//------------------------------// // Mad Scientists // Story: A Witch in Broad Daylight // by Epsilon-Delta //------------------------------// The two of them followed the river to the east until they were officially out of Equestria. Tall pine trees became more prevalent, but they were still in a forest for now. Heavy rain poured down, but Pinkie had a psychic umbrella that kept the two of them dry. This was the fringe of civilization they were in now, where all the ponies banished for consorting with evil powers scurried off to. This was the area where all the outlaws, all the mad scientists, cultists, and the like hung out and built their bases. There were a few small towns out here, but you were better off in the woods than going to any of them. It was a place to avoid if you could manage, especially if you weren’t an outlaw yourself. Which made Dash question why she was out here in the first place. The further they traveled; the more conflicted Dash became about this trip. “Hey. I was thinking,” said Dash. “Shouldn’t we go get the reward for finding Twilight first?” “Huh?” Pinkie turned around, surprised. “Why would we do that?” “Because we want a million bits?” “I already have millions of bits!” “Well, I don’t! And won’t it be good to make sure somepony else knows about this? You know, in case we both die or something?” “No, the fact that we’re the only ones who know about Twilight is leverage over her! Remember how much she doesn’t want ponies showing up at her house? It gives us bargaining power!” Pinkie tapped her temple, a little too proud of thinking that up. “I guess.” “And I don’t think it would solve the problem. Ponies are way more divided than they were when I was a kid. I blame the telephone, but that’s just because I’m old, it’s probably a more complicated issue than that. See, I’ve been doing this for fifty years, so I know how the pizza gets baked. Let’s make a mental list of all the ponies who could kind of put up a fight against Twilight.” “There’s you and the elite four, right?” “And?” “I guess another witch,” said Dash. “Or maybe a bunch of mad scientists working together, an unusually tough cult, then there are a few ghosts, like that one in Crater Cemetery, who are crazy strong, maybe there’s a werewolf tough enough or— okay I guess there’s a few.” “Right! Any time we learn of a spot half as good as Twilight’s house there’s a mad rush of everypony shoving over each other to get there. Even the Wonder Slayers are so fractured right now there’d be infighting. If this becomes public knowledge it’ll become a huge parade of carnage of all these factions trying to break into Twilight’s house and take her stuff.” “Twilight will get increasingly unhinged from all the ponies attacking her!” Pinkie went on. “Bad guys will get their hooves on some of her stuff! Werewolves and vampires would start living together! It’d be total chaos! And I don’t even know if anypony would beat her in the end! If we can resolve this ourselves, we should!” If Dash was being completely honest with herself, she hadn’t thought of the consequences of finding Twilight up until now. In her mind, it’d just been get the reward and that was that. Maybe she’d tag along when an army got assembled, but that would have been the extent of things. “If you are going to try and get the reward, promise me you’ll go straight to one of the elite four instead.” Pinkie clasped her forehooves together pleadingly. “They’d give you a huge reward for siding with them and we might still avoid all the chaos.” Obviously doing the right thing was the right thing to do, but if Dash seriously went through all of this only to not get credit she’d be so incredibly pissed. “Well I appreciate the insight,” said Dash. “But I have literally zero money. This whole thing’s sent me a hundred bits in the red, even! I don’t even know how I’m getting dinner when I get back!” “I’ll pay you for not telling anypony till we try my plan.” Pinkie pressed her hooves tighter. “Plus, you’ll have an in with all the big-name psychics! And I can get you one of those cards that let you eat at Curse Burger for free! Then you’ll never have to worry about dinner ever again!” That would still be great, but it sounded like Dash was being asked to do a lot more work for a much smaller reward. Dash stood there a moment, tapping her hoof. Maybe as long as Pinkie knew what Dash had accomplished things would still work out in the end. Besides, there was a limit to what Dash was willing to do for fame. “Okay, fine.” Dash relented. “You clearly know what you’re doing.” “Hurray!” Pinkie gave a joyful leap forward. “Besides, I think we’re almost there!” Pinkie held up the wanted ad they got back at HQ, showing a picture of a castle. When Pinkie lowered the paper, that same castle stood before them in real life. A bolt of lightning lit up the area, giving Dash a great, but brief, look at it. She’d picked up a bunch of posters, all the mad scientists known to be part of the ‘Mad Science League’ which Pinkie assured Dash was the most chill faction of mad scientists. The one they found first was named ‘Rarity’, a mare pretty enough in the picture to make Dash a bit jealous. The reward was set at a mere ten thousand bits. Mad scientists were generally worth little. Like ghosts, they usually kept to themselves and were only dangerous if you wandered into their territory. Ponies rarely bothered fighting them because they just weren’t worth the effort. The only exception was the few who unleashed their creations on the world. These castles were like ticking time bombs in Dash’s mind. Mad scientists used the inspiration and knowledge they obtained from the outer realm to create advanced technology they themselves rarely understood the workings of. Inevitably, they would create something dangerous and unleash it into the world. Yet ponies would only ever go after them once it was too late. The area around the castle was surrounded by carnivorous plants, most of which were essentially Venus flytrap only big enough to swallow a pony whole. The thick overgrowth covered a wide area around the castle, but there was a clear stone path you could walk along through it. The plants constantly snapped at them as they walked along the path. The walkway seemed to have been placed in the exact right location so that all the flytraps were just barely too short to reach it. As they approached the ground shook a little, but there was no rumble of thunder go along with the shaking. Pinkie strolled up and rang the doorbell like it was the most casual thing in the world, lightning flashing behind