Landshark was leaning against the wall opposite the door to the chapel, arms crossed. She'd barely been here a minute and already was checking her watch, although her impatience wasn't to her credit.
Not long after, one of her fellow agents, Lambchop, emerged from the room. "Bad news, Shark. The big guy finally put out a hit on ya."
They started walking down a hallway as Landshark emitted an amused snort. "And here I was giving Him credit for the hands-off approach. Did you at least finally get some minor healing spells out of it, spirit armor or something?" Fortunately most folks in the unit didn't mind a little good natured ribbing of that sort. She shook her head and changed the topic. "You seen that old beater they got our section for weekend leave?"
"Don't fuckin' remind me. No power steering, handles like you're drivin' the fuckin' Chernobyl sarcophagus." The tall human grumbled. "Shifting's annoying too."
"C'mon, Chops," a new voice joined the two from an intersecting hallway. "Grow a dick, drive stick."
The man gave the newcomer the finger. "I know how to handle a stick shift ya dim fuck. The clutch on this one's too fuckin' grabby. Got to be something wrong with it."
"Hey Gnat." Landshark nodded to her friend. Not a lot of agents shorter than the construct, but the organization couldn't be picky about that sort of thing. "Guess I'll be driving so your poor little arms don't get tired."
"Yeah yeah, have fun stalling. They better have a pool table somewhere in this dump. Or in town."
"Oh, good thinkin', Chops." The woman grinned smugly. "Twins' birthday is comin' up, be good to hustle some money out of the chumps from the other unit if they show up."
"That would be nice," the construct agreed. "Better them than us." She gave the shorter female a forceful pat on the back.
"Fuckin' right." Lambchop grinned. "Shoulda made a livin' as a pool shark."
Gnat cackled. "Not my fault you guys suck. I'd expect better from you, Shark."
"Still not a robot." It wasn't even that Landshark was bad at playing pool. She felt quite competent, once she'd picked up the rules, such as they were. Gnat's uncanny prowess was something of a point of pride with the rest of the unit, because it was always fun when she found a new victim among base personnel or other units.
"Sure wish the Copperhead had a pool table. Anyway, I miss cars. Even a bad one would be nice. Walking doesn't bother me but it does take longer." She hurled a stick far into a meadow, the Admiral chasing after it. "I guess it's not so bad."
Landshark had been looking for a locksmith, and the closest one lived an hour's walk outside of Ponyville in a tiny village called Hadneigh. Presumably this inconvenience was left over from the days when Ponyville had been considerably less relevant, and hadn't rated one of everything. Supposedly rural areas could be like that. Not much call to have one of everything in every tiny speck of a village.
"They do sound pretty cool," Ruby Pinch agreed. She'd tagged along mostly because Landshark didn't want to get a lock just anybody could reach into with magic to force them open. Bringing along a unicorn with what might be a slight mechanical inclination seemed like a reasonable precaution against being sold something below Landshark's standards. Pinchy seemed to appreciate the consideration.
Of course, burglary didn't seem very high on anyone's list of worries around here, and she suspected the locks on her smithy were probably a better grade than most others in Ponyville, but there were some habits she wasn't going to drop, even if it cost extra.
"Yeah, loved driving. Of course, sometimes it wasn't a good idea. Don't want the law to stop you and see something like me at the wheel. I mean, on a mission it doesn't matter, but on leave or when trying to keep a low profile, better to be on the passenger seat or in the back, y'know."
"I don't see how that fixes the problem of getting stopped and somebody seeing you who'd freak out."
Landshark's dog returned with the previously thrown stick, which Ruby Pinch took up with her magic to throw it a considerably smaller distance. The animal was a good sport about it.
"Oh, there's ways around that."
Malloy had been speeding. Of course she'd been speeding. She had no concern for the rules. Landshark wasn't happy about it.
"Relax." They'd been pulled over, which wasn't very promising, but Malloy was unfazed. She was always unfazed. "Boss'll pay the ticket."
Sure, the organization could make minor problems with the law go away. Minor problems. "Maybe so, but I'm not human! He'll probably want to see my 'real face' or something. Cops don't like masked strangers!"
