The night passed slowly, the timberwolves circling around the base of the twins’ tree for hours. As the wooden beasts circled, Natsumi sighed to herself.

“Why couldn’t we have gone as Decade and DiEnd?” She whined, taking a moment to make sure her sister wouldn’t fall in her exhaustion.

Haruka muttered out a tired, “Because you didn’t want to hear me constantly shout ‘ONORE DIKEIDO’ at you whenever you did something dorky.”

“Oh yeah…. Dammit. It still would have been a better option than Kivaara and Larc. Seriously, we have like… no powers! Denpa Ningen Tackle had more powers than Decade’s Kivaara! Larc only showed up for like… two episodes! And she only really used like two cards!”

“Yeah, but you’re the one that wanted us to have opposite colored costumes… I swear, even going as Blade and Glaive would have been fine. At least the male riders don’t die as often…”

The twin sisters grumbled angrily to themselves until Natsumi shot up, nearly unbalancing herself.

“Oi! Haruka!”

“What is it?”

“We didn’t buy just Kivala and your Larc Rouzer at the convention!” Natsumi exclaimed.

“We didn’t? I don’t remember any of it… mou~ It’s been almost three thousand years…” Haruka whined mostly to herself, picking idly at the tree bark.

Natsumi was beside herself with glee, “Yeah, remember? We bought those two Double Drivers and the whole set of Gaia Memories!”

Haruka gave a little gasp of realization, which then turned into a frown, “Didn’t we lose those as soon as Discord turned us into his foot soldiers? I distinctly recall him burying them in the middle of nowhere.”

Natsumi pouted, “Crap.”

They waited out the night in tired silence.

The wolves left around dawn, leaving both sisters to collapse onto their branches in tired silence, passing out immediately after.

Princess Celestia tossed and turned all night, visions of death and destruction filling her mind as she slept. Memories of Discord’s chaotic reign mixed and tumbled about visions of a ruined and burning future, monsters of the likes none had ever seen filling the landscape in scores.

Through all this, Celestia’s dream self strode in mute horror at the sight of her beloved ponies laying strewn across the landscape like so much chaff. The stench of blood roiled through the air like a thick fog. The screams of her subjects echoed through the hellish landscape, backed by the howls and trills and Giiiii!s of the monsters swarming through the land of corpses. The sky burned red. No vegetation withstood the river of blood.

And through it all, the pitch black sun soared high above, a white, double headed eagle printed on its face. What this meant, Celestia knew not, but she did know that the symbol was to be hated and feared. Two female voices rang out through the continuous background screaming.

“ONORE DIKEIDO!”

Celestia awoke in a cold sweat, two minutes before she was due to raise the sun for the morning.

“What…. was that!?”

Natsumi and Haruka awoke simultaneously again, this time both of them shot wide awake and stared at the other.

“Did you–!?” Natsumi started.

“I dunno, did you–” Haruka replied.

A beat.

Then, both of them cried simultaneously, “What the hell was that!?”

Luna burst into Celestia’s room with a cry of, “Sister! Are you alright!?”

Celestia shot out of her luxurious bed, tangling in her sheets and landing on the carpet with an unceremonious whump.

“Uugh… Luna? Why are you in here?” Celestia wondered, disentangling herself from the confines of her 100% pure Zebryptian cotton cocoon.

“We hath sensed thine discomfort while thou slept. It was readily apparent that thou was having some sort of vision as thou slept. What didst thou see, sister?”

Celestia cringed, “Well, it went like this….”

And so Luna’s eyes widened in horror at the grisly images provided.

“I...see…. then, what shall we do about this vision of yours?” she asked, half hoping for a positive answer.

“Nothing we can do but wait, Luna. You know that as well as I do.”

“Curses.”

Roanikstead had dropped off the map over the course of almost a single night, the Spider Fangire feeding in insane rates in order to return to its full power. The once quiet, yet happy, town of Roanikstead was now a ghost town.

The Spider Fangire then did something unexpected: It stood in the middle of the emptied ghost town and concentrated its stolen life energy. The glowing orb of energy grew and grew, a whining screech filling the air. The ground cratered beneath it in the shape of a twin headed eagle, filling the air with dust.

With one last screech, the orb exploded, dousing the swamplands around Roanikstead with a harsh light, a poisonous light that drained the life out of every living thing it touched and fed it back into itself.

A mist filled the area, and when both mist and light cleared, there stood an army of monsters. Fangire, Undead, Dopants, Worms, Mirror Monsters, Greeed, Orphnochs, even the strangely useless missile minions that Dai Shocker loved so much.

The ones that went “Gigi!” and jumped like monkeys, that is.

Coming in last was a white-tuxedo wearing, elderly man with a red and black cape.

“Dai Shocker is gone! From the remnants rose Super Shocker, but that too has fallen! Now, from the ashes, Ultra Shocker has risen! We shall take this world for our own, and then we shall take all the worlds for our own! I, Professor Shinigami, shall lead our new organization to a new age of glorious evil!”

Raucous cheers filled the ghost town, even as two more figures silently stood behind Professor Shinigami in support.

“Ambassador Jigoku, Colonel Zol, come. We must establish a reliable base of operations.” The squid monster in human form turned and strode off into the forest, leaving the rest of his army to scatter into the swamplands.

The two sub-commanders saluted and followed their de-facto leader into the swampy forest.

Roanikstead burned.

Author's Notes:

Ara ara.... looks like things are really heating up around here, ne? I wonder what'll happen now...