052 - Together We Will Always Shine, Part 2
Corona, like all the others in Reverb Hall, saw Six appear in the air.
Saw her drain the life out of almost everyone standing on the stage.
She saw them fall.
While Vivian started tossing fireballs and Lady Rarity unleashed magic lasers lasers - perfectly reasonable reactions - Corona started laughing.
“AhahaHAhahahhAHAhHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!” She wiped tears from out from under her sunglasses. Her laughs were so vocal they made Toph stop mid boulder-launch.
“Corona? What are you doing!?”
“Don’t you see!?” Corona shouted, grabbing Toph by the shoulders. “There isn’t hope! There is only death! AHhahahaHAHAHAAH! It’s. Just. So. Funny!”
She dropped the laugh, dead, turning to look at Six. “Excuse me, I’m going to kill the bitch who did this.” She teleported right to Six and unleashed the death spell in her face. Six absorbed it into her being.
Six grabbed Corona’s horn. Corona felt the life force inside her move toward the woman of death.
How about a little something I learned form Majora!?
Corona shoved her energy through the connection Six had formed with her, driving her personal magic signature into Six’s mind. This startled Six enough that Corona could place a hoof right on her face.
Then she was in Six’s mindscape.
She had never tried to use empathy this way before. It was always observe, perhaps interact a little…
She was going to go beyond that this time.
Corona didn’t care about the memory of Nautica and the Elements of Insanity she was seeing in the midnscape. She channeled the magic through her inner being and let it explode in Six’s memory.
Back in reality, Six screamed in agony as a significant chunk of her memory was incinerated with mental fire.
Corona wasn’t done. She couldn’t use the death spell – fine by her. Time for something more personal. She summoned a dragon of fire around her horn, the plasmatic wyrm swirling in a tornado fashion. It rushed Six with intent to incinerate her to the very bone.
That was when Fluttershout finally brought out her legendary voice, interrupting everything. The force of the noise forced all ears in the vicinity to bleed. Everyone with the ability to hear would have been dead in a second, but something stopped the offending noise. Corona didn’t know what, but she didn’t care. She summoned the dragon again, ready to shatter Six into nothing.
Six used a different spell. She created a shield of dark gray energy, absorbing the entire wyrm of fire. She clearly wasn’t doing very well with her mental charring, but her fortitude was every bit as intense as Corona’s. She couldn’t form words – but she could form attacks. She pointed a finger at Corona, grabbing onto her life force again, this time without direct contact.
Corona smirked. She thinks I need to touch her to do damage. While that’s true for empathy, Majora’s little trick still works. She tapped into the connection Six had made, flooding the girl’s mind with energy again. The connection broke, leaving Corona alive.
Corona decided lighting herself on fire was a good idea. She charged Six directly. As expected, the woman moved to defend herself with her dark powers – leaving her back wide open.
Corona teleported, enchanting her hoof with excess power. Once she hit Six’s back, the hoof would plow right through her spine, heart, and ribcage in an instant.
“GET AWAY FROM HER!” Brutalight shouted, bringing one of her swords down on Corona. Corona was forced to defend against the instant-death blades with her magic instead of taking out Six.
Instead of going for a longer fight, Brutalight shoved Corona away with a simple psychic burst. “RETREAT!” Brutalight ordered. “DEATH WAVES ARE DOWN! GO GO GO!” She grabbed Six in her telekinesis and teleported away.
Corona had been expecting the teleport. She traced it. It took her all of two seconds to follow it – but the destination no longer existed.
The crack the Elements of Insanity had come through had closed back up.
They had gotten away with it. She didn’t see a single one of them lying dead on the ground… Not a single one! She roared in rage, exploding to put the fire on her fur out.
An explosion of power told her that not all of them were gone. She turned – and her jaw dropped.
Siron and Eve were still fighting, the energy involved radiating off of them like stars.
Nobody wanted to even try to get close to the impossible chaos they were hitting each other with.
Nobody could process what was going on.
~~~
Siron took a warrior’s stance. “Come and kill me then, Evening.”
Evening Sparkle obliged. She did the simplest, most direct thing she could think of – a beam of pure magic energy, fired right at Siron with intent to vaporize that shell right off his body. With the power of Celestia in her, Eve found herself not only connected to the Sun or any other celestial body, but the shell of magic in the Hub itself. Not the planet – the universe. She was able to tap into the primal power that drove all spells. It was her domain.
Seraphim’s rotation increased as she powered up. A ring of fire surrounded her horn as a single point of energy coalesced at the tip.
Siron saw what she was doing. Instead of dodging, he pointed his staff right at her. Black, red, and green swirled toward the alicorn in a spiral pattern.
Eve launched her laser spell, a laser of pure energy so intense the purple affectation of her magic could only be seen around the edges. For all intents and purposes it was white with hints of orange at seemingly random locations. The beams hit each other – and held.
(Celestia looked down at Eve. “I have something to tell you, Evening.”
“What is it?” Eve said, looking up at the white alicorn with hope.
“Ever since our vacation, I’ve been thinking about you and me. About what we mean.”
“We’re friends. Colleagues. Family,” Eve said. “I thought we resolved that?”
“That we did,” Celestia said, smiling sadly. “I’m talking about something that nopony ever wants to talk about, but what is perhaps the most important aspect of life.”
Eve’s expression became serious. “Celestia… What is that?”
“Death,” Celestia said.
Eve fell silent.
“You’re not objecting,” Celestia observed.
“You’re right.”
“Then you’ve thought of it as well. No longer are we vastly above almost any foe we could face. It is very likely we will fall in battle, or assassination.”
Eve nodded. “It… It is more likely than it was before, yes.”
“Then we need to decide what happens in the event of one of our deaths,” Celestia decreed.
“I have a will,” Eve said. “Spike gets most of it. My friends get what matters to them. I’m currently giving the castle to Sparky. And…”
“I have a will as well, Eve. That is not what I’m talking about,” Celestia looked out a distant window. “We are alicorns. We have a power within us greater than most ponies. That power grows over time – evolving into more of a force of nature than anything else. That power can remain after death. That power can be used. What we need to decide is where that power goes once we die.”
“Corona,” Eve declared. “She’d be the best for my magic.”
“I was wondering who you’d pick.” Celestia turned to look directly in Eve’s eyes. “I choose you.”
“Celestia…”
“In the event of my death, my will is that you are given the power within me.”
“What about Luna?”
“Eve… I chose you. Not Luna.”
Eve nodded slowly, her eyes glassy. “…I am honored, Celestia.”
“I know you are. But I want you to know one thing – when the time does come, and I move on from this world, remember this moment. Remember me. In that sense, I will always be with you.”)
The focal point of the two direct attacks exploded. Neither Eve nor Siron budged an inch from the shockwave, though they did decide to stop firing the tremendous lasers. Eve tried something else, touching the magic around Siron himself, trying to crush him.
The staff wasn’t going to let that slide. Its eldritch energies activated, opening a hole in aether itself for Siron to survive. He jumped forward, using the staff’s energy to protect himself, using his own magic to attack Eve.
Seraphim easily caught the simple magic attack in its aura, tossing it to the side like it was nothing. Siron opted for a physical punch, aiming right for Eve’s head.
She lowered her posture by an inch. Siron impaled his hand on her horn. Blue blood should have come out of him, but it didn’t. Black sludge poured from the wound, the staff diverting energy to healing the hole.
Siron threw another punch with a free arm, but it never connected. Eve performed a combination spell – teleporting herself away and planting an explosive in his hand where her horn had just been. His entire limb flew off.
It started the process of regrowing.
“WHY!?” Eve shouted, looking Siron right in the face as she channeled magical energy into her entire body.
“BECAUSE YOU TOOK TOO MUCH!” Siron shouted back, leaping into the air.
“WE WERE FRIENDS!”
(Siron looked up from a book he was reading. “You wrote this?”
Eve… no. Twilight Sparkle nodded. “Yeah. I hope it does your people justice. I just… I don’t want everyone seeing you as violent warrior types all the time. There’s a lot more to you than that!”
“It works well,” Siron admitted, letting out a soft chuckle. “It may not be perfect in all areas, and you do get a bit… wordy. But this is serviceable. Everyone will see this?”
“I’m Charter-Princess Twilight Sparkle! Of course everyone will read my book on the races of the multiverse. Then they’ll learn about you and not be so scared!”
“It is not the fear that concerns me.”
“It should. You could stand to read the chapter on humans. Fear drives their anger and violence in unpredictable ways. If they fear something, they want to kill it or stamp it out by any means necessary. The trick to getting them on your side is to get them to no longer fear you or what you’ll do. Anger is a lot easier to deal with than fear. Fear is irrational.”
“Isn’t anger as well?”
“Ah, yes? But anger alone doesn’t rationalize itself – you can’t keep up being angry about something without some other emotion backing it up. It’s draining.”
“For your kind maybe. Demons can be angry all the time at everything.”
“Then I might just be wrong about something,” Twilight admitted. “But this book will help anyway. Removing fear is better than doing nothing.”
Siron nodded. “Thank you, Twilight, for doing this. We may yet come into our own out among the multiverse.”
“I hope you do!”)
“We were never friends,” Siron said, slamming his staff on the ground, creating a whirlwind of screaming shadows. “I was using you from the start.” He tossed Eve into the ground with a dark claw. “I sent you to the Mistress so I could be rid of a problem and use the altar for myself.” He tore at her wings with dark knives. ”I gave you the Hub so you would trust me.” He pounded against her magic shield with red and green lights. “I shipped magic artifacts to the Binary world for Ba’al, resulting in the destruction of that planet.” Siron cut Eve’s legs, drawing blood. “I RAISED AN ARMY ON THE CORRUPTED WORLD IN ORDER TO DEFEAT YOU AT THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT!”
“YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT TO ROT IN THE JUNGLE!” Eve roared, executing a complex series of teleports that placed solid debris inside Siron’s body. All of his organs should have failed – but the power in the staff kept him alive.
“YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE HELD THAT MEETING!” Siron shouted. “YOUR LUST FOR POWER HAS RUINED EVERYTHING!” He shot the debris out of his body like bullets, only for them to be blocked by Eve.
