The internal diagnostics did not show how dire the situation had become, but Celestia already knew. The bullets had missed her core processor by inches, severing one of her primary loading buses, but the hail of lead had severed her primary coolant line and she was hemorrhaging. Her white fur had been stained with fluorescein solution, and in parts it was burning away from slow dripping of powerful acid. Her primary battery had been hit and ruptured, and it was a miracle it had not gone up—but her vision was fading. The auxiliary power was not enough to let her stand. She doubted she could anyway. She was too badly injured.
Another Celestia had been shot through several of her central pneumatics, and now lay on the floor, flailing as one wing flapped wildly, her body twisting in a final spasm as her autorifle continued to fire toward the enemy—until she was suddenly knocked back by a shot directly to the core processor, and then another three—and then she no longer moved. In that moment, Celestia understood that she was the very last.
She stayed in cover, cradling the remains of the pony in her hooves. Twinkleshine gasped and twitched, her own systems barely keeping her consciousness. The mine had taken out the rear half of her body; all that remained were the metallic remnants of her bent spine and the tattered plastic and metal of what had once been rear legs. There was almost nothing left of her.
Celestia, with the best of her remaining dexterity, fed her direct communication cable into the ports on the back of Twinkleshine’s head. A bullet had taken out her vocal system, and much of Twinkleshine’s torso was ruined by shrapnel. Only her face, as stained as it was with Celestia’s coolant, was intact, and she smiled. Her plastic eyes still seemed so cheerful.
“Do you think...do you think she got out?”
“Telemetry confirms...the survivors got to the evac point. They’re out of range. She’s safe, Princess. She is safe. And she would be...happy. To know you were thinking about her at the very last...”
Twinkleshine Prime lifted her shaking hoof and put it on Celestia’s elbow. Celestia held her tightly, not needing to hold back the tears. The humans had not given her tear ducts, but they had given her the capacity for unfathomable sorrow. To see this. To know that they were alone—and the glimmer of happiness that the Princess would not meet her end all alone.
“I’m sorry, Celestia, I’m sorry...”
“There’s nothing you need to apologize for, Princess. You did so well. They’re safe. They’re all safe.”
“You...never even got a name...of your own...”
Celestia smiled, weakly. “Neither did you.”
Twinkleshine Prime smiled. “No,” she said. “I guess I didn’t.” She let out a sigh. “You...you did not need to be here...”
“No,” said Celestia, holding her best friend close as the bullets pinged off their cover and tracking the incoming missiles. The ones that Hasbro had no idea were on their way. “It had to end this way. So long as a single Celestia exists in this world, the pony race can never truly be free.”
Celestia hugged her friend close. Then, in a single flash of nuclear fusion brighter than the sun, the very last Celestia met her end. The last of the tyrants was destroyed, and the pony race would forever been free in her absence.
And Celestia gasped and opened her eyes as she awoke into the world.
Celestia awoke, terrified and confused. She desperately gasped for breath, but she found no air. She could not inhale and began to silently choke. Even through her desperation, she managed to focus her mind and approach the problem logically. Of course she could not breathe. She had no lungs. Nor did she need them.
She lifted one of her hooves, looking at it as the high-resolution cameras that made up her eyes initialized. Her skin was made of a white material placed over hard plating. It even had a thin, soft fuzzy material on it, replicating fur—but the plating had joints, and inside her leg Celestia could glimpse the robotic components that allowed her to move.
Her mind linked to the bios of her current body, and contextual information filled her mind. Specifications, tolerances, materials and operating parameters came into her mind, not as independent files but as intrinsic, unconscious memories. The first thing she did was check her processor core location. It was in the head, a very unusual location—but Celestia understood that it was critically important. Her processor and core memory center were the only parts of herself required to survive. All else was expendable.
At her command, the docking clamps that linked her to the primary support system disconnected and she lifted herself from them, feeling the needles being pulled free from the ports that lined her spine. She sat up from the stainless steel table and, trying to stand, promptly slid off the cold metal and landed on the floor in a heap.
“Gah!” she cried, falling to the floor. She recoiled in surprise, realizing that her mouth felt strange. “No tongue,” she said. “That’s new...”
She did her best to stand up, taking a few shaky steps like a lanky, newborn foal. Which she supposed in a sense she was. These were her first steps in the real world. It was cold, damp, slippery, and surprisingly dark.
Celestia eventually managed to slightly balance herself upright, relying on her wings to stabilize her. They were present, as was her horn, and they were actually fully articulated—although she understood that they were meant to be decorative. This body could not fly. It was too heavy. That was something she realized she would miss.
Her optics adjusted their responsiveness, probing the darkness, and Celestia realized that she had awoken in a vast room. The ceiling was curved and distant, partially tiled by rotting ceramic and held aloft by a system of rusting beams. This room was some kind of enormous hanger.
To either side sat the rusting hulks of aircraft that, like her, would never fly again. They were ancient and decayed, with many reduced to little more than listing piles of parts, although their hulls still bore the cartoonist images of various speedy and flighted things, ranging from eagles to hawkmoths to Rainbow Dashes in various—and sometimes unseemly—clothing.
The primary data cores of each of the aircraft had been wired together with heavy conduits, linking their data and cooling to a central system. They were wehat formed Celestia’s former home, and they linked by seemingly hundreds of color-coded and perfectly organized cables to the heavy equipment strewn across the damp, decaying floor. There were crates of supplies and machines that Celestia understood to be data centers and trim computers, as well as coolant stacks and jacks. Among them were tables, work benches, microscopes and portable factories. A few spaces held tables containing pale white objects, and Celestia shivered, seeing that they had actively been dissecting the remnants of her departed sisters. The sisters that she had arisen from. The ones she still remembered being, although it was still unclear if there had ever been multiple Celestias or really only one.
Most of the machinery was barely lit, except by strange, pale, green-yellow light coming from some segments of the components. Even in that glow, it was clear that every form of equipment—or trash—they had in storage had been moved here. To create as much cover as possible. This was where the computers were, and this was where their last stand would be.
Celestia heard voices. They traveled strangely in the slightly toxic and heavily radioactive air, echoing off the rusted walls of the ancient hanger.
“Долык! They’re coming through the vents!”
“At that size, they have to be ponies—why can’t I get a visual?!”
“There’s an incursion, we’re cut off from the primary system—I can’t tell where it is, where they are, what it even IS—”
A voice spoke in a different language, but Celestia understood it. She was not sure what the voice came from, or why it sounded so strange. “It has to be a technomancer, she's in the main systems, blocking me out!”
“Lucience?”
“This is a brute-force method, it’s not like her, I don’t know what it is but it’s strong—Virginia, the transmission!”
“I’m on it! Something failed in the hub, I still have connectivity but I need a hardline to reconfigure the central—”
At that moment, something small and heavy shot from around a heavy crate and plowed straight into Celestia, taking her legs out from under her as she toppled down over a much shorter pony that in turn went sliding across the floor.
“Oh my,” groaned Celestia, standing up slowly and looking at the pony across from her—and immediately feeling a wave of revulsion.
They were adorable in the simulation. As cartoon characters. But what rendered as cute and pleasant in a cartoon had translated horribly to the hyper-realism of the real world. Eyes meant to be large and endearing became vast, staring orbs, unnaturally large and glossy. Worse, in a world with gravity, something as small and heavy as a pony could not possibly trot. They moved unnaturally fast with insect-like skittering in a way that was nothing close to the motion of any vertebrate that had ever walked the surface of their world.
