//------------------------------// // 2. Daleks Have No Concept of Tact // Story: "Daleks Have No Concept of Friendship!" // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// Celestia disappeared after several rels in a golden flash – some form of teleportation, Soldier surmised. The once-dalek lingered for a few rels herself, before her compulsion to obey orders from her superiors started to pull at her mind. Soldier turned towards the road and began to glide down it towards its destination. Or that was what was supposed to happen. What happened instead was, as Soldier tried to turn, something got under her locomotors, and she stumbled. “Ah!” she cried out as she fell over onto the grass beneath her. The fall didn’t hurt, but she looked around desperately for the source of attack. “My gravity induction locomotors have been impaired! Emergency! EMERGENCY!” Soldier didn’t see the source of attack as she scrambled to her hooves – Ah. Of course. The once-dalek looked down at her hooves. She had willed herself to glide along, as she would have in her shell, propelled by gravitic manipulation that would allow it to overcome any obstacle. Instead, she had legs now, four of them. Carefully, Soldier lifted her front-right hoof, and placed it forward, then duplicated the effort with her front-left hoof. She repeated the process with her hind hooves, then started again. After about two minutes of repeating this cycle, Soldier had made it about a meter and a half. Soldier grunted. There had to be a more efficient means of locomotion, but Soldier didn’t have experience with even one leg, let alone four. Still, Celestia would not have left Soldier here, on her own, in the middle of nowhere, had the larger creature not believed that Soldier was fully capable of adapting. Soldier grunted again as she realized that this was yet another emotion added to her repertoire – trust. Stopping and closing her eyes, Soldier tried to remember what it had looked like when Celestia had walked around her when she was still dalek. She tried to calculate the precise angles at which she was supposed to raise each hoof in sequence. Once she was certain she had the pattern down in her mind, she tried to copy it. “Emulate…emulate…!” The trot was slow, an ungainly. She copied it with approximately one-quarter the efficiency that Celestia had shown, if her calculations were correct. Nevertheless, she was making more progress than her previous effort of moving just one hoof at a time. Despite the immense number of variables involved in moving legs as compared to simply hovering from place to place, the movement actually felt…natural, even if it looked anything but to Soldier’s eyes as she watched her hoof-motions closely. She supposed such a feeling was a side-effect of her new body – Something struck Soldier, and she fell over. “I am under attack! Emergency! EMERGEN – oh.” Soldier realized she hadn’t been attacked – she had simply been so focused on the motion of her hooves that she hadn’t been watching where she was going, and had bumped into something. Namely, her former shell – what had once been the latest model of the Mark III Travel Machine, used by the Dalek Empire for millions of years. Soldier once again picked herself up, staring at her shell the entire time. It was…sparkling, as whatever force Celestia had mentioned was beginning to gradually break it down and adapt it to the universe that she now found herself in. Unlike her, it had received no manner of protection. It was…strange. For so long the shell and Soldier had been completely inseparable in her mind. She was her Mark III, and her Mark III was her. It hadn’t been until very recently that she began to see it for what it was: a cage. A little box made from Dalekanium. All the other creatures of the vast universe got to see and experience the cosmos around them first-hand, with no environmental filters, no optical sensors, no data relays… Well, except the Cybermen. Soldier sniffed at the thought of the inferior cyborg species as she moved trotting in a slow circle around her former shell. She had orders to report to Twilight Sparkle. She should have been obeying those orders, making best speed towards Ponyville, but…but Soldier was almost literally watching her whole world, or what had once been her whole world, crumble to dust. She coudn't look away. The emotions inside of her, the ones given to her by Rose Tyler, were…overwhelming. She felt so much, and yet at the same time she didn’t know what she felt. Anger? Sadness? Depression? Horror? Or…something else…? All at once, whatever had been happening to her shell seemed to come to a head. It flashed – not brightly, just a slight pulse – and began to physically break down. Patches were torn across its form, holes opening up like fire burning away