//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8: A bumpy road to ERI 
// Story: MegaMare-X 
// by Xujints the Water Horse 
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LX was alone once more, but for once she was okay with this. Her spirit was burning brighter than ever! As she stepped out onto the train platform, she confronted her first maverick and took it down with ease. Despite the thing having a shield to block her shots with, it was nothing she hadn’t seen before. The second was dealt with in a similar fashion.

Before she could quip about the slow resistance she had encountered however, she noticed a distinct lack of Mavericks beyond them. Curious… Either B-0n was incredibly good at being a distraction, or they were terrible at guarding a city. While she did not doubt B-0n’s abilities, she has seen the kind of defenses set up in the capital city of a Kingdom. She had been to the Crystal Empire after all.

This was a trap, there were little doubts about this, but who was going to spring it first? Her, or B-0n. All things considered, she hoped that she would. She trusted B-0n to stay safe, of course she did, but… Something about the way she spoke on the train made it seem like B-0n wasn’t sure of herself. That was okay, LX had enough confidence for both of them. They were going to get through this! They had to!

With the wind in her sails, the armored unicorn left the ruins of the train behind and headed into the city. As expected, there was some resistance to be found there, as well as a heaping helping of destruction. Shattered storefronts and broken vehicles of some kind were everywhere. Pulling a faded concert poster off the wall really hammered home how suddenly the Mavericks took over. Poor DJ-Pon3, that musician just couldn’t catch a break, huh?

LX saw similar stories as she wandered towards the ERI building. Recruitment posters for support roles in the Maverick Hunters, promotional materials for ERI’s latest breakthroughs, and some Maverick Wanted posters. The last ones caught her eyes, as she noted three distinct figures upon them. Adagio and her sisters… Now that was a memory she didn’t want to remember as she was set upon by another small wave of Mavericks.

How fragile the peace must have been where once proud Hunter’s were displayed as criminals beside a call to arms to bring down Mavericks. This world was so dark, but she would shine a light on what really happened here if she could. This tragedy was hardly an accident. It was more than obvious at this point, but what was the truth? Surely ERI will have the answers. As much as she wanted to get home as soon as possible, she owed it to Nightmare Moon and the others to see this to the end.

As she passed by a pristine looking music shop, the sound of something shattering the storefront made her jump. So much for one place looking nice… Spinning on her hooves to face the Maverick that jumped out at her, LX raised her Buster and was surprised to see a very familiar face staring back at her.

Crossing hooves with the maverick, buster to buster, she asked, “Why the heck do you look like me?”

The figure was almost a near identical copy of her, save for the fact that they were definitely a robot… And bluer. Some say the most sincere form of flattery is imitation, but as they both charged up a buster shot, she felt anything but flattered. Those golden metal optics didn’t waver as Lyra powered up beyond what she believed the other’s limits to be but was interrupted suddenly by two consecutive blasts to the face.

While it didn’t do much to actually damage her armor, just doing a little less than the average boss in terms of damage, it made up for with the fact the second blast actually bypassed her armor’s ability to harden in response to trauma and pushing the damage past a boss’ normal damage.

Backing off, LX huffed and said, “Straight to the point, huh? Not bad… If you want to hit me again, you will have to catch me if you can.”

That sort of ability was dangerous… Especially if it can throw out multiple charge shots at the same time she could charge up one. She had to create some distance between them and turn this into a game of cat and mouse. Staying up close was a foolish endeavor if they would outpace her in terms of damage.

Turning about, LX forced the Maverick to give chase by dashing through the streets and climbing up the adjacent buildings with a quickness she hadn't used before. As expected, the Maverick followed her closely, but not close enough. During this time, the armored unicorn had plenty of time to charge up a buster shot and hit the robotic doppelgänger square on the chest as they landed upon the roofftop. 

