Now that Twilight has graciously provided him with the burst of magic he needed to revive himself, he uses his sinister magic to put her, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy under his control to ensure that the ponies cannot unite the Elements of Harmony to destroy him. Twilight can't believe that Sombra's returned-after all, she and her friends destroyed him last they met-but the evil unicorn explains that they merely dispelled his physical body and allowed him to gradually reconstitute his essence in crystal form. Though the Autobots first mistake the figure for Unicron, the Decepticons realize that this threat is not Unicron, but unicorn: a jet-black pony with glowing red eyes, who introduces himself as King Sombra! At first, the crystal merely absorbs the magic but as arcane power spreads across its surface, however, it explodes into a mass of living shadow that scatters Megatron's forces, a tower of darkness so large that even Optimus Prime and the other Autobots elsewhere on Cybertron take notice.

as they unload their crystal, however, Starscream and his team race through the portal with Octavia and Vinyl Scratch's stolen stage in hand, followed by Twilight and her friends! Twilight fires a beam from her horn her shot goes wide, however, and strikes the mysterious black stone. The ponies watch as Shadow Striker and Airachnid return through the portal to report a successful mission. Eager to find out what's on the other side of this 'magic gateway', the ponies fly through-when they emerge on the other side, they're promptly surrounded by Decepticons and thrown into a makeshift prison. In nearby Cloudsdale, Spitfire and the other members of the high-flying Wonderbolts discover the glowing spacebridge portal in the sky.

Unfortunately for the Seekers, Twilight Sparkle and her friends happen to be in attendance, and the pony princess warns the villains to back off, unless they want to relearn a painful lesson in kindness. While Mindwipe and Skullcruncher investigate the Everfree Forest, and Airachnid and Shadow Striker discover an unusual black crystal amidst the icy Crystal Mountains, Starscream and his team scout out the pony city of Las Pegasus-only for Thundercracker to recklessly blow their cover when he crashes a concert and orders the natives to surrender their magical artifacts. Having recovered the coordinates from the last spacebridge, Shockwave's reopened the connection between dimensions, and reports that Megatron's scout teams are converging on their targets: various magical artifacts of great power scattered across the idylliic landscape. After his ill-fated alliance with Queen Chrysalis ended with his defeat and banishment, the Decepticon hatched a new plan: if he can't conquer Equestria directly, then he will simply bring the magic of Equestria to war-torn Cybertron and use its various powerful artifacts to defeat the hated Autobots. Breakdown, on the other hand, doesn't understand Frenzy's newfound appreciation of pony culture at all, but their argument only draws the ire of their impatient leader Megatron. or, at least, that's what goes down in Frenzy's new book, a souvenir of his visit to Equestria. In a land of magic and rainbows, a pony and a goblin live happily ever after.

My little pony x transformers