//------------------------------//
// Top Bolt 
// Story: A Dream 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

	A Tesla coil battle cage in a cave on a floating island with an audience of magical ponies and a GAU-8 gunship was a really cool place to watch a fight.  
That is, if the hero hadn’t just been stabbed multiple times by a murderbot.
However,
“She’s fine,” said Merry.
Everyone turned to look at her.
Merry went on.  “Does Cordoba know she’s a robot?”
“What are you talking about?” said Twilight.
“As a pony who was built into a robot, I know how to tell a robot who’s been built into a pony,” said Merry.
“Are you saying Cordoba’s been a robot this whole time!?” shouted Twilight.
“Have you ever noticed that she doesn’t eat?” Merry pointed out.
“But Cordoba drinks coffee.”
“And yet, when you take it away, she’s still a morning pony,” replied Merry.
“But she bleeds.”
“As I understand, creating a meat-encased robot was a concept from Valiant’s world,” said Merry.  “Have you ever noticed that she doesn’t think, she processes?  That’s an awfully specific word for a non-native speaker of the language.  And you have to admit, Cordoba being a robot explains a lot.”
Twilight turned to Sunset.  “Is it true?  Did you and Valiant really build a daughter?”
Sunset nodded, but didn’t meet her eyes.  “It’s true.”  She was focused on the battle.
Cordoba didn’t enjoy being stabbed.  To answer Merry’s earlier question, no, she didn’t know she was a robot.  However, she was a teenager and therefore thought herself invincible anyway.
With Twi-minator’s claws stuck in her, Twi-minator was conveniently close.  Cordoba smashed a hoof into her opponent’s face, shattering one of her optical sensors.
The blow knocked Twi-minator back.  Cordoba got on her blind side and tripped her.  As Twi-minator fell, Cordoba stomped on one of her wings as it splayed out for balance.
Twi-minator raised a hoof, but Cordoba grabbed it, putting it in an elbow lock that twisted the servos into wreckage.  She rolled to get up, but Cordoba seized her other wing, and putting a hoof on Twi-minator’s neck to brace, tore it off.
The position of standing over the stricken Twi-minator left Cordoba exposed, however, and she took a hoof to the stomach in return.  The punch was so hard that it slammed her into the ceiling, mangling her wings.
As she fell back to the floor, Twi-minator tried to get under her to impale Cordoba with her horn.  Cordoba managed to roll enough to kick sideways, striking the metal horn and bending it.
She hit the floor and rolled sideways, coming up under Twi-minator’s belly and kicking her back legs out from under her.  That put all Twi-minator’s weight on her remaining front leg, and Cordoba took advantage, tackling it with her whole body and ripping it clean off.
Twi-minator was now halfway to being a sausage.  Or maybe a vegetable.  Food-based analogies don’t really work well for robots.
Cordoba made another diving attack.  Twi-minator’s damaged front leg could still be used as an improvised flail, and she hit Cordoba a glancing blow on the face.  That didn’t stop Cordoba from rolling Twi-minator onto her back and raining punches across her body.
Twi-minator’s back legs kicked, but there was nothing she could do.  Cordoba continued to hammer her body, slowly beating the living shit out of her.  Ironic, given both of their mechanical status.
Cordoba kept hitting her, punch after punch.  It went on for whole minutes, to the point where the audience was almost getting bored.  Twi-minator could only twitch, joints seized and hydraulic fluid leaking across the floor.
Cordoba got off and grabbed Twi-minator by the neck, dragging her across the floor towards the electrical barrier.  She turned in place, slowly spinning faster until she released Twi-minator, who flew into the arcing electricity.
A robot was arguably even more susceptible to current than meat, and Twi-minator started to smoke.  Wires melted, electronics fried, metal welded together.  The crowning touch came when she caught on fire.
Cordoba sat and watched, the acrid smoke washing over her.  Her voice cracked, but she managed to ask, “Does that count as killing someone, Twilight?”
Twilight didn’t answer, preferring to focus on one problem at a time.  “We need to figure out how to get this barrier down!”
She hurried away, looking for something, anything, she could use to disable it.  Perhaps the Wonderbolts had a lightning specialist.
To her surprise, it had started to snow in the last few minutes.  She didn’t know how she had missed that.
She also didn’t know how she had missed a large red sleigh that had landed on the Wonderbolts’ runway.  Approaching from the rear, Twilight noticed that it had a bumper sticker that read Valiant did nothing wrong and the year, spelled out in red, white, and blue letters.
I was sitting in the sleigh with my hooves propped up, drinking tequila when Twilight came around and saw me.
I lifted my glass.  “Hey.  ‘Sup?”
Twilight exploded.
Chuckling to myself, I got down and went to the cave.  It was a simple matter to ground out the Tesla coils and walk in.  The hard part was ignoring the various reactions of the audience to my presence.
Cordoba looked at me as I walked up.  She’d definitely gone through the ringer, but she’d won the fight.  I knelt beside her.  “Hey kid.”
Her optical sensors, which strongly resembled eyes, so that’s what I’m going to call them, looked at me questioningly.  “I thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, I was.  Sorry for the confusion.”
“How did you come back?”
“I sold my soul to Santa.”
Not a typo, by the way.
Sunset and Trixie came running over.  There was a moment of awkward silence, but then Sunset threw herself at me.  I caught her hoof with my face, which wasn’t what I had intended or expected.
“How could you do this to me!?” she demanded.
Hmm.  Sunset had taken a level in self-reliance.
“Sorry for dying,” I said.  “I hadn’t planned that.”
