business doing it. She had few adorants here and none of them knew what was really at stake.

All she could do would be to hope that her longshot would work. It had to, because if not…

…the price would be too high, both for this reality and for her, herself.

He closed his eyes, the bleeding and pain starting once more. It took a lot out of him to investigate that particular avenue from this far, and it turned out to be all for nothing. There was no building threat in Seattle; if anything, it wasn’t even worth his time to try to control or remove – the potential would not be worth the effort, and it would be just better to let the harmless thing be.

He then felt eyeballs staring at the back of his head. “I know you’re there,” he said to no one in particular. “I know you’re watching.”

I would slay you now if I could, the voice in his mind said. You have lived too long and I will not let you destroy this world.

The man cackled. “Destroy? I rule here. This is my realm – you have given it to me. And everything in it is my plaything – including—”

Have a care, fiend! I will not hesitate to strike you down if I so choose!

“No, you will not, and you know it. After all, your kind plays by the rules, and you are already stretching them to the breaking point. What good is Good if you are no better than me?” He began to laugh again, this time hard enough to finally end it in a coughing fit.

You will be destroyed. Mark my words: you will be destroyed.

“An author in this realm once wrote that it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven. You can keep your little technicolor candy paradise. I’ll be busy, making this my own personal Tartarus.”

Just as quickly as it was present, it was gone. He turned back to what he was doing, pausing only to grunt, “Sanctimonious bitch – you denied me my rightful due. Now I will take so much more from you.”

As the assault team moved on, they realized something from the sheer number of bodies they were starting to see, bodies that they hadn’t been shooting at. Somehow, the SIRENs were turning on each other, and the results were violent.

“Looks like I’m glad I didn’t get in the middle of this furball,” Sable said as he tapped a bloody body that looked like it had been on the wrong end of a grenade.

“Hey, the kinda furballs I prefer generally lean towards girls in bikinis wrestling in Jello,” Zephyr snarked before remembering the gender of most of his allies. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Sure,” Side shot back, a grin on her face. “I wouldn’t mind seeing me a few Chip & Dale’s guys, with firm abs and hot oiled bodies….”

“So would I.” The group turned and pointed guns in the direction of the voice – a woman slumped against the wall, who they thought had been dead, earlier. She was oozing blood, save that blood wasn’t naturally amber in color or glowing lightly from within. “It’s okay. I’m not…I’m not going to hurt anyone anymore. Maybe this is what I deserve.”

“Hey, Pulse.” Petty Officer 1^st Class Alto Pulse was one of the best explosives experts in the unit and could use an RPG like it was a sniper rifle. However, it looked like she couldn’t shoot her way out of what had befallen her.

“Hey, Sides. Looks like I’m not going to be able to get back at you for what you did to me,” Pulse commented.

“You talking about Morocco? You earned that punch, Alto,” Side told her. “Shouldn’t talk about my sister that way.”

Pulse laughed weakly. “Yeah, maybe I did. Doesn’t matter, anyway; I deserve to die and that’s what’s going to happen.”

“You keep saying that,” Pine chimed in. “What do you mean?”

“No use hiding it anymore.” She didn’t look at any of them, but instead just stared at the sky. “I was the one that killed the admiral.”

The ladies with Sable and Zephyr collectively gasped, and the two men suddenly felt that standing next to these furies with weapons might not be the most ideal location at that precise moment.

“You bitch,” Aria seethed. Sonata was more direct, instead slamming her rifle muzzle against the side of Pulse’s head.

“Back off, Seaman Dusk; she’s going to die anyway,” Pine said coldly. “Save your ammo for the rest of the fight.”

“You’re right,” Pulse commented. “It was the Captain. She played you all. Well, us all. I was in with her on most of it, but even I didn’t think she was going to sacrifice her own sœur to her plans. Or Coda.” She coughed up golden blood. “Or me, really.”

“Talk,” Adagio demanded.

“Yeah, sure. Sides, you remember when we were kids, right? There were four SIREN teams, eight platoons each. Now? Just the one, with six platoons and a bunch of detachments. I wanted to be like Basso Profundo – that woman was a legend! Walked up to a hidden KGB base in Newfoundland and took them all out by herself! That was the kind of badass I wanted to be!” She coughed up more blood, then paused for a second before continuing. “So what happened? Poutine happened.

“Don’t you dare blame Uncle Poutine,” Pine began.

Not listening, Pulse continued. “Golden Rule – CSIS Director – noticed he was a goody two-shoes, that he knew what we were was illegal and that he wanted SIREN shut down. He worked to compress the teams and convince girls to leave the life behind. Then one day he told the brass he was going to go talk to the prime minister and tell him everything. Director Rule didn’t want that, so she hatched a plan: take some of the deepest cover SIREN operatives and—”

“So you sold us out for your thirty loonies of silver?” Side asked.

“We didn’t want to do it, but we were made offers by Rule that we couldn’t refuse – too tempting. And it was that or maybe CSIS would have hired some rent-a-thugs like ALICORN to do the job. Better that we take him down fast and painlessly; that was our thought. Maybe it was Blast’s bullet to his skull, or maybe the K-Bar I drove straight into his heart. I don’t know.” Her eyes started to well with tears, the kind that were genuine. “I didn’t want to do it, but someone had to spare him the pain.”

“So you fucked over your own guy,” Zephyr stated and Adagio looked up at him. “I’ve seen it before: you justify reasons why you frag your own side. ‘Better from a friend than the enemy’, ‘it’ll be painless, we promise’, and all that kind of shit. Doesn’t matter; they’re still murdered by their own side and the murderers have to live with that lie.”

“Maybe,” Pulse chuckled. “But I didn’t expect that Cantata had an agenda of her own, one she didn’t share with us until the night before we took him down. She was persuasive, and we believed her – that CSIS would set us up and get rid of us just to cover their own asses. Better to go rogue and take the fight to them to get the public on our side if we were exposed, she said. Better that we look like the heroes we were; after all, we were risking our lives when girls our age hadn’t even seen a fraction of a fraction of the shit we had. So we agreed to her plan, which is how the remaining SIREN operatives came under her control. We thought we were doing the right thing.” She held up her hand and her fingers were moving unnaturally, more like tentacles than digits. “But not even I expected what was going to come next.

“I’m the last one alive, and maybe not even that in a few minutes. So…now you know the truth. We were always played for fools. We betrayed our nation, but we were betrayed from all sides, first – and we killed the one good hope we had.” She then looked at Side and the woman saw that one of Pulse’s eyes was starting to split, as if becoming two eyes. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll live, but with this shit in me…I don’t know if I’ll die human. I know I’m not human anymore, I just look it. But right now, while I still feel like one? I want to die as one. Kill me.”

“No,” Side snarled. “You don’t get that luxury, monster.”

“Given this black magic shit? She might be dead, but her body might not be. I’ve seen more than enough horror films to know that, sis,” Pine commented.

Sonata solved the problem by reaching for her sidearm, withdrawing her clip, and then sticking a bullet in the chamber. “You want to die like a human?” she told Pulse. “Take responsibility.” She held the sidearm out for the woman.

Adagio and Aria looked at their baby sister with surprise. “Soni—”

“No,” Sonata argued back, cutting off their argument. “She is a monster…but she doesn’t deserve to die like one. She made a horrific mistake, but she was misled – just like all of us. She needs to make it right…in the only way she can.”

“Well said, kid,” Pulse said, taking the gun from her in her other hand. On that hand they could see as an extra thumb had started to grow, barely protruding from the skin. She looked up at Side one last time. “You need to take Cantata Blast out,” Pulse told her. “I made the mistake and backed a monster – she can’t be allowed to run free any longer.”

