• Published 20th Dec 2016
  • 8,203 Views, 342 Comments

Ponies and Lasers and Clankers, Oh My! - Tekket



Battle droids left without orders stumble upon Equestria, its neighbors, and all of the planet's inhabitants. Hilarity (and droid clumsiness) ensues.

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Chapter 4 - Very Peculiar Spiders Indeed

7:31 A.M. Sugarcube Corner, Ponyville

Sugarcube Corner, along with the rest of Ponyville, was just waking up as the Cakes opened their shop and put the day’s first, uh… cakes… on display.

Mr. Cake had just put the ‘Open’ sign in the window when three colorful blurs zoomed past outside. Staring in the direction they’d gone for just a second longer, the voice of his wife brought him out of the moment, and with a shrug, he turned back to his duties.

***

Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle had just raced past Sugarcube Corner and were on their way to school when Scootaloo spotted a glimmer in the early morning sky. Screeching to a halt, she grabbed her two friends’ hands, nearly yanking their arms out of their sockets in the process, before pointing up at the bright point in the sky.

“Ow!”

“Hey, Scootaloo, what was that for?”

“Sorry girls,” she apologized momentarily, “but look! A shooting star! We should all make a wish.”

“A shooting star? Where?” Sweetie Belle asked, looking into the sky. She and Apple Bloom located the twinkle of light at about the same time and now it was the farmer pony that spoke first.

“Are ya sure that’s a shootin’ star, Scootaloo? It’s moving kinda slow. Don’t they usually zoom across the sky really fast-like?”

“Well what else could it be?” Scootaloo asked.

“I agree with Apple Bloom on this one. Maybe it’s just a firefly or something?” Sweetie Belle suggested.

By now the three fillies had started walking again and had left the outskirts of town. They were headed towards the schoolhouse again, which was just barely visible between the trees that lined the dirt road they were on.

Heads still craned upward, they watched as the bright pinprick moved slowly downwards, at least until they walked smack into somepony else.

“Ouch. Sorry about that,” Sweetie mumbled, massaging her lower jaw, which had collided with the back of Diamond Tiara’s head.

“Hey, watch where you’re going-” the pink filly said, turning around angrily, only to realize who had bumped into her and softening her gaze accordingly.

“Oh, hey you three. Um, are you alright? Why’d you run into me like that?”

“We’re fine, and sorry about that, we weren’t looking where we were going,” Scootaloo apologized sheepishly. “We were distracted by the shooting star-” she started to say before cutting off abruptly.

As she looked up to locate the shooting star (or whatever it was) once more, she found that she couldn’t. The sky was slowly getting brighter, with Celestia’s sun rising over the mountains far in the distance, but there was no trace of the descending light that had been there only moments before.

***

The startup had been successful, the launch had gone smoothly, and the ride down into the atmosphere had been wholly uneventful. Now, the Separatist probe droid unfolded itself from its atmospheric entry capsule and proceeded to do a systems check.

For just a few moments it was absolutely still before coming to hover a half a meter off the ground, its four thin, multi-jointed limbs dangling beneath it.

As two antennae on the top of its bulbous ‘head’ extended and began transmitting a signal, trying to establish a connection with the dreadnaught above, the probe droid moved off from its landing zone in the forest towards where its sensors told it the alien settlement was.

Hovering lazily across a fallen log just before the tree line, the probe finally got a transmission lock through the dense foliage of the forest canopy and began uttering a warped and garbled set of automated instructions to itself, just barely loud enough for itself to hear.

Off in the distance, through the trees it could just see the outline of a town of some sort, but then it spied something closer. A hut of some kind, built cleverly into a very wide, squat tree, right at the edge of the forest.

The bobbing spheroid of metal regarded it for a moment, then drifted closer, uttering a quick warble to itself before floating up to a second story window and grabbing hold of the windowsill with its four limbs.

Peering over the edge of the sill, the mechanical gaze swept over a room filled with both regular furniture and what looked suspiciously like miniature houses, both hanging from the ceiling and settled on the floor.

Sensing no danger, the probe clawed its way inside the open window and dropped to the floor, shutting off the gentle hum of its repulsor unit for the nearly inaudible tapping and clicking of its four spindly legs. From there it proceeded to crawl it way across the floor to a short hallway, from the end of which a rhythmically melodious sound could be heard.

