//------------------------------//
// Ninjas vs Changelings 
// Story: LEGO Equestria Girls 10 
// by Chronicler06 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 3
Ninjas vs Changelings


On any typical night, Ninjago City would be almost as bustling as it was during the day. However, due to a large majority of civilians taking refuge in their homes to avoid the risk of unknowingly sharing information with Changeling infiltrators, there was hardly anyone walking or driving around the brightly lit downtown streets. For those who were familiar with the typical city activity, the relative emptiness and quietness was certainly a rather eerie thing to experience.

Further out from the city along the shoreline was a seldom used dockyard with a few large warehouses that had seen better days. Most people would prefer to stay clear of such a shady-looking area, so there was very little confirmed activity to assure them they could even feel safe if they happened to be wandering around in such a place.

On this clear and moonless night far from almost any city lights, such plentiful darkness offered excellent cover for illicit activity. And so it was that with a faint squeak, one of the doors into the largest of those abandoned warehouses slowly opened and a pair of scruffy robbers wearing black beanie hats peeked their heads out and glanced around. Once they were certain everything ahead of them was clear, they snickered mischievously as they fully opened the door and rolled out a flatbed trolly upon which was a large safe. They hauled their ill-gotten loot over to a large hole that had been cut through a nearby chainlink fence.

“Hold it right there!”

Just as the two robbers reached that hole in the chainlink fence, that authoritative shout startled them as they immediately stopped and turned back to see three armed and fully armored Changeling guards marching directly towards them. The guards surrounded the robbers and pointed their laser blasters at them.

“State your business!” demanded one of the guards.

“Oh, uh, we’re just… makin’ a withdrawal,” stammered the robber with a grey jacket over his striped prison shirt, speaking with a gravelly gangster voice.

The robber with the sleeves ripped off his striped prison shirt spoke with a deeper dim-witted voice as he awkwardly agreed, “Y-yeah! We really needed the money, so we decided to take the lot.”

“Don’t say it like that, Mugsy!” scolded the first robber. “It’ll make ‘em think we’re stealin’ this loot!”

“Isn’t that what we’re actually doing, Rocky?” asked Mugsy in confusion.

Rocky slapped his partner in crime in the face and furiously shouted, “Darn it, Mugsy! Where’s your sense of deception?!”

“Hey, at least I know how to fight back!” retorted Mugsy before he slapped Rocky in the face.

Rocky growled furiously and tried to slap Mugsy again, only for the attempt to be blocked by an attempted slap from his opponent. They quickly responded to each other with weak blow after weak blow, and before long, they were slapping against each other in a rather pathetic wimp fight.

The three Changeling guards stared at the two bickering robbers, then glanced at one another. Finally, one of them shrugged and dismissively stated, “Eh, let ‘em go. They’re not worth the effort.”

Rocky and Mugsy immediately ceased their fight as they stared at the Changeling guards for a moment, then turned to each other with confused looks on their faces. Seconds later, they both grinned excitedly, then they pushed the safe on a trolley through the hole in the chainlink fence and away from the secret Changeling base.

“Are you sure it’s such a good idea to just let them go?” questioned one of the other two guards.

“Let’s face it,” the first guard responded dismissively, “they’re just a couple of lowlifes who are desperate for some quick cash wherever they go. Besides, the contents of that safe are mere pocket change compared to what we will eventually have access to, once this city is under our control. It’s no different than letting some rats get away with a few table scraps before the real feast has even arrived.”

“Not to mention, I’ve read their criminal records,” added the third guard, “With the kind of antics they’ve been through, those two morons are often more of a threat to themselves than they are to whoever they decide to steal from. If they tried to break into an actual secure facility and not a makeshift outpost like what we have here, they’d probably set off all the alarms in no more than five minutes.”

“But they know where our hideout is in this region,” argued the second guard. “What if they end up revealing that info to someone who could pose a more serious threat?”

“In that scenario, the enemy would have to either torture those goons or pay them a high asking price to get that information,” explained the first guard, “and let’s be realistic here, our enemies on this planet are likely to be too noble to even consider doing either of those things.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” noted the third guard uneasily. “According to what I’ve read, those two robbers have had several run-ins with one of the best groups of heroes on this planet. I can’t help but get a feeling that those heroes might be much closer than we think.”

“C’mon, what are the odds?” remarked the first guard dismissively. “It’s not like they’re just gonna drop down out of the sky behind our backs.”

Little did those guards realize, that was exactly what was happening while they were busy talking, and by the time that final remark had been made, that group of heroes had already snuck into the building through a window near the rooftop.

“What’s going on here?!”

The three guards turned back and saw a Changeling commander was now standing behind them.

“Oh, uh, nothing too serious,” reported the third guard nervously.

“Yeah, just a couple of petty crooks trying to take something of little value to us. No big deal,” assured the first guard.

“Any infiltration is a big deal!” the commander shot back furiously. “I don’t wanna see you nitwits getting side-tracked by whatever gossip catches your fleeting attention! Now get back to your posts!”

“Yes, sir!” acknowledged the three guards with a salute before they began walking away.

“You there!” barked the commander as he pointed at the first guard. “Patch up that hole in the fence! I don’t want any more rats slipping in and taking stuff from us, regardless of how little value it might be!”

“Yes, sir!” acknowledged the first guard with a salute before he turned back and began assessing the damage to that fence.

As the Changeling guards walked away, they failed to notice a figure hiding behind a small pile of crates on the other side of the chainlink fence. The only distinctive feature on this figure that stood out in the darkness was the short and wide conical hat on his head. As he watched the guards return to their posts, he pulled down the dark red mask that covered the lower half of his scruffy face and held a small device close to his mouth. “The diversion has run its course,” he spoke into the device. “Did they make it inside?”

“Affirmative, Ronin,” responded a female voice through the device. “The Ninjas have safely arrived without immediately raising any alarms.”

“Good,” acknowledged Ronin with a smile. “Whatever happens to them next will be entirely on them, which means my work here is done. Pleasure doing business with you, P.I.X.A.L.” He pocketed the device, then chuckled and quietly added, “And now to collect my payment…” He then turned away from the old warehouse and began walking towards where the two incompetent robbers ran off to.

Along the way, he passed by one of the few lights in the area, far enough to avoid detection, but close enough to briefly reveal his full appearance. He had olive green on his legs, sand green on his torso and right arm, orange on his left arm and shoulder, brown gloves on his hands, a dark red conical hat over his auburn hair, and a brown eyepatch over his right eye.

It wasn’t long before Ronin arrived at a secluded alleyway where he found the two incompetent robbers struggling to open that safe they had just stolen.

“C’mon, Rocky!” begged Mugsy impatiently. “Hurry up!”

“Hold your horses, Mugsy!” Rocky shot back as he held a stethoscope up to the combination lock on the safe. “We’ll get the loot inside as soon as I get this part done right.”

“How long is it gonna take?” asked Mugsy.

“As long as it takes for me to figure out the combination to open this thing,” answered Rocky.

“That’s gonna take forever!” whined Mugsy. “Why can’t we just smash it open?”

“We got this stuff for Christmas!” argued Rocky as he held up a sack full of burglary tools by his feet. “The least we could do is actually put it to good use!”

“But we still have our old crowbars!” Mugsy pointed out as he pulled out his red crowbar. “We can just use them to pry open the safe.”

“Ya think we haven’t done that before!” Rocky shot back as he whipped out his own red crowbar. “The last time we tried openin’ a safe with these, all we did was put so many dents into it that it became impossible to open the door!” He then emphasized the stupidity of Mugsy’s suggestion by bonking him on the head with his crowbar.

“Ow!” cried Mugsy in pain as he rubbed the sore spot on his head. He quickly retaliated by using his crowbar to bonk Rocky on the head.

Rocky grunted in pain and rubbed the point of impact on his head, then glared at his partner in crime and used his crowbar to smack the other crowbar out of Mugsy’s hand.

Mugsy swiftly responded by grabbing Rocky’s crowbar, then yanked it out of his hand and flung it away.

Now that both robbers were disarmed, they both glared and growled at each other for a few seconds, then suddenly they began flailing their hands against each other in a pathetic attempt to fight with relentless weak slapping.

“Wow,” muttered Ronin as he witnessed the ridiculous antics of those two crooks and shook his head in disappointment. “You guys really are a couple of brick-heads.” He then walked right by that pathetic wimp fight, turned the combination lock on the safe a few times, and with an audible click, the safe door unlocked and he pulled it open.

The two incompetent robbers immediately stopped slapping each other and turned to Ronin by the now opened safe. “How’d ya do that?!” asked Rocky in disbelief.

Ronin smirked and explained, “While you guys were busy trying to take some common loot, I also snuck into that Changeling outpost and went after something a little more… valuable.” He then pulled out an open box full of floppy disks. “Information.”

“You didn’t tell those ninjas you was gonna do that,” Rocky pointed out.

“Yeah, I thought we were gonna be the ones to break in and steal something,” added Mugsy.

“Of course I didn’t tell them that,” replied Ronin slyly. “This is something I decided to do for myself. Unlike you two nincompoops, I actually know how to pull off a heist and get away with it. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to collect my payment for helping you with a successful burglary. I’m not asking for much — about fifty percent will do.”

“Forget it!” shot back Rocky furiously. “We ain’t forkin’ over that much of our loot!”

“Yeah!” agreed Mugsy. “Go get your own loot!”

That smirk never left Ronin’s face as he retorted, “You really think you have that option?” He placed that boxful of floppy disks into the safe with the stacks of cash inside and shut the door. “Then let’s see what those Changelings think when I return this safe you stole from them and they realize you took something a lot more valuable than just a pile of cash.”

“Hey!” protested Rocky. “You can’t frame us like that!”

“Yeah, they’re never gonna believe that,” added Mugsy.

“Are you sure about that?” asked Ronin smugly. “Who do you think they’re more likely to believe? A couple of common crooks who took this safe in the first place, or the guy they haven’t met before who’s turning in the evidence?”

The two robbers went from glaring at Ronin to giving each other uneasy looks. They were hardly the brightest of criminals, but even they were smart enough to realize Ronin really did have the upper hand in this case. Regardless of whether it was the actual truth, most people would probably never trust them over practically anyone else, which meant Ronin could frame them for just about anything and would absolutely get away with it.

Finally, Rocky growled in frustration and crossed his arms. “Fine,” he grumbled reluctantly as he looked away from Ronin. “Take your payment.”

Ronin grinned and contently stated, “Glad we could come to an agreement.” He then turned back to the safe door and began turning the combination lock again.

“Aww, no fair,” moaned Mugsy in disappointment.

“There’s no such thing as fair when it comes to theft,” retorted Ronin as he unlocked and opened the safe. “You’d think a couple of burglar wannabes would realize that.” He then unfurled a large empty sack, stuffed it with half of the cash within that safe, and topped it off with the box of floppy disks. Finally, he tied up the opening of that sack and hauled it over his shoulder as he began walking away. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Once Ronin had left the area, Rocky and Mugsy both looked at the remaining contents of the safe, then glanced at each other. Desperate to take what little remained of the loot, they both simultaneously rushed to the opened safe, shoved against each other, and ultimately began flailing their hands around to resume their silly wimp fight.





While the diversion was underway, the Equestria Girls — fully dressed in their ninja disguises — followed the Ninjago Ninjas by sliding down a series of ropes from the deck of the Destiny’s Bounty and landing upon the roof of the large warehouse. There were only four ropes available, so Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack went first. As they neared the bottom, the other half of the team — Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Starlight Glimmer — followed right behind them. Most of them were able to follow the Ninjas’ example by slowing their descent to land gently upon the rooftop without much trouble. A few were a little less fortunate, such as Fluttershy stumbling upon landing and grasping tightly to the rope to keep herself upright, Pinkie getting a little tangled in the rope near the bottom that resulted in her gently landing on her head, and Starlight completely lost her grip partway down and screamed as she fell until she slammed into the rooftop with a hard belly flop.

Starlight groaned as she carefully stood up and regretfully muttered, “Maybe I should’ve sat this one out.”

“Too late to back out now,” noted Applejack ominously as everyone glanced up to watch the flying ship above them rise further up and then turned to begin flying away.

Once the Destiny’s Bounty had gone off into the distance in the night sky, Kai glanced around at their dark and quiet surroundings and stated, “Well, I don’t hear any alarms blaring, so I think we’re still good.”

