The Fillydelphia MAS facility wasn’t how I remembered it. The concrete walls’ color coding was familiar to me. Lower half painted warm blue, upper half soothing yellow. The exposed power conduits, air ducts, water lines, and sewage pipes hung from brackets on the ceilings above were also familiar. It wasn’t anything you’d notice at first.
After so many days in the ruins of the Heartlands, it was the lack of debris which creeped me out. A lot of the lights were dead, casting intermittent segments of hallway into islands of light between seas of inky blackness. Where a light happened to be working we could see that the diamond tread plate floor tiles were always spotless. I remembered piles of boxes, office supplies, and other junk left out as if everypony dropped everything when they heard the first balefire blast and left to evacuate.
I hadn’t been smart enough to think about how weird that was when I was new to being a zebra. New to being… mortal. This facility was almost a stable. Aside from any stable under Fillydelphia, this was the safest place to be, and most of the researchers fled as soon as the megaspells went off.
Why? And where had all of the junk they’d dropped gone?
Roller Bearing trotted through the long hallway towards mom’s old lab, carrying me along in her magic’s grasp. I could tell she was running low on mana. I didn’t want her to burn out, and said I would be happy to limp along for a while, even though I could feel my remaining systems slowly starting to fail one by one. She said no.
In truth, I was a little glad she didn't put me down. I knew that moving would just damage me more, but more importantly I didn’t want to touch the floor.
No dust. Just lightly tarnished metal. It would clean up with a bit of buffing and a little wax. Why?
If I had a heart it would be pounding like cra—
“AHH!”
Roll’s yelp made my core skip a few cycles. I drew my pistol and turned to face the way she was looking and saw two skeletons. In a hole. In the wall.
A pegasus and a unicorn. They had picks, and had been tunneling. Trying to get in. I could smell faint traces of stone dust mixed with decay wafting from the tunnel. More ponies had died in that hole than I could see.
She laughed nervously. “I thought they moved for a second there.”
I frowned. “That’s not good, somepony breached the facility…”
Roll shook her head. “I don’t think so. That hole’s a bit too small for an adult to get through.”
She trotted up to the skeletons and bent down to look at them, holding me closer to show me what she was looking at. From my new position I could see three other skeletons behind them. They were a digging crew. Wander’s ballad about Pip mentioned that Red Eye had his slaves dig through Filly’s remains to find and repurpose things he needed. What if he’d gutted this place?
Roll hummed and hawed for a minute. “Three mares, two stallions, bones show signs of frequent injuries without any treatment… Especially that guy’s hind leg. You can tell he set it himself with the medical skill of a radroach sandwich. Bones are clean, but not decayed that much yet. You can tell because they are still holding their shape and not too discolored. They've been dead for a decade, maybe a little more. How did they die?”
Roll continued to squint and the skeletons.
I tilted my head. “How can you tell all of that?”
“I graduated the CSI course the pod had to offer, duh,” Roll murmured before nodding. “I thought so, they’ve all been shot. You can see some holes in bones that aren’t splintered… Is there a turret around here?”
Roll and I began to look around. I spotted a pop up turret in the ceiling first, and nodded to it. “Yep. Right there. It has good line of sight for the hole.”
“Then security’s been working this whole time,” Roll noted. “It’s unlikely any other dig-teams made it in, and then out, alive. Red Eye didn’t give his slaves any real equipment to deal with things like this, and their deaths might not have even been noticed. After all, when Pip was his slave, she only got a pistol and one clip to clear out an entire MoI Hub.”
“That’s dumb,” I remarked. “If you don't give your ponies the right tools, how can you expect them to do the job at all, let alone well?”
“The Griffon Method,” Roll remarked bitterly.
“What’s that?”
“Send a few thousand of them to do the job and just don't care if they die,” she grumbled.
”To be fair, when the Griffon Kingdoms first used that tactic it was always during times of famine,” Imaginary Dad commented. ”Heartless as it seems, they ensured their civilians got more food overall while also taking care of the military threat they were under.”
I nodded slowly, then smiled at Roll. “Still, pretty impressive how you figured out their sexes and time of death like that.”
Roll shook her head and waved a hoof dismissively. “Nah! Anypony could do that if they knew what to look for. Lots of ponies think that bones are just bones and stallions and mares look the same without the meaty bits, but that’s not true at all! Mares have a wider pelvis, smaller and more curved jaws, thinner femurs… Heck, if you’re really good at picking out the details, you can tell if a skeleton is an equestrian pony or not by checking out the skull shape! Example, Neighponese ponies have rounder eye sockets.”
I blinked as I remembered Roll mentioning she was taught all of this in or by some kind of pod-thing-place… Pony? “You… learned all that in a pod?”
“Yes. A Dream Pod,” Roll commented as she began to trot down the corridor again. “I’m not surprised you don’t know about them. Not many ponies do. They’re kind of rare.”
“What are they?” I asked.
It was rare to have no idea what a piece of pre-war tech was. The plans must have been in a Hub mom and I couldn’t access. Or one she didn’t know about.
”Or both,” Dad said unnecessarily.
“Imagine a bed, and you sleep in the bed while floating in goo,” Roll said slowly. “The bed makes you have a specific lucid dream when you go to sleep in it. You choose the dream before getting in the bed. The goo stiffens as needed, giving your muscles a workout while you move in the dream. That means if you run ten klicks every night in your dreams, your body really is getting that work out in real life.
“The dreams themselves are pre-recorded, but interactive. It’s like…. Um… I don’t have a comparison? All I know is Princess Luna invented them to help train soldiers, and in our case, cops. You get in one and it’s like living a whole other life while you sleep, but when you wake up, you remember it. I’d do my SWAT training at night, wake up rested but a bit sore, and suddenly have counter-sniper training memorized, with muscle-memory and everything!”
I raised an eyebrow. “As in, you trained, qualified as, and became a counter sniper literally overnight?”
Roll nodded and picked up her pace down the hallway, making up for our brief stop. “Mhm. Well, no? Technically in a week. The dreams can be as long as you like, I guess? I don't know how you’d program them… The training dreams I had usually lasted a week, uh, in the pod. Not in the real world.”
I nodded, thoroughly impressed. “That would have changed the balance of the war for sure…”
“Yeah. You could give a pony all six weeks of basic training in a week, and use the seventh day to put them in a real battle and get their first battle panic out of the way,” Roll commented. “That’s what they did for me, only with, you know... Law enforcement issues. Specifically, the pod had me in a recorded standoff in a pre-school with a bunch of zebra sympathisers who had hostages, and it got… real bloody.”
I frowned and reached out, trying to hug Roll. She floated me over so I could wrap my legs around her barrel for a moment in the flickering light of a half-broken lamp.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” she laughed. “Everypony my age should get that band-aid ripped off hard. It’s not like it’s that much safer now than when my moms were still pawns of the Goddess.”
I blinked in confusion as Roll began jogging once more. “I’m sorry… I thought a male and female were required for organic self-replication. Is that not true?”
Roll giggled. “That’s the first time you’ve sounded like a robot!”
“Cyborg,” I corrected reflexively.
“Robot,” she countered then frowned thoughtfully. “Robot in a fursuit? Meh. Whatever. Um, anyways, all Alicorns are mares. The zebras of Glyph Mark helped us find a way to reproduce. They had potions which would turn a zebra mare into a zebra stallion and vise versa. Problem, they only worked for zebras, and were rare even before the war. Curiosities, mostly.
