Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls

by thatguyvex

Episode 178: On the Back Foot

Episode 178: On the Back Foot

The last time Scorpan could remember the edge of his Zanpaktou crossing paths with that of Glory, it was in a time so far back his memory of it was edged with mist. It was wretched nostalgia, to recall even a fraction of those days in this moment. The way he’d admired her. The manner in which, as a much younger soul, full of vigor and eagerness to become strong like his elder brother, he’d all but begged Glory to train him in the ways of combat. And damn her now, he could so readily recall her kind and eternal patience as she mentored him. Much of what he’d learned of how to fight had its foundation in Glory’s teachings, only refined much later by his own hand as centuries of war dragged on, and on, and on...

That was the greatest pain of all. He knew precisely the same frustration and desperation as Glory had. He’d fought in those same battles, witnessed the same procession of seemingly endless death, and even in his darker moments questioned the judgment of the Soul Queen and whether or not her unwillingness to intervene was truly right. Yet through it all he’d kept one ideal close to his heart; that a Soul Reaper was defined by their duty to preserve the cycle of souls. Good and evil, law and chaos, sin and virtue, these things were all secondary to that one overriding purpose, for nothing else would matter if that cycle of reincarnation was ever allowed to collapse.

And all this time Glory and her compatriots had always set that cycle up to abuse it for their own personal ends.

It was a betrayal so fundamental that Scorpan felt his soul could shatter itself without any need for Glory’s blade to pierce it. Yet he refused. Every shred of conviction within him screamed out with the force of a thousand bursting stars to deny the Zero Division and their plans in their entirety. If they had created Soul Society based upon a lie, then Scorpan himself would burn his soul to cinders in defense of those ideals and make those ideals real. He owed it to every single Soul Reaper who had ever given up their own souls in service to the Gotei 13 under his command. He owed it himself for his own role in allowing Glory’s plot to take place without having investigated matters more closely. And he owed it to Sunset Shimmer and every one of those living humans whose courage and resolve had already saved so many lives, while shedding light upon the dark truth the Zero Division had sought to keep hidden for so long.

Above anyone else, Scorpan would gladly sacrifice all that he had to if that is what it took to ensure those young ladies survived this day, so that they could fulfill their still untapped potential and become even greater guardians for the world Scorpan felt he had failed.

Which meant he had to either defeat, or at the very least weaken, Glory enough to grant those girls the opportunity to escape. No easy feat, considering that as powerful as he was, he had to begrudgingly admit that she still held the edge over him. Part of it had to be the Heart of the Soul Queen beating in her chest, fueling her already immense and godly reiatsu to heights it never could have achieved otherwise, but truly even without the Heart’s power Glory would have been a foe few could readily stand against alone. Even back in the ancient days, her skill and ability was among the highest of the Soul Queen’s children.

Her sword was not merely made of light, despite appearances. Scorpan knew an actual blade existed within that raw bar of pure white, so thin that only an eye of supreme perception would even note the steel glint at the heart of the light. He knew her Zanpaktou’ s name and ability, and understood she wasn’t bothering to draw much of it out yet. Then again, he hadn’t activated his own Shikai, either, and much for the same reason as she had, he suspected.

Time was all but frozen for the pair in comparison to everyone else in the expansive underground training area, which Scorpan was thankful Discord had constructed to be so large and sturdy. He and Glory streaked in incomprehensibly fast smears of motion from the center of the training ground towards the northern end, and each time the dull gray steel of his sword touched her brilliantly bright blade, entire new canyons were carved in the rock, and entire swaths of rocky cliffs and mesas were obliterated into dust.

He saw her face placid and calm in those flashing heartbeats between strokes of their swords. She was being defensive, parrying only as he unleashed his fury on her. He never attacked the same place twice, never kept the same angle, every flashing strike of his sword aiming for a different portion of Glory’s body, no matter the hundreds of blows he rained within those fractions of seconds. It didn’t matter. Her defense was immaculate. Every single time his blade got close, her own blade of light was simply there to intercept, halting his momentum dead and pushing his sword back. Every. Single. Time. Thousands of times.

Finally he halted with one final overhand strike, both of his arms surging with muscles and his body exploding with spiritual power as he gave out a great shout and hammered his blade upon her. She blocked again, and while she’d held her sword with just one hand up until then, this time she blocked him with both hands on the pearl hilt of her blade. Beneath her the ground shattered for a few football fields around, cracking apart as he drove power downward to try and force her to the ground.

She slowly floated down, more of her own free will than because he was driving her, but his blade continued to spark against hers and she didn’t push him away as her infinite blue eyes gave a flicker of emotion; disappointment and resignation.

“You’re still very hotheaded. You wear the flesh of an old man, but you’re still the same overeager young boy I took on as my pupil.”

“This age is my badge of honor for centuries spent fighting your war for you. A war I now know never served any purpose other than to further your madness, Glory. Every scar and wrinkle on my body is a symbol of those Soul Reapers who have given everything in service to Soul Society. Now, their strength fuels me, and demands I cast you down!”

With another shout he broke off from her sword and leapt back, landing on a tall broken piece of rock as Glory settled upon a lower set of crumbled rocks. In the distance the ground trembled and booming echoes of other battles washed over both of them, and Glory’s brow twitched.

“I know, Scorpan. Now that you’re committed, I understand nothing short of death will halt you. However if you and I are to do this, we simply cannot do it here. Discord’s wards will not hold much longer, and it is bad enough that this little skirmish is taking as long as it is. Hmph, I told the others to just focus on obtaining our goals and leaving, but I can already tell from their reiatsu that Blossom and Minty are having a little too much fun with this.”

Scorpion’s suspicions drew his eyes to narrow razors, “What ‘objectives’?”

She stared at him, as if he was once more a boy training under her, and having difficulty understanding a lesson. “If destroying this shop and this city was my intent, I would have destroyed it already. Aside from providing my offer and the explanation of my actions, I had only two other goals in coming here with the rest of Zero Division. Goals you need not be concerned with, since we shall no longer be here to witness their completion. I’ll entrust the others to handle things, hopefully with Medley and Bowtie being sensible enough to reign in Blossom and Minty. As for you and I, Scorpan... I will give you the duel you’re so eager for, but not in this place. Neither of us can fight to our fullest in this place. So come...”

She reversed her blade and stabbed it into the air behind her. A intricate, golden version of a Senkaimon took shape behind her and opened with sliding doors of blood red paper inlaid with gold painted wooden panels. Scorpan tensed as she turned her back to him and began to enter the Senkaimon. He knew that the Zero Division’s Senkaimon could lead to a number of places besides Soul Society, so he didn’t think she was going there. Indeed, he caught a glimpse through it, and realized it very likely was leading directly to the Soul Palace.

“Are you intending to try and stab me in the back?” Glory asked.

“It would be appropriate, considering your own actions,” he stated, and Glory sighed.

“Fair. But you know it wouldn’t work, even if you tried. So are you coming or not? Within the Palace’s Royal Arena, neither of us have to worry about holding back.”

The Royal Arena. He hadn’t seen it in an eternity. Certainly if there was anyplace where he could make full use of his power without concern for collateral damage, it would be there. If he followed Glory, it would also ensure she was kept occupied for a time, but was that really enough? Keeping Glory tied up fighting him would only accomplish so much, with the other four Zero Division members still free to do as they pleased. But how many other options did he have? As long as Glory was here, he could do nothing to help anyone else.

As if reading his thoughts, Glory continued, voice irritatingly reasonable in tone, “Come with me, Scorpan, and that will reduce the spiritual pressure in this area enough so that even if my compatriots get rambunctious the city should be safer than it would be otherwise. If we continue to fight here, you know what we’re both capable of, and what the results will be. This is the only real course you have.”

“Yes, but even if I defeat you, I’d have no means of easily returning, especially with the pillar already here,” Scorpan said. That golden pillar was the only conventional means of transport to and from the Soul Palace, without either using the Zanapktou of a Zero Division member to create a special Senkaimon, or making use of the Queen’s Key. If he went with her to the Soul Palace, then even were he to somehow emerge victorious over Glory, she’d still have effectively trapped him there.

Glory smiled, as if she felt no need to even hide her intentions, “Very true, but again, what choice do you have? In the highly unlikely outcome of your victory, that is still better than fighting here and dooming the city above.”

“No, Glory. This, I’m truly starting to see, is one of your many issues... you lack the ability to see outside yourself,” Scorpan said, and raised his blade horizontally in front of him. Glory’s eyes went slightly wider in surprise as his reiatsu shot upwards in an earth shaking fountain of spiritual power, surrounding his body in an aura of steel gray that began to spark with other colors.

“What is this? You wouldn't... not in a populated area!” Glory didn’t quite shout, but she did raise her voice, “Stop this at once, Scorpan! You’ll annihilate the wards and kill half the city!”

“What of it?” Scorpan said, face like a mask of death, “You intend far worse fates for them. If you truly care, then change that Senkaimon from the Royal Palace, to the wild lands far outside the Seireitei. You have that ability. But regardless of what you do, I am coming at you with the full breadth of my ability, Glory! I hope you are as prepared as you pretend to be!”

“Stubborn child!” Glory said and the Senkaimon she had opened altered, revealing through its doors the sight of a vast and empty grassland, one of many immense wildernesses that extended in the spirit realm beyond the boundaries of Soul Society.

“That location will do just fine,” Scorpan said, and didn’t halt the vastly increasing spiritual pressure pouring out of his body. He intoned a resonant phrase that echoed loudly as he rushed Glory with a supreme Flash Step. He struck with his sword even as he invoked it’s release, catching Glory who blocked with her own Zanpaktou as he shoved her through the Senkaimon just as a radiant surge of power exploded form him in four different colors of green, red, yellow, and blue.

”Bring all of heaven and earth under one sky and become the foundation of the world; Shiki no Ken!” (Sword of Four Seasons)

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Despite breathing heavily and bleeding like crazy from the ragged wound across her chest, Sweet Cider felt like she was holding her own fairly well, considering whom she was fighting. Her Zanpaktou was already released to it’s Shikai state, Kizuna feeling warm and weighty in her grip, although part of the warmth might have been the blood trickling down her arm and onto her right hand. In her other hand was her Fullbring, Hearthstone, the immense blade of rock pairing nicely with Kizuna’s steel weight.

Without having ceased to miss a beat, she came in with a whirlwind set of spinning strikes at her opponent, ripping the landscape asunder in front of her like she was one big blender and the rocky terrain little more than soft cake. Her spinning assault was met by a man who planted his feet firmly at her oncoming carnage and sheathed his katana of dark iron and clockwork, without taking his hand off of the hilt. Then at the last millisecond he drew the sword again with a speed that couldn’t even be measured in time, and Sweet Cider felt her swords not only deflected upwards as if they had weighed no more than leaves, but the pressure wave that rushed out of that man’s strike knocked her back like a doll being torn by shredding winds.

Yet it wasn’t just air pressure. Sweet Cider felt the presence of Bowtie’s reiatsu and barely managed to turn and use Flash Step to kick off the air and speed away as a blade of steel erupted from the ground behind her, gigantic like a tree of metal. Several more simply appeared around her, some forming from the air itself as they crashed down towards her. Bowtie didn’t even have to gesture, it was as if his will alone was creating this blades, constructing them from the very reishi in the air as they stabbed down around Sweet Cider as she laboriously dodged around, trying to get clear so she could find and opening.

