Chapter Nineteen: Justice
As every weapon in the room fired on me at once, I spun in place so that my overcoat covered the entirety of my body. It wasn’t enchanted like a doctor’s coat (though why one would go to the trouble to enchant a doctor’s coat to repel weapon damage, I couldn’t fathom), but I was able to activate a field that made it temporarily rigid and tough as body armor. Bullets whizzed off the surface in slow motion as I calculated my options. With my magic, I increased the temperature around the overhead sprinklers until they went off, drenching the room. Then, I cooled the ground, ice forming beneath the hooves of my foes.
They weren’t all caught off guard, but enough were to give me the opening I needed. I deactivated my overcoat’s protective field and galloped ahead without slipping one step. I levitated my battle rifle and fired bursts into each of the defenders behind their sandbag and furniture cover. Several ponies toppled backwards, but there were plenty more to stand against me. One armored in old Protect-a-Pony parts climbed up on top of a pile of desks and fired off a grenade launcher battle saddle at me. I teleported out of the way and reappeared above her, snatching her grenade launcher from the saddle as I landed on her back. A strike of my hoof to the back of her head dented her helm and crushed her spine, causing her to crumble.
My wings extended and I flew into the air to avoid the shots fired at me from the remaining ponies. Zinging through the activated sprinklers, I fired back down at the ponies below, using a thrown or teleported grenade or my stolen grenade launcher when they unwisely pulled in close together. Soon, the room was empty of life but for me, and I settled back down to the floor. I stocked up on grenades for the launcher before making my way to a service lift.
I depressed the button for the sub-basement warehouse, but the service elevator remained locked in place. Not willing to wait, I punched open the service panel and flew up into the elevator shaft. There was no way around the service elevator’s bulk, so I shot out the locks and cables holding it in place, sending it plummeting down to the bottom of the shaft before following. The doors at the bottom remained shut, but I pried them open.
An army of Protect-a-Ponies awaited me as I stepped out of the elevator and started firing magical energy beams at me. My wings bore me above them, where it was difficult for them to orient themselves to shoot me, and I rained down fury with my grenade launcher. Robotic parts were thrown everywhere as RoBronco’s signature automaton was destroyed a hundred times over. I landed amidst the sparking corpses of robots and threw the empty grenade launcher aside.
“Who are you?” the pony on the dais across the room asked. “You’ve copied me, so we must have met before, and you seem familiar.”
Subject: The Artificer
Crime: Gang Activities
Crime: Looting
Crime: Squatting
Crime: Unlicensed Alteration of Products
“I am Justice,” I said, my voice emotionless and oddly tinny. “I have come for you, and for all the warlords who unjustly rule this town.”
“Another player steps onto the stage,” the Artificer mused. “I think you’ll find it’s a crowded place, especially since there can only be ONE mechanical master!”
The Artificer leapt over his workbenches, mechanical claws grasping. I deftly stepped to the side, and he landed in front of me. Spinning, he discharged the magical energy weapons in his forelegs’ palms, and I ducked beneath the pink beams. As he tried to rend me with his claws, I took into the air. My mechanical dragonfly wings actually worked, unlike the ones on his costume. I buzzed around him as he tried to fire at me with his forelegs, something he had to rear up on his hindlegs to do and couldn’t maintain balance with for long. As he fired at me again, I zipped down rapidly and snapped his left hindleg with a strike from a hoof. Cursing his flesh, the Artificer went down. Vainly, he rolled onto his back and pointed his forelegs up at me, and I fired my battle rifle down repeatedly into his exposed underbelly until his forelegs went limp and fell to the floor with loud thunks. The readouts across my vision confirmed that the Artificer was dead. The first warlord was down; now I just had the rest of Castoway to clean up.
***
My memory of the following days is unclear, and most parts that I do remember vividly I wish I could forget. I was a prisoner in my own body, but this wasn’t something I’d realize until later. In the moment, Doc was completely gone, replaced by Justice. Well, maybe I wasn’t completely gone. There were hints that some of who I’d been before Orthros’s program had taken over was still there and affected things, like sending me to the Workshop first, since that had been my original destination. Forgotten, however, was why I was headed to the Workshop: to obtain information on RoBronco, not to kill the Artificer and his followers.
