//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7 
// Story: Militant Equestria 
// by GuitarKirby 
//------------------------------//

     I was about to speak, but Celestia raised her hoof. I snapped my mouth shut at the sign. She had suddenly gained an air of authority and command that I had not seen earlier in the evening.
"I'm sorry, Soaring Spirit, but I must ask you to wait a moment; we cannot continue until my sister, Luna, is present."
"Of course, your majesty." We waited only a few moments before a blast of light filled the room. The midnight-blue image and starry mane of Princess Luna appeared before me. I started quivering, not at Luna, but at the fact that I was in the same room as the most powerful ponies in all of Equestria. Luna spoke, more loudly than her sister usually did.
"What hast befallen you, my little ponies?" she asked, her voice powerful. I bowed, and related the whole story, as I had seen it. Celestia remained calm and collected, if powerfully focused. Luna's control was not so impressive; her face darkened with anger, and she glared as the story progressed. When I had finished, she turned to her sister furiously.
"Sister, this is most unacceptable! We cannot allow our subjects to be openly attacked by these strange, two-legged creatures!"
Celestia looked at her sister, her gaze hard.
"We will not jump to conclusions, Luna. It may have been an accident, and Equestria has not seen war in over 1000 years!" I quailed; the mere sound of the word "war" terrified me, at least at the time. Celestia turned away from Luna, and gazed down at Derpy, who was coming to.
"Miss Hooves, I would appreciate it if you would tell us your side of the story, so long as you think you can." The poor mare looked at Celestia with golden eyes, a confused frown on her face.
"Well, I didn't know they would hurt us. I just wanted to say hello, so I jumped on a cloud. I wanted to talk to one of them, but I was too tired to fly, so I just jumped on a cloud to make it move. But I'm not very good at controlling weather..." Derpy's eyes began to fill with tears. "I accidentally sh-shot lightning at it, and I was trying to catch up to apologize, but it j-just kept shooting lightning, and then he turned around, and there were those white things all around, and I fell off of my cloud, and- and..." She burst into tears. "I just don't know what went wrong!" Celestia spoke to Derpy in soothing tones, trying to calm her down. Derpy stepped on the ground, and her tears were suddenly renewed. Celestia seemed surprised by this. It was then that I noticed something wrong with her hoof.
"Princess, something's wrong! Derpy's hoof..." Derpy raised her hoof for us. Lodged in the cracked hoof was a small, metal object. Celestia used magic to remove it - much to poor Derpy's displeasure - and healed the hoof back over with a small spell.
"This object... It must have been what that metal monstrosity spit out," she said, looking at it carefully. "We will have this looked over at a later time. All of you will attend a meeting with these creatures. I will not allow this to happen again, unless we take part in open warefare."
We all agreed to the Princess' request, and exited the castle. Ponyville was only a short trip away for a pegasus, but I still offered to fly Rainbow Dash home. She was tired from her performance at the Wonderbolts' show, and her race with the humans, so she accepted, saying:
"I could fall out of the sky!"
We flew slowly along together in silence for some time. Rainbow Dash spoke first, after these first few minutes.
"What do you think is gonna happen? Do you think there's gonna be a war?"
I hesitated, not wanting to make a hasty answer.
"Well... I don't think Celestia and Luna will want to jump into a fight, but on the other hand, nopony deserves what happened to Derpy. I think that something needs to be worked out with these two-legged things."
It took Dash a moment to reply.
"Well, I don't know what you'll say... But I think that those metal monsters were machines, with people flying them from the inside." I just stared. The idea of flying on the inside of something, without wings of your own, was entirely alien to me.
"You think so?"
"I know, I know, it's crazy, but it seemed like there was one of those two-legged things inside that giant metal bird."
"That does sound kind of far-fetched. But I guess it doesn't matter. Do you think the two-legs will want to talk with us?"
"Who knows, and who cares? I just want to make sure that they don't invade my turf again." She looked angrily forward, as though infuriated by the very thought of someone in a machine trying to steal her thunder. "They really hurt Derpy. I'm not personal friends with her, and she might make lots of mistakes, but that doesn't mean they can spit metal at her and break her hoof! If they try to do that with even one other pony, then I don't care what the princesses say, the war is starting."
I stared in amazement at her determination.
"Well, Dash, I hope that doesn't happen... But if it does, I'll be right out on the front lines with you." I suddenly realized how dumb I sounded. She turned and gave me a quizzical look, but then smiled.
"Thanks. I guess you need more than one crazy pegasus to fight on the same side." She laughed a breaking, high-pitched laugh, and headed into her cloudy home. I flew away, feeling rather surprised, but pleased with myself.