The End of an Era (Series Finale Rewritten)

by StacheHand

Part 4 - Chapter 3 (15): The Great Intersection

Twilight's gang, once in front of Tambelon's entrance, worked to open it up with haste. Rainbow got to the other side and lowered the drawbridge in, as she would always put it, 10 seconds flat. Everyone uneasily walked across, avoiding the still boiling lava moat, to the brick roads of the city.

"Ew, so many blacks and greys." Rarity complained. "Hasn't that goat ever heard of a colour wheel?"

Spike took a breath and lowered his scale coat's hood to feel the area. In realization, he said "Do you feel that? It's warm in here!" The girls took heed and lowered their own hoods.

"Hey, cool!" Pinkie exclaimed. "No, not cool. Anypony know a better word?"

"That's just like a tyrannical varmint to hog the cold protection." Applejack commented.

"Stay alert." Spike recommended. "If we see anything, like that impostor draconequus, we'll try to work that to our advantage." He turned to one of the mares approaching, her balance unsteady. Twilight was shivering, as if the chills of the Windigos' blizzard lingered at full force. "Twilight, easy."

The young alicorn heavily inhaled and exhaled at the increasing effects of the poison swelled in her body. She could barely open her eyes to look at her dragon sibling. Her response was given with a smile. "Don't worry too much about me. We have to save Equestria... that's all that matters."

"Hang in there. We won't let the sickness beat you." Fluttershy encouraged softly.

"Eh, it's like getting bit. Keep it together, and the animal loosens up." Twilight remarked as her shoulder began to feel like an active stove.

"I guess." Fluttershy half-agreed.

The seven friends walked around for several seconds to find no signs of life within the city. No monsters or zombies whatsoever.

"Not as vibrant as I expected." Rainbow noted.

"It better stay that way." said Spike.

No sooner than when the dragon spoke did the smog of Malice creep into the area in a vast volume, closing in on the group like a river breaking past a dam.

"Oh, that doesn't look fun!" Pinkie stated anxiously.

"NO!" Twilight cried in sheer terror. Seeing all of that dark magic manifesting as this accumulation of gas clouds brought a freezing sensation to her spine even the scale coat couldn't protect her from.

They had to shake a leg. Nobody knew their way around Tambelon, for the layout of the roads and buildings were not the same as Canterlot's, but they could see a clear path on which they were able to get away from the thick smog. At a junction they'd find one way to go completely covered in it, but on the other they'd see just little enough of it to get past.

Following this chase, at the brink of tiring, the seven stopped at a place atop a set of stairs. Twilight groaned and coughed from all the exertion before looking up at the structure they stood before now. It looked like a theatre, from the ticket booth next to the doors.

"You think... it might... unsafe to go in?" Twilight asked, peaking behind her to see the smog surrounding them from the staircase and the parts adjacent to it.

"Horn please." Spike requested of Rarity. She opened the theatre's doors with telekinesis in a trepidatious rush. They looked through the opened passage to find a well-lit room, and no sign of that smog. "Inside!" he called out.

They ran inside and beheld the lobby walls. On each was... nothing. Not a single spot had a poster on it. There were only lounges chairs and tables, plus large windows. No life forms were around, either visiting or working.

"Slow day." Twilight muttered.

"Pinkie, can you race around and look for a back exit?" Spike asked of the party pony.

The question couldn't receive an answer before a most unwanted figure burst his way out of concession stand and made a snarl that echoed on the building's walls. Havoc appeared, bringing senseless destruction indoors.

"Oh dear Celestia, him again!" Rarity squealed. "It's over! We're done for! It's pick your poison! A rock and a hard place! Score 0 for us!" The whole team shared her state of panic. They were in this abomination's presence, but without a magic-draining gargoyle to help this time.

But, one member wasn't having this.

"Hold the phone there, grumpy pants!" Pinkie commanded. "I know they don't have a purpose, but that doesn't mean you have to tear them down!"

Havoc responded with a guttural howl at the pony's defiance.

"Pinkie, that's not helping!" Spike groaned.

"Won't it?" Pinkie argued with a sly smile. She looked at the malevolent draconequus and suggested "I'm just saying, you have all this power, rivaling the very creature you look like, you can make new things out of old things, but you wastefully break stuff. Funny enough, in your destructive pursuit, you've done a little... anti-destruction. You made us into new things. Dabble in that some more, but use the world around you. It's like cooking. Eggs crack, omelettes are made. Open the carton and grab some."

Havoc was taking a minute to register what this talkative, whimsically twirling equine was saying to him. Breaking eggs? Making omelettes? He couldn't wrap his head around these everyday concepts.

"Impress your papa with a little artistry, buddy!" Pinkie urged the Spirit of Destruction. "Nobody likes basic, broken junk! Replace to your heart's content!"

A nerve in Havoc was struck by the insult to his destruction. With a snap of his claws, he transformed the destroyed concession stand equipment into a big, fancy cupboard decorated with leaves and flowers. With another snap he transformed one of the tables into a wide mat with cushions. From a spark in his thoughts he turned the doorway into a conveyor belt and hatch. He grunted a silent query of his work.

"Not bad, but you could do more." Pinkie assessed. "How about... you replace the window glass with film projections? Or the stairs with platform lifts? Or the chairs with bikes? Or our position with the city's castle? Or the smog outside with cotton candy? Or..."

Havoc processed all of these ideas and, with a bellow, began snapping his claws like wild. It was like he was performing what his template never got to: the legendary Triple Pandemonium Snap Overdrive. The many objects in his vicinity turned into exactly what was planted into his mind. He didn't really notice that he teleported the gang of seven away while he basked in the realization of his creations. The streets of Tambelon were lined with blue clouds of a sweet carnival treat. He laughed in satisfaction, most fiendishly. Having had his fun discovering the joys of this newfound artistic thrill, he tapped his head for a second before remembering what he did with those ponies and that dragon. He was ready to finish things with them, even after what they gave them for a last request.

That heartless ambition suddenly came crashing to a halt when he felt his body grow paper-thin. A gasp left his mouth as the destructive being grew heavily transparent, vanishing to the wind within too few moments to understand the occurrence.

---

Spike and the others, as Pinkie wanted, had been moved to the inside of another structure. Judging from the interior decor, it was definitely a castle. The castle of Emperor Grogar.

"Wow. That did help." Spike pointed out.

"Pinkie, I can't believe that worked!" said Rainbow in astonishment.

"I get that a lot." Pinkie laughed.

"Fighting with faith... you could say." Twilight commented, trying to hold back the sensation of stinging, electrical currents in her bones.

"Alright, ya'll. What's our next move now that we're essentially, you know, IN THE BIG BADDY'S HOUSE?!" Applejack inquired, hitting everyone with a reality check.

"Oh dear, maybe we should get farther away." Fluttershy opined.

"Uh uh, no more chances with the disgusting gas out there." Rarity asserted. "I can't teleport us."

"Then again, we've been improvising so far." Spike mentioned, and sighed. "If it works, it works."

---

Tirek jumped upon the wall of Tambelon and gave his tightly gripped gargoyle brother a great view of the bleak city of the ram sorcerer. He held out his free hand and walked along the roof, pointing specifically at the marketplace.

