Leave Out All The Rest
This day was supposed to be perfect
Clip-clop-clip-clank, clip-clop-clip-clank
Vinyl knew she would never get used to the sound her hooves now made on metal floors. That fourth sound would always echo in her mind, reminding her of her failure...of how everything went wrong. Such a simple possibility, so obvious, so perfect as a way to counteract everything she'd built up...and she had missed it. Whoever was behind this, they had planned well. And now there was nothing.
That day two months prior - had it only been that long? - the wedding of the century became the end of an era. The one who'd burst in to object had been a human...with a bomb strapped to his chest. The human guests of the wedding weren't physically fit enough to deal with someone like that, being part of the robotics community and used to letting robots do most of the heavy lifting. The robotic guests and security faced a massive logic error as the First Law clashed with the First Law, as any action or inaction risked major harm to many humans, leaving nearly everyone unable to act. Prometheus could have acted, but his buster was too powerful. Had he fired, the bomb would have gone off anyway, and he wasn't quite fast enough to stop the bomber from triggering his device.
He'd shouted something in the middle of the chamber - Vinyl would never know what, too many others were shouting and she never bothered learning Latin - and had triggered his device. The blast had been blinding, searing Vinyl's eyes even before the explosion could reach anyone. She wore her shades now to protect her eyes from light towards the red end of the spectrum, the longer wavelengths painful to look at. It also muted brightness, leaving her gazing at a world of muted blues and violets.
Rock had moved as fast as he could, shielding both Kalinka and Vinyl herself with his body. An instinctive action, but perhaps a mistake. The blast had torn his body apart, along with Vinyl's right foreleg. And then the shrapnel from Rock's body had torn into Kalinka. Both of them were gone now, and Vinyl was left broken inside. On the day she was to marry her two best friends, she had lost them...and she could only blame herself.
And that wasn't the worst of it. When an article came out about the event a day later - while Vinyl was still in recovery from the event - someone had managed to shape the article in the worst possible way. The human dead and injured were listed under casualties, but the robots - no matter how loved, no matter what their status - were listed as part of the collateral damage, their deaths and pain valued only in coin. And the world had torn itself apart.
Down on the surface, war waged. Robots were once more the weapons of war, leading and linking the armies as the world fought, divided between those who saw the event and article as proof that robots never should have been treated as equal, and those who unwittingly overturned the very equality they claimed to fight for.
Vinyl's prosthetic was made out of Rock's own leg, the only part of his body that had survived. His newer circuitry as he'd been upgraded closer and closer to human proved perfect for interfacing with her nervous system, and she now wore the blue armored limb as a reminder of Rock, of Mega Man, the friend she'd both destroyed and lost...carrying him with her always.
clip-clop-clip-clank, clip-clop-clip-clank
This was the sound of a broken soul, who had lost faith in the world she had tried to save. She would try no more. She was ending this story.
The kind of day they'd dreamed since they were small
Mikhail oversaw the settlement of Mars, and the work making it a viable world. Humans and robots, everyone who wanted nothing to do with the war that was consuming the Earth had evacuated, first to Sky Lagoon and from there to Mars. The evacuation was almost complete, and once it was, he would follow his directive to sever the communications network between Earth and Mars. He'd been concerned about doing that, but Vinyl had told him she would take care of it. When she was done, Mars and its people would be safe from the war...and on their own.
Mikhail stared out over the terraformed landscape, and up at the holo-domes that made Mars look as red as ever from the outside. Unless a ship actually came in for a landing on the red planet, there would never be a sign the world was inhabited. They would be safe, safe to build a world where humans and robots were equals, and live as they had always wanted.
And yet...
He turned his gaze back towards the blue star in the sky, the world that had once been home. At this distance, even with telescopes, very little was visible. They'd never see the scars of war unless they looked...and yet he felt he could see with his own eyes how the world tore itself apart. He thought about the friends he would never see again...
