//------------------------------// // Evening 5 // Story: Five Nights at Freddy's: Cybersense // by AmpUpHeart //------------------------------// Spike burped, and a letter appeared in a puff of smoke. "It's from Princess Celestia!" He said, "Spring Trap mysteriously disappeared from the container he was in. There are no scratch marks or anything." "He probably came back here," Tesla said. "You know," Tripwire thought out loud. "You know what?" Hazard asked. "Remember when the two or us went into that cyberspace area?" "Yeah" "And we saw Blown Fuse?" "Yeah" "And we woke up when she 'smashed' us?" "Yeah. What are you implying?" "Axle. You saw flesh in the suit, correct?" "Yes. It was awesome, but disgusting. What's your point?" "Spike, what else does the letter say?" "Not much. It says that scientists didn't have much of a chance to see it. They found the guts, although they had no idea whose it was. They also noticed a weird spring at the back of the neck. It looked like it wanted to pop out at any moment, but it never did." "Bingo. I don't know how much of a major part it plays, but I have a hypothesis on something. We know for a fact that Fuse's brain was scanned after she died, but we never thought about her body. What if she wasn't entirely brain dead when she was stuffed?" "Whoa, whoa, time out!" Rainbow Dash said, "You stuffed her?" "No," Trip said, "But the animatronic suits are designed to sense a pony's agony, and in essence, avenge its anger mindlessly. What if someone from CREATion stuffed Fuse's body into the suit?" "What drew you to that conclusion?" Axle asked. "Pull up your memory files," Trip said, "Did the body show any signs of trauma or injury?" "Hang on..." Small lights blinked in Axle's pupils as he accessed that night. "Oh my Celestia, it shows signs of getting hit by a beam of energy!" "Talk about dressing a corpse!" Rarity said. "What?" Applejack asked, "Since when have ponies started sayin' that?" "Never," Rarity said, "The fact that Fuse's mutilated body was placed inside a less-mutilated animatronic suit just reminds me of how certain ponies are hired to make a corpse look pretty before a funeral." "Okay...." Trip said, "But the major sign of it is the spring." He formed a 3D holographic model showing Spring Trap's suit. "The Spring Trap model is just a hollow animatronic with no endoskeleton. For obvious reasons, it's not the typical suit model. Even ponies can fit in and control it without worrying about anything cutting or killing them." He compared the inside of the Spring suit with Freddy's suit, the former being hollow save for a small spring at the back of the neck, the latter being filled with wires and sharp projections. "Oh," Spark said, cringing, "That must've hurt when YOU guys were stuffed." "Those four were already dead," Trip said, gesturing toward Hazard, Amplitude, Mirage, and Axle, "But it did hurt. Think of a million tiny blades and wires digging into your skin. I had a lot of stuff that was damaged beyond repair. Not to mention that my horn was cracked." "Okay, I think that's enough detail," Twilight said. "Anyway, as you can see, the spring model has a spring right there," Trip continued, pointing out the spring in the suit and zooming in on it. "When the spring is coiled back, it won't do anything." He demonstrated by showing the model of a pony in the suit. "But the spring has a high tendency to.... Malfunction." The holographic spring then shot out, deep into the pony's neck. Fluttershy gasped, then fainted. Glitch walked up and shook her awake, although seeing that image had caused her eye to skitter again. "According to the letter," Trip continued, "The spring was never out of place. That means that whoever was in the suit did not die from a puncture to the back of the neck." "What if they had a heart attack or something?" Twilight asked. "Believe me. Someone would've noticed. And think about it: the suit has these capabilities, yet they were never mentioned. Why?" Amplitude asked. "My theory is that they wanted to fine tune everything, and then sell the fatal suits under a secret name," Mirage said, "Who's a better fit for the experiment than the pony who's behind all this?" "And don't forget about Vice," Glitch said. "Who?" Tesla asked. "Vice Militude." "Wait, what?" Tripwire said. A look of anger, fear, and doubt crossed his face before a look of sadness kicked in. "I should've known," he muttered, "I thought he'd been killed." "Hang on!" Pinkie said, "You know this guy? Are you friends!?" She asked with her usual hype, until she recognized the mood of the atmosphere and felt awkward. "I know him by name, face, and blood," Trip answered. "You know," Pinkie said, "When I looked through Twilight's genealogy scrolls, I remember seeing your name, saying you're the son of Blown Fuse and..." She gasped in realization, "YOU'RE THE SON OF CREATION'S MASTERMIND!!!!!!!" The cry resonated throughout the lab, and everyone stared at Trip. "I'm not surprised," he said, "My father was just as insane as my mother, if not more so. While she was into emotional distress, he was into power and deceit. He lives up to his three namesakes. He's the living definition of the word 'vice,' which is a synonym for 'bad quality,' he's lives up to the word much like his last name, 'militate,' which means to have a hard impact on something, and the word resembling the two combined words: verisimilitude, which means an appearance of the truth." He paused, and added, "I can't think of anything else specific. The memories are too obscured. All I know is that he vanished one day when I was three, although something, probably an experiment of some kind, gave me the mental and psychological maturity of a ten year old. That's why I remembered it." 'That's also why he acted twenty back when we were ten,' Hazard thought, 'Because he was a twenty year old in a ten year old body. If his body matured as fast as his mind, he'd probably be as old as Applejack's Granny Smith right now.' "We need to think of something," Twilight said, "We have a dead Madmare possessing the body of a discount Bonnie, a robot alicorn beginning to terrorize Equestria, and a mad stallion that's coordinating the whole thing. What do we do?" Suddenly, there was a flash, and a draqonoqueis was among the ponies in the room. "Oh no," Axle groaned. "Bingo," Tripwire said.