//------------------------------//
// Talking with royalty 
// Story: Totally Vanquished 
// by Gorgie 
//------------------------------//

The birds were chirping as the Sun radiated down on the castle from outside. The powerful beams of sunlight shot straight through the window, finding themselves warming up the bed what was now occupied by a not so 'morning' person. 

"Urgh....one good nights sleep and I wake up with the fucking sun in my eyes. Just perfect." Sam dreaded getting up from his comfy bed, but he decided it was either now or never. The next thing that happened was quite weird actually. He jumped up from the bed and found Celestia staring at the window. 

"Woah! How the hell did you do that?!" Celestia, now noticing that her new friend was up and ready to go, let out a slight giggle.

"Magic. Actually, I just walked in here after you looked at the window." 

Sam chuckled. A thought suddenly popped through his head what made his smile get wider. "She's a freaking ninja in disguise, I swear. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me. With all the R.I's I've fought, fighting a ninja would be a fucking walk in the park." He was brought out of his thoughts when he noticed that Celestia was now staring at him.

"I have a free day today. Do you want to do anything? It would be nice to spend time with an alien." She winked. 

If she sends a wink my way again, I swear down..." He spoke up when he'd done thinking. "Yeah, sure. Hang on, how can you have a 'free day'? Aren't you the ruler of this place?"

She walked over to him, still having that warm smile stretched out along her face. "Yes, I am. But it does not mean that I cannot take a day off once in a while. I feel like I deserve one, as I haven't had anytime to relax in quite a long time. And, when I have one of these 'free days', my sister, Luna, takes over for me. I thought since you were staying in the castle for however long you wished, you might as well spend some time with it's occupants."

He put a finger to his chin. "Hmm. Well, alright. Let me just get my suit on."

I'll have to meet this 'Luna' sometime. If she's anything like her sister, it should be fun."

Celestia looked at him in one of those comical looks that usually was followed by a light bulb appearing above their head. Unfortunately, no such light bulb appeared. "Oh! I'm so sorry! How rude of me. I didn't even notice that you were...undressed. Do you want me to wait outside?"

Sam put a small grin on his face as he fought to hold back a chuckle. "No, it's alright. I'm not actually 'totally undressed'. I'm wearing my standard clothes. I only wear the armor for battle and to protect my self. And, it comes in handy when I want to get around fast. Heh."  He saw Celestia eying him up and he raised an eyebrow towards her direction.

"Well, you are quite 'tone', as most of the ponies here would say. Why do you need the suit on here? We're only walking around town and maybe have something to eat." By the time she'd finished talking, she already noticed he'd quickly gotten it on. VERY quickly actually.

"Thanks for the compliment. And I don't care if I was just talking a walk to the bathroom and back, I'd still wear it. I'd rather be safe than sorry as I still have NO idea how this place works."

Celestia let out a sigh and walked towards the door, opening it as she stood next to it. "Suit yourself."

Sam laughed which caught her attention. "Haha. Very good joke there." 

Celestia was confused at first, but eventually, she figured out what he meant. "Oh. Hehe. I guess it was. So, do you wish to 'accompany' me to the royal gardens and take a walk through them?" 

"Sure. Let's go."

Before he could get to the door, she opened her mouth to speak again. "Although, I do prefer you without your suit on." She winked, again, to much of Sam's annoyance.

"I said she better not do that again...for fucks sake."

"Thanks, I guess."

And with that, they started their walk to the gardens.





"So you're telling me that you fought...what did you call them...R.I's?"

Sam nodded. "Yup. And R.I stands for '"Robotic Infantry." Basically, they are robots, which are metal beings created by us, humans. They are technically something called an A.I, which stands for "Artificial Intelligence"."

Celestia hummed in interest. "Your race sounds very clever and interesting. I would ask how you made these R.I's, but that would probably take too long as I'm sure it's very complicated to talk about. Can I ask, why were you fighting them?"

Sam sighed as they stopped by a giant oak tree in the royal gardens. Celestia sat down on her haunches and patted a spot next to her, motioning him to sit with her. He walked over and sat next to her, ready to answer her question.

