Licorice stomped on the gas pedal and spun the vehicle around, ignoring the orders given by the alarmed policemen. Many had to jump out of the way of the raging van as it punched through their vehicles, tossing debris everywhere and throwing the metal vehicles through lamp posts and gardens. The unicorn refused to stop for anyone, so he rushed forward through the city until he reached the outskirts. Luckily, no one else was blocking the entrances to the city, so there were no problems. Some stragglers blocked their way as they went through the city, however. They didn't pose much of a threat to the mobile home.
"So...Who exactly are your friends, Redmint?" Louis asked.
"Wh...What do you mean? I already knew them."
Louis narrowed his eyes and started to approach Redmint rather menacingly. This didn't go unnoticed by Starburst who was getting ready to intercept any attacks. "How is it that you knew friends who were so well versed in military technology?"
"W-w-well...I didn't. I just...knew that they knew about technology and brought it to them." The stallion smiled nervously.
Louis shook his...her...their head in disapproval. "Really? So, you JUST SO happened to know a group of people who JUST SO HAPPENED to KNOW how to work on a military-grade, state-of-the-art machine?!" The mare gestured towards Starburst.
"I...I...OKAY FINE! I was in debt with some really bad people. They told me I could get away from it if I just brought them a military combat robot."
The van was just barely a few hundred meters out of the city and into the deserted lands again that it violently screeched to a halt, throwing everyone forward, even Starburst. Redmint quickly scampered to his hooves and, in a panic, grabbed Starburst and righted her up. He even went so far as to dust her off and check her parts.
"You WHAT?!" Licorice bellowed.
"So it didn't fall out of the vehicle. I stole it, then I brought it back to them."
Louis rubbed his temples as best as he could and looked above his hoof as he ran it across his face.
"So how did it end up back in your hands? You stole it again?"
Redmint fumbled with his hooves and sat next to Starburst. He didn't dare to look up as shame started building up inside of him.
"Well...the drones within that truck were clean slates. It means that they had been wiped of all previous commanding officers and all but their operating systems were left on their memory drives. Because I touched one of them, I'm guessing I got my hair or something in it, so when the guys activated it, it only recognized me and would only let me order it. Because of that, I was forced to stay and work with it while they studied it. After a while, they started to pay me for it, but I didn't get much anyways."
"This doesn't explain how you managed to get her into a transformable state. I mean, she's one hell of an advanced piece of hardware," Licorice interjected.
"I kinda tricked them with a taunt." Redmint smiled awkwardly. "I said that if they truly wanted to outperform the military, they would need to learn how to create transformable machines, and since the neuroponies had just come out at the time..."
"So you convinced them to change it into this. Any particular reason you chose a female?"
Licorice reeled his head back in disgust, the emotion clearly spread across his face. "I didn't choose the gender. They chose it because the frame was smoother and was easy to craft...at least, that's what they told me..." Redmint trailed off and put a hoof to his mouth. "But...when they finished, I stole her back and met up with you guys...well, everyone except Louis. You came after."
Louis and Licorice both groaned in irritation. The unicorn went back to his seat and started up the vehicle again while Raspberry just watched them all with a spry and very cute expression. Even if she was still mainly neuropony, her face was still rounded enough her doing the 'sad face' that dogs loved to do would still be considered cute.
In Crinan, a metropolis close to the Baltimore Sea, a battle had begun. There were large blocks of the city that were destroyed. Debris littered the streets, vehicles were stripped of their pieces while others sat in their burnt ashes. The sky-scrapers were still standing but their lower levels were heavily damaged. Neurobots and basic drones were collapsed onto the floor and heavily damaged. Many of them seemed to have been hit by explosives. In this block, there was no silence. The sounds of gunfire and explosions rocked this place without care for those who were caught in the crossfires, and it was due to this that specialized enforcers were deployed to cut off the block from anyone wanting to enter it. Immense barricades of a reinforced structure and openings at their thickened bottoms allowed the police to fire from the protection of their walls while those atop could fire at any incoming threats with machine guns. Armored troop transports stayed in front of them as well, their turrets constantly rotating to be able to engage any potential threat in the vicinity. These armored vehicles did not use riot suppressor rounds. They used live ammo.
