"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "You can't hurt me, Twilight. I am immune to magic! Now bow down to your new master!"
Twilight tilted her head and curiously activated her horn to magically examine the new arrival. Strangely, his claim seemed to be more or less correct. Sensing no feedback of any kind whatsoever from her magical poking and prodding, he did seem to have some sort of anti-magic bubble around him. Still, having encountered anti-magic several times in canon already, she had very little reason to be surprised by it now. In this case, the effect didn't appear to be centered around any particular part of his body, and he wore no visible jewelry. So probably not a charm made of material similar to Chrysalis' throne. And while magic couldn't seem to penetrate the barrier, she didn't feel any particular draining effect, so he wasn't eating it, like Tirek did. If anything, this effect most seemed to resemble what The Smooze did.
"Neat!" Twilight giggled, conjuring up a sphere of perfectly ordinary stone around his entire body, just a couple feet beyond the range of his anti-magic sphere.
It took nearly ten minutes for his air to run out, but once the banging from the inside stopped, she teleported the stone away, and began dragging the unconscious human by her teeth back to her lab so that proper science could commence.
"Mwahaha!" the human twirled his mustache, marching his way up to a certain apple farm.
"Howdy pardner," Applejack tipped her hat kindly to the newcomer. "Don't reckon I've ever seen you in these parts before. Come to try out the famous Apple family apples?"
"Yes, I'm here to 'try' your applies!" the human laughed while making obvious air-quotes. "But I'm immune to magic, so I'm not going to pay for them, mwahahaha!"
"Hmm," Applejack frowned. "Well, I don't know what magic's got ta do with it, but Granny Smith always says it pays to give out samples once in a while. After all, can't expect a pony to know how good an apple is 'til they've tried it."
Reaching into her basket, she selected a fine red apple and tossed it to the human, who caught it in his magic-immune hand and bit into it with his magic-immune teeth.
"Wow," he mumbled through a mouth full of apple. "That's really good."
"Yep, sure is," Applejack nodded agreeably. "Every pony's a happy pony once they've had an Apple family apple."
"But now I have some bad news for you," the human grinned, licking his magic-immune lips clean.
"What's that, sugarcube? If ya don't got any bits on ya, ahm sure we can work somethin' out."
"No, mwahahaha!" the human laughed cruelly. "I am going to steal the rest of your apples, and because I'm immune to magic, there's nothing you can do to stop me!"
Applejack blinked. Then paused, and blinked again.
"Ahm sorry sugarcube, but I ain't the sharpest apple in the barrel, so I ain't sure I get ya. Do you mean to tell me that yer immune to magic so yer gonna steal apples...from an Earth pony?"
"Mwahahaha!" the human laughed. "You understand perfectly!"
Applejack blinked one more time as he rushed her, then whipped around and kicked him in the nads.
3 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and a hole in the ground
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "You can't hurt me, Twilight. I am immune to magic! Now relinquish Ponyville to my control and I will rule over ponykind with my severe OP-ness!"
Twilight looked over her antagonist for the day. Something about his speech seemed a bit familiar, but she shrugged it off.
"So what's stopping me," she inquired, "from simply encasing you in stone until you pass out?"
"Twilight!" Pinkie Pie whispered from inside her bacon-mane, "The whole point of this fic is to outline all the countless ways we can overcome a magic-immune antagonist! Also, you can't use the same solution twice. It would break the rule of funny and that's way more important!"
"Now," the human continued uninterrupted, "bow down to your new master!"
Twilight blinked. Then teleported a 10x10x10 foot deep chunk of the ground out from beneath his feet, minus the half-foot or so still within his physics bubble, leaving him to fall screaming to the bottom, landing with an unhealthy-sounding crunch.
Peering cautiously into the pit, she was a little surprised to find such an overpowered foe laying at the bottom, moaning.
"I'm sorry," she called down to him. " I didn't realize humans were so delicate that a 10 foot fall would hurt you that bad. I'll go get Fluttershy, she's a vet."
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache, surveying the land of helpless ponies he was about to conquer. "I am from another universe! Therefore I carry my own physics bubble with me, and I am immune to magic! Now I will conquer this land of helpless ponies with my amazingly overpowered, out-of-context super power, mwahahaha!!!"
~~~~ 10 minutes later ~~~~
"I'm so sorry, Twi!" tears streamed down Rainbow Dash's face. "I couldn't have been going more than three or four hundred miles at hour! Not even a filly would have been hurt by that!"
"It's ok, Dash," Twilight comforted her friend tenderly, magicking the blood smears out of her coat. "He was from another universe. That meant he carried his own physics bubble with him, so cartoon physics didn't apply to him. You couldn't have known."
5 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and a big rock
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache as he faced off against Twilight Sparkle. "I am immune to magic! That means there's absolutely nothing a unicorn like you can do to stop me!"