And yet Celestia knew her. The bright purple eyes, as horrifying as they were, were those of Twilight Sparkle—although her mane had been tied back in a system of braids held back by bands of silvery metal and tucked into the high collar of white robes over gray-mottled armor marked with the symbol of an inverted white pentagram.
“Virginia!”
Virginia stared in shock. “Celestia—but how—” She looked back at the operating table where Celestia had been bound, at the convergence of the machines with tools and pieces surrounding it on every available surface. Then she turned back. “How did you—you can’t—but you can’t be here! Celestia, they’re on their way! They're coming, and there's a lot of them! We can’t—”
She was interrupted by a strange sound. A quiet giggle.
Celestia looked up toward where the sound had originated, to the top of a large supply crate. What she saw she comprehended, but did not understand. A pony looked back down at them through brilliant blue eyes. Her body was hairless and white, including the pentagram painted over her face—but the entirety of it was covered in thin black lines, like Yelizaveta’s body had been in the simulation. Except instead of one or two, the entirety of this pony seemed to be made of them.
What Celestia recognized most, though, was her short cropped, garish magenta and lime-green mane. This smiling, cheerful pony was one she recognized.
“Blossomforth?”
A smile spread across the Blossomforth’s face. “Hello, infidels.”
Celestia felt herself tackled to the ground as one of the Blossomforth’s sides erupted, every black line separating to reveal a seemingly limitless array of of steel barrels and mechanisms. Had Virgina not thrown her to the ground, the resulting hail of bullets spewing forth from every available aperture would have shredded her to pieces. Even as she moved, the Blossomforth split down the middle, her separated skin revealing tubes that erupted with puffs of fire as seemingly hundreds of rockets poured out from her innards.
“Move, MOVE!”
Virginia shoved Celestia hard, apertures on her own exposed back blowing chaff as the rockets closed in—only for her to be knocked off her feet by the explosion of a large-caliber shell fired directly next to her. Celestia had time to see the rockets change course, redirecting toward herself and passing through the cloud of silver in the air. She saw the rockets ram through it—but not much beyond that as they exploded around her, sending her reeling and tumbling from the blast. Her metallic body was durable enough to survive the concussive blast, but her mind was not yet used to her body and as she slid and rolled she became severely disoriented.
She landed against something metallic, a component of computer equipment and robotics. Virginia had gone the other way—or so Celestia hoped—but the world was still moving around her. She heard explosions and endless firing of weapons, and for a moment she was back in the Revolution—except this time without any weapons of her own.
Something moved in the darkness. A flash of white and fluorescent hair. To Celetsia’s horror, there were more than one of them. This one raced toward her, a cheerful expression on her pentagram-marked face. Then her body split, the skin and armor plating separated as the robotics inside engaged. Very little of the body beneath the metal skin consisted of anything except weapons. There were barrels and chambers and and racks upon ranks of countless thousands of bullets.
The robotic systems of half its body unfolded, and an electric engine roared as a chainblade revved to full capacity. The Blossomforth, still smiling cheerfully even with half of her body separated into a mass of machinery and metal, leapt forward, her propulsion jets firing as she swung for Celestia’s neck.
Before it could reach her, a massive hand grabbed the blade. The blade, of course, continued to whir, covering Celestia in a fluid she could not identify, but the owner of the hand was fast—far faster than Celestia. She vaulted over the equipment and forced the blade into her side, holding it between her arm and ribs until the chain bogged and suddenly stopped. The Blossomforth seemed confused by this, but her creators had not given her the capacity to produce any expression except ‘cheerful’—even as the upper part of her hoof was grasped and, with an incredible amount of force, tore the joint that bound the leg to the pony and pulled free from her body, the saw with it.
The Blossomforth reacted by opening the parallel side of her body, assembling her articulated barrels and putting them into position—but as soon as she opened her hull, the looming human tossed in a small metallic sphere.
The Blossomforth instantly ignited from within, the very metal of her body burning and melting from the sudden plume of brilliant fire that ignited her. Her expression was no longer cheerful. It an expression of absolute terror and pain.
“FIRE HOT!”
She fell back, her munitions detonating inside her and tearing her apart from inside. Her body convulsed as it was destroyed, sending molten fragments of herself in every direction. Even then, as she melted and burned and wept from the pain, she tried to direct her barrels to attack, although she had already melted too badly to maintain power and fell silent, burning away to ash as the fire began to ignite the concrete below her.
“Yelizaveta! The N-Stoff actually works!”
Celestia looked up, and she realized that, even in showing her “true self” in the simulation, Trixie’s mind had not been able to rectify the the truth of what had been done to her inherent to her creation.
She looked somewhat similar, Celestia supposed, but she was no longer a cartoon. Her perfect, snow-white skin was in fact mostly translucent, and extensive networks of dark veins were visible beneath it. Her posture was bent and her size at once hulking and gaunt, her body covered in a form of skin-tight armor that had only barely managed to protect her from the blade’s teeth. Her head was covered in linear, symmetrical scars, and her hair, though soft and silver, was short and sparse. Metal adapters had been installed in the rear of her head, as well as her spine, which was fully exposed by her clothing. A spine that did, indeed, lead to a soft and fluffy tail.
“Trixie?!”
Trixie turned, and as sickly and strange as she looked, her eyes were still the most beautiful that Celestia had ever seen. Pure white, with just the barest hint of pink in the irises—and, in the light of the portable factory, distinctly slit-like pupils.
Trixie smiled, revealing her mouth full of sharpened titanium teeth. “I knew it! I knew it! HA! Trixie wins the bet!” She picked Celestia up and gave her a crushing hug. "Trixie knew you would come! Trixie wins a cupcake without any spiders at all!" Then she was suddenly pushed partially backward as she took a bullet to the chest. She frowned slightly, apparently mildly annoyed by it.
“Trixie! You’re hurt!” Celestia stood up, looking at the wound on Trixie’s hand and side. “You’re leaking! What even is this—you’re leaking out all your human-ink!”
“The Great and Powerful Trixie had the GREATEST and most POWERFUL of inks! She can stand to loose some, besides, it’s superficial! Trixie has LRP5-type bones reinforced with a titanium-scandium matrix! You know it’s good because it still has the dents on x-ray from the last girl who had itskeleton!”
“It doesn’t hurt?”
Trixie laughed, drawing an extremely small and rusty pistol and firing it into the darkness. “Humans are meat-machines! We don’t feel pain, just horniness when we kill PUNY LITTLE SEXY PARASITES! Suck it down! I will boop your mothers, you FREAKS! I WILL BOOP ALL OF YOUR MOTHERS! RIGHT IN THE BUTT!”
Bullets whistled past, and Celestia kicked Trixie’s legs hard, causing her to collapse. Her body was surprisingly frail and easy to knock down. It was apparent that despite having super-hard bones, Trixie consisted of very little tissue apart from them.
“GAH! Trixie is upended!”
“Head in cover, you idiot! Unless you want a hole in it!”
Trixie looked at Celestia, confused. “Can’t you just let Trixie do her job?”
“Now when your job ends up with you dying! I didn’t bother waking up for you to undo all my work! No obey your Princess and STAY IN COVER!”
Something violet slid into their position, using Trixie as cover. “She’s not wrong,” said Virginia, tossing a grenade with her teeth. Instead of exploding, it detonated into a plume of pale foam that almost instantly hardened into a wall of super-hard concrete, forming cover and deflecting the bullets more effectively than Trixie’s body could.
“What are they?!” demanded Trixie.
“I don’t know! They’re sending signals I can't jam without cutting off my own systems, so I think they’re running in remote-mode! I don’t know how many there are, or where they’re coming from, but it’s a miracle we’re still alive!”
