In Which Sacrifices are Made
Starlight knew war.
She knew it in the marrow of her artificial bones―knew it like an organic creature knows how to breathe and sleep and move. It resonated in every metal joint and arch, like the pumping of blood in coil-like veins―it was the very essence of her being. She’d been created for it, molded by it, and she lived for it. As much as an automaton could live, anyway.
Then he’d dug her out of the snow and ice, and learned a whole new meaning for living. It was his calloused hooves and gentle magic that brought her back together, his laughter a command unlike any she’d ever known, not ordering her but compelling her to mimic the quirk of his expressive mouth. His will was what brought her back from the brink, his kindness saw past her empty shell and found more than a machine whose sole mission was mindless violence and destruction. Her “Creator” gave her form, a task, a purpose in the form of warfare, but the mechanic―Sunburst―gave her life.
And for his sake, she would give it up in a beat of her mechanical heart.
“If we keep going down this way, we’ll be trapping ourselves into a corner―there’s no way out.”
Sunburst stomped his hooves as he paced, but the cramped space of the corridor gave him little room for his anxious pacing. He lost his tool belt along the way and he shuddered, restless without something to hold. He was no fighter, but even a mechanic would feel helpless going up against an army of killer-robots without some kind of weapon to use.
“He’s right,” Trixie said, strangely calm, but Starlight picked up the erratic pulse of her heart and the rigid lines of her withers betrayed her calm demeanor. “And if we linger here, they’ll catch up.”
Starlight looked through her memory data for a solution but found instead an impressive list of cuss words. She didn’t feel panic―she wasn’t programmed to, and for all of the adjustments he made, he hadn’t tampered with that. Though she didn’t feel it, she could understand the severity of the situation. If she had her old combat function, she could have blasted the concrete walls boxing them in, or even taken on the horde of droids heading their way, but she didn’t have her old weapons, and she couldn’t take on an army with weak magic and her bare hooves.
Regret was also a sentiment that wasn’t programmed into her, but she couldn’t stop thinking what would have happened if they hadn’t gone to the Cloud District―if they stayed in Sunburst’s workshop in the Crystal Empire. But her logic pointed out that there was no way they could’ve known there would be an army of changeling robots, also known as Droids, waiting for them when they arrived at Cloudsdale. They were chased down for a better part of the night by the Droids and the police until they found refuge in an abandoned mech factory, but there was the possibility that they were herded into a trap; there was no way for them to escape with what they had at their disposal.
Sunburst looked at her then, eyes wide and pleading for a plan she didn’t have, and she remembered the first time she’d seen him, though his eyes had been full of excitement then, a day a dig had been successful, and death hadn’t been hot on their tails.
“Starlight?” There was a tremble in his voice, one she’d never heard before, and she’d recorded and cataloged every pitch and lit of his voice since the first time she’d heard it.
“...this wire…”
“...if I attach...the circuitry is…”
Her sensors registered touch―warm, soft, careful movements, a persistent tug in her inner workings that sent a jolt of power through her system and her eyes flew open―
“Holy sh―”
“Sunburst, stand back!”
Her vision had been compromised, she switched to heat signature vision and her head snapped towards the source of the voices. Three ponies, by her estimation, probably more outside the room but her sensors weren’t fully operational, from the temperature she concluded she was inside a room, no windows, only a door behind her captors, soundproof, concrete walls, cement floor. But with her busted sensors and deactivated vision, she couldn’t conclude anything else with one hundred percent accuracy.
“Wait―no, wait, Shining, let me just―”
Her default vision connected and went back online, it registered with a jolt, and white light flooded her sensors―light, and something very yellow and red, and once her vision came into focus she registered a pair of blue eyes―real eyes, not made out of plastic or silicon, living and vivid and brimming with life unlike the cold unsympathetic gaze of a sentry robot pointing a blaster gun to her head―
“Hello?”
A warm hoof on the side of her face and she froze, not that she could move much, a quick scan told her that three of her four legs had been removed, the only one attached to her was hanging by a few measly cables. She was rooted to her spot by the power cables connected to her spine, suspending her in the air with her inner machinery exposed for the world to see.
She didn’t focus on that though, but on the eyes that stared back at her with no fear in them, only curiosity, with excitement brimming around the edges. She looked at the two figures behind them, giving them a brief scan for her to analyze at a later time, but her attention was mostly on the stallion in front of her, trying to decide if he was a threat or not.
“Can you understand me?” he asked then. “Do you understand Directive?”
The GLIM robot nodded, the command registered easily through her programming. They must’ve fixed her since the last thing archived in her memory data were the warning reports that her limbs had been disabled, her mission had failed when the enemy spotted her and she had been shot down and left for scrap.
Eagerness light up his face at her understanding. “We dug you out of a snowbank―you were buried quite deep and the ice did some damage on your circuitry, luckily there was no damage to your motherboard which is why I activated you in the first place, I fixed what I could and removed some functions to replaced them with new ones―oh, sorry! My name is Sunburst. Sunburst Zenith, I’m a mechanic and we found you on a dig. What’s your name?”