Perplexed by his confidence, Twilight telekinetically lifted a two ton boulder from the outskirts of Ponyville and dropped it on his head.
No more difficult than when she lifted the water tower in her fight with the Ursa back in season one.
"Mwahahaha!" the human laughed maniacally as he twirled his mustache. "Poor Fluttershy is helpless! I shall barge into her home and have my entirely G-rated way with her, and she won't be able to do anything about it because I have a physics bubble!"
Charging at the door, the human let loose with as powerful a kick as he could at the door. Unfortunately for him, it was built of sturdy oak, and even Rainbow Dash usually knocked.
"Ow!" the human cried as he rolled on the ground, clutching his foot in agony. "Oh my god that hurts so bad!"
"Oh dear, it's a strange creature that I don't recognize because Twilight never told me about her experience with the mirror between worlds!" Fluttershy exclaimed, having just returned from her visit with a hydra in the Everfree Forest. The poor thing had chipped a tooth and had needed emergency veterinary dental care. Not her usual field of work, but she was looking to branch out her services.
"Are you alright?" she asked kindly.
"No, I'm not alright!" the human whined. "Can't you see I'm in pain here!?!"
Without another moment wasted, Fluttershy rushed over to the human and began bandaging his foot. Then gasped in surprise when he suddenly reached out and grabbed her.
"Mwahahaha!" the human cried. "You foolish pony fell for my clever trick! Now I shall proceed to hug you and there's nothing you can do about it, mwahahaha!"
Behind him, the door to Fluttershy's cottage opened, and Harry the 900 pound bear peered out to survey the scene. He'd been waiting politely for Fluttershy to return home, but he'd heard the unusually loud knock on the door and it seemed only proper to not leave a guest waiting.
A furry paw landed on the human's shoulder.
Fortunately, Fluttershy asked Harry not to hurt the human too badly, then gave him the hug he wanted and sent him on his way. She's nice like that.
7 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and a small rock
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "You can't hurt me, Twilight. I am immune to magic! Now bow down to your new master!"
Probing the space around him with her magic, Twilight realized with dread that what he said was true: he was totally immune to magic. And unfortunately for her there were no huge rocks anywhere nearby.
Fortunately there were plenty of small rocks, so she telekinetically lifted one up, then launched it at just under the speed of sound towards him, where its entirely mundane and non-magical momentum carried it through his physics bubble, through his torso, out his back, and then lodged itself in a nearby building.
He didn't give her much trouble after that. Though his resistance to telekinesis did make it slightly more difficult to drag him to the hospital.
"Mwahahaha!" the human proclaimed loudly as he strode boldly forth into Ponyville. "I am immune to magic, and-"
His sentence was interrupted by a smiling pink blur filling his vision.
"Oh my gosh are you new!" PInkie bubbled with eagerness. "You look new! I love it when new ponies show up, even when they're not ponies! I'm Pinkie Pie! Now that you're here in Ponyville, I'll have to throw you a 'Welcome to Ponyville!' party and introduce you to lots of new friends!"
"Actually," his eyes glimmered as he twirled his mustache. "I'm here to conquer you all with my overpowered magic immunity!"
"Ohmygosh!!!" Pinkie gasped, shoving a cupcake into his mouth. "In that case I'll have to throw you a 'congratulations on conquering Ponyville for the seventeeth time ever' party! Ponyville's only been conquered sixteen times before, and it can only be conquered the seventeeth time once because next time will be the eighteenth and that's different so the seventeeth time is totally special and absolutely needs a party! This one time, my friend Trixie conquered Ponyville and-"
She kept talking, but the human didn't hear the rest because he was so distracted by the surprisingly delicious cupcake. Really, it kind of made him wonder why he wanted to conquer Ponyville in the first place. Before he could think up an answer, she shoved another cupcake in his mouth, and his train of thought was derailed entirely.
"-and then I'll introduce you to Cloud Kicker and she'll want to bang you and then I'll introduce you to Lyra and she'll probably want to bang you too, and here have another cupcake aren't they great!?!"
Properly subdued, the human allowed himself to be led away, resigned to his fate.
9 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and conservation of energy
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "You can't hurt me, Twilight. I am immune to magic!"
"Wait," Twilight frowned. "How is that possible?"
"Because I'm from another universe!" the human laughed. "And we don't have magic where I'm from, so of course I'm immune to magic! Why would you even think otherwise?"
"But that doesn't make sense!" Twilight stomped her hoof in frustration. "We don't have nuclear bombs in Equestria. If I went to your universe, would I be immune to nuclear bombs exploding on my head? Would I get stuck in elevators because we don't have them Equestria so they'd refuse to work for me?"
"I don't make the rules, Twilight," the human shrugged. "I'm just exploiting them to conquer Equestria. Now, submit! There's absolutely nothing a unicorn like you can do to stop me!"
"Ok," Twilight gently rested her face in her hoof and took a deep breath. "I like science. So let's do science. How does this work?"
