The Encounter in the Woods
The Magic Cone
By Fyld
Princess Twilight Sparkle was walking through the Everfree Forest, for whatever insane reason, when she heard a noise that sounded like a thousand ponies just said, “Whop.” Twilight was intrigued by the noise, then wondered why a thousand ponies would be in the same general area and say “whop” all together, at the same time.
Then, she saw it: a sleek, white vehicle, descending from the sky. It was like nothing else she has ever encountered before. It whined noiselessly through the sky, and, when it was close to landing, unfolded four, long, sleek legs in a ballet of technology. All Twilight could do was gawk at it. Then, as the ship landed on the soft earth beneath it, Twilight straightened up and reminded her that, whomever wishes to see her, she needed to make a good first impression. She spread out her wings and cleared her throat, mentally preparing a good, inspiring speech to say to the aliens.
When a ramp quietly extended itself from the vehicle’s side that was facing her, in which, she presumed, was the rear end of the vehicle, and the hatchway, that the ramp extended from, opened, she saw that the occupants were all obviously identical, shiny, white robots, that wielded, what looked like, baseball bats and red baseballs. But, there was only one robot that stood out more than the others.
Unlike the others, this one had a rather large head, with right triangles, that glowed green, like the grass, and was more stout than the others. It wielded nothing, other than a jar, filled with water and containing a single, strange-looking, yellow fish, and had a grim atmosphere surrounding it. The robot trudged forward, with a rather grim feel with it, and walked up to Twilight.
When Twilight noticed the robot walking towards her, she immediately put on a rather, large grin to counter the depressing atmosphere around the odd-looking robot. When Twilight finally saw what the robot held, her smile wavered a bit, but remained strong. When the robot was right in front of her, it looked at Twilight with grim, scanning eyes, then sighed. He reached out and grabbed the purple unicorn's muzzle, holding it tightly, then opened the jar in a very complicated way. When the jar was opened, Twilight saw the robot reach in, with his index finger and thumb, and take out the strange-looking, alien, yellow fish.
When it was firmly in his grasp, the robot let go of the jar, letting it shatter, improbably, on the ground below. He, then shoved the strange-looking fish into Twilight's ear, where wiggled about, trying, desperately, to get to the speech center of her brain.
Twilight squirmed and squealed as she felt the slimy fish dug deeper into her skull, and, when the feeling died down, she opened her eyes and looked at the robot with a curious expression on her face.
The robot's eyes bored into Twilight's and, after a moment of silence, lets go of her muzzle. Twilight gasped in fresh air, and, after taking in some deep breaths, to help her calm down, she lifted her head and, yet again, stared into his eyes. A moment of silence was all Twilight needed to prepare her speech.
“Hello,” Twilight began, “my name is Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I-”
“Twilight Sparkle?” the robot mused. “What a depressingly, boring name.”
Twilight was shocked. Though the smile upon her muzzle wavered a bit, she couldn't fathom why a robot would be programed to say, such depressing words. She decided to say something else. “Welcome to Equestria, where love and happiness is always present. What brings you here?” she said, with a smile on her snout that could make a manticore worry about the amount of sanity the princess had. The robot just stared at her with those depressing, green right triangles that he pitifully called eyes.
“Love and happiness?” asked the strange robot. When Twilight nodded nodded in response, the robot looked at the ground depressingly. “Just absolutely wonderful,” he scoffed, depressingly. “Love and happiness. My least favorite things in the entire infinite wastes that is the universe. And Equestria, another mind-mindbogglingly boring name. It sounds too peaceful, also. I hate peace. I hate everything.”
Before the robot could rant any further, Twilight raised her hoof and, luckily, the robot quieted nearly at the same time, just a couple milliseconds off. Twilight cleared her throat, again, looked at the robot, lowered her hoof, and asked, quite plainly, “Who are you?”
The robot thought for a couple of milliseconds, then replied, “Marvin.” Marvin looked back down at the ground, depressingly, thought for a few more milliseconds, then continued. “I am a robot that was made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, who are complete idiots, according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was made with a GPP prototype, that I regretfully wish that it was destroyed by some ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Trogg, and I am here looking for an artifact-”
“We have plenty of those!” exclaimed Twilight.
Marvin continued as if Twilight didn't speak. “-it's magical in nature-”
“Yep.”
“-it's purple-”
“Not much of those.”
“-and it's cone-shaped,” Marvin finally finished.
Twilight thought for a minute, racking her brain for any magical artifact, that was purple and cone-shaped. After a few, unsuccessful minutes Twilight gave up and decided to ask. But, as if Marvin could read her brain, the robot said, “You have it.”
Twilight was shocked and dumbfounded. She gave Marvin a look that said, all too clearly, “How did you know?”
Marvin decided to answer the unspoken question. “Unfortunately, I am a hundred trillion times smarter than you pitiful primitive creatures. I could see the question imprinted in your brainwave pattern, even without looking at your pitiful face.” Dumbfounded and confused, Twilight decided to ask where the artifact is located.
“Where can I find this artifact?” Twilight asked.
“Look up,” Marvin insisted.
Twilight did, and she didn't get what Marvin was saying.
Marvin sighed. “What an utterly stupid creature,” Marvin observed.
Twilight looked at the sky for a few more milliseconds, then decided to give up looking for the artifact in the sky. She, instead, lowered her head, looked into those depressing, green right triangles, that were the eyes of the robot, and firmly asked, “Why am I stupid?” with a hint of menace in her voice. “Also, why do you need this artifact?” she added.
Marvin sighed a depressingly boring sigh. “Of course you simpletons wouldn't know. About twenty billion years ago, our masters were imprisoned in a Time-Slo envelope, so that we couldn't do what we were doing for two thousand-one years: destroy everything that wasn't Krikkit. When the punishment was initiated, the key, or the Wicket Gate, was blasted into the space-time continuum. The Wicket Gate contained three pillars, two buckets, and a cone. We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar, the Plastic Pillar, the Silver Pail, and the Golden Pail. All we need, now, is the Magical Purple Cone.
“The Wooden Pillar,” Marvin said, obviously answering the question that just popped into Twilight's brain, “represents nature and spirituality; the Steel Pillar represents strength and power; the Plastic Pillar represents science and reason; the Golden Pail represents economic prosperity; the Silver Pail represents peace; and the Magical Purple Cone represents the magical forces that inhabit this depressingly boring rock.”
Twilight stood dumbfounded, when the robot finished. Marvin signaled to the other other robots, and they all raised their bats. “You are truly, utterly stupid, Twilight Sparkle,” he said, as he gave another signal.
After Marvin gave another signal to stop firing, he looked at the now-dead creature, which he loathed with all of his circuits, whose eyes were still opened with surprise, and were empty of any life. “What a depressingly, stupid simpleton,” he, yet again, observed. He took out a Cut-O-Laser, turned it on, kneel over, and cut off Twilight's horn. After he was done, he picked up the horn, turned around, then started to trudge onto the ship.
“Let's leave,” he ordered the deadly robots. “Let's get off this primitive rock.” The robots understood and marched back into the depths of the ship. The hatchway closed, the ramp was pulled back into the ship, the ship started with a silent roar, and, when it was several feet in the air, its feet slipped back into the belly, and slipped through the atmosphere of the planet that they were leaving.
Back on the ground, a nuclear fusion plant, that fused hundreds of tons of hydrogen, into hundreds of tons of helium, shone on the corpse of Princess Twilight Sparkle.