Turning Trix
Today was tinkering day. Now, without the CIA or Interpol breathing down his neck, Jack was free to have a few more tinkering days than usual. And with a full garage and workshop now in Equestria, he didn't lose anything in the move. Today's subject was his V22 Osprey. Switching out the propellers for ducted turbofans was an ambitious idea, but in the end it would be more efficient, less obstructive to weaponry, and most importantly, personalized. After these last few tests, he would be ready to take the new design flying. Alright, pre-test checklist. All cameras online? Check. Data readout synced to iPhone? Check. Emergency response systems on standby? Czech. Proximity alert going off? Che... wait a minute.
A shrill, monotonous chirp alerted him that someone (or more likely somepony) was approaching. Most of Jack's labs and hangars, including this one, were underground, but he did have something of a house on the surface. Pulling up the front-door security camera on his iPhone as he stepped into the elevator, he saw it was Twilight Sparkle who was urgently pounding on his door.
"Oh, it's her. Let her in!"
A few clicking locks and whirring gears later, the front door slid open for Twilight, and she entered the complex cautiously. Only a second later, Jack's elevator car arrived at the ground floor, and he made his way into the front room to meet her.
"Ah, Twilight, I see you've found my new home base! Good thing, too, it gets so lonely out here on the edge of the Everfree. What can I do for you?"
"Oh, Jack, it's horrible! Trixie'scomebackandmagicduelandagespellsandprincessgoneandbanishedforever!"
"Okay, hold up. I heard Trixie, not much more. She's that magician unicorn you told me about before, right?"
"Yes! She came back to Ponyville today and challenged me to a magic duel! She's so much stronger than she used to be, and she won the duel, and now I'm banished from Ponyville forever!"
"So how does Trixie have the authority to keep you out?"
"She's did it with magic! Now there's a huge force field around Ponyville, and nopony can go in or out!"
"Hmm, well that won't do at all. Let's go have a look, and I'll see what I can do. Just let me get some things together. Computer, prepare me a daypack with the following contents: field surveillance quadrotor drone. Advanced scanner attachment for iPhone. Thermal cutting tool. Two standard smoke grenades. MP7 submachine gun with concussive ammunition."
"Submachine gun?"
"You can never be too careful, Twilight. If Trixie finds us and decides she doesn't like me, I want something I can fire back with. MP7's always been my personal favorite for short- and medium-range combat. But back to the gear. Suppressor and targeting laser attachments for MP7. Two extra magazines of concussive ammunition for MP7. Finally, two bricks of C4 explosive with separate wireless detonators."
After about 10 seconds, a mechanical arm descended from the ceiling holding a camo-print backpack made of heavy synthetics. Jack grabbed it and slung it on his back, then headed for the door, Twilight right behind him. Walking in the direction of Ponyville, they soon encountered Trixie's transparent force field. All descriptions failed Jack except 'giant upside-down goldfish bowl'. Rapping on it with his knuckles, his suspicions were confirmed.
"It's not a force field, it's glass. Which means..."
Drawing a Walther P99 from inside his black windbreaker, he aimed point-blank and fired. With a low-pitched, reverberating 'ping', the shot seemingly bounced off the dome. If it could withstand that...
"Magically-shielded glass. Of course. Well, time for the next-best option."
Jack dropped his pack and started rummaging through the center pocket, then pulled out a futuristic-looking gun. He aimed and fired, and the barrel produced a glaringly bright beam of red light. When it hit the dome, the laser produced a sharp humming noise, and the area around the impact point began to glow red with heat. Shortly after, Jack stopped the beam, and as the glow faded away, it was clear the laser had done no damage.
"Damn, she's good. I guess if we can't get in, we might as well learn as much as we can from the outside."
Replacing the thermal cutter in his pack, he unzipped the largest pocket and pulled out the quadrotor drone. Holding its body with his left hand, he used his right to press a series of buttons on his iPhone, and instantly the drone's four rotors began to spin rapidly. He then tossed it up in the air, and it ascended along the edge of the dome, programmed to reach the highest point of the bowl, then take wide-range surveillance of Ponyville with its undermouted camera.
"Wait a second, Jack. If the dome is made of solid glass, then there's no airflow in and out of Ponyville. And if there's no airflow in and out of Ponyville..."
"Everypony inside will suffocate. You're right, and that means our situation just got much more urgent."
"Umm, Jack, don't look now, but I think you're more right than you know!"