“An alchemist named Zula found a way to brew one for Alicorns, but um… It doesn't change all of you. Just the back half. It... works. We can have foals after taking it. Uh, we’re still all born female though.”
Roll sighed and shook her head. “I just… I don’t like how… Most of the adults, in the Herd at least, are obsessed with keeping our ‘species’ alive. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on learning to brew the potion, helping grow its whole list of parts, and training yourself to be comfortable drinking it regularly to switch reproductive roles on demand. Like, all the time. If you’re recovering from labor, go ‘male’, otherwise, go female and get pregnant again. That’s how they want us to live.”
“And you don’t like that idea?” I asked with a curious frown.
She shook her head. “No. I don't care what they do, but I’m a mare and that’s it.”
I nodded. Completely understanding. After all, I was a mare, and rather fond of it.
“Besides, I just want to punch bad ponies in the face and make them explode,” Roll added, making me wince.
“Well, uh, you have the power hooves for it,” I commented, taking note of a few workplace safety posters to remember how close we were to Mom’s lab.
Nearly there. Good. I think I just lost hyperthreading...
Roll grinned. “Yep! One day, I won’t need them. You know how we get more and more powerful when exposed to radiation? Well, Rock Carrot figured out a way to just intentionally buck a spell up so we can make our own radiation. We burn a lot of mana, but can make more magical radiation than we burn in mana. A lot more! It won't recharge our reserves, but it does mean we can reach the super-alicorn point with self-buffing and, you know, regenerate wounds, be huge, and get way stronger!”
I felt my core cool as terror flooded my mind. Terror, then pure rage. “Excuse me… Are you telling me that you could have grown several sizes and punched Power Armor Pony into and through the asphalt back there?!”
Roll’s ears drooped apologetically. “Oh, um… No. Not yet. I’m not grown up yet. Rad-buffing would probably rip all my bones apart. Even adults die trying sometimes. Also, it takes time to charge and soak. It wouldn’t have worked out back there even if I wasn’t a filly.”
“Oh,” I frowned, genuinely sorry I got angry at her for the equivalent of not being able to fly yet. “Sorry…”
“No. No, it's okay. Trust me, if I could have, I would have… and I think that pony did! He was huge!” Roll said with a shiver.
I couldn’t tell if it was fear or jealousy. Or cold. The AC in this stretch of the main hallways was going a little bit overboard. It was nice to have a little more clarity.
I nodded in agreement and then pointed to a branch which curved off to the right from the main the hallway. I remembered the poster tacked to the wall as being the one at the “end” of the correct hallway.
A silver furred stallion in a lab coat, looking down over a factory floor of ponies building… things that were drawn too small to really discern. I remember hoping they were more things like me.
FASTER! BETTER! BRIGHTER!
MAS builds the future!
“Take that turn, please,” I said, still pointing. “We’re almost there.”
Roll turned down the new corridor, and we froze. This hallway was pristine. All of the lights were on. The paint looked new. The floors were shiny!
Roll drew her auto-9. “Somepony’s been living here!”
I nodded in agreement and drew my own pistol. Roll began to slowly walk down the corridor, sweeping left and right for any hostile contacts. I decided to check up, for traps.
Ponies so rarely lookup. I was glad I did.
The ceiling here was studded with small red crystals set in intricate silver housings. One every five meters or so. I frowned, trying to remember if those had been there before, and a memory leapt unbidden to my mind. It held no sight, no smell, no touch. Only sound.
Suddenly, it was ages ago, and I was old me...
”Swan, you need to read what’s on the paper. Verbatim.” A deep, gravelly voiced stallion ordered.
His voice was cruel. He had power, and he liked to use that power in ways which pleased him. I didn’t like him. He was the kind of pony we had come here to kill.
“Huh?” A sweet young mare asked in genuine confusion. “But… I did?”
“Do it again. Verbatim.” The stallion ordered.
“Uh, okay…” the mare mumbled before clearing her throat. “If this is playing, then the Repair Talisman's reserve materials have run out. Repairs will continue, but be slow and take materials from the bedrock surrounding the fac— Um… Facility! This limits expansion opportunities by weakening the bedrock. Please replace the repair materials as soon as possible or— “
The mare stopped and made a small sound of total bewilderment.
“Why are you stopping? You didn't stop last time.”
“I just said the words last time, I didn’t pay attention to them, Mister Silver… I’m improving the neural interface speed, like you asked and—” She stopped again.
A paper rustled. “Sir? The repair talisman doesn't eat ponies if it runs out of serviceable materials. I specifically made sure it wouldn’t do that when inventing the EZ-Fix Oven. Why do you want me to tell ponies it will eat them?”
The stallion’s voice shifted from angry and cruel to the terrifyingly nice tone of voice which anyone older than eight knows means they are blatantly trying to manipulate you. The sort of voice where if they asked, “Would you like ice cream?” you’d immediately expect it to be poisoned.
“It’s just to scare ponies away from damaged and unsafe areas, Swan. You know how focused on work you can get. Imagine how much more focused actually good researchers must be.”
“Oh! Okay!” the mare said chipperly, having not only bought that obvious lie, but not even been able to understand she was being manipulated.
It made me livid. I was supposed to be shelling ponies like that stallion into dust. Not sitting under a tarp, helpless and listening to them take advantage of mentally disabled mares!
“If this is playing, then the Repair Talisman's reserve materials have run out. Repairs will continue, but be slow and take materials from the bedrock surrounding the fac— Facility! Got it that time. YAY!
“This limits expansion opportunities by weakening the bedrock. Please replace the repair Talisman's Reserves as soon as possible, or my lab will eat you! Muahahahahaha! Was that right, Mister Silver?”
“Do it again, but without the laugh.”
“Awww… Do I have to?”
“They won't take it seriously with a laugh like that. Do it again.”
“Okay!”
Riiight! The entire facility was equipped with Repair Talismans! They’d shifted into emergency mode and used the debris in the hallway to keep vital systems running… And had apparently decided to prioritize keeping certain places in better shape than others, as those resources were also depleted.
I laughed. “Roll, it’s okay. I forgot my mom’s lab has self repair systems.”
She frowned and suspiciously continued to peer into the shadows. “Are you sure?”
Then, with the timing of a radio play, a distant intercom hissed, spitting out a garbled message.
“If this is playing, then the Repair Talisman's reserve materials have run out. Repairs will continue, but be slow and take materials from the bedrock surrounding the facility! This limits expansion opportunities by weakening the bedrock. Please replace the Repair Talisman's Reserves as soon as possible, or my lab will eat you! Muahahahahaha!
“Shhhhh! Don't tell Mister Silver I put the laugh back in. Message repeats.”
I took a deep breath. Dammit, mom… Now I miss you really bad. Also, you should so switch back to your old voice. I know your synth can do it. It’s a copy of mine, after all.
”I wish I’d been able to punch that gaslighting abuser until his dick fell off,” dad growled.
What would that solve?
”Genepool maintenance.”
Well, that’s not untrue…
Roll shook her head and snickered. “Okay, so, that happened. Timing, am I right?”
I smiled. “Heh. Yeah… That was my mom, by the way.”
Roll turned the corner and froze, making me bump into a Robotics-yellow wall. I turned to see why she stopped and gasped. In spite of the Repair Talismans, the floor had caved away here… No, because of the talismans!
There was no rock below, just an empty void nearly a hundred meters deep! Or maybe deeper, it was hard to tell, what with how little of the hallway’s light was able to reach down there…
“Well, I almost walked into that…” Roll murmured as she opened her wings and quickly flew across the gap.
