Our Equestria

by Nonagon

Aftermath

“You’re all going to die.”

The words echoed through Snips’ mind as he reappeared in the makeshift clubhouse. He sat perfectly still, silently shivering. Somewhere nearby, he could still hear the monster sirens and the sounds of shouting, screaming. From somewhere there was smoke. There were no other ponies to be seen. His and Diamond Tiara's mugs still rested on the table, untouched.

"You're all going to die."

The thought echoed. It didn't seem possible. Of course, it had always been possible; he'd always known, in the back of his head, that it was possible for ponies to die. Even young ponies. Even ponies who had a lot left to live for. But that wasn't how the world worked. Ponies didn't die. They just got really scared or got really hurt and then they got better, and they were always happier and wiser for it. They didn't... they didn't die. Even fighting a giant robot wasn't really dangerous. "Dangerous" had always just been a synonym for "awesome" in his mind. The bigger the danger, the more awesomeness when a pony inevitably escaped from it. That was the whole point. That was how it was supposed to go.

If fifteen giant robots threatened Equestria, then no matter what the odds, one giant robot could defeat them all. There had never been any question. There had never been any danger. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a story. And even if the situation looked bad, so bad that it seemed like the bad guys were going to win and things were never, ever going to get better, even then no one was supposed to... to...

"You're all going to die."

Diamond Tiara's empty chair grabbed his attention. He became subtly aware of his own breathing, in and out, conscious of the sucking noise he constantly made as air passed between his teeth. There was an absence. A gap where something should have been. A hole in the very fabric of the world. Less than an hour ago, Diamond Tiara had been there. Now she was nothing. No, less than nothing; she was gone.

Snips' staring eyes fell towards her mug of water with a leaf in it. It was still half-full. This unfinished drink was the image that chose to sear itself into his brain, and with it, the final, dawning realization that this - this painful emptiness, this task left unfinished, this gap on the far side of the table - was what was going to happen to him.

I'm going to die.

His breathing quickened. "No," he said, even though he knew it was too late. "That's... that's impossible!" He tried to scramble away and tipped his chair over backwards, tumbling over on the ground until he hit the wall. The structure above him creaked. He righted himself and continued to back away, still staring at the mug on the table. "That's impossible!" he yelled at the lukewarm cup. "It has to be! You're... you're lying!" When the tea set gave no answer, he turned and ran blindly away.

I'm going to die.

The world faded. Sounds and images melted away; debris and cries for help faded into a thick fog. He let his stubby legs carry him, galloping ungainly over suddenly uneven ground as he found his way along strangely unfamiliar streets. The world was crooked; the world was just. This wasn't- It couldn't-

"No!" he shouted again, for want of anything more coherent. He had a lot more things to say if he could: that him and Snails still had adventures they needed to go on, and his woodwork project for Cheerilee was almost finished, and Dad said that they were finally going to take that trip to Manehattan next month, and he still had so much more that he was going to do, and it wasn't fair-

He could hear screaming. Everyone was screaming. Everyone was crying out in protest. He ran on as the streets got narrower, a narrowness that hadn't been there an hour previously, until his legs brought him blindly to the only place where he knew he would be safe and he reached up to a door that, all of a sudden, wasn't there.

Snips blinked. "What?" he choked out. He retraced his steps in his head, making sure he had come the right way, but no... this was his house. Except there was no house. There was just a pile.

The already-frantic pony's tear-clouded eyes widened as they finally took in what was in front of him. A collection of splintered timbers and crumbled plaster sloped over backwards into the street opposite, topped by a hat of what had been a woven straw roof, smashed flat. In the foreground was a multicoloured mesh of fabric and furniture, fragments of glass and straw and all kinds of colours of wood, ground to a paste and mixed together with the powder of the front wall. There were indentations in the stone foundation where a doorframe had been, but of the door there was no sign. That part was simply gone.

Snips stood there for what seemed like several minutes before he heard his shaky voice start up again. "Mom?" he vocalized, finally lowering his hoof and taking a trembling step into the house. "Dad?"

Nothing. Just the distant screams and sirens.

"You're all going to die."

Fear burst in his chest like an explosion. He jolted forward, diving into the powder of the pancaked building, throwing debris aside and digging towards the greater lump in the middle. "Mom! Dad!" he screamed, tears running down his face as he worked. A torn piece of wood scratched down his leg, but he barely noticed. "Mom! Dad!" Something green slipped under his hoof - there was the plant from beside the door, still green, the leaves still flat - "Mom! Dad!"

