Author's Notes:

I apologize if you happen to experience problems seeing certain text characters in this chapter. To fix that, you'll need to go to your machine's "Regions & Language" control setting and add Amharic (aka Eithiopian) to your display languages list--then restart your machine, of course. (Windows is ALWAYS like that!) Don't worry, this will NOT cause your machine to lose its ability to display English.
Unfortunately, the route to finding the "Regions & Language" control setting (at least for Windows) is different for each version of Windows--and I have no idea if Apple Macs are even set up in the same manner. Linux? Good luck!
For Windows 10, you'll find it in "Settings" and from there, "Time & Language".
For earlier versions of Windows (2000 through XP), it was usually buried somewhere in "Control Panel", although there were occasional exceptions to that.
I forgot where it was in Windows 7 as my machine was running that for too short a time, and I've always filled the "display languages" option with as much shit as I could...it was a one time thing, and I never needed to touch it again).
And I never touched Windows 8, Thank God!

With Panthera cloaked inside the upstairs' spare bedroom to grab the newest set of skiff panels, Pardus carefully fed the hidden panels, one by one, through the window as he hovered cloaked above the night guards. This stack was the last of the batch they had made the previous night and they were running a little behind schedule. Dawn was approaching.

Even as their cloaks were also encompassing the panels, the operation was exceedingly risky for discovery. That pink menace seemed to have the ability to know where the panthers were even when cloaked, so there was no guarantee that other ponies couldn't also detect them. There were the guard, of course. There were also numerous pegasi scattered about, busy moving clouds into position for some early morning showers scheduled for today.

As Pardus passed the panels through, he was in position to observe the changing of the guards.

"Shadow Wing. We need to talk," the unicorn sergeant said as he led his team to meet with the Night Guard ponies.

"About what?" the bat-winged pegasus sergeant asked.

"About our normal passdown procedures," Silver Thorn replied. "Is there some problem going on that I'm not aware of? Is there something that I or my team did to offend you? If so, I'm sure that we can work it—"

Pardus had to blink and perform an internal replay of what he just saw when the butt of Shadow Wing's spear unexpectedly cracked across Silver Thorn's jaw. When the attack happened, the other night guard ponies began an assault upon their counterparts. At the same moment, several ponies came rushing toward the two sets of guards, swarming in from around neighboring buildings. At first, Pardus hoped this was some sort of drill they were pulling, but that initial surprise attack looked too solid to have been a mere practice strike.

Not wanting to compromise their own operation, Pardus called out to Panthera.

'Hey, something weird's going on with the guard!' he informed her. 'We need to wrap this up and I might need you out here!' They sped up the delivery of the remaining panels.

Pardus watched as Silver Thorn tried to get back to his legs. That's when his corporal, who had been parrying both Shadow Wing and his own counterpart, Midnight Flame, managed to get some good shots of his own on both the night guards. However, instead of disabling the night guard attackers, the two suddenly burst into green flame which erupted from them both and were replaced by black carapaced figures.

"They're changelings! Come on, girls! Let's get 'em" Pardus head Rainbow Dash suddenly yell from above.

Silver Thorn continued to struggle to get to his hooves again to join in the defense. Pardus was still busy with sending the last panel through the window to Panthera, when he saw that one of the creatures suddenly bite the unicorn on the neck, dropping him back into the dirt.

Rainbow Dash was leading several of the pegasi down to join in on the altercation. However, just before she could deliver a devastating blow against the creatures, two of her own wing mates intercepted the azure pegasus and drove her into the ground.

Pardus was able to see Rainbow Dash was still awake after the impact, and she stared incredulously at one of the two pegasi that apparently chose to drop its disguise as it stood over her.

"No!" Rainbow whispered.

Obviously getting pissed, Rainbow jumped up to deliver a satisfying right fore-hoof to the impostor, dropping it to the dirt with blood coming from its broken jaw. That got the attention of several of the attacking bug ponies, many of them obviously still in disguise.

With the last of the panels handed off to Panthera, Pardus was now free to join in. However, try as he might, his senses couldn't tell friend from foe. At least, he could start with the obvious attackers: the undisguised creatures and those ponies still fighting the day guard. He set his eye beams to a heavy stun level and let loose. In those cases where his beams hit the disguised creatures, they were forced to revert to their true form before falling.

By then, Panthera, as well as Trevar and Gilda had joined him outside. Having called Trevar and tying their systems together, both Panthera and Trevar were fully up on the situation. Yet, neither could she tell the real ponies from the disguised creatures.

'We'd better hit them all, just to be sure, she informed him as she dropped her cloak and began targeting the day guard ponies and pegasi that seemed to be fighting the creatures, too.

'Agreed,' he reluctantly replied, but he chose to remain hidden. The creatures will quickly realize that Panthera has such powers and try to swarm her. But with him remaining cloaked while sniping at them, the creatures were kept at a tactical disadvantage.

A few of the changelings tried to get at Trevar and Gilda as well. Trevar used his skills learned from taekwondo and kung fu to fight off three at once while Gilda used her claws to fend them off. When one of the creatures got too close, she sliced it open with her claws. The griffon was an obviously formidable predator, and that made the creatures cautious in attacking her.

But four of them made the mistake of jumping Panthera all at the same time, and they all screamed and fell the instant they touched her while she shot another distant one with her eye beams.

Pardus smirked as he saw Rainbow Dash, who was watching Trevar, Gilda, and Panthera, absently back-handed one of the creatures that had tried to sneak up on her while she was distracted by the show.

Sorry, Rainbow, he silently thought as he gave her a shot of his orange eye beams that her in the chest. The expression on her face before she fell told him she knew she had been betrayed by the shadowcats and that he was going to have a lot to answer for when she awoke.

But at least you will wake again. he silently thought as he fired off at a few more targets. A number of them had taken to wing, trying to get away, both disguised creature and real pegasi. But Panthera and he were careful to grab them in their tractor beams and gently lower them all to the ground rather than allow them to drop.

Gilda had just made a second confirmed kill when there suddenly nothing more to fight; they were all unconscious. So were the ponies!

"Lord Trevar!?" Gilda exclaimed. "Why did you take down the ponies, too? That's Rainbow Dash over there!"

"We couldn't tell any difference between them and the dopplegangers," Pardus said as he finally dropped his cloak. "The only way to be sure was to take them all down. We've merely stunned them. No one's been harmed, but they'll be unconscious for a few hours."

"In the meantime, we'll need something to bind these creatures," Trevar said, looking at the mess.

"GILDA!?" Blood Feather suddenly called out as the griffon came in for a landing—or at least it appeared to be Blood Feather. "What are all these changelings doing here?" she demanded when she settled and looked about.

"That's what we'd like to know," Gilda said, not relaxing her combat stance. Apparently, she had quickly picked up on their dire situation. "Panthera? Pardus? Would one of you do the honors of checking?" she asked with a smirk.

Pardus grinned and reached out a wing to lay across Blood Feather's frame and the griffon was instantly screaming as her body jerked about from the taser effect he conducted through his skin. She immediately collapsed but remained a griffon.

"She's real," Pardus said withdrawing his wing.

"Wh-wha-what the s-s-sq-quit was that for!?" Blood Feather rasped as she tried to lift her head.

"Couldn't tell if you were one of them," Pardus said by way of apology. "I'll go get some help in restraining these creatures," Pardus said to Trevar before launching toward the Apple family farm.

"Wait, Lord Trevar!" Gilda exclaimed. "He shouldn't go off alone! What if they replace him?"

"If they can take down Pardus, we've got bigger things to worry about. Like that they'd be able to take down Pardus," Trevar quipped.

"We should kill these monsters…" Gilda began as she raised a claw to dispatch another changeling when Panthera, coordinating with Trevar, grabbed her arm in a tractor beam.

"No," Trevar shaking his head, giving her a stern look. "If we kill them all, we can't get any answers!"

"Unless their biology is radically different from everyone we've encountered, the blasts Pardus and I gave them should keep them down for hours," Panthera calmly said as she began to telekinetically collect and sort the bodies of ponies and changelings. Evidently, all of the weather team had also been taken down. What was worrying was that more than half of them had been the creatures in disguise. "But don't worry. I'll be keeping an eye out for signs of early recovery."

"Would you and Blood Feather do us a favor and go get the purple alicorn and anyone she deems appropriate?" Trevar asked.

"Heh! Ar--are y-you kidding!?" Blood Feather squawked as she was still shakily trying to raise up to a sitting position only to fall flat on the ground again.

"Wh-what if the princess is one of them?" Gilda nervously asked. "What if they replace me when I bring them the news?"

"Then we deal with the creatures and hunt you all down wherever they stash you," Trevar grimly told her. "Or at least avenge you. I've still got two shadowcats and six of these pony guards plus Rainbow Dash and her pegasi friends to do that with."

"Y-yes, Cat-Lord," Gilda nervously whispered. But Trevar reached out to grab either side of her face and looked deeply into her eyes.

"I know you're scared," he gently told her. "I've no idea of how peaceful your world has become or for how long. I don't want to lose you or see you hurt, but this is potentially a killing situation and you are a warrior at heart. Trust in your instincts; they've guided your species this far. And watch that 'Cat-Lord' bullshit," Treavar softly finished with a grin and a wink.

"Yes, Lord Trevar," Gilda meekly replied to which he rolled his eyes and released her. Then she was off.

Blood Feather was still trying to get back up on her feet.

"Wh-what did he do to me?" she hissed as she finally managed to get all four legs working without toppling back down.

"Lo—Lord Trevar," Blood Feather said as she stepped Trevar. "Blood F-Feather re-reporting for duty."

"Knock it off with the 'Lord Trevar' bullshit, already," Trevar said face palming. "It's just 'Trevar' or you can also call me 'Allec' as that's my first name. And it's just 'Panthera', too. Not 'Lady Panthera'. Although Pardus still insists on being call 'His Most Shining And Illustrious Majesty, The Great And Powerful Lord Pardus, First Of His Name'."

Panthera snorted.

"If she uses that, he's so-o-o-o going to get back at you for that," she said snickering.

"And make sure you bow to him," Trevar added, fighting to keep a straight face. "With especially deep bowing when he farts."

Blood Feather just blinked at him.

"Trevar's kidding, of course!" Panthera spoke up, rescuing her. Blood Feather flinched as the shadowcat draped a wing over her, but she relaxed again when she wasn't zapped. The griffon seemed especially relieved when Panthera released her and resumed her guard duty over the unconscious creatures.

"Go on inside, get something to eat and freshen up," Trevar told Blood Feather, to which she expressed her gratitude.

"It's worrisome that we can't detect those creatures in their disguised state," Panthera muttered to him once Blood Feather was out of earshot.

"Hopefully, the ponies can," Trevar replied, nodding. "Pardus did say they seemed to recognize them. Dash called them 'changelings'."

Pardus invisibly slipped in between Applejack and Big Mac, who they had just finished loading the cart with a shitload of baked apple pastries along with the dozen bushels of apples.

"You guys know anything about creatures called 'changelings'?" he suddenly asked as he dropped his cloak.

"Where'd the hay'dju come from!?" Applejack screamed. The black cat blinked and looked at her.

"… Well, when a daddy shadowcat and a mommy shadowcat really like each other very, very much … uh … but … um … that's not important right now," Pardus said with a smirk.

"Enyope!" Big Mac agreed.

"Anyhow," Pardus began again. "Do you guys know what it takes to restrain changelings? I've got a passle of them back at Trevar's that need to be tied up."

"We've got rope in th' barn," Applejack said, her ears perking up. "How many's in yer passle?"

"Thirty," Pardus replied. "You sure that rope will hold them? They're shape changers, after all."

"It should," Applejack said, rubbing her chin with a hoof. "Iffen we run th' lines through them holes in their legs. Th' Guardsponies put their hoofcuffs through them when they find a…."

"Oh. Before I forget," Pardus said, grinning as he spread his wings.

Applejack screamed and fell to the dirt. Her brother hadn't been dropped but Pardus could tell from his expression he still felt that! And in retaliation, the stallion quickly delivered a buck with his two hind legs. His kick had actually moved the shadowcat a full inch across the ground. They both looked at each other in surprise.

"Damn! I'm impressed," Pardus said, looking down at the divot made.

"Eyyup! Me, too," Big Mac replied.

"Why'dju go and do that fer?" Applejack yelled at him, picking herself up from the ground.

"Just checking," Pardus replied. "We couldn't tell the changelings from the real ponies until we forced them to drop their disguises. So it's either zorking you guys like that or hitting you with my eyebeams. And I guarantee you'll be out for a few hours if I used them." Big Mac stared at the shadowcat for a few moments then nodded.

"Git th' rope, Applejack," her brother said.

Lieutenant Scott stepped outside her home the same time as Blood Feather came out from Trevar's residence.

"What in God's name is going on out here?" she exclaimed, looking about in shock.

"'Morning, Lieutenant," Trevar greeted her. "You're just in time to help with the cleanup. We had a little encounter with creatures that apparently can assume the identity of anyone about them. They seem to be called 'changelings'."

"These things?" she asked, pointing to the black bug ponies. "But what happened to these others?"

"We couldn't tell them apart until we knocked them all out," Panthera said, materializing alongside her. "Speaking of which," she said holding out a wing.

Scott's screams made Trevar wince.

She instantly crumpled and twitched uncontrollably for several moments before finally rolling on her side.

"Don't worry, Lieutenant," Trevar told her. "It's just like getting tasered. You'll be alright in a few moments. We just had to make sure it was you."

"D-d-did y-y-you have to use so much juice?" she asked, gasping for breath.

"Sorry, but it was that or knock your ass out for a few hours," he replied. "And here comes Applejack and Big Mac."

"Yep, ya'll sure gotta passle of changelings," the orange mare said as they arrived. "Wait! Is that Rainbow!?" she demanded, rushing over to check on her.

