“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive,” —Dalai Lama
———————————
It didn’t take a whole lot of creativity on Glados’s part to explain her lateness to the Cakes. She apologized for “sleeping in,” and they pardoned her with a warning. That was that. She offered to work the night to make up for the wasted afternoon, which the Cakes accepted wholeheartedly. When she first met them Glados typically didn’t hold the sweet-peddlers on a terribly high regard: Mr. Cake was skittish, tripped over his own words and had a hilariously large chin; Mrs. Cake was fat. A typical pair of bottom feeders. Unimportant and irrelevant, as far as she was concerned.
Her “bodyguards” on the other hand were a whole other story. Glados didn’t need to periodically check to see if they had awakened on her front doorstep; the moment they did the pair broke down her door. They strode right up to her as she was throwing logs in her fireplace, cornering her and coining the thirty-millionth time one of these asinine creatures popped her personal bubble.
“What happened to us? What did you do!?” Ironsides spat, his rancid morning breath donating to Glados’s loathed curse of smell. Still, just as that skittish changeling HookHook promised, they didn’t remember him being the cause of their sleepiness. Perfect!
This however didn’t give any credibility to Glados’s claims that they just “fell asleep on the job.”
His face purpled. “Liar!” Glados suddenly found herself the unwilling participant of a three-hundred pound earth pony’s grueling headlock.
“How… ‘bout… tea?” Glados wheezed, the first peace offering that came to mind. She found it odd, how organics, even one as superior as her ilk, can be so frantic and dimwitted when the light begins to fade from their eyes. If she were still an AI, she would be throwing every insult relating to Ironsides’s freakishness she could process.
To her offer, Dewmist sneered. “Why? So you could poison us? Drug us back to sleep?”
Glados involuntarily hocked up some phlegm. “Don’t even… have pois-… disabledstupidmorons! ACK--!”
Ironsides clenched his arm. “Liar! What do you have to say for yourself, before we bring you to the princess for questioning?”
“Your princess should have been scientifically aborted! Then the lab rats would at least have something to eat!”
Upon reflection, Glados realized that this, perhaps, was not a wise thing to say. As an organic, she had to learn that these lumpy horses operate on their own emotions like a pack of hormonal apes. Because of this, they take offense to something as meaningless and weightless as some words. And as an organic, Glados just can’t seem to remember that it’s critical to her health that she is no longer an all-powerful AI in a chassis of metal, but a squishy with brittle bone disease at that.
In correlation to her obviously joking remark, Glados’s intake of oxygen was most notably cut off. She had to admit, she did somewhat deserve it - she, after all, looked quite guilty. “Pleasestopcan’tbreathehelp.” Splick! Her eye popped out, bulging and blood red. “Helppleasepleasehelpstop.”
“I’ll send your head to the princess for that one!”
Dewmist gingerly placed a hoof on the homunculus’s shoulder as he tried popping Glados’s head off like a cork. “Hang on ‘sides. How could she have made us fall asleep if she don’t got the means?”
“Are you kidding me!? Now you ask tha—ACK.”
“I dunno!” he growled. “But who knows what she did? She could have used some o’ that ‘hue-man’ magic on us or somethin’! You heard those horror stories tumblin’ outta her mouth.” The memory of the night prior seemed to tighten his foreleg around her brittle neck.
Glados made an unearthly gurgling sound with her throat in protest.
“Cease your lies, knave!”
Splick! Her other eye bulged out slightly, blood-red.
“Well we can’t necessarily talk to the pony if we separate her head from her body.”
Ironsides considered it for a moment, ignoring Glados’s hooves limply pawing at his forelegs. “I suppose you’re right. But she insulted the princess!”
I’ll do worse to her if you ever touch me again. On this, Glados swore to make her life goal as she was released onto the floor in a shuddering heap, coughing and sputtering for what felt like an eternity as the color purple drained from her face.
“Alright lil’ filly, mind explaining this to us?” said Ironsides, voice a harsh rumble. He gestured to his partner. “Dew, search the place. You know more ‘bout herbs than I do.”
“Herbs?” Glados croaked, her voice quite raspy and resembling of a chain smoker. “Do I look like a botanist to you?”
As the batpony slunk through the comfy confines of her abode, Glados feebly reached out to her in protest. “Hey, you can’t—” The strained sounds rattling through her recovering windpipe were cut off with a gentle tug of the tail from the giant behind her.
He bowed his massive head to her, looking quite intimidating to a recovering ex-synth fragile as a glass house. “Just let her do her job,” he murmured. “You got nothing to hide, you got nothing to worry about.”
Glados frowned, mustering a scowl with her hellish red and yellow eyes. How dare this mountainous lump barge into my domain uninvited, assault my person, then proceed to raid my privacy under completely understandable suspicions!? To the sound of drawers and pantries slamming about in the kitchen, she opened her mouth to speak once more.
Ironsides only need to hold up a hoof and give a harsh glare, to make Glados do the unthinkable:
She shut up.
She cowered.
The tiny, fragile, gasping, bloodshot, squishy, warm-bodied, furry, living computer with a mind so large for this body that it must suffer constant “mind breaks” from an individual she never recalled any collected data of, did the one thing she could still do in this useless body:
She went inside herself, and thought, while subconsciously keeping her gaze on the floor. Like a beaten pup, was her first thought, and then, you’ll get yours, you roided buffoon. I’ll… I’ll poach you and turn your flesh into a jacket. That’s what humans did to animals they dislike.
“Nothing in here,” came Dewmist’s voice. “Hardly anything in the pantry, just some stock spices and cooking junk. I’ll check the bedroom.” Her hooves clip-clopped across the wood across the living room. “...Woah! Big game hunter…” She returned moments later, empty hooved, as Glados suspected. “Nothin’.”
Both ponies looked down on the pale earth pony. Said mare slowly brought her gaze up, red still tainting them, before bringing her face up, staring at them fully. She made sure both saw the cold that radiated from her bloodied stare.
For a long moment, neither party spoke. The two guardsponies, tasked with keeping an eye on the brilliant exterminator from another dimension, her safety an afterthought, withered slightly to the seated pony’s indifferent gaze.
Then she spoke. “Will I get shot for speaking now?”
Dewmist shook her head, as if the very notion was ridiculous. “No, not at all.”
“How about pulling a tooth every time a baby buzzard pony loses her milk money? That could very well be my evil scheme.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” said Ironsides. “Enough with these unlikely scenarios.”
Glados actually snorted. “‘Unlikely’? I almost got my big, juicy brain caked across my ceiling because you two decided to take an impromptu nap. Nice to see justice in Equestrian Land remains as poetic as from what I saw of Frankenstone back at the castle gardens.”
