Author's Notes:

This is it. The home stretch. Close to the end. About less than 15 chapters to go. Perhaps around 10.

6 years....on this one story....and it might be over soon. It feels strange.

Some time has passed since the battle with King N and Daniel was now walking with Nature in the garden which was sadly, burnt worse than the entire hangout was. Daniel was currently holding the Earth, waiting for Archie to help him restore it.

Nature pressed herself against him which still hurt her as her body was still burnt. She was currently producing a kind of slime or sap which covered her in the areas she was injured in. This was a natural healing response her species had and he made no effort to clean it off her. Thankfully, the hit she took from King N was nowhere near as bad as the burns she gotten before and those injuries healed quite quickly, the burns however were still there. Her eyes were still a little reddish, showing they were still healing and she had more than a few blisters and holes in her skin around her body.

As he moved his hand up her arm, beside the slime and the occasional hard skin from the burn, she was as soft as he remembered.

"Now Daniel. No feeling me up." She said in a joking manner before letting out a few coughs. "Besides. We still need to find out what was wrong with King N." She reminded him as King N was still in a cell and waiting to be put on trial. He was compleatly different to what he was when Daniel battled him. More confused. Less hostile, but Daniel knew why that was. Xaveroth was still out there.

"What's wrong?" She asked as she looked up at him. Daniel looked back into her eyes and didn't want to lie to her.

"I think i know what happened to King N. He was under control from Xaveroth." Nature looked at the ground as she was deep in thought.

"Xaveroth. The one the queen told us about?" Daniel nodded in confirmation.

"Yes. When i was fighting King N i saw a stream going into him and when i tried to break it i had a short battle with Xaveroth." Danie ldidn't have the heart to tell her that even when he was in his total merge form, he still didn't manage to land a single hit on Xaveroth during their very short battle.

"If that's the case, we need to tell Archie and the Queen as soon as we can."

"But we just got a victory, would it not be best to rest up?" He asked.

"Equestria and your friends can rest. This new threat is beyond them and it's best to not give out opponent a chance to-" She stopped and winced as she almost collapsed.

"You are the one who needs rest." Daniel told her with a smile.

"Fine. But when this is all over. You and me are going to battle. For real." She said with a grin. Smiling, he picked her up and carried her back to the hospital wing and placed her back in her bed.

"How long till she recovers?" Daniel asked one of the doctors.

"Given her healing rate, energy and severity of injuries. She should be healed in 5 days and be fully restored in 7 when her energy had returned to full." Daniel nodded happily at the doctor who then went to check on blade who was bandaged up on one side of his body and asleep. Bravacho was also there but he didn't need rest as he was the least injured of them all but he did need to walk slowly as his legs did get fractured in the battle.

"Daniel...a word." Looking behind him he saw Archie standing there and holding Earth. Daniel got up and left the room with him and headed to the upper level.

"What is it?" He asked.

"You know of Xaveroth?" Daniel nodded with a small hit of fear. "I feel like we will need to stop him and it will need to be soon."

"How so?" Archie showed him a piece of paper with something on it.

"This is called the Great Projector and i fear Xaveroth has it." Daniel took the paper and looked it over.

"What does it do?" He asked as he looked it over. It was partly cracked in some areas and didn't look like it would cause much of a problem that would be anything major.

"When energy enters it on one side it will be pushed out of the other side but will be multiplied thousand fold." Both of them were stumped on why Xaveroth would need such a thing. He had already shown himself to be stronger than Daniel is, even with control over his total merge form.

"Do you know anything else?" Archie thought for a moment until he remembered a time he overheard Xaveroth outline part of his plan.

"I do know it's got something to do with the Dark Multiverse." That caught Daniel's attention. What even was the dark multiverse?

"Can you explain what it is and why it's dark? I am sure i heard about it before." It did sound familiar to Daniel but he couldn't put his finger on when he heard it.

"Well....see it goes like this. All of creation needs to be in balance. So there is not 1 but 3 kinds of multiverses...or hyperverses. To balance out the energies of good and bad they are put into 2 locations with a neutral in between them. That is the world you live in. Earth. Sometimes bad won, sometimes good won. But in the dark multiverse, bad always win."

"So...it's like a tidally locked planet. One side is one way and the other is the opposite with a small neutral zone in the middle?"

"Yes only the neutral zone is much, much bigger than the dark or light." Daniel was starting to understand, but how did it work and how did it tie into being part of Xaveroths plan.

"How does bad always win there?" Archie looked to the side and sighed.

