Lucky for Sunset Shimmer, the Alicorn Amulet and prosthetic arm didn’t travel very far. For it along with the monster had only gone so far as to fall asleep after a night of chaos and they ended up in an alleyway in the small town of Canterlot.

The changeling hybrid opened his eyes slowly, flinching bright sunlight.

“Ugh… my head. Wait… where am I? What… what happened? How did I get here?”

The hybrid then felt the side of his left hand, feeling the pain along with a few droplets of green blood. It looked at his palm seeing the green blood dripping down, and gasped slightly.

“Changeling blood… why am I bleeding changeling blood… more importantly, why is it coming out of my system…”

After looking around at where he was, it discovered his body was still in its monstrous state, and without any question or remorse, he began digging into his chest, and started pulling the changeling skin off…

“It's time….that… you… get… off...my…. body!”

Once all the skin was torn off, the former monster stood facing the peeled off skin, and in the shadows, one eye illuminated in demonic red, with a black diamond retina. Looking around, he faced the prosthetic arm on the ground, and raised it up, and the wires began fusing into the side of his arm while he groaned in pain.

“Agh, ow… damn it, this hurts! Agh… finally.”

The now restored human with the ominous eye looked at his arm re-connected in place.

“Okay, now… let's… get… moving...”

The changeling hybrid started to lose his vision and soon he ended up falling onto the ground face first into the ground blacking out.

Over at a food court, the former Shadow 5 were all with their food awaiting for Coppermane to arrive. He had called them over in a request to talk to them and giving updates.

“So, did anyone hear from Sunset?” Sunny asked.

“Sort of. She kept crying and I didn’t understand a single word she said.” Sugarcoat replied.

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“What was she even crying about?” Lemon asked.

“The Alicorn Amulet and Toxigo’s prosthetic arm was stolen.” a familiar voice said.

Their heads turned to look at who talked and saw Coppermane. Their eyes bulged to see the huge scratch that went down his left cheek and reaching above his eye. There were still some marks showing, but most of it was shown to have healed.

“Dude, did you mess with a baby tiger down at the animal shelter again?” Lemon asked.

“No, I didn’t. I had a run in with that monster that you and Indigo met last night.” Coppermane said as he took a seat next to Sunny.

“You finally saw that changeling hybrid?” Indigo asked.

“Yeah I did. You were right. That thing is scary.” Coppermane shuddered.

“Did it do anything else to you?” Sour asked.

“Yeah, it did. It held me against the wall and taunted me with all my deepest fears, and said that Neon Lights was gonna die and… this last thing that’s actually got me worried the most.”

“What did it say?” Sunny asked.

“This thing said something like ‘This isn’t your world to rule. She will rise again’ or something.” Coppermane replied.

The girls looked at each other concerned, something about that seemed off.

“You don’t think the “she” that thing was referring to is…” Sour began.

“I highly doubt that’s the case. She died from the explosion, remember?” Sugarcoat replied.

“We didn’t see the explosion. For all we know, she could have found a way to make it out alive” Sour said.

“Who are you talking about?” Coppermane asked.

“Queen Chrysalis.” Indigo replied.

“Wait, is she the changeling queen that kidnapped the girls and the queen you all fought against with Toxigo?”

“Yep,” they all said.

“But I thought she was killed from the explosion.” Coppermane said.

“Well that’s the other thing, we were all evacuated from area, and we didn’t see what happened. So… that’s…” Sunny began, but she soon paused. “What if the Queen didn’t die from the explosion? What if she was still alive? But how?”

“Well if she is alive, we’ll take her down. There’s no way we’re letting those things take over.” Indigo smirked.

Coppermane smiled in relief and as he looked to the others he noticed something he didn’t see before. All of them had different wounds and cuts on them like if they were recently hurt.

“So… you said you girls made up with Toxigo, right?” Coppermane asked.

“Yeah. We did.” Indigo quietly responded.

“How exactly?” Coppermane raised a brow.

“We got our butts handed to us fighting changelings in Equestria as well as nearly died and got an understanding of how dangerous Canterlot High’s job is of keeping the magic safe.” Sugarcoat bluntly replied.

“So, is that why a bunch of you girls look like you were recently attacked?” Coppermane asked.

“Yep, pretty much. I got the scar from crawling around in the sewers from those bugs.” Indigo replied and pointed to the red scar going down her left eye.

“I got the knee bandage from a bite.” Sugarcoat said pulling her pant leg up showing the bandage wrapped around her knee.