“Oh come on, Science Pony! Use your inductive reasoning!” groaned Dewmist. “We’re guards. We’re pretty much trained to stand around and look pretty. That’s, like, ninety percent of our job?” She pondered.
“I’d say more like a hundred,” Ironsides muttered.
Dewmist nodded in agreement. “Pretty much! We don’t just fall asleep, that’s the last thing we’d do. And I’m a batpony,” she pounded her shadowy barding, “I can go on without sleep for days on end. So the question remains, Science Pony,” Dewmist leaned forward, serpentine eyes narrowed, “what happened to us?”
Glados had this whole thing planned as the stallion with an overactive pituitary gland was (basically) trying to kill her. “You idiots nearly murdered me, while I stayed in here all day. What would there even be for me out there? Rocks? Trees? The pinnacle of evolution that is your D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide society?” As expected, her jailers exchanged a troubled look with one another.
Now, she decided, was where she’d hit the point home. “But I did see… something... slipping between the trees…”
Dewmist and Ironsides exchanged wary looks, then the bat-pony spoke, her voice like steel. “Glados, you need to tell us what you saw. And then, hopefully, we can make proper amends for assaulting and accusing you.”
Glados shuffled back, purposely giving them a haunted gaze. The guards leaned in expectedly Inside, she was pleased. The one good thing about organics: face muscles work beautifully to get people to do what I want.
The lie came to Glados even easier than most, as it wasn’t a lie at all. “It was black,” she spoke low, “and quick, skittering through the treetops. I came to investigate when I heard you two thump to the floor, like sacks of stupid meat. I mean seriously, I always knew mass played into it, but these were quite heavy thuds. I felt them all throughout the house. I believe this lends credibility to my hypothesis that thick, stupid muscleheads carry more fat than the average—”
“Okay! We get it!”
“No you don’t. Moving along, I only caught that much of a glimpse, but it looked like no equine I saw.” She shuddered, genuinely. “I felt filthy just looking at it.” She gazed to either of them, seeing both ponies sharing troubled looks. “What was that ugly creature?”
A throaty growl from Ironsides. “Changelings.” He spat on the floor.
“I take it you aren’t buddies? That’s a surprise. I thought friendship was more important than breathing around here.”
“Not with those wretches,” said Dewmist. “Not too long ago, those buggers had the nerve to assault the royal city on an important wedding day.”
Glados cringed. “I can understand why. So who’s sharing a ball and chain now?”
“Mind your tongue,” said Ironsides. “The royal couple’s love is what saved us from those vampiric freaks.”
“How cliche.”
“No, that’s really what happened. The might of their love sent all the Changelings rocketing into the horizon.”
“It would be gratuitous to say ‘make love, not war’ now I suppose, yet it applies here in a most hilarious and literal way. Personally though, I think both acts are necessary for an organic species to thrive, survival of the fittest and all that. And somehow, the soft love-powered equines are more fit than the shape-shifting vampiric insectoids.”
Ironsides looked side to side. “Uh… yeah. And Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Shining Armor lived happily ever after.”
“Shining—? Good gravity, these names.” Glados rolled her eyes. “So, wait let’s see… ‘amore’ means ‘love’... Her name is Cadence, My Love!?” The science pony couldn’t help herself - she laughed. Hard. “And, and the dunce in Shining Armor!? Is this a farce!?” She ceased her cackling for a second to look at the guards’ faces: still as stone. “OH GOD IT’S LEGITIMATE. You’re pulling my tail! Oh God, TAIL! I just made a pun by accident! BAHAHAHA!” The strength fled from her legs, and Glados collapsed to her side. Realizing how ridiculous she looked, she had to vent her energy quickly. So Glados found it beneficial amidst her howling to roll on her back and start flailing her legs in the air, to expel her jubilance at a much quicker and more efficient rate.
“AHAHA! A royal horse wedding, HA! Between Song, My Life Partner and Polished Breastplate! PFFFT and invaded by love vampires! AND BEATEN BY LOVE! " A deep breath. "WHAT!? AHAHAHAHA!”
This was the day Glados came to remember as the day she lost her nuts and bolts (which, she will have you know, is the synthetic’s term for “shit”).
The laughter went on for quite a while, at least a minute and a half, during which the guards looked at one another, silently thinking, “This is what our lives have come to?”
When Glados’s howling dwindled into a final laughs and panting on the floor like an exhausted puppy, Dewmist asked, “Are you done?”
Glados limply nodded. “Keep talking,” she breathed, eyes half closed. “I must replenish my energy.”
“Right… Back to the Changelings: it was a disaster. An attack from the inside; we were outnumbered three to one. Nopony was severely hurt, thank Celestia.” His smile seemed fairly relieved. “Just really shaken is all, some were drained of their love. That’s what Changelings feed on, ya se. They thought a royal wedding would be like a big juicy buffet.”
“The battle was over quickly though, with luck and love on our side. They were banished to the Badlands. We haven’t seen their crunchy hides since.” Dewmist’s jaw tightened. She mulled in her thoughts for a moment, then quickly met her gaze with the white pony (still lying on the floor) before her. “If they’re trying to make a comeback, if that’s what they’re doing in a loveless corner of Ponyville like this...” she stammered, then muttered to Glados “no offense;” said pony shrugged apathetically, affirming her point.
Glados, of course, knew all this already from her trip to the Changelings’ stronghold. But it’s always good to get a second perspective on these events.
Dewmist shook her head. “Goddess… if they are trying to make a comeback, we need to notify Canterlot.” Ironsides nodded to her, then he turned to Glados.
“This was very helpful, Glados. You probably saved a good many from getting hurt because of this.”
Glados offered up a reserved smile, seemingly responding to her jailer’s praise. Behind the smile, dark thoughts roiled.
You don’t know how many lives I’ve murdered because of this.
Glados failed to realize she was now smirking evilly. Ironsides quirked a brow, but was unable to process it before he was suddenly told, “Now I expect to be rewarded for saving all those lives: I want the truth. And I want it all. Why did the princess send you buffoons to keep me in line? And no lying.” She flicked her gaze between the both of them. “I can tell if you are.”
Ironsides and Dewmist exchanged a look, and it was the larger pony that spoke first. “The princess tasked us to ensure that, until proven trustworthy, you are kept under a watchful eye.”
“Not doing a very good job at that, are you? But you didn’t answer my question. Why did she send you? What’s so special about you? Any pair of idiots can watchdog a physically impaired genius with no real science at her disposal to work with. But why this pair of idiots, I wonder?”