“I understand,” Side said flatly.

“Then I’m done. Be seeing you, Sides.”

“Go to hell, Alto.”

Pulse laughed one final time, but it sounded slurpy and nothing like a human’s utterances. “This’ll just speed me along faster.” She then put the gun in her mouth, smiled and pulled the trigger.

“So done after this,” Pine commented. “I’m done, got that? Fucking done!” She sounded agitated, as if she’d reached the end of her rope.

Side turned to her sister. “Greenie, calm down. We’re going to finish this shit up, then we’re getting out of here – you, me and the triplets, okay? We’re going to go get new identities and forget who we ever were.”

Pine looked into her sister’s eyes. “Promise me, Sides. Promise me that when we’re old and gray and telling our grandkids about our wild young years, they won’t ever know what we were.”

Despite the situation, Side let her weapon hang on its strap and took her sister’s hands in her own. “We’re going to have to come up with a lot of stories,” the lighter-skinned woman said. “But they’ll be our stories. But before we have to think about what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives, we’ve got to put down a monster that needs to be put down.”

“Personally, assuming you don’t kill her first, I’m going to enjoy meeting this Cantata bitch – haven’t decided yet if she needs to die or sit behind bars for what her goons did to my partner,” Zephyr said.

“I think all things considered, we should just end her,” Sable stated. “I know you’re a cop and all, but she’s been behind all this to some degree or other. The murders, the works. I don’t throw out the name ‘Fuhrer’ constantly, but he does come to mind.”

“I really don’t think we qualify as Nazis, Sable. Yeah, we’re no saints, but we were trying to do what was right for Queen and Country,” Side defended.

“Until we were hijacked by someone with her own plans,” Adagio commented. “So maybe we were, and we just didn’t know it.”

“That’s the joy of being in an illegal organization,” Sable pointed out. “You don’t get the choice of picking and choosing your battles.”

The group was so engrossed in their sudden conversation that none of them saw the flash of red lasers until it was too late.

“GET DOWN!” Sable shouted, as a bullet ripped through the space past his head, followed by several more rounds. Everyone hit the floor and returned fire, and the hallway filled with noise and storm as gunfire was exchanged, followed by a few screams on the other end.

After a few seconds, the gunfire stopped. “Adagio, check to see if they’re still breathing and make sure they’re not.”

“On it!” Adagio sprinted off towards the direction of the fire.

“MEDIC!”

There, bleeding on the ground was Zephyr. He’d taken two shots, and while they weren’t fatal, they were enough to debilitate him. “Goddamn! That’s the second time I’ve been shot today! How the fuck did I get so Goddamn lucky?”

Sonata was at his side immediately, tearing open his pants leg while reaching for her medical supplies. “You’re going to be fine,” she said clinically. “Looks like they passed through meat.”

“Fine? Did you hear the part where I’ve been shot twice today, for fuck’s sake?”

“You’ll be fine,” she insisted. “You’re just out of the fight now. You’re going to have to make it back topside. Someone will have to get you an escort up; maybe one of the sisters, right?”

It was then that they heard the wailing coming from behind them. They turned to see Sable, a tight look on his face, looking down at the scene at his feet: Pine, in hysterics as she held Sunny Side, who had a hole on one side of her neck and the massive exit wound on the other. It was clear that she hadn’t even had time to react.

Aria’s hand involuntarily went to her mouth. “Oh, no….”

“You’re gonna be fine, sis,” Pine said while panicking, holding her dead sister close to her, ignoring the gushing blood coming from the wound. “You’re going to be fine! I just…. MEDIC!” she screamed. “I need someone here!”

Adagio rushed back and looked at Sable. “One of them survived, but I put her down,” the eldest triplet explained. “I would say we’re all clear, but clearly we’re no longer near that.”

“Dagi,” Aria began, and the oldest sister nodded.

Putting a gentle hand on the middle sister’s shoulder, she said, “Ari…I know. I know.”

“But she…she didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Aria said, her eyes shedding tears.

“We have lost too much. We won’t lose any more.” The look on Adagio’s eyes was colder than it had ever been before. “Cantata Blast dies. And I don’t care who disagrees. She does not get to live.” She took her sister in her arms, holding her close. “You and Soni are my life, Ari. We’re triplets. The line ends here.”

Pine was in hysterics. “No! I’m not going to let you die!” she wailed as he lost it, holding her now-dead sister. All of this had been abstract professionalism to her before, detached and just another day. But now the person she considered a sister had been shot and—

Adagio bent down and put her hand on her shoulder. “Greenie…she’s gone.”

“No!” Pine was in tears. “She’s not! We can save her!”

Sonata got up from where she had been helping Zephyr. “What, do you think you’re the only one who got to lose someone, Greenie? At least you get to say goodbye! I never got to see Maddie again!”

“Sis, you’re not helping,” Adagio gently admonished before turning back to Pine. “Pine, she’s gone and you can’t get her back. I know how you feel – I lost someone I loved as well. But we have to fight now in order to make sure that no one else dies. Our loved ones weren’t innocent – they fought just like we did.” She pointed beyond one of the walls, adding, “There are billions of people out there that will be victims of Cantata Blast and her boyfriend if she succeeds – a whole world of Sunny Sides that will die if we don’t stop them!” Despite the pain, she reached out and embraced Pine. “It’s what your sister would have wanted.”

Adagio then held the bawling girl, her own tears coming to her eyes. Both cried for what they had lost and for what others had as well. Sonata hugged Aria, and for one fleeting moment, the surviving girls were acting like they should: like overwhelmed girls, who had no business being in the middle of a warzone.

Sable reached down and offered a hand to Zephyr, which he took. “You going to be alright?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” the older man said sarcastically. “I get shot all the Goddamn time. Not like it’s life threatening or anything.”

“Okay, I get the point. Seriously, though, you going to make it up topside okay?”

“Yeah, but I’m probably going to need an escort,” Zephyr groaned as he tried to put weight on his leg. “I’m going to need a hand going up, and there’s only one person who can do it. Besides, you don’t need me here mucking shit up.”

“Oh?”

“Look, I’m law enforcement. Technically, I’m legally obligated to arrest these girls for saving the world, and you for being here to kick ass, okay? I’m already skirting the edge because I’ve got major hots for the woman that got kidnapped, who I was only supposed to be protecting in the first place. Let’s just say that it’s better that I get out of here.”

Sable nodded, then bent down next to the weeping Pine. “Greenie, we need you. Zeph’s not going to get up there on his own and you’re the only one who can do it. I know this is eating you up – we’ve all seen death before, but losing a loved one….” He fell silent for a second before adding, “If we don’t stop this, I’m going to lose the woman I love, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg – we’re going to lose, period. We can’t afford that. I know it’s hard, but you need to say your goodbyes and help Zephyr to the top floor.”

“He’s not going to be of any use to us in his condition and you’re the only one we can trust to do this,” Adagio added.

“But—” Pine started to protest.

“Soni didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to Maddie,” Adagio reminded her. “There’s a burning wreck with Mezzo’s body out there, and we had to leave Vesper’s body behind as well. You at least get this.”

Nodding, Pine turned to look at her sister one final time. Hugging her and kissing her softly on the forehead, she whispered, “I love you,” then wiped away her tears, not caring how she looked. Not looking at anyone, she said, “Sable, do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Put that bitch down. No more deaths except what is on her hands. End it, once and for all,” Pine said coldly.

“That was never in question,” he told her.

