//------------------------------// // Act 1.1: Friendship will be magic // Story: Shadowrun: Equestria // by Savanah //------------------------------// "There is no greater sorrow, than to recall a happy time when miserable" Rarity's lasts words on Equestria. Horus felt the fangs digging on his shoulder and his jumpsuit dissolving under the action of the fast acting digestive enzymes that the creature secreted. He winced in pain and shoot point blank with his remaining heavy pistol, the powerful 15mm bullets were made to rip through almost any kind of personal protection and the wolfs were no exception. Blood and oil spilled from the creature. The two diamond dogs attacked together with short bursts of their submachine guns, ripping the creatures to pieces before they could reach the rest of the group. Echo was in the back with Access, she only had a small holdout pistol for emergencies. But even as the wolf fell more of them were coming and with them appeared strange ponies with yellow eyes. Druni and Skande quickly reloaded their guns as the group begun to retreat through the maintenance tunnels. Druni grabbed one of the creatures that was jumping against him and slammed it against the wall, squishing oil and blood. Even before he could bring his submachine gun to bear another creature was already over him biting deep on his forearm, he felt pain shot through his entire body as the digestive enzymes of the creatures dissolved his flesh and muscle easily. He sent a command to his implanted glands and the pain diminished as the artificial hormones worked hard to stop the bleeding and the pain. He touched the gun against the creature foreheads and unleashed a short burst against it. He slashed with his long claws against another creature that jumped over him with bared fangs, hitting the creature in middle of the jump and throwing it back. But before he could react another of the cyber wolves bit hard on his back and this time Druni screamed in pain. Skande came to his help as the rest of the group retreated; the old warrior emptied his gun against the wolf that was on Druni’s back. The youngster breathed in relief, but before they could retreat more of the wolves were over them. Without time to reload, Skande slammed the gun against the closer and unsheathed his long knife. Without saying a word he ordered Druni to retreat, but the youngster jumped over the wolves with both of his claws unsheathed and combat drugs pumping through his body. In a mist of rage he slashed and pierced the creatures, not only the cybernetic wolves, but also the strange ponies with yellow eyes. He felt amazing as his heart pumped furiously in his chest and his arms shattered the creatures with ease. He felt true and natural, in these rare moments that he could give all of himself where when he really felt alive, connected to the animal he once had been before civilization had stripped him of it. He slammed another of the cyber aberrations against the floor, he was getting quickly soaked in blood and oil, but he didn’t care for that. He rips the head of another wolf and quickly jumps over one of the small ponies with yellow eyes that seemed to be controlling the wolves and raised his claws to kill the aberration. And he stopped. Looking into those eyes he felt weak, incapable of doing anything. “Bad dog!” The soft pink pony said and Druni almost fell to the ground in shame. He couldn’t divert his gaze from the small creature and couldn’t bring himself to hurt him. “Sit!” The pony with yellow eyes ordered and Druni obeyed promptly, remaining immobile even as the cyber wolves killed him. The pony felt happiness seeing as his stare had worked; he would have felt disgust for the blood bath in front of him, but now he was beyond it. His brain was being filled by a special selection of neurotransmitters to give him a transcendental feeling of happiness. No, the blood wasn’t important; the only thing important was to make the Princess happy. -------------- Aura was crying alone in a dark corner, for the first time in long years she was seeing they world without her cybernetic enhancements. Even her artificial glands seemed to be missing, she had tried all the possible thought commands, but not a single enhancement was responding. “Why did you let me die?” Her dead mother kept asking between her screams of pain, blood continually pouring from her stab wounds. “I hate you! You let me die!” “You never will be good enough. You are little more than a mechanical doll.” Her boss said with a disappointed voice. “Next we will take out your brain and then maybe you will be useful” “You abandoned me!” Her ex-marefriend said. “You kept allowing then to change your body and now you can’t love me anymore!” She had tried to fight them at first, but it was all for nothing. If she tried to attack them they would simply disappear, if she tried to talk with them they wouldn’t hear. Sometimes they would change; sometimes they would look at her in silence. Time seemed to disappear in a haze. She had no idea how long she had been locked in this tartarus. A light shone in the darkness and vanquished the creatures. She looked to the light afraid of seeing more of the ghosts of her past appearing, but what she saw was a creature of pure white and light. “My little pony, you don’t need to be afraid anymore.” The being of pure light said in a motherly voice. Aura lifted her swollen eyes tentatively, the light almost blinded her eyes after so long in the darkness, but as she got used to the radiance she saw a beautiful alicorn that seemed so big and powerful, but she knew that the creature wouldn’t