“I suppose I shouldn’t bet against you, then again you can see through the eyes of your people. I should have accounted for that.” Luna shook her head with a mirthful smile, Chrysalis stood up and propped her legs on the edge of the balcony and flicked off her blindfold. The nobles were terrified of her like usual.
“Hello everyone, Luna will clean up the mess so you can get back to your measuring contests. Just know that mine is bigger.” Chrysalis was correct that Luna would have the mess cleaned up; Luna’s Thestrals were already working on picking up the twenty four invaders. “You may continue the gala, but be aware that going home might not be a good idea.”
Thestrals were commonly known as bat ponies, they had an inclination towards eating fruit and bugs, plus they were main nocturnal defense force of Canterlot.
“Where’s my husband you… you bug!” Upper Crust shouted finally finding her voice; Chrysalis just gave her a flat look and she back up with her ears dropping into a submissive position.
“He’s fine, provided the next attack doesn’t destroy the hospital. Speaking of medical help… good job Deep Throat! Now if you would stop Hard Throb from bleeding out on the floor; his wheelchair looks perfectly fine so use that to take him out of the room to get medical aid.” Being the queen of the changelings was a trifle to Chrysalis, especially given how easily she could get things done. “As for you Thorax, stop cowering on the floor! Show some pride in being a Changeling damn it!”
After throwing a salute Deep throat picked up Hard Throb, while avoiding the shards of the broken chandelier and glass that Luna was using to magic to fix. The stupidly stealthy Hard was on his way to getting patched up.
Tree Hugger had stepped away from the action once it started and was now just walking back to assist Thorax in getting him to calm down with gentle neighing. He had after all actually gutted somebody with a golf ball; he wasn’t a very violent changeling and didn’t like doing what he had to do.
All the nobles were slowly getting back to business, seeing that things were taken care of and Upper Crust was the only one upset given Chrysalis did something to her husband. The fact Chrysalis even said as much in front of Luna and the princess didn’t seem to react or care made Upper upset. Blueblood went to whine audibly to Luna as she started fixing things and she ignored him somewhat as well.
“Tree Hugger, what are you doing here?” Rarity made her presence known as she moved forward, the mare turned to her with a friendly smile. She hadn’t seen the funky earth pony when she spent her time listening to the nobles or those ten horrid minutes following Blue Balls around.
“I am here to assist him, Maker. I am a member of SNUGGLES and as such I help those in need, this changeling in particular definitely needs my help. His aura is always so stressed.” Tree slowly rubbed her hoof up and down Thorax’s back. “How is Sky Child? I can see that Ever Cheerful is here. Sky Child will soon fall to the earth to assist in the oncoming problem.”
“Hey Tree Hugger, Gilda’s okay and your friend Fluttershy is over there with Discord.” Greta came up to them looking cheerful at the fact that things were okay and went pretty well. “I just needed to ask you something, why don’t you ever call me Silver Lining instead of Ever Cheerful?”
“Because you can’t look on the bright side all the time, even while trying to smile and keep a positive attitude.” Tree Hugger was holding Thorax now and he seemed to have calmed down.
“Huh, well that answers that then. So how are you feeling Boss Lady?” Turning to her boss who looked to be having a horrible night, Greta moved close to maybe give Rarity a hug if needed.
“This night has been quite horrible; I probably wouldn’t want to go to another gala if invited to it by Celestia herself. Speaking of, where is she?” Noting all the guests that were here, there was another thing that Rarity had missed. “I’ve also noticed something else that is amiss, where are the Wonder Bolts? Weren’t they supposed to be here?”
“I can answer that, the Wonder Bolts are preparing for the real trouble. They are currently out in the city trying to the find communication jamming devices that are being moved about the city and set up.” All attention turned to Chrysalis as she landed softly and folded her wings back under her carapace where a bag of bits could be seen before she closed it off. “I knew leaking that information about me infiltrating the gala would give me a good set up to take some of them down. Anyway I just came by to say that I’m still busy so I can’t get to my commission quite yet nor can I get that job interview that I want with you. So if you’ll excuse me I have other things to attend to, because Celestia has probably finished her nap by now and it’s almost morning.”
“Yes I too have important things to see to, in preparation for the oncoming danger.” Luna turned around and followed behind Chrysalis, the chandelier was back in place and the windows that were destroyed were now perfectly fine.
“So, does anyone want to get something sugary and or fattening to cheer us up at the snack table?” The snack tables had been left untouched and Greta was glad for that as there was a fondue bar she had taken a liking too.
