As more and more feelings and sensations returned to her body, the voices and sounds beyond the darkness surrounding her started to make more and more sense.

She could recognize now the humid feeling of water around her, and why it made her feel a little bit cold. She was now able to take deep breaths and twitch her fingers as sensation returned to her body.

There was a faint quality to the world around her that instinctively told her that she was not in the 'real' world, and just as she realized that, a sizzling feeling--as if pinpricks were rolling up from her toes to her head--enveloped her. She felt her body change. Felt as if every cell in her body was turning somehow. She felt herself stretch and her hair becoming shorter… she felt her clothes transform around her into a body suit.

It was then that the memories flooded in.

The magical energy flowed down her arms and released in a torrent of destructive energy, straight down at the monster destroying Glocken. She had already felt herself slipping away the moment she had done so.

Thankfully the process wasn't painful. Just as her legs and arms started to burst into pixels of light, she just felt... nothing. She was at peace, knowing that she had destroyed that which had threatened her friends, and even the uncertainty of her future--whether she would return to her real body or not---was not weighing heavily in her mind.

She turned her eyes to Nightmare Moon. Briefly. Almost too briefly. But at least if she disappeared it would be with the memory of her beloved. Or her avatar in any case. Either way, sometimes, this world felt far more real than the 'real world'.

And then the world disappeared and she felt almost like she was once again going through the mirror portal. Actual worlds… some she recognized as videogames, others she had never imagined could exist, flew past her mind's vision and then--

She was staring at a room. It was somewhat familiar… it reminded her of the lab she had helped Twilight build… but it was missing several key components, such as the device to control the diary's influx of magic… but the diary was right there! Innocuously resting on a platform with several cables attached to it.

She moved unconsciously forward, reaching out to grab it. It was the last piece of the puzzle. The one item that could return her to her old self. But something stopped her. She felt her fingertips touch a thick glass-like surface and as much as she pressed, she couldn't push past it. She tried banging her fists against it, to no avail.

Sunset pressed her hands against the surface and screamed, calling for help, trying to get anyone's attention. For a short while, it seemed like no one could even hear her, but soon enough the door into the small lab opened, allowing a familiar figure to step in.

"Professor Sombra!" she cried out, trying to get his attention. Things were still a blur. Why was she here? Were her friends okay? Had she stopped the monster?

Sombra appeared to not have heard her, rather heading straight for another computer near the diary and quickly typing something. Sunset couldn't see what was on the screen itself, but Sombra did not seem pleased with whatever information it was showing. It was then that doubt entered Sunset's mind. Why was the book there, of all places? Since when did Sombra actually know it was an integral part of their research?

As if suddenly aware of her presence, Sombra straightened up, and he turned to look straight at her. His green eyes widened a bit while a savage smile crept up his face. "My, my. Seems my net DID catch something."

"Professor, what do you think you're doing?" Sunset asked, retreating a little as the grinning human sat down in front of what she now realized was a computer. She looked around, finding only darkness around her, and tried to float away, but she could only reach so far before some sort of invisible barrier would stop her from moving further.

She was trapped.

"You might be asking yourself how you ended up here," Sombra said after a moment. "I wouldn't know, since I can't hear you, but that seems to me like a good guess as to your state of mind." He leaned back, sneering at her casually, "What I did was nothing new, really. It happened with Alfheim as well… you see, when SAO was thrown into disarray, a certain company figured out a way to funnel users into another server, instead of back into their bodies."

He motioned with his hand at the equipment behind him. "After I got a hold of this little book of yours, I was able to create the parameters I needed based on Sparkle's experiments. I realized early on that direct usage of its power was outside my ability… however, through the game mechanics and the facilitating investigation you both had already started, I was able to imbue a character I created in GGO with incredible power… but it was not enough.

His eyes darkened and he glared at Sunset. "As soon as I realized that you had the power to contain all of that… magic, as you call it… inside of you, I developed a process to emulate it. But it was not enough. So, I emulated the portals that Sparkle was creating and hacked my way into administration, allowing me to produce and control monsters as needed... when my boss monster finally killed you..." he grinned in response to her frown. "I channelled your mind into my private server, trapped it, and we are now having this one sided conversation."

"You won't get away with this, Sombra!" Sunset shouted, smashing her fists against the computer's screen in a futile attempt to break through. "The others will catch you and then you'll have to deal with the consequences of what you're doing!"

