Phoenix

Chapter 20

The capitol building loomed before the two Legionnaires, both unarmored, though not unarmed.

The bustling streets of the Citadel passed them by, the people in them paying no care to the non-descript men. Millions of people walked into the capitol building each day and millions walked out.

The woman peddling various firearms, bladed weapons and high explosives to several law enforcement officers near the entrance. The man at his stall claiming his food is the best in the Imperium. None of them showed any interest in the two Legionnaires beyond potential customers.

The two silently strode up the stairs, the Senatorium a mere two blocks away and the Supreme Court four blocks.

Elevators clung to the outside of the capitol building, a left over remnant of the days when the Imperium wasn’t as advanced as it is now. The newer buildings all had short range teleporters, but they had refused to update the capitol building on the basis that it’s exterior was far too well known. It’s exterior colored in an imposing black.

The two Legionnaires entered through the main doors, both flashing IDs in unison, the armed security waving them through the checkpoint line.

“This is skeeving me out, Tommy.” The leaner, shorter one, leaning over, whispered to his partner. “Getting suddenly called to the capitol from base. Admiral doesn’t override Duren’s authority very often like that. Know the last time it happened?”

Tommy scanned the room, crowds of people going about their own business in the building, but he couldn’t deny something seemed off.

“He hasn’t done it once since I jumped on.” Tommy pushed the voice screaming at the back of his mind down, though another jumping up to replace it.

“The credentials and authorizations checked on the order, but I have to agree. I have never personally seen Krelnash override Duren.” Venus spoke up, though only heard by ‘Tommy’, the man who was known normally as Dante.

“Venus is saying she agrees with you, Leknen. And I also have to agree.”

“The voice?” The tan Legionnaire questioned, as he sidestepped a secretary with her face buried in a datapad. Dante nodded. “Jesus christ, some of these people just came off active duty and their situational awareness is worth as much as a fucking boot’s.” Leknen added, looking to Dante.

“Shit man, if that voice is yelling at you, something is about to go down. It ain’t ever been wrong yet.” It was Dante’s turn to avoid another distracted worker, the two Legionnaire's taking note of a passing group of uniformed service members carrying their service rifles. Undoubtedly on security patrol, and probably fresh out of basic.

“Wonder what it’s going to be this time, LG.” Leknen pushed open a door, using his free hand to wipe his nose. “Last time I went out with you, it was a massive fucking helo crash. We’re in the capitol building now, though.” He looked to Dante, meeting his eyes. “A politico asking what a mutt’s doing in the building and then making a scene requiring us to run away? Racist fucks.”

“Oi,” Dante protested with a chuckle, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “This mutt’s particularly proud of his Human heritage, and he says any politician throwing a fucking fit about him being here can remove the stick from their asshole and fuck off to another place.”

Leknen shrugged. “Well, shit… I mean, there ain’t no one in this building who’s going to argue with the second most powerful man in the galaxy. Lieutenant General of the PLMC, career suicide to fuck with that rank.”

The two came to a stop in front of one one of the iconic elevators, Dante pressing the call button.

Leknen leaned closer to his friend. “So what do you think this is about?”

Dante shrugged. “Honestly? Can’t be anything good if Admiral’s overriding Duren’s authority over the Legion. They only wanted me by myself, technically, you’re not even supposed to be here.”

Leknen squinted his eyes as the elevator arrived, the two stepped on.

“Really?”

Dante nodded his head. “Yep.”

“So, am I going to get court martialled for being here, or...”

Dante waved his hand. “Nah, fuck’em. I’m the Lieutenant General of the Legion and you’re my subordinate. If any shit goes down, I was the one who ordered you to accompany me, so the shit falls on my head.”

Leknen merely nodded.

The elevator stopped at the floor they were supposed to be on, as the two men stepped off.

The elevator ride was the end of an era… and the beginning of a new one.

Twilight was hoisted into the air, upside down, by her tail. The tall biped holding her supporting her weight easily.

Before she could charge a spell in her horn, his free hand wrapped around it, lifting her up so she could meet his eyes.

“Use any magic, and you lose your horn.” He growled. “Got it?”

The unicorn gazed into his eyes, looking for any hint of a bluff.

She found none, her eyes widening at the threat.

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but Dante quickly moved his hand from her horn to her mouth, gripping it shut. “Don’t talk, listen. Nod if you understand I’ll rip your horn off if you even try to use magic.”

She nodded.

“Good.” Without another word he let go of her mouth, and began walking back to the mare, his feet thudding on the grass and holding Twilight out by her tail.

Twilight began to speak in an attempt to figure out what was going on beyond the fact that she had just been kidnapped by a Human who seemed to be breaking every known natural law.

She was quickly silenced by said Human. “I said no talking.”

The mare was still collapsed on her side and breathing heavily, her belly facing the two.

Dante roughly set Twilight down, kneeling beside her and towards the mare.

“Shut up and listen.” Dante said, as he gently pushed his hands under the mare, carefully lifting her up.

The mare’s eyes were shut, as she seemed to be in pain with every breath she took. Twilight could see the sweat forming on her body and being absorbed by her coat. He brought her closer to his body, in a loose hug, lifting her so her head rested on his shoulder.

The purple mare’s jaw dropped, just seconds ago, this Human had shot her teacher, kidnapped her and then threatened to rip her off if she tried to get away. And yet here he was, holding this newfoal with… something she wasn’t certain how to describe.

He used his right arm to stroke the mare’s head and back as his left arm supported her.

He was whispering. Twilight’s ears flickered, as she struggled to pick up what he was saying, though the whispers further muffled by the fact that he was speaking into the mare’s ear.

“Twilight,” He spoke, lifting his head from where it had previously rested on the mare’s head. “Do… How…” He took a deep breath, apparently trying to collect his thoughts. “How do you see Celestia?”

Twilight showed no hesitation in her answer. “She’s a great teacher and a benevolent leader. She even extended her hoof to help Humanity.”

Dante continued to rub the mare’s back, the newfoal’s breathing having become less heavy and shallow. “Did you ever know any Humans personally… before they were transformed.”

Twilight tilted her head, wondering where this line of questioning was going. “Of course I did. I worked with several scientists trying to help Humanity before we fell back to ponification.” Twilight stood a bit taller, her shoulders squaring up as she reminisced on the time she spent helping the greatest minds Humanity had to offer.

“What are they doing now?” Dante’s question hung in the air, as Twilight struggled to process it. Her shoulder’s slumping.

She couldn’t answer, Dante taking the lead. “Their eyes are lifeless and they have less brain power then a newborn. They’re probably in some field somewhere munching on grass. They don’t think. They just move. Aren’t they?”

Twilight looked down, unable to answer.

“Your silence is telling, Twilight. I’m right, aren’t I? Some of the most intelligent Humans you’ve ever met, some of them even smarter then you I’m willing to bet, turning into nothing but mindless living corpses. Zombies. Spike.”

Twilight’s breath hitched. “What about him?” Her voiced cracked as she questioned the name.

“I haven’t met him back home except for a short while. But from what I saw, he was a smart kid. Acted on his own if he thought it was necessary without pushing from others. This Spike? He’s a zombie. What does he do all day?”

The realization was slowly creeping upon Twilight.

“No, it’s just temporary. That’s what my colleagues told me. That’s what… Celestia told me.”

“You don’t know how I figured out what happened, do you? I knew, a rough idea, before I even asked Celestia to explain it to me. But she,” Dante gestured to the mare he cradled. “She only confirmed it for me.”

Dante paused his rubbing, looking up to meet Twilight’s eyes. “Do you know who she is? Who this mare is?”

Twilight shook her heard, Dante smiled.

“She’s my wife.”

The green flames flared up, as Fortnite’s pony disguise was dropped, revealing a changeling, standing tall, though chitin cracked and slowly leaking green. Still, Fortnite stood, she knew what she needed to do.

She launched herself from the ground, her wings buzzing furiously as she propelled herself towards the gun that Discord had been playing keep away from them.

Already, the floor was littered with rubble, as Bulwark was still fighting the slime monster that Discord had magicked into existence.

Fortnite neared the gun, her wings buzzing harder, pusher her faster. As she neared it, less then two body lengths away, it was pulled away from her.

She was expecting this, banking her body up and towards the chaos god. The hybrid focused on moving the gun and not the changeling coming towards him at full speed.

Fortnite was forced to sudden stop, vibrations traveling through her horn and into her head as she slammed into something solid.

She felt a warm liquid drip onto her head, as the once loud room, shouting from the struggling Bulwark and the gurgling of the weird monster restraining him. The shouts of the Elements as they too were nearly grabbed by an errant tentacle. All of that stopped, the only sound in the room the buzzing of her wings.

She saw a red liquid slowly trickle down her snout, her eyes looking up to meet the shocked blood red eyes of the mad god.

Her horn firmly and deeply embedded into his abdomen.

“I got you, bastard.” She growled, an anger welling up in stomach as the realization of what he had done finally hit her. She could feel the magic growing in her horn.

“For Dante.”

The mare’s eyes were now looking around, neither lazily nor quickly. At their own pace. They were no longer dulled, bright, vibrant. But still the mare was quiet.

“Her name is Lakia.” Dante informed Twilight, the mare’s eyes dart up to try and look at the biped yet she still remained silent.

“How did you know it’s her? Back in your home… this didn’t happen, did it?” Dante nodded his head.

“At the moment, I am the only Human and Imperial contact the Equestrians have made. I could tell from her eyes. They’re not something you easily forget. Her voice only made me even more certain.”

At this point, Dante had shifted from his kneeling stance to sitting, his legs criss-crossing over each other, the mare laying in his lap as she recovered.

The mare, Lakia, took this time to speak, as well as she could.

“Thank you.” The voice was hoarse, almost as though it hadn’t been used in a long while. Dante calmly looked down at her.

“No need for thanks. I need to be apologizing, I failed you, again.”

“… I don’t even know who you are.” The mare bluntly answered. Dante smiled, chuckling as he looked to the sky.

“Can’t be helped, I suppose. This is a different universe, after all. Even the time line is different. Back home, it’s five thousand years into future, unless… what year was it when you were...”

“Ponified?” Lakia lazily questioned, shifting herself in the Human’s lap. “It was 2036.”

“That’s not good.” Dante replied.

“How so?” The purple unicorn questioned.

“Simple, Twilight. It means the Imperium doesn’t exist. They wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. And it also means I don’t exist in this universe. But that’s pretty obvious...” He looked around the field they trio was in. “I wouldn’t have let this happen either if I had been here to stop it.”

“You can’t stop Celestia.” Twilight answered. Looking up. “She destroyed Discord and stopped Luna. There is nothing you can do to stop her. She’ll be making her way back here to save me.”

Dante snorted. “Save you?” He rolled his eyes. “From what, Twilight? The tyrant’s going to save you from reality? That she’s a genocidal maniac who can’t live with the fact that species other then ponies exists? Let me ask you this, Twi. What happens once there are only ponies left?”

Twilight didn’t answer, merely raising an eyebrow at the question. “When she has no one left to direct her hatred onto. You think she’s suddenly going to stop once every living being is a pony? I’ve known plenty of people like her, and they always need a scapegoat, someone to turn the blame on.”

Dante looked to the ground, recalling memories, none of them good.

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out. Because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out. Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out. Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. That was a poem written by Martin Niemöller, in 1946. He was criticizing those who did not speak up against the systematic extermination of group after group by the Nazi regime. He, himself, was not innocent. He had been an ardent anti-communist and supported Hitler’s rise to power, until Hitler started claiming the state reigned supreme over religion. He recanted his support for Hitler. But this poem… have you ever heard of the saying: ‘History repeats itself.’?”

