To the Gods

by Comma Typer

The Worst is Not

Hot air shoots around him. Falling, rising, being stretched apart.

An all too familiar feeling. The first trip to that weird Earth with its Canterlot High was a crash course in being stretched to the extreme in a psychedelic tunnel. He didn’t close his eyes for that trip. His eyes are still closed here. Is this what the Power Ponies felt coming to this world through the machine?

A cold rush surrounds him when he lands flat onto the floor. A familiar coolness: the underground facility was cold. Something heavy in his claw: the proximas. The sharp edges stress his scales, but he grips it tighter. Never let it go.

Verumarendi there and the Power Ponies looking at him, their battle interrupted—and the enchanted issue in the alicorn’s magic grasp.

“You!” Verumarendi screams, shaking the comic in the air. “How did you escape the clutches of that world?! That was to be your eternal prison!”

Zapp yells, “Then too bad!” before landing a lightning bolt on her face, but Verumarendi fights back with a new lightning bolt right at Zapp’s own face, picking her off the air.

The other Power Ponies restart the fight, throwing more weapons and punches and kicks and jabs against the trashing Verumarendi.

In the chaos, Matter-Horn finds time and space to regroup with the lost dragon. “Spike!” Then a motherly nuzzle against his head. “Are you… are you okay? You’re not too hurt, are you?”

Spike answers her nuzzle with his own. “I’m fine. Should’ve gone to one of those lava pools on the street.”

“Uh, streets aren’t supposed to have lava pools.”

“Yeah. I think that’s Verumarendi’s chaos messing up your world.”

Tension builds up in her face. “Not good news at all. She’s vulnerable and ultimately ponish, but we’ve been fighting for a long time. I don’t think we could last thirty minutes of more fighting. She may be biding her time, waiting for a simple mistake, and—“

She falls to the ground, struck by a beam of magic. Or would’ve been struck by a beam of magic if it weren’t for Spike jumping in front of her, taking the brunt of the beam—all muscles, aching; all bones, brittle; all scales, as if falling apart; all his two eyes, as if blinded and his brain is torture.

A scream: Zapp falls down again, her spinning body clipping Rager’s wings and knocking her to the ground. A thrown rope frozen and turned back against Mare-velous ties her down, doubling as a tripwire for Fili-Second to trip on and smack her head at a dozen G-forces against the wall. Radiance, left alone to fight Verumarendi, but the unicorn is finished in quick fashion and her weary body lays sprawled at the madmare’s hooves.

Spike closes his eyes, having felt each body’s—each friend’s—impact. Eyes open: the bodies are realer now. They’re still focused on her, still gritting their teeth, moving slightly but failing—pain subsiding though it pierces still.

Verumarendi floats slowly to Spike. An aura cold as the grave emanates from her glorious alicorn form. “You’ve proven much more difficult to deal with than I expected!” A rub of her hooves: her blank eyes glow like supercharged light bulbs. “Now you and your friends have run out of luck.”

Her eyes catch the gleaming amulet. “Give it to me. It is useless to hold on to it.”

Fire numbs the pain. Spike growls and shoots a weak shot of flame at her. “No!”

Verumarendi dodges and smiles all the more, displaying all her fanged teeth ready to rip skin to shreds. Down to his eyes, she levitates the enchanted comic book. Clutch as tightly as he can, Spike feels the strength slip from his claws: the amulet slips from his claws, now firmly under Verumarendi’s magic control.

“You are so lucky to meet your heroes! The way you talk with them, the way you look at them! Do you want reality, then? I am reality! I am Verumarendi! What else is there above me?” A vain evil laugh pierces the air like that of a dying coyote. “Heh. I really thought you were Hum Drum. At least he’s a Power Pony and you’re not. Say what you will about your nepotism with the Elements of Harmony, especially that prissy landlord princess of yours! You’re not one of them, so I fear nothing. Oh, would you try calling for help? Like that’s an option here.”

Do you even know who I am?! Spike screams mentally, willing his agony out. Wishes to let loose that primal scream. You have no idea who Spike the Dragon is! I saved the Crystal Empire, you nitwit!

But whether she’ll care about threatening the Elements of Harmony themselves—all he sees is Verumarendi gloating above worn-out bodies, hovering as a scepter of death.

“Vulnerable. Vincible. Your efforts, vain. I will start spreading the news to Maretropolis: you have all been defeated! There is nothing that can save you now, nothing that shall save them from me. Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Why bother trying to get up? Why bother going after such a futile prospect—hah!”

