The black-knight-looking robot immediately struck Zest as a sort of leader. When it turned its aggression to Zest, so too did most of the others. The rest looked a bit unsteady as they fired off their guns, each as ineffective as the last.
“Well at least they aren’t smart,” said Zest.
“Do not insult my intelligence!” The black knight’s maw lit with fire when he spoke. His (the voice was way too low for Zest to think of it as anything else) voice was way too spooky. It was practically a growl in and of itself.
“You can talk?” Zest asked.
“I will not stand for such aggression as this continued verbal assault!” The black knight pointed an accusing hoof at her.
“You’re the one attacking me!”
“Only because I hated your face so much! This is your fault!”
“What? I don’t know what you want, buddy, but maybe we can not fight?” Zest asked. “Maybe this is a misunderstanding and friendship can–”
Zest stopped mid-reason as she watched the black knight slowly tilt its head to one side, the elongated helmet trembling as if in increasingly intense anger.
“Are you trying to reason with me?!” It demanded.
“Um. Maybe?”
“Blarg!” He actually screamed the word ‘blarg’ and charged at her. A drill emerged from his shoulder and he tried to stab her through as though it were a lance. Of course, it went straight through.
Maybe he didn’t have anything that could hurt her.
“It's your fault that didn’t work!” The black knight screamed at her.
“The heat rays!” Wallflower pointed at one of the other robots, one that was decidedly not talking, a gun on a set of tracked wheels. “Use the heat ray to fight ghosts.”
“Don’t you dare tell me how to do my job you worthless beast!” The black knight shook his head. Had he saliva, Zest expected it would have gone slobbering off in every direction just then. “I will not do this just to spite you! I will spite and kill everypony on this planet! Not necessarily in that order!”
“Whoops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Admitting you made a mistake?! Such brazenness must be punished! I’ll kill you!” He turned the drill to Wallflower. Some invisible force kept him from advancing it. “Blarg! Blarg I say!”
Okay. Wallflower had something that kept it from attacking. Maybe not all of them were intelligent enough to talk! This was information!
But what kept it at bay? Clearly not any sense of comradery.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to get out of this guy,” said Zest, more to keep Wallfower talking than anything else. “But I don’t think he’s particularly loyal to you.”
“You question my loyalty?!” The black knight spat at Zest.
“Yes?”
“Those who answer rhetorical questions are the worst scum imaginable!”
“These guys feel nothing but anger,” said Wallflower. “They see everything you do as aggression so there’s no reasoning with them.”
“You expose my secrets to the enemy and insinuate I am incapable of reason?! This is unacceptable!” Green flames flared up in his maw once again.
“You would have gotten mad either way, it doesn’t matter,” said Wallflower.
“I despise such nihilism! If you wish to be nothing then you shall be nothing!” It shuddered, turning to Wallflower to try and attack her again.
“Whoa! Okay. That’s why they stopped making these, huh?” Zest let the robot stab through her again, insulted by that as well.
Wallflower watched the wall. Maybe sixty robots in total had emerged, half of them were headed to the wall while the other half surrounded Zest.
Wallflower let out a sigh, giving up on controlling the black knight.
“Whatever! You do your thing. I need to get to the wall.”
“My ‘thing’?! Such ineloquence drives me to murderous rage!” The black knight stomped his hoof and fired his guns off wildly in random directions.
“Wallflower, if robots like this reach the wall, they’re going to kill tons of ponies on the other side!” Zest complained.
“I already told you, nopony is going to die!” Wallflower shook her head. “They’ll just be ghosts, remember? This is perfectly safe.”
Zest noticed Wallflower clutch that watch thing she picked up. She held it tight as she started flying away. That was it! Well, it was the only thing Wallflower was holding onto.
Okay, the robots didn’t seem like a threat to Zest herself! She needed to go beat up Wallflower instead! She could totally beat up wallflower! Totally!