Twilight was pointing back towards Ponyville, panic in her eyes. As Jack's eyes followed into the dome, he could make out what appeared to be a turquoise mare sitting inside a wooden... sled? Whatever it was, she was being dragged along by two oddly-shaped ponies in front. That must be Trixie.
The Great and Powerful Trixie charged valiantly in her grand carriage, free of those treacherous wheels, towards whatever foal had such unmitigated gall to disturb her force field. But The Great and Powerful Trixie knew she could not give the intruder any more time to continue intruding or even escape, and her carriage was progressing far too slowly, pulled by those incompetent buffoons who threw themselves prostrate at her hooves from the very beginning.
"Bah, you foals are too slow! The Great and Powerful Trixie must punish this intruder before they have the chance to escape! You leave The Great and Powerful Trixie no choice!"
Forced to use her own magic by her lackeys' weakness, The Great and Powerful Trixie picked up her carriage and levitated it towards the force field. With unmatched magical prowess such as hers, it hardly took any effort at all, but she could not spare a thought to Snips and Snails, who could endure the first part of their punishment by being dragged along the ground by their harnesses.
The sled was approaching more rapidly now, almost flying, so Jack quickly took action. Unclipping a pair of cylinders from the side of his backpack, he used his thumbs to flick open the plastic trigger-guard on both grenades, then pressed down on the triggers and tossed them towards Trixie. They rolled along the ground, and just as they reached the glass dome, both exploded in a cloud of thick grey smoke.
"Twilight, get to cover!"
Waving her towards a thick clump of bushes, Jack grabbed his daypack and pulled a brick of C4 from the very front pocket. He twisted the detonator capsule's head, priming it and causing it to blink with red light, then tossed it between the smoke grenades and followed Twilight into the brush. As Trixie lifted up her glass dome to pursue, Jack slid into cover behind a tree and pulled out his phone. With three taps to the home button, the C4 brick exploded with a massive fireball, enough to frighten Trixie into retreating and lowering the fishbowl again.
"What sorcery is this? Back to the city, quickly!"
Both parties hastily returned to their respective bases. Jack pushed through his front door, tossed his daypack on the couch in his front room and pulled out his phone. Punching in numbers, he brought it up to his ear as the connection went through. This sudden stop for something so mundane surprised Twilight.
"Who are you calling?"
"Pinkie Pie."
"How can you call her? You don't have her number."
"I may not, but I do have that speaker system I gave her before the whole Discord thing. It has a voice command function, so hopefully I can tap into it and use it like a phone. Hang on, it's connected. Hello? Pinkie, it's Jack, can you hear me? Pinkie?
After a few seconds, a garbled reply came through. "Mmhmm mmmm! Mmmh mh!"
"What?"
Twilight proceeded to put two and two together. "Trixie used her magic to remove Pinkie's mouth!"
"OK then. Pinkie, listen, can you get somepony else in the room who can actually talk?"
"Mmhm mhm!"
After a brief silence, Rarity's voice came through on the other line. "Hello, Jack, is that you?"
"Yes, Rarity. Listen, I have a plan to beat Trixie, but I need your help. I need you and the others to get everypony in Ponyville to go to the east side of the glass dome and start pounding on the glass. Make as much of a ruckus as you can, get Trixie's attention. It'll distract her and make it harder for her to focus on keeping the dome magically protected. I'll do the rest. OK?"
"Will do. Good luck, Jack."
Jack ended the call and made for the elevator. Barely holding the door open long enough for Twilight to get in, he ordered the computer "Take us to the hangar."
"Why do you want them to do that?"
"If Trixie's attention is focused on the east side, it'll make it easier for me to break through on the west side. That's how we get the air in and how we get in."
The two stepped out a few seconds later, and Jack lead Twilight through rows of assorted jet aircraft and helicopters. Some of the vehicles didn't either description, while others could be called both. What Jack was leading Twilight to was one of the latter: his V22 Osprey, newly retrofitted with massive ducted turbofans. He climbed into the cockpit and began flipping switches to initiate the preflight sequence, as Twilight stumbled amazedly in through the bay door.
"Jack, what is all this? "
"This is my Osprey! I just changed out the propellers, normally I'd like to test them out in a controlled environment, but we're out of time. Preflight sequence complete, rotors spinning up!"
Twilight looked out through a porthole window to see a huge metal blade spinning inside some sort of wide but short barrel, with no magic at all. The rotation grew ever faster, and she could feel the vibration from each spin beneath her hooves.
"This is... incredible!"
"No, this is what happens when a lot of brains meets a lot of money. Open hangar doors, raise the helipad."
