The Arising Cartoon Pony

by Darkonshadows

Bugging Boarders

Derpy flew down the hallway and thought about charging the last shot on her plasma shotgun. So far she didn’t know how to put more ammo in it, just she didn’t have any more after one last shot. She flew around a corner and suddenly ducked behind a barricade to hear a squealing sound; looking to her left she saw a yellow ant shaking in fear. Carefully Derpy reached up and started to slowly rub its antenna with her left hoof while letting her right go slightly limp as it held the plasma shotgun. She was managed to calm it down with gentle words long enough to open its eyes.

“Look everything will be alright ant… guy… thing, do you know where I can find some more ammo? My plasma shotgun is kind of running on empty and I don’t want to face more of those things without a weapon.” Well things had went particularly well with Honey B. negotiating a interesting deal with the Mizar forces aboard the S.S. Anubis. Things kind of went south not for the two who were surrounded by gun happy bipedal ants and beetles, but because the S.S. Anubis was under attack by an entirely, if possibly related, different race of bugs.

The yellow ant’s antenna perked up even if its knees were still chattering together, it pointed over to a hexagonal box sitting there on the ground. Derpy looked confusedly at the box and quickly flew over to it making sure that none of the scary invaders were coming down the hall. As soon as she touched the box it disappeared and her gun made a strange clicking sound, it was suddenly fully loaded. Blinking confusedly she looked back to the ant that was still cowering behind the barricade and staring down the hallway. It was holding a round object in its hands and anxiously fumbling with it, the ant was what was known as a Coward Drone by Jet Force Gemini terminology and its fear was palpable given how visible it was.

Derpy aimed her shotgun down the corridor and waited for one of those monstrosities that boarded the ship to come around the corner, they had stopped up the S. S. Anubis’s main engine somehow and were quickly trying to infest every corner of the level. What the enemy creatures weren’t counting on was how quickly the Mizar Ants and the big Mizar Beetle things reacted to the threat, not to mention how much of a fight they were willing to put up to stop the invading creatures. There were also these little mechanical flying things successfully holding the bridge and Derpy was helping out those who were making way to the rear of the ship.

The enemy ships looks simple enough, large red triangular pyramid shaped like a large single pointy toe or foot without the leg and with two large horns sticking out the front of them denoting what gaming realm they came from, not to mention what the creatures looked like giving them an idea of what they were dealing with. (A larger biological version of a Drej fighter ship almost)

A large mantis creature turned the corner and aimed one of its pincers at them firing yellow beams of energy from it's tip. Derpy and the yellow ant ducked behind the barricade as the blasts splattered against it. Derpy was about to start charging her shotgun when the yellow ant stood and threw it’s grenade at the creature that was trying to intimidate them with a screech, cowards the yellow ants may be but they were great grenadiers. The screeching red mantis like creature with green eyes found itself swallowing a grenade and then gave a small screech of confusion before its innards were splattered everywhere to slowly dissolve into nothingness, just like almost any other video game monster that doesn’t leave a body behind.

So far it seemed like the invading force wanted to the take the S. S. Anubis intact so they at least weren’t trying to destruct parts of the Jet Force Gemini level by firing upon it from the outside. They did however manage to do something to the ships main engine and Derpy exclaimed that she’d take care of the problem before Honey could stop her to talk out a strategy. Now she was near the back of the ship getting closer to her objective of unclogging the problem before the rest of the enemy invaders could arrive and swamp them with numbers, so far their numbers were ineffective as anything other than stalling the onboard Mizar forces from clearing the problem out from the rear end of the ship. It was a lot safer traveling inside the ship then it was flying out into the void to personally get a look at the problem.

Derpy knew those enemy ships were armed with bigger laser weaponry and even she wasn’t that crazy, though she knew she could probably do it considering there was no need for protective atmospheric breathing gear in the Video Game version of space. She would head toward a hatch near the top back end of the ship if she needs to check the engines from the outside; otherwise she was checking it from the inside first. It couldn’t be more difficult then fixing the TARDIS. That old space and time traveling girl was Derpy’s friend even if she has went slightly crazy dropping her off in the video game realms and was talking of a strange time fluxing bird the last time she saw her. She just hoped the S.S. Anubis didn’t have a temporal drive in it or she might cause a teeny tiny little somewhat significant domino accident by happenstance of just being within a mile of one.

Derpy was lucky this ship wasn’t useful for time travel and was a cargo ship like it had always been. What she wasn’t lucky with was the fact that it was an unarmed cargo ship with mostly ground forces and a limited supply of automatic aerial mechanical drone defenses.