“Then I’ll get Zephyr to safety – on my life if need be.” The tone, Sable noted, was sadly cool and professional, from a girl who had no business being either right now. “I am a SIREN. I know no fear.” She then gingerly set Side’s body down in repose, and looked at her loved one for the last time before walking over to Zephyr. “C’mon, old man. Let’s get you up to the surface.”

“Got it,” he said, leaning on her. “You guys have a nice war now, y’hear?” he laughed. And with that, the two started to walk back from the direction where they came, until they were gone.

Sable watched them go. Whatever they did to you all, it stops tonight, he said to himself. “Let’s go end this,” he ordered, hefting his rifle once more.

The triplets looked at him with determined grins. “On it!” they said in unison.

Within a nondescript room, a thing sat, bubbling and warbling. No one aware of its existence was sure if it was alive or not, but it served the purpose its master had given it: to stop all of time save for within a concentrated, localized bubble. And it did it. Reality and magic waged war against each other, the energy building up within the former that could tear everything – literally tear everything – into nothing more than shattered quantum strings, but that wasn’t the concern of the Gordian Knot, if it had concerns at all.

Then it began to burble…but in a way that it normally didn’t. The ropy coils of its body shook and then the whole thing began to shiver and shudder. It made a keening, unnatural sound, a brown note that would have likely seriously injured any humans, were they around. The keening became a wail, then a shriek, as its body began to gyrate and move as if it were breaking moves on a dance floor.

Finally, there was an unearthly scream, and a theoretical viewer would not be able to tell whether it was the Knot or whatever it was that made up the knot. It snapped, and in that, a wave of energy blasted out from the rupture, sending radiance out towards the four winds.

A split-second later, a hominid fell to the ground, covered in various fluids, all of which stank. It sat up and screamed, as the various excretions of the destroyed Gordian Knot began to slowly slough off it. After a few seconds, it slowly stood up, hearing the sickening sounds as more detritus fell off its body.

“I WILL NEVER BE CLEAN AGAIN, LUNADAMMIT!” Raspberry Beryl groaned nauseously. “Ew, I think I swallowed some of…whatever that was! I think I’m going to be sick. Sunny, help a filly out here, okay?”

Silence met the creature while she tried to wick the effluvial grime off her. “Sunny, you there? Sunset?” She tried to frantically wipe the stuff from her body. “Sunset Shimmer, this is not funny. You answer now, okay?”

Finally, after some practical scratching and removing an object that felt like it was still wriggling, Raspberry did what came naturally: she turned and vomited just about everything in her stomach, collapsing back to her knees in the process. Several minutes passed before she was able to get back to her feet.

What happened to Sunny? I hope they didn’t take her hostage, Raspberry thought. I don’t have my magic and she’s the only one we can rely on for that. And I am caked in shit and Oh Celestia! That smell! I gotta get out of here!

She stumbled towards the door, then as she cleared the room, so did her head. She looked around, hoping to pick the right direction, then rushed off in search of the others. I’m coming, Sunny – hold on!

She managed to run down a couple of hallways before she heard voices:

“Holy fuck, what the hell is that?”
“No idea – it’s probably another one of the infected ones! Kill her, quick!”

Bullets sounded out and Raspberry immediately dove for cover. Instinct that the SIRENs had drilled into her earlier in the day took over and she reached for her sidearm, returning fire and hoping she would live long enough to get to Sunset’s side. That mare-turned-human was the only one she had in the world now, aside from Heelee – I hope he’s okay! – and if her world was truly lost to her, Sunset was by dint the only family she had left, albeit in the “same former species” category rather than anything actually familial.

Shots were traded on both sides, until one side finally fell.

Raspberry stood up, looking at herself, shocked that she was still alive. She then went over to look at her foes, looking for those ghastly wounds caused by the horrifying human weapons…and found no wounds on them. She then looked at her hand, which held no gun…but a small, pulsating ball of sulfurous light.

A thought suddenly came over her and on instinct, she summoned a mirror. Aside from the fact that she shouldn’t have been able to do that, she looked at the reflection in front of her in the mirror: a ghostly white face the color of Rarity’s fur, black, pupil-less eyes, fangs that barely stuck out of her mouth, and a mane that was the color of darkness and blood. If anything, she looked like a human version of a vampony.

She tried one last thing, and closed her eyes…and when she opened them again, the girl she’d been earlier in the day looked right back at her. She looked down at her hand again, holding the still-present yellow light. She banished it, then summoned a hayburger, which appeared in a flash of golden energy.

I have magic again! she realized. But this doesn’t feel like mine! How? Then a bigger question came to mind: If I destroyed that thing…does that mean this universe is reset back to normal?

Throughout all of reality, the war between continuity and the bizarre red wall that held everything in stasis stopped as the barrier suddenly fell. All of the universe suddenly sang with power, and for one bright second, the universe was at one with itself, awash in more power than it had been since the Big Bang.

From where she stood, Faust smiled tersely. “And now we move into endgame.”

The old man suddenly fell out of his chair, having been knocked out of it by an unseen force. But he didn’t need to know what it was – he already knew.

“DAMN YOU!” he screamed at the figure beyond. “What did you do?”

It’s not my place to do anything to you, Faust responded. But you will be dealt with in due time, monster. I promise you that!

Divine’s body suddenly alit with power a second before he roared in pain as something was forcefully ripped from him. He howled in pain for an agony he had never before felt in his life and was just about ready to beg that one of those unnatural creatures warring against each other come and put him out of his misery.

Unfortunately for him, everything else was already occupied, and so he finally passed out, his body smoking with golden yellow magic as it vanished into the ether, leaving him powerless.

Sunset screamed in agony, and she could swear for a second she’d heard an additional bellow. But that was likely just her body shutting down.

~open your eyes~

What was that? Though she couldn’t open her eyes due to the pain, she did hear the voiceless speech, clearly directed at her.

~it’s the dawn of another day
wipe the fear from your mind
and swipe the clouds from the sky~

Who is it? Who are you? Please, help me! Sunset begged.

~tell me, can you see it?
tell me, can you feel it?
it’s for healing heart and spirit
and it’s coming~

What?

~let the light in, let the white light in
let the light in, let it all in~

Then, Sunset felt it. Pure ivory power, washing her, healing her. A flock of feathers gently pushing around her. And a memory came:

Sunset was eight years old and had another nightmare. She ran through the castle in a panic, looking desperately for the princess. She rushed down unfamiliar hallways, racing through empty spaces, seeing the shadows of night touch down and the moon staring at her as if in anger. She cowered in the silvery moonlight, feeling the rage and hatred from it somehow.

Then she felt soft golden light pick her up. Sunset opened her eyes to look into concerned lilac ones as Princess Celestia looked at her terrified young ward.

“You have nothing to fear from the moon and night, Sunset,” the great white alicorn said, nuzzling her worried charge. “You are the sun and the light and you will grow up to be a great mare.” Celestia carried Sunset to her bed, covering her charge with one of her wings before both settled to sleep. Pausing once last time to kiss the filly on the head, the Princess of All said, “You need fear nothing, if you let the light in. Let it all in.”

Sunset smiled, and in her mind, opened her arms to let the onrush of blankness come.

A massive rainbow of power, like nothing that had ever been seen before, slammed into Tirek, knocking him off his feet and burning him with prismatic flames. He roared in pain and fury, then countered, opening his mouth and spitting out a huge column of blackfire. His salvo did nothing to stop the massive Friendship Laser as it bored through his beam like it wasn’t there, impacting against him hard enough to throw him into the ruins of Sugarcube Corner.

“HOW DARE YOU!” he roared. “TIREK RULES SUPRE—” His neck snapped back as the Rainbow of Power virtually delivered a slapping blow.