"Hm. Good point." Malloy hadn't been all that good at thinking the consequences of her actions all the way through, which could really get a girl in trouble when you paired it with a complete lack of fear or anxiety. "Fine. I got an idea."
"Oh boy." Landshark's erstwhile partner wasn't exactly an idea person. The rest of the section might dispute the 'person' label altogether. It was fitting, in an upsetting sort of way. Malloy didn't seem to hold people in any more regard than she did things, and in return, people who knew her often came to regard her as little more than a puppet that killed when given a weapon and instructions.
Everyone had a story about that one guy or girl who enjoyed the violent parts of the job too much, even if they'd only heard it from a guy who'd heard it from a guy. Malloy didn't even have the common decency of being unhinged in a comfortingly familiar way.
Still, Landshark figured she might as well play along with any flash of personality the woman exhibited.
"Don't move. You're a puppet."
That was easy. Landshark nodded minutely as her partner lowered the window, turned on the interior lights and placed both hands on the steering wheel in plain view.
"The hell's that on your passenger seat?"
"First aid practice dummy, sir." Malloy was perfectly cool, as always. She'd even remembered to try and sound pleasant.
The officer practically leaned into the car. "Doesn't look like any dummy I ever worked on."
Landshark couldn't look at him directly, of course. He sounded confused, but he was probably willing to buy any story that fit into a normal world and didn't include robots or golems.
"That's a special order," Malloy added details to her lie. "Apparently this instructor had his car broken into by the police last winter because his dummy appeared too lifelike through the frost covered windows. They assumed it was a frozen person."
Landshark didn't have a lot of context for being pulled over. In fiction, people tended to be a little nervous. She doubted her partner had the capacity to fake that convincingly.
Malloy reached over to pull down the construct's jaw. "The company generally recommends not leaving them in the car like that, for obvious reasons, but they won't argue with money. I'll be delivering this thing personally." She let go and put her hand back onto the steering wheel.
"Well, that's just weird." The guy shook his head. "Well, let's see your license and registration, then."
"Yes, sir."
"I just started riding on the back seat after that. That seemed to make a difference." Landshark shrugged. "If you carefully arrange your life-size puppet on the seat next to you, you're weird. If you toss it carelessly onto the rear bench, it's a little less weird."
"So, you got, uh, pulled over a lot?" They stopped at a small stream to let the Admiral drink. It was a hot summer day and he'd been chasing the stick for most of the walk. Pinchy offered a Fluttershy-approved treat. Wouldn't do to have the dog chase around critters the kind mare knew.
"No, but even if you're idling somewhere, people can walk by and look into your car. They're practically begging for a reasonable explanation, and if I'm just sprawled or slumped in the back they have an easier time inventing one themselves. It's a psychology thing, I suppose. The dummy thing might have been more elaborate than it needed to be. As long as the driver doesn't mind some stranger thinking they're weird, doesn't matter. Maybe I'm a prop or a mannequin or whatever."
"Hm." Ruby Pinch appeared to consider this. "I guess going out with friends wasn't as easy as it is here."
"Depends. I mean, as long as I didn't draw attention to my face I could at least walk around in public. Winters were good, just wrap a scarf around the lower half of my face, or wear something with a large hood." She shrugged. "Not ideal, but could be made to work. Honestly I just spent most of my free time hanging around our bases or visiting places we knew wouldn't ask questions."
"Huh. I wonder what's different."
That was a good question, and not the first time Landshark had considered it. "I think it has to do with a sense of, let's say, established normalcy. A human, depending on what part of the world they're from, they have a pretty specific idea of how the world works. And often, golems or robots don't really fit. They'd think I was wearing a mask or otherwise pulling a fast one on them."
She spread her arms wide. "But around here? I just tell them I'm magically animated and most people will assume it's unicorn nonsense they don't know about because they're not some fancy scholar, they got a real job. So even if I'm the only one of my kind they've ever seen, they can slot me into a familiar part of what's normal for this society. Unicorns get up to weird stuff if they have too much time on their hands. Seeing me doesn't feel too threatening to their idea of the world."
