The it - Here you are. I hope it doesn't disappoint. ;)

ZoyeZest - I'm glad you;ve enjoyed the fic so far. I admit this is probably going to be a lot to convert into comic format, but I'll consider your offer.

A/N - Hey there, everycreature! I hope the holiday season is treating everyone well. Aside from being crazy busy, my own is going well. I hope everyone enjoys their holidays, and that you all stay happy and healthy. Enjoy this latest installment, and remember to always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind!

After carrying an embarrassed yet compliant, though still very loopy Luna back to her rooms and tucking her into bed to rest and recover, Twilight and I left and fetched her a bite or two of proper food to eat. Had she been anyone other than a nigh-immortal demigoddess, I might have been fairly concerned for Luna's wellbeing. Given that she was exactly that, coupled with some reassurances from Twilight, I found myself less worried than I otherwise would have been.

Instead of fretting over something we had little control over, Twilight and I walked the halls of the castle, making our way at a leisurely pace back toward the strange, enchanted guest room that the Vrondi seemed to be so fond of. "So Twilight, why are you so interested in human weapons all of a sudden?" A part of me was mildly concerned she might want to try to replicate them, though I knew that was a silly notion, given the peaceful nature of most ponies, and Twilight in particular.

The lovely library-dweller looked up at me with a reassuring smile, almost as though she could read my thoughts, though I was sure my expression gave plenty away. "Don't worry, I don't want to try to find out how they work or anything, I just want to know more about what they do, and how humans did things back on your world."

Her words were indeed reassuring, and I nodded with a slight sigh "I suppose that's fair. Plus, I doubt you'll want to go anywhere near anything humans have made once you've seen what our weapons can do." I had to suppress a shiver of my own as I thought about what we were capable of.

As we approached the hallway that housed the room in question, Twilight shifted a little closer to me, and I couldn't blame her. Already I could feel the invisible eyes of the harmless little air sprites as they watched us coming. "Friend?" I heard one of them ask, more in my head than the soft whisper of air that was its voice.

Deciding not to turn on my auraight, I simply smiled. "Yes, friend." I replied, though I didn't know what the Vrondi did after that, as the hallway went silent once more.

Soon, we reached the room we sought, and I opened the door for Twilight, who trotted in with a grateful smile, then entered after her and closed the door behind us. "So, what would you like to see first? You've seen our smallest weapon already, which would be my pistol." It wasn't the smallest caliber of pistol, being chambered in forty-five ACP, but was physically quite compact as it was meant to be easily concealable.

The lovely little mare looked around as I imagined the two of us on a military-style firing range, with a run-and-gun course to our left in case she wanted to see what I could do when properly outfitted with more than just a tiny pistol that had the same capacity as most revolvers. Through some trial and error, we had discovered that the magic in the room was capable of crafting intricate illusions which allowed for spaces that seemed to be much larger than the room's dimensions would otherwise allow. In fact, we had even simulated standing on the edge of Canterlot mountain while looking off at Ponyville far in the distance, nearly seventy kilometers away.

My studious marefriend considered her options for a moment as she watched the landscape take shape around us. "I… think I want to see some of the bigger things humans have made. I believe you mentioned vehicles that were made for war before? Could I see one of those? Then, maybe later you can show me what you could do with something a little bigger than what you currently have? I think you called them 'rifles' before."

For a moment I was a little disappointed Twilight wanted to skip past the more fun portion of the demonstration, but then she came back around to it, and I smiled faintly. "Sure thing, Twilight. If that's what you want, then let me introduce you to the pinnacle of ground-based warfare among the humans." With that, I closed my eyes and summoned up an image of an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank in my mind's eye.

Next to me, Twilight gawked at the nearly ten foot tall, more than thirty foot long armored behemoth as it materialized out of nothing before our very eyes. "Woah… and that thing on the front shoots giant versions of the bullets that come out of your gun? As impressive as this thing is, that doesn't seem very practical." It seemed that, even in the face of a technical marvel such as a modern tank, Twilight still maintained her pragmatic mindset.