A quick ping up to the orbiting dreadnaught confirmed that the sound was singing of some sort. Curiously, the little scuttling droid could detect no life from any of the nearby rooms, and so, sneaking along the ceiling, it went to the end of the hall.

Which turned out to have a flight of stairs. Which in turn opened up onto a single room that took up the entire base of the hut.

In the very center of the room stood a slender, cream-colored figure, wearing a green dress, which turned out to be the source of the singing.

A group of alien creatures crowded the figure, as it handed something periodically to them, at which point the creatures would move off in small groups to huddle around whatever it was the obviously sentient alien was giving them. A sudden call from outside the front door of the hut caused all the creatures to look up from their activities and also abruptly ended the tall alien’s singing.

It was at this point that the probe droid thought it would be an excellent time to make itself scarce, as the gentle warbling it was speaking to itself was suddenly the loudest thing in the room. Scuttling across the ceiling and out through another open window, the probe made its way quietly through the underbrush growing in clumps around the hut until it decided it was safe enough and engaged its repulsor unit once more, moving much more quickly across the sparsely covered ground, and into the early morning shadows of the town.

***

Sherlock was closing in. Of that he was certain. Nothing escaped him; nothing had ever even come close.

Except for a sense of direction.

But that was beside the point. Sherlock knew he was close to his destination; he had, after all, just seen a sign pointing him this way.

Rounding a corner, he spied what could only be described as the most perfect thing he could have ever hoped to find.

“Aha!” he cried, running up and seizing his prize. “I’ve finally found it!”

“Bones, what are you doing?”

The battle droid, Sherlock Bones, turned to look at the speaker. “Why, I’m claiming this as a piece of my property! It’s obviously what I’ve been looking for all along.”

The battle droid to which he spoke was B1-01010; Olo, as everyone simply called him. Olo was head of the maintenance center on board the Dawn of Dusk, where the two B1’s were holding their conversation.

Olo pointed to the object in his fellow’s hand. “Bones, that’s a bucket you’re holding.”

“I know. Isn’t it marvelous?”

“What do you want with a bucket? More importantly, what are you doing here? I thought you’re part of the deck gun crews now?”

“I told you,” Sherlock Bones replied, “I’m here for this bucket. I need it. It might even come in handy someday! Now, I’m off on another adventure. Ba-bye!”

And with that, the crazy droid skipped out the automatic door to the rest of the ship, swinging the bucket from his metal hand and humming a random tune. At the same time, two commando droids dragged in a powered-down protocol droid between them into the maintenance center.

B1-01929, Olo’s assistant, leaned closer to his supervisor and asked, “Why does everyone call him ‘Sherlock Bones’? And why is he painted like a skeleton?”

After hearing out what the commandos needed and directing them to a small station set in an alcove, Olo answered, “No one actually bothers to remember Bones’ number designation, since he got transferred here last year. He just started calling himself that after he solved some ‘great mystery’ and it stuck. But I don’t know why he decided to paint himself to look like a walking skeleton.”

Since it looked like the other droid was about to say something more, Olo held up his hand and said, "Don’t ask me anymore; that’s all I know. You can try asking Bones yourself if you want, but getting a straight answer out of him is harder than asking a droideka out on a date.”

Now, battle droids don’t have facial features that would allow them to give a look like an organic would; however, B1-01929 was looking at him in such a way that he knew if he could, he would be giving him a look right now.

“Don’t look at me like that. We’ve been on this ship a long time! Besides, some of the droidekas do have female programming.”

B1-01929 continued almost giving him a look while Olo muttered quietly, “It can be really damn hard to tell though…”

Snapping himself back to reality, he addressed his assistant and said, “Hey, since you were asking about Bones’ nickname, why don’t we give you one?”

“What?! I don’t want a nickname! My designation is B1-01929, and I’m just fine with that!” the droid in question exclaimed, clearly startled by the news, but Olo was already counting off a list of personality traits while his assistant started backing away towards the door.

“… you’re always asking questions, you’re a terrible mechanic…”

Just then, two more droids rounded the corner and ran into the maintenance center, colliding with B1-01929 on his way out.

“… you’re clumsy-”

CRASH!

Olo looked down at the tangle of droid limbs and suddenly had a great idea.

“I’ve got it! You’re clumsy and always running into things, so from now, I dub thee ‘Crash”!”