The sound of wings. One member of a flock of pegasi broke away from a scouting party and swooped down to him, wrapping her hooves around his middle before he had a chance to protest. "Let's get you outta here," she hissed, effortlessly lifting him into the air and making a beeline for Ponyville's outskirts.

"No! Put me back!" Snips thrashed in her grip, almost making her drop him before she tightened her hold. It would only be much later, when his more rested mind was able to sort through the events of that day, that he would finally recognize her as Cloud Chaser. His struggles lessened as the wreckage passed out of sight, but he still strained as far as he could to reach out towards it. "Mom! Dad!" he bellowed, one last time.

As gently as she could without losing firmness, Cloud Chaser turned Snips around in her grasp. She cradled him with his head on her shoulder and wrapped him in a tight embrace, which he returned without thinking. Her mouth was set in a hard line, biting back tears as well.

---

Canterlot's "war room," located about halfway up the Royal Guard tower, was inaccurately named. That it had a circular table was about all the claim it had to the title; since its construction many hundreds of years ago, no actual wars had taken place that had necessitated its use. For centuries the maps along the walls had lain untouched, the table and chairs only seeing service when they were rented for board meetings and birthday parties.

Until now.

In a rare turn of events, all four Princesses were present, Cadance having flown in herself from the Crystal Empire. The four of them were side by side, crowns removed, looking more solemn than many of the ponies at the table had ever seen them. Shining Armour was there as well, along with a few other high-ranking guards, and Red Cross had brought a pair of guests from whatever department he hailed from. The remaining four came from Celestia and Luna’s board of advisors: one of each of the three pony races plus one griffin, who barely fit even into the alicorn-sized chairs the room provided. None of them said anything. Those who weren’t familiar with the room’s ancient, unused customs had picked up on them right away: from the moment they were all assembled, they began a period of two minutes of silence to calm their nerves and remember why they were fighting.

Judging by the echoing sound of breathing, the first of these objectives was by far the more difficult to achieve.

Without opening her eyes, Celestia spoke first. "How bad is it?" she asked.

With a gulp, Shining Armour flipped open the report in front of him. "We won't know for certain until tomorrow," he answered with a facade of calmness, "but our first headcount lists eighty ponies confirmed dead, with another forty still unaccounted for. The same number of homes were completely demolished, but thankfully the damage was mostly restricted to the town's east side. Any way you slice it... that's a third of Ponyville."

Twilight Sparkle shook and let out a sob. She'd been silently weeping since before arriving. Celestia extended a wing and wrapped it around her, while Shining Armour shuffled in his seat. He was now starting to regret taking the place next to his marginally calmer wife. "And what of the attacker?" Princess Luna asked, the most composed of the four of them. "How much do we know about this... this black behemoth?"

Red Cross opened his own report on the events of the disaster. "Very much and very little," he answered. His tone had lost none of its calm enthusiasm, which led to a few quick glares in his direction. "After the previous sightings, we had assumed that the creature was an overgrown beast wearing some kind of ultra-light armour, but as pictures from the battle's end show, its interiors are inorganic. By some miracle of science, the dark unicorn is mechanical all the way through, like some kind of..." He tapped the table with his hoof, grasping for the word. "Like a living machine."

This grabbed Twilight Sparkle's attention. She finally raised her head and blinked several times, seeming to be only now waking up. "You mean it's some kind of..." She struggled for the word as well, reaching far back into the recesses of her memory. "Robot?"

This brought some confused whispers around the far edge of the table, quickly silenced. Celestia withdrew her wing, while Luna regarded the youngest princess curiously. "That word has some familiarity to us," the Princess of the Night said, "but I do not know if I am able to place it. What is this 'robot' that you speak of?"

"It's something I read in one of my obscure unicorn history textbooks." Twilight bit her lip thoughtfully, jumping at the opportunity to put her mind to something other than remembering. She'd been one of the first to dive back into Ponyville after the dark creatures had left, using all her strength to pull the remains of houses apart looking for bodies. Nearly every mangled pony she'd lifted out had been one she'd recognized. "The concept of a mechanical life-form was first postulated by Copper Coil the Second during the Pre-Classical Era. Natural elements could be used to create and harness a unique form of magic that he called electricity, combining the intrinsic magics of all three pony races. He imagined that this energy could be used to create and power all kinds of new inventions, which he imagined would revolutionize the world. One of these was something he called a 'robot,' an autonomous creature made of metal that could move or even think on its own using a stored electrical vessel. But less than a year later, Star Swirl the Bearded founded the amniomorphic spell, and Equestria underwent a revolution in unicorn magic instead of physical science. These days, electricity isn’t used for much more than heating ovens and lighting bulbs."