her. The rain continued to pour down on them. Vines crept up on them from every direction, slowly beginning to cover the stone walkway. “You realize we’re surrounded by mare-eating plants, right?” Dash took a step back to keep from getting bit. “I got ESP, Rainbow Dash. I noticed that yesterday.” Pinkie continued to not react even as a vine wrapped around her hind leg. “Hey, does the fact that these plants only ever go after mares make them sexist against stallions or mares?” Pinkie must have known what she was doing, with all those years of experience. The plants continued to snap at Pinkie Pie from every direction, but the pink mare was just out of their reach. She continued to ring the doorbell over and over again. “I don’t think she’s answering,” said Dash. “Nah! You gotta be annoying. She’ll answer eventually.” To be fair, even Dash was already annoyed. “Go away!” a voice screamed over the intercom after a few more rings. “I’m immensely busy and I’m not interested in buying whatever you’re selling!” Pinkie considered her options for a second before the intercom came back on. “Actually, are you selling zombie powder?” Rarity asked. “That is the one thing I’m interested in buying.” “Nope!” “Then begone!” The intercom cut out again. “Maybe she’ll help us if we can get her some zombie powder?” Dash suggested. “You don’t wanna mess with zombie powder.” Pinkie rang the doorbell again. “Trust me.” “And are you sure annoying the heck out of an insane criminal is the best way to get her to help us?” Dash asked. “The only way I know how. You gotta get your foot in the door first.” Pinkie kept ringing it. “Alright!” The intercom came back on. “Now you’ve done it! I dropped one of those tiny little screws and can’t find it. You’d better have an astoundingly good reason for coming here!” “We’re looking for a, uh, I think the thing was called a seal breaker 620,” said Pinkie. “What? How old are you, kid? The seal breaker 620 is ancient technology. They’re already up to the 1250RF. They explode a lot less often. Also, it has a tasteful blue stripe going down the middle, much more aesthetically appealing.” “Well I’ll take any alphanumerical sequence over 650,” said Pinkie. “I can pay you.” “And what am I going to do with the money? Bribe squirrels with it? I’ve been banished from society for literally going on the eighth. There’s nowhere for me to spend it.” “Do other mad scientists not want your money?” Dash asked. “The Mad Science League is a post-money communist utopia. Everything is free as long as you’re a member,” said Rarity. “But that only works because there’s a mere fifty of us. Don’t actually try that government system yourselves, you're bound to fail.” “Look, this is important,” said Dash. “We have a clear path to ending the curse of undeath. We can get rid of the zombies if you just help us out for like a day.” “Mad scientists zombies! We experiment on those,” Rarity explained. “If it weren’t for zombies, we wouldn’t have things like gorillas with crab claws for hands, monsters made entirely of eyeballs or air conditioning.” “We can trade you magical stuff for science stuff!” Pinkie offered. “The only magical artifact that would interest me is The Book of Shadows volume four,” said Rarity. “I’d give you literally everything for that. The entire castle, all my robots, my left kidney! But you can't possibly have any spellbook, let alone that one. I'm simply not interested in anything else." She was half right in that they didn’t have one. It didn’t take too much brainpower to figure out that she wanted access to a spell in that book, a spell Twilight created. “What spell do you want?” Dash asked. “That’s none of your business. I’ve already said too much.” “What are the craziest spells in that volume?” Dash whispered to Pinkie. “Oh, I have no idea,” Pinkie whispered back. “But I bet our future best friend would know.” “You’re way too confident we can change her mind,” Dash sighed. “Okay! We might be able to help you with that!” Pinkie called out to Rarity. “What?! How?” Rarity sounded much more suspicious now. “Who are you? Are you two witches?” “No,” said Pinkie. “You’re not filthy, disgusting cultists, are you?” Rarity asked. “Because I do not have time to hear about Cosmos or whomever." “I’m not in a cult.” Pinkie turned to Dash. “Are you in a cult? I forgot to ask.” “No,” said Dash. “Then what are you?” “Well I’m psychic.” Pinkie pointed to her head. “Oh, I see! You’re just neurotypicals, aren’t you? Yes. I understand now! You two must be slayers sent her to disrupt my incredibly important work! Aren’t you?! You people have an astounding lack of understanding!” Pinkie and Dash both tried to quickly deny it. “Don’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes! You’re just trying to trick me into opening the door so you can try to capture me! Well, I may be persona non grata back in Equestria, but you’re in our territory! That makes you the criminals here! Let’s see how you like this!” Pinkie tilted her head slightly to one side. Several poison darts shot out of the door, all of them missing Pinkie by the narrowest margin. Next Pinkie hopped slightly aside, standing only on her left legs. A trap door opened under where she stood a moment ago, but Pinkie didn’t fall in. Dash managed to just hover over it. Pinkie was in the range of a Venus pony trap now, and it did take the opportunity to try and eat her. Pinkie effortlessly held its mouth open with her psychic powers. “Ha! Can’t catch this mare off guard!” Pinkie tapped her brain. “Too much psychic perception. So you have no choice but to talk to us now, right?” “Oh, yes. All these years in this castle, after gazing into the maw of the outer gods for fourteen whole seconds, and I simply couldn’t invent anything better than a single trap door,” Rarity’s sarcasm was palpable. “I am completely defeated.” “Really?” Pinkie’s ears perked up. “That’s great! We’re friends now so— uh oh.“ Pinkie knitted her brow with concern. She looked around the area like she had two seconds left to find a hiding spot. “Bad news, Dashie! We’re not going to be able to dodge what’s about to happen!” “What’s about to happen?” Dash asked. “I dunno! Just that we can’t possibly dodge it!” “Then what was the point of you telling me this?!” “I don’t know!” The Venus flytraps and vines all began surging with electricity. The vines shot up in every direction, becoming taught. The path leading back and the air overhead was submerged in a crisscross of electrified vines. The entire castle side was covered in them too. When Dash tried to fly up and through an opening in them, they simply moved, reacting to her, closing the gap. Rarity began to laugh. “When I told them all my plan to invent battery-powered plants, they all said, ‘what are you talking about? What would that even be?’