Chapter Twenty-Three: Fowled Foreign Relations
The Castle of Friendship
12/26/3
9:12 A.M.
Twilight looked down at the Cutie Map with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. The two pranksters were once again being called to Griffonstone.
“I wonder what sort of problem Gilda’s having?” Rainbow asked aloud.
“Well, we’re not going to find out just standing around!” Pinkie replied cheerfully. “Come on. Dashie! I bet she can’t wait to see us again!”
Griffonstone
3:47 P.M.
The two ponies stared up in horror at the dark walls being raised around the city. Overhead, griffons patrolled the sky. Most were dressed in gold and carried spears, but some wore armor that was the same gray metal as the walls and gripped blasters in their talons. On one completed tower, a human could be seen directing a team of griffons in the installation of a weapons emplacement.
“Hey! You ponies aren’t welcome here!” Several of the griffons flew down and leveled their weapons and Rainbow and Pinkie.
“Since when?!” Rainbow Dash shot back. “And what are all these humans doing here?”
“Back off, colors. We don’t have to answer to you. Run on back to Equestria and tell your princesses that the Griffon Kingdom’s back, and we’re not going away again anytime soon.”
“Hang on,” another griffon interjected. “I recognize these two. They’re Gilda’s ‘friends.’”
“Oh, yeah!” The first griffon stepped aside to open the path to the gate. “King Gruff wanted to talk to you if you showed up.”
“King Gruff?” Rainbow and Pinkie chorused.
“You deaf? Yeah, I said ‘king.’ Come on, ponies. We’re taking you to the palace.”
As they were escorted through the city, the ponies saw that it was in the process of being restored. The rubbish had been cleared out of the streets, which were repaved with new cobbles. Many of the dilapidated buildings had been torn down and half-rebuilt. Throughout the city, uniformed humans worked alongside griffons to move blocks of stone and thatch roofs. The griffons who weren’t involved in the construction walked and flew around with their heads held high and lofty expressions on their faces. Rainbow, Pinkie, and the guards came to a stop at the center of the huge tree. Once more, the tower of Griffonstone Castle dominated the city.
“Wait here, ponies,” the leader of the guards commanded, then went inside. The two looked around with awe. Aside from the durasteel, blasters, and turbolaser towers, they were finally seeing what Griffonstone looked like during the height of its power. After about a minute, the guard came back out. “Alright. King Gruff will see you now. Make sure that you treat him with the respect the king of the griffons deserves.” They made their way up to the castle’s throne room, and gasped at what they saw. Gruff was sitting on the throne as expected, a golden sash across his chest and a crown on his head instead of his usual fez. But what truly took their breath away was what was sitting on the alter in front of the throne.
“The Idol of Boreas,” Rainbow whispered.
“Indeed.” A human walked up beside Gruff. “Recovered from the very bottom of the Abysmal Abyss as our gift to the esteemed griffons.”
“Yeah, right. It’s a fake, isn’t it? There’s no way you could find it all the way down there. Not in a million years!”
“Yeah!” Pinkie agreed. “I bet it’s made out of papier-mâché! Here, I’ll prove it!” She started to move towards it, but got immediately tackled by three guards.
“That idol will not be touched by any species except griffons ever again!” Gruff proclaimed in the loudest shout his gravelly voice could make. “I tested it myself. It’s real. Lieutenant Ilo and his humans have helped us more in less than a week than you ponies have in centuries.”
“You let Pinkie go!” Rainbow took a threatening step towards the elderly griffon, and the rest of the guards tensed.
“Let her up, Grampa.”
Rainbow whirled around, both surprised and relieved. “Gilda!”
Gruff scowled. “I told you to stay in your room.”
“You don’t want me to challenge you for that throne, do you?”
The griffon king muttered to himself, but conceded. “Guards! Let her up.”
The griffons got off Pinkie, and she bounced to her hooves. “I don’t get it,” she said. “How could you find the idol all the way at the bottom of that canyon? It’s really deep. Like, really, really deep.”
The human smiled. “It’s not so hard when you have the proper scanning equipment.”
“But what about the wind?” Rainbow wanted to know.