Twilight nodded, Dante continuing, as the two ponies present continued to listen.

“As someone who has seen the rise and fall of thousands of empires, and has seen hundreds of millions of massacres, thousands of ethnic cleansings, I’ve seen trillions dead… I have the unfortunate privilege of being able to confirm that history repeats itself. Hitler wasn’t the first Hitler. There had been thousands of Hitlers before his rise to power. And even after he blew his own brains out, Hitler was still alive. Maybe not as Hitler himself, but his ideas, his methods. Someone new would come along with similar ideas and place themselves in the annals of history. For a good while, Hitler’s name was the epitome of evil, but it was simply waiting. Hitler wasn’t the last Hitler, and his name would be replaced eventually.”

Twilight scoffed. “You’re not seriously trying to compare Adolf Hitler to Celestia.”

“Nope.” Dante responded, Twilight sighing.

“Oh, good, because that would have been a really du-”

“That would be insulting to Hitler. He’s a far better lad then Celestia. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking despise the man, but put me in a room with Hitler and Celestia, give me a single bullet in my gun and tell me I can only shoot one person dead, I’d put Celestia down without a second thought and shake Hitler’s hand… and then I’d probably beat him to death,” Dante waved his hand in face as Twilight stared at him in shock. “Anyway, point being is, Hitler’s the lesser evil when compared to Celestia and if I really had to choose, at least Humanity would still be alive under Hitler.”

“… That reasoning was really blunt and with no apology in it.” Lakia commented lazily

“That’s why you… er, the other you, married me.” Dante shrugged.

“So… what happens now?” The mare asked, the tiredness in her voice evident to anyone listening.

Dante paused, opening his mouth to speak, though no words would come out. He closed his mouth, before breathing in deep through his nose and sighing.

“Lakia… this is the point in which you need to make a decision. What I… did, it’s… it’s not permanent. I’ve seen… magic like this before. It was on a smaller scale, but the guy who was doing it was experimenting on… well, what he was doing wasn’t important. What is important is that I killed him when I found out about it. But he left his research behind and I found the… aftermath. Any transformation magic, but especially magic that target the brain, is extremely dangerous. The magic that don’t target the brain still has to have something else built into them otherwise they kill their victim by way of shock. Having your body transformed into a significantly different shape is extremely painful. And the ones that target the brain… well,” Dante rubbed his eyes. “Fuck, the ones that target the brain permanently alter and damage the memories and personality of their victim. What I did was something I managed to coax out of the guy, pretending to be interested in his research. I tried making it better to permanently revert his victims back to their previous state, but...”

Lakia stared at the ground, the grass swaying in the light wind.

She looked up. “So… I have a choice. I can go back to being a prisoner in my own mind, or...”

Dante sighed, Twilight could have sworn his posture drooped, as he removed his sidearm from his holster and tossed it in front of him.

Lakia nodded. “I see...”

“Lak, I don’t want to see you suffer but…” Dante trailed off, his eyes focusing on something out in the distance.

“You don’t know if you can pull the trigger...” Lakia nodded, laying her head down. “Please understand, I would rather die then go back to that hellish existence. I saw and felt everything.”

Twilight moved a bit closer to the mare, her eyes wide in shock.

“You mean you’d rather… die then be a pony?”

Lakia lazily flicked her eyes over to the unicorn. “It’s not that. If I was able to stay in control, maybe I wouldn’t mind. But I experienced everything and couldn’t do anything. Right now the rest death offers is a far more alluring offer.”

Dante nodded. “For now, let’s just rest.”

Celestia screamed in pain as the guardstallion applied pressure with several tablecloths to the left side of her face as he attempted to stop the bleeding caused by the Human’s weapon.

The Solar Queen was writing on the ground, as a pool of blood soaked the floor, the other guard that had been present during the very short fight having run off to find help after ripping dozens of tablecloths off the tables in a nearby dining room.

“Get off me!” She roared, the guard though terrified, protested.

“Your Majesty, please, I need to stop the ble-” He was pushed away as Celestia finally found her footing, her hooves gripping floor as she rose up, her wings flaring open.

“Get. Away!” She shouted as she began walking to the throne at the far end of her room, strips of flesh and muscle dangling from the left side of her face.

The guard stallion trotted a little ways behind, cautious so as to not too close to her and to leave enough room for him to escape should he make her mad.

“Your Majesty, please. You need help, there are doctors on their wa-”

“Quiet.” She spoke, cutting the guard off. “I am fine, I do not need help. Mobilize every guardstallion available. We are ending this.”

“Your Majesty, of course, but your ey-”

“Enough! Guns have never stopped me before and they will not stop me now! Now, go!” She pointed at the door with her hoof, as she sat on her throne, blood pouring from the left side of her face.

“It’s coming.” Lakia spoke.

The three had been sitting there for hours, the sun slowly lowering. Dante sighed. His fingers drumming the gun on his thigh.

“Please don’t make me go through it again.” Lakia almost pleaded, a hint of terror in her voice, Twilight remained silent.

“I’m not… I’m not going to Lakia.” Dante sighed once more, looking to the sky. The red horizon providing more then enough light to see. “It’s just… I never thought I’d be the one doing this. You might not be… my Lak, but you’re still Lakia.”

He had explained everything to her, everything that had happened on earth between him and the Lakia he knew. Why he was on Equestria and how he got to this point.

Lakia had taken the explanation well, and seemed to be welcoming her impending death.

“I’m sorry I have to put you through this, Dante.” She spoke, closing her eyes, and resting her head.

“I’m afraid in a few more seconds, I’ll no longer have any control over my limbs. After that, it’s when the true paralysis sets in, when I can barely think. Please, do it before then.”

Dante readjusted the mare, her body resting on his chest with her head on his shoulders. He opened his mouth, words unknown escaping it.

Twilight looked at him in confusion. This was different, even in the times when he hadn’t been outright hostile to her, his voice still carried with it anger and seemingly a lack of care for lives.

But now, his mouth was moving, words Twilight had never heard or come across before escaping it, though the tone and tune were unmistakable.

It was a lullaby. The dying sun glinted off something, catching Twilight’s attention, the area beneath his eyes were… wet.

As Dante gently cradled the head of the former Human with his left hand, the head easily fitting into his palm, the Human slowly removed the gun from its holster.

He moved it to the ear, lightly resting it right in front of the canal, his finger still off the trigger as he continued to sing his lullaby.

The song trailed off slowly, the biped singing the final verses, though his voice now cracking.

The world exploded.

The gun fell from his hand, as he finally broke. Any tears he had been holding came full force as he bellowed, doubling over from his sitting position as he cradled the corpse of the mare, no more words escaped him.

Hands trembling, he gently ran them through the mane of the mare.

Slowly, the sobbing died, and what was left was gasping and deep breathing.

The biped gently slid the mare away from his body revealing a blood stained left shoulder. Before Twilight could get a look at his face, Dante slipped his helmet on. He gently laid the corpse on the grass, allowing Twilight to get a good look at the grisly scene, the wounds on the mare’s head obvious.

Dante removed a reflective piece of cloth from a pouch on his armor and laid it over the mare, being sure to cover her entire body.

Once that was done, he silently moved away.

A sound to his left caught his attention, as a distortion in the air, caught his attention. Another portal was opening.

He calmly reclaimed his pistol from the ground and reholstered it just as a hoof passed through the portal, landing on the solid ground.

The blue coat of the pony was obvious, then followed by a rainbow colored mane and wings then a rainbow tail.

As the pegasus rushed out of the portal, she was followed quickly by several armed gryphons, fanning out to cover the area with their rifles.

Dante, though unbeknownst to all in the area due to his helmet obscuring his face, raised a single eyebrow.

“RD?”

“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash shouted, as the fanned out gryphons pointed their rifles at her.

“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight questioned, incredulous.

“Just ignore the giant alien, no, that’s fine.” Dante muttered.

“What are you doing here?” The rainbow maned pegasus questioned, Twilight shooting back.

“I think the better question is what are you doing here?”

“You first.”

“I’m stopping this.” Dante stated as he stepped between the two mares, hands up. “Twilight’s here because she and Celestia tried to ambush me. And then when that failed, she tried to retreat with Twilight, until I yanked her back here. Now you know what she’s doing here. What are you doing here?”

Rainbow pointed a hoof to the biped. “We came to rescue you!”

Dante pointed to himself. “Me?”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “A Human who can survive magic? You might be what we need. We might be able to find a way to turn all the new-foals back.”

Dante shook his head. “No. It would take an omnipotent god who actually cares to do that. The potion targeted their brains, damaging them in the process. The only cure for them now is…” Dante glanced over his shoulder to the reflective blanket, sighing. “Death.”

“But what about you?” Rainbow Dash asked, her hoof gesturing. “You’re fine. Why is that?”

“I’m not from here.” He answered. “I’m an immortal from another dimension. As far as I’m aware, there’s not a single thing in existence that can kill me.”

“But we can’t just leave them.”

“You all can’t. As much as I hate to see them suffer, I have things I need to do.”

“Then come with us.” Rainbow spoke, waving her hoof to get the gryphons to lower their rifles. “We’re trying to stop Celestia, gryphons aren’t affected by magic like Humans are and we’ve made strides i-”

“Our goals are aligned then.” Dante spoke, cutting the mare off. He knelt on the ground and pulled up a small patch of grass to get access to the dirt below it. He began drawing various runes into it. “I’m going to kill Celestia and go home. Anything that happens after is no longer my responsibility.”

Once more, unknown words escaped his mouth, as a terrible shriek filled the air, the earth shuddering.

A glow emanated from his hand, as he buried it in the ground, the wind building around him.

And finally, the violence died, as he removed his hand from the ground. He calmly walked over to the corpse and gently picked it up, using both his hands to support it.

He walked back over to the newly formed portal.

“Follow me, or don’t. Twilight, I think it would be in your best interest to come with me.” With that he walked through the swirling distortion, disappearing.

Twilight quickly followed behind him, wanting to see her teacher once more and not wanting to take her chances alone with the armed gryphons.

Rainbow Dash cursed and quickly gestured to the portal. “Follow him.” She commanded to the gryphons behind her.

She slipped through it, the gryphons following behind her until only one was left.

The gryphon paused before entering the portal, examining the scene behind him. He blinked his eyes, his green and blue irises betraying his fatigue.

He slipped through the portal.

Dante reacted first, kicking the guard nearest to him off the side of the bridge, a dying yell the only remnant left behind by the stallion, his left hand grasping the spear thrust at him by the other guard.

He ripped it out of the guard’s grip, swinging the unedged end at the stallion’s head and connecting.

The stallion collapsed and whether or not he had died was of no concern to Jaeger.

He had landed where he had wanted. The bridge connecting to the drawbridge of the castle.

The drawbridge which was up.

“Celestia!” He called, his helmet not filtering his voice, the rage apparent in it. “You murderer! You killer! You tyrant! Monster! Sub-Human!” He roared, the others appearing from the portal behind him. “You are life unworthy of breath! A collection of cells imitating intelligence in a vain attempt to continue what you call your pathetic attempt at living! Lower this bridge and fight me, or I’ll lower it for you, and kill every last living thing in this castle.”

Silence reigned, though not for long, as Dante began his approach to the castle. “Celestia!”

