//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: The Invasion // Story: Do Not Serve These Ponies // by Thanqol //------------------------------// Chapter Seven: The Invasion By Thanqol     First had come the running.   There had been quite a bit of it, and mostly uphill. While their opposition had consisted mostly of shambling zombie ponies, neither Lyra and Bon Bon were particularly in shape and were carrying a heavy oven with entrapped pony along with them. Trustworthy wasn’t a huge amount of help, excusing himself +On account of my super-sticky tar coating! Sorry, don't want to be the second pony permanently bonded to an oven today!+. He strolled alongside the two regular ponies as they shoved the oven up the hill.   “Go faster, you ditchwater rubes! They’re gaining on us!” cried Blueblood.   “Lyra?” Bon Bon said.   “Yes?” Lyra said.   “Wouldn’t it be a “tragedy” if “something” were to “happen” to “Blueblood”?” Bon Bon said, using so many airquotes that Lyra wondered if the obvious guess was the wrong one. She decided to make the assumption anyway.   “No. They’d probably just let him out of the oven,” Lyra said. Bon Bon supposed that was a good enough case to keep him around.   Puffing and wheezing, the ponies managed to shove the oven back inside Lyra’s house and slam the doors just as the horde crested the hill. Bon Bon’s lungs felt like two puffer fish implanted in her torso by a maniacal deep-sea surgeon, who - prior to his mad experiment - had outfitted the puffer fish with electrodes and was sending them into repeated cardiac arrest. Lyra was afraid to talk lest she accidentally sever her panting tongue.   The horde reached the house.   Then came the fortification.   Blueblood had been knocked on his side and used to barricade the main door. A bookcase was shifted to cover one of the windows. The dinner table was upended to cover another one. And then they ran into a problem.   “Lyra,” said Bon Bon, “we’re out of non-creepy stuff to barricade the windows with.”   “What’s creepy about my stuff?” said Lyra.   “You’ve got a pony skeleton in a vat.”   “That was my great grandfather, Requiem d’Heartstrings. He was a necromancer. It was his dying wish that his remains would always be on hoof in case any of his descendents were necromancers and needed his help.”   “Like I said. Creepy.”   “Well, technically we’ll be fulfilling his dying wish if we use him to barricade that door.” Lyra said, wheeling her ancestor into place. “I think that’s the only dead ancestor I have around here, what’s so creepy about the rest of the place?”   “There’s that globe of the world that screams when you spin it,” Bon Bon said. She was quickly remembering why she hated coming to Lyra’s house.   “It gets motion sickness, that’s all!” Lyra said, grabbing the globe and throwing it onto the barricade. It screamed with a thousand tiny voices.   “That answers one question, but not the more important one which is why does that thing exist?”   “Housewarming gift,” Lyra said.   “From who?”   “Actually, it was for you,” Lyra admitted.   “I already have a house!” Bon Bon said. The followup question slithered into her mind like an oily cobra: “Were you planning to destroy my house?” “I was gonna wait until it got destroyed by natural causes!”   By this point hooves were starting to pound on the doors. The impacts made the globe spin slowly, which made it scream quietly.   Focus, Bon Bon. “Don’t you have any weapons?”   “Weapons?” Lyra said, confused.   “Weren’t you planning to violently overthrow the government? Surely you have some weapons!”   “I thought you had taken care of the weapons!”   “How would I ‘take care of weapons’!?”   “You’re a baker, aren’t you?”   “Do you know that owning a military-grade oven is a crime?”   +Ladies. Ladies,+ thought Trustworthy, stepping between them. +You shouldn’t spend your last moments fighting. You should spend your last moments slathering this peanut butter behind your ears!+   Both mares turned to look at him.   +In tar pony culture, having peanut butter behind your ears when you die is good luck!+ Trustworthy thought.   There was a crash as a hoof broke through an unblocked window. Lyra pulled down the venetian blinds in the optimistic hope that it’d stop the attack.   “You know,” came Blueblood’s petulant voice from over by the door, “if I wasn’t trapped in an oven and still had my armour I would have been able to deal with this single-hoofed. Your petty vengeance has doomed us all.”   “Shut up!” shouted Lyra.   “What? I’m just pointing out how you’ve failed at yet another trivial task. The only thing you had to do to stop the world from ending was not get in my way.”   “Shut up!” repeated Lyra.   “Well, it’s some small consolation that I’ll be able to hear them kill you. I imagine I’ll be quite safe in here until this whole thing blows over.”   “SHUT UP!” shouted Lyra a third time, running over to the oven.   Bon Bon got in her way. It was what Trustworthy had said before that motivated her. It was sickening to see Blueblood claim any moral high ground whatsoever, after everything he'd done. She wanted to put an end to it.   “Uh, Prince Blueblood?” Bon Bon asked.   “Yes, plebeian?”   “Why are you here?”   “As I said. Damage control.”   “No, I mean, why did you come to Lyra’s house in the first place?”   “I – “ Blueblood sniffed. “It was the polite thing to do.”   Bon Bon’s scepticism could be heard even through half an inch of cast iron.   “Fine! It’s not like it matters now anyway! I was here to frame you!”   “Frame me for what?” Lyra said in shock.   “The meteor, obviously,”   “But I actually did that.”   “You told me as much. But the magical resonance all over the meteor belongs to Twilight Sparkle, I don’t know why, and that’s what mattered to the investigators. I was not going to let auntie Celestia get into trouble over her favourite student demolishing the countryside so I decided to kill two pegasai with one telescope.” Blueblood said.   “But I’ve got royal immunity,” Lyra said.   “Not against murder. And you’re the only pony I know who keeps a disgusting corpse in her living room. All I had to do was move it to the crash site...”   “Don’t you dare insult grandpa Requiem!”   “What are you going to do? Lock me in a stove?” Blueblood sneered.   “I can still set the stove on fire!”   “You wouldn’t dare!”   They were interrupted by some mild screaming   “What are you doing?” Bon Bon said to Trustworthy.   +Uh. Straightening the barricades,+ Trustworthy said, quickly shoving the screaming globe back into position. +Yep. Straight and tidy. Nopony’s getting through there.+   “You were trying to let the zombies in!” Bon Bon accused.   +No I wasn’t. Scout’s honour,+ Trustworthy thought.   “Are you even a scout?”   +No, but my cousin was. And I wouldn’t want to tarnish my cousin’s honour!+   “You’ve been weird from the moment we met you, Trustworthy,” Bon Bon said. “And I think it’s time you told us what’s really going –“   “Set the stove on fire!” Lyra said suddenly.   +That sounds important!+ Trustworthy thought.   “No more distractions!” Bon Bon said. "Tell us the truth!"   “I can get us out of here!” Lyra said. “I’ve got a telescope in the attic; we can try a long range teleportation!”   “It can wait until – “   There was a loud crash and the front door splintered partly off its hinges.   “- we’ve gotten to safety,” Bon Bon amended the thought.   Lyra galloped upstairs and angled the telescope so it focused on the demolished hill of the observatory. She quickly began sketching the silver arcane symbol necessary for the magic on the ground before them. For Lyra, unpractised at teleportation, this was going to be a big spell – moving four ponies and a stove across more than a mile.   To give an idea of the difficulty of this task, it was a matter of immolating yourself and your friends, hurtling them into the cosmic nether, curving it off the gravitational field of the Nightmare Dimension and slingshotting it back to land somewhere else in Equestria. At no point were those particle streams allowed to cross or she and Blueblood really would become ‘one flesh’, in a way that was almost as horrible to contemplate as the normal process.    The ease with which Twilight Sparkle could do magic like this was a sign of either deranged genius or glorious insanity.   She’d need all the time she could spare to get this perfect.   *   Speaking of Twilight Sparkle, the purple unicorn and her faithful companion, the Cone of Shame, had arrived alongside Rainbow Dash in Appleooza.   Twilight Sparkle made her way directly to the salt bar.   “Hey, uh, Twilight. You said that we’d come here to save Ponyville, not get salted,” Rainbow Dash said. “Not that you getting salted is a bad thing. I mean, you do need to loosen up a bit –“   “We’re not here to party,” said Twilight Sparkle. “We just need to borrow the bar.”   “The what?”   “The entire building. We’re going to teleport it back to Ponyville.”   “Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” said Rainbow Dash. “It wouldn’t be much of a party without Pinkie Pie –“   “Rainbow! We’re not going to party! Now wait here while I clear the building!”   