Pinkie’s question had me blinking at her randomness.
Of course, there was that stupid voice inside my head that popped up whenever Pinkie was around because she had the strange power of diving me half-insane with her sheer presence. It went, “why not do both?” But I shut it up with a boot to the head and looked at the situation logically.
The ponies outside the library screaming for their lives were where the majority of my responsibility lay. Sure, Twilight was technically the Princess of Ponyville, but I was the one that actually ran the place most of the time, made those important royal decisions about which pony got the bigger slice of cake and how much a foal needed to be punished for spitting on the sidewalk, when I wasn’t goofing off anyway. That left her free to do all the important things like playing games with a few other mares to keep their bonds of friendship strong. And even if the Fruit of Friendship had been returned to the tree that spawned it, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that the girls keeping together wasn’t important.
But then there were the girls inside the library. To be more specific: my girlfriend Twilight, my other girlfriend Rainbow, a blue pony I guess you could technically call my student in Trixie, and my other, other girlfriend’s sort of daughter, Sunset.
That last one really made me feel the yolk on my shoulders. Sure, it hadn’t even been a day since she put this really heavy family title thing on me, but I had accepted the position and everything that went with it. And that wasn’t a job you could just half-ass or only do when you felt like doing it, unlike running a country/town/whatever.
So…three-hundred-plus ponies that were currently trying to flee or hide from danger, stacked against one human that was actually stupid enough to go running towards it.
That made me really, really, reeeeeeeeeally want to go with the group that would be going after the worm to stop this latest bit of craziness. Hell, it would even be helping Ponyville. I mean, the faster the source of the problem was dealt with, the faster the danger disappeared.
Right?
But...I knew I was just trying to lie to myself. I wanted to go with Dash, Twilight, Trixie, and Sunset because I was worried about their safety more than the hundreds of ponies who were still in danger from the monsters. Three ponies and one human versus three hundred ponies and one dragon, and I cared more about the lesser number.
As a leader...I couldn’t care as much about the smaller number that could possibly take care of itself when I had the larger group that was mostly helpless to take care of. Because judging by all the screaming, they sure as hell weren’t doing a good job looking after themselves.
So, I took a deep breath to help silence the voice in my head that was yelling for me to go with the group Sunset was in to help protect her and looked over to the pink pony. “Okay Pinkie. You go with Twilight, I’ll head into Ponyville with Tia to try and mitigate the damage.”
“Rodger Dodger!” Pinkie replied with a salute.
The usual quick goodbyes and good lucks followed, and I tensed when Celestia put her foreleg on the back of my neck and met the eyes of each of the ponies in front of his with an even gaze. “Look after each other,” she told them before her expression tightened. “Each one of you is just as precious to me as the next.”
Twilight let out a confused ‘ummm’ and I watched her give Trixie the once over after hearing Celestia’s words.
Hell, the show of affection even had Trixie blushing just a bit.
“Well, she is the best friend of Sunny Skies,” Celestia said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye that had both me and Sunset wincing. “And a princess’s head secretary is very important to her.”
Twilight let out a groan. “Okay everypony, let’s get moving before a certain blue pony’s annoying ego gets too big to fit in the book.”
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash cried out in indignation. “I haven’t even said anything in like, ten minutes!”
The comment got a roll of the eyes from Twilight. “Rainbow, I was talking about Trixie’s ego,” she said before giving our girlfriend an almost lecherous smile. “Do you honestly think I find your opinion of yourself anything but adorable these days anyway?”
“I’m not adorable!” Rainbow Dash protested as Twilight motioned for them all to get closer.
“Yes you are,” me, Twilight, Celestia, and Sunset Shimmer all said at the same time, the last of whom got a surprised look from the rest of us that made her frown before replying. “Hey, I lived on an alien world where small bright creatures with cute little designs on their bodies, big eyes and larger than normal heads where the perfect example of things that make humans go ‘daaaaaw’! So excuse me for soaking up some of the culture and finding my entire former species extremely adorable!”
The fact Sunset crossed her arms and put on the cutest little pout with some puffed out cheeks right as she finished saying that made me lump her in with the rest of the cutsie brigade.
Twilight cleared her throat. “Okay, on that note, it’s time we headed out. Everypony on my team…and Sunset,” she added after looking over to the human, “form a circle, and join hooves…or whatever manipulative appendages with opposable digits you may have instead.”
