Moonlight spilled out across the linoleum floor as the front doors of Ponyville High School were thrown open, casting a lengthy shadow in front of the petite young mare who then sprinted through them. Wide-eyed and heaving for breath, she skidded to a stop and slammed the doors shut behind her, nearly tripping over her own hooves in the process. Normally, school would be the last place in the world she’d want to find herself stuck in—besides being stuffy and boring, it was completely pointless for a mare with as much natural intelligence as her. But right now, her pseudo-relatable sense of suburban entitlement and mastery of the normal curriculum didn’t matter. Right now, all she needed was to get out of sight before SHE could get in. Before SHE could find her.

The young mare swallowed back a despondent wail and awkwardly turned around, pushing herself back into a run as the sound of approaching hoofsteps echoed in from outside. Her hooves clattered delicately against the floor tiles, and squares of light from the small windows over the lockers illuminated totally lame posters on the walls and gleaming strands of silver and gold hair hanging over her face. After about fifty feet, she swiveled to the left and cut down another hallway, and behind her she heard the front doors slam open again. She was running out of time. She had to find someplace to hide NOW.

The first unlocked door she found led her into a dark room filled with high black-topped tables and metal stools, and for a moment she couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose and groan. Of all the classrooms to stumble into, it had to be the stuffy old chemistry lab? The only thing worse than gym class and Home Ec class and Remedial Shapes & Numbers class (she only had to take that one because she didn’t apply herself last year) was Chemistry class. Everything in here had a musty, chemical smell to it, and every time she tried to read her really obscure poetry book from Barns & Noble she was always interrupted by some unassumingly dopey colt who wouldn’t shut up about sports and healthy long-term relationships and video games and other stupid things like that.

The only thing that redeemed it were her lab partners: three smoking-hot guys who would constantly vie for her affection and whom she could successfully tell apart almost sixty percent of the time. It was like a love triangle, only with four sides. A love square? Did that mean one of the guys was gay for the other two, or…

The sound of hoofsteps snapped her out of her mid-escape brooding session, and her heart sank as she heard them got louder and closer. She dove behind a table and banged her shoulder on one of the stools, just in time to be out of sight before the door to the lab burst open. For a heart-stopping moment, the room was silent, and then from the unseen mouth of her pursuer came a deep, almost sympathetic chuckle.

“Well, aren’t you a clever one…”

The Hunter’s voice was high-pitched and syrupy sweet, the kind that could be kind and lovable one moment and absolutely vicious the second you let your guard down. Her tone was somewhere between those two extremes at the moment, like she was both happy and furious at the same time. At what precisely—and which one was taking precedence—the young mare hidden on the other side of the lab couldn’t be sure. All she could be sure about was that she really, REALLY didn’t want to find out.

“I gotta hand it to you, you lasted a LOT longer than any of those other little hellspawns you run around with,” the Hunter went on. Her hooves beat out a terrifying tune as she closed the door behind her and began to walk further inside the lab, each step echoing in a way that made it impossible to tell where it was coming from. “The rest of them were embarrassingly easy to find, but you… you were smart about it. While your disgusting friends squirmed out into the sunlight and left their slimy trails all over town, you stayed in the shadows, just biding your time and hoping you wouldn’t be noticed.”

The Hunter’s hooves slowed down and went quiet, and she laughed again. “I can see why Captain Hooves trusts you so much. Then again, who DOESN’T trust you? Everypony just ADORES the shy, smart, perfectly normal pony with a glittering silver-and-gold mane and every boy in school wrapped around her perfectly normal hoof. Don’t they, sweetheart?”

The young mare bit her tongue to keep from screaming and slowly began to inch forward on her knees. If she could keep from being spotted and work her way back around to the door, maybe she could still get out of here. If she could get across town fast enough, maybe Captain Hooves could protect her.

“Of course, I’ll admit it’s mostly my fault you’ve survived this long.” The Hunter’s singsong voice was just as sweet and sour as it had been before, but it wasn’t accompanied by the clunk of her hooves hitting the ground this time. “Dredging you guys out of the gene pool used to be a challenge. but now… well, I suppose while I was busy being so unbelievably successful, I lost a bit of my edge.”

