(Present Chapter 14): Spring Cleaning: Part 2
Celestia steps back in shock. "You're mad!"
Weiss, however, just takes the golden opportunity to flash his new pearly whites as he rolls his eyes at her. "I'm so glad you noticed, I've been working at it for years!"
Celestia's eyes narrow, planting her feet and casting a Blunting Charm, in case Weiss's new meter-long claws aren't just for show. It might deepen her voice and timbre, but it's worth the expense. "Weren't you the one that told me that 'Monstrous size has no intrinsic value'?"
Weiss just chuckles. "I've refined that thesis since then."
With that, Weiss's gigantic fist blurs towards the alicorn of the sun, her horn immediately shining with the power of a shield spell.
The bus-sized fist stops an inch away from her shield, before, with an eruption of purple steam from it's elbow, it smashes through her barrier and throws her into the air, her body spinning and flipping like a boomerang in flight.
She halts herself with a flare of her wings, summoning up the power of the sun to smite the monster before her, but before she can react, the several-hundred-ton abomination has already leapt up to her height, punching her into the ground and throwing up a storm of debris with her rag-dolling body.
'So what? I get to use some of the Alicorn Suite? Haven't gotten to do that in a few centuries...' Celestia thinks to herself, letting her wings and mane smoulder with hotter and brighter fire as the veins in her eyes begin to turn yellow.
Climbing up out of the rubble, she scowls when Weiss is on the other end of the courtyard, all six of his arms crossed as he looks down on her.
"Be honest Weiss, you made this form just so you wouldn't be the shortest pony at the monarch club, didn't you?" She says, cracking her neck.
Weiss shrugs, an achievement normally reserved for industrial machinery, with arms as heavy as his are now.
"It may have been a factor in the design process. Mostly, it was the 'Pushing Celestia to Her Limits' thing, though."
This time, Celestia's eyes are sharp enough to catch Weiss in motion, his wings and back releasing streams of glowing steam into portals that are created on the spot.
'If he's trying to cause havoc, why redirect the exhaust elsewhere?' Celestia thinks, leaping out of the way of another punch that blurs into place before pausing long enough to unleash a stream of steam to propel it suddenly.
Grinning as he throws another punch, Weiss somehow ensures that his arm doesn't explode instantly when Celestia unleashes her Brightning Beam at it, the fist plowing through the beam as though it doesn't exist. She then feels a second fist at her back.
Glancing back confirms her fear, moments before the two fists smash into her like the dust between two professional boxers.
Before she can recover from the dazing crush, a third fist crashes into her from another angle, sending her flying, with Weiss in hot pursuit.
She prepares a series of lightning spears, the swarm of artillery magic appearing behind her in a flash of light. During that same flash of light, however, Weiss's entire left half seems to explode with plasma that instantly turns to steam, throwing his body around in an arc as he sweeps behind the alicorn, pummeling her with two hammerfisted blows, one after another.
His titanic wings barely even alter his trajectory, much less slow his fall, without a hint of pegasus magic to enhance them. This works in favor of his twin clawed feet crashing into the ground, burying Celestia deep enough to be eye level with most basements.
She teleports out to the comical sight of Weiss trying to pull himself out of the loose rubble of the street he had obliterated, before his head turns around to the princess, a sheepish grin on his face, his body shriveled up from the release of plasma, but swelling back to normal quickly.
She empowers her body a little bit more, just enough to deal some damage, while keeping things interesting. By this point, her eyes have turned into slits. The consequence of casting sensory magic of the highest order.
Her hoof flashes out as her body buries itself in Weiss's neck. A moment later, a pulse of force emitted from her leg allows her to rip the draconic limb clean off of his body. Passing over the artificial body's neck stump, the graphene hoses inside of it unleash their payload inadvertently due to her decapitating move. Royal water so pressurized that it turns to plasma when it exits blasts her golden armor completely off of her in a cloud of vaporized gold.
She stares down from the air as Weiss reaches over and plops the severed head back where it came from. Regenerative magic begins to fuse the false crystal skin back together.
"My my, Celestia. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were fighting me right now!" Weiss rasps, as his speaker-crystal vocal chords slowly regenerate, and he pulls himself to his feet, wings flaring in preparation.
"I'm glad you understand that I haven't started fighting yet, Weiss," She quips, letting herself drop a few meters before a flap from her blazing wings breaks the sound barrier and sends her directly down towards him.
Shining Armor has no idea where he is.
He stares at the black chamber he's found himself in, and cautiously steps down from the rubble surrounding the vault.