"If you must know," the human rolled his eyes. "It depends on the fic. Sometimes it's just me that's immune, but not things I bring with me. For example, if you blast me with magic nothing happens, but you can use magic to recharge my cellphone, because that's super convenient for me. Other times, I carry a physics bubble around with me, and even standing near me can turn magic off."
Twilight let loose with a magic beam to his face. It vanished the moment it hit him. Or...wait, did it vanish a few inches before it him?
"Mwahahaha," he laughed. "Do you see?!?"
Her scientfiic curiosity piqued, Twilight lit her horn and began investigating the astral space surrounding him. Sure enough, there was a bubble, and beyond its threshold she received no feedback from her spell of any kind.
"So, this bubble," Twilight prompted. "Works according to the physics of your universe?"
"Yes! And there's no magic where I'm from, so it can't work in my bubble. You're completely helpless! Mwahahaha!"
"And," Twilight continued, "is energy conserved in your universe?"
"I'm not sure why it matters," the human tried to roll his eyes again, but found it interrupted by a few drops of sweat rolling down from his forehead. "But yes, conservation of energy, mass/energy equivalence, e=mc^2, all that's pretty standard where I'm from. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious," Twilight shrugged, her horn now glowing a little brighter. "How do you feel?"
It was a strange question. But now that he thought about it, it suddenly seemed very hot for some reason.
"Is it just me, or it really hot here?" the human asked from the very safe confines of his physics bubble.
"No, it's totally normal here," Twilight explained. "It's hot where you are, because the magic I'm applying can't function inside your physics bubble, but its energy isn't being properly returned to Equestria's aether, because the physics of your universe doesn't allow for it. And since energy can't be destroyed in your universe, it's being converted to waste heat."
"Oh, that's...umm, nice?" the human began panting heavily and frantically fanning his face with his hands. "Now hurry up and give up already."
"Which makes me wonder," Twilight pondered, then suddenly her tone became cheerful. "Hey! Would you be willing to participate in Equestria's first cross-dimensional physics experiment? I'll be sure to add your name as a supporting author on the paper."
Twilight poured more energy into her spell, and over the next few seconds, the human in the complete safety of his physics bubble burst into flames as the air around him turned to super-heated plasma.
"Mwahaha!" the human twirled his mustache, banging on the door to Carousel Boutique. "Open up and be subjugated!"
"It's not locked, darling!" a lilting voice called from within.
Frowning, the human examined the strange two-part door. Placing his hand on the top, he pushed, but it didn't budge. Perhaps the bottom? No, pushing there didn't help either. There were matching bronze mechanisms of some sort on both parts of the door, but they how were they supposed to work?
~~~~
Several hours later, Rarity stepped out of her boutique and nearly tripped over a mustachioed human sleeping on her porch, still twirling his mustache and mumbling in his sleep.
"Oh dear, poor human," she cooed, glancing back and forth between him and the bronze door lever. "Looks like he wasn't able to open the door. No wonder they're always asking how we can pick up cutlery with our hooves. No contact telekinesis."
11 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and light
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "I am immune to magic, which means that a mere unicorn like you is powerless before me!"
"Physics bubble, right?" Twilight prompted.
"Yep!" the human grinned smugly from the complete safety of his bubble.
"And," Twilight continued her train of thought, "I suppose that our light must work properly with your universe's physics? After all, you can see here, right? So clearly Equestrian light is passing through your bubble into your eyes?"
"Yeah, why do you-GAH MY EYES I'M BLIND WHAT DID YOU DO I CAN'T SEE!!!"
"Mwahahaha!" the human kicked open the door to Carousel Boutique, twirling his mustache menacingly. "I have defeated your door, and now you will fall before my wiley human wiles!"
"Oh no, this is horrible!" Rarity gasped, covering her mouth with her hoof in sheer horror at the monstrosity entering her shop. Because it simply wouldn't do to allow anypony see her jaw drop in horror. Most unladylike.
"Mwahahaha!" the human chortled at his good fortune, having finally found a helpless pony. "I am immune to magic, and so...wait, what are you-hurk!"
Never one to allow such a horror of a fashion emergency to go unanswered, Rarity grabbed the human by his conveniently not-magic-immune clothing and telekinetically lifted him up onto the measuring station. This would be a difficult client, but Rarity was a professional, and one way or another, no guest of hers was going to leave the boutique without looking magnifique.
"Mwahaha" the human twirled his mustache. "Not only am I immune to magic, but so is my clothing because it's from a universe without magic too! And even if it wasn't, my physics bubble extends at least half a foot or so beyond the range of my clothing, so I am totally immune!"
"Oh no! How horrible!" Rarity gasped in terror at the prospect of succumbing to such a tastelessly dressed villain.