When one thinks of the Mizar forces of Jet Force Gemini one immediately thinks the words evil, then again that would be one who never finished the game at a hundred percent. These bugs were created with little more than means to an end and when the means are at an end, these Mizar guys were out of a job entirely. Sure they enjoyed the job while they had it and it was what they were programmed to do, in all basics it was to find an enemy and shoot in its general direction with varying amounts of accuracy. The Mizar Ant forces were surprisingly not very bad shots when they were really trying to stay alive and especially when they were being angry alongside territorial.

Derpy flew into the room and saw the four cylindrical generator things that were connected to the main engine, she was shortly followed by the cowardly yellow ant that was fighting its programming entirely by wanting to protect Derpy with their own body if need be. With an ample supply of grenades and a strong fight against its urges to stand in a corner or behind cover and cower, it strode on arming another grenade. As usual the yellow Mizar Ant threw away its gun at some point, but at least it had infinite grenades on hand. The pony was this ant’s leader now and this leader was worth respecting.

When Derpy saw them, she wondered if they were related to the Mizar Ants in any way shape or form. They were three giant green, not so bipedal, actual ants and they were currently trying to damage the rear ship generators and had most likely crawled in through a hole in the ceiling from the upper floors. They sporadically spat small beams of energy out of their mouths as they crawled along the walls and took nibbles at the generators with their mandibles not succeeding in piercing the armored covering quite yet. Video Game levels were made of some stern coding, but they could still be broken and smashed apart given enough outside influence and force.

Pulling the trigger on the shotgun, Derpy soon released it to let a fully charged bolo shaped blast of energy go at one of the green invaders heads and the entire thing blew apart with relative ease leaving nothing of its existence left behind. The yellow ant followed up by throwing a grenade onto the back of one of the ants trying to damage the ships generators, it shortly exploded everywhere before its parts evaporated in small clouds of miniature exploding fragments. The last one screeched and a bunch of two and a half foot tall flea like bugs started dropping into the room, followed by a wasp like creature along with more of those giant truly ant things. Neither Derpy nor the unnamed yellow Mizar Ant had any fast firing weapons to deal with this sort of problem.

The flea creatures started hopping towards them and the one flying one above menacingly glared at them and pointed its suddenly lit stinger at them. The gi-ants started moving to pick at the generators and in the next room was the engine that Derpy was going to get working again.

Derpy looked to the yellow Mizar Ant with a frown and its antenna drooped, this might be a bad situation and the yellow Mizar Ant silently wished it had its gun now. It wasn’t like Derpy or the Doctor hadn’t run into big bugs before; it was just that they had the ability to run away from them. In this situation she had to fight for survival as there weren’t many places to run to.

Meanwhile in another part of the ship entirely with Honey B. and a small gathering force of Mizar Ants to repel the boarders as the bridge was well secured, they were in the main hold area.

“Can you please tell me why we’re dealing with a bunch of Body Harvest enemies?” Honey was in the cargo ramp room. Apparently the energy field below the main cargo hangar had been shut down by the invaders allowing the bugs entrance through the large gaping hole in the bottom of the S.S. Anubis, so far they were holding them at the ramp and doing a successful job of it.

The large beetle gave off an incoherent squealing in answer, before a giant green wasp could fully manage to worm its way into the bay. Once it did, it flew up at them trying to avoid all the energy weapons fire coming from the blue ants hiding behind the boxes. It was summarily dropped from all the concentrated firing within seconds and its body fragments exploded violently as they slid down the moving ramp in this room.

“Yes, well, I certainly hope Derpy can clear up the problem at the very back of the ship or we’re all screwed. Now we must push and retake the main cargo hold and hangar, send some of your men up on the walkways to give us cover fire from above.” Honey quickly stood up and let off six rounds of rapid fire into a gaggle of flea like bugs hopping into the room. If she remembered right, the fleas from Body Harvest were explosively dangerous despite their size. She kind of wished Khronozooie was here, as that game realm had time travel in it and she might have known how to deal with these pests faster. “Oh, and tell your people to watch out for those small ones, they explode. As in kamikaze enemy explode.”

Back at the very back of the ship, Derpy flew out of the way of several yellow shots as they flew by her and she flipped around and released her plasma charge at the wasp sending crashing into the ground and near one of the four rear ship generators. The giant green ants finding Derpy to be a viable threat turned their mouths upwards and started shooting at her.

On the floor of the room the yellow Mizar Ant, was tossing grenades like they were made out of candy and even with the fact that one of the grenades it tossed happened to have a peppermint coating had nothing to do with the previous statement. It was dealing with the enemy fleas the best it could, thankfully its sixth sense about kamikaze enemy types kept it far away from these things and grateful for having sticky grenades as well. Not because some of them came with a pleasant smelling candy coating, that wasn’t the reason at all.

