//------------------------------// // No dust left // Story: The Arising Cartoon Pony // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Walking back onto the bridge five minutes after their show they saw someone other than Goombella at the screens controlling the SCV’s. Instead it was Khronozooie and off to the side Goombella was resting against the wall with some smoke coming from her head. Screwball walked forward and asked what happened to Goombella and why was she, khronozooie, inside the ship when she was previously outside defending it. “Well you’re little morale boost did us a lot of good but we’re still in range of Kazooie’s package as we’re finally detecting an energy build up from it. I really don’t like the projected range on that thing, it’s really kind of overkill of Kazooie but it’s going to nail every fleet here when it goes off so she probably predicted the need for overkill. She was never easy to surprise before this… so why was she now?” Looking across the console she was sitting at Khronozooie turned to the three ponies. “We’ve also hit a small problem, the same one that shot down our ride armors. While the space pirates are having too much trouble to launch any more suicide pods our way, we’re still in the path of a lot of Gundam realm enemies.” “Yeah, the Gundam realm and their stupidly long range beam spam attacks shot us down, go figure.” Curly Brace groused out as she wiped down her machine gun with a wet cloth, there was one character missing from the ride armors that used to be protecting the ship. Screwball had to ask, where in the world was Sparkster and why wasn’t he here if they were all shot down? He didn’t permanently die right? “Oh him, he’s taken the fight to melee range with the enemy ahead of us. I’ll bring it up on a screen for you. There you go.” After bringing it up Khronozooie witnessed the surprise in the three ponies’ faces. “Don’t look so surprised, Sparkster has some magic assisted space combat training under his belt from his realm.” It was amazing to watch a three to four foot tall possum take on things ten times his size and actually destroy them without pause. Sure all the heroes were practically unstoppable in their own video game realms, but outside their own realms the effectiveness of their abilities varies wildly. “That’s not the worst of it, Star Fox and his friends are now swamped with the problem we were helping to alleviate previously. They aren’t exactly the best at fighting more than a small squad of mobile suits and all those green things in front of us that Sparkster is ripping through are called Zaku. Those aren’t even the worst of what we’re facing and are basically cannon fodder to slow us down so the true problem can gun us down at range.” The screen lit up in a number of red dots. “If that wasn’t bad enough we’ve lost almost all our turrets a few minutes ago and we’ve got an incoming attack lead by Full Frontal in his Sinanju. Why am I even bothering to tell you ponies this? You don’t have a clue how bad this is even if Fox and his crew can handle that stupid Big Zam that shot us down!” On the screen popped up a blazingly fast red humanoid mechanical suit followed by an army of smaller green suits and one blue suit all with large singular pink eyes. The second image was a bigger green two legged thing that was much farther away and firing a big beam that ripped apart any other approaching fleets. In particular it just wiped out a squad of Terran Wraiths from the realm of Starcraft whose missiles were completely ineffective as was their failing cloaking systems. “I understood something from all that… who would name their child Full Frontal? That’s just disgusting.” Khronozooie gave Lyra a flat look and then turned back to the console. Screwball asked if there was anything they could do. “Well if you can find out how to get through an I-Field Barrier that would be a start. It would also help if we could find a way to safely deal with those incoming enemies.” The arwings piloted by Fox and his crew were only managing to slow down the Sinanju and their tricky flying is the only reason why it and the other mobile suits hadn’t taken them down yet. Khronozooie decided to finish her thoughts. “Otherwise we’re pulling back all the Mizar forces outside of the ship.” The remaining Mizar forces among what was left of the missile turrets started making way into the ship and some even kept the SCV’s they were piloting while others ditched them immediately. The Command Center built by the SCV’s lifted off and positioned itself in front of the S. S. Anubis and tilted so that it became a forward flying shield. It was soon destroyed along with the remaining turrets. “Hmm… it is admirable that you defend yourselves so well… but the will of the people must know what secrets the pirates are after. You and your fighter screen will either surrender to my forces or you will watch me rip apart your last line