His face was flushed thanks to his enthusiastic speech, his eyes glittered behind his glasses and he was so closed she could feel the heat from his face. But his inquiry didn’t register in her programming. “Name?”
He frowned. “Yes, your name. What are you called?”
Her programming told her that he was asking if she had been given a distinct designation, she nodded and pulled out her system identification window, or would have if her holographic projector hadn’t been disconnected, so she read it out loud to him instead.
“Number 4415, series five of the Galloper Legionary Intelligence Model, or GLIM-S5-4415 if you prefer.”
She thought she gave a sufficient answer, but his brows furrowed as he stared at her.
“That’s...not much of a name.”
“My number is the only distinct designation they gave me.”
His frown deepened. “Maybe where you are from, but we do things differently here.”
She glanced around once more, wondering for the first time where she was, who he worked for. The facilities were too clean, the tools around her well maintained for a freelancer, unless he had access to some considerable capital. “We?” she asked instead, looking back at him.
He grinned. “Everfree Party. You must have heard of us, I recognized your...signature.” He fumbled with his words, and she wondered about the meaning of his wince, he should just call it what it was: her Creator’s Mark, the claim of ownership. “You were part of Chrysalis forces.”
‘Part of’ was not the correct definition of her involvement with the Changeling Organization, they own her in every definition of the word. They designed, sold, manufactured, and deployed thousands of robots like her every day, but he communicated with a whole set of terms that her programming wasn’t familiar with, and it threw her protocol off with every word he said. For starters, he’s implying that automatons have other designations besides their production number.
“Everfree?” She knew the name, of course, everyone knew it―automaton or not. A soft bunch, rumor has it. They treated their robots like actual living beings, like friends and partners instead of weapons. It was ridiculous and borderline insulting. She certainly wasn’t a real pony.
He nodded. “We’re a bit...different, compared to what you’re used to. I hope that’s not a problem?”
There was a sarcastic remark in her response box waiting to be issued―an idiosyncrasy she’d picked up from her previous owner. Why did he act like she had a choice? Like she had other options if she rejected his offer? He’d reprogrammed her, her scan revealed a whole chunk of missing data in her motherboard, he even removed all of her weapons and most of her combat functions. She was useless now, a glorified paperweight, or a coat hanger if he so chose. If he was a mechanic worth his salt, he should have programmed a function to shut her down if she so much as lifted her horn against him.
“It’s acceptable.”
He beamed, happily ignorant of her inability to reject him even if she wanted to. Then again, he behaved differently from the other organics that bossed her around, and being a coat hanger was probably better than being buried under ice and snow.
“Awesome!”
He turned and nodded towards the pair, a blue unicorn mare grinned back at him and hurried to the other side of the room, while a white stallion watched GLIM closely and the hardness of his expression was something she recognized all too well: distrust.
The mare pushed a cart covered in a white blanket, which she pulled away with an unnecessary flourish and a bow of her head.
“The Great and Powerful Trixie welcomes you to the Everfree Party! And as a show of good fate, she presents you with your new body!”
The blanket fell to reveal a pair of mechanical limbs, chrome color, and polished to a shine, cables running from the inner workings and standing to attention, waiting to be connected. Sunburst gestured to the left flank where a symbol had been painted on the metal, in the same position her previous mark had been. She concluded that it must be his Creator Mark.
“One of the reasons I woke you up was to see if you liked this cutie mark I designed for you,” he said pointing at the painted star. “You’re welcome to change it later of course, or if you would rather we connect you to your body first before you make a decision?”
Again, her protocol tripped and her programming was rushed to find a suitable answer, but there were too many variables and missing information to draw a conclusive result. “Cutie Mark?” She looked at him with wide eyes as she asked.
“We all have one and they are all unique to one another, the automatons of Everfree can change theirs whenever they like, though it’s uncommon they do once a design has been settled.”
She looked at the ‘cutie mark’ closely. It was much different from her previous Creator Mark, the princess crown with bug wings behind it had been replaced by an eight-pointed star with twin tails trailing behind it, reminding her of the paper toys the fillies and colts like to toss into the wind.
“It’s acceptable.” She said with a nod and turned to him. “But why didn’t you put your Creator Mark?”
“It’s not mine to give,” he said with a shrug of his withers. “We don’t claim ownership here, but we do offer partnership.”
He then held out his hoof, his white fetlocks smeared with oil, grime underneath his blunt horseshoes. She stared at it, uncomprehending, and she looked up to meet his gaze to see there was a question there; like he really believed she had a say in the matter.
“Will you be my friend, Starlight?”
“Starlight?”
She looked up at them then, both of them―odd companions who’d made space for themselves in her memory, who’d given her a name and place in their hearts, even though she wasn’t one of their kind. A wandering mare who love stage magic, half-equine and half-machine, and a mechanic with enough affection in his reckless heart to give a second chance to a weapon like herself. They were everything to her meager existence and looking at them, their fragile lives teetering dangerously close to the end and the enemy around the corner, Starlight knew what to do.
