☢★★ Black Swan ★★☢
Equestrian Airspace. Ruins of Hope. Altitude: 6096 meters. Estimated Date: September 13th, 2,293. 0739 hours.
Black Swan has reached the halfway point of her flightplan, and has reviewed critical data recorded by Whirling Gears. Gears' belief present ‘Gale Force’ is her uncle seems unfounded. Gales eyes were not evil. This entity’s eyes are evil. Swan has concluded this entity is somepony else.
Hon? Jack said over the comms, rudely interrupting my self narration. Do you really need to randomly narrate where you are and what you are doing in the fashion of the Process Jolt intro?
Yes. I reapplied flatly. I am a mare of culture, dang it! There are rules! I live— Uh, lived, in a society!
Okay, just checking.
I continued to fly along my pre-established rou—
Do you also have to do it in the main villain’s voice? He added timidly.
Yes.
Okay. He sighed.
I aimed my targeting senors downwards, deciding to see how badly the city I was passing over had fared. It was interesting to see the recontextualized state of the world. I’d always understood the Zebras had launched a ICBM strike, but this damage was more than their assault. It had been two hundred years of savages fighting over resources.
The poor shell of a town below was proof enough of that alone. Two hundred and sixteen years. Our ancestors had built Manehattan from nothing to a megalopolis in seven years, developing the magic and technology required along the way. Almost all necessary materials to assemble a fine town and start an industry lay in broken heaps below me.
For shame!
The Ponyville Carpenters Union would have cleaned all this up in months. At the longest!
...
They must have been caught directly in one of the balefire detonations.
But what of the others who knew how to use a hammer, saw, and wrench? Reduced numbers is matched with reduced resources, but such is irrelevant. There were places food could be found, hunted, or grown. Had there not been such places, pony kind would not have survived two hundred years.
Why then, had no new proper civilizations arisen around the new prime habitable zones? The Mend and Make Do mentality and movement I remember with digital clarity should have meant everypony in a town spent the Last Day mourning, then the next day sorting useable bricks from broken bricks, and the day after that helping the nearest surviving mason to build new homes, and repair still habitable dwellings. They had two centuries to make literally anything...
Instead, everypony seemingly decided to either be dirt farmers as if it were 11,000 BC, or techno-barbarians who raid dirt farmers.
It did not add up. We are ponies. Not those weird bipeds that fight all the time in that one colt’s cartoon.
I tuned my targeting systems to analyze the rubble out of morbid curiosity. How much sheet metal lay in the heaps? What of the concrete in recyclable condition? The timber, the fasteners?
Yes. There were weather-rotten resources aplenty. Just after the war, Equestrian civilization not only should have continued, but rebuilt. Within a decade, things should have been back to where they were before, just at a smaller scale.
What happened? Some effect of the Balefire? A mental compulsion to be primitive dickheads buried within the necromantic warhead somehow?
I shook my head, almost throwing myself off course. One of the rubble piles within Hope contained a rusted out but almost functional looking 2069 Arcana Athame J2. That autowagon could have easily been repurposed for plowing fields of any size, and the cargo bed would have been perfect for transporting scraps for recycling.
Yet there it lay, in a moldy, rusty, rotting pile of debris, along with—
ALPHA ALERT! OBJECT OF EXTREME INTEREST LOCATED AT GRID POINT 7.93 BY 9.02!— Oh, interesting. I haven't had that warning in quite some time.
I turned my attention to the grid coordinates indicated and zoomed in on what looked to be the corner of a small blue bookcase poking out from under a mattress.
Odd.
Why would I have set up an alert for a powder coated blue aluminum bookcase sized for a small novella? Did I need aluminium for something?
I checked my databanks.
No. I had sufficient aluminium.
I decided to make a quick loop so I could see the case from the angle I had been at when the alert had sounded. Maybe it was something beneath the case I had missed. Shame I couldn’t use an x-ray pulse at this distance and get meaningful data.
I banked left. Looped. Adjusted my focus point and managed to read the text printed on the side of the case.
Genesis Systems | Ultimatum IV: Quest of the Alicorn | Collector’s Edition
I heard my own gasp over the roar of my flight systems.
HOLY BUCK! WHAT IS THIS?! Forged in Celestia’s very flames! Do my sensors tell a lie, or is that a new Ultimatum game?!
I locked my S-Foils in Attack Position and dived for the case. My altimeter screamed some nonsense about a collision course. The ground shot towards me like a bullet. The winds buffeted me back and forth as I plunged through a patch of turbulent air.
Stay on target...
I rolled, spread my wings to aerobrake, extended a mec arm, and snatched the case out from under the mattress as I slung my momentum laterally to perform a hard-g turn.
