“Bloop!”
Twilight Sparkle sighed as she dropped a sugar cube into her tea, and watched the ripples slowly travel outwards from it, distorting her reflection in the murky brown liquid. She levitated a spoon and slowly stirred the steaming beverage. She looked out the window of the train, watching the landscape slowly pass by.
“Hey, Twi.” Spike said, opening the door of the luxurious train compartment. He’d had a minor growth spurt over the months; he was now an inch or two taller. Hardly noticeable to most ponies, but it reminded Twilight of just how long she’d been away from her friends.
“Hey, Spike.” Twilight said rather glumly, as she continued to stir her tea, even though the sugar cube had already dissolved.
“Come on, why are you so miserable? You’ve been looking forward to getting out of Canterlot for weeks!” Spike said, plopping down on the seat next to her.
“I was looking forward to spending time with my friends. Which I’m not going to be able to do.” Twilight said.
“Why do you say-“ Spike began, then he noticed her looking at the inner window of the compartment. He followed her gaze to see a dozen Solar Guards, goose-stepping down the train’s hallway vigilantly. “Oh yeah, the bodyguards.”
“Celestia sent, like, fifty of them, Spike!” Twilight burst out. “How am I supposed to see my friends with these guys breathing down my neck 24-7?!”
“Well… it’s not like they can tell you what to do. I mean, you’re the princess!” Spike said.
“So is Celestia.” Twilight said, levitating her bag and pulling out a scroll. “I’m not supposed to show you this, but…”
Spike grabbed the scroll and unfurled it. “…It’s a schedule. So?” Spike said.
“Spike, actually read it!” Twilight said, rather agitated.
“All right, all right, jeez…” Spike said, looking at the parchment more thoroughly. “hmm… Royal parade, 11:00… Royal Banquet, 12:00… Royal Address, 12:30… “ he flipped it over. “That’s pretty short for you, Twilight. Only three things?” he questioned, handing the scroll back to Twilight.
“That’s just it Spike. I didn’t make it.” Twilight said, staring miserably at the schedule. “Celestia herself made this, and she forbade me to stray from it.”
“Um… so?” Spike asked, still not seeing what was wrong.
“SO the thing doesn’t give me any time to spend with my FRIENDS!” Twilight yelled, throwing the parchment on the ground.
“Ohhhh…” Spike said, realizing why exactly Twilight was so agitated.
“I’ve spent six frigging months in Canterlot, and what do I get in return? Less than two hours back in Ponyville. That’s shorter than an average royal court session.” Twilight said, the words pouring out of her. “And plus, I won’t get to talk to them personally during the parade or the speech, so that shortens my time with my friends to a grand total of a HALF HOUR. Lucky me!” She was pacing around the room now, kicking shoes and bags angrily. Her royal dress billowed out behind her like a yellow tidal wave.
“Twilight, relax!” Spike said, hiding behind the seat. He always was scared when Twilight got like this. “A half hour’s better than nothing!”
“Maybe, Spike, but a half hour? In return for six bucking months?” Twilight said, flopping back down onto the seats in a huff. “I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t add up. And now I’ll need to spend another six months in Canterlot for another half hour!”
“You could try and bend the rules a little bit, and give yourself more time to talk with your friends…” Spike suggested, but stopped cold when Twilight glared at him.
“Spike, when GOD gives you a schedule, you follow the schedule or your plot gets smited!” Twilight cried as she pounded the seat with her hooves. “I mean, the only way I could possibly convince Celestia to alter the schedule is if there was a zombie apocalypse or something!”
As if on cue, there was a loud crash, as a severed robot head came careening through the window. It entered with such force that it bounced off the walls, broke the table, and landed in Twilight’s lap.
“Yo, wassup?” said the skinny, baseball-cap-wearing robot head, before sparking and shutting off, the blue light leaving its eyes.
Twilight yelped and tossed the head off of her lap. Judging by the screams she heard through the thin walls of the surrounding compartments, the nearby passengers were also being pelted with robot parts.
“Where in the hoof did that come from?!” Twilight cried, rushing to the broken window. She gasped, not quite understanding what her eyes were seeing.
