Songs of the Spheres

by GMBlackjack

073 - The Hunger for Games

“Hello ladies, gentlemen, characters, and readers! Do we have a show for you tonight! Who I am is not important – or, well, it is, but I’ll get to that later. What is important is that we’re holding yet another round of multiversal Hunger Games! After the wash that was the Super Smash event we have returned to the basics! With us today are twenty-four contestants hand-picked from the new multiversal neighborhood on the block, Merodi Universalis and its neighbors! What will they be doing?

“Why, they’ll be fighting to the death in a battle royale!

“I can tell all of you want to scream at me right about now, and are finding you can’t. That’s because none of you get to move until the games actually start – because I have to explain the rules first! All of you may use any powers at your disposal to kill all the other contestants, and those of you with multiversal powers will find that they still function but cannot be used to escape the games. Trust me, it won’t work.

“Of course, all twenty-four of you could just fight each other right here right now and end the games in an instant, but the arena is a huge forest designed to have many places to hide and resources to live for multiple days. The smartest thing to do is to run into the forest and take a moment to plan, forge alliances, etcetera. However, you’ll notice that in the center of you is a pile of weapons, artifacts, and supplies. If you’re willing to risk an early elimination, you can attempt to get an edge in the competition by fighting over this Cornucopia.

“I can still feel you planning to refuse to play. Don’t worry, there won’t actually be any consequences – all deaths will be reversed upon the completion of the games. Oh, still not enough? Perhaps I should have mentioned the fact that if you don’t play all of you will die permanently. We’re powerful enough to drag you here against your will and keep you frozen while I monologue, think for a moment how much effort it would take to squash you bugs.

“For additional incentive, the winner gets a wish. That’s right, a wish. Naturally there are limitations, but we can bring people back to life, we can give you any object you could desire, we can change the life of any individual, and we can do so many other things. That is because we are a Class 1 civilization. Some of you may know us as Them; others of you have no idea who we are. Suffice to say that “Class 1” is all you need to know.

“And to answer your deep, burning question of ‘why!?’, it’s simple really. We’re really, really bored up here at the top. These games break up some of our monotony. If you want a more ‘standard’ reason it’s because you’re trespassing on one of our universes, the one you call Earth Starfleet or Galaxus Quadrants. Your punishment is to play these games. …Nah, it’s just because we’re bored, we couldn’t care less what you did to Earth Starfleet, we’ve got thousands of them.

“Ready? Good. It’s time to meet all the contestants then, because we have an audience after all! Hello members of Them society and those of you reading these words off a page or screen! It’s time to see what the new players on the multiversal block have up their sleeves in a fight to the death! We’ve assigned the twenty-four contestants into twelve ‘districts’ by our ‘eh, it just works’ algorithm.

“In the first grouping, we have Evening Sparkle, Charter-Princess, Overhead, and Very Important Pony alongside Corona Shimmer, a non-Charter Princess and overpowered bundle of fire, fire magic, fiery personality, and Stand with a fiery emblem on it. These two are known for shaping their society and are heralded as heroes!

“Second, we have a pair of sisters, Renee and Allure, an Overhead and one of the League of Sweetie Belles’ core four, two unicorns who definitely aren’t killers by nature. I wonder what will happen when they are forced to?

“Next are a pair of old friends, Flutterfree and Nova, an unusual conglomeration of a pegasus, vampire, and spirograph source who’s known for her Kindness alongside a unicorn who’s just now realizing she doesn’t have any of her equipment with her. What a fun realization!

“Pinkie and Rohan, placed here because of… Well secret reasons! Some of you know exactly why they’re a pair, and others don’t. We’re not absolute jerks who will spill all your secrets for the fun of it. Just know they’re a party pony and manga artist. …But oh so much more.

“The two non-pony members of Merodi’s primary team share the fifth spot, the quiet, tactical, powerful Jotaro and self-proclaimed spiderbitch Vriska! I bet she wishes she had her dice right now, huh? Sorry, maybe you’ll find your equipment in the Cornucopia! Heh.

“Rev and Starbeat, versions of each other, stand together. The devoutly religious explorer and a pony doomed to love everything. A beacon of hope and a living tragedy.

“After them, Alushy and Blackjack, so grouped because… …They’re both multiversal travelers. Blackjack is notably swearing like nothing else internally because she has no guns. Ah, the no equipment rule, the great equalizer. Or unequalizer in the case of others.

“Representing the United States of ‘Murica – ahem, the Multiverse – are Ambassador Funny Valentine and the froggy hero known as Froppy! They’re here for freedom, justice, and trying not to die.

“Ninth, Jenny of the Red Gloves, effective master of Dracogen Enterprises and cocky regen girl. With her is Brutalight Sparcake, the angriest of angry villain types. Already imagining how to eviscerate every last one of the contestants, wow!

“Olivia, the great hacker of Merodi Universalis and Queen Toph Beifong sit together because… Because… Because it just works. Similar for the eleventh grouping, Thrackerzod the eldritch unicorn and Blumiere the on-off mayor of Celestia City… Did we just give up on classifications at this point?

“Oh, wait, the twelfth match up. O’Neill and Daniel, representing Earth Tau’ri. Congratulations! You two make sure the pattern ends on a high note. The old General who doesn’t age and the aging archeologist!

“Regardless, that’s everyone. I hope you’ve been planning your strategy this entire time, because now that I’ve talked far too long it’s time to actually begin! Remember, winner gets a wish! Refuse to play and you all die permanently! Please be entertaining. Some of you have bets riding on you.

“The moment I announce that the games start, you won’t hear from me again until tonight when I give an update on who’s fallen! I bet you’ll all be devastated to be without my glorious, heavenly voice, but we need you to focus.

“LET THE HUNGER GAMES BEGIN! Place your bets now and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

~~~

The arena for the Games was a simple forest of deciduous trees, the leaves in the transition from spring to fall. There was no sign of civilization in any direction, just endless trees upon trees. The ground rolled with numerous hills, and it would not be surprising to find a river somewhere amongst the trees. The only abnormal sight was the two moons in the sky, both showing a pale yellow in the daytime sky.

It was currently afternoon and a chill breeze blew through the air. Twenty-four contestants stood in a circle around a pile of loot – weapons, food, medicine, and equipment. Raging Sights was easily visible, sitting near the middle of the Cornucopia, while many of the weapons were clearly just taken from Blackjack’s inventory and thrown onto the ground.

Allure plotted rather than listening to the voice of Them - and really, that was a stupid name for a race. She could see some rations near the edge of the Cornucopia pile, food bars that would not only keep her alive but give her an edge when she did need to fight. …Her style of combat was very non-lethal, but breaking a spine after the target was down should work…

She shuddered at the thought. They clearly didn’t have any choice but to play this sadistic game, she would just have to put her emotions to the side. She really wasn't sure if she could do that, but she was going to try at least.

At the moment, though, the plan was to grab the energy bars and run. She’d have to run a little closer to get a good telekinetic grip around them, but not very far…

“LET THE HUNGER GAMES BEGIN!”

Allure made it one step before something exploded behind her, tossing her into the pile that was the Cornucopia. Blumiere landed next to her, but he ignored the presence of the unicorn, attempting to defend himself from Brutalight – failing miserably as one of her swords drove into his chest, another one cutting off his head.

First blood, Allure’s mind managed to register before her instincts took over. She grabbed a gun she was resting on with her telekinesis and started shooting wildly while running away. She tripped over her hooves, rolling to the ground as things exploded over her. Corona had tried to grab Raging Sights with a burst of fire magic, but Thrackerzod had already taken the crystal device and teleported away.

Allure suddenly felt alone. She lifted the bars with her telekinesis and started running, ignoring the fact that one of Starbeat’s limbs had just flown past her. The unicorn instead focused on the form of Renee, who had been running away from the start.

She’ll help me.

“Hey Renee!” Allure called. “I’m co-”

Renee glanced behind her shoulder just in time to get shot in the face with a sniper rifle.

“Bullseye,” Allure heard Vriska call.

Allure stared at Renee’s lump form in fear. “Wh… Wh…”

“Hey, it’s temporary,” Vriska said, looking down at Allure while kicking Brutalight away. “I saw an opportunity and took it. Speaking of…” She aimed the rifle at Allure.

Allure whirled around, the rage in her allowing her to use the gun she had grabbed to shoot at Vriska. The troll’s luck was high enough that no bullets hit her, but one of the bullets hit the sniper rifle, breaking it.

Vriska looked like she wanted to fight, but the moment a razor-sharp boomerang embedded itself in her lower back she decided it was a bad idea to stick around. She flew off into the forest.

Allure fired after her, long after her clip had run out of ammo. She threw the gun to the ground, breathing heavily.

It’s not permanent… It’s not permanent… It’s not permanent… she kept telling herself, oblivious to the explosions happening around her. She picked up the energy bars, looking at them, not sure what to conclude.

She shook her head – she needed to keep moving. There were a lot of people in these games who couldn’t be allowed to get a wish. She would have to fight for the sake of stopping them, if nothing else. She moved to leave.

She had taken too long to sort through the thoughts in her mind.

Jenny punched a hole through Allure’s skull, killing her instantly. She became just another one of the smears of blood around the Cornucopia mere minutes after the games had started.

~~~

Jotaro had gotten out of the Cornucopia area as fast as he could with a time-stop. He probably could have gotten more than one kill in the midst of stopped time at the Cornucopia if he had tried, but he was unsure exactly how many of the people there would be able to counter Star Platinum and he wasn’t willing to take that much of a risk. So he vanished, running into the forest.

That had been about fifteen minutes ago. Already, he was surveying the land. The forest was sparse and the trees were thin, ensuring that any fights would take place without interference from giant trees. Less cover. As natural as the forest may have looked, it was still designed to be an arena.

He found a river quickly, using Star Platinum to get some fish – easy food. Better than hunting deer or some other forest mammal. Given his background such things were relatively effortless for him, but he needed to be on the top of his game at all times. He began to ponder what he could do against certain powers that might trump Star Platinum…

He punched a tree, knocking a branch loose. He shredded the outside bark, creating a long spear with an ultra-sharp point. A weapon. Next, he took a rock and sharpened it with Star Platinum’s fists, creating a stone knife.

He put the knife in his pocket and slung the spear on his back, poking it through his coat collar so it would stay. He would only have them out if he needed them.

He had food, weapons, and the lay of the land. There was no question in his mind – it was time to start playing Them’s stupid game and get it over with. He’d try to win, of course. He was Jotaro Kujo. It was what he did.

It was time to hunt.

He backtracked a little bit, heading back in the direction of the Cornucopia, but at an angle. It didn’t take long for him to come across tracks – tracks of a human man who clearly had no idea how to be subtle in his movements. Jotaro even knew exactly who it was – Rohan Kishibe.

There was someone who needed to be taken out quickly. Give Rohan enough time, he could have his opponents eating out of his hand left and right…

Not to mention what he could do if he got hold of any paper.

Jotaro followed the tracks, finding it pathetically easy to catch up to Rohan. The manga artist was strolling through the woods, not a care in the world. It would be easy to stop time and snap his neck. Jotaro had plans to do just that, and was waiting for the right opportunity when Thrackerzod flew out of nowhere, brandishing Raging Sights like it was a weapon. The eldritch unicorn had clearly not gotten the device to cooperate with her, but she had managed to work out how to use it as a magic amplifier. A series of magic rings appeared around Raging Sights, apparently with the intent of vaporizing Rohan in an instant.

“Heaven’s Door!” Rohan shouted. Thrackerzod squeezed her eyes shut, but the Stand forced them open with its fingers. The spell cancelled, and Rohan scrawled a note in Thrackerzod’s book before closing it. “Thought I was so dangerous I had to be specifically hunted down?”

Thrackerzod growled. “What did you do?”

“You have to do everything I say. For now, protect me from all threats, Thrackerzod.”

Thrackerzod swore in eldritch but was unable to refuse.

Jotaro snuck away. He could handle any one of them with ease, but both at once? Five seconds was only enough time to, for sure, take care of one. And Thrackerzod probably had some dark nature within her that could be used to survive a normally lethal hit.

He would need more to be certain of his victory. It would be best not to face them now. …Even if that meant Rohan would get more ‘allies’ through Heaven’s Door.

Jotaro supposed he could probably strike an alliance with Rohan… But no, it would be too dangerous. Rohan would have to ensure loyalty with Heaven’s Door. Then where would Jotaro be?

Jotaro opted to just let Rohan and Thrackerzod go without knowing he was ever there. He was soon able to move freely again. It was late in the day, perhaps hunting wasn’t the right course of action just yet. The games would likely take multiple days to complete if people played it smart…

It was time to start thinking about the long haul.

~~~

Eve had teleported into a distant tree the moment the Games started. She needed more time to organize her thoughts than the monologue from Them had allowed.

Did she dare believe what they had said? That all of this would be undone at the end?

…She had to, because she knew they weren’t lying about flat killing everyone if they refused to play. That wasn’t a gambit.

Plus… she knew they had to get out of this alive. There were things she’d heard from Pinkie, from Twilience… There was no way all of them could die. This wasn’t one of those moments. This wasn’t the ‘end’.

The Them was probably telling the truth.

…Or they were just copies of their real selves, like what happened in the Starcross Society with Corona. Or in the copying universe…

She ground her teeth. Regardless, she was going to have to play along with these games and either experience death herself, or kill everyone else. That was going to be absolutely horrifying regardless…

She let out a deep breath, shaking her head. Sure, she’d ‘play’ because she had to. But she had no idea how she was going to go about it… What was the plan? Was there a plan? Who should she go after first?

That was a terrible thought to have.

A cupcake hit her in the side of the head. Eve looked down at the base of her tree to see Pinkie and Flutterfree standing there.

“Hey Evening!” Pinkie called.

“Oh, hey,” Eve said. Then she tensed. “Wait, aren’t we supposed to be fighting?”

Pinkie nodded. “Yeah, we are, but we’re still on the first day Eve! We can work together until we have to stop!”

Flutterfree nodded. “It makes the chances better that one of us will win. And this way we don’t have to fight each other.”

Eve fluttered down to the ground, a smile on her face. “…I love that idea.”

“And you don’t have to worry, the Them was telling the truth,” Pinkie said. “We’ll all go back once someone wins.”

“Good to know. So, who should we gather for our little team next?”

Pinkie sighed. “Nova and Renee are already out.”

“W-what?”

“The Cornucopia,” Pinkie explained. “A lot of us are already gone.”

“…So the team’s just us?”

Flutterfree nodded. “Yeah… Just us. Most of the others won’t want to team up if we just ask.”

“…Then we must be stronger together and get to the end,” Eve said.

“Must we?” Flutterfree asked, glancing from Eve to Pinkie. “All we need to do is keep anyone bad from winning.”

“Trying to win is the best way of doing that!” Pinkie said.

Eve nodded. “Right.”

“By the way, Eve, you should probably test out Seraphim to see what exactly it can still do.”

“Oh,” Eve spread her wings, activating Seraphim. She was still able to dial any of the universes with unusual physics she was already aware of, but the moment she tried to move anything through the portal, it just passed right through Seraphim without going to another universe. “Right, same effect, but we can’t leave, just like the Them said. That is a stupid name. I thought Rev was joking…”

“…We really can’t defy Them can we?” Flutterfree asked.

Pinkie shook her head. “No. They’re too big. We’re just pieces on a board game to Them. Or perhaps in a casino, since they’re betting on us.”

“Eternally bored…” Eve said, shaking her head. “We’re one of many, many experiments they perform just because they can, aren’t we? …I feel sorry for the multiverse.”

“It’s a strange kind of evil,” Pinkie admitted. “He did mention doing Smash Bros, after all.”

“...Smash Bros?” Eve asked, cocking her head.

“Multiversal Heroes except more original.”

“They’re not like the Celestialsapien at all,” Flutterfree said. “They seemed… neutral, just arrogant. These beings… they just don’t care.”

“Talking about Them isn’t really going to help us win,” Pinkie said.

Eve looked at the sun. “We should probably make a camp of some sort for the night. I can cut a burrow in the ground with Seraphim.”

Pinkie transformed her mane into a drill and cut a hole into the ground. “Or I could just do this!” she called from inside. “Come on down, the place is well-furnished!”

Flutterfree and Eve crawled through Pinkie’s hole into… a living room with several sofas, a TV, soft pink wallpaper, and a bright red carpet. Pinkie was drilling holes into the walls as they entered, creating more exits in the otherwise chokehold home.

“Wow,” Eve said. “You went overboard.”

“If we’re going to have an underground bunker, it might as well be in style!” Pinkie said, turning off her mane-drill. “Couches, TV, multiple exits, a snack fridge, we have everything!”

“…Does the snack fridge have snacks?” Flutterfree asked.

Pinkie shrugged. “Dunno.” She opened the fridge and found a mysterious plastic container with a brown sediment on the bottom. “…This might be edible.”

Eve summoned some fruit from the aether and put them into the snack fridge. “Now it has everything.”

Pinkie giggled. “Yep! Now…” she turned on the TV. “How’s about we watch the only program on right now, the Hunger Games?”

Flutterfree blinked. “…Pinkie, are you allowed to cheat this much?”

“At the moment I’m not bound by the normal rules of the story, I’m bound by whatever Them’s rules are.” She sat down on a chair, watching herself do the same thing on the screen. “This is a special case where I can go a biiit further than usual. Though I’m probably ticking more than a few of Them off.” She giggled.

“The less fun they have the better,” Eve asserted. “So, what’s on besides us?”

“Corona!”

~~~

Corona felt naked without Raging Sights.

Technically she still had a nightshirt on without Raging Sights’ barrier jacket/battle dress, which she always had in case a universe didn’t allow magic, but it did little to comfort her. An integral part of who she was now was in the hooves of Thrackerzod.

It wasn’t going to be easy to find the eldritch unicorn and take it back either. She could try to fly up and get a bird’s-eye view of the arena, but someone was bound to shoot her down if she did that. She wasn’t positive she could block an attack from every other contestant in the arena.

…She actually didn’t remember all twenty-four who were in the arena. That was an issue. What if she had a plan and forgot about a particular power involved? It was… concerning.

There was also the fact she really, really didn’t want to even fake-kill someone. She really wanted to just sit at this tree and do nothing the rest of the games, but that probably wasn’t an option.

“Fancy running into you here.”

Corona’s ears perked up. “Oh. Hey Toph. You want to fight now?”

Toph walked in front of Corona and created a chair of earth for her to sit in. “Not particularly. I was thinking more like we should make an alliance. Two old friends, facing all their other old friends and enemies together.”

Corona smirked. “Pass.”

“…what?”

“I said pass. We’ll just have to turn against each other eventually if we do that. I can already see one of us not paying any attention, and the other one thinking ‘maybe I should kill her now and get it over with’… I don’t want to go through that.”

Toph put a hand to her head. “I think you’re getting too deep.”

“You could say that,” Corona said, standing up and stretching her wings. “I’ll only fight you here if you want. You came here with plans of peace. I won’t punish you for that.”

Toph stood up as well, pursing her lips. “You know, I could order you as your Queen.”

“Princess of Passion,” Corona reminded her, smirking. “I only serve under you because I like it.”

Toph shrugged. “See you around, then. Here’s to hoping one of us wins without having to lob the other’s head off.”

“I’d drink to that. If I had a drink.”

Toph chuckled. Then she created a lump of earth under her feet and started ‘surfing’ away on it.

Corona went back to sitting at the base of her tree. At some point she’d climb into it and go to sleep for the night, but at the moment she wasn’t going anywhere. Just sit and think.

~~~

Blackjack decided she was going to make a friend to start these games off – fighting alone tended to make her go crazy. Unfortunately Gilgamesh wasn’t here… but a lot of the people who were here were friendly, right?

Not to mention she felt odd without her gear. She was still a cyborg pony able to regenerate, turn her hooves into hands, and see targets over enemies; but the only gun she had gotten away with from the Cornucopia was a simple rifle. Her magic bullets might be more effective, depending on the situation she ended up in.

Her scans detected a target – someone was over there. It was currently red, but that was because everyone was a possible enemy in this arena at the moment. She opted to approach carefully, ruffling her wings into a more comfortable and limber position.

It was Daniel Jackson, stumbling through the woods, a haunted expression on his face – he’d probably seen Renee bite it. His aging face only added to the sorrow in his expression.

“Uh… H-”

Daniel pulled out a gun and fired at Blackjack, hitting her right in the leg. Her systems took over, beginning to regenerate, but Celestia that hurt. “What the fuck man!?”

Daniel didn’t stop. He fired again and again, though this time Blackjack raised a magic shield to stop all the bullets. Being friends was clearly out of the question, so she was just going to have to kill him. She fired two magic bolts and hit him dead on. Nothing seemed to happen.

“What th-”

Something invisible slapped her across the face. It felt like the skin of a fish – except freezing cold and burning hot at the same time. She whirled around on the air, catching sight of O’Neill right next to her. She kicked out with her hoof – but what she hit wasn’t actually O’Neill. It was a tree.

“Fuck all kinds of sushi!” Blackjack blurted. “All of them!”

“Go Fish,” O’Neill said, mockingly. Blackjack knew Crimson Sushi only affected sight – she could go for the sound of his voice. She turned around, launching spells wildly where she thought he was.

As it turned out there was a tree he had effectively made invisible by swapping its visuals with that of with a patch of air, so she ended up running into the trunk. Her shield fell down and a few of Daniel’s bullets hit her in the back.

“Fuck this,” she muttered, executing a teleport. She had no idea where she was now – but she knew she had a freeze-burn mark on her face and numerous bullet holes in her body. Her energy reserves would heal those eventually, but she’d need to eat gems to heal much more. Or maybe a magic energy bar or something…

She shook her head – they hadn’t been playing around back there. Clearly, trying to make friends wasn’t going to work here, at least not with those two. Making friends was an impediment to winning if you didn’t already trust your teammates…

She really didn’t want to have to do this alone. Why did she have to be the only person she really knew here? Why couldn’t Gilgamesh have come along? Or that other version of herself? Or Littlepip?

Dammit, I’m missing my friends again, Blackjack said with a sigh. Don’t dwell on it now, they’re gone. They’re all gone.

Or are they?

There’s a wish on the line here.

Blackjack stood bolt upright. There were limits to Them’s power… But certainly they could bring her friends back. Yeah… Yeah, they could! All she had to do was win and all the losses could be fixed!

She had a one in twenty-four chance.

She really liked those odds.

She needed to heal up – but after that, she was going to destroy every last one of these opponents. Every. Last. One.

Because she needed to win. And that was her talent.

~~~

Ambassador Valentine and Froppy had managed to pull some shenanigans with Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap in order to duplicate the one gun they had gotten into a dozen copies, producing effectively-infinite ammunition and a firearm for both of them. They just had to be careful not to let any specific bullet come in contact with an alternate of itself. It was the problem with D4C – using it alone to break universe boundaries resulted in the instability of alternates. A powerful weapon, yes, but fraught with drawbacks.

Valentine would have loved to know how Them managed to create sub-universes for D4C to reach into on the fly whenever D4C felt the need to. He wasn’t even entirely sure the universes D4C was visiting were even real.

They had set up camp next to a tree split down the middle. Valentine watched the sun set. “A wish for the glory of USM…” Valentine said, hands to his eyes.

“Ribbit. What do you think it’ll be?”

“There are many internal issues I could wish away. The President has her hands full with the Ink Rebellion at the moment, but the economic crisis may be more important in the long run.” He put a hand to his face. “There’s also the request for technology that would revolutionize everything. Effective time travel. The Stand bestowal pills the Merodi have. Devices that can create universes to spec…” He folded his arms. “There are many options to consider on our path to victory.”

“We still have to win, though.”

“Only one of us must make it to the top. Without taking into account powers, that’s a one in twelve chance. Taking into account that I have one of the stronger abilities in this world, it’s higher than that.”

Froppy nodded. “We’ll still have to be careful.”

“We’ll also have to be ruthless,” Valentine said, turning to Froppy. “I understand you are friends with some of our enemies.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say friends.”

“But you are fond of them, correct?”

“Yep.”

“Even in this world of no consequences, fighting the faces of people who are not enemies is disconcerting. Especially to the death.”

“Ambassador, I won’t falter,” Froppy asserted. “There are no moral concerns here, and I can put aside my emotions for the sake of success.”

Valentine looked in her eyes for several minutes. “I believe you. You will fight well regardless of what we face.”

“Tomorrow,” Froppy said.

“Yes,” Valentine admitted. He pressed himself between a piece of wood and the ground to access alternate worlds, grabbing a few versions of himself. “We will take shifts standing guard.”

It sure is handy he doesn’t explode when next to himself, Froppy noted. “Ribbit.”

“Sleep, and rest your mind,” Valentine said. “We have a long day ahead of us.”

~~~

One person remained alive at the Cornucopia, the owner of all the loot. All the guns, magic artifacts, and food.

Her name was Brutalight Sparcake. She had been the only one crazy enough to stick around after the initial fights and death. She had no idea how many she had killed – at least two, definitely injuring a lot more – and now she was the king of the hill.

And nothing had happened all day. No one had come to challenge her. The only fun she’d gotten was tormenting Starbeat. The mare’s leg had been removed by a stray attack, stranding her in the Cornucopia, but she’d still lived long enough for Brutalight to have a round of ‘entertainment’ with the cursed mare. Then Brutalight had killed her.

She was going to kill every last one of them. There were no consequences here, she didn’t have to worry about her friends getting caught in the crossfire, and she knew so many of the faces here and would want nothing more than to tear their sorry eyes out of their skulls…

Probably roast the organs and eat them as well. She should have saved Starbeat for that rather than vaporizing the body. Shame.

She cackled to herself – it was times like this when she remembered she was an Element of Insanity. Quite a delightful feeling.

“COME AND GET ME!” she shouted in the Royal Canterlot Voice. “I HAVE ALL THE STUFF! COME OOOOON! I BET IF YOU ALL RUSHED ME AT ONCE YOU COULD GET ME!”

There was no response. She knew some of them heard her – they had to, that voice went out for miles – but none felt like coming on her terms.

Fine then. She could wait. She could wait all night. Sleep was for the weak.

But they would come eventually… Eventually…

And then they would die by her hoof.

That was its own reward. The wish would just be a bonus.

~~~

“It’s back to us,” Flutterfree said, pointing at the TV. “We didn’t get to see everyone.”

“Guess we’re not going to bother showing everyone,” Pinkie said with a shrug. “That would make for a really long chapter.”

“Brutalight is as disturbing as always…” Eve said, shaking her head. “The good news is it looks like she’s going to get herself killed in her insanity. We won’t have to deal with her.”