“I am bewildered by your title,” Bowtie commented without much inflection in his tone outside of mild disappointment, “For one who carries the name ‘Kenpachi’ your entire fighting style lacks refinement. You are passably strong, I will grant you that much. Your reiatsu is quite impressive for such a young and recently deceased mortal. It’s astonishing you survived my frist strike, and continue to fight me despite that wound. Still, much as I would like to keep commending you, I do have a task to perform. Testing you is merely a pleasant diversion from that task. So if you’ll excuse me...”

He turned as if to leave, which only enraged Sweet Cider further, because she could tell his attention was actually shifting towards her daughter and Applejack’s friends. Like hell she’d let this bastard anywhere near them!

“Hrrrraaaa!” she let out an orgerish bellow and managed to zip past several more pine tree sized blades that crashed down into her path. She burst past Bowtie so she was now in front of him, and she sliced down in a diagonal from left to right with Hearthstone while coming up with a upward angled thrust with Kiznua aimed right for his chest.

He wasted no motion, his footwork spinning him around instantly. His body bent so that the Fullbring blade went within a scant centimeter of him while he used the flat of his Zanpaktou to deflect Kizuna’s thrust up even higher, which ended up binding both of Sweet Cider’s swords together high and above her head. She was left open in that instant, and he flicked his sword down and struck with the pommel, crunching it into her stomach right across her wound. Sweet Cider was thrust back like a pinball, grunting in pain as fresh blood spilled from the injury. Even so, she didn’t lose her focus, and drew Kizuna back and slammed the blade forward while using Hearthstone to drag along the ground to slow herself down.

Raw golden energy was absorbed from her body and unleashed in a wild wave of power from her Zanpaktou, crashing right towards Bowtie.

She saw him take a deep breath and place both hands on his Zanpaktou, raising it up in a simple kendo stance before swinging it down in a single, fluid motion.

Her energy wave was parted like a waterfall being split by a vast hand, and a thin line was cut through not just the rock in front of Sweet Cider, but she felt the line of pressure cut further onward. She looked back in shock as she saw a small line was cut across the ceiling hundreds of feet above, and the wall even hundreds of yards further on, and felt the entire chamber shudder from the impact. And yet, despite being directly in that line’s path, she was...uncut?

“I see the confusion written plain on your face,” he said, sheathing his Zanpaktou, “A true swordsman cuts only what he desires. Nothing more. Nothing less. There is no excess. Considering your own destructive style, I can hardly see you as a disciple of the blade. You are more like a savage beast who's been given steel to thrash about with. You can’t even bring out your Zanpaktou’s full power.”

“Got ‘nough o’ it ta keep ya yappin’ at me, don’t I?” Sweet Cider shot back while letting the surging waves of her own reiatsu push back the pain from her wounds until all she could feel was the angered pulse of her own heartbeat. Kizuna was humming in her hand, echoed by the quaking roar of energy that reverberated from Hearthstone, both of her swords seeming to want to leap from her hands to cleave into this smug bastard.

She came at him again, this time not going straight in by instead smashing Hearthstone into the ground and activating the Fullbring’s ability to generate energy ports along it’s edge. These ports shot out energy that spun the blade so it became akin to a drill, and Sweet Cider used it to scoop up entire chunks of the ground and hurled them in a dust filled mass towards Bowtie. He sidestepped the rock chunks without difficulty, but Sweet Cider kept throwing more, until he was surrounded by debris and dust.

“Really? This was an old trick when I was still young,” Bowtie chided, “I can sense your reiatsu plainly.”

When he felt a burst of Sweet Cider’s spiritual pressure upon a rock that was flung past him, he drew his Zanpaktu and not only cleaved through it, but made a spinning strike that created sufficient air pressure to utterly blow away all of the rock chunks and dust from around him with ease. His eyes flicked towards the spot he’d sensed Sweet Cider’s reiatsu, and frowned as he saw it was not her, but her Fullbring blade stuck into a rock and still emitting jets of energy.

She came in from behind and above, having suppressed her reiatsu as much as possible while using Hearthstone was a decoy. Now it exploded from her and Kizuna as she slammed the massive blade down at Bowtie’s back with all of her might while unleashing the only real technique she knew.

”Chi Tanzo-Ha!”

He turned at the last possible fraction of a moment, his own Zanpaktou cleaving up with an entire array of over a dozen giant blades materializing around him and his Zanapktou to stab right towards Sweet Cider even as her sword impacted on the tip of his own.

Overwhelmingly bright gold energy exploded in a terrific pillar of power that exploded up and outwards from the impact point. It ripped the training area in front of it apart and tore a ragged ravine in both the ceiling and ground alike until it hit the far wall and encountered the wards there. Immense shaking filled the area, and even in the city above a large number of residents paused in their day to day activities as they felt the tremor and wondered if an earthquake had just hit the city.

It took a few seconds for the smoke to clear from Sweet Cider’s attack, and when it did it revealed both her and Bowtie were still there and intact, although both were in differing positions.

Bowtie was a few dozen feet back from where he’d previously been, Zanpaktou still in hand, if somewhat smoking, and most of the conjured blades he’d created having fallen into broken pieces that then dissipated back into base reishi particles. He wasn’t badly wounded, but it was clear that Sweet Cider’s blow had marked him with a bleeding red line down his right shoulder and about halfway down his chest.

He didn’t breath hard, nor even really wince, he just took one hand and briefly ran a finger over the wound with a look of... consideration. “Then again, even a raging beast has been known to wound an unwary warrior from time to time. I would offer you congratulations on scoring a hit, but by the look of you, I still came out ahead in that exchange.”

His words made sense once one saw the state of Sweet Cider. Even if Bowtie’s conjured swords had been destroyed by her attack, they still possessed a transcendent amount of reishi inside them that allowed the blades to strike hard and true before being blown to pieces. She was left on one knee, several chunks of broken metal from the conjured swords now stuck in her body. Some pierced her legs, others lodged in her arms, while a nasty chunk was embedded in her left side and could be seen piercing out of the back. Blood poured down around her feet and the woman breathed in hard, ragged gasps at the wounds even as she tried to force herself to stand.

“Guggh...you...talk a’ lot o’... crap fer a fella... who ain’t killed me yet...”

He nodded in agreement and began to walk towards her wounded form. “Well said, and a point well made.”

Sweet Cider tried to raise Kizuna to defend herself, but her injuries were bad enough that it was hard to get her Zanpaktou up. Just as Bowtie crossed half the distance to her, however, the ground split open between them. Plants rose in thick, coiling vines, opening several large, purple fronded flowers that pointed directly at Bowtie. Then they disgorged the thick purple and green lights of several Cero beams. Bowtie flicked from view, evading the explosive beams with a Flash Step that took him upwards. The vines continued to grow, making more flowers that spat out deathly beams of Hollow energy against the man, while right next to Sweet Cider a collection of smaller vines arose in the shape of a human sized pod.

The vines uncoiled to reveal Gaia Everfree, who already had her Zanpaktou drawn in her hand, and as she directed more vines to grow in a defensive barrier around her and Sweet Cider, she looked to the wounded Soul Reaper and grimaced at the woman’s wounds. “Those are some nasty looking injuries. Let me see about keeping them from killing you.”

With a gesture, Gaia brought forth more vines from the ground that began to wrap around Sweet Cider, and she felt those plants start to inch their way into her own flesh. Strangely this didn’t hurt, but rather Sweet Cider could feel energy transferring from the plants and into her. She still wined and muttered, “Alright, this is downright creepy. Ain’t gonna complain, mind, but... gugh, somethin’ ‘bout this just don’t feel right. An’ where were ya hidin’ out all this time?”

Gaia’s dark eyes gave Sweet Cider a sardonic stab, “Unlike some people, I know better than to charge in blind against someone stronger than me. Now quit squirming while I heal you. You’re a mess, but you’re also stupidly powerful, so I could use you nice and functioning.”

As they had talked, Gaia’s flowers had been throwing up quite the barrage of Ceros, but even those weren’t able to keep Bowtie more than momentarily occupied. In a second he just rushed past with a gust of air as the only indication of his motions, and flowers and vines alike were diced to pieces. Gaia grunted, feeling her plants get butchered, and turned in time to fling out an arm and bring forth a fresh wave of plants, these ones edged in piercing thorns, to try and stab towards Bowtie.

He didn’t even need to make a return gesture to conjure a giant slicing blade the size of a building to dissipate the thick vines that had come flying at him, and he landed nearby and gave both Gaia and Sweet Cider a flat stare.

“Gaia Everfree. You were always among the more peaceful Hollows, for what little worth there was in that. Fused with a human soul, one with Fullbring, I can imagine you might be an interesting opponent. But I’ve spent enough time on satisfying my curiosity about the so-called Kenpachi, and don’t intend to waste further time on dealing with you as well. I can sense Glory and Scorpan have left, and so my time for self indulgence is up.”

He held his Zanpaktou out to the side, and then let go of the hilt.

Rather than fall to the ground, the sword merely hovered in the air next to him. Then with a wash of white light, the Zanpaktou grew and morphed into a new shape. The shape of a woman. She wore tight fitting bands of metal armor that gleamed like polished steel, formed around a curvaceous body that still showed no shortage of muscles. Dark skin showed on an aquiline, womanly face that sported a head of wheat blonde hair and metal gray eyes. A voluminous cape of chrome metal fell from her back, and within its inner lining were sheathed swords, several dozen of them of varying shapes and sizes, clanking and clinking as her cape swayed in the air.

The woman looked at Bowtie with a loving smile, “You’re going to let me have a bit of fun on my own, Chonekutai-sama?”

“It’s best if you keep these two tied up, Ito-Kiri. I only need to perform a simple Konso, so one of your sisters will suffice.”

“But of course, Chonekutai-sama,” the woman replied, and withdrew a hiltless katana blade from the array of swords attached to her cape and handed it over to Bowtie. He took the weapon without question and then Flash Stepped away.

“I didn’t say you could just leave,” Gaia shouted, raising her hand and charging up a Cero that she fired at where she sensed Bowtie’s presence to be, but even faster than her beam was the woman of steel who appeared in front of the Cero blast and pulled out two more swords from her cape, a longsword and gladius, and with immense strength bisected Gaia’s Cero.

“As if I’d let you interfere with my lord,” the woman said, and slammed down onto the ground with enough weight to break apart the earth as she rushed forward and slashed out both at Sweet Cider and Gaia at the same time. The speed of the woman’s motions was enough that Gaia had to work to get her Zanpaktou into a parrying position, and Sweet Cider only blocked because Kizuna was large enough to practically be a shield. Still, both women were catapulted away by the incredible strength in this strange woman of steel, who spun her blades in her hands and laughed, “Chonekutai-sama doesn’t let me fight without his hand on my hilt very often, so I’m going to enjoy this!”

“T-the hell are you supposed to be?” Sweet Cider grunted, struggling to keep her feet under her with her still bleeding wounds.

The woman smiled, “My name is Ito-Kiri, or ‘Thread Cutter’ in your tongue. I am Chonekutai-sama’s first creation. I have the honor of being the progenitor of all of my sisters that came afterward. And it’s utterly distressing to see one of my kin in the hands of such a whelp like you, who doesn’t appreciate the bond you should share with her.”

