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// Ultraground Escape 
// Story: The Pony Of Vengeance 
// by BradyBunch 
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For a moment, neither Twilight nor Spike nor her friends nor Ironheart made any movement. The only sound that could be heard was a steady thumping noise, coming from the depths of Ironheart's chest as his impenetrable heart continued its lifelong mission of supplying life to the machine.

Then Ironheart let out a soft chuckle. "I've been wanting to use that line ever since I saw The Termarenator," he explained.

"...Ironheart?" Rainbow Dash weakly asked.

Ironheart nodded. "In the flesh. So to speak."

"Yer a machine!" Applejack cried. Suddenly the name Ironheart made sense.

"I am," he said simply. "I was not designed to be organic."

"That's not physically possible," Twilight whispered. How could he possibly exist? Nopony had been able to create a fully developed pony-shaped machine before, much less artificial intelligence. "You're not physically possible!"

"I'm not?" He seemed surprised. "My goodness, I didn't know that. I'm sorry." He felt himself, clanging a metal hoof against his stomach. "But look at that-- it appears I am." His face became softened somewhat. "Are any of you hurt?"

"Not too badly," Rarity cautiously reported. "Why? Why do you care about us when you just killed," she indicated the room full of smoking and bloodied bodies, "them?"

Ironheart pressed his flexible metal lips together. "Because I care for you, Element of Generosity," he replied. "I wouldn't take the trouble to launch this rescue attempt if I didn't want to see you still alive."

"And why do you care for us?" Pinkie asked. "Are we important to you? Did we do anything?" She gasped. "Ooh! Maybe it's because you liked the fact that we were looking for you in the first place?"

Ironheart gave a jilt of his head. "Actually, that last one isn't all too implausible..." he said quietly, before raising his voice. "Because the world is better when you're in it. I don't want to see any harm come to the forces of good that protected the innocent." Her gave a foul glance over his shoulder at the ruined corpses. "But them... If I had not shown up and rescued you, what would you have done? Would you have killed Amadeus? Would you have become somepony like me? And if you had, they would have killed you soon afterward. I solved that problem. You are still untarnished by blood." He extended a hoof again. "Now come with me, before any more come. I know the way out of here." His red steely gaze softened again. "Trust me," he said.

Twilight didn't know what to do. Should they go along with this terrorist and potentially be betrayed? Or should they be better off with the criminals in the underground? And if they did that, would Ironheart attack them as well, seeing them in the company of criminals?

Ironheart seemed to read her thoughts. "Princess Twilight," he spoke firmly. "If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so a long time before. I had the opportunity at the docks to kill you. I had the opportunity five minutes ago, when that griffon was dragging you off. I could have held my fire, and you would have been separated from your friends indefinitely. But I didn't. Because you are the force of good. And I don't want to see the light taken away from a darkening world. Now come with me, unless you'd like to be left at the mercy of the criminal filth that are undoubtedly coming here soon."

"Twilight!" Spike tugged on her mane. "Don't do it!"

"What other choice do we have, Spike?" Twilight admitted.

Rarity gasped. "Twilight! You're seriously suggesting we go along with this... this uncivilized monster?"

Ironheart's bladed horn ejected from his forehead. "Miss Rarity," he thundered, a gleam in his eyes now. "I am not what you would call a civilized pony! I have broken off with the rest of civilization for reasons only I have the privilege to disclose. I therefore obey none of its rules except the pity of the innocent, and I suggest that you never invoke them in my presence again!"

Rarity looked severely abased. She looked down and did not answer.

Ironheart directed his attention to Fluttershy, who was still trembling on the ground in fright, not looking at the metal pony. Ironheart looked at her for a second with sympathy, then shot his horn back into his forehead. "You're scared," he whispered softly.

Fluttershy nodded, not saying a word. She looked absolutely dejected.

Ironheart slowly walked forward to her. The other girls fell back, except for Applejack, who positioned herself between Fluttershy and Ironheart.

"I will not harm her," he said softly to her. "I swear it on the souls of those closest to me I have lost."

Applejack looked at him, trying to discern the truth in his unfeeling metal eyes. After finding nothing wavering, she stepped aside with a grimace.

