Pinkie blinked. She was meant to be meeting a cyber pony here. For a second, she considered the possibility that this was another trap. But the only two ponies in the room were her…
…and an unarmed, ordinary yellow pegasus.
“Please, come in,” she beckoned. “We have so much to discuss.”
Pinkie approached the bed. “Are you Angel Bunny?”
The mare smiled, lying casually on the bedspread, one hoof draped over the other. “That would be me. I’ve been waiting to meet you, you know.” There was a soft sincerity in her tone, one that conveyed a genuine benevolence. It was the kind of soothing, disarming voice that put you at ease.
“You know who I am?” Pinkie asked.
“Of course. You’ve caused quite the buzz lately. It’s not every day that a cyber pony goes rogue. As soon as I heard you’d arrived in Equestria, I brought you here.”
“But why do you want to meet me?”
She shifted her hooves. “I’m very interested in cyber ponies. I’ve dedicated my life to helping them. Ever since I first heard about you, I knew you were the key.”
“The key? The key to what?”
“The key to saving them all. Twirell makes these ponies as chattel. It’s horrible. They deserve the same freedom I have, so I do what I can to help them.”
Pinkie stared back at her, relieved. “I am SO glad to hear that. It’s like, everywhere we go, everypony’s like, ‘blah, I hate cyber ponies,’ and then they try to shoot lasers at us or treat us like stupid robots, and I just want to be treated normal like anypony else!”
“Oh, you poor thing, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” she said, getting off the bed. Carefully, she lifted up Pinkie’s forehooves to inspect them. “How have you been getting around like this?”
“Well, I have a hoof cannon, but the lady at the front made me turn it in before coming upstairs.”
“That simply won’t do. The weapons ban is for patrons, not our girls.” She walked around to a data pad on the nightstand and contacted the front desk. “Cotton, be a dear and bring up the hoof cannon you just confiscated, won’t you?”
“Of course, ma’am,” the voice replied.
She turned back to Pinkie. “I’m terribly sorry about that. Cotton didn’t mean anything by it, she was just enforcing our house rules. We don’t get cyber ponies outside of the girls who work here, much less one who’s armed. You’re just a special case, that’s all.”
Upon hearing a knock at the door, she opened it to retrieve Pinkie’s hoof cannon from the desk attendant. As she reattached it to Pinkie’s leg, she looked up at her. “I suppose you deserve a decent introduction, after everything you’ve suffered through. I haven’t been completely honest with you. Angel Bunny is just one of many code names I use. You might have heard the one I usually go by.”
She finished reattaching the limb and stood back up. “You see, I’m the Madame.”
Pinkie stared back at her, wide-eyed. “You’re the Madame? But that lady told us there was no madame here!”
“She’s right,” she replied. “The girls run the house themselves. I own it, on paper, because they can’t.”
“So you’re the toughie who runs the Ponyville underground?”
“Surprised?” she chuckled. “I know I don’t live up to my public image, but that’s a good thing. Very few ponies know my real name. I can’t really help cyber ponies if Twirell finds out who I am.”
Pinkie paused. “You said you needed me for something.”
She opened the door for her. “I think it’s time you and your friends find out why you’re in Equestria.”
Pinkie followed her back downstairs to meet up with Applejack and Rainbow Dash.
As Pinkie descended the staircase, Applejack looked up at her with concern. “You alright? You find what you were lookin’ for?”
“I have somepony you should meet,” Pinkie said, stepping aside for the Madame.
“It’s nice to finally see you all,” she greeted them. “I’ve been following your story closely, and I’m very impressed with the things you’ve done.”
“The things we’ve done?” Rainbow Dash asked, raising an eyebrow. “Who are you, and who do you work for?”
“She’s the Madame,” Pinkie answered, putting a hoof around her. “She helps cyber ponies like us!”
She smiled at Pinkie’s gesture. “Thank you. I understand the caution, though. It’s hard to trust anypony these days. But it’s important that we trust each other, so as a show of good faith, let’s do away with the code names. Ponyville knows me only as the Madame, but my real name is Fluttershy. I hope I can trust you to keep that private.”
“Please to meetcha, Fluttershy,” Pinkie greeted her again without hesitation. “I’m Pinkie Pie, Designation PP188449, that’s Rainbow Dash, our pilot, and that’s Applejack, Designation AJ705453, but she likes to be called Jax! If you ever forget what to call her, you can just look at her hoof. Hey, wait, maybe I should do that, too…”
“Look, exchanging names is fine and all,” Applejack stated frankly, “but unless you can bring something solid to the table, I’m inclined to take my chances without you.”
“Jax…” Dash stressed under her breath, “she’s practically the queen of Ponyville. If she wants to help us, then let her.”
“It’s alright,” Fluttershy responded. “She wants to know what I can do for her. It’s a fair request. If you come with me, I’ll show you.”
Fluttershy led them down a set of stairs to a basement office. “When I said I ran the Ponyville underground, that wasn’t entirely true,” she said, walking up to a giant safe built into the wall. She peered into a retina scanner on the wall, and slowly, the safe door slid open.
She lifted away a false bottom from the safe’s interior. “The truth is,” she continued, “I actually run the underground railroad.”
The trio leaned in to see a makeshift tunnel leading deep into the terrain below. Fluttershy motioned them to follow her inside, and after a moment’s hesitation, they complied. One by one, they descended into the tunnel, with Rainbow Dash bringing up the rear. Behind her, the safe door closed automatically, sealing them inside.
The dim glow of Pinkie’s fission core illuminated the passage. The ceiling was about five feet high, and it was narrow enough to force them to walk in single file. Fluttershy walked them through the tunnel, winding around beneath the streets of Ponyville.
“I’m sorry for the darkness,” Fluttershy said, her words echoing through the cavern. “We normally use headlamps down here. If we put up lights, the guards could trace the EMFs.”
“What are these for?” Pinkie asked. “Where do they go?”
“The tunnels run all over Ponyville,” she answered. “It’s how we move cyber ponies around without anypony catching on. They link our safehouses together so we don’t have to use the streets.”
“I heard about this place,” Rainbow Dash said, looking around. “You don’t just run ponies here. Guns, too. Illegal mods. Lots of stuff that ends up on the black market.”
