The Scout was at a loss for what to do. The robots had, somehow, made it into Equestria. He didn't think any of them recognized the threat for what it was, although Twilight seemed to be coming to that conclusion.
"What in the hay is that thing!?"
"I hope it's not disturbing the animals..."
"Scout," Twilight started, "what was it you said about those robots you fought?"
"Dey come in tanks like dat one." As the ponies conversed worriedly, the Scout tried to think of what to do. He would have to get by himself in order to talk to his teammates without anyone noticing, but that would look even more suspicious. What to do...
Oh, the hell with it. The Scout presses the button on his headset, calling up his team. "Yo, hardhat."
"What is it, Scout?"
The ponies looked at the Scout in confusion.
"We gotta problem. Dem robots are here."
"Well, damn. What do you want me to do?"
"Who is he talking to?" Rarity asked. Her friends just shrugged as the Scout continued talking. "I dunno, send some o' our team here."
"Why would we defend some alternate dimension?"
"Da bots are after Mann Co. If they're here, then they're looking for Mann Co. Since I was hired to crack some metal skulls, I plan to get my paycheck."
"Alrighty then. I'll see if I can get Spy and Heavy to go." There was a pause, before the Engineer came back. "Huh. I found Spy, but I didn't see Heavy or Medic anywhere. Can you do with just him?"
The Scout was too busy pondering to answer the question. If Medic and Heavy weren't at the base, then where else could they be...
The realization hit him like a crit wrench from a cornered Engineer. He turned to the ponies. "We gotta get back to my place."
"What- Why?! Who were you talking to?!" Twilight was both angry and confused. Mostly confused.
"Someone I know, now come on!" He turned to leave out the door, but Rainbow Dash stood in his way.
"Am I too late for the party?"
The others give greetings to the pegasus, but the Scout looks closer. There was something off about her...
Ah. Of course. "Come on, Spy, we ain't got time for this."
"Dash" sighed before being enveloped in a cloud of red smoke. When it cleared, a bipedal suited and masked figure was standing there. All of the ponies were shocked at the revelation. All of them, save for Twilight, whose eyes flashed with recognition. "You!"
"Yes, me, can we get past zis? I was told to assist my colleague, here, and I wish to do just that." He follows Scout out the door, the ponies right on their tail, Twilight trying (and failing) to get some answers from the Frenchman.
Before they could leave town and go back to the Scout's house, however, a loud boom of thunder broke through the air. All of the ponies and the two humans turned to look at the carrier tank. A thunderstorm was swirling around the antenna on top, and a loading ramp was ever-so-slightly opening.
"Aw, geez, already?"
"Well, no use staying here." The Spy cloaked while moving towards the tank, disappearing from sight. As the ponies looked for him, the Scout drew his scattergun and worked the lever, releasing an empty shell that he liked to keep in there for just such an occasion as this, in order to look cool.
"What's happenin'?" Applejack asked. "Why is that... thing... opening?"
"Ooh! Is it a party?!"
The Scout snorted in amusement. "Heh, it'll be a party, alright." He turned to Twilight. "Get all the ponies inside. This is gonna get fun." Before she could question him, the Scout ran towards the tank, as well, grinning with anticipation.
The ramp was now fully lowered, and a group of Pyro-bots walked out. The eight of them stood out in the open, confused by the scenery. Shuddering from their motors, they looked at each other, then back at the town, then back at each other, then back at the town. One of them, this one carrying a bomb on its back, shrugged and started walking forward, the others following him. Before they made any substantial progress, though, a blast of buckshot hit one square in the face, making it crumple into a pile of scrap metal and cash. They turned to the Bostonian offender, and began running forward while letting loose with their flamethrowers. This single-minded aggression hid the fact that a figure was uncloaking behind them, flicking a knife at the ready. The Spy had stabbed three of them before they all turned and looked at them. The timing couldn't have been worse, as the Spy ended up ineffectually stabbing into a robot's shoulder, lodging itself in. The starter flame of the bot's flamethrower was inches from his face.
"Oh merde."
And then they burned him to death.
The Scout had used this distraction to effortlessly dispatch the remaining robots. After he picked up the money, stepping nonchalantly around his teammate's burned corpse, he saw Twilight looking out from a window of her library, a look of total shock on her face.
"Did... Did he just... die?" she asked, the image of the French saboteur becoming kindling still fresh in her mind.
