This was bad. Very bad. I don’t even know the cause of this, and I can’t just put out fires at will... I look for some indication of where the fire started.

A crackling, creaking noise, like a thick piece of wood being bent, caught my attention, and I turned in time to see and dodge a falling beam from a house.

A pony, one I didn’t recognize instantly, was laying just inside the now-open house, apparently unconscious. A small pool of blood lay under their head, a stone or metal knickknack nearby, likely having fallen off of the shelf that was pinning them to the ground.

“Shit!” I switch to my Heat Form, but not actually producing any flames. I take advantage of my heat resistance to get inside and grab the pony. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a safe place to put them... other than the street, which was only marginally safer.

As I picked up the pony, they opened their eyes partially, and croaked out a “thanks”, before passing out again. I felt a little better inside, and took them outside. At least the street was better than nothing. I want to stop the bleeding. I attempt to tear off part of my shirt to make a crude bandage, but apparently, Rarity definitely knew who she was making this shirt for. Damnit.

I could use my heat power to try to cauterize the wound, but I’m afraid of burning them. I never got a chance to practice this... Oh well, I have to do something. I project a small but very hot flame from my fingertip and put it close to the pony’s wound, and pray I’m doing it right.

A quick swipe of my finger, and the flesh is now furless, rather blackened, but no longer bleeding. My job done, I rush off further into the town, looking for what could have caused this. An idea flashed in my mind.

I could create a backfire, and force the two to burn each other out... but then there’d be nothing left of Ponyville, and potentially it’s inhabitants.

A roar, monstrous and bellowing, reverberated through the town, and I could feel it more than I could hear it. Looking for the source, I watched as a... a something bursts through a brick-and-stone wall of a house, sending the building materials scattering. The creature turns towards me, and I see a perfectly human face and torso atop a body of nightmares. The person’s head is bald, and their smile is manic, and the demonic-looking body is darkened and covered in red, furiously hot cracks, dribbles of magma or blood falling to the ground from them.

A pony stumbles out of the house that had been broken open, and the monster looks at it. For a moment, I hope that it was all a misunderstanding, and it’s a human who got powers too and is just confused... and then it grabs the pony and bites off their forelegs.

A huge maw opened up in the thing’s chest, lined with red-hot teeth, and it just tore the pony’s limbs off, apparently swallowing them or something. The pony was thrown aside like a broken toy, screaming in agony and terror.

I decide I’ve had enough, and approach him, yelling. My body is now surrounded by scorching flames. “You have two seconds to tell me what you’re doing here!!”

In a voice a genteel as a polished dagger, the human face speaks. “I am seeking my ascension. Why? Do you think you can stop me?” In spite of the odd civility of the tone, the voice is a dozen decibels above shouting.

“What I think doesn’t matter, you bastard. I will stop you!” I raise my fists, still swirling with fire. I wait for his move. I’m not going to rush in and get my ass kicked.

“Ha! I shall find the fount of Kindness and despoil it. And no mere candle flame will stand in my way.” The gargantuan creature reared up, its gorilla-like posture explained by its proportions. The huge, wide chest supported by a pair of massive arms, each ending in hands half as wide as I am tall. A pair of rather normal human legs, coated in blackened, stone-like flesh dangled pathetically behind him. A whip-like tail, barbed and studded with spikes coiled angrily around him.

The chest-mouth opened again, and another fearsome roar sounded, the deep bass rumble shaking the loose stones and bricks on the street.

With that, the creature charged, fists swinging and mouths open in terrible grins. One vertical, one horizontal.

“Candle flame? Candle flame!? Buddy, you’ve asked for it.” I charge forward, going intangible. I hope I can surprise him with it and get a few quick hits in.

He slams through me, and I feel something like a wave of hot air try to push against my intangible form. The roar and shout of surprise tells me that he at least didn’t expect it, but I don’t hear or see him wheeling around to attack again. Instead, the thudding of his passage reveals he’s continuing onwards.

I don’t waste my time. I swap to my Dynamo form, and rush at him as fast as I can, and slam an electrified fist as hard as I can right to his human head. I smash through the crest of blackened bone protecting his back, the material brittle and easily destroyed, but my fist’s landing hits bone and flesh with no result. The monster doesn’t even flinch, and I feel my leg become impaled, the sharp pain coming seemingly from nowhere. Whatever it was, it drags me from the creature’s back, ripping out of my leg as it throws me.

This time, I get a good look at what grabbed me; the spined, barbed tail of the demon creature is, it would seem, fully prehensile.

The creature, still lumbering in the direction I’d came from, stops only for a moment to smash a huge fist through the side of a house and grab another pony from the second floor. For just a moment, I catch a glimpse of a lemon-yellow coat before I hear the grisly ‘crunch’ of internal damage, the pony shrieking in agony. Speeding forward, I’m able to catch the pony as she’s thrown by the monster over his shoulder, a series of spikes erupting from him back.

As the beast laughs, I gently lay the injured pony on the ground, where she bleeds quietly from the corner of her mouth. Looking up at me, she smiles slightly, before clutching her ribs with a pained expression.

