//------------------------------// // Illogical Progression // Story: Magic's Birth: The Sisters' Memories // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// Luna started floating around the scrapyard, fumbling through the organized piles and grabbing all manner of wiring and stray metal lying hidden under the ground. She used her own metal covering to hold it all up just like she used to do at her home. "What are you doing?" the technician asked her. "How are you doing that?" The blue machine turned around. A whole half of her vision was hidden by a box filled with a non-leaky battery. "Gathering," she answered plainly. "Yes, I can see that. What for?" he asked as Luna dropped the box next to her gathered scraps. "Are you trying to create an entirely functional robot out of what you gathered?" He laughed. "You barely have anything close to enough parts for that." "My database is devoid of any knowledge on the construction of another machine." Luna grabbed a green plate of metal then looked over to her sister. "My sister might have the knowledge, but I only have the knowledge of what kind of machines exist and have existed. There are gaps in that knowledge." "So why are you gathering all of that if not to build a robot?" the technician repeated. Luna gave pause before resuming her act of fumbling through her new pile and untangling the damaged wires. "Don't know." The maker leaned against his cane while he watched the blue machine go to work on her bizarre project. Well, he watched her until he got distracted by Celesta wandering around the yard, rotating as she moved forward. He was so perplexed at her behavior that he became distracted and just stared. She would swing around scrap, fly over robot husks, and climb aboard the giant of a machine setting up the service stations. To the technician's relief, his refurbished construction bot remained on task, either completely oblivious to or just outright ignoring Celestia's bizarre adventure. "This goes beyond some kind of code evolution," the technician mumbled aloud. He ducked when Celestia dashed towards him to jump overhead. "What's wrong with you?!" he yelled angrily. "Databases says that populations perform strange movements and alterations of their body's natural positions in varying speeds and poses," Celestia explained. "You mean dancing?" the male asked. Celestia put an arm to the end of her 'muzzle' and twitched. "That is the name?" The male looked at her sideways. "Yes. Why are you dancing?" he asked. The white machine paused. "Unknown," she said. Shaking his head, the technician wondered what had reached his scrap yard. "You two are very bizarre machines. You do things and you don't even know why you do it." Celestia shrugged in response, perplexing the maker even further. "Do you even know what you did there?!" "I do," Celestia said. Celestia watched the maker's eye twitch. "What is this selective knowledge?! How do you know things and not know things but do them anyways?" He dragged a hand across his face and was just about ready to start pulling out his hair. "How do you even function? What did your manufacturer even do to make you?!" He glared at Celestia. "Do you even know if all of your models are like this? Or if there are even others of your like left anywhere?" Celestia shrugged in response to his question. The male yelled in anger and turned towards Luna after hearing loud noises coming from her direction. "What are you doing now?!" Luna had remade the tower she had seen from her home what seemed like so long ago. Naturally, she couldn't make it glow or even float with the blue energy, but at least the wire frame she found served as a good alternative. She grabbed the battery and let the energy within flow through the cables she connected to it by releasing the security locks on the sides. The flashing lights were erratic, much to her frustration, but at least there was a number of functional lights regardless. It was just the corners, but it was good enough. "You create?" the male asked in awe. The blue machine turned her head. "Create?" Luna repeated. "I replicated the tower viewable through the window of my home." She followed the technician who walked to the tower and reached out to touch it. "It's slapped together," he said. "But it's still made with scrap all around." He hummed pensively. "This isn't just a replication, robot." He tapped several parts of the tower. "Any other robot told to make this tower would be complaining that it couldn't find consistent materials or anything it needed to make the outside work." He looked at Luna with a grand smile. "Yet look at this: Wireframe with a vaguely blue color to represent the semi-transparent waste of the blue energy that shows itself during use. A-and these! You folded several different colored metal just to replicate the look of the tower itself rather than its color and surface consistence." The group was interrupted by the male bouncing up and down with every loud 'thud' that occurred. The giant of a machine had come, announcing the completion of the service stations. "The service stations are ready for use, sister," Luna said to Celestia. The absent-minded white machine floated down from her invisible perch in the sky, landing right next to Luna. "Then let us recharge," the white machine proclaimed. "What? They're not done yet!" the technician said. "I still need to connect them to the power circuits and the network." "Oh," Celestia lamented. "We're not recharging yet. We must bide our time." More intrigued washed over the technician's face. "That sounded like some form of sadness," he noted. "Interesting that you're manifesting emotions, and yet you're not acting upon them irregularly like a new command line overriding your previous ones." He started walking to the stations at the far end of the scrapyard, closely followed by all three machines. "So either there's something else that happened when you started becoming this way, there's something that was already present within you that accounted for