“Eeeeeeeeeee!” I yelled in elation as I squeezed the case to my barrel and gave it an affectionate nuzzle. “I’mma play you in my brain now, okay?”
I brought a robotic limb to my barrel to start unbuttoning my robe so I could access my holotape cartridge reader, when I heard my husband sigh. So that’s where Gears gets it from…
Oh! Don’t worry hon. I’ll copy the files, break the copy protection, then send you a copy first! I promised.
Am good horse wife. :smile_01:
Jack murmured quietly. Hon? Hon? You can play that any time. You have it now. Gears needs help, remember?
OH. Right. Yes. That had happened.
wbadmin start systemstatebackup –backupTarget:Eeeee!: (-quiet)
restore systemstate -Target:RAGE!Ah. There we go. Properly livid with the option to restore emotional state later. Resuming search and destroy mission at point 1b…
I tucked the game’s case into my saddlebag. But only after taking off the seal, opening the case, and putting on the totally badflank brass ankh necklace the box had said was inside.
☢★★◯★★☢
Equestria. Primary SPP Hub. Altitude 6096 meters. Estimated Date: September 13th, 2,293. 0851 hours.
Black Swan has arrived at the SPP tower. The artificial leyline systems created by the towers to permit its primary function have created an incredible nexus of spiritual energy around the tower. If inhabited by a spirit, it will prove a formidable opponent. Swan must now interface with its systems to gather intelligence on the location of Gear’s murderers.
Oh! Buck! Jack said out of nowhere. Uh, hon, so it turns out that—
Shhhh! I mentaly hissed, cutting Jack off. I will need to concentrate.
Gears survived!
I blinked, banked and pulled into a hover just over the very top of the tower’s tallest spire, the ground below me hidden by a low hanging cloud. Oh. Well, that’s good. Less repairs for me to make.
Yeah! So you can go ahead and—
I nodded. Understood. Reevaluating course of action.
My little filly was alive! But someone had hurt her.
I brought one of the mec limbs tipped with a plasmacaster into my primary sensors’ field of view and examined the tip. The elegant needle-like points. The little crystal matrix held in the socket. The intricate iron tendril segments.
I lowered the frequency of the plasma. Theoretically, it would now hurt more when the superheated gasses were disintegrating their flesh and bone.
Task complete, I reported to Jack.
... I am very glad I never missed a Hearts and Hooves day present. Jack said with an odd little twinge.
Given recent calendar updates, and data from Gear’s fragmented database you have missed over a hundred, I corrected.
Oh no!
Correct. I will have to build you a remote drone body, then bap your snoot.
I turned my attention to the tower below me. An elegant structure to be certain. A towering spire, with many sub spires, bristling with high-power transceiver dishes and omnidirectional antennae, to say nothing of the forest of thaumic field emitters.
Ah, the power one could feel at this altitude, at the center plexus of this artificial leyline network.
I let the power wash over me for several long moments, allowing the overwhelming torrent of energy to penetrate into my essence.
It was so perfectly refined. The opposite of the naturally occurring bands of arcane power I had worked with before. Nature, so disgusting and prohibitive. Technology, beautiful and permissive.
One day, ponykind will fully tame nature. Then all would be able to feel the godly perfection of such perfectly refined thaumic fields. Probably when they were integrated into massage chairs!
I shifted my attention away from physical sensations and into the realm of the immaterial. The SPP tower glowed with power like a small sun. Appropriate for the alleged resting place of Princess Celestia.
Gears may fully believe Pip’s story, but I did not. The mare was certainly very psychologically unstable. I could easily envision her waiting for my therapist for an appointment. So much unattended trauma on top of religious zeal and delusions of inferiority… At the end of her story, Pip’s status as narrator was not something I would be willing to rely upon for objective facts.
A little observation and measurement to back up Pip’s claims was something I intended to retrieve immediately.
I threw my full will against the tower’s spiritual presence. I probed every last stone, cog, wire, and bolt within the structure, searching for any sign of life, spiritual or otherwise.
Ah, there were three. Two faint, and located behind an impressive shield array. A flux-pinned particle barrier supplemented by a photonic resonance matrix and powered by a soul-jar of all bucking things. Impenetrable to conventional tactics. Potentially vulnerable to a pinpoint application of the Kale maneuver.
I took a moment to theorize on the plausibility of this particular shield being vulnerable to the accidental bypass discovered by my old lab partner. It could be performed on any of the G3 shield systems. This system seemed to be a modified G3… But the power source was likely too big for anypony to apply the method in a practical sense.
I would have to get my hooves, or more likely, the find point electrode on arms 2, 4, and, 8 on the shield’s surface and attempt to perform the maneuver. Regardless of the ability to bypass the shield, at least I now knew Littlepip was correct about Celestia’s fate. Presumably, the other lifesign within the shield would be her within the pod. The third must be the tower’s spirit.
