Preparations were underway–again–for Pinkie and Fluttershy’s wedding. This time, we’d decided to hold it at the edge of the Everfree Forest. That way, the only thing that could disrupt it would be either weather or wild animals. Those things we could at least deal with. The crazy random things that had ruined it before were from so far out of left field nobody could have conceived of them.

Everything had gone well up to now. The location was set and decorated. The food and whatnot was being prepared. The deserts, courtesy of my newfound cake-fu, were great. Sir Win still wouldn’t let me cook with alcohol, but maybe he was saving that for when it was more appropriate, like Berry Punch’s wedding. I was the one who brought booze to Equestria, so I have no idea how they already had a town drunk.

We’d gone through the wedding rehearsal and gone back to Ponyville that evening to have a small party to unwind before the actual event the next day. There were a few games, and of course, food and sweets.

Rarity introduced us to a game called Reactions. It was played with note cards. Each card had two numbers and a location. Each player wore a number. If you picked up a card, you replaced the numbers with the names of the ponies and read the card. The objective was to see the reactions of the two ponies you’d mentioned.

Applejack picked up a card and looked around the circle to find which two ponies she was talking about. “Fluttershy, you and Spike went to Canterlot.”

Fluttershy nodded. “Oh, okay.”

“This is kind of boring,” said Spike.

“I’m sure not all the cards are so simple,” Twilight reminded him.

As if fate mocking her, the card I picked up was indeed more interesting. I cleared my thoat. “Dash, Pinkie takes you to a gay bar.”

Rainbow’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. Pinkie grinned, but gasped as she remembered her current situation. “No! I’d never cheat on Fluttershy!”

“I wish you would,” said the yellow pegasus, although I may have been the only one who heard her.

We were still talking about things to make the wedding cooler. Rainbow spearheaded this committee.

“What about…an air show?” she suggested.

“The last time you tried to get the Wonderbolts to come to Ponyville, they blew you off. Just like every time you talk to them,” I pointed out.

Rainbow glared at me, but Twilight got between us. “Maybe we can use magic to simulate something like that.”

“Magic is your solution to everything,” I complained. “And you never explain shit.”

“I don’t have to. It’s magic.” Twilight turned to Fluttershy. “So, can I borrow some of your animals to practice on? I’d hate to screw up a spell and hurt somepony.”

Fluttershy let out an “Eep!” as if she was not comfortable at all with the idea. Twilight and Spike were already talking about what the show might consist of and had walked away.

I went down the street to my building. It wasn’t a house and I hesitated to call it a home. Still, it was a good base of operations and I had a few priority missions to carry out. The first: kill the Black Twins. The second: kill Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon.

My rage against the Black Twins had grown to the point that I was willing to spend frivolous amounts of money just to get even with style. To that end, I decided to keep in mind the fact that they didn’t know anything about where I had come from or my experiences on Earth. Sure, they may have heard I was from somewhere else, but they had never heard of America.

To that end, I decided to build a Desert Eagle. While they were made in Israel, the design was pure insanity that could only have come from my homeland. Since I doubted Magnum Research could file copyright infringement claims on me in Equestria, I pretty much had free rein to make my own stupidawesome .50 caliber handgun.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really have the technology. I had done some research into firearms before, but never had carried it very far because I was basically doing every single bit of work all by myself. Ponies weren’t really interested in guns.

Still, the Black Twins had wronged me so badly that I was willing to invent something that didn’t exist on this planet just to have my revenge.

It was probably a coincidence that I met the two of them outside my building. I doubted they had freaky mind powers to know when I was thinking about them, but it would sure be worrying if they did. I gave them a glare as I walked up to my front door. They stared back, both of them wearing identical expressions of boredom.

“Nice place,” said Woody.

“Shame if something were to happen to it,” remarked Beauty.

“It’s made of stone,” I pointed out. “It can’t be burned like you did last time.”

Woody shrugged. “No problem. It’s coming down next week regardless.”