"Do you see this, Scorpan?" Tirek asked. "It's the emperor's offering to all of us! You wished for a pair of kingdoms to work together in the past, and I accomplished such a goal through an empire which, as my centaur brothers and sisters did, valued and embraced the supreme power of cold-hearted might! It inspires the most determined types! It's them whom deserve and take this food grown from Grogar's garden, and hold hooves or claws in standing above the lower class! You might've had this, but over a thousand years later you continue to choose the lesser of two goods!"

Scorpan's unimpressed expression didn't break for the entire speech. He shifted his eyes to the smiling face of his big brother and figured "That's different from father, I suppose."

"It is my proudest decree!" Tirek declared.

"So, in short, this means New Midnight Kingdom..." Scorpan reflected aloud. Stretching out his neck as far as possible and speaking at a deadpan pitch, he finished by saying "...is a petty kingdom."

Tirek received a shock to his brain, like some creature's acidic spit hit him in the head. He even reflexively put his free hand up to the back of it as if something actually did touch him there. When his little brother's words sunk in, he grinded his teeth, blew air out of his nostrils harder than he ever had in his entire life, and charged a fist full of heat energy to stick up to the gargoyle's face.

"WHAT DID YOU CALL IT, RUNT?!" Tirek screamed through his bared teeth.

"A petty kingdom." Scorpan repeated. "A footnote of a monarchy beneath the real superpower. Our family would've been ashamed."

"You! Will not! Shatter! My composure!" Tirek growled in intervals.

"Maybe we should talk about your composure, as well." said Scorpan.

"Talk to the hand." Tirek spat threateningly. The centaur wanted to strike down his helpless sibling right then and there. He could do so anytime; one powered jab would end it instantly. However, a feeling of frustration overflowed his senses, compelling him not to put energy into hitting him. His own words: "I'm not Father." played back to him, followed by Scorpan's descriptor: "A petty kingdom.", then Discord's mocking "What, you gonna tell daddy Grogar?", then Fluttershy's argument that "There's no glory in preying on those smaller and weaker than you!", and finally, Star Swirl asking "You may be remembered well, but for what?"

Tirek shook from these memories returning to him and spinning about like a blender mixture. Twitching all over and sharply turning his head left and right, he searched for some way to change this subject. To his fortune, he spotted a figure flying into the premises of Tambelon.

"Eclipse?" he presumed. "Why is she here in the flesh?" He opened a portal to the underground prisoner holding cavern beneath Tambelon, dropped Scorpan into it, and jumped down onto the rooftops.

Chrysalis, remaining in her Ophiotauri forms with her loyal carriers, took a look down below as the entire city of Tambelon came into view. She was surprised to see one of her fellow Horses of the Apocalypse trotting around on top of the buildings.

"What's Tirek doing here?" Chrysalis asked. "If he's come to step in the way of my plan, he'll know the depths of my wrath!"

"Into character, your majesty." one of her subjects whispered. At her reminder, Chrysalis cleared her throat and made a proper Ophiotaurus cry of distress.

Eclipse surveilled Tambelon with her x-ray spell, trying to spot any forms of life hiding within the rows of tall structures. Her sharp focus was broken when the edge of her eye caught the changelings' flight towards the castle. She magically enhanced the range of her sight on the crew of deceivers and their beast cargo.

"Sure smells nothing like a snake, Queen "Invincible"." the dark alicorn dryly observed. "You won't break apart our equality." In a flash, she teleported over to the balcony by the tip of the keep.

---

The six ponies and their dragon companion split up to cover more of Tambelon Castle's halls. Spike was with Rarity to look after Twilight. Pinkie covered Applejack. Rainbow stayed by Fluttershy. They scanned the place, top to bottom, for doorways, stairways, any way to reach a good vantage point where they could see Grogar, and in good health.

"Spike, darling, say we do get close enough to him without being seen, what do we do about his Bell?" Rarity asked.

"Still working on the process, but basically: I need you to use that spell Starlight sent us on the Bell to release all the magical cores he's captured." Spike explained. "Then we reunite and blast him with our friendship power without interruption."

"Normally, I'd be above using murky, evil talismans willingly, even to my benefit." said Rarity. "The suspense is worse, though."

"That'll mean he won't be able to stop time." Twilight pointed out. "Remember..?" she coughed, covering her mouth at the first sign of throat irritation.

"Ah. Of course." Rarity chuckled sheepishly.

"I feel you." Grogar's voice reverberated all over the castle's interior. "I hear you, doomed-to-fail peacekeepers of Equestria."

"Oh no!" Spike gasped. It looked like his idea was ruined.

From each of the places around the castle they occupied, Twilight and her friends paused and lent their ears to the air. The ram sorcerer was actually speaking to them from far away, within the great royal structure.

"Welcome to Tambelon, the capital of Equestria, and where your unrealistic scourge ends!" Grogar announced.

"Our unrealistc scourge?!" Fluttershy exclaimed furiously. "After all the horror you've sewn, you think you have room to be the critic?!"

"Has anycreature ever told you your head's deceptively small, considering how big-headed you are?" Rainbow questioned rhetorically. "I see big heads, I read them like an open book."

"Truly, you believe you know me, but don't care to make sure." Grogar commented. "So close-minded."

The seven friends continued running through the hallways, trying to give the ram sorcerer as many moving targets as they could.

"We're already quite sure of what his grace is, and the load of hooey he's full of!" said Applejack. "Everything you've said about the ponies "advancing forward" with fear? Claiming Equestria as their country? Big vows, all malarkey!"

"You act like this is supposed to make everypony happy and better, but we saw them up close!" Pinkie called out. "They're only angry and heartless! If I didn't know better, I'd say you take a lot of pleasure in it!"

"Haha, of course! It's amusing to me!" Grogar admitted in a change of tone that'd match the crack of a whip. "What a bore it'd be to look at you puny ponies grow off hugging and mingling in your comfort zones! The "betterment of society" is garbage, because the only suitable fate for you all is to live as peasants, squirming, and raving like chickens under the despair-bringing hoof of me: Grogar, Malice Incarnate, the Father of Monsters, the Sorcerer King, the First, and Rightful..."

As his speech progressed, his voice sounded more and more strained. Suddenly, he made the heaviest groan their ears were ever hit with."No. Not doing it anymore. I played that act long enough for my Horses. To think I got that far..." he said gloomily, and genuinely. Even sarcasm couldn't subdue the shame in behaviour he once exhibited with pride.

"Whatever kind of creature you think you've become since Gusty the Great banished you, we're not buying into it, and you're going to be stopped!" Spike affirmed.

"I won't try to sway you to my side." said Grogar, shooting down the assumption. "It'd be a naive thing for me to do. But, before I take your cores, you deserve to know what I really want."

"What, as another way to belittle us because you have the upper hoof?" Rarity guessed.

"I have to give respects where they're due, even to foes." Grogar answered. "Call it a fair trade."

"Respects where they're convenient for you, more like." Fluttershy scoffed, her thoughts returning to Discord being unfairly taken away from her.

"Question of the day: do you think you worshippers of the force of Harmony are the only ones who have hopes and dreams? Aspirations for a future without pain or war?" Grogar queried. "I've dreamt this one since your land was named!"

"Miss us with it!" Twilight barked.

