They landed in a grove of trees, near where the road to Applejack’s farm met Ponyville’s main thoroughfare. The geography of the area was burned into Joker’s mind, after years of forced study in school as well as pilot training. For a mare who supposedly mourned the loss of Ponyville, Princess Twilight seemed almost obsessed with making sure nopony forgot exactly how the town was.
Of course, eighty-five years later, most of the former dirt roads were overgrown with trees and wild grass, with the occasional grove of flowers sprouting from the ground. It seemed almost peaceful, except for the Brute presence.
Shortly after hitting the ground, Joker activated her heat pattern gear, a little machine that passively monitored fluctuations of heat patterns to identify friendlies and enemies. The half-magic, half-tech Golems almost constantly showed up as white-hot, while the Brutes, more often than not, were colder than their surroundings. The gear had already picked up at least four Brute signatures by the time Joker managed to run Thief over to where the rest of Fireteam Philomena had dropped.
Up close, the Mark VIs were about a head shorter than Thief, but longer and meaner looking; so much that Joker wasn’t sure if there was much pony left in the design of the things. Pilot Jaeger’s Golem was easy to make out, with a red stripe painted down the right side of the Golem’s “face.” She turned to Joker.
“Pilot Joker is making up for Pilot Goose today in his rifle position; Joker, in the back. Ragtag, Arrow, flank me,” Jaeger said over the fireteam comm channel. “We’re going to hit Sugarcube Corner. Our orders are not to touch the building itself . . . but not all orders have to be obeyed, clear?”
“Clear, ma’am,” Ragtag and Arrow shouted, and Joker echoed. She wasn’t about to piss off Jaeger, at least not before the mission even got underway.
Joker moved to the rear of the fireteam and broke into what passed for a trot in the Golems. She kept Thief’s “eyes” on Jaeger’s Golem as much as possible, while checking her rear and side cameras every few seconds. Over the open channel, cries of alarm and shouts of victory came in from the Mark V teams, who had begun fighting their way through Brutes to Twilight’s castle.
The shells of houses around Ponyville loomed above Joker, most of them rotted away and only a few pieces left standing. Some were just piles of refuse, while others, oddly, looked like they had just been left for a day, with only the decaying paint an indicator of how long it had been. Being inside the Everfree Forest, even around Zecora’s Hut or Fluttershy’s Cottage, was one thing, but seeing the world so empty would have sent shivers up Joker’s spine if she had one. The houses were so familiar from the brightly-colored pictured books of her childhood, but then run through a wringer of pain and waste.
“Eyes on the prize, girls,” Jaeger said. “Brute activity is being drawn away by the Mark Vs. We should be able to make it to Sugarcube Corner before we can expect to run into—”
A burst of magic opened up in front of Jaeger’s Golem, forcing the behemoth to a stop. In front of her stood a Brute, a monstrosity just like the rest of its race. Like all Brutes, this one was different from the rest; it stood on three misshapen legs with too many joints while a fourth limb that was too long for its body ended in a bony hook. Its head, or what passed for it, had too-large eyes and a jaw that stretched forward like an alligator’s, but hung open limply.
By the time the monster’s scythe-arm was swung at Jaeger, she had already leapt out of the way and opened fire on the Brute. Her plasma rounds impacted its chest, and the Brute staggered, long enough for Ragtag and Arrow to open up with shrapnel grenades and chain guns, respectively. Joker selected her anti-material rifle by clicking her teeth together, and her vision filled with the familiar scope.
The Brute, for being so brittle-looking, was fairly agile and managed to dodge the brunt of Arrow and Ragtag’s rounds. It leapt away across the street toward a hollowed-out house, then disappeared in a flash of magic, only to reappear in another flash. Unfortunately for the Brute, their magic still gave off plenty of heat, and it reappeared right into Joker’s crosshairs.
She “pulled the trigger” by grinding her front teeth together, and a bullet the size of her pony head spat out of the massive rifle attached to her side. Coated in a field of magic, it impacted into the Brute’s eye socket in a hail of viscera. Joker didn’t spend anymore time looking, instead getting the Golem to automatically load another round into the chamber and lining up another shot.
By the time she brought up her scope, however, the rest of the fireteam was pouring their ammunition onto the stunned Brute in a hail of brass and magic. The thing dropped to the ground and attempted to cover itself with its three bony legs while slashing out with the scythe, but couldn’t hit any of them.