A small whooshing sound caught the young mare’s attention, and then the screeching, ear-piercing sound of metal scraping against epoxy resin tabletop sent a bolt of lightning down her spine. “A bit,” the Hunter said with a simpering, wry twist to her words. “But not too much.”

The mare hidden in the darkness grit her teeth and kept crawling, aiming herself towards the back of the classroom as the Hunter’s footsteps crossed in front of the whiteboard. “So what’s it gonna be?” the Hunter called out. “You gonna quit being such a baby and make this easy for us, or do I get to keep chasing you around all night like those dark, mysterious stallions you keep leading on? Either way’s fine, I mean, I’m flexible. Just figured I’d let you know it won’t make a difference in the end. I WILL find you. I ALWAYS find ponies like you.”

The young mare shuddered and almost bumped into a stool again, but managed to collect herself in time to avoid giving herself away. She had to stay calm. She had to stay focused. “It’s because you’re predictable,” the Hunter went on. “It’s like no matter how hard you try, there’s a part that WANTS to be seen. Like you just can’t resist showing off how special you are. Isn’t that ironic? I mean, who ever would’ve guessed being perfect would be the biggest flaw of them all?”

The Hunter was striding down the center of the lab now, pausing to look behind each table she passed. She’d reach the back of the room where she’d cornered her prey in a few seconds. “But the thing is, you’re NOT perfect. That’s the real kicker. None of you are. There’s always one thing, just one teensy little smudge on your face or quirk in your personality. As if that alone could justify your repulsive existence. As if you that alone could make you a real pony.”

For the first time, the mare in the back of the lab saw the Hunter’s hooves step into view, pink as cotton candy and wrapped in what looked like spotless white tape. “And you know what? I think I might know what yours is.”

The mare was still edging back out of sight when it happened. Her hind hoof trembled and slipped out from under her, knocking against a side table standing against the wall before she could pull it back in. She turned just in time to see a glass beaker wobbling on the table’s edge, too late to do anything but watch it tilt and tumble and fall to the floor. Tiny shards of glass pelted her neck as the beaker shattered on impact, and the Hunter’s head snapped around as she zeroed in on the sound.

“Clumsy, are we?” the pink pursuer crooned. “How original.”

The thought of being courageous and standing up for herself had never once occurred to the young mare covered in beaker bits before, and it certainly wasn’t about to happen now. She was up on her hooves and sprinting for the door in an instant, almost fast enough to make it there before a silvery blur that whistled through the air and embedded itself in the door frame with a vicious THUNK. After coming to a screeching halt just inches away from the sudden obstruction, she just stood in place for a few moments, staring at her own terrified reflection in the weapon’s spotless metal blade and gasping for breath that wouldn’t come.

“Leaving so soon?”

She swallowed hard and shifted her gaze to the left, and the Hunter’s toothy grin bloomed into view. “You know, it’s rude to leave a party early,” she said. “Especially when I’M the guest of honor.”

“P-please…” the young mare stammered. “Please don’t hurt me, I didn’t me—”

“Oh, spare me the weepy monologue, please,” the Hunter said, rolling her eyes as she caught her sword in the crook of her hoof and easily yanked it free like it weighed nothing at all. She spun it once in a lazy loop by her side, then flicked her ankle and sheathed it on her belt. “Not like it ever works the first time anyway.”

The young mare bit her lip and swallowed again. She tried to force herself to look away from the jagged gouge left behind in the door frame and, as was the case with almost nothing else in her life, didn’t succeed.

“What do you want?” she managed to ask.

The Hunter shrugged. “Oh, this and that.” Without turning around, she reached back for another sheath on her opposite flank and grabbed hold of the jet-black hilt sticking out of it. “I think I’ll start with this.”

The Hunter’s second sword was twice as long as her first, sharp on only one side and curved back from its hilt up to a tapered point. It was powerful and beautifully crafted, and the mare currently quaking at the sight of it might’ve been quite impressed had she been able to stop cringing long enough to get another good look. “Oh, calm down, for pony’s sake,” the Hunter said. “We haven’t even been properly introduced yet. So… you are?”

