My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic: Heart of Friendship

by ShadowDurza

Chapter 18: The Final Showdown

After deflecting the knife strikes and arrowgun shots with her swords, Maxine got in close and gave the Central Administration Agent a hard kick to the ground. She looked around and saw the others doing their best to subdue the agents while the ponies and the youngsters of the Prancing Pony guild raced their way to the elevator. She sighed a sigh of relief over the fact that the Central Forces hadn’t arrived. She assumed that since many of them had such strong convictions, they were too conflicted over what was revealed about the High Administrator to properly mobilize, if it all.

Meanwhile, the ponies and their human friends raced towards the elevator. When they got to it, Kris stabbed at it with his ethereal sword, removing the protective enchantments. Then, Wilda covered his arms in an aura shaped like oversized gorilla hands and wrenched the grating open for everyone to enter.

The Liftman shivered in terror, but his hand remained on the lever. “W-w-w-where to, M-M-Mac?”

Alphonse stared right in the Liftman’s eyes as his own glowed with a green, swirly light. “The very top, please.”

The Liftman’s body relaxed as he gently pushed the lever to the up position. “You’ve got it, Mac… The very top…”

The elevator started its rise, but after passing three floors, Trace hacked in displeasure. “This is taking way too long!”

Right as Trace’s glowing white hand touched the wall of the elevator, Kris quickly reached out towards him. “Trace, don’t- !” But Kris and everyone else was forced to the floor as the elevator took off like a rocket. However, the bewitched Liftman remained standing with his hand holding up the lever.

Once they reached their destination, the Liftman flipped the switch to stop and the elevator abruptly halted, sending the occupants crashing into the ceiling. “Top floor… Yadda, yadda, yadda… you know the rest…”

Once they all got back up, Wilda and Alphonse gave Trace a well-deserved clobbering on the head. Once they all exited the elevator, the ponies and their human friends lined up in front of the door.

Kris turned towards Twilight. “I’m sorry about before, I definitely owe you girls for all I put you through, but I have to ask you to let us do the fighting.”

Twilight’s brow raised. “What? Why? We’re friends, let us help you!”

Kris sighed and gestured with his sword. “You’re a princess, a leader, right? This is our problem, not yours. If we can’t overthrow an unworthy leader ourselves, then we’d have no right to call ourselves the greatest warriors in the world.”

Wilda turned towards Fluttershy. “You have to understand, sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone you care about is let them help themselves.”

Fluttershy nodded. “I understand.”

Trace turned towards Rainbow Dash. “If you have any respect for us, you’ll let us do this, but we’ll do you the honor of letting you be our audience.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh, you better believe we’ll be right behind you!”

Percival, in his battle form, turned towards Applejack. “To be honest, we have a lot of pride, and we wouldn’t be able to hold our heads high if we didn’t do this. But know that we would have never got this far without you guys.”

Applejack tipped her hat. “That means a lot, friend.”

Sloop turned towards Rarity. “The point of looking your best is to show that you’re a better person than you were yesterday. But when this is over, if you can show me… the sea… I’ll be most grateful.

Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. “Consider it a date!”

Alphonse turned towards Pinkie Pie. “If anything happens, I want you to know: you’re a total goober. But you’re the kind of goober the world needs more of.”

Pinkie Pie giggled and rolled her eyes. “Thanks, I think!”

The humans stepped forward with determined looks. Kris raised his sword and, with a pair of imperceptibly swift slashes, cut the door down while neutralizing any protective spells there may be on it. The humans charged in followed a close distance behind by their pony friends.

Inside the High Director’s personal office, they found the High Director himself with his back turned to them and his head held low. Kris charged ahead and pointed his sword at him. “It’s over High Dir- no… Zeo Photum! The people know how you really run things in this city, and they’re definitely not too keen on keeping you in power!”

Zeo Photum sighed and shook his head. “Peace and freedom. That’s all the people ask for in its most simple form. This tumultuous period will only make the citizens of this… fine city realize that they truly desire the peace only I can give them. If you threaten that peace…” He quickly turned around and gave them a look of pure fury. “Then I will not hesitate to destroy you all!”

Taking the initiative, Kris tensed his body, covered his sword in an intense, fire-like aura, and made a powerful upward swing that sent a wave-like blade of pure magic racing towards Zeo. However, in a flash of white light, a barrier enveloped him and the wave dispersed against it. Leaving behind Zeo extending his arms as he was surrounded by a barrier of blue light which gently rippled in place.

Zeo made a sinister laugh. “Fire devours the air, air grinds away the earth, earth dams the water, water smothers the fire, and ether denies ether. Every child is taught that at one point or the other. Every elemental gets one element, but with the power of my prismatic barrier, my light element can change its wavelengths to emanate the properties of the other four of the primary elements to counteract the power of any other elemental before me!”

Wilda stepped forward and clashed his cestus together. “Well, we still have our weapons.”

Zeo sneered and extended hands, and from his palms erupted two saber-like beams of intense light. Then, in a flash of light he rushed Wilda with a barrage of strikes, only to be met by a shield-like aura in the shape of a rhinoceros’s body. “Wilda Urson, a fine adventurer. You’ve done a lot of service to this city with all the great bounty you’ve brought to our gates. I don’t suppose I could convince you to serve this city once more and join me?”

