If it was not for the urgency of the mission they were on Lucas would have liked to take in the scenery as the forest was quite beautiful. As they walked past the trees on the path they heard a light rustling in a nearby bush.

“What was that?” Night Light said looking at the bush scared stiff.

“Don't be so scared, it was probably just a rabbit,” Zanjin said

Just then a manticor jumped out of the bush landing in front of them, “that’s one big rabbit,” Tom said with a sarcastic tone.

They all readied there weapons as the manticore leaped for them, rolling out of the way just in time, Zanjin was the first to attack swinging his blade at the manticores paw leaving a big gash on it. Whist the manticore reared back howling in pain its tale swiped at Zanjin, he saw this coming but had no time to move so he braced for the strike. The manticore howled in pain yet again, looking up Zanjin saw that the tail had been pinned to a tree by an arrow. Tom charged at the manticor swiping his gauntlets claws across the manticores face leaving four very deep cuts. The manticore put its paw to its face, at that point Lucas was aiming another arrow at the face and fired. It pierced through the paw and face imbedding itself in the manticores brain; killing it instantly.

As Zanjin got to his hoofs, he just had to know “how?” directly the question at Lucas.

“What?” Lucas countered.

“How did you make that shot with the manticores tail? Even with years of training I would not be able to come close to doing something like that.”

“Oh right this is the first time you have worked with an ascended” Lucas said scratching the back of his head. “Well unlike humans we have powers.”

“What kind of powers?” Night Light interrupted perking up at this.

“It is not the same as pony magic you can't learn it, it's in our blood” Lucas said.

“What does that mean?” Zanjin asked puzzled by what Lucas said.

“No two Ascended’s powers are the same, also one of us can't learn how to use another’s abilities.”

“What can you do?” Zanjin said.

“My power is in my eyes when I use them time slows down for me,” Lucas said waving his hand in front of his face very slowly to enforce his point, “I can do over stuff but that is another story for another time.”

“OK then,” Zanjin and Night Light replied and with that they started waking again.

It was nearly midnight and the team had set up camp in a clearing, after finishing off the first set of their rations. There was just silence until Tom broke it, “so what do you think this anomaly is?” The others just looked at the night sky not sure what to say, “I mean it has to be something important or powerful, because the princess herself sent us to investigate.”

“Hey that is a good point how do we know that this thing is safe. It could explode when we get near it,” Night Light said, her face contorted, obviously not liking the thought of getting blown up.

“Maybe or it could be something helpful like a really big energy core,” Zanjin replied.

“I’m sure whatever it is we can handle it,” Lucas said trying to reassure rest of the group.

“I think it is time to sleep,” Tom said attempting and failing to hold back a yawn.

“Your right, Night Light you ready for your first shift?” Lucas asked.

“As I'll ever be,” Night Light retorted and with that they all called it a night.

It was morning and Lucas was the first to get up looking around he saw Night Light sitting down looking into the forest. “Good morning” Lucas said taking Night Light by surprise as he spun round to see Lucas.

“Oh you’re up, does that mean my shift is finished now?” he said wobbling a bit as he tried to stand up.

“Yes you can get some rest.”

“Thank Celestia” then he fell to the ground. Lucas could not help but laugh a bit at this.

It was late morning when they set off. Tom offering to carry Night Light they were walking for about two hours with not one word until Zanjin broke the silence, “Lucas?”

“Huh” Lucas said coming out of his thoughts and back to reality, “something on your mind?”

“Yes I just was wondering about a story I heard.”

“What story?”

“The one where you saved a colt from a gang leader, can I hear it?”

“Oh that one OK well it all started.”

Lucas was sitting just outside a café, there was not very many ponies around but off in the distance he could see a mother trying to protect her colt from another pony this got his interest, so he walked over to the ponies to see what was happening

“I am sorry, but I just can't make this week’s payment I just need a bit more time,” the mother said she was a light yellow earth pony with a light blue mane and a sunflower as her cutie mark.