Fires an energy ball at Spike: one more explosion throwing him across the room for a renewed spear of pain at the end. Scales and muscles ache, skull and chest ache, everything doubly aches, and he can only moan and whimper and see the psychopath float into view in bleary tunnel vision.

And something cold on his head. Spit. Her spit.

“As it should be. The only good dragon is a dead dragon.”

She fast turns to the Power Ponies, her audience by default. “Where was I? Oh, that’s right! See, your world… what is it but just a work of fiction? There was nothing to begin with, and now it will be reduced to the nothing it came from for greater worlds will be mine! Reality will be to me what an ant is to a pony! All the ten dimensions will be under my control, and my true power shall be asserted: worlds made in my image!”

The ranting carries on behind Spike. In the pain, in the whimpering, everything in his body howls at him to not move a single muscle.

With his throbbing mouth, he forces one little happy grin.

All according to plan.

“This room is sealed!” the alicorn continues, gesturing wildly with her forehooves. “Ninety-nine percent air-tight! I know what you’re thinking of: taking the fight outside, where pesky guards and police and soldiers and princesses abound—but no. This room is coated with magic dampeners, so goodbye to teleporting out of here, numbnuts! Will anyone even look for you? It won’t be easy even if they try so hard. Just bask in my glory and know that your fate is either the sweet release of death or the agony of being my puppets!”

His claws burn in aching pain, but Spike limps on, past broken machines. Starting and stopping behind cover: a machine, then a deep groove in the floor.

To the closest pony there. Happier to see it’s one of the two unicorns. Happier still upon seeing her signature goggles.

“No weaknesses to see here! Try taking these stones off me: I will take them back easily! This necklace is bound to my soul, powered by the spirits and the magic of all those dead ponies you’ve seen on the way here, and these amulets above me orbit me as their master! Yes, I was the mass murderer, I was the one who brought low all things! Opened the portals and wiped the slate clean too! When those enchanters returned from their battle with you, I thought: how pathetic! Let me show my true self and I’ll show them how easily those misfits will fall! Too bad they thought I was a danger when I did reveal myself so I had to kill them. Too bad that they won’t be witnesses to your doom!”

Weak claws grab a hold of Matter-Horn. She weakly opens her eyes, rubble hiding much of her body. Whispers are exchanged. A claw points to one of the amulets as if giving an order.

Her horn touches his head. A beep of magic and then: relief. A great deal of the pain, vanished. For Spike, flexes his claws—almost as good as new.

”That should get you all healed up for what you’re about to do… but a-are you sure about this plan, Spike?”

“I… I’m absolutely sure. It has to work.” A glance above: Verumarendi still distracted. “Just tell me: can you say there’s a clear path from here to the surface?”

Fatigue makes a chore out of thought, so she powers through her intellect. “Could be. The vault may be pony-proof but I can imagine that germs could get through. Ordinary smoke signals, most likely not, but we’re dealing with something quite out of the ordinary. You think your method could work with that?”

“Is it the best vault door you’ve ever seen?”

“No. Certainly not as air-tight as she makes it out to be. Ah! There’s ventilation! There must be ventilation. Otherwise, they’d have suffocated in their sleep a long time ago.”

“Then that’s enough for me. Shoot it my way, jump out of the rubble like brand new, and leave the rest to me.”

With Matter-Horn nodding, Spike limps back to his place, starting and stopping again but faster, more nimble, grateful for Verumarendi’s bloated self-blinding ego.

“It is destined, prophesied, from the very beginning, is it not? That one must have all the power in the universe! Many call it the Supreme Being; others determine a pantheon of deities and demigods. But it is all in the past: they did not look to the future, that one shall gather all the power in her lap, and that very one has finally arrived!”

Her horn electrifies with unheard-of magic, her wings spread like wildfire, and thunder booms across the chamber. “You shall bow before me and behold my hideous strength! Tonight, none shall survive! You will all be witnesses to me, the great, the grand, the one and only Veru—“

Thunk!

A tinge of power leaves her.

The proximas amulet falls.

She steps back and her eyes grow into saucers. “Who’s responsible for this?!”

She gets her answer right away: a huffing and puffing Matter-Horn, her horn glowing and flickering while sweat drips off of her face.