As soon as he does, he jumps back at the sight of an illusion. A chibified version of Weiss Noir, complete with droopy eyes and cel-shading on it's 3-D model.
"Hello! If you're hearing this, you've been teleported directly into my tower's prison dungeon, probably because I didn't want to deal with you right this instant. You can try to escape if you like, but it will end poorly for you! Thank you, and have a nice day."
With that, the hologram waves happily, before poofing away in a shower of digital sparkles. The gigantic obsidian doors that Shining Armor didn't notice before begin to slide open, the entire room rumbling as the innards of the tower shift around.
'I could try a teleport, but... I don't know where I am, or where a safe place would be.'
He lights up his horn, creating a magical buckler made of raw shield magic before slamming it into a wall experimentally. The wall cracks, but at the same time, a patch of wall begins projecting the hologram from before.
"Howdy, it looks like you're trying to cheat! Chances are, I can't stop you, but if you go this route, I can't guarantee your safety any more. The traps here are designed to leave you mostly unharmed, but the magic and guardians buried deeper within these walls may not spare you harm!"
"Please go through the designated areas if you want to escape or rob me, it's for your safety!" The hologram points at the gigantic obsidian doors, before winking and disappearing.
Shining Armor debates the merits of simply ignoring this advice and bashing through anyway, but ultimately concludes that Weiss's minions have already gotten him once.
Risking them pulling off the kiddie-horsehoes isn't his idea of a smart plan.
He walks through the doorway, into a hall that lights up with skull shaped torches. They're shaped like monkey skulls, if Shining's high-school biology class taught him anything.
In the middle of the hall, he pauses when three piles of large metal pendulums, wooden limbs, and burlap sacks are dropped from the ceiling, crashing down with clattering and thumps.
What he sees next confuses him and inspires no small amount of caution, as he surrounds himself with a small shield dome. "Are those... bugs?"
And sure enough, what must be thousands of tiny black bugs scuttle out of the walls and into the sacks, slowly bloating them up until they look like scarecrow ponies, each one having their right leg, left leg, or head replaced with the large, sharp looking blades.
If their appearance wasn't enough to bring Shining Armor into combat mode, then one of them flopping over into a cartwheel and leaping towards him with it's glittering blade sure did.
He blocks the nightmarish monster's scythe with his dome, backing away as the other two sway over like marionettes, attacking him in sync with sloppy, loose movements.
What really makes this whole experience strange, Shining Armor feels, is the heavy metal music blaring over hidden speakers in the walls.
"Dang it, I don't have time to play games!" Shining Armor shouts, his shield dome growing spikes before he spins it in place, shredding the scarecrows to pieces as he runs forward.
'Even though this game is pretty darn fun. This Weiss guy should have written an Ogres and Oubliettes module, he'd make bank!' Shining thinks to himself, before shaking his head to rid them of nerdish thoughts.
'Gotta get back to Canterlot and inform Celestia where the vault is, I can't defend it this deep in enemy territory,' He thinks to himself, galloping forward with his shred-barrier returning to an ordinary dome to save energy.
As fast as he's running, he nearly falls when he comes to a giant pit, bordered by a series of windows. He looks out the windows in shock, seeing the horizon is diagonal, for some reason, and distorted like it's being seen through a fisheye lens.
Thinking harder about this, he has a startling realization. This whole place must be one giant hallway, twisted in on itself somehow.
If he had tried to just punch through one of the walls... It wouldn't have felt very good. A genius trap.
Well, traction isn't a good look for the Captain of the Guard, so he's just going to have to deal with it and try to find an entrance where the warped space normalizes.
He stares down into the pit trap that he nearly stumbled into, spotting netting at the bottom. Another trap, or a safety feature? Both?
He dispels his Shield Dome, and forms a new one, a piston made of shield magic extending across the gap, and branching out with more cylinders to fasten itself to multiple parts of the wall at once, in case any of the pit was designed to give way when someone does this.
"One magical bridge, coming up!" Shining jokes to himself, trotting over the gap before , with a click from a tripwire he stepped on by mistake, a sandbag is suddenly fired from the wall, in such a way that it wouldn't hit someone unless they were exactly level with the pit.
As Shining falls into the netting and it inevitably snaps around him, he tries his hardest to not be too pleased with how clever a trap that was.
He might have to get his old Ogres and Oubliettes pals back together, what with all the ideas this is giving him. Well, after he figures out a way to get out of this net without falling into the pit he's hanging over, anyway.
As Celestia lands on the ground after dodging another one of Weiss's paused punches, she can't help but wonder.
