----- "I would like to apologize for my behavior over the past few weeks," said Vice Principal Luna at a school assembly, her face filled with regret, "as I let stress and paranoia get the best of me. As a symbol of my regret and acceptance of the responsibility for my actions, I am announcing that I am overturning Crimson Lionheart's expulsion, and will be honoring Rainbow Dash, Circuit Breaker, and Sunset Shimmer for their heroic deeds during the Spring Formal." This was met with an overwhelming standing ovation, with scattered cheers growing in intensity as it proceeded.
Spoiler: Music for scene (Heavily Recommended) Crimson's mind blacked out as he suddenly received visions of the three mysterious people once again, finding himself in the very same room that he never wanted to be in. Completely unconscious, the three figures walked out of the shadows and looked over him instead of sitting down like last time, the three of them were standing over Crimson's broken emotionally body in an almost condescending and authoritarian manner. Upon closer inspection, their masks looked drastically more lifelike then almost anything even possible, almost as if the masks they wore were actually real. "You have been getting yourself in all sorts of trouble..." Richard said in that sinister tone of his. "You haven't been thinking straight lately..." "I feel something inside of him has broken due to the loss of his childhood friend." Rasmus said aloud. "Things will not end well when he wakes up" "He will never be the same person after this." Don Juan said. "One final terrible act and he will be free" Crimson just remained unconscious as the two of them watched over them like twisted guardian angels. ""Remember, all the decisions you take always carry consequences; and today is a reminder that your decisions have really backfired on you. You're a horrible person, even SHE thinks that of you..." Richard said at Crimson as he looked at him with a sick smile on his talking-beak through his mask, also showing teeth."But you will find that out yourself..." Don Juan looked away in disappointment while a faint smirk appears on Richard's face, as he placed a ghostly hand onto Crimson's shoulder as the unconscious teen slept on the ground nearby his dead friend... "You really want to hurt people don't you" Richard said before slowly fading away with the two other masked strangers. "It's time to wake up now...." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Spoiler: Music for scene Crimson's eyes fluttered open for a moment before everything that had built up between Orchid's death finally caused him to snap, slowly rising off from the ground with tears of rage streaming down his eyes as he walked away from the reactor. He took a metal pipe and walked along the bridge, just as a surviving goon was trying to escape. Crimson lifted the adult man from the ground and choked him by the neck. "Tell me where the last of Sangira's men are operating..." Crimson choked the thug, before suddenly smashing the back of his head against the wall to cause him to yelp in pain. The thug offered no resistance whatsover as he finally let go his information. "T-thh...." The thug tried to speak. "1 Valley Rd..." Crimson nodded before dropping the thug and taking the lead pipe with two hands and swung it towards the face of the thug, it would be the last thing he would ever see... From there, he left the reactor and the powerplant, heading to the location on a stolen bike with nothing but pure rage in his heart. What would happen next would go down in history...