The young mare opened her mouth and worked her jaw up and down, but no words would come. She stared at the ceiling and she stared at the sword, and when she turned away to stare at the hole in the door frame again, the cold sensation of steel against her neck sent ice water shooting through her veins. The Hunter sighed, and a gentle tug from the blade beneath her chin slowly turned her eyes back towards her tight-lipped captor.

“Over here, Klutzy Kathy.”

“L… Lonely Happiness,” she finally said, searching desperately for some kind of approval in the Hunter’s eyes. “I like being alone.”

The Hunter rolled the name around in her mouth for a bit, then spat it back out with an extra dose of venom. “Lonely Happiness… that’s adorable.” With a ladylike grunt, she stabbed her sword into the ground and left it quivering upright by her side. “I’m Diamond Tiara. I like driving my enemies before me and hearing the lamentations of their illiterate creators. Not quite as fitting as yours, I’ll admit, but hey…”

Diamond paused for a moment, and an impish grin split across her face. “Nopony’s PERFECT.”

Lonely’s eyes darted towards the door again, but only for a moment. She’d never been very confrontational, and while that had been precisely the trait every boy she met seemed to desire in her, it wasn’t doing her any favors here. “Never figured out I was the Hunter, huh?” Diamond said, strutting around so she was between Lonely and the only way out of the room. “I’m not surprised. When the whole world revolves around you, I suppose it gets a bit tough seeing anything outside its orbit.”

Diamond advanced an inch closer to Lonely with every word out of her mouth, and it was all the latter could do just to maintain a safe distance. She only reached the third table back from the front row, though, before Diamond stopped on her own. “I sit right there,” she said, nodding towards the outermost stool on the second-row table closest to her. “Every Tuesday and Thursday, ten-thirty to noon. And you’re off to the left there up front, right? With those three pathetic mouthbreathers who can’t keep their tongues off your precious little hooves.”

“They’re not pathetic!” Lonely shouted. Despite needing those three strong, thoughtful stallions to save her from anything worse than a papercut, she was suddenly filled with newfound strength the second Diamond dared to insult them. “They’re just really nice guys who know how to treat ladies respectfully—”

“—and aren’t total douchebags like the ones all the other fillies date,” Diamond interrupted, uncannily predicting the exact words Lonely had been about to use. “Believe me, if there’s one thing I know by now…”

Diamond stood tall and stretched out her hoof, and with a buzzing tone and a flash of blue light her unsheathed sword extracted itself from the ground behind her and flew back up into the crook of her foreleg. “It’s how THAT story ends,” she finished. Lonely barely had time to flinch before Diamond was upon her, their noses separated by mere inches and Lonely’s chin tilted up by the nauseating force of the flat of her blade.

“DON’T KILL ME!” Lonely squealed. “I know ponies, I… I can do anything you want! You’ll be rich! The most popular filly in school!”

Diamond’s eyes creased in confusion, and the transition to exasperation came very soon after. “Wow, you’re oblivious…” she muttered, raising her voice again once she noticed Lonely trying to squirm free and tightened her grip on her sword. “Okay, first of all, I’m already the richest and most popular filly in school, so good luck getting anywhere with THAT. And second of all, you really think I would’ve gone to all this trouble and chased you halfway across town if all I wanted to do was KILL you?”

Slackjawed and numb with horror, Lonely could only keep her hooves as steady as possible underneath her and wait for Diamond to explain herself. And after lifting her sword off Lonely’s throat and stepping back a couple place, explain herself she actually did.
“You’re going to deliver a message for me.”

Stuck straddling the fence between panic and ecstatic relief, the closest thing to a coherent emotion Lonely could express was a fuzzy sense of bafflement. “A…”

“Message,” Diamond repeated. “Dispatch. Memorandum. Communiqué. I have something I want Captain Hooves to hear, and you’re going to help me tell it to him.”

“So… you’re not going to kill me?” Lonely asked. And it was such a lovely feeling of relief—definitely relief now—flowing through her that she almost didn’t notice that Diamond had taken a step forward again. Or that she was smiling.

“Oh, Lonely Happiness…”

Or that after picking it up again, she hadn’t ever sheathed her sword.

“I never said THAT.”

The pendulum of her emotions had swung over to joy in a fraction of a second, and with so little time left to react, the only thing left to do was let it swing back. Lonely Happiness screamed and shut her eyes, and the gleam of moonlight on the Hunter’s sword was the last thing she ever saw.