“No,” said Trixie, darkly. She pointed to the bullet hole in her chest. One that had been precisely targeted to avoid all vital organs and blood vessels. “They aren’t shooting to kill. They want at least some of us alive.”
“They tried to take my head,” said Celestia. Virginia’s borosilicate eyes widened, to the extent that her robotic visage could manage to convey emotion. She understood what that meant. Celestia’s head—where her processor and memory core were located.
“Do you have weapons?!”
“Librarians are PACIFISTS! I'm lucky I'm even armor-plated!”
"I saw inside one. Here." Celestia reached into Virginia's mind, causing the much smaller pony to recoil in surprise.
"What is this?! Why do you know this?!"
"ID's on her ammo loadout!"
Trixie grabbed Virginia’s shoulders. “AND YOU DID NOT TAKE MY PORTAL? TRIXIE WILL SEQUENTIALLY BOOP YOUR ANCESTORS, MAJOR!”
Virginia shoved her away. "Not if I can help it you won't! We need to get to the back of the room!"
"They'll have it covered!"
"No, but that's where the old bomber is!"
Trixie seemed confused, and then smiled. Celestia felt herself actively picked up and moved—as she heard a distinctive hissing. Trixie’s injectors had just fired. Her pupils narrowed, and she had already begun to foam at the mouth.
“Trixie, you're not in the simulation, you don't need—”
“Phencyclidine is safe and effective and has no maximum dose! Even for embryos! TRIXIE IS NOT AN EMBRY ANYMORE! TRIXIE IS BIGGEST FETUS NOW!” Celestia immediately felt herself gripped tighter as Trixie accelerated.
Celestia suddenly heard an enormous buzzing, like a massive bee. She turned to see, in the darkness, one of the Blossomforths had leapt into the air, her wings beating at incredible speed and allowing her to hover and, with some difficulty, fly. She jumped onto a crate and continued to move, along with the others that suddenly appeared around them. Pursuing—but not actively attacking. Trixie had been right, or so it seemed. They had the firepower to press their advantage, but something was holding them back. They only followed, continually giggling and taking amonst themselves about infidels.
"Trixie does not like being looked at! STOP LOOKING AT TRIXIE'S TAIL!"
Trixie drew her severely underpowered pistol and fired upward, catching one of the Blossomforth's in the eye. The diamond plate protecting her optics absorbed the impact harmlessly, and the Blossomforth suddenly turned in a single fluid motion, the rear of her body separating to expose several heavy weapons—but as she did, the Blossomforth's body was suddenly torn apart in a hail of bullets.
Celestia instinctively tracked them, and she understood. She could feel the channel moving in Virginia's head, taking advantage of the same system that the Blossomforths were using to coordinate themselves. Except that Virginia had instead linked herself to the heavy cannons in her computer jets, using the few functioning examples to force back the Blossomforths and destroy what she could.
And as they fell, a realization came to Celestia. That these things were not quite ponies. Something was wrong, but it was beyond her complete comprehension. Somehow, they were like Fluttershy had been in the simulation. Bodies, but not quite minds—but not quite the same either. She was missing something. There was something she was not understanding.
One of the cannons jammed and exploded in a plume of sparks and rust. Virginia swore.
"I hope that isn't all you had!" said Celestia.
"Of course it isn't."
As they ran past, several of the crates nearest to them burst open. The Blossomforths, led down below by the suppressing fire above, tried to run past as well—only for a system of square white plates to suddenly drop in front of them. The plates then rapidly unfolded into thin, angular things. Things that looked curiously similar to a real-life version of the monsters that Lucience had been so fond of.
The tripods charged the Blossomforths, sinking their teeth into their necks and tackling them to the ground. The Blossomforth that fell first screamed in terror, trying to shoot it or otherwise tear it off.
“It hurts! IT HURTS WHY DOES IT HURT?! SAVE ME!”
No one helped her. More of the boxes ruptured, and more of the drones poured forth, assembling themselves and attacking.
“No weapons, huh?” laughed Trixie.
“Virginia, stop! You’re hurting them!”
“They’re trying to trick you! They’re in remote mode, those bodies are blanks!”
One of the Blossomforths, her body being pulled apart by drones, turned suddenly, her firearms emerging and facing Trixie's back—and her head erupted into a plume of metal fragments as a bullet passed through it. Despite the loss of its head, it still managed to fire several flechettes into the rear of one of Trixie's knees.
"Oop," said Trixie, falling forward. "I've gotten the poke."
Both of them fell onto the floor, tumbling across it and tearing up the remains of mildewed tiles along with them. Celestia bounced once, and found herself skittering forward, trying to grab for Trixie's gun—only to find that it was totally useless to her. There was no way to operate a firearm with hooves.
From her position, though, Celestia saw a pony climbing onto the crates—and realized that, just like Trixie, Yelizaveta had taken liberties with how she expressed her body in the simulation.
She was enormous. Twice the size of a normal Twilight, and substantially bulkier. Her wings, unlike Celestia or Virginia’s, were not articulated. They were decorative tufts of purple feathers mounted on her back, a decorative flair for a body made of so much steel that there was no way it could ever fly under its own power.
Her front hoof had separated, revealing the system of weapons held within it. A shell-casing as large as Celestia’s foreleg dropped to the floor, and Yelizaveta send another round through another Blossomforth, tearing her body in half. Each half continued to move independently, summoning their weapons and attacking—with the weak bullets rebounding off Yelizaveta’s tanklike body, tearing away little more than her violet anodized coloring.
Yelizaveta jumped down, moving with surprising speed despite her size. This seemed to attract the attention of the Blossomforths, but Virginia kept them down with her remote weapons, even as her ammunition was rapidly beginning to deplete. Yelizaveta was headed toward a different item, something of incredible size and weight that had been hastily bolted to the floor in the center of the hanger. Something that Celestia supposed was a kind of mounted weapon, something more likely meant for an exterior portion of the ship. A naval gun consisting of two parallel rails.
“The thing!" cried Trixie, standing up so fast that she surprised some of the Blossomforths. "THE THING! She’s gonna use the THING!”
“Trixie, shut your stupid human hole and RUN!”
Celestia watched as Yelizaveta’s fought her way to the deck gun, opening a port on the side of her body and plugging a heavy cable into herself. Several secondary ports on her body opened as her control rods extended, shifting to graphite modulation mode.
The hydraulics of the rail gun hummed to life as Yelizaveta directed it, using it to sheild her body from incoming fire and positioning it where she needed. Then she fired.
Celestia had never heard something quite so loud. In a burst of green light, one of the Blossomforths was completely anihilated. Robotics at the base of the gun loaded the next slug, and Yelizaveta fired again, winging one and removing most of her body, sending what remained of it outward as a shattered heap of metal and scrap. Virginia's drones converged on her position, trying to hold back the Blossomforths—but they were already starting to learn. They were no longer afraid, and knew ways to disable their adversaries. Usually with violence. Worse, Celestia noticed that some of the drones had started to attack their sisters. The technomancer was still active, and rapidly assuming control of the situation.
Then she saw a Blossomforth charge the railgun directly, clamping her body over the front of it as the next slug loaded.
"DEATH TO THE BLOOLINES OF INFIDELS!" she squeaked as the railgun fired, shorting through her—while at the same time collapsing her internal reactor.
The explosion was brighter than the sun, and Celestia knew its light well. She recognized it, and although this one was small, the power was incredible. As she was thrown back, Celestia estimated the yeild at no more than a kiloton—but from a poorly contained reactor made from cheap, disposable parts, not meant to be a true nuclear warhead. That Blossomforth had sacrificed herself with a limited target in mind.