Smoothly but suddenly, the vehicle rose upward, and Twilight watched the hangar fall away below them. Soon she could see they were now outdoors, behind Jack's surface-level house.
"But how is this possible? The Everfree Forest runs right up against the back of your house, I saw the trees!"
"Holograms, Twilight," Jack answered, not the least bit smugly. None of those trees are real in the least. I've got a whole runway hidden back there, under holographic vegetation. Weapons systems online, avionics online, clear for take-off. You ready?"
"I guess..."
"Then... lift-off!"
With a roar from the engines, the Osprey's fans tilted downward, throwing twin blasts of air to the ground. The craft soon lifted off, rising above Jack's house before adjusting the turbines to fly horizontally.
"Good, we're in the air, no problem. Now let's get set to attack. It'll give Ponyville the chance to get riled up. Deploy nose-mounted minigun, extend Hydra rocket pods, exterior speakers online..."
"Speakers?"
"Yeah, speakers. If we're going to beat Trixie, let's at least do it with some style. Now, let's see how Ponyville is doing. Activate long-range magnification on main viewscreen!"
A small box appeared in the center of the windshield, which then grew lines from its corners leading outward and to the left to the corners of a larger box. Inside that box, whatever was in the smaller box was blown up in size several times. Jack tapped his finger on the windshield where he could see down Mane Street, to the far east end of Ponyville, and the small box followed his touch. In the larger box, they could see a growing mob of ponies pounding at the magical force field, and others just screaming and making a scene. It was a riot waiting to happen. And as expected, Jack saw Trixie levitating her wheel-less carriage down Mane Street. When he locked the magnifier onto her, he could see that she was obviously in pain from the disruptions to her force field. The time to strike was now.
"Silence, you foals! The Great and Powerful Trixie demands silence!"
But silence would not fall, no matter how many times the demand was made. It seemed that everypony in town was outside, Tartatrus-bent on starting a riot. Every hoof pounded against her magical shield was like a small shock inside her brain, and the constant angry shouting only made it worse.
"We want out!"
"Down with Trixie!"
If what was happening could even be described as a headache, it was beyond a bad migraine. Even with the Alicorn Amulet, she could hardly focus enough to keep the force field up. Maybe if she focused more on this one part instead of the whole thing... But at that moment, a punch like a hundred hornet stings ripped through her neurons, causing unimaginable pain. On top of the existing stimuli, it was enough to send her into mild shock.
Back on the west side of Ponyville, without Trixie's mind to keep up the magical half of the force field, the bullets from the Osprey's minigun easily punched through the remaining fish-bowl. "Perfect! Fire missiles!" Jack instructed the computer, and two Hydra missiles coursed from twin pods on either side of the craft. They slammed into the glass dome, and the shockwave ripped a gaping hole in its side.
"And... cue the music!"
With a touch on the computer screen, Jack called up an MP3 file, and through the outboard speakers roared a triumphant strain of electric guitars. The Osprey charged through the opening and into Ponyville, barreling down Mane Street only a few hundred feet above street level. At the sight of this airborne metal behemoth, most ponies ran for cover panickedly, as Trixie crawled back on her hooves. Seeing Snips and Snails treadmill-running in opposite directions away from the carriage, held back by their harnesses, she stepped out through the side.
"What... what is this?!"
The Osprey came to a hover just before her and just above the roofline. Inside, Jack set the controls on autopilot and climbed out of his chair, into the cargo bay. As Twilight followed, he hit a switch on the wall, and the rear bay door began to lower.
"Computer, I need my M1216 and the rappelling winch! Load first and second chambers with concussive airburst rounds, third with a grapnel line set of shells, and fourth with electroshock dart rounds."
A compartment on another wall opened up, and Jack pulled a larger gun from inside. From the floor emerged a large spool of double-weave paracord, with a carabiner clipped to one end. Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder, he clipped the rope into a metal loop on his belt, then approached the open cargo bay door. Twilight was, once again, puzzled.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting down there." Jack sat down on the edge of the bay door, pulling most of the slack out of the cord. "Engage rappelling winch, standard release speed." The spool from the floor began turning, spitting out cable.
"So how am I supposed to follow you?" Twilight questioned.
"You can levitate things, right?"
"Yes, but..."
"Then levitate yourself!"
With that, Jack slid off the back of the Osprey and plummeted towards the street, until the line caught him and held him steady. Taking a moment to think until the pieces clicked together, Twilight created a force field of magical energy around herself, then lifted up off the deck and followed Jack. "Fear me, you lords and lady preachers, I descend upon your earth from the sky..." Jack began to whistle, until his feet hit the cobblestone street, and his eyes met Trixie's.
