Chapter Five: Memories, Part 2.

***

London, January 23rd, 2030.

London was burning.

Skyscrapers had turned into metal skeletons, incinerated by magical attacks fired by blunt but powerful converted and skilled and efficient true-born unicorns. All across the skyline of the city, turrets firing streams of tracer round out into the burnt-orange night sky. Rain fell, splattering on the ground and yet not strong enough to diminish the flames of war or wash away the splatters of blood that covered the city. Yells - orders, pain, death - filled the sky, almost - but not quite - drowning out the bloody, brutal sounds of battle.

And yet, it was David Elliot's element. A combination of the spirit of Albion and his own, is not comfort then certainly familiarity with conflict, meant that he was managing to keep one step ahead of his enemies at all times. Pegasi couldn't touch him, for he'd gun them down and dodge their attacks. Earth Ponies couldn't hit him, for his skill at hand-to-hoof combat was the pinnacle. Unicorn magic could not harm him, for Albion's power and his own agility kept him safe, allowing him to dodge the spells until he was close enough to kill the fragile little mages or the trained Royal Guards - whoever they were, they died at his feet. It didn't help the enemy's cause that they attacked him in a city that he knew well.

Right at this moment, he was using the terrain to his advantage. He ran down a narrow side street, his pursuers - three armoured Royal Guard Pegasi - chasing close behind. He fired off a shot from his hand cannon, and one of the three took a bullet to the shoulder: with a scream of agony, he veered off, crashing into the Pegasus next to him in formation and sending them both into the wall at high speed, before they clattered to the ground. The last Pegasus gritted his teeth and charged at Elliot, who kept running.

"Albion!" the Pegasus screamed, aiming straight for the running man, "I'll take you down!"

Elliot span on his heel, standing his ground as the pony flew straight at him. At the last second, he stepped aside, as a giant sword materialised out of nowhere - as the Pegasus flew past him, the sword came down, slicing a deep gash along his side and spilling his organs to the dust. The pony spluttered for a moment on the ground, trying desperately to catch a breath despite the fact that his lungs had fallen out of his split carcass, and then he died, eyes wide in horror.

Sighing heavily, Elliot looked at Excalibur, the impossibly heavy looking blade seeming - and feeling - indescribably light in his hand. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them, the blade was gone once more. Suppressing a coughing fit, Elliot moved on, moving a hand to his earpiece communicator.

"Hell Blazer, where are you guys?!" he yelled.

"Coming up to rendezvous point now!" the Liverpudlian accented voice of the former John Constantine said, his voice tinny in the earpiece. "Got the Doc, Lyra and a bunch of guys together but we're taking fire!"

"I'll be there in two!" Elliot said sharply, and he took off at a jog.

***

At the end of the little alleyway, then down another, there was an intersection. Behind a wrecked routemaster waited Lyra, the Doctor, Hell Blazer, along with a dozen other soldiers, human and pony, including Elliot's old friend, the green unicorn True Grit. As Elliot watched, a spear impaled one of the other ponies present, pinning his wide eyed corpse to the ground. Elliot swore, before shooting down the offending Pegasus with his hand cannon, the body crashing not ten feet from his position.

"Sit-rep!" he bellowed, not caring who replied.

"Mixed," True Grit replied shortly. "But we're surviving, sir."

"John, how you holding up?" Elliot asked his old friend.

"Well enough," Hell Blazer replied, "though these bucking - FUCKING - plot-holes... ARSEWIPES... gah!" He shook his head, before concentrating on his words. "These sons of bitches seem to be tenacious b-fucks."

"They would be," Lyra said heavily, ignoring Hell Blazer's almost schizophrenic outburst. "They're the Royal Guard."

"That's not the worst of it, sir," True Grit said softly. "We've heard rumours that Shining Armour, Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle are all on the ground."

Elliot nodded, smiling slightly. Though this was certainly worrying news, to Elliot it was just a chance to continue the work of picking off the enemy one by one. Sparkle and Pinkie Pie had a date with his knives, and Shining Armour's death would only help to strengthen the morale of their soldiers. Added to that was the fact that if he did manage to kill them all, that might finally bring the bitch herself out, and he could finally meet her in battle.