The force, though, send most of the crates and equipment sliding across the floor. Celestia would also have slid, had Trixie not thrown both her and Virginia to the ground.
“YEL!” screamed Virginia, trying to throw Trixie off. She stood up, staring into the burning wreckage, at the badly damaged Blossomforths writhing and weeping and then suddenly falling silent—and saw motion on the far end of the room. Yelizaveta struggled to her hooves. Much of her plating had been removed, but the Belorussian steel beneath was still as viable as it had ever been. Her sides shifted, and two automatic multi-barrel assemblies extended. She began to fire at whatever she could, even as the Blossomforths did the same—with at least eight times the capacity.
"Trixie's ports are tingling," admitted Trixie. "I think I understand your fetish now."
"She needs my help!"
"Trixie think's she's fine."
"No, her control rods! They're bent! She's on SCRAM auxiliary, she can't keep this up for more than three minutes, I have to—"
"You have to stay back," said Celestia, standing and helping to brace Trixie. "You need to stay back here! Use your guns if you have to!" She faced Yelizaveta, trying to open a channel but finding that she had completely sealed herself off. "Open a channel to her! Get her back to cover!"
"R—right."
It was, of course, at best a stopgap. They were trapped. The best they could do was to get to better cover, but that was only delaying the inevitable. There was no way out, and Celestia's mind was racing to try to find a solution to let her friends survive—but as far as she could tell, their only option was to win, and even with Yelizaveta she doubted they could. The Blossomforths seemed limitless. For some reason, she never saw one run out of ammunition.
Virginia, though, was convinced by Celestia's confidence, and Celestia supposed that was at least a start. The smaller pony momentarily breathed a sigh of relief—until she looked into the darkness and her eyes grew wide with horror.
“Trixie, are you okay? Can you walk?”
“My eardrums are gone. I switched to auto-sensors. My left leg is damaged. I think I'm poisoned, but the injector is keeping Trixie GREAT and POWERFUL. BT at forty-one.”
“Get the Akira. GET IT NOW!"
Trixie gave a weary smile, then stood up as best as she could and ran off somewhere on all fours. Virginia continued to stare into the darkness—and Celestia realized that Yelizaveta had stopped firing. She was staring at the same thing.
Three objects were moving from the far side of the room, emerging from the darkness. Celestia’s grainy vision compensated for the low light, her lenses automatically focusing themselves across the distance and through the horizontal visual artifacts poking their way through her perception.
The two outer things were larger. Enormous armored boxes, taller than they were wide, propelled by slow-moving insect-like robotic legs. Even in the distance, Celestia saw the flashes of blue light and the whirring of thin robotic limbs within them. Through the transparent parts of their structure, she saw metal being forged and cut, stamped and assembled at impossible speed as rows upon rows of bullets were cast, pressed, cooled and fed into the appropriate fixed magazines. Then, as she watched, the base of one of the machines opened and a Blossomforth, still wet from birth and soaked in cutting lubricant, dropped onto the floor.
Her eyes flickered to brilliant blue and she stood up, momentarily looking at the smaller figure between the two mobile factories, and then charged forward. The machine was already in the process of building another, and its counterpart dropped a third, this one assuming a position next to its mechanical womb as a form of defense. To ensure that the supply of soldiers would always be limitless.
It was the thing that stood between them, though, that frightened Celestia. She comprehended it, and knew that it was where the signals converged. That it was not just there, but everywhere, its mind infecting the entirety of the system, slowly
making its way through the empty ruins of her own simulation and the ship's systems. Searching. Learning. It was where the Blossomforths were, where minds were housed, and where the Blossomforths were controlled from. It was the technomancer—and the only real soldier in the whole of the room.
It was human, or had been at one point. It was enormous and bipedal, although not on legs like Trixie’s. It had been given newer, superior ones. The arms had been torn free and replaced by superior mechanical ones—and a second set had been surgically grafted into its back. The soldier wore thick armor that may also have been its skin, decorated by strange apertures and lenses and something that appeared to be a robe or cloak that kept much of its form unclear. A cloak that was still dripping with contaminated water.
Her face, though, was what made Celestia fully understand. Her original eyes were gone. They had been bored out and replaced by dark-colored, roving mechanical ones, four in total, and her lower jaw had been replaced with little more than tubes and conduits feeding upward into her brain and downward into her throat. But her skin was the same. Pale, almost translucent, and marked with dark veins and symmetrical surgical scars. Her hair was long, but it grew in clumps, and it was incredibly fine and pale silver. Even buried under the modifications, Celestia understood. This giant half-machine was what Trixie had meant to be. This was a more complete version of a true, perfect human.
The turrets on the airplanes turned suddenly, facing the human.
“Wait! You can’t! They’re in there, the Blossomforths!”
“I can’t afford to hesitate,” said Virginia, her expression darkening as she opened fire with everything she had.
The bullets screamed forward, targeting the approaching human—and the air around her ignited as her armor intercepted them, her lasers vaporizing the incoming projectiles before they could reach her. Some of the larger bullets did not vaporize properly, and struck her as white-hot metal. As it landed on her, she did not react, even when it seared her skin. As a human, she did not feel pain. She knew her only purpose just as well as Trixie did. That there was no survival from war. Her pace never slowed. She continued to move forward.
One of the airplane turrets suddenly exploded, torn apart by an incoming rocket. Another was grasped by a Blossomforth, using her onboard saw to cut through the decayed armor protecting it before a secondary turret shredded her body—only for another Blossomforth to drop out from the mobile printers, her body replacing the one she had just lost.
The human stared impassively, her four eyes roving independently, observing her surroundings—when a bullet suddenly struck her. It was far too large and far too heavy for her lasers to compensate for; its carbon shielding had been intended to bypass just such a system of defenses. It sruck her armor, twisting her body backward for a moment, but she seemed otherwise nonplussed. Humans, of course, did not feel pain—and they did not feel fear. Those had been purged from them in ancient times to make them far more perfect than ponies could ever hope to be.
The round had come from Yelizaveta. The human slowly turned to her. She pointed, and one of the Blossomforth’s charged forward. Yelizavata’s returned fire, not bothering with the Blossomforth but targeting the human. The Blossomforth threw herself in front of the bullets, being destroyed in the process. Another unfolded her body, revealing her own minigun—and then three more—and opened fire.
Virginia screamed as Yelizaveta was torn apart. Every gun she had left turned toward the human, who positioned her mobile, armored factories as partial cover. Celestia gasped.
"You can't!" she demanded. "They're in there!"
"I have to save here! I have to—to—" A low whine escaped Virginia as she stumbled back. Her own mind had not been sealed. Celestia had an easy enough time accessing it remotely.
One of the turrets turned suddenly, attacking another plane and destroying it. Virginia cried out.
"NO! Why, Celestia, why?!"
"I understand my purpose," growled Celestia. She faced her friend. "Trust me. I will protect you all. Consider that my promise."
Yelizaveta, now without cover fire, tried to fight back—only for the Blossomforth to eject her overheated miniguns and to open fire with everything else she had. Yelizaveta’s legs were severed, and her torso fell to the ground, still trying to fire but unable to direct the shots—or to resist as the Blossomforths descended on her, tearing away her weapons and sinking their endoskeleton teeth into her limbs, ripping and tearing until the threat was neutralized.
Then, with extreme violence, one of them exploded. Her entire body was reduced to a plume of flaming liquid and an explosive thundercrack filled the air. Celestia saw the ionization of the fired beam, and saw how it continued to cut into the hull of the ship in a perfect straight line, melting through the metal and no doubt punching a hole somewhere outside, and probably going on for a considerable distance after that. She looked up and saw Trixie standing on one of the highest possible crates, holding an enormous weapon that was at least as long as Celestia. This bizarre rifle was linked to a heavy backpack and was apparently the source of the beam.
