//------------------------------// // Today I Playfully Engage In Lighthearted Activities // Story: I Am Going To Save And/Or Destroy Equestria! // by Bucking Nonsense //------------------------------// Gotta say, for all her weirdness, Pinkie Pie knew how to throw a party. I mean, it was pretty tame, by college standards, but there were drinks (We'll get to that soon enough), there was food, there were games for everypony, even the little fillies, I might have given it only a seven out of ten, save for one all-important factor... MOTHERFUCKIN' PIZZA!!! Don't ask me how she was able to make it before it was 'officially' invented. I've encountered Pinkie Pie a dozen times in my life, and given the timeline involved in those appearances, I would have assumed that she either transcends time and space, or she has identical descendants that she makes sure she describes everything to in microscopic detail before passing on. Either way, I choose not to question her insane awesomeness, for to question her is to question pizza, and I will not question the delicious pizza. And oh what a pizza it was. I made sure to get her recipe for it, so we could have it made again later, but I tell you now, Pinkie Pie's Perfectly Piquant And Pleasantly Palatable Pizza has yet to be perfectly duplicated by any individual save the adorable cosmic singularity that is known as Pinkie Pie. I'll also admit, no one can party quite as enthusiastically as Equestrians can, either. I swear, not a drop of alcohol had passed the lips of the mares present yet, but the party was definitely in full swing. I could understand why, honestly: Everypony expected to be going late into the night on this celebration, but for now, with the fillies participating, it wouldn't do to party too hardy just yet. Once the fillies were put to bed, though... Anyhow, the hours preceding the party were pretty dull, really. Lacking anything better to do, I asked the archon to give me a guided tour of the 'living area' where the mares were currently living. It was a fairly decent setup, if spartan: Sanctuary was built for survival, not for living, so asides from the architecture, there wasn't much to admire. I did note a distinct absence of a play area for the fillies, and resolved that, tomorrow, I would correct that post haste. The fillies had been through a lot, and they deserved someplace where kids could be kids. Asides from that, nothing happened worth mentioning. It wasn't until the fillies went to bed, and the girls started breaking out the drinks, that things quickly took a turn for the crazy. And yes, when I say that things started getting crazy, you know that means something. ---------------------------------------------- "Poko, your majesty?" Yeah, I can see you smiling. You've heard the stories, and you know where this is going. Poko is not a drink you should give to someone who does not know what he's in for. It is something that should have a warning label, one that shrieks out, 'DO NOT DRINK THIS SHIT, EVER! EVER EVER EVER!!!' every thirty seconds. Poko is a drink that is too strong for alicorns and adult dragons to drink more than a thimble full without becoming thoroughly plastered. To drink poko is to have a night that you will never remember... To give you an idea of just how potent poko is, perhaps Otaku terms would be best: Hard liquor is like Yamcha from Dragon Ball Z. Poko is motherfucking Beerus. Yes, that's right, poko is the Beerus of beers. In the war against Sobriety, poko is the Atomic Jager Bomb. "Sure," I said, taking the large mug from Pinkie Pie. Certain in my masculinity, I drank the entire thing in one go. Now, of the events that happened afterwards, I have no personal memory, you understand? As of the moment I finished chugging the bane of prohibition, I was so drunk that new words would have to be invented to describe it. In fact, that night is the reason why 'Kromnar' is now in the Equestrian dictionary, and is used to describe someone who has drank enough to drop ten men, and is still walking around. Still, I have the testimony of many trusted witnesses, including Sombra himself, who could tell what I was thinking, to tell me everything that happened over the course of what is now known as 'The Wildest Night Ever'... ------------------------------------- I swear, while he'll neither confirm or deny it, I think Discord was waiting for me to get plastered before he popped in. I do know, for a fact, that Sanctuary did not have any poko in stock, so Pinkie Pie had to have brought some with her. Regardless of intent, what happened, happened, and within thirty seconds of my having imbibed enough alcohol to make a dragon dizzy, Discord popped in. "I'm back, your majesty!" DIscord said, as a mariachi band appeared from nowhere and began playing a merry tune. "I've decided to accept your gracious offer, and will be happy to provide you with assistance in this, Equestria's hour of need." "Excellent," I said, grinning cheerfully. "Feel free to pull up a chair, and have something to drink." As an afterthought, I added, "But before you get too cozy, I'd like you to check a few things for me." Discord snapped his fingers, and vanished, then reappeared in a chair beside me as a disembodied head, wearing green face paint and a red turban. It took my inebriated mind to realize that he was dressed as Jambi the Genie. 'If he asks me to chant 'Meka Leka Hi Meka Hiney Ho', I'm gonna lose my shit completely.' *I'm more worried about the fact that he seems to know so much about your world...* "Your wish is my command, your majesty," Discord said with a chuckle. "I would like to see what Diretusk is up to at this moment," I said, after a few seconds of consideration. We'd set him to running, but I didn't know if he'd succeeded in regrouping yet or not. "As you wish," Discord said, then nodded his head, and in the air above me, I saw a projection. It showed the piglet Diretusk, running after his army, being carried on the back of a massive armored boar. 