“Oh, isn’t that cute?” Verumarendi hovers to her snout, squishes muzzles with the unicorn hero. “Trying to play games with me! How stupid could you get?! Do you not know when you’ve been outmatched? Will you not listen to the victor speaking here?”

She blows hot air at the alicorn’s mane. “I know how to listen to victors alright! I talk to myself some of the time!”

An alicorn stomp ripples shockwaves across the floor to again cast Matter-Horn down. “What an outrage you are! This is an outrage! Why are you not following what I say?! Why, why, why?!”

Matter-Horn can’t help but snicker. “It’s funny, how big of a baby you are. Then again, being born with all of that power must’ve made you pretty immature! At least the pony you possess didn’t start out that way and had to live a full life to get where she was… before you took over, that is.”

“Stop playing games with me!”

And Verumarendi charges straight at Matter-Horn, blank eyes across the deranged mare. “Show me what’s going on with you! Why are you still resisting?! It is futile to resist, and I mean it! I have won! I have everything! You think you can just shoot the amulet and get away with it?”

At that, Matter-Horn’s ears droop. She turns away in final fear. “No…”

Verumarendi relaxes with a growling sigh. “Good. You’ve finally learned your place in my empire and—”

“…but Spike can.”

And the madmare turns around to see Spike happily waving the amulet at her.

She narrows her eyes in fury, charges her wings and horn with untold amounts of magic. “You!”

“Spike, do it now!”

Verumarendi flings herself at him. Catches him, tackles the dragon to the ground, frothing at the muzzle.

“So you think you can get away with stealing what I rightfully deserve?!” she roars, saliva pouring onto Spike’s disgusted face. “That is intense madness! The amulet will do you no good anyway! Give it back to the pony who can actually use it!”

Spike nods with a pasted-on smile. “Yeah, sure! It’s gone thatta’ way!”

Following the pointed claw, she looks just in time to see a smoking green flame snake through the minuscule air gap under the door.

“That is a mere flame! Pathetic! A mere cry for help! Smoke signals even!’

“It’s a magic flame.”

“Whatever! You are only delaying the inevitable. Why must you mock me so when I do not deserve mocking?”

“Because you don’t realize how stupid you are?” Spike posits, channeling some of Twilight’s sarcasm. “You don’t know what I just did even though you’re way up on your high horse!”

“Then tell me!” she howls, choking his throat and jangling his head. “Tell me where the amulet is! Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

The damage done to his body doesn’t stop him from asking, “Uh, you tell me where you think it is.”

“Well, it must be with you!” She turns him around in her magic, shaking him like a near-empty bag. “Where? Where, where, where?! Or maybe you ate it!” She strikes his stomach, sending a missile of pain and squeezing fire from his belly to the throat. “Perhaps you’ve eaten it! Think your acid could burn everything—“

“It’s actually a fire sac in my stomach,” he manages to say in between wheezes. “Seriously, I know ponies don’t know much about dragons, but girl, you need some education—“

“Silence!”

That shuts his mouth. Not that he can say anything while a jabbing hoof makes its home on his stomach. Fire rolling up in his belly, with nowhere to go but up his throat in great strength.

Flames burn her face, warranting a scream at the surprise sear. She rolls on the ground, dousing the flame with lack of oxygen. Done with her stop-drop-and-roll routine, few words remain on her tongue. “You dare to make a fool of me?! You will pay! You will—“

“Power Ponies, now!”

They fall on her. She brings up shields too weak for the brute force of Mistress Mare-velous and the crisp speed of Fili-Second. Tries to fly away but the weather of Zapp stops her and the whopping size of Saddle Rager is its own roadblock. The attack constructs of Radiance drain the alicorn’s strength, and Matter-Horn’s sheer magic ability dogs her to the end with spell after spell.

Another punch to the face by Radiance now floating on an attack-construct platform with Mare-velous on board, linking punching combos and hooferangs until her lasso immobilizes the villainess to the ground.

Matter-Horn shouts, “Grab it! Grab it quick!’

Straight at Verumarendi Spike jumps, swiping one out of two amulets orbiting her head.

She feels it: another tiny tinge of power draining from her. “No! You can’t just do that! You can’t just best me like that!”

But she can hear it: the plume of fire cutting through the air. Doesn’t see the amulet, what he’s done with it, but two and two are put together.

When her power-shot mind connects the dots, a high-pitched screech is released. She pins Spike down on the floor: “Where are you taking it?!”