“Shut the buck up!” Rainbow Dash taunted. “The adults are talking!”

“Rainbow,” Twilight gently admonished, though she felt like doing the same thing. “Tirek, give up! You’re going back to Tartarus, if you’re lucky. And if not, we end you permanently! This is your last warning!”

The demonic centaur wiped the blood from his mouth and pulled a broken spar of wood that had embedded into his side; it gushed blood, but he didn’t care. “Tirek is a god here,” he hissed. “And nothing you can do will deter him! HE WILL RULE SUPREME!” A massive blast of energy began to build between his horns, with enough power to start warping the air in the immediate vicinity. Nearby buildings started to catch flame, and the screams of ponies trapped inside began to fill the air.

The centaur laughed at the sound, taking it in as musical accompaniment. “AND NOW TO SHOW YOU FLEAS WHO IS THE REAL RULER OF THIS WORLD!” He spat another lance of darkfire, and the energy between his horns joined it, and the resulting torrent of hellflame rushed forth, tearing up whole sections of earth in its path, boring through ruined structures as if they weren’t there and headed towards the Element Bearers as straight and sure as a missile locked onto its target.

Even a slight distance away, in the middle of fighting Tirek’s golems and defending survivors from the onslaught, Scorpan turned, knowing what was about to happen. Even still, the great king turned away, his eyes growing moist from the endgame.

“Goodbye, brother,” he whispered.

The deadly bore of power continued without pause, annihilating everything in its path, until it reached the Bearers…

…and then stopped. As if an inconvenience, Twilight leapt up onto the top of the beam, walking down its length as if she took a summer stroll. Without fail, the other Bearers did the same, save for Rainbow, who insisted on flying above it, because she was Rainbow. To Tirek’s shock, the six mares casually moved forward, unconcerned about the fatal, burning energies under their hoofsteps, completely disregarding it as much as they would the cobblestones of their now-ruined hometown.

The mares continued their casual walk, finally coming to a stop just before his face. With that, they sat down, bored looks on their collective visages. And to Tirek’s surprise, Twilight summoned a cup of tea, then one for her friends. She took a long, calm drink from it, bobbing her head as if listening to a music only she could hear. The others did the same, enjoying this sudden – and completely nonsensical – teatime.

Finally, she finished and said to her friends, “I needed that. Didn’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely, darling,” Rarity admitted. “Fighting the forces of evil can be absolutely dehydrating. Just imagine how much care my mane will need tonight!”

Rainbow flexed a wing. “Eh, but it was a decent workout, right, girls?”

Applejack shrugged. “Ah’ve had better. Remember th’ time we took Beauregard t’ my cousin’s place?”

“Uh huh!” Pinkie agreed. “That one was way more interesting than this!”

“Oh, I agree,” Fluttershy added. “But each thing in its due course, as Rarity would say.”

“Thank you, Fluttershy, dear. But yes, I do agree.”

Tirek looked at the gnats before him, completely uninterested in him at all. He brought a hoof up to stomp them. “DIE!” he roared.

Twilight shrugged. “Well, I suppose we’d better get this over and done with, right?” The girls nodded as one and they then hopped off the massive column of energy…

…which was now burning with a blazing rainbow power.

The beam reversed course and rammed Tirek like a freight train at full speed, setting him aflame once more, this time with rainbows dancing around him. He shrieked as the Rainbow Force did what it had been created to do, ending a threat.

“GIRLS, NOW!” Twilight thundered, summoning the power of her Elemental Armor once more. On either side of her, the other Bearers did the same and beams as large as they were tore away from them, combining into one massive trunk of rainbow fire, boring into – and through – Tirek. He screamed one last time, but even that vanished under the explosion of light and sparks as the demonic terror of the world was no more.

As motes of light rained down everywhere, restoring the magic he’d stolen, Twilight just looked to the sky and said three words: “Sic semper tyrannis.”

“What’s that mean, Twi?” Applejack asked.

“Old Pegapolisean,” Rainbow interjected. “‘Always with dictators’ or something like that. It was Commander Storm’s personal motto whenever she fought against the other two tribes, a reminder to never be the monsters she thought the other tribes were.”

“Well, well, well, looks like someone is more well read than she claims, it seems,” Rarity teased.

“You mean an egghead?” Pinkie chimed in.

Rainbow looked nonplussed. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball,” she grunted.

“Twily!” Twilight turned to see her brother rushing towards her, his armor battered and him with dozens of scratches, but thankfully alive.

“Shiny! You’re alive!” She went over and hugged him, immediately starting healing spells.

“Yeah, of course – as if I’m going to let some dumb crystal golems take me down,” he scoffed. “Although, we’ve gotten in some early reports of casualties. One of them was Pavane Bayan.”

Twilight looked suddenly downcast. “Oh, no. Does Celestia know?”

“It’s worse than that,” Shining said, and Twilight immediately knew what he was talking about.

“What’s worse?” Rarity asked, looking at Shining with concern.

“Talk!” Raspberry held the SIREN in the air by her magic, an unnatural color that she knew wasn’t her own magic, nor Sunset’s. She wasn’t sure where it had come from – had she received it from the Knot somehow, when she destroyed it? The thought made her shudder, and she nearly dropped her quarry, but recovered just in time for the SIREN not to notice.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” the woman said, though there was more than a hint of fear in her voice.

“You’re right, you don’t,” the teenager replied. “But you have to come down sometime – although long-term magic exposure might prevent that. And I’ve seen a lot of magic around here.” That, of course, was a lie, but Raspberry knew the other mare, er, woman, didn’t need to know that. To “prove” her point, Raspberry cancelled the stasis spell and added the slightest bit of a levitation spell to her target. Thankfully the room was large enough that the enemy floated up several feet before shouting at Raspberry.

She turned to leave. “Not my problem. Have a nice trip,” Raspberry said coldly, turning her shoulder once more.

“Fine! Just…pull me down, okay? I’m…I’m afraid of heights!”

Bingo! the former unicorn thought as she cancelled the spell and added a rebinding one. The magic, of course was familiar, but her skin still crawled a bit. Was this the magic she would have held if she was born as a human? She hoped not; it felt really creepy, if that was the case. She also wondered if this is what Sunset had to deal with on a regular basis; if that was the case, small wonder she didn’t feel comfortable in Equestria anymore – it was like the difference between drinking really great coffee, like they had at Sugarcube Corner or her parents’ hotel or drinking that horrible instacoffee that Frozen Grounds tried to pass off as the “next big thing in coffee”!

I really hope humans are advanced enough to not have instant coffee, she hoped.

As she brought the SIREN down, she demanded, “where are you keeping the prisoners?”

The SIREN, already in a fragile state whimpered, “Down in the central pit. I don’t know anything more than that! I swear I don’t!”

Raspberry stared at the woman for a second, then said. “Okay, I believe you. Now sleep.” She stomped her foot, and a flare of magic flashed on the ground. The SIREN collapsed instantly, asleep.

So I can do white magic? Raspberry asked herself, looking at the strange magic she held. That, of course, brought up other questions: if this was what she was using now, would she be able to take it back? Would she even be able to go back?

Is there a back to go to?

She pushed aside the questions for now; she would have a hundred or so to ask Sunset when this was all over. But for now, she was going to have to fight her way down to the bottom, where Sunset was already facing off against whatever was responsible for all this. Maybe she didn’t need backup – her fellow unicorn had proven herself to be immensely powerful and from what Twilight had said, Sunset could potentially be even more powerful than the alicorn was before her ascension.

Could she control the sun on her own? Raspberry grinned; having been the target of Sunset’s magic when she was depowered, she didn’t want to find out what would happen now that she had her full strength.

