The Clash
Dash was in a dark room, dressed in a lab-coat of sorts. She looked around, checking the dusk for any signs of life. She turned her attention back to a small cart covered in various medical equipment. Dash grabbed a scalpel off of a tray, running it over her hoof and observing it. What a nice blade. She giggled, and walked over to a sheet that was hung over a something that was strung between a few wooden posts. She grabbed the sheet with a hoof and pulled it off.
Jason stared back at her, grief in his eyes. "Stop Dash, I know you're still in there." he said. She smiled, throwing her head back in laughter.
"I am Dash. There's nothing new." She shoved the blade through one of the cracks in his armor. "Well, maybe a little." She left the scalpel stuck in him and went to grab another tool from the table. She perused her choices for a while, eventually selecting a tweezers. She chuckled and walked back to Jason. "Open those eyes now." Jason struggled against the chains. "Tisk tisk." She grabbed some metal clips, quickly pulling his eyelids out of the way.
"Dash, you don't have to do this."
"I know I don't have to, but it's so much fun! Now let's see just how compound those eyes really are..."
______________________________________________________
"Dash are you okay?!?! You were screaming and yelling about something, I was getting scared." Scoots yelled, pushing a hoof into Dash's cheek.
Dash awoke with a start, still reeling from her dream. Damn, that was vivid. Still somewhat in dreamland, she tried to get off the couch in a panic but ended up collapsed on the floor. Apparently there were already streams of tears on her face, made worse by the easily recalled memories from the dream. She felt numb.
"Dash, say something!" Scoots yelled. She was the one torturing him, why? What did it mean? The pressure of the cloud on her face seemed to increase and she rolled over, turning her field of vision to include Scoots, who looked like she was having a breakdown on the couch. She finally pulled herself the rest of the way out of the dream, shaking off the residual mental images.
"Scoots, it's okay." She got up off of the floor, then walked over and hugged her. If scoots was back here, that must mean that it was already morning. She glanced up at the clock, noting that it was, at least, still early. They hugged for a few minutes as Scoots tried to pull herself together and Dash continued to feed the rivulets that trickled down her cheeks. Just trying to handle losing Jason was one thing, but that? That was like the nightmare from hell, she could almost feel the cold metal of the scalpel on her hoof as she tortured Jason. She wasn't in control of the dream, but that didn't mean that she didn't feel responsible. She just prayed that whatever they had done to Jason hadn't been worse than that.
"Dash, why were you acting like that?" She finally asked.
"I--- I had a nightmare about Jason. I was in the middle of torturing him." She sighed as a few residual images flashed through her head.
"You wouldn't really do that, would you Dash?"
"No, of course not Scoots. I guess I should just start from the beginning here and explain the nightmare. Jason's been gone these last couple nights, because he was taken by some stallions. I want to get him back, because he's my special somepony, as I'm sure you know by now."
"Is that why you were yelling yesterday morning?"
"Well, partially. I was yelling at my friends because they never trusted Jason, and were ungrateful for not doing so. I kinda freaked out a little more than I should have, but I think I got my point across. I spent the rest of yesterday getting a plan together with two of the few ponies on my side, and I'm going to go save Jason today."
"Is he going to be okay Dash?" She could see that Scoot's eyes had become foggy again. She threw an arm around Scoots and pulled her into her chest.
"I hope so Scoots." She felt part of her chest dampen as she continued to pat her on the back. They sat there for a few minutes, the only noise being Scoots' quiet whimpering and the growing wetness on her chest. Eventually Scoots pulled her head away and looked up at Dash.
"I know you have to save him, but don't leave me alone, okay?"
"Yeah, Scoots, I won't." She really needed to cheer this kid up. "You wanna help me get ready then? I can show you a pair of knives Jason had made for me."
"Yeah, okay." She said. Dash smiled, at the very worst, she still had Scoots. They both trotted across the room over to the pile of armor and weapons that was still leftover from the day they had gotten back. She sighed in reminiscence as she grabbed part of a foreleg chunk. She looked through one of the holes, peering at Scoots, who let out a quiet giggle. She tied on the forelegs, then got up to grab the box. She carried it over to scoots, laying it in front of her.