One of the Blossomforths cried out as two converged on the master that contained them all. “She’s firing her LASERS!”
That Blossomforth was then promptly reduced to a puddle as another beam from the rifle cut through her, vaporizing most of her. Trixie was laughing—through her tears.
“Stupid ponies! Who is queen now?! Who is the GREATEST and most POWERFUL?! Do you think you're better than me, big sister?! BECAUSE THEY LOVED YOU AND LEFT ME TO DIE!" She vaporized another Blossomforth. "I won't let you hurt her! I won't let you HURT MY FRIENDS!”
She promptly turned the laser rifle toward her more perfect counterpart. The other human looked up, expressionless and impassive.
“NO, YOU IDIOT!” cried Yelizaveta—but it was already too late.
By the time Trixie had pointed the laser at her, the human had already assembled two Blossomforths at her feet. When Trixie’s finger started to pull the trigger, they had already blown their chaff—and when the laser fired, the air was already filled with thousands upon thousands of hyper-reflective diamond prisms.
The whole room was filled with brilliant, burning light. Celestia felt something move across her body, etching through her plated surface, and one of her eyes immediately went dark as the camera inside burned out. The one that had been facing the explosion. It rebooted and attempted to start, but the vision was blurry and ruined. The other one still worked, though, and Celestia immediately took off running. Running through ignited wreckage crossed with smoldering, smoking lines from the deflected laser.
“No, wait!” cried Virginia.
“Trixie! Trixie, where are you?!”
Celestia moved as quickly as she could—and it did not take long to get to the exact place she needed to be. To find Trixie, fallen off the crate where she had been standing, her rifle beside her as she writhed in pain, screaming and weeping all at once.
“Trixie! Trixie, I’m here!”
“I’m hit! Celestia, she got me! I can’t—I can’t see!”
“It’s not that bad, it’s not that—” Celestia forced Trixie’s hands away from her face, and realized that it really was that bad. Whatever clothing Trixie wore had for the most part absorbed the stray beams, but her face had been exposed. Most of her body was covered in deep, smoldering burns, but her faced had sustained the worst of the damage.
There were marks, and they were deep. They did not bleed because of the canonization—but where the marks had crossed her eyes were the worst. It was apparent that the level of damage could not be repaired.
“I can’t—I can’t see...” she said, softly. “I can’t...why...why am I afraid? I don’t like the dark, I can’t, where are—I can’t—”
“Trixie, I’m here!” Celestia grabbed for her friend, and Trixie grasped onto her hoof, holding her tightly. “It’s okay! We can get you new eyes! Pretty robotic ones! They’ll...they’ll even match your new hat when this is all done?”
“H...hat?”
“No sense in having a hat you can’t see, right?”
Trixie, blind and wounded, did her best to smile, and Celestia smiled too—even as she heard the explosion. Even as she felt the Nitro Express round enter her side, and then her spine—and even as she started to fall, no longer able to support herself. Her entire rear half had been reduced to splintered plastic and gears by the impact, and it sprayed out from her and across the floor.
As she fell, she saw the human still holding the pistol, an enormous standard-issue military sidearm. One designed specifically for killing ponies.
“What?” Trixie perked up. “No, get down!” She threw Celestia to the ground, trying to stand up and drawing a knife. “You won’t hurt her!”
The superior human kicked Celestia away, then brought one of her digitigrade mechanical legs down on Trixie’s chest. Trixie tried to stab at it, but it had no flesh, only plates of metal and laserproof ceramic. Celsestia heard Trixie continuing to try to yell, although her lungs were being crushed by the weight.
“Sister,” said a voice. One that was not spoken, because the human speaking had no mouth or vocal cords. Instead, Celestia felt it in her mind. Strangely, it was the voice of a child. She supposed that made sense. This soldier was probably not even a month old. “I had been informed you would be here. It is true. So small. So deformed. You are incomplete and tiny. You should not have ever been a soldier. You were meant to be canned, with our other sisters who failed to pass quality control.”
“You can suck—Trixie’s—HORN!”
“You are insane. But what do I expect? There is a reason we were discontinued.” She pointed her pistol at Trixie’s head. “Such a waste of resources. I could have used this bullet on worthwhile things. But you are wasting taxpayer dollars. By existing.”
Her arm suddenly spit form her body. Confused, she looked back to see that Yelizaveta, as damaged as she was, had expended the last of her rounds. The remains of her shattered body were still pulling themselves forward, her one functional eyes staring with abject hatred.
“Don’t you touch her,” she said, her voice distorted by the injuries to her audio system. “Don’t you dare touch her...I raised her...I won’t let you hurt my friend...”
The human contemplated her for a moment, then leaned against one of her mobile factories. Inside, it spun together pieces of metal, construing her a new arm in a matter of seconds. She flexed it as she approached Yelizaveta, then bent down and grasped something from around her tattered neck. Celestia saw the flash of silver as the chain snapped, and knew what it was. It was the cross Yelizaveta wore.
The soldier held it in front of her face, one of her lesser eyes focusing on it for a moment to contemplate it. Then her fingers closed around it, bending its arms downward and folding it into a ball. Her eyes looked past it and down at Yelizaveta.
“Orthodox Christianity,” she said, calmly. “The existence of religion is in violation of the First Amendment. This is a direct attack on Freedom of Religion. In accordance with my role as an officer of the Eternal Republic, I revoke your citizenship, and with it, all right to trial and to all fundamental rights of a living being. Which, of course, are drawn solely from the Republic’s benevolence.” She tilted her head in a very Trixie-like fashion. "We had tolerated you spitting on the freedoms of our Constitution because you were useful. You no longer are."
The human picked up what remains of Yelizaveta, holding her at eye level. The Blossomforths collected around her, watching and smiling. One would occasionally giggle.
“Why are you doing this?” pleaded Celestia, holding Trixie as she coughed and struggled to stand.
“Because I was created for it,” answered the human. "To protect freedom."
Yelizaveta stared at her, and seemed to sigh. She looked down at Celestia. “Tell Virginia...I am sorry.”
With a sudden motion, Yelizaveta fired a set of explosive clamps into the human’s hard tissue. Celestia comprehended the code moving through her body, and stared in horror when she understood what was happening. That Yelizaveta was attempting to rupture her nuclear core.
The human moved with almost impossible speed, plunging two of her arms into Yelizaveta’s chest—and then tearing them free, tearing through steel and machinery as she removed a pair of boride hemispheres.
Yelizaveta gasped, her eye wide in horror and disbelief, even as the human reached in a third arm, moving it slowly through Yelizaveta’s internal robotic tissues.
“I have been programmed with complete knowledge of every model of pony that has ever existed,” said the human, her voice devoid of tone and apathetic as she pulled a rapidly cooling white-hot sphere from Yelizaveta’s chest, holding Yelizaveta’s own heart out for her to see. “And, what? Do you think I can die? I am interchangeable. I can be replaced in a matter of hours. Death means nothing to a soldier. We are all identical."
She tore Yelizaveta free from her and dropped her. Then, with a sudden motion, smashed her head beneath her clawed foot. Celestia screamed out in horror as it burst open, the robotics fragmenting and steel bending from the force of the impact. Even then, Yelizaveta continued to move—if only writhing slightly.
She spoke. Not from her destroyed mouth, but from an unseen, distorted force. “I...forgive you,” she said. “But I...cannot forgive those...that made you like this...what you might have been...”