“As for why Sour and Lemon don’t really have scratches is because they got chucked into an empty realm and stayed there floating for a majority of our battle time.” Sunny replied.

“Oh okay.” Coppermane replied.

“Why do you ask?” Lemon asked.

“Well, something kind of got me curious with my conversation with Sunset. Our Sunset. She said Neon Lights was the reason he had a fake eye.” Coppermane finished.

The table went completely silent and the girls stared at each other.

“Please don’t ask what we did, please don’t ask what we did, please don’t ask what we did…” Lemon whispered to herself.

“I wanted to ask, how did any of you hurt him?”

Indigo paused for a moment. She really didn’t want to tell him about what they did, especially after they were about to make up with one another. But they knew he was gonna find out eventually.

“You… you promise you won’t walk away from us when we tell you?” Sunny asked.

“Yeah… why?”

“Well, some of the stuff we did was just… evil. And after you gave us the benefit of the doubt, I… I didn’t want to tell you because we thought you wouldn’t trust us again.”

Coppermane could tell Sunny wasn’t lying. But as much as they were right, he had to know.

“Sunny, I promise I won’t walk away from you girls. Just tell me what you did.” Coppermane replied.

Indigo gave a sigh and said the first response. “Well, first thing we have to tell you. We were actually blackmailed into hurting him.”

Coppermane’s eyes widened a bit. “But, by who?”

Lemon gulped. “Neon Lights.”

Coppermane groaned. “I thought so. Why did he blackmail you?”

“From what we remember, after the Friendship Games, he and his groupies began bullying everyone to doing what they wanted, one of them being Toxigo. They blackmailed us into hurting him with them because if not they’d post some… inappropriate pictures that no one should ever have.”

“Ouch…” Coppermane said.

“Actually, we’re all to blame. Mostly it was Neon though.” Sour said.

“Well, what did they have you guys do?” Coppermane asked.

“I had tied him up and gagged in a cornfield overnight which I still question how he got out of, Lemon Zest made him go deaf, Sunny kept pushing him down several flights of stairs, Indigo ran over him with a car, and Sour by some miracle sawed his ears off. And Neon tried making a permanent tattoo on his head with a power drill but Tox flinched at the last moment and got a spinning drill bit in his eye, hence the fake eye part.” Sugarcoat bluntly replied.

Coppermane’s eyes bulged out of his head and his mouth expressed great amount of terror.

“Good, god, that’s terrible!”

The girls nodded.

“We all still regret everything we’ve done. Now he’s dead, and everyone at CHS is still giving us a hard time about what we did to him… and you” Indigo replied.

Coppermane suddenly became intrigued by what she said.

“What do you mean including me?”

“Everyone at CHS hates us for what we did to Tox and you.” Sunny responded.

“I don’t think they’ll forget what we did for a long time.” Lemon replied.

“Well, I can see why. But how about this? Next week, on Monday, I’ll try and tell everyone to stop picking on you girls and tell them that my disputes with you five are over.” Coppermane offered.

The five of them paused for a moment and all gave each other nods. It seemed like a fair response.

“I think that’s a yes.” Indigo said.

“Perfect.” Coppermane said.

“Hey, since you’re here, you want lunch?” Sunny offered.

“I don’t see why not. I don’t have anything else to do today.” Coppermane said as he took a menu with all of them.

As Coppermane ate with the girls, they were all in deep conversation, mostly discussing their plans for the upcoming Halloween party. But one thing on everyone’s mind was this. The had enough information on what their threats were, they just had to figure out why they wanted to take them down, and what did human Sunset Shimmer want from this whole deal?

Jet, Royal, and Neon were raiding Toxigo’s dojo home to take the weaponry from his home, along with another plan they had set in mind.

“Did we get everything?” Royal asked.

“Well most of the items we were able to access, everything else is just too impossible to break through.” Jet replied.

“Okay, so does that mean we finally let the place burn?” Royal asked.

“Yes, it does.” Neon replied sounding unsure, making his friends concerned.

“Neon are you okay?” Jet asked.

“Ah, no, actually.” Neon replied.

“How come?” Royal asked.

Neon took a deep breath and spoke.

“Is… Is what we’re doing… right?”

Royal and Jet looked at each other with confused faces.

“What do you mean?” Royal asked.

“Is what, we’re doing, right here and right now, right?” Neon asked.

“When did you get so concerned about that? What we are doing is right, we’re putting an end to their little charades.” Jet replied.

“Oh… right.” Neon responded.

