//------------------------------// // Chapter 9: To End a War // Story: Mega Mares // by Keeper of time RD //------------------------------// The command room was bustling with activity as Twilight Sparkle walked in, with ponies darting from one station to another, or tending to the recently returned robot guardians. Escorting a thousand unicorns had slowed her down enough that she was the last of the six new guardians to return. Yet, she could only find four of her friends in the room. “Where’s Rarity? When she didn’t join me on the way back I figured she’d have come home before me,” Twilight asked, as the maintenance technician put the system interface helmet on her. Rainbow Dash, who had just removed a similar helmet, answered, “She banged herself up pretty good, more than her auto-repair function could handle. So they sent her down to the maintenance bay to get fixed up.” The horn of the maintenance tech tending to Twilight flashed for a moment before she tilted her head to the side and asked, “You too?” “Me too what?” “You didn’t use any magic at all on your mission?” “Oh, no I used plenty. It’s just that on the way back the unicorns who didn’t know any combat magic fed their magic to me so I could go all out protecting them.” The tech nodded her head. “Ah, at least that makes since.” “So what did you mean ‘me too?’ Who else came back with their magic systems toped off?” “Guilty,” Rainbow Dash said, with a big grin on her face. At that the familiar voice of Gears interrupted, and the stallion motioned for the mechanical pegasus to come over to him. “Miss Dash! Could you come here a moment?” “Guess I should go see what he wants. Although I think I have a good guess,” Rainbow added as if she was being called to a teacher’s desk to explain a lackluster exam score. With that the robo-pegasus with the prismatic mane trotted across the room. As soon Dash was close enough that he didn’t have to shout Gears said, “Rainbow Dash, I’m getting all kinds of erratic data from your system scan just now.” “Yeah, when I was fighting that griffin I suffered some kinda visual glitch. Basically, right when I did a sonic rainboom… If I did a sonic rainboom, maybe that was part of the glitch too. I can’t tell if that was just in my head or not.” “Something definitely did a sonic rainboom. But that’s not actualy what I’m talking about… maybe they are connected,” Gears said, starting to trail off into thought. Quickly shaking his head he added, “Anyway, what concerns me is your new weapon system. The auto-upgrade systems are only supposed to modify or add new systems that are compatible with the limits of your systems. But that new ‘Meteor Strike’ protocol seemed to be under the impression that your magic batteries are three times stronger than they actually are.” The mechanical pegasus blinked her eyes, then tilted her head to the side. “So what are you saying? That I can’t do what I did?” “Wait? You already used it? And you’re still in one piece?” Not even waiting for her to answer, Gears shook his head and added, “No, never mind. Look, I’ve only had the time to look at the raw data. I’ll look into details of the data later. But what you need to know right now is that your new weapon system requires a lot more magic than you have, so don’t use it at full power. If I where you I wouldn’t use it at anything more then one fourth its maximum output, and only if you still have full power in your weapon system’s magic power cells. Otherwise you’d be setting yourself up for an impact that would destroy you. Better yet, don’t use it at all until we can figure out what’s the deal with it. Okay?” “Speaking of odd data, you might want to look at this,” Dawn Dancer said, taping the computer screen in front of her. Ponies of both flesh and steel looked to Dawn’s screen. Rainbow Dash found the screen had a schematic of Pinkie Pie, not to unlike the one of herself currently on Gears’ screen. Then she simply tilted her head to the side, unsure what was supposed to be unusual about it. However, Gears’ expression quickly twisted into the king of ‘huh?’ expressions as he looked at the screen. “Is that a conjuration array?” he asked barely above a whisper, and inadvertently drawing attention to the fact that Pinkie’s two front hooves were no longer symmetrical. With a bit of a smirk and a raised eyebrow Dash said, “I take it that Pinkie did something she can’t do too?” “Actualy your change makes since. The upgrade system is designed to make minor modifications to you systems if it finds something compatible with your design. Your new weapon system is almost completely nothing but new protocol, and only needed very minor tweaks to your existing systems to accommodate. Baring the problem we just discussed.” Suddenly waving a hoof at the screen of Pinkie’s schematic he added, “This… this makes no since! You can’t even make a conjuration array by dismantling a blaster! They are made from completely different parts!” “Forgive my eavesdropping. But it merely sounds as if you have succeeded in recreating Pinkie Pie more accurately than you realized,” Luna said, stepping close. “However I will need to barrow the guardians from you. It is time.” Glancing back at the screen for a moment, Gears brushed his hoof against his chin for a second and then said, “Well these numbers aren’t self destructive. And I’ve already said what I needed to Rainbow Dash… Okay I can clear them for redeployment.” Luna gave a respectful bow. “Thank you.” And with that she led Rainbow toward an exit to the command room. As they joined the four robotic guardians already there Luna added, “Come, I will brief you on your next mission down in the maintenance bay. So that Rarity may hear as well.” They entered the maintenance bay to find Rarity standing on a table and