"Please don't eat me," she begged. "I've hardly any muscle on me at all, so I'd probably taste...well, to be fair I'd probably taste marvelously, because I'm Rarity and everything about me is marvelous. But please dear, at least think of your figure. All this delicious pony meat would go straight to your thighs, and you wouldn't want that now, hmm?"
"What?" the human recoiled. "I'm not going to eat you. Human don't eat horses. Except the French I think, but nobody cares about them anyway."
Donning her spectacles, Rarity stopped her cowering long enough to examine the human's mouth. Sure enough, his teeth didn't seem particularly well suited to rending flesh from bone, and were desperately in need of a good whitening cleanse. But she'd have to take that up with him later.
"Well in that case, please don't ponynap me and chain me up in an underground slave mine!" she begged. "Because I've already done that, and it simply wouldn't do for a lady of my caliber to have the same tragedy befall her twice. Whatever cruel fate you have in store for me, please let's try to be original, darling."
"Wait, are you actually giving up?" the human pondered the novelty of the situation, still twirling his mustache. "Huh. So, I'm just going to be honest here. This is the first time I've made it this far, and I'm not really sure what to do now."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Surely you don't mean to tell me," Rarity's voice took on an icy tone, "that you came all the way from another universe to be villanous and you couldn't even be bothered to think up a plan?"
"Uhh, no?" the human replied nervously, taking a step back from the very annoyed pony now walking towards him. "I figured magic immunity was overpowered enough that I could wing it."
"I'm sorry," she whispered softly, her eyes half lidded over. "Did you say, 'wing it?'"
"...yes?"
"What kind of blundering, amateurish, second-rate villain are you?" she demanded. "I am Rarity, and I expect to be accosted by only the best villains!"
"But wait! I can-"
Before he could finish his sentence, a roll of bright red ribbon bathed in a magical glow unfurled itself from a roll and wrapped itself around his ankles, his wrists, his neck...his whole body, really. She then lifted him by that same ribbon and hung him upside down from the rafters to think very carefully about the error of his tacky ways.
No need to operate your magic inside the anti-magic bubble when you only need to pull on the ends of a rope to pull a knot tight.
"Hmph!"
14 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and gravity
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "I am immune to magic, which means that a mere unicorn like you is powerless before me!"
"Physics bubble, right?" Twilight prompted.
"Yeah," the human grumped. "You could at least pretend to be surprised."
"And," Twilight continued her train of thought, "I suppose that not only our light, but also our gravity must be compatible with your physics? After all, the ground seems to be holding you down fairly well."
"Yeah, why do you-"
*thunk*
"Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"
15 - Anti-magic human vs Twilight Sparkle and gravity, round two
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache. "I am immune to magic, which means that a mere unicorn like you is powerless before me!"
"Since we've already established that gravity works with your physics bubble," Twiligth lectured, "and because we're having this fight outside, it occurs to me that there's a second way that we can-"
Unfortunately the human couldn't hear the rest of Twilight's speech, as he and his very-safe physics bubble had been launched several hundred feet into the air by Twilight's brief reversal of the local gravitational field.
"Although," Twilight observed upon his landing, "I'm pretty sure this would be effective indoors too, but then we'd have to clean up the mess."
16 - Anti-magic human vs random background pegasus
"Mwahahaha!" the human twirled his mustache, surveying the helpless ponies of Ponyville. "I am immune to magic, and now I shall conquer Ponyville! Helpless peasants, cower before me and despair!"
Most ponies ignored him, but a few tossed bits at the ground in front of him as they walked by.
"You!" he shouted at some random pegasus. "I don't recognize you, who are you?"
"Me?" the pegasus flew over. "Name's Backgound Pony. Want to see my cutie mark?"
Before the human could properly scoff a no, the pony had already turned to proudly reveal a stylized #23 on his flanks.
"My special talent is-"
"I don't care!" the human shouted. "I'm here to conquer you, so kneel before your new master!"
A look of dawning realization slowly grew over Background's face.
"Oh my gosh, are you a villain? And you're talking to me?!?" he clapped his hooves. "Is this happening? For real? Oh Celestia, this is awesome! I've been doing this background thing for years hoping to get a speaking part someday! Finally all my hard work has paid off! I promise I won't let you down!"
Striking a pose for the camera, Background Pony theatrically tossed his mane just like he'd been practicing in the mirror for just such an occasion. He was more than a little surprised when the human responded not by applauding, but instead by stepping in and putting him in headlock. He was even more surprised when the human starting using that headlock to pummel him in the face.
"Ow!" Background Pony cried. "Dude, quit it! That really hurts!"
"Mwahahaha!" the human laughed. "Now do you see the folly of your ways! You ponies cannot hope to defeat a human with an overpowered anti-magic physics bubble!"
"Stop punching me!" Background Pony cried, futilely trying and failing to avoid the punches. "I'm not credentialed for stunt work!"
Terrified of losing his SAG membership, the pegasus did the only thing he could think of: fly away really fast. Unfortunately, with the human still latched onto his neck.
