It was dawn on the Equestrian front. To the east lay the griffon encampment, alive with the sounds of soldiers sharpening their talons and wingblades. To the west sounded the marching drums of the pony army. A chilling, early morning fog rolled over the vast expanse of nopony's land that lay between the opposing forces. The sun was just beginning it's ascent, turning the skies an orangish-pink color, birds of carrion circled overhead, waiting to feast on the aftermath of what would come to pass later that day. In the midst of it all, there I sat enjoying a cheese pizza with extra oregano.
Oh, I should probably introduce myself... but I'm not going to. Anyways, it was the griffons that first came to meet me. "Escuzee, vee haf no quarrel vif you, good sir. Vould you kindly remove yourselv from zee battlefield please?" God, I had northern griffish accents, they are so annoying.
"No", I gestured to my half eaten meal. "Can you not see I'm busy here?" I swear, it's like these soldiers are blind. "You can get to killing each other in a moment, just let me finish my food and find a nice cloud to watch from."
That dude's face was priceless. He looked so confused, like he'd never been to a war with spectators before. "Go on, you can start in half an hour", I waved a claw at him, indicating that he had my permission to leave. It's not that I think I'm better than anyone else, it's just that in these sorts of situations, the messengers don't leave me alone unless I tell them to get out of my feathers. A long time ago, it made me feel bad treating them like that, but really he'll be dead soon so what does it matter anyway?
Once the griffon representative had gone, I was visited by the ponies. They sent three messengers, one of each kind, unicorn, earth, and pegasus. We get it, you're happy that you've finally gotten over your petty differences, but you don't have keep bringing it up! Whatever, at least I only needed to talk to one of them. I picked the unicorn.
"So," I said, offering her a slice of pizza, "let's talk casualties. What's the expected death toll for this battle?"
"Uh..." That blank look she gave me, I knew I shouldn't have picked her. I turned to the pegasus.
"So, what are we talking here? Ten, fifteen thousand on either side?" It's good to know what to expect before the fight begins, it makes planning the rest of your day much easier. For instance, I wanted to play tennis one afternoon, you know, after what was supposed to be a small military skirmish, but just as the ponies were finally down to the last few bodies, a reinforcement brigade came in and threw off my entire schedule. I'm still waiting for an apology letter from them, and I expect a fruit basket sometime before they get decimated.
Back to the pegasus though, he was much more cooperative than that unicorn. "The death tolls are estimated to be around twelve thousand on either side, sir. I would suggest that you flee while there is still time." What a kind sentiment from a complete stranger, and one that I could understand, too. I think of all those who died that day, he's the one I miss the most. Oh, but that's a spoiler, isn't it? You didn't know he was going to die until I said anything. Darn. Well he's going to die, but I won't tell you how until that part of the story, so at least there's still some mystery there.
Right then. I gave the ponies the same treatment as the griffons, and the returned to their camp. After that, I finished my early breakfast/late supper (I didn't get any sleep the night before), and found myself a nice patch of cloud from which to watch the mayhem. My altitude preference is around three-quarters of a mile up, you know, somewhere I can get a good view of the action while staying well away from the highest flying squadrons. If you can't tell, I've been to a lot of battles.
The fighting started around seven A.M. It began with the sounding of trumpets, first from the ponies, and then answered by the griffons. Once the formalities were out of the way, both sides began viciously tearing across the empty plains towards one another, intent on ripping each other's throats out. At the same time that the ground forces mobilized, a squadron of griffons took the air to engage the pegasi in a vicious dogfight. Two of the combatants crashed headlong into each other and fell to their deaths. You should've been there, it was priceless.
Ten minutes into the fighting and already almost two hundred ponies were dead and the one's left were freaking out, because... ya know... those aren't good odds. In response to this, the unicorns began pulling cheap shots. Instead of throwing rocks and fireballs like they normally do, they started just strait up killing the griffons with magic, running around and shouting "Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!" Those stupid idiots, that's copyright infringement! I had to stop them before it was too late.
