Two Households, Both Alike in Dignity
Winds of peace caressed the Spiky Mountains, home of two families. The Hooffields on the left, and the McColts on the right. One week, three days, seventeen hours and forty-seven minutes were peace surrounded the mountains.
This calm kept Big Daddy McColt, head of the McColt family, thoughtful. He stood on his watch, always attentive to his enemies. Up on the walls around his fortress, he could see those “things” the Hooffields called houses, his eyes wanted to run away every time he looked at his sworn enemies’ side. And there they were, stuck in their crops as always. But there was something that bothered Big Daddy; it had been a long time since the last time Ma Hooffield moved from her place.
What are those crazy and dirty Hooffields up to? asked the small, blue pony to himself has he scratched his bald head.
It was time for dinner and all the McColts gathered at the table to eat. All except Big Daddy, who kept his eyes on the rival mountain.
A shadow slipped through the bushes that surrounded the McColts fort. It was the mare Big Daddy was “watching”; it was Ma Hooffield, matriarch of the Hooffield family. She, seeing that the coast was clear, imitated the sound of a deer in heat. From the bushes, three other members of the family came out and joined her. The first stage of the plan was ready.
This day would mark a before and after in the history of the family. Before Princess Celestia rises the sun, the Hooffields will leave this place with one of the heavy cannons of their rival family. It was time for the McColts to learn how annoying is to repair your house every day.
“Ma, are you sure they won’t notice we left?” asked one Ma’s granddaughters.
“Maybe I’m not the best at buildin’ things, but I’ve been makin’ scarecrows long before there were birds. I give you my word that cone-head won’t notice. Alrighty y’all, time to climb up that wall,” said the light brown mare.
The Hooffields stuck their backs to the wall to avoid being seen. They tied some carrots to ropes and threw them to the other side of the wall. The carrots hooked and the family used the rope to climb. Once inside, the invaders crawled through the wall until they found a warehouse.
“It’s time for phase two: grab the cannon.”
The family crawled through the shadows of the night, taking advantage of the fact that the sky had no moon to give them away. The warehouse wasn’t far away from their position. Once inside, they found all the arsenal of weapons the McColts had. Ma was pretty sure the McColts won’t mind if the Hooffields give these cannons a personal touch.
Inside of each cannon, the family threw a rotten watermelon, so the one firing these up will get a little piece Hooffield medicine.
The McColts had left the table with the same taste in their mouths. What they would give for eating something else except pumpkin. Everyone was preparing for the night when one of the triplets heard a noise. The entire family was put on alert.
Big Daddy McColt trotted quick as a lightning to the warehouse to verify that all the food (pumpkins) was there and that there weren’t animals trying to take it away. Thanks the princesses everything was fine. However, there was something strange. One, two, three, four...
Big Daddy scratched his long beard. “Odd, it was supposed to–”
BOOM!
A pumpkin landed just above Big Daddy’s house, reducing it to nothing but sticks.
The bearded pony took a leap that took him to the top of the wall. The veins in his neck seemed to burst. “HOOFFIELDS!”
“Look what we got for Heart’s Warming, you prune!” Ma Hooffield shouted from her house with a hoof on the cannon.
The McColts took their weapons to the walls and loaded them. When the fuse consumed, the cannons exploded, bathing the whole family with watermelon juice.
“Let’s see what you think of this!” cried Ma.
Another pumpkin shot into the air. Objective: that dead ferret Big Daddy calls hat. The pumpkin hit just below him and made the entire wall collapse.
Big Daddy pulled out his bald, orange-painted head from the pile of rubble. “War time!”
On the other side, Ma Hooffield took a carrot from the ground and took a bite. “Now yer’ll see how annoyin’ is repairin’ your house a thousand times a day.”
However, before she could finish that sentence, the McColts already had the wall and the house repaired, another cannon in their ranks, and five bales of hay flying towards the Hooffield’s mountain.
“Take Cover!” shouted Ma.
The Hooffield family ran everywhere like headless chickens looking for a place where they could hide. But, one by one, the bales buried the family in hay. When the last of the projectiles fell to the ground, the Hooffields took as much tomato as they could carry and took them to the slingshots.
And again, the two families entered in another pitched battle. Even with a new weapon on the red side, there was no difference on the scale. This battle in specific went on all night. They didn’t stop until breakfast, and then they resumed the fight.
When the sun rose, a heavy rain bathed the Spiky Mountains. The rainy season had begun and flooding was expected in the area. There was no pony more attentive to this than the two families. When the rains begin, a period of cease-fire starts. Until the pegasi that control weather don’t let out the last drop of rain out of the last cloud in the sky, there would be no aggressions. Not because of honor or friendship, those terms are incompatible with the relationship of the families. Time. Time was the only reason.
The families needed time to prepare for the new battle, a battle over water. A naval battle.
The day arrived, and the last drop of rain fell from the last cloud in the sky. When the clock set midday, the boats of each family were already floating on the water.
On the side of the Hooffields were a lot of logs joined by ropes and vines. While the McColts had rafts that could hold up to the worst of the storms.
The heads of the families released the moorings of their flagships, all the other ponies followed them, setting free the ships on the lake that formed around the valley. They met face to face after a few seconds.
“Surrender, Hooffields, you have nothing ta do against our fleet.” The McColts lifted their oars to the sky with a shout of pride.
“Our boats have nothing to envy your–”
The boat next to Ma Hooffield collapsed into a thousand pieces as soon as a slight breeze caressed him.
“Mare down! Mare down!”
