“Do you think we should interfere, Hongo-san?” asked a young figure garbed in colorful, yet worn and ragged clothing.

“No. Not yet. The battle on this world has yet to truly begin, and these sisters have yet to prove themselves to their Rider Spirits,” replied an older man dressed in motorcycle leathers.

“Maa maa, seems a bit harsh, ne?” into the scene came a purple figure, somewhat draconic, though humanoid and childish in behavior.

Another man scoffed, pointing to the nonexistent sky, “It matters not if it is harsh enough, they have proven themselves worthy of my Zecter. As I see it, they are fit to rule over everything as we do.”

“I think Hongo-san is right,” spoke another figure garbed in black and magenta, hair feathered and with a camera in his hand, “they seem like they can still hold their own. If Ultra Shocker makes larger overtures into this world, we need to interfere, but as it is, we have our own hands full elsewhere.”

“You’re full of crap, Kadoya,” muttered a man dressed in a black and red trenchcoat, a banana held lightly in one hand. “We all want to go down there- at least those of us who aren’t complete assholes, and even the alternates of the ones who are assholes. So why don’t we?”

“Yeah! We should go down there and show those Ultra Shocker bastards our flaming hot friendship!” came a hotblooded voice off to the side, whom was promptly ignored despite his very noticeable pompadour.

“No!” the motorcycle gear clad man put his foot down and crossed his arms. “We must prioritize worlds without an active Rider presence! Remember, all of you! All of you saved your worlds with only your own skills to rely on! They can too, and they have an army with them. In time, they will grow into their own roles instead of copying Kadoya-kun.”

“Oi!”

“He’s got a point, though… even if it feels terrible, they’ll probably be fine on their own. Considering where they are… yeah, we should keep fighting. Us over there would probably be redundant.”

Murmurs of assent rippled through the assembled crowd, which then dispersed into the blackness between worlds to fight on.

“Hey, Haru, ***, you wanna go to a con?”

“Huh?” Haruka asked, looking up from her issue of Televi-kun to stare Natsumi in the face, “which con?”

“Any of them- anything where Kamen Riders will probably be,” Natsumi answered, still looking at Haruka and ******* expectantly.

“I dunno, will we even have time to make cosplays?” ******* asked, tapping her chin and fiddling with her shoulder blade length hair.

Haruka shrugged, “We should. There’s not a lot of cons this time of year and we still have spare parts from other cosplays that we could repurpose.”

“... Okay, but I’m not going as a Rider again. Those suits are way too hot…” ******* chuckled and clicked around on her laptop, bringing up a few pictures of the female monsters from the various Kamen Rider series. “Maybe Virgo?”

“Won’t that costume be even hotter?” Natsumi asked curiously.

“Not if I make the dress lighter and use lightweight stuff. Kamen Rider suits cover everything and they’re tight, too. And the way we make them, they’re just so heavy…”

“You got a point…”

“Why do we make them so durable anyway?”

“Because we also use them as paintball armor, remember?”

“Oh yeah….”

“So, Virgo eh? Does that mean you’ll also crossdress as Tachibana?”

“Wha- ehhh…. Nah. Too much hassle to make two cosplays for one character. Better to just stay as one costume and not worry about changing.”

“Fair enough.”

A pair of weathered, old, tired eyes opened in the forest.

Concealed behind the full helmet as they were, this gave nothing but the impression of an alien being watching through the round yellow lenses with complete apathy. The figure’s blue jumpsuit stood out in the gloomy forest, as did the silver of his helmet and jetpack.

“.... Interesting…” the man muttered, tapping his chin and looking around. “This is not… not… hmm… I cannot remember where I was before. Concerning.”

A sudden noise from behind caused the man to spin around and raise his hand reflexively, the forest stilling once more as the man beheld the silver dart clutched between his fingers. “... Already in peril. This is not a good time to be a researcher…”

The man moved on, activating his jetpack and ascending to the sky, leaving behind a single, somewhat confused Roidmude sitting a few miles away, staring down the scope of his sniper rifle with as much of a slack jaw as it could manage.

“.... Brain is going to want to hear of this….”