"It's okay," Panthera said as she stood nearby. "She and the others are just sleeping off the effects of our eye beams. You brought the rope, I see. Are you sure that running them through the holes in their legs will hold them?"

"Wait! I told that ta Pardus!" Applejack exclaimed. "How'dju know wha Ah said 'bout tyin' up changelings?"

"What Pardus sees and hears, I see and hear. And vice versa," Panthera said smirking.

"So there's no way that a changeling can impersonate one of them," Trevar told them.

"Unless, the changelings impersonate both of them," Scott countered, speaking up as she managed to get to her feet.

"Well, they can try," Trevar replied smiling. "But I'll know the difference."

By the time Gilda returned with the purple alicorn, the white unicorn, the timid pegasus, and the pink menace, the changelings were all tied up with a few judicious ropes strung through their legs linking groups of them together.

"Lor—uh—Trevar!" Gilda called out. "I've brought the Princess and her friends! A dispatch has been sent to Princess Celestia informing her of the changeling attack."

"Good," he said nodding to her. "Unfortunately, you know what this means."

"D-do you have to?" Gilda nervously asked, dreading getting zapped.

"Afraid so, given the nature of the enemy we're facing," Trevar apologized. "The shadowcats aren't able to tell the difference by their senses, so…."

"What's going—EYAAaargh!" Twilight Sparkle screamed along with Gilda when Pardus suddenly appeared between them and draped a wing over each. At the same time, Pinkie Pie and Rarity screamed as Panthera did the same with them.

"What was that for!?" the purple alicorn angrily demanded as she stood there, fuming. Gilda, on the other hand was lying in the dirt.

"Had to make sure you weren't one of these changelings," Pardus told her as he turned to look at Fluttershy.

"Eeep!" the timid pegasus squeaked, backing away from the approaching shadowcat. "Uhmm … For your information, I hope you understand that I'mnotachangeling!"

"A wise individual once said, 'trust but verify'," Panthera said as she suddenly appeared behind the timid pegasus as the cat set a paw down upon her rump. "Nothing personal. We're just verifying."

"EEEEK!" Fluttershy screamed as the voltage played over her body. When it was over, she looked up surprised.

"Oh! That wasn't even as much as a normal lightning strike!" she exclaimed, giggling.

"I hate you," Gilda softly muttered glaring at the yellow pegasus as she finally struggled back to her feet.

"Gilda, I have a message for you from your father at the Embassy," Blood Feather said, walking up to her and pulling a scroll from under her wing.

Puzzled, Gilda took the scroll and opened it and read the contents.

"Lo—uh—Trevar," Gilda said addressing him, "I have to go see my father in Canterlot."

"It shouldn't be a problem. We've got everything in hand here," he replied. "Do you want me to send one of the shadowcats with you? Just in case?"

"No," Gilda responded. "No, you might need them more here," she finished.

"Okay," he said. "Just you take care, now. There are players starting to take things a little too serious in their game."

"I'll be careful," Gilda told him before launching up into the sky.

Twilight Sparkle looked over the ponies still out after Gilda was gone.

"Is there anything we can do for them?" she asked.

"We've made them as comfortable as we can," Trevar told her. "They should pull out of this in a few hours."

"So far, we've not had anyone die from the heavy stun setting," Pardus spoke up.

"We've seen what your eye blasts can do to timberwolves," Twilight scolded him. "What made you think it was a good idea to use those on Rainbow Dash and her fellow pegasi?"

"With those—timberwolves—Panthera was using lethal force," Pardus acknowledged with a nod. "Although, they resisted the normally lethal yellow force blast. It took the heat and higher settings to destroy them. We knew there was the possibility they were innocent ponies, so we used the strongest non-lethal force to apply. Although, in hindsight, it may have been wiser to have used the light stun setting. But we didn't want to have to repeat ourselves if we finally ran out of attackers only for the first ones we took down to jump up and start the fight all over again."

A couple hours later, Princess Celestia arrived in a chariot, accompanied by an impressive number of guards.

"Princess Celestia!" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed, seeing her old mentor arrive via chariot.

"Twilight, my dear," Celestia greeted as she stepped off the chariot to nuzzle her in return. "How goes it?"

"It looks like you're just in time," Panthera said. "They're coming around."

"Wh-what happened?" Sergeant Silver Thorn moaned as he woke. "What the hay hit m—Princess Celestia!?" he exclaimed after blinking several times.

"At ease, my little pony," Celestia kindly told him. "You've been through a harrowing ordeal."

"Ow! My head!" another figure called out causing everyone to turn to look. "Hey! Panthera! Wh-why did ya zap me?"

"I'm sorry I had to do that, Rainbow Dash," Panthera said to her, not bothering to correct the mare that it had been Pardus who shot her. "We couldn't be sure who was pony and who was an imposter."

"Really? You couldn't tell an awesome pony like me from a bunch of fakes?" the spectrum maned pegasus complained, making Celestia smile.

"They took you down the same as Sergeant Silver Thorn," Pardus muttered. "Sort of hard to see any awesomeness when she's face first in the dirt."

"Speaking of which," Silver Thorn grumbled, getting to his hooves, "where's the bug that sucker punched me?"

"That would be this one," Pardus said, pointing to one of the changelings that was beginning to stir in its restraints.

"Hey! HEY, YOU!" Silver Thorn yelled, grabbing the changeling by the shoulder with his hoof and giving it a shake.

"Where are the ponies you replaced? What'd you do with Shadow Wing?" Silver Thorn demanded.

"Now, Now. Th—that's really not important," the changeling replied with a grin.

"Who the HAY do you think you are!?" the sergeant roared.

"Who decides that the workday is from 9 to 5, instead of 11 to 4?" the changeling asked in response. "Who decides that the taillengths will be below the hocks this year and short again next year? Who draws up the borders, controls the currency, handles all of the decisions that happen transparently around us?"

"I don't know."

"Ah! I'm with them. Same group, different department," the changeling answered, grinning.

"What are you talking about?" Silver Thorn demanded.

"I mean, I'm from the government," the changeling replied. "And I'm here to help."

But before anyone could react to that cryptic response, the sound of something's roar interrupted the interrogation as everyone turned to see a large dark cloud approaching.

"What the hay is that!?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed, pointing, getting everyone's attention.

"A cloud of nanites," Pardus said.

"Another smoke monster?" Trevar asked, glancing at him. At Pardus' nod, Trevar's face turned grim. He took a few steps toward the approaching mass.

Suddenly, five long crystal spears shot up from the ground to pierce him through the chest from multiple directions. Someone screamed, but Trevar was too busy to worry about that.

'Fuck! This is going to blow a few covers!' Trevar sent to the shadowcats.

As his body began to react to the shock, Trevar couldn't help but notice a face beginning to form from the midst of the dark cloud.

"Celestia!" a voice boomed across the land. "How I wish I could repay you for what you did in forcing me from my throne all those centuries ago. But I can at least do you a favor. Now that this monkey is dealt with, I'll take my time with the two shadowcats. Then we'll call it 'even'."

"You bastard! You killed Kenny!" someone screamed as Trevar saw that both shadowcats had opened fire from behind him on the approaching dark cloud.

The face roared in response to the beams converging on it, but didn't seem fazed.

'"You killed Kenny"?' he heard Panthera send.

'Seemed appropriate at the time,' Pardus quipped.

With the spears through his chest, Trevar couldn't concentrate on changing. It was going to happen when his body expired and not before. Trevar figured that he would only have moments between popping the gateway before everyone present would see his dragon form. His only chance was to use his dragon form to mentally probe the entity and hope its mind could be scanned. Then before their eyesight had time to recover, he would have to revert to his human form.

Then it happened.

Surprisingly, not only did the approaching cloud have a mind that he could latch onto, but the entity seemed to be roaring in pain.

Quickly, Trevar sent his mind probing into it. It didn't take him long to find what he needed. This being was not only just as psychotic as the other smoke monster he and the cats had once fought years ago, but he was able to see this was no random encounter. This "Sombra" had been sent to assassinate both Trevar and the shadowcats. Furthermore, Trevar saw that this creature had some special talent in controlling crystals!

'Panthera! Pardus!' he quickly sent. 'You're especially at risk here! This being can take control of you if he finds out what you're made of! We've got to take this bastard down HARD and FAST!'

Trevar could sense the others present, and that their vision was about to recover enough for them to see him. He had only moments left. But it was important to goad his opponent. Despite the fact he was facing a being composed entirely of nanites, the creature believed itself still alive! And that was a weakness Trevar intended to exploit.

"Interesting. This one's also psychotic," Trevar broadcasted out with his mind, actually intending the message for Sombra. "I'm beginning to wonder. Was it due to the process of imprinting their engrams on the nanites, or were they psychotic to begin with? Either way, this one has to be taken down, too."

Then Trevar triggered the gateway and reverted back to his human form. And once more, the creature that called itself "Sombra" roared as if in pain.

"Shields!" Trevar shouted. He was working with the shadowcats at two levels, but he had to make it look like their coordination was verbal only.

Pardus projected a large flat and opaque disk, more than four hundred feet across, centered beneath the cloud of nanites. With Pardus' tractor beam lifting him, Trevar was set to stand on the edge of the disk before Pardus extended the opaque force field into a hemispherical dome to contain both him and the nanite cloud.

Now, it was up to Trevar to keep this thing occupied long enough for the shadowcats to ready the trap. He had to keep Sombra from figuring a way out of the shield. And a ready way out existed in the very being generating that force field!

If Sombra so much as gets a whiff of those two, it's 'Game Over!' Trevar grimly considered as he cautiously stepped forward. And why the hell has Discord sicced this bastard on us?

At the same time Pardus was extending the dome over Trevar and Sombra, Panthera began using her own tractor beam to rip up a few dozen yards' worth length, about a foot thick, of the road that ran toward the Apple family farm and lifted the mass of rock and dirt, gathering it and compressing it before blasting it with her eye beams optimized for applying naked heat to the mass. She kept the mass rotating in her grip as she pumped as much power into her eye beams as she could manage, trying to melt it all down.

Trevar's mental probing of Sombra had shown them all that the creature had an affinity for controlling crystals. With her and Pardus composed entirely of the substance Guinan and Gary Seven had called "diLithium", it would be very, very bad for everyone if Sombra got a chance to learn about that! Also, the trap they were making for him wouldn't work all that well if there was any solids left in the cage they were making when they put it inside.

The first step, Trevar keeping him too busy to bust out of Pardus' shield long enough for me to melt down all this rock and get that shitass inside it! she considered as she continued to pour on the fire into the mass of dirt. After that, I hope we can come up with someplace we can toss the bastard where he won't return!

"Oh, Sweet Celestia!" Applejack screamed. "Mah trees!"

Once he was isolated from their view, Trevar activated the Gateway to both have a physically superior form with which to fight with as well as the impressive senses the dragon gave him, especially the telepathic powers he possessed when in that form. In any fight, one needed all the advantages one can muster. Since this being still had a mind that he could access, he'd certainly need that advantage. Especially as his first glance gave him, this was going to be a fight that mattered.

As his awareness adjusted to his new body, he heard the fading screams of his opponent. Quickly, he sent his mind probing in to the creature's consciousness again. Much like the previous encounter with a being composed entirely of nanites, it seemed that using the Gateway always caused them pain.

The cloud had recoiled from him and settled at the opposite half of the hemispherical chamber. Like the earlier creature they had encountered on Earth years before, Trevar suspected this one's control of his form was affected by proximity to the low level residual EMP created whenever Trevar or his friends used their Gateways. Much further away, whatever dampening mechanism limiting the blast effects of their Gateway usage wouldn't bother the swarms. With their previous experience, Pardus had something to estimate the range needed to affect him and kept the space limited in size. While this close, Trevar could still inflict pain upon this "Sombra" character. However, Trevar knew normal physical attacks would be pointless. And with the barrier needing to be air tight to contain the cloud, flaming was out of the question.

But he had to keep him busy, Trevar fumed. Thirty or forty minutes, they estimate? he considered. Even without flaming, air's going to get a little tight in here!

'Pardus! What music do we have to go on for the time you need?' he sent.

'I'll come up with something in a moment,' Pardus responded. 'Keep him busy, but try not to engage him too quickly. If, as you surmise, he's under the delusion he's still a living being, then you can use that against him. Once he realizes what he really is, you'll lose that advantage.'

The being coalesced into a dark furred unicorn, and the two began stalking and circling one another in their enclosure, giving Trevar more time to look into his mind.

And just as his initial probe of this creature had indicated, Sombra was quite intelligent, However, his intellect was offset by a psychotic obsession to control others to the point of recklessness. This was another advantage that Trevar fully expected to use against him. Trevar knew how to play the raging beast while patiently and calmly looking for an opening to take full advantage of his opponents' weaknesses. And it looked like it was going to be another one of those types of encounters.

Why can't anything I have to fuck with ever be normal? he wondered. I HATE being a weirdness magnet!

"So! That scrambled idiot was telling the truth," Sombra growled. "The monkey was hiding a dragon after all!"

"'Scrambled idiot'? Who are you talking about?" Trevar inquired, feigning puzzlement. He was taking care to not reveal that he already knew the being called Discord, whom he had met a few days ago, was behind this attack. He had no desire to reveal he was a telepath and was already sifting through this creature's mind.

'Sombra's mind evidently somehow got imprinted upon a case of programmable nanites when he was seeking some rumors of an ancient relic he thought could give him ultimate power,' Trevar reported to Panthera and Pardus. 'But instead, his real body was destroyed when he released the mass from its containment.'

"Some mismatched monster," Sombra said snarling in response to his question. "I couldn't care less, but before I can resume my goals, I'm being forced to kill you."

Indeed, Trevar considered. With his link with Pardus, Trevar knew that outside, Sombra was using his powers to cause crystals to spear up out of the ground, targeting Trevar, trying to get through the base of the barrier they were in.