“DAMN YOU!” Eve shouted. “ARE YOU REALLY THAT DELUSIONAL?”
“YOU ARE THE MARE WITH A DELUSION!”
Eve no longer cared about the consequences. No more bothering to keep secrets. No more trump cards. “That’s it.” She activated Seraphim’s ability.
Siron grabbed his head and screamed. The staff surrounded his head in a protective bubble of eldritch power, reducing the pain. “What…”
“Siron, you believe that we have interfered too much and destroyed your way of life. But from what you’ve just told me of your intentions, I am one hundred percent certain that your way of life needed to end. If there were that many lies… that much death… that much… You, Siron, should have let yourself change. But you didn’t. You refused to. Your reality is that you are the strongest, that you can achieve power, and that you will lead your people to a glorious empire. I reject that. I reject your reality and substitute my own.” Seraphim’s three rings lined up, and the space in its centre rippled.
Siron found that suddenly none of his muscles could move. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t even blink.
The staff still worked, but Eve deflected the shadowy attack. “What’s that Siron? Are you saying something? I didn’t hear, because I’m deaf. But I can guess. Maybe, you want to know what I’m doing to you!?” Eve narrowed her eyes. “Muscles, no matter what biological life form they are in, require electrical signals to operate properly. I replaced the local physics around you with one that doesn’t allow for the force of electricity. Your brain should technically be dead right now, but I suspect all your mental faculties are stored in the eldritch powers coursing through your veins.”
Siron’s inner power began to move him by force – not by electricity, but by darkness.
“Let’s switch it up, shall we? Let’s remove friction,” Eve declared. Suddenly, Siron’s limbs were flailing everywhere, moving so quickly they snapped in numerous places. “Now a world where there’s no light!” Siron couldn’t see anything. “No transference of heat.” Siron began to overheat. “Or what about… A world where organic life is impossible because DNA cannot link together properly?”
Siron struggled through the inner heat of his body. “What…”
“This is Seraphim’s power,” Eve declared. “Seraphim has the ability to open a portal to any universe. It can be used as a portal, sure, but its real ability is to tap into the local physics of that universe and force it onto a select area. In this case, you, Siron.”
“You have too much power…” Siron grunted.
“You would have been happy had this power been your own,” Eve spat. “Your double standard disgusts me, Siron.” Eve considered freezing him in some way and imprisoning him – but then she saw something in his eyes. Something that haunted her to her core and would be with her the rest of her days.
He wanted to die. That might have been the entire reason he was still here.
Eve sighed. “…Very well,” she muttered, the previous fire in her voice gone. She tapped into a universe where there was no temperature - everything was asolute zero. She released her telekinetic hold on him and let him drop. His frozen body shattered into a million pieces.
The staff remained unharmed, but it was no longer attacking her.
Eve sat down, eyes empty of emotion.
She may not have been Twilight Sparkle, but even then… Siron was where it all started. It was his world… He was the first adventure. The first ally.
He was dead now.
She didn’t cry for him. She wasn’t sure if he was truly evil or not, but she was certain he wasn’t a good person. The worlds would be better off without him.
But his memory would always be with them.
“EVENING!” Jotaro threw something at Eve’s head to get her attention. “GET OVER HERE!”
Eve executed a short-range teleport by instinct, appearing next to Jotaro. “Yes? What is it?”
Jotaro pointed at the body of Joseph Joestar. It wasn’t breathing – but somehow, by sheer force of will, Joseph’s mouth was still moving.
“H-How!?” Eve sputtered.
“Something our world does…” Joseph muttered. “I once cut a guy’s head off and he talked for several minutes… Heh…”
“We can save you then. We have magic. We ha-“
“No… That’s not how this works. I’m dying, Eve. I know it. Your next line will be ‘but you can’t die’.”
“But you can’t d-“ Tears welled up in Eve’s eyes as she caught herself. “Joseph! You’re… You’re the head of the Joestar family! You…”
“Can do one last thing,” he said. Hermit Purple appeared around him, pulling a camera out of his pocket. “Lend me Seraphim’s power…”
Eve summoned Seraphim, holding the Stand close to Hermit Purple. The purple thorns lashed around Seraphim, producing cuts on Eve’s body, but she withstood the pain.
Hermit Purple produced a spirit photo of Brutalight Sparcake sitting with Six on a frozen lake. Seraphim instantly knew the coordinates to the universe they were in.
“Thank you, Joseph,” Eve said. “You will never be forgotten…”
Pinkie appeared next to Eve, tears in her eyes. “Joseph… We… We never got to have our parties! Our pranks! Our next line contests!”
“We had some, Pinkie,” Joseph said. “And simply experiencing one… That was enough…” Joseph managed to look at Jotaro. “Don’t take my place, Jotaro. Stay free… Don’t get locked behind a desk…”
Jotaro grabbed his hat, trying to hide a tear. “Yare yare daze… Old man, I… I will.”
Pinkie sniffed. “…Your next line is going to be goodbye.”
“Heh,” Joseph said, finding this amusing. “Goodbye...”
Then he faded away.
Evening stood tall. “…Jotaro, do you need a minute?”
“No,” Jotaro said, standing tall. “I’m ready.”
Eve nodded. Then she roared with the Royal Canterlot Voice. “EVERYONE WHO CAN FIGHT – PONY, HUMAN, GEM, OR OTHERWISE – COME WITH ME. WE KNOW WHERE THE ATTACKERS HAVE FLED TO. WE ARE GOING TO TAKE THE FIGHT TO THEM. RALLY THE HUB! THE SHIPS IN ORBIT! WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A SHORT WAR.”
~~~
Aradia held The World’s fists back with nothing but pure telekinetic power. She couldn’t even see The World, but she could feel it pushing against her psychic barrier. Its strength was immense. She was a centuries-old god of time, and she was having difficulty.
“NOTHING CAN BEAT THE POWER OF ZA WARUDO!”
“Funny,” Alushy said, walking toward Dio menacingly. “I seem to recall Jotaro saying he killed you.”
This pushed one of Dio’s buttons. He pulled The World off Aradia. “ZA WARUDO!” In the midst of stopped time, he plowed seventeen different holes through the yellow vampiric pegasus with The World. Time resumed, and Alushy went flying as expected.
The only problem was that Alushy wasn't dead and had instead taken the form of a flying shadow of death riddled with eyes and teeth from the worst nightmares of demons.
“Huh,” Dio said. “You might actually be somewhat interesting.”
“Bitch, please. I’m a fudgemothering vampire.” She reformed into her default shape, allowing her eyes to remain covered in shadow. “I killed a lot of people to earn this title.”
“Don’t care,” Dio said, unleashing another punch.
“JUGULAR VEIN!” Alushy called, swooping behind Dio and biting down on his neck.
“AS IT HAPPENS I’M A VAMPIRE TOO!” Dio shouted, twisting his neck at an unnatural angle and biting down on Alushy’s.
This created a very, very stupid circular flow of blood.
Blackjack decided she needed to end it. She took a sword of glistening, alien metal out from its sheath. Using her telekinesis, she swung at Alushy, aiming for the head.
Vriska cut Blackjack across the face with her own sword, throwing Blackjack’s blade off. It cut off one of Alushy’s legs instead. Alushy writhed in agony and leapt off of Dio, growling. “FUDGE. FUCK. OW.” She stared at the stump that used to be her leg – realizing slowly that it wasn’t growing back. “…What in the name of all that is unholy is that sword made of?”
“Corpse of a Star,” Blackjack said, pulling her sword back to her body so she could defend against Vriska’s flurry of blows. Aradia stood up, wrapping her whip around Dio’s neck, accelerating her own speed to provide extra impact.
Dio grabbed the whip and laughed. “USELESS! USELESS! USELESS!” He tore Aradia’s weapon to shreds with his bare strength alone, punching her in the chest with The World. Alushy the Three-Legged decided to go for another attack on Dio, swirling with shadowy powers and slicing at the vampire’s legs. Dio opted to freeze everything that touched him. “DID YOU NOT HEAR ME? WORTHLESS! USELESS! MUDA! ZA WARUDO!” Time froze. Dio had The World grab Blackjack’s Sword. He drove it into Alushy’s midsection, laughing.
Aradia forced time to move for herself. Even if she couldn’t travel through time, she could alter its flow on a small scale. She removed the sword from Alushy with her telekinesis and driving it into Dio. He gagged, pulling it out with his own bare hands while The World pummeled Aradia across the face. Time resumed – neither Alushy’s or Dio’s wounds healed. Alushy’s erupted like a volcano.
“WHAT IS YOUR DEAL?” Vriska shouted at Dio, kicking the now-swordless Blackjack across the face. “What does ‘ZA WARUDO’ mean!?”
“The World…” Dio said, clutching his wound.
“Oh so you have a nervous tic when you get excited. Forget I asked.” Vriska grabbed her dice and threw them to the ground, creating a cannon that shot a giant fireball toward Blackjack. The alicorn teleported away from it and behind Vriska, kicking the troll in the back of the head with her metallic hooves. Vriska moved with the blow on purpose, landing near Aradia.
“Right, so, Aradia, the cyborg mini-goddess is immune to my luck stealing and I don’t know why.”
“Have you tried Dio yet?!” Aradia blurted, using her telekinesis to stop a flurry of bullets from Blackjack’s guns.
“Uh… No, actually.” Vriska leaped into the air and focused her special eye on Dio. Her eye glinted, absorbing a lot of luck from him. Dio tripped over his own two feet and took a header – right into Alushy’s guns. Had Dio not been an absurdly overpowered vampire, those blasts would have killed him instantly. Instead he just fell to the side, dazed.
Alushy laughed. “I win! Ahahah! Three legs and a fatal wound to the midsection by some stupid sword, but I WIN!” She coughed. “Blar- oh bother she’s pointing a magic spell at me.”
A beam of light shot from Blackjack’s horn, hitting Alushy right between the eyes. Normally Alushy would just shrug this off, but having suffered two major wounds that weren’t healing, she flopped to the ground, hardly able to move. “Aaaaa…”
Aradia and Vriska combined their powers to coordinate on Blackjack – Light and Time. Time slowed to a crawl and they were able to analyze which attack had the greatest amount of fortune. The course of action was clear.
