//------------------------------//
// Crump da gumps! Crump 'em eyll! 
// Story: Lux Locus: Blue fings 'n Big humes 
// by The Psychopath 
//------------------------------//

Ponies ran through the streets, some dodging the debris falling from the damaged skyscrapers; others not being as fortunate. Flashes and bursts of light came from the smoke of the impact site, punching little holes into walls, floors, benches, wagons, and even those simply having a walk on the sidewalk. One daring young stallion dared to muster up his courage and approach the smoke cloud despite everyone else fleeing for their lives. As the saying goes: Curiosity killed the cat. A giant blue hand reached out and grabbed his whole body: A thumb around the neck and four fingers around the rest. A loud crunch was followed by the sound of a body limply hitting the hard pavement below it. 

"Oops. Ey dropped it."

"Wot'd yeh go 'n do agaeyn? Theht's sehm preper meat fer latehr."

Two, massive blue figures came out of the smoke to look at what had been killed. They had a very muscular build, wore patchwork leather armor and boots with metal pieces on the joints, and possessed a large overbite with several crooked teeth attempting to escape their mandibles. They had no hair on their heads and had small, beady eyes with which to see the whole world around them. A few dozen more came out of whatever vessel they were in and started surveying the landscape.

"Wut'd theh Big 'Un say teh do ageyn?" The clumsy one scratched his head.

"Uhhh..." The second one put a large finger to his mouth and started drooling. "Oy have nehw eydea."

A third came from behind the corner of a skyscraper with a mare in his clutches. "Look wheht ey din' found!" he cheerfully presented.

"Wuzzat? Looks leyk sem keynda colerful meat 'fing wif feyr legs."

"Could be good feyr eatin'."

"P-please don't eat me!" the mare begged. She was crying and struggling against the massive hand around her neck.

With a living pony next to them, one had a better perspective of their sizes. They were twice the size of a pony, perhaps as tall as Celestia, but they still varied in height.

"Awww," one of them said. "It's beggin' fehr it's loyf."

"Crump it?"

"CRUMP DA GUMP!"

"CRUMP DA GUMPS!" the others bellowed.

The creatures all took black rifles from their backs and started shooting at everything in sight. 'Oomphers', as the rifles were called, simply because the cartridges faced inwards and could slam into the creatures' stomachs. The pony in question was as fortunate as the one who came before her, and the advent of more balls of fire and ships in orbit boded poorly for the city.

"Grab teh best things yeh can get yer mitts on. We'ze geht sehm tings teh make!"

One of them threw his arms into the air, roared, then front flipped through windows and part of the wall of a nearby building's entrance.

"Everything is in hehr!"

"Git it all!"

In less than thirty minutes, an entire, sixty-story tall building ended up crumbling from the 'termites' infesting it and creating a creeping cloud of dust and debris in the city.



Two weeks that the blue creatures had been ravaging and pillaging through the city. The multiple layers of walls did nothing to stop them, mainly because they kept coming from the sky and landing randomly throughout the city. The massive cylinders floating overheard screamed and bled smoke as though in pain, and they showered burning sections of themselves onto the landscape below. Pegasi trying to board them and kill the crew were met with flak and bullets streaking by them. They also got to see the crew swinging around on ropes and randomly hammering pieces of the ships back together whenever one fell down. They were incredibly fast and didn't care about the dangers accompanying such tasks, just that they could do them as soon as they could and as fast as they could.

Down below, Ponyville was in shambles. Entire sections of the city were leveled and the playgrounds of soldiers and invaders. Hiding in the debris was one thing, but having to do so amidst the lifeless bodies surrounding you was something that even the ponies couldn't have prepared for, and it was affecting them mentally. More of the blue giants were rampaging through the streets and trying to break through heavily defended blockades at key chokepoints leading to Twilight's castle, and it was clear that even the slightest error would be fatal to the defenders.

All the ranked soldiers bellowed orders to those under their command to defend or to attack, but neither were very useful. The blue creatures have even made artillery pieces and randomly placed them in the city. What this did was created various random zones dotted with craters, and the crew of these weapons didn't care who they were shooting, as long as they were shooting with the 'Giant Boomies'. That wasn't excluding the mechanical abominations they had created that were roaming the streets, and Twilight was about to enjoy such 'creativity' from such 'bored minds' first hoof.

"Keep them back!" the alicorn shouted. "We've lost too many on that left flank. Go reinforce it with some more sandbags and soldiers, now!"