"What I desire everyday, waking moments or otherwise, is an Equestria where everypony doesn't wish upon a star, but upon the very seeds they plant, figuratively and out of their dedication, passion, and freedom to make something of themselves!" Grogar began explaining. "A country without the shackles of destiny; a country truly free from tyranny!"

"You expect us to fathom your "noble" goal after how much you and your accomplices have destroyed the world? Why?!" Applejack inquired, flabbergasted.

"You speak truthfully, as I'd expect, Applejack." Grogar noted. "I won't deny, I am destroying the world. Causing the dismemberment of unity and stability... so I can save the world."

"Huh?! D-destroying everything down to the last bit to save it - IN WHAT WORLD DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?!" Rainbow exclaimed incredulously.

"Rainbow, there's a mantra everycreature abides by, whether or not they recognize it." Grogar responded. "It goes: no sacrifice, no victory. Your princesses have made Equestria forgo it's independence to suit the hiearchy's agenda. My reign seeks to suit the populace, regardless of gravity."

"Do you even see your own work?!" Rarity yelled. "I'd say poisoning the Tree of Harmony was hardly necessary!"

"Didn't you know? I moderated my power to make sure the foundation of Equestria didn't burn to smithereens!" Grogar attested. "Same with the Windigos, but I'm not done with them yet. I hold the key to their final defeat."

"So what, then? How do the Windigos fit into your scheme, huh?" Fluttershy asked.

"That's where all the magical cores I've assimilated come into play." Grogar answered. "The Fire of Friendship could only repel the Windigos until the illusion of peace and tranquility breaks down. With the powers of the key entities: time, love, crystals, Chaos, the day, the night, and your representation of Honesty, Laughter, Generosity, Kindness, Loyalty and Magic, I can cast an erasure spell that'll vanquish those winter spirits once and for all! Ponykind will be free from their deep winter!"

"I don't see how that explains your Horses of the Apocalypse." Pinkie mentioned. "Never mind only two of them being real horses, what would you have needed them for when you're this powerful?"

"Dear Pinkamena, like fillies and gentlecolts, we had an agreement." Grogar described. "Before my wish could be granted, I had to give them the honour of closure with you seven. They were satisfied, and since then, evolution has exponentially taken place!"

"I... don't... follow." Twilight dismissively mumbled.

"Over the ruins of the old Equestria, a brand new one will be built, devoid of limit and dissonance!" Grogar went on vigorously. "The ponies shall have the choice to fight and win it's own battles! The strong will thrive, and the weak will become the strong! Picture it: future generations learning about a world where their clans revolutionized order, not for materialism, not for control, not because they were pointed in the so-called "right direction" by the top of the food chain, but for no reason at all! None but their own instincts!"

"You haven't even told them you're the whole reason Equestria's a wasteland and unity's broken apart, have you?" Spike inquired.

"I have not." Grogar affirmed. "I'll concede my methods aren't flawless, having to commit a few regrettable, though necessary evils. Besides the Horses and my children, you're the creatures I've been the most transparent with. However, I care not about the state of my reputation at this point, just how distracted everypony will get if they know more than they need to. In the end, Earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns will rule, and write history as the real victors! Thanks to fear, they'll be shaping their versions of the betterment of society by whims alone! They'll be defended! They and the Equestria they inhabit will be... an eternal memory, remembered and celebrated forevermore!" After that, the ram sorcerer took a long, serene breath.

"I understand dispelling the Windigos for eternity... and wanting to make sure our time is never forgotten... not so much turmoil you felt you had... t-to... to cause." Twilight exerted herself to say.

"It's my personal guarantee the new age I imagine will never have to see meaningless divides or battles, when the fruits of labour grow." Grogar remarked. "Decades and decades of easily-provoked hardship, and untamable togetherness that you've been put in charge to monitoring, as Celestia dictated. However you justify the job... that can't be your responsibility forever, Princess Twilight. You shouldn't even want it to be."

"Thinking about what you're saying, perhaps you are not a creature without merit." Spike pondered. "Unfortunately, none of it excuses the SHEER DEVASTATION AND DECEPTION YOU'VE COMMITTED!"

"You're just as bad as you've always been, but for a new reason!" Applejack stated vehemently. "At least way back when you were frank about the monster you are! You know whom else are? Chrysalis! Tirek! Cozy Glow! Aurora Eclipse!"

"Speaking of which, what kind of champion of the greater good calls their posse the "Horses of the Apocalypse", anyhow?!" Pinkie regarded. "Kind of a hole in your intentions, big guy!"

"You didn't give Discord, your own son, that freedom you promise!" Fluttershy hollered hatefully. "None of your children will get your leniency if they don't fall in line! They'll see what "love" you have for them!"

"And don't act like you know a darn thing about the difficulty of friendship!" Rainbow called. "You never had to experience the happenings and the mendings of heartbreak, or what we need for camaraderie to make it through every storm, or any other lesson we've learned and shared firsthoof! You just watched it!"

"How about Midnight Kingdom?" Rarity asked. "Tirek and Scorpan's family and clans; they got the choice to live without royal guidance, and now they're gone! All of them! What makes you so sure things won't devolve into another picture of ugliness with us ponies?"

"All the good things you may do will never overshadow the effort and heart born from generations of friends new and old." Twilight added.

"Exactly the self-centered responses I expected." Grogar posited. "How could you know the value of the hard decisions, when you spent your lives placing faith in a perpetual failsafe? Discord didn't just step out of line, he submitted to the influence of Harmony! Midnight Kingdom fell because it never sought to find compromise in a needless, easy war! And lastly, "Apocalypse" stands for the removal of your diseased propaganda. There's no accounting for details with your crew; that is why you must be eliminated."

"Then come get us!" Rainbow challenged the ram sorcerer. She and the rest had the same idea in the heat of the moment: to split off even further. No more teams. They each took off and searched for ways up the characters by their lonesome. All except for Spike, who stayed as close to Twilight as ever.

Spike ran, Twilight fought to keep her balance as every step she took was on par with walking on a bed of nails. They found a door, at long last, but then something else happened. A cloud of black magic surrounded the young alicorn and whisked her out of the hallway. She was gone from the dragon's green-eyed sight.

"Twilight!" Spike wailed, dropping to the floor, clawing at where his big sister previously stood.

---

Twilight reappeared in the wizard's throne room. Every moment of transportation by his Malice spell, however brief, stung like a Flash Bee rampage. She was too bothered by it to say a word to the face of her captor.

"Because of your infection, I could track you the easiest." said Grogar. "So, you shall be the first thrown into the Phantom Zone." He prepared for Malice Assimilation. While his Bell pointed towards it's target, Twilight did something he didn't notice. She glowed a dark blue for a few moments. It didn't seem to mean anything, though, as it didn't change that afterwards, the spell struck her body and began stripping the energy and core away.

Twilight released a feeble sound from her mouth before she was left without the magical battery of her essence. It was dark blue, foggy, and looked like... the moon. What's more, near the spell's completion, Twilight turned into a cloud of smoke, which reformed itself into the shape of... Luna. She took Twilight's form and replaced her at the last second, and just like Celestia, she had been regressed back to her original unicorn form as her body fell down without any sliver of life left.

