• Published 1st Feb 2019
  • 4,512 Views, 989 Comments

The League of Sweetie Belles - GMBlackjack



A team of multiversal explorers comprised of alternate Sweetie Belles explore fanfic worlds and beyond!

  • ...
17
 989
 4,512

PreviousChapters Next
Cinder (Siren Song, Part 4)

Cinder walked right into Rarity’s office.

“Oh!” Rarity said, looking up. “Cinder, I am sorry about the…” she paused. “You look…”

“A little messed up?” Cinder said.

“Breathtaking. Have you used a mirror, yet?”

“Don’t need to, but might as well. I’m sure you’ve got pleeeeeenty, heh.”

Rarity smiled to herself, pulling out one of her full-body mirrors and pointing it at Cinder. The mare the mirror was still identifiable as the curious, brave filly who traveled the multiverse, but it was hard to think of them as the exact same person. There was less white on her coat than other colors, now, given as she was covered head to hoof in additional cutie marks. Still Waters still maintained a dominant spot on her face, but it was no longer alone in circling her eye. Smooth, thorny vines ran around the opposite side of her face while a dripping ice cube took form on her right cheek. Snaking down her neck were a series of colored dots with gemstones in them, all colors that were currently visible in the rippling glow on her horn. A bright blue spark occupied her stomach, a series of three bees on her left hoof, and a myriad of other tangled symbols all over the rest of her body. On her perfect leg, the crusader shield remained prominent, but on the damaged one a large rose had taken residence over the scar tissue.

She wasn’t wearing the metal supports anymore. One of the mantles—she wasn’t sure which one—had taken care of that need.

Cinder started laughing.

“It really is delightful, isn’t it?” Rarity asked.

“Absolutely! But you have no idea why!” Cinder reared up on her hind hooves and clapped, prompting a set of blue and red gemstones to appear. “You only see the beauty in my choice. You don’t see the beauty in what this means. What I’ve done.”

Rarity smiled knowingly. “I am well aware of your little intuition… I really doubt it is reliable, given your reaction to me, but it must have something.”

“Not reliable? Girl, you’re looking at the up-and-coming teenage drug addict who threw herself whole hog into this vat just because of some intuition and a mark of water around her eye.” She giggled. “If you like this, you aren’t trustworthy in the lea-e-east!” She sang the last word like it was part of a song, simply because it amused her.

“Well, at least you’re no longer hiding behind that mask of yours. This is good!”

“In the end, it will be. The ultimate end.” She stretched out her hoof, creating a bunch of bees that ceased existing when she got bored five seconds later. “So, I’m the mare of a million talents. Amazing.”

“Yes! What are you going to do with these million talents, Cinder?”

Cinder teleported onto Rarity’s desk, a few loose lightning bolts charring the wood. “I’m leaving!”

“To do what?”

“To go find my friends. Though I think we all know that’s just a pretense, right? RIGHT!?” She slid off the desk and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to explore. I’m going to be the hero. And, I don’t know, I’ll be the change this city needs to turn around or something.” Her face became deadly serious. “You going to stop me?”

“Not at all!” Rarity said, delighted. “It’s really very ‘you’, you know?”

“I do know! More than you eeeeeever will. I see things, Rarity. I see things about this city you only reach in the edges of your most impressive art. There’s a curse here.”

“Oh, no dou—”

“I’m probably the first pony in history to let it take me knowing full well what it was.” Cinder winked. “Let’s hope it’s worth it!”

“Do you not like yourself?”

“Oh, I absolutely love myself. Look at me!” She gestured at the monster in the mirror. “Gave up everything just to be the better hero. Woo, fun!

“I’m glad you agree!”

Cinder laughed. “The sick part is you don’t have that little voice in the back of your head telling you this is wrong. I, at least, still have that. That’s the difference between you and me, Rarity.”

Rarity pursed her lips. “Oh, I’d think there are more differences than that.”

“Absolutely! But I don’t care about what messed up scheme you got going here right now, at least not until my self-destructive journey of ‘heroism’ leads back here and labels you the villain. Which it probably will.”

“I actually look forward to that,” Rarity said, smirking.

“Psycho,” Cinder giggled. “Nice knowing you. See you around!”

“Do come back if you change your mind. You’re always welcome here.”

“Even if I’m on a holy crusade?”

Rarity’s eyes sparkled. “It will be beautiful.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you?”

Rarity nodded. “Good luck!”

Cinder backflipped out of the office, teleporting the moment she passed through the doors so she appeared in the front of the Pavillion.

Taking a deep breath, she threw her mane back. “Get ready Vision, Cinder hopped up on drugs and high on a sense of heroic responsibility is about to take you ON!”

“Go Cinder!” Sunshine called from her wheelchair near the entrance.

“Cinder sold her soul to the devil,” Cinder chuckled. “Oooooh the parallels, themes, and ironies in that.” She lifted a hoof, tapping into a sound-based mantle to create a finger-snapping noise. A red cape appeared on her back, patterned not with her cutie mark but rather a black spirograph. “Symbolism.” She giggled to herself.

She looked out from the clean, pristine white of the Pavillion into the dark murk of Vision. A place where ponies were suffering and falling to pieces because the city itself was poisonous to their very destiny.

Well, now they were going to have Cinder. A mare who let the city poison her because she knew it couldn’t kill her. Some things were stronger than the murk of some mare’s deluded dream.

Cinder’s song was one of them, even if she didn’t fully understand how.

“Take me out, beat me down, devour my soul… Cinders will remain.”

She ran as fast as she could, using the teleport mantle to cross vast distances in the blink of an eye. Before anypony knew what was happening, she appeared in an alley where three stallions were standing over a terrified and humiliated mare.

Cinder slammed her front hooves together, sending a shockwave into the three stallions. Two of them took one look at her and ran off in a panic.

The third, as it turned out, was an idiot.

An idiot with a mantle that let him cast lightning bolt.

Cinder decided it would be more fun not to rely on a mantle for this one. How about pull out a strip of paper that strangely acted like a lightning rod? That would be suitably humiliating and ridiculous for this idiot.

The bolt hit her paper and deflected into the ground, leaving the paper itself unharmed.

“Oooh, nice shot!” Cinder laughed. “My turn!”

Bees.

Holy Celestia, a lot of bees came out of her hoof.

He let out a scream as the stings covered his body, driving him into shock. She’d had no intention of actually injuring him, but from the swelling it was pretty clear he was allergic to the stings themselves.

No worries. She let him pass out before tapping into a basic calming mantle, forcing the allergic reaction down and reducing him to a healthy, if sedated state.

We’re not killing ponies this time around if we can help it.

Turning around, Cinder extended a hoof to the scared mare. “Hi! I’m Cinder! Who’re you?”

Usually, when a crazed mantle pony showed up, any normal pony in Vision would be understandably terrified and want to run away as soon as possible. This, however, was Cinder. And ponies liked Cinder.

“I’m… Blood Orange.” She took Cinder’s hoof and stood up.

“Well, Blood Orange, glad to meet you! You can go home now, you should be safe. Or…” Cinder smirked. “You could come with me and see who else we can save.”

Blood Orange thought Cinder was crazy. Blood Orange was sure this was a bad idea likely to get her killed and interfere with what Cinder was doing in the first place.

Blood Orange came along anyway.

