The fires finally vanished as the magic fueling them trickled out. The sand were relatively spared; a few charred patches and a few mounds of blown over sand here and there, but the beach was relatively clean--excluding the potentially dangerous shells that may or may not have living behemoth mutant crabs residing within them littering across the shore.

“Alright… alright. I think I’ve calmed down now,” the Summoner spoke, wiping a sweat glistening on his forehead.

“Good, ya whimp.” Malideus scoffed. “Anyways, let’s get the Staff of Vodahmin back. I don’t want it to be overly soaked in weird, green crab blood.”

“That’s off…” Ral muttered as they began walking towards the now motionless carcass with the Staff protruding from its head. “Crab blood isn’t green. It’s supposed to be blue.”

“As an avid researched of most departments,” the Summoner cleared his throat before continuing, “I can attest to that. Perhaps there was some artificial alterations to this crab?” the Summoner, with dull but curious eyes, stared at the carcass before them.

It was surprisingly left not charred to cinders and was actually cooked rather finely, permeating a miasma of aromatic seafood.

“Bleh. Who cares.” Malideus reached for the lance, manipulating the MC’s hand in order to reach for it. But as Malideus motioned their vassal closer, the crab suddenly exploded in an array of white light. “Oh god! It has come back from the grave to-” Malideus flinched, swinging the Staff in a frenzied state, trying to batter away the white light. Suddenly, the misty light seeped into the MC’s body, seemingly fading into him. “Oh. Cool. Dark Souls style experiencing gaining.”

Appearing just above their heads was another display screen. This time, it read: “Triumph” followed by a number of statistics such as ‘experience gained’ and ‘loot’.

“Yes!” Malideus shouted as he shot both of his arms towards the sky. “So we do have an inventory!”

“Let’s see here… wait… what.” The Summoner went deadpan, looking at the display with incredulity. “It says we’ve gained ‘a moderate amount’ of experience, and that our amount of experience required to level up is ‘not a lot more’.”

“Disregard the apparent impudence of the cosmos who designed this ‘game’.” Ral Zarek added, “At the very least we survived that ordeal.”

“The fact that we’d have to ‘die’ eight or so times to actually get a ‘game over’ makes surviving against things very, very easy for us,” the Summoner responded.

“What is this, a Shin Megami Tensei game?” Vaati spoke dumbfounded.

“After all that trouble, we got…” the Summoner leaned in over the display, shooting out a rather over analyzing glare. Suddenly, his neutral expression darkened to a grimace, “...a shell. Well, at least Malideus got what he wanted.”

“Had I known that we actually had to do a fight to the death with some fuk that looks like from a Souls game.” Malideus grumbled a bit. “No zweihander? No awesome spells? Ugh.”

“Hey, guys… don’t you have the feeling of...” the Summoner began turning the Main Character, causing him to face to the right--just directly towards the ocean, “...being watched.”

Roosting like a bird was a very eerie silence as the MC swivelled his head, gazing upon the ocean shore. Swaying from left to right was a very large tail, mantled with teal scales. Connected to this tail was a rather bored looking pony who was glaring at the MC rather… dully.

‘Do we say ‘We come in piece’ or something?’ the Summoner mentally noted.

‘By the way it’s looking at us, I’d say no,’ Vaati replied to the Summoner’s thoughts.

‘Her look… indicates of… bewilderment.’ The Overlord concluded, ‘As to be expected.’

‘She’s looking at us... with such… a flummoxed state.’ Ral began pondering, ‘What if she can read minds-’

“I can read minds, actually.”

‘Oh my god.’ The Summoner began, taken aback, ‘Did you just say that outloud, or did she actually-’

‘Impossible,’ answered Ral. ‘No matter where I went, my studies proven one thing--merponies don’t have the natural ability to read minds. One would require to be a very powerful mage, or much more rare-’

“I have ESP,” answered the merpony that was still about several feet away.

‘Uh… That.’ Ral finished.

“Oh wonderful, do you have mind control powers as well?” Vaati asked sarcastically.

“I read minds, not control them,” the mer replied, remaining stoic.