“I suppose I could go for a snack, tonight hasn’t been a totally horrible and I could use something to get my mind off things.” Rarity followed Greta, the two them were subsequently followed by Tree Hugger dragging a whiny Thorax along with her.
-
Mare-Do-Well had known something big was coming, but she still didn’t know what. She had managed to take down one of the teams carrying a jamming device and there were quite a few being moved throughout Canterlot. If Canterlot’s forces didn’t have the ability to communicate with one another, then they would certainly run into problems when it came time to fight. She was standing on the rooftop looking through her lenses and they were magically shifted to work like binoculars at the moment.
Something big was going to happen soon, she just knew it. Wait, it wasn’t happening soon… it was happening right now and she didn’t like the prospects of what she was seeing rising up in front of her. The shadow it cast made things slightly darker and Mare-Do-Well figured she h ad her work cut out for her.
-
“Come let us rise up. With our limbs held high, this is the dawn of The Hands of Midas!” There were a series of shouts and the figure standing before them smiled before preparing to launch the real attack. The plan for dealing with the nobles had obviously failed, but this was the main assault and it couldn’t fail. It just had to succeed.
-
Chrysalis waited in the front where Celestia was supposed to be greeting ponies and saw two of her own disguised as Celestia and Twilight. She made her way up to them and cleared her throat to gain their attention, she went ignored and then she glared at them while lighting her horn.
“So anyway, that would be the reason for the phase shift distortion field. It causes magic teleportation to lag, thereby teleportation takes several seconds to minutes, possibly hours based on distance and amount of magic used. The user disappears instantly, but reappears a lot later at said destination instead of being instantaneous.” The Changeling Grope Fondly who was disguised as Twilight Sparkle jumped when he found a gun shoved into his face. The Changeling known as Tit Elation, disguised as Celestia also became surprised.
“Pay attention to me or so help me I will find a screwdriver and some turpentine!” The two swiftly changed back to looking like their selves while saluting to Chrysalis pointing two of the five rifles she had on her back, they were both cowering in fear of her. The fear was mostly about the threat of turpentine; no Changeling wanted that to happen to them. “Wait… speaking of, where the buck is Positively Screwed? He should be here as well.”
“About that ma’am, he’s currently in a relationship with one of the guests that came to the gala and I think they are performing mating rituals with one another.” Tit Elation hoped that Chrysalis would shoot her for that, thankfully the queen just sighed and stowed the guns on her back.
“Yeah, that sounds like him. Oh he is so… hah… funny, his name. Yeah, I’ve never actually heard of a Changeling actually living up to it before now. I wonder why it is that ponies are more likely to do that.” Chrysalis started chuckling dryly before she gained a serious countenance. “At least tell me that Pants Viper is watching out for Celestia. She’s at least trustworthy in that respect.”
“Actually I’m here my queen, Celestia is a bit mad with you as she has recently come to her senses and she’s currently on her way here. She knows it was you or at least she wants it to be you and not Cadence who doesn’t even know about the banana thing. You know, since Celestia has prevented Cadence from ever eating bananas as she said it would bring about the apocalypse or at the very least kill Shining Armor.” Here is when Pants threw a salute as she came to a stop in front of Chrysalis. “All changelings throughout the upper, middle and lower districts are preparing several ambush points with Luna’s soldiers. However the communication jammers we haven’t stopped are being placed inside buildings and we weren’t able to get all the Hands of Midas people with the devices we did get. So they are aware that we know they’re coming.”
“The Hands of Midas guys are not really a problem; what is, is that Celestia is going to throttle me for…” Chrysalis was right as she was immediately throttled and slammed into a nearby pillar, the three changelings quickly scattered to the four winds as Celestia looked positively angry. “You bunch of cowards, get back here and make this a fair fight against me! Hey there Celestia how was your evening? Was it better than you ever hoped?”
“You… you are so lucky I’m the Element of Kindness or so help me I would be inclined to kill you right now.” Celestia narrowed her eyes into Chrysalis’s own as she forcefully slammed her onto her back. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Celestia… I had the weirdest dream.” A loud yawn was followed by a highly ruffled looking Twilight trotting slowly down the stairs and Chrysalis saw something that Celestia obviously hadn’t and she started laughing only to get a harsh hoof across the face by Celestia.
“What are you laughing about?” Celestia didn’t turn to look at Twilight, because she was going to have problems looking Twilight in the eyes after what happened. That and she really wanted to beat Chrysalis up right now and her kindness was warring with her ability to cause permanent harm.
