“What the frack are you doing standing there!? Get out of here!” Bellowed Praeratus to the group behind him; before any of them could respond he was already rushing towards one of the monsters, a mashup of goat, tiger and snake that breathed fire on his direction. The therawyrm ran through the fire and killed the thing by beheading it with a singular slash from his energy blade.

'Why didn't I grab a slugthrower?, he thought while attacking the other crazed beasts. Yeah, they all may have looked like they had rabies, what with all the foam they spewed and their (hopefully) unnatural aggressivity, but their maddened eyes and the fact that a few of them weren't mammals or synapids (the hydras and the chicken-snake hybrids) made clear that something else made them act like that. 'And a pistol, for that matter?'

He didn't need to probe their minds to know that it had been the 'demons' work. To possess what amounted to an small army required finesse for it to work over long distances, a minimum of formal training, a high capacity for psionics and , overall, being a blue-rated psionic , something that none of the (hopefully) still few red-rated bioweapons lacked.

But if what you wanted was to reduce the enemy's numbers without wanting to leave your safe spot, you had two options: mess with their brains to make them see their companions as if they were the enemy, or fry them enough to turn them into insane berserkers but without actually killing them; you didn't have direct control over them, but neither did your enemy. Obviously the demons had done the latter with these animals.

Both tactics tactics had lost most of their effectiveness nowadays due to the modernity of military helmets and the fact that even civilians shrug through the mind breaking or the hallucinations if they had a stronger will than the performer; he would know, he did the exact same tactic alongside other Centurions and Psionic Warriors during the War . That said, most civilians were still susceptible to these attacks, and non sapient animals, having not much of a will, had no natural defense to this.

Better still, the ponies had started to fight some of the less dangerous creatures; the unicorns and alicorns blasted them with magic, the pink one used her cake cannon to help the cowgirl, the levies were using nets to inmobilize the smaller beasts, the weirdo turned them into birds and such... Sure, some of their attempts made it worse (for example, the birds prompted pecked the creature, and the adrenaline coursing through the animal's veins made them nearly impervious to physical attacks), and some of them (like Spike, the yellow pegasus and her cyan friend) weren't actually doing anything, but helped the other civilians to get inside the castle. What bugged Praeratus was that they didn't kill the maddened animals, even though they had the means to do so it was the sensible thing to do (and the that their minds were so broken that they wouldn't never recover; death would be a mercy for them).

'As long as they don't get killed, fine by me.', thought Praeratus while raising a psionic barrier between a family of four and a hydra. “Get out of here now! Move!” He bellowed to them before grabbing one of the heads of the monster that had lunged towards him before snapping its neck. While he beheaded the other three heads he saw out of the corner of his eye how Cyranus was faring. The gorgonops was at the moment brawling with a particularly burly manticore, but given that the fighting beasts were surrounded by several corpses of other manticores, these things weren't a problem for the battle-tested gorgonops.

Usually he would have just sniped the animals from afar with the rifle, but after using all the energy (ultraviolet) to kneecap that monstruous bear its battery got depleted competely, so for the moment it was nothing but a glorified club; even if it had some energy left the barrel was so hot that another shot would had melted it.

Grabbing them all and using cryokinesis on them like he did minutes before was out of the question too: he had spent a lot of his psionic reserves in grabbing so many individual creatures and frash freezing instantly instead of doing it one by one. Furthermore, the surviving animals were already in the city, and he needed concentration and finesse to grab something he couldn't see, finesse he didn't really have because he had been trained to use psionics in a 'brutish manner' (basically to kill in the most direct way, be by messing with the atoms of his targed or snapping his entire body), as a psionic warrior would say. He could hover over the city with his jump pack and grab those he could see from above, but that would leave out the animals already inside some of the buildings and reduce his reserves even more. He could simply grab those inside the buildings, but again, it required some finesse.

And there was no way he'd calm those things down, their minds were simply too broken and pumped on adrenaline to salvage, unlike with Cyranus earlier who got possessed. Besides, his job was killing monsters, not helping them.

That left him the simplest option: maglock the rifle to his back, get into melee range and kill the beasts in close combat (with either his blade, his hands or close psionic attacks). Not that he didn't mind it, on the contrary, many of his hunts ended with him going hand to hand with his quarry after chasing it to its lair with Cyranus, and he needed the exercise to not lose his strength (it was a low gravity planet after all, and using his ship's gym all the time was tiresome), but with all these ponies still out in the open, he had to be careful with his attacks, else he would cause quite a lot of damage just by missing, and he preferred to shoot at any rate.