A spear impacted near their position, and Elliot, shaking his thoughts of killing specific ponies off, aimed his pistol in a flash, taking another Pegasus down. They seemed to have taken up rudimentary sniping positions on nearby balconies and rooftops: they were too well covered for Elliot to get them unless they popped up. One was unwise enough to do so, and Elliot took his head off.

"We'll never clear this sniper field this way," True Grit complained, frowning.

"There may be another way," the Doctor put in softly, the grizzled looking pony turning to his cigarette-smoking comrade. "Hell Blazer?"

"Already ahead of you, Doc," the yellow Earth Pony said, a sudden smile on his face. He closed his eyes for a moment, muttering some sort of arcane nonsense under his breath, and suddenly a fire bolt appeared in mid air in front of him, before launching full force at a cluster of sheltering Pegasi on the roof, incinerating most of them. The few who weren't incinerated desperately took to the air, trying desperately to not be killed. Bullets from the troopers and spells from Lyra's horn took them out quickly.

Elliot looked at Lyra - she seemed, as per usual, entirely sickened by having to kill. He sighed inwardly: that was just how it was. Some people could deal with the killing. Some people couldn't. Lyra, though willing to kill to protect her ideals and her loved ones, just wasn't built for it. It was a sad truth that some of those who fought this war might never truly recover from it, even if they did (by some miracle) manage to win it.

Suppressing a cough, Elliot mused that maybe those who survived would be the lucky ones for even getting a chance to recover. He knew he never would.

"Now that that's done with," he said, altogether too lightly for anyone or anypony's liking, "how's the rest of the city holding?"

"We've lost about a third of our defence force," the Doctor supplied immediately, "but the civilian outposts are holding well. Minimal victims of ponification, but massive casualties from bludgeoning, spell damage, spears and lacerations."

"It could be worse," Lyra added, firing another spell off. It impacted into a wall, the rubble crushing a couple of Earth Pony Royal Guards who had been approaching their position. "As it is, we're just holding our own."

"Commander Albion," one of the soldiers, an SAS man judging by the symbol on his uniform of wings, tapped Elliot on the shoulder.

"Yes, soldier?" Elliot asked.

"Sir," he said urgently. "This position isn't secure. We have to..."

There was a loud bang, and a heavy object flew into the man's head, snapping it back to an unusual angle. The body slumped to the floor, the head covered in an odd mixture of blood and cream pastry.

"Shit!" Hell Blazer swore, eyes widening at the sight. "Party cannon!"

Elliot holstered his pistol with a growl that was half angry and half anticipation. The party cannon meant just one thing: Pinkie Pie was here.

"Looks like it's time for you to take on another Element," Hell Blazer continued, his tone grim. Another shot impacted near them, spraying chunks of wall and pie onto the group. "You gonna Albion up?"

"Lyra, get everyone out of here," Elliot said seriously, ignoring Hell Blazer’s question. "Now!"

"R-right," the Unicorn said softly, looking worried. She immediately headed off in the opposite direction, the Doctor, True Grit and the other soldiers following her.

"You sure about this?" Hell Blazer asked.

"Get out of here, John," Elliot said grimly. He unsheathed his daggers, spinning them in his hand. Hell Blazer stopped for another second, and then raced off, leaving Elliot alone.

A moment passed in almost unnatural silence, and then a bright pink pony appeared, sans party cannon. She caught a glimpse of Elliot, who gave her a feral smile in greeting. She smiled back - her own smile a combination of madness and fury.

"You're that Albion guy!" she said, her voice impossibly chirpy given the carnage that surrounded her, not to mention the fact that she was fighting the man who had single handedly murdered most of her friends.

"And you're the pink bitch," Elliot replied conversationally. "How're things."

"You killed a lot of my friends," Pinkie Pie said, slowly advancing on him, the wide grin entirely unsettling. "But apart from that, things are just peachy for me, thank you for asking. How about you?"