being held steady in the clamps of several mechanical arms, as one such arm seemed to be screwing in a new front left leg. As soon as the leg was in place two unicorns came close and used their magic to start fusing the wires from the new leg to the ones from Rarity’s body that used to be attached to the old leg. Upon seeing that she had guests Rarity managed to say, “Oh dear me! I don’t think I’m quite presentable just yet. Forgive me princess.” “I hath seen many a damaged robot. By comparison you look spectacular, so fret not,” Luna answered. “Try not to move it,” the male of the two technicians working on Rarity said, as they raised armored plates to the top of her new leg and started welding them into place. Stepping aside so that she could face all of the robots in the room, Luna said, “Regardless, the time had come to end this war. The enemy hath made a bold move, yet we beat them back. What remains of the enemy forces will no doubt be defending their command center, and more importantly the one behind this whole war. If we can strike down the general of the renegade robots his master plan dies with him.” With a purple hoof raised as if at a classroom desk Twilight asked, “What makes you think that only the general knows the full plan?” “Easy, because you are not the first to defeat a unit commander. In the past we have salvaged the hard drives of said commanders. However, in their memories we have never found more then their immediate orders, maybe a day or two’s worth. But certainly never enough to piece together any true battle plan. As the war has gone on, it has become increasingly clear that the full battle plan never leaves the command fortress in Fillydelphia.” Luna paused for a moment to find the nearest computer. And under the glow of princess of the night’s magic several buttons clicked away until an image appeared of a large, tower-like, steel fortress looming over what remained of the city in question. “There are two objectives of importance within the enemy command center. The six of you need only concern yourself with one of them, the destruction of the robot mastermind who started this whole accursed affair.” “Begging your pardon princess, but what’s the second objective? If you don’t mind my asking?” Rarity said, as the technicians finished their work by using their magic to recolor the plane gray of the new parts to a polished white to match the rest of Rarity’s armor. “The current spirits of harmony are being held there. While you six fight your way up the tower to the command room, another team will be going down into the basement to free them and reunite them with the elements.” Twilight couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at Luna’s answer. “Wait, I though you said the enemy captured both the ponies and the elements? And that they were stored at different places now. So how can we reunite the ponies with the spirits of harmony with the elements if we don’t have the elements?” Luna couldn’t help but giggle at the outburst. “Surely you do not think you have been fighting this war alone do you? There are four other guardians much like yourselves. It is they who have been retrieving the elements. Missions like that were why they weren’t around to help you defend the base when we were first attacked today. In fact we now have all six elements being safely stored back here at this very moment, thanks to them.” “Oh, it’s just that I haven’t seen other robot ponies around.” “By the time they returned from their missions, you six had things well in hoof. So I sent them ahead on this next mission. You should find them engaging the enemy near the perimeter of the command tower. Speaking of which, you really shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer then necessary.” As Luna finished, the clamps on Rarity opened, allowing her to get down off of the worktable and join her friends. “Everything’s fixed. All systems fully charged!” the female of the two unicorn technicians announced. With a quick round of nods and affirmations the six friends headed for the deployment room. * * * * * * * Appearing on a rooftop near the edge of the city, the towering command center at the heart of the city wasn’t hard for the six robotic guardians to notice. Nor was distant sound of combat coming from within the city. “We need a plan!” Twilight declared, as she stepped forward. “Rainbow Dash, you’re our best flyer, so can you take overhead scout? You’d do best avoiding enemy fire despite flying above cover. Applejack, can you take point for the ground group? Rarity, can you take tail-guard?” A round of nods and quick salutes answered her. With a nod of her own Twilight added, “Then let’s move out!” They had barely gotten a city block from their starting point when Rainbow Dash gave her first report. “There’s some real heavy fighting going on over by that fort alright and… Oh my gosh! Those are the crusaders! And I think they need help! Catch up when you can!” And before anypony could respond Dash had blitzed on ahead. Ahead three robotic ponies were fighting valiantly. The yellow and white ones, that Rainbow Dash knew to be Apple Bloom and Sweetie belle respectively, were crouched behind what was left of a wall, trading blaster shots with an army of mechanical wolves. Perhaps trading shots wasn’t the right term, as most of the robo-wolves didn’t seem to care too much about the two robotic ponies at the edge of the fight. No, they were focused on the orange pegasus robot in the middle of the pack of wolves. The orange one, that could only be Scootaloo, was darting about, no that wasn’t right either. Sparks flew off of her hooves from the metal on metal grinding as she slid across the backs of the metallic wolves that she seemed to be dancing across. The leading edges