Her look softened.  “No, I’m sorry.  I should have believed in you.”
“Well, it was kind of a long time,” I acknowledged.  “The whole three-days-and-rise thing didn’t work out so well.”
Sunset started to tear up and hugged me.  Over her back, Trixie smiled at me.  “So are you Santa Claus now?”
I glanced at the furry red pimp coat I was wearing.  “No, just a helper.  But if you hear anyone call me an elf, stab ‘em.”
I helped Cordoba up and walked towards Merry May’s steel presence.  The crowd parted around us.
“Could you open the door for me?” I asked Merry.
“Oh, so you get to come back to life perfectly normal and I’m stuck as a machine?” she said.
“Actually, the conditions for the reversal of my death require me to perform certain services for one Mister S. Claus.  I am the chief naughty/nice arbiter.  And if you don’t want to go on the naughty list, you’ll open that door.”
Merry did.
I helped Cordoba inside and made sure she was comfortable.  I then turned around to face the others.  They all stared at me.
“This is strange and unusual, correct?” said Rarity out of the side of her mouth.  “I’m really seeing this?  It’s not just me?”
“I’ll agree,” said Applejack.  “I keep trying to come up with something to say.  None of the ideas seem appropriate since the situation is so weird, but they just keep coming.”
“They aren’t the only ones who just keep coming,” said Pinkie.  “Also, yes, Valiant returning in the service of some deity is very abnormal.  I thought he used to claim to be one.”
“Santa Claus isn’t a deity,” I said.  “He’s just someone who brings toys to all the good girls and boys.  But this is one of those things where if you believe hard enough, a previously fictional entity gains power enough to become real.  Christmas materialism has made him one of the most powerful figures in the universe.”
“And you sold your soul to him,” said Rarity.
I shrugged.  “More people probably believe in Santa than God, anyway.”  I paused.  “When I put it that way, shit, I should have sold it to The Beatles.”
“Um, what was that about a naughty and nice list?” asked Fluttershy.
“That’s the biggest part of my job,” I explained.  “There are two kinds of people: naughty and nice.  I decide who is who.  That affects what they get for Christmas.”
Nobody was brave enough to ask about that.
I turned to Trixie and pulled out a scrap of paper.  “I have some things that need to get done.”
She took it and glanced at the items on the list.  “I can do this, though it might be a tall order.”
“Execute the order.”  I paused, and then added, “And then have the others executed as an example.”
Trixie went on her way.  I pulled out my flask and took a swig.  The alcohol inside tasted like drinking a burning hospital.  Not my best batch, but better than nothing.
“All right,” I said.  “We might as well go back to Ponyville.  It’s where everything happens anyway.”
I took a look atf the ponies standing around.  Cracker had disappeared.  The Wonderbolts suddenly showed up, led by Rainbow Dash.
“What happened here?” said Wind Rider.
“Nothing to see, move along,” I said.  “This isn’t the robot you’re looking for.”
Truthfully, there wasn’t much left.  Trixie had already collected the various scraps of Twi-minator and the Tesla equipment and loaded it onto Merry.
“You don’t tell me to move along,” said Wind Rider.  “I’m in charge here on this island.”
I smiled at him.  “Look right behind you.”
It was Princess Celestia.
Rebel leader he may have been, but Wind Rider wasn’t about to admit that to an immortal alicorn’s face.  He quickly excused himself and went to join back up with his ponies.  I noticed that he’d recently gotten some new recruits.
I turned to Celestia.  “Hey.”
She nodded and tilted her head.  The two of us fell in step together as we headed back to where I had parked the sleigh.  Not knowing what else to do, the others followed along at some distance.
“I’m surprised to see you again,” said Celestia.  
I shrugged.  “Got bored.”
We came up on Twilight, who had recovered.  The snow for thirty feet in any direction was melted.  Twilight herself was still wearing scorch marks.  She was twitching and babbling to herself.
Celestia tapped her on the shoulder.  When Twilight saw who it was, she seemed to calm down.  “Princess!  I had the most horrible-”
Twilight saw me standing beside Celestia.  “-dream,” she finished, her voice at a much different inflection.
She shook her head and turned to Celestia.  “Princess, when did you get here?  How did you know something was happening?”
I looked at Celestia.  “Do you want to tell her or shall I?”
Celestia said, “Twilight, about your friend, Cracker.”
“I mean, she hangs out with us a lot, but I don’t know if I would say she’s a close friend,” said Twilight.
“Nevermind,” huffed Celestia.
I grinned.  Twilight looked at me.  “What?”
“Nevermind,” I echoed Celestia.
Twilight looked at the two of us and then without a word trotted away to the others as they approached.
I looked at Celestia.  “So do I get credit for naming your alter-ego?  Since you kept the theme from when I named your sister ‘Cheese?’”
“That may have been a factor,” Celestia admitted.
“So what are you going to do now that Twilight’s still clueless?” I asked.
Celestia smiled.  “We’ll see.”
She walked behind the sleigh.  I went over to where the girls and the Wonderbolts were hanging out.
Standing up on my hind legs, I clopped my forehooves to get their attention.  “Hello everyone.  You know me, Plymouth Valiant, man of myth and legend.  I’m glad you’re all here today for this press conference.”
Cracker walked out from behind the sleigh and joined the crowd.  I went on.  “Ms. Columbia, good to see you here.  I’m glad that you’re here, so you can hear this directly from me first.”
I smiled.  “I hereby declare my candidacy for President of Equestria.”
Reactions were mixed.  Sunset applauded.  Twilight looked horrified.  The Wonderbolts appeared confused.
I wondered why Cracker smirked.