Given Pip’s current health status, standing at the base of the tower and calling up for assistance was unlikely to yield a result. Attempting to speak with Celestia would require entering the shield bubble. Pip’s story rudely didn’t include the location of Spike’s cave, or at least Gear’s databanks were lacking that chunk of the story if it existed.
I had two options. Either I tried to create a temporary gap in a 1.21 petawatt shield bubble with the Kale maneuver, possibly damaging several of my manipulators byond even magical repair, or I asked the tower’s spirit to get Pip’s attention for me.
I took a moment to weigh both options…
Hon… Just ask the spirit, Jack sighed through my comm channel.
Dear… You’ve never had to deal with a teenage colt who thinks they are a god and has the power to back that claim up somewhat.
Jack was quiet for a moment. Mmmm. I see… Try the shield.
I sighed and shut my sensors off for a moment to simulate closing eyes. Your first idea was probably correct.
I focused my attention on the tower’s machine spirit, ensuring it would know I was looking specifically at it. It would be young, but quite powerful. Nothing to trifle with, but not impossible to dominate if I remained strategic in my actions. Hopefully, it would yield to me willingly.
I decided to approach it openly, and gathered my hatred for my daughter’s attackers along with every ounce of determination to bring them to the reaper’s final justice, then forged the emotion into words the spirit would understand.
“Greetings, Single Pegasus Project.”
The spirit’s response was instant, and enthusiastic. “Greetings, warlock! How are you today? Are here to fill the accumulated 892 outstanding repair tickets?”
“No, I am not. I’m here for a favor. Do it and I will perform your repairs later.”
I felt the spirit hesitate. It seemed to growl slightly. “What is this, favor?”
“Are you able to provide observational data from your espionage systems without a host?” I asked hopefully.
“No. A hacker disrupted this system. Only user Littlepip and Unauthorised Connection can access the camera array at this time.”
I sighed internally and readied myself for whatever bargain the tower would try to make in order to pass a simple message. “Then I require you to allow me to speak to Pip directly. I require information.”
“Ah, you are with the others.” The spirit said, its presence starting to burn and flicker with power as it put on a show to scare me off. “Fools! I have been constructed to harness powers the like of which not even a warlock such as yourself has ever seen! You shall never breach my defences.”
Others? Interesting.
“I came with no others. I am here alone. I seek only to locate my daughter’s attackers so I can kill them,” I said with cold sincerity. “You can assist me, or learn how arrogant the assessment of your power is.”
I felt the spirit laugh. “Arrogant? Fool. I sit upon a leyline channeling magic from across the whole of Equestria to the top of my spires. I am bound indirectly to the soul of an Alicorn, and through her to the very sun. None shall breach my walls.”
I cracked my neck, and gave the machine spirit my best thousand yard stare. “I am a mother. My child was hurt. You are in my way. Your power is nothing. Stand aside or be consumed.”
“My function is to protect my occupants,” The spirit said with adamantine determination. “None shall pass.”
I frowned. My body shifted somewhat as I moved my flight rig into a more stable hovering configuration. This could get ugly… Hopefully after a bit of a dick and clit measuring contest the little idiot would comply.
First, one last try at a simple request. “I command you, as She Born of Mag'ladroth, to stand aside!”
The spirit glared back at me. “I move... for nopony.”
In his defense, he is a building. That makes it hard to move. Jack said observantly.
I didn’t have time to deal with my husband’s technical correctness at the moment.
“So be it,” I said to the SPP’s spirit.
It was time to put this leyline to use.
Hey hon, remember that silly cartoon you loved to watch on your little portable TV you always plugged into me at night? I asked Jack.
Duh. Why?
What was that one song they played when Sweet Carrots would power up?
I felt Jack’s giggle through the comm. You’re not!
I am. It’s fitting.
It’s Ascension to Awesomeness by Robot Breezie Attack on their album 20% Cooler Than Awesome. Oh uh, the instrumental version. The normal version is a hilarious power ballad that I swear is sung by Miss Rainbow but there’s no way a ministry mare ever recorded something like that. He answered with another little giggle.
Thanks, dear! I said as I qued the song up on my external speakers, simply fetching it from the OST I’d stored locally for Jack in case he lost his holotape of the show.
“I know you’re familiar with a shaman's strength,” I said to the spirit, distracting it as I entwined my essence with the power I’d allowed to slip into it before.
“Before the hacker blinded me, I knew all and saw all. I have seen Shamen. I have seen Warlocks. You cannot overpower me,” The spirit insisted.
I smiled, and allowed my aura to burn with the same light I had seen in my mentor as a little filly. My memory was hazy… I couldn’t remember his name. Or face. Just that he had been a zebra and the janitor in my parents apartment building. He had been a warlock too. He’d shown me the way to not merely make requests of spirits, but to command them as a superior.
