“And next on our tour is Dreamland’s very own Orange Ocean!” Bandana Waddle Dee proudly stated. King Dedede had asked him to show the three extradimensional travelers around now that they had settled in a bit, a task that the general took to with gusto. He had already shown off the mountain chain Mount Dedede rested in, Green Greens, and the Float Islands in the several hours the tour had been going on. They were currently making their way north along the coast towards the planned final stop of their tour, Rainbow Resort, where they would be spending the night. For now, though, they were stopping for dinner at Orange Ocean.
Spike squinted out at the body of water. “How’d it get the name? It doesn’t seem very orange.”
True, the waves sparkled a clear blue in the late afternoon sun. “Just wait until the sun really starts setting,” Bandana said. “With how the light reflects off of Rainbow Resort’s ice spikes, this whole bay practically glows!”
“Huh, neat,” Sunset noted as she glanced around. She did a double take after her eyes passed over a patch of sky, though. “Sick! You guys have a flying battleship?”
Bandee blinked. “What? Kabula might count, but what do you…” he trailed off as he turned around. “Oh no.”
In the sky was a massive purple winged warship, its bow designed to resemble some sort of mask. The ship was armed to the teeth by way of being absolutely covered in artillery of all shapes and sizes. As the behemoth of a war machine moved through the sky, Twilight idly wondered how it was staying in the air.
She frowned. “That’s not promising.”
Bandee gulped. “Well, I guess we know why the Meta-Knights have been so quiet for the past few weeks.”
“The who?” Sunset asked.
“They’re a militant extremist group led by the alien Meta Knight,” Bandana explained. “No one knows when or why he came to Popstar, but ever since Dedede took over Dreamland he’s been a constant thorn in our side. The whole organization dropped off the map two weeks ago, though.” He looked back up at the flying fortress, gripped his spear, and shivered. “I guess they spent their time building that.”
“We have to stop them!” Spike shouted.
“Agreed,” Twilight said. “Any ideas?”
“Well, I don’t exactly have any ideas for how to take down a giant flying warship, but uh…” Sunset pointed up at the ship, which had trained its main canon at something in midair and began to fire. “What are they shooting at?”
Twilight narrowed her eyes and cast a farsight spell. “It looks like a…flying star?”
“Is it yellow?” Bandee asked.
“Very.”
Bandana Dee sighed in relief. “It’s Kirby on his Warp Star, then. He’ll take care of-”
“He just got shot down,” Twilight interrupted.
Bandee and Sunset both whirled around to stare at her with wide eyes. “He WHAT?” they shouted simultaneously.
“His Warp Star got hit and just went poof,” Twilight said. “Based on his trajectory, he should be landing over there right about…now.”
She pointed a hoof over to their left, where a few hundred meters away, a plume of dust shot into the air from in between the trees. Spike was running towards it near-immediately. “Come on!” he shouted as he vanished into the treeline. “We’ve gotta go help him!”
“Spike!” Twilight called, running after him and also disappearing into the foliage. “Hold on a moment! We need a plan!”
Sunset and Bandee glanced at each other before looking back to the plume of dust. “I guess we’re helping Kirby, now?” she asked.
Bandee twirled his spear and began walking forward. “The King and he called a truce. If he’s willing to help us fight off the Meta-Knights, I’ll be glad to aid him.”
When Twilight and Spike found Kirby a minute or so later, she noted that he was remarkably well put-together for someone who had just been launched a few kilometers at a high velocity. Which was to say, he was somehow completely undamaged. The puffball was even wearing a headset of some sort, for goodness sake! If he could take this much punishment without any problems, she was starting to see why Sunset was so scared of him.
Kirby glared up at the ship that had grounded him with fury in his eyes, though he still happily waved to Twilight and Spike when he saw them, and to Sunset and Bandee when some of the foliage rustled and they joined them in the clearing.
Sunset very pointedly stood on the opposite side of it from Kirby.