"Care to open it, Scoots?" She nodded, letting a small amount of excitement play over her face. She briefly struggled with the latch before getting it open and lifting the lid. She mouthed the word 'wow' before carefully pulling out one of the knives, balancing it between the two of her hooves.
"What do these things mean, Dash?"
"I dunno Scoots, I think they're just designs. Maybe I could ask Twilight. Hopefully she isn't annoyed at me, not that I really care how she feels, but because I won't get information out of her if she's mad."
"Are you still friends with them Dash?"
"I'm not sure Scoots. They didn't really trust Jason, and they thought that I was wrong about trusting him. I'll have to see how they act around me next time I see them. Help me get the rest of this on." Scoots walked over and pulled a few strings tight, locking Dash's chest plate in place and completing the armor set. She moved her legs around, running through every conceivable movement before deciding that the armor was on correctly.
"Are you going to have to kill the ponies that took Jason?"
"I don't know, Scoots." She threw the belt of explosives on. "If they surrender I won't have to. Do you not want me to kill them?"
"No, I couldn't care less if those jerks died." Dash looked over at the clock and jumped.
"Listen, Scoots, I gotta go. You wanna see the explosion?" She finished tying the second knife onto her foreleg. They fit like a dream.
"Yeah!"
"Okay, I'll stick you on a cloud pretty far away. At any hint of trouble you gotta run though, Squirt."
"But I haven't had anything to eat!" Dash ran into the kitchen, returning with a couple apples. She threw one over to Scoots.
"We gotta eat it on the wing." Dash walked over to the trash can, rapidly taking a few bites of the apple when she realized that she couldn't hold both that and the bomb. She awkwardly dragged it over to the door, rolling it along the front yard.
"Ready to go, Scoots?"
"Yeah, how are you going to carry that?"
"Simple." She pushed it over the side before diving after it. She flapped back up a few moments later, holding it with her legs. "I don't need my legs if I'm flying." She smirked. "Now let's go get Jason back."
__________________________________________________________
Dash quickly glided towards her destination, noticing a glint behind a bush nearby. She landed on the ground, hearing Scoots land behind her, and set down the trash can. She pushed the leaves of the bush behind, scrunching up her face in confusion when she saw the source of the glint. It was a long thing, and it had several things sticking out of it. One of the things held a lens. There were several other slightly curved blocks of metal scattered around. She shook her head and sighed, she couldn't figure out what it was, but it definitely wasn't equestrian. She covered the thing in leaves, she'd come back for it later.
"It's something from Jason's country Scoots. We'll have to come back later to get it."
"Do you know what it does?"
"I honestly have no idea. Maybe a shovel? Let's just get going." She grabbed the trash can again, quickly lifting off of the ground.
She landed near the brick building, carefully depositing the bomb before turning to the others present. She was slightly disappointed when the only ponies there were Luna and Heavy, both wearing light armor. Heavy was weilding a spear.
"Where's everypony else?"
"Called in sick today, bastards." Heavy replied.
"Ah, yes, but there should be a couple guards coming. I sent for them lat night, in case something like this were to happen." Dash let out a sigh of relief. "Why did you bring a trash can?"
"Aha! That's how we're going to get through the wall. All we need now is something heavy and mostly immobile to kind of direct the explosion into the wall." Luna rolled a dumpster on the other side of the bomb from the wall.
"Like that?"
"No, we need more stuff." She started shoving more of the trash cans and boxes behind the dumpster to keep it in place. After the seventeenth trash can she figured she'd added enough.
"Okay, so listen," Dash started, "That thing's going to go off, and it should blow through that wall. Then I'm going to chuck a few of these things inside," she gestured to the fash-bangs on her belt. "And most of them should be stunned. That's when we'll go in, and hopefully sweep the floor with these pieces of shit. A word of warning, get really far away from that explosion, if the shockwave doesn't kill you, the shrapnel will."
