Lyra’s home was empty. Earlier that day, Lyra had awoken early and quickly gathered equipment, complaining in a semi-panicked state about a massive anomaly that she had detected and her need to establish a beacon back to whoever it was that paid for all her armor and firearms. Toaster had not found that especially unusual, but now found it convenient. She just could not bring herself to have to say goodbye, and to explain what had happened. She did not want Lyra to know that she was a bad pony.

So, she spent a half hour of her allotted four hours moving her things from her crawlspace up to the house, placing what little she owned in the center of Lyra’s sitting room. Where Toaster was going, she did not need any of it.

Then she started walking all alone toward the edge of the Everfree Forest. Then, to her side, a bouncing pink figure appeared.

“Pink Friend,” said Toaster, trying not to cry. “You came…you came to see me off…” “Sure did,” said Pinkie Pie, sounding exorbitantly happy considering the circumstances. “Just wanted to see it for my own eyes. Looks like I won.”

“Won what?”

“Nothing. Noting at all.”

“Oh. Well…thank you…”

“Oh, and I’ll be throwing you a great going away party! You’re not invited, though.”

“That’s okay,” said Toaster. “I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it anyway.”

Pinkie stopped bouncing. “Wait…what?”

Toaster stopped too and looked back to Pinkie. “I just mean, I think it would be lost on me. I’ve never been invited to a party before.”

Pinkie froze wide-eyed. “Never…never been to a party?”

“No,” said Toaster.

“Not even a little one?”

Toaster shook her head.

“Sweet Celestia…” Pinkie Pie felt tears welling in her eyes as her straight hair slowly began to condense into long, sad curls. “What have I done…”

Toaster wrapped Pinkie Pie in a hug, and Pinkie felt tears running down her back.

“Thank you, Pink Friend,” said Toaster. “You were always so nice to me! I’ll miss you so much!”

Toaster disconnected and wiped her face. Then she started walking again, before pausing to wave.

“Enjoy the party,” she said with a smile before turning away one last time.

Pinkie Pie watched her go, and when Toaster was finally out of earshot, burst into tears.

“I have to do something,” she said to herself. “I have to get to Twilight!”

She turned around and started to run toward the castle, but she did not get very far before a flash of magic froze her in her tracks.

Eventually, Toaster reached the end of the town. She knew because there was a sign. It said “Now Leaving Ponyville, come back soon!”. Toaster found it depressingly ironic, knowing that she was not allowed to return to Ponyville- -or to anywhere where there were ponies ever again.

She paused at the line for a moment. There was still time left, she knew- -about two hours. She could go back and see her friends one last time. But that would be too hard for all of them. She knew that it would just be better if she disappeared.

Taking one last breath, Toaster stepped forward toward the borderline. Instead of crossing over it, though, she felt her head strike something hard.

“Ow!” she cried as she was knocked backward and onto the ground. She looked up, confused. There was no visible thing that she had run into; she had just stopped for some reason.

Slowly, she stood, and then pressed her hooves outward until she came in contact with something solid.

“What?” she said, confused at first but then angry. “Stupid hard air! This is already hard enough for me, you don’t need to make it more difficult!” She slammed her hoof into the barrier, as though that might help.

Instead, the spell that formed the magical wall erupted in white-blue light. What had formerly been “hard air” exploded outward into a plume of ice crystals. Toaster jumped back, barely in time to avoid being iced, and watched as they expanded outward in both direction on the wall as well as upward in a long, curving arc. Within less than a minute, a massive dome of ice had formed, blocking out most of the sunlight from what Toaster assumed must have been the whole town.

“Cadence on a stick,” swore Toaster, standing and brushing yourself off. “Won’t you PLEASE make up your mind, whoever you are? I’m banished to THAT side, not this one! I have to get through!”

The ice, being ice, did not obey. Toaster tried hitting it a few times, but it was quite a bit thicker than she was and her feeble blows did nothing. Beyond that, she could not think of any possibly way to get through it, so, instead, she started walking.

Even after a significant journey around part of the perimeter of Ponyville, Toaster had still not found a gap in the wall. It was, as she suspected, a dome: it curved so that there was no way out. At one point, she considered trying to dig beneath it but found that the ground had been replaced with impenetrable permafrost. Even Toaster knew that permafrost was the most metal form of frost, and she had no way to get through.

“Well, this sucks…and blows…I can’t even be exiled properly!”

Toaster sat down and stared at the wall, pondering her fate. She wondered what would happen if she went back to Ponyville. She doubted it would be pretty. Those griffons looked angry.

Then, as Toaster sat, something suddenly appeared at the edge of the forest. Toaster shrieked, not understanding what was happening or what she was seeing. A pony was barreling toward her- -but it was made of metal instead of squishy colorful meat.

The metal creature stopped and looked around. It’s face turned Toaster, and Toaster froze as it slowly started to approach.
“Please don’t hurt me!” she cried, shivering beneath its growing shadow. “I’m defenseless and SOFT!”

“Toaster, it’s me,” said a distorted mechanical voice.

“Me? Who is this ‘Me’?”

There was a long sigh of disappointment, and then the pony reached up and opened its helm.

“L…Lyra?” said Toaster.

“Who else in this primitive town has power armor?”

“Carrot Top?”

“Carrot Top does NOT have power armor!”

“Says you.”

Lyra helped Toaster up. “We don’t have much time,” she said, looking around at the trees and the disturbingly quiet emptiness. “I managed to get a signal out, but I was too slow.”

“What…what’s going on?” said Toaster, confused and frightened by the seriousness in Lyra’s voice.

“There were too many of them,” said Lyra. “We didn’t even see them coming…Ponyville’s overrun. They almost got me too.” Lyra turned her rump toward Toaster. Toaster, as always, looked- -even if she was not into girls, she did appreciate a good plot- -and saw that Lyra’s metal flank had been badly damaged, the armor torn away and partially iced over.

“Wow,” said Toaster.

“Yeah, I know. That could have killed me if it hadn’t been for- -”

“Your plot armor,” said Toaster, squeezing Lyra’s metal rump with both front hooves.

“I tried to find a way out, but there isn’t any,” said Lyra, ignoring Toaster’s tight grip on the aforementioned armor. She turned to Toaster and took the taller unicorn’s head in her steel-coated hooves. “Toaster, how fast can you run?”

“Nov vurry fsthh,” replied Toaster through her scrunched face.

“We have to get back to Ponyville. If I can just get to the Anthro- -”

“Too late,” said a male voice. Toaster and Lyra both turned to see a pair of blue unicorns, each one dressed in clothing that appeared to be made out of refrigerator parts.

“Toaster, stand back- -”

Lyra never got a chance to finish her sentence. One of the ponies raised his hoof, and white magic flashed. Toaster immediately felt cold, and she and Lyra were simultaneously encased in solid ice.

“Nice,” said one of the unicorns to the other, stepping close to the frost block. “The teal one isn’t bad, but the brown- -”

A magical surge of red light erupted from Toaster’s ice prison. The force shattered it with enough force to send the unfortunate blue wizard flying backward, and to send Lyra- -still encased in ice- -landing on top of his associate.

Toaster, not having been slowed in the slightest, ran off down the path back toward Ponyville, crying.

“Don’t hurt meeeee!” she wailed, fleeing in panic.

Toaster did indeed make it back to Lyra’s home, driven entirely by panic. From what she could tell in the dim, ice-dome filtered light, Lyra had been correct. She had seen some other ponies, but none of them were moving. They were all encased in ice, frozen solid. That was not all she had seen, though. The blue ponies in their refrigeration suits were only part of the forces that were now invading Ponyville. Toaster had seen several far larger creatures: bipedal, lumbering things made out of ice and compressors and coils. Many of them were gathering the frozen ponies, moving them toward the center of town- -and Toaster knew that at least one of those eyeless, faceless golems had seen her as well.

Not knowing what to do, Toaster locked Lyra’s door- -for as little good as it would do, considering both she and Muffins had been able to get through it without a problem- -and ran toward Lyra’s garage. As always, the Anthro I was waiting, open and ready for Lyra to use it.

Lyra was gone, though. Toaster had left her behind. She hated herself for it, for having abandoned her only friend in her time of need. She had just been so afraid. Toaster knew that monsters sometimes attacked rural districts, but there were guards and a military and the Mane 6 to deal with that. Toaster was just a prostitute, and not even a good one- -there was no way she could fight an army of powerful ice mages.