Ironheart continued to speak gently to Fluttershy. "You think I'm a monster who thinks life is an affordable commodity. Somepony that enjoys spreading the work of death. An unfeeling machine that doesn't understand the need to comfort others."

Fluttershy lifted her face up, her face soaked with tears and her mouth in an open look of grief. Her mane was disheveled.

Ironheart knelt down in front of her face, extending a hoof without a sign of a mechanical whirr, and touched her forehead. She tensed up at the unexpected contact, and froze in complete fright at the sight of a machine, a murderer, touching her face ever so softly, moving it down her jawline ever so slowly, ever so softly.

"Be not afraid," he encouraged so gently. "I will be by your side."

There came a pounding on the door leading out on the opposite end of the room, and the moment faded. Ironheart perked up. "Now come on. Let's get out of here." He went to the door behind Amadeus's seat and pushed aside his corpse, then opened the door leading into the dark beyond. He motioned with his hoof, the fingers retracted again. "Come with me. Now."

And after the slightest moment of indecision, they did. The last pony out, Rarity, slammed the door shut, and with a twist of the metal wheel, locked it.





The journey through  the Ultraground-- for that was what it was called-- was wet and narrow and dark and fast, but it was free of ponies and griffons with guns, which was good enough for Twilight. She and Rarity had ignited their horns for light in the dark tunnel, but Ironheart insisted that they keep their lights down, for what if their light gave them away? So she and Rarity extinguished their horns, now fully reliant on Ironheart for their directions-- and their lives.

There were sharp turns and intersections, musky water lying in stagnant puddles that they had to splash though, and once, a ladder leading even deeper underground. Twilight was uncertain of this once they had reached it. The point was to escape the Ultraground, not go even deeper into it, after all. But Ironheart was absolutely sure of himself, and pleaded with her to follow him, and she automatically obeyed him, for a reason she did not know.

For an amount of time they couldn't measure-- it could have been fifteen minutes, or an hour, or fifteen hours, or an entire year-- they followed him, trusting that he knew the way. He knew what turns to take, when to stop and reverse direction, when to run into other tunnels, when to splash off the path in the circular tunnels and into the narrow alleyways in between large unseen objects they couldn't even guess what they were.

And finally, after a narrow turn and a hidden passage and what seemed like forever, they arrived at yet another door with a wheel in the center. Ironheart, instead of turning it, pushed on the wheel and it retracted into the door and the lock Ka-chunked open and it swung inward. Ironheart motioned them all in quickly, then closed it once the last pony was through.

Twilight gasped at the unexpectedness of the room. Out of all the things she could find in the Ultraground, what she saw was definitely the most unexpected.

It was a large white room, almost as massive as the largest room in the Manehatten Institute of Technology. At one side was a scientific laboratory. There were chalkboards with impossibly complicated equations, even for Twilight, who ran over to them and studied it with an intense fascination. They were long, and involved a lot of Xs and Ys and exponents. On a table were beakers, flasks, and containers filled with colored liquids. On a counter off to the side were stacks of papers, a sautering iron kit, a collection of wires, and a lump of a silvery-grey metal.

On the opposite side of the room was a deep vat of dark, bubbling liquid next to a table on which were laid an assortment of bladed feathers. There were five conveyor belts extending out of the wall. One had a timer of forty-two minutes going above the door flap. One of these flaps was swinging back into place; it had just churned out a little black object and dropped it into a small bin. It was small and metal and had a trigger at the junction of the two sides.

On another end was an assortment of couches, recliners, and magazines. Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Spike immediately went for them and flung themselves on them tiredly. And on the wall behind that were several long metal-and-glass tubes that stretched above the room's ceiling, large enough to accompany a pony or two, and went, Twilight guessed, up to the surface.

But what drew attention was the massive object in the exact center of the room, covered with a brown tarp. It was an oval-shaped object, like a giant egg, resting on a raised platform. Spare parts and tools lay scattered haphazardly all around the egg shape like an aura. There were socket wrenches and screwdrivers, half-welded pieces of metal and severed cables, nuts and bolts, crumpled pieces of paper and pencils, and chains and hooks, to name a few.

"What's that?" Rainbow Dash asked, pointing at the large, mysterious object.