"You! The human!"
With a click to his phone, Jack shut off the music suddenly. Unclipping the rappelling cord from his belt, he then grabbed hold of the grip of his M1216 and unslung it.
"Yeah, that would be me. And this is..."
"Silence! The Great and Powerful Trixie shall make you suffer for your interference!"
A bolt of red energy coursed from the Alicorn Amulet, illuminating Trixie's scowl of rage in crimson, only to be blocked by the sudden materialization of a violet wall in front of Jack. Twilight stepped out from behind him, horn aglow.
"And if it isn't Miss Twilight Sparkle! The Great and Powerful Trixie is unsurprised to see you allying yourself with this animal. But it matters not; with the power of the Alicorn Amulet, the Great and Powerful Trixie will destroy you both!"
And with that, a stream of blood-red bolts came at them, each one cracking Twilight's shield a little more. As it reached breaking point, Jack dove out of the way, then rolled, came up on one knee and fired two shots. Both detonated prematurely as Trixie raised a magical force field of her own. Keeping his weapon trained on her, ready to fire the moment she let her guard down, Jack barely noticed as a ruby glow surrounded him, but did become aware of it when it lifted him right off the ground, and if was hard not to notice the sudden momentum as he was flung backward and upward.
"Ha! Face the magical power of the Alicorn Amulet, beast!"
As he tumbled through the sky, Jack prayed a very quick prayer that cartoon physics would not fail him now, but the need for it was averted as he came to a joltingly sudden stop, surrounded by an aura of purple this time. Twilight quickly uprighted him and set him down, but both had to scramble for the cover of a nearby alleyway as another volley of magic bolts came at them.
"Can I pick friends or what, Twilight?" Jack half-joked as he leaned against a wall and set down his gun, then pulled out his phone.
"Don't thank me yet," she replied. "We need to get the Alicorn Amulet off of Trixie if we want to beat her."
"I assume that's the red-and-black glowing necklace, correct?"
"Yes. It gives its user untold magical power, but corrupts their mind with ambition and pride."
"I see. And I'm guessing you can't just rip it off with your own magic."
"No, the user has to part with it willingly or it won't come off."
"Well then..." Jack pondered for a moment, then picked up his M1216 and cycled the oversized magazine to its third chamber. "How about the old one-two punch? Give me a flare!"
Barely peeking her head out of cover, Twilight shot a brilliant star-bolt into the air, which exploded with enough flash and bang to make the average pyrotechnician jealous. Trixie stumbled back at the unexpected move, shrieking in shock, and on cue, Jack popped around the wall and took his shot. But instead of a bullet, or slug, or concussive explosive, the gun's barrel produced a small grappling claw, tethered back to the weapon. Another pop from the gun loosed even more of the tether line, and the claw expanded and grabbed hold of the Alicorn Amulet.
"One..."
Another pop from the M1216 as the last of the cable came free, then Jack let the barrel dip toward the ground and fired again. Immediately below, another claw embedded itself in the pavement. Releasing the gun to hang from its shoulder-strap, Jack ran from cover and reached out for the rappelling winch, which was hanging exactly where he disconnected from it before. As he pulled down the carabiner and clipped it onto the grapnel cord, he pulled his phone out with his other hand and keyed in a series of commands. The winch cable began to retract back to the Osprey, pulling the cord with it and steadily removing any slack.
"...two!"
What Jack had effectively created was a pulley with one end of the rope stuck to the ground. As the carabiner moved upward, the only way to elongate the rope was to pull double-strength on the other end. Or in other words, yank Trixie up in the air barely seconds after she had recovered from the flare spell. She cried out, frightened, and with the threat neutralized, Jack and Twilight could lower their guard.
"Trixie, I'm going to avoid the obvious "hang-up in your plans" joke, but to state the obvious, the only way you're coming down is by letting go of the Alicorn Amulet. Now, if you really know anything about me, you'll know I've been pulling my punches so far. No heavy artillery, no firepower from my air support up there, nothing. Because a very old friend taught me that there was a better way, so listen."
In spite of the chaos, the world suddenly became a very quiet place for the three of them.
"You get one chance. Just one, that's it. Leave Ponyville alone and I'll walk away like this never happened. But after this, all bets are off. I will stop you, by any means necessary. So what will it be?"
Trixie paused, actually considering the offer for a second, but suddenly her eyes glowed red and a beam of similarly-colored energy shot from her horn, slicing through the grapnel cord. The Osprey lurched upward at the sudden shift in balance, while Trixie floated back down, body crackling with power.
