A Boundless Rivalry

by Chris-Cross13

Thinking With Portals

The air grew still outside of Sugarcube Corner. The crowd comprised of Twilight's friends, Vague, and Christian watched the two rivals. Twilight and Supernova remained still across the field, eyes locked on to one another, burning with anger and determination. Her friends' looks of worry stayed frozen on their faces, until they heard a small crunching sound. They turned to see Christian munching on some popcorn, (courtesy of Vague) patiently waiting for the first strike. He notices the ponies' staring at him and looks down at his snack. He shakes it in front of the ponies temptingly.

"Want some?"

"Christian, really?" AJ says sternly. "This isn't some sort of act. Two unicorns are about to enter a duel, one of them being our friend. If anything ya'll should..."

"YUM! POPCORN!" Pinkie pushes Applejack to the ground and starts helping herself to the yellow treat. AJ gets up off the ground and picks up her hat. She brushes some of the dirt off of it.

"Ugh, Nevermind." She and the others return their attention to the two unicorns, still unwavering to each other. A deathly silence now falls onto the battlefield. Sweat is running down the temple of the two rivals, waiting for one of them to do something. Finally, Supernova breaks the everlasting silence.

"Well 'Element of Magic', I'm waiting!" He yells over to the lavender mare impatiently as he throws his light blue pack over to the door of Sugarcube Corner. Twilight growls from afar. She starts mumbling to herself in anger.

"Big shot. First he thinks he can beat me, now he's taunting me? UGH!" She starts yelling. "Oh, don't worry! i'm just preparing myself!"

Supernova chuckles to himself. "You need to prep yourself? Wow, that's sad!" Twilight's eye twitched. She had finally cracked, that smart alike was gonna get. Twilight immediately fired a purple beam of magic from her horn. Supernova quickly turned his attention toward the oncoming attack, but did nothing to stop the magic, no shield, nothing. The audience looked on as the projectile moved closer, zipping past there heads. Twilight smirks at the purple projectile as it finally reaches its target...

...But yet, it misses.

The beam continues down its path toward the horizon line, disappearing from sight. The others' eyes widen in disbelief. Supernova vanished, but without using a teleportation spell, as there was no flash of magic. Twilight's eyes quickly darted around, trying to find her missing target. After a few minutes, she gave up and starts laughing.

"Ha! The coward must have given up! I knew it all along!" She marched right up to Christian, who was still eating his popcorn. "So much for your little friend! I told ya he was scared!" Christian just raised a brow and blinked.

"Oh, quite the contrary Twilight. I simply wanted to gain higher ground. To win of course." Twilight was startled at the voice. She and the others quickly look up at the roof of Sugarcube Corner to see the stallion leaning against the top spire of the building. All of them dropped there jaws in shock and awe... Except for Twilight, who gritted her teeth in anger.

"HOW THE HAY DID YOU GET UP THERE?!" She screamed.

Supernova smirked. "Remember those formula spells I was talking about?" Supernova suddenly leaped into the roof. Not off of the roof, INTO the roof, much to the crowds amazement. Twilight thought he had simply jumped down somewhere secretive. But when she backed up, She saw that there was no feasible way that he could have jumped down without being seen. Twilight yelped as she felt a hoof on her back. She turned to see Supernova standing next to a black hole in the ground behind her, with a cocky grin. "This is one of them." He points to the void. "It's a portal spell. Created it myself. In fact, the devices and the gate actually are just containment devices for the spell, so other ponies can use them."

"Big deal! Teleportation is much quicker!" Twilight announced. Supernova laughed lightly as he proceeded to circle his opponent.

"Maybe so. But teleportation drains more magical stamina then my portal spell. I mean sure, you can teleport a few times before becoming dead tired. But my portal spell can be cast tens of hundreds of times without making a unicorn out a breath." He pushed his face into Twilight's, rather uncomfortably. "Then again, a novice scientist such as yourself won't know." Twilight growled as she began to charge another beam.

"I'LL SHOW YOU NOVICE!" With lightning speed, she cast another spell. Supernova gasped but quickly fired a portal at his feet. The lavender beam just barely whizzed over his mane as he disappeared. Twilight's eyes quickly darted around to find the coward. "Where did he go?!" She repeats frantically as she zips around; searching in trees, bushes, and underneath Pinkie, who was still munching on Christian's popcorn.

"Over here!" Twilight turned to see Supernova waving by a far off tree. Twilight fired off a volley of purple magic at the tree. Supernova jumped into another portal as the shots soared over him, reducing the tree to nothing. Supernova reappeared in front of the crowd of Twilight's friends. "Right here!" He stuck his tongue out and mocked her. Twilight was now completely enraged at her moving target. She no longer had focus. She wanted to take down Supernova NOW! She fired another volley at the black stallion. Supernova quickly vanished once more, leaving her friends completely exposed to the oncoming attack,.

"TWILIGHT! DON'T!" They screamed as they get thrown back from the blast. They flew into the front of Sugarcube Corner with a crash. Twilight grimaced as she saw the impact. Her friends lay mangled in a pile, Christian being the first to recover, looked toward the rest of the disaster area.

"Oh dear sweet Celestia!" He quickly searched around in the pile of unconscious ponies. He grabbed something and pulled up to find a red and white container. He sighed. "We're good! The popcorn's fine!" Pinkie's head quickly popped out of the pile like a gopher out of his hole.