Wily would not leave Vinyl now, not for anything. Skull Man was staying, helping Vinyl with a special project, along with Prometheus. And Light would not leave X. He was going to stay by that capsule as long as he lived, just to ensure that he was safe, and would awaken safely. They could all only hope that the world he would awaken to would be one that would let him live a life of peace...
But no one could stay for cake
Skull Man shifted slightly as he adapted to his upgraded body. It had been patterned after Prometheus, making him much better at blending in with humans visually, which would be important to the mission he and Prometheus were going to have. It was their job to watch over the world after Vinyl played her last card. Watch, wait...and hope that humanity would overcome their hate, and learn to become something new. If they did, Anton's capsule - labeled A.X.L-C - was programmed to reveal itself, in the hopes that a good scientist would complete him, so he could live in the world his parents died believing in.
If they did not...Project Revelation had been completed. A binary etheric core, fully charged with Justice and Evil Energy, ready to generate Ether Energy in massive quantities. A body capable of wielding that power, a power that could devastate the world many times over. And a mind left blank, free to shape itself, and decide for itself...to save or destroy. Doc Robot...Secret...The-Robot-Formerly-Known-As-Secret...and now left to choose his own name. Only two AI programs - one based off Vinyl, one based off Albert - would remain to guide the technology left behind to maintain and restore him, should he need it.
Prometheus and Skull Man had said their goodbyes, and taken up their posts. Now only one thing was left for either of them to do. Nodding to each other, they disconnected from the world wide web, becoming alone in their own minds.
And two special guests were very late
Vinyl had prepared. At long last, she'd found the source of her magical energy. A portal device was prepared. Originally, it was going to be a bridge, letting her pass back and forth at will. Now, it was a warp device, meant to take the entirety of Wily Castle through to the other world, and seal the rift behind them.
She looked over those that would be coming with her. Her father, her brother Forte, his girlfriend Mizuki, her four Elemental Guardians, and every worker bot - from Mettaurs on up - that worked within the castle. And when the castle had gone, the program in Sky Lagoon's central computer would broadcast, and it would all end.
The ones who did this - who killed her friends, tried to paint her a villain to the world, and tore the world apart - wanted to turn back the clock of progress? Felt all the technology that had advanced was so wrong? Let them live without their technology then. Let them live without it then. She'd give them the greatest punishment she could conceive of.
She would leave them to reap the consequences of their actions, and face the truth of their desires. "Drop this place."
With that command given, Wily Castle disconnected from Sky Lagoon, floated up into the air...and vanished in a blaze of light.
In Light's Lab, Dr. Light was stunned as a flare of light appeared between him and X's capsule. A tiny pony - grey with a black mane and tail, purple eyes, and a purple treble cleft mark on her flanks - appeared, barely breathing. Checking her vitals with his scanners, Dr. Light was able to determine that she was over-exposed to chronitons and other high energy particles, greatly straining her physiological functions to the point it would take at least thirty years for her systems to adjust to the new world enough just to survive. Glancing from her to the capsule, Dr. Light got an idea. Working feverishly, he jury-rigged a bio-stasis field into the capsule's systems. Opening the capsule, he placed the tiny filly against X's chest, closing the capsule to keep both safe.
To his surprise, as the stasis kicked in, X's arms wrapped protectively around the tiny filly, and she nuzzled against his chest. Plainly, he'd made the right choice.
Feeling his body - injured and weakened from that incident two months ago - voicing its protestations of the effort it had taken, he realized it would be his last. Still, the Light Hologram Network - shielded against what Vinyl was about to do - would watch over them. In sorrow and hope, Tom closed his eyes.
Across the world, every machine hooked to any network with any connection - through robot or computer - to the World Wide Web displayed the long dreaded Blue Screen of Death. However, as every machine in the world - from military hardware that could launch nukes down to the toaster in a smart house - froze, each screen displayed two words. Two words the world would never forget.
The End
Their wedding bells would never ring at all.
