CLANG!

CLANG

CLANG!

Hammering and beating.

Those were the only sounds that could be heard in Canterlot at the moment. With the petrification of Princesses Celestia, Luna and Cadance, the capture of Princess Twilight and the theft of their magic, and the utter defeat of the Royal Guard, the poor enslaved citizens of the city thought that Equestria was doomed and that Storm King was unstopable, that the clanking coming from the plaza below the castle's courtyard was the preparation of weapons of destruction under a sky covered in

It was actually far worse than any weapon made or spell casted in Equestria. Or Equus for that matter.

It was a fool believing that he could control something that had been really close to destroying all life on the planet.

A couple dozen of particularly strong storm guards had been hitting a metallic object the size of a house (barely fifteen feet tall, but at least sixty long) they had found in a vault in the old Royal Pony Sisters castle on the Everfree Forest a couple days before the fall of Canterlot with hammers and picks to open it up, to see what it held inside. They only had two spare hours per day, and they weren't allowed to rest for eight hours (and thus had been working for at least 56 hours while watching or hearing their smaller peers enjoy the perks of being evil minions, like random acts of puppy kicking and urban vandalism), but since they didn't have anything else to do (Equestria had lost not just because of the surprise attack on Canterlot, but also because they were basically useless against anti-magical armor and creatures nearly twice their size, and the Royal Guard had never battled an actual enemy to begin with) and were loyal to their master, they didn't mind.

What they didn't know, but their master did, was that the moment the walls of the thing were opened they would used as a divertion (or maybe as sacrifice) to draw the demons out while their king used magic to make them submit to him.

Yes, demons. Whatever the thing was contained demons, because only a demon could be able of destroying the Equestrian's military might before expiring with nothing but claw, tooth and magic that turned soldiers insane and against each other or made them implode in a gory manner. And the monster that caused all those deaths nearly killed Celestia not with the destructive magic it possessed and used to cause uncountable deaths, but with a single slash of its claw. It had been so horrible that the alicorn had made Equestria believe that her army hadn't been destroyed by a singular monster, that they had died driving off an invasion of monsters from the Everfree Forest that appeared one day (why did the everyone fall for this, he didn't know, and didn't care). Even then, the trauma made Celestia have nightmares for a decade, nightmares of a red scaled monster slaughtering Equestria and then the world, but she conformted herself with the fact that it wouldn't happen again, having hiding the contraption and the journal in her hold castle to make sure nopony found out the truth.

At least, that was what the Storm King could collect from Celestia's journal, which was right now on his lap while he watched his soldiers hit the object from his throne (he was lazy and didn't want to stand like the common bad guy, so he ordered his soldiers to carry it out) on the castle's balcony.

But he knew better, for the simple fact that the thing had been made with technology, not magic. It was not a punishment to Celestia for banishing her sister, or dismishing the other races. It was a pod, an ALIEN pod. The monster inside? It could have been many things: the vanguard of an alien invasion, the invasion force itself, some kind of living weapon... It was difficult to know what aliens think (as for how he knew... he was deadly savvy about villainy, and had read a science fiction novel before, one from Abyssinia about magicless alien octopi invading the country in heat ray-toting tripods and slaughtering or harvesting the cats before dying to flu because they didn't have inmunity. Yeah, sure, an advanced race with superior technology and science ends up massacred by a common disease? Ha!).

Although it got right the pod part, thought the Storm King while mentally counting how many 10 feet tall freaks could fit inside a house-sized alien vehicle. Because if there was one there were more, and he would be the one to control them.

(Neither he nor his troops knew that they had been watched by the same aliens that created the monsters, but het, nobody's omnipotent).

On his right side stood his (loyal) right hand Tempest Shadow, a nearly six feet tall (nearly a foot taller than most mares, who were five feet tall on average; only Celestia was taller with five inches of height over her), dark lavender unicorn with dark pink mane and opal eyes (plus a scar on her left eye, which mare her look even more dangerous) which, due to an 'accident' on her childhood, had lost her horn (and received the scar) and therefore any hopes of using magic without blowing stuff up, having to traing her body to become a very skilled and strong hand to hand fighter. She also had a killer body (metaphorically speaking, since she hadn't killed anybody yet) with a bust of 40 inches, hips of 35, a waist of 35 again and a very toned flank, all of it supported by clearly muscled arms and legs. As for why he knew this, it was simply impossible to that kind of figure with the skin-tight suit he gave to her (she prefered to dodge attack rather than receive them fully; she was still a unicorn after all). The westler-like unicorn had become her most useful minion in exchange of having her horn restored with the Staff of Sacanas.

She was also quite antisocial, made even worse because she was very beautiful for other ponies (although not for the King nor the rest of his army), which tended to attract attention to her even when kicking flank.

On his left side, Grubber, some kind of light gray hedgehog or badger with electric blue eyes and a bluish tuff of hair on his back, who was his other important minion (because unlike a certain sentient stormcloud he didn't have ambitions of power and simply was there, making him the perftect advisor. He also idolized Tempest Shadow and wanted to be friends with her, something she hated, which in turn made Grubber sad, which in turn made the King happy). In contrast to Tempest he was short, pudgy, ugly overall and a coward, although some creatures considered him kinda cute, what with having the head of a pug.

Behind them stood four stormguards, two of them with red crests and red-fringed tails that denoted them as the personal guards of Tempest Shadow.

They all had been waiting for this moment, to control the 'demons' (his two most trusted minions knew the truth, but he had made them promise they would keep the charade up) with the magic stored in the Staff of Sacanas and obtain a way to conquer Equus without having to use an army that would definitely lose against angry birds, angry bugs, even angrier flying ovens, and yaks if he didn't use the Staff. On the other hand, the other threat to his future rule, the (sadly 'reformed') spirit of Chaos Discord. hadn't appeared, and the the Pillars of Equestria (somehow still alive) were at the moment exploring the world for some stupid reason. Still, if the old goat and those nags chose to help the ponies they would find themselves facing an unknown group of monsters from beyond space. And thanks to the Staff of Sacanas hehad the magic to submit their wills to him.

Admitedly, that's not how it all started. Before discovering that ruined castle in the Everfree Forest, he simply wanted to use the Staff of Sacanas to drain the alicorn princesses of their magic (after turning them to stone with Orbs of Darkness), using that power to do the same thing to other powerful casters and then rule the entire world of Equus.

And then, one day, his storm guards that were using the Everfree Forest to spy surrounding areas found the old Castle of the Royal Pony sisters... and on its depths, a hidden vault that contained a huge metal contraption and an old yet well preserved journal dating from about two hundreds years before. When his boys brought him the journal and the thing, he decided to modify his plans a little.

Sure, controlling the sun and the moon (as he had danced about it earlier that day) was an unexpected bonus, and having much more magic than anyone else in Equestria (and the mean to get even more magic) was neat since he simply loved being much more powerful than anyone else. But according to the journal, the monster who slaughtered the army wasn't simply resistant to magic, it was outright inmune: direct attacks from a several hundreds years old alicorn that could destroy a small mountain, and the aid of ten thousand trained stallions, had no effect at all on the thing other than angering it even more. And indirect magic (like grabbing a boulder and dropping it on the monster) was likewise useless because of its awesome toughness and strength and its healing powers, and the fact that it could simply catch it with its own magic and throw it back with much more force (she DID crush the monster to death with a boulder, but only after it sustained wounds that couldn't heal fast enough, and even then she crushed it until she exhausted her magic, which spoke volumes of its toughness and how desperate she was to kill it. Desperate and terrified).

Of course, the magic of a single pony princess might have been useless, but the magic of four? And with one of those princesses being the 'Element of Magic'? The things WOULD be his pets, whether they liked it or not. He only needed enough magic to breach their unnatural resistance to it. Besides, if the magic of four alicorns wouldn't do it, he could simply steal the magic of Discord (the moment he appeared in scene), powerful unicorns like Star Swirl (when he came back that's it), Starlight Glimmer or Trixie Lulamoon, who were in hiding (finding them would'nt be a problem since Equestria was completely under his yoke know)... or Tempest Shadow. She would become useless to him when he enslaved the aliens, she would betray him the moment she learnt that no amount of magic in the world could heal her broken horn, and she was after all just a useful pawn.

And to make sure he could escape if the Staff didn't have enough power, he had one of his airships prepared to lift off at the time. It was a fool-proof plan! All he needed was to wait for his brutes to break the walls of the pod and he'll have the best insurance a villain could have for his rule.