His chain of thought was interrupted by a collective scream of fear coming from a side street. Praeratus saw a group of ponies being cornered by a couple of those winged chicken-snake hybrids and a huge bear-wasp animal the size of a small house. The therawyrm saw with shock how the screaming ponies got turned to stone by the 'cockvipers' and then smashed to pieces by the bear.

'Dammit.', this was one of the things he hated the most, not being able to save everyone. As powerful as he was both with his body, his weapons and his psionics, he was not omniscient (nor omnipotent). He simply couldn't be everywwhere or win all battles, a lesson he learned the hard way during the Hegemony War.

He was about to kill them when he heard a very loud scream of both horror and rage behind him. It was Celestia who, with an expression of fury enhanced by glowing white eyes, fired at the monsters a huge beam of pure light that vaporized them and kept going until reaching the outskirst of the city. Praeratus thought at that moment that maybe he had understimated these aliens, or at least Celestia.

That was until he saw the white alicorn collapse on her knees and cry. At first the xeno-hunter thought that she did that due to a combination of exhaustion and witnessing the death of several of her subjects, but after probing her mind a bit he discovered another reason: the poor alicorn had seen a similar thing two hundred years ago when that one monster got out of the pod, only that time it wasn't animals killing, but also stallions cutting and stabbing each other to death.

Praeratus grunted in displeasure. He couldn't blame her for having PTSD (especially given that from time to time he too he it, mostly due to the harshest battles of the Hegemony War in which he was involved), but this was not the time to lose composture, especially when you are the main leader of the country and you are surrounded by creatures that wanted nothing but to see you and your friends dead and would do anything in their hand to see it happen.

Like another cockviper that took advantage of the vulnerable state of the alicorn to sneak behind her and attack. Praeratus thought that it would petrify her, but instead the creature did something else: it grabbed Celestia's neck with its body and began strangling her. Celestia (whose face was somehow turning blue despite the fur) tried to pry it off her, but either her previous attack had weakened her both magical and physically, or the thing was simply too strong for her to disentangle due to it being pumped on adrenaline. Worse still, none of the others realized that their monarch/friend/sister was being constricted to death.

'Like hell she is', thought Praeratus before running towards the struggling alicorn and grabbing the thing by its tail, prying it off of her. The monster looked at him with its red, maddened eyes, probably hoping to turn the therawyrm to stone. Since apparently Praeratus was inmune to magic, nothing happened.

Praeratus decided to give the thing a taste of its own medicine by using cryokinesis (which slowed down the movements of the atoms of an organisms to lower its temperature; it was what he used before to kill those animals) to turn it into an ice sculpture in question of seconds, and then crushing it.

'You know what? Screw it, I'll kill the ones I can see and then search and destroy the rest, I still have enough energy!'.

The therawyrm propelled himself upwards, grabbed and lifted all the creatures he could see in the city (including the ones dealing with the locals), and then incinerated them all with pyrokinesis which was the reverse of cryokinesis, accelerating atoms to rise their temperature; unlike cryokinesis, it had a lot more of uses in for a soldier) at the same time. After making sure there weren't survivors, Praeratus depowered the shoulder thrusters and descended slowly.

He knew that many animals were still pretty much alive, and that he couldn't simply snuff them out of their hiding spots after spending a bit more than a half of his reserves. Good thing he had a sniffer in handy.

“Cyranus, come here boy!” He shouted. Soon enough his best friend came running towards him, his entire head covered in blood and gore.

While petting him, Praeratus told him what he wanted him to do. “See if there are survivors inside the houses. If there are, well, you know what to do.”

The gorgonops eagerly nodded, sniffing the air and then galloping towards the center of Canterlot and entering his first building, a shop of some kind. Soon Praeratus heard roars of anger at first, and then of pain. The latter didn't come out of Cyranuys

'I hope he doesn't get himself killed.', thought the xeno-hunter as he watched Cyranus dragging the corpse of a manticore and going to another building before scoffing mentally. 'As if, he saved that botched hunt by killing that goliath alone. I doubt anything in this planet that can fit in a house can challenge him. Alright, maybe those chicken things, but I'm inmune to whatever that crap they do is, so maybe he's too; besides, I'm pretty sure I killed all of them.'

Praeratus then decided to check on Celestia and the others since he had done their fighting for them.

“Celestia are you alright?” He said while turning to the alicorn. When he turned he saw her gaping at him with wide eyes. Hell, everyone else had the same expression, even the blue pegasus.