“So… when did it happen? When you got off or when she did?” Chrysalis was still laughing and pointing behind Celestia despite being slapped across the face again which bloodied her nose. “You should really have a look at your conquest because she’s certainly different now.”
Twilight was too tired to remember what had happened and was rubbing at her eyes with her right hoof. The last thing she remembered before she lost track of what was happening was hooves. Wondrous, loving and beautiful hooves touching places they probably shouldn’t have. She also vaguely recalled a warm body and feathered fondling.
Celestia turned to look at Twilight and it took a second before she goggled at her, Twilight looked mostly the same… except for the two feathered wings she was dragging along as she tried to wake up.
“So is she now to be considered the princess of sex? Or did she turn into an Alicorn to just survive whatever it is you did to her? Would that make her the princess of survival? Oh I know, the princess of…” Chrysalis took a harsh blow to the face that shut her up as Celestia stepped off of her and started moving towards Twilight with a wondrous look in her eyes.
“Twilight, are you, are you feeling okay?” Celestia bit her bottom lip after asking that because she couldn’t believe that Twilight was now an Alicorn like her, Luna and Cadence.
“I’m feeling okay princess… actually I’m feeling better okay. Those were some of the best dreams I’ve ever had.” Obviously Twilight didn’t get the memo about her new state of existence or that she ascended while getting assaulted by a banana crazed Celestia. ”Did I mention that your bed smelled really nice?”
“Twilight, I know this might hurt for me to say, but you can’t be my student anymore.” That right there was the exact thing Celestia never wanted to say to Twilight. It caused Celestia’s favorite pony to immediately wake up and her wings to spread out from the sudden panic attack.
“What, was it something did?” Twilight didn’t even notice that she had wings. Chrysalis was laughing harder in the background at what was going on now; Celestia bucked her harshly in the chest making the queen start wheezing.
“Sister, we are preparing for…” Luna took one look at Twilight, the shock at the sight of a new Alicorn caused her to trip down the stairs and lose grip of something in her magic. Said object flew through the air and landed on Twilight’s outstretched left wing that caused her to shriek and flap it reflexively in pain as it was burnt.
“Luna, what did you just do…?” Sitting very still, Celestia’s pupils shrunk in realization at what just happened. “No, it couldn’t be that specific could it?”
“I was just ironing my towels to prepare for combat, but… are you alright Twilight? I did not mean to harm you.” Luna had a need of towels and wanted them warm and fluffy for combat, how she would use those towels for combat was anyone’s guess.
Twilight didn’t respond or even look at the hot iron that had struck her wing. She was emotionally hurt a second ago when Celestia said she couldn’t be her student anymore, but now she knew why Celestia had said that and understood completely. She was an Alicorn now, which was making her mind snap on a number of levels and brought about the fact that those recent dreams hadn’t necessarily been dreams either.
“Hey don’t you like the irony of this situation Celestia? At least you’ll have plenty of time to make it up to her.” Having calmed down about how new alicorn came about in a hilarious manner, Chrysalis knew where Celestia’s mind actually was. Tree Hugger’s little prophecy had come to pass and thus The Hands of Midas were going to strike in full force right now.
“They will strike while the iron is hot and it burns the one you love…” A blank Celestia stated slowly, Twilight really needed a distraction from the injury and her sudden panic attack at having wings now. Celestia herself was a bit distracted and needed to come up with something.
Basically Celestia just admitted that she loved Twilight out loud before the entire room took a huge explosion destroying a portion of the nearby entrance and wall. They had more important things to worry about than Twilight’s sudden ascension.
-
“Rarity, mommy, buck it all, I can’t get through to her! Her last location was at the gala at Canterlot Castle which just took a hit and is thankfully still standing. I’m guessing this is the moment Gilda’s been waiting for all week.” Opal immediately opened a channel to Trap Bar. “The jamming devices just went active and I’m giving you a feed of what’s going on down there from my perspective. Also I hope you don’t mind, but we’re going to send our friends some back up.”
-
“Gilda wake up, Rarity and Greta are in the middle of a war zone and they’ve got big problems. Did you finish testing your project or at least arming the Caravel Boutique? Because it looks like we might need both right now.” Opal’s voice suddenly caused the griffon to jerk awake and groan.
Gilda groggily sat up and pushed Lightning off of her and went to the nearest monitor, her current location was in one of the hangars pilot bedrooms.
“Where’s the fire Kitten?” As Gilda asked this question, Lightning Dust slowly got up and followed Gilda looking more alert than the griffon was.