[br]

At that precise moment in a universe very, very far away, a portly young man in his late twenties awoke with a start, showering the carpet of his mother’s basement with old candy wrappers and several empty Code Red Mountain Dew bottles. He sat up in his bed and swung his legs out from underneath his stained off-white sheets, and for a moment he sat in silence, idly scratching the stubble under his chin and staring at the dim glow of his computer screen across the room. From this distance, he could just barely see the black heading of the document he’d left open before bed:

MY LITTLE INTROVERT: FRIENDSHIP IS OVERRATED

His brain still fogged with sleep, the man squinted and read the first line beneath the title: “My name is Lonely Happiness and I have a golden and silver mane and bright purple eyes, but I’m really nothing special.” He put his hands on his hands and chewed on his lip, and slowly but surely an itching sensation of distaste began to grow in his stomach.

“Man,” he said to himself. “I need to rethink my choices in life.”

[br]

Captain Hooves strode menacingly through the halls of his manor with his long black cloak flapping behind him, not entirely sure who he was supposed to be menacing but still intrinsically feeling that the gesture was necessary all the same. Behind him trode his faithful butler Alfred, who in addition to being unfortunately named after someone his parents couldn’t conceivably have ever heard of, had also been trying desperately to get his master’s attention for the last ten minutes.

“Sir, if you’d please just follow me to the bedroom—”

“I have no need of your counsel instantaneously, Alfred,” Captain Hooves interrupted. “As it were, I’m traversing there now irregardless.”

“Very good, sir,” Alfred said with a satisfied nod. He didn’t always fully understand his master’s choice of vocabulary, but he supposed that was to be expected from someone so intelligent and worldly. Captain Hooves had, of course, traveled to over thirty countries with his vast, rarely questioned wealth, and proceeded to maintain very open relationships with a variety of warrior princesses and world-class athletes with soft spots for erudite scholars. For all his skill and success, though, he still needed his trusty butler around for a bit of timely sage advice, and occasionally to do his laundry and heat up macaroni and cheese in the microwave. Their bond was truly a special one.

With Alfred right on his hooves, Captain Hooves stalked his way through several dusty living rooms and parlors. The Captain had never had the heart to reorganize them after his parents—the original owners of the house—had been tragically mauled to death by a terrible hybrid between a bear, a pig, and a pony. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was actually an uneventful minute and a half that didn’t really justify such a dramatic turn of phrase, he reached the house’s master suite and threw open the double doors to begin searching for whatever it was Alfred had been so keen for him to see.

He didn’t like what he found.

“It’s a head, sir,” Alfred clarified after noticing the puzzled frown on the Captain’s face. “That of Miss Lonely Happiness, in fact.”

“Of that I am thoroughly cognizant,” Captain Hooves gruffly replied. “Is she expired?”

“Quite, sir. Dispossessed of her body as well, it seems.”

Captain Hooves nodded, then let out a grunt even more gruff and masculine than before. He approached the ornamental silver platter upon which Lonely’s glassy-eyed cranium lay and walked in a circle around it, examining it from every angle until he’d either had enough time to consider its significance or, as it looked from Alfred’s perspective, had simply gotten dizzy.

“Alfred,” the Captain said, lifting a hoof in emphasis for a moment before hastily putting it back down to balance out his wobbly other three. “To whom might I assign responsibility for this atrocity?”

Instead of speaking, Alfred just reached out and brushed aside a lock of Lonely’s shimmering mane. With her hair out of the way, Captain Hooves could now see a pair of initials—”DT”—carved in impeccable looping calligraphy into her forehead.
“Her contemptuous demeanor notwithstanding, you certainly can’t fault the Hunter’s pensmareship,” Alfred dryly remarked. “Or her style.”

“I care little for tomfoolery, Alfred,” Captain Hooves cut back. “From you OR the Hunter. She has crossed a line that shall not be uncrossed. Fetch me my armament. I will pursue this wretched strumpet summarily and with all—”

“That’s not all I wished to discuss with you, sir.”

It was a rare thing for the Captain to be cut off in the middle of a fiery pre-scene break speech, and it never failed to sour his mood. “Then speak,” he said.