“That’s not us,” Fluttershy replied defensively. “We loan out these tunnels to the rest of the underground. I decide everypony that comes in or out, but that doesn’t mean their business is mine. It’s the only way we can afford to keep running rescue operations.”
“So that’s what you do here?” Applejack asked. “Rescue cyber ponies and shuffle ‘em around?”
“Whenever we get the chance. They’re all registered, so we have to keep them hidden from the public. Some mares volunteer to work as pleasure droids or dancers. That’s when we forge documents to employ them. They get their independence and a fair wage, but those sweet angels donate a lot of it to the cause. They help keep the cycle going, so we can rescue more and more ponies.”
The tunnel widened up at this point, allowing them to spread out a bit.
“Whenever the opportunity arises,” she went on, “we send our rescues to off-world colonies, where there’s less of a chance of being found by slave catchers. We have cells all over the galaxy; if I’m not mistaken, you recently found one of them on Caelia B6P.” She paused to reflect on it quietly. “I heard what happened. Just terrible news, really. The theatre manager there was such a kind soul. She took in so many of our girls.”
“She sold us out to Twirell,” Applejack scoffed. “That don’t sound too kind to me. Never even cared to tell us who she really was. We thought she was the Madame and she just ran with it. Had no problem lying right to our faces.”
Fluttershy glanced back at her sympathetically. “I’m sorry to hear that, but she did what she had to. If Twirell knew about her cell, she had an obligation to protect her girls, even if it meant sacrifice. As for her identity, it sounds like she made the right call. Our operation works because hardly anypony knows who the Madame really is. We have to keep a loose structure so the truth stays a secret. She died loyal to the cause; Twirell thinks that the Madame is gone, even if only for now, and the rest of our cells are still safe.”
Eventually, the tunnel came to an end in front of a hatch. Fluttershy twisted the valve open, and climbed up. One by one, the rest of the girls followed, into a stone chamber filled with lab equipment.
A pony stood at the end of the room, clutching his chest, recovering from the shock of their sudden arrival. “M-Madame! Please don’t startle me like that, at least let me know when you’re coming by.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Flash, I didn’t mean to scare you. This just couldn’t wait.” She turned to the trio emerging from the hatch. “Girls, this is Flash Point, one of the engineers for the resistance. He used to work for Twirell, you know.”
Applejack squinted suspiciously at him, not particularly fond to learn of that tidbit.
“Are these the… rogues?” he asked.
Not wanting to dissuade her guests, Fluttershy nodded auspiciously, subtly trying to inspire confidence in her fragile colleague.
“Here I was hopin’ for a quiet arrival in Equestria,” Applejack murmured. “Just how many ponies know about us?”
“It’s a big secret to keep under wraps,” she responded. “But you shouldn’t worry, the public doesn’t know any details. Twirell is making sure it doesn’t make any headlines. It would just be bad press for them. Besides, everypony is much more focused on the news of Princess Twilight right now.”
“Yeah, what’s the deal with her?” Pinkie asked. “We came here to kick butt and take names, and now we find out she did our job for us! What’s going on?”
Flash looked to Fluttershy. “They don’t know?”
“You’re why she was deposed,” she told Pinkie. “You’re not supposed to exist.”
Still confused, the three of them stared back at her.
Fluttershy turned back to the engineer. “Why don’t you explain it, Flash? You know the science better than I do.”
He stepped around the table to join them. “You three know the laws of robotics, right?”
“Of course we do,” Applejack said.
“Duh,” Pinkie said.
Rainbow Dash glanced quickly at her friends, then back to him. “Uh, not at all.”
“Well, the history lesson goes like this,” Flash said. “Princess Twilight came up with the first cyber pony a couple centuries back. She touted it as this big revolutionary step forward for ponykind, a robopony that could think and act on its own, just like us. It was how she earned the title of ‘Lady Life.’ But all it really led to was this huge debate. Roboponies were just non-sentient novelties back then, and most ponies thought that giving them intelligence would make them turn on us. So the Equestrian legislature blocked the Princess and ordered her to scrap the prototype. They made it law that she couldn’t continue development unless she agreed to implement a strict set of rules into every last model.”
“The laws of robotics,” Applejack said. “Our behavior protocols.”
“Exactly. The first law: a cyber pony may not harm an organic pony. Second: a cyber pony must obey any order issued by an organic pony, except those which conflict with the first law. Third: a cyber pony must protect itself, except in cases that conflict with the first and second laws.”
“Why bother with all that?” Dash asked, giving the side eye to her friends. “Would they really try to hurt us without it?”
“It was never about protecting us from them. Maybe that’s how the politicians got widespread support for it, but the Laws are about something more evil. The first law protects us from the cyber ponies turning against us. That’s all good and well, but then the second law makes them slaves, with the exception preventing them from being used as weapons. If they already couldn’t hurt us, why force them to obey?”
“Money,” Applejack replied, stating the obvious. “The answer’s always money.”
“But in my opinion,” he continued, “the third law might be the most insidious one, because it sounds so innocent on the surface. ‘Must protect its own life.’ The legislature knew what they were doing was slavery, and they knew most ponies would rather die than be a slave. So what did they do to protect their investment? They made it so that cyber ponies have no way out… not even death. The third law was never meant to give them the freedom to live. It was only ever about taking away their right to die.”
Pinkie frowned, wholly disheartened by the history behind her kind’s inception. “So Twilight listened to their demands and turned cyber ponies into slaves. How does that mean we got her fired?”
Applejack put a hoof around her. “Don’t you see, Pinkie?”
Pinkie slowly pieced together everything she had learned.
“You saw my memories for yourself,” Applejack continued. “This is the story behind it. I was Twilight’s prototype, the first one to have the Laws in me. If what Flash’s saying is true, that’d make you the first ever cyber pony.”
“Twilight made you first,” Fluttershy said. “Not as a slave, but as an equal. That’s why you have free will. That’s why you run on old-world technology. The world was scared of what you were, so they forced her to destroy you. Clearly, she failed, and now she’s facing the consequences for it. That’s why we need to you to free every other cyber pony out there.”
“But— but— how?” Pinkie stammered. “How can I do that, when I didn’t even know who I was until you told me?”
“We want to find out. If you’re willing to let us look at your brain, that is.”
Pinkie paused. The news was weighing on her. Her unique nature came as no surprise, but to find out her role in the grand scheme of all cyber ponies left her pondering the ramifications. Still, even if it meant the slightest possibility of freeing the tens of millions of androids out there, no sacrifice was too great. She was tired of being small. She wanted to make a difference.