What else was she going to do, go back to her home and wait for the gang Cinder had just beat up to collect their “due”?

~~~

The cell was every bit as damp, dark, and depressing as Allure had expected it to be. Even Vision, with all its horrors, couldn’t really make the general “depressing prison cell” dynamic worse than it already was. It was wet and it was dark. At least it wasn’t a fleshy demonic hole in a literal hell. Those were always fun.

There was even a mild comfort—a little radio sitting outside the cell.

To be fair, it was currently set to the Applejack Propaganda channel, so it was probably intended to drive her to submission, but really all it did was make Allure laugh. Applejack propaganda just seemed… silly.

“She’s lost it,” Distant said from outside the cell.

Seren slurked her juice box.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

Seren did no such thing.

Distant facehooved. “Allure?”

“Yeah?”

“This is stupid.”

“Obviously,” Allure said, using the opportunity to stretch her legs. “But the rails aren’t fixed yet, are they?”

“Nope,” Seren confirmed after checking her ‘seeing-eye’ spell. “Still down.”

“So there’s literally no reason for me to break out of prison until we have a way to get to Sparkle Enchantments.”

Distant let out a sigh. “You’ve been arrested. By City Security. Chances are they’re trying to find a way to justify executing you just so they can avoid housing you for very long or dealing with a mountain of paperwork.”

“Surprising,” Allure deadpanned. “How long will that take? Days?”

“...Yeah, probably,” Distant admitted.

“Then we’re good to sit for a while until one of you figures out how to get us to Sparkle Enchantments quickly.”

“What are you going to do when they do come to execute you?”

“Assuming it comes to that, which I’m not sure it will, I will have Swip drop the Skiff on them.” Allure smirked. “If all your laws result in execution I might be inclined to break a few more.”

“...While I would pay to see you drop that thing on these assholes, that… well…” Distant wrinkled her snout. “The point is we’re just sitting here, doing nothing.”

“Oh, I’m well aware.” Allure glared at the lock on her cell. “All we seem to do lately is waste time. Can’t get to Sparkle Enchantments even though it’s a stone’s throw away. Can’t get to Cinder since we have no idea where she is. I suppose we could just leave and come back in a few days with a small army to turn this entire place upside-down, but that doesn’t really appeal to me.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I am.”

“I meant…”

Allure chuckled. “Sorry, had to do it to you.” Her smile vanished, replaced with a frown. “Look, I’d love to do something. Give me an idea of something to do that doesn’t involve burning the city to the ground or undue amounts of violence, I’ll hop on instantly. It’d be a snap to remove these iron bars.”

“...Your magic is sealed.”

“The idiots have no idea how to restrain an artificial horn,” Allure said, demonstrating by levitating a cockroach off the cell floor.

“Pretty sure the bars are anti-magic too.”

“Then Seren will blow them up or I’ll rely on my Heart powers or we’ll just use a dimensional portal, point is we have options.”

“Should we really be discussing this out in the open outside a police station’s cells?” Seren asked.

Distant checked the only guard watching them. He was fast asleep. “Idiots don’t care. Not right now, anyway.”

Allure tapped her hooves on the ground in annoyance. “They wanna kill me but don’t care enough to watch… all over a mysterious vehicle he clearly wasn’t all that interested in.”

“Flexing.”

“I’m surprised Suzie hasn’t razed this place to the ground already,” Allure admitted. “I hope negotiations are going well…” She was about to call Swip to see how things were going when a new voice came on the radio.

“Darlings…” what was clearly a Rarity said.

“Oh for the love of Twilight, not this psycho bitch,” Distant muttered.

“There are a lot of rumors in our city about the dangers of mantles. And while some are founded…”

“...all the others are also founded, because those things turn your brain to jelly, force your body to break out into tumors, and tear families apart!”

“Seren, shut the radio off,” Allure said.

Seren lifted a hand. “Ok—”

“...And here’s our special guest, Cinder b—”

“TURN IT ON TURN IT ON!” both Distant and Allure scrambled. Seren obliged, keying in to Cinder’s voice as she went on about mantles, her experiences with them, and how they could be useful as a medical treatment.

“It’s happening again…” Distant breathed. “A ‘Sweeties’ is going down the mantle deep end!”

“I doubt she knows the horrors of what they do,” Allure said. “...I’m just relieved she’s fine. We’ll remove the mantle when we get back to the League.”

“So convenient, so now all of you can just abuse the mantles without fear of ending up in a ditch somewhere, dead. Great lack of consequences. Brilliant.”

Allure decided to let Distant vent for a while. “Seren, you’ve looked at the maps of the rail system. How far is the Medical Pavilion?”

“Halfway across the city.”

“Great… well, guess she’ll just have to sit tight until the trams are ready.”

“Sit tight?” Distant put a hoof to her head. “Did you forget everything you’ve learned about Rarity?”

Allure sifted through her memories. Rarity… oh. She killed her Sweetie.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much of a psycho is she?” Allure asked.

“She lures broken ponies into her hospital and uses them to create art. The statues in that place are real ponies! I call that an eleven on your little scale!”

“Right,” Allure said, levitating Seren’s communicator to her. “Swip, Imma need you to drop that Skiff off again. We need to move quickly and I don’t care how many local laws we break, we’re getting Cinder out of the little workshop of horrors.”

“Hold for a minute,” Swip said. “Something’s up.”

“Something’s up?” Allure frowned. “What do you mean?

“I mean some kind of magic is messing with th—EMERGENCY EXTRACTION INITIATED.”

Allure didn’t know why Swip was initiating emergency extraction, but the first thing she did was grab onto Distant with her magic and hold on to her tight. If we’re getting extracted, I’m not losing her.

A portal opened behind them, showing Swip’s interior. “TELEPOR—”

The portal broke. A rush of dimensional energy ran through the manes and hair of everyone present. Allure and Seren took it like it was nothing.

Distant’s eyes widened in alarm. “What the fuck…”

“Someone just jammed dimensional travel,” Allure muttered. “Seren?”

“I can establish a connection out,” Seren said. “One-way only. The rest is barred.”

“Can you overcome it?”

“Don’t think so.”

“What the fuck!?” Distant squealed.

“Distant…?” Allure cocked her head. “It’s ju—”

“That’s my spell!” Distant screamed. “Somepony just used my spell on the entire city! How—they said it was useless! They said there was no reason to develop it! That was very clearly developed you… you… thieves!

“At least you’re not angry at us anymore,” Seren said, grinning.

“I’ll get back to you two and your interdimensional Sweetie-ness after I find those ponies I showed the spell to... Who I don’t remember the name of.” Distant facehooved and let out a deep, pained groan.

“Regardless, we’re getting Cinder out first.” Allure tapped into her Heart and cut the bars right off with her invisible spirit. “There we go!”

The guard woke up. “Wh… JAILBREA—”

Allure forced her Heart around his mouth. “Yeah, none of that. We’re going to do this jailbreak on our terms.”

“Quietly and without drawing attention?” Distant asked.

Allure laughed. “Well… that would be wise…”

“There is not a magic source within a mile that can take me on,” Seren declared.

“But who needs to?”

Distant sighed. “You know what, you two might be worse than her. You’re actually going to get me killed with your insanity.”

“We can send you back to the League, if you want.” Allure waggled her eyebrows up and down. She knew Distant wouldn’t take it.

“...Dammit, fine, I’ll help. By Twilight, you’re all insane…”

~~~

The guards and the receptionist were gone when Suzie, Celia, and Fluttershy poked their heads out of Twilight's office.

“So, legally speaking, Twilight told them not to attack us,” Celia said.

“But we know how easy it is to get the law against us,” Suzie added. “I was serious, hundreds would have died because Security didn’t like the outsiders.”

“We have subtle ways of mitigating that! No powerful magic, yes, but there is no doubt some way to abuse the mantles or a race that doesn’t have a tangible form to kill…”

“These ponies are creative, they’d find a way.”

“Well, now instead of a few of our people willingly risking themselves, we’ve got a poorly-conceived low-personnel effort to take down an entire city from the inside!”

Fluttershy inserted herself between them. “Stop fighting!”

“You’re one to talk!” Suzie shouted. “I—”

“She’s giving you the courtesy of not draining your mind and she’s right,” Celia said, sighing. “What happened in there was a fiasco, though honestly I doubt we could have come out any other way. Twilight was playing us.” She scowled. “I should have known…”

“Twilight’s… complicated,” Fluttershy said. “Don’t feel bad.”

“My job is to understand other complex, often insane people. I failed to manage that. And now she’s stuck us here.” Shaking her head, she put on a smile. Suzie couldn’t tell if it was fake. “But that’s behind us. We’ve got a new challenge, and we’ll rise to it! Save Cinder, take this place down. Fluttershy, how many of your friends do you think could be convinced to go against Twilight?”

Fluttershy thought about this a moment. “Just Applejack. The rest… I don’t see it happening.”

“Then we go to her after getting Cinder.” Celia tapped her hooves. “Medical Pavillion?”

Fluttershy nodded, climbing into her private rail car and setting it to the Medical Pavillion. “I have lunch with Rarity all the time, I have my own private entrance and everything. I think I can just ask for Cinder, we’ll get her out.”

“Good,” Suzie said, sitting down as the tram started moving. “How much danger is she in?”

“...Well, uh… usually Rarity’s little works of art take a few weeks to… complete.”

“And you have lunch with this psychotic art-murderer.”

“Yes. Rarity may have done some questionable things but I’m not going to let that ruin our friendship.”

“Sounds real kind to go on letting her kill ponies.”

“I did try to talk her out of it. Once.” Fluttershy looked at the ground. “I’ve learned not to try that again.”

“Big whoop, you tried with words.” Suzie glared out the window, expression souring the longer she looked at Vision’s light. “Sometimes, you need to take action.”

“Suzie…”

With a lurch, the tram stopped moving. The rail they were on sparked loudly.

Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “Pinkie wouldn’t let this rail break down…”

Celia glanced out the window at the damaged rail, finding a rather obvious cut in the metal. “Sabotage. Probably by the guards.”

Suzie groaned. “Ugh… what will they think of next?”

A nervous expression came over Fluttershy. Slowly, she walked to the built-in radio and turned it on, dialing to Applejack’s station.

“A big upset has just run by me. Fluttershy’s disappeared, and there’s a lot of blood in her Sanctuary that nopony’s talkin’ about. Ah’ve just been told that there’s an imposter runnin’ around with a tall, Rarity-like white unicorn and some kind of lanky monkey. They raided Sparkle Enchantments together. Please, if you see them, report to the local authorities, and do try to find out what happened to Fluttershy…”

Celia let out a hiss. “Passing you off as an imposter…”

“I’m not sure we can get into the Medical Pavilion easily, anymore,” Fluttershy said. “If I can get to Rarity, I can prove I’m me… but the ponies at the gate…”

Suzie cracked her knuckles. “Then we push our way in.”

Celia twitched. “Dear, Fluttershy is not a combatant, you don’t have magic, and I’m not exactly the biggest magic powerhouse in existence. We have to play this smart—sneak in!”

“I…” Suzie couldn’t think of a reason not to sneak in. It really would have a much better chance of success. And a smaller body count.

My authority is being undermined every freaking minute.

“Now… getting to the Medical Pavilion while we are stranded in a broken tram…” Celia frowned. “Since we’re ‘wanted’, if we let security know where we are, they’ll try to attack us. Then we can take the sub they have to use to get up here.”

Suzie stood up, hand on her pulse cannon. “I like that idea. Show them we mean business. Use their own power against them.”

“I see several ways that could backfire,” Fluttershy pointed out.

“The other option is for me to try and drag us along the rail with my magic, which will probably alert them anyway.” Celia frowned. “Actually, they probably already know where we are and are waiting to send a full contingent or something. That was probably sabotage out there, after all.”

“So we sit tight until they come.” Suzie folded her hands together. “Not… ideal, but I’ll take it.”

“We need a moment to rest and recharge our magic anyway,” Celia said. “I’m quite spent as it is.”

Suzie tapped her foot anxiously.

More waiting.