It hurts Spike, but he shrugs it off: nothing too painful now. In between torturous grunts, “I’m taking it as far off as I can! Not too far though! If she gets it… oh, when she gets it, she’ll send her forces on you. Might even come here herself!”

“What do you mean by she?! Who in the world are you referring to?!”

“I’m the one who mails Twilight’s letters! Guess where they go to!”

Her eyes shrink at the answer. “P-Princess… Celestia?!”

Despite her tight magic hold on him, Spike carries on: “What’s the hold-up? If you think you’re so strong, what’s stopping you from toppling Celestia over like a house of cards?! You’re an alicorn! You’re on equal hoofing with her!”

“I am!” but fear seeps into her voice. “I just did not expect you to call for back-up… so soon, you weaklings! Are you calling for mama already, wittle baby boy?”

“As if the amulets weren’t your mama!”

On the side, Mare-velous freezes for a second. “Did he just say what I think he just said?”

But she shrugs the thought away as they launch their final attack on a wrathful Verumarendi. A rope to the snout restrains her further while attack-constructs dig into the mare’s coat. Fili-Second goes round and round before landing punches and kicks as fast as milliseconds. Clouds of lightning block out any escape routes from the rope, and a bulked-up Rager stands ready to stop her if she tries to push the clouds anyway.

Matter-Horn shoots the amulet away in the madmare’s moment of weakness. “Go, Spike, go!”

And the dragon runs and leaps to the fallen amulet.

No cold feet.

Grabs the proximas amulet and bathes it in his special fire. Turns the stone into mist carrying out of the chamber by flame.

“No, no, no!” and Verumarendi trashes her hooves, throwing Fili-Second off her back. She latches onto Spike with her magic and slams him onto the floor’s cold steel. “You monster! You little brat! You won’t be getting away from me!”

Only for Matter-horn to teleport to his side. “No, you won’t be getting away from me, miss!”

“You dare call me miss?!” Verumarendi bellows. “I am not just a mere miss! I am the queen over all reality, your overlord! I am Your Majesty! You are mistaken to call me the title of mortals! You are all mere mortals! I will return you to the dust from which you came!”

“Yeah, keep talking!”

She fires freeze rays at the alicorn, sticking her hooves to the floor: wings and horn chilled to no use too.

His special flames are snails compared to Rainbow Dash, but they’re still fast. The distance, however, is formidable. Canterlot’s still far off, and nearby Mount Everhoof is not a stone’s throw away. Only way to win is to buy time, give it time—

The alicorn struggles and the ice breaks, but Matter-Horn refreezes her body with each attempt. The rest of the crew pile onto the mare, holding Verumarendi down as Matter-Horn exhausts herself until all but the villain’s face is frozen.

The dreadful seconds turn into agonizing minutes. The alicorn still struggles, still throwing off and bucking away a pony or two. Final fatigue catches up to the Power Ponies, with Matter-Horn’s magic heating up out of overuse.

An opportunity Verumarendi doesn’t waste: “It is useless! I… I have the power of the prxoimas on my side! They are more powerful than you think! You will lose this war of attrition and I will imprison you for your crimes! This atrocity will not stand, for I must stand as your ruler, your queen, your deity! Reality will bend to me, and it will be—“

She chokes. A thousand-yard stare in her glazed eyes.

A scream to birth nightmares.

Verumarendi crumples to the ground: no more glow of power. Agonizing pangs ripple across her torso and head: wings recede into her body, horn sinks into her skull like a drill. Her stature diminishes: strengthened muscles fade to normality. The shrinking mare howls, foreign lives stripped away from her soul.

In the end, it’s only her standing alone. A simple, ordinary Earth pony is all that remains. Blue coat, dulled by wounds and bruises old and new. Laid bare to the confusion of the Power Ponies.

She can only look up, her vision blocked by the imposing figure of Matter-Horn. On the unicorn’s face isn’t scorn. In its place cuts morbid curiosity on her features

She has one question for the Earth pony. “Who are you?”

And the mare swallows a heavy lump in her throat. “I’m… uh, I’m…” She looks down: shame. Her voice, quiet mewling. “I… I th-think y-you’ve… scattered around… a-and found it a-already…”

“Perhaps.” Matter-Horn brings up a list, checks it against the mare’s appearance and her broken spanner cutie mark. “Your name is Monakeras Wrench. Monk Wrench, for short. It’s good that the spell hides your mark. Would’ve been too easy to tell who you are...”