Before she could respond, Applejack interjected, coming between them. “Hang on. You can use me, I’m just as free as Pinkie. You wouldn’t believe what she’s been through these past few weeks, I’d hate to put any more stress on the poor thing.”
“Jax, I’m okay, you don’t have to—”
“Hush. You stick with Rainbow for now. This pony right here,” she said, tilting her head at Fluttershy, “just might be our only shot at takin’ down Twirell. If I’m trustin’ her with somepony’s life, it’ll be my own.”
“I suppose that’s fine for now,” Fluttershy replied. “Anything that gets us closer to deconstructing the Laws, right, Flash?”
He nods in agreement. “It’s a good place to start. I can’t say for sure we won’t need Pinkie, though. As the initial prototype, she might be able offer insight into specific behavior protocols I can’t study anywhere else.”
Fluttershy turned back to Pinkie. “You heard him, Pinkie. You’re very valuable to both sides. Don’t go getting hurt or putting yourself at risk of capture.”
“Good luck getting her to listen,” Applejack teased, nudging Pinkie.
“I’ll leave you two to it, then.” Fluttershy motioned Pinkie to follow her upstairs, leaving Applejack behind with Flash to begin the process.
Rainbow Dash followed them up the stairs. “So, uh, looks like you guys got all this cyber business covered. I’m going to go out for a bit, I’ve got some stuff to do in the city. I’ll meet back up with you later. Contact me if you need anything, okay?”
“You got it!” Pinkie replied cheerfully.
Fluttershy led them through a pair of metal doors, to the ground floor of a small repurposed office building. Here, the work floor was cleared out and replaced by tables cluttered with maps and computers. Several cyber ponies were milling about the room.
Rainbow Dash nodded a farewell and broke away from them, pushing open the guarded exit door and heading out into the city.
“Do you trust her?” Fluttershy asked Pinkie as she watched her leave.
“Totally! She wasn’t going to help at first, but she saved us at the last minute when that Twirell lady found us. Jax doesn’t trust her, but she doesn’t trust anypony, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
“Trust is a precious thing,” she whispered. “That’s what I like about cyber ponies. They don’t lie. But I’d rather give them the freedom to lie than force them all to be good.”
Pinkie thought about it. There were advantages to being infallibly obedient. But seeing what cyber ponies went through… it was hard to argue it was even remotely worth it.
It was liberty, or it was death.
“What is this place?” she asked, looking around the room. She peeked under a large, dusty stack of papers spilling off the edge of a nearby table.
“This is the primary Everfree safehouse. We have them all over the city, but this is the only one I can show you. I’m the only one who knows every location. We have to keep our cells isolated, so the capture of one cyber pony doesn’t bring down our whole network.”
Pinkie circled around the room. The cyber ponies here were hard at work planning some kind of mission.
“Come on,” Fluttershy continued, “I have somepony I’d like you to meet.”
She brought Pinkie over to a cyber pony hunched over a map, drawing lines and muttering instructions to two subordinates flanked on either side. His dark frame looked well-worn, and his mane had been lopped off to a short length.
“Pinkie, I’d like you to meet Earl Grey, my aide-de-camp. He leads all the liberation operations in Ponyville.”
“Hiya!” Pinkie greeted him, waving cordially.
Noticing her, he raised his head a bit. “This her?” he asked in a gruff voice, looking to Fluttershy, who nodded affirmatively.
He tilted his cap slightly in a curt display of acknowledgment.
“It’s nice to meet somepony who rescues cyber ponies for a living,” Pinkie said.
“He can’t hear you, I’m afraid,” Fluttershy told her.
“A cyber pony who can’t hear?” she asked, mystified by the concept. “How does that happen?”
“He did it to himself. Or, had Flash do it to him, rather, a long time ago.”
“Why?”
“He came to the decision he’d rather never hear again than have to listen to another order,” Fluttershy whispered solemnly.
Pinkie was amazed. Having taken her autonomy for granted, it wasn’t something she’d ever considered, but it made sense at first blush. “Does that really work? Is he free?”
“It’s a temporary fix, sadly. He still has to obey orders, just not spoken ones. There are other ways to communicate.” She handed Pinkie a data pad with a text box.
Pinkie typed out a message for him.
I’ve never met a cyber stallion before.
He dismissed the two cyber ponies beside him, and turned his attention to the girls. “Yeah, well, there ain’t many left in Equestria to save. Most of us are shipped off-world after manufacture to be sootskins.”
Pinkie typed another message.
How did you end up here?
“I used to be the house boy for a rich family in town, way back when. Practically raised their colt myself. ‘Course, when he grew up and took control of the house, he decided he didn’t like what Ponyville was turning into, so he packed up the family and moved them to Canter City. I couldn’t come, so he sold me off for scrap, without so much as a second thought. If it weren’t for Madame here stepping in at the twelfth hour and buying me, I’d probably be melted into steel trusses.”
Melted? Couldn’t you get another job?
“Job?” he sneered. “Where do you think you are, missy? We’re not organic ponies, we don’t gain experience over time. No, we’re cheap and replaceable. They use us till they ain’t got a use for us, and then they discard us. Why bother training an old model to do something new when you can get one already specialized for the job, fresh off the factory line?”
“Oh,” Pinkie whispers. She reflects on it a moment before typing again.
I guess I never thought about it.
“That’s ‘cause you ain’t never had to think about it. Let me tell you something, newbie. We don’t mean a thing to them. Never did. You just count yourself lucky you got a lady as kind as her watching out for you, ‘cause without her, you wouldn’t last a—”
While he went off on his rant, Fluttershy took the data pad and typed out a stern message.
That’s enough, Earl. Don’t fault her for being innocent in a harsh world. She’s just a little green.
Pinkie leaned over and read the screen, then glanced down at her chest. “I’m not green, I’m pink! Unless you mean my fission core…”
“It means inexperienced,” Fluttershy clarified. “You still have a lot to learn, but don’t worry too much about it.”
At her order, Earl quieted down and tapped his map. “You want to fix that, send her out on our next op. We’ll make a seasoned recruit out of her yet.”
Fluttershy frowned and typed on the pad.
Absolutely not. She’s an asset. I won’t send her out into the field.