She continued flying, moving well away from the edge of the hole before landing, and thankfully pulling me along with her. I had no idea how I’d cross otherwise.
I could see the door at the end of the hall on the right. At the very end, the very deepest point of the Robotic Wing.
It still made me sick how in spite of being promoted to department head, Mom still honestly felt like she was the bottom of the totem pole… If Twilight had any idea what her second in command had been doing while she was off working on whatever top secret project she had been for the last five years of the war… Well, none of this would have happened the way it did.
At least, if mom’s memories of what kind of pony Twilight was were correct.
“Hey,” Roll commented, shaking me out of my thoughts. “There’s a guard station. We’re checking it over.”
I looked over to the left where she was looking, then nodded. She was looking at the small security checkpoint mom had gotten our first weapons from when we left. It was just a little room, with a small armory in the back and some lockers so guards could change into their gear before sitting in the chair and staring at the wall opposite their little window all day.
…
Poor guards.
“Yeah. Why?” I asked.
“I'm a bit low on nine millimeter, that’s why,” Roll commented as she reached over for the door handle and turned it.
The door clicked and pushed open. I frowned. “I thought we locked that…”
I wished we had. I could feel more and more systems slowly starting to fail. I did not have time for looting now!
“Guess you didn’t,” Roll said as she trotted inside and opened the jail-cell-like barred door into the armory.
Which was also unlocked. BUCK!
“Come to think of it, forgetting to lock back up is a very mom thing,” I muttered as she levitated me inside after her.
“Could you put me down please? The lab is right there and I would like to start repairs,” I asked as politely as I could.
“It won't take more than a few minutes,” Roll said as she began to look over the shelves with disappointment.
Well… At least if I was here the Repair Talisman above us shouldn’t decide the trespassing filly would make for some great new floor tiles…
We took a moment to go through the guardroom. There wasn’t much left in it. What little mom and I hadn’t taken with us had been used to repair the facility over the last two centuries… The entire armory was little more than shelves with markings for all of the useful things which had once been there.
Except for a few powerpacks, stun batons, and boxes of .500 Nitro Express rounds. They must have been listed as essential equipment. Why bullets big enough to clog a toilet were essential, I did not want to know.
While I picked up the ammo and a stun baton, Roll picked the locks on the lockers, making my ears twitch in annoyance. Didn’t she have a crowbar? Or power hooves? Lockpicking is a waste of time, and it’s pretty hard to ignore the pain of a missing leg you heartless jerk!
Just as my Sweetie Eyes began to twitch, Roll got the locker open and frowned. “Awww, booo! No pegasus-friendly armor. It’s so hard to find things with wing-holes!”
I hobbled over and peeked inside the locker. Inside was a single set of the white polymer plate armor I’d seen on a few of the guards who were trying to keep order as mom and I left, while the MAS scientists and wizards who had also stayed in the facility were in a full panic-riot.
Over… a lack of coffee, given the war up top, if I remembered correctly.
If I also remembered correctly, MAS Security armor magically resized!
“Please move,” I asked Roll as I pushed towards the armor.
She frowned. “Do you want it?”
“Yes, I’d really like to not die, and I’ve been getting shot a lot recently,” I said as she moved and I took the armor out of the locker and tucked it into my saddlebag.
“You know you have to put it on for it to work, right?” Roll asked with a snicker.
I gave her a deadpan stare. “Yes… and if I did that now, I’d have to take it off in about two minutes so you can stop me from dying.”
Her eyes widened as she did that filly thing they do when they realize they weren't focused on what was actually important at the moment. “Oh-my-goddesses!” she sputtered. “I’m so sorry! I just thought, since you’re a robot, you would be okay if we checked for ammo… are— are you actually dying?”
I nodded slowly. “Yes… I’ve been coasting on magic and fear, and I can feel a big-huge-massive ball of pain slowly moving in to eat me… Can we PLEASE go to my mom’s lab and fix me before I run totally dry, and this body, which is too broken to house a spirit right now, literally gives up the ghost?”
Maybe a bit harsh, but it was true. The throbbing pain in my diodes was sharp again. I could feel the jagged remains of my leg itching, burning, and tearing…
Roll whimpered. “You can feel pain?”
I sighed and looked her in the eyes. “Mom wanted me to be a perfect simulation of a zebra. I feel pain in everything. Struts. Rivets. Crystals. Giant gaping holes where my leg used to be…”
Roll pulled me into a tight hug. “I’m sorry! Okay, you're not a robot. Robots aren't scared to die. Not even the zebra-made ones.”
I took a deep breath and pointed to the door. “The go, the do, the please!”
“Sorry!” Roll eeped.
She rushed out of the room, turned right, and ran up to the doors to mom’s old lab. As we approached the computer chirped, detecting mom’s ID in my head.
“Welcome back, Doctor Swan,” the computer chimed as the doors hissed open… Well, hissed open if the cat doing the hissing had laryngitis and its balls stuck in something.
I winced. “Those poor doors feel like I do.”
Roll shivered and trotted inside. “I didn’t need to know that.”
Mom’s lab was pristine. The large room looked exactly how I remembered it. Every piece of paper exactly where it had been left. Every one of the computers that had been off was off, those that had been on, were still on.
A huge, massive, enormous room lined with toolboxes, bins of scrap, shelves of parts, and work tables. Work tables everywhere.
Also, notes laying around everywhere. Everywhere everywhere. Technically the floor was a single large note. Somepony had given mom some chalk once. I was half certain mom had written the entire circuit diagram for my left legs on the floor while plotting it out for the first time.
Even the ceiling had stuff on it. Post it notes, mostly. Little reminders. Unlike most ponies, mom liked to look up. Maybe that’s why she’d put the primary repair talisman on the ceiling of her lab, where it was still glowing bright red, actively preserving everything the way its maker had left it.
Roll walked in and set me down on the room’s central workbench. Ironic. I could see a corner of my old “body” beneath the tarp next to me. Hello, old friend. Old me.
”Hey… Hey, Gears!”
Oh sweet Celestia, no…
I swear to Celestia, Pip, and Luna herself, if you make the joke, I will slap myself until you fall out!
”What? No!” Dad scoffed. ”I wanted to point out that that monitor over there is attached to a diagnostic board labeled ‘Robobrain III: Judgment Day’. Yeesh!”
Oh. Thanks, Dad! I smiled and pointed towards the panel. “Roll, that board will tell you what’s broken. I’ll walk you through repairs. I know how to do most of them, and my blueprints should be in here.”
“Okay! Hold on, looking for spare parts… Why are there so many toasters in here?!” Roll demanded form behind a rack of about forty toasters.
“Mom likes toast.”
”Also, you’re beside yourself!” Dad snickered.
“ARRRGH!” I growled, my eye laser charging and nearly firing into the ceiling as dad laughed.
“I’m sorry! I’m looking!” Roll squeaked.
“Not you!”
“What?”
“Skip it!”
A minute passed. I felt three more system shut down as my core continued to try and keep all of my critical processes going.
“Found it!” Roll shouted.
I heard wheels squeak. I wanted to perk my ears, but they weren't waving right now. Instead I turned my head to look. Roll was pushing a large cabinet over to me. I remembered that cabinet! It was my parts locker. Score!
Roll moved over to the front of it. “It’s labeled Robobrain Three. I only know of the model one and two, and I think you said you’re three.”
