Chapter 20
The situation in Ponyville proper quickly dissolved into chaos and disarray as the townspeople fled from their homes. The combots advanced through the streets in highly organised rank and file formations, they fired their submachine guns off into the air, seemingly uninterested in harming the townsfolk who were running for their lives. The formations broke apart, and combots armed with flamethrowers took to burning the town to the ground. Kelso and company could only helplessly watch as a crème coated earth pony mare with a cutie mark of three pieces of candy, and dark blue curly mane with several streaks of pink in ran by, the mare tripped and clattered to the ground.
The mare winced in pain as she struggled to get back to her hooves, and she looked up to discover a single combot standing over her, aiming its submachine gun mere centimetres from her face. ‘I surrender!’ the mare cried out as she threw her forelegs up to shield her face. Dizzy couldn't continue to watch, and turned her head away from the scene, burying her eyes into Sparky's shoulder.
'Look out! Here comes Tom!' a new voice cried out from behind them. The combot shifted its focus towards the voice, and the earth pony mare instinctively ducked her head down as a huge boulder in the rough shape of a diamond came flying through the air, smashing into the combot and crushing the metal monstrosity under the boulder’s weight. As the dust cleared, the earth pony mare poked her head up and turned and looked at the pony that had saved her. Her jaw dropped wide open as she looked at her saviour, almost as if she couldn't believe it. Standing in the middle of the road was a minty green unicorn mare with a very satisfied look on her face.
‘Lyra!’ the earth pony mare cried out to her.
‘Hey Bon Bon’, the unicorn mare, now known to them as Lyra said with a bright smile. ‘Come on, you didn’t think I’d really abandon you, did you?’
Bon Bon leapt up and gave Lyra a tight hug, her eyes erupted into tears and she held onto the unicorn mare like there was no tomorrow. ‘Lyra... I was so scared! I’m so sorry, I know I did wrong... I know you can’t forgive me for it...’
‘Shh...’ Lyra said, gently running a hoof through Bon Bon’s mane, smiling at the earth pony mare to give her reassurance. ‘That doesn’t matter anymore; you did what you had to, not just for your sake, but for the sake of the world. The world needs us Bon Bon, and we’re going to be there for it’.
Bon Bon smiled brightly at Lyra and gave her a quick kiss. ‘Let’s kick some metal butt!’ She cried out in a voice of newfound determination.
‘Right behind you!’ Lyra said as the two of them released from each other’s grasp, she enveloped the boulder in a telekinetic field and began to push it down the street, carving a pathway through the chaotic streets and steamrolling over any combots that were unlucky enough to get in the way.
‘By the way... “Tom?”’ Bon Bon asked.
‘It was etched into the underside of the rock, so I ran with it!’ Lyra explained with a smirk. Kelso and company were quick to take off follow them.
'Does the name "Tom" sound familiar to any of you?' Kelso asked.
'There's a giant boulder in the Fluttershy Memorial Gardens in down town Ponyville in the modern day!’ Viola said between pants. 'It had a plaque with the name Tom on it; I guess now we know where it came from!'
…
The memory changed again, and Kelso and company skidded to a halt. The changes happened without warning, and they nearly collided headlong into the side of a burning building. They turned their heads to watch as a piece of floating debris darted by and smashed into the front of a combot, knocking it off its’ tracked wheelbase. Kelso turned around to discover that Twilight Sparkle and most of her friends had taken up positions behind makeshift cover, alongside several other ponies that they were not familiar with. Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and the Azure unicorn mare that had identified herself as Trixie in an earlier memory, were lobbing rocks, random pieces of debris, and the odd stick of Pinkie Pie’s dynamite over their cover and into the horde of combots. Pinkie Pie was up on the roof of the building with a book of matches in her teeth and a crate of explosives by her side. She lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite and tossed it as hard as she could into the horde of combots.
‘Well, at least it looks like she’s improved her stock’, Viola said, pointing towards Pinkie Pie, to which Sparky nodded in agreement.
‘She must have found a better place to store the dynamite. That was probably her biggest issue’, Sparky mused as they watched the events unfold.