"So, is there a reason you continue to hesitate during your attacks, Weiss, or are you just too chicken to hit a princess properly?"
Weiss laughs at this. "Oh princess, I have to give you a fighting chance, or you might just turn tail and run. I'm surprised you noticed my little tells."
Celestia shrugs her wings as she trots forward, hardly even noticing when molten stone from a former archway drips onto her back.
"Well, of course I would notice. I've practically had time to play 'Eye Spy' while you shuffle around like a blushing colt at his first dance. You're boring me, Weiss."
Weiss's hand claps to his chest with a dull boom like dynamite. "Your words cut deep, deeper than any blade!
"I may be evil, but I refuse to be boring," Weiss claims dramatically, before the ground underneath Celestia explodes, flinging her into the air with a nasty bruise that would have been far nastier if her magic hadn't blunted the bladed tip of Weiss's tail, which had somehow grown through the ground underneath her.
As Weiss rips the tail downward back into it's hole, it becomes apparent that he had used one of his portals to do it. The magic flickers for a moment as Celestia grabs the tail with her telekinesis, and tugs on it.
"Don't you dare," Weiss deadpans, before, with a heave of her horn, she pulls Weiss through the portal, and spins him around her several times, like a tetherball struck by a professional toddler.
She attempts to finish this instance of an enhanced, improvised merry-go-round, but Weiss's tail muscles are strong enough to pull him against the centripetal force, and he rapidly throws two boulder-sized jabs at the princess, plasma and steam flying free without any hesitation combined with his hydraulic muscles, allowing him to hit far harder and faster than before.
Celestia swears she had heard ringing that time as she crashed into the ground, only to receive a portal-borne flick from behind that diverts her into the air.
As she rights herself in the air, Weiss taps his feet, waiting for the princess to overcome her dizzy spell. "So you do know how to throw a punch. You know, the mythological records were never clear on that," Celestia claims, floating to the ground and casting a spell which increases her durability a bit more, at the cost of making her even taller and larger than she normally is.
Tempest is trying, Elysium help her she is trying not to laugh, but it's just too good. She cuts the camera feed to Weiss's tower and returns above deck. This is some of the most fun she's had in years.
When she spots the pegasi guards trying to chase after her ship, she smiles.
"Alright boys, let's turn off the smoke, let em know how healthy we're feeling!" She shouts, prompting the crew into action.
She lifts up a spiked iron ball in her telekinesis, just taking a moment to enjoy the fact that she can for the fifth time today, before she flings it at one of them, the spinning orb whistling as it cracks the poor pegasus guard right in the dome, knocking him out harmlessly and sending the ensorceled sphere back towards Tempest.
Tempest spots one guard swooping down to catch the unconscious pony before he can hit the ground and break something.
"Better worry about yourselves, boys!" Tempest says with her ship's new speakers amplifying it, smiling as she refreshes the selective-masslessness charm on her ball on it's return trip and flipping over to kick it right back into the fray.
One of the Pegusus warriors attempts to dodge it, but Tempest just smiles as firework charms she packed in the sphere go off, altering it's course and allowing the sparking weapon to bash that one down too.
By now, the army of pegasi have started realizing that they're being played, as the "Damaged" airship has stopped smoking and sped up by a large margin.
Weiss was completely unreasonable, Tempest felt, to include this as part of his plan, but now that she's kicking around her ball, teasing the best of the best with her little love taps, she couldn't be happier.
She gallops over to the mast, running up it and leaping off to kick one pegasus in the head when they try to zoom in, using him as a footstool to reach her iron ball and kick that again as well. The rapidly spinning mass of spiked iron zips through the air, curving around and smacking two more guards before they finally all back off.
She catches her ball in a telekinetic grip, before a spear crashes into it, sending it flying over the deck.
Tempest frowns when she spots the Pegasus who did it, one who hasn't flown back with the rest of his troupe.
"Boys, could you bring out the bottle?" Tempest asks politely, The Fizz Guards gasping at this before rapidly running below deck.
In moments, they drag out a large reinforced glass bottle of Pyrotechnic Stars, little black spheres, each one roughly the size of a softball.
Tempest's horn ignites, as she begins lifting out all of the stars one by one, each one painstakingly crafted with her new magic.
She smirks at the one lone guard, before visualizing where to aim to hit the retreating pegasi.
Flinging the spheres in the air, she kicks them one after another, each one lighting up in a rainbow of blazing sparks and color before exploding and spraying hot sparks on the guards one after the other. At least a few of the guards grip their rears and yelp when a spark slips into a part of the armor it doesn't belong in.