of her wings were surging with lightning as she swung them like swords, cleaving the wolves to scrap as she passed by. Between attacking and parrying incoming blaster fire Scootaloo’s wings were a blur of motion. Despite that Scootaloo’s body crackled with another form of energy. The shimmer of shield damage as the inevitable outcome of being at near point-blank range, in the middle of hundreds of enemy robots made it impossible to dodge or deflect all of the incoming fire that she was drawing. Leaping high Scootaloo spun hard as she came down, clearing a landing spot as the shredded scrap metal of the wolves who’d formerly occupied it fell nearby. For the first time since her attack had begun she stood still, and in that brief second every single robo-wolf in the sight aimed their blaster at her. And yet Scootaloo’s only response was to smile and say, “That’s right, look at the decoy.” The wolves fired. Scootaloo vanished in a flash of green light, and a fraction of a second later a sea of red energy bolts converged on that very spot. The resulting explosion burned brightly for a second and when it faded not a single bit of orange scrap could be found. That’s when the wolves noticed the shadow that had swept over them. More importantly they noticed the massive wall of earth that had been torn out of the ground and raised up, blocking out the dying light of the setting sun. After that they noticed the white robot unicorn standing atop the wall, with a pink and purple mane, and a horn shinning radiantly with a soft green light. Finally they noticed that the wall was sparkling with green light as well and a flash of the same light flared beside the unicorn that faded to reveal the orange pegasus-bot. What they didn’t notice was the yellow robot earth pony behind the wall who coiled her hind legs and let loose with a kick that sounded too deep to be thunder but too loud to be anything but thunder. The base of the massive earthen wall cracked. The wall itself tumbled forward, toward the robotic wolves. And the two ponies atop the wall gave a slight hop and began sliding down the backside of the wall as it fell. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo even made it most of the way down the wall before is finally fell flat and a resounding crash accompanied by hundreds of small explosions sounded from beneath their hooves and the earthen slab. Apple Bloom hopped up onto the remnant of the stone slab she’d just knocked over and trotted over to her friends, where the three raised their hoofs and gave a cheer to go along with their high-hoof. “It’s about time they let us work together again!” Bloom said cheerfully, as the trio looked toward the towering fortress before them. “No kidding!” Sweetie added with a nod. “Incoming, six-o-clock, high,” Scootaloo said with a smile, giving no physical indication that she wasn’t still celebrating the moment with her friends. In a heartbeat all three spun around and pointed a beam cannon or ion cannon to the sky, only for Scootaloo to shout, “Wait!” And in calmer tone she added, “Is that who I think it is?” “Ah think so. Luna did say they were on-line now.” “And she said backup would be catching up to us soon.” By the time the trio had finished their comments the aerial intruder was close enough to solidly identify as Rainbow Dash. And at the moment she was flaring her wings hard and pointing all of her hooves forward so the thrusters in them could help slow her down as well. A sonic boom sounded just before Rainbow landed with a heavy thud, yet she held a strong pose that made the hard landing seem intentional. Then her composure faltered, as she looked into the eyes of the orange pegasus-bot before her and she just blinked, clearly wanting to speak but unable to find the words. When the blue robo-pegasus finally did speak she said, “Wow! You guys are all grown up!” The trio laughed and Scootaloo responded, “Heh, yeah. You didn’t think they’d make combat robots like us with only the memories of fillies did you?” With a swift hoof to her own face Rainbow Dash said, “Right two hundred year, of course they grew up. Sorry, it’s just the last time I remember seeing you guys was just before that meteor incident.” “Oh wow! We must have a good twenty years worth of memories on you then.” Stroking her chin with her hoof, Sweetie Belle saw fit to join the conversation, volunteering, “Actually, now that I think about it, we did cause a lot more property damage when we were kids then adults. So it could have made since to make us as we were as fillies.” “Thank you, walking calculator,” Scootaloo said with a scowl. “Seeing as we’re all robots here I think we all fit that description.” Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but chuckle at the exchange. Another thing she couldn’t help was the curiosity that drove her to look to the trio’s flanks. Finding that all three of them had identical cutie marks, depicting a blue shield with the silhouette of a caped pony in an adventurous stance. “You’re kidding right? You got cutie marks for being cutie mark crusaders?” “What?” Apple Bloom answered, and quickly followed with, “Oh, no. When they first made us we had our real cutie marks. But since they kept separating us on missions we had the mechanics repaint our crusader’s symbol there instead to remind us that we will always be a team.” “Whether we’re together or not!” Sweetie Belle added, pulling her two best friends into a hug. The smile on her face quickly faded and she added, “Umm… Rainbow Dash? Are Rarity and the others with you too?” Dash gave a quick nod. “Yeah, I didn’t see much in the way when I rushed over, so I’d give them another minute or two before they catch up.” Motioning to the ruble around them Scootaloo said, “I think we took care of