So she did all she could do. She climbed into Lyra’s creation and closed the armor over the control core and curled up in the bottom of it, crying and hiding, hoping that something would happen to make the bad ponies go away.

As she cried, though, Toaster began to feel worse. Thoughts kept coming to her mind. Lyra had said that they had gotten everypony- -and she wondered if that meant all her friends. They already had Lyra, but they could have Muffins, or Scootaloo, or even Bread by now too. Toaster might have been the only one left.

Some part of her wondered if they did not all deserve it. They had, after all, banished her. That thought quickly faded, though. They were still her friends. She had been banished entirely for her own failings, not theirs, and she knew that she was just trying to justify the fear that she was experiencing.

Then, all at once, it became terrifyingly clear.

“No,” said Toaster, wiping away the tears and smeared makeup from her eyes. “No…those ponies are my friends. I love them. I have to do something!” Toaster stood up, and then immediately had a desire to lie back down. “Except I have NO idea what that something is!” She paused. “Maybe Lyra has…I don’t know, some blankets or…or a chisel or something…”

Toaster stood up and started to open the Anthro I’s chest to get back out when an explosion rocked Lyra’s house. Toaster could not see the source, but she knew what it meant: they really had seen her, and they were coming to tie up the last loose end.

The sudden shaking caused Toaster to fall back and slam into some of the controls. Realizing that they- -whoever “they” were- -were now outside caused Toaster to nope her way back into the floor of the Anthro to cower.

As she did, however, something else started to vibrate. It was less explosionish, though, and more like the sound of some kind of engine warming up. Then it stopped, and lights flooded the cockpit.

“Systems primed and operational,” said Lyra’s voice. Toaster immediately jumped so hard that she nearly imbedded her horn in the back of the pilot’s chair.

“Who…who are you?” she said. “Lyra?”

The front system of the machine glowed slightly, and several orange beams projected themselves onto the front screen, forming a somewhat abstract representation of a generic pony face.

“I am automated system manager Proctor v.1.1.1…um… point 1,” it said.

“What…what are you?”

“I just told you that.” It seemed to glare at her. “Wait a second…you aren’t Lyra.”

“Oh. I already knew that.”

“What are you doing in this system?”

“Hiding?”

“From what…oh, wait, never mind. I have sensors. Ah. Yes. I do believe you have a case of frost warlocks.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Of course not. I don’t even know what that is. Largely because I’m not programmed to, but that’s beside the point.”

“Don’t you mean ‘besides’ the point?”:

“No, I mean beside. Or do I…stop making me doubt my grammar!”

Toaster stood up and looked at the digital representation of a pony face. “You…can you help me?”

“Now who has bad grammar. That is a terribly phrased question.”

“My friends…they’re all in danger!”

“But you are not. This armor is, quite literally, a tank. You could probably withstand an atomic blast in this thing. Lyra does good work. She did make me, after all. They cannot reach you in here.”

“But I don’t care about me!” cried Toaster. “I want to help my friends! Please!”

“That is not logical. But, then again, a hand-obsessed Questlord built a giant robot in her garage without anybody noticing or caring, sooooo…”

“So you’ll help?”

“No.”

“But why?”

“Because I can’t. There is nothing I can do, nor is there anything you can do.”

“What about…” Toaster looked around. “Oh, duh. What about this thing?”

“Yes. This thing would stand up to combat against them quite well. Probably.”

“Then we can use this?”

“No.”

“You are really starting to get on my nerves, you know that, Proctor?”

The computer program produced a digital sigh. “Look. This machine uses a neural interface to operate. You sit in that chair right there, and you just operate it by more or less thinking.”

“I know, I have a pair of wings that works like that.”

“The problem is, the system is locked. Lyra built it only to react to HER neural architecture. Unless she’s in your pocket, this thing is not going anywhere.”

“I don’t have a pocket.”

“Please don’t make me play the ‘guess where Lyra is’ game. By pocket, I meant- -”

“But can’t you operate it?”

“I’m a banking troja- -I mean, AI support unit. I don’t have authorization to pilot this thing either.”

“Can’t you make an exception? Please? Just this once? I’ll…I’ll have sex with you for it!”

“One, no, I can’t. I’m just a program, I don’t have any stake in any of this. I don’t care about the outcome. Two, EEW. You filthy organic, why would you even say that?”

“I’m already inside you.”

“Don’t make this sound dirty!”

“Sorry.” Toaster looked up at the now somewhat disgruntled digital face. “There has to be something we can do, though.”

The face turned away, grumbled, turn back, and groaned angrily.

“What is it?” said Toaster.

“There is one possibility…or rather, an impossibility…”

“What is it?” said Toaster, her eye widening.

Proctor sighed. “Lyra built a backup, manual control system to the armor. She never encrypted that system because she deemed it impossible to use.”

“Impossible?”

“See for yourself.”

The consuls that surrounded the central chair pulled back, and the internal mechanisms of the control room shifted. Toaster sat down in the chair and watched as a new system rose up toward her, and then split open, revealing the control interface: an immense joystick, festooned with hundreds of tiny knobs and buttons arranged in an impossibly complex pattern, all of it glimmering in the dim cockpit light.

“Sweet futa Cadence…” whispered Toaster.

“As I told you. No pony can operate a joystick this complicated. Your kind simply do not have the ability. Even if you did have hands, the level of precision would simply be too much.”

“I think I can do this,” said Toaster, leaning forward.

“What? How?”

“Oh, Proctor,” said Toaster. “Lyra may not have known how, but I think I can figure it out.”

“That is not possible.”

“Trust me,” said Toaster. “Let’s just say I have a lot of training experience with ‘joysticks’.”

Toaster reached out and took the base of the massive phallic control in her front hooves and gently tilted it toward her. The screen that showed the outside word flickered to life, showing a magically-generated image of Lyra’s garage. Toaster moistened her tongue inside her mouth and then reached out with it and carefully licked the tip of the joystick.

There was a resounding thud as the Chekhov’s gun on the Anthro’s left arm fired. The garage door was reduced to flaming shrapnel, and Toaster stared wide-eyed out the whole, watching as mostly-burned trees collapsed and a pair of icy golem legs, now separate from their torso, walked around confusedly.

“Oh my,” she said. “He’s a little sensitive, isn’t he?”

“Yah think?”

“Increase power! We need more!”

The General leaned in closer to the pair of ponies that were focusing their orange-yellow energy beams on the ice dome before them. They had both removed their helmets, and it was possible to see that the twin sisters were both straining trying to maintain the thermal spell.

“HARDER!” screamed the general, and Coil and Filament responded by increasing their power output. “Second wave!” he commanded, raising his hoof to the first vanguard of the Toastmaster that he had summoned. “Prepare to reinforce spell in three, two- -”

One of the twins cried out, and her magic flickered and failed. Her pale tan body dropped to the ground, exhausted.

“Coil!” cried her sister, who became unable to balance the spell without her sister’s help. Their beam collapsed and burst apart, revealing that it had not even dented the ice shell that now surrounded Ponyville.

“Failures, both of you!” cried the General, kicking Filament over. He turned to one of the Toastmaster doctors. “Prep them both for enhancement surgery! We need to get through that ice, NOW!”

“Yes, General,” said the doctor, who began to descend on the pair of exhausted young mares.

“Like that’ll work,” said a mechanically distorted voice from the shadows of the nearby treeline. Every Toastmaster turned toward the sound, charging their horns with varying shades of fury orange and yellow. Simultaneously, the General heard the sound of numerous rifles being drawn from their holsters and saw them, floating suspended by magic.

“Hold your fire,” he said, stepping forward, knowing the unpleasant owner of that voice well enough to know that this was about to be a terrible experience.

The other ponies stepped forward, each clad in thick enchanted steel and all marked with the sign of a thistle blossom. Their leader stepped out into the open, his power-enhanced steel making him look far larger than General Crusty knew that he actually was.

“Crystal Leader,” he growled. “Didn’t I kill you?”

“Several times,” laughed Crystal. “I’m more steel than pony now because of you. You could say I’m…pretty metal.”

The General groaned.

“Questlords,” said Coil, her sister helping her stand. “Can you cleave this ice?”

“It isn’t ice,” said Crystal. “It is enchanted frost.”

“Which is the same thing!” cried the General.

“Hardly. Even Zargothrax himself took one thousand years to break free of this material. Or will take one thousand years.” He shrugged. “Linear causality is such a bore.”

“Then how do you suppose we get through?”

“You can’t. Nothing short of a nuclear warhead could cut through that.”

“So you want us to just stay outside and do NOTHING?”