“Do you have any idea how many defenses I’ve put up? Do you know how much I am motivated to foil you two because I hate you?” I just barely kept my voice from devolving into incoherent screaming.

“Good luck with that,” said Beauty. “It won’t help.”

The two of them walked away. I realized I was grinding my teeth. I didn’t know how they could be so casual about things. They were clearly very confident, but not externally haughty. It was an attitude that frustrated me very much. I decided to prioritize the murders of DT and SS, if only to cheer me up.

I went inside. Between the physical defenses I’d built, I’d gotten Rarity and Twilight to perform some magic. Rarity had done a few things like fireproofing my fabrics. Twilight had managed some defensive spells, but those were not really her field of study.

After a quick dinner, I sat down to work on my nefarious designs. My nefarious, awesome, designs.

In the morning, Spike came by. “Twilight’s about to go practice the air show.”

“Cool, I’d like to see that.” I followed him out of town to Fluttershy’s place. I thought it a little overconfident of Twilight to only begin practicing the morning of the wedding, but she was the Element of Magic.

“How long do you think you need?” I asked.

“The event is this afternoon, but this won’t take that long,” she said. Fluttershy sternly warned Twilight about letting any of her animal friends come to harm. Then, the unicorn began to concentrate and a whole bunch of assorted cute animals flew into the air, forming a sideways figure-eight.

“Infinite critters,” I observed. “Nice.”

Rainbow came zooming up. “Twilight! Come quick, there’s an emergency!”

The multicolored pegasus didn’t usually make a big deal out of things, so there was either a crisis or it was one of her pranks. For either eventuality, I prepared my switchblade and followed Twilight back to Ponyville.

As we approached the town square, I saw a burst of red light and heard Rarity’s distinctive moan of fashion anguish. Fanguish? No, that was vampire Cheerilee’s problem.

The white unicorn was wearing some sort of dress, and had swooned to the point of actually falling over. Applejack and Pinkie were carrying her away.

“What’s going on here?” asked Twilight.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Twilight Sparkle!” exclaimed Trixie, pulling her hood down to reveal her evilly grinning face. She was decked out in a black cloak this time, and the red gem she’d been wearing the last time I’d seen her had changed into a full metal necklace with little red inlays. Perhaps this was her battle form, because it certainly looked like she’d abandoned all pretense of sneaking around. That would be kind of hard to do when she had eight legs, the giant robot she sat atop did too, and you could practically see the evil coming off her. I mean, I’m a magic-insensitive earth pony and I could feel it.

I was honestly a little worried, because she was just generally more wicked than I had ever seen her before—and for Trixie, that’s saying something. Of course, I only had that realization when I was already flying through the air and approaching her general location.

While Twilight had addressed her from the front, I had circled around behind and launched myself off the top of a house. There was an invisible bubble around the cockpit of her robot, though, and I bounced off and into the dust. Trixie chuckled.

“You call that great and powerful?” scoffed Rainbow. Trixie fired a bolt of red magic at her and suddenly one of Rainbow’s wings grew huge, throwing her off balance.

“Good spell, oh Great and Powerful Trixie!” called Snails. The eight-legged unicorn (arachnicorn?) zapped him and Snips, joining them at the horn.

While the two colts ran away in terror, Twilight put on a frown. “Stop picking on my friends, Trixie.”

“Snips and Snails are troublemakers,” I pointed out. “And while you might not say it to her face like I would, Rainbow is a bitch.”

“Shut up, Valiant,” said Trixie and Twilight at the same time. Realizing what they had done, the two glared at each other. I giggled.

Trixie was the first to recover. “You and I have some unfinished business, Twilight. My magic’s gotten better since the last time I was here, and I’m going to prove it. You and me—magic duel. Loser leaves Ponyville forever.”

“Since when do you not talk in third person?” I asked. “It was easier to make fun of you that way.”

“Why do you keep interfering?” screamed Trixie. “You come second. First, I defeat Twilight.”