Royal and Jet just got back to more loading up the car, while Neon looked at the front of the house in ruins. He couldn’t help but just feel a little bit bad that they were stealing things from a dead guy.

“We’re gonna get this stuff over to Sunset. You want the honor of burning the place down?” Royal asked.

“Yeah, I would. Go on ahead, I’ll catch up.” Neon replied.

With that, Jet and Royal drove off in their truck leaving Neon to look back to the house and talk to himself, and supposedly to the spirit of Toxigo.

“Hey, Tox. How are you doing? Well, I assume you’re doing much better since you’re dead and far away from me.” Neon laughed.

His eyes gazed towards the open door, and the lights that were still sizzling with electricity.

“You know… I remember when we were actually friends.You realize how much that would have affected our reputation? You would have been perfectly fine if you just let that shit alone. But no… you… you had to go out and die.” Neon said with his voice breaking up.

Neon rubbed his hands over his eyes trying to clear the tears from his face, and then once he opened them he got such a shock of what he saw standing in front of him. He thought he was seeing Toxigo standing right in front of him, but he wasn’t so sure.

He shook his head violently trying to get the image out of his head, and once his eyes opened, it wasn’t there.

“Get a grip on yourself, Neon. You’re just seeing things. He’s dead. He doesn’t matter anymore.” Neon said to himself.

“Neon….. Neon….” A voice whispered.

The voice sent chills down Neon’s spine. There couldn’t have been anyone inside the house, could there? The sound of thunder made him shriek a bit and looked up to see the stormy clouds.

“Oh, right. There’s supposed to be a thunderstorm today.” Neon said.

Neon quickly walked inside just to get out of the storm. And in case, he began to walk around the house, just to make sure no one else was inside. He walked into the kitchen, nothing. He walked into the living room, nothing. Where was that noise coming from?

He opened a door which led him into Toxigo’s bedroom still messy as it was last time he was there. He could see lots of clothes scattered about, bed not made, a few toys on the floor which he looked down, and picked one up to take a look. The toy he analyzed was looking like a robot that could possibly be changed into a racecar.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were a fan of Battle of the Form Changers.” Neon said before putting it back down.

He continued to look around and found a huge board on the wall with several amounts of push pins and photos attached to it, looking as if all of the pictures were all linked together. This one was just like Human Sunset’s was linking the magical occurrences over at CHS.

“So you were also curious about the magic anomalies too.”

Neon then turned his head and from he saw made him shocked. He picked up a picture frame which had a photo of him and all of their friends including Toxigo all standing with each other making silly faces at a carnival like environment, embezzled with a caption that said “Best Friends Forever”

Neon’s eyes hands were beginning to shake up and his eyes watered slightly.

“You…. you kept that photo. I can’t believe you still kept that photo of after everything we’ve done…”

Unfortunately he quickly became distracted by the sound of clattering which made him put the picture back down. However, he froze for a moment to look back at it, and so he opened up the back, folded up the picture and put it in his pocket.

So Neon walked into the office/engineering lab where he heard the source coming from. But for some reason, no one was in there. Or was there… His eyes gazed to the ground which looked as if some muddy footprints had been traced. Either someone had been recently walking in here, or Royal forgot to wipe his feet again.

Neon walked, following the footsteps and found himself walking through to another part of the lab where Toxigo still had the target practice gear set up. He took off his sunglasses to take a better look at the equipment around him.

“Huh, you sure have a lot of time on your hands don’t you Tox?” Neon said to himself. He turned his head and almost got a shock. There was someone else in the room with him. But all he was seeing was the back of someone looking down at a desk.

From the back he could tell this person had on a black tank top, green skin, a left black boot with the other foot being metallic and bronze. This figure also had what looked like a sheet hanging from his waist that only extended to his knees, almost like a waistcoat, and his hair was all ruffled up and messy.

After standing in silence for a moment, Neon cleared his throat and spoke.

“Hi. Uh, sorry for intruding in like this, but the door was open.”

No sound or reply came back from the figure. But Neon blinked again and suddenly the details on that figure were becoming a little… familiar...

“Tox… is… is that you?”

The figure turned himself around giggling quietly which made Neon gasp in fear. This person… it couldn’t have been. He stared right at the face of someone he never would have imagined to show up. But what made him scarier was that his eyes were all dark voids with nothing in them.

Neon slapped his face and winced in pain from how hard he hit himself. He turned his head back and saw the person wasn’t there. It was all visions from his imagination.

“God... No… never… never!” Neon shouted.