“Then let’s make sure we keep it that way,” insisted Twilight as the entire group quickly made their way to one side of the flat rooftop. The Ninjas led the girls over the ledge and onto a slightly lower roof that gently sloped away from the wall that consisted of several windows.

Lloyd reached out to grab one of those windows, then paused as he turned to the others and explained, “From this point forward, we need to be very careful to not get caught, so make sure you move quickly and try not to make any noise.”

“Swift and silent,” noted Sunset with determination. “Like a true ninja…”

Lloyd finally pushed the window open and led the way into the old warehouse. Fortunately, there were tall stacks of crates close to those windows, allowing the ninjas and girls to make small descending leaps from one crate to the next. All fourteen members of the infiltrating group of ninjas spread out and moved carefully and swiftly from one site of cover to another, although some of the girls moved around in ways that made obvious their lack of proper ninja training.

Despite some sloppy movements from some of the girls, the group had managed to successfully reach various locations overlooking the dark interior of the warehouse, all without ever alerting any of the Changeling guards that were slowly patrolling the building. To ensure a minimized risk of giving away their positions by speaking up, everyone had small communicators built into the hoods of their ninja outfits, so Lloyd gently pressed the side of his head to activate his communicator and quietly asked, “Titanium Ninja, Lavender Ninja, use your night vision. What do you see?”

Zane adjusted his cybernetic eyes while Twilight tapped the button on her Special Spectacles so that both of them were now observing the area ahead of them in the green-tinted enhanced lighting of night vision. After a few seconds of inspecting their surroundings, Twilight pressed the communicator on the side of her head and quietly reported, “I see a computer terminal down on the floor on the opposite side of the building. If I can reach it, I could hack into it and search through its digital files for any valuable information.”

“I, too, have detected a computer terminal,” reported Zane, “although this one is up on a walkway that covers the perimeter of this facility.”

“Then let’s maximize our odds and go for both of ‘em,” declared Sunset as she spoke quietly through her communicator. “The two of you will go for the terminal that each of you identified, and the rest of us will provide cover in case if either of you get spotted.”

“Sounds good to me, Mustard Ninja,” agreed Jay.

“I thought we agreed to call me the Saffron Ninja,” grumbled Sunset as she turned to follow closely behind Twilight.

Twilight carefully descended to the floor and moved to the right to reach the computer terminal she had sighted, while Zane climbed up onto the ceiling framework and moved to the left to reach the one he had sighted. Sunset, Applejack, Rarity, Kai, Jay, and Starlight followed after Twilight, while Lloyd, Cole, Nya, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy followed after Zane. The two groups diverged and attempted to stealthily cross to the other end of the warehouse on opposite sides.

Despite their best efforts, there was no denying that some of the girls were amateurs at behaving like a ninja, so it was almost inevitable that some clumsy mistakes were bound to happen. The first one to occur was when Starlight failed to watch where she was going and ended up running right into the side of a shipping container. That metallic impact immediately alerted one of the guards, but as he carefully approached to investigate, she managed to go around to hide behind the container.

A few seconds later, the other group was quietly running along the top of some very tall stacks of crates when Fluttershy tripped on the edge of a crate and tumbled uncontrollably atop that crate. The noise of that fall was enough to alert another Changeling guard, so everyone up there quickly took cover behind the crates of various shapes and sizes. The ninjas atop the crates waited in silence for a few seconds before they peeked out from their hiding spots and saw the guard turn away. Pinkie let out a sigh of relief as she leaned back against the smaller crate she had been hiding behind, but she rested too much of her weight against it and ended up accidentally shoving it off from atop the stack, causing that small crate to shatter into splinters as it crashed to the concrete floor.

Smash!

That noise definitely alerted some of the guards. One of those Changeling guards decided to adjust the visual settings on his visor to provide him with improved night vision as he focused his attention on the source of that noise. He quickly found the destroyed remnants of that fallen crate, then turned his gaze upwards to see a few figures with obscured faces standing atop the tall stacks of crates. As soon as he realized what exactly he was seeing, he urgently shouted, “Ninjas! Blast ‘em!”

Almost every guard in the area immediately raised their laser blasters and began to open fire, forcing the girls and ninjas to swiftly leap and duck for cover.

Pew! Pew-pew! Pew! Pew! Pew-pew! Pew!

Lloyd ended up being caught out in the open where the Changelings were easily able to aim directly at him, so with quick reflexes, he swung his silver ninja sword around to deflect each and every laser bolt that was fired towards him.

Pe-ding! Pe-ding! Pe-ding!

“Darn it! They’ve got silver weapons!” exclaimed one of the Changeling guards in frustration. “Somebody find a missile launcher!”

Meanwhile, the other group of ninjas peered around the shipping containers they were hiding behind and watched the Changelings fire upon where their teammates had been forced to take cover.

“We have to help them!” begged Starlight.

“They can handle it just fine,” assured Kai. “We should worry about reaching that computer terminal.”

“And abandon our friends?!” asked Starlight in shock.

“We can’t afford to lose sight of the big picture here!” argued Twilight.

“Ah don’t know,” muttered Applejack uneasily. “Ah’m kinda with Lilac Ninja on this.”

“See?” insisted Starlight in desperation. “She agrees with me! She knows what’s more important!”

“Would keep it down?” Jay spoke up irritably, not bothering to keep his own voice down. “If you keep shouting like that, they’ll know we’re here!”

“Hey!” one of the Changeling guards suddenly alerted. “More ninjas over here!”

Half of the Changelings turned around and began firing upon that other group, forcing those ninjas to take cover behind the shipping containers.

“Told ya!” complained Jay.

Sunset rolled her eyes as she pulled out her silver nodachi sword and quickly declared, “Alright, Lavender Ninja and I will run for the terminal. The rest of you can deal with those guards.”

“Now you’re abandoning us, too?!” asked Starlight in disbelief. “How are we gonna fight off all of those Changelings?!”

“Then you’d better pull out your sword and start swinging it around, ‘cause I’m not here to babysit you!” Sunset sharply responded before she turned away and — along with Twilight as she pulled out her silver naginata — began running towards the computer terminal.

“You heard her, everyone!” Kai spoke up with determination as he pulled out his silver flame-shaped sword and leaped to the top of the nearest shipping container. “Ninja-GO!” With that battle cry, he rushed forward along the top of that container, drawing the fire of those Changeling guards and easily deflecting those laser bolts with his sword.

“Well, maybe if we stick to the shadows, the Changelings won’t know where we are,” suggested Applejack as she began to carefully sneak her way out from behind the shipping container.

Pew! Pew-pew! Pew! Pew! Pew-pew!

That hope was quickly shattered as a bunch of laser bolts were suddenly fired towards Applejack, causing her to immediately yelp and dive back into cover behind the shipping container.

“You can’t hide from us, ninjas!” taunted one of the Changelings. “We have ways of seeing you in the dark.”

The other Changeling guard beside him suddenly smacked him in the back of the head and scolded, “Don’t tell them that, you brick-head!”

With a smirk hidden beneath her ninja mask, Rarity remarked, “Oh, so this midnight environment is insufficient at concealing us from you, is it? In that case…” She then did a cartwheel to swiftly cover a short distance, then used one of her silver Sai daggers to flip a nearby switch, causing all of the ceiling lights to flicker on.

Those lights might not have been immensely bright, but it was enough to illuminate the entire building. Everyone inside the building briefly flinched from the sudden brightness, but their eyes quickly adjusted and they all glanced around to better understand their surroundings. For an abandoned warehouse, there were quite a lot of tall stacks of crates, barrels, containers, stuffed sacks, and other means of storing various stuff, all packed relatively closely together. Scattered all over the building and in between the large piles of random storage were probably dozens of Changeling guards, many of whom were apparently glancing around in confusion as if they hadn't expected everything to suddenly become so visible. Put simply, the lights had revealed this facility was much more of a maze than any of the infiltrating ninjas had anticipated.

Rarity glanced back at the nearby Changeling guards and quipped with a smile, “I’d prefer to do this with the lights on.”

“Well, there goes what little cover we had,” grumbled Jay.

Applejack turned to Jay and raised an eyebrow as she asked, “Do ya always have to complain about everythin’?”

“Only if there’s nothing worth complaining about,” retorted Jay before he leaped up onto another nearby shipping container, whipped out his silver nunchucks and began swinging them around to deflect any laser bolts that flew close by to him.

With everyone else having already run off into action, Starlight turned to Applejack and uneasily asked, “So, uh… now what?”

Applejack pulled out her silver battle hammer and simply answered, “Now we fight like heck!” She then let loose a battle cry as she charged out across the open floor towards the nearest Changeling guards.

Starlight reluctantly pulled out her silver longsword as she sighed and quietly muttered, “I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come to this…”

Back with the other group atop the crates, Rainbow Dash had decided to join Lloyd out in the open and used her dual silver katanas to help deflect many of the laser bolts the Changelings were still firing at them. As she continued swinging those swords around, she groaned in frustration and grumbled, “We’ll never get anywhere if we’re just gonna sit here and let them keep shooting at us!”

“Cyan Ninja’s right!” agreed Lloyd. “Some of us will need to help Titanium Ninja reach the terminal while the rest provide cover!”

“I’ll stick with him,” volunteered Cole as he pulled out his silver scythe. “We’ll move out as soon as you have their attention.”

“Then let’s stop waiting around and get to it!” declared Nya as she pulled out her silver spear, leaped out from where she had been hiding behind a small crate, and began hopping from one crate to the next as she descended down to the floor, all while expertly deflecting the occasional laser bolt with her spear.

“You heard her, ninjas!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie as she pulled out her silver mace-and-chain flail. “Time for us to ninja-go!” She began wildly swinging that flail around as she also leaped out from her hiding spot and began hopping downward atop the crates to quickly reach the floor.

“Don’t leave me out on all the fun!” Rainbow Dash playfully argued as she also quickly began to make her way down to the floor, with Lloyd following close behind.

Zane pulled out his silver shurikens and gave Cole a nod of acknowledgement, but Cole held up his hand and pointed at the only ninja — one of the Equestria Girls to be exact — who had yet to charge into battle.

“Y-you two go ahead,” insisted Fluttershy nervously as she pulled out her silver bow along with a silver arrow. “I’ll provide cover from back here.”

Cole and Zane glanced at each other for a moment, then they both shrugged before they ran off and leaped atop the tall stacks of crates until they soon reached the upper walkway along the wall and from there reached the platform upon which was one of the computer terminals.

At the same time, Twilight and Sunset arrived at the other computer terminal down on the floor. As Sunset turned away from Twilight and began watching for any incoming Changelings, she pressed the communicator within her ninja hood and reported, “Lavender Ninja and I have reached our target terminal. Titanium Ninja, what’s your status?”

“I, too, have just arrived at my target terminal with assistance from Black Ninja,” responded Zane at the moment he stopped in front of said terminal.

“You just worry about doing your thing, Titanium Ninja,” assured Cole as he stood behind Zane on that upper platform and focused his attention out towards his immediate surroundings. “I’ll keep the Changelings off your back.”

At the computer terminal at the other side of the warehouse, Twilight stuck the blade end of her naginata into a nearby cargo pallet on the floor as she stepped up to that machine and muttered, “Alright, let’s see what we’re dealing with here on the digital front…”

Twilight hit the power button and began typing away on the keyboard. She soon managed to find a link that was labeled “Access Files”, so she selected that. The screen went dark for a couple seconds, then a rather familiar logo showed up on the screen: Hack-Man.

“It seems this terminal wishes for me to play a video game called ‘Hack-Man’,” reported Zane through his communicator.

“Same for this one,” responded Twilight. “Can’t say I’m too surprised. I’ve read that a lot of older computers tended to use this game as a security measure by restricting access to files based on how high your score is from only a single round of this game with only one life available.” Twilight smiled under her ninja mask as she added, “Looks like all those late nights of perfecting my performance with this game are about to pay off.”

“My experience level with this game may not be quite that extensive,” stated Zane, “but I am sufficiently familiar enough that I shall have little difficulty with completing such an unusual task to obtain access to the contents of this terminal.”

“Then you’d better get to it,” warned Cole as he held up his scythe defensively. “Looks like the Changelings are already on to us!” A few laser bolts were fired towards the upper platform, forcing him to swing his silver weapon around to deflect any that got too close.