“Maybe,” Pinkie said. “But she was a focus, so she might b-”

“HELLO EVERYONE!” the voice of the Them boomed into everyone’s mind. “It’s time for your nightly update! Day 1 is done, and oooh boy we’ve already lost a ton of contestants! A fourth of the original number have been cut down in the short time between the start of the game and now! Blumiere has the honor of being first blood! Those who perished today include Renee, Allure, Nova, Starbeat, and Jenny!”

Eve’s pupils dilated. “Jenny!? On the first day!?”

“Yes, you heard me folks, the ‘unkillable’ Jenny has fallen to one of the other contestants! Who? I’ll never tell. That’s for you all to wonder about! With that, I bid you all goodnight – sleep tight, don’t let the other contestants bite!”

The Them stopped talking, leaving the three ponies in silence.

“Sleep in shifts?” Pinkie suggested.

“Sleep in shifts,” Eve agreed. “Flutterfree, you go first.”

Flutterfree nodded. “Got it. …I didn’t know Starbeat was out.”

“Eighteen left…” Eve shook her head. “This isn’t going to take very long, is it?”

“I’m thinking less than a week,” Pinkie admitted. “Though we’re probably in a universe where everything takes place in a single instant.”

“…Let’s not think about that right now. You two go to sleep, I’ll wake you in a few hours,” Flutterfree gestured to the couches. “I’ll tell you if anything interesting happens on the television.”

The moment the two of them rolled under their covers, the television switched to static, for nothing of note happened that night… that would be shown to them, anyway.

~~~

The sun rose on the Cornucopia, and Brutalight’s sleep-deprived face.

Nothing had happened the entire night.

“They’ll come eventually…” she said, left eye twitching. “Eventually.” She began to root around the Cornucopia, looking for anything to draw potential victims to the Cornucopia. “WHO WANTS A SOLID GOLD RIFLE? I HAVE A- wait why the hell is there a solid gold rifle here?” With considerable effort, she tossed it to the side. “There has to be something…”

She pulled the All-Night mask out of the pile. “…Well this’ll keep me from falling asleep, at least.” She slapped it onto her face. She didn’t feel any less tired, but there’d be no nodding off for sure now.

Once again, there was silence.

God, I’m lonely, Brutalight thought to herself. I wish any of the girls were here, or Six… Hell, even one of my moronic subjects would be preferable to this. She sighed audibly. She could go hunting for them…

No, that’d mean admitting defeat! She was king of the hill and she was going to stay that way – nobody was going to lure her away from it! “COME FACE ME ALREADY, COWARDS!”

Nothing.

“FINE THEN. I’LL JUST SIT HERE, UNOPPOSED, AND BECOME THE FINAL BOSS OF THE HUNGER GAMES!” She raised her hoof into the air and shook it as violently as she could. She tossed a grenade into the forest just to have an explosion punctuate her claim.

Nothing.

She groaned. There were no books in the pile, so she started doing the next best thing to do when you’re bored.

Meticulously sort a pile of random junk into neat, organized piles of random junk to make it easier to find everything.

~~~

The screams of Brutalight from the television woke Flutterfree and Evening up in a panic. They were ready to fight for their lives.

Pinkie held up her hooves. “Woah woah woah! Calm down everypony! That’s just the sound of Brutalight losing her sani… Wait, hold on, that’s a dumb sentence. Uh… If she’s already insane what other part of her mind can she lose? Eve, help me here.”

“Give me a moment to lower my adrenaline,” Eve said, clutching her chest as if it were about to explode. “Good galloping grapes…”

Flutterfree rubbed her eyes, trying to focus less on her feeling of internal panic and more on practical matters. “What time is it?”

“Morning’o’clock,” Pinkie said. “Which is to say I have no idea, days may not even be twenty-four hours here.”

Eve rubbed her eyes, summoning a cup of coffee from the aether. “I did not need to wake up like this…”

“Did anything happen in the night?” Flutterfree asked.

Pinkie shook her head. “TV was static until Brutalight started screaming.”

“Do we… listen to her?”

“Aha, no,” Eve said. “Who knows what kind of world-ending powers she’s got in that stash?”

“Well it did have Raging Sights, but not anymore,” Pinkie said.

“And if there’s anything else of that power level or utility, we’re screwed if we try to take her on.”

“We’ll have to do it eventually,” Flutterfree pointed out.

“Let someone else do it,” Eve grunted. “In case it isn’t obvious I really don’t want to go face her.”

“Got it,” Pinkie said. “But we’ll have to do something. We can’t just hide in our house the entire games.”

“Why not?”

“Much higher chances of losing and also of ticking Them off to interfere.” Pinkie shrugged. “I mean, in the original Hunger Games the overlords or whatever would interfere from time to time if they felt like it.”

“Original?”

“Them aren’t being very creative. They just saw this formula and copy/pasted it.”

“Maybe if they applied themselves they wouldn’t be so bored!”

Flutterfree nodded. “They could be more dangerous that way...”

Eve wasn’t sure how to think about Them at this point, so she just shook her head. “Right, plan. Plan is good. Go out and hunt for other contestants with my magic sense?”

“Or lure them to us,” Pinkie suggested. “Do something flashy, let people know where we are, then lead them into a trap!”

“I like that idea,” Flutterfree said.

“You’ll most likely be the bait, though,” Eve pointed out. “Weakest looking, ‘easy’ kill.”

“…I like the idea less now, but still more than going out and hunting.”

“I can set up magic traps, Pinkie can set up party cannons. …You can, right?”

Pinkie pulled out a machine gun laced with miniature flamethrowers. “I have a lot more freedom right now.”

“I can tell. That’s good for us.” Eve rubbed her hooves together. “So, we set up traps, Flutterfree, are you willing to fly above the treeline for a short while, using Lolo to grab attention?”

“Won’t that look suspicious?”

“Not if you look like you’re trying to search for something.”

Flutterfree thought about this for a moment and nodded. “All right. But they’re going to try to shoot me down.”

Eve cast a barrier spell on Flutterfree. “There you go. If a bullet hits you it’s going to hurt, but it won’t break anything. Try to be back down before anything more impressive tries to shoot you.”

Flutterfree sighed. “Here I am, accepting the role of bait with open wings…”

Pinkie put a blue ribbon on Flutterfree’s chest. Number one bait pegasus. “Yep!”

“Let’s just get this over with.” She crawled out of their room back into the arena proper, the wind whipping in her mane. The sun was already a fair ways up the sky, casting the entire forest in a late-morning glow.

Eve and Pinkie crawled out behind her. “We’ll set up a mile that way,” Eve said, making notes in her head. “They won’t be able to find our base.” She lit her horn, teleporting them the entire mile in an instant, into a part of the forest that looked identical to the one they had just left, minus a mysterious hole.

“I wonder if they just copy-pasted tree patterns,” Pinkie mused. “Anyway, party traps.” She started pulling cannon after cannon out of her mane and stuffing them behind trees that should have been too thin to hide behind. The cannons vanished anyway. “Laced with razor-sharp confetti bred to kill!”

“Exhibit A of why everyone should be terrified of Pinkie Pie,” Eve observed, smirking.

“Hey, you don’t have to worry about collateral damage either, feel free to use Seraphim to its full potential,” Pinkie reminded her.

“I’m not making the arena explode in a nuke.”

“If you could find a way to survive it you’d win!”

“And anyone else who figured out how to survive it as well,” Eve pointed out, using her horn to lay magical traps all around them, the spells glowing purple for a while before vanishing into the surface they were placed on.

“Eh, it’s a thought,” Pinkie said, bouncing around, checking her own traps. “All ready!”

Eve made herself and Pinkie invisible. “We’ll be hiding right here, Flutterfree. You go up, fly around with Lolo, and then come back down. Do it faster if you get shot at.”

“Oooh! Oooh! If she gets shot make her look injured!” Pinkie suggested

“All right, that too,” Eve said. “Then we’ll wait for anyone to fall for it.”

Flutterfree took a breath and spread her wings. “Here I go…” She launched into the air and surrounded herself with the spirographs of Lolo, looking around the forest arena carefully. She temporarily removed Eve and Pinkie’s invisibility, and made Eve’s traps glow a soft purple. Flutterfree did see Corona flying around nearby, but the princess ignored her.

Flutterfree didn’t get much chance to look for other things, for a rocky boulder came flying from a fair distance away right for her. Probably from Toph. She ducked under the rock, but a bullet hit her in the side. Eve’s barrier spell caught it, saving her from the damage, not the inertia. She entered a tailspin and crashed into a nearby tree.

“Ow,” she muttered, recalling Lolo.

Eve levitated her out of the tree and set her in the middle of all the traps. With a quick spell, she made it look like Flutterfree had suffered a bullet wound… An illusion which Lolo removed in an instant.

“…I’m actually going to have to make you bleed Flutterfree, sorry,” Eve said.

“It’s fine,” Flutterfree said. “Just do it.”

Eve cut a few light scrapes into Fluterfree’s skin, and made one small hole that, from a distance, might look like a bullet had made it. She looked very vulnerable.

“How do you feel?” Eve asked.

“…Very itchy,” Flutterfree responded.

“Good.”

“Try not to get hungry for your own blood!” Pinkie suggested.

“…Helpful,” Flutterfree muttered.

Eve cleared her throat. “Everyone quiet. Be prepared for anyone to show up.”

~~~

Corona took one look at Flutterfree and thought that’s a trap.

Had she not already been doing something, she would have considered letting herself fall into the trap in the hopes of finding someone else. Lucky for her she didn’t even have to consider that, because she was hot on the trail of Raging Sights. She had picked up the magical signature a few minutes ago and had been following it ever since, flying just below the canopy to minimize her own visibility.

Her device was calling out to her. The closer she got, the stronger she felt their connection. It pounded in her heart, a deep desire to reclaim a part of her – a part of her she had scarcely let leave her side ever since she’d found it.

She was almost consumed by the desire to reunite – but she managed to keep enough of her awareness to realize she should probably be quiet. She stopped flying when she sensed she was really close, dropping low to the ground.

Raging Sights called to her. Corona saw her device – Thrackerzod wore Raging Sights around her neck. Good, it would be as simple as taking on the eldritch fill-

Crapbaskets, Corona cursed. Rohan.

She couldn’t take Rohan.

Not because she wouldn’t win in a fight – she definitely could, since she knew his ability relied on sight. Just use a blindfold and rely completely on magic sense, problem solved.

The problem was that when she first met Rohan the man had written a command in her.

Cannot harm Rohan Kishibe.

She still couldn’t harm him, no matter what. He was immune to her. And because he was traveling with Thrackerzod, brute force was suddenly out of the question. This meant she’d have to go with stealth…

It was times like this she wished she’d bothered to learn the invisibility spell.

This was going to be tricky, especially with how magically sensitive Thrackerzod could be. Corona was surprised the eldritch unicorn hadn’t noticed her presence already, or noticed what Raging Sights was doing.

She summoned Bacon Pancakes. She told her Stand to ready one of its long-range pins. It shot forth, grabbed Raging Sights with its power, and pulled it back to Corona.

Corona had a teleport prepared, but something gave her pause – Thrackerzod had winked at her after she took it.

Was she not under Rohan’s control?

Thrackerzod cleared her throat. “Hey Rohan. The device is gone.”

“…What!?”

“I mean it’s not around my neck anymore.” Thrackerzod gestured at her neck. “Someone must have taken it.”

Rohan Summoned Heaven’s Door and began scanning the trees around them – but Corona was already gone. “Why wouldn’t they attack us?”

“Scared of you?” Thrackerzod suggested. “Or me?”

“It must have been Corona,” Rohan said. “She’s unable to attack me, but she would have a personal connection to that device… How could you not have noticed?”

“Maybe I just don’t give a na’thz about anything right about now?”

Rohan folded his hands together. “Fine. Keep better watch, Thrackerzod. Next time something may try to kill us.” They walked away.

Thrackerzod smirked. She loved loopholes. Rohan didn’t need protecting from Corona at all, so the eldritch unicorn simply hadn’t offered any helpful information.

And now Corona was back to her old self, dress, device, and all. Ready to kick some serious flank.

~~~

Blackjack was not a smart pony.

Oh, hey, look, target! She grabbed her gun and fired, hitting Flutterfree dead on. Direct hit! She galloped towards where Flutterfree had fallen, the thought that it might be a trap being the furthest thing from her mind.

She didn’t even notice the flying boulder, somehow. She just charged through the woods.

She did see the second boulder.

When it hit her.

She was made of considerably sterner stuff than any normal pony – or even a standard alicorn – but taking a boulder to the side at high speed was still more than enough to crack a rib and blast the wind out of her.

Mending that rib would probably take the rest of her reserves, and it would take time…

Fuck it, she was done running. She whirled in the direction the boulder had come, catching sight of Toph in the trees. Blackjack fired a few white magic bolts at the Queen of Lai. She took them head on – not able to register that Blackjack had even cast a projectile spell until the bullets hit her.

“That’s not a laser spell,” Toph muttered, clutching the wounds in her midsection. “Definitely wasn’t expecting that.”

Blackjack fired more magic bullets rather than wasting real bullets on Toph. Toph was smart enough to try to dodge, but the bolts still moved too fast and were impossible for her to detect. She knew running wasn’t going to help either, so she was just going to have to get creative. She pushed herself forward with a brick of earth, holding her hand out to Blackjack.

“Ha, and I thought I was a mo-” Toph bent the metal in Blackjack’s legs, driving her into the ground. Toph twisted her feet, crushing the mechanical hooves between the earth.

“AUGH!” Blackjack shouted, firing more magic bolts. Toph doged one, but another hit her in the shoulder, knocking her back.

Blackjack used brute force to rip her legs out of the ground, tearing off their cybernetic tips. Artificial though they were, the act of severing the ends of four limbs was still excruciating.

Blackjack was nothing if not used to pain, however. She brought the broken, jagged edge of her front leg down to bear on Toph.

The woman reacted quickly, pulling a weapon out from under her shirt.

The Starmetal sword. My Starmetal sword! Blackjack’s first thought was anger – the second was pain that could only be caused by an anti-magic blade slicing her down the leg.

Blackjack drove her other jagged leg into the side of Toph’s face, a decidedly more lethal blow. Already weak from the blood loss and strain, Toph lost her grip on the sword.

Blackjack grabbed it with her telekinesis and held it to Toph’s neck. “Gotcha.”

“…Yeah,” Toph coughed. “Hurry up and take me out before I think of something.”

“A good idea,” Blackjack admitted, breathing heavily. “Goodbye.”

“Corona’s gonna getcha now.”

“I bet she is,” Blackjack said, grunting as she performed the final act. She’d seen it so many times before she was mostly desensitised to it.

She sighed and started using Toph’s clothing to patch herself up. If she’d had her armor on, Blackjack could have eaten that to refuel herself… As it was, there were only a few pieces of royal jewelry on Toph. Not enough to restore anything of any significance. Blackjack was now down all her hooves and had a completely useless leg.

Her systems could repair though… If she detached all the artificial parts of the pointless leg, the other three would work themselves back to health with time. She used the Starmetal sword to carve off the mechanical bits of the split leg, then started chewing on them.

It never ceased to amaze her what she could eat with this cyborg body. Gemstones, glass, metal… Horrendously uncomfortable, but hey, if it worked…

She moved on without another look at Toph. She had to crawl to a place that wasn’t quite so out in the open…

~~~

Jotaro strode through the forest, following some hoof tracks he was relatively sure belonged to Rev, given how they had movement patterns similar to Nova’s, and both Nova and Starbeat were already out. She was moving alone, so a simple time stop ORA ORA combo would easily take her out. But he wasn’t going to chance that she had time exploits hidden in her array of skills – stealth was important.

One may find it odd that a man as big as Jotaro would consider stealth, but when you’re a biologist who works in the field you had better learn how to observe animals without being seen or you’re doomed to fail pretty quickly.

He suddenly came to the end of the tracks. There were no signs of continuing hoofprints.

“Yare yare daze…” Jotaro muttered. She had either teleported away or backtracked long before he arrived. Teleportation seemed more likely, since it would have been odd for someone who knew a backtracking technique to make the hoofprints this obvious in the first place.

He wasn’t going to be able to find her now, regardless. He began walking in a random direction, continuing the hunt. He wasn’t going to call attention to himself for a ‘trap’ – that was just asking for trouble from multiple avenues. The best chances for survival were to remain hidden, play smart, and be as lethal as quickly as possible.

Not to mention have contingency plans for every opponent.

His current plan to beat Rohan was to find another tribute with a gun and take that. If Jotaro had a lethal long-range weapon, Rohan would fall easily. The issue was finding a gun.

Alushy was also a problem with her advanced regeneration. Cutting off her head and running would only have a temporary effect – the head would grow back, eventually. Jotaro’s best bet was to abuse time stop like nothing else and tear Alushy in the middle of an attack, getting her to cut herself in half.

Corona, he had two contingency plans for. If she had her device with her, Jotaro would need to shatter it, ruining her mental state. If she didn’t, a straight fight or stealth attack would work.

Valentine… Jotaro knew he’d have to be extremely lethal within stopped time, or Valentine was just going to be able to ‘revive’ himself with D4C. The headcrusher was the best option, and he didn’t like the chances of that one failing.

Brutalight presented a few options. Hit her with her own sword, or just sneak up and punch her head off.

Eve… Eve was the hardest. Seraphim automatically surrounded Eve with a protective barrier that would stop bullets and most magic projectiles. Getting close enough to ram a fist into her would be problematic due to Seraphim’s ability to erase Star Platinum from existence by making him ‘break’ the laws of physics. And that wasn’t even taking into account her magic sense and arcane mastery… Or the sheer variety of things she could do by rejecting reality.

He may have been strong, and in a fair fight he might have been able to pull through facing most opponents, but there was clearly more than one opponent, and remaining uninjured was a big deal for these games.

Kill them fast and before they have any idea.

It was at this point Jotaro tripped over a rock.

It took him less than a second to realize what this meant. He froze time. In the five seconds he had, he rotated around, scanning the forest.

There. A soft beam of light attached to where he was and with a direct line into a nearby tree. He saw Vriska sitting in that tree.

Good. Now I know where she is.

He had a second left, so he moved out of her luck-stealing sights. Time resumed.

“Fuck,” she said, noticing he wasn’t where he’d been just an instant ago.

“ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!” Star Platinum punched the tree Vriska was sitting in to the ground, dazing the troll considerably.

Jotaro jumped behind her, hitting her in the back of the head multiple times, but only one of the blows did any significant damage, cracking her skull.

This had mixed results. Her mental powers pulsed, freezing Jotaro for a second. She turned to look at him, cobalt blood running down her face.

That one glance was enough to lower his luck the rest of the way. His heart seized up, a sharp pain shooting through his chest. And he felt her still draining his luck. “STAR PLATINUM: THE WORLD!” Time froze again. Jotaro whaled on Vriska’s form with as many ORA’s as he could manage, but with every one he pulled a muscle or broke something. His luck was abysmal, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He died in the middle of the time stop, forcing time to resume sooner than normal.

Vriska wasn’t doing too hot herself. The blow to the back of her head was the worst, but she was bloodied in several other locations. Her overall luck in the fight had actually gone down from the sheer number of lethal punches she’d made nonlethal.

But she could still stand. “Sorry big guy.” Her normally confident features faltered as she examined his face – usually an impassive mask of strength, now twisted into immense pain.

She turned and limped away.

~~~

Valentine and Froppy walked through the forest, looking for victims.

“Jotaro?” Valentine asked.

“Attack from a distance and from behind.”

“Corona?”

“Decoy Valentines until one gets close enough to introduce her to herself.”

“Eve?”

Froppy furrowed her brow. “I still don’t think our plan for her works that well.”

Valentine folded his arms. “If we encounter her we must have something.”

“Even with your workaround she’s got magic, and Seraphim can do a lot more than just disable D4C.”

Valentine nodded. “That much is true. But we must be of one mind.”

“Ribbit. I will do as we’ve planned, but I’d prefer it if we thought of something el- get down.”

Valentine and Froppy crouched to the ground, cautious. “Where?” Valentine whispered.

“Two o’clock,” Froppy said, gesturing with her tongue. Valentine glanced that direction, seeing O’Neill and Daniel walking through the forest, both of them on edge. They hadn’t seen them yet… or at least it looked that way. With Crimson Sushi in effect, it was hard to be sure.

Valentine closed his eyes and listened closely. He heard their footsteps in the same direction he had seen them. They really were there, unless they had a really clever trick going on.

Valentine and Froppy pulled out their guns, both aiming at Daniel’s head. Both their bullets missed.

“Ribbit…” Froppy muttered, lowering her gun a considerable distance and firing while O’Neill and Daniel registered the first gunshots. She fired. A bullet that should have hit Daniel in the feet hit him in the chest, knocking him down.

“He’s making everything look higher than it actually is,” Froppy reported. “A-”

It was at this point all the trees appeared to scramble, including their perceptions of each other and O’Neill. Froppy was tossed to the side by Crimson Sushi, the freezing heat scarring her neck.

Valentine punched Crimson Sushi with D4C, the damage translating from the fish’s face to O’Neill. It was clear he wasn’t actually standing where they saw him, but they weren’t able to discern which angle the pained grunt had come from.

O’Neill opted to keep Crimson Sushi back away from his targets, pulling out a gun instead. Valentine took the hit right in the chest.

“Froppy! Flag!” he shouted. Froppy pulled an American flag out and draped it over Valentine. He vanished with the power of D4C. While he was gone, Froppy opted to jump high into the air to make it harder for O’Neill to shoot her. Not a single one of his three shots made contact with the bouncing frog.

Valentine returned, healthy as ever, with a dozen copies of himself. All of them winked, even though they couldn’t be sure they were actually looking at Froppy.

Froppy got the message – she aimed her gun and started shooting at the Valentines. The one individual O’Neill would be certain she’d never shoot – so he’d hide his real self behind one of them.

The third bullet hit the real O’Neill, forcing him to drop the illusion from the pain.

A version of Valentine with D4C appeared behind O’Neill. “Dojyaaaaan!” he called as D4C pulled another version of O’Neill from behind a tree. He threw the two men together, forcing them to fuse together. Them had managed to create a ‘false’ O’Neill that still reacted with O’Neill as if they were the same through D4C – as they collided, fractal-pattern cubes popped out of their bodies, exploding showers of blood around them. The two of them appeared as one being now, shuddering as they flew apart in every conceivable direction, reduced to a pile of blood and organic substance riddled with square holes.

Froppy shook her head. “No matter how many times I see that…”

“Brutal, I’m aware,” Valentine said, sending his alternate selves away. “But effective.”

Froppy made no further comments. She started examining the area. “…Where’s Daniel’s body?”

It was nowhere to be seen. The two of them stood in a fearful silence. Froppy hadn’t shot Daniel in the brain. ...He may have ascended.

But no judgment rained down upon them.

~~~

Eve was starting to wonder if they’d gotten anyone with the trick, or if they were sitting here in a trap nobody was going to fall into. Flutterfree was doing a good job looking like she was near death, but Eve could also see her getting bored. Not a single trap had gone off, and Eve hadn’t sensed anything coming closer to them.

She was wondering if she’d just have to call it off.

“Just a little longer,” Pinkie whispered in her ear. The sudden presence of an invisible Pinkie Pie next to Eve sent a chill down her spine.

“Aaaaa…” Eve said, holding her chest, wishing she didn’t need her ears on. “Pinkie, don’t do that!”

“Shhhh.” Pinkie hissed, placing an invisible hoof on Eve’s invisible face.

“Mmmf.”

“We’re luring someone,” Pinkie assured her.

Eve noticed that Pinkie’s hoof was shaking. “…Pinkie, are you okay?”

“Not really, but we’re not going to have time to discuss that.”

“Why n-”

One of Eve’s spells went off to the south, sending a purple cloud of gas into the air. A party cannon went off shortly afterward, and they saw a tremendous amount of blood shoot into the air.

Eve readied herself, summoning Seraphim to her side, the Stand’s three rings rotating faster and faster as her adrenaline levels rose. She knew who was coming.

Two more of Eve’s traps went off alongside another one of Pinkie’s pieces of razor confetti. Walking right into the trap, exactly as planned.

Eve didn’t feel confident about this. The person who was coming wouldn’t be easy to kill… Far from it.

A beast torn limb from limb, connected together only by a mess of dark magic, teeth, and menacing eyes, leaped at them, triggering the closest of Eve’s magic traps. The form of the beast became little more than dark sludge flying into the air.

Pinkie threw an invisible hammer at it, but the beast caught it with a yellow wing. The darkness coalesced into the wholly vampiric form of Alushy. She brandished the bow of light, firing bolt after bolt at Eve even though she was still invisible.

So much for stealth. Seraphim caught the weapons while Eve stopped maintaining the invisibility spell.

Alushy entered a dive-bomb, narrowly dodging some of Lolo’s vines sent to trap the vampire. The dive-bomb quickly went out of control when Pinkie slammed a hammer across Alushy’s head, spraying at least a gallon of blood over the clearing.

“You’re like a tomato,” Pinkie commented as Alushy hit the ground.

“It comes with the territory.” Alushy said, baring her teeth. It was at this point her teeth vanished, her red eyes became the cyan of a standard Fluttershy, and the dark aura around her vanished completely. “…Fuck,” she said, her voice somehow maintaining the unholy depth it always had.

Seraphim was in reality altering mode, all three rings aligned with a blue glow in the middle. “Gotcha.”

Alushy used her wings to pull back on the bow of light, aiming it for Eve’s face. While Seraphim was altering reality, it wasn’t protecting her in any other way. Eve knew she didn’t have time to shift reality again, but she was going to try, going for a set of physics where internal organic chemicals tended to spontaneously combust, all the while preparing her own magic to catch the arrow. She didn’t like her chances, but at least she had them.

Alushy turned around at the last second and shot Pinkie between the eyes. Her vividly candy-red blood seeped from the wound, down her face.

Pinkie looked at the arrow’s back half, shaking.

She knew this was coming, Eve realized with no small amount of horror.

Pinkie made a halfhearted wave at her friends before slumping forward, painting the ground red.

Alushy went up like a light, internally combusting due to Seraphim, unable to regenerate because of the magic void. She was reduced to cinders that would never rise again.

Just to be sure Eve vaporized the dust with a laser of her own.

Alushy was dead.

So was Pinkie.

Eve stared at the form of the pink party pony, sitting there on the grass, coloring it an unnaturally bright color. Flutterfree did the same, staring at her from her prone position.

“I… I don’t know what to feel,” Eve said, smacking herself in the head. “I know she isn’t gone, she’ll be back once all of this is over, so part of me just thinks I should move on. But then there’s this other part of me that can’t stop staring. Has she ever bled before, Flutterfree? That’s not a natural color!”

“I’ve seen other Pinkies for sure,” Flutterfree said. “But she’s usually… rubbery. …Maybe she lost her ‘Pinkie Shield’ because this event has no consequences…?” She blinked. “What are we supposed to think here?”

“She was scared…” Eve said, looking at Pinkie with a sad expression. “Even if this isn’t permanent… She still gets to experience it. What it feels like to die.”

Flutterfree gulped. “…It’s a horrible feeling, Eve. I… I’m not even sure it qualifies as a feeling. More like a lack of it. All sensation suddenly cuts. After that…? I ended up in a world of clouds. I don’t know where Them are keeping Pinkie’s spirit. For all I know it’s a box of nothing, freezing her…” Tears began to roll down her face. “Everyone in this arena is going to have to experience this! Everyone but one! Even Alushy!”

Eve put a wing around Flutterfree. “…Let’s go back to our home. We’ve done enough for today.”

“…I hope Corona’s going to be okay,” Flutterfree said.

“She’s strong,” Eve said. “She can do what she needs to do if the situation demands it.”

“But how will she cope with killing her friends? Even if none of this is real, it’s…” She couldn’t stop looking at Pinkie. “It’s too realistic. This isn’t some virtual game…”

Eve shook her head. “It isn’t… But it’s best if we think of it that way.” She lit her horn, giving Flutterfree her bow of light and initiating the teleports back to the base Pinkie constructed for them.

The two burst into tears the moment they saw the interior with the still-functioning television. They wouldn’t be leaving the rest of the day.