“Agh… my wing…” The Mizar Ant’s antenna perked up immediately and it turned to a downed Derpy who was bleeding on the floor and her left wing looked to have been shot clean through at the joint. It needed some Gemini Crystals and stat, not only that it also needed help as one of the ants jumped and slammed to the floor on top of her. The yellow Mizar Ant dared not to throw a grenade at the giant green ant when it could also hurt Derpy. It was actually strange for the yellow ant to see a creature actively bleeding and kind of scary.

Rolling onto her back, Derpy fired two quick uncharged burst pointlessly into the giant green ants face. It barely did anything as its mandibles were reared back to come down on her. The other giant green ants were starting to gather together to make a meal of her.

As the ant started to plunge it’s mandibles down on the helpless pony a blast ripped its way through the bugs head knocking it away from Derpy before it violently exploded into fragments. The other giant ants who had gathered together hadn’t been lucky to try and pick off Derpy as a grenade was flung amidst their group and blasted all three of them apart. The yellow Mizar Ant ran forward and shouldered a whining Derpy looking for the nearest Gemini Crystals wondering what had shot the giant green bug and stopped it from ripping Derpy apart. From the shadows of one of the generators stepped a brown Mizar Ant wearing some glossy green armor, the Ninja Drone had just saved Derpy’s life with a well placed shot.

It strolled on out and past the yellow ant carrying a bleeding Derpy toward the nearby purple crystals; the ant started placing accurate shots through the remaining flea’s taking them out. It squealed in an upbeat noise, pleased with itself that it managed to stop the influx of enemies from this portion of the ship. It turned and made its way over to the yellow Mizar Ant currently holding an armful of large purple crystals and it dropped one on Derpy causing her wing to slowly stitch itself back together, then a second and third for good measure to fully repair her wings.

Derpy stretched and flexed her wing and sat up, it wasn’t agonizingly painful to her anymore and it was completely good as new. Wiping the tears from her face and checking her ammo, Derpy was down to eleven shots and just flew over to another hexagonal ammo box to reload while the two ants conversed behind her.

“Derpy if you’re still alive to hear this we need the main engine fixed like yesterday… oh Rare… Scorpiosaur, everybody get down!” Hearing Honey’s frantic words over the intercom and a sudden really voracious screeching noise of a creature bigger than the ones they have dealt with so far was heard. There was a sudden sound of rapid firing and panic over the intercom before it cut out, Derpy’s ears wilted before they sprung up and she turned to the two Mizar Ants with a stern look on her face.

“You heard her, let’s get in the engine room stat.” Before any of them could all move to the door to the engine room two blue Mizar Ants, one had a strange metal shield, rushed into the rear generator room and spotted them. They quickly made their way over and pointed to the door to the engine room, Derpy nodded and charged up her shotgun. The blue Mizar Ant with a shield took up position in the doorway with Derpy squatting carefully right behind it. The other three Mizar Ants took up firing and throwing positions around the door way, the brown one held up two fingers flicked one down and then the other and the door popped open and a volley of yellow bolts of energy surged through the door way.

The engine room was positively swarming with more of those mantis things and in different colors too. They were a lot smarter than the other enemies and had better aim than just that one that got a lucky shot in on Derpy, even the ant holding the shield in front of her almost faltered at the sheer strength of the barrage constantly bombarding its reflective shield. The brown ant took a step off to the side and squealed something incoherent into its communication device it had while the yellow and blue ant at the sides of the door opened fire and threw grenades into the room respectively, Derpy also unloaded blast after blast into the room as the ant in front of her was refusing to open fire and just stood its ground warily keeping its head down from all the energy blasts whizzing past it.

“Well isn’t that just great! Didn’t you make sure to have teleportation field at full coverage at all times?” Honey shout was coming from the Ninja Drones communication device, a return of what sounded like sorrowful squealing was heard from the captain and then it took on a much harsher tone as it barked an order to the Ninja Drone before it heard that bee queen again. “Look just tell him quickly get that engine room cleared and to keep my friend safe while you’re at it, now call the bridge and see what’s taking them so long to get that teleportation protection field back to full strength, even Megman could skip an entire level at this rate! Not that he doesn't drop the teleportation fields when he gets to the boss door anyway.”

The brown ant nodded to itself as it heard some additive to its orders from the captain Mizar Beetle of the ship and looked back over at the firefight going on between the doorway to the rear generators and the engine. It made its way over to join the firefight, shooting its own shots through the doorway as it ran by the opening to start standing next to the yellow drone on the left side of it.

After five minutes of a constant fire fight in which the Mizar Ant holding the shield took a bolt straight through the shoulder by one of the remaining enemy bugs. Derpy quickly pulled him out of the line of fire and the other blue Mizar Ant by the door had already taken a shot to the leg and was still pouring as much fire out of its gun as it could manage, the fire rate wasn’t so good for the solid damage it dealt upon hitting something.