She hated waiting more than anything right now.

~~~

They called him Big Boy.

It was a name nopony could take seriously attributed to a massive black stallion that wanted nothing more than to be taken seriously. Yet, he had still embraced the oft seen as comical moniker as is own, using it in conversations about the death of many ponies. The reasoning behind this was simple.

If ponies laughed or looked amused, it gave him an excuse to kill them. This high up the chain of illegitimate enterprise, he rarely got face-to-face with any enemies, thus keeping him out of the killing game. His name, in the end, was to keep him engaged in his favorite pastime of watching the life drain out of ponies’ eyes.

Nopony had even so much as smiled around him for the past few weeks. He was getting impatient.

“Big Boy,” his aide, a rather shapely white pegasus, said in her usual monotone voice. “The vigilantes have destroyed another shipment of our dues.”

“WHAT!?” He shouted. For a moment, he hoped she would react, but she was as without a personality as ever. She was just too useful for him to kill her for that. “Why haven’t we gotten Security to stop them, Tabula!?”

“Uncertain. Rails have been down and our shortcut ponies have not reported back. Radio chatter has gone up. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say Security is busy with something else and the communication speed is harming our efforts.”

“Useless suits…” Big Boy grumbled. “Organize the mercenaries, be as brutal as possible. Kill all those ponies we’ve been letting live without paying in full. All of them. They need to understand that anypony going up against Big Boi is a death sentence to—”

The two of them heard a muffled explosion.

“...That sounded like it came from the entrance,” Tabula observed. “It is possible the vigilantes learned of your location.”

“Idiots think they can charge in here!?” Big Boy laughed. “They’re making my job easier…”

There were a few more explosions, these marked with screams of pain and terror. They could hear blades clashing and magic spells going off now, alongside the sounds of panicked ponies.

A lanky stallion with two strength-enhancing mantles ran into the room. “Big Boy, we’re under attack! They’re advancing on your position, we need t—”

Big Boy slapped him. The mantle on Big Boy’s forehead of a skull pushed so much power into his dismissive motion that the lanky stallion’s skull not only shattered, but was ripped clean off his body.

The sudden rush sent chills through Big Boy. “Heheheheh…” He stood up from his simple metal chair, rising so tall his head almost touched the lights in the ceiling. “Maybe this is a good thing…”

“I highly recommend fleeing for your own safety,” Tabula said.

“Hah. Safety. I’ve never met a pony I couldn’t kill…”

He strode right out of his dark room into the long hall immediately outside, filled with various artifacts and valuable materials he had collected over the years. A few weapons here and there, some golden statues littered around, and the occasional magic crystal. Nothing all that useful considering the strength he had.

The door on the other side of the hall blew in, clattering to the ground.

“I can’t believe this is working,” an orange mare said.

“Oh, come on Blood Orange!” A green mare with an eyepatch used her remaining eye to wink at her. “When are you gonna learn to have faith in Cinder?”

“When you learn to stop trying to wink, Eyepatch,” the lead mare said—white. Presumably Cinder.

“My name i—”

“Xenon, I know, but come on, Eyepatch sounds so much cooler!”

Big Boy stamped his hoof, drawing the attention of the ponies to him. There were more than just the three of them, though notably most of the ponies aside from these three looked a lot less confident. Blood Orange and Eyepatch seemed cocky, but overly unthreatening.

Cinder though… she was effectively still a kid. Small, frail, weak, and covered head to hoof in mantles of high quality. There was no way to tell how long they’d been on her, but he knew how having that many mantles worked; you took them all at once and the euphoria came like a wave of unstoppable power. The addiction quotient would simply be too strong, and if they weren’t able to get new doses, they would die horribly.

And yet, some ponies did this anyway. It had a name—spiral jacking. Done by those in desperate need of a last-minute-party before their suicide or who needed to give their life to accomplish some foolish goal.

Big Boy had seen a few spiral jackers in his time. All of them had this sort of background sadness to their expressions, if that hadn’t been washed away by the madness already. Cinder didn’t. Her eyes burned with a passionate fire that knew no end.

Big Boy decided he liked her.

Unlike most who fell under the adorable charm of Cinder, this meant Big Boy wanted to kill her. In the most brutal way possible. It was what she deserved, after all—a little gift directly from him.

“Wow, you’re a regular garden-variety psycho aint’cha?” Cinder snarked, tapping her hooves on the ground excitedly. “I bet you’re going to be fun!”

“Don’t let him punch you, he’s got the Visceral Veins mantle,” Blood Orange said. “Instant death to any who oppose him.”

“What makes you think I’m going to let him get close?

Big Boy rushed with a speed mantle hidden in his dark coat right to Cinder, expecting to drive his hoof right through her big mouth.

Instead, he found himself teleported back to the start of the hallway, punching nothing and falling over.

Cinder giggled. “Ooooh, that’s gotta sting, Boy!”

“You’re in for it now,” Big Boy chuckled, standing up.

“No, I think it is you who are in for it!” Eyepatch retorted.

“That was lame,” Blood Orange said.

“Wh— hey!”

“She’s trying, give her a break,” Cinder added.

Big Boy took advantage of her diverted attention, charging again. He closed the gap even faster this time, but with one wave of her horn Cinder diverted the mob boss into a nearby wall, cracking it from the force.

“Headache and possible concussion, I’d say,” Cinder said, quickly folding some paper into a nurse’s cap. “You’re really going to need some medical attention, I suggest taking a trip to your nearest hospital a—”

“AAAAAAA!” Big Boy roared, pulling his head out of the wall.

“Oh just…” Cinder held out a hoof. Eyepatch passed her a silver Loopty Hoop. Twirling it on her tail, Cinder smacked Big Boy in the face with it several times before looping it around his body and slinging him around like some kind of child’s toy. Slamming him to the ground, she raised an incredulous eyebrow. “So… still wanna fight?”

There were no more words. Only grunts and punches.

“Right…” Cinder teleported him to the far end of the hallway again. “Think he’ll survive being teleported out into the water?”

Eyepatch shrugged. “I dunno, he’s strong, but the pressure…”

“Eh, I’m going to try it anyway. Watch and learn, girls.”

There was a flash, and Big Boy was in so much pain everything went black. He didn’t even have time to register the water’s wetness.

Cinder teleported him back into the hall. Waving a healing hoof over him, she restored his breathing functions.

“Oh come on…” Blood Orange groaned. “Surely he deserves death!”

“Maybe,” Cinder admitted, tying him up with a glowing blue cord she summoned from the aether. “But then again, maybe not. We don’t really know his situation. What we do know is that he’s not going aaaaanywhere. Hey. You! White pony!”

Tabula blinked. “I’m Tabula. Yes?”

“You look capable. Wanna join our little, ahem, ‘crusade’?”

Blood Orange gasped. “That’s his number one assist—”

“Sure,” Tabula said with a shrug. “Mob business clearly isn’t worthwhile anymore.”

“Great!” Cinder sang. “Come along, I’ll introduce you to everyone else! This is Blood Orange and Eyepatch—”

“Xenon,” Eyepatch corrected.

“—And I’m Cinder, our wonderful, slightly crazed, leader!” She turned around and gestured at her small group of followers. “And this is Meathook, Fizzlebop, Rod, Squirrel…” She went through a list of about twenty ponies that were behind her. “And there’s a few that aren’t here but managing the mad ponies of the town that want to loot Big Boy’s Bountiful Base.” She chuckled to herself as a few ponies pushed through her followers into the hall so they could raid all of Big Boy’s precious toys.

“Interesting,” Tabula noted. “I have never seen a pony gather so many ponies voluntarily.”

“I’m definitely cheating,” Cinder chuckled. “Probably a little manipulative and shady in the end, but you know what? It’s better than starving and mobs roaming the streets for payment!”

“Definitely,” Blood Orange agreed.

“Oh, Blood Orange! The mob’s disbanded now, you can go home if you want.”

Blood Orange snorted. “And do what, sit and grow old while you galavant around? This has been the best day of my life, you insane bonehead, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I knew the moment she saved me she was something special,” Eyepatch added. “This was before she went all jacked, too! There’s something unique about her, Tabula. I’m sure you see it!”

Tabula nodded. “She does not belong in Vision.”

“And that’s a fucking good thing!” a stallion shouted.

Tabula seemed to accept this. “Now that you have liberated the ponies from Big Boy’s ‘services’, what are your plans with this area?”

Cinder cackled. “Girl, girl, giiiiiiirl! What makes you think Big Boy was our goal?” Cinder levitated herself into the air and let her eyes go white with the power of her many mantles. “We’re helping everypony.”

“Everypony?” Tabula cocked her head. “That seems unrealistic and ill advised. It is wise to know when to stop and call it.”

Cinder dropped to the ground and held out a hoof to Tabula. She could swear she heard music start to play. “Stop? Stop?” Cinder let out a melodious laugh before belting out into the first heartsong Tabula had heard in over a decade.

“Ooooooh I’m the mare that never stops!
You can’t keep me from saving flops
I see the pain there in the street
And bring my troop there with this beat!”

Cinder grabbed Tabula, dragging her through the small crowd and out of Big Boy’s doors, back to the main streets of Vision. A startling sight greeted them: ponies walking around with smiles on their faces, celebrating the fall of the local mob boss.

Cinder’s horn flashed, creating some cupcakes for a group of hungry fillies.

“A little bit of outside magic
Flips the story, no longer tragic
I can give my strength to you,
And you can spread it everywhere!”

The fillies cheered, running off to spread the excess cupcakes to the other ponies of the street.

The familiar sensation of locations and events blending together within the magic of a heartsong began to overtake Tabula and before she knew it, she was bobbing her head and marching in time with all the other ponies. They marched through Vision, the added power of the song adding ponies to their number without need for conflict.

“Yeaaaah I’m the mare that never stops!
Our hooves march into all these shops
Deep within the darkness hides
‘Till I come in and end divides!”

They were in a mantle shop filled with various of the magical chemicals. Eyepatch lifted a highly-expensive teleporting mantle off a shelf, eyeing it carefully. Cinder slapped it out of her hoof.

“The poison joke bleeds into ponies
Eats destiny, bleeding them dry
I’ll end these ceremonies
For I gave up my soul to this!”

Everything went dark for a moment. Only Cinder was visible in the fire that began to devour the shop. Her words suddenly took on a much more somber tone.

“Giving up your sanity to end all the depravity
A sacrifice of future peace, of innocence, of sweet release
At the end punishment will come even though now I am numb
Do not walk this path I tread; I do it for you, I won’t be dead.”

The mantle shop owner held out a hoof to his burning shop, tears streaking down his face. Cinder walked up to him and extended a hoof, smiling sadly. Slowly, he took it.

“Woooooah I’m the mare that never stops!
I’ll burn it down and plant our crops
If the world wants you all to fall
With other realms we will stand tall”

There was a fight. Several colts and fillies about to be brutalized by drooling ponies. Cinder and the others charged in, taking care of them with ease. There was Cinder’s power, yes, but there was also the song. A song of hope in a city that had none.

It had some now.

“I bring with me a stronger story
Of adventure, heroic glory
The League lives to face evil
And through friends and fire it will be
Eradicated!”

Cinder stood atop a mound of dazed—amazingly not dead—ponies that were trying to kill her from all sides. They came with knives, unusual mantles, mutations, and crazed laughs. She met them with a cocky smirk, clever magic, and graceful motions.

“Yes, I’m the mare who never stops!
I’ve turned around this city’s curse
Sure, awaken the worst in me
Through it I’ll set these ponies free.”

She rocketed away from her happily prancing followers, slapping aside a muscular stallion as he tried to push another stallion into a choke hold. He was easy to deal with—a paper crowbar mixed with just a light smattering of bees got him off long enough for a hard smack to the back of the head to knock him out.

“Through it I’ll set these ponies free…” Cinder extended a hoof to the stallion on the ground. Smiling, he took it.

“Are you insane!?” A new mare’s voice shouted, completely unaffected by the fading music or the smiling troop following Cinder. There was menace in the voice.

Turning, Cinder took in an orange pegasus with a sea-green mane, no doubt an important mare to the story in one way or another. She was pretty. Cinder thought this detail sneaking into her mind was suspicious. “I mean, I’m covered in mantles, so I have to be a little nuts, girl.”

“Not that! You just took out a cop!”

Cinder’s followers gasped.

“She… she’s right!” Blood Orange put a hoof to her head. “What are we gonna do?”

“Relax, relax,” Cinder said, smirking. “Security is part of the problem too, we would have run into them eventually. Plus, I think burning down those mantle shops already put us on their bad list. And no doubt the ones that were being bribed by Big Boy…” She shrugged. “We’ll take them like we take everything else.”

“You’re… you’re delusional…” the pegasus said.

“Probably,” Cinder admitted. “But this place is so far down the tubes nothing but a little delusional creativity will save it.”

“You’re…” she started laughing. “Oh, if she had tried to be you…”

Cinder frowned. “Who? ...Who are you?”

“Swiftwing,” she said, folding her wings. “And you’re a crazed filly, just like ‘The Sweetie Belle’, as I guess you call her.”

Cinder took all the information contained at once. This was Swfitwing, she knew The Sweetie Belle, closely at that. She had a lot of resentment toward her, and Cinder’s current mantle-covered self wasn’t helping things. Furthermore, she wasn’t surprised that Cinder was a Sweetie Belle, which probably meant…

“Where is the rest of the League?”

“I don’t know, they dropped by, left to go find my daughter.”

“Directions?”

“Maintenance and—look, you’ve got all this power running through your veins that’s going to kill you in a week, why not just go off and find them yourself?”

Cinder smirked. “Oh, I won’t be dead in a week.”

“Bullshit! No spiral jacker I’ve ever seen c—”

“Merodi Universalis can cure me, rather easily from what I understand.” Cinder dusted off a hoof nonchalantly. “All I have to do is leave Vision before the mantles kill me and take all my followers with me.” She turned to the small crowd of ponies she’d saved, converted, and in some cases beat up over the last day or so. “We don’t have to defeat this city, everypony, we just have to leave. The other Sweeties have dimensional devices we can use. And if those don’t work due to some trick of fate—which is pretty likely—then we have the power to hijack a submarine and get the heck out of here.”

Blood Orange blinked. “Wait, you actually have a plan? I thought you were just improvising!”

Eyepatch chuckled. “She’s doing both.”

Cinder giggled with a smile that was just a little too big. “Let’s go find the other Sweeties while running away from the law and… basically doing what we’ve been doing for the last song.” I wonder how much time passed in that. I’ve probably been awake longer than a day but I’ve never felt so alive! “Let’s see if we can get a second verse! Coming, Swiftwing?”

“No.” Swiftwing retreated into her shop quickly with an awkward backpedal. “No. No no no.”

“Suit yourself,” Cinder shrugged. “We’re the ponies who never stop!”

They left in a gallop, doing little to hide themselves.

Cinder was right about one thing.

City Security was already aware of them, and they weren't keen on what was happening.

They just had something else to deal with at the moment that moved through the chain a bit faster than a crazy spiral jacker and her smiling posse.

