"That's not good."

My mind went into overdrive. We had to get the heart working, now. I started planning to figure out how to handle this happening.

"Okay Jen I'll go after Sombra and buy you some time to explain the heart to Shining Armor and get it activated!"

She nodded, and I jumped from the balcony and flew as far as I could into the cloud layer. I flew out above Sombra and charged power in my sword for one of the 'tech' moves from my game. I took a second to wish that Sombra would be hurt by fire, and then divebombed towards him. I yelled out and he looked up. I could see briefly a moment of realization on his face, as he undoubtedly realized he was physical enough to be touched. He jumped back, but still got blasted back by the wave of flame.

"FLAMING STRIKE!"

More juts of crystal grew from the ground as he tried to dodge away from me while still trying to get past. I charged more magic on my sword and sent a blast of magic at him, one that'd be harder to dodge.

"FIREBALL!"

I watched the fireball nail him and send him careening into one of his crystals. He snarled at me and before I could react, all of the black crystals erupted with energy. I was hammered with black, purple, and green lightning from all sides. I dropped down to the ground and shut my wings, one of which I could feel was injured. I brought my sword around and managed to demolish the next crystal Sombra had made to step on. I hopped onto the replacement stepping crystal as he brought it out of the ground and then lunged out, knocking Sombra to the ground with me. He snarled and threw me off with his magic, slamming me into a wall. It seemed that I'd finally become enough of an annoyance that he had decided to deal with me before going for the heart. That was good by me, and I flashed him a tentacle filled grin.

"Heya buuuuuuuddy!"

He roared and sent a bolt of lightning at me, this one I avoided. I started running the opposite directions from the castle and threw a broken chunk of crystal at the back of his head. I glanced back and saw him charging after me. I ducked and dodged around to avoid getting blasted, until finally I heard him roar and a wave of pain erupted in my leg. I collapsed and looked up to see him approaching, with an expression like that of an animal watching prey give its last bit of resistance. I looked behind him and grinned dryly.

"Heheh."

He lifted an eyebrow and I did my best to imitate Yzma from the ending of Emperor's New Groove.

"I win!"

His eyes widened and he whirled around, only for a wave of blue energy to crash into him. I leaned out of the way of his remains as he shattered into darkness, and then darted my hand in to grab his horn from midair. I forced myself to my feet, and slowly started limping towards the castle. I glanced at Sombra's horn in my hand and then pocketed it. I decided that I'd have to keep an eye on it, and that it may come in handy. In the show it had the power to generate crystals and darkness even without Sombra, and that was just a small piece of it. The whole thing... I decided I would rather not find out. I looked up and waved as I saw Jen flying towards me and over all of the wrecked gems and broken street from while I distracted Sombra. She dove towards me and grabbed me in a bear hug. I gasped an poked her on the back.

"J-Jen! My back is hurt and.... I.... Can't... Breathe...!"

She blushed and loosened up. Then she seemed to notice my injuries.

"Holy shit dude what did you do!"

I grinned as she pulled me to lean on her as we walked.

"Well I pissed off Sombra until he decided I was worth killing, and then I got the shoulder of one of my wings injured along with my left leg."

She glared at me.

"Well don't get yourself all jacked up next time!"

"No argument there, but I'm still figuring out what stuff from the game I can actually do."

She nodded slowly.

"Yeah. I gotta figure out if I have all of XJ9's abilities or even if I have all of the transformable abilities. I could have a near infinite amount of weapons and such to use."

I nodded and grinned at her.

"Yeah. We're gonna have some fun figuring out our new limits."

She smiled back to me.

After a couple of minutes we made it back to the castle. We immediately received some weird looks, and it seems that the rest of the elements hadn't been told about us yet. Fluttershy gasped and rushed over, giving me the 'wounded animal' treatment. Pinkie ducked and dodged around, inspecting us at all angles, and Applejack and Rarity started yelling at the two.

"Oh my goodness, are you alright?"

Fluttershy had plopped herself under my other arm opposite Jan. The two of them started pulling me towards the castle steps and I heard Pinkie Pie speak up.