Sombra tilted his head. "I'm sure you're saying something along the lines of, 'justice will prevail' or 'you won't get away with this'," he teased. "But that's the thing, my dear, I already did! Not only are your friends practically setting up your funeral already, but they have given up hope of ever getting you back!"

"You see, your… soul and your mind were linked to your body, and now, thanks to some clever programing and a simple trap, I have all that I need to evolve from this human shell into something so much better!" He started laughing at Sunset's fury. "But don't worry too much, my little piece of data. I have just the best use for you… I'm going to compress you and reprogram you to feed my avatar all of your magic and power.

"Goodbye, Sunset Shimmer. And thank you," Sombra whispered as he started typing.

Sunset felt the invisible cage around her become smaller and smaller, just as she felt her whole body slowly--but thankfully painlessly--being torn apart. Her consciousness drifted away, the last thing she was able to see being Sombra's smug smile as the world and everything around her became irrelevant.

Mirage's eyes snapped open the moment the last particle of light drifted into her.

She was laying on her back in a cavern, and she was alone. Or was she? The familiar sound of gunshots and explosions reached her past the cascading water next to her and she pushed herself up slowly, taking stock of her situation.

Her radio crackled in. "...it hasn't pixelated yet."

"What's… what's going on?" She whispered. She narrowed her eyes, able to see some shapes through the curtain of the waterfall. It was then that one big, black shape arose from the waters past it, growled something she couldn't hear and rushed at something directly outside and above Mirage.

She heard Nightmare Moon gasp on the radio.

In an instant her hands were extended outwards and a massive fireball shot from them, drying up the cavern floor and evaporating the waterfall as it went through and smashed into the monster.

Even though she had been unconscious after Sombra had… done whatever he had done to her, she had somehow been aware of his presence and of him somehow syphoning energy from her while she was unguarded, and though this creature looked nothing like the Crystal Prep professor, Sunset knew immediately it was him.

She heard a familiar whisper behind her, "It's you…" but as much as she wanted to turn to see Nightmare Moon, her eyes were set on Sombra as he pushed himself up, snarling at her.

"You're not laying a claw on any of my friends." She growled. Deep within herself she felt a familiar call and she allowed her instincts to summon two familiar flaming guns which cooled down into metal within her grasp. "I'm going to feed you these bullets… and make sure you and your experiments never endanger any more lives!"

She pointed her gun straight at the monster.

"Do you hear me?!" She asked, meeting Sombra's angry gaze with her own. "This stops here and now, Sombra!"

For a moment, the whole little valley was silent.

"Who?" Lion asked.

"Sombra!" Nightmare Moon roared suddenly, making Heavy Collar jump. "How dare you cause all that damage and risk the lives of so many students? Don't you have any decency?"

Sombra snorted. "Don't lecture me on that, 'Nightmare Moon'." He growled, looking up at the sniper. "Students are seldom worth the effort we go through with them. A few less wouldn't be a tragedy."

Rather than reply, Nightmare Moon let loose another shot from her rifle, which went through Sombra's head without even staggering him. However, Mirage was right behind, and just as his face regenerated, he found himself gazing down the barrel of a fiery gun.

The shot reverberated in the valley, but Sombra had dodged, letting the bullet fly past his head as he took a swipe at the gunslinger.

However, Mirage was no stranger to fights in close quarters. She twisted her body just as fast as Sombra's attack and felt it slide past her, missing her by less than an inch. Already—as his effort carried him forward—she was pressing her other gun against his back and pulling the trigger.

Sombra cried in pain as he twisted just in time to avoid a direct shot, but he wasn't able to escape all damage. His left shoulder was blown off, and the wound steamed with the dark ichor he had for blood in this world as it splashed out before pixelating into the air.

He rolled back and away, holding his shoulder and growling at Sunset. "How were you able to hurt me?!"

Mirage grinned. "Oh you felt that? Welcome to my world!"

Sombra's reaction was to try and use the momentum to slash at Sunset, who managed to lean back just enough that he tore the tip of her coat. The pair skipped back, landing a few feet away and staring at each other with open hostility.

"You might have come back, but this is the last time you will stand in my way!" Sombra shouted, moving impossibly fast towards Mirage.

The gunslinger leaned down and rolled under his wide swipes, realizing that—for all his power and agility—Sombra had no real skill in combat. He had relied completely on his powers, immunities and brutality to take down the others.

Despite her advantage, she was still using all of her concentration to keep up with the monster. Mirage had more skill, but the longer things went on, the more likely it would be for Sombra to score a direct hit.

