Everything's Coming Up Ballstat!
Two letters sat opened before the leadership of the Earth Pony Union. Words from both the Unicorn Princess and Pegasus Commander demanding immediate surrender.
It was imperative that Chancellor Puddinghead act with both dignity and maturity to weather these demands.
“I don’t wanna!” Chancellor Puddinghead declared.
“They have us cornered, Chancellor,” Smart Cookie reasoned.
“Then get us out of it!”
“How?”
“Send the Royal Guard!”
“We sent them already.”
“Where?!”
“To the woods to gather truffles.”
“Oh, right. Well, I stand by that decision. That task is very important.”
“Why?”
“My tummy is rumbly.”
Smart Cookie facehoofed.
“So, what are we gonna do about this?” Puddinghead asked.
“Surrender?” Smart Cookie suggested.
“We’ll never surrender!”
“The Pegasi are bombarding us with tornados daily and the Unicorns are transforming our soldiers into fruit. On a related note, the wild herbivores are decimating our transformed forces by eating them.”
“Aren’t they just rabbits or something? Punt them! I’m sure even a pony-turned-apple could manage that.”
“They’ve allied themselves with the timberwolves.”
“Never mind, we should just surr— ow!”
Puddinghead rubbed her head, sucking in a sharp breath. Smart Cookie approached the strange object that had landed next to Puddinghead.
“Ball Stat Ick Miss Isles?” Smart Cookie sounded out hesitantly as she picked up the heavy book and read the cover.
“Why would we need islands for stallion— ow!” Puddinghead exclaimed.
Smart Cookie grabbed the second object off the floor as Puddinghead whimpered from the repeated head trauma.
“Mac hinds for dum-dums,” Smart Cookie read aloud. “Where did these even come from?”
Both ponies looked up. In the ceiling was a massive rip in reality, glowing in a multitude of colours and smelling vaguely of cotton candy.
“... Was that always there, secretary?” Puddinghead asked.
“No,” Smart Cookie answered.
“Do you happen to know when it appeared?”
“Also, no.”
“... right then.” Puddinghead nodded. “Time to scream.”
As Puddinghead began running around in a panic while screeching at the top of her lungs, Smart Cookie, curious, opened up the manual on Ball Stat Ick Miss Isles. Pages of blueprints greeted her.
“Ahhh— ooooh, what’s that?” Puddinghead stopped and looked over Smart Cookie’s shoulder.
“Blueprints for… something.” Smart Cookie checked a few random pages. “No explanation given.”
“Huh… we should build it.”
“We have no idea what this is.” Smart Cookie scowled.
“Exactly! What better way to find out than to build it!”
“...I don’t like how much I agree with that, but I’m still against it. We really should—”
“Ah, ah, ah, ah!” Puddinghead shoved her hoof into Smart Cookie’s face. “When strange, pretty coloured swirly things appear out of nowhere and grant you weird unexplained blueprints, you just build it!”
“I’m still not sure—”
“We’re also about to be conquered any day now and we might as well go out on a fun note.”
“Fine. I’ll get the engineers started.”
“Excellent. While you do that, I will continue to panic.”
“Huh,” Puddinghead remarked.
“Huh indeed, Chancellor,” Smart Cookie agreed.
Before them and the baffled engineers was a tall metal cylinder. It towered over them in the field beside the castle. It was connected to a single button in the hooves of Chancellor Puddinghead. It had been explained to her that one press would activate the Ball Stat Ick Miss Isle, or ‘Ballstats’ for short, and do ‘something’.
The engineers had thought it impossible to construct the Ballstats, but further instructions, tools, and materials had been dumped from the ceiling portal allowing them to build the strange object to completion.
“So, this will… ?” Puddinghead asked.
“We have no idea,” Smart Cookie answered. “But we did aim the ballstat at the Pegasus stronghold of Cloudsdale in the hopes that this might annoy them.”
“Right.” Puddinghead nodded. “So, I just need to hit the button?”
“Yes.”
“And I should do that soon?”
“The Pegasi and Unicorns have managed to take even more of our land in the time it took to construct the ballstats. As of this moment, we are only in possession of the castle, the mac hinds, the engineers, and a few key servants.”
“We didn’t even get the truffles?”
“Regrettably, the soldiers sent to gather them have become one with nature.”
“They went feral?”
“They were eaten and made into fertilizer.”
“That is significantly worse than I was hoping for.”
“Regrettable. We could have used better news, but, in lieu of soldiers, we will have to settle for whatever the ballstat does. On your press, Chancellor.”
Puddinghead stared at the button, biting her lip in hesitation. Deciding to just go for it, she squeezed her eyes shut and hit the button with her hoof.
All Tartarus broke loose.
Deafening noise burst from the bottom of the ballstat with thick clouds of gray smoke. It was like a Unicorn fireball was exploding over and over again in one place meaning it was very, very loud. It flew off with a final boom at a blistering pace toward Cloudsdale, leaving behind a trail of clouds to signify its passage and a loud whistling sound that was slowly becoming quieter as the ballstat got further away.
Puddinghead and Smart Cookie watched in stunned silence.
“Well, that was exhilarating,” Puddinghead noted.
“Yeah, quite the bang—”
Then Cloudsdale exploded. Violently. In rainbow puffs of smoke. The forest and grass below were dyed in a myriad of colours as rainbows spilled onto it.
Puddinghead and Smart Cookie were once more shocked into silence.
“Did— did we just blow up the main pegasus stronghold?” Smart Cookie asked.
“Yes,” Puddinghead replied.
“Does that mean we’re free from pegasus control?”
“Yes.”
Another lapse of silence.
“Should we make more—”
“YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES!” Puddinghead shouted as she shook Smart Cookie in place.
After a quick and very explosive war, the Pegasi and Unicorns surrendered to Earth Pony control. Then the Earth ponies became rulers of all ponydom and later Equestria with the power of the ballstats.
Puddinghead and Smart Cookie lived happily ever after, the prior with truffles, the latter with retirement.