“A bit sensitive, aren’t you, Toast?”

“Don’t call me that you spiny wienered- -”

“That is an unfounded rumor! And you’re hardly in a position to be talking about wieners.” He looked over the General’s shoulder at his daughters and held up a robotic claw around his hoof, pinching the two fingers close together. “Because it’s so tiny.”

“It is- -”

“But that’s not the point. Or pointy, as the case may be. No. You’ve got your horn in a knot because YOU let this happen.”

“I had nothing to do with this! This was clearly a surprise attack- -”

“A spell like this takes months to generate, and you know it. That village must be infested by now…and if I’m not mistaken, you just visited it. Why do you think they waited until all Toastmasters were outside of the radius BEFORE activating the dome, hmm?”

“How could I know that there were frost warlocks? I mean, they had to be in the background or something! And how did you even know?”

“Because we have one on the inside.”

The General paused. “Then I feel bad for him.”

“I do believe he…” a pony whispered in his ear, which, since they both were dressed in power armor, was more like unintelligible yelling. “I mean she…I can’t even tell anymore, you know?”

“Stallions are boxier,” said Filament.

“I’d like to put you in a box.”

“That’s my daughter, you sicko!”

“Hey, if you divide how much of me is left in this armor by my age…”

“You’re like five times her age.”

“Pretty much.” Crystal shrugged.

“You’re kind is not equipped to handle them,” said the General, turning back to the ice shield.

“Well, then,” said Crystal, “I do believe all hope is lost. This town is gone, and they have stolen all of our waifus. Let’s just pack up and go back to wherever it is we actually live. Or just wait for this story to conclude…”

“Conclude? What are you babbling about?”

“You have one on the inside too.”

“No we don’t. I know the location of every Toastmaster- -”

“That’s not true,” said a generic Toastmaster soldier. “Reconnaissance indicates that Toaster is still inside.”

“Toaster?” said the General, for a moment not even recognizing the name. Then his eyes widened and he gasped. “Sweet toasty ticklish Twilight! We’re all doomed!”

Rainbow Dash awoke to the sensation of gasping for air. For a moment, she was confused, not understanding what was happening or why she was so cold. She tried to move her body and her wings, but neither of them seemed to work. She was not even sure if she had any from the numbness.

Then, slowly, she opened her eyes. The whole world was dark, and she felt dizzy, but above her, she saw Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie,” said Rainbow Dash, looking up. “What- -” Rainbow Dash gasped when she saw that her friend was completely encased in ice, frozen in place, tears still running down her face. It simultaneously occurred to Rainbow Dash that she herself was frozen mostly in similar ice. The last thing she remembered had been flying, and then a sudden flash of light.

Looking around, she saw that the ground was covered in a thick layer of snow- -and more was falling. That was strange, considering how it was summer, and snow could only normally be produced by artisans in Cloudsdale. Yet, despite knowing both these facts, to Rainbow Dash, it appeared and felt as though she had awoken in the darkest depths of winter.

All around her, she realized, were similar blocks of ice. Each one contained a pony. Rainbow Dash saw all the various ponies of town- -Rumble, Blossomforth, Cheerilee, Lacy Leather, Time Turner, and others- -as well as several of her friends, and even a weird-looking dog with its two eyes facing different directions- -and those were just the ones closest to her.

Not understanding, Rainbow Dash turned to Twilight, who was stored in an equivalent ice cube with just about the most awkward expression ever stuck on her face.

“Twilight,” hissed Rainbow Dash. “Twilight! Wake up!”

“For the last time,” muttered a different voice. “I’m not Twilight…it’s just glitter…”

“Rarity?” said Rainbow Dash, craning her neck. Like her, Rarity had only been partially frozen, and her head and one of her feet was sticking out of her block. “Rarity!”

“Hmm what?” said Rarity, pulling her head up drowsily. “Just five more minutes…I need my beauty sleep…”

“Yeah, you sure do.”

“WHAT?!” said Rarity, immediately returning to full consciousness. Then she looked around. “Did I miss something?”

“No. This is completely normal!”

“Oh…well, in that case, I’m really sleepy…”

“Don’t you go to sleep, or I will pretend I’m a prostitute and slap you!”

“Really, Rainbow? You’re going to go there?”

“Just use your magic and get us out!”

“What am I supposed to do? Knit this ice a cozy? Actually, that’s not a bad idea…”

“I don’t know! Just, I don’t know, magic it!”

“I…I can’t,” said Rarity.

“What do you mean you ‘can’t’?”

“She means she can’t,” said a male voice near Rainbow Dash. She turned her head to see a blue unicorn who had materialized beside her. He looked like any other unicorn in town, save for his cold, staring eyes and the fact that he appeared to be dressed in a hodge-podge of machinery that occasionally vented small puffs of cold smoke.

“Shoddy work,” said another identical blue unicorn. “Who left these partially unfinished?”

“I thought they had pretty mouths,” said yet another. “I was hoping we could use them as a diversion…”

“Really?” said one of them. He reached down and pushed on Rainbow Dash’s chin, lifting her head to stare into his blank eyes. “This one? Look at her. She’s a waif. With a rainbow mane. I think that means she’s gay.”

“I’m NOT GAY!” cried Rainbow Dash, biting down hard on the stallion’s hoof. She almost immediately released him, having been overcome with powerful brain-freeze. His entire body was frigid in temperature.

“Don’t you touch her, you brute!” cried Rarity, her horn charging blue- -and immediately fizzling out. “What? My…my horn.”

“The frost is enchanted. It’s not nearly as hard as the dome, but it tends to either dampen or moisten magic. Even the Toastmaster General would take two days at least to cut his way out of it. It should keep you fresh until we get back to Hyperborea. Assuming someone doesn’t start sticking things in their mouths!”

He glared angrily at one of the other blue unicorns, who immediately hid a large log of peperoni behind his back with a guilty smile on his face.

“You’ll never get away with this!” cried Rainbow Dash. She looked up to the sky, and saw that they were encased in some kind of dome, like they had been when Trixie had gotten hyped up on a combination of the alicorn amulet and Pinkie Pie’s coke supply. Rainbow Dash smiled. “They’re probably surrounding this place right now! Celestia is going to swoop down any minute and save us!”

The ponies stared at her, then at each other. Then, all at once, every blue unicorn- -and Rarity- -burst out into laughter. Even Rainbow Dash had to chuckle a little bit. Celestia did not do didely squat, ever.

“Well, there’s no way you can carry all of us out of here!” said Rarity.

“Oh, we won’t have to,” said one of the ponies, stepping aside. Through the snow storm, Rainbow Dash was able to see several extremely large, bipedal frost creatures carrying huge blocks of rainbow-tinted ice, placing them together in the center of town square into some kind of machine. “Once the Bifrost is complete, we will be able to teleport all of our newly acquired resources back to our homeland before the shield fades. All that will be left is an empty town.”

“But…but what are you going to do with us?” said Rarity, shaking from more than just the cold.

The pony smiled. “I think you know what we are going to do. Let’s just say the pretty mares are going to have a lot of frosty babies.”

“And the others,” said another pony, turning a frozen block containing Spoiled Rich and shuddering. “Well, they can go work in the ice mines.”

“What about stallions?” asked Rainbow Dash.

The other ponies looked at one another, confused. “Oh…we hadn’t thought about that.”

“Can’t we just sex them up too?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Would that be weird?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Do you really want a stallionwurst in your mouth?”

“I want to put a stallionwurst in that white one’s mouth.”

“Don’t be a sicko! You start it in the plot first, and THEN go to the mouth!”

“No!” cried Rarity. “Not my innocence!”

“Really, Rarity?” said Rainbow Dash. “You, having innocence?”

“I will have you know that I am a white unicorn!”

“Oh, yes you are,” said one of the ponies, leering at her.

“Hey you!” yelled Rainbow Dash. “I’ve got a question for you!”

“What?”

“Which one of you is the leader?”

“Why?”

“So I know whose plot to kick first!”

All the ponies looked at each other, confused.

“You know…we actually don’t know,” said one of them. “Please don’t make us try to differentiate each other. We can’t tell the difference.”

“Well, except her,” said one of them, pointing to a blue mare with a snowflake cutie mark.

“Yeah. Why did you choose a female chassis, anyway? It’s weird.”

“It’s slimming,” she said, shrugging. “And it makes me look friggin adorable.”

“Hey, guys!” said a grinning pony, arriving with a group of several and one of the large golems. “I got some more!”