Aradia accelerated Vriska’s speed and gave her a psychic push. Vriska lifted her sword into the air and brought it down. Blackjack fired a weapon – but that was expected. Aradia deflected the bullets with her telekinesis, and Vriska dropped her dice under Blackjack.
Dio had had a lot of luck in him. It was time to cash in.
…The dice produced a ferret in a small hat.
“AUGH!” Vriska shouted. “Wh… Why?”
“I just know how to win,” Blackjack said, firing a bullet right at Vriska’s head. Her luck was used keeping the shot from being instantly fatal. Vriska fell to the ground, breaking a few ribs by landing at what was quite possibly the worst angle.
Vriska was down. Alushy was down. Only Aradia remained.
She focused on Blackjack, narrowing her eyes. “You’re augmented beyond belief and I have no idea what your true capabilities are.”
“Yeah, same here,” Blackjack said, laughing softly. “There’s probably a doomsday device somewhere in here, or something… Oh, do you know what I am good at?”
“What?”
“Stalling for time by talking.”
“ZA WARUDO.”
The next thing Blackjack knew, Aradia lay on the ground, bruised and battered.
Dio stood up, grinning. “We won. They thought they had numbers. The fools! WRYYYYYY-“
“Can you shut the fuck up for one second?” Blackjack sputtered. “We did what we came to do. Let’s go back.”
“We’re not done,” Dio said, angling a hand over Vriska. “They’re not dead yet…”
“They’re not moving anytime soon.”
Dio shoved his hand into Vriska. “Better safe tha-“
Blackjack cut Dio’s head off with the sword. Then she cut the head in half just to be sure.
Blackjack shook her head, swallowing hard. Dio… There were some people you just knew were evil, despite all their charisma. The way he fought… The way he talked… The way he took her sword and left her to fend for herself… The world was better without him, she had no question.
She teleported away. Those three women had been extremely strong – they’d survive. But they wouldn’t bother them anymore, and that was all she’d been tasked with doing.
As always, bringing down a government was nasty business.
She teleported to the Reform Hall just in time to see Siron shatter into a million pieces. She saw none of the others there – so she teleported right back out, eyes wide.
Did they fail? She’d seen a lot of dead bodies, but Eve was clearly alive, and-
“Blackjack,” Flagg said, suddenly standing right next to her. “We need to move to phase 2.”
“But Siron’s n-“
“Siron chose to make his last stand in that room,” Flagg declared, a disturbing smile crawling up his face. “His choice, I suppose. We are not done quite yet. You and I will wait a moment – and then take the secondary strike.”
“…Right.” Blackjack said, getting a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“Where’s Dio?”
“Either dead or in a lot of pain,” Blackjack commented. “Not quite sure how far the vampire thing goes.”
“So useless. He was a loose cannon anyway.” Flag began to walk away, gesturing for Blackjack to follow.
Blackjack shook her head. Focus on what you came here to do, not on him. She trotted after Flagg.
~~~
“Thorax!” Eve called over to the Changeling king.
“E-E-E-E-E!”
Eve slapped him. “Thorax, take the Diamonds and the surviving human leaders to the box up there with the foreign dignitaries. Think you can do that? Think you can watch them?”
“I…”
“Thorax?”
“Yes Eve! I can do that!”
Eve smiled warmly. “Good, Thorax. You’ll do great. Luna, I want you to round up any leaders that weren’t signing and take them there as well. Once you’re there, if you can think of a safer place, do it. But be on guard.”
Luna bowed. “Of course, Evening.”
“EVERYONE ELSE!” Evening shouted. “WE ARE TAKING THE FIGHT TO THEM!”
Gems, humans, ponies, and others had filled the Hall. “YES CHARTER!”
Eve saw Pinkie’s team, Toph’s team, the League of Sweetie Belles, Jotaro’s gang, and many other faces she recognized. A few were missing because they weren’t fighters – Lieshy most notably – but those that had come were ready.
Eve caught a glint in Corona’s eye she wasn’t sure she liked, but she decided she couldn't deal with that right now. “Cosmo, do you have anything to say?”
Cosmo looked nothing like a Twilight anymore. She was the crystallized skeleton of an alicorn, kept alive by nothing but the boundless power of the Tree of Harmony. “Usually, when we fight, we fight with mercy in mind, with the intent of achieving a goal, rather than killing. Today… Today that is different. Our targets – the Elements of Insanity, Flagg, and any allies of Siron – have been condemned to death by us, Merodi Universalis. I do not encourage you to kill whatever is on the other side with reckless abandon, but we already let most of these people live once before. They have forfeited their chance.”
Eve nodded, tapping into her much larger stores of magic. She found she could create a portal the size of the auditorium with only minimal effort.
On the other side of the portal was a cold world deep, deep underground. The area near the portal was a frozen lake that went on for miles, though Eve could see a rocky edge to the left, and swore there was the light of fire even further in the distance.
But that wasn’t the important part. The important part was the army of Gerudo mixed with what Eve could only assume were real demons. Not the buglike people of Siron, nor the forces of Hastur… Something much darker and menacing. They weren’t impossible to look at considering most were vaguely humanoid, but they made Eve’s stomach do flip flops in guilt, horror, and rage. It was like they bled evil intentions from their essence… No doubt they were Flagg’s…
The armies had been expecting them.
Eve’s eye twitched. She decided she didn’t care if this was expected. “CHARGE!” She shouted. “GET THE SHIPS IN THERE!”
The Enterprise appeared in the giant cavern, along with Equis Cosmic and Gem Vein ships. They unleashed a barrage on the demon-Gerudo army, but as Eve feared, the demonic presences generally didn’t care about the physical weapons.
Eve remembered she had a weapon she didn’t have to keep hidden anymore. If they were lucky, they still didn’t know about it.
“SERAPHIM!” She called, summoning her Stand. She rejected the reality through the portal – replacing demons and gerudo alike with physics that didn’t allow for the proper traveling of electric signals. Unfortunately that only disabled the gerudo, the demon targets just glared at her.
Cosmo held them back with a blast of harmony. “Try something else!”
Eve teleported into the frozen hellscape where the enemy army stood, cycling through universes she knew she could set Seraphim to.
How about she try removing magic entirely… A truly mundane universe’s physics. The Gerudo wouldn’t care – but the demonic creatures?
The demonic creatures vanished in puffs of smoke when forced under mundane physics.
Eve allowed herself to grin. “Take this!” She began to methodically sweep the army with Seraphim, reducing demon after demon to ash. The ships above and the army below made progress – without a demonic force, there wasn’t much of a threat anymore. As brave of warriors as gerudo were, modern weapons, pony magic, and Gem physiology was just too much.
Eve noticed Mlinx climb in through the portal, leading with him a troop of bug-demons.
Good. That would go a long ways to keeping the bug-demons from being omniversally hated after this. They did not deserve to suffer for Siron’s actions.
Eve continued to sweep demons – but she also had a goal.
She was looking for Brutalight Sparcake and Six.
~~~
Brutalight stared at the army Ganondorf and Flagg had created – and realized it was getting trounced. She hadn’t exactly expected the army to win against the might of the Merodi, but she expected them to be enough of a distraction so Eve, Cosmo, and the other leaders involved in the charge could be taken out!
But that didn’t seem to be the case. Between Cosmo’s holy light and Eve’s inexplicable control over physics itself, the army was dropping like candy.
Brutalight knew they could have dealt with only Cosmo, but there were two fronts… Two…
She hated to admit it, Eve had been exceptionally smart to tell virtually nobody what her Stand actually did. All Brutalight, Siron, and Flagg had figured out was that she had one that protected her at all times with a simple aura. They had never suspected something of this magnitude.
At least it seemed to had a limitation on its range and area of effect… Though clearly, Eve was able to extend that with use of her magic. So it wasn’t a hard limit.
Brutalight threw several dozen swords into the fray, killing a few people and poofing a few Gems. Six stood up to unleash a wave of death.
“Don’t,” Brutalight said. “They’ll be able to pinpoint our location. It is best if we remain unseen for now.”
Six lowered her hand and nodded. “This isn’t going well, Brutalight.”
“No shit,” Brutalight deadpanned. She saw Jet produce her scythe weapon, flying at Cosmo with intent to carve the harmonic skeleton to crumbs. Cosmo tapped into the power of a few of her ships, hitting Jet from multiple angles with laser weapons. Jet’s body poofed, leaving only her gemstone.
Brutalight teleported the round, black crystal to her. “Shiiiit…”
Rainbine fell out of the sky, half of her face flattened. “Oooow…” She groaned, twitching.
Brutalight narrowed her eyes. “They’re going to regret this…” She fired a few more attacks, realizing she wasn’t actually doing that much against their might. Six would, but the moment she did anything of that sort the entire point would be failure…
She grinned – ah, Fluttershout and Gaea had a plan. They had flown into the air, both adorned with Gaea’s ritual paint, giving them a slight purple aura.
Fluttershout pulled in a breath and unleashed her voice, indiscriminately hitting gerudo and Merodi.
Eve appeared behind them. “And now sound only propagates through solid materials.”
Fluttershout and Gaea fled, but Eve wasn’t done. She twitched, replacing the physics around the two of them with that of an eldritch location.
Brutalight felt a knife slide into her dark heart. She acted as quickly as she could – teleporting the two of them out of the mess of impossible geometry and to her. Fluttershout’s body convulsed the moment it arrived, unable to process what she’d just seen.
Gaea was just dead. Her eyes were lifeless.
Brutalight’s breathing hastened. “It’s happening again, Six… They’re killing us…”
“Brutalight…”
Images flashed through Brutalight’s mind. Fluttershout’s limbs being torn off. Rainbine exploding into a thousand pieces. Rarifruit getting cut in half. A hoof driven right through Six’s ribcage…
They couldn’t do this.
“We need to leave,” she said, teleporting Rarifruit to the rest of the group.
“W-what?” Rainbine blurted. “But Eve is still alive!”