I chuckled softly and petted her head lightly. "The principle is the same, but the payload is different. Where my pistol shoots out tiny little solid slugs of copper and lead, our tanks fire out a big shell packed with explosives. If what your notes said are right, there are definite limits to what this room can do, but I think I can at least visually recreate what this thing can do." I knew there was a decibel limit on sounds, a brightness limit, and that none of the illusions could actually cause us any other sort of harm, so I knew I could do this safely. "Brace yourself, Twilight. In three… two… one." The canon on the tank fired off with a report that was loud, yet not quite deafeningly so, and hit us with a concussive blast that rattled us, but didn't send us toppling over. The effects were a pale comparison of the real thing, but it seemed to be the limit of what the room could handle in that respect.

We were both able to watch as the shell the tank had fired streaked down range, and impacted a concrete wall at the other end, detonating in a burst of fire and smoke and debris that made poor Twilight shriek with shock and surprise as the ground beneath her hooves rumbled from the blast and a second, weaker concussion washed over us. "Th-that was much b-bigger than I thought." She remarked in a shaky voice. "I um… I think I get the idea, for the most part. Do you… do you think you could show me the most powerful weapon your world has? I think I can fill in at least some of the gaps between the two if I see that much."

The thought of that made me gulp, and I shivered lightly. "I um… sure Twi, I can do that. But to do that, and to make sure you have a proper idea of the scale of this thing, I'll have to use landscapes you're familiar with." I closed my eyes again, and the shooting range and the tank faded away, replaced by the shelved slope of Canterlot mountain, with the two of us standing at the edge, looking out at sleepy little Ponyville off in the distance.

Twilight looked up at me with a curious expression. "Blake? Why do we need to be here? What does this weapon do? Is whatever this thing is you're planning to show me going to set fire to Ponyville or something?" There was clear apprehension in her voice as she asked that question, despite knowing this wasn't real.

I knew there wasn't an easy way to break what was about to happen to the bookish mare, or even properly describe it for that matter. Instead, I knelt down and looked her in those lovely, amethyst eyes, hands resting gently on her shoulders. "Look, Twilight… there isn't an easy way for me to tell you what's about to happen. I want you to know that I'm showing you this because I want to keep anything like it from happening here. Ever. I want you to see just how terrible humans can be, and to know I will do everything I can to make sure what you're about to see never happens to this beautiful world." My words were kind yet firm as I sought to impress on her the gravity of what was about to transpire.

Twilight gulped softly as I spoke, her eyes searching mine. "I… Blake, you're scaring me a little. But I trust you, and I know I asked for this. So please, show me what you think I need to see about the other humans." The way she worded that, seeming to exclude me from the rest of my own kind, wasn't lost on me, and it made me feel good in a way.

With a slight nod and a gentle caress of her cheek, I stood, then turned back to Ponyville, Twilight turning with me to watch as well. My hand rested on top of her head in what I hoped would be a comforting gesture. "What I'm about to show you is another type of explosive." I said as I watched a faint glimmer of silvery metal catching the sunlight above Ponyville. "It's something we call a 'bomb', and this one is much, much bigger than what you just saw." I held my breath as the silvery shard descended, and I felt Twilight's head shift faintly beneath my hand as she caught sight of the silver speck descending from the sky as well.

In a cataclysmic instant, the shard of metal so far into the distance, descending almost lazily toward the town we both called home, transformed from a tiny glint of silver into a miniature sun, almost too bright to look at even with the constraints of the magic in the room. The bomb detonated and erupted into a white-hot fireball that spread out at terrifying speed, engulfing the town below just as the shockwave impacted the ground and shot back upward, crushing the landscape down into a deep crater before ripping the pulverized remains of the town below and a huge swath of of the land around it up into the air, caving in the underside of the atomic fireball and creating what I recognized to be the signature mushroom shape of a thermo-nuclear detonation. Almost in the same instant as the flash of light reached us, we felt a wave of heat, just bordering on painfully hot, wash over us as the thermal radiation struck the mountain at the speed of light. Around us, paint began to flake off of some of the buildings while powderizing and being blown off of others, showcasing a level of extreme and even deadly heat we were fortunately unable to fully experience thanks to the limitations of the room.

