A wave of gasps swept the room. "What is it?" came a voice from the back.
The earth pony hurried to the briefing room. Walking in, he was surprised that it was packed to the brim with lots of chatter. The general motioned to a seat, and the pony quickly sat down at the conference table.
"Thank you for coming, Dr. Kiso," said the general.
"Yes, sir," replied the earth pony.
The general addressed the conference room, which instantly fell silent. "Good afternoon everypony. I know that things have been moving quickly and there's been a lot of rumors and misinformation swirling around, so I've asked Dr. Kiso to brief everyone on the situation." Turning to the earth pony, he said, "Dr. Kiso, you have the floor."
Standing up, he said, "Thank you, sir." Turning to the assembled ponies, he said, "What you all are about to hear is of the highest classification. What is discussed here is not to leave this room. I've prepared some slides to help illustrate what's happening." He took a deep breath before continuing. "As you know, we've established good relations with several races: the changelings, the yaks, the dragons, and the hippogriffs. However, our relations are based on current leadership. Any change to the leadership of these races, whether natural succession or a coup, could drastically affect our relations and radically change the balance of power in Equestria, to our detriment. To that end, we began the Manehattan Project. The purpose of this program was to develop a weapon that we could use to defend ourselves. After several years of research and millions of bits expended, we developed the ultimate weapon. Slide please."
A slide appeared on the screen:
A wave of gasps swept the room. "What is it?" came a voice from the back.
Dr. Kiso adjusted his glasses. "That, is the friendship bomb. Ten megatons of pure friendship. Deployed from airships, we could drop them on our enemies, filling all creatures within the blast radius with love and kindness."
"Was it a success?" came a voice.
"Initially we deemed this explosion a complete success. Full production on the friendship bombs has been greenlit. However," he took another deep breath, "our experiment had an unintended side-affect. It appears that it has awoken an ancient beast. Next slide."
More gasps filled the room.
"What is it?" came a question.
"We call it Spikezilla. And we believe it's headed to Canterlot to spread friendship."