Her confident laugh was cut short as the Maverick returned the attack with a hefty punch of the jaw and throwing LX through the roof and into the music store below. Of all attacks, that one did trigger her suit’s emergency response. Brushing off the shattered remains of a cello, LX looked up as the machine leapt through the dim light filtering into the room from above and breaking a few more instruments upon impact.

Within this dimly lit room, all that could be seen of the two is their darkened profiles, the lights on their armor, and the subtle glow of their horns as they charged up their attacks. Despite having the more varied arsenal, something just seemed right about putting this one down with the good old buster. Blow for blow, she will face herself and win!

And indeed it would seem to go blow for blow, as they mirrored each other's attacks well, nearly canceling each other out. The one major difference between them was their movements. In this small, cluttered room, the machine had a much easier time getting their attacks off as they found their footing quicker. LX didn’t really have too much time to counter attack, only just halting the doppelgänger’s blast with one of her own.

They were dancing around eachother endlessly, something that needed to stop. As LX knocked over a large bass, she had a brilliant idea. Gripping it’s neck with one hoof, she raised it up to cover her approach as she rushed towards the machine, breaking past the middle ground between them. The Bass hardly held together when the machine fired upon it, but that was kind of the point of it.

A moment’s pause was all LX needed to prepare her assault, and when she was within range she tackled the machine to the ground and placed both busters on each side of the machine’s head and fired a charge shot into it.

They kicked LX off of them, but by then it was too late. Their helm was damaged, revealing its inner working, the outer casing protecting what looked to be a crystal horn shattered. An energy crystal horn? Well that was one way to supply power to a buster, but by no means was that able to power them alone, there had to be something more.

Still, it looked like it had received heavy damage thanks to her last attack. That fact became evident as their Buster seemed to fail upon charging it up. No focus, no power. Even the youngest unicorns can tell you how that works. Grinning ear to ear, LX knew she had this battle in the bag.

Without worry, LX kept her distance and peppered the doppelgänger with charged shots until it stopped fighting. It was surprisingly satisfying taking out an ‘evenly’ matched foe for a change. Normally bosses would be stronger than that… Perhaps this was only a taste to come?

With a light sigh, LX walked out the front door of the store, but before she would shut the door, she turned the open sign to closed. She was grinning like a little school filly as she left, “That was a nice break…”

Spotting the ERI building off in the distance, she continued, “Time to get back to work.”

As LX set out for her goal once more, she considered calling B-0n to tell her what happened. However, she decided against it. Odds are, B-0n is probably too busy to answer a call. The last thing she wanted to do was distract her when she needed the concentration.

As she ran down the street, she noticed something known as a transit station. Transit? As in a taxi? The temptation to investigate it was too strong. Whether it was controlled by a Maverick or not, having a shortcut could help immensely, as she was a little tired of running and jumping through the city streets dealing with Mavericks wandering aimlessly around every corner. And if there was a Maverick at the wheel, she could just take it over herself. No big deal, and then she could arrive in style.

As she approached the terminal, she saw a small panel there asking where she would like to go. Simple enough… Scrolling through the list of unfamiliar names, and the very familiar name of the capitol building, she selected ERI. No sense fooling around and picking anything else.

That was when they asked her to pay for the transit, asking her to put her hoof to the panel. She didn’t have any money on her, so she was hoping that the other her had some credit lying around. Putting her hoof down, the terminal scanned her hoof and said in bright green letters, ‘Approved! Welcome Miss Heartstrings.’

She knew it. Those words prompted LX to chuckle, which turned into full blown laughter as a personal green bench formed from the ground beside the terminal. What was she not surprised a bench of all things would appear for her to wait at?

With a content sigh, LX sat on the bench and waited for the Taxi to arrive, but to her surprise, that wasn’t what happened. No, the bench and a patch of the sidewalk lifted off the ground and into the air. Suddenly LX regretted this decision…

As quickly as she was traveling, as nice as the bench was, she really didn’t like how isolating the floating platform was, what with its guard rails and high flying nature. This gut feeling was only confirmed as the platform seemed to turn away from ERI and instead take the long way around as Mavericks were dropped onto the platform, shattering the bench she had been sitting on.