Baltimare was reconstructed quickly, all told. Sure it was in the form of hastily erected shacks built from rubble and spare material, but it was still there, and there were plenty of supplies to keep the city going for a little longer, at least until the area around the Canterhorn base was cleared out for a refugee camp. Fatalities were low as well, comparatively- barely two hundred dead out of a population of nearly one million. Staggering odds, made possible only by the intervention of Natsumi and Haruka.

Speaking of the twins, every spare inch of their hospital room had been covered in thank you cards, bouquets, gifts, even money pouches as the residents of Baltimare and beyond praised them for their heroism.

Similarly covered was the official front base of the Rider Corps, where the entire lobby was covered in drawings and cards praising the ponies’ heroic actions. Sorting eagerly through his portion of the mail was one Orange Slice, formerly a young orange farmer and occasional dancer.

Not searching for anything specific, Orange Slice was merely separating his mail into organized stacks, every single heartfelt expression of gratitude making his heart soar and his conviction of the cause even more ironclad than it had been before.

“Sorting through your mail still, Orange?” came a smooth, cultured voice, the owner of which came striding around the corner with his undersuit still on. “You know everyone else has already gone home. Why are you still sorting?”

“Because it feels like I have to be extra careful with it, or I’m just tarnishing their feelings, Treasure Sniper. Why are you still here?” Orange asked, neatly smoothing out a stack of children’s drawings and lifting them in his magic to plaster them to the walls of his bunk room.

“Extra practice,” Treasure replied, brushing his hoof against his chest. “I believe that being more in tune with the belt will aid me in further combat. I have also been piecing together a more useful style of martial art to aid me against these monster incursions.”

“Huh, that’s really cool, Treasure! You’ll be super strong in no time!” Orange grinned brightly as he picked up his vest and headed for the door. “Anyway, I gotta go meet my sister for dinner. Seeya later, buddy!”

“Indeed, Orange.” Treasure nodded, retreating to his own bunk for a quick power nap.

Haruka sat up with a strangled gasp, clawing for air as she ripped out her IVs and various monitoring devices and gazed about wildly. “A-akihana!”

Natsumi bolted upright immediately after, hand clutched to her heart and eyes wide. “W-what was that…? Who- who were you calling for?”

“I- it was-! I… I can’t remember…?” Haruka frowned as she calmed down. “Weird…. Wait… where are we?”

“Hospital, I think,” Natsumi replied, ignoring the sound of frantic hoofbeats coming towards the room. “I think we fainted after we kicked that Worm’s ass.”

“... Okay, but how the fuck did we even do that? Last I checked, the Uca Worm could still Clock Up, and Double… can’t. Hell, why didn’t one of us just use the fucking Sasword Zecter?” Haruka wondered, then nearly leapt out of her skin as the door slammed open and the room was quickly flooded by panicking doctors and frantic nurses.

“You ripped out all your instruments!?” one exclaimed in shock. “Do you have any idea how stupid that is!?”

“And the IVs! Do you know how much damage you could have done to your blood vessels!?”

“Please lie back so we can examine your health, miss.”

“You as well, miss.”

Natsumi deadpanned at Haruka, “You just had to rip all that shit out, didn’t you.”

“S-shut up!”

Several hours of thoroughly embarrassing check ups later, Natsumi and Haruka stood before Princesses Celestia and Luna, both of whom were dressed in wartime regalia- full enchanted plate armor done in a similar style to their courtroom regalia, with helmets molded with crown-like crests.

“You’ve done exceptionally well,” Celestia began, a warm smile contrasting with her imposing attire. “You saved Baltimare, if not the city itself, then what truly mattered- its population. And for that, you have our thanks.”

“Indeed, you two have done well… however, it does seem that you two seem… inconvenienced at times?” Luna spoke plainly, gazing towards their bags with a critical eye. “T’would appear that you have trouble finding anything within those voluminous bags of yours.”

“... It’s a problem, yeah,” Natsumi admitted sheepishly.

Haruka shrugged, “Not like we have a better option at the moment.”

Luna smirked mysteriously and chuckled, prompting Celestia to roll her eyes good-naturedly.

“I think you actually do have another option, at least, though you weren’t aware of it,” Celestia began, casually drawing a massive golden zweihander out of thin air and gripping it with her magic. “You two can be excused for not knowing this, but some powerful mages tend to keep their belongings in a rather complex section of folded space known as a subspace pocket.”