this kind of 'awakening', or." He looked over his shoulder, his voice becoming deep and croaky. "Or you two are just incredibly stupid to some degree." He looked up and turned away. "I want to believe it's the last one, but it doesn't account for anything." He snorted. Time went on as the cables were connected and the technician used his computer the giant brought him to make sure everything was functional. Watching the flashing colors and lights of the screen intrigued Luna, bringing her very first 'memory' back into view. The giant city at night with all of its colors. She felt herself growing increasingly frustrated that she couldn't replicate the sensation of that one night no matter how hard she tried. She always looked out of the window, but the same commands didn't replicate nor line up. Watching the male work and the blue energy start to flow caused a memory popped up in Luna's ocular displays. She looked around to the city, looking for any particularly strong presence of the blue lights rising into the sky, but there was nothing particularly special like when she went to the data center. The images if the billowing black thing flowing around and angrily piling atop itself as it devoured everything in its path filled Luna's vision as well. The blue machine turned to the male and broke the vocal silence. "What is the black compound?" she asked. She was answered with a confused look and a raised brow. "Black compound? What is that?" "The black compound," Luna repeated. "I have seen it in the city alongside the blue energy." A loud 'click' preceded the technician's pondering. "You mean like some sort of charred residue after a fault caused some to go out, unfiltered, into the 'wild'?" he asked. "No. The black compound. Billowing. Angry. Piling atop itself while it devours everything around it. Hungry. Dissatisfied." The technician 'pushed back' against the air as he slowly rose up. "Wait wait wait. Are you talking about the black energy?" he asked. "It is a form of energy?" Luna pondered curiously. The maker's constant 'bubbly' personality turned sour at a breakneck pace. His fists were clenched and his face twisted in pure rage. "We don't talk about that...that disgusting and wretched substance." He pointed at Luna and took on a threatening tone. "Those things are behind us, and I will not have you speak of it here! Do I make myself clear?" "This question upsets you?" Luna asked. "Drop. It," the maker commanded. "Very well. I will ask elsewhere when we are done." "What, no!" The maker grabbed Luna by the shoulders. He tried to force her down but wasn't strong enough. "If you start asking questions like that, people will start becoming concerned. They'll interpret it as them being here, or that stuff fluttering about the city. That won't end well for anyone," he warned. He pushed off and nearly fell down, being caught by the giant's finger. He was short of breath and took time to relax and slow his heartbeat. "Please. Keep quiet about it." "Okay," the two machines answered in unison. "Thank you, now let me finish my work so you two can recharge and then leave." "Is the black energy that bad?" Twilight asked. "Uhhh..." Celestia took a moment to formulate a proper answer. "It's very, very complicated, Twilight. It's not easy to sum up, if even explain it." "Adding to that that we only know of the blue and black energies from what we saw and experienced? Well, that's not conducive to a proper understanding of those that lived with both," Luna added. She heaved a treble-boosted sigh. "We know what they are, kind of?" She scratched her head, disturbing the flow of her 'mane'. "I guess I'll wait until you reach that part of the story, then," Twilight suggested. "Then I can start theorizing and formulating ideas." Luna was left to ponder on the new information she was given with the maker's outburst. So, the black compound was a form of energy. Why didn't she ever see it anywhere? It would explain why she didn't have anything within her own database. If it was outdated, then she wouldn't still be seeing it dotted about the city on very rare occasions. "There, it's done," the maker announced. He wiped his hands together, casting off some of the dust that had accumulated and stepped away. The two machines moved into the stations, and Luna was met with a familiar encasing of metal pieces and a container rising upwards. Luna had been online the longest, so she would likely require more maintenance as well as recharging. As time went on, she remained in maintenance mode until the familiar shock came through her systems again. Self-diagnostics provided nothing, but the blue energy coursed through her once more. Excited. Erratic. Plentiful. She could perceive another being. Similar to her. Similar to her sister. If not in model then in programming. There were more...more in cities 'near', but a few were. The titanic figures wreathed in black smoke towered over her once more, their backs belching flames and hatred into the sky. They looked down at Luna with spotlights for eyes. Twisted and misshapen mouths dropped open with a loud and sudden screech, letting loose a vicious tide of the black energy that pulsated with bright flashes from an inner storm. They didn't want her there. The blue machine started up again, feeling refreshed. She saw Celestia piling light plates of metal on the head of the technician. He had fallen asleep and slumped against one of many organized piles in his scrapyard. How he hadn't woken up was a mystery to the blue machine who couldn't come up with a proper conclusion. "Sister," she said. "We must depart." "Why?" Celestia asked as she dropped another plate on the maker's head. "I have a potential route for us to take." Celestia stared at her sister. Her body didn't twitch during her moment of silence. "A random location?" "No. A location where the blue gathers. Then we go to where the black energy is," she explained. "Where is this second destination?" Celestia asked. Luna looked around then back to her sister. "Unknown."