Red Cross stroked his scraggly beard thoughtfully. "So you think that somepony out there is finishing Copper Coil's work?" he asked.

Twilight shook her head. "Not by a long shot. Copper Coil's writings were all hypothetical; while Star Swirl was providing immediate results, he was struggling to figure out how to to create even simple machines with his own technology. Plus, he never imagined that robots would be used for anything more than automating simple tasks, like farming or mining. But those monsters that have been appearing, their armour, their power source, the way they teleport around... Even if somepony did crack the code to using electricity in this way, it would take hundreds of years of research for us to even begin to catch up. For once, this isn’t the work of some madpony wielding dark magic. A robot with that level of power and ability could only have come from a culture that took a very different scientific path from our own."

"Preposterous!" the griffin on the other side of the table spat at her. He spoke with a strong but unplaceable accent, a mix of a little of everything from the various Griffin Kingdoms and more besides. "No such culture exists! Unless you mean to suggest that this behemoth comes from somewhere..." He made a hacking noise at the back of his throat, the griffin equivalent of an amused snort. "Beyond this world?"

Twilight withered under the implications. "I don't know," she said in a small voice. "I... I just don't know..."

She began to tremble again, but this time managed to compose herself. Celestia and Luna looked at one another. In their glances, a thousand thoughts seemed to pass between them; when they were alone, they seldom had the need to speak aloud. Unable to read their millenia-old expressions, Shining Armour cleared his throat uncomfortably. "The first sightings were near the ocean," he offered. "It's possible that these might be the inventions of the fabled seaponies."

"Don't be ridiculous," one of Red Cross' cohorts laughed. "Seapony technology is completely different!" Red Cross punched his shoulder, and he shut up.

The baffled silence that followed was broken by one of the guards accompanying Shining Armour. “It doesn’t matter where they came from,” an especially massive pegasus pony growled, grinding his front hooves together as he leaned over the table. “What matters is how we stop them. If they’re made of metal, they can be broken. If they teleport, they can be tracked. All we have to do is figure out how.”

The two larger princesses compressed another ten-minute conversation into a single glance, ending with Luna sighing and Celestia putting on a thin smile. “I hope that it will not come to that,” she said. “Diplomacy may still be our best option. From what we’ve seen, these robots exist to fight one another, and they may not realize that they’re doing any harm; from what I’ve heard, one of them willingly left Ponyville after Twilight told it that ponies were being hurt. If we’re lucky, the magics of love and friendship may be all we need to end this without any further bloodshed.”

Before anything else could be said, the discussion was interrupted by a pop. A swirl of dragonfire materialized above the table and transformed into a scroll, which gently floated down to rest in front of Twilight. She reached out to it hesitantly, holding in a gulp when she saw the seal. “I’m sorry, everyone,” she said, looking apologetically around, “but I need to take this.”

A few ponies waved her away as she left the table. While Shining Armour started a discussion on a new plan to improve evacuation routes, Twilight slipped into a seat in one of the darkened corners of the room and rolled the scroll open, her heart leaping into her throat. The message inscribed on it was a short one.

Twilight,

We need to talk.

Spike.

---

A lot of ponies had chosen to trickle back into Ponyville once the battle had stopped, either retreating to the safety of their homes or to aid in the rescue of those still trapped under the rubble, but many more stayed where they were. Some feared that the dark giants would return to finish what they’d started. Others had no homes to go back to.

The place, which had previously had no name but was now known as Evacuation Field, quickly became the site of the town’s biggest ever campout. As many tents as could be found were wheeled out in carts, but many contented themselves with sleeping under the stars. Even after the sun went down, ponies still slipped back and forth between campfires, singing calming songs, sharing makeshift meals, finding one another in the darkness... and shedding tears at who wasn’t there to be found.