“We’ve thought out a dozen approaches for this one, ma’am. There’s a Twirell rep on-site. Every single plan goes sideways if we fail to neutralize him in time. We could lose everyone in one fell swoop. With her, we can—”
As soon as he started making his argument, she began typing out another message.
I told you no. Your job is to rescue them, but mine is to keep them safe, and she’s too valuable to risk for a mission.
“Ma’am, this isn’t an ordinary op, you know how desperately we n—”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down!” Pinkie interrupted them. “What is this mission you guys are talking about? If you’re saving cyber ponies, I want to help!”
“It’s not safe,” Fluttershy warned. “Think about what your friend said. She wouldn’t want you to go out there.”
“Jax isn’t the boss of me,” Pinkie insisted. “This is what I’ve been waiting for, a chance to actually help.”
Earl smirked. “I may not be able to hear her, but it sure looks like she’s made up her mind, ma’am. She wants to join us. What are you gonna do, order her not to?”
Fluttershy grimaced at the insinuation.
“You know what your job is?”
Pinkie nodded confidently. Earl had laid it out in simple terms exactly what she needed to do. She was a bit fuzzy on the rest of the plan, but he maintained that, being new, she should concern herself only with her role. Locking down her own part was all that mattered to him.
The team gathered in the alleyway. Earl had four other cyber ponies tasked for the mission, each of them outfitted with saddle bags. As the only autonomous cyber pony present, Pinkie was the only one armed.
As such, her role was the most critical.
“You ready?” Earl asked her one last time.
Pinkie nodded once more. “Let’s blow this sucker!”
“Don’t go in there if you’re having second thoughts,” he pressed. “We don’t need you locking up in there, putting my team at risk.”
Pinkie nodded a third time, this time much more insistently. There were cyber ponies in there, and she wanted to help by any means necessary. Under no circumstance would she let them down. She would defend them to her last breath.
Earl tucked a communicator into her ear. “Give us the all-clear the instant you’re ready.”
Valiantly, Pinkie marched through the alley, out into the street. They were carrying out the mission in broad daylight, as it was less secure during business hours.
Pinkie approached the storefront. Hanging above, the neon sign read out Twirell-Certified Cyber Repair. As she pushed open the door into the vestibule, she gazed at the inch-thick reinforced glass.
Standing in the entryway, she pushed the buzzer to request access. Inside, one of the technicians looked through the glass at her. She did her best to wave innocently, as she often did, and without so much as a second glance, he buzzed her into the shop.
Pinkie stepped through the door into the workshop and looked around. There were a few tables with powered-down cyber ponies in various states of disassembly atop them, with several organic ponies working on them intently. None of them seemed particularly concerned with her presence.
“Not very customer-friendly,” Pinkie whispered to herself.
With no one minding the front desk, she quietly slipped towards the rear of the store.
She entered the tiny back office as planned, coming face-to-face with the Twirell representative on staff, sitting behind a desk. Upon her arrival, he looked up.
“Hi, I—” Pinkie started.
Immediately, his face contorted into an expression of alarm. He clearly recognized her.
“Uh-oh.”
Without hesitation, she charged, leaping over his desk, and swinging her cannon against the side of his head. A resounding crack sounded, and he fell straight over, utterly disoriented by the blow. Hastily, she ran out of the office and quickly scanned the wall adjacent to the alley. Satisfied that no ponies were in range, she impulsively yelled into her communicator.
“Clear! Clear! Clear clear clear clear clear!”
Immediately, an explosion blew the wall open, sending rubble flying. An alarm began ringing out, and Pinkie stormed over to the main floor of the workshop.
“Everybody down!” she screamed, standing upright and waving her cannon around menacingly, as the team poured through the hole behind her.
The technicians all complied, cowering around the room. Between the debris settling, the alarm blaring, and the cyber hooves stamping about, the chaos was hard for anyone to follow.
“Rogue cyber ponies!” one of the technicians cried. “They’ve come to kill us all!”
“What?” Pinkie recoiled. “No—”
“To the back, team!” Earl shouted, interrupting her. He kicked open the door to the back room and led his squad inside.
Pinkie turned to face them, completely perplexed. “Guys, the cyber ponies are out here!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a movement on the floor and spun around, impulsively pointing her cannon straight at it.
What she saw, though, made her freeze.
He was just a colt, a skinny young thing in his technician uniform, barely an adult. “Please don’t kill me!” he begged, throwing his hooves into the air, mortified by the weapon shoved in his face.
Her cannon emitted a low tone as she cancelled the charge.
A loud clank behind her caused her to spin around again. One of the technicians, taking advantage of her momentary distraction, was making a run for it, weaving through the tables to get to the exit.
“Wait!” Pinkie yelled, pursuing him.
Earl leaned out the door to the back room to check on Pinkie. “Control that crowd! Don’t let a single pony out!”
As the technician drew closer to the door, Pinkie knew she couldn’t catch up to him.
“Stop him!” Earl barked at her. “Do your job!”
Panicking, she stood upright and aimed her cannon at him, charging it back up. “Please, stop, or I’ll shoot!”
Her orders went unheeded, and he quickly reached the front of the store, not stopping to look back.
Pinkie squeezed her eyes shut, desperately fighting to stave off sensory overload.
This wasn’t happening.
This wasn’t happening.
This—
As soon as his hoof touched the door, a deafening blast rung out above all the other sounds, and a burst of plasma flashed across the room, hitting him square in the back. He flew forward, collided with the glass, and slid straight down to the floor, lying there motionless.
Pinkie stood wide-eyed and in shock, hyperventilating as the crowd wailed and moaned in terror. She wasn’t given any time to dwell on it; the team soon spilled back out of the back room, and retreated through the hole in the wall.
“We’re done!” Earl yelled to Pinkie. “Let’s go!”
Pinkie stood, frozen in place, struggling to process what just occurred. The world melted away. Her senses failing her, the blaring sounds faded to a whisper, and the scene grew hazy. She felt a hoof wrap around her, pulling her back through the hole. As she was dragged away, she saw, through the glass, police rovers pulling up on the street outside.
Onward she was towed, back into the alley, where the team was dispersing as planned. She heard a door kicked open behind her, and once more she was lifted, carried into the condemned tenement building adjacent to the alley. Then, the door swung shut behind her, and with that, she was sealed in darkness.