“Indeed, it is very useful for carrying large amounts of objects in an organized fashion,” Luna nodded. “If you two wish, we can cast the spell on you two and allow you to utilize subspace pockets for ease of use.”

“Whoa, really?” Natsumi asked, eyes wide with confusion and interest. “We’d really be able to hold as much as we want?”

“Wouldn’t that take a lot of magic to maintain, though?” Haruka asked, curiously tapping her cheek as she pondered the implications. “Neither of us have magic- at least, none that we can freely use.”

Celestia shook her head, levitating forward a brush and an inkpot, “Not at all, actually. The spell itself draws a minute amount of ambient magic from Equus’ leylines normally, and even a normal mage could sustain one on their magic alone for years on end without any ill effects. However, the most difficult part is actually the casting, which also requires that you disrobe so that we may inscribe the runes.”

“The runes simply provide an access point and an anchor, by the way,” Luna interjected, “the spell itself is self sustaining even without the runes. That said, you should choose the location wisely, for an improperly placed gateway may end up making the pocket more inconvenient than is worth.”

Haruka and Natsumi looked at each other for a brief moment before sighing simultaneously and nodding. “Yeah, we’ll go for it,” Natsumi shed her jacket and tossed it to the side. “Though, I think we should probably set all this up somewhere other than here?”

“Yeah, a training area isn’t exactly very… private.” Haruka looked to the side and blushed softly, “I’d rather not be seen naked by any random pony that just so happens to walk through the doors.”

“Fair enough,” Celestia nodded and turned to the doors. “Come along. We’ll do this in my personal chambers. I trust that will be private enough to suffice?”

Celestia poked her tongue as she painted runes along Natsumi’s lower back. The girl herself was deeply unconscious to prevent any sort of fidgeting that might upset the formation of the delicate runes.

“I don’t understand why you’re putting so much thought into this, sister,” Luna muttered, already putting the finishing strokes upon Haruka’s back with an artistic flourish, “it’s not like the matrix will even be visible when it’s activated.”

“I don’t want to mess up, Luna. Everything must be precise and perfectly arranged to ensure proper energy flow,” Celestia replied, inking lines upon Natsumi’s back with surgical, nearly robotic precision, the ink of her brush coming in unnaturally straight, clean lines.

“... Now I know where your prized student gets it from,” Luna rolled her eyes and gently pushed Celestia out of the way, despite her older sister’s protests. “Just let me finish this. You always take so long with runes that you always forget that putting an artistic touch often helps.” With that, she unceremoniously wiped off all of Celestia’s hard work with a wet cloth, and swiped out a much more artistic looking matrix in less than five minutes. “Honestly, you make it look so difficult when it only takes five minutes for even an apprentice mage to sketch one of these out.”

“Well excuse me for liking precision over scribbling around willy nilly!” Celestia sputtered indignantly, a light flush settling across her cheeks at being shown up so readily and with such casual actions. “Some of us still remember when runes had to be exact and precise.”

“Yes, and some of us learned how to be efficient while retaining effectiveness. Now come, we need to activate these runes before they wake up,” Luna shot back, sauntering over to Haruka and tapping her horn against the runes placed in a continuous band wrapping around her hips. A brief flash of light burst from the runes as space warped and the runes faded, leaving nothing but bare skin with the slightest hint of a kaleidoscopic shimmer running through certain areas.

“Hmph!” Celestia huffed, activating Natsumi’s runes with the same flash of light. “There. Done.”

“You know, Hongo-san… I hate leaving people to suffer, and I get where you’re coming from.. But I can’t just… this is more than just a city, Hongo-san. This is an entire country being attacked at once! We can at least help them!” a man cried out, pointing the crimson drumstick in his hand at his predecessor and informal boss.

“I said no!” said boss replied, arms crossed and a mighty glare upon his face. “Those th- two are strong! Stronger than some of us even as we are now! If they cannot find their true Rider Spirits and gain their own power, they will fail! Us helping them will only cause them to waffle about, content in their own bare minimum! It is callous and cruel, yes, but ultimately it will only make their world all the safer from their strength!”