~~~

Corona sat in a tree, preening her feathers. She was part bird now, so it was a thing she had to do. Naturally she used her hands rather than her mouth for the operation.

In her lap was a globe of glass she had created from the aether, filled with a white wispy energy. Her secret weapon.

…If she would ever use it.

As it was, she had spent the entire day watching and waiting, gathering things for herself and getting more than powerful enough to take the majority of contestants in the arena. However, she had never instigated a single fight – merely watched a couple take place, taking what advantages she could from the aftermath. She’d killed a grand total of zero so far. She’d only fought Thrackerzod at the very start for Raging Sights, and that hadn’t gone anywhere.

She glanced at the crystals on the back of her hands – each one partly her necklace of empathy, partly Raging Sights. What do you think?

Victory is preferred.

I know that RS, but do we even want to win if it means killing?

Not true killing.

No death is meaningless RS, not even temporary ones.

The meaning changes.

I suppose so… It still doesn’t sit right with me.

You don’t have to start any fights.

Is that really what’s best here, though? Only fight in defense of myself?

The other option is to go hunting.

And I’d make quick work of most of them here, I know… Corona sighed. I just don’t want to. I really don’t want to.

Then don’t.

You’re making it simpler than it is.

I’m a magical device. It’s my job.

Fair enough. Corona looked into the distance, realizing that she had spent almost the entire day doing nothing. The sun was already heading for the horizon again. Let’s talk about this tomorrow. Starting anything now would just be somewhat pointless.

“…You okay up there?”

Corona raised an eyebrow, looking down to see Rev. “I’m supposed to kill you, you know,” Corona said.

“I don’t think you will. You have my promise that I won’t fight you if you don’t fight me.”

“Fair enough,” Corona said, gliding down from the tree. “If you’re here for an alliance I’m going to have to decline.”

Rev nodded in understanding. “I was hopeful we would band together over our hatred of death, but if it is not to be, it is not to be.”

“Been avoiding fights too, huh?”

Rev nodded. “I cannot fully defy Them’s plans, but I can try to be as boring as possible to annoy them.”

“Hey, you know things right? What can you tell me about these ‘Them’ types?”

“Do you remember when Pucci kidnapped Jolyne and ran through the D-Sphere?”

“…Vaguely. I wasn’t there personally.”

“Well, Pucci had heard rumors of the ‘highest’ universe in the D-sphere, known as the Pinnacle. He hoped to go there and become like a god.” Rev shook her head. “What actually happens if you manage to ascend all the way to the Pinnacle is you become one of Them – and you have to ascend by personal merit and spiritual understanding, not dimensional devices.”

“…So they’re gods?”

“Of a sort. You know how Earth Tau’ri has the Ascended, beings who become energy by meditation, thought, and understanding?”

“How could I forget?”

“Good. Imagine those Ascended beings realizing that another plane exists above their own, and then another, and another, and another. Over eons and eons, various ‘spiritual’-type beings approached the Pinnacle, until the race that Them used to be arrived. All at once, they had reached the top of pure-spirit meditation. I hear they were benevolent guardian gods of the multiverse at first.”

“But then?”

“Then they got bored. Really bored. And now Them are hated across the multiverse for their many attempts to cure their boredom. …I’ve never been a part of their games, but I’ve known people who have. The results are rarely pretty. Be glad they decided these games had to have no permanent consequences. Things are usually more entertaining when the stakes are higher.”

Corona leaned back. “…And why do they call themselves Them? That’s gotta be confusing.”

“This is just a rumor, but I’m pretty sure it’s because they are composed of more than one race that reached the Pinnacle. So they had no name, and Them really didn’t care to give themselves one, so everyone just started calling them Them.”

“…That’s confusing.”

“Don’t I know it,” Rev admitted with a sigh. “I wouldn’t try to go against Them. If it’s a game they want, it’s a game they’ll get. If you want to stick it to them, I’d suggest being as boring as possible.”

“Not as easy as it sounds.”

“No. It isn’t.” Rev lit her horn. “I’m off to go avoid fights some more. Do what you want. Who knows, maybe you’ll win and get a wish.”

“…But what would I wish for?”

Rev smiled at her. “Think about it for a second.”

“…The easy immortality,” Corona said. “If I win… I could stop all the research in one fell swoop…”

“The question you must ask yourself is if it is worth it,” Rev said. “I think you’ll be up all night on that one.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Rev teleported away. Corona returned to her tree to ponder what she’d just learned.

~~~

The sun was setting again.

Brutalight tore the All-Night mask off her face and threw it to the ground, roaring in rage. “FINE THEN! IF YOU WON’T COME TO ME, I’LL COME TO YOU!”

She armed herself, hanging three different magical pendants around her neck, levitating a half-dozen guns onto her back, and using her magic to fashion the leftover metal into a suit of armor. She had more than enough resources in the Cornucopia for a full set. She downed an entire magic energy bar, providing her with enough power to make her horn glow continually. She spread her wings and took to the air.

Her first order of business was to completely destroy any leftover items in the Cornucopia so no other contestants could even think about having them. The center of the arena was soon a smoldering crater.

“THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR NOT ACCEPTING THE CHALLENGE! NO REWARD! NO MORE MOUND OF TREASURE!” She grinned evilly. “TONIGHT, I SHALL HUNT YOU IN YOUR SLEEP! NOTHING WILL PROTECT YOU FROM BRUTALIGHT SPARCAKE, ELEMENT OF INSANITY!”

She twitched – holy hell she was tired right now. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her. She was not going to rest until she got another kill under her belt. The night would ring with the screams of murder if she had anything to say about it.

…If Fluttershout were here she’d just be able to kill them by screaming. Anything within earshot would be dead.

She sighed, flying away into the sunset.

~~~

Eve and Flutterfree lay in their respective couch-beds, staring at the ceiling.

“GUESS WHAT CONTESTANTS!?” the Them shouted, scaring the stuffing out of the two ponies. “It’s time for another nightly update! Day 2 has come to a close and a grand total of five more contestants are now out of the race, left behind in the dust! Or pools of blood, depending.”

“…Screw you,” Eve muttered, putting a pillow over her ears. It didn’t help drown out the voice.

“Those fallen today are O’Neill, Jotaro, Toph, Pinkie, and Alushy – such a shame, I had money riding on Alushy making it further. You’d think it’d be a safe bet that Jenny’s killer would be smarter, but apparently not.”

“…That answers that question,” Flutterfree said.

“Only thirteen contestants remain, just over half the original number! You’re all really good at killing each other, usually these things last a bit longer! There have already been a few twists and turns in this amazing game of life and death, we’re all dying to see what you come up with tomorrow!”

“My wish is going to be that they never get to have one of these games again,” Eve muttered through the pillow.

Flutterfree understood her friend just fine. “I don’t think they’ll grant that wish.”

“I know…” Eve sighed. “Let’s just try to get some sleep. We’ll need it.”

The two went to bed, the television soon reverting to an image of static rather than the two of them.

~~~

Corona couldn’t sleep.

All she could do was wonder what she’d have to do.

She could do it, she knew she could. She could kill. She’d done it many times at this point, and to people she’d known. She’d done it when it was real. Why was she so hung up now?

If she won, she would be able to end death from aging across Merodi Universalis, just like that. She would have taken the next step in defeating death once and for all, a huge victory in her personal war. A bit of fake-killing in a stupid game shouldn’t stop her from taking hold of that, should it?

…But if she did, it would force her to de-‘human’-ize everything that was happening here. To distance herself from the violence. To fight close friends. Toph may have been gone, but there were others she never wanted to fight. …Ever.

What if you need to at some point? she asked herself, staring at the stars. Not here, but out there in the real world. They could have gone mad, or could be doing something they think is right but is wrong… None of us are infallible.

She really didn’t like that thought.

She put her hands over her eyes. “Ugh…” She pulled out a globe of white energy and examined it. “Why do I even have you if I’m not going to use you? It’s just cruel.”

The energy made no response.

Corona sighed, pocketing the globe again.

It didn’t matter, did it? She either had to fight, or she had to lose. And if she didn’t even try to get the wish, she’d never forgive herself. She had to fight with whatever she had and accept the consequences.

There weren’t any? That was a lie. There were. No death was meaningless – she would not allow herself to think that, even here. Never.

She would use what she had, and she would win.

By killing, death would be defeated.

~~~

Brutalight woke up with the sun.

Wait, I fell asleep?

She opened her eyes and tried to lift her head, but found that she was caked to Rev’s body with dried blood. She, being the crazy mare she was, took this in stride, using her magic to separate her face from the corpse without really thinking about it.

She looked down at Rev, trying to remember what happened last night.

I was walking… I sensed her magic… We fought… CLEARLY I won the encounter, but I must have passed out or something… Brutalight shook her head, cleaning herself up with a quick set of spells. At least I got a kill.

She looked around. Half her guns were broken, she was missing one of her amulets, most of her armor was trashed, and she had a rather serious wound on her left wing. She wouldn’t be flying for a while.

She was in what amounted to Rev’s ‘camp’, which was just a tree with a nook in it she could use for storage. There was a large book, a handful of magically-summoned foodstuffs, and a holy necklace that filled Brutalight with an uneasy feeling. She was immensely thankful she hadn’t touched it in the middle of her sleep.

It was already late morning. Had another contestant come around while she was sleeping, she would have been dead.

I really should have kept that All-Night mask, she thought, though she did admit it was nice to feel rested. Also nice to have killed again.

But Rev wasn’t Eve.

Eve was who Brutalight really wanted to crush between her bloody hooves… Or slice into a million pieces with her blades… Or just blow up with magic. Anything, really. Anything at all.

The longer she waited the more creative and unrealistic ideas she got.

She picked up all her things that weren’t broken and set out, on the prowl for targets.

A slasher smile spread across her face. “And then there were twelve. I’m coming for you, Evening Sparkle.”

~~~

Eve finally woke up when she heard Brutalight taunt her from the television.

She sighed. “Well, I suppose we better go out there again today,” Eve said, checking the fridge for breakfast. “Set up another trap, or just try regular hunting…”

“The carpet is red,” Flutterfree said, staring at the offending floor like it wanted to eat her. “The carpet is candy red, Eve.”

Eve looked down. “…Oh.” She lit her horn, changing the color of the carpet to a muted purple. “T-there we go, better.”

“…Eve?”

“Yes, Flutterfree?”

“…Do we have to go out today?”

Eve looked at the hole in the wall that led outside. She knew out there was a forest in midday where people were going to be brutally killed. If they went out there, they would be part of the killing, part of the violence. Another one of them might fall to it. To the destruction.

“I… No. No we don’t have to. We don’t have to suddenly be all better,” Eve declared. “I don’t care if there’s ‘no consequences’ here. There most certainly are consequences, there are things we just can’t move past in an instant. We watched our friend die in front of us. She was in pain, she was scared, and she waved to us!” Eve wiped her face. “We can take a day off! YOU HEAR ME!? WE CAN TAKE A DAY OFF!”

There was no response from Them.

Eve sighed, turning to Flutterfree.

Flutterfree pulled her into a hug. “Thank you, Eve.”

Eve nodded, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “What are we going to do when this actually happens?”

Flutterfree looked at the television screen. “…Try to get each other back.”

“But we got you back, Flutterfree. That’s not always going to work.”

Flutterfree nodded slowly. “If it doesn’t… Those of us who are left will comfort each other. We’ll stand together.”

“Together…” Eve smiled and let out a sigh of relief. “Together…”

“Always.”

~~~

“I see three options,” Valentine said as he and Froppy trekked through the woods in search of victims.

“For what?”

“For what happened with Daniel.” He put his hand to his eyes, trying to look into the distance. “He could have fled after you shot him, surviving the wound.”

“Unlikely.”

“There could have been a health potion, there’s no way for us to know if he had one or not. But it is the least likely of the options. The second is that he Ascended and is toying with us.”

Froppy nodded slowly. “Seems very likely. Maybe he wants to make us think we’ve won, only to take it away at the last minute?”

“Possible, but there’s a problem with that theory.” Valentine folded his hands together. “As an Ascended, I cannot think of a single individual here he could not kill with a simple thought. Even those with unusual powers that could affect him would not be able to take him directly. Why would he not, once Ascending, just choose to declare himself the winner instantly?”

Froppy didn’t have an answer for that.

“This is where the third option comes in. Someone was watching the fight with Daniel. Perhaps they absorbed his energy, technically not killing him, but taking him out of commission… Better for us than facing a straight Ascended being, but problematic for any number of other reasons.”

“…I prefer to think he just had a health potion. Ribbit.”

“We must keep our minds open to all possibillitie-”

“HEAVEN’S DOOR!” Rohan shouted, opening Valentine’s face up with his Stand. He barely wrote anything into the book when another Valentine stepped out from behind a tree and shot the open Valentine.

Rohan moved to use Heaven’s Door on the new one. “Thrackerzod, back me up!”

“Of course master,” Thrackerzod said with a grunt. A deep, dark energy began to flow off her.

“FROPPY, SHIELD YOUR MIND!” Valentine yelled before he was opened up like a book and shot again.

Froppy did as she was told, remembering her training to protect her mind from eldritch influence. They get to you through sight and sound most of all, so those senses must be done away with. Stop thinking about your senses, act only from memory. Act from instinct, not from mind, for instinct cannot be corrupted.

Froppy performed one calculation – how to get to Thrackerzod – and then blanked her mind. Her Quirk certainly made it easy to do this. All she had to do was let the frog part of her take over. As far as the frog was concerned, Thrackerzod was a particularly large fly…

She shut her eyes and threw her tongue out, wrapping the fleshy limb around the eldritch unicorn. She pulled tight, snapping the pony’s spine.

Thrackerzod didn’t particularly care about the health of her spine – she was having a bad day and Froppy would serve as a good source of stress relief. She could worry about insignificant things like crippling pain later. She pulled her horn back, preparing to kill the frog woman in an instant.

It was at this moment Froppy pulled her tongue back and tried to eat Thrackerzod.

Such things happened when you let instinct take over.

“W-what!?” Thrackerzod blurted, losing all focus on what she was doing. Her front hoof was in Froppy’s throat. Her unicorn nature squirmed at how disgusting it felt. Her eldritch nature seethed in rage that such a lowly life form was trying to eat her. How stupid was she, there was no way Thrackerzod was going to fit in there!

Thrackerzod was suplexed into the ground, her skull cracking against a rock. Froppy was trying to pop her leg off, and in the process was doing immense amounts of damage to Thrackerzod’s mortal shell.

This has gone on long enough, Thrackerzod thought. I’m leagues above this minor superhero. She’s just a frog! Thrackerzod forced an explosion out of the tip of her ingested hoof, blowing a hole through Froppy’s insides, forcing mutations within her. Eyes appeared where none should have been, organs became hard, and a couple of tentacles sprouted from her back.

Froppy should have been debilitated by the maddening pain and sudden rush of insanity. She wasn’t – she was really following her training, giving her everything to her instinct. She still didn’t have to open her eyes – she still had a tight grip on Thrackerzod’s leg with her mouth. She heaved, dousing her with stomach acid.

Thrackerzod’s instincts made her recoil – but her broken back would not take the level of retreat she was trying for. She pulled her leg away, but fell flat on her back. Her body wasn’t listening to anything her mind wanted it to do. She needed to go into shock, she needed to pass out, but her eldritch mind demanded she keep fighting.

Froppy had to come out of her pure-instinct stupor because she’d lost track of Thrackerzod’s location. The eldritch nature of the pony began to worm its way into her mind and would consume her in a matter of seconds.

That was enough time to aim a gun and fire all its bullets into Thrackerzod’s skull. Then she started laughing.

She’d won. That was definitely not a matchup she was supposed to win. Not by any stretch of the imagination…

…But she was now aware enough to know she had a hole in her stomach, had suffered numerous mutations, and was about to go completely mad from worming eldritch energies.

To top it all off, Rohan decided to use Heaven’s Door on her. He was getting really tired of opening up different Valentines, only for them to get shot. “Obey Rohan Kishibe’s every command!” he wrote, shouting it at the same time. “Find me the real Valentine!”

Froppy made it one hop before collapsing on the ground, blood pooling around her. She started writhing in agony, her body finally catching up with all the injuries and trauma.

One of the Valentines took out a gun and shot her, removing Rohan’s new pawn from the equation.

“Where’s D4C?” Rohan demanded, taking a step back from the four Valentines he could see.

“Not on any of us,” two of them said. “D4C is remaining far from you, so you can never order the core to do anything.”

The other two drew guns, aiming at Rohan. They fired – one of the bullets hit him in one of his legs, the other missing by a hair. They fired again.

“‘MURICA, FUCK YEAH!” Blackjack shouted, coming out of nowhere, landing solidly on her three remaining legs. She used her shield to deflect the bullets back into the Valentines that had fired them, knocking them down. “Stole your battle cry.” She fired magical bullets at the other two she could see, taking them out as well. “Ni-”

“Dojyaaan!” Valentine called. An invisible fist hit Blackjack across the face, knocking her to the side.

“There it was!” Rohan shouted, summoning Heaven’s Door. “Where is he!?”

“Oh. You exist,” Blackjack said, looking at Rohan. “You know, I probably should have figured he was shooting at someone and looked for them first…”

“Shut up!” Rohan said, realizing that more and more Valentines were coming out from behind the trees. “Which one!?”

“I can’t see Stands so why are you asking me?”

“I SAID SHUT UP!”

Then Rohan saw D4C’s arm reaching out from under a large leaf lying on the ground.

The D4C Valentine isn’t currently in this universe.

No matter. Heaven’s Door may not have been a physically powerful Stand, but it was still a Stand – and could deal damage to other Stands. Heaven’s Door ran to punch D4C’s arm, ready to break the core Valentine’s limb.

Instead Heaven’s Door punched an alternate version of Rohan. They weren’t the same, so they didn’t explode, but it was enough of a scare to make Rohan jump back.

“This is gonna be a fun fight!” Blackjack said, firing at more and more Valentines. “Woo, I like this guy’s style!”

“HEAVEN’S DOOR!” Rohan shouted, popping Blackjack open like a book. Get Rohan Kishibe out of here. He wrote. Blackjack obliged, teleporting them away.

The Valentines lowered their weapons. The core Valentine dragged himself out from under the leaf using D4C, hand to his chin. “They fled,” he mused. One would think he would start talking to himself, but all the Valentines knew exactly what had happened and felt no need to comment on it.

They all turned to look at Froppy’s body. The core Valentine pulled out a large flag and covered her with it, sending her to another dimension. It was the best burial he had the time to give her.

He saluted – and then left.

~~~

Vriska was heavily injured.

From her vantage point in a nearby tree, Corona was having second thoughts. She’d been moving around looking for other contestants for most of the day already, and only now had she found someone.

And she looked like crap. Judging by the dent in her skull, it was probably Jotaro. She must have been really tenacious to have survived that. Not surprising, considering what Corona knew about Vriska.

But it would just be cruel to take her out now, wouldn’t it?

…Of course it would.

That didn’t matter. Corona was going to do it anyway. She was fighting for something, and Vriska was in her way. Best to make it as swift and painless as possible.

Omnidirectional life extinction, Corona ordered Raising Sights, creating red magic rings around her wrists. Focused through eyes and brain, instant. Repeat double. A larger magic circle appeared in front of her, and she grabbed it like a steering wheel. She infused it with magic from her horn, making it ready to activate. Engage.

A red halo appeared around Vriska’s head and exploded. It happened again, but she was already dead.

Corona furled her wings and landed next to the troll, watching her cobalt blood pool around her. She had really been beaten up by Jotaro in their encounter. Corona was having a hard time telling how many bones the troll had broken.

It was at this point Vriska started glowing and Corona realized she’d screwed up.

All of Vriska’s wounds were healed in the next second. She was soon standing up, fixing Corona with a smirk. “I should thank you. That was really starting to suck. Like, jegus, think about it a moment, I would have kept all those broken bones and that brain damage if you hadn’t killed me-”

“Nuclear reversion beam,” Corona muttered, snapping her fingers. A red and yellow burst of energy ringed with purple magic circles barreled into Vriska, disintegrating her down to the bone.

She was back in a second, hands on her hips. “Now Corona, that just wasn’t considerate of you!”

Corona blinked. “What, do I have to give you a fair fight or something?”

“Let’s see… I’m not being evil right now and clearly don’t deserve to die, so this can’t be a Just death, and I’m not really fighting for anything since I have no idea what my wish would be, so it can’t be Heroic either.” She folded her arms. “I don’t think I can be killed!”

“This is hardly fair.”

“It’s about to get worse.” Vriska opened her eyes wider, taking in Corona’s luck bit by bit.

Corona pressed her hands together and spread her wings, surrounding both herself and Vriska in orange-red magic circles. A chain of magic connected the two of them, pulling the two together. Corona’s eyes went white as she looked into Vriska’s eyes.

“…Counter,” Corona said, smirking. The spell vanished, replaced with a new one that gave Corona a bronze sheen to her person.

Vriska raised an eyebrow. “I was really wondering when you people were going to learn to construct a fate anchor.”

“No luck stealing for you,” Corona said. “And you don’t have your dice with you.”

Vriska sat down on a nearby rock. “Fair. But you can’t keep me dead.”

Corona narrowed her eyes. “I’m considering going for a brainwashing…”

“You want to have a mindscape battle? Do you think that’s a good idea for either of us?” Vriska laughed. “No. I think we’d both just pass out in the end.”

“Stalemate?”

“STAAAALEMATE!” Vriska decreed. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“No…” Corona narrowed her eyes. “But I have a lot of weapons at my disposal… I just need to get you to be Heroic or deserving of Justice.”

“Good luck with that.”

Corona got an idea. “I was expecting to save this for the finale… But it looks like you’ll need it right now.”

“Oh, what kind of special thing do you have?”

Corona took out the globe with white energy inside of it. “You killed Renee, correct?”

“Uh, yeah? Back at the Cornucopia. It was a sniper rifle. …Wish I still had that.”

Corona grinned. “Wouldn’t it be Just if someone who cared deeply about her took revenge on you?”

“…There’s no way…”

Corona held up the sphere. “This is Daniel. I was around when he started Ascending – all his energy is stored in here thanks to a simple transfer spell.”

“THAT’S CHEAP!” Vriska said, taking a few steps back. “VERY CHEAP!”

“Yeah, it is. But so is having conditional immortality.” She shrugged. “I’ll have to consume his energy to make sure he doesn’t try to kill me in the process… But it should trigger a Just death.”

“Fuck you.”

Corona smiled – a smile that quickly faltered when she remembered what she was doing. Her expression became dour as she held the sphere out to Vriska. “Sorry Daniel, this is gonna hurt.”

“No sorry for me?”

Corona sighed. “…Sorry, Vriska.” She surrounded the sphere in a red circle. She crushed the glass in her hands, cutting her hand in several places. The white energy was focused on Vriska, burning her away molecule by molecule. She was nothing more than angry screaming shadow to Corona, then just a shadow, then nothing at all.

Corona made sure to use up all the energy within the sphere just to be certain that both of them wouldn’t be coming back.

She sagged. Two kills. I’m making progress. At least Vriska didn’t seem that angry about it.

She sat down at the base of a tree, giving herself a moment.

~~~

“Sun’s setting again,” Flutterfree observed, having just poked her head out of their little base in the ground. “Still no sign of anyone having any idea where we are.”

“Good,” Eve said, staring at the TV. It hadn’t shown anything but static for the last few hours.

“Who’s left, do you think?”

“You, me, Corona, Valentine, Blackjack, Rohan. That I can remember, anyway. Oh, Brutalight. Right.”

“I hope they got her during one of the bits of static…” Flutterfree said, shivering.

“You and me both,” Eve admitted.

They stood in silence for a few moments.

“We might actually be able to win,” Flutterfree said. “Let them fight each other, tire, and come out well rested ready to defeat them.”

“The remaining people are going to be problematic though,” Eve admitted. “Some of them might be able to find a way around Seraphim’s negation. Only the really absurd get this far…”

Flutterfree paused. “We’re the last team, aren’t we?”

“Blackjack and Rohan?”

“That’s not really a team.”

Eve nodded. “That’s true… Yeah, I guess we are the last actual team here. Everyone else is working separately.” She sighed. “So many people walking alone. It’s just depressing.”

“Everything about this is depressing. Maddening too,” Flutterfree stared at herself on the television screen. “This is worse than being part of a story. The stories have meaning, purpose, a goal in mind. This isn’t something with a goal. This is an experiment, and we just have to fight or die.”

Eve frowned. “Could the wish mean something?”

“Do we even know what we’re wishing for?”

“I’ve given it some thought. I think I’m going to fix the Arcei problem with it,” Eve said. “Not just have Them wave a hand and fix it all, but have them tell me what I have to do to get them accepted back into society as a whole, to get them to stop thinking they can hunt Stars.” She stared at her hooves. “It’s not a problem I see myself fixing.”

“…I would ask for Celestia back,” Flutterfree said.

Eve froze.

“…More people we’ve lost, if Them will let us,” Flutterfree continued. “General Sunset. The Sage. Sparky. The Bloodbath…”

“No. No, no we can’t do that,” Eve said, shaking her head rapidly. “We aren’t meant to do that! We… We can’t just…”

“Why not!?”

“If we brought one back, we’d have to bring more! And if we brought all those we’ve tragically lost… Do you realize how that would destabilize things? How many leaders who were dead would suddenly be back?” Eve grabbed her head. “Revival’s already a tricky procedure as it is with Coming Back Wrong, and…”

“…Can’t we just save a few, then?”

