Not long after breakfast, I was giving Shining Armor and Celestia another 'official' dossier on the most dangerous beings that could end up in the world.
"This here is Albert Wily." I handed them a thick book, with the picture of the mad scientist himself attached with a clip.
"After that 'Kefka' guy and Ganondorf, this one looks almost tame." Shining commented. "How many kinds of evil sorcery does he have and how many mountains do we have to drop over him?"
"He's a different sort; he's a scientist, one as mad as he is a genius, which is the whole problem." I said. "He builds robots, and I shudder to think what he is capable of with access to magic, since I get the feeling that those that stay human are the exception."
"Why is that?" Celestia asked me with a feeling of dread just starting to creep through her spine.
"Because I haven't been human in a whole day but do not feel the same oppression from the air of orderliness around the world; I feel like the abundance of 'order' isn't fighting my existence." I pointed out, then had a startling revelation. "Oh my God!"
This made Celestia and Shining almost jump out of their coats.
"What is it?!" They asked in unison.
"I can have fried bread literally all day long every day and be phisically and psychologically unable to get sick of it! With no negative impact on my health whatsoever!" I yelled out, making Celestia and Shining Armor stare at me for a few seconds, panting with their hearts in their throats. Then, as Shining slumped back into his seat, hoof over his chest, Celestia sighed and almost touched her head to the table.
"In my defense, I have zero experience with this political manure you just shoved into my hooves, and it's your fault for listening to me."
"It'd be worse not to..." Shining muttered.
"Anyways, this guy makes robots; his 'robot masters' are armies in and of themselves, and one of his greatest, Bass, is even more powerful - then he combines with his support unit to be even greater."
Images of the different bosses of the games - including Bass in his combined form - appeared on a small projection screen I magic'd up, the bosses surrounded by hordes of their smaller robotic minions.
"Did- is one of them made out of wood?" Shining asked, squinting.
"He can make them out of anything, with complex and powerful energy weaponry and shielding - using science-based principles, of course, so neutralizing them might be really, really hard."
"There might be a way - we would have to talk to my sister, as she is experienced in metalworking." Celestia frowned delicately. "This Doctor is quite a threat."
"And I'm afraid it gets worse." I pursed my lips, wondering how to summarize it. "His magnum opus, Zero, is such a... a masterpiece, that even when driven insane - by the malicious code Wily added to his program to ensure he would be destructive - he could wipe the floor with a robot built the next century; one that could make Robot Masters look like wind-up toys."
"Why would he drive his own creation insane?" Celestia, obviously horrified, looked at the image of the red, blonde-haired robot with compassion.
"Because Zero has what few other robots of the time had - free will." I sighed in relief, as the next image was of a decidedly-non-psychotic Zero next to a blue robot. "He, almost as if to spite his creator, went on to become one of the greatest defenders of society. That's not the bad part, though."
"I almost don't want to know..." Shining Armor breathed out.
"See, at one point in one timeline, Zero became separated from his body; while he got a copy that, thanks to his ability to adapt, became as good as his original one... the original fell in the hands of another madman, one as much of a genius as Wily was. He- I- Look, one of Zero's nicknames is 'God of Destruction', so just add that to a robot without free will, actually programmed to be as destructive as he is obedient."
"From this info, there aren't many ponies that could do anything meaningful against them, much less stop them." Shining commented, flipping through a booklet. "We've got some protocols for various threats, but there's just so little overlap - anything this strong tends to be large and not so fast, anything this fast spends so much energy in being fast that their defenses are weak to something, even then there's the weapons."
"What has me worried is that this..." Celestia frowned as she debated how to refer to such an unpleasant character as Weil. "Individual turned his soul into information and energy, information that can cross world-barriers easily."
"I- I don't think it works quite like that." I said. "It is not that simple, and he'd be more... more like a Windigo. He'd need something more stable, since the only reason he could do that was because the world has this parallel plane called 'Cyberspace', made up precisely of data and energy."
"The machinery he uses as- hey, they are pretty much multiple phylacteries for his soul." Shining commented, surprised, leafing through the booklet. "Yeah, those would pull on each other, rooting themselves to their world."
We debated some more about what to do in case of spontaneous robot appearances (unlikely as they are). Later (several weeks later I mean), I found out that people that had a chance to survive but died in a 'possible' timeline, or 'canonically' survived, are more likely to end up here than someone that just 'dies'. This is (most of the time) because Fate and Destiny always win against Time, as Discord already said - there is no version of the story in which Harry Potter dies as an infant, or where [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] from [REDACTED] fails to come back, therefore, if it happens anyways, there's a small hiccup in space-time, the alternate timeline doesn't happen, but now you've got a person that's alive and outside of their reality, so he or she gets shoved into another one; like loading a save file, but with leftover data that gets tossed into the inter-Reality spaces.
There is a reason they are called "Collectives".
I haven't met someone who just happened to land in this world while travelling through any other means, be they accidental or not, but then again, it hasn't been that long; Twilight's "Granny Marelin" is suspect, though. The current king of the Griffons said that a few of his ancestors claimed to be from 'a very different place', with one outright having called himself a human, too.
Song Doll is a special case, in that she's... an incarnation of the idea of her. You could get technical and say that that describes just about everyone here, but it's not quite the same; she was formed in the Collective as a bunch of character traits that people attributed to 'her', which this world pulled in - some of the traits didn't 'stick' during transition, though, and others were fitted into this little corner of reality.