The girls did as instructed, with Rainbow locking up with Twi before Sunset grabbed her other hoof, and Trixie reached out for the redhead. As for Pinkie, she was...tying on a blue headband?
I raised an eyebrow at the odd action, and despite my better judgement, opened my dumb mouth. “Pinkie, what are you doing?”
Pinkie looked back as me as she finished making her knot to keep the headband on and rolled her eyes. “Getting infinite ammo, duh,” she said before reaching behind a nearby table and pulling out a party cannon that looked smaller than her usual model that I was pretty damn sure wouldn’t have just been laying around on the floor no matter how messy Twilight’s attack wrecked the library and slinging it across her back. “Ready for sortie!”
A second later, Twilight’s horn lit up, and I watched as the girls were surrounded by a purple glow before they were lifted into the air above the chewed up book. Fully grasped in Twilight’s magic, the party consisting of four quadrupeds and a biped quickly decreased in size until each of them could have walked through a hole on my leg without problem. And a moment later, they tell into the book.
Not on, into. I actually saw the tiny ponies and Sunset sink into the pages before completely disappearing in a flash of light.
“Alright then,” Celestia spoke before she looked back to the other two ponies in the room. “Applejack, Rarity. I want the two of you to remain here and watch over Twilight and the others. I’m not sure how the bookworm’s power will mesh with Twilight’s magic, but the spell she used is supposed to allow for outside manipulation of events going on inside the book by adding passages or pictures. Keep them updated on the status of Ponyville and try to help them if you can.”
The news that she wouldn’t just be standing on the sidelines seemed to cheer Applejack up a bit, or at least give her something to focus on besides the potential danger that her sister was in. As for Rarity, the unicorn was a little more vocal in her response.
“Well if that’s the case Your Highness, then I shall help them weave a grand tale that-”
“No!” Celestia nearly shouted as she cut the unicorn off and stepped forward to loom over the unicorn. “No fancy, no embellishment, no nothing! If you can completely control the events from outside the book, you take that quill on Twilight’s desk and you write a sentence saying that Sunset steps on that bucking bug two seconds after she landed in imagination land!”
As Rarity’s eyes widened and she back away from the big alicorn in fear, I walked up to Tia and put my hoof on her shoulder. The former princess calmed down a second later, and let out a sigh. “I’m sorry my friend,” Celestia apologized before she shook her head. “The magic probably won't even work to that extent, but…no, I-”
“It’s alright,” Rarity replied with a little smile before she also reached out to touch Tia. “And no matter how little assistance I can render to our friends, I promise that it shall be as speedy and beneficial as possible.”
Celestia nodded and looked over to me with a steely expression. I didn’t need to Smell her emotions to see it was just a facade though. Judging by that break in her demeanor, she was even more worried about the girls that I was.
Sunset was smart and still had enough self-preservation not to jump on a grenade, while the others had handled themselves well enough in the past, so...everything would be okay. I was in Equestria, where the good guys always won. With...well...an acceptable amount of losses.
I really wish I hadn’t thought of that last one.
After Celestia surrounded the interior of the library with a powerful force field, the two of us headed out into the mass of pandemonium that Ponyville had become. Everywhere I looked, a ponified version of something from my childhood was duking it out with another fictional character, or just wrecking shop.
It was...pretty overwhelming.
“Omnifarious,” Celestia said loudly, cutting through the confusion seeing the chaos going on in front of me had put me in. “Ignore the constructs and focus on the real ponies we need to help. Point us towards the real ones so we don’t waste time on the fiction damsel in distress types.”
I gulped and looked away from the giant flaming monster made of molten rock as it stomped through the town to nod at Celestia. “Okay.”
Which...turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. Although Ponyville only had a population of three-hundred, the whole ‘small town where everyone knew everyone else’ thing didn’t really count for the bug that lived half a mile outside of city limits.
Pinkie would have been a better choice for this, I told myself as I turned on my emotional senses and ‘sniffed’ around while scanning the area for endangered civilians that were real and absently noting some of the more...odd scenes playing out before me.
A trio of quadrupeds were standing in an alley to my far left.
“I want to be evil Daddy,” a unicorn pony in a black outfit that made him look like a cheap Darth Vader whined to a pegasus in a black vest as a yak with a crossbow aimed the weapon at him. “WHY WON’T YOU LET ME BE EVIL?”