Finally, after another thirty seconds, the stop command—a short, high-pitched beep in their comm—sounded from Jaeger. “Don’t expend any more ammunition,” she said. “There’ll be plenty more around Sugarcube Corner. Keep moving.”
Joker took off in a trot after them, taking up the rear once more. She afforded herself a few moments of quiet before she put her weapons away and started to scan their position. Sugarcube Corner was just up ahead, but her gear showed no hostiles around the vicinity. Her eyes scanned the rest of the radar-like gear, and her heart dropped just in time for her to whirl around.
The Brute from before, missing half its flesh but still coming, leapt at them with its full weight behind it. Joker managed to get out of the way, but one of the other pilots—Joker couldn’t tell if it was Ragtag or Arrow—wasn’t so lucky. Whoever she was, she screamed loudly when the scythe went right through the middle of her Golem like it was made of recycled paper, and the Golem’s lights went dark. Joker hoped it was because they had cut the cable.
The Brute made for Joker next and threw itself at her as well. She tried to bring up her rifle, but the thing was too fast and sent her toppling to the ground, with its whole body on top of her. The only thing that saved her was its midsection landing on her, forcing the Brute to pull itself up and bring its jaws back down on Thief.
For a split second, the Brute’s head was just above the extended barrel of the anti-material rifle. No more than eighth of a second. Not even enough time for Joker’s own brain to process what was happening, but Thief had all the time it needed. The Golem’s robot brain was simple, but it worked: threat in front of gun means fire gun. The anti-material rifle ripped the Brute a new one right through its brain cavity.
The Brute’s body jerked for a moment, allowing Jaeger and whatever pilot remained to pour more fire on it until the monster lay still, its body leaking fluids from a hundred different holes and its eyes dark.
“Pilot Joker, status!” Jaeger barked.
“Pissed off,” Joker said, shoving the Brute away. She maneuvered her mouth to get the Golem to retract the anti-material rifle in favor of her twin grenade launchers. “What about . . . the other pilot?”
“Ragtag’s Golem is a goner, but her vitals are fine, if in the yellow.” Jaeger scanned their immediate vicinity. “Tough bastard, this one was. I don’t think I’ve seen anything this tough before, even in the sims. Joker?”
“I haven’t seen these kind around the Everfree,” she said. “Could be a new breed, or the ones defending Ponyville are meaner. Either way, let’s get to Sugarcube Corner. I’m taking grenade position. Fuck rifles in urban combat.”
Jaeger didn’t protest. Joker figured this was her first command—and, by extension, her first casualty. Even if Ragtag was safe back on the moon with a blanket around her, hearing the dying scream of a Golem mixed with a pony was disquieting even to a veteran, much less a newbie commander.
They made it to Sugarcube Corner, or what was left of it. The overall structure still stood, but all the windows were long gone and one of the walls was completely missing. The rest looked like it had been hit by a hurricane, but miraculously still stood.
“Form a perimeter around the door, tight pattern,” Jaeger said. “Keep your weapons toward Twilight’s castle, that’s where that last one came from, and probably the rest too. Anything moves that’s colder than my heart, kill it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Arrow answered, her voice audibly shaking, though Jaeger’s crack about her heart seemed to calm her down a little. The poor mare had probably never even seen real combat before, and all the fancy gadgets on her Mark VI couldn’t make up for a lack of experience. She had even managed to turn on her maximum load out of weapons; enough that anything directly in front of her would be shredded to bits, but that her Golem would temporarily lose power for a few seconds afterward.
“Alright, everypony,” Jaeger said, “hostile at our one o’clock! Get ready, girls!”
Arrow whirled around, while Joker took her time to train her grenade launchers on the inbound target. She had them loaded with magical explosives—toxic mixtures of various potions that tended to have very random and very deadly side effects. Anything that could survive a barrage practically deserved to bring her down.
The Brute that emerged through the side of a crumbling house was a more typical monster, like those Joker had fought in the Everfree. A shambling mass of limbs and tentacle-like appendages, the only sign it was even alive was a bloated head in the middle of it all with the signature wide eyes of the Brutes. Underneath, drooling fangs were already snapping at them.