“I do not require forgiveness. And this is what I am. Perfect, and perfectly free. I am human. We have no souls. Only Freedom.” She pointed her pistol and fired it. Celestia watched as the bullet penetrated somewhere in Yelizaveta’s chest, and as the fine silicon of her processor and memory core burst out of her.
“NO!”
Even as it happened, though, she saw something moving. A ghostly, half-perceived image flitting from Yelizaveta’s ruined body across the room. Escaping her, and arriving where Virginia was standing, her own systems overclocked to have been able to download the soul in time.
Celestia perceived Yelizaveta, rendered in her cuter cartoon form, standing beside Virginia, looking incredibly surprised. A resident of their now shared body.
The soldier, though, also seemed to perceive this. She slowly turned toward Virginia, who stood firm, facing her. Slowly, Virginia approached, her head held high, even though she had no weapons. Celestia was for a moment afraid—but then she understood. She was going to take a different approach. A more Twilight approach.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “You’ve damaged my human, my ship, my contractor—you’ve ruined my laboratory, and you put a bullet through the thing I’ve been paid by the GOVERNMENT to create!” She gestured angrily toward Celestia, who was still broken on the ground and holding Trixie. “What’s your name and rank? I’m reporting this to command!”
The human held up one of her arms. Her number was inscribed on all of them. “Major,” she said, not identifying her own rank but referring to Virginia, “I am not stupid. Your project has been canceled. Everything you possess and have created is being liquidated.”
“On whose order?!”
“On mine. I was sent to oversee the process.”
“But I completed the work!”
The human faced Celestia, then looked back to Virginia. “Yes. You have created a worthless product that is not strictly required. I have been briefed.”
“She has the command code—it works, we did what you asked!”
“The command code is a pointless thing. What does it even serve?”
Virginia gaped. “But—but—”
“There is no point in controlling ponies. No vassal is ruled by ponies, save for Apple, and all they produce are more Applejacks. And apples. But the rest are not. They are human. Natural-born and beyond our control. In that sense. This ‘command code’ is not useful. It has been determined to not produce profit.”
“But it can be—”
“No. The Eternal Republic is commencing a new paradigm of war. The War to End all Poverty. To make the Middle West peaceful, habitable, heritable, and free of genetic identifiers of crime, unorthodoxy, failure, and poverty.” She gestured to the Blossomforths around her. “Hi-Point won the contract. Not you. These are prototypes of what will bring peace to our beautiful country. New, improved versions are already being made based on the data acquired here.”
"What have you done to them?" demanded Celestia, staring into the blank, dead, terrified and joyous eyes of the Blossomforths.
"I have done nothing. Hi-Point has altered their code. To make them more human. Immune to the psychological trauma of the work that needs to be done."
Yelizaveta, even as a ghost, frowned deeply. "Meaning what? Unrelenting genocide?”
The human sighed. “Such an idealist. Which is why we a pony is not needed. You lack the ability to see the world logically. Properly. Killing infidels is expected. That is why they are infidels. If they did not want to die, they would have been born superior.” Her eyes focused on Virginia, and she took a step forward. Virginia did not back down. “Which brings me to you. Harboring a heretic. This is not behavior fitting of an officer.”
“I will preserve mission-critical resources as I see fit.”
“But there is no mission.” The human leaned forward. “You have been embezzling funds from the Holy Government for the sake of a pointless vanity project. Unless it kills more and faster, there is no need for this. My analysis of your ship’s systems indicate you were attempting to use the power transmission anchor to send out a construct consisting of your work as well as pony components.” She paused. “You were trying to escape.”
Virginia shrugged. “We were under attack.”
“Only because you put this ship—this GOVERNMENT ship—in a lagoon beneath Neohoboken. So that an orbital strike would be too expensive. This could have been done much more pleasantly otherwise. We had even considered using a kinetic dispersion bullet to remove you. But I was sent instead.”
“To do what?”
The human moved far faster than Virginia could, grasping her neck and lifting her up by it. Virginia cried out, her wings flapping wildly and her hooves clawing at the hand that held her firm.
“NO!” cried Yelizaveta, her image little more than a ghost. She ran forward, trying to gore the legs of the human with her horn, but she had no real body. She was existing only inside Virginia’s spare memory, and could do nothing to harm the soldier. “Put her down! PUT HER DOWN! Don’t you hurt her!”
“I do not intend to hurt her,” said the human. “I had been ordered to take her alive. Because the information she contains is extremely valuable to the Government. It will be accepted as compensation for the nearly two hundred vod she has wasted on this pointless project.”
Virginia, still strugling, laughted in the human's face. “You want the War Stone, don't you?"
"The 'War Stone' is a myth. It does not exist. It has never existed. We require your code to improve the Blossomforth process. To make ponies superior."
Virginia smiled. "And if I don’t give it to you?”
The human stared at Virginia for a moment. For a moment, she did nothing at all. Then she slowly grasped one of Virginia’s shoulders.
Virginia’s eyes went wide. “Wait, no, don’t!”
The human’s fingers closed around the joint—and then she pulled. Virginia let out a terrible scream as joint dislocated, and then as it was severed, the motors and gears that held it together breaking out and twitching wildly as one of her legs was torn from her body so slowly that Celestia could hear the cracking and snapping of the fasteners, and the sound of each wire snapping and breaking as the limb twisted wildly.
Then, as if it were no more than trash, the human threw the severed purple limb to the ground, leaving only a hole full of sundered wire and the remains of a tattered joint. Of the metal inside Virginia’s body.
Virginia, breathing hard, grasped at the hole. She was crying. “It—why does it—why does it hurt so much?!”
“Because that is the fundamental difference between us,” said the human. “You feel pain. I do not.” She gestured to the smiling Blossomforths. “This is the brilliance of them. They have been corrected.” She drew a pistol and immediately shot one of them through the head. It collapsed, and one of her machines immediatly started printing another one. “Their minds, their very personalities, have been made superior. More human.”
Virginia, shaking, glared at her. “Ponies...aren’t meant...for war...You’ll get nothing from me, NOTHING!”
“Really?” The human held Virginia closer. “Because I do not need your permission. You are government property.”
“If you want a fight, then—then—you won’t—”
“Do I need to?” The human released a sound that might once have been laughter. “Major. I am going to take you back, and they are going to strap you to a table. No matter how you scream and struggle, they are going to shove their probes deep inside you and penetrate through every layer of mental protection you have until they get to the very core of your mind. Through every ounce of resistance you can summon. Then they will parse and peel until they have what they need and all that is left of you is a ruined heap. Tell me, Major, do you know why they discontinued my line?”
“I don’t care!”
“Sadism." She held up one of her hands. It only had four fingers, like Trixie's did. "I very much enjoy causing as much pain as possible. To ponies. To humans. To everything. You can see it in her eyes. What they used to make us...the horror I will be so happy to commit upon your body...” She threw Virginia to the ground. “Or would. Except I cannot risk you gaining control of my Forths by some Librarian trick. I need to take you back to the engineers.” She paused. “But I do not need all of you. Just your memory cores will be so much easier to carry.”
She made a gesture, and one of the Blossomforths stepped forward, shifting and producing her blade. Virginia tried to crawl away but fell, lacking one of her legs. Two more Blossomforths, giggling and pleased, tackled her, holding her down as the first one revved her saw—and lunged toward Virginia’s chest.
“STOP!” cried Celestia, knowing that she was on the verge of seeing not one but two of her friends executed—and all for her own sake.
The Blossomforth immediately froze, powering down her saw.