And everything stopped.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Tatsurou · 197k words · 997 42 · 14k views
- Tatsurou · 72k words · 1,205 30 · 21k views
- Tatsurou · 171k words · 718 39 · 11k views
- Tatsurou · 54k words · 1,208 28 · 21k views
- Tatsurou · 30k words · 987 29 · 13k views
- Tatsurou · 4.2k words · 493 8 · 9k views
- Tatsurou · 180k words · 1,065 24 · 17k views
- Tatsurou · 52k words · 1,252 30 · 19k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.042 seconds
Total duration
805 users online
1,127,376 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
It's....over? Gez, you really know how to end these dark don't you? Still, great story, can't wait to see the next one.
...........Damn. And thus, the connection to the Octavia Saga was begun from here.
... wow...
Now that is sad
now that is about the saddest ending to any of your stories.
Two main characters dead, just like that, and Vinyl merely writing off the world, dealing with the grief in a not entirely logical, but understandable way, by attaching her best friends leg, they only thing that was left of him, and simply damming the world into darkness.
this is deep.
Quite an end. And certainly so to a good story. You keep running the AU brand strong, so bravo on one to finish.
Excuse me why I sob. So what happened to Roll or will we find out in the combined epilogue chapters?
Well.... damn.
Sonnuva …
One thing I hate is being right. A human terrorist suicide-bomber.
Vinyl left crippled and using Rock's leg as a prosthetic, Rock and Kalinka dead before they could be married, the world descending into anarchy and war, then Vinyl pulling the plug on them all … just, wow …
Tatsurou, this fix made me remember why I liked FortressShy and a few of your other works, and encouraged me to read some of your others. I wait with bated breath the eventual conclusion to Melody of the Future, and the eventual sequel it and Wily's Wittle Wub will get with Vinyl and 'Tavi both returning to Equestria. I'm just sad that Rock, Kalinka, and many other 'bots and humans won't live to see it.
So...
Here we are then....
At the end.... sure was a wild ride, wasn't it?
I feel like this song is approriate for this...
I hope you like it.
In honor of Megaman and Kalinka... this is for you
*raises Legion flag to half mast*
The legion honors you
epic.... cant wait for melody to finish now
And so ends the legend of Mega Man and of the Robotic Age.
Damn... Vinyl snapped and said screw it, you're on your own (except Light's capsule, which she seemingly kept active). Mega Man was not only a rival, but a close friend of hers. But he lives on through her and Dr. Light's creation as well.
And though things look grim now. We know that things will brighten up slightly as Dr. Light's greatest creation shall awaken as well as the pony inside and fight for a world that has fallen into hate against robots.
From the legacy of Mega Man comes the story of Mega Man X...
A wonderful tale, Tats! Can't wait to see what's in store!
... Welp. Kinda figured that it would be something that would send the world to the state it was at the beginning of MotF. Just didn't expect that. Brilliant move by the bomber; cause a First Law lockup by being a suicide bomber.
Still, I find it hard to believe that there wasn't a single robot in attendance that could have disabled the bomb without hurting the bomber. A precision EM-beam, or anything similar?
Not trying to tell you how to write your stories, Tats, just saying there could have been ways to avoid this. Well, onto the next great adventure! And I hope to Faust it's a non-PWNY-verse story this time. Not that I don't like these, but I imagine you're tired of being typecast as 'the PWNYverse author'.
7691211
And now you know why Vinyl blames herself for failing there. Because there were easy ways to prevent something like this...and because she didn't consider it happening, those options weren't available...and that mistake cost her her two best friends, and the world.
The next story I'm going to publish will be 'Order and Chaos', the Sheeogorath/Discord PWNYverse story, simply because it's one where I can have endless fun just doing whatever (much like I did with "Merc With The Moth", but more so). After that, however, will be "Yes, My Lady", a non-PWNY story I've been looking forward to writing.
Sons of Damas should be ending soon, after all.
So, this is it then, yeah? We're finally here, at the end...
If I'm completely honest, Tat...
I don't like it. I've held you to the standard of love and protection of all your characters. I've defended you. I've stuck with you since the very beginning, almost two years ago. So now I ask...
What did I do? What did we do? Why did you kill them?