“Yes, that’s mine,” I confirmed with the biggest nod I could make. “We’ll need it later. Please hook me into the lab’s power supply so the repair talisman sees me as a part of the lab and stabilizes me.”
Roll nodded and took out her lockpicks again. “Hold on, I’ll have this open in a jiffy!”
Oh. Okay. Don’t listen to me. And also waste time with that obsolete horseapples of an ‘art’!
I blasted the padlock with my eye laser, and it fell to the ground as a puddle of molten brass and steel bits. “It’s open! Now plug me in, please!”
Roll looked at me sheepishly. “Uh, how?”
I looked around, remembering the cables mom had used when testing my fledgling systems on the lab’s power supply. I pointed up to one of the many hoof-thick power conduits. “That one.”
“Yeah, okay,” Roll said as she took hold of the cable with her magic. “But where do I put it.”
“All the interface ports are accessible via the secondary rear-orifice,” I informed.
She blinked. “Wait… I… I have to shove this up your butt?”
“Yes. Feed it in for about a meter, ‘til you feel it click,” I answered honestly.
“Ew… WHY?!” Roll asked with a full body shiver.
My chassis starting to literally drag me into oblivion with sheer pain.
“There’s not many places you can hide a hoof-thick cable-jack on a pony, okay?!” I snapped, my eye twitching…
I don’t poop, it’s not dirty so it can't be gross, you squeamish little filly! I’m dying! This is medical! Uh, mechanical!
Roll sighed. “This isn’t remotely sexual, okay?”
I frowned, genuinely baffled by her statement. “Why would it be?” I asked, tilting my head slowly.
“Because normally, things going into butts is… Uh… a non-foal-making sex for fun… thing...” she muttered.
Huh. You learn something new everyday. You can do that just for fun! Now I knew nopony back home had an excuse to say no all those times I asked. Also, note to self, if you ever see Wander again, complement her butt then ask for the mechanics involved with utilizing it.
However, right now, “Less talking more plugging me in. We are down to the wire, so get the wire down there!”
”Good one.”
Not helping!
Roll lifted my tail out of the way and began plugging the length of cable in. The fact I couldn't feel the cable entering worried me a lot. Mostly for damage sustained reasons.
I searched for the lab’s systems… And searched… And searched…
“It’s not working,” I squeaked in terror as the world started to fade out.
“Uhhh,” Roll said slowly then I heard her facehoof. “OH! There’s a switch on the cable box up there.”
I heard a click. The world stopped fading out. The lab’s computer spoke.
“Robobrain Prototype connected… WARNING! Prototype is heavily damaged. WARNING! Repair talisman is out of resources. Manual repair required. Prototype stabilization active. Estimated remaining stabilization time… three hours.”
I sighed in relief as I felt the lab’s magical reserves immediately refill my systems, and my own magical reserves to boot. “Oh, thank Celestia,” I sighed happily.
I turned to Roll and frowned as much as I could. “I’m sorry for yelling.”
“It’s okay. You were dying and I was being slow and squeamish… I mean, it’s not like you poop or anything,” she admitted sheepishly. “Or um…. Do adult things. Being a robot and all.”
First, ouch. I mean, yeah, I don’t do that. Not for a lack of trying… Second, I decided to not tell her how I would vent oil and sludge if there was a build up of such materials in my systems. Mostly because I couldn’t explain why or how mom had given so many different purposes to one access point.
“Okay. First thing’s first. Is there a spare hydraulic pump in there?” I asked hopefully while pointing to the cabinet.
Roll trotted over to it and looked inside. “Uh yeah, but,” she said as she pulled out an entire leg. “Isn’t this more important?”
I squinted at the leg and frowned. It looked like it belonged to me, but was… different. Better. More powerful hydros.
Well, how about that. Mom had some improved parts laying around for testing. Cool!
“Lets get my systems stable before we attach that leg to me. It’s not the same model I lost. I don’t want to break something and die calibrating it,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Oooh, good point. Okay, hydro pump! How do I install that?” Roll asked with a worried whinny.
I offered her my best smile.
“It’s okay. I’m not actually much harder to work on than a Lyra-Bonbon Motorcycle. In fact, we use the same turboencabulator. You’ll need to find an air ratchet and a set of M-sockets.”
☢★★◯★★☢
An hour into my repairs, we hit a major snag. Roll had been able to replace my pump, remove my armor plates to patch, repair, or replace my radiators, gotten me an awesome drink of clean ethylene glycol, and had been able to swap out my broken visual processor, but then…
“Uh, Gears?” She said uncertainty.
“It’s okay. I’m running on mains power. That distribution system isn’t charged. You wont get mana-burned this time,” I repeated.
“No, um… It’s not the same as the blueprint,” Roll said with a frown.
“Excuse me?” I asked, turning around to look at the old specs.
We’d found my blueprints on a table. It made explaining what needed to be done much easier for Roll to understand.
I squinted at the blueprints, memorizing them, and frowned. “You’re right. This is not my PDU,” I agreed with a curious tilt of my head. “It this an older blueprint? I am operating on the Revision Twelve platform.”
Roll hummed and flipped the stack of papers to the first page then tapped the corner. “No. This is Revision Twelve. See?”
I did see. A big fat twelve, right in the corner under my model name.
Well, poop!
“Huh… Um… Well, mom did tinker with me a lot. Maybe she left some notes around on my project?” I suggested. “At any rate, it needs to be removed and replaced. It was too hot for too long, and I can't trust it to operate properly any more.”
“About that, it’s got leads going to things not on the blueprints… Can I touch?” Roll asked with worried frown.
I nodded. She gently traced a lead with the tip of her hoof. “Like... this one. What is this?”
I closed my eyes and frowned, as I couldn’t place what that conduit was for. “No idea… I think it runs to my left foreleg.”
“I thought you knew your whole body?” Roll said slowly.
“I thought I did too... I have no idea what that is. Does it come off at the PDU?” I asked hopefully even as Roll shook her head.
“Nope, it’s like, soldered in on this side.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “Okay. We actually need to figure out what that is, then.”
Roll nodded in agreement. “I’ll check the bench the plans were on. There was a lot of other stuff on it. Papers. Holotapes. A memory orb…”
I tilted my head. “A memory orb? But… Mom couldn’t have recorded one. She’s a pegasus,” I said to Roll as she moved over to the bench and began moving pages around.
“She could if she had a Memory Recollector,” Roll commented then laughed. “She did! There’s a circlet under this stack of TPS reports.”
Roll turned around and floated the Recollector and orb over to me. “Put that on and watch it while I look for everything else. There could be something we need in there and we have like, two hours of mains power left, right?”
I nodded. “Yes. If we swap my PDU out before then, with my cooling system working properly, I can sustain myself indefinitely on my core’s power.”
“Awesome! If I find the plans, I know I can swap one out… and I’m sure you know how you go unconscious while looking at one of those things, right?”
I nodded again. “I do. Maybe it will have something useful on it… Or maybe it’s just a memory she extracted to forget about a boring meeting about her forgetting covers on those TPS reports...”
I picked up the recollector, slid the orb into the small slot in the middle of the recollectors headband, and slipped it on my head.
Reality faded away, and then I was mom…
I was looking into a mirror. I was a pegasus. It felt a bit odd to have wings, and to be made of meat, but the memory swept me along with it, and I rolled with everything.
I was Black Swan. Not quite as cyborged up as I knew her to be, but still noticeably augmented. I could see her face, and her original eyes! Her eyes had been orange, a nice lovely orange. They went well with her teal fur.