"Ha! As though anyone, pony or otherwise, could threaten the Great & Powerful Trixie!"
"So be it," Jack muttered, and with a kneejerk series of movements, he brought up his M1216 and hipfired. The shell exploded against Trixie's personal force field, but provided enough of a distraction for Jack to grab Twilight and dive back into the alley. "I need you to distract Trixie, put some cover fire on her while I work. She's powerful, but there's only one of her. If we give her an obvious target, she'll focus on it and nothing else."
"Sure, but how do we get her to focus on..."
"Like this!" Jack suddenly ran back into the street, waving his arms madly. "Hey look at me I'm a target!" Surprised as she was, Trixie responded predictably, and Jack barely outstepped a series of magic bolts as he ducked into a corridor opposite his previous cover. With a covert hand motion and mouthing of the word "Now!", he signaled Twilight to attack; she once again poked her head out, but this time loosed a volley of energy bolts. Blocking this attack took Trixie's attention off of Jack, and with that figurative safety net in place, he slumped down against a wall and began tapping at his phone once more.
Up above, an incredibly out-of-place airborne tank picked up on these wireless instructions. Servo motors spun to life, previously unused circuits fired with electricity, and the mutant Osprey bore its claws. From the nose, a massive Vulcan minigun deployed by a prehensile mechanical arm. Simultaneously, twin Hydra missile pods split out from either side of the fuselage, and the belly sprouted two 40mm BOFORS cannon turrets. Hovering just above the roof line, the gunship tilted forward, each of these weapons lined up on Trixie. She noticed this, Jack noticed her noticing it, and with a decisive, if regretful final tap on his phone, he signed what he thought was her death sentence.
At that moment, a roar unlike any Equestria had ever heard before chewed apart the quietness of Ponyville. Even Trixie, with her god-like power, barely had the chance to bolster her shields before 6000 rounds of incendiary 20mm fire a minute came down upon her like acid rain. They were joined immediately after by the repeated thunderclaps of Hydra rockets as they pounded against her resistance, one after another. The 40mm turrets sounded out a beat of their own, combining into a staccato of armor-piercing shots. Even Jack had to recoil from the mighty blast of sound, shielding his eyes from the swirl of dust and smoke; Twilight had reflexively thrown up a protective shield of her own.
Trixie, meanwhile, was truly in a fight for her life, sucking every last drop of power from the Alicorn Amulet to protect herself from the onslaught from another world. Blood running thick with adrenaline, she let out a primal scream in defiance of he who dared oppose her with his mechanical false idols. Jack fumblingly pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket, put them on and pressed a button on the frame. The inward face of the glasses expanded against his face, then sucked itself tight, forming a protective seal around his eyes. He walked cautiously to the edge of the alleyway, then peered around only to be struck by the intense blood-red brightness of Trixie's overcharged force field, immobile against a torrent of equally-bright tracer rounds.
Glare reduction set at a woefully-inadequate maximum, Jack glanced around the corner once more, but what he saw was even worse. Though his pet gunship had not let up in any sense of the term, Trixie seemed to be standing up to it. In fact, her shield was getting bigger. It formed around her, a bubble instead of a wall, and slowly began to sculpt itself. Protrusions developed on the bottom, front and back, thinning the sides of the bubble as they grew outward. As time went on, these protrusions took on more definite shape, and soon Jack recognized a pattern. Legs, head, tail, horn...
A giant, crimson-energy Trixie stood in the middle of Ponyville, its creator held aloft in the middle of its body. Standing immobile, but replicating a smirk on its face, it glared in triumph against the other giant of steel and wire who had challenged it. It lunged its horn forward, and shot a fiery beam of energy straight into the Osprey. With a rather humble shower of sparks, the craft's right wing pulled away from the rest of the body, then dropped out of the sky. The rest of the body, however, was hardly as graceful, spiraling counterclockwise around its remaining rotor, guns still ablaze as if the attack would continue unaffected. Jack saw this, of course, but had barely enough time to get away as two stray missiles blew the side out of the house he was taking cover behind, bringing it down. And as he ran, he saw the Osprey tilt about, lopsided, then slam into a pair of cottages on the opposite side of the street. Immediately the crash produced a fireball of aviation-grade fuel and cooked-off ammunition, large enough to throw Jack backwards in a scattered shower of debris.