most of the perimeter guards.” Then looking to the tower fortress she grinned and added, “If we walk a little on the slow side, maybe we can take out the turrets by the gate before the others catch up.” A smile and the hum of her ion cannon charging up was all the answer Rainbow Dash gave. And it was all the answer she needed to give. * * * * * * * The final turret guarding the front door was destroyed, not by the lightning of an ion cannon or the magical light of a blaster cannon, but by the raging flames of Twilight’s plasma cannon. As she looked away from the molten slag that remained of the turret Rainbow Dash asked, “What took you guys so long?” “Well we could’ve caught up sooner if y’all didn’t keep running on ahead like that,” Applejack said. “Sorry about that. But we did have orders to take care of the perimeter defenses for y’all.” “Well you did a god job of that. But now that we’re here how are we suppose to get in? After all that fighting I’d imagine that this gate is locked up tight,” Rarity said trotting over to the massive blast door that passed for the main entrance. Twilight gave a quick nod. “This gate looks pretty tough. It might even be easier to cut through one of the walls than try to bust though this. And I’m guessing they won’t open it if we just ask nicely.” A sudden clang rang out, unseen mechanisms roared to life and the gate began sinking into the ground. “That depends on who the doorman happens to be at the moment,” a male voice said from just behind the lowering blast door. As the gate continued to lower into the ground the lone figure behind it was revealed to be a robotic pegasus stallion, with a violet mane and light-blue armor. “Who’s this?” Twilight asked. As the crusaders walked casually past the stallion Scootaloo stopped and said, “Everypony, meet Scooter.” “Scooter?” the six robo-mares still outside asked together, several of them raising an eyebrow as they did. Giving a gentlemanly bow he said, “It seems I was named after my great grandma Scootaloo. Never really caused any problems in my life. Though now days, you may want to be careful when using the nickname ‘Scoots’ as both of us tend to answer to that name.” With a more serious look on his face he pointed to a hallway on the right side of the room and added, “The stairs up are down that way. Good luck.” “Aren’t you coming, too?” Rarity asked. “No ma’am. The crusaders and I were given the mission to rescue the spirits of harmony. Do us a favor and try not to bring the building down on our heads for ten minutes or so. The spirits of harmony are flesh and blood ponies after all. And seeing as one of them is the closest thing to a mother we robo-guardians really have… so yeah I’d really like to make sure they all get out of here alive before you do any major demolition, okay?” Rainbow Dash was the first to step forward. “Small arms only, for ten minutes. Yeah we can handle that. See you back at base!” With that she gave a salute and led the charge down the hallway that had been pointed out. A second later her friends gave similar acknowledgments and followed after her. On the first floor the wake of destruction Scooter had left behind made it clear that he had entered the building someplace on the other side of the building and fought is way to the front door. Quickly finding the stairs, the six friends headed up and found that the stairs only went up one floor before forcing them back out to seek a new stairwell to continue their assent. The floors above the first presented hallways with abrupt turns, traps and plenty of gorilla-robot-soldiers and fixed turrets to slow their progress. And yet, it rarely took more then a minute for the six heroines to cross each floor and reach the next stairwell. * * * * * * * It wasn’t until tenth floor that they found any real resistance in the form six robotic manticores. On one side of the room Applejack raised her hoof and three claws made of orange magic appeared on the end of it. Slashing down, the magical claws not only cut through the front armor of her target but also unleashed a wave of energy that finished the job and even scared the wall behind the sundered remains of the robo-manticore. On the other side of the room a five-pointed emerald star struck one of the manticores and exploded, showering a fair portion of the room with crystal shards. Of course, the manticore that had been struck was peppered the most by the shards of the exploding crystal and stumbled back a step. Even with the electric flash, revealing that it still had some shield energy left, several of the shards were imbedded into it’s physical armor, although not deeply. Correcting its staggered stance the manticore’s recovery was short lived as two more crystal stars finished what the first had started. “I suppose that weapon would be better suited to dealing with large groups of weaker enemies,” Rarity said, as she glanced at the numerous emerald shards that were now scattered about the room. Not far from Rarity another mechanical manticore collapsed to the floor with covered in dozens of small, metal, brightly colored cards protruding from its armor and even a few slots from where the razor-like cards had punched through the armor all together. “Well this razor confetti seems to work well for single targets,” Pinkie Pie said, hopping near her recently felled foe. More towards the middle of the room Fluttershy stood motionless, with the shoulder pads of her armor opened up, presenting an additional set of shield emitters. Said emitters were glowing brightly, producing a wall of pinkish light a few feet in front of her that happened to be holding back three manticores. Near the top of Fluttershy’s force field were Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash hovering just high enough