Zest flew right at her, catching up in mere moments. Wallflower turned back, eyes wide knowing she couldn’t win. A small burst and a sickening sound behind her made Zest crane her neck.
“Turning your back on me is unacceptable!”
A yellow, unsteady beam erupted from that nozzle, tearing through the ground, blowing sparks out of everything it collided with. The ray waved about like a rope, blue electricity running along its length. The strength of that beam seemed to make it too difficult for the black knight to control. As it wildly swept that particle beam around, it accidentally collided with one of the lesser robots, blowing it to bits in a small nova of sparks.
She watched it steady itself on two hooves before turning the beam off. It couldn’t control it, but on the other hoof, it left a trail of molten rock where the beam had been.
“And now you turn to face me?! That is even worse!” It pointed that weapon right at Zest!
Zest put up a barrier of ice!
She felt as though she might as well have been trying to stop a cannonball by holding up a piece of paper. The ice shattered before Zest even realized the shot had been fired. She felt something slam into her gut and her world became sparks and lights.
It wasn’t too dissimilar to that time she got electrocuted to death, only she could no longer feel heat. Once again, she felt locked in place only for a sudden blast to send her sailing through the air.
Indigo watched the monster come bounding out of the base, tearing through the frame of the door. This particular robot had the appearance of a distorted alligator, with the front part of its body opening up wide in imitation of a mouth made entirely of spikes, brutal hooks lining the rest of its back. Like all of them, it was black with only small amounts of red paint left over. It had large glass eyes, but they were shattered with small wires coming out of the cracks. It dragged itself forward on its belly using twisted claws as fire bellowed from that long mouth.
Most of them looked animalistic, either styled after nightmare versions of predators or twisted pony-like forms.
Basically, they were specifically designed to be as terrifying as possible. Nowadays, ponies thought they were twisted and rusted up because of age, but they looked like this when they were new. The spikes, the fire, the colors, the broken eyes with wires coming out of them, all of it was on purpose. They had two purposes, to kill and spread terror.
Indigo knew way too much about these stupid Toxco deathbots. They were the bane of her existence.
She’d spent six months painstakingly training to fight these stupid things only to get blown up by an artillery shell before even seeing one in the city. She totally got battle-cucked by these things! She swore to hunt down and destroy them all but…
Well some of them did survive the war. Some worked their way into the hooves of crime syndicates or mad science organizations. They were too widespread to get rid of anymore. But nopony actually used these things. They were too dangerous!
Indigo thought for sure she’d never see one again!
Sugarcoat wasted no time, creating a wave of ice larger than a normal ghost would have been able to. A miniature glacier forced the robot back and froze it partially. It really was good having a specter around.
“Sugarcoat. These are Toxco deathbots.” Indigo pointed to the wristband on Aria’s foreleg. Now that she knew to look at it, the thing was obvious. “They’re programmed to not attack anypony with one of those badges, but if they get enraged enough, they’ll ignore even that. And they can’t feel anything but anger, so–”
“Interact with them to make overstimulate their anger response. Then they’ll turn on their handler,” said Sugarcoat. “I know. This one’s clearly a drone. Do you know how to identify which one has a persona core?”
Indigo blinked. She knew exactly what Sugarcoat meant but was still confused.
Only a fraction of these robots had a ‘persona core’, or an actual robot brain. Those things could only be made with mad science, meaning a pony could at most produce four or five of them in their life before going on the eight.
The rest had very limited intelligence and needed an external controller to do anything more complex than basic tasks and tactics. That was either one of the smart robots or some huge ‘something-engine’ machine hidden somewhere. No way they had the latter so they needed to take out the former first.
But how did Sugarcoat know this? It wasn’t impossible to have read about it, but robots were rare. A slayer could encounter a hundred ghosts before meeting a single robot. Sugarcoat did cross her as well-read.
“Well the drones don’t talk,” said Indigo. “The real one will start shouting at us–”
“Unless they removed the voice box to confuse us,” said Sugarcoat. “You can’t possess ones with a persona core when they’re activated. That’s the only way to be sure.”