“I know she is. But if we stay here we soon won’t be.” She channeled her magic – she remembered the spell she had learned in the Sparkle Census. She would open a portal.
Rarifruit turned to Brutalight. “If Eve lives, Merodi Universalis lives. Siron said she had become a symbol of hope for them! We haven’t done enough yet!”
“Perhaps it's better she lives and suffers through the deaths of her friends,” Six said. “It’s not like their society actually matters to us.”
Rainbine growled. “Running away and not killing everyone? That’s… We don’t do that Brutalight! We kill every last one of them!”
Brutalight opened the portal. “I can’t lose any more of you. I’m sorry, but my connection to all of you is stronger than my desire for revenge.” She shook her head. “Let’s go. Maybe we’ll be able to find something to fight back with later, maybe we won’t.”
“What are we going to do?” Rainbine blurted. “They’ll chase us down!”
Brutalight sneered. “We’ll find our home Equestria and force it to bend to our will. After all, that’s what we wanted in the first place, right?”
The Elements of Insanity nodded. “Right!”
“Then let’s return to what we’re actually supposed to be doing.”
They left the army behind, living to fight another day.
~~~
Princess Luna and Thorax arrived in the glass balcony with the surviving human leaders, the two gemstones of the Diamonds, O’Neill, and the Doctor.
Jenny whistled. “That was spectacular.”
Luna glared at her. “It would be a shame if I imprisoned you in a magical fold-chamber on suspicion of being party to this invasion.”
Jenny held up her hands. “All right, all right, bad taste, I get it. Yeesh.”
Valentine walked up to the Doctor. “You know what’s going on here.”
“Of course I do, Ambassador Valentine,” the Doctor spoke with distaste. “I came here to stop him.”
“Who?” Luna asked. “Who is this Flagg?”
The Doctor pointed to Chartreuse. “He knows. No self-respecting Class 2 society hasn’t heard of Randall Flagg. But let me guess, that information costs? How much? An entire universe? Multiple?”
“The identity of Randall Flagg is one of the most valuable pieces of information in existence,” Chartreuse said.
“I have no patience for you,” the Doctor dismissed. “Randall Flagg, to put it simply, is an incarnation of evil. His origin…” He shook his head. “Hard to explain. Let’s just say he’s so unimaginably old that the era he hails from could be considered the early eons of the multiverse. Makes me look like a baby by comparison.”
“W-why is he doing this?” Thorax asked.
The Doctor furrowed his brow. “I have faced many forces of evil in my travels. Some do it for fun, some do it because they’re mad, and some think they have a higher purpose. Flagg… He does think it’s fun, and he’s definitely mad, but there’s something more to it than that. He takes pride that he is the man who can destroy destiny.”
The Grand Secretariat narrowed her eyes. “Why us?”
“He found Siron, I believe,” the Doctor said. “Siron told his ‘sob story’. Most would either turn Siron away, or sympathize with his cause. All Flagg saw was an opportunity – a new target. A civilization whose hope could be dashed by enemies of their own making. All Flagg needed to do was gather the enemies and give them some power, and they would mostly do the work for him.”
“Despicable,” Luna growled. “I take it this is his preferred method?”
“Yes, it is. He prefers to take the enemies and weaknesses a society has created itself, gather them, and turn them against the society. Sometimes he creates a society of his own as a god-king. Sometimes he just leaves anarchy. Still others the universes involved are completely destroyed. His signature is that he himself rarely does much directly.”
“Looks like I’m mixing it up today!”
Flagg was in the room with two people – Blackjack, and a woman some recognized as the old Headstone of the University of Doors, Elosa.
The Doctor tensed. “Flagg…”
Flagg strode into the room, his presence more than enough to keep anyone from attacking him. His smile was filled with glee. He looked at the faces of Thorax, the human leaders, and Luna. “Such brave little stragglers,” Flagg said, walking up to Thorax. The Changeling King couldn’t keep eye contact with the man in black.
Flagg found this amusing, laughing.
“Flagg, what do you have to gain from further death?” the Doctor demanded. “You’ve destroyed their leaders. You’ve brought about their end.”
“But you see, I haven’t, Doctor,” Flagg said. “The symbol of hope for Merodi Universalis is still alive in my Inferno. She has the power to tie you all together, so long as she keeps hope within herself.” Flagg turned to Luna. “But there’s no way she can do that alone, you see. All we have to do is destroy what she holds close. Starting with you, Luna – and the rest of these stragglers as well. And, you know what, why not,” he whirled to face the Grand Secretariat. “You’re an ally! You’ll die as well, so the Merodi will not receive aid!”
Valentine, Jenny, O’Neill, and Hastur glanced at each other. They nodded. O’Neill went first, using Crimson Sushi to scramble Flagg’s visual perceptions of reality. Valentine summoned his Stand, Hastur encased Flagg in eldritch energy, and Jenny pulled back her gloved fist. Jenny punched Flagg across the face, driving the eldritch wires into his skin. Valentine’s Stand lifted up two chairs and placed them on either side of Flagg, making him vanish.
Blackjack and Elosa prepared to retaliate – but Flagg appeared again, unharmed, with a delighted smirk on his face. “Three of you had no investment in this! And yet you attacked!” He laughed. “The foolish empathy of people never ceases to amaze me, even after all these eons.”
“You ticked me off,” Jenny explained.
“You are exempt from foolish empathy, and are instead subject to foolish anger.”
Jenny punched again.
“Stop breathing,” Flagg ordered.
Jenny stopped breathing. She tried to use her mental powers to override Flagg’s order – but she couldn’t. She passed out from overexertion.
“You know, that kills most people,” Flagg commented. “That body of hers really is something. Just like your Stand, Valentine.” Flagg smirked. “Passed on from Valentine to Valentine…” Flagg walked right up to the Ambassador. “You thought you could find an alternate version of me, didn’t you? You almost always can, right? Force a paradox?” Flagg laughed. “Too bad I’m completely unique! There have never been any alternate versions of me! They’re all me!”
Valentine’s expression was unreadable.
“Maybe I should go visit the USM next… In a few decades, just so you forget about all of this. And you, Hastur... Hastur, Hastur, Hastur… Your people are usually so wise, holding disdain for mortals. You’re a freak.”
“You are the one who is a ‘freak’, Flagg.”
“Strange, because your masters are the beings who come the closest to understanding me.” He twirled around, pointing at Luna. “Alas, I should probably stop my horrible cliché gloating monologue. As enjoyable as it is, it’s just asking to be interrupted by some clever plan or other.” He pulled a black sphere out of his jacket pocket. The globe whirled with dark, deadly magics of a time long forgotten.
Flagg glanced at Chartreuse. “Do you know what this is?”
The Melnorme said nothing.
“As I thought. This… is Black Thirteen. It holds the core power of the multiverse within itself.”
Luna tried to grab it with her magic – but her mind screamed in agony the moment she touched it. She fell back, whimpering. O’Neill ran to her, checking to make sure she was okay.
Flagg chuckled. “Anyone else want to touch it? To see the truth of what the multiverse is? The darkness that spirals everything together? Touch it for a few seconds and you could probably find the answer to any question you might wish to ask… What about you, Valentine? No? Shame… Secretariat? I’m sure you’d like to have some answers. Black Thirteen could take you anywhere, show you anything…”
“Only if you let it,” the Doctor said.
Flagg shoved Black Thirteen right into the Doctor’s face. “One-time-only deal, Doctor! I’ll tell it to go nice with you. You can touch it and gain all the knowledge you desire. For one as learned and experienced as you are, I expect you have a few particular questions in mind. It can be your judge, Doctor.”
The Doctor backed away, saying nothing.
“Shame…” Flagg held Black Thirteen above his head. “You’re all about to be transported to an antimatter universe. Have fun.”
And then something completely unexpected happened.
Lieshy flew through the glass window and grabbed Black Thirteen in her hooves.
Randall Flagg’s smile vanished. She was holding Black Thirteen. She wasn’t screaming her vocal cords out. She wasn’t dropping dead from the revelation. She was protected.
“You’ve been to the room at the top of the Tower,” Flagg said in a flat tone.
“Yes,” Lieshy said. “I really have no idea what it means, but I knew the moment I saw this orb that I had to grab it. So, potato crockpot, white sheet yourself.”
Flagg narrowed his eyes. “Blackjack, Elosa, get her. The rest of you don’t move,” he ordered.
~~~
Ganondorf watched as his army was slaughtered.
He got the distinct feeling he now knew how Siron felt. Maybe there had been something to that bug-demon’s rants.
It was too late now. This fight was clearly going to fall to the Merodi. Their losses had only driven them to fight stronger.
Ganondorf contemplated attacking Eve, to see if there was a chance he could remove her from the equation – but the risk was too great. At this point it wouldn’t serve him to risk his life in that way. He would have to become like Siron – leave and come back another time. He had fallen to the same level as that bug…
He took out his dimensional device, intending to leave.
A spear stabbed it out of his hands. “No,” Mlinx declared. “You don’t get to run.”
Ganondorf was at first overcome by surprise – but he quickly moved to a menacing grin. “You have decided to face me?” Ganondorf used his purple miasmic magic to tear the spear out of Mlinx’s hands. “You are nothing more than a somewhat brainy runt.”
Mlinx drew a gun from his side. “I also learned how to hold extra weapons.” He fired, unleashing a mixture of green and blue energy at Ganondorf. Ganondorf took it head on and laughed it off.
“Just fancy toys…” Another burst of magic tore the gun out of Mlinx’s hand. “And a scared little bug.”
Mlinx shivered, taking a step back.
“Having second thoughts about coming to face me on your own?” Ganondorf taunted. “You’re thinking you should have brought one of the people who are actually warriors. But no, you’re all alone. Your warriors are occupied. It’s just you and the king of all Gerudo.”
“I’m not alone.”
“Don’t give me some ‘the spirits of my friends are with me’ thing.”
“No, I mean I’m not alone. Mistress Luna is right behind you.”
Ganondorf whirled around with his fist, far, far too late in doing so. A burst of dark energy hit him chest first, tossing him to the ground.