"Oh hey! What are you guys I've never seen anything like you before! Are you some kinda sea dragon god-monster? And you are you an automaton so advanced that we can barely comprehend it that's called a robot?"

Everyone froze and looked at her. Jen and I did what would defuse the moment in the show. We both spoke at the same time.

"What?"

Pinkie blinked.

"What are you?"

Before we spoke, Applejack cut us off.

"Pinkie Pie! Fluttershy! Get away from those things! We don't even know what they are dangit!"

"Yes dears, get away from that unsightly creature."

This I decided to take offense to.

"Hey! For your information Jen and I are the ones who grabbed the Crystal Heart, fought Sombra and then got the Heart activated to save the empire! A little thanks is in order I'd say!"

Rarity and Applejack's expressions dropped, and they both looked at Twilight, who was now walking out of the castle.

"Hey Twi this thing here is trying to take credit for what you did to save the Empire from Sombra!'

Twilight gained a downcast expression.

"Well actually he's right... The Crystal Heart is an actual relic, and if these two hadn't been here working for my brother then we may not have been able to retrieve it in time to defend the Empire."

I took my arm off Fluttershy and pointed at Rarity and Applejack.

"How's THAT for unsightly!"

I turned to Fluttershy.

"And thank you for the assistance miss, but Jen's got me taken care of."

Fluttershy blushed and moved away, murmuring something about getting bandages.

Pinkie Pie giggled a little and I looked down to see her poking one of my tentacles with an outstretched hoof, almost like a cat with a string. I concentrated a moment and made the tentacle wiggle around, sending her into a giggle of laughter. I patted her on the head, and I heard Twilight speak up again.

"Of course! These two must be part of my test!"

The rest of the elements sans Fluttershy looked at her. Applejack spoke up.

"How do ya figure that?"

She turned to Applejack and responded.

"Well think about it, a pair of beings unlike any other show up out of nowhere to save the empire? Ones with next to no information surrounding them? It's gotta be part of the test, Princess Celestia must be trying to see how well I handle major changes in plans! Heheh, that's the only logical explanation!"

She had a slightly manic and nervous grin by this point, and the other elements shrugged and nodded. Twilight turned to us and I looked up to see Fluttershy return and start wrapping bandages on my leg and wing after Jen sat me down on the castle steps. I looked back up to Twilight when I heard her speaking to Jen and I.

"Wel sir and madam, could you please reintroduce yourselves to my friends here?"

Jen nodded and spoke up.

"Hi there, my name's Jen. I'm a sixteen year old robot/automaton with a sentient soul and my own free will, and this guy here's my boyfriend Kyth."

I spoke up now, with a small wave of my hand.

"Hello, I'm Cthulhu. I'm Jen's boyfriend and I'm an extra-dimensional spirit that's on a quest to regain my lost power!"

They all gave uncertain looks, and Twilight was beaming.

"See? If they weren't part of the test then they'd seem completely impossible other than the fact that we can see them! So, what're the two of you doing here in the empire?"

I let Jen explain this part. She usually was better with explaining things that would freak people out than I was.

"It's kind of a long story. How about we get Princess Cadence and Shining Armor and gather in the throne room so we can explain how it really is."

All of the elements agreed, and a short while later we were all gathered in the throne room. Jen and I had agreed that it would be best to skip some of the secret keeping and tell everyone at least why we were here. We told them everything except for what we knew about the show, and they were all hesitant to believe us. Then I reminded them of all that Twilight had said, and how it was the only thing that made sense. They all seemed to accept this, and they mostly forgave the fact that we had lied earlier since we had saved the empire and the circumstances. Of course Twilight had deluded herself into believing that it was all part of the test, something about testing her ideas on the nature of reality by Celestia. She still wanted to study us though, and we still wanted to move to Ponyville. Then Applejack rammed us into an awkward situation.

"So wait, don't y'all want to go home? Don't you have family to get back to?"

Jen and I both had figured this out already, the plan between us was to wait a while and then come with the elements when they came back to the empire after Twilight ascended. After that we could follow Sunset Shimmer back to the mirror and then be back on Earth. Of course there was the debate on the EQ movies being non-canon meaning the mirror wouldn't be there, but for the moment that was our plan. For the moment we were just saying we hoped to find something miscellaneous that could send us back. I spoke up.