"'Some mismatched monster'? Well, that sounds like someone I might have met" Trevar said, moving his position back and forth around the perimeter of their confinement, slowly causing the pace to the right to be longer than his movement left, seeking to turn Sombra from a position that could put the shadowcats in the direction of its focus. The longer he could keep it from discovering a brand new type of crystal to control, the better for everyone on the planet.

"His name wouldn't happen to be 'Discord', would it?" Trevar inquired.

"I—never asked," Sombra snapped. The slight hesitation in its speech didn't go unnoticed.

"But you think it okay to just obey any random weird-looking thing that walks up to you and asks you to kill total strangers? Tell me, Jack. What's it feel like to be a slave?" Trevar chided. Oh! All the buttons that that has just pushed! he laughed to himself.

"YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS KING SOMBRA, PEASANT!" it roared.

"Heh!'King', is it?" Trevar asked smirking. "Okay, King Bob. Whatever you say, Fred. Still, it's a puzzle. What's it feel to be something's slave, King Larch? I mean, if you're a 'Kiiiing' … a real king, it must irk something fierce to have to go out and do the bidding of whatever some random thing that comes about and orders you about, doesn't it, John? Oh, I'm sorry, I meant, 'King Ivan'."

Sombra stood there, livid and fuming.

"Uh—George? Bugs? Duck Dodgers?" Trevar asked. "I'm really sorry about this, but I seem to have forgotten your name. What was it again? Was it Susan? Or—uh—Megan, maybe?"

"ENOUGH!" Sombra roared before firing off a blast from its horn, blasting Trevar in the chest.

The beam tore through his scales, his bone, instantly burning its way through his heart and out his spine.

For the second time today, Trevar died.

And in between his transformations to and from his human form, he knew it wouldn't be the last time.

Trevar flexed his wings to work out the painful memory of the injury in his newly reformed dragon's body. Even though all wounds he had suffered, and even death, was healed with each use of the Gateway, the memory of the pain such attacks caused could linger for hours.

Sombra's screams died away, and Trevar could also sense the unicorn's lingering pain whenever Trevar used the Gateway.

"Now that wasn't very nice," Trevar chided Sombra as though he were a child. "Sorry, but that really deserves a spanking." he said, grinning.

Fear! Trevar suddenly sensed from Sombra. There it is!

Trevar held his grin a few seconds, letting Sombra finally understand what he was up against.

Suddenly, Trevar launched himself forward and had swatted Sombra's form before the unicorn could blink. With any normal pony, that blow would have resulted in nearly every bone on his left side being broken. And indeed, despite being composed entirely of nanites, the structures they formed in his body were shattered. And Sombra, still believing he was alive, felt pain. And fear.

The former pony looked up at the dragon from where he had been smashed into the side of the barrier. All the bones in the left of his body were broken. The right side wasn't feeling too good, either. And the dragon stood were he had be, still grinning.

"Oh, I'm far from done with you, yet!" Trevar told him, before rushing forward again.

In desperation, the unicorn fired off another blast, this time catching Trevar full in the face. Only Trevar had been decapitated before. Like then, as now, a couple quick uses of the Gateway restored him. But because he was much closer to Sombra, the EMP disruptions to the signals controlling all those nanites were more intense. Sombra's screams of pain were longer as Trevar's dragon body reformed. So was the unicorn's fear.

And Trevar knew fear was an amplifier of pain. So much so, that one could mathematically track fear's effect on how it affected a person's perception of pain due to injuries. He even knew the moment "fear" became "terror".

On top of that, Pardus finally selected a bit of music to help Trevar out. At the first notes of "Eternal Saga" by Antti Martikainen, he could tell Sombra didn't appreciate it. Apparently, the unicorn had a bad experience with other ponies breaking out in song during the reign of his kingdom. Something about it disrupting his control over their lives and spontaneously starting a rebellion.

Had he more time, Trevar might have been interested in investigating that aspect of the creature's psyche. But he had to push away the memory of the pain experienced from that last blast, his body had stopped. However, once his mind was focused once more, he resumed his charge on Sombra.

Obviously not wanting a repeat of the Gateway being used so close to him, Sombra opted to erect a shield instead. It was only a delaying move. It wouldn't be long before Trevar had battered his way through it. And he let the music guide how his claws, wings, and tail sliced, pounded, and hammered at the crystalline and spiked barrier.

That was the advantage Trevar knew he had over Sombra. Trevar understood pain and fear. How one influences the other. Pain was the body's way of warning itself about injury and potential death. Fear was a way of warning one's self of pain. But when injury and death were no long something to be concerned about, one could ignore pain. And likewise, one can much easier ignore fear.

Martial artists used similar techniques all the time. While they weren't immune to death or injuries, they could suppress their fear, suppress their perceptions of pain to win the fight. But with the Gateway, Trevar knew he could take it one step further. Pain was illusionary. Fear was nothing. Injuries were of no consequence. Indeed, death itself was only a momentary inconvenience.

And at that moment, Trevar's bloodied claws had shattered Sombra's shield and tore through the unicorn's body, sending him around to yet another part of their confinement. With his barrel sliced open, Sombra stared at his body. Trevar knew Sombra thought that the "magic" device he had found centuries ago had given him a powerful healing ability. Even so, it was taking time for the nanites to reassemble themselves into the simulacrum of Sombra's once living frame.

"And now, you know terror," Trevar said, turning to walk toward the unicorn.

"Panth'ra! Ya gotta stop!" Applejack screamed, running up to the female shadowcat. "Tha' ball'o fire yer makin's scorin' mah orchard!"

"It can't be helped, Applejack," Panthera responded as she continued to focus her eyebeams into the slowly melting mass. But she did use her tractor beam to raise it up as far as she could to give a little distance between the liquefying blob and the trees. "I understand you've met that creature in there? Sombra's his name? Right?"

"Not directly, but close 'nough," Applejack replied, keeping an eye on her orchard. "Yeah! He wuz bad news, sure 'nough."

"You see those crystal spears he's still shooting up out of the ground? Apparently, that seems to be his specialty!?"

"But they ain't gettin' through tha' shield ya'll got up!"

"Don't you remember what your friend discovered about Pardus and me?" Panthera then asked. "If Sombra breaks out of there, or if he senses us, a few scorched trees are going to be the least of your worries! Pardus and I are helping Trevar as best we can. We're all hoping that Trevar can beat him down well enough so that we can stick him in there. And we're still trying to figure out what we're going to do with it once he's inside!"

"But mah trees!" Applejack protested. A few of them had already caught fire in their canopies.

"Which would you rather lose?" Panthera angrily scolded her, shutting down her eyebeams to glare at the farm pony. "A few trees? Or thousands of your fellow ponies?" she demanded before resuming her blasting the melting rock.

"And Trevar's got to keep Sombra busy for at least thirty or forty minutes!" Pardus said, speaking up, glaring at Applejack.

"Perhaps Celestia and I can help?" Twilight said, stepping forward.

"Shining Armor taught me his shield spell," the purple alicorn announced as she activated her power through her horn. A thick purple aura suddenly formed above the trees, between them and the glowing sphere of molten rock.

"Whoa! That's some serious heat there!" Twilight exclaimed once she had her shield in place.

"And I'm on th' fires!" Rainbow Dash yelled as she zipped in among the orchard and generated several mini-tornados around each of the burning trees, quickly snuffing out their flames.

Celestia also stepped forward.

"Do you think that your friend Trevar can truly handle a monster like Sombra?" she asked the shadowcats.

"Uh—Celestia?" the sweating purple alicorn inquired. "A little help here? Please?"

"As Sombra's finding out to its chagrin, Trevar's a lot harder to kill than it thought," Pardus replied with some amusement. "Of course, it's not easy for Trevar. But he's holding his own. For now. But we need to find a place to put him where that bastard won't be coming back. The problem is, sticking inside that lava won't do a hell of a lot of good. In minutes, it'll solidify again and he'll have plenty of crystals to use against us! Not to mention what happens should he find out about Panthera and me."

"Must we kill him?" Celestia asked. "It would be such a waste to lose the opportunity to reform Sombra. We were able to reform Discord, after all."

"Did you really?" Pardus asked, snarling. "I think we'll talk about that later. As for Sombra, I can tell you right now, he's already dead!"

"What!?" Celestia demanded.

"What Trevar is fighting is nothing more than a programmed cloud of nanites, a cluster made of machines so small, they might as well be a mass of smoke," Pardus explained. "Trevar has already confirmed that Sombra died centuries ago. Somehow, his mind was imprinted upon that cloud, but his body was utterly destroyed. Whatever Sombra used to be, that unicorn is gone! This thing is just a reflection of the being it thinks it is!"

The white diarch took a few moments to think about that.

"I see. Then might I suggest a location to put it once you've contained Sombra?" Celestia offered, tilting her head. Pardus looked at her and saw the white alicorn was looking at the other glowing orb in the sky. He grinned.

"Uh—Celestia? That rock is really, really hot!" Twilight Sparkle said. "I could really use some help holding up this shield!"

Celestia's horn began to glow. But she began sending a steady beam into the sphere Panthera held as well, heating it up much faster.

"Yipe!" the purple alicorn exclaimed. "Celestia?"

"Apologies, Twilight, but time is of the essence, " Celestia replied. "Try to hold up your shield us long as you can. I seriously doubt anything can stand hoof-to-hoof against Sombra for thirty or forty minutes. The quicker he can be imprisoned in that lava, the quicker he can be exiled into the sun!"

Inside, Trevar struggled to extradite himself from Sombra's telekinetic grip. Since the unicorn couldn't win by burning holes through the dragon or shield himself from attack, the unicorn finally chose to hold Trevar up against the side of their confinement. At least long enough for the magic he thought he had found could heal his body. After that, he'd look for some manner to kill that music so he could think again. Then he'd figure a way to kill the dragon and do so in a way that's not so painful for himself. At least that was his plan.

It made Trevar smile.

Sombra saw him smile and nervously gulped.

Trevar sensed Sombra was beginning to associate bad things happen when the dragon smiled.

Trevar knew about plans. Almost as well as he knew about fear, pain, injuries, and death. He's had his share of plans quickly go south. And he's had a hand and/or claw in making sure more than a few other's plans decide to move to sunny south beaches, too.

A flash.

The screaming starts again.

With the beam holding him up gone, Trevar's human form landed on the deck.

Another flash.

And before the screams could stop, Trevar was rushing forward at full speed.

"Bet you didn't think I could do that intentionally, did you?" Trevar quipped just before delivering an uppercut that flung the unicorn upward into the dome where he bounced off and landed behind the dragon.

'Okay! We're ready!' Pardus called.

"What!?" Trevar exclaimed. It was just coincidence that Sombra had elected to return to a dispersed cloud form at that moment in an effort to give his body time to recover.

'We're ready with our part of the trap,' Pardus announced. 'You can now spring your half.'

'Hmf! That was quick!' Trevar snorted.

"Oh, so now my form gives you pause, lizard!?" Sombra roared, assuming Trevar's hesitation was caused by him.

Okay … this works, Trevar thought with a shrug.

"Uh—flaming shit!" he exclaimed, feigning being terrified.

"N-n-no! Keep back!" he yelled, backing away from the nanite cloud. To emphasize his "fear", he coughed a couple of times as well as wheezed as though gasping for breath.

Thinking he had an advantage, Sombra considered the dragon cowering in front of him. Those flashes of light that seemed to instantly heal his opponent caused him intense agony in his dispersed form. He was a little more resistant when he had reassumed his normal pony form. It had been that pain that had forced Sombra to stay in a corporeal state, allowing the dragon's attacks to connect.

But if the beast was terrified of my smoke form? Sombra thought.

"Then I should choke the lizard!" a thought echoed in his head that sounded like his own inner voice. "Fill his lungs and crystalize him from the inside out!"

"Yes!" Sombra exclaimed, rushing forward.

"NO-O-O-O!" Trevar screamed, continuing to feign terror. Once he was enveloped, Trevar fought to hold his breath and acted as if he was struggling to find a way out. He mustn't let his "defeat" appear too easy.

Then Sombra began push his particles down into his tracea, the nanites irritated the dragon's throat.

Trevar knew there wouldn't be much of a window to act. He had to breathe in as much as possible before allowing the Gateway to trigger. Exhaling as much as he could, he paused to hold his breath again but with his lungs empty, to allow Sombra to resume the attempt to enter him in full force.

I've only got one shot at this, Trevar thought as he held back from breathing in the cloud.

He could feel the mass building deep inside his throat, waiting….

Then, when his body could no longer go without air, Trevar sucked in as much of the nanite cloud as he could. And instantly had to fight his body trying to cough it all out again.

Sombra roared in triumph over his opponent. But right then, he heard a voice inside his head. The voice that had sounded just like his own thoughts. And it was the same voice that had suggested this very move against the dragon.

"Sucker!" it said.

Sombra was confused.

Then Sombra noticed the dragon was smiling.

Again.

And then Sombra was terrified.

There was another of those damnable intense flashes of light.

The cloud, well the remaining mass of the cloud, instantly recoiled as Sombra screamed. At the far side of their confinement, the unicorn reformed. However, he was now missing his entire left foreleg as well as half of the right one. There were also noticeable gaps in his torso.

Trevar, back in his human form impassively took in the sight of the mentally crippled unicorn. In Sombra's mind, it was clear how his now missing mass had manifested as the functional components of his body.

After all this time, and even with Yoko, Bill, and his wife to study, even with the panthers and their avatars to scan, Trevar still had no idea just how the Gateway worked. For the effects it did, it violated several laws of physics, namely the inverse square law. Intensity did not drop off as the square of the distance from them. It dropped off in a Gaussian curve, starting at their skin. Within a few millimeters, the temperatures reached tens of thousands of degrees, instantly vaporizing anything within that distance. But a few feet away, there was barely a reading.

Of their bodies, there wasn't even a trace. Not to mention the additions or subtractions of mass. It was as if the Gateway was some sort of white hole from which their bodies were exchanged with one of the forms that they could assume, after being converted to and from pure energy. What the flashes and EMP they could measure was simply a residual amount of leakage from a very, very tightly contained Big Bang!