Firing a burst of rounds out of its gun, the brown green armored Mizar Ant dropped the remaining two mantis enemies that exploded into quickly disappearing chunks. It decided to take stock of the situation.

“There there, it’s going to be okay, do any of you guys have any more of those purple healing crystal things?” Derpy watched as the brown ant squealed at the yellow one and it saluted before going to search for more health power ups. It motioned for Derpy to scout out the next room as it stood guard over the two blue Mizar Troopers that tended to have a short life expectancy under any amount of fire in their general direction.

Derpy sighed as she thought that at least the worst of it was over. She immediately shook her head of that though; she knew better that it wasn’t quite over yet. She didn’t even know how Ms. B was doing down in the main hold and it sounded like they were having a rough time down there, she trotted forward and started looking at everything in the engine room. Hopefully there was something that just required a good kick to get working again; it took her a moment to notice a nearby computer with the sign that said ‘Engine diagnostics station’ above it. The Mizar forces wrote in English yet spoke in a silly bug language, Derpy would never understand dimensional and time travel sometimes.

Derpy admittedly felt a bit silly about wanting to buck a big, possibly explosive, cylinder that spewed energy to get it working right. Taking in the large cube shaped room as she trotted over to the computer, she didn’t notice a single thing wrong with the room… that was kind of ominous in her book.

Usually it meant something bigger was about to become known and that it needed to be dealt with immediately like a Cyberman conversion table or invasion. It was a good thing the Doctor sometimes confuses Ditzy for her, because the table couldn’t convert a pony that was already pretty darn near indestructible. The Cybermen just couldn’t live in a multi-verse where a biological being was immune to lasers and painfully sharp blades that dulled immediately upon hitting her friends fluffy looking coat. The laser just miraculously bounced off and destroyed parts of the machine, which caused it to scan to see if she was already converted and thus the conversion table was confused by the one hundred percent biological return it kept receiving which lead to one of their greater defeats. Those machines just weren’t able to handle paradoxes as well as Doctor Whooves could, he just said ‘well’ and moved on even if Ditsy was a curious pony raised by Timberwolves.

Hearing a squealing noise the brown Mizar Ant came into the room and pointed at the ships really large thruster and squealing something.

“I just don’t know what could be wrong, it seems to be working perfectly fine… at a hundred percent even. Obviously since we’ve been boarded and they pushed the throttle to full. I have no clue why we’re drifting in space at the same speed we’ve been going since they’ve arrived, any idea's friendly ant thing.” After a moment of thinking over Derpy's quandary with the brown ant holding a clawed hand to its chin, it quickly had an idea and then started manipulating the controls to the rear viewport from the diagnotic stations controls. Once it opened both Derpy and the Ninja Drone wilted, the thing had its entire ass impaled on the end of the thruster which might explain why the ship wasn’t moving any faster.

“Honey, what do you call a big bug that’s absorbing a ton of propulsing energy with its butt?” Derpy asked into the Ninja Drones communication device much to the ants annoyance.

“Um oh... what is it called again... oh crap, it’s a Processor isn’t it? Find a way to deal with it and fast! We’re kind of swamped here in the hold, we’ve got at least three relentless Scorpiosaurs now along with everything else and it is most certainly... NOT PLEASANT!” The rapid sound of firing could be heard in the background of the communication device before it cut out. Derpy just stared at the giant beast connected to the back end of the ship. It was a giant beetle thing that had overtaken an aspect of the ship that could get them out of this mess before it could get worse, it would seem the enemy stalling tactics were working quite well.

Meanwhile watching the captured breeding seagull in her captivity three figures stood watching a flashing blue orb on Planet Clancer.

“What has she been doing lately?” A posh voiced average sized shadow with wings said walking into the room as the other two were watching Kazooie quote something.

“She’s been going on about Confucius this and Confucius that, it’s beginning to really steam my gears!” The short tempered short shadow with what looked like a jetpack on its back exclaimed angrily stomping its foot.

“We just need to hold her for another twenty four hours for the pickup. Twenty four more hours until we can be rid of this nuisance forever and even her extra lives won’t save her this time, not even a continue or spawning back in her own realm, just total death! I just wish the pickup would hurry up, it’s way too freaking slow even I could have been here long before the heroes arrived to put a stop to our plot!” The tall one said in a swift voice somewhat lisping voice. The average sized shadow moved a hand and changed the visuals on the round flashing blue screen. Banjo and Chaos hopped out of what was a combination of a house and spaceship, they immediately started making their way along the ground in the Clancer Badlands.

“Speaking of which… it seems Banjo has arrived to save his sister. Would you go take care of that nuisance please?” The posh accented shadow watched as the tall shadow ran out of the room at an incredible speed.

Author's Note:

Body Harvest and Jet Force Gemini share some similarities for vastly different games. Not to mention the comet heading to destroy a planet finale thing.