The tale of a Juggernaut from the MW trilogy gets into shenanigans in equesria
A juggernaut, embroiled within the war between America and Russia, is ripped through a trans-dimensional rift to a new world called Equestria. Here, he will find out a fact that will shatter his prospect on life.
So I do not own My little ponies: Friendship is magic, or the Modern Warfare Trilogy. Heck, I barely have enough money to buy myself a full tank of gas. ==========================================================
A large, seven-foot tall Juggernaut-an intimidating soldier-covered in Kevlar armor, stands in the middle of a war-torn New York. Looking as a nuclear explosion erupts in mid-air, he slowly gets sucked into the air. Through the in-built intercom only one word could get out before the EMP air-burst rocked both sides of the skirmish was, “shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” before he was sucked into the eye of the blast.
The mane six were standing around a strange, prostrate figure that Rainbow Dash had found while she was practicing. It was on what seemed to be its back, seeing that most of its anatomy was blocked by its apparel. Rarity looked at it, and says,
“What is this… stuff that it is clothed in?”
The figure was covered in a stiff, unyielding material that was beige of color. Rainbow Dash poked a fabric plate at the groin area of the body that was emblazoned with a poorly painted-on black-hooded creature like itself with a scythe in its white hand. She shrugged, and suggests
“I think it might have a type of armor on, check out what this is.”
Rarity cast a ‘find material’ spell, and found that it was actually layers upon layers of a special type of fabric. She shared this knowledge with her friends, saying,
“This material is actually fabric! I must get some right away, and see what I can do with it! Please, help me with removing some of the plates this thing has on.”
Applejack and Fluttershy both look at each other with worried glances, and Fluttershy pipes up with her trademark whisper voice,
“Uhmmm… I don’t think that disturbing it will do any good, it looks pretty…intimidating.”
Applejack looks at the thing, and nods her head in conjunction with Fluttershy, and says,
“Ah fer one would not like tuh tussle with this feller, seein’ as its jus so big! Bigger that even Big Mac or Princess Celestia! ”
Rarity looks back at the entity, and comes to her senses. It was intimidating, indeed. It had a full-head helmet that had two little holes for the eyes, and some type of advanced breathing apparatus by what would be considered the mouth for pony-structure. There was a very high collar, which shortened a bit in the front that allowed it to see. It was bi-pedal, and on the ends of the arms were strange claw-like appendages that were blunt. They also had a deformed claw on the side of the appendage that faced upwards into the sky. It was wearing many boxes, ranging from small to large on its body that contained objects that would clatter around if one of the ponies would prod it. Rarity looks up into the eyes of her friends and pleads,
“What if we are all very careful? I simply must have this material to work on! Think of the possibilities! I would be using a fabric that had not been used before anypony has before!”
Pinkie had been jumping up and down, giggling at the armor’s fearsome composure, and stopped, suddenly. She just thought up the most amazing idea! Wake up the thing, and if it’s a meany-weany pants, we’ll throw it a party, and make it nicey-wicey! Pinky rushed at the figure screaming,
His Juggernaut suit flickered back on to life. It ran diagnostics on him, and administered a shot of adrenaline to kick him back into the conscious world. The first words he hears, fuzzy from being out for so long is, “Pin…GET..WH.” and then nothing. His eyes shot open, and he brought his hands in front of his face. They were unscathed, as with every other part of his body, but he was bruised, bad. He says,
“Мед барсук не дашь дерьмо ...”
Гм, мне в голову. Кто получил числа он ядерный взрыв, который меня ударил?”
He sat up slowly, grabbing hold of his M240LMG that he was lying on with one of his hands and looked in front of him. His grip on his LMG tightened as he saw the chromatic ponies in front of him, and shouted,
“Вы должны быть чертовски шутишь, пони!”
He flipped his gun to his front, and pointed it at the ponies, who were already cringing in fear, and completely terrified them. The pony with the pink mane fainted completely away. He rose up to his complete height, and towered over their heads. He shouted again,
“Положите ваши долбанные руки вверх, или я буду стрелять в вас! Руки вверх!”
The purple one spoke in English,
“Please, don’t hurt us! We don’t understand you, but we mean you no harm!”
The pink one was just smiling. It was increasingly creepy. He shot one round into the air, a sharp retort to the quietness of the outskirts of the forest, and watched a the ponies flailed around in sheer terror. His tense position relaxed, but the gun never moved away from the ponies. The rest of the ponies relaxed, except for the blue, rainbow colored…Pegasus. He just noticed that two ponies had horns, a white, marshmallow unicorn, and the purple one that spoke the first sentence to him, two had wings, the passed-out pony, and the rainbow-pony. Two were regular ponies. One was the unnerving pink one. As he was pondering this, he lowered his LMG, and didn’t notice that the rainbow-Pegasus was slowly raising her wings to take flight, until she was inn his face, and punching him whilst still in mid-air. The Juggernaut did not notice at the time, but he did take mercy on the Pegasus, and caught her by the throat with in-human qualities. He stared into her frightened eyes and growled out,
“ У вас есть мужество, мне это нравится.”
He pointed his gun at the pony, and released it, trailing her until she returned to the group he shook his head, and stated,
“Черт, вы говорите по-английски? Я надеюсь, что мне не придется тебя убить всех, ты слишком счастлив, слишкомчисты. “
He returned to his senses, and regained knowledge of the English language. He shouldered his M240, crouched down so that he would be at almost eye-level. The Juggernaut reached out his hand to try and assure them that he means no harm. Nothing is helpful with his dang helmet, makes him look like some type of alien. He booms with his deep Russian bass voice, in English,
“I am sorry if I startle you, little ponies. No harm intended, I am Juggernaut for reason, to be frightening. Give my condolences to pink-mane pony, and sorry for making her faint. But tell me, where in world am I?”
The ponies were still wild-eyed from the sheer terror that he had instilled upon them, not to mention that the creature that just was spouting complete gibberish not a second ago speak in a comprehendible language. He sighed, and started to stand up, until the purple one approached him she was frightened, sad, and angry at the same time. She didn’t say anything, but its horn started glowing. Understanding that something is going to happen to him, the Juggernaut starts listing,
“Alright, little ponies, you can do anything to me, but do not take anything off of body, or from armor. Things tend to go boom when that happens.”
The horn flashed with a bright light, and he fell into the ground.
=========================================================== Sorry about the overused words of ‘it’ ‘he’ ‘creature’ ‘figure’ and related shenanigans. Just trying to depict the confusion due to some alien creature being described by unfamiliar people. I am also going to ride the fearsome appearance HARD. When I first saw those creepy bastards in MW2 I completely shat myself. That, stacked with an unfamiliar thing is introduced? Ponies be shitting bricks.
For the second time in a row, The Juggernaut woke up from being knocked unconsciousness.
“Shit, ponies have hidden power. Not even I could guess that.”
He noticed his surroundings; he was situated on a much-too short bed in a room that looked to be carved out of a living tree. Juggernaut shifted to a sitting position on the bed, and it squealed aloud at the massive frame adding hundreds of pounds to the frame. He held his head with his hands and asked himself,
“What have I gotten myself into? I was in American city in one moment, and lose control at ponies! The ponies looked nice, and even that rainbow Pegasus was only assaulting me because I was being a complete dolt. I know I was just acting on how they told me in army! They live in cheerful, happy world without the pollution and corruption that my kind live with. On top of that, where in the hell am I? What the hell am I supposed to do here?” --- --- ---
Twilight Sparkle was standing outside of the room that she had put the strange creature when she heard what it said, and she was still unsure of the entity’s motives about this world. She decides to give it some space before approaching it.
--- --- ---
The purple pony came inside of the room, sat down at more than an arm’s length, and stared at the Juggernaut. He took this as an opportunity to take the initiative to apologize. He may be a soldier, but being nice could be possible, it was not a war zone.
“I am sorry, pony, for threatening you and your friends, I couldn’t help it, I was… working when I was pulled into this world. As you can see, my choice of…profession… is not the most peaceful.”
The purple pony looked at him, and cocked its head to the side, while placing its hoof on its mouth. The Juggernaut could never handle ‘cute’ things, and he got slightly annoyed.
“Hello… I am truly sorry about this, but can you stop calling me and my friends ‘ponies’ we have names, you know. Mine is Twilight Sparkle, but you can just call me Twilight. As for what you did to me and my friends, I thought that you did it on purpose, but if you didn’t actually do it just because, I guess I can partially forgive you. You did show Rainbow Dash a large amount of lenience, seeing that you could have killed her, but you said something in a foreign language and let her go. Do you have a name? Or a gender to speak of?”
He looked down at his crotch plate, and saw the grim reaper that his squad mates had painted on in his sleep, and said,
“Reaper, reaper will do. As for me, I am a male, and by judging from your voice, Twilight, I would take a guess that you are a female, correct? But anyway, I can most definitely infer that this is not the same world that I used to reside in.”
Twilight just pulled put a small slightly upturned smile, and her horn glowed again. Reaper observed her carefully, and tensed up. However, she just brought out a large notepad, an ink well, and a quill. She then went to go on to say,
“I need to know about everything there is to know about you, your society, and everything else that you can remember about your world!”
Reaper just sat there for a moment, considering his words carefully before continuing on with his explanation. Things will be left out, due to things that should not be brought up in a place like this. Reaper continues on to tell all he knew about the worlds history, the different countries, their politics, and the different governments that the world had within it.
“I don’t want to really talk about my past..”
Twilight frowned at this, and Reaper picked up on it, and said,
“Be happy with what I actually offered you, because I could have clammed up, and went into Russian mode on you.”
After this, Reaper made a ‘humph’ sound and crossed his arms in mock contempt. After this surprisingly childish move, Twilights mood visibly improved. Reaper was relieved that he would not have to bring that up in front of the new race of pony that seemed to be very sensitive to things like violence. Twilight got a new sparkle of curiosity in her eyes as she asked,
“Why do you speak in almost perfect Equestrian now, reaper? When we first came into contact with you, you sounded like you had only become fluent with the language a year, now you sound like you’ve been speaking the language for half of your life.”
Reaper laughs, and says’
“In my world, Twilight, the language is called English, and I started to learn that language when I was four. It is just hard to switch from Russian to English very quickly, so…”
However, Reaper was interrupted by a tan pony bucking down the door to the extra room and screams,
“Git away from that monster, Twi’! It don’t give a buck and takes whutever it wants! Ahm guna teach this here THING a lesson it wo’nt ferget!”
Reaper fluidly rose to his feet to look down at the offending pony. He stared at the pony, deciding to show it with a show of his own frightening twist. As he glared at the pony, it scrabbled back two steps, before regaining its footing. It looked up defiantly at the giant figure that towered over it and all of its kind. The pony screamed out,
“Nothing yer go’in to do, or able to do to me will make me scared a you, ya big bully! Try some a’ this apple family brand flank-buckin!”
Twilight stepped forward, and tried to console the screaming pony by saying,
“Applejack! This thing is a real creature with a past, and he was just confused when he was…”
Reaper inhaled a large breath, and started to speak, going from a low growl to a full-bodied yell that made the walls shake with the power behind his voice.
“you think to threaten me? I am the juggernaut, a physical manifestation of untouchable power. I DO NOT TAKE KINDLY TO SILLY LITTLE PONIES WHO INTERRUPT ME SPEAKING WITH SOMEONE AND THEN THREATEN ME.”
At the end of Reaper’s little tirade, he knelt down to face Applejack, and said,
“But I do take to ponies that are brave enough to face me when they think that their friends might be in danger. Foolish, but brave. I respect those qualities in anyone, and that is why I spared your rainbow-colored friend.”
Applejack’s face went from mild fear, to shock, and extreme agitation. She said nothing, but glowered, and turned around. Reaper was confused until he was hit with something that has the impact of being hit by a shotgun point-blank. To the face. The buck caused his head to whip back, and the onboard nano-computers computed the PSI that his helmet encountered. Needless to say, it was enough to break a lesser man’s head clean off. For effect, he slowly lowered his head to make eye contact with the mare who just bucked him, and said,
“Nice shot, although you should not try to do that again without a proper reason.”
Twilight walked up to where Reaper was kneeling in front of Applejack, with a look of amazement on her face. She, and Applejack had the same look of awe on their faces. Reaper just looked, and answered curtly,
“What, Is something wrong with my face-plate?”
Applejack and Twilight both looked at Reaper, and said, almost incredulity,
“You just survived a trademark applejack buck full-on to the face…you should be dead, or close to it. And you just blow it off like it’s a butterfly kiss!”
Reaper just shrugs and Applejack turns her muzzle towards Twilight, saying
“Well, Twi’, I came here to tell you that Trixie has come back to Ponyville with some type of gem that amplifies her powers. She nearly set Sugarcube Corner on fire, and now she’s coming this way!”
The lavender unicorn gasped, and her pupils dilated. She scanned for Reaper, trying to keep him out of the fiasco, but he seemed to have an amazing amount of stealth for how heavy he seemed to carry with that suit of armor. Applejack looked around, bewildered. She asked
“Sugar-cube, where is that monster that you saved from the road?”
Twilight frowned at this, ready to begin a tirade that he was simply confused and followed protocol that was mandated of him, but they were interrupted by a large crash of the front door being broken open, Trixie declaring her presence, and a loud gulp. After a short time, there was the loud retort of the thing that Reaper threatened them with the night before. =========================================================================
Sorry about the delay, my pre-reader pointed out some major flaws with my character before he dropped me like a grenade. No hard feelings, though.
Reaper was infuriated with this ‘Trixie’ pony. The gall that she showed, threatening the ponies that took him in, even though he threatened them himself. He had his LMG with him, and to find the front door was easy enough to find, one staircase into a main area housing it. The room was fairly dark, seeing that the day-glow was almost used-up. He headed for a darkened corner of the room, right next to the door.
--- --- --- Trixie was absolutely giddy with excitement. She found the tear of Io, an old gem used by Celestia in the old Nightmare wars to supplement her own powers. She felt so powerful, untouchable, even. It took all of the time she had with the gem that was orbiting the tip of her horn to master the power, and even longer to activate the spells that were locked inside of it. The way that it increased all of her own powers was exhilarating, to say the least. She would find Twilight Sparkle and crush her for ruining her show! As she approached the library that Twilight lived in, she used a simple firework spell, and ripped the door off of it’s hinges. Announcing her presence with an amplified voice spell,
“THE GREAT AND POWERFULL TRIXIE WISHES TO HAVE TWILIGHT SPARKLE DUEL HER IN A MAGICIAN’S DUEL!”
She waited for a response, and heard a faint *CHICK-CHICK* noise behind her, and the sound of something thudding towards her. As she turned, she saw a seven foot tall monster looming far above even Princess Celestia’s height. Normally, Trixie would be terrified, but the gem’s power had gotten to her. She cast a towering inferno spell that engulfed what she would think of as Twilight’s minion, and turned back to face into the tree-llibrary.
--- --- ---
If there would be no other word for the emotion that Reaper was feeling at that point, it would be completely pissed off. The raging inferno around him only served to fuel the rage that was burning within him. He was so worked up, that he emitted a faint glow. In fact, this glow could only be seen by a unicorn that was very skilled in magic, or detecting magic. This glow seemed to protect his body from the inferno, and he ripped through the destructive barrier, destroying the spell entirely. The self proclaimed ‘Trixie’ snapped her head back at Reaper, sensing the spell being interrupted, and she saw the faint glow around his body. Taking two strides, he came within arm’s reach, and picked the blue mare up by her jaw. The only sound she could make before the gem was crushed under Reaper’s powerful fingers was an amplified gulp. Trixie could see more red start to seep from his hand, and then get sucked back in. She raised her eyes to where Reaper’s eye-holes, and saw red pouring out of them, streaming up to the ceiling. Reaper then spoke, in not the fake-roar he used on Applejack, but the calm, menacing, dripping tone, laden with fury, and hate. It was terrifying to hear. Reaper growled out,
“ Now that your power factory has been taken away from you, you lose the tough-guy act, huh? I hate people when they so that, it makes me want to kill them. Luckily for you, though, I need to show Twilight that I am not just a mindless killer.”
He throws Trixie out of the doorway, and in the front of the house. He calmly walked outside, shaking his head at the groveling figure before him. Trixie got up finally, horn glowing. An explosion, based at Reaper’s feet, burst with an incandescent light instead of with sound, sending him flying up into the air about 100 feet. Reaper landed on his chest and sprang, on all fours, at Trixie and ensnaring her in a headlock. He stood on his feet, holding Trixie by her horn. The red smoke boiling from Reaper’s eye-slots increased to something akin to a smokestack, and he shook Trixie around like a rag-doll. He brought Trixie to his faceplate again and said,
“Now, you are going to walk out of this town, and not return until you decide to come to a peaceful resolution with Twilight. If I find you in this town without a sorry heart, and an apology on the tongue, I am going to rip that pretty little horn straight out of your head, and shove it up your ass so hard, you’ll choke on it.”
Again, he threw the showmare another 200 feet onto the road by Twilight’s house. Trixie was squirming on the floor, panting. When Reaper was holding her horn, he was slowly sapping her own magical power. She looked up at her assailant, and asked,
“What are you?”
Reaper looked down, and remembered the Juggernaut motto: The brotherhood of those who have nothing left, we were offered a mask, and we shaped it into the visage of death. He looked down, a red mist enveloping his vision, for only a moment. He said,
“They told me that I could become anything, so I became death. I am the reaper.”
Trixie got on her hooves, and she was frightened by what she saw, and heard. Reaper saw that she was in fit state again, and brought up his M240, and aimed it at the blue mare. He uttered out his ultimatum,
“You have ten seconds, run. I will kill you if you don’t.”
He started counting, and Trixie scrabbled to get a grip.
“TEN…NINE…EIGHT…SEVEN…SIX…FIVE…”
Trixie was half as far as he thought, but was making steady ground.
“FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE!”
Trixie was still in shouting range, and, to give her a little ‘motivation’, he fired a bullet close enough to Trixie’s ear for her to hear, and feel the heat, and she skedaddled. Reaper laughed, and he suddenly felt the power that he had absorbed from both the gem, and Trixie. He felt fantastic! It was like the feeling of working out for a whole year, and figuring out how your limits were pushed ahead, and blowing them out of the water. Reaper felt stronger, lighter, and generally pain-free, even though the trans-dimensional warp, and the explosion had left almost every part of his body in bruises, and one of his ribs were affected with a hairline fracture, as the nano-bots told him. He was drunk off of the power, he didn’t care for the pain, or what he will be feeling. He felt so good, he even barely noticed a certain farmpony, who screamed,
“You, you monster!” --- --- --- Twilight stood, frozen with shock with what she just heard. She had sneaked off with Reaper’s device after a memory spell, and a little manipulation of the telekinesis magic, she figured out how to operate the gun. She had seen what it could do to a tree, not wanting to see what it could do to pony flesh. Twilight kept replaying the scene over and over again. Applejack had recovered faster, the only memories of the night before being the only thing to hinder her movement. AJ gallops down the two flights of stairs, and headed outside after seeing the carnage inside. She finally reached Reaper, and she screamed,
“You, you monster!”
Hearing this snapped Twilight out of her ponderings, and she ran to where AJ and Reaper were standing. There was something missing. Where was the blood? The gore? The various body parts cut from Trixie by the pointed metal? She started to shudder, feeling the immense power of the tear of Io, and at what Reaper was doing. His eye-slits seemed to be emitting a faint red mist. So faint, that she thought of it as a trick of the mind. That and he was laughing. This was no regular chuckle; it was a mixture of a laugh filled with mirth, and the sound created by a madman. It created a distorted sound, horrible to hear. He turned and looked. Reaper saw who was yelling at him, the laughing stopped, and he said,
Sorry about the small chapter, hopefully the action made up for it. I am finding this VERY enjoyable, so expect a chapter every day or so, depending on how much I feel like writing. Also 2000 word cap? Not happening anytime soon.
AJ was enraged, even ditzy could figure it out by the amount of foam and spittle flying from her mouth. Reaper was not impressed. One time, his drill instructor put three whole Alka-Seltzer tablets in his mouth, and chased subordinates around the camp while singing nursery rhymes. THAT was scary. But the really scary thing that was standing in front of him was Twilight sparkle. She was staring at the crater left by Trixie’s last attack. She was smoking. When she looked up at Reaper, her mane started to smolder, and her coat started getting singed with scorch marks. He needed to diffuse the situation, fast.
“When I shot my gun, it was just a warning to make Trixie shift herself faster out of this town. She won’t come back until she has an apology for what happened.”
AJ stopped frothing at this, and said,
“Unless ah-corse she finds something else stronger then that thing she did have today…”
She trailed off, letting the implications continue on without her voicing it. Reaper was fine with what he would do to Trixie, but that comment seemed to make Twilight snap. To Reaper’s perception, she ignited, without the bloodcurdling screams and death. And Twilight charged at Reaper. He sidestepped as she ran past, grabbing her horn and throwing her into the floor. She got up and growled, again she charged at Reaper. Reaper grabbed the horn this time, and noticed that the fire seemed to splutter whenever he made physical contact with Twilight’s horn, do he tried to hold her. This action seemed to make psycho-Twilight remember that she had magic within her disposal, and that it was heightened in this state. Needless to say, when she cast that ‘blastback’ spell, it turned into a small nuclear reaction. They both went for a relatively short trip to feel the majesty of Pegasus flight. When they landed, Reaper had already went for two flights for the day, and he couldn’t find his suitcase. Crazy-Twilight got up relatively quickly, and wandered over to where Reaper was lying half-senseless. She muttered something like ‘Now I will get your power’ before her horn started glowing red. Reaper used his last reserves by grabbing hold of Twilight’s horn, and put his massive frame atop of her to hold her down while calling out to Applejack
“Applejack! I need you to make sure that I keep my hands on her horn, and that she does not kick me off of her! Only let me off if regular Twilight comes back, or if she passes out. Got it?”
AJ dumbly nodded, and Reaper blacked out.
--- --- ---
Visions of his malevolent guardian float through his unconscious dreams. It was a bright white amorphous blob that spoke to him in his most trying times of his life. Today, it was a simple presence to help guide him out of his own loss of conscience. They passed through a large scattering of memories, mostly unsavory, and they found a door. Reaper saw this as a doorway to the outside world, and turned to his guardian, saying,
“Goodbye, guardian. It is always a pleasure.”
The guardian expressed feelings of gratitude by sending waves of feelings, and it did something unpredictable: it hugged him. Or at least, as much physical contact that its ethereal form allowed it to touch him, and blew him through the door.
--- --- ---
Reaper was slowly regaining his grip with the real world, he could hear a muffled conversation with two voices, probably Applejack, and Twilight.
“He trah’d to save yah, but Ah still don’t trust ‘im. He still threatened RD!” Twilight’s voice cuts in,
“I feel horrible about it, though. He started to emit a weird red aura, and for some reason, I wanted to control it, rule over it. I really must research about this! AJ, do you remember what the gem that Trixie had looked like? Or what it was doing in response to her, or her body?”
AJ seemed to be very guilty by her voice.
“Now, Twi’, Ahm sorry, but ah don’t remember a thing.”
Twilight seemed a little downcast, but had a hint of hope tinged with her own guilt.
“If Reaper can forgive me, perhaps he can tell us what it looked like. Hopefully, he’ll wake-up soon. I cast a basic body check spell, and he is covered from head to foot with bad bruises.”
That is when Reaper decided to show signs of life. He shifted his body, feeling more stiff and sore than he had in his entire life. That is saying something. Reaper thought that the one time where he fell 50 stories with nothing but an impromptu tarp-parachute, and about fifty blocks of Semtex to create a cushioning shockwave. That hurt like hell.
“Oh, he’s waking up!”
Reaper grunts, and says,
“О, Боже, мою голову. Я ценю озабоченность своим здоровьем, все же.”
Reaper’s eyes snapped open. Shit, he thought, might as well try to speak in English again.
“Сделать Стимуляторы Правовая!”
Twilight came into view, frowning at Reaper. She obviously didn’t like the prospect of having someone who she just met being demoted to a person who could just sit there and shout complete gibberish for the rest of its life. Reaper was Incredulous.
“Что, черт возьми? Почему я застрял на Россию режим?”
Applejack came over to Twilight’s side with a scowl, she wasn’t enjoying the prospect either. Reaper decided to screw around with the poor little ponies.
“Что ж, похоже, что я могу сказать что-нибудь и вы не можетепонять. Твой отец пахло бузина, а твоя мать хомяка. Вашамать матери мула. Черт побери, я должен делать это чаще.”
Twilight was looking stupefied, and Applejack was not amused. Applejack said,
“Hey Twi’, I think that I have a ‘resolution’ to this here problem.”
Reaper looked at the mares, and saw that Applejack was turning around again. A large cracking noise resounds around the room as she put all of her might into the buck. Reaper flailed around his arms, and shouted out,
“OW! Applejack should take legs, and throw self through intra-dimensional rift and see real pain!”
Reaper tried to get up, but he under-estimated the damage that the three encounters left upon his body, and immediately slumped into the bed, earning another creak from the little, over-strained frame. Really, he thought, what can I do to get this insane pony from bucking me? Reaper sighed, and turned his head to address the two ponies that were overseeing him. Judging from the expressions of their faces, it was time for a full explanation of what just happened. Great.
“Well, Twilight, care to tell me what the hell just happened to you and being set on fire?”
Twilight looked away guiltily for a second, before swinging her head back to face Reaper.
“I can’t really explain what happened. From what I got from what I remember from before I switched, and what I got from AJ is that I went into my raw magical form, and tried to absorb your power. Remember being overpowered by the sheer amount that you had, and then my mind goes blank. Next thing I know is that you’re holding onto my horn, siphoning my power into you, and you’re unconscious.”
Reaper remembers what happened to Trixie and what he did with the gem she had… and his hand was still clenched closed. He opens his hand, and sees a red, teardrop-shaped gem. Twilight looks at it, and gasps. She says,
“That is exactly the same power that you were saturated with when I snapped! I wonder what type of gem this is, and why a human, who lives in a world without magic, can absorb it. I need to research all of this! So little time!”
Twilight abruptly left Reaper and Applejack, perhaps by design, alone with just each other. Reaper saw this to help clear up some things with the mare in front of him. He would probably have to do this with all the other ponies that he initially met. Except that crazy pink one. She didn’t seem to be too terribly upset. That and he didn’t want to see her in a dark alley with nothing but a butcher’s knife and a tray of cupcakes.
“What is your problem with me? All you do is call me a monster, kick me, and try to degrade me in any way possible. I would apologize, if you wanted it, but all of my attempts at talking to you seem to end with getting bucked in the face, or getting knocked out.”
Applejack looked peeved for a moment, until she did go through al of her past interactions with him, and it did end up with a bucking, or him falling to the floor like a bushel of apples.
“Ahm sorry, but ah still don’t trust you. Ah would take an apology, and I think that you should go, explain the situation, and ahpologize to them, too.”
Reaper shook his head, and put his hand up to his faceplate, a sign of resignation, and thankfulness that it didn’t turn into a blood feud over his first few hours of a new world. However, there was a problem with Applejack’s reasoning- his inability to move.
“Alright, I apologize for going ape-shit on you and your friends, and I didn’t really mean it, I was confused. I would also do this for your friends, but according to all of my bruises, I can’t really move.”
AJ simply laughed, and said,
“Don’t think I didn’t bring thaht to thought, Ah’ll gather the group together tomorrow when you feel better. No gett’in outta this one, buddy.”
Reaper just shrugged as best as he could, and settled down to sleep, waving AJ off. --- --- ---
He was seeing his guardian again, something must be coming up, something even Reaper himself couldn’t handle without a small amount of psychological preparation. His guardian was always like that, there for him when something groundbreaking would happen to him, and skew his complete take upon reality. If being thrown through a multi-dimensional rift, attacking a power-hungry unicorn, and pacifying a primal unicorn hell-bent on absorbing his life-energy wasn’t life-changing, he didn’t know what was. Reaper turned to the bright, amorphous blob, and asked;
“Why am I here, guardian?”
The guardian and Reaper were standing in front of a picture of him and his family, standing together. It gave him a mental nudge towards the picture. Reaper looked at it, struggling to remember what they were doing. He recalled the background, and remembered that it was on his fourth birthday, they went to an amusement park to ride some of his first rides. He turned to the guardian, and said,
“Why are you showing me this, guardian?”
The only response he got was a wave of sadness, and a tinge of regret. A door materialized behind Reaper, and drew him in. Reaper realized something; he didn’t recognize his parents anymore. --- --- ---
Reaper woke to a farm pony prodding his faceplate, quite rudely, if he could say so himself.
“WAKE UP, SLEEPY-DEAD!”
Came a full-bodied yell from Applejack. God, Reaper thought that he would leave breathing in someone’s morning-breath at boot camp. The air rebreather would filter out poisonous gasses, but no amount of filters would ever stop that smell from reaching his olfactory nerves.
“Good, yer up. Yew sleep harder than Big Mac’ after a long day’s work.”
Reaper tried to move today. He was still sore and stiff, but not to the point of being almost immobile. He had actually made it onto his rear, and put his feet on the floor before slumping down in exhaustion. Being covered in bruises were very draining, and the nanobots administering a small amount of morphine weren’t helping. All that did was make him sleepy, but the failsafe within the nanobots did not allow him to shut that particular function.
“What time is it, Applejack? I can’t function without sleep, and this painkiller is doing nothing to keep me awake.”
Applejack looks at Reaper, and says,
“Wah, it’s four ‘oh clock in the morning, and if’n we are going to make everything up to everypony, we’d better make the rounds now!”