"I guess that makes sense," Ruby allowed as they continued their walk. "But back when we first met you said that there's a lot worse than you happening to the world, so you'd think at some point there's, like, a new normal?"
"Well, a lot of people are more comfortable hearing things they expect. That makes it pretty easy to fool them, at times. Sure, there's always going to be a couple who're on to you, but not enough to really matter." The construct shrugged. "Never really understood the nuts and bolts of what the CFD guys did, they must have been good at their jobs, though."
"Who?"
Landshark hesitated. "Counter-factual details. You run a covert group of monster hunters, you need guys who'll manufacture 'truth' on demand. Or so I'm told. They'll make sure you have some passable documentation for where-ever you're stationed, cover stuff up whenever they can, and if you're retiring, try to help you fill in that big spot on your resume you don't want to read '90% waiting around in the middle of nowhere, 5% freaking out, 5% shooting aliens'." She chuckled. "Had just about more resources and manpower than the other parts of the organization. Might as well have been magic to me."
She had a vague notion of knowing who to bribe and who to strong-arm, along with stuff about computers and government databases but she had a very strong suspicion her guesses were just cobbled together from fiction she'd consumed in that decade. She didn't really feel like she could do it justice in trying to explain it in more detail. Grumbling about the proliferation of cell-phone cameras had been a favorite past-time of these specialists as well. The way they told it, established normalcy was always only one poorly placed incident away from being destroyed forever.
"Huh. That sounds pretty, uh ..."
"Dishonest? Sure. Very useful to have around, though." She leaned down to pet the Admiral. He seemed to be tired of games, for the moment, and fell in besides them.
"Yeah, I guess I was going to say dishonest," Pinchy admitted. "Didn't want to go all Applejack on you."
Lanshark laughed. "Now, she's a perfectly respectable pony. There's nothing wrong with being uncomfortable with shady dealings. Being good at that sort of thing probably causes all sorts of temptations, and if somebody's too comfortable with that, well, maybe you'll wanna be careful around them." With a shake of her head, she continued. "Sides, we basically just got pulled over that time because Malloy figured the organization was going to handle any consequences. That's not a good attitude."
"Yeah, I know. Don't break rules just because you can. Only do it when you really gotta do it." Pinchy smiled. "Besides, I gotta think of mom. It'd sure eat away at her if I started seeing how much I could get away with."
"Laws are useful. Even when you're breaking them, you should understand that there's a point to them, at least the basic ones about how to treat your neighbor." She'd heard about plenty of laws that seemed pretty stupid, and the idea of too much micromanagement by the state upset her, of course. Still, it was important to give credit.
"I said before, I'm impressed how people can make concepts like justice and fairness and things of that sort real through their cooperation. Rights aren't real things, either, they're just ideas. Laws kind of help a group to drag along people who aren't sold on those ideas. Threat of punishment to make sure people don't violate the basic rights most of the society invented for itself."
"I guess if you looked long and hard enough you'd still find ponies who don't think much of the other tribes, or maybe gryphons or whatever," Pinchy ventured. She tilted her head in sudden confusion. "The Elements of Harmony seem pretty real, tho!"
"I guess," Landshark allowed. "But I assume some entity created those things, and that creator might have believed in those virtues. So, sure, if you put them together with bearers who are really good at those, I guess they can shoot a rainbow?" The whole thing had seemed extremely abstract to the construct. "Although to be fair, honesty or kindness or loyalty are just words until they're backed up by concrete acts, you can't be any of those things without enacting them. It's similar to what I said, because they need people to become real. You can't just describe them, you have to live them for there to be an effect. It only gets fuzzier with magic, which, uh ..."
She emitted a sigh. "Not gonna touch that one. That's above my pay grade." That was probably the important one that turned virtues into lasers, so she wasn't even going to theorize.
"That one is pretty weird," Pinchy agreed. "But you're right, the other elements are only real if you act it. I mean, friendship doesn't exist without ponies either, but isn't magic practically everywhere?" After a pause, she suddenly perked up. "I guess the Elements are a mechanism for turning strong good feelings, y'know, friendship, into powerful magic. Good magic, I mean. Discord or Nightmare Moon weren't killed. But without ponies who really live those things, the Elements are useless, if I remember Twilight's story about Discord's breakout right."