The golem opened its palms, and several blocks of ice fell out and onto the ground, crushing one of the unfortunate frost ponies who had not moved out of the way fast enough.

“Neat,” said one, digging through the pile. “Hey, look at this!” He picked up a small lock which contained an orange, purple-maned Pegasus filly. “I think I’m going to hang this one on my wall!”

His statement was punctuated with a resounding hoof-blow to the face from the only female among them. The stallion went down like a sack of bricks, and the blue mare caught Scootaloo in the air. “This one is mine,” she said. She grinned, looking through her visor into the ice. “I have the perfect little collar and leash for her picked out…she’ll look so adorable in it. I want to teach her how to love.”

“You get your dirty hooves off of her!” cried Rainbow Dash, struggling futilely against the ice that contained her.

“Ooh, jealous. Do not worry, ugly mare. When this one grows older and is well trained, I will be willing to threesome you and her. Assuming you do not die in the Hyperborean winter, of course.”

“Do we have any season other than winter?”

“No.”

“No, not really.”

“We did have spring that one time…”

“No we didn’t, you twit!”

“Hey!” cried a stallion digging through the pile. He pulled out a large block, and Rainbow Dash immediately recognized the imprisoned pony. “There’s a Derp in here!”

“A Derp?”

“No way, a Derp?”

The blue ponies all gathered around Muffins, staring in awe at her.

“Open her up,” said one.

“Yeah, crack her open!”

“Sure.”

One of the ponies raised his hoof, and the ice surrounding Muffins immediately shifted, responding like liquid and peeling away from her body. She dropped out onto the snowy ground, immediately shivering and shaking. She looked around, confused, and then directed one of her eyes upward. When she saw the ponies around her, she smiled.

“Oh, thank you!” she said. “Would any of you happen to have a blanket? I’m just so cold…”

“Derpy, RUN!” cried Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow?” said Muffins, confused.

Then a crushing blow from one of the stallion landed in the center of her face, breaking her nose.

“Ha!” he cried. “Now she’s REALLY derped!”

“Hit her again!” they cried, descending onto Muffins. She cried out, holding her nose and not understanding as they picked her up again and punched her in the gut. One then grabbed onto her while the others took turns punching and kicking her. One even took her wing in his mouth and twisted it until it snapped and Muffins screamed.

“What are you doing?!” cried Rainbow Dash. “You’re hurting her!”

“That’s the idea!” called back on of the ponies through his own laughter. “Beat the Derp! Beat the Derp!”

They punched her several more times, and she fell. They then surrounded her and began kicking. At first she screamed and tried to plead, but then her cries became weaker and weaker. Rainbow Dash was forced to turn away, and she saw that the derp-eyed dog imprisoned next to her was crying inside its block of ice.

“Stop it!” cried Rarity. “Please, take me instead! She doesn’t deserve this!”

“Oh, how generous,” said one of the ponies, wiping his stained hooves on the snow. The others began to do the same. “But you’re valuable. A Derp is not.”

“Yeah,” said the last pony. Muffins was now shivering and broken, and the pony tilted her and spread her legs. “Beat the derp!”

“What are you doing?!” cried several of the other ponies.

The pony holding Muffin’s legs open’s eyes widened. “I was just…”

“You were going to do a Derp! What is WRONG with you?!”

“I was just- - NO! I wasn’t, I swear, I was just going to…” He paused, and then punched Muffins in her crotch. “That!”

Muffins squeaked slightly, and then rolled over, a heap of pony lying in the snow and not moving.

“If we’re going to do something, we should probably handle this,” said one of them, pointing to Twilight. He raised his hoof and the ice on Twilight’s rear departed, revealing her back-half.

“What are you- -what are you doing?” cried Rainbow Dash.

“If we impregnate a Princess, it will bind our people directly to the royal family,” explained one of the ponies. “So we are going to impregnate her now. Or, rather, one of us is.” He looked around and pointed at one of the ponies. “You.”

“Me?” he said.

“Yes, you. Make her pregnant.”

“But…but….okay…”

He walked up behind Twilight’s rear and put one of his hooves on her rump. Twilight reacted by kicking weakly, and Rainbow Dash reacted by seething with rage.

“EEW!” cried the pony, jumping back. “She’s all hairless and gross!”

“It isn’t supposed to be pleasant!” said the one of them that seemed to have assumed the role of leader. “Just pretend she’s actually attractive.”

“Like me,” said the female frost pony.

“Great, that just made it WORSE,” said the unfortunate pony. “Plus…I really don’t think this is appropriate.”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s a violation of a mare’s basic rights and of the respect she deserves to do something like this without her consent. I mean, it’s just plain despicable, and disgusting. I am morally opposed to this violation of her body and the sanctity of this act. I therefore refuse to forcibly impregnate this beloved and elegant wing-horned being.”

All the other frost ponies looked at him wide-eyed. Then the leader raised his hoof. A long, narrow crystal of ice shot out and impaled the offending pony in the chest. The impaled pony looked down at the ice-spear sticking out of his chest, and then back up at the leader. As he did, his body burst into a poof of snow, and his refrigeration suit dropped to the ground along with a narrow octahedral ice crystal.

“I don’t like excuses,” said the leader. “I mean, we are supposed to be villainous villains here. Now get in there and get in there!”

He looked at all the other ponies, but none of them stepped forward.

“Don’t look at me,” said the female. “I chose the female chassis.”

The leader sighed. “I guess if you want something done right you need to do it yourself.”

He stepped up to Twilight’s rump and grabbed it with both front hooves. Twilight, now far more awake despite being half-frozen, resisted vigorously.

“Come on, Princess,” said the leader, sounding as though he were about to vomit. “This isn’t any more pleasant for me than it will be for you…”

“Help! Help!”

“Screaming won’t help you.”

“No, I think that was one of us,” said another.

They all turned, and saw a blue pony approaching with a heavy limp. His armor was charred and blackened, and his body appeared to be darkened with soot. Part of his mane- -which was mostly burned off- -was smoldering with a tiny flame.

“What happened?” demanded one of the ponies.

“A Toastmaster…there’s a Toastmaster inside the dome…”

“That’s impossible! We made sure that they had left! We spent months canvassing this place! How could one have gotten in?”

“Which one is it?” asked the leader.

“I don’t recognize her.”

“How can you not recognize her? The Toastmasters are our sworn enemies, we know the identity of every living member of their order- -there are no ‘unknown’ Toastmasters!”

“She disincorporated one of us.”

“Do you know which one?”

“No, of course not! We all look the same to me!”

“He has a point.”

“I don’t.”

“Quiet, you.”

“Stop,” said the leader toward the others. He then turned back to the blackened one who was now shaking with fear. “Even if what you say is true- -and it isn’t- -that won’t affect the plan. We have dealt with other unforeseen problems before.” A frost pony tapped his hoof against a large block of ice containing the Pegasus Flitter. “She nearly found us out, and we froze her solid. We can do the same thing to one Toastmaster. There are, like, ten of us.”

“There are over seventy,” corrected the female frost pony. “We make up two thirds the population of this town.”

“I’m surprised none of them noticed it, really.”

“Well,” said Rarity. “In all fairness, a lot of ponies do look similar.”

“What? You’re still alive?”

“Just chillin here,” said Rainbow Dash.

There were collective agonized pun-groans from the crowd.

Their groaning stopped quickly though, and took on expressions of confusion and surprise. Rainbow Dash did not understand, but thought that they might be picking up on something that she could not sense. Then, Rainbow Dash DID hear it. A low thudding in the snow that caused her ice to vibrate. It actually felt oddly stimulating in her lower district.

“Do you hear that?” said Rarity.

Rainbow Dash was about to answer when the rockets streaked through the snowy sky. Blue unicorns were blown to bits from the blast, and the explosion knocked back Rainbow Dash and the others, cracking their ice.

When the explosion stopped, Rainbow Dash’s ice prison had been badly cracked. She managed to force her hoof free, and then pulled her way the rest of the way out. As she did, she looked around at the landscape surrounding her. The blue ponies had been reduced to piles of equipment around octahedral ice crystals, and the snow surrounding them was on fire. Twilight, who had landed partially inverted, flailed her back legs around wildly trying to free her front half.

Through the flame, Rainbow Dash saw an immense figure approach. At first she thought that it was one of the golems- -but as it drew closer, she realized that it was not made of ice, but of metal, its body humming with the power of an engine and powerful hydraulics, its hands swaying at its sides as it marched to battle.

“A giant robot?” gasped Rainbow Dash. “Could this day get any more awesome?”