"Oh, same old, same old," Elliot grinned, spinning his daggers. "But they're about to get a whole load better. Only one of us leaves here alive, little pink bitch."

"Okie dokie lokie," Pinkie replied, eyes wide and manic. "But just so you know, I Pinkie promise that I'm gonna make you hurt for what you did to my friends."

"Oh, Pinkie," Elliot laughed. "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to make promises you couldn't keep?"

The pink former-party-pony had no reply for that save a deep scowl, one Elliot relished the sight of.

The two stood still for a moment, as if waiting for some unknown signal - and then they charged at each other, Pinkie screaming a mad war cry and Elliot yelling in fury.

Elliot moved his daggers in a finessed, if slightly unrefined attack. Pinkie Pie dodged every swing, moving preternaturally fast. She lashed out with a hoof, but he grabbed it, spun her around and threw her into a wall.

"Is that it?" she asked, seemingly not affected by her trip into a wall. She shook off some of the rubble and dust that had covered her. "How did you even manage to defeat the others with those weak moves?"

"Like this," Elliot smiled. He drew upon a small measure of Albion's power, and charged at her - his knives whipping out. At the last second, she dodged, but not fast enough to prevent him from cutting her cheek.

She growled, ignoring the bleeding wound, and charged him. This time, however, he dodged her, her hooves moving past him wildly. Elliot took a moment to analyse her style - she was unrefined, unfocused, relying on speed and power rather than skill or precise targeting. He dodged another blow, grabbed her left hoof and threw her, amplifying his strength with Albion's strength. She landed in a heap at the either end of the street. He coughed slightly, the forays into Albion's power costing him dearly.

"Grr," Pinkie growled, standing up and shaking rubble and dust off of her coat. "That does it!"

She charged at him, again moving with preternatural speed: her charge knocked him over, and she began punching his face, but his hand reached out and he grabbed the SAS man's shotgun, ramming it into her head. As she fell off of him, he rolled away and stood up. He tried firing the shotgun, but she dodged the three shells he fired. He cursed as he heard the click of an empty chamber, and kicked out at her, sending her rolling down the street. He grabbed the spare ammo from the soldier's corpse, thanking the man for having spare ammo handy.

She got to her feet as she rolled, and then she grinned, her eyes glinting with a dangerous madness. From nowhere, her party cannon appeared, and without any warning she fired. Elliot dodged behind some rubble, but more projectiles fired, forcing him to keep moving. Pinkie Pie screamed in frustration.

Elliot looked at the impacts as he dodged, the splatters of what he assumed was ponification potion were smacking into walls and rubble. Strictly speaking, he supposed he shouldn't have been worried, but all the same: no need to let the stuff get on him.

"Will you stand still?!" the pony yelled, regaining his attention.

"Nope!" he cried out in return, mocking her. "Come on, Pinkie Pie, at least Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash all put up a fight!"

"Don't say their names you... you big fat meany!" the pony replied, screeching in rage. The unlikely cannon the pony fired again and again, the rate of fire seemingly impossible for such an old style weapon. And yet, that which was considered impossible was the business of these... things, he supposed.

Suddenly, a pie smashed into a wall opposite his head, having over sailed said head by a few feet: he raised an eyebrow. Confectionary as a weapon? That wasn't new, but it was still surprising. Not really deadly on it's own, per se, but deadly enough as far as Elliot was concerned if that dent was anything to go by. Still, it meant she was trying to kill him now, which meant she was angry. And if she was angry, she was going to make mistakes.

Ducking behind cover, he reloaded the shotgun, rethinking his strategy. This wasn't exactly how he had wanted this encounter to go, but it wasn't as though he was enamoured of choice. She had jumped the group: no way to avoid her, he had to roll with the punches.

"Alright meany-pants, you can't hide forever!" he heard her yell. She was getting closer, the cannon disappeared to wherever the crazy bitch kept it.

But she was coming to within shotgun range.

"Don't worry," he called back, grinning maniacally. "I'm not."

He jumped out and opened fire, catching her front legs with the spray but not fatally injuring her. She yelled in pain, collapsing to her front knees.