The pink ball didn’t seem to mind, though. Instead, after giving them a wave of greeting, he continued scanning the sky for something. That something turned out to be the silhouette of a massive bird of some sort that his eyes glistened when he saw, and he began jumping up and down. Curiously, he turned to Twilight, pointed upward, and jumped.
She looked at him, a bit confused. “You want me to lift you up a bit?”
Kirby vigorously nodded.
Twilight shrugged. “Alright then.”
Her horn lit and she levitated him above the canopy. She wasn’t entirely sure what he was planning to do when he twisted himself around in her grip so he could face upward, but the microphone he produced from somewhere was concerning. She had a right to be a bit worried, it seemed, when he raised the microphone to his lips and SCREAMED.
Everyone present cringed and covered their ears, the two ponies even crying out in a bit of pain. It was so much that Twilight reflexively dropped Kirby, though she did recover quickly enough to send a cushioning charm his way. Not that it looked like he needed it, since he just gently floated down to the ground. He smiled up at the wincing group, pleased about whatever it was he did.
What that was became clear moments later, and a massive crashing sound reverberated around them. The giant bird had landed, taking down a couple trees in the process. Looking at it, Twilight’s eyes widened. It seemed to be covered in a beautiful cherry red armor, a massive blue gem embedded in its chest. Its wings were every color of the rainbow and ended in enormous blades. Its gigantic talons, some of the sharpest things she’d ever seen, sank deep into the ground.
“Th…that’s Dyna Blade!” Bandee exclaimed. “Why’d Kirby call her here?”
Then she cooed at Kirby, and the illusion of a threat shattered.
Kirby and Dyna Blade seemed to have a silent conversation of sorts, the former gesturing wildly and pointing at the still-visible form of the battleship. Dyna Blade, for her part, nodded in understanding and crouched down as she extended her wings. Kirby quickly clamored onto her back, gesturing for the others to follow.
No one moved for a moment, but Sunset broke the silence with a shrug. “Y’know what, I’m done questioning these things,” she said as she moved towards the enormous bird, keeping an eye on Kirby all the while. “I guess we’re fighting a battleship now. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”
Bandee moved forward next, vaulting on his spear to hop onto Dyna Blade’s back just as Sunset began to board. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help defend Dreamland!”
When Spike moved forward, though, he found himself blocked by a violet wing. “Not you, Spike,” Twilight said.
“Why not?” Spike protested. “I want to help!”
Twilight frowned. “You’re not even eleven yet, Spike. I am not allowing you to put yourself in this kind of danger!” Her expression softened. “You can still help, though. We still need somepony to run back to the castle and let Dedede know what’s going on!”
Spike sighed. “Okay. I get that,” he admitted. Before he left, though, he gave Twilight a hug. “Come back safe, please?”
Twilight wrapped a wing around her little brother. “Of course. You know the way back, right?”
Spike rolled his eyes and pointed a thumb over his shoulder, where Castle Dedede was plainly visible in the distance. Twilight released him and smiled sheepishly in response. No more words needed to be exchanged between them, though, as Spike gave her a determined nod and took off towards the mountains.
“You coming, Twilight?” Sunset asked after the dragon had vanished back into the underbrush.
Twilight spread her wings and unsteadily took to the air. She smiled at them. “I’ve been meaning to practice flying more, anyway.”
“Are you sure this is the sort of situation you want to try that in?” Bandee asked.
Twilight nodded. “As an alicorn, I have access to both pegasus and earth pony magic,” she explained. Looking up at their target, she focused. She hadn’t given it much thought before, but ever since she ascended, she could feel the air. Every gust of wind, every thermal updraft, every tiny eddy that circled around her. She could feel them all.
To anypony else, gaining an entire new sense like that might have been overwhelming. And yes, she had been caught off guard for a few minutes after she first ascended, but she was Twilight Sparkle. With how many experiments she had done on unicorn magic, gaining extra sensory data streams to her brain was nothing new to her.