"Stop!" the human shouted as the ground rapidly dwindled beneath him. "You can't do this!"
"Me?" Background Pony snorted in indignation. "What about you? We didn't even negotiate payment rates! And am I being credited in the final production? How high is my billing order?"
"No, I mean you literally can't do this! Pegasus flight depends on magic to work, and my anti-magic bubble prevents it! You can't fly!"
Background Pony's wings stopped flapping, and he craned his neck around to look down at both the human wrapped around his neck...and at the ground, now very far beneath them both.
"Uhh," he quavered. "Are you sure about that?"
"Yes!"
"Well, let's not be too hasty," the pony deflected. "Let's just take a moment to think this over."
"Why are we not falling?!?"
"Hang on, just hear me out," Background stalled. "Ponies are supposed to be about three or four feet tall, right?"
"Oh, for the love...I don't know! Sure, whatever!"
"Is that the height measured at the top of the head or the withers?"
"What even is a wither?!?"
"No, withers," Background Pony corrected. "The withers is the high point on the back of a horse before the neck. It's where our shoulder blades are. That's where pony height is usually measured, because our necks are so flexible. Maybe humans don't get shorter when they eat, but if I so much as lean down to munch on a plate of hay fries, that's fully a third of my vertical height gone."
"I don't care!" the human shouted, frantically trying to maintain his slipping grip.
"So anyway, let's be conservative and say it's three and a half feet at the top of the head. But you humans always use mares for those measurements, and I'm a stallion. So I'm probably more like four."
"Shut up already!"
"So if I'm four feet tall," Background Pony continued to reason, "I'm probably five and a half or six feet long. Though honestly that kind of depends. Ponies in the show are depicted as being kind of squarish. Is that biologically accurate, or is that abstract representation? Anyway, how big did you say your physics bubble was?"
"It varies based on the story!" the human struggled, watching as his whitely-knuckled fingers failed to keep him from slowly sliding down the pony's chest.
"Alright, so let's say it's about six inches or so. With your hands around my neck, and let's be honest, it's actually more like they're desperately clutching onto my forelegs, your hands are probably at least a good six to twelve inches from even just the front edge of my wings. You're nowhere near most of my wingspan. Sure, maybe if you climbed back up and reached over instead of sliding down to my hooves like you're doing now, maybe you could extend your bubble to block some of the flow of magic from my torso. But the base of my wings have some width to them, and so long as your bubble doesn't fully extend across that entire length, I can at least get some magic flowing into my wings. So maybe that's enough? I mean, it's not like I'm doing a sonic rainboom here."
Hearing no further argument from the human, or shouting for that matter, Background Pony concluded his argument had been persuasive.
"Wow, what a relief!" he sighed, and resumed flapping his wings. "That is such a weight off my mind! I feel positively lighter all over! Don't you feel better too? Human?"
Background Pony looked around, but didn't see anyone besides himself.
"Human?"
Figuring he must have left for the next scene, Background Pony flew off to renew his Screen Actor's Guild membership, thanking Celestia that he'd survived his encounter with the dreadful so-very-dangerous magic-immune human.
A human whose anti-magic physics bubble didn't help very much with his landing.
17 - Anti-magic human vs random background pegasus, round two
"Ok, no more Mr. Nice Villain!" the human shouted, shaking his fist at the sky. "This time my physics bubble extends an entire foot, and no cheating your way up into the air before you notice this time!"
The birds continued chirping peacefully, but nopony paid him any mind.
"I said," he called a little louder this time. "My physics bubble extends an entire foot, more than enough to-"
"Dude, stop shouting," a pegasus called from a nearby cloud. "Ponies are sleeping up here."
Having found his prey, the human twirled his mustache.
"Mwahahaha!" he laughed up at the cloud. "I am immune to magic! Now come down here so I can properly subjugate you!"
"Why?"
"I just said," the human retorted. "So that I can properly subjugate you!"
"Dude, I heard you," the pegasus rolled his eyes. "But that's not exactly a good motivation for me. I live up here. Pretty much every pegasus does. And if magic doesn't work for you, that means you have no way to get up here. So I guess that means that fully a third of all ponies can simply ignore you and you have no way to do anything about it?"
"Oh yeah?" the human shouted. "But what about the rest? Magic immunity means that I can do whatever I want to unicorns, and they can't stop me!"
"Meh," the pegasus shrugged. "What do I care about those boneheads?"
"Mwahahaha!" the human cackled in glee, once again twirling his mustache. "Just like that, I've immobilized fully a third of all ponies in the war for Equestria! Maybe I can't do anything to get at you, but there's nothing you can do to stop me if you stay up there! Meanwhile, I'll conquer the world down here, and with the unicorns and earth ponies both in my thrall, you pegasi will eventually be starved out! With my seriously overpowered magic immunity, there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop me! Mwahahaha!"