She makes sure to hit that one pegasus that made her lose her favorite cannonball with three of the scented ones. He'll be smelling like blueberries for a year, if he's lucky.
'This is life,' Tempest thinks, leaping up in the air to buck the last, largest one over, the spinning sphere erupting with special black sparks that drink in the daylight like a negative firework that explodes with a gigantic, animated image of herself winking her eye at Canterlot mockingly.
Landing on the deck smoothly, Tempest breathes in the smell of gunpowder and smiles.
"Well, that was fun. Let's go home, boys. We've got a Captain to welcome, so let's not keep him waiting! Full bore to the engines, wings out! Chop chop!" she shouts, spurring them into action.
Grubber watches from the crows nest with a smile of his own, before returning to his spyglass to watch for danger, as he swallows an ice cream sandwich whole.
Tempest, meanwhile, feels a weird itch on her flanks, which she ignores for now, too busy yelling at her crew and trying not to smile too hard about it.
"You know, you're pretty fun to knock around," Celestia pants, covered in scratches and bruises.
Weiss doesn't look much better, more crystalline scar tissue than dragon by this point, pink glowing through various parts of his hulking form where the royal cloth is thin, and the heat of the plasma shines through without any scales to cover it.
Weiss smiles. "Sounds like someone's ready for me to move on to the next act.
"How about a little fire, scarecrow?"
That said, Weiss's throat glows with green fumes, before unleashing a stream of flames that Celestia very nearly scoffs at, before years of endless combat warn her instinctively of the danger, summoning a barrier to block it.
Celestia sweats when the liquid dripping off of her shield hisses on contact with the ground, and her barrier cracks from the high pressure stream of flaming liquid.
"You like it, Celly? I was doing some research for authenticity, and I found out that sulfuric acid and phosphorous mixed together burn with a green color!
"Alicorn lungs are made of hydrocarbons like the rest of us, I'm fairly certain, so if I were you, I'd take a deep breath... And hold it." He finishes, as the noxious smoke and puddles of flames begin to become a problem as Celestia backs away from Weiss's stream of enchanted acidic flames. Celestia is forced to cast her solar purification charm, turning her breath into flaming smoke, more than sufficient to obliterate any noxious gasses.
She hisses when her rear hoof buckles as she steps directly into one of the pools by mistake.
Her shield shatters, and she has no choice but to go directly into the deep end of her magical power, her coat turning into a nest of white hot filaments as the acid is kept off of her by sheer superheated temperature alone.
Her teeth sharpen into fangs as she casts an old pegasus spell, designed to boost one's physical power and speed with haste-enhancing primal magic. In an alicorn's hooves, however, it serves to accelerate their magical functions as well, turning Celestia's body and a few inches around her skin into a blast furnace. Ice magic emitted from her hooves serves to keep the streets from melting beneath her at this stage.
As she leaps back, clear of Weiss's new attack range, she notices that his body has swollen pink with what she now knows is the plasma his body is using as fuel. He had been using the attack to stall.
"Do you plan to blow up at me, Weiss? I believe you've already done that, coming here and mutilating my fair castle."
Weiss laughs, but it's a strained noise. "Actually, princess, I was going to break your leg."
Before she can process what he means by that, he's behind her, and the street is nothing but blinding light from all of his body's pressurized water plasma being jettisoned almost at once.
She looks back behind her and starts to rapidly kick as fast as she can, blow after divine blow striking Weiss's snake-like limbs as they try to coil around her for some sort of pinning maneuver, blowing them back with a combination of raw muscle and bodily transmitted telekinesis.
Weiss is finally forced back, skidding on his feet before his wings flare to slow him down.
"That actually hurt. A little bit at least. But-"
He smiles, teeth growing to replace the ones lost after her steel-crushing blows.
"-The objective of a combination move is to finish your opponent." Weiss says, his body swelling up for another burst of impossible speed as his limbs snap back into place after she had fractured all six of them in her panicked counterattack. She notices that they have stopped regenerating, hanging limply at Weiss's sides. What is he playing at?
"When performing a combo, each separate attack must be delivered... With the intent to kill!"
Celestia can see it coming, her haste magic gives her the mental speed to process his movements, and her sensory magic tells her every little twitch and shudder of his false, pneumatic muscles. She even has the time to consider that he must have studied the Giant Spider clans to emulate how their own musculature functions, in order to make this disgusting form.
All of that is moot, however, when twelve portals open between her and him, shortening one-hundred meters of space into two, and the entire back side of his false body turns into the fury of a volcano erupting towards her.