paper. The Mark III was being reduced to dust, sand, rust, and other little pieces of unremarkable material. Soldier gasped, and realized that her front hooves were in the rapidly growing pile of dust, trying to…what? What was she trying to do? Stop it? But hadn’t she just called the Mark III a cage? Why would she want to preserve it? It took only a few rels. At the end, there was nothing left of the Mark III Travel Machine but dust and rust, some of it already beginning to blow away in the light breeze. It felt coarse on Soldier’s hooves. She went to withdraw her hooves, when she saw something out-of-place glistening in the pile. Using a hoof to brush away the dust, she found herself looking at a blue crystal of some kind, hexagonal in shape, nearly flat, but also nearly transparent and slightly concave. It was tiny, not much larger than the pupils of her now overlarge eyes… Soldier realized what it was, or what it had been, as she used both hooves to dig out the crystal, falling back onto her haunches as she struggled to pick it up between them. Holding the crystal up to eye level with both hooves and glancing though, she realized she was right: it was the optical lens from her Mark III, or it nearly was. The same process that had destroyed her Dalekanium shell had instead transformed the lens into a crystal. It wasn’t nearly as clear as her the lens had once been, and Soldier no longer needed it to see, but… Soldier stood, grasping the crystal in her mouth, since she had no other way of holding it. She didn’t know why she wanted to keep it, but she did. She decided not to question it too much, and instead looked around, trying to get her bearings once again. The road and the position of the Sun in the sky made it easy, and in just a few rels – and only occasionally glancing backwards, at the pile of dust and rust that her Mark III had become – she was trotting down the road, towards Ponyville. It occurred to her after a few minutes that she was trotting at a regular pace with ease, now that she was not consciously trying to keep track of all the movements of her new legs. Naturally, upon realizing this, she looked down to see what it looked like, an promptly proceeded to get her legs tangled up in themselves and fell onto her face. Soldier did not like walking. --- Soldier hadn’t been expecting much from a world that still used dirt for roads, but apparently she had nevertheless set her expectations too high for Ponyville. As she stared down on the town from a hill that overlooked it, she saw wooden buildings with thatch for roofing, a primitive rail line for what was no doubt a locomotive powered by an internal combustion engine, and absolutely no sign of any sort of high technology. No power lines or relay stations, no communications towers, nothing. Even more surprising to Soldier, however, was the lack of a palisade around the town. In her experience, primitive species were distrusting of outsiders and so built walls around their settlements to keep them out, as well as to defend against attack from others. Ponyville lacked any kind of defensive emplacements, however – no guard towers, no walls, no patrols, nothing. Soldier was disgusted. Had she still been a pure dalek, she would nevertheless have likely still felt disgust, which was after all simply a form of hate. A town like this wasn’t even worth the efforts of a dalek extermination squad and almost certainly had nothing of value worth preserving. Were she ordered to assess the best means of its eradication, she would simply recommend to her commander that the town be bombarded from orbit. One or two shots from a high-powered irradiated energy weapon over a wide area would exterminate the entire place with minimal effort, and any survivors would die from radiation sickness within a few weeks at most, or maybe even mutate into a more useful form for dalek exploitation. It occurred to Soldier that making such a comment aloud, however, would probably not be helpful. Primitive species rarely took discussion about their imminent and inevitable extermination well, and Soldier was in no condition to back up her thoughts with action. Oddly, she found she didn’t even have the desire, either. Her assessment had been born from habit more than anything. It was…strange, to be disgusted at a place, but not so disgusted as to want to wipe it out. Emotions were confusing. Soldier took in a deep breath – through her nostrils, as she still carried the crystal in her mouth – and proceeded down the hill, towards the town. She began to see more ponies as she neared the town, moving back and forth as they pursued their tasks for the day, males and females both of a variety of ages. They came in a large number of colors, but if there was any kind of rank associated with pelt or mane color, Soldier