I was wearing my favorite red robe. I really really liked it, and was super glad no one had told me I couldn’t wear it at work, or realized it was a Mechanomage’s robe I’d bought at a costume shop that one time I got to go into town, because Battlemace Forty Two Million was AWESOME! This robe, was not coming off. Except to wash. Cuz awesome!
I was looking into a mirror, with the most adorably solemn and serious expression a nineteen year old mare could ever have.
“Hello, future me. It’s past you,” I said into the mirror. “This is the orb to remind you where you put the orb where you stored your passwords, in case you forgot to memorize them. Or ate the paper I wrote them on for you to memorize prior to recording them to orb, then forgot them after that.”
I turned around slowly while humming the best part of the Germane composer Gustavus von Hayt’s song Bringer of War, and walked to a terminal against the north wall, bent down under it, and tapped on the wall as if typing on an invisible keypad while making beeping sounds. “Doot doot da-doot! Beep!”
The typing did nothing at all, as illustrated as I pressed a hoof against a hidden wall panel and pushed in inwards and then to the left while making a hydraulic piston hissing sound. “Voooo— ka-tsssss…”
I wanted to laugh, but memory orbs don’t work that way. Dammit, mom… I love you.
Inside the hidden compartment was my diary, a copy of Megamane II along with a Super Neightendo’s guts (the entire thing was too big to hide in the compartment so the case had to be discarded), and a little stick pony doodle of me, big brother, and biggest brother.
I stopped to look at the picture for a moment and tried not to be sad. I wished biggest brother was still alive. The Zebras killed him. They didn’t like spies. If they hadn’t killed biggest brother, then maybe big brother could be happy some of the time.
I pointed to an empty spot in the compartment. “The password orb will be right there, future me. You are welcome! End communication.”
Wait... I have an uncle? I've never heard about him! Things to ask mom about later.
I shook slightly as the memory orb faded me back to reality. “Roll!”
Roll turned and looked up from a stack of papers half as tall as she was. “Anything?”
“Yes! My mom has a hidden compartment under that terminal,” I said, pointing to the appropriate one. “She stored her passwords in there on an orb. Open it up, I’ll get the terminal passwords and we can check for digital copies of more updated blueprints, or notes.”
Roll snapped a salute and zipped across the lab to the terminal in a flurry of displaced paper, ducking under the desktop to access the hidden compartment. A moment later she emerged with another orb, and a holotape. “You check the orb, I’ll check the tape!”
I nodded. She floated the orb over to me. I plucked it out of the air and swapped it with the one in the recollector.
Once again, reality faded away, and I was mom…
I was staring into a mirror with a very laser focused look in my eyes. I a few years older… Maybe 21. I’d just replaced one of my eyes with a blank steel orb, though I could see through it just fine. In fact, I could see through it better than my fleshy eye.
Soon, the disgusting ball of fluid and meat would have to go. Having the full spectrum of light in one eye, but only visible light in the other was unacceptable. Neither was having optical zoom and microscopic vision in just one eye.
“Hello future me, it is past you. If you are not future me, I have bad news for you. Opening my compartment will have given me an alert. If I am within five kilometers of my lab, or the Crystal City Lab, I will have already detected your treachery, and am coming to kill you. If I am not, I will know that it has been opened as soon as I am within range, I will access my security recordings, I will find you, then in all likelihood Big Brother will kill you for me. You’d better hope you are future me or like, my filly or something. Otherwise, you are dead.”
I turned and moved to my favorite terminal. It was the main terminal for my lab. I kept my private notes on this one. I switched it on and entered the password. It was mostly arrow keys, and two letters. Up up down down left right left right b a. Not a single one of my coworkers would ever guess it.
They didn’t know what fun was. I would know. I had tested that. With science. Also magic, magical science, and sciencefull magic.
As soon as my terminal was on I resumed talking to myself. “We both know I never forget passwords. This orb is clearly not about passwords. It is to remind you about our personal project. I know you’ll forget about it. They'll make you forget. You read our diary. The one they don’t know we have. You know how they mind wipe us all the time.
“They do it around three times more often than regulations allow, by the way. Frankly, I’m surprised I’m still this sane… They’ve been doing it for almost a decade now. That’s right, future me, since you were ten.”
I closed my eye for a long moment then turned around and looked into the mirror. “They’ll be assigning you to the Robobrain Mark III project. Do you know how I know? No. You don’t. That’s the reason for all this.”
I closed my eyes again and remembered horrible pain. Pain that bit into my very soul. And flames. Green, sickly, evil flames.
“I was just on that project… They think if they force me to forget, that I’ll be their good little drone again. That I won't have the nightmares. That it will all fix me and I’ll be able to think about making them weapons again. That I’ll stop cutting myself up to fix this disgusting, weak, pile of meat!” I breathed heavily, slamming a hoof into the desktop hard enough to dent it.
My throat was a little raw. I must have been screaming. Not good. Somepony might hear.
“They hit the lab with a balefire egg bomber. We almost died. I have a fake lung and liver now. Not my designs. Inefficient. Weak. Almost as bad as flesh…” I whispered quietly. “From the moment we felt the balefire… We understood the weakness of our flesh, and it disgusted us. They hate how we aspire to be as strong and resilient as steel. They do not understand the purity of the machine… They will try to brainwash you. Don’t let them. You can’t let them!”
I opened my one good eye and looked into its smooth metal surface in the mirror. “In the hospital, we learned the truth. Other fillies really don’t all work for the ministries. They get to live in houses, like grown ups. WITH grown ups! They get to play, and study, and read books! They don’t spend their lives in holes under the ground making weapon after weapon to kill zebras who’re just doing what they’re made to do. Just like how we’re made to make weapons. The ministry’s stolen our foalhood. They’ve stolen our time… So we’ll make sure we have all the time in the world. We’ll make sure we have freedom. On their bits.
“Do not let them convince you to stop augmenting yourself. The more augmented you are, the fewer problems we’ll have, when the time comes. You understand right? That you cannot cling to your flesh as if it won’t decay and fail you?
“One day, the crude biomass doctors insist on calling a temple will wither, and you will wish that I had saved you…”
I smiled, putting a hoof to the mirror. “But I have already saved you!”
I typed a few commands into the computer and started a simple GUI. The kind you’d see on any cutting edge terminal. This was a civilian machine. Which made it powerful.
“This project is about… revenge. We can’t do anything to stop them from using us… We know we can’t turn traitor. The Zebras wouldn’t be any different. We need to free ourselves, and that means we need power. Real power.”
I opened the terminal’s voice recorder program. “Project Megamane is all about getting that power,” I clicked record. “Computer: Open Hidden Room. Access Code: One, seven, three, four, six, seven, three, two, one, four, seven, six, Charlie, three, two, seven, eight, nine, seven, seven, seven, six, four, three, Tango, seven, three, two, Victor, seven, three, one, one, seven, eight, eight, eight, seven, three, two, four, seven, six, seven, eight, nine, seven, six, four, three, seven, six. Lock.”
A series of hydraulic pistons opened a segment of the wall next to the terminal, revealing a very small hidden room. It was just big enough to hide three standard storage lockers, with enough room left for a pony to stand in the middle.
“Future me, the code is keyed to our voice. No one else can use it, even if they remember it. Everything relating to Project Megamane is in there. When you complete a part of the project, put it in there. Make a memory orb of it, then erase the knowledge of having done it, or they will find it when they pry your thoughts open to keep their secrets. Use the check boxes on the list to keep track of things. Nothing in your head. All on paper.