! Well, who’s laughing now?” Pinkie tried using her mind to smash a few of them into plant juice. They did get crushed, making a brief gap in the barrier, but rapidly regrew. The front door flew open. Total darkness shrouded whatever was on the inside of the castle, but shortly after several glowing red eyes began to appear from inside. “So, believe it or not, I’m sensing the least amount of danger from below!” Pinkie pointed down at the trap door. “Right! Let’s go!” Dash dove into the pit. Pinkie jumped, trying to follow her down, but something came out of the front door and grabbed her. Dash tried flying back up, but the trap door closed again. Darkness surrounded Dash as she pressed up against the new roof. The thing was so thick she couldn’t hear what was happening above. “Pinkie!” Dash shouted out to her. “Can you hear me?!” There was no response. Dash tried ramming and fiddling with the trap door but couldn’t make the dang thing budge. She looked down into the black abyss instead. Pinkie did say this was the least dangerous path. Dash slowly flew into the blackness of the pit. It was a long drop; she’d estimate it went down three stories before she finally reached a stone floor. That was good to know because that meant going up three flights of stairs before she had a way out of here. She could hear a bubbling sound coming from either side of the room, but it was too dark to see anything. Dash got a little drenched near the end when the psychic umbrella dropped. She shook herself off only to be scolded by an intercom. “Tch! How dreadfully rude!” Rarity called out at her. “You can’t simply break into my castle and start making a mess like that!” “I didn’t break into your house! You literally dragged me inside!” “Don’t think a technicality like that will work here! You’re going to madness jail! And yes, we do have our own jails that we throw you normies in for trespassing.” Rarity shot back. “I figure the mistake ponies in my situation make is not immediately unleashing their ultimate creation! So take this!” Dash looked around. Nothing happened. “It’s not going to make a sound or anything,” said Rarity. “But trust me, it’s coming for you!” Dash certainly didn’t want to get caught by whatever was coming after her without Pinkie around. First, she needed to figure out where the crow she was. She took out her lantern and turned it on. Zombies! To her left and her right, the walls were covered in glass tubes, stacked four high, big enough to fit a pony. And they did fit a pony, each one having a zombie inside. The zombies didn’t like her light and started moaning and scrapping at their glass walls. Thankfully, zombies were kind of dippy, so they didn’t get out. Not all of the zombies were ponies. She noticed a few griffon zombies, remembering that those did eat meat and would try to devour her brains if they got out. Thankfully, those more dangerous undead were asleep and submerged in a bubbling liquid. None of them looked like they were able to get out, so she ignored them for now. She had to find a way out. Behind her was an enormous tank of something bubbling. In front was the only thing that looked like a door. Dash flew over to it but it was shut tight. It seemed to open from the bottom up like a gate, but Dash couldn’t lift it. The ground shook a second time, rumbling the room roughly enough that Dash was briefly worried the tubes would all fall over and shatter. None of them did, but she heard something in that door break. She tried lifting it again to find it would budge ever so slightly now. In the back of the room, a tap at the bottom of the largest tank opened and the liquid began pouring out. It wasn’t long before something came bubbling up from it, taking shape. Then a second and third thing came out of the liquid. They were clearly undead but appeared slightly less solid than normal zombies did. Even more fascinating was the fact that they all looked the same, were all white filly unicorns with curly hair. Zombie clones? That was new to Dash. “Hugs.” The filly zombie moaned in a squeaky voice. “Hugs.” They shuffled over to Dash as she struggled to get the door high enough to squeeze through. One of the zombie fillies glommed onto Dash, but it really did just seem to be trying to hug her. It seemed only mildly annoying at first until two more jumped up and hugged her as well. They were trying to restrain her through hugs? What kind of stupid plan was that?! “Hugs. Hugs. Hugs.” Dash easily threw one of them off of her. But they kept coming. There were like twenty of them! And more were forming! Dash was so close but she was covered in these zombie fillies. A red circle appeared on the ceiling. The stone was getting hotter and hotter until it began to melt. A hole appeared through the melted stone. Dash looked up through the hole and all she could see were two glowing red eyes. “Looks like the main attraction has arrived!” Rarity announced. That gave Dash the adrenaline rush she needed to push open the gate just enough to roll out to the other side. As she got through to the next room, the thing fell down the hole in the ceiling, landing with a loud crash. All the filly zombies tried to jump up and hug it, but they were all incinerated by the newcomer in a wave of fire. The door slammed shut again with an even heavier thunk. Hopefully, that would hold it for a short time. The door started glowing but was turning red much more slowly than the stone did. Dash had to hide somewhere. To her left and right were hallways lined with doors. She opened one of them, finding a room filled with barrels of white powder. Nope! Back in high school, she learned the hard way not to mess with mysterious white powders. She left that door open and went to the next one. Some kind of closet, not full enough to hide in. The third one was like a chemistry lab, filled with all kinds of distillation apparatuses and glasswork Dash didn’t recognize. Behind her, that massive door blew off its hinges. Dash turned off her lantern and darted into this room, her time up. She sat next to the door, listening. It sounded like whatever was out there was wearing metal boots that clanged with each step against the stone floor. But it was also going in the wrong direction. So Rarity couldn’t see everywhere. Good to know. Dash looked around the room. She could see just a little bit of it because there were bottles of chemicals