1,346,720 bits.

That is the total sum of bits that rebuilding and repairing most of Ponyville had cost the town.

3 weeks, 1,346,720 bits, and a whole lot of busy work for The Forgemaster.

He wrote a letter to Celestia, requesting financial assistance. That had been granted. He then used 45% of his own monetary resources, a huge sum it was, to additionally assist the town in matters unrelated to non-house-having. Much of Ponyville was destroyed. In addition to the buildings destroyed, some buildings were damaged, and others were completely devoured to the last nail. On top of that, crops and gardens were eaten almost immediately after the swarm hit, they were completely gone. Many of the market vendors had also had their stocks devoured as well. To stave off a famine, short term though it would likely have been, The Forgemaster rushed in supplies from a newly founded apple-producing town in the Mild West; Appaloosa. This would have cost the villagers a pretty penny but The Forgemaster paid for this out of his own pocket. He rarely used the bits anyway; he already received a large pay check each year from Celestia in addition to having a few patents on several technological advances that the entirety of Equestria and some parts of Zebrica enjoyed.

The cost would have been far greater had The Forgemaster not stumbled across a last-second plan. He bought raw supplies, that's it, no ponies to work it just the supplies. A large pile of wood, nails, and glass, amongst others things, had dominated the central square of Ponyville for a solid hour as every unicorn in town was gathered, a good 127 unicorns, it would have been more in any other town of similar size but Ponyville was originally and still primarily is an Earth pony colony.

While being unable to be affected by the unicorns' magic himself, The Forgemaster could manipulate it to a degree.

He asked that all of the unicorns focus their magic around him, not at him as that would be useless. The unicorns did as they were asked, and soon a large gestalt had settled around The Forgemaster as he closed his eyes in concentration. Each and every color was represented in the swirling mass of pure magical energy; the colors matched a pony in the surrounding if one looked closely enough.

For his part, The Forgemaster stood at the center of the deluge, acting the part of an eye of a hurricane. He focused his own will upon the magic around him and thrust his magic into the maelstrom. Though the 2 magics repelled each other as magnets of the same pole would, The Forgemaster forced them together and made them blend. Slowly at first, but the process gained speed as it went, the magic began blending colors. At the start, each color could have been picked out if one looked closely, but as The Forgemaster worked the magical tempest changed color into a vibrant gold.

It was an old trick, magicians of old would focus their will and power on another and through them the other gained their power. It was far easier to get an army of magi to focus their power into one and have him do the work then having them all work in concert with each other.

With the amount of magic present, one could have raised the sun twice over if one wanted too. It was merely a problem of power and intent to do something so drastic, the power was there but the intent was not.

The Forgemaster had a much different task in mind for this magic.

Most anything could have been done here, a new moon could have been made, a mountain raised from the bowels of the planet, or a portal warp them all to a higher state of consciousness.

But, The Forgemaster settled for a much more mundane goal for this magic.

He set it to rebuild the town.

And so it did…

In seconds.

The wood flew from the neatly arranged piles and formed the rough outlines of structures. The nails followed soon after with the speed of bullets, the nails rammed into the boards and held them in place. More wood came, and then more nails, then glass for windows, metal for signs, paint flew from their cans to splash evenly against the newly crafted walls, roofs were tiled and flower boxes remade in an instant.

What The Forgemaster saw in his mind's eye became reality. What he saw, he made. For a few moments, he was a god. And it was rapture.

The more magic he used, the brighter the magic was and the higher off of the ground he floated. In the center of a crowd of unicorns with their eyes closed in concentration, The Forgemaster floated off of the ground with his arms outstretched and his brows furrowed in intense concentration, a golden nimbus of bright magical light surrounding him.

And then it was over.

By some unseen mental command, The Forgemaster told those unicorns connected to the spell to release and they followed his command.

While the unicorns opened their eyes and gazed in wonder upon the result of their collective work, The Forgemaster slumped from his position in the sky and fell to the ground, landing on shaking legs. He stood ramrod straight for an instant and then fell to his knees and then onto his right side. Blood trailed down in small rivulets from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth, his eyes were wide and unseeing, and his body was silently shivering.