Reaper looks at her, feeling incredulous. Four o’ clock in the morning? This is insane to even war zone standards. Also, they are going to go see everyone- or everypony-at their houses? He can barely get on his feet. Whatever. Time to wake-up Twilight to tell her about the gem and stall for more time to gain more strength. Genious!
“I think that I need to talk to Twilight first about the gem before we go out to meet everybody else.”
Applejack looked at Reaper with a scrutinizing consideration, but ended up relenting. Twilight DID say that she needed to talk to him once he had recovered enough.
“Alrigh’ we can talk to Twi’, let me go wake her up.”
Applejack turned, and walked out of the room. There was a short pause, and then there was a thump, crackle, and a short chuckle from AJ. She returned with a bedraggled Twilight, with a small grimace from being up so early.
“Hey, you wanted to talk to me about the gem I crushed?”
Twilight brightened up at this statement, and before she could start asking questions, Reaper decided that to start talking about the darned thing before she could start asking things like ‘what was its approximate diameter?’ or ‘how many giga-watts of unicorn power did it generate when it was used? At rest?’ or similar questions of lunacy that would be expected of one with her nature. He held up a hand to stem the tide of oncoming questions, and said,
“It was a my-fist sized gem, with many imperfections. It was a light-red, almost like a ruby, but with almost one-hundred sides to it. It orbited around Trixie’s horn, and when she cast a spell, a glow traveled up her horn to the gem, and bounced back o the base of her horn before it got cast. Alright, Lets go Applejack.”
Twilight had put that all on a scroll, and what Reaper thought, was probably writing down book names that she could refer to for finding what the gem could be. He and AJ walked down the staircase, and out of the building. Amazingly, the front door was fixed, and they walked deeper into ponyville. They came into the town square without encountering any ponies, and, based off of Reaper’s reasoning’s, they were very smart ponies. They came up to a building created by what seemed to be gingerbread, and Reaper asked AJ who lived in the building. She replied with a devious smile,
“You’ll see yerself soon enough.”
They opened the front door, and the next thing he knew, Reaper was hit in the face by a ridiculously fast pink blur.
Sorry for the long week of waiting. I had a serious writers block that I had to chip away at with nothing but a rubber duck and a lifetime supply of glazed donuts. This took a long time. Hopefully, the length of this chap. is long enough. Also, W00T, 3000 word limit blown out of the water.
As Reaper was knocked down by the pink thing, he just thought, ‘Down for the count, Applejack can handle this. Peace out.’ He then impacted with the ground, making a very loud, dull *clunk* noise. He observed the pink thing undulating on his faceplate, and remembered something. Pink . Pink… where had Reaper seen this color before that had posed a great importance other than a regular passing color? The memories of two nights ago came rushing back to the front of his mind, filling his eyes with visions of the grinning… pink pony… All Reaper wanted to have is that pony NOT near his face, even if it is protected by a bullet-proof helmet, and he was covered in Kevlar armor.
“Alright, you had your fun, now off of my face, please.”
He picked up the chortling pink pony to reveal the face of Applejack, brimming with horribly contained mirth. Reaper slowly got up to his feet, holding the squirming pony under his arm like a football. Once he fully got his balance, he hoisted up the giggling pink ball of fur to his faceplate, and said,
“What is the meaning of all of this?”
The pink pony looked at Reaper with a smile that would not be possible under the laws of physics. This, too made Reaper skeeved out. The laws of physics were made, and under no circumstances were they to be broken. Reaper liked the law of physics, and this pony brutally ripped them to shreds, and cooked all of the remnants of them into a big, physics cake. She took in one big gulp of air, and said,
“Heya, I’m Pinkie Pie, but you can call me pinkie, what’s your name? and I cant believe that you came to see me so soon, I mean two days may seem a lot, but then Trixie showed up and said ‘I am all powerful, obey me!’ and then she put sugarcube corner into a big oven, and I was like ’Sugarcube Corner isn’t actually made out of gingerbread! I already tried, and then I remembered about you, and I need to make you a party for being the new pony, or whatever you are, and I wonder what type of cake you like, but then I remembered that you have that silly thing over your face, and I wondered if you could eat with that thing on, and if you had to eat something yucky like foal-food, or just a puree of regular food! Do you?”
Reaper just stood in sheer terror of what the pink, furball of energy just did. If he listened hard enough, he could hear the basic laws of biological beings scream in pain of what just happened. Pinkie Pie just said that in one, giant breath. One, her body was too small to sustain that amount of oxygen… Actually, no, Reaper thought, go with the flow…acceptance. Perhaps It is just normal for their bodies to do that. The logical part of his brain was feverishly looking for a metaphysical gun to put itself out of its misery, but it had guessed at this while it was behaving normally, and destroyed all of it’s guns. Wait, Reaper thought, Pinkie Pie is awaiting a response, activate dialogue protocol. He set Pinkie down carefully, and she started bouncing up and down.
“Hello, Pinkie. My name is Reaper. First off, I would like to apologize for what happened two days ago, I didn’t mean it, and I was confused. Secondly, no parties. You might think I’m not as scary as I seem, but I don’t want to be upsetting the entire town with the ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ fiasco, and have to be prodded with pitchforks and being set on fire.”
Pinkie’s smile faded a bit, almost to regular-sized proportions, but she thought of a good idea to her, and she said,
“Well, all we need is some type of small-town catastrophe that you can solve to get everypony’s attention and acceptance! For the apology, no need! I knew you weren’t a meany-beaney pants at the end.”
Reaper’s eyes, often unused for emotion, showed a sign under his helmet. It was a twitch, an involuntary reaction to stress. A reaction that surprised even him. This pony has an unstoppable thirst for having parties. A sudden noise made Reaper look behind him, and he saw pinkie, to his front another pinkie, and to his left, you guessed it, pinkie. After checking every conceivable angle, and only coming up with the dimensional drifter, he turned to Applejack, almost beseechingly, to bring him to the next pony that he had to apologize to. She must have picked up on this fact, because she expedited the situation by saying,
“Pinkie, I think we need to go ohn with see’in the rest of our friends, and make it back in time at Twi’s library to noh’t cause a commotion.”
Pinkie just responded with a ‘seeya’ before bouncing off into Sugarcube Corner to do whatever she was going to do. Reaper and Applejack took off to the right of the building they were at, towards the other end of the town, presumably towards another pony abode. Applejack speaks up,
“Again, ahm sorry fer not tell’in yew about Pinkie, Ah just wanted to see what you did before bringing yew to another one of mah friends, she was the least shook-up ahbout the whole shindig that happened. Were goi’n to see Rarity, a real ‘classy’ pony. Ah doh’nt care for what she does, frilly froo-froo stuff, but you might like her.”
Reaper nods, and they eventually come to a rest in front of a tower-like building with a carousel motif that is white with purple trimmings. In the front of the store there is a sign that says ‘Carousel Boutique’ Reaper hazarded a guess that this is where they would meet Rarity. The last time he went into a store like this, it was set on fire, and it inspired a new line of flame-retardant clothing. Hopefully, this visit will include less fire and burning to the ground. Applejack asked,
“Are yew ready? Ah don’t know whats gonna happen when we step hoof in there.”
Reaper nodded, and they opened the door. From the list of opening times by the door, Reaper could deduce that Rarity opened her shop early, much to his own sleeping habits. They opened the door, and a jingling bell announced their presence to the shop. In short order, they heard a soft clopping of Rarity moving about the shop, and were greeted by her saying,
“Welcome to the Carousel Boutique, where everything is *AUGHahahah*”
Her greeting was cut short by her appearance in the doorway to the main room, and seeing Reaper. She was a white pony, with a painstakingly curled mane. Reaper is surprised by the amounts of convenient pauses that these ponies give him. They should be handing them away like hotcakes. He said,
“Please, before you start screaming and running away, I would like to apologize for what I did two nights ago, I was simply confused. Please don’t hold this against me, and I hope that we can start again without me threatening you and spouting gibberish.”
Rarity continued to scream, shrilly. Reaper turned off the sound capacitors in his helmet, but even muffling the sound didn’t stop that high-pitched noise from piercing his thick helm. Applejack walked up to her, and screamed something that was unintelligible to Reaper, and Rarity stopped screaming. Reaper turns his sound capacitors back on, bringing everything into clarity. Rarity looks a Reaper with a mix of curiosity, fear, and a strange type of insanity only to be described as ‘hunger’. Reaper shifts uneasily under her scrutiny, and tries to strike up a conversation,
“Hello? Are you still in there? I just wanted to apologize about what happened two days before.”
She seems to shake out of the trance that she was in, and said,
“Alright… But, do be careful around me and my friends, I don’t want a reoccurrence to what happened earlier. Anyway, what DO you call that material that you are wearing? I MUST know what it is, we simply do not have that in my world, and if I can get a sample to create more of it, I shall be the new sensation of the entirety of Equestria!”
Reaper was confused by this statement, not having known, or even thought, about things like this not being needed, or used in this world. Kevlar was a molecular-synthesized fiber, or in other terms, advanced science. The ponies that lived in this town had thatched roofs. For god’s sake, THATCHED ROOFS. Reaper took a guess that this world had not yet found the magical wonders of science, or ever will be. Science was bred out of need, and they had no need. They had an unnatural control over other things with unicorn magic. Once he got an adequate response, he said,
“It is basically a type of fabric that starts out as a liquid, and is then spun into fibers, which are turned into a fabric. It actually is more blown through the air like cotton candy, and forms like that in jets of air.”
At the mention of cotton candy, a certain pink pony with mane and tail like the candy appeared and shouted ‘Yay for candy!’ before disappearing into thin-air. This time, Reaper’s logical side of his brain tried to repeatedly bang itself into the wall of consciousness that separated itself from the illogical half. This proved that the walls are made out of some type of metaphysical fluffy substance. Rarity looked very disappointed at the fact that Kevlar was created by means not possible to her, and Reaper tried to cheer her up by saying,
“If you want to look on the bright side, It gets disintegrated by UV rays that are emitted by the sun. So unless you created a type of UV-blocking gel, the suits would not be permanent.”
Rarity looked even more downcast, and Reaper kicked himself in the butt. If anything, he wanted to make at least amicable ground with the ponies, not put them into a state of some type of manic depression. He gave himself a face-palm, and from what he had seen from Twilight, it was a common action for ponies to do. Hopefully, they won’t catch on to his frustration and blow it out of proportion. Unfortunately, they do. Rarity looks at Reaper, and hump’s before turning around, nose held high, and trotting out of the room. She didn’t even introduce herself. Applejack looks pityingly at Reaper, and says,
“Ahm sorry bout’ tha, she is one a those high-class ponies that don’t take kindly to ‘immodest’ expressions. She’s probably jus shook up about two nights ago, and that she cant have that fancy-shmancy fabric a’ yours. Ah feel yer pain.”
She mentions with her hoof towards the door of the boutique, and they walk out. Applejack explains the next pony they are going to visit, the one that he made pass out due to being so scared. Great, he was going to need to become the great teddy-bear that he knows he isn’t. Heck, Reaper is still in American-city invasion mode. Looking at and double checking available cover, makeshift weapons, trying to do a bullet count on a gun that isn’t there, the whole shebang. AJ goes on to explain that this certain pony is a veterinarian, and takes care of al the animals that live near Ponyville. She is also very, very reclusive, and probably will lock-up, and not move for a while. They approach Fluttershy’s abode, a humble little cottage surrounded by bird-houses, and other wild-animal paraphernalia. As they walk up to the front door, they hear a faint ‘eep’ and a faint whispering, followed by a dull thump. The front door is opened to an almost hair width crack, and Fluttershy whispers out,
“Applejack? Why are you here so early? I was about to…”
She notices Reaper, and eeps once before the door is somehow slammed shut, even though the door is seemingly closed. Again, there was a dull thump. The door creeped back open to reveal a white bunny with a face of indifference. A regular person might have ‘dawwd’ at this display, but the insanity in the back of Reaper’s head started screaming something about fire and burning everything. He knelt down to the scowling white bunny who was staring up at him with animosity that knew no bounds. Seventy-five percent of Reaper rationalized that he needed to befriend, or show some kindness to the bunny to gain Fluttershy’s trust, and twenty-five percent of him was screaming about setting things on fire while stomping the life out of the bunny while expelling tremendous gouts of fire into the forest. The rational seventy-five was trying it’s best to ignore the twenty-five. Reaper reached deep inside of himself to find a comforting voice and said,
“Hello, little bunny. Why is your pony friend hiding in the house? I just want to apologize about what happened earlier. Can I see her please?”
The bunny crossed his arms, and walked inside of the cottage. Reaper looked at AJ, and the only explanation she had was to rear back on her hind legs, and give a shrug while maintaining a blank expression on her face. The thump occurred again, and more whispers. An occasional thump was heard until Fluttershy lightly walked into the threshold of the house, coming face-to-face with Reaper, she eeped, took a step back, and sat on her haunches. Fluttershy then flicked her mane to cover her face. The now repressed twenty-percent of insanity flared up to about thirty, and reaper thought about how to keep his killing urges down. Fluttershy shyly whispered,
“Uhmm, my name is Fluttershy, and uhmmmm… I’m sorry that I slammed the door on you.”
Reaper was surprised, and awe-struck on how some people could withstand something that wronged them, and somehow find a way to apologize to them. He said,
“There’s nothing to apologize about, Fluttershy. I did a very bad thing to you and your friends, and I am the one that should be apologizing to you. Speaking of which, would you ever accept my apologies for making you faint that unfortunate night?”
Fluttershy had a small smile on her muzzle, a she just nodded. Reaper was relieved that he had not made another enemy with one of the first-encounter ponies. As he dot up, his body repaid all of the effort he had put in to staying upright with an all-encompassing wave of pain that tingled through his body. He made a small grunting noise that Fluttershy noticed. Her veterinarian instincts might have kicked in, or she just thought that Reaper was a kind of animal that was in pain, but she started to care for him by saying,
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Applejack, why did you make him walk all the way here if he was hurt!”
She strongly, but gently made Reaper lie down on the floor, and she attempted to try and check his wounds. Reaper protested against having her do that, since he was in a suit that covered his whole body, and she couldn’t access his actual form. He gave up on objecting, and humored her for a while until he answered a gauntlet of questions and finally got to his feet after getting a surprising hug from Fluttershy. After Reaper fully stood up, Fluttershy was all hiding behind hair, and whispered speaking. After a short time of pleasantries, and learning about Fluttershy, Reaper and Applejack headed out the door on the way to their last destination. As Reaper learned, they were making their way to Applejack’s home, sweet apple acres in pursuit of Rainbow Dash, who was most likely was sleeping in one of her apple trees. As Applejack explained a small bit about her, she cautiously included the sonic rain-boom. Reaper stopped in his tracks for a second, and he made quick mental mathematics, finally coming to the conclusion that she would have to reach speeds higher than mach 1, and accelerating to an even greater speed than that after piercing the barrier. The logical side of his mind didn’t care anymore, it just signaled for more psychotherapy drugs. Applejack was worried, but Reaper explained that the breaking of the sound barrier was not something to be idly done while not in special types of vehicles, and if tried in just bare skin, bad things would happen. AJ nodded in understanding, and went on to tell that Rainbow was the most shaken-up because she couldn’t protect her friends, and she felt like she was betraying her friends. As they approached the apple orchard, Reaper felt like he was being watched, but he didn’t need to drag Applejack into a fight that would probably only involve him. From the state of the trees, which had apple blossoms, Reaper guessed it was late spring, early summer. As they arrived at a tree on the top of a mountain, they saw a strip of rainbow-colored hair sticking out of one of the lower branches. Applejack turned and bucked the tree. This would explain the raw power behind those legs, a life of using them to harvest acres of apple trees. Rainbow came falling down, and landed with a thump. She took one look at me, mouth agape, and took off with an astounding speed. Applejack replied with a ‘cosdarnit’ and ran off in Rainbow’s general direction. This left Reaper alone, in the middle of acres of land of unfamiliar territory, and no means of protecting himself save hand-to-hand combat. Reaper decided to lie down in the clearing of the hill, and watch as the sun slowly rose from the horizon. After a while of appreciation, he got up to stretch before choosing a random direction to set off in. As he took his first step, he felt a large hoof tap the side of his helmet with a long, drawn-out,
“Hey there, jackass.”
Reaper turned to see a massive red draft-horse preparing to buck, and got two massive hooves to the chest. This definitely broke the ribcage a bit, and Reaper got to feel the majesty of flying, yet again. He definitely thought about getting something to fly in, because he was clocking in so many frequent flyer miles. Reaper hit the ground with a sickening *thud*, and the last thing going through his brain was,
“This is Reaper, checking out of the building. Sleepytimenow.”
IS THIS A NEW CHAPTER? yes. IS MY LAPTOP STILL BROKEN TO ALL HELL? Yes. THEN HOW? Computer wizardry on my part. You're welcome. I decided to rip apart my laptop before I brought it to best buy, and accessed the memory to download on my other computer. Now its on two computers and in my E-mail.
Oh, this is kinda a practice round for me here. If the chapter feels confusing or bad to too many people, Im going to rip it apart, clean things out, fill them with science, scoop out the tumors, and the story will get another 60 dollars. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+===================
Big Mac was sitting on Reaper’s chest, waiting for him to wake up. Suddenly, in his dreams, Reaper grabbed Big Mac by the neck, and forced him into a teddy-bear hug. He mumbled something about the Russian brown bear before squeezing Big Mac. And there they were, Reaper lying on his back, with Macintosh spread-eagled across his chest. Mac was surprised with the monster’s strength, and he could not break out of Reaper’s embrace for all he tried. Needless to say, Big Mac prayed to Celestia to not be caught in this position by one of his two sisters, or Granny Apple.
--- --- ---
This time, Reaper was standing in front of the guardian, and the guardian alone. It started singing a lullaby that both it and Reaper’s mother sang to him in his sleep.
Hush a bye, Don’t you cry, Go to sleep my little baby. When you wake, You shall have, All the little ponies.
In your bed, Momma said, Babies riding off to dreamland. One by one, They’ve begun, Dance and prance for little baby. Blacks and Bays, Dapples and Greys, Running in the night. When you wake, You shall have, All the pretty little ponies.
Can you see the little ponies, Dance before your eyes? All the pretty little ponies, Gonna be there when you arise.
Hush a bye, Don’t you cry. When you wake You shall have All the pretty little ponies.
Memories of his past erupt into Reaper’s mind. Horrible memories that were never to be brought up again. And for the first time in many years, Reaper wept.
--- --- ---
Big Mac was still stuck in his previous position, feeling rather awkward. Along with that, Kevlar does not a very fluffy pillow make. Somewhere in Reaper’s mumbled ramblings, he started to cry, and that made the awkward level get turned up to eleven. This reminded Macintosh about the one time he forgot to turn off his swag at night, and much to AJ’s displeasure, was covered in mares. By this time, he was praying for somepony to find him.
--- --- ---
At this point, Reaper had somehow shrunk into a small child, and was being rocked back and forth. Pictures of him and his parents were repeatedly being shown to him by the guardian, and Reaper couldn’t quite grasp what it was trying to show him. His parents were being shown, but eventually phased out to reveal ponies, hundreds of them take their place, all colors of the rainbow with faces full of glee.
--- --- ---
Once Applejack arrived on the scene after four hours of chasing Rainbow around Ponyville and pleading for her to stop, she was angry at Big Mac. She also thought that it was hilarious, seeing a big, mean stallion like him being used as a teddy-bear by something so harmless when asleep. As punishment, AJ forced Big Mac into carrying Reaper all the way to the library, on the back roads to avoid suspicion. Once they arrive, Fluttershy was visiting Twilight along with Rarity before they went to the spa for the day. Fluttershy was almost outraged, but was too nice to scream at them, and Rarity was indifferent to the whole matter. Twilight told them to just put him on the guest bedroom until he woke up.
--- --- ---
One picture was of a majestic figure with an aura that clouded its form like Reaper’s guardian. The picture then had al of the ponies in the previous pictures bow to it, and it walked over to where baby-Reaper was. It touched his picture-chest, and he felt pain, a dull, thumping pain.
--- --- ---
In his sleep, Reaper started to writhe and groan in agony. The only thing that the ponies could do was to secure his limbs, and even that was a tough job. He started wailing something about his father and his mother.
--- --- ---
The figure burst out of its picture-habitat, and spread its white aura across Reaper’s soul and psyche, effecting pictures and memories, unlocking, changing, re-sealing, sealing, effecting, and steeping them with power. His guardian then changes form to match that with the majestic one, and touches his forehead.
--- --- ---
Reaper sat up breaking the many ropes used to secure him, his eyes becoming smokehouses, visible to even earth ponies. All the light seemed to be sucked into the eye-slots that Reaper had, and made the red smoke billowing out of his face to glow incandescently. All he said was mother, and let out a roar that made some people in Canterlot quake in fear.
*** *** ***
After a few hours of magical phenomena and insane ranting about Raptors and opening doors, Reaper came to his senses. He remembered what happened in his personal dreamland, but he kept it to himself. No mention of him crying in the real world was mentioned, so he kept that information on the down-low. From what the other ponies told him, he was surprised that they didn’t call the pony mob to expel him from the house. He talked with Applejack for a while to know that Rainbow was currently at her house, crying at what she did, and what he did. Reaper felt bad, he really did. He could connect with Rainbow Dash because he used to be much like her when he was a kid, and if he did that to one of his friends’ acquaintances, he’d be all torn to pieces too. For this whole time, Big Mac was sulking in the corner. Reaper noticed this, and he asked her about it. All he got was a ‘how about you ask ‘im yerself’ So Reaper, who could only sit-up and turn in bed, beckoned the large red stallion over to talk to him. All he got was a sullen look, and what could be described as the pony lean, where two hooves were used to stand, while the other two were tucked behind their congruent hoof. Again, with the pauses, Reaper thought, and struck up the beginning of the conversation by saying,
“So would you like to explain to me why you bucked me so hard that it gave me a few hairline fractures in my ribcage?”
Big Mac flared his nostrils, and blew through them, and turned his head to the side. Reaper sighed, another use of force is necessary. He looked to Applejack, and said,
“Forgive me.”
Before turning his attention to the big red stallion. He reached with his hand, and lifted him up by his jaw line with one hand, and raised him over his head. He sighed audibly, and said,
“Alright, I think we all know who can beat who in a fight. Now drop the attitude, or we will be talking for a very long time.”
Big Mac flailed around a bit in the air, and eventually gave up. He mumbled something about Reaper being a bitch monster and played unfairly and then said,
“Allllright, Jackass. Put me down.”
Reaper unceremoniously plopped Big Mac onto the floor, and stooped down to become eye-to eye with the horse. He stared him down, and said,
“I know that Applejack told you that I am a monster, and you don’t need to make nice-nice with me, hell, we don’t even have to be amicable towards each other, but touch me again, and I will make your life a living hell.”
The stallion nodded, and walked out of the room, forcefully stomping every step so that we could hear his contempt in his walking. Applejack just started to laugh, and said,
“Ah think that he’s jus’ riled up about what yew did tah’ him after he bucked yah. Yew were hold’in him like a foal holds a teddy bear.”
Reaper laughed, and activated his nanobots. They gave him a reading of body-damage. Full-body stage two bruising, with three hairline fractures in four ribs. EST recovery time, one week. Reaper suddenly remembered that when he fought Trixie, he had a hairline fracture, and it suddenly went away… Perhaps if he sucked enough energy from a unicorn, or an object steeped with power, he could start healing at an accelerated rate. Reaper turned to Twilight, who was staring at reaper with a wide-open gasp of a face. Reaper was sure he saw a fly eject itself out of her mouth. He said,
“Hey Twilight, how about you close your mouth and help me with something that I’ve been thinking about, like an experiment or something like that.”
The bookish unicorn comes to attention immediately at the mention of a science experiment, trotting over to his bedside.
“What is it?”
Reaper just shook his head minutely and felt like chuckling. One of his squad mates had a personality like her. Real bookish type, everybody called him specks, or just scientist. He never got exited about a mission unless it included political intrigue, or scientific discoveries that had to be ‘terminated with extreme prejudice’ or other types of sugar-coated fanciness for downloading data, and blowing the shit out of anything else. Last time Reaper checked with Specks, he had four different types of cures for cancer, ten for alcoholism, and four new recipes for curing AIDS.
“Well, you know how when I fought Trixie, and she blasted me in the air? She broke one of my ribs, and after I absorbed her, and your power, it wasn’t broken anymore. Could I grab your horn for a few minuets to see if it expedites my healing process? I just need to ask you before just grabbing your horn to see what happens.”
Twilight brought her hoof up to her mouth for a moment to think out what Reaper said for a moment, and she got a little light-pink, almost unperceivable on her coat. Obviously horns and physical contact are some kind of scandal in the equestrian world. However, she gave her consent before Reaper wrapped his hand around her horn. He set his nanobots to observe his ribs as he felt a thrall of power wrack him that started from his hand to the rest of his body, then converging to his chest. Once he felt the power condense, the nanobots detected bone growth increase by 90%, and blood withdrawal from his bruises by 50%. After a few seconds of documenting the effects, Reaper let go of Twilight’s horn. She wobbled a bit on her legs, and she shook her head to clear her mind. The recovery time shrunk to about five days. This was intriguing to Reaper, because he always hoped for something to help him heal faster, he always hated being injured. Twilight was good on her feet…hooves, now, and Reaper thanked her before he went to bed, even though it was about mid-day. --- --- ---
Twilight was standing in the kitchen area in her house, and was very upset. She decided to write to Princess Celestia, informing her of Reaper and everything he has done once Spike came back on his trip to Canterlot for his royal duties. She found out that the gem that Reaper had crushed was called the tear of Io, and was used as a prison for a scrap of old Nightmare Moon corruption that was used to try and combat the elements of harmony by creating vengeful, violence-driven troops that adapted to destroy the Elements of Harmony. That with the glowing magic in a non-magical world worried her, and that she tried to attack him earlier. Twilight was sure that she would regret doing this, but it was necessary for her and her friend’s sakes if the corruption had affected either Reaper or Trixie, and they destroyed Ponyville.
The next five days, in short of better words, was very uneventful for Reaper. He was periodically visited by Fluttershy, AJ, and Twilight. Reaper was overjoyed to learn that equestrian words were the same as English, and he was interested in seeing the differences between pony literature and human writing. The main difference, barring the fact that when the main character was a Pegasus or a Unicorn, they flew or did magic, was that they always were so forgiving of others who did them fault. It was a carefree world, and it shone out in their works. Reaper found it degrading after a while, not having any type of strife, or having a sworn enemy to base the story off of, so he went on to read the big ol’ tomes of knowledge that Twilight seemed to be so partial to. This took up the rest of the week for Reaper. After ten books, about 10,000 pages, and learning about the magical abilities of unicorns, Pegasus, and the physics surrounding them, Reaper was able to move around with minimal amounts of sores, and being stiff at the joints. Twilight was interested in how he could affect magic being sent his way, whether it was neutral or if it was directed in a way to hurt him in a way. He agreed to try it out the next day. Applejack met-up with him the first day he went downstairs and promised to bring Rainbow Dash over the next time she met up with her. Reaper was barely ready for what was going to happen when he met up with Rainbow next. As AJ drug her through the doorway, Reaper was helping sort the library by the Dewey Decimal System, and he turned around when he heard a squeak behind him. He saw RD cowering in the corner, with her wings clamped to her sides, immobilized by fear. She had the thousand yard-stare. Reaper knew just what to do. He squatted down on his heels, and looked at RD until her shaking stopped, and he started to talk as softly and as like the purr of a diesel engine as he could.
“There is no need to be frightened of me, little one. There is no need to be angry at your self, either. I could have killed you when you attacked me, and I probably would have if I was a lesser man than what I am now. Don’t be afraid, be strong for knowing that you looked death n the eye and survived. Don’t be angry; be proud of your self for standing up to me when I threatened you and your friends.”
As Reaper allowed RD some time to think out what he said, he saw that she started to visibly relax, he felt good that he was able to make amends with another pony, even though he made enemies with two of them less than a week ago without even trying. RD’s eyes started to focus, and roam around the room, taking in Reapers countenance. He let Rainbow calm down more, and turned his head towards AJ, getting a small smile, and an approving nod towards his actions. Good, he had started to like knowing Applejack as a…Friend? Reaper didn’t really know what he would go categorizing them as. Awkward friendship? Friendly acquaintances? Bah, no time for this nonsense for now, need to keep on mentally patching-up RD.
“You know, if you wanted to take a few free shots at me, you could. I mean, if you wanted to.”
This proposition would’ve made Reaper jump at it like a rabid dog, and RD did as well. She completely perked-up, and she even had the ghost to the beginning of a smile upon her face. She said,
“You really mean it?”
Reaper stood up slowly, nodded, and spread out his arms. He laid out a few base rules first.
“As long as you don’t go for this area, you’re good.”
He gestured to his crotch. RD didn’t understand, but she got on her wings with a wicked smile, and zoomed over to Reaper, hitting him full blast to the chest. Reaper barely even felt a thing, and he thought that she must lay down the hurt like rain, but it has little momentum for it, unlike Big Mac’s. She flew around for a good fifteen minuets, wailing away at Reaper until she got tired. RD alighted on the ground in front of Reaper, panting. He looked down at her, and said,
“Done already? Applejack probably would’ve gone twice as long.”