“What?” He prayed that they wouldn't start screaming at the realization of what he could do. Fortunately, they didn't. Unfortunately, one of them was thinking diferently.

“IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY!? AFTER THE DEATHS OF INNOCENT PONIES THAT YOU COULD HAVE SAVED!?” Screamed the blue alicorn in a furious tone so loud that the buildings and the ground quaked. “INNOCENT PONIES HAVE DIED BECAUSE YOUR-”

“DON'T BLAME ME FOR SOMETHING I COULDN'T CONTROL YOU DAFT IDIOT!” Interrupted the therawyrm by roaring at the top of his lungs, shocking the alicorn and the others with the power behind that scream (thanks to years of screaming orders and warcries in the middle of a battlefield, enhanced lungs and simply being bigger than her by quite a bit). She probably had never been shouted at in all her life, or at least not by someone that was not family or friend. Praeratus kept speaking, but this time in a more even tone.“And this is not over yet! There are still many of those things in the city!”

“Then why don't you do get all of them, uh?” Asked the weirdo. The animals he had turned into birds weren't in sight, but Praeratus was sure he had killed those too. “You make it look like you could!”

“Why don't YOU get all of them, eh!? You turned those into birds, I bet you could turn them into something harmless! And you're 9 feet tall!” The weirdo shutted up and looked away.

“I hate killing. It's simply wrong.” His simple response made Praeratus snort in disgust. He didn't even explain WHY was it wrong!

“Many planets, in the past, refused to kill because they thought it was wrong and that they could defend themselves without ending lives. You know what happened to them?” He asked to the present people, who shook their heads. “They're dead, nothing more than either lifeless husks or space dust.” He then surprised them with his next words. “I'm not going to let that happen to this planet, even if you don't like it.”

“Besides, just because it looks like I can do it doesn't mean I should, or can. I can't just use my psionics all the time, and if I did what you're saying I would end up destroying half of the place just to get the surviving-” He said before being interrupted by Twilight, who rather than using her voice raised her arm. Yeah, she actually raised her arm like a primary schooler in class, apparently just to talk to him. “Yes, Twilight, what do you-?” He managed to say before a levy came up at him with his spear aimed at his face

“It's Princess to you, dragon.” Said the levy in a venomous tone. If the primitive thought that his spear would force an armor clad, thousand years old former soldier that could kill without even moving to recognize a primitive ruler who, as much as grateful and nice as she was, hasn't done much to earn his respect, then he had another thing coming for him.

Praeratus didn't even bother to look down to the warrior to grab the idiot by the neck, making everyone present (minus Celestia, who was still sitting in the ground) gasp at his action.

“I don't think I was talking to you, beast.”, he said before 'gently' (as in not strong enough to splatter him) throwing the alien away. “And where were you when the invasion started, uh!?” He then turned towards the rest of the levies. “Anyone else?” They promptly backed off with scared looks. “Good. Now, did you want something Twilight?” Continued Praeratus from before.

“H-how did you do that Praeratus? You didn't say you could do that.”

“What do you mean, the killing? Well, it was either let you die or help you out.”

“No, I mean the burning and the freezing and the exploding... That was no normal magic, I couldn't feel it. What kind of magic are psionics?”

“Oh, that.” 'Why does she want to know about psionics now? Is she even aware of the situation? Actually, I don't mind it, better curious than terrified of me, especially since she's a leader.'

“Well, do you have about stories psychic powers? Unrelated to magic I mean.”

“I don't think psychic powers can burn stuff or turn it into ice.”

“Psychic powers, as in mind reading and that stuff without magic? Like in my comic books?” Wondered Spike.

“Impossible, those are nothing but fiction, and all they do is read minds and grab stuff. I mean, he did grab stuff, but that may be some freaky alien magic.” Scoffed the blue pegasus

“Too bad because it's not magic girl, it's psionics. As for how did i kill those things, I simply accelerated and slowed their atoms to incinerate and frash freeze their bodies, respectively.”

“Atoms?” Said Twilight in a confused tone. Praeratus groaned internally; even though they had things like airships, rudimentary radios and even early films, they hadn't invented microscopes powerful enough to see particles.

“The smallest particles of chemical elements that exist, like your or me... or those animals I killed. Anyway, why did are you asking me that in a moment like this?”