"My Manehattan project," was Ironheart's reply. He said no more after that.

"I can't believe this," Twilight whispered, turning away from the complicated math on the chalkboards and observing a beaker of blue fluid. "You had this space to yourself this whole time?"

"Yes, Princess Twilight," Ironheart responded. "I needed someplace to conceal myself when not up and about. This place has all I need to sustain on. It's alone and out of the way. It's large and secret. It has a space for me to research more additions to my body," he pointed at the lab space, "A space when I need time to myself," he pointed at the couches Rarity and Fluttershy and Spike and Pinkie were on, "and a spot to manufacture weapons." He pointed at the machines churning out bladed feathers and guns.

Applejack looked indignant. "Wait a sec," she said uncertainly. She pointed at the machines again. "Ah thought you didn't need ta hold weapons-- they just pop outta yer body, right?" She was still uncertain as to how that worked, but she was trying to roll along with it.

"Correct," Ironheart responded.

"So why do ya need ta make these weapons? Do ya put 'em in yer body or somethin'?"

"No." He shook his head. "I just think about any weapon, and it appears in place of my hoof. I was designed to operate that way. I haven't tested the limits of it yet, but I'm sure I can be unstoppable without the guns I manufacture."

"So why do ya need 'em? And how do ya know how to make 'em?"

"I stole the blueprints of the weapons," he said.

"But why do ya even make 'em if you don't need- " She froze. She faced Ironheart with a face of disbelief. "If ya don't need 'em... then you make 'em fer others ta use?" She looked horrified at what it meant.

"Correct," he said.

Applejack dropped her jaw. After a moment she stuttered, "Yer Client 24!"

Twilight and Rainbow spun around in a heartbeat. On the couches opposite the room, all movement stopped.

Ironheart looked passive. "How did you know about that?" he asked.

"Our little buddy Amadeus told us before you killed him," Rainbow said, flying close to Ironheart. She immediately felt weak and nervous around a pony like him, though she didn't know why. She didn't like the feeling. "He told us that he had been receiving guns from a pony conspiring with you. You're arming the entire population with incredibly unstable weapons!"

"Not for long," he said darkly.

"What?" Rainbow asked.

Ironheart shook his head, making his metal mane sway. "Never mind." He turned away. "Don't make yourself too comfortable. You're going to be leaving soon."

"What do you mean? This is perfect!" Twilight looked around the massive laboratory. "I don't want to leave!"

"Then you have a choice, Twilight," Ironheart told her, idling up next to her. "Your friends will make it to the surface by use of the tubes over there." He pointed at the metal-and-glass elevator. "Will you stay down here and be with me? Or will you go with your friends instead?"

"Why not have us all stay down here?" Twilight pointed out, trying to tangle his logic.

"Because this place must be a place of security, of isolation! Were you seriously suggesting you stay down here while Manehatten's above your heads?" Ironheart looked surprised.

"We have to take you in," Twilight said. "And we're not going to go up to the surface empty-hooved. You won't separate us, Ironheart. We won't have some of us stay down here with a terrorist and have others go to the surface. What if we never see each other again? So you will come with us, or we will have to force you to come along."

"You'll never take me in alive," he said serenely. "I will fight to the bitter end."

"We have to stop your reign of terror, Ironheart. Innocent ponies are afraid!"

"Let them be afraid of whatever they will-- the criminals that they know I'm fighting, or me, the pony that gives justice to those who deserve it. If they are innocent, they have nothing to fear. Why don't you tell them that when you return to Manehatten?" Ironheart's voice was tight and patient.

"I can't believe you," Twilight said to him. "You slaughter ponies and griffons and call it peace, you-you spread terror to the ponies you don't like, you abuse the weapons Bright Mind developed-- "

Ironheart wheeled around, an brutal animalistic gleam in his eyes. His teeth were clenched; his horn was jutted out, the dried blood on it still tarnishing the metal.

"Never," he slavered like an untamed beast, "say that name in my presence again. Never will I hear that pair of syllables out of your mouth, do you understand? I despise that pony. He was unfit to exist on this planet, and so I killed him and took his work for a greater purpose."

Twilight was frozen; unable to defend herself from his furious outburst. "Are you insane?" Twilight gasped. "What did he do to deserve being killed?"