He pulled out the pulse rifle hanging from his back which he had stolen along with the other items they stole, loaded it up, and began at random spots around the laboratory and his face expressed great amounts of distress.

Sweat ran down his face as fired the high powered weapon towards a generator, a smoke detector, a sprinkler in the ceiling, and some transformers. Soon, the generator began a fire which began to spread as papers burned, the target cardboard cutouts were burning to ashes and dust, and soon parts of the ceiling began to collapse.

“I’m… I’m sorry. ”

Neon ran out of the house as quick as he could and jumped into his car, and sped off. Letting the house burn to the ground, and fall apart to ashes, and dust….

During the storm, Twilight walked down the sidewalk her arms clutching to her sides from being cold from the rain, and she was still contemplating over the monster attack.

“I can’t believe that monster made it over. Surely there must....”

Twilight didn’t finish her sentence for something caught her eye. She saw a hand sticking out of what appeared to be cardboard box. Curiosity got the better of her, and she walked over to see what its contents were. After a bit of scouring, the sight of Echo Dash’s dented and damaged head made her quietly shriek.

“Echo… What happened to you?”

No reply came from the head, and so only one option came into her mind. She put her head back in the box, picked it up, and carried it with her over and sped up her walking as fast as she could.

Twilight quickly opened up the door and stepped inside her home now soaked from the rain and dripping onto the floor. She dried herself off and then walked upstairs with the box of the disassembled android.

She entered inside her room and began pulling out her remains, which sadly weren’t many. All she found was a bit of her upper chest that had been sliced apart, with all there being left were a bit of the breast, one arm, and her head.

“Okay, let's see if I can find a way to kick you back on.” Twilight turned her head to the side, pulled out a connector plug and plugged it into a USB port on the side of her head, and then connected it to her battery.

Echo began jolting, and her operating system began to reboot once more.

“Paralysis Systems. Echo Dash, online.”

Jolting, she turned her head up and her functioning eye opened to look forwards at a concerned Twilight.

“Hey, Echo. How are you feeling?”

“Not so good. I can’t feel my legs.” Echo’s voice kept on shortening out, making it seem a little unclear as to what she was saying.

“Echo, what… what happened to you?”

“Responding to the non-Wondercolt entity is an unnecessary drain on my power units and is therefore disallowed…” Echo repeated from her last encounter.

“You said that to someone else. Who did you say that to?” Twilight asked.

“Its very dark in here… the end… is near.” Echo strained.

“Who did you say that last line to?” Twilight asked sounding slightly impatient.

Echo slowly positioned her head up to sort of get Twilight in her view, and spewed out one sentence.

“This world’s… Sunset Shimmer.”

Twilight looked puzzled, and stressed at the same time. If she attacked Echo, then chances are she knows everything about them.

“Does she know anything about us?” Twilight asked with a bit of worry.

“No. The human equivalent to Sunset Shimmer and the Shadowbolts don’t have any information on us. I erased my memories files just before they were able to hack into me.”

“So, we’re safe then?” Twilight asked.

Echo looked Twilight in the eyes, and wheezed a bit just before speaking.

“No. They… they’re planning something.”

“Do you know what they’re planning?” Twilight sniffled.

Echo sadly shook her head. “Self has no knowledge of prior engagements.”

Twilight paused. Things weren’t looking pretty.

“I hurt. Please… do me a favor, and disconnect me. Permanently.”

“But Echo, you’re one of our friends. We can’t just do that, we can fix you!” Twilight pleaded.

“No Twilight… I could be reworked, but I’ll never stay strong as all of you. I rather stay shut down. Please… disconnect me. For me?” Echo begged with a dying breath.

Twilight teared a bit, but he satisfy her final wish, so she got ready to pull the plug until--

“Wait. One last thing… before you end myself.”

“What is it?”

Echo slowly moved the only arm she had on her towards her head, and from Twilight could see, she pulled out a small data chip. She opened up Twilight’s palm with what strength she had and placed it in her hand.

“I offer my last contribution to help your situation. Sunset doesn’t know… but I have picked up some...vital information.”

“Vital information on what?” Twilight asked.

“I may not be useful anymore, but I know who that monster is. Look at all of the data files on this chip… I may not know how to stop him, but you will know who it is… ”

“Okay. And I promise to keep your last wish. Thank you for everything you did for us.” Twilight teared.

“And thank you… for giving me a purpose… and for giving my master something to care for… for giving my master...friends...” Echo then banged her head back down on the table, and Twilight pulled the plug out listening to her breath one last time.