“What n’ blue blazes are ya ramblin’ on ‘bout?” Sweet Cider grunted, but she noticed Gaia Everfree had a look of recognition on her face.

“I see,” Gaia said, “I knew Bowtie was the original forge master who made them, but I hadn’t realized he still kept the first as his personal blade.”

“Of course he did!” Ito-Kiri said, and radiant waves of reiatsu started to rise from her as every weapon attached to her cape and her very armor started to gleam like it was shining under the sun, “Why wouldn’t the creator of Zanpaktou keep the first and most beautiful of them for himself?”

Sweet Cider blinked, “Wait a tic, yer the... first Zanpaktou?”

“In the steel,” Ito-Kiri said with a widening smile and a bow. But as she rose from that bow the air above her gave off a rending noise like screeching metal, and several layered circles consisting of hundreds of floating katanas rose above her like a gigantic cylinder of floating death. “Now, shall we resume the dance you began with my beloved Chonekutai-sama?”

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Sombra felt the abrupt absence of Scorpan’s and Glory’s reiatsu and understood that the two must have traveled elsewhere to finish a duel that had a high probability in resulting in one of their deaths. Considering the state of their respective spiritual pressures, Sombra had a feeling Scorpan’s odds were not favorable. In some ways he had very little reason to be bothered by that fact. He and the old Soul Reaper had been foes for a very long time, and Sombra had neither forgotten nor forgiven Scorpan’s role in the fateful day that he had lost his dear Radiant Hope. The very Radiant Hope who had a portion of her soul now shaped as a Soul Reaper and was present in this very chamber. He sensed her, clustered near the other Soul Reaper Lieutenants and those two Captains. The group had not moved to engage any of the Zero Division, which was either a sign that they were overwhelmed by the spiritual pressure that flooded the battleground, or that they were simply smart enough to understand they couldn’t affect the outcome with their meager powers.

Either way, Scorpan was out of the way for now. If he lived or died was a matter of a coin toss. In a moment of generous levity, Sombra decided to silently wish his old adversary luck, for if Scorpan did somehow manage to scrape a victory over Glory, then that simply meant one very deadly foe was dealt with and a familiar, weaker one was leftover to consider.

And besides, was it possible that Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer’s mad dreams of peace could actually come to pass? Sombra didn’t dare want to hope, but perhaps with Twilight now revealed to be who she was, he could allow himself that small, dangerous luxury. Regardless, the future had to wait. He had a rather troublesome opponent to focus his attention on at that moment.

“Ugly, ugly, ugly! You’re so utterly ugly and gross I just want to tear you into little, slightly less ugly pieces!”

It was rather difficult to pin down Minty’s motions. Every twist and bounce of her body was an erratic puzzle, leaving nothing but black and pink smears of light in her giggling path. Sombra was surrounded by coil after coil of ashen black mist that came at him in a relentless tide. He felt the raw corrosive power of this mist the moment he defended himself with the Absolute, creating pitch black voids in space around him in a protective shell of snapping tendrils. Where the void touched the consuming mist, Sombra felt his own reishi struggle and sizzled as the base particles started to decompose. He’d never felt anything like it before, as if the very components of his reiatsu were being corroded and dissolved at a touch from Minty’s own sickeningly acidic spiritual pressure.

However his own power did resist and rushed forth from him in a heavy well of pure spatial warping that still managed to generate a wide bubble of safety around himself, a good twenty meters wide. Minty hammered at it not just with her mist, but with her blade, which was like a dripping shard of sharpened tar that ate at the black void Sombra surrounded himself with.

“Stop hiding in there you big ugly faker! You can’t survive in that little dark hole of yours forever!”

I have no intention of doing so, Sombra thought to himself, having already drawn his own weapon, the gloriously gleaming blue blade of solid reishi that was akin to a sizable broadsword made of sapphire light. Keeping the void shell of space hardened in place, he stepped into a warp created by his Absolute and flowed outside of it, keeping track as best he could of Minty’s movements while he prepared his attack.

He appeared with such speed that the darkness he stepped from moved faster than light could register, cleaving an azure path with his blade right at Minty’s midsection as she streaked by. He felt his sword make contact, slicing into Minty while somehow catching on a vast net of hard reishi that instead of cutting through her, caused her to spin around and get thrown backwards across the air. She instantly came to a halt, giggling even louder, and Sombra blinked at the wound in her side. His sword had dug right into her, but she didn’t bleed so much as just... ooze more of the tar-like substance that dripped from her sword, and now even her parasol.

“Heheheh, you don’t hit anywhere as hard as Dad did,” Minty said, a lopsided grin of wide, sharp teeth on her face, with bits of black blood dripping from her jaw, “You can’t cut my body up with a dull blade like that, little man!”

Her flesh rejoined, and Sombra heard a sizzling sound from his sword and frowned as he saw bits of black ooze on the edge of his sword of reishi, corroding it’s edge. He shook his head and turned hard ruby eyes towards Minty, “You Zero Division creatures are more monstrous than I imagined, but who said anything about using a blade?”

He inverted his grip on the sword, and exerted his own vast spiritual pressure, pushing back the corrosion on its edge. At the same time, a second blade sprouted from the hilt, and both blades curved back, forming a massive crescent bow forged of both seeming swords, that weren’t swords at all. “Quincy use bows and arrows.”

He drew back upon a string of light formed upon his bow, and then the shadowed void of his Absolute bloomed across the weapon as an arrow of warped darkness took shape. He fired, and the space around him shuddered and twisted. In a flash, an uncountable storm of black reishi arrows, all tearing space with the power of raw void, burst into being and swarmed upon Minty. She moved in an erratic corkscrew of streaking Flash Steps, narrowly avoiding an air rending and earth shaking procession of explosions as each of countless thousands of void arrows detonated in spheres of crushing spatial energy in her wake. Sombra fired more, and warped space in front of him in a dark wave to transfer the new barrage and send it ahead of Minty. Now she was trapped between two converging swarms, and was left with no option by to try and confront the oncoming attacks.

She did so with howling laughter, swinging her black blade of tar around her with such speed and force that she practically surrounded herself with a shield of thick mist and black liquid. These corrosive crescents of power and mist slammed into Sombra’s barrages of arrows, melting many as Minty’s power ate through the very space warping energies that encased each arrow. An ear bleeding string of explosions followed as Minty was surrounded by the tearing space of thousands of destroyed arrows, but even so there were still dozens that broke through and found their marks upon her, engulfing the young woman in a cluster of spherical voids of destructive darkness.

Yet a second later, Minty emerged from the storm, body twisting and cracking as it reconfigured itself to wholeness, despite having just had several limbs bent into broken fragments. Sombra could only wonder if even a trace of the girl’s body couldn’t reshape itself. It seemed Chrysalis had a contender for most difficult to kill madwoman, now. Whatever blood did seep from Minty just pooled at her feet and sizzled as it rose and pulsed around her like a living thing, and she just chuckled, looking up at Sombra with eyes hungry for more violence.

“A little painful, but whatever I can take apart, I can also put back together. That’s the essence of Kaido, the healing arts. Soul Reapers owe their thanks to me for inventing the skill. None of them have half the ability I do in using it. So good luck trying to kill me, faker. You’re gonna run out of energy long before you manage to do enough damage to take me down.”

“That is of course assuming that taking you down is my objective,” Sombra replied, and raised his left hand, where shadows pooled and swelled, “However I have already accomplished my goal.”

“Huh?” Minty tilted her head in confusion, and then looked down as she felt a tug in her side, in the same spot she’d been hit by Sombra’s first strike. Shadows emerged there, like black blood seeping from a wound. These shadows crawled across Minty’s body and she growled like a feral panther at them. Sombra felt her reiatsu push back against his, and knew she could indeed tear apart the bonds of his power if given a second to focus. So he didn’t give her time to bring the heft of her power to bear and made use of his Absolute to activate the tether he’d attached to her side when he’d struck her, knowing full well his attack wouldn’t have really injured her but using it as a means to physically string some reishi onto her body. He had then used the swarms of arrows to keep her distracted as he connected that tether to the sphere of void he’d previously been using as a shield.

But it was not meant to be a shield, but a prison. He’d created it and reinforced it while testing it against her corrosive powers specifically so he could calibrate it to be stronger against her ability, while ensuring he erected a spatial warp to the tether he’d attached to her.

“Oh sunuvabit-” Minty shouted, the shadows flowing over her like a cocoon, which then immediately vanished and deposited her inside the spherical barrier of void.

Sombra turned to the sphere, and with his left hand still extended, he gripped hard with it like he was squeezing the sphere in his line of sight. “I know that won’t hold you for very long. Your power does, unfortunately, surpass mine. However, I think I can keep you in ‘time out’ for a few minutes at least. Enough for Twilight Sparkle to finish her work.”

He pressed down with his palm, and sent the sphere crashing towards the ground, while at the same time the sphere contracted and grew smaller as he compressed the spatial energies within it. He felt Minty inside being pressed upon by a crush of black hole-like gravity and tearing forces. He also could tell she was utterly enraged and outpouring enough reiatsu to readily survive the horrific confines of the sphere, and as he had estimated, he could probably only contain her for a short time.

Hopefully long enough for Twilight Sparkle and Sugarcoat to finish creating magical portals to get everyone to safety.

“My King, well done! Quite magnificent!”

Sombra glanced up as Coloratura descended next to him. She had the glowing blue keys of her piano bow conjured before her and he could tell by the way her eyes shifted about that she was keeping close watch on the other battles taking place.

“Hardly,” he said, ignoring a bit of sweat pouring down the side of his cheek, “I barely scratched her, and this containment will only last ten minutes or so at most. I doubt I can outright kill her, even if I used my full power.”

“Surely not, your Majesty!? I can tell these cretins are powerful, but once you get serious-”

“Countess, let us not waste time on idle attempts to fluff my ego. We have no time for it,” Sombra responded with terse tension. Minty’s power was raging like a corrosive hurricane within the sphere the Absolute had created, and it was taking no small amount of his concentration to keep reinforcing it with his own power to try to keep her contained. The sphere pulsated and shook like a living thing being tortured, cracks appearing along its pure obsidian surface as bits of Minty’s acidic reiatsu leaked outward, even as Sombra redoubled his efforts to keep her locked inside. The raw gravitational and space warping forces of the sphere were shaking the ground and carving out a vast crater beneath the sphere as Sombra poured more and more power into it, and even then he could tell Minty was slowly gaining ground on him.

Coloratura saw this and visibly paled, gulping slightly as she truly began to realize that even her King had a foe against whom his vast power had met a match. “Very well, your Majesty, I then only ask what you would have of me? I am prepared to sacrifice my human form to aid you against this one, if it is your will.”

She of course was referring to her Vollstandig, which much like with Sapphire Shores was of a unique type that would unleash a Quincy’s fullest power by merging her soul with her body in a far more thorough manner than what was normal. Using it would grant her power beyond any regular Sternritter, but at the cost of losing her human form, forever. Sombra was loath to command any of his most loyal subjects to make such a sacrifice without absolute necessity, but had also known even during the development of the Vollstandig transformation that such a sacrifice would likely need to be made if the Zero Division was ever to be defeated.

However...

