//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: I mean, it's quite a reasonable limit, if you think about it. // Story: War Machine of Doom // by lolitsme //------------------------------// Chapter Three: The Incredibly Unforeshadowed Plot Twist In Favour of the Protagonist(s) Just as They Appear to be Inconsolable and Defeated by the Mechanisms and Machinations of the Antagonizing Party Resulting in a Surprise Ending that the Author Hopes the Average Reader Would not Have Been Able to Predict Through Normal Means Followed by Even More Surprising and Nonsensical Plot Twists that are Only Foreshadowed by This Title Resulting in the End, the Victory of the Protagonist and Reconciliation for All in a Thrilling Conclusion --- "CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS SPECIAL SOMEPONY MAKERS!" shouted the Cutie Mark Crusaders as they rushed out the door and flung a love potion and pinecone at Trixie. Surprisingly, their plan didn't horribly backfire and end up with the three of them covered in the liquid generally found within the trunk of a tall wooden plant with many branches and leaves. In fact, both of the objects they threw struck true. Furthermore, Trixie's mouth had been hung open in shock at what had just happened, allowing the potion to smash in her face, getting a significant amount of liquid love potion into her mouth and glass in her face. The pinecone also hit her face, but unfortunately for all parties involved, did not make it inside her mouth for her to eat. This extremely minor detail was actually of no consequence and did not matter at all to the plot. The effects of the love potion were immediate and obvious. Trixie's eyes turned from regular ones equipped with parts such as (but not limited to) the vitreous humour, a lens, a retina, an iris, and a pupil into round white balls with pink hearts on their fronts. Whether Trixie was still capable of seeing with her eyes was debatable, however, what was not debatable was that she was now in love with Twilight Sparkle with all her heart, which remained as it was unlike her eyes. In fact, if one were to be an omniscient narrator, one would be able to see that Trixie loved Twilight Sparkle so much that it was more than all of the love in the world, which is a lot of love. One might also object to such a comparison, citing that Trixie must be part of the world, but if one were an omniscient narrator like I, one would also realize that such a fact simply made Trixie's love for Twilight out of this world. Trixie immediately jumped twenty-three feet down from the cockpit of her gigantic robot pony to the ground and teleported to where Twilight Sparkle was. It seemed strange to all of the onlookers that she would jump down right before teleporting directly to her destination, but none dared to question the motives of one who loved Twilight Sparkle so truly, madly, and deeply. Once she arrived at her teleportation destination she shouted "TWILIGHT" at her peak volume (which you would know if you'd done the exercise), which was so loud that all of the birds within a one mile radius flew from their roosts in the trees. The largest of the birds ousted from their resting place had a wingspan approximately as long as the following blank space (not to scale): Admittedly, the bird was not very big. Twilight Sparkle was also within one mile of Trixie and so she heard her, though she was not rudely awoken like some of the birds because she was neither asleep nor a bird. She instantly recognized the sound of the pony she loved, despite having resigned herself to thinking she'd never love her back, and turned around and started to run back at the same speed that she left at, but in the opposite direction. Trixie and Twilight's faces smooshed together at considerable speed, but their love was too great for them to care about the possible physical and mental ramifications of smashing your head into somepony else's at Mach 0.05. They transitioned flawlessly into a kissing motion and soon enough Twilight's fantasy #37.2.6, variation seven, was being acted out live. After three minutes and fourteen seconds, Twilight broke off the kiss. "So you do love me!" she said, half relieved that her worst nightmare wasn't coming true, and half worried that this was still part of a dream. "Yeah," said Trixie, satisfied with the single word response. Trixie wrapped her right foreleg around Twilight's neck and her left foreleg around the other part of Twilight's neck and nuzzled her, in what an ordinary person would call a hug. Then, the two lovers started to walk back to Ponyville at a leisurely pace of one metre per second south-west. Their stroll out of the woods was rudely interrupted by a brilliant flash of light from the sky. Down descended the deity and diarch of day, demonstrably devastated and desperate. "Stop, Twilight! This isn't allowed of a pony of your station! It's unbecoming!" she shouted at her student. Twilight, to her credit, didn't care and simply started running away, Trixie following closely behind. Celestia, never one to be outsmarted by literally the dumbest and simplest plan in the book of "running away", used her horn in conjunction with her affinity for the sun to conjure up a blindingly bright light in front of Twilight. The light was so bright that Twilight, despite being four metres away, was instantly blinded by the barrage of photons. Trixie, close behind, was also blinded. Celestia, owing to her incredibly overpowered demi-goddess status, was not affected in the slightest by her spell, and shut it off once the desired effect was accomplished. Unfortunately, the light was so bright that Rainbow Dash, who had just spotted Twilight and was making her way to her position, was also blinded and crashed unceremoniously quite a ways away from the other ponies into a pile of razor sharp leaves. She was almost dismembered in a horrific manner but luckily survived with only minor injuries. --- In the town of Ponyville, many members of the community that had the extreme misfortune to have been standing outside when the bright light spell was cast were blinded and all collapsed to the ground in agonizing sensory deprivation. Luckily, none of the characters named previously in the story were affected, with the exception of the flower pony who fainted after seeing Trixie's giant robot. She had just regained consciousness mere seconds before being blinded. "My eyes! MY EYES!" she screamed, but it was no use. No amount of screaming would return her eyesight to her; only time could