"God Devouring Hydra!"
Six individual punches strike her one after another, closer to cannonballs than the work of any sort of martial arts, with pure, incredibly compressed plasma jets replacing the power of any sort of muscle as it's primary mode of propulsion, all topped up with a headbutt like a whip cracking as his elongated neck sweeps around and snaps at her, breaking the sound barrier.
Before she can be sent flying with seven new bruises, a portal rips open on Weiss's body, and a seventh arm rushes out, grabbing her by her left hindleg before an eighth limb erupts as well, raising up in a knifehand and-
Sunset gallops towards the castle when she hears Celestia's scream in stereo, Royal Canterlot Voice is really not doing Sunset Shimmer's ears any favors right now.
Pushing through crowds of ponies, she sees a guard cordon trying to keep ponies away from the castle. Sunset snarls, teleporting past them. No time to play bureaucrat right now, damn it!
She walks past the ruined streets and courtyards in horror, stepping over puddles of acid and keeping a wide berth from the puddles of molten stone, ignoring the intently staring Eyeroc perched on a tall piece of rubble nearby, until finally, she sees a sight that chills her to her core.
Weiss had turned himself into a monster, some twisted beast from the depths of Tartarus itself, holding Celestia's limp body from her leg like a turkey, if a turkey were glowing so brightly that it left spots in Sunset's vision. Could this really be the same pony who she caught practicing keeping a casual expression in his room while choking down ranch-dressing flavored soda?
"Weiss, stop!" Sunset shouts, stepping forward with desperation in her tone.
Weiss looks over, his expression turning into a knowing grin, as though her arrival had always been part of his plan.
"You like what I've done with the place?" He says, throwing the princess to the side, where she flips in midair to land on her hooves, telekinesis holding her broken leg up and in place with practiced ease.
"Weiss, please, stop all of this. I'm the one you want. Celestia may have taken the book, but I'm the one that stole it's contents!" She shouts, waiting for him to turn on her.
Weiss's smile disappears like ashes in water as turns to her fully, his broken limbs snapping together and regenerating enough for him to hold them up approvingly, even as they shake slightly from weakness.
"When I came here, Sunset Shimmer, I had three main goals. Two of which are now fulfilled. I wanted to show the two of you one simple fact. Celestia believed that her knowing my secrets, my spells... She thought that knowing them made her better than me.
"But that's what I'm here to make her understand. It doesn't take the Grimoire Weiss to create a pony like me. It takes a pony like me to create the Grimoire Weiss!
"It was never about the book. It was about my reputation. A reputation that the two of you disrespected, and ruined. Celestia turned all the history books about me into puns! She didn't just uncover the Grimoire Weiss's secrets, she made a mockery of them! Of me!"
Weiss sighs, shrugging to himself, as he closes his eyes and shakes his head. "But I guess, perhaps I've taken it a bit too far."
A portal opens up behind Celestia, who doesn't notice what comes through. All she can see right now is red, and her vision has fully tunneled in the heat of combat.
Sunset looks mournful. "I'm sorry, Weiss. Please, stop all of this. I'm begging you."
When Weiss begins to shrink down in a haze of black fire, returning to his normal form with a faint smile, he looks Sunset Shimmer right in the eyes.
"If it's worth anything Sunset, I apologize for what you are about to see."
By now, Twilight Sparkle is pacing the room desperately. Obey Celestia, or try to help her? Obey? Help? Obey?
...Help.
Spike by now has already woken up and recharged his batteries with a pile of snacks, so Twilight has no problem asking him to open a portal to Celestia.
She runs through the portal, prepared for anything, but she couldn't have been prepared for what she sees, like a nightmare come to life.
Celestia, holding her hoof on Weiss's chest, her mane and tail a glowing solar flare, her teeth grit with smoke rushing out from between the lengthy fangs.
Her face twisted with wild-eyed madness.
Celestia's leg has already healed, but her ego hasn't. The blow had gotten the adrenaline flowing like nothing else had for the past millennium. Such a familiar feeling. She hadn't let loose like this for what must have been over a thousand years. She had spent so long cultivating peace that she'd almost forgotten what it felt like, the feeling of her heart hammering in her chest, of her horn burning with unrestrained fury, of being able to see every pore beneath every hair on a pony's face as she smashes through anything opposing her in a perfect dance of war.
She forgot how much fun this is.
The instant that Weiss finishes burning away his draconic form, she obliterates the air between her and him with the force of her wingbeats, pinning the dark sage to the ground, a hoof pressing down on one of his dragon arms, and the other one pressed firmly against his chest.