Twilight heard the sound of pegasi flying overhead and towards the swarming blue masses. On their fore hooves were golden bracelets glowing orange, and the reason why was immediately apparent when they thrust them downwards: Fireballs came out and exploded against the ground, charring some of the blue creatures and tearing others to pieces.

The lavender alicorn nodded in approval as she watched the ponies round the corner with due speed. "Good job, everypony. Keep this up."

Canon fire by the earth ponies deafened her briefly, but she recovered rather quickly enough to see five flying machines chasing quickly after the pegasi. They had two-to-seven wings, had a flattened, cylindrical shape, and still belched out as much as the rest of their machines. In fact, there were even more of these creatures hanging onto the rudder and cheering loudly as their 'mounts' reared around the corner at full speed. 

The barricade of the ponies was little more than a few damaged tents placed in a four-way lane and protected by the destroyed buildings in its corners. Large and tall black walls had been erected by the earth ponies and sealed in place by the unicorns with openings big enough to fit canons through. Unicorns had small platforms from which to summon various spells to attack the invading blue creatures, but it wasn't enough, especially with the flying ships in orbit using their own canons to bombard the surface below.

"Princess, how are we going to survive this?" a wounded soldier asked her. "These...these things. I've never seen anything like them before. Can't you use your magic to destroy them all?"

Twilight shook her head. "I don't have that kind of power, and there are too many to attempt such a thing. I would rather use my magic to protect all of you here until Princesses Celestia and Luna arrive with their reinforcements."

The pony blinked. "You got a message through?"

Twilight nodded. "Yes, but with the trains out, it would take them three weeks to reach us, and I sent that message two weeks ago on the dawn of the invasion." Twilight levitated a piece of paper from a desk within a damaged tent to her and looked at it. "From this message, the train lines shut down while in transit, but I haven't --" A loud explosion interrupted her momentarily, and she brushed some debris out of her flowing mane. "I haven't heard anything since. I think they were intercepted by a group of these things out there."

The pony struggled to sit up, but Twilight forced them back onto their mattress with her magic, certain that she would not undo the bandages around the pony's torso and left foreleg. 

"Princess, please. I can still help."

"No. You're staying there," she commanded.

"But I assure you--ah!" he winced in pain.

"See! You're very hurt, and we don't have enough medical supplies to treat you again if your wounds op--"

For just a brief moment, Twilight saw a pony and a large section of the barricade wall fly by her right side and punching through the opposite wall, taking more ponies with it.

"PRINCESS! INCOMING ABOMINATION!"

"CRUMP 'EM ALL!" the blue creatures yelled.

"Weh ehr theh greatest feyters of all!"

A giant, poorly built contraption on wheels rolled slowly towards the barricade and was sized at about fifteen meters by the ponies. It rolled on two large metal wheels while a long, tri-segmented, mechanical arm pushed it randomly across the floor as added propulsion. A torso rested on the armored section holding the wheels and possessed two arms ending both in large guns. The right 'hand' was an assortment of randomly sized pipes firing various calibers at irregular intervals at the pony barricade. The left 'hand', however, kept firing blue orbs that slowly dissolved whatever it went over, but it had a very poor reach, and considering the machine itself was only about fifteen meters (hundred and fifty feet) from the barricade, it had no chance of hurting anyone. Its head, on the other hand, was just a massive canon with its loading mechanism on the inside, which made it more efficient and destructive than the left arm, as Twilight witnessed. Its back belched out flames and smoke and sputtered with every mere millimeter the contraption made along the ground. Any normal person would run for the hills with the utmost certainty that the machine would explode.

"What in Equestria is that thing?!" one of the guards shouted.

"I don't know, but take it down!" Twilight ordered. "Use EVERYTHING you have at your disposal to shred it to pieces!"

The small pony cannons weren't strong enough to destroy whatever the smoke belching machine was, and even more insulting was how its shoddy armor would get the cannon balls lodged into it to serve as even more armor for the massive thing. Unicorns tried throwing fireballs or even combining their magic to make a lava ball, but it wasn't working. For things of magic thrown against were blocked by a colorful-rag wearing magician of the creatures dancing in the background behind the line of fighters. More blue giants came around with giant, make-shift heavy weapons mounted onto their stomachs. Six long cartridges extended from the sides of these weapons, providing a lot of ammo for what the gunners wanted to do. Held in place around their waist and shoulders by thick straps, the gunner didn't care about his own well-being, so long as he could fire at the ponies. Of course, standing in the open next to the machine was a bad idea, but even a crossbow hit to the skull couldn't kill them. Their skulls were thick for just such an occasion.

