19 - I, Pinkie
Twilight Sparkle - 6th of Solar Dusk, 1st year of Harmony
749,573.29
GA Chebureki, Steller Orbit -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector
Being the pony Twilight was, she’d gone to great lengths to befriend most of her rescuers over the last few days. She’d talked to everyone who wasn’t too shy in person to have a conversation, and most of them Twilight felt comfortable calling her friend.
In spite of this, Twilight was not enjoying her time on the Chebureki.
Twilight had assumed at first that her rescuers mutual obsession with an alien culture’s military would wear thin after a few days of getting to live the fantasy. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
The ship constantly reverberated with the harsh metallic dance music which Vinyl Scratch had been banned from performing in Ponyville after the now infamous ‘72 Hours of Dance!’ concert she had put on last Nightmare Night. Most people put on accents Twilight knew were fake, even without knowing the real alien languages, in an attempt to poorly imitate a language everyone’s cybernetics could translate anyways.
At least the little furry hats with earflaps were the fun sort of silly, and the food was good.
Twilight had been rather surprised with how close Chernin food was to Equestrian food. Most ponies didn’t eat meat based dishes, even though they could. Meat simply lacked flavor to non-pegasi. Except apparently when put into any one of the alien dishes available on the Chebureki.
Twilight looked into her now empty bowl of ‘herring under fur coat’. While disgustingly named the beet, carrot, fish, and potato based salad had been extremely tasty.
This stuff managed to make fish tasty, Twilight thought as she debated licking the bowl. I guess it makes sense for the stuff cooked on a ship named after food to be good.
Twilight turned to look across her cabin at Zuul. The alien mare was slowly nibbling on one of the ship’s namesakes right now; a large deep fried dough-pouch containing a mixture of minced meat, onion, spices, and on Zuul’s special request, soup bones.
Twilight frowned and watched her poke and peck at the very edge of her meal. “Is something wrong with your lunch?”
Zuul shook her head. “No… I’m not sure if this body is full or not, but I want to continue eating this.”
Twilight looked closer at the chebureki. Perhaps one eighth had vanished into Zuul’s fanged maw so far. “Uh, you’re probably still hungry?”
“I’ve eaten six,” Zuul remarked.
Twilight felt her lips pull into a smile. “Best save that one for later then.”
Zuul sighed and flopped onto her stomach. “They are so good though! I think I understand why a warship was named after these. I would happily fight for one.”
Twilight hummed and tapped her chin in thought. That’s a good question. Why would you name a ship after a meal? It wouldn’t hurt to ask, would it?
Twilight reached down to the small bracelet on her left hoof. The crude silver circlet had been given to her by Captain Dj, and contained a communicator as well as a locator. With a quick tap of her hoof against the braclet’s star-shaped charm, a small hologram of the bridge and its crew popped into existence in front of Twilight’s nose.
“Excuse me? Am I interrupting?” Twilight asked.
Dj turned to look at the internal communications screen which popped into existence behind him and saluted. “Not at all, Miss Twilight. In fact, we were about to summon you to the bridge.”
Twilight tilted her head. “You were? Is something wrong?”
Dj shook his head. “There’s no time crunch just yet. Why did you call? We can attend to you first.”
Twilight nodded slowly, frowning more as she tried to understand what might be going on. “I was wondering why you named your ship after an entrée.”
“Snack!” Three different bridge officers corrected instantly.
Dj smiled for a brief moment and shook his head. “Miss Twilight, as I am sure you have discovered, most of this volunteer crew has a deep, perhaps even obsessive, love for Chernin military tradition. Naming warships after snackfoods has been a Chernin tradition for nearly two thousand years after Tzar Katya Ivanov was asked what the naming convention for her warships should be and she replied, ‘What do you need my opinion for? Name it after whatever you ate last for all I care!’
“From then on, each Chernin warship has been named after the head shipwright's last meal or snack before her christening. This has lead to warship names amusing enough to create the fandom you see aboard the Chebureki. The Chernin warfleet contains such amazingly named vessels as the, Rassol, Buterbrod, Salad Olivye, Holodets, Pashtet, and the rather distressingly named ‘Какая бы ни была серовато-зеленая вещь в моем холодильнике.’.”
Twilight giggled and shook her head slowly. “That sounds like something I can see Princess Celestia saying, and my own people doing. Now what did you need, Captain?”
Dj pointed to the bridge’s main viewscreen, which showed a view of a mostly brown and tan planet orbiting a rather blue star. The planet had a rather incredible amount of orbiting platforms built around it. Each platform took the form of an equilateral triangle with clipped corners, and seemed to be hubs for ships to dock and send cargo to the surface.
Each platform’s position, or its orbit if it wasn't stationary, had been highlighted on the Chebureki’s tactical map. A fairly large number of warships had also been highlighted, along with the paths of their patrol orbits.