She converts a swath of her defensive spells into anti-spacial spells, preventing any new portals from being formed, and preventing anything else from teleporting in or out.
She leans down, smiling fondly and excitedly. "You know, this has been a lot of fun. Come on, what's next? I've missed our little spats so much, Weiss.
"You going to let loose with yet another spell that Equestria has never seen before? Summon some sort of mechanical beast, packed with wondrous weaponry and countermeasures tailored to me alone?
"I know you didn't just dispel that form of yours without a plan, Weiss."
He laughs at her, as she hears an odd flapping noise nearby.
Weiss flashes a knowing smile. "You put up a good fight Celestia. There's no way I could have beaten you in a direct fight. Even Malifessence was running out of power by the end. And you would have just kept regenerating, faster and faster, the angrier you got.
"But I've won," He finishes, still bearing his grinning smile even as his ribs creak dangerously.
Celestia's confused look perfectly indicates how her mind is, in that moment, flooded with ice and caution.
Weiss tilts his head at this, his ears twitching. "Oh, did I forget to mention... I cheated?"
And with that, the sky is blotted out by swarms of Eyerocs, all staring at Celestia and Weiss with laser focus.
Celestia looks around, uncomprehending. "What is this Weiss, Answer me!" She shouts, preparing a shield spell to protect herself from whatever this is.
"One thousand years of you trying to make ponies not be afraid of you, Celestia, and you've just pissed it away in half an hour. Even if I'm the obvious bad guy of this little story, you're now the entity of fire and justice, no longer a pony to be crossed or slighted, even in the most trivial matters.
"They've been recording our entire fight, and now the recording is being broadcast across all of Canterlot. You probably should have held back half of your pegasus guard instead of sending them all after my minions, then maybe you could have cleared up the smoke before the enchanted fireworks could turn it into the world's biggest television!
Celestia leaps off of Weiss in horror, looking up at the skies, where in high definition, Celestia turns herself into a feral god of fire and destruction, fighting Weiss. All displayed on the smokescreen Weiss's ship had left when it appeared to be damaged.
Her eyes widen in abject despair, as Weiss stumbles to his feet.
"Didn't it once seem odd to you, that I was fighting you head on? That I just walked right into your home and put my dukes up?" He asks, staring at the paralyzed Princess Celestia.
"But that wasn't even the best part. No, I've saved the best for last. The timing I had to set up was nearly impossible, if I hadn't used some clever magic to help me do the math to predict a baby dragon's magical recovery rate."
"You see, I got you a live audience for the finale."
Celestia only just now notices her student, Twilight Sparkle, and her heart sinks into her stomach, as she dismisses as much combat magic as she can, among the spells that can be dispelled early.
"Twilight," Celestia starts, but the rest of her words won't come when her student flinches at her movements, unable to tear her eyes away from her teacher's slit pupils, and fanged mouth, which, moments ago, were glaring down like a wolf looking at a particularly tasty piece of meat.
Weiss chuckles, before laughing out loud at Celestia's pitiful expression, pure sadistic pleasure running through him at the sight, like it's the funniest thing he's ever seen in his life.
"So, what are you going to do now, then, finish me off? Pop my clone like a grape, and dump my lamp into that pit you're so fond of?" Weiss says smugly.
He shakes his head with mock-sadness. "You know, your biggest flaw was the one I was desperately hoping you would have been able to overcome. You've gone soft.
"If you had started with your full, unrestrained power, you could have ended this fight before I even thought of transforming. You could have ripped through my chest instead of my neck, and taken the lamp out before I could physically react. Hell, if Luna had helped you, she would have seen through my invisible spies in a split second."
Weiss shakes his head. "At any rate, our debts are squared now.
"You ruined my reputation, and now I've ruined yours. You destroyed my home, and now I've destroyed yours. You stole from me one of my greatest treasures, and now I've stolen one of yours.
"I think that makes us even." He says, turning around and walking away.
Celestia snarls, turning to him. "You've won Weiss, but you won't be leaving this place. The Anti-spacial spells won't let you create portals. They won't let you run away."
She takes a threatening step forward. "Your lamp isn't leaving this courtyard."
Weiss's smile doesn't change as he turns back around. "Oh, this lamp? This one right here?" He says, pulling it out of his chest.
"No..." Weiss shakes his head, scratching his chin ponderously.
"You meant my Lamp, with a capital 'L', didn't you? Well, of course it isn't leaving Canterlot," Weiss says, ripping the copper lamp open and revealing a swirling portal embedded inside of it.
