Ponies, cannons, and war

Not even half an hour later, Spitfire and I reached the shore of Lake Canterlot, I didn’t even know Canterlot even had a lake. A small oval track had been hastily put together along with various medical tools and implements, as well as barbells and exercise machines. I had just barely managed to give her a copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships when I asked what the plan was as we passed guards, wonderbolts and ponies in lab coats.

Spitfire wanted to know what would happen if an actual pony went toe to toe, or rather hoof to hoof, with a Morgana and she, and the researchers brought in from the School of Magic, had me lifting weights first. That ended when I steadily climbed my way up to lifting twelve hundred pounds before they couldn’t fit anymore and the researchers gave up. I didn’t have much time to contemplate it as Spitfire set me up on the track to see how far and fast I got. According to her and a researcher with my timesheet, I could apparently beat trained professional runners, neat.

It was the blood test that wielded some interesting results. The blood itself wasn’t anything to note with the naked eye. It was the needle that snapped off my skin when an accompanying nurse tried to take another blood sample while I was talking to the doctor that was interesting. Turns out I had a form of invulnerability, or at the very least I can make my skin far tougher. It was selective with the default being on unless I was aware that what was about to happen, like a needle, was harmless. I was just glad that I could walk away with all my hooves still attached.

Then a researcher asked about my rigging.

And I summoned it for them.

The ground cracked beneath my hooves.

Curious, I jumped and everything seemed to shudder slightly when I landed and the cracks spread slightly.

More testing was done.

The result was a fairly good understanding of what I could and couldn't do, physically speaking.

To start I had two modes/forms/functions/settings (The researchers couldn't agree on the terminology). Rigging on, rigging off.

Rigging off left me more or less as an extremely capable and fit earth pony with two exceptions. The first was strength. I had an estimated one hundred horsepower I could push through any muscle in my body. Enough to lift approximately three hundred tons. The second was in how tough I was. The researchers’ calculations based on some further testing suggested no melee weapon could penetrate my skin. But anything magically enchanted? Theoretically unlikely. I was not eager to let someone stab me again for testing purposes, once was enough.

Beyond that I was well within pony performance levels, top ten percent. I wasn’t Sonic Rainboom levels of fast of course.

It was when the rigging came out things got a bit insane. As best we could tell I had my full engine power to push through any muscle in my body, 56,300 horsepower. One of the researchers caught a glance of my cutie mark and upon closer examination found that it was my design plan which did confirm their findings. I could quite literally lift anything! Not that I was going out of my way to find out what I couldn’t carry, but that was beside the point. The point being I was absurdly strong.

The second thing was again my toughness. We'd run a couple careful tests, and a blow that had bruised me before now didn't even hurt. Considering I could feel my armor belt, our working hypothesis was that I had full protection equivalent to my hull. Which, according to what the researchers could read, was 6-8 inches thick. From what I could remember was about equal to Kongo at her thickest, but if I had all or nothing armor like the Standards then mine was better designed. Still not enough to convince me to go toe to toe with Hood.

My eyesight also got a nice upgrade. I could make out a fly at two miles, and as far as I could tell I had visual clarity on par with my optics, with or without my glasses. As if that wasn't enough, thanks to my lookouts, I quite literally had eyes, be it those of my fairies, in the back of my head. It wasn't quite 360 vision, but more like a general awareness of all of my surroundings. Now I wondered how it would work through aircraft and radar.

After ‘second breakfast’, which meant I ate a large chunk of the food forcing a wonderbolt to make a donut run, I had distributed my book duplicates and found myself on the lake, finally.

Simply put: I was the ship and I already knew that. I could stand on the water and hit my flank speed of 30 knots. I had my guns which after some target practice shot more accurately than the muzzle loaders and breech loaders shipped over from the naval yard and hit harder, punching through the 4.5 inches of iron armor that protected all of Equestria’s armored frigates, a steel plate of the same thickness and experimental compounds of steel backed by either iron or a more elastic steel plate while the Equestrian cannons had trouble penetrating the iron armor let alone the other armor types. All my weapons functioned as they should. I was, quite literally, a battlecruiser in pony form. This test was more for the researchers and guards then it was for me.

It was then that the royal guard and wonderbolts began their testing.

Needless to say, I was not amused.

Not a single airborne pony was able to even make me move even an inch through their strikes, no matter what tricks they tried. Though their constant fluttering about and hoof-strikes did eventually start to annoy me, leaving me itching to try out my anti-air weapons, all four of them. One pegasi had even resorted to hitting me with a bolt of lighting, but besides for leaving my fur standing out straight left no mark.

The earth pony fight turned into a form of tug of war, since they couldn’t do much to me, what with me being out on the water and therefore out of range of their attacks. Although to call it tug of war was a joke considering that I didn’t bother to pull at all after the first attempt resulted in the guy taking a dunk in the water. The guy gave it the old college try before collapsing to the ground exhausted. Assuming the Morgana had similar capabilities then a boarding party had no hope of subduing the Morgana controlling the ship, if they could break through the mist and whatever AA capabilities they had. Best that any such boarding party could do is set explosives on them.

The gathered unicorns attempted to use a number of other spells against me, from spells designed to confuse me to ones that attempted to force me down, but no matter what they attempted, no spell managed much beyond annoying me. In the end the unicorns failed to find a single spell that could affect me in any meaningful way. One unicorn had proposed that transmogrification magic might be effective in halting Morganas and had suggested testing such spells against me, but Spitfire put her hoof down on the suggestion before I could refuse to have my atoms rearranged, especially since I wasn't certain their spells would put me back together as a ship, as a pony, or even as a human. Even their shield spells were useless, no one could block a 1,400 pound armor piercing shell.