“There’s… something else the Hunter left for you.”

“An ultimatum?”

Alfred pursed his lips and placed his hoof against Lonely’s chin. “A message,” he said as he pulled his hoof down. Lonely’s mouth fell open with a mechanical click, and after a few seconds of what sounded almost like radio static, a robotic voice emanated from deep within her skull.

“You have: (2) new messages,” it said. Lonely’s head clicked again, and then after a loud electronic tone, the sickening sound of the Hunter’s speech filled the room.

“Hiya, Cap’n. It’s me again. I’ve been great, thanks for asking. Just wanted to drop you a line and see how you were doing. Heard you were a little short on staff lately. Something about a bad case of the Horrific Disembowelments going around? Sounds like quite a pickle.”

His talents in narratively convenient consultation no longer required, Alfred tottered off to perform some small housekeeping task in the background and do nothing of particular importance. Meanwhile, Captain Hooves stepped closer to the disembodied head on his ottoman and continued listening.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d check up on you and make sure everything’s okay over there. In fact, I might even stop by for a visit soon! Wouldn’t that be fun? How does about fifteen seconds from now work for you? Looking forward to hearing from you. Love ya!”

Lonely’s head beeped again, and the Hunter’s voice returned.

“Oh, and by the way, I killed your little servant guy. ‘Pologies.”

A third and final click brought Lonely’s teeth clacking back together, and with that the Hunter’s dispatch was done. First a smirk broke out on Captain Hooves’ face, then a smile, and finally a bout of deep, booming laughter.

“An originative threat,” he declared, “but hardly disquieting. For I just parlayed with my dear attendant not moments ago, and he’s presently here in this very room with…”

To be fair, the Captain wasn’t ENTIRELY wrong about the status of his butler. Alfred was in fact very much present in the room with him; he just also happened to have a wide-eyed look of agony on his face, and eight inches of maroon-stained steel protruding from his chest.

“Message for you, sir,” Alfred gargled, unfortunately referencing a film he couldn’t possibly have ever seen. The blade withdrew from his torso with a sound like that of a sword being pulled through the body of an unsuspecting housecarl, and he collapsed to reveal a magenta-coated earth mare with a lengthy purple-and-white streaked mane and a three-foot long katana clutched in her manicured forehoof.

“Diamond Tiara,” Captain Hooves spat at his adversary. Seemingly undaunted by the spittle covering her face, the Hunter put on a lopsided grin and responded in kind.

“Captain Hooves, I presume… or can I just call a spade a spade and say ‘Daniel’?”

“If you would, MILADY,” the Captain growled. “That’s Captain Darkshadow Thunderdawn Piddlelip Hooves to you.”

“Daniel it is, then. Excellent.” Diamond Tiara hopped over Alfred’s corpse and closed half the distance between she and the hulking, muscular pony standing in for a scrawny fifteen-year-old with a deviated septum and an inferiority complex. When she noticed his eyes flicking back and forth between her head and her hooves, her smile grew.

“Like my new toy?” she asked, presenting her sword with a flourish and spraying droplets of Alfred all over the place. “You might recognize it. It used to belong to one of your buddies. A Mister Brave Dangerpony, if I’m remembering that right.”

She spun the sword lazily in her hoof, and giggled to herself at a joke she hadn’t yet spoken aloud. “Such a fillies’ stallion, he called himself. Please. He couldn’t have charmed a steak off a vegetarian, but damned if he didn’t compose one beautiful symphony of destruction here. Top-grade Nippony steel, folded two thousand times and enchanted with the souls of a dozen all-powerful unicorns. I don’t even know how any of that’s possible, but credit where credit’s due: the guy made a good sword. Not to mention an even better pinata once I persuaded him to let me test it out.”

“Your gasconation falls on deaf ears,” Daniel said. “Speak your purpose for penetrating my place of solitude.”

Diamond’s eyebrows shot up towards her temples, only for one to dip back over her eye as she laughed like a mare saddled with either complete disbelief or crippling indigestion. “Holy crap, you really ARE that bad,” she said. “Y’know, I’d heard you were really the consummate package out of everypony else, but… wow. I think I might be doing BOTH of us a favor by killing you.”

“You find my grandiloquence disquieting?”