On the other end of the portal, another identical lamp rests on a soft looking purple velvet pillow.
"It was never here in the first place." He winks as the portal self-destructs and Weiss's Shadow Clone self destructs along with it.
As the skies of Canterlot display a high-definition theater release of Celestia unleashing righteous fury unlike anything Canterlot's peaceful ponies had seen before, the real Celestia falls to her knees and sobs. Neither of her students are able to approach her, each one having their own reasons for their inability to approach the monarch.
One held back out of fear, and the other, guilt.
Tempest Shadow pulls out a Black Materia, apparently one of several that Weiss had produced, for situations not too dissimilar to this one.
Activating the Materia, she briefly feels her disciplined stance slip away in favor of a more relaxed and casual pose as a flash of Weiss's time-locked memory washes over her, allowing her to cast the exact same spell he had cast when creating the Materia. The Shadow Clone technique.
A relatively small drain on her magic heralds a shadowy black eyeball with wings appearing in front of her, before it collapses to the ground with a smoky splat, and slowly grows into the form of Weiss Noir.
"Well, it's a bit forward of me to be wearing your magical energy Fizzy, but I think it's a good fit," He jokes, still riding the pure high of sending someone into despair.
Before long, the ship is brought in and pointed at the Vault that they had stolen.
The lack of sound of Shining Armor pounding on the inside of his soundproofed prison cell is music to Weiss's ears, as he has his minions use an intense blast from the Gaon Cannon to rip open Celestia's Vault of Dark Artifacts.
"Remember, boys, don't touch anything I don't sign off on. We're only taking my own shit back, and also the Alicorn Amulet, of course. We'll dump the rest of it back where we got it," Weiss says, looking inside.
"Ooh! A Moon Crystal! Looks like Celly's been holding out on me." Weiss says, picking up one of the crystals off the shelves. When he senses the swirling nightmare trapped inside it, he drops it in shock, as something clicks in his mind. The label reads: "Nightmare Gem, discovered in a Longma Village shortly before Nightmare Moon's banishment."
"Sorry boys, take the rest of the day off, I have to look into something," Weiss Noir suddenly shouts to the Fizz Guards he had requisitioned, before trotting through a sequence of rooms until he reaches the one with his crudely assembled dream-machine in it.
Plucking the strands of a dreamcatcher web he had purchased from an earth pony, Weiss attempts to contact the Arcana Nox again, suspicion burning in his mind.
"Inputting code phrase. Tarot Designation: 'The Moon', please respond," Weiss says into the microphone, waiting to receive the bleeps that either confirm or deny that a connection was successfully made.
The response is the same one he had been getting for months. A successful connection, but denied access.
Before, he thought it was damage to the system that had caused this denial of access, some crossed crystals somewhere locking him out.
Now, though, he suspects it may be compromised. Again.
♪"Oh life on the outside ain't what it used to be..."♪
Luna finds herself in a strange role reversal, attempting to comfort Celestia over how the views of her subjects did not favor her at the moment.
"I was such a fool, Luna. I wanted to believe that he would fight me like a real stallion so badly, I just... Didn't pay attention to how angry I was getting."
The Lunar Diarch pats her sister on the back. "Celestia, Sister, you need to get out of your room. The ponies still need you."
Celestia throws her hooves up. "What's the point?! Day court has been empty for weeks, they all think I'm going to vaporize the castle if any of them disagree with me!"
Luna couldn't decide whether to be offended or grateful that night court had filled up so vastly after that day, but, ultimately decides that the improvement to her reputation is not worth this.
Celestia continues quietly. "He made it feel just like old times, Luna. He kept riling me up, every time I became suspicious, he unleashed some fantastic new assault. It was so thrilling, I just fell into that old pattern. Win, at any cost."
Her tears grow fatter when she spots the newspaper, before Luna levitates it out of the room and shreds the unflattering bundle of paper to pieces. Her sister doesn't need to keep rereading that sensationalist garbage.
"What am I going to do, Luna?"
Luna smiles comfortingly. "You've always had a temper, Sister. All Weiss has done is prove that bottling it up and trying to hide it was a major misplay..."
Celestia looks at her sister ruefully. "What, so I should go back to defenestrating nobles when they do something asinine? I've tried for hundreds of years to convince ponies that I don't do that anymore..."
Luna shakes her head. "Honesty has never been your strong suit, sister, but you need it now more than ever. Didn't you say that Kindness was a firm hoof? What changed?"
Celestia sniffs. "You weren't here to reign in my... Boldness. I had to be the calm one, when you left."