"Yep," the Scout answered casually. This surprised Twilight.
"Wha- How can you not care that your friend just died?!"
"He does that all the time. Give him a sec, he'll be right back."
As he ran off in preparation of more robots, Twilight's eye twitched. He had mentioned dying multiple times, but she thought he meant it metaphorically, not literally. Sure enough, the Spy uncloaked, leaning on the wall next to the window, smoking his trademark cigarette.
"He never was one for subtlety."
Twilight jumps at the voice, before she glares upon realizing who it was. "You're going to answer my questions, mister!"
Almost imperceptibly, a faint chuckling could be heard in the wind. "Hold zat thought." From behind one of the buildings, the Scout emerged. The Spy pulled out a large revolver, and took aim. Before Twilight could ask just what in the hay he was doing, he fired. But rather than the dead Scout she was expecting, she saw it suddenly change into a blue robot, that looked similar to the Spy and now sported a decent-sized hole in its head. With a dismissive "Hmmph," the Spy reloaded the spent bullet. "Amateurs..."
With that, the Spy flicked away his cigarette and cloaked. Twilight hit her head on the nearby wall in exasperation. Today was going to be a long day.
It took some restraining from Heavy, and a slight increase in the use of duct tape, but the Medic had finally subdued the now-awake pegasus. She was still fearing for her life, that much was obvious, but at least she wasn't screaming and flailing anymore. Still, that didn't mean she was silent.
"What the hay do you think you're doing!? Let me go!"
"Alright, fraulein, I'll just take zis medigun off of you und let you die from a notable lack of organs." He started to "turn off" the medigun, but Dash cracked.
"Wait, wait! Just..." She took a deep breath, despite missing her lungs. "...what are you going to do with me?"
"Simple, really." The Medic went searching for something amidst the cart. "I vas curious about you ponies, and I figure I might as vell take a specimen and examine them, inside und out." Finally, he seems to find what he was looking for. "Zere we go!..."
He stood back up, now holding a small device with spikes on one end, and a dial on the other. Picking up her heart, which was only slightly smaller than the average human heart, he noted, he stuck the device onto it, making Dash squirm slightly from the ensuing squelch. He held it under the medigun, which diverted some of the beams from the pony and into the organ.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Oh, just seeing if zis vill-" He is cut off by the heart exploding, covering the front of his operating vest in blood. A part of the heart hit the Heavy in the head, which he pulls off with no amusement. "...vork."
If her heart wasn't both out of her body and exploded, it would be racing. Before she could call the doctor out on his sub-par medical skills, he spoke again. "Don't vorry, this has happened before. Just ask Heavy."
The Russian in question nods. "Da. Happened to me, too. Is not pleasant, I admit."
The Medic scans through his mini-fridge, looking for a suitable replacement heart. Mega baboon heart? No, too big. Loch Ness hamster? Too small. Sandvich, liver, Spy head ("I thought I got rid of you." "Please do." "Later."), and even some beers. Then he saw another heart. He can't quite remember where it was from, but it was similar in size to the heart this pony had before, so it would have to do. He removes it, and sets it on the table for later. Instead, he jots down a few notes on a blood-speckled notebook, before turning to the pony. "Now, vould you mind telling me vhat zis is?" He holds up the two halves to the mystery organ, both of which pulse weakly. Upon seeing it, Dash gasped.
"You took out my faust gland?!"
"So zat's vhat zey're called. Anyvay, vhat do zey do?"
"They supply magic to the body by pulling it from the air, duh!" It didn't occur to her until after she said it that he probably wouldn't have known the purpose to the important organ. Trying to make up for that, she adds, "Ponies need them to survive."
"Vhere can I get another, zen?"
Dash hesitated. Would she really put other ponies in danger to satisfy this mad human's curiosity?
When he squeezed both parts of the gland, she panicked. "There are some stored at the Ponyville hospital!" she blurts out, before futilely trying to cover her mouth with her bound hooves.
Before the Medic could say something else, the sound of gunshots came from somewhere outside. "Heavy, go see vhat zat vas, will you?"
"Da." The large man leaves. Seconds later, he comes back. "I think Doctor needs to see this..."
Wondering what ever it could be that would warrant coming out of his current operating room, he goes upstairs and looks out the window. There, in the distance, was one of the robots' carrier tanks. "Those schweinehunds..." He turns to the Heavy. "Do you still have zat 'disguise' Soldier made for you?"