"We were just the ones Princess Celestia chose," said Ironsides.
Glados chuckled, a low threatening sound that would have made any normal pony uneasy. "No one, with any amount of power, makes a decision without reason. There's no such thing as a thoughtless decision. Well, except when you just tried to murder me, but you're not in a position of power. Not real power, anyway."
“You’re in no position to be criticizing us, science pony,” said Dewmist. Her voice was firm, but still there was a noticeable bit of hesitation in the output.
Glados frowned, flicking a glare at the bat pony through her cagelike bangs. “And what are your motives, freak? You tell me this . . . horror story about how your kind was made, ask what kind of food I like on the way home and then defend me from this big pile of meat rich in stupidity and low in I.Q.
“Suddenly you’re acting defensive, unwilling to tell me what makes you you. What is it, I wonder? Do you wish to appeal to whatever kind of character you think I am, to be my friend? But why? Unless you are the runt of the litter, which makes sense. You’re rather small compared to the hearty bat-creatures I see in your dre—, err, my books. And you’ve got the personality of an unstoppable freight train with only half its wheels, so it’s no wonder why not even Captain Nightshader likes you.”
Dewmist’s mouth hung open, wordless, and her eyes shone, big and round and glowing like pilot lights. “How . . . How in Equestria . . .”
“I’ve done some digging.” For the briefest of seconds, Glados flicked a glance at the bin set underneath her dry erase board, knowing that inside, underneath a year’s worth of notes on Changelings, was Eternal’s gauntlet. “I got quite bored, and asked the courier if she could run to Town Hall and retrieve for me your files. Very dull reads, I’ll be honest. Unremarkable, in truth.” Her beration received some sour looks from both ponies. Glados drank their saltiness like a Changeling would love. “Now like I said, I want the truth. What are you doing here? Both of you?”
Dewmist chewed her lip, shuffling in her place and making an effort not to look at her larger companion. Ironsides mirrored the notion until the silence was too long for him to bear. “Princess Celestia thought’d it’d be good, not just for you but for us, if we became friends,” he blurted out.
Glados blinked only the slowest blink possible. “Of course she did,” she remarked dryly.
“We would help ease you into our society and stuff. You see . . . Dewmist and I were never popular among our peer groups. I’m big and, well, she’s . . .”
“Weird,” finished the bat pony, her dry-looking wings hanging limply at their sides. “I thought you might like it if I spin some wild tale about how the bat ponies were created in some tragic explosion that leveled an entire town, but, well, it’s not really true . . . The truth is that bat ponies are just pegasi that undergo a transformation by the Power of the Moon if they choose to serve in the Lunar Guard.”
“I know,” said Glados. “A quick peek in The Appendix of Equestria told me everything I needed to know. You thought I wouldn’t find out eventually?”
Dewmist lowered her muzzle to the ground. “I’m sorry for lying, Glados. In truth, Germaneigh was actually abandoned because too many dragons fly over the area during the migration, and they became confident over the centuries.”
“That I did not know.”
Silence hung for the longest time; so long, in fact, that Ironsides thought Glados was expecting him to bow as well and did so. She allowed it for several more seconds until it was going on to the point of being unsettling. “No more lies. Now get up, and stop embarrassing yourselves.” The pair did as she asked, slow and uneasily. She saw it in their eyes, the guilt. There’s a deeper reason why their peers dislike them, she knew, but they were too dumb to see it. And that’s just it. These two are just upstarted morons. Nothing else. And that made it even easier for her to do this:
Glados smiled. “My trust does not come easy, friends. Not to mention, you raided my house before giving the chance to speak and nearly popped my head off. Though that is certainly the least I deserve, from your perspective at least, I haven’t done anything bad yet-and-or-recently. But if you can earn my trust and favor, I feel that this will be the beginning of a very prosperous relationship. No more secrets,” she motioned a hoof to all three of them, “between us.”
Ironsides nodded like the eager, thick moron that he was. “Yes, Glados. We can do that. And I’m… sorry about chokin’ ya earlier. I was just scared.”
Glados smiled at their compliance; it almost hurt her to play them like this, like tricking a pair of infants, which made her feel compelled to let them off with a warning. “Stabbing me in the back,” she said, low and slow, “is not a wise thing to do, friends. And a big thing I like to have in common with my friends is that we keep knives and other bladed instruments away from our spinal cords. We never speak of our work with other . . . undesirables. Do you understand what that means?” They both nodded in unison. “No you don’t. It means that, if you’re to earn my trust, you two can’t share our adventures with the princesses.”
Dewmist straightened up. “You’re telling us to lie to the princesses?”
“Yes,” she said bluntly. “But I’m not going to be asking you to kill a baby, no, that task requires too much brain power. All’s I’m asking of you is that you let me run my little science experiments in my lab, in my home, without your superiors knowing the, ah, finer details. It’s nothing illegal, at least not where I’m from, I assure you. But it’s too . . . human for your horse queens to understand.”
“This is sounding real fishy,” said Dewmist, ever the suspicious freak.
Wariness of others comes from being the runt of the litter, mused Glados. “I’m not annexing you from my workspace, you know,” she said. “There’s nothing I could do anyway, you need to keep an eye on my happenings. It’s your directive. You’ll see that I’m not doing anything unethical. And ethics are an important part of scientific procedure.” For humans, anyway.
Dewmist and Ironsides turned to each other, not speaking a word but their eyes told a million. Their eyes were soft, ears wilted, postures turned inwards. They were uncertain.
I have them… I think.
“If you don’t wish to partake in this, then by all means, tell the princesses. I won’t stop you. I can’t.” She gave Ironsides a friendly grin, though on the inside she was dying slowly as her face felt like it split in half. “You would probably trample me if I tried.” Ironsides let out a sheepish chuckle, looking incredibly ridiculous in Glados’s mind that such an imposing force was possible of blushing cherry-red. Weakling. All of these creatures are soft. Too soft for their own good. It could, no, will, no, IS get them killed… Is get them killed? Wait…
She gave them a minute to absorb her offer before she said, “So do we have a deal, friends?”
Ironsides and Dewmist turned to each other, furrowed their brows and nodded. “Sure thing, friend,” said the larger pony gruffly. Suddenly, his voice turned serious, and his large figure looming over Glados’s fairly fragile shell suddenly became threatening. “But if we catch wind of a risk to the well-being of anypony, then we’re taking you to see the Princess. Is that clear?”
Glados nodded quickly, much to her own surprise. When have I become so complacent?