The yak raised his crossbow at Darth Whiner. “VILLAIN NOT PERFECT!”
Directly in front of me, I blinked as a dragon landed on top of Sugar Cube Corner and bit into it. Apparently, pony-Smaug was hungry after his hundred or so years of just sitting around in a cave.
And to my right…
“The horror!”
“The inequinity!”
“Oh the horror!”
…were three mares that actually had a reason to be freaking out for once in their lives. As for what they actually looked to be afraid of, an oversized venus flytrap had sprouted from the flower stand Lilly used to hawk her wares. Vines attached to the stem had grown out to wrap around the girls, and the plant had its big red bulbous head open to show its...teeth.
Apparently, pony-eating plants had teeth in Equestrian fiction. If it even was fiction, that is. Considering the world I lived in had a plant that could change ponies in ways that violated every law of physics so she was tiny enough to hide in her little sister’s hair, I wasn’t about to second-guess the validity of a venus flytrap that could eat a whole horse.
“Over there!” I told Celestia while pointing with my hoof a second before we galloped towards the damsels in distress.
As the plant spotted us, despite a distinct lack of eyes, it drew in a deep breath...somehow, and then spit a blazing fireball at the two of us.
While I might have shrieked just the tiniest bit to lure my opponent into a false sense of security, Celestia took the fireball head on and completely ignored the flames as she ran through them to spear the villainous vine in the giant bud that was its head.
Right as she connected, the fake plant exploded in a mass of ink that left behind a ruined book and Celestia grabbed the three mares in her magic before teleporting them away from the mess before a drop of ink could touch any of them and reappearing next to me. I could Smell the girls were terrified, but my eyes said they were unharmed.
“Girls, do you know if the shelters your houses are still open or not?” the former princess asked the flower vendors.
Rose shook her head. “I live with my mom, so she’s probably sealed it by now.”
“Ours should still be open,” Lilly told us as the third flower girl I think was called Daisy nodded her head.
After taking a look towards the direction of Lilly’s house, Celestia looked back to the girls. “Alright then, follow me as close as you can my little ponies,” she said before glancing over to me. “I’ll clear the path, you take the rear.”
I nodded before Celestia began to gallop off towards the east side of town with the girls following behind her. I took to the sky, but didn’t get more than ten feet off the ground as I followed after them. It wasn’t that I had let Dash rub off on me a bit too much, but with insect wings holding me up instead of the usual pseudo-pegasus kind I usually used these days, dodging was a lot easier.
As we got to the group of buildings that looked like they were offering some shelter from the shitstorm, a large white pony that looked something like Bulk Biceps’s dead earth pony grandfather smashed through the wall, making Celestia turn her head away before she got kicked in the face thanks to the opening her looking away provided.
“ZOMBIE!” Rose shrieked as Celestia flew over their heads in a way that no way involved the use of wings before I flew up high enough to avoid the bigger pony from crashing into me.
“BORN ON A MONDAY!” The giant, muscle-bound pony shouted as he put all four hooves back on the ground.
Although I was more concerned for Tia’s well-being than that of the girls in front of me, the sun pony could take a punch from a fictional character that came from one of Spike’s comics, unless I really missed my guess. So, I narrowed my eyes and thought about how much I wanted the thing in front of me to die as I ignited my hooves with the green flames of a changeling and dove for the overgrown undead that had all of its attention on the three cowering ponies in front of it.
But even as pissed off at the grungy pony as I was for its treatment of Tia, I did have a sense of style that needed to be maintained.
“Charred on a Tuesday!” As I connected my flaming holy hooves with the undead’s face in an attempt to at least melt its eyes.
“Marred on a Wednesday!” I went on before landing in front of the creep to shoot him in the chest with a kinetic blast that made him stumble backwards.
“Taken down on a Thursday!” A blast to the knees turned the stumble into a fall.
Next came a bit of bile from the back of my throat as I hacked up three balls of changeling flim and used my magic to telekinetically wrap it around the monsters wrists and legs. “Got pinned on a Friday!”
I used my magic to mold the last bit of gunk I hacked up into a sharp blade, and spun it around in the air before slicking off the monster’s head at the neck. “Decapitated on a Saturday.”
“And booked on a Sunday,” I finished before the fictional monster exploded in a poof of smoke to reveal the remains of a graphic novel that made me frown. “Thought we moved all of Spike’s stuff to the castle.”