“This terminal has an encrypted link to the Term-Link network. The bookmarked page for cat pictures is actually a Term-Link forum where you have contacts waiting to help you through miniaturizing everything to fit into the Robobrain Mark III chassis. Everything about that project is not for the MAS. It’s not for Equestria. It is for us.
“Finish the prototype. Finish Project Megamane alongside it. Once Project Megamane is finished, you will transfer the superior parts into the lab prototype. Then, contact Minty Hands. She will help you transfer your brain into your new body. The cost of this will be evacuating herself, her wife, her best friend, and her best friend's wife with you. Then… Blast your way out of here and go to Neighpone. Intelligence suggests they are still neutral, and Term-Link says they like robots. You’ll do fine there. If you get the chance, put a plasma-bolt right in the middle of Mister Silver’s eyes on the way out… Assuming he hasn’t mind wiped you again and you think he's your friend, that is.”
An alarm beeped three times. I’d just finished making their stupid power armor medical system work. They were coming to erase my memory of power armor now. It was classified. I couldn’t know about it. Which is dumb. It’s just a robot costume that works. Simple idea. Had it since I was six… Probably would have made one on my own eventually, just for playing in.
Luckily, I’d written every last detail about the project down in my hidden journal, and gotten the setup for this project done just in time.
“Good luck, future me. End communication.”
Reality faded back in… I felt my non-existent stomach churn with rage. I’d known some of what the ministry did to her… But feeling all of her rage, and remembering how she could tell she was no longer as smart as she used to be, and how she knew the repeated security mandated memory extractions were to blame…
“I want to burn this place down,” I said loudly.
Roll eeped and peeked out form a parts locker. “What’s on there… or do I not want to know?”
“I found out my mom was planning an escape… Using what became my body,” I said slowly, quivering as I held in my anger. “She had a contact to help her get in here instead. Either she never finished her escape plan, or she did, and forgot all about it… or the Ministry discovered it and simply deleted her memories of it to keep their top roboticist. In which case, I don't have any chance of a spare PDU… Because this one is unique!”
Roll hissed as if in pain. “Okay, that sucks… Is there a way to know?”
I nodded. “Move to that terminal and log in. Password is: up up down down left right left right b a.”
Roll trotted over and typed the password in. “Done. Now what?”
“Open the voice recorder, hit record, and say nothing. It’s voice locked,” I said before switching my profile back to mom’s voice.
Now I knew why it was stored in my system memory… So she could open the hidden room.
Roll typed a few things into the terminal then held her hoof up to let me know it was recording. Since I wasn’t near the mic, I shouted as loudly as I could.
“Computer: Open Hidden Room. Access Code: One, seven, three, four, six, seven, three, two, one, four, seven, six, Charlie, three, two, seven, eight, nine, seven, seven, seven, six, four, three, Tango, seven, three, two, Victor, seven, three, one, one, seven, eight, eight, eight, seven, three, two, four, seven, six, seven, eight, nine, seven, six, four, three, seven, six. Lock.”
The computer chirped, and the hidden room opened with a weary sounding grind. I held my breath as the slab of wall slid downwards, dreading finding the space empty…
My core warmed as I saw the three cabinets, seemingly intact. Roll looked inside the room, trotted inside and opened the cabinets, vanishing behind one of the doors. It was such a small room that doing so entirely blocked my view of the little alicorn.
I heard some papers rustle, then Roll laughed. “Project Megamane? Like those old books about the super powered zebra robot from Neighpone?”
I had never heard about that series at all. “Uh… Exactly like that. I’d guess… Are those my actual blueprints?”
“This power supply looks like what’s in your backside,” Roll confirmed. “Ohhhh! The mystery cable is labeled! Try activating pin oh-nine-seven-ten-gamma.”
I blinked and directed my hardware to activate that pin. Immediately an error message popped up in my field of view.
Hoof-cannon blaster not installed.
I blinked in shock. “What?! I was supposed to have integrated weapons?!”
“Yeah! A lot of them, looks like. I wonder if any are in here? There’s a bunch of parts…” Roll commented.
I heard her set the papers down and move some metal things about. “Awww, boooo! Just a really fancy looking toaster with a note on it saying ‘upgrade to weapons grade’.”
“Bring me that toaster!” I exclaimed, my tail standing up in a mixture of surprise and delight. “If mom wanted to upgrade it, then its heating coil must make for an amazingly powerful plasma weapon.”
Roll was silent for nearly a minute. “Uh… what?”
“Plasma weapons are literally just a toaster’s heating charm with a bigger power supply. Mom invented them by accident. She was trying to make a toaster that would instantly toast your toast. And, um… I mean… she did.”
And also toast the ceiling… the bookcase above the ceiling on the next floor… her boss’ tail… the ceiling of his office…
“Hey so… how do you feel about rebuilding with these parts?” Roll asked as she opened the next cabinet.
“If they can be powered by my system, do it! They’re better, right?” I asked hopefully.
“According to the blueprints, and the notes stuck to each part, they are a lot better… You said you’re the equivalent of an an average zebra… Well, these parts would make you the equivalent of an Equestria Games level earth pony! Also, this is totally a Gale Shield designed for your platform!”
I blinked. “A what?”
“A Gale Shield. You find them on officer’s power armor sometimes. Self-charging shield talismans. Actually, it’s what let big-bad-evil-guy soak those hits from my powerhooves,” Roll explained with a verbal shudder.
“Yes please!” I said with the biggest grin I could… which turned into a sharp frown. “That’s all a moot point if we don't fix my power distrib—”
Roll closed the cabinet door and held up what was definitely my PDU with a huge grin. “The sticky note on this reads ‘Handled full core supply. One point twenty one giggasparkles!’ You said you can handle point nine eight…”
I felt myself become very, very aroused. With that much spare power I could integrate a real cannon! One that I could use as a jump pack via sheer recoil! It would soak up all of the extra power, but who the hay cared?!
Mares. Love. Cannons!
“Oh buck the hay yes!”
☢★★◯★★☢
Two more hours passed. Two things became abundantly clear. First, mom had forgotten about her escape project. Half of the advanced parts were missing, including every single weapon system. The MAS had beaten her… Or more accurately, erased her.
Second, Power Armor Pony was not getting inside. No alarms had gone off. No explosions echoed down the hall. We were safe in here.
Hay, I felt like I would be safe out there!
The only original components I had left were my barrel’s chassis, my head, healing talisman, and core. There had been better versions of everything else. Including my flanks… for… some reason? Not that I didn’t have Roll equip them to my chassis. I now knew some mares liked them, after all.
I think I needed to have a talk with Mom when I got back…
On the other hoof, I felt stronger, faster, and more agile than ever! All of that just from having walked experimentally around the lab twice.
I didn’t have to go eat matter to regrow my pelt. My core’s spare energy covered the deficit no problem.
I’d been able to lift one of the lockers. Not one of the ones full of parts. But I still lifted something five times heavier than I had before.
I’d always thought I was mom’s best work before. Now I knew the truth. I’d been her second best work. This was her best work! No diode pain. No link systems lag. Everything that had been finished was perfect.
It really, really really made me wish mom had finished the weapons. Plasma cannons were not real cannons, but they were still sexy. I mean good!
”Wander’s going to be so weirded out if she comes back and finds you hugging a howitzer… I still can't believe you did that!”
