"Okay, okay, Dan, I got it. We'll be there soon!"
"BE HERE NOW!!" Dan yelled into the phone and closed it.
Daring was busy keeping an eye on their pursuit in the rear-view mirror. "You guys call in back-up?"
"Oh yeah, the best," Dan said reassuringly. "We got Derpy and Rogue Squadron's air support whenever we want."
"Wait, the mail mare and the forest rangers? THAT'S your air support?"
"No," Twilight shook her head, "Rogue Squadron's the border patrol."
"I thought they were the neighborhood watch," Tuxley said.
"They're whatever we want them to be," Dan clarified. "And right now, they're air support so keep your eyes on the sky. Hey, wait, can't this car fly?"
Tuxley burst out into laughter. "Hahahaha, this is a PROP, my dear Dan. It only flew in the movies and the ride," he explained. "Honestly, the notion of a flying car is a bit far-fetched, don't you think?"
Dan, Twilight and even Daring Do leaned forward to quirk eyebrows at the dressed reptile.
"You do realize you came here to recover an artifact from a crashed spaceship, right?" Daring asked.
"Yeahhhh…" Twilight agreed. "At this point, I don't think much is left that's far-fetched for us."
"Hoho," Tuxley laughed again. "Well, as curator, one does come across quite a lot of-"
A stream of laser blasts cut Tuxley off. They blazed through the street like a rain of fire at a slanted angle, blasting through the ground and nearly hitting the DeLorean. Overhead, several ponies flew past directly over the street.
"They almost hit us!!" Twilight yelled. She grabbed Dan by the shoulders, "CALL DERPY BACK AND MAKE THEM STOP!!"
"THEN STOP SHAKING ME!!"
*kung-kung-kung*
A sound reverberated off the door; not bullets but something softer. They all looked out the passenger's side windows to see Derpy flying alongside them. Her mouth was moving but they couldn't she wasn't making any noise. Tuxley casually flipped a switch on the door that lowered the window.
"Oh, hello, Miss Derpy!"
"Hi Tuxley," the mare replied gleefully.
"What brings you to this side of Mane Boulevard today?"
"Well, we were just in the neighborhood and we thought we'd drop by to save your butts, actually," Derpy said, giggling. As she did, Edge and the rest of Rogue Squadron formed up with the car and gripped it with their hooves. Very quickly, they lifted it up off the street and into the skies above Ponyville.
"Haha, there we go!" Dan cheered. "Good job, Derpster!" he reached out the window to ruffle her mane.
"Yes, thank you, Derpy! Thank you all," Twilight said. "You showed up just in time; what's left of Ponyville's streets aren't built for a car chase."
"Much less one with guns," Daring remarked.
"You guys can drop us off and then go deal with those dogs," Dan said.
"Umm," Reginald pointed at the rear-view mirror. "The dogs are still behind us, Master Dan."
"WHAT?!"
Sure enough, the dogs and their boxy vehicle were jetting up after them, propelled on four hovering wheels and engines on the back. More bullets pinged the underside of the car, the pegasi juked to avoid getting hit.
Tuxley's jaw was agape. "My word. A flying car! Can you all believe this?"
"Yeah, seems pretty far-fetched," Daring said sarcastically. Dan laughed bluntly at the comment.
More bullets whizzed past them. The pegasi pulled the car left and right, dodging the volleys with surprising maneuverability. Dan and the others were yanked back and fourth with it, surprisingly in a way similar to if they had been on the ride the vehicle was originally designed for. Fortunately, their seat belts made sure none of them were injured.
"I say, they are quite tenacious, aren't they?" Tuxley said.
"Your backup's not working, Dan," Daring said. "We got any other plans or should we get lower to the ground and bail?"
"Wait!" Dan turned to the still-open window, "Derpy! Take us back to the library!"
"Back to the guns! Great idea, Dan!" Twilight clapped her hooves approvingly.
Rogue Squadron was already pulling the vehicle into a dive back to town. Behind them, the dogs were doing the same in their cube-car.
Dan pulled out his phone and re-dialed the house. "Come on… pickuppickuppickuppickuppickup!!"
Finally, on almost the last ring, someone did pickup.
"H-hello?"
"Hey! …wait, who is this?"
"It's Blast…"
Dan frowned. "Which one?"
