The moon hung in the sky, sending glimmering light across Equestria and lands beyond.

Atop a mountain close to Ponyville, a trio of Princess Celestia’s least valuable Royal Guards stood close to a certain blocked cavern. They had been sent for a not-so-simple mission; to arrest the Dragon that had been causing the recent weather issues. Twilight Sparkle had contained it well enough and, with a letter to the Princess, the team had been sent to clean up the mess.

As the leader began to discuss tactics, however, he was cut off by a sudden rumbling…

Cloud lay curled in the fetal position in a field of grass as Princess Luna continuously kicked him in the head.

“HOW IS THIS ANY KIND OF TRAINING?!” He screamed as the awful headache grow worse and worse.

“I am helping you build a tolerance to pain, imbecile!” The Princess cried, kicking him harder.

“FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME, I DON’T WANT YOUR DAMN HELP! THIS ISN’T HELP! THIS ISN’T ANY KIND OF REWARD!”

“Bah! You mortals always speak of this, yet when the training is done you always regret your words!”

“EAT A DI-!”

The two’s argument was cut short by a sudden rumbling, both audible and physical. They looked around in confusion, but saw no clues as to what was happening.

“What is that?” Cloud asking, shakily climbing to his feet, struggling from both the rumbling as well as the simulated brain damage.

“I do not know,” the Princess replied. “However, it appears to be emanating from the physical realm. Perhaps an earthquake or avalanche?”

“Probably the latter; I trapped a Dragon in a cave earlier today by causing a cave in. It probably loosened some rock.” The Princess didn’t reply as she was deep in thought, so Cloud took the time to stretch out. This training is bullshit.

A few moments later, the rumbling subsided. Princess Luna remained deep in thought for a while longer, only stopping when asked a question by Cloud.

“Can we please go back to you actually teaching me to fight?” He asked. Princess Luna huffed as she glared at him.

“This is me teaching you, foal,” she spat.”If you do not have a tolerance for pain, you cannot prevail in any fight where you take any damage.”

“But if I learn to not take damage, I won’t need to learn how to take damage.”

Princess Luna glared at him for a while longer before sighing and closing her eyes.

“Very well. I am certain it shall lead to you demise, but I shall teach you techniques first. I warn you now, however, skipping this part of your training will only hinder your progress, and greatly. It is not only passing your conditioning to pain, but also to your physical strengthening.”

“I don’t care,” Cloud replied honestly as his headache quickly faded, “I would much rather learn offence before defence.”

“You are speaking as a fool.”

”So, what do I learn first?” He asked, ignoring her. The Princess was silent for a moment before answering.

“Try to punch me,” she asked simply.

“Alright.” Cloud tried throwing a punch at Princess Luna, only for her to bash his hoof towards his body, grab ahold of his foreleg and yank on it, roughly dislocating it at the shoulder with a crunch.

“This is the first technique I shall teach you,” said Princess Luna to Cloud, who was back in the fetal position. She fixed his leg with dream-magic and pulled him back onto his hooves, ignoring his vulgar language. “Now, try it on me!”

She threw a punch at him. Cloud tried to counter it as she did, but reacted far too late and was soon back on the ground, now with shattered, bloody teeth.

It was many hours until dawn, and Princess Luna hadn’t wasted a second of them.

Even as he woke without feeling any physical pain, Cloud still felt just as horrible in his mind. In the end, he had failed to pull off the counter technique. It’s strange that Luna was so willing to move on when I asked, she hasn’t displayed behaviour like that before last night. It looked like that earthquake put a lot on her mind. She’s probably just desensitised to them after those thousand years on the moon. Then again… Can there be earthquakes on the moon? Well, whatever. If I’m lucky, she won’t go back to pain training for a while.

After shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Cloud began his morning routine as normal and teleported to the kitchen for breakfast. For the first time in his stay at the library, nobody seemed to be home. Cloud shrugged and continued with his routine, making breakfast before going to brush his teeth. Once that was done, he went back to the kitchen to read the newspaper that Twilight would always leave on the table.

Yet the table was bare.

“She probably hasn’t gotten out of bed,” Cloud said to himself. “She seemed pretty stressed yesterday.” He began walking to the front door. “I doubt Spike ever gets up before her, so he’s probably asl-” He stopped in his tracks as he heard the sound of a distant, thunderous roar followed by screams.

Cloud teleported outside. Ignoring the screaming crowds of Ponies running through the streets, he looked to the sky to see a red Dragon soaring towards Ponyville. Okay, so, Plan B didn’t work out great.

All of a sudden, Cloud received a telepathic message: Cloud, I’ve figured out a way to stop the Dragon, but I need your help.

Twilight? He thought back. Where are you?

That doesn’t matter, this is the only way we can properly communicate with everyone freaking out.

What do you need my help with?

I need you to keep the Dragon busy for a few minutes.

What?! For how long?

You’ll know when to stop.