to fire over the energy wall while still using it for cover as they sent fire and lightning down on their foes from their plasma and ion cannons respectively. Just as the first two manticores fell Applejack came running in from the side and swung her tiger strike attack in and uppercut that cleaved the third manticore into two. Said attack also sent another shockwave flaying that slammed into a wall hard enough to dent it enough that the outside twilight could be seen around the edges. “Applejack!” Twilight and Rainbow both chided their friend. “What? I didn’t brake it! And ain’t it been ten minutes by now?” “True. But after helping all those unicorns escape it’s a fair guess to assume that the spirits of harmony might not be in the best shape, and might not be able to move as quickly as the crusaders would like. So we really should give them as much time as possible to get clear before we start dropping two-ton pieces of building armor from a hundred feet up.” Applejack sighed and said, “Fine, no more showing off until we get to the top.” And with that the six resumed their trek up the tower. * * * * * * * Emerging onto the twentieth floor the six mechanized mares found the general of the renegade robots to be what looked like a mechanical minotaur, save for the bat-like set of wings on his back. The general’s armored exterior was primarily colored red and gold. “How dreadful! He looks like a demon,” Rarity muttered to her friends. While the others nodded or whispered similar sentiments Rainbow Dash’s eyes were drawn to the sword in the general’s hand. More precisely the energy crackling around it, not like the energy of a shield system but more like the energy that flowed from the leading edge of Scootaloo’s wings that let her use them like weapons. Taking notice of the blue pegasus’ gaze the general rose from his chair and said, “To be honest, swordplay is not my preferred means of combat. But I was expecting to see the orange pegasus again, and I find it unwise to face her without a means to parry.” Motioning to a monitor he added, “Imagine my surprise when I saw this on my security cameras.” The computer screen in question was replaying a loop of the battle on the tenth floor. “So tell me. What makes the six of you, with hardly a day’s worth of experience, greater in Luna’s eyes than the four robots who have been troubling me for quite some time?” As the unofficial leader of the group, Twilight Sparkle stepped forward. “I’m not sure. But if I had to guess, and I am, Luna chose us because of simple numbers. It’s harder to evade six than four.” “You seam surprisingly modest, for the first alicorn model robo-pony I’ve seen. But perhaps that modesty is warranted. After all, every sensor in this tower is telling me that despite being a truly new model, you seem you be nothing more than an slightly stronger unicorn model that they slapped an inferior flight system on. Sure your slightly superior size clearly accounts for your stronger magic energy signature. Yet I’m still bigger,” the general said, gesturing to the easy observation that he stood two and a half times taller than the robotic ponies gathered before him. “Size isn’t everything.” The general laughed. “Those weak fleshling ponies would think that. But that’s not entirely true. You can only reinvent a motor so small before the only way to make it stronger is to make it bigger. Even with magic’s disdain for the laws of physics, the only way to make a robot’s magic systems stronger is to use a bigger magic battery, or multiple of them, either way you need more space.” Twilight opened her mouth to answer but Rainbow Dash interrupted. “And that’s why we don’t deserve to rule. The real Rainbow Dash watched the magic of friendship grow within herself and her friends. She watched the strength of their spirits grow with out bounds, without regard to the size of their bodies. So the way I see it, is that the spirits of the living are something better then the cheap imitation of life we are! And that makes the living something worth protecting!” Dash punctuated her last line by slamming her hoof to the floor with a resounding clang. With a shake of his head the general countered, “Even if I were to believe you. What good is this precious strength of spirit, when it couldn’t stop me from slaughtering them while their cites burned around them? Clearly even it isn’t enough to make up for the greater weakness of body and mind that they suffer. Look around you! Two thirds of Equestria has already fallen to me, and who do they send to stop me? More robots! No, clearly we are the superior entity. And once the fleshlings have been eliminated I will rule this world!” Cleaving the air with his sword a wave of red energy came off of the general’s sword and flew at the ponies. Applejack responded by taking a swing with her tiger strike and sending out a shockwave of her own. The two waves of energy met in the middle of the room and canceled each other out by exploding in a shower of sparks. Pinkie Pie responded by firing a dozen or so shots of her razor confetti. The general met this attack by spinning his sword as if were a helicopter blade, deflecting every single colorful razor-card. However, at the same time Rarity shot several of her exploding crystals at the wall behind the general and the crystal shrapnel did indeed hit the general in a way that drew the electric flash of shield damage. As the barrage of metal and crystal continued, the general reached behind his back, pulled out a pistol-sized blaster and bolted from his place before his throne. Of course his idea of pistol-sized mean the blaster was about the size of the average school filly. But minor details aside, he returned fire with it while using the sword to cut a path through the incoming