“But I told you, I don’t want a nickname,” the newly rechristened droid moaned, while at that moment, Olo recognized the two newcomers.

“Cranker, Spaller, what are you two idiots doing back here? Why aren’t the maintenance crews with you?”

“We came back because of the change in command,” Spaller explained, getting to his feet and helping Cranker and Crash up as well.

“Yeah, that means we get new orders, right?” Cranker chimed in, dusting himself off.

“What? No, it was just a formal change of command. There’s no orders been changed or anything of the sort. Why does everyone think that? I’ve even had B2’s asking if they can get reassigned…”

“Aww, but boss, we hate supervising the maintenance crews, it’s boring!” Spaller whined.

“I don’t hate it, but that’s just because I enjoy watching Spaller lose arguments with that red astro-droid.”

“Well what do you want me to do? Invent a new job for you two?” Olo asked rhetorically.

“Sure! We’d like that!”

Olo didn’t know much about the Force, but right at the moment he was really wishing that it would come down and smite the two idiots standing in front of him.

Right at that moment, the two BX’s passed by with the protocol droid, who seemed very disoriented, and Olo had another great idea.

“You know what? You want a new job? Go with those two commando droids to wherever they’re going. You are to report to their commander and tell them you’ve been reassigned to their detail.”

The two battle droids stood in stunned silence for a moment, barely registering that their plan had actually worked, before they high-three’d and raced away to catch up to the two commando droids and their charge.

The excitement finally over, Olo turned back…

…Only to see Crash with what he could only assume was an attempt at a pleading look on his faceplate.

“Don’t tell me… you want to be reassigned too?”

“Well, it you don’t have to reassign me, and not that adjusting the temperature on the hot oil bath every two hours isn’t fun, but…”

Olo sighed and faceplate-palmed before looking around the room, his photoreceptors coming to rest on a recently vacated spot on the floor.

“Fine. Crash? Go find me a new bucket.”

***

Both the servant droid and the tactical droid stepped onto the bridge at the same time. They had walked in complete silence for a large portion of the way to their destination and only now did either speak.

The squat, purple-and-silver LEP servant droid scurried forward to be the first to reach the Commander, but just as she said, “So, you’re-” she was cut off and shoved aside by the horizontally-striped, black T-Series tactical droid.

“Hello, Captain. For what purpose did you deem it important enough to summon me here?”

“Ah! TV-44, good! As you probably know, we’re in orbit around an unknown world. We’ve found out that there’s intelligent life down there, and so we just sent some probes to scout out the locals and give us an idea of how to introduce ourselves. I was hoping that when we start getting some footage of the local natives,” the Captain gestured to a large screen hanging from the ceiling, where six different views of vegetation, grasslands, rivers, mountains, and buildings could be seen, “that you could provide your tactical expertise on how to proceed. You see, we’ve realized that since this world has been completely untouched by the Republic, we could add it to the Separatist Alliance and start rebuilding our fleet and army to conquer the- uh, Empire.”

Looking very pleased with himself (even without any physical way to do so), the Captain turned back to the screens and forwarded the feeds to the current time.

“Umm, Captain,” the servant droid said, weaving between the legs of the taller droids around her, “you wanted to see me?”

“Oh yes! Good, I didn’t see you there. Since you’re no longer on your old ship, I am reinstating you into our crew and you will be my personal assistant, uh… assisting me in whatever I need … assistance… in,” B1-72624 said, getting quieter and less sure of himself as he continued, “uh, here, hold my datapad.”

Looking quite surprised at the datapad being thrust in her optical sensors, the servant droid slowly took it from the B1 captain before mimicking clearing her throat quite loudly.

The Captain looked down at her, momentarily distracted and asked dumbly, “What?”

“Captain, even though I may be reassigned to be your aide, I still have a name, and would prefer if you call me by it.”

“Umm, okay.” B1-72624 started again, “Now anyways, as I was saying-”

“Captain, I haven’t even told you my name or designation yet. And you haven’t told me yours. My name is Pix. I am glad to make your acquaintance. What is your name or number?”

“Listen here, assistant, I’ve got important business to attend to. I don’t have time right now to make friends, and I certainly don’t have time to be interrupted for very little thing you want. Now stay where you are and stop talking.”

As 72624 started talking once again with TV-44, Pix was left to stand there, silently fuming.