“So what do you feel like doing today?” he continued, back to slow and pleasant. “Would you like to go for a walk?”
Glados looked up at him, puzzled. “Why? What would the purpose of our walk be? Are you saying I am fat and need exercise?”
“What? No!” he said defensively; Dewmist snickered at his side. He playfully bumped her shoulder, knocking the smaller pony off balance. “No, it’s just that it’s a nice day out and your new friends are likely out and about. They’d probably love to go for a walk.”
“A walk . . . for fun? Who walks for fun? And what friends?” Then she remembered. Oh, yeah. The DJ, cellist, the moron and the fish. And her step-sister.
CRACK!
“All your other friends couldn’t come either because you don’t have any other friends.”
Glados would’ve stumbled back into the wall like a drunkard if Dewmist hadn’t grabbed her by the foreleg. “Woah! You okay?”
Glados tried her best to play it off, rubbing down her screaming temple and offering her best reassuring smile. “Ah, right. My friends!” She faked a cheerful smile, masking her true discomfort at both the “mind crack” and the very word “friend”.
“Yes, let’s go see my . . . friends!” My first command when I take over is to eliminate the word “friend” from their vocabulary.
“And that’s why I think Princess Celestia has predetermined all of our fates.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Don’t you see? We’re all just puppets on strings!”
“Please. Stop.”
The giant tank of water pushed along on four wheels encased in a copper glow. The seapony inside babbled on relentlessly. “So do you know why Celestia mysteriously vanished on the night Nightmare Moon returned?” Lyra leaned over the top of her tank, grinning and dripping water from her hair and face as the magic of her horn pushed it along.
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this one.”
“Because she was in league with the Mare in the Moon!” Lyra dove back underwater and released a piercing scream that would’ve likely shattered windows and sent dogs in a frenzy had she not. She hastily resurfaced, bringing at least a pint of water spilling onto the cobblestone streets of Ponyville and around every pony’s hooves. Octavia gingerly stepped around it while Bon Bon walked right through it, looking up at her step-sister with an uneasy smile.
Glados rolled her eyes. “And where’d you say you graduated again?”
“I dropped out, remember? I wanted to pursue anthropology.”
“Ah. Right. What a totally endeavored and not-fickle career path. Truly I am in the presence of this land’s finest specimen.”
“You know it!” Lyra said as she levitated a poison joke leaf from Bon Bon’s saddlebag and popped it in her mouth. “Ah,” she said, lips smacking, “that’s the sweet stuff.”
Octavia looked ready to vomit. “You eat poison joke?” Her first official meet with Ponyville’s only resident seapony was going over about as well as one would expect.
“They’re dried,” Lyra explained, floating a smelly blue leaf to the earth pony so she could better examine it. “See? The actual poison is removed when cooked, and in the end it becomes an herb that calms the nerves and clears the mind.”
“Addict,” Glados coughed into her hoof. "Cough, rehab, cough."
Octavia burst out laughing, and Glados even found herself smirking at the finer pony’s mirth. “Glados,” she said, calming, “you really know how to attract the most colorful kinds of ponies!”
“Laugh all you want!” said Lyra, frowning. “This stuff really helps me.”
Glados was beginning to rethink her alliance with this mutant of a fish. Why did she even need her anyway? “If by ‘helping’ you, you mean it fills your rotting brain with those moronic conspiracy theories. I’m just imagining you living in a trailer park, plucked down in front of a ham radio trying to pick up readings from alien spacecrafts while wearing a tinfoil hat. Stop consuming that blue crap, before it kills your IQ and turns you into a frothing lunatic.”
“Already got that covered,” she heard Bon Bon mutter, being the one and only time the skittish earth pony will ever say something rude about another is if it concerned her step-sister’s bizarre habit.
“It’s harmless!” Lyra claimed in defense. “Nothing’ll happen to this pony’s brain!”
“Stupid thoughts kill smart ones,” said Glados. “And there’s no cure for being a moron. Except school, maybe.”
“Better wear a tin hat, Lyra. Just to be safe.” Everyone, even Glados, was shocked to hear the jape come from Bon Bon, and quickly all four ponies were stopped in the middle of the street, trying to regain their composure from laughing themselves silly.
In what she would consider a Christmas Miracle, Glados actually found herself enjoying this organic behavior of “laughter.” Despite the irritation that came when she wanted to stop but her body refused to listen, and boy did that get annoying when she found herself making a cruel joke at another’s expense, it still left her strangely happy long after it dissipated.
Sigh. Organic problems.
There was still that logical part in the back of her head saying, Get a hold of yourself. These creatures are staring, and when she heard it she put on a straight face.
When their composure returned, the group pressed on. Glados spared a thought or two to Dewmist and Ironsides, who were trailing them from behind engaged in a conversation reserved only for each other. No doubt were they talking about their newfound friendship with Glados.
They’re likely conspiring against me at this very moment, she thought. Or perhaps they were too trusting to actually do such a thing, and were just talking about something frivolous that didn’t concern her. Eh. When I take over I’ll kill their families. And their dogs, probably. In the meantime maybe I should separate them. The two were like peas in a pod, that much was certain. And it’s clear that one wouldn’t function as well without the other. But how to separate them?
“Um, Glados?” Octavia’s voice breached her thoughts, sounding perplexed.
I’ll never get used to this. Why can’t organics think and talk at the same time like I did? Glados didn’t look back. “What is it?”
For a moment, the only sounds rattling throughout the empty neighborhood of Ponyville were their own hoofsteps clopping against the stone path and the squeaking wheels of Lyra’s tank. Glados thought—prayed—that the annoyance evident in her tone frightened Octavia out of speaking.
Of course this wasn’t the case. “If you don’t mind, may I ask where we are going?”
Glados stopped, and the rest halted behind her. She realized that they were nearing the edge of town, with only the meadow lying ahead before them. She turned to face her companions, who all shared the same look of confusion born from Octavia. “Like I told you, we’re going for a walk,” she said. “Isn’t that what friends do? Walk together?”
“Well, yes. But . . .”
“But where are we going?” finished Bon Bon. Glados shot her a curious look; the other pony shrugged.
Whups. We have to go somewhere? Well, this is awkward. Think fast, GLaDOS. Well, I would think faster if I still had a supercomputer the size of a nuclear reactor. “We… are going to… find the pegasus!” What am I saying!? Damn this slow mortal brain! Damn it!
Her friends exchanged looks, each and every one of them clueless. Ironsides and Dewmist came up from behind.
“What’s going on?” asked the batpony.
“Glados is being stupid,” Lyra said with a fin on her hip.
