As Elise steered the craft towards Canada, she turned towards Last Laugh. “So, given everything, I feel I need to ask...just how dangerous is this plan we’re working from?”

“You’re asking that plainly?” Dan demanded irritably. “Don’t you have some sort of special ‘protocol code’ for that?”

“Of course I do,” Elise confirmed. “But considering we’re apparently doing magic of some sort, I’d rather get specifics. Besides, if Future Me told Last Laugh the codes, she’d only tell her what she needed to get Present Me to listen. You know how I am about intentionally giving out information.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie piped up. “You give out way more information accidentally than intentionally!”

“You did tell me quite a bit only to tell me to forget you said anything,” Last Laugh pointed out. “You were really disappointed to learn I didn’t do that literally like Pinkie Pie does.”

“How come you’re still calling us by name?” Dan demanded angrily. “I’m pretty sure we all know by now who you actually are.”

“I don’t,” Chris pointed out petulantly. “I’m so confused. And hungry.”

“Exactly,” Last Laugh confirmed. “And for right now, it’s important to keep you that way.”

“Confused or hungry?” Chris inquired hopefully.

“Both.” Last Laugh turned back to Elise. “In answer to your question, this plan has...about a 50% chance of destroying the Killi-TOK without any long term negative side effects to the fabric of reality.”

“That’s...pretty bad odds,” Elise muttered nervously.

“However, I’m told it still gives us a 100% chance of victory,” Last Laugh pointed out.

“That’s better,” Elise replied in relief. “I take it the possible negative side effects cover the other 50%? How bad will they be?”

“Chain reaction that destroys the Nexus, and possibly the entire multiverse,” Last Laugh admitted.

Everyone was dead silent for a time. “How is that still a victory?” Elise demanded in shock.

“Well, when you told me the plan, you said TOK had already destroyed everything that made the multiverse worth saving, so as far as you were concerned it was a 50% chance of saving everyone, or a 50% chance of avenging them, making it win-win,” Last Laugh explained. “So...you tell me.”

“Wow, Elise,” Dan murmured in awe. “Future You makes the craziest plans. I’d probably approve if not for the fact that it might kill us all!”

“If we don’t do this, you all die to Killi-TOK at this point, anyway,” Last Laugh pointed out.

Dan scratched his chin in thought. “So...either we all survive, or TOK is destroyed to avenge us, with no middle ground? Okay, I can accept that collateral damage. Good plan, Future Elise.”

“But what about Equestria?” Pinkie demanded, her eyes wide with tears at the corners, her lip quivering.

Last Laugh glanced away as they came in for a landing in front of a cave. “You don’t want to know…”

“Do we want to know the details of exactly what’s going to happen?” Elise asked as she started unloading.

“No you don’t,” Last Laugh countered. “It would take too long to explain, and we don’t need Chris that confused. For now, get a big pot and pour all the bear blood into it. In the meantime, Chris...strip!”

“What?” Chris gasped out in shock.

“You need to be in your underwear for this to work, and I need to draw the proper runes on your chest with the Kraken ink before drawing the magic circle, so you might as well start now.”

Chris grumbled as he started to disrobe. Dan looked away, torn between not wanting to see Chris undressed and cackling wickedly over the turnabout after the last time he was in this cave.

Pinkie Pie gasped as she looked upward. “What’s happened to the sky?”

Up in the sky, the stars had come out...but something was off. It almost looked like there were two completely separate night skies superimposed upon each other. The Ursa Minor constellation was directly above, seemingly cradled in the arms of the Ursa Major constellation, as though parent and child star bears were lovingly reunited.

Last Laugh took one look at the sky and grinned. “Good, it’s working. Mixing time periods is always risky in magic, mostly because you never know if it will work or not.”

“That’s supposed to happen?” Dan demanded in awe, staring up at the sky.

“Yup,” Last Laugh confirmed as she drew various runes on Chris’ chest that caused the pot of bear’s blood to start bubbling despite the absence of heat. “Elise, drop the nuclear by-product into the blood now. It’ll mix properly at this point, and I can draw the magic circle.”

Nodding, Elise did as instructed, and the blood flashed white before turning into black ooze. Last Laugh took the pot and tossed the fluid inside out of it, the splash landing in a perfect magic circle inside the cave. Elise stared, stunned. “How...never mind.”

“Chris, stand in the circle, then dump the fish guts and grass clippings over you, and then sing the Monty Python Lumberjack song until you feel magic flowing into you,” Last Laugh instructed firmly. “Elise, you sing the Monty Python ‘Camelot’ song while dancing around the magic circle. Dan, Pinkie, you both guard the entrance until you hear Chris cry out. I’ll go delay the Killi-TOK.”