attacks as best he could. The six ponies scattered. Unable to get close Applejack settled for shooting with her beam cannon, not too unlike Twilight and Fluttershy who were firing off their plasma cannon and ion cannons as quickly as they could. In addition to all of that, every few seconds a fully charged blast from Dash’s ion cannon flashed across the room. For such a large robot the general moved with a surprising amount of speed and grace and he jumped, slid, rolled and otherwise did his best to dodge his way around the room. But between his blaster and the shockwaves from his sword he could only force his adversaries to stop attacking and dodge for cover two at a time. Things got even worse for him when Twilight Sparkle started timing her magic barrages to coincide with Rainbow Dash’s fully charged ion cannon shots, leaving him to chose between parrying the undodgeable lightning flash or the target seeking magic missiles and take the hit from the other. Seeing his shield energy drop to dangerously low levels the general made the only move he could, yell, “ENOUGH!” A sudden stillness came over the room, and a strange silence as six robot ponies suddenly stopped moving and held their cannons steady, pointed at the robot general that they thought was surrounding. In that brief moment the only thing moving was Rainbow Dash’s wings and she hovered in place. The general casually tossed his weapons aside further adding to the illusion of surrender. And yet, the moment his weapons hit the ground the heavy clang of multi-ton metal latches releasing echoed through the room. The back wall suddenly dropped into the floor making the room about twenty feet deeper than before. Two robotic manticores came running out of the newly revealed space. And were promptly obliterated by the converging energy-weapon fire from three ponies each. “Didn’t you just watch us beat six of those? How did you expect two to stop us?” Applejack asked. “They weren’t supposed to beat you, only buy me the seconds needed to do this,” the general answered, as he motioned mechanical tentacles now attaching to matching sockets on his back. More tentacles completely covered the back wall and wrapped around the general’s legs as they lifted him up, holding him aloft, more or less centered in front of the mass. Slamming her hooves to the ground Pinkie Pie shouted, “Oh! You want to play transformers! Well I can do that too!” With that her body went ridged and her chest opened up, revealing her party cannon. Two massive flashes of pink energy flashed across the room, causing the general and the mass of mechanical vines he was attached to flash with electricity. Then a clicking noise came from Pinkie’s prized cannon. (Despite the fact that said cannon had no mechanisms capable of making such a noise.) “Uh oh,” she added, as she realized she’d just spent the last of her magic weapons system’s energy. The general gave a slight laugh. “Impressive. But not impressive enough.” Raising his hand four mechanical tentacles with beam cannons on the end came out of the mechanized mass behind him. The four cannons opened up, sending a spray of red energy shots at the pink pony-bot. Forced to scramble to dodge the barrage, Pinkie jumped over, slid under or otherwise spun to the sides of the chain of beam cannon fire. Fluttershy’s shoulders popped open as she projected her shield wall to give her friends a safe haven. A few more waves of crystal shards scattered, eventually adding to the shards laying on the floor, before Rarity leaned in close to Twilight and whispered, “I hate to say it, darling. But I’m out of magic for my weapons. So if you have a plan, do share.” Even as Rarity joined the others in attacking with only their generator-powered cannons, Applejack growled, “Ah can’t even get close enough to try using my big guns!” Twilight Sparkle could only mutter an ‘uh’ as her eyes darted around looking for any piece of information that could help. Not that the constant flashing of beam cannon fire from friend and foe alike was helping her stay focused. The now immobile general was taking every hit fired at him, yet he didn’t seem to care. And what bothered Twilight the most was the sneaking suspicion that she knew why, but she couldn’t put her hoof on it. The answer came when Rainbow Dash swooped down, close to Twilight, and pointed a hoof to a monitor off to one side of the room. “Does that screen mean what I think it does?” Examining the screen in question Twilight found part of it had a bar that was draining and refilling. As if to finish making her point Dash flew just above the top of Fluttershy’s shield and fired a blast from her ion cannon. The bar on the screen dipped and refilled in perfect sync to Dash’s attack and in the back of Twilight’s mind the image of the dragon-bot at the prison returned to her. “His shields are recharging…” Twilight uttered, quietly at first and then repeating it as a yell loud enough to be herd by everypony. “Everypony, we have to punch through his shields all at once! Charge up your cannons and fire together!” she quickly added. Fluttershy gave a slight nod, and everypony hiding behind her shield gave an understanding nod in return. A second later that shield vanished and Fluttershy started charging up her ion coon. The general provided a barrage of beam-cannon fire of his own, causing everypony to scatter, dodging one way or another. “Now!” With the command given six blasts converged on the general. And Twilight’s metaphorical heart sank as she saw the monitor indicate that they’d only knocked the general’s shield down to half strength before it regenerated back to full. With a sinister grin the general said, “Like I said, size matters. And now, you face not only me, but also every generator in this city! You can not possibly hope to stand against that much power!” Then for good measure, the general cackled maniacally as the mass of mechanical tentacles just above his head parted to reveal a giant beam-cannon lens about ten feet across. The giant cannon glowed brightly for a second and fired a column of red energy across the room. Naturally anypony even remotely in the direction the large lens was pointed had jumped to the side, so the blast accomplished little more than singing a few tail hairs and causing the armored plate in the wall it did hit to glow white hot for a moment. Amidst the clatter of metal hooves, the high-pitched buzz of charging energy weapons, and somepony shouting ‘Twilight think of something!’ Rainbow Dash heard a low crinkling sound. Tracing the sound to its source she noticed the armored plate that the maga-cannon had hit was emitting the noise as it cooled, warping slightly in the process. A devious smile flashed on Rainbow’s face just before she flew to the top of the back wall, sounded an ear-splitting whistle, and started blasting away at the mega-cannon with her ion cannon. At first the general tilted his head to the side, but quickly decided to honor the request for attention from the robo-pegasus by pointing all of his guns her way. No one was really surprised when the moment the cannons opened on at her Dash fired all of her thrusters to slid out of the way, leaving the wall behind her glowing like the other misses from the mega-cannon. What did surprise some of her friends was when Rainbow shouted, “AJ! I need a window!” In response Applejack held a leg up and bent her knee to make it like a hook. “Point me where you want it!” she shouted back. Swooping down Rainbow Dash hooked her friend’s leg, spun hard and launched Applejack at the still glowing armored plate at the top of the wall behind them. The mechanical earth pony’s hind legs glowed with magic as she coiled them and when she reached her target a resounding clang proclaimed the armored plate’s departure into the night’s sky beyond the wall it was formerly attached to. As Applejack fell to the floor and scrambled back to her other friends Rainbow Dash darted out of the newly made window, vanishing into the night’s sky. “Ah, so she was the scout,” the general mused aloud. “The what?” Twilight asked. “You know, the scout. The one who’s job was to flee with your backup hard drives when things went bad. When the three who call themselves ‘crusaders’ face me it’s the white unicorn who always run’s first. And usually only the orange one stays and fights to the end, to maximize the other two’s chances of getting away.” Pausing and looking into Twilight’s eyes with a look of bewilderment on her face Pinkie Pie said, “Ohhh! Is that what those detachable hard drives are for?” The robotic ponies in the room all burst into laughter, and even Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle as she answered, “Apparently.” Applejack said something. But she to too busy to lying down, pounding the floor with one of her front hoofs and laughing historically for anyone to make out more than a few words like ‘Dash… run away… good one.’ The general could only tilt his head at the display before him. What did he miss? What did these robo-ponies find so amusing about their impending doom? Did they really think that the one that had fled would come back? Or did they think they would last long enough for the blue pegasus to find and destroy all of the generators linked to the tower? For all the questions that passed through his mind, the general could find no logical scenario under which the robot ponies were victorious. Shrugging the thoughts off he ended the momentary reprieve all that thinking had given to his doomed foes. * * * * * * * High above the tower Rainbow Dash came to a hover. With the full moon lighting the night it wasn’t really that dark. In fact, even though the night made it impossible to make out their colors she was able to make out ten equine-like figures moving away from the tower fortress in the city below. As a night breeze brushed her ears Gears’ warning encode in her mind, and Dash gazed into the metallic sheen of her hoof, glistening in the moonlight. Slowly shaking her head she whispered, “The life of the lifeless is a small price to pay to save the living.” Then she set her meteor strike system to full power and dove. Mach one came in a flash in Rainbow Dash’s airspeed indicator and she poured all the power she could into her flight boosters. Mach two... A flash of doubt passed through Rainbow’s mind as she passed mach three and nothing extraordinary happened. Mach four… No, I have to try! Mach five came, the sky exploded in prismatic light, and the visual glitch repeated as Rainbow Dash was certain that she saw fur instead of metal on the limbs stretched out before her. * * * * * * * Inside the tower the general suddenly stopped his assault on the five pony-bots before him and he looked up and out the hole in the wall. An inexplicable prismatic light shown through the hole and he couldn’t help but wonder why. Equally mesmerized by the light two of the robot ponies traded a few words. “Uh, Twi?” “Yes?” “She’s not going all east barn is she?” “I think she is.” Then the purple pony-bot suddenly clapped her front hooves together and cheerfully said, “Actually that could work!” Taking notice of where she was Twilight’s voice peaked as she added, “Oh crud! That could work!” A radiant glow surrounded Twilight Sparkle’s horn just as a prismatic motion blur shot into and across the room in the blink of an eye, and slammed into the general. * * * * * * * The twentieth floor of the fortress tower exploded outright, sending debris everywhere. A nanosecond later, about four floors down, one wall exploded