Jim was sitting in his room, playing Disgaea, when an explosion of pure magic of magic appeared behind him, destroying his playstation and pretty much everything else in his room including one of the wall.
“Well there goes 300 hours of gameplay,” said Jim, dropping his controller.
“Oh no! I'm sorry!” he heard an unfamiliar female voice say behind him. “I'll pay for the damages!”
“No amount of money can buy back my save file,” said Jim. “I had a full team of lv9999 nekomatas and-”
Jim spun around in his office chair and stopped mid sentence when he saw the witch that had destroyed his gaming life. It was none other than Twilight Sparkle (and also Rainbow Dash).
“You're a horse,” said Jim. “An adorable horse! Like, I can't even be angry at you right now!”
“Um. Yeah. We're actually from another dimension, but don't worry!” said Twilight. “We come in peace. There's no need to be afraid.”
“Why would I be afraid of something so cute?” Jim asked. “You're so adorable!”
Jim got down on his knees and pinched Dash's cheeks.
“Who's a cutie?” he asked Dash.
Dash smacked his hands away and backed up, glaring at him, then at Twilight.
“I guess our relatively large eyes and head-to-body ratio makes us cute to them.” Twilight shrugged. “But anyway, I'm here as diplomat from another dimension.”
“Can I rub your tummy?” Jim asked.
Twilight blinked.
“I'm like the ruler of a nation,” said Twilight. “Well, a town. Castle. Tree. Tree castle. But I'm still a ruler!”
“So no?”
“No,” said Twilight. “Can you take me to your leader?”
“Daw! I can't restrain myself!” Jim declared. He reached forward and grabbed Dash.
Dash tried to struggle, but the human's grip was just too strong. A moment later her tummy was being rubbed as Dash blushed heavily.
“Daaaaaaw!”
“Get off me! Twilight zap him or something!”
“Wait a second.” Jim suddenly stopped rubbing. “I feel kind of weird.”
Jim began to convulse. Then his body turned gray and melted into a blob of goo.
Twilight stared at it with her mouth wide open.
“Did we just kill that guy?” Dash asked.
Before Twilight could answer, the blob of goo reformed into a pony. The pony, Jim, looked over his new hooves with stunned curiosity.
“Well that's unusual,” said Dash.
“Oh no!” Twilight gasped. “The thautmatic arcano-systema clause must have revibritized the influx of null-void meta-static thaut, convulsing his triti-matrix lay-thaut into a replica of sendu-claus!”
“What?” Dash asked. “Did you just make up a bunch of words?!”
“What I mean to say,” said Twilight, “is that the complete lack of magic in their world is like a void that gets filled with our magic, the magic of friendship, if they perform a vibrational gesture of friendship. Getting filled with magic like that causes your form to break down, then reform as the nearest magical-compatable creature. Ponies, in this case.”
“Vibrational gesture of friendship?” Dash asked. “Like petting us or something?”
“Exactly!”
“Well you can turn me back, right?” Jim asked.
“Sorry.” Twilight shook her head sadly. “The second law of ponification states that once a pony is created the universe will conspire to keep them a pony. No matter how hard I try, hilarious mishaps and crazy misadventures will keep preventing me from turning you back.”
“Are you sure?” Jim asked. “Cause that sounds like a load of bull.”
“It is,” said Twilight, “but it's also true. It's one of the mysteries of science.”
“So I'm stuck like this?” Jim asked. “Probably forever?”
“I'm really sorry!” Twilight said.
“Great,” said Jim, “just great! Now I'm a freaking horse! How am I supposed to brush my teeth, huh?! I can't hold a tooth brush with these!”
“It is kinda your fault, though,” Dash pointed out. “I mean, who the buck just grabs somepony and start rubbing their tummy?”
“This isn't something to make light of,” said Twilight. “Accidental this may be, it could set back out diplomatic relationships with this world! How are we even going to explain to their princess that we transformed one of her subjects? We need to be extra careful around the rest of them.”
“I'm home!” a female voice called from somewhere else in the house. “Jim, did you blow up your room again?! I knew I shouldn't have bought you that X-station DS! Those games are teaching you to be explosive!”
“That's my mom,” said Jim. “She lives here.”
“Well I'd better go warn her about the whole transformation thing,” said Twilight, “and find a way to explain to her that her son is a pony now.”
Twilight left the room and slowly peered around the corner at Jim's mom, who stopped in her tracks the moment she saw Twilight.
“I know this sounds weird,” said Twilight, “but I have to ask you to refrain from giving me a tummy rub.”
“Daw,” the human knelled down to Twilight level and pinched her on the cheek. “How could I not give a tummy rub to such a cutey wooty pooty shmooty looty?”
“W-wha?” Twilight blinked in disbelief. “Shmooty? N-nevermind. Look, I acknowledge the fact that I'm cutey and wooty, but if you rub my tummy you're going to turn into a pony yourself and that would be bad for-”
Jim's mother grabbed Twilight and held her in her arms, making more cutesy noises as she pulled the thrashing pony closer to herself. Like Rainbow Dash, Twilight was just too small to break out of the human's grasp.
Twilight made one last effort to free herself using magic, no matter how she tried her magic just couldn't 'grab' the human, or anything else for that matter. It did make some sense, there was so little magic in this world that anything you threw magic would soak it up like a sponge, which is why humans transformed into ponies in the first place.
This also meant that Twilight was unable to stop the tummy rub from happening. The unabated glee in Jim's mother's face faded a mere moment later. Then she was on the floor, then covered in gray goo, then the goo melted away to reveal a new pony.
Jim's mom looked over her new hooves and tail with curiosity.