that glowed faintly in the dark. It looked like the only way out of this room was to go back the way she had just come from. She listened again. The footsteps sounded much louder, but not because they were closer. No, there was a second, much bigger monster out there and that one was headed towards her! Dash needed something to work with! Okay! They taught more practical skills in chemistry classes these days, like how to make bombs. Maybe Dash would get lucky for once and find something she knew how to build an explosive with. She went through the counter, covered in chemical bottles, scanning over names she didn’t recognize. She got near the end before finally seeing one she could do something with. Khorium Trioxide! A nice big bottle of it too, like a whole gallon! If you mixed this with water… The door burst open and the large one entered. It was a big, blocky, metal machine. It took Dash a second to realize but it vaguely resembled a pony. So it was some kind of robot? “Sweetiebot 2000 loudly announcing presence!” it shouted in an extremely robotic voice. “Stop resisting!” And then it immediately opened fire from muskets mounted on its shoulders. It wasn’t even shooting at anything! Just blindly firing, shattering random glassware. Busting through that armor would take a lot of work, but just maybe the bomb could do it. Dash stalked over to its side. She threw some of the trioxides on it, then some water from her canteen. Just as it turned to face her, the left half of its body glowed a bright light. Lightning surged through its body, then shot out in every direction shattering even more glass. A white light consumed the room. When it faded, the robot was clearly destroyed. The thing actually melted! Only a few parts of it left intact. “Thank you, chemistry class.” Dash got out of there as fast as she could before anything else exploded. There were a few zombies back out in the hallway, but what worried Dash was on the far end of the hall. It was the same glowing red eyes she saw before, coming from a much smaller robot. Though it was tiny, the size of a filly, it also looked more sophisticated. Instead of being big and clunky like all the other robots Dash had ever seen, this one was sleek and small, looked like a filly wearing plate armor. Her eyes even seemed expressive. Actually, she was nearly identical to those clones in the other room, like a robot version of them. Two buzzsaws emerged from either side of the pony’s barrel, as though they were wings. They were just large enough to dig into either wall as they began to spin. The new robot walked forward, buzzsaws screaming, tearing a hole in the wall as she moved. Dash had to get rid of this one too! Dash threw the rest of the trioxide at her. The robot made no effort to dodge, simply walked forward. Dash threw the water, and the effect was just the same as last time. The entire room erupted in a blinding light. Electricity blew all the nearby doors off their hinges and destroyed every zombie in sight. Dash winced but when she opened her eyes this new robot was still there, still walking forward, completely unfazed. Not a single singe was on it. “What?! It did nothing?!” Dash jumped back. “I am Sweetiebot 9000!” the robot declared. The voice had a surprising lack of robotic tinge but was exceptionally squeaky. “I am the ultimate little sister in terms of both offense and defense! Big sister Rarity has granted me an invincible body!” Not like Dash had enough firepower to test that claim. Unless she found an even more incredible bomb, she just had to run from it, try to get to the surface again. It was still far off enough that Dash could get back into the first room. And there was a hole leading to the next floor. She darted forward at Sweetiebot. Sweetiebot switched her buzzsaws out for flame throwers and got ready to fire at Dash. “The flames of sisterly love will incinerate all!” Sweetiebot declared. She fired the flamethrower down the hall Dash came from a moment too late, Dash just barely swerving into the zombie room in time. “Hugs!” A wave of zombies tried jumping at Dash, but she flew over them. That hole was still there! Dash flew towards it as Sweetiebot stomped into the room. “Hugs! Hugs!” the zombie fillies demanded. All of them dog-piled on Sweetiebot. “Rarity alone is worthy of my hugs!” Sweetiebot declared. “Die false sisters!” She crackled with electricity, then bolts of lightning erupted from her body, sending the zombies flying off in every direction. Dash didn’t waste time to see what happened next. She flew up the hole Sweetiebot made earlier. The room she was in was relatively normal, had a bunch of furniture in it instead of mad science stuff. Dash shoved a dresser on top of the hole and flew out of the room. Then she ran down the next hall only to get to a dead end. Behind her, she heard the furniture getting thrown violently, then Sweetiebot’s hoofsteps. Dash darted into one room, too dark for her to see anything inside of and hid. “I feel no mercy!” Sweetiebot announced. “Only love for my big sister Rarity!” Sweetiebot’s hoofsteps slowly sounded down the hall. They got to the door Dash was behind, but she kept walking, missing Dash. As soon as she heard Sweetiebot open the next door, Dash darted out of her room and went down the hall in the opposite direction, into yet another room. This one was better lit. The room had a narrow catwalk that went over several vats of boiling acid. Dash could feel it burning her nose even from here. As Dash flew to the other side, one of her feathers fell into the vat, dissolving instantly, almost before it even touched the liquid. She got to the other side, but this door was locked! “Ah! There you are!” Rarity came back over the intercom. “Impressive you managed to escape Sweetiebot 9000 once, but you can’t run from her forever!” “You know, you can just let me leave!” Dash called out. “We didn’t come here to fight you!” “I can tell neither of you has ever seen the outer gods,” said Rarity. “As far as I’m concerned that makes both of you barbarians! If you really want to be my ally, then why not give in to the madness as well? Eight seconds is all it takes, you know! Then your mind will be open as mine is and you can see the world as it truly is!” “Look, I’m not literally going on the eighth and banishing myself from society, okay? I want to be popular, not live out here in the woods.” “Oh, please! What you call society is hardly civilized at all! I live in this luxuriously huge and air-conditioned castle, for example, and what kind of house do you live in? I have thirty bathrooms. Do