But no one was there to see: the unicorns were gazing n wonder about them, the Earth ponies were off remaking their orchards and fields, and the pegasi were flying off to gather new clouds from Cloudsdale for the new crops coming in.

It took a few minutes, but The Forgemaster's convulsing eventually ceased. He laid down stock still as he regained his bearings. He blinked until he could see and then looked around him. He saw the surrounding unicorns' backsides, all of them. The Forgemaster silently thanked whichever god that had been looking out for him at that instant. He did not want to look weak at any moment, not in his private life, and certainly not in his public life.

He got off of the ground and stood to his feet, all the while contemplating his reaction.

The amount of power that was present could have done it; it was beyond his own power after all. There is a limit to how much power one could channel at any given moment, one could increase this with training but The Forgemaster had enough magic flowing through his veins at all times that he had figured it to be useless to train himself in that art. The odds of him ever having to channel that much power were astronomical at best, and those odds only got worse as time went on and magic slowly died out. Then again, magically teleporting to a magical land of talking ponies had similarly astronomical odds. Fair is fair, after all.

It must have been a combination of the amount of power and the fact that much of it seemed to be the antithesis of what his magic was. Drawing the opposite of one of your body's functions into yourself wouldn't be a very good thing to do, of course. It would be like a person purposely absorbing a large amount of arsenic into their body through their pores.

Then again, it had felt amazing. So it was probably more akin to heroin. Not good for the body by any stretch of the imagination, but damn it felt good.

He dusted himself off of both dust and blood. Nothing that made you bleed from your orifices could be a good thing, and he hadn't even checked his other 2 holes yet!

He concluded several things from the amount of information at his disposal. #1: it had worked. #2: he shouldn't use magic in the near future, similar to having oversensitive private bits after mind-shattering sex. #3: he is going to have to go home and take a shower, then preferably eat something and fall asleep. Rebuilding a town in moments really takes it out of you.

And it was only 3 in the afternoon too…

wWwWwWw

For the rest of that day, The Forgemaster did as he thought he should; he sat around, ate, and slept. Trouble started the day after when he tried to leave his house. Apparently, someone had seen his episode after the magical orgy and thought it wise to tell those who care about him what happened.

Here's what happened:

Door opened.

6 Elements of Harmony appeared full of self-righteousness.

The door closed.

And that's how The Forgemaster stayed indoors for 3 days while the 6 angry mares tried to get into his home. They probably wanted to take him to the hospital, or at least take care of him themselves. The Forgemaster wasn't a babe to be coddled, but he wasn't a fool either. Compromising between his pride and his intelligence, he remained in self-imposed exile while his body recovered from the ordeal while simultaneously avoiding the 6 that would lecture and annoy him until he did the same thing he was doing at home only at the hospital.

While basking in the joy that was being in your own home for a few days, The Forgemaster needed things to do. Unfortunately, the backyard did not have a roof on it so he couldn't go and forge while there were flying ponies around… also, he used magic quite a bit when he forged and he didn't want to make anything worse by over-exerting an already physically exhausted frame.

The more quality swords usually take months to make, but The Forgemaster can make similar blades in hours. This is due to a process he calls molecular-magic, where he takes molecules and moves them about with magic. Doing so, he can do what most blacksmiths do over periods of days in hours. See, to make a quality blade; the metal needs to be perfect, most do the perfecting process by slamming the blade with hammer and tongs until it is righted, but The Forgemaster just goes down to the molecular level and moves them that way, instead of using a hammer to do the same. That was actually how he earned the title.

A challenge: make the best sword you can, whoever wins will forever be called The Forgemaster.

12 hours later, The Forgemaster walked in with a blade, presented it to the judges, and won. The others had barely even started.

That being said, enhancing any blade with a rune or two could make an excellent blade easily, combining the two sciences made truly devastating weapons of war.

Then, adding onto that process his signature method of calling friendly spirits to inhabit the blades and assist the wielder makes devastating weapons of war into extraordinarily devastating weapons of ass kicking destructiveness.