But I bet somehuman is going to find out – and they’re going to find out the hard way.

Chernabog had kicked the unicorn so much that she was enveloped in a cocoon of her own making, and the demon laughed in joy. Wouldn’t be much longer until she was literally beating a dead horse!

“Bitch, this world is mine, now, mine! I will be the unstoppable power here! What have you got to say to that?”

“SHŌRYŪKEN!”

Chernabog felt herself burn with a screaming pain as she was sent flying. As she looked, all she could see was a fist, burning in white flame, carrying them above. As she hit the apex of gravity’s rainbow, she saw someone with burning white eyes turning at an impossible speed, hitting her with a reverse spin kick in mid-air.

Chernabog crashed to earth nearly head first, while her opponent landed, on her feet. Chernabog scrambled to her own and turned to see Sunset Shimmer, once more in her human form and white fire blazing around her, enshrouding her as it was a cloak of ennoblement.

“You want to know what power is?” Sunset seethed, her voice reverberating. “You think you know what it is? Fine, let me show you – ALL 385 YOTTAWATTS OF IT!”

In space, freed of its constraints, Sol flickered and flared as one part of it turned darker. For a second it radiated with the forces of yin and yang in balance, heeding a call the orb had not known from this plane.

Finally, a massive ejection of solar corona mass rocketed away from the star, flung towards earth and picking up speed. As it did, the mass became tighter and more focused, until as it passed Venus it was a blindingly bright and powerful beam the width of a telephone pole, burning through space and annihilating matter as it passed into Earth’s atmosphere.

“You think that was a punch?” Chernabog said, rushing towards her. “Let me show you a real one!”

Sunset stood there calmly, her corona shining brilliantly. “Oh, that was just the warmup. Let me show you what happens when I hit you with the Sun!” And with that, Sunset snapped her fingers.

A bolt from the blue ripped through several floors, melting through them as if they weren’t there. The beam then struck true, slamming into Chernabog at literal light speed, setting her ablaze with the pure power of the sun. Chernabog screamed with the roar of someone in absolute pain, while Sunset rushed towards her, her body burning from incandescent energy.

At the same time, Sunset felt herself slip. Something was wrong – very, very wrong. It didn’t matter, though; she had to stop this monster from destroying everything and everyone she loved. Even if it meant….

Sunset summoned a massive blast of energy and let it slam into Chernabog, making her scream all the more.

“GIVE IT UP!”Sunset roared. “YOU DON’T GET THIS WORLD! YOU DON’T GET ANY WORLD! YOU ARE GOING TO GO DOWN!”

Chernabog was thrown into the wall, cratering it and rocking the room from the impact. The structural integrity was starting to go from the battle and there was a whole building’s worth of infrastructure above them, and if it all came down….

No. Sunset refused to let that happen. No one was going to die here save for that demon. The line was drawn here.

Meanwhile, Chernabog forced herself to her feet. “You…you can’t hold that much power. It’s killing you,” she taunted. “You’re just a mortal. You can’t control a s—” The word was bitten off by another scream as a second blast from Sol hit the demon, punching another entryway through the building above.

“I’ve done it before,” Sunset snarled, ignoring the rivulet of blood that was starting to leak out of the corner of her eye. “I am the Daughter of the Sun. I will beat you to death with it if it’s the last thing I do!”

From a distance, everyone watched, transfixed. It was becoming clear that Sunset was at her limit and was still pushing. Shining had seen that kind of attitude before – it was the kind that spoke of heroics, the kind he’d seen in officers that had gone above and beyond the call of duty…and had earned posthumous accolades and kind words at their funeral.

“Someone stop her!” he shouted. “She’s going to kill herself!”

“No!” Everyone turned to see Pinkie, and to their surprise, the girls were united behind her. “No! She’s not….” But the teen couldn’t summon the words to state what she knew in her heart.

Thankfully, Rarity could. “We know what she’s going to do.”

“We’ve always known,” Rainbow said.

“Ah know this doesn’t make sense, but…believe in her,” Applejack told them.

“Believe in us,” Fluttershy finished.

Chernabog charged at Sunset once more, and the teen barely dodged. “Ha! You cannot hope to defeat me!” the demon bellowed. “You might hold me to a stalemate, but that’s it! So long as I have a presence on this world, I cannot be defeated! You, on the other hand, won’t last much longer!”

Sunset, in return, flung a massive beam of whitefire that slammed into the back of the demon, sending her flying. A small pool of blood started to form at Sunset’s feet, but she held it steady. “If I go, I’m taking you with me!” she roared.

The demon fired a beam back, but it was clear that it wasn’t anywhere near as strong as Sunset’s. “If you kill me,” she crowed, “I will be back. This body will die, but sooner or later, I will be back. There will always be one in the bloodline to control, and you can’t stop that. You can’t stop me!”

“I said I will stop you!” Sunset cried back, though she started to crumple while holding up the beam. The energy within her, the very sun that she was tapping into, was starting to overwhelm her and burn her from within. The demon had been right: no mortal was ever meant to hold this power. It was destroying her.

Yet she knew if she gave up now, too many people would die – starting with her loved ones. Her friends. Her family.

Her sister.

The love of family and friends. I’m not alone. And I won’t be alone.

A cocksure grin came onto Sunset’s face.

“I don’t have to beat you,” she said with a grin, “because I’m not alone!”

The solar power at Sunset’s command seemed to flare brighter than it ever had before.

“GIRLS!” Sunset roared. “PONY UP!”

Raspberry had a hard time throwing energy blasts. As a unicorn, it was normal: point your horn in the direction of your foe and just let fly. That was why she was able to use the wand Sunset had given her; she understood that even though it came from human myths, it still served as a sort of licorne, after a fashion. Likewise, why she understood the gun and how it worked, at least on a basic level; clearly humans wanted horns, at least on a subconscious level which is why all their weapons leaned in that direction.

It also made her realize that object she’d encountered in Rainbow Falls might have been a human gun – and how it got there, she had no idea. If she had the chance, she needed to borrow it and bring it back here so Sunset could look into it.

“If I get the chance”, right – that’s still assuming I have a home to go back to, she thought grimly.

That, of course, also frustrated her; the possibility she would have to live as a human for the rest of her days. She was already unlike other ponies, but Sunset’s life was definitely beyond the pale when it came to living like that. She’d already done this for maybe a half-day and the thought of doing this for years secretly unnerved her. If it hadn’t been for her family, she would have wondered how Sunset had done this for half a decade.

As it was, splaying her hooves, er, paws, er, hands together – I have to remember humans have hands! – she launched a sulfuric blast of energy from it, taking down another SIREN. The remainder returned fire, but this time Raspberry stepped into the middle of their gunfire and blocked the rounds with a shield, much to their surprise.

“You know, I thought humans were going to be much nicer, despite what Sunny stated,” the teen snarled. “I thought that maybe you guys were like griffins – a bit on the rough side, but overall decent folk. Turns out that was a lie.” She set the bullets on fire right before their eyes. “I have to wonder if you’re more like Tirek than ponies.”

She raised a hand and golden fire burned within. “I could destroy you all,” she hissed. “It wouldn’t take much effort.” She then pointed her hand at them and launched several blasts of energy at once. Each small fireball smacked each SIREN right in the head, taking them down.

She smiled. “Hey, maybe these finger things aren’t so bad,” she said, looking at them. “It’s like having multiple horns at once.”

Down went another basilisk in flames, their bodies burning to cinders before they even hit the ground. There were less of them and they’d switched from the tactic of attacking him individually to striking in groups. Didn’t matter; they could all come at him at once and he would flame them out of the sky. If he could smile right now, Heliodor would do so.