“Jeeze, fine. I’ll go get some popcorn or something.” I wandered away to find Pinkie. Truthfully, I wasn’t worried that my revenge on Trixie would go unquenched. Twilight would soften her up, maybe teach her a friendship lesson or two, and then I would cut her throat. Hopefully literally.

As I wondered how to optimize the slice in order to get as much arterial spray on Twilight as possible, Trixie began shooting more red magic bolts at various ponies in order to coerce Twilight to agree to a duel. The thought that she was using fear to get what she wanted put her in the same category as terrorists. I hate terrorists.

I didn’t have to go very far to find Pinkie so I could ask for some popcorn. As Trixie was working on her supervillian monologue, she mentioned a dreadful job working on a rock farm. Pinkie, who had grown up doing just that, was the first to protest. “You’re lucky a rock farm would take the likes of you!”

Trixie removed her mouth and nose.

“Whoa.” I stared, wide-eyed. While I had no idea how Pinkie was breathing, Trixie had managed to do something nobody had ever done before—get Pinkie to shut up.

Twilight seriousface’d. “All right Trixie, let’s duel.”

I doubted that she meant to make a reference to Yu-Gi-Oh, but Trixie began laying out the conditions. “If I lose, I won’t set hoof in Ponyville again, but if you lose you’re the one banished from this one-horse town.”

I looked around for a horse to see if he had been insulted, but those weren’t as common as mules.

And so the duel commenced, but it didn’t last long. Twilight got her ass kicked in probably the least dramatic way possible. She couldn’t turn Snips and Snails back to their normal ages after Trixie had made one younger and the older older.

Twilight got kicked out of Ponyville, and Trixie summoned a huge bubble to place over the whole area. I followed the rest as they ran to the edge of town. Twilight was on the outside of the bubble.

“It’ll be okay, guys. I’ll figure something out. Keep an eye on Trixie. There’s something strange about her.”

“You don’t say?” I shouted. Twilight ran off.

We walked back into town. Trixie hailed us. “You all, I want decorations made! Hang them around town. While you’re at it, dance for my amusement and make applesauce.”

“We-we’d better do what she says,” whimpered Fluttershy.

“Not so high and mighty now that Twilight’s gone, are you?”

Trixie glared at me. “The Great and Powerful Trixie was going to say that! Don’t you dare steal her lines!”

I shrugged. “Look Trixie, I think we can all agree that you are the only pony in this town who likes you. I’ll steal whatever I want from you, although in this case it wasn’t stealing at all because I thought of it first. Even if I didn’t , you can’t prove it because I said it first.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, I got off track. Anyway, the point I wanted to make is this: You aren’t the only one to hold a grudge against Twilight. The feud between her and I is legendary compared to yours.”

“Aren’t you friends?” she asked. “You even lived with her for a while.”

“Frenemies,” I said. “It’s complicated. Something that is pretty simple, though, is how I’m going to take you down. I challenge you to a robot duel.”

She grinned. “Oh really? What are the conditions?”

“No magic, just machines. We fight to the death.”

“I’d love to,” she gushed, advancing in her spiderbot. I suddenly realized that I was naked. I mean, I was in Ponyville, so of course I was naked. I meant naked in the sense that I had just challenged a madmare to a robot duel, and I didn’t have one. They had all burned up along with my building in Las Pegasus.

“Face sand!” I shouted, throwing a hoof full of soil at Trixie’s eyes. It bounced off her invisible shield just like my body had, but it was enough of a distraction to let me slip out of sight.

Trixie rampaged around for a while, but didn’t manage to find me or the Elements of Harmony. We had all holed up in the library with Spike.

“There sure is somethin’ funny about that necklace,” observed Applejack. We’d managed to find a book that contained information about Trixie’s mysterious new jewelry.

“What the heck is an ‘alicorn’?” I asked.

They all looked at me. “How could you not know?” asked Rarity.

“I swear, I’ve never heard that word in all the time I’ve been here,” I said. “Is it a new thing?”