He still had a fool next to him though.

“So...” Said Grubber for the tenth time “, when will the demons come out? Because I'm hungry.”

“If you don't shut up, you'll be the first thing they'll eat.” Threatened Tempest Shadow in a calm tone. This made Grubber look away in and whistle.

Tempest snorted. The Storm King remembered that he promised he would heal her horn only after taking control of the demons.

The reminder made the king smile mentally She didn't know that he would use her as a living training dummy to see what the demons could do, having no intention of healing her horn. Even if he wanted to, that was an impossible task for even the magic of four alicorns. Healing magic simply did not exist; if it did, then hospitals wouldn't have been invented.

“Sorry, it's just I'm bored!” A couple seconds. “They have done nothing but beat that metal thingy for three days and it doesn't appear like it's even dented! Although I don't want to be near when it ends up opening.” he whispered the last part.

“Then help them open it!” Yelled Tempest.

The hedgehog gulped in fear and stared forward. The possibility of being near the thing just moments before the monsters broke free was enough to shut up Grubber for more than two seconds.

The Storm King stroke his chin while thinking. His lackey had a point, this was getting rather boring.

“Patience, they have been beating the thing two days straight and didn't look very sturdy when it was found, so I calculate it'll finally break today, no matter how it looks. But you have a point Grubber, this is getting boring.” He admitted. He then smiled. “And I know the perfect thing to alleviate it. Tempest, bring Princess Twinkleshine, inside the cage of course. I want to see her cry a bit more.” he ordered to Tempest Shadow, who complied and left with her personal guards. He then turned to the other two “As for you, bring Princess Stonelestia here. I want to test something.”

The storm guards nodded and hurried off to as they had been ordered. He didn't specify the speed, but it wasn't necessary; they had been somewhat scared of him before, and probably didn't want to find out what he could do with enough magic to move the sun and the moon at the same time.

“What are you going to do with them your majesty?” Asked Grubber.

“Simple: I''m going restore Celestia just to rub on her face that I'm going to enslave a bunch of the same thing that was THIS close to actually killing her,” While saying 'this' he made a pinching motion “, and set them loose on the rest on the world. And see who can cry more, her or the purple crybaby. And who knows, maybe we can use her as a distraction too.”

“But what if she tries anything? We don't have any Orbs of Darkness left, and we haven't made more of 'em since the attack.”

“With what? I drained her of her magic, and you know that, with some exceptions, ponies are practically useless without their magic: no strength, no flying, and no... well, magic in the case of unicorns. And that's without taking in account their tendency to fly the moment they see danger, again with some exceptions. Remember the Royal Guard?”

“Yeah, they were kinda pathetic.” Nodded Grubber. Admitedly the Royal Guard did fight a little at first, but since the storm guard armor and shields rendered their direct magic useless (and by extension forced the ground ponies and unicorns to fight against soldiers that were bigger, more skilled and better armed than them they), they ended up surrendering (although many pegasi wisened up and flied away, not that it helped against someone that had airships).

Several minutes later, Tempest and her guards came back draggin the cage holding Princess Twilight Sparkle, who was crying a river and speakign about 'failing friendship' and that stuff, and the other guards came with the black figure of the petrified Celestia. And what a figure it was, with wide hips and enormously sized breasts, each nearly as big as her head and always perky, with her body covered by a yellow one piece dress that also showed her legs and part of her thigs, and showing a good amount of cleavage, plus golden regalia and hoof shoes. The Storm King found her attire ridiculous, even if it wasn't that revealing, but apparently her subjects loved her as a maternal figure so much that lustful thoughts didn't exist. Too bad for her because he didn't see her like that either, he could have spared her if so.

“Well, time to wake up the sleeping beauty.”

The poor alicorn couldn't do nothing on her petrified state except think. She had hoped that Luna, Twilight and the rest had been able to escape capture to travel to Mount Aris, home of the hippogriffs, and ask for aid from her old friend and monarch of the hippogriffs, Queen Novo. The hippogriff queen was in possession of the Pearl of Transformation, a powerful transforming artifact that as it name implied had the power to transform those touched by its waves.

Unfortunately, she had been a statue for over three days straight, and got petrified before he could say 'hippogriff' completely. Knowing them, they would probably try to find the Queen of the Hippos. And as said before, that was three days ago (or even longer considering that she couldn't see anything on her current state). For all she knew they had been captured. Just to makes things worse, she felt her magic wane and dissappear earlier that day, which meant that somehow the one who attacked Canterlot had the power to move the sun and, given that Cadance had been petrified too (and probably Luna too), the capacity to do even more.

She would have continued thinking, but then a sudden light that made close her eyes and fall to the ground. She raised a hand to her head, groaning in discomfort.

Wait.

She could move! She wasn't stone anymore! That could only mean that Twiligth and the others had...!

Her joy disappeared when she heard a very familiar voice say“C-celestia?” while crying.

Opening her eyes, she saw Twilight inside a metal cage (and either the cage nullified magic, or Twilight's had been already drained, and the second possibility was the most likely one), with messy clothes and tears falling from her eyes. The sight broke Celestia's heart.

“Twilight!” Said she said while getting on her hooves and rushing to the cage, gripping its bars to comfort her fellow princess, ignoring the other observants in the place, who were looking at the display with either mirth (the Storm King), confusion (Grubber), indifference (the storm guards) or disgust (the unicorn with the broken horn).

“I failed Princess. I betrayed Queen Novo's trust, and the girls abandoned me. I failed Friendship!” cried Twlight before putting her head on her hands and sobbing. Celestia couldn't help except cry alongside her.

“I'm sorry Twilight.”

“Oh boo, poor little ponies who are sad for losing, bwah! I'ts making me cry crocodile tears.” Said the Storm King while wiping away an imaginary tear.

Celestia wiped her own tears away and got up slowly while facing him, glaring daggers and spreading her wings in anger (she may have been unable to fly without magic, but she wanted to make clear she was not going to cower like a coward). Putting aside that there was a pony wearing armor with the symbol of the villain amongst them, she spoke:

“I don't know who you are, and I don't know what do you want with our magic, but as long as there's hope you'll never...” She said before trailing off when she saw with widening eyes what the ape-like creature had on his hands.

“Oh, so you rememeber this little thing eh?” Smirked the brute. “I found it in a certain abandoned castle located in the middle of a certain forest where the weather is uncontrollable and the animals take care of themselves.” His smirk became a smile and then a grin when he saw Celestia's eyes widen to their limit, her pupils shrinking to pinpricks and her press her body to the cage with all the strength she had. She hid the darn thing so well she forgot where she hid it! “I forgot to introduce myself: I'm the Storm King, future overlord of the entire world. These are Tempest Shadow, a unicorn who got cured of things like friendship and goodness, and Grubber who... well, is.” He said while hugging his two underlings and lifting them off the ground, making the unicorn called Tempest Shadow (who she realized had her horn broken) uncomfortable and asphyxiating the hedgehog. He then released them and smiled.

“And guess what else I found in a vault so well hidden that it was only found by sheer luck?”

At that point Twilight had already stopped crying, watching with reddened eyes as her beloved mentor turned from defiant to scared to death, which in turn scared the purple alicorn. She had seen Celestia angry or scared before, but never terrified like that.

It was at that moment that Celestia heard the sound of something metallic and hollow getting beaten by weapons.

“No.” Whispered Celestia when he looked over the railing of the balcony and saw the thing that gave her nightmares centuries ago being beaten by large brutes wielding hammers and pickaxes.

“Yes! I know about the demons!” Shouted the Storm King triumphantly. “And thanks to your and your fellow princesses I have the magic to control them.”

“D-demons?” Celestia heard Twilight say behind her, but she was too scared to turn to look at her former pupil.

“There was only one...” muttered the alicorn in a tone between horrified and shocked.

“Girl, have you seen the size of that thing? It's big enough to hold at least ten monsters, maybe even more if they are cramped. I've made the maths and I'm sure it has at least ten things inside, nine not counting the one that nearly killed you and destroyed your army.”

It was at that moment that Twilight spoke, concerned for her former teacher who had started to shiver in fear. She did know about the sacrifice of the Royal Army fighting off an horde of monsters that came from the Everfree Forest, and that they would be remembered, but that was it.

“Princess, what's he talking about?” she asked to her mentor, who looked at her with dread.

“Your precious princess has been lying to you all these years little girl!” laughed the Storm King. “Her precious toy soldiers hadn't been killed by monsters in plural. Here,” he said while throwing the journal to Twilight “, start reading from the marked pages.”