"Phew, you probably just spared us having to ask Twilight about it. I'll take that explanation, no questions." She didn't feel any closer to understanding why Friendship was supposed to be Magic in general, maybe the design specs of the Elements had had some kind of cultural impact, but thinking of those things was just an idle way to pass time, not really useful.
Pinchy giggled. "Yeah, she'd go into a lot more detail, or at least know where to look up information we'd understand."
Landshark had never thought too much about the Elements of Harmony, or their capabilities. Powerful magical artifacts had been part of the world of her creation, they were just things that made sense. Having to have six of them seemed a little cumbersome, of course. She supposed that in general, she wasn't in the habit of fearing things based on capabilities alone. Unless they were godlike, of course, but she tried to guard against extending that sort of reflexive suspicion into the rest of her life.
She kind of appreciated that this was a world where villains could be reformed. Not all of them, but even a limited number of successes probably kept the option on the table. She may have been a mere minion, but she'd started out on the wrong side of good and evil herself. It was very good that there were prettier solutions to problems than 'more gun'. Violence answered a lot of questions, but not usually in an optimally constructive manner. Just because she was a big fan of the tools didn't mean she was always looking for excuses to use them. Still, better to have them and not need them.
"I ever talk about why I like guns so much?"
The deck listed dangerously, and if the big trailer they'd been heading towards hadn't been secured so well, it would probably have gone overboard. She saw a large cargo crate slide off the ship nearby, confirming her guess.
"Dossy is not made for this," one of her colleagues muttered under his breath as the vessel righted itself. They were all clinging to safety railings.
Although the sounds of gunfire and panicked shouting were constant, the other human seemed to have heard. "What's this fucking garbage scow made for, anyway?"
There was no answer. Landshark had been quite impressed with the airship and some of the engineers on the ground had gushed about it as well, but she was reasonably sure they really hadn't meant for the City of Dosso to see action. The groan of strained hull sections hadn't quieted down since the vessel had started maneuvering evasively.
Well, that choice was out of their hands, now. The present crisis had caused the mobilization of anything within range you could conceivably strap a gun to. The recruitment pitch had made the organization sound a lot more subtle than that, but perhaps it couldn't be helped. Her colleagues had spoken quite ill of the local armed forces.
Of course, technically they were only meant to deliver supplies and other necessities, but the crisis hadn't been so polite as to stay contained within the circle someone had drawn on the map.
Presently they were supposed to open up the big trailer. It had been meant to fold open under remote control, but the construct suspected that it just wasn't a day for things working out just as they were meant to be.
"Alright, newbie. Take big hammer. Hit prybar here." Hitting things with a hammer did fall squarely into Landshark's skill set, so prying the uncooperative container open wasn't a tall order.
Whatever warped component had stalled the automatic opening seemed to have been freed by the force applied, and the trailer finally opened up fully to reveal a large weapon with multiple barrels mounted in a little turret.
"Look at this stupid fuckin' thing. Perfectly good sea-wiz ruined 'cause some idiot with a plan wanted to disguise it. 'Cause why not add more points of failure?"
His grousing was interrupted by the sound of a tremendous impact, setting the hull to ring as if under the blow of a hammer, and the whole ship seemed to briefly enter free fall, once more tilting at a dangerous angle. Both him and Landshark were swept off their feet, but the construct managed to grab onto both the human and the trailer they'd been working on.
Both of the humans were swearing. The free fall seemed to be over, but if she let go now, they'd still slide overboard.
Then it happened. The gun came alive, whatever motors controlled its aim nearly drowned out by the racket. Landshark spotted one of the enemy's odd flying machines passing in the distance. Perhaps it hadn't anticipated the cargo vessel's sudden loss of altitude and wasn't expecting an attack. Perhaps the controlling intelligence was too single-minded to care.
She'd been introduced to firearms, of course. Visited a firing range, and even maintenance personal got to carry a handgun, just in case.
It was difficult to describe the sound of the gun. Individual noises merged into a sort of angry buzzing. The muzzle flashes were massive, flickering irregularly. The target buckled under the assault, spinning out of control and out of sight.