Beneath my comforting hand, Twilight sat, slack-jawed and trembling violently as the raging apocalypse that was nuclear hellfire wiped Ponyville off the map entirely, vaporizing the town itself and transforming a good portion of the surrounding landscape into a glassed-out, glowing crater. The shockwave of the blast shot outward, across the intervening landscape, flattening flora and destroying what few structures existed in the interim. Anything within several kilometers of what used to be Ponyville that was made of flammable materials flash-combusted from the hellish heat of the thermal pulse, then was almost immediately extinguished by the force of the overpressure of the blast as it followed behind the intense burst of lightspeed thermal radiation.

Twilight shrieked and clung tightly to me as a roaring cacophony of megalithic, booming sound, felt as much as heard and wrought by unfathomable destructive power that sounded as though the very earth itself cried out with hatred, rattled us to our cores a bare moment before the mountain rocked and shuddered worryingly beneath us from the impact of the shockwave against the stone platform that made up the literal and figurative pedestal of the Equestrian Capitol. That same shockwave nearly bowled both of us over, first as a heavy rush of wind blew past where we stood, then again as the vacuum caused by the outward surge of atmosphere, driven by nuclear hellfire, collapsed on itself and drew the air back past us in the other direction, seeking to restore equilibrium. All around us, glass shattered and formed what would otherwise have been a deadly whirlwind of razor-sharp shards.

Canterlot was fortunate in that it was situated right on the edge of the blast radius, as most of the bomb's energy had been expended by the time it reached the mountaintop city, minimizing the damage done to the beautiful architecture. It was also fortunate that this was, in essence, nothing more than an elaborate illusion, crafted by a series of spells cast upon the abandoned guest room we occupied. That didn't stop my blood from running cold at the shrieking of the wind that howled past us, threatening to rend the whole of Canterlot from the mountain it perched upon. That shrieking was nothing compared to the frightened cries of the mare clinging to me, however.

As the gargantuan, illusory mushroom cloud rose into the sky nearly seventy kilometers away from us, over the glowing crater that had once been quiet little Ponyville, Twilight began to gasp and pant, and I could tell she was starting to hyperventilate even as the almost demonic roaring of the detonation whirling around us seemed to quiet somewhat. Thinking quickly, I knelt and wrapped her in a firm hug, holding her shuddering form to me as I turned her head away from the sight of nuclear devastation and lightly pressed her face into my shoulder. The wind and sound both died down to nothing as I willed them away, to which the enchanted room complied.

I could feel her starting to slowly calm down as I stroked her head gently to comfort her. "Shh… it's alright, Twilight. It wasn't real, it was just an illusion, a fake. None of that actually happened, and Ponyville's just as fine as it always has been."

Time escaped me as I held my beloved marefriend in my compassionate embrace, giving her all the time she needed to recover. Eventually, she calmed enough to pull away and look up at me, eyes red from freely flowing tears and filled with a fear that seemed slow to fade. "Blake… That was horrible. How could anyone ever create something so… monstrous? So… Evil?"

A soft sigh escaped me as I reached a hand up and stroked her cheek. To my relief, rather than try to pull away from the touch, Twilight leaned into it, seemingly grateful for my presence rather than afraid of it. "It's like I said, Twilight; humans can be terrible. What's even more terrible is that what I showed you was only the most powerful weapon we've actually tested. Those that made that horror of a bomb actually designed one that was twice as powerful, and theorized that one many times as destructive could be made. Fortunately, what was tested was right on the limit of what could be feasibly transported because of how big and heavy it was, so nothing bigger could ever reasonably be used. The fact something like that exists at all is still terrifying beyond words though."

A single tear rolled down one of her lavender cheeks as she gazed up at me. "I… I can't even imagine something bigger than what we just saw…" She said softly. "It's hard enough just to imagine what you showed me already, and I watched that happen!"

My eyes searched Twilight's own, and I wished I had more answers for her than I did. "I know it's not much consolation for what you just saw, but you can be at least a little comforted knowing ponies are far too peaceful to ever come up with something like that, at least from what I've seen. And I don't foresee humans ever finding their way here on their own, so this beautiful world of ours should be safe from such nightmares."

