CHAPTER 9 T3's EPIC ADVENTURE!
On the surface of Hoovris and on one of the landing pads of the Imperial base, a transport was coming down on it and was opening up to reveal a dozen droids and crates being unloaded. Among the droids was T3, as he was moving along with the rest of the droids. They were all lined up in a row and an Imperial inspector was using his datapad to keep check of the droids.
The inspector was confused at first and called one of his superiors to check it out.
"Yes, what is it?"
"Sir, we were supposed to have twelve astromechs, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, I did a headcount and we have thirteen droids. Do you think there was a shipping error?"
"More than likely."
"Should we send one of them back then?"
"And waste having an extra droid? No, I think we'll keep the extra one. Just say that we received all the droids that we needed and nothing else, understood?"
"Yes sir, I'll do that."
The inspector saluted his superior and continued on with his inspection. He then told the droids, "Alright you lot, go over to the maintenance room and wait further instructions."
The droids did what the inspector asked and they made their way to there. When the droids were close to the maintenance, T3 stayed behind the other droids, until he saw a chance to get away from them and started roaming the base. He looked around the base seeing Imperials soldiers making their patrols and all the workponies were either working on a terminal or having chats.
As T3 was strolling by, he overheard a couple of soldiers talking.
"There is no way I'm going to do this."
"We don't have much choice. We have to deliver these reports to Sunset herself."
"But have you seen these reports? No Beks have been captured for days and we've been losing patrols down there while we're searching for that blasted unicorn. What was her name again?"
"Twilight."
"Yeah, that's it. I don't want to be the pony who has to give Sunset this report. She'll properly just electrocute us to get rid of the anger. I don't want to go through that."
"Well-" The trooper looked around and saw T3. "Why not send the droid to give the report? He's expandable, which's means Sunset has something to let out her anger and we don't get electrocuted. Everypony wins."
"Good idea. Hey you. Take this datapad to Sunset at once. Just take the elevator over there and she’ll be on the top floor."
T3 didn't want to take the datapad and be electrocuted, but since he was in the middle of the Imperial base and couldn't risk the chance of being discovered, he had no choice but to go along with it. He took the datapad and went into the elevator. He used an extended cylinder rod from his chest to plug into the elevator’s controls and as he did that, the elevator started to move and was making its way towards the top. When the elevator stopped, the doors opened and there was another door in front of T3. He slowly left the elevator and when he did, the door behind him immediately closed. If a droid could feel fear right now, he would be feeling a lot of it. T3 gathered some courage in him and opened the door to the next room.
In the room were Sunset, Snips, and Snails. Sunset attention was at the monitors and terminals. Snips and Snails noticed T3 was coming in and went over to him.
"Hold it right there," Snips commanded the droid.
"Yeah, hold it right there," Snails repeated.
"Would you stop saying the same thing I'm saying?" Snips asked Snails.
"I just wanted to make sure that they got the idea," Snails clarified.
"Whatever. What do you want little droid?" Snips said.
T3 was confused by Snips’ comment about him being little, as in fact T3 was just a hoof or two bigger than Snips. He then processed to answer Snips’ question.
"Beep boop boop bee"
Snips and Snails looked at T3 for a moment with confused looks.
"Did you understand anything he said?" Snails asked Snips.
"Umm no, I was hoping that you did," Snips replied.
Sunset couldn't take anymore of her guards' idiotic comments. She walked over to them and shouted, "Will you two just move out of the way?!"
Snips and Snails complied and both went to one side of the doorway and proceeded to stand as still as statues. Sunset looked down at T3 and asked, "You said that you came to deliver a report?"
"Beep" T3 then opened one of the compartments in his torso and used an extended claw to give Sunset the datapad.
Sunset used her magic to lift the datapad and looked at it. Her eyes soon became enraged as she was reading the datapad and finally her horn was sparking with electricity. T3 was just about to make a break for it, until she channeled her anger on Snip and Snails letting out a bolt of electricity shocking the two guards. After she was done shocking them, Snips and Snails soon fell to the ground groaning in pain from what their mistress had done to them.
