It was a completely normal day when everything went to shit.
Twilight Sparkle awoke from her beauty sleep, took out the curlers Rarity suggested she use, used a hair straightener to fix the damage the curlers did. Spike was still asleep, so Twilight very quietly crept to the kitchen to make herself breakfast.
She poured herself a bowl of oats, enjoyed it thoroughly, and set about reading the book she had left out last night, The Mating Habits of Dragons. She was in the middle of a particularly saucy part when she heard a cough come from outside.
Heading over, she cautiously opened the door, and had to suppress a scream. Sitting on her front porch, eyes slightly glazed over, was King Sombra.
“Oh, finally!” he said, perking out when he saw Twilight quaking in fear. “I thought you’d never show up!” Twilight tried to scamper away, but Sombra used his superior dark magic to levitate her back in place.
“Why can’t I teleport away?” Twilight asked frantically, flaining around in the aura of dark magic, her own magic powerless.
“My magic overpowers yours! Granted, it wasn’t easy for me to do so, you’re quite powerful. No need to escape though...” he said in his growling, low voice. “I just want to talk...”
“What could you possibly say to redeem yourself?” Twilight spat at him, turning around so she could look at Sombra’s smug face.
“Oh, I’m not trying to redeem myself. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to take over Equestria and destroy the Elements of Harmony so nopony can stop me!”
Twilight Sparkle gave him a confused look. “Wait, it was the crystal heart that stopped you last time, not the Elements of Harmony!”
Sombra rolled his eyes. “Yes, but I’m taking precautions. I’ve got an amulet to guard against the stupid crystals. I’ve also enrolled in a rehabilitation center to overcome my crystal addiction,” Sombra explained. “I already killed your other five friends, so now I’m here to finish the job!”
Twilight took a moment to register this before her eyes began to fill with tears. “Y-you... KILLED them?”
Sombra nodded, a cruel smile gracing his features. “What did you expect? You guys blew me up! It was a pain in the ass to reform back together. But, my horn lived on, so I slowly re-solidified. Now, I’ve just got to kill you and finish the job...”
Twilight sniffled, everything moving too fast for her to feel the full pain. All five friends, gone... there was hollow, buzzing sound in her head, and her body felt completely numb. “E-even if you kill me, the Elements can be carried on by some other ponies!”
Sombra’s smile became wider and crueler at these words. “Ah yes, but I will also destroy the Elements of Harmony themselves! I’ve studied dark magic long enough to destroy all manner of magical artifacts!”
“They’re all the way back in Canterlot, guarded by the royal guard and the Princesses! It’s hopeless!”
Sombra smiled. “You really think I believe that? I know where you stupid ponies really hid the Elements of Harmony...”
Twilight’s eyes widened in fear.
“You’ll never get away with—” she started to say, but was cut off when Sombra used his magic to snap her neck. He dropped the body of the dead unicorn on the ground, and walked over to the the bookcase.
“Yes, I know where you hid the Elements of Harmony... where no one would ever dare to look!” He perused the shelves until reaching the “A” section, and levitated out a copy of Atlas Shrugged. Sure enough, when he opened it, the book was hollow and contained the Elements of Harmony.
After acquiring the Elements of Harmony, Sombra took to the streets and began announcing his new title as the King of Equestria. His minions, wispy pony-shaped creatures made of shadows that were creatively named “Shadowlings” went about hanging banners and passing out pamphlets about Sombre’s new reign.
Vinyl Scratch had been playing a gig in Ponyville the night before, when she got completely fucked up on pills. After tripping balls and smashing her DJ equipment, she woke up seven to ten hours later in an alleyway behind Ponyville’s only night/strip club, “The Plot Hole”.
“Dammit, what happened...” Vinyl rubbed her pounding head, then looked over at her DJ equipment, which had a Vinyl-Scratch-shaped indent in it. Her glasses lay next to it, one of the lenses shattered.
“Oh shit!” Vinyl Scratch caressed her damaged turntables. “I guess I should have listened when that weird dude in glasses told me about taking which color of pills.”
After giving her equipment a 21 wub salute with her pocket electronica-generator, Vinyl Scratch left the alleyway to find out when the next train to Canterlot was leaving. She needed to buy new turntables with some of her roommate Octavia’s money.