Ponyville was quite close, not a half mile away; they must have been very near the station. Parked directly next to Ponyville was an enormous blue machine, half the size of Ponyville itself. The thing was constantly spewing out gray figures, which moved into the town. Though Twilight’s view was blocked by buildings, she could hear fighting taking place throughout the town. Chunks of buildings were missing, and Twilight could even see a rainbow blur as Rainbow Dash fought the invading robots.
“So… I take it a robot apocalypse is as good as a zombie apocalypse?” Spike said, pulling himself up to the window.
“Attention, passengers.” Said the train’s intercom in a cheerful male voice. “We’ve experienced a slight inconvenience here at the front, and the train is going to be forced to stop for… an indeterminate length of time.”
Without a word, Twilight unceremoniously tore off her regal princess dress – literally ripping it into pieces – and exposed her slightly small wings. Then she leapt through the broken window, and took flight, soaring towards Ponyville.
She could hear Spike calling her back, but she paid him no heed. Her true home needed saving.
XXXXXXXXX
It took Twilight a couple of minutes to reach the town, despite it being close by. Her wings weren’t as strong or often used as those of a pegasi, and she couldn’t fly as fast or as far as most pegasi. She could fly for moderate distances, though, at admittedly rather slow speeds.
The alicorn was already panting as she finally reached the town. She looked down, and saw the streets in absolute chaos. Holes and rubble were everywhere, and robots and ponies fought at every street corner. Twilight worriedly noticed that there were signifigantly less ponies then robots; almost half as many. Not only that, but the robots showed no sign of stopping, as another surge of the things tromped out of the machine.
Twilight was about to fly down and help, but she heard a particularly loud, high-pitched scream. Rarity! Twilight flew as fast as she could in the general direction of the scream. Then she saw her: the white unicorn had fallen near the ponyville library in the center of town. She was clutching her hind leg and wailing in agony, blood staining her white fur.
Twilight landed via faceplant, then got up and ran over to Rarity, still huffing from the relatively long flight. Despite her aching muscles and the sweat streaming down her neck and back, she started to charge up a healing spell. “Are you ok? Don’t worry, I’ll fix you up!” Twilight said.
Rarity leapt at her, and hugged her tightly. “Thank you, t-thank you! I was so s-scared that nobody w-w-would help m-me!” she cried, tears running down her face.
“There there, it’s ok.” Twilight said quickly, trying to angle her horn to hit the wound. “Just let me-“
“-Urk!”
Twilight froze as still as a rock. She toppled to the ground on her side as Rarity let her go; the trickles of sweat pouring down her back had turned into a warm, sticky waterfall.
Twilight’s vision began to dim. As she craned her neck upwards, she saw Rarity somehow standing on her hind legs, despite her leg wound…. And that being a physical near-impossibility.
In her white hoof, she held a bloodied butterfly knife.
As Twilight watched, Rarity became shrouded in smoke that seemed to originate from nowhere. When the smoke cleared, a robot stood in rarity’s place. This one was particularly skinny, and its face was painted as though it was wearing a ski mask or a balaclava.
“Oh dear, I’ve made quite a mess.” The lean robot said, brushing a few spots of blood off its dark blue metal chest. It clipped the knife to its belt and unclipped a revolver.
“I never really was on your side.” The robot said as it lazily took aim at Twilight’s head.
Then, to both Twilights and the robots astonishment, an arrowhead sprouted from the robot’s chest. Then another one appeared in between its eyes. The blue lights in the robot’s eyes dimmed, and it fell backwards.
“I was never on your side, either! Wankah!” An unfamiliar, accented voice came from somewhere farther away.
Twilight tried to tilt her head to see who had spoken, but she was getting weaker. Her vision was rapidly fading now; turning black, and her head flopped to the ground. With the last of her strength, she put her faith in the stranger, and weakly croaked, “…please…help…me…”
The stranger’s voice echoed in her head like the speaker was in a deep cavern. “Ah, bloody hell, it got one… MAY-DIC!” she vaguely heard footsteps running away. She wanted to beg him not to leave her, but couldn’t speak. As she neared unconsciousness, she faintly heard the unknown speaker saying “this way, doc!”
