Seaquestria, Throne Room
Around 48 hours after Canterlot Occupation
As the Mane 5 and Spike led Princess Skystar and the guards away for one small thing, Twilight Sparkle put her plan into motion to steal the Pearl. Given the apathy of the Seaponies-no Hippogriffs and not giving a proper enough explanation as to why they can't help, they would most likely be disappointed a third time and be stuck in Seaquestria for the rest of their lives while their family and friends are captured or even worse.
"So Twilight, you are a fan of Pinkie's songs and you definitely need one right now given your mood. Why are you staying here instead of joining them? I noticed you didn't come with us when Pinkie started singing so I came back."
Twilight froze and proceeded to turn around. A very angry purple puffer-fish is glaring at her.
"What are you doing here?" Twilight asked her assistant.
"I was about to ask you the same thing. What are you going to do next now that you plan to steal the pearl? Disappoint our friends? Make enemies of the Hippogriffs and trap them indefinitely in here while making Equestria more enemies?" Spike retorted.
"Don't stop me, Spike. If they can't help us, then I need to steal the Pearl. We alone are not enough."
"And then what???!!!! You never think these things through!! This is exactly what happened when you found out about Starswirl being in Limbo. You set him and his friends free while never considering about the Pony Of Shadows!!"
"First, I need the Pearl. Then I'll think of something else. Besides, it all worked out in the end."
"No, you won't!! I seen this sort of situation happen to you before. You would just freak out and huddle into a corner and then apologize to your friends before cleaning up your mess!! If it wasn't for modern conveniences and Stygian's resisting, we would have lost the Elements or worse!!"
"Stop it, Spike!! I know what do I have to do, I'll deal with the consequences later!! Right now, while we are all singing, dancing and living it up in here, our friends and family are being sold with price tags on them!! I saw what happened in Klugetown and realized that Equestria isn't going to be simply taken over. It's going to be stripped of it's wealth and population!! They are going to be reduced to slaves while we comfortably live it up!!! Shining Armor and Flurry Heart in peril once they are done selling Mom and Dad to the highest bidder and the moment Tempest finds out about the 5th alicorn..." Twilight's face was drained of her color at the realization. "We need action now!! There's no way the Seaponies would be of any help!! You heard from Princess Skystar and Queen Novo, they bailed underwater the moment The Storm King arrived. They had the home field advantage and they just threw it away on first contact to rot in here until this whole thing supposedly blow over!! Not a single line about how they lost their best fighters in combat or anything like that would justify why they can't be of assistance!! Even if they said yes, there's no way they would be of help now!! All we can do now is to get the only useful thing which is the Pearl..."
If there are tears from Twilight, it definitely can't be seen since they're underwater. Spike took in all this in stunned silence and only had this to say:
"THEN I'M BEGGING YOU AS A FRIEND, FAMILY AND YOUR ASSISTANT!!! PRINCESS OF FRIENDSHIP, IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE AND ASK YOURSELF THESE TWO QUESTIONS: 'WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I ATTEMPT STEAL THE PEARL?' AND 'WHAT WOULD BE THE CONSEQUENCES?'!!"
"ARRRGGHHHH!!!" With a grunt, Twilight rammed her head against the wall in frustration.
The Hippogriffian airspace, Tempest's airship
Around 48 hours after Canterlot Occupation
Tempest Shadow hovered over the airspace with all the ship's scopes looking for the Princess. After scuttling that ship of traitors and liars while leaving them to fall to their doom, she found out that the Princess is going after the site of her previous conquest of Mount Aris. All she needs now is for her to show up in disappointment and her horn would be restored.
"There's nothing stopping me from my horn being restored now. I can finally be normal again."
Grubber was eating some cake out of earshot and decided to ask Tempest this single question:
"So I've been wondering...what's the reason you want your horn restored so badly again? Aside from it looking cool again, how are you going to rejoin the society of the country you just enslaved and destroyed? You are from there and not some other ponyland right?"
The gears turned in the commander's head as she thought back on her past actions, she could only respond with silence.
I'm amused that Grubber's question seemed to work better than Spike's. Although Twilight has a point, why DIDN'T the seaponies just turn into dragons or something and fight back?
What Spike should REALLY be asking is why he always gets turned into the humiliating stuff. First a dog, now a pufferfish.
8793795
I go by a set pattern after establishing the speaking order in a coversation. For example, I set the speaker order to A,B and C in the first three sentences then set the rest of the conversation in that pattern until stated otherwise, that way I can avoid having to write redundant "X said" over and over, which will no doubt get repetitive. I try to get them to name drop the recipients to help the readers know who was being spoken to.
8793841
Yeah I dropped the ball at the Star Wars bit as I was trying tell them that they can shoot lightning out of their hooves and wings using an example. Should have said that it's like an O&O wizard casting lightning and sound based spells instead.
Spitfire knows that RD will come back with her friends to come save them. The difference is that instead just sitting on their asses getting captured or doing nothing as usual, they still need to protect western equestria and the civilian part of cloudsdale. When the Trojan cake is triggered (I will get on that in a later chapter), they will assist in the liberation of the populace/background ponies and draw away most of the forces in the city especially the airships parked there from the outside to clear a path for the Mane 6 for them to get to the palace. You can already guess how the guards at the palace be handled. Considering that canon has the entire squad captured, this is already a step up.
8793906
Mistmane is talking to her descendant Rarity met when she went to get the flower.
Somnambula read about Daring Do as a storybook character. She didn't think the latter would real too. Didn't include a scene where Daring gives the location of the tomb and how they got there because I thought it would be filler. The scene with Hisan was meant to be him speaking to Somnambula from the Equestrian Egyptian afterlife.
Flash was in denial about the Royal Legion being disbanded since it was his only anchor left of his old world as far as canon shows. The museum was the breaking point. The Pillars were taught to read as part of their crash course to avoid the mistakes Luna made. Since he was running around in armor, it made him stick out like a sore thumb attracting a crowd and he nearly got arrested over mistaken theft of museum artifacts, so he had to prove that he was the real deal.
Rockhoof was meant to be the opposite situation. He came to terms with what happened to the Mighty Helm before he arrived as he knows that moping around wouldn't do anything. Captain Steela would give him one hell of an earful from the afterlife if he breaks down.
Shadow Lock was destroying records of Stygian as per usual. He heard about what happened in Ponehenge after giving Sunburst the Legends of Magic issues and immediately ran to kill Stygian.
I felt that the 8 items needed to be remembered so I tied them into the storyline.
Finally the Royal Guard in question has been assisting in handling the stray shadows that tried to backstab the Pillars from behind. Should have stated that aside from that one sentence. Not to mention, they have been fighting the main guy himself while Discord tracked down the Pillars.
The YouTube links are meant to be BGM that I think would fit the situation. They were meant to be heard when reading that section.
8793911
Spike realized that Twilight is about to make the biggest mistake of her life when she didn't come along with them for "One Small Thing", complaining about being a pufferfish is the last thing on his mind right now.
Overall, how do you think I should have handled the scene transitions? Oh yeah, Ponyville is coming up next and I have the line-up of heroes planned.
8794518
I'm not sure I agree with all your points, but I appreciate you replying to my critiques so well. I still think you needed to be clearer at several points, especially in regards to who's talking, and at least DESCRIBING who they're speaking to. Like, if you hadn't had Mistmane refer to that one pony as her descendant I wouldn't know who she was speaking to.
As for scene transitions, most of them are okay but other times it's just the character saying, 'Here I am at X' rather than 'after a short (blank), X reached Y' and maybe saying what Y looks like.