For her part, Twilight seemed to relax at that, at least a little, taking in slow, deep breaths through her nose and letting them out through her mouth. "I know. You're right on both counts, and that honestly does help. I just… never even imagined something so terrible and destructive could exist. Let alone be done without any magic involved. It's more than a little frightening to think about what might be possible with magic."

She had me stumped on that one; I still barely knew anything about magic, especially with the revelation of pony and human magics being so different from one another. It was a sobering thought to imagine how magic and physics might interact on that scale. Just what might a few spells do when working in tandem with the already apocalyptic inferno that was a nuclear blast?

I was broken from these thoughts by a familiar voice clearing her throat next to me. "H-hey, Blake? Do… Do you think we could do something else for now? I want to get my mind off all this." Even Nightmare Moon was shaken inside my mind by what she had just witnessed through my eyes, and I could sense her desire for a change as well.

Glad for the suggestion, I nodded and promptly conjured up a different scene, getting us away from the heat-damaged buildings and the sight of the monolithic mushroom cloud off in the distance by imagining the two of us standing next to a motorcycle on the shoulder of a seemingly deserted road, just on the edge of a small town and ready to drive in to tour it. The bike was a cruiser that I had done my best to model from memory after a Harley Davidson Heritage Cruiser, sporting a cherry red, metallic paint job with white patches on the sides of the tank and shiny new chrome throughout. A pair of tasseled saddlebags hung from either side of the machine, to either side of the rear wheel.

Next to me, Twilight gasped in delight and began to circle the bike, taking in its features as she scanned it with bright, curious eyes. "Oh wow! This looks amazing!" She exclaimed, clearly enjoying getting to examine something new and shiny. "The design is so functional without being too simple. It's ingenious." It seemed her previous horror at seeing the nuclear apocalypse that was the Tsar Bomba was quickly set aside as her curiosity was piqued by something new to learn about.

I chuckled and nodded at her fascination, smirking as I conjured a key in the ignition. "Well, it wasn't perfect. This particular brand of bike has something of a penchant for… leaking. In fact, it was so much a common occurrence it became a joke, saying that any patch of oil in a spot where people parked their vehicles was a Harley 'marking its territory'." There was a momentary pause as Twilight looked at me in mild confusion. "Like how a dog marks its territory. Basically joking and saying that the bike's leak was actually it peeing on the ground to mark where it had been."

The lovely mare scrunched up her face at that. "That sounds… weird." She said, then turned back to the bike. "Anyway, I get the feeling you didn't just want me to look at this thing, right?"

I nodded and conjured an open-faced helmet for each of us to wear, with Twilight's being the same color as the hot pink stripe of her mane and bearing her cutie mark on either side and bearing a hole in the forehead for her horn, with my own being a basic silver that had my own mark on it. "Of course not, Twi. I know you've wanted to check out human technology for a while, and while flying is definitely fun, I've missed being able to just hop on a bike and cruise."

The pair of us donned our helmets, and Twilight looked the bike over. "So, I take it I'm supposed to sit on the back here?" She asked with a gesture to the rear seat of the bike, complete with padded pillion bar for her comfort.

I nodded again and swung my leg over the seat to sit down, lifting the bike off its kick stand in a fluid motion so it sat level for the lovely librarian to climb on behind me. "I'll take it easy for now, so you can get used to the feel of this. Also don't forget that human vehicles mostly run on what we call 'internal combustion engines', so they make noise as they run." A pair of lavender forelegs wrapped themselves around my midsection as I spoke.

Without further ado, I turned the key in the ignition, flipped the start switch to the 'run' position, then pressed the ignition switch. The bike roared to life in typical Harley Davidson fashion, causing Twilight to yelp in surprise as she gripped me tighter, clearly not expecting the din of a motorcycle's engine. The way the machine vibrated beneath us, both as it started, as well as when it ran, likely did little to help in her fear, as someone who didn't know what a motorcycle sounded like could be forgiven in thinking it felt and sounded like they were sitting on some angry monster.

I grinned sheepishly back at her. "Sorry about that, Twilight. I suppose I should have picked a quieter brand. This one just happens to be one of the most iconic, and the one people tend to think about when they think of a motorcycle." The helmets I'd conjured for us had connected comm sets in them, enabling the two of us to talk relatively normally despite the din of the bike. I knew the helmets weren't necessary, but old habits died hard.

