Luna grumbled within the dark basement of Canterlot castle. Every step she took got her deeper into a mossy abyss with a stench so rancid it would've torn her muzzle off had it not been fully affixed to her face. She was busy rummaging through crates of old scrolls stored away since the archives ran full every so often and needed to be cleared out for newer scrolls.
"This is stupid," Luna complained when she grabbed another scroll. She glared at it then tossed it over her shoulder. "Why dump this things down here?" She dove in a large box and fumbled through the rolls, her lower-half sticking up and wiggling like a little worm. "Why do I have to look for some stupid scrolls related to the cat kingdom or whatever it's called?" She groaned and stopped moving. "I could sleep in here, actually."
The mare continued her search for several minutes, but she stopped and leaned against a stone wall between several boxes she had moved out of the way.
"Pffff. This is nonsense."
She heaved a heavy sigh that through its incredibly nonexistent power, caused the wall she rested against to evaporate in a thin cloud of smoke.
"Oh," she noted apathetically.
The lunar princess fell through and plummeted through the large, strangely well illuminated hole.
"If I could see where I was falling, that would be great!" she shouted down the massive shaft.
The shaft was easily the width of the castle's entrance hall without the inconvenience of a tiny doorway to ruin the massive space within. After a while of falling, the mare was leisurely relaxing in the air by 'resting' on her back, hind legs crossed, and checking her foreleg hooves for damages from keeping them in her royal apparel.
"You know...I could use my wings to break the falling and get back up but...I don't care enough fo--"
Her self-monologue was cut short by her smashing through the ground at the bottom of said shaft and kicking up several wagons worth of dust. She popped out of her new hole and shook the dust off of her head. She whistled to herself and looked up through the opening, eyes wide and body slightly trembling.
"Good thing I was using the plot armor spell I learned from that kirin in the far east." She pulled herself out of the hole and dusted herself off using her wins and hooves. "Now where exactly did I land?"
The mare looked around the large area as best as she could, but it was pitch black. Annoyed, the mare creating a small, light blue ball from her horn, raised it as high as she determined the room to be, then unleashed the full potential of the spell, illuminating the entire chamber all at once. She gasped and stood in place, paralyzed from what she was seeing.
She walked around the area, creating hollow, metallic echoes with every step. She had found herself in a massive hangar of sorts. Several catwalks lined the metallic walls, although many had fallen down due to disrepair and lay about in dusty and rusted piles on the sides of the hangar. Several dead lights hung within the ceiling, although they weren't needed thanks to Luna's spell. As for what the hangar held within its confines, it was the crown jewel, and Luna didn't hesitate to fly towards it.
"This thing has windows," she noted. "But how do I get inside?"
Luna crawled around it like a cockroach, tapping its body until she finally found a small metal hatch to push to the side and reveal a red button within. The mare rubbed her hooves together, stuck her tongue out in anticipation, then pressed said button. The sides of the object slid to the side, leaving Luna to crawl within and disturb the dust that had settled within.
"A seat?" she noticed. She tapped it several times and almost coughed her lungs out from the dust present. "Still seems intact enough..." She put her butt onto the seat and smiled. "Aaahhh...nice and comfy." Her smile led way to curiosity when she payed full attention to what was in front of her. "Hmmm..." she hummed with a hoof to her chin. "What are these?" Before her were a plethora of different-sized buttons and screens of different sizes. Intrigued, she pressed on a large red button that caused the object she sat in to shake violently and cause the screens and internal lights to flicker with just the same amount of violence.
A voice jittered and ran on until it finally stabilized into a hard-to-hear, female voice. "Systems: Online. Weapons: Online. Engine:Fully fueled. All systems nominal."
The screen in front of Luna, right in the middle of the button wall, displayed 'weapon systems' underlined, with a list below it with numbers and more numbers next to some of those. The mare tapped the screen, confused about what she was seeing.
"What is this? Large laser x two? Long-range missiles ten x four? With seven hundred ad twenty next to that? And WHAT is this 'medium laser x four' all about?! It makes no sense!"
Two screens on the right, connected to the hull, also had their own displays. One displayed what Luna saw were called 'heat sinks' in each compartment, and the number present. The one below was just a flat line in a red background displaying 'NO SIGNAL' in large format. One on the right hanging from the ceiling showed 'friendly IFF', but it was blank. The mare scratched her head and shrugged.
"I wonder if there's an instruction manual somewhere."
She fumbled all around the cockpit of the machine and pulled out a simple, average instruction booklet.
"WHAT THE HADES IS THIS?!" Luna bellowed. "This thing is EASILY TEN THOUSAND pages long! I could pry up the towers with this monstrosity!" Her horrified expression was thrown away for one of peace and serenity. "Good thing I have all the time I need." The alicorn smiled, slouched in her seat, and opened the book for a 'good' read.
All was not well topside, however, for the Storm King had returned...somehow, with a new fleet of airships. He stood on the prow of one of them and yelled at Celestia at the top of his lungs.
"CELESTIA!" he bellowed. "Surrender now, and I won't completely raze Canterlot to the ground! I went easy on you last time, but this time, things won't be as simple!"
"WHAT?!" one of the ponies in the city shouted.
One of the Storm King's guard tapped him gently on the shoulder. "Uh, the new engines are too loud for anyone to hear us."
Color flushed from the ape's face and he frowned with disappointment. "No fair. I had a speech and everything..."
They both looked to the side to see Celestia and her royal guards take to the sky with scowls as their primary weapon. They both stared at the white alicorn yelling something, but it came off as exaggerated body movements and mouth flapping.