The princess, wanting to know what was he talking about and terrified Celestia, did as she was told

What she read shocked her to the core.

“A... a single monster... Celestia is this true!?” Asked Twilight to the alabaster alicorn, who shakily nodded in confirmation.

“Yes, just a demon was needed to annihilate the predecessors of the Royal Guard and nearly kill your precious Princess of the Sun! And it wasn't just your average bog standard freak, no!” Explained the Storm King in an excited tone. “It had magic, and I don't mean the scrappy lightshows and rainbows you call 'magic'. Its magic turned those idiots in berserkers that tore each other to shreds, or grabbed them by the dozen and crushed them like grapes. And guess what? I'm gonna make them my pets! I'll even give them names, like Diablo or Harbinger!”

“You won't be able of controlling them.” Whispered Celestia staring at the thing with dead eyes, silently praying that there were no more demons still inside. “The magic of thousands of unicorns and an alicorn did nothing to one. Several will kill us all.”

“Puh-lease, why do you think I have THIS.” With that the Storm King showed her the Staff of Sacanas, snapping her of her fear and making her gasp. The Staff of Sacanas, able to drain any creature of its magic! Now she knew what happened to her magic.

“Where did you get that Staff!?”

“I'm not going to tell you anything whitey, but I'm going to tell you this.” Said the Storm Kign while approaching the alicorn and forcing her to press on the bars of Twilight's cage. “Your magic might have been nigh useless against that demon, but that was because you were only one simple alicorn who wanted to slay it instead of control it. Now, quick question: what would happen if I insert the magic of four alicorns in this staff, on of them being the Princess of Magic, and add a distraction in the form of twenty peons as both bait and distraction?” Seeing the princess expression he raised his arms: “An unstoppable force of monsters under my command! Nobody will be able to stop me because they will be busy eating each other's faces or being mauled by 10 feet tall monsters from space! Not even the Dragonlands will be safe from my future pets. And all thanks to you ponies!” He then started to laugh maniacally.

However, before he could continue speaking about his future conquests, a voice coming below the group spoke:

“Bait!?” It was one of the large brutes that had been beating the object, looking up towards them direction with the others and glaring at his king. Nopony knew how did they heard their king speak from that distance.

“Crud.” muttered the Storm King.

“We don't want to get eaten by demons, or worse!”

“Yeah! Our lives and our butts are literally the only things we have! They may not be much, but we don't want to lose them!”

Celestia started to feel hope. Maybe the minions would betray their master, and since they had anti magical armor and weapons they could serve as a diversion to free Twilight, grab the Staff, defeat the Storm King and his forces and then release Cadance and Luna and restore Canterlot!

Unfortunately, she didn't take in consideration the loyalty of the brutes. Or their awareness.

“Your great evilness, I volunteer those red boys as bait!” Said one of the stormguards while pointing at Tempest's own guards. “They do nothing except follow Tempest Shadow around while not doing anything to advance our cause!”

“Now that you say it, yeah, I don't think they have done anything of use.” agreed tyrant while stroking his chin in thought. “Although their lack in bulk might reduce the distraction time I need to use the Staff.”

Tempest bodyguards gasped in fear. Tempest herself, however, simply scowled without bothering to even look at them, indifferent to the fact that they would very possibly end as alien food.

“H-hey, why don't you use the pretty pony princesses as bait for the demons while the others get the heck out of dodge when they get out? We're all more valuable than them, they do nothing!” That statement made Twilight gasp, Celestia freeze, and the Storm King think.

“Well, you make some points, but as I said before their smaller size might not be enough to distract the...” Said the Storm King before being interrupted by a sound similar to a thunderclap. The sound had been so sudden that everyone present, excluding Tempest and the Storm King, jumped startled out of their wits.

“What the heck was that!?” Exclaimed Grubber, who had been catched by one of the storm guards.

“Bah, it's probably just a storm.” Dismissed the Storm King before his eyes widened when he realized that nopony was managing the sky. “Wait, where are the thunderclouds? Because that wasn't me.” He looked at the Staff with puzzlemen. “I think.”

“Maybe it was a cannon?” Added Grubber.

“Cannons, in Equestria?” Said Tempest Shadow in a doubtful tone. Her skepticism was due to the fact that cannons were practically non existent in Equestria because Celestia never liked them due to their capacity for destruction. Other countries, however, fielded them in battle, although none had ever been shot to kill, only to intimidate and inspire fear.

“That pink pony had one with her remember?”

“Yes, but it shot cakes, not cannonballs.” Replied Tempest before another 'thunderclap' was heard.

“Wait, did you see that?” Said Twilight.

“See what?”

“There was some kind of purple magic bolt in the sky.”

“Magic? Boys, did you do as I said with the unicorns?”

“Of course your majesty!”

Everyone looked at the sky. and sure enough, when they heard the next thunderclap they saw it: a brief but bright pulse of violet energy in the sky. At first they didn't know what to make of it. That was until they saw one pulse hitting the pinnacle of Celestia's tower, sending debris falling to the ground and covering the group in dust, leaving them all agape in fear/unease/awe/envy.

“W-what did just happen!?” Stuttered one of the storm guards. “Those weren't magic projectiles! We made sure that the unicorns had nullifiers!”

“I don't think it was magic. It simply didn't look like a magic bolt.” Said Twilight in a low tone, attracting the attention on her. “And those 'bolts' struck anything in their path instantaneously, as if they were as fast as light.”

“As fast as light?” Said one of the storm guards. “Like a heat ray?”

“You read that stupid book?”

“Hey, when you get bored of magic you start reading about other planets and killer tripods.”

The Storm King narrowed his eyes at that, but only Celestia saw it.

'What, jealous that somepony else can do that you bucking monster?', Celestia thought angrily before looking more closely. 'Wait, you're not jealous. You're angry.'

“It's the aliens! They want their monsters back!” Screamed Grubber before grabbing his mouth, eyes widened in shock. 'I've spilled the beans', he thought.

“Aliens? What aliens? What are you talking about?”

“Aliens and demons!? Now we're definitely doomed!” Shouted one of the brutes before noticing something. “Am I the only one hearing someone screaming?”

“What do you...”

“...aaaaaAAAA-” BRAK! Something fell in the middle of the courtyard, making them jump in fright.

Twilight was the first one to see what it was, screaming in horror at the sight of the splatered corpse of a dead storm guard, bones sticking from his body and blood oozing out slowly from the mouth and eyes. They could even see his guts unrolling out of his belly and one of his eyes hanging from its eyesocket.

Grubber did as Twilight and screamed, Tempest Shadow recoiled in horror and disgust, the guards turned green and removed their face plates to empty their stomachs, and Celestia froze again, staring at the corpse while rememorating the battle of two hundred years ago that left hundreds of stallions in a similar state (although mostly by the use of claws and teeth).

The Storm King, on the other hand, approached the dead guard and inspetcted it, touching the corpse with the Staff of Sacanas.

“Mmm, it appears that this guard has been launched towards the sky by something, or someone, with prodigious strength, rising to a height of several hundred feet before falling down and hitting the ground at a speed of several tens per second. He does present the usual marks of a very severe beatdown, but those wounds are from the fall, not from a beating.”

“That's nice and all” Said Tempest in a calm tone. “But all I'm seeing right now is A BUCKING CORPSE SPLATTERED LIKE A BUCKING WATER BALLOON! HOW DOES KNOWING HOW HE DIED HELP!?” She screamed. She had never screamed at her master for several reasons (one of them fear), but right now she didn't care.

“Well, for starters it means that whatever or whoever killed him didn't use weapons nor his arms, but magic, and if you did your jobs the it's not pony magic. And I'm pretty sure that not many ponies have killer intent either.”

They may not had killer intent, but they sure has hay had big lungs for such small creatures, because soon the ones present started to hear the screams of horror of the citizens of Canterlot.

Soon however, sounds of a different kind began to accompany the screams: battlecries, yells of pain, bones snapping, the thunderclaps from before, and the roars of an unknown monster. Eventually, some citizens (the few that didn't have chains on them) came running from the main part of Canterlot, none even looking up to see their beloved princesses or the feared conquerors of the country, running past the confused storm guards and the object, all of them running across the plaza to to find shelter in their homes. Even worse, alongside them were a couple of common storm guards, lacking their armor and weapons, scared out of their minds.That meant that whatever was happening, it wasn't good for the Storm King's forces.