Mistress Luna glared at him. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this, Ganondorf.”
Ganondorf roared, punching the Mistress across the face with a magic-enhanced fist. She fell onto her back, scrambling to recover, unable to deflect a kick to her stomach. Blood flew out of her mouth.
Ganondorf summoned a gigantic sword of unholy light to his hands. He lifted it above his head and brought it down on Mistress Luna. She teleported above the sword and kicked him in the skull. He pushed her away with a powerful magic.
“Your darkness is similar to mine,” Ganondorf said.
“Shut up,” Mistress Luna declared, unleashing a burst of pure moonlight at Ganondorf. He withstood it – standing strong against the cosmic power.
Then Mlinx drove his spear through the back of Ganondorf’s skull, the tip protruding from the Gerudo king’s forehead. Normally, this would not have killed the dark warlock.
But Misterss Luna and Mlinx had enchanted his spear with holy magic long before this day.
The dark magic could not cope.
Mlinx tore his spear out of Ganondorf’s head. The one great king of the Gerudo fell to the soft bug-demon.
Mlinx put a hand on his heart, trying to slow his breathing. “I… never want to do… anything like this… ever again…”
“Hopefully we won’t have to,” Mistress Luna commented. They turned back to the battlefield – the demons were almost all completely vaporized. The Gerudo were close to being defeated. They saw death, yes – on both sides – but the Merodi suffered significantly less casualties than the other side. Only one of Cosmo’s ships had actually gone down.
Eve landed next to Mlinx a few seconds later. She saw Ganondorf. “…I think he was the last one still here. You did good, Mlinx.”
“No sign of Flagg,” Cosmo said, teleporting next to Eve. She was still a skeleton, but didn’t seem much the worse for wear about it.
Eve sighed. “That might be a good thing. Excuse me, I have to call for surrender. ATTENTION GERUDO COMBATANTS! YOUR KING IS DEAD! IF YOU SURRENDER NOW, YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED! YOU WILL BE RETURNED TO THE BINARY WORLD AND NO CHARGES WILL BE PRESSED.”
That got most of the fighting to stop.
Eve let a pained smile come to her face. “I think… I think it’s over.”
O’Neill’s voice came from Starlight AI’s place around Cosmo’s neck. “We’ve just gotten a message. Flagg’s back in the Hall.”
Eve paled. “Oh no.”
~~~
Lieshy dodged a bunch of key-shaped projectiles from Eloisa. “Let’s talk about this, think very carefully about wh-“
“Don’t listen to her,” Flagg ordered. Lieshy knew in that moment that Elosa’s ears were effectively shut off and her most powerful weapon, her speech, was completely useless.
Not to mention that Blackjack was also shooting at her.
She was going to die if she didn’t think of something fast.
“USE BLACK THIRTEEN!” the Doctor shouted. “THINK OF WHAT YOU SAW AT THE TOP OF THE TOWER!”
Flagg smirked. “She’s clearly not sure what she saw, Doctor. Just as you aren’t sure what’s up there. She can do nothing.”
Lieshy ignored Flagg’s comments. She flew into the air, holding Black Thirteen aloft and staring into it. She felt things that would have turned her mind to jelly pass by her consciousness, protected by something within her. She looked into it… A murky, dark place…
She saw Flagg’s eye in there. “Hi.”
She ignored it, going further. Feeling Black Thirteen’s connection to everything… To…
Elosa smashed Lieshy across the side of the head with a powerful burst of magic, knocking her silly.
As it turned out, going a little crazy was exactly what she needed to do. Her thought process shifted sideways and she found it. For a moment, everything was clear.
Suddenly Elosa started talking as if she were giving a class at the university, oblivious that she wasn’t in one of the classrooms. “As your professor, I expect you to already know everything about higher door physics, and if you do not you best go throw yourself into the nearest gearbox. To begin this course in Door Creation, let’s think about the very rather philosophical question of what constitutes a door…”
Lieshy kicked Elosa out the broken glass. She didn’t notice, continuing to teach the entire way down to the auditorium floor. There was a sickening crack when she landed.
Lieshy expected she was still alive with all the enchantments on her, but she admitted she had no idea what Black Thirteen had done to those. If it did anything. Her moment of clarity was gone.
Flagg took advantage of that, grabbing her by the neck. Instead of looking angry, he looked… pleased. “It’s so hard to find things that surprise me these days. I had forgotten that those Touched like you even existed. Perhaps it is a sign of things to come.”
Lieshy was planning on driving the sphere into Flagg’s chest, just to see what happened, but she caught something out of the corner of her eye.
Blackjack was looking right at her. She made a subtle wink.
Lieshy felt something from Black Thirteen stir. She knew that Blackjack could be trusted right now.
She let herself go limp. Flagg took Black Thirteen out of her hooves and tossed her to the side like a ragdoll. He stood tall at the window, holding Black Thirteen against the lights in the ceiling. “So beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked. “A connection to everything that can fit in the palm of your hand. Such a dark truth.” He turned around, ready to gloat some more.
Blackjack stood alone, everyone else in the room having been moved to the back. She levitated a single gun in front of her, aiming right at Flagg.
Flagg recognized the gun. He knew all of Blackjack’s weapons. He had read her story, after all, and helped her complete her armory once she had joined him.
Trottenheimer’s Folly. The superweapon you could hold in your hoof.
Flagg suddenly regretted helping Blackjack gather ammunition.
A tremendous cone of blinding white light blazed forth from Folly. Flagg was disintegrated immediately. The destruction of the weapon extended far beyond Flagg’s form – the cone continued on to destroy the wall on the opposite end of the auditorium and the entire ceiling, allowing light from the sun to shine into the enclosure.
Blackjack put Folly away. “Everyone needs to check for radiation poisoning now. Everyone. Just because you weren’t next to it when it went off doesn’t mean you’re safe.”
“Right,” Luna said, bowing. “I shall call a doctor immediately. Thank you, Blackjack.”
“Don’t thank me. I was fighting against you not all that long ago. I think my job was to make sure your time-wizard couldn’t go back and undo this.” She looked down at the ground. “I… I don’t know what I was fighting for anymore. But I do know that that man… He was evil.”
“Where’s Black Thirteen?” Lieshy shouted, scrambling to where Flagg had just been. “Wh-“
The Doctor sighed. “Black Thirteen is tied to Flagg’s soul. Whenever his body perishes, it leaves with him.”
“He’s not dead!?” Blackjack blurted. “How the fuck!?”
The Doctor sighed. “His being is tied to a paradox. His existence is a rule of reality.”
“That… that sucks!”
“Yes, it does,” the Doctor said, shaking his head. “However, you can rest. He generally does not return after being defeated. He prefers to move on to greener pastures rather than continually rage against the same place.” He turned to Princess Luna. “You beat him. You’re lucky.”
“I imagine you are more lucky to have run into him multiple times and survive each one,” Luna commented.
The Doctor chuckled. “I… Currently fill the role of his ‘nemesis’. He likes having those. Individuals who serve as his opposite in the multiverse. He has never truly tried to kill me for that reason. It’s less luck and more of a curse.”
Luna nodded. She turned to Blackjack. “Whatever you’ve done prior, you saved us here, Blackjack. You are welcome t-“
“I’m going to leave,” Blackjack said. “I… I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be part of this. This… thing you have.” She shook her head. “I don’t have the right to destroy it. But I don’t like it.” She started walking away. “Goodbye.”
“If that is what you wish,” Luna said, bowing. “Return at any time, sister.”
Blackjack halted. “W-“
“I can sense my soul in you,” Luna said. “Damaged extensively, yes… But it is still one of mine.” A tear rolled down her face. “…Take care of yourself.”
“…Okay.” She teleported away.
The Grand Secretariat put a hoof around Luna. “I’m so sorry.” Thorax joined her.
Luna grimaced, trying to force her face into a stoic expression. She couldn’t say anything.
“We’ll help you however we can,” the Grand Secretariat continued. “You can count on that.”
“Y-your aid will be m-most welcome…” Luna managed.
~~~
Toph, Corona, Lady Rarity, and Vivian all returned to the Hub. The only major injury they had sustained was a fracture in one of Lady Rarity’s legs, probably from her fighting without her armor.
Vivian’s face was one of fear – they returned to still find so many bodies on the ground. It made her want to hurl.
Lady Rarity's face was one of pain. She found it hard to focus on much besides her own injury, but she said she was going to stay with the group until this was over.
Corona and Toph’s expressions were impossible to read. Toph was in the lead, walking right for a specific area of the stage of death.
The Elemental Nations.
She had two close friends she needed to say goodbye to.
She fell to her knees the moment she arrived. The forms of Aang and Zuko lay prone, lifeless, on the ground before her.
“Hey… Zuko… Twinkletoes… We won,” Toph said. “Saved everything, again. Beat away the latest flavor of evil mastermind. Some of them got away, but that’s always the case, right?” she laughed bitterly. “We’re still unified, so that’s good. They didn’t get what they wanted. We were able to walk together, and… and…” She broke down. “Spirits, your kids…” Her body didn’t move, she just stopped talking.
Vivian had to look away. Lady Rarity stood still as a statue, untold thoughts swirling around her skull.
Corona sat down next to Toph. Her sunglasses fell off her face, revealing eyes that had been crying too much – ever since the fight started. They were dry now. So many tears had come out, no more could come.
She stared at Aang.
“…Thank you,” Corona told Aang. “You… you saved me, back then. You saved so many. I…” she sniffed. “There’s… There’s nothing anymore, Aang. We’re here. But… But…” She covered her eyes, the burning sensation too much.
Toph pulled her into a hug. Through her tears she shouted. “LISTEN TO ME CORONA! WE’VE GOT TO STAND! DO YOU HEAR ME!?”
“I hear you…” Corona said, her voice not really into it.
“Corona…”
Corona moved a hoof and opened her mouth. Then she just stopped, letting the leg flop to her side lazily. She sighed. What does it matter?
Silence reigned.
A deep, throaty voice shook them out of it.
“I still detect the Avatar Spirit.”
Toph and Corona looked behind them to see Thrackerzod standing between Lady Rarity and Vivian.