“This is Yeruta,” Dj announced. “It’s a place I have been too several times before my retirement. The planet is owned by Bara Gani, an Underboss in the Space Mafia—”
Twilight’s ears twitched. “Captain, you don't need to talk to me like I am a foal. What’s the organization’s name?”
Dj’s lips curled to give Twilight the slightest of smirks. “I said the very same thing to my CO fifty years ago. He had no answer. While undercover I asked an associate about the name and he said ‘So the Boss is bad with names, what of it?’ “
Twilight blinked twice. “There’s a gang of intergalactic criminals, and they are actually called the Space Mafia?”
Dj nodded. “Yes. If it helps you take them more seriously, Timuri has tracked your friend Pinkie to a Caporegime serving beneath Bara Gani.”
Twilight’s eyes immediately narrowed as a wave of anger and determination washed down her spine. “Who is he, and when do we make our move?”
“A Furrlan by the name of Arrymo. I’ve sent V-1X to scout the estate before we attempt any operation. That said, she should be reporting back soon.”
Twilight nodded slowly then paused. “Why did you send her? Wouldn’t a two-pony tall bipedal fox robot stand out like a sore thumb?”
“Ordinarily, yes,” Dj said with a nod before bringing up a small holoscreen which he turned to show to Twilight.
As he turned the screen to face Twilight, her comm fetched the screen from the other side of the conversation, and displayed a copy in front of Twilight for her to see along side the view of the bridge.
The screen’s view showed a large room in an elaborately decorated mansion. Before Twilight could decide if it was a ballroom or a great hall she noticed that every single one of the silk-uniformed servants was an android in the shape of various animal species.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Huh… Well that’s convenient. Did he buy Pinkie just because of how we look?”
Dj nodded grimly. “He did. V-1X says this guy is something of a collector. He prefers exotic organic specimens, but also curates rare androids. We overheard some of his men talking about their boss’s new ‘art piece’. He believes she’s a biomechanical android, and wanted to add her to his collection.”
Twilight looked over the screen again. It didn’t look like a bad place. When she’d heard Pinkie had been taken by an organized crime syndicate she’d expected concrete rooms, with a single mage gem in the ceiling to provide a distressing yellow glow.
This mansion looked like just that. A mansion. Hoof crafted furniture made from exotic hardwoods, masterfully made oil paintings, plush carpets over stone floors, and of course, gold scroll work on all of the trim.
“Why did you send Vix in, if we already had a way to spy on them?” Twilight asked curiously as she searched the screen for any sign of Pinkie. “Are you in there? I can see this room well enough to teleport into it.”
“Timuri was able to hack into their security feed, it’s how we found her,” Dj explained as he took a seat in the captain’s chair. “He refused to keep the link up longer than point-oh-five. If the security expert says maintaining a link is getting to risky, I believe him. We needed more data, and V-1X volunteered… Oh! Don’t call her Vix, she doesn't like that.”
Twilight nodded slowly. “I understand. I’ll apologize to her later. Can I come to the bridge and wait for her report?”
“Of course you can,” Dj said as he began to tap some commands into the ship’s computer from his seat armrest. “I was going to ask if you wanted to join the recovery team and—”
Twilight closed her eyes and focused on the bridge as she saw it through her hologram. Everything was crystal clear in her mind. Every seat, every console, every person, every last piece of clothing they wore. She could feel herself there as if she had been there before.
Twilight reached into the immense pool of magic at her disposal, took but the tiniest drop, and made herself be where she wanted. The Lavender pegacorn appeared on the Chebureki’s bridge in a flash of violet light, making everyone jump, and some fall out of their seats in shock.
Captain Dj sputtered as he sat as far back as his seat would permit. “Stars above! Did you just teleport one and a half kilometers?!”
Twilight nodded, her wings fluttering happily at the reaction she’d gotten from her new friends. “Yes. Zuul helped me practice teleporting to places I couldn’t directly observe. I was able to use the video chat to safely translocate to the bridge. Which gives me an idea… How did V-1X get to Yeruta’s surface? One of the shuttles?”
Dj cleared his throat and did his best to sit up straight. He’d dealt with his fair share of psykers, enough to know you should be as polite to the ones who casually used their powers as you would your Tribe Elder.
The rest of the bridge quietly returned to their seats, shooting Twilight the occasional weary, excited, or jealous glances.
Dj took one last moment to compose himself, then focused his attention on Twilight. “We sent her down in an old T-40 infiltrator. We do not have any stealth shuttles, so the mobile suit was our best option, given it’s outdated stealth systems and small size.”
Twilight hummed and stroked her chin. “Could we afford to leave it behind?”