Now that hurt a lot more than the doppelgänger before… No one breaks her benches! Whether it be flying foes or normally grounded ones, LX would show them her wrath for highjacking her transit. It was almost poetic, just as how she had planned on taking a taxi from Mavericks, her ‘taxi’ was taken for a ride.

After a minute or so of flying, and many more Mavericks. LX heard a spine tingling roar. Was that-?

There was another roar, much closer this time. Turning about, she saw a horrifying sight. A giant metal dragon was flying towards her! She raised her Buster and prepared for a one-sided fight. This was a mess, and she had to deal with it. The Dragon didn’t pause to attack her in a traditional sense, instead, it seemed to try to knock her off the platform by running through it. How the platform was still floating was anypony’s guess.

LX scrambled back onto the platform and noticed its disheveled state and knew immediately what needed to be done. She had to end this fight before the platform fell out of the sky. Once again, she raised her Buster as the dragon hovered just off the side of the platform. She didn’t waste time trying to figure out possible weaknesses, she instead used her tried and true buster and went on the offensive, peppering the dragon’s face with limes. It fired back, literally, blowing fire across the platform and forcing LX to retreat to the back of the platform.

Getting an idea, she fired a shot into the dragon’s mouth, prompting it to halt its attack and withdraw as its flamethrower was rattled. It flew away briefly before appearing on the other end of the platform where she was to swipe at her. Dodging out of the way, LX found herself perfectly primed to jump onto the dragon’s arm as it clung to the side and climb upon it.

“Knock knock, it’s Lyra!”

One doesn’t even need her to remove her mask to know she was smiling at this as she punched the metal dragon in the face, firing her Buster directly into its head. It hurt her hoof doing that, but as she leapt back to the platform, she relished watching the machine scramble to hold onto the platform before falling to the ground with a roar.

By no means was this the end of the fight, it was only just the beginning, but by Celestia did she enjoy that! And here she thought this was going to be harder. When the dragon came back up to breathe fire upon her again, it started high and worked its way down towards her. Dashing in close, LX fired upon the dragon’s body as she just went out of reach from the flames.

The dragon stopped its fire attack to swipe at her, knocking her away slightly but she would not be deterred. This thing could be hurt, that was more than enough to keep her going. The next time she had the chance to strike it’s face directly, the metal beast tried to breathe fire upon her at close range. Knowing how deadly that could potentially be, LX equipped the ice shard and silenced the beast, filling it’s mouth with newly made water thanks to their combined attack, followed by Ice as she repeatedly fired over and over again.

The dragon seemed to panic as it’s mouth was sealed shut with ice. LX quickly switched gears and charged up a charged buster shot and shattered the dragon’s inner workings.

As the dragon started to blow up from the attack, LX landed back on the platform and wave it off, “See you later, you toothless gator.”

Sighing deeply, the armored unicorn waited as the platform sat down just outside the ERI building. Once firmly on the ground, she received a transmission from B-0n, “Lyra! I sensed a heavy Maverick presence in your area, strong enough to jam my communicator, are you okay?”

LX nods and returns the call, “I am alright… Things weren’t too bad. Sat down on a nice bench and had a nice ride over to ERI.”

B-0n’s confusion was evident in her voice alone, “You rode the transit? I didn’t expect that to still work!”

“Same… Was worth a try, dragon aside…”

B-0n gasped, “They got Torch up and running? Oh my, I am sorry, I should have warned you about him. I had to leave that salamander behind when Canterlot fell.”

LX sighed and stated, “It’s alright… I am heading inside. Be ready to guide me.”

B-0n affirmed, “Okay. I am already inside. They seem to have changed up a lot of things here…”

As LX opened the double doors leading into ERI, she stated resolutely, “Whatever tricks they have now, we can do this together!”