And another voice: “ooh… zis is not good!”
Twilight desperately wanted to open her eyes, but she had no strength left, and lapsed into unconsciousness.
XXXXXXXX
It could have been a few minutes or a few years later, when Twilight regained consciousness. The first thing she heard was a light humming. So peaceful…
“UEEEEEHHHH! UAAAAAHHHHH!”
A third voice, which sounded like Snowflake the giant Pegasus wailing like a baby, penetrated Twilight’s eardrums, and her eyes jolted open. And for the second time, Twilight had to take a few seconds to register what she was seeing.
Her first thought was, “Lyra was right. That crazy madmare was right…”
How often had she walked to the market, and her route had taken her past the street corner where Lyra was constantly preaching the dangers of humans. (Didn’t that unicorn have a day job?) The green pony constantly warned of the two-legged humans, with no fur and spidery front hooves, would come one day and advance all of ponydom to a higher plane of existence.
Of course, Twilight had dismissed this as utter nonsense, like she did with all fairy tales. Humans were just an old mare’s tale; some alien civilization which supposedly lived tens of thousands of years ago. There were no physical remains of them or their culture, nor were there any nonfiction books on the subject, and so Twilight had completely ignored Lyra.
Next time the two of them were at a bar, Twilight would buy Lyra not just a drink, but the bar’s entire stock.
Standing over her was (what else?) a human, in a long white lab coat like the medi-ponies in Equestrian hospitals. It wore red gloves over its bizarre hands, and was looking down at Twilight with a rather grim, yet somehow excited expression. He wore black spectacles, and was pointing to Twilight a most curious device.
The odd device was connected to a backpack on the human’s back. The device itself looked like some bizarre cross between a plunger and a boat throttle; the front was a large, plunger-like nozzle, while the rear end was just a black mass of metal, with a horizontal handle which the human grasped, and a pipe connecting it to the backpack.
Strangest of all, the device was shooting some sort of… energy at her. It was difficult for Twilight to understand what it was; some sort of constantly twisting beam of red light, traveling down from the device into… her body?
Twilight looked down and over her chest, to where the loud cry had come from, and saw another human. To her great astonishment, this one was much larger than the first, with bulky, disproportionate arms, and carried an enormous gun, which was spewing an impossible amount of projectiles. The big one was wearing red and black, and around his torso was a strip of… were those enormous bullets? To complete the big one’s ensemble, an odd metal case of some kind was strapped to his back; it bore a red cross on one side, and more of those bullets on the other.
“CRAI SUM MOAR!!!!” The enormous human roared as his grinned wickedly, continuing to fire his weapon.
Twilight registered almost all of these details in a matter of seconds, thanks to her skilled brain. Then she sat up abruptly, causing the skinnier human to jump a little bit in surprise.
“A miracle! I can’t believe I could save it in time!” The human said to himself. Twilight stared at him in astonishment, still getting over the fact that a mythical creature that she had never even believed in was standing in front of her. It was oddly beautiful in some way; this large, majestic creature.
After a few more seconds, which felt like hours as she stared at the human, she found her voice. “Excuse me? I am a ‘her’, not an ‘it’.” she said. Then she almost facehoofed; all the questions she could have asked, she said THAT?!
The human jumped in surprise. “Oh! My sincerest apologies, my dear lady.” The human said, bowing and twirling his hand.
Finally, Twilight thought to ask an actual question. “What…. Who are you?” she said. Better place to start then nothing.
“Oh! Where are my manners…” the lab-coated human said. “I am formally addressed as ‘the medic’, but you can just call me Medic.” He bent down, lightly took her forehoof, and kissed it politely.
“Ok, Medic…” Twilight said, still a little hysterical.
“Heavy! Come over here and say hello to the little sleepyhead!” Medic called.
The large man began to walk backwards towards Twilight, still firing his massive gun. Now that Twilight had focused a bit more, she saw that he was shooting robots, which were still pouring out of the huge blue machine. Evidently, she hadn’t been out for very long at all.