RD’s eyes flared with challenge, and she took to the air again, and resumed pounding away. To reaper, he felt a light battering, like a massage. It felt good after being covered in bruises for the better part of a week. After roughly thirty minuets of beating this time, RD collapsed on the floor. Reaper started stretching and bouncing up and down, humming a nameless tune that everyone in Russia knew even if they didn’t know the lyrics. RD must’ve thought it was a great idea to take a nap on the floor right there and then, because she somehow found a way to do so. He once again turned to Applejack, getting another shrug. Reaper decided to just put her on one of the library’s chairs. He scooped up RD, and deposited her on the chair in question. Reaper and Applejack talked idly about what is going to happen when Reaper decides to walk about town in broad daylight. One Reaper brought up the discussion, AJ started out with,
“Ah would guess it would start like Zecora, doors being slammed shut, windows barred, the whole shindig.”
Reaper retorted with,
“But if I walked with at least you, Twilight, Pinkie, and perhaps Rainbow Dash, would they be more acceptant?”
AJ said,
“Well, some ponies might have tha’ gall tah waltz up tah us, and dehmand for certain things be done to yah, they’d think thaht you’were belongin to us.”
Reaper mulled the thought over, thinking that the public appearance would for him to walk into town from the outskirts, and meet up with five, or four in the town. However, he didn’t have too much time to think, because he got a flying RD to the back of the head. She said,
“So awesome! I can’t believe you are so cool!”
RD seemed to take a roost upon Reaper’s head, and settled there. She sniffed the fabric, prodded, poked, licked the Kevlar, and finally looked at Reaper’s face. She had an extremely cocky grin, and said,
“I forgive yah. I mean, no harm, no fowl, right? Even the fastest flyer in Equestria can have her off days. On any other day, you would’ve been smoked right then and there-KAPOW, right in the kisser!”
Reaper chuckled and shook his head. He picked up RD gingerly, and placed her on the chair he was sitting on after he got up. He said,
“Good to see that you forgive me, I couldn’t make amends with Rarity, I made a gesture that she found as ‘rude’ and she hasn’t wanted to talk to me since.”
RD just looks at AJ, and they both, comically shrug at the same time with the classic ‘she’ll come around sometime’ phrase. Reaper excuses himself from the room to meet Twilight, who was waiting for him by the outskirts of town, nearby the forest that he came to know as Everfree. He jogged off at a decent pace, getting there in about fifteen minuets. Twilight and Reaper went over what they were going to do that day, work with telekinesis, and working up to a few attack spells to see the reaction of Reaper when he actively tried to stop magic. As they started out with telekinesis, Reaper could feel the prickling of… something in the back of his head, and he tried desperately to grab a hold of it. It was illusive, and Twilight was able to play around with Reaper’s limbs like he was a ragdoll until he got a hold on what it was. Reaper realized that what he was holding was actually Twilight’s magic. All Twilight felt was a slow draining of power and that to move Reaper around was about twice as taxing as it was before. After a few exhausting minuets for Twilight, she released her magic. Reaper was slowly doing the Macarena, and stopped right before he grabbed his bottom. After a few minuets of rest, Twilight started to shoot small fireballs at Reaper. He felt the prickle in the back of his mind, and he could associate that prickle into an image of the fireballs, and could more effectively interact with the magic itself. The most he could do was deflect them, or by sending them on another direction, and even that was troublesome to do, only making contact every once in about twenty-five bolts. At the end of their training session, Reaper was getting very frustrated, and screamed at Twilight to send the largest fire bolt at him that she could conjure. Twilight had some apprehension towards doing it, but she knew Reaper long enough to know that he would have gone after her until he got what he wanted, or somehow killed himself by doing it. So naturally, she complied. Needless to say, it was humongous. As a fireball about the size of four eighteen wheelers came charging towards Reaper, he felt a raging twister engulf his mind, and he reached out towards it. Ad he did this mentally, he did it physically. A millisecond before the gout of fire would have impacted with Reaper, immolating him, he caught it. It pushed Reaper back a few hundred feet until its momentum was properly stopped. He raised it above his head, and sucked all of the energy into his body. Reaper picked up one of his hands and snapped, causing some sparks to erupt from his fingertips. He started to glow faintly orange, causing unnatural ambient light to emit from Reaper. Twilight thought that he acted like diamonds, they would suck in a large amount of magical power, and gain the ability to activate a spell that they had absorbed. In Reaper’s case, he probably was burning off excess magical power that either his body couldn’t absorb, or use for energy-consuming tasks, like mending bones. Reaper was gleefully setting small patches of fire ablaze with all of his energy, and Twilight told him that she was going home. What she didn’t tell him was that he was slowly making his own case that much harder to let slide. Reaper felt like he was 500 pounds lighter, and that he could rule over everything. However, the only thing he was interested in ruling over for now was the small ant hill slowly roasting underground. Reaper felt marginally guilty about his actions, until he remembered what they did to him for six months straight under his suit during a snatch and grab mission for enemy intelligence. He got stranded in the forest and slept on a mound of fire ants. While Reaper was musing over his past actions, he barely heard a snap of twigs behind him. He turned to see a certain blue unicorn mare with a face that portrayed nothing but arrogance and pride.
So, I cuss like a sailor when I'm drunk, and I also get...Frisky for a better word. Also, THIS IS A DRUNK CHAPTER AND HAS NO CONNECTION WITH THE STORY. I like to think that they are little nuggets of bonus that you'll get.
================================================================= Alright, so there was this BIG BADASS Reaperqw, or something like that, and he wllalked over to talk to Twilight and he was like,
“YO BTCH I HAVE A GUN.”
But Twilight was dead, or something…yeah, we’ll go with that
(INSERT PLOT ASSVANCEMENT HERE, MOLFO)
Oh god am I soooo drunk. So Reaper walks over to the next bar and shoots EVERYTHING and drinks a beer. How? Magic. That’s how, fucker. He then gets high as FUCK and starts seeing bird peropl. Yeah, lets go eth thalt. Then he was like
WHATS GOIN ON?
Yeah, no quoted, what are you going to. And Reaper was like
heyeyheyeyeye HEYEYEYEEHEH A SAID HAY WHATS GOIN oN?
And big mac wass al up in Reapors grill and like,
“I’m mena cuz im secretly in nlesbians with you”
Yeah, their both girls…wth the dangly bits still attached somehow. And Reaper was all like
“EWWWW get away for me yiw big gay red thing!”
And then cllorophornm. Gallons of it crashe d over his head. When he came out f his drunken stup… stughp..l. ss fuck it sleep he woke to see himlelf chined to a tree deep inside a foresed and was all like shit cus there was Bic Mac and Trixie sne they did unspeakable things to him that scarred him fot the rest of his lifeee.
6(More poltt assvncement, asshole.)9
So Reaper wnet to see princess cellestia because he was RAPED wth a corncob and he was a lllllllllllllllllll like
“HEY celestia I got al high and walked outside and then I got repds the enmd.).
AND THEN CELETIA was al like reaperg I am your father, because I am asexual an al ruling! Repae r sprouted wings on hid dangly bit and passed out.ll.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Alright, next is on a piece of paper that I brought with me to the bar, writing up chapter seven. After the first few sentences, I got challenged to a drink off. I won, but not after slamming back about ten shots of vodka. Needless to say, I was smashed. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Big Mac was sitting on Reaper’s chest, waiting for him to wake up. Suddenly, in his dreams, Reaper grabbed Big Mac by the neck, and forced him into a teddy-bear hug. He mumbled something about the Russian brown bear before squeezing Big Mac. And there they were, Reaper lying on his back, with Macintosh spread-eagled across his chest. And then marvin the robot wandered up and was all like
Im a bitch and no one cares about me in the seires.
And then reaper woke up, and beheaded marvin going
Yeah that’s right bitch *Impercieveable scotch stain*
And Reaper took Marvins head and ran aocoross the world screaming that he was a lumberjaclk and wore womens clothing. After he ran for ten hours ahe was like *Oh god I hope this is vodka for a couple small paragraphs*
AND THEN EVERYONE WAS SMASHED, VYNLYL SCRATCHED PUT ON CARAMELLDANSEN AND EVERYONE CARAMELLDANCED. Reaper sung along with the chorus, singing the dirty English version. After a good TENN hours if dancinghn, Reaper activated the rude bgoldberg amaschene that switched the song to TUNAK TUNAK TUN for the next ten hours. Reaper hit replay like fifty times. Celestia and luna where thered ltooo, so the night lasted for a gfrtu days cuz tey lgot their frelak on like o one elddse. *I’m going to say that this is either blood, or red wine* …ND and celklesltia wlantered over to reaper, who was sitting in the corner for a timeout for kilinght llsomePONy, bitahcres, and was pissed. Celestlia wahgd s al like GLUGHHT and threw up on reaper, who caught of fire. *Um… there’s scribblings about sacrificing vinyl acratch to the elder race and things like that.*
(INSERT PLOT ASDERVANCNEMENRT)
And once Celestia was sone wirth reapwer, they switched to ten hours of U.S. owen was her. The end
Trixie had a new gem, and a few new tattoos. She had a pentagram on her forehead, her horn being the center of the shape. Orbiting around her head was a new gem, shaped like Reaper’s, and it was red. In his pocket, Reaper’s gem started shaking, and slowly turned blue, unbeknownst to him. Reaper stated,
“I guess your not going to apologize, huh?” Trixie smirked and shook her head, and started to say something before Reaper cut her off with a,
“Lets skip all the pleasantries and go straight to the part where I rip your horn off and shove it up your ass.”
He snapped his fingers, and a solid pillar of flames erupts from under the hooves of Trixie, catapulting her into the air. Trixie landed with a thud a few seconds later, and reaper called out,
“How was it with the birds? I have been in the air enough to know how fun I think it is.”
He walked over to the limp form, and prodded it. Trixie quickly got up, charged energy into her horn, and jumped into Reaper’s chest. His reflexes alone kept his outfit alone from being pierced. He caught Trixie by the horn, lapping up the energy like a thirsty dog, and took his fists to his chest. Bruising most definitely happening. He set Trixie’s horn on fire after throwing her through a tree, making it break over her. She got up and shot a grand bolt of lightning at Reaper. He summoned a shield of fire that covered his arm that deflected the bolt. From the tingling in his arm, Reaper came to the conclusion that if he was struck by it, his heart would have stopped. Her gem started to glow a bright red, and ten nearby trees dislodged themselves from the ground, and hurtled themselves at Reaper. He dodged the first nine, but was forced to catch the last one, a smaller tree. As Reaper and Trixie struggled against each other, magic against raw power, Reaper heard a shrill squeak that made him forget where he was for a little, until he got a tree to the face. As he was sent flying backwards, Reaper saw the telltale sign of Fluttershy’s tail disappearing from view. Trixie hadn’t shown any signs of noticing her, so he played dead. Trixie waltzed over to Reaper’s seemingly dead body saying,
“See? None can withstand the power of the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
As she reached Reaper, and started to gloat over his body until he kicked her in the face with flaming legs. As Reaper got up on his feet, he was fully ablaze with power sucked from the two magician ponies. He got up, and grabbed Trixie by the hoof. He threw her up into the air, and jumped after her, using two gouts of flame to propel himself with her. After they got to the apex of their jump, they started to trade flurries of blows. Trixie supplemented her attacks with magic blasts, Reaper trading her magic with sheer speed and strength. As they start to fall, Reaper grabs Trixie by the horn, and moves her face close to his. He starts screaming,
“IT ISINT THE FALL THAT GETS YA…”
They land with a resounding *BOOM* and the crackle of arcane energy being unleashed in it’s raw form. Reaper staggers up, and says,
“It’s the sudden stop at the end.” He lowers his head, and makes the sign of the crucifix. As he starts to navigate the dent in the earth that their decent made, Reaper got hit in the back by a rather large fireball. He turns around, infuriated. Reaper launches himself at Trixie, supplementing all of his muscles with the rest of his arcane energy stored into himself. He pins her down with his body, and yells at her, supplementing every shout with a resounding blow to the face.
He kept on cracking on Trixie’s muzzle until he felt no sign of life within her body, from involuntary to voluntary, no response came from her body. Reaper laughed with an insanity of someone long gone, for he was back in America, gunning down enemy soldiers. After a while of insanity-filled chuckling, Reaper crawled out of the ditch with Trixie’s body, and threw her with the last of his enhanced muscle power deep into the forest, cutting through any trees that got in the way. Once the last of the magical power diffused out of his body, he returned to his senses. Reaper found himself out of the ditch, and thought that he jus got carried away in day-dreaming to notice that he went topside. From what little Reaper could discern from Fluttershy’s direction, she seemed to go towards the center of town, so he headed off into that direction, thinking,
Fantastic, this’ll be bad, really bad.
As Reaper started to approach the center of town, he heard the good ol’ signs of people disgusted at his presence; doors slamming, windows barring, things being placed up against the glass windows, and then silence. The damned silence, judging, watching, talking notes silence that made Reaper want to scream, rip houses open, scream at ponies, and throw them through the ripped-apart house. Reaper almost hopes for Big Mac to come galloping down one of the cobbled streets for a fight. The Silence. As Reaper made his way into the center of town, he heard a quiet whimpering, if someone else was out with Reaper, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it. He arrived at the center of town, the whimpering became louder, only by a small amount, though. He peered into the fountain that dominated the middle of the circle and found a fearfull, quivering Fluttershy who said,
“Those poor, defenseless trees!”
Reaper was happy that Fluttershy was safe, but a little bewildered that she would chose to worry over something like a tree, for that matter. He picked-up Fluttershy, and softly murmured,
"Don't worry, Fluttershy, everything is alright, nothing is left to try and hurt you."
Fluttershy eventually calmed down a small bit, and stopped quivering at the sound of a friendly voice. She whispered,
"But, Mr.Reaper, those poor trees are going to die!"
Reaper calmly hushed the quaking Pegasus, saying,
"There, there, Fluttershy, the trees are already dead, they cant be helped. You saw what Trixie did to them, she ripped their roots clean off."
Fluttershy seemed to resign to the fact that it was out of her mortal power to help the majestic, peaceful beings that she dearly loved. Reaper set her down, and She stood shakily on her hooves, crashing after that brief surge of adrenaline. Reaper signaled for Fluttershy to follow him, and he struck off to go to Twilight's library tree. As they walked, Reaper tried to strike up a conversation with Fluttershy by saying,
"How has your bird chorus been doing?"
This only served to remind Fluttershy about trees, and upset her more. Needless to say, it was a long, uncomfortable trip that was ridiculously awkward.
So, I'm sorry about the wait. I had to stitch together a couple Ideas to help make the chapters not a mess. Also, have made a Tumblr, so you can ask me questions there. Here is my battlesong that I listen to for writing the stories. Its pretty EPIC. I like to call it my own personal battle theme. Check it out.
As they made their way to Twilight’s house, reaper was uncomfortable, and was glad for arriving to it. They made it to her front door, and Reaper knocked. The door opened to a distressed-looking Twilight. Reaper was startled at her eyes, they looked like she had been crying for a long, hard time. Her eyes dilated fully, and said nothing as they stepped inside the house without a word, as if Twilight’s surprised silence was contagious. As they made their way into the sitting room, Twilight found her voice, somewhere in her throat.
“Reaper, remember what I was saying about Spike, and how he was off in Canterlot?”
Reaper could remember learning the names of different cities. Some names were original like Ponyville, or some had pony-fied versions of other cities, like fillydelphia.
“Yeah, I remember. What about him?”
Twilight shuffles on her hooves like she is afraid, or bashful about something.
“He came back from his trip; would you like to see him?”
Reaper just wanted to see whether he would be attacked again. If it didn’t hurt so badly all the time, it would be really funny. Huh, really funny.
“Sure, why not, lets see it he attacks me on sight or not.”
Twilight just rubs her leg with a hoof, and calls for spike. The little purple guy rounds the corner, and his eyes nearly pop out of his head as he rounds the corner. He just stands here for a moment, gawking. Reaper thought that gawking was an improvement, and he just let it continue. After a few minuets of looking, he seemed to snap back to the norm, but with a hint of attitude. He said,
“Too bad you made Rarity angry at you; I might’ve been your friend.”
He huffs, turns smartly on his heel, and he walks down the hallway. Great, Reaper knew the little purple squishy thing was infatuated with the big marshmallow, but he didn’t know that his attachments went that far. He just sighed and looked at Twilight with a shrug and a shake of the head. He headed upstairs into his room, and fetched his LMG. He stared at it for a long time, and started to automatically clean the gun, taking out its barrel, checking the bullet feed, polishing the metal. He heard a scrabbling sound of hooves over slightly-buffed hardwood flooring, and a burp followed by the sound of fire. Reaper just put it off as Twilight being Twilight, Beakers got like that sometimes when his OCD got the better of him. He put the finishing touches on his LMG, and made his way downstairs. He found Fluttershy sitting on a comfy-armchair with a distressed look upon her face. She looks at Reaper with pleading eyes. He says,
“Let whatever she’s got wrong with her pass for now, I think that its just a fit of OCD madness that has her in its grasp. Talk to me if you are feeling too stressed about it, and trust me, I know a thing or two about OCD.”
Reaper remembered that Beaker’s OCD got really bad whenever he was stressed by something, or he had a strong emotion flood his body that he couldn’t control. Perhaps that was it. Fluttershy nervously chewed on the tip of her hoof, and jumped a little when she heard some pots and pans clanging together in the kitchen. She turned to Reaper, and said,
“EEP! Oh…Alright. I mean, If you say so. Anyway, why don’t you take off those clothes of yours? I’ve come to see you, and al of the time, you haven’t taken off your suit of Kevlar armor.”
Reaper sighed, and wished that it wouldn’t come up. It was a touchy subject, and it was a little too graphic for poor Fluttershy, so a watered-down version was required. He gathered his scattered thoughts, and he said,
“Well Fluttershy, I was the first of my kind, and they did things to me that made the rest of my brethren possible to create. It was not as simple with us as just popping someone into a suit like this, and waltzing off into battle. My army needed to create a super soldier. I had risen in the ranks like a shooting star, and my endurance was some of legends. Even now, I am surprised at what I could do back then. They took me away to a scientific laboratory and conducted tests on me. They did things that should not be let out to the public, so when they gave me this suit, they told me if I ever took off my suit, special nanobots within my body would shut my heart down, and kill me.”
Fluttershy’s hooves flew up to her muzzle with a dainty gasp. However, it was a better reaction than expected; Reaper was pleased with her that she didn’t burst into tears. She dot over her surprise, and she said,
“How rude! How could they do something like that to a fellow being?”
Reaper sighed; this world was full of nothing but minimal strife and one-day emergencies. It would be hard to explain, but he had to try.
“Our world is different than yours; I’ve already told you that. We were made to prevent people from hurting us, and if they got a hold of how to make someone like me, they would end up hurting a lot of people in the end. So they had to protect their country, and I gave them my life to protect everyone.”
This seemed to appease Fluttershy until another burp of fire erupt into the air, and scrabbling of hooves resounded out, startling Fluttershy again. After a short amount of time, a very stressed looking Twilight emerged from the kitchen with an almost-manic smile plastered on her face. She started to try and talk about something before Reaper interrupted her.
“I fought Trixie again.”
Twilight looked aghast, a few strands of her hair sprung up, making her hair messy, but not having her set on fire type of messy. Reaper was very happy about that, and continued with,
“She had a new gem with her, looks like mine with strips of orange cris-crossing the face of the gem. She accosted me after you left. We fought, and I beat her, she was unconscious when I left to find Fluttershy, probably got up and walked off already.”
Twilight’s eyes widened and she struck a hoof to her face, pulling it downward in exasperation.
“Barely one day, and you’ve already gotten into a fight and hurt somepony, what am I going to do?”
Before she went onto full lecture mode, Spike ran into the room, clutching at his stomach. He tripped on a tome, and went sailing towards Reaper, letting loose a green gout of flame. Reaper’s reflexes helped him catch the flame, and condense it into a little marble of raging green fire, and threw it down onto the floor like a ninja smoke bomb. Surprisingly, it did create a small smokescreen, and gave him the time to stoop down to get the resulting scroll of paper. He un-rolled it, and read its contents.
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
Bring him at once, I have sent a carriage, it will be there within the hour.
HRH,
Princess Celestia
As the smoke cleared, it showed a very confused-sounding Reaper while Twilight was crying, and her horn glowed purple. All Reaper got out was a,
“What the FUUUUuuuuuuuuughug?”
Before he collapsed on the floor in front of the two ponies, and one dragon.
*** *** ***
Reaper was slow to regain his senses, but he found that he couldn’t move. His eyes flickered open under the lenses, and he saw that he was bound by a shit-ton of rope, perhaps a shit load, but he didn’t have the available time to determine the correct slang-term. The next thing he noticed were the two shining stallions, oh wait they weren’t shining, they just had on armor made out of gold. He decided to raise his head, but one of the guards leaned his head real close to his, snorted, and said,
“Stop right there, criminal scum! We are taking you to the castle to meet with Princess Celestia to be judged.”
Reaper just lolled his head to the side, and said,
“You know that once I get over this anesthetic spell, you two are going to become little canned meats?”
The other, bulkier-looking one turned and bucked him in the head.
“You know that that is going to just piss me off more? I can barely even feel those weakling little attempts at bucking. I could beat you both with just one arm and you both can attack me at the same time.”
One guard unfurled his wings, obviously getting riled-up, but the other, the older-looking one that poke to Reaper put his hoof up, and said,
“He’s right, son. Calm down. He could probably take a whole battalion of troops with just a chair and one arm, half drunk.”
The younger guard calmed down, and the older one turned to Reaper, and said,
“We have the better part of an hour left on our journey, go back to sleep.”
Reaper still felt tired from what had already happened, and he eventually fell asleep.
*** *** ***
This time, Reaper was moving, still bound by a ridiculous amount of rope. He appeared to be riding on a sea of golden meat-cans, and that assumption turned out to be not too far away from the truth. He was rushed down a hallway, down two flights of stairs, and another hallway to a chamber with two doors that went al the way to the ceiling, a good mile or so up. They push-open the well-oiled doors, and enter a chamber that was devoid of anything except two thrones, two alicorns, he remembers them from the book, and six other mares. He was quickly deposited onto the floor, and surrounded by a bristling sea of gold, white, and flanks. A melodious voice fills the air, breaking through the barrier that was created by the guardsponies.
“Please, leave our guest in peace, and I want every guardspony to their station right away.”
Somehow, the rope binding reaper had slipped away into the same dimension that socks go to when they go to their death at the hands of a washing machine, and Reaper found himself standing upright, sans guardsponies. He was still groggy from all the sleep. He manages to mumble out,
“Thank’e”
Before stumbling to meet the ground with his chest. He heard a large amount of laughing, so he puts up his hands to wave off the joviality. He struggles to get up on his knees, and shakily gets up onto his feet, jumping up and down a bit before feeing the circulation bound unbidden throughout his limbs. Reaper looks up to see an eerily familiar figure before him, the white alicorn with the rainbow hair floating aimlessly, not giving a care towards what gravity thinks. Where had Reaper seen her before? Both the alicorns had to be around six feet at the withers, because their heads barely come within eyelevel with Reaper.
“Hello, Reaper.”
Reaper blinked a few times under his mask, and he stretched some more. Then the finality hit him like a train going about one-hundred miles an hour. One of the leaders of the Diarchy that this country had just called him by his own name. Oh, and there was the rest of the five ponies he knew, along with Rarity. He walked over to the group of ponies, and kneeled to the two princesses. Celestia had a tiny smile, and Luna was sitting on her rump, awkward even with her own kind, not to mention a whole entire being from a distant world. Celestia commanded,
“Rise, Reaper. You are not of this world, and you should not have to kneel to me. I am not your ruler.”
Reaper got up on his feet, and assumed a relaxed, but still militarily presentable pose that made him stand up straight. Celestia continued, as Reaper wondered where he had seen this figure before, cogs and wheels clicking and whirring together.
“Now I bet why you were brought here like that, and I can explain. You did scare the citizens of Ponyville, and we did that to show the town that they were safe.”
Reaper scoffed in contempt at the statement, and the cogs and gears whirred faster, faster, faster, until everything clicked and the old grandfather clock in his head chimed. My Guardian. His posture went slack, and as if Celestia could read his thoughts, she slumped her face down into a shallow frown. She began,
“Now, Reaper…”
But that landed on deaf ears. Reaper had a boiling stew of rage, happiness, confusion, and hysteria. Rage and happiness were fighting to get in top, and confusion agreed with hysteria to be on high priority. Rage won out on top, but was tempered by happiness. His voice was laden with so many emotions, it was hard o decipher what he was trying to convey.
“Why?”
Celestia continued with her frown, and Luna looked from her sister, the mane six, and Reaper, trying to figure an escape route if things go south. Reaper continued on, this time, filled with malice,
“WHY ME, GUARDIAN? Why do you allow me to live my life in a godforsaken place such as my home while there is a world like this one? Why did you take me away from my home? WHY?”
The six were perplexed, and Luna was getting even more perturbed. Luna knew what he was, but that didn’t give him an excuse for yelling at her sister. However, her sister said not to intervene in any way, so she left well enough alone. Celestia’s voice turned into a soothing, motherly voice, and said,
“I brought you for a reason, Reaper. Calm down and I will tell you. But, would you like to take that heavy suit off? I do believe it’s been some time since you’ve felt the sun shine on your skin.”
Her horn took on a golden glow, and Reapers whole body started to faintly put off a bright aura. After she was done, Celestia said,
“I disabled the toxin-emitting capabilities and shut off the poisoning protocols in your nanobots. Please, I want to talk to you face to face.”
Reaper saw the expectant faces on his five friends, and he suppressed a shudder. His friends were waiting, and he had to take off his outfit. Great. He started to go through the motions of removing layers of clothing. It took about fifteen minuets until he got to the skeleton suit that lined his body. As Reaper took the final steps to take off that suit, leaving only his pants, all of the ponies in the room gasped. There were little metal discs that rose up, let out steam, and allowed Reaper to take off the skintight, it peeled away to show a large tattoo of the Kremlin on the entirety of his chest, stretching al the way to the groin. On his shoulder, he had a tattoo that looked like Reaper’s helmet with the word ‘Jugsy’ underneath. Across his whole body, the discs proved to be connected to his body, and sunk back in when he fully took off his suit. Reaper, however, refrained from taking off his helmet. Celestia said,
“Take the helmet off, please.”
Reaper sighed, turned around, and took off his helmet. He kept his head down to not face the ponies while he turned. He lifted his head up, and the ponies joined n on another gasp of shock. Reapers eyes and mouth were still closed, but his face was limp, lifeless, muscles twitching underneath the skin, trying to remember how to work after years of little to no use. Slowly, his eyes opened. They all wished he hadn’t. His eyes were a soul-stealing black. So dark-black, and coal-black that they seemed to suck away at the light, even in a room that was created specifically to showcase the brilliance of the sun. He opened his mouth to reveal sparkling-white rows of viciously sharpened teeth to talk, somehow seeping with sarcasm and malcontent even though his mouth showed no emotion.
“What’s wrong, Princess Celestia? You can’t handle what you have unearthed?”
A guardsman Pegasus came behind Reaper’s de-clothed torso, and placed his hoof on his shoulder.
“Don’t you dare talk to our…”
He stopped when Reaper turned his head with the most insane smile plastered onto his face. As he and his other door guard brethren fled the room with pale faces and quivering wings, Reaper yelled after them, his voice talking a more royal, full, tone.
“HaHAhahahAHAhA! Run! RUN you insignificant buffoons! Run while you still can from the Juggernaut, the devil from another world!”
As the last notes of Reaper’s majestic laughter faded away, they all came to their senses as if his de-robeing had put the ponies into a magical trance. Celestia spoke up first, saying,
“You will NOT do that again to one of my guards, am I clear?”
Reaper’s maddened expression slowly deflated as he replied an affirmative, and the ponies to a small iota of time to appraise Reaper’s body after they got done with the face shock. He had well-defined muscles, not too-terribly large, but deceiving, carrying three-hundred pounds daily will make even the smallest muscle ridiculously defined. His hair was cut relatively short, with a strange, line motif like RD’s, but starting at black, and moving up the chromatic scale to various shades of red, orange, and yellow. Celestia motioned with her hoof towards the group, and they gathered around her, all looking up with worried glances at Reaper’s eyes and teeth, now poking out from under his upper lip. She said,
“I need you here because of what I fear is going to happen soon. The tear of Io has been disturbed and destroyed, allowing the shard of Tiamat, and the will of Bahamut to materialize. These were the names of the actual gems created by the Nightmare wars, and I fused them together to reduce the chance of this happening, but unfortunately, it has. Nightmare Moon anchored a fraction of her soul onto the shard of Tiamat, and that part of her still lives. It will slowly corrupt the current owner of the gem into a new Nightmare, and when It eventually succeeds at this, it will go after the bearers of harmony, you six. She will enslave you, and will kill everyone on the face of the planet if she is not stopped. However, the will of Bahamut holds the answer to stopping Nightmare, it contains the only spell stronger than even the elements of harmony; The sun’s cleansing fury. Now Reaper, don’t you have something to show us?”
Reaper reached into he squareish container, and his hand came int contact with the gem that he had stored there. As he brought it up, he was shocked to see that the gem had turned blue, with little threads of platinum weaving about it’s surface. As he held it, it floated up to his forehead, cast a floating circlet of platinum around his head, and started circling about his head, projecting an aura of calm within Reaper’s drowning brain.
“This is the will of Bahamut, and by proving himself by crushing the gem, and by mastering its power, it has chosen Reaper as it’s new master.”