After all, there were no points for second place.

Right now, he wasn’t even close to his natural form, and he wasn’t sure how his magic was holding out. He didn’t care about that; and thinking about it was a hindrance, anyway. Right now, his mistress and her friend were counting on him to take down the bandits. And take them down he would – a world depended on him.

Maverick wouldn’t let his buddies down.

Neither would he.

And then he sensed it.

Running, Raspberry turned the angle a bit too fast for her liking and her leg screamed, sending her to the ground in a heap. She forced herself back to her feet immediately; she needed to get down to where the ringleader for all this was so she could bolster Sunset, especially now that she had this weird magic. Once they stomped this guy into the ground, then she could try to figure out how to get back to Equestria. There was obviously another way back aside from that mirror, one Sunset was already familiar with, so all they had to do was to figure out how to access it.

She was so focused on her thoughts that she almost missed it – and then she sensed it.

Her eyes widened in shock.

Flames burned around Sunset more and more as she began to change again…but this time, it was different. Her hair grew down to her ankles and had changed into a ponytail. Pony ears the same color as her fur had been suddenly appeared on her head, and as for her normal ears, they could no longer be seen. She seemed somehow more real, as if a new layer of reality had been added to her person. And a whirlwind of amethyst light swirled around her like she was a living whirlwind. “I think it’s time you learned what real power is, Chernabog!”

To the surprise of nearly everyone there, indigo light began to swirl around Rarity. Her ears, too, vanished, replaced by white pinnae atop her head, and her hair lengthened and became a ponytail. The young woman became filled with renewed confidence as she raised her hand, a ball of indigo power burning within. “About time, darling,” she told Sunset. “We thought we’d have to remind you.”

Ruby light exploded and when it faded away, Rainbow, too, had joined the change, with light blue ears and red flames dancing around her fist. “Time to kick some demon ass!” she crowed.

Orange fire rose up to meet Applejack, bathing her in its light. Light orange ears appeared on her, as her hair, like the others, also became lengthened and a ponytail. “You’re going down, demon and that’s the truth!” she crowed, glaring at Chernabog with cocksure certainty.

Green flames started to caress Fluttershy like a lover. She sighed in sweet contentment as butter-yellow ears appeared alongside her trail of hair. The flames continued to dance around her, like an intimate friend, and she gave a beatific smile. “It’s time to end this.”

Pinkie, of course, danced in her light blue flames as if she were a sentai hero. As her pink ears appeared and her long, tangled mass of curls became even longer, she grinned. “You’re going down, meany!” she told the demon. “Plus, I got some kissing with my babe to get done, and you’re wasting our time!”

Twilight looked at her friends and her eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “You…you’re….”

“It’s a long story, Twi,” Applejack told her. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

Octavia was just as nonplussed as her cousin. “What the hell? Are you guys not human either?”

“We are,” Fluttershy began, “but….”

Rarity interrupted. “Octavia, darling, I would love to have a nice chit-chat about this at another time, but right now, as Rainbow so colorfully said, we have some ass to kick.” The look in the fashionista’s eyes was one of cold determination, and it matched the looks in the eyes of the other transformed girls. It was as if they had a singular purpose that only they were privy to.

Twilight looked at the arcane flames forming around her friends and her sister and wondered if things would ever be the same.

Meanwhile, Chernabog got up from her position and snarled, “Okay, I’ve had enough of you, you damnable horse. Time to end you for once and for all!” She started to summon a massive orb of energy, within seconds had grown larger than a minivan. The ground began to crumple underneath her feet and the air around her warped. Her eyes began to burn with the same black fire that the titanic sphere was, and her face was contorted in an unnatural grimace. With a reverbing scream of “DIE!” she launched the blast forward, intending to annihilate everything in its path.

The energy blast rocketed forward like a freight train, destroying everything in its path, including the very air molecules. From where they stood, those caged could feel the hum in the air as death came forward, inexorable and unstoppable.

Pinkie merely smiled. “Now you’ve done fucked up for the last time,” was all she said.

The massive missile of mayhem came within meter and meter of massacre, burning and blazing, with only a single teenage girl to stop it.

“SUNSET!” someone screamed.

Sunset yawned.

The mammoth volley came to an instant stop just inches before impact. Sunset reached out to touch it with a simple tap of her finger…

…and it dissipated. The blast released its energy to the four winds, decimating everything in its path…or would have, had not translucent shields popped up from nowhere, protecting the others from horrific death.

Chernabog looked at the teen, her mouth agape with shock. “How…?”

Sunset ignored her. “Girls, let ‘er rip!”

As one, the girls summoned bright balls of color-coded flame as they illuminated the area with their newfound magic. They then blasted Sunset with it, much to the shock of the adults.

“What the hell?” Spike said, speaking for pretty much everyone – and getting away with cursing for a change.

Sunset nearly fell to the ground from the force of the beams, but she forced herself back to her feet. She was going to end this, one way or another – she didn’t have a choice. Her loved ones were in trouble, and she was at her endpoint. It would be so easy to give up right now, to let herself drift away on the pain and agony she felt.

But then she saw the look on the faces of her loved ones out of the corner of her eye: a mixture of fear and worry. Were they worried they wouldn’t survive? Were they afraid of her? She didn’t know the answers; she couldn’t discern them. All she knew was that they were the people she loved more than anything right now and they were in danger from the creature she had inadvertently brought into this reality through her own misdeeds. She had to make it right, but it was more than just that – she had to make amends for what she’d done to her loved ones, and for what she’d done to humanity as a whole.

So for the second time in her life, she felt the full brunt of the Elements of Harmony hit her, but this time she wasn’t so much its target as she was its focus – a living prism, turning five separate beams into one full cascading blast of energy. And it filled her, overwhelmed her senses and threatened to shut her down. She was already tapping into Sol to use its energy against the demon and now she was taking in a second source of boundless energy. No mortal was ever meant to hold that kind of power and she knew what the result would be.

But she wouldn’t give up. Not while she still drew breath – and while her loved ones did, too. Someone had to be the protector, shield logic against sword logic, the immovable object against the unstoppable force.

And thus she channeled more power than any other human had ever done in history, firing a massive rainbow beam with white lightning dancing around its edges, pounding the beam against Chernabog like a massive pressor, slamming her back into the wall and practically embedding her into it.

The demon howled from the mind-rending pain, but still managed to keep her mental faculties operating. “Do you think this is going to stop me, you bitch?” she roared at Sunset over the continuing thrum from the beam. “You can’t stop meeeeeeaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!”

One hand still focusing the Harmonic blast, Sunset lowered the other, and 93 million miles away, the Sun complied. “Apparently you’re not a fan of sunlight,” the teen taunted. “Should’ve brought some Coppertone, cunt.” She felt her eyes start to moisten and she knew it wasn’t due to lacrimation. “Give up!”

“Ha! So long as I have a host, I will never be defeated!” Chernabog screamed back. “I will rule this fetid world and I will line my throne with your skin!”

“So be it,” Sunset said sadly. “If it means that someone has to die, then…I’m sorry.”

«RENDS-MOI MA FILLE, MONSTRE!»

The words cut through Sunset like a lightsaber. She turned to look at the hysterical woman – a woman who looked like a short-haired version of Ms. Celestia – leaning against the bars right next to Ms. Celestia. As for Celestia herself, she looked at Sunset with horror, and in that moment, the former unicorn knew shame.

“There is always a way, my student,” said a similar voice from a time long gone.

I don’t know who you are, Sunset thought to her counterpart, possessed by the demon that had haunted Sunset for so long, but you don’t deserve this. Even if you were as bad as I was, you don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.

