The President took a deep breath. He'd gone over every single possible way to do this with his cabinet, and this was the best they could come up with. It was a bit direct for his tastes, but it had a good density of information and would hopefully limit the panic stage.

The President opened the oak door, arriving late to the meeting. Around the table a handful of other heads of state—Canadian, French, British, Greek, Norwegian, Belgian. Ideally, he would be giving this address to all the members of NATO, but they'd sat in the dark for too long already. With Twilight catatonic, the president felt that they should probably have a backup plan. He started talking before he even sat down.

"Gentlemen, I come here today to state my belief that the United States has suffered an armed attack by an alien race, and to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

The President expected this news to be met with silence. He was mostly correct, save for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom muttering "of course" under his breath.

"This attack involved the use of an explosive device in a New York area hospital," the President continued. "Thankfully, the device was diffused due to the expert action of Twilight Sparkle, princess of Equestria."

"Was it a magic bomb?" the French president asked.

"Yes," the American responded. The Frenchmen only nodded in response.

"Anyway," the American continued, "that constituted the first armed attack against the United States. But, for the past several months, the invading force has sent soldiers between the worlds, with—"

"Wait a bloody minute," the Englishman interjected, "you're supposed to inform the council as soon as possible when attacked. You say these have been going on for months? It seems like that's something we'd like to know about!"

"The other soldiers were unarmed, and, well..." the President began, trying to find the right words. "The word 'attack' implies some degree of success. Here. We have video on file."

The president jabbed a finger at the screen in front of him. Instantly, a video feed sprang to life on the monitors that surrounded the room. He didn't bother watching the footage, instead trying to see the reactions around the table.

As expected, the table recoiled in horror when the creature first appeared. For a moment, the American was a bit concerned the Belgian was going to lose his lunch. Their reactions were logical. At first glance, those creatures were terrifying.

Not ten seconds later, he heard the familiar sound of a gunshot, followed one of the creatures exploding.

Most of the room jumped, which was understandable. The audio was quite loud, after all. The president gave them a moment to recover before speaking.

"The creatures are, as far as we can tell, a species of inter-universal conquerors, designed to take over every world they come across," the President said. "To the point where we have been receiving form letters about our surrender. Unfortunately for them, they seem to have optimized for magical combat, a skill which we don't posses. As you can see, to bullets, well... They're not very effective."

"He exploded like a balloon!" the Englishman exclaimed. "Just right popped!"

"Exactly," the president replied. "This presents us with a rather interesting dilemma."

The president took a sip of water, letting the coolness rush down his throat.

"Twilight Sparkle first came to our world to ask for military aide against the Changeling empire, long-time and power enemies of her nation," the president began. "If our intelligence is to be believed, these creatures wiped the Changeling nation off the map within a matter of hours, and enslaved Twilight's nation shortly thereafter. We can assume from this that their army is supremely powerful—if you happen to use magic as your primary form of offense. Furthermore, the form letters indicated that they have conquered many universes. This means that a vast, interdimensional, presumably evil empire has declared war on us—normally cause for panic, but this is a war that they cannot win. In fact, they are so hopelessly outgunned that labeling the conflict a 'war' is generous. So, gentlemen, the question is..."

The president leaned forward for dramatic effect.

"How far do we go?"

"If they explode like that?" the Englishman said, ruining the president's dreams of causing a historic silence. "Well, let's go all the way. Storm into the other universe, free it, move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat, save multiple worlds in a few months, ask for a little bit of material wealth for our trouble. Easy, yeah?"

"Well, uh," the president stuttered, "supposedly, but the longer we're at war with them, the better their chances of finding some way to fight us are."

"Well, we always have that problem," the Frenchman responded. "Just fight them off on Earth, they go back, they lick their wounds, maybe they come back next time with better armor. We are dealing with something that can become very dangerous. It is best to destroy it as quickly as possible."

"Exactly," the Englishman exclaimed. "Call up the Russians and the Chinese, make it a grand old show. Throw a blitz on them so hard they don't have time to react. Then figure out the pieces. I can tell you one thing, I am not bloody waiting for them to get more intelligence on us. If I have to have an interdimensional horror on my back, I damn sure want it to be one that explodes into blood and guts when you whack it hard."

"Well," the president said, straightening his tie, "does everybody feel that way?"

All of the delegates nodded in sequence. Some, of course, were more apprehensive than others, but nobody wanted to break the chain.

The president sat down again, cracking his knuckles.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "guess we have a war on."

Author's Note

Small timeskip backwards.

It's been forever, I know. It's becoming harder and harder for me to work on this.