you have even half that many rooms in total?" “Okay. I guess that’s fair. But I don’t know if having thirty bathrooms is worth also being insane and only getting to talk to other crazy ponies. I mean, have you even used all thirty of these bathrooms?” “That is not a question you ask a lady! Just you wait until my ultimate creation captures you!” Sweetiebot entered the room, a flamethrower on either side of her ready to fire. Dash was cornered. “Total annihilation awaits all who oppose my big sister!” Sweetiebot announced. “Capture me?” Dash asked. “I’m pretty sure that thing is trying to kill me!” “I love my big sister Rarity so much I would reduce the entire world to ash for her!” Sweetiebot declared. “Oh, okay! I admit her enthusiasm is set a tad high,” said Rarity. “Here, I’ll turn it down fifteen percent.” “I would reduce eighty-five percent of the world to ash for my big sister Rarity!” Sweetiebot corrected herself. “I’m working on it! Tell me that’s not a step in the right direction,” said Rarity. The ground shook again, more violently than before. Both Dash and Sweetiebot lost their balance. Dash, being a pegasus, merely took to the air. Sweetiebot nearly fell into the acid. No way Dash would get a better shot than this! She swooped in and rammed the robot from its vulnerable side, sending it tumbling into the vat. The acid made a sickening crackling noise as Sweetiebot flailed her forelegs, trying to stay afloat in it. “No!” Sweetiebot 9000 lifted her hoof above the green liquid, making a shrill whimper, before sinking back in. “Big sister! I. Love. You.” That last word droned on, the inflection deepening before slowly cutting off. Dash felt a little bad after seeing that. But it had been a matter of survival. “Huh.” Dash sat down, panting but relieved. “I guess she wasn’t that invincible after all.” After catching her breath, Dash stood up and started towards the door. “Actually!” the squeaky voice came from behind Dash. Dash turned around to see Sweetiebot, head hanging out of the vat of acid, her forelegs grabbed onto the edge. “It turns out I am that invincible!” Sweetiebot pulled herself off. Other than some lingering acid dripping off of her, she was perfectly fine. “Hahaha! You have fallen for prank.exe! You are less intelligent than me! Hahaha!” “Seriously?!” “Prepare yourself for incineration!” Sweetiebot flared her flamethrowers. “But how would I do that?” Dash asked. Sweetiebot stopped, stunned by the question. She turned her flamethrowers off. “Rarity,” said Sweetiebot. “How does one prepare for incineration?” “I don’t know!” Rarity came over the intercom. “I guess you pray or something.” “Yes!” Sweetiebot reactivated her flamethrowers. “You will pray or something and I will incinerate you!” “But, uh." Dash shrugged. “I’m an atheist?” Sweetiebot stopped again. “Rarity! An error has been encountered!” “Look, just shoot her with something non-lethal,” said Rarity. “But I am confused. You said—” “I know what I just said Sweetie Belle— sorry, I mean Sweetiebot, but—” Dash didn’t stick around for the rest of the conversation. She booked it out of there, trying to get as much distance as she could before Sweetiebot figured things out. She managed to find the stairs and went up. Still no windows anywhere, but there should only be one more floor till ground level. That robot may be the ultimate little sister who could destroy the world, but she still had the same weakness all little sisters had. She was easy to mess with! She ran down a hallway, cautiously peeking her head around the corner. More red eyes! It was another one of those big, bulky sweetiebots. After a moment, it looked away and Dash took the opportunity to fly down the next hall. Immediately she ran into yet another robot! It was an inch away from her, looking down at Dash with glowing eyes. But this one immediately exploded, ripped limb from limb by some unseen force. “Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie jumped out from the wreckage. “I finally found you!” “Pinkie!” Dash was so relieved she hugged Pinkie. “You shoulda seen it! I had to fight a bunch of Sweetiebot 8000s.” Pinkie sat down, sighing with exhaustion. “Boy were they tough! It took all of my psychokinetic force to destroy them. But I think that’s the toughest thing Rarity has.” “Um, actually.” Dash pointed behind herself. “There’s a Sweetiebot 9000.” As if on cue, Sweetiebot burst through the wall behind Dash. “No other little sister comes standard equipped with over one hundred weapons!” Sweetiebot announced. “Firing rockets!” Sweetiebot fired three rockets at the two of them. Pinkie caught them with her psychokinetic grip, crumpling them up without them exploding. Next, she grabbed Sweetiebot herself, lifting her into the air. She tried to bend or pull apart the robot’s body. Pinkie struggled harder than Dash had ever seen her struggle before, harder than when she’d lifted an entire building. She bent it so hard that the walls and floor around the robot began to crack. But Sweetiebot herself was not bent by the tiniest millimeter. “My body is as invincible as sisterly love!” Sweetiebot declared. “Yeesh! She might be right!” Pinkie dropped her. “That’s the toughest thing I’ve ever tried to bend!” “Hold on, I have an idea.” Dash stepped forward. “Hey, robo-kid! You said you were Rarity’s little sister, right?” “Yes! I am the ultimate little sister! No other little sister could possibly defeat me!” “Well incinerating ponies is against the rules. Do you know what happens to younger siblings who break the rules?” Dash asked. “On Hearth’s Warming Eve the Krampus comes and takes them away in his big bag to the little sister sorting facility. They get shipped off to live with a new big sister who’s got a wooden tail and big beaver teeth.” “That’s not true!” Sweetiebot said. “You’re lying!” “No way! It’s totally true! It happened to this kid at my school,” Dash assured her. “She got thrown into the Krampus's bag and never got to see her big sister ever again. She sent me a letter complaining about how her new sister keeps eating all the furniture with her big bucked teeth.” Sweetiebot stood there, thinking in silence for a moment. “Rarity,” said Sweetiebot. “Is that true?” “No. It’s not!” “Are you sure?” “Yes!” “How sure?” “There’s no such thing as a Krampus! Even if there were, that doesn’t make any sense because—" The two of them ran down the hall as Rarity tried to talk Sweetiebot out of her irrational fear, Pinkie leading Dash to the stairs that would bring them to the surface. That actually worked! Dash could see a window to the outside