Arrow shrieked and unleashed her barrage of chain gun rounds, plasma gun charges, and other assorted weaponry in one massive burst. Joker sighed and added a few of her grenades to it, but it was pointless by then. The Brute may have stayed up longer than one of the forest ones might have, but it was down in seconds, and by the end of the barrage, had been reduced to glowing cinders and scattered bits of flesh and bone.
Arrow’s Golem sagged as it began to recharge its power, but the pilot’s ragged breathing could be heard through her mike.
While she took her break, Jaeger keyed a private channel for herself and Joker. “Arrow’s out of it,” she said. “If the other teams are ahead of us, I’m going to tell them to pull the plug and get her out of here. Poor girl . . . hell of a way to start her career, huh?”
“Better do it now, before her sync gets too high,” Joker said.
“Right.”
The private comm cut off, and soon Arrow’s Golem fell to the ground, its power gone. Joker let out a sigh of relief. They had lost two members of Fireteam Philomena already, but Golems could be replaced, and both pilots were safe. Still, two Mark VIs gone within the first hour probably would land as her own fault for dragging along her Mark V . . .
While Jaeger paced their little perimeter, Joker switched over to the open channel. Golems technically couldn’t hear their surroundings like a normal pony could, so Joker had no way to tell whether the city was deathly quiet or alight with the noise of battle.
When she switched to the open channel, Joker hadn’t been expecting to be greeted by screams. Her entire head filled with them until she turned the volume down long enough to focus on the voices, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“Fireteam Manehattan is gone, I repeat, just gone!”
“This is Fireteam Poison Joke, falling back to Carousel Boutique perimeter, lost the rest, just me, I’ll be there—”
“No, no, Luna, please . . . help me, Luna, please—”
The cries grew more distressed and filled with static the longer Joker listened. The feeling in her gut had gone from ice cold with fear to fiery with rage. How the hell were just some Brutes destroying the most disciplined force in Equestrian history?
Finally, a calm voice broke through the rest, shutting them up with a protocol only command possessed. “This is Marshal Roughshod. All active Golems, fall back to the Carousel Boutique perimeter. Wounded near the perimeter, move back to Everfree station; the rest of you wounded, cut the plug if you can; activate your beacons if not. We’ll come for you, I repeat we will come for—”
The transmission cut out entirely, replaced only by static. The entire mission was . . . lost? Joker reeled. There’d been more Golems than she had ever seen, more fireteams on one mission than ever before; they had to win, they had to! No, it must have been the Marshal losing it, had to be . . .
While she was trying to figure things out in her head, Joker had neglected to switch back to her fireteam channel, or notice that her gear was picking up a new signature. She only had time to look up as a winged Brute dove for her, its “feet” resembling tooth-filled gaping maws that snatched and snarled at her.
At the last moment, she was shoved aside and landed hard on the ground while Jaeger took up the spot she had just occupied. With a cry of, “Pull the plug you idiot!” over the fireteam comm, she was gone, carried off by the Brute over Sugarcube Corner and out of sight.
Joker’s breath was ragged. With Jaeger gone, she was the only friendly showing up on her gear so far into town. Everypony else had gone dark or fled. Though she couldn’t actually hear them, other tech on her Golem could pick up the sonic vibrations of Brutes howling all around her. There was no way she’d make it back to the perimeter alive.
“Fuck this,” Joker muttered and slammed her head upwards, the bodily signal to pull the plug. She waited a moment, but opened her eyes and only saw the burnt-out remains of war-torn Ponyville. She did it again, harder this time, and was given the same result.
A screen popped up on her HUD that sent every organ she had to the pit of her stomach. It read: De-Synchronization Error—Synchronization Rate Too High.
The howls of the Brutes grew louder.
It's here!
You bet I'll be tucking into this.
Brb getting drunk on moon
shinelight.Celestia... Celestia didn't make it, did she?
4784297
Action already picking up straight out of the gates, an interesting story and premise, I'm hooked already. So I gave you a golden star and a thumbs up. Don't ever stop!
ChaoticLightning told me to come here. So I did. Yay, peer pressure!
In all seriousness, you have a very good beginning, and a very interesting story developing here. Looking forward to more!
4784514
Well a lot of that chapter was inspired by Pacific Rim, though I admit I had some Evangelion inspiration as well.
Really enjoying this, keep it up.
Minor mistake I notice:
I think you meant 'threw' rather then 'through'
4784715
Less avatar and more:
Awwwwww shiiiiiiiiiiiet...
Keep this up, wow.