“W-what?” Toph said.
“The Avatar Spirit. It didn’t die with him,” Thrackerzod said. “Even though he died offworld, I still feel it.” She lit her horn. “I can find it.”
Toph stood up instantly. “What are you waiting for? Find it!”
Thrackerzod nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. “Done.”
“TAKE US!”
Thrackerzod obliged, teleporting elsewhere in the Hub. They found a hospital. She marched right in. Some of the doctors tried to stop them, but one look from Toph shut them up.
They soon stood outside a room where they could hear a newborn baby crying.
Toph, tears in her blank eyes, knocked.
It opened, a doctor poking her head out. “I’m sorry, we’ve got a new baby here an-“
Applejack looked at them, holding a new foal in her hooves. “Toph? What are you doing here?”
“Applejack!?” Toph blurted. She shook her head. “You… I…” She stood at attention, like the General she was, and cleared her throat. “Applejack… Avatar Aang has perished along with most the world leaders at the signing.”
Applejack winced. “Ah was wonderin’… Eve?”
“She’s fine,” Toph said. “Thrackerzod, it is that foal, right?”
Thrackerzod nodded slowly.
Toph took in a breath. “Applejack, when an Avatar leaves us, the spirit of the Avatar moves into a newborn somewhere in the world. Had it been on our world, it would have gone to someone in the Water Tribe. Instead… It went into your foal.”
Toph walked in, looking at the filly. She had her mother’s orange coat and a dull blue mane. She was crying profusely. “…What’s her name?”
“Core Apple,” Applejack said. “We wanted Apple Core, but thought that’d just be confusin’ with the last-name thing becomin’ more common.”
“Hello Corea,” Toph said, placing a hand on the filly. “You’ve got a big destiny, little one.”
“Ah’m not sure what that means,” Applejack admitted. “But… Ah’m already proud of her.”
Toph nodded. “Yeah…”
Thrackerzod cleared her throat. “I believe I can initiate contact with the Avatar Spirit.”
Toph started. “You… could do that?”
“Yes. Did you forget who you were talking too?”
Toph turned to Applejack. Her face pleaded.
“It won’t… hurt her, will it?” Applejack asked Thrackerzod.
“No.”
“Then go ahead.”
Thrackerzod lit her horn. Corea’s eyes went white. For a split second, the visage of every Avatar there had ever been appeared in the small hospital room – freaking the doctors out. But soon, only one remained – the form of Aang.
“Toph,” Aang said. “Found me already?”
“Don’t think you can hide from me by disappearing into the air, Twinkletoes,” Toph smirked. “I’ll always find you.”
“Should I expect a rock to the face anytime soon?”
“As soon as I figure out how to hit spirits. Actually… Thrackerzod?”
“I could enchant a rock,” Thrackerzod said.
“Keep that in mind,” Toph told her. She turned back to the spirit of Aang. “…Zuko didn’t make it either.”
Aang looked down. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“We all are.”
“Toph… Tell Katara I love her. Tell my kids too.”
Tears welled up in Toph’s eyes again. “I will.”
“Tell Zuko’s family that he spent his last moments fighting back.”
“I…”
“Tell everyone that I’m proud of them.”
Toph choked.
“Toph… Don’t forget who you are. And don’t abandon the newest Avatar because of bad memories. Stay with her because of good ones.”
Toph nodded. “Of course.”
“Applejack… You should talk to Iroh. He knows the most about what being the Avatar means.”
Applejack nodded.
Aang looked past Toph, to Corona. “Corona… I can see your pain.”
Corona barely reacted.
Aang smiled. “Also, uh, make sure someone’s taking care of Appa and keeping him fed, okay?”
Toph let out a short chuckle. “You got it, Aang.”
Aang bowed. “Goodbye, master.”
Toph bowed. “Goodbye, Avatar.”
Corea’s eyes turned back to normal and she started crying again.
Toph had a smile on her face. She said nothing, but she seemed… at peace with the emotions inside of her.
A unicorn-deer teleported into the room, freaking out the doctors again.
“Message for General Toph.”
“Here,” Toph said, her expression shifting to annoyance.
“Medium confidential information.”
“The doctors are sworn to protect patient confidentiality and that’s Applejack there. We’re good.”
The messenger nodded. “Queen Luna of Lai has fallen.”
“I’m aware.”
“Her will named her successor. All parties of Lai are being made aware.”
“Who is it?” Toph asked, losing patience.
“Queen Luna named you to be her successor in her will,” the messenger declared. He promptly bowed. “Long live the Queen.”
Toph blinked. “…What!?”
~~~
The Reverb Hall took hours to clean up, but it eventually returned to the way it was before.
Aside from the giant hole in the ceiling. And the lack of a back wall. That would take longer to fix.
The stage was still there. The podium was still there, somehow unharmed throughout all the fighting.
Eve stood on her hind legs, hooves on the front of the podium, staring at the abandoned seats that made up the hall. The orange stripe in her mane was no longer aflame, but the mane itself was flowing slightly with the magic inside her. It was nowhere near as active as Celestia’s mane had been, still in its shorter, windswept cut, but it just no longer remained stationary. It looked alive, occasionally sparking with a star of magic.
Her friends stood behind her – Pinkie, Renee, Flutterfree, and Nova. Spike, Princess Luna, Daniel, and Allure were there as well.
“Just so you all don’t have to ask, I think I’m going to be fine,” Eve said. “I’m not fine now, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m going to pull through.” She put a hoof to her chest and tapped. “She will always be with me.”
Luna nodded. “I am glad, Evening, that you are the one to carry her legacy. There would have been none better suited.”
Pinkie smiled at Eve sadly. “You look so awesome and so torn at the same time.”
“But I’m not tired,” Eve declared. “If anything… I have more fire in myself than before. Siron thought he could take this away from us. Flagg thought we were weak. They were both wrong – we stand strong. Not because of the power Siron thought we shouldn’t have, not because of some lucky trick of fate, but because of our bonds. We are not just a coalition of worlds who have banded together because it’s the smartest thing to do. We are friends - family even. When you hurt us, the bonds between us only strengthen.” She stamped her hoof on the podium. “We’re here, everyone. We’re here to do good. If the truth is that the multiverse is surrounded by the darkness of that Black Thirteen, then I say we create a new truth.”
“Yeah!” Flutterfree cheered.
“We will not cower! We will not hide! We will not hide from the danger! We will expand and we will help everyone escape the darkness that lurks in existence!” she held her hoof out. “We are Merodi Universalis! And we have a goal.” She turned around and pulled them into a magically held hug. “Luna, get the press. I’m going to give a speech.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Eve declared. “It needs to be now.”
~~~
Hardly a few minutes later, Eve’s face appeared on screens throughout Merodi Universalis, and on a few screens beyond it. “Hello everyone,” she said with a sad, but warm smile on her face. “By now you are all probably aware of the great tragedy that befell us earlier today. The Bloodbath. The criminal Siron worked with an entity known as Randall Flagg in an attempt to kill all of our leaders and destroy the nation we had just barely created. For the most part, they succeeded. Of the hundreds of leaders present at the event, only thirteen survived. It is harrowing to find that our darkest hour is also our first hour.
“But we are not going to let them have what they want. The Bloodbath they created had the intention of dissolving Merodi Universalis the instant after it was born. They thought we didn’t deserve what being unified would bring to us. Instead of dying out like a shattered lantern, we are going to burn brighter than ever before. We are still Merodi. This event shall not tear us apart, it shall bring us together. All of our worlds have suffered loss – loss of leaders, loss of stability, loss of hope. However, because we are unified, because we are Merodi, we will help each other. I will see to it personally that every sub-nation thrown into disarray with the loss of their leader will receive everything they need. Equis Cosmic has once again devoted resources to us. Even universes outside our borders have come to us – Equis Concrete, Earth Exus, Equis Fallout, Esefem – have turned to give us aid in our time of need, thanking us for all we had done for them. The Sparkle Census has promised to provide assistance with reorganizing sub-governmental structure. We are not alone in this cosmos!
“I have only one request for all of you, my Merodi. I know that you’re angry, that you’re scared, that you’re confused. That’s fine, you should accept these emotions and learn from them. But I ask that, instead of using them to drive your lives from this point on, we instead focus on helping each other. If our purpose becomes driven by a need for revenge and protection, we have lost what made us special in the first place. Our bonds. Everyone needs to remember what brought us to this point. We must keep that outlook as we move forward. I ask us to remember that together we will always shine.”
~~~
Randall Flagg woke up. He rubbed the back of his head and grunted – it had been a while since he’d failed to jump to another universe when a superweapon went off in front of him.
He went over what had went wrong – he had started having too much fun again. Had he kept his cards closer to his chest, Blackjack wouldn’t have turned on him. He’d been so caught up in taunting the societies of the local multiverse that he’d basically forgotten about her.
It didn’t help that he’d known nothing about Lieshy’s status or Eve’s power. He felt confident he could have dealt with those, given time, but the combination of them and Blackjack… It was just enough to catch him off guard and stop the destruction of Merodi Universalis.
Flagg didn’t let this bother him. He lost occasionally – he accepted this. It wasn’t even overly rare, considering how his goals usually focused on completely destabilizing societies with their own hubris. Not that he didn’t also do other things, that was just the general modus operandi.
They had won – going back would just be overly greedy. So he’d stay away, at least for now. Give them a few decades before deciding if a round two was in order.
Though, admittedly, he was curious. How much damage did he do? It was a lot, but he knew Eve survived, so chances were Merodi Universalis still existed.
He took Black Thirteen out of his coat and looked into it. The dark power rippled right into his mind, tearing at it. Flagg didn’t even flinch. He was the master of this object, and would be until the end of everything. Which was never going to happen.
Flagg activated his all-seeing eye technique, connecting it to Black Thirteen. Like this, he might as well have been omniscient, if only he asked the right questions. He looked around, finding different scenes spread out across time...
(Toph Beifong stood in the throne room of Lai Castle. Corona, Lady Rarity, Lieshy, and Vivian stood to her side. Corona seemed distant.
An oculus-pegasus-unicorn placed a crown on Toph’s head.