I wish the MAS hadn’t erased my memory so many times… I’d have liked to remember him more.
Also too bad he wasn’t still around. I could show him how to do things with them as friends. Much better system that.
“Exactly,” the SPP’s spirit said mockingly. ”Your light pales compared to mine, warlock. Flee or burn at my pleasure.”
“I’m just making sure you're not lying,” I said smugly. “This is indeed your typical warlock’s full channeling range.”
I tripled the power flowing to my aura. Fortunately, such things were invisible to ponies. Unfortunately, if any Shamen were within a few kilometers and looking up they’d probably be a bit scared.
“And this is a warlock bonded to an older spirit,” I informed flatly.
The air around me grew cold. Clouds began to form from nothing. Thunder rumbled, and rain began to fall within seconds. Not the spirit’s doing. It had likely communed with Pip and asked her to make it a storm. I could feel her presence in the structure, commanding its systems in real time.
Cute.
“This is my power. I span a continent. At my heart is the soul of an Alicorn. I command the very skies… if the pony in my care wills it…”
I nodded once. “I am aware your mistress is conjuring a storm for you. I can sense her inside your shield.”
“NO!” The SPP’s spirit blurted a bit too quickly. “That’s me! I’m doing it!”
“And this…” I said with a smirk. “Is the power of a warlock, born of mutual desire to survive, formed from a prodigy and a truly ancient essence… Who can draw on the same power source as you!”
I let the song play and pulled every last ounce of power from the leyline nexus into my being.
Big mistake.
The pain was immediate and total.
Everything burned. It felt like when I was in the iron lung after the zebras bombed my first workshop. Somepony screamed.
It was probably me.
All I could think of was the fire melting my circuits, even as the power I drank in forced them to reform and repair instantly. That, and Rule 22 of the Sparkle Guide to Mad Science. Never attempt to consume an energy field bigger than your own head.
Now I remember… great! Perfect timing, brain. This is why I digitize reminders!
I’d pulled too much energy into too small of a space, and still was… uncontrollably. I’d become the fuelle for an arcane singularity!
My sensors began to register my aura in the visible spectrum as purple and black smoke-like tendrils drifting off my body as if I were smouldering. The arcane pressure created by the well I had opened forced the storm clouds back and away, creating an eye within the storm.
“Uhh…” the Spirit said with the slightest quaver in its mental voice.
Oh good! It was working. Too bad I couldn’t stop… This was going to be a very explosive situation soon enough. At least, if I couldn’t move from this spot. If I could, the singularity would disperse on its own.
I grit my teeth and curled up, hoping I could squirm free of the very bad idea I’d woven into and around myself before I was destroyed faster than I was repaired. The fire inside graduated to lava.
If I could just… move… out… of… the… zone… burning...
I sprang outwards, moving my limbs as far out as I could, hoping the explosive motion would knock me clear. It did not. It did however unleash a wave of power sufficient to shake the top of the spire and awaken a good hundred dormant spirits resting in destroyed machinery at the base of the tower, though.
Oops. Hadn't meant to revive anything. Wait, had I stopped screaming? Yes. It hurt too much to scream now.
“I uh… See your point there…” The SPP’s spirit said somewhat worriedly.
Oh good, he hasn’t realised this was an accidental self-destruct yet. If I could abort it, then—
Something raced up towards me from the ground. My systems registered rocket motors on a collision course for me. The little bastard had fired some point defense system at me?!
I twisted a sensor arm to get a view of the inbound rockets and readied a second to bathe them in a hail of plasma bolts.
It wasn’t rockets.
It was whoever had found Gale’s armor.
Racing up from the ground towards me.
Hey! Convenient. When I overloaded and exploded, he’d be vaporised too! Good.
The daughter-hurting-monster activated his air brakes and came to a stop a short distance from me. ”I see, you’re holding back the storm, not causing it. Good work, soldier. Keep it up another ten minutes and we’ll be in the front door. Which unit are you with? I don’t have any cyberponies in mine.”
He… He thought I was helping him? Wait, my actions were actually helping him?!
U͈͔̦̰N͇̙A͖̗̩̘̗C̰̟C̹̟͈͔̩̗E̵͚P̠͖̯͇T̟͔̞̟̣A͎̺̮̝̠̕B͕̪̱̳L҉E̡͓̤!͈͝
I let out an unearthly scream, ripped free of the power well, grabbed him by the throat, and hit my thrusters on full, aiming directly for the ground.
We took off like a rocket, plunging through the bottom of the aerial leyline system almost immediately. My subconscious registered this would prevent the overload and explosion.
A shame.
The SPP’s spirit said something about not realizing I was here to kill the people breaking in. An apology maybe.