couldn’t determine it. She also saw that ponies seemed to come in three broad forms: horned, like herself; winged, though the wings seemed absurdly small for flight and Soldier assumed some form of natural gravitic control was involved; and a third variety that lacked either wings or horn. This last group seemed to be the most populous, and Soldier’s first thought was that this was some kind of slave caste – but Soldier saw nothing to support this, and indeed the last group seemed to be interacting with the other two as equals despite their impairment. Perhaps she could inquire of Twilight Sparkle when she found her what the significance of the three phenotypes was. Soldier picked a pony at random, a mare with neither wings nor horn, with a yellow coat and orange mane, and a pair of baskets slung over her back laden with carrots that matched the trio that appeared as a mark on her flank. “You! Pony!” She said as she trotted up to her. Of course, with the crystal in her mouth, it came out more as hyoo, hoenee. The pony was at least intelligent enough to realize that it was being addressed despite the unintelligibility of Soldier’s words, stopping her trot and looking to Soldier with confusion. “Um…yes?” she asked. “Who are you?” Soldier stopped in her own trot, taking the crystal from her mouth so as to ease communication. “I am Soldier,” she responded. “I require the location of the one called Twilight Sparkle. Give it to me!” The mare’s expression changed, from one of curiousness to one of annoyance. “You’re not very friendly, are you?” “No.” The other pony paused as Soldier’s response, her expression now shifting to confusion. In a detached sort of way, it was actually interesting for Soldier to watch – ponies could convey a lot of meaning through facial expression alone, something that daleks, for obvious reasons, could not. It added an extra layer of complexity to their language, and being unable to duplicate those nuances would help mark an outsider, Soldier realized. Her estimation of ponies went up by just a little bit. The mare bit her lip. “Am I being pranked?” she asked. “Daleks have no concept of ‘pranks.’” The mare rolled her eyes. Soldier was unsure as to the meaning of that gesture. After two rels, however, she pointed down the road the two stood on. “Just go that way. She lives in Ponyville’s library. You can’t miss it.” “I will not.” Soldier confirmed, taking her crystal into her mouth once more and setting off. The pony watched her go. “I’m Carrot Top, by the way,” she said, as though this were a vital piece of information. Soldier ignored her as she walked, and the subsequent muttering in annoyance that was too low to make out the details of. The walk to the library was a short one in terms of distance, but not in terms of travel time as a direct trot down the road that Carrot Top had indicated was prevented by the bustle of ponies constantly getting in her way and in the way of each other. It was…inefficient. Many of them even seemed like they were not performing any vital tasks, but were rather simply wandering about and making a nuisance of themselves; in particular, she was almost run-over by a trio of each kind of pony, youths all, as they zoomed by on a two-wheeled vehicle pulling a four-wheeled, red cargo container. At length, Soldier found herself before what was designated as the Ponyville library. It was a large, hollowed-out tree near the center of town, with holes for windows and doors, a balcony within the boughs of the tree. Interestingly, the tree seemed to somehow still be alive in spite of its disfigurement. Soldier could only assume that its life was sustained through artificial means, and her estimation of ponies once more went up just very slightly. Primitive species such as ponies often projected feelings onto objects. Either the pony who lived in this tree was intelligent enough to realize that it was, in fact, just a tree; or else she continued to project feelings onto the object and relished its suffering at having been disemboweled. Soldier found the entrance to the library easily enough – it was marked – and proceeded to it. It was a simple swinging door, easily pushed open by using one’s head as a sort of ram, and Soldier quickly found herself standing inside the library. It was fairly unremarkable: filled with primitive knowledge retention devices (…books, Soldier believed they were called?), with a doorway leading to a basement below and stairs leading up to a second floor. Soldier put her crystal down, looking around, but not seeing anypony. “I have reported as ordered!” she said loudly. “I am Soldier! I now await further orders!” From somewhere on the library’s second level, there was a disturbance, the sound of things falling over followed swiftly by the scampering of feet. After