~~~

As it turned out, City Security didn’t appreciate jailbreaks.

Even if they were busy with something else, the moment they noticed anypony was gone, they hunted them down like rabid wolves after a succulent rabbit.

“Stop in the name of the law!”

“Your law sucks!” Seren shouted, pointing her scepter at the large mare and unleashing a shockwave of immense magic power that tore up the ground and sent a few cracks through the glass keeping the ocean out which, conveniently, didn’t rupture and doom everypony to a watery grave.

Distant stared at the cracks in shock. “...I… how... what? That’s not physically possible!”

“She’s a magical girl,” Allure explained.

“You say that like it explains everything.”

“Her spells are a spectacle of convenient destruction meant to entertain and awe.”

“W-why?”

Seren floated down and smiled innocently at Distant. “Because it’s more fun that way!” She held out a hand, surrounding the crack with blue magic rings. “I’ll fix it though, don’t want someone actually letting the ocean in.”

Distant facehooved. “Well… we’re really fugitives now. Fun.”

“You’re smiiiling,” Seren ribbed.

“I smile to hide my pain,” Distant retorted.

Seren put a concerned finger to her lips. “No… no, I don’t think so. You think this is fun!

“Fun? What does fun have to do with anything?”

“Everything!” Seren pressed her hands together, eyes sparkling.

“...Ocean’s floor, that’s cute,” Distant said with no small amount of trepidation.

“Woohoo!” Seren cheered—she was getting through to Distant!

“That cute noise really shouldn’t come out of a murder-machine.”

“Whaaaat?” Seren rolled her eyes. “They’re not dead!” She floated over and tapped the downed mare with her scepter. She didn’t move. “Oh. I guess she is.” Seren shrugged. “Eh, she was attacking us anyway, wanted us dead.”

“Makes sense,” Distant admitted.

Seren gasped. “You don’t think I’m creepy?”

“I mean… compared to the stuff I see around here every day? You… I can’t believe… You’re a good kid with a good heart. You’re better than everypony in this rotten city.”

Seren beamed. “T-thank you!”

I still think you’re creepy,” Allure offered.

“Of course you would,” Distant muttered.

“Okay, time out, why does she get to be ‘better’ and I’m still chopped liver?”

“Not cute enough.”

“That’s…” Allure twitched. “Every Sweetie Belle is cute!”

“It’s a matter of degrees.”

Allure twitched—then broke out into a laugh. “Glad to have you on board, Distant.”

Distant forced an awkward smile. “S-sure. I…” She blinked, processing something. Then she let out a soft chuckle. “Oh, if only Pinkie could see what real Laughter was supposed to do… Look at me now.”

“She’s corrupted,” Allure said. “We’re… not.”

“Oh, the city’s getting to you, I see it in your eyes,” Distant said. “But it looks like you are getting to me too. I don’t know what it is about your insane adventuring law-breaking antics, but it’s addictive.”

“There’s a whole wide multiverse out there to explore!” Seren squealed. “And you’re on the cusp of realizing your talent!”

Distant glanced at her flank. “I guess…” She shook her head, pulling her mane back. “We do have to get out of this city before that, and Cinder before that.”

Allure nodded. “Seren, do you mind continuing our reckless charge to the Medical Pavilion?”

Seren lifted her scepter into the air. “Don’t mind if I do! Blastin’ off at the speed of s—” She stopped herself. “Incoming!” Forcing her hands out, she created a barrier of immense strength in the ocean waters, protecting the recently-repaired glass from an incoming torpedo. The torpedo impacted her shield and let out a massive star of fiery energy.

She was able to contain it.

This did not stop ponies from panicking.

“...They’re willing to kill their own ponies just to get rid of us…” Allure realized. “What… what is wrong with them!?”

“A lot of things,” Distant said. “Though this does seem a little overkill, even for them.”

Seren frowned. “Did the others do something to make them mad?”

Allure shrugged. “I don’t know. Seren, are there more torpedos coming?”

“No. I’ll be ready for them if they d—”

“Citizens of Vision!” the voice of Rainbow Dash called out from several public speakers, making the three of them fall silent. “We have a situation. Several creatures known as ‘Sweeties’ have invaded our precious City, identified by a white complexion and pastel purple-pink manes. Some are ponies, while others are lanky two-legged creatures without a coat. Collectively, they have a long list of crimes ranging from mugging to theft to murder to arson. They are causing mass unrest within our city and they will not be tolerated. All citizens who engage them are authorized to use lethal force with no repercussions and will receive a reward of one thousand bits for every confirmable kill. We are no longer interested in taking prisoners.”

“Shit,” Distant said.

“Yeah, I’m thinking the others made them mad, somehow,” Allure said, pulling out he communicator. “...If only Suzie would respond…”

“The entire city is against us now… and panicking.” Distant glanced at where the torpedo had exploded. “They couldn’t have known we could stop that, though.”

A giant stallion with knives in his legs saw them. “There they are!” he shouted. A group of panicking mares were torn out of their stupor to glare at the Sweeties and Distant.

Allure and Distant were ready to fight—admirably preparing their Heart and spatial rendering spells respectively. They were not needed. Seren pointed her scepter forward and knocked every single pony back with an invisible shockwave. The stallion with knives in his legs stood back up and charged her.

Willing to kill a child. Oh no. Seren clasped her hands together, encasing him in a series of magic circles that froze him in place. She teleported him into a clock tower, smashing his face right into a bell with a loud gong.

“...Geez,” Distant said. “Could you take down this entire city?”

Seren shrugged. “Depends on how powerful your top mages are.”

“But we don’t want that kind of collateral,” Allure reminded them. “Seren?”

“Right a—” before she could get them moving again, an invisible mare dropped her cloak and stabbed Seren in the back.

“Seren!” Distant shouted. Through instinct, she cast a rend spell that twisted space around the previously-invisible mare. Several bones within her body cracked as the wave moved through her, and she fell to the ground, screaming in agony.

Seren focused her magic in the knife, removing it quickly. It took a significant amount of focus to heal her wound without passing out, but she managed it. “...They… could take me out of they’re clever.”

“We need to move fast,” Allure said. “This w—”

“Over here, idiots!”

Seren, Allure, and Distant turned their heads to see a white mare shrouded in a blue cloak gesturing to them from a manhole cover. Allure and Distant were uncertain of the strange mare. Seren was not—this was their help in a time of need. She teleported the three of them into the manhole, finding a dark but surprisingly clean sewer pipe within.

“Good, I was afraid I’d have to lure you in with promises of power, or something.” She took part of her cloak off, revealing her face to be that of a Rarity. A young Rarity free of mantles or the grime of Vision. “You Sweeties really don’t know how to lay low, do you?”

