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// Chapter Four: The Second Cylinder Falls 
// Story: The War Of The Worlds 
// by King Of Thieves 
//------------------------------//

	Throughout Equestria that Friday evening, ponies were having dinner,store-owning ponies closed up their shops, fouls were being put to bed, young couples were wandering the lanes, and students were sitting over their books. The daily routine of working, eating, drinking, and sleeping went on as it had for years-as though no planet Mars existed in the sky. 

But in the houses facing the Commons in PonyVille, ponies stayed awake watching the heath burn from the Martians' Heat-Ray.

Now and again the Heat-Ray swept the common, catching a few adventurous souls who had gone out in the darkness to see the Martians. But blackened bodies, lying twisted in death, were all that remained of them.

All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless and untiring at work on the machine that would bring more death and destruction. Now and again a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled out from the cylinder up to sky.

About eleven o'clock columns of Princess Luna's soldiers came through PonyVille and Sweet Apple Acres and formed a cordon around the edge of the common.

A few seconds after midnight, a group of ponies on Chertsey Road outside of PonyVille saw a star fall from the sky into Ever-free Forest to the northeast. The star had a greenish color, and caused a silent but bright flash of light. This was the second cylinder;