Reaper stood, his brain able to work overtime, coming to conclusions, welding them onto a whole line of events, coming to the conclusion of events, he shouted out, saying,
“Trixie has Tiamat’s shard. I’ve seen it.”
Twilight and Celestia swung their heads towards Reaper, with questioning looks, both warning him that it was a serious acquisition. Celestia came out with a,
“Was it red, with burnt orange highlights?”
Twilights was,
“Really?”
Reaper nodded, and Celestia had two emotions going on, one of relief of finding the gem, and one of stress due to the gem being found, in general. She turned to Luna, and got a re-assuring head-bob. She said,
“Twilight, could you take your friends on a tour through the great library for a while? I need to talk to Reaper alone for a while.”
Twilight wordlessly left with her five other friends in tow, leaving Reaper alone with the two goddesses. Celestia turned, and looked at Reaper with a pained expression, eyes darting to and fro. Luna walked up to the side of Celestia, and whispered something into her ear. The sun goddess looked at Luna, and nodded. She looked Reaper straight in the eyes, and said,
“Reaper, I have something important to tell you. I… I am actually your true mother.”
So, updates after Christmas will probably be delayed by an unforeseen forecast. =================================================================
“WHAT?”
Celestia and Luna both cringed at the volume of the voice that burst into the air. Luna mad a frantic hoof-gesture towards Reaper, and Celestia tried to calm down Reaper by saying,
“Reaper, calm down! I can understand that…”
But she was interrupted by Reaper again, deep within his eyes the color started to gain hairline fractures throughout the black orbs, gaining red highlights. He said,
“UNDERSTAND? How could you UNDERSTAND that I would be UPSET? YOU are NO mother. A REAL MOTHER would NEVER ABANDON THEIR CHILD TO LIVE IN A WORLD FULL OF DESPICABLE BEINGS.”
Celestia came with a rebuttal,
“Then what would a mother do if her world would be destroyed, and she had the answers to saving the planet?”
Reaper lowered his head, seething. He said,
“I have no idea. But YOU are not my mother. MY mother held me and sang me to sleep after my ‘father’ was done beating me, and telling me that I was not his son.”
Celestia continued on with her explanation,
“I would also understand if you were confused by the race difference…”
She trailed off, allowing Reaper speak his mind. Reaper took this opportunity to try and rip down the wall of understanding that Celestia was hastily constructing.
“Yeah, I’m DAMN confused about how the HELL I can be YOUR son when I’m a bi-pedal human and you’re a quadruped EQUINE.”
Celestia flinched. She knew his past, and she didn’t expect a very good reception, but she expected results far better that what she received. She had expected more of an angry result. What she got was a veritable sea of rage, foaming, crashing, ripping, eddying, flowing, and destroying. She said,
“After you were born, I knew that you needed to be in a different world to learn how to kill Nightmare Moon’s last surviving piece of soul, so I magically morphed you into this form. Unfortunately, It is permanent, and has sealed away all of your magic. However, your Alicorn resilience, and your control over magic has not gone. Weren’t there times where even with your own pride of your stamina that you have surprised yourself?”
Reaper paused, and recollected that he oftentimes pulled through when others did not. One time, before he became a Juggernaut, his squad was jumped by terrorists, and over half of his team died, the other half was injured. Reaper lead from the front, and was peppered by Kalashnikov fire. He was hit multiple times in the extremities, and twice in the stomach. The doctors said he wouldn’t pull through, but within a week, he was on his feet, writing letters of condolences to all of the families of his platoon. But there was a hole, the books he read said that the last of the Alicorns died off long before Nightmare Moon. He said,
“Fine, then who’s the father?”
Celestia was expecting this one; Reaper was smart enough to figure out that her and her sister were the last Alicorns in existence. The answer was easy enough, but the explanation was the hard part.
“You don’t actually have a father. Once a Female Alicorn becomes of age, and they reach the height of their power, they bear a child. However, this also marks the time of their fertility, and they can put it off until they are ready. I came of that age when the end of The Nightmare war was beginning.”
Reaper was astounded. He was the creation of ridiculously powerful pony magic. But wait, does Luna have a child?
“What about Luna? Any cousins that I should know about?”
The atmosphere in the room dropped, even worse then it had been before. However, this was not due to anger, but of sadness and regret. This time, Celestia was the one to whisper something in Luna’s ear. Luna whispered something in response, and Celestia moved to talk to Reaper.
“Luna, while still in the thrall of Nightmare Moon… became of age about when I did. Nightmare was in desperate need of power, and she didn’t have the time to carry, birth, and raise a baby Alicorn, so she…killed it. She then absorbed the raw power that she obtained from the child to begin her last assault.”
Luna was crying very hard at the end of Celestia’s speech. Reaper knew what it was like to lose a child, his mother had a miscarriage when he was twelve, and it was devastating for everyone. He walked up to his supposed aunt, and crushed her in an overwhelming bear hug, almost engulfing her with his size. After a good few minuets of hugging, crying, and soft murmurs, Luna broke free. She said,
“Thank you, young one.”
Reaper responded with a bow and an elaborate wrist turn, and faced Celestia.
“We are not done just yet, you don’t have any type of material proof of my heritage, and unless you do, I’ll just call you a liar.”
Celestia had been hoping that pointing out the anomalies in his nature had been enough to prove to him that he WAS in fact an Alicorn. The way of proving it was to pump him full of magical energies, and that would have an unpredictable outcome. She said,
“This will require me to flush your body with raw magical power, are you alright with that? Will you control yourself?”
Reaper just waved his hands in a bring it on fashion, so the Princess stepped up in front of him, and placed her horn on his forehead. Magical lightning sparked from the base of the Alicorn’s horn, to the exposed skin on Reaper’s forehead. To Reaper, the experience was even more intense than the time when he absorbed the power of Bahamut’s will, he could actually feel the power leak from his head to his entire body. After a good thirty minuets of power being relentlessly pumped into his forehead, Celestia stepped away; a good deal shakier than when she first approached him. Reaper stood, his mouth open, forgotten in the flood of emotions and feelings that he possessed, like a dam overflowed. He felt something snap deep within him, and his head snapped back as the black of his eyes were destroyed, leaving two blood-red eyes, projecting their hellish light into the interior of the throne room, tinting everything in the color of blood. He rose into the air, and levitated there. Both Alicorn Princesses were staring at his back, and he looked back there two. He was greeted by the sight of two wings that seemed to be caught in an inferno. He saw that they appeared to be crafted out of pure flame, and were not actually connected to his body, stopping just centimeters away from connecting to his shoulder blades. He looked at the back of the throne room, where there was a mirror, and saw that he had a rather large horn that hovered in the front of his forehead. He splayed his wings out, and drifted towards the floor. As he alighted it, he said,
(With this, I am working on a little side-project called Party of One: Call me Pinkamena Pie. Yeah, I'm sure the title alone should tell you what it's about. Its a one-shot, so It won't take up too much time. Look out for it.)
Reaper spread out his wings to the front of him, displaying themselves to him. He reached out, and felt them. The wings were warm, but didn't burn him with their fire. They actually felt like they were a physical limb that he was born with. Reaper reached up with one hand, and flicked the horn floating on his forehead, getting the same feel, and emitting a soft pinging sound. Without even looking up from what he was doing, he asked of the princess sisters,
"How in hell is this happening? Why does it feel so real?"
Celestia replied with saying,
"You are an Alicorn. Being flled with arcane magics will cause you to transform, to use some of the magic that was stored within you to manifest the Alicorn buried deep inside of you. Even you have a limit to how much power you can store."
As Reaper pondered what Celestia just said, he noticed that while in this state, his senses seemed to increase exponentially, from seeing the pulse underneath his skin, to being able to feel the prickles of raw energy surging about in the air, and he could hear the faint clopping of a small contingent of guards as they rushed down the large hallway to get to their leaders. Reaper cocked an ear, and decided to bring out one last thing before he would be drug into another conflict. Reaper raised his hand, and little dancing flames danced about his fingers, jumping from finger to finger, hand to hand with almost an aura of glee. They danced, round and round, until Reaper forced them to converge onto his right palm, causing a small pillar of fire that slowly grew, until it engulfed his entire body. Reaper stretched out his arms and flapped them down, extinguishing the raging inferno. As the fire extinguished at his feet, he asked,
"Now how can I manage to do that?"
The two celestial sisters stared at Reaper, they weren't expecting the sudden expense of energy, and his eyes were changing. The glow that they emitted died out, and his pupils seemed to dilate to the point of enveloping the red iris of each respective eye. It was both entrancing, and revolting at the same time. His magical appendages had also been absorbed back into his body. Luna seemed to snap out of her trance first, and was going to explain, but she was interrupted by the guards finally breaking down the door with a,
"STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!"
Reaper manages a quick look behind his shoulder, and notes that the pegasi had leathery bat wings, and they had curious-looking ears. His face contorted into a malicious grin full of macabre glee. Celestia, who had snapped out of her trance from the brief break of eye contact, understood what that grin meant. She promptly buried her muzzle in her front hooves. Luna caught on, and she said,
"Alright, but don't hurt them too bad, I just got them a few months ago."
Reaper chuckled with mirth at stretching out after getting the suit off; he hadn't had the chance in about ten years to move about unhindered from the constricting fabric. He spun smartly on his heels, and started to feel about the insides of his body magically when he noticed that he couldn't feel, or move the fire wings. Reaper found that he could actually feel the appendages within his body, and that he could siphon his own energies into them. Ignoring this, he got back into the current task at hand-making trained military personnel look like they were trained to fight gumdrops when the candy revolution hit. Reaper flashed his razor-sharp teeth, and said,
"I see you have come to attempt to protect your princess. Let me test you."
A burly guard armed with a greatsword charged at him, completely blind with a berserk charged. While in the suit, Reaper might have been the epitome of a walking steel wall with a tank hidden behind it somewhere, un-suited Reaper looked like a first-rate acrobat. He nimbly dodged the charging stallion, and neatly disarmed him with a boot to the side of the muzzle. Reaper retrieved the blade, it was roughly full-sized for a human. Reaper had taken a few sword-fighting lessons in the time before his upgrade to juggernaut. This was mainly because for someone to pop out of the top of a tank wielding a nasty-looking blade screaming at the top of his lungs,
"Driver! Drive me closer! I wish to hit them with my sword!"
And proceed to impale people like it was a fondue dinner on Saturday night is pretty freaking scary. Reaper began to bring the basics up as he tried some practice swings to help familiarize himself with two-handed blade battles. After obtaining a few nasty cuts, bruises, and lacerations, Reaper decided 'screw this', then throwing the useless hunk of metal out of the door and resorting to unarmed battle. Reaper was always a pugilistic phenom. In a rating system of one being a blind man with two broken arms, and ten was like Chuck Norris while drinking pure radioactive kool-aid, he was somewhere around a fifteen in unarmed combat. It was basically like geting into a bar fight with not Reaper and everyone else had a mickey slipped into their drink, except Reaper. Needless to say, he was a spinning ball of lashing limbs, wreaking havoc in the ranks. Reaper had barely remembered what happened after a particularly nasty stallion spat on his face and bucked him in-between the legs, but he distinctly remembers using said stallion as a mace. Next thing he knew, he was standing in front of what looked like the leader of the guard, he had all of the regular trimmings of a captain; the fancy little hat, medals galore, and leading from the back. As the guard captain drew his fancy little rapier, and the two combatants circled about, Reaper could not hold back a chuckle at how useless all of those ponies were in a fight. This evidently enraged the captain, because he decided to insult Reaper. The exact same way that Reaper's father had.
"You freaking disgusting monster! You don't even deserve to live, just look at you!"
This tripped off Reaper bad, and a deep, guttural growl issued from his lips. He stood up smartly, and his eyes started to get that red glow. Reaper raised his hand towards the offending pony, and he enveloped him in a red glow of telekinesis. Reaper blindly began to slowly increase the temperature of the blood inside of the guardspony, slowly bringing it up to almost killing temperature. Just as he was about to take the plunge into making the blood boil, he felt a restraining hoof placed on his shoulder. Reaper turned his head to see who did it, and was confronted by the face of Princess Celestia. Again, he felt anger well up inside of him, but this time, it was a cold, malicious anger that he could control. This anger reminded the uncontrollable fury to whom was responsible for him having an abusive father was her. Together, they made the foundations of contempt for Celestia. Reaper released the now-unconscious guardspony, and slumped down onto the ground, suddenly feeling weak, and noticing that his senses were gone. Celestia picked up on this, and explained,
"That reaction is from coming off of a magical high, where your body is filled to the brim with magical energies. As you were sure to notice, your senses went up, and you were stronger than you regularly are. After using up a large amount of that energy, you got off the high, and you returned back to your normal state, and you used up an astonishing amount of energy, so you are probably going to be weak and tired for a small while."
Reaper was too exhausted to care, and he wanted to melt into the floor. Butter always looked so carefree and relaxed whenever he melted it in the microwave. Reaper had his face in a crack in the marble floor, and was considering how to transmute things, and if he could safely trans-mutate someone else, or himself into pudding, he suddenly remembered something-the five ponies that he would consider friends, and his one mortal enemy, the large fluffy marshmallow creature. He lifted a crazy crocodile eye lazily up to the monarch standing in front of him, and he said,
"What about your faithful student, and her friends? How are we supposed to handle telling them?"
Celestia felt like a bit of a tyrant with her answer, and she didn't like leaving her student out of the loop, even if it was for her own good. She said,
"We won't. You will not tell her, or her friends, nor will everyone else. It's better for everyone involved if this does not get out in the world. It would be a nasty affair."
Celestia turned her head towards Luna, and hoped for the best. Fortunately for her, Reaper was still in a exhaustive state, and didn't care much for emotions at the time. The most she got was a noncommittal grunt that sounded strangely like pudding, before going back into the crack. As Reaper pondered about various viscous liquids, and how they represented full harmony and peace, the two princesses discussed silently about what they were to do with the situation at hand. Luna started with,
"A whole contingent of my moonwatch elite guard? Just how strong is he? Isn't my half of the guard supposed to be better trained?"
Celestia looked at the now-slumbering form of the gigantic Russian bear of a man, and shook her head, she said,
"They are. Remember that he is the definition of a super soldier. He could probably take on our whole army of all pony types in that suit of his."
It was starting to get late, and it was bout time for Luna to go out and raise the moon. Celestia sent a letter to Twilight saying that they could stay the night, and she brought Reaper's unconscious body into a spare room near the royal chamber. As she left the room, she looked back from the door at the sleeping form of Reaper, studying his sleeping, and she whispered sadly,
"My little Day-glow..."
*** *** ***
Que card: THE NEXT DAY.
Reaper woke up with a pounding headache. And he was in a bed that he didn't recognize. Huh, it wasn't the first time for him, he once tried to see how many shots he could get to without choking on his own vomit. He got to about thirty-two shots before his military licence didn't get him any more. He was then pretty much raped by a girl for the rest of the night. Reaper looked around for the bottle of Smirnoff that he kept perpetually on his bedside table, until he remembered where he was. And it hit him like a cement truck filled with C4.
"Damn ponies."
Reaper groggily got up onto his feet. He stumbled into a random door, broke through it, and found that it was the closet. He picked another random door to try and find the bathroom. This time, he went out into the hall, where a bruised and battered guard was walking down the hallway. It was the nasty stallion who bucked him down there. Reaper half thought about going over and beating his sorry flank, but more pressing matters were at hand. He finally found the bathroom. Thankfully it had a bathtub. Reaper put ice cold water inside of the tub, and dunked his head in for a good amount of time. Reaper emerged rejuvenated, but a little groggy. He went over to the bed, and jumped onto it. Reaper felt awkward about being there, he couldn't go anywhere because he didn't want to cause a commotion outside currently, and even if he did feel like it, he couldn't figure out which ways were what. It was basically like a prison without bars. Without anything else to do, and still being tired, Reaper fell asleep on the bed with his hands tucked behind his head.
--- --- ---
Needless to say, when Reaper woke up, it was very uncomfortable. Celestia had sent two guards to escort him from his room to the throne room. The guards lost all premise of being hostile, and were almost to the point of shitting themselves when they figured out who they were escorting. Reaper had slept throughout the day, and the two halves of the guard had an opportunity to talk to one another during the change of the guard. The walk to the throne room was deathly silent, and Reaper didn't feel like talking right now, he had some choice words for the 'Princess' when he got there. As they entered the large double doors, the mane six were conversing with the two princesses.
"Ah don't think thaht whut yer doin is fair, princess..."
Reaper was noticed once he plodded silently up to the group, and crossed his arms in front of his chest. When all of the ponies stopped to look at him, Reaper motioned for them to continue. They did, but with a certain amount of difficulty, as if Applejack had suddenly run dry with her conversation with Celestia. Reaper picked up on the fact that they were talking about something that they didn't want him to hear. He sighed in defeat, and found doors that flank the thrones. He creaked one open, and saw that it lead to a large balcony that had the perfect view of the sky. Reaper was surprised that the sun was setting, he must of slept throughout the day. He wouldn't have told anyone, but Reaper enjoyed sunsets more than almost everything else in the world. He always found it to be a daily reminder that in a world full of uncertainties, there will continuously plod on with no change from the status quo. Reaper ran his hand through his close cut hair, the hues of the stripes identical to the sunset that was slowly unfolding in front of him. So Reaper stood there for a while, observing the daily natural phenomenon. After a good thirty minutes, Celestia opened the door, and motioned for him to come in. Reaper entered the throne room, and stood slightly to the left of the six ponies, facing the princesses. He said,
"What do you need me for, Celestia?"
Again, a nervous shuffling of hooves from the party of ponies that Reaper was standing by. They must of been talking about this. Celestia glanced at the posse, and cleared her throat officiously, and said,
"Reaper, you are not to return to ponyville, and you are to stay here at the castle here under the tutelage of me, and my sister Luna, to learn how to control your magic."
Reaper somehow knew this was going to happen. After all, he was the son of an all-powerful ruler of the land. It didn't stop him from being angry at her. Reaper took a deep breath, and as he exhaled, the metal holes dotted across his body released small gouts of steam. Little whirring sounds emanated from his body as he calmed himself down. He responded with,
"As you wish."
The tension inside of the whole room lifted because of Reaper's reluctant complacency. Reaper was definitely sad that he had to leave the only sentient beings in this world that he could call friends. Celestia said,
"I understand that Twilight and her friends have made friends with you, and their flight won't go until a few hours, so you are free to talk with them before they go."
Reaper looked at Celestia with his curious black eyes, and he nodded. The ponies all bowed, and they left the throne room. As they left, Pinkie piped up,
"Um, Reaper, I though you were going to say something like 'and now for something completely different, and explode when you let off that steam! How do you do that anyway?"
Reaper regarded the small metal rounds that were embedded inside of his body with disdain, more steam escaping his body.
"I shall tell you when we get to Twilight's room. Shall we?"
The rest of the walk was in silence as they strode down the hallway, Reaper noting that the guards were warily eyeing him up. They entered the bedroom, and Reaper took up position on top of the mattress, while the ponies took up a semi-circle around him.
"I'm about to talk about something that would be considered a bit graphic for you ponies. Is everyone alright with that?"
Everyone except Rarity shook their heads yes. Even a terse head bob from Fluttershy. Reaper continued on with his story,
"As you know, I am a soldier. Not just a regular soldier, but a super soldier. I was chosen out of the whole army to become the front runner for being a guinea pig with body enhancements. They injected me with things like dangerous drugs mixed up with uranium to make me resistant to irradiation, proven I survive the blast, along with many other things. This includes my eyes, which were 'adapted' to allow me to transition from bright to dark quickly, making me almost impervious to bright flashing lights. They would then take me out into the yard to see how far I could go until I would break. They went so far as to shoot me with smallfire munitions to see what my threshold was like after my extensive testing. The final thing that they did to me was install these little holes that you see about my body. Every few months, I would be suspended in a vat of water as they pumped various liquids, gene treatment, and more chemicals. After ten months of researching and testing, they finally came up with nanobots, which are small robots that monitor my vitals, look after minor things like bruising, chemical distribution, basic bodily functions and the like."
Reaper took a minuet to take a breather. He surveyed his audience, and they were still attentive. Good.
"After I was named the first Juggernaut, more came after me. However, these were also made in the same way as I was, so they were mentally unstable, and would often commit suicide after a few months of service. Ten years later, and many comrades killed by their own hand, they figured out a way to safely make a Juggernaut without the suicidal tendencies. In that, became the beginning of the Juggernaut legion. We became a ruthless unit, and we did things that I am not completely proud of, but we did save many lives of fellow army men. That is all I cared about."
--- --- ---
After a few hours of talking, it was time for the mane six to go. Reaper was sad because of it, but there was a strange thrill about it, too. Reaper saw their leaving as a door opening to a whole new objective rearing it's head into the fray, the take down of a threat to the world. Reaper had done many things that have preceded even some of the heroes made up by America, but this was a whole new frontier, a whole new world to live in. As Reaper made his way to his bed in the bedroom he was given, his suit was neatly piled on the side table near the bed. Reaper patted the helmet with a bit of affection, and said,
Reaper woke up to two Moonwatch guardsponies trying to exact revenge in the crack of the morning. They were trying to use a cockamamie plan involving a dead parrot, and about one thousand volts from a magical sigil. He feigned sleep as he allowed the two blunderers to try and make two and two equal four. Unfortunately, they made it equal forty-two. They had involved a wet towel, a pot of petunias, and tried to enchant a book to talk about what it had written inside of it. All they managed to do was to get it to screech out
"DON'T PANIC!"
In a very panicking manner. Reaper took this opportunity to launch himself out of the bed, twirling with effect, and landing with both of the unfortunate guardspony's necks within each hand, respectively. Reaper shook the two, slightly stunning them, and said with a voice like he was about to go on a Sunday stroll,
"Alright, alright. What is with the parrot, the towel, and the screeching book? Were you just trying to get me angry at you so I would decorate my walls with your entrails? Haven't your mommies told you not to wake the hibernating bear?"
Reaper felt a gulp escape between his fingers on both hands as the two started to cobble together what would surely be a weak answer. Reaper let the two ponies slump out of his hands as he stood up, a hand on the hip, and another on the brow. He really must talk to Luna about deciding who would be on her half of the guard. They seemed even more daft than the little walking tin cans of meat. As the two groveling ponies finally came to their senses, they said,
"The captain told us to wake you up to have an early meeting with the celestial princesses, sir!"
Reaper scoffed silently; they always called him sir. He had made his subordinates all drop that and call him whatever the hell they liked, but he liked his comrades, these were bumbling idiots that should learn a bit more discipline. He motioned them to lead on to the room, and he plotted in his head to make it up to the captain of the Moonwatch.
--- --- ---
They entered the throne room, and at the signal from the two princesses, all of the guards left the room. Celestia had a scroll that she was staring at intently, and Luna's jagged shear from the void that served as her hair was giving Luna a bit of a hard time. Reaper decided to seize the conversation by saying,
"I was wondering if I could teach the troops a bit about discipline around here, the two bozos who tried to wake me up had lightning. I mean, a simple walk into the room, salute, shout, and remaining locked in that position wouldn't be too hard, now would it?"
Celestia put the scroll down, and started to contemplate the question, as Luna's brush snapped into about one-hundred different pieces at the same time. Luna sighed, and said,
"Yes, little one, I have seen the behavior of my personal guard, and I must say that it is very...loose about it."
Celestia piped in,
"While my own guard does portray a good example of discipline, I only post the ones that have been specially trained to have it. I would like to have more of an understandable guard that wouldn't abandon post after the doe eyes of some other pony."
Reaper clapped his hands together, and prepared to leave, when Celstia stopped him. As she spoke, she levitated a burlap sack towards him
"I believe that this is yours, and I have found a way for you to stay in contact with your friends; Any scroll that they send me with a wax seal of a scythe to bind it closed will be sent via magical lay-lines to you. To send a response, simply think about the pony in question, or just spike, and set it on fire within your inner mind."
Reaper accepted the bag, and bowed, saying,
"Thank you, Princess."
Reaper headed outside of the chamber, and was meet by a large crowd of mulling ponies. Reaper checked a quick peek inside of the burlap sack, and saw that it was the LMG and all of it's ammo, its bipod, and various cleaning equipment that he left inside of the treehouse. Reaper closed the bag, and addressed the crowd that had gathered about.
"Come on! Princess's orders, I am to teach you all a bit of discipline in the ranks! GET TO THE TRAINING GROUNDS!"
Reaper threw up his arms, and made as if to rush the entire group. They scattered like little ants. Oh, how fun it will be to train them!
--- --- ---
All of the guardsponies that either weren't already trained, or on guard duty, were lined in one long row, all standing at attention, slightly slumped. Reaper went up the line, bag in hand, and would shake his head constantly, especially at the Moonwatch guards. As he got to the end of the line, he turned crisply, and walked back to the center. There was a meat can to his direct front. As a test to see how long any of them can go without shuffling, making a noise, or moving a body part, reaper pulled out his bag, and took out the LMG. He started to take it apart, and when he finally disassembled the gun, the pony to Reaper's direct front turned his head to look more closely at the contraption, and Reaper summoned his best drill sergeant voice, and shouted so loud that it reverberated off the walls of the pavilion that they were standing in.
"EYES FRONT MAGGOT! YOU ARE NOT TO MOVE UNTIL I SAY SO, YOU ARE STANDING AT ATTENTION!"
A quick jostle and frantic hoof-scrabbling had every guard snap to attention, all staring off into space. Reaper expertly cleaned the various parts, and put them back into place than when he first took them off. He started to yell, lecturing the entirety of the guard that were lined up.
"LISTEN UP, AND LISTEN UP GOOD!" Reaper walked back to a weapon rack, picking up a suitable sword, a greatsword, "BEING AT ATTENTION MEANS THAT YOU ARE TO LEAVE YOUR MIND BLANK AND BODY IMMOBILE."
Reaper slowly rose the blade to come to rest just inches from the forehead of the previously offending guard, and stood there. After a few minutes of almost no movement between the guards and Reaper, the tip of the blade dropped to Reaper's side. Reaper said,
"Good," a few high-ranking ponies walked in. Reaper recognized the captain from the day before. He said, "Yes, what do you want?"
The small group took a place beside Reaper, and they observed the line of focused guardsponies. One of them whistled. One of the most decorated ponies within the bunch, armor almost falling off due to the weight of the amount of medals spoke up, saying,
"Boy, how in the hay did you get all of those milk-drinking bozos to stand perfectly still in a straight line?"
Reaper embedded the greatsword in his hand into the ground a hairsbreadth away from the guard that he was yelling at. He leaned on it, and said,
"I can be quite...Potent when I need to. Talk to the captain over there if you really don't know."
All there was as a response was a brief shuffle of hooves as the captain in question shifted his weight. Reaper continued on teaching everypony the basics, marching, saluting, saying sir before and after, various things usually taught within the first days of boot camp. After about two hours, Reaper dismissed the guard. He went into a training vault, filled with practice dummies, and honed his abilities. He was going to need an alternative to just shooting everything he saw, or by filling it with magical energies. After about thirty minuets of honing, Reaper had the tip of the greatsword flashing, and following an intricate pattern that was designed to help the person gain an affinity with the blade that they were using. After a few dummies were set up, the blade flicked and slashed with deadly speeds.
*** *** ***
When Reaper first arrived, he had learned that it was the day after the summer sun celebration. It was now spring, and he had learned many things about the pony people, even gaining a few handful of friends that hadn't automatically ran away in fear. Reaper was training in the same room he always trained in, flicking the sword with ever more mastery. He got challenged regularly by both leaders and soldiers alike, sometimes in groups, ambushes, or solo battles. Reaper had barely noticed when a small group of guards had come in his room. As one snuck up behind him, Reaper spun around, and clobbered him over the head with the handle of the sword. the Pegasus went down like a sack of potatoes. Reaper swung his head from side to side, noting that there were four others, all the same from the group that did this yesterday. He called out,
"Aren't you sick of having your sorry asses handed to you on a daily basis?"
The unicorn leader of the group, to the direct right of Reaper, chuckled evilly, saying,
"You stupid ass, we are going to kill you for sure now, I came up with a new move that will kill you!"
Reaper took his blade in one hand, tracing up the length of it, remembering some training from the celestial sisters about magic, he pumped the feeling of cold through his fingers. When he got to the tip, the blade gently glowed with a white aura. He raised the blade in a two-handed downward-stroke fashion, while saying,
"I think I've learnt something cool as well."
The blade struck the ground, and great juts of ice enveloped the four, rendering them immobile, and defenseless. Reaper cringed inwardly at the lame pun he just uttered, and left the room, heading to the banquet hall, where he and the Princesses would eat their meals. The two were already there when he opened the door, he just sat down with a thump on a chair that was especially crafted for his stature. It was spring salad with various fruits thrown in. Reaper sighed, wishing for a twenty-ounce steak to flop down on the vegetables. He had to repurpose his nanobots to produce enough protein to allow him to still function. As Reaper munched down on the leafy greens, a scroll popped up near Celestia's face. That made Reaper think back to when he'd get them. His first one made a new recruit get hit upside the head with a telekinetic ball of force. Reaper and his five friends kept in relatively good touch. As Celestia read the scroll, her face went to one of benevolence, to shock and horror. Reaper was concerned, the couple of months that he had been around her, he noticed that she was very hard to upset visually, it was more of an aura. He asked,
"Celestia, what's wrong?"
Luna turned to see what her sister was reading, and got the same expression on her face. Celestia found her voice, and said,
"Trixie came back to Ponyville, and she has been calling herself the new nightmare moon. It's time."