It was only when the bridge doors opened once more that the quiet chatter of the bridge crew stopped, as the two commando droids had returned with TL-90, who, in the Captain’s opinion, was acting much more reasonable, and two more B1’s walked in with them, where they stood off to the side, looking this way and that, seemingly overcome by the splendid view out the bridge windows.

“Finally, TL-90, come here, we need you to translate for us what the natives we’re spying on are saying,” 72624 said, gesturing again to the huge screen, which now only showed a single, enlarged view from one of the probe droids as it travelled between huts and houses, staying out of view of the bipedal creatures that were not only walking around, but also flying between buildings.

“S-spying? Sir, I must protest! It is against my programming to assist in subterfuge,” TL-90 replied indignantly.

“Uh…” The Captain looked around at the rest of his bridge crew for support, but none of the other droids were about to jump in. Mostly, they just didn’t care enough to.

“You see, I didn’t mean spying, I just mean that, uh, we’re getting some information about them without them knowing.”

“That’s spying,” the protocol droid deadpanned.

“No it’s not! We’re just getting the information before we make contact with these new aliens. We just uh, want to learn some of their culture so that we, um, don’t screw up our first contact?”

72624 stood there, not even believing himself what he was saying, and neither did any of the bridge crew. To everydroid’s surprise, TL-90 actually did believe him.

“Well, alright then. I suppose I am indispensable with my knowledge of over six million forms of communication. And if it’s just to learn a culture so that first contact goes smoothly, then it is fully within my right to act as a political and linguistic interpreter and aide.”

“Wow. Okay, come here and tell us what they’re saying,” 72624 said, regaining some of his previous air of superiority, before adding, “Um, please.”

“The beings on this screen? Yes? Alright then… well it seems that the source of this feed is in some sort of marketplace. I can’t very well pick out an individual conversation going on here, but some of the things I can hear are the usual things one would hear in a market. Prices, advertisements, haggling- Oh! It seems one of the aliens is talking about a member of royalty that lives in the area! I can’t be certain what’s going on without more information and context, but I believe that with the tone their using, this member is a high ranking person of authority in their culture. Oh this is simply splendid!”

Turning to the other droids on the bridge, the protocol droid did her best to beam at the rest of them, and exclaimed, “This is extremely fortunate for us! Making contact with the leaders of a planet first is a great way for the leader to keep the populace calm in a first contact scenario. I will monitor these feeds and inform you of any other developments you will need to be aware of as you prepare those that will have the honor of making first contact with this new culture!”

“Ah, yes,” the Captain grumbled to himself, “the honor. Let’s hope someone’s up to the task. Otherwise we may have more than just honor to worry about.”

He tried musing a bit about how he was going to handle such a situation when his attention was brought back to the bridge by TL-90 asking, “So, what political expedition are we on, anyway?”

***

“/Aw, shucks, sugarcube, yer too kind./”

“/No, really, I mean it. If you didn’t donate the leftover apples from your farm to us, the orphanage would never survive. You really are a lifesaver, Miss Applejack. And besides, all the fillies and colts here really like you./”

“/Well, ah like them all too. How’ve yer blankets been holdin’ up? A know it can be-/”

“/No! Summer Bloom, that’s my Daring Do book! I was reading it!/”

“/I’m trying to get you to play with me, ever since Twilight lent you some of her books, you’ve practically stopped playing with me! I just want my friend back./”

“/And this is why we share, my little ponies. How would you feel if you-/”

“/I knew going out for hayburgers would cheer you up! Now let’s see a frown try to get onto your face! I’ll wipe it off before-/”

“/Come on, you dumb mare, just give us your bits and no one has to get hurt. No one’s gonna hear you scream if you try to resist-/”

The probe droid heard all this and more as it floated and crawled its way between buildings, over roofs, and through alleys, staying out of sight and simply trying to catch as many different samples of language for the translator up on the ship. None of what it heard made any sense to the probe of course, but that didn’t matter. It had recently been given instructions to look for something that could house a leader, someone of royalty. It had been out of luck for the first few minutes of searching, but then had seen something over the tops of the town’s buildings.

