War Machine of Doom

by lolitsme

Chapter 2: I didn't, until just now.

Chapter Two: The Initiation of Conflict by the Antagonizing Party who Appears to Have the Clear Advantage and the Subsequent Loss of Hope by the Protagonist(s) and Their Entourage of Minor Supporting Characters due to a Lack of Methods to Respond to the Offending Act of the Antagonist with Brute Force or Otherwise Resolve the Conflict Peacefully

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The large ball of mostly hydrogen plasma in the sky was still emitting large amounts of photons onto the land of Equestria, mostly because it was still around the halfway point in the twenty-four hour unit of time known as a day when the Great and Powerful Trixie rode into the town of Ponyville in her gigantic robotic model of a pony that was not to scale, actually a few times larger than an average pony. In fact, the robot was so large that if one uncoiled and lined all of the wires inside it end to end, it would circle the land of Equestria more than thirty four times, and if one were to coil them back into a large ball, it would be approximately the size of an extremely large pony rolled up into a ball, about the size of the robot pony that the Great and Powerful Trixie was riding in.

And so the giant automaton and Trixie made their way into the main central meeting location of the town of Ponyville, colloquially referred to as the "town square" even though it was more of a circle than a square. A certain pink pony with a certain flower as her cutie mark screamed in horror immediately before fainting in shock.

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In a location that was most definitely not the town square, a sizeable gathering of ponies were present at the Ponyville Golden Oaks Books and Branches Library, one of which was Ponyville's resident librarian (of course), Twilight Sparkle. The other ponies, in no particular order (especially not alphabetical) were Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle. They were gathered in the library built from a tree to celebrate a certain momentous occasion, one so earthshakingly important that Ponyville's premier pink party pony with preternatural predictive powers felt it necessary to throw a party in celebration. The party was aptly titled "No-houses-destroyed-in-Ponyville-for-a-week-party", in celebration of the incredibly rare event that no houses in Ponyville had been destroyed within the time frame of the past one hundred and sixty eight hours.

As a result of this particular party, Pinkie Pie had felt it necessary to decorate the library, as she would for any other party she threw. Along the walls and floors were a variety of decorations added specifically for a party, in accordance with the usual conventions of a Pinkie Pie party. These decorations included, but were not limited to, mostly spherical rubber objects filled with a lighter-than-air gaseous fluid, thin long strips of paper twirled a non-zero number of times, a long white piece of fabric with (most of) the title of the party written in legible but still poor hoofwriting in blood red ink. The colour of the rubber flotation devices varied from pink to blue to yellow to several other hues of colour in between the three mentioned colours. The strips of paper also had very varied colours, including vermillion, celadon, scarlet, chartreuse (despite the protests of the white fashionista pony who was Pinkie's friend also), lavender, mauve, and brown.

Suddenly, one of the many windows in the library shattered into exactly seventy pieces, which would have given the pony responsible, likely Trixie, seventy years of bad luck had the glass been part of a mirror instead of a window. The sound of the window breaking into seventy pieces was greatly overshadowed by the resulting thud of what sounded like a large metallic object making contact with the ground in a violent manner. All nine of the candy-coloured equine lifeforms gathered and exited through the main entrance of the library to see what was the cause of such a large commotion.

Upon seeing the purple pony who is also a librarian that she wished to revenge, the Great and Powerful Trixie's eyes lit up in anticipation. Correspondingly, some red lights in the eye-analogue of the giant equine-shaped robot lit up to notify her of the presence of the previously mentioned purple librarian pony. "Twilight Sparkle!" she shouted with authority, though nopony other than herself heard much of anything because Trixie was still inside the cockpit of the giant metallic robot machine in the shape of a pony. She cursed a series of increasingly colourful words as she fumbled and bumbled with the controls until she found the one for the microphone activation sequence. As she pressed the button, several panels on the mouth-analogue of the giant robot spinned around, revealing similarly giant speakers (capable of producing sounds up to 193 dB, at which point the atmospheric pressure becomes a limiting factor). She repeated her statement of her rival's name. "Twilight Sparkle! I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, have tolerated your continued and prolonged harassment and embarrassment for far too long! Trixie challenges you to a duel, in single combat, and the loser of this duel will leave Ponyville --"