"Stay behind cover," Twilight ordered. "I'm going to erect a shield dome. They won't be able to get past it, but we can attack them!"

The alicorn's horn crackled and glowed with focused magic then released it all outwards, creating a solid dome of purple that absorbed even the artillery shells. The lavender alicorn flinched from the explosive impact but stood her ground nevertheless. Some curious aliens charged at the shield with axe and mace in hand and bashed them on the shield, only to be shot multiple times by crossbow and magic bolt. Many of the ponies felt relief that they had been lacking for two weeks, but their was as resourceful as they came, and a flying ship rotated away from its trajectory and started opening fire as the stubborn dome. Such impacts were far deadlier than the artillery rounds, and Twilight screamed in pain as her horn was starting to give out under the stress!"

"Princess!" multiple ponies yelled. 

They all ran to Twilight's aid, but she stopped them with a hoof. "Keep fighting them. I can hold."

Many hesitated but were pressed by their comrades to do as their princess said. While the creatures themselves were collapsing, their machine wasn't, and further away, one could see several more of these contraptions coming up along with other machinery too far to be able to make out. The cannon-head, once next to the shield, sent out another of its strange orbs, but the millisecond it came into contact with the shield, Twilight howled and fell to the ground, writhing, shaking, and crying. Her dome flickered and dissipated, allowing the aliens to charge in and start shooting at everypony present. The barbaric creatures would grab ponies and shoot into them at point blank range while others found twisting them to be much more amusing and practical. A few of the remaining guards rushed to their princess and surrounded her. Their spears and bodies were the only shields Twilight had left.

"Princess Celestia, I'm sorry," Twilight thought.

A loud explosion accompanied by a bright flash attracted everyone's attention. A rectangular vessel with outward ridges of a strong metal rammed into the ship that had been firing at Twilight's shield and kept pushing the vessel until its entrails were shared with as many buildings and blocks as possible. One of them floated above the street and opened up a large compartment in its back. A large, metal cube dropped from there and crushed several aliens below.

"Theh humes!" a blue alien shouted.

"Theh humes ey'r the giant humes?"

"Giant humes!"

"Crump 'em dead!"

Bullets were ineffective against the machine that rose from the impact point and its size dwarfed everything below it. It was quite a ways shorter than the giant contraption before it, but surpassed it with sheer quality. The machine stood on two thick, heavily armored legs meant to carry the large weight of its upper body which consisted of a single crew compartment flanked by multiple missile pods and other hidden goodies. A creeping missile barrage swept through the swath of alien soldiers and damaged the contraption, attracting its attention. More of the blue barbarians tried patching up their creation as best as possible, but it was pointless. In the head of the machine itself, flanking what would have been the glass window for the pilot, were two machine guns sniping the monsters off. Another volley blew the contraption to pieces whilst the blue giants charged to attack their new enemy, but the machine had been built with them in mind. The legs started humming. At first, the sound was quiet, but then started to gradually and smoothly strengthen in noise until a leg was lifted and thrust downwards. Whatever weapon it used deafened everyone around, threw the blue monsters around like pebbles, and shattered all glass around as well as damaging the already unstable structures even further.

A circular pod slammed in front of the barricade where it opened and released six giant bipeds wearing thick armor. The metal wrapped around their joints unnaturally, the folds of metal actually sectioning into cubic forms glowing a neon blue whenever stress was applied onto them. The helmets these bipeds wore only had thin yellow slits serving as eyes, and a thin bit of metal protruded from their cheeks bones and thinned out at the top of the nose bridge. The metal went around the back of the helmets to meld into the metal. The upper right and lower left sections of their bodies were painted candy red while the other parts were admiral blue. The outlines of the pauldrons, gauntlets, knee pads, and boots differed in coloration between each that appeared, but most were black. The sole exception to this was one in a fully golden suit with a pitch black helmet. This one's hands were easily twice the size of his fellows and crackled with blue energy.

It approached the fallen alicorn, punching away two of the blue monsters into the sixth floor of a nearby building, but found itself blocked by several wounded soldiers.

"Don't you get any closer," one of them warned. "If you touch Princess Twilight you'll regret it!"

The creature was not amused and approached, ignoring the threat of the spears. Ponies cried war and thrust their weapons into the biped's armor. Unfortunately, they could not hit the metal as a thin, blue barrier revealed itself with every strike, negating their attacks.

"Equines creatures that can talk? What sort of abominations could these possibly be?" the golden figure pondered aloud. "You needn't worry, so long as you don't intend to war with us as well," it assured. "We're only here to deal with the puwandese aliens."