Rainbow Dash obediently sat down while Twilight Sparkle walked into the bar. She overheard an “Excuse me everypony, could I please have your attention?”, followed by a shriek and Twilight Sparkle flying through the saloon doors to land in the dirt.   Twilight Sparkle, furious, got up and walked right back in. Rainbow Dash tried to straighten her feathers but the Cone of Shame was blocking her. It was really uncomfortable. Like having your teeth out of alignment.   There were flashes of purple magic from inside the building and muffled explosions.   Rainbow Dash approached a cute grey unicorn filly who was leaning against a fence post. “Hey there,” she said.   “Oh, hello there beautiful,” said the filly. “Looking for a good time?”   “Yeah, actually, could you help me out a bit? My feathers are all crooked,”   “My speciality,” she purred. “Right this way.”   There was the crash of broken glass and Twilight Sparkle, slightly scorched, landed outside the bar again just as Rainbow Dash started to leave with the grey. Twilight raised her head, focused, then yelled, “Rainbow Dash!”   “What?”   “I leave you alone for five minutes!”   “What!? She’s going to help me with my feathers!” Rainbow ruffled her wings uncomfortably. “They’re crooked.”   Twilight Sparkle walked over to Rainbow Dash, horn glowing. Rainbow’s wings were pulled to full extension and there were a few flashes as Twilight straightened the feathers with magic. “Now stay put,” she said, and stomped back towards the bar.   “My. Your girlfriend is so... rough!” said the grey pony.   “What, Twilight? Yeah. When I first met her I thought she was just an egghead,” Rainbow said, wincing.   “It’s always the ones you least suspect.”   “Yeah. She made me wear this cone too.”   “Really? Why?”   “I hurt my throat.”   “Goodness! How did you manage to do that?”   “I got something really big and nasty stuck in it.”   “I’ve never heard of that happening before,” said the grey pony, looking slightly dizzy.   “I had to walk like that halfway across town.”   “Oh my stars!”   “It was actually the second time that’s happened to me,” Rainbow Dash said. “so I kind of knew what to expect.”   “How... how did she get it out?”   “Oh, she cut it out with a knife.”   The grey pony raised a hoof to her forehead and daintily fainted. A moment later, there was a loud explosion and a dozen ponies were tossed out into the street. “Rainbow! We’re leaving!” shouted Twilight Sparkle.   “Okay!” Rainbow Dash said, trotting over to the saloon.   *   “Alright... I’m ready,” Lyra said. She took a deep breath. “When we arrive, there might be a little bit of fire. Just be ready for that.”   “I will do my best,” said Blueblood sarcastically.   Bon Bon and Trustworthy stepped into the circle, pushing the oven along with them. Without it blocking the door, the wood was starting to splinter much more rapidly. The hinges were getting weak and there’d be hat zombies inside any moment now.   Lyra closed her eyes. Her horn started to glow. She gathered the magic delicately, pulling it from the pages of books and from the breeze and the fireplace. She tasted it on her tongue, let it roll, and began to shape. It was like sculpting with her mind; taking all the raw potential in her horn and cutting away huge chunks of it. No, this spell would not be for healing. No, this spell would not be for control. Her horn cut the glowing potential like a knife, shaping it ever closer to what it had to be –   And then a bright blue light jabbed her in the eye and grabbed for the spell.   “What –“   She grabbed back at it with her mind, trying to get hold of the magic before it went out of control, but she was jabbed again and the magic pulled further away. Belatedly, Lyra realised what was happening – my magic is being stolen! Before she could react to it, the deed was done.   The stove imploded, crumpling like a tin can, crushing down to the size of a baseball.   Blue light bathed the entire room, burning away impurity.   Fires started by the dozen, immolating every book, table, and floorboard. Bon Bon’s tail burst into flames, as did Trustworthy McLegitimate’s entire body – that’s right, tar is flammable.   A single hoof in golden armour stepped down onto the stairs.   “I’m free!” said Prince Blueblood, emerging from the fire of teleportation. “I’m free! Ha! Haha! Ahaahahaha! AHAHAHAHA!”   His laugher settled into a malevolent grin. “And you, my beloved, are going to pay for this humiliation.”