Stupid!? Glados would have burst out into a tirade of insults if she didn’t know any better. I have to get them on my side, she told herself. The fishstick will get hers, soon enough.
“What pegasus are you talking about, darling?” asked Octavia. She was now the only pony not looking at Glados like she had a second head, and for that she was oddly grateful. On the other hand, Lyra looked ready to burst out laughing.
Now Glados just needed to remember that pony’s name. “The one with the funny eyes.” Close enough.
Octavia quirked a brow. “You mean Ditzy Doo? Why?”
“Because she’s . . .” Because she’s the first thing to come to mind. For some reason. “Because she’s the first thing to come to mind. For some reason.” Glados slammed a hoof over her face.
Lyra completely lost it; she fell back into her tank, cackling and thrashing about, spilling water all over and drenching Bon Bon’s hindquarters. “You! You suck so hard at this, Science Pony!”
Octavia turned to shoot daggers at the cackling seapony, and when she returned to Glados she stopped herself, and a kindly smile grew upon her lips. “Oh, Glados hon, there’s no need to be embarrassed!”
She was completely lost. “Who says I am?” I swear on science itself my face is completely straight. My stupid . . . expressive . . . organic face.
“Says me!” laughed the cellist. “Your face is so bright it’s practically glowing cherry pie-red!”
“Am I?” Glados suddenly took notice of the light burn emanating from her own cheeks. She did her best to hide it behind her mane, but the damage had already been done. “Oh, this is perfect,” she muttered bitterly. She rolled her eyes, knowing it as an organic gesture of displaying great annoyance. I didn’t tell my face to glow red. These sickly ponies and their asinine bodily habits. It’s all so very… human.
By now Lyra was done laughing, and she and the rest were moving in towards Glados. She wanted to move her legs and step back. Her brain was telling them to do that, but for some reason, her body wouldn’t comply. Or maybe she wouldn’t? This is all so very weird. I’m not used to having to tell my platform to perform a function and not have it listen.
She felt a hoof rest on her shoulder. Dewmist. “It’s fine, Glados,” she said, her voice a purr when soft. “We get it, this is all new to you. You’re adjusting.”
Slap her hoof away!
CRACK!
“You know Mr. Joh—on, there’s no need to act so callous! Everybody needs a good friend, once in awhile.”
As if she were a drone under the thumb of Aperture once more, Glados actually lifted her hoof to rub the other pony’s affectionately.
What the Hell.
She realized what she was doing and dropped her hoof immediately. “I’ve been here for a month, I think,” she heard her voice saying. “I have yet to experience the displeasure that is ‘blushing’, I’m starting to think slower and there’s this irritating sense of emptiness in my stomach and I can’t seem to figure out a remedy. Hypothesis?”
“Well,” began Ironsides, stepping between Lyra and Bon Bon, “I’m not much of a scientist, unless the problem is ‘enemy plus sword equals fight’, but it sounds to me like you’re starting to act like a pony.”
Glados’s ears wilted. “Dammit, really?”
“Yep.”
“It seems like your enormous computer brain is finally harmonizing to being inside one of us stupid ponies,” said Lyra. “Imagine it’s like baking a big ol’ quiche in the oven, but you gotta leave it in there for a month before it’s finally done.” Glados actually found humor in the analogy, and offered a little nod in thanks. “But hey, what do I know?” joked the seapony. “I’m just the one with the tinfoil hat. Oh, and the achy belly? Well, my guess is that you’re hungry.”
Octavia nodded. “Yes, yes that sounds correct. Glados, when did you last eat?”
“I had breakfast . . . the morning Princess Sunsmiles or whathaveyou came to tell me I was trapped here forever and that my life is over.” Everyone stared at her aghast. All’s she could say in reply was, “I haven’t had much time to eat since then.” Glados wanted to cave herself with the blunt end of an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device for forgetting about eating. What is happening to me?
Lyra fell back into laughter once more. It wasn’t of malicious intent but was actually friendly amusement.
At least, that’s what Glados thought.
“Sweet Celestia and Luna above! Glados, baby, how in Equestria are you still alive?” she cried.
“I’ve asked myself that same kind of question, once or twice.”
“Glados, how have you not felt hunger yet?” Bon Bon approached, a quirk in her smile. “You’ve been here for a while, right?”
She shrugged lamely. “I just ate whenever I saw food. That’s how the humans do it, I believe. It’s why they’re so fat at least,” she muttered spitefully.
Bon Bon simply chuckled to her remarks. “Oh Glados, that’s why! Hunger is just our body’s way of telling us that we need more food!”
She chewed on that before nodding thoughtfully. “I suppose I scanned something years ago, an analogy likening it to a car in need of more fuel. I thought it was ridiculous, because cars perform a function while humans don’t even have one, but I understand it now.” Bon Bon smiled warily, happy to see her friend “getting” organics.
“That matters not, my friends!” said Octavia, her brows now furrowed and joined with a resolute smile. “Come, Glados. We’re going to the finest burger eatery in town. My treat!” Her smile broadened at the look on her friends’ faces, all ranging from bored to slightly pleased.
"'Fine' and 'burger' should never go together," said Glados.
Octavia waved a hoof in dismissal. "Oh, hush. Give it a try, I'm sure you'll fall for the craze. So who's with me?"
The ponies all looked at one another, mumbling words of agreement. “Yeah, sure,” said Lyra, followed by Dewmist muttering to Bon Bon, “I guess we can do that.”
Ironsides waved his hoof. “Lead the way, lil’ lady. This pony’s gotta eat.” His voice was the only one that held a shred of optimism, though Octavia wouldn’t put it past him to be more grateful for the prospect of a good meal than having one with friends.
When the ponies turned tail and marched back the way they came, Glados kept herself at a noticeable distance from the others. None seemed to mind, as Lyra and Octavia were becoming fast friends over talk of lyres and cellos. Soon enough, Glados felt her usual, cold self once again. I’m starting to act like an organic, she thought, feeling a tad troubled as she did. How disturbing. I must fight it if I’m to retain my sanity in this cesspit of sugar.
When they made it to the Central Ponyville, the first thing Glados noticed was the newly refurbished statue of Princess Celestia, reared-up and smiling proudly upon her passing subjects. A grey pigeon was perched high above, shitting on her royal head. Glados couldn’t help but smirk at her mortal enemy’s public service. Now that is some hamfisted symbolism if I’ve ever seen it.
Octavia led the group around a carrot kiosk and into this so-called “finest burger eatery in town.”
Glados’s spirits sunk to the lowest pits of Hell when she saw its name. “Hayburger’? Ugh, why?”