Sunset looked at everyone she could: her family, her mentors and her friends. They all looked at her in a way that made her want to beg them not to. Was she the monster now? Had she ever really proven herself?

Yes. And I’ll keep doing it.

Focusing past the pain she felt, the agony ripping through her, Sunset held the beam on her foe while reaching into the fabric of spacetime. To the side of Chernabog, a massive tear in reality opened, and in the distance was nothing but black, followed by a blindingly complex stellar structure that strobed and occulted, vibrating at a ridiculous speed.

Sunset coughed, then spat up blood before hissing through gritted teeth, “Behold – Sagittarius A-star, the black hole at the center of the galaxy.” She glared at Chernabog. “Your new home.”

Chernabog looked at the black hole and paled. “You wouldn’t dare!” she snarled.

In response, Sunset shifted the beam, ignoring the shrieking as the atmosphere rushed out of the room, as the black hole’s supergravity started to reach through the rift to claim what was present. She moved the beam ever closer to the edge of the rift, as her vision began to tunnel. She couldn’t take much more of this in her human form, so she had to change again.

Biting back a scream, Sunset let the energy burn through her as she changed back to her unicorn form. This time the damage to her compact body was worse: parts of her fur were scorched, the skin underneath scalded. Half her mane was aflame, and she couldn’t feel her back right leg. Still, she couldn’t stop. She had to save those she loved. She had to save the Sunset that deserved to live. She had to stop Chernabog.

So Sunset did what she did best: never give up.

The beam rocketing away from her cracking horn, she weakly lifted her left front hoof, and twisted. Something within cracked, and she bit off the scream again. She forced herself through the pain, pulling Chernabog towards her with the adhoc telekinesis she focused through her ruined leg, until the demon stood before the maimed unicorn.

“This doesn’t belong to you,” Sunset snarled, and twisted once more. Something snapped further, and her now-useless leg fell to her side and this time she couldn’t stop the scream of pain that uttered from her muzzle.

But she wasn’t the only one that screamed. To the surprise of everyone, the body of Sunset Shimmer sloughed off Chernabog like an oversized dress slipping off a reedy girl. And reedy would be an apt description of Chernabog’s true form: inhumanly spindly with brick-red skin, black eyes, fangs and deep red wings, and hair that was the same coloration as both Sunsets with the addition of a black streak, the demon was now repulsed from the corpse she’d defiled and worn like a suit.

“DAMN YOU!” Chernabog shrieked. “I’LL EAT YOUR HEART!”

Meanwhile, no longer able to supply Sunset with harmonic magic, the five girls reached their limits and, nearly as one, fainted, crumpling to the ground, the spell broken.

“Time to end you,” Sunset hissed. A tooth fell out of her mouth, root and all, but she ignored it. Her body was breaking down from the magical overload, but she couldn’t fail. Not while this monster still stood.

Forcing herself to her hindlegs, the unicorn unsteadily stood and forced herself to call upon the last bit of magic she had that was truly hers. Pointing her forelegs at Chernabog, a burning ball of cyan fire appeared between the two legs.

“GO TO HELL, BITCH!” Sunset roared then let loose her attack. “SHINKŪ HADŌKEN!”

The fireball rocketed forward and hit Chernabog dead center in the chest, repeatedly exploding as it moved forward, pushing her back step by step and making her reel back. The demon was pushed back into the rift, only managing to hold onto the edges.

“Help me!” Chernabog screamed. “I deserve to live!”

“There’s only room for one Sunset on this world,” the unicorn said sadly, “and you’re neither of us.”

Finally, the supergravity got its hold on the demon and started spaghettification, pulling the being’s body thinner and thinner until she could no longer hold on. By the time the scream of horror reached Sunset’s ears, the only thing left of Chernabog was a long, thin tendril that stretched towards infinity as it fell into the great black hole.

As Sunset collapsed to the floor, she had enough sense of mind to collapse the rift. The release of energy blasted out, slamming into everyone and everything, claiming all and whoever wasn’t already unconscious was immediately rendered so as the detonation of mystic energies overwhelmed everyone.

Sunset fought her way through the wave of magical white noise, forcing herself to endure it. She couldn’t feel much of anything anymore. She still had something to do, though.

She approached the maimed and wounded body of Sunset Shimmer – her counterpart from this world. The one that deserved to be here, and who had suffered hell because of Sunset’s own greed. Sunset’s actions had inadvertently made this girl suffer, and now she was dead.

Or not, Sunset thought with a weak smile. I can bind her soul back to her body; there’s still time. But to do so….

No excuses. Pony Sunset was too far gone now, but human Sunset still had a chance.

Moving as close as possible to the wounded, naked body that was the other Sunset, the unicorn rested her horn on the girl’s head, shielding her from the brunt of the magical blowback. “Live,” Sunset whispered through a burnt and ruined muzzle. “One of us has to live. You deserve it.”

A bright cyan star flared from Sunset’s horn.

The ground shook and a localized earthquake shook the environs.

Cantata cheered. “At last! I will be queen!” she chortled. “I will rule all!” She looked at the SIRENs under her command and ordered them to the door. “Find the rest and prepare them to storm the gates of heaven – we will own this world by the end of the week!”

The answer to that was gunfire that raked across the body of the SIREN next to her.

“CAPTAIN CANTATA BLAST!” a young voice roared from the darkness. “YOU HAVE BETRAYED THE SISTERHOOD AND YOUR ORDERS! BY NATIONAL SECRET ORDER 221.4A SECTION 2, YOU ARE TO SURRENDER NOW!”

“HOW DARE YOU!” Cantata shouted back. “I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD FOR THIS, WHOEVER YOU ARE!”

“Fine.” From the shadows, Adagio grinned wolfishly. “I am a SIREN. I know no fear.” Next to her, on near-identical faces, the same dark look sat on the visages of her sisters.

The ground shook and a localized earthquake shook the environs.

Raspberry was knocked off her feet and collapsed to the ground as the tunnel shook. “Magiquake!” she gasped. “But how?” She lay down on the ground, covering herself with a shield, waiting until the rumbling passed as quickly as it came.

“I didn’t think that much magic existed on Earth! Unless….” Raspberry’s eyes went wide as she recalled a conversation she’d had with Twilight once.

“When it comes to power, Razz, Sunset is probably more powerful than any of us, save the Princesses and me now – and I’m not sure I would even put that to the test.”

“But I thought you were the Princess of Magic?”

“I am – but that’s because I have far better control than anypony else. Think of it as the difference between hammering a nail and dropping a mountain on one. Both will get the job done…but one is far more useful than the other.”

Forcing herself to her feet, Raspberry made herself run as fast as she could, giving the brace a workout. If Sunset was going all-out, it could mean that there were quite a few natural rules of the universe that were going to protest – and Sunset was the kind of mare that didn’t take no for an answer.

Twilight Sparkle was the first to regain consciousness. Mainly that was because of the sharp pain that shot through her leg, as she noticed it wedged between two large boulders. She pulled and forced her foot out, screaming in agony as she did so. Thankfully it wasn’t broken, but it was a sprain for the ages. Tears filling her eyes, she forced herself back to her feet, unsteadily looking around at the bodies around her, the remnants of the cage that had held them now ripped off its support and flung to the other side of the cavern.

Fear filled her and she moved over to the nearest one. “Mom?” She dove to her mother’s side, checking for a pulse and finding one. She quickly checked everyone else, trying to shake them to consciousness, but to no avail.

It was just as she reached and fruitlessly attempted to revive Octavia that she noticed the two bodies in the distance, still and unmoving: the naked girl that looked like her sister…

…and the wounded, burnt alien that was her sister.