"I have no clue but, when i was there it was like....not just the bad guys, but time, space, reality, the laws of physics.. Even fate itself was against me. I understand you are a human and your mind is still adapting to these things so i will put it in a way you will understand. When i was in the dark multiverse. I felt like i was a character in a story and the author itself was trying to kill me off as everything was against me." This is when Daniel got an idea of what Xaveroth was up to.

"Is it possible for that effect to spread?"

"Well as creation expands, so do those 2. But nowhere near the speed. So while it is growing, it is slow." Daniel shook his head.

"No. I mean it is possible for that, the feeling of everything going against you to spread any other way?" Archie thought for a moment before looking back at Daniel

"Not that i can think of." Daniel sighed as he sat down on a chair nearby. "Hey. We will deal with it as it comes."

"Best thing we can do." Daniel looked down at the Earth which Archie was holding. It was still in the same field it was before. Looking back up at Archie, he smiled.

"Let's restore Earth." With a nod from Archie, a portal opened and they both stepped on through. Their location was undeniable as Daniel saw planets that were familiar to him and a certain gas giant with a red spot. Jupiter. He was back in his home system. Flying with Archie, pass Jupiter and mars he stopped at where the Earth was before.

"Let's fix the orbits first." Archie grabbed the moon with his mind and pushed the rest of the planets back into their old orbit and then broke the field the Earth was in, before throwing it back into the location it was before. Daniel watched as the Earth started to expand more and more until it was returned to normal size.

"So what do you want to do?" Archie asked Daniel as he just kept looking at Earth. So happy to see it again.

"I think they might need some time. Many might think that the Consumer was a strange dream that they had." Daniel saw Archie snap his fingers as a pink cloud of energy emerge from it before vanishing.

"There. They won't remember it. So no panic." This got a chuckle from Daniel.

"Well i guess i can leave a note for my parents. They must be worried." Daniel took flight and went towards his home. It took about 10 seconds to get there to get there thanks to his speed and Archie was following him close behind. As Daniel landed outside his house, in the back yard. He took a moment to take it all in.

"You alright?" Archie asked him.

"Yeah i am. Just...memories. So much has happened since i was last here." As Daniel looked at his house, he saw lights on inside and gently levitated himself up to look into the windows. He saw his parents, both looking compleatly confused but alive and well.

Raising a hand with a finger up, he aimed it at a pen in the other room and quickly scribbled and note down on it for them. They thankfully didn't hear it as they were talking amongst themselves.

'Dear Mom and Dad

Don't worry about Me and Annabelle. You might now know where we are but i promise you we are safe.

You might be a little shocked to see Annabelle but i will tell you everything that has happened when i come back home. Which will perhaps be a few weeks. But i will come back.

Love, Daniel' He stopped writing and backed away from the house. One thing he was not looking forward to is telling them why Annabelle almost looks like a teenager when they return home.

"Come on. Let's go." Daniel teleported away with Archie. Both of them planning to have a battle soon.

The ponies of Equestria were happy that the battle was over but the damage done to the land was a real concern. There was large holes littering the land and fires that were caused by the alien weapons were being put out by the pegusi. The holes in the land were being filled in with dirt by the earth ponies to make the land flat again and the unicorns were taking the task of capturing the weapons left behind as handling them with magic was the safest bet.

All the soldiers were currently locked in many different kinds of cells. From normal cells under watch from entities and ponies alike to shield bubbles and electric cages. They would soon be appearing in a court along with King N to see what their sentence would be.

For now, they were just happy the battle was over even if there was still a bunch of ships covering the sky and an army of robots which looked like metal spiders with 5 legs were across the landscape putting the land back together and clearing up the corpses and destroyed remains of their fallen metal brothers.

"Still think you could have done much?" Twilight asked with narrowed eyes and both Discord and Dash. Both of them were left speechless. Freddy was missing a limb but since he was mostly a robot it didn't effect him much. He was gathering the rest of his brothers and sisters together and Alpha was with them, focusing on repairing them.

"You're all a bunch of idiots." Alpha said with a mechanical sigh but Barry just laughed as he reattached his ear and eye. "One of these days you are going to do something that will get you killed."

"Didn't we say we would stay with Dad no matter what he faces?" Freddy reminded him as he sprayed his new leg with golden spray and getting a feel for his new leg.

"I might need to give you all warforms rather then the ones you currently have." Alpha stopped a moment after saying that, looking at them for a moment he let out a mechanical chuckle. One that indicated he was planning something.