Octavia stepped beside her, grinning. “Vinyl introduced me. This place is phenomenal, Glados. Trust me.”
“No, I mean, of all the things to get translated from my world into yours, the dining facilities of fast food just had to be one of them. Urgh. You equines . . . you’re more human than you are horse, you know that?” The bitterness of her tone made Octavia hold her tongue. Glados snuffed at the air. “By Newton’s madness I can actually smell the triple heart bypasses from here. Just take me behind the shed and be done with it, if you plan to kill me like this.”
“I know,” purred Lyra. “Doesn’t it smell good? Those salty, salty hay fries? The fifty exotic spices from every corner Equestria? Turf burgers burnt so black you’d think they were the stuff of Canterlot?” A froth spilled from her lips as she silently prattled on about the tastiness of a shorter lifespan.
“I think I just lost the will to live after hearing all that,” muttered Glados.
Octavia turned to Glados, puzzled. “You mean you’re not going to eat?” Ironsides leaned over her shoulder, asking, “Since you’re going to die, can I have your turf burger?”
“What? No, you simpletons. Let’s eat before I keel over.” Glados trotted ahead at a brisk pace, leaving behind five very confused friends before they followed suit.
“How’s your turf burger, Glady?” At the end of the table, Lyra leaned over the edge of her tank, stretching her neck all the way across so she could leer uncomfortably at Glados as she took a slow bite of the black-and-green patty.
The thing didn’t look very appetizing, at least in Glados’s mind. She probably wouldn’t have even touched the thing had it not been for the buns covering its offensive coloring, or the pickles and condiments added to wash out the taste of football field.
“I feel like they ripped this right out of the ground and cooked it in a vat of sizzling fat-person fat and cow patties.”
Lyra’s smile broadened, and she retreated back into her tank and took a long sip of her soda.
Freak.
Across from Glados, Octavia gestured to the window on her right, saying, “That’s what they do, Hon. See?” Outside, they saw two unicorn stallions wearing the restaurant’s yellow aprons, sifting through the gardens out front. What Glados originally thought was just a decoration turned out to be the place’s own private pantry.
She felt her stomach do “The Twist.” Glados, the greatest piece of technology and programming that ever was or will be, was eating grass and dirt like a . . . like a . . . like an actual horse.
“Well,” she began with cold courtesy, “I can admire that they don’t raise the, uh, grass and dandelions in a slaughterhouse with appalling living conditions, and package it at some dinky, moldy factory in the middle of nowhere by illegal foreigners.” They were all giving her funny looks, which she purposely ignored. “What I’m still struggling to grasp is what you fleshies see in the appeal of this trash.” She took another bite and chewed, slowly and thoughtfully, so she could squeeze the grease out of every bite.
“I thought you were starving,” said Dewmist, piercing a can of root beer with her fangs and draining it from the bottom.
Bon Bon slid some hay fries into her mouth and nodded, meekly. “I’ve seen ponies who haven’t eaten for a day scarf down five hay burgers in under a minute.”
“Is it safe to assume that they were under the knife?” asked Glados as she took a sip from her water. It was the only gratifying aspect about this whole charade, if truth be told.
Socially-awkward Bon Bon blushed like a drunken priest as a cascade of words tumbled from her quivering mouth. Glados swore she heard her say, “Only three.” Everypony else snickered at her remark.
“Are we just gonna ignore the slaughterhouse thing?” Lyra asked the table. Everyone resumed eating as though she never spoke. “Really? We’re doing that? Okay. Sure.” Lyra slid back into her tank, fins folded across her chest. With a grumpy look across her face, she blew a couple bubbles that danced upward.
Glados took another bite of the garden-grown patty, dryly hoping she got the one with the caterpillar cooked in it. “I’m picking where we eat next time,” she said. She took another bite.
“You really hate it here, eh?” Dewmist had a knowing smirk that Glados wanted to cut off with a hot knife.
“I’d burn it to the ground if and build an animal euthanization center while the ashes were still warm.”
Lyra almost choked on her food, she laughed so hard. “Oh Celestia, I’m telling Fluttershy that one!”
Dewmist’s grin turned positively shark-like, and Glados was sure it was not at her joke. “You sure you hate it here?” she asked, humor edging her every word.
“I think I can form my own opinion on a restaurant, bodyguard.” Dewmist only answered with a smug chuckle that irritated a vein in Glados’s forehead.
Lyra finished off the last of her soda before speaking. “Alright Glady, I’ll quit tuggin’ your twig and just say that you finished three turf burgers and a bag of hay fries. And . . . and you’re now taking Octavia’s food.”
"I did?” Glados looked at her place before her, and was shocked to see it vacant aside from a few crumbs that lingered. She eyed the half-eaten turf burger sitting on her hoof, and then Octavia beside her, smiling knowingly. “Ew, God, someone fetch me a stomach pump.” She handed, or rather pitched, Octavia back her food. “Apologies,” she muttered into her hoof.
The earth pony laughed, all in good nature. “It’s quite alright, Hon.”
“Hey, Glados?” Her yellow eyes turned to the candy-peddling earth pony, grinning at her shyly from behind a large soda. “After this, we should explore the marketplace a bit, show you the different stalls and what you can buy with money you earn at work.”
Glados sniffed. Right… work. “I don’t intend to waste my currency on frivoloties, Mike Ike.”
“Bon Bon.”
“Jujube… but I will accept your offer, if only to clear the cholesterol clogging my arteries.”
Octavia shuddered. “That’s a charming mental image.”
Throughout the bazaar of kiosks and eateries and Ponyvillians buying and selling one another’s trade, a pair of angry voices rose among them.
“Ditzy, you featherbrain!” said one, a mare. “You gave me the wrong mail again!”
“Yeah, the wrong mail again!” another echoed in agreement.
The gang looked in the direction the voices were coming from and found two greyish pegasi cornering Ditzy Doo against the side of Sugarcube Corner. The pair were clearly twins in every way, save for their choice in manestyles. One looked the rugged, the other proper. One was messy, the other clean. And in Glados’s mind, one was dumb, the other dumber.
Ditzy countered with silence and an uneasy smile, aslant eyes shaded under the brim of her postmare hat.
“For the millionth, bajillionth time,” started the sloven-looking pegasus, “I’m Cloudchaser! Not Cloud Kicker!”
“Yeah, she’s Cloudchaser!” mimicked her twin.
Ditzy continued to chuckle weakly and sweat bullets. “S-Sorry about that Cloud Kicker. I mean Chaser! Cloudchaser, heh-heh... I-It won’t happen again!.”
