Part 3: Chapter 7: Everything Always has Reason behind It. Always.
Canterlot was aflame. Its walls were breached, her buildings and cottages destroyed and burning. Trees were knocked down and the smoke blotted out the moon. No longer held up by Luna's magic, the stars began to fall one by one, impacting the ground at high velocity, causing the planet to let out small cries of pain as her mountains and ground were torn apart. Her hot glowing blood slowly oozed out of the mountains, melting the snow and causing pyroclastic floods that destroyed everything in its path, dead or alive, it did not care. The sounds of avalanches and rockslides created a deafening thunder that once thought to only occur in legends and old stories of forgotten times long ago.
The Princess, cloaked, her once snow-white suit now a light pink as the suit absorbed the oxygen and iron molecules from blood, stood in front of the colt. "You destroy my kingdom for a simple answer?"
"We both know you have done far worse." Alpha replied as he replaced the brace and donned his helmet. "And besides, we both know that's not the only reason why we are here."
Celestia revealed herself and snorted in amazement, turning her flank on Alpha. Flakes of dried blood fell to the ground like snow as they lost their grip on the metal.
"I know his question and I already answered it long ago. But because you actually succeeded in attacking my kingdom and entering the castle, I will answer both your question and his again. But before I start, let me tell you this." She said as she looked back at the colt. "You learned his view. Your view is based off of what you have seen and what he has either shown and/or told you. That's a one sided blade."
"We aren't here for a fucking history lesson."
"You have told him though, right?"
"He knows."
"Does he know all of it?"
"All of what?"
"Why, how it all started of course. How this whole battle, this grudge he has against me came to be." Celestia teased.
Alpha shook his head. "It's not my place to know."
"Would you like to know?"
He shrugged. "As I said, it's not my place to know."
Celestia stood next to the fallen door, looking outside at the stars, all hazed by the smoke of the burning building. "I told you to fear him"
"I would have, but he helped ease the emotional, the mental, and the physical pain."
"Beta isn't somepony to be trusted so easily."
"Coming from the Alicorn that just killed everypony in Canterlot."
"You did far worse."
"I have, but I saved others from harm."
"So have I."
"You have killed more tonight than I and Tirek combined. We both know that none of what has happened tonight can spread. And considering the number of letters going to the other populated cities as we speak,"
The Princess glanced at the rubble that was once a barracks. Smoke came through a small opening of the demolished roof as the fire within burned the makeshift beds. Embers began to fall from the sky, glowing faintly.
"Exactly…" Beta slowly spoke. "We both know what you will have to do next in order to stop the truth from spreading."
"You two have forced my hoof. I did not want to do this."
"You forced my hoof, not the other way around. I didn't want to kill them at first, but then after you met me, you used me, scapegoated me."
"I needed something to blame. Something to blame that was realistic; that others would believe would be the actual cause."
"So you go for mutants." Alpha spoke out. "You didn't understand them at the time and decided to blame them because it was realistic. What about the factory?"
"The Rainbow Factory was created 400 years after Beta. I needed power to keep the economy stable. There was no other way."
"What about the Heart of Equestria?" Alpha asked.
Celestia sighed. "The Heart of Equestria is...is…" she trailed off. "I don't actually know what it is."
"You used it before though, to heal your leg."
"How do you know that?"
"Your sister."
"I know faintly what it is." Celestia corrected herself.
"Which is?"
"It's a type of magic unknown to our kind. It was created long ago when the two legged beings lived."
"Humans then? I thought they never experienced magic."
"They did, but they had another name for it. I was part of the first tribe of ponies to live in Equestria. There were humans when I was little but a disease wiped them out just after I turned 50."
"How old are you now?"
"A little over Millennia. As centuries passed, their creations were taken over by nature and the elements. Cars, buildings and, cities turned to dust but a rare few stayed behind. Canterlot was once an island called England. The human machines that created power or electricity were both dangerous and useful. Buttons and dials filled the rooms that held the great machines. They flickered and beeped and spun but as time went by with little to none taken care of, these machines turned into Volcanoes of Deadly magic. This magic could not be seen, smelled or heard, but it was felt. My friends became sick, their bodies degrading rapidly."
She paused then shook her head. "After few thousand years, the deadly magic infused with the body and blood of ponies, including mine. As some grew wings and began to fly and walk on the clouds and others grew horns to use magic, I grew both. A year later, I learned how to use magic and how to fly. The tribe, now grown from 10 ponies to 100, wanted to know what magic this was and what the humans knew, if anything, about it. So they sent me for I was back then considered as three types of ponies in one form."
"Sounds fun." Beta commented sarcastically.
"It was my first adventure and I was eager to explore. I flew across the land, searching for the deadly magic. Guess what I found."
"The Heart of Equestria."
"Yes, but it wasn't, however, a mountain when I first found it. It was made of concrete and looked like a grey pipe with both ends wider than the middle section. Half of it was taken over by the mountain."
"What is it?"
"It was where the Deadly magic was coming from. At first I felt sick, but longer I stayed there, the longer I absorbed the magic and became more and more powerful. The elements of Harmony are solidified deadly magic."
"What did the Humans call this 'Deadly Magic'?"
"Radiation."
"What is the Heart of Equestria?"
"It's a Nuclear Reactor Plant."
Alpha did not like Celestia telling him everything he wanted to know at once. He stood up; deactivating his suit's light and disappeared as she continued. "I began to search for other and found out in an abandoned deactivated reactor that I had previously discovered that humans did not die by a disease but by the Radiation from Reactors that had collapsed prematurely. In an attempt to save their planet from more harm, they went to the moon. I couldn't leave Equestria as I had become princess shortly after I returned to tell the tribe what I had learned.