Manipulating air with pegasus magic was harder, but nowhere near impossible. Regular pegasi did it mostly subconsciously, like when Rainbow messed with her mach cone to make breaking the sound barrier easier. Normal pegasus magic, though, simply wasn’t strong enough to do much of anything else with the surrounding gasses. If one were to try it as an alicorn, however…
Twilight grinned as she felt an updraft carry her higher. “I have all this new magic that I need to try out. And hey, if I do mess up,” she lit her horn, “I can always fall back on my unicorn magic to help.”
Dyna Blade cawed, and the group shot into the air.
Twilight’s smile split her face as she felt the wind rush by her ears. She wasn’t normally one to have adrenaline junkie tendencies, but she was raised by Twilight Velvet. Really, it was a wonder that she hadn’t tried something like this before; it was exhilarating.
She still wasn’t going to go down Neighagra Falls in a barrel, though, no matter how many times her mother tried to convince her.
Regardless, she could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins as they approached the battleship. Now that she could get a closer look, she reassessed it. It was far larger than she first assumed, looking to be several hundred meters in length at the least. Its superstructure over doubled its height, and its wings stretched out nearly as wide as it was long. Its main cannon dominated the middle of the ship, and of course it was pointed directly at the approaching group.
Then it started firing.
Twilight and Dyna Blade dove to avoid the explosive projectile, swooping under the ship as they started to circle towards the stern. “How are we gonna take this thing down?” Sunset shouted over the roar of the wind.
“I was thinking of taking out the engines!” Twilight shouted back. “But they’re probably the most fortified part of the ship! We might want to keep that as a backup plan!”
“What do you suggest?” Bandana called, one arm holding on to Dyna Blade for dear life as his namesake flapped in the wind.
Twilight considered that as they started ascending the port side of the ship. Her eyes trained on the side cannons as they began tracking them. “Get back to the bow and try to board from the front!” she commanded. “I’ll try to keep their aerial defenses trained on me until you can take out the main cannon!”
Dyna Blade nodded in understanding, and the group split. The bird and her passengers headed for the bow, where hopefully they would be able to fight their way to and destroy the ship’s main cannon. As for Twilight, she flew straight up and began charging energy in her horn.
Hopefully this works, she thought.
Unfortunately, the ship’s commanders must have seen her charging up for a strike, as the majority of the mounted artillery turned towards her.
The onslaught began.
Twilight was forced to cancel her spell and focus entirely on dodging the variety of projectiles the ship fired at her. Most were conventional shells, but it seemed that the Meta-Knights also had access to some sort of energy weapon. Whatever laser cannon they were using to fire them was capable of rapidfire too, apparently. Twilight had to pull in both of her wings and enter a free fall for a bit to avoid them. Safely dodging the first volley, she extended her wings once more and flapped, rocketing forward and up towards what she assumed was the bridge.
Well, she certainly had their attention.
The world blurred as she sped by. Unfortunately, she couldn’t really concentrate enough to pull together enough energy to seriously damage any part of the ship, so she was reduced to relying on her instincts to dodge. As she arced in front of the bridge’s massive window, laser fire trailing behind her, she spared a glance inside.
The being she assumed was Meta Knight was staring directly at her, a sword in his grip and…was that amusement in his eyes? Also present on the bridge were a Waddle Dee in a sailor’s cap, a bipedal bird of some sort in captain’s garb, what looked like a walking skull holding an axe, and someone in purple armor. As she watched, she could see the bird shouting into a communicator, but that was all she got to see before she had to focus on dodging again.
Circling over to the ship’s starboard, she banked right and felt an explosion of heat from behind her as she dove under the wing. They must have shot some sort of explosive at her that just barely missed. She paled a bit at how close she had come to legitimately dying there, but steeled herself and kept pushing forward. Having successfully cleared the massive bat-like structure, she shot back up towards the ship’s stern, and the engines’ massive roar started overpowering that of the wind.
