Chapter 3
Trixie kept her eyes forward as she followed the spritebot as it hummed ahead of her, rapidly flapping its four wings like hummingbird as they dashed through the corridors of the FutureTec Headquarters, corridors that were, surprisingly deserted.
Suddenly SD-E stopped and turned towards a locked door. Trixie too skidded to a stop. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
SD-E beeped happily as its multi tool changed from the heater that it used to free Trixie’s bonds into an electronic lock pick, it hovered towards the door lock, allowing it to slide inside the access console. Something had clearly piqued the spritebot’s interests. A few seconds later, the door unlocked with a small click. SD-E beeped happily as it removed the lock pick and watched as the door opened and SD-E flew inside. Trixie followed, discovering that they had entered some kind of workshop, the work bench had several deactivated spritebots sitting on it. In the far corner were two combots powered off and slumped over slightly. SD-E went over to the combots first, sliding her access tool into a port on the back of them and making a few clicking noises as the little robot did its work.
The first combot’s telescreen flickered to life, displaying an image of a unicorn mare, a green glowing image that somewhat resembled Twilight Sparkle. Trixie recognised the image from the Battle of Ponyville. This was Emerald Sparkle.
‘You... the robot wasn’t mimicking your voice, you’re still alive!’ Trixie said towards the combot.
‘Correct’, barked the artificial voice of Emerald Sparkle over the combot’s telescreen loudspeakers. ‘Stop cult, push back!’
Trixie eyed the combot with suspicion. ‘What happened to you? I thought Twilight Sparkle killed you?’
‘No, disconnected. Brain damaged, still think, not speak right, brain don’t put the urban in the left of centre!’ Emerald Sparkle said.
Trixie eyed the combot in confusion, she thought about it for a moment and then the realisation hit her. ‘You can still talk, but when you try to put together complex sentences, your brain messes up and makes you say the wrong thing?’
‘Correct. Think good, speak bad!’ Emerald Sparkle said. ‘Kill rabble! Push back! Hit hard!’
Trixie nodded in approval. ‘The Fillydelphia Chapter has a lot to answer for here; twenty six town ponies are dead... on top of the casualties of the Nephites and the Manehattan Chapter.’
‘Kill rabble!’ Emerald Sparkle barked again.
By this time, SD-E had finished activating the other combot and the six other Spritebots. It beeped happily at its work and had armed itself with a spare submachine gun in the process. Emerald Sparkle’s combot pointed over to a locker at the far end of the room. ‘Open up, take what there’.
Trixie nodded and opened up the locker, it was a gun. Trixie pulled it out and examined it closely. There was a box of ammunition sitting behind it, Trixie grabbed it as well.
‘Shotgun!’ Emerald Sparkle barked again. ‘Eight gauge lever action!’
Trixie nodded in understanding as she examined it closely for a few moments, Trixie may not have ever used a gun before, but a clever unicorn like her could figure it out after a few minutes of study, long enough for the combots and spritebots to fully arm.
‘Let’s go hunting!’ Trixie said with a grin as she slung a bandolier of shotgun ammunition over her shoulder, and levelled the lever action shotgun above her head.
‘Push rabble back!’ Emerald Sparkle barked.
Trixie walked towards the door, the hydraulic motors slid pushed the door open, and lead Trixie right into two Paladins on patrol. Trixie wasted no time, levelling the shotgun and blasting both paladins at point blank range.
The kinetic energy of the eight gauge shot at such a close range made it impossible to miss, and as a result the shots tore through the paladin’s combat armour, sending them down to the floor. Trixie pulled the lever forward, sliding a new shell into the barrel, and pulled the trigger again. Maybe it hadn’t been necessary, but Ponyville had become her home, and these pathetic excuses for ponies had killed her neighbours. She felt no remorse for them. They followed a mad pony.
One of the combots wrenched the paladin’s heavy machine gun from his assault harness. Discarding its own 6mm submachine gun and integrating the 12.7mm heavy machine gun into its arm. Using the other arm for support, this combot took point as it rolled along the hallway.
SD-E stopped again at another door to pick it open, Trixie levelled he shotgun forward to cover the spritebot as it worked. The door lock clicked open and Trixie turned to take a look inside as the hydraulic motors pushed the door open.