“Well I didn't see that coming,” she said.
“Yes you did!” Twilight shouted at her. “Remember when I explicitly told you this would happen?! That's how you were supposed to know!”
“Y-you did this to me!” Jim's mom said, scrambling back away from Twilight and pointing a quivering hoof to her. “You can expect to hear from my lawyer!”
And then she began screaming and crying like a little filly.
“Calm down!” Twilight commanded.
But Jim's mom just kept screaming. Dash put a hoof on Twilight's wither.
“Look, Twi,” said Dash. “I think these monkey people are just too dumb to interact with us. Our cuteness overloads their monkey brains and fries them. There's nothing we can do to stop that.”
“No. They are smart,” Twilight insisted. “I've already looked into their world a little and they've built spaceships. And they didn't even use magic to do it! We must have just run into two really stupid ones. You'll see.”
The door opened again and this time a male human, who Twilight presumed to be Jim's father, looked inside.
“What's going on here?” the man asked.
“Honey buns!” Jim's mom galloped straight at him and jumped forward into his arms. He didn't do that good of a job at catching her, so they both fell to the ground, tumbling outside. “It's me! Your boopy bear! These horrible horses turned me into a horrible horse and now they're coming for you! Whatever you do don't let them let you... um. Don't let them let you...? Wait.”
Jim's mom thought to herself for a moment.
“Oh,” said Jim's mom. “You know now that I think about I did kind of do this to myself.”
“I dunno what you're talking about, Boopy Bear,” said her husband, “but you the absolute most adorable thing I've ever seen in my life!”
“Ah. Really?” Jim's mom put a hoof on her cheek. “Even after two kids and transforming into a horse you still think I've got it?”
“What you've got is a tummy rub coming your way!”
“Wait. That's what I was supposed to-”
Twilight watched this with a sense of growing horror. Jim's dad grabbed his wife despite her protests and gave her a tummy rub.
Dash walked up to Twilight's side and gave her a glance.
“Okay,” said Twilight, shaking her head hard, “a family of idiots. That's heritable, I guess. But surely the rest of them will be more reasonable.”
“Yeah, sure.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Hey Jim, can I get a soda? This is gonna take a while and I'm gonna need a drink.”
Jim gave his consent and Dash trotted off to get a drink.
“This isn't going to-” Twilight started.
“Noooooooooo!” A newly transformed stallion screamed. “My fingers are gone! I was a graphic designer! Now what am I going to do?!”
“Well if it helps you're a unicorns so you can just use-” Twilight started, but again was cut off.
“What's all this screaming about?” a human came out of their house and came towards the ponies.
In fact several humans heard the stallion's continued screaming and either that or the sight of the aliens was enough to draw a small crowd. Already they were cooing over how adorable the two ponies were. Twilight bit her lip. This could be bad.
“Listen to me!” Twilight ran out of the house to address the crowd. “If you rub their tummies you're going to be transformed into ponies! Don't do that, okay? Do. Not. Do. That. Rub our tummies, I mean.”
“Eh,” one of them, who had already picked up Jim's mom, shrugged, “it's probably worth it!”
“What?!”
And he did rub her tummy and transformed into a pony. The moment he was transformed humans started 'dawing' over him as well. Both him and Jim's mom were immediately picked up by two more humans, who were transformed and so on and so forth.
Actually seeing the transformation themselves wasn't even enough, it seemed! In fact, even after that they were practically fighting to get their tummy rubs in!
A car came to a screeching halt when the person inside saw the crowd that was now mostly ponies. Another car slammed into that one and the person inside came out, made as heck.
“Hey! What are you trying to pull?!”
“I couldn't help it! Look at how cute those things are.”
“What? I- Wowzers! They are cute! I guess I understand. Think they'd let us rub their tummies?”
And the chaos slowly spread out from there. A human got poniefied, another human spotted them and the cycle continued. The more ponies there were the larger the area they took up, meaning more and more humans were able to see them and got sucked in. It was like a black hole swallowing everything and expanding, only instead of gravity it used cuteness.
Twilight watched this, stunned, with her mouth agape. What even was this?!
Dash trotted up to her side, a soda in her hoof, sipping it calmly.
“I think we may have unleashed something here, Twi,” said Rainbow Dash.
“No.” Twilight shook her head. “No. No. This is definitely going to stop before it becomes a serious problem. They can't all be this stupid. I mean, they can't, right?”
A vehicle with sirens on top of it rolled onto the streets and a human in a uniform stepped out of it. Twilight assumed this was some kind of emergency response human. She revealed to see this, sure that order would be restored.
“Okay, what's going on here?” He asked. The officer glanced around at the chaos with a look of growing concern, finally taking the sunglasses he was wearing off. “Wait a second.”
He went down on his knees and looked one of the newly transformed ponies, putting himself at eye level with her, and gave the pony a stern look.
“You,” he said, “are adorable! Ah come here and let me give you a tummy rub!”
“Wait!” The pony tried to warn him, but the officer quickly picked up the pony, rubbed her tummy and a moment later was a pony himself.
Dash continued to sip her soda and glanced sideways at a distraught Twilight.
“They have spaceships, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight stomped her hoof. “They can't possibly be this stupid! It'll stop any moment now!”
“Uh, huh,” said Dash. She turned her cup upside down to make sure it was completely empty. “I'm gonna go get another soda.”
Dash trotted back into the house, leaving Twilight to glare at the ponies as they were grabbed and petted by the obsessive humans.
“Any moment now,” said Twilight.
Two hours later....
Rainbow Dash threw another one of the new ponies into the containment zone, an area that comprised of three houses and their lawns, presently filled with to the brim with ponies.