Pew! Pew! Pe-ding!

Sunset grasped the handle of her long ninja sword with both hands as she saw two Changeling guards extend their wrist-mounted blades and began to charge at her. “Go for it, Lavender Ninja!” she declared. “I can hold them off, but not forever!” It was at this moment that her silver sword began clashing against Changeling blades as she began battling to defend that computer terminal.

With the order given, Twilight started up the game. With vintage video game graphics and sounds, the space background showed up, followed by the playing field of several crisscrossing paths made of square tiles, then came the score tokens along those paths, and finally the player’s astronaut character along with the two enemy MegaBite robot characters. Twilight knew the main objective of this game was to capture all of the Core Processors on the board, but if she wanted to obtain access to what would likely be the most important files on this terminal, then she would need to maximize her score by collecting all of the tokens on the entire board. Of course, with this system offering only one life, she would have to be careful to avoid getting touched by either of those two MegaBites. Once those enemy characters began wandering around, it was game on, so she began using the arrow keys to move her astronaut character along the paths around the board.

Boink-boink-boink-ding-boink-boink-boink-ding-boink-boink-boink…





Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie ran rather aimlessly along the floor between the stacks of crates until she practically bumped into one of the Changeling guards, who immediately responded by extending the blade mounted to his right wrist. Pinkie simply smiled under her ninja mask as she began to quickly swing her flail around and quipped, “I call this one the Wiz-Waz Whacker!”

Before the Changeling had a chance to swing his blade even once, Pinkie brought her rapidly spinning flail close to his face, striking him repeatedly in the head so rapidly that the impacts sounded like the pounding noise of a jackhammer. She pulled her flail back after a few seconds, and with that Changeling dazed, she finished him off by swinging her flail back, down, and then up to strike him with an uppercut hard enough to send him flying backwards and finally hit the floor on his back.

With her first opponent defeated, Pinkie giggled and cheerfully remarked, “One down, a whole bunch more to go!”





Not far away, Rainbow Dash had quickly gotten lost between the large stacks of crates as she continued running around. Eventually, she turned to a different path between the crates and quickly stopped when she noticed someone in a red ninja outfit standing out in the open. As that red ninja waved at her, she quickly ducked back behind the huge crate she had just passed by, set aside one of her dual katanas, and pressed the communicator within her ninja hood and asked, “Red Ninja, where’re you at?”

“A little busy deflecting laser blasts right now!” responded Kai from atop a shipping container elsewhere in the warehouse as he kept swinging his sword around and blocking all the laser bolts the Changelings were firing at him.

“Oh, so you’re not standing nearby waving at me?” asked Rainbow Dash as she peered around the massive crate to see that red ninja doing exactly as she described.

“Of course not!” responded Kai in confusion. “Why would I—” He paused as the realization suddenly hit him regarding what Rainbow Dash had actually encountered. “Oh, I get it now… Go ahead and take out that impostor!”

“With pleasure,” acknowledged Rainbow Dash before she raised both of her katanas and came charging out towards the impostor red ninja. “Nice try, Changeling!” she taunted before letting loose a battle cry.

The impostor red ninja suddenly faded into a featureless black shape, the silhouette quickly morphed into a different shape, and the shadow faded back to reveal a Changeling just before he extended his blade and raised it to block the downward strike of Rainbow’s dual katanas.

Rainbow wasn’t going to be deterred that easily, so she began striking her swords against her opponent’s blade, one after the other in rapid succession. The Changeling managed to block each and every strike with his blade, so Rainbow raised the pressure by slightly charging forward with each strike. As their weapons continued to swiftly clash, not only did Rainbow manage to push the Changeling back, but also the two of them began rising up through the air as if they were stunt performers suspended by cables.

The two clashing opponents suddenly froze in midair just before Rainbow muttered, “Wait… Something’s not right…”

Rainbow and the Changeling glanced down to see they were now apparently hovering over a large pile of cardboard boxes, then they glanced back at each other before reality hit and gravity pulled them down to the boxes below. The empty boxes softened their landing, allowing them to quickly get back up, though Rainbow was quicker to react by kicking the Changeling in the chest, knocking him down onto his back for the moment and allowing her to clamber her way off from the pile of cardboard boxes.





Back at the tall stacks of crates at one side of the warehouse, Fluttershy was still hiding behind one of the smaller crates. While it was true that she could be rather cowardly at times, she really wanted to contribute and find a way to help her friends in this battle. However, it seemed that every time she exposed herself to try using her bow, one of the Changeling guards would start shooting his laser blaster at her, forcing her to quickly duck back into cover.

Desperate for anything that could potentially be useful, Fluttershy began looking around. Her gaze soon fell upon a structure that was built into the ceiling framework. It was some kind of platform on a track with a crane hook dangling from the bottom, which made sense considering the size of many of the crates and containers stored within this building. Not only was that platform the highest ground available within the warehouse, but the fact that it was mobile meant that she could evade danger and find new targets without having to do any running around. All she needed was for some way to get that platform to actually move around.

Fluttershy peered over the crate she was hiding behind and soon located what was likely the cab that controlled the crane platform, all the way at the other end of the warehouse. She pressed the communicator within her ninja hood and asked, “Does anyone know how to operate that crane? I’d like to use the high ground offered by that mobile platform.”

A few seconds later, Jay responded, “No problem! I can take care of that!” He then began swiftly leaping upwards among a stack of shipping containers until he reached the ladder that led up to the crane cab.

Inspired by Jay’s agility, Fluttershy quickly inspected her surroundings and soon noticed one nearby stack of crates that was so tall that the highest one seemed to be within reach of the ceiling framework. Moving swiftly to avoid exposing herself to any laser bolts flying around, she jumped out from her hiding place, leaped across one stack of crates and another, and climbed to the top of that tallest stack. Once she stood atop that highest crate, she put away her bow and then jumped up to grab onto the nearest ceiling support strut. She swung her body back and forth a few times to build up momentum, then released her grip on the support strut and reached one hand forward to swiftly grasp onto the next support strut up ahead. Maintaining her momentum, she expertly swung from one support strut to another like a set of monkey bars. Once she reached that last strut before the crane platform, she grasped the strut with both hands, swung her body back and forth to build up even more momentum, and finally flung herself upwards to land upon the platform on her feet.

Fluttershy stood up on that crane platform and contently remarked, “I guess those climbing lessons I once got from that family of monkeys have really come in handy.”

“Yeah!” cheered Jay as he climbed into the crane cab. “You show ‘em, monkey girl!”

Now that she had reached her desired high ground, Fluttershy pulled out her silver bow and began searching for potential targets. She saw one Changeling aiming his laser blaster at Applejack, so she drew her bow, aimed her arrow at that Changeling, and released. As intended, the silver arrow struck the laser blaster, knocking it clean out of his hands and clattering to the floor.

Applejack had turned to that Changeling guard just in time to watch him suddenly get disarmed by that arrow flying down from the ceiling. Recognizing an opportunity, she grinned under her ninja mask before she charged at the Changeling and struck him with a mighty swing of that heavy battle hammer in her hands. The force of that impact sent the helpless Changeling flying high into the air and finally slammed into the side of a shipping container atop a stack of them, causing that container to tip over and begin plummeting down to the concrete floor below.

Sunset noticed the container as it began to topple from atop that stack, so she immediately shouted, “Smash alert!”

Twilight and Zane both instantly responded by pulling their hands away from the keyboard on their respective terminals only a fraction of a second before that container slammed against the floor.

CRASH!!

“Thank you!” responded Twilight as she brought her hands back to the keyboard and resumed her game.

“Yeah, thanks for the heads up, Mustard Ninja,” added Cole as Zane also quickly resumed his game.

“I told you to call me the Saffron Ninja,” reminded Sunset irritability as she blocked another strike from another Changeling’s blade.





Elsewhere in the warehouse, Rarity stealthily made her way along the pathways between the stacks of crates. She pressed her back against one huge crate and peered around the side to see no major obstacles up ahead. She glanced back the way she had come from and was stunned to discover two Changeling guards were standing there with their laser blasters aimed directly at her. She yelped and dove around the side of the crate just before those guards fired their weapons. The pair of laser bolts flew by and blew a hole into the side of a large crate just opposite from where she had taken cover.

Rarity glanced over at the hole in the crate and noticed among its contents were an old music player with some audio cassette tapes. Curious, she approached that crate and quickly read through the labels on some of those tapes, and when one of them in particular caught her attention, she contently remarked, “Oh, how lovely.” She grabbed that cassette and inserted it into the music player, then pressed the play button and turned back to the two Changeling guards as she playfully asked, “Now, then… shall we dance?”

As some tango music began playing from the music player, the two Changelings watched Rarity for a moment as she danced to that music, glanced at each other with confused looks, then shrugged and fired a few shots from their laser blasters at her.

Moving to the rhythm of the tango music, Rarity dodged some lasers and blocked others with her silver Sai blades as she stepped closer towards the Changelings. Once she was close enough to them, she hooked her daggers around one of the laser blasters and yanked it out of the Changeling’s grasp, then swiftly repeated the process with the other Changeling’s laser blaster.

The two Changeling guards were briefly startled, but quickly responded by extending their wrist-mounted blades and prepared to strike their dancing opponent.

Rarity continued dodging with the rhythm of the music, and struck back against them with each beat of the tune. Once both guards were stunned, she grabbed one of them and began hauling him around like an unwilling dance partner. When the other guard had recovered, she flung the first one against the side of a nearby shipping container, then continued moving with the music’s tempo as she dodged and struck back against that second guard. She grabbed that second guard and swung him around as her next unwilling dance partner, then as she saw the first guard recover, she carelessly cast aside the second guard and resumed her playful dance-fight with that first guard. As the tango music continued, she repeated her dance moves, striking and tossing each of the two guards, swapping between one and the other before either of them had a chance to fully recover.

Evidently, one of the Changelings had had enough of that ridiculous dance, so he retrieved his laser blaster from the floor and fired a shot at the music player, blasting it to pieces.

Rarity immediately stopped dancing and glanced over at the destroyed remnants of that music player, then glared at the Changeling guard and placed her hands on her hips as she indignantly stated, “Now that was just uncalled for!”

The Changeling guard ignored Rarity’s complaint and aimed his laser blaster at her, but before he could fire a shot, a silver spear suddenly thrust against the side of his weapon and knocked it out of his grasp. He had barely enough time to glance over at his new opponent before the side of that spear smacked him in the face, then against the back of his head, and that was quickly followed by a kick to the abdomen and finished with a swift punch to the face that sent him sprawling to the floor.

It took Rarity a moment to recognize the spear-wielding ninja as Nya, who then turned to her and quipped, “Hardly my first choice of combat music, but whatever works for you.”

“Everyone marches to the beat of their own drum, so to speak,” Rarity playfully retorted. As the other Changeling guard recovered and lunged to strike her from behind, she used his momentum to fling him forward over her shoulder and sent him slamming into the first guard before he had a chance to push himself off the floor.

Nya glanced down at the two fallen Changelings, then turned back to Rarity and asked, “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”

“After everything my friends and I have been through,” explained Rarity, “I figured it was only a matter of time before we did something like this, so I decided to prepare myself with a few lessons. Not professional like you Ninjago Ninjas have been, but sufficient enough to hold my own.”

“Hey! Over here!” called out a different Changeling guard to somewhere behind him before he turned forward to aim his laser blaster at the two ninjas.

Rarity reacted swiftly by tumbling toward the Changeling and kicking his laser blaster out of his grasp in such a way that it struck him in the chin, then immediately followed that by using her dual daggers to knock his feet out from under him, sending him sprawling down onto his back.

“You’re actually pretty good at this,” remarked Nya. “What do you say we work together to beat these alien invaders?”

Rarity shrugged and replied, “I don’t see why not.”

With their weapons raised, the two ninja girls began running together along the paths between the stacks of crates, eager to take down any Changelings that dared to get in their way.





Not far away, Starlight Glimmer was practically dragging her longsword as she moved around from one hiding place to another. She watched some of the confrontations unfold and listened in on the conversations being shared through the communicators, and she understood not for the first time that she was in way over her head. She let out a sigh of disappointment and muttered to herself, “I am not cut out for this…”

“Tell me about it…”

Starlight suddenly paused and turned to the one who had just spoken. Standing right there beside her was a fully armored Changeling soldier with his back turned to her, seemingly unaware that he was sharing small talk with one of the infiltrators invading this Changeling-occupied facility.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, the Changeling soldier turned to see who he was speaking with, and as soon as he noticed the person in a ninja costume who was carrying a sword, he suddenly yelped in shock and quickly extended the blade mounted to his right wrist.