Even amongst all this, Snips was still one of the last to fall asleep. He’d been brought back to an area reserved for foals without their parents, which had seen tearful comings and goings for several hours. Sweetie Belle had been there when he’d arrived, but she was immediately whisked away by a pair of loudly bawling unicorns. Snails had shown up not long after. Even if Snips had been able, he wouldn’t have needed to say anything; their homes were only a few houses away from each other. They sat together, Snails silent, Snips still coughing and sobbing, watching Scootaloo’s mom quietly tend to their fire pit.

The next few hours had passed with few interruptions. Twist arrived along with a few other foals, looking almost as if she were sleepwalking. She spent half an hour staring into the fire without noticing the two colts on the other side of it before a tan mare with a straight red mane came up to her and wordlessly dragged her away. Dinky Doo was brought in close to sunset, but she didn’t say anything to the pair either. Somepony with a cart stopped by and passed out bowls of soup. Most went untouched.

There were four or five other foals in the circle, some getting replaced by others as the night went on. Snips tried not to count them. He tried not to look at their faces. As the night went on he only kept staring into the dying fire, and it wasn’t until he heard Snails snoring by his side that he felt any inclination to let himself lie down and do the same.

He woke up to something being thrown over him. He started to bolt up, then relaxed when he realized that the attacker was just a fuzzy blanket. Snails’ gangly mom was standing over them, putting a pillow under her sleeping son’s head. She put a hoof to her lips and nestled down beside him, pulling part of the blanket over herself as well. In what felt like seconds, she too was asleep.

Before he could stop himself, Snips looked around the campfire. Dinky Doo had vanished, as had two others. There were three more foals there besides themselves. He thought he recognized one of them as a filly named Pluto before he clenched his eyes shut again. Don’t look.

---

He dreamed of a landscape overrun with titanic black ants.

---

The next time he awoke was in the morning, with Snails’ knee tapping his side. He squinted against the morning sun as he raised himself up, the itchy blanket falling away from him. The massive campsite was starting to come alive again; ponies were starting to roll up tents and put out fires. One of the fillies nearby had started crying and was clinging to Scootaloo’s mom, who was holding her as if she’d never been near a foal before. “Where’s my muh-mommy?” the filly was saying.

At this sound, several realizations came to Snips all at once:

1. If his parents hadn’t come for him by now, he would probably never see them again.

2. Even if he did see them again, the reunion would be short-lived, as he was going to die soon.

3. He hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch the previous day, and

4. he really needed to use the bathroom.

Words couldn’t articulate how much he hated that the last of these was the one rising to the top of his brain.

Nearby, Snails was still being fussed over by his mother, who looked like she’d slept less than either of them. He grinned sheepishly and directed Snips’ attention to the pony he’d woken him up for. Apple Bloom was going from campfire to campfire with a wagon of fruits and juice and had arrived at theirs, starting to pass out apples. When she arrived at Snips, she paused. “Can... can you meet us in the cockpit ‘round five tonight?” she asked quietly. “We’re all gonna try to get together and confront Cicada. We need to get some answers.”

Snips stared at her for a while. He started to speak, but his throat was dry. She darted to the cart and back and presented him with a glass of juice, which he gulped down quickly. “I... don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know where I’m gonna go, or... anything.” He looked longingly back at Snails’ mom. “I don’t know anything.”

Apple Bloom looked at the ground. She swayed forward slightly, and Snips found himself wondering what her night had been like. “Will you try?” she asked.

The pain in her voice found an echo in Snips’ heart. Even if nothing else, they still had each other. It wasn’t much comfort, but he took it. “I’ll try.”

“Thanks.” She shuffled, unable to look at him. “Ah’m... sorry ‘bout your parents,” she said. “Ah... sorta know how that feels.”

Snips stared at her. “They’re really...?”

Apple Bloom’s eyes widened, and she put a hoof to her mouth. “Ah’m sorry!” she gasped. “Ah thought you knew. They found ‘em last night.”

He tried to process this. He couldn’t. Dimly, he was aware that his body was giving up precious fluids to leak tears down his face again, but he felt... nothing. Too many things had been ripped out of his life all at once, such that the tapestry of his being was now more hole than story, and he didn’t know how to feel about something that he could barely see any more. Interpreting his reaction in her own way, Apple Bloom started to move towards him. Hesitantly, perhaps afraid that he might try to squirm away from her as he would if she’d done this at any other time, she reached out and gave him a gentle hug. “It’s gonna be okay,” she said, pressing her warmth against him. “Ah promise, it’s all gonna be okay.”

