//------------------------------// // Unstoppable // Story: Roborganics // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// "Commander in danger. Initiating priority defense protocols!" "What the hell is that thing?" "Get away from it!" "Holy shit!" A car was seen being violently thrown at a whole group of the cultists, tearing cars with it and smacking the crazy people in their faces, causing them to flip backwards and slam painfully on their backs. "Seven targest-est-targets neutralized. Foll-following protocol until safety-ty-ty of commander is ensured-ensured." "It's a military combat drone!" one of the cultists shouted. "A neuropony combat drone?!" the manager gasped in horror. Starburst had somehow transformed into a frighteningly dangerous being. She was now bipedal, although her legs still retained the general back-knee shape of equines. Her stomach had tightened up to be much more narrow and curved inwards, but widened near the chest area as several blue plates of overlapping armor seemed to cling to each other but exceed the length of the chest somewhat. The legs and fore arms were also covered with the same armor set as on the chest, and these parts looked like a thin layer of segmented green armor. She was slouched over to a high degree, at which point it looked like her back had become a half-circle. The head was the strangest part of all. Her mouth had completely disappeared and was instead replaced by a silver looking plate of metal. The head itself had become very slanted, jutting forward, almost resembling a cone. As for the eyes, they only looked like horizontally placed, iridescent diamonds. The 'tiny' Starburst was slouched over and was moving ever so slightly, her hands and fingers gently bending and twisting as if ready to pounce. She seemed to twitch every now and then, static even coming from her voice box as she did so. The manager looked at the other members run and stumble to get away from the frightening drone. Coming back to whatever senses were left, the woman pointed to the drone and stuttered: "Sh-shoot it! Quick! She was still a neuropony. It might have an effect!" "But--" "Now!" The row of cultists fired in an erratic pattern, some of the monstrous darts seemingly curving away from their targets. The combat drone was hit by several of the darts, and electrical impulses surged through its body, but this only served to indicate the direction of a new threat and induce additional system glitches. "N-n-n-n-n-new threat de-de-de-detected. Neutralizing-zing." Starburst jumped high into the air, the sounds of pumping pistons reverberating through the street. She seemed to be flying through the air, but this did not change the laws of physics. What goes up must come down, and come down she did; Painfully and heavily on a cultist and crushing her under the sheer mass of the metal monstrosity. Those few who had the cannons immediately dropped them and ran away, leaving the manager on her own. "Wh-wh-what are you going to--" "Neu-neu-neu-neutralizing," Starburst glitched. The drone punched its right palm into the woman's thorax, producing an audible crack while she flew through the doors of the store. For some strange reason, the cultist holding Louis had fled without his catch, leaving the pegasus to stare at the bizarre scene with a gaping mouth and widened. "Woah. Starburst is a military M-9 Reaper Drone!" Raspberry shouted with sparkles in her eyes. "What?!" Louis shouted. The drone retracted its arm and righted it stance so that it could turn around and assess the situation. "New recruit in optimal condition. Raspberry soldier in optimal condition. Commander and engineer in critical condition. Extracting to closest known base." Without a moment of hesitation, the drone jumped to Redmint and picked him up, but not without more arm twitching. She proceeded to do the same with Licorice and started to run off. "Quick! Let's follow her!" Raspberry shouted with glee. She was far too joyous about what was going on, and Louis didn't like it, but he had no choice. "Why? What are we doing?" Louis panted. "We're going back to the truck, duh! That's the 'last known base' she talked about." "I really want an explanation for all of this afterwards." "I'm sure Redmint will explain afterwards anyways." The energetic mare simply smiled and continued to hop away, much to Louis' bewilderment. The drone curved around corners with such precision and ferocity that large bits of asphalt were torn off the street and thrown about the floor. Starburst was unbelievably quick, somehow speeding past people with such velocity that they were slightly pulled back by the current. Her constant twitching and jittering gave off the effect of a kidnapping by a crazed maniac, unfortunately. "How is she not killing them at that speed?!" Louis asked aloud. "I dunno," Raspberry verbally shrugged. The drone was too fast, but, luckily for the two followers, she darted straight to the mobile home and entered it. The vehicle rocked from side-to-side as a result of the sudden entrance. The two neuroponies were huffing and puffing when they finally arrived in the vehicle, seeing that Redmint was looking down in shame on the bed and Licorice was staring at him with shock and appall. "What...was...that?" Licorice struggled to say. "Yeah. I'd be very curious to know exactly WHY and especially HOW Starburst is a military combat drone!" "To be specific, she's a decommissioned M-9 Reaper Drone. They are specialized in the extermination of unarmored personnel and the protection of commanding officers," Raspberry said. She adjusted invisible glasses, spoke with a know-it-all voice, and scrunched her face up to look like a snooty intellectual. Starburst began cracking, twisting, and bending again as she returned to her pony form. Much to the intrigue of the other three ponies, at end of her transformation, she wobbled around a bit, then stepped on the bed and snuggled next to Redmint with her still emotionless expression. "Well? We asked you a question! What the hell are you doing with a military drone? How did you even acquire one in the first place?!" "If you want it straight, I stole her. " Licorice and Louis' eyes narrowed while Raspberry's just continued sparkling with joy. "Yeah. I stole her. To be specific, I spotted a truck leaving a military compound and, as it didn't seem suspicious in the least and wasn't being escorted, I assumed there might've been some broken junk for me to take apart and cannibalize. What I saw weren't just the corpses of drones and robots, these were complete, intact, fully functional bots. I never saw something like that. I'd rather not explain how I managed to sneak aboard a moving truck. I get bruises whenever I think about it. Anyways, I inspected one of the bots and accidentally reactivated it. Apparently, whoever drained their power sources didn't do a very good job, and it glomped onto me, making me tumble and fall out of the truck, giving me a few more bruises and a near fracture." "Near fracture?" Louis said. "Yeah. I think the bot took the hits for me. It was its fault that I fell, but it didn't let me get hurt, either. I'm guess it was a near fracture. I'm not saying it actually was." "You didn't go to the doctor?!" Licorice scorned. "Oh, yes. And tell him how I got these wounds? 'Oh yes, doctor. I snuck onto an undercover military transport, stole one of their robots, and fell out of the still moving vehicle'. That would've sounded off nicely." "And what about her shape? How come she's a neuropony now?" Raspberry asked. The mare was poking Starburst's left eye, but the victim was not reacting in the slightest. Her face remained stoic and disinterested. "Yeah. I didn't have the best connections before, so I took it to a few guys I knew and they agreed to morph the drone into a neuropony just for experimentation. They had to reprogram it and reform several mechanical components of its, but I didn't know they gave it a transformation module." "It stuttered when talking earlier. You think that's part of its programming when you found it?" Louis asked. "Oh. That. Yeah. It was the voice module that caused short-circuiting. It was damaged or poorly built. I don't know the specifics. The program was also corrupt and, for some reason, the guys never bothered to at least fix that. Anyways, I got the guys to program it into thinking that I was the 'commanding officer' or something. That's why she follows me around all the time." Louis looked at Starburst and saw her eyes slowly rise to look at Redmint, then slowly towards him. They were creepy. He couldn't tell if they were actually looking at him or just scanning the environment. Yet, for some reason, he could feel his inexistent heartbeat rise violently and his breathing become erratic and stuffed. The drone was still looking at him. It might have had an expressionless face, but it seemed that, for a moment, the spark of free will twinkled in its eyes. "Okay. We'll go over this later. We need to get out of this city. Who knows how many more loons like these 'Evolutionists' or whatever they called themselves are left," Licorice sighed.