That was a low blow. At their wedding, no less. I can't believe you. You told us that everything would work out okay. Everyone would be happy. That this story would end like all the rest.
But you lied.
7691224
You knew from the moment this was connected to 'Melody of the Future' that this story would not have a happy ending. I never claimed it would have one. The only one who did any deceiving...were those who deceived themselves.
... Its moments like these where I'm reminded of that golden line from The Dark Knight:
"Some men just wanna watch the world burn."
Michael Caine's Alfred.
Still, this was a powerful ending. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna drown my sorrows in this song:
Keep on doing what you do best!
excuse me while I.....curl up into a little ball and sob.
Figures, leave it to a lunatic to pull a snackbar.
....Sucker punch me in the soul why don't you....
Anyone have the Grim Reaper on speed-dial? I wanna make a deal.
To those that want to know what i want from the deal:
Make the bastard who started this suffer and ask if he could perform the marridge ceremony for Rock and Kalinka in the afterlife.
To be %100 honest, Vinyl handled it relatively well. If she really wanted humanity to suffer, she could have
cdn.highdefdigest.com/uploads/2015/07/21/High-Def-Digest-Bluray-Review-Terminator2-2015-Arnold-Schwarzenegger-1.jpg
That was a heavy ending...And it's funny how it can speak to certain people as far as the real world goes. There's always gonna be terrorist assholes who will do anything and everything to throw off humanity's progress.
Vinyl made the right call in leaving, but I hope that - if she reaches Equestria - she doesn't go megalomaniac on everyone...
7691224
7691231 the thing i will say to this is, they story's not over tell they get home and together both Vinyl and Octavia
7691254 i do the number is 1800-the-death-for-all
it is a really long number sorry it has to go through 3 portals to reach his work line.
the home phone is 410-111-death
7691231 it was undeniably low but i just want the new story to update even faster now which is more likely to be happy.
And I was having a good day too. . . .
Hole in my chest aside. A well written chapter with some nice plot development for Melody of the Future.
This, this was pretty much physically painful with the feels. Bravo author, bravo. Nice way to really punish the world for what happened. It is very frequent that giving someone exactly what they want is more often than not one of the greatest punishments of all.
Edit: Thinking about it, having something that was so joyful end like this...... that is how you really screw with emotions.
She sorely underestimated the greed and lust for power behind the shadows of the governments, and how easily they could re-spark hatred in the minds of mankind, the corrupt warmongers and profiteers who wanted to keep the masses divided and ignorant so they could be better controlled and culled...
Still, the final price is on them. They wanted a dark age to rule, she gave them one, but one THEY couldn't control. No internet, no media outlets, no military bases or nuclear launch codes, no reason to hold onto fossil fuels or currency, no way to scare or manipulate the angry masses into blaming the people they want blamed. And as a result, they'll be the first to go as their distopia falls to chaos and ruin.
Aw man... That's one hell of a closer...
7691276 i do not think she will. but i could see her going the craze old cat lady only with robots instead of cats. but i do not think it likely because she has the support of her dad, brother, and other to help her pull thrugh
Rest In Peace, Rock. You've more than earned it.
The worst part is how I KNEW it was coming, but it was still a shock.
Hmm, wonder if the Pinkie A.I was sometime Vinyl developed to help her prevent disasters and Octavia happened to be the one find it and with her being a pony like Vinyl, the A.I accepted her as a user.
Or maybe it was Light himself who developed it as a way to help prevent tragedies his own son had suffered and keyed it so it would respond to the little grey filly as he didn't trust any man or machine to have such power.
7691321
No, humanity at it's very core is the warmonger and the xenophobe. It is sad that many view Thomas Hobbes as someone ignorant and useless, but we have been raised by the Romantics that created the bedrock for the Enlightenment. Only one major player -Locke- was anywhere close to reality just like Hobbes sadly is.
Give humanity the very tools or technology to carry out it's ideals... then they will use them to the determent of humanity. The only way to fight these ideals is now the very thing mankind has more or less made forbidden... and that way is to more or less what Machiavelli and Hobbes say is acceptable: exterminate the entire lot.