“Your day to make that sacrifice may yet come soon, Countess, but fortune willing it will not be this day. I will continue to deal with this troublesome one. You are to go to the aid of those young ladies with whom lay the power of magic that troubles the Zero Division so. I suspect they will be key in our future efforts to bring this despicable war to its final closing. Besides, it seems you know one of them.”

Coloratura gave a dainty shrug at the mention, but then bowed with a flourish, “A trifle of my youth, but no matter, I shall gladly follow your command, my King. I sense the young girls in question are having difficulty anyway, so perhaps I can tip the scale in their favor.”

Sombra nodded to her to give her leave, and without further words Coloratura vanished from view with the use of a swift Hirenkyaku. Sombra knew her words to be true, for his own senses had not ceased to keep track of the other conflicts, and could tell that Sunset Shimmer and her friends were being pressed hard by Blossom. He could tell the Zero Division member was doing little more than toy with them, using far less power than Minty had been using against Sombra. Coloratura’s presence might incite the man to get more serious, but Sombra saw little choice. They had to hold out long enough for Twilight to enact their escape route.

It was galling that escape was really their only option, but all it did was highlight the extent of the danger Zero Division represented. Defeating them would take a unified front, and power beyond what even the greatest of their forces presently possessed.

Which meant the key to all of this was Equestria itself, and the mysterious strength of its magic. How convenient that Discord had somehow connected himself to each of the individuals who had gained access to great stores of magic; Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, and Adagio Dazzle. Had Discord known all along that those girls would be the critical elements needed to unravel Zero Division’s schemes?

Somehow Sombra imagined that if he asked Discord, the man wouldn’t give anything resembling a straight answer.

----------

“So, just so we’re all on the same page, I am really not into Glory,” Discord said with entirely too much casual snark for a man squaring off with one of the most powerful entities in the world that presumably had every reason to harm him. He had his Zanpaktou spinning on one thin finger, having not activated his Shikai yet, so it remained a wooden cane for the moment.

Next to him Ditzy Doo was licking her lips and cracking her knuckles, staring down their opponent with a bristling twitch running down her hair, “Nothing personal, Discy, but the idea of you two being in bed together seriously gives me a case of the projectile vomits. Just, ugh, you know?”

“Honestly taking that one as a compliment, as I have such better taste than that,” Discord said, his eyes not leaving the one standing nearby. He and Ditzy had ended up picking a lonely canyon near the east end of the training ground’s wall to face off against Medley, and Medley had appeared on the canyon’s opposite cliff, Zanpaktou in hand, but oddly not leaping into the attack.

Instead Medley seemed to be casually observing them, as relaxed in truth as Discord was attempting to show on the surface. She put her free hand on her hip and let out a faintly amused groan, “Trust me, I’ve never encouraged Glory’s inexplicable crush on you. I really don’t get it, myself. I guess she’s just into crusty weirdos who keep telling her ‘no’. Kind of self destructive, if you ask me.”

“Oooh, she’s that type,” Ditzy said, as if receiving a revelation as she pounded a hand into her palm, “Some people really jones after the people who keep rejecting them. It’s like the more you tell them to piss off, the thirstier they get.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Medley agreed, “Glory’s used to getting her way so much, I think the idea that anyone would consistently stand up to her activates some weird reverse dopamine reaction. If I didn’t love my sister so much, I’d probably have worse things to say about that, but eh, can’t choose your family.”

“I rather disagree,” Discord said, “I’ve never much cared for my biological family, but have instead chosen those with whom I believe I can give that definition to without regret. Which brings me to an observation, Medley. You seem the one least pleased with your family’s plans. Why then do you remain on their side?”

Medley looked him squarely in the eye, and he felt the piercing rush of power that focused directly upon him as her body let off such spiritual pressure that it was hard to gauge it as a physical thing. He knew the reiatsu of the Zero Division members weren’t normal, that the presence of the Soul Queen’s pieces within them had transmuted the spirit energy into something subtly different than normal reiatsu. Those too weak wouldn’t even be able to sense it properly, even as it crushed them. He and Ditzy could sense Medley’s only because they themselves were on a high enough level to do so. It was still unnerving to feel the laser focus of Medley’s reiatsu upon him, however, like a hot knife digging into his heart.

“Let me spell one thing out for you, Discord. No matter what I think of Glory’s obsession or my siblings’ willingness to go along with her plans, I will never let them come to harm. Not while I’m still breathing. That just isn’t in me. So think what you will of the things I do, even if they don’t make sense to you. They don’t have to. All you need to know is that while I wouldn’t shed a tear if Glory’s plans fail, I’ll die myself before I let her or any of the others fall.”

Discord sensed a double meaning behind Medley’s words. Oh, he could tell she absolute meant each and every single syllable, but her choice of wording had meaning beyond the obvious. As someone used to using double-speak himself, he suspected he had a notion of what she was actually getting at.

Yet that would have to wait, because Medley was making her move.

She vanished from view, but Discord didn’t sense the tell-tale air currents of a Flash Step and didn’t see any trace of her movements. He leaped up in an evasive maneuver on instinct, placing his free hand on the side of his sword cane, filling the weapon with an aura of prism light.

”Rip through all boundaries; Konran Arashi.”

He was surrounded by a resplendent wave of light formed from all colors across the spectrum, splashing up and around him in a waterfall of eye wrenching color. His Zanpaktou assumed its Shikai form, the gnarled cane retaining its head but the rest becoming a shifting blade of painfully twisting prismatic colors , some of which defied common comparison. As this happened, he saw Ditzy Doo suddenly shift on her feet and pivot away from Medley, who was suddenly behind the other woman. Medley’s Zanpaktou blade, which was seemingly made of solid wind, cut down and took off a bit of Ditzy’s hair as she in turn flickered from view with a Flash Step that took her above Medley, coming down with a sudden ax kick. Medley twisted away, and a substantial portion of the canyon cliff was sundered into rock chunks by Ditzy’s kick.

“Where are you looking?”

Discord grunted and threw himself to the side as a second Medley cut by him, and he felt the bite in his side as her Zanpaktou tore at him. He responded with a fast series of thrusts from Konran Arashi, sending out waves of prismatic chaos to try and tag Medley with their disrupting power. Yet even as he did so he felt a twinge in his mind, and that Medley disappeared, while the fist one he’d seen also vanished. Yet in that same instant another Medley appeared below him, grabbing his foot and with shocking strength hurled Discord down with the force of a sonic boom.

He corrected himself in mid-air just barely in time to keep from cratering into the ground, but he landed in a crouch, one hand on his hat, which had nearly fluttered off. Ditzy appeared next to him, frowning.

“Okay, I know Zero Division members are going to be fast, but I’m having trouble tracking her. Also, are those speed clones, or actual copies?” Ditzy asked, and Discord just shook his head, eyes focused on Medley.

“I don’t think they’re either. This might take me a minute, but I don’t think her power is merely speed or copies. Something else is happening here.”

“Don’t overthink it,” came Medley’s voice, but it didn’t stem from the Medley that stood high in the air, but one who was now behind the pair with her hand pressed upon the ground as she gave off a knowing smirk, “The mind is a fragile thing. Always misinterpreting and misremembering.”

A series of black kanji lettering extended from Medley’s fingers like a skittering carpet of spiders across the ground, almost faster than Discord could visually track. He also noticed that her right eye was now dark as pitch, with faint wisps of oozing blackness curling up from it. Both he and Ditzy jumped in opposite directions with blurring Flash Steps, but Ditzy had always been the faster between them and while she escaped the boundaries of the swarming script on the ground, Discord was a touch slower as the letters sprang to life upwards in nine separate pillars of interlocked kanji. A glow of deep blue energy flowed between the letters, then formed a containment field that looked smooth and solid as glass, transparent but pulsing with power.

Discord didn’t recognize this Kido, and Medley had conjured it without even bothering with an invocation, but he could sense it was Kido, and appropriately potent given its summoner. Still, powerful or not, this binding spell was still something that relied upon its fundamental order to function, and so Discord swung his Zanpaktou around him and let out a flowing wave of prismatic chaos energies.

Konran Arashi’s power seeped into the Kido and Discord felt Medley’s infused reiatsu clash with his own. Normally he’d have difficulty exerting the full breadth of Konran Arashi’s ability against a higher grade reiatsu, but Medley wasn’t able to put her full power into a separate Kido. Honestly it was a testament to how powerful the Kido was that it resisted Konran Arashi for even a short time, as Discord could feel the spell fraying as the rules governing it were broken down, but the field remained intact for a few seconds.

A few seconds that the other Medley used to attack Ditzy, blazing down like a light speed shooting star. Ditzy was fast enough to meet the attack head on, and both women clashed in mid-air with such speed and ferocity that it was as if someone was unleashing multiple airburst cruise missiles in the span of a mere couple of seconds. Discord could see some of it. Medley was not just slashing with her blade of solid air, but was mixing in a flurry of palm strikes and wheeling kicks that seemed every bit as strong as anything Ditzy Doo was dishing out in turn.

But Ditzy did have a card still to play, and did so amidst blocking one of Medley’s kicks while performing a hard backflipping kick of her own that actually drove Medley back a step. Completing her flipping arc, Ditzy ran her hand over her face and immediately a black and golden aura of explosive Hollow reiatsu burned hot around Ditzy’s body as her Hollow mask took shape over her face. Bending like a predatory feline on the balls of her feet and her palms down, Ditzy smiled beneath her mask and launched herself right at Medley with a shattering crack of force.

The punch wasn’t singular, as it was accompanied by a legion of simultaneous strikes, all so swift they came as a mutual storm of fists and feet laced with an explosive aura of crackling golden and black energies.

Medley weathered the storm with not a single wasted movement, bending like a blade of grass in the midst of a harsh wind. For all of Ditzy’s fury, little in the way of actual contact was being made with Medley, but at least she appeared to be on the defensive for now. Yet Discord had to focus on the fact that there was more than one Medley, and with another swift swing of Konran Arashi, he ejected another wave of disrupting energies that finally shattered the Kido that had trapped him.

Which triggered this particular Kido’s secondary effect, for upon breaking the glass-like field it had created turned into a series of sharp, thin reishi blades that then slammed towards Discord with murderous intent. He had to hold onto his hat as he flipped through the first wave and slashed about with his Zanpaktou, forming a near torrent of rainbow color that fanned out around him. Even these incredibly sharp shards of reishi lost their cohesion under the utter loss of order Discord’s Zanpaktou created.

He then wasted no time in homing in on the second Medley, and flinging a Kido of his own her way.

“Secret Hado: Jugeki Byakurai.” (Heavy Striking Pale Lightning)

A thin beam of crimson light shot from his outstretched finger at Medley. This was a modified version of Byakurai he had created himself that took the penetrative power of the low level Kido and amplified it while stripping out any connection to the electrical element, replacing it instead with the raw speed factor of concentrated light energy. In theory the spell was a perfect speed tester, for only one capable of light speed motion could dodge it. He fully expected Medley to do so, but at the same time, this was a way to test his growing theory concerning the nature of her power. Not to mention that eye of darkness she’d just unveiled, which he knew had to be the Right Eye of the Soul Queen.

To his mild surprise, Medley didn’t dodge the Kido beam, instead letting it strike her straight in the chest. To his further interest, it penetrated her, boring right through her body and into the ground behind her like a high intensity laser might a mere block of cheese.