Luna can't help it, laughter bubbling up. "I'm sorry, it's just... You were trying to-" she snorts
"Trying to fill my shoes while I was gone?"
Celestia nods with a fragile smile. "I suppose it was a bit ridiculous. I didn't want ponies to be afraid, and they had a great many reasons to be afraid when it was me alone deciding Equestria's policies..."
Luna cracks a joke, smiling at her elder sister. "Well, sister, I'm here now. Though I would ease into deleting ponies via window expulsion. This poor castle has been repaired enough, this year."
Celestia laughs, and Luna starts joking some more, ribbing the poor solar Alicorn's barely-hidden violent tendencies. She just laughs even more.
Just like old times.
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Got what she deserved :)
Now this. THIS is the exact kind of character I love, the kind that plans everything out to tear down their nemesis, physically and emotionally.
Masterful work good sir!
Nothing. Nothing. was quite as satisfying to read as this was, and the best part? it was all justified, eye for an eye.
I especially loved seeing fizzy just enjoy herself and have fun playing the baddie!
ah plot twist got me in a chock hold there and I loved it! the twist of an old eye for an eye was wonderful Celestia you have quite the trial and I hope twilight and other ponies overcome and accept this part of you. who knows maybe Weiss shall bring out twilight "rage" side to better understand her mentor even better.
loved how tempest having fun and it seems shining having fun despite himself!
I honestly think those nightmarish forms are pretty amazing Celestia the battle princess is hard to ignore!
I LOVE the name of this arc, it fits so well.
Weiss, you Magnificent Bastard.
It's the funny little details like that what really fleshes out a character.
*insert massive amounts of clapping* That was incredible. Truly, Weiss is an enemy that should NEVER be underestimated. Wonder if he plans to make a deal with Chrysalis?
Well played, well played. This is a great chapter, I love how you handled it. I will be very interesting to see how Twilight and Sunset will react and how they will act towards Celestia now.
Got nothing to say here, other than this chapter was everything I hoped it would be.
Nice to see you have good tastes in shows.
This chapter is just too good, man!
It's like a freaking jojo battle, with all the wits, the play of mind and not the power, it was so freaking awesome!
The reveal part was having me at the edge of my seat!
And the consequences, oh the sweet consequences at the end was just the cherry on the top.
You, my good sir, had me in awe. I applaud you, standing.
9718919
oh I know it is practically word for word I just thought it was weird now that we know more about dragons and even then it was odd due to how intelligent they are. But your second point confuses me a bit they DO have some type of society. They have a leader and holidays along with traditions. Not only that but we can tell a lot of the dragons live in the same general area as the few times we see the teenage dragons they are together. So I would say it is still racism even if that wild pony idea was true.
9719022
Yes, but THAT SPECIFIC dragon that lived on the mountain didn't live in that society, which is why it specifically was considered a wild animal. Civilized Dragons wouldn't be called wild animals. Just that specific one that was living away from the rest of it's society.
You know, it makes sense that Celestia is the short tempered one and Luna is the more serene one, if you go with the themes. The sun burns hotter than the moon. Oh well, excellent chapter. And fantastic conclusion ot this fight. I did not see that coming. Well, not like THAT. I noticed that Celestia kinda lost herself and that he would use it, but not broadcast it to the public. More personal. But I was clearly not thinking big enough!
9719060
Not to mention that Luna's the Element of Laughter. Celestia doesn't really laugh, she just sort of smugly smirks internally and doesn't let anyone else in on her jokes. Whereas Luna is probably the type to break windows with the volume of her helpless laughter when she groks a good joke.
Quick quedtion: did Weiss teach tempest how to play blitzball or something? Also will Weiss be holding DND games now?
All in all i couldn't stop reading this chapter and fucking loved every sentence of it. The scene where he just went full Asura and using portals so whe couldn't guess where the fists were coming from was just pure style. Or the fact that he did all this just to ruin her rep.
9719439
Have you SEEN the MLP movie? Tempest Shadow fucking moonlights as a hoofball player, I SWEAR.
9718956
Might want to check other chapters too, I saw it pretty much every time it was mentioned other than the authors note.
9719653
Consider it done.
Good to see celestia get her metaphorical crap kicked in. Maybe she will treat him with a little respect now
K. Bye.
Isnt this a darkest dungeon reference?
"Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit, unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue..."
Ha. Someone's been watching One Punch Man.
Well, Weiss Noir just secured a spot on my favorite villain list.
9880964
Wow I can hear it. I can hear his voice