At this, Pinkie Pie, Ponyville's premier pink party pony with preternatural predictive powers, perplexingly and paradoxically popped into the periwinkle pony's (Pinkie's prospective patsy) periphery to shout "FOREVER!" in her trademark menacing tone. Trixie, for her part, was quite obviously surprised and scowled menacingly in a feeble attempt to reassemble her facade of bravado. Pinkie Pie shortly reappeared next to her friends, looking on at the robot with an expression of awe that suggested she'd stayed in the same spot for the past sixty seconds or so just like the others.

Trixie finally composed herself enough to continue with her tirade. "Yes, exactly what she said. The loser of the duel will be exiled from Ponyville, forever!" This time, Trixie was ready for the not as surprising interruption from Pinkie Pie, and was able to complete her sentence despite her accompaniment.

Silence reigned in the wake of her words. It was as if there was a zone about forty metres around where suddenly the personification of silence decided "oh, why not" and decided to annex the land from Equestria. Naturally, due to the way silence operates, the celestial diarchs, rulers of the land of Equestria were completely unaware of the transgression that silence had made. Were they to be aware of the impunity with which silence had attacked, they might have retaliated accordingly with judicious application of the Royal Canterlot Voice, which would effectively disperse silence for the next few minutes afterward due to ringing ears.

Finally, after an academy-record-breaking six minutes, the tyranny of silence was overthrown. Twilight Sparkle shook her head to clear it and spoke up. All she managed was a single word, and yet with that one word she managed to say all that was on her mind: "WHAT?"

"You heard what Trixie said perfectly well, Twilight. Unless you've become hard of hearing as of late?" Trixie snapped in a snippy sort of way.

Twilight shook her head again as if it might change the circumstances under which she'd meet Trixie once more. "A duel?" she said tentatively, "No, no, no, no! This isn't the way it's supposed to have turned out! We were supposed to meet at a nice restaurant, or have a candlelit dinner, not confront each other for a high-stakes conflict with irreversible consequences!" Twilight took a deep breath in and was about to continue her rant (she was only about seven percent done) when Trixie cut her off.

"So do you, Twilight Sparkle, forfeit the duel? That's all I care about really, since I am extremely monodimensional and singularly motivated by the prospect of your defeat or embarrassment at my hooves," Trixie said, ignoring the majority of what the purple librarian pony said.

"I love you Trixie, don't you see?!" proclaimed Twilight in an extremely dramatic manner that is so dramatic it is incapable of being documented with mere words.

Pinkie Pie's eyes widened and she gasped one of her trademark gasps which almost inflated her into a round pink balloon with legs. Before she's able to express her surprise in another fashion, though, she remembers something critical to her. "Wait, Trixie, did you break houses on your way here?!" she asked menacingly.

"Huh?" said Trixie, who wasn't capable of parsing her speech at that fast of a rate.

"I said, did. You. Break. Houses. On. Your. Way. Here?!" repeated Pinkie Pie, putting just the right amount of emphasis on each of her words and advancing on the giant robot containing Trixie.

"Of course Trixie did, how else do you imbeciles think I got this giant robot pony, which Trixie made entirely herself, Trixie might add, in front of the Ponyville library? This robot is bigger than the puny dirt roads you have in a backwater hick-town like this!" she responded, as if the fact was clear as a particularly clear day.

Pinkie Pie sighed. "So much for my no-houses-destroyed-in-Ponyville-for-a-week-party'. Well, there's always next time. Right, everypony?" Her head lowered dejectedly.

"Now is not the time for that, Pinkie Pie! I'm kind of busy declaring my love for Trixie here!" Twilight said, mildly aggravated that her metaphorical thunder was being stolen.