“3245!” Twilight called out. “How many more are there?”
“We're not even getting close, Twilight! There's like a million of them out there,” Dash said. “There's no way we'll be able to round them all up.”
“Ah horseapples!” Twilight stomped her hoof. “Okay. We need to find their leader right away and explain everything to them. Maybe they can evacuate the area this is expanding into.”
“Alright, let's go.” Dash started flying away, but Twilight grabbed her tail and yanked her back.
“Not yet! Apparently this,” Twilight gestured to herself, “is just too much for them to handle. Our cuteness must fry their brains like you said. We need to make sure they don't see us, it's the only way we'll be able to communicate.”
“With an invisibility spell?” Dash asked excitedly.
Twilight threw a blanket over her.
“With a blanket,” said Twilight. “You stay here and make sure no one does anything stupid while I go talk to the mayor, okay?”
“Right.” Dash gave a salute.
Twilight threw a sheet over herself and trotted off towards where the new ponies told her town hall was.
Twilight galloped through the streets towards townhall. She passed a zone filled with confused ponies, then an area of chaos and transformation and finally an area with nothing but humans.
Her blanket did keep them from gawking at her cuteness, though not exactly in the way she would have suspected. The humans she ran into took one look at her and scream 'Ah! A ghost!' before running away. It did make Twilight wonder if the humans in this dimension were really were just stupid, though.
Twilight shook her head. No, no. She didn't want to be racist. Besides, the humans in that other dimension weren't complete morons! And these ones had spaceships and stuff! Did Twilight mention that yet? It must just be some kind of cultural misunderstanding.
Finding the mayor wasn't too hard, either. She was behind a door that read mayor and had a hat that said mayor on her head.
“Are you the mayor?” Twilight asked the human, just to be sure.
“Yeah, I'm the mayor,” said the mayor, looking Twilight up and down. “Are you a ghost?”
“No. I'm an alien,” said Twilight. “Don't worry, I come in peace but there's a bit of a problem. Um, can you take me to your leader? Like your princess or whoever rules your planet?”
“How do I know you're an alien and not just one of those stupid kids trying to prank me again?” the Mayor asked. “Last week they wore an alien costume and claimed to be ghosts and now you're wearing a ghost costume pretending to be an alien? Well I'm not going to call the president and look like an idiot a second time in one month!”
“Do you not see how big my eyes are?” Twilight asked. “Or that I'm walking on four legs? This is serious! Like, we need to evacuate your town!”
“I see your point about the eyes,” said the mayor, “but I can't really be sure you have four legs as long as you have that sheet over you. Why are you wearing a ghost costume anyway?”
“Well it's just that you can't handle my true form,” said Twilight.
“Are you that ugly? Or twenty-dimensional or something?”
“No. I'm far too cute for you to handle,” said Twilight. “That's actually why we have a problem. See, if you get even one look at me you won't be able to stop yourself from giving me a tummy rub. And once you've given me a tummy rub the magic of friendship will transform you into a pony!”
“You can't be that cute,” said the mayor.
“Oh I'm beyond cute,” said Twilight. “See magic permeates my dimension, allowing supernatural levels of cuteness to arise. My species posses an amount of adorability that can't physically exist in your world.”
“Now see that actually makes it kind of tempting to look at you,” said the mayor.
“Well don't! I'm serious! It'll start a chain reaction that'll possibly doom your species!”
The two of them had a stare down, then the mayor threw the blanket off of Twilight.
“Oh my god!” The mayor gasped. “You are cute!”
“You fool!” Twilight staggered back. “You've unleashed my cuteness upon the world! Do you have any idea what that means?”
“That you're getting a tummy rub? Come here, you!”
And once again Twilight found herself getting her belly rubbed. A minute later everyone in the building was a pony. Two minutes later it was spreading down mainstreet.
“Whoops,” said the mayor.
“Yeah, whoops.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Okay, if we work fast we might be able to contain this new expansion zone, throw everypony into a forcefield and-”
“Twilight!” It was Rainbow Dash's voice. “We've got a problem!”
Twilight turned to the window to see Dash on the other side.
“Rainbow Dash! What are you doing here?” Twilight asked. “You're supposed to be watching the containment area!”
“The p-zone has already expanded all the way over here!”
“What?!”
Twilight ran to the window and looked outside to see dazed and confused ponies, many of them panicking in the street.
“How could it be spreading this fast?! It's got to be traveling nearly 10 miles an hour! Can they even run that fast?”
“I dunno, Twilight, but we gotta come up with something else if we're going to stop this,” said Dash.
“Maybe if we can one of them from farther away,” said Twilight, “then we could still go with the whole evacuation thing.”
“We could use the phone!” said the mayor. “I'm not sure who I'm supposed to call, but 911 should be on this!”
The mayor picked up the phone, or rather tried to. She still had no idea how to use hooves to hold things and those tiny buttons were almost taunting her.
“Give me that,” said Dash. She grabbed the phone and dials '911', placing the phone to her ear.
“How did you-?”
“Shhh!” Dash hushed her, her attention on the phone. “Hey! Yeah, I'm calling to report an alien invasion, and we're the aliens. Well, I mean I know it probably looks like we're invading but really it's more like you guys are invading yourselves so we need your help to stop-”
Dash deadpanned and hung up.
“They hung up on me,” said Dash. “Now what?”
“Now we keep calling them over and over again until they listen!” Twilight said, picking the phone back up.
She began to dial, but at that very moment a helicopter flew down, hovering just over town hall. Several dozen humans armed with guns and body armor descended from the helicopter on ropes. One of them kicked his way through the window of town hall, rolling into the room through a rain of shattered glass.