And all that mass that Sombra had shoved down his throat—well, wherever it was, it was in the same place and condition as that last dragon body he had used. What Trevar and the others did understand, was each body they got was a completely new and never-before-existed creature, in whichever form they chose when activating the Gateway. Nothing of those old forms existed, unless it got cut off at some point. Like one of his wings during that practice fight a few days back. And the same thing happened to anything within the confines of their bodies, whether it was already there. Or, if it happened to intersect where their new body would form, it was gone from the universe!

But then, before ending that practice session, he had cleaned up by taking the dismembered wing with him through the Gateway. It was totally gone when he had resumed his human form again. It seemed the Gateway "knew" when it was supposed to destroy something more than just a few millimeters out.

Everything of his new body was brand new. Except the memories.

Trevar had to fight the intense feeling he was still choking.

"Sorry, Sombra. But you're not the first smoke monster we've had to deal with," Trevar said snarling as he stood up. He then stepped back through the opaque barrier, leaving the still screaming unicorn there.

Outside, the dome had shrunk, leaving a lip for Trevar to stand upon. He saw the others still there: Panthera and Pardus, the two alicorns and their friends, the guards—wait—

'Where are the changeling prisoners?' he sent, and Pardus quickly glanced over to look, confirming they were gone.

'Shit!' Pardus exclaimed, returning his attention to Trevar. 'We'll have to worry about them later.'

He felt the shadowcat's tractor beam grip and he stepped off the platform as the shadowcat guided him safely down past the purple barrier covering the orchard and simultaneously shrunk the black barrier containing Sombra.

Once on the ground, Trevar let his body run out the coughing fit he had been fighting. He didn't need to watch to know that Panthera and Pardus traded off control of the molten mass as Sombra and Pardus' barrier was encased inside. Nor when Pardus shut off the barrier and allowed the molten rock to entomb Sombra's remains. Nor when Pardus launched up into the air, taking the lava blob with him, and rocketed up into the sky.

But neither did Trevar care. He was too busy, splayed out on his hands and knees, trying to hack up stuff from his lungs that were no longer there—and technically, never where. Not that the technicality really mattered.

All that mattered right now was the feeling of needing to clear his lungs. The coughing fit finally began to ease and he was able to gain some semblance of control over his body again by the time Panthera draped a wing over him.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get you inside. We can all use the rest!"

"Whoa! You fought King Sombra all by yourself?" Rainbow Dash exclaimed. "Awesome! How was that?"

"Not very pleasant," Trevar snapped. At the sound of Panthera clearing her throat, Trevar looked at the azure pegasus.

"S—sorry, Rainbow," Trevar apologized to the crestfallen mare, and then he had to deal with a renewed coughing fit. "I'll be alright in a few hours or so. But it's—not something I would recommend if you want to keep your health."

"Y-yeah," Rainbow replied. "Sorry 'bout buggin' you over it."

"Like I said, I'll be alright in a bit," Trevar said. "I just need to rest up for a while. By the way, has anyone else noticed the changelings are gone?"

"Wha—!?" Rainbow exclaimed, quickly looking over to where they were supposed to be. "HEY! THE CHANGELINGS'RE GONE!" she screamed.

When she did so, Applejack screamed, too.

"Mah rope!"

After that, it was pandemonium.

But Trevar no longer gave a shit as Panthera resumed guiding him home.

Much like the tactical nuke he had to dispose of the previous week, Pardus was having to eliminate the mass of encased nanites as quickly as possible. And again, he was going to have to run them in overdrive. The big difference was the mass he was hauling.

Where the nuke was only a little more than his own 100 kilograms, the molten blob was nearly 988 thousand tons! Not only that, but he needed to devote nearly half of his core power to his eye beams firing to maintain the molten temperature. Plus he needed some for his tractor field to continuously rotate it about so he could blast every square foot while he tried to not overtax his antigrav system while flying them both toward the sun.

Fortunately, as the mass was so huge, he knew his acceleration was going to be next to squat. Since he didn't need to protect either himself or the payload, he could afford to ignore putting any juice into his inertial dampeners. Besides, not only would the dampeners contribute practically nothing to being able to take it off the planet, but using them actually would rob him of thrust. Likewise for shields. So that left nearly the entire other half of his power supply to devote for lifting that bastard out of there.

As before, he could not immediately slam his systems with a full power output. Unlike electronic circuits, his components actually worked better when "hot", but there were limits. They needed time to warm up before taking on more power loads without risking total burnout. While his systems had the ability to self-repair, there were limits beyond which no amount of time would ever see restoration, just like any living organism.

And since he knew he might need to apply his full strength to his tractor beam at any moment, he did at least routed all his power through that system to warm it up and be ready, even though he was actually using only a fraction of the power to hold onto the molten mass in his grip, before dividing the power flow to his antigrav and eyebeams.

So, after enduring four minutes of an agonizingly slow increasing acceleration that finally reached 0.81% g, he had risen a measly 766 meters. But with his antigrav processors running at 228 kiloWatts, he was able to finally get out of "first gear".

Now, he actually started to see some payoff to the low, but steady jerk thrust he was applying. His velocity, now past 21 miles per hour, was starting to noticeably climb at this rate. Eight minutes later, "second gear" paid off with a respectable speed of 226 meters per second. Even so, at 43 kilometers, he had yet to break Mach 1.

But 115 seconds into "third gear", he finally did so. Even so, he still had almost another ten minutes before he could shift to "fourth gear". Fortunately, when he did so, he'd be well outside the planet's atmosphere.

And like his antigrav, his eyebeams were also slowly increasing in their efficiency. And just in time, too. The outer layer of Sobra's tomb was cooling down faster than he could maintain the heat. And there were disturbing wild crystal growths erupting from the shell that had formed. At least Sombra hadn't been able to yet sense Pardus … or if he had, the fact that Pardus was keeping the sphere randomly rotating on several axes at once in his effort to keep the reheating of the shell even was probably keeping Sombra from being able to lock onto him.

But now, like his antigrav, which was also in "third gear", he was able to pump well over 292 MegaWatts, which was also slowly increasing, into the mass. Wherever his beams struck now, the black shell was instantly glowing again, even if they were still solid at this point. Nearly halfway out of the atmosphere now at 46.76 miles and a thousand miles an hour.

But "third gear" had allowed him to nearly double the jerk he was putting on his antigrav from 1.5 to 3 millimeters per second cubed.

"Jerk"! he thought with a laugh. He had to mentally applaud the collective of scientists who had finally named the derivative of acceleration, as well as jerk's subsequent derivatives of "snap", "crackle", and "pop"! All the years he had grown up as Trevar, the derivatives were just mathematical features to the equation of motion, and rarely ever used, except in cases of changing acceleration. And even then, only if one could form a polynomial equation for that change.

But they had evidently done so sometime after he and Panthera were created. All those years the group had been together since Trevar first met Yoko kept them all so busy, none of them noticed when the scientific community had finally settled on naming them. And even so, there are many who still count those labels as "temporary" for not being "politically correct".

And now, after a total of twelve minutes of that level of increasing acceleration, it was time for "fourth gear". His eyebeams, at 2 GigaWatts, were clearly remelting that outer shell and keeping it melted, which was slowly robbing Sombra of crystals to grab and grow in his desperate effort to escape the molten interior of his prison. His slowly increasing acceleration had fully reached .3 g, and his velocity was still a measly 3552 miles per hour. But he was more than 375 miles up, well outside of the atmosphere and on their way toward the sun. Even so, it was a long ways to go. He was going to have to spend at least a quarter hour at "fourth" where jerk was nearly 4 millimeters per second cubed before pushing it up another notch.

At his best estimate, it was going to take him at least three hours for him to deliver Sombra there. He had already aimed for where Celestia was supposed to be putting the sun when they got there. Fortunately, Panthera was there to help them coordinate their movements. So far, Celestia was willing to cooperate. Even so, Panthera was reporting that the alicorn princess seemed on edge whenever Panthera addressed her.

Forty minutes after launch, the wild crystal growths from the mass were becoming short work for his eyebeams now running at 21.7 GigaWatts. He was more than 4000 kilometers from Equus, Sombra and his tomb were now moving away from the planet at 3.87 miles per second. Panthera was confident that even should Sombra managed to escape the lava, the cloud of nanites was either going into the sun, or he's flying out of the system completely. One way or the other, the fucker wasn't going to ever going to make a return appearance.

Still, Pardus wasn't about to relax. He's seen too many missions where something went south so unexpectantly, it was only sheer luck and quick thinking in using their abilities that managed to not FUBAR their friends, innocents, or the entire Earth. He wasn't about to allow something like that happen to this planet.

Even so, Sombra continued to direct wild crystal growths to suddenly jut up out of the liquid rock, desperately trying to escape the confines of the heat that threated to finish the job that Trevar had begun with tricking the creature to enter the dragon's lungs.

Trevar had reported that Sombra still behaved as though he were alive; that damage to the nanites and their connections to each other seemed to give him pain. Pardus could very well understand what Sombra must be experiencing right now. A good chunk of his body suddenly and violently gone. And before he could even come to grips with that, the rest of him now faced annihilation in thousands of degree heat. That sort of injury, pain, and the realization of his own mortality would not allow Sombra to evade fear.

Since becoming a dragon, Trevar had put a lot of study into the relationship between those elements in the psyche. While being stuck in that form, he had been forced to live in fear himself. But while hunting for food, Trevar discovered that he could use fear as a weapon against others.

The deer that he had taken down was still alive when he had begun eating. But after he had torn its rear leg off, he had to pause as his senses were overwhelmed with the dying animal's pain and terror. But instead of suffering as the deer did, those sensations seemed to go into another part of Trevar's mind: a part that he could call back up and relive … or … make others relive what the deer had experienced.

The first time that had happened, which was a few months after that particular hunt, the guy who had built a meth lab actually died of sheer fright. The experience had surprised and impressed Trevar greatly.

After that, Trevar spent months studying his own telepathic abilities and how he could find uses for that memory. As Trevar and Kelly Smith, the woman he had rescued from an attempted rape when he first woke as a dragon, pursued their Green Hornet-like agenda, he began experimenting with those telepathic powers.

Even with the ability to read an opponent's mind which gave him tremendous advantages over his adversaries, occasionally some were actually able to resist his mental probing. That was, until he started using the records of suffering, pain, and fear from that unfortunate deer and soon a growing list of others.

So, by the time Trevar finally encountered Yoko, and their subsequent battle caused Panthera and Pardus to awake in the same cave that Trevar had first awoke as a dragon, Trevar had actually come up with a quantified equation for the relationship of pain and fear—quite an elegant equation, actually:

P = ½F + ½(I + ⅕Tε^(3T/4)) + ⅙I*(½F + T*ε^(4T/5)), where P was pain, I was injury, F was fear, and T was terror.

His initial findings had made Trevar quite fond of his claim that "Fear was half of all pain". His early researched had pointed that way anyhow, until the day he found there was something else going on. When he began digging deeper, Trevar soon realized "terror" wasn't just amped up case of fear—it was a quantity all its own! They might have shared a close relationship, but "terror"—shear unadulterated "terror"—was as different from "fear" as "power" was to "energy" in physics. He still liked and used the phrase he had coined, even if it discounted the other factors he later discovered.

Afterwards, when Pardus questioned him about it, Trevar's response was, "Meh. A difference that makes no difference is no difference. Besides, explaining it takes too long, and it still ends up being more effective if they don't know. So there's always an upside to all that."

Speaking of physics, it was time for Pardus to shift to "sixth gear" as he had been in "fifth" for 20 minutes. It had been a full hour since he started hauling Sombra off the planet. They had just passed 11,000 miles, velocity was 10.95 miles per second, and acceleration had grown to 1.25 gs. Both his antigrav and eyebeams were processing 125 GigaWatts each. So jerk was increased to 5.27 millimeters per second cubed from its previous 4.6.

While injuries were something that could not be discounted, Trevar had realized the value of his discovery. "Fear" and "Terror", while they could be quite debilitating, they were also something that could be controlled. They were, after all, merely emotional responses to one's environment.

That understanding came in exceptionally handy during his first encounter with Yoko. When she came in to attack him, she used the very same telepathic assault on him! Fortunately, he was able to resist that illusionary fear. Even though he was still killed in that first meeting, the fact he was able to resist gave him the opportunity to turn her from being an exotic lackey assassin working for his enemies and into a valuable ally against them.

And the time was soon coming where they would fight again. On top of that, they were each going to have Bill and Sherry to contend with. Their companions, those like him and Panthera, were still in contact with each other, even at this distance. They were all aware that Trevar knew what they were going to be doing when they arrived. That Trevar had prepared for the encounter to come. And Pardus knew they were conflicted, even as he and Panthera were, about the secrets they kept hidden from their primaries.

There was the question of just what and how it happened to them all. Who had changed them and created the avatars? They all knew the answers. However, they were blocked from revealing them. The time was not yet, and the proper questions had to be asked before they would be permitted to tell. But Trevar, at least, understood. And accepted them.

Being a copy of Trevar's mind and actually being in the position to know what had created them and yet unable to speak it, both Pardus and Panthera appreciated the trust Trevar put in them. Bill was likewise pragmatic where it came to Canis and Lupus, while Sherry was somewhat accepting, she was still disappointed with her companions. But Yoko would often get into numerous shouting matches with Naga and Naja that could go on for hours until Trevar would intervene.

Unfortunately, at the moment, it was Bill, Sherry and their companions that were having to deal with Yoko as they all flew toward a fight none of the three primaries had any idea was coming. Pardus didn't envy his counterparts flying with them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Y-you'd *cough* better get back out *cough cough* there … co-coordinate with Celestia and—" Trevar couldn't continue verbally as a new bout of choking took hold, so he finished by sending to her, 'Pardus!' But even his ability to send was affected as his concentration was constantly getting broken.