“Huh, I honestly didn’t think I’d hit you.”

“Did you hit me?”

Discord forced himself to refrain from blinking in shock this time, for Medley just... ceased to be in one location and now was right behind him with her sword of cutting wind poised along his neck. She had no injury at all on her chest as she chuckled like the crinkle of dry leaves, “I remember it differently, myself.”

No stranger to being caught in a tough spot, Discord gave an impressed whistle while holding up his free hand with his palm out, “Oh ho? So I was right. You don’t use speed at all, at least not as a specialty like the Third Espada does. Now, hot or cold, tell me true, is what you’re doing a means of manipulating my mind’s memory?”

“Warm, but not quite red hot. You’re on the right track, for what little good it does you,” she replied and instead of striking with her sword, Discord felt the incredible air pressure on his back as she kneed him there with enough power to send him spinning. However he had rolled just enough with the blow to only feel a couple of ribs crack, and he retaliated with an explosive wave of prismatic force that was practically a shimmering rainbow tidal wave towards Medley’s position.

This time she had no room to dodge it, and instead used her Zanpaktou like a shield and withstood the brunt of the wave of chaos force. Discord saw genuine discomfort on Medley’s face from what must have been a horrific scrambling of her senses, but even as he turned to come back at her, she grit her teeth through it and rushed him as if she could still sense him clearly. That, he suspected, had a lot more to do with the Right Eye than it did her own ability to completely resist his power. Even with her higher reiatsu, taking a full wave of Konran Arashi’s power would meddle with her, yet even as her normal eye was glazed and unfocused, that dark Right Eye stayed laser focused on him.

Their blades met as they flew right into each other, the many colors of Konran Arashi sparking and buzzing against the invisible wind force that comprised Medley’s sword. And behind the clashing pair, Discord could still see Ditzy fighting the seeming double of Medley. Was this a trick upon his and Ditzy’s mind? Were there really multiple Medley’s or were they just remembering it this way? As his Zanpaktou pressed against hers, pouring more and more of his Zanpaktou’s disruptive reiatsu into her own weapon, he saw flickers of static across the whole area they were fighting in.

As if Medley’s power didn’t just extend to herself, but the entire region she fought within.

“Getting a clearer idea of things, hm?” Medley said, her Right Eye seeming to leak even more darkness that trailed upwards across her brow, “You’ve got a halfway decent head, Discord. And Glory, blind as she is, still wants you. But you and I both know you’re not the linchpin to all of this. It’s those girls. They’re the ones who are important. Even Glory, in all of her vast pride, has enough sense to realize that on some fundamental level... which is why she gave the orders she did. Do you honestly think any fight here matters other than the one involving those kids?”

This was more than a taunt. Discord could feel it in the intense inflection of Medley’s words. And a part of him realized with a sinking feeling like cold oil in his gut that he’d made another mistake. He’d assumed Glory would be focused on the big fish like Scorpan and Sombra, or even capturing himself. He’d conceded she might considering taking him as an objective alongside defeating Scorpan. But he’d believed that, by and large, she’d dismiss Sunset Shimmer and her friends. They weren’t strong enough yet to warrant a genuine threat, even if one of them realized Sunset had the second Hogyoku he’d created.

But if Glory had surmised how important the girls were...

He broke off from Medley and tried to focus his attention on their battle. He only just realized to his dismay that Bowtie had managed to break way from Sweet Cider and Gaia and was proceeding towards the girls’ battle with Blossom.

“Ditzy! We have to get to the girls, fast-” he started to shout, but Medley was right on top of him before he’d barely drawn breath to speak. He was now forced to defend himself from not just one, but a dozen Medley’s that just seemed to apparate into existence around him, surrounding him in an endless barrage of wind blades that he had to all but engulf himself in chaos power to keep at bow.

At this rate he’d have to use his Bankai, as dangerous as that would be for all involved.

Ditzy was equally unable to respond, having heard him but suddenly finding herself pushed back by one of Medley’s devastating kicks that Ditzy had to block with both arms crossed in front of her.

“You’re good, scion of the Doo Family,” Medley said, and potent streams of tinted cerulean reiatsu coiled around her back and exploded outward in a familiar sight to Ditzy’s eyes, “In fact I think you might have taken the Hakuda unarmed techniques I developed further than I could have imagined. But there’s still plenty you don’t know, kid. But come on, show me what you’ve got. One Shunko against another.”

Ditzy didn’t want to give this woman any more time, especially if there was danger approaching the girls, but Medley wasn’t exactly an enemy she could just turn her back on, either. She didn’t have the blind pride to think that she was going to be able to overcome the person who essentially invented the very school of reiatsu-fueled unarmed combat that all Soul Reapers learned at least the fundamentals of. At the same time, Ditzy believed in the same basic ideal that Discord did, that the old eventually gives way to the new, and the potential of the younger generations was ever higher than the ones who came before. Even if she couldn’t win here, even her defeat might serve to pave the way for those younger to have a chance to do the things she and Discord couldn’t.

In her heart’s eye, she could see her daughter, Derpy, smiling with the purity of the young not yet beaten down by the world. A smile Ditzy knew was shared by those other young ladies she’d helped train and shape, and whom Ditzy was happy to shed her blood defending even against the worst possible odds.

With those thoughts in mind, she focused her own reiatsu, Soul Reaper and Hollow alike, and let the melded energies explode out of her body in a swirling mix of sparkling white and blood drenched vermillion. She held her right arm out and let the spinning torrents of reiatsu coil from her shoulders and down her arm. Eyes locked with Medley's she crouched in a panther’s gait, hands curling into feline claws as her reiatsu dripped from her fingers in sharp points, the energies around her growing to a typhon torrent.

Medley smiled and nodded, adjusting her stance with one foot sliding forward and the other sliding back, left hand forward with palm up while the other cocked back in a straight first. Her own smoky blue reiatsu spun like a wild tornado around her, focusing upon her right fist. “Good. Hate to think the family I entrusted these techniques to produced an heir with no backbone. Let’s do this.”

The blaze of blue power engulfed her as she shot forward in a spherical blast of speed beyond light, her words stamping themselves upon reality in that same shard of an instant. “Shunko: Ten-Suisei!” (Flash Cry: Heaven’s Comet)

Ditzy shot forward to meet Medley, almost as fast, her clawed right hand slashing forward while extending claws of thick, blood red energy from it. Then her left hand, held behind her did the same, bursting forth with long claws of crimson. At the same time she spun her whole body like a insane, blood colored blender as line after line of cutting ruby power spun off of her until she was akin to a cyclonic wood chipper made of energy claws. “Shunko: Abareru Tora!” (Flash Cry: Rampaging Tiger)

They collided in a spastic kaleidoscope of air rending power, with crackling lines of distorted space spreading out from their point of impact as Medley’s pure torrent of azure force smashed into the spinning storm of Ditzy’s reiatsu claws. For just a few moments it looked as if they were actually evenly matched, or that a few of Ditzy’s flying claws of reiatsu might penetrate through the corona of Medley’s comet...

But Discord, further away, even while dealing with the other Medley, could sense what was about to happen. He’d been wracking his mind to understand Medley’s power, and finally he believed he understood it, and he shouted, “Ditzy! Below!”

It was hard to tell if his warning came in time. It did give Ditzy just a small fraction of an instant to realize what was about to happen and, having utter faith in Discord, she rolled her body with a blow from beneath her. Fortunate, as Medley simply vanished, as if she’d never charged Ditzy head on, and suddenly another Medley, with the same comet-like Shunko technique was just as abruptly beneath Ditzy, flying up. Rolling with the blow or not, Ditzy was struck, her own momentum and Shunko aimed now entirely in the wrong directly as her whole body was caught in the blast of raw power and force that now drove her upwards at such speed that she and Medley all but immediately impacted with the ceiling of the training grounds.

Then punched right through it, wards and all.

Within Discord's shop, several rooms on both floors were annihilated by Medley punching Ditzy right through them. Then they burst up through the roof itself, where Ditzy was left spinning in the air, a dark bruise up her entire indented right side as Medley let her fall and land on top of the shop in a heap.

Below in the courtyard, Screwloose, Screwball, Clover, Chappy, and the young girls of the CMC all heard the impact and saw Ditzy fall to the roof. They also now felt the immense leakage of reiatsu from the hole driven in Discord’s wards.

“W-w-w-what the heck!? Ditzy!” Chappy shouted from within the bubble she was still trapped within.

Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo, who were all trying to help Scotaloo’s Doll get back up, now stared in pale horror at what they saw and were sensing.

“No way...” Sweetie Belle gulped, “No way.”

“What n’ tarnation are we supposed ta do? Who’re these people anyhows!?” Applebloom said, shaking her head as fear started to grip her as well.

“Get a hold of yourselves!” Screwloose shouted, “Get that rock bird up and get going! Don’t look back!”

“Can you afford to be giving them advice right now?” said Bubbles, who took advantage of Screwloose’s brief distraction to flit about with Flash Step and get behind her and swung her bubble generating scepter down in an attempt to trap Screwloose in a bubble the same way Chappy was. Screwloose, having not entirely taken her attention off of her opponent, flipped to the side and spun her rocket launcher around, the barrels glowing red as she charged it up with Hollow energy, courtesy of her Vaizard mask.

“Can you afford to be getting cocky?” Screwloose replied before firing a point blank barrage of explosive red shells that tore up the courtyard where Bubbles stood. However an instant later something bounced up from amid the explosions, and it appeared that Bubbles had surrounded herself with a bubble at the last moment. This bubble, unlike the others, didn’t explode, but appeared to serve as a protective barrier, and she all but ignored Screwloose to look up at Medley.

“My Lady Medley, is everything going well down below?”

Medley, eyes locked on Ditzy’s fallen form, didn’t even look at Bubbles before replying, “Eh. Could be going faster, to be honest. Don’t let any of those kids run off, but don’t kill any of them if you can help it. I think this one is done, so I’m heading back down.”

Bubbles bowed, “Of course, my Lady.”

Ditzy lay still, one arm hanging off of the roof’s edge. It was impossible to tell if she was unconscious or worse. Medley, oddly, didn’t double check, and simply disappeared with a Flash Step. Bubble’s, perhaps distracted by the brief conversation, hadn’t removed her protective barrier bubble and Screwball leaped up at her while she’d been talking to Medley.

“Give me a ball to smack around is a bad idea, lady!” Screwball said, eyes burning as sparks of red Hollow energy ran up and down her spiked club, and she whipped it full force into Bubble’s barrier. The impact didn’t break the bubble, but it did bend it, and knocked Bubble’s off her feet. More importantly, the strike launched the bubble right into the wall of a building adjacent to Discord’s shop, and sent it bouncing around within. Luckily it was an empty storage facility, still partially inside Discord’s wards, weakened as they were.

“We’ve got this kids!” Screwball said, waving at the CMC and Clover, “You lot get going!”

“Hold on!” Clover said, “I have to help Ditzy, but the three young ones should go.” She looked back at the three girls, “Is Alerion capable of flying?”

“I, I don’t know. Alerion, big guy, you good?” Scootaloo asked, hand worryingly stroking her Doll’s stone beak. The Doll grunted and shook himself, standing up.

“I believe I can, if the ringing in my skull stops,” Alerion said in his booming voice. He lowered a wing, “Come, small weak ones.”