“Go go go! Kill everything that moves!” A voice from an unseen loudspeaker commanded.
The armed human quickly scrambled to his feet and pointed his gun at Twilight, then stopped.
“I,” he said, shaking his head, “I can't do it! You're too cute to kill!”
“You have your orders!” a radio attached to the soldier announced. “Shoot everything that moves!”
“Sir! I think we underestimated how adorable these aliens invaders were! We can't fight them! Just look!”
The soldier took a picture of Twilight and sent it
“Whoa. That is pretty cute,” said the radio. “Actually, okay. Forget the mission.”
“Permission to rub their tummies sir.”
“Permission granted, soldier. Dammit, I need to get over there to pet those things too!”
Twilight and the soldier looked at each other
“Um, thanks for not killing me,” said Twilight, “but I really should warn you that-”
And then Twilight got a tummy rub... again.
Meanwhile, on Air Force One.
The president had just been whisked away from the middle of a meeting and taken into the sky. It had all happened so suddenly that there were no time for details, just the knowledge that he needed to be taken to safety and that there was a crisis of monumental scale. It wasn't safe to be anywhere, apparently, even the sky wasn't safe.
Once his jet was in the air, his general came out to meet him, a dire look on his face.
“Sir,” said the general, “two hours ago we made first contact with an alien race.”
“My God. It's finally happened,” said the president. “And in an election year too! We need to immediately kill and dissect them all!”
“We tried, but we seem to be no match for them. They've destroyed all the armed forces they've come into contact with and have already taken half of Iowa.”
“What?! So this is an invasion?!” the president grew solemn. “That will make it harder to cut them up. How are they managing to defeat us so easily?”
“Sir, I don't know how to say this, but um,” the general began, then stopped. He had a painful expression on his face during his silence, as if it really was hard to say it.
“Well what is it?” the president asked. “Are they crashing asteroids into us? Killer robots with heat lances? Viruses? Turning us into plants and eating us? Lasers that make your eyes implode? I can handle it!”
“It's worse than that.” The general shook his head. “Okay, it's not worse than that. Basically, they're incredibly cute.”
The president gave him a moment to elaborate, but the general remained silent.
“And?!”
“And that's it,” said the general. “Their cuteness is too much for us to handle. From the last recordings of our soldiers before running into them they are, and I quote, 'a billion times cuter than every kitten ever'. Upon seeing them, we lose all ability to resist and have no choice but to give the cuddles and tummy rubs and once one pets them, they become one of these creatures themselves.”
The president stared at his general for some time.
“Are you trolling me, general?” the president asked. “Because I swear to Voltron if you are-”
“I'm afraid not,” said the General. “They really are apocalyptically cute.”
“Well can I see a picture of one of them?”
“I'm afraid not. Even that much is enough to completely incapacitate you. One look and you'll be unable to resist them in any way.”
“Surely we have someone who can fight against them!” The president slammed his fist into the desk. “What about our hardened special forces operatives? They'll have the discipline to capture and dissect one of them.”
“We already sent in Seal Team Six, sir,” said the general. “They weren't able to shoot because these 'ponies' were too adorable for them to kill. We've also sent in the army, the navy, fire fighters, the police, FBI, CIA, red cross, pretty much everyone. Then we just went nuts and tried sending in random celebrities. Penn and Teller, Tabatha St Germain, John Cena, the Harlem Globe Trotters. I don't even know what we expected to happen, but they all failed too.”
“Are we going to have to call in an airstrike then?” the president asked. “I mean, you can't see them from that far up, can you?”
“We already tried bombing them, sir,” said the general, with a solemn shake of his head. “Some of them can fly. Even our most elite pilots end up catching a glimpse of them and get so distracted by the cuteness that they crash and die within seconds.”
“Then what about our robots? Surely they won't be affected by this!”
“We tried sending in Google's self driving car, you know, to run them over, but the moment it saw them in its sensors, it grew a soul or something sappy like that. The beauty was so much that it shed a single tear of joy and short circuited its own hardware, causing it to explode for no apparent reason. That happens with every robot we send in from predator drones to Asimo.”
“What about like,” the president stalled, not knowing what to say, “like maybe one of those blind swordsmen from the movies! Those guys are pretty badass! Can we get one of them to cut up the aliens?”
“The blind can smell the cuteness.”
The president stared at his general for a solid minute.
“And you're sure this is actually happening?” asked the president.
“Apparently it is, sir. Apparently it is,” The general let out a long, long sigh and took off his hat. “Sir, there's only one option left – the nuclear option. That's why I needed to go to you, sir. We need to nuke all of Iowa, the entire state. It's the only way to be sure.”
“Aren't we being too hasty?”
“Sir, three hours ago there were two ponies. Two hours ago there were 3000 ponies. Now there are one hundred fifty thousand ponies. This is radiating out at an unimaginable rate. The entire nation will be horses in 24 hours at the rate things are going. Do you have any idea how bad that would be for the economy? The glove industry? Gone. The pencil grip industry? Gone. The oat corporations will do fine, but it looks grim for everyone else.”
“But what about nuclear winter? The countless lives that will be lost? Not to mention that we won't be able to dissect them if we vaporize them all first.”
“Sir, what's really worse? Nuclear winter or horses?”
The president nodded and laid back in his chair.
“Eh. Iowa didn't vote for me anyway.”
Meanwhile, in some random guys house. Air raid sirens were playing. Screams and car alarms could be heard from outside. Dan scrambled to gather the bare essentials he would need to survive as the news played on the TV.