At one of the barricades, a group of neuroponies were being escorted into an armored vehicle by a neurobot. It was very much like the others being used by the Enforcers: Bipedal, heavily armored, and its head resembling a helmet with a thin, red visor. It pretty much only resembled the normal police enforcers with body armor covering its whole body, the colors varying from white at the joints to blue for the rest of the body. A golden star with the words 'Crinan Enforcement Squad' surrounding it sat in the middle of the machine's chest. The Neurobot was easily twice as tall as an average human and had a much larger build with wider shoulders. The one escorting the neuroponies was carrying a round, giant, black rifle with no sights atop its rail.
"What the hell is going on with people?" one of the officers said.
She was sitting behind one of the rounded fortifications sitting in front of the wall. The fortification had a heavy grenade launcher sitting atop it while boxes of ammo sat next to the police officer in riot armor.
"I don't know. These weird machines have been preventing everyone from escaping them, so several have gone crazy because of it," spoke an enforcer atop the walls.
"I still don't see how that warrants these...riots."
The other officer slammed his hands on the top of the barricade and looked down. "You mean you don't know?"
"Don't know what?"
"The machines are becoming organic, so no one can leave them and go back into their own bodies."
"What?!"
"Yeah. Ever since then, things have started to degrade."
The woman put her hand in her hair and passed it through as she stuttered while speaking."But...but...That's impossible! That breaks the laws of physics!"
"Oh yeah? Which ones?" the man asked in a do-tell tone.
"Well...Several..."
"Name them."
"Umm...uhhh...the second law of thermodynamics?"
"How is the chaotic state of an enclosed environment relative to machines becoming organic?"
"Well--"
"Yeah. You don't know." The man pushed himself off the wall and went back to the machine gun.
Elsewhere in the block, a group of people wearing an assortment of colorful but thick clothes were hiding behind a collapsed piece of building and shooting through the broken holds for a window frame. They were exchanging rounds at humans and neuroponies hiding behind damaged vehicles.
"Give in to evolution, now! Nature has decreed that we must become the equines that these machines turn us into! You have to accept it for the better!" one of the people behind the vans and cars shouted.
"Never! You are abominations of reality! You are a threat to the human race! The Evolutionaries will fall to the cleansing grip of the Human Revelation!"
An explosion close to both saw the two parties blown away as a construction oriented neurobot collapsed through one of the buildings and fell to the ground in a heap of smoke and fire. Its yellow body and clamp hands fell heavily onto the streets with resounding clanks, cracking the pavement as they did so.
More neuroponies ran over from behind the buildings to charge the position of the humans, but they found themselves blown away by make-shift grenades thrown at them by a higher position above the joint humans and neuroponies. Neither side would give up.
Licorice looked at the sky to see that the Painter of the Sky was coloring it with a fading shade of bright orange, yellow, and receding blue. Looking at it, he started to feel a bit dizzy and his vision was blurring. He tried to shake his head and hit it gently with a hoof, but nothing worked.
"I'm going to pull over. For some reason, I'm starting to feel tired..."
"We're all feeling a bit tired. Ooo! A slumber party!" Raspberry blurted out.
"Are you sure?" Louis asked with a rather drowzy voice. "I feel like...I just walked through a room full of sleeping gas. I really...need to..."
Louis couldn't finish his sentence that he had already collapsed onto the floor and had fallen asleep. After Licorice managed to park the vehicle onto a grassy patch of dirt next to the road, he too fell asleep. In fact, all but Starburst fell asleep, the drone watching over her 'commander' ever vigilantly and with the utmost peak of patience.