"You're a big ugly meany!" she yelled in agony. "I'm going to hurt you so badly when I get up...!"

"No," he replied, unzipping his jacket, "you're not."

He let the garment fall open and showed her the inside of the jacket, his grim trophies now visible. The pony's eyes widened in what the man guessed was fear at the sight.

"You're a monster," she said, uncharacteristically completely serious as she looked at him with utterly terrified eyes. Elliot laughed, a cold and cruel sound. It was the sound of all the damage this war had done to him, and he was sure that it wasn't done yet.

"I'm just fire," he replied, aiming his shotgun at her head. "Fighting fire."

A bang rang out into the night.

***

London, January 25th, 2030.

Elliot grimaced slightly at the twinge of pain that ran through his side. He pulled the shrapnel out of his rib, the enhanced healing that Albion's power afforded him already closing the wound. He laughed at the irony - in so many respects, he was stronger, faster and harder than he had been, and yet the power that gave him these edges was also killing him, slowly but surely. He was sure True Grit would have had something to say but... no.

No, that wasn't a good train of thought at all. He had lost enough people, and he was going to lose more before the end. No sense dwelling on those he had failed to save. If he did that, he might never move again for dwelling.

"Elliot," the voice of Hell Blazer said, bringing Elliot's attention back to the here and now. "You nearly done?"

Elliot moved his arm, testing the movement of the side. The pain was still there, sort of, but the twinges were definitely dying down.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I'm done. What's the situation?"

"Pinkie Pie and Shining Armour's deaths don't seem to have slowed them down," the Earth Pony said softly. "If anything, I think they're more pissed off than they were."

"Typical," Elliot sighed. He unsheathed his lucky dagger - the one that had killed Rainbow Dash, 'speed killer' emblazoned into its hilt - and walked to the exit of the small "command centre" (a fancy name for a hastily appropriated corner shop).

As he stepped outside, a soldier fell across the doorway, a spear lodged in his chest. Snarling, Elliot Drew his hand cannon and fired at the offending Pegasus, knocking it from the sky. More fire drove the attacking Pegasi back, but that wasn't good enough for Elliot. He charged after them, dagger spinning. Behind him, Hell Blazer and Lyra charged, Lyra's horn flashing with offensive spells.

They turned a corner, only to find themselves facing what must have been forty or fifty Earth Ponies.

"Bollocks," Hell Blazer swore. "Might be an idea to retreat?"

Elliot didn't answer, only taking time to reload his hand cannon. Hell Blazer sighed.

"Should have guessed," he said tiredly. "You want the twenty on the left or the twenty on the right?"

Elliot charged, firing as he went. Lyra stayed put, firing her spells off. Hell Blazer started muttering a series of ancient attack spells, fire forming and shooting off at his words.

The first pony went down with a bullet lodged in his skull. Vaulting over huge falling corpse, Elliot stabbed a second pony in the spinal column, before kicking out, sending another sprawling into his comrades. Firing his cannon again, Elliot took out three more ponies, before holstering the weapon and drawing his other dagger. He lashed out, taking down a handful at a time with sliced throats and stabs to the heart. He span around, stabbing another pony in the neck, before pushing the corpse off of his dagger and kicking it into two more ponies. Before the stunned ponies could stand, he stabbed them in their throats, pinning them to the ground. Leaving his daggers in their necks for the moment, he drew his hand cannon and his shotgun, switching the latter to semi-automatic fire: he span around, firing indiscriminately, taking out pony after pony...

"David!" a small voice called out. Elliot span, to find himself facing off against a Unicorn, who fired a spell at him. Elliot blocked the spell with his arm, but the kinetic force drove him to the ground.

The Unicorn gave a feral grin, and moved to send another spell at Elliot -

But then the spell impacted Lyra, who was suddenly stood between them. She yelled in pain as the energy enveloped her, and then she fell to the ground, eyes closed as she fell unconscious from the pain. Angrily, Elliot fired the last round from his hand cannon at the pony, blowing the top of his skull out, before grabbing Lyra and sprinting down the street. Around twenty of the Earth Pony squadron were still active, but they were being pinned down by a combination of Hell Blazer's continued fire spells and several soldiers firing their weapons in a suppressive pattern. Fortunately, these ponies were Royal Guard trained, not human soldier converts, and so their tactics were piss poor by comparison.