"Princess, when are those guards supposed to get here?" Heavy asked. The princess pointed a hoof in response. Two ponies were trotting down the street in full royal armor, one of them an earth pony, the other a unicorn. They stopped in front of Luna and saluted, looking around at the rest of the rag tag team.
"At ease, soldiers." They dropped their solutes.
"What's the plan, Princess?" One of them asked.
"To simplify for you, we art going to blow a hole in that wall, then go inside after Dash gives us the signal and take out the hostiles inside. Is that correct, Dash?"
"Yeah. Have either of you seen combat?"
"Yes, Boss. We were assigned to sector G8 in Canterlot along with the rest of our squad."
"Where is the rest of your squad?"
"They're still M.I.A. ma'am."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Stop with the formalities by the way. This should be basically the same as it was out there, but with ponies instead of griffins." She turned to Luna. "Luna, can you deal with at least a few of them when we blow our way in?" The Princess laughed.
"I'm sure I can deal with at least a few, if that's all you're going to allot for me. It's been quite a while since I've been able to outright fight something. My sister says that violence by the princesses is no longer looked up to like it was." She smirked. "But this is off the record. Are we taking them dead or alive?"
"It doesn't matter. Their boss is in there though, watch out for him. The captured pony said that he was pretty freaked out by the guy, he might have a large amount of power." Dash turned to Scoots, who had been watching intently the whole time. "Get to that cloud over there if you want to watch, Scoots. If something goes wrong, I want you to fly into town as fast as you can, okay?"
"Yeah, Dash." She jumped forward, throwing her arms around Dash in a hug. "Be careful." She could hear a few 'aww's from behind her.
"I will be Scoots. Now get over there so we can get started." She nodded and took off, quickly ascending to the cloud. She had gotten much better at flying in the last two weeks, Dash noticed. She turned back to the group, putting a hoof up to her mouth to tighten the string around one of the knives.
"You guys ready to blow some shit up?" There was a resounding cheer from the team. "Luna, will you do the honors of lighting the fuse? As soon as you do, get back to a safe distance."
"Ah, yes. I would love to." She tapped her hooves together happily before trying to regain her composure and walking over. Her horn glowed and she gestured for them to get away as she took off into the air. Dash pulled out a couple of flash-bangs and got ready to prime them as she hovered back at least fifty extra feet. The five of them waited in silence as the fuse continued to burn. It was a long wait.
Her nervousness grew as the time period continued to drag on. The worst part of this plan was not knowing what was inside. Everything was based on them successfully surprising the gang members. They definitely had an advantage, but that never seemed to help them in the past. They'd just always squeaked by on the slimmest of margins, why would this plan be any different?
BANG!!!
The dumpster fell over backwards as trash and dirt flew everywhere. A small mushroom shaped fireball floated past the top of the building as debris started to rain down, creating a light pattering noise. Dash took off towards the opening that was making itself known through the rapidly clearing smoke cloud. She pulled the pins in midair, throwing them through the rather sizable hole as she neared.
Bang!!! Bang!!!
The two slightly muffled bangs sounded as the other ponies rushed up to the entrance. Luna got inside first, immediately picking up several ponies in her magic. They briefly struggled before going limp, and she tossed them into the wall. Dash looked over at Luna, who was smirking.
"What, I can't have some fun of my own?" She said, continuing to smirk. Dash shrugged and looked around for an exit. An open door led out of the room into a long hallway, and the five of them crept through while making sure they weren't running into a trap. As Dash went around the corner into another room, a stallion jumped out of the shadows, diving at her with a knife. She knocked the knife to the side and put her other hoof in front of her chest, impaling the stallion using his own momentum. They ended up face to face, and Dash watched as a trickle of blood flowed out the side of his mouth before she threw him into a corner.
"Clear!" She loudly whispered back to a pony at the door, who turned out to be Heavy. She snuck back out the door, moving to the next room in the long hallway with him by her side. They entered and split up, Heavy immediately taking out a pony that was too slow to get out of his chair while Dash sparred with the other, more ready stallion. He swung at her with a knife, jumping back to avoid her counterattack. He repeated the process a second time, eyes going wide when he jumped backwards into a wall. Dash smirked before quickly running a blade across his exposed throat and throwing him to the ground.