----- 1 Valley Road just so happened to be a small manufactured home just outside of downtown, where the remnants of the gang were waiting for a report on what had happened at the power plant. Inside was a stash of illegal assault weapons and various contraband drugs. However, just as they were about to contact the power plant, a loud noise was heard as the door fell down... ----- Orchid awoke to see a blinding white light. So it's happened, she thought, I really am dead. This must be the afterlife. But... what am I in for? As she thought about this, the light faded, revealing what appeared to be a massive throne room, covered from floor to ceiling in gold and silver. The architecture seemed Greco-Roman in nature, but what caught her eye was the man upon the throne. He looked to be about 70 years old, and his white beard reached to the floor. Yet he also looked very physically healthy for his apparent age. He gave off an air of a man who had seen much conflict and strife, but nevertheless was benevolent through and through. "Who are you?" asked Orchid curiously. "A good question," said the man, with a voice that sounded very wise and authoritative, yet also comforting. "To put it simply, I created all that exists. Your kind have given me many names through my interactions with them. The Mesopotamians called me Marduk. To the Egyptians, I was Horus. In Greece, they call me Zeus, while the Romans called me Jupiter or Jove. The Aztecs named me Quetzalcoatl. I am Odin in Scandinavia. I was called Izanagi by the ancient Japanese. In India, they call me Vishnu. The ancient Israelites called me Yahweh, and to the Arabs, I am Allah." "What is your real name, then?" asked Orchid. "I have gone by so many different names over the centuries that I have forgotten, my dear," he replied, "but for lack of a better term... God will suffice." "Nice to meet you," said Orchid awkwardly. She had never explicitly believed in any major religion, but she had always acknowledged the possibility of a creator deity. But to see him in the flesh... "However, Miss Orchid Bloom, I am afraid your purpose among the living is not yet fulfilled," he continued. "What do you mean?" "You will be pleased to know that I have dealt with your father's spirit according to his crimes, and your mother is quite proud of you. Nevertheless, it is not yet your time to proceed to the afterlife. Seven days I shall house you here, to prepare you for what is to come. On the seventh day, you shall return to the land of the living to fulfill your purpose and finish your life. Your sacrifice was not in vain, but you are not ready for death." Orchid was even more surprised. Not only was God real, he was offering her a second chance at life! This made her elated. "Thank you," she said, kneeling in respect. "Thanks is not necessary, my dear," he replied, "I am only doing what is right, as are you." She rose up again. "So... what's next?"
Spoiler: Music for scene The doors completely threw themselves off the hinges, before a eerie silence fell along the barricaded thugs as they aimed their rifles at the empty door. For a moment, nothing happened before a soft 'ka-dook' sound happened nearby, before suddenly everything went up in a flash of white inferno, blowing up everything in the doom and using the broken pieces of furniture an sharp metal pieces as shrapnel. Behind the door, Crimson was holding a small yet very compact grenade launcher. He knew for a fact that he didn't get everyone on the bottom floor, so he turned around the corner and slowly made his way inside of the building, armed to the teeth. Another grenade shot out of the launcher and hit the right corner of the room, causing several stashed weapons to explode and killing another two people. He threw the launcher to the side before taking a stashed Ithaca 37 shotgun from the now emptied bottom floor and made his way up. One goon tried to take him from downstairs before he was hit in the legs by a shotgun shell, causing him to fall down and land on the ground. Crimson then went up to him before he could react, as the thug suddenly realised that he was powerless, before the barrel of the Ithaca was placed up against his forehead in a brutal fashion. Crimson would continue to massacre the rest of the building in a horrific yet rage-filled fashion. At the end of the day, the death-toll wasn't entirely certain, but the final raid with Orchid and the Avenue Street Massacre had skyrocketed his kill-count to over 600. Just as he left, he put a time bomb in the middle of the drug-lab before he drove off, set to blow in two minutes and erase the Canterlot Underground from the face of the Earth. However, his actions had a much larger effect then he realized. Within the next 24 hours, the entire West-Coast underground practically collapsed....
----- The next day, Twilight had disappeared again, for reasons only known to seven others. Nobody else questioned it, however. The same day, Crimson returned to school. However, he seemed... different. For reasons known only to himself, he had become much more cold, bitter and distant than when he was expelled. He often went out of his way to avoid others whenever he could, and when he couldn't, he was more blunt and less empathetic towards others. This didn't sit well with anyone, especially Circuit, who was very concerned about his new friend. "Is Crim okay?" asked Sunset with concern. "I don't know," said Circuit, "Ever since he came back, he's been... off." "It's so unlike him," said Fluttershy sadly. "Yeah, I tried to talk to him, and all I got was a 'f*yay* off' in response," sighed Pinkie. Circuit hung his head. He hated seeing Crim like this... Rainbow Dash put a hand on his shoulder. "Circuit," she told him somberly, "You've known Crim longer than any of us... Maybe you can get through to him where we couldn't." Circuit sighed and said "It's worth a shot." He had no idea how much difference he was going to make for Crim... ----- Spoiler: Music for scene (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) The torrential downpour that afternoon covered Canterlot in about half an inch of rain, and as school ended, it was at its worst. Not that Circuit cared, he just wanted to see his friend feel better. He found Crimson sitting on the bleachers on the baseball field, head hung and hands folded in his lap. Circuit braved the rain and sat down next to Crim, looking at him with a smile on his face. "Hey, buddy," he asked in a reassuring tone, his voice filled with concern, "you okay?"
