Never the Final Word (Vol. 2)

by FanOfMostEverything

Kris Overstreet's Flavor of War (Rambling Writer's "How the Tantabus Parses Sleep")

Author's Note:

[Comedy][World Building]

The following is a riff inspired by Rambling Writer's How the Tantabus Parses Sleep. (See previous chapter; story is now 146,612 words at time of publishing.)

HOW THE AUDIENCE PARSED JOKES: Someone asked why Twilight's castle had an armory. Someone else noted that a castle without an armory isn't suited for the main purpose of castles, namely defense. And that led to, well...

The Royal Palace at Canterlot had an armory. Almost all castles do. After all, the whole point of a castle is to fend off attackers. A castle without an armory isn't much of a castle at all.

Unfortunately for those charged with defending the heart of the realm from hypothetical barbarian marauders and actual horrific monstrosities, Canterlot happened to be ruled by a mare with a sweet tooth. And although rumor amplified her appetite beyond all reality, it had a rather large nugget of truth at the core. Whether it was by accident or by centuries of careful guidance, in the thousandth year of Celestia's solo reign, the preferred ammunition for ranged weapons was sugary baked goods. The cutting edge in artillery technology had turned out to be a cake knife.

As a result, the Equestrian Army's garrison at Canterlot found itself suffering from what politicians of another world would call a "missile deficit."

Comments

[Georg]

Luna strolled down the line of empty storage rooms with her sister meekly walking beside her. There was a silence of a sort, since the sound of eight alicorn shoes on concrete ensured that a complete silence was out of the question, but there was an unspoken question that hung heavy over the sisters like a soggy thundercloud.

"The pieapults," put forward Luna, "are all gone? What will our nation use to defend against any griffon uprisings?"

"The Strategic Pie Limitation Apple Treaty made that a fairly low probability, dearest sister," said Celestia with a quick lick of her lips. "The party celebrating the signature of the treaty was epic. We ate all the pies around the bonfire," she added quickly.

Luna took a quick look inside a nearby empty freezer, only to have Celestia quickly speak before being prodded again. "SPLAT II took care of the Ice Cream Ballistic Missile stores we had to defend against the Yak kingdoms. That led to the Decade of Peace. And ice cream headaches."

"So," considered Luna after walking along several other empty storerooms, "in the event of hostilities against a dread foe, we have nothing at all to use as a ranged weapon of any type."

Celestia perked up at that. "Oh, nothing public. We do have one specific weapon that we are keeping under a cloak of extreme secrecy. During a recent field test, it has proven devastating against even the most powerful foe. I assure you, although Equestria may appear defenseless beyond a spearpoint, production of this weapon has progressed to double our national stockpile, possibly even triple it if a certain letter I mailed just this morning..."

---

Green Grass stared at the letter in mixed horror and fascination. It made sense, in an alicorn way, but explaining it to Twilight could go so many shades of wrong. The small paragraph that Shining Armor had added to Celestia's letter helped, and the teacher inside of him just had to wonder if it would actually work now that the concept had been raised. An experiment to test the hypothesis was in order, after all.

"What is it, dear?" called out Twilight Sparkle from the shower. "I thought I heard a letter arrive."

"Just junk mail, dear," he called back as he tossed the letter into the fireplace and watched it burn. "Hey, I was wondering. Your brother told me about a new launching technique for your flying, so would you like to go outside of town--" away from anything breakable "--and give it a try this morning?"

EMartial Bliss

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Random

Shining Armor learns the most important tactical lesson of his life.

• OC
• Shining Armor

Skywriter · 1.5k words  ·  2,877  36 · 33k views