“Go with your brother, Green Hoof!” Ma Hooffield stomped a hoof, opening a crack in her boat. “Enough mutterin’. Charge!”
The ponies began to row while their companions loaded the weapons. The boats and the rafts approached each other as the anger of the two families increased. When the distance that separated them disappeared, the bombing began.
From their humble boats, the Hooffields threw tomatoes, carrots, watermelons and pumpkins without mercy. The McColts carried their heavy catapults with bales of hay and scrap, but they wasted their energies collecting the food the Hooffields were throwing at them.
“Adopt formation!” shouted Big Daddy.
The McColts rowed close to each other and deployed in a circular formation, with Hammerhead, the strongest stallion of the family, in the middle with its powerful cannon pointing at the heavy boat of the Hooffields (the only one that weren’t just logs tied together).
The Hooffields needed that ship to win the battle. Losing it was not an option!
Ma Hooffield quickly ordered the loading of all the weapons.
Hammerhead shot the immense scrap ball he carried in his cannon. The powerful shot destabilized him and he fell into the water. The projectile was flying towards its target, but Green Hoof diverted it by launching it a watermelon.
“Nice! Our turn!” shouted Ma.
Brussel Sprouts, who operated the Hooffields’ new cannon, pointed it to the McColt flagship and released the cannon’s fury against it. The weak boat couldn’t handle the recoil of the cannon and disarmed into a thousand pieces. But the lost wasn’t in vain: the pumpkin flew towards enemy lines and struck a blow so hard on Big Daddy’s boat that it was reduced to a pile of splinters.
Big Daddy grabbed a piece of wood and floated out. The bales and watermelons flew mercilessly above him. They soared trough the skies looking for a ship to crash. Both sides had the same number of ships, since, although the McColts had technological advantage over the enemy, they used all their energy in catching the food that the Hooffields launched. But under no circumstances Big Daddy would let that filthy Hooffields win.
“Hammerhead send ‘em another one!”
“On it, Da–”
Something flew directly from a boat to the soaked stallion’s mouth so quickly and precisely that he couldn’t help to swallow it. An intense fire rose from his stomach to his throat, causing him to spit out puffs of fire. His hooves gripped on the oars and he began rowing as if a pack of timberwolves pursued him all over the lake until he disappeared in a forest, now rowing by land.
Big Daddy veins were about to explode. It was time to show those Hooffields why they call him Big Daddy.
“Release the Kracolt!”
The gates of the McColts’ fortress opened wide. A colossal galleon with cannons even on the sails, powered by wind, steam and a magic stone Big Daddy found one day, rolled downhill on a path of logs until it fell on the water, making the Spiky Mountains tremble. Its blue sails rose to the sky while its countless cannons waited for their ration of gunpowder. All the McColts approached the boat, grabbed as much food as they could carry and jumped on it.
Big Daddy grabbed the ship’s wheel. “Is time to end this, Hooffields.”
Ma Hooffield didn’t let herself be intimidated by such a monster. Her family had all the necessary to finish that thing off.
“Hooffields! Triangle formation!”
After one or two collisions, the farmers finally achieved the formation of a perfect scalene triangle.
“Ha! Your huge ship has nothing to do against my family!”
One of the guns released a log that hit full on half of the boats. All the Hooffields that fell into the water swam as fast as possible to Ma’s boat.
“Ha, ha!” Laughed Big Daddy.
“Ha, ha, ha! You may have finished with half–”
The galleon fired again, exterminating all the remaining boats except Ma’s. Her fallen relatives climbed into her boat. The whole family stayed together on the piece of floating wood that was sinking little by little.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha! You were sayin’?”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Union is strength!” shouted Ma.
The dreadful galleon pointed all its guns towards the weak boat. All the Hooffields gulped at the same time.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Hooffields!”
Big Daddy dropped his hoof on the red button next to the wheel. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of logs, bales of hay, dirty clothes, scrap, broken tools, stones and sticks flew towards the boat.
Everything was over for the Hooffields. However, Ma would never give up as long as there was a drop of fertilizer to throw out. In a quick movement, the old pony threw an apple in the air and kicked it with all her might.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, her raft sank before the projectiles impacted.
The apple went through the countless enemy projectiles and impacted on the Kracolt’s sail. From there, it bounced on a cannon, which it ran down to bounce on the head of one of the McColts triplets. The apple fell on a telescope where it started spinning at great speed until it went straight against Big Daddy’s hat, but that wasn’t the end, because the apple rolled down his hat and fell into a small hole beside him, just like a golf ball.
A cold sweat ran down the pony’s beard. That hole led straight to the main boiler in the engine room, and that apple had just the right size to plug it...
BOOM!
The boiler couldn’t withstand the pressure and exploded. Pieces of wood flew everywhere as the birds fled in terror. The ponies of both families pulled their heads out of the water, looking for a piece of wood to cling to.
The last to leave the water were the heads of family. They looked at each other’s faces and said with an expression of blankness, “Tie.”
The battle was over. This time there were neither losers nor winners. Only a bunch of soaked ponies swimming toward their homes. The Hooffields carried all the wood and materials they could take, while the McColts left nothing edible behind.
Big Daddy stood on his wall to see what his enemies were planning to do with so many materials, but they just left them lying around. It doesn’t matter, because the day he has been waiting for a long time was approaching: the migration of the dragons. Once those super-developed lizards pass through here, he will execute his master plan to end once and for all with those annoying neighbors.
SPLAT!
A tomato hits directly on Big Daddy’s face.
“HOOFIELDS!”