An uneasy murmuring broke out amongst the gathered men and few women assembled, much of it being a general lack of surety on how to proceed. None wanted to leave the pair to suffer, but if it meant that they came out all the stronger and more able to protect others? That changed things.

Silently, one member of the crowd stepped forward, silencing the whispers with his raised hand.

“I object to and reject that. If anyone wants to join me, I’m going to go help out those poor sisters.”

“Ooh! This is so much more convenient!” Haruka gasped appreciatively as she withdrew her Delta Driver and clipped it around her waist. “It’s like an invisible gun belt but better!”

Natsumi nodded, quickly drawing the Sasword Yaiver from behind her back and replacing it. “Mhmm. This’ll really help. Thanks, Princess Luna, Princess Celestia.” She quickly sketched out a bow, followed by Haruka.

“Yeah, this was really nice of you!” Haruka sprung back up and did a few stretches, “That said… now what? I mean, I know we’re gonna have to go help out with reconstruction for a while, but what after? Just keep responding?”

Celestia shook her head, “None of that, actually. Due to the mounting threat, we have decided to open up the Canterhorn and the base plains to refugees. In essence, we are compressing the entire country into a safer radius. This folds neatly into our secondary point- you two, along with the rest of the Rider Corps, will be searching out the headquarters of the organization attacking our nation so as to, despite what I have taught my student, destroy them once and for all.”

“Equestria does not tolerate terrorist organizations very well,” Luna mused mostly to herself, “though singular villains, that seems to be the exception.”

“Wait, so we’re just going to be, what, wandering around the country and fighting monsters for who knows how long?” Natsumi protested, a look of annoyed aggravation flashing across her face. “We don’t even get any downtime?”

“I know the country’s in danger and all, but that… sounds kinda cruel.” Haruka muttered.

“Of course not,” Luna scoffed as she stepped forward. “You two will be deployed next month, while the Royal Guards and Rider Corps organizes the evacuation and integration of the refugee mega-city. I suggest that you two also patrol around the city should you feel the need- the sheer amount of ponies incoming will likely lead to a large amount of conflict.”

Celestia nodded, “You will officially be off duty, but will still carry the full weight and authority of the Rider Corps generals. I suggest you use your time wisely- packing might take some time.”

“Once more into the breach, then,” Haruka muttered, spinning her Delta Driver’s main walkie-talkie grip in her hand.

Natsumi snorted, “Always a fight to be had.”

A figure in black and green armor stepped away from the smoking corpse of the monster that had attacked the small town he was currently upon the outskirts of. “Hmph. The kaijin here… they’re stronger than normal. Haruto-kun could probably tell me more about this- it all reeks of some kind of magic,” the man shook his head as he released his transformation, showing off his weathered face and leather riding outfit. He sighed and adjusted his jacket, the golden “RX” decal stenciled across the back of his jacket glinting in the light of early morning.

“Oh well. It will have to wait.” With that, Kotaro Minami- Kamen Rider Black RX- disappeared through a distorted wall of gray. “There are other worlds to save beyond this one.”

He never noticed the figure in blue dart out from the trees and steal the corpse from its crater, never once laying eyes upon the figure in blue even with all of his precautions.

“Interesting specimen…” the man in blue murmured, pulling a set of delicate tools from seemingly nowhere as he started carving away at the monster’s corpse to see what lay deep within its genetic structure. “I must study this phenomenon closer.”

Deep beneath Roanikstead, the base of Ultra Shocker was bustling with activity as hundreds of kaijin and soldiers went about their various duties. Within a large laboratory on sublevel 4, a tube of liquid stood at the center of the room, reaching from floor to ceiling and nearly four feet in diameter. The liquid inside was dark, sinister. It reflected no light and seemed almost like smoke, rather than any normal fluid. Streaked through this strange non-liquid were veins of turquoise energy, pulsing and wrapped around a figure in the center. At the base of the tube, large pipes ran along the floor to a console holding a strange red object- a switch that pulsed black in time with the veins of energy in the tube.

The Shocker Minion Scientists assembled worked calmly around the room, most of them preoccupied with other, smaller tubes that held seemingly empty suits of Rider Armor, while the few that held their attention on the tube muttered quietly to one another as they adjusted the dials and switches of their consoles to ensure that the creation in the massive tube would emerge in perfect condition.