A second later, I shook off my confusion and looked back up at the trio of flower merchants. “Okay, all of you inside!” I told them while pointing at the building Lilly called home. “Go go go!”
The girls scampered off to safety, and looked back around in the general location where Celestia had been knocked down to see her battling a purple pony with wild green hair. “Ma’am please, if there is any way for you to return to your previous state of existence without me having to destroy a foal’s treasured possession, I would very much appreciate it.”
The manic pony that looked like a pony cross between the Joker and Medusa from the Inhumans laughed maniacally. “Oh I don’t think so Princess Celestia. The Power Ponies aren’t here to save you this time!” She said before her mane whipped out to grab Tia’s front legs and horn. “Your mane may be more mobile than most, but it is still no match for mine! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“True, but my horn is more than sufficient,” she replied calmly before the appendage in question lit up, and the maniac’s mane burst into flames.
“HAHAH-AAAAAAAH! MY MANE!” the villain shrieked after Celestia burnt her way free of the dancing hair and raised a hoof to smash the mare’s face in with a golden horseshoe.
As the green and purple pony disappeared in a cloud of smoke to leave another comic book behind, I came up on Celestia as she finished fluttering her wings about. “Honestly. Those picture books always seem to make the real guardians of the realm so incompetent that we can’t even deal with the simplest threats.”
Being a changeling, I felt really, really tempted to remind Tia what had happened the first time she had tangled with Chrysalis on national television, but...as Smog had just finished off the roof of Sugarcube Corner, and the pony balrog was making his way to the hospital, I really didn’t see a reason to bring up Tia’s track record. “Okay, so...what next?”
Celestia looked back at me for a second, then motioned to her back. “Get on.”
I looked at my girlfriends glorious backside and despite the danger of our situation, I couldn’t help but smirk. “Well I knew you were really into it Tia, but are you sure this is the right time for me to mount up?”
My joke actually got an eye roll from the alicorn. “Omnifarious, while I enjoy sexual innuendo more than most mares, I think we should concentrate on more important matters.”
The next hour was a bit of a blur for me as I literally rode my big alicorn girlfriend all over town, firing off as much as I could whenever we could find an opening on an opponent that Celestia couldn’t just barbecue right off. Which was a very limited number of foes.
Tia rammed our way through obstacles and trampled anything that looked even remotely non-pony while we searched high and low for any more citizens in trouble, which didn’t number very many. Ponyville had apparently experienced these sorts of things so much that everybody knew what they were supposed to do. The dragon and other big things we left alone. The hospital had its own shelter that would have taken all of the patients in the small town into its zone of safety when everything started, so the only thing about its burning wreckage that made me wince was how much the repair bill was going to be.
Of course, there weren’t just monsters running around what was fast becoming a fully fictional battlefield. I spotted plenty of ponies without a Scent trying to do the hero thing, but...well...several of them just weren’t cut out for it…
“Quick!” A brightly colored pony in an even brighter vest with matching helmet shouted as she struck a pose while five other ponies in similar garb joined in with the rather odd changes in stances. “There’s giant monsters attacking the town! We need to call in some more horse power!” She went on before changing her position as all the other ponies on her team shouted ‘RIGHT!’. “Super Ultra Cutie Power Princess Megaforce Squadron-” *CRUNCH*
I winced at the sound of breaking bones as the sentai team was crushed beneath the pony-balrogs flaming hoof without it even really noticing them. Then, as the monster walked off, the pink pony power ranger let out a groan. “I...I can’t feel my legs,” she said before poofing away like so many other fictional characters I had seen today.
Celestia bobbed and weaved between villains and buildings, shoving the live ponies I pointed out into the nearest building that didn’t reek of active protective magic while blasting whatever was in the way. I’d like to say we saved everyone but...well...there were some horribly hurt ponies that weren’t going poof when they got hit, and Tia didn’t have the time to do more than some basic healing magic to keep them from bleeding out before moving on.
One of the things that helped save a lot of the ponies was the complete inability the fictional villains had in terms of working together. For all the good guy vs bad guy fights that were going on, there were at least as many villain only death battles being waged. It seemed a quiet little town just within view of Canterlot wasn’t big enough for twenty-plus world conquering megalomanical maniacs to share.
Go figure.
