The cream-coloured earth pony dived out of the way of the beam at the last possible millisecond, rolling to the left on the soft lawn, now mostly torn up by the cruel metal claws of the house-sized chicken mecha. Sitting atop the mechanical beast, the mad hippogriff Star Glider cackled with glee. "Such good sport you've been! Squawk! But now, Ferret Keeper, your fate is innnnneeevitable!" The steel grey robot rooster stomped its feet, shaking the ground and spraying clods of earth everywhere, recharging its glowing beak for another shot. His own beak half-open with glee, blue-green crest feathers puffed out in all directions, the half-bird continued "Nopony can escape the featherisation rays of the Doom Fowl! Resistance is useless!".
Ferret Keeper spun around, her dusky pink tail streaming behind her; planting her forehooves and looking back over her shoulder at the crazy creation and its crazed creator. "Not today Star Glider! As long as ponies still run free, as long as we still have adorable muzzles and fluffy ears, you will never take away our ponyhood!" Transfixed and delighted by the sudden improvement in her monologuing skills, Star Glider didn't realise what she was doing until too late. With a few swift kicks the mare sprayed sticky mud up into the air, coating both glowing red optical sensors of the giant robot rooster.
"ERROR! ERROR! VISION IMPAIRED! GUIDANCE MALFUCTION!" it bellowed in a grating monotone, bucking and swaying wildly. "No, no you stupid machine, override, override!" cried the hippogriff stallion, as he stabbed desperately at the control panel on the thing's back. Ferret Keeper danced gracefully around the lawn, twisting to avoid the featherisation beam now firing wildly. The coruscating ray struck the sole lawn ornament still standing, a marble unicorn with water spraying from its horn, and in an explosion of magically conjured featherdown transformed it into a statue of a cross-eyed griffon with water dribbling from its beak.
"You feathered fiend! huff, huff... That was my favourite water feature!" cried the panting mare. Cantering and sliding over to place herself behind the now ruined statue, she prepared to buck again. "This ends here, you bird brained menance!" she screamed, waiting for the precise moment as the still out-of-control mecha-fowl reared up and exposed the glowing weak point on its underside. Understanding her intent a second too late to do anything about it, the rouge hippogriff shouted back "No, wait! Squawk! We can work this out! Don't..."
With the precise, powerful kick that is the signature of an earth pony pushed to violence, both hooves struck the ugly griffon statue at the same microsecond, propelling it at transonic speeds into the exposed reactor coupling. The projectile slammed into the machine's exposed innards with a tremendous crack, bang and fireworks display. The mecha rooster got off one deafening, synthesised SQUAK before its pony-sized steel head popped clean off, leaving smokes, sparks and hydralic fluid pouring from the severed neck.
"Argh!" shouted Star Glider as he was forced to leap from his creation's back, flapping his oversized wings desperately for altitude as the thing went wild, crashing through the picket fence and stomping into the street. "More like Doomed Fowl, ha!" shouted Ferret Keeper gleefully as she galloped behind, watching the erratic half-avian inventor totally failing to find a way to salvage his creation. The thing stomped wildly through the streets of Ponyville, with ponies of all kinds and colours milling about and screaming and dashing out of the way of its flailing steel talons, smashing windows with its flailing steel pinions and setting fire to rooftops with the sparks spurting from its severed neck. After barely a minute of this chaos, the robot finally collided with the Ponyville Memorial Fountain and both burst apart into a pile of smoking junk and marble chunks, the still-spraying water conveniently extinguishing the massive fire. Fortunately nopony was sitting next to the fountain; it was Tuesday after all.
"Nooo, noooo, my Doom Rooster, cut short in your prime, so young, so beautiful, squawk!" wailed Star Glider. This did not go unnoticed. "That's him!" shouted Cloudkicker, who had been desperately directing rainclouds over the burning thatch before the fires coud spread. "That crazy hippogriff again! This is all his fault!". Pegasi began to converge on the hovering, defeated Star Glider, but he immediately began a new monologue which froze then in their tracks. "You may have won this round, Ferret Keeper, but I'll be back! You ponies can't resist birdification forever! My next creation will be even more irresistable, and once you have a nice coat of feathers and a shapely beak you will surely agree to join me in my takeover of Mount Aris!".
"Dream on, Star Glider!" the cream-furred mare shouted back. "This pony will never sport a beak, at least not so long as you display such reckless disregard for proper lawn care!" With that the mismeric monologue effect expired and the pegasi surged forward, hoping to bring the demi-pony outlaw to the Justice of Celestia. They would have no such luck; the exchange had given him time to light the fuse on the giant firework rocket strapped to his back. "Soooo loooong, poooooniesssss!" he cackled as the solid fuel ignited and propelled him rapidly up to and through the sound barrier.
The ponies were left with a few loose feathers drifting to the ground and a faint, distant "Squawk!" as the hippogriff vanished over the horizon. Oh and the massive black smoke trail that settled over Ponyville, causing much coughing and complaining, and the steaming ruins of the giant rooster mecha where their fountain used to be. They'd have to break out one of the three perfect duplicates kept in a nearby warehouse for exactly this kind of event. Ferret Keeper sighed and trotted back towards Mr Rich's garden, wondering if she'd be able to bill him for all the emergency remedial groundworks she'd have to do. Perhaps she could convince him that a six foot polished steel chicken head would make a lovely replacement sculpture for the marble unicorn that just gave its life in the line of duty?