//------------------------------//
// A Hearth's Warming Tail 
// Story: A Dream 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

	“I have an idea,” said Pinkie.
“We’re a little busy right now!” Twilight reminded her, as they fought the sort-of-Godzilla-thing outside Ponyville.
“That’s why I was hoping we could have a holiday,” said Pinkie.  “Nothing bad ever happens on holidays.”
“Lots of things happen,” Applejack cut in.  “You remember some of the problems we’ve had to solve.”
“No, I mean, giant monsters never attack during holidays,” said Pinkie.
Twilight considered it.  “I guess that’s true, given what we’ve seen, but why would you apply this result to that causality?”
“I’m just saying.  All we need to do to get rid of the monster is have a holiday.”  Pinkie grinned.  “How about Hearth’s Warming?  We haven’t had one of those in a while.”
“I’m okay with having Hearth’s Warming now,” said the newcomer, Cracker.
“We haven’t even had Nightmare Night yet!” Rarity protested.  “The weather isn’t even cold.”
“Emergency Hearth’s Warming party coming up!” Pinkie declared, firing her cannon full of silver iodide into the clouds.  It immediately began to snow.
“Also,” said Pinkie, “that looks like Tin Mare coming in on an attack profile.”
Because she was.
Aboard the speeding aircraft, Tin Mare said, “Please designate suitable targets.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this,” Braeburn replied.
“You often aren’t.  However, we are protecting your friends and town from this violent, apparently mindless monster.”
“You’re one to judge mindlessness.”
“Not having free will is different from not having intelligence.  Changing subject, the laser designator is slaved to the FLIR.  You can find the controls on your side of the cockpit.”
“I’m not sure if that was an ironic use of the word slaved or not,” Braeburn muttered.
“In retrospect, I should have used a word that would not upset you,” Tin Mare said.  “Do you have the target?”
“It’s kind of hard to miss.”  Braeburn alternated between looking out the windshield and into the screen were Tin Mare’s camera feed was displayed.
“I recommend aiming for the eyes,” Tin Mare said.  “My cannon had little effect on its hide.”
“What’s that little thing sticking out of its mouth?” Braeburn said, zooming the camera in.  “It looks like a smaller dragon.”
“Based on overheard conversations and my observations during the Gauntlet of Fire incident, I assess the smaller dragon is Princess Ember, daughter of the former Dragon Lord.  I do not know how she came to be possibly symbiotic to the monster.”    But this being Tin Mare, of course, she didn’t give a shit.  
“Isn’t that an excuse to not attack?” Braeburn asked.  “She could be hurt.”
“The bombs have a short delay.  If you drop them accurately on the eyes, they will penetrate and explode deep inside the cranium, thereby shielding Princess Ember.”
“You’re sure?”
“Braeburn, I could aim the laser and drop the bombs myself.  I would have already, but I asked you to participate in slaying the monster because you like helping me.”
“That’s…simultaneously touching and horrifying.”
“Similar to the entire theme of my existence.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Now would be a good time to attack.  We are on a favorable heading.”
Braeburn opened and closed his mouth, and then turned to look at the screen in front of him.  He lined up the crosshairs and squeezed the trigger twice.  A pair of five hundred pound laser guided bombs dropped from the rack on Tin Mare’s right side and streaked downwards.  The laser’s aim was true, and the bombs perfectly speared the monster’s eyes.
There was a muffled bang as they simultaneously exploded inside its skull.  Its enormous form fell over, shaking the earth.
And that’s how Tin Mare saved Christmas Hearth’s Warming.
On the ground, the cloud of dust drifted away.  Cracker coughed, having accidentally inhaled some of it.  “Oof.  Nobody told me it would be this way.”
“There’s a lot they don’t tell us,” Twilight muttered.  “Now then, I believe I had a few questions for you.”
“Come on, it’s Hearth’s Warming.  Do you really want to?”
“She’s right!” Pinkie exclaimed.  “Let’s have a party!”
Twilight started to protest, but the others didn’t seem to care and went along with Pinkie’s suggestion.  It wasn’t like a Hearth’s Warming party was bad, but she had the feeling that the sudden appearance of Cracker was forshadowing something more important.
She was wrong, it wasn’t really important at all, but this is Twilight we’re talking about.
Speaking of not really important at all, Justin Bieber was headlining a concert in Cleveland when Trixie, Daring, and Cordoba arrived.
“Isn’t this where that mysterious voice said she’d meet us?” Daring asked, staring at the crowd.  As if on cue, the phone rang.  Daring answered.