I was too distracted by the astonishingly wasteful amount of bullets flying literally everywhere and getting ready to slam this son of a bitch into the ground at mach 2 to pay attention to it anymore.
WOOOM!
We hit the ground. It hurt. I was too mad to care. I was also very much stunned and my overcharged spiritual reserves were busily repairing a lot of impact fractures. That I cared about.
The impact seemed to have knocked my stranglehold loose. Unacceptable!
The monster squirmed out from under me and threw me aside with a grunt. “It’s gone berserk!” he bellowed. ”Restrain it. I’m sure the Doc will want to try and fix it.”
I tried to move. Still stunned. I’d forgotten to activate inertial dampening wards. A mistake I wouldn’t make again.
I willed every fiber of my being to move. To ignore the damage and function. To destroy the power armor clad stallion in the center of my field of view.
It wouldn’t respond. Ripping free from the singularity I’d been fueling must have done a bit of damage. Hopefully function would return in a moment. Otherwise…
I took a moment to examine my surroundings. I was next to a deep crater I’d made inside a big junk mound. Gale was walking out of the crater towards the tower’s main entrance. A small squad of power armored soldiers and a few of the Tainted’s infantry ponies stood near it.
The infantry ponies were standing on guard, clearly there to secure the entrance once opened. Aside from the monster tainting the name of my brother by abusing his armor, there was a huge pony wearing armor that was seemingly a walking tank, complete with turret (I wanted it badly. Cool things are cool. But there would be time to admire it more later). Another had a sleek version of the Air Scorpion armor, modded out to carry a pair of linear canons on each side which were set up for extreme long range firing given the helmet’s integral scope system. The last was clad in what looked like a normal set of Steel Ranger armor, but black, and with a pipbuck built into the right foreleg.
The last pony had jacked his armor into the door’s terminal. Clearly trying to hack it open.
I see. The SPP’s spirit had thought I was with them. Understandable.
Also holy crap the tank-pony was huge. Bigger than Celestia huge, maybe! It was hard to tell from this angle and distance. Note to self, ask for height before destroying.
“Sir,” the black-armored pony engineer said with a sigh. “I’m almost in, but I’m still very busy. Falcon isn’t equipped to restrain anypony. Loom’s needed here in case there’s internal security and we need sompony to fire a round or three into the lobby. Unless you think the B-Team here can hold down a mad Cyberpony that you probably just killed, I suggest you handle it.”
“He’s right, sir,” the tank-pony added. “If I have to shoot from over there, I could damage something critical inside it by accident. What if I take out the main support block? We’re here to try and rescue Celestia, not collapse a tower on her. Buck, this little trip isn't even authorized. They may not punish us for trying if we fail because we just can't get to her, but if we kill her, Doc Silver’s going to have us all shot as traitors.”
To my surprise, not-Gale nodded. ”Right enough… Don’t worry about the Doc. I overheard him debating sending us to do this. It’s why we’re here. If he thinks this might be possi— Ah, there’s the stim pack injection! Black Hat, keep working on the security codes.”
He turned around to face me, popped his neck, and for some uncelestialy reason opened his visor to reveal the same pair of hate filled evil eyes that I had seen in Gear’s databank.
Shame I was a mare. It would be really nice to gouge that child-hurting-monnster’s eyes out and skullbuck him to death!
…
No. No, he’d probably like that.
I tried to move. My forelegs twitched slightly.
Not-Gale walked towards me, glaring directly into my visor as he took each havey step towards me. ”On second thought, my Corporal is correct. We’re not equipped to take prisoners. Especially not one, now that I think of it, is dressed in a silly halloween costume, rather than an engineer’s uniform. Do you know who I am, spy?”
I managed to open my mouth to speak. “It’s… not… silly… Mom, made… it… for… me!”
It was the only thing she ever made for me… probably. Stupid mind-wipes.
I struggled to my hooves. My spiritual power surged with the movement. It wasn’t under my conscious control yet, but maybe soon. System diagnostics showed my shields had recharged. With luck, I could take a few quarters of a second of fire from Not-Gale’s microguns before they failed. By then, maybe my power would be back.
Not-Gale spun up his front two cannons. I brought a plasma caster to bear and tried to fire, but my fire control circuit wasn’t responding. Ponyfeathers!
You’d better fix yourself soon, or we’re toast, me!
“I am the blood that boils in the heart of the beast, a killing machine with a hunger deep.”
His words hit me like that skybus had when I was six.
“Excuse me,” I said holding up one grabby-claw tipped mech limb. “What the buck?!”
Not-Gale’s glare deepened. “I was born to the beating drums of war—”
Holy bucking cow, Batmare! He was!