of defense personally.” Full Frontal was a man wearing a white mask and had curled blonde hair as he appeared on the screen. “You know for a guy named Full Frontal I’d thought you’d be wearing less clothes… what did the nudist's not call you back for being so flamboyant and they exiled you with only one suit that you can’t remove under penalty of horrifically scarring people? We’re not surrendering to a guy who doesn’t wear underwear!” Khronozooie’s rebuttal was met with cheers along the bridge, even the ponies giggled at that. “How did you know I don’t wear… never mind that… say good bye to your last line of defenses life.” Full Frontal steered his Sinanju to land in front of Quote who was still piloting a slightly battered Chimera ride armor. “I have a feeling this will be easy.” “Be careful quote.” Quote appeared on the screen and nodded to Curly Brace and smiled while throwing her a rousing thumbs up. “Well you better, Chaco and I would miss you too much if you left us alone for three years because you died!” The following battle was quick and brutal, but the Chimera ride armor Quote was piloting went into destruct mode making it invincible for approximately ten seconds. “Why isn’t it blowing up?” Lyra had asked after Quotes vehicle started sparking violently while smoking, “He’s in the armors sparking period, he gets a temporary invincibility grace period… then it explodes.” Quote was perfectly fine, but his ride armor wasn’t. Khronozooie winced at the return policy he was managing to dish out till the Sinanju flew out of range. “Does everything in this dimension explode?” The minty pony asked sardonically. “Well a lot of stuff in our worlds is made of explodium so… yeah everything explodes spectacularly and in a variety of ways most of which are barely survivable.” The time traveling breegull couldn’t help but smirk at the twitch forming in Lyra’s right eye. The explosion finally happened and they turned to the screen to see Quote standing safely outside the blast radius. When doing a size comparison Quote was quite small compared to the machine piloted by the crazy nudist guy that actually wore clothes and was probably the reason why he was kicked out of the nudist colony. “There goes you’re last line of defense now surrender to my forces and the will of the people.” Full frontal held out a beam blade pointed towards Quote who simply just pulled out his Spur and looked ready to continue fighting. “You know, I’ve been wondering why he’s saying that’s our last line of defense repeatedly.” Curly looked at Khronozooie awkwardly. “Well isn’t he?” The female neo biological robot said with a hint of despair and some pride in Quote continuing to stand up to that machine that’s more than a few times too big for him. Quote would always pick fights with things larger than life and somehow succeed; of course the title of hero was a pretty good hint. “Has everyone forgotten already? We’ve only just lost all our missile turrets and our close range aerial forces, Star Fox and his team are reliving their glory days over there with a battle right out of Sector Y. There’s still someone out there waiting for the right moment to help Quote and like me… he has a damningly good sense of timing. Hey clothed nudist weirdo we don’t surrender and I don’t think Quote is giving up on fighting you either!” The ponies shivered at the dark chuckle Full Frontal let off before he sent his Sinanju flying forward towards the smaller human sized robotic hero character. “So be…” Just as he was about to bring the beam saber down on his really small target the chest of his machine was struck by a brilliant oval of energy knocking him back. “Gah, I was careless.” The Land Master that landed in front of Full Frontal Sinanju charged up a shot and blasted the Sinanju again sending it rolling towards the back end of the ship. “This is Canadian stereotype Banjo; I’ll take it from here Quote unless you think you can give me some support fire.” Quote nodded and leapt on top of the tank. Watching from the screens inside the ship Screwball felt something tapped her side and she looked to see it was Derpy’s wing and she passed the popcorn she was eating to her. “Where did you even… you know what? I don’t need to know where the popcorn came from just send some my way.” Derpy scooted the bag over to Lyra who levitated out a blob of popped corn goodness and it was lightly buttered for flavor. “You ponies sure do eat a lot, at least it’s not Master Higgins Syndrome because that’s a pretty hard syndrome to live with.” This was to draw attention to the fact that Video Game characters didn’t need nearly as much sustenance as the cartoon ponies, Khronozooie wouldn’t bother telling them that video game characters hardly ever ate at all. Unless they were a wizard or had a food related game mechanic that gave them reasons to eat constantly, they could go years without food. Wizard needs food badly after