“If you're just tuning in, this is hour three of the alien invasion,” said the newscaster. “They have already decimated the armies of the world and are pushing outward at an unbelievable speed, transforming anyone they come in contact with into a member of their own species. It looks like we're all doomed and there's no hope for anyone, but if you want to delay your own demise by just a few moments then get as far away from Iowa as possible.”
“Just throw everything in the car! We're leaving now!” Dan shouted at his wife.
The aliens, man! The aliens! They abducted him years ago and now they were back to finish the job! Dan had to get out of here.
Looking out the window, it seemed he wasn't the only one. Lot's of cars were already on the road, trying to drive as far away from the p-zone as possible, several of them already crashed in their frantic attempt at escape.
Dan was getting his mattress money out of the mattress, mindful of the TV was he did.
“We're getting more information in about the aliens now,” said the news. “Apparently they are impossibly cute, to the point that just seeing one will fill you with an insatiable desire to rub their tummies and transform into one of them. Under no circumstance should you look at these creatures, not even a photograph. We will now show an image of them.”
A picture of a pony appeared on the screen and that thing was freaking cute! Dan felt his heart just melt at the sight of it.
“Honey! Honey come look at this thing! It's the most adorable creature I've ever seen!”
Maybe Dan was wrong about these aliens. Did he really need to run away form something so cute? Heck, he'd even rub their tummies if they came around! So what if it turned him into a horse afterward? It'd be totally worth it!
And so millions of humans were caught in the adorable snare of the ponies.
Back in Toronto, Iowa,
“You have your missions everypony!” Twilight shouted to the group. “Dismissed!”
A few dozen pegasi picked up a few dozen unicorns and flew them off towards every direction. Twilight trotted to the edge of the roof she was standing on and looked down at the town. Order was already reinstated in this town, with ponies lined up to be accounted for.
Of course, this was just the one area. The true chaos lied far away, on the edge of the expansion zone.
“Well the good part about them sending the army and all those other people to kill us,” said Twilight, “is now I have thousands of trained professionals to work with. Once we get those unicorns to the edge of the 'p-zone' as everyone is calling it, I'll be able to use them as channeling points to erect a massive force-field around us, keeping the ponies in and the humans out.”
“Twi, you just explained that to me,” said Dash, “like literally two seconds ago.”
“And I'm going to keep explaining it at regular intervals!” Twilight vowed. “Anyway, I figure once we get this mess sorted out we can move forward. Any luck calling them on the phone yet?”
“Still ain't listening,” said Dash. “No matter how we try to explain they just keep going like 'oh no you don't! You're not gonna anally probe me!'”
“Anally probe?” Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah! They're obsessed with that for some reason!” Dash said. “Anyway, I think we should-”
“Problem!” screamed Jim. He came running up onto the roof in such a panic that he tripped and tumbled his way over to the other ponies, landing on his face just inches away from them. “Problem.”
Jim got back on his feet and straightened himself out.
“They're going to nuke us!” Jim declared. “I just heard it on the news. The US, China and Russia are going to fire every single nuclear weapon they have at Iowa. Basically the entire state is going to explode when they hit.”
“What?!” Twilight gasped. “I had no idea you had weapons like that! My force-field won't be able to stop something that massive!”
“Mam!” A pegasus flew up to the roof and saluted. “The unicorns are in place and are ready to create the barrier.”
“Oh no no no!” Twilight nervously jogged in place. “If only they had waited a few more seconds! Now my plan is ruined!”
“And we're all gonna die,” Jim pointed out. “That's pretty bad too.”
“So,” said Rainbow Dash. She took a few more sips of soda before speaking again. “You ready to admit I was right? We gonna bail now?”
“Okay!” Twilight threw her hooves up. “Okay! Mission failed! I give up, we're going back to Equestria! I'll use the unicorns to channel a spell that will bring all the ponies back home instead. Probably should have done this hours ago.”
“I guess we were just too darn cute for them,” said Dash.
“Yeah,” said Twilight. “It would have been really nice to learn about them, but I guess all I can do now is minimize the damage. Hold onto your hooves, everypony!”
Of course not all of them could hear her, but Twilight cast the spell. Everyone who had been transformed into a pony suddenly felt themselves being lifted into the air and vanished in a flash of light.
Nopony saw it, but a minute later there was a much, much brighter flash of light as thousands of nukes rained down on the area, destroying everything.
Celestia sat at her balcony, waiting. Suddenly, a portal opened about Canterlot and about hundreds of thousands of ponies rained down from the sky. Twilight was one of them, landing right in front of Celestia. She was followed by Rainbow Dash and then a few other ponies.
Celestia calmly looked up at the rain of ponies, then down at Twilight.
“Twilight,” said Celestia, “I feel like there are questions I need to ask you.”
“Ugh.” Twilight got up, rubbing her head. “Yes. Yes there are. Look that mission didn't go so well...”
Twilight explained everything that happened to Celestia.
“So that's pretty much how it went,” said Twilight. “I don't know if we'll ever be able to bring the transformed back to their world. The only way would be to turn them back into humans first, though that's basically impossible. A single pony in their world would be enough to doom their entire species.”
Celestia cast a spell and turned back to Twilight.
“I think you may have missed one,” said Celestia, “I'm getting a reading that there's still one pony left in your world.”
“What?!” Twilight snapped out of her depression. “But how is that possible? My spell should have grabbed every single pony! And even if one was left behind they should have been blown to a million pieces by the explosions!”
“Oh boy,” said Jim. “I think I know who it was. Crazy Old Jenkins! Guy's got the most secure bomb shelter in the world! He even magic-proofed it just in case the government sent wizards to spy on him. I mean, he didn't know how to magic-proof something so he just put a layer of every material known to man around his bunker. Guess one of them must have actually worked.”