"Basically, back on my home planet, Earth, there was a financial crisis which pushed every country to the edge. There was already WAY too many humans populating the Earth, making food scarce and quite a lot of people died of hunger. One of the communist countries, called Russia, had it the worst. Their death count was in the millions. Because of this, a new terrorist group, known as the 'Order of the Russian Star', saw this as an opportunity to take control of Russia and all of it's advanced technology. Including the R.I's. They succeeded and declared war on my country, America, by using a weapon of mass destruction on one our cities, San Fransisco. It killed hundreds of thousands of people."

He looked over to see that Celestia's eyes had started to water up. He knew what was coming, but he continued anyway, feeling that he needed to get this off of his chest as soon as he could.

"So, DARPA, the company I worked for, sent me up to the space station what had used the weapon of mass destruction. It was called the Providence colony. It had people living on it, but they were either killed by the terrorist group or got evacuated. My priority of the mission was NOT to stop the them. It was to rescue one of my close friends, Professor Candide, who also worked at the same company of me. He originally went up there to stop the weapon of mass destruction being fired again. The leader of The order of the Russian Star, Victor Zaitsev, contacted our president and said that if we did not surrender, he would use the same weapon on one of our other major cities, New York. She, in retaliation, sent the Marines to claim back the colony, and stop them from using the weapon. As I said before, my company sent me up with the marines. I was also using this opportunity to test out my battle suit. That's the long version of the story. I don't really want to go into detail."

After taking a deep breath, followed by a sigh, he felt something wrap around his neck and pull him towards Celestia. He saw that she'd wrapped her hooves around his neck and brought him in for a hug. He didn't respond, as he hated hugs. But he merely patted her on the back. She released him and now had tears streaming from her eyes.

"Sam...I'm so sorry..that's awful. I can't imagine what you've been through."

He just pulled out a cigarette, popped it in his mouth and lit it. He pulled it out of his mouth as he took a drag of it and sighed again.

"Yeah. I actually have my weapon with me right now if you want to see it?"

Celestia didn't like weapons, but she was interested in what he used to fight. "Alright then."

The next thing she knew, Celestia saw a little black line come out of Sam's armor. His elbow to be precise. She noticed that the black line formed into a type of object, which she presumed to be the weapon he was talking about. He raised it so she could see it better.

"This is called the BLADE system. It's basically a core running on energy, which lets it copy any weapon I find on the battlefield and store said weapon in its memory banks. It lets me switch to the weapons it has stored in said memory banks. For example..."

Celestia watched as the object formed into something else, which she guessed was a different type of weapon. Now, she wanted to ask a question what had been lingering in her mind ever since he mentioned the weapon.

"How does it work?

Sam pressed the little grip on the bottom and it produced a loud sound, which made Celestia flinch a bit. A little mark had been made in the grass where he had aimed it at. 

"It's called a gun and it fires out a little small projectile called a bullet. It flies at such a fast speed that it goes into someones body, ripping their bones, organs and muscle tissue along the way. It then comes out and creates an exit wound, which is always much bigger than the wound the bullet created when it entered the persons body. It doesn't ALWAYS create an exit wound, sometimes, the bullet stays in the persons body, which is worse. Bullets come in different sizes, from small to large. If it's a big enough caliber, it can break through a brick wall."

"That...sounds...very brutal."

"It is. But they get the job done and that's all that matters."

She nodded in agreement. "How it works is brutal....but amazing. How did your species come up with such technology?"

"It's a long story what I really can't be bothered to explain right now. Maybe another time, alright?"

Celestia nodded once again and now her tears had gone, she formed a wide smile on her face. Which, in turn, made Sam smile a bit.

"What do you think of my sun?"

Sam watched as the sun drifted a bit towards them and shot down more rays of sunlight, which made Sam cover his eyes in reflex.

"It's really nice Celestia."

She blushed at the compliment and thanked him. After a while of watching the sun, they both got up and walked towards the castle gates. "So, where do you want to go now Sam?"

He thought to himself for a moment before answering. "You said earlier about going for something to eat? Could we do that now? I'm starved."

Celestia smiled at him and opened the gates, which resulted in a quick salute and a brief "Princess" from the guards who had now moved out of the way. As she closed them and the guards went back to standing at the gates, they started to walk into town.

"Don't worry Sam. No pony will say ANYTHING nasty or demeaning to you while I'm here. OK?"

"Yeah, alright. Thanks Celestia." As she smiled at him and looked away, a thought came into his head.

"They better not do, for their sake."