hurt her. “Celestia…?” She could remember only vaguely her classes in pre-Fading history. “I’m here to help you, Electric Aura.” She spoke graciously and there were no more shadows around them. “But for that I need your help.” Aura knew something was wrong, a small part of her brain told her that it was impossible. “Aura, do you accept my friendship?” She simply couldn’t say no to her, she would vanquish the darkness of the world, she would end this era of cynicism and greed to bring back magic to this world! The alicorn showed her a vision of her world rebuilt and Aura completely remade in her old self, no more chrome under her skin and no more need to prove worthy. All of that could be done only if Aura helped her. There would be pain and fire, but in the end they would have sunshine and rainbows. It all faded and Aura slowly felt the sensation coming back to her body and a wave of panic as she felt that even more of her body had been replaced by chrome. The sensation lasted only a moment until she remembered Celestia’s promise of restoring her body to its natural state. Slowly she got up from the surgery table remembering the first days after her first surgeries and how hard it had been to control the cyberware then. She took steps carefully and felt her new legs moving with ease and more power than she had ever had. Data was pouring constantly through her eyes and at first she thought she would end up crazy, but whatever they had made to her brain now she could take it all with ease. The wings were the worst, the constant weight of the metal and plastic on her back was a constant remind that she was now a poser, she hated the wings! Something clicked inside and changed inside her without her conscious brain even realizing. She flared her wings and heard the sound of sharpening knives they made as the sharpened feathers moved and smiled knowing they would cleave clean trough any pony. After all, they weren’t so bad, she could get used to it. “Your help is needed.” Celestia beamed in her mind and she immediately bowed. “Yes, my princess.” Aura answered promptly. Suddenly her mind was updated with all the information and status of all the agents in the arcology, and the data they had on the conversion of the captured ponies. She was sure she could deal with any problem that had arrived. “You have been progressing quickly in your training, my little element of loyalty, but now it’s time to find new friends.” The princess said and Aura rejoiced. ------------------------------- Sound Wave felt pain running through his body, but it was quickly numbed through the quick injection of powerful painkillers by his automated systems. The system, however, had a small glitch: the dosage wasn’t enough to dull the pain completely. Something exploded at his side; the detonation sent some weird kind of shrapnel so sharp that it passed through his teammate’s armour as if it wasn’t even there. The automated combat system quickly shifted strategy to take into account an area of effect weapon that could eliminate personal with a single hit and transmitted it to all members of the squad rough their private network in just a few seconds. Sound Wave moved almost unconsciously, his mind was being flooded with the new fire patterns as the enemies advanced steadily. A minuscule part of him registered that the enemy would be unsettling for any normal pony, their orange and blue shinning eyes, the way they advanced trough heavy machine gun fire and how they moved in some eerie synchrony, but in his conscious mind there was only the tactical patterns chosen by the tactical system that linked him to the rest of the squadron. Pain flared trough his body as another bullet from the strange ponies found a chink in his armour. More painkillers flooded his mind, but as always it wasn’t enough to completely dull the pain. He could have the glitch fixed at any time, but he had never reported it. His squad launched a barrage of fragmentation grenades and charged before the enemy could recover from the shock. His body shook as his twin NMM HVAR (NightMare Moon armaments, High Velocity Assault Rifle) unleashed a barrage of high velocity lead that mow down some of the ponies with shinning eyes before they could reach cover, but at the same time two Blue eyes hit their squad’s flank with long mono filament whips that cut another teammate in half. The tactical patterns changed once more as they tried to compensate for those new enemies. The battle had been raging like that for at least a few hours by now and what once had been an elegant office complex was now a devastated battlefield, Sound Wave’s squad was used to be mostly an intimidation force and this was their first real combat since the Apple’s riot a few years ago. They had trained exhaustively in simulated scenarios; they had played in war games against the best of Hayraku and won with minimal losses. The automated system that used their brains as organic software was running at maximum capacity to keep calculating news manoeuvres, but whatever intelligence controlled the ponies with shinning eyes seemed to have more cycles than the combined processing power of the entire squad. One of the ponies with shinning blue eyes and big sharp metallic wings got close to Sound wave, he tried to retreat, but the pegasus-poser was faster and the metallic feathers slices one of his titanium armour plates. Pain bursts trough Sound Waves mind, but with it also came the memories. The pain was easy to endure since there was little still living inside him, most of his body had been replaced by chrome, his mind was hooked to several informational systems and he was covered in titanium plating. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror since the conversion process, but he didn’t needed, he knew that he was looking exactly as his squad mates. Usually he wouldn’t even be really conscious, his mind was kept sedated by chemical cocktails, but pain brought a few precious memories of his past. A Molotov burning made him remember his name; his leg being blown out by an improvised explosive device and he could get glimpses of his mother’s face; having half of his plating cut by some freaky poser with a fetish for swords and he could remember his short time on the streets of Yoma island. He smashed the pegasus-poser head with his armoured hooves, but just as soon three others came out of nowhere with their sharp wings making sounds like sharpening knives. “Retreat to zone B! Lock the heavy doors!” Gale Warning commanded and the tactical system flooded their minds with the pre-planned patterns for a retreat. They were losing ground fast. ------------ Access ran as she never had before, adrenaline pumped through her veins and her lungs seemed to be on fire as she tried to keep ahead of the strange cyber-wolves and their dripping mandibles. She cursed all those time she hadn’t gone jogging with Azure. She turned a corner and another at random, simply trying to lose the creatures in the endless maintenance tunnels that permeated the superstructure of the Arcology, however the metallic abominations kept hot on her trail. Access Page kicked opens the first door she saw, her muscles seemed to be on fire and every breath sent a jolt of paint rough her body. The leading wolf jumped over her and Access turned, whispering to herself that the creature wasn’t a pony anymore as she pulled the trigger of the heavy pistol NMM Predator strapped to her right hoof twice. The first bullet ripped right through the sheets of metal and the soft flesh of the pony inside. A nauseating mix of blood and oil gushed out, but the second one flew wild and embedded itself on a wall. Access screamed in pains as the creature’s fangs closes on her shoulder, missing her neck for just a few centimeters, and it’s caustic saliva crackles in contact to her clothe, corroding it away and burning her fur and skin. She quickly put the pistol muzzle against the creature’s chest and pulled the trigger as fast as she could. She pushed the creature away, feeling its teeth cutting hard against her skin and bringing tears to her eyes. Later she would cry for it, but right now she needed to focus on staying alive. She walked out through the open door and into a big habitation module. The place that once had housed the salaryponies in small and clean apartments was now in ruins. Several houses had their doors ripped open and many others were stained with blood and other bodily fluids. She ran into the first house with a working door and locked it behind her just as another wolf begun to bang against the door. Access recovered her breath, her hooves were aching and her heart seemed like it wanted to escape trough her throat. The door wouldn’t hold for too long, she could see the hinges ready to give away at any moment as the heavy creature kept throwing himself against it. She inspected the little apartment, but there was no other exit. Whoever inhabited this place last wasn’t worth even a small window. She looked at the door, it was beginning to crack. She looked around desperately; there was a single room, a small kitchen, and a small room with a big screen and a deck… It hit her suddenly, all the rooms probably had access to the arcology’s matrix and there was no way they could handle it all trough a wireless network. She throws the television to the side and behind it there are the cables she was looking. She follows them to the wall and… Yes! She almost jumps in glee, all those cables running through the houses would require lot’s of maintenance and some way of accessing them, running under the houses there is a small maintenance tunnel, barely enough for her to craw in. She grabs the deck, an old model Canterlot-tech 7, and crawls into the tunnel just as the door breaks down. She creeps trough the small tunnel, the wolf was roaring behind her, but he was too big to enter in the tunnel. She kept going until she couldn’t hear the beast at her back and couldn’t see the light anymore. She kept going in the darkness, feeling her path with her hooves. She needed to find the others, discover what had happened with the others after they had been separated in the tunnels. She kept crawling until the only sound was the constant humming that came from the cables and her own beating heart. She kept going, too afraid of getting close to the light that filtered through the cracks into the tunnel and alerting one of the cyberwolves to her presence. Her stomach eventually got the best out of her, the smell of cooking beans and hay was coming through a small crack, she slowly crawled towards it. The smell seemed to be coming from inside an apartment, she moved as best as she could trough the small space, trying to peek inside, but there was a big screen and the only light on the other side seemed to be a small and trembling fire light. Putting her fear aside she kicked the small cover and crawled inside the apartment, scratching herself as she exited. The room was almost exactly equal to the one where she had escaped the wolf. The only difference was the small fire in the center, built using pieces of wood from kitchen utensils. There was a can of food over the fire. She moved tentatively to the can… A big creature pounced over her. She