Twilight tried to keep her composure at the sight of one of her new friends now dead, and she managed to stay calm. She picked up the small data chip card, and analyzed it closely.

“Who could that monster be?”

Twilight placed the chip inside her computer and began opening the folders and found files labeled Monster Identification.

She loaded up the files and began analyzing them. The first photo that shown was a satellite picture of four meteors soaring across the town of Canterlot, and the first oddity she noticed was the date on the side of the picture that was marked.

“Wait a minute, that’s a week before we had that war celebration….”

Twilight flipped over to the next file which was a video recording. She hit play and she saw footage from Echo’s point of view along with the camera’s constantly switching to other people’s points of views from their first fight against the changelings in Equestria. The cameras were showing them freak out in the caves.

“They’re coming out of the goddamn walls!” Flash shouted.

“Where’s Twilight! Where’s Twilight!” Tox shouted into Indigo’s point of view camera.

“Twilight’s gone! Let's just get the hell out of here!” Indigo shouted with an extreme look of panic on her face.

Twilight stopped the video in fear of that awful memory. She didn’t liked seeing her friends terrified out of their minds, especially when it came to them having to fight an enemy they couldn’t see.

She hit next and found another file showing another video, only the icon was on… Sunset holding a camera? The file had peaked her interest and she hit play.

“Okay… The subject is still sleeping. But, get a look at this.” Sunset turned the camera towards a giant glass silo container, with the green orb bouncing around inside it.

“He has magic. And now, I have it!” She shouted with joy, and then turned the camera to look towards her face.

“Now. I do have his magic, but that’s all I wanted. But after a bit of analyzing the wreckage, I discovered green goo from that weird thing, I don’t know how to describe it… anyways. I took a look towards the specimen and…”

Sunset turned the camera towards the small sample reader and her computer displayed an image of a DNA reading, and it read Regenerative Blood.

“This blood is regenerative, and I found out he lost an arm. And so what I’m gonna do is give his arm back, and then set him free. Fair’s fair.”

A groaning noise erupted and caught Sunset’s attention, and looked to the left.

“Oh good. You’re awake. It certainly has been a while hasn’t it?” Sunset asked.

“Where… where am I?” A voice called out from the background

“You crashed landed from a meteor on a bit of the grass on the hill. Just a few feet in front of my house.”

“Well… Wait, why I am strapped to the wall!?” He shouted.

“Relax, you’ll be freed soon, I just need to do something first.”

Sunset moved the camera around to a needle filled with the green blood and walked towards the darkness of the basement where a bit of light was shown on the hostage.

Once it was known who he was, Twilight’s eyes bulged out of her head.

“What… no… that’s...that’s impossible!” She stammered.

“No...no...NO!!!!!!”

Fear was apparent on Twilight’s face.

Sunset backed away after watching her subject twitch and attempt to hurt himself in pain, but alas he had stopped and blacked out. She turned the camera around and the look on her face shown she was now disturbed and scared.

“Okay… I guess he might have known something I don’t. But, it doesn’t matter he’s got an arm back.”

A snarling was heard from the background in the video, and Sunset moved her eyes to look.

“And he’s snarling at me like an animal. Why don’t you turn into a monster while you’re at it!?”

Her face drooped with shock looking into the background hearing some bizarre sounds, and then looked back at the camera.

“We’ll be right back.”

Sunset placed the camera down on the table and walked off to the side while the camera stayed on a shot of another part of the dark and mucky basement.

The video kept showing that one shot and nothing happened. Twilight allowing the video to play, jumped back in her chair thinking about what she saw. She couldn’t have imagined that, but at the same time, she didn’t.

“This… this isn’t good. But… how?”

Twilight didn’t have long to think about it for at that moment, for when she was about to ponder, the camera screen on the video began glitching and making lots of static, until glowing eyes illuminated in the darkness.

“I...will rise again...”

Twilight’s fear got the best of her, and she slammed her laptop lid down, threw what was left of Echo into a box, and locked the room, holding her back against it, and slid down in fear.

“No… that can’t be real. He can’t be real...that’s impossible!” Twilight talked to herself.

She couldn’t believe what she had seen, and part of her wished she hadn’t seen it. But deep down, she knew whoever it was, had returned. And she would have to face him one way or another…

Author's Notes:

Hey, this is FourShadow everyone (co-author of this story). Had a question for you guys, this is just a story question. Do any of you know who the monster is yet? Feel free to make your guesses.