I've only got one question at this point: Did we ever find out who framed Vinyl, or is that still to come and/or in Melody of the Future?
7691421
Was never revealed.
Ya know, to be perfectly honest, I knew something bad was going to happen. To this extent? Kind of. So frankly I can't really find this 'sad' when it was as predictable as a plate of pizza rolls was going to be done. So good chapter, and hope the rest of the crap in Octavia's story fixes all this shit...by the by what's happening on mares? Have they basically become a super race or something? Cause without war raging basically mars could have become the greatest planet in existence if a shit ton of robots and people went their so they didn't have to be apart of the war.
Fair thee well story.....
I was not expecting such a sudden and grim ending to this story, due to how the endings of so many of your other stories have gone. I guessed this story wasn't going to have a 100% happy ending, due to the events of Melody of the Future needing to happen. The only way I coulda seen it being happy, was Vinyl moving peacefully to Mars or the new world order collapsing without Vinyl to keep it together. But this terrorist incident makes a bit more sense. Coupled with Vinyl wiping out most of the technological progress, as a punishment for what happened to Rock, Kalinka and the other humans/robot guests. And her subsequent treatment thereafter.
7691224 You do realize that the story was always planned to go through the main timeline right? Since Megaman X happened 100 years after Classic Megaman and given that Melody of the Future happens directly after this story chronologically, it should've been rather obvious that a sad ending would happen because of the one canon event happening we know absolutely nothing about other than it was a massive tragedy that led into X, The Cataclysm. For X to happen, for Melody of the Future to logically even be possible, this kind of disaster HAD TO HAPPEN. The only thing we can hope for is that in the sequel to both, in the return to Equestria, somehow, someway every main character who died here in the cataclysm ends up in Equestria, either reborn, reincarnated or given a 2nd chance at life by either GOD, Fausticorn, Anubis or whatever other gods are out there in both universes watching over their worlds.
Well.
That was a bummer.
Alright, disregard what I wrote about the worst possibility. This is worse than that. Still, it was an enjoyable ride.
I've started reading a different story. But, when I'm finished with that one, something about Princess Celestia joining Team Rocket, I'll read Melody of the Future next.
Generally, in my worst-case scenario stories, I like to leave some bit of hope for the future. And, I suppose, in a way, you have with the sequel to this story. At least, I'm guessing that's the case.
Jeez. I think that's the bleakest ending i've read so far. A couple of strings cut and the whole web fell apart.
A fine story. Well done.
Okay, I liked this story, but that ending Kicked me RIGHT in the Feels. Which I DON'T like, seeing as I just woke up. Also, I think that ending might require either a Dark or a Tragedy Tag.
Now then, for everyone else who is down about what happened, I'd like to point something out. My Little PWNY. The massive, mega crossover between all the PWNY-Verse stories. We have: Pinkie's family - The Greek Gods. Twilight, who pulled a Crono Trigger and made Causality her Bitch. Discord, a reality warping Mad God, raised by Sheogorath, another Mad God. Rainbow Dash, raised by super genius Tony Stark in the MARVEL universe. Chrysalis, now with causality warping powers, raised by Deadpool in the Marvel universe. Spike, who pulled off a serious A God Am I transformation - Which he can STILL do.
So, until the Word of God strikes us down, let's all assume that if nothing else happens, that some of the above can pull another Crono Trigger to save at least Rock and Kalinka. That's what I'm assuming, anyway.
Well, that was grim.
It was a fun journey, but alas, all things must end, and not all endings are happy.
May those two rest in peace.
7691421
Nope: but I can tell you the mentality thou:
Greedy, power hungery, fanatics that would rather see the world burn then let it be out of their control... Much like the bastards that control groups like ISIS, and the Taliban.
Holy shit that ending was dark and came outta left field. Though oddly we should have seen it coming I suppose giving the start of things in Octavia's story
you know, even though its for his successor, this fits the final chapter well.
Perhaps, the world was not ready for this melody of peace. this is one that shall play, far into the future.