Author's Note
Why do I do this to myself?
...and Bob's your uncle.
'Twas a beautiful day in Equestria. The sun was shining, the grass was green, Discord was off harassing some poor pony again, and Celestia was snarfing up on cake.
Also, don't mind the humongously huge, eyewear-donning yellow smiley face that just crushed like, half of the trees in Sweet Apple Acres. I'm pretty sure it's been there all this time, and totallly didn't come hurtling from a portal in a garbage can labeled "Recycle Bin".
Definitely not.
Somewhere across town, Twilight and her friends had just finished cleaning up the mess that was the remains of Internet Explorer. Or at least, what remained until Microsoft Bob came. Then all of the pieces of shredded browser lit on fire in a horrific, literal garbage-fire.
At some point in the writing and narration of this story, the author realized just how idiotic the entire point of this story was, but pushed on nonetheless.
Twilight's eyes tepidly traced the trail of fumes that lined the horizon, and down to the flaming wreckage of yet another technological flop. "C'mon, girls!" Twilight yelled at a volume that was certainly too loud for conversing to those standing directly beside you, "Let's go!"
Twilight teleported with a twinkle to the site of the incident.
Rarity ranted and raved, annoyed by the fact that she had to once again dirty her hooves. She went anyways, because generosity... I guess?
Rainbow Dash roared towards the spectacled smiley with a rambitious "Whoop!"
Pinkie Pie the Pink Ponk Pony pronked her way towards the place of impact.
Applejack, appalled by the fact that the astronomically absurd event took place in her literal backyard, darted adjacent to the rest as they made their way towards the area.
Fluttershy fluttered shyly, flying above her friends to the formidable foe.
...And the author proceeded to pat himself on the back for writing such an absurdly alliteration-filled section of the story. 'Cause seriously. It's more annoying than it looks.
As the six mares found themselves staring at the behemoth of a yellow smiley face, Celestia touched down atop the strange intrusion, cake frosting still smeared across her muzzle. "Holy mother of me!" The alicorn exclaimed, "Where'd this come from?!"
A glint of light shone from behind the oversized spectacles of the smiley face, and little-by-little, everything-- the ground it crushed, the grass and greenery around it, the houses, even some ponies, began to turn, little by little, into absurdly low-quality clipart images straight out of the 90s. Also, yes. Almost this entire paragraph is a single run-on sentence.
"Wh4t." A clipart-horse Celestia deadpanned, wiping pixelated crumbs off her face with a hoof. "Neigh. Neigh neigh nei-- neigh? NEIGH! NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIGH!!!"
Twilight facehoofed from afar. She and her friends had long-since retreated, watching the infectious touch of Microsoft Bob's clipart reality take hold over Ponyville. Not that Celestia really mattered all that much, anyways. It just meant a shorter time for Twilight to wait before taking her place, after all.
"So." Applejack pawed at the ground. "Whaddya say we're gonna do, Twi?"
Twilight shrugged, pulling out the Elements of Harmony from the hammerspace of Pinkie's mane. "If you ask me, I'd say we should blast the thing. Or I could disassemble it. Or both! Oh, maybe if I could figure out what's inside that makes it alter reality in such a way we could--"
The sound of hoof-on-face reverberated over the land. "Twilight!" Rainbow Dash scolded, "How about we worry about your egghead stuff later, and worry about saving Equestria for now. Alright?"
"Wheee!" Pinkie squealed, pulling an EMP blaster from her mane, "Don't worry, I've got this!"
A pull of a trigger later, and for some strange reason, every unicorn (and alicorn, unfortunately,) lost their magical abilities. The Microsoft Bob smiley continued to wreak havoc, unaffected by the EMP. Almost as absurdly as one could imagine an unanimated clipart horse walking, a wrinkly old clipart horse cantered up to the spectacled behemoth, squinting in the brilliant yellow of the smiley face's surface. "H-hey, Bob?" The horse began, still squinting as their brain formed a vaguely pony-shaped blob in their vision reminiscent of their friend, "Could you remind me tomorrow to pick up some apples from the banana farm?"
Just like that, a holographic, but still absurdly childish-looking calendar appeared before the clipart horse with the next day's date circled. Just like what, you may ask? Just like that, of course.
Also, at some point a cartoonish dog named Rover had burst from within Microsoft Bob, and was now roaming about the town searching for nothing in particular.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Twilight hollered at Pinkie, trying and failing multiple times to charge her horn.
Pinkie shrugged, firing the EMP several more times in hopes that it would have an effect on Microsoft Bob.
"STAAAAAAAAHP!" Twilight continued yelling, cowering on the ground as she felt every blast of the EMP hitting her horn that may or may not have actually been computerized in nature by some unknown force. Rarity joined the mare on the ground, despite her brain's protests to not roll in the grass. After all, it was the most obnoxious headache the two had ever felt.
Somewhere back in Sweet Apple Acres, Celestia lay twitching atop Microsoft Bob's yellow... face? Body? Either way, she felt the full force of multiple EMPs on her horn as well.
At this point, the narrator realized that he just narrated himself into a corner that he couldn't narrate himself out of without having to either renarrate and rewrite the entire latter half of the story, or just toss in some good ol' Pinkie Pie randomness. Naturally, one would easily guess what the author chose to do.
"Oh, I know what to do!" Pinkie chirped, stuffing the EMP blaster back into her mane and pulling her party cannon from under a pebble, "I'MMA BLAST MYSELF INTO THAT THINK AND MAKE IT MY FRIEND!"
Twilight balked, her horn still aching. "Pinkie, no--"
"LEEEEEEEEEEEEEROY JEEEEEEEEENKIIIIIINS!" The pink pony hollered, firing herself from the cannon directly towards Microsoft Bob's... main unit? Honestly, with how much more often Internet Explorer was humanized and memed compared to Microsoft Bob, it's hard to come up with a proper term. Either way, don't worry. The pain of this story is nearly over now.
Microsoft Bob simply sat there, unmoving. After all, just like Internet Explorer before it, it was nothing but a synthetic creation, a tangible representation of nontangible code. Pinkie Pie proceeded to collide full-force against the definitely tangible surface of Microsoft Bob, flattening like a pancake against one of the lenses of the glasses that the smiley face wore.
"Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie!" The mare squeaked, popping off into her original form, completely and entirely unaffected by the clipart reality around her. "Welcome to Ponyville! Ooh, I need to throw a Welcome-To-Ponyville-You-Big-Yellow-Smiley-Face-Thing-From-The-Sky party! Did you ever hear about this thing called Internet Explorer crashing down a few hours before you? Oh and also your glasses look a bit cracked from me slamming into it, so lemme just clean it off and--"
Microsoft Bob proceeded to crash, unable to keep up with the mare's rapid-fire blabbering. Unfortunately, the patch of Equestria it left behind remained as clipart, as did the ponies. Or at least, for the next hour they did. Celestia, however, immediately stood up as herself once more, brushed herself off, and made a direct trip to Donut Joe's shop. Because donuts.
As for Twilight, Rarity, and countless others, they'd continue to have a migrane for the next week and a half.
