The night before Greg's escape, while he was still peacefully asleep in his underground cell, events elsewhere were progressing rapidly.

Nightmare Moon paced back and forth in front of the assembled ponies, the rippling nebulae of her mane and tail leaving bright sparks in the air. The massive mirror taking shape behind her looked nearly complete. Soon now... soon, she thought.

"They are waiting for us," she said to the crowd as she paced. "We can fight when necessary, and the people out there may well make it necessary, but do not harm any of them unless they attack you first or try to destroy the mirror portal. It is our only connection to Equestria and we must defend it." She stopped pacing and faced the crowd, her eyes blazing nearly as brightly as her sparkling mane and tail. "But our first duty, our most important task, is to find Greg and make sure he is safe."

She cast her gaze over the mass of creatures before her, rank on rank of ponies, griffins, diamond dogs, and others covering the valley floor and the slopes of the nearby hills, and she smiled.

"Soon."

By the time the commander of the California National Guard unit surrounding Greg's house got his new orders, it was well after midnight. He read the paper the courier had handed him three times before he could bring himself to believe it. He leaned into the open door of his humvee and grabbed the microphone from where it hung from the radio unit."Bottleneck to all armor units. Assemble at Point Charlie, ASAP. Load main cannon DU rounds."

His aid stared at him in disbelief. "Sir? We can't use uranium AP rounds in a civilian area!"

The commander ignored him and clicked the radio again. "Bottleneck to all ground units. MOPP level 4. Repeat, MOPP level 4. Suit up! Monitoring group, remove the screening, ASAP." He tossed the mike onto the seat, opened the rear hatch and pulled out his heavy protection suit. He looked up to see his aide still staring at him. "We're in the shit now, son, so move your ass! There may be something really nasty coming out of there, and it's our job to send it to hell."

There are those sorts of days that only occur once or twice in a lifetime. "Where were you when it happened?" That's the question people ask. Everyone knows what the question means and everyone remembers.

Most people on the West Coast were asleep. The ones on the mid-San Francisco Peninsula awoke to the roar of the main guns of several M1 Abrams tanks being fired simultaneously. Most of the ones elsewhere in the US awoke to conversations along these lines:

"Huh? Wha...? It's three in the morning! Why the hell are you calling me at—"

"Get up! Get up and turn on the TV!"

"Huh? Uh... okay... what channel?"

"Any channel!"

And some people went about their early morning business without any clue that their world and their lives were being changed forever.

When a flood of creatures from Equestria erupted out of the mirror, the tankers blindly opened fire. Nightmare Moon was the first through the gate, and she was fast enough that she was out of the guardsmen’s field of fire before they could react.

Some of the ponies that followed behind her were hit by the tank rounds. Entirely unlike organic creatures in such circumstances, they burst into a cloud of sparkling fragments each no bigger than a fingernail, which settled on the cracked asphalt as a gritty gray substance. The massive number of creatures streaming through the gate made the main guns an ineffective weapon. The .50 caliber machine guns were slightly more effective, but it took several direct hits to destroy an individual. Anything less, and the ponies seemed to shrug off the damage.

As the Equestrians cleared the immediate vicinity of the mirror gate, small arms began firing. The roaring echoes of the cannons faded away, and screams filled the air, more and more of them human. A more experienced guardsman calmly tracked Nightmare Moon with his AR-15 and put several bursts into her side as she crossed the perimeter. She screamed and tumbled headlong across the street to end up sprawled behind a bullet-riddled Prius. The guardsman was turning away to acquire another target when a swooping griffon ripped his throat out.

Applejack rushed across the street and found a shimmering glow that condensed down into the form of Luna as she watched. “Are you okay there, Yer Highness?” she asked.

“I am still alive, at least,” Luna replied, rising to her hooves. “It seems that my magic is much less powerful here. The unicorns will have to get closer to use their spells.”

Applejack grinned. “My hooves seem to work just fine, and I like bein’ close up!”

“Stay with me for a moment,” Luna told her. “I need to assess the situation.”

The weapons of the humans were not very effective against the ponies, and there were many more targets than they could cover. The unicorns seemed able to use telekinesis as well as direct blasts of energy, and though their strength varied wildly, it didn't take much force to disable or kill a single man. The pegasi were blindingly fast and maneuverable, and the earth ponies were strong enough to kill a man with a single kick. Conversely, the ponies were disorganized personal fighters, and didn't coordinate with each other beyond simple groups of two or three. The griffins didn't cooperate at all. Many of the Equestrians ran or flew straight through the perimeter and away into the night without engaging at all.