She looked over to see Heavy finally kick the stallion off of his spear, and they both ran back out, nearly colliding with the other three ponies. The only room left was at the end of the hall. They snuck along the walls, careful to not burst into a situation they weren't ready to handle. Dash grabbed another flash-bang, making it obvious that she was going to use it before tossing it into the other room and covering her ears. From what she could see before she closed her eyes, the others did the same.
They all rushed into the room as a stallion was thrown aside by Luna, crashing into the wall and going limp. Dash punched another across the face, stabbing him with the blade from her other hoof as he fell. She heard several other bodies slump to the ground. That left two ponies in the room. A pony and a changeling, that is.
Dash felt tears start to pool in her eyes when she saw what Jason looked like, he was cracked all over, covered in blood. One of his eyes was looking over at the group of them. He smirked, wincing a bit when some of the cracks on his face moved around. She managed to tear her gaze away from him and focus on the stallion that was standing on the raised platform that held Jason. He was laughing maniacally, something you really didn't want to see from somepony you'd thought you had beaten. There was an almost unnatural darkness around him, obscuring his face and most of his grey coat. The baseball bat like weapon was floating in the air next to him.
"You think you have me beaten? Not now, not ever! I have resources, I have more power than any of you. I have what I came for, so I'll just be taking my leave. Expect another visit from me, because mark my words, I'll be back. And next time I'll bring an army!" There was a burst of light and the pony disappeared. A tendril of smoke rose off of the platform where he was standing.
Dash flew over to Jason, struggling with the manacles that bound him. Luna's magic extended to the chains, and Dash watched as the chains unlocked and opened. She managed to grab Jason before he hit the ground, and carefully laid him out in a way that looked somewhat comfortable, propping him up with a hoof. Her tears started to flow again as she looked him over more closely. He looked terrible. Worse than terrible, actually. Besides the cracks that spiderwebbed over his body, she could see that he was missing part of an ear, and that a sizable chunk of armor on his side was missing entirely. One of his fangs was chipped more than it had been, and was now missing at least an inch and a half of it's length. The tissue around his closed eye was so swollen he couldn't even open it. And worst of all, they had somehow managed to completely saw off part of the very bottom of his hoof. She had chipped off part of one of hers before, and it was one of the most painful weeks of her life.
He focused his eye on her, seemingly unable to form words. Finally, he got some out as he smiled up at her. "Dash," He chuckled lightly. "I knew you'd come for me." He coughed and contorted in pain as he re-closed his eye and his head lolled sideways.
"Jason!" she gently slapped his cheek, which had apparently not received any mercy whatsoever. There was no reaction. She shook his body around, still not managing to get him to re-open his eye.
"JASON!!!"
my feels!
Good chap bro! thanks for this!
He got what he wanted? What in the hay that means? Oh, don't tell me some vital info from Earth... wait... that thing she found... just dawned on me... a sniper rifle? Makes sense. Long, protrusions, one of them with lens, shells/bullets/rounds/whatever around...
Wait, why am I even rambling about stupid piece of stuff from Earth? Jason is in critical state!
Also, interesting take on Princesses. Obviously not really that powerful. I mean, Luna couldn't stop one mad stallion teleporting away? Kind of lame... nah, it's okay!
Can't wait for next chapter!
This post was delivered to you by midnight fatigue!
my feels if the story end with his death
you kill him and i will send you hatemail
just voicing how much i hate the idea of you killing him off
retarded villan... hate you all just cuz...
Wow what a steriotypical villain
YOU WILL PAY FOR HARMING MY PEACEFUL BRETHREN!
COME! BRING ME YOUR ARMY! THEY WILL SERVE NOTHING BETTER THAN KINDLING FOR MY FLAMES *cue maniacal laughter*
I am loving where this is going.
If you kill off Jason......
and another near death experience for jason, what exactly did that "mastermind want" i hope the interogation of the ponies they left alive will pull up something
oh and btw when jason recovers will he be using the scoped rifle in future battles
Ohh....How BADLY I want that jackass to pay. I don't want him DEAD....nonono...I just wanna...throw him into the Rift and erase him from ever having existed.