"Are you sure you're okay by yourself?" she asked, to which he vigorously nodded. She left him lying on the bed to finish recovering on his own.

The distant sonic boom as she stepped outside the door signaled Pardus had just surpassed 75 kilometers. And she could see Celestia was clearly not pleased.

"I'm sorry, your highness!" the stallion guard sergeant profusely apologized after the evident berating she had been giving him was finished. "I’m at a loss to explain it. The corporal and the privates I put in charge of the prisoners are also missing!"

"More casualties, Princess Celestia?" Panthera quietly inquired.

"It would seem so," she angrily replied. "While we were all focused on what you and your brother were doing to Applejack's orchard, the changelings somehow cut their bonds and escaped! And somehow, without alerting anypony, managed to take the guards standing watch over them, as well!"

"Please note, Celestia," Panthera sternly responded, her hackles starting to rise at how it Celestia was implying their actions were somehow reckless. "We were rather busy trying to contain that creature! We truly regret any collateral damage that may have caused, but you will please also note all those crystal spears shooting up out of the ground all over the place out there? We had nothing to do with that, but instead, that could've been my brother and me! Or worse, given what Trevar communicated to us while he fought that thing—he might have taken control over both of us! Just imagine what we could do if our powers were suddenly turned against you!" The astonished look the white alicorn had told Panthera she had the ruler's attention.

"Now, whatever you just thought of, multiply it!" Panthera snarled, showing off her teeth. "Believe me, you have no idea what we're capable of! But if that power fell into Sombra's—paws, you would have quickly found out!"

"I—apologize," Celestia finally said, dipping her head.

"Apology accepted," Panthera likewise replied. "However, that danger still may yet come to pass. Pardus is currently hauling that thing toward the sun. But the entire time he's out there with it, he's still in that creature's range of control and in danger of being taken over at any moment."

"I see," Celestia responded. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Pardus and I know your schedule to move the sun," Panthera said. "He's anticipating a three hour flight to deliver Sombra there, so he's headed for where you're supposed to put it for the three o'clock hour. But—"

"'But'?" Celestia inquired.

"But, there's still the risk," Panthera continued. "Should he be forced to do so, he's prepared to fling Sombra as hard as he can so as to avoid capture. We may need to ask you to adjust the sun's position to catch the rock."

"I see—" Celestia said, trailing off. Then she chuckled. "Once again, I'll have to endure the complaints about not being an accurate time keeper for weeks to come."

"Oh?" Panthera asked.

"Ever since my sister and I had assumed our duties over the sun and moon, we've been criticized for every deviation from the scheduled movements," Celestia explained. "Despite seeing firsthoof the devastation Discord made when he first escaped his imprisonment, you should have heard the hue and cry over the mess he made of the sun and moon's schedule—but it wasn't him the papers complained about. No. It was the fault of my sister and me."

Panthera pondered that for a few moments. Then she smiled. A big toothy smile.

"In case you have to deviate, would you like me to provide them the reason as to why it was necessary?" she asked. And the offer definitely had an impact. Celestia was clearly considering it. But finally, the alicorn shook her head.

"As tempting as that might be, no, that won't be needed," she said, declining.

"Are you sure?" Panthera asked. She looked down at the ground and sent out a red eyebeam to score the road surface before looking back up at Celestia. And smiled. "I so rarely get an opportunity to make a public appearance. I wouldn't mind."

"So tempting!" Celestia muttered. "But, no. And thank you for the offer."

"Just say the word, I can be there."

"'Wor—'" Celestia instantly began, but stopped herself. Then burst out laughing, with Panthera joining in. "That's seriously tempting offer. But Luna and I will manage. Thank you, Panthera."

"Speaking of Discord," Panthera began, returning to a serious subject. "That's the strange mismatched creature we met when we arrived at Twilight Sparkle's castle, correct?"

"Indeed," Celestia replied.

"Interesting," Panthera said. "While Trevar was keeping Sombra busy, he learned that Discord was responsible for this encounter."

"What?" Celestia exclaimed. "How?"

"Mentally probed Sombra while they fought."

"Trevar can do that?" Celestia asked, clearly astonished.

"Trevar can do a lot of things," Panthera told her. "And yes. He can do that. We would all be very interested in finding out why."

"So would I," Celestia growled.

"I'm so sorry, Celestia," Twilight Sparkle said, stepping over to them. "I should have been keeping an eye on the changelings."

"Nonsense, Twilight!" Celestia scolded her. "You were busy with the shield protecting the orchard. Besides, there were three guards on them, and they disappeared, too!"

As Celestia and her friends began to confer, Panthera spied Lieutenant Scott standing by herself, looking to be in shock.

"Are you okay, Lieutenant?" she inquired when she stepped into the woman's view.

"H-how—how did—how did he—?" she stammered.

"Easy, Lieutenant. Easy," Panthera said, reaching a wing out to drape over her shoulders. "Calm down. There nothing to fear, now that that cloud of nanites is gone."

Scott looked sharply at Panthera.

"How can you even say that!?" she exclaimed. "I saw him stabbed through the heart five or six different ways! He should be dead!"

"That may explain a little of why we like him," Panthera put forward. "Trevar is an intriguing creature."

"You're kidding! Right?"

"A little," the shadowcat said, grinning. "What matters is he's on our side.

"Really?" Scott challenged. "He's not even human! How can he be on 'our side'?"

"I'm not exactly 'human', either, if you've happened to notice," Panthera reminded her. "But he did get through saving both this world and yours from being destroyed. And just now, he fought off a creature that had once enslaved an entire nation on this one. And yet, Trevar has asked nothing from anyone in return."

"He's fucking every griffon in sight!" Scott protested.

"By their request, not his," Panthera replied. "Yes, he could have declined. But does it really matter that he allowed himself to be seduced and accepted their offer? It doesn't make him a monster."

"…" Scott tried speak. "But getting stabbed through the heart like that … and surviving … "

"What's wrong with that?" Panthera inquired. "So that makes him something other than human. But look at me. I am what you see. No other creature on this world, besides Pardus, can do the things I can. Yet, do you fear us because of what we can do? Or do you fear us after we have acted as your friend to this day?"

Scott had no reply, but her face spoke volumes of her inner conflict.

"Then what difference is it for Trevar to do the same?" Panthera challenged. "Perhaps as a species, that he is different from you, it makes no difference. His actions, as do ours, is what matters. And the fact is we do care. We're here to help. That we have a little fun along the way isn't important. We're certainly not abusing our privilege.

"That he survived that attack is something we should be thankful for," Panthera went on. "Pardus and I certainly are."

"Where had Pardus gone?" Scott inquired.

"He's hauling Sombra off to the sun," Panthera replied. "He's got at least another two-and-three-quarters hours' flight to go."

Just then, Panthera spied two figures coming in from the vicinity of the crystal tree castle. Mittens and Screaming Eagle.

"Greetings, Princess Celestia," they announced when they landed. "We saw there was something strange going on here. We came as soon as we got relieved."

"Greetings, Lieutenants Mittens and Screaming Eagle," Celestia responded. "I do regret to inform you that we have an ongoing problem involving changelings, as well as another crisis that has just been resolved. As a result, I would request you submit to a scan."

"Of—of course, Princess," Screaming Eagle agreed. At that moment, Panthera came up between them and spread her wings over each.

Screaming lived up to her name. And Mittens was rivaling her for it.

"Scan completed," Panthera happily announced. "They're real."

"That really wasn't necessary, Panthera. The spell I was going to use is painless," Celestia muttered.

"Oh?" Panthera asked, intrigued.

"C-coul-couldn't you have waited for P-Pr-Princess Celestia to cast it?" Mittens asked, glaring at the shadowcat.

"Sorry about that. Oh, and by the way, congratulations," she said to the griffons. "You're both pregnant."

"Wh—wha—WHAT!?" Both griffons exclaimed.

"I'm detecting four zygotes implanted in each of your wombs," Panthera explained.

He'd been in "seventh gear" for about twenty-five minutes. Three more, and he be able to bump it up yet another notch. His acceleration was at 28.625 meters per second squared and still slowly climbing. But at least there were only 720,000 kilometers to go. And at 1.5 TeraWatts, his eyebeams were now melting the crystals forming in the lava faster than they could develop, and deeply heating the blob of lava at that, which was rapidly depriving Sombra of both ammunition to fight back with or a means of escape.

It was hard to imagine it was only a week ago he had been out this way, playing with a few boulders trying to figure out this system's crazy gravity field.

To date, this was the weirdest assignment they've ever been on. Indeed, this Sombra character was refreshingly "normal".

At that moment, Pardus felt pain, so intense it made him scream. Or he would have screamed had there been any air out there. Crystals were suddenly shooting out of his body from various locations.

He fought to get control of his body once more, instantly knowing it was the creature he had been transporting. Immediately, he gave the molten mass a tremendous kick with his tractor beam, setting it spinning at a high rate in a few more random axes in his effort to evade Sombra's grab at him.

However, Pardus suspected he, himself, was the cause of the attack. By depriving Sombra of any crystals with which to play with, his desperation to grab anything was reaching out to find anything to work his power on, which left only the shadowcat's body within his reach!

When the attempt to disorient Sombra didn't work, Pardus had no choice but to fling the bastard off toward the sun with as much force as he could muster. He burned out his tractor beam system, but he managed to give Sombra a 2257 g kick to send him on his way. Unfortunately, it was where the sun was at that moment. If Celestia moved it on schedule, he'd miss. Their success now depended upon Panthera convincing the alicorn to let the sun stay where it was for another hour. Or the bastard would eventually become someone else's problem in a few million or billion years.

Once the blob was on its way, the pain immediately began to lessen. It still hurt, but he was now out of Sombra's reach. Now, he could focus on trying to regain control of his own body's components. Aside from how it felt, it was most aesthetically unappealing to have shards jutting out at all angles from everything.

Fortunately, no critical systems were compromised, and he began decelerating and veering off above the equatorial plane to avoid flying into the sun should he lose consciousness before he could regain control and fix himself. Naturally, he informed Panthera and Trevar. Panthera let him know she would be on her way to rendezvous with him as soon as she could.

Despite the pain that was threatening to make him pass out, he fought to keep his vision focused on Sombra's tomb as it continued on toward the sun. They needed confirmation that the bastard was properly dealt with.

Still, the pain was too great, and he couldn't help but close his eyes and rest. Sombra wasn't going anywhere. A few minutes later, his eyes snapped open in a panic.

Awww, shit! I seriously fucked up just now!

After conferring a bit on coordinating the situation going on in space, Panthera left Celestia to devote her time to Twilight Sparkle and her friends in doing what they could to help on the damaged trees, as well as oversee the work of her guards who were sent out to look for any sign of the changelings.

In a couple of hours, those guards eventually came back to report they had found the missing ponies whom the changelings had replaced, including the Lunar Guard, whose absence started this fracas, as well as, strange as it seemed, the guards who had been assigned to watch over the changeling prisoners!

But then, Panthera got a call from Pardus.

"I'm sorry, Princess, but Pardus has run into a little problem," Panthera spoke up. "He's been forced to retreat from Sombra's vicinity and he needs you to adjust the sun's position."

"Where does he need me to move it?" Celestia asked.

'The other side of the planet,' came the response when Panthera relayed Celestia's question.

"WHAT!?" Panthera vocally screamed, glaring up in the direction her sensors told her Pardus was located.

"Come again?" Celestia inquired.

'When he made a grab for me, I—may have—tried to throw him straight for the sun' Pardus sent.

'What did you do?' Panthera growled, knowing it wasn't going to be good.

'I panicked, okay, bitch?' Pardus responded. 'Like I said, I threw him straight at the sun.'

'And…?' Panthera stressed.

'… And … I forgot to take into account the vectors that thing was already under,' Pardus admitted. 'It's not only going to miss where the sun is now, it's going to miss where it's going to be when it gets there.'

"SHIT!" Panthera yelled, making Celestia blink in surprise.

'Hey! Lay off! Shit was hurting like nobody's business,' Pardus protested. 'Still is, in fact. I've got crystals growing out of places you'd rather not think of!'

'Bloody fuck!' she cursed.

'With some of these crystals sticking out of me, it certainly would be,' Pardus snapped back. 'Also, my tractor beam is fried. I was able to vector myself off of the equatorial plane, so I'll miss the sun, but my antigrav is now off-line as well as a few other things. Most of that should fix itself with any luck, although I'm really concerned about the tractor beam.

'Fortunately, Celestia only needs a slight adjustment to where she'll put the sun at three o'clock for Sombra to bullseye it,' he finished.

"Sorry, Princess," Panthera apologized after the few moments of their exchange and she finally got the updated telemetry from him. "My brother was being a snarky troll just now. We need you to adjust the sun's position just short of your normal full 15 degrees. We need it moved just 14.087."

"Hmm," Celestia said, considering. "I'll still get complaints for that, but it shouldn't be too bad."

"The bad news is, you'll need to hold it there for the next two and a quarter hours," Panthera told her. That made the alicorn blink.

"He said that when Sombra made a grab at him, he was forced to throw him on a wild trajectory. Unfortunately, they were still too far out to make it to the sun any sooner than that."

"I can see why you screamed just now," Celestia muttered.

"Actually, that was when he told me he needed you to toss the sun to the other side of the world," Panthera sheepishly told her. The admission made Celestia laugh. "Anyhow, I've got to go get him. He's hurt up there and doesn't think he can make it back on his own," she said rising up.

"Wait!" Celestia called.

"Don't worry," Panthera called back. "Trevar can let you know if the sun needs any further adjustments. He's almost recovered from his ordeal and he can relay any messages between us." Then she was on her way, breaking Mach 1 right over the orchard.

"Really, girls. It's just a matter of time for me to recover," Trevar told the griffons who were each offering different remedies to his coughing.