now, but the light from the electric plants still shone brightly, flooding in through the windows. “We gotta find some way to stop that if we’re getting out of here, right?” Dash looked out the window. “Can’t you find the switch for it or something?” “I was looking for you first.” Pinkie closed her eyes. “But now we can look for that one.” After a moment, Pinkie pointed up the stairs and the two of them ran. Just as they got to the top of the stairs and turned the corner, Sweetiebot appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at them with her glowing, red eyes. Another tremor went through the building as the two ponies raced even faster down the hallway. At the end of the hall was another four doors. “Let’s see.” Pinkie pointed to each door in turn, listing them. “My best guess here. That door leads to a hilarious situation. That way leads to certain death. That one is the shortest path to Rarity and over there is the most inconvenient door for Rarity.” The last door Pinkie pointed to was the heaviest, the only metallic door of the bunch. “What does that last one mean?” Dash asked. “I dunno! These are just gut feelings. Don’t take anything I say too literally.” Pinkie walked over to the inconvenient door. “Might be the best one to pick.” Pinkie blew the door off its hinges. This new room was exceptionally dark, so much so Dash couldn’t see one thing inside it. “Wait!” Rarity yelled across the intercom, suddenly panicked. “Don’t go in there!” “Yeah, but see you telling us not to go in there makes me want to go in there,” said Dash. “Look— I’ll give you whatever you want! Anything! You can have that seal breaker! Just don’t go in there! Please!” “I want whatever I want.” Pinkie shrugged. “I say we take the deal!” “Sure, if it gets us out of here,” said Dash. Pinkie brought the door back up and gently placed it where it had been, barely fixing it. The lights turned on, banishing the darkness. Sweetiebot charged at them from down the hall, her buzzsaws whirling and tearing a line in the floor below her as she ran. She was ever so slightly less intimidating when her eyes weren’t glowing in the dark. “You cannot outrun my love for my sister!” Sweetiebot yelled over her screeching sawblades. “Sweetiebot! Change in plans!” Rarity announced over the intercom. “Do not attack them. I want you to lead them to me instead.” “But they are not Rarity! They must be destroyed! You said to destroy them!” “No, no,” said Rarity. “I changed my mind.” “Do not incinerate?” Sweetiebot struggled with the concept, but she stopped her buzzsaws. “Yes.” “But my love for you burns like ten million campfires incinerating ten million marshmallows!” “Yes, and that’s why you aren’t eviscerating them,” said Rarity. “Remember that our sister is the most important thing in the world! We can’t fight anywhere near her!” “Yes.” Sweetiebot looked at the door. “Deactivating intimidation mode.” The only thing that appeared to change was her eyes going from red to green. “I would rip out your still-beating hearts, but it would displease my sister Rarity whom I love,” Sweetiebot explained. “Follow me.” “Makes sense to me!” Pinkie started following her. Dash sighed and followed, taking one last look at the forbidden door. If this was a trap, Pinkie would see it coming so why not? Sweetiebot led them up one more level, where they found the room Rarity had been watching them from this whole time. This room had a fainting couch, a desk covered in an enormous stack of paper, and some strange machine that had lightning arcing between two anodes on the top of it. This machine was attached to a projector, though it was only projecting white light at the moment. A pony, no doubt Rarity, was sitting in a chair behind the desk and piles of paper, back to Dash, looking out a window at the raging thunderstorm. A flash of lightning light up the room brightly, casting a silhouette of her over the room. Of course, there were a few buckets of bubbling green stuff on a shelf next to the desk as well. Apparently, every room needed that. There was a portrait on the wall of a filly that looked remarkably similar to her this robot. Almost ten of them hung from the wall in total. Dash looked back at Sweetiebot 9000 for comparison, getting a better look at it now that it wasn’t trying to ‘non-lethally restrain’ her. It was a perfect match. “I’m still not a hundred percent sure how intelligent this thing is.” Dash waved a hoof in front of her now green eyes. “I tricked you, therefore I am more intelligent than you,” said Sweetiebot. “I got you twice, kid.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Here, I’ll do it again.” Dash took out her lucky bit, technically the only one she had right now. She waved it around in front of Sweetiebot, then clapped her hooves together. The coin was gone when she pulled them apart. Sweetiebot leaned forward, looking for the coin. Dash reached behind the robot’s ear and pulled it out. Sweetiebot jumped to her feet in surprise, her eyes opening wide. She grabbed the coin and studied it intently. “This is impossible!” Sweetiebot continued to turn it over, trying to uncover this mystery. With her distracted, it was just Rarity now. “I suppose I have no choice but to reveal myself.” Rarity kept staring out the window. “I’ll have to ask you not to scream when you see me.” “Sure?” Dash tilted her head. There had to be next to nothing that could make her scream at this point. Rarity slowly turned around in her chair, revealing that she was easily the most beautiful mare Dash had ever seen. “There!” Rarity winced and pushed away from her desk. “Now you both know my horrible secret!” Dash and Pinkie looked at one another. “We do?” Dash blinked. “That I’m hideously deformed!” Rarity pointed at her absolutely perfect face. “Uh.” Dash and Pinkie shared another confused look. “From the scar?!” “Scar?” Dash looked Rarity over. “I don’t see one single scar! Don’t take this as me hitting on you or anything but you’re like ten out of ten hot. I’d bathe in dragons’ blood to be as sexy as you.” “I appreciate your low standards, but it’s right here!” Rarity jumped across the desk and came in as close as she could, pointing to a spot just above her eye. Dash leaned forward and squinted. “Oh! I see it. But that’s microscopic. It looks like somepony poked you with a red pencil.” “No stallion will ever love me now!” Rarity put a hoof over her forehead like she was about to faint, collapsing on the couch. “I had to give up on relationships entirely and focus only on my career!” “Um. That scar ain’t that bad.” Dash shrugged. “I got bigger scars