For her part, Nightmare Moon was gritting her teeth in frustration. She didn't have a clear shot most of the time, but the few instances where she might have been able to help were being thwarted by the fact that a shot from her wouldn't even slow the beast down.

Focused as she was, she was still able to hear something.

Blinking, she leaned back, noticing a melody, a ballad almost, riding the winds of the battlefield. There was never background music in this game and yet… there was something familiar about it.

Words filtered in through the air and haze of battle, the familiar voices of the Rainboom's song that managed to lift her spirit.

Nightmare Moon smiled at the words and looked down, intending to rejoin the battle when she noticed that her rifle was glowing a pale deep purple.

Eyes widening, she looked through her scope at the others, who hadn't noticed a similar effect on them. But if it was what she thought it was...

Mirage and Sombra paused as the words and music gained strength. Although they didn't take their eyes off of each other, Sombra seemed nervous, somehow sensing that the music had been responsible for the shields that had appeared earlier, and possibly influenced the return of Sunset Shimmer; Mirage simply grinned.

Sombra almost didn't notice the prediction line positioning straight on his chest, but some instinct told him to jump, and as he did, a perfect heart-shot ended up carving a hole through his stomach and making him howl in pain.

"But how?!" he gasped as his body regenerated at a much slower rate until it stopped, healed, but not completely.

It was then that the sky opened.

Little holes, too small for a human or even something half the size of one started appearing all over the battlefield. Through them, all fighters could see a different sky, a distant crowd of people, a stage and familiar faces.

The voices and music of the Rainbooms flooded the battlefield and Nightmare Moon immediately spoke into the radio. "Our weapons have been enhanced! Let's take him down!"

She hadn't even finished saying that when another shot cracked through the valley, blowing up Sombra's knee.

It didn't take much longer for the others to start firing as well at the crumpling figure. For the first time since the battle started, Sombra seemed to be at a disadvantage, but it didn't last long.

"Come on gang! We're winning!" Wallflower shouted, emptying her unique weapon on the collapsed creature.

Mirage, who skipped back to avoid being hit by accident noticed with some worry that the damaged ichor that had previously faded as soon as it left Sombra's body wasn't pixelating anymore.

"I will not fall here! This world! This universe will belong to me!"

As bullets shook his body, Sombra growled, his cries turning incoherent. He curled up and then sprung into the air, trailing behind the shadows that had flowed out of him like blood.

"Guys, be careful!" Mirage warned, stepping back and keeping a wary eye on the unhinged professor.

Sombra cackled, or maybe it was a painful gasp… it was an odd, repetitive sound that sounded wetter by the second. Out of his back, long, shadowy appendages emerged and crashed with tremendous speed and force on the ground, digging into the rock as if it was made of paper.

One by one, more of them formed until he was held above the surprised group by six, spider-like legs.

Smoky ichor still dripped from Sombra's wounds and pixelated a few inches away from his body, but he didn't seemed weakened by this. If anything, his unusual sounds seemed to gain strength the more time passed.

His pain-filled red eyes bulged out as his jaw opened and widened more and more, resembling a twisted, monstrous smile until his whole humanoid body was split in half and had transformed into an upper and lower jaw full of tendrils of smoke that resembled fangs, his arms and legs dangling like sick reminders of his once human-like appearance.

"Take cover!" Surgeon ordered over the radio. "We don't know what he's going to do next, but if it's an area attack we cannot allow it to hit us all."

As if reacting to his orders, black thorns emerged from the long, chitinous legs as they continued to widen. Sombra's new body grew bigger until the appendages were each the size of a tree trunk and didn't fit anymore in the tiny valley, forcing Sombra to shift his legs out to maintain his balance, digging them into the side of the mountain and into the ground below.

Now much bigger than the creature that had attacked Glocken, Sombra turned to face the tiny beings below, clicking and giggling in a slightly hysterical way, that could be mistaken for incoherent words—but were really nothing more than mindless noises—babbled out of his distorted mouth.

With incredible speed, tendrils shot from his legs and body, smashing through, trees, rocks and even magical shields.

Mirage watched in horror as one of the spikes went straight through a rock and impaled Thunderbird, who had been taking cover behind it. The scout vanished in a puff of pixels without being able to even scream.

The Lion fared a little better, dodging desperately the moment the closest spike shot his way. The tiniest glint of a shield formed around him, but couldn't stop the loss of his left arm. Lion cursed and rolled on the floor and sprinted away without stopping for a second, barely avoiding another thorn tearing where his legs had been.