"Luna!?" Grogar gasped. "But, I know I had Twilight a few seconds ago." His attention was caught by the sight of some visitors. It was a cyclops and a pegasus zombie, crawling and appearing sleepy. "Back form the pegasus camp?" he presumed. He put his hoof up to his forehead and looked at the signatures. He found three. "Hmm, indeed, you are the same I sent there. Say, how would you kids like to see the Phantom Zone, for old time's sake?"

The drowsy beast and undead equine nodded. Right behind them, clinging on to the back of the cyclops, where there should've been the other zombie, was Twilight, still energized.

"The Phantom what?" she whispered in confusion.

The Phantom Zone, in all of it's terrifying, hypnotic, portal-to-nowhere glory, manifested above the throne room's council table. Grogar reached it's hoof out to in in preparation.

"Starlight, you better not have held out on me about this." Twilight murmured in awe.

"Wherever I'll find you, Twilight and her friends, listen: this void of condensed space is my creation, the Phantom Zone!" Grogar announced, as if to speak to the running ponies from afar again. "This is how I'll perfect the erasure spell! By offering all the assimilated and tainted magical cores to be sentenced to eternal intermixture..." registering the command, the Bewitching Bell blasted Luna's core into the portal. "...memory of these powers shall be widely and permanently forgotten in 8 days, but best of all, the blend will be all mine to hold and command! One mold, clean slate! Farewell Windi-"

"Thank you nice shadows! Whee!" Pinkie hollered, bouncing into the throne room from the side and hurling herself into the Phantom Zone. When Twilight saw, she gasped on the verge of tears. Grogar was taken aback. "Should be around here somewhere!" said the party pony from the dark void. Then she was going "AH!", and "EEK!", and "D'OH!", and "OOF!" repeatedly from all the Malice Magic poison she was making contact with inside.

Grogar shook his head and quickly waved his pastern to close the Phantom Zone. At the very last nanosecond, Pinkie shot out of the decreasing hole like a cannonball and landed on the floor, not too far from the ram sorcerer. Her body was rapidly wiggling, generating electricity all over, and every part of it was growling like a hungry stomach.

"PINKIE!" Twilight cried, her worry powering through the Malice-induced pain. "Pinkie, why did you do that?!"

H-H-Hi, T-T-Twilgiht! Ooh!" Pinkie stammered through her quaking muzzle.

"Not bad, Luna." Grogar complimented the lifeless night princess upon seeing Twilight reveal herself.

"Pinkie, you have the poison now, too! How do you feel?" Twilight asked without thinking much.

"Hmmm... tingly. Itchy." Pinkie assessed, her talking sounding normal again. Suddenly, her body grew a couple of feet in an instant. "Also like..." the growing kept going. She stood up on her hind hooves. Her head reached the ceiling. Eventually, she grew too big for the floor to support her weight, and it wasdestroyed, causing her to fall through. But that didn't matter, because she wouldn't stop getting bigger. Grogar and Twilight backed up as her pink, marshmallow-y form took up more and more space. Her head smashed through the roof.

---

Outside in the city, Eclipse was confronting Chrysalis and her minions at the keep's balcony, making a good guess as to what she was up to. Chrysalis was cursing the dark alicorn for trying to be a roadblock on her path to success. Tirek was about to reach the end of his climb up the tower to join the quarrel, when each of them heard the growing noise coming from the castle. The bubbly, curly-maned giant emerged from the castle's materials breaking off and flying everywhere.

Just outside the city border, Cozy Glow arrived to get to find the colossal metamorphosis that was taking place.

"What the.. what did I miss?!" the wicked filly shrieked in perplexion, her hooves clasping her head.

Soon enough, after a quarter of a minute that made the entire continent shake, let alone the city, Pinkie stopped growing and towered over at a height that was certainly multiple stories tall. Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow and Spike, with the added bonus of the walls being torn down, saw the enormous earth pony from ground level. They were frozen with fear at the sight of their companion having gotten so frighteningly large, and then stamping her hooves on what still remained of the castle.

"I COULD TRANSFORM THE COSMOS SO EVERYTHING IS MADE OF ICING!" the giant Pinkie gleefully roared at a booming pitch, cupcakes in her eyes. Confetti, streamers, balloons and cake batter popped into existence around her and flew all over Tambelon.

Applejack gulped, realizing what this had meant. "Aw, shoot! Not another problem!" Incredible as it sounded, Pinkie had absorbed Discord's Chaos Magic.

Chaos Pinkie raised one of her fore hooves, and each of her friends were teleported away, including the husk that was Luna. Not only that, they were taken out to the outskirts of Tambelon in a protective bubble, which the Windigos' blizzard couldn't get through. "I SEE YOU!", she hollered out, noticing Eclipse, Chrysalis and Tirek nearby. Her mane, having a life of it's own, grabbed and entangled them deep into Pinkie's hairs. She blew a strong gale at Grogar, lifting him off his hooves, after he took some time to transport the cyclops and zombies to safety in a portal. The gale then became sticky, pink cotton candy and constricted him like a rope. "WE'RE GONNA PARTY INFINITELY!"

Grogar looked at the earth pony-turned-chaos being defiantly, even as she made her next astounding move. Her other fore hoof pointed at him, and transformed into a gigantic Party Cannon. Without a second wasted, it fired with a deafening squeal, blasting the back of the castle to pieces in a shower of flour, sugar, candy and dough.

Cozy, witnessing this display of bedlam in stunned silence, turned around robotically, shrugged and said to herself "Well, they got theirs." while retreating.

Chaos Pinkie giggled and snorted madly at what she had done. WHO WANTS CHOCOLATE RAIN?!" So, by her mental command, the sky made it rain chocolate milk, and not only that, but also numerous great dollops of whipped cream. This disturbed the Windigos a bit. But, the chocolate droplets didn't come down as rain. It was hard and icy, as immediately seen by it's meteor-like impact on it's behemoth of a conjurer. She reacted in pain at the barrage.

"That's chocolate hail!" Spike exclaimed down below in the plains.

On the streets of Tambelon, Scorpan managed to escape the underground caverns. He brought the leftover magic-disabling shards of Chrysalis' throne up with him, carrying them in one of his arms. "I'll see if Twilight can do something with these..." he thought out loud, before he looked up and saw Chaos Pinkie. "My goodness!" He shifted his view to the left to see Grogar above, pointing his Bewitching Bell and activating the assimilation spell once again. It hit, and Pinkie was being drained. He acted fast.

The chocolate hail and whipped cream storm ceased, and all the designs of Chaos Pinkie slowly faded away in the moment she was having her power absorbed. Every core that was put in the Phantom Zone was ripped out of her. Scorpan lobbed one of the throne chunks at Pinkie, knocking her out of the stream's range before her core was pulled out. The party pony fell, but was thankfully caught in time by the gargoyle. They flew out of the decimated city, and fast enough for Chrysalis, Tirek and Eclipse to miss them in their unfortunate descent.

Grogar spotted him as he sent all of the collected cores back into the Phantom Zone. The sight of the one-and-only Scorpan passed him by, as he was too surprised by the big show he got to see.

Outside, the protective bubble around Twilight's group lowered. They quickly put their scale coat hoods back up in response to the cold. Scorpan arrived at their position with Pinkie, whose coat had been destroyed by her Chaos transformation.