The big man looked at her for a moment. “I am heavy weapons guy. And this-“ he stopped firing and hefted his gun. “-is my weapon. She weighs one hundred-“
“Yes, yes, Heavy, we don’t exactly have time for the whole spiel. Robots, remember?” Medic interrupted.
“oh. Yes.” Heavy cleared his throat, then began firing again and yelled “I HATE ROBOTS!”
“Heavy’s been protecting me vhile I revive you.” Medic explained. “Can you valk? Because I really must get back to assisting my comrades.”
“Oh… yes, I can walk. Can I help at all?” Twilight asked.
The medic snorted. “The battlefield is no place for little fraulёins like yourself.”
“What’s a-“ Twilight began.
“Little girl, it means little girl.” The Medic said, rolling his eyes and waving his hand dismissively. He turned his back to Twilight and began to heal Heavy.
Twilight fumed. A minor alicorn princess, and arguably the most powerful magic-user in Equestria, and she was being called a “little girl”?!
She stood up rather shakily, but got her balance and began to run towards the battlefield. She promptly began blasting the swarming robots left and right with shots from her horn.
A droplet of oil got in her eye. She blinked it out and continued fighting.
Within seconds, she’d killed every robot on that corner.
She turned around proudly to see Medic and Heavy staring at her, jaws open.
“…ok, maybe you can help us fight a little, miss…” Medic said, still staring at Twilight.
“Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight said proudly, her nose a little bit in the air.
They all heard a loud noise, and turned to see a robot three times as tall as any other robot thus far come stomping out of the machine. It was one of those helmeted bots, only giant.
“Could use help.” Heavy grunted, and together, the three began to wade their way through the sea of robots towards the giant.
XXXXXXXX
“Roooannn….” The giant robot groaned and creaked as it slowly walked through the town. It was plowing through buildings like they were tissues. Wreckage was strewn in its wake as it mercilessly crushed anything in its path.
Suddenly, a thick rope looped around the giant’s neck. “Yee-haw!” came a battle cry from nearby.
Applejack pulled on the rope, throwing the robot off balance. “Now, Rainbow Dash!”
The cyan Pegasus promptly crashed into the back of the robot’s knees, causing it to topple to the ground.
“All right!” Dash cried. She zoomed over to Applejack and the two high-hoofed.
“Roooaaaannnn…”
The two turned to see the metal giant creaking as it got up again, fazed but mostly undamaged.
“Wuzzat? You want some mo-“ Applejack began, but was cut off as the robot’s huge metal hand lashed out in the direction of the sound. It connected with her and Dash, and sent them flying clear through a couple of buildings.
“Urgh… I think I broke something…” Dash said, rubbing her shoulderblade. Then she gasped. “My – my right wing won’t move! I think it’s broken!” she strained visibly, but only succeded in causing herself excruciating pain.
“Well there goes one of our last weapons…” Applejack said, slowly getting up and cracking her neck. “Oooo-wee… I’m gonna be feelin’ that one in the morn’.”
A rhythmic rumbling started up, and the two saw the giant robot towering over them. The huge thing straightened its helmet, and pounded its fist into its other palm.
“AJ, in case we don’t make it… you always had an annoying accent.” Dash said, not taking her eyes off the robot.
“Love you too, girl.” Applejack said, holding her hat to her chest.
Then something came hurtling out of nowhere, hitting the robot squarely on the head, stunning it. Was that a… baseball?
“Theah’s a dinga for ya!” came a Boston accent.
A particularly skinny human rushed around the corner, wielding a brown bat. He wore a red outfit with brown pants and running shoes, and wore a red hat.
“Dash, you seeing this?” Applejack said slowly, as she watched the human taunting the robot.
“If you mean the skinny ape mocking the huge robot, then yeah, I see it.” Dash replied as the robot recovered and turned around to face him.
Scout raced over to the two ponies. He quickly rattled off, “hey-you-guys-ok?-ok-I’m-Scout-just-wanted-you-to-know-who-to-give-praise-to-gotta-run!” he ran off as a huge fist slammed into the ground where he’d just been standing.
