“Stay back, Bullette, I got this.” The nameless monster leveled his glare on the three raiders. He only briefly registered that the red blur in his vision was more actual blood than rage. “I ain’t planning’ on walkin’ away from this… you shouldn’t either.”
“You fought a good fight, freak,” the leader, a red unicorn mare, replied with a sneer. “You could have just run off, we would have totally been too busy rounding up the little filly… ain’t like she’s your’s or nuthin’. Did you find her, like a stray dog? Maybe you got a thing for steel hearts? Or maybe a thing for foals?”
“Uh… boss…” A red maned, deep blue leatherwing stammered nervously.
“Hell, she’s a cutie, I’ll give ya that much, I’m betting we can get a pretty good deal on her in Murrage.” The mare chuckled viciously, ignoring her underling until she was interrupted by a loud mechanical clicking noise.
“Safety protocols suspended…” A clear autotuned voice rang out across the ashen waste. And impossibly large guns emerged from the chassis of a small, white metal filly. “Response level, ‘Cupcakes’ initiated. Termination of all designated targets is commencing.”
“It wasn’t you I was tryin’ to protect her from...” The monster sighed as he collapse into a heap and the wastes exploded into a cacophony of thunder.
“He wasn’t protecting her from the world,” Galus said thoughtfully as Smolder looked on in awe at the destruction, “He was protecting the world from her.”
“No,” Ocellus replied sadly, “He was protecting her from herself… or trying to. Pharanx did the same thing for us in the invasions… he fought harder so we wouldn’t have to…”
“Well now, it seems Bug Pony is paying attention to the lesson after all.” Discord hummed thoughtfully. “But I wonder is this a one way street? Let’s find out together, shall we?”
“I’m sorry, but you’re not gonna tell me she wasn’t just awesome.” Smolder grinned from ear fin to ear fin.
The bus careened further into the future as the students contemplated what they had just witnessed.