"Um… I'm not even sure, right now." Back at the treehouse, the mare felt around her head and as luck would have it, found her horn. "Powder. It's Blast Powder. I'm the unicorn one." But then, her horn felt loose to her. And then, it fell off. "Wait… oh crap. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, OH CRAP!!" she panicked, her wings spreading. She then caught her breath when she realized what had been on her head. "Oh, thank goodness… it was just the soy sauce bottle. Hey, I have wings! That means I'm Blast Fuse!"
"WHOEVER YOU ARE," Dan raised his voice, "turn on the security system to the house! We're being shot at by the criminal pound puppies!"
"Oh… that's been on."
"What?"
"Yeah, Phoenix turned that on like right after we got your message. I'm sorry; we're all a bit out of it right now. Your cake made all of us sick."
"I- wait, my cake did what?"
"It made us all sick 'cuz you put soy sauce in the frosting."
"But I didn't PUT soy sauce in the frosting!" Dan yelled.
"Oh… well, in that case-"
"I put soy sauce in the icing! I put the hot sauce in the frosting," Dan declared.
"Uh… uh, excuse me." The phone abruptly cut off.
"Well, great," Dan said, pocketing it again. "Looks like Spike's cake batter made everyone at the house sick. But the good news is that they activated the security system!"
"Oh, thank goodness," Twilight wiped her forehead, relieved. "Wait, I had that cake and I'm not sick."
Dan smiled. "Probably because you like soy and hot sauce."
"Wait, what?"
The car barreled down to the surface, flying just above the rooftops. Reed and his boys remained in close pursuit but had apparently switched ammo. Now, small rockets and grenades began whizzing past them, detonating over the street.
The two vehicles reached the treehouse just as the ion cannon was deployed. The massive spherical gun aimed directly at them both.
Daring's jaw hit the floor. "THAT'S your security system?!?!"
"Not bad, huh?"
"How did you even- that's an ion cannon!" Daring exclaimed. "That thing could ionize the country! What were you thinking mounting that thing to your house?!"
"Well, honestly I was thinking about ionizing the whole country," Dan said.
Daring turned to him. "Wot."
"To defend Equestria!" Dan said defensively. "The ions'll wash out."
Daring then began looking around at the rest of them. "He does know that's not how ions work, right?"
Twilight shrugged. Tuxley did the same. Reginald shrugged from behind the wheel.
"It's for a good cause," Dan continued. "Honestly, if that thing was dangerous to us, don't you think we would've been hit by it by now?"
The ion cannon decided to answer Dan's question for itself by firing a massive blue bolt of electricity at them. Derpy and the pegasi dodged right, pulling up over the rooftops again. Behind them, the dogs followed them, narrowly missing the blast as it flew past.
"See?" Dan asked, steadying himself. "Perfectly safe. We just have to get Rover closer to it!"
"Closer?!" Tuxley exclaimed. "Dan, I do hope you know what you're doing."
"Sure, let's go with that. Derpy!" Dan called, "Get us closer to the house!"
"Kay."
The pegasi pulled back towards the treehouse. The ion cannon, having been preprogrammed not to target Dan and Twilight, was instead targeting Reed Roamer on their tail. The huge gun's barrel pointed at the cube-car, made the necessary calculations for a shooting solution and began aiming to take the shot.
Back down the street, the first bolt of ion energy struck a contraption Flim and Flam were demonstrating to Blueblood. The device, while it hadn't been named yet, was made to dispense various types of coffee very quickly. After being zapped by the ion blast, it began dispensing hot coffee on Flim, Flam and Blueblood, scalding the crap out of them.
"GAAAHHH!! IT'S IN MY EYES!!!"
"IT BURNS!!!"
"WHY DOES IT TASTE LIKE SOY SAUCE?!?!"
The Delorean and mobster car began circling the treehouse. The ion cannon, mounted directly on the roof, did its best to track its target. Unfortunately, it tried a bit too hard and wound up dizzy like those Mr. Eye enemies from Super Mario 64. It even made the same sound effect because at this point, why the heck not? But, fortunately, it didn't poof out of existence with one of those huge blue coins but grinded to a halt and stopped spinning.
"We're going too fast for the ion cannon!" Dan yelled.
"What about all the other guns on it?" Twilight asked.
"Had to trade those in for the ion cannon," Dan explained glumly. "It just made more sense because we save money on ammo just having one big gun now."
A missile exploded just outside the car. Derpy popped her head back up a split-second later. "I'm okay!" the mare said, though she was smoldering and her mane was blackened on the edges.
"We have to do something!" Daring yelled. "Don't any of you have something we can use against them? Smokescreen, oil slick, anything?!"