Getting a look at the thrusters, she was nearly hit by the next shot fired at her when she froze in astonishment. It was a technological marvel! Six great jets of flame shot out from the ship’s stern, pushing it forward through the air. She wondered how they were powered, and how the thing even stayed afloat. If it wasn’t an existential threat to Dreamland, she would’ve felt bad for trying to destroy it.
Unfortunately, though, she wouldn’t even get the chance to go after the engines. Her original assessment of them being heavily fortified was correct, and it wasn’t the usual mounted artillery of the rest of the ship. Instead, the ship seemed to double as a carrier. The thrusters were positioned above a massive hangar, the door of which was currently opening.
Out of it flew a miniature fighter aircraft. Twilight, being an Equestrian, wasn’t exactly familiar with the concept of planes, but a kitted out flying hunk of metal coming right for her was intimidating all the same. It was just the one, thankfully–it seemed that the Meta-Knights didn’t have the resources to spend on more–but it instantly started shooting at Twilight. She yelped and dove, dodging the projectiles and engaging in a dogfight.
Fortunately, it looked like it could only fire in one direction, and she could actually catch her breath as she rose up behind it. Gathering up energy in her horn again, she launched a blast. The pilot apparently saw it coming, though, banking left hard enough to avoid it. Twilight frowned. This machine was small enough that it could avoid just about anything she threw at it, so she’d need to do something impossible to dodge, or get creative.
Or, she grinned, I could do both.
The aircraft had turned its bank into half a barrel roll and flipped around to face her by the time she’d come up with a plan, though. It fired at her once again, and she tucked her wings into a roll to get under it. With the gunfire dodged for the time being, she called upon the pegasus magic she had access to. She still wasn’t able to do anything spectacular with it–no tornadoes for her, at least not yet–but a sudden crosswind was enough to cause her pursuer extreme turbulence. Following that, she gathered magic in her horn again and fired.
There was a reason Twilight bore the Element of Magic.
The massive beam of magic vaporized the plane’s left wing and left Twilight no more tired than before. The aircraft fell into a tailspin without its wing, plummeting down towards the ocean far below. Twilight was about to try and stop it to save whoever was inside, because she was nice like that, but the cockpit’s roof splitting open and the pilot ejecting stopped her. She blinked as she looked at said pilot. This was a new creature!
It had the same general build as the Waddle Dees and Waddle Doos she had encountered, but was covered in orangish-yellow armor. It had a shark-like helmet, and Twilight could make out its glowing eyes behind its visor. Most interestingly, though, it was wearing a jetpack that it was using to hover at her level.
Then it charged directly at her, and she barely got a shield up in time.
The creature spoke no words as it bounced off of her shield, but Twilight got the feeling that it was scowling at her. She prepared herself for another strike, but it seemed that the pilot simply gave up after one attempt and fled back to the ship. Twilight smiled as the hangar door closed. Maybe with the lack of mounted artillery on the stern, she could take out the engines and end this early!
Regrettably, that was not to be. The engines’ true defenses appeared not long after, and Twilight suddenly had to deal with half a dozen heat-seeking missiles.
Twilight yelped again and managed to shoot down two of the missiles with magical lasers, but was forced to physically dodge the other four. They tracked after her even as she accelerated by flying downward, and she glanced behind her as she moved underneath the ship. They were unfortunately small enough that inertia wasn’t a problem for them, so she couldn’t just make a sharp turn and force them to hit the ship itself. But then an idea started forming in her head. Perhaps she could still get the ship to destroy the missiles!
She darted to her left and ascended the port side of the ship again. Predictably, it started shooting at her, but a series of explosions sounded out as the missiles following her were caught in the cannon fire and detonated. Twilight mentally cheered. She’d survived so far, but she definitely wasn’t going to be heading back to the stern anytime soon.
The laser cannon started firing at her again, and Twilight began her routine of dodging it as she hoped the others were at least faring better.