Starlight awkwardly raised her rather heavy sword and grunted as she swung it around in an effort to strike the Changeling soldier, but her opponent easily blocked the attack, though the blade-on-blade impact did cause him to stumble a little. She adjusted her grip on the sword and swung again, but her armored opponent managed to dodge it. The Changeling soldier swung his blade at this opponent, but she dodged it by stepping aside, despite an awkward stumble. The Changeling and the rookie ninja both swung their weapons and clashed again, the impact sending both of them staggering away from each other a few steps.

As she took a moment to catch her breath, Starlight noted, “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“I could say the same for you,” retorted the Changeling soldier.

“Oh, gimme a break!” Starlight shot back. “I just got here!”

“Don’t even get me started!” argued the Changeling soldier. “It’s bad enough that I tripped on a clothesline and fell into a dumpster! I will not be humiliated again!” He then charged forward and swung his blade at the novice ninja.

Starlight raised her sword to block the attack, then tauntingly remarked, “Then it’s a good thing I’m not afraid to make a fool of myself if it means winning the battle.”

Starlight then shoved the Changeling’s blade aside and swung her sword at him, only for the Changeling soldier to block that and knock it aside with his blade. The Changeling soldier made another swing of his blade at Starlight, but she dodged it by leaning backwards, only to lean too far and fall over down onto her back. The Changeling soldier followed that by swinging his blade down onto the fallen amateur ninja, but Starlight rolled out of the way and held tightly to her sword as she scrambled back up onto her feet. Starlight wobbled a little as she raised the heavy sword, ready to do whatever it took to defeat her opponent.





Meanwhile, Kai continued running and leaping across the top of several shipping containers while using his flame-shaped sword to deflect the occasional laser bolt that was shot towards him. At one point, a trio of Changeling guards spotted him and fired of a barrage of bolts from their laser blasters, forcing him to take cover behind the shipping container at the middle of the stack he was currently on. Once all of those laser bolts stopped flying by to his right, he faintly heard to his left the clacking noise of bricks being assembled, so he turned to the source of that sound to see what was happening.

On a large balcony not far away along the edge of the warehouse, two Changeling soldiers were quickly building something in front of a massive cylindrical fuel tank. Within a few seconds, they fitted the last of those Lego parts into place, completing what appeared to be some kind of large turret on a rotating base.

Kai stared at the completed creation and worriedly asked, “Let me guess… Is that a laser turret?”

“You guessed right, ninja!” taunted one of the Changeling soldiers as he climbed into the seat of said turret. “We even repurposed it to run on a gasoline engine, since there’s plenty to be found on this planet.” With that added statement, the other Changeling soldier yanked a cord on the contraption, causing the engine to sputter and rumble to life. The Changeling standing beside that engine then grabbed a lever and slowly pulled it back to increase the engine’s throttle, which caused the energy cell connected to the turret to charge up. Once the turret was fully charged up, the Changeling seated at its controls took aim towards Kai and finally triggered it to unleash a continuous laser beam.

Kai was just barely quick enough to raise his silver fire sword and deflect that laser beam down towards the floor. Because the laser attack was a constant beam rather than a brief bolt, he had to hold his sword in place, knowing that the moment he even slightly faltered could mean certain doom.

Desperate to find some way to strike back, Kai glanced around and soon discovered that one of the two support beams holding up the turret’s balcony appeared to be made of gold. He grinned under his ninja mask before he began to adjust the angle of his sword so that the deflected laser beam started to move closer towards that support beam.

“I bet you’re wondering why we’re not using our golden weapons this time,” stated Kai confidently as that deflected laser beam began striking that golden support beam. “Well you’re about to find out!”

While the Changeling in the turret continued firing the laser beam in a desperate hope actually hit that ninja, the other Changeling operating the engine was curious by the Ninja’s sudden boldness, so he glanced over the side of the balcony and discovered one of the support beams underneath their position was gradually glowing brighter and brighter as the deflected laser beam continued firing upon it. The Changeling soldier immediately gasped and exclaimed in terror, “No! The beam!”

Boom!

That golden support beam eventually heated up so much from the laser that it suddenly blew apart. With that support beam now completely gone, the balcony tipped over and collapsed, sending the two Changelings, their laser turret, and the fuel tank tumbling to the floor below. Due to the shape of the fuel tank, it ended up rolling across the floor until it hit a pile of progressively larger crates and containers, which acted like a ramp to send it slamming into a huge crate stacked atop another one, causing that upper crate to be shoved off-center from the lower one. That impact took away all of the momentum on the fuel tank, so now gravity pulled it back down the pile of containers and along the floor back towards the fallen balcony.

The two Changelings had just gotten back on their feet when they saw the huge fuel tank rolling back towards them. They screamed in terror and tried to run away, but were quickly run over and ended up flattened against the floor before the fuel tank slammed into the wall of the warehouse and was finally brought to a stop.

Kai rested his flame-shaped sword over his shoulder as he smirked and remarked, “And that’s why lasers and gold don’t mix very well.” He then turned away and continued his run atop the stacks of shipping containers.





Back at the computer terminal on the floor, Twilight had made significant progress on her game of Hack-Man. Utilizing one of her most successful strategies, she had captured two of the three Core Processors in the process of collecting all of the tokens on the board. She was well aware that silver tokens were worth ten points, gold tokens were worth one hundred points, blue tokens were worth one thousand points, and collecting every token on the board would cause a single purple token to appear in the center, which was worth ten thousand points. On this particular board, that final purple token would nearly double her total score, and since a higher score would permit access to more valuable files on this computer, she was determined to not miss that major boost to her final score.

Boink-boink-boink-boink-boink-boink-ding.

Upon collecting that final purple token, Twilight smiled, but remained focused. Her score may now be at the maximum possible, but she still needed to complete the game, and that meant capturing the final Core Processor. She navigated her astronaut character along the now empty pathways towards that last Core Processor while being careful to avoid getting too close to the two MegaBite robots still wandering around on the board.

Boink-boink-boink-boink. Boink-boink. Boink-boink-boink.

Finally, Twilight’s astronaut character safely reached that last Core Processor, so she mashed the attack button a few times to capture it.

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap— Bling!

Upon capturing that final Core Processor, the board cleared away and a message of “You Win!” flashed across the screen. Seconds later, the computer screen changed to a list of various files.

With that accomplishment completed, Twilight raised her arms victoriously and triumphantly shouted, “Yes! Success! I now have full access to these files!”

“Then what are you waiting for?” responded Sunset impatiently as she clashed her sword against the wrist-mounted blade of a Changeling guard. “Download them right away!”

Twilight knew she didn’t have much time to spare, so rather than try to search through each of the digital folders for anything that might be particularly useful, she decided to simply download everything on the system and study the contents later. True, this would likely result in obtaining a vast quantity of practically useless data, but with the limited amount of time available get anything done at this location, it was the only way she could be certain they would not miss even a single page of potentially valuable information.

Twilight selected everything on the terminal’s screen and prepared to download all of it. However, her plan hit a major snag when a pop-up window asked for a method of download: “Print” or “Insert Disk”. She had brought along with her some CDs and flash drives, but when she checked the hardware on that computer terminal, she discovered that neither of her prepared means of data storage were compatible with this machine. Instead, it seemed capable of accepting only floppy disks, which she had presumed was an obsolete technology.

“Oh…” muttered Twilight worriedly. She pressed the communicator within her ninja hood and reported, “Uh, slight problem, everyone. It seems this computer system is so archaic that there are only two ways of gathering the information stored within. One is to copy everything onto floppy disks, which I had not anticipated would be necessary for this mission, despite having plenty of blank ones that I could’ve brought with me.”

“No surprise there,” grumbled Rainbow Dash.

“So what’s the other option?” asked Kai.

“We’ll have to print out everything onto sheets of paper,” explained Twilight, “and considering the probable infrastructure of this warehouse, the printer we’ll need to use will almost certainly be within the office room.”

“I have just obtained access to the files on the other computer terminal,” reported Zane though his communicator, “and I am sorry to inform you that I am confronted with a similar dilemma.”

“Then we have no choice but to go with the printer,” concluded Lloyd. “How many pages are we talking about?”

“Easily in the hundreds,” reported Twilight defeatedly, “and that’s just from this terminal.”

“Likewise with this terminal, too,” added Zane.

“Okay, don’t hit that print button just yet,” declared Sunset as she finally beat back that Changeling guard. “First, we need some of us to get to that office and make sure the Changelings don’t destroy the printer. Black, Titanium, and Lavender Ninjas, stay where you are and defend these computer terminals. Everyone else, I need volunteers to defend that printer and make sure the pages that come out are worth taking with us.”

“On our way!” declared Applejack as she began running towards where she believed the office might be located.

“You got it, Mustard Ninja!” acknowledged Rainbow Dash as she saw Applejack running not far away and rushed off to join her.

“IT’S SAFFRON NINJA!!” snapped Sunset furiously as she swung her sword at yet another oncoming Changeling guard, slicing him in half across the waist.

The Changeling’s torso flipped through the air and landed upright on the floor, while his legs wobbled around a little before they began to aimlessly walk away on their own. The Changeling cried out in protest and began chasing after his legs by hopping around on the base of his torso.

As Rainbow Dash and Applejack began running alongside each other, Rainbow turned to her friend and asked, “So where’s this office we’re looking for?”

“Mah guess is that it’s a small room behind a door at the top of a stairway with a large window to the side,” Applejack speculated.

“You mean like that?” asked Rainbow Dash as she pointed ahead towards one corner of the warehouse that had exactly the kind of structure that had just been described.

“Eyup, sure looks like it,” confirmed Applejack. “Let’s move!”

Pew! Pew! Pew!

Applejack and Rainbow Dash both yelped and stumbled to a stop as they narrowly avoided getting struck by a few laser bolts. They both glanced up to their left and saw a Changeling soldier standing atop a stack of crates and armed with a laser blaster that was aimed right at them.

The Changeling soldier prepared to fire his weapon, only to suddenly get knocked off his perch by a swift kick from the Red Ninja. “Mind if I tag along?” asked Kai as he rested his flame-shaped sword on his shoulder while standing where that Changeling once stood.

“Don’t see why not,” replied Rainbow Dash with a shrug. “You can never have too much defense.”

While Rainbow spoke, Applejack saw the fallen Changeling soldier starting to get back up, so she rushed over and swiftly struck him with her battle hammer, sending him tumbling along the floor until he came to a stop and remained motionless.

As Rainbow and Applejack resumed running along the floor towards the stairway outside the office, Kai ran and leaped across a few more stacks of crates and shipping containers until he eventually landed directly in front of the door at the top of the stairway. He grabbed the handle and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge, so he scoffed and grumbled, “Of course that door’s locked.”

“Hang on just a second!” called out Applejack as she began charging up the stairs. “Ah’ll bust it open.”

“I got a better idea,” Rainbow Dash spoke up as she held up her dual silver katanas. The stairway leading up to the door ran along the wall below the large and wide window that exposed much of the office, so she tossed those swords up at that window, shattering the glass. Once that large opening was exposed, she leaped onto the stairway’s railing and from there leaped through the opening and landed within the office.

Rainbow Dash stood up and looked out the missing window to her two fellow ninjas, but as they seemed to be staring at her in confusion, she retorted, “What? We’re gonna be defending this room against Changeling attacks! It was probably gonna get broken, anyway.”

“Whatever works for you, Cyan Ninja,” muttered Applejack as she reached the upper part of the stairway and jumped to grab onto the bottom of the opening where that window used to be.

Kai did a front flip as he leaped over Applejack to land on his feet upon the floor of the office, then he turned back and helped her climb the rest of the way into the room. Once all three of them were within the room, he pressed his hidden communicator and reported, “We’re in the office. Start printing those pages.”

“Copy that,” responded Twilight.

“Acknowledged,” responded Zane.

Only a few seconds later, the large printer in that room hummed to life and soon began spitting out printed sheets of paper, one page at a time.

“How many pages did they say had to be printed out?” asked Applejack.

“They both said hundreds from each terminal,” Kai pointed out.

