"You idiot!" Ician glared daggers at the smiling Administrator. "You've doomed us all!"
"Don't worry, I won't keep them dead forever." The Administrator wore a mocking grin. "Only up until I retrieve the Elements of Harmony."
"I knew it." Ician hissed. "You can't be trusted. I should go to Celestia and Luna-"
"Don't bother. I'm the only one here with the power to force the war to end."
"If they agree to make peace-"
"I doubt they will. Not until the threat is too close, at any rate." The Administrator laughed. "I'm your only hope."
"Grr..." Ician took a deep breath. His angry features began to settle down into their normal, impassive state. "Hm."
"Decided to comply?"
"Not quite yet." Ician quickly passed a piece of paper to his vulture. The bird grabbed it between its talons, nodded, and flew out the door.
"What was that?"
Ician grinned. "Nothing... that you need to know yet."
The Administrator regarded him warily. "It's too late to stop this, if that's what you're thinking."
"I was thinking nothing of the sort." He reseated himself on his chair, bringing his hooves together in rumination. "Actually, I have another proposition."
"Sounds interesting. What is it?"
"I will not interfere with your plans... on one condition."
"What?"
"You must allow them to respawn when the infestation strikes."
The Administrator snorted. "And why would I do that?"
Ician considered this. "She has spoken to you, correct?"
"Yes."
"Who else would she speak to?"
"Celestia and Luna, I suppose. Anypony with enough power to help her."
"What about the separatist groups?"
"That sounds logical." The Administrator glanced at Ician thoughtfully. "Though I believe that the dragons and griffins will be just as averse to her proposal as the two princesses are likely to be."
"Who do you think she will have gone to first?"
"The separatists, definitely. She would probably save Celestia and Luna for last."
"Why is that?"
"She has a... uh..." The Administrator coughed. "... history with them."
"Ah." Ician nodded. "So there are deep feelings of resentment between both sides."
"That would be correct. Why?"
"Think. What would you do if you had two ponies you didn't like trying to kill each other?"
"I'd probably kill them both while they were distracted." The Administrator's brow furrowed. "Wait..."
"Exactly. For her, it'll take almost no effort at all to infiltrate the castles of both princesses and kill them. And what would she do after that?"
"She'd look for the Elements of-" His eyes narrowed. "No."
"She's just as weak as you are against them." Ician, who at this point may or may not have been making somewhat educated guesses, kept a very straight face. "And if she's anticipating an inevitable clash with Equestria, the best thing she could do is to eliminate the leaders and seize the only artifacts capable of stopping her."
"Then I'll have to get to them first."
"I'm not inclined to believe that you're likely to succeed. Odds are, both Celestia and Luna have prepared some line of defense against your incursion. Besides, for all you know the Elements of Harmony may already have been taken."
"I... I see."
"If anything, she would have gone after them only today."
"Today? Why today?"
"Because your dear Pyro just left Canterlot - and much of its defenses - in flames."
"Good point." The Administrator conceded.
"Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that she already has Celestia's three Elements. After all, any spies she might have planted in Canterlot would have taken advantage of the chaos to move in."
"Fair enough."
"Therefore, it may well be that Celestia is already dead, and we just don't know it yet."
"... True."
"This means that, since the Elements are likely already gone, your best option would be to snatch them back as soon as possible."
"How would I go about doing that?"
Ician tsked. "Isn't it obvious? You may as well use those who have already sworn to defend Celestia to the death. RED team."
"It's a bit too late for that." The Administrator stated plainly. "Pinkie's already fighting."
The smallest hint of a frown twitched at the edges of Ician's face. "In that case, the Elements are lost. The next best course of action will be to revive all your victims at the earliest possible opportunity and spring a surprise offensive. Chances are they'd be unprepared."
"You forget that I don't have control over them." He shrugged. "I'm just as powerless as you are. The only ponies who obey me are the two Pyros and Screwball."
"An unfortunate circumstance that will cease to exist upon the Princesses' deaths." Ician reminded him.
"But up until then, I cannot do anything."
"The least you can do is to tell the Pyro to bring back their bodies after she's done with them."
"Why?"