Dj raised an eyebrow. “Yes, though no one here would like it. Do you have a plan?”
Twilight smiled and nodded triumphantly. “I do! All Vee needs to do is find Pinkie and look at her for me. I mean, she’s a robot, right? She can just show us what she’s looking at. If we fly the Chebureki in close I can teleport down, then bring them both back with me!”
Dj’s tail swished with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify. “You can teleport more than yourself!?”
Twilight nodded. “Of course! I’ve teleported my friends across town before. It’s not hard.”
A short bright blue Irgsin manning the Chebureki’s helm spun around in her seat. “It’s not hard to teleport three people from the ground into orbit?!”
Twilight’s cheeks tinted a light pink. “W— well, I’ve never done that before. But last week I was able to teleport from one side of the planet to the other! Zuul and I were seeing if my new body could let us just teleport back home. It can’t, but I got to the other side of the planet. We were going to try to make a vacuum suit so I could try to get to orbit and simply set satellites up where we needed them without using rockets… Buuuut you picked us up before we could try.”
Dj raised a nonexistent eyebrow. “You can teleport from one side of Tustea to the other?”
Twilight nodded. “Mhm! We checked five times, it wasn’t a fluke.”
“You can teleport at least fourteen thousand kilometers?”
“If that’s Tustea’s diameter, yes.”
Dj steepled his talons and leaned forward. “Let me get this straight, you want us to take the ship into firing range of Yeruta’s defense platforms, so you can attempt to perform a feat of pure wizardry, right from the pages a fantasy novel, to rescue your friend and my crewman?”
Twilight blinked. “Fantasy novel? It’s not that hard to do. I can think of five unicorns who were able to achieve a teleport to the upper layers of the atmosphere.”
The helmsman cleared her throat. “If that’s true, then your species is the most powerful one ever recorded. You are talking about something that’s never been done. Ever. Not once. And there are sixty billion inhabited star systems, averaging a hundred billion inhabitants each thanks to mega-systems, and perhaps tenth of those people have some level of psionic power.”
Dj nodded slowly. “Matrose Kivi is correct. Your claim is a little hard to believe.”
Twilight pursed her lips. “Oh… I see. Well, we can find a baseline to compare our units of power! What’s the most powerful feat you have on record?”
Dj hummed and turned to his second officer, an incredibly fluffy Toraxian man whose silvery fur poked out of every single seam and hole in his long coat. “Mister Yarr, you’re our psion expert. What’s your answer?”
Mister Yarr thought for a moment, looking off into space and biting his lip before nodding. “I would say the greatest feat of psionic power I know of was the Prai witch Lady Cuir’s simultaneous enchanting of seventeen soldiers sent to kill her. She permanently warped their minds to make them her loyal troops all at once in the span of perhaps twenty seconds.”
Twilight tilted her head. “Seventeen? That’s all?”
Mister Yarr frowned. “Why are you not impressed by that?”
“Well first of all, that’s a horrible, evil thing, and can’t be impressive because of it,” Twilight said, her eyes laying back in disgust. “Second of all, because our history books list King Sombra as having mind slaved his entire kingdom at once. We’re talking hundreds of thousands to a million ponies, all thralls.”
Mister Yarr scoffed. “Captain, I don’t want to say she’s a liar, but I don't believe her. All we’ve seen ponies do is Blue’s epic lightning bolt and Twilight’s telekinesis.”
Dj nodded in agreement. “Yes. Before we risk the ship on your plan, Twilight, I believe a demonstration is in order.”
Twilight frowned and looked around the bridge to try and find something to use as an example. Her eyes settled on an empty lunchbox, which she picked up with her arcane grip and floated over to hover near her head.
“Well, I can’t teleport out into open space to show you,” Twilight said slowly. “But I can show you other things I can do to prove I’m not, and I meant no offense, a four year old foal with only a few filly’s books of education.”
The helmsman's ears stood on end. “Y-your children could mindslave a whole platoon of soldiers?”
Twilight shook her head. “No. In theory yes, but not really. They would have the mana required for the feat, but no child would have the attention span to cast such a complex spell, let alone memorize it. Also Princess Celestia had all Dark Magic tomes located via magic, then burned, with only one copy being stored in the restricted archives for emergency use, so nopony could learn that if they wanted to…”
Twilight trailed off, closed her eyes tightly, and facehooved. “Unless they were me! I had full access as Celestia’s personal student! I could have learned so many things that we could be using right now! ARRRGH! This is why I need to make myself read everything!”
Dj cleared his throat to regain Twilight’s decision. “I take it you are holding that lunchbox to show us your power?”
Twilight’s eyes opened wide. “Oh! Right! Sooo transfiguration isn’t really the same as teleportation, but would you say it’s impossible for a magic user to turn this lunchbox into an orange, then eat it?”