None of the trio looked remotely like they wanted to leave. Sweetie Belle looked at Chappy, still trapped in a bubble, but the mod soul gave a weak if reassuring grin and a thumbs up, “Don’t worry about me, kids! I’ll be fine! We all will! Just get going while the going’s good.”

“Dammit, this sucks so hard!” Scootaloo said past fearful tears, worried about her aunts, and about her idol Rainbow Dash, all still trapped down in the training area with such monstrous foes. A strong hand from Applebloom on Scootaloo’s arm got the girl to gulp and nod, seeing her friend was just as scared, but trying to keep it together.

As the CMC started to clamber onto Alerion, Clover Flash Stepped up to Ditzy and kneeled down to start administering a healing Kido. So close to the hole in Discord's shop, and his wards, Clover got a strong feeling of the clashing reiatsu below. Trying to hold back her own tears, and equal fears, for the safety of her friends, Clover pushed through those feelings and got to work trying to heal Ditzy.

All the while a part of her retained a growing sense of dread that this was not going to end well.

----------

It was becoming more and more clear to Sunset that Blossom was not taking them seriously, merely playing with her and her friends in the same manner a child might with a moth caught in a jar. This was not something that disheartened her. If anything it sharpened Sunset’s focus, for she knew that Blossom and the other Zero Division members, as powerful as they were, still overestimated themselves while grossly underestimating herself and her friends. The power gap was real, but not insurmountable.

Her worries were less about herself and her friends taking on Blossom and more about the fact that she sensed Scorpan’s reiatsu disappear alongside Glory’s, and further sensed that Applejack’s mother and Gloriosa were struggling, as were Discord and Ditzy.

Still, with Scorpan and Glory having vanished somewhere, that took some of the reiatsu pressure off of the wards, so Sunset felt like she could bust out her Bankai without making things worse. She sharpened her spiritual pressure and focused it into her Zanpaktou, preparing to speak the words, but just then Pinkie Pie bounced up in front of her and held up a hand.

“Hold up, Sunny! No need to get your Bankai on just yet!’

“Uh, okay...?” Sunset said, and flinched a bit as she saw that the rest of her friends were still going at Blossom full force.

Rarity’s army of crystal knights had emerged from the sanguine gates that hovered behind her, marching forth in gleaming ranks. Rarity mounted up on a crystalline, armored pegasus, flanked by a score of similar mounted knights each bearing an array of deadly weaponry. Fluttershy appeared amid the group and from her back halo extended ethereal arms that laid hands upon Rarity’s mounted knights and Rarity herself, pouring reinforcing spirit energy from Fluttershy into the whole unit.

“Thank you, darling,” Rarity said, saluting Fluttershy with her rapier, “Always appreciate a supporting boost from you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Fluttershy replied with a serene smile, then she floated upwards herself and formed more arms from her halo, which coiled around her six flesh and blood arms to encase them in a sheath of heavenly gold light.

The pair, along with Rarity’s host of constructs, went flying up at Blossom, who’d been playing his saxophone while seeming to moonwalk across the air, flinging clusters of exploding reishi particles towards a rapidly dodging Rainbow Dash and Applejack. There was always a faint sparkle of flaming red in the air that accompanied the explosions, as if the reishi particles were being ignited from within before expanding into such shining bursts of destructive power. Sunset couldn’t help but notice that each arc of explosions were far from random, but looked more like artful brush strokes on a canvas. Rainbow Dash was little more than a line of lightning, keeping just ahead of the arcs of blasts that followed her, while Applejack’s armor was jetting out long tails of gold power to keep herself blasting around like a hypersonic rocket.

It didn’t even look as if Blossom was trying to hit them, but Sunset realized each stroke of explosions his music produced was ever tightening a net around her two friends, cutting off their escape and herding them towards each other.

Just as it looked as if the trap was going to close around Rainbow Dash and Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy struck.

Rarity and her flying pegasus knights formed an elegant series of streaking lights, their coordination and speed improved from their confrontation with Hoity Toity. Weapons cut lines of blinding red across the air, converging on Blossom from multiple arcing angles, with Rarity forming a central spark of spearing power as she charged in, rapier thrusting forward with a conical surge of power cutting the air at its tip.

The man kept playing his tune as he twisted and juked his body in ways that seemed almost anatomically impossible, seeming to all but break dance as his feet kicked and twirled about in a blur, never once taking his hands or lips form his instrument. Crystal weapons were shattered on impact, and more than a few pegasus knights were sent blasted away by the force of the kicks alone. Rarity fared better, performing a magnificent aerial maneuver as her pegasus inverted itself in a roll that still kept her rapier on point, and in a display of her construct manipulation she altered the shape of her blade, bending it around Blossom’s deflecting kick to stab it on towards his chest. This did indeed force him to halt his playing, just for a moment, to reach out and grip the tip of Rarity’s rapier to halt it in place. But Rarity didn’t miss a beat, altering her blade to detach it’s crystal tip as she flew right on past, and letting the detached blade spark and glow brighter with volatile reiatsu she’d left behind in it so the blade exploded in Blossom’s grasp, covering him in a burst of crimson flame.

Then Fluttershy rushed right into those flames, eyes placid and calm, yet somehow fierce as two bottomless volcanos as her six fists of shining gold pummeled at Blossom within the still searing flames. A countless number of punches rained in from Fluttershy, cracking the air and sending hurricane blasts of wind from the intensity of the barrage.

Sunset grunted, “Pinkie, I really ought to get in there-”

“Just wait, I got an idea, but this won’t work if everyone’s just trying to punch and/or stabbity the dude,” Pinkie said, and a bit of Mena’s voice came out as she winked, “Trust us, Sunset. Ahem, guys! Hey guys!? Give it a rest, and let me and Pinks have a go!”

For their part, Rainbow Dash and Applejack were both momentarily busy defending themselves against the lines of explosions that had chased them down and, back to back, both blasted out at the oncoming line of detonations with their own might. Rainbow Dash flared her prismatic wings, and summoned surges of godly lightning from on high into them, which then flowed into the many colored lights within the wings themselves before firing outward in twin, wide bolts of electrical rainbow power. Applejack, vastly more straightforward, grounded her lance in the air and used it as a brace with one foot while kicking out with the other, where dozens of vents opened at once to expel a flood of raw golden energy in a massive beam. Their attacks managed to sweep through the oncoming explosions, momentarily dissipating them, or at least that was what it appeared like. Sunset sensed it was more that Blossom simply stopped playing his music, robbing the explosions of their igniting reiatsu.

The reason he’d stopped playing his music was because he stepped out of the remnants of red flame created by Rarity’s own exploding crystal weapon, and cracked his neck as he stepped into Fluttershy’s rain of punches. To her credit, there were actual small bruises on his chiseled chest and for the first time Blossom looked a tad less playing and more intrigued. He flowed smoother than water through Fluttershy’s fists, placing a palm in front of her face as he intoned a Kido that Sunset had never heard before.

”Ura Hado: Sannodo-Teppusatsu.” (Hidden Way of Destruction: Third Path - Iron Wind Murder)

His palm chopped down, and around him formed the head of a gigantic, translucent jade dragon. This monstrous dragon head then puffed up it’s cheeks, the mustache tendrils from it’s lips quivering, as it sucked in a breath so hard that Sunset felt the entire chamber’s air pressure change, before the dragon blasted the air out in a focused line of raw force right on top of Fluttershy. The sound was louder than any storm wind Sunset had ever heard, and even standing a good distance away, she felt her body buffeted by the surge of wind. Fluttershy had barely had time to cross her six arms in front of her to block a her own body took a direct hit from the brunt of the focused blast, and she was sent flying back at insane speed, the gold energy around her arms cracking and shattering like glass in the process.

“I gotcha Flutters!” Rainbow Dash shouted, moving faster than any of them could track as she simply flashed into existence behind Fluttershy and caught her, but still had to streak backwards through the air with her feet grinding out a sizzling path on the air particles before managing to stop herself and Fluttershy.

“Ugh...ow...” Fluttershy coughed, at least two of her six arms bent at angles that heavily suggested their broken state.

The green dragon head vanished from around Blossom as he stretched his arms and tapped one foot on the air as if still hearing his saxophone’s beat in his head, “You gals are pretty durable. That Kido is supposed to straight up liquify your innards, but you took it with only a few broken bones. Color me impressed. Heck, some of you gal’s moves are putting some scratches on my nice duds and immaculate body. Now what’s this I hear about the pink gal wanting a go and stopping the redhead from going Bankai? I mean, granted I don’t recommend Bankai right now, because I’d probably break it and then you’d be up the creek, but I mean, it’s a shame you don’t get to come at me full force while your friends can.”

“Tell me about it!” Sunset growled, frustrated a bit herself that Pinkie had asked her to hold off on Bankai. Granted she wasn’t convinced it’d be enough to do much more to Blossom than what her friends were doing, because she was well aware that they were all roughly on par with her, but her Bankai still technically gave her the edge overall. “What exactly is your plan, Pinkie?”

“Going to do what I do best, and get a laugh out of even bad situations. We might not win on brute strength, but not even the grumpiest of these godly meanies can say no to a little Pinkie Pie and Pinkamena magic.”

Sunset was nervous about the notion of Pinkie and her alter ego trying anything solo, especially against a guy this ludicrously strong, but it wasn’t as if she and the rest of the girls wouldn’t be right there and ready to jump right back into the fray if things went sour. Fortunately at that same moment, she heard a familiar voice appear in her head.

“Everyone, can you hear me? Respond with a thought to this message if you can hear me.”

“Twilight, that you?” Sunset thought, and heard all of her friends respond similarly, as if they were all somehow sharing a mental link. Twilight gave off a happy if very nervous laugh.

“Hah, the spell worked. Great! I mean, not great, because of what’s happening, but great that I can contact all of you now. Me and Sugarcoat are underground, and I just finished getting the second of three magical portals open that will lead to my family manor. I just need a bit longer to get the third open, then I can start teleporting people down here to escape.”

“That’s perfect. Things are rough up here, but we’re holding on. But wait, what about those who were in the shop?” Sunset asked, and she heard Rarity and Applejack speak up, swiftly followed by Rainbow Dash.

“I’m worried about Sweetie Belle, but I know they had instructions to escape if things went poorly. They’re probably already out of the shop.”

“Wish I could feel out their spirit pressure, but I just gotta trust my little sis knows ta git her n’ her friends outta harm’s way.”

“Scoots is a smart kid, and Chappy, Clover, Screwloose, and Screwball are all with them. They’ll be fine. But just in case, when you all evacuate, I’ll instead take the stairs up and out. I’m the fastest, so I can easily check to make sure they’re in the clear. Besides, somebody has to tell them where the rest of you went once we’re all out.”

Sunset nodded, “Good point, Dash. We’ll leave that to you, then. But we still got to find a way to keep Blossom busy. Guess we’ll go with Pinkie’s plan, whatever it is.”

“You all having a stroke? Is that what all of this blank starring is about?” asked Blossom, who’s eyes then gained a dangerous glint as they flicked downward and he sighed, “Or it’s that magical Quincy girl. I was wondering what that odd energy I was sensing was. Maybe I ought to just stick a fly in whatever arcane ointment she’s working on down there.”