all. “Um, does anyone know where a bathroom is on this ship?” Everyone just stared at Lyra, not once has going to the bathroom come up for the ponies. Despite having spent a while on the ship, Derpy hadn’t had a call to nature in quite some time. Screwball had no excuse for not needing to use the bathroom except maybe the fact that her chaos powers allowed her to use everything she consumes without any waste. Only now that it was brought up did the three ponies stare at the only bird in the room. Video game characters used toilets even less then they ate food. Khronozooie sighed and started rooting around her red backpack to bring her bathroom closer to the flap. Carrying a bathroom on wing at all times was a rather useful novelty, not that it has ever been used before now. Dimension hopping did have strange effects on you suddenly having active metabolic processes and Kazooie did get Khronozooie to carry a bathroom in the case that she’d eventually need it. Now at the battle still in progress, Canjo slid the tank circle strafed around on one of its treads while constantly blasting the Sinanju. “I’ve had about enough you.” Full Frontals machine armor bar was about at half and he had a full power mark ready to launch a special attack, he never got a chance to use it. “So have I about you attacking my friends, Shining Burning Finger!” If one were expecting a machine motion controlled by a person wearing a rubber suit, well you’d be wrong. The last thing Full Frontal saw was what looked like a large middle finger coming towards his camera in a impossible to decipher blur, the last thought on his mind was the name ‘Domon’ in a questioning sense. Then Full Frontals Sinanju violently blew apart in a shower of quickly disappearing parts. “Its Aboot time you showed up eh. Uh, you do realize that your daughter is watching this right?” Canjo smiled at the image on his screen as she gave him a salute. “Not like she’ll know what the gesture means anyway, but it’s about time someone flipped that guy a bird. Will of the people my donkey. Sorry I’m late by the way, I had to drop thirty buildings on a Red Crate.” Kazooie turned her screen to that of the S. S. Anubis’s. “Hey Screwy, you okay? Good. You Mizar guys might want to start flying for it full throttle and don’t stop on my account. I’ll ice that Big Zamboni for you, but before that I’ve got one little thing to do.” Suddenly the machine Kazooie was piloting winked out of existence and appeared behind the blue single pink eyed machine called a Gouf sitting back from the dog fight. The green machines known as Zaku’s were slowly beginning to lose to the Star Fox team and the Great Fox. In a split second a blade rammed its way out of the chest of the blue machine and the only thing heard from it afterwards before it exploded was a single transmission as Kazooie’s machine disappeared again. “In the middle of a battle, Ramba Ral forgot to fight!” “You know this is just like old times eh Fox?” The humanoid blue bird said as he shot down another green armored machine. “Damn it you kill stealing… ugh, yeah the similarities are startlingly close to Sector Y. Stupid bird... I wanted to shoot the lead unit down.” Though he would never admit it, Kazooie was a surprisingly dangerous partner character and should be respected as a major powerhouse. “Okay what are you piloting? I’m curious now… looks like an Armored Core type machine.” Her interest peaked; Khronozooie wanted one with a custom built in time gimmick. The sound of page turning could be heard and she turned to look at Goombella. Idly Screwball could be seen crawling out of Khronozooie’s backpack and the sound of flushing could be heard faintly from the backpacks flap as it closed. “Well this is odd… it says that’s a Vic Viper.” It took a moment for Goombella to state this, but her book was never wrong nor was her analysis. “Well darn, now I really want what she has. If I’m right, it’s a modified ‘Zone of the Enders’ Vic Viper with Zero Shift capabilities. As if a Vic Viper wasn’t stupidly powerful enough already… must have taken forever to get the Zero Shift installed on that thing, also I think it would look nice with a blue and purple color scheme. My other is a traditionalist if anything with that red and yellow color scheme.” Sighing dreamily, Khronozooie longingly thought of her own super powered spatial and temporal moving destruction machine. “Stop daydreaming about my double V special the Bloody Breegull Khronozooie! You guys have less than three minutes, move those asses now!” The scream of the breegull brought everyone to the present as the Bloody Breegull as Kazooie called it disappeared. It was nearly getting atomized by a beam of energy fired by the giant tortoise shell shaped chicken legged Big Zam. Kazooie slammed into the barrier of the Big Zam and started to punch it several times, then applied the arm blade to it after that… none of it was working. The