“I’ll tell you where the fire is, right here!” The screen showed what was going on down in Canterlot and Gilda froze, several P-wing fighters were blown out of the air by what looked like Flak Missiles and then the screen panned to what fired them. Opal popped up on the screen and pointed out ten large humanoid machines slowly moved through Canterlot. “Your project can make an orbital drops right? Then get down there and help out! Wait… I actually don’t want the Caravel Boutique anywhere near that hostile airspace. Even with good shields it wouldn’t even survive two direct Flak Missiles. Your project is more likely to get through.”
Flak Missiles were a thing. They counted as powerful anti-air weapons and did decently against larger ships with poor armor plating and shielding, but what they excelled at was destroying fighters. The missiles when fired while locked onto target, gets into a good enough proximity with said target and exploded into a number of smaller explosives that went off upon impact. They were like heat seeking shotgun shells in that respect. The missiles tended to overwhelm shields instantly, but weren’t good against well armored targets. Even if you shoot the missile, it will still deploy its explosives unless the entire missile is destroyed in one shot. They had an even nastier cousin called Shredder Missiles, which were basically infantry killers and good against ground targets that sent shrapnel everywhere.
“Come on Lightning, let’s a get a move on!” Gilda immediately set about preparing herself and she looked to her project upon exiting the room, it was mostly finished. There was only one really key issue with it, but it wasn’t noticeable so long as nobody figured out what the problem was until Greta could help her fix it.
She climbed up the ramp into her project followed by Lightning, Gilda went towards the front where she would be driving it from and Lightning climbed a small ladder to get into position positively eager for some action.
“Hold on Boss Lady, because we’re coming!” The project came to life under Gilda’s quickly moving talons and started to move. “Give me a good launch position Opal, which is if you want me to get close to where I need to be if we’re to help at all.”
The Shining Jewel shuddered as it begun rotating and the left door in section three of the hangar slowly opened, the project moved towards the atmosphere barrier and then shot through along the open door using it as a ramp before it shot off into space.
-
“I told you they were black ops, but you didn’t believe me!” Trap Bar had watched what had launched from the Shining Jewel and was already getting details on the Flak Missiles that were ripping the Wonder Bolts P-wings apart down there. “Prepare the bombers for low orbit bombardment runs, but don’t let them fly any lower. With all the Flak Missiles those machines are armed with its suicide to fly within range of Canterlot right now.”
-
“Here we go… orbital drop. Let’s see shields at maximum power, engine running fine and we’re coming in hot.” Gilda wanted to take baby steps in building her own fighter; as such she was never going to use the remains of the Javelin she piloted on anything and would probably build a new shell for it herself for recreational purposes. This thing she was in now was built one hundred percent out of scrap, spare parts, blood, sweating, sleepless hours and tears, it was going to see her through. “I’m switching the turrets over to automatic point defense even if it won’t help against those Flak Missiles much, I’m sure my baby can hold together long enough for us to make landfall. Just don’t shoot until we hit ground Lightning, we haven’t exactly fixed that problem yet.”
“Roger that, holding fire until we get down to that mess… is it bad that I’m enjoying the fact that the Wonder Bolts are failing to keep any of their fighters in the air?” Lightning sat in her own chair where she could see the variable thrusters become active to give them a good angle.
“Yes, because if those fighters fail to hold those massive machines back then you won’t be having a paycheck for much longer and you’ll just go back to being on the streets! Hitting atmosphere now, using variable thrusters to get the right angle and we’re heating up.” There was a subtle excitement building up in Gilda, she wanted to fight and she was going to get one. They made it through the upper atmosphere without trouble and were on a direct course for the city; unfortunately they weren’t unnoticed in their approach. Checking something on the panel she was sitting at Gilda noticed something. “I just found another problem; the variable thrusters are eating through fuel like your Princess Celestia goes through cakes. I guess it makes sense given how heavy this thing is, I need to watch that when we land and I’ll have a discussion with Greta over how to fix that as well.”
“Do we even have enough to land this screaming metal death trap safely?” That actually had Lightning a bit worried, but mostly excited at the risks they were taking.
“I’ve never landed anything perfectly anyway, this will be a first for me if I do. We’ve got plenty for maneuvering and a few hops, after that we’re stuck to base movements. Unless I can switch the variables over to consuming energy, but we both know what a bad idea that would be. Would you want to be lacking a shield in this environment?” That response from Gilda had Lightning cackling that was soon joined by the griffon, adrenaline seekers would beware these two being good friends. “If it comes to it, I like those odds.”