"Pinkie!" Spike and the ponies worriedly whimpered for the bringer of laughter.

"Waiter! There's some chaos in my soup! Needs crackers!" said Pinkie, dazed and wobbly.

Right before them, portals opened. The evil changeling queen, the gluttonous centaur king and the malicious alicorn echo stepped forward, faces rich with contempt.

"You..." Chrysalis hissed, eyes twitching. "We should've dealt with you thoroughly."

"Yes, you should've!" Spike snarked. "You practically gave us another chance to beat you!"

Having her own words, almost verbatim, thrown back in her face made Chrysalis emit the most supernaturally demonic series of noises from her lungs, spewing a cascade of her acid spit in the midst of it.

Tirek used his telekinesis to rip the remaining scale coats off their wearers and toss them away. "Sorry, small potatoes. You blew that chance. Accept your miserable failure with some grace."

"You won't threaten our plans anymore, and I won't let your precious ponies threaten my world of equality!" Eclipse declared, wrapping the group, including Scorpan, in her electrical binds by every appendage. "I can't believe Grogar was instigating such a thing!" She overheard the emperor's discourse from the balcony doorway, gripped with paranoia over an imbalance of influence in the works.

Atop Tirek's head, Cozy lowered herself down and looked at her fellow Horses of the Apocalypse jovially, chirping "Oh boy, the band's back together! Reunions are my favourite!"

A foot behind the villainous team, Grogar's Malice portal opened, and the emperor himself walked through it with a content smile.

"And one more makes five." Cozy stated, wearing a cunning stare.

Grogar stepped up to Twilight and her friends, all of them helpless and looking the cold embrace of defeat right in the eyes. He laughed heartily. "Magnificent, Pinkamena! If only you had been raised under a different wing, I'd have happily given my blessing for you to be known as the Lady of Chaos!"

"Save your blithe kudos. Get it over with." Fluttershy spitefully snarled, tears welling and freezing up in her eyes.

"So I shall. The time for wasting time has ended." Grogar confirmed. This was it. His Bell pointed at the six ponies huddled together. The spell was ready, And then, not another second spent, everything went white.

The next instant was in silence... save for the single, remarkable sound that preceded it.

BOOM!

"Uh, girls? What happened? Can I open my eyes?" Spike asked apprehensively.

"You sure can!" Applejack attested. She, Spike and others had been lifted far off the ground, floating above a cloud of snowflakes. "We're safe! But how?"

"It's not me!" said Twilight.

"Rarity, nice save!" Spike commended.

"Don't look at me, either!" the fashionista stressed.

Right after that sentence, they were pulled towards the hill in the large, telekinetic field that hoisted them all at once. Sounds were heard from the other side. The sounds of stepping, and wings flapping. Some little ones, only heard from the number of them coming forth. Some were large and mighty. They all waited with baited breath to see just what was about to reveal itself at the very top of those snow-covered mounds.

What they feasted their eyes on next was... mind-blowing.

All of Equestria appeared. Every single, last earth pony, pegasus, unicorn and even crystal pony showed up to the area, from the most familiar of faces - Starlight Glimmer, Sunburst, Trixie, Shining Armor, Discord, the six Pillars, Tempest, and the revived Celestia - to ones the heroes had not seen in a long time. Family, friends and acquaintances from across the country, even some that were normally enemies, stood in a line and confidently stared down at the battlefield where the enemies were. The unicorns' horns were ignited to put their magic together and haul Twilight and her friends into the crowd of their fellow ponies.

But that wasn't all. Each of the various intelligent creatures from across Equestria and the lands beyond it had joined this great gathering. The yaks, the dragons, the griffons, the hippogriffs, the changelings, the buffalos, the Kirin, Zecora, Iron Will, Ahuizotl, Steven Magnet, the Diamond Dogs, Captain Calaeno and her pirate crew, Capper and the fishfolk from Klugetown, the hulking creatures whom served the late Storm King, all the animals from Fluttershy's sanctuary, and the one child of Grogar besides Discord who didn't serve his creator in this crisis, only living for his chosen purpose as a guard dog: Cerberus.

The many ponies pointed forward, and others charged downward.

Grogar and the Horses of the Apocalypse looked at the spot where the ponies, the dragon and Scorpan were. They saw... well, Spike and Scorpan had taken off, but apparently, the six heroines were still right there. The ram sorcerer narrowed his eyes at them. He noticed that Twilight was looking much more whole and healthy again, horn, wings and everything. He tapped his Bell, causing a terrible sound wave to affect the ponies. It wasn't them. They were changelings from Thorax's army, and their disguise was broken.

"How did you get free?!" Chrysalis yelled in bewilderment.

Tirek felt a bit dizzy, but regained his composure fast to look up at the creatures coming down the hill, and the ones at the top. "Don't let them escape!" he ordered.

"Big whoop! I'll compel them all to serve me!" Eclipse laughed. She spun around in her air, ignited her horn and shot out her brain scrambling spell in a multitude of beams aiming for most of the ponies above. To her surprise, the quantity of magic deflecting the blasts and redirected them as one back at her. By reflex, she flew aside and dodged it with a yelp. The beam ineffectively hit ground a mile away.

"Stand down, Horses!" Grogar demanded. His hoof went up to his head, but this time in the telepathic communication position. Each of them looked at him like he was insane, except for Cozy.

Come on, you goodie-goodies! One cheesy friendship blast on these four bullies!, Cozy was thinking impatiently. Her eyes sharply focused on the Bewitching Bell, like it was a prize in the cards. At that moment, the ponies and other creatures formed a perimeter around the villains. More changelings took the form of the six heroines in the hopes of achieving disorientation, but this time making sure to get the appearance of Twilight right.

Back on the hill, Twilight's gang looked around at their saviours. Surrounding everyone was a cylindrical energy shield.

"The changelings won't confuse them forever." said Thorax.

"And I don't know how long we can keep you covered." Starlight added.

"Everycreature, you came." Twilight stated under her breath.

"Twily!" the voice of Shining Armor was heard yelling.

"Twilight!" Celestia's voice cried out at the same time.

The both of them jumped out and hugged her. They felt relief beyond words. Shining Armor was so happy his sister was still alive. Celestia was exhilarated that her faith in her former student wasn't for nothing. It was only after this moment of warm contact that they noticed how bad she looked.

"I missed you." Twilight said tearfully. Her pain spiked like crazy again, prompting her teeth to gnash.

"Oh, Twilight. He did this to you, didn't he?" Celestia grimly pointed out. She looked to her left to see the drained body of Luna. She pulled it in, wanting to be close to her and Twilight. "Sister."

"Everything's going to be okay, sis." Shining Armor assured, choking up.

"You're all here. Did that alliance work out? How did you find us?" Twilight asked.

"That's kind of our fault." said Gallus, revealing himself along with Smolder, Yona, Ocellus, Silverstream and Sandbar.

"You know those long lectures you gave about friendship at school?" Smolder reminded. "Turns out they teach elders as much as they teach children."

"Also, we followed the giant professor Pinkie Pie." Silverstream added. "What was that all about?"

"Just as the School was meant for ever since it opened." Applejack remarked.

"More creatures learning friendship, more to protect us." Spike attested.

"The ponies are helping one another, too." Rarity noted. "Looks like you and your classmates are professors in the making, Sandbar."