Rainbow Dash and Applejack watched in astonishment as Scout continually dodged the robot’s slamming the ground with its fists. “Missed me!” Scout yelled as he vaulted over the slow robot’s fist.
“ROOOOOAAAAANNNN.” The robot moaned, louder than before, as it rapidly walked after Scout.
“Oy!”
The robot stopped, and turned, as well as the two ponies. There, previously hidden behind a building, was another human. This one had dark skin, wore an eye patch, and had on a vest with grenades strapped to it. He held some sort of weapon; a round spout connected to a circular barrel, with a laser pointer strapped to it.
“Couldnt’cha see the bloody bombs?” he said with a sort of maniacal glee, as he gestured to the robot’s feet.
Sure enough, surrounding the robot’s feet were a dozen round orbs.
“Ka-BOOM!” the Demoman said, setting off the bombs as he did so. The robot was promptly blasted to smithereens.
“Diiiiis-missed!” The Scout said from nearby, with a mocking salute. Then he held up his hand. “Demo! Don’t leave me hangin’, brotha!”
The Demoman ran over, and the two of them pulled a glorious high five. The Scout pumped his fists while the Demoman used two fingers to playfully make the “I’m watching you” motion (despite him only having one eye).
“These humans Lyra talked about are very strange creatures.” Applejack said, putting her hat back on.
“You said it.” Rainbow said, absentmindedly rubbing her injured wing.
“Dash! Applejack! Thank Celestia you’re ok!”
Twilight came running over, followed by Medic and Heavy. “Are you hurt? Where’s the giant?”
“Well, the giant’s taken care of…” Dash said, pointing to a chunk of metal from the robot. “…and my wing’s broken.” She continued to rub it.
“Ha! A simple fix.” The Medic said, pointing his device towards Dash. He fired the red energy to her, and in seconds, Dash’s wing was fully repaired.
“Wow! What the heck was that?” Dash asked, experimentally flexing her wing.
“My medigun. I don’t exactly haff time to explain it now.” Medic replied.
“Da. Ve still got probblum.” Heavy said, pointing to the huge blue vehicle. Now two more giant creatures came out; one a larger version of the fat, dumpy robots that spewed fire, the other a Cyclops which looked unnaturally like Demoman.
“Ye lot can have the firebug. Me an’ Scoot’ll take the demobot.” Demoman said, pumping a lever on his stickybomb launcher to reload.
“Consider eet done.” Heavy said.
“Wait! What about us?” Dash asked.
“eh….” Demoman looked to the Medic. “Wanna swap?”
“No problem.” Medic said, turning to the ponies. “Twilight, you go with Demo and Scout. Orange and Blue, you’re with us.”
“nice ta meet ya, pardner. Ah’m Applejack.” AJ said, nodding.
“And I’m Rainbow Dash! Fastest thing on the planet!” Dash said.
“Now hold on just one gosh-danged minnit here! Ah’m the fastest thing around dese parts!” Scout said, stepping forward and jabbing a thumb at his chest.
“Oh yeah, pipsqueak? You don’t even have wings!” Rainbow laughed.
“Oh, dat’s it!” Scout growled. “Apple-whateva, go with Med and Hev. Twi’s with Demo. I’m gonna show this prismatic pony who’s the real pavement pounda around heah!”
“Where are you even going to go?” questioned Medic.
“Um…” Scout said, before there was an even larger rumbling. Everyone turned to see the largest robot yet, looking an awful lot like Heavy, step out of the blue machine. It was so large, it had to bend down to exit the huge machine.
“Dat ting! We’ll take dat ting.” Scout said, pointing.
“All right; your death wish.” Medic said. “Just be careful, eh? We need our Scout.”
“Hey, I could probably outrun the thing’s bullets!” Scout bragged.
“This is all very nice, but can we please MOVE?” Twilight said, looking at the Demo-bot beginning to launch explosives from its grenade launcher.
“Da! Move!” Heavy said, and the three teams split up for their own goals.