She looked at Trixie then. “Take him away.”
The showmare’s frown deepened but didn’t waste time arguing, though Starlight did not doubt that she wanted to. Instead, she nodded and without a word picked up Sunburst in her magic and pulled him to her side. “What―Trixie, what are you doing―” he yelped when his hooves left the ground, dangling uselessly in the air, but didn’t offer any protests, only turned to face her until he met her eyes. The confusion was evident in the furrow of his brows and Starlight wondered if he would ever forgive her for what she’s about to do.
“Starlight? What’s going on?”
“The wall is thick, but not impenetrable. A good explosion should make a hole big enough for an escape.”
He rolled his eyes at that. “I know that but we don’t have any explosives―” he stopped himself and the confusion melt away to understanding.
And then to horror. “No―”
Trixie’s magic held him in place as he thrashed, kicking and bucking for all he was worth, but he had never been physically strong and Trixie’s magic held him fast. “You can’t―you said you wouldn’t go back to being a weapon. You promised―”
“I’m not.”
She smiled―made her artificial muscles obey the memory of his patient tutoring, the fond roll of his eyes as he explained the practice of showing humor and contentment among ponies, the curve and quirk of a mouth that could mean so many different things. And she paid attention even when he wasn’t actively teaching her―fond smiles and excited ones reserved for when he found a new piece of machinery to take apart; patient smiles and other ones he reserved only for her. She cataloged them all and, aside from the color of his eyes, it was the one prominent memory she had of him, stored away where violence and battle had taken up so much space in her mind.
The breath went out of him. “You-you’re smiling.”
She shrugged, another gesture she picked up, but mostly from Trixie, who did an excessive amount of it in defiance to her gossipmongering and general meddling nature. “I’m not a weapon,” she said. “Not anymore.”
He shook his head, ready to protest, but she held out a hoof to silence him.
“This wasn’t an action programmed into me,” she said, hoping he would understand. “It’s a choice. You always told me to make my own decisions, that’s the protocol you gave me to follow.”
She changes the curve of her smile, turning it into a smirk, at least by his definition. The textbook one had been ‘the kind of smile that follows a wry comment, suggests self-satisfaction or smugness.’ She didn’t feel particularly satisfied at the moment but in another context, she felt she would have been smug at her own reasoning. It went to show how much she learned from him.
Sounds of approaching Droids broked the silence that had settled between them, and Starlight nodded at Trixie, a silent plea, but despite her reassurances, Sunburst still called after her to stop, come back don’t leave me don’t you dare leave me don’t you dare―
His voice grew faint as she put distance between them. She was a Galloper after all, and the speed of her model had yet to be outmatched, but there was a function shared by all models created by the Changeling Organization that made her especially dangerous. Her inner mechanisms were highly flammable―they were designed that way to ensure that company secrets were destroyed with their robots, so enemies couldn’t gather their parts or their memory discs. There’d be no putting her back together after this, Starlight knew―knew it like the truth embedded into her circuitry. It was designed specifically to destroy the part of her that made her operational, the part that made her who she was. If robots had a soul, or whatever the equivalent was, triggering the explosion would eradicate it.
Her mind went to the cutie mark she’d engraved in the metal plate of her flank, another secret, but this one all of her own. On the other side of the plate and underneath her mark, the one she’d carved herself when no one was watching. His cutie mark, like a Creator’s signature, but different. She was his, but by her own decision. She never got the chance to show him.
The steady thrum of the approaching mechs shuddered through her, a steady drum drum drum of Droids against the concrete floor, but she was hardly listening for it. As her programming went over the protocols, she played all the images and sound bytes she had of Sunburst―the concentrated wrinkle of his brows as he worked on a project, his laughter playing loudly in her ears, and his surprised shrieks when she hoisted him over her back and ran across the rooftops of the city. She let herself get lost in memories of him to drown out the warning chimes blaring through her system as her core overheated.
The blast would not only break the concrete wall but also take out several Droids with her, triggering a chain reaction of explosives as their flammable insides made contact with her flame. The blast would do it―it would have to, they had no other escape. Trixie would take him to safety, she knew, but this―this was her job. Starlight’s job, not GLIM’s. She left the title behind, and she was taking the new one with her to whatever afterlife awaited for her kind.
I’m sorry, Sunburst.
The heat melted away the last of her defenses and all she could see was light. Light, blinding, burning, searing, melting, scorching light. And in her mind, it tore apart the red of his hair and the endless blue of his grinning eyes.
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This gives me Battle Angel vibes and I love it!
Also, I’d love to read more about this, it just sounds so interesting
10251217
Battle Angel is awesome, I'm glad more people are into it.
I was thinking about writing a second part to this story if I saw an interest in it.
That was awesome! Very creative entry.