“She’s late...” Celestia said to herself as night began to fall on day 50.

“My apologies Celestia, I went to the wrong side of the city and had to shake lose a few Ghosts.” Starswirl said, floating up to the barrier in his sphere.

“Starswirl?” Celestia said as the sphere stopped in front of her and emitted magic to form his body.

“Not quite in the flesh but I can’t think of a different metaphor.” Starswirl replied.

“Where is Twilight?” Celestia asked, choosing to ask him about this new development later.

“Well she’s not recovered enough to win a fight against anything besides a single Ghast at the moment and she still has to finish a few parts so she sent me to take you to her.” Starswirl said, holding out a gas mask similar to Twilight’s.

“Recovered? Did she get hurt?” Celestia asked, quickly passing through the barrier and holding her breath as she donned the mask before breathing again.

“She wants to tell you about it herself, but long story short she got hurt but she’ll be fine soon.” Starswirl said as his image faded and he was nothing but a sphere again. “You have wings correct?” He continued. Celestia answered by extending them and hovering a few feet in the air.
---
“I’ve got her Twilight.” Starswirl said as he opened the unlocked door.

“Good, I saw you go the other way like a moron.” Celestia heard Twilight’s voice. She looked over to the bed and saw Twilight working on something. They walked up to her and Celestia slowly stopped and looked in horror as she saw Twilight adjusting a few things on an arm different than the Longsword and her two stumps with Docks implanted in them.

“Hang on a second, I just need to get this last gem in place.” Twilight said as she fitted a blue gem into a row of them along the top of her forearm.

“Twilight?... What happened?” Celestia asked with a horrified tone.

“We got overwhelmed and I had to teleport, wound up halfway in a wall.” Twilight said as she used her magic to help her intact arm put the new arm in the port.

“The vulgarities that came out of her mouth... I was horrified and scared out of my mind, but thinking back at it I can’t help but chuckle.” Starswirl.

“Yeah thanks for laughing at the single most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.” Twilight said sarcastically. She look at Celestia then, who had tears running down her face that could be seen through the large eye lenses.

“Celestia, you don’t need to cry for me. I thought we’ve been over this?” Twilight said with a small smile as she put a hand on her masked cheek.

“I’ll just be going then.” Starswirl said, reverting to his sphere form and whizzing out of the door.

“You keep getting hurt... I... I wish I could be here to help you...” Celestia said, ripping the gas mask off as the door closed.

“Then you’ll be the one getting hurt and I’ll be the one crying about it, you may be a princess but even you couldn’t survive in this place with the toxin to take care of. Speaking of that, I’ve made a lot of progress on my research. All we need is a way to stop my blood from leaving the city through the water we can use to get it to saturate the city.” Twilight said.

“That’s already been taken care of. I remember you telling me something like that so I’ve been having my scientists working on filtering it from water. We’ve made some progress.” Celestia said, wiping her face and composing herself.

“I’m glad.” Twilight said with a smile as she reclined on her bed.

“What are all of those gems anyways?” Celestia asked, pointing to the double row along her forearm and the circle of red ones around a large green one on the top of her hand. Twilight grinned and stood up and leaned against the wall.

“The blue ones are enchanted with all purpose protection spells, the green absorbs unstable energy while the red absorbs anything energy or magic based the blue ones stop.” She said as she used a touch of magic to activate the device. The top of her forearm split in half and extended outwards, stopping at different places while they aligned so that the green gem was the center. The red gems also extended outwards but not as far as the red. The final product was a double circle. With another burst of magic the circles became powered with her energy and made a purple shield.

“There are magic amplifiers in the center around the green gem to minimize the amount of magic used to make it and magic reflectors around the rings to add a second layer of magic protection, blue gems don’t catch everything.” Twilight explained. If she kneeled down the shield could protect her completely and she saw more mechanisms that could be used to extend the shield further.

“My right arm is the Longsword, my left is a shield now. I’ve also modified my armor a bit and the steam rifle so that its connected and with magic I can bring it forward and shoulder it almost like a sort of cannon.” Twilight said, pointing to the armor on a rack.

“Can you feel with them?” Celestia asked after a few moments of silence.

“Feel what?” Twilight asked. Celestia took her right hand in both of hers and put it to her cheek.

“I can feel your warmth even though it isn’t flesh, can you feel mine?” Celestia asked softly, looking Twilight in the eyes.