Across the town, on the far side of all the houses, it had caught a glimpse of something shiny, something that, when viewed closer, resolved itself into a castle of incredible proportions. Not to say it was incredibly large, but just the fact that it was made out of crystal and shaped like a tree was a marvel unto itself; the ability of the building to not simply collapse under its own weight was quite a feat of engineering, and it was doubled by the fact that it hadn’t been made with any of the modern tools that would be standard on most developed worlds in the galaxy.

So, for the past couple hours, the probe droid had gotten stuck in, and had been moving through the town as silently as possible in an attempt to get to the castle without being seen.

It had succeeded in one of its objectives. It had indeed been moving silently.

Unbeknownst to the probe however, it had been spotted and was now being followed on its path to the crystal castle.

“/I have to remember to give Mr. Marshmallow a raise-/”

“/No, no, no. Zis is all wrong! More blush! Less blush! More! I vill make you ze greatest star Equestria has ever-/”

“/So then the donkey says to the mule-/”

“/-Kind of worried, and your face has made a frown, I’ll work real hard and do my best-/”

The probe continued to float around, dodging the gazes of ignorant ponies going about their daily business, but even with its quick lunges, short darts between shadows, and walking upside down under roofs, it never escaped the attention of one being for very long.

Not much longer, the probe droid finally found itself in front of the crystal castle. The only problem was, the area seemed quite busy and the only way to get to it was across a large open square and then up a slightly smaller front lawn.

Turning its ‘head’-its cranial dome-this way and that, looking for some way to get to the castle without being seen, the droid spotted what appeared to be some sort of billboard hanging from the side of a nearby building.

Whatever the purpose of the building itself was, it was making a whole lot of noise in regular bursts, and sparks could be seen flying out from one corner on the ground floor.

More interested in the sign, the probe droid floated over to land on it, then inspected the entire area. It pinged a query up to the dreadnaught and got a response only seconds later. For this to work, it would have to time its shots correctly, lest it bring attention to itself and endanger its mission.

Aiming carefully at a specific point, it tried to pick out a pattern to the clanging and crashing sound coming from below and prepared itself.

***

At first, Starlight thought that something was attacking Ponyville, and that she would have to wake up Twilight. It ]was already past noon; however, she had been so exhausted these last few days from working on her metal mare that Starlight first went to investigate herself.

It didn’t take much more than a cursory glance out the window to surmise what had happened to create the shriek of metal and accompanying explosive thump from earlier. The large metal sign that hung from the side of the blacksmith’s shop on the other side of the square had somehow fallen and landed flatly on the ground.

Seeing a large crowd gathering and fearing that somepony had gotten hurt, Starlight rushed to the ground floor and out the door to help, and in her rush, didn’t realize the door take an extra second longer than usual to close behind her.

Bounding down the front steps, she crossed the square where the crowd had now congregated.

“Hey, what’s going on, what happened?” she asked nopony in particular.

A red stallion with a silver mane looked over at her and replied, “The big blacksmith sign fell off of the building. I don’t know if anypony got hurt, though.”

“Yeah… I kinda knew that already,” Starlight muttered to herself, My fault for asking a stupid question, I guess. Pushing her way through the crowd, she finally arrived at the sign, where two large earth pony stallions and a unicorn mare were lifting the metal sign off the ground where it had lain. As Starlight finally got a look underneath it, she let out a huge breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Nopony had been under the sign when it fell, and it looked as if nopony had been near it either.

Silently thanking Celestia that no one had been hurt by the accident, Starlight was about to go back to the castle when she spotted the broken nubs of what remained of the sign’s original fixture. She couldn’t be sure, but instead of being broken or splintered, as would be expected of a wooden sign fixture, it looked to be slightly… burnt? Why would it be burnt? Did that mean somepony had tampered with it? Could they have possibly tried to hurt somepony on purpose?

Starlight scanned the crowd for a few seconds, trying to zero in on anyone who looked nervous. The only problem was, many ponies still looked nervous, those who had yet to hear that the accident hadn’t hurt anyone, that is.

She was still looking when a voice calling her name caught her attention. It was Spike, running down the front steps of the castle in a hurry, calling out to her and waving his claws in the air.

He’s acting awfully excited. I wonder what that’s about? Maybe Twilight woke up? I know she’s a pretty heavy sleeper, but I bet all this clamor out here woke her. Starlight went to meet Spike, and after following him back into the castle to see what he wanted to show her in Twilight’s workshop, the memory of having seen the damaged sign fixtures flew out of her mind faster than the reformation of the changelings had happened.