“This is really bad!” Twilight began trotting back and forth nervously. “Just one pony could easily destroy your entire species! We need to think of a way to get this 'Jenkins' guy out of there.”
“Crazy Old Jenkins,” said Jim. “You gotta say the whole thing. And I mean, we could maybe hope the government manages to kill him off. It's like the saying goes – There's no comma in 'Crazy Old Jenkins'. That guys like a hundred and twenty. He should be thankful he made it this far!”
“I don't think we can count on them killing Jenkins, even if we were willing to sacrifice him” said Twilight. “Even the most elite humans can't overcome our cuteness. The only thing that can stop him is another pony. I gotta go back in!”
“But you can't!” Jim insisted. “The radiation is probably so intense after all those nukes went off that you'd die instantly.”
“Celestia dang it!” Twilight stomped her hoof. Then another idea came to her. “Wait! Radiation? I know just the pony to deal with that. Pinkie!”
“Yes Twilight?” Pinkie jumped out from behind a pillar.
“What? How did you get here so fast?” Twilight asked. “Were you standing behind there the whole time?”
“I stashed myself all over Equestria! Just in case of a Pinkie related emergency.”
“That doesn't-” Twilight shook her head. Down that road lied madness. “Never mind Look, you're immune to radiation, right?”
“I think that's been well established by now.” Pinkie nodded.
“Good,” said Twilight. “Here's what I need you to do.”
Crazy Old Jenkins surveyed the halls of his fallout shelter until he came to a rack with several dozen hazmat suits. There were ones with two legs and two arms of various sizes, ones with four legs of various sizes, ones with slots for tentacles, ones that looked like they'd fit a bird and ones that would fit a fish or a dolphin. That last set had a button reading 'press for emergency flooding' next to it.
“Said I was crazy, didn't they?” Crazy Old Jenkins asked himself, walking up to a hazmat suit shaped perfectly for a pony. “Said it was darn foolish to buy a hazmat suit for each species just in case I got trans-o-magically trans-o-mogriphied into an animal. Well who's laughing now? E-hehe-hoo!”
Crazy Old Jenkins put on the hazmat suit, grabbed his guns, gold and bible and set out to examine the remains of civilization. Needless to say, everything on the surface had been reduced to rubble. The smoke and air-borne debris were so great that one couldn't see more than a few inches from their face.
“Whelp!” he said to himself. “Looks like I've got to repopulate the whole planet all by my lonesome!”
Back on Air Force One...
The president and his general watched the nuclear blast from over the horizon. The mushroom cloud was so massive that it could be seen coast to coast.
“Ha! I'd like to see their cuteness deflect that,” said the president.
“Still, we need to be very careful,” said the general. “There could be more coming at any moment. We need to prepare for round two.”
“As long as they don't come into any blue states I don't see the problem,” said the president. “We can just keep nuking them as they come in.”
“We're out of nukes sir,” said the general.
“Curses! Looks like we'll need to resort to more drastic measures. Get that scientist guy on Skype.”
A moment later, the president had his scientist on video call
“We need you to create a portal to the pony dimension,” said the president.
“You need me to create a what?”
“An inter-dimensional portal. How long do you think that will take?”
“Um. A while. A long while. Possibly forever,” said the scientist. “Maybe if I had, say, a sample from the aliens it would speed things up. A little. I wouldn't get my hopes up, though.”
“We can't actually give you a specimen or else you'll end up under their cutesy spell,” said the president.
“Then how am I supposed do anything?” the scientist asked. “I have no idea how their portals work and no clues to go on! I don't even know what they look like! Even if I did create an inter-dimensional portal it probably wouldn't even be to their planet.”
“You'll just have to science harder.”
“What does that even mean?!”
“You have three hours,” said the president. “Good luck.”
The president closed the video feed.
“And once we have a portal opened,” said the president, “we can build millions of ICBMs and fire them through, destroying all life on their planet!”
“But for now we need to surround Iowa with more troops,” said the general. “We need to get artillery in there and get ready to fire at and kill anything that moves.”
That little Skype sound sounded, drawing the president's attention to it.
“Who could that be at a time like this? The world is in peril!” the president leaned in and read the message. “It's from the KGB! They say they have an offer for us.”
Pinkie appeared in the toxic wasteland that used to be Iowa. It was, in a word, not pretty. Nothing but rubble, smoke and toxic residue as far as the eye could see, which to be fair was only like five feet cause of all the debris.
“Yuck!” Pinkie stuck her tongue out. “I hope the rest of their world isn't this dirty! Ah well, not like I'm here to throw a party. Crazy Old Jenkins! Come out come out wherever you are!”
Pinkie only got two bounces into the wasteland before she heard a shotgun cocking. She turned to see another pony wearing a hazmat suit and pointing a gun at her.
“Stay back or I'll shoot you just like I shot Kennedy!” Jenkins shouted at her.
“Calm down now,” said Pinkie. “I'm not here to hurt you.”
“That's what the Lochness monster told me!” said Crazy Old Jenkins. “And then he faked the moon landing to distract us all while Big Foot planned 9/11!”
“While Big Foot planned nine hundred and eleven what?” Pinkie asked. “Oh! Did he plan nine hundred and eleven birthday parties? I did that one time!”
“Wait.” Jenkins lowered his gun just a little. “You're telling me you planned nine eleven?”
“Sure did! And then some,” Pinkie said proudly.