"Oh no. He is planning something. EVERYONE RUN!" Elizabeth joked. All of them stopped laughing and looked around. Robert was missing.

"Robert!?" Freddy called out as they all looked over the mountain of robot and organic corpses to see if they could see him. To their horror. They did see him and he was in a much worse shape that they all thought. He was missing one eyes. His back was blown out and 3 of his 4 limbs were missing. Not to mention he also had a hole in his head and his last eye was flashing on and off. His half brain was viable and looked undamaged but the the mechanical part it connected with was visibly burt. He was barely hanging on to life.

"OVER HERE!" Freddy shouted as Alpha and the others ran up to him.

"Quick. Take him back to the lab." All of them lifted him up and ran back to Aperture with their dying brother.

"Are you sure you want to battle Archie?" Daniel asked as Archie cracked his knuckles and smiled.

"You bet i do. I want to see how strong a full powered heart bearer really is." Daniel looked up to the sky and felt a little upset at what he saw. This location they were going to do battle in was a universe at the end of its life. There was no more than 7 stars in the sky that normal eyes could see but Daniel was able to see a few red dwarfs and black holes with rings of burning dust around them thanks to his enhanced vision.

"So...come at me." Daniel told him as he got into a stance.

Faster than Daniel could see, he was hit in the face with a strong punch from Archie which he felt left a dent in his skull. Archie didn't stop his attack as he went to grab Daniel who was now starting to get stronger himself. He moved his leg to land a kick on the back of Archie's neck which caused him to wince a little in pain but not stop his assault as he turned around in a moment and landed another hard punch to Daniel.

Daniel was starting to feel his anger raise again and decided to waste no time and head right into his blackfire form. The moment he turned into it he acted in instince and anger. Recovering almost instantly and punching Archie as hard as he could in his face. He then grabbed his neck and fired a blast as his neck, point blank range and still firmly holding his neck.

This resulted in Archie being knocked backwards and going through a moon, which broke apart a moment later and Archie was standing there, dusting himself off with no viable damage seen on him.

"I forgot. You are a 5th dimensional being and that body is just a projection. I can't damage it by normal means." Daniel said to him. "Meaning my Blackfire form is more or less useless." He said that to himself. He needed to enter his total merge form, but the problem was he still didn't know how to fully do that.

"Correct." A moment later, Archie himself was in front of Daniel with his own blast, which was right against his chest. As he fired it he blasted a hold through Daniel's chest and that resulted in Daniel losing his Blackfire form from the pain alone as his chest started to heal. He coughed up blood and struggled to breath and even his lungs healed. Archie didm't let this go to waste and kept on attacking as he landed an uppercut on his forehead and Daniel felt his neck snap as he was thrown back.

"Where's that power Daniel?" He asked him as he grabbed Daniel by the head and threw his around. The pain from his broken neck was making it almost unbearable but in a sudden spike of his anger and a rage filled scream, Daniel got a red aura around him and brought both of his hands down on Archie head as strong and as fast as he could. This resulted in the barren planet they were on getting shattered and splitting into pieces as the sheer force from his downward his alone cause the planet to split and then rest followed suit.

Daniel knew he couldn't keep going like this. Archie would eventually beat him if he didn't get his total merge form and he done the same thing he done before to get it. He closed his eyes and reached into the source of his powers.

He pressed in more and more. Drawing more and more power. His concentration was almost cut off from a sharp pain in his neck as it healed fully.

Archie was not far away from continuing his attack and Daniel needed to access his new form before the fight continued. He pushed more and more. Trying to merge fully with his source and he was close to doing so.

"Just a little more." Daniel felt himself get punched on his chest and was pushed back from the heart source. But he made no effort to fight Archie. He focused on this one thing. Merging with he heart once more.

Pushing more and more and he felt himself take more blows, he was worried he wouldn't be able to do it as he felt himself get weaker. He felt like he was about to pass out from the pain of the battle and even felt himself losing consciousness. As a spike of adrenaline kicked in, he pushed himself as hard as he could and felt his hand tingle.

It then started to grow and soon felt like it was burning, but it didn't hurt. It felt full of power and energy. Soon Daniel's whole body felt like that and he smiled.

Archie looked at Daniel was laying down on the ground. He looked like a burst balloon as he saw his ribs were broken and some were penetrating out his skin and some others got his organs. If there was one thing he hand learned, it was at times like this is when Daniel got his power boost, so he waited.