"Hell Blazer!" Elliot yelled. "Back to base, now!"

"Right!" the pony said, calling out instructions to the soldiers. With a final blast of hellfire, the yellow Earth Pony ran after his friend.

In the base, Elliot was examining Lyra's wounds. They didn't seem to be serious on the outside, but as far as Elliot was concerned, that was a bad sign - it just meant that her injuries were bad on the inside. Magic tended to be like that.

"Where's the Doctor?!" he bellowed at Hell Blazer as the pony entered the room.

"In a different part of the city," his friend replied, eyes fixed on the injured Lyra. "Oh ponyfeathers... this a magic injury?!"

"Yeah," Elliot said, not commenting on the pony oath Hell Blazer used.

"Horse shit!" Hell Blazer swore, hitting the wall with his hoof. "Horse shit and motherbucking bastarding fucking wankers!"

"Can you help her?!" Elliot asked, ignoring the outburst.

"No idea," Hell Blazer said honestly, looking frustrated and upset. "Maybe if I..."

There was an explosion outside, and the sound of hurried yelling and panicked orders. From the sounds of it, things were getting desperate.

"They're getting closer," Elliot said quietly. "Shit."

"That's a word," Hell Blazer said angrily. "These bastards are tougher than I thought."

Elliot knew that if they moved, the sheer number of ponies out there might overwhelm them all - even the Avatar of Albion couldn't kill an entire army. Then again, if they waited here without trying to escape, they'd be trapped and killed anyway. There seemed to be no way out...

Except...

"Hell Blazer," Elliot said quietly. "You know that plan you had?"

Hell Blazer looked at Elliot, eyes wide. "Yeah?"

"It's time," his friend said. "You ready?"

Hell Blazer didn't reply, instead grabbing a vial of salt from his coat pocket. He immediately ushered Elliot into the centre of the room.

"Here," he said. He drew a small circle around his friend. "Remember - once you get there, get to Canterlot, kill Solamina any way you can."

"Gotcha," Elliot said. "I'll do my best."

"I've got faith in ya mate," Hell Blazer mumbled as he began drawing more symbols in salt.

"You don't, but it's nice to say," Elliot smiled. He looked up at the ceiling. "I'm ready."

Hell Blazer mumbled a few words, and then there was a flash of light.

***

The Present, Canterlot.

Celestia jumped backwards in shock, almost as though she had received a violent electric shock. She was sweating, her body shaking as she reeled from the influx of vivid, brutal memories. Her breathing was coming in short, shallow gasps, and she had to deliberately concentrate on slowing it down again. After a moment, she managed to control it, but it was still faster than she would have liked. She had to swallow to stop herself from evacuating her lunch, nausea making her feel altogether wretched.

"That..." she said, her voice breaking slightly. She swallowed reflexively again, the nausea subsiding slightly. "That was... that was..."

Elliot, shaking and pained, stepped away from her and sat on his bed; he looked like he was trying his best not to faint, his eyes half closed in fatigue. The memory sharing must have taken a lot out of him, especially given his fragile state of health, and the Princess of the Sun felt a brief pang of guilt.

"That was where I came from," he said, his voice grim.

Celestia didn’t know where to begin - what she had witnessed, in fragmentary images and brief snippets of moments, was a battle unlike any other - the slow obliteration of a world by this ‘Barrier’, and some sense of a deepening crisis within that version of Equestria, leading up to the flight of many thousands of her little ponies from their homes… and her own declaration of an Empire in place of the Diarchy. It was insane - there hadn’t been a full scale war in many years, and the conflicts Celestia had fought in recent living memory were smaller border conflicts with enemies like the Griffons - nothing like the insanity this man had lived through, and nowhere near as devastating.