Lazily, the random background pegasus leaned over and kicked the cloud he was laying on. After a brief scream, the air was once again silent, and he went back to napping.
Turns out humans don't react well to lightning bolts.
Sturdy Shield sood impassively at the gate. He was a Royal Guard, and standing in one place impassively was their speciality.
"Hey Sturdy," his partner at the gate commented. "Have you ever wondered why we're so bad at what we do?"
"Nonsense," Sturdy Shield harruphmed. "We excel at standing in place looking impassive."
"Well of course we're good at that, but that's not what I'm talking about."
"What do you mean, then?"
"Well, think about it. We're 'Royal' guards, so that means we're supposed to defend royalty, right?"
"Of course," Sturdy Shield nodded.
"But how can we possibly do that? We're just ordinary ponies, and the princesses are immortals who move the sky around before breakfast."
"Well, right," Sturdy nodded again. "But that's not just an ordinary spear you're carrying. Remember, every Guard weapon is triple-layered with thaumic bands and personaly certified by the inspector-magus of the forge. Don't you remember in training how the enchantment on your spear was able to pierce even a class 3 unicorn barrier? That takes a lot of power."
"Yeah, I know all that," the other guard replied. "But so what? So what, really? Whenever there's a crisis it's always some superpowered demon from Tartarus or a chaos god or the royal kitchen running out of cake batter. You know, serious problems that we're just simply outclassed by."
"Mwahahaha!" the human walked up to the gate. "I am immune to magic and I am here to conquer Equestria!"
"Do you have an entry permit?" Sturdy calmly inquired.
"Mwahaha-what?"
"I said," he repeated. "Do you have an entry permit?
"No, I don't have a permit!" the human screeched. "I'm here to conquer Equestria! I'm pretty sure they don't issue permits for that."
"You might be surprised, sir," Sturdy Shield straightened his posture. "But I can't let you through without an entry permit."
"And where do I get a permit?"
"You'll have to apply inside, sir."
"And how do I get inside?"
"You'll need a permit, sir."
"Oh, for the love of..." the human stepped forward and placed his hand on Sturdy Shield's withers, causing him to instantly collapse to the ground even though in the fics this fic is a meta-commentary on, anti-magic powers never seem to cause problems when an author-insert human wants to have sexy times with the author's favorite pony waifu.
"Oh, I feel so weak!" Sturdy Shield moaned as he collapsed. "Nameless other guard pony, it's up to you to stop him!"
The other guard looked on at the overpowered human in horror. "Me?!?" he recoiled in fear. "What am I supposed to do? I'm just a Royal Guard! They don't train us for this kind of thing!!!"
"You can't stop me," the human looked on in pity. "I have an anti-magic physics bubble, and even Celestia will be powerless to stop me. What could you, a mere guard, possibly do?"
"Don't...forget..." Sturdy Shield whimpered, "...magic...spear." Then collapsed.
Quivering in terror, the poor nameless guard saw his life briefly pass before his eyes. He looked up at the sun he'd sworn to protect, and then down to his fellow guard laying on the ground at his feet.
"For Equestria!" he shouted, then lunged forward, still shaking, and stabbed his heavily enchanted magic spear effortlessly through the human's totally-immune-to-magic stomach.
"What?!?" the human spluttered. "It can't do that! I'm immune to magic!"
Princess Luna stalked the halls of Canterlot Palace.
"Forsooth," she lamented out loud. "We art so lonely now that We art no longer the only living creature on Our entire world. If only We had a friend here in Equestria to call Our own."
Through the window, the moon was slowly rising through the starry night. It was a lovely contrast, the light of the moon on the dark marble tile of the night court's floor, as if it were a glittering mirror seen through-
"We said," she repeated, a little louder. "If only We had a friend to call Our own!"
"Mwahahaha!" the human stepped through a nearby door. "I'm immune to magic and I'm here to conquer you!"
"HUZZZAH!" Luna shouted, rearing up and clapping her hooves happily. "WELCOME, FRIEND!"
"Ack, turn down the volume," he cringed back. "That's seriously loud."
"BUT WE ART OVERJOYED AT THY PRESENCE!" she shouted even louder, stepping forward and reaching for snuggles. "AND WE WISH TO EXPRESS OUR JOY!"
"Gahhh," the human spluttered, clutching his ears and writhing in agony as she approached. "I think I've just gone deaf!"
"THOU ART DEAF?" Luna inquired. "WE CAN REMEDY THIS! JUST ONE MOMENT, PLEASE."
Fishing around in her mane, the princess pulled out a megaphone and applied it to her lips.
"CANST THOU HEAR US NOW?"
"Please...stop," the human fell to his knees, desperately trying to shield his ears as blood started dripping from them.
