Chapter 19
They recognised this place. The memory that they had just entered was taking place in Princess Celestia’s bedroom, completely identical to the memory of it that took place a thousand years prior. It was late in the morning, and Princess Celestia was lying on her bed, looking very tired. She eventually managed to drag herself out of bed and let out a yawn.
‘She looks exhausted’, Dizzy said as they watched Princess Celestia cross the room to her private bath, she turned on the water at the washbasin and allowed it to fill completely, before she splashed some water on her face.
‘Not sleeping well, are we Celestia?’ a tinny, metal voice called out from behind her, causing the princess to jump in surprise. Kelso watched as one of Emerald Sparkle's spritebots materialised from thin air. Princess Celestia opened her mouth and was about ready to call for her guards when the voice continued. 'Don’t even bother, call for the guards and I’ll be gone before the words even escape your lips'.
Celestia turned around slowly and looked at her ‘guest’ and was clearly surprised to discover what had invaded her private bath. ‘A robot?’ Celestia asked. ‘There have been no robots in Equestria in nearly a thousand years!’
‘I can understand why you would think that. Unfortunately, you are stupid for thinking it. Your little pogrom against technology hasn’t worked nearly as well as you hoped. I, and the Cultus Mechanicus should have made that perfectly clear to you’.
‘I will not stand here and be insulted in my own bedroom!’ Celestia said hotly. ‘Who are you!? You have a lot to answer for!’
‘Stupid indeed. Is it not obvious to you? That I should disappear one day without even the slightest trace? I really wouldn’t have been that hard to find if you had really wanted to’.
Celestia looked over the robot intensely for a moment before it dawned on her who she was speaking to. ‘Emerald?’ she asked.
‘Nice to see you too, bitch, hope you enjoy today, because today is the last day that you are ever going to be in power’.
Celestia was taken aback by the words of her former friend who she had thought to be long dead. ‘Emerald... What happened to you?’ she asked, her voice filled with worry as she carefully stepped forward towards the spritebot.
‘Oh you know, the usual story, filly gets raped in a dark alleyway in the middle of the night, gets pregnant, has foal, is forced to abandon said foal on some stranger’s doorstep because princess of the universe decides that she is going to destroy everything that Equestrian society needs to prosper, and puts herself in stasis so that she can save the world, not that you would care about any of that, all you care about is what you want, always has been, always will be’.
‘Emerald... I... I don’t know what to say...’ Celestia said, while the voice through the spritebot’s loudspeakers was artificial, monotone, and without emotion, she could tell that Emerald Sparkle was angry from word choice alone. ‘I just tried to do what was right...’
‘Oh, you did what was right! Right for you! Damn you Celestia, do you know how close we were? We were THIS close to civil nuclear power. Clean, cheap energy for everypony! And it wouldn’t have stopped there. A thousand years went by, and we went back in time, only to get back to the place that we were at. A thousand years wasted because of you. Well, enjoy this day, because it will be the last one you see. Because when we meet again, I will kill you’.
‘Emerald...’ Princess Celestia began; however, Emerald Sparkle did not stick around to speak with her further. The spritebot disappeared into thin air, and was nowhere to be found. Celestia glanced around, making sure that she wasn’t hallucinating.
'Announcing your intentions to your enemy', Hopely said with a frown. 'That’s a bold move and not something that you do unless you're ready to play your hand'.
Kelso nodded her head in agreement. 'Emerald Sparkle's about to make her attempt'.
...
As they entered a new memory, this one in the centre of Ponyville, they could tell that things were off. As they landed the earth beneath their hooves began to shake, and they all struggled to keep their balance.
‘An earthquake!?’ Kelso cried out.
‘Impossible! There are no fault lines for hundreds of kilometres!’ Sparky cried out in response.
They looked up and saw themselves standing in front of what was obviously a bakery, decorated as if it was a gingerbread house. The ground beneath the building shook wildly and cracked, eventually faltering completely. The building collapsed as the ground began to move apart. Large steel doors pushed the rubble away and opened up a large chasm. Ponyville had been built on top of the Everfree Plains Missile Base’s launch silo.
What launched from the silo, however, was not a missile like they had been expecting, rather, a horde of Emerald Sparkle’s spritebots ascended into the air in a cloud of fluid metal; they rose high, passing before the sun as if it were some twisted version of a solar eclipse. The spritebots ignored Ponyville however, and the metal cloud turned its attention towards Canterlot, descending on the capital city.
The threat was not ended there, as a large ringed cargo lift rose to the top of the silo. Sparky’s jaw dropped wide open as she saw what was on it. More robots, and worse still, it was a design that she recognised from the same dream that she had first seen the spritebots in. The robots had a large body with thick armour plating, with two manipulator arms jaunting out from each side, built into each was a submachine gun on the right arm, and either a grenade launcher or flamethrower on the left. The centre mass held a small television screen, displaying which was the imposing, and disconcertingly friendly looking, image of Emerald Sparkle, and the robots rolled around on a tracked wheelbase.
These were Emerald Sparkle’s soldiers. These were the EPMB Combots.