Wilda roared and with a lunge, extended the aura’s horn at ramming speed at Zeo, but his barrier simply turned green and spiraled in several places, protecting him from direct harm but sending him flying back. “I did that on the assumption that all that food and goods would go to those that truly needed them, not to make the city’s fatcats even fatter!”

At a breakneck speed, Trace raced towards Zeo and hit him with a dancing barrage of strikes from his staff, but each one was deflected with a spin by Zeo, and anytime Trace tried to strike him with a glowing hand, the barrier flashed red and gave off emanations like tongues of flame. Zeo soon jumped back and crouched while crossing his sabers. “Trace Paragon. Always able to outrun my law! Tell me, thief, do you think you can run faster than light?”

Zeo dashed forward at an imperceptible speed, leaving behind a sparkling trail. However, Trace was ready and held one of the ends of his staff down low in his path a fraction of a second before his charge, sending Zeo flying to the ground. “I don’t have to be faster than light, Mr. High Director. Just faster than you.”

Zeo quickly rolled to his feet and came up as he was surrounded in a jagged yellow barrier that deflected Sloop’s arrowgun shots. Then he glided in a curve around Sloop, leaving behind horizontal rods in his path pointing towards him. “Sloop Masters. Your ancestor was the only one of the city’s elites that never claimed his place in the great reconstruction. I bet you curse him every day for having to work so hard for people always looking for a hand out!”

Sloop merely made one of his arrowguns disappear and held out a hand as the rods flew towards him like laser blasts, redirecting all of them upward as they made contact with the circle with an arrow pointing up. “My great, great, granduncle, Scrooge McMasters earned his fortune square from nothing. That gave him the wisdom to know that the mixing of great wealth and politics leads only to great sadness. I’m proud to know that I used what was left of it to start my business to help people with profit as a mere consequence!”

Zeo leapt back, but found that he was boxed in by Percival’s sharp focuses on all sides. However, as they closed in, Zeo turned into an orb of light and slipped out from between the blades. When he turned back he raised his arms and was suddenly surrounded by beams of light erupting from the ground. “Percival Sonoma. Another poor soul excluded from society by the Embodiment. In a few more years, we could have developed a cure for your affliction!” With a thrust, he sent these beams spinning towards Percival.

With a swing of both arms, Percival sent out an expanding wave of yellow ether that turned the beams to faint smoke that dissipated on contact with him. “I stopped viewing it as something to be cured a long time ago. And to be honest, it helped that I one day found myself surrounded by people who accepted me and saw all the great things I was capable of!”

Zeo slowly turned around as he faced the onslaught of green discs of solid energy being blocked by his barrier, which now took on a shape of hexagons of solid light. He slowly strided over to Alphonse who desperately flung them one-by-one from his free hand. “You’re the worst of them all, Alphonse Faeno! After I shut down your abominable guild, you never did anything for anybody! In fact, you seemed to love nothing more than making life as hard as possible for city officials!”

However, Alphonse gave a mischievous grin as, with a swing of the handle, the whip that slowly curled around Zeo when taught and entangled him. Then, he opened his free hand and a small knife-like construct appeared extending from his palm. “Ever since I was a kid, all I ever wanted was to just stay out of everyone’s way. But my parents sent me to the guild to train me into something useful, and I found myself being constantly pestered by people who refused to leave me alone. When they put all of their trust in me, I would have regretted it for the rest of my life if I didn’t live up to that! And today, I plan on doing so!”

He stabbed the construct into Zeo’s body, which extended to impale him all the way through. However, the illusion disappeared in a flash of light, and in another, the real Zeo appeared from behind and struck at Alphonse's back, only for his body to disappear in a puff of green smoke and reappear a distance aways, pulling down his eyelid and sticking his tongue out.

They all regrouped behind Kris and each took a stance to match Zeo’s. Trace gently nudged Kris with his staff. “So… what’s your take on this guy?”

Kris took a deep breath. “Well, he’s amassed a tremendous quantity of magic, has a diverse array of powerful spells, and trained his innate abilities to their limit. But the way he moves, it’s too… mechanical. And the ways he defends himself is just a little too slow, like his instincts have nothing to do with it.”

Sloop squinted at their opponent. “You make it sound like he’s…”

Kris nodded. “...a mid-classer. He’s probably gotten as close to top class as someone on his level can get, but there’s no denying that somewhere down the line, he hit a wall he just couldn’t break through.”

On that note, Zeo’s eyes grew wide, then his whole body shook as he looked even more furious than before. “NONE OF YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TOUCH ME!”

Wilda made a loud laugh. “Oh, do you think we were fighting with everything we had? Can I show him first, Kris?”

Kris nodded. “All right, let’s do it everyone!” Suddenly, Kris’s body was enveloped in an amber light. Then, all of the team was enveloped in auras of their own colors that began to mix and surround them in a rainbow of colors.