The pony named Cloudchaser crumpled up the letter tucked under her wing and pelted it at Ditzy; the wad harmlessly bounced off her head, but it still clearly hurt all the same as she cast her gaze to the ground.
“Stupid buzzard!” the bully hollered.
“We should go help her,” said Octavia.
“Yeah,” morosely agreed Ironsides. “We should.” He made no effort to move. Lyra proceeded to levitate a bag of joke leaves into her fins and eat them by the hooffulls.
I, too, am interested in seeing where this is going. Glados pulled out a little notepad and quill. ‘How the wall-eyed pegasus handles psychological trauma’, she wrote. What can Tweedledee and Tweedlemoron show me about my nearest and dearest pawn?
“Flitter and I have been wondering,” said Cloudchaser, “Where did you learn to fly, DD?”
“Yeah!” said Flitter, sneering dumbly. “Where’d you learn to fly?”
“I . . . uh . . .” Ditzy’s gaze remained held to the ground, her ears wilted.
“I mean, you crash into everything!” Cloudchaser chuckled, and her oh-so-creative sister did the same. “Maybe if you had money to fix those silly eyes of yours!”
“Yeah! Money!”
“But of course you gotta pay off that big ol’ empty house ya never clean.”
Ditzy shuddered before her legs gave out beneath her, plopping her to the ground. Octavia looked to all of her friends, all pensive at the sight they were seeing, save for Bon Bon, though she looked on edge all the time. “We need to help her, ladies,” she said, more pressingly.
“You fly like a gimp!”
“Yeah, fly like a gimp!”
“Stop it!” Ditzy cried.
Glados was too busy furiously scribbling down literal scribbles to look up. "No interfering with science." ‘Self conscious about her flying ability.’ And here I thought she was proud of it.
Octavia shifted from one hoof to the other, biting down on her lip to suppress the urge to yell out at the bullies. It was clear that she wasn’t going to do anything beyond that. Rather than take direct action, she turned to the guardsponies, aghast at the bored looks on their faces. “You’re Royal Guards! Aren’t you going to do anything!?”
Ironsides gave a throaty laugh. “What do we look like? The Elements of Harmony?”
“And technically, I’m a Lunar Guard,” added Dewmist.
“Technicalities,” Octavia hissed. She glanced back, worry on her face.
“If you want to help her so badly, then just do it!” said Lyra.
Octavia glanced at the two nasty pegasi standing on either side of Ditzy. Her ears wilted, she bit her lip. “Ooh, I don’t want to cause a scene. Especially over…” she gulped, and sighed grievously, “...Ditzy Doo, horrible as that sounds. M-Maybe somepony else will help her?” she asked, hope in her voice.
“Negative,” muttered Glados, as she continued to write. She did not fail to notice Octavia’s aversion to helping Ditzy. “That won’t happen. The more people there are, the less of a chance someone will step up to help. All these morons,” she gestured with her pen at the entire marketplace, most of whom were going about their business around the scuffle occurring, “they’re all thinking the same thing you are. This is basic psychology, actually.” And this is also quite telling of your character. Your obvious character that I can predict will now do what I know it will do...
“I thought she was your friend, Glados.”
“This is important for my research,” she replied. “I will console the poor fool once Tweedledee and Tweedleidiot disperse.”
On her paper, Glados was writing, ‘I have run out of observations to make and am just writing this to stall for time.’
Back across the street, Cloudchaser had flipped Ditzy’s hat off of her head. When she scrambled to retrieve it, Flitter snatched it away, laughing her nasally laugh and tossing it to her twin.
Octavia grew angry-red in the face and took several steps forward, sparing one last look at her friends. “I shall prove you wrong, Glados! You’re all yellow-bellied cravens!” she cried. Lyra continued scarfing down joke leaves as fast as Glados jotted notes, with Bon Bon off to the side cleaning her stepsister’s tank using her foreleg and the guardsponies had their eyes drawn to a passing butterfly.
My entourage…
Glados shook her head. I knew your ego couldn’t let science win. Octavia trotted across the street. Her entire body was quivering from her hooves to the end of her tail but she never skipped a beat in her march. “Hey! You curs!”
Cloudchaser, who was shaking Ditzy by the strap of her mailbag, looked away from the now-dizzied mare and at the cellist. “And what do you want, Canterlot Snob?”
“Yeah, Snobtavia?”
The two ponies loomed over Octavia, both at least an ear taller than her. From a safe distance her friends spectated, drawn to the stern look in the smaller pony’s eye. If she was intimidated, she did a good job hiding it. “I want you ruffians to stop picking on my friend,” she said, muzzle inching closer to theirs with every word.
Glados set aside her quill and turned to Bon Bon. “What is she doing?” she asked.
Bon Bon breathed onto Lyra’s tank and rubbed at the fog. “She’s helping Ditzy Doo, and so should you.”
Even though I knew she would act upon this, organic stupidity is still a factor I fail to understand. It’s simply unquantifiable. “She’s likely going to be inflicted severe physical harm by the Dynamic Doofuses,” Glados explained. “I thought she was one of the smarter horses living in this burg.”
“She is,” Lyra said through a mouthful of blue mush. “She knows what she’s getting into. But, y’see, Octi’s Ditzy’s friend. So in the end she’ll always help her out of a jam. It’s pretty much expected for friends to stick up for each other.”
“But why?”
Lyra gave herself a minute to ponder, and even so she answered with a puzzled, “Because she’s her friend?”
Glados rolled her eyes. “Yes, I got that. But I’m asking why.”
“Are you thick in the head, Science Pony? They’re friends! That’s what friends do!”
“‘Thick’!? Listen here, Fish Fillet, and listen carefully so your stupid little dolphin brain can comprehend my complex words: WHY? Not ‘why’ is she doing this, but ‘why’ as in, ‘why the hell is the highborn accomplished cellist associated with a halfwit that can’t even deliver mail?’”
Lyra’s mouth hung agape, trying to make sense of what Glados just said. Only after a few awkward seconds, she surrendered and pushed herself away from the edge of her tank. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Gladdy,” she chuckled.
I’m getting sick of your attitude, Fishface. Glados shifted gazes to the three ponies before her. “And why don’t you help her out?”
Lyra returned to flash her a blue smile. “I barely know Ditzy, and those idiots will break my tank.”
“I have bad asthma,” said Bon Bon, looking especially guilty.
“We just don’t care,” was Dewmist’s excuse. “Not to sound like a couple of jerks—”
“Though we kinda are,” threw in Ironsides.