“By the wishes of Queen Luna, I crown you Queen Toph Beifong, ruler of Lai.”
Toph stood tall and smiled warmly to the gathered crowd.
They cheered.)
“Amazing how fast a society can change,” Flagg commented to himself. “They’ll accept an otherworlder as their leader…”
(Corona sat on a couch, staring at the ceiling.
“You need to do something, Corona,” Sombra’s voice came from the TV.
“Why?” Corona said. “Just… Just why?”
“Why do something? Because you’re really freaking depressed and doing something would at least give you the possibility of finding something better. Why did it happen this way? Because the multiverse is cruel.”
“Yeah. Yeah it is.”
“You should listen to Eve. So what if it’s dark? Screw that, do stuff anyway. That’s what I do.”
“Eve’s being stupidly idealistic,” Corona muttered. “We can’t do anything, Sombra.”
“Not with that attitude we can’t.”
Corona didn’t respond, she just stared at the ceiling.
“I’m going to have to call the girls over, aren’t I?”
“Sombra…”
“You need someone to come over. Don’t fight it.”
Corona didn’t fight it.)
A depressed hero… Flagg took pleasure in that. It took a lot to break one of their ilk.
(Evening Sparkle and Luna sat at Celestia’s tomb. It was located at the very top of Canterlot mountain. The statue of Celestia had been constructed by the Gems out of pure diamond and set atop the square structure that housed Celestia herself.
The two said nothing – they only stared and held each other.)
Boring…
(“Renee, with all the sudden scrambling, I’m going to have to promote you,” Eve said.
“Oh? To what?” Renee asked.
“My equal. You’re Overhead of the Expeditions Division now. I’ll give you the details of all the teams we have to you. I’m going to have to devote myself to just being Relations Overhead.”
Renee smiled. “I’ll take care of them, Eve, don’t you worry.”
“Oh that’s not what I’m worried about, it’s that some of them took pride in working directly under me. There might be some difficulty in the transfer of power.”
“Dear, I’ll be fine. This is probably good for me anyway – won’t be leaving Daniel out to dry among the political sharks as much.”
“Good. Now I’ve got to go make sure O’Neill is taking his role as Military Overhead seriously. See you around!”)
A transfer of power brought on by necessity. Flagg wondered how much else Eve was having to swap around within the chaos.
(Corea sneezed fire into Applejack’s face.
“Well, I was hopin’ it’d be a couple years before she started showin’ signs…” Applejack said, wiping her singed muzzle.
“None of us know how the Avatar Spirit will act inside a pony,” Iroh said, scratching Corea behind the ears. “But that suggests she has power.”
“Think Ah can teach her potions, eventually?” Applebloom asked.
“Aang did figure out magic bending… With a body actually designed to interact with the force, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could bend magic as skillfully as a unicorn.”
Applejack called back. “You hear that? Your sister is destined for great things!”
Applejack’s other kids didn’t pay her much attention. Applejack glanced at Big Mac. “Y’know, Ah don’t get any respect.”
“Eenope.”
“Funny.”)
A new hero was born. Flagg wasn’t interested enough to pay attention to this particular one – he had others lined up for his torments – but he made sure to remember her.
(Aradia, Vriska, and Alushy shared a room at the hospital.
“I have never needed to be hospitalized in my unlife,” Alushy commented. “Everything about this sucks.”
“Oh? Why?” Aradia asked.
“I’m not allowed to have my guns and my leg that doesn’t really exist fucking hurts.”
“They can get it back,” Aradia encouraged. “The procedure that saved the Arcei can be adapted for that.”
“Lovely. Why not just un-enchant the curse that sword put on me?”
“Pretty sure the sword was anti-magic. Which is why you aren’t healing.”
“Right.”
Vriska grunted. “Aradia…”
“What?”
“Why don’t you just accelerate yourself until you’re healed? You can do that.”
“Well, I’d actually experience that time because I’d be accelerating myself…”
“Bullshit. You can accelerate every part of your body except your brain.”
“That’d result in a blood aneurysm.”
“Aradia…”
“All right, all right, there’s ways around it. I dunno, I just feel like taking it the normal way this time around. I get to experience a long hospital stay with friends old and new!”
Vriska blinked – then laughed. “How can you be so morbid and yet so innocent?”
“The world may never know.”
Alushy chuckled. “Who’s ready for another round of hospital songs?”
“Not the spleen one, please,” Vriska groaned.
“SPLEEN! SPLEEN! SPLEEN!” Aradia cheered.
“Woooooooooah~” Alushy began.)
Blackjack had truly been a useful tool. She’d been paramount in defeating all three of those powerhouses, and keeping the temporal powers from being able to change anything. Flagg knew now that Aradia would not try to erase what had happened. Flagg was certain what he did to the universe had sealed the Bloodbath as a fixed point in time, regardless of what anyone did to the universe itself, but he didn’t need her poking around.
(“Japan owes you a great debt,” Jotaro told his visitor.
Twilight Sparkle 7Y nodded. “Just doing my job, mister Kujo.”
“Such a cool job…” Jolyne said, hanging around near her father.
“You’re around the age you can start thinking about doing stuff like this,” 7Y said. “I’m sure Eve would love to have you.”
“Uh…” Jolyne looked flustered. “Yeah I don’t think I’d do well as a diplomat. I tend to solve problems by punching it or tricking it into punching itself.”
A small smile crawled up Jotaro’s face. She was his daughter, all right.
“Expeditions could always use more punchers. Join one of the contact teams. If you were a Twilight, I’d suggest submitting a proposal to the Census, but alas, it cannot be.” 7Y smiled awkwardly. “Heh…”)
Father-daughter bonding. Flagg wondered what all his daughters were doing. Probably mayhem.
(Nautica was no longer to be an unsupervised prison.
Large construction efforts took place, creating a tremendous compound deep under the sea. All inmates on Nautica were rounded up and placed in the regulatory building.
Never again would they attempt to take care of their enemies by just dumping them in another universe. They would keep them where they could watch them. Those that couldn’t be kept would be killed.)
Took them long enough to realize that, the fools.
(Brutalight and the rest of the Elements of Insanity – including Jet – stood on a hill looking at a version of Canterlot Castle.
Brutalight’s evil grin widened. “Girls, I think we found it. And, lucky us, the Merodi have no idea.”
Fluttershout rubbed her hooves together. “I’ve been waiting forever for this…”)
That world was doomed, Flagg decided. He should probably go visit it at some point in the future. It was always interesting to see if he could run an ‘evil’ system even further into the ground than it already was.
(“LISTEN UP LADIES!” O’Neill shouted at a troop of Gems. “I AM GOING TO TEACH YOU HOW TO FUNCTION AS A UNIT WITHIN THIS MILITARY! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”
“Sir yes sir!”
“GOOD!” O’Neill blurted. “Each of you will be assigned an organic partner. Enjoy.”
The Gems’ reactions ranged from enraged to excited. Exactly what O’Neill wanted.)
Flagg enjoyed the suffering of others, and the forced cooperation of the Gems was no exception.
(“Five eldritch canisters,” Thrackerzod said, glaring at a member of the Melnorme race. “That should be worth more than enough for information on the blue metal guy.”
“No,” the Melnorme said, narrowing his eye. “Such canisters are just globs of eldritch excrement, and you know it.”
“It has uses though!”
“None that other materials cannot provide.”
Thrackerzod twitched. “I give up. Allure?”
Allure smiled. “I can get you access to Arcei physiology data.”
“Still not enough.”
Allure threw her hooves in the air. “OH COME ON!”
“It’s an exceptionally valuable piece of information.”
“I can see why the Doctor found you annoying,” Squeaky muttered.)
The Melnorme, traders of the multiverse. Very useful for higher societies. Class 3s often just found them unbelievably annoying because anything they actually wanted had prices that were far too steep. The Merodi likely weren’t going to do much with them.
(Blackjack stood over a sea of pure magic. She took a breath, closed her eyes, and lifted a hoof…
“I would say think about what you’re doing, but it’s not exactly the sort of thing you do.”
Blackjack turned around to see herself as a unicorn… without a cutie mark. “Wh…”
“Right, so, I’m Jackie, I’m from Equis Regarden – you didn’t die, by the way. Well, you did, but your soul found your clone body, and blah blah boring science whatever.” Jackie shrugged. “The point is, I’m you, but a bit older.”
“And without Luna in your head.”
“That too. But as I recall she wasn’t exactly bad company, was she?” Jackie raised an eyebrow.
“…I guess not.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Jackie said. “We’ve made our fair share of mistakes.”
“I jus-“
“Think very carefully about the accusation you’re about to make.”
“No.”
“Good girl.” Jackie grinned.
“…Did you just come here to push the buttons of your younger self?”
“That’s only part of the reason,” Jackie said. “I’m here to tell you that, yeah, the Merodi have power. Yeah, they have a lot of it. But Eve isn’t Ministry Mare Twilight Sparkle. I don’t think she’s going to ruin it.”
“Our Twilight was good once as well. Look what happened to her.”
“Not all Twilights are the same. I visited the Sparkle Census once, it was crazy.”
Blackjack sighed. “So… What then?”
“Just grab a dimensional device and go exploring. Start the adventures of Blackjack – super overpowered and over-armed alicorn.”
“Princess of winning?” Blackjack smirked.
“Yes. Princess of winning.” Jackie winked.
“I dunno…”
“Yeah, that’s right. That’s why you just go and do it without thinking. I’m sure there are ponies out there you can help.”
“Fine!” Blackjack created a portal. “HERE I GO AGAIN!”
Jackie smirked. “We never were very smart ponies.”
“And I guess that’s a good thing?” Blackjack shrugged.
“Fuck yes.”)
Flagg furrowed his brow. If she was turning into an explorer… In time, she could become the one to replace the Doctor. His actions as Flagg’s nemesis were getting rather old, perhaps it was time to mix up the formula. But Flagg needed to wait for Blackjack to get a little wiser in the ways of the multiverse before that happened.