Snips nodded vaguely. Even after the long night, her mane smelled sweet, like apples.

Still gentle, Apple Bloom let go of him and backed away. “Ah’ll see you soon,” she said with some glimmer of confidence. She delivered apples to Snails and his mom, then did another round of the circle for juice, before dragging her wagon away and leaving Snips to his thoughts.

---

Five o’clock was a long time coming. Sweetie Belle was more than an hour early, but there was no helping that; her link to Equus was her sister’s sewing stool, and after a long day of making blankets Rarity was about to close the boutique to help at the shelter Applejack was setting up. Sweetie held her breath as she disappeared from the workroom, hoping that Rarity would think she’d slipped by her out the front door and wouldn’t spend too long looking for her.

Cicada was already there when she arrived, high up and facing away from her. “-t like I want them to die,” he was saying. Sweetie Belle’s gasp cut him off. He paused and turned around, lowering himself to eye level. “You’re early,” he stated.

Sweetie Belle leaned back, trembling in fear. “You knew about that?” she asked.

“Of course. I like to keep an eye on you all.”

He said nothing more after that. Regaining some confidence, Sweetie Belle leaned forward. “Who were you talking to?” she asked.

“None of your business.” Cicada vanished.

The next hour was spent uncomfortably. The stool was really supposed to be a support while sewing; the pony using it was meant to have a table to lean on while they worked. Sweetie curled up on it as best she could, letting her tail hang off the end. She looked longingly at Twist’s bean bag and Silver Spoon’s loveseat, but wondered what would happen if somepony was sitting on a seat when somepony teleported onto it. She felt warm. The temperature never seemed to change, but the absolutely still air was stifling. She wondered why the air in the cockpit never seemed to run out. She wondered if teleporting for real would feel the same as it did when Cicada moved her. She wondered if anypony was going to bring food. She wondered a lot of things.

Peachy Pie arrived next, only a few minutes early. Then came Tornado Bolt, then Apple Bloom, almost exactly on the hour. Snips and Snails were a few minutes late, but arrived together. “Hey, everypony,” Snips said without enthusiasm, jumping down to join the circle forming in the middle of the room.

Apple Bloom looked around at the sorry six of them. “Is that everyone?” she asked, looking around at the far wider circle of chairs. “Ah thought there’d be more...”

“I was expecting fewer,” Peachy Pie said with a shrug. “I thought more of us would want to spend time with our families right now.” She caught the multiple flinches this produced and looked around in confusion, then crimsoned as realization set in. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!-”

A final wop silenced them as Rumble appeared in his folding chair, immediately hopping down to join them. “Hey guys,” he said, sliding into the circle. “Sorry I’m late. My brother kept me talking for a while.”

Sweetie Belle blinked at him. “Isn’t your brother in Cloudsdale?”

Rumble blinked back at her. “Uh, yeah. He came back to check on me. You know, giant monsters? But he’s gone again now.” He rapidly turned to look at Snips and Snails. “I’m sorry about you guys’ houses. Where are you living now?”

Snips was unusually quiet, and Snails took his customary long time to answer. “At Sweet Apple Acres,” he said once he was finished gathering his thoughts. “They got everypony to work together and put up another barn for us to stay in. It’s nice. My mom’s there.”

Rumble smiled cautiously. “And... what about your dad?”

Snails shrugged. “Los Pegasus, I think. He’s with some other mare.”

The casualness of the answer gave the others pause. “Does your mom know you’re here?” Sweetie Belle asked, fearful that her own crime had been replicated. “She might be really worried about you.”

Another shrug. “I just told her we had to go somewhere. She said okay.”

“That’s all?” Tornado Bolt said in surprise. “I had to tell my mom I was checking on some friends.”

Apple Bloom stared at them in bafflement. “Really? Ah just told mah folks the truth.” She looked down as the others stared at her. “Okay, not... all of it.”

Having accidentally breached the central topic of the evening, Apple Bloom steeled herself and stood up. Nopony stopped her as she took a deep breath and turned her face upwards. “Cicada!” she yelled.

The mouse materialized overhead. Even though he’d been expecting them, he still managed to sound annoyed when he answered. “What do you want?”