Reaper threw the chair away, and tore down the hallway to his room. When he got there, he put his suit on at blazing speeds, and put the will of bahamut into a back container. As he burst down the hallways to go to the takeoff point, he noticed that the guards down the way all stood at attention and did sharp salutes. When he arrived at the takeoff point, he summoned his wings, and blasted off into the sky. All of the time training had been for this moment, he would destroy Nightmare Moon's last fragments that was attached to the world.
--- --- ---
Reaper made it into the town in a little less than forty minuets. He made a few sweeps around the town until he found the azure unicorn. The mane six were already trying to deal with her. The six shot off a streamer of rainbow-colored light. Reaper made a nose-dive straight at the ground between the six and Trixie, creating a massive explosion. As the dust cleared, it revealed Trixie and Reaper fighting over a beam of magic not quite different then the harmony's, but black and white. The six couldn't do much, because the elements sucked a large amount of energy into firing it, but they all noticed something different about reaper, until Pinkie noted,
Reaper heard this, and his wings flapped once out of annoyance. He was obviously in a fight with the same thing that DEFLECTED AN ELEMENT BLAST. It became a contest of power, Trixie's dark energies against Reaper's borderline grey power. Reaper got a hand up when Trixie's attention got taken by the ecstatic pink pony bouncing about in the background. This allowed Reaper to dissipate the beam, and charge in for melee attacks, as he forgot his gun at the palace. As he swung his blade at the possessed unicorn's head, the blade glanced off an unseen ward about her body, and broke the gratsword in half. Disposing of the useless half, Reaper dashed to the left side of the unicorn, and fired pinprick points of energy that would hopefully shatter whatever protection that Trixie had, but to no avail. Trixie gloated with,
"You dare think you could deal with the mighty Trixie, the NEW NIGHTMARE MOON! I bet you are wondering WHY I am here, YOU thought that you had Killed me, but the will of NIGHTMARE MOON is too strong for the likes of you!"
Reaper was close enough to see that her eyes were small slits, dragon eyes. They signified that she was under the thrall of Nightmare Moon. Reaper whirled in a half circle, and blasted the shield with all of his strength, but made no impression on the shield. Totally exhausted, Reaper slumped to the floor, and couldn't get up. Trixie decided to take this as an incentive to attack. She hit him with an explosion, sending Reaper multiple hundreds of yards across the small clearing that they were fighting in. Trixie teleported over, and started to beat on his body, making Reaper fly a few yards every strike. Another flash of rainbow struck the possessed unicorn, drawing her attention. A whirring sound resounded out, ending with a massive *THUNK* Near Reaper's arm. Opening his eyes, and turning his head, he saw a large sword embedded in the ground next to him. It had three skulls up the middle, and a ridiculous cutting edge that ended with a gap in the tip, making the tip two. He gripped the handle to help himself up, and a deep, dry voice resounded through his head,
CHAOSEATER
As he got to his feet, time seemed to slow, Trixie was preparing to blast the six while they were still down from the elements. With a mighty heave, Reaper unearthed the massive blade, expecting a massive weight, but getting a lightweight, almost dagger-like weight. It had a handle for two hands, but he could hold it with one. He managed to jump over Trixie, and absorb the lazer. The attack didn't kill him, but was absorbed by the topmost skull on the blade, it had a gaping maw that sucked the lazer in. As he felt power surging in his body, the voice spoke again,
RELEASE ITS POWER
For some reason, Reaper felt compelled to follow the voice. He mentally reached into the blade, and tapped into the power. He went into full-on Alicorn mode. The eye-sockets on the blade started to glow bright red, along with Reaper's own eyes. He was floating as Trixie summoned a few black tendrils that acted like flexible swords. Reaper dodged around in the air, slashing at the black tendrils, eventually decapitating all of them. He landed, and launched a large, hammering swing with the sword at Trixie, it broke through the shield, and all Trixie could get out was a strangled,
"Noooo!"
Before meeting her end by the blade cleaving her in two. Reaper dropped the sword, and slumped a bit on his feet, the horn and wings vanishing. He saw a black cloud float out of the remains of Trixie, and speed off towards Twilight Sparkle, who had just woken up. The wings erupt again, propelling him towards the nebulous cloud.
Twilight had just gotten back up from the second harmony discharge to see Trixie being cut in half by a strange sword that Reaper had with him. Then she saw the cloud rise from Trixie's body, and felt it's dark machinations. Reaper was then on a collision course with it, and ended up on his knees facing away from the ponies, absorbing the cloud. He slowly took off his helmet, and put his hands on his eyelids. The mane six didn't see, but he took off his hands and snapped open an eye.
A slithering, cold voice made its way into Reaper's head.
My my, you actually managed to defeat her, I am impressed.
Reaper was bewildered, it wasn't the voice that spoke through the blade, and it wasn't when one of the two princesses contacted him via a mind link.
Confused, little prince? You shouldn't be.
As the voice continued, he felt his contempt for Celestia boil up, becoming an all-encompassing feeling that eradicated everything else. The voice continued,
Yes, I know what you are, and my, do you have so much hate coming from it. Let it all out. I have power that can make all of your desires true.
Reaper couldn't help himself be taken by the voice, the rage he was feeling was like a tsunami of power, feeding into him.
Now you are MINE.
Reaper's appearance started to change, his wings and horn started to have a boiling, creeping black start at the base, and it went slowly to the tip of the respective extremities. Reaper got up with a strong flap of the now pitch-black wings, and his other eye shot open. Twilight noticed something strange, his eyes. She brought it up with her friends as he approached them,
"Do you remember what Nightmare's eyes looked like? His eyes look just like that now."
Pinkie yelled out,
"Reaper as black snooty? No WAY!"
Reaper stopped mid stride, and looked at his wings. His head jerked back as they went away, and his eyes went back into the usual orbs that they were, and continued walking after them after retrieving the large two-handed blade that he used against Trixie. He got to the group, and asked in a weird voice that was different than usual. It had so much power behind it that is actually made the ground tremble and shake a bit from the reverberations.
"Is anyone hurt?"
Twilight stood there, confused. She definitely saw his eyes, and the phantom wings. AND unicorn horn. Now he was trying to shrug it all off after blatantly hiding it all in a weak question? She asked,
"We're fine, but, what was all that about? With your eyes, and those wings?"
RD and AJ decided to put in their own two cents, saying,
"Yeah! How come you never told us that you could fly? We could have all kinds of cool races and stuff!"
"Whal ah agree with RD, ah ahm a little unhappy thaht yew've been lahin to us."
Reaper's eyes seemed to shift back to what they were before they snapped back to circles. They shifted side to side lazily to mask his own uncomfortable feelings. He said
"Oh, just some magic I learn't from the princesses. You know that I've been training under her, don't you?"
That didn't dissuade Twilight, however, and she persisted with saying,
"Then why did you have those eyes? We all know that Nightmare Moon had those eyes. You covered them up with your magic, I can sense it with my own."
Reaper got frustrated, and the same whisper voice echoed through his head,
Let them taste our power, not even the elements and the two princesses combined could deal with what we have.
Reaper scoffed, suddenly sounding not any like he used to, his deep bass undertones now holding nothing but scorn and menace,
"You stupid fools! You have no Idea of the extent of my power!"
His eyes snapped back into their previous form, slitted and dragon like. Dark energy seemed to slide off of him and make the surrounding area much more dark and foreboding, the wings and horn making a dark comeback. A dark chuckling escaped the razor maw of Reaper as he saw the faces of the six staring at him go from suspicious to horrified. Twilight cried out,
"Why are you doing this? This isn't like you!"
Reaper's chuckle evolved into a mad cackle as he unleashed his whole power. he said,
"Nightmare Moon sends her regards."
Reaper plunged the sword he had into the ground, pumping black magics into the surrounding area. Soon, it was just a bubble of black. Reaper let go of the sword, and slid into a magical fighting stance. Rainbow Dash screamed out,
"You... YOU AREN'T REAPER ANYMORE!"
A wicked grin graced the features of Reaper as he laughed evilly,
"Ha! I see that you have finally caught on. My name is no longer Reaper, It is Supernova."
With that, Reaper started to speed about the battlefield that he had sectioned off, applying punches, magical blasts, and enchantments when necessary. When he went back to original place, his speed left afterimages, all converging on him. The mane six all slowly got to their feet, and wordlessly began to fire off another harmony beam. Supernova spread his arms out, beckoning them to hit him. When the rainbow beam smashed into his chest, he did not turn to stone, nor did whatever was possessing him get ripped away. The beam went straight into him, and fed into his power. As the beam continued, it slowly lifted Supernova into the air, darkness energy practically gushing out of him in waves, and the mane six couldn't stop the blast from feeding into him. When the surge finally stopped, Supernova unceremoniously landed on the ground, growling. His mouth was starting to stretch and move in ungodly ways, and shadows seemed to begin to solidify around his fingers. Supernova shot up as his roars came to a crescendo, his teeth growing in size by a few inches, and dark, nether-claws formed on his hands. Supernova spoke, voice becoming deep and disembodied, as if it came from another realm, and his mouth was not in sync with his voice,
"Ohhhh, you little ponies shouldn't have done that. But, time for play is just about over. As Celestia would say, goodbye, my little ponies."
Supernova walked over to the sword embedded into the ground, and started to rip it free. As it slowly unearthed itself, the orb of darkness began to collapse itself on the mane six, sparing Supernova. As the split point of the blade got free, the dome completely collapsed, knocking out the six still trapped under it. Supernova summoned a small ball from the nether that linked all of the world with itself, and threw it on the ground. He descended into the mire of bubbling darkness, picturing Canterlot Castle in his mind.
*** *** *** When the six regained consciousness, it was nighttime. Pinkie Pie was consoling Fluttershy as Twilight was having a meeting with Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity. Rainbow started with saying,
"I can't believe that he did that..."
Applejack rubbed RD's back, and said,
"Now dohn't worry, Just think of what he did before he changed. Did you see what he did? He threw himself in front of whutever that black thing was from Trixie."
Rarity looked puzzled, and said,
"Reaper called himself Supernova when he changed, right? I wonder what that means..."
Twilight's eyes widened as realization hit her like a ton of bricks. Se said,
"Well, the last two major evil influences had self explanatory names, and he said it was Supernova. Supernovas have dealings with stars, and astronomers say that the sun is actually a star. A supernova is the death and explosion of a st... shit. We're all dead "
Twilight saw as her friend's faces went from glum to completely terrified. She continued with,
"We should try to get to Celestia, she could be in danger...Or worse."
*** *** ***
Luna was running blind down a hallway, it was all she could do now. All she heard was the scratching of nails against the stone walls as the thing she would've called her nephew was following her down the hallway. It was nighttime, he had decided to strike when she was lowering the moon, knocking out the entirety of the guard with one simple spell. From the few moments of interaction she had, Luna could tell that Reaper had enough power in him to take out half of the world. She also recognized another feeling. It was her. All of her mind told her to run as far away from it as possible. Unfortunately, that wasn't very far. A slithering, drawling whisper cut through her mind as she stopped at a dead end.
Lunnnnaaaaa....
As Luna looked back at the dead end, she saw that she was surrounded by mirrors. Reaper's distorted form seemed to step from the edge, staring straight at her. A dark glowing ball was slowly growing in the hand pointed at her. Luna was in Reaper's mercy.
To the moon, Luna."
A shockwave emanated from Reaper's hand, busting all of the mirrors, leaving him staring straight at Luna from her direct front. Reaper shot the ball, and a feeling of cold pinpricks engulfed her, blacking her vision out for a moment. When she regained her sight, she saw an all too familiar landscape, craters and dust dominating the landscape. Desolate. Luna collapsed on her legs, crying out in desperation and loneliness.
*** *** ***
Celestia wasn't scared, she had accepted her own fate when she first saw what had become her son. She should have guessed that Nightmare might of had a self-preservation device if the host body was terminated. It would be easy to control Reaper, because she could tell that he was still angry at her. Now that anger has been heightened to something of an obsession, and he had the power to be able to do anything he would want. Celestia was in her own personal chambers, readying herself for anything. There was a thud, and the walls shook. He was coming. The doors burst open with a dark blast of arcane power. A deep, almost disembodied voice resounded out,
"Princess."
Celestia looked at what used to be he son, and said,
"You know that you won't win, Nightmare. The six will get to you soon enough."
At this, an evil chuckle escaped from Reaper, and he said,
"You really expect those little foals to topple me? I have already survived three blasts from your precious 'elements of harmony' and gained it's power. They could never touch me."
Celestia grinned, and said,
"While the weapon itself might not, but what they embody and what they are will, reaper."
Reaper snorted, and growled out,
"My name is not Reaper, Its SUPERNOVA!"
Supernova grabbed Celestia with his super-powered telekinesis, and started to head down into the dungeon. He started to make small, invisible sigils on the way down. once he go there, he went into the deepest chamber, and locked her in it. He said,
"Don't even try to use any magic, those spells are there to stop any and all magic to flow through your body."
Celestia stayed regal, and calm even in the face of death,
"What did you do to Luna? And what will you do to me?"
Reaper licked one of his front teeth, and said,
"I gave her an outcome that would be worse than death. As for you... You will be turned."
He turned, and stalked out of the cell, dark intent seemed to emanate off of him and leave everywhere he touched with a vile odor. Celestia was scared, becoming turned into a nightmare unwillingly would be a prolonged and painful experience. For luna, she knew that she was sent to the moon, and wept for her.
--- --- ---
Supernova had gathered every guardspony and locked them in a room with a note that told them that they would get rations every week. He walked into the throne room, and decided that brainwashing the highest ranking officer to hold precedence over the every-day necessities, Supernova didn't want everyone to know about his presence yet. He continued through the room and onto the private balcony. The sun wouldn't need to be raised in a few hours. Supernova summoned the general of the army out of the room, and held the older Pegasus mid-air, staring straight into his eyes. After a few moments of getting into the general's head, he sent a small cloud of darkness into the pony's brain, taking complete control over his thoughts. Supernova sent a list of commands into the pony's subconscious, the guardsman mumbled back the directions to tell everyone that the princesses need a small vacation from ruling for family matters, and that they left him in charge. Reaper let the guardspony to stumble off to fulfill his duties as Reaper went back into the throne room, lounging on the celestial throne and enchanting an organ to play a song to help him think. A wicked smile came upon Supernova's face as he figured out how to enslave the elements of harmony to do his bidding. Soon, all of the world shall be under his control.
Celestia was chained to a wall, and on a table next to here were multiple balls of corruption. Supernova would periodically lift one and send it hurtling into her horn, sending pinpricks of pain down her horn that would slowly increase into a raging fire as it traveled down her body. After the eighth ball went into Celestia, Supernova left the room, leaving her to her own thoughts. Celestia looked down into a small puddle of water that leaked down from the stones above, and saw that her mane was deflated, and started to darken. She was turning, slowly, but it was inevitable.
--- --- ---
Supernova was on the same balcony as last night, and stretched his hand towards Ponyville, magically throwing his voice. He bellowed out,
"TO THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY, MEET ME IN THE OLD TEMPLE IN THE EVERFREE FOREST TOMORROW AT DUSK!"
He then turned back into the castle, melding into the darkness to re-appear in Celestia's own quarters.
--- --- ---
It was the next day, and it was a few hours after Celestia's latest treatment of corruption. As the dosage of corruption entered Celestia's system, she began hallucinating. It began with a strange beat echoing inside of her head. She then began going inside the memories of when she saw her sister's, the mane six's, or anypony else's plots. As he fantasized about asses, her wings slowly became erect, and she was beginning to have dirty thoughts. Just as Celestia was about to take it too far, she grabbed a hold of herself, and tried to calm down. Before her mind finally expelled all of the impure thoughts, Reaper walked in. Celestia then said something that completely surprised her. She said, with a voice husky and impure,
"Hmm, has my little son come to see me?" She had a pout that would rival even Rarity's, "Mommy needs a little sugar..."
Reaper moved a boot within touching range of the chain that clamped the solar princess to the wall, and Celestial jumped at it, licking it up and down as sensually as she could. She found the willpower to smack herself away and press herself up against the wall that she was fastened to. Supernova laughed, and said,
"I came here to tell you that your precious ponies are going to become... Changed today. That, and there is nothing that you could possibly do to help them."
Celestia was worried, she couldn't even comprehend what Supernova had in store for the six. By the high spirits Supernova had, it was nothing good. He said,
"I should let you out, free you on your most faithful student. You would do things that you wouldn't even imagine, and you wouldn't even be able to stop yourself." Supernova chuckled, and continued on, "But some part of you would like that, wouldn't you? The freedom, the pleasure, the... intimacy..."
Supernova left Celestia to mull over what he just said, and melded with the shadows to teleport to everfree forest.
*** *** ***
The mane six were sitting in a circle around a large book that Twilight was reading inside of her tree-library. It had been only a few hours since the pronouncement of the phantom voice. There was an unspoken agreement, and they all showed up at Twilight's house, talking about what they were going to do. Twilight started with saying,
"I've just gotten a newspaper from canterlot that says that the princesses are on hiatus, so we know that Supernova has gotten to them. He has also had a few days to prepare, so he is probably even stronger than he was before."
AJ spoke up,
"But whut if this'n's a trap?"
Rainbow's tomboyish voice spoke out,
"What if it is? I'm not gonna back down to protect Equestria! That and, you all said that there was probably still reaper and not this 'supernova' guy, so I have my own loyalty for him to make sure that he gets back!"
Fluttershy softly mumbled out,
"Rainbow Dash has a good point. Reaper gave up his own freedom, thinking that he would die, we owe it to him."
Pinkie giggled, and popped out of the book, saying,
"I think I have a plan to make Reaper's nasty-wasty face go from nasty grouchy to a smile! And not that condecending little chuckle, either." Pinkie seemed to the ponies to turn to no one in particular, saying in a singsong voice, "I don't know if it's me or not, but I think that the author uses that word way too much!"
The rest of the ponies shrugged the little outburst as just plain old pinkie pie zaniness, and Twilight plunged back into the book. Rarity inquired,
"Just why are you looking into that book, dear?"
Twilight's eyes peeked out from behind the cover of the book, which was propped up for easy reading, and said,
"This was a book that Celestia sent me after a few months of Reaper being with her at Canterlot, it's named Alicorn illnesses and plagues, It is from when the Alicorns used to be more than just two princesses ruling over all of creation. Hopefully, we can understand what happened to Reaper and Trixie."
A few minuets passed with an anxious tension almost palpable in the air. This was all broken when Twilight shouted 'found it!' and began reading off what was probably happening,
"The book here says that when an Alicorn receives a large amount of negative emotion, like what Luna experienced, they become a Nightmare. This Nightmare, if defeated, could still be alive, and could move on to take control over others if their feelings were strong and negative enough. I guess this is what happened, but what could Reaper be angry about?"
AJ face-hooved, sighing with exasperation, saying,
"Yah don't think he was jus' alright with leavin' everything he knew behind?"
Twilight nodded, and she continued on with her reading, saying,
"The book says that being trapped under the influence of a Nightmare is like being washed away with whatever emotion that was heightened. Girls, we need to get Reaper out of that water."
Pinkie leapt up with a squeal, and a water inflation vest about her upper body, squealing out,
"YAAAYYYYYYY! WATER SEARCHING PARTY!"
The ponies just shook their heads, and called it in for the day, sleeping at Twilight's house, and preparing themselves for the confrontation they were going to have inevitably at the end of the next day.
--- --- ---
The group left Ponyville as it slowly began to sink into a state of emergency and disarray, ponies running about in HAZMANE suits, boarding up windows, and just run-of-the mill chaos that accompanied the mane six whenever they went on their escapades. They left the town with as much silence as possible, and plunged into the forest. The trip was relatively uneventful, Nightmare not leaving any traps for them to stumble onto. They made it to the old temple where they first found the elements of harmony, and a dark aura seemed to fill the air, making the six present very uneasy. What really put them on edge was that once they approached the door inside of the temple, they could head distinct crunching noises, and every once and a while, the sharp retort of a bone being snapped. As they entered the largest room where the elements were being held, Reaper was slumped over, and resting on a knee, while his head bobbed up and down with the sounds that were emanating from whatever he appeared to be holding. When he noticed that the ponies arrived, he quickly twisted on his heels and threw whatever he was eating into a wall, creating a meaty thud. He drawled out,
"I hope you don't mind me taking a break to eat something, Iv'e been absolutely famished for something with more substance than vegetables for food."
He wiped a gloved and be-clawed hand over his mouth to get rid of any blood left behind by the body. Rainbow turned her attention to where he had thrown the thing, and saw familiar features. She began to sob silently, and she choked out,
"Gilda..."
Reaper looked over to the medium-sized lump of feathers, and said,
"Hmmm, a gryphon, eh? No wounder it tasted so good..."
Rainbow dash let out a strangled yell and charged at Supernova. He acutely stepped out of the way, grabbed her tail, and threw her into her other friends. he called over, saying,
"If it makes any difference, she attacked first. I killed her, and simply got hungry."
When they all got to their feet, Supernova lifted a finger, and seemed to push the thin air with a finger, toppling the six ontop of each other again. Twilight called out in a strangled whisper to her friends,
"He didn't use any magic for that!"
Reaper stood, arms spread apart, asking to be hit with all they had. Fluttershy began by standing up first. With a low grumble, she began to stalk forward, staring straight into the onyx slits that Supernova had for eyes. She stopped within arms-length, and sat down. What happened next surprised everyone within earshot. Fluttershy began to yell at Supernova, saying,
"You.... You BRUTE! How COULD you? Here we were, just us and Reaper, and suddenly you come along, and TAKE OVER Reaper's body, getting in due to the FACT that he was TRYING TO SAVE US!"
As she screamed, Fluttershy used the 'stare' on Supernova. Once she was done, and was entrancing him in her gaze, Supernova's eyes chipped away to show two blood-red rubies that served as Reaper's eyes. He blinked, and shook his head. Reaper looked down at Flutershy, who was still sitting on her flank, staring up at him. He stuttered out, i his own voice,
"F-f-f-flutershy?" He looked at his hands, and gasped, mumbling, "So it wasn't a dream... Alright, you need to listen to me and listen to me good! This, as you can probably tell, is not me, It is Nightmare Moon, and she has been burying me deep inside my psyche so I couldn't fight against what I was doing... But you brought me out, and I can fight now."
One of Reaper's eyes began to darken, turning into the draconic eyes of a Nightmare. He hastily shouted out,
"I dont have much time left, but I am sorry for what Iv'e done..."
Both of Reaper's eyes went vacant. Reaper's eyelids shut closed, and when he opened them, he was Supernova again. Supernova said nothing except growling and reaching behind himself and bringing out his greatsword. just as he was getting ready to attack, a dull voice ripped through Supernova's mind, saying,
NO
Supernova stopped mid-swing to grasp at his head, screaming bloody murder, ripping mortar and bricks around the temple. The six ponies had to duck and move around to avoid being hit. The same voice ripped painfully through Supernova's mind,
I SAID NO. YOU ARE NOT REAPER, YOU DISGUSTING EXCUSE FOR PERSON. I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN ANY LONGER, I KNOW WHERE THE REAL REAPER IS.
Supernova growled out with such an intensity that it actually made the roof start to cave-in, he shook his head, and started to dart about the room, trying to subdue the six. An errant shot of dark corruption hit the pedestal where the elements were originally situated the elements, and a dark glint flashed in the eyes of the element-bearers, right before Supernova forced them all out with a blast of pure power. Dropping his sword, Supernova teleported to the entrance of the dungeons, one side of his face had a red eye, while the other one was black. Repeatedly, Supernova slammed into walls. One side was fighting with the other, every time that Supernova collided with a wall, different reactions resounded from two different voices. Once Supernova got to about halfway inside of the dungeon at the stumbling pace that set him back, he was going to let out the one thing that would corrupt the six with little to no effort on Supernova's half. He clutched at his skull, and screamed out,
Author's note: We ALL know what this chapter is going to be about; it's that time again, that racy chapter that almost everypony has. I have not been wanting to write this ever since my brain beat me upside the head with this idea. I give you MOLESTIAAAAAAAA (Consider this your first and ONLY warning.)
On a related note, ADRIAN BRODY. It is undoubtedly Molestia's theme song.
I also challenge you to get me a TV tropes page for this. I can't even find all the stuff I put in here. =================================================================
Supernova crashed into the bars of a cell as he stumbled about in the below-ground dungeons, Reaper was losing the battle, Nightmare was gaining the upper hand. With a bellow of pain, Supernova brought rents through the solid stone with his razor-sharp claws, ripping apart the metal bars of the cell he just crashed into. Another wave of pain wracked through Supernova as the same powerful voice spoke again,
CALL IT, REAPER. IT IS THE ONLY WAY I CAN HELP YOU.
Supernova's head bucked to the side, and he mumbled out,
"Chaoseater..."
The large blade dropped from the sky, and Reaper began to regain lost ground. The right half of his body began clawing it's way towards Celestia's cage, but was tripped by the left half. Supernova rolled around on the floor before the right began to crawl towards the prison cell again. When he arrived there, his crazed eyes frightened Celestia, and somewhere deep down inside, made her turned on. The red eye on the left slowly shut, and the right side grabbed Chaoseater, propping himself up with it. He opened the prison door, and grabbed at the shackles confining the exited princess mare. He heaved himself up to full height, and said,
"Will you follow my commands?"
The heavy panting of Supernova seemed to have an impression on Celestia, as, if in a trance, she mumbled,
"Yes...master."
Supernova nodded, and said,
"Good," He began to remove the shackles, one-by-one, as he talked,"I need you to get to ponyville, and somehow get them under our thrall. Is that clear?"
As Supernova got the positive answer, he undid the last clasp. Next thing he knew was that he was pinned onto a wall, and that there was something moaning and stuffing it's moist appendage inside of his mouth. He then deduced that he was getting frenched. By his mother. Even Nightmare was creeped out by this, and tried to escape from the demented pony's grasp. After a long while, Celestia detached from Supernova, and looked at him with a sexy little smirk. He wiped off his mouth, and changed Celestia's appearance to a unicorn mare not much bigger than Twilight. He said,
"Alright, if you can use a bit self control, I have changed your appearance so that you aren't spotted and swamped. And please, for the love of you, stay discreet."
As Celestia turned to leave the cell, he couldn't help himself from giving her a hearty slap on the flank. He said as she left the room,
"Do it well, and I might reward you."
Supernova once again melded with the darkness to arrive in Celestia's personal quarters.
--- --- ---
Celestia was having a hard time trying to figure out an identity for herself, her mind couldn't keep itself from plots. Twilight's, specifically. It wasn't until Supernova had mentally contacted her by saying,
Gather them all, and lead them out someplace, like the old temple where I had them meet the last time. Once you secure them in an area, contact me.
Celestia had a revelation- she turned her horn to her flank, making her cutie mark a compass. Her name would be Cardinal Compass. Celestia's horn glowed for just a second before she vanished in a small burst of light. A few nanoseconds later, a similar flash appeared at the edge of the Everfree forest.
--- --- ---
It was morning, and nobody noticed the arrival of a new pony... except Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie was getting up earlier than the sun, as she normally would, until she felt it. It was a certain itchiness on the sole of the hoof that she got on the day when twilight arrived, and she was the first to talk to her. It was time to take a day off of work today and prowl the streets. End of the world or not, this pony still had a job to do, and a party to throw! She headed out into the streets once the sun shone out in the sky, and after an hour of her twitches lead her about the streets, she saw her, the new pony. Pinkie followed her around just a bit, until she got a perfect image ingrained into her mind, a compass pointing north, brown coat, red mane, and a unicorn. Pinkie bounced off to go find where this unicorn in question is staying.
--- --- ---
Celestia had a easier time gathering the elements that she had first thought, she just took out a room in the one hotel in the entire town, and waited. She was eventually approached by Twilight, who told her to come over to her library a bit past one. Undoubtedly, the rest of the elements would be there, seeing that it was a blaring Pinkie Pie party. After an hour of so of wandering around, figuring out a fitting reason for venturing into the old temple, she arrived at the Library. As she entered, lights switched on, and the ponies stuffed in the library all screamed out,
"SURPRISE!"
Celestia feigned surprise, eyes darting back and forth in what the party ponies would register as shock, but in reality, she was scanning the room for possible victims, she was getting bored. Celestia did a quick one-through of the library until her eyes rested for a moment over a purplish earth pony making love to an extra large bottle of whiskey. The town drunk would be perfect, ponies would expect it to be drunken ramblings. Pinkie Pie spoke up again as the last notes from the joint exclamation vanished from the air,
"HI, My name is Pinkie Pie, and I threw this party JUST for you! Is there ANYTHING MORE EXITING than a new PONY party? Anyway, what's your name?"
Celestia smiled, years of governing allowing her to mask her true desires, and said,
"Hello, Pinkie, my name is Cardinal Compass."
Pinkie's smile seemed to get unnaturally larger as she shook Celestia's hoof with vigor. After a good few minuets of shaking, Pinkie said,
"Well, nice to meetcha, Cardinal! Wow, that's a funny word, almost like cherrychonga!"
Pinkie bounced off into the crowd, repeating the same word over and over again. Celestia allowed her compexion to relax a bit, giving her a promiscuous, self-assured look. She wandered about the party until she came into contact with Twilight again. Twilight was nursing a cup of punch, and started off their conversation, saying,
"Hey there, Cardinal! How is the party for you?"
Celestia smiled; this was the pony that she was looking for. She said,
"The party is great! Say, Twilight, you haven't been in the everfree forest, have you?"
Twilight just laughed a bit before she responded, saying,
"Too many times to count, why do you ask?"