However, when she walked onto the streets of Ponyville, she found that the walls had been plastered with propaganda posters, most of which showed pictures of a dark colored unicorn wearing a thong and displaying his flanks to the world with the words “Serve the sexy shadow!” inscribed on the top. Another look around also revealed weird shadow ponies wandering around putting these posters up, and in the center of town was a large bonfire with six pony corpses burning in the center of it.
“Did the pills not wear off yet or something? Am I having that weird ‘sexy dictator’ dream again?” Vinyl Scratch wondered aloud.
Wandering out into the town square, the DJ saw many grieving ponies all staring mournfully at the bonfire. She took a good look inside, and recognized the cutie marks of the ones burning inside.
“Wait... those are the ponies who always end up saving Equestria!” Vinyl’s eyes widened. “But with them dead... who will solve our problems for us?” Vinyl fell to the ground, staring into the merrily crackling fire that was incinerating the former heroes of Equestria. Small droplets of rain began to fall upon Ponyville, because even a hostile takeover was not an excuse for the pegasi to neglect their jobs.
“WHO WILL SAVE US‽” she shouted up into the sky. As if the pegasi had heard her, the clouds cleared right above the square, and a beam of light shone over the town square. However, what descended was not a group of pegasi, or even one pegasi; instead it was two upright beings that were covered in far too much light and chrome for anypony below to get a good look at what they truly were. Their arrival was accompanied by sick electronic beats that Vinyl Scratch recognized. Could it be...?
They touched down on the ground right before Vinyl Scratch, and the light died down. Everypony could now get a proper look at the beings that had touched down. They stood upright, like Diamond Dogs and dragon whelps, but they were thinner and considerably less hairy. Not that anypony could tell that, they were covered in white suits from the neck down. The due wore helmets: the one of the left wore a helmet that was mostly chrome, with an eye vizor that stuck out a few inches from the rest of the hemet; the one on the right wore a gold helmet with a vizor that covered the entirety of its face.
The one of the left began to speak. It was fuzzy and glitchy, a weird babble of electronic words and noises. It lifted a hand up, and began to fiddle with the nobs on the side of its helmet, the pitch changing and odd static sounds filtering in as well. The gold-helmeted one banged its fist on the helmet, and words came out fluidly.
“Ah! Got the damn thing working. Hello, ponies from a children’s cartoon! We’re the French duo Daft Punk, and since we’ve recently been dubbed galactic heroes for our works on our latest album ‘Random Access Memories’, we’re here to save you from certain death!”
Vinyl Scratch fell to the ground, spasming in bliss.
“I came.”
The two beings looked around at the faces of the astounded ponies. Vinyl Scratch was still wriggling around on the ground in orgasmic pleasure as the golden-visored one began to speak.
“I think we should introduce ourselves, as the ones who will be freeing you of the tyranny that has fallen over you. I am—”
He was shoved to the side by the chrome-plated one, who announced his own name instead in a tone that demanded power and importance. “—I am THOMAS BANGALTER!”
“Who’s he?” asked a nearby pony, pointing to the gold-visored one.
Tomas looked over at his partner. “Oh. He’s just Guillaume Emmanuel ‘Guy’ de Homem-Christo.”
Jaws popped open at the sound of the gold-visored robot’s name. Vinyl, who had recovered from her fangasm, straightened up and said “Wow, that’s a pretty cool name!”
“Yes, but not as cool as THOMAS BANGALTER!” Thomas bellowed in his voice of mass importance.
Vinyl shrugged. “Actually, your name is sorta lame.” Tomas deflated a bit. “But that’s not what’s important! You guys are Daft Punk!”
“That we are,” Thomas confirmed. “I didn’t know you were aware of us.”
“Of course I am!” Vinyl said with a roll of her eyes. “A few years back, I was messing around with radio transmissions right after I first became a DJ. Then, I got a transmission that contained your amazing music! Since then, I’ve been trying to get as many samplings of your music I possibly can by fiddling around with my roommate’s radio antenna.”
“So, how many samplings have you managed to pick up?”
“One, from that better faster stronger song,” Vinyl said.
“Well, that iss the song that we broadcasted using the Voyager III: Return of the Synth satellite.” Thomas’s visor flashed for a moment, which Vinyl assumed was the equivalent of a blank stare. “Wait, one? If I’m not mistaken, you just said that you spent several years collecting them.”
“Eh, I got bored,” Vinyl admitted. “But I did manage to catch bits of info about you guys while flicking through the radio frequencies late at night when I was whacked on pills. You guys are awesome!”
