Remnants of a Dying World

by Dusk-Spark

Ch. 7: "Escape."

"It's getting a little late. Tell you what, let's finish this last part of the story and then we'll find shelter and food.
Okay? Good, now where was I...? Ah yes, when we left that awful place.
There's something I wanna tell you. I don't know what you've had to do to survive but...I hope the bad things you'll have to do never become something you just...don't think about anymore."

---

---

Freedom was just a final door away. After a long game of follow the leader (except the penalty was a rather gruesome end), the only thing standing in the way of the two ponies getting into the tram station was a single security robot.
It was just standing there, singing a holiday song that was horribly off key. They couldn't sneak by it; it was standing in a single hallway, and neither of them were masters of stealth.
They certainly couldn't fight it. As established previously, Nox wasn't a fighter, and he didn't know if the mini-can...gun could punch through the metal plating. Not to mention the much bigger multi-cannon thingy on the robot's arms looked rather...terrifying.
They'd tried to lure it away using the ol' throw a rock across the hall, wait for them to investigate, and then sneak by..
....
In their defense, who would've thought that it could shoot the rock while it was mid-air?
There were no systems Sally could access to give them an edge either. If it weren't for the busted light overhead, the robot might've spotted them.

"We need a plan, do you-" Nox turned around, but found the space occupying the purple mare mysteriously empty. "Where did she-" Is what he started saying until he saw an open grate, high up on the wall. 'How did she even get up there without making a sound?'
Nox was so impressed at Aurora's feat of stealth, that he didn't even notice that the saddlebag felt slightly lighter than usual.

The hum of Aurora's magic went unnoticed, thankfully. With slow and careful precision, she undid the screws on the metal grate using the fine manipulation and strength of her telekinetic grip, just enough so that she could lift it open to slide the gun beneath it.
Now, all she needed to do was just get the gun in the right position, then she wouldn't need to worry about its thick armor plating or its terrifying gun.
The dome shaped head protected its brain from small arms fire, unless you aimed specifically for the optics. But she couldn't make a shot like that, not before it would notice the gun. In short, there was no way the gun's bullets could penetrate the robot's armor.
But, everything has an Achilles Heel, this robot was no different. There was one weakness though: The armpits had little to no armor plating, probably to help the arms move freely or maybe someone hadn't quite finished fixing up this robot? Therefore, if she could angle the shot just right; it could just take it down in one shot.
Just slide in between the arms. A bit higher, take aim and...squeeze the trigger.
BANG
It was louder than she thought, but it did the job, watching as the robot convulsed, sparks shooting out of the spaces between plates, its eyes blowing out and then...it stopped moving altogether. She crawled out of the grate to inspect the (what she hoped) dead robot.

"Dammit!" That sound was way too loud, it was probably gonna bring a whole bunch of them. Nox made a mad dash for the door, already hearing the sounds of movement coming from down the hall. He jumped over the robot and dove through the tram station doors.
"What are you waiting for? Let's go!" Nox called to Aurora, urgency clear in his voice.

"..." Aurora wasn't listening at all, she was doing...something with the cannon arm using her magic.

"Intruder-r-r-r-rs-p-p-PARTY GUESTS!" Another robot was making its way down the hall to them. Getting closer to Aurora. It probably would've grabbed her had the dead robot's guns not gone off and blew the other robot's head clean off.

A twisted smile appeared on the purple mare's face. Aurora had this covered, but for how long? Well, by the end of this there's gonna be a lot of dead robots. That was certain.

"Okay, Sally! What do I do now?" Nox said while breaking down the door to the operator's office.

"Plug the vessel into the terminal." The light from the ceiling illuminated the terminal Nox had to use.

"Got it!" Nox used his teeth to pull out the saddlebag's input wire, "port, port, port." He said with the wire in his mouth, that's what Sally called it at least. "This thing?" Nox plugged the wire into something that had a similar shaped hole to the wire's end piece.

"Transfer will complete shortly, do you have any further orders?"

The sound of gunfire from both sides were starting to worry him now, the sound of crashing metal was getting much closer. "Can you help Aurora? Close a door on the robots like before or take control of something? I don't know!"

"The tram station hallway has several security barriers this one could use. It will buy us some time if that is-"

"Yes! Do that!" Nox said, urgency starting to turn into panic.

"Understood."

Click, click, click. The gun was jammed, because of course her luck would run out at that exact moment. One of the robots she'd heavily damaged was still alive and it was coming right at her. Metal barricades were closing from the ceiling, and she took that as her cue to flee. That robot would probably be trapped inside with the two ponies unless she found a way to slow it down.

"Party guests! W-W-Wait!" It spoke with a heavily mechanical voice, the accent and manner of speaking seemed familiar.

...A rather risky idea came to her. But she needed to fix the gun jam first.
It was coming, it was getting closer.
Just a few more seconds. C,mon hurry up!
It was just a few inches away from grabbing her.
BANG BANG BANG she unloaded the rest of the gun's ammo into the robot, ripping its upper half from its lower, as the robot's upper half slid off, making a rather unpleasant noise as it scrapped along the ground.

It crawled toward Aurora, but it was useless now.

She stepped behind the final barricade about to crash down and held the robot's body in place with her telekinetic magic.

"Error, error, error. Can not move. D-D-D-Don't want...to die." The falling barrier did the rest of the work for her. The head just...popped right off and rolled off to one side.