“Would you believe if I tould you that I just wanted to know because?” Said the alicorn in a sheepish tone, making Praeratus eyebrow twitch. “I had never seen something like that happening without magic before. How do these psionics work”

“I'm afraid I can't actually explain how psionics work, only that they do. I'm not one of those who dedicates their lives to study the power of psionics, I simply use them when I-”

“Thank you.” Interrpted Celestia before before going to the xeno hunter and bowing in front of him; at this act of gratitude, Praeratus responded by grabbing her left hand and kissing it, to the amazement of the others, who looked on in bewilderment. Celestia, in turn, blushed due to his action

“You're welcome” Replied Praeratus as he let go of Celestia's arm. “, but thanks for what?”

“For helping us yet again. These beasts were too frenzied and numerous to handle, and if not for your assistance, that cockatrice would have killed me.”

Before Praeratus could say 'Just doing my job', a very loud growl coming from outside the city drew the attention of the group. It was the Ursa Major, which had managed to climb back to Canterlot after being kneecapped by Praeratus, rearing on its feet even with its a wound on its knee. They hadn't sensed the trembling it made because it climbed much slower than before, but it was impossible to miss the huge purple bulk now.

“You again.” Growled Praeratus. “I should have gone have gone for the head with you.” He then turned to the group and said: “Everyone, stay here.”, before walking towards the Ursa at a steady pace.

Only to be stopped by the yellow pegasus, who landed in front of him.

“What now girl!?”

“You can't kill that poor thing!”

“Poor... It's big enough to topple a skyscraper, it wants to kill everything on this city, and there's no way I can calm that thing down!” He screamed.

“But it's only a mother!” Yelled back the pegasus. “It may just want to find her baby! Maybe if we just...”

'This idiot doesn't get that that thing isn't going to just stand there!', thought the therawyrm, deciding to probe the mind of the girl to see what was her issue. It turned out that Fluttershy, that being the girl's name, was a pacifist and an animal lover, but one of those who literally would die rather than hurt a single hair from a dangerous beast if it couldn't be convinced to 'be good' (by glaring at it. How the hell did that work without psionics?). Too bad she was trying to convince someone whose income came from killing dangerous beasts with extreme prejudice after stalking them for days and who had a particular dislike for very large creatures like the Ursa Major.

“I don't think you understand the situation girl. That thing is not desperate to find its young, its insane and full of nothing but murderous rage! In fact, I'm pretty sure it KILLED it's young!” He said, eliciting a yelp from the young pegasus.

(If Praeratus and Fluttershy had turned to look back at the group they would have seen Discord watching their discussion with angush, unable to decide on what to do. In one hand Fluttershy was not just the one who reformed him, but also his best friend. On the other hand, he also wanted to live and according to Celestia the collective magic of four alicorns simply dissappeared when touching him; angering someone who he was completely powerless against would probably end up with him turned into an icicle, a funeral pyre, ripped apart or worse. Besides, the alien, Praeratus, had saved his friends even though he didn't have to, he wasn't actully hurting her, and he also had a point concerning the Ursa Major. There was something very wrong with the giant bear).

Praeratus, not wanting (nor willing) to keep hearing Fluttershy, walked around the yellow pegasus, psionically grabbed the heaviest thing he could see (some kind of heavily ornamented bookshop by the looks of it), and threw it with all his might towards the roaring beast. He wasn't in the mood to fight a giant bear, did not have access to heavy weapons, and although a psionic bomb would have been a better option, the feats from earlier had drained Praeratus psionic reserves and had to recharge; besides, lifting and throwing a building made in a low-gravity world was easier and and just a tiny bit less effective.

The effects of a two hundred (local) tonnes of stone and wood hitting a slightly heavier bear at a speed of approximately eight hundred yards per second were both spectacular and terrifying: the Ursa Major, though very resistant by Equus standards, was still a creature that had evolved in a low gravity world, owning a good part of its size to the weaker strain it had, not its strength. As such, it didn't have much in the defense department aside from its not-so-thick skin and sheer size, unlike dragons or armored vehicles (and the first were rarely much bigger than the aforementioned house)

It wasn't surprising, then, that the gigantic bear ended with a gaping hole bigger than its head that went traversed its torso. The monster, after standing for several seconds, fell off the city.

Praeratus nodded at what he saw. 'That should take care of the main problem. Cyranus can take care of the rest.' He then turned and walked back towards the group. 'Now what do I do with them? Do I tell them how much more dangerous is the Hegemony, or do I-' He looked at the group again...

Only to see something that froze his blood cold for the first time in two hundred years.

Well, first cliffhanger. Also, can I get more comments from you guys?