“Meet at the lakeshore.”  And then the phone disconnected.
Out on Lake Erie, a restored PBY Catalina seaplane came in for a landing.  Its two Twin Wasp engines grumbled at idle, bringing the flying boat up to shore.  The machine guns and bombs may or may not have been removed following its wartime service.
Cher stepped down onto the shore as the plane came to a stop.  She wore very practical clothes - and not just practical by Cher standards.  She was there for business.
A painting of Sonny posing in a pinup posture graced the nose of the plane with the title I Got You Babe.  Cher touched it briefly, for luck.  The otherworlders would come to her.  All she had to do was wait.
One wondered why she cared.  Chering is caring, you see.
Justin Bieber was not caring, however.  That became immediately apparent when he elbowed Cordoba in the face as she, Daring, and Trixie were making their way through the thick crowd to the waterfront.
Cordoba stopped short of killing him.  They probably should maintain a low profile here on Earth, after all.  None of them had any identification.
She settled for screaming in his face, “What did you do that for mierda pequeña!?”
“Piss off, I’m from Canada,” Bieber replied, blowing some marijuana smoke in her face.
Cordoba seized him by the throat.  Trixie put a hand on her shoulder.  “Even if he is Canadian, I’m pretty sure it’s still illegal to kill him.”
“She’s gonna kill me!” Bieber squeaked.
Two very large men that Bieber paid very well came through the crowd.  Cordoba drew her cutlass and fended them off.  “Stay right there!”
Bieber was not worth it, and the two of them shrugged and complied.
“Oh wow, you’re like, totally living the dream,” said a girl around Cordoba’s age.  “I totally wish I had thought to just grab him.  You must think I’m a total spaz.”
“I’d believe it,” Cordoba muttered.
“I know, right?  He hasn’t responded to any of my letters.”
Cordoba glanced at her.  “What are you talking about?”
“Huh?”  realization dawned on the girl’s face.  “Ohhhh, you said ‘believe it.’  I thought you said ‘belieb it’ because you’ve got this weird accent where your b’s and v’s sound alike. Because of that, I thought you were a fellow Belieber.  But now I see that’s totally not the case and you don’t want to marry him like I do.”
Bieber took this opportunity to kick Cordoba in the shin.
The irony was lost on her, but her wrath was not lost on him.  She scraped him up the wall by his neck, the rough bricks pulling at his hair.  He limply struggled to breathe, no longer able to annoy her.
“So, um, if you’re done with him, could you just leave him there for me?” the girl asked.
Cordoba shrugged and let go.  The girl rushed forward and completely failed to catch the falling  Bieber.  “O-M-G, I am sooo sorry!”
“We should probably get going,” Daring said, spotting people with uniforms coming in their direction.
That seemed like a good plan.  They left.
“We should probably get going,” Pinkie said, talking to the others back in Ponyville.  “We’ve got to get to the party.  What’s a Hearth’s Warming without a party?”
“At least we can have a party,” Rarity remarked.  “Rather than hearing the same old Hearth’s Warming stories over and over.”
“But it’s tradition!” Twilight argued.  “I suppose next you’ll be saying that you don’t want presents and candy.”
“Nopony would deny themselves presents and candy,” said Spike.  “That’s crazy talk.”
“But it’s about more than that!” Twilight countered.  “Why, it’s part of Equestria’s very history.  Back when the three tribes-”
“Yeah, we know,” said Applejack.  “We all were in a play about it.”
“Well, you five and Valiant,” Rarity corrected.  She smirked.  “Him playing Princess Platinum was almost funny enough to forgive him for replacing me.”
“So let’s have a party where we have presents, candy, and jokes at Valiant’s expense,” said Pinkie.
Speaking of things at other people’s expense, back on Earth, the headline read This Random Chick Just Throat-Lifted Justin Bieber Like a Baller.  We’ll now go live to TMZ’s Haley Olivert for the update.
“Good evening everyone.  Big news tonight, a young girl assaulted Justin Bieber and threatened his bodyguards with a sword.  That’s the kind of stuff you just can’t make up.  Let’s check with our reporter on the scene, the homophobic Joe Pancizowski.”
“Thanks Haley.  The scene here is pretty damned hysterical.  Bieber’s lost a lot of street-uh, heh.  Sorry, he didn’t have much street cred to lose.  The event happened a few minutes ago, and I’m sorry that I missed it.  It was ‘pretty sweet’ according to totallynotabrony, a local writer of My Little Pony fanfiction.  Sir, what makes you think you’re qualified to talk about this?”