“You think I care? But if you don't want to pay I guess I can always take your son he would make a fine addition to the gang, once we rough him up a bit, make him tougher,” the other pony said he was a brown unicorn with a black mane and a bow and arrow for a cutie mark.

Her eyes went wide at this “no, not my son please anything but him.”

“You can’t make the payment, so you’re not giving me a lot of choice hear but look on the bright side you would not have to pay us for the next three or so months what do you say?”

“NO!”

“Well if you’re not going to give him to us willingly.”

“STOP!” both the ponies look at Lucas.

“Hey look it a human! Shouldn't you be off burning some innocent pony’s home right now?” The unicorn said, making Lucas’ blood boil but somehow he remained calm.

“Tell you what I will make you a deal,” the ponies just looked at Lucas confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“A simple game, if you will. You see that tree over there?” Lucas pointed to an apple tree 50 meters from them.

The unicorn looked at where he was pointing and saw it “yeah, so what do you have in mind?”

“We both take a bow and one arrow, the one who can knock the most apples to the ground with their shot win. If I win you will leave these two alone and forget about the money they owe you, but if you win I will pay you double what she owes you.”

“This will be easy you see the mark on my flank, archery is my special talent,” the unicorn almost fell over laughing.

“So do you accept then?”

“Hell yes!”

Lucas pulled a bow from his back and one arrow from his coat handing them to the unicorn, a red glow appeared around them as they levitated in the air just above the ponies, as he took aim at the tree and fired. The arrow went straight through the branches and three apples fell to the ground. “HA beat that!” he said giving the bow back to Lucas.

Lucas pulled out another arrow and took aim and fired the arrow hit the bass of one of the branch’s and nothing happened

“Oh would you look at that I win!” 'CRASH' the unicorn turned to see that the entire branch had fallen and there was at least 20 apples on the ground.

“I think that is a couple more than you got,” Lucas said with a hint of sarcasm. “So that means I win.”

“There’s no way you could of known that the arrow would break the branch!”

“Who cares if it was luck or skill the end result is that I got more apples to the ground. Now are you going to accept defeat?”

“Like hell I am,” and with that he spun around and tried to buck Lucas, but Lucas was too fast, he side stepped at the last second and the unicorn missed, then without missing a beat Lucas swung his bow smacking it in to the back of the stallions head, who fell to the ground clutching his head in pain.

“Last chance, will you accept defeat?” Lucas spat he was clearly losing his tolerance with this stallion.

“Yes,” he managed to say weakly before getting up and stumbling off. Lucas was just about to walk away when he heard the pony behind him say, “thank you.”

“No problem he was not all that tough,” Lucas replied putting his bow away.

“I just can't thank you enough, if it was not for you he probably would have taken my son away,” she said hugging the little colt tight.

“Yeah you’re a hero!” a voice came from behind him. Looking around Lucas could see that he had drawn quite a crowd. There where at least 15 ponies standing around looking amazed at what he had done. How; even with eyes as good as his, he had not known they were there was beyond him.

“Maybe we were wrong about them, they’re not evil,” another voice came from the crowd.

“Wow that was amazing you stood up to a gang leader, beat him at his own game and got him to run off with his pride broken all to protect a pony you didn’t even know!” Zanjin said in awe.

“How come you do not answer any of my questions?” Tom said with a bit of annoyance in his voice.

“Because your questions are always stupid,” Lucas replied, “like asking me why I wear my leather coat when I have told you a hundred times.”

“Yes I know, you want to look like he did, but why did he betrayed us?”

“No I still don’t think he did, there has to be some other reason he disappeared.”

“Face it Lucas he left and we had to fight the humans on our own.”

“Who are you talking about” Zanjin interrupted thinking he only heard half of a conversion.

“Brimstone,” Tom said.

“Oh Brimstone... who's he?”

Lucas ended the conversation with, “our leader.”