It was a day later, and I had a few surprises in store for those damned caribou, like for instance, remember the drone cannon from the Mothership Zeta DLC? Well, zetan technology once again was integrated into my own army, the drone cannon was downsized, upgraded, and made into a portable plasma grenade launcher, aim up, and fire near a target, it will explode mid air, it was the perfect artillery weapon for ground troops, unless they could hide under the ground that was, but it replaced normal artillery within the Empire, like all heavy energy weapons it was powered via a fusion core.

From the information the zebra warriors had known, and seen, the caribou possessed minor metal making abilities, like iron swords, spears, crossbows, and metal armor, along with magic, they seemed to mostly use lightning based spells, for combat at least, the zebra knew little of the actual caribou's abilities in magic other than shield spells, lightning attacks, and their basic healing spells, they knew where the caribou resided, it was much like Rome in terms of stile from what I've heard, but on a smaller scale, made of normal stone, rather than concrete, rather than taking the teleportation gate, and risk it shattering due to the amount of soldiers coming with me on this little adventure, we'd be taking one of the troop carriers and flying to the Caribou Kingdom.

As we got loaded up, zebras had the chance to grab any weapon that suited them, from plasma rifles, laser rifles, to tesla rifles, they had full access to anything in the armory, I myself was carrying a gamma rifle, this was an automatic version, less damage but with a faster rate of fire, it didn't really matter much, anything that was hit with this would die of radiation poisoning within minutes, seconds if I kept shooting,

While the fortress was being flown to the Caribou Kingdom, lets talk some details shall we? Everyone remembers the DIA , or the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA of the Fallout universe? Well, I had that as well, but mine did a few different things rather than just monitor possible hostile kingdoms, they had a network of changeling spies, another job changelings excelled at was the art of deception and misdirection, it was their very nature to be like that, however all I really did was use my spies to gather Intel on how things had been going on in Seaquestria, since I didn't know much about that kingdom, as for how the changelings I had sent there stayed hidden, and under water to begin with, they are CHANGELINGS, one of the most adaptable species on the planet, they can grow thick armor, larger horns, sharper wings, venom sacks, even porcupine needles, gills were hardly a challenge due to the amount of love available for them to soak up.

I had them spy on Seaquestria for about, a month and a half, to judge their technology, and how likely they would be to attacking others, seemingly however they had no guns, of any kind, and mostly relied on swords, spears, and other such things, it made sense if you really thought about it, they used to live underwater, gunpowder would just clump together if it was completely wet, however I don't actually understand how they managed to forge swords and shit underwater, that was the part that confused me, but anyways back to the point, after getting Intel on the new kingdom, I had them come back.

I had stealth soldiers as well as hard hitters, like the zebras with me in power armor, followed by sentry bots, the stealthy ones where given 100 small, quarter sized fallout 3 style stealth boys, a stainless steal knife, and a silenced ten millimeter pistol, and anything else they needed upon request, with reason of course, they where the assassins of the Empire, they could kill someone in a crowed and they would never be found, even if someone where to know what to look for, they had surprisingly agility and luck.

As we passed what was once Zebrica, we flew into what looked like something from a Mario game, the desert transformed in a perfect line into a jungle, a perfect line clear and strait as a fucking postcard, even a year later this world still finds ways to fuck with my sanity, either way soon enough we came upon something that looked like what Rome may have looked like, before it was destroyed, in the center sat a large dome of stone and glass, seemingly the capital or castle, whatever you wanna call it, as we started to land the fortress to actually let the troops file out, caribou guards tried to rush up with spears and swords in their mouths, thankfully I had thought about troop defenses and had a pair of .80 cal heavy machine gun turrets, built into the sides of the door that let troops out, opened fire on the caribou rushing the fortress, shredding their iron armor and turning them into bloody swiss cheese.

I turned to the soldiers that had wanted to join this battle, about 30 or so zebra stallions, all decked in X0-1 power armor, of course modified as needed per species, it was pony shaped, they had various weapons strapped to their battle saddles, from mini guns, to gamma rifles, as I explained before any weapon within my Empire that was hoof, or claw held, was able to be strapped and fitted to these battle saddles. "Alright men! This is what you wanted! Revenge for the zebras that have fallen to the hoof of these violent caribou, but now they will fall to your hooves! Just remember the rules I set in place, harming any caribou aside from the soldiers trying to attack you, will result in you being dishonorably discharged and placed in prison for up to two hundred years in cryo stasis, other than those rules, go absolutely fuckin nuts." With that, and the press of a button, the door on the back of the fortress opened up and the zebras charged out, their weapons shooting the caribou still trying to approach the fortress.