“Yeah, I guess we kinda are,” said Thomas somewhat smugly. Guy nudged him, and Thomas cleared his throat, which came out as a burst of auto-tuned static. “Right, but that’s not the point. We’ve got to save you guys from this evil Sombrero guy, right?”
Vinyl took a look at a propaganda poster that was plastered to a nearby wall. “Yeah, this ‘Sexy Shadow’ dude. What, is his name Sombrero or something?”
“That’s what it sounded like in our mission briefing,” Guy said, talking for the first time since being shoved aside by Thomas.
“Right. It looks like his minions are those really weird shadow pony things that keep sliding around.” Vinyl pointed tot he shadowlings, which were all still wafting about, plastering the posters to every wall they could find, and passing out pamphlets to anypony who was unfortunate to get too close.
“I think we can take those on,” Thomas said confidently. Turning to Guy, he nodded his head at a pair of the shadow creatures who presently had their backs turned to them. “Let’s start off easy; one for each of us.”
Guy nodded in agreement, and the two left the side of the bonfire, which had now died down with only the burnt remains of some wood and the charred skeletons of the mane six to keep it from dying out completely. Cautiously, the duo approached Sombra’s minions.
“All I’m saying is, do you think I’m too young to be thinking about marriage?” the shadowling on the right asked the one on the left.
“Well, we were only manifested just yesterday, but I like to think that it’s never too early to start planning, you know what I’m saying?” the one on the left told his companion.
Thomas stepped in the middle of them. “Hate to break up the chat you guys, but it’s time for us to beat you up! Guy, grab the one on the left, I’ll take the other one!” The robot took a sweeping grab for one of the shadowlings, but he fell right through him as though it were made of shadows. Which it was.
The two shadowlings looked at each other in somewhat amused confusion. Thomas’s LED eyes narrowed. “Alright. Time to hit them with our full power!”
The fight lasted all of ten seconds. Soon, Guy was smashed against the wall, where he fell on top of Thomas, who had been smashed against the same wall two seconds earlier. The two shadowlings wafted away, off to do shadowy things, which presumably had something to do with receding and growing depending on the hight of the sun in the sky.
Vinyl trotted up next to the supposed heroes. “Wow, you guys got your asses beat.”
Thomas rubbed his helmet. “Hey, we’re musicians, not fighters!”
“But you’re galactic heroes!” the DJ pony pointed out.
Guy snorted, and Thomas chuckled nervously. “Well... RAM was our most recent album, and this is kind of our first mission as galactic heroes. They said they wanted to break us in with something easy.”
Vinyl sighed. “Well, come on. Since you guys aren’t gonna get any better fighting just by laying there, I might as well take you to my roommate Octavia’s place.”
“Can we learn to fight shadow monsters there?” Thomas asked hopefully.
“No, but she’s got food, so that’s a plus,” Vinyl stated, and started to trot away. “Alight, follow me, we’re gonna see if we can catch a ride to Canterlot before that stupid shadow guy decides to shut down the trains too.”
The two “heroes” shrugged, and followed the white unicorn as she ran down the alleyway to find the easiest rout to the train station. Unfortunately, Vinyl knew this town only slightly better than the two aliens she was leading around, and soon the three were hopelessly lost.
“Should we ask directions or—?” Guy wondered out loud.
“No, it’s hopeless,” Vinyl said, incinerating a propaganda poster in rage. “We’ll never get there! This town is like a maze!”
The trio rounded a corner, and saw the train station before them. Vinyl grinned sheepishly, and the three rushed to train. Peaking inside one of the windows, Vinyl got a good look at the backside of King Sombra, who had been bending over to pick up a penny.
“Pfft. Sexy shadow? Yeah right...” Vinyl smirked at the flabby flanks.
“Quick, hide!” Guy said, pointing towards a large group of shadowlings that was advancing towards the train. The three of them scurried to the caboose patio at the very back, where they waited in silence.
After a few moments, the train started to move, and they began their journey. The entire time, they were silent, for fear of the train occupants finding them out. When the train finally stopped, they waited for Sombra to make his move.
The three of them watched from the back of the train as Sombra disembarked, flanked by his shadowling guard.
“Eh, he doesn’t look so tough,” Thomas said with a scoff. “I bet we could take him.”
“Are you forgetting when we tried to take on his henchmen?” Guy asked his partner.