Upon the button of the switch pulsed a single symbol, marred with scratches and pits, though slowly repairing itself.

“Hey Natsu?” Haruka asked as the twins walked through the “suburban” part of Canterlot, craning her neck to look around at the nearly mansion sized houses on either side of the street.

Natsumi for her part was simply fiddling with her phone, frowning in confusion. “Come on… come on… you’d think that weird reality warper made phones would give a better catch rate for stuff but nooo…. Stupid Silcoon, you don’t even have the movement capabilities of breaking out of a fucking pokeball…”

“....” Haruka sighed and shook her head, “Natsumi, I know you like future Pokemon Go a lot, but for god’s sake can you just tell me what the hell we’re shopping for and why we have to be in this area to get it?”

“Well, we’re going to be staying in public lodging for a while, y’know? I figure we might as well rent a house here with our advance pay. I doubt anyone will really object, what with us being heroes and all,” Natsumi stated plainly as she pulled up the map application on her phone and quickly scouted out the nearest house for rent. “And look, there’s one not far from here.”

“... Can we even afford it?” Haruka asked, exercising her common sense for once as she looked at the lavish surroundings, “And hell, why would we even need something in this neighborhood? Judging from the surroundings, it’d probably be way too big for the both of us.”

Natsumi shrugged as she stopped in front of one of the smaller houses, picking up a flyer from the “For Rent” sign staked into the lawn as she made her way to the door and knocked. “Figure we could repurpose some of the rooms to make things cooler, like having a training room or something.”

“... You realize that we’d have to take it all down when we move out ri-” Haruka was cut off by the door swinging open and a rather unlikely mare to come staring out with a dull expression of confusion on her place. “.... The DJ mare from Ponyville? She owns this place?”

The mare, Vinyl Scratch, nodded and smirked, adjusting her glasses and waving the pair in before clearing her throat and speaking in a voice that spoke of long hours of screaming and hyping up crowds, “So, what brings you to my temp pad up here in the big C?”

As Natsumi quietly facepalmed in the background, Haruka spoke up, “Well, apparently my sister thought it’d be a good idea to rent a house or something. I dunno, she just led me here without much in the way of explanation.”

“Yeah, we’re on leave for a month on account of everything happening, so… we kinda need a place to stay since we’re technically not allowed to even be in the Corps building right now,” Natsumi explained, taking a look at the flyer. “Not sure how we’re going to pay for this, though… Princess Celestia hasn’t discussed much on the topic of pay, not that we’ve remembered to ask. Haru, can you go ask her real quick to see if we can afford this?”

“How come I have to go ask? Do it yourself.” Haruka crossed her arms and huffed, clearly more interested in flopping down on one of the bean bag chairs in the living room. “You could use the exercise anyway.”

Natsumi sighed, “Just go. I’m going to try and work out an acceptable deal here, Haruka.”

“Euuugh, fiiiine… Just make sure we have a place to stay before tonight ends, alright?” With that last parting remark, Haruka dashed out the door and transformed into her Gatack form, speeding away in a burst of Clock Up.

“Now… about us moving in…” Natsumi followed Vinyl into a side room containing a table and several forms to be filled out.

Celestia sighed quietly to herself as she took her afternoon tea in the Canterlot Gardens. She’d recently commissioned an artist to fill in the blank spots left when Haruka and Natsumi finally broke free of their prisons, but the statues wouldn’t arrive for another day or two.

A small part almost wished that they wouldn’t come at all, leaving the space blank as another reminder of how her mistakes had hurt someone that hadn’t truly deserved it.

Her musings were cut short by a short burst of wind and the form of Haruka sliding to a halt in front of her.

“Hey, Princess? I got a question I need to ask about finances,” Haruka cut right to the chase, barely even giving Celestia time to react before she sat down at the table and folded her arms across her chest. “How much do we get paid, and how do we access our funds? Natsumi is trying to rent a house for the two of us.”