They all ignored me and began concocting a plan to sneak Fluttershy out of town to take a message to Twilight about the amulet. Since sneaking was involved, I decided to do a little of my own. After donning an old pair of sunglasses that I’d left in the library and putting on a jacket Rarity had fashioned out of the curtains, I went out.

The town had been transformed into some strange perversion of Ponyville. There were red and black banners with symbols on them. I set my jaw. Trixie was a terrorist and a Nazi? Where was George W. Bush when you needed him? Not in Equestria, the wimp.

While I was disguised, now seemed to be a good time to talk to Trixie. I ambled down the street, trying to slip into a traveling salesman vibe. Trixie was busy being a terrorist Nazi.

“’Scuse me, miss, I was hoping you could tell me where you got that robot.”

Trixie turned. “The Great and Powerful built it, of course! It’s the best one in the universe.”

“Ha ha, oh really?” You lying bitch. “Care to build me one? Or tell me where I could find a duplicate?”

“Try Fillydelphia Cybernetics. They give Trixie a cut of the profits.” She did a haughty flip of her mane.

Fillydelphia Cybernetics? How had I never heard of them? Well, that was a small matter. I could destroy their company later. I nodded. “So I saw that crazy battle earlier. It’s a good thing you had that shield around you.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie always plans ahead.”

“How does it work? Just for reference. I’m sure somebody would love to write an article in the magic journal about you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Somebody?”

Shit. “Uh, sorry, I have Tourette's. Horseapples.”

Trixie explained it, and since I wasn’t Twilight I didn’t understand a thing she said. Well, I guess I would just have to resort to the brute force method. I asked if she would mind lifting the barrier so I could leave town and tell the world what she had done. Despite the fact that what she had done was hold an entire town hostage, Trixie seemed to think that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about, and let me go.

I had debated asking her about the connection she had with the Crystal King in the time leading up to her attack on the town, but since King Sombra was dead and I was already pushing my luck with the disguise, I figured it didn’t matter. I mean, there wasn’t somebody else called the Crystal King, was there?

I encountered a group of beavers assisting Fluttershy to escape as well. I put jokes about her beaver aside and walked with her to Zecora’s hut. Twilight was there, and we watched a little bit of freaky Jedi training the zebra had her doing. Part of that was walking on water.

I was going to give her a piece of my mind about that, but Zecora began to say something and I shut up because her speech was generally pretty hilarious.

“If Trixie’s tricks have you in a fix, you must use your magic, and use the six.”

“Are you saying I should have built a Smith & Wesson .500 revolver instead of a Desert Eagle?” I frowned. “No wait, that only has a five round cylinder. What the hell kind of six-gun are you talking about?”

“The Elements of Harmony!” exclaimed Twilight.

Aha, of course, Trixie was evil now, I should have seen what the perfect choice was. I said, “Using the Elements on her body would be the perfect way to make sure she stays peacefully dead. Around here, evil things have a tendency to come back.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Twilight.

“Well, I challenged her to a robot duel to the death,” I said. “While I don’t currently have a robot, I’m certainly not going to be the one to back out.”

I marched out the door before any of them could reply. Out of the forest and down the road was Sweet Apple Acres. I came up on Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle.

“I’m going to need to borrow that robot,” I said. “Trixie’s back in town and this time I’m going to finish her.”

The three of them looked nervous. “Promise to bring it back?” said Apple Bloom.

“I can’t promise that, but I will get you a replacement if it comes to that.” That was good enough for them, and the three fillies climbed down from the cockpit.

The robot had been modified extensively from the last time I’d used it. They’d painted it brightly and adapted it to their use. It didn’t have any weapons, though.

I was at a bit of a disadvantage. Not only was Trixie’s eight-legged bot much more stable on eight legs, it was a newer design than the old one I’d given the Crusaders. I swore once again that when this was over, I was going to pay a visit to Fillydelphia Cybernetics.