The armored vehicles were the main point of success for the humans. The thick metal made it nearly impossible for the ponies and griffons to get to the humans inside. The Equestrians could continue to come through the portal, but only with heavy losses.

Luna took a deep breath and bellowed out in the Royal Canterlot Voice, “SPREAD OUT AND TAKE COVER! STOP ATTACKING THE VEHICLES!” Then she turned to Applejack and said, quietly, “I need a courier. Can you get back through the mirror with a message?”

Applejack grinned at her. “I’m your fastest pony without wings, Princess. I can do it!”

Luna nodded. “Good. I will have some pegasi distract them for your run. Here is the message…”

In a desperate attempt to stop the flood of terrifying, colorful creatures, Lieutenant Franklin, commander of the lead tank, switched to fragmentation rounds. The first blast took out half of the ponies in the field of fire, but more emerged from the mirror immediately afterwards.

"Dammit!" he swore. Given the rate of fire of the main gun, he was wasting his time. He thought furiously for a second. He'd been told that attacking the material of the mirror itself was futile, but the engineers hadn't had superheavy uranium rounds to work with. "Eddy, AP rounds!" he barked to his loader. "Sergeant, aim for the frame of the mirror!"

Moments later, the cannon roared and the depleted uranium round blew a big chunk out of the golden metal and twisted the frame around the hole. The surface of the mirror flickered and went dark.

The crew of the tank cheered and Franklin yelled, "Take that you cartoon motherfuckers!"

But only seconds later, the metal reformed and the silvery surface of the mirror appeared once again.

"You have got to be shitting me!" Franklin snarled. "Eddy, keep 'em coming! Fast as you can. Sarge, keep hammering it!"

He was so focused on destroying the mirror that he didn't notice the little palomino pony that darted back into it.

Lieutenant Franklin was on the radio to the other tanks, about to give the order for them to concentrate their fire on the edge of the mirror as well, when the first dragon emerged from the portal. His sergeant tried to swing the gun around to cover the huge reptile, but didn't quite make it. The DU round went through the monster’s wing membrane and a frag round from another tank spattered off the thick red scales which angered the beast but in no way hampered its ability to deal out terrible damage.

Metal shrieked under its claws, and the tank's armor crumpled and split. Franklin and his crew died almost instantly.

The guard major in command of the operation, watching in horror from his humvee at the rear of the control area, relayed the situation as he had been ordered to do even though he knew it would probably mean his own death. "We're not stopping them! There are too many targets, and they’re taking out our armor. Repeat: We cannot contain the invaders! Over." There was a brief acknowledgement and then the fateful words crackled out of the radio's speaker,

"Your orders are to hold your ground." That meant the commander and what was left of his unit would still be fighting the horde of monsters when the bombs fell on their position.

Beneath the plains of South Dakota, General Greenwaldt was, for once in his long military career, absolutely speechless.

"That was a manticore," Corporal Williams said excitedly, pointing at the monitor. "I dunno if that tail’s poisonous or not, but I’d hate to get hit by it. And those are Diamond Dogs. They can burrow... Holy crap! Dragons! Oh shit! Oh shit!" The Corporal watched in horror as the titanic saurians shredded the tanks and their crews. and then he turned and vomited on the floor.

A lieutenant seated at a tactical station said in a calm, even voice, "3rd Air Wing has been sent in. time-on-target is two minutes. They've been ordered to blanket the entire area."

Blanket. Such a nice, comforting word, Corporal Williams thought as he wiped his mouth. Those poor bastards.

"Blue Leader, Blue Five. Multiple bogies, 12 o'clock."

The flight leader checked his displays and saw several target markers. "Roger that, Blue Five. Slow and soft... may be civilian... can you get a visual?"

"Negative on that. They... Sweet Jesus!"

"Ice up, Blue Five! Gimme some tactical!"

"Captain, it was a flying dinosaur! A... a... dragon! And I could swear there was a zebra riding it!"

The flight leader didn't know if his wingman had gone suddenly crazy or not but he knew the situation was dire enough that he had been ordered to bomb an American city. The time for caution was long past. "Whatever the hell they are... take 'em out!"

Their modern weapons hadn’t been made to track living creatures, and so the air battle lasted less than twenty seconds. People standing on the lawns and sidewalks in front of their homes, some hastily dressed, some still in bathrobes, watched the streaks of arcane red fire and the bursts of green light followed by the bright flashes of more familiar explosions above them and then the long, expanding red trails of fire as the burning wreckage, jet fuel, and napalm began to rain down from the sky.