“Shit! We’re hit!” Sunset cried as Dyna Blade began a descent towards the main deck. Despite most of the ship’s side cannons focusing on Twilight, it seemed that the main cannon had stayed squarely trained on the enormous bird.
“We’re gonna have to jump to the deck so Dyna Blade can get out of here and recover!” Bandee shouted.
Kirby said nothing, but nodded in agreement.
Sunset rolled her neck. They were fast approaching, but Dyna Blade would have to pull up soon to stop them from crashing straight into the ship. “Alright, then!” She flared her magic, and on the deck a rectangular prism of aquamarine light formed. “That’s our target! The charm I just cast should cushion our fall!”
The three steeled themselves, and just as Dyna Blade was starting to ascend again, they jumped. Sunset and Bandee both landed on her static featherfall charm, but Kirby just ignored the damn thing and landed with a high-speed roll.
Sunset nearly rolled her eyes. Show-off.
At least it looked like a straight shot down the deck to the main cannon. With how likely they would be to damage their own ship, she reasoned that the Meta-Knights wouldn’t dare use the cannon on them while they were on the deck. Unfortunately, that meant that they’d probably have a different plan.
The ship’s PA system crackled to life around them as a message from the bridge came through. “Dyna Blade is down! I repeat, Dyna Blade is down!” came a somewhat high male voice.
“Kirby and his pals are on the deck, though!” shouted a deeper one.
“Stay calm and stick to the plan,” sounded a third voice. Based on how suave and smooth it sounded, Sunset assumed that this had to be Meta Knight.
“All soldiers near the deck, get up there and assume combat positions!” shouted a gruff, stern voice. “Defend the Halberd at all costs!”
Quite suddenly, their way forward was flooded with members of the Meta-Knights. Bandee twirled his spear, Kirby inhaled a bird-like creature, and Sunset grinned. This was gonna be fun.
The battle that followed was carnage. Kirby took to the air almost instantly after he got a hat made mostly of feathers, taking care of most of the flying mooks. Sunset and Bandana Dee pushed forward together as the ground troops rushed them. She scoffed. Amateurs.
Two creatures wielding a trident and a cutter blade rushed them, to start. A Trident Knight and Sir Kibble, if Sunset’s memory of her introduction to others of their species served her right. Kibble’s blade was snapped in half by her magic almost as soon as he threw it, and she quickly picked him up in her aura and knocked him out on the floor.
Bandee had engaged in a proper fight with the Trident Knight, though. The two’s longer-ranged weapons served as counters to each other, neither able to get a hit in. Their stalemate came to an end, though, when Bandee successfully parried a hit hard enough to actually disarm the knight. While they were disoriented, he shifted his spear up and bonked them over the head, dropping the Trident Knight like a sack of bricks.
“I take it you don’t really like to kill, either?” Sunset asked, noting that he had specifically avoided hitting with the spearhead.
“Not really,” Bandee replied. “It just doesn't feel right, even during a battle like this.”
The PA sounded again, this time seeming to direct a statement directly at them. “Tch, classic Bandana Dee, the pacifist general,” sounded a mocking, feminine voice. “Willing to be a bootlicker but not able to get his hands dirty.”
“Stay focused, Sailor,” Meta Knight said, and the PA shut off again.
Bandee narrowed his eyes. “Of course she would be here,” he growled as they moved towards the next group of enemies.
“Personal history?” Sunset asked, ducking under a Knuckle Joe’s strike and blasting him with some magic.
Bandee twirled around a Wheelie and knocked it onto its side. “You could say that. Sailor Waddle Dee and I used to be friends, but we had a bit of a falling out when Dedede rose to power.”
“Sounds rough, buddy,” Sunset said as she grabbed a bird-like being in her magic. The thing was about to strike Kirby from behind, but she put an end to that real quick. Twisting her head a bit, she slammed it onto the deck, knocking it unconscious.