And then there were the ponies we actually ended up meeting. Meeting and having the time to talk to, I mean. We actually came across a lot of ponies, although...the number of protagonists definitely declined as the day went on. Still, there were a few standouts that ended up getting my attention. One in particular was a light brown pegasus mare with a sandy blond mane and a badge for a cutie mark. We ran across her at the Barnyard Bargains building that was missing a good chunk of north wall as she was taking cover behind the checkout counter while a trio of diamond dogs in bright red prison outfits threw whatever was laying around at her, keeping the pegasus pinned down.
A quick glance from Celestia let me singal her that the pegasus wasn’t registering on my emotion-o-meter, and thus didn’t need to be saved. We had enough live ponies to worry about without the need to look after fictional ones on top of that.
“Last chance dirt shovelers! This is the Windy City Police!” She shouted in an authoritative voice that sounded strange coming from such a little pony. “Surrender now, and I promise to go easy on you.”
Celestia looked away from the hole in the wall and up to Canterlot with a frown. “For crying out loud. When just a single dragon attacked Ponyville, it took me all of ten minutes to dispatch the Wonderbolts,” the ex-princess grumbled. “What on Equestria is Luna doing?”
I snorted. “Yeah, like the Wonderbolts were really all that helpful. If you really wanted to take care of Spike, you should...have...uh oh,” I mumbled as something occurred to me. Something kind of terrifying that also completely destroyed our plan to just run around putting out the smaller fires while waiting for Luna to swoop in and save the day with a nice big army.
“You’ll never take us alive coppa!” one of the diamond dogs yelled before he reached behind his back to pull out some weird looking tommy gun crossbow hybrid.
“What?” Celestia asked in a worried tone as she looked around for whatever fictional monster that might have the power to give me pause. “What is it? What do you see?”
“Uh...it’s not a bad guy,” I told her. “It’s just...I might have realized that Luna may not be sending any help.”
“THAT’S THE OTHER GUY!” the fictional police pony shouted in the background before she ducked back behind the counter to avoid getting shot.
Celestia’s head whirled around to look at me. “WHAT?”
I winced at the big horse shouting right in my ear. “Um...well, it’s just...Ponyville has two real alicorns, me, five national heroes, and an army of changelings,” I said. “Considering the weird magical nature of the threat, why would Luna send more ponies into danger when we’re already equipped to handle the problem? I mean, you didn’t send any help when Trixie tried to take over Ponyville because Twilight was there, right?”
“Actually, I was in Saddle Arabia and had no idea about what was happening until after that incident was long over,” the goddess deadpanned before she sighed and shook her head at the ground. “But I can see your point.”
“MUHAHAHAHAHA! TOP OF THE WORLD MA!” the beagle diamond dog with the machine-bow let dozens of arrows fly into the police pony’s cover.
After taking a moment to collect herself, Celestia took in a deep breath and picked herself back up. “Alright, we need to come up with a new plan. Which we can’t really do in the middle of this chaos, so…” The Alicorn of the Sun spun around and shot a beam of celestial fire into the store, vaporizing the three criminal canines and leaving nothing but ashes in their wake. “I remember there being some back to school supplies in isle three the last time Twilight and I went shopping. Would you kindly fetch them while I work on repairing the wall so we have some privacy, my love?”
I got ready to get off, but was interrupted by the other occupant of the store poked her head out from behind the counter with wide eyes. “P...Princess Celestia?”
Said pony’s muscles tightened, and I felt a pang of sympathy. So far, pretty much every fictional character we had met had either been a villain that had written Celestia off as a non-threat, a pony that thought she was in need of saving, or even the occasional fantasy horse that didn’t even know about the god empress of ponykind. Considering that fiction was a reflection of society’s opinion of things as a whole, I felt a lot of sympathy towards the former-ruler that wasn’t getting any respect.
So, I tried to ride to my princess’s rescue. “Hey, you want me to deal with this one?”
As soon as I poked my head out from behind the big horse, the little pegasus let out a cry of surprise and raised her crossbow into firing position. “Princess Celestia, there’s a changeling on your back!”
Celestia sighed before her horn lit up to snatch the crossbow bolt out of the air. “No. I’ll deal with her,” she said. “At least this one recognizes me. Now, go get that paper and come back as soon as you can. We need to devise a strategy.”
I nodded, then got off my big fat equine girlfriend to do as instructed.
I’d like to say all I did was run down aisle five, barely take any time in getting the items, and then returned to Celestia before you could say pretty pseudo-pony princess. But in reality, which I was learning was a lot weirder than fantasy, things don’t go that smooth. Not that I ran into trouble on the way there or anything. In fact, nothing really stopped me from getting to the paper.