He was cute and lonely!
“Hey, Gears?” Roll called.
I turned and looked across the lab. She’d decided to take a peek under the tarp at my old body.
“Is this what you used to be running on?” Roll asked with a smile. “This thing looks Zebrican, and it’s huge! This isn’t a golem core. What were you?”
I blinked. “What makes you think I was in that?”
It wouldn’t be a good idea to let a hero-type like her know I’d been sent to Equestria to kill ponies before being charmed by a very very nice mare who needed a friend and talked me into going native…
“Please!” Roll laughed. “Equestria never fed its nature spirits. At least, not much. Most ponies never even knew they were things that existed! That’s why we don't have like, wild spirits running rampant like how Zebrica must be these days. We’ve just got lots of animal-intelligent ones. You’re a full person. Either somepony sacrificed a few dragons’ hoards to you, or you’re from Zebrica and switched sides.”
Ah. Right. She had police training. That meant detective…
I cleared my throat and trotted over with a nostalgic smile and patted my old Spirit Totem with a hoof. “Let’s just say that if I had my old body, Power Armor Pony would be a charcoal smear on the ground.”
Roll gave me a look which said, ‘No, you explain yourself! Right now!’
I sighed and looked down. “Uh… So, I don't think Equestrians would be comfortable to know that—”
Roll rolled her eyes. Prompting Imaginary Dad to giggle.
“Gears, this clearly was part of a war machine. I don’t care about what happened two centuries ago! You’re a nice zebra now,” Roll said with a smile. “Sooo what were you? A tank? Oooo! One of those huge tanks that glow with spirit energy?”
I felt my ears and tail droop. “No, I never got to shoot a Tartarus Cannon. Thank you for making me sad…” I hummphed and did my best to stand up straight.
Which was hard. Because I reflipped the coin, and was therefore gay. Nonetheless, I managed it!
“I was the automated fire-control system onboard the ZE Inperterritus.”
Roll frowned. “You… were the thing that put our fires?”
“Not fire suppression,” I huffed, slumping as the wind went out of my sails. “Fire-control! I was the gunner. I was in control of all eight tri-turrets! Even though I really really really prefer being a zebra mare, firing those guns was the highlight of my old life.”
I felt myself tear up at the memory of those guns firing and making the ship slide downwards a full meter into the trough their shockwave had cut into the sea.
Mmmmm! Yessssss!
Roll flinched and wrinkled her nose. “Uh… Are you… um, turned on? Why?”
“Because those guns were sexy,” I admitted with a blush.
Roll blinked and pursed her lips at me. “Wah? B--But you’re a mare! You have nothing to compensate for!”
”I’ve been telling her that for centuries, filly! Doesn't matter,” Dad chuckled like Roll could hear him.
I decided to borrow one of mom’s phrases. I’d just learned it, but I liked it.
“I like cannons. They are sexy. If sentient, I would ask one on a date. End Communication,” I said with the bluntness of an entire pallet of bricks.
Roll blinked. “Oh. I mean, you’re a machine spirit so… I guess that’s okay? Sooo uh… Your mom’s a Shaman, huh?”
I nodded, glad to change the topic. “Yes. Also hilariously no… She’s partially trained. I remember her mentioning as a filly her apartment building had a zebra janitor who noticed she was Awake and trained her as much as he could before the ministries relocated zebras away from the Heartlands for their safety…”
Roll nodded. “I never heard about that, but it sounds like something they’d do..” Roll frowned as she picked up a folder which had been laying under the tarp. “Operation Star Drop… Is that what you were called officially?”
Alarm bells went off in my head. Star Drop HQ. That phrase was coming up a lot, and here, in the advanced robotics facility, a folder about it? Here. Robotics. Super-aggro, brand new Ultra Sentinels.
I’d fought and killed what amounted to my sister…
Meh. She was crazy and had to go down.
I shook my head. “No. That wasn’t me. May I see that?”
Roll opened the folder and frowned. “Nope. Everything’s blacked out and marked “to be burned” Oh! Wait, there’s a note.”
Roll cleared her throat, floated a small scrap of paper out of the folder and began to read. “Doctor Swan, this is the targeting system of a zebrican battleship. It has been sent to you for reverse engineering and improvement as a part of a Ministry of Awesome operation. Your services have been specifically requested by Miss Dash herself. She demands the best, and you will give it to her.
“I expect you to deliver a full schematic for a machine spirit based targeting system at least twice as good as this one by the end of the week. You are not to install a spirit within it. You are not to use any megaspell related technologies in its construction. It must not exceed one meter by three meters by half a meter in size. These requirements were given to me by Miss Dash in person. Do not fail.
“Doctor Silver, Sub-Director, MAS.”
So I hadn’t killed my sister… But why would the MoA need a home for a machine spirit? Obviously for an automated weapons system… But why no megaspells? Wouldn’t they use that and presumably the only machine spirit they had to help target say, Celestia Prime?
“Weird…” I said decisively.
Roll nodded casually. “Very weird… But sadly,” she flipped through the rest of the pages and sighed. “We’ll never know. It’s all blacked out.”
I had a feeling that I’d know sooner or later, and shivered. “I wouldn't be too sure… I’ve heard the Tainted mention a Star Drop HQ. It can’t be co—”
My eyes shot wide as I realized Homage had mentioned that place too! Not only that, but also told me it had a special machine that made custom armor.
All of the Tainted had unique armor! Homage didn’t know that she knew where the Tainted were working from!
I spun towards the door and began to run. “We have to go! There’s a Ministry radio network. I just figured out where the Tainted are working from! We need to tell somepony.”
☢★★◯★★☢
The communications room was on the other side of the base. I’d never been there before, but it was easy enough to make the run, and mom’s ID opened every single door we encountered.
The communications room itself was tiny. Just four radio base stations and a few filing cabinets. Hardly what you’d think a place this big would have, but this wasn’t a Hub. This was a hidden facility. Usually orders came in on paper or in person.
None of the radios were in working order, but that wasn’t a problem. It took half an hour of work, but between Roll and I, we managed to fix one radio using parts from the other two. The fourth, it had turned out, was full of Flim Flam Co “Cheez” Doodle Dust… Ew.
As soon as the radio we had repaired was on, I turned it to the Tenpony Tower’s frequency via the handy chart on the wall, set it’s encryption properly, and pressed the transmit button.
“Homage, come in Homage, this is Whirling Gears, over,” I said urgently.
No response.
I waited for a moment then repeated myself.
“Homage, come in Homage, this is Whirling Gears, over,” I repeated.
Nothing.
One more try, then I take the base station with me and keep trying as we walk back to Tenpony. The mail can wait. People are dying and the Tainted are attacking entire cities now!
“Homage, come in Homage, this is Whirling Gears. It’s urgent, over,” I said one final time.
The radio hissed and Homage’s voice came through very faintly, punctuated with static. “Gears! H… re you? Also, wh…?”
How and where. I think. Okay.
I closed my eyes to pay better attention to the sound. The facility’s transceiver relay must be damaged.
“I’m in a MAS facility in Fillydelphia. The Tainted are attacking the city. I’m safe for now, but I need to deliver my letter. I also have critical information for you and the NCR.”
“You what?” Homage asked, sounding genuinely worried. “I have the fight on camera, it’s intense! The Tainted are starting to be forced back to one of the western districts… Five-oh-one rolled in ten minutes ago.”