The two fell silent after that, slowly working their way across the deck and towards the main cannon. It only took them a few minutes to plow through the mooks, but Sunset was continually surprised by just how many troops Meta Knight had at his disposal. As they neared the massive artillery piece, though, the PA started up again. “They’re nearing the main cannon!”
“Disengage the twin cannon and fire at them!” demanded the gruff voice again.
“Vetoed, Captain Vul,” Meta Knight shot him down. “That could still damage the hull.”
“Not if we lower the power by thirty percent,” pointed out the same voice that had confirmed Dyna Blade’s retreat.
Meta Knight hummed. “Yes, that could work. Thank you, Axe Knight. Captain, proceed.”
Vul laughed as Kirby landed next to Bandee and Sunset, still decked out in his feathered headdress. “Prepare to get blown to smithereens, you three!”
A small pair of side cannons detached themselves from the larger, main cannon and pointed at the group. Sunset and Bandee jumped back as a massive projectile slammed into the ground where they just were with a clanging sound. Kirby, though, rushed up and shot a feather at the larger of the two. Predictably, it did nothing and just bounced off of the metal.
Frowning, Bandee dashed forward and tried to jab at it with his spear, which just glanced off of it. He was forced to run away soon after, when the smaller top cannon started spewing machine gun fire at him. Sunset’s horn flared, erecting a shield around the small spearman. Thankfully it was enough to stop the bullets in their tracks, the spent shells clattering to the floor as the small canon stopped firing.
Sunset’s own attempt at destroying the twin cannon didn’t go any better, but she wanted to test something. Her weak beam of magic hit the top cannon and was deflected into the sky, of course, but that was the point. She knew that if she had something like this, she’d have an irresistible urge to gloat about her toys. So maybe…
Vul cackled, and Sunset mentally grinned. “You three have no hope of destroying the twin cannon!” he shouted.
“It’s made of reinforced steel tempered with water from the Fountain of Dreams!” Axe Knight added. “Nothing you could do can pierce it!”
Sunset was physically grinning, now. “Tempered, you say?” Her horn shone brightly, aquamarine magic sparking around it. She felt a bit of a dull heat from her cutie mark as she tapped into her special talent and the twin cannon began to glow a dull red. “So it can melt?”
The sound of panic in the bridge spread over the PA system, and the top cannon swiveled to point at Sunset. But it was already too late, for when they tried to fire it, the barrel was already being reduced to melted slag. Instead, all that they succeeded in doing was igniting all the gunpowder at once, and what once was a contained explosion became very much uncontained.
Sunset quickly shifted to shielding herself and her allies as the twin cannon violently exploded, sending molten steel every which way. It wasn’t done there, though, as the explosion took out significant proportions of the main cannon as well. The barrel was even ripped off from the sheer force of it, spiraling off the Halberd. A few seconds later, they heard a mighty splash as it hit the water.
God she loved having a cutie mark in blowing shit up. Well, technically it was pyroturgy as a whole, but same difference.
“The main cannon has been destroyed!” shouted the only unidentified voice from the bridge.
“Thank you, Mace Knight, for STATING THE OBVIOUS!” Vul screeched.
“You are welcome, Sir.”
Vul’s next words were less coherent language and more indecipherable rage.
Twilight landed next to them, sweating bullets and panting hard. It seemed that the princess had to use all of her strength just to keep herself standing. “I didn’t even know,” she gasped between breaths, “that my wings could hurt so much. I’m walking the rest of the time we’re here.”
“Thank you for keeping most of the guns away from us, Your Highness!” Bandee said.
Twilight stood there and caught her breath for a few more seconds. “You’re welcome. I’m not doing that again.” She looked around. “That's a lot of molten metal.”
Sunset beamed. “That was me! Pity nothing's on fire, though.”
Twilight sent Sunset a confused look as she laughed and dove through the door that Kirby had yanked open, entering the Halberd's interior.