Applejack, along with three other ponies had leapt out from cover and engaged the combots in melee combat. They recognised one of them to be Viola’s grandmother Octavia, and another one, a gigantic red coated draught pony that they recognised as Big McIntosh, the pony who would eventually go on to become the third Prime Minister of the Equestrian Republic, and another yellow coated earth pony stallion, clad in a brown Stetson hat and matching waist coat, whom they did not recognise at all.
Another pony had taken to the roof of the building that Pinkie Pie had perched on, and they did not originally recognise the grey coated, blonde maned pegasus mare, as she had looked vastly different then the last time they had seen her. Dizzy’s great-grandmother’s eyes were no longer crossed, and she was clad in suit of nephite riot barding, and a schäferhund storm harness, firing off a pistol identical to the one that Dizzy ordinarily carried.
‘Great Grandma Dizty’s already converted!’ Dizzy cried out with glee as she watched her great grandmother peer through the zeroing sight on her storm harness, carefully firing off her weapon to make every shot count.
Above them, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were preforming complex aerial manoeuvres designed to attract attention away from the melee fighters, and it seemed to be working pretty well. Almost all of the unengaged combots were focusing on the fliers, doing their best to try and take them down, but with little success. The pegasi above were far too fast for the combots to track.
Most noticeably of all, was Vinyl Scratch however, armed with nothing more than her revolver and a grin on her face, Vinyl Scratch waded nonchalantly through the battlefield, not even flinching as bullets flew past her head. She fired her revolver off at the unengaged combots, emptying the cylinder, before snapping open the top break and using her telekinesis to slide in six new rounds. She passed by Octavia, who promptly took down the combot she was fighting with a single kick.
‘Damn Tavi! You’re really kicking arse!’ Vinyl Scratch called out to Viola's grandmother with a grin as she blasted another combot right in the television screen display.
‘I’m just pretending that all of them are you and it comes naturally!’ Octavia quipped back as she jumped up and smashed another combot in its face.
Viola couldn't help but smirk. 'That's my grandmother, motivated by thoughts of violence towards Vinyl Scratch!'
'Do you ever wish we could go back and watch the two of them go at it under better circumstances?' Sparky asked, turning towards Viola.
'All the time', Viola said nodding her head.
Without warning, Lyra and Bon Bon came charging through the streets rolling Tom through and crushing a number of combots that weren’t able to wheel out of the way.
'Ha! Hope these guys like "rock" music!' Lyra said gleefully as she and Bon Bon leapt into the makeshift fighting pit alongside Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Trixie.
'Lyra... no', Bon Bon said, as she couldn't help but face hoof at her friend's horrible pun.
Suffice it to say, they were doing quite well all things considered, but more and more combots just kept rolling on them, it was like Emerald Sparkle had an endless horde of them. What was worse, the more they fought the combots the more they seemed to adapt to their opponents skills. A few close calls with grenades and they had pushed the four melee fighters back behind the makeshift fortifications that the group had pulled together. Vinyl Scratch had too fallen back behind the barriers and continued to shoot at them from cover. Ditzy Doo had run out of ammunition for her gun long ago and had taken to running interference over the battlefield alongside Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, but it wasn't long before they were forced back to the ground as well.
‘Well, we all put up a good fight’, Applejack said. ‘If this is it, than at leas’ we did that’.
That was something they could all agree upon.
‘Trixie has never known a finer set of ponies, Trixie is glad to have stood beside you’, Trixie added with a nod.
It was not the end, however, at that moment, a gunshot pierced the air and Kelso watched as a high calibre bullet whizzed by her eyes and hit a combot with tremendous force, knocking it off its wheel base and sending it clattering into a second combot behind it.
Bursting from the trees was a tank; Hopely turned her head and recognised it immediately. ‘The M3 Light tank, built in South Island for the Welaran Commonwealth, favoured by the Kangaroo army for their speed!’ Hopely cried out excitedly.
The tank, bearing turret number 105, barrelled down on the combots, firing off a canister shell and raining high velocity shrapnel on the combots as an infantry section of Kangaroo Fusiliers hopped along besides it, firing their bolt action rifles and submachine guns as they went and joining up with the ponies stuck in the makeshift fighting pit.
A kangaroo holding a high calibre anti-armour rifle smiled brightly at them as he set his gun on the ground. ‘Twilight! Rainbow Dash! Catch!’ he said as he tossed a revolver to Twilight and a self-loading pistol to Rainbow Dash. Twilight caught both in her telekinesis and passed the self-loader over to Rainbow Dash.