“Where do we draw that line, Flutterfree? Where do we draw that line?” Eve asked. “Do I just bring back people whose deaths didn’t pivotally change our history? Sparky? But how could I just leave Celestia dead? But if I bring her back I’ll have to bring all the leaders back, and… Do you see what that’d do?”

Flutterfree grabbed Eve. “But we’d have them back!”

“We might lose them again right afterward!”

“…So? At least we’d get to talk to them.”

“…Would you really wish just to have conversations with people you’ve lost at the expense of solving a major problem in our society?”

Flutterfree looked away, ashamed. “…Yes. I would.”

Eve took a few steps back. “I’m sorry… Flutterfree, we can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

“I know. But I can’t change what I feel. We have a wish, Eve. I want… I want to bring back what we’ve lost. Perhaps wish to turn back the time and do it over again with what we know?”

“…I don’t think even they can turn back time on so many interconnected universes,” Eve said, shaking her head. “That’s a wish I could get behind. But it’s too much.”

Flutterfree looked down. “Right… You’re right. We need to think logically about this.”

Eve let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you for understanding, Flutterfree.”

“Mhm…”

“GOOD EVENING CAMPERS!” the Them’s voice boomed into their heads. “Time for a nightly update! It sure feels like this third day went by quickly, didn’t it? But you didn’t skimp out on eliminating opponents, nosireebob! Five others have left us today: the Reverend, Thrackerzod, Froppy, Daniel, and Vriska! Only eight of you remain! You might even finish tomorrow – but I doubt it! All I can say for sure is that you have officially entered the late-game. You eight are the finalists for this round of the Hunger Games. Only one will take home the coveted wish – I hope you’re thinking about what it’s gonna be! Who am I kidding, I know you’re all thinking deeply about it. Have a nice night!”

Flutterfree and Eve stared at each other.

They were in the final eight…

The end of these games were coming sooner than they would have expected.

“We need rest,” Eve said.

“Agreed. I’ll take first watch,” Flutterfree offered.

Eve nodded. “Thanks.” She curled herself up on one of the couches, waiting for morning to come…

~~~

Something in Blackjack made her wake up in the middle of the night. It wasn’t Rohan – he was lying on the ground next to her.

He was supposed to be on watch.

Blackjack wanted to hit him so hard, but she couldn’t – so she just nudged him. “Hey bastard, you’re supposed to be on watch.”

He felt cold to the touch. She used her magic to create a light and look at his face.

He was foaming at the mouth, dead. Poisoned.

She didn’t reel back in horror – she was somewhat pleased by the news, to be frank – she moved in to investigate. There was a small puncture wound on his neck from an injection, or dart.

She felt her own neck – there was a mark there as well. Chances were the poison just wasn’t effective against mega-alicorn-cyborg-ponies. But that still meant someone had snuck into camp and poisoned them…

The intruder was probably what woke Blackjack up.

She scanned the forest, but her sensors didn’t pick up anything aside from a couple owls and a sleeping squirrel. This did nothing to ease her nerves. She was sure she was being watched.

Somewhere very close by, a gun went off and hit her in a back leg. She howled, firing two magic bolts where she thought the shot had come from, but they made no contact.

She brandished her starmetal sword. “Show yourself!”

Evidentially the attacker thought this was a stupid idea, because they did no such thing. They fired again, hitting Blackjack’s other leg. Her retaliation hit nothing again. Not to mention the fact those wounds weren’t going to heal with her current resource levels…

She couldn’t fight whoever this foe was.

She took everything off Rohan – including his clothes – with a quick spell. She teleported away before the attack aimed at her third and final leg went off. She teleported twice more, until she was in a tree far from the original campsite.

She grabbed all the buttons and jewelry Rohan had on him and ate them, giving her systems at least something to work with. Why couldn’t the arena be a post-apocalyptic wasteland? She’d have plenty of metal to work with. As it was, trees didn’t really provide her with what she needed, and these pickings were pathetic. Not even enough to really do anything to her back legs.

She needed to find something to repair her if she wanted to take out some of the stronger targets, like Valentine.

…Seven left, now, Blackjack noted. It was probably going to be nothing but difficult, close fights from here on out.

She opted to stay in the tree and not fall asleep the rest of the night. She could operate on the scant bit of rest she had gotten. But she wasn’t going hunting in the night with… Whatever that was. Her systems couldn’t detect any infrared, so she needed normal sight to compensate. Probably.

~~~

The gunshots from the television had put Flutterfree on edge. She had almost woken Eve because she thought they were under attack…

But they weren’t, it was Blackjack who was. Or had been – the screen had turned to display Flutterfree again.

She sighed. Something was going to happen, given how the screen was focusing on her. What was it going to be? An inner monologue? Stealth attack? Or something she didn’t see coming?

The fact that she asked the question suggested to herself it was option three, but she went to check outside anyway. She poked her head out of one of the holes, checking the area for intruders. For most it would be a fruitless endeavor to look out at a forest in the middle of the night and expect to see something, but having vampiric eyes came with perks. Namely night vision.

She saw nothing. Even after crawling out of the hole and taking a good look around, she still didn’t make out anything interesting. Didn’t hear anything either. This put her at ease about the possibility of an attack, but she remained alert.

She walked back into the room – the television still showed her walking around. Still the focus.

Flutterfree was stuck by a sudden realization that Pinkie knew when she was being watched all the time. She had new respect for her old friend’s ability to deal with the knowledge…

This meant something was going to happen. Perhaps she was going to have some kind of realization? Or something?

…The only way that would happen is if she stopped thinking about the fact she was on the screen.

She went to the fridge and got herself a snack. Eve had packed it with apples, the primary thing aside from blood that satisfied Flutterfree’s natural hunger. She drained the fruit of its juices in an instant and tossed it into the trash.

Still hungry, but the hunger never really went away. It also never got strong enough to demand she bite down on a pony’s neck. Quasi-vampirism didn’t really appear to follow much in the way of rules.

But there was something about the way Eve was lying that drew Flutterfree’s attention to her purple neck. Normally Flutterfree would just force herself to look away and get a little flustered, but she didn’t this time.

She’s not going to bring them back.

All it would take was one carefully placed bite on the jugular while she was sleeping – Eve wouldn’t even be able to summon Seraphim’s reality rewrite, and the automatic barrier wouldn’t protect against Flutterfree’s fangs. She would be out of the game and then Flutterfree would be free to make her wish. In a straight fight with Eve there was no way Flutterfree could win…

She took a few steps forward to Eve, moving as quietly as possible.

I have to do this. She’ll forgive me. And then everyone will be back. Everyone.

She leaned in, fangs bared, nearing Eve’s neck.

But she had some good points… What if my wish ruins everything? And am I really willing to live with taking a wish to just talk to them?

How would I even survive the rest of the games without her?

Flutterfree pulled back, a tear rolling down her face. She couldn’t believe she’d even been considering taking out her dear friend. When the time came, and they were the last two, Eve would painlessly disintegrate her and make the wish for the both of them. That was the way it was supposed to be.

Flutterfree turned back to her couch.

“…I’m awake, Flutterfree,” Eve said.

Flutterfree’s heart started racing. She didn’t turn around.

“…Why couldn’t you do it?”

Flutterfree slowly turned around, looking into Eve’s wide, open eyes. A film of tears covered them. “It was wrong,” Flutterfree said. “I… I wanted my wish more than yours. But it wouldn’t be right to do that to you.”

“But you were this close to doing it!”

“But I didn’t.”

“I know you didn’t. You were stronger than yourself. Which is what makes this so difficult.” Eve wiped her face.

Flutterfree gulped. “I… I can imagine. I’ve broken your trust.”

“Yeah! Yeah, you have!” Eve wailed. “I can’t trust you! What if you can’t fight it tomorrow night? What if you see an opportunity in the middle of a fight to be rid of me? You’ll take the opportunity and do what your heart wants!”

“Yes. I will,” Flutterfree said with conviction. “If I give in, I will wish them back to life.”

“But how can you… Who? How far do you go? How far can you go?”

“…Bring them back, deal with the consequences,” Flutterfree said. “That’s… That’s what I think.”

“You can’t make that choice! You’re not the only one who’ll be dealing with the consequences!”

“And you can control the lives of the Arcei to make them better liked?”

“I’m just asking for what to do, not asking them to do it.”

Flutterfree looked at Eve – and nodded. “I know. I know. I know. I’m being emotional and I…”

“I have to get rid of you,” Eve said, heaving.

“W-what?”

“I can’t take that risk. The risk that you’ll change your mind in a mood swing or something.”

“Eve, I promise that I won’t try to kill you again,” Flutterfree said, putting a hoof over her chest. “We’ll fight together to the very end.”

Something in Eve cracked. “Can I really trust you on that? What if you think of a reason it’ll be for the greater good? What if you suddenly think of exactly the line you want to draw on who to save and who not to?”

Flutterfree gulped. “Evening. I Pinkie Promise that I will not try to kill you again.”

Tears rolled down Eve’s cheeks. “Why are you making this so hard?”

“Don’t kill me, Eve,” Flutterfree said. “Please.”

“Flutterfree…”

“I don’t want to feel it again,” Flutterfree pleaded. “I don’t want to feel death.”

“Flutterfree, I’ve already killed you.”

Flutterfree stared at her in horror. “W-what?”

“I hit you with the death spell from behind when you were reaching for my neck,” Eve said. “…But I wanted to talk to you after, so I had Seraphim tap into a world where the soul lingers after death.” She brought her Stand out from where it had been hiding, under the couch she was sleeping on, shrouded by blankets.

“B-B-” Flutterfree’s consciousness permitted her to see her body on the floor at the foot of Eve’s bed. “What th-”

“I… I’m so sorry.”

Flutterfree gulped. “I… I’m sorry too.”

To anyone else, Flutterfree’s apology would have been genuine. But Eve picked up on a slight inflection in the her voice that indicated anger. Deep, seething anger. “Flutterfree…”

“Recall Seraphim,” Flutterfree said.

“We can keep ta-”

“I SAID RECALL SERAPHIM!” Flutterfree shouted, summoning Lolo. Her Stand was decidedly weaker than Seraphim, but the surprise Eve felt from having Lolo attack combined with her unstable emotional state was enough to make Seraphim lose focus.

Flutterfree’s spirit vanished without so much as a flash of light.

Eve took in a deep breath and released it. “Calm… I’m c-” she didn’t finish the word, instead devolving into deep, bitter tears. When this didn’t provide her enough of a release, she grabbed her couch and threw it into another one. She told Seraphim to remove molecular cohesion from the room, forcing everything to cave in.

She teleported out with Flutterfree’s body, eyes full of pain.

She was not done with the place.

She had Seraphim find a universe where the chemicals found in soil would react in an explosive manner when introduced to a certain kind of magic. She used that magic, her home for the last few days going up in a bright mushroom cloud. Seraphim cleared the heat by dialing a universe where heat didn’t exist.

Eve used the hole to bury Flutterfree’s body, filling it in with her considerable powers of telekinesis. She summoned a headstone imprinted with her butterfly cutie mark and forced flowers to grow in front of it.

Eve was still angry. At this point she didn’t have any idea what at.

The television fell out of the sky, somehow still working.

“Oh look! A TARGET.” Eve punched the television, shattering the screen and cutting her hoof in several places.

~~~

It was morning, and Valentine was alone. He walked along the edge of a riverbank.

He supposed he was hunting, but he wasn’t really looking that hard. He was mostly sitting, thinking, the inner machinations of his mind occupying more of his time than the act of hunting other contestants.

This would have been dangerous, and likely would have resulted in another death of his, had the person he come across not been Evening Sparkle crying her tears into the river.

Valentine’s first instinct was to take her out, but the combination of his own out-in-the-open location and her complete disinterest in him gave him pause.

Eve knew he was there. “What’s in a wish, Valentine?”

Valentine decided to take a seat at the riverbank, a fair distance from Eve, but close enough for them to easily see each other’s facial features. He thought for a moment, and answered. “Above all else, a wish has conviction.”

“I see.”

“Perhaps not,” Valentine pointed out. “A wish… is a desire you vocalize, something you want to occur. It is a manifestation of your personal code of conduct. Those who are selfish wish to rule the world. Those who are selfless wish to help others. Those who devote themselves to a particular idea wish to see that idea come to those who don’t understand it.”

“And if you don’t know what your wish is? Does that mean there is a lack of conviction?”

“In some cases, perhaps,” Valentine said. “What is your conviction?”

“Harmony,” Eve said, looking into the river. “And in seeking it, I have destroyed it.”

“In the fights we face, the thing we want most may need to be harmed.”

“I know. You know. We all know!” Eve said, spreading her hooves wide. “You basically are me, you ever think about that? Find something that lets you go out into the multiverse, start exploring, and then eventually form a society. …You even change who you are.”

Valentine was unsure of the meaning behind that last statement, but it clearly meant a lot to her. “It is well known, and in many cases understood. But there is another part to us that is not reason or thought. A place where deep seated convictions are held.”

Eve nodded. “That place… I hurt that place. I had that place hurt. Badly. Oh so badly…” She wiped her face. “Have you ever had it hurt, Valentine? Have you ever suffered betrayal?”

“My first wife was replaced by an imposter,” Valentine shared. “I didn’t know for quite some time. My feelings about her are now muddled in my memory… But I am sure I Ioved her. Perhaps not as much as a man should.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ancient history,” Valentine said. “Perhaps a better example would be Johnny. It took a long time to build up trust between the two of us. But after we had begun to form the USM, Gyro back alongside us… We were friends. But he became convinced I was going to make myself President for life. He made an attempt on my life.” Valentine looked into the distance, his memories flooding past his eyes. “It was that attack that told me I should step down. It’s the reason I’m Ambassador Valentine today. The end result was better for the United States of the Multiverse, but the hole between us was devastating.”

“You eventually made up?”

“It was years later before I considered us friends again.” He looked Eve right in her eyes. “But sometimes I wonder if I’ll do something he doesn’t approve of, and he’ll try to take me out again.”

Eve shivered.

“It’s not something you can completely fix. Once someone’s truly broken trust…”

“…You know they have the capacity to break it again,” Eve completed. She shook her head. “And in this case, it’s two-way. Convictions on both sides…”

Valentine nodded, making a ‘hrmm’ noise.

“What’s your conviction, Valentine?”

“Justice,” Valentine declared. “I fight for justice.”

“Really? It seems like you fight for your country a lot more.”

“For I believe it is the closest thing to justice,” Valentine explained. “I wish to see those who deserve to be punished put where they belong. I wish to see those willing to sacrifice and fight for others to be elevated. I wish the way of life that promotes justice seekers will be spread across the multiverse.”

Eve nodded. “I… I understand. It doesn’t seem like you really want justice a lot of the time, though. It seems like you just want more power for your country.”

Valentine looked at her. He didn’t have a response.

The two sat at the river, watching it pass by.

“Thanks,” Eve said, standing up and spreading her wings. “I needed that.”

“We all need to think about what we wish for, once in a while.”

“You too, Valentine. …Try to think less about your country, and more about actual justice, okay?”

Valentine nodded. “I endeavor to do so.”

“So… Are we going to fight now?”

“I think not,” Valentine said. “I have determined that if you were to make a wish, it would not be detrimental to the USM. There are other, larger threats I must take care of.”

Eve pondered this. “…I think you’re the same way.”

“Until we cross paths again, Overhead Evening.”

“Of course, Ambassador Valentine.”

Valentine walked away. He told himself he let her go because he didn’t want to tire himself, and she’d be able to take care of other enemies with little risk to himself now.

But even he knew that wasn’t the full story. There was something about a crying purple alicorn…

“Damn these ponies,” he muttered, “they drive me to sentimentality.”

~~~

Corona finally picked up on a strong magical signature – whoever it was would be her next target. She prepared an instant-death spell, wrapping the red magical rings around her left wrist. It would only take one solid hit and she would be one step closer to her goal.

She didn’t hesitate when she finally realized it was Eve. She was another enemy in this game – Corona would apologize later. She pointed her finger at the oblivious purple alicorn and fired.

A magic bubble shield surrounded Eve, blocking the magical attack. She whirled around, eyes narrow. “I have magic sense too you know.” She summoned Seraphim behind her, locking the Stand into its reality altering position.

Reality Anchor Aura, Corona ordered, clapping her hands together. A series of white, blue, and green rings rose out of the ground and disappeared above her head, encasing her in a soft blue-green aura.

Corona knew Eve was trying to make her spontaneously combust. “Not going to work, Eve. I’ve forced myself to maintain the form of reality I currently occupy.”

Eve nodded. “Then I’ll have to get more creative.” Eve set Seraphim’s combustion reality to the grass beneath Corona, triggering an explosion.

Corona absorbed the heat and light into her hands, sending them back to Eve along with a dose of Bacon Pancakes’ pins. Eve had to stop editing reality to use Seraphim to physically throw the pins aside, and her magic to block the torrent of fire.

She teleported behind Corona, hitting her with a laser coursing with purple and orange energy.

“You’ve got to stop hitting me with fire,” Corona observed, firebending the flame part of the laser to bring the magical part of the attack to a halt. She flew toward Eve, brandishing the center disc of Bacon Pancakes, ready to flatten her.

Eve created a half-dozen needles of crystal, sending them flying into Corona. The spires pierced her skin, drawing blood. Corona worked through the pain – but she found that the crystals hindered her movement. She was unable to bring Bacon Pancakes to bear on Eve, allowing Seraphim to make use of the opportunity.

The three-ringed Stand rotated its three individual parts with alarming rapidity, charging Bacon Pancakes’ center disk. The impact cracked Bacon Pancakes and fractured one of Corona’s arms, sending her flying backward.

Corona used her free arm to cast a mending spell on her cracked bone. She spread her wings, taking a large loopdeloop before charging back at Eve.

Eve tapped into a universe where solids didn’t exist, creating an invisible wall for Corona to run into. She fell back, but in her fall she summoned a fireball larger than Evening. Seraphim stopped editing reality to catch the offending meteor, disintegrating the rock with its touch.

Eve apparently liked the invisible walls from earlier, because she resumed tapping into that universe, this time creating a box around Corona. After she mimed for a couple of seconds, the flaming princess teleported out, her hand alight with holy energy. She rushed for Eve’s face, planning to burn it.

An invisible spike poked right through her hand. The pain was so sudden and unexpected she unleashed her explosive magic too soon. Eve’s face was charred, but not melted to the point of defeat.

Corona teleported back, taking a moment to mend the hole in her hand. Eve didn’t let her finish – she teleported behind Corona and drove her long, purple horn through her back and out the other side.

Corona maintained enough awareness to activate Bacon Pancakes, flattening Eve to nothing more than a piece of paper. Corona tried to kick the paper and tear it, but the pain in her stomach was too much to not address. She fell to her knees, mending her wound.

Eve, meanwhile, struggled to move in her paper form, creating a lull in the fight.

“Look at us, fighting like old enemies,” Corona commented as she sealed the hole in her stomach.

“Heh, yeah,” Eve said, using her own telekinesis to float away. “Out of curiosity, what are you fighting for? There’s too much conviction to just be ‘because I have to’.”

“The secret to fight death,” Corona said, standing up tall and spreading her wings. “Easily producible immortality.”

“Why am I not surprised. That will cause problems, you know.”

“Not as much as just wishing death away completely. What’re you wishing for?”

Eve blinked. “At first, it was a solution to the Arcei problem. Now? …I’m starting to think that’s not actually the best way to promote harmony. There might be something else.”

“Your heart is in the right place, at least.”

“Yeah…” Eve shook her head, the motion making her body fold at the neck. “…This is an exceptionally weird sensation.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Corona said, lighting herself on fire. “Shall we continue?”

Eve looked right at her. “Yes. Seraphim!”

“Bacon Pancakes!”

“Absolute Zero,” Eve declared.

“Fusion Cascade,” Corona said.

Seraphim tapped into a universe where everything was always absolute zero, bringing true cold to the fight. It was just a small area that existed at absolute zero, but the temperature difference was so extreme the grass below froze solid and ice crystals began to form on Eve and Corona.

Corona’s attack was to create a miniature sun in her palm and toss it into the air, fusing the gasses in the atmosphere to create a cascading explosion. The cascade wormed its way to Eve through the frigid air.

Eve let it get close enough to burn her – she was going to need the extra heat to survive what came next. She expanded the single point of Absolute Zero by factor of ten, dramatically dropping the temperature. The gasses around the altered reality solidified, liquid nitrogen and oxygen pouring off of it. The entire ground became coated in ice, a sheen moving up Corona’s legs despite the fact she was on fire.

Eve was further away from the extreme cold, and she was having difficulty forcing her body temperature up even with the help of the fusion cascade – a source of heat that was quickly fading away.

Corona was significantly closer to it. Her own internal heat was not enough to overcome the biting cold. The fire in her began to go out as the parts of her body closest to the ground began to freeze solid.

She had enough of her wits about her to teleport out of the cold proximity, behind Eve – where it was still absurdly cold but manageable. She took a step toward Eve – and her foot shattered into a hundred pieces. She fell to the ground, shattering her left hand as well.

The stump that was her hand attempted to bleed, but the red liquid froze on what was now the edge of Corona’s body. She tried to force flames to heat up the injury, but she was running too low on energy.

Eve took a step toward her. “Sorry Corona, I got you.”

Corona didn’t think so. She lashed out with the hand that was still in tact. She cut the still-paper-form Eve across the chest, almost cutting all the way through.

But it wasn’t enough. Eve caught the hand in her telekinesis, shattering it as blood ran down her papery front legs. Corona, having lost both her hands, attempted to use her horn in one last-ditch attempt to pull a victory out of this.

In her desperation she overloaded the poor magical conductor. A small explosion went off at the base of her horn, making her lose consciousness. The deep cold got to her not a second later, and Eve was returned to her three dimensional form.

Eve cut the absolute zero reality, allowing herself to finally warm up. The solid gasses quickly dissipated once there was nothing keeping them frozen. She forced herself to throw Corona into a tree, shattering the beautiful being into nothing more than jagged shards of what she once was.

Eve then turned to the gash in her – it ran from the middle of her chest just below the neck to halfway down the right side of her body. She had never been the best at pure healing magic, and she knew this was a mortal wound.

She had to perform surgery on herself. She tapped into a universe where pain didn’t exist and began the slow process of sewing herself back up. In the process of doing so, she realized her wingtips had frostbite and one of her ears had been removed in the fight, though she had no idea how.

When she was satisfied she had sewed herself up enough to the point where she’d live, she turned off the pain remover – and screamed. Holy Celestia those stitches hurt…

She set Seraphim to a universe where metabolic processes were faster, staying there long enough for her to be sure her internal organs weren’t going to slide apart if she twisted her body the wrong way. But that did nothing to alleviate the pain, and it also made her very hungry.