Tossing aside my box of popcorn (yeah I know I had just eaten, but popcorn tastes good), I dropped off the side of my cloud and went into a steep dive. The wind whooshed and howled and made other generic sound effects as the ground grew closer, until it was time to land. I open up my wings and blam! the air pressure snapped them backwards and it hurt like hell. In retrospect a strait fall was a terrible idea. Anyways, all that painfully blunt force was enough to slow my decent so that the remainder could be cushioned by that pegasus whom I spoke to earlier. No, that's not how he died, I merely shattered his pelvis.
"Ahh! Ye gods!", he screamed. Then his hind legs went all uncontrollably twitchy and he started screaming like a baby.
"Calm down" I said. "My wings are bent at right angles here and you don't see me whining. Now who commands the unicorns? I need to speak to them."
"Nnngguh...", he struggled to speak as his quivering hoof pointed at the ridiculously rainbow-patterned unicorn in the distance, the one who started cheating first when she began directly crushing her opponents with magic.
Just then, a griffon swooped at me with her talons and I only managed to jump and evade her by a few seconds. Causing her to smash on the ground and collapse momentarily.
"Whoa! What do you think you're doing little lady? Were not enemies, can't you tell?"
"But monsieur... your flank-"
"My flank nothing, I'm half on your side, half on his", I gestured to that one pegasus, who was starting to lose consciousness, "which makes me neutral. You don't want to anger my neutral party. We're a force to be reckoned with, there's like... ten of us."
"My apologies sir, I thought zat-"
"It's okay. Just don't do it again." After that I went off to consult that unicorn mare who was ending the battle too quickly. I was promised a magnificent death toll by that guy who was now screaming in the background because I left him alone with a griffon, and I was going to get it. Also if you didn't quite catch that, that's the part where the dude dies. See? I said I didn't do it, I just helped.
"Hey you!", I grabbed that pony from where she stood. "No dark wizard magic, ya hear? There's no f-"
"Let go of me or I will-"
Hadoken!
I dislike having to conjure street magic, but I absolutely hate being cutoff mid sentence. She left me no choice but to vaporize her head. All the nearby combatants stared at me in awe, as if they were too thick to comprehend what had just happened. "What are all you staring at? she talked back to me, that's what ponies like her deserve."
"No." said a stallion, "That's not why we're staring. How did you do that?"
"Ancient family secret" I lied. It wasn't a family secret, it's just down and then forward + left attack button, but if these newbs didn't know how to do that I saw no reason to tell them. Wanna know a real secret? Up up down down left right left right B A. Three extra lives right there. Don't believe me? Try it and go jump off a bridge, and thank me when you respawn. That's the 'ol secret to immortality. But I digress from the story.
Both the griffons and the ponies were shocked out of their minds. They were all jabbering away about how crazy a simple trick like that was. I informed them that it was no crazier than what those unicorns were doing, casting their instant death spell and spoiling the afternoon's blood sport. I also told them that my attack was nothing more than a cheap fourth wall break for the sake of humor, and the more they brought attention to it, the larger the plot hole would become. They didn't listen.
Everyone was all, "Please, you got to teach me how to do that" and "I didn't know your kind was capable of magic" and "Why are we fighting again?" I killed that last guy, before someone heard him. It was about then that other nearby soldiers stopped to question why a whole bunch of mortal enemies were busy talking to me instead of bathing in each other's blood, so they dropped what they were doing, or in some cases, who they were carrying, and went over to me.
"What eez going on ovair here?" demanded one of the griffon generals.
I replied, "Nothing, I was just telling these unicorns not to end the battle too soon, because I rearranged my whole schedule to see this fight, and I don-"
"Ma'am! He there was blue fireballs and he-"
Hadoken again!
Total incineration. One of these days they're gonna learn to stop interrupting me.
"Ye godz..."
"Funny, the last guy to say that was just seconds away from dying. Only he didn't have an accent."