“Not as easily as you can, but yes. I can feel everything through connected nerves and magic.” Twilight answered, bringing her other hand up to the other cheek softly. “But I know what would be able to feel your warmth with ease.” She continued in a slightly lower voice with a light smile. She proceeded to kiss Celestia, who wrapped her arms around Twilight and let herself fall onto the bed.

“You’ve been through more pain in two months than I have in over a Millenia. It’s time that pain turn to something else.” Celestia said softly as the hatch slid closed.
---
“This will help our research greatly, thank you. Be safe, if I come back and find you’ve lost that leg I swear I’m just going to level the city.” Celestia said outside of the barrier the next day.

“Trust me, if it was under my control I’d still have all of my limbs. And remember, no matter what happens to me it’s all my choice. You have as much blame as any random civilian that was here.” Twilight said.

“I still feel bad... I’ll personally oversee our research to get this to you as fast as possible. If we figure it out before our next meeting I’ll shorten the wait time and just come through the barrier and signal you with it.” Celestia said.

“Alright. I need to adjust my leg a bit more, it’s a bit long. I’ll see you soon.” Twilight said. Celestia nodded and they parted ways.

After Twilight returned home and made the adjustments to the leg she decided to test her new limbs out.

“Hey starswirl, can you detect any ghasts nearby?” Twilight asked as they left the house.

“There’s four of them down thataway, are you sure you want to test it like that?” Starswirl replied.

“If worse comes to pass you can help me.” Twilight said as she charged off in the direction Starswirl had pointed. In order to balance out her leg powers she had designed a boot that would have around the same durability and strength as her biomechanical leg. This was proven as she was able to hop from rooftop to rooftop that were nearly ten feet apart without any trouble on either leg.

She saw the Ghasts fighting amongst themselves and decided to try something she had thought of. Extending the shield to its maximum radius, creating a large riot shield, she leapt into the air. Charging the kinetic magical barriers in her shield, she used a burst of steam from her retracted wings to smash thirty feet down into the ground, landing on one of the Ghasts and creating a shockwave that knocked the other three to the ground.

The one she landed on was a pile of fried mush so she grinned and extended the Longsword blade and retracted her shield to it’s normal radius and took a stance facing the last three Ghasts as they got to their feet.

“That was spectacular!” Starswirl called from his place spectating from the rooftop she had jumped from.

“You liked that? Watch this!” Twilight said as one of them charged her. She braced the shield as the Ghast body slammed into it and was staggered by the barriers. Twilight skid backwards a foot or two and used a burst of steam to send her smashing forward into the Ghast with her shield, shattering its skull.

The next to charged at the same time and at her sides, trying to flank her. She ducked under the first and spun to decapitate the other with her blade. The last recovered quickly from its miss and charged again, this time swinging its claws at the same time. Twilight smashed its strike aside with her shield to stagger it and proceeded to spin kick it with her biomechanical leg, sending it crashing into the wall. With a burst of steam for added speed she impaled it before it could recover and smashed its head with the shield.

“My, you’ve gotten a bit more brutal. And you’re using steam power to add bursts of speed and power to your attacks and dashes, very smart.” Starswirl said as he clapped lightly. Twilight did an exaggerated bow and grinned as she retracted her weapons.

“I guess if you go through enough pain it happens. All I know is that this thing is sturdy, working perfectly and I love it.” Twilight said, looking at her gore splattered left arm.

“You know, if you’re going to be using steam power for bursts of speed you could put thrusters in that boot and leg of yours. Just a thought.” Starswirl said. Twilight froze and looked at him for a moment before grinning.

“That’s why I keep you around buddy, you’re a genius.” Twilight said.

“Indeed. Well do we have anything planned for today?” Starswirl asked.

“Actually I did, I wanted to start polluting some of the ponds and other sources of water we can find that don’t run off into the river so we can get a head start. I’ve calculated my recovery rate and modified the blood pump in the Longsword to pump just a bit slower so if I have to fight all of a sudden I’m not weakened.” Twilight said.

“Well there is the fountain in the center of town.” Starswirl said.

“I had that in mind, but like I said there’s a pond or two. They're not natural but some places flooded so I call them ponds.” Twilight said.

“Well then, we’ve still got most of the day left, shall we then?” Starswirl said.

“Of course.” Twilight said, her wings extending.

(A/N hello friends, the end is coming soon. The next few chapters will be the end of the Toxin and after that nothing much is left in the story besides a little clearing of the town. I've got 3 OCs i needed for the sequel but I'll always accept more suggestions until the final OC makes an appearance in the story. Hope you enjoyed this chapter! -Dark)