'Just because I happen to own a bunch of guns is no excuse'
XDD
you killed the sad mood of the story!
2059098
Now where did I put that rifle of mine?
i dont think he will die because if he did there would be sad/tragedy tags on this story so chances are good he will recover.
I just hope that villians death is brutal and painful!
as long as you don't kill off the main character, I'm happy.
What I don't get is how the fuck that dude's more powerful than a princess
2059242 YOU HAVE A NUKE?!?!?!?
2059730
I HAVE A FLAMETHROWER!!!
HUDDA HUDDA HURR BUCKERS! (Hope you get the reference)
2059747 huh well I didn't get the reference but I can help you defeat the army with my M.A.C cannon
2059760
I think the 'hurder hurder hurr!' is the sound pyro makes in tf2
2059768 hmmm ( googles it ) yep!
Well there really is a third type for HiE fics. Where the character is knowledgeable, but not in the MLP is a TV show type way, they could just happen to have knowledge of them existing. Ive seen a couple of those types and they are generally good.
Anyway good chapter
Vanilla HIE, I can agree that at this point in the site's history, they are getting annoying. Anyway MOAR!
The villian has an army, HA! Bring it bitch i have a death star
Here's how I would kill that smoking jackass
Step 1: bind him magically
Step 2: enchant BIG sharp thing (I prefer the scythe ) to instantly heal wounds and to quadruple the pain
Step 3: have fun
Is Jason k?
This is an exciting chapter, I knew Jason was going to be in bad shape but couldn't imagine how(Will we find out what happened to him after his capture?). Also what was the deal with the cupcakes dream(is it suppose to mean something?)
Well, just as the devils advocate for the "becomes friends instantly" genre of human in equestrian fanfics, that is pretty much what happened to Twilight, when she was trying not to make friends. Although, yes, it is often taken to far.
Oh, and what I would do to the bastard is throw him in the psuedoelemental plane of pain.(basically like being crucio'd forever)
Let me guess... That enemy is also a changeling?
2059098 I think It may not be a sniper rifle, It has curved clips. It could be a battle rifle or assault rifle with a scope attached.
...Did Luna forget that she knows magic just so that Dash could blow something up? Twilight's shown plenty of magical strength to do something that minor, so I'd be very surprised if Luna could not.
And those author notes... wow. Let's see...
I'm not sure if the first paragraph is intended to end with an implied threat/posing, or is just unintentionally ironic. Or both. Simply put, it is very easy, and requires no effort, to simply click the dislike button and move on. Most people who are going to downvote aren't going to have the interest in the story to stick around and say why, they're going to downvote and look for something they like. It's kind of a flaw of having such an easy system to put a permanent negative mark on a story. They're not doing it because you're some "scary dude." It's not cowardice. At most, it's laziness.
MLP fics in general, not just shipping, tend to be skewed more toward females because that's what we get in the show. Of the characters that get lots of development, almost all are mares. More developed characters are generally more interesting. Even in the background, we tend to see many more mares than stallions. It's hardly surprising that fanfics would write about the more interesting and developed characters.
And it's a greatly amusing irony to see an author complain about HiE fics in the author notes of their own HiE fic. That's... impressive.
2061989
Yeah, that's better guess. Midnight is not a good time to have enlightenment for me...
Still intriguing. I mean, what next? Modern jet? WMD?
2062027
Okay, lets see. Luna COULD have blown through the wall, but it would've taken time because of all the protective spells, and notified the ponies inside, which is something they wanted to avoid.
Now, with the author's notes, I put a comment in the first chapter saying to comment if you downvote. Chapter one is only seven hundred words. It's pretty much impossible to miss, therefore it can't only be laziness, because if it was, they'd just avoid the whole process and skip downvoting. It's not really a threat, just a joke.
And mares, shipping isn't just skewed towards them, most fics are between mares. Normally I wouldn't care that much, if most of them weren't all the same, but a huge amount of them are, and involve shipping that's already been done in nearly the same way. Therefore I find the repetitively annoying. It's not that hard to develop a new character, or a background pony.
