//------------------------------//
// Chapter 26: Processing Reality- Part 1 
// Story: Mechaniquus 
// by DougtheLoremaster 
//------------------------------//

Dash grunted as she plummeted, crashing into the cracked, blackened ground at incredible velocity. She slowly pulled herself to her hooves, gears whining in desperation. The now twisted metal in her wings screeched out as Dash desperately tried to flap them, to no avail. Glancing up, she cried out.
“That’s not fair!”
Staring back down at her with baby blue eyes, and looking rather timid, was Fluttershy. The buttery yellow of her metal body glinted in the harsh sunlight, while her silky pink mane and tail whipped around in the solar wind. Her words were soft and timid as she called down to Dash.
“Y-you should probably surrender, D-Dash.”
“I will never-”
Dash’s frequency fell silent as Fluttershy smiled sweetly, and whispered softly. Her voice radiated with icy malice and her stutter completely vanished.
“Because all I want is to make you writhe in pain. To peel back your metal flesh and disassemble you, slowly, as you desperately begged me to stop.”
Fluttershy began to laugh, slowly at first, as soft as the driven snow. But that gentle laugh grew deeper and more wicked in tone. As her laughing grew more and more sinister, her eyes began to crackle with an almost chaotic electrical current. 
Off to the side, sat the girls. Applejack and Rarity who had been watching, had grown bored and pulled out a deck of cards made from old motherboards, and sat playing poker. Pinkamena lay in Chrysi’s embrace as the two sat there, eagerly watching the spectacle. Both cheered as Shy taunted Dash. 
On a ledge overlooking the small gathering, sat Starlight,  her wings flattened against her sides as she watched with the intense ferocity of a mother hawk. And beside her, lay Twilight, nestled deep within her own metallic wings. Having grown disappointed from the lack of destructive power, as she called it, Twilight had entered ‘standby mode’. 
Chrysi stared on in morbid fascination as Fluttershy bit down on Dash’s neck. In her former life, she would never have been as enthralled by the display of her friends going all out against each other. And yet, here she was smiling, laughing as Dash suddenly kicked out just as Fluttershy tore a massive chunk of metal from the Pegasus’s neck.
Why am I so excited? Chrysi could feel it welling up within her, a truly primal urge. A desire to cheer on the ensuing chaos, to witness the wanton destruction. Her fangs felt just a little sharper, her eyes a little colder as Dash’s hooves broke through Fluttershy’s metallic body. Isn’t it wrong to enjoy this?
Chrysi cheered loudly as Fluttershy staggered back, bright red coolant spraying from the holes in her barrel. Dash stumbled to her hooves, her own neck gushing that bright red coolant. Her voice was distorted, glitching in and out as it rose and fell in volume.
“This isn’t over, Shy!”
Fluttershy laughed coldly, ignoring her own wounds as she shouted back, caught up in the moment.
“I love when they fight back!”
The two laughed as they stared each other down. Chrysi’s eyes widened. They are smiling. Her own lips curled up in a malicious smirk. I’m smiling. Why am I smiling? She watched as the two charged each other, creating a blast of air on impact, causing the crystalized sand to fly into the air. The glass shards enveloped the two, creating an impenetrable smoke screen of debris. Both were heard to give shouts of pain.  She could feel the coolant in her veins speed up, and she blinked. Excited? This situation was dire, her friends were tearing each other apart and she was excited. Chrysi found herself staring at the cloud, eager to see the outcome. Who won? Wait…Why do I care?
Before her sensors, the debris cleared and she saw the forms of Fluttershy and Dash, standing there on their hind hooves, forehooves connected in their final blow. Dash’s eyes widened as Fluttershy fell forward onto her, speaking just loud enough to be heard.
“That was awesome, Dash.”
Her body went limp as she lay against Dash, who staggered back two steps, smiling.
“That-”
She toppled over onto Fluttershy, muttering sullenly with her broken synthesizer.
“Is my line-”
Like Fluttershy, the LEDs that made up her eyes blinked on and off sporadically, before going dark.
“-Shy.”
Both lay there, completely still, their eyes completely dark as coolant poured out onto the ground making a pool of crimson red around the silent forms.
There was a moment of silence as Chrysi watched Mena rising to her hooves, and she found herself, much to her surprise doing the same. It just felt strangely natural. She opened her mouth to cheer.
“Ye-”
Her words died in her throat, as she looked around. Below her Mena stood frozen in mid-crouch as she prepared to leap into the air. Off to the side, AJ was in mid-laughter as Rarity hung, suspended in the air, having leaped at AJ; most likely having caught her cheating. Their cards lay in the air, Rarity having tossed them to the side. Chrysalis swallowed hard. Everything had stopped. Everything that is, but her.
Chrysalis looked wildly around her, but no matter where she looked, nothing moved. 
“Is it as wonderful as you believed it would be?”
