The next morning, Princess Celestia awoke to a roar that would rival Tirek himself.

She ran over to her balcony and threw open the doors, and the (imagine they are white and blue instead of orange) sight before her both amazed and frightened her. Huge monsters were breaking through the clouds, with thousands of smaller creatures following them. The roar was heard again as another one of the smaller creatures flew over her head, barely missing the spire of her tower. She tried to grab the thing with her magic, but it somehow went unaffected.

She looked down upon Canterlot, and saw what appeared to be the entire population standing in the streets, gazing up in fear. She could see pegasi guards in the sky, trying to get the creatures to land, but failing. A guard narrowly avoided being hit by one of the flaming meteorites, which landed near the one from last night.

Quickly realising that something must be done about this, Celestia teleported to the throne room, to be greeted by hundreds of worried ponies seeking her council. She walked up to her throne slowly, to give the appearance that she was calm. Upon reaching the throne, the ponies went silent and bowed to her. "Rise my loyal subjects. I can understand that you are all very worried at the moment, but I assure you there is nothing to fea-" She was cut off by an explosion that shook the ground itself, and any unsecured items fell over and broke.

Once the shaking died down, Celestia opened her mouth to speak again, but was interrupted once again as a large pointed object smashed through the roof of the castle behind her, impacting the floor and coming to a rest. She quickly recognised it as one of the pods from yesterday, however this time the Spectres that came out were coloured orange, and had pointed muzzles instead of the flat muzzled ones from before. The leader looked at her silently its head quickly juddering about, with sparks flying from it's torso every few seconds.

She was considering whether or not to say anything, when it spoke up, "Everyone get on the ground and you will not be harmed". A few seconds went by, nopony in the room dared to move. "You have three seconds. Three. Two. One" She didn't previously see how these machines could harm them, but at this point she realised her underestimation came at a cost. The four Spectres took the sticks off of their backs and pointed them at Celestia. The end of the leader's stick exploded, and Celestia instantly felt a huge pain in her front right leg. She recoiled in pain, as guards rushed to put a shield up in front of her. Looking down at her leg, all she saw was a small hole, and a lot of blood.

She picked up the leading machine in her magic and boomed "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?". She was answered with silence, followed by the other three Spectres operation their weapons as well, only this time there was a constant rattle as their weapons went off.

What followed next surprised Celestia even more. A large stain-glass window caved inwards, and a creature she recognised as a human jumped through the window, a small black L shaped object in it's claw. It pointed this object at the four assailants, and eight very rapid explosions came from it. The four Spectres dropped to the floor, a mass of sparks, and clearly dead or knocked unconscious.

It ran over to Celestia and shouted over the explosions nearby, "We have to get to the meeting point! Some of our enemies are here, but we will get rid of them. Are these ponies safe here?" She looked to her guards, who nodded in reassurance, before she turned back to the human who saw their response and spoke up quickly, "we need you to come in our transport, we will get there much quicker and we can treat your wound".

She looked apprehensively at the human before following him to the window, "where is this transport of yours?". As she finished speaking, another large black metal beast flew in from the right and stopped directly in front of the window in an instant. The side slid open, and she saw two more humans, both without their helmets, and a very different Spectre. The human who was with her leaped in, and she cautiously flew into it. The second she was in, the side slid shut behind her. She could feel the machine lift upwards, before shooting forwards. She looked out of the window and saw they were flying very fast. She doubted she could even fly half as fast as this machine. What stopped her train of thoughts however, was the sight before her. A huge battle was taking place between the beasts in the sky. The huge machines (she had learned to assume as such) that she saw breaking through the clouds earlier were now engaged in combat with a single machine over Canterlot, and were clearly beating it. The lone ship didn't stand a chance against the hundreds that were high above, raining down fire and magical beams. She also saw many more of the ships she was in now deploying their troops in the streets of Canterlot, who went on to usher the ponies to safety, defeating any orange Spectres that came their way. She also noticed many Titans firing strange arrows up at the ship, which then exploded upon impact.

Suddenly, the battle stopped, and the ship began to move away. The human next to her spoke up, "They have surrendered, and will now leave Canterlot be". She saw some other airborne machines, also orange coloured, moved up to it, before flying inside. The large ship pointed diagonally up, before the rear end lit up, and it sped off into the sky, leaving an orange trail behind it, much alike to Rainbow Dash after performing a "Rainboom".

The flying machine soon landed on the grass, and once again the door slid open. She limped out, and before long humans without armour and with red crosses on their arms came over and led her to a tent with another large red cross on it. She laid down on one of the beds inside, with her right leg resting in front of her. One of the staff came over to her, and told her "this may sting a bit" before proceeding to dab at her wound with a wet cloth, causing it to sting.

It was at this moment that Celestia realised she could have used magic to heal the wound. However, she was glad that she didn't because the human then took out a pair of tweezers, and removed a small chunk of metal from her wound. She then used magic to close up the wound and get rid of the blood, leaving the human completely shocked at such a speedy recovery. It then spoke up, "wow, that was unnaturally fast healing. You guys magical or something?"

To which Celestia replied "Yes". The human went back to being shocked, as Celestia stood back up, "where is your leader?"

