Blackstorm woke up from his coma and painfully raised his head to look around. He couldn’t remember what had happened. His last conscious thought before falling down the falls was feeling his wingbone break. Then he had blacked out for what must have been several months, although it felt like minutes. He vividly remembered waking up and feeling, as well as hearing, the pounding roar of Horsetail Falls. Then he was hit with sudden realization as he knew it must be close to his birthday. He had dragged himself out of the pool at the base of the falls onto the shore. Luckily, his body had not been so severely damaged that he could not move. Time had helped heal his wing and ribs, although he found out the hard way that flying was painful.

Then another black stallion had flown towards the clearing just before dusk had fallen. He had landed in front of the injured Blackstorm and said, “Who are you?”

To which Blackstorm had replied warily, “Who are you?” He noticed that the other stallion didn’t seem very nervous, so he tried to be on his guard. He could not possibly have been on guard enough for what happened next, however.

“MY NAME IS ECLIPSE!!!!” The strange black stallion screamed. Blackstorm realized that Eclipse looked just like himself, but Blackstorm had no further time for thinking as Eclipse started hurling what looked like small silver fireworks at him.

Blackstorm managed to elude a few of them, but the ones that made contact burned his hide. Eclipse kept hurling these fireworks at Blackstorm relentlessly, and eventually Blackstorm jumped into the pool to try to avoid them. This didn’t deter the other stallion however, he simply changed tactics. Instead of fireworks, he propelled lightning-shaped blades of starfire at Blackstorm, the bolts slicing right through the water.

Blackstorm couldn’t stand it. He hoped it was close to his birthday and leaped out of the pool, flapping painfully towards the Hundred Year Star. He could hear Eclipse’s contemptuous laughter behind him, but he ignored it. As he grew closer to the Hundred Year Star, he opened his mouth and the starfire filled him. He could feel its warm, healing glow and once he thought he had been filled with all of it, he turned back and roared a golden plume of flame up into the night sky to try to scare Eclipse off. Unfortunately, his display had the opposite effect. Eclipse was furious that Blackstorm had managed to get the starfire before he, Eclipse, could kill him. Eclipse launched himself into the sky to try again.

Blackstorm saw the other black foal coming and thought quickly. He had heard of Star’s shield and Star had told him how to use it, so he sprang his own shield in the nick of time, as a silver firework hit his foreleg on the shin. He sent the starfire down to his leg to heal it at the same time as the shield formed its shiny globe around him.

Eclipse looked on, awestruck. As good as he was with the different weapons of the starfire, he had no knowledge of a shield. He was about to surrender when he saw a large ball of golden starfire floating down to him from Blackstorm’s mouth. He flew up to meet it but found himself stuck as the glowing ball oozed a sticky substance. The substance stuck his wings together, kept his mouth slightly open, and since he couldn’t flap his wings, he started to fall. He managed to get enough starfire up into his throat to send a silver lightning bolt zipping toward Blackstorm. Then he crashed down on the bank near the base of Horsetail Falls.

Even though Eclipse couldn’t see the result, his last silver lightning bolt did considerable damage. Blackstorm had retracted the shield after sending the oozing orb at Eclipse, so his guard was down when the silver bolt hit him. The lightning-bolt made of starfire zipped into Blackstorm’s front legs, nearly breaking the fetlock joints. Blackstorm had been about to try and find the other two black foals to warn them about Eclipse, but then he felt the searing pain of the bolt. He started falling, and when he landed he was unable to stand correctly and passed out from the pain. When he woke up, Eclipse had worked himself of the sticky substance and was gone.

Blackstorm sat up, wincing as his ribs flared in pain from his crash. He sent starfire coursing through his system until the pain was gone. Then he set out on what he had planned to do before crashing. He didn’t know where Eclipse was, but he needed to get to Darkblaze and Nightpearl to warn them. He started out on hoof towards the Sun Herd meadow.