Allure rubbed the back of her head. “Well… I mean we usually can just march right in and get what we want.”

“Yes. Quite. Overconfidence will be your doom.” She sighed.

“So, not from around here?”

“Clearly,” the Rarity commented, adjusting her saddlebags subconsciously. “I was just passing through to pick up some… unique items that can only be found in this universe, as far as I know. And then it turns out I can’t leave. So, how about, in exchange for me telling you how to not get your plots handed to you by Central Security, you tell me how to get out of this dimensional lock experiment you have going on?”

Seren cocked her head. “...One-way portals out still work.” She cast a dimensional portal. She could see nothing through it since everything could only go one way, but she knew it led somewhere safe. “We could leave anytime we want, we just can’t come back.”

The Rarity glared at her. She shoved a hoof at the portal, finding that it acted like a solid wall to her.

Seren blinked. “That… doesn’t make any sense.”

Distant tried next. Her hoof was stopped too. “...What…?”

Allure pulicked a strand of her mane out and tossed it at the portal. It went through.

“Fuck…” Distant’s eyes widened. “It’s giving you a way out. But you can’t take anything with you. Whoever cast this spell… they want you to run away with nothing to show for it.”

“What kind of monster would do that?” Seren wailed.

“Sounds annoyingly like the local Twilight,” the Rarity tutted. “Bother…”

“She’s alive!?” Distant gawked.

“Oh, yes, quite. She’s quite the well-kept secret if I do say so myself, took me several visits to figure it out. I’ve done my best to make sure she doesn't know I exist…” she scowled. “That appears to have worked against me, here. She didn’t know to leave me with a way out. Delightful.”

Distant sat down. “Princess Twilight Sparkle… stealing my spell…”

“I doubt she stole it herself, somepony else probably did it without her lifting a hoof. The mare has an issue with not being held accountable for anything.”

“Sounds like a special kind of psycho,” Allure said.

“Please, you should see the local analogue of me, that girl’s so far off the deep end it’s ridiculous.” The Rarity rubbed her head, soothing a headache. “...You are hoping to remove the dimensional lock, yes?”

“Yes!” Distant blurted. “Yes we are.”

“In that case, it looks like I’ll have to help you darlings.” She frowned. “I’d rather not be here when all hell breaks loose, you understand. This place is poison to everypony in it and were it not for the amazing magic I wouldn’t touch it.”

“...You’re with the Infinite Carousel, aren’t you?” Allure asked.

She smirked. “I’m an independent. And while they are excellent business partners, I have no desire to lock myself into one place through… association.”

“So what’s your deal then?”

“You may call me Indigo Shroud.”

“...Gonna tell us anything else?” Seren asked.

“About me? No. About how to not die and avoid Security? Yes.”

~~~

City Security had multiple armed submarines and the occasional mantled officer. They thought they could take anything that was trapped in Fluttershy’s little private car. And to be fair, if it had been just Suzie and some ‘fake’ Fluttershy in there, no matter how clever the two of them fought they would go down.

But today, they had Celia.

And there was absolutely nothing Security was going to be able to do to Celia.

“Gentlemen?” Celia asked, teleporting into one of the submarine cockpits. “What’s the situation?”

“We’ve been boarded!” The captain shouted. “G—”

“Why don’t all of you sleep, hmm?” She waved her hoof before any of them could fire their weapons. Five of the seven officers fell to the ground in an instant, a few of which hit their heads painfully on consoles and walls. Celia didn’t care. To be honest, it took all her restraint not to outright kill these ponies, but you never knew who might be a potential ally in the future and killing the government would just make a bad situation worse.

The two officers who were able to resist her charms attacked. One only had a sword, which Celia effortlessly snapped in two with a spell. The other was a unicorn with a mantle: a crossed out heart. She could feel a spell wash over her that was designed to give her a heart attack.

“Oh, darling, if only I was a pony…” Celia summoned the tip of the razor-top out of her gemstone, smacking the unicorn in the horntip. The agony went to his brain—but his willpower kept him up. However, in his severely weakened mental state, it was easy to make him sleep.

With a smirk, she tore the captain out of his chair and sat in it. Pressing a button, she sent out a radio message. “This is Celia, Chalcedony, and I have just taken over this sub. The rest of you Security subs might want to stand down and let the real Fluttershy explain herself. Currently all of the crew is alive. You wouldn’t want to put them at risk, would you?”

To her annoyance, apparently the rest of Security did want to put the crew at risk, since the three remaining subs fired massive harpoons at the commandeered sub, breaking through the hull and spewing gallons of water into the cockpit.

Celia sighed. “Fine, if you want to kill your own ponies, be my guest! It won’t do you any good.”

She attempted to teleport to the next sub, but appeared outside it in the water. Some kind of teleport protection. She fully summoned her razor-top and drilled through the back of the sub, flooding an empty storage locker with water. Now that she was inside, the teleport lock wasn’t advanced enough to keep her from teleporting within the sub.

With a flash, she was on the bridge, and six ponies were asleep. “The mental fortitudes of these ponies is alarmingly low… tsk tsk tsk.”

The last unicorn standing only had a simple fireball and jamming spell. The jammer was annoying, sure, but Celia was a Gem weilding a massive top with a saw at the end. A simple fireball just didn’t protect against that. His neck split open, pouring blood all over the ground.

Celia dissipated her razor-top. He was dead, yes, but he would have been dead anyway, since… there it was, right on cue, the other subs skewered this one’s reactor core. There was an explosion Celia teleported out of, arriving on the third sub.

“This really is laughable,” Celia commented, dropping all but three ponies with a wave of her hoof. “Surrender is probably a good idea? You’ll do a lot less killing of yourselves that way. You’ll all live.”

They didn’t care. Celia almost used the death spell to make things simpler, but she sensed this sub wasn’t about to be destroyed. After all, the remaining one would have sensed a pattern at this point. She dispatched the three enraged security with a series of careful dodges, pointed hoof stabs, and bucks to the back of the head.

She walked to the radio again. “Do consider letting this crew live, hmm?”

A voice came back this time. “Surrender or we blow the tram.”

“Allow me to explain why I’m not going to do that. You want us dead. If we surrender to you, we die. All those officers you killed? Well I’m a hundred percent certain you’re going to blame that on me and not your brutal mega-harpoons. So, go ahead, blow the tram, kill the two people inside. I’ll still come for you and grab your sub right out of your grimy little hooves. But—oh but—you could just let us go and all this death could e—”

They tried to surprise her by interrupting her speech and using a much larger weapon than before. A full blown torpedo right to the cockpit. Naturally, she was expecting this—her plan had been to elicit such a reaction, after all. Better they shoot her than Fluttershy’s car.

A teleport later, she stood on the last sub with a grin. “Congratulations, you get to live!

Not a single pony on this sub resisted her sleep spell.

“...Anticlimactic…” Celia muttered. She tossed her mane back and sat down at the controls. There was a password lock she bypassed easily. Technically speaking, Gems were artificial computers, and any simple tech security was shreds of paper to her. Unlocking the console, she found the controls were intuitive.

Got one, she messaged back to Suzie. Prepare for complex teleport…

After orienting the sub directly above the tram, Celia focused. She teleported all the sleeping officers into the tram, replacing them with Fluttershy and Suzie.

“I really hoped I would get to talk to them…” Fluttershy sighed.

“You heard the radio, they weren’t in a talking mood,” Celia said. She had to force herself to leave the captain’s chair so Suzie could sit in it.

Suzie glared out the main viewport at the tram filled with a half-dozen sleeping officers. “It’s better than they deserve.”

“No doubt,” Celia agreed. “But we have an image to maintain, even if they want to smash us into the dirt.”

“A lot of them are dead,” Fluttershy said. “No matter what, they will blame it on you.”

“I do deserve some of the blame,” Celia admitted. “But the point is, they shot their own ponies. We can use that to our advantage when the time comes.”

Suzie placed her hands on the controls. It was a little awkward with consoles designed for hooves, but she knew how to adapt. “Next stop… Medical Pavilion.”

“Or someplace I can teleport us off into Vision,” Celia said. “Security has more than four subs and I would rather not risk an aquatic firefight.”

Suzie growled. “Fine. First civilized place your teleport extends too.”

“Thanks, dear.”

Celia only got a harumph in response.

And I’m supposedly one with a streak of violent darkness running through me.

~~~

Allure was not surprised that hiding from Security involved trudging through a bunch tiny corridors connected to the sewer system. She just wished it didn’t. No matter how clean Seren’s spells kept them, they were still marching through tubes filled with filth and noxious toxicity.

“You really are a treat,” Indigo told Seren. “These corridors are usually so unpleasant to get through.”

“This isn’t unpleasant?” Seren asked, currently using her magic to keep the four of them inside a bubble shield and levitated off the ground. This did not stop the smell from assaulting their noses.

“You literally have to climb through ponies’ infected, magically-overridden filth most days,” Indigo said. “Compared to that, this is… well, not exactly pleasant, but certainly nothing more than a chore.”

“How close are we to the Pavilion?” Distant asked. “We’ve been at this for hours.”

“If we want to avoid detection, a few hours,” Indigo held out a hoof. “The stealthy route of the criminal is a slow one when you aren’t in charge of the infrastructure. I would love to get through Big Boy’s little mob, but that seems to have fallen apart recently.”

Allure snickered. “Big Boy?”

“He chose that name because he liked killing ponies who laughed.”

Allure took a few seconds to process this. I’m a dead pony. Fun.

They entered a sewer junction where a lot of filth—and a dead body—was passing through.

Indigo pointed. “Seren, up, we don’t want to go down into one of the gullets.”

Seren directed their levitation upward. The higher they went, the more ominous the feeling in the back of her mind became.

“...I think someone’s watching us,” Seren said.

“Please tell me you have an Awareness spell…” Indigo muttered.

“No.”

“Then we might have a pr—”

Everything exploded.

Allure saw fire. The heat burned her coat for a split second, followed by the sensation of being pressed into one of Seren’s barriers. She saw light, then darkness, then water. Her body shivered as Seren’s teleport tore them away from the danger and to another location.

At this point, Allure had enough of her awareness about her to see that they were out in the open. In the middle of a street filled with ponies. A second later, she saw these ponies for what they were—not normal citizens of Vision. Security. Regular uniforms surrounded them in the middle of a cobblestone path.