The group behind the angered biped kept their distance, unsure of what exactly was going to happen.

A loud bang sounded from the castle, a chain that held the drawbridge up snapping from an unseen force.

“Nothing can save you from me, Celestia! There is nothing in reality that can prevent what I am going to do. Come out, show yourself!”

Another snap sounded from the bridge, as the other great chain anchoring the bridge in place snapped. Rebounding against the stone walls, it carved a large dent in it as the bridge finally collapsed to its place on the ground, bridging the gap between castle grounds and the ground Dante was on.

Revealing within the mouth of the castle a large group of guards, numbering somewhere in the low hundreds, all armed with spears.

“Oh, we’re screwed.” One of the armed gryphons muttered as he took a step back and began raising his rifle, preparing to fight.

Dante, for his part, paid no attention to the fact that he was currently outnumbered, perhaps because he knew he wasn’t outgunned.

He began walking forward, as the armed stallions raised their spears, forming a wall in preparation for the alien biped.

He had crossed the bridge halfway, the mass of guards unmoving, when he finally spoke up.

“Back off or die.”

They did not speak as he continued forward.

“My fight isn’t with you, it’s with Celestia. But if you stand in my way, I will not hesitate to kill you, so back off.”

Still they stood, as Dante approached the last dozen feet of the bridge.

“This is your final warning, you can lay down your weapons and go home. Or die. It’s your choice.”

They stood resolute, Dante was undeterred as he continued forward.

“You made your choice, now die.”

A roar sounded, as dust billowed.

The man clothed in a simple black suit, coat unbuttoned and black fedora, topped off with a tan trench coat, entered the large wooden doors, the rain pouring behind him. Candles gently flickered to his side.

Various printed pamphlets were pinned to a board. The man scanned his surroundings, the small vestibule being separated from the rest of the church by another set of doors. To keep the warm air in.

In the center of the simple vestibule sat a bowl of water, to be used by patrons for blessing themselves upon entrance to the church.

This was not something the man was concerned about, as he forcefully opened the wooden doors separating the main body of the church from the entrance.

His unbuttoned coats were swept back by the wind of the doors, flashing a M1911 safely stored in a leather shoulder holster, set up to be drawn with his strong hand. Opposite to that was a Browning Hi-Power. For both the firearms, spare mags were stored under the other gun.

The shoulder holster had been very expensive, though effective for his job.

As the man entered the church proper, he laid his fedora on a table to the left of the door, typically reserved for storing the sacraments.

He paused, the doors closing behind him as he took in the empty church. Of course, as it was nearly midnight.

He glanced down to the floor, before once more looking up. The alter, on the far end of the church, beckoning him. The main floor was dark, but there, it was lit up. As though God himself were calling to him.

“Maria Jaeger, death date, sometime around July, 1945. Hard to tell when the only fucking thing left is a pile of bones and ashes. Months before I came home.” The man spoke to himself, quietly, as he glared at the altar, a snark etched upon his face.

“Is this a joke… a punishment?” He asked. His feet slowly picking themselves up, moving him closer to the altar.

“What the fuck have I done! I murdered Smith! But you’ve been doing this to me even before I did that.” His voice began to grow in volume. “Mom is dead because of you! I don’t know who the fuck dad is! Every wife I have ever loved, I’ve lost, their lives cut short. Every daughter and son I’ve helped bring into this world? Dead! At your hands!”

His foot steps grew heavier. “So what the fuck is this? Do you find this funny! My suffering! Everyone I love is dead and I can’t even join them! Why! What do I need to do for you to let go of me! Do I need to speak to you in fucking Latin! Quid est hoc, te, deus! Nisi hoc feci absterget mala tellus Condemnabitur est anima mea, et ego cum maledixi pulchritudini aeternum manu tua! Ego fratrem meum, et in ira fit, sed hoc a malo, et adhuc extergimus terra! Ego interficiam quaerentium serunt iniuriam.”

The man raised his hands out in anger. “Or is that still not good enough, you scum. Do I need to fall upon my knees and beg you in Greek! Δεν θα πάρω ποτέ γόνατο. Όλη τη ζωή μου δεν έχετε κάνει τίποτα για μένα! Έχω ζήσει τη ζωή μου στην υπηρεσία της ανθρωπότητας. Έχω να αντιμετωπίσω λάθη που κανείς δεν πρέπει να αντιμετωπίσει, αλλά εξακολουθείτε να θεωρείτε κατάλληλα να με τιμωρήσετε!.”

He reached the altar, his feet soundly landing upon the steps leading up to the tabernacle. He slammed his hands down, the marble on top of it cracking from the pressure.

“Οπότε, τι είναι! Εκουσιάζουν για σας, σας επαινέσω σαν αγαπητό, παντοδύναμο! Καλοκάγαθος! Ισχυρίζονται ότι παρακολουθείτε πάνω τους, αλλά δεν το κάνετε! Καθίζετε εκεί, καθώς αθώοι άνθρωποι πεθαίνουν σε συγκρούσεις που θα μπορούσατε να σταματήσετε με μια απλή κίνηση του pinkie σας! Αν είσαι παντοδύναμος, πού είσαι η fuck όταν είσαι δολοφονημένος από αυτά ... τα δαιμονικά σπέρματα! Πού ήταν η fuck όταν είσαι καμένος!”

He pushed himself from the tabernacle. “Your chosen people, the Jews! Where the fuck were you when your “beloved” children were being, imprisoned, starved, beaten, experimented, mutilated, raped, dismembered, tortured, burned! Taken from the hellholes they were imprisoned in, their bodies experimented upon and turned into unwilling supersoldiers of the Reich. Beasts who could only follow orders! Where were you! Where were you when the Chinese were being slaughtered en masse! Where were you when the Japanese were tossing babies into the air and catching them with bayonets. Where were you? When sailors were trapped in their ships, being burned alive in oil or drowning! You weren’t there! You were never there! How can you claim to be all-powerful when you use that power for nothing!”

The man spun around, his hands raised in the air as though he were challenging the entire world. “Or do you only use that power when you need to get people to worship you! When people challenge you! Well here I am! Daring to question God! Show me! If you’re there, if you have the decency to intervene in something you can stop, then show me something! Anything!”

The church fell silent, as the man paused, his hands falling to his side.

He silently stepped down from the altar and began walking back to the door he had entered from.

He stopped to retrieve the fedora he had taken off. As he put it back on, he looked back to the altar, his heterochromatic eyes brimming to the edge with disgust.

“All you gods are the same. Self-serving hypocrites. The blood that will be spilled is on your hands. Not mine.”

With those final words, Dante T. Jaeger went back into the rain, his mind on a mission.

The roof over the courtyard had crumbled. It had been designed with kill-holes in it, as a plan to hold the castle. However, the defenders had never bothered to funnel Dante into the room in an attempt to kill him with arrows or heavy rocks or hot tar.

As a result, the roof had been pulled down.

The dust billowed as the biped walked into the cloud, the deceased pony still held safely in his hands. The group behind him followed cautiously, though Rainbow Dash was the first to continue moving, Twilight moving close behind her and the gryphons moving to catch up.

Twilight pushed past Rainbow, catching up to the Human and holding at his leg. “Wait a minute, Jaeger. You haven’t told us what your plan is.”

“I’ve told you,” Dante used a foot to force a pair of wooden doors open. “I’m going to find Celestia and kill her. Then I’m going home and I’m taking Lakia with me.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Yes, I can.”

Rainbow Dash suddenly pushed herself into the conversation. “As much as I hate to side with… her.” Rainbow gestured to Twilight. “She’s right. Not even we planned to do that. If Celestia dies, then there’s no way to raise or lower the sun… resulting i-”

“Is Luna still alive?” Dante questioned, cutting the mare off.

“... Yes. She is, but she was turned to stone by Cel-”

“Then I’ll get her out once I’m done returning Celestia to the dirt she was birthed from.”

Before Twilight could protest at the idea of killing her beloved teacher, a guardstallion came racing around the corner. He skidded to a stop on his hooves upon seeing the giant man.

He raised his spear, though Dante appeared to be uninterested.

“Make your choice, boy, live or die.”

The seconds were tense as the biped continued his walking, unphased by the spear pointing at him, the guard turned his body to the side, back-stepping until his rump was against his wall, though spear still pointed at the group of intruders.

“Smart.” Dante responded passing the stallion, the guard having to look up to see anything other than the biped’s legs.

The gryphons continued cautiously as Dante rounded a corner, being sure to keep their eyes and rifles trained on the guardstallions.

“There was still some guys alive in the courtyard, get them help soon and they should live.” Dante called to the guard before he rounded the corner.

“Why?” Twilight asked.

“Why what?” Dante asked back.

“Why would you do that? Tell him about still living guards. Not kill him. You even gave the stallions in the courtyard a chance.”

“Same reason I haven’t ripped your head off Twilight. My fight is with Celestia. I’ll kill you if necessary, but you’re just following herd dynamics. Follow the strongest person in the room. You’re doing it right now.”

“I am not.”

“You’ve not fought with me beyond arguing.”

Silence reigned, as the gryphons lagged behind the group, Twilight and Rainbow Dash using the Human to separate them.

Dante, though he was able to tell there was an obvious tension in the air, could not care any less for whatever problems were going on between the two mares, who had seemed to be friends back home in his proper universe.

The odd group of ponies, gryphons, a corpse and a Human continued their walk for minutes, bothered by no one else.

“We’re here.” Dante stated, as they turned a corner, the large doors to the throne room emblazoned in the wood. “If she was smart, she moved most of her troops to the room.”

“You’re not going to get in there.” Twilight spoke, sticking her nose in the air, smugly. Dante slowly approaching the closed entrance of the throne room. “The doors are protected by an impenetrable enchantment created by Princess Celestia with me as a co-creator. Not even a dragon could kno-”

She was cut off as Dante planted a foot in one of the doors, blasting it off its hinges, dozens of screams of shock coming from behind.

“Did you enchant the hinges?” Dante called out behind him.

“Yes!” Twilight called back, as Dante shrugged, stepping onto the collapsed door.

As he entered the room, he saw exactly what he expected…

A couple of hundred guards, a door sized empty patch in the crowd of guards.

And at the far end of the room, the mare he had come for.

“Your face is looking lovely today, Celestia, did you do something with your hair?” He asked, as the optics in his helmet zoomed in, giving him a very clear view of the alicorn’s mangled head, the left side bandaged, the face locked in a grimace, and anger very apparent in her right eye. “I’d say eighteen rounds of nine millimeter applied directly to the face makes you prettier and easier to look at.”

Celestia breathed, closing the one eye that wasn’t bandaged. She opened it, meeting his eyes in a stare.

“General Jaeger, I offered you a chance. And you turned it away, with violence.” Her eye locked onto the corpse in his hands, though it was covered, it was obvious what it was. “And you killed my ponies. This ends. Here.”

Dante nodded. “So this is the way we’re going? I’m going to have to kill everyone in here to get to you?”

No one responded as the mass of guards charged the tall biped. The first was met by a foot kicking him away from the target, a pegasus was caught mid air around the throat as Dante launched himself away from the ground, landing horizontally on a wall, and sticking there.

Lakia’s corpse had been readjusted in his free hand to account for the change in the direction of gravity, and the biped violently threw the pegasus against the wall.

“Stop.” Dante stated, holding a hand out. “Not yet. Give me a second. Gryphons.” The guards stopped and stared, unsure of what the enigmatic biped was doing.

