Helen stared at the readout on her computer screen. "Did the trace work?" she demanded.
"Yes," Grey Mann replied, gesturing to his readout. "The tracer attached to Luna's tail went undetected, and the ion trail it left through the ether between worlds has established a wormhole from our world to theirs."
Helen smiled mirthlessly. "Is it stable?"
"For now," he admitted. "It is also about as wide as a fly's dick, so it won't be viable for transfer of an invasion/excavation force for some time."
She frowned at that. "How long until we can begin widening the portal?"
"It'll take a few months to find the right energy type to expand the portal without collapsing it," he replied. "Even then, it'll take anywhere from a few months to a year to expand it to the right size without ripping a hole in the space-time continuum. It'd be easier if we could recover any of the data from the recording device on the respawner you gave to the ponies." The snarl in his words at the end would have been grating to anyone else.
"Hardly my fault you didn't design it to withstand a blast from a rocket," she replied blandly.
"You mean I was supposed to anticipate that the mercs would try to destroy it?" he demanded in frustration.
"You always did underestimate the value of dumb muscle," she replied with a shrug. "Just get the portal open."
"I have my Mechengineers working on it as we speak," he replied, frowning as his mind wandered.
"Good." Helen turned her back to him, dismissing him as unimportant beyond that, focusing her attention on her planned conquest and eventual strip mining of Equestria.
Without warning, Grey Mann pulled out an electrified knife and drove it into her back, and she slumped forward, lifeless.
Helen slowly came back to herself, but something felt off. "What's going on?" she asked, pausing as she noticed her voice sounded strange, almost synthesized. Also, her mind was strangely clearer than it had been before. As she looked around, she felt her body swivel in a manner much different than before.
"You told me not to underestimate dumb muscle," Grey Mann said, coming into view. In Helen's vision, a blue box focused in on his face, bringing up a close up of his face as well as pertinent information. "But in truth, I find intelligence eventually always wins."
"Your mechamercs demonstrate that quite clearly," Helen quipped back. As she spoke, she saw text appear at the bottom of her vision stating, 'Sarcasm Processors Fully Operational'.
"Oh, I don't mean artificial intelligence," Grey Mann countered. "I mean real intelligence, like you or I possess. Yours proved to be able to circumvent and conquer mine...temporarily. I realized that, if I'm to accomplish my goals, I needed you at my side...so I surrendered. It was so easy to reach this point once that happened. Now you are on my side, working towards my goals...I just removed the human element. So much more efficient this way." He grinned mirthlessly at her before turning to walk away. "Now about the portal-" His voice was cut off as a spike on a metal tendril drove into the top of his skull. "Wha...how? How can you harm me like this? The safeties..."
Helen blinked internally. She hadn't even realized she had struck forward, or that she had that tendril, but it had responded to her will all the same. This would take some getting used to, but she knew what it was doing. "What are you talking about?" she asked aloud. "I'm not hurting you at all." Begin neural download, she sent the mental command.
Grey Mann flinched as he felt all of his mind being drained from his flesh into the machine. "No..."
"I'm just removing the human element," she continued as his intelligence, experience, and brain power were added to the machine she had become. "You're right, Grey...much more efficient." Turning, she sent another mechanical pseudopod to retrieve her body. He had been incorrect about one thing. She wasn't entirely human, and there were things about her body that could still prove useful in the future.
As Grey Mann was drained completely, he slid off the spike that had stolen his brain, his life. His blood dripped from the spike like a grotesque, macabre quill. Seeing this, she turned towards the paperwork on her desk. As her new mechanical core extended to examine it, she saw it was a request for a final report on the status of 'Project Bumfuck', the in-office name for the show that had been made from the events at the fort of that name. "This was a triumph," she whispered, bringing the spike forward to inscribe a note under 'Final Assessment' in Grey Mann's life blood.
Huge Success!