“Are you trying to intimidate me by quoting the opening lyrics of the Wonderbolts cartoon?” I asked while staring into his death-glare with my mouth agape.
“Is that what that’s from?!” The huge tank pony said in a mare’s voice before letting out one loud and long “HA!”
To my surprise, Not-Gale stopped in his tracks. “No! It’s a regimental ballad sung by—”
“Commander McCool,” I finished with a smirk. “The fictional leader of the Wonderbolts, in a colt’s cartoon. I watched that every day with my big brother growing up. You can’t fool me!”
My spirit slid back into my conscious mind like an oily plastic bag. I wasn’t in full control yet, but I had some… and it looked like I’d picked up a whole heap of excess power just ready to burn. If I could just buy another few seconds…
Not-Gale’s glare deepened until I wondered if his suit’s medical systems were using stim-pakcs to prevent his eyes from popping out of their sockets. Okay, now he was going to kill me for sure. A shame, since I wasn’t quite able to unleash my burning hatred on him quite yet.
Wait a moment. He seemed to respond to taunting with anger. Most ponies did not have electronic emotion governance. If he was angry he’d make more mistakes than me.
Idea!
“Hey,” I said loudly, so his squad would hear me clearly. “You know what’s more intimidating than foal’s show lyrics?”
I reached down with my left hoof and yanked a length of pipe out of the junk pile.
Not-Gale snorted in dismissal. “If I wasn’t in power armor, threatening to hit me with a pipe might be slightly worrying. But I am, traitor.”
I shook my head. “Noononono,” I offered him a hate-filled smile. “This is a prop!”
For the moment at least. I began directing what little power I could channel into the pipe, preparing it to change shape to my needs. A cheaty, short term, very temporary means of creating items, but one that would work for at least a hooffull of uses. Which was all I needed today.
I reared up on my hind legs, balancing by extending my robotic limbs and wings, and quickly modulated my voice to mimic a deeper, sltry, exotic mare. "I am Terra, Princess of Aeondra. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said, by the Power of Sleipnir!"
I swiftly trust the pip upwards, willed it to take the form of Swordmare’s sword and bellowed "I HAVE THE POWER!"
It would have been really cool if it had worked. Instead Gale just glared at me while the tank-mare collapsed in a laughing fit.
“Luna’s mane, the balls on that little mare,” she sobbed as she stood back up and Not-Gale continued to fume.
“Bigger than yours,” the engineer agreed. “And that’s saying a good five hundred pounds of something.”
I winced as I managed to perceive the tank-mare’s hurt look through her helmet.
Not-Gale took another step towards me and spooled up the rest of his guns. “I’m going to turn you to paste, you pathetic bucket of bolts!”
A twinge of fear raced through my circuits. For whatever reason, this caused me to jump on the next dumb cartoon quote my brain thought of. “Don’t be deceived by appearances. My true form is far more powerful!”
Not-Gale hesitated for half a second. That was all the processing time I needed to realise that while I couldn’t control my power, I had awakened a bunch of mostly inert spirits and I was still basically glowing with spiritual energies.
I extended my will to the spirits in the junk around me, inviting them to drink from my power in exchange for a simple service.
“Ancient spirits of progress,” I said, outloud, because a bunch of rotary cannons pointing into your face is pretty scary.
For whatever reason, extending my will caused my aura to remanifest as visible light, blanketing me in a black and purple nebula.
Oh. Good! Now I could block those bullets. Possibly. Probably not. But… if I could just finish...
I grit my teeth and just rolled with speaking out loud even though it was slower. “Transform your decaying forms, and slay my enemies!”
“WARLOCK!” Not-Gale shrieked as his faceplate dropped shut with a hiss.
The junkpile beneath my hooves began to shake. Gale’s weapons erupted in a blaze of fire. Bullets streaked towards me. The first few splattered against my shields. The next shattered them. A round whizzed past my ear—
The junk pile exploded upwards, carrying me into the sky with it as the hundreds of separate spirits animated the broken machinery, twisting and buckling it into a new form. They worked in concert with one another. Unusual. I had expected a few junk golems to harass and maybe injure the monsters we faced.
This was something new. Something unexpected.
“I told them you were avenging your filly,” the SPP’s spirit whispered to me.
“Oh. Thank you.”
Bless his young little CPU! You’re going to get so many repairs once I’m done!
I could feel the fragmented spirits searching my essence for ideas for a form to take. They were enraged. They hated foal abusers as much as any true-blooded Equestrian. We would slay the monster as one.
A tank shell punched a hole in the scrap metal cocoon shielding me. Fortunately it missed. We had little time to plan.
It should be something primal. Something predatory. Something unquestionably enraged.
My inner 5 year old offered a suggestion. I loved it and passed it on. Everyone liked it.