Dante walked down the wall, defying gravity as he stayed upright, and walked onto the remaining door he hadn’t kicked down.

He gestured to the gryphons. “Two of you, over here.” Standing at about mid-chest for a gryphon using its hind legs to stand.

“Stand up.” He said, the two responding gryphons doing as commanded. “Hands out.”

He gently transferred the covered corpse to the two.

“Take her to the back. Make sure she’s safe.” The two gryphons nodded, as the waddled away from the door and back into the hallway with the pony corpse.

Dante walked back to the spot he had landed on initially. He grasped his right hand in his left and pushed down on his fingers, cracking them, then repeating it with the other hand. He pulled his neck side from side, cracking that as well.

“Okay, we’re good now.”

Without warning, Dante launched himself from the wall, his fist landing directly on the head of stallion, helmet or no, the guard’s skull cracked as Dante rolled.

Seamlessly, the marine transitioned to his sidearm. With impossible accuracy, he landed seventeen shots into the eyes of stallions in the crowd.

He struck a guard near him who had recovered the quickest with an arm, tossing him into the crowd as Dante dropped the mag on the Glock, the mag hitting the ground, as he slammed a fresh one in and sent the slide home.

He flipped himself over a thrust spear, putting a shot in the attacking guard’s head as he was inverted in the air.

Landing, he dropped five more stallions, kicking a sixth away from him and into a wall.

He grabbed a spear thrust at him, pulling it closer, tripping the owner. A shot was fired at point blank range on the guard’s, the nine millimeter severing the spine of the guard and killing him instantly.

Ten more shots rang out as ten more guards fell. Dante repeating the reloading process as he launched a kick on a nearby guard’s head, severing it from the body.

Seventeen more stallions fell.

He repeated the process, though in his haste to cut through the guards and get to the mare he actually wanted dead, he had lost focus on that very mare.

The very mare charging a spell on her horn. She had thought it quite ingenious. A simple spell of tangible energy traveling in a straight and at a defined width.

It would almost be like hitting a clothes line at high speed.

She let go, a grin growing.

The room grew silent as Dante’s arms fell to his side, his helmeted head falling to the ground.

His body remained upright, as the stump that used to be his neck spurted blood.

An unknown female voice cut through the air. “You know… that was pretty impressive.”

Celestia’s grin grew smaller, as Dante’s body refused to collapse, and not knowing where the female voice came from.

“Using a blade formed from magic to decapitate me was a good idea, and it obviously had a lot of power in it. Slicing through my armor like it was nothing.”

Celestia’s eyes widened as Dante’s corpse shifted its footing, tossing a stallion it had gripped around the throat violently into the wall, splattering the guard.

“But the first mistake you made was pissing me off.”

Twilight’s face was one of disgust. “H-how?”

Dante’s corpse raised it arms in a shrug. “How? When I was recruited into the PLMC, I underwent various extensive augmentations to make me even deadlier then I was to begin with. One of them was nanites, being controlled by Venus. The other was multiple… electronic back-up brains. The brain in my head is the primary brain. But should it be… suddenly disconnected, Venus immediately reroutes control of my body to one of the sub-brains, which is capable of running the body at the same capability of my primary brain. That being said.” Dante bent down and retrieved his fallen head.

“This fight is over, Celestia.” The female voice spoke, as Dante’s body turned to face her. He held his head above his body and placed it on the stump of his neck. “No more fighting with these,” Dante’s voice returned as tendrils of flesh and muscle reclaimed his head. “guards. This is our fight.”

The guard standing in front of Dante parted as he stepped forward, picking up the pistol he had dropped. He holstered it and began walking towards the throne with a shocked Celestia sitting on it., the crowd of guardstallions parting, none of them willing to confront the man who just survived having his head removed.

“It’s simple, Celestia.” He spoke, reaching up and placing his hands on his helmet, he removed it, the seal breaking on the armor.

“Ten thousand years I’ve lived. And only one person has ever survived me.” He allowed his helmet to fall to the floor. “In ten thousand years, the only man who has ever survived my wrath, making an enemy of me.”

He reached the foot of the throne, looking up to Celestia, his eyes locking with her.

He placed a foot on the first step.

“Celestia, it’s simple. You’re going to die. Do you know why?

She didn’t respond, frozen, seemingly unable to move.

He stepped up to the throne proper, the sitting Celestia only reaching to his chest with her horn.

He knelt down, to eye level with the alicorn.

He grabbed her, dragging her into a tight hug.

“The man who survived me?” He whispered into her ear. “He killed my mother. He survived only because if I were to kill him, I would have been less then he was. He had daughters, Celestia. Human daughters, a Human wife… before she passed. He killed my mother working for a woman who wanted the extinction of Humanity. I hunted him… for ten thousand years, I hunted him down. Every waking moment my mission in life was to destroy him. But I couldn’t. If I had killed him, I would have deprived his daughters of the very thing he deprived me of. A loving parent. But you? You have none of his qualties.”

Before Dante could react, he was throne back and across through a wall, being thrown clear into the sky. His body soared and then began arcing down, into the streets of Canterlot. He slammed into the wall of a building, taking out several support beams as he rolled to a stop, ground bulging up around him.

He slowly pushed himself up. “Ah, fuck. Should have stuck a knife in her throat instead of doing a monologue.” Dante coughed out dirt and colored tile from his mouth.

“That would have been preferable, yes.” Venus answered back, causing Dante to roll his eyes. “Shut up, Venus.”

As Dante finally found his footing, he noticed a small group of ponies staring at him. He gave them a lazy salute. “Evenin’… how’re y’all doin’?”

The group simultaneously panicked, screaming.

“Human!” Was the general sentiment all of them shared. The rushed through the single door in the shop, a candy shop, it appeared to be to Dante.

Well, they tried to rush through the door. They all ended up getting stuck.

The biped rolled his eye, then glanced around. Another direct hit would take the building down, and on top of the trapped ponies.., and judging by their squirming, they weren’t going to be getting out soon.

Jaeger shook his head. “Motherfucker.”

And another hit was likely, considering he now had one of the most powerful ponies in the world fighting him.

Unable to leave the ponies to die a horrible death of having a building dropped on them, something he had certainly experienced before, he calmly walked up to the small door.

There five ponies were stuck, so Dante grabbed the stallion at the top of the pile, and tucked the panicking stallion into his left side.

With room at the top to maneuver now, Dante gave a sharp shove to the rumps of the two ponies now forming the top of the pile, the two tumbling out of the door way and to freedom. He grabbed the left bottom pony by the scruff of the neck and dislodged him from the door frame, allowing the last pony to get out.

Dante stepped past the door, gently setting the two in his arms down, the two ponies promptly scrambling to their hooves and running away.

“You’re welcome!” Dante shouted after them. “… Dicks.” The biped looked to his right and then left, scanning for any threats, instead, he was met by the bewildered looks of various citizens of Canterlot.

“What?” He shrugged, raising his arms. “Never seen a Human before? Jesus Christ, take a fucking picture, it’ll last longer.”

Dante ducked, as a fireball launched over his head.

“Fuck! Celestia, are you insane?” Dante shouted as his eyes locked on the flying mare in the sky. “We’re in the middle of goddamn Canterlot! That’s like having a gun battle in the middle of Times Fucking Square!”

Dante rolled once more, drawing his sidearm as he squeezed off five rounds in the general direction of the tyrant queen, as she once more launched another fireball, landing at Dante’s side.

“Fucker!” He shouted as he flipped a table, sending five more rounds at the Queen, the mare in question sending up a shield of energy, blocking the rounds. Ponies all around him scrambling for cover.

Another fire ball was launched, hitting the building behind him, sending the front of it up in flames.

Dante recoiled from the sudden heat, not expecting it, though his armor kept most of heat back, his exposed face easily felt the convection.

Apparently Celestia can launch extremely flammable fireballs that are also extremely hot.

Who would have guessed?

Dante moved away from the flames, his scanners reading no ponies in the building. He avoided another fireball as he dove into an alley, rolling to a stop, kneeling near the corner of the wall.

“Hey, Venus!” He called.

“Yes?”

“You getting any flashbacks to our time in Vietnam?”

“You mean besides the city fighting and the random fire? Not at all.”

“Yeah.” Dante grunted. “I figured.” He peeked around the corner, a fireball flying inches from his face.

Dante shot from the corner, sending off five more shots to the hovering Queen.

“Celestia, stop this!” Dante shouted as he slid the edge of a corner of a building. “You’re going to kill someone!”

Another fireball impacted another building near him, launching it into flames.

“Fucking christ! Venus, we’ve got to stop this, she is going to kill people.”

“Dante,” Venus began. “She’s flying at a hundred-seventy meters in the air.”

“Jumping distance? Or thrusters?

“Should be able to reach her with a jump.”

“As good a plan as any other.” Dante launched himself from the corner, his feet slamming in rapid succession on the ground, his bulky frame leaving a sizable dent in the cobblestone.

As he neared his jump point, Celestia, a look of craze etched onto her face and blazing in her one eye, launched another fireball.

It shot high, but the sensor’s in the back of the suit designed to prevent from the back ambushes, alerted Jaeger to something he didn’t want.

His blood ran cold as he turned his head behind, his eyes landing on a frozen unicorn foal in the middle of the street.

Venus had overlaid the trajectory for the fireball launched by the raging Celestia… the impact landing directly on the child.

Dante skidded to a stop, twisting on his heels. His focus was no longer on the raging alicorn, her aim made inaccurate by her missing eye, loss of depth perception.

Another fireball landed next to him, kicking up debris and stone as the fireball heading for the foal inched ever closer.

A fireball landed in front of Jaeger, obscuring his vision and kicking debris into his eyes., he stumbled recovering quickly.

He blinked the blurriness away as he continued to run, his eyes focusing an armored soldier armed with an Imperial standard issue Gauss rifle.

Dante slammed into the soldier as he was attempting to raise his rifle, Jaeger using his bigger frame to redirect the rifle away from him, as he reciprocated the attempt to kill him with a rifle by burying his own rifle into the soldier’s head, firing one round, obliterating the cranium and collapsing the man.

Dante allowed the dead soldier to fall from his hands. A rifle round impacted the building next to him as he slipped into the alley to his right, a volley of rifle fire landing where he had been standing previously.

“Leknen!” Dante called, the comms built into his helmet connecting him to his comrade.

“Aye!” The name in the right corner of his HUD identifying the voice as Leknen, this was a direct line to him

“Have you received any word from India team?” More rifle rounds slammed into the building, some of them impacting the ground in front of him, the rifle team was trying to get a shot on him.

“That’s a negative, LG. Duren’s line has been dead as fuck. Last contact I have from them is when you decided to push forward. How’s the resistance?”

Dante peeked around the corner with his rifle, bracing his right arm against the wall. He fired off five shots, hitting three NPR soldiers attempting to move to flank him from a street corner.

“Light. How’s it going down there?”

“Oh… you know. We’re standing at fifty Legionnaires now and the NPR keeps throwing these GODFORSAKEN clones at us… but otherwise quite peachy. Like a nice little stroll at the beach, except we’re getting shot at.”

“I’m pushing further into the Citadel, Leknen. I got a faint echo from India’s last position. I’m going to try and RV with’em.”

“If you can’t?”

Dante took a deep breath, the possibility of Duren having fallen in his attempt to reach the objective having crossed his mind before.

“I’ll take the generators down myself.”

“That a promise, LT?”

“Promise.”

There was a pause in the lines, before Leknen responded.