"It was mostly the fact that he existed, if you know what I mean," he snarled. "The accident in his lab that blew his chunks across the land... wasn't an accident."

"You... you're a hypocrite!" she stammered, leaning back away from his savage red eyes.

Ironheart clearly disliked that word. After a moment of pondering, he sighed in resignation. "You need to know before you understand," he breathed in her face. "Whether you like it or not, you will know it all."

He turned and violently ripped a drawer out. In it were some cards, a few pens, a few paper clips, and...a book. It was old, thick, tattered, and black, and had a few tears on the cover. There was no image on the front, or on the spine, or on the back. Ironheart picked the book out of the drawer, looking at it with reverence for just a moment, before he thrust it into Twilight's wing. Twilight, surprised, held on to it.

"That should tell you everything," he told her. "Read it and understand, Twilight. I can't explain it now in the best terms. That book should clear everything up better than I can explain right now."

"Come with us, Ironheart!" Twilight pleaded. "Give yourself in! Please! And cut your losses!"

"You're not leaving empty-hooved, Twilight," he pointed out, indicating the dog-eared book. "That'll be more worth to you than I am. As for myself, I will decide when and where I will surrender. I have more work that's unfinished. I must continue to remain hidden for the moment."

"You talk to us like we're your allies," Twilight said to him bluntly. "We're not."

"Then that is your interpretation," he conceded. "I will not fight you if you disagree with me. I will not fight you if you try to persuade me. But know this," he said in all seriousness. "That if you try to kill me, then I will see you as my enemy at last. When you descend to the depths of despair, when you become like me-- then I shall know that you have given up hope, and then shall I know that you are an enemy to my progress. But until then, I will protect you time and time again. When you decide to join the side of the filth I fight against, only then will I decide to fight you. But you won't. Knowing you, you'd never stoop to helping criminals achieve their purpose."

"I won't help a terrorist either!" Twilight indignantly fired back.

"Then you choose who to support," he said calmly. "Me, or them."

He indicated the girls on the couches. "Now come with me to your ride." He pointed at the glass-and-metal elevators leading out.

They all obeyed, though all with some degree of reluctance. They packed into the tubes two at a time, Spike on Twilight's back next to Rarity. Pinkie was next to Applejack, and Rainbow was next to Fluttershy, holding a wing over the tender pegasi's back. Ironheart pressed a few controls next to the doors, and the doors slid shut, and Twilight and the others could now only see him through a layer of turquoise glass. There was a small whine as the elevators powered up.

"I am sorry I couldn't have you stay longer," Ironheart said. He sounded sincere, his voice muffled through the glass. "You were very, very interesting to talk with."

And suddenly the lights went out and the seven of them were shot up through the tubes, Twilight clutching the book in her wing hard. She was screaming, and so was Spike and Rarity; the ride was fast and tight and disorienting, and seemed to go on longer than it actually was. Her head hurt and her throat was raw and it was dark and it was confusing-

And it stopped, and the glass slid aside, and they tumbled out in exhaustion. They were in a side alley, and the elevators were in the wall of the brick building. Twilight cricked her neck and looked to the side. There was Pinkie Pie stretching out her hind leg and moaning, "Wowee! Now that hurt!" And there was Rainbow, and Fluttershy, and Applejack, and Spike was on her back and Rarity was right next to her.

She looked behind her, but the machines that had shot them to the surface were gone; retracted back into the wall from whence it came. She tried to open the wall, to try to force the elevators back open, but the doors were invisible. It was like they weren't even there.

Why am I doing this? she asked herself. Why am I trying to see the terrorist again? Is it because I want to talk to him again? No, no, of course not. It's because I need to persuade him. I care for him and the outcome of his choices, and the outcome of the catastrophic effects already set in motion.

They were allies, whether Twilight bothered to admit it or not. But the alliance was shaky on Twilight's part. Ironheart was totally trusting with her. Why was she so hesitant, even if what he was doing was right, just in another way?

Twilight looked at the pavement, where below the hard street, Ironheart was preparing for war. And she was not looking forward to the time when she would have to confront him head-on. The time for that would happen, whether she wanted to or not.