The caribou didn't even get within ten feet of the zebra soldiers, let alone the sentry bots I had with us, caribou guards where being slaughtered, either melted with gamma guns, plasma, or turned to paste by battle saddles with missile salvo launchers, or simply by the walls of lead my sentry bots where laying down with their mini gun, missile shooter, and mortars, some had a drone cannon modification where the missile launcher arm was supposed to be, we slowly made our way to the castle the king would reside in, as I said before it looked like a large dome of stone and glass, so I had no actual idea what this thing was called, I'm just calling it a castle for simplicity's sake, I didn't even really have to shoot, I just let the zebras have all the fun as we smashed our way into the throne room, only to see a BEHEMOTH of a caribou sitting on the throne, when I say behemoth, I mean 5 fucking times CELESTIA'S size.

A caribou guard, in fancy looking armor, the captain of their military I presume, stepped up in front of his ruler. "You DARE attack the caribou kingdom?! And you bring our sworn enemy as well! just who the hell do you think you are coming into our home and invading us?" He didn't get the response he wanted, as I don't think he wanted a missile to the face, courtesy of one of the zebras.

I walked up to the throne and looked up at this behemoth. "I presume you are the leader of the caribou that have been attacking these kind zebras? If so then you are kinda screwed." I had my beam rifle in my hands, no doubt it would kill this thing, just not as fast as it does with NORMAL sized targets.

"I am King Ma'al, and you are a fool to think you can just rid of me as simple as one would rid of a rotten fruit." What he did next surprised the hell outta me, he pulled out a weird looking staff and aimed it at my soldiers, and it shot LIGHTNING at them, thankfully all this did was force the power armor to go into shutdown mode to bleed off excess power, my robots however where not so lucky, if them exploding and spazzing out from the power overload was any indication, I quickly replaced my beam rifle with a fatman, to be exact a nuka nuke launcher, and fired, the nuka nuke hit him in the face, melting half of it off, but not causing him to die as he let out a primal scream of unbridled rage as he LEAPED from his throne with speed no living creature of his size should possibly have, and stabbed me in the chest with one of his horns, thankfully my armor took most of the blow, however it still hurt like a bitch to have a long, sharp, horn, through your chest, and out through your back, with half his skull destroyed it showed his brain to the air, I pulled out a combat knife and threw it like a throwing star, stabbing it deep into his exposed brain, causing his body to spasm and twitch before he fell lifeless, ON TOP OF ME nonetheless.

After about 15 minutes of laying trapped in agony bleeding out, a zebrican soldier trotted up and with the help of a few others, pulled the large fat bastard off of me, once that was done I quickly took three super stimpacks and three syringes of Med-X, and to be safe, some X-cell, once that was done, we looted this kingdom, keep in mind however, we only took from the castle itself, we did not break into others homes and just steal their shit Viking style, I had rules in place to prevent shit like that, and we came off with quite a haul of gold, gems, and other goodies, it would be sorted later after we got back to the Empire, ammo counted, and weapons and gear checked over for damage done in battle, mainly due to the fact I wanted to make sure that fucking lightning staff hadn't permanently damaged their power armor, speaking of I nabbed that staff for myself.

The staff would go to the magical research division of my military scientists, while my Empire relied HEAVILY on technology like laser and plasma rifles, combat magic was still a thing, and so was magical artifacts that certain spells could use as a boost, that staff would certainly help with making a spell to fry electronics with little effort by the user, and tomorrow would be a day of celebration, for the Crystal Lorenzo had been completed, plus it was the anniversary of the day I had liberated the Crystal Empire from Umbra, and freed the crystal ponies in doing so.

Author's Notes:

Ok, first off! hello everypony, been awhile, as I said before, just don't really feel like writing, plus thinking of story ideas, but I have a bit of news, I need an editor, no not for this story, for the first story before this, a new empire, as I have edited the first chapter, fixing the mistakes I made, aka no commas n crap, but I just don't have the time, nor the will, to do so for the entire story, so if anypony wants to help, I'd be glad, secondly I have decided against writing a non cannon sequel about the empire appearing on a semi modern earth, however that doesn't mean I won't be doing something extremely weird with the Empire, maybe even in this story, not a separate one!, I'd like to note however, some drastic changes will be coming to the story within the next chapter, if you do not like them when that chapter comes out you need to comment and let me fucking know for once, actually comment That line was meant for those who like the story so far, but never comment, for those who do comment, still comment lol

also I have some exciting news! I'm having a national anthem made for this version of the crystal empire, anypony here excited for that? lemme know in the comments

One last side note, I said there would be nobles from Canterlot in this chapter, I am sorry there are not, however I felt it was dragging on, so I decided to save that for the next chapter