"WHAT?" she shouted even louder. "SURELY OUR SPEECH REMAINS NOT STILL OCCLUDED FROM THINE EARS? OR IF NOT THINE EARS, THEN AT LEAST THY SKULL SHOULD PROVE SUITABLE FOR BONE CONDUCTION."
Seeing the human now spasming uncontrollably on the ground, Luna came to the obvious conclusion that the volume setting on the megaphone was simply too low, so she turned the dial up to 11 and held it up against his twitching head.
"CANST THOU HEAR US NOW?"
Fun fact: sound up in the 185 decibal range can kill you. Not very different from the pressure wave of an explosion.
The herald trotted brightly up the red carpet and into the throne room. Bowing to the princess, he telekinetically lifted a scroll from his pack and unfurled it to read.
"Petitioner #27 to the Court of the Sun, announcing...uhh, there's no name listed. It just says...mwahaha?"
"That's pronounced, 'Mwahahaha!'" the human twirled his mustache, sneering at the herald as his anti-magic physics bubble caused the scroll to fall to the ground as he walked past.
Celestia watched with interest as the human marched towards her throne. It was always nice when the otherwise dreary and predictable humdrum of the court was interrupted by something unusual. It had been at least a few months since an aspiring new villain had been the source of such an interruption, and she was curious to hear this one's pitch.
"Princess Celestia!" he bellowed. "I am a human, and I am immune to magic! Therefore you are helpless before me and I demand that you surrender of all of Equestria into my care!"
Oh. That was a bit of a disappointment. She'd heard that one before seventeen times in her thousands of years. Eighteen if you counted Fluffy Biscuit 'the horrible' who had found that one artifact, even though it hadn't actually granted her magic immunity. Of course, Fluffy hadn't realized that at the time she'd issued her leadership challenge, not that Celestia had bothered to tell her that the item in question was actually just a spell focus to help manage surplus magic from unwanted estrus cycles.
Celestia smiled fondly at her memory of their final battle, the chase up in the rafters, the blindfolded sword fight, the exploding alchemy lab in the south tower...good times. Pity the stained glass window commemorating the event hadn't survived through the 500s.
"I said," the human shouted again with a bit more volume, "I am immune to magic! Surrender Equestria or feel my wrath!"
The princess glanced over at her guards. They were excellent at remaining standing while sleeping, but she could always tell. Well, no sense waking them. Turning to the right of her throne, she spoke to her aide.
"Raven," the princess intoned calmly. "Is that timeshare in the Bahamares still available?"
"I believe so," Miss Inkwell nodded, flipping through her notes. "Starting this Friday, and until the following weekend. Shall I have it booked for you?"
"Please do," she nodded, removing her crown and peytral, then teleporting them up to her bedroom.
Regally, the now unencumbered princess stepped off her throne, reared up onto her hind legs and dramatically covered her forehead with the back of one hoof.
"Oh, alas!" she cried, giving a good impression of a bad Shakespearian actor. "Alack! What could a mere pony such as I possibly do to overcome such a clearly overpowered ability as an anti-magic bubble! A bubble of such raw strength, such unseemly power, that no pony alive has seen the likes of it since at least their first few undergraduate classes at my school for gifted unicorns! Oh, the horror!"
"Booyah!" the human cheered, giving a fist bump to the sky. "Finally a pony who gets it!"
"Oh, woe is me!" she continued, taking another step towards him, then dramatically tossing her mane in a tragic display of helplessness. "Oh, calamity of misfortune! What travesty it is that I, merely a timeless immortal, with mere millenia of experience protecting Equestria from chaos gods and the demons of Tartarus alike, must do battle with such a powerful foe as an ordinary human!"
"Hey, I'm no ordinary human," he objected, pausing his victory dance just long enough to grumble. "But yeah, that part about the calamity and misfortune sounds about right."
"Oh, alas!" Celestia continued, taking yet another step closer. "Oh, how callous is fate to pit me against such a dreadful thing...I, mere alicorn, burdened with such useless abilities as dematerializing and reconstituting my own body, battlefield removal, extreme long range teleportation, casual nuke-tanking level durability, and before the post-Lauren Faust retcons started happening, substantial thematic metaphor suggesting that I'm a nigh-omniscient, hyperdimensional Sun Goddess operating independently of a physical body that I wear merely as an avatar, while I myself am not fully tethered to time and space-"
"Wait, hold on!" the human interrupted. "When have you done any of those things? And no, the comic books don't count. I'm pretty sure you just sit around the palace eating cake all day. It's always Twilight who saves Equestria or fights anything. What is this 'not tethered to time and space' nonsense? When have you ever 'operated independently' of your body?"
"Do you remember when Twilight ascended?" Celestia replied calmly.
"Yeah, of course."
"Do you remember the scene where we walked through a starry background, watching scenes from the entirety of Twilight's life?"
"Yeah?"
"Where did that happen?"
"Uhhh..." the human thought about it. "Dream sequence?"
"And where," the princess prompted, "were our bodies when we were 'dreaming' this?"