Pinkie buried her face under her hoof, wanting nothing more than to fend off the memory the played back endlessly in her head. Refusing to open her eyes, she couldn’t see where she was, or what was going on. But she heard the voices arguing nearby.
“What were you thinking? Look at her!”
“I thought it was a bad idea, too, but she demanded to join them.”
“Why did you let her go? You were supposed to look out for her! What, did you break Jax too?”
“No! She’s fine, she’s downstairs—”
“How do you screw up this royally? I leave you with her for one day and I see her face plastered all over the news. The city’s out for her head now! They’re saying she killed an innocent pony!”
“There was a complication. We will keep her safe, I promise. I never meant any of this to happen. She wasn’t supposed to kill anypony. That was never the plan.”
“If you wanted a job done, you should’ve asked me. She’s not right for this stuff, she doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”
“We don’t work with organic ponies. They’re a risk.”
“I’m a risk? You’re the risk! You messed with her head! I never should’ve left her with you, you’re probably working for Twirell!”
“Don’t you dare say that, I stand against everything those monsters have done to cyber kind!”
As the yelling continued, Pinkie recoiled deeper into herself, balling up tightly until she could take it no more.
“Enough!” she yelled, throwing her eyes open.
She was back in the safehouse, alone with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, both facing her, stunned by her sudden outburst. Standing up, she frowned at Fluttershy.
“That wasn’t a rescue mission.”
“I don’t think Earl ever said it was,” Fluttershy said.
“You lied to me.”
Fluttershy approached her. “You wanted to help cyber ponies, and you did.”
“No, no, we left them all there,” she argued. “We didn’t save a single one.”
Fluttershy sighed and returned to her data pad on the table. She tapped at it and leaned in. “Send Earl up with one of the bags, please.”
After a few seconds, Earl pushed open the door, a saddlebag slung over his back. He approached them, and leaned to the side, letting it fall to the floor.
Fluttershy held up the data pad for him.
She’s having trouble understanding it.
Earl looked over to Pinkie. “There’s nothing to understand. It was an operation to recover a payload, and we succeeded.”
“What?” Rainbow Dash asked, dissatisfied with his vague explanation.
Earl pushed the bag over to her. “Proprietary components, vital to the repair of cyber ponies. Flash Point needed parts you can’t source anywhere but Twirell.”
Pinkie picked up the bag and peered inside. It was full of mechanical pieces, finely-machined precision technology. “That’s what we risked our lives for? I thought you rescued cyber ponies!”
“We do rescue them,” Fluttershy said. “But not from places like those. We’re strained as it is, we needed the components to help the ponies we already have. We couldn’t possibly have dragged those ponies out of there without getting caught. There’s nothing we could do for them, they’re just dead weight, all of them offline and half-broken already.”
“All the more reason to help them!” Pinkie protested. “I can’t believe this! You said you were helping ponies, but you just abandoned them!”
“We are helping them! We’re doing everything we can, but it’s only so much. You need to understand the danger of what we’re doing. We can’t save everypony. Not like this.”
Pinkie stared down at the bag, the prize she had murdered in cold blood to win. It didn’t feel like a victory in the slightest. It just felt wrong.
“That’s it,” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “I’m taking her out of here. Where’s Jax?”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Fluttershy said. “All of Equestria knows her face now. Before, we had the advantage of Twirell keeping everything secret for us. Now, the story’s blown wide open, and the public is terrified of a killer cyber pony running loose.”
Pinkie stared at the ground uncomfortably.
“Oh,” Fluttershy murmured, realizing her mistake. “I— I’m sorry— I didn’t mean you’re a—”
Earl put a hoof around her, pulling her away. “Let’s go, ma’am. You’re needed back at the house.”
Fluttershy nodded a silent goodbye to them and followed Earl back through the metal doors.
Rainbow Dash circled around the table to console her. “Hey, don’t worry, kiddo, we’ll figure something out. I promise.”
Pinkie looked up from the ground and gasped. “You got—”
“Wings?” She proudly outstretched and flexed her shiny new augmentation. “Yeah, I stopped by an Equestricorp mod dealer yesterday and had them fitted. No nano-rockets this time, but they’re carbon-fiber base with iridescent finish, so they’re super light, and they look awesome.”
Pinkie watched as the metallic sheen glimmered with all the colors of the rainbow under the light. “Well, at least one of us has good news,” she sighed.
Rainbow Dash wrapped her enormous wings around Pinkie and effortlessly pulled her in for a hug.
“Don’t give up yet,” she whispered.
Pinkie spent the next several days cooped up in the safehouse. Having quickly become public enemy number one, it had ceased to be safe to go out under any circumstance. Fluttershy had been pulled away to fight fires elsewhere. Rainbow Dash was out most of the time, dropping by only occasionally to check up on her; after their own firefight, the Genesis was in desperate need of repairs. Not feeling up to socializing with the cyber ponies she had run the operation with, Pinkie found herself in the basement lab most of the time, where Flash Point was running diagnostics on Applejack’s brain. She had been unconscious the entire time, as he emphasized that the repeated reboots would put unnecessary stress on her and interfere with the examination.
Pinkie sat on a stool beside the table where Applejack lay, resting her head against the edge, watching Nano climb around on her stiff body. Flash sat by the computer on the other side of the room, parsing through data.
“You promise she’s gonna be okay?” Pinkie asked forlornly.
“For the fourth time, yes,” he groaned. “I’m not doing anything that’ll hurt her. She’s just asleep.”
Pinkie put her lips together and blew, mindlessly watching the tip of Applejack’s mane wisp around. Bored out of her mind, she looked across the table at Flash. “Will you at least explain to me what you’re doing?”
He glanced up from his computer. “I’m… well, I’m trying to see how she bypassed the Laws.”
“I just put her memory thingy in my head and decrypted it for her.”
“Yes, you told me, but I’m trying to find the exact process that makes it work. That way, I can conceivably clone it and induce it in other cyber ponies.”
“You’re a smart sciencey guy, you got any theories?”
Flash flipped through pages and pages of code. “That Princess Twilight ran a tight ship. She thought of just about everything. I can only think of one way she made it happen without anypony discovering.”
“Lay it on me.”