"So you sent Luna."
Celestia turned to realize that Alpha was gone. She walked back towards his last location as she continued to explain. "Like your legend, Beta, Luna's legend is also somewhat false. She and I both knew about the reactors and had volunteered to go to the moon to search for more. But we ran into a problem."
"Everypony would want to know where she went and why."
"I had forgotten how fast you learn." The Princess chuckled. "Yes, so as the legend says, Luna went insane and attacked Canterlot, which forced me to use the Elements of Harmony to banish her to the moon."
"Why the elements? Couldn't you just banish her without them?"
"I could, but flying to the moon takes a lot of energy and magic. So I used the Elements to send her there without her wasting her energy."
"Why for a thousand years?"
Celesta looked around. Clever bastard is using the walls to bounce his voice off, she thought. "It takes a long time to explore an entire planet, Beta. Anyway, I'm getting off track." She said as she shook her head. "You can figure out why I did what I did now by yourself."
Alpha, for the first time, felt Beta retract. His chest felt as if a cold liquid had been poured into it and had frozen.
"I tell you all this now for I offer both of you a choice. As you know, I have a genocide to do, have to kill them all to stop the truth from spreading so I will leave now and give you time to run and hide. Perhaps you can survive."
"Where are you going?"
"Manehatten is already abandoned, Cloudsdale is destroyed and Ponyville is ablaze so I am going to Fillydelphia." The princess shook her head before looking at Alpha, who was no longer cloaked and in full view. "I will be back in one hour." She said and teleported away.
Alpha stood outside, watching the embers glow faintly as the fell. He took a deep breath of the smoke-filled air and felt his chest contract as his anger began to rise.
It was quiet, save the crackling fires whose sound echoed off the walls. His heart beat in his ears like a drum and his breathing was short and quiet. He could feel his depression almost come to life and try and take this chance to come back into his already miserably life.
The blue-haired pony shook his head violently to rid himself of the one dangerous thought. He sat there, in the doorway, his eyes half-open. He clenched his teeth as he resisted the urge to lower his head and cry. The hurt pegasi seemed to vibrate from afar, shaking from the hopelessness that was giving its best to take over. His mind was at war; his emotions distraught.
"Beta?"
No response.
Gotta try harder.
Alpha looked around for Nova. "Beta!"
Nothing.
Alpha growled and stood up, looking around at the fire that had surrounded him. He felt the heat everywhere.
"We always had the chance to leave; to hide and run. And every time it was presented with us we ignored it."
"I'm not asking for your permission here. This is my life, and as much as I want to live, this has to end before it gets worse." Beta was quiet. The flames slowly turned blue as Alpha's magic came to life.
"Fillydelphia, Near the bank."
The flames grew, licking the second floor's walls and windows of the castle, blackening the once white marble-like stone. The pony's head began to shake visibly as his adrenaline touched his bloodstream.
"You only gonna have one shot at this."
The ATP surged through the blood vessels and veins in his muscles and they absorbed the new-found energy like dehydrated plant absorbing water. His heart began to beat faster and faster, doubling before tripling its normal rate. His brain-activity lit up like a Christmas tree, getting ready to acquire every single detail he heard, smelled, saw, and felt.
The fire around him grew to unimaginable lengths in its awesome blue hue. His eyes glowed neon red and blue; his mane and tail, unaffected by gravity, waved in the air.
"Ready when you are."
Alpha galloped through the blue flames and took to the air, purposely staying just above the ground. He felt his heart begin to beat slower and smiled as his anger mixed in with the Adrenaline. He felt the intense push that the sonic boom gives when one breaks past it. But instead of teleporting now, Beta waited.
Alpha flew past the cottages; the shockwave behind him easily ripped them to smithereens. The halo of blue was already far in the sky when Beta gave in, helping the pony fly faster by allowing his own rage into his anger.
As the two teleported, the second halo erupted, this time the outer ring was galaxy blue while the inner ring was blood-dark red.
Celestia was already doing what she said she was going to do. The ponies pleaded in a futile attempt to halt the Princess. She had to admit, she did not like what she was doing but she had no choice and continued to blast the group of ponies in front of her to atomized particles. Celestia turned to her left and watched as the infamous DJ caught her gaze, turned tail, and bolted down the street like a young antelope sprinting from a Lion.
The DJ vaulted over bodies and rubble as she galloped for her life, turning left and right as she navigated through the streets void of life. She jumped onto a fallen dumpster then off the wall on her left, clearing the chain-link fence that blocked off entrance to the back of the Bank vault when she felt something snag her neck before losing its grip. The mare landed and looked back at the fence to see her headphones dangling from the barbed-wire on the top. She looked past the headphones to see the pink suit of armor walk towards her.
She panicked and turned around only to meet a wall of concrete. She looked left and right to see that she had ran into a dead end. Shit. She tried teleporting and was confused to see that nothing disappeared. The DJ looked up at her horn to see trails of blue sparks falling down directly in front of her eyes. With fear she turned to look behind her to see the pink suit with its white eyes staring into hers. The metallic horn glowed bright as it charged with magic.
The wall behind the mare flashed and the suit of armor stopped briefly and turned its metallic head around to see what caused such a flash. She saw the double halo ring explode, searing the sky and cutting through the clouds.
All she could do was watch as the electronic signal that her brain sent out crawled like a slug to her legs, miles and miles away as she watched him come for her.