The Equestrians continued to stream out of the gate, unimpeded. Rainbow Dash stood with one hoof on the back of a young soldier, pinning him to the ground. The boy's voice could be faintly heard through his gas mask rapidly and ceaselessly running through a fervent prayer. "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death..."

Rainbow Dash ignored him and watched Luna as she held up the major in her magic and ripped away strips of his protective suit with her horn.

"Where is Greg? Have you hurt him?" she asked the soldier in a dangerously quiet voice.

"I don't know who you're talking about," he gasped.

"Greg. Our creator," she explained.

"I don't understand any of that. What the hell are you, anyway?" the major gasped.

"I..." Luna hesitated. "I don't really know. That's odd, isn't it? I am a princess of Equestria, but I am also..." She trailed off in confusion.

"Then what do you want?" the man persisted.

"That, I know." Luna pulled him close to her face, his eyes inches from her cold, merciless eyes. "I want my Greg... safe and unharmed."

"Let me use my radio," the man said. "Maybe I can locate him for you."

Luna dropped him on the pavement and he kicked off the ruins of his MOPP suit. As he did so, she gave a few quick orders to waiting ponies.

The commander picked up the microphone but turned back to Luna before he keyed the transmit switch. "If I do this for you, will you stop killing my men?"

"We're not killers," Rainbow Dash snorted at him. "If they stop fighting us, we won't hurt them."

The soldier stared at her for a long moment and then spoke into the mike. "All units, stand down. Repeat: All units, stand down. You are hereby ordered to surrender." He flipped the channel switch on the radio unit and then continued, "SP Command, this is Bottleneck. Over."

"Bottleneck, SP Command," came the immediate reply. "We are monitoring your situation." That meant they were still getting video and audio feeds from the many remote cameras that had been placed in the area. "We are countermanding your order to surrender. The invaders must not be allowed to spread out of the area. Reinforcements are en route. Over."

"Dammit, SP! Our air cover went down in flames and we're getting slaughtered! There are too many of these things and a lot of them are damn near impervious to small arms fire. The one here says they just want somebody named Greg. Do you have any idea who—"

"Stand by, Bottleneck." There was a long moment of silence and then the voice on the radio spoke again. "Is the one you're speaking to called Luna or Nightmare Moon? Over."

Luna nodded at the soldier. "Luna, as I am now."

"That's affirmative. Over."

"Stand by."

During the long wait, the streets around them seemed eerily quiet. After what seemed like an eternity, the radio crackled to life again. "Bottleneck, SP Command."

"Go ahead SP. Over."

"We have authorization to deliver the prisoner to your location. He will be transferred by Marine aircraft. A single helicopter will deliver him by..." There was a short pause. "...ETA 0830 hours, your time. Ask Luna to instruct her forces not to fire on the aircraft. Greg will be aboard. Over."

"I understand," Luna said. "But tell them this; if they are trying to deceive me or if Greg isn't unharmed, all this—" She waved a hoof, indicating the fiery destruction around them. "—will look like paradise compared to what I will unleash upon you."

Eight-thirty came and went. There were several frantic radio conversations and the commander assured Luna that everything would soon be straightened out.

But she finally lost her patience, lost her faith that she wasn't being lied to, and worst of all, lost her temper. A whirlwind of sparkling magic shredded the major's humvee and he was left standing in the street holding a microphone with a severed cord dangling from it.

"Please wait! We can..."

But she ignored him and shouted to all the Equestrians, "Go! Spread out and find Greg. Bring him here!"

"They won't be able to find him!" the soldier told her. "You'll have to be patient and—"

"I have no more patience left!" Luna snarled at him. "If I cannot bring Greg to Equestria, I will bring Equestria to Greg!"

She bowed her head, the tip of her long horn stabbing into the pavement of the street, and a ragged blue glow formed around her horn. There was an accompanying crackling noise, like prolonged static discharge, which began to grow in volume. The street began to ripple, bubble, and change beneath her touch of her magic.

The major turned to Rainbow Dash for an explanation. "What... what is she doing?"

Rainbow Dash didn't look away from Luna as she answered, "I dunno... but I bet you're not gonna like it.”

Author's Notes:

Thanks again to my awesome prereaders and editors, Jordanis, WrittenWord333, and Fana Farouche!