"I don't know," the human shrugged. "Twilight blew herself up and then somehow ended up in the sky. But that doesn't mean anything for you. Maybe she was disembodied for her ascension, but you could have been projecting into her mind while munching cake in Canterlot for all I know. That's remote viewing or telepathy at best. When have you personally ever 'rematerialized' a body or done anything without one?"
"Season 1, episode 2, Friendship is Magic part 2," Celestia recited, her starry mane billowing silently. "After Nightmare Moon was defeated and Twilight's friends settled in with their new jewelry."
"I don't remember that."
"Applejack 'reckoned' that they really do represent the Elements, to which I replied that 'indeed they do.'"
"So?"
"I wasn't in the room at the time,"
"So what?" the human repeated. "Any stage ventriloquist can project their voice."
"And then a ball of light flew from beyond the horizon, like the light of dawn."
"Just symbolic nonsense because of your cutie mark."
"And then only after entering the room did the ball of light become a pony body for me to wear."
"Just the animators being lazy."
"While a choir of angels sang in the background."
"Yeah, yeah," the human dismissively waved his hand. "I don't remember that scene, and it's all just symbolic nonsense anyway. Alicorns obviously aren't hyperdimensional energy beings or something. It's not like you can just dematerialize and rematerialize a body whenever you want. And even if you could, it would just be magic, and I can turn that off."
"Even though Luna does it casually and routinely, and her horn doesn't glow when she does."
"Whatever," the human rolled his eyes. "Go ahead and dematerialize your body if you can, and I'll just conquer Equestria while you're off watching as a useless ball of light somewhere."
The princess's mouth slowly grew into a grin, and she threw back her mane and resumed her lamenting.
"Oh dear!" she cried aloud, rearing up again to clutch one hoof to a breast and one to the sky...then taking yet another step closer to the human. "How fickle is fate, to pit such a clever antagonist against Equestria! Surely there can be no outwitting such a tactical genius, able to see how clearly useless such abilities would be! If only I were powerful enough to overcome his anti-magic barrier through sheer magnitude of strength! But alas, a mere alicorn such as myself, able to telekinetically accelerate objects in the octillion ton range to double digit multiples of c, with requisite secondary powers that imply both casual violation of the speed of light-"
"Wait, wait...stop!" the human facepalmed. "I already know where you're going with this, and no. Just no. You can move the sun because of your cutie mark, and that's it. Nothing else."
"Even though it's canon that teams of unicorns were able to do the same without a sun cutie mark."
"Yes, exactly!" the human gleefully pointed his finger. "Any pony can do it! So clearly it's just magic and I'm immune to that."
Again the princess grinned, now with a nearly predatory look in her eyes, as she took yet another step closer, before throwing her head back and lamenting again.
"Oh, how terrible!" she cried. "What horrible travesty it is that I, a mere alicorn, blessed with the attributes of all three pony races, have not the sheer strength to effortlessly overpower you, nor the speed to remove you from my chamber before you can blink, nor a horn sufficiently pointy to gore you upon, nor the-"
"Sheer mass to crush me from eating all that cake?"
Celestia paused her monologue to look down at the human.
Slowly, deliberately, taking one last, final step closer...she lowered her head to bring it level with his, then turned a single eye to bear, mere inches from his. Close enough that her pastel mane, billlowing freely in the invisible solar wind, crossed the threshold into his physics bubble.
It did not turn pink.
"But no!" she cried out, backing away and spreading her wings. "There is but one suitable option available to me, to retreat! To flee, to turn tail and run like the wind! Perhaps someday, as ruler in exile, I might yet forge an army from among the non-magical races to reclaim my throne. But that day is not today. Care well for Equestria in my absence, mighty human, for some day when I return there may yet be a reckoning!"
And with that, the princess pushed off the ground with a single flap, then teleported away, the only sound left being the light snoring of a guard.
And a few crickets.
"Wait," the human frowned at the near-silence. "Did I actually win this time?"
"Indeed you have," Raven trotted over to her new liege. "And as new ruler of Equestria, I will be your assistant to help you properly manage affairs of state. To begin with, there are currently fourteen new tax policy proposals under discussion, as well as forty five public construction projects needing review in eight different jurisidictions, each with their own unique licensing requirements."
The human opened his mouth to speak, but Raven continued uninterrupted.
"Next, we have twenty-two petitions for redress of greivances, three ribbon-cutting ceremonies to attend, a floodgate planning committee meeting you're already late for, an orphanage in Manehatten that needs..."
~~~~
The following week, Princess Celestia returned from her Bahamares vacation feeling well rested. Her first act upon her return, to send an exhausted human back to Earth via a magic portal to get some much-needed sleep.
Maybe he was immune to teleportation, but clearly he wasn't immune to portals. After all, if his physics bubble prevented him from going through portals, then how had he arrived in Equestria in the first place?