“The Bell Rings True!” Seren shouted, slamming her staff into the stone ground hard enough to create a small crater. The rumbling cracks rippled through the street, upsetting the footing of the officers. A bell constructed of neon-green energy appeared around her and her three companions.

The gong sound was muffled to everyone inside the bell. Outside, windows cracked, ponies screamed, and the shockwave spread out a beautiful ring of dust.

Seren dropped to a knee, breathing heavily.

Every last officer had been taken care of.

“Holy shit…” Distant breathed.

“We get it, you’re an anime protagonist,” Indigo said. “Now be a dear and get us out of here before they get clever.”

Seren struggled to her feet, lifting her scepter high. Allure prepared for the teleport.

It never came. A sword flew through the air and punctured Seren in the chest, spewing blood over Allure’s face. With a scream, Seren levitated the sword out of her, sending more of the crimson liquid out the other end. As she used her magic to seal the wound, she crumpled to the ground, shivering from her drastic overuse of power.

“Works like a charm…” a deep, feminine voice said, coming from a maroon unicorn who had just teleported into the arena. She was covered in six different eye-related mantles, giving her the appearance of a monster who saw all. “Get the magical powerhouse to exhaust their energy and they go down. I am rather impressed that she’s still breathing, but in many ways agonized writhing is much better to watch.”

Allure summoned her Heart, Distant readied her spells, and Indigo summoned a magic rapier construct.

“...Yeah, I’m not fighting you,” the mare of eyes said, smirking. “These marks are for finding and planning. Not smashing you into the ground.”

“Then you best move along then, hmm?” Indigo gestured to the side with her sword.

“I will. He won’t.” With a flash of her horn, she teleported away, revealing a small, yellow stallion behind her covered in head to hoof in dozens of different markers, most of them red and violent in some fashion.

“Oh.” Indigo bit her lip. “They appear to have created a spiral jacker just for us.”

“There is no way we’re that important!” Distant wailed.

“I’m going to need to have a talk with Suzie…” Allure muttered.

The spiral jacker encased his body in stone, created two illusions of himself, and charged the group from three different directions, his body giving off a purple aura.

“Hints!?” Allure asked.

“You’re the ones who do the crazy fighting!” Indigo shouted.

“Tear him to shreds before he can do anything!” Distant stamped her hoof on the ground, creating a ring of distortion around them. All three images of the spiral jacker hit the distortion at the same time, snapping multiple bones in the process.

This activated a bone-related mantle, prompting the real jacker to grow eight spider-like bony limbs from the breaks. He let out a roar with enough force to distract Distant, breaking the distortion spell. He moved in, sending rows of bones out of his mouth.

Allure met him dead on with her Heart. “Eat this.” Her invisible spirit drove itself into his throat, tearing the bony limbs to shreds and poking a hole out his neck. The attack was intended to kill him—such a dangerous enemy couldn’t be given a chance to do what he wanted.

It did no such thing. The injuries only prompted more constructs of bone to appear, giving him more power. He drove several of them to Allure at once. Quickly, she twisted her spirit around him, flinging herself up. Forcing her inner magic to her hooves, she met his bony tendrils like a karate master, seemingly cracking through them with brute force alone. She drove her hoof into his back, careful to push far enough to damage both the spine and the flesh beyond.

With a grunt, he shot back with a lightning bolt. Thinking quickly, she converted it into magic energy at her back hooftip and sent it at him through one of her front hooves, careful not to let it pass through her heart. He was driven to the ground with a crackling explosion.

Indigo threw her blade construct into the smoking crater several times while Distant forced a rippling distortion around it.

The spiral jacker didn’t care. He erupted from the dust with dozens of bony limbs coming out of a mangled body that had no right to be alive, but was anyway. A limb lashed out at Indigo, tossing her aside like a helpless puppet. He went for Distant next.

Allure didn’t let him. She drove her Heart out as far as it could reach, slicing at his midsection. She made it about halfway through before his blood started glowing blue and solidifying into a substance her spirit couldn’t cut through.

What?!

He focused his attention on her, letting out a scream that made the most annoying song she’d ever heard play in her mind at full volume. Her entire body felt like it was crawling with fire ants—but she held. She met the bones with her hooves, cracking them with every hit.

Then the sword went through her stomach.

Turning to the side, she saw the many-eyed mare standing atop a ruined wall, smirking.

Why did I think she would play fair?

Allure fell to the ground like a ragdoll. She wasn’t aware enough to feel herself hit the ground.

Why is my vision swimming so much? I’m stronger than this… I had a hoof in my innards for crying out loud! I… Her head reeled. The rules are different here…

Her eyes blessed her by focusing before the rest of her senses. Seren was down. Indigo was down. Distant was screaming her lungs out and sending an endless wave of distortion at the spiral jacker, unable to stop his progress completely. She was no match for him.

I’ve failed. I couldn’t protect her. Couldn’t keep my promise. Allure wanted to get up. Wanted to move. But she couldn’t. There was no energy within her to keep fighting. Not anymore. Even if she got up, she wasn’t Seren. She couldn’t take on the spiral jacker.

She was just a terrible leader.

There was something under her hoof. Glancing to the side, she made out the shape of a dimensional device. Her dimensional device. Already set to go to Swip…

There’s nothing for me here. She glanced at Distant. I’m dying. She’s dying. We’re all dying. This city is poison. She lazily drifted her gaze back to the device. There’s nothing for me here.

She lifted her hoof a centimeter, prepared to tap the device.

There’s no point....

She pushed down.

A green laser shot from the side, destroying the dimensional device in a puff of smoke. Allure’s hoof burned from the proximity of the explosion.

Allure felt reality itself scream in anger.

I… I almost chose to abandon them… she glanced at Distant, about to break under the spiral jacker’s pressure. I almost chose to abandon her…

Allure discovered where the laser had come from. Seren. Barely able to move or breathe, she had shot a single laser out of her finger to stop Allure. Her face was riddled with tears and a question of why!?

Had she not been here, I would have abandoned everything… Allure closed her eyes. Tears came out painfully, mixing with her blood. I am her… Distant was going to be abandoned again…

Distant stumbled to the ground, eyes wide.

Even though I’m still here, I got her killed.

The spiral jacker raised his bony limbs…

“CINDER-EX-MACHINA!” Cinder shouted at the top of her lungs, impacting the spiral jacker like a meteor form heaven. The colors split into dozens of lines around the bony monster of a stallion, driving him into the ground. Every crack in his original skeleton created a new limb.

“Oh, that’s how you want to play?” Cinder lit her horn, surrounding her hooves in a holy light. “Let’s try this!”

She healed him. And with every healing motion, a bony limb vanished, pushing him back until he was a perfectly healthy stallion without a single extra limb. Growling, he charged, relying on his other mantles. The first attack was a roar mixed with a purple aura and some illusions.

“...Did you just stick the troll song in my head?” Cinder asked, raising an eyebrow. “Okaaay… weird.” She teleported behind him and tripped all three of his selves, revealing the true one. Her horn flashed a myriad of colors, encasing him in at least seven crystal shells. “Now, everypony!”

Allure couldn’t believe what she was seeing. A herd of ponies charged into the streets, jumping over the dispatched members of Security, rushing into the fray at high speed. Those with magic and mantles that could assist in the fight moved to Cinder, giving her boosts and trying to tie the spiral jacker up their own way. Dozens of magic chains, sheilds, and spells went off around the spiral jacker, mixed with traditional lassos and even a few ponies who threw themselves at the ball of magic.

Those who didn’t assist in the capture process rushed to the injured. Indigo, Seren, and Allure were all lifted to their hooves and given medical treatment. Nothing as advanced as Allure’s insane healing spell she’d somehow obtained recently, but it was enough to keep them up.

The sphere of magic encasing the spiral jacker eventually hardened into a black shell and fell to the ground, innate. Cinder trotted up to it and laid a hoof on it. “Yep. He’s out cold. Poor guy, needs the hospital more than I do!” She laughed, as if this were some kind of joke. “Mission success, everyone!”

“Yeah! Do you hear that, Eyepatch, we did it!” an orange mare shouted.

“Xenon. My name is Xenon.” Eyepatch said—even though she couldn’t help but smile.

“Anyway, who got that mare with all the eyes?” Cinder asked, dusting herself off. “Oh! Nice one, Tabula!”

A white mare—presumably Tabula—was dragging the chained-up mare with many-eyes along the ground to Cinder. “All in a day’s work.”

“And we finally got the other Sweeties!” Cinder rubbed her hooves together. “Time for us to put this into overdrive!

Cinder’s followers cheered.

Cinder teleported to Allure and healed her up. “What are you doing in this horrible city?”

For the first time, Allure had enough awareness to realize what Cinder looked like. It was more than just the mantles covering every square inch of her coat—those were unsettling, sure, but not as unsettling as her eyes. Wild. Unrestrained. Determined in a way that could tear down anything that stood in her way.

“Cinder… what happened to you?”

“Long story, probably best to explain it when we’re in a safer location. I need to get all these ponies to the League stat.”

“That’s… not going to work. We’re under a dimensional lock caused by the local Twilight Sparkle, we think. Suzie might have had something to do with it.”

Cinder didn’t take any time to process this. “Girl, that’s no problem!”

“...Girl?”

“Shush, it’s a verbal tic designed to showcase my ‘descent’ into ‘madness’, it’s not going away.” She coughed. “Anyway, back to what I was saying, so what if there’s a dimensional lock? If the local Twilight is still alive and doing it, we just have to find her.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Tabula asked.

“Simple. I told Rarity I would probably be back to storm the Medical Pavilion. What are the chances it wouldn’t happen?”

“I am afraid I do not have the gift of your train of thought.”

Cinder giggled. “True! Very true!” She trotted over to Seren and healed her. “Regardless, Rarity will know how to get to Twilight, then we find her, and have Seren here do DA MAGIKS!”

Seren backed away from Cinder. “...Are you okay, Cinder?”

“Not at all!” Cinder’s smile didn’t falter. “But we’re ignoring that for now since more important things are afoot than my sanity and stable characterization.”

“Storming the Pavilion…” Eyepatch frowned. “They’ll be expecting us. There’ll be a lot of guards.”