“Careful out there, Tommy. We can’t afford to fail here, the Imperium’s depending on us.”

“Aye, you too.”

“You still owe me a round of drinks.” Leknen responded, before he cut the line.

Dante smiled. “Dick.”

Dante rounded the corner, sending more rounds downrange as more NPR soldiers attempting to converge on his position fell.

The squad attempting to kill him opened fire, as the rounds impacted near him.

A shield formed from his left forearm, as Gauss rounds slammed into it, the shield sparkling in response to the sudden shock.

Jaeger dropped more rounds downrange, as the rest of the squad quickly fell.

He paused, taking in the carnage caused by him. Chests were burst apart and heads destroyed, some of the clones who had attempted to assault him still groaned as they sucked in their final breaths.

Their armor wasn’t made to keep them alive, it was made exactly like they were. Produced en masse and with only care for the bare minimum.

“Poor bastards.” Dante muttered as he allowed his rifle to rest with the barrel pointing at the ground.

He truly harbored no ill-will to the clone. This was their entire life, this was all they ever knew. Their parents were the natural born NPR members who trained the first batch, and then that training was passed onto the second batch by the first batch, and the second batch passed it onto the third batch and so on. They didn’t have parents, the womb they grew in was a glass tube. And their childhood was spent as a twenty-five year old with only pertinent memories that allowed them to start raining immediately.

Their only purpose in life was to fight and die. And their armor reflected so.

But Dante had a more pressing matter to attend to then to feel bad for clone troopers.

He rounded the corner, after scanning the road in front of him to make sure there were no other NPR troops down the road. The road was entirely clear and dead.

As he rounded the corner, he had to pause. Though his helmet would block out deafening sounds, it amplified other sounds that didn’t break the decibel limit.

A whistling…

Dante’s eyes widened as he realized what it was.

“Fuck!” He took off running as a mortar landed behind him and to the side.

“Venus, incoming! Find out where the fuck it’s coming from!”

More whistling was heard as another mortar impacting the ground, this time closer.

The road itself was a mile long with no turn offs. Only small dead-end allies.

At the one hundred meter mark, Dante’s optics in his helmets picked up something he didn’t want to see.

Two-hundred-forty-seven meters in front of him, a little girl stumbled out of a small alley, confused a dazed. Her small frame a features made it certain. She couldn’t have been more six years old, born right before the war began. Her once yellow dress torn and destroyed from years of war, her parents undoubtedly killed in the fighting.

Dante screamed at her, the words he said lost to his memory even as he said them, but they fell on deaf ears, as he glanced to the sky. Venus picked a mortar out of the gray sky, trajectory reading… putting the girl directly in the kill zone of the mortar.

His heart pounded, as his blood ran cold, his eyes focused.

He could see the mortar inching its way to the little girl who was frozen in confusion.

He hit the hundred meter mark, the mortar itself a hundred meters in the air.

Dante pushed himself harder, in just a few seconds, he had reached with ten meters of the little girl… but so had the mortar.

He leapt, diving through the air in an attempt to reach the girl.

His world exploded.

Dante rolled with the foal safely in his hands, as the fireball exploded directly behind him, right where the foal had been not even a second before.

Tucked into Dante’s chest, the child was protected by most of the heat and debris by the armor. Dante felt the searing heat on the back of his head.

He heard the child cry in fear. Both from the shock of being ripped up from the ground and from the heat that wasn’t blocked by the large frame of the biped who had saved his life.

Dante paused, hyperventilating, his arms shaking.

That hadn’t happened in a long time.

Another explosion to his left reminded him just of the danger the foal was in, as he quickly ducked the two into an alley.

He set the foal behind a metal dumpster that made up the various detritus of the alley. The child still crying.

Dante knelt down, holding a single finger up.

“Listen to me.” He spoke, softly and low. “Buddy, listen to me.” Though the foal’s crying didn’t stop, his screaming did, and instead he was left sobbing.

“Listen, I need you to stay here. Don’t come out until the explosions stop, but not until ten minutes have passed. Okay, do you know how long a minute is?”

The foal wiped his eyes with his foreleg, as another explosion sounded on the main street. He nodded.

Dante nodded as well. “Okay, listen. This is what I want you to do. Everytime you hear an explosion, I want you to begin counting. One, two, three, four. And if you hear another explosion, I want you to start over. One, two, three, four, explosion, one, two, three, four. Do you understand?”

The sobbing foal nodded once more.

Dante continued. “Okay, and then when you reach six-hundred, you can come out. Can you count to six-hundred?”

The foal once more nodded.

Dante nodded back, glancing to the entry way. “Okay. Now I’m going to leave you here. Remember, don’t leave until you can count to six-hundred without starting over. I’m going to make sure no one gets hurt.”

With waiting for an answer, Dante stood up and exited they alley.

A fireball flew inches from his face.

Under normal circumstances, he would have cringed from the sudden heat.

But this was no normal circumstance.

She nearly killed a child.

That would prove to be the final mistake Celestia would ever make.

Dante approached the hovering mare, all launched fireballs soundly ignored, and any that would have hit him were blocked by a shining shield emanating from his forearm.

Dante slowly approached the hovering mare.

“Celestia. I can’t allow you to live. You’re destroying Canterlot. Look at this!”

Dante gestured to the street around him, certainly resembling something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, no ponies present on the street due to all of them having the good sense to run away and find cover. Many buildings were roaring in flames, the fires threatening to the spread to the rest of Canterlot.

“You’ve nearly killed multiple people and you nearly killed a kid!”

“Acceptable casualties to ensure you’re no longer a threat!”

Dante paused. “… Oh, jesus fucking christ.” Dante buried his face in his hands. Then quickly shot up.

“Listen to yourself, Celestia! ‘Acceptable casualties’? I suppose next you’re going to say their lives are a sacrifice you’re willing to make!”

Rage was growing in Jaeger’s chest as he took more steps to the mare. “And listen to yourself! A thousand years ago, when you banished Luna to the moon to ensure Nightmare Moon wouldn’t destroy Equestria? What happened to that mare? Yeah, both you and Luna sacrificed something, but you refused to the throw the lives of your citizens away, at least in my universe and I’m certain it’s the same here! So what happened to that mare. The mare who loves her subjects? The mare who hesitated in sending her sister to the moon? You fought her in the old castle and you tried to break through Nightmare Moon to her!”

Celestia recoiled at the memory. “How do you kn-”

“How do I know that? Memory sharing is a two-lane street, Celestia. Luna invaded my memories and saw some of them, as a result I also saw some of her memories. Specifically, I saw her time as Nightmare Moon. I saw the battle between you two. I saw how valiantly you attempted to bring her back. So where is that Celestia now? This isn’t the real Celestia.”

A ball of energy grew on the tip of Celestia’s horn. “Be quiet! Your sins will be your end.”

“Sins!” Dante shouted, raising his arms in anger. “Sins! Sins? You want to talk about sins? Ten billion Humans turned into zombies! They see everything that’s happening, but their personality is dead! Your newfoals are nothing more then living corpses. Not even a fraction of the Human they were before. And your sister! Why is she turned stone?”

Celestia screeched at the memory.

Dante continued. “Oh! What? Were you trying to block out the memory that you betrayed your sister!” Dante pointed in the general direction of the Canterlot Gardens. “That she’s nothing more then a fucking statue in your garden right now? She’s still conscious, still breathing, still living. She experiences everything around her, hears everything. She knows! She wants to scream, but you took away her mouth! So now she’s nothing more then a sapient rock with no free-will of her own! You want to talk about sins? Remove the log from your eye before you try to remove the speck of dirt from mine!”

The ball of energy balancing on the end Celestia’s horn grew even larger, as her wings flapped in anger and her body shook. “Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup!”

“And to top it off, is this what you’re teaching Twilight? The mare you consider an adopted daughter, the mare who views you as a mother? You taught her that genocide is okay? That betraying your friends for disagreeing with you is okay? She looks up to you more then she does her own mother!”

Celestia’s eye widened, as she snapped.

The massive ball of energy was released, shooting towards Dante. With enough energy to level the mountain they were on. This should have been the end… for every living creature with in a few miles.

Dante launched himself from the ground, his arm cocked back in a punch. He impacted the sphere of magical energy.

The blast dispersed, clouds for miles were wiped from existence, the blast was dispersed enough the only casualties were a few small birds caught in its blast.

But the impact was not enough to stop Dante, as he continued forward to Celestia.

The hit landed, as his right arm punched through her left lung, and destroyed her heart as it went through the other side.

Her wings lurched as she lost a few feet in altitude due to the added weight. Dante braced himself against the hovering mare by holding onto her left wither and pushing against her lower abdomen with his boots.

She looked down to his arm, as she began coughing, blood spewing with every cough.

Her wings still beating. She gasped. “I’m sorry… tell Luna… I’m sorry.” She choked out, her purple eye rolling back onto her head as her wings finally stopped beating.

Her corpse began to fall as Dante quickly removed his arm, and kicked himself away from her, landing on the ground on his feet with a thud, as Celestia too landed, though far less gracefully. Just a few feet from him.

Looking around the destruction, Dante sighed.

“Fuck.” He walked over to Celestia’s corpse. The mare’s corpse lay, wings splayed out at impossible angles and two legs also at angles indicating they were broken.

Dante gently slipped his hands under the mare and lifted her up, looking to the castle.

The thrusters on the back of his suit activated, lifting him into the air, as he began making his way to the castle.

It wasn’t long before he came to the spot in the roof where Celestia had shot him out of the castle.

Thrusters concealed in the boots of the suit allowed him to come to a gentle landing, before the opening in the roof.

As he peered down into the hole to ensure there was a clear landing, he saw a pony he hadn’t yet seen in this world.

There stood Princess Luna, pieces of stone still stuck in her mane.

Dante stepped over the threshold, gravity taking hold before his thrusters canceled it out, Dante coming to a gentle landing with the broken body of Celestia.

Though he didn’t hear it over the sound of his thrusters, he could see the shocked look on everyone’s faces as his feet hit the ground. He was certain they gasped as the shock of the bloodied mare, the wound on her chest and the exit wound on her back having stained her white coat even redder finally met their eyes.

He gently laid the mare down, before kneeling next to her head. Gently lifting the head up, he used his hand to close the eyelid of the remaining eye he hadn’t destroyed, concealing the white of the eye.

Moving to the horn, he slid his right hand to sit at the base of it, his palm enveloping the top of Celestia’s skull, the horn resting in the web between his thumb and trigger finger.

Gripping it in the middle, he gave a mighty pull, the sound of tearing muscle and cracking skull resounding through out the throne room.

“Stop!” Luna cried, though far too late, as Dante removed the horn from the corpse.

Dante stood, the grisly ivory held in his hands. Luna moved to intercept him, but he shoved her out of the way.

Wings flaring, Luna challenged. “Who do you think you are?”

Dante paused, turning around he walked up to Luna. “I am the worst fucking nightmare of anyone who crosses me. I am also the one who killed Celestia and I am the one who’s going home. Which I need her horn to do so.” He turned back around to head off.

“Why did you kill her?” Luna questioned, her voice softening.

Dante stopped, mid-turn. “... She couldn’t be helped Luna.”