She'd later learn that the thing could apparently fire up to six-thousand rounds per minute. She could literally not conceive at the time of the same mechanical action taking place, identically, so many times, so quickly. Being introduced to the maintenance requirements of such devices did nothing to diminish her awe.
No gods, no magic, just ingenuity. She thought her soul might sound like a harp string.
She had to get her hands on something like it, however diminished it would be by being made portable.
"And that's why I was always in love with guns. Because building them just means knowing how the world works. Chemistry, mechanisms, metallurgy, sometimes electronics. It's just knowledge." Landshark cackled. "Can you tap your hoof a hundred time a second? No, you can't. Can I repeat even the smallest motion that quickly? Again, no. I was crafted by a god! And the gods think they're in charge. But it's mortals who master the world. They figure out by methodical, repetitive experimentation how the world is working, then do great things within the framework they find."
"That's not a slight against magic," she added. "I'm certain Twilight could drown you in testable results and consistent terminology. Science is about working out how the universe works, whether it be because of atoms or spiritual humors, no matter what kind of nonsense that universe ends up being made of. But for me, that gun was the epiphany."
Ruby Pinch gave the construct a dubious look. "You just gloss over the part where you save a guy from falling off the ship to gush about the gun, huh?"
"Well, y'know." Landshark decided to sound embarrassed. "That's just part of the job."
She switched back to enthusiasm. "That gun, though! It was in a weird spot where I understood that it was a mechanism. Crafted. But far more advanced than anything I ever made. Sure, Other things, like flying machines, long distance communications, or more unselective means of destruction are impressive achievements as well, but I'd seen similar things done with magic, so they didn't touch me the same way." It didn't help that electronics and computers were totally alien to her and might as well have been magic. Landshark assumed that if you gave her a lot of time and unlimited materials, she'd eventually be able to build the tools to build a pretty decent gun. Maybe even a primitive car. It wasn't likely that she'd die of old age, after all. She'd never know where to even start to eventually end up at a digital watch or a calculator, however.
"Fair enough, I guess. You never mentioned airships before, though," Pinchy pointed out. "You hardly ever see any this close to Canterlot. I guess gryphons like them more than ponies. Maybe they're not much for trains and such."
"I wouldn't know anything about that. They told me they used the Dossy to shift cargo in places with poor infrastructure on the ground, maybe it's something like that for gryphons?" She shrugged. "In hindsight, that ship was a mess. Half the systems were just sort of kludged together without plan, prototype or back-up by people who thought they were too smart for regular engineering, drove the maintenance crews mental. Plus, no budget oversight anywhere to be seen."
The construct snapped her jaws. "A lot of people working at desks liked the idea of it, but most people who actually had to work on it ended up hating it, the way I heard it. But I guess it did fly, so as a proof of concept it had some merit? I'm glad I didn't stay on board, though."
Considering her lack of applicable skills at the start of her employment, it had basically been a make-work assignment where she had been of some use as an extra pair of hands and a strong back. They hadn't been in the business of making aliens field agents immediately upon arrival.
Ruby Pinch frowned. "Well that seems pretty unprofessional. Just sort of tossing together a machine on that scale. I mean, you put a lot of folks at risk."
"Hey, don't look at me. The most complicated I get is hammering metal into shape. I don't need a plan for that." It was a little amusing to Landshark to see Pinchy mirror the reaction of most conventionally trained personnel when confronted with the vessel's internals.
"You still had to learn it, and probably had some bad examples to look at." She shook her head. "You're not making that up, are you? It just seems crazy to try and build something really new, or in a new way, and involve anyone who plays it fast and loose like that." She hesitated. "How're you gonna, um ...iterate? Yeah, how you gonna iterate on your designs? I'm just a filly and even I know it takes work to do something right."