"Yes." He takes out a small pile of cardboard and aluminum tubing. The German is confused on why his comrade was holding on to it, but that did not matter now. Working quickly, he put on the pieces to the costume. While adjusting the head part, he said to the Heavy, "Make sure she doesn't escape, and that no one barges in."
"I will." His costume now complete, the Medic left for the town, practicing his "robot speak".
The situation was bad, sure, but it was more strange than anything. The robots kept trying to move a bomb to an undetermined point in the town, only to be stopped by the pair of humans who were protecting it. Oddly, when they met the occasional pony who was stuck outside, they simply ignored them, only paying them mind enough to go around them. This wasn't much of a problem, as the ponies who encountered the robots either ran as if their lives depended on it or sat there and cowered.
The humans, in the meantime, were making short work of the mechanical invaders. They had stepped up their game, but even a pair of giant Demomen went down eventually. Both the Scout and the Spy died a number of times, but they both just teleported in and went back into the fray. The Spy had heard commotions coming from the basement, but he paid it no mind. The Scout, meanwhile, had gotten into the habit of jumping straight out the window upon teleporting in, preventing him from hearing anything that might've been happening in his house.
The robots were moving the bomb closer and closer to the center of town, but it was slow progress. After all, the Scout and the Spy were the best ones for stopping the bomb's progress.
Amidst the battle, neither of them saw the very odd "robot" that was heading towards the hospital.
The Medic strolled right into the hospital's front doors. He, thankfully, hadn't had to speak to any robots, so he didn't have to see if his robot speak was accurate quite yet. There was a pony at the front desk who, despite the chaos outside, was still filling out paperwork calmly. Upon looking up, she's startled by the appearance of a... robot?
The "robot" shuffles forward with a decidedly non-robotic shuffling noise. "I vill need-" It clears its throat, before speaking again in a stiffer, more unnatural voice. "I will need one of your stored faust glands. Er, beep boop."
The pony, somehow, buys the act, as she goes into a back room and brings out a small container. Looking inside, the Medic saw the same organ he got out of the pegasus, along with some ice. Perfect.
"Danke. I will be leaving now. Boop beep." He shuffles back out in another non-robotic fashion. Once outside, he started running. If any robots saw him now, he didn't care; he got what he wanted. With this peculiar organ, he could potentially augment one of his mediguns, allowing him to give a teammate the power of... super-crits? Uber-crits?
He'd think of a name for them later.
As he arrived back at the house, he wasted no time in going back downstairs and slamming the door closed behind him. He placed the container on the cart, next to the organ he pulled from the pony. He picked up the latter and placed the two halves together before placing it under the beam. After a few moments, it had mended itself together like new. Dash stared at this wide-eyed.
"While I vould love to continue our little procedure," the Medic says, "I'm afraid ve vill have to cut zis short." He gets into position near the side of the pegasus. "Hold still, zis may sting a little."
Before she could ask what he was going to do that would sting, he shoved the gland roughly back into her body, making her scream in pain. Next were the lungs, which were handled slightly more carefully but it was still enough to make her cry out again.
Before he put the heart back in, the Medic attached the device from earlier to it and began adjusting things on it that Dash couldn't see.
"What are you doing?" Dash asked, worried that this heart would explode, too.
"Zis heart is more than likely not 'tuned', so to speak, to your body. I am making sure zat it will actually work for you. If I'm going to have a dead pony on my hands, it vill not be for medical negligence." The words both comfort and freak out the pegasus, who decides on a general feeling of unease.
His tinkering complete, the Medic holds the heart under the healing beam for a second, priming it, before plunging it painfully into position inside the pegasus. Once that was in place, he made sure that nothing unwanted fell inside her body (he learned that lesson the one time he had sealed Archimedes inside the Scout's chest) before he grabbed the medigun. Pulling it downward while flicking a couple of switches, he aimed it right at the pony's exposed guts, the beam intensifying as it seamlessly repaired the cut flesh. Dash watched in awe up to the moment that it was finished. The tape holding her hooves and wings down was removed, and she shakily got off the table. She felt like she had just finished taking a nap, as if nothing had even happened to her in the past hour or so.