She looked over to the datapad again and said, "Curse you Twilight! Somehow you're one step ahead of us. When I find you I will make you pa-." Before she could finish, noise started blaring from one of the terminals.
A light from the terminals came up and formed a hologram of a pony.
"This is Admiral Soul, Sunset are you there?"
"Yes Soul, what is it now?"
The pony didn't answer and it soon changed to another pony. The other pony was the dark lord himself, Nightmare Moonlight.
*Gasp* "Master?" Sunset said and bowed before her dark master.
"Sunset, your progress of capturing Twilight has taken too long," the dark lord said.
"Yes I know master, but we may have a-," Sunset tried to explain, but Moonlight raised his hoof up to silences her.
"The search for Twilight is taking too long. The empire cannot risk her escaping this planet. So I am ordering the fleet to destroy the entire planet," Moonlight said to Sunset.
Sunset, Snips, Snails, and T3 were shocked to hear such news.
"The entire planet, my master? But....there are billions of ponies down here. We will be killing thousands of innocent civilians down here and not to mention our forces are still down here," Sunset explained to the dark lord.
"Your concern is meaningless, my apprentice. If Twilight escapes, she will continue to use her "Harmony's Will" against us. As much as I want her to join us, she is too dangerous and must be stopped," the dark lord replied.
"Y-Yes, my master. I will prepare all troops that I can bring," Sunset said in a defeated voice.
"No, do not bother. It will take too long and everypony would suspect us. You must come here with your guards and nopony else. Do I make myself clear?" Moonlight asked.
"Yes, my lord," Sunset replied.
The terminal went off and Sunset was at first conflicted by her master's decision, but in her head she was a Nightmare warrior and they only care about surviving to become more powerful. She started making her way to the elevator and said to T3 on the way, "I want you to stay here in this room and monitor all that is going on, until Lord Moonlight is done with the bombardment." Sunset and her guards then went in the elevator and the door closed.
T3 looked around the room and went up to a terminal. He used the same extension that he used on the elevator and plugged himself into a terminal. He looked through the database of the computer, until he found the codes for the Imperial blockade. He downloaded them, including the recording of Darth Moonlight's plan to destroy Hoovris. After he was done, he uploaded a virus into the terminal in case something bad happened to him in the base. T3 then started making his way to the elevator.
As Sunset was making her way to the shuttle, the inspector from the landing pad was walking by and he asked her a question. "Umm ma'am, have you seen an astromech droid around here?"
"Yes, there was one in the control room, why?" Sunset asked.
"Well we just had an extra droid from the shipment that came down here earlier and instead of twelve droids we had thirteen. And now one of them is missing, do you think it's the one in the control room?"
Sunset took a moment to think about it. And all of a sudden, she realized that the droid wasn't one of theirs and only one pony that she could think of could be behind this.
"TWILIGHT!" Sunset shouted as she lifted her hooves up into the air. Over the speaker phones, Sunset made an announcement to the whole base. "We have an intruder in the base and it might have the codes to the blockade. Find the little, blue droid and bring it to me, NOW!"
All the soldiers and workers started grabbing ion weapons and looked around the base for T3.
A few seconds ago, T3 was coming out of the elevator and entered into a corridor, until he overheard the speakers on the walls. "We have an intruder in the base and it might have the codes to the blockade. Find a blue little droid and bring it to me, NOW!"
T3 optics shrunk and from around a corner, less than a dozen Imperial guards were holding ion weapons. One of the guards pointed at T3 and said, "There it is! Get it!"
The guards galloped towards T3 and he quickly made a break for it. He went as fast as his wheels could go and was able to stay ahead of the guards, but they started firing their ion blasters and if one of those blaster fire hits T3 he would be stunned by it. All T3 could do was just roll away as fast as he could and scream.
"WWEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWW!"
T3 saw a turn in the corridors and he took it, but unfortunately when he turned, Sunset was in front of him with dozens of Imperial soldiers. The guards behind him caught up to him and aimed their weapons at him.
Sunset approached the little droid and said to it, "You're going to tell me everything you know about Twilight with or without your permission." Right behind her were a couple mechanics ready to dissect the poor droid.