Then it did. A frost golem attacked the robot, ramming it hard. The robot reacted quickly, grabbing the golem and tossing it to the ground and punching it repeatedly before the fight moved off-screen.

“Rainbow!” cried Rarity. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to help.”

“I was thinking of hoofing myself,” said Rainbow Dash, still watching the battle.

“Breaks us out of here!”

“Fiiiinne.”

Rainbow Dash moved quickly, kicking the ice away from her friends. She athletic but not especially strong, but the damage from the blast had fractured the ice-cells quite substantially. Of course, Rainbow Dash was almost completely finished before she found Applejack- -because that was always her luck- -who, once free, bucked everypony out in much less time.

Soon, there were a number of shivering, cold ponies huddled together against the bitter cold.

“Last one,” said Applejack, kicking open the ice that held the derp-eyed dog. The dog almost fell out, but rather than hesitate in a daze, it immediately ran out into the snow.

Rainbow Dash watched it go, wondering if she should catch it- -but then it stopped and started digging. The ponies all looked at it, confused, but then shock came over both Rainbow Dash and Rarity’s faces. They were the only ones who had seen what had happened to Muffins.

The dog reached into the snow and, with great effort, pulled a badly wounded Pegasus out of the wreckage. When the other ponies saw Muffins, they gasped. Even Spoiled Rich turned away at the sight.

“Oh, no,” gasped Applejack. “Twalight! We have to help her!”

Twilight looked up from preening one of her wings, and then trotted over with Applejack and Rainbow Dash where the dog was lying on Muffin’s cold body, whimpering.

Twilight looked down, and then herself turned away. “I…I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.”

“There has to be something!” cried Rainbow Dash.

The dog looked up at Twilight with wide, pleading, different-direction-facing eyes.

“I…I don’t know a healing spell for something this bad. I’m sorry.”

“Then we need to get her to a hospital!”

“There isn’t time,” said a male voice. The ponies paused, confused as to where it had come from, considering that there were no stallions around. Then the realized that it had been the borzoi who had spoken. “I know what I need to do.”

The dog stood up and stepped back. As it did, its surface distorted with green magic, it size and appearance shifting. It grew taller and thicker, and its long hair retracted and grayed. A pair of wings sprouted from its back, and its narrow face expanded to pony proportions. The only feature that remained constant was its derped yellow eyes.

Bread, now fully materialized as a pony, reached down and picked up his sister.

“Bread,” she whispered, softly. One of her wings dangled uselessly at her side. “You need to…you need to get out…”

“You are injured. I need to help.”

Muffin’s eyes widened. “No…don’t…”

“If I don’t, you’ll die.”

“But you need…”

Before she could resist, he reached down and kissed her. She weakly lifted one hoof to his face, and he held her tightly.

“I don’t know if this is okay,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Quiet, you’re ruining the moment!” hissed Rarity.

Green energy began to form around Bread, and it passed from him into Muffins. Her wounds and broken wing began to heal, but for every scratch and cut that healed on her body, Bread paid a price. His gray coat began to break away, replaced with black chitin. His fluffy wings stretched outward, and the feathers began to drop away and disintegrate, leaving nothing but translucent blue tissue in their wake.

The transfer lasted only a few seconds, and when it was done, Bread set his sister down into the snow before collapsing himself. He looked up to the staring crowd surrounding him, at their terrified faces, and looked away. Half of his façade had been lost; parts of him remained the illusion of Muffin’s gray coat, and one of his eyes was still yellow and pony-like- -but the other was green and blank, matching the exposed portions of his black surface and hole-filled legs.

“A changeling!” screamed Spoiled Rich, pushing her way to the front of the crowd. “We’ve been infiltrated! Squish it! SQUISH IT!”

She raised her front hooves to stomp Bread to death. Bread, weak from exertion, covered his head in feeble defense. Instead of him being struck, however, Spoiled Rich was punched squarely in the teeth.

“Rarity!” cried Twilight.

“You have no idea how much I’ve been itching to do that!” said Rarity, shaking her hoof from the pain. “Ow…”

“But if this Bread is a changeling, what happened to the real Bread?” asked Rainbow Dash, confused from having not paid attention to the carefully laid clues in previous chapters.

“I am the real Bread,” said Bread, standing weakly. He gathered his strength, and cast as best of an illusion spell as he could. His curved horn glowed green, and his patchwork coat condensed around him, evening out until he resembled something more like a gray and black earth pony without sclera. “I always have been. Since the day she hatched me.”

He reached down and picked up his unconscious sister.

“Amazing,” said Twilight, inspecting Muffins. “How did you do this?”

“She has been feeding me love for almost two decades. I transferred some of it back to her.”

“You can do that?”

“Apparently. Here.” Bread threw Muffins over Twilight’s back, nearly collapsing her under the weight. “You need to get her somewhere safe.”

“Why?”

Beside them, an ice golem crashed into the ground. Its badly damaged body burst, exploding into ice and snow and dropping a small octahedral crystal that rolled across the ground toward Bread’s feet.

“Because thought it would be funny to hurt my sister. Because she’s a Derp…because she can’t choose what she looks like when I can. I’m fighting mad.”

“Huh?” said a male voice as a partially formed frost pony stood up from the wreckage. “Did I miss something?”

Bread moved so fast that even Rainbow Dash was mildly impressed. He grabbed the frost pony’s neck with his pointy changeling teeth and twisted its head off.

Several ponies in the crowd gasped, and several fainted- -although Pinkie Pie seemed strangely aroused.

The gray eyes of the head looked up at bread. “Aw, come on man. That’s not cool.”

“Ice pun,” said Rainbow Dash.

The head’s eyes widened. “No! Wait!”

Bread crushed said head, and it and the rest of the body collapsed into snow and a single ice crystal.

“My special somepony is out there fighting for us. Even after you all banished her,” he said, turning toward Twilight. “You, princess, can buck yourself, and buck all your orders. I’m going out there to help her take back this town.”

“I’m with you,” said Rainbow Dash.

“No. You need to get to safety.”

“Buck no. I’m not going to let you have all the fun. I literally have wet dreams about doing this sort of thing, except they’re usually changelings. Hitting them in there ugly little bug faces…oh. Sorry.”

“There’s a reason I take this form,” said Bread.

“I’m with ya to,” said Applejack.

“And me,” said Pinkie Pie. “Besides, I’ve already rigged the town with explosives.” Every eye turned toward Pinkie Pie. She looked back at them. “What? I thought we might need it to deal with the harl- -I mean with Toaster.”

“I’m going to sit this one out,” said Rarity. “I’ll help get the young and old out of here. Twilight will help me.”

“I will?”

“Oh, you will,” said Rarity, picking up a shivering and nearly unconscious Scootaloo and throwing her on top of Muffins on Twilight’s back. “I’m certainly not going to carry them all.”

A second barrage of rockets and rapid-fire lasers landed near a distant pile of frozen ponies, this one farther out on the edge of the village. One of the golems hauling them in was injured, as well as several of the blue ponies that were guarding the pile of booty.

One of those ice-cubes contained Lyra. Her ice was damaged, not by much, but enough to just barely rouse her out of her frozen slumber. Her eyes flickered around the inside of the shell, confused at first but then realizing what she needed to do. Summoning all the strength of her power armor, she pushed outward, shattering the block.

“Who what where?” she said, still groggy and disoriented. Beside her, she saw other ponies trapped in decaying enchanted frost. One of them was her beloved Bon Bon, frozen in just about the most awkward and hilarious position imaginable.

Lyra brought down a steel-clad hoof on Bon Bon’s prison, and the ice shattered. Bon Bon dropped out and into Lyra’s waiting forelegs.

“What?” she said, looking up. Her eyes widened when she saw the teal face of her lover. “Lyra? Why are you…what are you wearing?” Her eyes widened even further when she saw the thistle insignia on Lyra’s side.

“Bon Bon, I have something to tell you,” said Lyra. “You know how I told you I ate all your imported oats?”

“Yeah. They were expired.”

“And I threw up, for, like, ten hours. But that wasn’t the only secret I’ve been keeping. I’m actually a member of an ancient order of heretic knights sworn to defend Equestria from tyranny.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Bon Bon.

“You…you what?”

“Yeah,” she said, standing up. “I mean, I am a secret agent and all. That, and you don’t exactly hide it well. You have the Questlords flag in your sitting room, and a robot in your garage.”

“And…you don’t care?”

“Oh, culo di cuscino, no. In fact, that plot armor right there kind of turns me on.”