"What'd she say?" the Storm King asked his guard. He shrugged in response. "Bah! Whatever. Destroy everything so we can install a new base here from which to strike the rest of Equestria."
The guard shrugged. "If you say so."
Luna, meanwhile, was rolling around in her new acquisition and accidentally dropped a hoof along several buttons. A loud siren blared in the hangar, and Luna clutched her ears, trying to prevent her head from exploding.
"What's happening?" she wondered aloud.
The ape tapped his feet impatiently on the ground. "Well?!" he yelled at the guard.
Said guard took his arms back down from his face and took several tries to speak properly. "I don't know. We're not firing and they aren't attacking."
The ape blinked slowly. "What is this, some kind of theatrical show where we wait for some kind of ill-conceived appearance to create tension or something?"
The guard raised a finger but lowered it just as fast. He had no idea what the Storm King was mumbling about. Everyone's attention was drawn to the welcoming center just outside of Canterlot Castle exploding upwards in an avalanche of smoke and debris.
The Storm King threw in arm towards the explosion. "What the hades is that?" A large, metallic construct rose out of it just slowly and indicated it stop with a loud clank. "AND WHAT THE HADES IS THAT?!"
The guard hung onto one of the many pipes connecting the hull of the ship to the balloon. "Looks like one of our airships with giant legs and weird pod things on its side."
The ape bolted his eyes left and right then stared at his guard and did the same thing until he could decide on which eye to lock onto. "What?" he wheezed.
Luna squinted through the windows and saw the airships in the sky in front of her sister. "Oh no! The Storm King! I need to get out of this machine and assist her!" The mare's urgency led way to a nagging feeling in her head, so she looked back at the book. "I wonder..."
"What do we do?" the guard asked the king.
"Give it flowers and a nice back massage," he answered sarcastically.
"Really?"
The ape gave the canine a whoop upside his head. "NO, YOU DOLT! SHOOT AT IT!" The guard complied and rushed inside, leaving the King to drag his hand across his tired face. "I miss my old army." He grabbed a his staff and ordered his airship to land upon the plaza, where Celestia and the rest of the guards had gone. He walked up to the princess after landing, accompanied by a contingent of well-armored and armed guard and a smirk on his face. "Well, well, princess. It looks like this time, there won't be any adventure by a protégée or such other nonsense. This time-" He pointed to her with his staff. "It's only you-" he pointed to himself. "And m--"
A large green laser shot from the side of the blimp-shaped center of the metallic monster, hit an airship, then caused it to spontaneously combust. Luna clapped enthusiastically and shot the others at the other blimps. Soon, all eleven still in the air were going down in flames, leaving everypony present slack-jawed.
"You think this will stop me, princess?!" the Storm King bellowed. He raised his staff and created a mighty storm from within its twirled tip. "I was defeated by coincidence, but this time, I will bring my full might upon whatever and whomever you bring forth!"
A might funnel of raging storm clouds and snaking lightning burst forth from the staff, hitting and spreading his magic for a time. When he was done, his big smile slowly faded, and he looked at his staff with a baffled expression. Maybe it was a problem with it, so he shook it and brought it to his ear. Luna, on the other hoof looked at him, then the pedals, then at him, then back at the pedals. She was sitting in a very pensive pose, with hind legs crossed and foreleg holding up one head while the other held that one up. She very slightly, almost unnoticeably, touched the pedal, moving it by naught but a molecule's length. Her toy instantly stepped on the ape, crushing him.
The lunar princess laughed manically when the guards ran away in their airship. Celestia flew up to the cockpit and saw her sister in it, shaking her hooves happily.
"Wha-Luna?!" she screeched in surprise.
A pegasus pony rushed towards Celestia, completely ignoring the metal walker next to her. "Princess, it's terrible! Tirek is back and has absorbed all the magic in Equestria, including from princesses Twilight and Cadence!"
"Hmmm...This is terrible news indeed. Where is he?"
The giant centaur smashed down from the sky into the ground, shorter still than Luna's toy. He pointed aggressively at Celestia.
"You WILL give me your magic this...time...What's that?" he asked. The princess shrugged in response. "Bah! It doesn't matter! I'll just destroy like everything else you ponies threw my way!"
He tackled the machines legs, expecting his empowered and muscular form to easily lift it, but he struggled for several minutes, each dragging on longer than the last. He eventually stopped to lean against the machine, panting.
"It's almost like this thing is...eight-five tons or...something," he panted. Luna responded by shooting blue lasers at his chest, pushing him away. "Ow! What was that? That really burned!" He looked at the burn marks on his chest and glared at the machine. "What was that even supposed to be? Some kind of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation?"
"That's oddly specific," Celestia pointed out.
Tirek shook his fist at her. "SHUT UP!"
Luna noticed a flashing yellow button on the display board of her machine and leaned in closer. "What is this? 'LRM SPAM!' is written on the button." She pursed her lips. "I should think about the consequences this could bring...but then I could fire more beams."
She immediately pressed the button, and the pods on the side of her machine dropped a hatch and let loose a volley of many, many missiles that engulfed Tirek in a big 'ol 'splosion. When the smoke cleared, the centaur was no longer there, but a large, red hole was left in his place. The giant mech shook the land when it walked forward, but it let Luna look down into the hole...somewhat. It didn't lean down much.
"What's that?" she spoke through the machine's loudspeakers.
"Looks like you blasted him into hades," Celestia sighed in a defeated tone.
"Woohoo!" Luna cheered. "Explosions save the day again!"
Author's Note
Yis. She haz Stalker. This stalker
From Battletech