Good times…

So forging was out, doing anything that required magic was out, going outside was out, getting laid was probably out… maybe.

So he sat around, drank, ate, and slept, occasionally he read but more often he maintained his home.

By the end of the second day, it was official: he had entered Boredom Mode.

Boredom Mode: a mental state in which the person has been bored out of his mind for at least an hour and has resorted to doing the most random of things in order to become un-bored, which is normally met with negative results.

Well… to be perfectly honest, this is home The Forgemaster used to spend most of his days. You live long enough and eventually everything becomes boring. Since he entered Equestria, everything had been new to him; as such Boredom Mode had yet to afflict him.

Unfortunately, nothing in his home would satisfy him.

So, the day after, on the third day, he went outside to meet his fate.

The reaction he received was both anticipated and unexpected.

At a speed most jets would be hard-pressed to match, a certain rainbow hued blur shot out of the clouds above him and flew directly at him.

Rainbow Dash slammed into him, not even bothering to slow down slightly. He was forced back into his home by the sheer force that accompanied her. He fell onto his back, with Rainbow on top of him.

She frantically looked him up and down, searching for any sign that he was injured, all the while saying, "You dumb bucker, why didn't you go to the hospital. If there is one mark on you then I'll send you to the hospital on a stretcher."

He sat there, not resisting in the slightest, as Rainbow basically crawled all over him.

Rainbow was eventually satisfied with his non-injured-ness, but decided that being uninjured was too good for him.

So when she walked off of him, she kicked him in the ribs hard enough to leave a bruise, muttering, "This is what you get for being an idiot!"

Thankfully, the other 5 mares showed up in time to prevent an extremely irate Rainbow from beating the sin out of him, and that would take a really, really long time. They literally had to drag her off of him with a combination of magic and Applejack's lasso.

It's a times like this that The Forgemaster remembers what a close friend of his said about angry women, "Women can go psycho kung fu whoop ass on you and anyone else when angry. If they are angry, do not look them in the eyes, do not make a sound, and stay in another country for the next couple of decades until they calm down. Otherwise...you're fucking dead!"

Ah… while a slight exaggeration, the message of it was completely true.

Coming out of the ordeal relatively unscathed, The Forgemaster proceeded to flee for his life. Unfortunately, the only thing faster than Rainbow when pissed is teleportation and he wasn't 100% sure that he was fully recovered.

Then Twilight caught him in a levitation spell…

Well, not so much as caught him in a levitation spell, merely levitated things around him in a threatening manner.

She hung Rainbow in mid-air next to him, both with their convenient frontal appendages crossed over their chests, both of them with similar frowns on their face, though The Forgemaster's was closer to a pout.

Twilight affixed them with her baleful eye, which was actually kind of hilarious, and said, "Forgemaster explain, now."

The Forgemaster grumbled and then said, as though he were revealing some great secret, "I wanted to run for my life because Dashie was angry."

While Rainbow smiled smugly, Twilight said, "That's not what I meant, you know what I meant! Why am I even explaining this to you?" she shook her head.

"Because you know that I won't answer your question unless you are so specific that I can't twist your words in some way…" The Forgemaster supplied.

Twilight brightened, "Oh yeah, then tell us what happened yesterday after your spell."

He sighed, "I had a bad reaction to your backwards, evil, magic."

"While I point out that unicorn magic is neither evil nor backwards, I have to ask what exactly happened."

"I do kind of worship the gods of 'It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit.' So, yeah… I don't know."

"You don't know?" Twilight asked, with her mouth hanging open, her tone belying her incredulity.

He shrugged, "I'm all-powerful not omnipotent."

Twilight groaned.

Applejack came to his rescue, "Hey Twilight, shouldn't you let 'er down now?"

Sheepishly, she replied, "I suppose so."

An unimpressed Forgemaster watched while Rainbow elected to remain hovering with her wings.

An awkward silence filled the air…

"So Forgey! What are you gonna be for Nightmare Night!" Pinkie asked, enthusiastically.

The Forgemaster thought for a moment, going through his collective memories to find out what exactly she was speaking of, and then asked, "Isn't that in like 3 weeks?