"You... you left your comrades in... London?" she asked, uncertain of the unfamiliar (and yet horribly familiar) name.

"Yeah," he said, his tone sour. "By now, they're probably all dead."

Celestia blinked, her mind wandering as the horrid memories replayed themselves over and over through her mind. The Elements, turned into murderous fighters for an oppressive regime - her ponies, or ponies so like them that the difference didn't matter, invading a world; murdering innocents, or worse, converting them against their will into other ponies. What kind of world was this? What could have caused this?!

"How did your Celestia... this... Astra Solamina.... how did she fall so far?" she asked Elliot.

The man - a human, not a Briton, the new memories told her, a man named David Elliot but called Albion by most - shrugged casually.

"No one knows," he said, sounding somewhat unconcerned. "By all accounts from our pony refugees, the craziness only started when Equestria's portal opened."

"Something in your world affecting her maybe?" Celestia asked.

"Possibly," Elliot said, still sounding unconcerned. "No way to know now: my job isn't to know why she's crazy, my job is to stop her. It's why I'm here: this is just the wrong Equestria."

Celestia thought for a long moment about everything she had seen, the horror the man had experienced - more to the point, the horror he had experienced at the hooves of her and her subjects. This was... she knew it wasn't really her fault, that she had done nothing to cause the horrors he had seen and fought against... but all the same, the fact that it was her people, in a way, that were responsible for this... that was something she could barely stand to think about for too long.

"What..." she asked slowly, hesitantly. "What can I do to help you?"

"Send me back?" Elliot replied at once, as though this were an obvious answer.

"Back?" she repeated, shocked. "To that nightmare?!"

"My place is there," Elliot said with a shrug.

The Sun Princess blinked in disbelief at the simple request, and then shook her head, not willing to simply send him away and have done with this whole business as though it were nothing to do with her. She had taken such lacklustre action before, 'for the good of her ponies'...

Mol Cassar was a mistake I will not make again, she thought to herself.

"Is there nothing more?" she asked, her tone almost desperate. "I wish to help however I can... and if you don't mind my saying so, it would seem you need the help."

"By doing what, giving me an army?" Elliot asked, smirking slightly. "You happen to have one?"

"Yes," Celestia said grimly. It had been a long time since she had mobilised the forces of Equestria to battle, but she could still do it - and she knew her ponies would react as she had to this travesty. "I can send..."

"How many?" Elliot said, interrupting her. Celestia blinked, frowning at him.

"I think... at present, something like ten thousand Royal Guards, maybe one hundred thousand reserve and militia," she estimated, trying to remember the exact numbers - it was a peacetime force, not one built for full scale conflict. "Why?"

Elliot laughed. "Solamina has a fair few billion soldiers at her potential disposal. Converted militia and Royal Guards alike. She threw a million at London alone."

Celestia blinked: that was a considerably larger number than she had considered. Still, it made no difference to her - she had faced worse odds before, with less hope of success.

“You need whatever you can get,” she said softly. “Even with such odds stacked against us, it is better than nothing.”

“Even with an entire army of the best you can give me,” Elliot told her softly, a regretful smile on his face, “they wouldn’t be enough to make a difference. It’d delay the inevitable, at best.”

“Then let me help you delay it!” Celestia insisted.

Elliot sighed. “Even if I took every soldier you have, how would we get back to my world?"

“We will find a way!” the Sun Princess said, her voice almost at shouting level. “You cannot show me this insanity and then ask me to do nothing! I must help you somehow”

“No,” Elliot said quietly, shaking his head almost mournfully. “No, I can’t let you do it, Princess. It’s not my place to ask that of your world… and I’m not interested in delaying tactics. I need to end the war, not keep it going.”

Celestia sighed, but she seemed no less determined. “Then how can I help you end the war?”

Elliot, not looking entirely happy about the line of the conversation, was frowning, apparently trying to think of something that he might be able to ask of Celestia to do just that. Then a slow smile crossed his features.

"There's one thing you could do," he said softly. "It's a long shot, but it just might work."

***

Author's Notes:

EDIT: This chapter was (re)edited 2nd July 2015.