Crim turned around to look at him, having been crying for the past few hours. His hands were shaking, and the look of a small amount of dried blood on his T-shirt said that it wasn't his. He just shook his head in a somber tone. "I had to kill....hundreds of people....and what do I get out of it?" He just sighed deeply. "Orchid died yesterday, as a hero." Crim then buried his head in his lap. "And I've become the one thing that I swore to destory..."
Circuit sighed. "Is that what this is all about?" he asked, "You're afraid that by killing an entire criminal organization, you're no better than they are? At least you had a good reason for what you did... And as for Orchid... you're not the only one who lost someone close to you..."
Crim's ears perked up at the thought of Circuit's parents, he never mentioned what happened to them. He looked at him curiously, yet with a tear running down his eyes.
Circuit sighed in remembrance. "I'm going to show you something I've only shown one other person," he said, pulling out his phone and showing a photo. The photo was slightly pixelated and artifacted, due to its age. It was a family portrait. On the left was a tall man, no older than forty-five, who wore a black, long-sleeved shirt and brown overalls. He had charcoal gray skin and auburn curled hair and muttonchops, with dark green eyes and bifocals. His arm was around the shoulder of his slightly shorter wife, who looked to be in her mid-thirties. She wore a woman's business suit and a pair of rectangular glasses. Her fiery red skin was complimented by her long, flowing blonde hair and her kind, compassionate brown eyes. Front and center was a boy, who was no older than nine. His precocious, light gray face was covered in freckles, his chestnut hair was short and unkempt, and his dark brown eyes, framed by horn-rimmed glasses, were full of innocence and joy. He wore a pair of lime green basketball shorts and a navy blue Bumblebee T-shirt. "This photo was taken two years before they died," said Circuit. He pointed to the man. "That's my father, Lucky Key. He was born in 1962 to a pair of working-class Irish immigrants, and worked as a locksmith in San Bernadino. He was the most caring and loving father you could ask for... and he was a good friend." "My mother, Sunrise Jubilee," he continued as he pointed to the woman, "She was born in 1971 to a Chinese mother and a Norwegian father, and worked as a receptionist for a Los Angeles insurance company. She was energetic, cool, and most of all, compassionate." "Both of them provided for me like no other parents could... but then..." Circuit shed a tear as he remembered how they died. "I was waiting at LAX for my parents to come back from vacation in Hawaii," he began, "They were going to take me to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on opening day. However, the plane was hijacked by terrorists, and crash-landed in the middle of the ocean..." He was now sobbing profusely, as the memories flooded back to him.
Crimson couldn't help but bring Circuit close to him and wrapped his arms in an almost-brotherly hug. He continued to pat his back while he sobbed, hoping to calm him down while the rain continued to pour down...
Crim patted his back and for the first time since he came back to school, smiled. "No problem, it's what I'm here for"
----- Area 51 Nevada, United States Twilight Sparkle awoke in a cell of some kind. That is to say, Earth's Twilight Sparkle, not the one from Equestria. The cell door opened, and a man stepped inside. He was tall, looked to be in his thirties, and wore a suit, sunglasses, and a wire. "Miss Sparkle," he said, "please follow me."
Twilight was alone and confused, but she had to follow this man regardless. She also looked down to find herself in a pocketless jumpsuit of somekind, as she was soon escorted by the man. She wanted to go home, but whatever reason that she was here, something must have happened. Something about her...