Tinsel Rose and Leadfoot - and the artificer that made his leg - all 'died' without having that 'open-to-interpretation' possible end, though. They are happy, though, and even though one of them definitely wanted to hang on to his previous life, he said that someone gave him proper rest (don't I know it!), so he can enjoy this one without regrets. Those cases tend to be because the non-physical aspect of them lives on, thrown through the In-Between with a great deal of energy (usually that of what killed them, but often purely emotional)... there are some worlds where someone seems to have been completely-erased/destroyed, but that's not quite true, is it? After all, the audience can see someone suffer such a fate, yet remember them; only fools deal in absolutes, even if they are veritable gods in their worlds.
People that have a 'safety net' or loophole themselves back to life using world-specific means tend to not have the wiggle room, since the loopholes most likely don't work here, as I said for Weil and his Essence-saturated evil-fragments of space-station. If anything, he would appear from a less troublesome point in his history. If he had been capable of dying, anyways.
As for being pulled in as-is, him or his mockery of Zero? That is a little harder to deal with.
The whole point of these meetings.
Plans were still kind of vague, since I didn't know what resources we could reliably use against them... heck, I didn't know what resources I personally had. I could alter the 'Essence patterns' of things, or make my own - A.K.A. conjuration/alteration through shaping of the raw building blocks of things; that was the one thing I knew I could do easily that few others could even understand.
Still, there was one world where Wily was the good scientist. It was an OK comic, but that meant that the possibility was out there. Speaking of such, some 'possible worlds' may be unsustainable, such as many of those where Twilight Sparkle dies under certain circumnstances. Those are... a headache to deal with. They end, in an unnatural way at that; the saying that 'all stories come to an end' is a load of hogwash, since that is the tendency of mortals to seek patterns and apply them to the world around them, which they don't even enforce... King Arthur, anyone? Have his stories ended? How about Gilgamesh? Things may die, but most ends are merely a projection of our models into the shadows of Plato's cave.
Eh, moving on.
We sat there for two hours discussing different ways someone could build a killer robot out of native Equestrian materials, or an equivalent golem or magic construct or the like.
...
I really didn't like the fact that it's not as hard as it sounds, even for such a technologically-grab-bag of a world like this; they had computers right out of 1960, wireless microphone headsets, DJ decks and some engines (all magitech-based), but no internal-combustion engines - the autogyros and helicopters are nearly-all pedal-powered (although it turns out that a pony can output a lot of energy), and airships are nearly-solely magical. Runes and diagrams are basically programming, and enchanting isn't too terribly complicated; the hard part is making the instructions for movements and decision-making, and make the enchantment power a specific kind of weapon or armor... something that a scientist like Wily already has done, with the only difficulty being learning a new programming language and figuring out how to make the principles behind his already-near-magical weaponry run on magic rather than energen.
Making a variable-tool-system or a learning program is a tad harder. Technically you could apply a come-to-life spell to another such spell, itself animating a doll for a task, and it'll learn to do said task more efficiently, and maybe even a few simple tasks... but that would make the spell incredibly costly in terms of energy and concentration.
The flip side being that ponies aren't as helpless as baseline humans, and they have some way to fight back. There are ponies with dueling experience and of appreciable power, like Lyra, and the higher-ranks of the guard are pretty good at fighting. The deal with the changeling invasion was that they were too focused on evacuating the civilians; the cities are designed with safety in mind, making so that ponies can get to safety easily, and the guard can retake the city quickly.
As we left. I called out to Shining Armor.
"Hey, I would like your counsel on a delicate matter that has arisen." I said, making Shining blink and eye me with discretion (the servants can spread gossip faster than the speed of light, in this or any world). "It is unrelated to the previous topics we have discussed; it is a personal issue."
He could have said anything, as I don't use magic to still my muscles when there aren't any nobles around... I've been told I'm very transparent.
He didn't, though. He could tell that this was important - to me at least.
We made our way back to my room, where I presented my situation.
"Please help me." I said from as close as I could without touching him; almost muzzle to muzzle. "You know how it is to have a girlfriend, and no way I'm going to Celestia after yesterday."
"Wait, what?" He jerked his head some, but didn't step back. "What happened?"
I told him.
"Fo- wh- how did you even." He stopped suddenly, closed his eyes and breathed. "First off, how?"
"How should I know?! I just knew, as soon as I saw the pair, that they had a crush on me. Then Topsy came in! Look, have you- you have seen a puzzle, right? As soon as you lay eyes on the pieces, you know, know, that they fit - instinctively - they fit. It was like taking a backseat to my own mind." I was pacing back and forth, and the air was charging up with static. "I don't even know why they even accepted that quickly, either, or why they were blushing that hard - I mean, I know I look good-ish, but really..."
"Maybe your scent - it's just that vague, but potent, undertone of the ali-..." What he was saying got lost as he took in my look and petrified body.
"I can't believe I forgot about that." I breathe out. "Y- No I- just how strong are they?"
I calm down and turn into a mare with a 'pop'.
Shining raised an eyebrow, but sniffed at the air nonetheless.
"It's nice, but you do realize I've adapted?" He said. "It's from being in and around the castle for so long."
"Oh, Captain." I smirked as my words flowed out of whatever influence chaos magic had over me. "You cannot tell a mare she 'smells nice'."
I opened one of my wings, slowly turning it and reaching with a pinion as I lean in.
"You should use words like 'enticing', 'alluring'..." I just barely avoid actually touching him. "'Divine'."
He gulps audibly and sweats a little.
We both say "Buck."
"Get Cadence?"
"Get Cadence."