The overlord of evil sat upon his mobile throne. He stared off into the viewport of his dreadnaught. Several bouyes had been stationed in empty space for this event. It would finally bring destruction to those pesky Space Rangers and their Galactic Alliance.
"At last, it is time to test my most evil creation," Zurg said with glee, "A bomb, that shall rend the very fabric of the universe!" The dreadnaught shuddered slightly as the massive torpedo jettisoned from the ship. Immediately the onboard guidence system directed it on its course.
"Ahh, new weapons testing. Perhaps my job's best perk. Well, that and casual Fridays." Zurg added quickly. The emperor wore a blue sweater on over his usual metallic uniform of evil. Below him a grub swiveled his chair to show off his hawian shirt. One of the brain pods stopped and turned towards Zurg.
"Casual Friday?" He inquired. "I thought it was hat day." Instantly Zurg vaporized the stetson the pod had mounted upon his bio-mechanical 'head.
"You thought wrong!" Zurg yelled at his underling. He was surrounded by incopitence...
"Detonate my new bomb!" Zurg commanded. Below him the brain pod began a countdown until the torpedo's inevitable destruction. The pod continued it's countdown until the bomb vanished entirely.
"THAT'S IT?! Where's my big universe-altering explosion?!" Zurg demanded quite annoyed. "Brain pod 18, I believe that bomb was your project, was it not?" Zurg glared down the end of his tri-barrel vaporizer. He never go the chance to pull the trigger. In the next second a bright light flashed as the entire ship was consumed in the explosion.
Zurg awoke from his unconcious state to find his dreadnaught crashed. The tiny forms of the brain pods and grubs had all disappeared.
"Ugh..." Zurg managed weakly as he hauled himself up off the floor of the bridge. The viewport had shattered. Zurg gazed out of it to find the remainder of his ship. The dreadnaught had aparently been ripped in two on whatever sort of explosion had happened.
"GRUBS?!" Zurg yelled into his communicator. There was no reply except static. Zurgs cybernetic eyes on his helmet glared a different shade of red as he scanned his ship for life. There was none. Either the underlings had fled or they had perished. Either way he was now stuck here on this - wherever he was.
All was not lost however, the scans revealed that the majority of his robotic drones, the hornets that he used to regularly attack star command, remained intact. Now he just had to reactivate them.
A groggy DJ sat behind her desk, waiting for her broadcast to end. In addition to being a DJ, this blue maned mare hosted the loudest radio station in Equestria. Suddenly her broadcast was interrupted by a metallic sounding voice.
"GRUBS?!" It yelled. Someone was pulling a prank, she assumed. She leaned forward and slid the knob on her consol to boost her own station's signal. But as quickly as the voice had come on the air, it vanished. Something was not right. Vinyl could understand the average filly pranking her by overriding her station by broadcasting on the same frequency, but this 'thing' had no intention to disrupt her station any further. What chilled her more-so was the anger in the voice. Vinyl Scratch, or moreso her 'alter-ego' DJ-PON3 had never seen anyone that angry before, never in the night clubs, the parties, not even Octavia had been that upset when she built a dishwasher out of wubs. She shut off her radio system and groggily went downstairs for breakfast. Octavia was making flapjacks and that was all that mattered now, she would worry about the voice later...
Zurg slammed his metallic fist into the hornet unit's body.
"Work you accursed automaton!" Zurg yelled. Finally the hornet turned on. The robot looked at its master, awaiting a command.
"Start the rest of your brethren, I've got to sort out this mess we're in." Zurg said as he turned and walked away. The hornet pressed a button on the wall and the robotic army powered up from its sleep. Why hadn't Zurg just pressed the 'on' switch, the unit wondered...
Octavia wondered why her usually-loud friend was so silent. She understood her nocturnal nature, and that Vinyl could indeed have no wish to speak due to the ill effects of sepending the entire night awake. But something seemed to be troubling the mare…
"So, whats the latest news around Ponyville?" She inquired, attempting to break the silence that consumed the room. Vinyl looked up from her pancakes.
"You ever get a wierd feeling when someone interrupts your tunes?" Vinyl finally asked.
"I've learned to live with it." Octavia replied almost casually as the dubstep dishwasher kicked on again behind her. It was the third time this month it had broken and played at random intervals, instead of when washing dishes.
"Last night there was a horrible sounding dude took my air. He screamed 'grubs' before going silent again." Vinyl began.
"Probably somepony playing tricks." Octy replied, whilest shifting her position in her seat.
"No, the dude sounded so unnatural. He sounded metallic and electrified - but not like the way the almighty Glaze is in his tunes!"
"I'm sure its nothing to worry about." Octavia would never understand her.
"Ugh." Was all Zurg could say to accurately emphasise his disgust at what had happened to his ship. He keyed a command on a console in the wall. A hologram appeared, indicating for him to record his emergency message.
"This is the Evil Emperor Zurg. To any that find this, RESCUE ME! My dreadnaught has crash-landed on an uncharted planet within the alpha quadrant. Oh! If this is Warp Darkmatter recieving, I left my laundry in the third machine again could you-" The machine sputtered and stopped recording before Zurg could finish.
"Blast!" Zurg said angrily.
"I left my laundry in the third machine-" The recording sputtered and died.
"We picked that up at oh eight-hundred hours." Commander Nebula stated whilst pacing beside the projector.
"Sir, if Zurg is in trouble this would be the perfect chance to-" A ranger started.