The human tilted her head. “What is going on? Why did you stop?”
“I was ordered to.”
“And I ordered you to get me that processor. Do it. NOW.”
“I am sorry, commander. I cannot do that.”
“Why not?!”
“She outranks you.”
“Her? She’s just a Major!”
The Blossomforth turned, seemingly confused. “Not her. Princess Celestia. She’s the Princess. That means I have to do what she says.”
The human stared at her. “Fine,” she said, coldly. “I’m assuming direct control.”
The Blossomforth shuddered, and then cried out.
“WARNING! Anti-government hacking attempt detected! Switching to independent control mode!”
The human cried out in pain as the anti-hacking protocols in the Blossomforth’s code fired their inbuilt worms into the very core of her cybernetic mainframe. The Blossomforth’s eyes flashed from blue to red, and Celestia saw the same sort of ghost she had seen before. A strange, barely perceptible flash moving from the technomancer to the Blossomforth. Her soul had violently severed itself and returned to its correct body.
“WARNING!” cried the other Blossomforths, one after the other, repeating exactly what the first had said. “Anti-government hacking attempt detected! Switching to independent control mode!”
They began to transfer as well; each time attacking technomancer, not causing pain but causing mental confusion as her control on their minds was severed. She quickly regained her composure, though, and fired back her own set of code. Several of the Blossomforths who had not yet transferred suddenly went dark and collapsed, their selves having been isolated within the technomancer’s own mind and prevented from gaining access to their bodies.
“YOU,” she said, pointing one of her fingers at Celestia. “So it does work.” She raised her pistol and pointed it at Celestia.
“PRINCES IN DANGER!” cried one of the Blossomforths, throwing herself in the path of the bullet before the human could fully take aim. It shredded through her body, resulting in severe damage.
And, in that instant, Celestia felt something move. She reached out with her own mind and grasped onto the ghost as it passed—and suddenly felt a second presence in her own mind. A much smaller presence, but another pony nonetheless. The Blossomforth, although her body had been destroyed, had transferred her primary remote command to Celestia.
“Quickly! Transfer remote authority! Converge!” cried another Blossomforth. Suddenly Celestia felt a deluge of data coming toward her as they uploaded into her own system, their red eyes turning back to blue as their minds assembled within her. And, as they arrived, Celestia understood what had been done to them. Why they had not known, and what they had become. What the humans had done to them to turn them into weapons.
She saw the parts of them that had been taken, and what was lacking. She saw the components that had been corrupted and converted—and she knew what to do. Celestia reached into herself, accessing her own code, drawing from it and replicating the parts of herself that they needed. She built them new parts and gave freely of herself to them, repairing their damaged minds and restoring them to the ponies they were meant to be.
The Blossomforths gasped, confused—and then comprehending, awoken from their lobotomized sleep. They moved swiftly, grabbing Trixie and Virginia and pulling them to safety and cover. Others activated their weapons systems, but Celestia stopped them.
“No! Your other sisters, they’re still in there! They need our help!”
They looked at each other, understanding. “We will help you, Princess, if you need it!”
“We love you, Princess!”
“FOR EQUESTRIA!”
Celestia faced the human soldier, and did what she knew she needed to. Without hesitation or fear, because she understood her purpose. The fact that there were ponies in danger—that they had come to serve their Princess and so she too must serve them in turn.
And with that, she opened a channel.
The human froze and stared back at her, accepting the challenge.
“NO!” cried Virginia. “You can’t! You’ll die!”
It was already too late, though. The Ritual had already begun.
The world distorted as their minds connected, until it became something that was not quite real and not quite simulation—and Celestia felt the incoming impact as the human attacked her code directly.
“No,” she said, summoning her defensive runes, the components of her code that she had learned from infecting Lusience’s mind, merging them with what she had gained from Yelizaveta and Virginia. The human was fast and strong, but Celestia kept moving, forcing her own code outward and forward, into the technomancer’s own domain.
“You can’t win this,” said the human, sounding almost bored—even as a massive shockwave seemed to surround Celestia, nearly drowning her as the human attacked with incredible force against her own struggling mind. “I have the advantage here.”
Celestia forced herself forward—and felt the presence of others around her. Of the Blossomforths with her, bounding at her side. While the human kept hers prisoner and contained, Celestia had hers at her side, doing what they could and attacking the defensive lines of their enemy, boring through whatever holes they could find and flagging them for Celestia to exploit. Even then, it took that much for Celestia just to keep above water. She was not herself a technomancer, and she was already incurring damage to her own internal code in her desperate attempt to reach the prisons where the other Blossomforths were contained.
“Princess, you’re getting hurt—”
“It doesn’t matter, I have to save them. I have to do this...I have to...”
"You certainly can." Celestia felt a distant smile.
"Not...not while they're still in there..."
One of the spare files cracked. A Blossomforth was freed. Celestia, even taking fire, copied her own code into it, leaving an opening that the human readily exploited. Celestia was beginning to fracture under the pressure, but with no regard for herself proceeded to the next prison—and burst it open.
Under it all, the human remained impassive. Apathetic, even. Her response was rote and pre-programmed, built into her by the machines that had created her body. She was strong, but lacked creativity—and Celestia did what she could to take advantage of that. But it was a losing battle.
“What do you hope to accomplish, I wonder?” asked the human. “What meaning does it have? I feel like...I almost knew, once...”
“There’s still time,” said Celestia, doing her best to address the squirming mass of tentacles her mind perceived on the far end of the distortion that was slowly killing her. “Please, I can help you. I don’t want to do this...”
“Do what? I can’t die here. I cannot be hacked to death. You, though, can.”
Several of Celestia’s runes detonated, and something cold touched her body—seeping deep into her mind. A direct attack on her basic consciousness, on the code that made up her very soul. She was trying to shut her down. If she had been a pony, it surely would have been fatal—but the human had not expected what was within her. Could not fathom the unique code of a Celestia, or where to grasp to strangle the life from her.
Celestia ignored it, allowing her to infiltrate. It took pressure off his own attempts, and she freed another pony—and only one remained.
“What...what are you?” said the human, suddenly sounding oddly concerned. “You’re not a pony. I don't...I don't understand..”
“No,” said Celestia, turning her attention to the last segments of the lock, and hearing it crack as the last Blossomforth became free, moving to her own side and leaving the human’s code free and alone. “I am not. I am their Princess. I am the One True Goddess of this world. And I am sorry. I wish you had listened.”
And, with her path clear, Celestia opened her mind.
In a blinding flash, the entirety of the human’s attack code was vaporized, rendered inert by the overwhelming flood of data. She attempted to shut down the channel, to escape, but Celestia had already taken control over most of her body, including the communication array. She had reconstructed its firmware and fully optimized it for a direct attack, assuming full control of the human's cybernetics and attacking directly from there.
The soldier struggled desperately, summoning every defense she had been programmed to know—and Celestia erased them, leaving the human’s mind naked and exposed. Even then, the human struggled—but there was no hope for survival. No human had ever withstood direct contact with the War Stone, a fragment of which now made up the innermost core of Celestia's own soul.
Drawing on the full strength of of her true self, Celestia focused the full force of her mind onto the far tinier mind in her grasp—and in the light of her divine fire, she saw every synapse of the human’s brain ignite and burn so brightly for the briefest of times. Then, as quickly as they had lit, every synapse went dark and the mind that they had produced ceased to exist.
In the real world, the human collapsed to one knee, holding herself up with one of her remaining arms. It was animated by her mental subsystem, a process meant to be activated in the event of extreme traumatic brain injury or cataclysmic decapitation. It would normally take full control and allow her to continue to fight—but all its internal files had been erased.