Wow, what's with the downvote bombs? from 29:0 to 33:4
4786062
Well you have the OC downvoters, the Dark downvoters, the futuristic downvoters, and the feature box downvoters. This story is just gonna be a target for them, like Reach was.
So i'm waiting in part for the likely reveal of the giants being former ponies, with necrotising abilities with the surrounding areas in order to use that sludge as a building block for bodies. Tossed in with the nature of the synch, with the fact you've named this particular aspect of all things, Thief.
I say they are former ponies given you dropped the line of them being colder than the terrain itself, only dead things are, and with enough mass, if the core is cold enough, then no amount of ambient heat is getting in there to change that. When you consider how strong, durable, and capable bone and chitin can be, the body makes for a perfect building block.
You also never mention celestia, discord, or the rest, so that also begs the question which and what occurred to each, likely either answered, or not in this respectively.
At least, this one's not shinji ikari. But you have a good premise, and certainly going to be unique, as I doubt you have in mind the let go of this at all, with the synch and the pilot being old hands.
4786213
Then those individuals are fools. Simply having OCs is no reason to downvote, and good OCs can make the canon characters perform better. I like dark and futuristic in the FiM stories that I read, as the dichotomy is a fascinating contrast, when done well. And why the heck would someone downvote a story for getting into the feature box? Spiteful much?
I liked 'Reach', and I am intrigued by your premise here. Please continue.
Hm, feels like its got a little bit of Blue Gender mixed in there with the Eva and Pac Rim...
See, I always wonder, why the hell would you build this obvious weakness into your mecha? Like, over-synchronization leading to pilots getting killed when mechs are damaged? It's just a dumb design. We should figure out something better.
4788455
I get where you're coming from, but that's sort of like asking what sort of gun-smith would design a firearm that would jam, in my opinion. A lot of times it seems like people, myself included, look at weaknesses and think more in the mind-set of a video gamer or a reader: it was something done purposefully for the sake of creating a challenge/drama/tension/etc.
An in-story explanation is much simpler. Its an unintentional side-effect of the design. Much in the same way that the designers of a new rifle wouldn't purposefully design it to jam after "x" number of rounds, the Equestrians who helped set up the Golems didn't design the whole thing with the idea in mind to make it where pilots couldn't survive a sudden disconnection from their Golems.
That's all just what I think, though, so take it or leave it as you will.
[/hr]
I like the story so far. Could use a bit of minor polish in terms of the flow, deciding what sort of info is being told to keep and what to scrap or put elsewhere, and minor things like that which arguably shift from writer to writer.
Keep up the good work and I'll be keeping my eye out for updates.
4788546
Glad you like it, though I'll admit the flow has been wonky so far. It'll settle down in future updates, though, as I get deeper into the story.
I'm glad that you recognized the stuff about the design flaw. I can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but the Mark VIs were even designed for as little synchronization as possible to pilot them so the pilots don't get trapped. Not to mention having the pilots safely on the moon is still, in my opinion, a better alternative than have the pilots in the mechs themselves, as suggested by JohnPerry. Since, you know, the Brutes tear through Golems like paper, ponies won't be so lucky.
Anyway, like I said, glad you like it and the coming updates will go quite a bit deeper into the backstory and life on the moon than just pure action.
Oh hell yeah, this is everything I was hoping it would be.
Why does the moon have the Nightmare Moon shadow on it?
4788761
THIS.
4787587
It’s not so much that it’s in the feature box that gets it down‐votes, per se, more that the extra exposure brings it to the attention of FiM Fiction’s oft hyper‐critical user‐base.
4789155
There is this thing called foreshadowing, ya see.
When I saw this in the featured box, I though Moonlight updated, which was quite a surprise since that story is marked 'complete'.
This is darn amazing - can't wait to read more!
Cannot handle levels of awesome! Four chapters in and we're already at the 'shit, they're boned' part. More please!
Just how many different mecha shows have you referenced so far? I caught the Pacific Rim and Evangelion bits, but that's all.
Twilight worries me. She seems obsessed about Ponyville, and with her behavior backsliding to her introverted pre-friendship days, it becomes a bit... concerning. I understand and support the idea of freeing the planet, but still... And the Brutes--there are so many questions there! Why did they appear? What are they? Is Celestia being harvested to create monsters from alicorn flesh? Why were the Brutes so strong? What's different about the ones in Ponyville--where there are no other monsters--than the ones in the Everfree--filled with murderbeasts--that lets them kill all the Roboponies?