‘Who’s there!?’ cried out a voice that was very familiar to Trixie.
‘Spike?’ Trixie asked. Sure enough, the baby dragon too was tied up and blind folded in a room that had been similar to the one that she had been locked into. Trixie got down close to him, pulling the blindfold off his eyes.
‘Trixie?’ Spike asked as the blindfold was pulled off his eyes.
Trixie nodded in affirmation. ‘Let’s get you out of here!’ she said as she cut the bonds holding the baby dragon in place. The last one was cut and Spike got to his feet.
‘Thanks for not leaving me here’, Spike said with a small smile. ‘You’ve really changed a lot, you know?’
Trixie smiled at the baby dragon. ‘Thank you, now come on! Let’s go take back our town!’
Spike nodded in approval.
They encountered little resistance on their way out of FutureTec; the majority of the paladins must have all been out enforcing the will of the mad pony they called a leader on Ponyville. Spike, Trixie, SD-E, the combots, and the spritebots made it to the lift without incident. They rode up and high tailed it through Whitetail Wood towards Ponyville, passing the train station and taking up positions. Trixie saw that the paladins were all patrolling the streets, blissfully unaware of what had happened up at FutureTec.
‘Ready?’ Trixie asked Emerald Sparkle through her combot proxy.
‘Always’, Emerald Sparkle barked through the combot’s speakers.
Trixie nodded, and leapt from her cover, charging down a group of paladins caught unaware by her attack and opened fire. The spritebots followed in close to cover her. While the two combots dug themselves in to provide support fire with their co-opted 12.7mm heavy machine gun.
Trixie dropped the paladins in a surprise attack, they all fell without incident.
However, Trixie had just given away the element of surprise. Every paladin in town now knew that something was wrong; she could no longer use the surprise to her advantage. Trixie wrenched one of the fallen paladin’s heavy machine gun and raising it up. The heavy weapon would have strained the magical ability of any normal unicorn, but Trixie was not the typical unicorn.
Trixie’s magic was just as, if not more, powerful as Twilight Sparkle, what made her different than Twilight, however was the fact that she had specialised into illusionary magic. While Twilight Sparkle was one who studied a broad variety of magic.
Trixie ducked herself into an alley way, pointing the heavy machine gun out from around the corner. An assault section came around the corner and into Trixie’s field of view. She opened fire with the heavy machine gun to suppress them. Trixie checked the opposite corner. Several of the Fillydelphia Chapter’s scribes had entered into it. Trixie pulled the trigger, sending a round of scattershot into the lightly protected scribes. She pushed the lever forward and fired again. In the tight quarters of the alley, the shotgun proved to be devastating.
Trixie was attracting more attention. Soon enough more paladins were pouring into the streets. The combots moved up to provide support for her, but Trixie knew that she couldn’t hold out here forever.
That was when something else caught Trixie’s eye. Something red was flying through the air. Trixie watched as it landed near a section of scribe auxiliary fighters and exploded violently. That was dynamite!
Trixie looked up onto the roof of one of the buildings and smiled. Lyra and Bon Bon were smiling back at her, Lyra light another stick of dynamite with her magic and Bon Bon lobbed it with a slingshot into another group of scribes.
They were all putting up a heavy fight. Trixie looked up; several airships were approaching from the south from Fillydelphia. The cult was getting reinforcements.
The two combots had taken to Trixie’s side. ‘Lyra! Bon Bon! You need to move! You’re not safe up there!’
Lyra looked up and saw the airships. She and Bon Bon lobbed one last stick of Dynamite before sliding down a drainage pipe alongside the building and taking cover.
‘Going to need a better position than this...’ Trixie said towards one of the combots.
Something was wrong with it, because the telescreen showing Emerald Sparkle’s face began to crackle. Then it changed to a smiling face.
‘Hi there! I’m Mister Happy!’ Mister Happy said as he waved his manipulator arm towards Trixie. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll be taking over this body for now! I just uploaded myself to it from a backup copy in the network archives!’
‘Uh...’ Trixie said nervously.
Mister Happy did not respond, instead he simply raised his submachine gun and fired.