As Chris and Elise obeyed instructions, Dan and Pinkie followed Last Laugh out of the cave. “So...how much of that was strictly necessary for the magic to work?” Dan asked curiously.

“The runes on his chest and the magic circle,” Last Laugh explained bluntly as she checked her chainsaw. “The rest of it was revenge for the Monster Under the Bed fiasco on your behalf. You never did get even with them for that in my time.”

Pinkie gaped in astonishment. “You...you came back in time to enact a plan where the slightest thing going wrong would cause the destruction of the entire multiverse, and you used it to inflict some sort of vengeance prank on Chris and Elise?”

“Uh, yeah?” Last Laugh offered as she brushed her hair away from her face. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Dan burst into proud laughter. “That’s my girl!” he crowed happily. “Go show that bot what the rage of a Mandel is capable of!”

Last Laugh grinned widely. “Speaking of, when you hear Chris cry out from the magic flowing into him, you need to get back in there with him and do whatever it takes to get him as angry as humanly possible. Otherwise, he won’t be able to contain the power and it will probably cause that chain reaction I warned you about.”

“Got it!” Dan confirmed. “I’m an expert at making Chris angry!”

“I know you are,” Last Laugh confirmed, racing down the road. As she’d expected, the Killi-TOK was quickly approaching, plainly ready for battle.

Last Laugh sighed as she stared it down. “You probably think this fight will go like all the others, and you’ll be able to either weaken me or push me towards the cave so you can get the others caught in the crossfire, don’t you?”

“You speak...like something’s different…” Killi-TOK growled out.

“Something is,” Last Laugh explained. “You see...this entire time, I’ve been holding back. First, to limit what of my abilities you could adapt to, and second, to build up a certain reserve for just this situation should it come up. So I’ve got a lot of power to burn. I’m going to win today…” Pulling a device out of thin air, she strapped it to her waist “Cause this is my jam!” With one finger, she pushed ‘Play’.

When it’s time to party we will party hard!

Revving her chainsaw, Last Laugh lunged forward, carving through the weapons Killi-TOK unleashed to try and stop her, dodging the energy blasts and bullets to start carving into its body. Killi-TOK countered by trying to carve into her, only for her wounds to heal just as fast as its did. After they’d each taken several blows and reattached a limb at least once, Killi-TOK caught the chainsaw coming down and broke the blade in half.

“That…” Last Laugh growled out as she drew out a violet-bladed sword. “...was my mother’s!” The blade began to glow, and she lunged in, rapidly slashing the android to bits before releasing a concentrated energy blast from her palm that seemed to obliterate it. “One more down, she grumbled as the Killi-TOK reassembled itself.

“Your...meaning?” the android demanded as it regained its mouth.

“There’s only so many of you in there,” Last Laugh explained. “Each time that body takes enough damage to qualify as ‘death’, one of you dies, leaving one less mind to guide all that power. By my calculations, there should only be two of you left, including the King.”

“You are too overconfident,” the android growled out as it charged in.

“And you’ve obviously never heard of random oscillation!” Last Laugh shouted out as she threw her hands forward, launching a barrage of smaller energy blasts from both hands as the android charged her, burning through her energy stores rapidly as she focused on doing enough damage to inflict another kill. Each energy blast impact blasted away another chunk of the android, until all that was left was a puddle of silver goo. She took several deep breaths as she saw it start to reform. “And...one to go.”

“Your mistake to make me take the reins myself,” Killi-TOK responded in the voice of the TOK King, a crown taking shape around the top of its head as it stood.

“We’ll see about that!” Last Laugh roared out as she lunged in, sword first.

The Killi-TOK raised a hand, and Last Laugh froze. A twist of fingers, and her sword shattered. A flick of her wrist, and she was sent flying into the wall of ice and snow left behind by the avalanche Dan and Chris had caused so long ago, which Canada had never recovered from. “I now have at my command all the power the Nexus sends to this out-of-the-way world,” Killi-TOK explained. “And the assistance of my contemporary self, though he still cannot find this world directly. However, he can assist me.” With that, Killi-TOK began to swell, slowly expanding.

Last Laugh grinned as she pulled something out from around her neck. “I was...counting on that,” she growled out, coughing out blood onto the snaggletooth hanging from the string around her neck, a last gift from one she cared for, to protect her. It began to glow. “By the way...Big D says to suck his Big D!” She hurled the tooth forward.

As it impacted against the expanding Killi-TOK, the tooth exploded, unleashing a field of anti-time that temporarily locked it in position. Knowing she’d bought at best two minutes, Last Laugh staggered to her feet and raced for the cave, hoping the ritual was complete.