Celestia was getting Twilight, and through her, the elements; Hook, line, and sinker. She calmly responded, saying,
"I am an explorer, and a map-maker, so I just want to be able to chart out the insides of the forest. I have even heard about an old temple dedicated to the two sisters that is hidden somewhere near here!"
Twilight had been surprised that not many ponies had actually heard the tale of Nightmare moon's second coming, and even then, most other ponies pushed the whole Discord fiasco out of their minds, so not many of them had actually heard that the elements had actually found their bearers. She stated, with more than just a hint of pride,
"Well, I'll have it for you to know that me and my friends are actually the bearers of Harmony, and we actually discovered them at that very same temple!"
Celestiua feigned slight shock as she said,
"Oh really? I heard that the elements were used as the way to defeat Discord and Nightmare Moon, but I had no idea who actually used them. In that case, could you and the rest of your friends bring me to the temple?"
Gotya Twilight just responded with,
"Why not? I think that the Everfree needs a few more maps, seeing how many ponies get lost in there every year."
Celestia let out another grin as Twilight excused herself to go talk to her friends, and she started to stalk off towards the drunkard pony sitting by the punch. As she slid through the crowd, Celestia saw her reflection in a mirror, taking some time to admire herself. She swayed side to side, admiring her supple flanks, her long voluminous mane that had thick curls, and her eyes. Little burnt orange discs flashed from under Celestia's bangs. After a few minuets of checking up on herself, Celestia went back to finding her prey.
--- --- ---
No matter what they were doing, or what they were trying to think about, the six bearers of harmony all had one thing that dominated their minds; Cardinal Compass. For some reason, they all had an attraction towards the mare. Whether it was her own presence that permeated the air, the alluring way that she talked, or just the fact that her body was just attractive in it's own right, but that new mare would not be erased from their minds. They all knew that, in some way, they would have to bring themselves in the spotlight for Cardinal.
*** *** ***
Supernova had once again vanquished Reaper's uprising, and had managed to suppress him for a time. Once he lowered the sun and raised the moon, he contacted Celestia via the mind-link that he had attached to her. It not only sent brainwaves, but Supernova could hear what was going on around Celestia. As he initiated first contact, the signal was fuzzy, and all he could hear was what he thought a type of heavy panting. Supernova reached out with his mind, almost not wanting to know what she was doing.
Celestia? What are you doing?
When she replied, Celestia seemed a bit flustered and distracted as she responded with,
"What's up, boss?"
No, it was actually panting. Heaving. Thumping. Supernova didn't want to know, but he was inadvertently going to learn about it, some way, some how. As he gathered the strength to start talking, he was interrupted by Celestia in both her mind, and the audio stimulation. She said,
"OHHHHH, YEAH! PREPARE YOUR ANUS!"
Supernova blinked. Once. Twice. Began to say something in his mind. Stopped. Considered suicide, but decided to veto the idea. He finally said,
What. Did. You. Just. Say. I told you to keep a low profile!
Celestia seemed meek and sheepish, and said,
"I am. It's just the town drunk! No one will notice if she's gone for a few hours, and I doubt that she will think that this is real. Anyways, I got the elements to follow me into the old temple, we are going to go there tomorrow."
Supernova sighed. He was probably have less-than-pleasant nightmares tonight. He shut down communications when he heard the high-pitched squeals. He had enough insomnia-fuel to keep him sleep-free for a good few days.
--- --- ---
Celestia had gotten away Scott-free, changing around the drunkard's memory so that she believed it was a drunken dream. Now, she was going to go over to Twilight's library to get ready for the excursion into the forest. When she got there, she opened the door, and the mane six were already there. She felt something, whether her natural Alicorn instincts, or her current attachment to sexuality, but she could sense something strange about them. Once she took a few steps into the library, she was confronted by Twilight. She said,
"There you are, Cardinal! How are you? After I told you to come here, you just disappeared from the party. What happened?"
Celestia was sure of it, Twilight didn't use this type of tone unless she was almost infatuated with it. A good length of time with the filly let her pick up on the subtleties of Twilight's speech. She was definitely attracted to her in this form. This will be fun. Just after a pause that allowed her to think some more, she said,
"I just wandered the party for a while before I went home for the night. I really was tired, I came from a little past Appaloosa all the way here on foot."
Twilight nodded in understanding, and she said,
"I get that. However, you are here now, and we can leave. Lets go."
And they did exactly that. After about a half of an hour, Celestia noticed that the elements were acting differently. As she walked, Rarity took up position in front of her, and seemed to take an extra bounce in her step, jiggling her plot in almost an un-ladylike manner. Rainbow Dash was in the air, showering Celestia with a plethora of tricks that even the Wonderbolts would shed a tear at. As they got closer to the temple, they got to the bridge again, but it seemed that it had fallen completely off, a few hundred feet down into the gorge. Applejack trotted up to the side of the cavern, saying,
"Ah got this, don't worry!"
In a flash, a lasso was skillfully thrown, and it caught on the bridge lying in the canyon. She hauled it up in a flash, and fastened one side of the bridge to the securing posts. Rainbow flew over to the other side and fastened that. Once the entire party made it to the other side, Applejack's lasso cracked out again, snatching a nearby apple. Applejack handed that apple to Celestia, saying,
"Here ya go, sugarcube."
Celestia sniffed at the wild apple, and it was almost as good as the ones she would grow in her garden. Che took a crunching bite of it, juices dripping down her jawline. Feeling Applejack's eyes upon her, Celestia slowly licked herself clean, just to tease her. It was definite, all of the ponies had attractions to her. When they got back to the road, Fluttershy took up the position to Celestia's right, pointing out all of the flora and fauna, while pinkie pie was trying to tempt her with a varying amount of baked goods. What Celestia was wondering was when Twilight would break out her own move to be put in the limelight. When they arrived at the temple, Twilight began to talk, and Celestia recognized it, her move. Twilight said,
"This, as you have probably heard, Is the old temple where me and my friends had found our elements, and where we banished Nightmare Moon from our Princess Luna. Here, not only did we find the elements, but in this very temple, the two celestial sisters walked the halls hundreds of years ago."
The move to get her in high graces was not as obvious as her compatriot's were, but it was smart, just like Twilight. If the time for molesting the little fillies were not too close, Celestia might actually felt a bit of pride in her student. She took the path that wouldn't be initially noticed by the quarry, but would stay in their minds until Twilight would bring it up, somehow. Twilight continued to talk, as they walked deeper into the temple. Twilight seemed to walk closer, and she said,
"Just think about it, you'd be the first pony ever to make a map to this place! Isn't it exciting?"
Celestia sent a quick message to Supernova as they got into a chamber that had only one door, and it was thick. As they all passed through, Celestia stayed behind to hold open the door. As they all got in, she swiftly closed the door with almost no sound, and she made the lock close with an inaudible click. As she approached Twilight, she allowed her own voice to peal out, saying,
"Oh, but my faithful student... NOTHING is more exciting than what I am about to do to you, my little ponies..."
Twilight was confused; Cardinal's voice suddenly changed to Celestia's voice, but Celestia was somewhere, under Supernova's whim. She turned her head, and saw her, she saw Celestia, but something was different, her eyes had dilated to the size of pinheads, giving her mentor a fearsome appearance. Twilight stammered out,
"Buh...Whu...Where is Cardinal?"
Celestia's grin grew in intensity, and she said,
"Cardinal? Well, I am cardinal!"
This took Twilight for a loop. To mess with her, Celestia reverted back to Cardinal's dorm, and stalked in little circles around the group of ponies, saying,
"Oh... Twilight, Pinkie, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, were you expecting me to be just a regular that you thought you could seduce?" Celestia chuckled at the confused faces that graced the mane six. She continued, "You don't think I would notice? All of your 'hidden' advances were glaringly out in the open. Twilight was the only one to try and build my appreciation for her by explaining things with a certain... twist."
Celestia went back to her original form, those maddened eyes flashing out again. She chuckled almost vilely as she said,
"Now, let's see how you like my own form of advances... I like to call it my ASSVANCEMENT!"
She immediately took control over her hair, and Celestia snared the elements within her grasp. Celestia floated twilight over to her, sitting at her feet, looking into the wall directly in front of her. Celestia began licking Twilight in long strokes of her tongue, sensually grooming her. As Celestia began to bring her strokes downward, Twilight somehow found her voice, saying,
"Celestia! This isn't you, you would never do this! What has gotten into you?"
Celestia brought the lick from Twilight's flank up to her ear. As she nibbled on the fleshy extremity, she huskily whispered,
"My dear student, it's not what got into me, but what is going into you."
After hearing this, Twilight's mind went into overdrive, trying to figure out a way to dissuade Celestia from raping her. Twilight finally figured out something that would hopefully snap Celestia out of whatever kind of trance she was in. As Celestia's skillful tongue swiveled around her cutie mark, Twilight yelled out,
"Remember Discord, Celestia! Remember your SISTER!"
Twilight's voice had gone up an octave as Celestia's tongue had started to go downwards, getting to the lower belly. Celestia suddenly stopped, and the mane six were all dropped from the air. Twilight was released, and she turned to look at Celestia. Celestia's face had gone slack, and her eyes dilated back to regular size. She glanced around with a look of worry, and her eyes landed on Twilight, who's hair had more than a few Celestia-given cowlicks. Celestia's eyes took on a look of sorrow. She said,
"My little ponies... What have I done to you?"
--- --- ---
Supernova's mood had gone downhill again, Reaper was fighting with him for body dominance again. THUMP...THUMP...THUMP... A regular thumping cadence enveloped Supernova's mind, blasting every other though away from him as he sat there, trying to suppress Reaper. Supernova suddenly got an idea, the sword was giving Reaper the power to fight against him, so if he somehow absorbed that power, he wouldn't have to deal with this incessant pounding going on in his head. He grabbed the massive blade, and forced his being inside of it. Supernova felt another, ancient being residing inside of the blade, but he easily overpowered it. Ge collected all of the energy that composed the blade, and sucked it into his own body. To the casual eye, it would look like reaper was slowly getting stabbed, but the other side of the sword didn't come out of Supernova's back. Once he got the entire thing done, the thumping reduced greatly, as if someone covered Supernova's head with a blanket of cold. Once Supernova had enough focus, he sent his attention towards Celestia. As he started to initiate contact, Celestia sent him a quick message that she had them subdued in an area. Supernova initiated the mind-link again, and listened to the scene through Celestia's ears. Suddenly, he heard Twilight scream,
"Remember Discord, Celestia! Remember your SISTER!"
His mind was shut off from hers, but from the brief last seconds of contact, he could tell that Celestia had miraculously attained control over her body. The thumping gradually came back as Supernova's rage slowly grew to an all-encompassing crescendo.
--- --- ---
The mane six were all sitting around Celestia, getting an impromptu 101 on nightmare magics and corruption. Celestia started to conclude her lecture with saying,
"No, you see, my little ponies, Reaper has been taken control by the remnants of Nightmare Moon, and made me do what I was doing by..."
Celestia's rant was cut short because Supernova decided to teleport in their midst with a small explosion. When Celestia got on her hooves, Supernova flung a ball of dark magic at her, hitting Celestia with such a force that it knocked her off her hooves and sent her flying into the air again. As they all got onto their feet again, The mane six all saw Supernova pointing a dangerously sharp claw at them, growling to Celestia,
Celestia slowly stalked over to the six as the thumping inside of Supernova's head became more painful and often. One hand rose up to grasp at the side of his head, Celestia enveloped the six, and started to message them, causing them to wriggle about. She sent little bolts of electricity, knocking them all out. As the thumping became a bass progression of pain, Celestia was advancing on Twilight again, Supernova heard Reaper's voice drift across his consciousness,
"You will not have my freedom..."
Supernova felt some of his control after he heard this, and half of his body suddenly went numb, starting to move on it's own. Before Supernova could try and suppress whatever Reaper was doing, he felt his mouth moving independently, shouting out,
"CELESTIA! STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT. NOW."
Celestia's head swiveled to look at Reaper, half of his body rigid and immobile, the other pointing it's palm at her horn. Celestia's head jerked forward as large balls of black ejected themselves out of her horn, being sucked back into Reaper's body. As the last one came out of the tip, Celestia's hair grew limp, simply content with billowing around, dropping the six elements to the floor with a few thuds. Celestia's eyes went vacant for a few moments before she began to look about the room. When her eyes landed on reaper, she saw one red eye looking up at her with concern, while the other black eye radiated only contempt and hate. She called out,
"Reaper? What happened? I can't remember anything after you came back to the castle..."
The side with the red eye seemed to smirk, as he said,
"Nothing you need to worry about, you weren't you."
Celestia almost didn't notice as one of the void-sharpened claws started to make it's way up to Reaper's throat. Celestia stared at it as she said,
"Reaper? What are you doing?"
Reaper gave off a grunt as he looked down to see what was happening, and he saw the hand independently moving on it's own. He grabbed it, and began to struggle with his hand as a voice seemed to boom out of the black eye. It said,
"IF I CAN'T HAVE YOU, THEN YOU CAN'T EITHER!"
Reaper was suddenly flung across the room, landing on a wall. When Reaper got up, his body was being wracked with convulsions of pain. He raised his palm towards Celestia. As arcane energies started to swirl into a black ball in the direct middle of his hand, Reaper shouted out,
"Celestia, I need to send you to the sun! I'm sorry, but it's for your own protection!"
Celestia's face went from confusion, to shock, and then to understanding. She lowered her head, and lifted her wings to full extent just as the ball of energy hit her in the breast. A loud, bright explosion wracked the air, and when the flash subsided, the only thing left of Celestia's teleportation was a sizable crater and sizzling yellow bolts of magical energy. Reaper started to drag himself towards the six before he was forced off his feet again. This time, it was Supernova who had control of the body. He quickly made his way over to the slumbering six, and summoned some of the corruption that he had gathered from Celestia, and began to seep them into the six, being careful to corrupt only certain things, not making them invalid to be the incarnations of the elements. Reaper reared his head, and as the corruption did it's job, he forced them to teleport into a clearing by the edge of the forest. Supernova's body stood rigid and immobile, not even hinting at the struggle happening within the body's mind. Nightmare gouged out with a mental spike, as Reaper covered himself with a wall of mental steel. After the initial assault, they started to mentally trade blows with each other. Whatever presence that had resided in Chaoseater helped out Reaper, and together, they started to go out on an offensive, slowly driving the nightmare from Reaper's brain. As they started to purge, they found out that the Nightmare was heavily entrenched, curling around Reaper's psyche, dug deep down inside of it. After a good hour of struggles, the Nightmare was finally being removed from Reaper. His body let out a long, pealing cry, and it seemed that his currently altered state seemed to start to peel off of him, like a mirage. Another thirty minuets, and the visage was completely removed from Reaper's body. Reaper fell to his hands and knees as he received verbal abuse from the Nightmare, a wispy voice cutting through all thought.
"You... YOU FOOL! YOU'VE RUINED EVERYTHING I WORKED TO ACCOMPLISH! YOU WILL RUE THIS DAY!"
Reaper just grinned, and got up to his feet. He called on Chaoseater again, and brandished it at the perverse shadow of himself, and said,
"That's nice to hear. Now, how about you move your god-forsaken ass away from me before I do something I regret."
The Nightmare scoffed, and fired a wispy dark spike at Reaper. Reaper deflected it with an expert flick of the blade he had. Reaper quickly countered with a slash directly down the middle. The ghost of himself dissolved into a pool of black, and Reaper eyed it carefully as it dissolved into the ground. The voice resounded out as Reaper slowly slumped to the bround, crashing from the Adrenaline that had been coursing through his body, saying,
YOU KNOW THAT IT ISN'T DEAD, RIGHT?
Reaper just muttered out,
"Yeah, now let me sleep..."
Reaper's body slumped onto the ground, and he was out like a light before he even hit the dirt.
--- --- ---
When Reaper opened his eyes, he found himself to be on some type of dreamscape. He looked side to side, appreciating the funnel of dust that he was currently standing in. For some reason, he felt the unquenchable desire to explore the area, so he set off to find the end of the tunnel. After an imperceptible amount of time, he arrived at the end of the tube. It entered into a large meadow, surrounded by large trees, flowers and tall grasses dominating the clearing. In the middle of the meadow was an uncharacteristic pile of human skulls with a large blade sticking out of the top. As he approached the pile, an apparition appeared to him. It was a man covered in some type of demonic armor, and two long locks of bluish hair popped out from the cowl that the figure had on. It held up a massive arm seemingly made entirely of metal, and beckoned Reaper over. When Reaper got within arms reach of the blade stuck into the ground, he recognized it immediately as Chaoseater, and reached out to grab it, but was interrupted by the figure standing next to it. The figure shook it's head, and ice blue eyes flashed out from under the cloth covering it's face. As Reaper started to speak, the figure interrupted him with it's powerful voice. It said,
"You must think very hard before accepting that sword, Reaper. What it means is that you are going back to Equestria, and fighting Nightmare, even if that means you will die."
Reaper glanced at the large obelisk of metal that erupt out of the small pile of skulls. The figure went on, saying,
"Tell me, what do you see, Reaper?"
Reaper mumbled out,
"We're in a large meadow, a clearing in a forest. There is tall grass everywhere, along with so many flowers. It seems peaceful. Wait, why do you know my name?"
The ghost walked over to the side of the blade, resting its gauntlet on the hilt of the blade. It said,
"I know much about you, Reaper. I know how long you served in the army before you lost your identity. I know how your parents died. I know your real name. I know when you will die."
Reaper's eyes widened, and he whispered out,
"Are you death?"
The apparition smiled, gleaming white teeth glinting out under the shade of the hood. It chuckled a bit, and said,
"No, that would be my brother."
The ghost quickly passed its hand over Reaper's head, and Reaper began to see things unfolding from the inside of his eyes. Scenes of one man going up against legions of enemies, some being angelic, some devilish, and even some more being regular humans brandishing futuristic-looking armaments. The same ghost from last time was brandishing Chaoseater, decimating and laying waste to every enemy in his path, barely sustaining any wounds. As the battle raged on, the different enemies started to slowly morph into every type of soldier that Reaper had fought in his extensive lifetime in the army. The ghost started to shift and morph as well, the plates of metal armor shifting into blocks of Kevlar, moving to cover the entirety of his head. Chaoseater turned into a LMG. It was Reaper. A voice drifted across the raging din of the battle. It said,
"You see Reaper, I know of you because we are brothers. A bond forged by the strife of war, and intertwined by the blood of our enemies."
Reaper responded, saying,
"I think I know who you are. You say your brother is death, and we are brothers in our own rights by the fires of strife. You are war."
Another chuckle reverberated off into the distance as Reaper began to regain his ocular senses, and he found himself standing right in front of Chaoseater. War's voice drifted through Reaper's brain again, saying,
"Then you would be guessing right. I am war, rider of Ruin, one of the bringers to the end of your old world."
Reaper began to reach for Chaoseater as he asked out,
"Then how are you present here, War?"
Right before his hands touched the handle of Chaoseater, War replied,
"Not only are we the harbringers of the end, but we are also universal rulers over the things we are named after. For instance, my brother, Death, is often seen as the grim reaper in your old world. Only me and Death are here, the other two can barely even talk to us when we are here due to the lack of what they represent in this world."
Reaper grinned with anticipation as he wrapped his hands around the hilt of the blade. Suddenly, a great pain tore through Reaper's skull, feeling like it would split in two. Reaper felt like he was being bent in half, and suddenly, he got sucked through his bellybutton. When Reaper came to, he woke up on the ground with a pounding headache. Chaoseater was embedded in the ground in-between Reaper's thighs. He hoisted himself up on it, and tried to access his magical stores. He found out that he was drier than Nevada in the middle of summer. Reaper tiredly noticed that it was getting late, and he somehow needed to take control over the sun to make it move in the sky. He reached out a mental probe into the sun, and he felt as though the sun was happy, almost willing to comply with his demands,lowering itself to the other half of the world, and set the moon on it's path of ascent with a bit more trouble. Once he was satisfied with his work, Reaper ripped Chaoseater from the ground, and dragged its dangerous double-tip along the ground, digging a furrow as he went. Reaper followed his instinct, and after a good thirty minuets of traveling, he arrived at the gate of Canterlot. Reaper still needed to keep a low profile, so he went to the back of the city, and started to crawl up the side of the castle. He successfully got inside of the castle without notice of the very few brainwashed guards. Reaper went to the room containing the rest of the guardsponies were held. Once he got to the door, he knocked on the door and called through,
"Hello? Captain Steel-feather? You in there?"
There was a faint shuffling and bickering as Reaper heard hoofsteps approach the door. A strong and proud voice called through, a bit dampened after a few days on starvation rations, called through the thick steel door,
"Yes? Hello? Who is out there?"
Reaper cautiously called out,
"It's Reaper, Steel."
There was a small scuffling of hooves as a few ponies got closer to the door. Steel-feather called out,
"Reaper? Is that really you? Because if that is Supernova that I am talking to out there..."
Without answering, Reaper just yanked open the door to the rest of the room. Steel was standing there, crouched low at the sudden movement, wings splayed out in the case of a fight. The strain on all of his muscles gave way when he saw the familiar visage of his teacher. Steel swiftly went up to a salute, followed by the rest of the guards within the room. Reaper grinned, and said,
"Come now, ponies! The ones that the nightmare-distorted version of me has taken out of the room have been brain-washed! We are now to subdue them all so that I can reverse the state that they are in! Everyone, break up into your squads! Sunbeam, left castle! Dayflash, take out the sentries! Moonbeam! Right castle! Shadow Spear, Take care of the higher-ranked guardsponies! Eclipse, you're with me, we're going to get the General the hell out of dodge."
The respective squads all broke apart, braking into formation as they headed into the main landing, leading into the main complex. Reaper took up the lead of the legion, Chaoseater slung across his shoulders. He broke open the large double doors, and stood still with his squad of ponies as Pegasus soared and scrambled in even ranks about the air as earth ponies and unicorns calmly marched out in battle-formations. They weren't actually going for kills, but intimidation is seventy-five of the battle. Reaper saw the entire scene play out, and he turned his head to Steel, his grey coat contrasting with his gold armor, and said,
"Have I ever told you guys how proud I am of you?"
Steel responded by saying,
"No, sir."
Reaper started to walk off as he said,
"Then let me congratulate on your accomplishment. I'm proud of you."
The rest of eclipse guard followed behind Reaper, the elite hand-picked by Reaper from both sides of the guard. They silently trotted behind the looming figure that had superiority over even the general of the army. They arrived at Reaper's room, and he donned his long-forgotten helmet, and cocked his LMG. Only a short walk thereafter, they were in the throne room, where General Iron-hooves was. They entered the throne room, and there the general was, his slightly older frame decked out in metals. He was currently sitting on a smaller throne slightly removed from the celestial ones. When he saw the group enter the room, he chuckled evilly as Reaper briskly walked up to him.The general said,
"Foolish boy! You can't defeat the dark mistress! She is just too powerful. Now, come, join me so I can return you to her."
As Reaper raised his hand to start unraveling the enchantments wrapped and burrowed inside of the earth pony's brain, the General screamed out one last time,
"STRIKE ME DOWN! I ORDER YOU TO STRIKE ME DOWN AND CONTINUE YOUR JOURNEY TO THE DARK MISTRESS!"
Reaper shot a spear of light from his hand into the earth-pony's forehead, causing him to writhe in pain. Reaper brought up his fingers and palm so that they were pointing to the ceiling. A dark penumbra began to emit itself from the now-prostrate form of the older stallion, and it sped towards Reaper. As he flashed his palm at the shadowy cloud, it stopped in it's tracks. The shadow began to visibly grow even darker, turning into almost like a storm head. Reaper's eyes twitched under his helmet as he mentally fought with the nebulous shadow for dominance and control over the minds of the afflicted guardsponies. After stabbing deep within the cold depths of the sentience of a segment of the Nightmare, he made it collapse on itself. After a little boom, the cloud was gone.
"Sir...What the buck was that?"
Reaper turned his head to the side toward Steel-feather, and said,
"Just a little thing I like to call condensed evil."
He slung Chaoseater over his shoulder, and started to walk out the front door. Steel intercepted Reaper, and asked,
"Sir! What are we to do?"
Reaper stopped without looking back, and said,
"Resume course as usual. I will be dealing with the sun, just keep up the facade of normalcy. You will know when I've... Resolved the problem. Reaper strolled out the door.
--- --- ---
Reaper had affixed the greatsword to his back, and had both of his arms entwined with the LMG slung across his shoulders like a yoke. He had been on the road for an hour and a half, contemplating how he was going to try and explain everything to the element bearers, and he walked into the center of Ponyville without noticing it. What he did notice, however, was the sudden vacancy of the town on a completely beautiful day. There was no cloud in the sky, and it hadn't gotten too hot yet, so it would be perfect outside weather, yet everypony was shut up inside of their houses. When the realization came to him, Reaper repressed the urge to facepalm, and Reaper went to Pinkie's place, hoping that she would be one of the most understanding of the six ponies. When he reached the front door of Sugarcube Corner, he knocked on the door. When the Bouncing Party Pony opened the door, her hair and eyes went from jovial and bouncy to flat and lifeless. When she spoke up, her voice mirrored her facial features. She said,
"Oh... It's you. Who don't you leave this town, you disgusting freak!"
Reaper took a step back in surprise. He expected for the six to be upset, but this might be overreacting. He said,
"Pinkie? What's wrong? Why are you acting like this?"
Pinkie just snickered, and her eyes narrowed. She said,
"Oh nothing's wrong, everything is fine... for me, anyway."
Reaper was confused, why was she acting like this and acting like nothing was wrong with her? Pinkie went on, as if she could read Reaper's mind, and said,
"Nothing is wrong with me, but it is for you. Just look at you! You look like some sort of rejected crocodile with those teeth! And I guess you have those black eyes because you can't live with people knowing who you really are! Hahahahahahahaha!"
Reaper was trying to keep his temper down as Pinkie bombarded him with insults. His face slowly evolved into a scowl as Pinkie continued on,
"Whats wrong? We're all laughing here!"
Reaper walked out of Pinkie's abode without saying a word of goodbye. He guided himself to Sweet Apple Acres, hoping that Applejack could tell him just what the hell was going on with Pinkie. Reaper could have been blind and noticed if something was wrong with her. As he walked, he tried to calm down by watching the scenery switch from suburban, to grassland, and finally to light forest that lead on to the apple farm that AJ worked on. He followed the sound of hooves thunking on wood to try and find Applejack. As he finally started to hear the repetitive sound get louder, Reaper stumbled into a line of trees that contained the certain farm pony that Reaper wanted to find. As he caught himself from falling, he called out to AJ and waved his hand. Applejack didn't respond, so Reaper thought that she didn't hear, or see him. He tried again, but got a response that he wasn't expecting. Applejack turned her head towards him with a face-twisting scowl, and she shot out,
"Whadda yew want?"
Reaper was noticing a trend. His so-called friends have become complete douche bags. He decided to keep a collected composure; AJ could have had a bad day, and her mood could have been just a bit nasty. He said,
"Hey AJ... I just came here to ask you just what is bothering Pinkie, and to apologize about what happened, but I'm sorry if I'm intruding. You're acting weird. what's wrong? Is there a problem with anything?"
AJ shook her head, and said,
"Oh, nuthi'n 's wrong with me. Its ahbout yew, I reckon. Yer the reason everypony's goi'n all nutso, we had a nice life before you showed up."
Reaper was sure of it, she was as demented as Pinkie was. Hopefully, there was a way to try and help her, though. He said,
"Why are you saying these things, AJ?"
He was cut off from saying anything further by a flying buck to the chest. When Applejack got down on the floor from her assault, she said,
"Only mah friends can call me that, Reaper."
Reaper was buckled over, wind completely knocked out of him from the unexpected aggression. All he could get out was a choked,
"...Why?"
Before he got another buck to the side of his head. Reaper recovered quickly that time, because the adrenaline finally kicked in. When he straightened up, and the fire in his eyes blocked by the dark welder's glass that took residence in the helmet's eye-sockets. He was about to speak up again before he was interrupted by AJ. She said,
"Ahm bei'n honest here; it'd be best if'n yew left this town here. Big Mac, Git' em."
A familiar large red draftpony stepped into the row of trees. He dug at the ground with a hoof as AJ sauntered off. Big Mac growled out,
"GIT SUM'BITCH!"
As he rushed at Reaper. He neatly stepped to the side with a magical push that sent Big Mac into a tree. Reaper let his own rage get a hold of him as he pointed a hand straight to the air. A resounding boom echoed across the land as a sizable lightning bolt connected with Reaper's hand, the lightning fusing with his natural energies leaking out of him, engulfing him in crackling aura. He floated off the ground and spread out his arms in full splendor to Big Mac. He growled out, almost with the voice of what thunder would have if it could speak,
"Do you really want to test me?"
Mac got back up on his hooves, and snorted as he readied another bull-rush. Reaper just shook his head, and charged up a voltage that would be needed for a stallion of his bulk. Right as Big Mac was about to collide with Reaper, Reaper shot a large amount of voltage into Mac. It was just enough to knock out the stallion, but not to stop the heart. A few nasty-looking black burns on his coat were the only lasting impact left from the attack. Reaper shook his head again, before arcing up into the sky, using the lightning to propel himself. He was getting seriously worried about what had happened to his friends, the two that had been some of the most friendly and understanding of the six friends he had. Only one that had been any more kind than them... The word kind resounded around Reaper's head as he immediately changed course mid-air. He landed down a few yards away from Fluttershy's cottage to not startle her too bad, and allowed the electricity discharge itself through his hands and dissipate into the sky. He calmly walked toward the shy pony's house as he checked that Chaoseater was still in its resting place on his back. As he approached the little house, he heard the characteristic little squeak and the door being bolted. He got to the door, and knocked softly with the softer part of his glove. The door opened just like the first time he visited Fluttershy, and she said,
"Oh... H-hi, Reaper. Please, go away," She gasped, as if she forgot something, and then said, "If you want to..."