several rels, a being appeared and came down the stairs. It was not a pony. It stood on two legs at around half the height of Soldier, and was clearly a reptilian creature. Its scales were primarily purple, but for a green underbelly and green spines on its back. “Oh…you’re here,” the creature said. “Um…Twilight isn’t.” Soldier stared. She had been expecting the creature to be some form of pet or guard beast, not intelligent. Apparently ponies were not the sole sapient species on this world. “I have been ordered to report to Twilight Sparkle,” she informed the reptilian. “Where is she?” The reptilian blinked a few times, before waving, its eyes half-lidded. “Oh, hello there. My name’s Soldier. What’s yours, little baby dragon?” Soldier stared. “Your designation is also Soldier?” she inquired. That could be…complicated, especially seeing as ponies and whatever this creature was seemed to depend upon sound as their primary means of communication. The reptilian seemed to grow confused at Soldier’s question. “N-no, I was doing an impersonation of…” he began, before throwing up his little arms. “Forget it. My name’s Spike. I’m Twilight’s number-one assistant.” He looked Soldier up and down. “Jeeze, Princess Celestia wasn’t kidding when she said that you wouldn’t know anything, was she?” “Correct. You are Twilight’s second-in-command?” Spike, as the reptilian was apparently known, nodded and grinned. “Second-in-command…hey, I like that. That sounds a lot better than number-one assistant.” Soldier had no opinion one way or another. She had been ordered to report to Twilight Sparkle. But this Spike was Twilight Sparkle’s second-in-command. It would technically be a subversion of her orders to report instead to Spike, something she had been ordered not to do by Celestia – she was supposed to follow the letter and the intent of all orders given. But, conversely…Soldier was a soldier. She needed orders. Needed them. And she didn’t know where Twilight Sparkle was, but knew that this library was where she made her home. And Spike was her second-in-command… “I shall report to you until Twilight Sparkle returns,” Soldier said, standing up straight and looking straight ahead. “I am Soldier. I am formerly a dalek of the soldier class, designated 4598-03-875-01. My most recent engagement was – ” “Why are you talking like that?” Spike interrupted. Soldier paused, considering. “Talking like what?” she asked. “All…stilted and stuff. One syl-la-ble at a time. Like that.” He scratched the back of his head. “Are you a robot or something?” The once-dalek felt the fur on her coat stand slightly on end in indignation that sprung from nowhere. “Daleks are not robots!” she exclaimed. “Daleks are living organisms integrated into Mark III Travel Machines to better facilitate their objectives and survival!” Spike stared. Soldier stared back, before she looked down at herself and remembered a vital detail. “However, I am a pony now,” she said. “Did Celestia not inform you of the circumstances of my arrival?” “Sort of,” he shrugged. “It’s a little confusing. I get that Twilight’s supposed to help you make friends, though. She’s pretty good at that these days.” “Daleks have no concept of friendship.” Spike held up one claw on one hand. “But you’re not a dalek anymore, right?” he asked. “Correct.” Not physically. Celestia had said that she could remain mentally dalek, however. She intended to try. “So you can make friends now!” Soldier rather dreaded that possibility, especially seeing as it would likely impede her integration into the pony hierarchy. She took a step towards Spike. “I am a soldier. I require orders from Twilight Sparkle. You are Twilight Sparkle’s second-in-command. You, therefore, are empowered to give me orders.” The reptilian creature crossed his arms over his chest, head tilting to the side. “Give you orders?” “If I am to integrate myself into your hierarchy, I must have orders. I must!” Some part of Soldier was surprised at the sudden upswing in emotions from her. But she was a pony now, Spike was the second-in-command of her designated commander. Spike was empowered to give her orders – real, legitimate orders, and probably not ones that would result in her self-destruction, unlike the last non-dalek, non-pony she had empowered to give her orders. “I am your soldier! I demand orders!” Spike backed away a step from Soldier, holding up his hands. “Okay! Okay! Calm down. There’s probably some stuff around here for you to do…” he scratched the back of his head. “What are you good at?” “Obeying orders.” “Okay…but what kind of orders?” “As a dalek of the soldier class, my most common orders were to see to the destruction of the enemies of the Dalek Empire.” At a confused look from Spike, Soldier clarified: “I exterminate what I am ordered to