The Artificer was far from the last warlord I went after as Justice. All of them were guilty in my new artificial eyes, usually of crimes that would have applied during the War but made no sense in a post-megaspell world. Occasionally, however, the crimes were more abstract, such as “sub-par management” or “inefficiency.” As much as the Justice protocol was trying to address crimes (real or imagined), it also seemed willing to bend over backwards for any justification to oust anyone who could pose a threat or compete with Orthros. That was the ultimate goal, after all, written out in the protocol. Orthros wanted to rule Castoway, likely the entirety of Iron Valley, and possibly even the whole of the Commonwealth; I was its tool to accomplish this vision. It had chosen to frame it as “justice,” which I admit appealed to me; it’s probably what had allowed the takeover in the first place. However, anyone could see what I was doing was anything but just.
There were plenty of warlords in Castoway I’d never met, and not all of them deserved to die. Some were despicable, like the Corpse Grinder or the Gourmand, and I would have likely done something about them anyway. Others I would have gladly helped and seemed to be doing some actual good in the city, like Madame le Moth or the Breadwinner. Most of the warlords, like the Artificer, lay between the two extremes: not doing anything to improve the conditions in Castoway but not really doing anything to actively worsen them either. They might fight periodically over territory with others, but life had changed significantly since the megaspells had fallen; what had once been criminal was now commonplace and sometimes necessary for survival. For Justice, none of that mattered. Every warlord in Castoway was guilty, and all deserved the same punishment: death.
For three days, I terrorized the city. One by one, warlords toppled, leaving their followers in disarray. New warlords cropped up and also fell to Justice. The ponies of Castoway began to panic, some even fleeing the city for the wastes or the Iron Valley. I became a nightmare, a hated enemy of all, a myth, a monster in the night. Thanks to Orthros’s upgrades, they couldn’t kill me—but I had no problem killing them, physically or morally.
I was winging my way over Castoway, seeking out the next recipient of my wrath, when a sniper had the audacity to try to shoot me. My wings easily got me out of the way—my attacker hadn’t been terribly accurate in their shot—and I easily pinpointed their location. A pony atop the roof of the RoBronco offices was ducking back inside, and I pursued her. My wings folding flat against my body as I established proper trajectory, I dove through the open window through which she’d run.
The moment I passed through the window into the spire atop the building, lightning lashed out at me from both sides. An incredible jolt of electricity passed through me, temporarily paralyzing my entire body, and I struck the floor without my legs ready to absorb the impact. Colors and words flashed across my vision in a dizzying array and my hearing crackled with static and screeches. As I began to recover, another jolt went through me as a cable wrapped around my torso. This was repeated thrice more until I was thoroughly restrained so that not even with my augmented strength could I break free. The yellow-coated unicorn trotted up to stand over me and glared down with the eye not obscured by her white mane.
“Stop!” a male voice yelled as she pointed her sniper rifle at my head.
“Why should I?” the mare asked without moving her rifle away. “He’s the one responsible for everything.”
“I told you, it cannot be him, it’s all that stuff attached to him,” the other voice said as he moved into my sight, a griffin with white fur and black feathers, and pulled the sniper rifle away. “I know him, and he would never do something like this. Please, help me get him onto the table. If I cannot free him from whatever now possesses him, only then I will give you my permission to do as you wish.”
The mare grumbled unhappily about not needing permission, but she relented and put her sniper rifle aside. Together, the two of them hoisted me up onto a table designed for working on robots. Between my adamantine bones and the restraining coils, they had to strain to move me but managed to do so, before locking me down with even more restraints.
“I am Justice!” I objected. “Release me now and your deaths will be swift and painless!”
“Not much of an offer, is it?” the mare snorted. “Justice … that’s not who you said you were when we first me. And you’ve got a fancy new leg now. You sure this is the same pony?”
“Yes, I am confident,” the griffin said as he moved my mane aside and plugged something into a socket at the base of my neck that I hadn’t realized was there. “Oh dear, this is … complex.”
As the griffin tapped at a keyboard, the mare levitated Big Iron out of its holster and pointed it at me.
“Patience, I can do this,” the griffin chided her before saying under his breath, “I hope I can.”
Text flashed across my vision as the griffin tore into my mind. I tried to stop him, and for a time was successful, but eventually I was locked out of my own systems. I could feel parts of me broken, relocated, deleted, and eventually … released. I screamed as static tore across my vision and hearing, and then vanished. Blinking in disbelief, I remembered. I was myself again.
“Doc?” Rael asked hesitantly as he leaned toward me.
“Yeah?” I asked the Rokkist acolyte.
“Oh good, you’re back,” the griffin breathed a sigh of relief, and he set about removing my restraints.
“So, you really are the same pony,” Daff said. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
“I do?” I asked before the memories of my time as Justice came spooling back. “Oh; I do. Orthros took over my body, my mind, everything. There must’ve been some program hidden in these … enhancements they gave me. I think … I think I was supposed to prepare Castoway for their takeover.”