Dj shook his head. “You’re going to do that, aren't you?”
Twilight nodded. “Mhm!”
Dj turned to Mister Yarr. “Can you monitor her and ensure she’s not casting an illusion?”
“Of course, sir,” Yarr said as he looked Twilight in the eye. “Miss Twilight, if you can do that… Would you teach me how to detect power use better?”
“I’ll teach you even if my spell flops for some reason,” Twilight promised before once again reaching for her magic.
The mare’s horn shimmered, magenta light leaking from its spiral contours as Twilight charged her spell and directed it at the lunchbox. Thin green duraplast sparkled and warped, twisting into the shape the mana coursing through it demanded it assume. The entire bridge watched in awe as the container almost elegantly folded in on itself, brightened into a vibrant orange, then after becoming a round ball, grew a thick leathery, pitted skin.
“No…” Dj whispered, his eyes wide a she stared at the newly made orange floating next to Twilight.
The Captain turned around and looked at Mister Yarr hopefully. “Is that a real orange?”
Yarr’s ears lay back in shock. “Uh… W— Well she said she’d eat it!”
Twilight peeled the orange with her telekinesis and separated it into slices before tossing one into her mouth and chewing it. “I’m a little full from dinner… I think I can manage all of it. Anypony— Sorry, anyone want some?”
The bridge descended into a sea of impressed chaos as fifteen gopniks all began to propose Twilight turn various personal effects into other things.
Amidst the chaos, Captain Dj sent a coded message to V-1X.
Twilight will be recovering the package. Locate it and provide AV stream of its location.
V-1X
749,573.29
La Casa Exótica y Magnífica, Yeruta -- Gruis, Aurigae Sector
V-1X walked through the overly lit halls of the quite poorly named La Casa Exótica y Magnífica. She’d switched off her emote subroutines, allowing her to be as blank faced and expressionless as the rest of her “people” here. It had been nice to see other Kixie-made androids at first, before she’d learned they were empty shells.
Lux Desire series 53-X7, V-1X’s series, were one of a kind, each built to exact customer standards with the skill and love of roboticists who had wanted to be fantasy droid makers ever since they were little and never lost their passion. Each of her brother and sister units were works of art, not only in terms of their chassis, but also in terms of their programming. Only thirty five of her siblings had failed to awaken in the line’s two hundred year history, and of the sixteen million who had awoken, only two had personalities which substantially differed from their programed ones.
While other awakened AIs found V-1X’s awakened personality to be distressing, or even offensive for not being of her own creation, she’d never cared about their opinions. It brought her immense satisfaction to have fulfilled her marketing slogan for her long dead commissioner.
Lux Desire, your wish delivered.
Her commissioner had wanted to have a cool sister who on top of looking like a bipedal vulpineoid, was also a gunbunny, and was just as obsessed with Chernin military geekery as he had been. That is exactly what V-1X was. The one constant source of companionship and love the poor social outcast ever had. She’d meant everything to him.
That is what all of the empty shells attending to Arrymo’s mansion had been to someone. Lovers, best friends, family. Little more than basic protocols and simple instructions ran in their minds. People converted into simple walking art pieces that jumped through the hoops you held up for them.
Arrymo was so much more than a mind wiping monster. V-1X’s brief scouting mission had thus far taken her through four of Arrymo’s galleries. The immense rooms held rare living specimens in stasis fields, some animals, some people. Each specimen in the collection she had seen first was labeled as the last of its kind. The second had been labeled the best of their kind, and the third listed as believed to be unique.
V-1X had hoped to locate Pinkie Pie in the unique room, but she had not been there. Then Arrymo’s chef had ordered her to help him turn off the stasis field on Specimen 34-D’s head section. The android complied to avoid breaking her cover, she wished she hadn’t.
Arrymo’s favorite meal was flash cloned exotic meat. He prefered it when the original watched their copy be butchered and prepared for cooking in front of them. V-1X could still hear the alien’s terrified screams. Her audio processors refused to clear their RAM and let her synthetic soul be at ease.
Every spare ounce of processing power V-1X had was dedicated to feeling the blackest pit of hatred this side of the Orion Arm. She kept having to prevent her hands from reaching under her stolen maid’s skirt towards the holsters hidden in her thighs.
This place will burn in atomic fire… V-1X thought to herself as she did her best to remember that one day, the planet’s star would expand into a red giant, and swallow it up. It shall be purged from the universe along with all of its evil.
She turned the corner, following the blue carpeted path her zombified siblings used while walking the grounds. There were only six rooms left for her to check in the mansion. Two of which she couldn’t check because they were Arrymo’s personal quarters. One of the final rooms was just in front of her, a small basement laboratory, likely a maintenance center for the android chassis used as serving staff.