exterminate.” Spike held up one claw on one hand, mouth open. However, no sound came out for several long rels. “T-tell you what,” he said, his voice high and shaking. “W-why don’t we…uh…g-get you to the k-k-kitchen, and, uh…you can wash dishes!” “I obey!” --- Step one: fill primary sink with hot water and a small amount of soap. Note: water will become gradually soiled and cool. Change and refresh regularly. Step two: use mouth or hooves to move soiled dish into soapy water and clean with sponge or cloth. Note: dishes are fragile. Step three: move cleaned dish into secondary sink and rinse, again using mouth or hooves. Step four: move rinsed dish onto dish rack to allow to dry. Step five: repeat. The process was slow, especially as Soldier lacked any appendages useful for precise manipulation. Of course, as a dalek, she doubted her manipulation arm would have been much more useful; then again, daleks had no need for dishes. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. It was a task, a task she had been ordered to do. For the first time in a long, long time, Soldier felt like she was doing something useful. No, it wasn’t what she had been created to do, but daleks were an adaptable species. Even a soldier dalek could perform tasks normally reserved for other classes. Theoretically a soldier dalek could have even filled in for the Emperor, if need be. Her crystal, the one remainder of her Mark III Travel Machine, sat on a nearby windowsill, glistening blue in the sunlight. It was almost like it was watching her. Far from being unnerving, as an inferior species might have felt, Soldier was grateful for the facsimile of being observed. A dalek in a starship would be constantly observed by other dalek, and in turn constantly observe other dalek itself. Soldier’s ears perked up slightly when she heard a noise from the library’s main room, the sound of a door being opened. Glancing out of the kitchen, she saw that a pair of ponies had entered – one, an orange one with a yellow mane, wearing a hat of some kind and lacking wings or horn. The other was purple, with a dark mane but for two stripes. She possessed both wings and a horn, and further was somewhat taller than the orange pony. Both looked tired, the wings on the purple one sagging notably. “…really miss Pinkie Pie,” the purple one said. “It’s only another day, Twi,” the orange one responded. “Ah think the two of us did a pretty good job with the twins.” “They’re Fluttershy’s problem now,” the purple one, ‘Twi,’ responded as she closed the door behind her with some kind of telekinetic field projected from her horn, and immediately sank onto the ground. “Those twins are a hoof-ful, I don’t know how the Cakes do it…” The orange one had made to respond, but the two ponies then noticed two things: first, Soldier, who had not stopped rinsing the dish. Second, Spike, who sat in the doorway of the kitchen, trembling. The second-in-command to Twilight Sparkle had disappeared after Soldier had begun washing dishes, only to reappear wearing some form of armor – though Soldier questioned how effective an open-faced helmet and a pair of pillows would be at defending oneself from threats. He also clutched a long, wooden bludgeon of some kind tightly as he trembled, and hadn’t taken his eyes off of Soldier. It was almost like he was afraid of her, though Soldier couldn’t conceive why. She was his soldier. “Um…Spike?” The purple pony asked, standing up again. “What’s, um…what’s going on here…?” The reptilian turned around, saw the purple pony, and let out a cry of relief. “Twilight!” He exclaimed, dropping his weapon and charging at the purple pony, hugging one of her legs tightly. “Thank goodness! I’m safe!” “Safe?” the orange pony inquired, stepping forward, eyes narrowing. “Okay, um…ma’am?” she leaned over slightly, looking at Soldier from an angle, before nodding to herself. “Right. Ma’am. Who are ya an’ what in tarnation are ya doin’ in mah friend Twilight’s kitchen, washin’ her dishes?” “And scaring Spike?” the purple pony appended, pushing Spike behind her so that she stood between Soldier and the reptilian. Soldier had immediately stopped washing dishes on the reptilian’s mention of the purple one’s name. She would have immediately gone up to Twilight, but paused a rel and instead grabbed her crystal first, in her mouth. Once she had it, she trotted over to Twilight, set down her crystal, and stood up straight. “I am Soldier,” she said. “I have been sent here by your Princess Celestia. I have been ordered to follow your orders as you integrate me into the pony hierarchy. You will contact her as soon as you have debriefed me and given me my orders.” Twilight looked Soldier up and down. “Uh,” she said. “Come again?” “I obey! I am Soldier. I have been sent here by your Princess Celestia..."