She started eating the grass around the forest floor to replenish her reserves. She would be here a while…

Haunted by the sight of Corona shattering into a thousand pieces.

~~~

“MURICA, FUCK YEAH!” Blackjack shouted, swooping in for an attack on Valentine. “LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN!”

D4C punched Blackjack in the face before any more than a handful of bullets emerged from Blackjack’s horn and guns. Some hit Valentine, but he wrapped himself up in the flag, transferring to another universe – and another Valentine. Four of them came up out of the flag in response.

Blackjack shot off one of their heads with a shotgun. “So, let me see if I understand this,” she muttered through her broken, bloodied nose. “You have an infinite supply of yourself you can go through, but only one of them has the big ‘Stand’ power at a time, right?”

“Correct,” a normal version of Valentine said, shooting at Blackjack. She blocked the bullet with her shield.

“So all I have to do is find which one of you has the Stand. Because, let’s be honest, a bunch of regular guys with simple guns isn’t going to do much to me. You’ll have to use that punching ghost somehow.” She used her telekinesis to swing the Starmetal sword wide, cutting two Valentines in half. “Now I can’t see your dirty little secret, but I think odds are pretty good this god-killing sword can hit it.”

“Dojyaaan!”

“What the-” D4C’s fist came out from a leaf under where Blackjack’s fourth leg should have been. The invisible fist hit Blackjack in the chest, sending her into the air. She swung the sword fast, cutting off the tops of D4Cs fingers.

She saw one of the Valentines had lost some of his fingers. “GOTCHA!” She blurted, shooting him in the forehead.

Then she remembered that meant D4C just translated to another Valentine.

“Fuckballs,” Blackjack muttered. She was going to have to kill the Stand to win. And she was definitely not smart enough to lure it out into the open and kill it while it was invisible. Best she could do was get some nicks in here or there.

But she couldn’t just retreat – there were only a handful of contestants left, chances are she needed to face Valentine. But unless something changed she saw that he would slowly wear her down faster than she would be able to cut D4C…

Her prayers were answered in the form of a purple alicorn who was missing an ear and had an impressive wound across her chest. “Absolute Zero.”

The arena of combat between Blackjack and Valentine began to freeze over. Blackjack fired bullets at Eve, since she was unable to determine where Seraphim was. Eve caught all the projectiles with her magic, continuing the act of freezing everything solid.

She didn’t make it that far – the real Valentine stepped out from behind a tree and apparently used D4C on Seraphim, the powerful punches upsetting the control over reality. The freezing halted, and blood came flying from Eve.

Blackjack swung the Starmetal sword wildly where she thought the Stands were. She nicked both of them, prompting a cut to appear on Eve’s flank and one on Valentine’s hip, but nothing lethal to either.

Eve had Seraphim take the rapidly-rotating form, trying to dice D4C up, but the Stand transferred to another Valentine, leaving her in the dark as to where the multiversal spirit was. She opted to focus on Blackjack, summoning a dozen sharp crystals and throwing them at her.

“Well fuck me in th-” One of the crystals slammed into in Blackjack’s throat, cutting her off. The crystals embedded themselves in her body in numerous lethal places. Given just a bit more time, they would kill her outright.

But she caught one of the magic crystals in her mouth and ate it.

“What in the…?” Eve wondered aloud as Blackjack tore a crystal out of her jugular and devoured it. Her wounds began to heal right before their eyes.

“Thanks for the snack!” Blackjack said, smirking. She rushed at Evening, brandishing her sword and a shotgun. “NOW D-”

She ran facefirst into an invisible wall riddled with spikes. The power from the crystals kept her alive, but she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. She peeled herself off the spikes, falling to the ground. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-”

D4C appeared behind Eve, grabbing her wings. She couldn’t hit D4C directly with Seraphim in the form to make the invisible wall, so she just had to scream as her wings were popped out of their sockets. They would have been completely removed, but Eve sent out a pulse of magic that scrambled everyone’s thoughts.

Numerous Valentines started shooting at her, but she’d recalled Seraphim, reinstating the protective aura that caught every bullet.

Eve decided it was time to use some of the magics she preferred not to, given their nature. Her eyes became black as night with purple wisps of energy trailing off the edges. Deep darkness surrounded her, cutting jagged shadows across the forest. Claws rose up all around her, writhing with powers mortals were not meant to touch.

Good thing she wasn’t a mortal. None of them were.

“It fills my long dead heart with joy to see you give in to a darker nature,” Brutalight said, revealing her presence at the edge of the fight. “It’s a nice thing to see you reject your false harmony before you die.” She took one gun in particular out and aimed it at all of them.

“FUCK! FOLLY!” Blackjack shouted.

“The gun you took Flagg out with!?” Eve blurted.

“YEAH. WE’RE DEAD.”

Brutalight pulled the trigger. Folly unleashed its brilliant white cone of absurd energy, a cone that would have vaporized all of them and most the ground they were standing on.

“SERAPHIM!” Eve shouted, ordering her stand to dial a universe where magic didn’t exist. The energy blast from Folly hit a void in front of Eve, Blackjack, and Valentine, carving away the ground to either side of them.

“…Useful,” Blackjack commented.

Brutalight scowled. “Oh just die already, Evening.” Brutalight teleported right in front of her, using a red amulet she wore to hold Eve still. Valentine took this as an opportunity, using D4C to punch both Eve and Brutalight hard enough to break ribs. Blackjack took advantage of that to cut off one of D4C’s feet.

Brutalight ignored Valentine, fixated on Eve and only Eve. “DIE!” She pulled her horn back, unleashing a beam of dark magic. Eve did the exact same.

“Why are you so fixated on killing me? It won’t even mean anything!”

“It will if I wish all of you to stay dead!” Brutalight shouted back.

Valentine and Blackjack stopped fighting each other the moment they heard those words. They nodded to each other and rushed Brutalight from the side. For his efforts, Valentine got one of Brutalight’s swords embedded in his chest. But another Valentine took up D4C, and Blackjack brought her sword down on Brutalight.

The moment D4C and the Starmetal sword made contact with Brutalight, she smirked. “Kaboom.”

She used a spell that forced a reaction to occur with her own coat of fur, becoming the epicenter of an explosion that drove Valentine and Blackjack back. The pain that came from the spell made Brutalight falter, but not enough for Eve’s own dark magic to overpower her.

It was enough for Brutalight to forget about Seraphim.

She barely had time to realize she was being frozen solid before she was frozen solid.

Three on one had just been too much.

Eve dropped her magic, walking up to the shimmering form of Brutalight. “I’m not sure if you can hear me in there, Brutalight. But once this is over… We’re going to find wherever you’re hiding. And then you will be executed.” She narrowed her eyes. “I know you probably have some remark you want to leave me with to haunt my dreams, something to affirm your desire to see me and my friends dead. But you’re not going to get the chance.”

She slapped Brutalight across the face, shattering her. The headless alicorn of insanity tipped over, falling to the ground.

“…Brutal,” Blackjack observed.

“She’s the only one in this entire game who actually deserves that,” Eve muttered. She glanced at Valentine and Blackjack. “I suppose we’re in truce for the moment?”

“The enemy of justice has fallen,” Valentine admitted. “But we must fight to determine the winner of these games.”

“Wait, we’re all that’s left?” Blackjack blurted. “Wow…”

Eve furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t seem right… We had eight starting from last night. Flutterfree, Corona, and Brutalight are gone…”

“Rohan too,” Blackjack offered.

“That means there’s one other person besides us,” Eve said, blinking. “…Does anybody have any idea who it is?”

Valentine and Blackjack exchanged glances before shaking their heads.

“I think they’re the ones who killed Rohan,” Blackjack said. “We were poisoned last night. Doesn’t match the MO of anyone else I’ve encountered. I had to run away because I couldn’t pinpoint them.”

“A stealth player…” Valentine said, scratching his chin. “A particularly dangerous opponent.”

“And one we know nothing about,” Eve said, biting her lip. “…We can’t fight here, now. For all we know, they’re watching, waiting to kill the last of us the instant the fight ends.”

“That seems likely,” Valentine admitted.

“So we don’t give them what they want,” Blackjack declared. “We stick together until we find them.”

Eve nodded. “Agreed. Then, and only then, will we have our three-way.”

Valentine put out his hand. “I accept this plan.”

Two hooves met his hand, a last-minute group forming to face the mysterious final player.

“Let’s go hunting,” Eve said, lighting her horn. “There has to be some way to find them… Magic, spirit, something.”

“They had a gun, if that helps,” Blackjack offered.

“Almost all of those guns in the Cornucopia were yours,” Eve pointed out. “They’d probably have your signature.”

“Yeah…”

~~~

The entire day passed without incident.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Eve said, dropping her scanning spell. “There’s no sign of anyone else here, but we know they’re here.”

“Maybe Brutalight got them?” Blackjack suggested.

“Then we will have to wait for the nightly announcement to know for certain,” Valentine said, looking at the setting sun. “We won’t have to wait long.”

“Time to make camp then,” Blackjack said, sitting down at the base of a tree. “Get a fire going, you know, all that stuff.”

Eve used her magic to gather wood, create a fire pit, and light it. “Done.”

“You’re pretty handy with that.”

“Surprised you aren’t,” Eve responded. “You’re supposed to be a descendant of a Twilight, yes? Alicorn to boot.”

“Sorta-kinda-okay at magic here, but not, like, fucking amazing or anything.”

“You should apply yourself. I bet you could learn a lot.”

“Eh, yeah. Probably could.” Blackjack looked at her uneasily.

“…You think I should be mad at you.”

“Of course you should be fucking mad at me! How many of your people died because of what I did?”

“Blackjack, Blackjack, you also saved us.”

“Just because I fixed my mistake does not mean the mistake didn’t happen in the first place!”

“A mare is more than her past mistakes.”

“Yeah, well, just… Gah why are you so fucking understanding!?”

Eve looked into the distance. “I wasn’t last night. Perhaps I’m trying to move past a mistake of my own.”

Blackjack looked at the ground. “It’s been a while since that day, Eve. And I’ve had a… lot to think about since then.”

“Hm?”

“…Think about it. I hated you because of what you do to worlds, the way you interfere with them and act like gods. I’m still upset with that, nobody should have that kind of power – but I acted because I hated the way you made everything I did more or less meaningless. Quite stupid huh?”

“It’s not stupid, just misguided.”

“Ooooh boy… Regardless, this game has shown me something else.” She looked Eve in the eye. “For what you are, you need the power you have to survive, don’t you?”

Eve looked to Valentine for a moment before nodding slowly. “Yes. Often times, it seems like it isn’t enough. I worry that we’re not strong enough to face what’s coming.”

“I know the feeling,” Blackjack muttered. “…I still don’t like what you’re doing.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t like the USM’s way of doing things, but I learn to live with them. For the sake of harmony.”

Blackjack looked at Valentine. “That must be extremely difficult.”

Valentine raised an eyebrow.

“No offense… Okay, go ahead and take offense, nevermind – you aren’t the easiest guy to deal with.”

“It is the way I have become to serve my country,” Valentine declared. “I regret nothing.”

Blackjack chuckled. “At least you’re certain of yourself.”

Valentine nodded. The three of them stared into the light of the fire for a while.

“…Who do you think it is?” Blackjack asked. “All the people here seem related to you guys rather than stuff I deal with, you’d be the ones to know.”

Valentine shrugged. “I would remember any others from the USM.”

Eve put a hoof to her chin. “...There’s a lot I don’t remember. Was Starbeat here? Aradia? Lady Rarity?”

“Aradia would have already killed us all with ease,” Valentine pointed out. “We exist in a single timestream. The stealth approach would make sense for her, but she would not need to stay hidden unless she was limited.”

“Starbeat maybe…” Eve said, scratching her chin. “She’d know how to game the system. Expert in ka.”

“Fun,” Blackjack muttered. “Turn my winning against me.”

“Maybe that’s why she targeted you and Rohan?” Valentine suggested.

“Maybe…” Eve said. “But this is all just speculation. It’s probably not Starbeat. Could be, but we just might not remember.” Eve shrugged. “We-”

“GOOD EVENING CONTESTANTS!” the voice of Them boomed, interrupting the conversation. “We’ve cut our number in half once again! From eight to four on the fourth day! Lost to us are Flutterfree, Rohan, Corona, and Brutalight, victims of some very amazing battles – you sure are doing your captors proud! Only four remain! Evening Sparkle, Funny Valentine, Blackjack, and…”

The three of them held their breath.

“…Spoiler!”

“FUCK YOU!” Blackjack shouted. “EAT A HOLY, BURNING COCK YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD!” She did not stop at this, continuing to shout expletives at the sky.

The voice of Them calmly waited for the string of swears to be done. “Sorry about that, connection issues.”

Blackjack twitched.

“When only four remain, it seems as though the games will soon draw to a close! Perhaps tomorrow will be the final day for our contestants! Remember, only one of you can make the wish!”

The voice vanished, leaving the three around a fire. There was silence for about a minute.

“Sleep in shifts of two,” Valentine said, suddenly. “That way no assassinations will occur between us.”

“Yeah,” the alicorns agreed.

~~~

Frostbitten wings hurt.

They hurt so much Eve was unable to fall asleep – or that’s what she told herself on the surface.

Inwardly she kept thinking about last night. About Flutterfree.

How was she going to face her later? How were they going to even talk to each other about what happened?

She, for once, didn’t know. Apology? Discussion? Begging? Anger? …It didn’t even make much sense, really.

“You’re groaning,” Blackjack called back to her.

“I know,” Eve muttered, opening her eyes. “Can’t sleep.”

“Images of the not-dead haunting you?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Figured it’d be the same as images of the dead,” Blackjack said, looking into the distance, Valentine at her side.

“It looks as if there won’t be more sleep tonight,” Valentine observed.

“Yeah, sorry,” Eve admitted.

“I can move to a fully rested body easily, and Blackjack already had her rest.”

Blackjack grunted. “Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“You’re missing a leg. Things like that tend to take their toll.”

The three of them sat side by side in the cool night air.

“What are we going to do when we are the only ones left?” Eve asked.

“Fight to the death,” Blackjack deadpanned.

“That’s what Them want,” Eve pointed out. “What if we… don’t?”

“They kill everyone, are you crazy!?”

“I mean, we won’t fight – we’ll just decide who makes the wish by talking. Reason out who’s wish would be the best for everyone. I would wish for something to bring harmony to all of the nations here, not just us.”

“And I would wish for true justice,” Valentine declared.

“You having doubts about the specifics as well?”

“Yes. Simple, material things are not justice… Justice transcends. There are fates that must be dealt with…”

Eve smirked. “I like where you’re going.”

Blackjack rolled her eyes. “I’m just going to wish that anybody who died because of me that didn’t deserve to would come back.”

Valentine and Eve stared at her with expressions of mild horror.

“What? What the fuck is wrong with that?”

“Blackjack, I’ve read your story,” Eve said. “You… Death followed you around more than almost any other person I’ve seen. How many ponies would that be? Hundreds? Thousands?”

“So? If they didn’t deserve to die, I’ll bring them back.” She folded her hooves. “End of story.”

“Ignoring for a moment the question of ‘where do you draw the line’, do you have any idea what that would do to Equis Fallout? The destabilization that many ponies coming back would cause? It might cause another war to break out, especially with all the new infrastructure.”

Blackjack twitched. “There it is! The ‘high and mighty, better than thou’ STUPIDITY that you flaunt! You have no fucking right to determine what my world needs and what it doesn’t. I’m going to bring my friends back and there’s nothing you are going to do about it.”

Eve was taken aback. “Blackjack, I-”

“I’m going to undo the damage I did,” Blackjack said with extreme conviction. “I am going to win these games and I will get the best possible ending.”

“What was that you were saying earlier? About making struggles meaningless?”

“I don’t fucking care,” Blackjack spat. “I’m going to fix everything.”

“Listen to yourself! Think!”

Blackjack laughed. “Do I look like I do thinking!?”

“Selfish,” Valentine said.

“What was that?”

“Such a wish is selfish,” Valentine said. “Just bring back the lives of those lost on your world? Of those close to you? Why not extend the range to include others? Other worlds? Other nations?”

“Maybe I’ll do that! Whatever it takes to get Glory back!”

Eve looked at Blackjack with sad eyes. “You really mean that don’t you? Whatever you can, damn the consequences?”

Blackjack drew her sword, noticing the look in Eve’s and Valentine’s eyes. “Yes. I mean every word.”

“…Can we convince you to put your personal desires aside for the betterment of everyone?” Eve asked. “Please?”

“Everyone’s better off alive than dead, princess.”

Eve sighed. “It looks like we will have to fight then. After we deal with mysterious last contestant.”

Valentine nodded.

“You think I’m just going to work with you if I know that you’ll turn and kill me once we’re done!?” Blackjack blurted. “No dice! I’m taking you both out right no-”

Eve froze her solid with Seraphim.

Valentine put a hand to the bridge of his nose. “I don’t suppose you can condition her to work with us?”

“At this point, I doubt it,” Eve said, frowning deeply. “…She just wanted the same thing as Flutterfree. It’s a thing so, so many want. But bringing people back to life… It’s not a skill meant to be at our disposal. I fear the day when we do get strong enough to revive everyone we want. I fear it more than I fear the day Corona discovers mass-produced immortality.”

Valentine nodded. “Some powers are too much to give to anyone. And yet, there are those who have such abilities. Them, for instance.”

“It does things to them…” Eve admitted. “It’s done things to us to make Blackjack and others like her see us as enemies. Higher up it only gets worse… Disconnects, ideals above all else, power taken to extremes…” She shook her head. “We can’t wish for anything that would ruin who we are, Valentine.”

Valentine nodded.

“Blackjack can’t move past that,” Eve said, putting a hoof on Blackjack’s frozen face. “I think that’s part of why her nature in ka failed her. Her nature is to win most of the time, but to endure great loss in the process. She’s not the Princess of Winning, she’s the Princess of Sacrifice. If she found a way to undo all her sacrifices… It would destroy the drawback to her nature. She wants to undo the sacrifice…”

“But she cannot.”

“It’s a much darker, more depressing curse than Starbeat’s,” Eve said, sadly. “…It means all she loves and cares about dies.”

“Only if she tries to be the hero.”

“I don’t think she can stop.” Eve shook her head. “Blackjack… I’m really sorry. I don’t have a cure for you. And I’m not going to make that wish for you. I know you see me as an enemy for this, and… you may be right to do so.” She stared into the alicorn’s cold, frozen eyes. “Goodbye, Blackjack. I hope you find a cure.”

With a burst of magic, Eve turned Blackjack into diamond dust. The sparkling bits of ice rose into the air, riding the wind. They filled the night with the their beautiful sheen, rising to the stars themselves.

“…And then there were three,” Valentine said, hands in his jacket pockets.

“What are the chances our mysterious third is going to try to kill us now?” Eve asked.

A dart struck Valentine at the base of the neck, a second one bouncing off Seraphim’s natural protections.

“Rather high,” Valentine muttered, wrapping himself in the flag to access his alternate selves before the poison killed him. It was only a few seconds before there were six Valentines, all crowding around Eve.

“We need to find where these darts are coming from…” Eve said, scanning everywhere with her magic. “I’m not finding anything!”

“It is also night…” Valentine muttered, three of his selves going down with a carefully placed gunshot. “And they’re really good at aiming.”

“I can’t track the bullets!” Eve grunted. “They don’t appear to exist until they hit you, and that only gives me a general idea of where they are!” She raised a bubble shield around them, deflecting all the bullets.

“We clearly have the power advantage,” Valentine declared. “But they know that, so they won’t let us see them.”

“They’re playing smart,” Eve said. “They probably have some kind of plan…”

The plan turned out to be a grenade. Eve’s shield shattered when it exploded, exposing Eve and the Valentines. More gunshots went off, this time knocking down all the Valentines at once, but easily bouncing off Seraphim’s barrier.

Valentines started pouring out from behind trees, scouring the area, but they fell from seemingly random directions.

“We might have an invisible teleporter!” Eve shouted.

“Can Seraphim help with that?”

“If I drop Seraphim’s shields, I get shot by an invisible bullet! They’ve already proven it’s possible for them to get past a bubble shield!”

“Then take this!” Dozens of Valentines walked up to Eve – and dogpiled her.

“What the-”

“We are your shield.”

“Well now I can’t see…”

“Would that really help you in this instance?”

“…Good point. SERAPHIM!” Eve summoned her Stand, forcing it to rise above the pile of Valentine. The invisible opponent started shooting the pile, unable to dig all the way through to Eve. Seraphim didn’t know a universe where invisibility was impossible without screwing with the nature of life itself, but it did know one where teleportation wasn’t a thing. It just needed to edit reality to prevent that from happening…

“PONYFEATHERS!” Eve swore. “I need to know exactly where they are at one moment to stop them from moving again!”

“…Would you be able to know where they were if a bullet hit you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I would survive th-” D4C grabbed Twilight’s horn and shoved it into a parallel universe, one that had the exact same events as was happening in the base. Yeesh, Them were thorough when they created these sub-universes. “Tap into your other self’s mind!” Valentine demanded.

Eve did so – finding it to be a shadow of her own, little more than a puppet designed to carry out what Them thought she would do in any situation. A Valentine in her pile tore her out and tossed her into the air – where a bullet hit her right in the chest. Eve got the information directly from the bullet shot in the other universe, using it to triangulate the enemy’s position in her universe.

Seraphim activated fully, freezing the enemy in place. Eve hit the area with a true-sight spell, banishing the invisibility.

Olivia appeared, holding several guns, a poison kit, and a teleporter belt. “…Oi caramba…” She muttered.

“OLIVIA!?” Eve blurted.

“Yeah. It’s me.” She tried to shoot one last time just for the heck of it.

“DOJYAAAAN!” Valentine shouted, appearing behind her with D4C, the flurry of Stand fists hitting her in every location. She fell down, but filled Valentine with lead. Another version took possession of D4C. He reached under her and pulled another copy of Olivia from the ground. She fused together, exploding in the disgusting fractal shattering D4C was known for.

“…Ouch,” Eve winced.

“Who was that?” Valentine asked.

“One of our techies, works with Corona and Lady Rarity,” Eve explained. Also the person you think the TSAB has in custody, but we don’t need to talk about that.

“She deserves recognition for making it this far,” Valentine said.

Eve nodded. “She will.”

The two looked at each other.

“And then there were two,” Eve said.

Valentine nodded.

“…Let’s do this in the morning,” Eve said with an exaggerated yawn.

“Agreed,” Valentine said.

Eve cast a sleep spell on them both now that it was safe to do so.

~~~

The sun rose.

Eve and Valentine woke up the moment its rays fell on their faces. The two stood up, dusted themselves off, and looked at the sunrise.

“So, which one of us gets to make the wish?” Eve asked.

“It’s the same wish,” Valentine pointed out. “It doesn’t matter.”

Eve thought about this for a moment. “Yeah… Yeah it is the same wish, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.”

“All that thinking, fighting, and arguing, and in the end it doesn’t matter at all.” Eve found this amusing enough to laugh at. “Flip a coin?”

Valentine looked into the distance. “That doesn’t seem right, though. To end it with a flip of the coin.”

“I know…” Eve smiled, shaking her head. “In the end, we just can’t escape Them can we? They want a final battle… And we want one too.”

Valentine let himself smile. “But it will not be like any of the others fought in this arena.”

Eve smirked. “Because we’ll be smiling and having fun. You hear that Them? We’re going to enjoy ourselves despite you!”

No response.

“I’m making an arena,” Eve declared. “Help me clear trees.”

It didn’t take long for a small army of Valentines and the Charter-Princess to clear enough trees for an arena. With a quick landscaping spell, all the grass, stones, and weeds were removed as well, creating a flat circle of dirt more than large enough for the two to go at it.

Eve agreed to let Valentine start with a few duplicates – after all, without them, Eve could go for the Absolute Zero instant-kill with ease. It was only fair.

“A fair, just fight,” Valentine said, summoning D4C to his side. “I believe Them were not considering this.”

Eve nodded, summoning Seraphim and spreading her wings. The two bowed at each other.

“Three…” Eve said.

“Two…” Valentine continued.

“One…”

“FIGHT!” They both declared, charging each other – smiling.

Already D4C had been transferred to another Valentine, who vanished into the flag, grabbing more alternate versions of Valentine for the fight. Eve froze two Valentines solid and shattered them by smashing the two of them into each other.

Valentines appeared behind her and started shooting, only to find she had erected an invisible wall with Seraphim. Eve tapped into her dark magic, surrounding the arena in dark, wispy tentacles that, upon touching a Valentine, reduced him to ash while screaming.

“DOJYAAAAAN!” Valentine shouted, the one with D4C jumping out of a nearby Valentine’s coat, the Stand punching Seraphim enough to upset the invisible wall, allowing bullets to fly. Eve caught them with her magic, opting to send them back rather than just drop them.

Eve saw the D4C Valentine running at her with a flag poised, ready to trap her in another dimension. She teleported away – only for D4C to translate to the nearest Valentine, giving him the power to cross dimensions, and he enveloped her in the flag, sending her to another realm.

There were now two Evening Sparkles in existence. This meant they had greater firepower – but this also meant they could not come into contact with each other.

The Valentines wanted to make sure they did. They appeared on either side of the Eves, forcing them closer together.

Both Eves opted to use their dark magic mixed with a teleport to distance themselves and decimate the numbers of Valentines present.

“It doesn’t matter how many of us you kill, Eve!” Valentine called. “I have a truly endless supply thanks to Them!”

“The only way to defeat you is to defeat your Stand then!” Eve declared. “Seraphim!” Seraphim stopped editing reality and became the rapidly-moving gyroscope used for physical conflicts. “Get D4C!”

“Seraphim is not a physical combat Stand!” Valentine declared. “D4C is stronger! Not to mention, I can still use my ability while fighting directly!”

“But you don’t have magic!” Eve declared, one of her selves floating into the air. The gyroscopic form of Seraphim surrounded her. She tapped into the magic of the universe they occupied, shifting her coat color to white and her mane into a fiery inferno. She pointed a hoof at Valentine. “I can shunt my power directly into Seraphim if I so choose!”

The dark magic in the arena fell, leaving the bright star that was Eve as the only source of her magic.

Besides her other self, that was. D4C quickly grabbed the other Eve and tossed her like a bullet at the glowing Eve. The glowing Eve and the purple Eve shared a moment when they locked eyes. The purple Eve let herself get disintegrated by the other’s flame attack.

Eve smirked. “I think I’m going to keep increasing my power here, just to add to the absurdity. It’s not like you can really interrupt me.” Her eyes went black, summoning a dark highlight to her blinding light. She pointed a hoof at Valentine. “What now?”

“It’s times like this I wish Love Train was portable.”

“Hm?”

“One of the most powerful artifacts the USM has under its control improves D4C’s abilities. Notably, I cannot carry it with me everywhere I go.” He and all his other selves entered a ready stance. “But that’s not important. What is important is that you have no idea where D4C is right now.”

“And you can’t defeat me without using him directly!” Eve declared, chuckling. She sent a beam of solar light around the arena, charring all the Valentines. More came out of the woodwork, indicating D4C was currently occupying another plane of existence.

Eve didn’t care – Valentine had to show D4C eventually, all she had to do was wai-

A flag was tossed up to her, and out of it came another version of Eve, looking rather bewildered. Eve sent all her focus on the alternate self, disintegrating them before contact could be made.

This allowed another flag to get closer to Eve. The current core Valentine and D4C appeared out of it. “DOJYAAAAAN!” D4C punched the rapidly rotating Seraphim, cracking the outer ring. This broke both of Eve’s wings, forcing her down to the ground – but she maintained her heightened fiery form.

She managed to teleport less than an inch from D4C, using Seraphim’s remaining rings to shred one of D4C’s arms off. The Stand cracked, but remained complete. It kicked Seraphim, breaking the second ring.

This pain broke Eve’s legs, the pain enough to draw her out of her heightened magical form. She fell to the ground, breathing hard as the last ring of Seraphim rotated around her with incredible speed.

The Valentine whose arm she had just removed passed out – and a new, perfectly healthy Valentine took his place. Granted, D4C was still damaged, but this Valentine hadn’t tired at all.

“You never tire…” Eve said with a chuckle.

“Usually I’m not so careless with my other selves,” Valentine admitted. “After all, I have to take them from somewhere. This place just allows me to cut loose. I will never tire or sustain lasting damage. You will.”

“I just have to kill your Stand…”

“Seraphim is at the breaking point.”

Eve pondered this, then grinned. “Oh, I’ve got an idea.”

“What?”

Eve activated Seraphim in the reality-altering mode, using her horn to raise a magic shield. “ANTI-STAND UNIVERSE!”

D4C vanished. Eve shot the Valentine that had been talking to her, killing him in an instant. She set to work killing all the rest – without D4C, if all of them were gone, she would win. She would definitely win.

She cleared the entire arena in a matter of seconds.

“Ha! Gotcha!”

D4C appeared behind her, rising out of a flag with another Valentine.

“DOJYAAAAN!” He shouted, punching with D4C’s remaining arm.

“WHAT!?” Eve blurted, unable to comprehend much as Seraphim’s final ring crumbled, reducing her spinal column to dust. Most Stand users would just die when their Stand disintegrated completely, but Eve managed to hold on with her powerful magic.

“I transferred D4C the moment you activated Seraphim, to make you think it had worked,” Valentine said, walking up to her.

Eve looked at him. “Y-you’re the o-only Valentine h-here now…” Eve said, barely able to move her mouth.

Valentine raised an eyebrow, about to ask what her point was. She shot him with a disintegrating laser before he could speak. It was too weak to kill him, but it severely wounded him. He landed on the ground, clutching his chest. “NANI!?”

“Y-you are the only Valentine…” Eve coughed. “You c-can’t transfer D4C without t-traveling…”

Valentine started limping away – to a flag, anything he could press himself to and translate.

“No,” Eve said, using her remaining magic to wrap him in telekinesis and drag him closer to her, slamming his head on the ground in the process. “Not going anywhere…”

Valentine grunted, summoning D4C. “If you die first…”

“I’m not going to…” Eve grunted.

“Maybe not…” Valentine said. D4C used its hand to grab Eve – and roll her overtop of Valentine. D4C was able to activate using the collapsing of Eve and the ground.

A fully healthy Valentine appeared a moment later, looking down at Eve.

“You win,” Eve admitted, the life draining from her eyes. “Make it impressive, Valentine.”

Valentine saluted. “It has been an honor. And it will continue being one.”