"Well yeah. But Equestria has magic out the wazoo so it shouldn't be much of a problem to find a magical relic or spell that can send us back home. Until then we can just chill with you guys in Ponyville."

They seemed to accept this, and they all swore to do their best to either help us find something or to make our stay comfortable until we could go home, and after that we departed for Ponyville. Each of the mane six had something they wanted to ask us about as we went along the way. First of all was Fluttershy simply checking that I was still bandaged properly. Then Applejack who was left perturbed by the idea of humans having machines to do farming tasks for us. Pinkie had already had her spiel, and next was Rainbow Dash asking if Jen and I wanted to race her when we got to Ponyville, since she had seen us fly with prety good speed earlier. Twilight was furiously writing the whole time, and Spike was actually curious about the comics and such that we had. That was actually an interesting conversation, and while I did that I heard Jen telling Rarity about clothing styles from Earth.

"Well we have the Power Ponies! They have all kinds of magic, lightning power, shaping gems into anything imaginable, super anger strength, a magic whip, even super speed!"

I smirked at him.

"Yeah well the Avengers have a robotic suit of power armor, super anger strength, a thunder god, a super soldier with an unbreakable shield, a secret agent, and even an archer with a whole crapton of technologically amplified super-arrows!"

Spike and I locked eyes. He broke the brief silence.

"You got any copies on you?"

"No. You?"

He shook his head.

"No, but I have some in Ponyville."

"Then I'll be borrowing some of those."

"No problem just take good care of them and keep them in the sleeves."

We broke the intense gaze with a laugh, me punching his shoulder and him grinning at me. Then we hear Jen getting ticked off.

"Hey considering they were crafted from a torn up tunic and scraps then they look damn good to me! Hell, Kyth likes them and that's what should matter when personally making stuff like clothing!"

Uh oh. Something I had learned before Jen and I started dating was that she gets defensive about stuff she works on. She can take criticism but a direct insult will get her ticked fast. And from the sound of it Rarity was criticizing the pair of pants Jen had thrown together back at the empire. I like them as Jen said, but sewing was a bit of a hobby for Jen, and so it was one thing which easily got her vamped up.

"Well I'm not denying that it's important that the client like the item darling, merely that that... Ensemble... Could be made to look a good deal more fashionable. Then again I suppose that a machine could never match the ability of a skilled designer."

And then I leaned over to Spike and whispered to him.

"Brace for impact, here comes the yelling."

"Excuse me, but just because I'm a machine doesn't take away from my skill in the slightest!"

"Well darling I apologize, maybe I simply misread your skill."

"Hey I'm no master but I'm no amateur either! Hell, I bet I could outdo anything you could make with the same conditions!"

"Well challenge accepted dear, we can settle it back at my boutique."

"Game on."

The rest of the ride was spent with them sitting back to back looking away from each other. Spike and I locked eyes and made a silent agreement to not be involved. After a short awkward while we arrived in Ponyville and everyone dispersed, Pinkie heading out to get supplies to throw us a housewarming party later, Rainbow to get to weather duty, Applejack and Fluttershy to take care of chores, leaving only me, Jen, Spike, Rarity, and Twilight. We were about to head to Rarity's for the two of them to settle their challenge when Jen froze up in the road. Her eyes widened and she stood stock still. I asked what was wrong but she shushed me.

"Shutupshutup! I hear something."

One of her pigtails bent and opened into a satellite dish looking broadcaster. Her eyes widened and she looked at me.

"C'mon, we got trouble!"

Her pigtails reverted and jets opened in them, and I unfolded my wings and the two of us dashed across town. I could see what she meant by trouble, I could see a group of foals from the Ponyville school running away from the Everfree Forest. I could see the Crusaders, Snips, Snails, Twist, Pip, and HOLY FRACK IS THAT BUTTON MASH!? I lost focus for a split second but quickly realized  why they were running.

Following them from the forest was a full grown hydra, and it/they looked pissed. Next Chapter: Chapter Four: Cutie Mark Crusader Hellraisers! Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 48 Minutes