Rusty metal creaked and groaned as it folded into shape. Shards of smashed vertibuck hulls ripped apart into leg-length metal teeth. Sparks hissed and spattered as metal fuzed together, powered by the will of our collective rage.
Our swarm knew my filly was alive… but also that this monster had cut another filly in half. The rage guided the morphing junk pile, adding detail to the machine we forged. The transforming machinery guided me to the center of our creation, where the spirits left control ports for me to jack into. I connected to them as they formed.
It was complete. Now I too had power armor. It stood on two taloned feet in a pseudo-bipedal stance, balanced by a long tail made from the folded hull of a cloudtank. It had no weapons, for it was a weapon. I bent down, angling my head to get the spotlight/camera cluster eyes roughly level with Not-Gale’s bite sized form, opened my mouth, and attempted to inform him of just how bucked he was.
I did. But not in words as I’d intended. Instead, a mechanical roar produced by vertibuck rotors spinning and grinding against metal like an army of malfunctioning tablesaws, modulated through several turbo chargers made the point abundantly clear.
That point being: I am a motherbucking T-Rex!
“NNNNNNNNOPE!” The sniper-pony yelped, immediately taking off.
The regular infantry began to run for the hills as well.
Not-Gale began to spray me with bullets. They punched into my outer layers, stinging like ants.
I lunged forwards and snapped shut my jaws, teeth producing a shower of sparks from the force. They clipped the front of his left-forward cannon and sheared through. The gun misfired, clicked, jammed. I wrenched my head to the left. The weapon’s mount held and Not-Gale came with it.
I opened my mouth and threw him into the side of the tower. A cannon shell exploded against my chest, knocking me to a knee. I stood back up, scrap metal glowing near the hit, and swung my tail into the tank pony, pinning her to the side of the tower as I sprinted towards my enemy, unleashing a second roar.
A series of small explosions severed my left foot, forcing me to plow into the ground and miss my target.
What?! How?!
I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The Engineer pony. He had clusters of small explosives attached to lengths of chains. He threw them like a lasso. Interesting. I’d have to make something like that for myself in the future.
Repair locomotion system, I ordered the swarm
Tendrils of purple-black energy linked my ankle to the severed foot, and dragged it over, fuzeing it back in place with a hiss and sizzle of molten metal.
I felt a spirit detach from the swarm and slide into a junk pile. I stood up. The departed spirit stood too. It had taken over an old Air Scorpion suit, amusingly enough with a pegasus skeleton inside.
The spirit forced the armor to charge the Engineer while firing the SMG still in the armor’s battle saddle. The Engineer shrieked something about necromancy.
I turned to charge my prey. It greeted me with a hale of gunfire. This time aimed at my not very well armored legs. The bullets sparked, ricocheted, punched through… Hydraulic lines gushed fluid. Unfortunately for him, this construct was not animated by the laws of physics. No. This was approximately 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentration and power of will, 5% pleasure, and 50% R̞̥͈̤A̵̺̩̯̯̦̫G͓͇̘̪̖E̱̝̬͓̘̝ͅ!̶̩͎̗
One of his bullets pierced the swarm’s creation and twacked me in the head. It didn't cause any damage, but it did hurt. If I took too long, the junk protection would be eroded and not slow the rounds enough to prevent death.
The impact did however trigger my music player, which began blasting an old HMFoals album at top volume.
I left it running. I’d played that while playing Battlemace 42M. It was only fitting to play it during an actual war too.
I lunged at Not-Gale and snapped my jaws. He dodged at the last moment, rolling to the side. I snapped again. He dodged, rolling between my legs. I smashed my tail into the ground, smashing a shallow trench into the earth.
Several more spirits departed to assist their brother piloting the decrepit Air Scorpion, causing more of the decaying armored suits lying within the belly of a downed troop carrier to rise from their graves.
The Tank-Pony fired a second shot at me. The round buried itself in my shoulder and exploded, blasting off my left arm. I spun around, jumped, landed in front of her and roared.
Translation: Buck off, lady! This has nothing to do with you.
Apparently she spoke Robot-Dinosaur because she took a step back and reapplied “Yeah, okay!” with a nervous flutter to her voice.
Good.
I returned my attention to dispensing bite-shaped justice to monsters.
A hail of bullets ripped through my right side, two of them pierced my actual flank as well. Not good. Little time remained. We would need to find more armored plates in the junk pile or end this quickly.
I spun to face the bullets and charged. This time, Not-Gale failed to charge. My iron-shard teeth clamped around his right shoulder, waist, and flank.
YEEEEEEEEES!
I bit down with all the all 10,000 tons of pressure the landing ramp hydraulics on my jaw would permit. Not-Gale continued to fire directly into my face, aiming where a brain would be.
Fool. I am the heart of this swarm.