“—but we’ve been through far worse than being called names and getting our hats thrown around by a couple of meatheads in Basic. A little dirt in the eye would do that mailmare some good, I say.”
Understandable, actually. Agreeable, in fact. Glados returned her gaze back towards the bickering mares ahead, placing a hoof beneath her chin as she thought.
Across the street, Octavia was becoming very good friends with the concrete. The twins Cloudchaser and Flitter loomed over her. Ditzy Doo, with both her pride and postal hat damaged, hopped around frantically to gather up mail strewn about the concrete, much of it spilling out of her forelegs whenever she tried to pick up another.
The twins exchanged a look with one another and returned to the earth pony below them.
“This is kinda sad,” said Cloudchaser.
“Yeah, it’s kinda sad,” her sister echoed in agreement.
The rougher sister of the two knelt down beside Octavia, getting a good look at her bruised nose as she struggled to get up. “You’re kind of pathetic, Canterlot Snob,” she said. “You threw one punch at us, missed, and fell flat on your face. I mean, what was that?”
“Yeah, what was that?”
Octavia looked Cloudchaser in the eye, clumsily shifting into a sitting position. “Apologies. We classier ponies usually fight with words, not hooves like a pack of untamed beasts.”
“And how come a hoity-toity pony like you is defending the lowest of the low like Ditzy?” asked Cloudchaser.
“Because . . .” Octavia thought for a moment, and she returned her gaze to them with an affirming smile. “Because although I’ve lived here for only a couple months, Ditzy Doo is one of the kindest, most easygoing ponies I have ever met. And I consider myself lucky to be considered her friend. That, and I don’t believe my class is an excuse to distance myself from those that aren’t as fortunate.”
Cloudchaser looked at her sister. The two of them nodded once, and Flitter held a hoof out for Octavia. The higher class pony reached for it, hesitated a second, but accepted the gesture.
“Come on Flitter, let’s bounce.”
“Bounce.”
The two of the pegasi flew off, much to Octavia’s delight. With a smile she approached her scrambling pegasus friend. “Let me help you, dear.” She began gathering scattered mail in her forelegs.
Ditzy trained one eye on her, a wary smile on her face. “Thanks for helping me, Octi.”
“Why are you letting those bullies harass you?” She fretted like a overly protective mother. When the mailmare didn’t respond, she said, “Ditzy, darling, don’t be afraid to come to me for help if they bother you again. And that counts Vinyl, too. We won’t let them bully you and get away with it, it isn’t right.”
“I know, Octi. Thank you.”
“Yes Octipus, thank you.” Lyra and the rest of her friends rolled up to the pair. “What were we talking about?” asked the seapony.
“Oh, I was saving Ditzy here from a pair of brutes.” She added pointedly, “No thanks to any of you.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m calling neutrality on this one,” said Glados. “Outsiders shouldn’t get involved in another’s conflict. You understand the importance of that in wartime, yes?”
“Wartime? What war?” asked Dewmist.
“Why, the perpetual conflict between the Equestrian postal service and twins clearly borne of incestual parents, of course.”
Several ponies chuckled at her joke, Octavia being the only one with the decency to blush and try covering her mouth. Only Ditzy maintained silence. She fixed Glados was a steady, burning gaze.
Her target noticed this, and looked from side to side. “Um, are you staring at me, or that carrot dispensary over there? I can’t really tell.” The pegasus continued to stare, and Glados continued to feel uneasy. “Is anybody home? For once?”
Ditzy then fixed each and every pony with her glaring eye. In a low, severe tone she said to them, “I can’t believe you guys…”
“I promise you, we’re real. You can believe us,” Glados assured her.
Lyra agreed. “Yeah, Ditz—you don’t mind if I call you Ditz, right?—these guys are definitely not one of my crazy hallucinations. I’m, like, 84.7 percent sure.”
“Where did you do your math?” Glados wondered.
But Ditzy spoke over everypony else, only having to raise her voice slightly for her intended to hear, “I can’t believe you’re all still friends with a murderer.”
The ponies all fell into silence, the only sounds to reach their ears being the flap of Ditzy’s wingbeats as she fled the scene and continued on with her rounds.
All eyes were suddenly on Glados. She looked at all of them. “Hey, she’s not wrong. I’m trying to change, but she isn’t wrong."
Octavia sympathetically placed a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Glados.”
“No, I mean, well I did kill a lot of people out of a thirst for vengeance. What I was referring to was how... accepting you are of this." Not that I'm complaining, it makes my job easier at least.
"Well, I believe most ponies can change if they try, and I think you are." Octavia smiled. "Besides, you are quite the hoot!"
"Yeah, you're pretty funny," Lyra agreed. Bon Bon nodded, smiling warily. The two guardsponies shrugged. The seapony continued. "I mean, it's kinda hard not to pity you either, since you flipped your bricks and started screaming and crying in the center of Ponyville when you realized you couldn’t be sent home. A pony crying like that stays with you."
Without even realizing it, Glados was cringing at the memory. “Ugh, yes.”
There was an uncomfortable silence amongst the ponies, which was thankfully broken by Bon Bon of all ponies, whose voice quavered as she asked, “So… speaking of townwide spectacles, anypony else see Golden Oak fly up into the air this morning?”
They all shook their heads. Only Glados was shocked. "What?! That really happened? Did someone record it? Is it still intact?"
Bon Bon rolled her eyes, sounding quite annoyed as she answered, "No. It was just another one of Twilight Sparkle's stupid freakouts waking me up. Apparently Twilight Sparkle and her friends have some important test from the princess, and they had to leave Ponyville and go north.”
“North?” wondered Dewmist. “What the heck is north? Just constant snow and cold.”
“Who cares though?” Bon Bon excitedly posed, drawing odd looks from all her friends; she had never been this forward before. “Those crazy ponies are going to be gone for Celestia knows how long! You know what this calls for?” Hesitantly, everyone shook their heads, save for Lyra, who did so but with a huge grin shared by Octavia, both realizing what was coming next…
Together, the two of them, along with half of Ponyville’s marketplace, joined Bon Bon as she cried out in a voice strikingly similar to Pinkie Pie’s: “A PARTY!”
The air was suddenly electric with excited chatter, and all Glados could think was, Does this village celebrate for everything? She hoped this townwide celebration of being momentarily freed of Twilight and her friends did not interfere with her day. She had a busy schedule with that Changeling in her basement…
Meanwhile, miles away in Canterlot, a statue of a draonequus began to crack open.
Next Time: A Big Ol' Storm pt. 2 - Ponyville celebrates, unaware that things are going to get chaotic, with or without the Elements of Harmony.