perform such a feat. --- Twilight no longer cared. She didn't care about anything that was trying to keep her away from her one true love. She especially didn't care for her (now former) mentor who appeared to be preventing her from furthering her relationship with Trixie, as described in unlikely but unfavourable scenario #14b, section iv of Twilight's Declaration of Love. In fact, she didn't care for Celestia so much that she decided to shoot her with a beam of pure magic. A little known fact about alicorns (even by Twilight Sparkle) is that they are only vulnerable to a select few things in the universe, and these few things are different between each specimen. Celestia's, unfortunately for her, was pure magic, and thus the beam which she was too shocked to dodge hit her in the chest. What happened next was that she exploded into a cloud of green fire and was knocked back one seventh of a furlong. In her place was a certain queen of a certain group of black chitinous equine lifeforms that had the capability of changing their form into any other equine lifeform temporarily. Doubly unfortunately for Chrysalis, her disguise made her extremely vulnerable to what Celestia was vulnerable to, but didn't confer any of the advantages such as being able to control the sun or near-immortality. She was confused in more ways than one, as well - Twilight didn't show any outwardly visible signs of noticing her deceit, but still fired a spell at her, probably assuming that she was Celestia. What reason could she possibly have had for attempting to strike down her mentor so suddenly? Or what about her disguise gave her away? There were so many questions bouncing around her head, like it was an extremely spacious bouncy castle that was very popular to a select crowd of thoughts that specialized in being annoying and unknowable called questions. Such an amount of questions was not conducive to thinking rational thoughts, and so the first thing that came out of her mouth was "buh?" in a very weak and pained voice. Before Chrysalis could collect her thoughts to any meaningful degree, Trixie saw that in what she thought was Celestia's place was an impostor, a changeling no less. She, following Twilight's lead, also shot a beam, using her innate magical sense to follow Twilight's beam's path. Though her beam was weaker (a mere forty kilothaums compared to Twilight's gigathaum), all of Trixie's beam's energy was concentrated into making Chrysalis go flying as far away from their current location as possible. Thus, Chrysalis was sent flying away, screaming a Wilhelm scream (though perhaps not entirely appropriate) and soon she was but a distant speck in the sky. Then from the sky descended yet another beam of light. However, this time, the sky darkened around it, as if clouds had blackened out the entirety of the afternoon sky save a small circle through which sunlight peeked through. Once more, the white pony with wings and a horn descended from the heavens. This time, what appeared to be the real Celestia touched down onto the ground gave a spiel on how Twilight wasn't supposed to love Trixie. In retrospect, what happened the second time was just about exactly the same as the first time up until the beam of magic fired by Twilight. This time, her evocation of raw magic into the physical realm emitted purple and pink light (a shade or two different from the original due to a difference in power expenditure). Furthermore, Celestia was outright killed, owing to the nature of her weaknesses. Her body exploded violently (is there any other way something can explode after being shot by a laser beam?) into a veritable blizzard of white flakes which shortly coalesced into a ball of light floating in the space her body used to occupy. The ball shimmered, flickered, and scintillated on its way to Twilight, who was still blind and thus unable to perceive the differences in the physical appearance of the manifestation of what likely was Celestia's soul. Twilight heard a raspy, wispy voice saying "I'm so very proud of you, Twilight. It's time you became a princess." and was three parts startled to four parts creeped out. Then, the ball of light dissipated into her horn and then Twilight acquired a brand new set of Princess-tier™ wings (batteries not included). Along with this (and somehow more noticeable to Twilight), her eyesight was restored to its previous state, as if her eyes had been a computer that performed a system restore. Naturally, the first thing Twilight did after regaining her sight and fighting off two of the most powerful beings in existence was to kiss Trixie. "There, now stupid Celestia is gone and we can be together finally," she said, relieved that the conflict in the story had finally been resolved. "Yay," was all Trixie had to say. Twilight suggested that they return to the library to tell everyone of the good news and conveniently leave out everything she thought they wouldn't want to hear, namely how she'd killed Celestia. Trixie voiced her agreement in a fashion involving using her vocal cords to produce pressure waves in the air perceived by Twilight to be words of affirmation. Having communicated adequately well to reach an agreement, the two equine lifeforms with blue and purple coloured coats began the relatively short walk back to the Ponyville Golden Oaks Books and Branches Library. Twilight stepped on three leaves that had fallen off of a nearby tree, making a satisfying crunching sound. Trixie didn't notice the noise made by this action. They left behind the remains of the leaves without a second thought. Twilight suddenly thought of an important thing to do now that she had apparently become a princess in Celestia's place. What was she going to do with her sister? It would be a patently bad idea to leave her in a position of her after killing her sister in hot blood (to be honest, Twilight had been feeling quite angry with her when she'd killed her), so she did the most obvious thing: she made Trixie a princess in her place. "Right, so I'm figuring Luna's going to be bloody pissed that I killed her sister, so to be safe I'm going to make you a princess instead," said Twilight. Before Trixie had a chance to respond, Twilight had conjured up a piece of parchment, written the words "You suck and we killed your sister, so we're dethroning you too. Trixie's replacing you. Love, Twilight" on said piece of parchment, and set it on green fire (indicating it was mail-fire, not burning-fire), sending it to her intended recipient. "Ok," said Trixie.