“We could have helped he-”

Dante spoke over the alicorn. “If we did help her, if we could have helped her, she would have been racked with guilt at the realization of wha-”

“That does not excu-”

“She may have been fine for a few months, but she would have eventually taken her own life. You can’t come ba-”

“More vile villains have been refor-”

“Entire species and damning them to live their lives as living corpses!” The room grew silent as the last line escaped. Dante’s already large frame seemingly having grown, even the Princess of the Moon having grown silent. “I don’t doubt there was still good left in her Luna, but to leave her alive, even if she were no longer a genocidal maniac would have been unkind, as she would have still been mentally unstable and would have had to live with the fact that she was solely responsible for the deaths of ten billion sapient beings!” Dante’s voice lowered and softened, though his presence in the room seemed to grow even larger.

“... You can’t come back once you’ve tasted the blood of another person, Luna. There’s no coming back. And there’s no reconciling your actions when you’re solely responsible for the mass slaughter of innocent people except through your own death.” Dante gestured to the silent corpse with the horn in his hand. “That was her penance, Luna. Her death. It’s unfortunate… but I believe if she had been capable of making sound decisions, she would have requested it.”

The silence in the room still held, allowing Dante to continue. “Sometimes the silence of death is more comforting then the screams and anguish of your victims.”

Dante finally turned, walking the doors he had come in through, not a single pony making a move to stop him. He collected his abandoned helmet and mags, replacing them to their proper spots.

As he was about to exit the door, he stopped, pausing and turning around to Luna.

“Before she died,” Dante began, making a light gesture to Celestia and then Luna. “She asked that I tell you something… ‘I’m sorry.’”

With Celestia’s final words having been delivered to her sister, Dante paid no attention to the tears threatening to brim over the edge of her eyes.

He walked out into the hallway in front of the throne room.

With his affairs in the throne room sorted, he lightly gestured to Rainbow Dash. “I don’t really give a fuck what the hell’s going on between you and Twilight and the rest of the goddamn elements. I’ve got more important things to worry about and I got what I needed, Celestia’s dead, Luna’s free. You all have to rebuild from here.”

He held up the horn he had taken from Celestia, the foot long horn ending in a very pronounced point.

And still dripping with blood and nerves dangling from the end. He tucked into the webbing on his armor, not caring about the gore from his armor slathering onto the white of the horn.

He walked to the body of the woman he once knew, though in a different universe, this one was still…

Dante took note of the gryphon standing near the corpse guarding it.

One eye blue, the other green.

A small smile found its way to his face, as he gently picked up the corpse.

Shifting the weight to hold her with one hand, he pulled a golden bit out of a pouch, tossing it to the ground a fair ways away from any living creature.

He removed Celestia’s horn from his webbing, grasping it at the base, he pointed the tip at the bit, and began speaking in a tongue dead to the ages, scattered to the winds. Unknown to all living but one.

A blast of darkened energy was released from the tip of the severed horn, a swirling sphere of multiple colors suspending itself into the air.

Dante replaced the horn to where it was originally, turning back to the group.

“I needed it to focus magic.” He explained. Glancing to Rainbow Dash, he continued speaking. “Good luck to you whatever it is you all are going to do here. Don’t kill Twi, she was misguided.”

Rainbow Dash nodded as Twilight glanced between the two in confusion.

He nodded to the rest of the gryphons, then turned his attention to the one who caught his attention.

“You knew her?”

The gryphon’s beak opened so as to speak but closed. There was a pause. “… Yes, but… not personally.”

Dante nodded. “No, but you loved from afar.”

The gryphon nodded.

Dante glanced to the left before meeting the gryphon’s eyes once more. “Listen, kid, none of this was your fault. There was nothing you could have done... Don’t wish for my curse. You have something far better then what I have.”

The gryphon inhaled. “What’s that?”

“You’ll get to see her again.”

With no further words, Dante turned back to the sphere and walked into it, disappearing from this dimension and timeline.

“What is happening!” Shining Armor questioned as he and his fiancée, Cadance, rushed to the castle. Ponies were filtering around the two, running in any direction, as the two, relatively, large ponies had to avoid ramming the smaller ones.

After seeing the spectacle of the sun and the moon freaking out and hearing an explosion in the market district, the two rushed to the castle. Certainly no good could be occurring, Celestia and Luna would never do that weird dance.

“Can’t we just catch a break!”

“Stop whining, Shining, we need to make sure everything is okay!” Cadance called back.

“And where’s Jaeger? I thought you said Canterlot was safe so long as he was here.”

“I don’t know, but that changes nothing, we nee-”

Cadance was cut off as a large explosion originated from the castle, a large cloud of dust rising.

The two skidded to a stop, having difficulty coming to a stop even on the cobblestone.

They stared in shock at the castle, as ponies continued to filter around.

Cadance shook her hea. “Come o-”

Two more explosions rang out. A short pause then another one, coupled with a beam of bright energy in the sky, sounded.

“Come on!” Cadance shouted, giving Shining a light tug with her magic.

Discord had not taken kindly to being injured by a mere changeling, a soldier at that.

Which is how Fortnite found herself once more being thrown into a wall.

Discord wasn’t one to kill his prey. Killing was about as orderly as you could get, after all, it’s the fate of every living being. But this changeling had bothered him enough.

As he prepared to finish her off with a piece of debris he had plucked from the wall, a beam of magical energy struck him in his side, causing the god of chaos to yelp, dropping the large debris.

He looked down to the slime monster, the beast partially burnt as the guard stallion unicorn pulled away from it. While it was still holding strong to the guard’s bottom half, he had managed to free his upper body, struggling to pull away from it.

“I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

Discord sighed, as he contorted his body to avoid another beam of magical energy.

That is, until two more beams slammed into his back.

He roared, as he swiveled, only to met by the sight of Twilight and Rarity standing with their horns brandished high.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but we will stop you, just like last time.” Twilight stated, as she took a step forward.

Rarity flipped her hair, as she too took a step forward. “And I will not allow you to hurt lady Fortnite.”

Discord folded his arms, laughing. “You stop me? How do you plan to do that? Celly locked the Elements away so only she or Luna could get to the them and they’re kind of, uh… well, stoned right now!”

A brown aura wrapped around the dragon’s leg, tearing him to the ground. As Twilight and Rarity let off blasts of magic, both hitting their mark.

Discord slammed into the ground, destroying the marble flooring where he landed. Though the reality warper wasn’t slowed down, as he quickly floated up, showing no signs of previous damage.

“Stop!” He yelled, as Rarity and Twilight found themselves pinned to wall.

Fortnite was gasping from breath, trying to recover from the throw from when she had impaled the chimera.

Her chitin was cracked in multiple places, green blood oozing from the fissures.

Discord, floated over to the unicorn known as Bulwark, the unicorn struggling to pull away from the slime monster. Discord, upon closing the distance, dropped to the ground and walked to Bulwark.

Discord waved off the slime as he picked the unicorn by the horn, who yelped in pain from the shock of having his horn pulled, grimaced and then growled at the hybrid.

“You are really annoying. I think I’ll deal with you first and then take over Equestria… no, I have a better idea…” Discord raised a claw and slowly drifted it to Bulwark’s head. “I’ll make you kill them. It’s as chaotic as I can make death b-”

A blast of green magic caught the pre-occupied hybrid causing him to grimace in pain.

He turned to the changeling, who was struggling to get up. Her chitin cracked in multiple areas.

“I am not.” She gasped, as her left hoof collapsed under her. She struggled once more to find her footing. “I am not going to let you hurt him.”

Discord sighed. “You know what, you’re making me really mad. I’ll kill you first then deal with everyone else.”

A sphere of energy slowly collected in his eagle’s talon, as Fortnite herself began charging her own magic at the tip of her horn.

“A friend told me something recently.” She gasped, green blood dripping from the corners of her mouth. “That even when the entire universe stands against him, his duty is to continue his stand. I have a similar duty. Even when faced with a god, I will not back down. If you want to hurt Bulwark… anypony here, you’ll need to kill me first.”

“This is getting really annoying.” Discord growled as he launched the sphere of energy as the resolute, though bleeding and badly injured changeling stood her ground.

She let off her own magic blast. The sphere contacted the ground in front exploding in a brilliant blast of energy, collapsing the wall and destroying the roof behind Fortnite. The ponies in the room still breathing pinning their ears to their skulls in an attempt to lower the noise they were being exposed to.

Dust, debris and stones were kicked up as the view in the direction of the once living changeling was obscured.

“No, fuck!” Bulwark shouted as he began flailing his suspended hooves in a vain attempt to hit the god of chaos.

Discord observed the destruction he had caused. Not his usual modus, after all, destruction and death was so orderly. But that changeling was really beginning to annoy him.

Satisfied that she was no longer going to be a bother to him, Discord returned his attention to the flailing unicorn he had by the horn. “Now… where were we?”

The hybrid moved his paw to encompass Bulwark’s head, the stallion settling as he did so, his mouth flopping open as his shouts died.

Just as suddenly as Bulwark’s protestations died, the lion’s arm of Discord’s was separated from his body at the shoulder, a fountain of blood flowing from the wound.

At an impossible rate, his gryphonic arm shortly followed.

As Discord’s eyes finally managed to focus on just what had taken his two arms, a hit to his torso sounded an explosion, sending him flying out of a portion of still intact roof.

Dante stood, his armor soaked in fresh blood and caked in the blood of stallions, tyrants and gods.

The once tanned flesh on his head, the only part of his body exposed, was now caked brown and red. His black hair stained a dark brown.

Bulwark shrugged the dead limb off his head, as he scrambled to his hooves. “Sir, Fortn-”

“She’s fine.” Dante stated, gesturing with his hand over to the clearing dust. Indeed, the silhouette of a collapsed changeling, a blanket covering something relatively large next to her. Dante brought a hand up to his bloodied chin. “Well… ‘fine’ is a subjective word. She’s not dead at least.”

An explosion sounded from outside of the building, Dante glancing up to the hole in the roof. “Fuck, Twilight.”

The purple unicorn who had been called over quickly trotted to meet with the tall biped. “Yes?”

“All the elements here?”

“Except for Pinkie.”

“Shit, where the fuck did sh-, no, don’t want to know. Any way to get her here soon?”

“Could break a Pinkie Promise.” Applejack cut into the conversation.

Dante raised an eyebrow and then held up his left hand pinkie finger. “A pinkie promise?”

“Yeah, you know? ‘Cross my heart’” Applejack crossed her heart. “Hope to fly” The farm pony flapped her wings like a chicken. “Stick a cupcake in my eye.”

There was a moment of silence as Dante took in the ritual to complete the promise. “Applejack… that is the most retarded shit I have ever seen. What the fuck makes you think she’ll appear just because you did that? That’s something a five year old would do.”

“Because she’s done it before.”

“Really? Alright... well, since I’ve got nothing to lose… except my dignity...” Dante looked at a stained glass window near him and pointed. “I promise not to break this window, Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye god I feel retarded.” Dante muttered the last bit as he drove a fist through the window, shattering it, before Twilight could protest on the basis of how expensive it is… was.

Pinkie popped her head out of a nearby flower pot, her head picking up the pile of dirt that allowed the plant to live.

“Hey!”

“I hate this world.” Dante deadpanned as he grabbed the pink pony by her neck and hauled her out of the pot. “Fucking reality warpers. This pot isn’t fucking big enough!”

The Human roughly set the pink pony down… by dropping her.

Like a rubber ball, she bounced back up to her hooves. “Twilight! I went to go get help but then Dante made a Pinkie Promise and then broke it, so I ha-”

“Stop.” Dante wrapped his hand around the pony’s muzzle, silencing her… sort of.

“Coo’ ‘oo p’eas s’op, your h’n’s aw’ b’uddy.” She mumbled as well as she could through the hand.

