Alister braced himself as he caught Nefarious' head on the way down. "Did you see enough?" he asked.
"Yup!" Nefarious confirmed as Twilight attached his head back to his body. "And the best part is they aren't moving, and there aren't any friendly targets amongst them."
"I...fail to see how that's the best part..." Qwark murmured in confusion.
Twilight giggled happily. "I don't. Get your Plasbomb Launchers out, everyone. And the Element Blasters, too!"
"This is going to be abjectly terrifying, isn't it?" Alister asked nervously as he pulled out the requested weapons.
A quick connector modification and Twilight had everyone's weapons connected, the Element Blasters each set to a different element and channeling the energy into the Plasbombs. "And now we just locate the ideal target location..." Twilight murmured as she and Nefarious ran calculations based on what Nefarious observed. "Adjust the payload for a greater launch range...adapt the Plasbombs for Elemental eruption...FIRE!"
All four immediately launched the mortars, which sailed through the air towards where the enemy troops were based. When they landed, the combined explosion caused the intra-element reaction to create the explosive temporary singularity, obliterating all the troops in that location.
"Success!" Nefarious crowed happily, cackling in triumph.
"Yes yes yes yes yes!" Twilight chanted as she bounced happily around him. "It worked! It worked!"
"And how much of the settlement they were occupying is left standing?" Alister asked sternly.
Twilight froze in her bouncing. "...oops?"
"We can always rebuild it before we leave," Nefarious countered. "Nothing to fuss over."
"True!" Qwark agreed happily.
"And now I'm not so sure about it," Nefarious quipped dryly.
Alister shook his head, deciding to leave things along for now. "Well, as long as we've got a clear path, let's get moving."
"Right!" Twilight agreed, taking to the air.
As they followed along the now clear path, the voice they'd heard aboard the Ephemeris echoed. "Attention Tharpods. By order of Commander Spog, this land now belongs to the Master. Please, remain calm, gather your belongings, and relocate to the corner of We Don't Care and Not Our Problem."
"...I really don't like that computer," Twilight grumbled angrily.
Eventually, they reached a point where more hostiles blocked the path, and the group once more drew their weapons to mow their way through. Twilight disabled the connector between the Element Blasters and the Plasbomb Launchers, as that combination only really worked well as a stationary attack point on a distant, non-moving target. Using the same connector to put the Element Blaster energy into the Devastator homing rocket launcher, on the other hand...
"I'm beginning to think we might want to pull back on the firepower," Alister commented dryly as he stared out at the smoking waste ahead of them.
"Why?" Nefarious countered. "The robots did most of this damage!" Shrugging it off, he turned to Twilight. "By the way, how did you make that assembly field?" he asked curiously.
Smiling, Twilight tapped the helmet she'd donned. "Pilot's Helmet," she explained. "Picked it up on the first adventure back in Solana, made some modifications to make it work with my magic, and I can use it to generate a field in which any tech inside will expand into its component parts so I can see how best to modify it. It's not as efficient as using the simulator I built based on it, which I left back in our home in Metropolis, since it puts a bit of a strain on my magic and mind..." She paused, gently tapping her horn. "Not nearly as much as when I first used it, though."
"Pretty sure after quantumly entangling your mind in order to bootstrap a fix to the time-space anomaly the Great Clock was built to contain, very little is going to seem a strain," Alister chided teasingly.
"Wait, she did what now?" Nefarious asked quickly, optics wide.
Twilight winced, rubbing her forehead. "I'd love to tell you about it, but it's painful to even think about what I did then," she explained. "I think the only one who really understands what I did and can explain it is Orvus."
"I thought he was dead!" Nefarious gasped out. "Umm...I would like to state for the record that I never actually intended to kill him or cause his death, just use him to get access to the Clock..."
"Quite alright," Twilight replied easily. "After all, thanks to me, he got better. And so did my grandparents on my other side."
"...is that what Ratchet was talking about in that interview about me when he mentioned the recently resurrected grandparents?" Nefarious clarified.
"Yup!" Twilight confirmed.
Nefarious frowned thoughtfully, piecing a few things together...and his eyes widened. "You made time your bitch?" he gasped out excitedly.
"Causality, actually, but yes!" Twilight proclaimed proudly.
"That...is so cool..." Nefarious marveled.
Alister rolled his eyes as he kept moving, hoping in that way to keep everyone more or less on track even as Twilight and Nefarious once more launched into a technical discussion.
Before long, the group made it past the last of the hostiles in that area, finding their way to a power conduit. "According to the map data," Alister observed, "this leads straight to the N.E.S.T. sorting terminal."
"Which is where Commander Spog will be," Qwark pointed out.
"Which means we're going to grind down it," Twilight grumbled. "I don't like grinding...it's hard keeping all four hooves on the cable now that I'm so big..."
"You could always ride on my shoulders again," Qwark offered.
"Or fly," Alister suggested.
"Or use your jetpack," Nefarious pointed out. "It shouldn't take too much modification to give it fast level flight instead of slow descent, especially since it's designed for someone much heavier than you already and adjusted for your light body mass."
Twilight grinned from ear to ear. "Just a second!" she called out as she pulled out her jetpack and tools.