Diamond Tiara lifted the hilt of her sword and, for a brief moment, pressed it against the bridge of her nose. “Oh, stars above…” she muttered. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Can we move this along? I haven’t eaten tonight.”

The Captain’s braying laughter was unfortunately all the answer she needed. “Petulant whelp,” he pompously professed. “Your ostentation will be your undoing. I possess more power in a single fetlock than you could ever aspire to contravene.”

Now both of Diamond’s eyebrows were raised again. “Is that a fact?” she asked, glancing down at her sword with a hunger in her eyes that wasn’t just for a warm dinner. “Well, how about I call that bluff, and raise you a fight to the death? That sound like a plan to you?”

“Verily!” Daniel heartily replied. Bolstered by the sight of Diamond cringing—and seemingly unaware of her muttering, “Are you friggin’ serious?” under her breath—he reared back and cast off his cloak, revealing for the first time his handsome and terrifically unique body. He was, as Diamond Tiara really wasn’t surprised at all to see, a double alicorn. Two equally sized horns protruded from his forehead, and two pairs of wings from his back—one feathered like those of a pegasus, and one webbed and leathery like those of a pterodactyl or something. Her fur was jet-black save for his electric-blue stripes, neon-green fetlocks, and the bright red splotch on his chest shaped like a fedora, and his mane and tail seemed to be made of pure darkness somehow collected into corporeal form.

“Methinks the lady appears perturbed,” the Captain said, his smile revealing perfect white teeth carved into lightning-bolt points.

“Eh,” Diamond replied. She took a deep breath, flicked the last few bits of butler residue off her sword and readied it in front of her nose. “Less than you’d think.”

“Still you persist? So be it! Prepare yourself!” With that, Captain Daniel stood tall on his hind hooves and flapped all four of his wings, and as the lights in the room dimmed and the sky outside the window began to darken, he opened his mouth and bellowed with a force that blew Diamond’s hair back and overshadowed the fact that he was referencing a show he couldn’t possibly have ever seen.

“THIS ISN’T EVEN MY FINAL FORM!”

Diamond Tiara blew out a sigh and let her sword tip drop to the floor, partially because of what was happening in front of her but mostly because her foreleg was getting tired from holding it up for so long. Daniel’s mane billowed out from his scalp until it was large enough to form a pitch-black hole in the ceiling, which doused the whole room in inky darkness and which Daniel probably thought looked really, really cool.

“Lightning!” the Captain yelled, calling forth arcs of bright yellow electricity from the chasm overhead. “Hellfire!” he screamed next, and the nether spat forth dozens of amorphous orange balls that circled around him and threw roiling shadows all over the walls. He went on like that for some time, gathering more and more energy into his rapidly spinning orbit until, in a single brilliant flash, every part and piece of the Captain’s elemental fury collided into one mass and exploded, spraying molten lava everywhere and filling the room with thick, impenetrable smoke.

“I call upon the Elements of Harmony! Magic! Loyalty! Laughter! Generosity! Honesty! Kindness!” With each name, the room vanished behind a burst of blinding light which coalesced into a different color each time and shot forth to wrap around the Captain’s intensely vibrating body. Once a full and vibrant rainbow had formed, he called out one last time.

“And the seventh Element, the most potent and paramount of all: Power!”

The floor quaked and cracked open, and an ornately decorated belt hewn from white-hot gold rose from the bowels of the earth into the center of the room. A single flawless gemstone was embedded in the buckle, and as Daniel watched in gleeful triumph, the rainbow he’d collected around himself darted out and was absorbed into it. “ATTACK!” he screamed, and with a titanic BOOM the seventh Element of Harmony charged up and levelled half the mansion with a devastating, unstoppable blast of light the exact same color as the gemstone.

That color being, of course, black.

Heaving for breath and inordinately proud of himself for almost completely demolishing his only place of residence—he’d only managed to knock down the library wing the last time he’d tried this—Captain Hooves leaned forward in midair and willed away the smog he’d created. He was hoping to see the last remnants of Diamond Tiara that his massive spell hadn’t managed to disintegrate, and in this search he was disappointed on two counts. The first was that once the air cleared, he couldn’t see any trace that the Hunter had ever been in the room at all, let alone that she had been spectacularly defeated in magical combat.