-
A magical shield had been erected over the castle by Celestia and Luna to prevent several more impacts from damaging the castle any further. The attack had started in earnest and the Thestrals were in the streets avoiding taking to the air after seeing several of the Wonder Bolts well known P-wing fighters get shot down by Flak Missiles, whether or not the pilots managed to even eject was worrying. The fight had only begun and the situation was slowly coming into focus as everyone realized what they were dealing with. The Giant machines had broken out of several buildings from the lower and middle districts to begin their slow march towards the castle. At this point even Chrysalis was clueless as to how The Hands of Midas had managed to hide their construction so well.
“Those are some pretty big machines, mostly human in appearance and they have shoulder mounted missile systems, possibly creates the missiles in the barrels using limited resources in the ball shaped shoulders. Can you hit it with magic to see if I’m right about what it has for shields?”Chrysalis watched as Celestia launched a powerful beam through the hole in the wall and past the barrier protecting the castle and the shields of one of the titanic robots just flared brightly. “Right its double layered meaning regular and arcane shielding. We’ll have to brute force them down as magic isn’t going to work.”
“Um excuse me, but is someone going to get this collar off of me?” Discord asked in a slightly disgruntled manner.
“It really is making him rather upset.” Fluttershy couldn’t remove the collar and didn’t know how, the collar didn’t block normal magic which is why Discord could still float but chaos magic became impossible for him with it on.
Even if he couldn’t help with the machines Discord could at least give these Hands of Midas chumps that aren’t protected the run around. Which is why Celestia went to assist him, he would be useful in taking out the infantry, but those machines would be more problematic to deal with.
-
The massive machines stomped forward at a snail’s pace and were launching missiles at any aerial interference coming at them. The Hands of Midas had some ground forces near every single one of the Colossuses; they were there to prevent any Canterlot infantry from taking the larger machines down. The Colossuses were tall, but quite thin, if sturdily built. Even so they had exceedingly strong shield generators and lasers in the palms of the giant five fingered gold painted hands and bulky shoulders that held the flak missile launchers. The shield generators were on their backs as in the form of a large box that was bigger than the spine and torso of the machines. The feet were like snow shoes, wide at the bottom and capable of keeping the machines upright without problem, but the design didn’t give them anything approaching agility like the upper torso which swiveled about and fired off missiles swiftly. As for the heads they were cylindrical and had one large glowing yellow eye.
“Wait for it; now shoot for targets of opportunity!” Several Thestrals and changelings quickly popped from cover and fired bazookas at the back of one of the Titans. The rockets didn’t do much damage, but they did manage to burst through the shields and cause minimal damage. After that the Changelings and Thestrals had to get away from the Hands of Midas infantry that saw spotted them and started to give chase.
Scenes like this were taking place all over Canterlot and ponies were running and screaming from buildings being knocked over or set ablaze. While the available Royal Guard, Changeling Guard and Night Guard were organizing the civilians and taking the fight to The Hands of Midas running through the city in what was quickly becoming a blood bath. The ten Colossuses had already done a lot of damage in a short amount of time just by standing up.
-
Even when the defense turrets blasted two more flak missiles they still released their payloads, thankfully the payloads fell short of hitting Gilda’s new pride and joy. After the explosives went off at a safe distance Gilda angled the vehicle downwards and fired off the variable thrusters to change trajectory. On top of the nosedive, the vehicle quickly seemed to spiral out of control.
“What are you doing Gilda?” Not having her time to shine Lighting was getting a bit antsy at having nothing to do at the moment. “We were on course!”
“I’m trying to get them to ignore us; we’re going to land a little bit higher up than Canterlot. If they think we’re a fighter, then why should we get any more missiles shot at us if we can fake going down like one? If they ignore us now, they’ll certainly regret it later.” Gilda kept her eyes on the rapidly growing landscape before her and was keep her eyes on the castle. Rarity and Greta were safe where they were for the moment, she didn’t know much about magical barriers but they would have to hold for a while. “So shut up and let me concentrate on landing this beautifully sculpted death machine! The Bombing Peregrine will definitely be put through her paces in live combat.”
“Are we really going to call it that?” A snorting Lightning Dust could be heard scoffing at the name, she finally put her hooves on the controls ready to get things started. “Well, let’s put our cuddly penguin through its paces then.”
The Bombing Peregrine put all its variable thrusters into slowing down its fall before it twisted effortlessly and landed a bit roughly, but it was intact at least and without any mechanical failures. Gilda let out a whoop of joy as she pushed the vehicle to charge down the mountain.