V-1X stepped over to the door and opened it slowly, taking care to peak inside before fully opening the door. As she pushed it open the door swung open completely on a set of exceptionally well oiled hinges.
The laboratory's interior was covered with workbenches, cabinets, and computer driven tool stations, with a single proper assembler in the rear left corner form the door. The laboratory was dimly lit, with light installed over critical workstations, but not over the room in general, giving the lab a feeling more akin to a dungeon than a robotics laboratory.
A dark oily smell like rotting leaves and iron filings hit V-1X’s nose like a train the moment the door opened. She recognized that smell. It was a bad smell. Celish, the proprietary liquid computing solution which composed her core. A substance she had been programed to react too in the same way an organic would react to the sight of their own brain poking through their skull, for obvious reasons.
Oh god, did my core breach?! No, that’s not me, that’s someone else… Who are they butchering in here?! V-1X demanded.
Her systems jumped into high alert mode, and the world seemed to pause. Every mote of dust froze in place as the android scanned each and every last bit of every last sensor scan of the laboratory her systems could detect. One of her siblings was being tampered with. They needed to be saved before they too were reduced to a mindless zombie like the poor bastards on the upper floors.
V-1X traced the Celish’s sent to the assembler. Sitting in the devices dozen slender mechanical arms was a completed endoskeleton, ready for its outer plating, or skin and fur if it was intended as a deluxe model.
Yet this was no ordinary endoskeleton. Series 53-X7 were exclusively humanoid, this one was quadrupedal. The visual parameters matched the biodata scans for a pony skeleton in terms of general shape and joint location.
They are making a copy of Pinkie, but why? Wait! I’m picking up her transceiver signal. She’s online! V-1X thought as her perceptions clocked back to real time in her surprise.
A four armed, tentacled, centaur-like, vacuum-native alien’s head spun around to see who had opened the door, making V-1X cores sparked in fight. She recognized his species as a Grosson. A rather nasty people known best for inventing a sport where you tricked tourists into dangerous situations and gained more points the more harm happened befall them.
The Grosson wore a tool belt around his upper waist, and a pair of saddlebags full of spare parts on his sides. His gray and brown chitinous exoskeleton looked something like a hardsuit meant for deep space, as befitting a species which evolved on an airless world.
The alien, looked V-1X in her eyes for half a second before demanding, “Who ordered you here?”
V-1X yelped internally. She hadn’t heard any of her siblings speak while she was here. Can they talk? He thinks I can. Should I reply?
“I know you’re a new unit,” the mechanic said with an annoyed pulse of glowing blue slit-eye. “Your movement is still factory fluid. I haven't turned off your voice interface yet. Who ordered you down here?”
Three other Grosson looked up from their workstations, intrigued by their boss’s sudden confusion.
V-1X’s face remained expressionless. Her cooling system kicked it up a gear as her rage consumed eighty three point six percent of her processing power. This is the monster who lobotomized my family!
Grosson are known across the galaxy for their speed. Grosson athletes competed in their own events. Aliens felt it was unfair to let someone who's reflexes let them react in under ten milliseconds and run over a hundred kilometers per hour, and the Grosson felt competing with aliens wasn’t a challenge.
Grosson warriors were famous for keeping their weapons holstered at all times. Live reports showed time and time again that the lightning fast aliens would simply draw their weapons upon hearing a weapon being discharged, move out of the way of the projectile, then return fire. Implausible as that sounded, the tactic worked well for them. Well enough to demoralize the enemy to the point where many soldiers would surrender at the sight of Grosson sharpshooters.
The head mechanic’s eye-slit dimmed dangerously. “Wait a minute… The boss didn’t order any new toys. Boys, get ready to hack a brain.”
The Grosson reached to his toolbelt and began to draw an EMP caster.
The world froze again as V-1X dropped into her full processing speed.
She reached out for the Pinkie clone’s transponder signal and sent the proper handshake packets for her series, hoping that despite the exotic shape her internal hardware would be the same.
<Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie!> The android clone replied.
<I am V-1X of the GA Chebureki. I am here to locate the organic used as your template. I would like to know why you were built. If you would like I will liberate you as well.> V-1X offered as she tried to compute a plan which would allow her to evacuate the half finished android.
<Oh you mean my body?> Pinkie asked. <The really big alien kept it. He said it looked good.>
V-1X let several nanoseconds of real time slip by as her cores jumped with worry. <Explain. Quickly. I can’t process at this speed for long. I am intended for interacting at organic speeds.>
<I’m Pinkie Pie! There was an accident with the freezy thing, so they downloaded me into this,> the pony android elaborated. <Or uh, maybe that’s wrong? Maybe they copied me into this, so the other me is out there still too? I don’t know. They keep poking my brain. Things are… Fuzzy.>
Desperately wishing she had time to triple check weather or not the android she was speaking too was truly a consciousness transfer or had simply been programed to think she was the real Pinkie Pie, V-1X returned her processor to real time.