At lunch time the researchers, royal guard and wonderbolts gathered their equipment and left to prepare their findings to their departments. At the very least Spitfire offered to lead me back to the dining room to meet up with Princess Celestia. Yay.

For the one hundred and seventy fifth time since she received Princess Celestia’s letter, Twilight Sparkle had to force herself to calm down by performing her breathing exercise…not that it helped at all. The purple alicorn tried her best to not stare at the slowly approaching view of Canterlot outside the train’s window that was starting to look less like the majestic capital it was and instead more like the entrance to Tartarus.

“The princess sure knows how to drive you nuts.” Starlight Glimmer commented off handedly while rereading the letter that had Twilight in a tizzy. It was a scroll with the royal seal stamped upon it, meaning that it was an official correspondence from the princess herself. The contents of said missive had nothing to calm down the panicking alicorn. An official summons to Canterlot by way of train with a ticket included, and no mention of why they were being called to the capitol. The only thing mentioned were issues that the princess wanted them to solve.

“Starlight! How can you be so calm!? This is obviously a summons for a super-secret special practical magical test! Oh no! I haven’t prepared at all!” Twilight said despite having spent the entire night studying every branch of magic she could get her hooves on and reviewing her various emergency checklists.

“Because we can just go ask the Princess why she summoned us.” Starlight pointed out as the train pulled into Canterlot station.

“But what if she wants to test us on friendship? I haven’t reviewed my old friendship letters in twenty-eight hours! What if she asks me about one of my lessons? Or what if she wants to test me on one of the more obscure spells? Like Astral projection or coordinate based teleportation arrays! Oh no, this is bad, so very bad!” Twilight continued to spiral downward into near complete panic as the two made their way into the castle.

Starlight simply rolled her eyes at the alicorn’s antics before taking in the tense atmosphere of the castle. At this rate, nothing Starlight could do would reassure the alicorn and frankly the visible increase in guards was starting to worry her.

“Oh!” Starlight’s attention snapped back to Twilight who had bumped into a familiar pegasus.

“Whoa. You okay?” The pegasus asked, pulling Twilight back onto her hooves.

“Thanks, Flash… Magnus?” Twilight replied surprised.

“What are you doing here?” Starlight couldn’t help but ask.

“After you guys got us out of Limbo I went looking for work for a pony who wanted experience in the Royal Legion. Princess Celestia just sent me a message to discuss my position.” Flash Magnus looked around before continuing. “From the looks of it, I doubt Princess Celestia is making me a drill sergeant. Call it a hunch.”

“That’s odd. We just got a letter from Princess Celestia to resolve an issue. Do you think the two might be related?” Starlight asked before Twilight could do so as the group walked to the throne room.

“Maybe, although I wonder why she’s only summoning us instead of all of the Elements and the Pillars.” Flash Magnus wondered as the group was told that Princess Celestia was currently preoccupied with meeting her advisors. The solar Diarch had left a message for the three that they should await Princess Celestia in the alicorn’s private dining room for lunch. The group had just turned around a corner when Twilight saw a sight to raise her spirits.

“Shiny! Cadance!” Twilight greeted as she approached the two and Sunburst, the group turning to look at her and her companions.

“Twilight!” The Princess of Love shouted out as she pranced forward, Twilight mirroring her excitement as she too rushed up to the group.

“Cadance!” Twilight returned as she smiled widely as she began to bounce up and down, with Cadance mirroring her movements. “Sunshine, Sunshine, ladybugs awake. Clap your hooves, and do a little shake.”

“Sunburst, what are you doing here?” Choosing to ignore Twilight and Cadance’s reunion, Starlight focused on her own reunion with Sunburst.

“Oh, Princess Celestia sent me a message about a research project that she wanted me for.” Sunburst replied before yawning.

“And she wanted to see us about a potential threat to Equestria.” Shining Armor stated, revealing the reason for the tension in the castle.

“Threat? What threat?” Twilight asked, glancing between Shining Armor and Cadance.

“Oh good, I was hoping that Cadance, Shining Armor and Sunburst would arrive quickly.” The melodic voice of Twilight's teacher echoed from down the hall, the Princess of Friendship turning and seeing the Solar Princess and her attendant approaching.

“Princess Celestia! It’s so nice to see you!” Twilight greeted as she cantered over to the Princess and nuzzled against her foreleg, the Princess returning the embrace with one of her wings. “We came as soon as Spike handed me your scroll, but what threat is Shiny talking about? Has Tirek escaped from Tartarus? Or has Queen Chrysalis returned?”

“No, my dear friend. A new, previously entirely unknown threat is encroaching upon our nation. A threat that has already attacked…” Celestia, a grave expression upon her face, started to explain, only to be interrupted by an unnaturally loud growling noise.

…

“Sorry, I missed breakfast.” Sunburst blushed sheepishly.

“Not to worry. We can continue our explanation once we sit down for lunch with our resident expert.” Celestia led the group to her and Luna’s private dining room.

“Expert? What expert?” Twilight couldn’t help but ask as they finally reached the dining room door.

“The only pony who has any idea of the threat that we face and the only one who has actually fought them.” Celestia explained, the door creaking open.