Berry picked at her salad with an exquisitely ornate silver fork, frowning eversoslightly as she did. Across the antique, hoof-crafted table at which she sat was Octavia, who daintily ate her own lunch of grilled vegetables.
“What’s wrong with the salad, Berry?” asked Octavia.
“I thought I asked them not to put vinegar on it! There’s vinegar all over this salad,” Berry Punch whined.
“There is no vinegar on that salad, you’re just imagining things.”
“But there is, see? Right there!”
Octavia sighed. She opened her mouth to respond when a thunderous crash echoed
over the city. Both mares looked up in surprise, and then glanced out the window next to their table. Outside, the protective pink bubble that had encased the city for the last week was shattering in a spectacular display of magic and light.
"What in the name of Celestia...?" muttered Octavia. At the sound of a wet pop, the gray mare turned around to see Berry chugging down the fancy wine bottle Berry had brought for the party later. "Berry! This is serious, how could you be drinking at a time like this?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Octy," said Berry Punch, a cheeky grin on her rosy face. "First off, we don't know anything about what's going on with the shield. For all we know, it could be a practice drill."
Octavia barely had time to give her friend a frown when the roof exploded downward, sending a great cloud of dust and debris everywhere. Octavia coughed and waved her hooves around in an effort to try and clear the dust. When it was finally clear enough to see again, two things immediately stuck out in her sight. The first was a black-carapace-clad creature with menacing fangs eyeing up the ponies inside the restaurant like a buffet; the second, and by far most important, was Berry Punch standing absolutely still and staring off vacantly into space.
"Berry! Snap out of it!" Octavia harshly whispered. "We need to get out of here--"
in the middle of her sentence, Berry began trembling. Octavia paused, surprised, then noticed the neck of the wine bottle in Berry's hooves. Looking down, she saw the rest of the bottle in pieces on the ground, the wine spilled all over the floor.
She looked back up to see the creature in black staring directly at them and grinning evilly. It buzzed a pair of hole-y wings and began hovering towards Octavia and Berry.
"...Berry?" Octavia shook her friend's shoulder. "Berry, please, we need to go now."
The creature alighted on the ground before the pair with a click of chitin on wood and chittered in a bizarre and unsettling language. It bared its fangs and leaped at Berry. Octavia screamed.
Berry smashed the broken wine bottle in the side of the thing’s head, the sound of breaking glass echoing through the restaurant. With a thump, the black-coated creature collapsed to the ground, clearly taken by surprise. It staggered to its feet and wiped a hole-y hoof against its cheek, green ichor oozing from several small cuts.
“That was the second-last bottle ever made of my mother’s secret recipe Super Special Punch,” Berry said, staring intently at the invader. “She never taught me the recipe.”
The black creature smirked and began chuckling. Berry twitched and began walking in a wide circle around the invader. It watched her curiously.
After a few moments, Berry reached back and picked up a mop that had fallen out of a janitor’s closet during the impact. She held it in her hooves carefully, appraising it much like one would a fine diamond or treasure. After a few moments, she nodded in satisfaction.
“This will do,” she said.
Without a moment’s delay, she leaped into the air with a wild war cry, landing just in front of the surprised creature. She stood poised on her hind legs, using her front two to wield the mop in graceful, swift flourishes. The invader took a step back, hedged out by the sweeping mop. Berry took a step forward. It continued back, and she followed. It bumped into a wall and glanced backwards in surprise.
This proved to be its undoing.
Berry Punch let out a fierce yell and swung the mop’s business end in a ruthless arc, smashing it down on the invader’s head and dropping him cold. She planted one of her hooves on its back and stood over him victoriously before looking down and frowning.
“That’s for breaking my wine bottle.” After a moment, she looked around the restaurant until she spotted the bar. “Bartender! Toss me some booze!” she shouted. “It’s going to be a long day.”
~~~~~
“Twilight, I don’t know if we’re going to make it to the Elements with all this resistance from the changelings!” said Applejack, running alongside the rest of her group of six friends. “There’s just too many of ‘em.”
“We don’t have a choice, Applejack,” Twilight replied, a grim frown of determination her only expression. “Princess Celestia said-”
Twilight was cut off by several impacts in front of the group, blocking the way forward. From the smoldering craters rose a dozen changelings, all grinning and cackling like mad. They pressed forward, joining with more changelings and surrounding the group in an ever-shrinking ring of gleaming fangs and malicious intent.