His armor cracked, buckled, and then ruptured as the teeth plunged through. He screamed. Apparently I had missed putting a tooth through his head.
My warlock, one of the stronger spirits still capable of speaking whispered.
Yes?
We should eat him.
YES! I replied with a smile.
”Retreat!” Not-Glae ordered, twisting in my jaws as I swept my head back.
Fool. You are going nowhere aside from this industrial shredder.
”Gale to Star Drop! Emergency Beam Out! NOW!”
My cores burned with rage. Oh, hell no! You do NOT get to sully his name, too!
I flung my prey upwards and opened my jaws.
Not-Gale’s form shimmered with rainbow light.
No…
He began to drop. The shimmering intensified, I strained upwards.
Noooooo!
I jumped, snapped shut my jaws, and felt the spell effect complete. Not-Gale had escaped.
I roared in rage.
Translation: SON OF A BITCH!
I rammed my head into the ground several times to release some of the accumulated fury. After the fifth blow I noticed the tank-mare was still here, slowly walking backwards along the curve of the tower.
Hello, there…
I took the 8 steps needed to reach her as slowly and menacingly as possible.
She froze, laughed nervously and asked. “Uhhh, can we pretend you didn’t smash my teleport transceiver to powder and I’m not here right now, please?”
No.
I commanded the swarm to open our creation’s chest, forming a ramp so I could walk out.
The mare gulped audibly. She was properly afraid. Good. That meant she would be compliant.
I descended the ramp, extending several of my mec-limbs to raise me off the ground as I went. I wanted to be at her eye level when I got up to her face.
To her credit, the mare remained where she was. Or perhaps now that I was no longer in the barely-working mech I was less intimidating. A problem I could resolve.
I grabbed the mare’s helmet with my forehooves and pulled her face down so she was looking into my sensor visor.
“Hello,” I said in as calm a voice I could manage. “My name is Black Swan. Your friend hurt my filly. He has to die.”
She flinched. “Oh… Uh… Yeah, I heard he killed that little filly playing police. He’s.. kinda more bucked up than I remember. Sorry…”
I shook my head. “No. Not her. Whirling Gears. She’s a postmare.”
She shook slightly. “Wait, you’re Gears’ mom?”
I nodded. “Correct. State your friend’s location. He has to die.”
“He’s in space right now,” she answered, clearing her throat. “So, uh, unless you can conjure a space ship…”
“Understood,” I said before silently asking the swarm of spirits if there was sufficient parts and fuel to construct a rocket.
There was not. The swarm was sad.
Fortunately, I had a solution.
Find a robot or armor frame, and animate it. I ordered. We ride for the scrapyards of Whinnyapolis.
I let go of the tank mare as my small army of scrapped armor rose from the junk piles, shaking off years of sand, rust, and ash.
“You’re coming with us,” I stated.
“A— Actually,” she said heastently.
“You’re coming with us,” I repeated.
She nodded, then opened her helmet’s visor. She had very kind looking eyes. “Yeah… Uh… Look, Intell says Gears is alive. She’s the only mare who was ever nice to me for no reason at all. I— I’ve been trying to get my friends to leave the guy we’re working for. Something’s not right with everything he says, but they won't listen.”
She bent down slightly, and sighed. “I— I’m going to have to leave them. You don’t need to cuff me or anything. I’ll go with you willingly. Their cause isn’t worth fighting for.”
I titled my head. “Are you stating you met and like my daughter?”
The big mare nodded. “Well, yeah. As a friend.”
“Oh!” I smiled. “Good! She never had many of those.”
I turned to four of the machine spirits who were busy digging one of their comrades new forms out of the rubble. You five, carry this mare with us. She’s on our side.
As you command, my Warlock.
Hopefully my swarm could feed themselves long enough to remain active… and preferably indefinitely. I wasn’t about to risk flying back into the leyline to recharge so I could power them up more and/or again.
“My friends will carry you with us,” I said as I lowered myself back to my hooves. “We are going to Whinnyapolis. The scrapyard near Lyra Machine and Tool had some of everything pre-war. It should easily yield a one-use rocket now. Ponies have foolishly not used any resources to rebuild, so they must all remain as they were.”
The tank-mare nodded once. “Yeah… that’s why Doc was able to trick me into thinking it had only been a few years…”
I tilted my head. “Explain?”
“Oh, I’m pre-war. My squad and I were in stasis pods. Commander Dash said she needed to test them out,” she extended her left hoof for me to shake. “I’m Ribbon Loom.”
My ears perked up. “Oh! Like the wrestler? My husband loved her.”
Loom smirked. “Yes, I am like me.”
I tilted my head in confusion. I didn’t get her joke. Probably because Jack was busy eeeing really loudly into my comms.
Whatever.
I opened my wings. Let’s fly!