Sunset grunted as she felt Blossom’s reiatsu quite swiftly shift in focus and power as he spun his saxophone and it became a blaze of cherry flame that turned into a new instrument, that of a flaming black cello. Running the bow across gossamer strings, the Zanpaktou turned cello gave off a mournful, air rending cry. What looked like a cascade of several scores worth of ribbon-like bands of black energy flew from the instrument's strings and shot downward, presumably aimed for where Twilight and Sugarcoat were hidden.

Fed up, and reacting on instinct as much as anything else, Sunset became a burning shade of motion as she Flash Stepped and cried out, “Bankai!”

Air searing flame burst into a blinding column around Sunset and she was already in motion, creating a wall of rock melting fire in her wake. In a streaking inferno of motion she got lower than the descending bands of blackness, her Bankai forming around her instantly and surrounding her body in a thick aura of incredible heat. Raising the now brilliantly bright shield of Hokori she extended a translucent white barrier from the shield, unsure if it was strong enough to stop Blossom’s attack. Yet she wasn’t alone. Help came from several unexpected sources.

“Bankai!”

A set of glittering lights flew around Sunset and impacted with her shield from below, and she saw daggers made of glass set their points around her shield as they filled with blinding white light that connected all of the daggers with intersecting sheets of energy. Soon a humongous plane of glass, like a thick plate over a hundred feet wide, supported her shield. Blade-like protrusions both rose and descended from the pane of glass, and Sunset saw the image of a compass rose engraved almost invisibly upon the glass surface of the giant disc.

Beside her, Blueblood stood, hand raised, body glowing white with his reiatsu, which was notably a fair bit stronger than what Sunset remembered it from her encounter with him in Soul Society. He looked half terrified, half thrilled, like someone leaping out of an airplane without a parachute but still having the time of their life.

“Kagayakashi Chiheisen.” (Brilliant Horizon)

The black bands of energy from Blossom slammed into Hikari’s energy shield, piercing through it in places as Sunset struggled to pour out more spirit power to reinforce it. Where the bands did break through, Blueblood’s Bankai extended thick blades of glass from the floating disc at remarkable speed and charged with gleaming white energy. Some of the bands were halted, but others snapped the glass blades or coiled around, faster than even Blueblood could compensate for, although he most certainly tired as he narrowed his eyes and sent out a fresh set of blades from the edge of the disc to curl around like living things to try and catch up.

But even he wasn’t alone in helping Sunset, for another voice intoned, “Bakudo Number Eighty One: Danku.”

A flat shield of nearly invisible force blocked yet more of the ribbons of darkness, and Captain Amore appeared on Sunset’s side opposite from Blueblood, palms out as she focused upon the protective Kido spell. She offered Sunset a pleasant if unease nod, “I may lack my Zanpaktou at present, but my Soul Sleep is recovered enough for a Kido or two.”

Even with the assistance of two Captains, some of Blossom’s attack still managed to wiggle through way like snakes of shadow around all of those defenses and tried to stab down into the earth. However they were met by a sudden and beautiful melody of energized piano notes that picked up a fast and strong beat. Coils of blue reishi wavered through the air, fast as the black bands, and sliced through the remainder like hawks diving upon cobras.

Sunset glanced to her right and above, where higher in the air, the origin of those coils of reishi stood with her hands gracefully strumming a keyboard bow made of blue light. Countess Coloratura grinned with flashing white teeth and gave a brief salute to Sunset and all others present, “My King has graciously ordered me to lend you my considerable assistance! Be grateful for my most glorious presence, for now your victory is assured!”

For his part, Blossom took in the new combatants on the scene with a twitch in his pompadour. Rarity saw Blueblood and as one her surviving pegasus knights flew about in formation with her as she brought them down to Sunset and his level, while the rest of her army was taking up position around Blossom.

“Captain Blueblood, good to see you are willing to actually put in the effort,” Rarity said, glancing at the floating, hundred foot disc of glass in the air, “Your Bankai certainly has an elegance to it.”

“Your words lighten my heart, fair lady,” Blueblood said, bowing, and withdrawing from his robes a small, red crystal rose, “I’ve kept the token you gave me, as inspiration to continue to improve myself so I might earn your regard.”

Amore cleared her throat, “Perhaps compliments can wait for after we are not dealing with a foe quite this potent?”

“I was going to suggest that you all are entirely too relaxed, thinking a few side dishes were going to distract me from the main course,” Blossom said loudly, twirling the cello bow over the strings of the instrument, eyes shifting towards Coloratura, “Although it’s always nice to face off against another patron of the arts.”

“Oh, you’ll find my music quite to your liking, I’m sure,” Coloratura replied, “Sadly I don’t have my usual partner available for a duet, but I can still keep pace with you, I’m sure.”

Before Blossom could reply, a burst of pink motion appeared between him and Coloratura. Pinkie Pie, surrounded by the thick tendrils of her pink mist, and smacking her hammer down on the air, created a giant, twenty foot tall fire hydrant which burst water out of both ends in a sudden high pressure torrent. Both Blossom and Coloratura were soaked, although hardly harmed by the display, but both were left spitting water out and blinking at the ornery pink girl bouncing lightly atop the fire hydrant that floated in mid-air. It vanished, and Pinkie Pie landed on a sudden musical stage that replaced the fire hydrant, complete with a set of ornate pink stereos and a mic.

“Now hold it and cool off, you eager beavers! I’ve got first dibs here, and honestly it’s been driving me batty trying to work out just what kind of fun I wanna have with a fella who proclaims to be all into the arts.”

Blossom, drying out the water with his reiatsu alone in a wash of steam, transformed his cello back into a saxophone, flashing his teeth at Pinkie Pie, “Doesn’t matter to me who I take on. One of you, all of you, whatever order or sets you want to try. I’m here to enjoy myself until my more boring siblings get their own jobs done, so I don’t mind, have at me girl. What do you got?”

“I confess I wish you found a dryer way to ask to go first, but I’m not so rude as to try to cut in line if you happened to be first,” Coloratura said, leaning on her keyboard bow and sighing, “But for the record, if he kills you, I’m telling my King it is not my fault, and that you asked for this.”

“No problem, Collie! I actually could use your musical talent here. Can you bust out a nice rap beat on that shiny accordion of yours?”

“C-Collie? Accordion!? I, ugh... fine, whatever. Wait, rap?”

“Oh yeeeeah,” Pinkie Pie said, grabbing the mic on her odd, very pink stage, which Sunset was realizing happened to be shaped like a double decker cake with strawberry frosting. “Hey B-Dude, you ever heard of a rap battle?”

Blossom threw his head back and laughed. Then, without hesitation, he flipped his saxophone into the air. It turned into flames that went into his held out right hand, transforming into a burning red hand-held microphone, “Rap battle? Oh, little girl, I inspired the idea. Quincy, do as the pink one says, and get a beat going. This is gonna be fun.”

Coloratura looked a tad put out, but she shrugged and adjusted her piano shaped bow a little so it started sparkling with various new shades of blue. Her fingers danced like spider’s legs over the keys, and music flowed forth. Pinkie Pie and Blossom both started nodding their heads to the beat, and Pinkie Pie stuck a finger at Blossom, “How about you start us off, B? Age before beauty.”

“Hah, if you insist!”

On the beat, he went right into it, as everyone else looked on with varying levels of confusion, bewilderment, embarrassment, or outright enjoyment, depending on just how well the individual happened to know Pinkie Pie.

“Let’s kick this off right, put an end to this so-called fight

Bubblegum girl you’ve got no style, your combat technique is a steaming pile

Your ability is to fight with the power of jokes, but you should've left it on the shelf

Because the biggest joke of all is yourself!”

Pinkie Pie tittered at the end of Blossom’s opening volley, and with her eyes alight with joy, even behind her jester’s mask over half of her face, she shot right back.

“Hah, someone thinks they’re the king of funny,

But Pinkie’s got some bad news for you, honey

You’re just the washed up stooge who’s out of time

With a hairdo that’s as dead as your sense of rhyme

You blowing nothing but hot air from your sax

So give it a rest while Pinkie spits some facts

Me and my friends have taken on the worst of the worst

Against Sternritter, Espada, or Captains, we still come in first”

Rainbow Dash was pumping her first, “Oh yeah, get him Pinkie!”

Amore glanced at Sunset, whispering, “Is this... normal for her?”

To this Sunset could only smile and shake her head, “What? Did you never ask that Cheese Sandwich guy about his fight with her?”

Meanwhile Blossom was clearly getting into things, gyrating his body in a wild dance as he launched into his next verse.

“You talk about facts, while here’s one for you girl

You’re a slack jawed protozoa with the brains of a churl

We’re changing the world, you’re barely a speedbump

Struggle all you want, we’re ragdoll you straight to the dump

That other you wants to have a go at the master, I can tell

So let her on out so I can send her straight to lyrical Hell”

Having been called out, Pinkamena wasn’t one to remain in the shadows. Pinkie Pie’s face twitched and her hair went straight as the jester’s mask flowed to the other half of her face and her eyes turned yellow. Yet her voice was still as energetic and Pinkie as ever, even if one could tell Pinkamena was the one singing now, with her tone gaining a whipcord edge to it.

“You want me, you got me you ham faced nitwit

Get your ass ready because Pinkamena is about to Fullbring it

I’ve seen scarier things than you in Pinkie’s day dreams

One of them is me, and I’m gonna feast on your screams

Zero Division is nothing more than a bunch of whiners afraid of death

While Pinkie Pie and her friends have braved it with every breath”

The cake stage rumbled and trembled as pink tendrils, now rimmed in black, grew out of it like the stage was turning into a tentacled monstrosity. The tendrils rose around the cake and grew many dozens of razor toothed mouths that blasted horrific screams at Blossom. He withstood the sonic assault and responded in kind with his own bellowing voice.

“That’s cute little shade, but you’ve got one thing wrong

I’ll still be the one standing at the end of this song

Because even if your beats are sick and your music clear

You only started this rap because it’s my power you fear

It seeps out of every pore and drips down your face

You know you’re facing the extinction of the human race

When this is all over, Zero Division will win this bash

While all of your souls will be ground into ash”

With that verse his reiatsu only rose higher, as if reaching out to press down and compress all of them like ants under a boot. Sunset felt it woven into his very words, as if the verse he sang was more than some jaunty rap beat, but some manner of oracle’s prophecy of death and doom. Power was woven into his words, Blossom’s voice as much an instrument as his transforming Zanpaktou, perhaps even his strongest instrument. More than that, Sunset noted that on his hands and parts of his exposed arms, black markings had appeared, growing along his veins. Hadn’t it been mentioned he had the Arms of the Soul Queen? Was that adding power to what he was doing?

Yet even if Sunset could see her friends and Soul Reaper allies were being affected by Blossom’s crushing reiatsu, Pinkie Pie refused to stop. Pinkamena’s frightful grin merged with Pinkie’s happier, hopeful one, and while the mask stayed put on one side of her face, her eyes went blue again and when she sang next it was as if both Pinkie and Pinkamena were speaking as one.