Off in the distance the passive observers heard a faint noise. pof… pof… pof… It was a noise that they did not recognise, not until it was far too late, something hit the ground and exploded violently in the middle of the combot horde!
‘That’s 26 pounder fire!’ The kangaroo fusilier with the anti-armour rifle cried out. ‘That bloody Gryphon Decanus in Canterlot is shooting at us!’
‘No it’s not!’ Rainbow Dash cried out. ‘Look at where the shells are falling! They’re not coming anywhere close to us, they’re shooting the robots!’
…
The memory changed once more, and Kelso and company had returned to Canterlot, this time, they were along the city walls, and besides them was an armoured vehicle, an open topped self-propelled artillery gun that was filled with gryphon soldiers loading large explosive shells into the firing chamber, and covering their ears as their howitzer fired, kicking with the explosion and causing the Gryphon Decanus to roll back several centimetres from the recoil.
Shining Armour, Cadence, and the Cheval Aerial Cavalry section under Maréchal des logis-chef Dmitri Moreau had made their way here, figuring this was probably the best place to make their stand.
The situation in Canterlot was a mess. Unlike Ponyville, things had deteriorated rapidly, and many of the Royal Guard units had broken and routed, only for them to be cut down trying to escape the fight.
‘I trained them better than this!’ Shining Armour cried out as he watched another phalanx of guard break out into a run.
‘You couldn’t have possibly trained them to handle this, don’t blame yourself!’ Cadence said reassuringly, patting Shining Armour on the shoulder.
Shining Armour merely brushed her away. There was nothing she could say to make this okay. ‘You don’t see the welarans, or the schäferhund breaking do you?!’ Shining Armour cried out. ‘Not even the gryphons have cut and run! And I would have expected them to go first!’
Unfortunately, Shining Armour had said that at the worst possible time, and one of the gryphon soldiers descended upon him angrily. ‘Hey, Captain Dweeb! We’re right here you know!’ the female gryphon said in annoyance.
Shining Armour held fast, looking the gryphon before him right in the eyes and not blinking. She returned his stare, and the two of them would not flinch. Cadence opened her mouth to say something to get the two of them to snap out of it, but she herself was interrupted before she got the chance to.
‘Piss off a gryphon soldier, great plan’, Viola said, rolling her eyes at Shining Armour.
‘Lance Bombardier Gilda! I do not hear you calling out targets!’ one of the other gryphons called out to her.
Gilda broke her gaze with Shining Armour and looked back at the Decanus, and then back to Shining Armour. ‘This isn’t over’, she seethed. ‘You don’t challenge a gryphon unless you intend to go through with it’.
‘I’m looking forward to it!’ Shining Armour said with a huff as Gilda spread her wings and leapt into the air, pulling a pair of binoculars up to her eyes and peering through them.
Shining Armour grumbled with annoyance as he turned back towards Cadence. ‘The nerve…’
Cadence responded by slapping him hard on the shoulder. ‘Must you act like a complete muscle head!? We are in the middle of a crisis here! We’re lucky the attackers have finally decided to leave us alone!’ she said scoldingly.
Shining Armour frowned at her, and gave her a small sigh. ‘You’re right… I’m sorry… I…’ Shining Armour paused as something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. ‘Look!’ he said.
Kelso and the rest of the passive observers turned their heads away from the wall, and towards the city. Marching towards them, was none other than Princess Luna herself, leading the welaran and schäferhund escorts towards the wall.
‘All will rally to me!’ she cried out in a voice that was unnaturally loud. ‘Our fight is not over yet! We shall take this city back… and…’ Princess Luna’s voice began to trail off as she looked up at the sky.
Shining Armour, Cadence, the cheval, welarans, and schäferhund soldiers turned and looked up towards the sky. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Shining Armour asked.
Kelso and company turned back to look. Gliding over the mountains to the north was a zeppelin, but not just any zeppelin. The canvas covering the ribbing was dyed a deep red, and it bore the royal insignia of the Kingdom of Equestria from a thousand years ago. Kelso was able to recognise it in an instant, the enormous insignia draped over most of the zeppelin’s body had been plastered all over the Castle at Canterlot in the earliest memories that they had seen. Something was coming, now they all had to ask the question, was it something good? Or something bad?