"He should be in the second tent on the right" the human then stepped out of the entrance to the tent, Celestia in tow, and walked on into the aforementioned tent.

Before her, she saw a wall of pictures. Moving pictures, that had depictions of humans in them, looking out of the picture and towards another human that was in front of each image. She was lead to a large conference table, with a single human sitting at the end. She presumed he was their leader, being the only one at the table. She took a seat opposite him, and he began to talk, "Greetings, Princess Celestia, I am Admiral Dave Bennet of the IMC Industrious. We are extremely sorry for the violence today, and intruding in the first place, but let me explain."

As he began explaining to the Princess about their predicament, he saw a large red blip on a map display behind Celestia. He recognised the area as the deployment zone of the ISEC First Navy. He heard communications officers behind him talking about 'air support' and 'relief', and began to get worried. Five minutes later, the red blip disappeared and became green, relieving him of his worries.

Thirty minutes earlier

The HMS Queen Elizabeth and the rest of the ISEC First Navy fell into formation (replace the front aircraft carrier with the Queen Elizabeth, and add about 50 more ships), and began to head west, closer to land.

Once the fleet began moving, they picked something up on radar, which rapidly became visible to the naked eye. Amassed on the horizon were birds. Thousands of them. They were flying straight at the fleet, and as they neared, the Spectres on board performed scans and discovered them to be griffins, creatures of legend from Earth. Highly magnified images showed them to be armed each with a crossbow and sword, and sometimes multiple of each.

Spectres scrambled about the deck, preparing for the griffins. All aircraft were moved to below decks, and it was decided that the Spectres would deal with them, being able to take many more crossbow hits than humans, as well as dismemberment.

As they approached, the griffins noticed that the strange metal objects they saw were boats. Huge boats, and hundreds of them. They looked unarmed, but flew flags the griffins had never seen before. The group of leaders and their heavily armoured guards landed on the deck, and saw no signs of life. This boat was something entirely new to them, as it appeared to be powered by something other than wind, but it wasn't magic, because there was no detectable traces in the air, and combined with the fact that magic users would have detected their presence easily, they assumed it wasn't magical.

What they didn't see were the guns of the nearby thirty-odd battleships and cruisers that were now pointing at the other still-airborne griffins. So far, their plan to ambush the griffins was working. A lone MRVN walked out onto the deck, clearly scaring the griffins nearest to it, but it kept walking up to the leader. He stopped and began talking, "Hello, and welcome aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth, how can I help you?"

The griffin leader quickly recovered from the sight of the robot, and replied "Where is the crew of this ship, creature, are you the only one?"

To which it replied, "The crew are currently waiting for you to either drop your weapons and surrender, or prepare to die", in a completely monotone voice.

Several griffins started outright laughing, while the leader and his guards watched in fear as a large metal machine turned towards them, as a pole sticking out of the front of it began to spin. He put on a face of determination as he responded, "we will not surrender without a fight".

"So be it"

The battleships all simultaneously opened fire, annihilating the griffins in the sky as they tried to flee, however the hundred-or-so griffins aboard the aircraft carrier were safe, due to the risk of damage from friendly guns. The large metal machine with the spinning pole made a huge continuous whirring sound as the griffins at the rear of the group were turned into a fine red mist, along with a few stray feathers. The surviving griffins made a mad run to get inside the ship, where at the entrance they were met by another metal beast, however this one was about fifteen feet tall. It stepped on a griffin, before punching another, making a sickening crunch as its fist went straight through the griffin onto the flight deck.

The remaining thirty griffins took flight, dodging and weaving in an attempt to escape unharmed, however all but five of them were torn out of the sky and killed. The survivors kept flying for about five minutes, until they returned to their flock of 100,000 griffins. "They are hostile, and have killed all but the five of us" spoke the leader of the reconnaissance group to the leader of the combat group.

"Good, now we have reason to kill them" spoke the higher ranking leader, with a cold blood-lust present in his voice. "Flock, attack!"

Back at the carrier, Spectres began preparing defences for the oncoming horde of griffins. A flight of five F-35s took off vertically, to try and deter the oncoming force. They sped off, opening up their weapon compartments, ready to let rip with their 30mm anti-aircraft cannons and AIM-9 Sidewinders. As soon as they were in firing range, they started tearing up the griffins, killing about 70 before being shot down themselves. What had happened was that the griffins, in their blind panic, had fired flaming arrows into the engines of the F-35s, essentially disabling them. As the pilots ejected, they activated their distress beacons for the helicopter pick-up later.

Once the horde of griffins reached the fleet, they began to circle ships, rendering cannons useless against them, as well as the C-RAM Phalanx systems, due to there being too many targets. The crews of every ship were left to hand-to-hand combat and handheld weapons to defend. They sent out a request for air support and waited.

The griffins suddenly stopped circling when the IMC Industrious and seventeen cruisers (the spaceship kind) jumped in.

Author's Note

Hi guys, thanks for reading! Sorry for taking so long to release just one chapter, but like I said I got other things to be doing right now. Thanks for your patience, hopefully there should be another chapter by the weekend. Constructive criticism is welcome, as well as suggestions! See you guys next time

Sidenote: I think this goes quite well with the griffins getting torn to shit