T3 then activated the virus that he uploaded into the terminals. All of a sudden, alarms were going off and the walls revealed robotic arms that had fire hoses attached to them. The arms soon started firing water at all the guards, troops, mechanics, and even Sunset. Everypony was defenseless against the hoses and T3 was able to get by them. Sunset was able to jump out of the firing stream from one of the hoses and chased after the droid, but as soon as she was close to the droid and was about to grab it with her telekinesis, one hose came out of nowhere and her pupils shrunk. The hose fired at her and sent her into the laundry chute, where she fell down screaming.
T3 soon made his way to the exit of the base and rolled on back to the Bek's base.
T3 was in the streets of the lower levels, after he took an elevator from the upper city. He was just strolling by and was feeling nervous (If a droid can be nervous that is). Moving through the streets was dangerous, especially since the Griffons lost their leader, Gilda, and had been looking for the Beks nonstop and Imperials had been patrolling the streets as well. There were reports of increased violence and raids going around the city because of the two factions.
All of a sudden, dozens of Griffons were coming out hiding from dumpsters, corners, and broken down doorways. They all stood in front of T3 looking at him with devious smiles.
"Well look what we got here. Another droid to smash!"
"Now hold on a second. Let's just take it apart and see what we could sell off of it."
"This is going to be fun."
T3 was about to make a break for it, until from behind the droid, three large speeders were coming. They stopped when they came close and soon Imperial troopers started coming out and were forming a line in front of the vehicles. Coming out in one of the vehicles was Sunset and her guards, Snip and Snails. Sunset stood in front of the soldiers and said, "That droid belongs to the Luna Empire. Hand it over now or you will face our wrath!"
"WAIT! That's the horned freak that killed Gilda! GET HER!"
The Griffons started charging at the Imperials with blasters and swords. Sunset and the Imperials then started charging towards the Griffons. Sunset brought out her double-bladed lightsaber with her magic and turned it on. The color of the blade was blazing orange. The two sides soon clashed with one another and T3 was caught in the middle of it.
T3 was dodging every blaster fire and avoid all the troops and Griffons from capturing him. He was able to get out of the fight and strolled away quickly. After Sunset slashed some of the unfortunate Griffons that crossed her, she saw T3 getting away and made chase after him.
"GET BACK HERE YOU STUPID DROID!"
"WWWEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW"
T3 made a quick turn around a corner, but he quickly stopped as he made a wrong turn into a large cross way that went on for miles with speeders coming from opposite directions and was so deep, it was pitch black down below. T3 turned to find another way, but Sunset was right behind him and she had him cornered.
"I got you now, you little trash can!" Sunset said. "I would electrocute you right now after what you did, but since you have valuable information, I'll take you apart piece by piece until I get what I want." She then tried to levitate T3 with her magic. But T3 quickly opened a compartment and launched a piece of pie (that Pinkie put into him) at Sunset. It hit Sunset and it blinded her. She was struggling to get the pie off her face, because for some reason it had some glue in it. While she was struggling, she was moving around too much and tripped over to the cross way. She let out a scream as she was falling down into the dark abyss. Fortunately for her, a passing garbage transport was coming by and Sunset fell in the back of the transport, right into the foulness of the garbage.
T3 then let a beeping sound that sounded like laughter and continued his way back to the Beks base.
Back at the Bek's base, Pinkie was still crying about T3 going away for hours and everypony was getting sick of it. Twilight's eyes were bloodshot red and were twitching from the constant sob, Scootaloo had her head deep down in Zaalbar's fur, Zaalbar covered his ears with pillows somehow gladly offered by Pinkie, Fluttershy was crying as well because Pinkie's sob was making her sad as well, Applejack was struggling against her urge not to strangle Pinkie nonstop, and Garret was banging his head against the wall.
Zandra came into the room and saw what was going on. She gave out a sigh and said, "Pinkie I have some good news." Pinkie stopped her crying for a moment to hear what Sandra had to say. "T3 is back and he has the codes, so please stop crying. All the Beks were planning on kicking you out of the base or at least putting a mesh tape over your mouths."
Zandra then stood aside and T3 rolled into the room. Pinkie immediately went from feeling miserable to overjoyed to see her little droid buddy again. She quickly went to him in an unusual speed and started hugging and kissing the droid. Everypony was glad that Pinkie was happy again and were relieved that she stopped crying.