"Phew! That's good!" She stuck her hoof into the box and continued to eat. Supernova reappeared next to the contorted mess.

"Well at least you hit somepony!" Twilight veered toward him and fired again. Supernova dove into another portal and reappeared, making Twilight fire again. Christian and Pinkie watched intently as this cycle repeated for a few more minutes. Finally, Twilight started to become tired. She started to sweat heavily and pant. As Supernova disappeared and reappeared around her, her magic started to grow weak. Her purple beams become thinner and more translucent. After one more shot she collapsed onto the ground, dazed and feeble. As she tried to catch her breath, A black hole appeared in front of her as Supernova leaped out of it. He stood above the lavender unicorn, victorious and boasting.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here? The famed 'Element of Magic', lying on the ground in defeat. Face it Twilight, I was able to defeat you with only a single spell, and I haven't even broken a sweat!" The rest of the group gets up to see the outcome of the duel. They rush over to help their friend up, even Christian.

"Twilight, are you ok?" Spike asks.

Twilight looks up at the others, their faces hold concerned looks, Twilight ignores them and quickly looks back down in anger. She pushes them aside and walks back to Sugarcube Corner in a disgruntled fashion. She enters the building and slams the door angrily.

"She's probably just a sore loser."Christian exclaimed. He patted Supernova on the back. "Nice job Supernova, that was a pretty crazy duel. I'll make sure Celestia hears about that miss-fire though." He glaces back toward where Twilight stomped off.

"Oh, don't worry about it. If anything it was my fault." Supernova pleads.

"If you say so." Christian rolls his eyes.

"Anyway, now that that little...whatever is done with, where to next Supernova?" Rarity asks.

"Actually, I have work to attend to. Very urgent in fact. I must be off." He shakes Christian's hand vigorously. "Thanks once again for showing me around! It was nice to meet you all!" He casts a black light onto the ground at instantly, another portal opens. "So long everyone!" He jumps through the void and the portal closes after him. The remainder of the group blink emotionless.

"Cool guy." Vague comments.

"I still think he's evil." Pinkie adds.

"Whatever." Christian starts off for the castle. He turns back to see the motionless group. "Well? Are ya coming to help tell what happened to Celestia, or are you going to let Twilight rot in the dungeon?" Christian heads toward the castle once more. Dash looks at her friends behind her worryingly and nudges them to quickly catch up to Christian. The race after him to make sure Twilight stays out of some sort of trouble. Twilight peers through the thin crack of the door as they leave. When the coast is clear, she emerges from the bakery, irate at her defeat.

"A novice? A NOVICE?! I can't believe that little stuck up punk! He'd better stay out of town if he knows what's good for him!" She turns to stomp angrily back home, when she notices something brightly colored over by the side wall of Sugarcube Corner. She approaches the object to inspect it further. She's wide eyed at what she finds: Supernova's neon blue backpack, discarded like a crumbled up piece of paper. Twilight snickers to herself. "Well, i'm sure Stupidnova won't mind if I 'borrow' his backpack and return it when he apologizes for the way he acted." With that and a malicious grin, Twilight snatches the backpack and races back to her library.

The sun was now pecked over Manehatten, it was lunchtime on a blissful Saturday afternoon. Everypony was taking a break from the hustle and bustle to breathe and relax for a bit. However, just on the outskirts of the busy city, relaxation was the last thing on the mind. On a nearby hillside lies Supernova's massive observatory, shining in the hot sun. Inside, a black portal appears from the ground and a certain black stallion jumps out.

"Well, today has already been quite interesting!" Supernova said contently. "But now back to business." He calmly walks toward the far end of the room to the massive telescope. He sits down in a revolving chair and peers into lens with one eye. Supernova flips a switch and the gadgets around the telescope roar to life, beeping and cranking. To the left of the giant telescope is a table cluttered with notes of many formulas and observations of the night sky he has made in the past. Underneath the mess is a small marble ball that lies inside the table, used to navigate the immense telescope. Supernova uses his hoof to maneuver it. "Now, let's see if that star has changed any bit from last night." He looks out toward one of the many instruments and punches in some random coordinates. He looks back into the telescope toward a nearby solar system expecting to see a giant, bright red star smack in the middle of the planetary field...

"This can't be right! The star is gone!" Supernova starts to frantically search the surrounding area, trying to find the missing light. "Ma... Maybe I punched the coordinates wrong! Yes! That's it!" He turns toward the coordinate display again and looks down at one of the many pages of notes to spot the written X and Y coordinates. "No, that;s not it. It's a perfect match! But then how did it vanish?" He peers back to the empty void, when something alarming near toward where the star was. Supernova pushes the ball down to zoom in a hundred times to spot a small asteroid hovering, not moving at all. It seemed to be getting smaller as it reached the center of the star's original coordinates. Supernova scratches his head in confusion. "That's not possible! Asteroids are affected by gravity! They can't just be stationary in space! Unless..." Supernova quickly looks back to find the asteroid has vanished from sight... along with half of the system's planets. Supernova slowly looks away from the lens. His eyes wide eyed with fear. "Dear sweet Celestia..."

Author's Note:

YES! Finally! This chapter is done! Follow and read my blogs and stuff for updates! Sorry for the ridiculously long wait! The next one should not take this long!