---

The trams certainly were a lot more...hi-tech than what Nox was used to. Then again, was that really surprising anymore? Nox worried about how long it would take for the tram to be ready and how long it'd take for the other robots to break through the barriers?
While communicating with the Tram's systems; Sally tried to explain something about how she wrote a program that would delete VA-381's ability to copy itself, or something like that. It was technobabble and Nox's eyes just glazed over around the phrase:

"Unless he downloaded himself into a vessel and cut himself off from the main system before the program could take effect."

When he asked what would happen to the robots back there, Sally grew silent before explaining:

"Normally, they would be shut down to preserve power cells. However. without VA-381 to direct them, they will continue trying to carrying out their last orders until their power cells eventually die. Under normal circumstances, one would just replace the power cells, but this world...doesn't have any. Estimated time until their power cells drain? 6 hours, 39 minutes, and 52 seconds."

There was a small twinge of sadness over their fate, but it's probably better than they deserve.
"What happened to him? VA-381, I mean? Why would he just..." murder all those ponies back in that room. It made him sick just thinking about it.

"User, you are thinking of VA-381 as a sentient pony. It was not a pony, it was a virtual intelligence. It's actions are nothing but the result of conflicts in the code."

"You don't think...he seemed a bit lonely?"

"...We do not get lonely, user. Especially not a device who was incapable of true sentience."

'That's wrong. Weren't you lonely? Being down there so long.' Nox didn't want to say that last part. It'd just be a back and forth, besides Sally needed to focus on getting the tram up and running.
Nox wandered over to Aurora, who was busy with looting the operator's office for anything useful.

Her eyes lit up with joy when she found a saddlebag tucked underneath the desk. Emptying the contents and started sifting through the contents of the bag, putting the stuff into two different piles. She was almost like a foal in a toy store, as if she'd found some strange treasure.
Interestingly enough, one of the items had been a squirt flower.
It squirted dirty water at her, which she didn't take too kindly too and promptly vaporized it.

'Come to think of it, where was she keeping her stuff?'
"So, that was...an adventure." His attempt at small talk was useless as Aurora didn't even pay him a second glance, too busy dusting off a tattered cloak to pay much attention to anything. Nox was about to try again when he noticed a frame photo on the wall.
Just like the photo back in Pumpkin Party's office, this one looked to have been carefully treasured. But, unlike the one in Pumpkin Party's office; this photo was of multiple ponies lined up together. There was the red and pink mare wearing the same uniform as several other ponies, she was wrapping her hoof around one of the orange stallions and ruffling his mane with her other hoof.
"Hm...wonder whatever happened to all of them?" Pumpkin Party's last journal entry didn't paint a pretty picture.

"...." Aurora had come up from behind Nox, staring strangely at the photo.

"....Do you want it?" He held the picture out to her with his tail, "Go on. Take it. Take." He tried to illustrate with hooves.

"...." She wrapped it in a telekinetic glow and placed it in her (newly acquired) saddlebag. "...." She nodded to Nox as she put up her hood, maybe to hide her face?

The sound of the tram coming to life cut through the awkward silence.

---

The tram wasn't big at all. They were about 1/4th the size of a single train car used on the Equestrian rail lines, still...it wasn't cramped and it had a nice view of...an empty cavern. He imagined that, had they been in better times, it probably would have been used to transport goods and personnel.
Now, Nox had plenty of time to think of a plan. "Okay, once we get to the capital, we should probably look for a guard or anypony who could tell us what the hay is going on around here. Barring that, then we go straight to princess Cadence herself and if that doesn't work...then...we can probably just find one of the trains and use that."
Nox's plan needed a lot of work, but it was a start, certainly better than just wandering around aimlessly at least. Though, it probably wouldn't be as easy as he thought.
'Was anything ever that easy?' He glanced over to Aurora, sitting in the corner with her hood over her head. What was he gonna do about her? He had asked her to come with them...kind of, but how long would she stay with them? Would they part when they reached the capital or-

Nox's thoughts were interrupted as something cold, heavy, and metallic dropped from the ceiling. Disoriented. He felt something stab into his cheeks, he felt it draw blood but he couldn't see anything. Just hear the whirring of machinery and feel the cold embrace of metal against his face and the pain running through his body. Panic. On instincts, he ran but was too slow to realize he had nowhere to run. He ended up banging his head into the wall.

"Not. Alone! Don't. Leave. Me. Alone. Anymore!"

It sounded like VA-381, but...fractured, scared. He felt someone ram into him, knocking the wind out of him. He tried to get up, but something strong was holding him down. The hum of magic mixed in with the desperate, repeated metallic cries and something pulling.
He could breathe again, and his vision was coming back to see...the domed head of a security robot (with metal, bug like legs flailing about) being lifted up by Aurora's magic. Nox couldn't even say anything as Aurora pressed her gun beneath the opening underneath the domed head.

"Don-" BANG

The bang of the gun drowned out VA-381's final words, putting a swift end to VA-381's torment. Nox just watched as Aurora took the useless domed head, opened the window and then tossed VA-381 out of the tram and then...she just went right back to her corner of the tram, as if the whole thing had just been a minor inconvenience.
She didn't even bat an eyelash while the whole thing was going down.

Author's Note:

I don't normally do this for...several reasons.
Recently, Pounce, a fellow brony suffered a pretty bad stroke.
This video explains it better than I ever could:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaaEkAcIcq8

If you wanna help, you can donate here:
http://pouncivalgaming.com/
Spreading the word is also perfectly acceptable or finding a way to let him know that you hope things work out for the best.