“Never *hic* fear, city-zens, I shall s-s-save you!” cried a voice from somewhere above and off to the side of the scene.
Twilight and her friends looked over to where the sound had come from, but had to squint due to the sun being just behind the source of it.
“Wh-who’s there?” shouted Rainbow Dash.
“It is I, *hic*, the Mop Ninja, who has come to save you!”
A rogue cloud happened to drift in front of the sun, allowing all the ponies and changelings below to finally get a look at this newcomer.
“Berry Punch?!” cried all as one.
Berry hiccuped loudly and groaned in frustration.
“Awwww, guys, you ruined my secret identity! Now everypony knows who I am!”
“Your disguise was a cloth napkin tied around your forehead,” Twilight called up to her. “How did you expect that to work?”
“It always works in the *hic* movies…” Berry trailed off near the end of her sentence, stumbling and falling off the edge of the roof she stood upon. Mid-air, she flipped about several times and twirled like a dancer, finally landing on her back legs with nary a scratch on her.
“What.” This was all that Twilight was able to muster upon seeing the sight.
Several of the changelings chittered amongst themselves, and began to charge at the pony who would dare interfere with their mission. The pony in question simply twirled the mop around casually before shouting to the six ponies.
“Go on, girls, get the *hic* Helement Thingies of Armoury, I’ll hold these clowns off for you!”
And with that, she leaped headlong into the throng of changeling invaders. A great cloud of dust and flailing limbs erupted, allowing a brief distraction during which the six formerly trapped ponies ran off towards the Elements’ keeping place.
~~~~~
Pow! Kick! Smack! Zorch!
Berry Punch was a blur of motion, spinning clumsily on her hooves and sweeping the mop in great arcs that swatted scores of changelings from the sky. She was a goddess of the battlefield, her drunken prowess unmatchable by mere mortal beings like these grunt soldiers. It took her only about eleven seconds to wipe the floor (heh) with the invaders.
Then, learning of the great commotion, the Queen of the Changelings, having heard of the Equestrian Champion tearing through her legions of darkness like a great beacon of intoxicated justice, decided to make an appearance.
A great flash of green light appeared as the Queen teleported into the battlefield, the lesser changelings backing away from their great and powerful leader. She approached the Mop Ninja-- who wore a terrific disguise to conceal her true identity, by the way-- as one would approach an equal.
“Well, well. You are a worthy foe to stand against my evil armies so formidably,” said the Queen. “However, I cannot allow this to continue. Come, let us duel!”
“Indeed! For Pony!”
“chitterchitterscreechhissscreech!” shouted the Queen. (roughly translates to ‘I think I left the oven on!’)
With two great battle cries, the Mop Ninja and the Changeling Queen leapt at each other. The Queen made the first strike, a powerful spinning kick that the Mop Ninja only narrowly avoided with a quick duck of the head. She brought the mop-head across in a disarming flourish, but the Queen merely blocked it with her hooves, which were as tough as iron.
“Nice try,” said the Queen, “but you’ve fallen for my trap!”
The dark queen shot a sticky web of green goo at the Mop Ninja, catching her by surprise and sticking her to the ground.
“Argh! Oh no! How could I possibly escape this goop? I’m done for!” cried the Mop Ninja.
~~~~~
“Okay, Berry, that’s enough,” said Nurse Redheart from across the table. “We know that’s not how things really happened.”
“It could have happened!” Berry protested, taking another swig of her vodka. “You weren’t there.”
“No, I wasn’t, but I’m sure the Elements of Harmony would have mentioned if they’d been saved by a poorly-disguised, drunken pony wielding a mop,” said Redheart, gently sipping from her own glass of white wine.
“Yeah? Well why don’t you try coming up with a better story, then?”
“Berry, calm down,” said Octavia, resting a hoof on Berry’s shoulder. “It was a good story. Redheart will tell her own and it will be just as fine as yours. Not better, and not worse. Red, if you would be so kind?”
“...wasn’t a story…” grumbled Berry, folding her front legs across her chest with a frown.
“Ahem. Yes, my story is about six mares who wear real disguises and fight crime. They’re called ‘The Power Ponies’...”