...
‘Shining Armour! Be careful!’ a mare’s voice cried out.
The scene had changed to the streets of Canterlot. Kelso clutched her head in pain as she fell to the ground, the rapid scene changes were getting worse, and becoming more frequent.
‘Kelso!’ Viola cried out, quickly rushing to her partner’s side.
‘I’m okay...’ Kelso said as she pushed herself back up to her hooves. Her head was killing her, she felt as if someone had taken a hammer and mashed it against her skull to give her the worst migraine she had ever had, this was starting to take its toll upon her, when it was all said and done, Kelso didn’t know if she was going to have enough strength to get out of the Ghastly Gorge Industrial Complex on her own four hooves, or if Viola and Hopely would have to drag her out.
Kelso turned to watch the focus of the memory, though it was difficult to determine what it exactly was. The streets of Canterlot were highly chaotic and disorganised. The residents of the city fled from the spritebot strafing runs. Members of the Royal Guard engaged in a highly disorganised and ineffective resistance to the flying horde before them, and the escort troops of the World Leaders Conference weren’t doing much better, a section of schäferhund soldiers turned their weapons towards the sky, peering through the zeroing sight on their storm harnesses to try and hit any spritebot that they could, as their tank rolled along besides them, firing high explosive shells into the air to disrupt the flight patterns of the attacking spritebots.
In front of them, standing back to back were two ponies, a unicorn stallion, dressed in the armour of the Royal Guard, the other, was a pink coated mare with both a unicorn’s horn and a set of pegasi wings. Both of them levitated long swords besides their heads, and took a moment to swing, and usually miss, any spritebot that happened to get close.
The mare however swung and caught a lucky break, hacking off a spritebot’s wing and causing it to crash into the ground. ‘Ha! That’s five! How many have you gotten Shining Armour?’
The unicorn stallion mumbled something inaudible, even to the passive observers, who were just as close to them as they were to each other.
‘What was that?!’ the mare cried out.
‘Three’, the stallion repeated with a huff as he swung at another spritebot that attempted to strafe him, smashing it between the eyes with the sharp edge of his sword. ‘Make that four’.
‘You’re going to have to do better than that! Captain of the Royal Guard!’ the mare said taking another swing, clipping the wings of another spritebot as it fluttered rapidly trying to stay afloat, the mare was unimpressed and finished it off with a quick roundhouse kick, sending it flying into a nearby building and smashing to bits.
‘Cadence... I love you, but I am not above tossing you off the mountain!’ the unicorn stallion identified as Shining Armour said with annoyance.
‘I have wings!’ Cadence responded as she hacked at another spritebot, sending it crashing into the ground at her hooves, and giving it a hard kick, sending it flying into the side armour of the nearby schäferhund tank.
‘And I have a sword sharp enough to hack them off!’ Shining Armour replied.
Cadence couldn’t help but smirk. Her head turned up as a full squadron of spritebots dove upon them, clearly discovering the value of these two targets, they had changed their tactics of just sending in one at a time. ‘Shining Armour! Look out!’ she cried out as she leapt at her companion, pushing him out of the way as the spritebots passed over them, firing their submachine guns at full speed.
Shining Armour hit the ground hard, but he quickly jumped back up to his hooves and turned towards her. ‘Cadence!’ he cried out. The mare was bleeding.
‘I’m okay!’ Cadence cried out as she picked herself up. ‘Just a graze!’ she said, reassuring him. Her eyes turned back to the sky as the squadron of spritebots turned back around. ‘We need to go!’ she cried out as she pulled him along. They took off running, as the spritebots increased speed to match them. ‘They must have figured out who we are!’ she cried out.
‘And here I thought our wedding was rough!’ Shining Armour cried out as he turned around to look. As the spritebots were getting closer, the two ponies increased speed, making it harder for Kelso and company to keep up, they rounded a corner and nearly collided head long with a group of pegasi clad in tan uniforms, and they were the escort troops of the cheval delegation. The cheval were a race of pegasi ponies hailing from the continent Europa, and while they were similar in appearance to Equestrian pegasi, they are completely unrelated.
‘Tomber!’ the leader of the cheval, a brown coated pegasus armed with a bolt action rifle cried out. Cadence and Shining Armour needed no further encouragement, and dropped down to the ground. ‘Tirez vos armes!’ the cheval shouted as the soldiers surrounding them discharged their weapons in a hail of gunfire, sending the spritebots hurdling into the ground.
Cadence looked up at their saviour and gave him a small scowl. ‘Cheval...’ she hissed at the pony before her.
‘Oui mademoiselle!’ the cheval said nodding his head, ignoring the annoyance in her voice. ‘Je m'appelle Maréchal des logis-chef Dmitri Moreau’, he said, offering a hoof to the fallen mare to help her up. She refused to take it, instead getting to her hooves by her own means.
‘Your assistance is appreciated, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it’, Cadence said with a scoff.
‘Oui mademoiselle!’ Dmitri Moreau said with a nod. It was clear that he understood what she said, but didn’t particularly care. ‘Stay behind us! My men will give you cover!’