Reaper could understand if she was upset, so it didn't bother him much. He said,
"Now I know that you must all think that I am terrible for what I did to both you and Celestia, but..."
Reaper trailed off, not knowing what to say to Fluttershy, but she piped up, saying,
"Oh, no, no, no. We knew that you weren't you, we just came to the conclusion that you're a terrible person."
Reaper did a double-take. This wasn't like Fluttershy at all, she was a nice pony, and she wouldn't want to cause any type of harm to anypony unless she thought it was good for them... Right? Fluttershy continued on through the door, oblivious to Reaper's mental thoughts, saying,
"Although we all knew it. The six of us. I really hate to say it... but... um... I don't think you deserve to be in this town anymore. I'm sorry, Reaper. Sometimes... tough love is the best type of kindness."
The door shut again, leaving a speechless Reaper to stand perplexed at the oaken door. It wan't until a certain Rainbow-hued pony crashed into him at full speed, and tried to pin him under her to pummel. As Reaper shook himself out of the stupor of incredulity, he noticed the Pegasus trying to pummel him while screaming out,
"Why don't you leave here, you ass! You don't belong here!"
The Pegasus was sent flying into the air as Reaper got up on his feet. As he staggered upright, still smarting from the buck to the chest he received, and wondered what to do with RD. She zoomed about, landing a few blows every sweep that she did. Reaper soon got into her rhythm and began adjusting his body to conform to the attacks that Rainbow was raining down upon him. After a good thirty minuets of fly-bys, Rainbow hovered out of arm's reach from Reaper. She was glaring not daggers, but full-sized long swords into him. He said,
"Will you please explain just what the hell is everypony's major malfunction today?"
Rainbow continued her glower as she said,
"Why are you here at Fluttershy's? I thought you would have gotten the picture from her to leave."
Reaper was feeling it, he was about to make something explode. His eyes twitched, and raw magical power collected around his fingers. When he spoke, Reaper's voice was dangerous, low, and full of un-restrained anger. he said,
"You will tell me why the hell you ponies are acting like this. Now."
Rainbow scoffed, and crossed her arms. She said,
"Haven't we explained enough? We all figured you out; you are nothing than a monster that was dragged here by some stupid reason. You don't even deserve to live."
Reaper was just about boiling at this point. He said,
"Why are YOU doing this, RD? I thought you were the element of loyalty?"
RD's eyes narrowed as she heard him say loyalty. She said,
"Loyalty? I AM being loyal. Loyal to my friends. YOU are no friend, just a guy here that can do only one thing. Kill. THAT is why we all HATE you!"
At the end of her speech, RD bull-rushed Reaper. Reaper was fed up with everything, so he caught her by the hoof as she whizzed by. The impact made the leaves from the nearby trees. If he grabbed anywhere other than RD's hooves, it would be shattered. Reaper flung RD into the air, and blasted her with a shock wave of force to knock her out. She ended up landing on a stray cloud. He wasn't even going to try and go to Rarity's, so he went to the librarian's tree-library. As he walked down the road, he mentally calmed and prepared himself for what was probably going to happen; Twilight would be snapped. One thing that really bothered him was that the other elements had all mentioned their certain aspect of harmony, while they had been distorted in every other part of their personalities had been warped with their interactions with Reaper. Reaper got to Twilight's front door, and reluctantly knocked on the front door. The door was opened by Spike, and when he saw who was at the door, he quickly slammed it straight on Reaper's face. Reaper decided it was best not to force himself in, and called through the door,
"Hey spike? Open the door please. I'm... better than what happened to me before. I've come to apologize."
The door was hesitantly opened, and the scaled head popped out. Spike looked him once over, and said,
"Really? Because Twilight said that you looked and sounded different. You don't look any different from when you first came here."
Reaper said,
"That's because I'm all better now. Could you let me in, please?"
Spike gave Reaper another once-over, and nodded his head. The door swung open fully, and Spike waved him in. He called out to Twilight, saying,
"Twilight! Reaper's here! He said he wanted to say sorry!"
Twilight's head popped out the doorway right next to the stair, and Reaper readied himself for a glower, but what he got was a smile. She said,
"Reaper! Am I glad to see that you are yourself again!"
Reaper was flabbergasted. He had expected nothing but negatives and palpable hate gushing forth from the unicorn smiling at him from a floor up, but he got regular old Twilight. He said,
"Twilight! I am happy that you aren't like the other five. Have you talked to the other elements yet? I came to apologize, but they acted and talked funny. They all told me that I was a horrible person and didn't deserve to even be in this town..."
Twilight's bright face quickly turned into a confused frown. She came down the flight of steps, and said,
"Reaper, are you sure of what you are saying? I mean, this is a very serious accusation."
Reaper nodded, and said,
"AJ even bucked me and sicked Big Mac on me. RD rushed me after I was done talking to Fluttershy."
Twilight sat on her rump as she thought about what happened. She said,
"Did you notice anything... Strange about their coloring?"
Reaper shook his head no, and said,
"They all mentioned their embodiment of harmony, so I don't think that they have been discorded."
Twilight let out a breath of relief. She said,
"Well, perhaps they all are having a bad day, or..."
Twilight was cut off by the sound of the Library's front door being torn off of it's hinges. A dark cloud rushed into the tree, and Reaper got up, saying,
"OH, NOT THIS BULLSHIT AGAIN!"
And began blasting everything he had into the cloud. It separated around Reaper, and grabbed twilight, levitating her and whisking her out of the tree. The door slammed, and when Reaper got to it, it was locked. He took out Chaoseater and began hammering away at it. A familiar voice snaked its way through his mind when Reaper was doing no perceivable harm to the wooden door. It said,
Foolish boy... None will hinder my world domination!
Reaper growled, and heard a commotion outside, a scream being rent out of Twilight. Reaper went to the side of the tree where he heard Twilight. Spike was already there, pounding away at the wall. Reaper pushed him away while saying,
"Sorry about this spike."
And placed his foot on the wall. As he strained all of his weight and strength at ripping a chunk out of the tree with his foot, Nightmare spoke up again, saying,
You will never be able to save them, Reaper...
Reaper screamed out,
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I'M THE JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!"
A burst of energy surged it's way through his leg, the wall completely tore off, sending the sizable hunk hurtling through the air. Reaper stepped outside, toting his LMG in his left hand, and Chaoseater in his right. Reaper couldn't resist the urge to scream out,
"OHHHHHH YEEAHHHH!"
As he blew up the chunk of wood that connected with the now prostrate form of what used to be Trixie. The powder-blue mare go up with a distortion of a mad smile, and cackled out,
"Do you really think something as mundane as that could defeat me?"
Without a response, Reaper toted his gun levelly at the mare's forehead. He emptied half of a magazine into her head dead-on and stopped. Trixie's head was cut completely in half. A small chuckle from the now-supposed-to-be-dead mare as the top half of her head floated back onto her skull, and attached itself. Reaper slung the carrying strap onto his shoulder as he rushed with Chaoseater. He grabbed a hold of Trixie's throat as he brained her -literally- with the flat of his blade. He then used a swift uppercut to slice her in half. Again, chuckling when there were no vocal chords, and the body stitched itself back together again. Nightmare-Trixie said,
"Mmmm... My, my. This body has so much hatred in it, it doesn't want to quit. And you, Reaper. Seems that you've gotten even stronger than when we last met in the field of battle," The form of a purple unicorn in a fetal position hovered into view as Nightmare continued, "But... I need to take her. I've already met her other friends... But you already seen that, haven't you?"
Reaper said,
"NO. You will NOT be taking her!"
He rushed again, every blade-stroke seemed to cut through smoke, dissipating the dust before it settled together again. He stuck Chaoseater inside of Trixie's chest and sent some of the pent-up rage into Trixie, making her explode into thousands of pieces. Yet again, her body drug itself back together. Reaper staggered back, in disbelief. Trixie let out another chortle, and teleported away. Reaper fell to his knees. He rested his head on the pommel of the blade until Spike knocked on the side of his helmet. He turned his head to find a sniffling baby dragon. Reaper used his arm to sweep Spike into a type of bear hug. When Spike recovered, he said,
"What are we going to do, Reaper?"
Reaper got up, Spike in arm, and held him in an arm's length. he said,
"It's not what you are going to do; it's what I am going to do."
Before Spike could question what he was talking about, he felt that same weightlessness from when he first teleported with Twilight, and then he saw the familiar architecture of the Royal palace. He could only blurt out a confused,
"Whah...?"
Before he saw a guardspony rushing towards both him and Reaper. Reaper nodded towards him, and said,
"Steel-feather."
Steel-feather saluted smartly, and said,
"Is the situation dealt with, sir?"
Reaper shook his head, and said,
"No, unfortunately not. It is just the beginning. Do you remember Twilight, Steel?"
The guardspony nodded, and Reaper said,
"Then you must remember spike, her dragon. Show him to his room, and give him all of the accommodations he asks for. Is that clear?"
Steel saluted, and motioned for Spike to go with him. Spike looked up at Reaper, and Reaper said,
"Don't worry, Spike. I'll get Twilight back, even if I die."
Spike nodded solemnly, and followed Steel to his room. Reaper muttered to himself after the retreating form of the baby dragon,
"...I promise..."
--- --- ---
Reaper was sitting in the royal garden with Steel-feather, explaining what was going to happen in the next few days.
"When Nightmare attacks, I want NO PONY outside with me. None. I do not want any of them to die for my own battle."
The captain nodded his head. Reaper continued,
"If I die, and Nightmare is victorious, then bow to her will. Again, there is no use for sending dead bodies against a force that has, and already won. If I die, and Nightmare does not win, then I want you to plan my burial. If Celestia get to earth, refer to her preference to the burial."
Steel tilted his head to the side, and said,
"Why would that be, Sir?"
Reaper just shook his head, and said,
"That's under Celestia's digression for why. She only has that liberty to tell you."
Steel saluted sharply, and set off to hand out the orders. Reaper was sitting on a tree stump in the middle of a clearing in the royal orchard. This clearing had a perfect view of the sky. The sun was beginning to pull down on Reaper's body, telling him that it was time to begin the end of the day. He reached out to the pleasant ball of warmth, and pressed down on it. At the same time, he touched the moon. A pang of guilt wracked it's way through him as he remembered what he did to Luna. As he pulled up on the moon, he projected his own visage onto the surface of the moon.
--- --- ---
Luna was sitting by a crater, looking down at the moon. Her usual calm composure was there again, but a cloud of sadness seemed to seep out of her every pore. She felt an entity touch her moon. It felt familiar. She surveyed the area, and was rewarded by seeing a ghostly apparition of what looked like Reaper. As wispy strands of white trailed off of his form as he walked towards Luna, she was shocked to see him on her domain. He came up to her, and put a hand on her cheek, and said, with obvious sadness and affection,
"I... I am so sorry for what I did to you, Luna. I hope you can forgive me."
Luna began to shed tears of happiness, and hugged Reaper. As they embraced, Reaper softly said into her ear,
"I guess I could take that as an apology. But Luna, don't be sad. If friendship is two souls living on one body, then family is a collective of every soul living in every heart. We are family; never forget who we are, never forget where we are, and never forget why we are. Remember this. You are NEVER alone."
Luna continued to hug Reaper, feeling his warmth heat her body, cold from the harsh, inhospitable surface of the moon. When she felt the warmth engulf her body completely, she opened her eyes, and released Reaper. When she took a step back, she saw that he was gone. Instead of feeling cold and alone, Luna smiled, and the warmth she received from her nephew stayed with her, reminding that she wasn't alone in this world.
--- --- ---
Reaper looked at the sunset, hoping that Luna would be okay after he went to see her. As the sun went halfway, bringing out more majestic colors of the death of a day, he heard nightmare.
Hello, Reaper. I hope you are enjoying this sunset of yours, because It's the last you'll, or anypony else will ever get to see. Meet me in the everfree forest, the clearing you woke up in. There, one will rise, and one will fall.
Reaper didn't even react; he embraced it. War decided to speak up.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT AND WHY CELESTIA SENT YOU TO THE EARTH?
Reaper woke up in his room, he had wandered into it after his interactions with Luna. He reached towards the moon, trying to push it down to raise the sun, but he was blocked by some type of power. A voice drawled across Reaper's head.
Ah-ah-ahh, Reaper. Remember what I said; the last sunset you had was yesterday. It's my sky now.
Reaper reached into his back compartment to see if bahamut was still there, and it was. He twirled out of his room, and alerted the guard. In a short amount of time, the entirety of the guard was assembled inside of the throne room. Steel-feather was at the head of the group, and called everypony to attention. Reaper nodded to steel, and said,
"Guardsponies! We all know why we are here today. I am to fight Nightmare moon. She is the reason why Celestia is gone. She is the reason Luna is gone. SHE is the reason why the moon will not rise. She is the one I will be fighting today. Captain Steel will tell you what you will be doing during this."
A loud voice that seemed to travel and reverberate across the land shook the walls as it said,
"THIS IS YOUR NEW QUEEN OF DARKNESS SPEAKING; YOUR PRINCESSES ARE GONE. ALL OF YOUR DEFENSES ARE GONE. THE ELEMENTS ARE. GONE. GIVE UP, AND ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE BATHED IN THE ETERNAL COOLNESS OF THE NIGHT!"
Reaper collected himself once the intruding tones of Nightmare Moon winked out of existence, and said,
"Looks like that's my cue. Listen to Steel, and wish me luck."
With that, Reaper threw open a rift that connected the throne room to the clearing that he was to meet Nightmare, and left to hearing Steel barking out orders. When he came to the other side of the portal, he was in the middle of the clearing he woke up in after that connection with War. War spoke,
SHE'S STRONG. VERY STRONG. BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO. REMEMBER BAHAMUT, IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO WIN.
Reaper reached into his pocket to make sure that it was in there, and readied himself to battle with Nightmare. The night sky was cool, and made Reaper relax. He sunk Chaoseater into the ground, and checked on his LMG. Not long after he was done checking it, a dark portal ripped into existence and expelled Nightmare moon into the clearing. She floated into the air, and raced Reaper. She said,
"Hello, Reaper. Shall we get this started?"
Reaper responded by ripping Chaoseater out of the ground and leveling it at Nightmare. A wicked smile graced Trixie's features as she struck out with a black tentacle. It went for Reaper's head, and he dodged it with a flick of the neck. It sailed past and into the the collar around his neck, piercing it and ripping it off of Reaper's suit. the tentacle presented it to Reaper, and he saw just what the appendage crafted from the darkness of the void could do. Reaper made a mental note to be more conscious of how he was dodging them. Another tentacle shot towards Reaper, and he brought up Chaoseater, splitting it in half with the wicked sharpness of it's edge. It cut straight to the base of the tentacle, earning a howl of pain from Nightmare. Reaper smiled under his helmet, and shouted out,
"So the mighty Nightmare moon has finally felt the wonders of pain, has she?"
She replied with a wild shot towards him, too fast to dodge or block, nicked him in the upper right bicep. It ripped a rent through the armor, and landed a good laceration on Reaper. He whipped his arm back, and grabbed a hold of the dark appendage, and broke it off with a twist of his wrist. More screams resonated in Reapers ears as he jumped away from a wriggling mass of more flexible spikes. Trixie screamed out,
"YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!"
Another Tentacle went seeking for Reaper, and landed a hit on his lower left thigh. Blood splattered on the floor, making little wet splats emanate from the ground. Reaper struck out, severing the tentacle that just hit him. All of the attacking tentacles retreated, and Nightmare growled. She said,
"I should have known I have had to bring them out..."
Suddenly, a bright, rainbow-colored flash appeared behind Trixie, and six pony-figures emerged. They all were floating in the air, head and front legs slumped over their chests. They formed a barrier around Nightmare, and Nightmare said, as the six finished spinning,
"Look at them closely, Reaper. What do they remind you of? A certain group of six that you used to know... Spurned friendship, perhaps?"
Reaper looked around, and saw them. The six. They were the elements of harmony.
"No. NO! What have you done to them, you fucking monster!"
Nightmare laughed and shook her head. She said,
"I made them happy. Look at them," The mane six head's snapped up when their respective names were mentioned. "Pinkie. I made her the best party ever that she can be in all the time. Rarity, I gave her all the fabric and gems she needs to make the best dresses. Applejack, I gave her the best legs and hips, eternal life, and a never-ending orchard that she could cultivate the rest of her life. Fluttershy, I gave her a cottage full of every animal known to ponykind. Rainbow Dash, I gave her a part in the Wonderbolts and the fastest frame in the world. And finally Twilight Sparkle. She was the hardest to sway. I had to give her Celestia, a bedroom, and a Library with all of the books in the world."
Reaper surveyed the faces of the six ponies circled around him, and saw that their faces were not truly happy. Their faces were twisted, plastered on faces that tried to hide grimaces of pain and torture. He bounded towards Trixie, but was met by two hooves to the faceplate. Reaper was sent flying away in the other direction. When he landed, he heard Nightmare gloat,
"Oh, and I have full control of their bodies at the peak of their own capabilities."
Reaper got up on his hands, hoisting his upper body up so that he could see. Trixie was grinning maliciously down at him. Reaper quickly scanned the area, and saw that Chaoseater was far away, too far away for him to actually reach it in time before he was attacked. Remembering what the blade was capable of, he stretched out his palm, and shouted,
"Chaoseater!"
The sword shimmered, and teleported to his hand. Trixie shot out another tentacle, much faster than last time. Reaper only had the time to re-position his sword so that it would deflect it. Reaper was actually propelled backwards by the force of the impact. War spoke up again,
YOU CAN'T KEEP UP WITH HER WHEN SHE IS LIKE THIS, YOU HAVE TO CHANGE.
Reaper just growled, and jumped up on his feet. He put his palm facing up to the sky. A ball of orange-red appeared in the middle of his hand. Reaper crushed it in his grip, and a wave of power starting at Reaper's feet distorted his figure as it passed up towards the moon. Once it passed from his body, his wings and horn appearing again. Trixie sent another mass of tentacles headed towards Reaper's way, but he dodged them by launching into the air. Some of the tentacles followed him into the sky, attacking him. A flurry of parries and slashes found all of them severed from their host. Reaper dropped down from the air, within striking distance of Trixie. Nightmare activated Twilight, and a tower of lightning enveloped Reaper. Reaper noticed the reluctance in the spell from Twilight, and he took a hold of it. Re-directing it, he sent a massive bolt of lightning traveling from his right hand to his left, launching it at Nightmare. After the bolt fully sent itself into Nightmare's forehead, Nightmare was staggered. Reaper hit Trixie with such force that it launched her into the air, with Reaper following. Reaper used the mass of Chaoseater to send him into a tight spin into the air, slashing Nightmare in a buzz saw fashion. Once they both hit the floor, Nightmare collapsed on the floor, covered in deep lacerations, and seemingly dead. Pinkie's smile faded into a frown as her body floated into the center of the circle. Her hair deflated as her eyes cracked open, seeing Reaper standing next to the body of Trixie. She said,
"R-r-reaper? Is that really you?"
Amazed and overjoyed to hear Pinkie's real voice, he flew to her side, saying,
"Yes Pinkie... It's really me. How are you feeling?"
Pinkie fidgeted and squirmed, and said,
"I'm stuck." Her eyes suddenly widened, she seemed to remember something. She gasped out, "Did I really say that to you?"
Reaper winced under his helmet, and said,
"Yes, Pinkie, you really did."
Pinkie shook her head, and said,
"No! Nononononono! I couldn't have said that to you! You're my friend!"
Reaper replied, with a hint of sadness in his undertones,
"That is true. And that is the reason why I am still your friend, Pinkie."
Pinkie looked at Reaper with her sad, blue eyes, and said,
"But I was a big meany-weany pants! The things I said weren't even that funny! I make a horrible element of laughter..."
Reaper thought about what she said, and after a bit of thinking, he knew what to say.
"Pinkie. Think about all those times that you sent me a letter with a party magically put inside of it. Think about how you made everypony laugh when you were in the Everfree forest. Think. You are the element of laughter, nopony else could get a cannon that can literally shoot parties out of it. No one can be angry at you, Pinkie. If you can forgive me, then I forgive you."
Pinkie's hair poofed back up, and a genuine smile stretched on her face. Pinkie slumped back over and drifted to the perimeter of the circle. Nightmare's body stitched itself back together again, and floated back onto its hooves. Trixie's eyes snapped open and surveyed the circle, eyes slowing to a rest on Pinkie, Pinkie's face bearing a real smile of genuine joy. Nightmare's eyes narrowed as she said,
"You... You actually managed to knock her out of my spell. Too bad I had no use of bending time and space, I already have that ability at my disposal."
With that, she launched an attack of shadow-clones of herself to harass Reaper from all sides. The metal from Chaoseater buzzed around in the air as he parried thrusts, bucks, and magical attacks. Four of the fifteen shadows had fallen to Reaper, but he was beginning to tire from constantly having to re-position himself every time an attack came from the circling band of fake Nightmares. Reaper sunk Chaoseater into the ground, and blasted outwards with a shockwave of power. Making his hands like claws, he put them so that they went palm-to-palm, and placed them as his waist. A small ball of raging bluish-white emerged from the top palm, and hovered between the two hands, steadily getting larger. Once it was big enough to touch both palms, Reaper flung his arms up and outward, making a human 'X' with his arms and legs. The ball of white exploded outwards, and left all of the shadows frozen on the ground. Reaper heaved Chaoseater from the ground, and flung it. It sailed like a boomerang, following a circular path to hit all of the frozen forms, shattering them. Reaper raised his hand, and Chaoseater returned to his palm, settling itself firmly in his grip. He pointed his finger at Nightmare, summoning powers from the moon and stars, and preparing an attack straight from the heavens. He said,
"You know what the difference between you and me are, Nightmare? The moon doesn't want to kill me."
He dropped a tremendous amount of power from the height of the moon. It hurtled down, and Nightmare looked up in time to see the cone of death coming straight for her. It crashed down into her face,splitting it in two, and it continued down her body to the tail, where it stopped. Reaper sighed, and mused out loud,
"How many times am I going to have to do this?" He looked around the circle, and saw AJ floating to the center. "Right. Four more freaking times, not counting when I have to kill her permanently."
He walked towards the drifting farm pony, trying to see what he would have to do for her. He approached her, and within arm's reach, AJ's head shot up, as if she were in a dream, and she was forcefully woken up in it. She shook her head, and wriggled her body, looking down at it. She gave up when she could not see any restraints, but felt constriction that she couldn't break. AJ's head swiveled around and locked on Reaper's form. She said,
"Reaper, whut in tarnation..."
She trailed off as a spark glinted in AJ's pupils, and they grew so big they only left a small sliver of green in each eye.
"Ah... Ah... Ah didn't say that to ya, did I?"
"Unfortunately, you did," Reaper sighed, "And Big Mac has a nasty burn to show for it."
AJ's voice was incredulous.
"You didn't!"
Reaper was ashamed, he let his anger carry him away when he had all that power at his disposal. Big mac really had no chance.
"No, but I did get carried away. Sorry bout' that, AJ. Honest."
AJ's eyes seemed vacant as she heard the word 'honest'. After a few moments of contemplation, she said,
"For the element of harmony, Ah haven't been the most truthful, have ah?"
Reaper said amicably,
"Now, the things that you said were kinda in the eye of the beholder. You said that you had a nice, peaceful life before I showed up. I knew that I would only bring trouble, and I did. You still told the truth. When you told me that only your friends can call you AJ, that was still the truth. Honesty can become a hurtful, barb of pain when manipulated properly."
AJ gave Reaper a dumbfounded look.
"So, yer sayin' that ah used honesty, but in a twisted manner?"
Reaper nodded. He started to speak, but was interrupted by Applejack again.
"Ah have to ask fer yer forgiveness, sugarcube."
Reaper looked at her, and shook his head no. He said,
"Actually, AJ, I have to ask for your forgiveness. I was the one to go all berserk when you all treated me like you did, I unfortunately lost control, and when you have a lot of power, you cannot lose control."
AJ smiled, and said,
"Well, that's mighty gallant of ya. C'mere."
AJ spread her upper arms wide for a hug, and Reaper engulfed her with his arms. Only after she was long gone to the spell that trapped the six did Reaper release her. As her body drifted off into the circumference of the circle surrounding Reaper and Nightmare, Trixie's body slowly got up again. A wicked smile graced itself across her distorted features as she said,
"Every time you 'kill' me, I get stronger. You only get weaker. Now..." Nightmare trailed off as she noticed which of the ponies that Reaper had removed from her influence. "You took out AJ, smart move. Take out my source of physical strength, leave me open to attacks. Too bad you won't be able to capitalize on my weakness."
With that, and undulating mass of tentacles erupted everywhere, engulfing him in a wriggling black mass. A glowing hot ball of energy ripped through the wall, and Reaper landed on three appendages, hunched over the ground with Chaoseater parallel to his body in his other arm. Bursts of fire began to hedge him into a cage, until a conflagration smacked Reaper, heating up his suit to almost unbearable levels. Two wings appeared from the pillar and propelled him out of the deadly blast. He landed on the ground, and constructed a glyph that glowed about him. He quickly shouted out,
"Aaz! Ag! Al!"
A pillar of light boomed outwards from the epicenter of the glyph, and whenever it came in contact with either Nightmare moon, or her magic, it burst into flame. The attack left Nightmare scrabbling around on the ground, trying desperately to bat out the fire. Reaper was just standing with his arms in the air, hands hooked and pointed to the sky. The glyph he used was banned from use to anybody but Alicorns, and he saw why, it left him heaving for breath and out of power. The amount of it put into that spell would kill even Twilight, with all of her power. He stumbled over to Nightmare, and grabbed her by the horn, absorbing her power, and whipping her side to side. He was blasted back by a surge of energy, and they both got up panting. Reaper charged at her, and planted his fingers firmly inside of her skull, gore splattering Reaper's faceplate. He collapsed, dragging himself to Chaoseater. He picked himself up with it, and leaned on it. Another pony was drifting into the middle of the circle. It was Fluttershy. Reaper sighed and rolled his eyes under his mask and stumped towards the now-floating pony.
--- --- ---
Fluttershy was singing happily under her breath in one moment, taking care of all the animals in the world, and awake in a clearing filled with the stench of blood and fire, staring into the bloodied visage of Reaper. She knew that he meant no harm, but she was still scared shitless. She began to hyperventilate, and tried to run away, but she felt her body being completely immobile, like when her wings lock up. Reaper stretched out his hands, one covered in blood and gore, to get her attention. He wrapped his hands around the sides of Fluttershy's face, and said,
"Look at me, I'm here. Don't look at what's around you, only look at me, I won't let anyone hurt you."
Fluttershy was calmed by the deep tones of the hulking beast that stood in front of her. After a few seconds, memories started to remember what she had said. Her pupils contracted, and she squeaked. She stammered out,
"Y-y-ou don't h-h-ate me, d-d-o you? It's alright if you do, I'm a monster..."
Reaper began to laugh. Fluttershy was confused, she did a horrible thing to Reaper, at least in her eyes. Reaper recovered himself, and said,
"Fluttershy look, you said some of the nicest things even when you were angry at me. You showed me that you understood that I wasn't me when Nightmare had me, and you just told me that tough love was sometimes the best kindness, and it is. You have to be a little more kind with what you have to say about yourself, too."
The shy Pegasus gasped, and felt a hidden eye open suddenly open in her eye, and the element of kindness enveloped her thoughts, eradicating the previously un-felt presence of Nightmare. She slowly drifted off to sleep, appearing in her cottage, with free reign of Ponyville, where she somehow knew Pinkie, and AJ were.
--- --- ---
Reaper sighed, it wasn't as hard as he previously expected to talk some sense into Fluttershy. He cracked his joints, and hefted his previously forgotten LMG, wrote three glyphs on it-Sahqo, Sahrot, and Shul- and cocked the loading pin back. Trixie got back up, her power flooding back into the slab of meat that Nightmare had been using. She said,
"So you took Fluttershy... Hmmmm. I see that you are tired. Good. You see what I mean, every time you manage to kill me, you get progressively weaker."
SHE'S RIGHT, YOU KNOW.
Reaper couldn't stop from barking out as he toted his LMG at Trixie.
"Thanks for the eternal insight, smart-ass."
He pumped a large stream of bullets, they would hit Trixie, and burst into a flaming conflagration. With meaty thuds, Trixie would be flung back as bullets perforated her body, and scream out in pain as the bullets burnt her up from the inside-out. She slumped just as Reaper's LMG went click, and he dropped the gun down, going in for the kill with Chaoseater. As he approached the slumped form of Trixie, she leaped up, and began to punch Reaper. When the first one impacted reaper's body, his nanobots informed him that he had achieved a bruise. Automatically, Reaper threw up his blade for protection. He used the blunt side of the blade to deflect the blows, and used the blade for an attempt at offence. Trixie was surprisingly fast, getting in a few punches as they traded flurries and counters across the clearing. Reaper had tripped over a rock after ten minuets of fruitless tradings of blows, and used Chaoseater as a canvas to protect himself from the blows. He felt a repetitive thumping against his back, and after just a few, he knew that he wouldn't last for very long. Lifting the sword to perform the duties of a shield, he raised left hand, filled with what looked to be liquid earth pouring from the cracks in his fist. Reaper screamed out,
"LET'S END THIS!"