shields on the thing were pretty tough. “Ugh, activate fighter mode!” The Vic Viper transformed into a sleek space fighter it is known to be and flew backwards and to the side avoiding the powerful beam emitting main cannon from the ridiculously armored weapons platform on legs. After hitting the shield a few times with the tiny laser shots Kazooie sighed as even this wasn’t affecting the Big Zam as much which continued reprisal with spamming smaller beams and missiles. Flying between the smaller beams wasn’t hard, dodging the missiles was a tad difficult given their minor homing capability. Turning her head slightly to the left the S.S. Anubis was almost out of range and the Great Fox and Fox with his crew were retreating away from the following Zaku enemies with worn down shields. Well since there was no one in her way or anyone around to stop her… “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, be a start!” The Vic Viper glowed and four explosions happened around the ship and four orange orbs alighted around the fighter rotating in a circle around it. “Weapon change, ripple laser activate!” (Zone of the Enders: second runner, Leo, Leo! Music plays.) The orange orbs started to rotate around the ship rapidly releasing a staccato of rippling blasts of energy that started to really mess up the Big Zam’s shields as Kazooie continued to deftly dodge between the shots and out of the way of the main cannon when it fired. “Whoa and I thought Vinyl was kidding about sound system weaponry.” Lifting another blob of popcorn to her mouth, the mint pony watched what she thought was an advanced version of the bass cannon. The very same thing that Vinyl Scratch had been designing and what looked like it being put into action. “It’s really pretty to watch, also the music’s good too.” Derpy was enjoying the show that Kazooie was putting on and she noticed that the options and the Vic Viper were shooting the ugly big green thing in tune to the background music. Even her head was bobbing up and down to the music. Screwball was cheering her mother on in silent protagonist. “Yeah, now that’s more like a Vic Viper!” The only goomba on bridge stated with excitement. “Those things are stupidly godlike in maneuverability when fully powered up, capable of flying in any direction and changing it on a dime.” Kazooie was sweating as she continued to finely maneuver her ship until she managed to get some ripple shots to fly into the Zam’s main cannon. It was best if she shot up the core and soon. Eventually under the heavy fire of her ripple lasers creating shockwaves across its shield the barrier that protected the Big Zam suddenly went down. “I guess now’s my chance, weapon change cyclone laser!” As soon as she said it the rippling blasts of energy stopped firing from her ship and after a second of high speed dodging the change completed. Kazooie smirked as she and her options started pumping a stream of constant energy into the enemy. The beam firing personally from her ship was going down its main cannon as it was charging. A second later the main cannon of the Big Zam blew up and Kazooie changed her ship into orbital frame mode and quickly disappeared. (End music.) “Huh, so it can’t Zero Shift while in fighter mode. I’ll keep that in mind.” After a moment Khronozooie closed her eyes and when she opened them and looked down at the dagger now held in her left wing. Given a moment to think over the imminent future she looked up in a panic and hit the communications at the console she was sitting at. “Everybody onboard this vessel better move towards the front of it now!” Captain Gibs agreed with her orders, causing a mass exodus of everything from the rear of the ship towards the front on all levels of the vessel. All the heroes had nothing better to do given that there were no more boarding attempts, they followed the crowds of ants storming towards the front of the ship as it sounded rather urgent. In the next twenty seconds a bright flash happened and everything went dark aboard the Anubis and the three ponies along with a few Mizar Ants could be heard screaming. The space around where Planet Clancer used to be was entirely vacant of anything, there wasn’t even any wind suction or any space debris left afterwards. Everything within range of Kazooie’s weapon had just disappeared; all those fleets, their weapons and the insanity of the battle taking place were just gone. Not even a speck of dust survived the Mischief Makers realm completely collapsing; it was going to be quite a while before even Ridley himself could come back from this one. A light flickered in the suddenly darkened expanse; the Bloody Breegull suddenly came back into existence outside the range of the realm collapsing bomb. It had appeared right next to the Great Fox. “Hey… you guys alive out there?” Seven confirmations came back with dazed groans. Apparently all of Fox and his team of ace mercenary pilots