“Who’s Orthros?” Daff asked. “Some new warlord?”
“Maybe they want to be. Orthros is two pony minds combined in a machine in the Iron Valley. They saved my life, but then they went and turned me into … this,” I said.
“Okay, I take it back. You have way more than a lot of explaining to do,” Daff said.
“How bad is it?” I asked, “What have I done to Castoway?”
“The city’s tearing itself apart,” Daff said bluntly. “You killed over eighty percent of the warlords in the city, and their followers don’t know what to do with themselves. The remaining warlords are either too terrified of you—Justice—to do anything but hole up and hope for the best or are trying to seize an advantage.”
“I didn’t want any of this,” I said. “When I got to Castoway, I just … lost control.”
“Sure, I believe you. Thank your friend for that,” Daff said as she nodded at Rael. “Doesn’t change how the city is, though, nor the fact that you can’t stay here unless you want to continue to fight and kill everypony in it.”
“As long as you look like that, anyway,” Rael pointed out. “I removed what I could as far as a control program, but we really should remove any enhancements we can to be safe.”
“Orthros should be able to reverse the process; they admitted to keeping all the parts they replaced,” I said. “However, I don’t know how I’m supposed to get them to do that. I’ve tried to think of a way, but everything just comes back to the fear that if I threaten them, they’ll destroy my brain.”
“Well, they shouldn’t be able to do that anymore now that the control program is deactivated,” Rael said.
“They don’t need a control program,” I told Rael as I shook my head. “They’ve got my brain in their base, the Castle.”
“Begging your pardon Doc, but … they don’t,” Rael said, looking puzzled, “Your brain, augmented as it is, is still very much within your skull.”
“It is? Of course it is,” I groaned. “Just another lie to control me.”
Gunshots sounded in the night nearby, possibly the base of the tower. Daff trotted outside, past the massive coils from the Artificer’s lair that had been used to incapacitate me, and looked down.
“It was only a matter of time before ponies started fighting over this place again,” she said as she trotted back. “We need to get out of here.”
“Wait; before I go, I need what I came here for in the first place,” I said. Rael looked surprised and Daff skeptical. “Even if they don’t hold my brain hostage, I can’t assault the Castle all on my own. I have an idea.”
“Fine, but we better be snappy,” Daff said. “What do you need?”
After explaining, Daff led me down a couple floors to a working terminal hooked up to the building’s maneframe. While the mare kept an eye out for ponies who’d want to kill us (me especially), I hacked in and delved into the secret files of the executives who’d once worked here. Either the Artificer had never discovered this or had indeed lied to me when I’d asked about RoBronco sites in the Iron Valley, because I found the proof I was looking for. There were four sites, two of which I’d already visited and were public knowledge, and two more owned by RoBronco subsidiaries that had been secretly used for research. These files had also been accessed after the War, probably by the RoBronco scientists that had fled to the Griffin Commonwealth. Once I had the coordinates of RoBronco Site Hibiscus and RoBronco Site Dahlia, we could leave.
The three of us headed back up to the roof to make our escape. Although Rael and I could both fly, Daff could not, so I carried her down to street level. She still seemed understandably upset with me but no longer looked like she desired to kill me, which was probably the best I’d get under the circumstances.
“You two better get going,” she told me, and I was a bit surprised she included Rael in that. “If you come back to Castoway, Doc, make sure you’re back to yourself.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “I will.”
Rael and I flew up beyond the sight of the ponies of Castoway, leaving Daff behind, and winged our way east away from the city and all the tumult I’d caused.
***
As I made my way back up the Iron Valley, I had plenty of time to talk to Rael and learn how he’d come to be in Castoway. After we’d parted ways, he’d stayed in Moonraze for a time to try converting the population to Rokkism. However, the way in which we’d overthrown the mythologists there, through force instead of words, had left Rael thoughtful. Rokkism espoused pacifism, but condoned violence in self-defense. The question in the griffin acolyte’s mind was whether defending others or fighting for a good cause could be justified in the same way.
With that question in his mind, he’d decided to track down the pony who’d inspired it. He’d followed my path through the northern Griffin Commonwealth, sticking to the low points of the valley in order to trace my wingless route. It had been a slow journey, as he stopped to speak with griffins in all the different places I’d visited. Apparently he’d been impressed enough by what he’d heard that he was willing to brave the wastes, still beset by Dogs of War, in order to find me.
He’d arrived in Castoway just before my return and subsequent takeover by Justice and had asked around for me enough to meet Daff and learn that I had made it across the wastes. While I didn’t remember the event, he’d also seen me after my transformation, recognized who I was, and realized my augmentations had taken over. It was after that that he’d gone to Daff and recruited her to help in his scheme to trap me. The rest I remembered well, and I was grateful to the griffin and the unicorn for breaking me free of Justice.