'That's Diretusk? He's like a tinier version of Chuckles the Silly Piggy!' *Heh. Yes, but size matters little when it comes to the mastery of magic. Age, study, and will always make up for a deficiency in size. Still, he's very young to have mastered such a potent spell as Subjugation. It would take years to... Oh. Oh, that is clever.* 'What?' *Diretusk probably only knows how to perform the Subjugation spell, and a few minor cantrips besides. Any other spell would require that he makes use of some sort of magical relic to assist him. It would explain why, after Arabus was defeated, he did not attempt a second strike using his magic: Any truly puissant wizard would have pressed the attack after our collapse while the main barrier was being powered up, or would have dispensed with the army and tracked the mares down alone. Subjugation is a powerful art when you have access to creatures like the fiends of Tartarus to make your slaves, but it only works on the truly wicked. For everypony else, he has to have an army to back him up. He's a magical prodigy for having been able to master such a powerful spell so young, but...* '...But instead of learning a broad range of spells and leveling up his character the normal way, he's 'Twinking', using other resources like armies, enslaved fiends, magical artifacts, and other things, in order to give him abilities well beyond his normal capacities.' *In your gamer terms, yes. Were Celestia and Luna still around, then Diretusk would not be much of a threat: Take away his armies and his equipment, and he's just a piglet with a trick that only works on a small pool of individuals, the size of which has diminished over the last two days, thanks to you. Celestia alone could have managed defeating him, in fact. Now, though, he's gotten his armies on Equestrian soil, and he still has the Raptorians, Crunch, and Catrina on his side. He'll be much harder for us than he ever would have been for her.* 'Not if we break his toys, he won't.' *What?* "Discord," I began, an evil plan forming in my pickling brain, "Does Diretusk have access to anything that would allow him to teleport at this moment in time? Or would let him know what's going on elsewhere in Equestria?" "Hmmm," Discord pondered that question a moment, and then the image shifted to a palanquin being carried by a group of boars at the front of the army. "Not at this moment," the master of chaos admitted, "but once his army stops running, he'll have access to his magical items again. Although, given the state of his army, I imagine they've got another day worth of running left in them, and after that, Diretusk will likely take a day or two to mete out punishments for his army's retreat. He'll likely be so busy that he wouldn't even think of checking with his forces elsewhere in Equestria: He's a sadistic little runt, to be sure." 'He needs a dwarf to slap him in the face until he learns some manners.' *That would take a lot of slapping. You'd have to hire a team.* 'A pity there's not a spell for that.' *...Yet.* 'Oh hell yes. Keep me updated on your progress: While there are few situations that would warrant a team of bitch-slapping midgets, if one such situation appears, I want to be ready for it.' Yeah, I was starting to get pretty drunk by that point. A devious smile crossed my features as I asked, "Could you do something to make it... difficult for Diretusk to get ahold of his magic items for us?" Discord vanished, then reappeared as his normal self, then snapped his fingers. The palanquin vanished from the backs of the running boars in the projection, and appeared in the middle of the room. The retreating boarcs didn't seem to notice. "Done, and done," Discord said with a chuckle. We now had the silent attention of every mare in the room. The exultant partying had given way to a sort of silent expectation. The mares knew that something big was coming, and they all wanted to see what was about to happen. My grin turned absolutely villainous as I rubbed my hooves together and said, "Excellent. So, for at least the next couple of days, Diretusk is out of the picture. We have more or less free rein to do whatever we like to his forces elsewhere in Equestria, and he can't do anything about it until he returns. Plus, we have you, Discord, who will allow us to teleport in and out while Sanctuary is on its way to the Crystal Empire." Discord chuckled, and asked, "I am guessing that you have something in mind, your majesty?" "Oh yes," I said, my tone turning as dark as it had when I was in Sombra's original state. "Diretusk came to Equestria in order to play at being an evil conquering overlord. Well, he's about to learn that if you come to play at the big colt's table, you'd better not cry if someone breaks your toys. If Equestria is going to have an overlord, then it is going to have an Equestrian overlord." Looking up at the projection, I asked, "Now, I need to know where Diretusk's remaining fiends are, where the rest of his army is, and where he keeps the lion's share of his magical gear." I doubted that he'd taken his good stuff with him to track down the mares: While some magical artifacts are small, as I recalled from various fantasy novels that I had read, the ones that were really powerful tended to be big, and difficult to transport. Admittedly, some like the One Ring were easy to move, but they were also easy to lose track of. Diretusk's forces had been chasing the mares, so they'd only been focused on speed, not firepower: Anything truly powerful had been left at his home base. Discord snapped his fingers, and I was given a view of what I could only call a 'doom fortress'. It was massive, black, and foreboding, almost to the point of being a cliche. "All of those can be found here," Discord said with an elaborate gesture. "The piglet used a magical