were alive, including Bill and Katt. “Whatever you did Kazooie, its left me almost blind and I have a headache from the millions of voices that were just immediately snuffed out. Fox do you think we can we start relaxing now?” The blue fox known as Krystal was mentally tired, atmospheric dog fighting leading into a corridor run followed by more dogs fighting with large mobile suits. She’s had to fly by the Anubis at least five times for shield repairs and currently her shields were sitting on five percent of a maximum bar. “Just when my thumbs were getting a good workout too… all ships report in, we’re landing on the Great Fox there are no signs of hostile’s currently. Do you need us for anything at the moment?” This was directed at the only other thing flying in space at the moment; the Great Fox had stopped and looked to be in need of repairs as it had two broken fins and one of its two cannons was damaged. “No I think I’ve got it from here for the moment.” Kazooie turned her ship towards the S. S. Anubis or at least what was left of it. She flew in front of the bridge and lit up the bridge with a light, unlike the Great Fox this ship had been caught up in the blast. Looking inside she saw three ponies rubbing at their eyes with their hooves, it seemed like the poor Mizar Ants surrounding them were writhing in agony as their eyes were a bit more photoreceptive. A good forty percent of the ship had survived the realm ripper. So that meant the S.S. Anubis didn’t have engine, communications and judging by a scan with her Bloody Breegull’s systems it only had two generators and both were currently inactive. Screwball finished rubbing the brightness out of her eyes and looked out of the bridge at the light and saw her mother’s vehicle looking down on them, she smiled and started waving to her mom. Mission Complete! (Metal Slug Mission Complete music plays and ends.) Celestia sighed from her position on the balcony overlooking Canterlot; it had been a week since Twilight saved the Crystal Empire. Her student was growing up and as she and her sister had looked in a little black book she couldn’t help but feel that the future was inexorably altered. Her student may have been able to forget Kazooie even existed, but she certainly hadn’t. It was strange, there was no prophecy of the ‘Princess of Adventure’ and yet the book has stated a few things that will happen, but doesn’t state any repercussions or a dimensionally traveling beings interfering in what was prophesized. Celestia couldn’t help but think that the prophecies might not come true just because of the red bird’s interference even if it was for a short while; she had been tossing this idea around in the back of her mind for a while. What had Kazooie done in her time in this world before she left? Another thing to worry about, Celestia mentally added, was that her sister in particular seemed to be consistently asking Twilight for a progress report towards a certain goal and her student was sworn to secrecy on it. So there was something Luna wanted that Twilight knew about that she wouldn’t tell her lovi… overly friendly mentor. It worried her that Twilight would keep secrets from her. There was a chill running down Celestia’s spine that spoke of Discord possibly getting free again without that bird around to handle him… maybe… maybe she could get Discord to be a good being. Yes, she would have to consider this possibility later, but who would be able to convert his neutral chaotic heart? Fluttershy seemed most likely as she was a sweet little thing and somepony every pony should get to know. For now she had more important things to worry about, she lit her horn and a piece of cake raised up to her mouth on a fork. Her libido was acting up something fierce; she really should cut back on the bananas. That or get more northern ice. “Sister, art thou thinking of problems most unnerving?” Trotting up to her sister, Luna gave Celestia a quick nuzzle. “Yes, it’s about that foolish creature Kazooie… I have a feeling she’s coming back soon.” Celestia didn’t know how this was possible, she sealed off the way Kazooie warped into this world and thus it should be impossible for that nuisance to return. However being part earth pony did lend her the ability of what was called the Pinkie Sense by Twilights friend Pinkie Pie; sometimes the earth ponies were just plain better at survival especially given they had better ability to predict the future then even unicorns with all their magic. If this were true she knew her spell to block dimensional travel into Equestria wasn’t going to work and that it wasn’t entirely foolproof. “Sister thou doth worry too much, relax and spend time basking my moonlights glow. I now appreciate you more than I ever could have before.” Luna rested her head on Celestia’s and brought a wing around her sister. “Everything will be okay, but I still think you should tell Twilight of the prophecy.”