It wasn’t all over, though. Multiple times, I could feel Orthros’s programming attempting to take over again and had to fight it back. I stopped using my wings after we’d left Castoway, afraid that making use of Orthros’s enhancements could help a second takeover along, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. I never felt truly in danger of succumbing to the program’s advances—Rael had done an excellent job in purging its core from my mind—but I remained vigilant.
“Are you okay, Doc?” Rael asked with concern as I recovered from another attack.
“I will be fine,” I assured him as I stood back up.
“Perhaps we should camp here for the night,” Rael suggested.
“No, Charity’s Reach isn’t far. We should continue to push on,” I said as I set out again. “Besides, Orthros must be running out of things to throw at me. They just tried to tempt me with fame, as if that was something I need.”
“Yes, you are quite famous in the north of the Commonwealth already,” Rael said, though that wasn’t what I’d meant. “In time, and with another persuasive radio announcer, I’m sure you’ll be famous in the south, too. You were famous in Equestria as well, weren’t you, Doc?”
“I was,” I admitted. “Again, thanks to a radio announcer spreading myths about me.”
“Why did you leave your homeland?” Rael asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time,” Rael said chirpily.
Indeed, he had. After catching up to me, Rael’s intention was to follow me and observe how I dealt with life in the Griffin Commonwealth. I’d almost forgotten how much I missed having a companion with me, but I had some misgivings about bringing a pacifist along. For one thing, I was worried about having to protect my own hide and that of someone else at the same time, though Rael proved to be capable of defending himself when (and only when) the need arose. For another, I tended to kill a lot during my travels, and having a second conscience along when I was already dealing with a foreign presence in my head didn’t sound appealing. However, I was willing to give Rael a chance. There was something I liked about this griffin, for all the little time we’d spent together.
“Maybe someday I’ll tell you the whole story. For now, let me just say this,” I told him. “I used to be a very different pony, a … warlord of sorts. Then I went and erased my memories, changed my appearance, and started over. While a coalition of raiders and slavers still followed the warlord version of me, I—as Doc—fought back and united an alliance of settlements that eventually won out. That’s how I became famous, but that also made me dangerous. When the leaders of the new alliance I’d helped create learned I’d once been their hated enemy, I had to leave, to run from ponies who might’ve wanted revenge for what my past self had done.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Rael commented.
“You’re telling me,” I said. “I can understand where they’re coming from, though. How easy is it to believe that someone who was once a villain won’t go back to being one again, even if they don’t remember anything of that life?”
“You could make a good Rokkist, Doc,” Rael said. “Empathy is an important skill, and you are better at understanding and seeing the good in others than even some of my brothers and sisters.”
Our conversation didn’t go much further than that, and soon Charity’s Reach came into sight. It wasn’t late enough yet for the lights over the town to come on, but that meant that I was able to easily see the Protect-a-Ponies tending the fields. Most shops were open as I strode into town this time, and I received more calls from those who tended them. Our progress slowed significantly as I took the time to shop and restock supplies and ammunition. I was also on the lookout for something to replace the shotgun the Dogs of War had destroyed but wasn’t able to find anything to suit my needs.
When we finally made it to the town’s main square, I noticed that things had changed since my last visit. The alley in which destitute griffins had begged for food or coin was now empty. I could see some of them seated at tables in front of the wheelhouse, near the Rokkist church, and others came and went from the segment next to them, which was lit up, allowing me to see other silhouettes moving within. They all looked content, and they chatted and laughed with each other. Something was different; I trotted into the Rokkist church, which Rael was already staring at, and sought out Geraldine. I found her within speaking to some of her acolytes, whom she sent them on their way as we approached.
“Welcome, my brother, and …” Geraldine squinted as she looked me, “Doc? Is that truly you?”
“It is, Geraldine. I’m afraid this will take a bit of explaining,” I said as I waved my replaced foreleg. “Before that, though, I wanted to ask how things have changed since I was last here. I saw the beggars’ alley is empty.”
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” Geraldine asked cheerfully. “I thought about what you said, Doc, and decided that you were right. Donations to the church to help the less fortunate are now mandatory.”
Rael blinked in surprise at that and looked at me.
“Dres and Gellen didn’t like that one bit, but I made it clear that I couldn’t consider them fellow Rokkists if they continued to withhold their fair share,” Geraldine continued. “They eventually bent, and now the church has plenty of funds to help all those who cannot work themselves. Surely you saw them just outside?”