His expectations were right as a moment later, Daniel was covered in a golden aura and stood up like he was in no pain at all. As his eyes opened. He saw his iris outlines in his glowing eyes and smiled.

"There we go. Now the real fight starts." Archie said as Daniel returned the smile. Archie went to attack like before but Daniel easily avoided it thanks to him seeing a ghostly version do the actions beforehand. Using one of his free hands, he delivered a solid punch to Archie's side which sent him stumbling back.

After recovering he moved back a little more to think of a plan of attack. Daniel was happy to wait as the pain from the hole in his chest was starting to vanish. A moment later he heard Archie start to laugh.

"I've been looking forward to this." Daniel smiled at his enthusiasm.

"Well with someone as strong as you. I don't think a strong challenge appears every day."

"No it doesn't. But now we can fight for real." Archie started to walk up to Daniel, cracking his knuckles.

"Oh. No rushing. You're going to just approach me?"

"Well i can't beat the crap out of you without getting closer, can i?" Daniel grinned at that.

"Then get as close as you like. But i warn you. I won't hold back anymore. I'm going to win this battle." As Daniel clenched his fist, he saw the light was becoming bent and distorted around his hand. He and Archie walked up to each other till they were less than 2 steps away and with Daniel's new power, he was able to see Archie was covered in a grey aura. As Archie tried to attack him, Daniel was able to see the ghostly version of him ahead of time and avoided his attack. With his right leg, he landed a solid hit on Archie neck and sent him backwards. The planet they were on had long since been compleatly shattered and was littered with floating rocks and small rivers of magma. Daniel looked down and saw he was stepping in some, but he didn't feel anything. It was at this moment he felt a tingling sensation at the side of his neck and as he reacted on instinct, he avoided another attack from Archie and as he passed in front of him, Daniel grabbed him by the neck and tossed him overhead.

Daniel made a mistake at this moment as he lost his focus and was assaulted with an over stimulation of information. He gripped his head and gasped...or tired to gasp as he tried to sort out his mind. He felt so many things that he didn't know what was what and didn't get a chance to figure out thanks to something else grabbing his attention.

He was on his knees and holding his head, Eyes closed and shaking. He felt...a stream all around him. He felt like he was trapped in a box. Trapped in an air tight box. He didn't know what this was he was feeling and pushed it out his mind as he slammed his hand into the ground and opened his eyes to focus on Archie. Who was waiting on him recovering.

"That felt weird." Daniel said as he stood up and got ready to fight. He didn't know why but something was telling him in the back of his head to desire to win this battle. It was just a friendly battle between him and Archie but he decided to give it a try.

As the fight dragged on, Daniel was hoping that Archie would make mistakes and that he would win, and the things he hopped for, seemed to happen. At one point in the battle, Archie froze and remained like that for about 3 full seconds and looked confused afterwords. But as the fight went on, Daniel also felt himself start to sweat and felt his body get weaker as his muscles seemed to give out at times. Like they had no strength in them. He almost collapsed but was able to barely hold himself up.

Looking at Archie, he saw he was covered in bruises and also seemed to have trouble standing.

"Let's finish this Daniel." Archie went upwards and was overhead. "Block this and i will declare you the winner." Archie started glowing and gathering more and more power. The very light around him was starting to bend and the sheer pressure that was being emitted from him almost caused Daniel to collapse.

Looking up, Archie finished powering up his attack and fired it at Daniel. The shattered planet was compleatly ripped apart and reduced to atoms before the blast was even close to it. Daniel decided to try something insane. Clenching his fist, he put his own energy into into it and rushed forwards. Punching his blast, he managed to pierce through it and kept pushing until he was right up to Archie. Daniel's fist made contact with Archie's face and was blasted back into a nearby star. This force of his impact resulted in the stars collapse and a resulting supernova. Archie was seen by Daniel, flying out of the explosion a moment later with no visible damage from the supernova, but there was a very swollen spot on his nose, which was where Daniel punched him.

Daniel powered down and so did Archie. Both of them sharing a chuckle from their battle and sweating. Covered in bruises which were all starting to heal.

"Looks like i win." Daniel said with a smile of joy.

"Yeah you do. I said if you got through that attack than you would be declared the winner." Archie said as he punched Daniel shoulder.

"Let's head back. I need to check up on Nature."

"Worried about your future wife?" Daniel blushed at that but didn't deny that it was a major possibility at this point with his close him and Nature were.

"Yes." He simply said as he opened a portal back to the hangout and both him and Archie returned.