“Hey, where are you going!?” Screamed the Storm King to his fleeing troops, who kept ignoring him. “Get back here and... Well, stand around?” He looked around and realized that they were alone in the castle.

Something was certain in the minds of all present creatures: those ponies and guards had been spooked by something. But what? And where was it?

“What are the running away from?” Whispered Twilight fearfully, was pressing her body against the bars of her cage to put the most distance between her and the corpse.

Before the Storm King could say something, they heard another sound, and this time it was a sound they all recognized.

Footsteps.

Two sets of footsteps that to be precise. The first set seemed like it came from a pair of heavy armored boots, regular and steady, whereas the second set appeared to come from a large quadrupedal animal, maybe a large bear, slow but heavy.

“Look over there.” Whispered Grubber while pointing to a spot between the buildings, eyes wide in fear. “It's the aliens.”

The group could do nothing but gasp with widening eyes as they saw the ones who were making that stepping enter the plaza from the direction the ponies from before came from and ignoring the bewildered brutes, stopping only when they exactly below the Storm King and the others.

The animal was definitely big (larger in fact than a bear), and kinda looked like something from their world, looking like a non-magical hybrid between a canine (shape of the head, body covered in brown fur, mammalian gait and eyes) and some kind of reptile (a pair of long fangs protruding from its upper jaw, sharp non-retractable claws, bony ridges along its body and a non-flexible tail), but its mouth was covered in fresh blood. Unlike its master, the animal had stopped walking when they reached the metal thing, standing near it and growling menacingly at the storm brutes, who stepped back in frigh, fearful of the blood-splattered monster.

The bipedal figure (maybe the owner or master of the monster), on the other hand, was definitely not from Equus. It (with all that armor it was difficult to see if it was a mare or a stallion) was large, (a couple inches taller than seven feet, and very stocky), lacked a tail (something that was practically the norm among the races of Equus) and wore a suit of black armor that hid his identity (and gender) yet clearly showed that it was powerfully built. The helmet in particular had two slits that glowed red like demonic eyes. With its left hand/claw he held a strange-looking weapon that was eerily similar to a shrunken cannon.

It was an alien

And the way it stood made pretty clear that it was angry.

Neither party did anything except stare at the other for several minutes until the alien crouched and, with the help of some kind of rockets on the shoulders of its armor, gave a jump much higher than any creature of Equus could have been able to do, well above seventy feet above the balcony. The group ran away from the railing (minus Twilight, who was in her cage and in shock of the appareance of the armored unknown, and Celestia, who didn't want to leave Twilight's side and was also in awe) when they realized that the alien would land where they stood. Tempest, Grubber and the storm guards ran back to the Storm King when it did, breaking the tiles and shaking the balcony from the strength of the landing. The Storm King, on the other hand, simply looked at the alien with bored eyes.

The alicorns watched in fear as the alien walked towards them with its weapon in hand, and stopped when it reached Twilight's cage.

“Are you by any chance Twilight Sparkle?” Asked the alien in a terrifying voice that sounded like it was distorted.

Celestia shook off her fear and put herself between Twilight and the alien warrior, glaring at its 'eyes' and standing defiant (despite the fact that it was at least a head taller than her and twice as wide) and making clear she wouldn't let it do whatever it wanted to do with her former student.

“Whatever you want to do, I will not let you touch her.” Threatened the alicorn to the much larger being.

The alien sighed, grabbed her shoulder with his free hand and... pushed her aside with care, surprisinng her, before grabbing the bars of the cage with and lightly pull them out, tearing them off the cage like twigs. Twilight didn't waste time and sped out of the open cage to hug the alabaster alicorn for half a minute. Both princesses glanced at the alien.

“Spike asked me to get you out of trouble.” Said the alien, causing Twilight to smile and cry, this time tears of happines.

“Thank you.” Thanked Celestia with a smile.

The alien looked at Celestia in the eye and retracted its helmet, shocking the creatures present with his now revealed identity and gender.

He was a reptilian being with one closed eye that looked a lot like a dragon with the shape of his head and the black scales, but his open eye had round pupils instead of slitted ones, his scales were more skin-like, and he was clearly smaller than the average dragon: he was clearly clearly an adult, and bigger than any teenage dragon, but the average adult dragon was thirty feet tall and fifty feet long (although if he had been that tall he would weighed at least three times more than a dragon... and that was without that heavy-looking armor he wore).

And his eye... She always thought that eyes were the windows to one's soul, and most of her enemies (King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis, Lord Tirek...) had unnatural ones that usually denoted a sense of superiority, selfishness, megalomania, insanity...

The black pupil and white sclera of the warrior, on the other hand, showed intelligence, determination, stoicism, calculation... all of it masking sadness.

“You're welcome.” Smiled back the alien with an unaltered deep baritone voice, making her blush, before the Storm King moaned in disgust:

“Oh, great, the classic love in first sight between a beautiful princess and a handsome knight, except the princess is a thousand years old nag, and the knight is a black knight, is as handsome as a rock from space, and is a dragon... from space.” He said this with a gesture that imitated vomiting.

The alien warrior glared at the tyrant and extended his hands towards him, surprising everyone when the Storm King, who dropped the Staff of Sacanas, was suddenly surrounded by a purple glow (similar to Twilight's telekinesis, noted Celestia) and pulled towards the alien's extended arm, who grabbed his neck.

“YOU.”

“Yes, o angry one?” Replied the Storm King without fear despite the fact that a huge alien dragon capable of using magic had his hand on his neck “Am I in trouble or what. Because I don't think I have done nothing wrong. I am a bad guy after all.” He smiled smugly.

“You son of a bitch.” Replied the alien before putting pressure and strangulating the Storm King. “Give me a reason to not rip your head from your shoulders and feed it to my gorgonops.”

Throughout all his life and career as both Centurion and xeno-hunter, Praeratus had seen many atrocious things that sickened him: cannibalism for pleasure and not for survival, terrorist attacks (which in those days meant the use of fusion devices and sabotaging of orbial weapons), doing horrible things in the name of your non-existant gods, the abuse of children in general...

However, none disgusted him more than slavery.

When he arrived to the Dwarf Galaxy through the worm hole he didn't waste time and went straight for the planet using his warp drive (no hyperlanes to travel through with) to avoid being detected by the local Hegemony outposts and draw their attention. It may have not been listed in the datapad, but Praeratus knew that the real goal of the bounty was to stop that ape-like alien from awakening the cryogenized creatures not just to save the unnamed planet, but also to make sure that the Hegemony didn't discover the existance of the living weapons and start another war. He wanted to kill Hegemony grunts just as every veteran of that war (not all of them were therawyrms), but everyone agreed that breaking the peace that cost so many lives wasn't worth it.

Interestingly, when he finally reached system he saw that the planet's orbiting moon and sun appeared had stopped moving, leaving with part of the planet in perpetual day and the rest in continual night. Maybe it had to do with that warlord that discovered the container.

After landing his ship on the mountain from which the city hanged (for some reason no one had noticed it landing, but that was probably because no species had invented even radio detection devices and despite having radios and hey, the longer it took the natives to notice an alien ship on their world the better) where the objective of the mission would arrive soon (apparently he wasn't part of the invasion force), Praeratus decided to see explore the city and the surrounding country with a drone equipped with a cloaking generator, knowing that the primitives had no way to discover the machine.

The report about the planet was right about the warying technology tier: many houses were mostly built out of wood, the roads were paved with stone and rickshaws (they didn't appear to use beasts of burden for transportation) were everywhere, yet he could also see trains and railroads, primitive home appliances (washing machines, fridges and such, although televisors were notably absent and the radios were quite rudimentary), arcade machines of all things, and such.

However, when he saw what the invading army did to the locals made his blood boil with rage and press the control of the drone so hard it nearly broke.

Slaves. Pony slaves. And many of them were children. Scared children... The last time he had seen something like this had been during the Hegemony War, with many of those slaves being used not just as workers, but also as slave troops and living shields against the Confederation (although the latter use had been abandoned after when the Confederated Military got desperate and attacked anyway), with the rest simply tortured and killed in retaliation. The Confederation also killed and tortured many of their Hegemony prisoners, but didn't use use them as cannon fodder.

These slaves, however, had it better and worse. Better because besides manual labour they simply cowered with fear, and worse because they were used as playthings. Not 'playthings' as in sexual objects, playthings as actual playthings! He even saw one of those xenos using a pony like a damn ottoman for support its feet for fuck's sake!