"Thank you anyway," he said to Screaming Eagle as she insisted he take the water she was holding. The water did at least soothe his irritated throat.

"Can—can you not try that—uh—that thing—you did with Screaming and me?" Mittens suggested.

As he drank from the cup, Trevar saw the expression on Blood Feather's face and almost choked anew from the urge to burst out laughing. He knew to what Mittens was referring to, but Blood Feather obviously thought it was something else entirely.

"Actually, I was doing that throughout my fight with Sombra," Trevar told them when he could, knowing the image that statement was going to cause to appear in Blood Feather's mind would be hilarious. "It was the only thing keeping me alive."

"Oh," Mittens softly replied. "I see."

With the concerned and serious expressions on Mitten and Screaming Eagle's faces coupled with the innuendo of the words said as interpreted by Blood Feather's mind, it was a crime that neither Panthera nor Pardus were there to record it.

He heard raised voices coming from outside. Or rather a raised voice. When Trevar stepped over to the window to look out, he saw that Gilda was back from Canterlot. And from her expression and animated gestures she had as she spoke with Celestia and Twilight, they told him she was being updated with the latest news. And Rainbow Dash was evidently jumping into the discussion, raising her own voice with Gilda. It was looking like those two were about to go to blows over something at any moment.

"I'd better go out there and hose a few folks down," he sighed. "You girls wait here. I'll be right back," he said as he stepped out of the house.

"Hey, Gilda! Welcome back!" Trevar called out as he walked up to the four of them. "You missed quite a bit of fun while you were away."

"Lord Trevar!" Gilda exclaimed. But at Trevar's arched eyebrow, she contritely apologized. "Sorry. I'm glad you're alright!"

"I'm well, for the most part," Trevar said, nodding to her. "And Rainbow, I do apologize for snapping at you earlier. As I mentioned, going up against Sombra isn't conducive to one's health. It was tons worse than dealing with a room filled with second-hand cigarette smoke. But I am feeling much better now." Although, he was still forced to cough from the memory. "And like you said, winning that fight was rather awesome," he said, grinning, and that made the pegasus mare grin in return.

"You'd better come along, Gilda," Trevar said to the griffon. "We've got a few matters to discuss.

"Oh, and Princess Celestia?" Trevar spoke to her before leaving, "I've just been informed by Panthera and Pardus that Sombra did managed to break out of his tomb, but only at the last moment before the rock impacted into the sun. He was still caught by the splash back. I don't think he'll be bothering us anytime in the future."

"Yes, I did sense the boulder's impact," Celestia replied. "It is good that Sombra didn't escape. Although, I do regret the loss of life."

"Don't you remember? I know Pardus relayed to you that I found out the real Sombra died centuries ago, when his body was destroyed by that cloud," Trevar told her. "That cloud merely held an echo of his mind. He was nothing more than a ghost simply being laid to rest after all this time."

"Yes. Yes, that's true," Celestia agreed.

She looked up and powered up her horn, and in seconds, the sun had moved to settle next to the horizon.

"Umm—" she started to speak, but apparently changed her mind.

"Something else?" Trevar asked.

"Nothing important. I'll speak of it to Panthera when I next see her," Celestia said, shaking her head.

"Well, it's going to take her and Pardus a while to get back here," he told her. "I can relay your request and you can get the reply right away."

"I—am going to have questions to answer when I get back to Canterlot," Celestia explained. "I was going to ask if her offer to accompany me when I spoke to the reporters was still valid." Trevar grinned.

"She wouldn't have made that offer if she wasn't sincere about it," Trevar replied. "Of course she'd be willing to speak to them. It's regarding the lousy timekeeping you're doing right now, isn't it?"

"Yes," Celestia said grumbling.

"Don't worry. She'll be happy to accommodate you," Trevar replied.

"If you are sure?" Celestia confirmed, to which Trevar nodded. "I'll hold the press off until tomorrow morning, then. Would nine o'clock be good?"

"No problem," Trevar assured her before leading Gilda back to the house.

"I—I'm—very sorry, Lord Trevar," Gilda stammered as soon as the door was shut. "I—I should not have squandered the op—the opportunity—to—mate with you! If—if you and Blood Feather have no objection, I'd—I'd—"

Trevar was stunned. The wretched expression Gilda wore on her face told him she was still not wanting to do that with him, and the expressions on the faces of the other griffons told him there was something much more going on than just a simple agreeing to an action by a lesbian daughter that may have been scolded at by a father wanting her to mate with a male so she could pass on children.

"Alright!" he interrupted. "Just what the hell is going on?" he demanded. "I can understand Gustav wanting me and the shadowcats contribute 'fresh blood' into your gene pool. But there's something more going on, isn't there?"

"You—you know?" Gilda asked, but she was clearly not asking Trevar but the other griffons. "You all know about—about the eggs?"

Whatever the back story behind her question was about, the abashed looks on their faces told Trevar, as well as Gilda, that they did indeed know what was going on.

"Well, I think it's time I heard what's going on as well," Trevar said, crossing his arms to glare at them.

"It—it started with the last war we had with the ponies," Blood Feather began. "When we lost. Again."

They all took turns chiming in, but the picture they painted for Trevar was clear: the griffon species was dying out. Lack of genetic diversity and generations of forced inbreeding due to such a low population was beginning to take its toll. The high percentage of physical deformities and failed hatching was only the latest sign. This little detail had been left out of the meeting that Panthera had had with Gustav and the griffons the other day.

It was no wonder that Gustav had been so desperate to not allow Trevar or the shadowcats to escape without providing some means of aid to them, that his panic nearly started a new war with Celestia. Only a handful of griffons knew the truth at the moment: The emperor, Gustav, their aids, the griffons assigned to Trevar, and a couple others. Sooner or later, however, word would eventually get out to the general public. And when it did….

"This is much more than just wanting a little extra genetic diversity!" Trevar exclaimed when they were finished. "You guys need us to repopulate your entire species! With just the six of you? Even if we're successful to getting you all pregnant, it wouldn't be long before your species would be in even worse shape than it is already!"

"But what else can we do?" Screaming Eagle asked.

"You guys need help!" Trevar told them. "Real help! I don't have the knowledge you need, and neither do the shadowcats. Perhaps Celestia—?"

"NO!" All four griffons screamed in unison.

"If we involve the ponies, word will get out to the griffon public—!" Blood Feather yelled.

"It's a state secret—!" Gilda exclaimed at the same time.

"Griffons will go to war en masse—!" Mittens cried.

"It would end us all—!" Screaming Eagle yelled.

"There's got to be a way to fix it!" Trevar protested. "But there's just no way to do it by following the route you guys are taking!"

"Please, Cat-Lord!" Screaming Eagle pleaded.

What IS IT with this "Cat-Lord" shit? Trevar wondered as the title they conferred upon him made him scowl.

"I promise I will help!" Trevar growled. "But I can't do this alone! Panthera and Pardus are almost back. As soon as they arrive, I'll have Panthera fly me to speak with Gustav. Gilda, I want you with me. With any luck, the three of us can talk some sense into him!"

"M-me?" Gilda stammered.

Pardus was able to fly under his own power as they came in for their landing. Panthera headed straight for the house as they both had been updated on the current situation by Trevar while they were on approach.

There was a new set of Lunar Guards on duty for Panthera to contend with, as well as both Day and Night princesses there on site.

"I see that 'normal' got fucked over again," Pardus muttered to himself as he watched her deal with identifying herself before being allowed to enter.

Turning, he looked out at the nine ponies and the infant dragon working on the damaged trees in the orchard.

"Hey! The shadowcats are back!" Rainbow Dash called out before flying over to greet him. But she recoiled in shock at the sight of his wings just as she was landing before him. "Whoa!" she exclaimed. "Dude! That's gotta hurt!"

"That, it does," Pardus admitted, smiling as most of Rainbow's friends joined them. "But injury is only half of the pain. I have to admit, though. As much as it hurts, it does looks wicked," he said, glancing over one of his wings and the crystal shards jutting out at all angles all over it. "Maybe I should start calling myself 'Crystal Wing'."

"How can you still fly?" Twilight Sparkle asked.

"Magic," Pardus replied, making the purple alicorn blink.

"Wait! It doesn't work that way!" she protested. To which, Pardus simply rose up a foot to hover over the ground.

"'Magic'," Pardus repeated. "It means, 'I ain't gotta 'splain shit'." But then he blinked before dropping back to the ground. "Or is that what you say for science? I forget."

Twilight Sparkle looked indignant. Pinkie Pie, however, was rolling on the ground laughing. Rainbow Dash also was chuckling.

"Oh, dear! That evil Sombra did that to your wings?" Rarity asked.

"Not just to my wings," Pardus admitted. "But I was able to reverse what he did to the rest of me before I got back here. To be honest, I'm taking the rest of the night off and worry about the wings in the morning.

"But I'm afraid I'm still going to have a scar or two coming out of this that aren't going to go away," he muttered, thinking of the damage to his tractor beam components.

"Come again, sugarcube?" Applejack inquired, stepping over to join them. "Ah couldn't help but hear some of what ya was sayin'. Sorry 'bout yer injuries."

"Sorry about the damage to your orchard," Pardus replied. "It just couldn't be avoided. Is that your grandmother there with Big Mac and Applebloom?"

"Shore is," Applejack proudly told him. "Come. I'll introduce ya."

"Maybe later, after I'm rested up a bit and had a chance to do something about these," he said, glancing at his wings. "If there's anything I can help you with later, after I've rested?"

"We could use a bit more help removing those crystals," Applejack said, sighing. "Poor lil' Spike's been gorgin' himself tryin' ta eat 'em all. But there's more'n he can handle."

"Well, they can wait for Spike to digest what he's eaten already," Pardus said. "There's no more Sombra, so those crystals can't get any bigger."

"Oh, but of course they can!" Pinkie Pie objected. "Rocks grow all the time. And crystals are just specialized rocks."

"Wait—? What—?" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed, looking at the pink earth pony.

"Huh? I thought you knew, Twilight," Pinkie told her. "That's how rock farms work, after all!"

Everyone just stood and stared at Pinkie Pie for several minutes, not saying anything.

"I'm gonin' ta bed!" Pardus suddenly announced, turning away and leaving them there.

A few hours after Celestia sent the sun to the other side of the planet, Q arrived on the photosphere. With his eagle talon, he pulled what was left of Sombra up from the depths. Refusing to let the king perish, Discord once more restored him to life.

"I told you what would happen if you failed me, Sombra!" Q snarled into the unicorn's terrified and pained face.

"P-pl-please!" Sombra screamed. "M-make it stop!"

"Nope," the draconequus said, shoving the still screaming king back into the swirling fire. "Back in you go! You'll get to endure my displeasure for all eternity. Buh-bye!" he finished with a wave of his paw.

He sighed as he rolled over onto his back and looked out toward the planet the sun was orbiting, idly swirling his eagle talon in the boiling silicon plasma.

"I've really got to stop plagiarizing my lines," he groaned, rubbing the bridge of his muzzle with his lion's paw. "'Burning eternal in a lake of fire'? Pft! That idea's been done to death!"

"You know, that was my favorite character," the P announced his presence by yelling at him. "And the producers promised he'd get to shine again this coming season."

"Well, he is shining right now, if you think about it," Q cheerfully said, pulling out an object from the plasma soup to hold up in front of his eyes. From there, the P was able to see it was a thermometer. "He's shining at about … oh … 5693.35 Kelvin. So the producers haven't lied," Discord said snickering. "They just didn't read you all the fine details. Time to roll up a new character, I'm afraid."

"Really, Q," P grumbled. "I don't know what you were expecting, but everyone here told you that using my Sombra against Trevar was going to be a bust. There's nothing we've got that will affect something engineered by them. Only their technology can affect their technology."

Q merely grumbled his annoyance.

"Anyhow, I'm out of here," P said, walking off in a huff. "Like you said, time to roll up a new character. Hmmm … maybe I'll go with a talent-stealing pony … ? Might as well go for a mare, this time. They're always more popular. Oh, and this means I'll have to come up with some sort of backstory for her. But I suck at making those! I never did get around to doing a decent backstory for Sombra…." P was saying; his voice fading away as he departed.

"Yeah, yeah. See ya," Q said, absently waving off behind himself. He sat there thinking.

"Only their technology can affect their technology," he muttered to himself several minutes later, repeating what P had told him.

Then his eyes got big.

"Only their technology can affect their technology!" he suddenly exclaimed. Then Q smiled. "Or—even better yet—use one of them! Brilliant!" he shouted.

With a snap of his lion's paw, he vanished from the surface of the sun.

Moments later, Q appeared in Twilight's castle.

"Gyaahh!" Spike exclaimed, startled out of his late night pilfering of the refrigerator. "Discord! What are you doing here?"

"Hello, Spike," Q said, smiling.

Gustav had been working several hours late into the evening. It was just him, his secretary, and a couple of guards there in the embassy at the moment. They caught him as he was about to lock his office door.

"Good evening, Ambassador," Trevar announced as he unmounted Panthera and stood up to greet the griffon. Their sudden appearance as they decloaked startled all four griffons, causing their feathers to suddenly puff out and making their avian halves look twenty percent larger.

"Cat-Lord!? Panthera!" Gustav exclaimed, quickly getting over his surprise. "What an honor! Please! Please, come in!" he offered, reopening the door.

"To what do I have the honor for this visit?" Gustav asked once they were secure inside, leaving his staff members alone to deal with their shock. "Not that I'm complaining. It's certainly my pleasure to meet you both again. Has Gilda here agreed to please you as I asked her to?"

"Yes, she has. And that's brought up a little matter which prompted my visit," Trevar admitted.

The previous hour, the moment Pardus and Panthera entered the house, Trevar and Gilda accompanied Panthera to the bedroom upstairs, where Trevar climbed aboard Panthera's back and Gilda got to experience the shadowcat's cloaking field, tractor beam, shield, and flight all in one go.