Behind me, Twilight took a moment to gather herself by taking in a few, deep breaths. "I-it's ok, Blake. It's certainly better than the last loud sound I heard…" I felt her grip relax a little, and she nuzzled me. "We can go any time you're ready. I think I'm about as good as I'm going to get." The engine of the bike quieted down as she spoke, a mental command to the magic in the room muting it to a more reasonable level.

I felt a twinge of guilt for having put her through that, though I knew in the long run it would benefit the mare to know just how terrifying humanity could be. It would also help her to know how lucky ponykind was that we hadn't remained on Mythis, and that Celestia and Luna had only managed to bring one of us back to this beautiful world. Those thoughts quickly faded however, as I pulled in the clutch, pressed the gear selector into first, then revved the throttle, taking us out and onto the deliberately empty road.

As she sat on the pillion seat, Twilight gasped and held me more snugly, though I could tell it was only because she wasn't fully prepared for the takeoff. When we began to cruise down the road, Twilight started to look around, her mane flowing behind her from beneath the helmet as the wind blew past us, her curiosity getting the better of her as we rode through the small city. "This place looks very interesting." She commented as we cruised along. "The architecture is so different from what we ponies make, but it still somehow feels familiar."

As we rode along at a relatively sedate pace, I glanced back at the inquisitive little mare. "That's what I thought when I first came to Ponyville. The buildings all looked similar to what you find here, they were just so much more… lively, and happy, like the ponies that made them. Here everything seems to be about efficiency, and while I like that aesthetic to an extent, being surrounded by nothing but buildings like that got… depressing. Earth, or at least the part of it I came from, seemed like it was having all the fun and joy drained out of it by huge corporations, and it was more and more miserable to live there every year."

There was silence for a time as Twilight likely contemplated my words, though I felt her hugging me tighter, this time as a gesture of comfort rather than an attempt to keep herself on the bike. "The more I hear about how bad your world was, the more I wish the Princesses could have found more humans like you to bring here and take away from all that. You and others like you deserve better."

Her words made me smile in my helmet, though I also felt a little guilty. "Thanks, Twi. But I didn't mean to sour this experience with my own misgivings. There was goodness there, it just seemed… overshadowed. So it wasn't all bad, I've just been in a bit of a melancholy mood lately, so I've been thinking more about the bad things." Seeing all the good and happiness of this new world had revealed to me just how much better Earth could have been, had humanity not lost its way so terribly. "I'm ok though, I promise. So let's enjoy our ride together, ok?"

Twilight nodded behind me, a gesture I could feel more than see. "That sounds good to me, Blake. Though, how about you tell me about some of the good things about where you're from? To offset the bad things we've seen today." We turned onto the main thoroughfare of the town as she suggested this, more buildings changing to an older, more rustic aesthetic.

The request had me take a deep breath as I thought over the possibilities while the old, brick buildings of the town's main strip passed us by. "Well… There was kindness and compassion in the world, just like there is here. Technology had its advantages, like this motorcycle we're on now. And we were working on more environmentally friendly vehicles too. Power production was starting to move away from dirty sources like burning coal to cleaner forms like solar, wind and nuclear power." We passed through the main thoroughfare and onto a less densely structured area of town, leading toward one of the residential sections. "There were also parks and nature preserves meant to keep animal habitats safe from people, so we could keep the wildlife safe and secure. I used to go camping in some really remote, beautiful places too, when I had the time off from work and other responsibilities to do so. It was peaceful in those places, way out in the wilderness, miles and miles from the nearest person. Those places had the best views of the stars I've ever seen, way out of the way where city light pollution didn't outshine the starlight. Or at least, they did, until I came here." I could feel the nostalgia for those times starting, and reminded myself that I had a whole new world, full of potential to explore, with the possibility to find places that were just as beautiful, if not moreso, than what I'd seen back on Earth.

My explanation seemed to sate my inquisitive passenger for the time being, and we rode on in peace, with Twilight hugging me as the bike thrummed beneath us, the town that had once been my home gliding by almost unnoticed.