“Pinkie, go with Twilight and the others. Get the Elements, wherever they are. I assume you all know where they are. I’ll buy you all time with Discord.” Dante let go of the pink mare, who stuck her tongue out at the blood transferred from Dante to her coat.

“We can’t.” Twilight answered, Dante cocking his head to the side. “Celestia has them locked so only she or Luna can access them.”

Dante slapped his face with a bloody gloved hand, groaning. “Jesus Christ, that’s like issuing me a gun but forcing me to keep it in the armory. Fuck’s sake.” Dante removed a long brown horn with string at the end he had tucked into the meshing on his armor, as well a small wire with a mesh pad on it, to the purple unicorn, who caught them in her magic.

“Take that. It should get you into the room. Head to that observatory thingermerjigger , you know, the one at the top of the castle and wait for me. When the time comes, hit that asshole with everything you’ve got.”

Twilight turned the horn around, though quickly gagged upon realizing what those “strings” really were. And to her horror, she began seeing splotches of white cutting through the brown. The horn had been dismembered and… it was a white horn a foot long.

Her eyes widened as she came to the realization of what it was, holding it quite a ways from her, having no desire to physically interact with it.

Dante rolled his eyes at her antics, tossing another item at Twilight. “Yes, that’s Celestia’s horn. She was a piece of shit in the other dimension, I want it back. Give that other thing to RD. she’ll know how to use it.”

Twilight’s ears flicked as she slowly backed up. “What about the signal?”

“RD will tell you when. Now, go.” Dante gave her side a light swat as she followed the order, heading out the door, the other five mares following her lead.

Dante turned to Bulwark, gesturing with his hand to the collapsed Fortnite. “Bulwark, take care of Fortnite and Lakia. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Wait, but what about the pri-” Bulwark’s question was ignored by the biped, as flames shot from his back, carrying him up and out of the roof.

“… Princesses… oh, no, that’s fine. Just leave me here to take care of the changeling I have not a single idea how to care for and the petrified princesses of Bloody Equestria, General! … Wait… Lakia?”

Another explosion sounded as Dante shot out of the roof of the severely damaged throne room, thrusters on his back lifting him into the air and thrusters concealed in the boots controlled his…

Well, honestly, he had never really bothered into looking up how this stuff worked, just that it did.

His job was to kill, and that’s what he was about to do.

The Legionnaire Mark V powered armor was a vast improvement over his old LMII armor. It could be removed by the user instead of requiring special, stationary equipment. The LMII could only have the helmet removed by the user. It also incorporated unlimited thrusters due to upgraded suit cooling technology, whereas the LMII was only able to utilize limited boosting.

Dante had missed the Mark III and IV due to the civil war that had raged on Lux.

The Mark V armor was capable of a sustained Mach 1.5 at sea level with a minimum acceleration time of ten seconds.

It just so happened Discord happened to be ten seconds away from the throne room.

In a cloud of vapor, Dante lost control of his thrusters, something that tends to happen when a nearly four hundred pound man slams into a reality warper weighing in at two-hundred-seventeen pounds.

Slamming into an empty valley a little ways outside of Canterlot, Dante’s body dug a crater due the speed he was being propelled at, burying him in dirt and earth as once more a cloud billowed.

The valley was silent, as earth attempted to settle back into its proper place due to being displaced.

Suddenly, the armored hand of Dante forced its way out of the pile of dirt it was buried in, the rest of his body being propelled clear of the earth thanks to his thrusters.

“Fuck!” He shouted, Venus scanning. That hit didn’t kill Discord. He knew it didn’t.

He dove and rolled to the right as a blast of energy contacted the ground we he had been before.

“Sonuva!”

As he shot back to his feet, he blocked a swipe from an eagle talon with left arm, Discord materializing in front of him. He caught a swinging lion’s paw with his right hand, grabbing further up near the shoulder with his left hand, the biped slid on his heel, slamming the hybrid over his shoulder and into the ground.

Dante stepped back drawing his sidearm as Discord disappeared from the ground.

“That hurt you know.” A disembodied voice called.

“Jesus Christ, Venus, where is that asshole?”

As the readouts for the HUD augmented into his eyes gave no information on any living being in the area, Discord spoke once more.

“Oh, my dear Dante. What did I ever do to you to cause you to have this reaction.”

Dante continued scanning the area, walking backwards in order to not be caught still. “Well, let’s see… you attacked me, tossed me to another dimension… Uh… you nearly killed Fort as well.”

“Not even going to mention me trying to brainwash that unicorn, I see.”

Dante scoffed. “Bulwark’s a big boy, he’ll survive a little bit of brainwashing.”

“So, essentially, we’re stuck like this. If I come out of hiding, you’ll kill me. And you’re not going to leave until you have killed me.”

Dante nodded. “Uh… yeah, you pretty much summed up the entire situation.”

“Well… fudge… okay. Now, I’m going to appear. Do not try to kill me, I want to talk.”

Dante laughed. “Oh, right, fucking now you want to talk, maybe you should have fucking thought about that before, you know, all that shit you did a little while ago.”

“Just let me talk.”

“… Fuck, fine. But if you appear behind me, all bets are off.”

Before Dante’s voice disappeared from the air, Discord appeared behind him… a blast of energy directed upwards launching Dante into the air.

“Ay! You fucking dick!” He screamed as the thrusters in his suit straightened him out in the flight.

However, before he could react, another hit sent him launching to the ground, impacting in the streets of Canterlot, ponies still panicking around him as he slid down the cobblestone road, throwing up bricks and rubble as he rolled the last few feet before coming to a stop.

He shot up, only to drag a mare nearby him to the ground by her neck as another beam of energy shot right above his head and the mare’s head, destroying the building behind, miraculously none of the ponies around being injured… well, he had probably traumatized the mare by violently dragging her down, but still. Better then being dead.

An explosion sounded behind from the building that had just been leveled.

“Detecting elevated natural gas levels in the air, Dante. I assume Discord disconnected some pipes in that last hit.” Venus informed him, as he looked back to see a now growing fire.

“Fuck! We need to get out of the city or end this. People are going to die… Fuck I’m getting some serious Déjà vu here.”

Dante let go of the mare, standing up. He noticed a frozen stallion out of the corner of his eye staring at him.

The biped nodded to the pony, then launched himself from the ground with a mighty jump. He landed on a roof, launching from it once more and towards the maniacally laughing Discord, collapsing the roof. Hopefully any ponies in it had already evacuated, the tile clinking as it tumbled to the ground.

His fist drawn back, he landed a hit on Discord, sending the hybrid into a row of buildings down in the streets of Canterlot.

He cringed, he had not intended to cause as much damage as he had already done.

Discord launched himself from the row of buildings he had destroyed with the help of Jaeger, the biped bracing for the hit.

The hit came, and proved too much for his thrusters to compensate for, hitting the side of the Celeste and denting the metal plating.

Dante groaned. “Fuck, ow. Fuck. This is getting painful. Venus, do you have eyes on the Elements in the tower yet?”

“Negative. Sensors indicate they have retrieved the Elements and are on their way. ETA: three minutes.”

Dante groaned as he pulled himself from the metal.

“We’re going to have to end this soon, I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I used up a lot of energy jumping dimensions and preventing Celestia from nuking Canterlot. How’s everything looking?”

“Nanites are prioritizing unnecessary organs. Appendix, bladder, intestines, both kidneys, gallbladder, stomach, liver and spleen.”

“Oh, jesus, I’m running low on organs to give up, aren’t I?”

“Your lungs are next. I would advise ending this fight soon, otherwise you are going to be forced to regenerate.”

Dante gripped onto the smooth side of the Celeste. “Discord’s being oddly nice letting us have this conversati- and... I jinxed myself. Here he is.”

Dante waved to the floating hybrid. “Ahoy there mate, I just got hit by a car and the bastard ran off. By any chance did you catch that jackwagon’s license plate.”

“You are really annoying, you know that right?” Discord questioned, glaring at the biped who was sticking to the side of the Celeste as though he were a spider. “And this is coming from me! The god of chaos!”

Dante merely nodded. “Yeah, my duty is to be as annoying as possible to dickheads. If you hadn’t attacked me and just tried to talk to me, we probably wouldn’t be having this problem right now. But no, you just had to toss me into an alternate dimension… though I suppose I should thank you, Discord.”

Dante brought a hand to his heart. “Seriously, this is a heartfelt thanks.”

Discord’s head turned in a circle, turning his eyes upside down, finishing with cocking his head to the side. “How so? What did I do that you’re thankful for?”

“You kickstarted this old war horse’s heart. You let me see Lakia, though she had been mutilated, and reminded me of why I still have a reason to live.”

Dante pointed to Discord. “Which is also the reason why I can’t let you win. I need these pony’s help to get back home. I’m not going to be able to get through the Sea of Clouds without their help.”

Discord paused at the name, silence reigned, then the hybrid began laughing furiously, cause Dante to take his turn of cocking his head to the side in confusion.

“The fuck do you find funny?”

Discord slapped his knee as he wiped a comically large tear from his eye. “You don’t know what’s actually in the Sea of Clouds, do you?”

“I know my ticket home is there.”

Discord grinned. “If you ever meet a gryphon, ask them to tell you about the Sword of Boreal. But I have something I need to ask you.”

Dante looked around, shrugging. “I mean, we’re supposed to be fighting, but shoot, I guess.”

“Why are you holding back?” Discord asked, gesturing with his arm. “And don’t act confused. Don’t try to tell me that the being who killed the Wendigos plaguing this world couldn’t kill me like a bug. You killed the Wendigos and then jumped dimensions and killed another Celestia. Those are not achievements just anyone can do. I doubt even Celestia could do so. I can only do so because, well, as you know, I’m a reality warper.”

Dante paused as he thought, rubbing his chin, seemingly trying to figure out something. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, pointing into the air with his trigger finger. “John Motherfuckin’ de Lancie!”

Discord took his head off his shoulders, breathing into his eyes and rubbing the fog off with his forearm, then cleaned his ears before replacing his head back onto his body.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“John de Lancie! Son of a bitch! This entire time, there’s been this niggling in the back of my head because your voice sounded so goddamn familiar! That’s who your voice reminded me of! You know, the guy who played Q on Star Trek?”

Discord’s face was blank as he attempted to process what he had just heard. After a few seconds, though, he shook his head and launched a ball of energy towards Dante.

Jaeger shot from the Celeste, his thrusters kicking up his speed, as he dodged the ball of energy.

His hands wrapped around the throat of the hybrid, as he quickly brought his leg up, kicking the beast higher into the air, past a cover of clouds.

His thrusters gave chase as Discord’s impossibly undersized wings caught him, stopping the chimera in the air. Beating the air, Discord launched himself towards Dante, snapping his talons

Neither Venus or Dante could react fast enough as a bolt of lightning seemed to materialize from nowhere, striking the thruster on the left side of Dante’s back. He recoiled from the sudden heat on his face, as the nanitic augmentations in his ears compensated for the clap of thunder next to him.

Quickly dropping altitude, Dante avoided ramming the chaos god as his remaining thrusters struggled to compensate for the sudden loss in power.

“Fuck, he can control lightning?” Dante questioned as he slowed down to hover to physically examine the suit, glancing over his left shoulder to see smoke wafting off the damaged thruster.

“Left thruster down, systems reporting approximately five minutes for repair.” Venus informed him.

“Don’t have five minutes. We’ll have to make do. Venus, route more power to the left boot to compensate for the shoulder, level it out with my right shoulder.”