Tuxley tapped his chin. "Reginald!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Begging your pardon, Reginald, but did you remember to pack Mara-belle?"
"Yes, sir," the driver gestured, "should be under the seat in front of you."
"Ah, thank you, Reginald."
"Indubitably, sir."
Daring leaned forward. "What are you doing?"
"I'll just be a moment." Tuxley reached under the seat in front of him. After a moment of scrounging around, he pulled out what had to be the largest hunting rifle Equestria had ever seen.
"Holy crap!" Dan exclaimed. "Is that an elephant gun?"
"Hahaha!" Tuxley laughed again, loading the rifle. "Haha, Dan, your humor never ceases to make me laugh. This is hunting rifle, my good Dan. Elephants don't use hunting rifles," he explained.
"Oh."
"They use miniguns. Everyone knows that." The gun Tuxley brandished looked like a cross between a blunderbuss and an anti-material rifle- massively long barrel and collapsable stand but a cone muzzle and wooden stock.
"Right… it makes so much sense," Dan said, nodding.
"And all of it's non," Twilight added.
Tuxley stood. "Reginald, would you mind?"
"The sunroof, sir?"
"If you'd be so kind."
"Of course, sir."
Tuxley removed his top hat and handed it to Dan. "Would you hold onto this for me, Master Dan?"
"Uh, sure," Dan said, accepting the hat.
The reptile then stuck his head out of the vehicle and aimed the rifle. "Tell Derpy to keep her steady!"
"We got it!" Derpy yelled back.
Tuxley narrowed his eyes and got the car following them in his sights. "I do believe you're about to have some engine trouble, old bean." He fired.
The blast from "Mara-belle" was so powerful it caused the DeLorean to buck. The pegasi nearly lost their grip on it but a few of them repositioned to balance things out quickly. The round Tuxley fired was explosive and the moment it connected with the dogs' cube vehicle, it turned it into burning scrap. The car hit the ground in a fiery heap, rolling to a stop in the middle of the street.
Reed Roamer and his dog cohorts looked more like a trio of smoked sausages in the remains of their car, the fat mobster himself still clutching what was left of the steering wheel. For a brief moment, they sat in their tattered and burned clothes in their slagged car, letting the moment sink in before the pain of being burned by a tank shell took its effect.
Cliff, Reed's top lieutenant, tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, boss. Look, it's the library."
Pained, Reed looked up at the rear-view mirror. When it became apparent that it was no longer there, he slowly turned himself to look out the hole where the back window had been. Just a scant few meters away from them was the library, just as Cliff said. Somehow, though, it looked different from the last time they'd seen it. On top of the library was a giant golf-ball shaped thing that resembled some kind of observatory. And it was pointing at them.
The ion cannon blasted the dogs, electrifying them and the scrap pile they were in. It ignited what was left of their explosives and sent them all flying far away in a manner that would be better-suited to Team Rocket. They continued soaring until they were but a twinkle in the distance that winked out with an audible *ding*.
Back in front of the library, Derpy and the gang lowered the DeLorean back to the ground.
Twilight expected Dan to say many things. She expected him to ask where Tuxley had gotten such a weapon, why he hadn't used it before, what he was doing with it in his car. But Dan only said, "Wow… I am definitely getting you an attachment like that."
"What? Me?"
"Sure," Dan said happily. "I'm sure there's a rifle attachment or something like that for your horn we could find."
Twilight rubbed her horn. "Uh, uh… okay?"
Like a good dinosaur, Tuxley carefully ejected the spent shell casing, reengaged the safety and placed the unloaded rifle back underneath the seat. "Not the most sporting of duels I've been in but, it got the job done, eh, Dan?"
"In-freaking-dubitably," Dan replied. "So, you guys wanna come inside?"
"Certainly! Reginald, get the tea!"
"Already ahead of you, sir!"
"I guess so," Daring said, sounding somewhat unsure. She eyed the ion cannon warily as she followed the others through the front door.
Dan led the others inside to find an unconscious Phoenix Wright beside the controls to the security system by the door.
"Awwww," Dan said. "Looks like the guy had more than he could handle."
"Mmff hay ou, Dan," Phoenix's muffled voice said.
Twilight closed the door behind her as she walked in. Dan, beside her, was deactivating the security system. "You sure we should turn it of so soon?" she asked.
"Why not?"
She cast a glance to the door again. "Well, what if Reed and his goons come back?"
"Heh," Dan chuckled. "I think that's pretty far-fetched."