"Panthera, here," Trevar continued, "is also here to help you with developing the encryptor device so that you and your emperor can communicate with me. That said, there is also a matter I need to discuss with you."

"Of course! My pleasure! My pleasure," Gustav continued gushing about meeting Trevar, and it was starting to grate on his nerves.

"First things, Ambassador," Trevar said with a sigh. "Please. Tone down the effusiveness. And most certainly, stop with this 'Cat-Lord' business. I don't even know what that's supposed to be about, even as the girls you've sent over tried to explain it to me."

"I—I'm—sorry," Gustav stammered, unsure as to what was wrong. He looked to Gilda for an explanation.

"It's not that I don't feel honored by you sending them to me," Trevar told him, getting straight to the matter. "If anything, they're quite appealing, in both carnal and social interactions. They're all very charming, and I feel very honored to have the opportunity to enjoy their company. But—there is a very serious matter that's just been brought to my attention. You and I really need to talk about it!"

"I—I don't understand," Gustav replied. "If you're pleased with them, then what's wrong?"

"Evidently, the real reason why you've sent them to me," Trevar replied.

"I—I thought I explained the reason to you," Gustav protested.

"Not to such great detail as I just got from Gilda and the others," Trevar explained. "I thought you just need a touch of genetic diversity. I'd no idea you needed me to help repopulate your entire species! As enjoyable as trying to do so might be, even if I'd be here for a hundred years there's just no way that I'd be able to make an impact to your hatching problems. You need some real help in solving this. Not a band-aid."

"We—we have no other option, Cat-Lord," Gustav sadly said.

"Have you spoken to Celetia?" Trevar inquired.

"Ab-absolutely not!" Gustav exclaimed.

"Why not?" Trevar demanded.

"It—it—it," Gustav stammered. He had to stop in order to nervously swallow. "It would be the ultimate humiliation—to what we suffered—as a result of losing all those wars with them," he admitted, beginning to openly weep. "Y—you're the Cat-Lord! You should understand. We're your children and we failed you! We failed miserably!"

"Pride is what's stopping you?" Trevar asked, to which Gustav nodded.

"Pride's sure as hell isn't going to solve it for you," Trevar admonished. "Pride is what caused this mess to begin with and pride is what's going to cause your species to go extinct! You're not responsible for any fuckups done by your ancestors. But you do have to deal with the consequences."

"I—I know," Gustav admitted.

"Then ask Celestia for help," Trevar told him. "I have a good reason to suspect that she has the knowledge that can help. Or I'm certain she can find it."

"I—I—can't!" Gustav exclaimed as he collapsed to the floor. Trevar and Panthera both rushed up to comfort him.

"Easy, Gustav," Panthera instructed.

"Hey! Do you consider Celestia to be your friend?" Trevar asked, and the griffon nodded.

"Then don't think of it as asking Celestia-the-ruler-of-Equestria. Think of it as asking your friend," Trevar begged him, to which Gustav violently shook his head. He was weeping too severely to respond verbally.

"But you still want me to help?" Trevar gently asked, and Gustav quickly nodded. "And I'm a complete stranger!"

"Y—y—you—you're the Cat-Lord!" the griffon finally managed to squawk out. Trevar sighed.

Trevar truly hated days like this.

"Then I'll ask her."

"NO! NO! You mustn't!" Gustav exclaimed as his pupils and irises shrunk to dots.

"Gustav," Trevar softly said. "Pride keeps you from asking her for help. But I have no pride to bruise. What I don't have is a means to help you other than by asking her. It won't be you, it will be me! Remember that!"

"And remember that when she approaches you with an offer to help," Panthera added.

"Please—!" Gustav begged as tears continued to flood from his eyes.

"Shhh," Trevar said, gently taking the griffon's head into his grasp to comfort him, softly stroking his beak, cheeks, and forehead. "It's okay. It's okay," he continued in that vein until the griffon ambassador had regained some of his composure.

When Trevar was sure Gustav had recovered enough to be rational once more, he directed the griffon's head to look at him so they were eye-to-eye.

"I don't know what this 'Cat-Lord' bullshit business is," Trevar told him. "But if you insist on thinking I'm some sort of creation myth in your origins, understand this: I am not afraid of asking for help from friends, or even strangers, when I need it! And, if you truly are my children somehow, then neither should you be!"

"Is there no other way?" Gustav hoarsely asked.

"I have neither the skills nor the knowledge you need to fix this," Trevar replied, shaking his head. "And neither do the shadowcats. I'm afraid the ponies, specifically Celestia and Luna, are your—our—best and only hope. I most certainly don't want your species to go extinct. And I absolutely do NOT want your people to suicide, either individually or en masse by going to war! I'm saying this as this bloody 'Cat-Lord' thing you insist on calling me!"

They gave Gustav time to digest the news. Finally, the tearful griffon nodded.

"Good," Trevar said, sighing. Finally! One more crisis averted! "When I can, I'll go speak with your boss about this matter as well. It's imperative you guys keep the peace with Celestia, and it's vital this problem with your hatchings gets fixed."

"I think you'll find his reluctance to accept Equestria's help will equal, if not exceed, my own," Gustav told them.

"Doesn't he consider Celestia to be his friend, too?" Panthera asked.

"Of course he does!" Gustav responded.

"Then our arguments and our insistence won't change, either," Trevar warned. "I take it when he meets me, he'll have the same reaction as the rest or your kind? Then I'll be sure to make it an order directly from the 'Cat-Lord'!" Trevar muttered at Gustav's nonverbal acknowledgment. "Maybe I should start with that and save myself the aggravation of any emotional objections!"

"Now," Trevar said, helping the griffon back to his feet. "Let's talk 'Enigmas'."

The next morning in the Throne Room, Luna rushed in, holding a scroll in her magic.

"Celie! We has't a problem!" she exclaimed.

"Well, of course you do!" Q said, popping into view. "And the solution is get rid of Trevar and his two shadowcat friends!"

"Discord!" Celestia yelled. "What is the meaning of resurrecting Sombra? And enlisting Chrysalis!?"

"Chrysalis," Q sighed. "Yes. Well, I'm looking for somepony to help you. Unfortunately, there's very little that can go up against those three. But you take what you can get. On the other hoof, by sending her after Trevar, I did manage to put off a little matter of revenge she was seeking against Twilight, so there is that.

"Oh, and believe me, I'm as disappointed as you are with Sombra," the draconequus added. "Granted, he wasn't my first choice to send in, but he's served his purpose."

"Not half as disappointed as you think! But it's not Sombra that I'm disappointed in!" Celestia scolded him. "But what sort of purpose did you hope he'd serve?"

"Why, to show you just how dangerous Trevar is!" Q sternly admonished her. "I knew he wasn't up to the task. Of course, my first choice might have, but resurrecting a pre-reformed Discord could just as well gone the other way. He might very well have delighted in the chaos Trevar and his friends are going to bring! Now, Nightmare Moon … she could be an option…," he said trailing off.

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" both princesses yelled, with Celestia stomping her foot hard enough to crack the marble floor.

"Is Trevar very much so dangerous?" Luna inquired after she calmed down.

"I can't say he's the same level of evil that Tirek was," Q replied. "But he did take on Sombra. Not only did he survive what should have been a fatal wound, but he turns right around and soundly beats Sombra! Even before his friends finished preparing that molten tomb they encased him in and tossed into the sun, Trevar had him beat—single handedly! So you tell me," he said as his eagle-clawed arm stretched out to snag the scroll from Luna's magic before returning to normal.

Before either alicorn could react, he had unrolled it and looked it over.

"Well, this appears to confirm I'm too late," Discord sighed as he turned the scroll about to show them both.

ሽ ቧ
ሐ
ሟ
ቖ ፬ ሬ ሶ ዑ ሌ ቢ ሂ ሚ ቔ
ጒ ሴ
ሸ ኻ ም ር
ꬌ
ዏ
ቍ ꬉ ኜ ቸ ፠ ፚ
ጙ
ቷ ኖ ጼ ኛ ሂ ኑ ዀ ፭
ፖ ቃ
₴ ቼ ֎ ሻ ꬅ ጔ ∩
ተ
ቇ
ꬪ ፏ ꬍ Σ ኟ ጐ ቃ ላ ሱ ч ቹ ገ ፁ ቡ ጉ ኽ ዞ ፤ ፭ ꬬ ፫ ጿ ጽ ꬩ ሲ ቿ ኞ ❧ ጛ ⊥ ኰ ፨ ኲ ኯ ቼ ኲ ጲ ቑ ቔ ቆ ኜ ቸ ቲ ቧ ዔ ∠ ኽ ፦ ፐ ከ ቋ ፀ ጱ ጳ ኟ ꬊ ፈ ቚ ኇ ቜ ጱ ቃ ቧ ሂ ጛ ፕ ፤ ጎ ጜ ዞ ፎ ኬ ሲ ት ሹ ጟ ኝ ጌ ኚ ቒ ኑ ጳ ት ቅ ሿ ኋ ኤ ኇ ፋ ኜ ች ኈ ት ኾ ሂ ዖ ጛ ፒ ፕ ∧ ኺ ቚ ꬋ መ ꬋ ꬃ ꬉ ሃ ፕ ጝ ሃ ֎ ኽ ው ኡ ሶ ጝ ኘ ፈ ል ቃ ኆ ቃ ቃ ሼ ቁ ጏ ሆ ቤ ሬ ዏ ¿ ቚ ጎ ፋ ጉ ሸ ዎ ፆ ሀ ቁ ዕ ꬫ ኮ ꬩ ⊥ ኯ ኋ ፤ ጔ ∪ ኤ ∀ ∀ ኘ ፑ ჻ ኹ ፇ ሐ ሜ ዅ ꬋ ህ ꬉ ፎ እ Π ┊ ገ ሇ ቤ ፬ ፍ ረ ቲ λ λ ው ቧ ፀ ሟ ቸ ዄ ꬫ ቊ ቄ ኵ ገ ጋ ጸ ጿ ዔ ꬪ ꬉ ሟ ፩ ጴ ኙ ፩ ኸ ꬃ ፃ ቁ ኋ ֍ ሆ ዔ ꬅ ሐ ሃ ሬ እ ሄ ቧ ቱ ቓ ቹ ሐ ጷ ቢ ኙ ጘ ¡ ። ሄ ኦ ч ቒ ሸ ዄ ስ ዔ ጊ ኰ ቾ ዔ ጿ ኋ ጊ ጳ እ ሚ ┊ ቤ ጱ ካ ሞ ሬ ሽ ꬫ ቡ ኹ ዄ ⊥ ሆ ኋ ዑ ኼ ሱ ት ኝ ኌ ዄ ኂ ሟ ጘ ፋ ኻ ኆ ኹ ገ ሷ ꬂ ም ፍ ፭ ቇ ኤ ꬃ ረ ኟ ፖ ፤ ⊥ ቝ ካ ፒ ቺ ጙ ኋ ቱ ቶ ጻ ጿ ኳ ፑ ሷ ቄ ቱ ፇ ዀ ቅ ሃ ∠ ፫ ኣ ኒ ች ┊ ኲ ቢ ኙ ኵ ቹ ፏ ጟ ሆ ቚ ꬨ ዟ ꬩ ጵ ኞ ዏ ሙ ጸ ሾ ጞ ፁ ሌ ჻ ዂ ጉ ሲ ቶ ጐ ጴ ꬭ ሼ ∀ ጸ ጐ ዟ ካ ❧ ጰ ፂ ተ ጼ ስ ፙ ዐ ጸ ቺ ፩ ። ቤ ቴ ጰ ኰ ኈ ጎ
ዑ ጘ ꬃ ስ ∧ የ ቁ የ ቼ ኢ ч ሽ ቴ ን ዓ ፯ ቍ ሀ ኙ ፈ ኮ ች ꬍ ሼ ኳ ህ ለ ኢ ጺ ፏ ሉ ገ ፤ ፩ ኞ ፕ ሶ ጎ ጚ ቇ ሜ ጷ ቺ ። ቚ ፅ ፅ ዋ ቤ ክ ዄ ፮ ና ቺ ቌ ቧ ቅ ኝ ꬪ ቾ ∠ ጓ ϟ ኙ ዕ ኙ ዒ ። ኾ ሏ ቘ መ ፌ ሷ ኡ ካ ስ ፠ ፪ ጷ ጶ ፆ ኴ ጔ ኈ ሹ ሾ የ ፖ ꬬ ቧ ኀ ∪ ቌ ቈ ሜ ሶ ቊ ቈ ፚ ን ጘ እ ቶ ሎ ኚ ጌ ዟ ጚ ቐ ፈ ϟ ሇ ፐ ክ ሼ ፅ ጶ ሶ ዞ ጒ ኧ ኅ ∩ ኙ ቻ ኂ ፌ ኢ ሱ ቤ ኁ ꬊ ኍ ቼ ላ ዧ ሎ ሴ ፥ ጹ አ ቔ ꬊ ꬍ ኮ λ ተ ው ቲ ጞ ኃ ራ ዕ ፊ ሞ ኗ ፧ ቺ ጕ ꬃ λ ቷ ፗ ቐ ዃ የ ና ሪ ሯ λ ? ꬆ ቕ ቓ ቍ ጿ ዋ ቍ ሇ ጴ ኖ ⊥ ሮ ኅ ኊ ህ ኳ ቐ ፥ ጵ ና ሱ ተ ቑ ቾ ፠ ቴ ጕ ኗ ቐ ሀ ሀ ዟ ¡ ቃ ጰ ፥ ሾ ዏ ቈ ዌ ጟ ፣ ֎ ኪ Ξ ቌ ቼ ሄ ч ቺ ፃ ዀ ጎ ሿ ዂ ኇ ጛ ቲ ꬭ ቃ ቴ ꬅ ሊ ላ ፔ ፔ ረ ሰ ኊ ጿ ፉ ֍ ሚ ቺ ዒ ኄ ጴ ዊ ኗ ሊ ꬂ ሽ ኑ ሸ ∧ ኮ ч ꬌ ኙ ፉ ና ኝ ሄ ꬎ ቼ ፎ ጌ ጝ ኪ ፩ ቴ ፋ ቕ ጸ ‡ ገ ቃ ሺ ዅ ። ፆ ፖ ኧ ኴ ፨ ሶ ኧ ኗ ኯ ጲ ቝ ኈ ህ ቧ ኚ ጋ ቑ ሀ ꬅ ፨ ቌ ቅ ቃ ሚ ኦ ቓ ሟ ፭ ꬃ ኹ አ ሩ ሪ ጽ ጞ ቃ ֎ ፮ ኇ ጘ ቇ ቒ ፀ ‡ ገ ፍ ኬ ኋ ሮ ፍ ꬮ ኝ ? ꬮ ፔ ሯ ፓ ፖ ተ ኤ ኧ ֎ ቚ ቔ ጸ ዃ ቐ ሙ ሪ ቃ ኋ ዃ ኃ ꬃ ꬬ ኂ ꬉ ኯ ካ ሄ ቂ ፉ ስ ፈ ል ꬭ ቑ ቈ ኣ ነ ሎ ፬ ኊ ጚ ኢ ጋ ቍ ꬪ ₴ ኽ ቌ ሷ ። ꬩ ዓ ኲ ዯ ቄ ፁ ዊ ፎ Ξ ሞ ቖ ኌ ኑ ꬊ ፐ ሸ ሎ ጝ ኩ ዧ ስ ¿ ኖ ብ ሐ አ ኾ ፠ ሐ λ ኛ ꬅ ቢ ዉ ꬨ ኒ ኁ ┊ ቖ ቢ ቷ ች ለ ኹ ጓ ኃ ሬ ዅ ኻ ኴ ሌ ጝ ኍ ሾ ¿ ¡ ∠ ┊ ዋ ቢ ኸ ጱ ፏ ኙ ፮ ጟ ቝ ታ ዖ ኸ ዋ ር ☼ ሩ ጲ ሮ ል ሺ ጔ ለ ብ ኪ ፒ ❦ ሹ ፧ ነ ꬃ ቑ ዀ ቢ ꬂ ሮ ኑ ፈ ፈ ሜ ካ ኖ ኊ ቶ ፃ ግ ኙ ጾ ꬁ ጌ ሲ ፗ ꬁ ꬄ ኤ ሳ ሲ ፚ ሱ ጰ ፫ ኡ ፙ ∀ ኣ ጔ ፌ ዂ ቝ ፇ ጶ ፐ ፥ ሞ ቊ ው ኄ ፅ ሉ ኄ ጼ ዌ ጟ ዂ ቾ ስ ዎ ጲ ኦ ቐ ሪ ሜ ፓ ኺ ☼ ም አ ሬ ኄ ል ч ፗ ፪ ጓ ኵ ❦ ቴ ሟ ዞ ። ኴ ኊ ꬂ ዅ ֎ ፣ ታ ፬ ሿ ጔ ኯ ጵ ፩ ቝ ቈ እ ፍ ֎ ዃ ፑ ꬩ ተ ገ ቲ ፌ ፬ ጐ ቁ ꬂ ሴ ፀ ሹ
ሬ ቑ ዑ መ
ፕ ፀ ጛ ቑ Ξ ቴ
ቶ ጒ ኊ
ዯ ኚ ቱ ቕ