artifact to transport one of his most impressive fortresses here to Equestria, and he uses it as his base of operations. Diretusk doesn't trust his minions to operate independently, so they're waiting for his return." The image zoomed in on an underground dungeon, where a massive bulldog made of stone was sleeping. "Crunch doesn't move fast, so he was ordered to wait in catacombs beneath the castle for his master's return. He cannot, and will not, move until his master returns and orders him to do otherwise." The image zoomed out, and then in on three monsters with the bodies of birds and the heads of snarling, ugly canines in what looked to be a combination of a rookery and a kennel. They were busy tearing apart something that, thankfully, was too far gone to identify, but had once been a living creature. One of them was drinking a mug of something frothy, and almost certainly alcoholic. "The Raptorians, unable to handle the cold, spend their days growing fat and lazy while they await their master's return. They don't seem to mind, but they're hardly in peak fighting condition." The image zoomed out, and then in again, showing a feline with a long, flowing mane and dressed in robes. She might have looked feminine, but her robes were dirty, and it was clear, even from where I was sitting, that she hadn't washed for days on end. She didn't seem to care, as she was puffing on something that I immediately recognized. 'First tweakers, and now an evil magical stoner?' *Quiet. We have more important things to pay attention to right now.* Storm Cloud, beside me, went very still, but otherwise said nothing. The Raptorians, I remembered, were the one group of fiends she wanted dead the most, and now she knew right where to find them... "Catrina sits in her laboratory, trying to find new ways of processing witchweed so that she can gain greater power from it," Discord stated. "She's been duped: The truth is, the witchweed that the Boarcs brought with them is of a radically different nature than that of the breed found in Equestria: It offers no increase in power, but it is just as addictive as its native counterpart. These days, she spends her time smoking the stuff, never realizing that it only serves to make her docile, not stronger. She was left behind because if she runs out of witchweed, she'll become difficult for Diretusk to control, since she's only evil when she's either on Equestrian witchweed, or is going through withdrawals." "A pity we don't have some means of capturing her alive," I said after a moment's thought. "If she were given some time to... detox, and then told the truth about what Diretusk had done to her, she might make a powerful ally." She might have looked dreadful now, but it was clear that, under the grime, she made for an impressive figure... for a cat, at least. "In that respect, I might have some good news for you," Discord announced. The image zoomed out, and then in again, this time showing a number of prison cells. There were ponies by the dozen in chains, all of them looking despondent. However, as sad a sight as that was, there were two figures that drew my immediate attention. One was a bizarre fusion of bee and bear, wrapped in chains so tight that it could not possibly move. The other was a strange green ooze trapped in a glass orb. While it lacked a face, it had a mouth, one in a definite frown. "The ursine creature is known as the Bugbear, a lesser creature that had been held in Tartarus, barely strong enough to qualify as a threat compared to the other creatures that escaped," Discord explained. "While their master was away, the Boarcs managed to capture it, and await Diretusk's return so that he can try to Subjugate it. It wouldn't work, though: The Subjugation spell works on creatures that are evil, and the bugbear is not actually evil. Instead, it is simply wild and uncontrollable, as much a primal force of nature as a living creature. The other is known as the Smooze: It is a lifeform that grows as it consumes shiny things, such as gemstones and the like. It isn't evil at all, but it is effectively indestructible, given that its substance nullifies all magic, and its body cannot be damaged by any weapon. Diretusk plans on harvesting its substance to make anti-magic weapons and other devices." I grinned, and said, "So, if we spring them, then the Smooze could help us capture Catrina, and the bugbear would make for one heck of a distraction. Maybe even an ally, if it feels grateful for having been freed from its chains." Acorn, from behind me (She was always behind me, in those days), said, "If I could get to those pens, breaking those two out would be relatively easy. The ponies too, although we'll need a means of getting them out of the fortress afterwards." Discord added, "And while I can teleport you and any ponies you choose to take with you a close distance to the entrance, the fortress is enchanted to prevent teleportation, in or out. They'd have to leave the grounds for me to be able to bring them all here." "So," I said, "Me, Storm Cloud, and Acorn go down there, and while I make a massive distraction, one sufficient to keep the Boarcs occupied for a good long while, Stormy goes and takes down the Raptorians. Meanwhile, Acorn frees the captured ponies, the Smooze, and the Bugbear, and then takes the Smooze to apprehend Catrina. Once the bugbear is loose, I'll be free to go into the fortress, and take whatever magical artifacts I can locate and carry, and then destroy the rest." I paused, then said, "I don't think I'll want to try Crunch tonight, so I'll just let sleeping dogs lie. We can always go after him later." I smiled, then said, "And then, after we've succeeded in accomplishing our goals, we'll all leave the fortress, and Discord can teleport us all back here. Simple." Of course, as often happens with a drunk raid, it was a lot easier saying it than it was accomplishing it.