//------------------------------// // Nighttime Festivities // Story: Friendship is Grievous // by Snake Staff //------------------------------// Grievous hated battle droids. He really did. Ironic, considering how much of his own body was itself robotic, but he found the war machines he was provided by Count Dooku and the factory worlds of the CIS to be perpetual exercises in frustration. Even the best of them suffered from serious limitations compared to the armies of Kaleesh warriors he had commanded when he was known as Qymaen jai Sheelal, and even the days shortly after he had taken up his current name. But of all the battle droids in the arsenal of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the B-1 models were by far the worst in Grievous’ opinion. Weak, stupid, fragile, and only useful in extreme numbers, he often wondered why anyone bothered to build them at all. He himself had often petitioned to decommission the model altogether in favor of more organic armies to fight for the Separatists, but each time he was denied his wish. And so he was stuck with what he considered to be the single most annoying model of droid in existence. Which really was unfortunate, considering that B-1s made up the bulk of the Separatist Droid Army. It was in that context that Grievous’ next actions had to be understood. Ignoring the cheerily-dressed equines and their party altogether, General Grievous stormed across the room, hands curled up into fists. He grabbed the first battle droid in a hat that was within his reach, holding it up by its chest. “Tell me,” he said, in a dangerous tone of voice. “For what purpose were you constructed?” “To defend the interests of the Confederacy of Independent Systems! To fight and destroy its enemies wherever they may be found, sir!” it said in its high-pitched, squeaky voice. Grievous hated that voice. It was the antithesis of what he thought a warrior should sound like. Nonetheless, he set the droid down and folded both hands behind his back. “So enlighten me,” he continued. “What does the wearing of party hats and participation in a primitive festival have to do with that?” “Uh…” the droid paused, tapping its hand to its chin. “The maintenance of our morale?” Grievous sighed, closed his eyes, and drew back his fist. And punched the battle droid’s head clean off. The long, thin, eyeless, mouthless head of the B-1 battle droid, party hat and all, went flying through the air. It hit one of the crystal walls of the palace at high speed and bounced off, clattering to floor below. The body it had left behind wobbled momentarily as it struggled to keep balance, before toppling over and joining its head on Twilight’s floor. Everypony around the general froze with shook. Even Twilight, who had seen General Grievous execute a living creature as his very first action in front of her, did not expect such callousness towards his own troops from the alien cyborg. Punching one of his own droids’ heads off – over a trivial annoyance no less! To everypony, it looked as though their guest had just committed a public murder. The atomosphere went from celebratory to extremely tense in the blink of an eye. Who knows what might have happened had another B-1 not reacted when it did. The droid walked over casually and picked up the head of its fallen compatriot, turning it over in its hands like some kind of curiosity, before looking to its leader and speaking up. “Well, that was rude!” Twilight Sparkle’s jaw dropped and she blinked, looking shocked. “Didn’t… Didn’t he just kill one of you? Isn’t that a bit more than just rude?!” “Oh no,” the battle droid shook its head, sounding cheerful. “We have a fusion torch back in the pod! B-1X25 can be reassembled easily. We just have to weld his head back on and everything is a-ok!” ‘Don’t remind me,” said Grievous, his eyes still closed as he struggled not to explode any more than he already had. He could, of course, forbid the repairs from taking place, but on this benighted planet he needed every soldier he could get, including the miserable incompetents of his army. Regrettably. The battle droid leaned in towards Twilight, as if letting her in on some kind of secret. “Between you and me, he does that a lot when he’s mad.” “Not often enough, it seems,” Grievous answered. “Aw, we love you too, sir,” said the droid. “Grievous! Grievous! Grievous!” it chanted. The chant was very rapidly taken up by all the other B-1 battle droids in the room and slowly, reluctantly by the ponies in it. Beginning, naturally, with Pinkie Pie. Grievous fantasized about murdering every single thing, organic or droid, in that room. Vividly. In great detail. When the chanting began to die away, another battle droid took the stage. “Ok everybody, our friend B-1X25 is going to be just fine! And I know from the bottom of my central processor that he would want us to go on without him and party!” The ponies and droids alike cheered at that. Somepony blew a streamer very loudly, and confetti floated down from the ceiling. In the corner, a blue-maned white pony in sunglasses fired up the DJ stand as the celebration recommenced. The cyborg general felt a tugging on his cape, and looked down to see a certain bright pink pony he had already developed a particular dislike for. “So, Grievy,” said Pinkie Pie, looking up at him. “Do you want your welcome to Ponyville cupcake now, or later?” “No! And my name is Grievous! General! Grievous! Understand?!” “So…” Pinkie rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “That’s a later then?” “No! Go away!” Grievous made to storm off in a huff, but Pinkie Pie clung to his cape. “Nopony escapes the cupcake, Grievy! Nopony!” “I hate you all,” thought Grievous. Far away from the celebration, from the village of Ponyville, and indeed from Equestria itself, another figure was on a