She levitates reports and test logs into view. A lecture might’ve been nice, but she puts it off. “Tell us your side of the story. Considering the portals, the extra-dimensional visitors, and the other signs of dark magic in this place—”

Wrench gulps. Still hasn’t looked up yet. Her eyes, blue eyes, naked without a long mane to hide behind: the windows to her blackened soul.

“The evidence we’ve gathered point to something more than an experiment gone wrong. We’ve seen Verumarendi herself back in Maretropolis, and I don’t think you could’ve possibly been her or have been possessed by her. Your foalish attitude threw us off from the cold and calculated abomination we’ve met.” She shakes her head, pawing the floor. “It’s sad, isn’t it? You call us mere comic heroes, but even the dumbest villains we’ve faced were less cliched and immature than you.”

“That’s not fair!” A defeated whimper compared to the alicorn’s booming voice. “You’re just picking on me! I’ve lost, okay? Why can’t you just accept that?”

“You tampered with numerous worlds. You tampered with living, breathing worlds full of history and life. Yet you’ve treated life as nothing more than equine resources.”

The mare cowers. Lowers her head, raises her hooves for mercy.

Matter-Horn allows a sigh. “Yes. You want me to be kind to you. To make us believe that the spirit of Verumarendi possessed you and that we should judge you as an unwilling vessel. The words of your leader didn’t imply anything to the contrary.”

She affords a look up. “Whorlick’s still alive?”

“Recently deceased. He told us about Verumarendi rising to help everypony ascend. With the reports we’ve scoured, I first thought it was Verumarendi taking over somepony in the crew, biding her time until the right moment to strike. But Monk Wrench…” Puts the list away. “I saw your name among the other test subjects for that experiment. Tell me: what happened?”

And the mare bleats, striking her chest with her thin and aching hooves. She looks up, eyes red and close to bleeding. “Y-yes, something bad happened! S-something t-terrible happened, and I… I was caught up in the fiasco and… th-that’s it!”

Matter-Horn bends down to her drawn-back body. “Would that really be all there is to it? Or is there something more?”

“Are you… are you… are… you—” scampers backward to the wall, everyone else following her. “P-please don’t kill me!”

By her side, Matter-Horn sits down. A cold breath crosses out of her mouth. “We won’t. Fortunately, killing off one Mane-iac doesn’t mean killing all possible versions of her, but the crime remains. You did kill your fellow ponies in this world too.”

The others soon give the downed mare water and food from outside. The door’s already opened thanks to the lack of cursed alicorn magic controlling it. Cool refreshing water clears her throat even as excess energy and magic leave her bit by bit.

“Now what made you do this?” asks Matter-horn, scooting closer to her. Interrogative yet reasonable.

A great weight weighs down on Wrench’s withers. “I-I… I-I just wanted to… t-take over…”

Matter-Horn leans in for more words. When she doesn’t get any more, she clams up. “That’s… that’s all?”

Wrench growls at her despite a tender throat. “What did you expect? A sappy backstory?” A sneering evil smile. “You’re quite comical even for a comic book hero.”

“At least we gave you the benefit of the doubt. But… just power?”

Wrench nods, tired but with renewed resolve. “When Whorlick started making the rounds, somepony told me of a secret plan to obtain a few magical artifacts and unlock magic powers no one’s discovered in history. I resigned from my job as engineer and took up a role in Clockwisely. Wasn’t a unicorn, so I couldn’t join the Enchantment Division. Just went around as a clerk and coffee gopher. Turns out that was perfect ‘cause I could do errands for them: deliver things, scan stores, spy on colleagues. No one noticed because I was ‘just’ a gophering clerk.”

“I was vital to the project ‘cause they told me to go AWOL last night and use the bloodenstone I was given. I… wasn’t there for the fight. I was one of the few who stayed behind to watch out for any suspicious civilians—sitting behind the window cleaning thing and looking at the streets to see if the battle was too loud, see if ponies down there noticed. They teleported me away with them and introduced me to this place where they enliven fictions into realities!”

An avaricious light in her eyes. “I... I realized what they were doing over there. It wasn’t just magic artifacts or forbidden spells. They desired to ascend, to become gods. They could become rulers over all reality, the new princesses and princes of Equestria and beyond... but all they did was just make special editions for comics!” A spit at the floor sums up her contempt.

Her half-lidded eyes, fuzzy from life force spent. “They’re right that this power must be controlled properly to bring about a new order. That didn’t matter. They were in my grasp. So close. The moment they opened up test subject slots for the Verumarendi experiment, I took it. No one else did. They were too afraid.