And it was a lot of paper. From wide to college-ruled, construction paper thick enough to double as cardboard, paper with lines, paper without lines, colored paper, paper without any color to it (although I don’t know if that made it black or white) and that really thin kind of paper you can easily trace stuff on.
So let’s see, what kind would Tia want? I asked myself as I looked through the pile.
Which is a PERFECTLY REASONABLE question when you live with Twilight Sparkle! Seriously, my first week in Ponyville as the pony who shall not be named, I got an hour lecture from the purple princess on just the right type of paper to use because my lack of anything to do had me running around her house as a fetch horse.
In the end, I settled on construction paper. While it lacked the mobility of a scroll, it was the type of paper Twilight used when adventuring. Able to hold up to the frantic scratching of a quill and durable enough to keep intact when Rainbow Dash inevitably snatched it away to look at Twilight’s plan for herself, it was probably the best choice given our current situation.
I also took the liberty of snagging some pencils so Tia could doodle some visual aids.
By I time I got back to Celestia and...whatever hell the fictional pony’s name was, the wall had been completely fixed by Tia’s magic and the little pegasus with the sandy mane was sitting on her ass, looking down at the ground with one of those expressions that just screamed her mind had been flooded with the heaviest of heavy ideas.
“Then I...I’m not...real,” she said in between breaths.
Despite the fact she was fictional and hadn’t really even been alive for a full afternoon, Celestia still put her hoof on the not-pony and gave her a sympathetic look. “I am sorry to place this burden of knowledge upon you little one. The fact that you react like this, it only underscores the cruelty of the creature causing this catastrophe. Now, Omnifarious and I must plan for Ponyville’s defense.”
“I...um...y-yeah...right,” the little pegasus said before looking over to me with a mix of fear and despair, then trotting over to the sales counter to sit down with a hopeless look on her face. If she hadn’t of been some sort of magical construct, I might have actually felt bad for the poor girl.
But, I had more important things to worry about. So I jogged over to the big white pony and levitated over her stuff. “Okay Tia, got the drawing stuff. Now, what’s the plan?”
With an inhuman grace that I knew I’d never be able to match with my magic, Tia took five pencils and sketched out a little drawing of Ponyville in about ten seconds flat. A pretty damn accurate one too that managed to be a little bit artistic as well. “Alright then, we’ve already made a circuit around the town and gotten as many ponies out of harm’s way as we could.”
I noticed she didn’t mention the few that we didn’t reach in time. But that was what you had to do when in the middle of a fight. After it was over though...well...let’s just say I really wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow and planned to drink my fill of the girls tonight so everything would be a nice big blur.
“Now that we’ve got all the citizens out of the way, we can begin our counterattack,” Celestia went on.
I took that as my cue. “Okay, so, we get back to the castle, grab some changelings, and start throwing them at the fictional stuff,” I said with a nod. It was simple and easy. We outnumbered them by several thousand after all, and a dragon wasn’t that big a deal, I had already killed the one in the Everfree a while ago. His head used to decorate Twilight’s castle, till Spike moved in at least.
But, my time to shine was quickly undone by Celestia shaking her head. “No.”
“What?” I demanded before frowning at the bigger quadruped. “Tia, there’s a big nasty army of monsters destroying Ponyville! Let’s get our own army of more controllable nasty monsters and smash them with it before things get out of hoof!”
Celestia looked up at me with one of her looks. You know that looks that says ‘I’m kind of disappointed in you but I’m too tired to actually get into a fight over it right now’ kind of looks that your mom gives you? It was one of those. “Omnifarious, we don’t need to risk the lives of the changelings needlessly like that.”
It was a point that I really wanted to argue. I mean, being a changeling myself, and thus an expert on the subject, I could most certainly say that Equestria could do with a lot less changelings. But, arguing on the value of a species I kind of wanted to see be put on the endangered list while I could hear explosions going on outside probably wasn’t a good idea. “So you’re saying we don’t use the big army of bugs that can ferret out a real pony from a fake because...why?”
“While you were looking for ponies to save, I was studying our enemies,” Celestia told me. “Right now, the fictional creatures are very confused and disorganized, if a large force masses to attack them, it is highly probable that they could join forces in order to survive and mount a counteroffensive. That is why I simply wanted you to send the few changelings patrolling the castle to take care of the outer perimeter of town. They will be able to escort ponies who made it out to safety and remove any of the villains that try to trickle out on their own.