What will Twilight do when her big attack team is utterly crushed? Just how far is Twilight going to go to take back the world? Do earth ponies have the same connection with the earth as they did their planet? If they don't, does this have a bad effect on them?
Incidentally, is Twilight still a small pony, or has she reached the size of the other princesses?
4790787
I can't really answer most of that, but I can say I'm very glad that I've stirred up some questions in so few words, and that I am (hopefully) able to spark interest through that. And don't worry, I'm not going to pull a Lost of Evangelion; the questions will be answered.
As for the references, the only media I directly drew upon was Neon Genesis Evangelion (though more the Rebuild than original) and Pacific Rim, though I suppose I took some thematic ideas from other shows I've enjoyed, such as Attack on Titan and Starship Troopers.
Nice, I may be wrong but I'm seeing a mix of things like Pacific Rim, Evangelion, and even a bit of Edge of Tomorrow with all the invasion going so bad. Have a lot of questions but hopefully those will be answered later.
4792533 don't forget district nine.
4792562 How so? There's a neck scene in that movie but it doesn't really seem relevant
4792626 is there more than one district nine or something?
I'm talkin' the badass alien mech suit that the half human half prawn Australian guy drives near the spoilers end of the movie
4792533
Actually, with the whole "invasion going wrong" thing, I'm borrowing from the original:
media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/s/starship-troopers/9780441783588_custom-687c1628bad756253c64b990e70fb559a6a8b6e4-s6-c30.jpg
4792937 Ah, I see, I didn't pick up on that because of how serious the chapter is. OH! And this totally escaped my mind but will we see what happened to the rest of the world? There were more than ponies living on it last I checked.
4792760 1st off, Wikas Van Den Merwe is South African, not Australian, and yes while it does have a meck, it isn't the same kind. The one that Wikas drives is more mechanical and relies on an onboard pilot, these rely on a direct connection to the brain from a remote location, kinda like if the conpod on top of a Jaegar in Pacific Rim was somewhere else.
4791731 That's fine. I'm pretty bad at making reviews, so I generally try to make up for it with a stream of questions that show my interest in the story.
And I wholeheartedly approve of Rebuild-based Eva inspiration. More awesome fights, less extended breakdowns from the horribly, horribly broken people who make up the entire cast of the show. (Instead, they got very quick, possibly even worse breakdowns, but accompanied by more explosions. A fair trade.)
4794345
Very true about Rebuild. I am a massive fan of Evangelion, from NGE to End to Rebuild, and Rebuild is by far much better as far as pacing, plotting, and getting the mythology a lot more straightforward and interesting. Not to mention some bits of Moonlight will draw on...ideas...from Rebuild...
4795404
This can be interpreted in so many ways I can't begin to count them.
4793732 I know he is South African but I meant his very strong Australian accent
4808061 That's not an Australian accent either, there aren't many movies with a South African protagonist but if you were to watch say, Invictus with Matt Damon, you would realize that it's intended to be South African.
4808106 oh my god
I just listened to a clip and now I fell stupid
I forfeit this convesation
Hmm. Very interesting so far, I'm on board. Mecha action doesn't hurt either, though I come firmly from the Pacific Rim/Mechwarrior side of things.
I have one niggling question, though: is there any reason only unicorns can pilot these things? Because it seems like a bit of a design flaw to cut out two thirds of the potential pilot pool when losing pilots is the big concern.
4811501
The whole bit about only unicorns is actually a driving question to the overaching plot, so...yeah, that's all I can say about that.
4811546 Was suspecting that might be the reason, but I just thought I'd ask. Given that you list Evangelion as an inspiration, I'm already certain the reason will turn out to be horrifying. That leaves the question: who's gonna get hit by the horror?
This train of though now has me really worried by those "blank stares" from the earth pony handlers in the suiting-up sequence.
4791731
Oh, they will? I have a question for you about Reach: Why did Celestia and Luna just suddenly decide to wage a civil war against each other so brutal and vicious that the Elements of Harmony decided to santimoniously exterminate ponykind? I hate to say it, but that's why I downvoted that story, because of how much I rejected the reveal at the end.
Well, I hate to be right about this. What's up with the Brutes, I wonder?? And I'm worried about Twilight...