“Thanks for ending this on a… high note…” Eve coughed. “See you soon…”

And Evening Sparkle died with a smile on her face.

Valentine stood tall, the wind blowing through his hair.

“I CLAIM VICTORY OF THEM’S HUNGER GAMES IN THE NAME OF THE UNITED STATES OF THE MULTIVERSE!” He threw his hand into the air, sending the flag into the air, stars and stripes waving in the wind.

“EVERYONE GIVE A HAND TO AMBASSADOR FUNNY VALENTINE, THE WINNER!” the Them said. Valentine could hear actual clapping coming from all around him. “He only had three kills to his name alone though, the honor of most kills goes to Evening herself, with five. She also has the honor of coming in second overall, with the stealthy one-kill-wonder Olivia in third.”

In a flash of light, Valentine was no longer in the arena – he was standing on a perfectly flat purple plane that glistened with the light of distant stars. D4C was completely healed, standing alongside the Ambassador, ready for anything.

The Them revealed himself to Valentine and his Stand. The being was white, and took up all of Valentine’s field of view. The central point of the instance of Them rippled with energy, sending out smooth fractal patterns out into the rest of the white creature’s essence. Most of this essence outside the center was translucent, shifting with beautiful waves. Valentine knew that these beings were the distilled idea of physical perfection – the mathematics of the golden ratio and spin infused in everything about them.

“Valentine, as the winner of the Hunger Games, you are to receive a reward beyond the likes of which most lower races can even comprehend. You get a wish. Tell me what it is.”

Valentine looked the Them right in the center. “I wish for Justice.”

“…Care to be a little more definitive in what that means, exactly?”

“I wish for Harmony.”

“That doesn’t help!”

“I wish for all of us to be brought closer together through an act of justice!”

“…Just say it, dramatic politician.”

Valentine took a powerful stance. “I wish for the Collector to be brought to justice for what he has done to us.”

“Ah, finally, a solid wish we can deal with. Your wish i-”

“HOLD IT!” another Them interrupted, appearing behind Valentine. This Them was identical in every way to the other one, right down to the male voice reverberating in Valentine’s mind. “He just wished for us to bring down a Class 2 Presence. That’ll take a bit more work than snap-fingers-done. Just waltzing in and giving the Collector a beatdown isn’t wish material. It’s not like we’re using a Wishing World.”

“Are you scared of a little Gary Stu?” the other one ribbed.

“Yes. I am. They have the nastiest tricks and you never know when one of them is going to find a way to destroy one of us with a Deus Ex Machina or something.”

“You’re giving him too much credit.”

“I’m cautious. But if you want to go over there and do it yourself, it’s your funeral.”

“You all agreed to assist with the wish! Going there alone sounds like work.”

“One forbid any of us actually do any work.”

The two found this statement amusing enough to laugh at it.

The first Them rippled with emotion. “The point is this isn’t beyond us or anything.”

“It’s not worth it. Just refuse to give him the wish, it’s not like we actually have to keep our word or anything.”

“Ahem,” Valentine said. “If I may make a suggestion?”

“Yes, what is it?” the second one asked, clearly annoyed he was talking to a human being.

“Don’t go over there and deal with the Collector personally, if that is what you fear. Why not manipulate events in such a way that he will be brought to justice? You clearly have the power to manipulate universes on a fundamental level. Surely you can do something from a distance.”

The two Thems were quiet.

“That sounds fun,” the first eventually said.

“I thought you hated work?”

“I’m already thinking of a way to make this decidedly more entertaining! I’ll need to do some research on the Collector and see what makes him tick… But ooooooh this could be our next round of bets!”

“If you’re willing to set it up, I’ll call the gang together again.”

The first returned to addressing Valentine. “YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED, FUNNY VALENTINE! EXPECT RESULTS WITHIN A FEW WEEKS!”

Valentine bowed. “Thank you for your generosity.”

“This has been another round of the Hunger Games! Join us next time when we… apparently try Smash Bros again. I promise you folks, it’ll have an actual story this time! Now everyone, get out of here!”

And suddenly Valentine was back in the board meeting he had been in the middle of when the Games started. He sighed. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a question. Did I vanish there for a moment? Or were there any signs of a dimensional anomaly?”

After a bunch of shaking heads, Valentine sighed. “I need to contact Merodi Universalis to see if any of what I just experienced actually happened.”

~~~

Eve regained consciousness deep inside the covers of her bed.

She thought about getting up, about dealing with her job, about talking to her friends, and about fixing the damage that was done.

She decided she was done thinking.

She pressed a button on the wall with her magic. “Cessera, I’m taking a vacation day.”

“Got it.”

Eve returned to her bed, thinking of nothing but pillows and rest. She was soon fast asleep.

~~~

Renee sat in her office.

She twitched.

“I’m going to have a word with Vriska about sniper rifles,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head. “At least now I know what it feels like to get shot with a sniper rifle. That’s an interesting experience to have survived.”

She lit her horn and pulled up to her computer and started typing up a report on what she’d just experienced. She didn’t see any reason why she should put her work on hold for this – clearly, there were other people among her fellow contestants who would make a bigger deal out of it. She also hadn’t really been around long – got told what was going on, and then got shot.

In and out, more or less.

It took her about ten minutes to type up everything she had experienced. She folded it up, sent an email holding it to the rest of the Overheads, and got back to what she’d been doing when she’d been taken away – reading reports marked ‘high importance’ by her many expedition teams.

Most often these reports were rarely the kind of ‘high importance’ they were supposed to be, but she enjoyed reading them. Plenty of amusing anecdotes and interesting bits of information.

Today it was unfortunately rather boring. It was important, yes, but the danger to the economy from wood that could absorb magic was hardly engrossing. Not to mention the typos…

She swore she would have wished those Rubies learned how to write properly. It had to be pretty bad if the translator wasn’t able to parse it at all for Renee’s viewing. She would have to call them in at some point.

A message came in on her computer – Pinkie was asking for a day off. Renee granted it – the pink pony probably got a lot further into the games than Renee herself did. She wondered what Pinkie was going to do with the day.

“Visitor for you, Renee,” a voice came in on the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“Your sister and her kid.”

Renee smiled. “Ah, send them in!”

Allure and Minna were teleported into the room. Allure’s face was red, tear streaks visible under her eyes. Minna was very confused as to why her mother was crying.

“Renee!” Allure blurted, rushing her sister into her hooves. “Renee… I saw… I saw…”

Renee gasped. “Oh, Allure, dear! I’m sorry! I didn’t think about what you would ha-”

“It’s my fault! I distracted you! I…”

“Allure, it didn’t matter.”

“But what if I distract you at another time? What if I screw everything up? What i-”

“Allure… Everything’s fine now. We’re both home, as if nothing had happened. I don’t even have a headache!”

Allure gulped. “I know.” She squeezed Renee tighter. “I’m still not letting you go.”

Renee shook her head. “You’ll have to eventually.”

“Says who?” Allure demanded.

“Our jobs?”

“Psh, they don’t have voices,” Allure said, allowing herself to laugh. Then she buried her face into Renee’s mane. “I was so scared…”

“I was too, Allure, I was too…” she saw Minna out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, you poor thing, so confused.”

Minna nodded slowly, clearly trying to process what was happening behind that impassive face of hers.

“Come here. I may not be able to explain but I can make you feel better about it,” Renee said, pulling the girl into the hug with her magic. Minna wrapped her arms around them.

“Everyone’s here,” Allure said, smiling. “That’s all I need.”

~~~

Rohan Kishibe stared at a blank manga page, unable to get the drive to write or draw anything.

This never happened. He sometimes had difficulty writing stories meant to affect the world around him, but working on his manga series? Never. Never had he stared at a blank page and not felt something. Not since he got Heaven’s Door.

He broke the pen he was chewing on, spilling ink all over the paper. He stared at it, wondering if inspiration would come. Nothing did.

Was he going to have to go on hiatus again?

No… He would never do that if he could help it. All that could stop him from meeting his deadlines was physical distance! He had a reputation!

He still couldn’t figure out what the ink blob on his page was supposed to be. This just didn’t bode well…

Perhaps it was just the funk he was in. Having fallen to… to… whatever it was he had fallen to in his sleep – or was it in his sleep? The memory of the end was foggy. Some assassin, regardless. Some coward who wouldn’t face him.

Though who in their right mind would face Rohan directly? Toph. The rest who had faced Rohan directly tended to lose very quickly by virtue of being overwritten.

What was he even complaining about?

Not winning, that’s what. He should have been more careful. Though since his memory was foggy he wasn’t exactly sure how he should have been careful. That was no small part of what was bugging him.

Rohan heard the sound of his front door being smashed in. He had two guesses as to who it was. The guy who usually bashed his door down was Josuke, but there was one other who might have a particular vendetta against the manga artist today…

“ROHAN KISHIBE!” Thrackerzod roared. “YOU ARE TO REMOVE THIS BLASPHEMOUS COMMAND FROM MY BODY!”

“Sure,” Rohan said.

“I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOUR EXCUSES ARE. IF YOU DO NOT REMOVE THEM, THERE WILL BE A TRANSMISSION TO THOSE ABOVE YOU TO FORCE YOU TO DO SO!”

“Alright already,”

“I MEAN IT, NO FUNN- Wait, you said sure!?”

“Yeah. But go on if you want, I’m sure the speech got much better as it went on.”

“Shut up. Just fix me.”

Rohan summoned Heaven’s door and popped Thrackerzod’s book open, leafing through the pages where he had left commands. He erased them with whiteout and then closed the book. “Good as new.”

“You didn’t leave anything?”

“Just ‘cannot attack Rohan Kishibe’,” Rohan commented.

Thrackerzod looked like she wanted to scream at him for leaving that in, but she decided it would be a fruitless endeavor. “Fine.”

“Good,” Rohan said, turning away from Thrackerzod and examining his paper. Summoning Heaven’s Door, he made a sketch that turned the ink blot into Thrackerzod being smashed into the ground. Rohan added Froppy a few seconds later.

“…Is it possible for a Prophet to act retroactively?”

Rohan shrugged. “Probably. Though only without prior knowledge of the event, I would think.” He paused. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you know about me.”

“Classification is a loose thing here,” Thrackerzod admitted. “Now, I’m going to go home. I’m going to forget anything in those games ever happened. But before I do, I want you to know. IF YOU WRITE IN ME EVER AGAIN I WILL SMITE Y-”

Rohan popped open Thrackerzod like a book and wrote ‘does a jig for the next five seconds.’ Upon closing the book Thrackerzod did a jig for five seconds.

“You were saying?” Rohan asked, smirking.

Thrackerzod vanished without another word.

Now in a considerably better mood, Rohan found the images coming to his mind once more.

~~~

Brutalight screamed in the throne room of her castle of insanity.

Rarifruit looked to Fluttershout. “What did you do to her?”

“Do to her? I didn’t do anything!” Fluttershout retorted. “She just started screaming completely on her own.”

“But that’s what you do! So you must be responsible!”

“Morons,” Rainbine muttered.

“Say that to my face Rainbine!”

“I did.”

“Oh. In that case, thank you.”

Rainbine rolled her eyes. “Whatever floats your fruity little boat there.”

“Shush, it doesn’t have anything to do with Fluttershout,” Six said, walking up to her mentor. “Brutalight? What’s wrong?”

“I LOST! I WAS SO, SO CLOSE! TOP FIVE AT LEAST!” Brutalight screamed at the sky. “But then they had to GANG UP ON ME because I had a BIG MOUTH!” She lit her horn, picking up a boulder and throwing it out the window. The village outside lost yet another house to Brutalight’s ‘boulder therapy’.

For once, it didn’t do anything for her. “I need to start a war.”

“We own the universe and the next one over,” Rarifruit pointed out.

“Time to find a new one, then,” Brutalight decreed. “I need to conquer something.”

“You know, you should probably talk about it with us,” Fluttershout suggested.

Brutalight glared at her.

“In addition to going conquering, of course.”

Brutalight’s glare lessened. “Right, right. Well… Some higher-order beings grabbed me and twenty-three others – mostly from Merodi Universalis – to engage in a deathmatch battle royale. I killed every version of Starlight Glimmer I could find. Got a bingo and everything. But then I went to fight among the finalists in a free-for-all battle to end all battles… AND THEY FUCKING GANGED UP ON ME!” She roared.

“Sounds like they didn’t like you,” Rainbine pointed out.

“No shit,” Fluttershout muttered.

Six folded her arms. “Well, it sounds like you made it really far and got to kill a lot of people. I bet it was cathartic.”

“I didn’t get Eve,” Brutalight muttered. “Some of the killing was good, but most of it was kinda… void of meaning. I would have wished for all of them to stay dead had I won, but I didn’t win, so they’re all alive, GAH.” She sat in her throne and leaned on one of her hooves.

“Oh, oh, idea!” Rainbine shouted.

“You? An idea?” Rarifruit blurted.

“Let’s make our own deathmatch to cheer Brutalight up! We can find twenty-something poor saps and throw them into an arena, see what happens, easy!”

Six looked at Rainbine. “…That’s actually a good idea. What about it, Brutalight?”

Brutaligh’s angered face gave way to a psychotic grin. “Oooooh, I can see why Them like this sort of game in particular… Except in mine, consequences will be permanent! Heheheheh… I’ll make it bigger! Better! Brighter! Best idea you’ve ever had, Rainbine. Let’s start rounding up contestants, shall we?”

Six grinned. “I already have some in mind…”

~~~

Jotaro walked through the streets of Celestia City, hands in his pockets, head down. To virtually everyone who had ever seen him, this appeared to be nothing more than normal behavior. He may not have gone on walks all that often, but it wasn’t unheard of. Plus, he may have had a destination.

In truth, Jotaro had no idea where he was going, busy dealing with internal thoughts of inadequacy.

Fell to Vriska. She didn’t even have her dice, just her luck.

He clenched his fist in his pocket – he saw a million ways he could have won that fight. A slightly better use of time stop. Forego the rapid ORA ORA punches for fewer, more accurate ones to get through her luck barrier. Blind her. Anything, really.

Yet, in the moment, he was unable to pull it off. He failed against an opponent he knew.

And then he’d been taken out early in the game. All that preparation, for nothing. Nothing.

Had he just been unlucky? Or was there a better way to play the game?

These thoughts were pushed to the back when he recognized one of the figures coming toward him. He sighed – it was Vriska.

“Hey, big guy!” She called waving her hands. “Over here!”

Jotaro didn’t look at her, he just kept walking.

She flew over to him, taking up a pose like she was lounging on the air. “Come on, Jojo, lighten up a little! Game’s over!”

No response from the inheritor of the Joestar bloodline.

“All right, fine,” Vriska said, landing on her feet and standing in front of Jotaro. “Since you won’t start a conversation that leads into this, I’m just going to have to tell you directly. Remember this day well, for two words are about to escape my mouth that will blow your tiny mind.”

Jotaro raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry.”

Jotaro looked at her in shock. The ends of his mouth curled up and he grabbed his hat. “Yare yare daze…”

“Should have asked you to be an ally first,” Vriska admitted. “Shouldn’t have become quite as bloodthirsty as they wanted. Shouldn’t have become so invested in the game.” She shrugged. “But hey, I lost.”

“Who to?”

“Corona. She did some serious bullshit.”

“Sounds familiar.”

Vriska chuckled. “Don’t you start.”

Jotaro opted not to respond.

“Anyway, now that all that tedious and drawn out apology business is out of the way, how about you and I go out and have some fun? Hub arcade is good this time of year, but there’s also a giant laser tag arena right here in this very city!”

Jotaro glanced at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Right, fine, laser tag is a bad idea considering what we’ve just been through. What about… one of those virtual reality terminals? There’s this new thing called the Oasis where you can apparently do anything and be anyone.”

“I’ll have to see it to believe it.”

“No you don’t.”

Jotaro shrugged.

“Come on, I’ll show you.” She pushed him forward, grinning. “I think car racing sounds like a good thing to look for, don’t you?”

Jotaro nodded slowly. Racing did sound fun.

~~~

Corona received an email, marked urgent enough that her red shades displayed it in front of her eyes the moment it appeared.

From: Renee

Come to my house now. It’s an emergency.

Corona didn’t need to be told twice. “Emergency call from Renee,” Corona told Toph.

Toph shrugged. “Eh, we can talk later. Not like I really got to do much besides get the tar beaten out of me by an alicorn destined to win. Go.”

Corona dialed the Hub, having Raging Sights mix a teleport spell into the portal to ensure they’d arrive right outside Renee’s doorstep. She knocked on Renee’s door, adjusting her glasses.

Renee opened the door, her eyes the image of terror. Her mascara had already run down her face.

“…What happened?”

“I… I just got home,” Renee said, choking on her words. “H-he isn’t himself. You’ve got to help him!”

Corona paled. Something happened to Daniel? “What’s wrong with him?”

“Just… Just come look!” Renee dragged her into the house and took her to the living room. Daniel sat in a chair, staring at the clock on the wall. His jaw hung slack and his arms lay at his sides, limp. He was alive, but he didn’t appear to have much life in him.

Corona was struck with the realization that he’d gotten old in the almost thirty years since they started exploring the multiverse. He was around forty when they started… Seventy now. Even magic medicine didn’t let him keep his youth. Ascending probably would, if it came to that...

Corona removed the tips of her gloves, exposing her fingers. “I’ll go in, see what I can do to shake him out of it. I don’t know how he’ll react tho-”

She didn’t even get to touch him before he reached out, grabbed her wrist, and screamed at her.

“…Oh…” Corona said. “I… Renee, I think I did this to him.”

“W-what?”

“I messed with his Ascended form in the arena… I had to kill him in it. He sees me as a threat.”

“I don’t care if you did it, get in there and fix him for me!” Renee wailed.

“I’ll try,” Corona said, forcing her hand to Daniel’s head.

The surface memories of his were impossible to fathom. She saw images of herself, images of Renee, and images of a stargate.

She forced her powers of empathy deeper, digging up memories of being an Ascended being trapped in a globe. It wasn’t a maddening existence, just dreadfully boring. Most of the Ascended’s far-reaching senses and higher-dimensional understanding were limited to the confines of the globe, unable to see as far as he needed…

And then she used him. The feeling of being burnt to extinguish another was such a mixture of emotions even Corona had difficulty parsing through it. There was the vindication of getting revenge. There was the horror of realizing one was being devoured by an attack. And then there was a deep, horrendous burning that had no physical body to attack, so all of it went to the mind…

Corona forced herself deeper into Daniel’s mind, a place where everything was white and Daniel himself stood.

“Trying to fix what you did?” he asked, back to her.

“I didn’t realize!” Corona blurted. “I though-”

“You thought wrong. You damaged my mind by burning me there. Now I’m stuck in here, in the place my Ascended consciousness comes from, denied access to the rest of my body.”

Corona extended a hand. “I can bring you out.”

Daniel turned to her, face lined with fear. “…I’m not sure I can let you.”

“Just take my hand, Daniel.”

He flinched, taking a step back.

“Daniel…”

Daniel started running away, deeper into the recesses of his mind.

Thoughtchain, Corona thought, holding the palm of her hand out. A mental construct that looked like a holy chain shot out, wrapped itself around Daniel’s midsection, and pulled him to her. “We’re going out, Daniel.”

He writhed in the chain, taking a partially-Ascended appearance.

“This is just your mind. You can’t actually become one of them, in here.” She lifted her other hand and left the depths of Daniel’s mind, dragging him along with her. When she reached the surface memories, she dropped him off.

Then she returned to the real world. Daniel was screaming at her. He kicked her in the stomach and plastered himself against a wall.

“Daniel! Dear!” Renee called. “You-”

“She just tore me through my own mind!” Daniel shouted, gasping. “I can’t even think straight anymore!”

“You’re better than you were,” Corona said, dusting herself off. “Stuck in your head.” She summoned the fingertips back onto her gloves. “I wouldn’t try to Ascend for a few days, but otherwise you…”

She noticed that with every syllable she spoke, Daniel flinched in visible pain. Her expression fell. “Oh.”

“Daniel?” Renee asked. “…Do you want her to go?”

“Yes. Yes, get her out of here,” Daniel said, trying to avoid looking at Corona. Her mere presence was an affront to his subconscious. “Please.”

Renee walked up to Corona and roughly scooted her toward the front door.

“Renee, I…”

“Thank you,” Renee said, hardly more than a whisper. Then she opened the door and shoved Corona out of it. Renee slammed it right after.

Corona stood outside, in the street, wondering what to do next.

She came to the horrifying conclusion she might not be able to do anything about this.

She might be permanently ingrained into his mental state to trigger a fear response… And she wasn’t good enough to remove specifically that, especially if he didn’t want to cooperate.

Corona put a hand to her head. “Why the heck did I have to catch him like that…?”

She didn’t have a good answer.

~~~

Froppy sat in her house, staring at the ocean from her balcony.

It was nice, being able to afford this house. Usually the view would always cheer her up. Endless water she could hop into at any time…

She didn’t particularly feel like swimming at the moment, though.

She felt like… Well she didn’t even feel like looking at the sea, but that was just the least-hated thing at the moment.

She’d needed to be killed by Valentine in the end. Killed so she wouldn’t do anything for Rohan.

Rohan Kishibe… He had authority over her, now. Did she dare go ask him to remove his commands? She could probably get Valentine to strong-arm him… If Valentine felt she was worth it. But she had failed him and the USM.

Her doorbell rang. She ignored it.

This forced Valentine to use alternate universes as a stepping stones to appear right on the balcony. “It’s rude to refuse your superior.”

“V-Valentine! I’m so sorry it won’t happen agai-”

“It is no problem, not today. I don’t even have an assignment for you. But I am here to tell you a few things.”

Froppy looked at the ground, dejected. “…What?”

“I’m giving you another award for exemplary service and injury in the line of duty. You were victorious against an opponent who had the edge on you in almost every way.”

“Ribbit?”

“Don’t be surprised. You are one of my most loyal, hardworking, and empathetic employees. At this rate your record might even exceed Johnny’s if you keep going the way you are now.”

She bowed. “Thank you, Ambassador.”

“You deserve it. You’re not a disappointment, Froppy.”

Froppy nodded. “Anything else?”

Valentine allowed himself to smirk. “I won.”

“You won!?”

“More surprised there than I would have liked,” Valentine mused. “But yes, I won. And I made my wish.”

“What did you wish for?”

Valentine told her. At first she was confused, but a smile soon grew across her face. “…We’re going to get Gyro back?”

“If Them keep their word, then yes.” Valentine removed a USM flag from his suit jacket. “Now excuse me, I must inform Johnny as well. I’m sure he’d like to be in the loop when it finally goes though.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“Take care of yourself, Froppy. Continue fighting for justice.”

She saluted. “I will! Ribbit!”

He saluted back at her before vanishing to another plane of existence.

~~~

Blumiere noticed four hours after the games ended that there was a new trophy on his mantleplace.

First to Die!

It was made of solid gold and covered in cute, cartoon skulls.

Blumiere narrowed his eyes. “I wonder which of them made this…”

Vivian shrugged. “No idea, sir. Do you want me to remove it?”

“No… It’s a good conversation starter.”

“Like the chest you’ll never let anyone open?”

Blumiere smirked, adjusting his white hat. “Precisely, Vivian. This is why one has knick-knacks in one’s home and office.”

“And submarine.”

“I do not own a submarine,” Blumiere asserted.

“Your wife thinks otherwise.”

“It is not a submarine.”

“It flies underwater, right?”

“Yes! And in the air and in space!”

Vivian shrugged. “It’s here on the checklist as ‘submarine’.”

Blumiere sighed. “Sometimes I wonder about things…” He looked at his reflection in the First to Die! trophy. He smiled. “And sometimes I just find things amusing.”

He twirled his cane and got back to his work.

~~~

“And that’s why I’m fucking pissed,” Blackjack explained to Gilgamesh.

“Sounds like you were the one going a little nuts,” Gilgamesh observed, leaning on one of the Void’s many crystalline pillars.

“I’m not completely nuts though! They still fucking killed me because they didn’t like what I was trying to do! Didn’t want me to save everyone!”

Gilgamesh shrugged. “Bringing people back usually results in a lot of pain. Except when it doesn’t. Ka isn’t especially consistent about it. Except when it comes to you.”

“Hey, you’ve managed to stay alive despite my ‘curse’.”

“I like to think I’m a special case.”

Blackjack seethed. “So what, do I blame them? Or do I blame my curse? Or… Or what?”

“All of the above?” Gilgamesh suggested. “There’s also something else to think about.”

“Hrm?”

“Things and people that have been dead that long can’t really be brought back without time exploits. That I think Them would have done would be to create completely new ones directly from the Sea of Infinite Possibility. Maybe even rewrite your universe completely to make it simple.”

“Fuuuuuuuck, that would bug everyone…” She put her hooves to her head. “Am I real? Are they real? Are we who we remember or just copies?” She let out a pained grunt. “…I think I’d be fine with that, as long as I got to be with Glory again.”

Gilgamesh nodded. “I’ve never been one for the ‘romance’ thing, but I think I get what you’re saying. Why don’t you find an alternate version of her?”

“She only exists in worlds that are variants of mine,” Blackjack reminded him. “…And in every one of those there’ll be a version of me.” She looked at her hooves. “Jackie removed the curse.”

“Didn’t she have to die to do that, and get lucky?”

“Yeah,” Blackjack said, staring into the distance. “Yeah, she did. …Dammit, why can’t I have hope Gil? What is it about existence that demands I can’t have anyone I want back?”

“Same thing that demands I wander the universe looking for the great EXCALIBUR!” He held his fist in the air for dramatic effect. “It’s ka.”

“But some people aren’t cursed. Most aren’t ‘cursed’.”

“Or everyone just has different variations of the same curse,” Gilgamesh suggested.

“Gah. We don’t even understand what we’re talking about.” She rammed her head into a crystal column. “I’m not going to be able to let this go.”

“That’s it,” Gilgamesh said, grabbing Blackjack by the scruff of her neck. “We’re going to see Jackie and learn a bit about what you can do to let things go. You’re an immortal multiversal traveler, Blackjack. You can’t keep being hung up over these things.”

“Let go of me!”

“SCHOOL CALLS!” Gilgamesh decreed, opening a Void sphere and jumping to Equis Regarden to begin the search for Jackie.

The Blackjack who had escaped her curse.

~~~

Flutterfree still technically lived in her cottage. It was in the middle of a public park rather than far outside Ponyville nowadays, but it still gave her the nature she held so dear to herself.

Evening was walking down the cobblestone path to the cottage, having managed to get herself out of her bed. She knew Flutterfree was here.

She gulped, knocking on the door of the large tree that was a house.

“Come in!” Flutterfree called, not that Eve could hear it. She just nervously tapped the ground in front of the door, waiting for a response. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to her?

