The Mysterious Adventures of Mare-do-well

by Commando-Scarecrow

Brotherly Love

They were all surprised by his generosity, Miss Magnificent more than anypony. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all. They all nodded and then went through the door where destiny awaited. Miss Magnificent took one final look at the colt that, in defeat, had become their ally. Maybe he was a mercenary with a conscience, or maybe he just really hated the mare who showed up. Either way, she was grateful. He was right, though. They did have an evil plan to thwart.

...

They both looked at one another: Winter Night and Summer Blaze. They circled each other, cautious and unsure what the other was truly capable of. This fight had been a long time coming, and both of them knew that.

"It's about time we had a little heart to heart, Winter." He was the stoic in these situations. He always had been.

"I knew you didn't have the guts to go through it, Summer." She had a look that was nothing but contempt for what had been her partner. "You're still just a little filly. And I guess I was right all along."

"Well, maybe I just changed my mind." He gave a shrug and smiled, but he was still dead serious about what was going on. "You have to see that what they're doing isn't right. Winter, they’re going to hurt a lot of ponies if we let them go through with this."

"You always have to be right about everything, don't you, Summer?"

"There's a difference between a stupid argument and actually doing the right thing, Winter. Besides, what makes you think I was totally on board, anyway?" he took a much more stern expression.

"What makes you think I care?" He figured she's say something like that. Apathy was always some she excelled at.

"I didn't," It was time to start pushing her to the edge. Maybe then she could get a good view of what was going on here. "But then, you never did care about much, did you?"

"Shut up."

"You were always hiding away in your little corner, feeling sorry for yourself and not doing anything at all to make any of your problems any better."

"Shut up," she said it a little bit louder this time. He was either getting to her or she was getting even angrier, but if he knew his little sister, and he knew he did, then it was the latter. Anger was never something she got a good hold on. It was kind of ironic, her being the hothead and him having the fire powers. Maybe it made sense because she was cold and kind of apathetic and he was fiery and passionate and actually seemed to care.

"But complaining is all you were ever good for, isn't it?!" He was straight up shouting at her now. "And now, when he have a chance to bring an end to something that could literally DESTROY LIFE IN EQUESTRIA AS WE KNOW IT, WHAT DO YOU DO?!"

"SHUT UP!" She charged at him, a blizzard surrounding her with her in the eye of the icy storm. He countered by doing the same thing with his fire magic. This would be the end of their rivalry, one way, or another.

...

The three adept adventurers ran through the halls of the complex, trusting what the mercenary had told them, perhaps even unwisely. They had no choice, though. And as they plowed through platoon after platoon of enemy soldiers, they wondered if they would see that colt ever again. Miss Magnificent shrugged off the thought as hard as she could. The way he stood behind so they could finish their mission. She had no real idea why he did that. None of them did. She found herself totally perplexed by his act of self-sacrifice. He knew what was at stake, it seemed. He maybe even knew more than any of them. She didn't put it past him. She'd seen shades of that character trait in the Hat, after all. Omitting information until it was actually needed. But she digressed. What mattered then and there was finding the leadership of this organization and bringing an end to them. Once and for all. They fought through swaths of soldiers and security, each successive wave tiring them even further than the last. Honestly, the magician didn't really have an idea of how many more guys they had to bring down before they came across what they were searching for.

"How much longer must we fight, Hat?" Miss Magnificent finally asked him. She was exhausted and her magic was nearly depleted. She'd upped her game since her duel with Twilight, sure. Hay, she'd even learned spell after spell in an attempt to emulate the one who defeated her and so she become something a little more than what she had been, but she couldn't fight like this forever. She wasn't even sure the Hat or Mare-do-well could. "Hat?"

"Sorry, Sheila," his accent was still just awful. She had been there when he was first trying it out, and it changed only slightly. She actually thought it was really offensive to everypony who lived in South Equestria, and that was her talking. "I was just wondering what all was going to happen after all this shonkey business blew ovah. We still don't have a bloody idea on the specifics on what this lot plans to do."