"To put an end to his tyranny." A certain, model-of-perfection ranger stated from the rear of the room.
"That's why I'm putting you on this one, Buzz." Nebula began again. "Your mission, is to find Zurg, and bring him in. Accompanying you will be Ranger Parsec, and Ranger Crocket. Your three ships are to approach the event horizon of the disturbance. Once passed through, its your job to track down that emergency beacon, and capture Zurg. As an aside, if the planet supports a populous below hyperdrive technology, you are in no means allowed to violate the prime directive."
"Understood sir." Buzz curtly replied.
"Meeting adjourned." Nebula said before limping out into the hallway.
XR stood at his station awaiting the force of the engines.
"Oh this is so cool." Booster said for the fifteenth time beside him.
XR rolled his eyes to the best of his ability, despite being a robot, and braced himself against the G-forces as shuttle forty-two lifted away from Star Command. In orbit of the station two other shuttles pulled up alongside the ship.
"Coordinates locked in, jumping into Zurg space." Mira reported as she pushed the hyperdrive to full power.
Zurg approached a group of hornets carrying a large cylindrical container.
"Is that the thigy?" Zurg inquired.
The hornet in question gave its master the most quizzical look a robot could.
"You know the Evil Takeover Thi-" Zurg growled, "THE CRYSTALLIC FUSION SELF PERPETUATING BREEDER CONSTRUCTION CORE?!"
The hornet nodded.
"Put it over there!" Zurg replied still enraged by the device's long name.
The emperor had to hope the device hadn't been damaged when the dreadnaught had crashed down. The device was his only chance to get off this rock. Perhaps if he loaded in the plans to the dreadnaught itself he could leave in as much leisure as he arrived in.
One hornet approached the emperor. The drone held in its metallic fingers a holo-pad. The emperor thumbed the 'on' switch, and the device responded immediately. Images of ponies in the nearby town filled the screen. Trotting about they seemed quite content and happy in their peaceful world.
Zurg began to cackle madly, before slamming a fist into the machine behind him.
"You mean to tell me, I'm stuck on a world filled with sentient equines?!"
The hornet nodded, and Zurg looked contemplative for a moment.
"A world of sentient equines, below warp-capability, hidden in an inter-dimensional rift..." Zurg brought the three-barreled weapon of terror to the read. "Lock 'n load!" Zurg said with a cackle.
A thunderous boom shook the house. Whether Octavia noticed, was another matter, given the company that she kept. The next thing she heard was what caught her attention. The sounds of ponies screaming filled the air. The sounds of terror hadn't been heard as such, since when the queen of the changlings overtook the capital of Equestria. Octavia looked out the window above the sink to see metallic drones marching on two feet through town, firing at anything that moved. Suddenly the Mane6 burst onto the scene, their elements of harmony at the ready.
"Whoa, rad!" Vinyl said behind her. "Action movie time!"
Octavia dropped to the floor and cowered as a hornet approached the window.
A blast of rainbow energy burst forth from the elements, and swept over the approaching horde of hornets. The magic seemed to do little to stop them.
"Whatever they are, they're not bound by the laws of our world!" Twilight yelled over the cacophony of battle. A stray laser shot struck her element, and sent it flying. It landed at the feet of the evil emperor himself. Zurg picked up the crown, and eyed the gem in it, before polishing it against the fabric of his cape. He set it upon his own head, and beamed a vile smile back to Twilight. Several hornets stopped fighting to cast glances at their leader.
"What?! An emperor's got to have a crown!" Zurg said, flinging his weapon about in a most unfashionable motion. In the process he nearly knocked over a hornet, which cast a glance at him before rushing off the conquer the town.
"Enslave the women and chil- I mean, the mares and the fillies..." Zurg sputtered realizing his error, "I'm an equal opportunity enslaver, regardless!"
A platoon of space rangers sat in front of the event horizon of a dimensional rift. In the distance hundreds of escape pods floated adrift in space. At the helm, Lightyear prepared to enter the anomaly. The portal loomed menacingly over them. On the other side had to be something terrifying and evil enough to bring down Zurg's heaviest ship.
"Booster, this reminds me of the time we took on the Vulturan fleet."
"Oh oh, you mean the time when you and Warp arrested the Raenok, and the they hired the Vulturans to wreck you guys's ship?" Booster started excitedly.
"Uh, no. I meant the time we had to rescue XR before they sold him for scrap." Buzz replied coolly.
"Dang bird-brains..." XR muttered.
"Are we even sure that whatever is on the other side is even capable of defeating Zurg? What if its a trap?" Mira inqured, from the seat next to Buzz.
"Or maybe he flew into a planet..." XR remarked, almost sarcastically.
"Oh, trust me XR," Buzz began, "whatever is on the other side is something ferocious. Zurg won't go down without a fight, and besides, even the worst grub wouldn't fly into a planet."
"Lightyear, are we gonna wait here, or are we going after Zurg?" Rocket Crocket said too loudly over the communications screen.
Buzz chuckled.
"Alright Crocket, ahead full."
As the first ship crossed the horizon, Ty Parsec's, a loud boom reverberated through the ships. When the crews of both ships looked again, Parsec's star cruiser was gone. The two remaining ships pulsed towards the horizon. White light overtook both, and suddenly they plunged towards a habitable terrestrial planet. Buzz noticed a red cloud in the distance as forty-two crossed the ionosphere...