“Well that puts a damper on my skidoo. Hold on a minute, I gots to work this out.” Jenkins tapped one of his hooves against the other, like he was doing math. “So the time Eisenhower knew about Pearl Harbor before hand divided by the people abducted in the Bermuda Triangle times the number of chem trails I seen... Ah ha! The only other explanation is that you're an Illuminati clone Dave Chapel! Admittedly the government isn't making clones like they used to, but-”
“Oh I can't be a clone, silly,” said Pinkie. “Twilight already destroyed all of my clones! She made all of us watch paint dry and-”
“Of course!” Jenkins smacked two of his hooves together. “That's how you find out if someone is a clone! You make them watch paint dry! The lead in the paint will react with the lead in the vaccines they were given and the resulting autism will cause them to explode! Why didn't I think of that?”
“Well I don't think watching the paint dry made them explode,” said Pinkie.
“But they did explode, right?”
“Well, yes, but-”
“Well there ya go! It all makes sense now! E-hehe-hoo! They called me crazy but now I gots all the information I need to conclude it- the government is what's moving the moon!”
Pinkie gasped.
“You're right! The government does move the moon!” Pinkie stopped and thought to herself for a moment. “But what does that have to do with paint?”
“Yeah, well- wait. You actually agree with me?”
“Of course! It's totally obvious that our rulers move the sun and moon.”
“That's what I've been saying this whole time,” Jenkins said. “But they just kept tellin' me that the Earth was round and spinning! You see it spinning? I tell you! The government wants to make us believe that cause if they make us believe that they can make us believe anything!”
“Nope! And if your planet was a spinning ball wouldn't we fall off or something?” Pinkie asked. “That sounds super-mean of your government, though! Princess Luna is perfectly open about moving the moon around! I'm really surprised yours is lying to you like this.”
“Well at least your government is honest about lying to you. It's a step in the right direction, I'll admit.”
“Oh! Speaking of my government I'm supposed to take you back to Equestria now so you don't transform anyone else,” said Pinkie. She ruffled threw her mane and pulled out an amulet.
“I do suppose I should go with the marginally better evil government,” said Jenkins!
“That's the spirit!” Pinkie cheered. “Now all I have to do is touch you with this and-”
Pinkie held up the amulet, but just then a helicopter swooped down next to Pinkie. Two men inside it reached out and grabbed onto her. A moment later she was whisked away into the sky.
“I knew it!” Jenkins shook his fist at the helicopter “I warned you they had pandas! Just shake your fist at em, kid! They won't know what hit them!”
Jenkins looked down at his fist, realizing it was a hoof now.
“Oh no!” Jenkins shouted. “I'm defenseless! Whelp! Guess that's that. Government wins. Time to go surrender and what not. E-hehe-hoo!”
And well you can probably guess how that went.
In case you can't, he walked all the way out of Iowa, ran into the military and they all immediately became transformed into ponies, unable to resist.
Pinkie woke up on a metal slab, an iron bar around each of her legs, her neck and her tail. It was a dark room with a single light in it. From the darkness emerged a human wearing a lab coat. He didn't look very happy.
“You may have been able to outwit the stupid Americans,” said the man in the lab coat, “but we KGB had all had our souls, hearts and the part of our brains responsible for emotion removed. There is no way your cuteness will be able to stop us.”
“Oh no! You're right!” Pinkie gasped. “If I'm strapped to this table there's no way I can stop you from giving me tummy rubs! That's so dastardly!”
“What? No!” The doctor-type person groaned and raised a scalpel. “I mean from performing a live vivisection on you! Why? Because I'm with the government and that's just what we do to aliens.”
“A live vivisection? What's that?” Pinkie asked. She gave and excited gasp. “Is it like a rainbow? Is it like a magical rainbow made of love and candy?”
The doctor stared down at Pinkie, mouth agape, with a mixture of shock and horror. He felt his grip weaken and the knife fell through his fingers.
“I-” The doctor had to sit down. “I can't do it! You're just too innocent and adorable! In fact-”
The doctor loosened Pinkie's straps and lifted her up to give her a big hug.
“Daaaaw. A vivisection was just a hug, wasn't it?” Pinkie asked.
“What are you doing, comrade?” another one of the KGB agents in the room said. “If we can't dissect her then we are no better than the Americans.”
“But look at her, sir,” said the doctor-type guy, holding Pinkie up to him.
“Hello,” said Pinkie with a smile and a wave.
“Do you really think you can get to me as you did the others?” asked the KGB agent. “My soul is so frigid that it makes the oceans of liquid nitrogen on Titan look like the burning flames of hell. My heart is so black that it could, at any moment, collapse into a black hole and extinguish all light in the galaxy. I drown a puppy every morning and strangle a kitten every night before bed and feel nothing. I have never felt a single emotion in all my life.”
“Oh I bet you're not that bad!” Pinkie Pie said. “I bet you just need a hug! Everypony feels better after a hug!”
Pinkie Pie jumped up over to the other agent and gave him a big hug. He made no reaction.
“Wait,” said the agent, putting his heart over his chest. “I think I feel something in my chest! What is this? Is this what emotion feels like?”
“That what love and the magic of friendship feels like!” Pinkie declared.
The agent stared at her for a moment, trying to restrain himself as best as he could. But Pinkie was just so adorable and warm! Her fur was so warm! Her tail so soft!
A moment later her cracked and hugged back. Pinkie cuddled into the KGB agent as he began petting her.
“Oh wait! I think I did the opposite of what I was supposed to do!” Pinkie said.
“I have bad news, Twilight!” Colgate, who was now monitoring the pony-tracking spell, called out. “It looks like Pinkie didn't find him in time! The number of ponies just doubled! And now it's 8. 16. 32. 64.”