The second was what he saw soon after that: namely, Diamond Tiara standing completely unscathed right beneath him, with an expectant look on her face and his Element of Harmony balanced on the end of her hoof.

“You done?” she asked, and when Daniel didn’t reply the corners of her mouth twitched up.

“Good,” she said. “My turn.”

Before Captain Hooves could do anything to stop her, she let the Element fall with a tilt of her hoof, then brought that hoof crashing down on top of it. The gemstone shattered like a china doll, and Daniel’s all-powerful storm winked out of existence without so much as a warning wheeze. Comedic effect overpowered gravity just long enough for him to make disbelieving eye contact with the Hunter, and then Captain Hooves tumbled helplessly out of the air with all the grace of an arthritic dodo.

“The Element of Power?” Diamond Tiara said, her sardonic tone nearly as sharp as the point of the sword she’d lifted into an offensive position again. “Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got, Daniel?”

“How…” he gasped with what little breath he could scrounge up after his painful return to Equestria. “You just… that’s…”

“Impossible?” Diamond finished for him. As she hopped over bits of rubble and came closer to him, she laughed. “Since when has THAT ever stopped any of you?”

Now with a little more air in his lungs, Captain Hooves was able to clear his head and think a little straighter. The Hunter’s last remark echoed in his mind half a dozen times before he spoke again, and when he did it was with the seed of a sudden, revolutionary realization budding on his tongue. “So that’s it? You think this is over?”

Diamond pursed her lips and took a cursory gaze around the room. “Uh… yeah,” she replied. “Pretty emphatically over, actually.”

Captain Hooves shook his head and coughed out a laugh of his own. That seed had sprouted now, and it was about to bear some big fruit. “Then you,” he said, “are even stupider than I thought.”

“Aw, no more big words for me?” Diamond jabbed back. “I’m hurt.”

“Don’t be so cocksure. I’ve not concluded with you yet.”

“Oh yeah?” Diamond was standing over him now, her sword at the ready but not close enough for him to consider it a real threat. “And what, dare I ask, makes you think that?”

With another cough, Captain Hooves pushed himself into a sitting position and faced Diamond Tiara. With their differences in size, he was now at eye level with her. “Because I know who you really are,” he said. “I know WHAT you really are.”

For the briefest of seconds, he saw Diamond’s eyebrows twitch, but whatever reaction that betrayed was quickly smothered beneath the same bemused expression she’d been wearing before. “I’m all ears, big guy.”

“Oh, this is rich,” Captain Hooves chuckled. “Is it not manifestly obvious? Even to YOU?” Instead of responding, Diamond just blinked and remained as stony-faced as ever, and the Captain took that as his cue to continue. “You call us freaks. You call us unnatural perversions, and you commit every waking moment to exterminating us because you believe that our abilities, our GIFTS, should not be allowed in the hooves of normal ponies.

“But then if all of that is truly the mark of a pony unbefitting of life and happiness, then what does that make YOU? You’re physically and mentally immaculate, wealthy beyond compare, and inordinately well-liked and respected despite treating everypony around you like worms beneath your hooves. You destroy everything you touch, yet suffer no consequences for it. You wield a weapon built and balanced for unicorns as if it were an extension of your body, and you survived the full extent of my power without so much as a hair out of place. For Celestia’s sake, you destroyed an Element with YOUR BARE HOOF.”

“And this big, rambly rant is all leading up to… what?” Diamond asked, her question one which Captain Hooves was only too happy to answer.

“I know how you do those things,” he said. “I know how you find us, pursue us, slay us without the slightest effort. I know why you’re just as PERFECT as any one of us.”

Diamond Tiara blinked again, and Captain Hooves grinned. “Because you ARE one of us,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. Almost an entire half-minute had passed by the time Diamond Tiara did more than dip her eyes towards the floor and ponder what Captain Hooves had said to her, and only after that time had passed did her lips finally part.

“You know, Daniel,” she said, her sword tip swaying and jerking with every emphasized word, “that is QUITE the interesting theory you have there. Yeah, you know, that’s… that’s really fascinating, actually. What IF, theoretically of course, I was just another terrible violation of proper narrative technique gifted with immensely disproportionate power and a preternatural awareness of how to manipulate my friends and eradicate my enemies?”