The black of a blackout fading into the black of smoke clouds, Jack found himself on his back, cut up and bruised. He rolled onto his side reflexively to stand, only to feel a sharp pain in his rib as it pressed against the ground. Biting his tongue and sitting up, he then rose to a knee and slowly stood, trying to get his bearings. As the fog wore off, he recognized the caved-in house and Osprey crash site. A woozy, unfocused anger ran through him. Someone's gonna pay for that. But the details suddenly drew into sharp focus as he saw several shades of purple beneath a thin pile of debris. Jack called out to Twilight, but when she failed to reply, he called up a second wind to start running for her. Before he could even get up to speed, however, he was floored by a blast of magic to his side. Recovering and restarting the process of standing up, Jack looked up to see Trixie approaching, surrounded by an aura of red.
"Ha! The Great and Powerful Trixie has found you, you impudent foal!"
It was all too easy to tell her intentions, and as he first noticed the lack of an M1216 hanging from his shoulder, Jack's eyes began darting about, looking for any kind of defense he could mount. The first thing he spotted was his missing shotgun, lying on the ground just too far away to reach before Trixie could react. The second thing was the wreckage of his Osprey, which was beyond salvage but not totally destroyed. Some pieces were still relatively intact, and one of those pieces was a 40mm turret sticking out of the side (formerly belly) of the craft. Panickedly, Jack pulled out his phone and swiped through various control menus. Dammit, this is taking too long! It's just taking manual control of a vehicle turret, it should be easy!
Eventually (as it seemed to Jack), his screen shifted to a camera-view, looking down the barrel of the BOFORS cannon. He locked his thumb against the right side of the screen, and slowly the turret began to rotate. As soon as Trixie was visible onscreen, he tapped on her, and the gun took precise aim. With assured relief, Jack hit the "fire" button...
...And nothing. The cannon had fired, he heard it go off, but there was no contact, no impact, no explosion, not even against a shield. Instead, as he looked back to Trixie, he noticed a small metal cylinder hovering next to her head, surrounded in the blood-red glow of Alicorn Amulet magic. She had caught the bullet shell. She actually caught the God-damned shell. Stunned with astonishment, Jack regained his focus, only to be denied as the gun's cycling action delayed a follow-up shot. It was plenty of time, though, for Trixie to magically grab hold of the barrel and twist it into a loop. Throwing the shell backward to explode nowhere in particular, she loosed an unapologetically-cliche maniacal laugh, while Jack swore in frustration. There went that defense.
Desperately, Jack looked back to his phone and flipped through screen after screen to find any active assets he had left. Everything he could come up with seemed to be a dead end. It would take too long to scramble anything from his Everfree base, and anything in-area was either knocked out of commission in the crash or of little tactical value. But little value was value all the same, and right now that was all Jack had. Time to get creative. As Trixie drew ever-closer, he took a calming series of deep breaths, then set his fingers in motion as fast as they could tap. What he was doing was unconventional to say the least, so much so that he would have to write a few of the commands from scratch. By the time he was ready to execute, Trixie was almost on top of him, and his phone was starting to lag from the strain he was putting on its capabilities. Backpedaling across the ground to buy time, he thrust his phone into the air as he repeatedly hit the "execute" button, like some defective TV remote.
"Technological trickery won't save you this time, human!"
"Mmm, you're probably right, I don't guess it will."
"The Great and Powerful what?" Shocked by her enemy's sudden acquiescence, Trixie stopped in her tracks, and the glow of magic faded. "You agree with me?"
"Well, sure," Jack replied, trying to sound as calm and conversational as possible. "I mean, look, you took down my most powerful weapon with one shot, after withstanding literally everything it could hit you with. I don't have anything else that could hope to match up to that power."
"So are you saying that...?"
"Yes, I'm a good enough man to know when I'm beaten. Congratulations, you're just too much for me." Jack got up on his knees, then held his arms out theatrically. "I surrender!"
This flustered Trixie quite a bit. "Well then, um, I... The Great and Powerful Trixie will now..." She was so flustered, in fact, that as she tried to figure out what to do next, she failed to notice the steadily growing whirr of small rotorblades. This error cost her dearly, as a small, unarmed surveillance quadrotor plowed into her side at full speed, sending her reeling. Jack immediately brought a foot up and planted it on the ground, then threw himself toward his M1216. By the time Trixie had recovered, Jack was already up on his feet, gun trained on her. Wasting no more time with words, he squeezed off a shot, and Trixie felt the hit of a dart sticking itself to her neck. More specifically, sticking itself to the Alicorn Amulet.