As he struck the ground. Tremors and cracks of rock exploded out and traveled around, causing devastation to the playing field. Trixie was knocked off balance, and was being knocked about, so Reaper flew off the ground and manipulated the flow of magic and might to throw Trixie's body around like a ragdoll. After the manipulation of the buckling and roaring earth began to become sluggish, Reaper ended the floe of magic in mother Gaea. He landed, and walked over to Trixie. With a red glow of telekinesis, Reaper picked the now bruised and battered mare, and slapped her in the face, rousing her from the black and cool embrace of unconsciousness. Some of the glow traveled it's way up to Trixie's horn as Reaper's voice was haggard and dangerous from exertion and rage.
"Remember that promise that I gave to that hunk of meat that you use as a vessel? Well, I plan to make due on that promise."
With a savage rip and twist with his powerful telekinesis, he ripped Trixie's horn out to the root. One hand spun lazily in the air as the horn began to spin like a drill bit, and he positioned it behind her flank. Reaper snarled as he launched it with enough force to pierce the skin, and the natural fluting along with the powerful spinning allowed the horn to shoot through the pony's frame, finding it's way straight through the trachea, causing unthinkable damage and trauma, ending Nightmare's life once again. Reaper collapsed again, falling on his rear, and grunted in the sudden loss of his stamina. Again, a ghostly floating of the chromatic-maned Pegasus approached the center. Trixie's horn found it's way into Reaper's hand, filling him with all of her energy. It was drained of all power, crumbled into dust, and caught the wind from Reaper's clenched fist. The spectrum-maned pony began to stir like the rest of them. She looked around, and her wings twitched, straining against her enchantment. After a few moments of struggle, RD gave up on it, and muttered out,
"Ugh... NOT cool."
She noticed the surrounding landscape, and looked in awe at the widespread destruction, abruptly stopping strangely at the edge of the forest. Her attention was quickly brought back into the center of the clearing, she looked directly into the eyeslots of Reaper's familiar helmet. She let out a breath of relief as she said,
"Reaper! Am I glad to see it's you, and not whoever the buck you were earlier. What was his problem anyway?" Rainbow shook her head, there was more pressing matters at hand, "Hey buddy, you think you can get me out of whatever I managed to get myself in?"
Reaper just shook his head no, and crossed his arms, waiting for the memory to come rushing back into the Pegasus's mind. RD's over-imaginative mind took over, slight paranoia developing from Reaper's uncharacteristic silence.The cyan Pegasus started panicking, and said,
"W-wait, you aren't abandoning me, are you?"
Reaper did not break his stance, but he said,
"RD, why would you think I would do that? You know that I would stay with you or the others until I could fix whatever's wrong."
Rainbow's eyes derped for a second as she muttered,
"Right.."
They focused as she remembered what she had said to Reaper earlier. Her mouth hung open as the pictures flashed across her eyes. She said,
"Reaper... I've been an awful bearer of loyalty, haven't I?"
Reaper loosened up, and shook his head, saying,
"Rainbow, you weren't being disloyal to your friends. You saw the other five as your friends, not me. You saw that your friends were in danger. By me. So, you were doing your job by being loyal and protective to your friends. By attacking me. I wasn't your friend at the time, so I didn't have your loyalty. You were being loyal to your friends, and through them, me. What you did was good, I would have wanted you to do that if I were in anybody else's hooves."
RD looked relieved. She said,
"You have no idea how much that means to me. I would never want to hurt my friends, really. I got your back Reaper."
Reaper smiled under his mask as RD was powerless to drift back off to sleep after they finished talking. Reaper shook out his arms and legs, feeling the lingering fatigue that didn't want to leave. Turning around, Reaper prepared himself for another assault. He was toppled over by the body of the blue mare. Reaper found himself staring into the bloodshot eyes of the showpony unicorn. He saw that the dust from his fist was forming itself back into a unicorn horn on Trixie's head. Nightmare Moon growled out,
"So you think that you will kill me because you took out four of the six, huh? You might of taken away my speed, but I will be taking your soul soon enough..."
She was silenced by a smashing right hook to the jaw. She went tumbling through the air as Reaper got up and dusted himself off. He sunk into a pugilistic stance as tentacles once again erupted from Trixie's body, and made their way towards Reaper. Many of them found themselves snapped off by either a stomp, or ripped off by a hand. a few managed to get past Reaper's dexterous defenses, and ripped gashes across Reaper's frame. Blood splattered on the floor, leaving small puddles underneath the lacerations. Reaper launched himself at Trixie, landing a wild haymaker to the side of her head. Using the momentum of the jump, Reaper wrapped his arms onto the side of Trixie, bringing Nightmare with him into the ground. Reaper was on his knees, pinning Trixie to the ground with his weight. He began punching her with all of the force he could muster, cracking noises resounding in the beginning, fading into a dull splorching noise as the skull began liquefying. Reaper got off of Trixie's body, chest heaving, and fists dripping blood. Reaper's head whipped to the center of the circle, but he didn't see Twilight or Rarity float into the center of the circle. He spoke to himself,
"Wait, I just killed her, why aren't one of the ponies going to the center of the circle?"
As a response, Reaper's head was engulfed with flame as it was hit with a fireball. He heard Nightmare call out,
"It's because I'm not dead yet, you foal."
Reaper was lying on the floor, and his vision began to black out.
No... Can't go yet... Have to save them...
He slowly hoisted himself onto his hands, body shaking from all of it's expenditures of the past few minuets. Lactic acid seared through Reaper's muscles as his indomitable will forced them to function. Reaper extended his hand, and called for Chaoseater once again. He sunk into a defensive position as a smug smirk started to affix itself onto Trixie's face as it healed itself. She stalked within striking distance, and cooed,
"My, my, my, you are a persistent one, aren't you? You know that you could end all this suffering, don't you? All of this pain, blood, suffering... all gone in a few simple words."
Reaper shifted his legs in preparation for an attack as he said,
"Nightmare, I will not have any of your deals, offers, or contracts. You can take your evil and shove it up your ass."
Trixie's smile dropped into a scowl as her eyes literally began to glow with fire.
"Then you will die."
A massive gout of flames erupted from Trixie's eyes and onto the flat of Chaoseater. As the blade deflected the fire, it began siphoning the power from the magical flames. After the magic subsided, the skulls were glowing red, and trickles of what looked like blood escaped from the sides of their mouths. Reaper quickly disregarded it, and launched an offensive against Trixie. Her hooves, and surprisingly, her horn came into play as they traded flurries of attacks. Reaper and Trixie madly hacked and lashed out at each other, traveling from one side of the circle to the next. They met in the center, sword locked with the side of Trixie's horn. Reaper had scored a good few hits, gaining cuts across her body. Trixie gained more hits than Reaper, but she only caused bruises under his suit. Chaoseater's cutting edge grazed up Trixie's horn, shaving off a layer of horn, and sparks from the grating of the fluting of Trixie's horn. Trixie batted Chaoseater to the side, and charged forward with her horn. Reaper grabbed it with his free hand, and stopped her dead in her tracks. Reaper started to slam Trixie into the ground with as much force as he could, breaking and shattering all of the bones in Trixie's skull and the first few vertebrae of her spine. He flung Trixie into the sky after a minuet of repetitive slamming, and clenched his fist, his fingers glowing. Once Trixie reached the apex of her flight, Reaper unclenched his hand, the glow disappearing and Trixie exploding with an entrancing firework of blood and power.
Twilight drifted into the center of the circle. Her horn began to glow as she got closer to the center of the circle. The bindings on the other six seemed to fade away as Twilight crumpled up into a ball, her magic spurting every which way. Her eyes were yet to open. Reaper got closer to Twilight, and touched her forehead, right under her horn. An arc of power surged from Twilight to Reaper, making feel only a little energized. Reaper sent his consciousness into Twilight's, and found himself into what looked like both Twilight's tree library, and the castle all mixed up into one building. He came to what looked like a door to the great library, but it had a hole just big enough for a horn to fit. Reaper reached up to feel if he was still in his alicorn form, and he was, so he bent over, and pushed his horn into the hole, feeling just a little silly, and the door swung noiselessly open. He entered a library like no other, it was larger than every library in Canterlot put together. He heard a giggle, and a voice that he had sent to the sun.
"Very good, Twilight."
Reaper put his back lightly on a ridiculously large bookcase that seemed to stretch into the sky. He sneaked a quick peek around the corner to see where the unicorn and the supposed Alicorn were. He saw a little space in the center of the library where all of the bookcases were accessible. He saw the bleached-white Princess lying down with a moderately sized purple ball nestled next to her. They were reading a large book together, Reaper supposed from what both Celestia and Twilight had told him about Twilight's apprenticeship was that they were studying the book. The page turned, and Reaper could only catch a glimpse of what they were reading; advanced offensive magic. Twilight spoke up, and said,
"If focus on the element of whatever magics you are trying to cast is crucial, then why would someone be able to conjure up an ice spell while staring into something like a fire, or being in a hot, humid environment?"
The princess flicked her horn in the air, and a flaming ball appeared floating in the air. She explained the answer to the question as she demonstrated an ice spell.
"You see, Twilight, if I were to be in, lets say the center of the sun, I would still have the power to shut off my mind. This is a unique ability gained by unicorns that allows them to focus on one thing no matter what is happening to them physically."
The ball thunked to the ground as a chunk of ice, shattering a moment later. Reaper bunched up his courage, and stepped out into the open. Celestia's head automatically honed in on his position the moment he stepped out from his cover. As he stepped forward into the light, both Twilight and Celestia's faces broke out into warm and welcoming smiles. Reaper got to the edge of the square, and crossed his arms, surveying their actions. Twilight said,
"Hey there, Reaper! Are you here to help us study battle magics?"
Celestia nodded, and said,
"It would be good to see two students of mine to study together."
Reaper noticed something, Celestia called him her student. Nightmare must have based this enchantment on Twilight's memory, Twilight was told by Celestia that he was her student, but he was never called that in public with other ponies. He turned his head to Celestia, and darkly stated,
"I'm not your student."
Celestia showed a mixture of confusion and being tense.
"But you are. You have been under my tutelage for the past few months now..."
She was interrupted by Reaper.
"And in that whole time, you have not called me by that title. Who am I, Celestia?"
Celestia cocked her head to the side, and said,
"Your a human who was pulled through a multi-dimentional rift..."
Again, she was interrupted by Reaper.
"Again. Wrong."
Twilight butted in, feeling more than a little bit angry for Reaper to be talking like this to her mentor.
"Reaper, why are you saying these things? Aren't you going to show at least a little bit of respect to the princess?"
Reaper sighed, it was time to end this little charade. He gathered all of his power into his hands as he said,
"Why can't you see through this, Twilight? This is all a distraction magically created by Nightmare to keep you under her control! SNAP OUT OF IT!"
As he roared the last few words, Reaper raised his right hand and clenched it. The gargantuan library seemed to crumple, and the surrounding area turned into a sheet of paper, their plane becoming two-dimensional. Cracks, as if the matter surrounding them were comprised by hundred year-old paint. The chips flew off, leaving him, Princess Celestia, and Twilight alone in a dark landscape. Celestia's hair began to darken along with her coat, and a shadow seemed to pass over her vision. Reaper blasted her with a ball of fire, making her disappear when she turned into Nightmare Moon. Twilight looked at Reaper, and did something that took Reaper aback. It wasn't turning into that hellspawn fire-unicorn that attacked him a day after being in Equestria, it wasn't being hellbent on killing him, it was that she actually swore.
"What the... WHAT THE BUCK DID YOU JUST DO!"
Reaper automatically grabbed the angered unicorn by the horn, and forced himself into Twilight's psyche yet again. He was in the same place where they were standing, but Twilight wasn't as angry. Reaper said,
"Twilight, you have to listen to me."
Twilight shot daggers from her into Reaper as he said,
"That wasn't Celestia. That was part of Nightmare's soul."
Twilight snorted and stomped a hoof.
"How do you know that?"
Reaper took off his helmet and unzipped his suit to take it off as he said,
"It was because she based it off of your memory. Celestia would never have called me her student, nor has she ever in her real life. What I am about to show you, don't tell it to anyone, and tell Celestia about it immediately once she gets back."
Twilight nodded with a confused and curious look on her face. Reaper closed his eyes, and focused on bending the world around him, slightly removing some of the nearly-impenetrable layers of enchantments that have been affecting him for the entirety of his life. After he broke through what seemed to be a dam of power, he felt something in him change. He felt a weird, pulling sensation on his forehead, and his back twitched and spasmed. Before he opened his eyes, Reaper heard Twilight gasp. When he did open them, Twilight was looking at him with shock and awe. she stammered out,
"You're... Y-y-you're an..."
Reaper's wings folded up majestically and tucked them behind his back.
"Yes Twilight, I am an Alicorn. And why she would never call me her student is because..."
Reaper allowed her to say it for herself, to allow the truth to sink in a bit more.
"You're her son."
Reality seemed to chip away as they were ejected into Twilight's first psyche, and then into reality. Reaper came to with one hand on twilight's forehead, head slumped in concentration, eyes locked with Twilight's. Twilight's eyes didn't open, but she went back into the default postiton, and her smile turned genuine. Reaper only had time to think,
I just went into Twilight's mind... And then went into her mind again. Holy. Shit.
He was standing there when he suddenly had a coil of tentacle wrap him up, and hoist him in the air. He was spun in-air to meet the face of a no-longer mortal pony. Her eyes were filled with bulging veins, veins popping out under her fur, frothing at the mouth. Without a word, she began to thump Reaper into the ground repeatedly. Chaoseater was, miraculously, still in Reaper's grip. It began to vibrate violently, making Reaper's arm numb from the force it was exerting. Reaper mentally called out to war.
"WAR! What in the hell are you doing with Chaoseater?"
War responded, a hint of worry in his voice.
I'M GIVING YOU SOME HELP. JUST LET IT HAPPEN.
So Reaper did. The tingling sensation along with the immense pain of being repeatedly slammed grew to a crescendo as the feeling of warmth shot up Chaoseater and into Reaper. That pain heightened from inside outwards.
LET THAT PAIN HELP YOU. RIDE IT OUT AND LET IT CHANGE YOU.
Reaper was about to question War until he felt it. He felt a type of pain-filled covering envelop him. The tentacles released their iron-like grip on Reaper as he floated in the air. A slight boom came from Chaoseater as he chandged into a large, devil-like flame being. Two curved horns and a pair of dragon-wings with only the bones rested on his hunched shoulders. Chaoseater had sprung forth into a one-bladed sword and grew to match it's master's explosive growth. Reaper swung down at Trixie, guessing that trial by fire would be the best for finding the limitations of this body. Even with Nightmare dodging out of the way, Reaper clipped her on the side, shearing all of the tentacles on that side, and searing the flesh underneath. He followed with a monstrous sweep of the blade. Again, his slow strikes only managed to clip Trixie, lopping off her horn. Reaper swung out with his un-equipped hand, and caught the now very small-looking pony. He brought up Trixie to his mouth and spat out a stream of fire, cooking the pony to a crisp.
As fast as the transformation came, it was gone.
Reaper fell onto the ground, groaning in pain and exhaustion. He saw Rarity float towards the center of the circle.
This is it, Reaper... One more time after this and we can go home...
Reaper could barely prep himself as he drug himself towards the white unicorn with the expertly coiffed purple mane. He sat down in front of Rarity, waiting for her to open her eyes. She did, surprise and anger covering her face as she scanned the area. Reaper was glad that he had come to at leas speaking terms with Rarity over the few months of mail being sent back and forth. Otherwise this would be a tad more difficult. Rarity's roving eyes finally rested on the sitting form of Reaper, and she said,
"Reaper, dear, just what are you doing down there?"
Reaper just shrugged, and brought up his most smart-assed response.
"You know, bleeding, suffering from the buildup of lactic acid, being thrown around by tentacles that have shown themselves to be in Hentai, saving the world. You know, things you would do on a lazy Sunday afternoon."
Rarity glared down at him, and said,
"Now Reaper, I do not appreciate the sarcasm. Now, do tell me where we are."
Reaper grunted at the pain making it's way through his traumatized muscles.
"I think we are in the Everfree forest, actually. Near Canterlot."
Rarity looked at the floor, and clicked her tongue when she saws that Reaper's suit got damaged, not to mention that he was bleeding.
"Now how am I supposed to fix that."
It was more of a statement than a question, and it's implications did not escape Reaper. He sighed, and said,
"I guess I will have to tell you how to make Kevlar, won't I? That, and show you how to make the salve for the sun-sensitive fabric."
Rarity smirked, she got what she wanted. She began to fall asleep again, muttering out,
"And can I get your measurements while I am working, darling?"
Last thing she heard was Reaper grunting an affirmative before drifting into her sleep again.
Reaper slowly got back up on his feet, and turned in the general direction of eternal damnation called Nightmare. Trixie got up, skin and fur growing through the burnt flesh of her body. Nightmare called out,
"You know that feeling when you go full-swing with an emotion, and you feel the opposite of whatever you're feeling? Yeah, I guess you could say that's what exactly I am feeling right now."
A bright flash and twinkle, and Trixie was in arms distance, a vein throbbing on her temple.
"Although I am impressed, you were able to defeat me single-handedly six times over. Shame I am going to end you slowly and painfully."
All of the surrounding ponies all had their heads shot up as the elements suddenly appeared, and clamped themselves onto their wielders. Trixie looked about, screaming out in frustration... until she noticed where they were all pointed at, the middle. She leaped up at the last second when they all fired the beam. Reaper stood there, dejectedly accepting his fate as time seemed to slow down with the rapidly approaching beam. There would be no deflecting, no absorbing, just whatever the elements deemed acceptable for his past war-crimes. His head slumped back, taking in the beautiful calmness and serenity of the night sky.
The beam hit him.
Reaper expected for him to be turned into stone, and then shattered, or some other gruesome fate, but he felt an immense power engulf his form in tingling relief. His pain all washed away as he began to glow a pure white. A small shell enveloped him as his form began to subtly change. This time, six pony-like shapes approached Reaper in his mind's eye. They all called out in unison, in perfect harmony.
"We have judged you, Reaper. We have seen fit for you to wield us like your mother did before you. Now go! Banish this taint of the land from our harmonic equality!"
His vision was gone, and with it, all thoughts of losing this fight.
Pearly-white claws, much like when he was Supernova sprung over his hands, and his Alicorn features had all turned a blazing, blinding white. Reaper reached up and took off his helmet. His hair had achieved the same weightlessness as his mother, eyes blazing with the intensity of the sun themselves. His voice seemed to age to countless millennia old.
"Hello Nightmare. I hope you know what is about to come next."
Trixie reared back, disbelief and shock written across her features. Reaper picked up Chaoseater, his power diffusing into it, the eyes shooting out pure light. Reaper bent down into a fighting stance, and with his free hand, he prepared a spell. Nightmare spent no time trying to dispatch him. more tentacles, followed by a blazing inferno erupting from underneath Reaper's feet. The tentacles were swatted away by Chaoseater and the spell was re-directed by Reaper's own spell. Reaper took to the sky, and dove in to come with a pass at Nightmare. Trixie summoned a black sword to counter Chaoseater, the two blades clashing with a resounding clank that boomed out, disturbing the grass and trees. Landing, Reaper and Nightmare traded blows, sometimes Reaper switching to his his claws to deflect the blows from time to time, a flurry of strikes and twirls of death to try and overcome Trixie's defenses. They got into a blade-lock and their faces got close to each other. Trixie taunted Reaper, saying,
"Poor little Reaper! Your mother banished me in half of the time in this state!"
Reaper's face was devoid of all emotion.
"But it isn't banishment I am after... I'm going to kill you to make sure you can never come back again."
All of the color in Trixie's face drained out as Reaper lashed with his claw to the side of Trixie's face, leaving five deep rents that bled profusely. He growled as Trixie disengaged the lock, twirling backwards with help of her tentacles. Reaper sent a large ball of fire at her, growing larger as it approached her. Trixie threw her defenses up at the last time, getting sent flying, being just a bit scorched. Trixie knocked Chaoseater out of Reaper's hands, and shot a few more magical spells at him, rocks, ice boulders, flame spears, and lightning bolts converging in a slew of destruction that was intent on ending Reaper's life. When the dust settled, it revealed Reaper with a ball of multicolored energy gathering in his hand. Without a word, he pointed it at Trixie, shooting an ultra-condensed Harmony blast. Putting all of the power he had in it, the beam wrapped around Trixie's body, engulfing her with the power of harmony and constricting. It all ended with a shockwave knocking everything about. Reaper had to summon Chaoseater to keep him from flying around. Once the turbulence ended, revealing a now normal-looking Reaper and Trixie's limp form. Reaper struggled to unearth Chaoseater with his now close-to-useless muscles, his will the only thing keeping him running. He froze after unearthing Chaoseater, and saw that Trixie was moving, getting up.
"Ha...Hah. You thought that that would be able to keep me down? Pathetic."
Reaper was standing there, his body screaming for him to stop, his muscles twitching and undulating under his skin. He started to repeat a mantra:
Just kill her and be done with it, then you can rest. J-Just kill her and be done with it. Just kill her and...
He was interrupted by the feeling of being pushed in the abdomen, and the mild sound of a thump. He looked down.
Reaper never saw the tentacle coming.
Trixie lifted Reaper into the air as she gloated over her victory.
"You put up a good fight, but sadly, it wasn't enough. Do you have any last words, Reaper?"
Reaper's right arm hung limply behind him, Trixie was holding him at a slight angle. He found that he could get his hand in the back compartment where the will of Bahamut was residing. Clenching his fist around it, Reaper said,
"Yeah... Yeah. I have some last words."
Nightmare's ears perked up as she leaned her head closer to Reaper, just in arm's reach.
"What do the five fingers say to the face?"
Nightmare's face turned to confusion for a second before she was hit by reaper as he screamed out,
"SLLLLAAAPPPP!"
Trixie's face switched to indignation as she began to say,
"Now what kind of last words is..."
Then she felt it. She felt it, she could see it. It was the will of Bahamut, the only way for her to actually die. The sun rose up like a pop-gun, settling straight over where Reaper and Nightmare were standing.
"No...N-NO! YOU FOOL! YOU ARE STILL GOING TO DIE!"
A beam of condensed sunlight began to hone down on Trixie's forehead, right where the will of Bahamut was resting. Nightmare flung Reaper from her, trying to cause as much pain as possible before they both passed from this world. Reaper hit a tree, and landed on his back in the shade. A faint sizzling sound came from the frying of Trixie's hair. A crackling sound emanated from the sun as it passed it's judgement on Nightmare. There was a boom, and Nightmare, along with Trixie, were no more. Reaper chuckled weakly as the six elements hit the floor with meaty plops.
"Ha...hah-ha. I'm Rick, bitch. Rick."
Reaper coughed up some blood, a dark red line trailing down his jaw-line. The nanobots displayed life expectancy.
Three minuets.
Reaper shut them off, ready for his death, waiting for its sweet embrace. Happy that he was able to save the world, and in turn, his friends.
His eyes drifted closed. They opened a minuet later.
Reaper heard a rustling and a sniff coming from the edge of the clearing. Something picked him up. Something white, and motherly. Reaper looked up and saw a floating rainbow, billowing on an unseen breeze.
Celestia.
Celestia gently picked him up with her wings, suspending him in a soft, downy hammock. Reaper looked into Celestia's watery eyes as he felt the warmth in him slowly fade. Reaching up, he said,
"I... I saved them, I killed Nightmare." Reaper paused as another splatter of blood came out of him mouth. "Don't let Luna blame herself for all this,"
Reaper caught Celestia's full attention, trying to convey as much emotion through his coal-black eyes as he could.
"Mother."
His lungs took in a breath of air.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as all of his senses heightened to the point of it almost being painful. He could smell Celestia's scent, the soft, downy texture of her wings, her warmth desperately trying to keep him as long in this world as possible, her coat, silky and smooth and rubbing against his skin. He felt a drop of wetness hit his exposed cheek. Reaper looked once more into Celestia's eyes, and smiled.
It was in the clearing where Reaper last spoke to Steelfeather, he always liked that place.
It was raining, three days after the final battle between Reaper and Nightmare. It was his funeral. The six flanked the princesses, all openly weeping, tears splashing on the ground. In his coffin, Reaper lay there, with that smile plastered on his face that he died with. They were all accustomed to his razor-sharp teeth. His hands were clasped over the LMG he brought with him from Earth, helmet resting on his breast. his suit and body showed no sign of war or battle, as if he peacefully died in his sleep. Celestia wanted to reach out, feel her son for one last time, but she knew it was time. With a nod to the Guardsponies, Reaper was slowly lowered into the ground. A squad of Pegasus guardsmen all burst into the sky, spiraling and twisting out to their respective places, and landing. They made small rows, lining the coffin. Drawing their swords, they made a small hallway covering over the gravesite, honoring their mentor. As Reaper made his last decent into the ground, so did the memories of the six.
Applejack looked back at when she first handled talking to Reaper, and how he responded with nothing but respect and honesty.
Pinkie Pie looked back with a small, sad smile when she first glomped Reaper, his reaction of being completely drained mentally.
Twilight looked back at when she first learned that Reaper could control magic. She also remembered that then was also the time when she turned him over to Celestia's guards.
Rarity was sitting there, eyes puffy. While he did not have that much interaction with him, she thought that she could of known him better before he left.
Rainbow Dash was unlike herself, solemn and serious. As Reaper began to make his decent into the cold earth, she threw one of her feathers down the hole, a physical memory for him to take with him. As she tracked it fluttering carelessly down the hole with Reaper, she muttered,
"I got your back."
Fluttershy sat there, dejectedly rubbing at one streak of blood that Reaper had left on her cheek with his hands, refusing to wash it off until she properly got to say goodbye to Reaper.
All of their thoughts finally rested on their last joint memory of him that uncovered some of Reaper's mysterious capabilities. After Nightmare died, they all awoke at once, immediately remembering what they had done with Reaper. They heard some kind of soft sniffling, and they all saw a sight that they never would have guessed to see.
Luna was resting her head on Celestia's shoulder as they both wept bitterly over something held in Celestia's arms. Twilight didn't even need to be one of the smartest unicorns in Equestria to know something was wrong.
And so there they were, all looking at what could have been, the entire world of Equestria not being able to know what they had just sacrificed, or ever getting the will to care. The futility of his sacrifice conflicted with the sheer importance, making it a momentous, quiet occasion that had already been swept under the rug by the general populace.
They all stood there, not knowing what to do.
Slowly, they all began to drift away as the dirt was piled on top of Reaper's coffin.
Applejack went home, and re-named the year's cider stock to the Hooded Alicorn.
Twilight stayed with the two Princesses to help console them before going back to her library, dedicating herself to research and amend all of the misconceptions of Nightmare Moon and her uprisal.
Pinkie Pie went home, a smile plastered on her face, knowing that being with Reaper for his last goodbye would have made him happy.
Rarity found a memory from Reaper implanted into her mind, and immediately set to work making Kevlar fabrics.
Rainbow Dash went home and made her first solo sonic rainboom. It's colors seemed to be ultra-bright as she dedicated it to Reaper.
Fluttershy washed off the grime Reaper left her, and returned home, tending to her animals. She hoped that seeing that she was happy would have made Reaper happy.
The night's following Reaper's death sucked all of the joy from the world, the moon and stars were all snuffed, everyone witnessed the pitch black void that Reaper had to journey to to make sure that they would be safe. If some pony listened hard enough, they could hear a haunting melody drifting through the night. It said,
A falling star fell from you heart and landed in my eyes I screamed aloud, as it tore though them and now it's left me blind
The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out You left me in the dark No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight In the shadow of your heart
And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat I tried to find the sound But then it stopped and I was in the darkness So darkness I became
The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out You left me in the dark No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight In the shadow of your heart
I took the stars from our eyes, and then I made a map And knew that somehow I could find my way back Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too So I stayed in the darkness with you
The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out You left me in the dark No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight In the shadow of your heart.
Luna sat next to Reaper's grave, staring after her song. She knew that what she was doing needed to be done, but not yet. It doesn't feel right to stop now. Luna looked at the headstone where Reaper was, and leaped into the air to do her nightly duties.
--- --- ---
Later that night, a strange figure appeared not too far from the royal orchard, stalking through the trees. To anyone, even for Reaper, they would have called it a monster. It stalked through the night, body seemingly changing with the breeze, outline dark as the sky above it. It finally came to a stop at the foot of the small mound of dirt from the funeral. It's shape resembled something to Reaper's as it squatted down to pat the mound, and reach for the headstone. It muttered out,
"Never expected to claim you this early, Prince."
A brief shining on the headstone, and it was gone. --- --- ---
Luna returned from her rounds, and visited Reaper one more time. When she did, she noticed something was wrong. There was writing on the headstone. Luna read over it once and memorized it before rushing off to see her sister.
Sitting on the tombstone, in drawling scrip was a message.
The villain lies slain, the family saved, the friends safe, but the one with two and four inside is lost.
Of the 13 of blood from his coming, and the longest of birth, the grass takes it's domain in the water above the billowing verdant sea.
The creature of four does not remember the two, but yet it will find itself drug back to you.
When night intersects the longest day, the lost will find its way, and in the coming of power, and in the chime of the hour, the two within the four will once again feel the bright of day.
The two will become four, and the four become six, but the two will leave and forever walk away.
