More Dreams

by totallynotabrony

A Day in the Life

The weather was excellent today. Tin Mare calculated the air density and her fuel burn rate. According to message intercepts, a cold front would begin to cover the area in the evening.

Braeburn was the first to arrive that morning. He didn't have much to say. He had previously stated that he simply liked being around her. Tin Mare suspected he would eventually try again to convince her to abandon her directives. In the meantime, he was useful and relubricated her main gearboxes.

He left, telling her to have a good day. Days were not good or bad to Tin Mare, they simply were.

Cordoba appeared next. She, too, seemed to just enjoy hanging out. Cordoba, however, was much more animated and chatty. Tin Mare seemed to be one of the few with whom she took that attitude. With most everyone else, Twilight Sparkle especially, Cordoba was rather dour. Perhaps it was simple teenage angst, or perhaps Cordoba simply considered Tin Mare a better friend than most.

Regardless, she wasn't squeamish about weapons like Braeburn. She loaded Tin Mare's side-mounted rocket pod.

Both of them were even more helpful than they realized. When townsponies saw them interacting with Tin Mare, it helped normalize her hulking metal presence. Tin Mare knew that improving her public relations would make just about everything easier. Granted, a cyborg and Valiant's daughter were perhaps not the best goodwill ambassadors, but better than nothing.

Tin Mare pondered what Cordoba got out of the relationship. With Braeburn, he felt justified in his white knight crusade to help her. Cordoba seemed especially pleased just to be there, and seemed to respect Tin Mare more than she did anyone except perhaps Trixie and Ms. Sunset.

Tin Mare realized that perhaps Cordoba thought of her as a role model. It was a strange choice, and Tin Mare did not believe herself qualified, but she had been programmed with a certain amount of creativity and would attempt to mentor the filly.

Cordoba left, perhaps to get a cup of coffee and attend a friendship lesson. Her making a deal with Twilight to learn about friendship was mildly improbable.

Tin Mare passed the afternoon sitting in the same place. She had no current tasks.

It was just after sunset when she suddenly began preflight checks. The latest pass on the imagery satellite had revealed something on infrared, now that the sun had set and the air was cooler.

Tin Mare's sophisticated sensor fusion equipment effectively gave her more situational awareness than any other entity on the planet. The Equestrian government had obtained the gear to intercept signals but was only able to grab snippets from the many listening devices installed by Valiant. They either couldn't downlink from the imagery satellite or didn't know it existed. They certainly couldn't task it. In the wake of Valiant's death, it had seemed prudent to maintain the ability to control the satellite. Since Tin Mare had been moved to the larger chassis, she had room to take the equipment onboard.

She spun up her engines and got airborne, heading out over the Everfree Forest. The mysterious cold spot picked up by the satellite infrared hadn't been identified due to the cloud cover of the incoming cold front. Tin Mare wanted to get her camera on it. Her whole reason for being was to eliminate threats, and part of that was determining whether something was a target. A large, moving cold spot may not end up being dangerous, but was definitely worth investigating to make sure.

She ducked below the clouds, scanning. A large equinoid creature made its way among the trees below.

Recalling long-stored information from her organic brain, Tin Mare decided it must be a windigo, a winter spirit that fed off fighting and hatred. The more hate the spirit felt, the colder things became.

Clearly, a dispassionate robot was the ideal choice to fight an emotion-based monster. What it was doing near Ponyville was anyone's guess, but allowing it closer to the town was in no one's best interest. Tin Mare armed her weapons.

Cannon rounds would likely not harm a ghostly translucent windigo. It was fortunate that rockets were generally labeled for use on "all accessible targets."

And on ghosts? The burning white phosphorous rounds should do nicely.

The windigo noticed her, but apparently was not interested. Tin Mare lined up the laser guidance and pickled the first rocket, which streaked to the target.

That got the windigo's attention, as chemical compounds burning at 5,000 degrees tend to.

And the windigo went up in flames, as monsters set on holy fire tend to.

It's actually the "fire" part of that statement that's important, not the "holy." Valiant built blessed ability into Tin Mare, but it didn't come in handy very often because Equestrian monsters tended to not be on either side of the whole heaven v. hell issue.

Problem dealt with, Tin Mare returned to base. It had been a day.

Comments

[Lithl]

i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/223/976/neutral.jpg

[Doctor.whooves]

7348045 tell my wife I sad "hello"

[paladinwolf]

and now for Tin Mares newest trick...
i1.wp.com/memecollection.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/665bd73c-kill-it-kill-it-with-fire.gif?w=900

[Ultimate Bromaeda]

This was a good chapter to reflect on Tin Mare, in order to prepare for Merry May.

[Varinki]

7348244 What is that thing?