Snips felt his heart seize up. His breath quickened; his skin felt flush. Unimposing as it was, the plastic toy loomed over them like the spectre of death. Others in the circle seemed to feel the same way, unconsciously drawing closer to one another, their words catching in their throats. Only Apple Bloom seemed unaffected, glaring up at their personal harbinger of doom. “We want answers.”

“Please. What more could you possibly need to know?” The mouse began to circle overhead. “You fight the enemies and destroy their vital spots. You save your world and then die for the privilege. What about that is hard to understand?”

Apple Bloom was rendered speechless, so Peachy Pie took over. “But that’s not what we were promised!” she protested. “If we’d been told that we were signing up to die, then none of us would have ever done it!”

“Which is, I surmise, precisely the reason you weren’t told,” Cicada said.

“But...” Peachy stood up and cried out. “But it’s not fair!”

Cicada halted. “Not fair?” he echoed. “Who said anything about fair?” He warped down and reappeared right in front of Peachy Pie, causing her to flinch away with a shriek. His smile was gone again, replaced by a snarl of sharpened teeth. “Do you think any death is fair?” he continued in a mocking voice. “Is it fair that your world is threatened to begin with? Would it have been fair if somepony else was chosen instead of you? Is that what you want, for me to take your registration away and give it to somepony else, so you can say ‘I want you to die instead of me, because it isn’t fair!’?”

Peachy Pie was near tears. “But... but didn’t want this!” she cried. “You forced us!”

“I didn’t force you to do anything. Nopony forced you to sign that contract. Nopony’s forcing you to fight. But do you know what’s going to happen if you don’t? Do you think fair is going to matter then?” He wiggled back and forth in midair. “Wah, I’m going to die so I’m going to make everyone else die with me because it’s not fair!”

“Enough!” Tornado Bolt leaped to her hooves, her wings snapping out reflexively. “Don’t talk to her that way! How can you trick us into giving our lives away and then act like we don’t have a right to be angry? Stop being so heartless and actually help, you... you bully!”

Cicada turned to face her. “Bully? Hm. That’s a new one. Although I don’t have internal organs, so heartlessness isn’t something I can help.” He tutted as her glare only intensified. “And really, I don’t have to be talking to you at all. My function is to move pilots around and perform repairs. Giving advice is really only something I do in my spare time, so whatever complaints you have, it’s not actually my problem.”

Tornado Bolt shook in fury. “It is your problem because you’re the one who brought this monster here! If you hadn’t shown up, none of this would have happened!” She pointed angrily. “How do we know you’re not the one who brought those other monsters here to attack us? You’re the one who keeps saying that all this is just a game!”

The mouse looked back blankly. “It is a game.”

The others took a step back as Tornado Bolt seethed, steam practically coming out of her ears. “Were all those deaths just a game?” she asked. “Was Ponyville getting destroyed just a game? Are our lives just little games to you!?” She stomped once, then leaped at Cicada with a hoof raised to swing. “We aren’t your toys!”

She disappeared in a flashing bubble just before reaching her target and reappeared near the wall, hitting nothing. She struggled to move, but the flashing bubble was keeping her suspended helplessly in the air, forcing her to fall through the same patch of air again and again. “You’d do well to not get on my bad side, little one,” he said over her outraged roars. “I’ve been patient with you so far, but even I have my limits. Whether you accept it or not, you need my help. Try to accept it soon.”

Sweetie Belle shuffled forward and looked up pleadingly. “Please let her go.”

“...Please? Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” The warping momentarily switched directions, tossing Tornado repeatedly up in the air, which made her lose enough momentum that Cicada was able to let her go without her crashing into the floor. She fluttered the rest of the way down on her own, still glaring. Cicada drifted up to Sweetie Belle, his painted smile back to normal. “For polite little fillies,” he said, “I’ll answer any questions you have. What would you like to know?”

The filly only stared back in terror. Rumble quickly cleared his throat. “Could you... please just tell us one thing?” he asked. “If any of us loses our battle... what will happen?”

Cicada didn’t even look back. “Your world will be destroyed, and everypony who lives on it will die. Your energy will be harvested, and those responsible will move on to another world.”

“So... in other words, it’s an invasion?”

“That’s a less fun way of looking at it.”

“Okay.” Rumble started to speak again, but stopped twice before he found the words he was looking for. “We... ponies don’t think of that as a game. I’m sorry that we got confused.”

“It’s a game in the sense that there are rules, and there are winners and losers.”