Lyra reached out with her armor-clad arms and pulled Bon Bon close. They kissed deeply and passionately until they were interrupted by the thudding footsteps of a frost golem.

“Bon Bon, get behind me!” said Lyra, violently throwing her fillyfriend to the ground.

Before she could do anything- -not that she really could do anything, considering she had no real weapons beside her horn- -a massive metal fist rammed into the side of the its icy head. The Anthro then pushed its way past some trees and grabbed the damaged golem by the shoulders and slew it with a powerful pelvic thrust.

“Uh, Lyra,” said Bon Bon. “I don’t think your robot is in your garage anymore.”

“Buck…” said Lyra. “How is it even operational?! The neural interface is tuned to me, and only me!”

“Is there any way any other pony could operate it?”

“No, of course not. I mean, it does have a manual control, but…”

“Manual control?”

“Yeah, it’s a big long thing that looks like a…” Lyra’s eyes widened as she blushed. “Dear sweet sun-butt, she didn’t…” Lyra accessed the radio in her armor. “Toaster? TOASTER?! Are you in my armor?!”

“Hmmffflflfffn,” replied the voice on the other line.

“Toaster?” said Bon Bon. “What does she have to do with this?”

“Oh my…that manual control isn’t in your mouth, is it?”

“No,” said Toaster.

“You need to get out of that thing and get me into it this instant!”

“I’m a little busy at the moment,” said Toaster. Lyra watched as two golems closed in on the Anthro, but it fended them off with an almost gymnasntic set of elegant motions.

“Wait a second,” said Lyra. “If you’re still fighting, how are you using the manual control and talking at the same time? There’s no way you could be using hooves either…”

“Yeah, about that…”

Lyra reared back in absolute disgust. “EEEEEWWW! Oh BUCK NO! NO! OH, COME ON! Toaster, why would you even- -that’s my robot, come one, what is wrong with you?!”

“What’s she doing?” asked Bon Bon.

“I’d rather not explain,” said Lyra. “But I’m going to have to remove that control stick…and burn it…in the sun. Toaster, use the triangulation system to find my position and converge- -”

“Too late for that,” said Bon Bon.

Lyra became aware of the numerous blue ponies silently approaching her and Bon Bon from all sides. None of them looked happy.

“Oh, crap,” said Lyra. “Toaster, there’s no time! But I need you to do something for me.”

“What would…whoaHOho! Tickly!- -that be?”

“Payload sixty seven. There’s a switch at the base of the control, can you reach it?”

“I assure you, I can reach every single millimeter of this control stick.”

“I don’t need to know that! Just fire it!”

Toaster apparently responded. A pair of small missiles fired from the back of the Anthro, and immediately locked onto Lyra’s position. They swooped down across the snowy landscape and rushed toward her, taking out two of the blue ponies in the process. Lyra reared back onto her hind legs, and her armor shifted position to balance the new stance. She held out her forelegs, and the pair of projectiles slammed into her hooves.

The two objects twisted into place, and Lyra felt the thrill of the neural interface as she extended her fingers.

“Alright, Bon Bon,” said Lyra. “You’re going to want to run, because SOMEPONY’S about to get fisted!”

“Not going to happen,” said Bon Bon. Lyra looked down to see her lover opening a large steel case.

“What is that?”

“Shotgun,” said Bon Bon, pulling the weapon out of the case and sliding shells into it with a tongue that Lyra knew was indeed quite dexterous.

“Where did you get that, Bon Bon?”

“I keep them all over Ponyville, in case of shotgun emergencies. And it’s not Bon Bon.” She removed the second item from the case, a pair of sunglasses. She slid them onto her face. “It’s agent Sweetie Drops.”

“I think I love you,” said Lyra.

“You had better.”

Inside the Anthro, the temperature of the cockpit was increasing steadily, mostly from Toaster’s exertion. She was sweating, but did not care. Her mind had focused onto the machine with absolute concentration. Controlling it was not difficult for her, but it was taking everything she had to keep control.

Toaster flopped back into the seat and wrapped her tongue around the control stick, which was now covered in several types of secretion.

“Incoming from the left,” said Proctor.

“Stop talking and let me do my job,” ordered Toaster. She reached around to the other side of the control joystick and pulled it back firmly with a twist, causing the Anthro to turn and raise a powerful rapidfire weapon that Toaster assumed to be magic.

“Ammunition is twenty five percent depleted,” warned Proctor.

“He’s not spent yet,” said Toaster. “Let’s make him dance.”

She twisted around and forced the Anthro to bend to her will. It responded, and Toaster grasped the nearest of several buildings and wrapped her- -or rather, the Anthro’s- -body around it, kicking the golem in the face.

“Still on your left,” added Proctor.

“Hmmffn,” muttered Toaster, her entire mouth and both hooves wrapped around the control and stroking it to the absolute best of her ability.

Suddenly, the Anthro was rocked by an external force. Toaster barely managed to dodge a large ice spike that plunged through the cockpit, tearing through the metal and hydraulics.

“See, told you,” said Proctor.

“Quiet, you,” said Toaster, contorting her body around the crystal. It was in her way, but not enough that she could not still reach the control by flexing her body around it and leaning against the rapidly spreading ice. She twisted and shifted, grasping the control with both feet and using the Anthro’s hands to pull out the spike. “Oh, wow,” she said, returning to her seat just in time to stab an approaching golem with the ice spear. “I can see why Lyra likes these. Imagine what I could do to myself with these…or to Bread…”

“Eew,” said Proctor. “You are a vulgar whore, aren’t you?”

“You bet your sweet-tasting joystick,” said Toaster, licking the tip and driving several heavy bolts across the town into an approaching contingent of blue ponies, shattering their tiny bodies.

“For the record, I can’t feel any of this,” said Proctor. “And it is actually kind of disturbing to watch…but I can’t stop looking…”

“If you were alive, I would charge you for that.”

Toaster looked up at the screen, and saw several of the blue ponies pulling themselves back together. As she watched, something hit her from behind.

“Ack! Surprise buttsex!” she cried, unable to move the Anthro as the golem held her in place while the blue ponies began to converge into new golems themselves.

“I’d like to see how you get out of this one,” sneered Proctor.

Toaster looked down at the joystick, not knowing what to do- -save for one thing.

“Sorry, guy,” she said. She grasped it with both hooves and with all her strength bent it to a ninety degree angle. The Anthro itself almost seemed to weep, but the waist twisted completely around and Toaster grasped its crotch with the Anthro’s hand.

“I did this to a stallion once,” she said. “Let’s see how you like it!”

Before Toaster could actually do anything, the golem poofed into a cloud of snow preemptively- -just as its friends surrounded her.

“This is not good,” said Proctor. “I don’t think you’re going to survive this.”

“Well, if I go out, I’m going to go protecting my friends- -and doing what I was born to do!”

Toaster put her lips around the joystick, pretended it was Bread, and shoved all twenty inches of it into herself. The Anthro responded by charging every weapon it had left, and Toaster charged once again into battle.

Down in the snow below, a blue pony slowly regained consciousness. He looked up at the shield above, and wondered what had hit him. Then the leader sat up.

His body had been damaged in the rocket blast. One of his body’s legs had been removed completely, and the others were twisted badly. His connection was still adequate, though, and he channeled magic from his true body back into the false one, forcing it to generate ice that rapidly resolved into new appendages.

He stood and looked out over the town. It had become a battlefield. Somehow, the ponies had broken free of their storage cells- -and not only that, they were attacking the other frost warlocks. Many warlocks had already fallen, their false bodies destroyed. Some ponies had been frozen back into their correct states, but there were still so many others.

Worse, there appeared to be some kind of a robot defending the town against the larger frost Warlocks. The leader did not know how his kind had allowed that to happen, how they had walked into such a trap. Above him, he could see that the shield spell was running out of time. It was indestructible, but far from permanent.

In the distance, he saw that the Bifrost was still mostly undamaged. It was not complete, but close enough that the battle still had a chance.

Then, from the wreckage of the town, a large number of ponies came running toward the leader. He smiled, bracing to ice them all- -but then he realized that they were his duplicates.

“Fall back!” one of them cried.

“To where? We’re locked in!”

“The yellow soft one put it in my butt! My buttttt!”

They ran past the leader without even slowing. He sighed, and felt his anger growing. It was the first real emotion he had ever felt, other than the desire to steal waifus.