What are you talking about?! I suppose ‘thinking about’ would be the better phrasing here. There was no reply. Twilight! Dammit, she’s stopped the spell!

The Dragon landed a couple of streets away, but Cloud had no trouble seeing it towering over buildings. It wasted no time in setting things on fire and tearing both buildings and Ponies to shreds without bias. Cloud groaned in exasperation before summoning a Support Circle and flying towards it. He stopped when he was close, but stayed hovering in the air.

“HEY!” Cloud bellowed, getting the Dragon’s attention. “I’M THE FUCKER THAT TRAPPED YOU IN THAT CAVE!”

The Dragon roared in reply and swiped at him with a claw. Cloud easily dodged it by flying around it. Yep, that got its attention. Okay, here we go!

Cloud fired a regular magic bolt at the Dragon’s torso, but its scales reflected the attack in an instant, sending it slamming into the ground. Speeding around it to avoid any attacks it could try, Cloud continued firing magic bolts, trying to find any weakness in the Dragon’s armour. The Dragon ignited the air with a breath of flames, too wide for him to dodge, so Cloud cast his water conjuration spell which created enough of a gap for him to fly through and get clear.

Trying a new tactic, Cloud zoomed at maximum speed towards the Dragon’s face, charging a boosted magic bolt all the while. At the last second, he released the attack, blasting the Dragon at point-blank range. The Dragon roared in pain as a few of its precious scales crumbled away, revealing a fleshy spot for Cloud to attack.

The spot was too small a target to hit from the range he had been flying at, so Cloud circled around and prepared to do the same thing again, but this time the Dragon was ready: It swung its gargantuan claw at Cloud, putting the power of its whole body behind it. Cloud managed to dodge the swipe, but the Dragon followed it up by turning its entire body and, using the momentum, unleashed a bludgeoning from its tail that Cloud didn’t see until it was too late. The tail hit him directly with enough force to smash his Support Circle and send him hurtling to the ground.

After a blood curdling crack of bones shattering, Cloud lay unmoving - broken and defeated.

The Dragon reached down with its head to eat his remains and truly claim victory over its antagoniser, but stopped as it heard a roar to compete with its own. It looked around to find the source of the noise to see none other than an ursa minor being flown towards it, held up by Twilight’s magic. She dropped it just in front of the Dragon, crushing a house, but the effect was instant: The Dragon roared and began attacking the ursa, and the ursa responded in kind.

“Hah!” Twilight cried, grinning at her success. “This will distract it long enough to-” Her grin quickly ended as she spotted Cloud’s bloody figure lying close to the Dragon. “No…!” Twilight began running towards him before remembering how bad of an idea it was to do that as dozens of buildings were crushed, burned and generally reduced to rubble.

Suddenly remembering she was Princess Celestia’s apprentice and strong enough to carry an ursa Minor, Twilight simply teleported Cloud to her. She picked up his body in a telekinetic grasp and began running away towards the train station to join the evacuations. Before she could get too far away, however, the Dragon pinned down the ursa minor, tore out its throat and blocked Twilight’s path with a claw.

“You insolent pest!” The Dragon growled as Twilight turned to face it. “Did you honestly think a mindless beast could stop a being such as I from unleashing my wrath upon this pathetic mortal construct?!” Twilight swallowed her fear and summoned all the courage she could.

“Knowing how to use a thesaurus doesn’t make you intelligent, you dumbass!” She yelled, stalling for time. “And what makes you think you’re any better than any other stupid Dragon?!”

Before the Dragon could reply, something let out a roar - a roar that made the Dragon’s sound like a moth’s wing beat. A roar that gave everyone in Ponyville moderate tinnitus after making them wince slightly. A roar that was of a higher volume than that of a lesser roar.

From the edge of the Everfree it rose, a creature more powerful and destructive than anything in the world save for Gods and Demons. To say that it towered over the Dragon would be an understatement.

“And for the record,” Twilight continued, “no; I didn’t expect the ursa minor could stop you! I expect this to stop you!”

Hunched over and walking on two legs, heading straight toward the Dragon that killed its child, came a truly powerful being:

With a snarl, the Dragon flew upwards and let loose its most powerful bout of fire, engulfing the ursa’s entire face in its incredible power for a full minute. It was an unrelenting attack, something that surely no mortal being could ever survive.

The ursa major leant forward slightly and swallowed the Dragon whole.

Twilight grinned at her success. She had outsmarted a Dragon by bringing a much more dangerous creature to it! A much, much more dangerous creature! A creature so unstoppably powerful that it stood on the edge of mortality and Godhood. A creature that was now standing in the middle of Ponyville...

“Dammit.”

The ursa wasted no time in continuing where the Dragon had left off, destroying Ponyville at an even faster rate.

Twilight scolded herself as she ran to the train station to join the evacuations, Cloud still in her telekinetic grasp. With help of her magic, she managed to find a place on a train and joined the rest of Ponyville as everyone escaped towards Canterlot.

Author's Notes:

Mistakes were made.