“Step One: Assemble the avengers. Done!” Rainbow made a tick mark on the notepad she held in her wing as she looked out into the crowd she had gathered. A massive herd consisting of the Element bearers sans Twilight and Rainbow herself, Spike, Gilda, Trixie, Discord, and many others from Ponyville and beyond stood idly on the field just outside of Ponyville, conversing with themselves as they waited for Rainbow Dash to speak.
“Step Two: March them all the way up north to the Crystal Empire!” Rainbow Dash got the crowd’s attention by blowing on the whistle around her neck. “Alright, everyone, listen up! Twilight Sparkle is being held hostage at the Crystal Empire, so that’s where we all need to go! Now march!”
“Whoa whoa whoa, hold on just a minute,” Gilda said. “You expect all of us to walk all the way up to the Crystal Empire?! With no food, no warm clothing, no supplies at all?!”
“Well yes.” Rainbow Dash replied as if that fact was painfully obvious.
Gilda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we’re not doing that.”
“Wouldn’t it be much more expedient to just take a train?” Applejack asked.
“Or, better yet, I could just teleport everyone there like this.” Discord snapped his fingers and suddenly, Rainbow Dash and the rest of the crowd found themselves standing in a plaza in the middle of the Crystal Empire. "Ah, there we go."
Suddenly, everyone heard a volley of laser shots being fired relatively close to them, so they panicked and stampeded into the nearest house they could find. The house, small as it was, was carved entirely from crystal, shining radiantly in an array of pinks and blues. In the corner of the living room, there was a small walk-in kitchen. Off to the far side of the room, a small staircase led up to the second floor.
"Alright, nobody panic," Rainbow Dash assured the crowd. "No one knows we're here. We're safe."
When she said that, Sunburst yawned as he went down the stairs. When he got halfway down the staircase, he paused, looked at the crowd, cleaned the lenses of his glasses with a handkerchief, and looked at the crowd again.
"Um...happy birthday?" Discord said awkwardly.
"How did you guys get in my house?!"
Twilight was back in her cage, glaring at Flurry Heart as she tended to the patches of scorched fur on her light purple coat. “You’ll never get away with this!” she said.
“Hey, you lost that game fair and square. You know the rules,” Flurry said with a smirk. One of Flurry’s robotic servants rolled into the throne room from the front gates. It was a cruder model, with only a single wheel taking the place of its legs, two long, stick-like arms holding a heart made of crystal, and a glowing glassy orb in lieu of a face. It spoke with a cold, yet oddly charming metallic voice, "Crystal Heart delivery for Princess Flurry Heart."
"Took you long enough!" She plucked the Heart from the robot’s arms with her magic and levitated it in front of her and walked to the front of the throne room towards the exit. As she did so, she also lifted Twilight's cage through the air behind her. “Come with me. I think you’ll like what I have to show you.”
As Flurry set Twilight’s cage down on the central square of the Crystal Empire, the perfect place for Twilight to see what robotic hooves created. It was a sphere of steel gray with a radius that rivaled that of the main square itself, dwarfing any and all buildings it sat next to. Across its otherwise smooth surface were etched a complex web of lines and circles. A crew of Flurry’s robots, one holding the Crystal Heart, worked on this monstrosity as they climbed its sheer curved surface. As the Crystal Heart was inserted into the device, the lines and circles began to glow a bright lime green, and the whole thing hummed with a frightening power.
“Behold, the strongest weapon in all of existence, the Metal Star!” Flurry announced bombastically. “It’s made of some of the strongest minerals in the known universe, and armed to the teeth with weapons even star-spanning empires would fear! Once the Crystal Empire is fully under my control, I will be able to use the unlimited power of the Metal Star to subjugate all of space and time! No force in Equestria, nay, all of existence will be able to stop me!”
“You’re insane!” Twilight shouted out.
Flurry Heart laughed. “I’m a mare who gets things done! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a universe to conquer!"
At that moment, another portal opened up in front of the Metal Star, and Commander Spatium came out once more, glowing teal sword floating by his side and twenty new alicorn soldiers in formation behind him.