Heading towards Ponyville, I reviewed my game plan. It was good that I knew what I was up against, but bad that I didn’t have all the advantages. Let’s see, I had my switchblade, an old robot, a small flask of tequila, and cool guy shades. Well, I supposed that would have to do.

I approached the bubble and knocked on it with one of the robot’s manipulators. Before too long, Trixie came out of Ponyville on a golden four-poster bed being dragged along the ground by Snips and Snails.

“You could just use wheels,” I pointed out.

“She doesn’t trust them,” wheezed Snips.

Trixie stared at me. “Well, well, well, look who’s back.”

“Can it. Then let me can you.”

She did a little evil laugh and then ordered the two colts to drag her back to where she’d left her robot. I realized that maybe she was outside her protective bubble at the moment and felt the urge to attack, but had to watch forlornly as Trixie calmly boarded her spiderbot because I couldn’t get through the barrier.

“Come and get me!” she shouted from the center of Ponyville. The bubble faded away and I moved forward. In close quarters, I probably had a maneuverability advantage. Trixie moved out of the streets and into the town square to negate some of that. We squared off.

I glared at her. “This day has been a long time coming.”

“It has,” she agreed.

“Let’s get it on, you eight-legged freak.”

With a terrific slam of metal on metal, we clashed head-on in front of the town hall. The Mayor, in a cage, looked on as the two robots grappled together. I managed to get a solid hold on one of the spiderbot’s legs and twisted it until it bent. Trixie’s horn lit up and I ducked just in time to avoid a spell that was aimed at my head. It bounced off the rear wall of the cockpit, and I imagine it would have kept bouncing around if I hadn’t gotten lucky and had it go straight back out the open windshield.

“We agreed no magic!” I shouted.

Trixie grinned. “Yes, but if I win, does it matter?”

“You do have a point, I suppose. In that case, let me show you some of my magic.” While I was capable of growing agave and transforming it into alcohol, I never would have guessed that tequila had reasonable a combat effectiveness.

I opened my flask and threw it at Trixie. It bounced off her shield, but tequila flew everywhere. It was a simple matter to beat more metal on metal until sparks lit everything up.

Trixie winced in surprise at the flames and I managed to get a good enough grip to throw her robot. The eight-legged machine landed at the far end of the town square, sort of near my buiding. I had a sudden thought. What if I take down my building myself before the Black Twins get to it? That would show them.

Trixie managed to right her robot but it was still on fire. I rushed forwards and hit her again, ripping off one leg with each of my robot’s manipulators. I followed up with a couple of kicks with her own missing legs and tossed her through the wall of my place. The roof caved in on top of her.

Slowly, Trixie made her way out of the rubble. The now six-legged robot swayed a little, but she wasn’t down yet. Her eyes flashed red and the whole robot was enveloped with a magic aura of the same color. I should have known she would have a backup plan.

She went on the attack, slamming into me so hard I almost got whiplash. My robot flew across the town square and knocked over the fountain. It seemed that I was going to have a real problem dealing with her all powered up.

As I struggled to rise, my eye fell on a boulder sitting by itself down the street. Rarity had dropped it there back when we were fighting Discord. His name was Tom.

“Hey Trixie, how’s your love life been recently?”

My question was so far off topic Trixie actually halted her attack to speak. “That is no business of yours!”

“I bet it sucks. Anyway, you said you worked on a rock farm. There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to.” Using a manipulator, I pointed.

She looked incredulous. “A rock?”

“He’s always hard for you. And when you have sex, you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant, because his semen is cement. Sement. He’ll screw you in the asphalt all night long. Plus, if you ever decide to break up, you can kick him in the stones.”

She looked at me even more incredulously than before. I made a mental note to apologize to Tom later, and began preparing for my next attack in the few seconds I had before Trixie recovered. This was likely going to take all I had and more than my robot could provide. I was thinking about how much that sucked, when my eye fell on a button the Crusaders had installed. It was labeled nitrous.