“I did,” I replied. “I’m happy that things worked out for you.”
One of Geraldine’s acolytes signaled for her attention, and she waved that she would be over in a minute.
“I’m so busy now,” Geraldine said cheerfully. “We shall have to talk again sometime. Until then, may you bless and be blessed by those around you.”
“May the same be true of you,” Rael replied as the griffin walked away to attend to her acolyte.
Rael looked uneasy, but he refrained from speaking until we were out of the church.
“You advised the priestess to make donations mandatory?” Rael asked as he stalked beside me.
“Not those exact words, but I did tell her I thought she should compel those not living up to the beliefs they claimed to possess to give fairly,” I said. “Why didn’t you say something to Geraldine?”
“Well, she is a priestess and I’m still just an acolyte, so perhaps I don’t understand it all, but Rokkism has always taught voluntary contribution,” Rael said. “This mandatory donation thing … I don’t think it’s what Rok would want. It’s certainly not what he did while he was alive.”
“You weren’t here before, so you didn’t see all those griffins begging for food and money, unable to get it because the two wealthiest griffins in town were keeping everything for themselves,” I said, gesturing toward the griffins who now had a place to live. “Maybe it’s not what Rok did, but does that necessarily make it wrong? It’s helping griffins. How could the church mandating donations for that purpose be a bad thing?”
***
Charity is such a foreign concept to us griffins, it seems. To give of one’s own possessions to help another? Why, that would decrease oneself, wouldn’t it? In some ways, yes, but in other ways, I don’t think so. Certainly, one’s possessions would decrease, but is that all one is—possessions? During the zebra-pony war, the Commonwealth grew rich, but most of that richness found its way into the claws of a few. I don’t decry that richness in itself; certainly many of them acquired it through their own labor or cleverness. But what did it gain the Griselda von Plumes of the world after the megaspells fell? Griffins go on living as if nothing has changed in the Commonwealth, just because we were not as hard-hit as others, but it’s a post-megaspell world we’re living in. We all need to help one another to survive, and still griffins hoard great riches for themselves.
Is there anything to be done about this? I would petition such fortunate griffins to use that wealth to help the less fortunate, to see us all thrive. And if they agreed, and placed me in charge of fortunes in order to see them used for the good of those who needed them, what would I do? If there were none to oppose me, and I had before me all the coin gained from ponies and zebras, could I make wise use of such a fortune? And if I was opposed yet acted anyway? The claw that reaches into a fortune, even to give it to one more needy than them, is ever tempted to place some of what it has touched into its owner’s pouch. The actions of the Commonwealth government during the zebra-pony war led us to the world we now live in; I cannot stand by them without reservation, but perhaps they got a few things right. Trapped between two behemoths that demanded absolute obedience from their populations, it’s a wonder that they didn’t travel the same course. Perhaps griffin stubbornness had something to do with it.
Can we change now? I think about this often. That, and questioning what should change and what should stay as it was. In this post-megaspell world, so much has changed—but not us. No, griffins are griffins, even after the sky was set aflame.
***
Rael and I continued to follow the train tracks that served as the Iron Valley’s spine as we made our way to RoBronco Site Hibiscus. After getting the locations from the RoBronco offices, it hadn’t taken me long to discover that Hibiscus was located in the same place I’d previously searched. The coordinates were exactly the same, and yet I was repeating the search. Still, I had hope, as I remembered how I’d failed to find the exit to the Castle until Orthros had been willing to let me go. Orthros’s programming was able to affect my perception, but it couldn’t affect Rael; I’d be relying on his sight in case that part of the program still existed in my mind.
We were passing the split where rails ran off to RoBronco Site Rose when electronic howling sounded from the distance. We took to the air to get a better vantage point, and I quickly spotted a Dog of War bounding across the landscape in our location. As it neared us, the overlay on my vision picked out two more charging in from different directions. The first Dog of War transformed mid-bound, and its claws skidded through scree as it stabilized itself and fired the magical energy weapon in its snout, nearly hitting Rael.
Shield Protocol Ready
I willed the message away and drew my battle rifle. With Orthros’s programming guiding my aim and steadying my shots, I expertly fired on the Dog of War, severing a couple cables in its neck area before it shifted plates to protect them. I had a plan for the Dogs of War, so I didn’t want to destroy them, but I also couldn’t ignore them. The Dog fired another beam, but the power was much less than before; after a second, it fizzled out.