The three ninjas silently stared at the printer as it continued to expel one printed page after another, after another, after another. Eventually, Rainbow Dash grumbled, “This is gonna take a while…”





As the gathering of information was finally underway, the rest of the team continued to battle against the Changelings throughout the building. Up on the crane platform near the ceiling, Fluttershy continued to carefully select her targets, firing an arrow from her silver bow only at certain Changelings that appeared to be threatening her friends. A few Changelings attempted to fly up to reach her, but a single arrow to one of their blue insect-like wings disabled their wingpacks and sent them plummeting to the floor.

Assisting Fluttershy by keeping that crane platform in motion was Jay inside the cab that was high up against one wall of the warehouse. As he flipped the levers on the control panel and watched where that crane platform was moving, he also made sure to keep an eye out for any potential threats that might come his way. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Jay noticed one Changeling flying towards the crane cab and with a laser blaster aimed right at him.

Jay kept his right hand working the controls while he used his left hand to pull out his silver nunchucks and began rapidly twirling it around just outside the cab. The oncoming Changeling fired his laser blaster at Jay, but every shot either completely missed or was deflected by that spinning weapon.

Pew! Pe-ding! Pe-ding! Pew! Pe-ding!

“You’re gonna have to do better than that!” taunted Jay.

The airborne Changeling responded by putting away his laser blaster, extending his wrist-mounted blade, and then charging directly towards the cab.

Jay was forced to step away from the controls so he could focus on blocking that Changeling from attempting to enter the crane cab. Their weapons clashed, but despite Jay’s advanced ninja training, he knew his flimsy nunchucks were at a disadvantage against the Changeling’s solidly fixed long blade. In an effort to buy himself some time, Jay swung his nunchucks around to smack the Changeling in the face, sending that alien trooper tumbling through the air before he regained his bearings and swiftly flew back towards the cab.

Jay moved quickly to take advantage of whatever he had available to work with. He grabbed a large wrench that had been left within the cab and pulled open a panel on the floor to expose a tangled mess of wires and hoses. Thankfully, Jay was highly skilled at working with machinery, so he was able to almost instantly identify which particular component would be most useful to him. He had just barely enough time to loosen only one bolt holding down one particular cable before the Changeling returned.

The Changeling soldier landed atop the ladder into the cab, grabbed the cab’s external frame with his left hand to hold himself steady, and used the blade on his right arm to strike at the Blue Ninja. Jay used the wrench to block a couple strikes from that blade, but the Changeling managed to hook his blade onto the end of that wrench and was able to fling it out of the cab.

Despite suddenly losing the wrench, Jay was ready. He swiftly pulled out the loosened cable, held it out towards the Changeling, and flipped one of the control levers to send the crane platform moving. With one of the controls activated, a strong electrical current was sent through the cable right at the moment the Changeling attempted to jab it with his metallic blade. As a result, the Changeling was suddenly electrocuted by the current pulsing through his body from one arm to the other.

The Changeling was fiercely jolted continuously for a few seconds until Jay flipped the lever again to stop the crane platform and thus shut off the electric current. The electric shock had caused the Changeling soldier to twitch so uncontrollably that as soon as the current ceased, he ended up flinging himself out of the crane cab and plummeted to the concrete floor.

“Maybe next time you’ll think twice before messing with this bug zapper!” taunted Jay as he looked down upon the fallen Changeling. As he chuckled triumphantly, he reattached the cable to its proper place and put the panel back on the floor of the cab before he sat back down behind the controls and resumed flipping the levers to keep Fluttershy and the crane platform she stood upon on the move.





Elsewhere in the warehouse, another Changeling guard was flying low between the stacks of crates and containers, carrying with him a large weapon that rested over his shoulder. Once he reached the center area of the massive building, he flew up and landed atop a shipping container. “Missile launcher at the ready!” he reported.

“About time!” responded another Changeling guard irritably. “Now blow those ninjas to pieces!”

Pinkie Pie happened to be nearby, and when she overheard those Changeling guards, she immediately gasped in shock. The silver weapons she and her friends had may have been effective at blocking lasers, but they would be useless against the explosive power of a missile. She knew she had to find some way to disable that missile launcher, so she desperately began searching around for anything that might help, whimpering nervously at the thought that any one of her friends could be blown up at any second.

After desperately glancing around for a few seconds, Pinkie smiled behind her ninja mask as she found what she believed would be the perfect tool for the job. It was a simple plunger, no different from one that might be found beside a typical toilet. As she swiftly grabbed that plunger, all she needed now was some way to quickly deliver that tool to the target, and when she noticed the crane platform with Fluttershy passing by overhead, she knew right away that her effort to stop that missile launcher would be successful.

“Yellow Ninja!” shouted Pinkie. “Use this!” Without waiting for a response, she flung the plunger up at the ceiling towards the crane platform.

Fluttershy glanced over the edge of the platform towards Pinkie and saw an object flying towards her. With her left hand holding her silver bow, she reached her right hand out and managed to catch that object. She was pleased that she had actually managed to catch something in midair, but when she looked closely at the object, she was baffled to discover that it was a common plunger. “What?” she asked in confusion.

“Shoot it like an arrow and plug up that missile launcher!” Pinkie urgently explained as she pointed up at the Changeling guard armed with the missile launcher.

Fluttershy looked over to that Changeling guard — who thankfully was not looking up towards her — and immediately recognized the missile launcher he held over his shoulder. For the sake of protecting her friends, she knew she had to take out that missile launcher, but as she glanced back at the plunger in her hand, she couldn’t help but express some serious doubts.

“Trust me!” insisted Pinkie. “It’ll work!”

“I sure hope you’re right…” muttered Fluttershy skeptically as she placed the plunger against her bow and pulled back the string. She took a deep breath to relax and steady herself as she took aim specifically at the muzzle of that missile launcher, then released the string.

Meanwhile, that Changeling guard was aiming his missile launcher towards Sunset and Twilight, who were unaware of his presence as they continued to fight off any Changelings that tried getting too close to the nearby computer terminal. As soon as he locked onto Sunset, he chuckled menacingly and smugly muttered, “Bye-bye, ninjas…”

In just a split second before the Changeling pulled the trigger to fire the missile, a common plunger suddenly stuck itself over the muzzle of the launcher, plugging the barrel.

BOOM!!!

The missile launcher — and all the missiles loaded within it — detonated in a massive explosion that shook the entire warehouse. The weapon had practically vanished, the Changeling was blown to pieces that scattered far across the building, and the large container he had stood upon was torn to shreds. The Changeling’s head — which miraculously survived the explosion — landed atop a pile of crates, then turned to face the site of where he stood only a moment ago as he exclaimed in disbelief, “How was that even possible?!”

“Whoa. Nice shot,” remarked Jay.

“Huh… I didn’t think that would actually work,” muttered Fluttershy in astonishment.

“That’s the Pink Ninja for ya!” Pinkie cheerfully stated as she playfully swung her flail around. “Always unpredictable!” As if to demonstrate that, one Changeling tried to attack Pinkie from behind, only to suddenly get smacked in the face by that flail before he groaned and collapsed unconscious to the floor.





At the computer terminal on the upper platform, Cole and Zane stared in disbelief towards the site of that massive explosion. “Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” remarked Cole.

“I am struggling to find any logical reasoning to explain what we just witnessed,” stated Zane.

Before the two ninjas could dwell any further on the seemingly impossible explosion, a ladder was suddenly propped up against the edge of the platform. “We’ll worry about that later, ‘cause right now, we’ve got some unwanted company,” declared Cole as he looked down and saw a few Changeling guards climbing that ladder.

“Indeed,” agreed Zane before he tossed one of his silver shurikens down at the Changeling highest on that ladder, striking him in the head and causing him to lose his grip on the ladder and plummet to the floor. As that shuriken flew back to Zane, Cole hooked his silver scythe onto the ladder and used his immense strength to yank the ladder aside, sending it toppling over. Every Changeling on that ladder fell with the ladder to the floor, except for the one who was highest up as he had just enough time to open his wingpack and fly up towards the platform.

“Don’t even think about it, Changeling, ‘cause you’re messing with the wrong ninjas!” declared Cole before he hooked his scythe around the hovering Changeling and then swiftly spun around to fling him away from the upper platform. That Changeling ended up smacking into the side of that huge crate that had been knocked aside by that fuel tank earlier, causing it to be shoved further off-center from the other crate it was resting atop of.





Back inside the office, Kai, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack stood guard behind the shattered window, using their weapons to deflect any laser attacks and beat back any Changelings that tried to charge into the room. As they battled, one of them would occasionally glance back towards the printer just to be sure all those pages were still being printed out.

After a few minutes, the whirring noise from the printer suddenly fell quiet, followed by a pair of faint beeps. Kai turned back to the printer and saw that it was no longer printing out anymore pages. “Uh-oh,” he muttered before he pressed the communicator within his ninja hood and reported, “We got a problem here. The printer just stopped working.”

“That’s not good,” responded Twilight. “We still have more than half of the pages left to go, so you’ll need to troubleshoot the printer to get it working again.”

“Ah’ll take care of that,” offered Applejack as she stepped away from the broken window. “You two just worry about keepin’ the Changelings outta here.”

As Rainbow Dash and Kai continued to defend the office, Applejack set aside her battle hammer and walked over to the printer. She inspected the panel of buttons and notice one particular indicator light was on. Upon reading the label beside that light, she pulled open the internal paper tray and discovered that it was completely empty. “Well there’s your problem,” she reported through her communicator. “The printer ran outta paper.”

“Then find some more to refill the printer,” responded Sunset. “We can’t afford any further delays.”

“Already on it,” replied Applejack as she began searching through desk drawers and cabinets. It wasn’t long before she found several packs of blank paper inside one of the cabinets, so she immediately grabbed a couple of those packs and brought them over to the printer.

“Boy, who would’ve thought that dressing up as ninjas and fighting off an army of shapeshifting aliens would involve doing some office work?” grumbled Rainbow Dash.

“Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing my friends and I have done in the middle of a fight,” quipped Kai.

Applejack tore away the wrappers and placed those stacks of blank paper into the printer and closed the tray. With the paper tray now full, the printer began whirring back into activity. “Ah think that’ll do it,” Applejack confidently reported through her communicator.

However, rather than smoothly spitting out the next page, the printer instead produced a noise of crumpling paper, then stopped and made another beeping noise as a different indicator light came on.

“Dagnabbit!” shouted Applejack in frustration. “We got a paper jam in here!”

“You have got to be kidding me!” exclaimed Rainbow in disbelief.

“Stay calm, Applejack,” responded Twilight through the communicator. “I’ve read about how to properly resolve such an issue for every type of printer. First, I need you to—”

“Ah ain’t got time for tech-talk!” interrupted Applejack furiously as she reached into the printer’s output slot. “Ah’m just gonna yank out that stubborn page.”

“No! Don’t do it!” Twilight begged urgently. “You could risk damaging the printer beyond repair!”

Applejack ignored Twilight and grabbed onto the crumpled page that was sticking partially out of the printer. Despite her stubbornness to solve the problem her way, she at least knew better than to carelessly overdo it, so she began tugging on the page lightly and gradually pulled a little harder with each attempt.

Rip!

The stuck page soon yielded as Applejack yanked it free from the printer. With that blockage removed from the output slot, the printer whirred back into activity and resumed printing page after page as intended. “There! Problem solved!” declared Applejack. “The printer’s workin’ just fine now.”

“What about the page that got stuck?” asked Twilight. “Is it still salvageable?”

Applejack glanced at the paper in her hand that was now completely torn to shreds and responded, “‘Fraid not…”

“Could you at least tell me which page number it was?” asked Twilight. “Check the pages that have already printed and see which one is missing from the stack.”

As more pages continued to settle atop the stack of printed paper, Applejack quickly flipped through the sheets with her focus on the numbers at one corner of the pages. She eventually found the missing number in the sequence and replied, “Two hundred seventy-four.”

“Got it,” responded Twilight. “Once all the other pages have finished printing, I’ll make a second attempt to print that specific page. Until then, maintain our defensive positions.”

“Sure thing, Lavender Ninja,” replied Applejack as she retrieved her battle hammer and joined Kai and Rainbow Dash in defending the office against attacks from the Changelings.