"Oh no, that wasn't me." said Sandbar.

"Well, how else could they have been reunited?" Rainbow queried.

"By knocking some sense back into them!" Apple Bloom was heard saying behind the students. Sandbar and his friends stepped aside to show her, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. The Cutie Mark Crusaders presented themselves, beaming in joyous solace.

Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash were frozen for a moment. They each had an explosion of so many positive emotions, they couldn't express it coherently. After 7 days of separation, imagining what horrible trials their little siblings had gone through in this horrible winter, sometimes fearing they might already be goners, they got to see them again. They couldn't suppress the overwhelming sensation of their release from such long unease for much longer.

"SWEETIE BELLE!" Rarity screamed happily, tears running wildly as she jumped onto the little unicorn, picked her up with her hooves and nuzzled her cheeks, crying profusely.

"Apple Bloom, you're alright!" Applejack euphorically yelled, running up and grabbing the small earth pony in a tight hug.

"Right on, Scoots!" Rainbow cheered for the tiny pegasus in her usual way to mask her watery eyes, giving hoof-bumps up high and down low.

"We took a page from Headmare Starlight's book for our part." Scootaloo avowed.

"Got their split loyalties fixed." Sweetie Belle affirmed.

"We told you you had it figured out." Pinkie confidently hinted to Twilight. She coughed from the Malice irritating her throat afterwards.

"No. They did." Twilight modestly corrected her.

Scorpan held a ball of magic on his flight over to the worldwide army. Not sure what he might've collected, but guessing someone was missing their power, he bumped it up with his other hand and sent it flying. It returned to Shining Armor and the six Pillars. They instantly felt their vigor returned, the unicorns igniting their horns in celebration, as well as the pegasi by doing mid-air flips.

"Twilight? This is the Equestria I knew." Scorpan mentioned, approaching the heroines and their dragon comrade. "This waning gargoyle couldn't be more glad to see it once more. You have my gratitude."

"I think this goes to show however much of enemies a kingdom's folk can make out of each other..." Spike started certifying. "...there are always those out there whom are far, far worse."

"Case in point!" Rainbow said, pointing down the hill to the surrounded villains.

Back at the lower grounds of the city outskirts, Grogar made a complete observation.

"I sensed the storm had gotten lighter as I came down here. This is why." he asserted. "Besides that, what happened to Havoc's signature? I can't find him or get a response. Did they..?" He blew out of his nostrils and take a hard look at the worldwide army. "Princess Twilight and friends! As tired as I am of the chase, I praise this strategic defense! I wouldn't dare risk hurting or poisoning either all these civilians or your squad of minions just to take six targets! Malice Magic is my curse for expelling all light from my essence! But if you'll allow a friendly reminder..." his horn and collar glowed, and a row of gigantic Malice portals opened up far behind him and his cohorts. "...you have no monopoly on armies."

Every single type of monster that served their father during this entire incident, from the miniscule to the gargantuan, clusters of earth pony, pegasus and unicorn zombies, along with the Horses' personal servants and creations, the rogue changelings, Transformer, the wyverns, Stratadon with the Midnight Chariot in tow, the brainwashed Crystal Empire guards, Berserker, and the Umbrums, emerged from or around the portals, roaring, screeching and shouting in respect for their leaders, and disdain for those opposing them.

"Remember, draw out Princess Twilight's herd of six carefully, and bring them to me." Grogar telepathically instructed his forces. "Do not harm the others, or worse. Only incapacitate. Anycreature unfortunate enough must be treated immediately. Thank you."

"You six stay back, get a spark going, and behold our command performance!" Trixie implored grandiosely, receiving a nod.

"Equestria, and everywhere else! In the name of harmonious freedom..." Twilight called.

"Horses of the Apocalypse, and children of Malice! In the name of immortal memory..." Grogar called.

At the exact same time, they spoke the signal for this war's climax.

"GO!"

Both sides attacked, full speed ahead. Earth ponies engaged in close combat, pegasi flew in circles making whirlwinds, and unicorns used energy beams, telekinesis, teleportation and some elemental spells. While a quarter of them were going-to-toe with their zombie counterparts, others were contending with manticores, avoiding the gazes of cockatrices, ganging up on ursa majors, and trying to fend off the tiny ones such as parasprites and twittermites.

The yaks used their size to shake the earth with their rhythmic stomping, causing a loss of balance in creatures like the cyclopes, who were firing their eye beams. The Chimera and a bunch of lava lizards joined up to blow streams of fire, but the dragons had the same idea, countering their offense. Pukwudgies shot out their needles, Timberwolves exhaled their terrible breath, and the griffons paid them back with a snowball fight.

Sea serpents blasted iron-punching streams of water, while the water ponies turned their fore hooves into hammers and swords to strike. The hippogriffs transformed into seaponies to swim through the blasts and liquid body parts to stupefy them. Changelings transformed into monsters and zombies to misdirect the attacks of the real ones, but the changelings on the villains' side saw through their ploy and took on the forms of giant insects to smack them around.

Iron Will joined the buffalos and Storm King soliders in toppling over the Maulwurf and the Hydra, with his old saying "When somepony tries to block, show them that you rock!" belted out. The Kirin took on their Nirik forms and tackled the Bugbear, Steven Magnet assisting by wrapping himself around it. The Klugetown fishfolk and Calaeno's crew were kept busy by the Tatzlwurm and the Ophiotaurus, but with help from Tempest's lightning, they got somewhat of an edge. Trixie launched fireworks at the Roc, the thunderbirds and the wyverns. The crystal royal guard and Whirling Mungteeth closed in on Zecora, Ahuizotl and Daring Do, tearing at their triple defense.

Ember headbutted a rogue changeling, Rutherford kicked the Sphinx, Sunburst threw amphibian demons into the air, Pharynx punched the Umbrums, Grampa Gruff tossed a bag full of bits at shadow dogs, and Seaspray flapped his wings to blow snow into slingtails.

Chrysalis furiously flailed and fired beams and acid spit everywhere, trying to swat the good creatures like they were gnats. She shapeshifted into a flock of bats to escape a bind. Tirek tried to drain the magic out of his attackers, but because he was such a big target, he was a popular choice for them to hit and interrupt with snow, beams and other objects. He was left stomping about, leaving the work to his shock waves. Eclipse used her magic to sprout giant vines, summon lightning and generate fields of heavy gravity to attack, but her aim was compromised by all the snow that was blocking the view. Cozy, way out of her league, could only shield herself and use her magical clone as a means to slip out of the crossfire.

As the great battle raged on, the number of ponies and other creatures keeping Twilight's team out of sight were dwindling, as more and more needed to go out to hold Grogar's army off. It didn't look good.

"Why are some of the changelings attacking our side?!" Starlight questioned, noticing the confusing sight of the hostile rogues.

"The renegades! They remained loyal to Chrysalis and waited for me to be overthrown!" Thorax confirmed.

Chrysalis came diving towards the top of the hill, and everyone noticed; everyone including Pharynx, changing to the shape of a black bear and grabbing his former queen out of the air.