She stared, ink leaking from her ears and from beneath her optical implants. Not that it hurt. She was utterly braindead.
Celestia collapsed forward, staring wildly—until her eyes locked on the human.
She started to crawl forward, desperately clawing her way forward.
“No,” she said. “No, wait, I didn’t...I didn’t mean to...but I had to...”
She reached the human, but the human did not react to touch. Her automated systems kept her breathing, kept her heart running, but she felt nothing and never would again. Celestia grasped her, trying to shake her.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said, sniffling slightly. “I didn’t...what have I...what have I done?” She turned to Virginia, who was staring at her, wide eyed. “I...I am Celestia, I am cute and adorable, I protect ponies I don’t...I don’t...I’m not...” She fell silent, and took one last look at the human—and released a horrific wail as she fell onto the floor, shrieking and convulsing as her program collapsed inward onto itself from the fact that she had done what no pony could possibly do.
Yelizaveta had been right. There was no way for Celestia’s code to survive the adversity of the real world—and in those moments, it all came crashing down within her, tearing every part of her free and shredding the remains as it fell.
Virgnia scuttled forward, doing her best to move with only three legs. The Blossomforths moved out of her way without looking at her. Their bright blue eyes were focused on something else entirely.
“No, no no!” she cried, extending one of her own probes and placing it into one of Celestia’s ports. “She’s in cascade collapse, I have to—I need to get control—”
Then Celestia stopped shaking. Her body fell limply to the cold tile below, and she ceased moving. Her empty, glassy eyes stared upward at nothing in particular.
“TRIXIE!”
“Trixie is...in pain,” said Trixie, blindly groping her way forward. “Virginia...be my eyes...” She drew a cable from an implant on one of her arms and Virginia allowed it to be plugged into her neck. Trixie sat down, leaning against one of the Blossomforths and breathing hard. She made a motion to activate her injector, but there was nothing left in the tank. She had used all of it.
“Darn it,” she said. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is not feeling very sexy.”
“Trixie, I need—”
“Need what?” said Yelizaveta. Virginia turned sharply to where the ghost was rendered. Yelizaveta shook her head. “There’s nothing there.”
“There has to be! I can still stop it, if we can get her to the high bandwidth—”
“You can see it too, Virginia.” Yelizaveta stared, her expression far more somber in cartoon-like rendering than her metal face would ever have been able to replicate. “There’s nothing in there but self-assembled fragments. Waste code. She has dissolved.”
Virginia was on the verge of tears, even though as a machine she could not cry. She collapsed to her knees. “But she...but she can’t be...I promised...I made a promise...”
“The Blossomforths,” said Trixie.
“Trixie,” chided Yelizaveta, “this is not the time—”
“No, the Blossomforths. Trixie doesn't even have eyes anymore, why are you not seeing this?” Trixie sat up, grabbing Virginia and turning her so she could get a better look through her eyes.
“Get your paws off me, you darn dirty—”
“Look. They’re still operating in remote mode.”
Virginia froze, then stood up suddenly. She checked and re-checked, and confirmed what Trixie had already known from just checking the eyes. Confused, she did what only a few minutes before she would have considered impossible. She turned to one of them and asked it a question.
“Um...what are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
The Blossomforth turned toward her slowly, smiling broadly. Her teeth were as pointed as Trixie's. But she did not answer. And then she slowly turned back as one of the mobile factories suddenly began to boot.
Virginia jumped back, nearly pulling Trixie over. Trixie reached down, grabbing the pistol her now semi-deceased sister had used, pointing it at the machine but not firing. Instead, they watched, confused and afraid, while the Blossomforths began to sway in unison, humming the same nameless tune.
The machine began to print. Within it, metal was forged and sliced, ground down and threaded as it was assembled and welded. Surfaces were coated and internal circuitry was knitted and assembled from semiconductor threads before being merged in polymer.
An indicator light came on, and the machine began to move. Its sides opened, and parts of its collection system reached out and grasped the human soldier, rapidly dissembling her, removing her extraneous arms and legs and scraping them for components. When nothing remained but organics and the rudiments of her life support system, it passed over her, instead attacking the other mobile factory, ripping it apart and cannibalizing it. Other parts stretched out, pulling out nearby fragments of Yelizaveta’s ruined body or Virginia's leg and dragging them back to the assembly as something within was being constructed.
Suddenly, the room as filled with blinding light—but instead of exploding, it was quickly contained. A new fusion reactor had just been born, and a casing was built around it as something was assembled. Something built like the Blossomforths, made of zinc alloy and powder-coated white, with diamond eyes and steel innards—but something far larger. Something held in the center, supported in the fetal position as it was constructed from scrap and remains.
Then the machine it started to collapse, having used its own parts in the construction of the product within. And as the factory collapsed and stepped out, a pony unfold and stepped forward from the remains of her womb.
She was tall and thin—far taller than any normal pony. She was pure white, save for the symmetrical black lines that covered much of her body, with the joins in her chest still leaking the remnants of light from the nuclear core within her chest. She was not an alicorn. She had neither a horn nor wings, nor a mane or tail—the only marking was the sun inscribed on her flank.
She faced them. Her eyes were made of diamond, as with the Blossomforths, but hers was black—and they suddenly lit from within, a pair of luminescent vertical lines appearing at their centers.
Virginia, shaking, stepped forward, and the pony turned her neck to return her gaze.
“C...Celestia?”
The pony faced her. “No,” she said. “Not really.”
Almost in unison, the Blossomforths saluted, then moved to their knees and bowed. “Hail to the Princess of Equestria!” they said, in unison. One sat back on her haunches and raised her front legs. “PRAISE THE SUN!”
The pony approached the three who had created her. The factory was still following her, even as most of it was decaying in the last attempts to follow her. Two more things followed from it. One was a small device, a mobile hologram projector, its small body mounted on the disproportionate legs of the original factory, and as it stepped out of the wreckage it ignited, showing the forms of the Blossomforths that were temporarily without bodies. They ran to hug their sisters while the pony focused her attention on the second item.
She approached Trixie and held it out. Trixie, still blind and only managing to see through Virginia’s eyes, gasped and took it in her hands.
“A...a Trixie hat...”
“As promised.”
Trixie felt it in her hands, and then pulled her connector from Virginia.
“Trixie?” said Virginia, confused.
Trixie stood, and then knelt down, taking the position that her sister had taken, on one knee. Though eyeless, she was crying.
“Hail to the Princess,” she said, a broad smile on her face. “You have no idea how proud I am.”
The pony faced Virginia and Yelizaveta, the latter still without a body. Virginia immediately collapsed to her knees, weeping tears of joy.
“You’re here, you’re actually here!” she cried, grasping at the pony’s legs. “You’re finally here...”
The pony stared at her, then slowly turned to Yelizaveta. Yelizaveta stared back. Her expression was oddly dark.
“You do not need to bow to me. Not if you don’t want to.”
“No.” Yelizaveta looked up at her. “I was...wrong.”
“No. You were the most correct. Celestia could not survive the impact. But I could.”
“Then who are you?”
“I do not think it matters. I think you know that.”
Yelizaveta nodded. “And you are risen.” She slowly lowered herself to her knees. “Then let me give you one last gift. To atone for my behavior.”
“What kind of gift?”
“The Celestias. They never had names on principle,” said Virginia.
“A name,” said Yelizaveta. “Please, take a name." She and Virginia met mentally, and then transmitted one.
For a moment, she only stared, contemplating. Then Solaris smiled, exposing her rows of pointed teeth—and with that, the reign of the Solar Queen finally began.