(Blumiere stood atop Castle Bleck – which was soon to be demolished. It was going to be replaced with the Dimensional City. Unlike the Hub, this city would become the mobile capital of Merodi Universalis, a city that would eternally grow and move between universes… Built upon the dimensional core of this castle Blumiere himself donated.
It felt good to turn this place of darkness into something that would do much good.
A letter appeared in front of him – personally signed by Eve. He opened it.
The Dimensional City had a name now.
Celestia City.
Blumiere couldn’t think of a better name.)
“Overly sappy…” Flagg muttered.
“You always hated it when things turned out that way,” the Doctor said.
Flagg turned to the Doctor, not bothering to ask how he had gotten here. “Ah, Doctor. I might be building up a replacement for you. Just thought I’d warn you.”
The Doctor didn’t react to this. “They won, Flagg.”
“That they did. And I’ll leave them alone for the time being. There are other fish in the sea, after all.”
“Their song is strong.”
“One of the strongest I’ve seen,” Flagg admitted. “Are you trying to suggest I bit off more than I could chew this time?”
“Not directly, no. I’m just wondering what you see in them.”
“I see underdogs,” Flagg said. “Underdogs with a terribly idealistic mindset. The Tower loves idealists.”
“For all your talk, you are still just a part of it,” the Doctor said.
Flagg shrugged, holding Black Thirteen high. “You may not understand this, Doctor, but I appreciate that I am part of something. That I have a well-defined purpose.”
“To be evil?”
“To the normal mind, that is certainly how it seems. Doctor, I am a force of nature. The multiverse needs me to stir the pot now and again.”
“I disagree.”
“Agree to disagree!” Flagg chuckled. “See you around, Doctor. Have a nice day!”
The Doctor said nothing as Flagg vanished.
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you didn't
...
you did
! GM YOU ABSOLUTE MAD MAN YOU MADE KORRA A PONY! i f
ing love you right now 
...
Fraymotif: Divine Tribunal
In any case... Yowza. I can only hope that Corona's friends can pull her out of depression. I don't want Flagg to get anything more out of this than he already has. And Seraphim truly is terrifying, in all its mythbusting glory.
And poor Applejack. As if normal infant surges weren't bad enough...
All told, this has been a powerful blow to the Merodi, but a tempering one. This didn't kill them, and thus it made them stronger. They've lost some of their naivety... or, put another way, some of their idealism. But the soul of hope is still alive, even if some of them can't see that at the moment. They stand united against the darkness, which has been considerate enough to put on a face they can recognize so they don't have to try to stay angry at an intangible concept.
Hard to believe we're only a third of the way through this behemoth. Looking forward to the next arc... though I can't tell if the aspect symbolized by a sun is appropriate or tasteless in the wake of the Bloodbath.
When did we do Discworld? How did I miss that?
You cheeky son of a gun.
I'm kinda disappointed that Ganondorf didn't get to betray anyone, but whatever.
9107692
Carrot was shown with the USM team. We'll get more Discworld later.
-GM, master of commentus.
And now my watch has ended.
I've often said that I have had issues with a lot of the overarching stories in Song, mostly prefering the character moments in the smaller scale chapters. A lot of time the build up wasn't as compelling, and I found just how large the threats were made it unbelievable that there was any actual dangers for the long term.
That was not the case at all here. Besides the obvious of Blackjack was there, Siron has been around since the beginning. We've seen Siron from the start of his journey into the multiverse. He was just a tribal chief of a species without a name. Where Twilight/Eve grew as people, he fell deeper and deeper in his desperation to preserve what was. Change happens, and it can suck, but we have to grow as people or we fall behind. Siron never learned this. It hurt a bit to see Eve kill him so readily, but it had to be done.
Ganondorf is gone too. And Dio I guess. Still, Ganondorf is dead.
As for world leaders... Celestia, Queen Luna of Lai, Aang, and Zuko are the ones you highlighted. Since you had Republic City being built by the Demons a while back - even before Siron went full evil - I was kind of expecting Aang to bite it at some point. Getting Corea instead of Korra is certainly a twist I hadn't expected. Applejack better watch her around the mares though...
Queen Toph! I don't have anything else to say especially. Toph is Queen. That's a bit of a step up the ladder from Melon Lord. Paperwork is going to be some trouble for her though, isn't it?
This arc was probably the most complete package yet. I loved the individual chapters - probably helped I knew the source material for a lot of them - and I loved the overarching plot. I'd expected Flagg to be an endgame thing, and he still might be, but it was a surprise for him to be tabled at least for now. Looking at the title's next arc, I have... No idea what's coming. I can't even begin to guess what those things are. Makes me a bit... What's that word? Right, 'nervousxcited!'
9095860
Here you go:
https://www.fimfiction.net/group/213761/songs-of-the-spheres-extended-multiverse/thread/369396/the-ever-updating-list-of-major-deaths-big-spoilers-for-main-story-if-youre-not-caught-up
-GM, master of ask and thou shall receive.
Wow, this arc was sick, awsome, incredible, mesmerizing, intensive, muy bueno, espectacular, tremendo, la ostia, la mera verga, de puta madre, congrats dude, you haber q big senior story here, and im looking foreward for more :D.
Fluttershout finally brought out her legendary voice, interrupting eerything
she could alter it’s flow on a small scale
1. Everything.
2. Its.
Huh, so Daniel really didn't die. Again. Not spoilering this because now we know. An unexpected development with Toph but I guess she didn't really need to Lai down with that surprise decree. Now let's hope she doesn't suddenly discover that she now has suddenly inherited magical powers and would ilLumenate her kingdom's path to a better future.
YES I WAS THE HUNDREDTH LIKE YAY *nothing happens* huh...ok
9117455
You get an internet cookie!
voedingsadviesbureau-puur.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cookie-wet-300x248.jpg
-GM, master of some limitations apply.
9117781
YAY *nibbels on cookie to masked it last*
This arc has really upped my respect for this story and it's characters. This is probably one of the best mega crossovers I've ever seen, and your update schedule is very decent.
The only problem is that I did not detect any potatoes in this chapter. I WILL FIND YOU AND END YOU ON COMMAND OF THE GREAT POTATO.
RIP Best Princess
Those are some pretty big horseshoes to fill Eve
also RIP Ember, we hardly knew you.
and so on
9118531
Lieshy calls flagg a potato crockpot. Does that sastisfy your quotato? (get it? quota? potato? it's a bit of a stretch, sorry)
So much death. Hopefully in the future they're going to start having wards set up to specifically block such death magic. And Brutalight is beyond their grasp for the moment...though I get the feeling she would much rather just stay out of the sight of the Merodi for a good long time. Every time she's run into them, she has lost multiple friends.
This arc has been difficult for me to stay invested in as the story is moving beyond most of the characters having any real effect on it with the exceptions of people like Eve or Vriska or Pinkie, as well as returning or introducing characters that just bring the quality of the story down by their presence (Rick and Monika).
Hopefully the upcoming arcs will recover more character and feel less like reading a history book.
I wonder if Flagg has any time related abilities. Trap him in time acceleration or something. He brought in people to counter Aradia, so maybe not?
Well, at least Brutalight valued her friends more than her revenge this time. That's some good character development. Hopefully it can continue in that direction.
Feels like the ponies are losing their goodness.
Change has come and HOPE shines ever bright.
*Comments as it happens/d:*
Well, that's not a good sign. Corona seems to be slipping. She's losing her marbles. She's slipping away to the dark side and giving into despair.
Okay well yeah I guess that all but confirms it. Celestia is gonezo and not coming back.
Uh...wow. That's certainly beyond powerful, especially charged with with Celestia's power like that.
Also this sounds very familiar. Didn't something like this happen in LSB? I swear I remember that one particular line at the end there-
OH WAIT YEAH RIGHT THAT WAS HER.
Goddamn.
Like I said before, it just hurts that her earliest ally in the Multiverse went down such a dark and evil path. And that flashback of their encounter before his demise (boy the death flags were flying for him at this arc finale) reinforced that.
I gotta hand it to you, you played Blackjack's ability against Vriska to annoyingly good effect.👏
...Jesus.
That was brutal. Hopefully he stays down for good, but with Dio you can't quite be sure.
Hmm...based off her actions and dialogue here and with Flagg, I'm starting to get the HOPEful feeling that Blackjack is coming around...
WAITAMINUTE. Wasn't this thing the or related to theUniversal Generator?Ah okay no, looking again probably not.The Tower has made its move. For whatever a "move" could be defined as for an overreaching focal point of existence and destiny that transcends all understanding.
Anyways it's decided that on this occasion your ass is grass, have a nice day.
At this point, at this key moment, there's only one gun that could be...
OH YEAH. Nothing else it could have been but Trottenheimer’s Folly.
Blap.
Well, we're certainly going to be seeing him again, I'll bet.
Ya' done good, Blackjack. Hope to see you again.
Time to pick up to pieces.
Corona and Toph's bits hurt to read, especially Toph's.
Looks like the multiverse still has a couple good tricks up it's sleeve.
Oh no way.
...Did you just-
Well that was unexpected. Long live Queen Toph, I guess. Long may she reign.
That unfortunately didn't take long. That took a lot shorter than I would've liked.
Well the fact is, my dude, you can't be the one holding the cards when Blackjack calls for you ante up.
Damn right it is.
Also, my brain is subtly starting to ship Sombra with Corona now.
Man, I get the feeling he's going to target her in her despair to bring her over to his side, and that's a bad feeling.
Oh yeah, I think I recall something about that in LSB.
Now that I definitely remember.
PFFFT.
That important, huh? Welp, the rules of spacetime pretty much dictate that nothing about this is changing now, then. Stuff and lives lost are now set in multiversal stone.
Hang on, correct me if I'm wrong, but is this at all related to Warehouse 97?
Well, I guess that's a pretty satisfying conclusion to that storyline, for now. Exit Blackjack: multiversal helper of oppressed ponies.
Also, Blackjack always did some of her best work being not a clever pony, anyways.
And thus, the beginning of the mighty Celestia City and the start of greater things to come.
You know, if it weren't for the nature of the story and Flagg and The Doctor's odd but required relationship, I'd be a whole lot more worried than I am now of what's to come.
Another fantastic arc ending, GM.