“How the heck do you know more about robots than me?!” Indigo stammered. “I took a whole training course on this!”
“Now’s a bad time. There’s more coming.” Sugarcoat looked over at the wall.
She was right! There were scores of them down there, the red eyes and disgusting smell of hot metal giving them away.
Indigo saw a stream of lightning or something down there, near where Zest was! And sadly, it looked way too intense to be something Zest created. Indigo would be lying if she cared more about Zest and Juniper than any of the predeads or all this political crap. She half wanted to call off the mission just to make sure those two were safe.
“How many more of these are in the base?” Sugarcoat asked Sour Sweet.
Sour Sweet slumped against the wall, trying to recover some amount of strength.
“We destroyed ten of them, there has to be at least ten more,” she said. “I don’t know which is the ‘real’ robot. None of them have spoken so far.”
Sugarcoat nodded.
There was probably more than one, Indigo suspected. One down there and one over here would be the bare minimum for this.
“We have to protect her from Wallflower,” said Sugarcoat. “I’m afraid this might be part of their plan. If she’s weakened, Wallflower could possess her. Then she can make Sour Sweet do something idiotic before dying, making it look like this was her fault. Her ideology’s fault.”
Sugarcoat kept her eyes on Aria and Sonata hiding behind the former, watching them carefully for any tell. Indigo regarded them with suspicion as well. They weren’t fighting back. That usually meant the enemy was trying to stall, and that time was on their side.
“Very clever,” said Aria. “It’s too late for you to stop us, though. All you can do is make the blow less severe. Just like all you can do is delay your defeat at the hooves of Crater Cemetery. If all this fighting is pointless, why not just give up? You could join the winning side right now, you know.”
“It’d hardly be ‘me’ joining, would it?” Indigo asked. “Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t hate that bitch’s guts if you got ten seconds to think for yourself?”
Aria smirked. She probably wanted to have this debate to waste time. But maybe she’d give out information if she wanted to stall and thought she’d already won.
“What are you even trying to do?” Indigo asked. “Those things are borderline useless as actual weapons. They kill more of your own guys in the long run. That’s why they stopped using them. What are you–?”
“Old Manehattan was allowed to stay here unmolested in exchange for doing work to keep the dangers of the ruins in check,” said Aria. “Encasing the reactor in cement, disposing of the mercury… destroying the remaining Toxco robots. So of course, if it turns out Old Manehattan didn’t keep their end of the bargain–”
“They did, though! The last of them in the city were melted down over a decade ago and–” Indigo realized what this had to mean. She’d seen robots outside the city before. Spatial Tear’s robot-making pony hid stores of them all over Equestria and some groups nabbed a bunch before Old Manehattan fell. “You brought these in from outside, didn’t you?! It’s so obvious now! I can smell the difference!”
That was right! The ones inside the city at the time would have been irradiated by the meltdown. Even after all this time, everything in the city still had a slight, sharp smell to it.
They clearly did something to these ones to cover it up, but the scent was off. It was way too strong and stood out against the backdrop of the city. Now that she was looking for it, the difference was clear.
Aria chuckled despite this revelation.
“Oh, come on! If I figured this out in ten seconds, you really think the predeads won’t?” Indigo pointed to herself.
“They won’t if whoever investigates this is on their side,” said Sugarcoat. “The truth won’t matter if somepony up high is looking for a pretext to get rid of us.”
“Huh?!” Indigo lowered her hoof and grit her teeth. She was totally right! That’s exactly what would happen.
That smug grin on Aria’s face, too!
They had to hope their predead friend really did manage to track down whoever this pony was. Or else…
Unlike her first electrocution, Zest didn’t die this time! At least, she didn’t think she did. She hadn’t realized she died for a solid five minutes the first time.
Zest looked over her body. When ghosts got injured, they didn’t bleed or anything. Instead, they kind of unraveled, with chunks of you going missing or fading away into little purple threads.