“I said come i- oh.”

Eve had just started to walk away when Flutterfree opened the door. Flutterfree tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.”

“Oh… Right.” Eve nodded. Inside the house she saw Discord sitting, drinking a cup of tea. “I can come back la-”

“Discord, do you mind leaving us for a moment?”

“Not at all.”

“Go play with Trixie and Nova. This really needs to be a private conversation. Understand?”

Discord blinked at how suddenly she had gotten serious. He decided the best course of action was to shrug, nod, and teleport away.

Flutterfree gestured for Eve to come into the house, letting her take the couch Discord had just been sitting in while Flutterfree took a soft chair.

Eve looked at the tea already set out.

“You can have some, don’t be nervous.”

Eve nodded, levitating the tea to her and taking a drink. It was nothing compared to Iroh’s, but there was something about Flutterfree’s personal touch…

A tear rolled down her cheek. “We’ve ruined it, Flutterfree.”

“Eve…”

“I know we’re still friends. I know we’ll work past this and live with each other. I know that. But the mutual trust we’ve shared is still broken.” She gulped. “I… I killed you, and then I didn’t even let you know… I reacted before you decided… Then you attacked me, because you wanted to wish for the others. And then I had to kill Blackjack for basically the same reason and it felt horrible and her story is so tragic.” Eve put her head in her hooves, crying.

Flutterfree put a wing around her, failing to keep her face neutral and kind – she was clearly upset with Eve. “You’re right. It is broken.”

“Why’d we have to ruin it, Flutterfree?”

“Because we’re ponies.”

“That’s a dumb answer,” Eve muttered.

Flutterfree nodded. “Doesn’t mean it’s any less true. We broke each other’s trust. We couldn’t reach an agreement for once in our lives… And now there’s a rift.”

“I want to heal that rift!”

“I do too, Eve, and I’m going to put everything I have into it.” Flutterfree swallowed hard.

“You’re struggling.”

“Yeah. A lot.”

Eve looked at the ground. “It’s always going to be a painful memory.”

Flutterfree nodded, not commenting further on it.

Eve shook her head. “Flutterfree… This is wrong. We’re supposed to be the Elements of Harmony. How can we be that if we don’t trust each other?”

“We’re not the Element of Loyalty, Eve,” Flutterfree reminded her.

“No…” Eve said, looking into the distance. “But maybe we needed her.”

“Maybe.”

“…Want to go talk to her?”

“…Yeah,” Flutterfree admitted.

It was at this moment there was another visitor. Flutterfree moved to open the door, but she didn’t get very far – Pinkie Pie burst in, a comforting smile on her face. “Hey girls. Brought you some help.”

“Pinkie!” Eve called. “Are you oka-”

“I’m fine,” Pinkie said. “Really. I’m just sad I couldn’t be there for you two. But…” She stepped to the side, revealing Rainbow Dash. Their Rainbow Dash. “I heard you needed some help.”

Rainbow Dash looked at them, face set, and nodded. “Right.” She turned to Pinkie. “Prism’s outside – don’t let her mess with the bears, okay?”

Pinkie saluted. “Pinkie Pie, expert babysitter, is on the case! ...Though she’s old enough to watch herself.”

“She’ll try to kick one’s face in and critically analyze its reaction. Don’t let her.”

Pinkie giggled, saluted, and left the cottage, leaving Rainbow with Flutterfree and Eve.

“Do y-” Eve began.

“Pinkie told me more or less what happened,” Rainbow told them. “You don’t need to repeat anything.” She took a seat, looking at the two of them with a stern expression. “Here’s the ugly part. You two have hurt each other bad enough that it’s going to change your relationship permanently.”

The two of them looked away, ashamed.

“So here’s the first piece of advice – don’t try to set things back to the way they once were. That’ll only make things hurt, a case of misplaced Loyalty. Loyalty to a pony who doesn’t exist anymore, betraying the new ponies you both are. That Loyalty to the past? Change it to be Loyalty to the pony. You don’t care what the relationship used to be between you two, you only care that you want the relationship to continue. To stay.”

The two of them nodded like students in a classroom.

“The second piece of advice – the new relationship doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

Eve blinked. “W-what?”

Rainbow smirked. “Think back to our days before the multiverse, Eve. We were good friends, but we were also knuckleheads. Heck, I’m still a knucklehead. That should jog your memory about how undeniably stupid I was. I devoted myself to my goals at the expense of you girls more than once. For the Element of Loyalty, I think I was the one who twisted our bonds the most!” She shook her head and laughed in pity at her younger self’s plight. “And every time I – or anypony else – did that, I was welcomed back into the fold. And the relationship changed. We accepted each other as people who might do those things, and because of that our relationship changed.”

“The day we went camping in the Everfree…” Eve said.

“That wasn’t us,” Flutterfree reminded her.

“We thought it was,” Rainbow said. “And our dynamic changed. Everyone forgave everyone. But we remembered – and things changed.”

Eve and Flutterfree looked at each other. “We’ve already forgiven each other,” Flutterfree said.

“Then the trick is to accept the drastic change,” Rainbow said. “Prove your Loyalty to each other by letting it happen.

Eve nodded, placing her hoof on Flutterfree’s. “We will. …Thank you, Rainbow Dash. It’s been too long.”

Rainbow Dash laughed. “Oh, you think I’m done here? I’m just getting started – there’s so much I need to drill into your heads about Loyalty. So buckle up buttercups, this is gonna be a long ride.”

Eve and Flutterfree gulped. Rainbow Dash smirked – she’d missed these two a lot more than she wanted to admit to herself.

~~~

A couple of days later, there was a curious sight at Iroh’s teashop.

Eve stood outside the establishment, waiting for someone. She checked her watch – not late yet, but getting dangerously close to it. He wouldn’t ruin this without calling ahead, right? After all, it was kind of important they talk…

Perhaps more than just ‘kind of’, more like ‘really really’. Eve was beginning to get nervous about it all falling apart.

She was struck with an image of her young self setting up a meeting between universes in a hall, freaking out over banners and images of Equestrian heroes.

She allowed herself to think of those memories as her own for a moment – and laughed. She used to be so panicked about everything. Now she handled the fates of entire worlds in her hooves without any outward expression. A good thing for her job… But was it better for herself?

She didn’t know.

What she did know was that the man she was waiting for had arrived.

Valentine walked up to her and extended his hand. She shook it. “Shall we?”

Valentine nodded. The two of them entered the teashop together and sat down.

There was no plan to talk policy, no thought to discuss anything that had happened or was going to happen to the Collector, and no pushing for any sort of political movement.

They were just here to talk and learn about each other and their respective cultures. A place to talk, debate, and gain understanding. Not as enemies, colleagues, or leaders – but friends.

It would be the first of many such ‘tea parties’.

~~~

The Collector was staring at his computer screen. A game was on it, one that had a hexagon composed of nineteen circles. The puzzle was to slide three dots of a kind into each other, creating a bigger dot, until the biggest dot was created.

He had been trying to beat the game for three days straight. No luck.

Lightning ran into the room, breaking his concentration. “Augh! Lightning, I was focu-”

“Our universes are being moved around,” she told him, tapping at an alert on his computer screen.

“…Why now?” the Collector muttered, curling his hands into fists and rubbing them against each other, creating an annoying metallic scratching sound.

“Unknown. What is known is that the movements are making us significantly more visible.”

The Collector grunted. “To who?”

“Merodi Universalis and its neighbors.”

“Of course,” the Collector muttered, putting a hand to his head. “Who else would need to see us? …Do we have any idea who’s doing this?”

“Current analysis suggests it’s Them taking an indirect approach to altering our position in the multiverse. Long range positional scrambling.”

“Man I wish I had toys that impressive,” the Collector muttered. “It would make things so much easier.”

“You and I both know that would draw too much attention.”

“At this point remaining hidden looks to be a fruitless endeavor. “ He leaned back in his chair. “This is happening too fast. We weren’t supposed to go any further yet!”

“We can still do this.”

“Assuming Them aren’t doing this for some reason other than amusement.”

“Them never do anything for a reason other than amusement.”

“You never know,” the Collector said, standing up tall. “Regardless, we need to make the following events happen on our terms. If we have to go with Them’s timetable, we have to decide the where and the who.” He pointed at Lightning. “Get any agent in Merodi Universalis – any agent at all – and have them report the universes the Primary Team is scheduled to visit.”

“…Really sir? Going after them?”

“Yes. They were always part of the plan.”

“But even with the complications?”

“Nothing about that part has changed,” the Collector asserted. “Nor should it.”

Lightning nodded. “Who should I send?”

“A familiar faces brigade.”

“That’ll be interesting.”

“That’s the point. Make it interesting,” the Collector said. “I expect a report the instant the mission is concluded.”

“Of course.”

“Until then, leave me alone. I need to beat this game.”

“Need is such a strong word.”

The Collector would have raised an eyebrow if he had them. “Using my phrases against me?”

“We both know you got that from somewhere else.”

“Fair enough. By the way, interesting is a non-word.”

“Case in point.”

The Collector rolled his eyes, chuckling. “Just get to it. Also, for the sake of appearances, send a complaint letter to Them. Not that they’ll listen.”

“If we get a response it’ll be the talk of the Collection.”

The Collector tapped his fingers. “…Don’t advertise this. I know none of them can betray me, but this is too important to bank on the purity of their loyalties.”

“Got it,” Lightning said. She smirked at him. “Enjoy your game.”

“This is the sort of game you do not enjoy… This is the sort of game you keep playing only because it is an affront to your intelligence if it beats you into submission. It is a matter of pride Lightning!”

“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes. She left the office, leaving the Collector to his game.

Comments

[Efadd]

Pinkie giggled. “Yep! Now…” she turned on the TV. “How’s about we watch the only program on right now, the Hunger Games?”

Holy Fuck, Gabe! Pinkie is broken as fuck!

[prism heart]

Welp, that was not the play I was expecting. Time to wait for the next update.

[Efadd]

Pinkie pulled out a machine gun laced with miniature flamethrowers. “I have a lot more freedom right now.”

Case in point

[the other sans]

Couches, TV, multiple exists, a snack fridge, we have everything
Well it did have Raising Sights
had actually gone downfrom the sheer number of

1. Exits.
2. Raging.
3. Forgot your spacing.

[Galliar]

One of the best chapters of the entire story. You already have my essay on this one GM, I just wanted to restate a few things because I want it to be public record and I'm also avoiding going back to work on my take-home final for as long as possible.

Highlight for me is still Blackjack's breakdown near the end. Believe it or not, I have a bit of a personal attachment to crazy drunk cyber-horse. I know, I'm sure everyone who recognizes me is surprised. I read all of Horizons over the course of a single Summer, and I suffered with her for 1.7 million damn words. So when I see her here in this story - written as well as she is here but from a detached third person view, I still feel like I know what's going through her head, and not just because she's not entirely subtle. But here she's absolutely in the wrong and needs to lose the game - just like you all just did -, and that is so damned heartbreaking for me. I'd had to stop reading for a bit after that section just to collect my thoughts because ow.

Olivia making it to the final 3 with only a few rudimentary gadgets and her cunning against so many super powered foes is a close second. Sombra has been one of my favorite characters in this story since basically her introduction, largely in part because she's a morally grey character when the early story was very black and white. As Merodi grows more powerful and such, she stays that hacker from the early days. Meaning she never gets a Stand, or magic, or any anime powers unlike some people. Despite that, she was still able to outlast the likes of Corona, Jotaro, Vriska, Thrackerzod... It's awesome.

It's just SUCH a shame this entire thing has no consequences in any way, shape, or form. None at all. Nope. Them said so after all, and why would they lie?

[FanOfMostEverything]

Well. Didn't see that one coming. Though at least there was a point to the carnage beyond awesome fight scenes. (And they were awesome.)

Hmm. The Ink Rebellion could be any number of things, but part of me wonders if it's in a world where kids evolved from squids...

“We might have an invisible teleporter!” Eve shouted.

For the record, it was here where I remembered the identity of Contestant #24.

I have the distinct feeling that that magic-absorbing wood will come back to haunt the ponies at the worst possible time. Of course, that may just be paranoia.

Oh goodness, the Elements of Insanity are multiversal. Someone's going to need to nip them in the bud soon, lest they metastasize... though they likely won't be able to administrate/tyrannize many worlds to an effective degree.

I am gravely concerned that Blackjack may end up trying to destroy ka. And she might well succeed.

Merodi has the Oasis? At least the world isn't an economic dystopia that'll encourage massive amounts of escapism.

I immediately like Prism. I can get behind a "kick first, ask questions later" personality that actually does ask those questions.
Also, if Fluttershy's cottage is in the middle of a park, I can only imagine how much Ponyville has bitten into the Everfree. (Or that park is in the inside curve of the crescent.)

Despite Their promises, not all the damage was undone. Just ask Daniel. Heck, the thought occurs that Corona could've done nothing and let him have the wish, though ka might have demanded the Games unfold as they did to create this vulnerability for the Collector. Still, at least repairs are underway, some more effective than others.

One heck of a movie-length chapter. Thank you for it.

[Gemseeker]

This was an amazing chapter. I always love the movie-length chapters, but this was something else.
First off, it was a lot of fun to see our favourite characters face off in a battle to the death, especially that finale between Eve and Valentine. I loved the emotional tension caused be seeing close friends die, and even having caused those deaths... I fear this is just emotional foreshadowing for later when stakes are higher... I had hoped Eve, Flutterfree and Pinkie could have stayed a team longer, although the battle against Alushy was intense, and wouldn't have been the same without a death. Vriska's Just death was an amazing feat for Corona to pull off, although I hope Daniel will get eventually get better, even if he can never forgive Corona, or even remain mentally stable in her presence...

I especially liked how Olivia was so stealthy that she was the only competitor we didn't see until the end.
I had guessed GM might pull something like that, so I made a list of the competitors up front, to keep track of who was alive. For a while I thought it was being set up that she would come in and win right at the end, but that would be just a little too wacky for this story, also I'm sure her wish wouldn't be quite as story-bending as Valentine's was, or Evening's would have been, so it seems that ka required someone with a more influential wish to win. Also, I wonder if pairing Olivia with someone mostly unrelated (Toph) as opposed to someone she is close to (Corona) as well as placing her near the end, but not at the end of the initial list of competitors was intentional to make her more easily forgettable. If so, kudos to GM for such attention to detail in a work this large.

I think the lesson all of the characters should have learned is that teaming up with others with somewhat aligned goals to take down foes that are much worse is essential, since the cost of betrayal by such an ally is nothing compared to the risk of losing when fighting separately. It seems that Eve and Valentine figured that out by the end (fortunately) while Corona never did... and that hubris is probably the main reason she lost.

Well, that's enough from me. I guess I just really liked this chapter. Thanks for writing such an amazing work, GM!

[Chronokat]

Sorry to say but eve does have a my way is the right way mentality and everyone elses way is wrong or misguided .... she had no right to judge bj or fluttershy. Plus technically blackjacks world was sorta forced into the fold ...bj did all the work for merodi to come in last minute to .... save the day.. when she was allready fighting the final boss. I was hoping she'd declare war on merodi universe ... for interfering in other universes. Dio and soran were sorta right about what merodi is doing.... they change elements they don't like to what they view as acceptable. Fluttershy should've slammed the door in eves face.... she outright murdered fluttershy because fluttershy wouldn't agree with her... even after she backed off ....because she couldnt take a chance of fluttershy winning. Can't wait for her to find out eves the x copy just to see her response to eve. Sorry for ranting eve really erked me this chapter in a bad way.

[Chronokat]

Oh by the way .... great chapter. Wish blackjack would've got to eat sunsets crystal just to see what kinda power up she would've got.

[theunbalancedone]

I wonder if the whole smash bros thing could be considered a multiversial society in their own right? If so probably just a class 3 since it seems like while Them could pull such direct meddling in class 2's, it seems like it's more effort and resources than they'd rather do more than rarely, especially since it'd probably be annoying to have a reputation that would automatically make all class 2 societies hostile.

I am kind of worried about starbeat, she arguably got the worst of this chapter between her curse and her treatment from brutalight.

Side thought, I wonder if Them ever gets a winner who wants their prize to be someone to call on to shake up their games once in a while to make it more entertaining.

9353834
Not here to argue with you or anything on your points here, just wanted to point out that it kinda seemed that Eve struck down flutterfree the way she did when it really did seem like flutterfree was going to kill her. Not claiming she was right to do that or she had no other reasons, just hoping to get the order of events clear here.

[GMBlackjack]

9354544
You are correct about the order of events. Eve had retaliated about the time Flutterfree was ready to bite down on her neck.

-GM, master of COMMENTUS.

[Chronokat]

9354544
I see your point and flutterfree did almost bite eve .... almost....but she backed off ... she got tempted with the wish but everyone was tempted it's a wish .... i had alot of respect for flutterfree she literally gave up her wish for eve.... but she kept her there to have a conversation to apologize and justify why she killed her she could've used seraphim to negate fluttershys bite to see if she'd go through with it but killed her before seeing if fluttershy would pick their friendship first. Another thing she doesn't realize is theirs plenty of ways to bring back the dead ... what's she gonna do when someone finally succeeds... kill everyone that gets resurrected on the chance they might disrupt things. Yah theirs new leaders in place but that's why they go into retirement... or do what Valentine did and be a advisor/adventurer...the only one that'd cause ripples coming back is the princess of lai Luna but that's more the people wanting her back but I'd see her not wanting to and going into retirement too. I'm still waiting for her to finally decide sunsets immortality research is a threat and try to do something about it.

[Keywii_Cookies55]

9353670

Not really a comment on what you said, but I like your icon. Celeste was an amazing game and I loved playing it.

[EnderHooves]

Wow. That was Big. Not just big, but Big! Big Action, Big stakes, and a Big prize!
And as we can see with Valentine and Eve, friendship always prevails!
3 days later and it is way too late at night, but the chapter has been read. This chapter is bigger than some of the medium sized stories on this site, and just thinking about that is crazy!

[keybounce]

Don’t worry, there won’t actually be any consequences – all deaths will be reversed upon the completion of the games.

Mwa-ha-ha! This is like an RPG group's "best way to have a destress session". And the best way to deal with something as horrible as H.G. -- turn it into a commedy.

You will have DeadPool in there, right? Heck, this could be your chance to do DP vs PP. They could probably show up at the Monologuer.

And, out of boredom? And They are willing to admit it?

Nova without any time equipment. Vriska without dice. Hmm...

Allushy, the unkillable source of destruction?

Ok, so you have 14 from MU. 2 from USM. Jenny and Brutalight, half a society each. Olivia and Toph ... call that 8 MU teams. Thrackerzod and ... Blumiere? 8.5 MU and another solo. O'Neil and Daniel ...

9.5 MU teams.
1 USM team.
1.5 assorted.

A lot of stands. No equipment, but stand users get their stands. That is definitely not fair or balanced.

No one from the University of Doors? Mushroom worlds? (Oh, Blumiere probably counts). ... I think everyone else is represented, I can't think of anyone left out. Oh, the Link/Zelda world.

“LET THE HUNGER GAMES BEGIN! Place your bets now and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

This line cracks me up.

===

attempting to defend himself from Brutalight – failing miserably as one of her swords drove into his chest, another one cutting off his head.

Hey, no equipment. Cheater.

Now, you forced everyone into the center in an explosive forced move?

I'm reminded of Film Theory's look at The Hunger Games, and they concluded that the worst move you could make was trying to get into the central bloodbath -- running away was so much safer.

Ok, the rest of this tomorrow.

[keybounce]

Meticulously sort a pile of random junk into neat, organized piles of random junk to make it easier to find everything.

...

"That’s just the sound of Brutalight losing her sani… Wait, hold on, that’s a dumb sentence.

Such humor. Well done.

Pinkie pulled out a machine gun laced with miniature flamethrowers. “I have a lot more freedom right now.”

And now, I'm really curious. We've seen two starting teams obviously split. Why did Pinkie and Rohan not stay together? Heck, Rohan with the 3 ponies would make a really strong team.

Alushy, and Blackjack are both strong killers. Why are they apparently soloing? ... Well, other than they both have their own goals for the wish, probably can't trust the other, ok, never mind.

And if Pinkie Pie really has a lot more freedom, she should pull out Piebold's gun. ("A tree is not cover, we need 2 meters of dirt". She can dig 2 meters of dirt, we see that overnight bunker.)

“I’m not making the arena explode in a nuke.”

“If you could find a way to survive it you’d win!”

That's the spirit Pinkie. And Eve, if you do it right, no one would be aware of it in time to do anything.

Finally, let me just say that I love Thrakerzod's method of dealing with Rohan. "Oh hey, there's someone from MU that I want to help. I'll do nothing, and let her take this. After all, I'm still protecting like I'm required to do.".

===

(Browser crash destroyed some of my comments, sorry)

Around now is where I realize that I'm confusing Blackjack, Brutalight, and at least a little, Alushy. They're all ultra nasty killers. Brutalight is a corrpted Twilight, and Blackjack seems like a regenerating cyborg Twilight. (Alushy is just a killer vampire :-).

Still, that was an interesting way to take out Alushy. I'm actually not sure if there is any other way. Implies that Eve could actually take out ANY of them, and it isn't clear that the others could take her out without surprise.

I am curious why so many friends are not actually teaming, and going solo. I'm really curious why Rev and Corona, both pacifists, did not team up.

I’m not being evil right now and clearly don’t deserve to die, so this can’t be a Just death, and I’m not really fighting for anything since I have no idea what my wish would be, so it can’t be Heroic either.” She folded her arms. “I don’t think I can be killed!”

Oh this is just perfect!
As is the idea that Daniel has the ability to ascend as a power. He only did it what, three times?

And Eve complains about the lack of friendship and teamwork in the remainder. :-)

“You, me, Corona, Valentine, Blackjack, Rohan. That I can remember, anyway. Oh, Brutalight. Right.”

That's 7. She missed one.

... I'm not really sure what to think about Eve's response to Flutterfree. Part of me can't help but think that Eve would have given Flutter the chance to back off, and then trust her afterwards. She is all about forgiveness and second chances. Taking one moment of error, as a point of finality like that?

“Harmony,” Eve said, looking into the river. “And in seeking it, I have destroyed it.”

Yea, she's really upset with herself for this. I think she'd choose differently if she could do it again.

Eve vs Corona is a really interesting fight.

Meanwhile, I'm curious. If Eve wins, will Them restore her body, or do the scars from the fight continue? They just promised that the dead would be brought back, right?
(recheck)
Yea, not clear. They say that there will be no consequences -- but if the participants have all their memories of the fights, that will be a consequence. All they really guarantee is that the deaths will be reversed.

(and another too late at night to continue).

[keybounce]

The final three. They know there's a fourth.

... Oh my. Sombra/Olivia? Probably avoided all direct combat, just taking overwatch position and doing potshots the whole time. Of course, with hindsight, she's also the one that never had focus the entire movie. Started with Toph.

And the final battle. In the ultimate victory of harmony, just like how Twilight handles Monopoly as a game of "I don't want to bankrupt you, you're my best customer" and "I know we're almost at the point where we just have money flowing back and forth, both of us doing well and prospering", the two opponents realize that they want the same thing, and might as well just have fun and fight for enjoyment rather than anything else.

Meanwhile, when did Eve become half-Thrackerzod?

We see that Them are kinda like Discord.

And ... Paperwork. Routine office stuff. Day offs.

Rohan and Thrackerzod. Classic.

Ahh. Yes, lasting consequences. Daniel did NOT come back intact. Rohan's alterations are permanent.

Even a class 1 has some errors and failures.

Well, now that Froppy knows that Valentine does not consider her a failure, will she ask Rohan to undo this? Will she ask Valentine to force Rohan to undo it?

Rainbow Dash the relationship counselor? I love it.

2 am. Well past my bedtime. Sign of a good story/chapter. Heck, this chapter is a full story in itself.

And for some reason, I thought the elements of insanity were all killed off except for Brutalight. They're all still around. Nasty. We're going to see more of them, aren't we?

[Xyanaris]

I loved this chapter, I think it is my favorite of them all, it amazes me how great you are at writing stories.
How can you even depict so many different philosophies so believable?
You deserve more praise for this story than I can give you.

[My name is R]

First a typo:

That I think Them would have done would be to create completely new ones directly from the Sea of Infinite Possibility.

What perhaps?
9353670
Yeah, I was a little surprised more of them didn't band together against Brutalight. You'd think they would all see the risk in letting her have the wish, but no, it's all about them. Of course, that isn't a point against the story, but more against human nature.
10275919

attempting to defend himself from Brutalight – failing miserably as one of her swords drove into his chest, another one cutting off his head.
Hey, no equipment. Cheater.

If I recall her initial appearance correctly those swords are quasimagical constructs, not material equipment.

I'm reminded of Film Theory's look at The Hunger Games, and they concluded that the worst move you could make was trying to get into the central bloodbath -- running away was so much safer.

That's what Haymitch said: 'When the gong sounds, get out of there. You're neither of you up for the bloodbath at the cornucopia. Just clear out, put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the others, and find a source of water.'
The only folks who should go after the loot are the careers, who often work together at the beginning.
10279423

And for some reason, I thought the elements of insanity were all killed off except for Brutalight. They're all still around.

Pinkiemedic was also killed. By Alushy on our Pinkie's orders. That was probably the first time any of the Equis Vitas elements were responsible for killing someone.
10752736
With the exception of this being my favorite chapter I offer a repeat. And GM? It's your fault this isn't my favorite chapter, you've already done too well.

[Biglulu]

Eve's philosophy is hypocritical, and I agree with Blackjack. Eve is definitely acting holier than thou and thinking that only she has the right answers, even though all the others' wishes were just as valid as hers. She says they can't lose what makes them who they are, but Eve already has lost that. She's no longer as good as she used to be, as seen with her betrayal of Flutterfree, disregarding the value of life by not wanting to cure old age death, and her rage-fueled and tunnel vision vendetta against Brutalight.

Speaking of Flutterfree, Eve was the only one who did any betraying there. Flutters considered it, but then decided that she valued her friendship too much and decided not to. Eve jumped right to killing Flutters in retaliation, not trusting in their friendship at all.

[RoboRed]

Welcome to to Songs of The Spheres: Hunger Games Edition, the game in which NOBODY FUCKING WINS!!!
images.hitpaw.com/topics/photo-tips/laughing-emoji-meme-2.jpg

---

*As it happensd:*

“Hello ladies, gentlemen, characters, and readers! Do we have a show for you tonight! Who I am is not important – or, well, it is, but I’ll get to that later. What is important is that we’re holding yet another round of multiversal Hunger Games! After the wash that was the Super Smash event we have returned to the basics! With us today are twenty-four contestants hand-picked from the new multiversal neighborhood on the block, Merodi Universalis and its neighbors! What will they be doing?