“Then why are you here?” Tornado Bolt asked. She stepped closer, stopping near but not quite inside the circle. “Why are you ‘helping’ us?”

Cicada sighed, twirling away in the air. “Believe me, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t be, especially not with a crew like this. If you want the full answer for why you in particular, you’d have to talk to Pollinia, and she’s... not available any more.”

A sickly hush fell over the group. Apple Bloom keeled forward. A vile realization, which had been lurking in the back of her mind ever since yesterday, finally made itself known. “She’s dead,” she croaked out, bringing the thought to life. “She said it was her first time. It had to be. And that means that right after the battle...” A second realization filled her throat. “And Scootaloo...”

Cicada swirled around and stopped, tilting slightly to the side. “You must have figured that out by now.”

“Yeah.” Apple Bloom nodded, holding back a scream. “But Ah want to hear you say it.”

He watched a moment longer before answering. “Your friend is dead.”

It was Sweetie Belle who broke down first; a bubble of worry in her heart burst, releasing a flood of reserve tears down her face. Over the sudden wailing, Peachy Pie spoke in pain and anger. “You told us you sent her home!”

“I did.” Cicada performed a half-bob that might have been a shrug. “I can’t tell you why she wasn’t there when you returned. Maybe somepony else found her first.”

“So.” Rumble tightened his lips, his whole body weighed down. “We’re all going to...”

“Die, yes.”

Sweetie Belle started to cry harder. Several others were tempted to join in. “Okay.” Rumble gulped. “That thing you said earlier... about taking registration from one pony and giving it to another... can you do that?”

“Huh?” Cicada started to move closer, then stopped. “Oh, no. That was rhetorical. I can’t actually do that. Once you’re in, you’re in. And once you’re up...”

Snips finally found his voice. “What about the Elements of Harmony?”

Sweetie’s crying stopped. “Hey, yeah!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, lightening up. “The Elements of Harmony! They can banish any kinda evil magic. Why, one blast from those, and we’ll-”

“They won’t work.”

“Huh?” Apple Bloom frowned up at the mouse. “But you ain’t even seen them.”

Cicada circled away. “The contract is unbreakable. That’s the long and short of it. Your puny pony magic can’t even touch it.”

The filly was undeterred. “Are you absolutely positively sure?”

“Yes, I’m absolutely posit- Oh? Well, would you look at that.” Reacting to a signal the assembled foals couldn’t feel, he twirled back into the middle of the room and raised himself up. “Looks like you might have a chance to find out sooner than we thought.”

The circle of chairs began to move.

Snips couldn’t breathe. The whole past day had felt like one extended nightmare; now, with death bearing down on him, he was sure that he must be about to wake up. After all, all of this was impossible, right? It had to be. It had to be!

“You’re all going to die.”

There was a shrill whistle of magic as another roulette symbol appeared under their hooves. Sweetie Belle shrieked and clung to Apple Bloom. Peachy Pie shrieked and clung to Tornado Bolt. Snips clung to no one. He clamped his eyes shut as the roar of the chairs got louder and louder, then softer. “Not me,” he begged under his breath. “Not me. Anyone but me. Please, not me!”

The noise stopped. Snips opened his eyes.

The seat within the circle wasn’t his.

It was a bench.

He didn’t fully realize what this meant until Peachy Pie started screaming.

Cicada rose up to the top of the room and sighed. “I really hate foals,” he muttered.

Comments

[Mlp_BladeDancer]

Why does this remind me of Sword Art Online lol
oh well it has caught my interest so i will give it a read when i can

[Compendium of Steve]

Not gonna read the story, but... given the title you chose and the subject matter of giant mecha, you get a Like regardless, as well as this gift of my appreciation:

God bless you sir, and long live Hisoutensoku: the Pride of Gensokyo :')

[Alondro]

>>>“You’d do well to not get on my bad side, little one,” he said over her outraged roars. “I’ve been patient with you so far, but even I have my limits. >>>

*Alondro glowers as reality begins to bend and crack under the sheer infinite power of his limitless rage* As do I. And the wicked creatures behind this have passed them.

So, those responsible wish to play a game with my favorite little world and drain the life from all the happy ponies... they shall beg me for death and will not allow it. They shall know the true meaning of hell...