Then the truth of what had happened came to V-1X like a bolt from the blue. They put her in a machine so she could watch herself be eaten as a one time special meal!
Organic life could do plenty of amazing things. Synthetic life had long since surpassed organic’s capabilities in every field, and were held back only by the laws relating to their designs. Law’s V-1X’s designers ignored for her. She had been designed to function identically to the anime character her appearance had been modeled after.
V-1X rammed her left hand through the mechanics head in one single smooth motion. The mechanic hadn’t stood a chance.
Before the other three aliens could react she spun her fingers through their full range of motion, pureeing the brain within her grip beyond repair.
V-1X bunched her left arm up and threw the corpse of the head mechanic at the Grosson nearest to her. The other mechanics began to draw their own weapons. V-1X ripped her skirt off, opened her right thigh holster, and drew her side arm.
The two bodies slammed together with a dull wumph.
V-1X’s M59 Vlazhnyy-Samorodok carbine unfolded from its storage state with a loud click.
Her enemy's guns hummed as they sensed leaving their resting position and charged their capacitors.
V-1X’s M59 hummed as its mass drivers came on line.
The three fireballs lit up the workshop like the noon on a world with three suns. The M59’s bellowing reports shook dust fell free from the ceiling tiles. The 7.62μm depleted uranium slugs raced towards their target at a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Even a Grosson couldn’t dodge a shot from the M59. It had been designed with them in mind.
The three shots connected with their targets, and three fist sized holes were punched through alien heads. And cabinets. And a wall.
Chernin firearm design: Overkill is barely sufficient.
Three things happened simultaneously. Alarms began to shriek all throughout the mansion, V-1X received a message from her captain asking her to show a visual of Pinkie Pie so she could be extracted by Twilight, and V-1X realized she had just thrown the whole mission straight into a giant vat of pizdek.
V-1X moaned and shook her head slowly. “Opa… Okay, let’s salvage this.”
The android sent a message back to her Captain. <They are torturing people for fun, so I shot three guys in the head. Please come quick. I have located one Pinkie, there may be two.>
Captain Dj’s reply was almost instantaneous. <Explain yourself!>
V-1X paused for just a microsecond to think of how best to word her reasoning to avoid pissing off her Captain. <Arrymo’s favorite food is flash cloned meat. Of a sapient being. That watched their clone get butchered while being helpless. He also likes to lobotomize my series of android. They have also either transferred Pinkie’s consciousness into an android, or made a copy and put it in an android.
<I am fairly sure that he wants to eat Pinkie’s original body, and… That’s why we have this poor half finished girl in the corner. So, I shot Arrymo’s mechanics in the head. Now alarms are going off, and I am pretty sure that if the organic Pinkie Pie is still alive she’ll be in Arrymo’s room.>
<Broadcast video of your location immediately!> Captain Dj ordered.
V-1X compiled, opening a video feed of her current view to the ship. <Requesting extraction within—>
A violent burst of purple light nearly whited out V-1X’s vision as an enraged lavender pegacorn teleported into the room with a thunderclap comparable to her rifle’s report.
The Pinkie android looked up at the sound and smiled. “Twilight! Can you get me down please?”
“Just a moment,” Twilight said, her voice quavering as multiple emotions slid over each other.
V-1X ripped the maid-dress top off of her chassis and retrieved her old Chernin long coat and military cap from her lower-back storage compartment.
Twilight closed her eyes and cast a quick spell. When she opened her eyes, she found a faint pink aura glowing around the half-built android’s frame for several seconds before it faded to nothing.
“What’s that mean?” V-1X asked as she slipped into her coat.
Twilight’s body shook with righteous fury. Her horn pulsed violently as she telekinetically ripped the assemblers limbs from the central hub and gently set Pinkie on the floor.
“It means there’s a soul in there, and it's hers…” Twilight said through clenched teeth.
V-1X felt the rage inside Twilight’s heart. She didn’t have any sensors for such things, but she felt it all the same, because the same righteous fury burned in her heart too. “There could be another of her alive, Twilight. Consciousness copies are claimed to duplicate the soul, creating two of the same person. This is why transfers are legal while copies are not.”
Twilight took a deep breath and looked at the chrome skeleton of hydraulics, gears, and timing belts which housed her friend’s soul, or at least, a copy of it. “Pinkie, do you know what you are?”
Pinkie’s ear survos hummed, drooping aesthetic components which were not installed. “I— Um, d--does it matter?”
Twilight nodded. “Yes. I need to know if I am carrying one friend out of here or two.”