‘Could somebody tell me what the hell ‘ESP’ is?’ Malideus mentally spoke.

‘Well…’ the Summoner sheepishly began, ‘I know what ESP is, but I forgot the unabbreviated title for it. Uh… Was it… Extra… Super Power?’

‘No…’ Ral mentally shook his head. ‘It’s Extra Special Perception.’

“It’s extra sensory perception,” corrected the mer.

‘Ack.’ Ral let out an incoherent babble of words throughout the MC’s mind.

‘What’s our course of action… ?’ the Summoner asked, a bit dazed.

‘She can read our minds, pretty sure that whatever our plan is she’ll know it.’

‘I’m pretty sure she’s going to be more concerned as to how we have several minds stuffed into one body,’ the Fat Friar regarded.

‘If she is, then we’ll have to spill it.’

‘Yeah, I guess we have to,’ the Summoner admitted, closing the MC’s eyes as he brought up his hand below his chin. ‘We have to clear up that we’re-’

‘Here to fuck shit up?’

‘To murder Celestia--this world’s Celestia, anyways?’

‘Enslave Equestria and destroy it to build a better city?’

‘That I want sushi right now?’ Audrey, without much regard to anything, nonchalantly spoke in the mental IRC chatroom.

‘Those are… somewhat correct, save for enslaving Equestria. We can’t do that right now… we have to find True Celestia and-’

‘Fuck her shit up?’

‘Stab her throat with her own horn?’

“You got me at ‘murder Celestia,” the mer, once more in a stupor of stoicism, answered. “Talk.”

“We are many, you are but one!” Malideus declared. “We’ll talk when we want to talk!”

“Yeah!” Audrey took control, pumping the Main Character’s face into the air. “Just who the hell do you think we are?”

“Some odd being that surpasses ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’?” the mer answered.

‘I want sushi even more now…’ Audrey glowered at the mer.

“Since you’ve read our thoughts prior,” Ral steeled his glance at the mer--whose glance was as cold as a barren, cold wasteland, “I don’t think we need to punctuate on our intentions.”

“It’s fine.” The mer shuffled her tail around, kicking up sand. “I want Celestia dead as well.”

‘That… makes things less complicated,’ the Summoner thought.

‘I still want sushi.’ Audrey reluctantly lowered her stance.

“Oh.” The Summoner fumbled with words, uttering out incomprehensive blurbs. “Very- very well then! Uh… Why do YOU want Celestia dead?”

“Our distant cousins of the Southern sea has been nigh completely eradicated due to Celestia’s ponies gratuitously polluting the the se..” The mer somehow gained an even more chilling, ominous aura. “It won’t be long before we too will die.”

“Rather… blunt.”

“I’ve told you mine,” the mer spoke. “Finish the exchange.”

‘By that I’m guessing she wants us to tell her why we want to-’

‘Fuck Celestia’s shit up?’

‘Yeah…’

“It’s a very long story-”

“I have time,” the mer stated.

“Fine then!” Malideus abruptly took control.

“Get the popcorn, we have a lot of stories to tell,” Vaati spoke to her.

“Some time ago, all eight of us in our respective separate bodies--wait or was there nine of us? I’ve lost count…” the Summoner sighed as he spoke. “While collaborating, we accidentally stumbled on an Equestria--an alternate one thanks to dimensional transportation.”

“This Equestria… was hectic… but organized, deadly so.” Ral interjected. “Naturally, the one leading this Equestria was Celestia. She, however, prefers to be called ‘True Celestia’ as she regards her counterparts to be inferior and mere defective copies.”

“After we found that out, we went on, crusading about and freeing the races she’ve enslaved in her Equestria,” the Summoner continued.

Suddenly, there was a very conspicuous pause as the MC suddenly went quiet, an atmosphere of embarrassment beginning to overwhelm the vicinity.

“And then what?” the mer asked.

“We died, unfortunately.” Ral sighed. “We were then reincarnated, for whatever reasoning behind some sort of deity. Catch was that we’d be stuck in just one body…”

“That’s stupid.”