“So, we will continue to hamper their movements and keep them focused on Ponyville,” she told me. “Remember, it’s Twilight and the others that are working to stop this. Our job is simply to keep the damage under control. Attacking with a large army would be detrimental to that.”
As much as I hated to lose an argument, Tia that have a point. Although, it didn’t much like what she was suggesting. “So what? We’re just supposed to run around town and have the bad guys try to capture the princess?” I asked with a raise eyebrow before looking at where her crown had been. “Tia, I know you’ve got bigger magical reserves that me, but even you have got to run dry sometime.”
Celestia gave me a little smirk. “At which point, they will capture the princess and hold her for ransom long enough for Twilight to finish her job.”
“Or kill you,” I pointed out. No need to sugarcoat it. Pony fiction might not have been violent, but there were some works about the super sick kind of characters that did that type of stuff. Hell, Rarity was an avid reader of murder mysteries. “If you’re not going to go for help and no pony’s coming here, then I say we find an empty shelter, hunker down, and wait for everything to blow over. Or go to the library! I’m sure AJ and Rarity would love having you around to protect them!”
Which Celestia had a counterargument for. Let me tell you, debating someone with more experience and intelligence than you when their life is on the line is not fun. “And bring all the villains that know of me down on our heads. Now come along, I’ve already mapped out the route we need to take to ensure maximum confusion, and being out of sight for too long gives our opponents time to rally.”
As Celestia stood back up, I found myself unsure and took a quick Sniff. While I couldn’t actually gauge how much gas she had left in the tank with my empathic senses, I did Smell that she was worried. Which could have easily been some worry for me, some of the other residents, or something else, but...well, I latched onto that self-preservation kind of worry that any sane person would have when walking into a warzone. Which meant…
“Princess,” the short fake pony spoke up before I could tell Tia no and do my best to guilt or drag her into a bomb shelter. Said pony had lost that look of hopelessness in her eyes and had flung her crossbow on her back. “Listen, everything you’ve told me...well, even if I’ll just fade away when everything’s over, I...well, I’m here now, Your Highness. And as a member of the police, it’s my duty to help ponies in distress. So please, let me help you.”
I blinked. That...wasn’t such a bad idea. Sure, the pony in question was a completely normal, if not less than normal, pegasus, which meant she would be totally pwned if she tried to gone one on one with some of the monsters running around outside. But, there had to be a few useful fictional ponies running around the place.
And when I told my idea to Celestia…
“Hmm, I suppose that could work,” she admitted as she rubbed a hoof beneath her chin. “I did see a small number of fictional heroes earlier, and they might be amicable to assisting us if approached in the proper way.”
“Great!” the police pony said as she smiled up at the Princess. “I even know where we can start. I know the best wizard in Windy City. If I’m really a fictional character from a police serial, there’s no way Copper Field didn’t get a mention. We hire him on as a mystical consultant from time to time. He’s a little snarky, but basically a good pony.”
The mention of the pony wizard made me frown as I realized something I should have earlier. So I looked over to the short pegasus with the blonde mane and blue eyes. “Hey, I didn’t get your name.”
“Hm?” she said before turning to me and blinking. “Oh! Right. I’m police Sergeant Murphy Law. Nice to meet you, Your Highness.”
I stared at the pony for a good ten seconds. Honestly, I should have realized it sooner. The whole thing was just right there in front of me. I mean, outnumbered about one hundred to one, me and Tia just come across some pony willing to help us out despite the impossible odds.
Of course there had to be something wrong with her.
“Omnifarious, get back up on me,” Celestia said. “Sergeant Murphy, I would suggest following behind us a safe distance. Call out if you see any fictional characters that might be of use to us, and we shall have them join our cause.”
Instead of voicing my concerns to Tia, I just did as instructed and climbed aboard while Murphy reloaded her crossbow. There was no reason to tell the pony upon whom all our hope lay how doomed we were. With any luck, an anvil would fall from the sky and poof away our police pony like a bad memory.
“Now, let’s get going!” Celestia shouted as she reared up, and blew away a good chunk of the wall in front of us before she galloped us out into the bedlam that was Ponyville.
And behind us followed the pony whose name literally meant that anything that could go wrong, would.
We were so doomed.