"Y- you killed her. You haf sided vith ze p0n33z"
"Ok that last one wasn't even an accent, that was internet spelling."
"You are hostile towards us and you deserve to dye!"
"No no no", I said, "It's an 'i', not a 'y', and also, I'm not sided with the ponies, that killing wasn't an act of war, it was a personal thing, like a murder. Look, just to show good faith."
Kamehameha!!!!!
I destroyed twenty ponies standing in line and the better part of an apple tree, in order to prove that I hadn't chosen sides. Despite that, the ponies freaked out and were all, "This guy is berserk! He'll kill us all!"
That wasn't true, I didn't want to kill them all, they were supposed to be killing each other. But nevertheless those darn ponies and griffons line up shoulder to shoulder and surrounded me, two massive armies completely focused on my destruction killing me. It seemed apparent that they had forgotten that one of them had assassinated the Archduke of Australia Austria and that they should be focused on global destruction rather than one little me.
"Oh, so you're just gonna gang up on a guy? Is that it? You really think you need all that overkill? I suggest that instead you send forward your toughest warrior and have him, or her, now that I think about it, it's probably a her, the gender ratio is 1 to 5, anyways, you should have her fight me in one on one combat instead of surrounding me like you are."
"Very well, we accept your terms, and send forth Jason Lee Scott, Zack Taylor, Billy Cranston, Trini Kwan, Kimberli Ann Hart, Thomas "Tommy" Oliver, Rocky DeSantos, Adam Park, Aisha Campbell, and Katherine "Kat" Hillard!"
"Whoa whoa what the hell!", I said, "One warrior, your very best, not these ten assorted rainbow stripes!"
"But we are one" they spoke in unison. "For we are... the MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS! ASSEMBLE!"
Then it was all whoosh and chung chunk shunk and there were whirring and clicking noises and their bodies transformed and locked together to form some sort of... uber deadly weapon that I can only describe as a... megazoid. And it was scary. This megazoid was slowly walking towards me, ready to dole out certain demise, then I was like 'Wait a minute, this is just like in that book that I read, that one that kept putting me to sleep, where that really short dude killed that really tall guy by hitting him with a rock.' So I reached for my sling that that I could use it against the giant, when I realized I don't own a sling, because slings are obsolete, and I feel like they were even when that book was written.
So then I was all, 'Damn. This is the end.' When I remembered something I had been saving, and I quickly dashed forward ten feet and then returned to where I was previously. As soon as I reached my spot once more
*bum bum bum da dum*
You ran 26 miles
Marathon V challenge completed, +10000 experience points
*bum bum bum da dum*
You leveled up to level 78
Choose a perk
Instant wing regeneration
Fire breath
Megazoid-killing hadoken
A sack of potatoes
I didn't know what perk to choose, it was a game of roulette trying to decide which one would do me the most good against this guy. Luckily, I didn't have to decide, because remember that popcorn that I threw down right before I went to talk to that cheating unicorn? Yeah, it fell out of the sky in a roaring ball of fire and the painful smell of burnt food. It's temperature alone was enough to melt through the behemoth's thick metal skin and kill the hive mind inside, and the earthquake that resulted killed everyone else nearby. I managed to survive because I'm not an idiot and I jumped at the last second, of course the aftershock sprained my hoof, but t'was a relatively small price to pay.
In the end, I don't know how that popcorn came down so hard or so late. I like to think that it was the Ghost of Christmas Past, holding it up in low orbit until the time was right. It's not that the ghost cared about me, it's just that I kinda promised to babysit his kids on the 25th, and I have a feeling he needed me alive. I'm grateful anyways, and I did repay him, only lost one kid, which is a loss anyone can live with.
Now that you've heard the story of the time that I came to watch and got caught in the middle, there's only one thing left for me to write down. It's time I introduced myself. It's only seems fair, if you've stuck with me this far, that you know my name. Those two words, that special combination of and adjective and a noun that for whatever reason seemed like a good naming system in this society. My name is...
Actually I changed my mind. I'm wanted for war crimes, after all.