"It'll be best to have both RED and BLU teams assembled immediately when the time comes to strike back." Ician rested his hooves on the table. "My guess is that you've also sent the RED Pyro after BLU team's potential Element bearers."
"You're correct. But since she's not labouring under separate personalities, it's a much simpler affair."
"That makes ten mercenaries gone. We'll have to bring all of their bodies here."
"Celestia and Luna will object."
"A dead princess is a powerless one."
The Administrator eyed him suspiciously. "What makes you so sure that they will die?"
"If I were to put numbers to it, I'd say that the odds of them being dead by the end of the week are... four out of five." Ician said. "When the odds are in my favour, I have just cause to be confident."
"That's still a one-fifth chance of their survival."
"A risk I can afford to take."
"Hmm... Fine. I will accede to your terms."
"Excellent." Ician's voice bore a tone of finality. "You may worry about contacting the RED Pyro. I've already taken care of Diana's notification."
"Since when?"
"Since I sent Faye away earlier."
The Administrator stared at him blankly.
"My vulture." Ician clarified.
"Ah." He frowned. "Wait, didn't you send it away before we started discussing terms?"
"Her." Ician corrected. "It's a her."
"You're avoiding the question."
"... I did, of course."
"How could you have sent your bird away with a message I gave you five minutes later?"
"The odds were nine out of ten." Ician smirked. "It was a risk I could afford to take."
"Those odds are going to betray you one day."
"One day." He agreed. "I'll be waiting for it."
"Glad to hear it." The Administrator gestured to the forgotten computer screens. "In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to sit back and enjoy the destruction."
Ician looked him in the eyes. "I'll watch, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it."
"Come on, be grateful that I at least gave her a small mercy."
"What do you mean?"
"The second spell I cast." He waved his hands nonchalantly. "The hallucination spell."
"That doesn't sound like something that'll be useful to her in combat."
"Oh, it's not for her active personality. It's for her inactive one."
Ician groaned. "Something else you 'forgot' to tell me."
"It's not strictly necessary for you to know." The Administrator said. "It's just that the part of her that doesn't want to kill won't suffer too much."
It didn't take long for Ician to connect the dots in his head. "The passive personalities are inactive, but not 'unconscious', in that sense."
"Correct."
"Meaning they can still see and hear what is happening."
"Yes."
"So Pinkie's original personality will still be aware of the killing going on around her?"
"Not quite. That's where the hallucination comes in."
"When that happens," Ician guessed, "I assume she will see a warped version of the truth."
"Absolutely correct."
Ician considered this piece of information. "Will she know what happened after she takes control again?"
"She will. They're all connected to the same mind, so they share a set of memories."
"Fair enough."
The Administrator paused. "Wait, do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"It sounds like something's burning..." He looked at the screen. "... Oh."
"Ah." Ician said. "Looks like your party's begun."
Yeah, about next chapter being the final major one... sorry. I had to get this out of the way first.
Anyway, still looking for cover art and prereaders for the next story. I'm aiming for this story to be more or less done - basically, I've just got to finish the next chapter - by the end of the week. Shouldn't be too hard.
3501164
I don't think I'd actually listened to Friendship back then, but when I did I was like "oh yeah, I did write that in Meet the Demomare didn't I?"
Not much else rhymes with magic, ironically.
So now I think we see why it is the real Pyro sees things differently from everyone else in his "Meet The" video.
umagurd must rud
3500688
a) I offer to preread and correct all them grammar and other things!
b) Please make an epilogue with a TL;DR version. As much as I enjoy reading this, I am so lost at this point I may as well read it upside down.
c) Any good interlude needs this:
3501179 Talking about words that can't rhymes scarce is another one
Something tells me Ician could be a gambler. Not an often one, but a good one.
3501954
Not really, she's about the same as the sentry from Story of a Sentry back in the Saxxys. Of course, whether or not she is a mini-sentry really doesn't change much, since she was never upgraded either way.
3502801
Woohoo! A prereader! I must humbly ask for your assistance with my next story... which isn't really out yet or even begun for that matter, so yeah.
Also, on the subject of a summary, I'll probably be making one for this story in the next story so new readers can catch up quickly without having to read this story.
3502925
Ooh, that's a toughie. The only thing I can think of on the spot that has even the slightest chance to rhyme is stairs. Probably not even that much though.