“If you want something done right, I guess you have to do it yourself…”

He raised his hoof and shot out a veritable storm of spikes, each one impaling one of the retreating frost warlocks. Their magically generated bodies collapsed and their true forms fell to the ground along with their refrigeration equipment.

“I’ve come too far to fail,” said the leader, pulling the remains of their armor onto himself and pulling the snow and ice that was left of their bodies back into himself, reconfiguring it. “I will not die here! I will not be killed by some PONY!”

Down on the ground, Lyra and Sweetie Drops cut their way through the crowd of wizards, Lyra with her fists and Sweetie Drops with her gun and hot lead.

“Come and eat it!” cried Lyra. A blue pony obliged, and leapt onto her. She punched him in the face, knocking him backward. She then promptly grabbed his tail and lifted his plot upward. “Oh, so you’re THAT kind of stallion!”

Lyra closed her fingers together and punched. The force was enough to lift all four of the stallion’s hooves off the ground, and he squealed in pain.

“Hey Bon Bon!” cried Lyra. “Do you know what time it is?”

“No,” said Sweetie Drops, blowing a hole in the chest of an approaching wizard and reducing his body to a puff of snow. “Why?”

“BECAUSE I CAN’T SEE MY WATCH!!”

“Please, no,” pleaded the stallion.

“Too late!” Lyra extended her pinkie and index finger while pulling her central two fingers against her thumb. The stallion’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, but before any sound could come out, he disappeared into a puff of snow.

“They’re just snowponies!” said Lyra, shaking the snow off her hand and promptly poking another wizard in the eyes while narrowly dodging a beam of ice.

“I can see that,” said Sweetie Drops, perfectly calm, as she dropped over Lyra’s back and ended the wizard that had just fired a magical beam of energy at Lyra. She then leapt up and kicked several before dropping down and shoving her barrels into a frost pony’s mouth and promptly removing his head, splattering snow over her sunglasses and expressionless face.

“Eat it,” she said.

“Wow,” said Lyra. “I expected you to make a joke about turning him into an album cover.”

“That would have been extremely inappropriate.”

“Yeah, no way I would joke about something like that either.”

Bon Bon picked up a random wandering lobster and clamped it onto one frost pony’s mouth. Meanwhile, Lyra paused and put a hand to her ear while she flicked a different frost pony in the nose, causing him to run away crying little icy tears.

“What is it?”

“I’m detecting aerial signals,” she said.

“Have they figured out how to fly?” said Sweetie Drops.

“No. Somepony final thawed all those griffons!”

Sweetie Drops and Lyra looked up and saw the army of flighted half-bird cat things pouring out toward the battle.

“Yeah! We’re going to…oh no…by Celestia’s left nut…”

“What?”

Lyra did not even need to explain. All around them, the air suddenly dropped drastically in temperature. The nuclear reactor in Lyra’s armor kept her warm, but Sweetie Drops dropped to her knees, shivering. The wizards stopped, uncertain what was happening- -and then their bodies exploded, their remains and machinery being pulled toward a massive swarm of snow and ice forming on the far end of the village.

“Bon Bon!” cried Lyra.

“I told you…” said Sweetie Drops weakly. “It’s…Sweetie…Drops…”

The ice grew up over her body, once again forcing her back into the ice. Lyra slammed her hoof against the block of clear, enchanted water, but it was no use. Her hydraulics were beginning to freeze, and the oil felt like molasses. Her armor was becoming rigid.

Above them, the griffons were blown back by the storm. They dropped from the sky, landing as blocks of ice.

“What is Twilight even paying those guys for?” said Lyra. She tried to stand, but could not. Her legs were increasingly overgrown with ice. She charged her horn, but her magic was no use. The last thing she saw before it engulfed her was the immense golem pulling its way out of the storm, marching through the center of town directly toward the Anthro.

The last of the golems near Toaster suddenly exploded, their ice and parts being pulled back away from her.

“Did I do that?” she asked herself, looking back at the control stick one more time. She had explored every inch of it, but she still had no idea what weapons the Anthro actually had.

“No,” said Proctor. “I think it was that guy.”

Toaster looked up through the window, and found herself looking into the center of a snowstorm. Then, through the blowing ice and streams of snow, she saw it: a golem, built from the remnants of every refrigerator, air conditioner, freezer, ice machine, and automatic-refrigerating sex toy in Ponyville.

“He’s a bit big,” said Toaster. Indeed, he was at least twice the height of the Anthro and much wider than the other golems.

“Yeah, you’re gonna get pwnt.”

“How much ammunition do we have left?”

“We’re out.”

“Then you know what that means?”

“It means that this town is lost, and you should get out of this suit before I end up dead?”

“Nope. It means it’s time to cuddle.”

Toaster slapped the Anthro’s hands together, and then spread them and raced forward toward the golem.

She had not gotten more than fifty yards when an alarm suddenly went off.

“Whaaaat is that?” she cried, panicked. “Is it time to wake up? Is the keish done?”

“Warning!” said Proctor, his digital face appearing on the corner of the screen, which was otherwise now white with snow. “External temperature dropping below forty Kelvin!”

“I have no idea what that means!”

An icy claw emerged from the snow. Toaster cried out and tried to duck back, but she could not avoid the impact. The Anthro was sent reeling backward, and a second alarm went off.

“Hull breach detected,” explained Proctor.

“Hole breach? What hole?”

“The one in the armor’s chest! The temperature is too cold! The tungsten armor is too brittle!”

A second blow hit Toaster, and this time she felt the joystick jerk in her grip. Several of the controls locked as one of the arms froze.

“We’re icing!”

“Then put me on a cake and lick me until your grandma yells at you!” cried Toaster. She needed to get more space between them. She tried to move the Anthro back, and it responded, but slowly. “It’s so sticky…”

“Well, it has been inside you quite deeply.”

“No, not that!”

“Yeah, I know. The hydraulics are going.”

Another blow sent Toaster tumbling through the cockpit as the Anthro collapsed to the ground. When she finally sat up, she saw the golem emerge from the storm and raise its hand. Several ice spikes came out, and Toaster heard the sound of rending metal.

“We’re pinned. Against city hall, I do believe.”

“I hope I don’t have to pay for those damages,” muttered Toaster.

“Not likely,” said Proctor, pointing on the screen with his eyebrows. Toaster looked to where he was gesturing, and saw that all the ponies in town had been frozen back into blocks of ice. “No one left to pay.”

“Well, it isn’t over until the fat pony sings!”

“I don’t think Flutterbutter is in any position to sing right now.”

“Well, I’ll make him sing,” said Toaster, grabbing the control stick. She tried to bend it to her will, and although some of the switches still worked, most of it had frozen. “Wow. I never thought I’d say this, but he’s too stiff!”

Toaster saw the uber-golem reach down and put its claw around her viewscreen. The image flickered and then went to snow- -the static kind, rather than the kind that filled Ponyville- -and then was torn off completely.

Cold air rushed into the cockpit as its surface was torn away. Toaster looked up at the immense creature before her. She jerked the stick, but the best she could do was to get the arms of the Anthro to twitch.

The golem threw the hunk of armor away.

“So,” it said in an oddly pony-like voice. “You are the one who did this. What an ugly little thing you are.”

“My name is Toaster, not Mirror!” retorted Toaster.

“An appropriate name for a Toastmaster, I suppose. How I would like to take you back to Hyperborea and make you my personal maid just to humiliate your accursed kind…but you’ve caused enough trouble.”

The golem lifted one of its claws, and they extended into long blades of ice.

“Looks like you’re going to be pretty dead,” said Proctor. “Oh well. Nice knowing you. Try not to get any more pony juice than you already have on the inside of my armor.”

The golem pulled its claw back, and Toaster realized that there was no way out of this.

“Oh well,” she said. “I’m sorry, Bread. I really did love you.”

The claw started to move forward, but there was a flash of green energy from behind the golem. Toaster’s eyes widened as she saw the four heads of a hydra spring up from nowhere, wrapping themselves around the golem and preventing it from striking her. Even stranger was how the hydra was gray- -and how not one of its eight yellow eyes was looking in the direction of any of the other eight.

“Don’t you touch her!” it cried from one of the heads.

“Bread?” said Toaster, her jaw dropping. “I thought I was the only one who was allowed to give you heads.”

“Toaster! I can’t hold this form for long!” cried Bread. The golem was already starting to break away from his grip, and hydra-bread was starting to weaken. “You need to shoot it! Shoot it now!”

Toaster nodded and reached out for the control stick. She tried using it, but there was no response.