What followed was very unpleasant to watch, but even worse to experience. A jarring degree of voltage shot through the metal choker and straight into Trixie's body, setting off every pain receptor she had. Mounting any sort of magical defense would require focus, and that was one thing this Taser dart would not let her have. Unflinchingly, Jack fired again, sticking the Amulet with another shell and doubling the electrical power.
"Take it off, Trixie! It's the only way to stop the discharge!"
Her response was little more than a scream, the furthest thing from intelligible speech. Jack answered it wordlessly, shooting another Taser dart into the Amulet pitilessly. But to his surprise, Twilight appeared at his side, scratched and bruised but otherwise in good condition.
"Jack, what just hap..." She then finally appreciated the immediate situation, as Trixie's pure rage and anguish caused random sparks of red-and-light-blue magic to join the ever-shifting web of electrical bolts surrounding her. "What are you doing to her?!"
"What I have to. I gave her one chance to give it up, and you saw what she did. Now I'm taking that amulet from her, one way or another."
"But how do you know this won't kill her?"
Jack thought for a brief moment, then decided to give her the truth. "I don't. I really have no idea how much voltage it takes to kill a pony, and her having the Alicorn Amulet throws another random element into the mix. But I have one shot left, and if she doesn't give up the amulet..."
"You can't! She'll die!"
"...she'll get what she asked for and what she earned. I gave her the chance to stand down, Twilight, you saw it. She brought all of this on herself. Now then..."
"No!"
But before Jack had the chance to take a final shot, the light show and screaming stopped, and Trixie collapsed onto her side, immobile and unconscious. Breaking his firing stance, he ran over to her body, Twilight close behind. Almost in response, the Alicorn Amulet unfastened itself and popped off Trixie's neck, three custom-made shotgun shells still jutting out of it. "Careful, it still has voltage going through it," Jack warned Twilight.
"Is she...?"
"Let's see." Jack stuck out two fingers and began to feel around Trixie's neck, then found a spot, settled on it and tried to take a pulse. What he felt was very hard to interpret. "She still has a pulse, but it's erratic and unstable. We need to act fast."
He felt across her chest like he had her neck, finding a spot and marking it in his mind. "Alright, Twilight, listen carefully, I'm gonna need your help here. I'm going to shoot Trixie with my last electroshock dart, as close as I can get to her heart. When the shot hits, I need you to count to two, then pull it off magically. Then, when I tell you, stick it back in the same spot, count to two, and pull it back again. It may take three or four shocks to get a result. There may be some resistance when you try to remove it, but just rip hard and fast."
"Okay, I see where you're going. But what if your electric dart thing isn't strong enough, or it's too strong? There's no way it's as smart as an AED machine!"
"Fair point, but right now I think this is our only option. Let's do what we can and hope for the best. Ready?"
Twilight sighed with resigned agreement. "Ready." Jack took aim with his shotgun, shooting almost point-blank at Trixie's chest. "In 3, 2, 1, fire!" The M1216 went off with the usual smoke and noise, unaware that it was now working to save a life instead of take one. "One Manehatten, two Manehatten," Twilight counted aloud, before yanking the dart free and holding it aloft. Jack tossed away his gun and bent down to take another pulse. "No good, hit her again." Twilight stuck Trixie with the dart for another two-count, then removed it. Jack checked again, only to get the same result. "Again." Both repeated the process, with frustratingly similar results.
"Damn, there can't be that much juice left. This time, give it to her in shorter intervals: one second on, one second off. Four times, then we'll check again."
"Right. One on, one off, four times." Twilight pressed the shock dart back into Trixie with diminished enthusiasm, but kept a very reliable count as she withdrew and replaced it. One after the other, Jack could barely hear the sizzle of electricity as it surged into his patient, and by the last time there was almost no sound at all. "Dammit, Trixie, don't give out on me!" As the final surge went through, he brushed away the shell and dug his hand into her neck. Through the rush of his own adrenaline-soaked blood, he could barely feel a thing, but as his nerves steadied there it was: a steady pulse, weak but reliable. Jack fell on his back, laughing with relief through exhausted breaths.
"We did it, Twilight. We beat her, then we saved her... Good day's work."
And at that moment, a small filly poked her head up over the crates she had been hiding behind, and declared "Awesome!"
As Trixie was loaded into an ambulance cart, Jack, Twilight, and now a little fan-filly called Scootaloo watched Ponyville slowly come out of hiding.