“Yeah, getting smashed into that wall did knock me around a bit,” Thomas admitted.
“Alright, let’s head on over to my place,” Vinyl said, once shadow and his troupe of shadow goons were gone on a march to Canterlot Palace. “We can brainstorm there, or just eat some food. I guess they’re both good options.
Upon entering the house, Thomas and Guy took a quick look around while Vinyl trotted off to the bedroom to get a fresh pair of glasses to replace her broken-lensed ones.
“Vinyl, you back already? I need to–” a grey earth pony began to say as she entered the room, but stopped dead, mouth agape, when she saw the two robots.
“What? Yeah, I’m back with a few friends.” Vinyl said, lazily gesturing to the robots.
“I am THOMAS BANGALTER!” Thomas announced.
“And I’m Guillaume Emmanuel ‘Guy’ de Homem-Christo,” Guy said.
“Wow,” Octavia told Guy. “Long name.” Thomas made a noise that soudned like a raccoon being molested by a robot.
“You got anything to drink?” Guy asked. Octavia nodded, dumbfonded and left to the kitchen for a moment. When she returned, she was balancing a soda on her head. Guy took it, popped the tab, and poured the drink on his visor. Cola dripped from his helmet as he sighed through the vocal transmitter. “Ah, good stuff.”
“That’s how you drink things?” asked Vinyl curiously. Octavia just narrowed her eyes at the waste of soda.
“Well, not really, but since we can’t take off our helmets...” Guy shrugged.
“Why, because you can’t breath in the atmosphere in Equestria?”
“No,” Guy said, “We’re just really, really shy. We don’t like to show our faces.”
“It’s also a stage gimmick,” Thomas explained. “Robots don't make people feel like there's an idol on stage. It's more like a rave party where the DJ isn't important. We are two robots in this pyramid with this light show, but everything is meant for you to have fun and enjoy yourself.”
“Plus, robots look cool!” Guy put in. “So the helmets stay on.”
“Aw, it won’t hurt you,” Vinyl said, and before Guy could even react, Vinyl slapped the side of his helmet, causing the visor to descend rather quickly.
“Crap!” Guy covered his face quickly with his hands, keeping his head low. He dodged sideways into the couch, and resurfaced with a pillow shoved in his visor space.
“Don’t do that again,” he said, shaking his finger accusingly at the lamp. Accidentally walking into the wall a few times, he groped his way to the bathroom and emerged with the pillow in his hands and his visor returned to normal.
“You’re taking this rather well, Octavia,” Vinyl said to her roommate.
“Well, with the whole lockdown thing going on...” Octavia said with a shrug. “I don’t really care. The city is under attack, and now there’s weird robots, so you know. Fuck everything I guess.”
“That’s the spirit!” Vinyl said. “Wait, the city’s on lockdown already?”
“Yeah, a bunch of weird shadows showed up, and then the princesses all ordered us civilians inside,” Octavia explained.
“Oh. Well, King Sombrero, their leader, is here too. We were on the same train he was. I think he’s gonna try taking over Equestria!” Vinyl sat down, brooding. “We;’ve got to think of a way to fight those shadow monsters...”
And so, the group waster a good half-an-hour not talking to each other, mulling over ideas.
“Wait, I’ve got it!” Vinyl said suddenly. “What if we were to engineer one of my turntables so that the music that was produced was able to mess up the frequency at which the shadow things vibrate at? We could destroy them with the power of music!”
“Wouldn’t it be more effective and easier to just shine a light on them?” Guy pointed out. “They are shadows after all.”
“Yeah, but I’m not going to miss an opportunity to play music with Daft Punk!” Vinyl said with a squee.
“She’s got a point,” Thomas said to Guy.
“Octavia, you’ve studied music; that would a plausible thing to do, right?”
“No,” Octavia deadpanned.
Ignoring here, Vinyl went to her closet to get her turntables, only to return a moment later, looking crestfallen. “I just remembered, my turntables are broken in some alleyway back in Ponyville.”
“Isn’t there another place you could get turntables?” Guy asked. “I mean, you must have gotten yours from somewhere.”
“Yeah, but with this lockdown, we can’t buy anything,” Octavia interjected. “So unless you’re going to steal the turntables, I don’t—” her eyes widened. “Oh no. Oh no, please forget I said that, please for the love of—”
The three had already shot out the front door before Octavia had even finished her sentence.