ኖ ዋ ኯ ሐ ኈ ጋ ጊ ሐ ኯ ጵ ኼ ጚ ዎ ሎ ሽ ፕ
ዓ ጵ ዐ ኣ ክ ፒ ꬫ ኊ ሽ ቤ ኍ ኬ ቢ ጊ ፈ ሿ ኞ ኁ ∪ ኳ ኯ ጜ ጉ
ቷ ቧ ሞ ጋ ዀ ጱ ቇ ራ ጌ ኸ ኺ ኯ ኀ ኢ ሴ ኡ ‡ ኢ ሴ ኈ ሴ አ ተ ሆ ቒ Ξ ኺ ኯ
ዀ ኽ ኛ ፀ ጿ ዞ ኃ ቐ ቘ ∀ ጿ ቲ ሊ ፣ ቼ ሻ ፋ ₴ ጸ ጶ ፖ ፒ ዞ ግ ዋ ኳ
ꬨ ꬁ ኹ ጏ ቹ ጐ ኜ ዏ ው ኀ ኰ ꬌ ቹ ፪ ጟ ጎ ኯ ቷ አ ∀ ቴ ꬎ λ ። ዂ ዓ ፎ ፓ ሽ ፬ ቊ ሐ ꬂ ፩ ꬮ ፒ ፈ ሱ ሸ Ξ ∩ ኋ ኮ ሌ ኟ ር ¡ ሟ ብ ኤ ዧ ኩ ጉ ገ ጻ ሲ አ ታ ቃ ኒ ሟ ጱ ዀ ጕ ⊥ ቇ ዅ Π ፎ ቕ ቋ ጹ ኯ ሊ ሁ ፒ ፤ ኀ ጴ ጷ ሏ ꬪ ኡ ኺ ኯ ጽ ዏ ቹ ፦ ፇ ቺ ኾ ጴ ሃ ኧ ሏ ኘ ፅ ዟ ኸ የ ሩ ሳ ኀ ሶ ሴ ꬆ እ ዯ ፫ ቹ ዟ ❧ ꬁ ? ⊥ ሊ ታ ታ ኈ ኍ ኖ ኣ ኈ ፨ ቖ ። ኌ ዯ ኪ ጲ ዊ ቄ ፔ ቖ ჻ ፰ ሙ ሱ ኾ ጏ ኢ ቹ ፩ ቴ ‡ ኈ ኸ ꬎ ኈ ሐ ኀ ቒ ‡ ኯ ጳ ‡ ꬁ ሴ አ ተ ‡ ኸ ኺ ኯ ኀ ኢ ሴ ኡ ዋ ꬬ የ ሆ ሪ ┊ ች ቡ ኄ ሚ ዉ ኂ ኗ ጔ ꬪ ዓ ኆ Σ ፐ ፫ ታ ኂ ም ኼ ሴ ኡ ዋ ꬬ የ ሆ ሪ ┊ ች ቡ ኄ ሚ ዉ ኂ ኗ ጔ ꬪ ዓ ኆ Σ ፐ ፫ ታ ኂ ም ኼ ዄ ብ ጐ ኖ ❦ ኈ ወ λ ፖ ች ኜ ግ ¡ ቘ ኜ ስ ጿ ኙ ቊ ጸ ☼ ው ሉ ፮ ሾ በ ፄ ☼ ጳ λ ፉ ꬅ ቌ ፈ ቄ ጛ ቈ ሾ ዖ ጰ ∧ ፙ ዕ ቑ ∧ ኀ ጿ ሀ ቒ ፁ ስ Π Π ሟ ሲ ዓ ჻ ❧ ች ꬁ ጺ ꬫ ֍ ጼ ኂ ኽ ኜ ኽ ሙ ቄ ሰ ሽ ❦ ቛ ኰ ቁ ኘ ከ ፒ ቴ ኌ ዟ ኀ ራ ዒ ጕ ч ∧ ፥ ቱ ϟ ሚ ዃ ሎ ኴ ∩ ዎ ሊ ꬫ ሐ ፃ ጌ ወ ፥ ን ሇ ϟ ጴ ቸ ꬬ ረ ሿ ፩ ሁ ሬ ዑ ረ ጏ ዑ ር ሼ ፠ ቲ ¡ ꬄ ፔ ֎ ቾ Σ ኑ ፊ ፑ ጶ ሎ ል ሜ ፰ ፚ ¿ ጻ ኲ ꬫ ቌ ሺ ኄ ዟ ሮ መ ¿ ጲ ታ ሃ ቕ ች ዎ ፭ ፨ ዏ ዒ ጛ ገ ሎ ኟ ጵ ሾ ቇ ዧ ፏ ዞ ላ ኟ በ ኩ ። ኾ በ ሇ ፅ ሌ ዟ ዋ ጊ ኒ ቄ ነ ኘ ❧ ፁ ሺ ፑ ቐ ¿ ኻ ኚ ሞ ኩ ፏ ኋ ꬎ ሰ ቸ ዑ እ ዓ ፓ ዐ ֍ Σ ጱ ꬩ ዔ ነ ፭ ዉ ፬ ወ ቖ ቱ ቱ ጱ ቻ ሎ ኜ ጙ ። ቕ ሸ ቚ ኍ ፓ ፩ ┊ ኀ ከ ጶ ኀ ꬨ ቂ ቷ ሻ ጷ ሞ ጔ ꬍ ና ჻ ሪ ꬅ ፆ ቔ ህ ፄ ሐ ꬭ ፒ ወ ፖ Π ቌ ም ፰ ቂ ህ ❧ ም ሐ ቔ ሎ ኃ የ ቶ ኦ ቝ ህ ሹ ∧ ቛ ኾ ኘ ኅ ቴ ኒ ኽ ሌ ኃ ኸ ኦ ሬ የ ኙ ሰ ፐ ዅ ቈ ል ኩ ሷ ዂ ኻ ዂ ꬫ መ ፯ ሚ ቶ ፀ ኼ ፀ ቍ ቐ ች ኘ ❧ ጞ ቕ ፅ ዄ ሉ ኞ ኚ ሽ ሙ ለ ኋ ጙ ጲ ዯ ት ኇ ቃ ጹ ፠ ጲ ጳ ጵ ጺ ፓ ጲ ሿ ኊ ሾ ጽ ሉ ሎ ፏ ሜ ኙ ፥ ጼ ꬄ ቡ ሳ ኖ ኩ ፊ ፃ ፓ ኒ ቈ መ ч ቻ ሙ ኻ ች ቊ ኝ ፆ ዄ ቴ ቢ ¿ ሪ ჻ ጓ ኽ ሄ ሞ ዅ ϟ ዐ ኇ ፈ ፄ ኟ ቐ ꬭ ፅ ቍ ፏ ሰ ኛ ኍ ፌ ሀ ዅ ኯ ለ ቀ ጼ ዑ ሁ ꬅ ጒ ꬄ ሶ ዉ Σ ዉ ሶ ቷ ኈ ፪ ም ጙ ꬍ ጐ ግ ፗ ሬ ዋ ኝ ቼ ሜ ዅ ጞ ኈ ጒ ኣ ሺ ቹ ቜ ል ፕ ቾ ኸ ጳ ቓ ኼ ሐ ꬉ ϟ ጉ ዅ ከ ቌ ቃ ኚ ኸ ኽ ኮ ቤ ኌ ቓ ፯ ጌ ሎ ֎ ፮ ኲ ፄ ሚ ፄ ቿ ∧ ራ ጽ ቜ ጎ ላ ꬬ ፇ ኅ ታ ቼ ኚ ፓ ∩ ለ ኩ ኸ ❧ ፃ ጱ ፨ ቸ እ ገ ቾ ቲ ኀ ዅ ч ጟ ሿ ፏ ፐ ዅ ኃ Ξ Σ ፎ ቧ ቲ ፄ ን ቓ ሉ λ ቌ ꬍ ኲ ታ ჻ ኁ ኖ ፑ ሿ ቻ ች ጹ ኡ ፋ ኃ ❦ ዓ ቢ ቇ ቐ ፦ ው ፙ ቂ ፧ ሮ Σ ፈ ጚ ሚ ቄ ፮ ቿ ኆ በ ‡ ቍ ቘ ዌ ዌ ኼ ቧ ሮ ፓ ጽ ኁ ቛ ኾ ፌ ፖ ┊ ፠ ⊥ ∀ ገ ኳ ከ ꬩ አ ኲ ራ ☼ ¡ ከ ❧ ግ ∀ ክ ꬮ ኙ ❦ ፌ ኰ ዌ ዅ ኞ ጐ ሁ ጉ ሪ ር ቲ ቻ ቺ ዀ የ ኳ ዖ ꬎ ጟ ዌ ቲ ቷ ኰ ∪ ወ ኛ ቇ ∠ ፬ ቁ ሇ ❦ ኞ ቡ ቤ ጞ ቧ ሊ የ ፇ ጝ ረ ቝ ፥ ለ ኢ ጎ ጒ ꬬ ꬨ ኘ ጼ ቀ ጟ ኴ ኩ ቡ ¿ ቒ ም ቴ ꬂ ጻ ኟ ኤ ፠ ꬂ ጛ ቢ ሁ ቧ ጳ ፩ ኁ ዐ Ξ ꬆ ጿ ፒ ֍ ፈ ፂ ዐ ꬂ ዓ ቖ ∩ ተ ቛ ꬮ λ ዊ እ ሏ ጾ λ ዉ ዉ λ ꬉ ሲ ኅ ዊ ኈ ኌ ꬅ ቁ ፤ ፦ ት ክ ግ ቚ ኸ ኢ ሰ ጕ ፥ ሞ ፭ ☼ ኌ ጓ ሼ ፄ ጟ ቝ ჻ ዀ ዓ ꬩ ꬁ ረ
ቘ ፕ ፨ ኖ ዉ ሏ ጷ ❦ ና
ፆ Σ ሸ ꬭ

"What is this?" Celestia asked. "I'm ... the subject...? Huh? And ... 'Luna is best princess'...!?" she demanded after reading what Luna had managed to decipher so far.

"Yond's what I wast coming to see thee about," Luna told her. "The griffons has't hath changed their encryption methods once moo. They seemeth to beest nesting a card of their Vigenere Beauford cipher with there's few or none will entertain it else they art doing. Mine own guess is they has't begun using yond enigma machine they has't been talking about. While I has't did manage to breaketh through a bawbling portion of their outermost layer, this is something I has't nev'r ere encountered!"

"I'd say your problems have only just begun!" Q grumbled before he vanished in a flash of light, leaving the scroll flutter to the ground.