Flash got out of his seat and walked over to the table. “There’s the second law, right? It says that cyber ponies have to obey. But in the program, it’s not that simple, because there’s a hierarchy. See, there are sub-laws, caveats where a cyber pony can refuse an order if conflicts with an order issued by the assigned owner. Once an owner is registered, all of their commands supersede everypony else’s. But there’s another sub-law where the owner’s commands can be overridden by an authorized Twirell representative. I’ve never heard of Twirell Corp using it, but it’s kind of like a failsafe.”
Pinkie picked her head up off the table. “So where does Jax fit in?”
“It’s just a hypothesis, but I think the Princess wrote a contingency that somehow lets every command be overridden, by simulating a counter-ignore command directly from her every time an order is processed.”
Pinkie put it together in her head, slowly tracing the logic behind it.
“Wait, who’s the owner of all the cyber ponies here?” she asked.
“The Madame. I reprogrammed them all myself. It’s a simple enough crack to rewrite the owner registry.”
Now it all made sense to her, why Earl and his team needed her for the mission. Fluttershy was their owner. With her direct order to ransack the store, the technicians were helpless to stop them. The first law precluded them from hurting anyone, but they could still refuse any and all orders to stand down.
Until it came to the Twirell rep. They would’ve had to obey him, no matter what Fluttershy’s commands were. That’s why Earl had goaded her into joining, why he had gotten her to sign up under false pretenses. She was helping them. She just didn’t know how or why, until it was already over.
She was being manipulated here.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?”
Pinkie looked up to see Flash tenderly holding up her front hoof, admiring it. Etched into her leg were the bold black letters denoting her slave designation, branded onto her skin decades ago back on Servos 6. The first three letters had long since been seared off by her own handiwork, leaving only three left.
JAX.
Suddenly, Pinkie heard a crash and yelling upstairs. Worried of an attack, she ran up and burst through the door to see Rainbow Dash standing outside the entrance, blocked by Earl.
“Lemme in!” she shouted. “I need to see her now!”
“The Madame says we’re under lockdown, no one’s allowed in. Now get out of here before you attract attention.”
Pinkie locked eyes with her, confused by what was going on.
“Pinkie!” she yelled, deftly ducking past Earl, and charging inside. “I need to show you something.” She grabbed ahold of Pinkie and dragged her back downstairs to the lab.
Earl stormed down after them, furious, but unable to lay a hoof on her. “I told you to get out.”
“What’s going on?” Flash asked, concerned by the commotion.
“Everypony shut up,” Dash ordered, shoving a data pad in front of Pinkie. “Watch this.”
Pinkie stared at the news report playing on the screen.
“A bombshell was dropped earlier today when a leaked report confirmed that the Twirell Corporation had prior knowledge of the rogue cyber pony involved in last week’s murder of a Ponyville repair technician. Tensions have been running high, and the reveal of Twirell’s extensive coverup has caused an enormous backlash from the public, with many pundits believing their actions directly enabled this tragedy to occur. The Equestrian legislature has launched a formal inquest into Twirell Corp, and the company’s stock has plummeted to the lowest levels since it first unveiled the cyber pony line nearly two centuries ago. Meanwhile, anti-cyber sentiment runs rampant through Ponyville, as public faith in Twirell to keep cyber ponies subservient dwindles. Many attacks against cyber ponies have already been carried out, and Equestrian authorities are struggling to keep up with the influx of these property crimes. Riots are just now beginning in the East Orchard and Everfree boroughs, and the mayor has ordered a lockdown on the Old Town to protect corporate offices.”
The coverage of the event was interspersed with footage of the panic brewing throughout the city. Mass marches, attacks against businesses, and worst of all, public lynchings. Pinkie cringed in horror at the footage of one cyber pony being descended upon by an armed mob and subsequently blown to pieces.
Dash set the pad down. “You and Jax aren’t safe here. We need to get you out of here now.”
Earl came between them. “I don’t know what’s going on out there, but I don’t care. I’m under strict orders. You need to leave.”
Dash leaned around him. “Pinkie, don’t you see? They’re keeping you prisoner. We have to get you out of the city, before—”
The floor hatch swung open, and Fluttershy emerged from the tunnels, out of breath.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re safe,” she said. “Ponyville is on the brink of war. It’s not secure here anymore, it’s just a matter of time before they pry the safehouse locations out of my rescues.”
“I know!” Dash shouted angrily. “I’m taking Pinkie and Jax, and we’re—”
“No, no,” Fluttershy interrupted, “we still need them. It’s not safe in the city, but I know somewhere safe to send you, out of Equestria’s reach. Just give me an hour to arrange transport, and—”
“No way!” she countered. “You screwed with Pinkie enough, I’m not letting you take her hostage!”
“You don’t understand. This has spun way too far out of control. The Equestrian government has a reach all over the universe, you can’t just keep running anymore, they’ll catch up to you. The only way you’ll be safe is if you let me help.”
“Let you help?” Dash ridiculed. “You caused this mess! Now you want to pretend you’re here to help us?”
“Stop it!” Pinkie yelled over them.
All eyes were locked on her now.
“Okay,” she said to Fluttershy. “We’ll go to your place.”
Fluttershy seemed appeased by her assent.
Rainbow Dash stared at her in disbelief. “Pinkie, you can’t—”
“BUT,” she continued, walking over to Fluttershy, “you’re coming with us. In Rainbow Dash’s ship.”
Fluttershy balked. “I— I can’t do that! I have to take care of my rescues, they need me to look out for them!”
“We’ll bring them,” Pinkie said. “As many as we can.”
Dash frowned. “I hate to break it to you, but the Genesis is a small ship. Four is already stretching its support systems pretty thin.”
“Fine,” Pinkie relented. “Just you, then. If you want us to trust you, you need to show us you mean it.”
Fluttershy sighed. “You don’t understand just how important you are.” She paused and looked down before conceding. “Okay. We’ll go together.”
She then turned to Flash, suddenly wearing a determined expression. “Unhook and reboot her. Destroy everything you have on her.”
“Everything?” he repeated.
“They’re coming,” she stressed. “Everything.”
He nodded and got to work.
She picked up the data pad and typed out orders for Earl.
I’m leaving you in charge. Go the house and tell the girls to board it up. Send them into the tunnels, and call in every last favor we have to evacuate them from the city. Be careful.
Earl hesitated a moment before bowing his head respectfully and descending down the hatch, into the tunnels.
“Better get your ship ready,” she told Dash.