Zeo merely scoffed. “Even I can put on a lightshow! I thought you were supposed to show me what you’re really made of!” In response, Wilda leaped towards him, extending an oversized claw. Zeo’s barrier deployed its air configuration, but somehow, Wilda cleaved through and Zeo was sent flying back. He shakily got up and extended his sabers once again. “Did you just hit me with a fire attack?”

Kris scoffed. “It was about a month before the guild shut down. You see, after years of working together, we found that when we were all in one place, we could use a completely unique kind of magic that seemed to defy the normal rules of human magic and follow its own. In this case, it enables each of us to use any of the five primary attributes we want!”

Zeo flinched in horror. “But… but… that’s Ultimate Magic! Nobody’s been able to use that in decades!”

Shimmering, Alphonse stuck out his hip in a mocking gesture. “Says a lot about how you run things, doesn’t it?”

The human warriors proceeded to unleash a barrage of attacks. Kris raised his sword and swung it down as it extended an aura that took on a granular texture. Trace thrust out his staff, sending out a shell of magic that bubbled and rippled. Sloop used all of his ammunition to send out a massive bullet that spiraled like a tornado. And Percival and Alphonse brought their hands together and thrust them forward to send out a bomb of pure ethereal energy. When all these attacks got close, Zeo’s barrier flickered across different attributes and began to destabilize and warp. Once they hit him he screamed as he was bathed in their force and fell to the ground, breathing, but incapacitated.

Before they could celebrate, they were suddenly met by a slow clapping followed by a satisfied laughter. The humans and ponies alike turned around and were startled to find the Underworlder Boss striding in. “Excellent! Most excellent! I knew you ponies were the harbingers of great change in human history, but I never expected it to go all the way to the top!” Before the ponies could say anything, the humans raced between them and the Underworlder Boss, their weapons at ready. At this sight, the Underworlder Boss gave off an even heartier laugh. “I’m glad to see your years outside of the guild have done nothing to affect your form!”

They all got confused looks. Kris shook his sword at him. “What are you talking about? Who are you anyway?”

At that, the Underworlder Boss made a cheerful laugh and took his katana from his hip, holding it perpendicular to the humans. Then, in a shimmer of darkness, it changed into a two-handed ax with a long, curving handle. At this, the humans looked utterly stupified as they lowered their weapons. Alphonse was the first to regain his senses enough to speak. “No way… Head Trainer Noxus?”

With a final mirth-filled scoff, the Underworlder Boss touched the front of his helmet and the whole thing disappeared in a shimmer of darkness, revealing a dark-skinned head with greasy, unkempt hair, a strong jaw and brow, dark eyes, and five-o-clock shadow. Lacking the hollow echo of the helmet, he spoke. “Please boys, by this point, you can just call me Boros.”

Twilight trotted to the humans. “What is going on here? Who is he to you?”

Kris was the next to regain his composure. “This is… the old Head Trainer of the Prancing Pony guild. Right before it was shut down, he was the forerunner candidate for Guildmaster, ahead of even Madam von Wrinkle!”

Boros scoffed at that. “Oh, Please! That would have been way too much paperwork for my taste! I’m lucky the Underworlders didn’t require so much bureaucracy! Speaking of which…” He tapped the side of his thigh armor and a hidden compartment appeared out of nowhere, where he retrieved one of the communication artifacts other humans use before raising it to his mouth. “Durza, it’s go time!”

He waved his free hand and a few chains of glyphs swirled around in a cone shape before him. Unknown to the others, screens of pure shadow appeared in the same place as Zeo’s screens of light appeared. Boros stepped ahead and cleared his throat. “People of Core Metro, I Boros Noxus, boss of the Underworlders, have an announcement to make. Yesterday, when our pony brethren from above came down here, I saw the opportunity of a lifetime. By orchestrating a series of… incidents, I was able to obtain an archived form from an undisclosed location and create a big enough distraction at the Party District for the Director to absentmindedly sign and notarize after I filled it out. Despite what our former High Director says, establishing a guild is not illegal. So I was able to get the Underworlders recognized as an official Core Metro guild! After some associates of mine cast down our unworthy former High Director, the city’s bylaws went into effect. Article seven-hundred eighty-five subsection C-eleven states that in the absence of a qualified head of Central Administration, the guilds shall assume full administrative authority over the City’s government. What that means is that I, as Guildmaster of the Underworlder Guild, am now your new High Director!

“Now calm down, calm down, I’m being honest when I say that I didn’t do this for myself! It’s my personal belief that the reason the Immortals of old, whom thanks to our champion, Kris Duelis was able to prove the existence of without any reasonable doubt, didn’t follow us down to the cavern simply because we weren’t meant to live this way. So, my first act as High Director before resigning and dissolving the Central Administration, is to announce the mass migration of the citizens of Core Metro back to the surface world! Gather up anything worth bringing, because after a brief period of preparation, our new pony friends shall lead the way to the land of plenty above, where we shall begin our lives anew! Is this agreeable to you, Princess?”

Twilight, at first caught by surprise, trotted forward with a smile. “Most agreeable Mr. Noxus, and this time, I really mean it!” The mixed group of humans and ponies behind them expressed their approval.