and guys still hit on me. You’re being a little overdramatic.” “Look, I stared at the outer gods for more than eight seconds and went insane, remember?” Rarity opened her eyes, unamused. “I had a mental breakdown that drove me to do that in the first place. You add nine dives on top of that and, well, these things compound you know.” “Oh! Right. Well did you ever think of maybe getting therapy?” “I did and I have! But the only thing you can get out here are mad therapists. That only made things worse.” Rarity flailed on her fainting couch. “And oh! Now I’m being robbed! You said you’d vanquish yourselves from my presence if I get you a seal breaker, yes?” “We’re not trying to rob you, okay?” Dash asked. “Yeah! We just wanted your help,” said Pinkie. “But we can help you back! We can get you whatever spell you’re after. Maybe.” “Yes,” said Rarity. “The way you were talking before implies that you know a witch who used to have the book I was looking for?” Technically, that was exactly the case. “I think we can work something out!” Pinkie jumped up on the fainting couch with her. “We can probably get you the mystery spell if you lend us some of your stuff for a while. We’ll need your robot and the seal breaker and— oh! You! You can talk all nerdy like about your inventions, right?” “Have you ever met a creative, darling?” Rarity flicked her mane. “Why, I never shut up about how any of this works! You see, the secret to artificial general intelligence is simply to—" “Yeah! Exactly that!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together. “But save it for tomorrow.” “Well the problem here is that I would never work with a bunch of neurotypicals,” said Rarity. “Ponies who haven’t seen beyond the veil of reality and sanity cannot be trusted. We cannot possibly understand one another, there’s far too much you take for granted.” Another tremor shook the place, knocking over Rarity’s piles of paper. One of her large bubbling buckets fell over as well. “You can stop whatever’s causing those tremors, by the way,” Dash suggested. “That isn’t me.” Rarity wiped up the green ooze on the floor. “We’ve been experiencing a lot of earthquakes recently is all. Just give me a moment to clean this stuff up before we absorb any super-radiation.” Rarity got it all back into a bucket and carried it to the next room, a small bathroom, where she flushed it down the toilet. “Wait! You’ve been pouring super-radioactive waste down the toilet?!” Pinkie looked suddenly worried. “We’re miles away from anyone else, it hardly matters,” said Rarity. “What about alligators in the sewers?” Pinkie asked. “Some ponies flush baby alligators down the toilet and then they live in the sewers graining power as they continue to mutate. And alligators never stop growing so they can get massive in just a few years. Those ancient sewers go all over the world so there’s no telling when one might pop up.” “Don’t be ridiculous.” Rarity rolled her eyes. “I live miles away from anypony else. There’s no way an alligator would have come all the way from the city down here.” “I don’t know! A giant alligator could come bursting out of your toilet at any moment,” said Pinkie. “In fact, my ESP is telling me there’s a ninety-nine percent chance at this point.” “What? Are your toilets the size of swimming pools? Because mine is normal-sized.” Rarity opened the door to the bathroom all the way. “How is a giant alligator going to come out of that?!” The shaking grew louder. This time it didn’t die down. The entire bathroom lifted into the air, breaking apart from the rest of the castle. Several other rooms went with it as half of Rarity’s castle was torn up from the foundation. The rubble continued to push up until finally the ponies were at eye level with the largest alligator in history. “Oh.” Rarity paused with the giant still rising behind her. “I suppose it’d be like that.” A hissing sound shook the building as the alligator took a second step forward. Just this one step was enough for the entire room to collapse. Pinkie gave a hop and levitated briefly with her psychic powers, but Rarity began to fall through the floor. Luckily, Rainbow Dash was there to grab both of them and start flying out of the castle. She intended to just ditch this place for now, put as much distance between them and the gator as possible. But Rarity began to panic as soon as they took off. “No!” Rarity flailed in Dash’s grip. “Sweetie Belle is still in there! I can’t leave her!” Rarity fought her way through Dash’s grip and jumped down to the crumbling castle. Meanwhile, the alligator saw her flying off and snapped at her in midair. The force from the snap sent a blast of wind and sound that made Dash lose balance. There was too much turbulence to fly between that and the storm! Dash had no choice but to make a crash landing a few meters away from the alligator. At least the plants were no longer electrified. Pinkie jumped off Dash’s back landing with no problem, exploding the nearby flytraps with her telekinesis. They grew back much slower this time. “Okay!” Pinkie looked up at the reptile in determination. “Remember, you gotta run zigzag away from alligators!” “I’m not sure if that’s going to help.” Dash took to the air. That thing was so big it looked like it could pluck her out of the air. The alligator was bigger than Rarity’s entire castle, destroying half of it just by coming out of the ground. Pinkie was the one the alligator went after first. It scooped up a significant amount of ground with its lower jaw to pick Pinkie up. Then it moved to snap down on the mare. Using her psychic powers, Pinkie managed to keep its mouth from slamming shut. It was clearly near the limit of her strength though, Pinkie visibly struggling with it as Dash flew back down to her side. “Quick! Do something!” Pinkie called out to Dash. “I can’t hold it forever!” Do something?! It’s not like Dash had some magical anti-alligator weapon! Or did she? “Okay, this is a bit of a long shot.” Dash took out her last youth gummy. They were supposed to grow fast. Dash jumped forward and threw the bottle with the gummy in it as hard as she could, the container disappearing in its maw. “Can’t hold—" Pinkie grunted, then finally jumped out of the alligator’s way and let its jaws snap shut just in front of her. The force from the snap was enough to knock both Pinkie and Dash flat on their backs. Dash’s brilliant plan didn’t look like it was working! The alligator opened again and inched forward, threatening to bite down and crush both ponies at once. The alligator snapped its mouth shut but came