“Why, they’ll be fighting to the death in a battle royale!

And wowwwwiee I am suddenly instantly concerned.

“I can still feel you planning to refuse to play. Don’t worry, there won’t actually be any consequences – all deaths will be reversed upon the completion of the games.

Oh okay then.

Perhaps I should have mentioned the fact that if you don’t play all of you will die permanently.

Oh okay okay, then. I sense oncoming trauma from friend being forced to kill friend. And probably just the act of painfully dying in general can't be good.
At least I also have some assurance that these guys will keep their word since I've seen most of these characters in LSB...

That is because we are a Class 1 civilization. Some of you may know us as Them; others of you have no idea who we are. Suffice to say that “Class 1” is all you need to know.

“And to answer your deep, burning question of ‘why!?’, it’s simple really. We’re really, really bored up here at the top. These games break up some of our monotony. If you want a more ‘standard’ reason it’s because you’re trespassing on one of our universes, the one you call Earth Starfleet or Galaxus Quadrants. Your punishment is to play these games. …Nah, it’s just because we’re bored, we couldn’t care less what you did to Earth Starfleet, we’ve got thousands of them.

Wow two Class 1 reveals one after the other, we're on a friggin' roll. Also, the guys sound like a bored-ass super-Q variant.
And whatever this wish is awarded to the victor, I bet it has the potential to be near story breaking.

I feel kind of bad for Blackjack getting shot at early on there when she was trying to reach out an befriend/ally someone. As if she already doesn't have enough issues to deal with in the multiverse. Also,

“Fuck all kinds of sushi!” Blackjack blurted. “All of them!”

“Go Fish,” O’Neill said, mockingly.

i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/903/458/f7b.gif

And nothing had happened all day. No one had come to challenge her. The only fun she’d gotten was tormenting Starbeat. The mare’s leg had been removed by a stray attack, stranding her in the Cornucopia, but she’d still lived long enough for Brutalight to have a round of ‘entertainment’ with the cursed mare. Then Brutalight had killed her.

Trauma victims 1 and 2 for sure are going to be Allure and Starbeat. Oof.
I'd add BJ to that list but she's already a little nuts. What's a bit more trauma for her? She's had the Wasteland and Eldritch Star horrors.
Nova's probably not gonna be too thrilled, either.

Blumiere has the honor of being first blood! Those who perished today include Renee, Allure, Nova, Starbeat, and Jenny!”

Dayum, Jenny already?

Brutallight going even more nuts would be a bit more funny if she wasn't already murderously highly dangerous.

Pinkie pulled out a machine gun laced with miniature flamethrowers. “I have a lot more freedom right now.”

Dang, Pinkie's pulling out the lethal firepower today. That doesn't happen.

Corona took one look at Flutterfree and thought that’s a trap.

Had she not already been doing something, she would have considered letting herself fall into the trap in the hopes of finding someone else. Lucky for her she didn’t even have to consider that, because she was hot on the trail of Raging Sights. She had picked up the magical signature a few minutes ago and had been following it ever since, flying just below the canopy to minimize her own visibility.

So Flutterfree is a trap, but the signature of Raging Sights possibly being used isn't. Riiiiight.

She summoned Bacon Pancakes. She told her Stand to ready one of its long-range pins. It shot forth, grabbed Raging Sights with its power, and pulled it back to Corona.

Corona had a teleport prepared, but something gave her pause – Thrackerzod had winked at her after she took it.

Okay...that went surprisingly better than I expected.

Blackjack was not a smart pony.

NOT👏A👏CLEVER👏PONY!!!👏
At least she's got her sword back but man she's taking a beating in the process.

That one glance was enough to lower his luck the rest of the way. His heart seized up, a sharp pain shooting through his chest. And he felt her still draining his luck. “STAR PLATINUM: THE WORLD!” Time froze again. Jotaro whaled on Vriska’s form with as many ORA’s as he could manage, but with every one he pulled a muscle or broke something. His luck was abysmal, and there was nothing he could do about it.

But she could still stand. “Sorry big guy.” Her normally confident features faltered as she examined his face – usually an impassive mask of strength, now twisted into immense pain.

Light trauma here. Vriska's resilient but she did not enjoy doing that to her teammate.

Froppy made no further comments. She started examining the area. “…Where’s Daniel’s body?”

It was nowhere to be seen. The two of them stood in a fearful silence. Froppy hadn’t shot Daniel in the brain. ...He may have ascended.

But no judgment rained down upon them.

And another Daniel Jackson death to the tally. Lol.
Still, no corpse?

Alushy turned around at the last second and shot Pinkie between the eyes. Her vividly candy-red blood seeped from the wound, down her face.

Pinkie looked at the arrow’s back half, shaking.

She knew this was coming, Eve realized with no small amount of horror.

Pinkie made a halfhearted wave at her friends before slumping forward, painting the ground red.

Man, that was sad.
Also, I was kind of expecting Alushy to get taken out by the Starmetal Sword.

So, I was kinda right. Them are kinda ascended multiversal super-Q. And they got bored.

Fun.

“…But what would I wish for?”

Rev smiled at her. “Think about it for a second.”

“…The easy immortality,” Corona said. “If I win… I could stop all the research in one fell swoop…”

“The question you must ask yourself is if it is worth it,” Rev said. “I think you’ll be up all night on that one.”

Expected. But like Rev said, is it really worth it? I'm also wondering if she'd want Sparky back. Could Them that happen?
I could take all sorts of stabs at who's going to wish for what when the win. But the big feeling I'm getting here is that it's going to be an event. There's going to be lasting consequences.

The sun was setting again.

Brutalight tore the All-Night mask off her face and threw it to the ground, roaring in rage. “FINE THEN! IF YOU WON’T COME TO ME, I’LL COME TO YOU!”

Still being the slight comic relief here, I see. She's pissed and were it anyone else left alive here I'd expect the first person she encounters to get turned into a bloody smear hilariously quick.

“Those fallen today are O’Neill, Jotaro, Toph, Pinkie, and Alushy – such a shame, I had money riding on Alushy making it further. You’d think it’d be a safe bet that Jenny’s killer would be smarter, but apparently not.”

Huh, so Daniel is still alive.
And it was Alushy who wasted Jenny, apparently. (Them lied about never telling...)

Corona couldn’t sleep.

All she could do was wonder what she’d have to do.

Fancy that, the question is keeping her up all night.

Brutalight woke up with the sun.

Wait, I fell asleep?

She opened her eyes and tried to lift her head, but found that she was caked to Rev’s body with dried blood. She, being the crazy mare she was, took this in stride, using her magic to separate her face from the corpse without really thinking about it.

I...might have been wrong about my earlier statement...

She looked around. Half her guns were broken, she was missing one of her amulets, most of her armor was trashed, and she had a rather serious wound on her left wing. She wouldn’t be flying for a while.

Or not quite. Rev must've still put up a fight to leave her bruised like that. Still, she's no Brutalight.

“The carpet is red,” Flutterfree said, staring at the offending floor like it wanted to eat her. “The carpet is candy red, Eve.”

Eve looked down. “…Oh.” She lit her horn, changing the color of the carpet to a muted purple. “T-there we go, better.”

Trauma point for Flutterfree. Ouch.

The second is that he Ascended and is toying with us.”

Froppy nodded slowly. “Seems very likely. Maybe he wants to make us think we’ve won, only to take it away at the last minute?”

“Possible, but there’s a problem with that theory.” Valentine folded his hands together. “As an Ascended, I cannot think of a single individual here he could not kill with a simple thought. Even those with unusual powers that could affect him would not be able to take him directly. Why would he not, once Ascending, just choose to declare himself the winner instantly?”

Maybe he Ascended and by becoming Ascended the Ascended rules of non-interference suddenly applied here and he's stuck with non-interference until some case releases him from being Ascended?
Idk. That'd be a heckuva cosmic joke, though.

“‘MURICA, FUCK YEAH!” Blackjack shouted, coming out of nowhere, landing solidly on her three remaining legs. She used her shield to deflect the bullets back into the Valentines that had fired them, knocking them down. “Stole your battle cry.”

Glorious.

She’d won. That was definitely not a matchup she was supposed to win. Not by any stretch of the imagination…

…But she was now aware enough to know she had a hole in her stomach, had suffered numerous mutations, and was about to go completely mad from worming eldritch energies.

Froppy made it one hop before collapsing on the ground, blood pooling around her. She started writhing in agony, her body finally catching up with all the injuries and trauma.

Trauma point for Froppy after this for Eldritch exposure. She's not gonna forget that.

Man, Valentine's gonna be right up to the end with his cheatsy-ass stand, isn't he?

Corona took out the globe with white energy inside of it. “You killed Renee, correct?”

“Uh, yeah? Back at the Cornucopia. It was a sniper rifle. …Wish I still had that.”

Corona grinned. “Wouldn’t it be Just if someone who cared deeply about her took revenge on you?”

“…There’s no way…”

Corona held up the sphere. “This is Daniel. I was around when he started Ascending – all his energy is stored in here thanks to a simple transfer spell.”

Whaaaaaaaaat the fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Corona sighed. “…Sorry, Vriska.” She surrounded the sphere in a red circle. She crushed the glass in her hands, cutting her hand in several places. The white energy was focused on Vriska, burning her away molecule by molecule. She was nothing more than angry screaming shadow to Corona, then just a shadow, then nothing at all.

Corona made sure to use up all the energy within the sphere just to be certain that both of them wouldn’t be coming back.

...Damn dude, I gotta applaud you on that scene. That was a pretty dark twist there.👏
Corona may have come out alive at the end, but there were no real winners here. She didn't enjoy that, Vriska didn't enjoy that, Daniel's pissed and hopefully he calms down afterwards since no one really had a choice with all this crud.
Trauma points all around!

“I’ve given it some thought. I think I’m going to fix the Arcei problem with it,” Eve said. “Not just have Them wave a hand and fix it all, but have them tell me what I have to do to get them accepted back into society as a whole, to get them to stop thinking they can hunt Stars.” She stared at her hooves. “It’s not a problem I see myself fixing.”

Huh, well there's Eve's wish. I was almost wondering if she'd undo or bring back the original Twilight.

“Where do we draw that line, Flutterfree? Where do we draw that line?” Eve asked. “Do I just bring back people whose deaths didn’t pivotally change our history? Sparky? But how could I just leave Celestia dead? But if I bring her back I’ll have to bring all the leaders back, and… Do you see what that’d do?”

Yeah, something tells me the Ka narrative isn't going to allow for mass-revival. And even that overrides Them.
At least, I'd like to think. There seems to be the odd Ka manipulator here and there.
Tower trumps all, though.

Blackjack wanted to hit him so hard, but she couldn’t – so she just nudged him. “Hey bastard, you’re supposed to be on watch.”

He felt cold to the touch. She used her magic to create a light and look at his face.

He was foaming at the mouth, dead. Poisoned.

...What an inglorious and unexpected way for Rohan to go out. At least he's out of the picture right now. He's pretty dangerous as-is.

Wonder who the heck that was. Eve and Flutterfree are sheltering. Brutallight would've killed them both and made sure they were dead. Same with Valentine and he would've used his stand to wipe her out just then. Corona doesn't have a gun...
I think it must've been Olivia. We've barely seen her so far and she's more of the hit and run type...also I wonder if maybe she left Blackjack alive on purpose just to hack into her and user her as some sort of tool or something?
"Everything can be hacked...and everyone", as she says...

But they weren’t, it was Blackjack who was. Or had been – the screen had turned to display Flutterfree again.

...Something's nearby and on the attack. And I also wouldn't put it past Olivia to hack the TV in any case to like, spy on them or mess with them or somecrap.

Flutterfree’s spirit vanished without so much as a flash of light.

Eve took in a deep breath and released it. “Calm… I’m c-” she didn’t finish the word, instead devolving into deep, bitter tears.

...I was wrong. I was so wrong about expecting it to be Olivia and damn it, that scene hurt.
Not only was she near-betrayed by Flutterfree and hurt by that, she already killed her, brought her back just to talk to her only to find out that she didn't need to kill her at all.
But it's too late. The deed is already done and she can't take it back. The two of them betrayed each other. Flutterfree is *pissed*.

The television fell out of the sky, somehow still working.

“Oh look! A TARGET.” Eve punched the television, shattering the screen and cutting her hoof in several places.

And then there's that zinger at the end.
Yeah, nobody is gonna have a great time after this game.

Bravo for that scene, and...I'm gonna need a few minutes. Just in time for halfway through the chapter, at least...

“It’s not something you can completely fix. Once someone’s truly broken trust…”

“…You know they have the capacity to break it again,” Eve completed. She shook her head. “And in this case, it’s two-way. Convictions on both sides…”

Valentine nodded, making a ‘hrmm’ noise.

At this point, if she makes it out on top (which, in all fairness, I'd give her the benefit of the doubt since she's the Protagonist and has been revealed to be as such by Twilence), I think the best thing that Eve can hope for at this point would be to use her wish to make everyone forget what had happened here.
If Them would give her the benefit of that wish.

Sadly, it would rob Eve and Valentine of the mutual understanding that the two seem to have finally reached with each other.
Man, there are no real winners in this game except Them.

Valentine walked away. He told himself he let her go because he didn’t want to tire himself, and she’d be able to take care of other enemies with little risk to himself now.

But even he knew that wasn’t the full story. There was something about a crying purple alicorn…

“Damn these ponies,” he muttered, “they drive me to sentimentality.”

...Heh.

Fierce battle between Eve and Corona there. Them going at it as old, now mega-powerful rivals. But really I didn't expect Corona to win. And so it ended with Eve the victor...

She set Seraphim to a universe where metabolic processes were faster, staying there long enough for her to be sure her internal organs weren’t going to slide apart if she twisted her body the wrong way. But that did nothing to alleviate the pain, and it also made her very hungry.

She started eating the grass around the forest floor to replenish her reserves. She would be here a while…

Haunted by the sight of Corona shattering into a thousand pieces.

...In an agonizing and horrifying conclusion.

“MURICA, FUCK YEAH!” Blackjack shouted, swooping in for an attack on Valentine. “LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN!”

Blackjack doing this is just going to stick in my mind forever, I'll have you know. Thanks a lot.

Eve decided it was time to use some of the magics she preferred not to, given their nature. Her eyes became black as night with purple wisps of energy trailing off the edges. Deep darkness surrounded her, cutting jagged shadows across the forest. Claws rose up all around her, writhing with powers mortals were not meant to touch.

Good thing she wasn’t a mortal. None of them were.

Probably not a good idea to use those darker magics, Eve. Also you're reminding me a little about-

“It fills my long dead heart with joy to see you give in to a darker nature,” Brutalight said, revealing her presence at the edge of the fight. “It’s a nice thing to see you reject your false harmony before you die.” She took one gun in particular out and aimed it at all of them.

Ah, speak of the Devil and she shall appear.

“FUCK! FOLLY!” Blackjack shouted.

OH FU-

“SERAPHIM!” Eve shouted, ordering her stand to dial a universe where magic didn’t exist. The energy blast from Folly hit a void in front of Eve, Blackjack, and Valentine, carving away the ground to either side of them.

“…Useful,” Blackjack commented.

Nice trick. That was nearly really, really bad.

“Why are you so fixated on killing me? It won’t even mean anything!”

“It will if I wish all of you to stay dead!” Brutalight shouted back.

Yeah, under no circumstances can Brutalight be allowed to win this. And Valentine and Blackjack realize it, thank goodness.
...Or it could just be the lingering threat of perma-death, y'know.

Eve dropped her magic, walking up to the shimmering form of Brutalight. “I’m not sure if you can hear me in there, Brutalight. But once this is over… We’re going to find wherever you’re hiding. And then you will be executed.” She narrowed her eyes. “I know you probably have some remark you want to leave me with to haunt my dreams, something to affirm your desire to see me and my friends dead. But you’re not going to get the chance.”

She slapped Brutalight across the face, shattering her. The headless alicorn of insanity tipped over, falling to the ground.

“…Brutal,” Blackjack observed.

Well, thank Ka that's over.

“That means there’s one other person besides us,” Eve said, blinking. “…Does anybody have any idea who it is?”

It gotta be Olivia, yepsirree.

Valentine and Blackjack exchanged glances before shaking their heads.

“I think they’re the ones who killed Rohan,” Blackjack said. “We were poisoned last night. Doesn’t match the MO of anyone else I’ve encountered. I had to run away because I couldn’t pinpoint them.”

“A stealth player…” Valentine said, scratching his chin. “A particularly dangerous opponent.”

“And one we know nothing about,” Eve said, biting her lip. “…We can’t fight here, now. For all we know, they’re watching, waiting to kill the last of us the instant the fight ends.”

Uhhh...maybe I'm missing something but uh...did they forget who she is? Or do I know some much that I've forgotten they actually don't know. Kinda dropping the ball here.

“So we don’t give them what they want,” Blackjack declared. “We stick together until we find them.”

Eve nodded. “Agreed. Then, and only then, will we have our three-way.”

So they're gonna stick together and Olivia is going to totally catch them unawares and use a hacked Blackjack to try and backstab one or both of them, maybe only succeed with Valentine but Eve or both of them will retaliate and Blackjack (and probably Olivia) will be atomized.
Hmmm...I'm leaning more towards it will be Eve and Valentine as the last two for one battle. This is my call.

Valentine shrugged. “I would remember any others from the USM.”

Eve put a hoof to her chin. “...There’s a lot I don’t remember. Was Starbeat here? Aradia? Lady Rarity?”

Uhhhhh...okay I'm starting to get the feeling maybe they *aren't* dropping the ball here and some force is making them forget.
Perhaps some Ka-manipulating force?

“GOOD EVENING CONTESTANTS!” the voice of Them boomed, interrupting the conversation. “We’ve cut our number in half once again! From eight to four on the fourth day! Lost to us are Flutterfree, Rohan, Corona, and Brutalight, victims of some very amazing battles – you sure are doing your captors proud! Only four remain! Evening Sparkle, Funny Valentine, Blackjack, and…”

The three of them held their breath.

“…Spoiler!”

You absolute motherfuckers.

“You think I’m just going to work with you if I know that you’ll turn and kill me once we’re done!?” Blackjack blurted. “No dice! I’m taking you both out right no-”

Eve froze her solid with Seraphim.

Well, so much for that prediction. Ish. Wasn't Olivia's decision. She did it to herself.

With a burst of magic, Eve turned Blackjack into diamond dust. The sparkling bits of ice rose into the air, riding the wind. They filled the night with the their beautiful sheen, rising to the stars themselves.

And with that, Blackjack is gone and of no more use to Olivia if she was hacked. And I was kinda right about her getting atomized.
...Well fuck, now what?

A dart struck Valentine at the base of the neck, a second one bouncing off Seraphim’s natural protections.

Ah.
Well, she certainly didn't make it easy but she's down now. Now its between Valentine and Eve, like I thought.

“One of our techies, works with Corona and Lady Rarity,” Eve explained. Also the person you think the TSAB has in custody, but we don’t need to talk about that.

Oh yeah, I forgot they worked to make her vanish from USM's visibility.
Wait, I guess that means Blackjack wouldn't know either. So maybe Eve was just playing dumb the entire time. Should've seen that. D'oh. It's late. That's my excuse.
.

“It’s the same wish,” Valentine pointed out. “It doesn’t matter.”

Eve thought about this for a moment. “Yeah… Yeah it is the same wish, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.”

Question: who decides what is justice, and where the line between justice and vengeance is drawn?
Bigger multiversal consequences aside, umm...I'm more worried about the more immediate clientele here. Like all the people now dead in this game and how they'll be affected once everyone's brought back.
*Because a lot of them are likely not happy right now.*

“FIGHT!” They both declared, charging each other – smiling.

Well, whatever the outcome, at least it'll end as a somewhat friendly rivalry.
And I go back to my previous dilemma of what happens if they forgot what happens from all this. I mean, I guess exemptions could be made in the wish? Idk.

“I CLAIM VICTORY OF THEM’S HUNGER GAMES IN THE NAME OF THE UNITED STATES OF THE MULTIVERSE!” He threw his hand into the air, sending the flag into the air, stars and stripes waving in the wind.

Well...well-played, I guess. The multiverse is in his hands now.
...'Murica.🇺🇲

Valentine looked the Them right in the center. “I wish for Justice.”

“I wish for Harmony.”

“I wish for all of us to be brought closer together through an act of justice!”

Valentine took a powerful stance. “I wish for the Collector to be brought to justice for what he has done to us.”

Well, I guess that's a good sign so far.

“Ah, finally, a solid wish we can deal with. Your wish i-”

“HOLD IT!” another Them interrupted, appearing behind Valentine.

Fuck.

“It’s not worth it. Just refuse to give him the wish, it’s not like we actually have to keep our word or anything.”

“Ahem,” Valentine said. “If I may make a suggestion?”

“Yes, what is it?” the second one asked, clearly annoyed he was talking to a human being.

“Don’t go over there and deal with the Collector personally, if that is what you fear. Why not manipulate events in such a way that he will be brought to justice? You clearly have the power to manipulate universes on a fundamental level. Surely you can do something from a distance.”

This is...more like what I was expecting to happen with that last wish statement about bringing The Collector to justice, and I'm really glad in this moment that Valentine is a good speaker.
Also, the Them banter is pretty amusing for them being Class 1 beings.

“This has been another round of the Hunger Games! Join us next time when we… apparently try Smash Bros again. I promise you folks, it’ll have an actual story this time! Now everyone, get out of here!”

I mean it's not like there wasn't a story here. I'll be damned if this hasn't been one of the best chapters yet.

After a bunch of shaking heads, Valentine sighed. “I need to contact Merodi Universalis to see if any of what I just experienced actually happened.”

Huh...maybe they didn't actually remember? Or maybe Valentine's just that mentally resilient.

Eve regained consciousness deep inside the covers of her bed.

She thought about getting up, about dealing with her job, about talking to her friends, and about fixing the damage that was done.

Nope. Everyone's going to remember.
And it's about a fifth of the chapter to go. Hoooboy.

Well… Some higher-order beings grabbed me and twenty-three others – mostly from Merodi Universalis – to engage in a deathmatch battle royale. I killed every version of Starlight Glimmer I could find. Got a bingo and everything.

Pfffft. Okay that got me to laugh out loud."Got a bingo and everything.", she says.

Brutaligh’s angered face gave way to a psychotic grin. “Oooooh, I can see why Them like this sort of game in particular… Except in mine, consequences will be permanent! Heheheheh… I’ll make it bigger! Better! Brighter! Best idea you’ve ever had, Rainbine. Let’s start rounding up contestants, shall we?”

Sigh...well another new threat on the horizon. Though compared to The Collector out there it's a lesser threat.
Also there's a typo in Brutalight there. There was also one earlier in the chapter about Renee's "lump" form but ehhh...

I liked seeing Vriska's apology to Jotaro. And that he's so accepting of it. At least these two don't seem to be holding grudges with each other.

“Just… Just come look!” Renee dragged her into the house and took her to the living room. Daniel sat in a chair, staring at the clock on the wall. His jaw hung slack and his arms lay at his sides, limp. He was alive, but he didn’t appear to have much life in him.

Corona was struck with the realization that he’d gotten old in the almost thirty years since they started exploring the multiverse. He was around forty when they started… Seventy now. Even magic medicine didn’t let him keep his youth. Ascending probably would, if it came to that...

Oh. Fuck.
Well, I hadn't thought there would be any trauma points on Daniel apart from witnessing his wife die but I was wrong...at least Cronoa was able to sort of fix him.
Not all of these were going to be happy endings for the 24 participants...

Blumiere noticed four hours after the games ended that there was a new trophy on his mantleplace.

First to Die!

It was made of solid gold and covered in cute, cartoon skulls.

Blumiere narrowed his eyes. “I wonder which of them made this…”

Heh. Well a least being first out so soon makes Blumiere get to be blissfully ignorant of what happened.

“That’s it,” Gilgamesh said, grabbing Blackjack by the scruff of her neck.

This is an amusing mental image.
Well, I for one am interested in seeing how Blackjack works to change her destiny. Also, this fic has been making me want to reread PH another time. It's been a few years.

Flutterfree still technically lived in her cottage. It was in the middle of a public park rather than far outside Ponyville nowadays, but it still gave her the nature she held so dear to herself.

Ohhhh here we go.

Well, at least they seem to be handling this maturely, for as much as it hurts.

“I’m fine,” Pinkie said. “Really. I’m just sad I couldn’t be there for you two. But…” She stepped to the side, revealing Rainbow Dash. Their Rainbow Dash. “I heard you needed some help.”

Man it's been forever since we've last seen Rainbow.
And good ol' Pinkie's here.

Heh, Rainbow being the voice of reason isn't usually the thing that happens. But for what it's worth it's good that she's the one here.

Valentine walked up to her and extended his hand. She shook it. “Shall we?”

Valentine nodded. The two of them entered the teashop together and sat down.

There was no plan to talk policy, no thought to discuss anything that had happened or was going to happen to the Collector, and no pushing for any sort of political movement.

They were just here to talk and learn about each other and their respective cultures. A place to talk, debate, and gain understanding. Not as enemies, colleagues, or leaders – but friends.

It would be the first of many such ‘tea parties’.

Once again, for all the trauma brought by Them's game, it forged a new friendship between Eve and Valentine. And hopefully between Merodi and USM.
Heh...and to think I wanted his ass to be grass a while back. Eh, another turnabout can still happen, but I sense betrayal is far less likely now.

“You never know,” the Collector said, standing up tall. “Regardless, we need to make the following events happen on our terms. If we have to go with Them’s timetable, we have to decide the where and the who.”

Clock's ticking, you shiny blue bastard. Clock's ticking.

“Fair enough. By the way, interesting is a non-word.”

Interesting is also not a flavor but no one will get that reference.

Huh...there was no scene shift to Starbeat, Nova, or Rev. Or Olivia. Or Alushy or O'Neill. Wonder how they turned out? Though I already know longer term that O'Neill turns out fine.

[GMBlackjack]

11794712

Once again I just want to thank you for such a stupendously long and detailed comment! I can really tell you're enjoying all this and it makes me squee inside!

I do have one clarification. You seemed confused that nobody remembered who Olivia was.

Tell me, can you remember a list of twenty-four names spoken to you one time only just prior to being thrown into a game of death? If you can, amazing, because I can't I needed an outline to keep track of everyone. Thus, once Olivia did nothing and remained hidden for a while, she was quite simply forgotten about.

-GM, master of techies.

[RoboRed]

11794933
Fair enough, I guess. They had some time at the beginning there to hear the rules and names read out and Olivia is someone that Eve's had a more involved hoof with, but maybe I'm overthinking it and there's a more simple answer: survival do be more important, mhm.