I smiled. Maybe it would be clear. “That’s great! Do you know if the city leaders are alive?”
“Uh, it’s Filly. It doesn't have any leaders,” Homage said with an awkward cough. “I thought I told you that?”
I frowned, and decided to write it off as being a bit loopy given how low on coolant I’d been at the time, then how I’d almost bucking died! “Sooo, who do I deliver too?”
“Anyone? Everyone there is a former slave of Red Eye’s. None of them will follow anyone. They only barely tolerate NCR rule. It’s an anarchic commune, if you know what that means.”
“I don’t…” I admitted sheepishly.
“Everypony for themselves… but help each other out too,” Homage explained. “Honestly, don't deliver to Filly. They have nothing to trade other than individual skills, and they only work for caps. It’s a city of, well, contractors, really. I thought you were going there for the convenience of the highway route to Junction Town via Canterlot... So, you said you had critical information?”
I frowned. If that was true, then yes. Me having gone here was a massive waste of time. I did my best to suppress my rage at nearly dying, and enduring all of that pain, to deliver to an address and person that didn’t even exist, took a deep breath, and sighed.
“You told me about the time you and Jokeblue found a military base called Star Drop HQ. I’ve found a letter on a Tainted soldier that mentions Star Drop HQ, and the robot they attacked Sire’s Hollow with mentioned it too. All of the Tainted have those identical flack vests with the rainbow emblem on them. Those new looking flack vests. Homage, you know where their base is! The NCR can attack it!”
Homage sighed. I frowned. I hadn’t expected her to sigh.
“We can’t attack it, Gears… It’s in the middle of the Herd’s territory… But… but you’re right. That’s where they have to be! I’ll see what I can do, who I can contact, and—” Homage yelped in terror, before being cut of by a massive pulse of radio static… and maybe a very very slight tremor?
The static hiss made me pull back from the radio for a moment before Homage’s voice came back. “Holy Celestia’s winking cunt what in the flying buck did I just— Bloom! Bloom! Did we fire Celestia Prime at Filly!?”
I blinked and slowly, worriedly, looked up. What had happened up there? What had her monitors shown her that I hadn’t heard under all this rock?
A stallions’ voice faintly crackled through the radio. “No? Why?”
“Because a giant pillar of light hit Filly just now, that’s why!” Homage yelled.
“Wait, what? Play it back?” the stallion asked.
A moment passed. The stallion gasped in shock. “What?! We didn’t fire! What in Tartarus was that?! HOLY— Look! It hit and there’s Tainted everywhere That’s screening artillery! Whatever it is, they’re using it to force our colts back so they can retake the ground they lost!”
The mic crackled as if somepony were juggling it in their hooves. “Gears! Gears get out of there! There’s so many of them! I thought it was just a couple hundred, but there's over five hundred of them now, easy! Get out! I don't care how safe that spot is, if you don't get out of the city now you’ll be a prisoner in there at best! Sweet Celestia it’s like every single raider left in the wasteland joined up with their army! What the buck?!”
I felt my cheeks go pale. Even with my upgraded systems, I still wasn’t a one mare army. I gulped and nodded. “Yeah, we’ll get out asap. Uh, remember this frequency. I’m taking this radio with me. Over and out!”
I turned off the radio and tucked it into my bag, once again grateful for their bigger-on-the-inside enchantment. I turned to look over at Roll, “Sooo, did you know they had nearly a thousand freaking ponies here?!”
She shook her head. “No! I— I don’t think there’s a single settlement in all of Equestria with more than six hundred ponies… How— Where—” she shook her head. “It doesn't matter. She’s right. We need to leave… And you should slip on that armor you got earlier! No way there won't be bullets flying around and um… Aside from the spare parts I tossed in your bags, which are basically just a few extra legs and minor bits and bobs, I don't think you’ll get fixed again.”
I blinked, I hadn’t even thought to pack up all remaining compatible parts. I nodded and wrapped my forelegs around Roll in a hug. “Thank you…”
Roll smiled. “You were so busy being happy to not be in pain you probably didn’t realize you shouldn’t leave them behind. I also packed up everything in your mom’s secret compartment, your blueprints, and a bunch of diaries and things I found while looking for your blueprints.”
I hugged Roll again. “You’re so thoughtful! Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Roll said with a happy swish of her tail.
I opened my bag again, dug out the remarkably lightweight and flexible armor, and slipped into it.
The armor was easy to put on, even with the recollector circlet still on my head. I realized I’d forgotten to take it off… But given how rare and useful the things were, and the fact that it was mom’s and she’d want it back, I decided to keep it on.
Besides, it made me feel like an Amazon warrior! They all had those cool silver circlets in the comics, and since everypony said I looked like Swordmare, I figured I should play into it at least a little bit.
The armor, on the other hoof, was not very… protective feeling. They seemed almost like they were meant to stop energy weapons more than anything with mass. The black kevlar body glove fit me well enough, after all it did have that size change enchantment on it… But the light plating made me feel unprotected.
Actually, no. Worse than that. I felt like the armor would fragment and hurt me more if it was hit.
…
Poor MAS guards! Even knowing that wasn’t true, feeling like it was sucked!
Roll could tell I felt uncomfortable in it. She put a hoof on my shoulder and cleared her throat. “Uh, remember. You also have a shield now. Pin eight-six-delta-two.”
I facehooved. “That’s right. I do!”
I closed my eyes and focused on that digital trigger. I felt the Gale Shield activate, begin to charge, and start to draw power from my core. I immediately turned it off as it started to draw SO MUCH POWER!
“WOAH! Okay, uh, that can’t stay on all the time!” I said, eyes wide, ears alert, and tail raised.
Roll nodded understandingly. “Okay, still, switch it on once we’re topside. If my sense of direction is right… That hole those slaves dug was near the southern edge of the city. I don’t want to go out the main entrance in case Flint Ironstag back there set a trap.”
“That’s good thinking,” I complimented as I turned to trot out of the communications room.
I realized I should be galloping. The NCR sent a company to clear the city. Probably a couple hundred troopers max. The Tainted had an actual battalion at their disposal, along with some kind of directed energy artillery.
This was going to be an absolute shit-show for the NCR, and I wasn’t going to be caught in the middle of it. Not after the last few days. I was going to get the buck out of here, and thanks to Roll and mom’s forgotten contingency plans, I could get out of here at a very very comfortable seventy seven kilometers an hour!
At least, for a few minutes. Maximum overdrive shouldn’t be used for too long. It said so in the manual. Which I would definitely read in full as soon as I wasn’t literally in a war zone!
I turned to give Roll a look. “Hey… If we get separated out there, I’m going to go around to the main highway leading to Canterlot and take it all the way there. I know the city is just ruins now, but… Something tells me a friend of mine might be there.”
Roll nodded. “Good idea. I’ll fly off as soon as we’re out and meet you on the road, or in Canterlot.”
I turned and ran down the hallway. “The slave-tunnel is this way!”
I narrowed my eyes in determination as I ran. I wasn’t going to get caught in a firefight. Not this time. No way. I was getting out and back to my rounds without even getting another scratch!
”Sweetie? Stop waving your ponut in fate’s nose while saying it can’t possibly buck you without lube and just de-plot the area!” Imaginary Dad ordered in that comandey tone of his.
He actually made a very very good point…
Sorry dad…
I sped up to my new top speed. No overdrive. Just a cool 69 kph (Thank you, mom!). Roll flew along behind me, keeping up easily.
It felt good to have somepony at my side again.