Meanwhile, Twilight and Sunset continued their efforts to protect the computer terminal on the floor. Sunset was busy clashing her nodachi sword against the blade of one Changeling guard, while Twilight used the long reach of her naginata to frequently knock another Changeling guard off-balance until she finally managed to strike him down. From the edge of her vision, Twilight noticed another Changeling step out from behind a stack of containers and aim his laser blaster at her. That Changeling fired three laser bolts at her, but she effortlessly used her silver naginata to deflect them, with the third deflected shot striking the side of the torso of the Changeling who was fighting Sunset, sending him collapsing to the floor.

Sunset glanced down at the fallen Changeling guard, then turned to Twilight and remarked, “Nice hit.”

“It’s all in the physics,” stated Twilight proudly as she twirled her naginata. “By anticipating which angle that projectile is coming at you, you can adjust the angle of your weapon to ensure it gets deflected directly at a specific target. If you can get it just right, you can even reflect that projectile.” She then demonstrated that by holding up her naginata to not only block another laser bolt from that distant Changeling guard, but also deflect it directly right back at him, striking him in the shoulder and sending him collapsing to the floor.

“A ninja that obeys the laws of physics?” quipped Sunset. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

Not far away, Lloyd also found himself clashing blades with a Changeling guard. After another successful block, the Green Ninja swiftly followed that with a hard kick to the Changeling’s torso, sending that guard flying back and slamming into the side of the large fuel tank that had fallen earlier. The Green Ninja then turned away and leaped up to reach higher ground.

The Changeling guard had his blade extended when he slammed into that fuel tank, and he ended up hitting it in such a way that the blade pierced the tank. He quickly recovered, yanked his blade out from the side of that fuel tank, then began to pursue the ninja that had beaten him back.

Twilight glanced towards the fuel tank and quickly noticed the fuel stored within was starting to leak out through that narrow hole in the side of it. She turned her gaze upwards and identified a certain array of fixtures in the ceiling. Once she mentally made the connection and considered a probable outcome from a certain scenario, her eyes widened as she fearfully exclaimed, “No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no! If that fuel catches on fire, it could trigger the fire suppression sprinkler system, and all that water could short out these computer terminals before we finish printing out all of the data stored within!”

“Can’t you see we’re a little busy trying to prevent the Changelings from trying to smash this terminal to pieces?!” exclaimed Sunset irritably as she once again found herself clashing blades with yet another Changeling guard.

“Don’t worry about it,” assured Lloyd from atop a nearby shipping container. “You girls keep protecting that terminal. I’ll take care of the fuel leak.” The Changeling guard he had fought only a minute ago now flew up to confront Lloyd, but the Green Ninja somersaulted over him and stabbed his sword into the Changeling’s back, disabling his wingpack and sending him plummeting to the floor.

Close by to where Twilight and Sunset stood, Pinkie Pie suddenly burst out from one of the smaller crates and cheerfully offered, “I’ll help, too! I can shut off the water so that even if the fuel does catch on fire, the sprinkler system won’t be able to spray anything on those computers.”

Twilight and Sunset watched Pinkie run off in a seemingly random direction. They then glanced at each other with confused looks in their eyes, then they both simply shrugged before resuming their defense of the computer terminal.

As soon as Lloyd reached the ruptured fuel tank, he quickly inspected the damage, then began looking around for possible options. The first practical solution he came across was a simple rag that was left atop a small crate. Although stuffing that rag into the opening in the tank would not completely stop the fuel from leaking, it was still a lot better than to just let that fuel continue to gush out. As he rushed over to retrieve that rag, he noticed that the crate it was on was marked with a label that read “Duct Tape”.

“Huh. How convenient,” remarked Lloyd as he grabbed that rag, then used his sword to pry open the crate. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from within that crate, then rushed back to the fuel tank. He quickly shoved the rag into the hole in the tank to suppress the flood of fuel, then he began tearing off strips of duct tape to form a makeshift patch to plug up all the remaining leaks.

Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie managed to come across a large pipe that ran along the wall at one side of the warehouse. She smiled behind her ninja mask as she found a large wheel connected to the pipe. That had to be the valve that controlled the flow of water through that pipe, and all she had to do was twist it shut and the problem would be taken care of.

However, once she grabbed onto that valve handle, she was surprised by how difficult it was to get that thing turning at all. She grunted with every effort to twist that handle, but it just wouldn’t budge. As she kept struggling with that valve handle, she grumbled under her breath, “C’mon, you piece of—”

Clang!

Pinkie somehow managed to release her grip on the valve handle right at the moment that wheel suddenly burst off from the pipe, unleashing a gushing sideways fountain of water. Behind her, three Changeling guards had the misfortune of trying to charge at her right at the moment of that mishap. One guard was instantly struck in the face by that valve handle as it burst off, sending him collapsing to the floor. Another guard lost traction on the rapidly flooding floor and slipped his feet around uncontrollably until he ultimately landed hard on his back. The remaining guard also began slipping, but because he ended up leaning forward, he was able to open his wingpack and take off from the floor. However, drops of water from the sideways fountain collected on his wings and threw off his balance, ultimately causing him to fall directly into the path of the gushing torrent that then sent him rapidly tumbling across the soaked concrete floor.

Sunset had just beaten back yet another Changeling guard when she heard that flood suddenly unleashed. She glanced towards that incident and stared in disbelief at the burst pipe with her friend Pinkie Pie standing near the source.

Pinkie noticed Sunset staring back at her before she turned her attention to the nearby rupture in the water pipe. When it finally occurred to her what might have caused such a catastrophic failure, the pink party girl giggled nervously as she turned back to her friend and awkwardly explained, “Whoopsie! I think I turned it the wrong way.”

“That’s the Pink Ninja for ya,” grumbled Sunset sourly as she turned away and shook her head. “Always unpredictable…”





Elsewhere in the warehouse, Rarity and Nya once again found themselves battling against a squad of Changeling guards. Rarity kept her distance from two guards who were firing their laser blasters at her, but she used her silver Sai daggers to deflect each bolt. Eventually, she was lucky enough to deflect one of those shots directly at one of the guards, striking him in the hip and sending him collapsing to the floor.

Nya parried her silver spear against one Changeling’s blade, then used the opening to spin around and strike him in the back, sending him slamming into the side of a nearby shipping container. She then charged in another direction and used the flat end of her spear as a pole vault to launch herself into the air and kick another Changeling in the face, fracturing his visor. That Changeling then blindly wandered around until he eventually bumped into an open barrel and fell forward to fall right into it, leaving his legs uselessly flailing around in the air.

Rarity used her dual short blades to parry another Changeling’s longer blade. When she used her dual daggers to grip the longer blade from opposite sides, the Changeling tried to use that leverage to flip Rarity up into the air, but she was able to twist her body around to turn that momentum back against the Changeling, flipping him over and causing him to slam face-down against the concrete floor.

With all of their current adversaries down for the count, Nya turned to Rarity and remarked, “I have to say, for someone without any real ninja training, you’ve been holding up quite well.”

“As well as one can, I suppose,” acknowledged Rarity, who was now lightly gasping for breath. After taking a moment to relax, she turned to Nya and confessed, “I don’t know about you, darling, but I fear I may soon reach my physical limits.”

“We just need to hold out for only a little longer,” assured Nya. “You heard everything through our communicators. The others already got access to the information we need, so now we just have to wait until they can actually collect it, then we can all get outta here.”

As the two ninja girls spoke, the Changeling inside the barrel behind them eventually managed to flip over back onto his feet. However, he was still stuck inside that barrel, so he was left blindly waddling around and ended up frequently bumping into the side of some containers and knocking over some other barrels.

“And what then?” asked Rarity. “Has anyone considered the details of our escape plan?”

“Not really,” confessed Nya. “If there’s one thing you learn as a ninja, it’s that trying to plan too far ahead can be a waste of time.”

“Yes, but don’t you think we are now close enough to such a moment that it would be worth formulating a plan?” Rarity pointed out.

“You’re right,” acknowledged Nya. “As soon as all of those pages are finally done printing, we’ll need to make a quick escape, so let’s try searching for a getaway ride while we still have time to spare.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be the most prudent course of action,” agreed Rarity. “Where shall we search?”

“From what I saw while I was up on the high ground, I think I know just where to look,” replied Nya as she began glancing around the ceiling. Once she identified a structure she recognized, she pointed towards it and declared, “Over there!” She then immediately ran off in that direction, with Rarity following not far behind.

As for the Changeling still stuck inside that barrel, he once again bumped into the side of a container, but this time he lost his balance and fell over onto his side, causing the barrel to start rolling away as he was again left with his legs uselessly flailing around.





Meanwhile, Starlight Glimmer and the poorly skilled Changeling soldier continued their amateurish sword fight. Starlight kept swinging her sword at her opponent with all the effort she could manage, but the weight of her weapon made it difficult to land any decisive blows. The Changeling soldier was easily able to use his long blade to block the rather slow strikes from his opponent, but his apparent hesitation on the offense meant that she was also able to easily block any of his strikes.

After several minutes of fighting to a stalemate, both Starlight and the Changeling paused for a moment to catch their breaths. It wasn’t long before Starlight turned to face her opponent and tauntingly asked, “Ready to give up?”

The armored alien soldier moved back into a battle pose and declared with conviction, “Changelings never surrender!”

Starlight raised her silver longsword once more and confidently retorted, “Yeah? Well, neither do I!”

The ninja and the soldier both raised their blades over their right shoulder and then swung forward to clash together in the middle.

Clang!

The simultaneous strike was so fierce that the blade of Starlight’s sword was sheared cleanly off from the handle. The two opponents paused and watched as that broken blade twirled through the air and then clattered to the floor.

There was a moment of silence between the two before the Changeling suddenly pointed at his ninja adversary and cheerfully cried, “Ha! Look at that! I just broke your sword! Boy, I can’t wait to tell Pharynx about this!”

“Pharynx?” asked Starlight quietly. She was initially confused by why a seemingly random Changeling soldier was eager to share such a minor triumph with someone whose name she was familiar with. It didn’t take long before she mentally put the pieces together and realized there was really only one specific Changeling who would be so poor at combat and be so desperate to impress someone named Pharynx. “Is your name Thorax?”

The Changeling soldier immediately froze, then asked in shock, “H-how did you know?!”

“Oh, just a lucky guess,” Starlight coyly replied. She glanced down at the silver sword handle still in her grasp, then tossed it aside as she turned her gaze towards Thorax with a look of determination in her eyes. She began to take a few steps back away from her opponent as she confidently stated, “Seeing as you won that first round, how about we make this a fair fight? You wanna impress your brother, don’t you? Then retract that blade and try to fight me with only your bare hooves— uh, I mean, hands.” She silently hoped Thorax didn’t catch that little slip-up at the end of her challenge declaration.

Thorax turned his gaze down at his wrist-mounted blade as he considered Starlight’s challenge. It was one thing to strike down an opponent he had just disarmed, but it was quite another thing to subdue an opponent in pure hand-to-hand combat. Breaking an enemy’s sword was already impressive, but it would be even better if he managed to finish the job without using his own blade. Not to mention, judging by the lack of combat experience displayed by this particular ninja, he saw no reason to believe he would have any difficulty winning this battle.

With his decision made, Thorax retracted his blade, then turned to the Lilac Ninja and confidently declared, “Even without my blade, I still have many advantages over you. I don’t think I’ll have much trouble taking you down and out.”

Starlight simply smirked and retorted, “That’s what you think…” She then began to charge forward directly at Thorax.

Thorax responded by letting loose a battle cry as he also charged forward directly at his oncoming opponent. He raised his right fist and prepared to strike the ninja with a swift knockout punch.

However, just as the two opponents came close enough for Thorax to start swinging his punch, Starlight suddenly leaped upwards, flipped forward through the air directly over his head, then as she began to fall behind him, she thrust both of her legs out against his back. That powerful double kick launched Thorax straight forward until he slammed face-first into the side of a massive crate, while Starlight landed on her hands and flipped forward once more to finally land upon her feet.

Starlight turned back to the defeated Thorax and proudly stated, “As a friend once told me, never assume anything is impossible.” She took a moment to silently thank Sunset for providing her with those Kung Fu lessons at the dojo during her previous visit to the Lego World.

Thorax groaned as he finally fell from the impact site on the side of that crate and rubbed his head as he stumbled back a few steps.

Creeeeaaaak…

Thorax paused and slowly turned his gaze upwards. Stacked on top of the massive crate he had just slammed into was another massive crate that was now teetering precariously over the edge directly above him.

