My Little Pony LII: 525.600 Ponies!

[Anarion]

It's still September 3rd where I am, Zecora speech shall have to wait.

Edit: Well, it was when I started to type
Now, I must join with the hype.

First, the final X-pony report from Commander Vinyl Scratch.

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Dear Princess Celestia,

We did it. I still can't believe they put me in charge of this rag-tag band of heroes, but we did it. And y'know, commander Scratch has a nice ring to it. I think I might stay with the force after this. Maybe assign Sergeant Octy to be my personal secretary. Her expression every time I give her a direct order is just so rich.

I guess, let me back up. In preparation for the trip to Cydnonia, I decided to be extra careful. First off, we consolidated bases and split the troops up into the psionically gifted and the, we'll call them psionically challenged. Given our experience with those blasted Etherials, taking a pony withb weak psionic skill to Cydonia was a risk I wasn't willing to take. We didn't have time for as much training as I would ahve liked, but everypony that went on the final mission had more than 70 psionic strength based on the psionics lab rating, and between 30 and 50 psionic skill.

Let me take this moment to call out thanks to my sweet fillies, Lyra and Bon-Bon. At 100 and 97 psionic strength, respectively, the two of them went hog wild when we got into the alien base. They never pulled off a mind control on an Etherial, but the two of them bested 2 Sectoid leaders and a Sectoid commander in a single round of psionic power, and mind-controlled the commander into unloading a blaster bomb into his own control room. Then, when we got into the bowels of the base, they mind-controlled several Chryssalids. Those things are so fast, and when they're on our side, they wreck house.

So yeah, psionics were a big part of our victory. Production was another big one. Before take-off the boys back home finished up all the kit I asked for them, and they did it in record time. We went in with everypony armed with heavy plasma, you and I carrying blaster launchers and extra ammo, psi amps for everypony, and not 1, not 2, but 3 plasma hover tanks. I uh, might have sort of blown up one of the hovertanks with my blaster launcher, but these things happen and we finished with the other two intact. On top of that, we had flight armor for everypony, and that made moving around the Cydonian landscape really easy, not to mention taking shortcuts in the underground section of their base. And while we were gone, our triple Avengers with plasma held down the fort back on earth.

We ended up taking out a little over 60 UFOs total. near the end, I stopped even sending ground teams. We just had the Avengers blow the UFOs out of the sky as fast as they could enter the atmosphere, and I tried to take some of them over water so that there would be no survivors in any of the wreckage. Our hyperwave decoders said that the aliens were doing some kind of "retaliation" mission, but it's hard to figure out how they would retaliate against us when any ship that got within 1500 miles of one of my bases got shot down with half an hour.

I did find that last alien base before I left, too. Would you believe it was in Brazil as well? Like, less than 500 miles from base #4. I can't figure out why our planes didn't find it earlier, but now I know why Brazil pulled out of the X-pony project. Their loss, considering all the sweet, sweet Cydonian tech we brought back.

Princess, I also want to give you a special shout-out. All that firing range training you did really paid off, and it was a satisfying moment when you were cross-map sniping with your heavy plasma and a 105% hit rate.

A shout-out to my senior officer corps. Princess, you made a great colonel, and Colgate, I'm sorry I snatched your command, it wasn't my idea, and you my a great field colonel as well.

I think back to that first terror mission, when we had no idea what we were doing, and a single reaper seemed like the most scary thing in the world. And I look at how far you have all come.

Fillies and gentlecolts, I see great things in the future for X-pony. It's going to be awesome and I hope you all receive this message and stay on with me, if you wish. I'd welcome you all, you have served with dignity, honor, and butt-kicking radicalness.

Let November 4th go down as the day all of you saved the world.

Your faithful DJ,
Commander Vinyl Scratch

And Nightmare Moon totally would have killed everypony if she'd won. Otherwise I don't see how Celestia justifies banishing her for so long.

I'm going to use this as a convenient entry point to the discussion.

Nightmare Moon was a queen. She heralded her return by appearing before the gathered townsfolk in place of Celestia and announcing her victory along with an evil laugh. If she just wanted everypony dead, I don't think she would act the way that she did. She wanted them to know she was back and know who she was.

This is linked to the original reason for her becoming Nightmare Moon: loneliness and sadness that everypony ignored her beautiful night and jealousy towards her sister.

Now, I think it's heavily implied, both by Nightmare's Moon's magic, and the fact that everypony panics when they here that Celestia is gone, that eternal night would be pretty terrible. It probably has monsters, and it might involve things like extreme cold, great danger for anypony going outside, and even a relative scarcity of food.

However, I suspect that there exist plants that can grow without light and provide alternatives, as well as enough heating sources, magical or otherwise, to keep the population alive. And if there weren't, Nightmare Moon probably would have assisted once she had established her new castle and gotten her kingdom properly set up. Because Nightmare Moon, twisted as she is, wants a kingdom of fearful and adoring subjects, not a kingdom of corpses.
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Regarding Pegasi and Earth pony abilities and magic, you're basically just arguing semantics, as far as I can tell. Magic, if you take Twilight's soap box, means something like a studied technique, used intentionally, in order to create a specific and repeatable effect.

If you follow my interpretation of Twilight's definition, that discounts most things that are not unicorn magic. A sonic rainboom wouldn't count because it happens to any pegasus that hits a certain speed, whether they will it or not, and whether they even know about it or not. Similarly, bucking apples or falling leaves seem to be natural phenomena that are not always consistent, but that happen at certain times or in response to certain actions whether the pony wills it to happen or not.

I'd also point out that anything being done during Winter-Wrap up is specifically called out as NOT being magic because Ponyville follows earth pony tradition and uses no magic for their Winter Wrap-up. That means all the cloud and bird gathering, animal communication, planting and snow clearing are not, at least according to the inhabitants of Ponyville, classified as magic.