Looking herself over, Zest found no real sign of such injury. There’d been times Sparky pounced on her and left more of her fading away than this.
Okay! One of two options was at play here. Either Zest was resistant to electric attacks now or that gun was made to look way scarier than it actually was. That latter would certainly play into the whole ‘terror army’ motif they had going. Also, it would explain why nopony was using these sci-fi plasma rifle things.
That beam did little in the way of damage to Zest, but it did stun her long enough to let Wallflower get away. Zest could still sense her aura, but she was far away now, already near the wall. Zest wouldn’t catch up in time.
Right now, Zest saw the robots approaching the wall as the bigger threat. Indigo could likely take Wallflower out in one punch. But these things might be a problem.
Outraged by her continued existence, the black knight tried shooting her with that thing a second time. Zest managed to get underground just in time. She poked her head back out a safe distance.
She could probably avoid them and get to the wall. But was there any way to destroy them faster?
A group of four skeletal ponies jerking unsettlingly about as they trotted forward caught Zest’s eyes. Wires hung from their bellies, almost as though designed to look like intestines, sparking slightly.
That was right! Robots used electricity! And they were kind of like dolls! Maybe she could possess them?! Maybe this was her moment!
Zest flew right at it, trying to take control!
Possessing a living thing never worked out. Even if it was a freaking plant, you still got this feeling of being rejected, of being repulsed by the very cells of the organism kicking you out. Zest felt something similar when she grabbed hold of the skeletal robot.
Something with a savage, wild hatred that made her tremble. She’d encountered such things to not be dazed by it. Indeed, she was able to turn her head to find the source.
The black knight! He was imposing his will on the other robots just like a specter would on lesser ghosts. The others were largely mindless drones and this guy was like the queen ant or something!
Unlike a living entity, Zest could put up a struggle to control this robot! The two engaged in a tug of war, making the skeleton jitter about. She could feel the black knight’s frustration intensify until he could no longer take it. He all but lost control and shot that electric beam again, right at the skeletal robot.
It hit something, igniting a battery back or fuel tank or whatever powered this thing. And it exploded hard! Zest went spinning out of control with nothing physical to hold onto.
This time, the hit hurt a lot more! She figured it was more from the explosion than the electricity.
So much for friendship among deathbots.
“Such cowardly tactics!” It snarled at her, taking another step forward.
So that didn’t work. But Zest learned something important. That was the main robot guy… thing! He was the one she needed to take control of! If it was possible, of course.
Yeah, maybe this was a long shot, but if this worked maybe Zest could just force all the other robots to back off or something? Yeah! She felt like this was the most brilliant plan she’d ever come up with!
She whipped her muzzle off and stared the black knight in the eyes.
“Alright! Try that again!” She braced herself, ready for the attack.
“Confidence.” Those purple flames seemed to narrow. “I hate confidence more than anything else in the world!”
He pointed that canon right at her.
Now that she’d experienced it, Zest knew just enough about that electricity beam attack to use it against him! It wasn’t too different from the wires she was almost able to ride!
Sure, she’d yet to get the hang of this, but surely the adrenaline would push her past her limit!
The canon glowed and–
A wave of intense heat shot forward! Zest didn’t feel her body get hot, she felt something slam into her. She only knew this to be the ‘heat ray’ Wallflower mentioned earlier because of the overwhelming scent of radiation-based heat.
Her right side took the brunt of the assault. She’d broken that a few times in life and this felt about as bad for a second or two before mostly stopping. Only pain in her shoulder lingered.
Zest turned in horror to see her right foreleg missing completely!
“It’s okay! It’s okay!” Zest grabbed it with her remaining foreleg, more a reflex than anything helpful. “It’ll grow back!”
She’d never ‘lost’ a limb as a ghost, but Indigo told stories of half her body being blown off and still recovering. She’d be okay! As long as she didn’t get hurt any worse than that.
Clearly, though, this wouldn’t be that easy.