I severed more cables as the Dog of War continued to shoot at Rael and me using its wrist-guns, and by the time the other two arrived, it was having difficulty balancing. Rael shot up into the sky when the others arrived, leaving me to face the Dogs of War on my own. Magical energy beams crisscrossed the sky and I flew under them. The first cyberhound jumped up to grab at me, but I hardened my overcoat and its claws screeched off rather than finding purchase.
I landed and fired a burst of shots that finally crippled the first Dog of War completely, leaving its joints slack as hydraulic fluid spurted from half a dozen holes. One of the others swiped at me and I dodged beneath, shooting a blast of magic from my horn that sparked like a flare and temporarily blinded the Dogs. While they were incapacitated, I jumped with the aid of my wings and struck an outstretched arm with my forehooves. Had I been entirely flesh and blood, that would have shattered my forelegs and done nothing to the Dog of War; but with adamantine hooves applied at just the right angle, my strike cracked through the protective plates on the Dog’s arm and bent the frame beneath.
It swung back around, and its claws glanced off my hardened overcoat and pulled over my face. My horn glowed brilliantly as I lifted the other Dog of War off the ground, leaving it floundering in midair, before dropping it atop the one attacking me. I flitted off the ground as they disentangled themselves while firing at me with their snout weapons. I drew Big Iron and shot into the face of the Dog with the broken arm several times, shattering the optical sensors and lights surrounding them. I circled the Dogs of War and fired on the damaged one’s waist until it had a solid set of protective plates circling around its midsection to deflect my attack. Pulling the pin while it was still in my saddlebags, I teleported a grenade to the other side of the Dog; the blast nearly tore it in half as the exposed and already damaged joint of its waist was hit.
“Rael! Let’s get out of here!” I called up as the second Dog of War collapsed, and the last remaining one fired up at me defiantly.
As we flew away, the remaining Dog of War didn’t follow, just as I’d hoped, instead staying behind with its damaged compatriots. Hopefully, I would see them again, but not until I was ready.
***
There was no doubt in my mind now that Orthros had been able to make me see whatever they wanted until Rael had broken their control. What had been real, and what hadn’t? Perhaps I’d never know. One thing I did know was false was what I recalled from searching for RoBronco Site Hibiscus the first time. I was standing in the same place as before, but now there was a building with a rail line running to it. Rael confirmed that what I was seeing now was reality.
A squat building with only a single story was built into the hillside, painted a faded and flaking white. Upon the flat roof was a large collection of satellite dishes, many of them filled with leaves and birds’ nests. Just below the roof overhang, “ABACUS PRECISION SOLUTIONS” was painted in red. The doors in front slid open jerkily as we approached, and we entered the abandoned office.
At first glance, the building was innocuous. There was a small reception desk that would seat only one pony up front, and the rest of the space was mostly taken up by offices filled with file cabinets containing printouts covered in numbers and graphs. There was a terminal in each office, and the cables’ pipes could be seen on the ceiling in the hallways, all converging on the center of the building, in a room labeled Maneframes. The door to the maneframe room had once had a keypad lock, but at some point in the past, something big with sharp claws had torn the door off. We were on the right track.
Within the maneframe room, there existed the stacks of computers that gave it its name, but there was also a large trapdoor on the opposite end of the room that was permanently propped open. My eyes adjusted swiftly to the darkness as Rael and I passed through the trapdoor and down the stairs beneath it. There were several flights of stairs with doors to other floors, but we kept going until we made it to a floor where the doors had been forced open.
This was exactly what I’d hoped to find when I’d left Pleasure Coast over a month earlier. We were in the secret laboratory where the Dogs of War had been built. Technical diagrams hung in alcoves with controls ready to file them out for examination. Crates of spare Dog of War parts stood against the walls, many of them torn open by mechanical claws. Terminals blinked at research stations, hooked into another set of maneframes built deeper into the hill. Skeletons in RoBronco lab coats soaked in blood and torn through by claws were scattered throughout the space, telling the grisly end of the Dogs’ creators. In another part of the facility stood fifty enormous “kennels” used to hold and repair the Dogs of War. A small assembly plant stood ready to fabricate any part that might be needed, given the raw materials.
“So?” Rael asked when we’d finished exploring the complex where the Dogs of War had been born. “What now?”
“We’d never be able to take on Orthros alone. Even with a small army, defeating all the robots in the Castle would be difficult,” I said. “However, I’ve seen Dogs of War take over all kinds of robotic networks. We’ll reprogram them, give them a new purpose. Then we’re going to go to the Castle and get my body back.”