“And we now have the Sweeties with us! Seren here is more powerful than all of us combined, if we protect her, we wipe the floor with everything. One child army!” She teleported to Indigo, healing her up. “Fancy running into you here.”

“...Quite,” Indigo said, nervous.

“Everyone thinks you’re some kind of fancy mystery. You’re driving them insane. I wonder if any will figure it out?”

“I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you weren't actually Aware?”

“I’m not, but that doesn’t mean my mind isn’t in overdrive from all these mantles!” With a laugh, she whipped to stare at Distant. “You’ve been fixing me with a death glare ever since I arrived. My presence makes you distinctly uncomfortable in a very, very personal way. Got something to say to me?”

“All you Sweeties really are the same… you doom yourselves to death… abandon everythin…” She glanced at all of Cinder’s followers. “What the hell are you doing!?”

Cinder examined Distant closer. “Let’s see… off-white coat, sea-green mane… You’re related to a Sweetie and that Swiftwing I ran into not too long ago. Daughter? Biologically implausible, but given all the screwed up magic around here I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“What in…”

“I’m good at guessing,” Cinder waggled her eyebrows. “And I’m really good at guessing with all these mantles!”

“They’re killing you!”

“Oh, I’m fully aware of that. I wasn’t when I took the first one, but it doesn’t take a genius to see all the tumors these things cause. I’m dead in a couple weeks even if I stay like this. Buuuuuut as soon as I leave this city, bam, cures for everything. Isn’t that right, Allure?”

“Uh… yes…?” Allure shook her head—still stuck in the recent events that involved an exploding dimensional device.

“You’re reckless, stupid, unthinking, and… and…!” Distant slapped Cinder. “And you deserve much worse than that!”

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Cinder agreed. “We all do, girl. But we’re fighting for a good cause, and I didn’t throw myself here for myself. Well, I did, but through the back door I didn’t…” She tilted her hoof side to side. “I basically sold my soul so I could save this city. Get it?”

“You are literally insane.”

“Sorta true. And not the fun kind, either.” For the first time, Cinder’s smile vanished. “I’m going to a reckoning for this. I’d had a pretty good run of innocence up ‘till now.”

“Did you think of those you were abandoning?”

“A little,” Cinder admitted. “A lot more after I did it, since most of this was inevitable. Not that I didn’t choose, but there wasn’t a future that existed where I didn’t choose this.” She looked up to the inky blackness above. “In the end, this city needs to be brought down more than I need to be built up.”

Distant was speechless.

“Distant’s right, though,” Allure said, looking not at anyone, but at her burnt hoof. “We…” tears rolled down her cheeks. “We abandon everything. We Sweeties… we leave problems for others…”

“Allure, that’s not true,” Cinder said.

“I almost left!” Allure shouted. “I was laying there, barely able to move, and if Seren hadn’t destroyed my dimensional device I would have abandoned everything!” Was she crying blood or was it just mixing with her dirty fur? Did it matter? “I made a promise to The Sweetie Belle to find her and I was about to leave it for nothing and abandon her daughter to a bone monster!”

“Ah…” Cinder said.

“Ah?” Allure blinked. “Ah? That’s it?”

“Yes. Ah.”

“Ah wh—”

“You what?” Distant growled.

Allure turned to Distant, sniffing. “You were right about me. About… her. About all of us. We… we all have the capacity to leave. Even when…” She crumpled to her knees. “You should have never followed me. We should have never… The League shouldn’t exist.”

Distant pointed a hoof and opened her mouth to shout, but nothing came out. Slowly, she lowered her hoof and closed her mouth. “...You were going to leave. But she didn’t let you.”

“Wh…”

“You were right about one thing. The difference between you and my mother? You have your friends to keep you up.” She narrowed her eyes. “So you never have to suffer the consequences for your actions at the core of your self.”

“No one does,” Seren offered. “No one should. We’re… all messed up in some way, right? That’s why we band together. So we can be less messed up as one.”

“Look what Vision did to a bunch of ponies who decided to band together!” Distant shouted. “This city is for ponies to work together under freedom and… and they are killing each other every day!”

Cinder laughed.

“What the fuck is so funny!?”

“You think Vision is an example of ponies bonding?” Cinder turned around, looking everypony in the eyes to make sure they all heard what was coming next. “Vision is no such thing. Vision is a selfish brood of self-seeking arrogance where friendship exists when there’s a convenience and the darkness at the bottom of the ocean corrupts all. Vision is a place where the opposite of what Seren describes is true. Ponies don’t build each other up and cover their weaknesses, they’re enablers. They push the darkness inherent in everyone out to their maximum. Rage breeds rage, anger breeds anger, until everypony is steeped in their deepest flaws at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Cinder?” Seren asked. “What… what have you found?”

Cinder fixed Seren with a serene smile. “Why, a very cruel truth, Seren. That you can’t blame anypony for any of this. Not really.”

“Why the hell not!?” Distant threw a hoof wide. “Everypony chooses to kill each other!”

“Yes! Yes they do! They make the choice! But the city is designed to drive them to their terrible choice!” She jumped into the air, clapping her hooves. “Every little thing around you from the cops to the leadership to the mantles to the lack of a day/night cycle, everything is keyed to bring out the worst in ponies. Why, you ask? Who would do this? And to that I tell you absolutely nobody.

“You’re insane.”

“Am I? Am I?” Cinder scratched her chin. “Well, I am in other ways, but not this. There is no pony driving this cesspool deeper into the ground. It is Destiny.” She gestured at her healthy cutie mark. “Ka. Beat. Narrative. Story. Theme. Whatever you want to call it. The story—the curse—of this city is to bring out the worst in every person who enters it.”

Distant stared at her.

“Seren!” Cinder whirled to face her. “You are losing faith in your family bonds, wondering if it really is just a matter of the right circumstances before even your family abandons you!”

Seren stared at her in disbelief.

“Of course, you haven’t fully fallen yet, you’re too innocent and strong for it to break you down that quickly. Though if I hadn’t stepped in here, you wouldn’t have been able to trust Allure anymore, would you?” Without waiting for an answer, Cinder turned to Allure. “You have lost your faith in your name, your promise, and your self. Just now, Vision broke you, threw you to the ground and showed you that you were a terrible leader and that everything you based your life on was dust.”

Allure took a few steps back from her, unable to vocalize a response.

“And if I had to make guesses for Celia and Suzie… I bet Celia’s allowing herself to fall into the realm of ethically dubious decisions while Suzie is about ready to cause a genocide. And you.” Cinder whirled to Distant. “You… daughter of The Sweetie Belle, right?”

“I already know Vision’s b-broken me,” Distant stammered.

“Yes. And I don’t know enough about you to say how it did for sure. But think. Isn’t a little odd that is seems to have broken you in a way tailored for you? I’m going to list off some guesses here. Abandonment issues, isolation, rejection, feelings of uselessness… need I go on?”

“N-no,” Distant breathed.

“Good! And now we get to me. What, pray tell, is Vision trying to beat me into seeing? Well, hmm… Maybe it’s that I have an unhealthy obsession with exploration and adventure, so much so that I’m willing to mutilate my mind to reach it? That I don’t know how to ask for what I want? That I’m most definitely not a normal unicorn and the fact that I haven’t asked too many questions about that is alarming for my sense of self? That I haven’t thought at all about that stallion I burned to death!?

Allure gasped. “Cinder…”

Cinder wiped a tear from her face. “The difference between me and the rest of you is that I saw what Vision was doing. And I let it do it to me. I ran headfirst into it, corrupting me from the inside out. You thought ‘selling my soul’ was a metaphor, did you?” She cackled, before dropping her face completely level. “No. No it’s not. I’m serious. I’ve let Vision tear into my very depths. The only problem is that one of my ‘flaws’ it naturally seeks out is that I’m addicted to the thrill, to being the hero.” She grinned malevolently. “And at the risk of becoming a psychotic evil villain, I have embraced that in order to set this city free.”

There was no response to this.

“We’re going to save this city,” Cinder said, stating it like it was a fact. “We’re bringing a different story to this endless tragedy. Look around you at all these followers. Yes, I know, I naturally make ponies like me just by being around them… but this is more than that. I can’t make followers out of that. But I can make followers out of giving ponies hope. An idea of a brighter future.” Her psychotic grin lowered into a soft smile. “And one way or another, they’ll get it. We’re getting them out of this city.” She extended a hoof to Distant. “Are you with us?”

Slowly, Distant extended her hoof and shook Cinder’s. “...I’m in too deep to back up now.”

“Great! Tabula, get as much magic into Seren as you can. Sorry Indigo, there’s no way we’re being stealthy with this many ponies.”

Indigo frowned. “How lovely.”

“Still, it’s probably safer to stick with us.”

“I’m well aware there’s a bubble of protective aura around you.”

Cinder winked. “Nice! Anything I should know about the Medical Pavilion before we try to storm it?”

“The Rarity inside’s a psychotic murderer who turns ponies into art?” Seren offered.

“I am not surprised in the slightest,” Cinder deadpanned. “Eyepatch?”

Eyepatch sighed. “...Yes?”

“Get everyone you can organized. We need to be fast, we’re basically a miniature army in enemy territory. We’ll need a backup plan of escaping to Equestria if everything decides to go sideways. I know there are docks near the Medical Pavilion, start thinking of plan B to grab a sub and high-tail it out of here. I doubt very much that this will turn into a long game, but it will come back to bite us if we don’t plan for that eventuality.”

“Sure thing.”

“And Allure?”

Allure suddenly felt very small. “Yes?”

“This place is a curse. You would not abandon everything anywhere else.” She grabbed Allure by the cheeks. “That. Isn’t. You.”

Allure smiled sadly. “I… Okay.”