I started this story about two days ago… I can finally say it.
MOAR
2062364
It just seems strange that one of the princesses is weak enough to not blast through a wall that is destroyed by a crude serpentine powder bomb. We've magic more powerful than that from Twilight, and I'd be surprised if Luna were that much weaker than her.
Downvoting takes a single click. That's a lot quicker and easier than writing a comment explaining why you're downvoting something. It's easy to be lazy and spend half a second to click a single button indicating you don't like something, rather than spending a minute to explain why you don't like it. That doesn't mean there's some nefarious deeper reason to it. Just leave instructions for people to do something doesn't mean they're going to give that request any weight.
And of course there are more F/F shippings than M/F shippings. There are a lot more developed female characters in the show. Most of the background ponies are female, too! There's also a large number of people who strongly prefer show characters over OC characters, and shipping OC characters with existing show characters often goes very poorly. And even while F/F pairings are more common (With the main six skewing the results pretty heavily all on their own), there's still quite a few M/F stories, too. The only thing that's actually uncommon (Heck, outright rare) would be M/M pairings.
As for originality, well... it's fan-fiction. It's going to be hard to find anything original. As much as I value originality, I'd rather take a story that's unoriginal but thoroughly well-done and enjoyable than one that's original, but simply written for crap.
My god this is like playing LSD: Dream Emulator all over again
If you dont know what that is look it up on youtube. It messes with your mind man
oh god... I can't wait for the next chapter!
You could really work on your characterization. It feels like nearly everyone talks the same way, and especially the rescue from Midnight Canterlot Castle felt awkward - Dash couldn't possibly have known where in the castle they were (and it probably would have been underground anyway), and the mane six and Celestia felt dead while discussing what to do.
There was a lot more I found wrong, but can't remember any details and can't be bothered to read through the whole story again taking notes. Thumbs down for all the flow breaks, but have a fav for somehow keeping me interested enough to read 158k words in one sitting.
2064421 two things i would like to say... most likely under the castle is very little rock and wouldn't you want to put an interrogation room at the top of the castle so rescuers would get tired out before going in there and bye the time they got back that there would be a wall of gaurds?
2066294
When ~1/3 of your population can fly, you'd be far better off putting anything you want secure deep inside the castle, rather than right by a big window any of them could fly in.
Listen to this piece from Half-Life if you want a good experiance while reading start it at the explosion C:
Heres another Good one
"Luna, can you deal with at least a few of them when we blow our way in?" The Princess laughed.
"I'm sure I can deal with at least a few, if that's all you're going to allot for me. It's been quite a while since I've been able to outright fight something. My sister says that violence by the princesses is no longer looked up to like it was."
1st ) Alicorns in this story are totally underpowered.
2st ) Equestria is lately having crisis one after another, so why is it so hard for princesses to not sit on they flanks and be useful, what is good of powerful Alicorns if they are so useless when it matter the most ?
3st ) Celestia alone should be able to take down far more Griffons then team Green-Bean could, and yet she end up to be a weak princess who need to be saved ( weak and fragile princess locked in the castle who need to be saved, typical ).
As much as I like this story, reading of Celestia and Luna being useless still annoy me.
" It's been quite a while since I've been able to outright fight something. " and what about Griffons what invaded not many weeks ago ?
Do not tell me Luna with all her power was giving orders and doing nothing when others who are far weaker then her had to fight and die ?
"You think you have me beaten? Not now, not ever! I have resources, I have more power than any of you. I have what I came for, so I'll just be taking my leave. Expect another visit from me, because mark my words, I'll be back. And next time I'll bring an army!"
Did he just said that he have more power and resources to the face of the princess ?
And what's up with him leaving so easy, come on, why not one knocked him out when he was busy talking, why no one prepared anty teleportation spell, it was very simple that every Unicorn can teleport to escape if he have enough power and experience with magic, so why no one prepared for this ?