reacted clumsily trying to use her pistol, but the creature used her claws to pin her hoof on the ground. A flash of metal in the dark, the creature raised some kind of knife. Access tried to punch and kick, but the creature barely felt it. And then the creature stopped. “Your eyes aren’t shinning.” Naomi spoke, putting her screwdriver to the side. Access now could see better her attacker. She was barely more than a teenager griffon with feathers tinted mauve and a leather jacket that was stained with at first seemed to be some kind of paint, but then Access noticed the metallic smell coming from it over the smell of the food. “Shinning?” Access asked as she checked her pistol, the griffon didn’t seemed to have any implants, but she still could be crazy. “You know, like those other ponies. They have shinning eyes and try to kill you.” Naomi put her screwdriver back into her tool belt. They kept in silence for a moment, Access got back on her hooves and they both kept staring at each other, trying to decide if they could thrust each other. “Sorry…” Naomi finally said, not really knowing what she should say to a pony she had just tried to kill. “Do you want some food?” She offered. “Thanks,” Access replied happy not only for having something to eat, but some company. The two of them eat mostly in silent, only exchanging a few bits of conversation awkwardly. Access just said she was programmer for the company that had been transferred from Neighpon and Naomi spoke a bit of her sister and how she was looking for her, but said nothing about how she got hurt or the blood on her jacket. “Where are you going now?” Access asked after the meager meal. “Up,” Naomi said as she smothered the flames, putting the two of them in complete darkness. “I saw them transferring some of the young ponies to the top floors.” “You can’t,” Access said. “The top floors are reserved for the executives and if this place is like the Hayraku’s apartments back in Neighpon you will need an executive access card.” Naomi cursed under her breath. “Where do I find one of those?” Access shuddered. “Probably with some of the high level managers.” “And where I find one of those?” “They spend most of their time in the top floors, sometimes you can find some of them on the shopping areas, but they don’t like mixing with regular ponies.” Access explained. “But there is another option.” “Which one?” “I’m going to meet with a few colleagues in the security officer, they have these master-key systems that can basically open any door on the arcology, our plan was to use it to open one of the garage doors, but we were chased by the wolves and got separated.” “Do you mind if I come along?” Access nodded, but then remembers that they were in almost total darkness. “Sure, I guess there is no problem.” “Thanks.” The silence extended between them. Naomi couldn’t believe she was really talking with another pony, after all that had happened she never thought she would find any more normal ponies amidst this dammed place. She still felt the pain in her wrist and, even worst, every time she closed her eyes there were the unnatural shinning orbs were once had been the eyes of a pony, and a maddening grim that persisted even as she stabbed him. She had never seen him before, but now she was sure that she never would be able to forget his face. She kept guard, spying through a small crack on the door, until the lights dimmed to signal the night inside the arcology. The pony was dozing off close to the fire, but Naomi was happy to drink a few energetic drinks she had stolen earlier from a vending machine. By the time Access woke up Naomi was already ready to move out, the gryphoness had packed her few belongings in a small saddlebag. They cracked the door open, paying attention to see if there was any wolf outside yet, seeing that all was clear they as silently as they could opened the door and ran to the stairs. The level below once had been an elegant club, reserved for the very important ponies to rest while they were shopping on the mall. Now, the carpets caked with dried blood. The two females didn’t even dared to peak through the double doors that lead inside the club. Instead, they squeezed through the broken doors that connected to the shopping levels. Surprisingly enough the escalators still were working. As they descended into the shopping floors their eyes were hit shinning yellow light, different from the sterile white lights that permeated every other floor, a mix of wood and grass aromas flooded their noses and the sound of work filled their ears. Both of them couldn’t believe in how much the place had changed since they last had seen it. Gone were the stores and the tile floor, instead there was small houses being built and grass covered the floor, ponies with orange glowing eyes worked all around dismantling the hayraku’s patented architecture and in their awake came more ponies ready to rebuild it in a bucolic scene. Ponies with glowing yellow eyes worked on what had been the small green areas of the shopping, they were creating small forests, big trees with dark leaves grows at their command and everywhere they gone they were followed by packs of cyber wolves. Ponies with white glowing eyes worked on the houses built by the orange ones, they painted and decorated them. The moment they put a hoof on the grass floor a zebra with glowing pink eyes appeared, she had an unnerving smile in her face and hooped to their direction. “Oh! A new pony! Come! Celestia will want to know all about you!” She giggled. “Come with me, transfiguration waits and then we will have a big welcome party!”