Miss Magnificent took a brief pause from the conversation to consider what artifacts could be gathered for their adversary’s nefarious schemes. She herself had once been in possession of the mighty "Alicorn Amulet" a couple of years ago, but that charm was dangerously uncontrollable. She knew that from experience. Mare-do-well no was no doubt wondering the same thing that she was. There were other charmed artifacts, though. There was the armour Thunder Clapper the Brave, which had been forged by the greatest unicorn blacksmith of all time, Tempered Steel, as well as the personal diary and spell book of Star Swirl the Bearded. Legends say that he meditated with his last breath while sealing away all of his magic into it. There were countless others, but she honestly didn't have much of an idea where to start.

...

"GAAH!" Winter Night was pushed back by the ferocity of her brothers fire. She had made a bad mistake by under estimating what, exactly, he was capable of. Weakened as he was, his fire was still a match for her ice. "GRRR," she let out what Summer Blaze assumed what was supposed to be a growl of intimidation.

The soot on his face from the earlier backfire was totally smudged from all the ice that he had melted away. "Is that supposed to scare me, Winter?" whenever they fought, he did his best to play head games with her. She was so easy to push over the edge and he always did that when they were training. It was intended to teach her how to keep a level head in a fight, but her failure to learn that lesson turned out to be a godsend. "Because if you think it will, I’ve got a news flash for you!" He propelled himself with his fire and rammed himself into her side. "IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN YOUR FROZEN TEMPER FROM HELL TO EXTUNGUISH MY MIGHTY FLAMES!!! Egotism was just another weapon to Summer. He realized a long time ago that if you act like you can do something, ponies believed you. It was no different here, and he could tell his little sister was losing it.

"Buck..." she was preparing a major counter attack at her older brother, but so long as he was able to control the field, she wouldn't be able to make one. "YOU!!!" She sent a beam of pure, arctic, tartarous at him. He counted with his own burning flames, but unlike any attack she made before, she actually managed to graze him on his front left leg, slowing him down.

"Crap," he said plainly as he saw what happened. Winter saw an opening and she decided to take it. She used her mastery over cold to freeze the entire floor of the large room, immobilizing him even further. She then made further use of her powers to more or less skate on said ice and prepared a chest-mounted spear made entirely of the frozen substance, no doubt meant to run through her older brother.

"TIME TO DIE, BRO!!" He knew that after it was over, after she killed him, she would live the rest of her life in regret at what she did. Too bad he wasn't going to give her the chance. He had to think past if he wanted to end the fight now without hurting her to bad.

"HOW 'BOUT NO?!" With only a few yards before he was a Blaze-kabob, he used his burning flames to melt the area of ice just in front of her. The result? She quickly lost balance and tripped over the now wet patch, sending her flying at Summer. Using all of his might of flames, he broke free of the ice and kicked her back, not only back from where she started, but also slamming her face first into a wall. Her horn broke her landing. Likewise, the landing broke her horn.

It was a few moments before she was able to came to from the crash, and it was quite a rude awakening at that. Winter Night saw pieces of her horn scattered all over the floor surrounding her. She was experiencing what he liked to call the "despair event horizon", meaning that she might be forever changed by this event, for better or for worse. "No..." her denial came quiet at first, then it quickly got louder, "no, no, no, No, NO, NO!!!!!!" Winter Night turned to her brother who had essentially left her broken. "YOU!" She tried to get to her feet to fight again, but she was in no condition to stand, let alone fight. "I'LL KILL YOU!!!"