“Keep thinking that, but all we see is you making a gaff

We know that the best way to fight fear is to laugh

Together we’re better than the sum of our parts

While Zero Division, you guys are just a bunch of old farts

Trying to turn back the clock to what you think are better days

But if you know how these stories go, you’d be rethinking your ways

Because Pinkie Pie and Pinkamena are as inseparable as a pair of socks

Oh, and Applejack is about to pummel you with rocks”

Power radiated from Pinkie Pie and her voice, the cake stage and it’s tendrils spinning about like buzz saws that then shout out a glamorous display of pink and purple fireworks, which timed perfectly with a crescendo to Coloratura’s playing. As it happened, Sunset couldn’t help but notice that Fluttershy had snuck beneath Pinkie Pie’s stage, despite her injuries, and even while wincing in pain she’d placed her hands on the stage and poured power into Pinkie Pie to enhance the girl’s reiatsu to help withstand Blossom’s.

As for Blossom, he paused, shrugged, and said, “Alright, alright, not half bad for a kid. But that last part didn’t really flow well, you know? And which one of you is Applejack anyway?”

He got his answer almost immediately, because whether Pinkie Pie happened to spot Applejack moving earlier or whether this was just some element of Pinkie Sense triggering, Applejack had indeed used the rap battle to make a move of her own. Attaching her lance to her back, she used her hands to pick up two colossal chunks of rock from the broken mesa, and while Blossom was still distracted, she flew right up behind him.

He turned around just in time for Applejack to smash both giant rock chunks together on top of him like someone trying to clap a mosquito out of the air.

“Rocks? Seriously?” Rainbow Dash shouted, “Why do you think that would work?”

“I don't!” Applejack shouted back, “I just thought it’d be kinda funny!”

Rock dust fell and from the cloud Blossom emerged, unscathed save for slightly mussed up hair, which actually seemed to put him out more than any actual injury could have as he raised a hand to pluck a stray purple hair from his pompadour and glower at Applejack, “Oh yeah, hilarious. Applejack, right? How about we rename you Applesauce?”

“That’s technically my third cousin’s name on my Ma’s si-” Applejack began to say, only to have to immediately blast herself backwards to dodge a powerful flip kick from Blossom that still created enough air pressure to knock Applejack out of the air and impact with the ground in a hard crater.

“I guess that means Pinkie Pie’s distraction time is over with,” Rarity said, looking to Sunset, Amore, and Blueblood, “Still I think with all of us we can still keep him busy. Twilight must only need a few more moments.”

“Done!”

Twilight poofed into existence in front of them in a burst of purple light, breathing hard, sweat covered, her eyes showing a wreathing of purple flames from the magic she was tapping into. “Got the portals ready. I can start evacuating all of us. Um, if all of us are together and in one place, which doesn’t appear to be the case.”

“Twilight, thank goodness! Okay, just start grabbing whoever is closest. I’ll keep Blossom busy,” Sunset began to say, then halted as she felt the press of another spiritual pressure that had appeared nearby. Just ten feet away, in fact. She turned, as did everyone else nearby, to see the form of Bowtie standing in the air just in front of Sunset, Twilight, Rarity, Amore, and Blueblood. Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie were still higher up with Coloratura and Blossom, while down below Applejack was digging herself out of the crater she’d been smacked into.

Upon seeing him, Blossom let out a huge sigh and waved at Bowtie, “Yo! Did I run the clock out?”

Bowtie eyes scanned around him with complete dispassionate calm, and Sunset shivered as they rested on, of all people, Rarity. Strangely, he wasn’t carrying the same Zanpaktou that Sunset had seen him arrive with. Even odder, her senses told her that Zanpaktou was still over where Sweet Cider and Gloriosa were, and it felt like that Zanpaktou... was fighting? But how was it doing that by itself, while Bowtie was here, with another Zanpaktou in his hand?

“We all have taken too long,” Bowtie said, “Glory and Scorpan have departed to settle their affairs. Medley is occupying Discord and the Doo scion. Minty is wasting time with our Father’s shadow. And you’re wasting time playing with these children when your job was to break their fellowship. So, as usual, it falls to me to do it in your stead.”

“For crying out loud, Bowtie, lighten up! We’re not on a strict schedule here! I was having fun, and discovering some halfway decent talent in the process. Might want to nab the pink gal here, whether she likes it or not, because no way I want her soul going to waste,” Blossom said, and Pinkie Pie made a sour face.

“Ew, no thank you, weirdo. I’m not getting nabbed without a fight.”

Bowtie made a cutting motion with his hand, “Silence! All of you! Blossom, get Minty, and prepare the pillar. I am finishing our business here and we are leaving. This matter has gone on long enough.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?” Sunset said, readying Hokori with a fresh blaze of fire as she stared Bowtie down, “Finishing what business? If you want to leave, just leave.”

Bowtie didn’t even bother to look at her, but he raised the Zanpaktou in his hand. It was a simple looking thing, no hilt or guard, just a solid sharp crescent curve of steel. “Glory instructed one simple task for Blossom which I now shall perform. To remove the threat you and your companions represent by your fellowship. Medley made it clear your true power stems from being together as a group. So, ergo-”

Even with Sunset having suspected he was about to make a move, there was little she was able to do. Even with two of the Gotei 13’s Captains present, there was nothing they could do. None of Sunset’s friends, powerful as they had become, were in a position to do anything either.

Sunset still go the closest, almost managing to match Bowtie’s Flash Step with a flaming burst of speed of her own. He wasn’t going for her, however, but Rarity.

Sunset saw the pommel of his Zanpaktou touch Rarity’s forehead just before she slammed her own blade into Bowtie’s side and unleashed a raw blue blast of searing flame via an Aoihi Senko. The melting storm of azure flame drove Bowtie away from Rarity and even singed through his clothing and burned his arm, but his Zanpaktou had still touched Rarity all the same.

For a second Sunset wasn’t sure what Bowtie had just done. “The hell was that!?” She shouted, readying another attack, but Bowtie seemed uninterested in her, just dusting himself off.

“Hell. Yes. The appropriate term. But you are a poor ‘Substitute’ Soul Reaper indeed if you did not recognize that technique. It is the first thing almost all Soul Reapers learn once they obtain one of the Asauchi I forge. Have you never performed a Konso before?”

Konso...?

Konso!?

“Sunset?” Rarity said in a wavering voice, looking at herself as bits of her body, her spirit body, began to glow with small motes of light.

“I don’t understand,” said Fluttershy, “Wouldn’t Konso just send her to Soul Society?”

Normally, yes, Sunset knew that was what Konso was supposed to do under most circumstances. But there was no way Bowtie would have done the technique if that was all it was going to do. Sunset’s blood turned colder than winter’s depths as she sensed something faintly familiar, a sensation of energy she’d only felt once before. Once, when she’d seen a Hollow dragged to Hell.

“Rarity, run!” Sunset found herself shouting, just as the very air behind and beneath Rarity turned darkly red.

Then, with shocking speed and harsh finality, the Gates of Hell arose. Vast doors of stone, flanked by skeletal guardians merged into the doors' gargantuan frames, dwarfed Rarity as they loomed over her. Rarity turned with eyes wide with fear, recognizing these Gates as well, for she’d been present that long ago day they’d all witnessed the snake-like Hollow’s fate upon being defeated by Sunset and Clover.

And just as then, the Gates of Hell yawned open, revealing a smoky void beyond that was licked through with intense and ominous flames; opening to claim Hell’s newest convict.

Author's Note:

Hope everyone had a good holiday! This chapter was mostly dedicated to just showing a slice of each skirmish with Zero Division to give an idea of what each member is capable of, with the exception of Scorpan and Glory who will be getting a dedicated chapter to themselves soon. Some might have noted that the Zero Division can seem to do plenty with their Zanpaktou without invoking Shikai, a factor that will be delved into a bit more when time allows and the girls have some breathing room. Serious as circumstances are, I am highly amused that I was able to give Pinkie Pie a rap battle, something I'd been intending to do for years now ever since Bleach Abridged did it:

At any rate, thank you all for reading, and as ever I welcome any and all comments, questions, or critiques. 'Till next time!

Comments

[Thought Prism]

I applaud you for the immaculate rhymes, good sir. And I see what you did there with Scorpan's Zanpaktou. Instead of the four cardinal directions of his canon counterpart, he channels the four seasons.

I figured out exactly what was going to happen the second Konso was mentioned. Didn't mean it would hurt any less, however. Poor Rarity. Not even sure why they thought it was necessary, given the Zero Division still has their geodes. If anything, now the girls will just be even more resolved to kick their asses. At least now we know what they'll probably be doing while the folks in Equestria deal with Tirek and Starlight's group: A good-old Doomguy-style dive into Hell.

[PoisonClaw]

Oof, I was afraid of this outcome. Guess now we have a good idea as to what the next arc might be...

[hydra30]

Doesn't Glory realize that these dead siblings she pines for started the civil war that caused their deaths in the first place? Even if she succeeded in resurrecting them it would all just start again. And this time maybe she might be the one cast down and her soul broken up into a thousand little human souls. Sibling bonds didn't stop them from slaughtering each other the first time after all.

Ever think about printing this story as an actual book when it's done? IC did, after all.

[PA2]

...You know, when this fight started, I really had no idea how this fight was going to end up turning out. I mean, obviously the Zero Division were going to come out of it with most of what they wanted, but I couldn't figure out what their endgame was going to be. And with the Memory Stone still in play, I was worried that we might get a take on Forgotten Friendships after all, with everyone's memories being wiped. But this? This is worse. And yet so much better.

Seriously, these last two chapters were intense, and I loved them so much! Seeing the Zero Division in action was every bit as amazing as I thought it was going to be, especially when it's clear that they're mostly playing around. I had assumed that they were just capable of activating Shikai without the release command, but you're telling me that all of the crazy Zanpakuto abilities they're using are just pre-Shikai powers? That's both fascinating and terrifying, as is the simplicity of their plan. But for all that simplicity, it looks like it's going to be incredibly effective. Guess the girls know where they're going next...

But first, Glory vs. Scorpan! That's going to be fun!

[RanmaChaos]

An amazing chapter! Great job!

[MSie95]

Scorpan's inner monologue, Chills!

Now the question is if Rarity'll go alone or with someone. Pinkie/Mena might enjoy it. Shy might even begin rehabilitate those that deserved Hell. She wouldn't be the first bodhisattva to do that.

“I rather disagree,” Discord said, “I’ve never much cared for my biological family, but have instead chosen those with whom I believe I can give that definition to without regret.

Officially, funnily enough, Discord has a canonical "cousin" named Cosmos who specialised in illusions and to lesser degree reality warping. He also had an Ex who was a spirit of Malice.

11461607
Yeah, but if her lost family was to return, this time SHE would be in charge. And most likely not afraid to put her foot down and order them to behave and with the Queen's part she might have some merit to believe that. For a short time, at best.

[hydra30]

11461607
Good point, being in charge didn't help the Soul Queen in the end

[you know i really hate 2]

11461837
i don't know if you need more meta knowledge, or i need less. which would really make it better?

between scorpan and glory, and discord and medly, they all but spelled where this was going. with the meta narrative context that a new arc had to start here. someone had to end up in hell, and rarity being dead made it her.
chekhov's gun. an entire chapter was dedicated to introducing hell. they are so going there.

[PA2]

11467124
I understand where you're coming from, but there's really no call to be rude about it.

[you know i really hate 2]

11467583
how was that rude? genuinely, im autistic and i don't see it.

i mean, im sorry if it was.