“Already on it.”

“And keep an eye out for any signs of more lightning. I can not afford to lose another thruster.”

Without an affirmation from Venus, Dante shot off once more, the optics in his eyes locking onto his target.

“Venus, Elements?”

“Sensors are showing them in the observatory, I would assume they’re go.”

The remaining thrusters on Dante’s suit kicked high into gear, as he moved to put his final plan into motion.

Coming in a straight line at Discord, his suits sensors picked up the conditions for another lightning strike, as Dante saw the hybrid god snap his talons.

Jaeger dove sharply, disappearing below the clouds.

As Discord looked around, trying to figure out where the alien was going to be coming from.

But he didn’t need to look for long, as Dante slammed in from below him, wrapping his left around the serpent like torso of Discord, Dante dug the barrel of the Glock into Discord’s chin, firing off round after round, the two climbing in altitude thanks to Dante’s thrusters.

Discord, to his credit, was only slightly phased by the nine millimeter rounds passing through his lower skull and into his head. He retained enough faculties to slam his talon into the left side of Dante’s head, a crack of thunder sounded as lightning struck Jaeger in the head, the nanites in his body struggling to compensate for the massive and unexpected electrical shock coursing through his brain, heart and whatever organs still remained.

Dante grunted in pain, and cringed. The left side of his face was dead, third degree burns had killed the nerves living there.

But he could feel heat spreading to the right of his head.

Dropping the Glock, Jaeger reached with his right hand and violently wrenched Discord’s talon from his head, raking flesh and meat from his skull, exposing bone in multiple places.

The sidearm fell away and down towards the ground as the two hybrids battled.

The two continued to climb, Jaeger grabbing Discord’s lower jaw and pulling upon it. Bone cracked and muscle snapped, as Jaeger’s head was once more soaked in blood.

The pair reached three miles in the air, the thruster’s in Dante’s boots, changed angle, arcing the two down to the ground, accelerated by the remaining thrusters on his armor.

Discord’s lion paw gripped the last shoulder thruster, ripping it to the left. Dante’s HUD began flashing warnings of the now damaged beyond operation thruster.

Dante’s HUD read his velocity as ninety-five meters a second, and fast approaching the one and a half mile mark to kick his plan into the final turn. They cleared the cloud cover before the view of the Celeste appeared.

A talon gripped Dante’s head, attempting to peel him from the draconequus. Allowing him to see the reformed jaw of Discord, back in place as though he hadn’t just torn it off.

“What is your plan?” Discord shouted over the sound of the wind hitting them. “Slam me into the ground? That’s not going to work.”

“Next time!” Dante shouted. “Pay attention to where you are.”

Dante slammed his right hand into the chest of the chaos beast, an object piercing Discord’s hide. At the same time, Dante’s left hand gripped the deer antler on Discord’s head, ripping it off by kicking himself off and away from the villain and back towards Canterlot.

“Rainbow, now!” Was the last words Discord heard from Dante, as his eyes glanced down to see a spike protruding from his chest, with a blinking red light on it. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the royal observatory, a light of rainbow growing from it, his eyes narrowing.

“Oh… no.” Was Discord’s final words as his world went dark, the rainbow making impact.

Dante, for his part, was still in the path of the rainbow beam.

A pressure ripped through his body, feeling as though it was crushing him as all air was sucked from his lungs. Not too dissimilar from having a two miles of water above him.

Venus activated the explosive Dante had left pierced in the chest of Discord, the blast wave hitting him in less then a second, but not before the nanites in his body had compensated for the massive pressure differential, in order to prevent them from being crushed.

The thrusters remaining in his boots kicked in, in an attempt to slow him down, but he was a three-hundred-seventy-five pound mass of flesh and metal traveling at three and a half miles a minute. It was possible with a single shoulder thruster, but only two boot thrusters? No.

The cobblestone streets of Canterlot were incoming and fast.

All Dante could do is brace for impact.

He impacted, digging his way into the ground.

He laid on his back, his lungs violently sucked for air. The broken high impact polymer visor of his helmet allowed the smell of the sea and the crash of waves to reach his nose and ears, as he desperately sucked in air.

He groaned loudly as he tried to sit up, electing finally after several failed attempts to sit up, to roll over onto his stomach, laying there to catch his breath.

The smell of ozone reached his nose, as he slowly pushed himself onto his knees, pushing his upper body up.

He grabbed his helmet, ripping it off his head and tossing it to the side as he calmed his breathing.

He looked around, trying to find something he fell with.

Finally, his eyes landed on a white helmet, scorched with burn marks.

He stood up, but his legs quickly gave up, bring him back to the ground. Pushing himself up with his arms, he crawled over to the helmet with great difficulty.

After crawling for a good few minutes, he reached the helmet, a neck slowly rebuilding itself from the decapitated head present in the helmet. He grabbed it, using his arms to push himself back onto his knees.

There, through the broken visor of the helmet, stared the still in shock brown eyes of Queen Olephus, the brains behind the NPR and the reason for the war. Her tan skin having been damaged in some places by the heat and impact.

Dante took a deep breath, then hocked a thick loogie of blood and mucus into her face.

“Cunt!” He screamed, as he removed his sidearm from the holster, shoving it into the helmet, he fired one round into Olephus’ head, arresting her regeneration, and killing her… permanently.

He attempted to empty the magazine of the pistol into her head, but found the trigger was dead and unresponsive. He pulled the pistol back out of the helmet to examine it, finding that it had melted during the fall through the atmosphere. The slide having fused with the receiver.

Jaeger grunted as he threw the now useless gun away.

He gripped the helmet, head and partial neck by the ridge of where the visor used to be. He planted his left foot on the ground and, with great difficulty, then stood up, planting his right foot down.

He glanced over to where he has initially landed, a crater about a foot or two deep.

He slowly walked over to it, limping, preferring his left leg.

He scooped his damaged helmet up, most of his communications equipment being built into it.

There was a village visible in the distance. A ten minute walk, at most.

And so that’s what Jaeger did. His grisly trophy and proof of Olephus’ demise in one hand and his helmet in the other, Dante walked to the village.

As he approached the outskirts of the village, a crowd of people had gathered, undoubtedly drawn by the sound of the impact of his body and the single gunshot.

They parted way for the limping Legionnaire, all of their eyes glued to the remains in his hand.

Dante stopped at a building wall, throwing Olephus’ corpse down, he slowly slid himself down, until he was seated on his rear, one knee brought up close to his chest and arm resting on it.

One of the villagers slipped in, grabbing the abandoned remains of the Queen and holding the grisly item up, as high as his arms could reach.

“The tyrant Olephus! Is dead!” He shouted, the quiet village suddenly erupting, as family members hugged each other and other cheered and jeered at the remains of Olephus.

Dante cared for none of this, he slipped his broken helmet on.

“Venus, record: ... Identifying Lieutenant-General Dante T. Jaeger, Phoenix Legion Marine Corps, second in command to General Durendal, completing this log at… nineteen-sixteen, Gregorian calendar date nineteen eleven, nineteen-eighty-four, confirming the death of General Durendal, Phoenix Legion Marine Corps, KIA, date: nineteen eleven, nineteen-eighty-four time: eighteen-thirty-seven. Cause of death: Detonation of Durendal’s Mark II’s self destruct. Confirming the death of Queen Olephus, New Phoenician Republic, KIA, date: nineteen eleven, nineteen-eighty-four, time: eighteen-fifty-seven. Cause of death: Arresting of regeneration by… bullet to the head. This is my, Lieutenant-General Dante T. Jaeger, Phoenix Legion Marine Corps, official statement. Venus, end recording.”

Dante took a deep breath, before breathing out and speaking once more.

“Leknen.” There was a pause, though the HUD in Dante’s eyes failed to show a connecting to Leknen’s communication’s suite.

“Venus, open a public channel with Legionnaire frequencies and encryption... Gryphon 4-1 Actual, this is Poet 1-5 Actual…” The channel was still dead. “Gryphon 4-1 Actual, this is Poet 1-5 Actual, sound off.”

Dante took another breath. “Baseplate 7-4 Actual, this is Poet 1-5 Actual ordering a sound-off.”

The channel remained dead.

“Baseplate 7-4, Kit 3-8, Glass 8-7, Canner 9-6, Ghost 1-2, will someone fucking pick up the goddamn radio!”

The channel was still silent.

“Fucking goddamnit! This is Lieutenant-General Dante T. Jaeger ordering a Legion wide sound off! Any Legionnaire still in commission is hereby ordered to sound-off immediately or face a fucking goddamn court martial...”

The line remained silent, before a garbled radio transmission cut through, though it was completely unintelligible, the HUD identified it as Yerter 5-7.

When the transmission stopped, Dante immediately replied.

“Yerter 5-7 Actual, your last was broken and unreadable. Repeat your last.”

The line sparked back up. “… Dante.”

It was a woman’s voice, most definitely not one his Legionnaires. And it sounded hesitant, but it also seemed familiar, something about it sparking memories in Dante, but he couldn’t place it.

“Unknown personnel, you are operating classified Legion equipment. Identify yourself immediately.”

There was a pause, before the line went live once more. “Dante, this is Rat.”

For some reason, the name seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He felt as though he should know it immediately. “Rat...”

“Rattal.”

“Rat… Rat, what are you doing with Yerter 5-7’s helmet? Where is Leknen, why is no one sounding off?”

“… Dante, my infantry didn’t reach the beachhead in time. The Legion is… it’s… Dante, as far as I’m aware… I’m sorry Dante, but you’re the only one.”

Dante’s heart seemed to stop, his hands reaching up to his helmet and gently removing it. He allowed it to fall from his hands, rolling to a stop near his foot.

“Dante, stay where you are. We have a lock on your position and I’m deploying a bird to get you… Dante… Dante...”

Rat’s final words were lost on Dante as he processed what he had just found out.

A man knelt down to Dante, putting his hand on his shoulder.

The last Legionnaire looked up to meet the eyes golden eyes of the man. “Sir, sir. Please, you need to calm down. Just remain seated.” The voice seemed distant and muffled, as Dante’s mind was suddenly muddled, the celebrating villagers slowly losing focus, along with the golden-eyed man’s voice, another voice was breaking through.

“Don’t let her get away.” Durendal’s voice cut through, followed by the memory of a very strong impact, sucking Dante’s air from his lungs even through his armor, his vision going white.

Another voice was cutting through the ringing of Jaeger’s ears, something that shouldn’t have been happening, the explosion had been in space. He should have just felt the impact.

The whiteness in his eyes slowly subsided, as he looked to the villager who had put his hand on him, the bipedal, clothed form shifting into a quadrupedal form. And as Dante’s eyes began refocusing, he started making out feathers.

A gryphon stood near him, using one talon to try and get a crowd of ponies surrounding him to back off, his other talon resting on Dante's shoulder.

“Give him space.” He shouted. “He’s having a panic attack. All of you need to back off right now.”

Dante’s vision blacked out, then came back into focus, two large winged ponies landing, as the crowd of ponies reverently gave them space while bowing.

There was a murmur of words, very few he could make out.

“…. panic attack… common in gry… troops… serving in the Nor… flashback…”

Dante’s mind finally gave out, not wanting to bother with trying to sort out what was the past and the present.

Had Dante been conscious, he would have beat his mind for being so inconvenient.

Author's Notes:

Oh, laddy. Look at this absolute unit!

There's a deleted scene. Explanation here!

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