short, just in front of Dash. It seemed confused, momentarily, about missing but lunged forward and snapped at her again only to miss once more. It was clear now that the alligator was rapidly shrinking! It kept missing because its jaw was getting smaller and smaller. That thing was shrinking far faster than Pinkie had, even. It was almost like the thing wasn’t moving the shrinkage was so extreme. But eventually, it did get to the two mares and finally bit down hard on Pinkie’s leg. Of course, by then it was so tiny that Pinkie merely giggled when it bit her. “Aw!” Pinkie picked up the gator and hugged him. “You’re such a cutie now! How could somepony have flushed you down the toilet? You’re gonna be my pet from now on!” A large chunk of the castle fell off. Dash squinted. It was hard to see in the rain, but Rarity was up there, near the part of the castle that just fell. Dash darted up there. Clearly, that place wasn’t safe even with the gator shrunk. As Dash got close, the floor crumbled again. There was another large tube, the same size as the ones with the zombies in them, sitting in what once was the middle of the room, Rarity clutching to it dearly. But once the floor started to break, that tube fell off the edge. “No!” Rarity ran to the edge of the crumbling floor. She actually jumped off after whatever was in that tube. Dash flew in to catch Rarity, who kept a foreleg stretched out towards the tube. That thing had to be important. Dash darted under that next. It hit her with significant force, but Dash managed to slow it down. “You have to get it back up to that room!” Rarity pointed back up. “Hurry!” This had better not be another zombie they were trying to save. With significant effort, Dash flew it back up. That thing was freaking heavy! Dash set it down on the far end of the room. Without a word of thanks, Rarity went into a mad rush, hooking tubes up to the thing. “It needs power!” Rarity clutched onto Dash. “You have to hurry and find where Sweetiebot 9000 landed! She’ll know what to do!” Dash noticed something else in the room. It was another Sweetiebot 9000, identical to the one Dash saw before, sitting on a pedestal. “What about that one?” Dash pointed to it. “No! That’s something else! The one I need fell downstairs somewhere!” “Alright.” Dash had no idea if she was doing the right thing, but she flew downstairs. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find the robot, still in the rubble of the first floor. Sweetiebot must have gotten the message because she opened her forelegs for Dash to lift her. Dash got her back up there as fast as she could. Once there, Sweetiebot hooked the tube up to herself, electricity surging from her to it. The chemical inside began bubbling again. Only then did Rarity let out a sigh of relief, collapsing onto her haunches. “Thank you so much for helping her.” Rarity grabbed Dash in a sudden hug. “After I was so rude to you— and you didn’t even know how important this was!” “Well I could tell it was important to you,” said Dash. “I couldn’t just let it get destroyed.” Dash finally got a look inside the glass tube. It was a brain and a spine suspended in the fluid; tubes jammed their way into the brain. “A brain?” “This is my little sister, Sweetie Belle.” Rarity put her hoof on the glass. “Is she—?” “Dead? No. Thanks to you.” Rarity turned back to Dash. “She’s the entire reason I became a mad scientist. Seven years ago, I was at the beach with my entire family, but then it came! The slither dee! It came out of the sea! It ate all the others but it didn’t eat me! My entire family slaughtered before my very eyes!” Pinkie came crawling up the side of the castle with her new pet alligator just then. “Sweetie Belle and I were the only survivors, and Sweetie Belle just barely. The doctors told me there was nothing they could do to save her— but I had to! I had to find some way to keep her alive! I couldn’t bear to lose everyone. I came out here and found somepony to show me the outer gods. If normal science couldn’t save her, then maybe mad science could!” “So you built a bunch of robot versions of her?” Dash glanced back at Sweetiebot 9000. She was sitting next to the near-identical copy of herself, giving her twin a few playful, curious pokes. “Yes, I wanted to put her brain in a robot body,” said Rarity. “The rush of inspiration and knowledge culminated in the Sweetiebot 9000! I created an invincible body for my sister! I couldn’t bear the thought of her getting hurt again, but I knew that if I could make her an unstoppable avatar of death she’d never be injured ever again.” “Daw!” Pinkie cooed. “That’s so sweet!” “Is it?” Dash raised an eyebrow to that. “I got so close!” Rarity walked over to the second, empty Sweetiebot 9000. “So close to being able to put her brain in the robot. But the rush I got from gazing upon the outer gods has all but dried up when I’m just one step away! With mad science reaching its limit for me, I had no choice to go with the next best thing. Actual science!” Rarity pointed to a desk, covered in notes. “But oh!” Rarity whined as she slumped against her sister’s tube. “Real science is a lot of hard work and takes forever!” “You can’t just take another peek at the outer gods?” Dash asked. “Like one more second? You already went past eight and went mad, right?” “Yes, but it’s a matter of how mad! Maybe you don’t know how things work out here in the real world. Society is like an onion. It has layers. If you stare at the outer gods for more than eight seconds you get thrown out of the center and have to associate with the mad scientists, werewolves, and necromancers. But we have our limit too. After fifteen seconds, even we kick you out into the fringe of the fringe of society and get stuck with the cultists and ghosts.” Rarity stuck her tongue out. “I can’t associate myself with those filthy cultists. They smell disgusting and their robes are so tacky! They keep talking in riddles and parables, acting like you can define things into existence with sheer logic! I can’t put up with them. They are the truest enemies of mad science!” “Okay, so I see.” Dash nodded. “You need that spell to finish reviving your sister, right?” “Precisely.” Rarity gave her sister’s brain one last look. “I would do absolutely anything to revive her.” Rarity bowed her head. “I want to apologize again,” she said. “My sister would be dead, all my hard work for nothing if you two hadn’t broken into my house. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say this time.” “Again, I didn’t break into your house,” said Dash. “But yeah, you’re welcome.”