He would do something with three goals in mind: learn the language of the locals, gather information about what was going on, and scare the furry frackers shitless. However, instead of going it that same moment he waited until the next day to act, exploring the place some more to search the entrance of the hanging city (jumping from the mountain would have been one hell of an entrance, but he didn't want to land in the middle of a invader army; even if their weapons were medieval at best and unable to damage the sets of armor he had, did not have any way to counter his psionics (unless they had lead helmets dense enough to break their bodies, and even then it would only block mind-related powers), and were simply crappy overall, he was still one against a few hundred at least. He had worse odds in the past, but those times he didn't have to deal with collateral damage.

When found one, more specifically the paved road that went into the city, he donned his xeno-hunter armor (it was an intimidating set of black-coloured plates and red eye slits; the materials used on its making, nanofibers and such, enhanced his strength and speed twofold, plus had jump thrusters placed on the shoulders, all of it costing as much as a armed starship; despite the cost and the perks, however, it was not even half as powerful as his Centurion power armor, which beside being better in all the ways it also had a personal shield generator. However, he didn't want to use it except for really, REALLY dire situations in which he needed to be ten times as strong), grabbed a laser rifle (he had quite an arsenal composed of both kinetic and energy weapons stronger than it, but the lightspeed pulses of the rifle could destroy all conventional armor sets from the Confederation in a few shots, shields included; he could also change its shots from red, which was lethal, to violet, which was anti materiel) and equipped his energy blade, attaching it to his right wrist. After that he secured the ship, released his ATV and left.

While he left, the sun and the moon of the planet went wonky, rising and setting rapidly for several minutes; despite this, however, he ignored them, knowing that he was in a galaxy full of strange(r) things.

He drove down the mountain at a speed of 70 mph with Cyranus riding shotgun. The ride went smoothly until they arrived to a subjugated village... with all its inhabitants forced to build a stone statue of the 'Storm King' (the name of the fracker who orchestrated all of this) under the painful whipping of the invaders, from whom some were laughing. And some were children.

'The hell I'm gonna let that pass', he thought before acting.

He made his presence known by running over three invaders, shocking the present natives; Cyranus followed suit by jumping out of the car and mauling an entire group by himself. The rest shook off their astonishment and attacked, but Praeratus simply mowed them down with with a three-round burst of the machine gun of the ATV.

All of this in less than twenty seconds, after which Praeratus procceeded to free the chained slaves. However, rather than thanking him (or dropping on their kness and worshipping him, which was a possibility), they all ran inside their houses while screaming. Praeratus sighed, but acknowledged this (he already knew he would be terrifying to the natives of the country, especially since they were apparently quite skittish; but a 'thank you' would have been nice, even if he wouldn't have understood them. He also forgot to read their minds to acquire knowledge of their language), piled the dead guards in a giant pile to disintegrate them, and drove away from the village in direction of the city with the giant palace.

After running over and gunning down a couple of patrols ,the pair reached the main entrance to the city. When they passed through the gates (this time the guards were fast and smart enough to get away) and into the place, the first thing he saw pissed him off.

A maroon cat with green eyes (and with a head full of indigo hair that was pretty damn weird on him, since he literally looked more like a humanoid bipedal cat than a cat-like feline alien), wearing only a jacket and daisy duke-like pants, was talking with the guards posted at the gate. That wasn't what pissed off Praeratus, but rather, the cart with the giant cake the cat that had with five ponies (two pegasi, two normal ponies and a unicorn) pulling it with miserable looks, plus all the other chained ponies he could see from his position, with many of them outfitted with muzzle-like contraptions that covered their mouths.

But that was not the worst.

The worst was the small, purple dragon with green fins at the top of the cake, blowing green fire and standing still like some kind of living candle. The sight of a boy so disturbingly similar to a therawyrm being used as a damn object was rage-inducing enough, but the fact that said kid looked like he wasn't even ten years old... That brought him memories of the Hegemony War. BAD memories that included felines gunning down civilians.

(If he hadn't been so pissed off he would have seen that the ponies were simply faking their despairing, and badly; and that the 'cake' had a pair of eyeballs on its side. Living eyeballs.)

Several moments of silent shock later, one of the guards regained his bearings. The hairy brute shouted and stomped towards his vehicle, pointing his spear on Praeratus's window and spouting in that untelligible language, probably ordering him to drop his weird looking weapon. Cyranus growled and crouched low to lunge at the alien, but a look from Praeratus made him stop.

Praeratus then looked stepped out of his car, looked at the guard at the guard and retracted his helmet (psionics tended to backfire a lot if used within enclosed armor), shocking the aliens when they saw he was basically a dragon (especially the purple boy)... before grabbing the guard with his psionics, ripping out all the important knowledge he had on his mind (language, name and appareance of the important people, all that) and, after basically mind raping the xeno, launching him upwards at a speed of over thirty meters per second, screaming bloody murder all the way.

Cyranus didn't waste a second and proceeded pounced on one of the other guards, tearing him apart with claws and teeth. The sight of a predator the size of a bull mauling another being horrified the ponies (whose species were in fact called ponies), who ran away screaming (or at least the ones without chains) alongside a few storm guards (as that's what were they called). The other ignored them and attacked the pair, only to find out that the monster was simply too savage and the dragon-like creature had both telekinetic powers and a weapon that spat deadly pulses of light. When Cyranus bit the neck of the last living guard, the fight ended. Praeratus, after incinerating the corpses with the laser, stomped towards the terrified cat, and before he could talk the therawyrm grabbed him by the neck with just two fingers and lifted him up, watching the bag of fur gasp for air.

“Scum like you should burn. In. HELL.” Praeratus punctuated with a snarl that showed his sharp teeth while pressing the cat's neck. "Like the others."

However, before he could behead the fracker, one of the ponies (the white unicorn with purple hair and with a mark of diamonds) screamed “Leave him alone you monster!” and shot him an energy bolt from her hands towards his head... which did utterly nothing to the therawyrm when it connected, harmlessly fizzling and disappearing.

Praeratus dropped the cat and turned to glare at the ungrateful bitch, who went from angry to terrified when she realized that she had angered a 7 feet tall creature that just slaughtered a dozen of guards with some kind of weapons and had just shrugged a magic projectile.

Suddenly, the cake the ponies were pulling exploded outwards, revealed to be the hiding place of a bunch of avian humanoids with reptilian tails dressed in stereotypical ancient pirate outfits and wielding cutlasses (but interestingly no archetypical pistols or shoulder animal, although most of them looked a lot like green psittaca, which in turn resembled parrots) and lead by a female of their species (at least he thought they were same species, because she looked more like a paradise bird, possessed a pair of ears and lacked the lizard tail) with a green crystal as a pegleg and a tricorn.

Alongside them also came another female avian with butter plumage, but this one looked like the bird-feline hybrids from the report, only instead of a feline her lower part was of a pony, in addition of an equine mane and tail of lavender. Her clothes were minimalist, the kind of clothing wore by those who love to swim, with a white t-shirt and shorts.

All of them (except the purple boy, who was still in the top of the cake) attacked him, screaming at the top of their lungs. Bad idea when the only weapons you have to fight a xeno-hunter outfitted with heavy armor are steel swords and a toy cannon.

He grabbed the cyan pegasus with the rainbow-colored mane and the cloud mark by the face and slammed her to the ground, slapped away the pirate captain so hard that her beak bled (which in turn showed how much Praeratus restrained himself with them; otherwise he would have ripped AND pulverized her head), grabbed the lasso of the orange one (who was dressed like a cowboy, and whose mark was three red apples) and used her as a flail to hit the others... The pink pony (with three balloons as a mark) shot him with some kind of cannon that shot sweets and cakes, and she in turn ate a 'knuckle sandwich' courtesy of a puppeteered white unicorn.

“Rarity, what are you doing!?” Screamed the pink pony.

“I can't control myself! It's using some...!” She said before uppercutting herself.

“I'm a HE, you stupid primitive!” Shouted Praeratus (he would have used a more rude expletive, but there was a kid near; admitedly, swearing was quite worse than killing, but he was too pissed off to care) before using his psionics to lift all of them and slam them to ground. All of them except the butter pegasus with a pink and a mark of three butterflies, who until know had been cowering under the cart alongside the little dragon. When she saw her friends forced to the ground by a purple force, however, she got out of her hiding spot with amazing speed and put herself between them and Praeratus, glaring up at him.