“What?! How is it doubling this fast?!” Twilight asked.
“Well now it's quadrupling, actually,” said Colgate. “Over a thousand. Now four thousand! They must want to give those tummy rubs really bad.”
“Well we still have one shot left,” Twilight said with determination. “The mass recall spell I was preparing as a backup! Is everypony ready?”
“We're ready, Twilight,” said Celestia, entering into the room. Several high ranking mages were in tow behind her, as well as Luna and Cadence.
And that was only just the beginning. Every unicorn in Canterlot and all four alicorns had been prepped to lend their magic to this massive spell. Every single one of them would be absolutely exhausted afterward, but if they got all the ponies off of Earth it would be worth it.
“Okay! We've only got one chance at this,” said Twilight. “Let's hope it works.”
Twilight gave the word and massive amounts of energy flowed through the city and into the portal. Controlling and weaving it all was a desperate feat, but Twilight wasn't alone. With the help of so many others, she was able to reach out, to find every pony in the other dimension and to bring them to Equestria.
Once more several thousand ponies appeared in the sky and began raining down on the city. One of them, of course, was Pinkie, who landed next to Twilight with a few bounces.
“Hey Twilight!” said Pinkie. “I've got
“Not now,” Twilight said through gritted teeth, concentrating hard.
The rain of ponies turned to a drizzle, then to nothing. Twilight couldn't find any more ponies to grab on to.
“That's it!” Colgate announced. “That's all of them! Every single pony has been brought back to Equestria.”
“Oh thank Celestia.” Twilight let out a sigh of relief and collapsed onto the ground.
“You're welcome,” said Celestia. She was panting heavily as well. The entire town was, actually.
They wouldn't be able to cast that spell again any time soon, but thankfully they wouldn't need to. Twilight had saved that planet from mass ponification, though that was only the first step. She'd still have to-
Twilight's mind went blank and her heart stopped at what happened next.
A portal to earth appeared over Canterlot and sucked in several hundred ponies. And it wasn't just Canterlot, either! From the high tower of Celestia's castle, Twilight saw in the distance portals opening over several other cities as well. And all those portals would be sucking up more ponies and dumping them all over the planet.
“What?! Why?! How?!” Twilight shouted at nothing in particular.
“Excellent!” the president said. Mere moments ago all the aliens either went home or spontaneously combusted or something. No one knew, but they were gone now. “I don't know what just happened but I'll take it. Cancel the portal to their home planet. After this, I'm just going to leave well enough alone.”
“Sir! The portal is done!”
The president blinked, then slowly turned to his laptop to see the scientist smiling widely.
“What?”
“The portal to the pony dimension,” said the scientist. “We were seriously able to open a portal to their dimension. Of course, seeing as we only had two hours there were some complications. Instead of just one portal we ended up opening thousands all over the world.”
“You fool!” the president banged his fist on the table. “You've doomed us all!
“Well hey! I only had two hours!” the scientist yelled back. “We had to discover like twenty new laws of physics and a hundred new materials to pull it off and. I think that's very impressive.”
“Can you close the portals?”
“I barely even understand how we opened them,” said the scientist. “So no.”
“Well maybe-”
“Sir!” The general came back in. “We're getting reports of ponies flooding in from all over the planet!”
He turned on a radio.
“It's a horrible sight!” the radio said. “China's gone dark. Europe's gone dark. The west coast is gone, Canada's gone, Russia's gone and we just lost contact with West Point. Pearl Harbor is our last remaining military base and it's being overrun as we speak. Oh no! There's one now! My god they're so adorable! No! Nooooooooo!”
And then the radio cut off.
“Whelp!” said the president. “I guess that's it. Humanity's dead. Nothing to do now but smoke my final cigar, listen to Sweet Cherry Wine one last time and shoot myself.”
“You know we won't actually die even if they do take over, right?” the general asked.
“There's no hope for me now,” said the President, lighting his cigar. “I failed to capture the aliens and cut them up for science, so I failed as a leader. I can't face anyone after that.”
“Understood,” said the general.
He walked into the other room. After a moment, a gunshot was heard.
Twilight watched in horror as the map of earth quickly turned red, signifying the spread of ponification.
“How is it spreading that fast?!” Twilight stammered. “Dang it! They've already been completely wiped out.”
“Well there's still this one island left on the coast of 'Africa',” said Pinkie, pointing to the map. “Maybe those humans can repopulate?”
“I doubt those ones will last much longer. There's just nothing more we can do,” said Twilight with a sorrowful shake of her head. She turned to Jim. “Sorry about making your species go extinct.”
“Ah it's okay,” said Jim. “It was probably gonna happen pretty soon anyway. We were about to elect Donald Trump, you know.”
“And it's not like anyone actually died,” said Dash. “They're just horses now.”
“But it's going to be really bad for their economy, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said. “Their glove industry, for example, is going to fold completely!”
“Oh!” Pinkie said. “There goes that island.”
“Well,” said Celestia, sighing mournfully, “Looks like everyone on the planet is a pony now. Guess that means I've got another place I need to rule over.”
“I don't think it works like that, Celestia,” said Twilight. “Just because they're ponies doesn't mean you rule them.”
“Actually it does work like that,” said Celestia. “Believe me I wish it didn't work like that, but it does.”
And Princess Celestia really did become the new ruler of Earth.
Everyone turning into horses was really bad for the economy so the planet fell into its worst depression in history. But over about two decades the economy recovered and things weren't too horribly bad unless you're allergic to horses in which case it was that horribly bad.
And that's how Twilight accidentally conquered our planet.
Seriously.