Chrysi stiffened. Behind her, she heard a voice that was anything but pleasant. Grating, and harsh almost as if the speaker were forcing the words out through clenched teeth. Yet, the voice was feminine and very familiar. Chrysalis felt the coolant that composed her blood turn to ice, whirling around she shouted.
“Luna!”
Her eyes went wide. Before her was…something, but it wasn’t Luna. Actually, Chrysi wasn’t sure what exactly she was looking at. A strange mist hovered before her, formless, and yet, it almost seemed to take the form of an Alicorn. Chrysi could swear that she could just make out wings and a tail, maybe even a flowing mane. The mist appeared to be the colors of the night sky, yet not any color that Chrysi could actually name. It had no face, and no body, and be that as it may, Chrysi couldn’t help but feel like the entity was rolling its eyes at her as she stared intensely at it.
“No, I am not.”
“Oh Lulu, must you always be so impatient?”
Chrysi felt the metal that composed her flesh crawl. The words had come from behind her, and were warm. Extremely warm, almost unbearably so. Somehow, she felt the presence of wings enveloping her in a loving embrace. It was comfortable, at first. But it soon became almost horrifying how affectionate the embrace felt. As though she were being smothered, strangling her with the sheer feeling of gentleness.
What’s more, she knew that voice. That sickly gentle, caring voice. That voice belonged to the being she had fought many times in her past life, and though she had won their encounters, she managed to damage her not once. She shivered and forced herself to turn around, whispering in fear as she did so.
“Celestia?”
What she saw, however, was not the Royal Princess, but a formless and colorless bright light. No, not colorless. Just beyond the brightness, Chrysi’s receptors could just make out all the colors of the known spectrum converging into the colorless brightness. It was truly overwhelming, and Chrysi could feel her motherboard smoking as it tried to process what it was she was seeing.
Almost as if it could sense this, the brightness seemed to coalesce, condensing down into a more compact form, that resembled a rather tall alicorn. The mane and tail were visible and seemed almost to have the colors of an aurora. It was hard for Chrysi to tell for sure, as her receptors went haywire from the brightness of the light filling them. However, the face was blank and lacked any defining features. And yet, Chrysi could have sworn it was staring intensely at her, watching her every movement. She balked as it spoke in that overwhelmingly gentle tone once more, raising a hoof to gesture at itself as it did so.
“I am that is, that was, that will be.”
“You waste your precious breath on that one, sister.”
The silence was deafening as Chrysi watched the white Alicorn cock its head, as though considering something. Though it had no visible face, Chrysi could feel it staring down at her as it towered above. As Chrysi silently gazed back sheepishly, she felt somewhat embarrassed as though she had disappointed her own mother. Though oddly enough, that feeling came not from the being in front of her, but rather behind her. Chrysi watched the entity of light slowly raise its head as though peering behind her.
“Isn’t Chrysalis one of your creations though, Lulu?”
Chrysi’s processor was overclocking past the breaking point as she tried to make sense of everything. Who was Chrysalis? She was certain she had never heard that name before. Her name was Chrysi. Always had been. After all, that’s what her moms had named her. She was sure of that. 
“Yes, Tia. She is.”
Chrysi flinched. She had felt a sudden horrible stinging pain in her hindquarters. For a moment, she felt like she had been struck, but then she realized that was impossible. Her flesh was made of metal, she shouldn’t feel anything, and yet the pain was soon radiating throughout her very being, piercing her core. Chrysi twitched in agony as the pain seemed to infect her very motherboard, filling her memory banks with horrifyingly traumatic images. Images she neither knew nor recognized.
“I do not understand dear sister, what about this one has you so riled?”
The gentle warmth of the words from the entity before Chrysi washed over her once more, alleviating the pain almost instantaneously. Chrysi breathed a sigh of relief, just moments before she found her body swung around, to face the mist once more. But it wasn’t mist that greeted her this time. 
Chrysi’s receptors were glitching out. They had to be, for before her now stood a black Alicorn. But not black in color, black as in the absence of color; the absence of anything. Within the outline of the Alicorn standing there, was an empty space, a complete void, in reality, creating the Alicorn's body. 
It stood two-thirds the height of the white Alicorn behind Chrysi and like its counterpart, possessed no eyes or defining features. That is, besides a mane and tail that seemed to contain swirling galaxies within a spacial area. Chrysi watched in complete awe as a comet soared out of sight as it left the tail, only to reappear moments later within the mane. Chrysi shuddered. What exactly were these beings, and what did they want with her?
The black Alicorn spoke, and once more Chrysi was stricken with pain of an unimaginable caliber. 
“Because she’s closed her eyes, Tia.”
Chrysi found herself frozen in place as the entity placed its featureless face close to her own.  Chrysi's receptors flickered and glitched out as the Alicorn seemed to stare directly into them. Though it had no visible eyes, Chrysi could feel it peer into her own. And what it said next made a shiver run down her metallic spine.
"And after an eternity of waiting, I have tired of waiting for her to open them."