“So I came and I saw. Saw her. Her. I was so scared and happy… I knew I could die, but if I did things right… but they didn’t do things right. Enchantment didn’t go perfectly. Verumarendi came up wrong: just a shell of herself. They caught me in the crossfire, and guess what? I gained her powers! Now why enslave Verumarendi under my will when I can be the next Verumarendi? So... I drained everyone’s magic that way, opened up all the portals and consumed the magic in their places too… and that’s how it came to be. Could’ve led an army, ruled the world with it, but with my powers, I could do it all alone.”

A ghost of a chuckle beneath high-pitched coughs. “I was never close to greatness. Ran for mayor of Manehattan a few years ago, but that was the closest to it. And here you see… ponies fiddling with make-believe stories? What madness is that?! I… I could do great things with such power, show the world what I can do without all that make-believe gunk, but… heh. You took that chance away from the poor desperate mare, hm?”

“You’ve already shown us what you can do with so much power,” and Matter-Horn stands up. “The first thing you did was kill your colleagues in a fit of supremacy, then you willingly used up the resources of other universes for your gain alone. If that’s your first instinct, it’s best the world doesn’t see what you’re capable of.”

A choke. Holding her throat. “You’re…?”

Collapses to the floor. Can’t sit anymore. Can only lie down on the cold heartless floor, shock overtaking her entire body. “You’re… g-going to send me to jail, aren’t you?”

Matter-Horn shoots a cursory glance at Spike, silently asking if he sees it right too. “A decades-long sentence would be the most lenient way to protect society from the likes of you. Not the laser-focused reformation Spike told me about: chances are, they could imprison you in stone. But rehabilitation is an option.”

Wrench fires deadpan eyes at her. “You must be joking.”

“I am not.”

“Then so be it.”

She screams and leaps at her, breaking the ice in her limbs—

A smack to the head. Wrench falls to the ground as a fly to the swatter. The last of her strength, drained. Her ears twitch a second after her crash.

Nothing.

Nothing more comes from her. The becomer of death, the destroyer of worlds, the would-be harbinger of doom: defeated by a whack. They may have laughed if they haven’t recalled the dead bodies and the dead worlds.

Fili-Second checks her pulse: alive, unconscious. Awkward silence.

The Power Ponies exchange glances. The fallen “Verumarendi,” somepony to take care of in the meantime. The destruction around them: dead villains to dispose of somehow.

Spike: the savior at the eleventh hour.

They sit down on the floor. Contemplate. Few words are said, asking if one or another is okay, only to hear a bland affirmative. Sitting there, catching their breath, churning their minds.

The places of other worlds left burned, wasted, pillaged in her wake. Other universes tainted by the experimentation of those who saw everything else as fiction, as play toys and mere materials. But in Hum Drum’s vision, it’s all equal: only a portal to connect to other universes. Many worlds, many different versions of said worlds: with their own lives, their own histories, their own dreams and futures.

Their own friends to make.

“No matter what, the deed is done.” One long-lasting gaze upon Matter-Horn’s fellow partners in crimefighting. A reward for persevering to the end. “It’s over, girls. We’ve won.“

Full silence devours Spike; mind stirring, churning, whirling. Then, “What about Maretropolis?”

“Give me your comic. Good thing some of their spells are easy to decipher.”

She takes out one such spell from her bag. Reading the equations out and fusing the resulting magic with the comic: a great light explodes and strikes the wall.

From the blast, a portal appears. Swirling, spinning until the static clears.

Buildings reappear. Billboards return as well as the trees. From the ether, vanished ponies reunite with their loved ones. Rampaging villains, reined back into custody. Parties, celebrations on the street: balloons and streamers already climb the sky. The heroes left there are the most surprised, having expected to fight the chaos for a little longer: they can now rest.

Smiles pop up on the Power Ponies’ faces. Liquid pride fills their eyes: tears wipe the suffering away. Staring long into a city saved, into a world saved. Lives saved.

They cheer long after the portal closes.

Matter-Horn fights a sniffle. She loses, her tears finally breaking the barrier of her eyes. “Then that’s all and good.”

But her stomach rumbles, shutting everyone up.

And she laughs at herself for that. “Though as much as we’d all like to go back right away… I’m famished. Spike, let’s sort out a second breakfast, shall we?”