“SUNNY!” Twilight screamed, running as fast as she could, ignoring the blinding pain in her leg, tripping over ruined ground and craters only to fall, and force herself back to her feet. She did this for a few more minutes, moving across a blasted plain, desperate to reach Sunset.

Finally, she reached Sunset. In her…real form…she looked so small, so tiny, so fragile. “Sunny?” Twilight spoke softly, reaching out, yet afraid to touch the brutally wounded unicorn.

Sunset began to cough and Twilight abandoned all sense of hesitation, picking her up immediately. “Sunny?”

“Hi, sis.” Sunset’s voice was raspy, Darth Vader-like. Twilight knew what that meant; Sunset’s vocal cords were burnt. Most of her fur and hair was gone and she was caked in blood and carbon scoring. She was also hot to the touch, so much so that Twilight forced herself to keep holding her. Sunset coughed and Twilight held her close.

“Don’t speak,” the teen said in a wavering voice. “Just rest. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”

“I’m beyond a hospital now, sis,” Sunset murmured. “Or a vet,” she joked, chuckling weakly.

“Stop it. You’re not a pet.” Tears started to come to Twilight’s eyes. “Just…rest for now. I’ll make sure you get better.”

“Twily, I’m dying. There’s nothing you can do about that. Anything…well, it’s too late.”

The words cut Twilight to the quick. “No! It’s not too late, Sunny! Please!”

To Twilight’s shock, Sunset reached out with a blackened foreleg; to the girl’s horror, she could see blackened bone through parts of shredded skin. “You have to be strong, sis. I did what I had to do to save the ones I love.” Sunset fell silent, and Twilight’s heart leapt into her throat for a second before the dying unicorn had the strength to continue. “For what it’s worth? I love you, sis. You, Mom, Dad, Tavi, Shiny and everyone. Even Spike.” Sunset coughed again, and this time it was stronger. “I’m such a coward for not saying it before.”

“No, you’re not.” Twilight held her close. “You’re my sister – I love you no matter what you are! I’m the coward for not trusting you!” Twilight cradled Sunset like a child. “Please don’t give up!”

“In the end I was good…right? A good pony?” Sunset’s voice was barely audible, and her eyes seemed glazed over. “A…good…person?”

“The best.” Twilight cried into her sister’s charred coat. “The best.” She felt Sunset’s body shudder, and Twilight begged, “Please don’t leave us. Please don’t leave me….”

No answer came.

“Sunny?”

No answer would ever come again.

“Sunny, please! Say something! PLEASE!”

But the mare would never speak again. And slowly, there was no mare, as the absolute magic burnout set in, the cells in Sunset’s body turning to ash and dust. Like spent charcoal, the body of the dead unicorn melted away, until Twilight was covered in nothing but soot. Within moments, there was little to mark the fact that a unicorn named Sunset Shimmer had ever walked the earth, either as a biped or a quadruped.

Next to Twilight, Sunset Shimmer lay, unconscious, now the only one in this reality.

Twilight heard a keening wail, a banshee’s hysterical scream.

She didn’t realize it was coming from her.

Author's Note:

As you can see, this was not an easy chapter to write.

It's all downhill from here, folks.

Also, PLEASE SPOILER your comments for the chapter, as it's an important one. If you want to talk, we'll be chatting over on the Discord channel.

Comments

[BlueBastard]

8802420

Please spoiler your comment! This was requested in the author's notes.

[Shinzakura]

Sorry, namar, had to delete it as it was up 30 minutes later.

[Twilight_Shimmer]

Knowing Faust so will do something to bring back ole Sunny. After all shes the hero! Maybe Alicorn Sunny?

[solusjbj]

Wow. Just... wow. Good chapter.

[Starcat5]

Sweet mother of Celestia, Sunset went off like a nuke!

[Shinzakura]

8802659
"Heroes die. It's all a part of the myth."
- Adam Warren

[badninja]

Wow just wow. Now how will they deal with the last two threats Divine Right and Cantata? Hopefully something involving cement shoes or the electric chair.

[Zekromic]

Sunny....... died........

[shy sad jaded shard]

And that how you tell a story

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

Holy merciful emperor of Mankind....

[Flynt Coal]

8803164
What makes you so sure Divine and Cantata are the only threats left?

[Shinzakura]

8805537
Yeah, methinks someone forgot about the Black Creatures.

[namar13766]

8803014
You play Destiny, so I think you’ll get this.

Sunny embraced the Praxic Fire.

“In that last moment she seemed as wholly luminescent as the Sun, and I wished to be so brave."

[Shinzakura]

8805783
EMBRACE THE PIXAR FILE!
(DtG joke)

[badninja]

8805664
8805537

I haven't forgotten about them, it is just our Maverick wannabe has been effective and they haven't put up that much of a fight yet. Besides they are becoming more animalistic so I am seeing their intelligence go down somewhat. The two big fish are the ones that are a threat, even if Divine Right has lost his magic that orchestrated just about everything that has happened.

[Ariel Schnee]

Whuh... everybody's dead?!

[badninja]

8808026
Nope not everyone is dead just knocked unconscious. Only pony Sunset Shimmer is dead. The next few chapters are going to be very interesting as Raz and the rescue team get to see the aftermath. I am sacred of the psychological damage that everyone will be going through.

[Seraph_Of_Snow]

Jesus Christ man, this chapter was awesome, funny, and down right heartbreaking like the others before. I'm glad I caught up with this story finally. Because it was worth the wait. I only hope Sunset's reborn from the ashes. I mean that's what a Phoenix does right? Always get back up no matter how many times you knock them down?

[badninja]

8814442

Sadly I think she is dead permanently. I do believe that this is going to become more os Razz’s story. After all the shared universe is named after her.

[WhitewolfStormrunner]

8824263 8814442

[Shinzakura]

8824263
Yup. Blue is already working on Seven Days in Razzy July.

[badninja]

8828650

I would definitely read that! Plus I want to see more of Razz interacting with everyone on human Earth.

[WhitewolfStormrunner]

8828650 Good.

[HeartfireFirebrand]

But it was surprising to learn that Sunset outstripped her as a unicorn when it came to raw power. At first, Twilight had thought her friend to be mistaken, but when Sunset insisted that the princess look up their individual thaumic readings, it shocked her. As a unicorn, Twilight had been at the top of the scale in control and near the top in power – but Sunset was near the top in control…and over the top in power.

It made no sense whatsoever, and Sunset’s response even less so: “I’ve never really known how to give up,” had been the mare-turned-girl’s response. At the time, Twilight hadn’t quite got that. She’d never given up either on a problem or test or bit of academia that had puzzled her. But now? Now she understood what her friend had meant.

Sunset never gave up. Even at her lowest, she kept on going, because that was all she ever knew. She was the daughter of Princess Celestia, and in the public eye, failure was never an option for the Princess’ personal student – Twilight knew that all too well. And with Celestia having been the sole parent in Sunset’s life, Twilight could see how her friend could take that as a tenet of her life. After all, when Celestia had told Sunset she wasn’t meant to be a princess, Sunset didn’t just accept it – she made plans; foolish plans by her own later admission, but plans all the same. When Twilight’s double – the girl Sunset thought of as a sister – fell ill, Sunset didn’t panic, she instead made plans and bulldozed forward like a minotaur in the Crystal Empire. From the countless missives and talks they shared, it was clear that Sunset was always at something and likely in the middle of it, too. But she never shirked it.

Yeah she will never give up.

[AliCentaur Br0ny]

From where she stood, Faust smiled tersely. “And now we move into endgame.”

Called it.