Pinkie sighed in relief. “I’m a copy. The original me is upstairs on the tippy top floor. I uh… I didn’t think she’d take me with her if I told the truth.”
V-1X reactivated her emotion display subroutine, allowing her face to fall. She squatted down and looked the Pinkie clone in her digital eyes. “We share basic architecture. You’re technically the same model as I am. We’re sisters.”
Twilight’s head swiveled as her ears picked up the sound of five people coming down the stairs to the basement floor. “We have company…”
Pinkie frowned. “Sisters? What do you mean?”
V-1X nodded and stood up as she buttoned her uniform coat and moved to take a firing position in the door frame. “It means stay behind me, sestra. We’re getting out of here! Squishy-meat-sister too, if she’s still alive.”
Twilight joined V-1X in the doorway. “If she’s not, we make them pay.”
“They eat people they imprison and torture, and lobotomize AIs for fun… We make them pay anyways?” V-1X asked hopefully as she took aim at the stairwell.
Pinkiebot shuffled her hooves. “T— They are very bad ponies, Twilight… Worse than Nightmare Moon. Or Discord… Bad isn’t… Bad isn’t enough, b--but I can’t call someone the E-word.”
That was all Twilight needed to hear. She had been furious before, but if a version of Pinkie believed these people were truly evil, they had to go.
With a flash of her horn, Twilight cast a shield spell for each of them, enveloping them in pale purple bubbles of light.
“Uh, what’s this?” V-1X asked.
“A shield.”
“Can I shoot through it?”
Twilight nodded. “Yes… Do we have a war cry, Vee? I think now’s the time for one.”
V-1X started to nod. A group of five Prai armed with plasma throwers came into view in the stairwell. The android decided to unleash the old Chernin warcry as her answer.
“A nu cheeki breeki iv damke!” The ancient oath was punctuated with the report of an M59, and a blast of arcane fire.
As their associate’s skull shrapnalized, in their final seconds of life, the remaining four mobsters briefly wondered what they had done to deserve running into an angry Chernin Stalker. It never occurred to them that if they had been facing a real Stalker, they wouldn’t have had time to wonder anything.
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Moar space russians are required...also HALO universe style glassing of this planet....
An excellent chapter.
It's a great time for wholesale slaughter, and massively parallel rescuing.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA that last one
VERY good chapter sadly leaving us HANGING by our clawtips hooves whatever. Knew I should've brought my harness to help as my paws are getting tired
9263086 When Rarity teleports Sweetie Belle's cooking away, that's where it goes...
Time for the Pinkie-loaded flash cloner to get stuck on... again?
And now for a bit of appropriate music.
Come to think of it, what does "serious business" Chernin gear look like? Something like this?
i.imgur.com/ixCm8MQ.jpg
They're also warm. Very warm and cozy, actually... If it's cold enough. Else they get hot as fuck.
Pegacorn? Well, she ain't an Alicorn but she does have wings and horn, so yeah I didn't think I'd see it but there is a valid use of that.
Casual op Twilight is hilarious
And obviously the Goipniks want her to transform their stuff into other stuff, because why not?
Ok, that's evil. Truly evil. Both the lobotomies and eating sapients.
It would be funny in a sick way to see him die through sugar poisoning from the first bite from Pinkie, though.
And that have you done, Meeps?!? The universe is not ready for TWO Pinkies!!
9263479
Slap a gold star and three white or black parallel stripes on it and yep!
9263563
Good to know!
You know, it's funny, I had a feeling somepony would end up with a cyborging, but I honestly expected it to be Applejack. After all, a quasi-legal mercenary corp would be all about the augments wouldn't they?
derpicdn.net/img/2018/2/12/1654020/large.png
Twilight and Zuul discover the wonders of good food!
I'm mildly surprised that Twilight actually said something that can be considered unflattering concerning Sunbutt.
Aw...that'd be awesome to have!
The galaxy gets another lesson on just how arcanely powerful ponies are. And you can bet that after they leave Yeruta's space, someone there will be posting that conversation to the ODIN network...after scrubbing direct mention of Yeruta.
Good God...after reading through this section, I think calling this...being...a 'monster' is a dire insult to other villains normally considered monsters.
A copy of her...to watch her real body but hered and eaten, likely all while she's locked behind dumb programming and forced to watch but unable to do anything. This estate needs to be bathed in holy nuclear fire.
Unleash the fires, Twilight! After you rescue Pinkie's original, make a pit stop hovering about a mile up and turn that whole damned place into a molten crater!
9263589 A robot clone is not a cyborg :P
Of course the poor idiot would actually eat that. Well, his sacrifice is now recorded for posterity. Now if only Google Translate would not try converting it to Spanish first for some reason.
In that list of foods-as-ship-names, the first comma before the foods are listed should be deleted.