“Hah! Did you think you could keep me away forever, Flurry Heart?” Spatium boasted.
Flurry guffawed uproariously, puzzling Spatium. “You really came back? After all that? You get everything that’s coming to you.” She shut her eyes tight as her horn began to glow a light blue. “Come to life, my engine of ruin!” The lines etched on the Metal Star began to glow brighter as it levitated into the air with a low hum of power. Spatium and his army of alicorns turned around and looked at the ultimate weapon in horror.
The Star opened a small hole barely the size of a coin on the front of its shell and vaporized one of Spatium's warriors with a ray of blazing death, leaving him a pile of ash on the ground.
"...Huh, did not see that coming,” Spatium said.
In the distance, former Princesses Celestia and Luna flew towards the war-torn city. They saw an entire company of alicorn warriors being completely annihilated by a sphere of annihilation while it sustained no damage itself.
"Erm, do you think we are in over our heads with this, sister?" Luna asked.
"Nonsense! We've defeated every threat to Equestria for over a millennium, and this shall be no exception!"
Celestia charged up a mighty beam of magic and fired it directly at the Metal Star. The beam bounced off its metal surface and into the sky, and the Star was left completely unharmed.
"Okay, we may need to step back and rethink our strategy a bit." Celestia hovered idly in the air, thinking on her next move. After a while, a light bulb came to life in her mind “I’ve got the perfect idea! Come along, sister!”
Laser shots still rang out in the Crystal Empire, mostly at Sunburst’s house, leaving a few chips and dents in its crystal walls. In the house, Rainbow’s army huddled together, shivering in fear.
“Never you fear, for the Great and Powerful Trixie shall get us out of here!” Trixie opened the door and stuck her head outside, only to lose her nerve and duck back in when she heard more blasts from outside. “The Great and Powerful Trixie would like to rescind her last statement!”
“Hold on for one second, people.” Discord rose above the crowd more than he usually did. “I have an idea! Applejack, come here for a second.”
Applejack groaned as Discord beckoned her forward. “Okay, this better be good.” The tricksy draconequus whispered into Applejack’s ear. Her ears perked up and her eyes widened in shock. “That’s a terrible idea, and you know it!”
“Wait, I’m not finished yet!” Discord went and whispered the rest of his plan into Rainbow Dash’s ear, to the same effect as it had on Applejack.
“Now hold on there! That’s...actually not a bad plan, now that I think about it,” Rainbow Dash said.
“What?!” Applejack said. “Don’t you remember the last time Discord had a plan?!”
“You got any better ideas?” Trixie asked.
Applejack sighed and hung her hat in shame. “No...I guess I don’t.”
“Then let’s go! Time’s a-wastin'!” Discord proudly strutted out the door of Sunburst’s house, Applejack and Rainbow Dash not too far behind.
Silicate, Autonomos, and their horde of robotic horses roamed the streets of the Crystal Empire, looking for innocent ponies to brutalize with their weapons. They didn’t find any at all, since most of the Crystal Ponies had the good sense to hide inside their houses and lock their doors. Autonomos suddenly turned one of his hooves into a high-powered laser gun and opened fire on the side of one of the houses.
“Why do you keep doing that?!” Silicate asked annoyedly.
“Target practice,” Autonomos said.
“Don’t you know that wastes ammunition?” Silicate said.
“Oh, I’m not too worried about it,” Autonomos said. “After all, I know you’ll always have my back if we ever get into trouble, brother. You’ve always been there for me, and I’ll never forget it.”
"Yeah, about that." Silicate transformed one of his hooves into the glowing muzzle of a massive laser cannon, which he held right up against Autonomos' muzzle. "Have you ever heard of the saying 'there can be only one'?"
"What?!" Autonomos backed up, his optic sensors widened to their maximum capacity. "But, I'm your friend, your brother!”
“You also have telepathic control of half of the Metal Army. You think I’m just going to take that lying down?” Silicate said.
“But, we've done everything together since the day Princess Flurry Heart installed our programming! Does that mean nothing to you?!"
Silicate chuckled lowly as he charged up his gun. "Long live the king."