mission. Princess Luna soared high above the lunar landscape, seeking the location of the foreign object she could sense on the moon’s surface. It took even the dark alicorn some time to locate even such a large thing on an object as big as the moon, but eventually she found what it was she sought. The Venator-class Star Destroyer Fateful was an absolute wreck. Battered first by the bombardment of the Separatist fleet, then by its unexpected and wild journey through hyperspace, and then finally from its crash landing onto the surface of Equus’ moon, it was a testament to the sturdy construction of Kuat Drive Yards that there was anything left of it at all. As it was, the port-side command deck was missing, the overall port superstructure was full of holes and completely compromised, and the bottommost decks had been ground off altogether during the ship’s long, slow crash onto the moon. Princess Luna naturally had little difficulty in finding entrance into a ship so full of holes. It was quite dark inside the Fateful, all power supplies having long since gone dead, so Luna lit her horn to see her surroundings. What she saw was ruin. The walls and floor of the ship, where they had not been ground or blasted into hunks of charred metal, were covered in what looked to be burn marks. Some places had them more intensely than others, but almost nowhere Luna visited was devoid of such things. And they were more plentiful where the bodies were lying. In her millennia of existence, Princess Luna had seen many sights, but very rarely had she witnessed such appalling carnage as she found aboard the Star Destroyer. Bodies – of both organics and droids – were scattered throughout the ship. But far more common were parts of bodies, torn apart by the forces that had been exerted on the ship. Dried blood, crimson and black, stained the durasteel everywhere Luna looked. The droid forces matched up roughly with what Grievous had brought with him – when they were whole enough for such identification anyway. The other side, the soldiers of what Luna presumed must be the Galactic Republic Grievous had named, somewhat resembled Twilight Sparkle’s description of the creatures that lived on the world beyond the mirror. Humans she had called them, though the ones Luna saw lacked the multicolored skin of their dimensional counterparts. Indeed, they all sported the same tone of brown skin, with solid black hair. When the princess was able to examine their faces, she noted that each soldier had the same face, save for a few cosmetic alterations such as tattoos or variant hairstyles. This seemed to confirm Grievous’ claim that they were all clones. They were, she noted, dressed in white battle armor that looked and felt somewhat like plastic. However, the burn marks indicated it was at least somewhat effective in protecting its wearers. The fact that they were all dead tended to belay that observation, though. Luna wandered through the great bay in the center of ship’s superstructure, noting as she did the many wondrous-looking craft around her. This place too was full of bodies, but was also full of the wreckage of dozens of smaller ships, which intrigued the alicorn. Perhaps this ship was meant as a carrier of lesser vessels? Was it intended to support a planetary invasion? Maybe that was why they had been destroyed in the bay when the ship was boarded? Having no answers to these questions, Luna pressed onwards through the ship. The many scenes of carnage that she passed only hardened the night princess’s resolve that such devastation should not be brought to Equestria. These Clone Wars must not be permitted to reach the surface of the planet below, no matter what must be done to stop it. For if such death was the result of one single battle, how much worse would the entire war be? Equestria would be a charred ruin, if indeed there was anything left of it at all. It was as Luna began to climb the remaining tower jutting out of the ship’s superstructure that she noticed something odd. Previously, all of the Republic’s clone soldiers she had observed had been dressed in white battle armor. As she climbed, she noticed that some of the clone corpses were dressed not in armor, but in cloth uniforms. The composition of the droid forces, by contrast, did not change as she ascended, except in that far more of the black-bodied ones were showing up. She began to have her suspicions. It was when Luna reached the bridge that she found her suspicions confirmed. She recognized the area for the control center that it was instinctively, needed nopony to explain that to her. There were spaces for many operators for a dizzying variety of consoles whose function she did not understand, but only pieces of three droids. Two were the black-armored models Grievous had called commandos, and one appeared to be the same model as the staff-wielding droid that had hung close to the general throughout their meeting. By contrast, the bridge was full of the bodies of clones. They had been killed in variety of ways, to look at it. Some had been beheaded, others cut across the chest, some lacked evident wounds besides general burning, and others had simple, clean-looking holes through their bodies. Luna even found the one human that did not look like the others. It looked female, with blonde hair with streaks of grey. Its legs were missing, and it had a burned hole through its chest. What united all corpses was the fact that they were, to a man, wearing cloth uniforms rather than battle armor. Sending armored troops to take lesser areas and unarmored, light-equipped men to take the bridge made no sense at all. On the other hoof, putting unarmored men in an area where they were unlikely to see combat was perfectly sensible to the alicorn’s mind. Grievous had lied to them. He had not been boarded. He had been the boarder.