I also see that the naming style of the Space Mafia is categorically that bad. The magnificent and exotic house...
Trixie would approve. :D
Too bad the owner counts as a really horrible villain. It would almost be better if said person had turned out to be affable, but at least this way we don't need to feel bad for whatever happens to him.
Ah, I love their weapons-design philosophy. You know it's good when your weapon uses a mass driver. Capacitors are for sissies. (Technically, that one is fusing plasma, but accelerate anything fast enough and it does the same thing)
Having the Pinkie-cloner get stuck in the "on" position would be hilarious, but hell on their evac, since all the clones would be equally real. I hope Twi knew that soul-detector spell before the mirror-pool incident, though. Let's hope that the other living Pinkie(s) is/are still alive when they get to her.
But, I do wonder what happens when Twilight dumps a large majority of her mana with no direction. I kinda want to see that planet (at very least a few kilometers around that mansion, dammit!) become an uninhabitable, irradiated realm of horrors where physics decided to take the day off. Something that would make Discord proud. :D
peek
scent
x's cores spark in fright
add "race" or "compete" before the comma, and who's should be whose.
whether or not
speaking to
Laws
9263626
"Trixie does not approve! How can the house be magnificent when Trixie isn't painted on its walls?"
He's not the big boss, he's an underboss. So you might want to feel a bit sad for the nowhere near as bad big boss having to deal with the headache of appointing a new underboss for that sector.
Chernin prefer ballistic weapons. That said, the Moist Nugget is a relatively low powered weapon meant for training troops or giving your kid for pest control. Basically, V-X1 is playing soldier with a .22 Chipmonk keystonesportingarmsllc.com/wp-content/files/2017/05/youthChippy.jpg .
9263626
It was likely that incident that prompted her to hunt down and learn that spell.
9263589
That is a rather cool pic of a cyborg or robotic Applejack. Jet assisted bucks would be nasty with earth pone magic backing them. Who's the artist? It looks very similar to a pic Meep used after someone got hurt bad enough to require augmenting in Cataclysm.
I wonder if that planet has a moon...
Because if it has, i think someone just won an one way express ticket there... or it could be coaxed into visiting the surface of the planet but that would probably be a bit excessive.
You're blowing their minds, Twilight!
She'd better be. She'd better be.
As for this evil, evil, evil place...I say we take off now and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Either that, or we Death Star that puppy to...well, death, obviously.
9263671
It's that underpowered?!
Also, I should let you know that the new chapter made my day. Updates have been slow lately, and it's one of my favorite stories.
9264940 Thanks, I love it when I know i made a difference for someone :3
Hmn, if Pinkie's captor thinks she's a collector's item, she may have ended up somewhere where there won't have been much or any physical abuse.
Hey, that's a pretty good way to skip several steps of the space program.
Of course they'd react like that.
Oh wow, that's a pretty great awakening success rate. I hope someone appropriate is studying it for a better understanding of the process. The whole personalization thing might be a big part of what makes it work more frequently.
Well shit, that gives me less hope that Pinkie will be unscathed.
Oh, crap.
Given what's going on, that's fair.
Angry Twilight has arrived, Arroyo is so screwed.
Well, at least they have one Pinkie, and if the rescue goes well there'll be two of her.
9265661
Unfortunately, that's assuming that her original body still has an intact mind. They were building an android of Pinkie with a personality copy, when he has had her for two or three weeks now....She has likely had the wonderful experience of watching herself be butchered and eaten several times. Assuming that the one in stasis is the original, that could be the first clone. The synth Pinkie may well have been in the process of being built because her mind shattered.
9265977
That is a horrifying thought. So, it's going to be Pinkamena by the time they get to it. Could still be interesting...
Ha, save for spelling and grammar, these last two are amazing.
Keep it up!
9271554 Sorry, I have an editor, but they have been under some stress lately from RL stuff.
Vee, need I remind you that there is a dreadnought overhead, you don't need to wait for star explosions, CALL DOWN THE HAMMER OF DAWN!!!
"E word"? WHat E word????
Not gonna lie, I too would have a mansion filled with cute androids in maid outfits, though without the lobotomizing, AI's are people too!
So we have on angry pegacorn [really not full alicorn yet?], one pissed android and once they hear what he wanted to/or did to Pinkie a ship full of angry Slav[ish] people, kill yourself now buddy.
By the way, I think you were collecting these? Any of the following paragraph would make for a good "hall of fame" quote (especially the last and third-from-last lines):
For that matter, that bit where the world burns in nuclear fire a bit sooner than planned would also be a good one. Or any of the scenes where someone finds out that, yes, there ARE psykers that powerful. Especially that poor doctor who found out how ponies wear clothes.
of a
a tenth
programmed, to]
whether, to, programmed