outward as a mass of debris continued the path of the rainbow-colored streak that had entered the tower higher up. On a rooftop about a mile away a purple flash of light faded and left five robotic ponies to witness the top half of the tower fortress falling over, more or less coming down on the debris that had been ejected from around the sixteenth floor. A series of explosions began ripping apart the lower half of the tower. (That probably had something to do with tons of energy being directed to systems that no longer existed shorting out everything else instead.) * * * * * * * Rainbow Dash awoke in a crater, immobile and surrounded by debris. Some of which probably belonged to her. The first thing she did was promptly disregard parts her damage report, as it was telling her that her main generator, backup battery and magic battery were all offline. Clearly not true as she was getting power from somewhere. Considering that she couldn’t move she figured the part that said only her front right leg was responding to data pings but reporting it’s motors were broken was telling the truth. Weakly scratching the dirt she found that her right wing must have still been attached despite most of the sensors in it being destroyed. Looking beyond her internal display and finding the world around her badly pixilated she figured that ‘cameras operating at 10%’ sounded about right. With the world so badly pixilated she couldn’t even tell what anything was… except for her… A few feet away, and crystal clear, sitting before her was a flesh and blood, fur covered, sky-blue pegasus with a rainbow-colored mane. “You? You’re… Rainbow Dash?” the robot asked. “And I’m told, so are you,” the mare answered. “But… you’re dead.” “Come on! You have my memories. You should know I’m too awesome to let something like that stop me!” the mare said with a brash smile. “You helped me… You made the rainbooms happen, didn’t you?” “Guilty. When I heard that they made a robot version of me I just had to come and make sure it was awesome enough to share my name.” The only motors in her body that seemed to work right were the ones in her neck, so the robot Dash tilted her head to look up at the mare as best she could and said, “Am I good enough?” The smile on the mare’s face suddenly became a gentle one. “Just now you proved you were willing to pay the hero’s price. So yeah, you’re awesome enough to hold our name.” Not sure if her face could make a smile at the moment the robot said, “I’m glad.” “And I’m proud. Look I’d better get going before the others miss me or something. Somepony has to be awesome over there too you know.” With that mare reached out and touched her hoof to the robot’s muzzle, and then faded away. A second latter Rainbow Dash passed out again. * * * * * * * Once more Rainbow Dash’s mind awoke, this time to the sound of two voices. One she knew but the other she couldn’t place. “Hold your horses. We’re engineers not miracle works, so just give us a minute,” an unfamiliar mare’s voice said. “Hey! There we go! I think she’s booting up!” said the voice that defiantly belonged to Scootaloo. Once more Rainbow’s mind was barraged with her internal systems damage repot. This one seem much more reasonable as it actually accounted for her having power from her damaged yet functional main generator and most of her limbs being damaged but working. Opening her eyes, Dash found her left eye was still giving her a uselessly pixilated signal, but her right eye was giving her a clear look at the world. And the first thing she saw was a one-eyed Scootaloo looking back at her. “Scoots! What happened to your eye?” Tapping her empty left eye socket Scootaloo answered, “Oh this? Yeah… both of your cameras were shot so we used one of mine. You’ll need to see if you’re going to make your way back to base with us after all.” Stepping forward Rarity offered, “Look on the bright side, purple isn’t too far off from rose.” Slowly standing up Dash said, “Yeah, I’m not worried about how it looks.” Taking an unsteady step forward, Rainbow Dash stumbled but caught herself before she fell outright. “Careful. We practically have you held together with spit wads and duck tape,” said the unknown mare beside Scootaloo. A quick examination proved her to be a pegasus with a white coat, purple eyes and a tri-colored mane of red, yellow and blue. Looking down at herself, Dash found that she did in fact have a great amount of silvery tape bound to just about everything. Seeing that Dash was looking over her wings, Scootaloo said, “And don’t even think about trying to fly. You’d rattle yourself apart if you did. You’ll have to hoof it back to base with the rest of us. Think you can make it, or will I have to carry you?” “Oh I a can make it. Might take me a while, but I can make it.” After a pause Rainbow Dash asked, “So, did we win? Is it over?” Scootaloo motioned to draw attention to the ponies gathered around them. The robots Dash knew but in addition to the mare beside Scootaloo there were five more flesh and blood ponies gathered around. Two were earth ponies, two were unicorns and one more pegasus. Of the earth ponies one was a mare with a yellow coat and pink mane, the other was a tan stallion with a red mane. One of the unicorns was a white unicorn mare with a silver mane, while the other was a stallion with a lavender coat and blue mane. Finally the other pegasus was a mare with a gray coat and white mane. As soon as she was sure Rainbow Dash had seen the non-robot ponies, Scootaloo said, “Once we get them back to base and give the elements back to them, they’ll be able to break the banishing spell on Celestia. With the general gone, the reaming renegades in disarray and Celestia back, this war can’t last much more then a week. So yeah, we won.”