“I mean, I think I know a little about preteen cringiness, having observed a whole bunch of it,” replied totallynotabrony.
“At first I thought you were going to say you know a lot about gay faggotry.”
“Joe, what I do is an art and a science.”
“Thanks for the update,” said Haley, back in the studio.  “Police are saying this might be the same girl who assaulted and battered Vince McMahon.”
Speaking of assault and battery, good old Assault and Battery Dash was training with her new Wonderbolt friends.
Her new nickname had come from her extensive combat experience.  Nothing formal, just a lot of ass-kicking that she had either participated in or been witness to, usually also involving Valiant.  That still put her far ahead of any pony in the military, including Wind Rider.
“So what are we doing this training for, anyway?” Rainbow asked, punching at the air.  The other Wonderbolts had long ago tired of training, but irradiated Rainbow always had more energy to give.
The pills she’d gotten from Zecora didn’t seem to have a side effect of diminishing her energeticism, even when she remembered to take them. 
“We need to know how to fight,” said Wind Rider.  “I have a feeling a storm is coming.”
Even Rainbow Dash, a bitch, an idiot, and a weatherpony, knew he was speaking figuratively.  “What’s going to happen?”
“Equestria needs help.  There are groups out there that want to see the country torn apart and a radical government installed in place of the current do-nothing government.  We’re going to make sure Equestria gets what it deserves and teach these radicals that no small-time crooks can just muscle in on the leadership of the country.”
Rainbow laughed.  “Well, if Valiant didn’t do it, who else would want to?  Who else wants to upset the thing the Princesses have going?”
“You’ve already encountered the SOS, I believe,” said Wind Rider.  “We’ve had other groups also trying from the shadows and present a threat.  The Princesses and the Royal Guard either haven’t been able to eliminate the danger, or don’t see it as anything important.  But the Wonderbolts do, and we’re going to save Equestria.  From itself, if we have to.”
Rainbow nodded.  “Absolutely.  Count me in.”
And that’s how Rainbow Dash accidentally became an anarchist.
Back in Ponyville, the party had begun to bump, and the library was rocking.  Bible may not have known anything about Hearth’s Warming, but could see the clear references to a human holiday established for consumerism in the name of the birth of one guy who’d lived for a relatively brief period of the biblical story.
Braeburn was doing his best to warn everyone about the so-called Love Meister, who had yet to make a direct appearance and only seemed to use messages.  
Sunset sat in the corner by herself, drinking and brooding, though all of a sudden her head shot up, receiving a message on her earpiece from Tin Mare.  “Ma’am, Princess Ember has come to visit and wants to meet with Spike.”
“She’s not dead?”
“No ma’am.  Not normal, either.”
Whatever that meant, Sunset decided she didn’t want to know.  She called out to Spike and told him he had a visitor outside.
Spike exited the library.  He saw Ember poking her head around the corner of the library and hustled over to her.  “You’re okay!  How did you manage to get free of that thing?”
“Well…”  Ember bit her lip.  Spike rounded the corner and stopped dead.  Ember was still attached, her upper body still sticking out of the mouth of the now-braindead Godzilla-thing, its teeth clamped around her torso.  She was like a centaur, except both halves were dragon and the bottom was tens of times bigger than the top.
And, Spike noticed with a gulp, male.
“We’ll figure some way to separate you,” said Spike hastily.  “I’m sure Twilight has a spell or can find one.”
“I...don’t know if it’ll work,” said Ember.  “After the attack from that flying thing, I seem to be fully in control here.”  She twitched the massive tail behind her to show him.  “If that’s the case, I don’t know if I can go back to my normal body.  I don’t know...if it’s still there.”
Spike gulped again.
Inside the library, Applejack had convinced Coloratura to sing a few songs from her Hearth’s Warming album.  Despite her scrawny, eye-patched appearance, her voice was still better than any that had graced the library before.
Applejack was on edge.  If what Coloratura had told her was true, about the mysterious electronics that kept appearing around her, then that could very well turn into a serious problem.  How, exactly, she wasn’t sure, but it certainly couldn’t be a good thing.
Speaking of not good things, unknown to Cher, Trixie, Daring, and Cordoba had simply decided not to come meet her.  She stood on the lakeshore, checking her watch and looking around impatiently.  They weren’t coming.  “Shit.”
Cher swears aside, Trixie, Daring, and Cordoba were back in the car and headed east, towards another name in Valiant’s contacts book.