Pinkie heard Applejack mumble behind her, and rushed over to meet her.
“Pinkie?” she asked, raising her head. “Did it work? Did they figure it out?”
“Come on. Everything went bonkers, we’re getting out of here.”
Fluttershy helped Pinkie bring her down from the table, and the group followed Rainbow Dash up the stairs.
“So long,” Flash said, watching them depart. “Good luck out there.”
Dash led them out of the safehouse and ran out into the street, where the Genesis was haphazardly parked, taking up the entire width of the road.
“Gah,” she groaned, seeing a traffic drone hovering above her ship issuing a ticket. She flew up into the air with grace, and swatted at it with her wings. “Shoo! Get out of here, there are riots going on, go do something useful with yourself!”
After a few solid whacks, the drone beeped erratically and flew off. Satisfied, she landed on the road and opened the door for them to enter. Keen to not be spotted, they all hurried straight inside and shut the door behind them. Fluttershy followed Dash to the bridge and took the copilot’s chair while Pinkie and Applejack strapped themselves in on the main deck.
“So where are we headed?” Dash asked. “Caelia? Ailles VO3? It’s not Torquek, is it?”
“No,” she replied. “It’s not a planet at all.”
Confused, Rainbow Dash turned to face her.
“Take us to New Cloudsdale.”
“Really? Are you serious?”
Remaining unwavering, Fluttershy nodded.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Dash said uncertainly.
Slowly, the Genesis rose through the air, and Ponyville shrank beneath them. As Pinkie peered through the window, she saw rising plumes of smoke scattered throughout the city.
Ponyville was falling.
Once they had ascended past the clouds, Applejack unbuckled her restraints.
“Pinkie, what’s going on?” she asked. “Why’d we have to leave all of a sudden?”
“Um, well…” Pinkie trailed off. “Things sorta got weird. Maybe you should ask Rainbow Dash.”
“Ugh,” she hissed. “Don’t tell me she turned on us again.”
“No, it wasn’t her! It was kinda… Fluttershy’s fault... but mostly mine, I shouldn’t have— wait, Jax, no, don’t yell at her!”
Pinkie fumbled to get out her restraints as Applejack stormed over to the bridge.
“What did you do?” she yelled, startling Fluttershy.
“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy stressed defensively. “Pinkie wanted to go out into the field. I tried to stop her, but I don’t own her. What was I supposed to do, imprison her?”
Applejack scowled at her. “Tell me what happened.”
“Pinkie killed somepony,” Rainbow Dash said solemnly, bluntly answering for her. “Somepony innocent.”
Applejack’s anger melted away instantly, leaving only a stunned silence between them.
Pinkie silently trudged over to her, hanging her head in shame. “I’m sorry, Jax,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to, it all just happened so fast, and I— I— oh, please don’t hate me…”
Without hesitation, Applejack pulled her in close and consoled her. “Hush, sugarcube. I know whatever you did, you didn’t mean to hurt anypony. You ain’t got an evil bone in your body.”
Pinkie buried her face in Applejack’s neck.
“So I reckon everypony knows now, huh?”
“It looks like it,” Fluttershy replied, staring out the windshield pensively.
“Then what’s the plan, Madame?” she asked, repeating her title with scornful contempt.
“We’re going someplace you’ll be safe, outside Twirell’s sphere of influence.”
“Yeah? Where’s that? The freakin’ moon?”
Fluttershy didn’t answer.
Dash broke the silence. “New Cloudsdale. They’re not a part of Equestria, and they really don’t like Equestria.”
“I think it’s better for you all to find out more once we get there,” Fluttershy said.
Applejack released Pinkie and marched closer to the copilot’s chair. “No, I think you ought to tell us now, ‘cause the way I see it, you ain’t given us one good reason to trust you.”
Holding steadfast, she glanced back at Applejack, meeting her tense stare.
“Five thousand, six hundred and twenty-seven.”
Applejack blinked.
“That’s how many cyber ponies I’ve saved. Compared to how many are out there, it’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s more than anypony else in the universe can say. In a cold, unforgiving world, compassion is the strongest weapon of all, and I haven’t lost a fight yet.”
She turned her back on Applejack, facing forward again. “I don’t think you want to bully me. Far stronger ponies than you have tried and come out worse for it.”
At a loss, Applejack stood down, returning to Pinkie’s side.
Rainbow Dash glanced over to them briefly, unnerved by the tension. “The trip will take a couple hours,” she said, changing the subject. “It’d be faster if we left the atmosphere, but with all the ships patrolling Low Equestrian Orbit, I don’t think we should risk it.”
“Do whatever you gotta,” Applejack muttered, taking Pinkie back to the main deck.
“Jax,” Fluttershy called out to her.
Applejack turned back to face her, waiting to see what she had to say for herself.
“Ponyville is going to war. And if we want to win, we need an army.”
The crew was largely silent for the rest of the trip. None of them had wanted their arrival in Equestria to play out so obliviously, and as each of them looked back, they regretted not being more cautious. As ironic as it sounds, they were too quick to trust. But the truth behind it was that they’d found their first safe haven since they began their journey; it was easy to scold themselves for complacency in retrospect, but none of them wanted to admit they’d been on the run for so long, that it was such a relief to find somewhere they could let their guard down, if only slightly. Still, in true form, they were never truly safe from the misfortune that sought them out wherever they went. At every turn, the situation grew more grim, and the Twirell Corporation was the looming goliath that looked bigger and badder with each passing day. By this point, it felt like they were just hopping from planet to planet, city to city, simply buying time, staving off their impending demise. No one was particularly optimistic about this next stop, because with the way things were going, it was bound to be just another in a long line of bad decisions.
But, between the four of them, none had any idea just how special this next stop was; what awaited them at their destination would defy anything they might have expected.
Pinkie stared absentmindedly at her hoof cannon, watching Nano crawl around the rim, his spindly legs rhythmically tip-tapping against the steel. The guilt of her mistake had been weighing on her greatly these past few days. The problem with having a digital memory combined with the fallibility of raw, unfettered compunction was that nothing was stopping her from playing the incident back in her head on an endless loop.
As it repeated over and over again, she loathed herself for her apparent lack of empathy. Reliving that scene, she felt more a shell of herself, trapped inside, watching as a mere spectator through her eyes. She was able to process information millions of times faster than any organic pony, but in that moment, she must have encountered a fatal error. It was like Pinkie.exe had crashed, and her base instincts took control.