Transformer turned his head into a dragon's, and his wings into those of a giant albatross. He breathed fire and flapped those wings to fan the flames. Stratadon joined with his own fire breath, which was impeccably hot and strong. The dragons, even the massive Torch, were struggling to match. Berserker screamed in his surge of hot energy, culminating in a wave of magma bursting forth from the ground and blowing many of the worldwide army's combatants into the distance.

"Twilight, don't give up." Celestia said urgently, feeling her head.

"I won't." Twilight breathed out with a smile. "I feel them. They flow through me..."

It was certain what this meant. While they anticipated something good, a new surprise came. A manticore had snuck into the crowd.

"Stand back!" Starlight warned. But the lion-scorpion beast didn't attack. In fact, it looked ready to speak.

A bunch of cockatrices, cragadiles, Whirling Mungteeth, lava lizards, water ponies and parasprites joined it.

"Hold on, I think they want to say something." said Fluttershy. Her ear was raised.

The manticore and it's fellow super-creatures spoke. The shy pegasus had a reaction of shock.

By this time, the battalion of Equestria and it's neighbouring countries was spread thin and losing energy. The unicorns holding up the cylindrical shield couldn't persist anymore. Chrysalis, Tirek, Cozy and Eclipse powered through the decreased resistance and scowled, absolutely finished with these delays in their victory. Grogar, still biding his time, narrowed his gaze to the space that had widened up on the hill. His six trophies were exposed.

"YOU TOOK OUR FAMILIES AWAY!?" yelled a pony at the ram sorcerer.

"THOSE ZOMBIES ARE THE MISSING PONIES!" yelled another pony.

"YOUR KIDS TOLD US EVERYTHING!" shouted a pony who sounded like she was in tears.

"WE TRUSTED THIS CREEP?!" shrieked a pony, embarrassed with themselves.

All of the ponies of Equestria whom Grogar made accept as their emperor jeered him relentlessly. For a long time they didn't understand why members of their clans were disappearing. Now they knew the truth, which this tyrant withheld. It became clear just how pointless their feud really was. The wizard didn't try to weasel his way out of this. No feeble, last-second attempt to save face. He did, however, feel something in him pinched when he learned that his children gave away this information. Nothing else, but a resigned sigh. He let not another second go by without immediately aiming to seize the six heroines.

Twilight, as a result of the ponies and the other creatures' determination to protect the land and fight for those whom they cared for, exploded with raw energy and rose into the sky, for the first time since before her wings were burned off. With her ascent a maelstrom of magic swept over Grogar and the Horses of the Apocalypse. Grogar wasn't affected as much, but the Horses felt like their center of gravity was cranked up by 3 times.

"Oh man, not me too!" Cozy whined, futilely trying to lift herself back up.

Twilight looked gloriously majestic. Her broken horn radiated a brilliant light, and translucent wings grew out of her sides.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" she bellowed. In this state, the young alicorn felt none of the Malice poison. She was in the perfect condition and mood to give a speech. She gave the villains, reaching out to the rest of the world on the side, this: "Because of you, I almost lost my way! But everycreature here has reminded me of the true power of friendship! The darkness in the world is unpredictable, but what remains constant is those who find the light! The Pillars knew this! That's why they created the Tree of Harmony! The Elements showed me and my friends how much our bonds can effect! As one, we worked to bring harmony to Equestria, but there will always be more to do, which is why we teach others about the values of it's virtues! Others who will continue our mission after we are gone! Do you understand? Our accomplishments, the powers my friends and I harness, were a seed! One which has grown the great tree of magic we see right here! And the more who understand the deeper meaning of friendship, the stronger we will all be! Together!"

Everyone in the worldwide army watched Twilight give her speech, touched by her words. Even the monsters on the villains' side thought this was a wonderful thing to see. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and even Spike rose up in that glow of Harmony magic. Star Swirl, Rockhoof, Somnambula, Mistmane, Mage Meadowbrook and Flash Magnus did the same, as did Gallus, Yona, Silverstream, Ocellus, Sandbar and Smolder. They closed their eyes, and from their wishes, rainbows lit up and spun around before shooting up at Twilight. Upon contact, Twilight posed, pointing her hoof up at the sky, directing the empowered rainbow beam towards the Windigos' clouds. In an instant, the clouds cleared away, the winter spirits vanished with a horrific scream of anguish, and then the beam slowly curved down to the five malefactors below.

"How confident..." said Grogar sarcastically, staring up at the rainbow beam with an expression that read "Bring it on!"

The rainbow smashed into the foot of the hill where the ram sorcerer and his primary enforcers stood, swallowing them in it's colourful luster. This was it! After everything that happened, they were defeating the greatest threat Equestria ever knew! Following this shining blast, the war was over! The tribulations were over! This almighty evil would never hurt anyone or anything again, and everyone could rest easy knowing they would soon be rebuilding, and returning to, the world as they knew it before! Twilight and her friends, the companions they made along the way, the power of Harmony, finally won!

Up close, where the rainbow hit, Chrysalis, Tirek, Cozy and Eclipse were screaming from the ferocity of this focused surge of friendship. But what about Grogar? He had gone eerily quiet.

Then another noise sounded off. A noise that nobody could hear over the beam's awe-inspiring impact.

The sound of the Bewitching Bell activating.

The amazing rainbow, which had been mostly straight up until this moment, had been twisted into a tornado and pulled towards a smaller point, as if it were water going down a drain. Twilight's group, the students and the Pillars, previously generating the blast calmly, were now feeling like their hairs were being yanked. They all opened their eyes, and looked down along with all the other creatures in the worldwide army, to see an... unthinkable sight! The rainbow beam stopped flowing out of their bodies and was stopped! Not only was it rendered ineffective, Grogar had captured it in his Bell! Worst yet, he and his accomplices were no worse for wear! They saw him brush his shoulder a single time, unimpressed! The Horses looked at each other, astonished that nothing happened to them!

"WHAAAT?!" Twilight and her six friends shrieked at taxing volumes, not able to believe what they saw in the slightest. The Pillars and the students gasped in equal disbelief. Their triumphant auras of magic faded away, leaving them dropping to the ground unceremoniously.

"But you'll never be as powerful as the Tree of Harmony, will you?" Grogar rhetorically asked. His Bell, after assimilating the rainbow, was rattling, crackling with colourful lightning and emitting thick smog. Though it was an indestructible talisman, holding in that kind of energy was causing it to react violently, like it was going to burst any second.

"That! Didn't! Just! Happen!" Spike whimpered.

This cruel turn didn't feel remotely real. Was everyone way in over their heads after all?

Author's Note:

We have now reached what I've personally come to call the "Cool Things Happen Because They're Really Cool" chapter. Also, it's the one where I could finally put the focus primarily on Twilight Sparkle's group again, after spending the previous chapters on Starlight, the students and the Cutie Mark Crusaders. About time, right?

The matter of removing Havoc from the story was an important piece of this chapter. Like Arimaspi's Eye, he had qualities that made him feel incredibly overpowered, so I had think of a way for him to organically exit. What I landed on was a neat trait that he, as a Spirit representing an all-threatening force, likely would've inherited from his older brother Discord: vanishing from existence if he completely goes against the very thing he's meant to exist for. I also saw it fitting for Pinkie to trick him into his undoing with her talkative nature and ability to think up crazy, but effective, ideas on the fly. On the topic of the location, I thought of putting them in a library at first, but I changed my mind and went with a theatre because I liked the idea of this destructive being restricting his rampage to a place that couldn't have anything possibly made for it yet in this apocalyptic winter.