I’ve never even heard of anyone acting this callously towards anything. This goes beyond mere psychopathy. I have to stop him somehow, before he finds his target. He said he was searching for a ‘fount of kindness’...

A chill settles in my heart, and I swear my core grows a little dim for a moment.

Fluttershy. He’s going after Fluttershy.

“Not on my watch.” Deciding to change my tactic, I power down and increase my size until I’m twenty times his size and rush after him.

Reaching down with my own gargantuan fists, I swat him away from a trio of ponies he was about to slam into paste. Each of them look up at me in awe, but I don’t have time for that. A faint surge or pride fills me, though, and my next attack punts him clear over a bunch of houses and into the clear area of the town square. Abandoned market stalls are scattered around, but the ponies have abandoned the area, meaning I’m not as restricted in my attacks.

The monster, now visibly more angry, rakes my hand with his claws as I try to hit him again, my larger form vastly more sluggish than his. The pain is a bright, searing thing, but the heat at least cauterized my wounds, so they aren’t bleeding.

I return to my normal size, and return to my Dynamo form, and I charge as much electricity through my body as I can, trying to electrocute him.

He charges again, this time with his chest-mouth wide open. Inside I can see what looks like a forty-foot tunnel lined with red-hot teeth. It’s possible that my intangibility won’t work if I get sucked into that, but it just means I need to be a little more creative.

Just before he hits me, I fall backwards, pushing myself down to speed it up. It’ll hurt, but means his relatively un-armored belly will pass right over. And when it does, I slam my hands up, palms out, release all the electricity I’d been storing. Constantly running it back and forth to up both its voltage and amperage, it ought to be able to at least stun an angry moose. And I‘m far more terrified of an angry moose than I am of this guy.

The electrical jolt seems to lift him off the ground, and he falls into a limp pile of limbs in the mess of a bunch of wrecked carts. The body twitches once, but then stills, jittering slightly from the residual static.

I’m not going to take any chances, so I decide my next course of action would be to finish him off. I walk up to him, my plan forming in my mind. I’m going to go intangible, reach my hand through his head, and send ten-thousand volts straight to his fucked-up brain.

I stand next to his head, and reach for his face, tiny arcs of electricity already jumping from my hand. Before I can do it, though, a literal tongue of flame flicks out from his chest-mouth and grabs me. The burning sensation of liquid fire being poured across my flesh hurt worse than any other injury I’ve ever received. I can feel myself being flung by the fiery tongue, and I slam through another market stall.

I’m barely hanging onto my consciousness as I watch the monster stand up again. He starts laughing, the scratchy, distorted sound making my head hurt. My powers seem faded, no sparks of electricity coming to my call. As he begins lumbering towards me, I hear something.

“Get up!”

It came from somewhere on one of the rooftops.

“Get up! I know you can!”

Looking towards the source of the noise, I see a tiny speck of white, with a little mop of mulberry curls on top. Next to it is a little speck of yellow, with a pink bow, and a dot of orange with a purple mane.

One of the other CMC members called out. “C’mon, man, I believe in you!”

A spark jumps between my fingers. The monster is closing on me, but I see shapes on the clouds above, pegasi staying at a safe distance to watch. They too begin to shout encouragement to me.

Another spark crawls across my skin. More ponies are forming a wide, cautious ring around the town square, and they’re shouting encouragements as well. The demon eyes them moodily as he advances towards me, evidently seeking to squash their hope and me in a single blow.

Then, the crowd goes quiet for a moment, drawing both me and the demon to look around at them. Slowly, they begin chanting.

“An-tho-ny. An-tho-ny. An-tho-ny! An-tho-ny! An-tho-ny! An-tho-ny!”

And while it may not be my true name, I can feel their belief flooding in like a refreshing drink after hard work.

The demon growls, baring his two sets of teeth at the ponies, but to little effect. He turns his gaze on me.

“Heh, what’s the matter, demon-boy? You don’t have a fan-club? I gotta say, they help. A lot!”

I get to my feet and charge up. I’m not entirely sure what the energy buildup will do, but I hope it’s enough. I’m probably going to hate myself for this later, but right now, I need to give this all I got.

I rush forward as fast as possible, and throw a burning, electrified fist dead center between his human eyes. I don’t know how fast I’m going, but it looked like he was frozen until I made contact.

And for a moment, the chanting was dead once more, this time from speed alone. Sparks of flame and lightning were suspended in air, their light coruscating off of them in shapes I could almost see. As my fist connected, I could feel bones break in my hand, but I couldn’t feel the pain yet. The slowly expanding doughnut-shaped wavefront tore outward like a drill expanding in size. Visceral, meaty chunks went everywhere, and time came back to me as I watched his head come apart like a melon with an M80 going off in it.

For a moment, I stood there, perfectly serene.

Then, my Spark flickered out, and so did my consciousness. Next Chapter: Chapter 41 Estimated time remaining: 29 Hours, 60 Minutes