***
My plan was more quickly said than done, and not just because of the complexity in reprogramming Dogs of War. They were the most advanced machines RoBronco had created during the War, designed to tear through zebra legions and the zebras’ own advanced automatons, but the megaspells had fallen before they could be sold to the Equestrian Army and deployed. I gathered from reading the notes left by the long-dead RoBronco scientists that losing their purpose had been what spelled doom for the program. The Dogs of War had no more reason for existing, so they’d made one for themselves: protecting robotic networks from flesh-and-blood beings, starting with freeing themselves from the scientists that had created them. Fortunately, they hadn’t truly mutated their programming and become self-improving, so once I’d figured out how to reprogram one using the test kit left by the RoBronco scientists, I was able to reprogram them all.
Once I’d learned how to do so, it was just a matter of getting them to the facility so that I could apply my changes. I wasn’t sure if the dishes atop RoBronco Site Hibiscus were capable of reprogramming at a distance, but I did find out that they could recall all the Dogs of War from across the Griffin Commonwealth. Some came soon, from the pack that roamed the Iron Valley, including the three Rael and I had faced near RoBronco Site Rose. They had actually come before I’d sent out the signal, as I’d hoped they would, the intact one dragging its compatriots back for repairs. They’d been the first to be reprogrammed, and I continued to refine and tweak my changes as others arrived over the next six days.
The first thing to go had been that core piece of code Robert Horse had included in all his machines to allow for emergency override. Although it was a risk to remove it in case I ever needed to override the Dogs of War, it couldn’t stay for Orthros to potentially exploit. I could’ve simply changed it to a different key, but even at 256 characters, Orthros would soon have nothing better to do than run through every possible combination and brute force a takeover. The possibly of them cracking it was infinitesimally small, but it still existed, and that was unacceptable; better to remove the weakness entirely. I also made sure that the Dogs of War were no longer hostile to ponies and griffins. I gave them a new enemy, Orthros, and a new task, to take over the Castle and guard it.
During those days, in addition to tweaking the Dogs’ programming, I also investigated the maneframe for signs of the RoBronco scientists from Equestria. They’d visited, just as they’d said they would, but didn’t stay for long. The Dogs of War had not been kind to them, and they hadn’t wanted to take the time to bring them back under control completely. Instead, they opted to temporarily hold the robots in place to give themselves time to escape. They’d fled to RoBronco Site Dahlia and had included the coordinates again. Now that I’d found where the Dogs of War had originated, I had no reason to also look for Dahlia. Be that as it may, I was a curious pony and didn’t like leaving loose ends; I intended to visit it once this business with Orthros was done and see what had become of the Equestrian scientists.
A week after arriving at RoBronco Site Hibiscus, the Dogs of War were all ready. According to the notes left by their creators, there had once been fifty of them, divided into five packs, but Wartime testing and the occasional takedown by heavily armed or lucky griffins in the years since had reduced their numbers to twenty-seven. With twenty-seven Dogs of War, I could probably storm Shearpoint itself and oust Grand Marshal Gideon, but I had no interest in doing that (at least not at the moment). I, and the Dogs, had but one enemy right now: Orthros.
After crossing the Iron Valley, we launched our assault on the Castle. Picturing a fight between the Dogs of War and the machines of Orthros, you might conjure up something truly epic; for better or worse, the actual fight was much more anticlimactic. There was some fighting between the Dogs and securitaurs and the two-headed robot dogs at the start, but once one of our cyberhounds managed to take control of one of Orthos’s machines, the fight was as good as over. The Dogs spread their programming through the ranks of the enemy, turning them to our side, and we encountered very little resistance within the Castle. There were still a few robots under Orthros’s control as we made our way to their lair, but in all but a few cases, the Dogs of War or automatons under our control took care of them before I had to fire a shot. I noticed that they seemed to be particularly protective of Rael, as if they’d taken a liking to him. I wasn’t sure if that was because of our reprogramming, or if the Dogs truly did have personality.
“Very clever—” Orthros’s right head said mockingly as we entered the chamber where they hung from the ceiling.
“—very clever!” the right head repeated.
“Make the Dogs of War your own—”
“—and turn our army against us—”
“—but you’re not as wise as you think—”
“—otherwise you would have accepted our gifts!”
“They’re no gifts,” I told Orthros. “You wanted me to be your slave.”
“But the shackles were your own choice—”
“—and we all wear shackles in some way—”
“—slaves to our natures until the end.”
“Even us?” the head on the left asked as it turned its eyes toward its fellow.
“Yes, even us,” the head on the right replied.
“So what if your shackles were more apparent than most?”
“You were doing good, as you wanted to.”
“Not by my own choice, and that’s important,” I said.
“Wasted! Wasted on you!”
“We should have taken control from the start!”
“But that never works, does it?”
“Don’t you start now!”