3503777
Oh, you have no idea. Maybe not literal gambling, but something like it.
Also, on another note, does anyone know why my views have shot up by 800+ since the last time I got featured?
3505522
Yes. Betrayal is magic.
As for the name... it doesn't matter what you see her as, because I never actually described what she looked like anyway. You can see her as pink with poofy hair, it's all the same to me.
Until the last few chapters, that is... heh heh heh...
*insert foreshadowing here*
Sounds like something's........BURNING!
3504308 Aha! Message me when you need my help or to talk (or whatever, really) and I'll be there for you :D
3508100
Yes, it occurred to me that I should have resolved this issue earlier, but I couldn't find anywhere appropriate to slot it the particular piece of information that explains everything.
Just consider it to be like TF2: Two identical mercs, one on each side. That means two RDs, two AJs, two Big Macs etc.
3508790
Did Discord create the clones?
The main reason this is causing me distress is because Red!Rarity talks about ideologies on how she preferred a monarchy, and then there's the Blu!Rarity who obviously doesn't think that way. The whole "loyal to one side and their ideas" thing gets weird when they are clones.
TF2 doesn't have this sort of problem mainly because they don't really care, and really just for the job. Plus, their bosses are both idiots, and don't have any higher purpose than "I hate the other guy".
3509328
Think about it more as... hm... "identical twins", say. It's not really like that, but the thinking processes are about the same. Identical twins look alike, and depending on extremely rare circumstances may even speak alike, but despite their outward appearance may have two totally different ideologies.
It really depends on how they were raised - whether in the embrace of Solar or Lunar propaganda.
3509373
ooookay.
So one clone hear's Luna's stuff and the other hear's Celestia's?
3509521
Pretty much, yes.
3509531
Trippy. They should bang
'Scuse me, sir/madam, but would you mind if I were to use this concept in a story of mine? One of my biggest fears on this site is being accused of ripping off others, so I figured that I'd get an "okay" before I went on writing.
3512288
When you say "this concept" what exactly are you referring to? Because, well, y'know, if it's the entire plot then that's kind of a problem, but if it's just one of the components it shouldn't be too big a deal.
3512918 I'd like to use the concept of "The ponies in the places of the TF2 classes". I'd use 18 ponies (9 for RED and 9 for BLU). Here is my class list: (Note, I realize that the RED team is similar to your picks. This is solely because I had conceptualized the teams prior to knowing that this story had even existed. Plus, a few of the choices are just give-ins. RD as Scout, AJ as Engineer, Pinkie as Pyro, and Rarity as Spy.)
RED:
Sniper- Twilight
Scout: RD
Pyro: Pinkie
Medic: Fluttershy
Spy: Rarity
Engineer: Applejack
Heavy: Luna
Soldier: Big Macintosh
Demomare: Zecora
BLU:
Sniper: Trixie
Scout: Lightning Dust
Pyro: ??? (Left ambiguous)
Medic: Nurse Redheart
Spy: Chrysalis
Engineer: Vinyl Scratch (Using her fandom-created "Bass Cannon" as a Sentry Turret)
Heavy: Celestia (Trollestia, mainly.)
Soldier: Iron Will
Demoman: Discord
The "meet the" chapters would be in the Meet the Heavy through Meet the Sniper format of switching between a class' interview with an anonymous source, and the action (However, Meet the Spy would most likely be a ponyfied version of the actual Meet the Spy video. I have lines/actions planned out for that one.). It would use the plot of "Gamer Luna (the fandom meme version of Luna) shows a stressed Celestia TF2, who takes a liking to it. Now being hooked, Celestia decides that she wants to live the action of TF2. She creates a magically-charged simulation of it for her and 17 other 'completely willing' participants."
If any of these concepts/ideas are too similar, I can cancel/change them without argument. I really don't want any strife/conflict/bad blood with anyone.
3513175
Well that concept's nothing really new, or even made by me to begin with - it's accepted by a lot of the TF2/MLP fandom, it just so happens that I wrote a story about it. So feel free to use it, since no one really lays claim to this idea's origins.
Looking forward to your story. I want to see how it contrasts with mine and hopefully I can learn more about writing from you. Cheers!