“If you think this place has the most extreme weather in the galaxy, you’re crazy. That canyon’s nothing compared to Sevarcos. Trust me, the Imperial Exploration Corps is quite well equipped to handle anything this planet has to throw at us.”
“Gilda… how could this happen? I thought you were going to spread friendship to Griffonstone!”
“I was! But that sort of thing doesn’t happen overnight! There’s just one of me. It takes some time, and –”
“And we gave them actual opportunity, not just empty platitudes,” the human interrupted. “Friendship’s all well and good – it’s a great thing, in fact. But you can’t build a functioning nation on goodwill alone. And that’s not what your ‘help’ was actually all about, was it? You wanted to turn Griffonstone into a copy of Equestria, engage in a little cultural imperialism in order to get a new, subservient ally.”
“What?!” Rainbow couldn’t believe her ears. “No! That’s not true at all! That’s what you’re doing!”
“Oh, really? Well, if we are, we’re being a lot nicer about it than you were. Now, I’m no political scientist, but I don’t think it’s really possible for a ruler to simply not notice the total collapse of her nation’s biggest rival. If Celestia actually cared about the griffons, she would’ve sent them some sort of aid as soon as the idol was stolen. But she didn’t. Apparently, you ponies didn’t even know about the griffons’ misfortune, which I find rather hard to believe. But let’s give you the benefit of the doubt. You really didn’t know, somehow. It’s been over a year since your last visit. I’m not seeing any Equestrian money and supplies flowing in to help the griffons rebuild. Nope, just a load of bantha poodoo about how ‘the magic of friendship’ will fix everything.”
“But it does!” Pinkie exclaimed. “I don’t remember any problem that couldn’t be solved by somepony being a better friend to somepony else.”
“If that was the case, there wouldn’t be war, or murder, or rape, or organized crime.”
“They wouldn’t exist if the ponies who did them were more friendly to everypony else!”
“Enough!” Gruff snapped. “I didn’t let you come here so you could say a bunch of nonsense about friendship. I did it so you could tell your princesses exactly what’s happened. We have the Idol of Boreas back, the Griffon Kingdom is on the rise again, and we won’t be playing second fiddle to Equestria this time. Guards! Take my granddaughter back to her room and throw these ponies out of Griffonstone!”
“Don’t worry, loser,” Gilda said as the guards surrounded them. “I’m not giving up this easy. I’ll spread friendship to everygriffon, you’ll see.”
“I know,” Rainbow replied with a grin. “You’re just too bucking stubborn not to.”
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God I hate that line. "Spread friendship" If you're incapable in making friends then you have a serious fucking problem.
7296362 Would Spreading Friendship be similar to spreading butter?
>>Tathem_Relag But yeah, the whole spreading friendship crap is overrated anyway. I'm all for the Imperials this time. There have been a few instances in which I've questioned certain parts of the story, like the sheer amounts of power the Princesses have. If their magic is really just the Force, I couldn't see them just F-ing up all of the Ties and taking hits from a Star Destroyer. Did you specify what kind of Star Star destroyer(s) they have, or is it safe to asume its just your typical Imperial class SD?
And the Clone thing... That was dark and I'm with the Clones on their choices there. But that they were swatted down like flies pissed me off.
Love the story though. Kerp tgose updates coming.
7296430
Trust me, the sorts of things that true masters of the Force can do are really quite absurd. What the Princesses are doing is well within the realm of possibility.
As for the composition of the Imperial forces:
The Navy squadron consists of four Vindicator-class heavy cruisers and their associated fighter wings as the heaviest hitters, two Acclamator-class assault ships serving as troop transports, two Strike-class medium cruisers modified with improved sensors to be scout ships, and four Carrack-class light cruisers for anti-fighter support.
I won't go into much detail about the Army force, but it's a fairly standard line corps operating primarily out of an IM-455 modular garrison, though at this point the stormtrooper battalion's been wiped out and not yet replaced.
7296508 Hi, Here is A Private Messege I just Sent to You Today Celebrating the Announcement of Star wars Battlefront 2 for 2017...http://www.fimfiction.net/manage_user/messages/9021707
7300981 well it better be better than that crap they made before that game was not star wars battlefront you wants Battlefront go play the original 2 they were golden specially for their time