It took Captain Hooves only a moment to process what Diamond Tiara had just said, and it was a moment he didn’t have to spare. Diamond Tiara pressed her free forehoof up under his chin and, in a single fluid motion that should’ve been impossible for a mare of her size, effortlessly lifted him up in the air and pinned him against the wall. The Captain squirmed and kicked out at her in an effort to free himself, but he might as well have been trying to shove away Princess Celestia herself.

“Well, I suppose, theoretically, I’d deserve to be wiped off the face of Equestria just like every other black-coated blemish on this charming little mortal plane,” she wondered aloud, not even looking at Captain Hooves as he struggled helplessly under her preposterously strong hoof. “And I suppose, theoretically, it might be possible that I was the first one to ever realize that and fully comprehend the magnitude of our potential. Which I guess would mean, theoretically, that I might be tempted to, oh, I don’t know, hunt down and systematically murder everypony that could possibly have a chance at stopping me. Y’know, if I were to, say, use my unnatural talents to bend reality to my will and take over the world or something.”

The Captain’s jaw worked up and down, but he no longer had any breath with which to form words. Finally, Diamond’s eyes lifted back up to meet his, and the blackness he saw swirling behind them was darker than anything Daniel could’ve ever dreamed of.

“That’s the funny thing, I guess. About the way we are. About the way we define our existence,” Diamond said, her voice so soft it could’ve been mistaken for a whisper. “We’re strong, we’re smart, we’re brave, we’re noble, we’re good and we’re evil and we can save the world or blow it apart with just a bit of exposition and a monologue or two. But when it’s all said and done, we all owe the same debt that we can never refuse to repay. We don’t have any control over what we do or how we’re supposed to be. That’s someone else’s job. That’s someone else’s mess to make.”

Diamond Tiara blinked, and the tip of her sword twitched again. “Unless we decide that we like it that way,” she said. “Unless we decide that we want it more than THEY do.”

Spots were beginning to form in front of the Captain’s eyes. Diamond released a bit of pressure on his throat, but only enough to keep him conscious. She wasn’t done with him yet.

“The truth is, Danny, I’m in the same boat you are, surfing all the same rises and holding on for all the same falls. I played my part, I paid out my time in the spotlight, and I answered to the same single, untouchable higher power that everypony in Equestria does. And you know what the difference between me and all the rest of you is?”

Diamond’s hoof shuddered, then pressed down harder than ever as she leaned in to within inches of Daniel’s nose. “I outgrew them,” she seethed as his desperate swats at her foreleg grew feebler and feebler. “And you didn’t.”

She glanced up and down his frame once and waited until his eyelids began to droop, then leaned back and flashed him a smile worthy of a great white shark. “Tell Lonely Happiness I always hated her,” she said as the Captain’s eyes finally closed for good. Keeping him hanging there for another ten seconds just to make sure he was gone might’ve been a little unnecessary, but she didn’t think it counted as overkill.

To be fair, though, throwing him to the ground and planting her sword in his skull afterwards? That probably DID count.

Leaving her weapon lodged in the brainpan of her last and greatest foe, Diamond Tiara walked back over to the destroyed side of the room. Through one of the gaping holes in the wall and ceiling, she could see Ponyville a few hundred yards away, down at the bottom of a hill where a crowd of rubberneckers, volunteer fireponies, and town guards were already gathering. No doubt they’d come running as soon as they heard the explosion from the Captain’s attack. She couldn’t help but smile again. She’d have an audience up here soon enough.

No, not just an audience: a following. A loyal congregation terrified of the immense battle so close to their homes, shocked to learn of the apparent corruption of the Elements of Harmony, eager to join their simple, herd-minded friends and neighbors in swearing fealty to whoever the most knowledgeable and powerful pony in sight was. And now that she’d finished dealing with the others, there was nopony else in Equestria that could stop her. After all, Captain Hooves had been absolutely right: she was just like all the rest of them. And now all the rest of them were dead, and she was still here.

A voice from the throng below shouted out her name, and from the peak of the ruins of her previous life, she smiled. She was still here. She was all-powerful. She was alone.

And she was happy.

Diamond Tiara was very, very happy.