Pinkie replied, "Yeah!"

…

…

…

"I'll burn that bridge when I get to it."

wWwWwWw

Exactly 20 days later.

The Forgemaster was in his office in Canterlot, and he was incredibly furious.

Apparently, Celestia made a new rule that he couldn't burn the paperwork that was taken to him!

After that rule was summarily ignored for a solid 2 weeks, she stationed guards – his guards! – inside his office to prevent him from burning the damnable paperwork.

This was the first day that the new policy was implemented, and this one day would solidify 'Forgemaster Paperwork Guard Duty' as either the worst or the best detail a guard could have, all depending upon the guards chosen.

There were 4 guards in his office, and each of them, despite their training, were amazed at what The Forgemaster was doing.

They had never seen someone, anyone, do paperwork so… wrathfully.

It was like every single time he set open to paper, he was wishing for both to spontaneously combust. There was a furious expression on his face, and one could literally feel the malice in the air.

The entire time, The Forgemaster was mumbling things under his breath in an incredibly pissed tone, the only thing any of the guards could make out clearly was when he suddenly stood from his desk, looked them each in the eye and proclaim, "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency."

He then sat back down at his desk and resumed his work, leaving each and every guard in the room dumbfounded.

The guards couldn't help but make comparisons between The Forgemaster and their Lord-general Crimson Hammer. (A/N – remember, they don't know that they are one and the same.)

While The Forgemaster seemed to be stoic and enigmatic, Crimson Hammer seemed to be the sort of commander to get to know each and every soldier under his command, crack jokes, and be reasonably informal with them. They appeared to be polar opposites, but they were apparently best friends. Even if you asked the two of them, they would reply that they had no idea how they had ended up friends.

Hell, they even shared the same office together! Though their desks were on different sides of the room and they never seemed to be in the same room at the same time…

The guards were getting slightly frightened. They knew that The Forgemaster was their second in command, but he sometimes scared the crap out of them. Granted, so did Crimson Hammer, but The Forgemaster took it to a whole other level.

Right before these 4 poor, nameless guards their commanding officer seemed to get angrier and angrier, his pen strokes more chopped and rushed, and his brow more and more furrowed.

It all came to a head when The Forgemaster yelled in fury, picked up one of the stamps on his desk – ironically the one marked 'denied' – and threw it at the window.

At the same time, some unfortunate pony was opening the window that The Forgemaster threw the stamp at. The exact moment the window was opened was the exact instant the stamp left The Forgemaster's hand. The stamp hit the unknown pegasus pony straight in the face and sent him plummeting 3 stories with a cry of pain.

The guards looked on in amazement as The Forgemaster went back to his paperwork as though he hadn't probably just killed somepony.

Suddenly, from out the window, they heard, "By Celestia's sweet sugar-coated flank that hurt!" an unorthodox yet appropriate curse given the situation.

A few moments later the same pegasus that was seen being ejected from the window reappeared at the same window, carrying a rather large bag with him, he also seemed to have a bright red 'denied' over his right eyebrow.

Said pegasus pointed a hoof at The Forgemaster, who was busy looking at his paperwork, "You crazy old bastard! You just about killed me!" this impressive show of cursing, given ponykind's disposition to avoid cursing, was a surprise to the guards in the room.

The Forgemaster looked up from his work, "Hmm…? Oh, Bright Star, how was your mission… what happened to your face?"

"You're what happened!" the newly named Bright Star proclaimed, "You threw something at me and nailed me in the head!"

The Forgemaster furrowed his brow, confused, he asked, "I did?"

Bright Star said exasperated, "Yes."

"Oh… well how was your mission?" he asked.

Bright Star suddenly… brightened, "It went great! I did it this time! I definitely assassinated the right guy! I went to the village you told me about and killed every single living thing there!"

While the guards, despite their training, recoiled in shock from this chipper pegasus and his flippant attitude, The Forgemaster nodded, his jimmies completely unrustled.

"Well, that's one way of doing it." He said.

Bright Star replied, "I like the fun way, that's why it's called the fun way."