He simply looked at her, face stern and like a tombstone, only alive. "No, little sister. No you won't." He knelt over to her and began to talk down to her. He was not her father, and she always made him abundantly clear on that. But that never, not once, stopped him from trying to help in ways her father wouldn't. "You're broken now, and not just because of your horn." She stared at him with only contempt and pure, distilled hatred burning in her eyes. "You are broken because you were never prepared for this, and now I ask you. In what world could you have ever beaten me? You tried so hard for so many years to be better at me at what I do best. You cut corners and you cheated. You stopped caring about the world at large and let only a few in. You became nothing but an instrument of hate and vengeance. And now look at you. Your broken horn matches the rest of your pathetic and fractured existence. You did what you wanted. I did what I had to do." He turned his back on her and then began to walk out of the room and into the direction of the heroes he betrayed his best contract for, leaving behind only a few more words of wisdom. "If you take any lesson from this night, Winter, then learn this. Look at everything you did and why you did it and ask yourself: Was it worth doing?" And so he left, intending to join the ones he earlier aided. What became of his sister was up to her.

...

Three Heroes could hear the screaming of a mare that seemed to pierce the very air itself. They all knew what that had to have meant. Summer had won his bout with their new adversary. Miss Magnificent couldn’t help but further wonder what, exactly, made his give up on his current employment. Maybe he wasn’t fully on board with what they were planning from the very beginning. Maybe he always intended to betray them once there was an opportunity was seen. Or maybe he just felt obliged to tell them just because they let him live. Maybe he cared about her and was afraid that they would kill her. Different options kept running through her head, but they all eventually came back to one image playing over and over and over again. Him winking at her and saying that there were none like him. She tried to get it out of her head, so eventually she just stopped and looked at all the carnage that they left behind them, the massive amount of knocked out bodies and the like. It took some kind of apples to fight through all of these guys and not use lethal force like that through almost the entirety of this whole ordeal. Eventually, after fighting non-stop for what seemed like forever, they came across two very large, very nice, and very expensive looking doors. It looked like they were made from marehogany, a tree only found in the more tropical locals of Equestria.

“This is it,” Mare-do-well said in a deep and gritty voice. She was brought on this adventure only less than a day ago, yet she had more than earned her place here. “Are you guys ready for what’s lies inside?”

“There ain’t no turning back after this, girls,” Almost totally uncharacteristically of him, he shifted out of his fake accent and spoke in his true-blue country voice The other two were almost visibly shocked. “Miss Magnificent? Mare-do-well? Whatever happens beyond those doors, I want you both to know… It has been an honour fighting next to you.”

“The Great and Powerful Miss Magnificent concurs with that statement,” She was still running with her naturally hammy persona, but Mare-do-well could still feel the sincerity in her voice. “It has been an honour!”

“Likewise,” Mare-do-well finished the triangle of honour short and sweetly. She never had much of a stomach for the sappy, but even she had to admit. What was at stake here, whatever it was, was going to change everything. For better or worse, all three of them knew that what lay beyond these intricate doors might change the very world as they knew it. Even battered as they each were, their costumes torn and worn ragged from all the fighting, they knew this might be there only chance to end this heinous conspiracy that was deep within the foundation of her city. “Well? Are we just gonna stand here or are we going to save our city?”

They both looked at her with an alien expression at her enthusiasm at what she just said. The Hat knew her better, however. She was just as afraid as they were. Indeed, she’s never been so afraid. But she would never let the Hat see her scared. She was stronger than that.

Both the Hat and Mare-do-well opened the two huge doors easily enough. What they saw wasn’t all that interesting, really. They saw what looked like a theater, only in this one, the stage watched you. It was dark with the exception of the center of the room and the actual stage. They could see what looked like four different ponies of various different ages. It wasn’t until Mare-do-well flew up to question them did she see the horror of what they had walked into.

Everypony with the exception of the three invaders were dead. Blood stains were everywhere and Mare-do-well couldn’t help but feel disgusted by the horrors she was looking at.

“Mother of Celestia,” She said in a voice that was in pure awe at the carnage. Words could not even begin to describe what the three saw. The guards and the leadership and even some poor guy that was probably in a meeting, they were all dead. “What happened here?”