“HOW DARE YOU!” She screamed. “WE HAVE DONE NOTHING TO YOU AND yet... you... go and...” She stopped talking altogether when she realized that Praeratus was glaring back, and when a seven feet tall, one-eyed black therawyrm who's also a psionic able to lift tanks is glaring at you, you might as well be dead.

The worst was that Praeratus wasn't even using his psionics to diminish her bravery.

“Dare I?” Whispered Praeratus while turning around and lifting the cat again, this time with his psionics. “I rescue you from this piece of filth “continued Praeratus before turning sharply towards them and roaring “, AND THIS IS HOW YOU UNGRATEFUL ALIENS THANK ME!?”

He turned again towards the terrified cat, who despite all his squirming and struggling couldn't simply free himself, and was about to vaporize his head with the rifle before a young voice screamed:

“WAIT!” He turned again and saw it was the young dragon, who got up from below the cart and walked towards him with raised hands. “He's not a bad guy!”

“Spike no!” Cried the white unicorn

Praeratus glare practically evaporated when he saw the scared expression of the boy, Spike, and when he got closer the therawyrm knelt to his level (or at least only one foot taller) to look less threatening to him.

“And how's that, boy?” Asked Praeratus in a calm tone. “What I saw tells me otherwise. You were a living candle for a giant cake for heaven's sake.”

“It was a disguise! To enter Canterlot unnoticed!” Explained Spike. “Our friend Capper was trying to get us in the city!”

Praeratus looked back to the cat, Capper, who hastily nodded.

“And why do you want to infiltrate the city?” Questioned Praeratus, but rather than the dragon, it was the pink pony who answered him.

“To rescue a friend captured by the Storm King's lackey to steal her magic!”

“And why does he want her magic?”

“To control the world, you doofus!” Replied the cyan pegasus. “He already has the magic of the other princesses and can control the sun and the moon!”

The moon and the sun?, thought Praeratus. He already knew about this 'magic', so didn't question it. That would explain their weird movements from earlier.

Wait a minute...

“Are you guys telling that one of your rulers has the capacity to blackmail the other countries by controlling something vital for most living organisms?”

Before the ponies could complain, Praeratus got up. “Nevermind. I'm not here to talk, I'm on this planet to do a job, and the longer I'm here with you the more time they'll have to break out and destroy all life on this planet.”

“Destroy all life?” Said Capper in a puzzled tone.

“Wait, 'on this planet'?” Wondered the hybrid girl. Like an alien? You're just a weird dragon!”

“I'm a dragon-LIKE alien, miss horsey-bird, not even a true reptile, so don't expect from me to breathe fire except THIS” He said while hefting his rifle. “,and no tail or wings either. And my name is not 'it', Rarity” he snapped to the white unicorn who flinched at his tone.”, it's Praeratus. And I'm here to fix the Confederation mistakes.” He replied before moving away.

“What are you talking about?”

“The less you know, the better. Cyranus, follow me!” The pair were about to enter the city truly when Spike stopped him again.

“Wait!”

“What know?”

“Could you rescue our friend for us, please? She's called Twilight Sparkle and is a purple alicorn with sparks as a Cutie Mark. She's practically my sister, and she got captured because of me.” Said Spike while tearing up.

Praeratus crouched in front of the purple dragon to wipe away his tears (and take advantage of the physical contact to modify his memory, altering the violence he had seen but making him only remember it happened.

“I'll make sure to save her kid.” With that he detracted his helmet turned to his gorgonops. “C'mon Cyranus, forward march!” And the xeno-hunter went deeper into the city in a light jog in direction to the castle, with his 'hound' at his side.

While on route to the large building, the encountered many other ponies and stormg guards; the former ran away at the sight of the stomping aliens (the ones unchained that's it; the rest simply screamed and stood away from their path), while the latter tried to attack the. The key word being 'tried', since Praeratus didn't even slow down when either throwing them away with psionics or simply slamming into them. Cyranus did the same, not stopping while biting the leg off a storm guard and not even licking the blood on his muzzle.

When Praeratus saw that he was close to the castle he went from a light jog to a simple walk, and Cyranus imitated him. Entering into the plaza in front of the palace and below a huge balcony, Praeratus saw the containing pod that held part of bounty surrounded by larger than average storm guards, all of them wielding either hammers or pickaxes and looking at him warily. Cyranus stopped near the the cntainer and growled at the nearest brutes; Praeratus, however, kept going towards the balcony, ignoring the wary storm guards who were clutching their weapons while keeping away from his gorgonops.

Looking up at the occupants of the balcony (the Storm King, some kind of hedgehog, a few storm guards, a taller than average dark lavender unicorn with a broken horn and an even taller pearly white unicorn with a multicolored mane, all of them but the titular king looking at him with fear or awe), Praeratus crouched and activated the shoulder thrusters to jump. The low gravity of the planet, the enhancements of the xeno-hunting suit and his own physical strength allowed him him jump three times his own height without aid, but the balcony was so high that he needed the boost from the thrusters to reach it.

The natives ran back when Praeratus was about twenty meters above the railing and mere seconds before he landed on the structure, cracking the stone and making the balcony shake with the force and his weight, but he saw that the white alicorn stayed near a cage with another, smaller and younger looking alicorn inside. A lavender alicorn with sparks (he remember they were called a Cutie Mark) on the back of her hands, just like Spike described her.

Approaching the cage with the quivering girl, Praeratus saw that it didn't look very sturdy and decided that the best way to free the purple pony would be simply ripping the bars out with his hands. Mere feet from it, he asked to the scared pony:

“Are you by chance Twilight Sparkle?” He said using his voice filter, not yet willing to reveal his identity.

However, before she could had said anything, the white alicorn put herself between between the cage and Praeratus and flared her wings, glaring up at him in the visors.

“Whatever you want to do, I won't let you touch her.” Threatened the alicorn.

Now that he was closer could inspect the woman's features: she was tall (not as tall as him but at least as tall as the average human male, and definitely taller than all the other ponies he had seen previously, even the males), with the aforementioned alabaster fur and beautiful magenta eyes. Her muzzle and proportions were longer and sleeker than the average pony's, and her horn and wings were also longer and larger respectively than the ones from unicorns and pegasi, with the latter looking like they could actually keep her in the air and the former sharp enough to poke an eye out. Her

As for her other features, her Cuite Mark was that of a stylized sun (which revealed her role as controller of the star that orbited the planet), and she wore a single piece dress coupled with golden regalia in the form of bracelets and her tiara, plus horse shoes that may had been the equivalent of heels for hoofed creatures.

What attracted his attention the most was, unfortunately, her cleavage (although not just because he was a man), which showed the biggest and perkiest pair of breasts he had ever seen on a woman with that height. Those things had to be approximately as big as her head. Good thing he had the helmet on, or else she would have seen his eye drift towards her cleavage and probably see him as a pervert.

Sadly, he had chosen to forego other romantic relationships a long time ago.

The staredown lasted only a two seconds, before Praeratus grabbed the shoulder of the alicorn with his free hand and pushed her gently to the side, surprising her, before opening the cage with his bare hands. Twilight quickly got up and ran towards the white alicorn, hugging her while crying. He let them have their intimate moment: apparently the white one was either Twilight's mother or someone very near. Of course, she had someone else wanting her back.

When they finally looked up at him, he decided to remind Twilight of her 'little brother' and demonstrate that he was, if not a friend, an ally at least.

“Spike asked me to get you out of trouble.” He informed, watching the young woman tear up again and smile. The older alicorn looked up again.

“Thank you.” She said in a weak voice while smiling. Praeratus had always responded to being shown kindness by being kind in return, so he retracted his helmet, shocking everyone present by showing his dragon-like head. He looked at the woman straight in the eye for several silent moments, seeing awe and curiosity on them.

“You're welcome.” He said while smiling back. To his (hidden) surprised, the alicorn blushed.

“Oh, great, the classic love in first sight between a beautiful princess and a handsome knight, except the princess is a thousand years old nag, and the knight is a black knight, is as handsome as a rock from space, and is a dragon... from space.” He heard a voice say in a disgusted tone. Looking towards the group on the back of the balcony, he glared when he saw his real bounty, the Big Cheese, the Storm King, holding some kind of staff. Killing him would effectively decapitate the occupation force and by extension stop any attempt to breach the container of the weapons.

He would make him scream in pain first.

Extending his arm in direction of the Storm King, Praeratus grabbed the conqueror with his psionics (and startling the others like it happened in the gate. This confirmed that apparently dragons didn't have 'magic' and that psionics didn't exist here) and pulled the xeno towards him, making the alien drop the staff; he then grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up.

