//------------------------------// // Chapter 16: Failure is Unacceptable! // Story: Logic and Friendship. Roger! Roger! // by Anaylze //------------------------------// Celestia, Luna, and Spike walked downstairs, finding the Mane 6 in a battered position with destroyed Commando Droids and killed guards around them. Flutter shy and Rainbow Dash were bruised, Rarity's Mane had been cut, Applejack had a cut on her cheek, and Twilight looked exhausted. Pinkie was really the only one who looked fine. Spike ran over to help Twilight up.   "Twilight are you ok? Twilight talk to me!"  "Ugh… Spike… what were those things?"  "I don't know"  "Some kind of special ops folk, that's what ah reckon!" Applejack said  "My poor guard’s ponies…" Celestia said, as she looked over her dead guards, a single tear running down her cheek. "Is every pony else, okay?"   "Yeah, I think we're ok…"  "I wish I could say the same for my Mane, it's ruined!" Rarity said, crying with her mascara running down her face.  Flutter shy flew over to her friend  "There, there Rarity, it'll be okay…" she said in her soft voice.   Suddenly a Guard’s pony rushed into the room through the doorway  "Your highnesses! Your help is needed at the front!"  "Right away Lieutenant!" Celestia said, rushing toward the front with Luna.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The AATs neared the front, preparing to destroy all the barricades with their cannons.  "Sir, we're in range." Reported the Pilot.  "Fire at will." TA-175 replied, as the tanks began to fire on the barricades and guard's ponies within, blowing them apart along with nearby houses, leaving it hung but burning buildings, straw, wood, and various other debris.  Shining Armor witnessed the destruction firsthand, as many of the good soldiers he knew and trained were massacred by the tanks.  "Fall back to secondary positions!" He yelled over the explosions and Blaster fire.  The remaining Guard’s ponies rushed out of the trenches and back towards the Market area, where they took up defenses around food carts and sales kiosks.  The Droids began to advance through the smoke of their former barricades, letting loose a massive rain of Blaster fire.  "Where are the Princesses?!" Shining yelled  Just then, there were 2 bright beams of magic, 1 golden and 1 blue, as Celestia and Luna arrived, and began to destroy the advancing Droids.  "The princesses have arrived! Attack!"  TA-175 sat in his tank.  "This operation is taking too long!" He shouted, yet still in a monotone voice somehow, and activated his holo pad  "What is the reason for the delay? You are 10 minutes behind predicted schedule!"  "Sorry sir!" The B1 replied "but there are 2 very large ponies here with huge lasers!"  "Explain!"   "They're bigger, and they have flowing hair, and-" the droid was suddenly interrupted as a huge beam of magic energy tore through his chest leaving a smoking hole all the way through.  "AWWwwwuu…" the droid said in its failing voice, before falling over dead.  TA-175 began to recalculate, they had established their primary objective, but he wanted to eliminate the weak creatures for opposing the CIS. However, the more calculations he ran accounting for the 2 larger creatures, the more the results began to point towards a failure. Failure was not acceptable! Failure did not compute! Nonetheless, he couldn't calculate anything he could do about it.  How could puny organics such as them repel an attack like this? He would have to retreat, and try again, he didn't have unlimited forces to sacrifice.   "All troops, return to base." He began, activating his radio "withdraw forces from battle. We are pulling out. If you do not comply you will be left behind on your own."  Almost immediately, the squads of Droids that were talking towards the town turned around and began running towards the forest, followed by the tanks.  In the town square, Shining Armors Guard’s ponies and the Princesses had finished clearing out most of the Droids. Most had started running away, but they couldn't let them escape, and continued to throw spears and shoot magic at them.  "The Battle has been won your highness." Shining reported  "That is good captain, but that of your ponies? How many did we lose?"  "49 I think, but we took down a lot of these things."  Celestia hung her head  "That doesn't get them back. Tend to the wounded, I must speak with your sister."  "Is she ok?"  "Yes, but she and her friends were attacked by a group of elite troops who must have snuck in."  Shining cursed himself for not having tighter security at the castle. Those droids getting through was his fault, or at least he felt it was.  "Alright… I'll speak with you later your highness."  Back at the outpost in the forest, the Droids returned from their mission.  "Your failure is unacceptable." TA-175 scolded "you have all disappointed me, except you Captain"  He said, pointing to the Commando Droid Captain  "You succeeded in your assigned task. Bring OOM-340 into the briefing room for analysis."   "Roger, Roger."  "All other units seek required maintenance. I expect you all to operate at 90% or greater by the next rotation."  "Roger, Roger" all the Droids replied.  Walking into the briefing room, OOM-340 sat in a chair with an R5 Astro mech next to him, who was handing cables and preparing to hook him up for data analysis.  "Contact Kraken" ordered TA-175.   The Astro mech whistled and extended an arm which it used to activate the Holo table, before continuing to prepare OOM-340.  "Results of Mission?" Kraken asked  "Mission partial success. OOM-340 has been retrieved, but we suffered heavy losses when they brought in their leaders. We were able to breach the first layer of barricades but were driven back."   "Acceptable. Has OOM-340's data been analyzed yet?"  "Negative, it is being worked on as we speak however."  "Good. Transmit them to me when complete."  "Hey, um, is this going to hurt?" OOM-340 asked the Astro mech, which whistled in response.  "Just the first part? How much? Exactly how painfu-AGH That's my face!" He yelled as his faceplate and upper head paneling was pulled off, exposing the circuits and electronics within.   The Astro mech hooked the cabling up into the OOM-340's "brain" and began to extract the data. A nearby computer began to display various images, locations and information at an incredible speed, so fast that no human would be able to read or understand any of it, but for Tactical Droids like TA-175, this was normal reading speed. Among the images displayed were some of standard things you'd expect a Battle Droid to have, such as its own blueprints, programming, a diagram of an E-5, assembler information, ID tag, and battle memories. However, as the memories began to become more recent, newer images and events appeared. The landing in Equestria, Meeting the Mane 6, The various other creatures it logged, its social interactions, the Equestrian Alphabet, and of course, the meeting with the Princesses."  But what particularly interested the Tactical Droids were the image of the Cutie Map, which gave a highly detailed image of the landscape, and its locations in better detail than could be seen from orbit.  Suddenly the Screen flashed with a message saying "End of memory log. What do you wish to do?" With the options below stated as  -Copy to external drive (drive present)  -Transfer Files  -Erase Memory  TA-175 walked over to the terminal, pressing the first option, to begin copying and transferring the files to Kraken, allowing OOM-340 to maintain his memory banks.  A nearby slot opened, and a storage drive extended out of it, which TA-175 grabbed and placed into the holo table, transferring it to Kraken.  "Thank you. That is all I require for now." Kraken said, before his hologram faded from view.  The Astro mech began disconnecting OOM-340 and reassembling his face as TA-175 walked out of the room. He had another Battle calculation to prepare given his new data.