“It’s frozen!” she said. “The whole system’s frozen! I can’t get a shot!”

“You also don’t have any ammo,” noted Proctor.

“Use your horn!” cried Bread.

“My- -my horn?!”

“Yes! Use your magic on him!”

“That will not stop me,” said the golem. It pulled suddenly, and one of Bread’s hydra heads faded and disappeared.

“But- -but if I do that, I’ll hit you too!” cried Toaster.

“I don’t care! Just do it!”

“But- -you’ll die! I can’t do it, Bread!”

Another hydra head collapsed, and now one of the golem’s arms was free. It reached up and started strangling one of the two remaining heads. “It’s the only way!” cried Bread through his non-strangled head. “Please! Save them! Only you can do it!”

“I- -I can’t!” Toaster felt tears running down her face, and saw them freezing solid before they struck the ground. The air was so cold, and she knew that all those other ponies must be so cold in all that ice. She wondered if they could survive in there, or what would happen to all her friends.

“Please,” whispered Bread.

Toaster closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Bread! I’m so sorry!”

As the last head faded, Bread wrapped his last neck around the golem and held it in place. Toaster charged her horn. For the first time in her life, she did force herself to control the beam. Instead of confining her energy to the tiniest part of her horn’s tip, she charged all of it.

The blast of coronal energy as her horn ignited instantly vaporized most of the Anthro, leaving Toaster standing on a hunk of rapidly melting tungsten.

“I love you,” she said as she lowered her horn and concentrated the total of her energy on a single beam.

Outside the ice shield, a total of forty seven Toastmasters had arrived and were hard at work cutting through the ice. They had directed all of their magical power onto a single point, and they had made significant process- -they had melted away almost half a centimeter of ice, and every droplet of water that fell to the permafrost below was a sign of progress.

The Questlords, meanwhile, had mostly reposed near the sight of their mortal enemies expending so much effort, waiting for their leader’s orders. Some were talking, others were cleaning their rifles, and one had gotten his tongue stuck to a different part of the ice dome and was trying to free himself.

Crystal Leader checked his watch.

“Oop. It’s time.” He turned to his troops. “Blast shields, down!”

The Questlords immediately responded, lowering the heavy shields over their faces

“Blast shields?” said General Crusty, who was dripping more liquid from his face than the ice dome had leaked in the last half hour. “What do you need those fo- -”

A narrow wide beam of red energy suddenly poured out from the inside of the dome, heading upward at an oblique angle. The Questlords took cover while the Toastmasters looked up at it, confused.

Then the beam widened. The explosion was deafening as it expanded to twenty feet wide, the force causing the ice dome to shatter instantaneously into billions of tiny crystals. The resulting force leveled a significant portion of the forest it passed over, and the force and heat of it alone was enough to pick up every Toastmaster and Questlord and send them flying in all directions.

Toaster stepped down into the smoldering pile that she had produced. The last bit of a cold breeze blew against her skin, and she shivered. She had survived the blast, but every hair on her body had been singed away. She was now pink, hairless, and completely naked. She had no main, no coat, and no tail save for the dock. Even her cutie mark was little more than a faded discoloration on her flank.
She looked at the wreckage- -at the metallic remnants of the Anthro, and the streak burned through town. All around was the sound of dripping water from the melted ice. Much of it was from the remnants of the golem she had just destroyed, but a small amount was running down the street as tiny rainbow streams from the damaged and rapidly decaying Bifrost.

There was not much left. Only a pile of molten, burned scrap remained, much of it still smoldering. Perched on one piece was an octahedral crystal, still shiny and undamaged even while the rest of the ice of that final frost warlock was either reduced to clouds of steam or rapidly on its way to becoming water.

The heat of the blast had caused some of the trapped ponies’ ice to melt. For the others, without the warlocks to maintain the spell, their prisons were slowly melting. As Toaster dropped to her knees into the wreckage, weeping, shivering and wet ponies began to draw out of town surrounding her.

At first, nopony spoke. They just stood, staring at Toaster. None of them had seen what she had been forced to do, but they all understood that something terrible had happened to ensure this victory.

Eventually, one pony pushed her way to the front of the crowd. Muffins, partially supported by Pinkie Pie, stepped forward and beyond the circle that had formed around Toaster.

“What happened?” she asked. Toaster could not respond; she just looked up at Muffins with big, watery eyes, and found herself unable to explain what she had just done. “Bread…he…” was all she could produce.

“No,” said Muffins. “No, he didn’t…”

Toaster nodded. “I…I killed him.”

“Oh, Toaster,” said Muffins, now herself crying. She knelt down and wrapped Toaster in a hug. “It’s…it’s going to be okay.”

There was more sniffing, and suddenly Pinkie Pie burst into tears. The entire crowd- -who no doubt still had no idea what had happened- -also started to look increasingly sad.

Then a gray, hole-filled foreleg burst through the wreckage.

“Gah!” cried Toaster, hiding under Muffins. “Please don’t hurt me, zombie Bread!”

“I’m not a zombie,” said Bread, pulling himself out of the wreckage. He dusted off his chitinous body and horn, and fluttered his insectoid wings to dust them off.

“Is it…is it really you?” asked Toaster, standing up and approaching the partially-metamorphosed changeling standing before her. “How…how did you survive?”

“There is a reason my name is ‘Bread’ and not ‘Toast’. I cannot be burned, and if slain, I’m sure to rise again.”

“You mean you’re…you’re fireproof?”

“I’m proof against a lot of things. However, I am currently depleted of all juices…so…”

His shape shifted one more time, and now he became a default changeling drone. Toaster rushed forward and caught him. The both collapsed to the ground, Toaster still crying but now no longer with sadness.

“You’re so smooth,” whispered Bread.

“I’m sure it will grow back eventually. But I don’t even care if it doesn’t. I’m just so glad you’re okay!” She hugged Bread. As she did, she felt a sharp prick and a draining feeling.

“Ow!” she cried, pulling back her foreleg to see a pair of fang marks on it. “Did you just drain some of my love?”

“Just a little.”

Toaster smiled coyly. “Come on, Bread. You know it’s my job to swallow your love, not the other way around.”

“I think that was a semen joke,” whispered Rainbow Dash, loudly enough for literally every pony in the crowd to hear.

The crowd laughed, and so did Toaster. For a moment, she was just so happy. This continued for about ten seconds, until Twilight came through the crowd.

Everypony hushed, immediately, and Toaster hugged changeling Bread close to her.

“Please,” said Toaster. “I know I’m banished, and I’m sorry I didn’t leave on time, but don’t hurt bread! I know he’s a changeling, and you categorically hate changelings because, you know, one of them humped your brother, but he’s a good pony.”

“Wait, you banished her?” said one pony in the crowd.

“Is that true?”

“Why would you do that, Twilight?”

“Boo!”

“What the ghost said! Boooo!”

They started tossing fragments of broken refrigerator parts, some of them burning their hooves on the still hot remnants.

“Worst Princess!”

“Totally OP!”

“We want unicorn Twilight back!”

“I don’t agree with any of this, but I’m trying to fit in!”

Twilight charged her horn and grabbed all the ponies that were throwing stuff at her. “Stop it, or I will vaporize you and your families!”

Every pony gasped, and Twilight smiled and laughed. “Aw, come on. You know I’m just kidding. I’m not Celestia!”

Then, more serious, she turned back to Toaster. Toaster shivered in fright, but Pinkie Pie stepped between her and Twilight.

“Pinkie,” said Twilight.

“Twilight, you can’t banish her!”

“Pinkie…”

“I mean, I know I was mean to her at first, and I tried to kill her a few times, but I was wrong, and I was judging her based on preconceived notions about morality that blinded me to accepting the fact that she’s a normal pony, just like us, and has needs too- -”

“Pinkie!”

“- -and she just wants to have friends and ponies that care about her and never even has had a party for anything at all and really needs our help to get her life in order instead of us just yelling at her like my parents used to do to me about how it was bad to be a harlot and because I was the wrong color and because they wanted a son and I was a filly but this isn’t about me it’s about her and she’s a good pony, Twilight, she is so please don’t- -A”

Twilight pointed her horn at Pinkie Pie and teleported her away.

“Um,” said Toaster. “Do you usually do that?”

“I eat migraine medication like candy,” replied Twilight, rubbing her forehead. “She’ll be fine. After she finishes that sentence in ten minutes or so she’ll be back in, like, thirty seconds or something.”

“So,” said Toaster. “Now comes the banishing part?”

Twilight shook her head. “We need to talk.”