And now, I reveal one of the many things I was looking forward to typing down at this critical point in the story. Grogar's true motivation for what he's been doing since the opening chapters was something I wanted to tie into the recurring theme of Friendship is Magic's final season, which was saying good-bye and remembering the good things we had in the years we spent with it. When the show was close to ending, I asked many questions and pondered many inevitable things for the My Little Pony franchise going forward. Things like the fact the series' biggest convention was ending with it, how much the fandom would change when there would no longer be new episodes to provide discussion pieces, and how once everything was said and done, it was fated to be left alone by the higher powers that be, never to be celebrated or treated as relevant again. Questions like "Will it's lasting power be enough, or will it fade like a fad?", and "Where could My Little Pony go from here without living in it's most recent incarnation's vast shadow?", and "Has there been a real point for it to go on as long as it did?". So, I aimed to give Grogar a goal that defied the looming threat of the unavoidable, without downplaying the fact that he's a villain, still.

One more thing to note is that I wanted to add a subversion to the whole "survival of the fittest" trope to give Grogar that extra semblance of humanity and depth to his madness, wanting a world where the strong and the weak get to survive and live as they see fit. In general, I've intended to characterize this big, bad ram with his own strange cases of the six Elements of Harmony. Honest, but only as much as he feels is pragmatic. Laughing, and not with sadism, but at the expense of some. Generous, but misguided in his aims. Kind, but still packing a gleefully malignant side towards a handful. Loyal, but willing to make some rare exceptions with utter coldness. Magical, and extremely dangerous, as even he recognizes.

I must confess that in coming up with giving Grogar the intention of brewing up an erasure spell of astronomical magnitude in order to permanently dispose of the Windigos, I did draw a little inspiration from the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Thanos and his aspirations with the Infinity Stones. If you haven't already drawn a few parallels between him and my take on this ancient ram sorcerer since the earlier chapters, you may find the similarities in this particular instant striking. It's just that Grogar only wants to annihilate a herd of irredeemably, viciously hostile entities that are, for all intents and purposes, wrathful gods.

How did Pinkie Pie get up the castle, past the enchanted barrier that prevented Starlight and her group from reaching Grogar's Tome earlier? It's Pinkie Pie, she understands the world and feels on a level nobody else could comprehend, so I figured it could be easily rolled with.

Still on the subject of Pinkie Pie, we get to the Chaos Pinkie bit. Yeah, I gave Pinkie, my favourite pony, quite some time to shine here. In the O.E., Pinkie taking Discord's Chaos Magic, growing giant and harnessing the power to make chocolate rain and tun the fabric of space into icing was little more than a quick, late piece of padding for an episode that I was wishing to be over already by then. While it's not really important for plot here, I still wanted to preserve the potential of Chaos Pinkie, lending my ideas to making her presence a little eventful. The Party Hoof Cannon was something I've been saving, but the chocolate hail thing just crossed my mind as I was putting the chapter together. Since I've put this occurrence near the climax of the conflict, it serves more as a minute of levity where a desperate character gets to have fun for a change.

Before discussing the big "Avengers Assemble/Everyone is Here" battle scene, I wanted to point out the inclusions I've added to this roster of attendees to the ultimate battle. While it was kind of nice to see a cameo from Tempest Shadow in the O.E. gathering of Equestria, that always left me in lament of the fact that they still underrepresented The Movie. So, along with Captain Calaeno and her crew, whom I already established, I got Capper, the fishfolk from Klugetown and the Storm King soldiers involved to bring completion to the scale of what I dub the "worldwide army" of creatures from all over. I also included Ahuizotl to give him a little time to properly team up with Daring Do, as well as Iron Will just to bring back an iconic phrase of his from the early days (when he was at his best). Now for a note on someone I ultimately didn't include. I wanted to put Sunset Shimmer in there, but decided to leave her out because I didn't want to trivialize a character whom is important to her own sub-series. In other words: she didn't belong here.

Now, the battle itself. While I perfectly get that the O.E. was focused on it's story and character development (or the little it liked to call story and character development), if they were going to try their hand at the Endgame fad that was going on at the time with the many characters from the Friendship is Magic universe, there was more than enough precedent for going nuts with some action-packed thrills in the show, and they should've felt free to use that character roster of theirs to show what combat scenarios (however brief) they could illustrate with the various capabilities at their disposal, and given themselves the episode time to do it, whether it was all the land against three guys or an equally humongous army. Speaking of three guys (or in this rewrite's case, four), I know I put Chrysalis, Tirek, Cozy and Eclipse rather out of focus during the epic battle royale, but only because they've done a ton already and I wanted to depict the might of the two armies.

Twilight's final "Friendship is Awesome" speech in the O.E. bothers me in a number of ways. First of all, this may only be a petty thing, but capping off the whole thing with "Together!" had less of an effect when the word was already said in a sentence from seconds ago. Second, the "there will always be darkness in the world" quote, which drives me crazy because it's basically Twilight learning to make peace with the impossibility of perfection again, a problem I've already brought up in the notes of an earlier chapter when I mentioned Applejack's "Nothing will ever be perfect" line. Heck, the last special of Equestria Girls handled that topic (not counting Holidays Unwrapped)! Third, the Elements being "symbols" being news to Twilight here after The Beginning of the End goes in hand with her saying "We don't have the Elements of Harmony amymore" to make Season 9's tail end feel at odds with it's beginning. It felt like the good old "I didn't learn anything, I was right all along!" disguised as something meaningful. Fourth, the spiels were coming off as arrogant at this point. So, I touched up the speech to remove a little repetition and give it some freshness for the context of this rewrite.

So, we reach probably the craziest subversion I've done for this rewrite. The last rainbow laser beam of the whole series. To preface, I recognize that this moment in the O.E. was pretty exciting and appropriate for most of the fandom. For many, it felt cathartic to see not only Twilight and her friends, but also the students, the Pillars, and even Spike contribute to this final, triumphant blast of villain-defeating camaraderie. It felt like a full circle seeing what crushed the first major threat of the show also crush it's last. After years of the rainbow laser finishes being all "deus ex machinas", I've heard this one called "earned". I'm sorry to all those fans, but after that whole "the Elements were just symbols" comment, it was underwhelmingly ironic to me that this "real magic" just did the exact same thing the Elements (and the one-time thing that was Rainbow Power) always did. Also, the aftermath of the laser beam, the villains' defeat, is weird to me, because I've always felt, since my first viewing in 2019, like it was one of those instances where, in literally any other story (even another Friendship is Magic story), they'd be tricking the audience into thinking the horrors were ending that easily, before pulling the rug from under us and presenting one last complication for the heroes to overcome. How did Grogar pull this off, though, when consuming the power of Harmony should tear him apart? The next chapter will quickly explain that away.

And now, the end is near! So this rewrite faces the final curtain! I wrote a story that's full! I travelled each and every highway! And more, much more than this! I did it my way! (Translation: The End of an Era is almost over!) Oh yeah, and I sprinkled in a reference to a line from the Transformers films. My Little Pony is no stranger to making a little nod to the Robots in Disguise, and this one I deemed apt for the antagonist's justification.