“I- wha?” Celestia spluttered elegantly, taking half a second to regain composure before clearing her throat, “Ahem, well, the answer to that is simple. The two of you combined make a total of forty thousand bits per month for your services, and though it isn’t the end of the month yet, there has already been advance pay dropped into your account at the Canterlot Central Bank, a branch office of which actually operates on one of the castle’s public floors. That said, my sister and I were planning on telling you this at the end of the month, but I suppose circumstances have pushed this forward.” Chuckling to herself for her small error in timing, Celestia then teleported a scrap of paper and scribbled out a few lines upon it, stamping it with her insignia via a flash of magic. “Here. This will allow you to access your funds for now, but please do get a more secure method, perhaps a blood seal if you wish.”

“Uh huh. Right, so… forty thousand combined, that’s like… enough to rent a house, right?” Haruka held the slip of paper in her hands, then folded it and put it away in her pocket, “Because Natsumi is, like I said, trying to rent a house right now.”

Celestia nodded, “It’s definitely enough for almost everything up until the aristocrat quarter. Though, I must ask, why exactly is she trying to rent a house? I thought the two of you would have just stayed in the Corps barracks?”

“Wait, we’re allowed to do that?” Haruka asked, blinking in confusion, “I thought that we weren’t supposed to stay in the building since we’re on leave for the next month?”

“Oh no no no no,” Celestia chuckled, waving a hoof around as she covered her mouth with her other. “You’re perfectly allowed to stay in the Corps building- as a matter of fact, I half expected you to anyway- though I suppose it was a little ambiguous. That said, if you wish to rent a house, I shan’t stop you. To be completely honest, my intention was more along the lines of you two taking it easy- you had taken quite a few injuries during your… deployment, and I would rather you take the time to recover, which, I think, would have been rather poorly affected if you were in an environment with so much training equipment.”

“You have a point there. So…. I guess that’s everything?” Haruka waffled indecisively, quite unsure of how to properly leave quickly without being rude.

“I suppose it is,” Celestia nodded, idly waving Haruka off. “I believe you had something to tell your sister?”

“Oh, right… well, uh…. Seeya!” Haruka waved quickly, transformed, and raced off again.

Between the layers of reality, she dreamed.

Beneath the realm consciousness, she stirred.

She, who was the herald of the void.

Her mission lay bare before her, details etched in her mind.

Destroy.

Her mission was to destroy everything, and oh how she longed to go and complete it, to see the world as naught but a smoldering ruin and all signs of life either destroyed or enslaved. To let the earth run red with rivers of blood, the sky turn black with smoke.

But she couldn’t.

She was still weak, though growing stronger. She was still growing, though she was almost done.

A name slipped from her lips and echoed within the roiling tube of Cosmic Energy she was born in.

“.... Virgo….”

Upon the pedestal which held her broken switch, a light pulsed as the switch’s symbol finally repaired itself, the stylized M representing her glowing with harsh, violet light.

Within the depths of the Ultra-Shocker laboratory, she readied herself to destroy and enslave all.

In a cave deep within the nameless forest in which he stayed, the blue suited man wiped his hands of gore and smirked internally. “I see…” he murmured, “combining different genetic traits and supporting the rest with a network of cybernetic augmentations… Fascinating… I should very much enjoy seeing more samples… Though… Hmm…”

The nameless man in the nameless cave in the nameless forest tapped his chin and thought back to the strange figure he had seen disappearing through a wall of scintillating gray. “I wonder… just what kind of power it is that allows such… power,” he finished lamely, almost lamenting the fact that the scientific knowledge in his mind was useless for poetic descriptors. As he looked out of the cave to discern the time of day, he was stricken with surprise yet again, this time at the beautiful sight of the stars shimmering in the night sky, the pale moon full and illuminating the world with silver. Beyond the twinkling, he identified potential planets, the faint light of an aurora in the distance, and the vast clouds of nebulae defining the wondrous band of dark and light that was the galaxy at large.

Something welled within him, and his arms raised unconsciously in praise.

“Praise the night,” he murmured, “for it brings visions of the heavens beyond, and of the beauty of deep space…” Almost involuntarily, he basked in the moonlight with his eyes closed, whispering words of deep reverence that came unbidden.

“Uchuu… Kita.”

