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// Twilight's Five 
// Story: My Little Space Empire: Mechs are Magic 
// by Wheezyandbreezy 
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Twilight Sparkle, personal protege of the Solar Viceroy and her most able student, fumed at the assignment her revered sovereign and mentor had tasked her with. She had to organize a strike team. "Like a Common MUDBOOT!" she growled under her breath. She could hear the thoughts of every mind in an entire fleet. She could give dozens of commands simultaneously. She could telekinetically position a thousand ships at will. Yet here she was going over the service records of cockpit jockeys, star brawlers, and academy brats.

She dropped the myriad of holographic pages she'd been pouring over and leaned forward heavily, her long purple hair spilling through her fingers almost to the floor. She'd never even been interested in military matters. She'd always been happier learning the arcane secrets of the universe at her mentor's side. Combat was a plebs duty, "Not a Job for LITERALLY THE THIRD STRONGEST PSYCHIC IN THE GALAXY!!!" Twilight whined as she telekinetically threw her desk against the wall in a huff.

A greenish light from the ceiling projected a hologram of a child friendly rendering of a green and purple dragon. It was her "Small Person's Instructor and Kinesthetic Exerciser." Twilight often got strange looks at still having her babysitter program well after childhood, but Celestia felt it was good to have an early warning system always with Twilight, not to mention someone for her to talk to. So they constantly tweaked his programming to keep up with Twilight's changing needs, though he was a few years overdue in Twilight's opinion. He looked on the mess and sighed in simulated exasperation. "You know Celestia knows best Twilight." He said in a friendly synthetic voice. He pointed at the various messes and overturned desk and gentle forcefields coaxed each and every item back into its proper place. 

Twilight often wished her companion program had a physical form that she could smack when he was annoying. "S.P.I.K.E. I'm a scholar, Not a soldier! Celestia should be grooming me for leadership, not for fighting separatists and pirates." She summoned another profile and absorbed its entirety at a glance.

"Well. . ." S.P.I.K.E.'s programming wasn't designed for such problems as he was built for ages five to twelve. He glitched ever so slightly and beamed. "If you're going to be in charge of soldiers someday, maybe Celestia thinks that you should know how soldiers work! After all she fought in the unification wars didn't she?" Twilight dropped the file she was levitating and stared straight ahead in shock. She gave a sidelong glance at her holographic companion and wondered if Celestia had been tampering with his programming. What he'd said made sense, but she wasn't gonna let him know that.

She begrudgingly went back to reading various personnel files and occasionally sent a few to a file titled "possible candidates." It occurred to her that she should research proper strike team tactics and composition. She'd not been assigned a specific role by Celestia, so she decided she needed to cover her bases tactically. Her research led her to believe she'd need a heavy gunner, a long range specialist, and a flanker. She herself, of course, would handle defense, tactics, and logistics, but the last quality she was told to add confounded her. 

S.P.I.K.E. loomed over her shoulder as was his function and saw the words blinking on the display. "Wild card? What in Celestia's name does that mean." He asked. 

She poured over countless strike teams ranging a host of different specialities and sure enough in every one there was at least one fighter who had one specific skill or specialty that set them apart from their comrades. "Well I think I'm just a bit different from your garden variety soldier. Don't you spike?"

"I dunno Twilight, I think you might wanna let someone else handle that role. You'll be busy leading the team and everything." He said bringing up a model mech suit and making battle sounds at a model battleship.

Twilight rolled her eyes and went back to her screens. She sighed hard and thought about her mentor, the solar Viceroy, Celestia. Literally the most powerful being in the galaxy. She had plucked her from obscurity and set her at her right hand. Celestia, who had never once steered her wrong, had assigned her this task. So she was going to give it the diligence it was due. If anyone had earned it it was Celestia.

She once again shifted through the scores of service records and data profiles. She decided to select candidates for each speciality specifically. She made four files and labeled them accordingly. She arbitrarily decided to start with heavy weapons specialists. A host of personnel files flew about the room and passed in file before her eyes. Each hologram's information was absorbed instantly by the psychic's powerful mind. 

After several hundred pages of being less than impressed she rested her head on her hand. "Fifty thousand soldiers in the mechanized unit of the Imperial Navy, AND I CAN'T FIND ONE WHO~" Twilight lurched forward suddenly and stared at the file floating in front of her. S.P.I.K.E. manifested over her shoulder and looked at the file. Both simultaneously breathed the word "Bruh." An ancient expression expressing disbelief or disdain.

"How is that not a war crime?" S.P.I.K.E. asked breathlessly. 

Twilight leaned forward and studied the file with extra scrutiny. "Well she stopped when ordered to so. . . " An eyebrow shot up high on her head. "Wait a damned second." She swung her hand out to summon another file. 

For the record, Twilight never needed to do any sort of physical motion when she went through files, or performed psychic feats, but the gesticulations helped her focus and made it easier to do. 

She looked at the file and once again saw the name referenced, then turned to the other lengthy, rather unusual service record. "How in Celestia's flaming ball sack is she not in prison?" She asked incredulously. She looked at the beginning of the pilot's service record but it seemed to start with her as a pilot. No training regimens or recruitment world listed. She frowned, and went back to the heavy weapons expert file. She looked at the recruitment world of the other pilot and slammed her head against her desk. "FUCKING AG WORLDERS!!!" she shouted in annoyance. 

The agricultural worlds had a reputation for being notoriously lax with their paperwork. They would call it being pragmatic. This pilot apparently had her paperwork squeezed in through the cracks somewhere. Twilight found that she'd been a pirate and "THOSE FUCKING HICKS just put her in an IMPERIAL MECH and set her to work". Twilight groaned and looked back to the file, seeing that despite her BLATANTLY ILLEGAL entry into the imperial Navy, this pilot had earned her keep. 