"Sometimes you run into people who're incredibly clever, who could probably make a fortune on their gifts. But they're fragile. One bad experience and they'll yell 'I'll show you all!' and suddenly they're robbing banks with robotic henchmen or trying to steal famous gemstones for their death ray while talking about how their massive smarts put them above the silly morals of us common drudges." She turned her head back towards Ponyville. "Malign hypercognition disorder. I expect when they built the Dossy, whoever was in charge was scared to put their foot down on some folks. It's no fun hanging around MHD cases even on a good day. Depends on how much they hate getting called mad by the grunts."
"Is there anyone your bosses didn't put to work for them? You're describing characters out of comic books." Pinchy obviously wasn't entirely sure what to make of it.
"Art imitates life, I guess," Landshark offered lamely. She hadn't really thought about it in those terms. Feeling unappreciated just made some people crazy. That was supposedly half the reason the First had become evil and start building an army of constructs. Allegedly that sort of thing had originally sent Luna into a downward spiral towards villainy as well.
They were quiet for a short while before the construct changed the topic. "I've been wondering something. We've established that I never knew much about children anyway. I kept hearing weird anecdotes about the Crusaders, but not really about other kids trying all kinds of bizarre stuff to get those cutie marks."
"The thing is," Pinchy eventually responded after a lengthy pause, "being a blank flank can suck. You ran into DT when she was still a huge jerk. But ... uh ... I guess I just bought it when the older ponies told me it'll happen in due time, and that we're full of potential before we get it. And I didn't want to make a fuss. Mom had enough ponies looking down on her without me going nuts over a cutie mark." She shrugged. "Figured I might get one similar to mom's, maybe. I mean, most of the family is sorta farmers, except grandma and she doesn't count."
That made a degree of sense to Landshark. Even Applebloom ended up having an apple on her cutie mark, even if that seemed a particularly odd case, with the shared Crusader marks. "I see. Seems like an adult thing, to tell kids not to be in too much of a hurry to grow up. I agree with the sentiment. You'll spend enough time being grown up, may as well try to enjoy not having so many responsibilities."
"I guess you never had that, huh?"
"Being a kid? Well, I did start life fully formed, but I didn't take control of my own path and my Self until decades after the fact, despite the whole Cult of Self thing." She rubbed her chin. "You can't miss what your culture doesn't have and your mind doesn't need to be well, I suppose. I'm a tool. All cast us all from the same mold. Being a person with personal agency is an existential stance. After all, I could have stayed loyal and left the thinking to others, but I chose not to."
She shrugged. "No, I was never a kid, but I like to look at the world with a degree of wonder that not every adult seems to have. Toiling away at a forge for decades will do that to you, I guess. Some days it seems like everything's awesome in some way."
"There are some pretty boring adults," Pinchy agreed reasonably. "Don't seem much interested in the world around them."
"Some parts of being an adult are are pretty stressful, I'd never look down on someone for not wanting excitement after keeping their nose to the grindstone all day to make rent or something. I don't need to eat, I don't get sick, or require a real residence besides my office, I'm livin' cheap." Landshark paused to gather her thoughts. "I think that's why people usually tell kids not to be in a hurry to grow up. You got less to worry about. Ideally, anyway. I guess that's why people react strongly when they hear some kid doesn't get to have a good time growing up."
Pinchy nodded slowly, apparently considering that, eventually starting to frown. "Y'know, mom never talks about grandma to me, but I remember visiting when I was little and grandma was always really nasty to mom. And mom sometimes says how she used to be no good, and it kinda hurts. Dinky likes her grandparents even tho she doesn't see them often either. Granny Smith seems a little weird but nice. Even Mr. Donkey is pretty okay. I'm too old to be scared of grumpy folks anyway." Pinchy huffed. "So I'm curious. S'not like I'll go bad just from mom telling me about what she did when she was my age."
"You'll just have to ask her, I suppose." Landshark shrugged. "It's not really my place to talk about what I do know." Berry had acted a lot more confident around other ponies during the previous year, but some of her remarks made the construct wonder if the woman really valued herself. A little too much talk about how it was all for Pinchy. Which was important, of course, but the Self had to be able to stand on its own without a cause to prop it up.
"I guess I'll do that."
"Good luck with that." She threw the stick one last time, they'd almost arrived. "Now let's see what the locksmith got for us. Kinda hoping I don't have to hit Canterlot for properly warded locks."