“YOU.” Said the xeno-hunter in a monotone voice that didn't hide his anger. However, rather than become terrified or start begging for mercy, the xeno simply looked down at him with boredness.

“Yes, o angry one? Am I in trouble or what. Because I don't think I have done anything wrong. I am a bad guy after all.” he said with a toothy smile.

'Cocky motherfracker. He's one of those who likes being a bastard for the hell of it!', thought Praeratus furiously, snarling “You son of a bitch.” before tightening his hold on the King's neck. He could have mind raped him, but he wanted to feel his life slip away on his hands. “Give me a reason to not rip your head from your shoulders and feed it to my gorgonops.”

However, before the Storm King could respond, the dark purple unicorn with the broken horn yelled and charged towards him.

“Watch out!” Warned the white alicorn. Praeratus felt grateful for her 'assistance' (it's not like she could do anything without her magic), but it was not necessary.

The xeno-hunter dropped the Storm King, turned towards the purple unicorn and... did the exact same thing he did with the Storm King, only this time he grabbed her by the head and crushed it like a rotten egg.

Well, he would had crushed her head like a rotten egg if it wasn't for Twilight screaming at the top of her lungs:

“WAAAIIT!”

Praeratus, still holding the woman by her shoulders, looked at the panting alicorn.

“Why?” He simply said.

“She deserves another chance, she hasn't killed anypone; she can be a better pony!”

“So, I have to let her live because she's a pony and hasn't killed yet, is that it?” Said Praeratus, having read both minds (but only a little to not alert them and because he simply didn't want to know everything they knew) and seen that Tempest Shadow, as the unicorn was called, had sang (yes, sang, not talk, sang) to Twilight about her life earlier. He forgot reading the mind of the white alicorn, but he didn't think she had information. “Because by that same assumption I'm an unfeeling monster; I killed thousands, but they were all lowlives, invaders and monsters that deserved it.”

“Well, too bad.” Said another voice in front of them. The therawyrm and ponies looked as the Storm King aimed his Staff at the xeno-hunter. “Because we could have been the best friends. And I know you want to take your freaks back. You abandoned them, and I rediscovered them, therefore they're mine!”

“Back?” That made Praeratus chuckle, confusing the Storm King (and scaring everyone else in the balcony because of the way he laughed). “You think I want to retrieve those freaks? I'm a xeno-hunter, I'm here to kill them or stop you from releasing them, not to recover them!”

“Oh yeah? Then I suppose I have no more use for you. Now I get to kill three birds with one stone!” Laughed the Storm King before conjuring a huge ball of lightning with the staff and shooting it at them, apparently not caring that Tempest Shadow was in front. Praeratus throwed her backwards and braced himself, trying to cover as much of the three women behind him with his body as possible.

“Behind me!” He screamed to the women, who did as they were told.

Everyone looked on as the magical attack hit him... and promptly dissappeared. The Storm King went from laughing like someone whose plan went better than they thought to someone who just realized they shot a 200 feet monster with a peashooter (or a warrior from the stars able to cast powerful spells and that shrugged the magic of four alicorns), dropping his staff in shock.

He wasn't the only one. The ponies, the hedgehog and the storm guards were looking at him with wide eyes (and in the case of the hedgehog UNNATURALLY wide), with their mouths hanging open. Praeratus, though? He simply glared at the Storm King while he gathered a psionic bomb (a exceptionally powerful attack that did minimal damage to stone yet annihilated organic material and damaged metal) on his free hand. He wasn't amused.

“MY TURN.” Said the xeno-hunter in a dark tone before throwing his arm backwards and hurling the purple ball of death and destruction towards the Storm King with enough strength to push him inside the room and through the wall like a cannonball, going through the following walls of stone. And the bomb hadn't even exploded yet.

'Mph, weird.', thought Praeratus while looking at the Storm King-shaped silhouette. 'Usually the explosion would had-'

BOOOOM!

The slow yet powerful shockwave of the psionic bomb came out of the the openings in the castle (windows, the gate of the place and such), and unfortunately for the people in the balcony they were right in front of one.

Grubber and the storm guards were lucky, since they already were away from the entrance, but Praeratus wasn't; he received the full impact of both the psionic shockwave and the propelled throne. He was barely hurt by these, but his body wasn't anchored to the ground; because of this he pushed the ponies that hid behind him, and while Tempest Shadow managed to grab on the railing and Twilight's arm, the white alicorn was pushed out of the balcony. It wouldn't have been a problem to her, since she was an alicorn and could either just fly away or crash and survive the fall (although very painfully), and her wings were big enough to let her glide down.

Unfortunately, her resiliency only worked when she had magic, and the shockwave broke her wings.

“CELESTIA!” Cried Twilight in anguish as she saw her mother figure fall to her death whilst screaming.

Praeratus didn't waste a second and dropped his rifle while rushing forwards and jumped off the balcony, using his weight, his thrusters and a psionic charge (for those occasions where he needed to go fast over short distances) to give him enough boost to reach the now named and grab her bridal style.

“HANG ONTO ME!” He shouted to her before crashing feet first on the plaza, making a small crater due to the impact. Even with his enhancements, armor and years of doing the same thing (with the only difference being the shorter height), the action still hurt his knees, although not by much.

“Damn, It's been a long time since I've jumped like that. This reminds me of when I was still in the military.” Praeratus said to Celestia, who was apparently wasn't listening. “Quite a long time ago I jumped out of a gunship from an altitude of ten kilometers with a platoon of Helldivers. Of course I jumped with my power armor on, but had the misfortune of forgetting the jetpack. I nearly broke my knees.”

It was then when he realized that the alicorn had pressed herself further against him. It would have made an interesting scene if not for the fact that she was hugging Praeratus tightly and looking behind them with terrified eyes, whimpering in fear.

It was then when heard Cyranus growling. At them.

The therawyrm set Celestia to the ground with care and then turned slowly while detracting his helmet. What he saw made him frown.

Eleven reptilian monsters the size of cars (or 'demons' as the natives had named them) had breached out of the pod while he was in the balcony and slaughtered the storm guards. Only they didn't do the deed themselves.

Cyranus (who was indeed growling at them) had several corpses of the brutes around him, all of them mauled beyond recognition. Surrounding the pod where ten living storm guards, weapons dripping with blood and glaring at the pair with murderous intentions. The red glow in their eyes made clear they were being mind controlled by the demons, who were completely inmobile (which was a fortunate effect of being low-level psionics. Blue and above could both control a creature and move). Above them, Twilight, Tempest Shadow, Grubber and the storm guards were watching the events unfold with horror. Twilight in special was looking at her former mentor.

“Listen carefully.” Praeratus whispered to Celestia, who looked up at him slowly with vacant eyes. He had seen that look before in civilians who had suffered near death experiences (an evacuation bordering on failure, an encounter with a wild predator), similar to PTSD but choosing the 'fly or flip out' option instead of the 'fight or go berserk' one most of the time. “I'm going to attract the attention of the possessed while you run away. The monsters are unable to move whilst they control them, so with a bit of luck I'll be-”

“What are you whispering about.” Interrupted another voice next to them. The xeno-hunter looked with astonishment as one of the previous ponies, the pink one, had somehow placed herself near them and was right now looking at him with a smile. Behind her he could see the group running into the plaza... including Spike.

'Stupid frackers, they're going to get themselves killed!', screamed Praeratus on his mind.

The cyan one sped towards them.

“Stay the hay away from our princess you-!”

“RAAARGH!” Roared Cyranus before giving an adrenaline-fueled punce that propelled him over Praeratus and towards the frightened pegasus, but before the 1600 pound killing machine could eat her head Praeratus grabbed Cyranus by the left hind leg and threw him towards one of the possessed brutes.

Getting up, Praeratus turned towards the pegasus and grabbed her by the neck, glaring at her terrified eyes.

“You do that again, I'll kill you myself.” He said before shoving her backwards and charging towards the screaming brutes. Usually he would have just beat them to death, but several factors (among them the fact that there was a kid near him and that if he killed the brutes, the demons would be free to kill the others and attack him and Cyranus) made him settle to control his strength and just knock them senseless.