"OH MY BUDDY! MY PAL! MY LITTLE DROID AMIGO! How did it go? What did you do? Did you meet anypony? Made friends? Anything interesting? Oh I am so going to throw a welcome-back party for you! We should definitely do the robot dance. I always wanted to do the robot dance," Pinkie said and kept on talking about the robot dance, until T3 asked her to stop for a moment and he started playing a recording.
When T3 turned on the recording, both Sunset and Darth Moonlight appeared on the hologram.
As the hologram was playing Twilight recognized Sunset and Moonlight right away. "I know those two. That's Moonlight right there and that's his apprentice, Sunset Shimmer," she said.
"Ah don't believe it. Thet's the infamous Nightmare lord right there?" Applejack asked with great concern.
"That's right and I'm guessing T3 had a reason for recording this," Twilight replied.
As the group was listening what the recording was saying, they were horrified to learn that Moonlight was planning on destroying the entire with his fleet. After the recording was finished, everypony soon started to go into debate about what to do.
"We have to do something to stop this! Hoovris is my home," Scootaloo said.
"I agree. Hoovris is my home as well and I can't let those meanies get away with it," Pinkie said supporting Scootaloo.
"Ah'm sorry, but we just can't. We don't have a fleet to back us up and they outnumber us one to hundreds," Applejack pointed out.
"Applejack's right. Our best option right now is to get off this planet and tell the council what’s happening. They'll know what to do next," Twilight added to the conversation.
"But um...what about all the poor ponies here?" Fluttershy said with concern.
"I'm afraid Moonlight is putting us in a position that we can't do anything about. We're....going to have to do nothing for them," Twilight answered Fluttershy's question with regret.
"But...We can't just leave Hoovris to be destroyed can we?" Scootaloo asked and turned her attention to Garret. "Garret please tell me that we're not going to let Moonlight do this. Right?"
Garret wasn't sure how to answer the little pegasus' question. On one hoof, he knew that the planet would be defenseless against Moonlight's assault and that he needed to help, but on the other hoof, Twilight was maybe the only pony in the galaxy that could win the Republic the war and save countless more lives. All he could say to Scootaloo was, "I'm sorry Scootaloo, but I'm afraid we have to go along with this. If Moonlight is this vile to do this on Hoovris, then we must make sure we get Twilight off this planet so we can stop him from doing the same thing to another planet."
Scootaloo was conflicted at what Garret said. She wanted to do everything she could to stop the empire from destroying her homeworld, but deep down in her heart she knew that what Garret said was true and there wasn't any way for anypony to stop it. She started to cry, trying her best to fight back the tears. Everypony gathered around her and began hugging her to make her feel better. Scootaloo was glad to have so many friends that wanted to comfort her. "Thanks guys. I really needed this."
Everypony broke up from the group hug, except Zaalbar, Pinkie, and T3. Garret walked over to Zandra and asked, "I suppose that means you want to come with us too huh?"
Zandra thought about it for a minute and replied, "Thanks for the offer, but my place here is with the Beks. I'll warn them about this and we'll head down to the Undercity where it's safe. You guys better get on going, I suspect that you only have a few hours left, so I recommend getting out of here asap."
"Thanks, we will. We're sorry that we couldn't do anything else to help," Garret said.
"You've done more than enough for us. I think you deserve a bit of a break from being a hero," Zandra said with a smile.
"I don't know if I'm ever going to stop being a hero," Garret replied with a thin smile.
"That's good to hear. The galaxy is going to need heroes like you," Zandra commented.
The two said their goodbyes and Garret went to join up with the rest of the gang.
Applejack then spoke up and said, "Well now thet we got that settled, I suppose that we all will head over to meet Canderous."
"I doubt that we'll all go with Garret when Canderous takes us to Blueblood. What will the rest of us do?" Twilight asked.
Scootaloo wiped away the last of her tears and said with boldness, "Don't worry your pretty little head about that. I have a plan for that."
Twilight dreaded what Scootaloo had in store for the rest of the gang.
END OF CHAPTER