Then she remembered that, hey, this human kidnapped her and cut her open, just to study her insides. She wanted to be angry, to yell and hit and kick, but she didn't want to go through that all of that again, so she did the next best thing:
She quickly flew, wordlessly, through the basement door, out the front door, and into the open air. And I do mean through; the door had been reduced to splinters. The Medic paid it no mind, however; he was focused entirely on the newly-acquired organ, and his trusty medigun. Namely, he was trying to find out how to apply the former upon the latter in a way that would allow him to not only have the standard Ubercharge, but to add Uber-crits (that seemed like a good name for now) to that, making the target of the charge into an unstoppable killing machine. The Heavy, meanwhile, simply listened to the fighting going on outside. He wanted to get out there and kill metal men, but he was hired to protect Mann Co., not some pony town. Besides, he still owed the Medic that favor from all those years ago...
Celestia silently wished her carriage drivers would fly faster. She had looked out the window towards Ponyville earlier, and saw that massive vehicle parked near the edge of it. At first, she didn't know what to think, but she decided to leave as soon as possible once she saw the thunderstorm swirling around it. Clouds don't just do that, unless there is a need for it.
The carriage stopped abruptly upon making contact with the ground. Celestia dismounted, just as a group of robots(?) that looked remarkably similar to Scout ran by, bats in the air. They simply ran around her, only to be taken out by a set of blasts from the genuine human's firearm. Chuckling, he started picking up all the money they dropped, before he noticed Celestia standing there. He jumped slightly upon seeing her.
"Woah, Celestia! When d'you get 'ere?"
"Just now." She looked around, seeing the town being ravaged by these...
No, wait, the town was mostly fine. Sure, there were burn marks from overenthusiastic Pyro-bots, and a few small craters and holes in buildings from Soldier- and Demo-bots, but other than that, the town itself was surprisingly untouched.
Regardless, robots were still running around. "Scout, what is the meaning of-"
"Hold dat thought, Celly." The Scout took out his baseball bat and tossed the ball in the air. "Yo, heads up!" With a thwack, he launched the ball to a lone Heavy-bot, which was stunned by the impact. Before the ball even hit its mark, the Scout took out a meat cleaver and chucked it at the robot. It sank deep into its head, making it fall into a pile of metal, motor oil, and cash. "And t' answer your question, we got bot trouble."
As he ran off in pursuit of more cash and more targets, a nearby window opened, followed by a familiar gasp. "Princess Celestia?!"
Celestia turned to see her faithful student leaning out of the window of a nearby building. Behind her, the princess could see the rest of the townsponies gathered together. "What are you doing here?" the unicorn continued her questioning.
"I saw that... thing... and decided to come here at once. What is going on?"
"I... I don't know... that machine just appeared out of nowhere earlier today, and Scout said that it belonged to those robots, and then him and his teammate started fighting them, and the two of them have died numerous times now..." She shook her head. "I just don't know anymore!"
Celestia rose an eyebrow at the mention of dying numerous times, but otherwise showed no reaction. Before she could say anything, the Scout came running up again. "Alright, they're thinnin' out for now, and Spy's got the rest of 'em handled, so I'm free t' talk for about a hundred seconds."
"Scout, what is this about 'dying numerous times'?"
"It's just respawn. Hurts like hell, but give or take a few seconds, and you'll be back on your feet, perfectly fine."
Celestia was about to question the human further, but a pony that had left the safe (despite the lack of attention from robots) haven of their home decided that now was a good time to tell everyone that those weird fire-shooting things were back in the forest, coming this way. This caused the Scout to tense up.
"Aw, jeez, not dem again."
"Who is 'them'?"
The Scout was the one to be interrupted now, this time by a barely-audible noise on the wind. When all those present listened more closely, it sounded a lot like manly yelling...
It was at this time that a Spy-bot uncloaked behind the Scout, poised to strike. Twilight was about to shout a warning, but the yelling was growing louder, until something fell right on top of the robot, pulverizing it and knocking the Scout off his feet. Once the dust from the impact cleared, they saw just what it was that had made an entrance. Standing in a newly-formed crater, was a muscular and shirtless man, who had decided to cut the shape of his country of origin into his chest hair. Also, he was wearing unusually tropical shorts, boots, a hat adorned with crocodile teeth, and nothing else.
For the first time in a long while, Celestia was truly speechless. "H-Hale?!"
"What the- Why is Hale here?! And how do you know 'im?"
"G'day, Tia. How has Luna been?"
Twilight, who had lost track of what even is anything anymore, simply passed out from the sheer confusion.