Intercepting a clumsy attack from a hammer, the xeno-hunter grabbed its head and kicked the owner of the weapon away while backhanding another with a pickaxe. A foaming brute was about to throw his weapon at one of the ponies before the xeno-hunter grabbed his throwing arm instead. Then, Praeratus pulled the storm guard towards him and used him as a makeshift club to hit other two, after which he grabbed a fifth by the head and slammed him several times on the ground. The other four fought against the newcomers, which to the surprise of Praeratus fought them off quite well, with the avian pirates ganging on one and the orange one using her lasso to restrain another before kicking him in the gut. Praeratus, however, was more interested in the fact that, although he was the one who was inflicting the most 'casualties' on them, the storm guards (and by extension the demons) were more preoccupied attacking the locals than him.

Unfortunately, that also included dragons. Cyranus recovered from the previous throw and rushed towards Spike who, even when he was already running, was not fast enough to escape. Grunting, Praeratus slammed himself on his possessed gorgonops and after both fell to the ground restricted him, retracting his helmet and looking at Cyranus in the eye. The organic weapon was completely overmatched by the former Centurion and was forced to leave the beast's mind. Slowly, Cyranys went from biting and roaring to panting.

“Relax boy. Calm down.” Whispered Praeratus to Cyranus ear while petting him. He kept doing it until he felt the gorgonops breathing regularly. He was asleep,and therefore safe from any future attempt of possession. Praeratus sighed in relief, aliviated that his friend was free from the bioweapon's control. And it looked like the others had taken care of the remaining brutes.

All except one that was right now rushing towards Celestia with his weapon raised and screaming gibberish like a maniac. However, the therawyrm could understand two words amongst that gibberish.

“DIE XENO!” The words came from the brute's mouth, but the brute was at the moment under total control of an engineered monster. This confirmed to Praeratus the datapad's report abount their use as a weapon aginst the Hegemony and that they hadn't forgotten their purpose. Why was it confirmed? Because the brute made a beeline for Celestia while passing next to him for a feet.

And the white alicorn hadn't even moved from where Praeratus had set her, too terrified to do anything. The others attacked the brute, but the possessed, pumped on too much adrenaline and centered solely on killing the alicorn, either charged through them or trampled them.

Praeratus didn't have time to think, he simply activated his energy blade and rushed forward. Just seconds before the hammer could crush Celestia's head...

THUK!

Everyone (Celestia included) watched on with horror as Praeratus impaled the brute from back to front with a 'magic' blade made of a glowing violet energy before lifting it up and throwing the corpse away.

Praeratus sighed. He wasn't happy that he killed someone in front of a kid (even if the death was bloodless thanks to the blade being so hot it evaporated the blood and cauterized the wound. He could also did the same thing from earlier to 'delete' what he had seen), but it was either that or let the possessed madman kill their ruler and destabilize their kingdom in one movement, and that was something he couldn't let happen.

Now, the only thing left was killing the bioweapons before they could recover from-

A sound well known to him and a roar of pain made him look in direction of the monsters; one of them had a scorched stump where its left arm should have been. Looking up, he could see Twilight Sparkle with his laser rifle on her hands, the barrel smoking from the discharge. She had somehow changed the fire mode to 'blue'.

The response of the monsters was inmediate. All of them bolted towards the group, but instead of attacking they ran past them and into the city, separating and going into different directions.

“NO!” Shouted Praeratus started to run after them, but then stopped. The beasts ran so fast that even the former Centurion couldn't have been able to keep up with them, and outnumbered him eleven to one so he didn't bother chasing the creatures. Didn't stop him from getting mad.

Snarling in anger, the therawyrm turned towards the balcony and pulled Twilight towards him, grabbing her by the throat.

“Let her go you freak!” Cried the cyan pegasus while charging at him. Praeratus didn't even bother to look at the damn alien to grab her with his psionics, slam her to the ground, make her bite her own arms with enough strength to draw blood, and throw her against a building, not fast enough to kill her but still strong enough to break her wings and several bones and knock her out. Considering what he was able to do, she was pretty luck to be alive.

“RAINBOW DASH!!” Screamed the yellow pegasus.

The display terrified the rest of the group, but despite this attacked the xeno-hunter, which ended with them stopped cold by a terrifying feeling of dread with unnatural origins. All except Spike, who hadn't moved from his place since the moment the therawyrm grabbed his friend, frozen by a more mundane fear.

As for Celestia... She might have been very powerful, but only with her magic (and the encounter with that demon hundreds of years ago made her realize that even with magic there could be stronger creatures than her). She could only watch in horror as her former student was mere seconds away from death.

That didn't matter to Praeratus, who turned his head to glare at a crying Twilight.

“WHY DID YOU DO THAT! NOW THEY'RE DISPERSED! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY-” He started to rant before closing his jaw and grunting while dropping the alicorn, forcing himself to calm down.

'Killing her will only make the natives hate you and worsen the situation.'

'I don't give a damn if they hate me, they already attacked me when I saved their asses! And the situation has gotten worse already, the fracking idiot let those things get away! Now they'll kill even more, multiply to grow stronger, mind rape anything that crosses their path, destroy all life on this planet and force to use the 'thing', alerting the Hegemony of their existance and their origins, and start the Second Hegemony War!'

'She didn't let them go away, she simply shot at one!”

'I don't give a damn! She could have aimed for its head!'

'She's a civilian, most don't know how to use a firearm properly! And I doubt anyone on this planet has ever heard of energy weapons. Hell, I doubt they even know what gunpowder is!'

'And? She's an ALIEN civilian! And like all alien civilians, she fracked the situation when it got to her! I have never let a quarry get away in a hundred and fifty years and now some stupid alien lets the most dangerous monsters yet escape to do accomplis their mission!'

'You forget what your job as Centurion was! You may have slaughtered millions of alien soldiers, but never, ever touched a civilian! No matter their allegiance!'

“RAAAARGH!” Yelled Praeratus before grabbing the container of the bioweapons (which weighed well above twenty tons) with his anger-fueled arms and throwing away at a distance of over twenty feet, shaking the ground. The extraordinary feat (he had throwed heavier weights before and at longer distances, but with the Centurion armor) left him panting in exhaustion.

What Praeratus didn't know was that his mental discussion was being broadcasted to the minds of the ponies, hippogriff, avians and dragon in the plaza (except Rainbow Dash). All of them were hearing the mental discussion of the alien warrior, going from terrified to astonished, and not just for the incredible feat of strength they just saw happen (especially Applejack; her brother Big Macintosh was strong, so strong he could pull a wooden house for a good distance at full strength, but not even he could lift a metallic space thingy bigger than a common house and throw it away like a barrel!).

Celestia in particular couldn't help but feel sympathy for the dragon-like warrior, who was divided between taking his anger on her fellow princess and her ponies (and by extension her) and struggling against himself to become rational. The fact thath he had freed Twilight and personally saved her twice in a single day helped.

Then there was the way he held her after saving her of the fall. She had never been grabbed by somepo-someone so strong yet so gentle, with a emanating presence that made feel safe. And then there was his smile... That thought made her shake her head a little and blush from embarrasment.

Fortunately for everyone, Praeratus managed to calm himself down in the end.

The therawyrm, now calm, turned towards Twilight. He was still glaring daggers, but not with killing intent.

“Do you know WHAT can were those things, and what can they do?” Asked Praeratus to Twilight in a calm yet commanding voice. When she shook her head, he continued. “Biological weapons made specifically to fight and kill aliens, and in this case it means anything born on this planet. They're strong, fast, smart, can heal wounds and possess magic.” Each word that spoke of the creatures capabilities made Twilight's eyes widen and her pupils shrink. “And don't need genders to reproduce, so don't expect them to be only eleven in a few days."

“W-what can we do!?” Exclaimed Twilight. Praeratus, after recovering his laser rifle looked at her in the eye with a serious look.

“Nothing, not if your only means of fighting are based on your magic because they are inmune to it; and you're simply not advanced enough to pose a threat to them, not with spears and swords. I'm the only one who can kill them.”

He then approached Cyranus and hefted him over his shoulder. He had to return to his ship and plan his next move. However, before he could leave...

“Wait.” He heard the soft voice of Celestia say. Praeratus turned and looked at the alicorn. “Why did you help us?And can I know the name of my saviour?”

The xeno-hunter thought it for a moment before responding.

“Because I hate slavery. As for my name... it's Praeratus.” With that he detracted his helmet and jogged off.

He didn't see the smile on Celestia's muzzle.

Here's the second chapter. Some might be put off by Celestia's portrayal, but how would you act when a monster that nearly killed you years ago (and without magic) came back and in greater numbers? And she also never met a big, handsome male either.