The Sexiest Man in Equestria

I flew straight at the queen, barrelling into her torso headfirst and knocking her down.

"What's the matter? I thought your victory was assured. Or were you just too stupid to know when something won't work?"

She gasped a few more times, then stood back up.

"I am more than capable of destroying you, you insolent little foal!" She tried to blast me with magic again, and I swatted it away, the plates on my hand moving as I did so the magic would impact my skin.

"No. No, you are not. Because I am an apex predator, and you aren't."

I began walking towards her, swatting away more magic as she futilely attempted to slow me down.

"You see, on my world, we don't have magic. Just our own skills. But here? Here, there is an entire, untapped energy source, which can be harnessed and controlled for the betterment of others. I designed this suit as an augmentation and safety device. It is designed to assist the wearer in doing more difficult tasks, or allow the wearer to move quickly during an emergency. I would never have been able to do this on my world."

I swatted a final ball of magic away, and grabbed the queen's horn.

"Of course, I wasn't able to do more than a couple of prototype frames for the arms at first, but a couple of months spent getting copyrights on songs this world has never heard before has done wonders for my funding. A few fake names and a couple extra pickup boxes at the post office, and I have enough spread in my materials orders to keep suspicion off me."

I threw her into the pews, knocking over several and breaking one.

"Fortunately, I finished testing the systems on this one a couple weeks ago, and I was able to make a few final tweaks on the struts before having it fly all the way out here."

She stood back up, and snarled at me as her wings buzzed in anger.

"Do you know what the best part is, though? Once I'm done putting down your pathetic little incursion, here, this armor is going to be seen as even more impressive. Because, hey, 'it beat a changeling queen, what could it do for you?' I'm going to make enough money off of this to fund the entire effort to save the rest of these changelings from the fallout of how badly you fucked up."

Her eyes went wide, and she lunged at me. I fell backward as she flew over me, using the flight gems to keep myself from hitting the floor. She landed a few feet away, and I returned to an upright position facing her.

"I WILL NOT FAIL IN THIS! These are MY changelings, and they do as I command!" She stood up straight, and pointed at me. "KILL HIM!"

Every changeling in the room bum-rushed me, and I decided to return the favor. I flew straight at the tyrant again, and this time, I grabbed her muzzle, clamping it shut as I drove my feet into the tiles and stopped.

"You're done now."

I slammed her head down onto the floor, and a loud crack rang through the hall, cutting through even the roar of wings behind me. I saw flecks of black litter the floor around the point of impact, and heard the muffled scream of pain as my victim scrambled against my hand. Turning around, however, showed that I was correct. Breaking her concentration hard enough broke her control over the others, and the horde began landing, turning the sound of buzzing wings back into background noise. A few, however, still had angry snarls to be heard. One of them came up and looked straight at my face as he spoke.

"You have freed us, but as you said, she will have caused numerous problems for us. She must be punished."

A wave of angry murmurs of agreement swept through the changelings present. I shifted my grip from Chesty-lust's face to her horn, allowing her sobs to echo freely around the room, then began dragging her through the crowd.

"Not my call." I pulled her along the floor, and she squirmed the whole way until I threw her forward, depositing her at Celestia's hooves. The Princess of the Sun had finally recovered, and she looked pissed. "What do you think her punishment should be, Celestia?"

A beat passed, then two, and Celestia took a deep breath.

"Simply for the crimes I have seen with my own eyes, the only punishment that would normally be permitted is death. However, I refuse to follow up a royal wedding with a royal execution, so I currently have no options available to me. For now, you will be locked in the dungeon, until we have found a suitable fate for you to suffer. Guards!"

Several guards appeared through the crowd as the changelings made way for them. They slipped an inhibitor ring on her horn, locked her arms behind her back, then started marching her out of the room on wobbly legs. As they got to the door, I noticed Shining Armor and Cadence holding one another, and called for the guards to wait.

"I have one last thing to say to her." I got close, and lifted my faceplate so I could whisper in her ear. "You see that? Do you see Shining Armor and Cadence over there? They love one another. And you know what? They also love the ponies they protect. And you could have had that, too. Not through force, or guile, or anything else. All you had to do was play nice. All you had to do was think about what someone else would want. I know Shining. He would have at least given you a chance, once he deemed you weren't a threat. But you didn't. Instead, you chose to simply take what you wanted. You chose to try and force others to do your bidding, without giving anything else in return. And now, instead of being able to live with the ponies nicely, you fucked it all up for your entire species. In the same amount of time it took you to put this invasion together, you probably could have been a part of the wedding, right next to Cadence. You could have ensured your entire hive's survival for generations to come. Instead, you're being dragged away in shackles, and the rest of us are going to have to spend a lot of time and money getting all these changelings new lives. Lives they could have already had, if you had just come and asked nicely. A life you could have had, if you hadn't been such a bitch."

She started sobbing anew, and the sounds quickly turned to keening wails of misery as she was dragged off, her legs no longer containing the strength to hold her up. The rest of the changelings watched her go, and several of them left the room to follow. I didn't really care why, and turned back to the ponies in the room just in time to get slapped by Twilight. With my faceplate up and my guard down, I had no way of taking the blow properly, and nearly fell over before using my flight gems to straighten back up.