[Traveler7]

3418972

Eh. You're late to the game. The Bokurano multiverse was..... Dealt with some time ago. The amount of paperwork and repairs was ABSURD, believe me. But, yeah, it's not just Equestria that'll wind up getting harvested if the kids lose. It's the whole universe. Peachy Pie dies next though so... Fun times!

3418651

Eh. SAO wasn't NEAR as dark as Bokurano. Came out long after it too. I think? Anime wise anyways. Manga and LN wise i'd have to actually look...

[Aquaman]

See, this is why I love writing about life-or-death situations (or... I guess death-or-much-worse-death situations, in this case): you get to set up characters with all their aspirations and personality quirks, and then in an instant boil them down to their most basic internal strengths. I think in a previous comment I said it might get boring if it was just as simple as "You're all going to die", and I said that because I was worried you wouldn't try to make things play out that way. Thankfully, it seems I had no reason to be concerned. I know you said you just wanted to take a month to mow through as much of this as you could, but should you feel like continuing it afterwards, I'm in for the long haul. I'll also try to check out Death Note: Equestria sometime soon, since (very thankfully here) I'm not just into this fic for the plot and characters here, if you catch my drift.

(Seriously, though, Battle Royale adaptation. We should talk.)

[Alondro]

3420728 Bah, I don't like 'hopeless trap' stories. They're invariably pointless, with worlds designed entirely around failure.

Besides, this story shares a common crossover flaw: it immediately renders the 'host' world's powers and abilities completely helpless against the 'parasite' crossover world for the sake of sticking too closely to the plot, resulting less in a 'crossover' and rather merely a copy-paste story.

That annoying little mousebot's declaration, "Oh your puny pony magic is sooooo helpless against our game master's supreme ultimate powers of otherworldness!" was instantly gratingly infuriating. A toss-out like that is a weak cover, and I am of the opinion that he must be lying. Common sense dictates that this must be so given the powers that exist in Equestria.

I should like to to introduce him to Discord... whom I'm guessing will be conveniently absent from the story since with a snap of his talons he could unmake the entire thing.

A true crossover merges the aspects of both worlds, making each susceptible to influence from aspects of the other.

[maxdoss]

3422871 And that's why I don't like these kinds of stories.

[Nonagon]

3422871 Don't worry, he's lying... but not quite for the reasons you might think.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with your point about the host world's abilities not being taken into account; this kind of story is character-driven, after all, and we've already seen small but significant changes from the source material, which will only grow as the story progresses. If your issue is the story's central premise - Equestria's future is put in the hooves of a bunch of doomed kids with a robot - then there's only so much that I can do. I could have Discord snap his talons and fix everything, but if I did, then there would be no story, so what would be the point? (But thank you for the reminder; I'll be sure to throw a nod in his direction at some point.)

[Alondro]

3423235 Well, my primary underlying problem that the source manga itself made no sense. It was 'character driven', but set in a completely illogical conflict.

I've seen so many giant mecha manga, hundreds really, which do a much better job of at least creating a conflict that has a solid backing, rather than just tossing in world-destruction for losing, just because it ups the stakes, and without providing a feasible rationale behind it.

Point: If the masterminds have such overwhelming power and want to destroy worlds... why not just destroy the worlds? There is no point at all to these games other than if said masterminds are also hyper-sadists. From a logical standpoint, the plot was implausible and unresolved.

It was a story that, at the end, went nowhere.

[Nonagon]

3423300 There was more to it than that, which I will happily discuss when we reach a point where it won't fill up the comments section with future spoilers.

[Alondro]

3423828 I read the entire plot of the manga after it was complete. It never made sense.

The anime's ending was changed significantly from the manga's because the anime director didn't like it.

[Traveler7]

3425189

Thank God for that director, I say... I should, at some point, maybe consider scanning the manga, but given i'm pretty sure I know how it ends from the anime... I am not eager to test those waters.

[Braininthejar]

Of all the ponies you could use as the POV character for the chapter, you had to choose Snips...

i.imgur.com/nLiq2rL.gif

Wait... if the pilot is the main energy source, how would not starting a battle lead to a catastrophic overheat? A moot point if the loss dooms the entire planet, but someone is lying here. While most of the cast will definitely die, there seems to be a puzzle to be solved here

[Dawn Flower]

Putting my comments into points is now something I'm going to do in all of your stories:

1. Copper Coil. Nice reference to your other story.
2. I made Red Cross sound like Mayuri Kurotsuchi from Bleach.