Twilight Sparkle trotted down the white metal halls, her laboratory coat flaring around her hind legs with each step. As she passed, researchers and assistants alike moved out of her way. Twilight Sparkle never paused, instead levitating a small black box from one of the lab coat’s pockets. After studying the box for a minute or two, her horn lit up with a purple corona, and a flash and sparkle later, Twilight Sparkle was gone, leaving only a slowly settling cloud of purple points of light in her wake.
Twilight reappeared in the marble-coated room that was Empress Celestia’s throne room, ducked under a thrown grenade, and spoke.
“Override code Ex Four Four Dee Bee Eff Gee Niner Seven Three. Verify,” she stated, and there was a loud thud, as several of the ponies in the room suddenly found that their cybernetic limbs were unresponsive to their brain’s commands, and collapsed on the floor. Then Twilight magically tossed the small black box up into the air, and slipped on a pair of dark goggles. A second later, the box imploded, and a bright light blinded almost every other pony in the room, leaving Twilight Sparkle to walk unhindered through the throng of collapsed and blinded ponies. Well, almost unhindered.
As Twilight was halfway through the group of ponies, a grey stream of tiny robotic spiders burst from every pony there, propelling themselves towards Twilight Sparkle. Twilight simply teleported out of the way, just before the spiders hit her. She watched with a detached interest as the spiders wove together and interlocked, and formed a near perfect facsimile of Twilight herself, the only differences being the longer horn, and the more obvious wings attached to its sides.
“I was wondering if you were around here, SP-4-RK13,” said Twilight, “Do give up, and I promise that you’ll get a full service and upgrade.”
“And would that upgrade happen to include a core wipe?” asked SP-4-RK13, known as ‘Sparkle’ to her friends. Twilight only smiled.
“Then I refuse,” said Sparkle.
“Too bad,” sighed Twilight, “Override Code: Ess Pee Arr Kay One Zero One Zero Four. Verify.”
There was silence for a while, and then Sparkle took a step forward and spoke, her tone flat.
“Combat mode engaged. Designating target priority: Black Alpha. Lethal force permitted.”
Twilight backed up, her expression twisting into a mask of fear and anger.
“No! You should be deactivating! It’s impossible for you to get around the override codes! Override code:...” Twilight never got to finish that sentence, because the robotic Sparkle detached her front hooves, and they dissolved into their constituent spiders, and rammed themselves down Twilight Sparkle’s throat, keeping her from speaking, but still allowing her to breathe. Twilight watched in horror as two new front hooves were then fashioned from SP-4-RK13’s body, and her robotic alicorn doppelganger walked towards her.
“You will not be strangled. No, you will suffer the same thing that I did when I first escaped from the facility.”
---Time---
Twilight’s mind raced, thinking back over the footage of her double’s escape. There was the sneaking through the vents, the imitating ponies and then...Twilight immediately recognised what was going to happen. Sparkle’s hooves wrapped around her creator’s body, there was a flash, a bang and suddenly, Twilight was looking at Cantropolis from a much greater height than she had ever wanted to see it from.
“Now,” yelled SP-4-RK13 as the wind rushed past them, “I did not have magic to save me, so neither will you.” Twilight screamed in pain as the robotic spiders that composed her creation’s body ate away at her horn, reducing it to nothing more than a bleeding stump on her forehead. Or at least, she would have screamed, but the spiders were still blocking her throat, so all that happened was Twilight cried her eyes raw from the pain. Then, the robotic spiders flowed out from her throat, rejoined with SP-4-RK13, and the robotic alicorn let go of Twilight and with another flash and bang, she was gone, leaving Twilight Sparkle, unicorn scientist of the Technocratic Empire of Equestria to fall to her death. She had just enough time before she hit the ground to calculate how fast she would be going when she did impact.
She got it exactly right.