Rael and I stood puzzled as Orthros had an argument with itself, before regaining compose and looking back down at me.
“What will you do now, then, pony?”
“Will you kill us, destroy Orthros forever?”
“No,” I replied, “I won’t destroy you. But I need you to do something for me.”
“A—”
“—deal?” Orthros said excitedly.
“You’re going to turn me back to the way I was,” I said, and the two dog-heads recoiled slightly. “Not dying, of course. I am grateful to you for saving my life, even if it was for selfish ambition, but I want all your ‘enhancements’ gone. I want to be myself again.”
“You want it all gone?”
“You haven’t changed a bit!”
“I think that’s what he wants.”
“And what about the forelimb we grew for you?”
“Will you reject that as well?”
I looked down longingly at the foreleg that I’d thought lost forever. But it wasn’t my foreleg, not really. I’d lost that when I’d come to the Griffin Commonwealth, and I’d gotten by without it since. I didn’t need it anymore. Even if I’d lost a part of myself, that didn’t make me lesser.
“It all has to go,” I said. “Give me the griffin arm again. I’ll manage with only three hooves.”
“Fine, fine—” Orthros said.
“—we’ll do as you ask.”
“You’d better,” I said. “If Rael here sees any funny business, you’re finished.”
“He wears the symbol of the broken griffin,” Orthros said as they leaned down to observe Rael.
“He wouldn’t hurt us.”
“Is that a chance you want to take?” Rael asked defiantly.
“Very well, Doc—” Orthros said as they retracted.
“—we will reverse our enhancements.”
“Foolishness, to want frail flesh—”
“—when he could be glorious like us.”
***
With Rael watching over things, Orthros behaved and made me as I’d been before. Once again, my bones were frail, my magic, sight and hearing only average, I was unable to fly, and I was missing a leg; but at least I was all me. After the operation, Rael had given me a thorough examination with the equipment on hoof and declared that everything Orthros had added was gone.
While I’d regained my body, there were some things I wouldn’t be getting back. Orthros had saved everything of mine, but the Stable 85 jumpsuit I’d worn for so long was a lost cause. It had been so torn and damaged by the Dogs of War that it was mere scraps, and I had to give up on ever donning it again. I’d investigated the clothing I’d taken from my room in the Castle and couldn’t find anything that suggested Orthros had any hidden tricks in it, so I decided to keep the armor. Even with the wing-holes, I wasn’t likely to find anything much better out there. The doctor’s coat the Yellows of Stable 85 had given to me was similarly ravaged by the Dogs of War. It was such an iconic piece of my look, and how ponies and griffins recognized me, that I wasn’t willing to give up on it completely. The upper back and neck were still mostly intact, and I used some amateur sewing to attach the section to the overcoat I’d taken from the Castle, covering the wing holes. Without my augmentations, the overcoat was no longer able to turn rigid at will, but it would keep the rain off; and the enchanted section of my doctor’s coat would cover most of my vital areas from above. I also took the remaining shoulder patch from my doctor’s coat, the butterflies on it faded now from pink to nearly orange, and attached it to my new hybrid coat. I had no sense for fashion, but hopefully it would still provide adequate protection and allow me to be recognized.
Before we left the Castle, Rael and I made sure to disconnect Orthros completely from all the building’s systems. They could stay in their room and fume or constantly bicker back and forth, but they wouldn’t be touching anything else. To make sure nobody came to free them, either purposefully or by accident, we left the Dogs of War behind. They seemed content with their new purpose of guarding Orthros, and they had plenty of other robots with them now that they could protect, too. The shutters closed behind us as Rael and I left the Castle and set out into the wastes around it. The Iron Valley opened up in the distance, along with the possibilities of what mission I would take on next.
Level Up
New Quest: Scientific Pursuits – Find out what became of the RoBronco scientists that fled Equestria for the Commonwealth.
New Perk: The Horse Always Wins – When it comes to chance, you seem to have figured out the knack of coming out on top more consistently than one would trust. +1 to Luck.
Quest Perk removed: Built to be Better
Strength -4* (5)
Perception -4* (6)
Endurance -4* (6)
Agility -3* (7)
Luck +1** (7)
Alchemistry +1 (55)
Alteration Magic +1 (39)
Athletics +1 (41)
Barter +1 (117)
Big Guns +1 (86)
Electronics +1 (55)
Explosives +2 (117)
Illusion Magic +1 (35)
Manipulation Magic +1 (44)
Repair +1 (114)
Science +3 (118)
Small Guns +3 (139)
Survival +1 (67)
Unarmed +2 (95)
*Built to be Better
**The Horse Always Wins