"And just when were you going to tell us you had a set of flight-capable battle armor?!" she demanded with justified anger. I collected myself, and rubbed my cheek where she had hit me.

"When I had gotten the patents, which, before you ask, would have been maybe a week from now. I sent the papers in a couple days ago."

With her questions answered, Twilight took another look at my suit. It didn't have much protection, as it was still a prototype, with barely enough to protect me from most small objects that would be found while flying at high speed, such as bugs, larger dust particles that had been kicked up during the day-to-day activities of others, and small birds that decide getting directly in front of fast-moving objects is a good idea. Most of my torso was still bare, save for the chest and back plates holding my wings on. A pair of shoulder guards and short gauntlets were the only coverings on my arms, to hold the magically-charged gems that powered the tracking and autopilot abilities. My thighs were covered almost entirely in straps and buckles for flight, held in place with strips of metal so the automatic suit-up would work properly. The boots were made of thin metal, with more magically-charged flight gems, to supplement the ones on the wing struts. Finally, she looked back up at me, obviously still unhappy, but no longer murderous.

"I'm not going to let this go, you know."

"Oh, I don't expect you to. You were going to be the first one to see it, until this whole mess. Oh, before I forget..." I pulled the lower half of my helmet apart, and the entire suit began releasing me. I stepped away once I was free, and the suit folded down in a crouch as the wings wrapped around it, forming an egg shape. The slight glow of the crystals faded, and everyone else, especially Twilight, stared in disbelief. She turned back to me and jabbed a finger at the curled-up suit.

"How did you do that?! I've never seen a spell that advanced, and you don't even have magic!"

I grinned at her.

"Who said anything about a spell?"

Her face went blank in confusion, along with most of the other ponies in the room.

"Remember how I said the Music of Harmony has its own will? When I first figured that out, I theorized that all magic has a similar semi-consciousness. It turned out, I was right. By using these crystals, I was able to 'hear' what it was 'saying'. I found that simply thinking hard enough about a particular activity while in contact with one of the crystals would allow it to happen. I started with the pegasus suit first, since that would require the smallest number of moving parts. The wings only move up and down, and have a minimal amount of fanning ability. They don't have anywhere close to the range of motion of actual pegasus wings, but the lack of motion allows the magic in the crystals to function without worrying about keeping the parts untangled. And since the crystals function on the will of the user, it's easier to stay in control, since all it takes to avoid a collision is a thought. This is just a prototype, though. The crystals barely had enough magic to handle that little fight. I want these suits to be able to be used for long shifts of work. I intend to open every job to every pony by the time I'm done."

By the time I was finished, Twilight's jaw was nearly scraping the floor, along with most of the other ponies'. Even Celestia looked truly shocked.

"Hold on," Twilight said as she shook her head and collected herself, "where did you even do all this? I've been in your house, and there were definitely no suits of armor in there."

"That's because I keep them in an underground lab. I didn't want anyone trying to steal my work and claiming credit, or worse, using it to hurt others, so I turned my basement into a lab and put a fake wall in the main house. I'm probably going to have to repair the hole in the wall, now, too, come to think of it. I haven't actually made an exit for these things, yet, so it probably just punched through the door. Damn."

"And what about those bracelets? How do those work?"

"The crystals are broken. Each of the gems here are halves, while the other halves are in the wrists of the suit. Knocking them together causes them to 'cry' for their other halves, which respond by 'calling' to the other crystals in the suit to activate. Once the halves touch each other, they stop moving of their own volition, at which point they come under my control, allowing me to make the suit put itself on me. It's all fairly easy once you've done it a couple times, since the magic itself is doing all the real work."

Twilight stared at me for a moment, then at the suit. I saw a single strand of her mane sproing up out of place and curl dangerously. I put a hand on her shoulder as her pupils slowly started shrinking.

"Twilight, relax. I'll explain everything to you later. For now, though," I looked back at the ruined hall, "I think you have an actual wedding to help plan. Last I checked, you were invited here to make sure everything was ready for your brother and your foalsitter to get married. I don't think the wedding is getting put off, either." I looked to Cadence and Shining for confirmation, and Cadence came over.

"He's right. We're not going to let a little invasion get in the way of our wedding, and now we need to redo most of the preparations. I could really use your help with it."

Twilight sighed, and took a last look at the armor before turning around.

"Right. You're still in trouble, though, Zephyr. We'll be talking about this at length later. For now, though, you're right. There are more important things to worry about."

I hugged her without warning, then let her go before she could react.

"Don't worry, you'll get what you want. It's not like I won't be around. For now, though, enjoy being with everyone. I need to go put this thing somewhere safe." I patted the armor, and she nodded. Her hair was back to its usual appearance, and the rest of the group began filtering out as I regarded the armor. It took me a few seconds to dismiss all other options, leaving me with Luna's room as the only safe place to put it. I tilted it over, and began rolling it down the halls, heading for the stairs to Luna's chamber.

That's going to be a pain in the ass.