Halfway across the warehouse, Cole and Zane continued defending the upper computer terminal against any Changeling attacks. At one point, Zane tossed one of his shurikens at one Changeling flying not far from the platform, but the hovering guard managed to dodge the oncoming weapon. As a result of that miss, the shuriken continued to fly forward until it eventually struck the side of the huge upper crate, embedding itself right next to a label that read “Anvils”.

That minor impact was all it took to finally cause that huge upper crate to topple over the edge and come crashing down directly on top of Thorax.

CRASH!!

The huge crate practically exploded into splinters upon impact as the dozens of anvils stored within settled into a huge pile, leaving Thorax completely buried underneath.

Starlight winced as she witnessed the moment of impact. As proud as she was to have struck such a decisive blow against the one particular Changeling she had been hoping to find, she certainly had no intent to overdo it to such an extreme extent. As the scene of devastation fell still and silent, she quietly muttered with concern, “Ooh… That’s gonna leave a mark…”





Back at the office, Kai, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash continued to fight back against any Changelings that attempted to come in through the broken window. Kai and Rainbow used their swords to deflect any laser bolts that were fired at them, while Applejack used her battle hammer to smack any troopers that tried to come through and easily sent them flying away.

After several minutes, the printer once again fell silent and stopped expelling pages. Kai glanced back at the printer, then pressed his communicator and asked, “Is that all of them?”

“All pages from this terminal have successfully printed,” reported Zane.

“Same here,” reported Twilight, “but please wait a second while I re-print the page that was lost in that paper jam.”

A few seconds later, the printer reactivated and expelled one more page, then stopped and fell silent once more.

Kai grabbed that last page and briefly inspected it before he reported, “Page two-seven-four, got it!”

“Good,” responded Twilight. “Now find a way to secure those pages so we don’t lose any while we make our escape.”

“I’ll take care of that!” Rainbow Dash eagerly offered as she turned away from the broken window and began rapidly checking all of the cabinets and desk drawers. When she found and pulled out a ball of twine, she stated, “I used to deliver newspapers when I was a kid, so I know how to tie together stacks of paper.”

While Rainbow Dash began separating the hundreds of pages into stacks small enough to tie together, Kai quickly searched through the office for anything to help carry all of those pages more easily. He eventually managed to find two empty briefcases inside a storage closet, and once Rainbow had finished tying the pages together into four stacks, there was just enough room to fit two of them into each briefcase.

Once all of the pages of valuable information were finally secured within those two briefcases, Rainbow declared, “Got it. Now let’s get outta here!”

It was at that moment that a Changeling guard suddenly burst through the locked door, breaking it off its hinges.

“There’s too many of ‘em!” exclaimed Applejack as she kept swinging her hammer at one Changeling after another as they kept coming through the broken window. “Ah can’t hold ‘em off much longer!”

Kai tossed his briefcase over to Rainbow Dash so that she was now holding both of them, then pulled out his flame-shaped sword and declared, “I don’t think so, Changelings! Ninja-GO!” He then began spinning around rapidly enough to apparently turn into a small red tornado that moved through the doorway and down the stairs to the floor of the warehouse, effortlessly knocking away every Changeling that stood in his way. Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped spinning and looked back at the path he had just cleared back to the office.

“Ah guess that’s one way to clear a crowd in a jiffy,” quipped Applejack as she took both briefcases from Rainbow Dash and held them under her left arm while holding her battle hammer in her right hand as she began to head down the stairs, with Rainbow Dash following right behind her after retrieving her two katanas.

“Gotta love Spinjitsu!” Kai proudly remarked.

As she followed after Kai and Applejack, Rainbow Dash pressed her hidden communicator and asked, “Okay, we’re out of the office with the info. Now what?”

In another part of the warehouse, Sunset struck down another Changeling guard before she pressed the communicator hidden within her ninja hood and responded, “The Changelings have us badly outnumbered. There’s no way we’ll be able to clear the whole building, so let’s just take that info and get outta here.”

“Agreed,” added Lloyd as he kicked away yet another Changeling guard. He pressed his hidden communicator and declared, “Everyone, meet up at the center of the warehouse! We got what we came here for.”

With that announcement, all of the Ninjago Ninjas and Equestria Girls quickly finished off whatever opponents they were currently occupied with and began making their way towards the center of the massive building. Jay moved the crane platform back towards the crane cab so that Fluttershy could easily climb down right behind him.

Among the first ones to rendezvous at a small open area near the center of the warehouse were Twilight and Sunset with Cole and Zane, all of whom no longer had to bother defending those computer terminals now that the potentially valuable information had been collected. Lloyd arrived just seconds later, soon followed by Kai, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack, who then handed the two briefcases over to Twilight and Sunset. It wasn’t much longer before Nya and Rarity soon arrived, with Jay and Fluttershy not far behind them.

Next to arrive was Pinkie Pie, who casually walked towards the group while waving around a hair dryer as it blew air all over her body. When she noticed everyone giving her questioning looks, she turned off the hair dryer and responded, “What? I got soaked after I accidentally burst a water pipe.”

As Pinkie carelessly tossed aside the hair dryer, Rarity scolded, “Regardless, that is not one of the recommended methods of drying a ninja costume.”

“Is that everyone?” asked Cole.

“I think so,” replied Kai. “Now let’s figure out a plan of escape before the entire garrison swarms in on us.”

“Wait!” Fluttershy urgently spoke up as she glanced around worriedly. “Where’s Lilac Ninja?”

The rest of the group glanced between one another to confirm Starlight’s absence, then began looking around for any sign of their missing teammate.

“Over there!” Twilight suddenly pointed out.

Everyone followed the direction Twilight was pointing at and they saw Starlight struggling to drag a seemingly unresponsive Changeling soldier towards them.

Applejack walked over to Starlight and offered, “Need a hand?”

Starlight dropped the Changeling and hunched over as she gasped for breath, but managed to respond with a nod of acceptance.

As the rest of the group began to gather around Starlight, they noticed the unresponsive Changeling’s armor appeared to be very badly mangled in several places, especially on the helmet with the three protruding sensors twisted out of shape and several fractures to the visor.

“What happened to that guy?” asked Rainbow Dash as she pointed down at the fallen Changeling.

Starlight took a few more breaths before she flatly explained, “A crate full of anvils fell on top of him.”

Everyone in the group winced and recoiled in response to that statement. “Ow,” remarked Jay in sympathy. “That’s gotta hurt.”

“Are you sure he’s even still alive?” asked Lloyd skeptically.

Zane stepped forward and began closely inspecting the fallen Changeling. After a few seconds of high-tech analysis, he concluded, “He is unconscious and his armor is badly damaged, but he will reawaken, albeit likely not for several hours.”

“Well, not my concern,” declared Sunset dismissively with a shrug. “Just leave him here. Right now, we need to focus on making a clean getaway with the info we collected.”

“We have to take him with us!” insisted Starlight desperately as she grabbed the Changeling’s arm and struggled to drag him across the floor again.

“But why?” asked Cole. “What’s so special about this particular Changeling?”

Starlight turned back to the group and stated, “His name is Thorax.”

As soon as Starlight had revealed that, all of the Equestria Girls stared at her and the fallen Changeling in stunned silence.

“Huh…” muttered Applejack in shock. “One in a million… Looks like we did win the lottery…”

“Does this mean we should start buying lottery tickets?” asked Pinkie.

“I still don’t get it,” Kai spoke up in confusion. “What’s so special about this ‘Thorax’ guy?”

“I’ll explain later,” replied Starlight. “For now, let’s just get outta here and reach a safe place where the Changelings won’t find us.”

“Already taken care of,” assured Nya. “White Ninja and I were able to find something that’ll help all of us make a quick escape. This way.” She and Rarity then turned back and ran off in the direction they had arrived from.

The rest of the group quickly followed after Nya and Rarity, with Applejack and Cole delaying only to help Starlight carry Thorax along.

The group soon arrived at a corner of the warehouse that was walled off by a makeshift fence made of cargo pallets that were arranged vertically and crudely tied together with duct tape. Rarity used her dual daggers to effortlessly cut through the duct tape, then Nya pulled aside the cargo pallets that had been cut loose to provide an opening through the fence for everyone to pass through.

On the other side of that fence, there were a few vehicles parked not far from a row of garage doors that were currently closed. Among these vehicles — all of which were black with bits of glowing green in some places — were several small ATVs, a few open-cockpit mini fighters, two larger space fighters, and three massive ground vehicles that each moved on eight wheels. There were a few Changeling guards patrolling around the doors, though none of them seemed to notice the presence of the group of ninjas at the moment.

Moving cautiously to not alert any of the guards, the group made their way towards the nearest of the three large transport vehicles, which happened to have the rear hatch fully opened. They stepped lightly up the ramp and into the vehicle, then gathered together inside and inspected their new surroundings. The larger compartment they entered was illuminated by a single long light along the rather low ceiling, was wide enough to fit a small vehicle, had benches and storage compartments along the sides at the rear half, with the front half consisting of a few swivel seats in front of various display screens, and a narrow doorway at the end that led into the driver’s compartment.

“Not exactly my idea of luxury,” noted Rarity, “but I will give praise for such a spacious interior.”

“By my calculations,” stated Zane, “this vehicle appears capable of carrying a maximum of thirty-two passengers, which should be more than sufficient for our group of fourteen.”

“Plus one hostage,” added Cole as he and Applejack set down the unconscious Thorax onto the floor.

While the rest of the group set aside their weapons and settled down in some of the available seats along the sides of the interior space, Jay and Nya moved forward into the driver’s compartment. Jay immediately sat down in the left seat, but his eagerness to drive this huge vehicle fell when he discovered that rather than a steering wheel and other driving controls, all he found in front of him was a display screen showing various bits of data. He glanced over to Nya in the right seat and was dismayed to discover that all of the driving controls were over there. “Hey, why’s the driver’s seat on that side?!” he whined.

Nya shrugged and replied, “I guess Changelings drive on the other side of the road on their home planet.” She took a moment to inspect the gauges and switches on the dashboard, then spoke up, “Okay, everyone! Buckle up, ‘cause we’re about to make our getaway!”

“Uh, slight problem,” Twilight pointed out worriedly. “None of these seats appear to have any seatbelts.”

“My guess is the Changelings don’t even bother,” responded Rainbow Dash, “considering how tough and durable their armor is.”

“Well, whatever the reason,” stated Sunset, “we’ll just have to hold tight to anything solid we can grab onto.”

With everyone prepared to ride, Nya turned the dial to activate the mighty engine, then flipped the switch to close the rear hatch.

The noise of the ground transport’s engine rumbling to life definitely caught the attention of the nearby guards. One of them focused his attention on the front compartment of that huge vehicle, and the analysis that flashed across his visor revealed that the two individuals seated inside were not Changelings, but rather two of the infiltrating ninjas. “Hey!” he shouted. “Someone’s hijacking one of the troop transports! Seal the exits!”

The rest of the guards quickly obeyed and began securing locks on the garage doors and shoving all kinds of makeshift barricades — things like a bookcase, a toilet, a refrigerator, a telephone booth, a bathtub, and a small cement mixer — in front of those doors.

“They’re blocking off the doors!” exclaimed Jay in panic. “We’ll never make it outta here!”

“Oh, yes we will,” said Nya with determination as she shifted the vehicle into gear and then stomped on the accelerator.

The mighty engine roared loudly as the massive troop transport vehicle suddenly began to accelerate… in reverse. Before the Changelings had a chance to react, the ground transport quickly backed up and punched a clean hole through the corrugated metal wall of the warehouse. Once the massive vehicle was outside the building, Nya sharply turned the vehicle to the left and brought it to a screeching halt.

Inside the ground transport vehicle, most of the ninjas and girls had not anticipated their backwards escape and ended up flung out of their seats and scattered all over the floor. Rarity sat up and adjusted her ninja hood so that it was no longer askew atop her head.

Starlight staggered up onto her feet as she turned to the front compartment and asked in shock, “Did you do that on purpose?!”

“Sure did!” replied Nya proudly. “If the bad guys won’t open the door, just make a new one!”

“Save the gloating for later,” scolded Lloyd. “Just get us outta here!”

Without a word, Nya shifted gears, then turned right as she began to drive the ground transport forward and away from the warehouse.