“.... I’m grateful for this whole building and all, but seriously, I will never get over the fact that the two of us have a private bunk room with king sized, luxury beds while the rest of the corps just gets normal twin size bunks… Feels a little like favoritism or something to me…” Haruka muttered, hands laced behind her head as she stared up at the ceiling from where she lay on her aforementioned bed.

Natsumi snorted from where she sat across the room, sitting at her desk and reading through volunteer applications, “Well, we’re technically generals, so it’s pretty fair- and not like the useless kinds of generals back home that sit in the back and yell orders into a radio. At least we actually go out and kick ass too, even if we keep getting our asses kicked at first.”

“Yeah, but still. Everyone in the corps risks their lives for this kind of thing and we get better stuff just because we’re leading?” Haruka shook her head, “I feel guilty just laying here…”

“Well don’t- if you really wanna go back to a twin size bunk bed, you can sleep in the barracks or draw up a petition for everyone to get a better bed. If not, go to sleep or something. Not much else to do right now.” Natsumi returned back to the applications, alternating between stamps that read “Denied” or “Accepted”.

“.... Yeah fine, I guess,” Haruka sighed and turned to her side, swiping her phone to activation and browsing through what the strange piece of technology called Voidnet. “Hey, why are you even still working through those apps anyway? It’s like two in the morning and we’re supposed to take it easy.”

Natsumi shrugged, “It’s easy work, just have to make sure they’re qualified and remember which stamp I’m using. Plus, we used to stay up far longer than this, remember? God what happened to us? Did we get old?”

“You’re two thousand and twenty four- you tell me,” Haruka shot back.

“.... Touché.”

Deep under the Crystal Empire in the far, Frozen North, a swirl of magical light illuminated the glacial cave system that lay long unnoticed by all, the owner of which was a mare- a crystalline blue mare with a curly mane swept over her left eye in a darker shade of blue with stripes of pale green- surveyed the tunnels with a practiced sapphire blue eye, searching out the treasure which she had buried here long ago, long before Sombra’s curse had taken her and the empire above into temporal stasis.

“Ah… there it is…” she whispered, her voice echoing through the tunnels in a ghostly way. With a boot covered hoof, she cleared away the light layer of frost covering the ice in which a single, metallic briefcase had been buried- silver in color with a flaming snowflake decal upon it, just like the mare’s cutie mark. “Time for the Snowflame Rider to make a reappearance… and just in time too…”

With a flourish, the mare known as Winter Heat drove a lance of heat into the ice, melting it instantly as she withdrew the briefcase and placed its contents into their proper spaces- a tight fitting leather choker marked with a blue and red hexagon around her neck, a bracelet of red around her left forehoof, another of blue around her right, and lastly a simple belt with another red and blue hexagon for a buckle cinched around her waist.

Old Neighponese words came flowing back to memory, half forgotten teachings in mysticism and martial arts skills clicking into place almost audibly as she crossed her forehooves in front of her necklace and shouted,

“HENSHIN! RIDER SNOWFLAME!”

A burst of heat and freezing wind accompanied her transformation, and gone was the simple crystal pony that had entered the caves, replaced by an armored alicorn shaped figure streaking off into the distant sky southward- half red, half blue, soaring along on wings made of flaming snow.

Within the deepness of the night sky, ships flew in erratic patterns, of various make and model and of intents both benign and malevolent. The one thing they had in common was their destination, Equus, for the planet itself had called out in distress and as such the universe had deigned to answer for better or for worse.

One such ship was a large, red pirate galleon, sails emblazoned with a strange symbol of a pair of crossed cutlasses under what might have once been an extremely stylized skull.

It had clearly seen better days, and in fact, though it was at the head of the race, it was almost limping through the emptiness. Holes pockmarked the sails and rigging, with hastily formed patches covering dangerous holes. The captain himself was of a similar state, though perhaps his uniform got off lighter than the rest of his ship.

“Natsumi… Haruka… who are you two and just why is it so important that I find you?” he muttered, scrolling through the strange smartphone inset into his ship’s steering wheel. “And… what treasures might you bring to the table for me, hmm?”

Author's Notes:

Heyyyyy, another apology for the long gap with a pretty long chapter, I guess. Not a whole lot's happening here, but a lot's gonna happen later on. This is just setting up a lot of dominoes in preparation for the wrecking ball.... or something.