“I know, right?!” the Summoner yelled out in vehement agreement. “Why couldn’t they have gave us more than one body-”

“I was referring to how supposedly eight of you died to one Celestia.”

The MC’s body stood motionless, still in his exact same posture. Seething inside, however, were the several different screams of anguish. Suddenly, Malideus regained control, eyes blazing with hate.

"The fuck do you know about it!? I have to work with THESE idiots, of course I was going to get killed! Were it up to me, I'd have just summoned Nicol Bolas and been done with her!" Malideus cried, gripping his face.

“We love you too Madileus.” Vaati remarked, eliciting a sigh from Malideus.

“You don’t seem to understand what the situation was.” Ral began. “This world’s Celestia? We’ve seen her, and she couldn’t hold a candle to the ‘True Celestia’. It is a fact that most, if not all of us have fought our own versions of Celestia and won. But the ‘True Celestia’...” Ral shuddered. “She does anything, and I mean anything to further her own goals. Even if it means enslaving her own ponies, doing genetic experiments on her enemies, and sacrificing whole worlds just to grow stronger.” He emphasized.

“And this one could be next.” He finished the statement with a dark tone.

"That's why we need some help this time. This Celestia may be a massive knobgobbler, but she can be beat with a small party. We need a worldwide ambush, or a godlike, homosexual robot named Terridax to even weaken 'True' Bitch-lestia. And since I see no homo-bots around, the honor falls to your ilk, hippocampus." Malideus gave his speech, puffing out the MC's chest for intimidation.

“Under the tense that I were to believe all of this,” the mer spoke with a surprising hint of emotion behind her words--said emotion being indignation, “by what assurance do you provide that, assuming that you can even fulfill killing this world’s Celestia, we mers will be spared from the inevitable crumble of this Equestria as the Celestia here is a high ranking authority.”

“If need be, we’ll also kill the other world leaders too!” Vaati clapped his hands. “Problem solved.”

‘Wait- god dammit, Vaati.” The Summoner mentally glared cold, stabbing eyes into Vaati. ‘That’s not-’

“Fair enough,” the mer stated, still remaining that emotionless mien on her face. “Additionally, will you disregard the fact that we merponies, ensuing after the murder of Celestia, will in fact establish tyrannical rule over Equestria?”

“Sure!” Malideus half-mindedly answered.

‘Hold on!’ the Summoner yelled out. ‘What-’

“Very well,” the mer nodded her head as she began to slither back towards the ocean. “I shall provide you adequate enough resources.” Slipping into the clear waters, she let out one last call, “I’ll try to be utmost punctual. Give me a few minutes.”

With that, she delved into the ocean, slipstreaming into the blue abyss of the ocean floor.

With an idle blink, the MC turned around, facing opposite to the beach, gazing upon the golden, glistening sand of the beach.

“Now what,” the Summoner deadpanned.

“Now?” Malideus evanesced a breath from the MC’s mouth. “Now we kill some more hermit crabs.”

“What?” Ral emitted out a disparaging sigh. “We nearly died from the one crab alone.”

“We gotta start somewhere,” Vaati added “If there’s anything I learned from playing Golden Sun it’s that to stand a chance against True Bitchlestia we need to do every single side-quest ever. Every. Single. One.” He ended emphasizing the last words.

“I’ve no qualms with that since I’m a perfectionist in regards to these things,” the Summoner answered, wiping off a sweat from the MC’s head. “Very well then. We should probably do a pre-emptive strike on them while they’re still unaware,” the Summoner muttered out audibly as he faced the uncountable amount of spiny, colossal black shells resting about on the soft blanket of sand.

“Alrighty then.” Without much regard, Audrey began to spin the lance, seamlessly spinning it with her one hand as she began to raise it. Firmly gripping the base of it as she reared it way over her head, she threw it.

Lunging at its target, it reft the winds of its peaceful stillness as it began to cut through them. Finding its way into the base of the shell, the Staff lanced its way into it, burrowing deep into the crab as it cracked out the shell, flinging bits of it away as it made a sickening crunch.