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// 16 - Oh, Rats 
// Story: Closing the Barn Door 
// by David Silver 
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Stan tightened his grip on his gun as he heard something rustling near them. "Watch — " The ground exploded around them with the form of angry furry residents. "Dang it."

"On it." Skyline had his swords out quick enough to block the lunging strike of one of the big toothed combatants. "Mole rats aren't... an enormous threat on their own, but we must have stepped on a whole nest of them."

Twilight yelped in fear as she hopped back from one that grabbed at her with its teeth. "Stop that!" She zapped it with an energetic spray of arcane fury. "I'm not on the menu!"

Miss Aunt just hovered there, ignored by the rats as they went for things with softer and living parts. "I'm unsure if I should be insulted by this or not..." Rather than sit there and let the others do battle, she angled herself towards a knot of the rodents and pushed off the ground. She lifted with the force of the flames that sent the rats scurrying for safety. They were paying attention to  her, though she wasn't sure if that was a good thing.

Applejack put a hole in one even as she turned. "There are too many of 'em to even count!" Their position was being overrun with murderous rodents. "Don't let 'em in!"

"I did not invite them." Giddyup was stomping any rat foolish enough to be within range of his metal hooves. "Stan!" He could see Stan wasn't having a good time of it. The long arm was not suited for the enemy, and he was being swarmed by too many of them. Seeing his child get bit was too much and Giddyup charged into the melee with an angry equine snort playing from inside him.

Stan beat one back, using his rifle as a club just long enough to fire a bullet through it from the mouth to the tail. "Ain't much a place to let 'em in or out of." They were emerging from the ground from countless holes. Between them, in front of them, or behind them didn't seem to matter much. "Never saw so many rats!"


Miss Aunt was slapping them away as best she could as they nipped and chewed at whatever part of her they could, mostly getting their chompers closed around her lower metal ring. "This is... I don't even have words for this." She backhanded one rat away, but there were so many others.

Skyline skewered a rat coming close to Twilight. "We need your magic. Can you do any area spells? This'd be a fine time for it."

"Right, area." Twilight hunkered down with some faith that Skyline would keep them off of her. "Area..." Her horn glowed with threatening new promise.

"Get a pistol, they said." Stan kicked one as another jumped for his extended leg. "But nooo, rifles are so much better."

The second rat went limp, falling to the ground with a new hole. Daffodil was already aiming at a new target. "They gotta get tired of this eventually."

"Tired!" Twilight hopped up as a bubble of magic spread from her in all directions. "That's it! Just need to get... tired..." She fell to the ground limply. She wasn't the only one, with other living forms littering the surrounding ground in an expanding bubble of lethargy.

Giddyup aborted his attack to hurry to Stan's comatose side. "Administering medical treatment." Which came in the form of a healing kiss. The automatons were unaffected by the wave of sleep that took out all the other combatants. "We should move — "

Miss Aunt was already grabbing the nape of the fallen Twilight. "That one's still awake."

"Yeah." Skyline was rocking and woozy, but awake. "Yeah... I'll help..." He staggered to the vault ponies to get them on his back. As one, the awake members hurried away from the agitated swarm of rats. Skyline let Applejack and Daffodil sink to the ground. "Never saw so many rats before..."

"Are you alright?" Giddyup set Stan next to the other sleeping ponies. "Allow me to examine you."

"He looks just fine." Aunt looked about as fine as Giddyup, which is to say both robots had new bite marks in their metal hides, but appears to be in fully functioning condition. "Just tired is all. I've never seen creatures like that. They seemed quite angry at us... existing."

Skyline chuckled at that line of thought. "Basically. We must have wandered into a nest of theirs and they wanted us to know how upset that made them." He patted each hilt of his swords to make sure they were in the right place. "We didn't die. Giddyup?" The equine perked at his call. "Can I get a poke?"

"As requested." Giddyup nuzzled the well-armed pony and, with a soft hiss, plunged a needle into him and delivered the healing serum that Skyline had asked from him. "Why did you permit Aunt to declare your well-being if you were actually injured?"

"I was well enough to keep moving." Skyline took a step one at a time on his limbs. "Which I was and did. But the action's dying down, so a little healing is called for." He sat down facing the other ponies. "It's only luck and my stubbornness that stopped me from passing out. You didn't need us all laying on the ground."

"Most certainly not!" Aunt poked at Applejack lightly. "Are they alright?"

Giddyup sank much as Skyline had. "I thought you were programmed. Can you not determine their state?"

"I can guess." She was not a medical robot, as much as she played the part at times. "They look alright, but when do they wake up?"

Skyline threw out a hand. "Your guess is as good as mine. Only Twilight would have a better guess, and she knocked herself right out. I feel back in one piece, so... soon? Going with soon."

Giddyup dropped the used needle, not that he had much choice in the matter. The tool he had been given did that without asking for his permission along the way. "I have questions for Miss Sparkle."