Well, that was an easy button to push. I heard a surge of power in the mechanics and I pushed the controls forward in a direct attack. The collision was terrific, and the spiderbot lost several more legs as its machinery ground to a halt.

My own robot did not escape unscathed, but that hardly mattered at this point. Trixie was thrown from her seat and spilled out onto the ground. I hopped down from the cockpit and walked over to her.

Her head jerked up at the snick of my switchblade opening. Her long, eight-legged freaky body was splayed out on the ground, and she began trying to get up.

I noticed that the bubble around Ponyville had faded. Since I was able to walk right up to Trixie, I assumed that all her magic had temporarily been stopped. Good.

I was about half an inch from completing what I had set out to do—killing the bitch—when Twilight’s voice shouted at us. “I’m back, Trixie!”

“You all have a really weird concept of forever,” I said. “That’s how long she said you had to leave if you lost, Twilight. Actually, now that I think about it, very little in Equestria that is said to last forever actually does.”

While I was distracted, Trixie got up and used several of her legs to grab me.

“Eww! It touched me!” I cried.

“Don’t come any closer, Twilight,” said Trixie. “If you move, I’ll kill him.”

“While this is my life you’re talking about,” I said, “You couldn’t have picked a worse thing to threaten her with. Frenemies, remember? She doesn’t care about me.”

Twilight nodded to confirm that. Trixie growled. “Well, what are you here for, Sparkle?”

“I came to challenge you to a rematch,” the purple four-legged unicorn said.

“Ha! Still worked up about those age spells?” cackled Trixie. “Well, how about I give you a closer look?” She fired a bolt of red magic.

Twilight grabbed a piece of metal from the shattered robots. Just like it had in the cockpit, the spell ricocheted off the steel. My eyes went wide as the magic headed straight back the way it had come. It whizzed past my ear and hit Trixie in the face.

She shrieked and fell over backwards, releasing me. I glanced up at Twilight who was staring at the wreckage of the town.

“Kind of made a mess,” I said. “Totally worth it, though.”

“Well, it’s not the plan I was going to carry out, but I suppose it works.” Twilight sighed. “I guess I should thank you for taking out Trixie’s robot to make things easier for me.”

She started to repair my building, placing the stones back where they had been. I almost stopped her, but she spoke before I could. “And if I’m thanking you for that, you should thank me for saving your life.”

“I…okay, yeah. Thanks.”

“Friends?” she asked. My lip twitched and I couldn’t seem to make my vocal cords work.

“Frenemies?” she tried.

I nodded quickly. “Yeah. Frenemies.”

Twilight held out her hoof and I bumped it. She went to calm the watching crowd with a few tricks. Applejack and Rarity were aged and de-aged. AJ turned into a dude. Pinkie played her polka set.

When Rainbow was doubled, one of the watching ponies gasped. “What does it mean?”

“Just tricks,” said Twilight. She revealed the clever disguises she got her friends to put on. Also, she put down the cute animals that had been swirling overhead with her magic.

“You’re a terrible magician,” I said. “You’re not supposed to reveal the secrets.”

And speaking of magicians…I turned, looking in surprise at what lay in the street. It was a blue unicorn foal, too young to have a cutie mark. And thank God. The last one Trixie had looked suspiciously like the star and moon of Islam. George W. would have had a fit.

I was interrupted for a moment by Pinkie mashing her lipless face against Fluttershy’s mouth. It was the creepiest kissing I had ever seen, but since their wedding had been ruined again, I suppose they deserved it. Or at least Pinkie did. One of these days, I would have to set her straight on Fluttershy’s true feelings.

Twilight fixed Pinkie, and to avoid watching the makeout after the pink mare tacklesmooched Fluttershy, I went back to what I had been looking at previously.

Trixie’s big eyes looked kind of confused, and not at all like normal asshole Trixie. I wondered if the de-aging spell had affected her memories. The amulet was now too large and had slipped off her neck. I walked over to the young filly.

She looked up at me. "Are you my daddy?"