"And so it was about one part science, two parts luck. If the Amulet couldn't be removed unless Trixie wanted to take it off, I reasoned it was somehow interfacing with her brain. Since the brain runs on electrical impulses between neurons, it made sense that overloading the Amulet with electricity would disconnect or at least weaken that interface. And when Trixie was shocked into unconsciousness, her brain basically went into standby, so there was no willpower to keep the Amulet for it to reference. Lacking that, it came loose, like it was attached to something that couldn't think at all."
"I couldn't understand half those words, but that was still one of the most awesomest things I've ever seen in my life!"
"I could understand all those words, and I will admit it was a clever strategy. But Jack, did you even think about the risks to Trixie?"
Sensing the impending tense conversation, Jack sighed nervously, then prepared to confront a moment he knew was coming from Day 1.
"Hey kid, I appreciate the praise, but Twilight and I need to have some grown-up talk. Think you could, uh... go find Rainbow Dash and hang with her?"
"Oh yeah, where is Rainbow Dash? Why wasn't she fighting Trixie by your side? That would've been something..."
Scootaloo happily trotted off, the potential awkwardness having gone right over her head. That minor issue dealt with, Jack turned back to Twilight.
"Yes, Twilight, I did think about what could've happened to Trixie. I knew there was a chance the voltage could've been too much for her, just like I knew there was a chance she wouldn't be able to withstand my Osprey's firepower and it would've torn her apart. But you heard me, I gave her a chance to stand down. I warned her that the gloves were coming off, and she kept pressing."
"But just because she won't give up doesn't mean we should try to kill her!"
Jack took a knee, hoping to end this debate before it really began.
"Listen, I know that intentionally killing other ponies isn't a concept that comes up a lot in Equestria; that's just how this world works. But have you ever thought about just how lucky you've been up to now? What if Discord decided he wanted you out of the way for good instead of just trapped or corrupted? What if Nightmare Moon had attacked you with all her magical power before you even discovered the Elements of Harmony? You may not have noticed, but you and your friends face very real threats every time you go on an adventure."
Twilight admitted to herself that she had never really thought too hard about how powerful and dangerous her enemies actually were.
"Like I said, you've been lucky. But you saw yourself how much power Trixie had at her disposal. Even if it was just through carelessness and not malice, she could've very easily killed you. I wasn't willing to risk that. So I'm sorry if my methods seemed extreme, but it's only because I wanted to do everything I could to keep my friends safe from my enemies. You over them, every time."
Twilight opened her mouth, but no words came to her; suddenly, what Jack was saying made a lot of sense.
"Oh my Celestia, you're right. We've been brushing with death almost every day since the six of us met, and we never even realized it! What if..."
Jack knew he had killed the argument, but the conversation wasn't over. "Stop right there. That's a dangerous game to play, second-guessing yourself. You never know when to stop, believe me. Now, I'm not saying you need to start carrying weapons or anything; your methods are pretty reliable as is, and there's no reason to change. But I want you to know that if it ever seems like I'm taking things too far, it's only because I think the situation warrants it. I just need you to trust me and trust my judgement. Can you do that for me?"
Pondering for a moment, Twilight hit a snag. Something Jack had said didn't sit right with her. It was something small, and she couldn't say why, but there was just enough unease to make her think twice. She turned his words over once or twice, convinced herself that whatever it was was unimportant, and resolved not to let such a tiny misgiving affect their friendship. "I'm sure I can."
Jack wrapped his arm around her and they shared a moment's embrace. "Great. Now then, we should probably start work on cleaning all this up."
"Yeah. Speaking of which, did you get the Alicorn Amulet? I was looking for it on the ground after the ambulance came for Trixie, but I haven't been able to find it."
"I got it, don't worry. I can store it at my place, behind every layer of security system I can think of. It'll be safe there."
"Good plan. And I think I have one of my own for cleaning up what's left of your jet-helicopter-thing."
"Twilight, I'll worry about the Osprey, you take care of the bigger problem."
Twilight looked around with alarm. "What bigger problem?"
Jack pointed upward, to the mile or so of jagged edges suspended above Ponyville. "What's left of that fishbowl."
Though the Osprey's telecom systems had gone offline with the rest of its computer upon its uncontrolled flight into terrain, if it was still operating, it would've picked up the very angry tight-lipped cries of one still-mouthless Pinkie Pie, yelling into her sound system like it would make some kind of difference.
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What is this a crossover of?
5342311 Next story is going to have some heavy Doctor Who crossing-over. The Doctor already made an appearance in Chaotic New World Pt. 3, but I always imagined the larger story as involving crossover characters, so I went ahead and marked it as crossover when I made it. I just didn't want to start too early with the crossovers so I could have a chance to develop my OC first.