"So do I." Skyline rubbed at his cheek nervously. "She is worryingly powerful, just... entirely without focus."

"Hm?" Applejack sat up, looking woozy but otherwise present. "Wha? Oh! Weren't we... fightin'?" But she could see no angry rodents around. "Did we win?"

Skyline smiled at her movement. "Ah, you're awake. I had a feeling it'd happen soon. We fled the fight, which is winning in my book. It does mean those rats are waking up about now, but we aren't next to them, so..."

"So it ain't our problem." Applejack nodded in agreement as she reached for Daffodil. "Hey, wake up." She shook the mare gently. "We should get movin'."

"Hm?" Daffodil opened a single eye before rolling upwards in a seated position. "Ten more, wait, weren't we — "

"Yeah, we were." Applejack inclined her head at Skyline and the robots. "Ain't heard the full story, but we probably don't want to be around when the rats notice where we ran off to."

"That'll take care of 'em!" The waking ones looked over as Twilight punched at the air, laughing in her sleep with delirious assurance.

Daffodil poked at Stan instead. "Hey, human, you alright?"

Aunt hovered closer to them. "He's just fine. Twilight's little stunt knocked out all the surrounding organics, which included him and her."

"Huh?" Stan scrambled to his feet without even being fully aware of where he was. It was only after that was done that he began to put it together. "Oh... Better than fighting a bunch of angry rats, for sure." He rubbed over where he had been bitten, though the wounds had largely sealed shut thanks to Giddyup's help. "Now can someone tell me what happened?"

Daffodil turned her pokes onto Twilight, prodding the unicorn on the head just beside an ear. "They need you to talk."

"Wha?" Twilight joined the groggy awakeners as she sat up. "Do what in the who now?"

Daffodil rolled her eyes. "Just before we got knocked out, you sounded like you had a big plan. What was it?"

"Big plan, big... plan... right!" Twilight hopped to her feet. "You reminded me that they were all awake. We needed them not to be, so I made a sleeping sphere." She applied a hoof to her face. "I neglected to consider that sleeping would affect me too. We're just lucky it put them to sleep before the spell fizzled. I can't imagine it lasted long with me passing out."

Giddyup inclined his head at Twilight. "Robots are incapable of the organic state of 'sleep', so we were unaffected by your actions. Is this correct?"

Twilight nodded firmly at Giddyup. "Exactly! I can't knock you out, since you don't... have a knocked out state. If I wanted you to stop working, I'd have to approach it a whole other way." She worried her hooves in wild pantomime, perhaps imagining how one knocked out a robot. "It would likely have little effect on the rest of us."

"Please don't do that." Aunt hovered closer. "We just want to help. It was thanks to our effort that we got you away from there while you were sleeping."

"Speakin' ah that." Stan inspected his rifle for problems. "Time to get movin'. If we're all awake, ain't much reason to stay here. Don't need those rats finding us."

There was some grumbling, but the group got moving. Twilight and Giddyup, acting together, could easily pinpoint which direction they needed to go in and where they had wandered. "We're lucky." Twilight cantered along with a big smile. "They didn't chase us in the wrong direction. It would have been quite unfortunate if we had to cross through their nest again."

Skyline nudged against the taller human, er, ghoul. "You're a fine shot with that rifle, but if we come across a small arm, I suggest you take it. There isn't anything for short range melees. You aren't any good with a sword or a dagger, are you?"

Stan waved his hands negatively. "Nuh uh. I'll let you keep up the melee slashing you love so much." He inclined his head faintly at the swords that Skyline kept. "But maybe a pistol or somethin' like that wouldn't be a bad idea. The rifle wasn't so good with so many little thin's runnin' 'round like that."

Giddyup nudged Twilight with his face and threw his head back at Aunt. "Please outfit her with your most lethal short-range option. She would have gladly assisted us."

Aunt gasped softly. "You understand then! I want to help, but I really couldn't in that fight other than cook a few of them. At least I got a few of them angry with me so they weren't biting you." A small job, but one she managed. "Giddyup was helping in his own way."

"I caused eleven rodents to cease functioning. Between five and fifteen rodents were injured by my actions." Giddyup had a precise tally ready. "It did not prevent all harm to my child. I apologize for that."

"Don't even start." Stan patted Giddyup's side. "We all fought like hell. Hopefully, they regret what they done did."

Applejack rolled her eyes at that. "This I doubt. Rats aren't known for their advanced thinkin' much. Bet they'll jump all over us again if we wander into their territory. So let's not do that." Soft noises of assent rose from the group. Avoiding the rats seemed like a good idea.

Daffodil turned an ear at the others. "One thing that's bothering me a lot. What if there are a lot of things like that in the new vault?"

Stan threw up his hands. "Then we run and tell your vault how bad an idea it is to go poking around in there."

Applejack lowered her hat. "That sounds like the right course of action right there. Ah don't plan to wrestle with nothin' that don't need a wrestlin'.