***

The probe had narrowly avoided detection when it had entered the castle, almost running into a squat purple reptilian creature just a couple meters away that was looking out a window at the distraction the droid had caused outside. Fortunately, it managed to click-tap away before the creature focused its attention elsewhere.

Now, having ventured quite deep into the castle (which was deceptively large; based on what the probe had seen of the inside, it estimated that the inside was somehow larger than the outside), the droid was slowly building up a map of the interior. It had been sticking to corners and hiding behind furniture and in shadows, though there seemed to be no need for it. Though this was indeed a castle of some sort and some of these beings were inside, there was no sign of any life to be found anywhere.

Rounding a corner, and another, and another, and yet another, the probe droid finally picked up some sound coming from down the corridor, out of an open door.

Crawling around the hallway to come to rest on the crystal ceiling, it moved closer to the door and listened in.

“/-No one! No one anywhere! You’ll figure out this minor setback, and the next one you make will be able to talk, and maybe even after that they’ll be able to think on their own or have feelings, or even… or even make friends. How amazing would that be?/”

“/You’re right! I’ve done the impossible! Now the next step is just a tippy-hoof away! It might take another few nights of hard, tireless work, but now that I know a way to make the Metal Mare work, it’s only a matter of time before I get the bugs out./”

The probe droid, moving to be able to peek inside the room, popped its head over the threshold of the door, still hanging from the wall and saw what its sensors indicated were three life forms, and some sort of metal suit… before the energy radiating off the suit overwhelmed and caused a shutdown of all of its visual sensors except those operating in the standard spectrum visible to most humanoids.

Staggering back, the clicking and tapping sounds of the probe’s legs were still all but inaudible, but its stealthiness was rendered obsolete by the panicked screeching it emitted as a result of almost being completely blinded.

It could hear sudden movements and the clatter of hooves in the room over its own desperate wails, and, in an effort to escape capture or destruction, the small probe droid activated its repulsor and flew off down the corridor, trying to remain quiet, as it navigated using only one spectrum and the map it had compiled from its exploration of the building. Reaching an outer wall that was not near any door as far as it knew, the probe droid climbed onto the windowsill and launched itself out, towards the relative cover of a nearby copse of trees-

But it was not to be.

A shout from the window where the droid had just exited the castle caused it to turn its cranial dome slightly in order to look back at its pursuers. Just as well as it had, because its view clearly showed one of the aliens, this one purple and dressed in simple white and blue clothes, jump out the window and start chasing it through the air, yelling something unintelligible the whole time.

Seeing the creature renew its efforts to catch up, the probe changed direction suddenly, aiming instead for the nearby buildings and releasing a very alarmed fweep-fweep-fweep!

The sound of the droid caused several other aliens to look around in surprise, and then jump out of the way as both it and the alien following hot on its tail barreled past pedestrians. The screeching of the droid eventually died down, but then something unexpected happened.

A beam of bright purple light shot through the air at the probe from behind and missed by centimeters. Feinting a turn to the left, the droid zoomed down to the right at an intersection within the town, but before the alien could launch another beam, something with the speed and force of a starfighter slammed the probe off of its course and into the dirt in the middle of the town’s main marketplace.

Something blue.

Something rainbow-colored.

Slightly dazed, droid took a second to reorient itself, during which it found itself held firmly in the grip of another one of the flying creatures, this one a bit shorter than its purple pursuer, which was now walking up to it and speaking in an interested (if not concerned) tone.

Turning its cranial dome this way and that in order to get a better bearing of the situation, the probe droid struggled against its bonds as the blue alien held it even tighter, wrapping its arms all the way around the smooth metal and constricting it even more securely.

Realizing there was no chance for escape, the probe droid activated its capture-prevention failsafe as the inquisitive purple alien leaned closer and inspected it.

***

Rainbow Dash had finally caught the strange creature that had eluded her for a half hour now. After tailing it for hours through Ponyville and subsequently losing it during the little distraction with the blacksmith’s sign, she was not about to let it go.

Even if it did look a lot like some sort of big, weird spider or octopus creature.

“Why did you run away, little guy? What happened that made you scream out in the palace?” Twilight asked as she stepped closer.