Bright Star then tossed the bag to The Forgemaster and he opened it and reached in. He withdrew the bloody head of a terrified griffon, the fear still evident on his dead features.

The Forgemaster frowned and tossed the head over his shoulder, he then reached into the bag and withdrew another. This repeated with about 13 heads of griffons before he finally stopped at one particular head and closely studied it.

He set the thing down on his desk and reached into his desk. He withdrew a book and flipped through it, occasionally glancing from the griffon head to the book. Eventually, he stopped on a page and looked back and forth repeatedly before nodding, satisfied.

"Good job, you got him. Much better than the last time when you killed everyone in the village except the guy you were supposed to kill."

While the guards in the room were completely freaked out, Bright Star shook his head and said, "How was I supposed to know that there was a fork in the road!? You're just lucky that I managed to find the village at all."

"It's fine. You got one of the griffon's top black ops commanders. That's a good work for any pony. Head on down to the interrogation department, I heard they were having some trouble. You remember the 3 rules?"

Bright Star nodded enthusiastically before his entire being shifted, eyes became dull, his posture straightened, and his voice became monotone as he replied as though he were answering a textbook question, "The three lessons of the fine art of torture. The First Lesson: Control the environment. Every aspect of your subject's existence that you control is a step closer to the information that you need. The Second Lesson: Follow the directives of your superiors and never allow the subject to expire unless ordered. The subject can only endure so much at one time, and to go beyond is to render them mentally destroyed and useless. Get the information within as timely a manner as possible, and dispose of the subject in the manner specified by your superiors whether it be execution, or held for ransom until their nation decides to pay for their return. The Third Lesson: Be the master of your emotions. Showing the slightest hint of emotion to the subject shows a flaw in your control. If they can get you to show emotion, then they have gained control over an aspect of their environment—their existence. That deviates from The First Lesson. To show emotion is to show weakness, and to show weakness is to lose the information, to lose the information is to deviate from the directives of your superiors, to deviate from the directives of your superiors is treason. To go against The Third Lesson is to commit treason. Treason earns you death."

"Good job, Bright Star. Now go and make sure that every person in that damnable department knows it!"

Bright Star shifted back to happy, bubbly, and homicidally insane Bright Star and walked, or more like skipped, out of the room and into the hall.

Thus began the legend of 'Forgemaster Paperwork Guard Duty' amongst the guards.

As Bright Star opened the door, there was a unicorn on the other side. A certain Shining Armor. The captain walked in, staring confused after the leaving pegasus, he then raised a questioning eyebrow at The Forgemaster.

"You have to respect people and places that wear their crazy on their sleeves where everyone can see." The Forgemaster declared in an apparent non sequitur.

Shining Armor did not question his leader, but instead looked around at the guards in his office. They were all white as a ghost, which was a shade lighter than normal, and they were all staring after the pegasus that had left. Captain Shining Armor then looked at The Forgemaster's desk and the corner with a pile of mutilated heads and put 2 and 2 together.

Decapitated heads plus Forgemaster's non sequitur plus scared guards equals insane pegasus.

It was obvious, really.

"Who was that, sir?" the Captain asked.

"Oh, a criminally insane pegasus I found wandering around. Gave him a job and now he's Equestria's third best assassin and most insane, surprising given their career choice compared to normal pony docility."

Suspicions: confirmed.

"Why did you let a random criminally insane pegasus become a Celestia-sanctioned assassin?"

"Whoever said that he was Celestia-sanctioned?" The Forgemaster asked, with a frown.

Shining Armor sighed, he did not need this headache, not now, he had just gotten back from a weekend with Cadance, he'd tell Princess Celestia later and have her deal with it.

On to more social issues and hopefully distract himself with more conversation, "So Forgemaster, what are you doing for Nightmare Night?"

"It's some festival in Ponyville. I'll probably just go there and participate in some small fashion."

The guard Captain grew a sly grin, "You know you have to dress up right?"

The Forgemaster frowned, "Yes, but I assure you that I won't have to dress up at all. It's all part of the plan…"

Followed by devious chuckles, and rubbing his hands together.