She navigated through the menus in her HUD, poring through the log files of that incident, trying to understand why she acted the way she did. Any organic pony would chalk it up to a panic attack and take some small solace in their reaction being beyond their control, but organic ponies weren’t afforded the luxury of data logs detailing their entire thought process.
As she scanned the billions of lines, however, none of it clarified very much. Everything looked as it always did: a record of sensory input, thousands of different minutiae, the processing of that information, and the determination of how to interact with the stimuli. It was the feedback loop that governed every choice she made, and all she saw was everything that pointed toward the decision to kill. Though it surely didn’t feel that way in the moment, absolutely nothing had gone wrong. It was always meant to play out this way.
So what did it say of herself, that her most rational instinct was cold, rapidly-calculated murder? She had apparently been the only cyber pony designed with the freedom to kill. It didn’t feel right, or remotely compatible with who she was. All she wanted in life was to spread joy to the ponies she cared about, and to do what would make them happy. In pursuing that objective, her behavior protocol had reasoned the decision to fire was an acceptable means to that end. There was no excuse for her to hide behind. Cold, hard data doesn’t lie.
She was all too willing to kill a pony that didn’t deserve to die. And she had to live with that fact.
“We’re on approach,” Rainbow Dash called out from the bridge.
Pinkie looked up, and gasped at the landscape on the side of the window.
New Cloudsdale was most certainly a city of clouds, but it was also so much more. Massive floating steel buildings were weaved into the clouds seamlessly, the swirling tufts of vapor contrasting brilliantly against the dark metal. Below the city was an overcast valley surrounded by a mountain range, dotted with the remnants of tiny, long-forgotten buildings. In the center of the valley sat a giant ruined structure, the top half crumbled completely, its former luster stripped by ages of dust and ash. Whatever this civilization on the ground once was, it had been forsaken for ages, left to decay beneath the shadow of the floating metropolis suspended above it.
The Genesis slowed to a stop a few kilometers from the city, hovering in place above the mountain outskirts. Rainbow Dash was on the radio with someone in the bridge. Pinkie leaned forward in her seat, trying to hear. Through the doorway, she could see Fluttershy mouth something into the communicator, and after a few seconds, the ship started once again, as Dash flew them into the city.
Slowly, they descended onto the landing pad, a large metal platform built into a small cloud. Pinkie squinted at the surface, wondering how it was possible, but failed to find any indication of its design. With a much closer view of the city, she could see many ornately-shaped cloud buildings. The neo-futuristic edifices spread throughout the city were less classically-inspired, with each steel structure’s base built atop a cloud. Many of the roads and paths were comprised of assembled clouds, but most main throughways were artificial, connected by metal bridges that linked smaller clouds to the main ones.
As soon as their ship landed, a squadron of armed pegasi hustled up to the landing pad and surrounded them in formation, training their weapons. Two turrets emerged from the adjacent buildings, and a rooftop cannon locked on their position.
“By the order of New Cloudsdale, you are to remain in your craft until such a time you are deemed to not be enemies of the state,” one of them barked. “Shut off your engines and disable all weapons systems.”
“What’s going on?” Pinkie yelled, growing concerned.
“Come on,” Applejack said, undoing her restraints. “Let’s see what mess that Fluttershy went and dragged us into.”
Pinkie followed her to the bridge, where Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were sitting patiently.
“I knew we shouldn’t have come here,” Dash said, leaning her head against her hoof casually. “Bunch of paranoid crazies, that’s what they are.”
“Are we in danger?” Pinkie asked. “Are they gonna kill us?”
“Definitely not,” Fluttershy responded calmly. “They’re just being careful, that’s all. They know me. We work against a common enemy.”
A large pegasus, ordained in military garb, strolled up to the formation, and started conversing with the leader.
Rainbow Dash squinted at them. “Hey, Gene, point the parabolic mic at ‘em. I wanna know what they’re saying.”
The voices of the two pegasi began playing quietly through the speakers.
“…from your post? Give me a sitrep.”
“Our scan of the ship indicates four passengers inside: two pegasi, two cyber. Craft is registered Caelian, but our outpost data suggests they flew in from the south, well into Equestrian territory.”
“If you’re telling me I’m staring at an Equestrian scout, and you didn’t shoot them down at the perimeter…”
“Sir, it’s the Madame. She claims to be seeking political asylum.”
He stared straight through the windshield, locking eyes with the crew. “If she is who she says she is, her timing is no coincidence. Her precious city is crumbling beneath its own weight, just as I always said it would.”
Imprudently, Fluttershy pushed a button on the console, activating the ship’s loudspeaker. “You were right, General. Ponyville is doomed, while your city sits pretty. But if I hadn’t put those blasters you’re pointing at us in your hooves, we might be having a very different conversation. So lay them down, and let us out.”
For a brief moment, the General was startled that she’d heard him, but immediately, he shook it off and turned back around. “Stand down,” he ordered apathetically, as he walked off. “It’s her, alright. I’d recognize that bleeding heart anywhere.”
In unison, the blaster mounted on each pegasus lowered. They broke formation, pulled back, and congregated on the bridge linking the landing pad to the rest of the city.
Fluttershy climbed out of her seat. “Let’s go.”
“Thought you said you weren’t a gun runner,” Applejack muttered distrustfully, watching her walk past.
She glanced back. “The truth is always more complicated. We do what we have to, to help those we can.”
The four of them exited the ship onto the landing pad. Pinkie peered over the edge, to the valley far below.
“Careful,” Rainbow Dash warned. “Stick to the walkways. It’s a long way down, and with wings like these, I could probably catch you, but it’s better if we don’t have to find out.”
Fluttershy led them across the pad to the bridge, where the cluster of guards stood, awaiting them. “It’s been a long time since I set hoof on a cloud. I can hardly remember when that was…”
Suddenly, they heard a piercing voice from behind the guards.
“Is that them? It is, isn’t it? Let me through!”
The crew stopped and watched curiously as a pony pushed their way through the group on the bridge, and burst into view in front of them.
Applejack stared, mouthing hanging agape, too stunned to speak.
“Holy moly,” Pinkie whispered.
The pony standing before them, backed by a dozen guards, was none other than the Lady Life, Princess Twilight Sparkle.