“I know you don’t believe me now, but you will later.” Cinder winked. “Until then, we got a little bit more nightmare to go through.”

~~~

“They knew we were coming,” Celia observed from their vantage point outside the marble-white Pavilion’s gates. There were a few dozen ponies from Security patrolling the area, all with weapons, all looking ready to kill.

“No. Really,” Suzie deadpanned. “It’s not like guards heard our entire conversation with Twilight or anything.”

“Luckily, Fluttershy knows a back way in.” Celia glanced to her. “Care to show us?”

Fluttershy nodded. “We’ll have to cycle around back without being seen.”

“Just be quiet, then, I can keep the invisibility up if we’re close together.”

The three nodded to each other. They left the statue they were hiding behind and cycled around, avoiding all unicorn guards since it was possible they could detect their magic. Moving around to the back took several minutes, but they eventually reached what looked like a warehouse—though admittedly, it was still as over-decorated as everything else around the Medical Pavilion, so it actually looked like an ancient Greek temple of some sort. The only real hint that it was a warehouse were all the boxes inside stacked in a rigid, computer-like organization system that had nothing to do with visual beauty. Likely a lot of medical supplies, mattresses, sheets, and other such things.

There was a guard here, but Celia was able to convince him he didn’t hear any hoofsteps with a simple spell. They trotted into the warehouse, keeping to the right wall until they came to an electrical panel. After checking to make sure nopony was around, Fluttershy popped the front of the electrical panel off, reaching inside to flip a latch hidden within the wall. There was a click beneath them. Reaching down, Fluttershy lifted the now-loose floor tile up, revealing a trapdoor that led to a miniature tram system.

Private use for the Council only, but it still needed a way for maintenance crew to get in. Usually Pinkie Pie herself.

The three of them dropped down. Celia used her magic to close all the panels and hatches behind them. The tunnel they found themselves in wasn’t lit at all, but Celia’s magic served their purposes just fine. Walking along the rail into the Pavillion, they didn’t say a word.

Eventually, they reached the end. Rather than a hidden hatch and a complex series of levers, it was a normal glass door. No guards. Why would there be? It was Rarity’s private door to her personal tram, only the Elements had access to it.

Elements like Fluttershy, for instance.

But the Fluttershy with the Sweeties was a “fake,” so there was no reason to be concerned about a possible breach.

Fluttershy opened the doors and stepped out into the light. After nothing happened, she motioned for the Sweeties to follow. Trotting down a short hallway, they found themselves in Rarity’s office: a white, round room covered in elegant art pieces. Two of which were full sized pony-statues that looked just a little too lifelike.

Rarity was not at her desk.

“...Do we wait for her?” Celia asked.

“No,” Suzie said, pulling out her pulse cannon. “We go find her. Or Cinder. And whoever gets in our way…”

“Stealth, Suzie, stealth.” Celia tapped her glowing gemstone. “We’re invisible. Let’s make use of that.”

The three of them stepped out of Rarity’s office. There were two unicorn guards on the other side of the doors, both with eye-shaped mantles on their necks.

They detected the three of them the instant they stepped out.

Suzie moved quickly—firing her pulse cannon at their heads in quick succession. Her military training was accurate, the blasts centered right between their eyes. The blue energy of the cannon engulfed their skulls, reducing the atoms within to their component parts and splattering the char against the back wall.

Celia gawked at her. “Why was that set to kill!?

Suzie refused to answer her, setting off down the left hall.

“Suzie!” Celia hissed.

I’m not letting your siren words twist me anymore, Suzie thought. I’m doing what needs to be done. Anything that stands between me and Cinder is getting slagged.

“It’s as good of a way to go as any,” Fluttershy whispered.

“I’m more worried about th—”

A red light flashed on the ceiling. “INTRUDER ALERT!” a voice called over the Medical Pavilion. “INTRUDER ALERT! Nonresponsives outside Rarity’s office! Patients, return to your rooms; Security, intercept!”

“Shit.” Celia ran to Suzie as fast as her hooves would carry her. “Move move move move mov—”

They barely turned the hallway before several members of security teleported to meet them. Not all of them could see through the invisibility—but enough of them could sense the magic that they fired off lasers.

Celia dropped the cloak and summoned her razor-top, but Suzie had already dispatched all of them with brutal efficiency, turning ponies to dust like it was nothing.

Celia’s eyes widened. She had never seen Suzie actually fight like she was in a war before. By the time they’d met, Suzie was already off active duty and working more on exploration.

Suzie smirked, finding this amusing. Yes, this is what I came from, Celia. Don’t like what you see, too bad, this is how it’s done.

“Suzie!” Celia shouted. “Where are we going!?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Suzie shouted.

“We can’t take this place head-on!”

“WATCH ME!” Suzie shouted, vaporizing the door in front of her, leading to a wide open space with several statues. Security responded with blades, bombs, and any number of spells.

Suzie moved like a machine. No magic, no special tools, just her hands and an elegant weapon. Beams fired in specific arcs. No pony dodged. No pony blocked. All became puffs of ash on a charred, twitching corpse.

They started screaming. Let them scream. Let them run. They deserve every last bit of what they’re getting.

She shot the leg of a statue. It crumbled, falling onto four ponies, splattering blood and bone across the perfect, white floor.

“No!” a pony shouted, jumping at her. Suzie registered that it was a stallion in crutches after she shot him. He had attacked her. He made that choice.

They all decided she was the enemy.

So they were hers. She unloaded dozens of pulses, every last one finding its mark and a death. That pony with mantles? That shield spell only took two shots to dispel. She was gone the instant after. That pony with a broken wing? She was trying to tend to one of the dead guards. She was one of them. She went down.

“STOP!” Fluttershy shouted.

Suzie felt the Kindness driving into her mind. She refused to let herself think on the matter—that was the enemy too. She turned the pulse cannon on Fluttershy and fired.

Celia stood between them, deflecting the bullet into her razor-top. “SUZIE! NO!

You really will let her control me when it suits you. She unloaded as many bullets as hse could into Celia.

The Gem forced all the energy in the pulses into her magic, giving it back to Suzie. Not in a lethal burst, but a massive shockwave that knocked Suzie into a statue, crumbling it to crystalline dust.

Suzie wanted to pass out. But her training forbade it. Her rage forbade it. She may not have been able to move her arms or legs, but when she could she was going to make that mutant. Gem regret not killing her then and there. They would pay… Everything in this God-forsaken city would pay!

“...It seems your help went a bit far, Fluttershy,” Rarity said, standing in a doorway with bodies piled around it.

“I’m sorry!” Fluttershy wailed. “They wouldn’t let me keep her happy… She had to… And then…”

“Shhhh…” Rarity said, smiling warmly. “It’s fine, Fluttershy, it’s fine. Sometimes a room needs some redecoration.”

“You’re a psycho,” Celia said.

“And you’re me, must be uncomfortable to see yourself on this end, hmm?” Rarity smirked.

“Not pertinent at the moment,” Celia muttered. “We’re here for Cinder. Produce her and we leave you alone.”

“See, if I did have her, I wouldn’t give her to you ruffians, that would be too easy.”

“You don’t have her.”

“No. She decided she wanted to look for you, so I let her go.” She chuckled. “Not all my art gets put on display in the Pavillion, you understand. Some of it needs to run free so ponies may be… enlightened.” She pointed at Fluttershy. “Take notes, this applies to you as well.”

“W-what?” Fluttershy’s ears folded back.

“I’m not upset about the massacre. Quite delighted really, haven’t seen anything like it in a while. Far too pleasant up here. I do believe the cleanup will be annoying, especially considering they’ve turned it into a minor warzone on the lower level… but in the end, what statement worth making doesn’t cause just a little suffering?”

“W-well, I wouldn't say too many…”

“What I am upset about is this whole ‘fix everything’ deal. Fluttershy, if fixing everything were really the way, I would have done it a long time ago. Any number of my pieces would completely cure at least one aspect of suffering if used against their intended purpose. But that would ruin the message, the point. You can’t have art without suffering. So you need it.”

“But there’s beauty in triumph!” Fluttershy countered. “We have too much darkness… there should be, at the very least, a balance!”

“Oh, balance, that’s so out of date. You remember Celestia and Luna? Balance is static. Granted, this city definitely could be better, and should, in many ways, but the fact that it is where it is carries a different… statement.”

“Then why don’t you just let it collapse?” Celia jabbed. “If you like suffering as art so much.”

“Why, dear, I suspect it’s the same reason you fight to ‘fix’ it. I care about my ponies.”

Celia snorted.

“Oh, you can be that way, dismiss me all you want, my ponies are important. Those who work with me, those who star alongside me… my friends, no matter where they’ve stumbled.” She glanced at Fluttershy. “We’re all in this together.”

“And that includes in a statue made of stitched together pony bone?!”

“Yes!” Rarity shouted in glee. “You’ll never see, of course, no matter how long I try to keep you. Shame, really, the art truly is wasted on some.”

Fluttershy sighed. “It… is. I’m sorry, Rarity.”

“Oh, dear, don’t be, it’s not your fault that you can’t see!” Rarity closed her eyes and smiled. “In fact, I think what you’re trying to do has a beauty all its own! It disagrees with my work, so naturally I can’t help you, but what is art in a vacuum without competition?” She held picked up Fluttershy’s hoof and chuckled. “Go, take your new friends. Try to change the city. Show me the power of your New Vision.”

“O… okay.”

Rarity’s expression went from eerily calm to shocked in an instant. “Wh—”

Holes erupted in her flesh, sprouting from within and sending blood out in several directions. Her pupils had time to shrink to pinpricks before falling still.

To Celia and Fluttershy, it was as if an invisible sea urchin had sprung out of her.

To Suzie, it was the branches of U-Catastrophe growing through Rarity’s body. She had been waiting, waiting to be sure of Rarity’s philosophy. Of her position. Of how she thought of her ponies.

Psychotic as it was, it was still a viable target for U-Catastrophe.

The brilliant white tree of Suzie’s spirit devoured Rarity’s Vision for her ponies. A Vision of art, of conflict, but of little triumphs and changes, of eternal twists, of beauty in darkness.

U-Catastrophe cursed her Vision.

It could not be true anymore.

There was a burst of light green energy, and then U-Catastrophe vanished.

“S-suzie…” Celia said, haunted.

“What did you do!?” Fluttershy wailed.

“She… she just damned the entire city to death…” Celia stammered.

Suzie breathed. “They des—”

“COLONEL SUZIE “SWEETIE” MASH!” Celia shout at the top of her lungs. “I, CHALCEDONY CELIA, HEREBY RELIEVE YOU OF DUTY AND PLACE YOU UNDER ARREST FOR ABUSE OF POWER!”

Suzie weakly sneered. “You c-”

“Fluttershy, help me take her mind.” Celia’s gemstone lit up in time with Fluttershy’s Stare.

Suzie’s mind went black.

PreviousChapters Next