Back inside the warehouse, the Changeling guards scrambled into action as they swiftly hopped into the two remaining ground troop transports and the two large space fighters. Because the main doors were still blocked, the two hovering fighters turned around and fired a few laser bolts to expand the hole in the wall, then flew outside and up into the sky. The two massive eight-wheeled vehicles backed out through the hole in the wall, then turned and accelerated forward in pursuit of the fleeing infiltrators.

The stolen Changeling ground transport vehicle, carrying the Ninjago Ninjas and the Equestria Girls, sped off through the nighttime darkness along an empty highway. Convinced they were now safe from any further attacks, Jay decided to switch on the vehicle’s headlights so they could actually see where they were going. It wasn’t long, however, before the area immediately surrounding the huge vehicle was suddenly illuminated with much brighter lights.

“Whoa! Hey! I didn’t touch anything!” insisted Jay defensively as he held up his hands.

Further back in the passenger compartment, Pinkie Pie noticed the brighter lights coming in through the front windows, but the lack of windows along the sides of the vehicle made it very difficult to get a better look outside. She noticed a nearby ladder that led up to an escape hatch through the roof, so she decided to climb up that ladder and open the hatch. As soon as she opened that hatch, she was briefly blinded by the bright lights outside, but was then able to use her arm to mostly block the intense glare. Once her sight had recovered, she gasped in shock as she discovered four Changeling vehicles in hot pursuit, two on the road and two in the air. She immediately shut the hatch, dropped back to the floor, and fearfully exclaimed, “They’re after us! Step on it, Aqua Ninja!”

Nya needed only a quick glance at the side mirror before she tightened her grip on the steering wheel and stomped harder on the accelerator.

Even so, the pursuing Changeling vehicles soon managed to close in on the stolen ground transport, then aimed their primary weapons — dual laser blasters on the large fighters and a pair of cannon turrets on the ground transports — at the fleeing vehicle and began firing upon it. Although none of these attacks made any direct hits upon the target vehicle, several of them did strike close enough to cause the huge ground vehicle to shake and slightly swerve around.

“We’re under attack!” screamed Fluttershy in terror as everyone inside the vehicle was rattled around by each nearby impact.

“Which ones are shootin’ at us?” asked Applejack fearfully as she desperately held onto her seat.

Zane turned back to the rear hatch and noticed a narrow opening in the middle that was barely large enough to see through. He walked up to the hatch and observed the pursuing vehicles for a moment before he reported, “All four of them. Two large aerial fighters and two massive ground transports, to be precise.”

“Wait…” muttered Sunset as she stared aimlessly ahead and her eyes widened. Shen then smiled behind her ninja mask and excitedly spoke up, “That’s actually kind of a good thing!” When everyone nearby turned to her with stares of confusion, she clarified, “Don’t you get it? The ground transports they’re using are exactly the same as the one we’re in right now!”

“Which means we should have access to weapon systems that are identical to the ones they’re using against us!” concluded Twilight as she also smiled at that realization.

“At least that gives us some way to fight back,” noted Cole contently.

“Found one!” announced Kai excitedly as he pulled open a hatch on the left side of the passenger compartment and crawled through the opening.

“Hey! Don’t leave me out on all the fun!” retorted Rainbow Dash eagerly as she found and pulled open an identical hatch on the right side before she also crawled through the opening.

The two turrets atop the huge ground transport vehicle were located at the center of each side, between the two pairs of wheels. Kai and Rainbow Dash squeezed into the compact seats within those turrets, then turned the turrets towards the rear of the vehicle, took aim at their pursuers, and began firing. Although the projectiles proved destructive by exploding upon impact, the two operators of those turrets quickly found themselves struggling just as much as their opponents to make any direct hits on their targets.

Kai growled in frustration and grumbled, “These things are impossible to aim!”

With Kai focusing his efforts on the two troop transports following them on the road, Rainbow Dash decided to turn her attention to the two space fighters in the sky above. She completely missed on the first few shots, but soon managed to hit the wing on the fighter to her right. With its right wing suddenly blown off, that fighter swerved to the right and collided into the other fighter, sending both of them plummeting until they splashed down into the harbor not far from the highway.

“Nice shot!” praised Kai.

“I was aiming for the other one,” Rainbow flatly retorted as she turned her aim down towards the two ground vehicles that were still following and began firing upon them.

The pursuing ground troop transports returned fire, with one of those projectiles managing to strike the outer rear wheel on the right side of the fleeing vehicle. The sudden destruction of that wheel violently rocked the transport, sending everyone inside swaying around so much that several of them fell to the floor.

“What just happened?” asked Lloyd as he helped Starlight back onto her feet.

“They just took out a wheel!” replied Rainbow Dash fearfully as she attempted to turn her turret back towards the pursuing vehicles.

“That’s okay,” assured Nya. “We still have seven more wheels on this beast.”

Despite that bit of reassurance, the absence of that wheel caused the vehicle to slightly shake and rattle as it continued speeding along the highway, which certainly left some of the girls and ninjas riding inside feeling quite concerned for their odds of a successful escape.

Kai fired a few more shots at the ground transports and continued struggling to land any decisive hits upon them. Desperate for other options, he glanced around and quickly realized that to his right was a steep and rocky hillside along the side of the highway they were on. As that rough terrain gave him an idea, he shrugged and remarked, “Oh well. If you can’t be precise, go with brute force.”

Kai aimed his turret up towards the top of that rocky slope and fired a few shots. Most of those explosive projectiles struck several large boulders, causing them to start tumbling down the hillside and quickly cascading into a huge landslide. When that landslide reached the road at the bottom, it slammed into the nearest of the pursuing ground transports, smashing it to pieces and sending debris flying all over the place. The other pursuing ground transport was just distant enough to avoid being significantly damaged, though some of the tumbling boulders did strike the left rear part of the vehicle and caused it to swerve uncontrollably for a few seconds until it eventually regained traction.

“Good thinking, Red Ninja,” praised Rainbow Dash. “Just one more left to go and we’re home free.”

“Uh-oh,” Jay spoke up worriedly from the driver’s compartment as he looked down at the display screen on the dashboard in front of him. “We got more incoming!”

Kai and Rainbow Dash ceased fire and looked around. They soon noticed a series of lights up in the dark sky rushing towards them, with a series of distantly faint whooshing and screeching engine noises as they began to swarm around.

Rainbow Dash quickly recognized what those flying objects were. “Mini fighters,” she noted. “There must be at least a dozen of ‘em up there.”

“Those things are tiny at that distance,” observed Kai with concern. “We’ll never be able to blast them all out of the sky!”

“How will we ever get away from these Changelings?” asked Rarity in dismay.

As Nya kept driving at full speed, she began looking around for any alternative paths they could take. She soon spotted a line of railroad tracks beside the highway that led into a tunnel entrance not far up ahead, and that gave her an idea. “We’ll take the one route those fighters can’t possibly follow,” she declared. “Underground!”

Before anyone could question her plan, Nya sharply turned the huge ground vehicle to the left and continued ahead along the railroad tracks and into the tunnel entrance. The mini fighters were too far above to react to the sudden change of course, though the lone pursuing ground vehicle was able to follow after the stolen troop transport into the railroad tunnel.

“Okay, good news is we lost those mini fighters,” stated Jay contently. He then added in a more panicked tone, “Bad news is one of those eight-wheeled tanks is still after us!”

“And to make matters even worse,” added Kai in dismay, “this turret seems to be out of ammo.”

“Same for this one,” grumbled Rainbow Dash in disappointment.

“Though on the bright side,” suggested Cole, “since they have the same vehicle as us, they probably ran out of ammunition as well.”

“Not to mention,” added Pinkie Pie blissfully, “we should consider ourselves lucky we’re not on a collision course with an oncoming train.”

Despite Pinkie being seemingly dismissive of such an idea, everyone else in the passenger compartment silently glanced at one another with varying looks of concern and fear in their eyes, then they all turned their attention forward towards the driver’s compartment and through the front window. Thanks to the vehicle’s headlights, they could see that the tunnel ahead branched off in two directions, and there was some additional light coming from the tunnel that went to the right. To make matters even more foreboding, they also faintly heard the horn of a train from somewhere further ahead through the tunnel.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” exclaimed Starlight in disbelief.

“Actually, this is exactly what I was hoping for,” stated Nya confidently.

Jay turned to Nya and skeptically asked, “You’re joking, right?”

Nya remained focused ahead with a look of determination in her eyes as she replied, “If I can time this just right, we can make it into the other tunnel before that train arrives, but the Changelings chasing after us won’t be so lucky.”

As Nya continued driving ahead through the tunnel, everyone else watched helplessly with increasing fear, tension, and dread. As they got closer to the tunnel intersection, the light from the oncoming train grew brighter and its horn sounded significantly louder.

HOOOOOOOONNNNK!!

“You’re crazy, you’re crazy, you’re CRAZY!!” shrieked Starlight in absolute terror.

As they came within seconds of the moment of truth, most of the group within the huge vehicle began letting out screams of fear and horror, with some of them also covering their eyes and looking away from what they were convinced was certain doom.

Finally, it happened. The fleeing ground transport vehicle turned into the left tunnel as the rapidly oncoming train emerged from the right tunnel. The ground transport and the train passed so close to each other that the train barely scraped through the open space where the missing wheel on the transport used to be. Just one second after the fleeing transport escaped through the other tunnel, the pursuing transport was plowed head-on by the oncoming train. Despite its durable armor, the Changeling ground troop transport vehicle was obliterated by the impact, its debris sent scattering wildly through the tunnel as the train continued ahead with virtually no resistance at all.

It took a few seconds of watching themselves continue ahead and hearing the sound of the train speeding away before all the ninjas and girls inside the last remaining ground transport vehicle were finally able to let out a collective huge sigh of relief.

“That was cutting it way too close,” muttered Sunset.

“Yeah, we could’ve been smashed to pieces by that train!” scolded Jay.

“Could’ve been,” quipped Nya contently, “but we’re not.”

“If this is what you Ninjago Ninjas do all the time, then I’m glad that this was a one-off thing for us,” grumbled Starlight as she turned away from everyone and sat down on the floor beside Thorax, who still remained unconscious.

Fluttershy turned to Starlight with concern and asked, “Are you alright, Lilac Ninja?”

Starlight sighed, then removed her ninja hood and sadly muttered, “I miss Equestria already…”

Everyone else inside the vehicle also removed their ninja hoods and glanced at one another with various uneasy expressions on their faces. The long, awkward silence eventually ended when Rarity cleared her throat as she turned to Nya and asked, “So, ehhh… does this mean our escape was successful?”

“As long as we stay in these tunnels, the Changelings won’t be able to find us again,” assured Nya. “And since I’ve studied the map of Ninjago City’s metro system, I know which way to go to reach the station directly under Borg Tower, where we agreed to meet up with P.I.X.A.L.”

“As long as you don’t put us at risk of colliding with another train, that’s fine by me,” declared Lloyd. He then turned back to the rest of the group and asked, “Do we still have all that information we gathered?”

Twilight and Sunset responded by opening the briefcases they still carried and showed the stacks of printed documents stored within. “We’ll still need to scan all of these pages so we can analyze them more efficiently,” Twilight pointed out.

“Cyrus Borg should have no problem taking care of that, once we get there,” assured Lloyd.

“Good,” acknowledged Sunset with a nod as she and Twilight closed the briefcases. “Hopefully, it won’t be long before we find out what the Changeling army is really up to.”

“What about our Changeling hostage?” asked Cole as he gestured down at Thorax.

“He is definitely in no condition to pose any threat to us,” noted Zane. “Perhaps Doctor Cyrus Borg would welcome the opportunity to try to reverse engineer his armor and sensors. Such an effort could potentially reveal more about the Changelings than even those documents might tell us.”

“I just hope he can recover,” muttered Starlight sadly. “After all the misery he’s been through, it’s the least he deserves.”

As the stolen ground troop transport vehicle continued moving through the train tunnels under the city, the Ninjago Ninjas and the Equestria Girls were all mostly pleased by the success of their covert mission. Not only had they gathered valuable information, but also managed to encounter the one specific Changeling that Starlight had been convinced would be essential to ending the threats of the Changeling armies once and for all. Whether or not capturing Thorax would be worth the effort was something no one could be certain of at the moment. Only time and patience would reveal if a Changeling such as Thorax would be willing to defect against his own kind.