After a moment the other pilot's record became a little too familiar. She had to keep flicking her mind back to the other record.  She put them side by side and saw that after a certain point the two records seemed to list the same history but with each name respectively. Twilight dismissed the two files and sighed hard. "I suppose I can't have one without the other." A thought occurred to her and she looked at the specifications of the other pilot. She gained a smug grin at what she saw and said, "And just like that I've got my flanker as well. HA!"

With renewed energy and mood improved she began flying through the files for a long range specialist. Fortunately or unfortunately the tactics of combat mechs led to a very few people who liked to stay at furthest possible operating range. Pilot's tended to feel that it was pointless to pilot a ship with your own limbs and then not punch the shit out of things. If a mech was fighting a ship every battle would devolve into boarding actions, and mech versus mech became a fatal game of tag. So giving your enemy all the room in the world to dodge your attacks was tactically unsound. Yet in very specific circumstances a shot would need to be taken from a place of safety, and that is when the sniper shines. Most were instantly found unsound as they were ground fighters, and she needed knowledge of void combat. Some were close but none seemed to click. 

Suddenly Twilight's right ear almost went deaf as S.P.I.K.E. shouted as loud as his speaker function would go, "THAT ONE! THAT ONE!!!" Twilight flinched and rubbed her ear petulantly, then roughly performed the gesticulation that put S.P.I.K.E. into sleep mode. 

She took the file back out of the discard pile and woke S.P.I.K.E. back up. She sneered, "S.P.I.K.E." She pulled up the other two files and held them next to the proposed long range specialist. "Look at the different kill counts. She hardly compares." Twilight's eyebrow raised high on her head to see that S.P.I.K.E.'s eyes had become small pink hearts. 

"But look at her mission success rate Twilight!" Twilight considered this, and bobbed her head in token that her companion had a point. "Besides Twilight, you don't need butchers, you need winners. Right?" Twilight's face went blank for a moment and she turned back to the file. She read very carefully, though still quicker than a normal human mind could process, all the engagements that the named specialist had fought in. Her face grew more and more hard as she read. She pulled up the few scraps of video in her file and saw that her relatively small kill count was not from cowardice, or lack of skill, rather Twilight became surprised at how few rounds this pilot needed to fire in order to complete a mission. Every battle she treated like a chess match, never wasting a single stroke and finishing an opponent quickly and with as little loss as possible. Twilight had quickly gone from uninterested to very impressed. Something lingered in her mind though and she couldn't put her finger on it.

"I dunno S.P.I.K.E." she said doubtfully. She pulled up the file again and suddenly it hit her. "Oh Viceroy!" Her hand flew out and she used the computer's face recognition software to confirm her fears. She brought up a military intelligence file about a catastrophe at a research and development facility. She brought forward several pictures, then put a hand to her mouth. S.P.I.K.E. leaned forward waiting for an explanation for the outburst. Twilight sighed hard and glanced sidelong at her holographic companion. "She's the other diamond sister." S.P.I.K.E.'s face went blank and Twilight rolled her eyes. She dragged and dropped the holographic file onto S.P.I.K.E.'s head. His face went blank for a few seconds while his operating system caught up with the new information. Once he'd absorbed the history his expression drooped low. 

Twilight began to return the file to the discard pile but S.P.I.K.E. appeared in front of the pile. "WAIT!" He shouted. "I still think she's right for the job!"

Twilight sighed hard and looked gently at her holographic friend. "S.P.I.K.E. look, I'm just not sure about her. I mean you read the file. I'm just not certain about having someone with that kind of history behind her."

"But the other two had histories!" S.P.I.K.E. scolded. "Heck that one." He pulled up one of the files. "Was even a pirate!"

Twilight grimaced in token of his point being fair. She pulled up the file and selected her battle records. "Well apparently she's been hunting them with a vengeance ever since, so I'm not worried about her so much. But these are the Diamonds were talking about. Their synchronization units are in every current generation battle suit in the navy as we speak. If we chose her it might cause drama for Celestia!"

S.P.I.K.E., showing amazing likeness to human emotions, rubbed his foot against the floor in unhappiness. "Well yeah but. . . But."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Is he hiding something?" She thought to herself. "Can A.I.'s hide things?" She made a mental note to get that upgrade completed sooner rather than later. "Well?!" She finally blurted out, unable to stand the tension.

S.P.I.K.E. snatched the file and stretched the personnel file picture up to life size. "JUST LOOK AT HER TWILIGHT!" The startled psychic lurched backwards in surprise. "She's SOOOOO PRETTY!!!" S.P.I.K.E. immediately copied the picture and pantomimed putting it into a non-existent pocket to save it to his memory banks.

Twilight stared at the hologram who was still ogling the pilot. "Okay we're getting that upgrade right now." She said levitating her coat onto herself. 

She made for the door but S.P.I.K.E. called out, "Wait! You still haven't officially selected her." He paused for an overlong moment. "Oh! Or your." He over emphasized air quotes with his holographic claws. "Wild card."

Twilight groaned and put the long range specialist and a randomly selected file into the official dispatch to go to the munitorium. She turned smartly on her heel and summoned her holographic nuisance. "Wait!" He looked back uncertainly at Twilight's quarters. "Who'd you pick for your wild card?" 

Twilight didn't stop her stomping gate. "Well what better way to pick a different quality than by using a different selection method." She said testily as she plugged in the code for a teleporter to Celestia's A.I. labs.

S.P.I.K.E. was stunned. "B-B-BUT TWILIGHT! Isn't that a HUGE security risk?"

Twilight petulantly hit the sleep button on her wrist to silence the bothersome dragon. "The only security risk here is you!" She snapped as the teleporter opened.