Heavy Collar rolled under one thorn, while Nightmare Moon jumped over it. The pair were doing their best to keep alive and barely managing to do so out of sheer luck and skill.

Surgeon, Butcher and Wallflower made their way to the waterfall as they dodged and shot the legs. Despite the power of Butcher's weapon and the magical boost from the Rainbooms, he didn't seem to be inflicting any damage at all.

"The legs are definitely not its weak point," Mirage heard him mutter.

Where Sukiru had been nested, there was nothing but rubble and collapsed trees, with no sign of the sniper.

"We're getting decimated here!" Heavy Collar shouted, rather redundantly given the circumstances. "We need a plan!"

"That's not what decimated means!" Mirage shouted in return, dodging the spikes. She had dived into the lake, emerging soaked but intact from the attack. Sombra had paused now, swaying and biting at the air in some sort of delusional anger.

She had taken cover behind one of the large boulders on the edge, hiding from its crazed eyes.

Nightmare Moon ran to her side and ducked, looking up in disgust and awe at what Sombra had become. "That has to be the ugliest thing I have ever seen," she muttered, before looking at Mirage. "And you are the most beautiful thing I never expected to see again. Don't. Ever. Do that again!"

Mirage gave her a pained smile before looking up at the monster again. "Moon, I can see the diary up there."

Nightmare Moon's eyes widened and she looked up, trying to follow Mirage's line of sight. "I don't see it."

"It's there," Mirage insisted, "in the lower jaw. I can see the magic swirling around it. It's what's giving him the power to do this."

"Is that the only way to stop him?" Moon asked nervously. "Can't we blow up its eyes from a safe distance?"

Above them, Sombra—seemingly unable to recognize who was who anymore—had turned to try to destroy the cave behind the waterfall, after it had spotted Surgeon and the others running in through it.

"I have a plan," Mirage confessed.

"I'm not going to like it, am I?" Nightmare Moon asked, forcing her eyes away from the creature to look at her recently-recovered lover. "You can't do this to me. You can't do something that will get you killed again. I'm not sure I could take it..."

Mirage simply pulled her into a kiss that made Nightmare Moon's toes curl, and then started running around the lake. "Let's continue that later!"

"Mirage!" Nightmare Moon shouted. She couldn't lose her! Not again!

She watched in disbelief as Mirage jumped up to the rocky side of the mountain to stand in front of the monstrosity. "Hey! Sombra! You wanted me? Come and get me!"

The creature seemed to tilt its body/head/jaw and after barely a second, it dove forward with impressive speed, carving gashes on the rock with its maw as it closed around Mirage.

Nightmare Moon stared in horror as the creature reared back with a self-satisfied gurgle before it started attacking the cave again. Of Mirage there was no sign.

That is until a bulge seemed to form right on the tip of its lower jaw, expanding and expanding, and even through the creature's shrieks and the song around them, Nightmare Moon could now hear shot after gunshot blasting from within its form.

In retrospect, she would compare it to an egg exploding.

But at the time, all she saw was ichor flying in all directions and Mirage falling from far up, arms wrapped around something pressed to her chest.

The beast above convulsed, it's gargantuan legs glowing from within as they started cracking loudly, almost like trees breaking. Each piece of shadowy chitin would dissipate into clouds of shadows, and through the haze, past the figure of Mirage, turning in the air to try and land on her feet, Nightmare Moon saw something.

Another figure, almost human but also wolf-like, reforming from the center of the shadows. A deep anger seeped into her heart at the sight of the reforming shape of Sombra.

This creature had almost ruined everything. It had turned Twilight's and Sunset's experiment into an almost fatal losses. Three lives could have been lost that day due to his interference. And then she had lost Sunset just because of him!

She lined up her rifle, focusing and imagining all the energy from the song, from her love for Sunset, from her own love of this world and the real world and her students and family seeping into the bullet.

Her shot was true, and it glowed with blue-white energy, casting almost a laser-like trail behind it as it flew.

The magic-imbued bullet, carrying within it the hopes and powers of the Rainbooms, her own hopes and the magic her lover had brought into this world, blew up the distant figure, and like a thunderbolt splitting the night, the sky went white for a seconds with the crackling roar of displaced air.

And then Mirage splashed into the lake.

Nightmare Moon stared at the form of her lover as Mirage stood up shakily and waved at her with a forced grin. "Nothing to it."