I am glad that Luna had her moment to shine, but I still fell she could do far more, for example, as princess of the Night who sleep only during the day, she would ask RainbowDash to bring explosives, blow up wall ASAP, and even with every pony tired, she should be in great condition to just get in and capture every pony ( 1 day less to torture Jason, not to mention that defenders would also be sleepy at night ), or she could just blow up the wall, so what if it would alert enemies inside, they would have no time to react since Luna could get in fast and strike.
I really fell like this part was forced just to give villains more time to torture changeling and for evil villain plot to be accomplished.
2059098
2062027
I agree totally with both of you, as much as I like this story, I noticed that Alicorns ( princesses ) are greatly underpowered, all the talk about how Jason could kill Celestia many times if he wanted to with bombs sounds far to easy, also the way how Celestia wanted to surrender to Griffons without even fighting them or how she was rescued by team green-beam ( rescue princess imprisoned in the castle, sounds familiar ).
And the fact how Luna mention that it was so long since she had to fight, when there was war with Griffons not many weeks ago, with mean that she probably not even fought.
And the fact that Luna could not blow up magically secured wall ( when explosives could ).
However I noticed that not just princesses seems underpowered, I think Unicorns, Pegasi and Earth Ponies seems underpowered as well, just to make explosives and gadgets far more useful, also the fact that stronger material ponies could make was Iron and having steel would be revolution, technically it seems to make sense, but there is so many gems all over the place, there are dragons what scales let them swim in lava, in MLP show ponies can withstand more then armoured vehicles can, magic attack should penetrate rocks as good as missile luncher, and I am sure Sonic Rainboom let RainbowDash fly faster then speed of sound ( what is 50% of speed what Jet can achieve ).
However even if ponies powers are nerfed for the good of the story, I still think that Luna and Celestia are far to weak, and why no one captured the boss or prepared anty teleportation field in case someone would, well, I do not know, teleport himself away ?
2068851
You should probably wait until the next chapter, because things tend to not make sense until they're explained. If this were the end of the story or something I'd understand, but seriously, wait a few chapters until you start mentioning arguments that are only backed up by the last couple paragraphs of a cliffhanger chapter. Maybe I should just release chapters in groups, that'd avoid the people that ask questions that are rendered completely useless by the next thousand words.
2069279
I know I may react in haste, but this story already have a lot chapters, and so far I learned to expect Celestia and Luna to be useless in it.
Even if you nerfed ponies power and durability to make to more balanced towards weapons and explosives, there is no way Celestia and Luna can be so weak and useless as you show them in this story.
And the way how everyone decided that they need to sleep entire night when a potential prisoner is tortured behind a wall in front of them even having a fully powered Alicorn of the night on they size and probably sleeping and tired guards inside was so disappointing, so I kind of expect this story to go in bad direction from now on.
Even now I can imagine how Luna is walking in dark allay and one pony with knives attack her, and as result Luna spend week in hospital in critical condition even since we have changeling healer who withstand 10 time more punishment in this story in most of chapters, the power balance in this story just make me expect the worse scenario.
2069386
Yeah, it's an unfortunately common method of making a character an author favors "look better," by having the other characters simply perform so much worse. It's really not a good way of doing it.
2069550
I know, it is used very often, and it is something I do not like in the stories, I mean, there are a lot stories I like, but this element in them still annoy me.
And there are many ways to make main character look good without making everyone around him worse and incompetent.
Many autors are afraid that letting Celestia and Luna to be useful and competent in the story or get chance to shine is like throwing mary sue or giving the good guys far to much power and unbalance the story, but in my opinion, it is not hard to avoid, like a story about Twilight becoming Vampony, Luna send Twilight to find changeling hive and Chrysalis because she have cure what can turn Twilight back to normal, she give her map and just leave, because operantly sending Vamp Twilight and Spike into badlands to face Chrysalis and her entire army is balanced, and letting Luna join Twilight on this adventure would be unbalanced.
Many fans of MLP show are annoyed that Celestia and Luna are always kept out of the way, that they never have character development, and autors of fanfics are doing exactly the same in they stories.
I gotta find Jason..
So far your story has been 90%+ original.
I hope those guns you have in your house have over 8 rounds in the MAG (if they are guns that accept mags)