“I know we must have scared you pretty bad, and I’m sorry, the only spell I cast at you was just to try to stop you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Rainbow Dash saw Fluttershy among the small crowd that had gathered, looking slightly upset at their treatment of this weird spider-thing, but Rainbow Dash wasn’t going to about to loosen her grip. For one, the thing in her arms was bucking like mad-

Except it wasn’t. It had stopped twisting and squirming and even making the frightened little noises it had been making.

After that everything happened too fast to understand.

Twilight leaned in closer like she was going to ask another question, her face getting uncomfortably close to the weird spider-thing in Rainbow’s opinion, the spider-thing in question suddenly released an ear-splitting shriek, accompanied by a sudden flash of light.

Then everything went dark.

***

The screen had gone dark.

One second it had been showing an extreme close-up of one of the aliens’ faces, and the next the image had simply disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a dark, blank background and spelled out in Aurebesh, ‘Signal Lost’.

72624 stared at the screen for a few more seconds (along with some of the other members of the bridge crew) before turning to one of the droids monitoring the connection between the probes and the dreadnaught. “What just happened? Where’d the feed go?”

It was TV-44 who answered him.

“The probe must have tried to prevent its capture with by activating its failsafe.” The tactical droid replied calmly.

“What do you mean? Which failsafe?”

“Why, the capture-prevention failsafe, obviously,” TV-44 explained, his flat voice accentuating the point.

“Then that means…” 72624 trailed off.

“Yes,” the black droid finished calmly, “the probe blew itself up.”

The Captain sat down hard on the Captain’s chair, having a sudden very bad feeling about this, and felt as though his battery had just been drained.

***

“What’s going on? Why can’t we access the tower?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t seen any patrols, and all the corridors and ventilation shafts leading to the conning spire have been closed off,” Rabid answered, a sudden sense of unease overcoming him.

He and Laugher had found themselves in their fourth dead-end corridor in their search for a way into the communications spire, and he was starting to wonder what exactly had happened that had caused the droids to seal it off.

The two clones, having found this area of the Separatist vessel deserted, had opted to not confine their investigation to the cramped interior of the air ducts and, after a brief stretch, were really liking their regained mobility, even if it put them in slightly more danger.

Crossing over to a terminal right near the recently-fabricated bulkhead at the end of the hall, Laugher brought a small datapad out of his pack and began accessing the logs in the area.

“Maybe we can find out what they were doing. The droids might have left a report or something of why they closed off all the ways into the communications tower.”

“Good idea,” Rabid replied, checking back down the way they had come to make sure it was still all clear. The corridor they were in at the moment had no ventilation shafts, so the clone wanted to spend as little time as possible in that particular one.

“Well… oh, here they are. Now let’s see…” Laugher was muttering to himself as he scanned through a series of orders and calls that had relevance to that area of the ship, before he perked up.

“Found it! Yeah, looks like the Captain of the ship ordered maintenance crews here to seal off all the halls to- oh…” Rabid could hear the sudden deflation in his subordinate’s voice as he continued.

“Sir… they closed off the halls because… in the battle over Muunilinst, the conning tower was damaged and disintegrated as they jumped to hyperspace… Sir, there’s nothing left. The whole tower’s just… gone.”

“Well, that complicates things,” Rabid muttered to himself.

“Sir, Rabid, what are we going to do?”

Rabid was about to remind the Private that Separatist dreadnaughts had secondary communications centers when something stopped him. Down the corridor, from around the corner, the faint sound of clanking could be heard. Clanking meant battle droids, and the current dead-end they were in had no cover to offer. The clanking got slowly louder, coming from their only way out.

They were trapped.

Author's Note:

Hello, hello!
Yes, I know I'm quite late with this chapter, and I apologize, but I've come to realize something: don't trust what I say.
If I say the next chapter will be out in a month, I would take it with a salt mine.
Also, in regards to the chapter, yes I am fully aware that the correct term is 'sapient' and not 'sentient', but it's used as such in the Star Wars universe and I wanted to stay consistent.
Secondly, just in case it wasn't completey obvious, the hut the probe droid entered was Fluttershy's house. She was feeding her animals when she was being spied on by the probe.
If there's anything else you guys need cleared up, please let me know in the comments below, and I'll be sure to answer them.
As always, I hope yous liked the latest chapter, and I'll try to get the next one out reasonably soon.
Ba-bye!