"Wait, I've got an idea! We can make the party a Twilight-is-finally-proclaiming-her-love-for-Trixie-that-she's-had-for-years-party! This'll be great! Suddenly, for no reason other than because Pinkie Pie, the red writing on the white banner switched from "No-houses-destroyed-in-Ponyville-for-a-we" to "Twilight-is-finally-proclaiming-her-love-". Despite her strange abilities, the new writing wasn't any smaller than it originally was, resulting in the longer new party name being even more cut off than the original was. One would think that Ponyville would have gotten better at the whole "fitting it all in" thing by now, but apparently Pinkie Pie keeps banners hidden all around Ponyville that are deliberately too short "in case of unintentional inadvertent innuendo emergency".

"Oh will you shut your trap for once?" asked the Great and Powerful Trixie, extremely aggravated at how long her victory over Twilight Sparkle(which was supposed to be quick and painless for all parties involved, save Pinkie's) was taking. "Now just where did you get the idea that a pony of the Great and Powerful Trixie's status," she continued, throwing a multicoloured pyrotechnic display into the air above her giant robot, "would harbour any sort of affection for a disdainful pony like you?" She raised her nose upon saying the last word for extreme emphasis.

"I - I thought that you might have wanted to be special someponies, but I see how it is!" Twilight started to cry, and shook her head emotionally. "I guess I'll leave Ponyville forever so you don't ever have to see me again," she added before running off with a velocity of thirty-two feet per second north.

Rainbow Dash, finally taking the conversation by its metaphorical reins, piped up and said "Oh no you didn't! You didn't just make Twilight cry, did you? Because around these parts, there's a pretty severe penalty for doing that without a good reason, and you definitely don't have one, you jerk!" She was about to fly up towards the face-analogue of the giant robot pony head was to some degree interrupted when her tail was grabbed by Applejack's mouth.

"Ah get that you're a mite angry at Trixie, Rainbow Dash, but don't ya think we gotta help Twi first?" she suggested suggestively.

Rainbow Dash was about to retort but then deflated a bit before realizing that yes, Twilight Sparkle was higher on the imaginary priority list than showing up Trixie for being extremely rude. She waited only a small amount of time, around a second or two, resulting in a total delay of fifty-seven seconds between Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash's departures, before shooting off at a velocity of thirty seven metres per second north-northwest. The time at which Twilight and Rainbow would meet up is left as an exercise to the reader, given that Rainbow Dash can spot Twilight Sparkle from four kilometres without obstructions.

Inexplicably, none of Twilight's other friends (including, but not limited to, Fluttershy, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, possibly Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and all of her other friends that weren't present to witness what had just happened) felt the need to go look for her, probably because they knew Rainbow Dash was on the case already and she was figuratively the fastest pegasus alive. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on the many possible points of view that one can take in a story like this), they were present to witness the first (and last) hostile takeover of Ponyville by way of embarrassment and bravado.

In the wake of her victory, Trixie found it very appropriate to start laughing maniacally. Her laughs started off fairly quietly, as the realization that she had actually defeated Twilight Sparkle was just starting to sink in. Just as her laughter started to pick up, however, she realized she was not being dramatic enough and sheepishly stopped momentarily to lower the light blue screen keeping her safe. Now safe to laugh at her heart's content about her glorious and hard-won victory, the volume of her laughs started at 60dB and increased quadratically for six seconds before peaking at its maximum volume. The exact loudness of Trixie is again left as an exercise to the reader.

Once she was finished laughing, she got up off of the floor of the cockpit of the giant robot in the shape of a pony that she had commissioned from the dogs named for a usually white transparent crystal made of covalently bonded carbon and stood majestically in a gentle breeze she summoned that made her cape billow beautifully in the wind. "Now that I have defeated Twilight Sparkle in single combat, Ponyville will be mine to rule --"

"FOREVER!"

"Shut up, Pinkie Pie!" everypony else shouted.