10. A Ghost in the Machine
"It's clearly not thinking rationally... It's not using its head. It's using its heart."
Fluttershy dropped another pair of flowers into her basket, and ran her tongue along her lips to savor the lingering taste of their stems. "How many more do you think we should pick, Angel?" she asked.
When she heard no reply, she frowned. "Angel?" She glanced about, but Angel had vanished within the carpet of white petals. "Angel, sweetheart?"
She heard a cough, and felt a thump on the back of her head. Craning her neck around, she saw Angel perched on her back – where, she now recalled, she'd left him. He frowned, and raised an eyebrow at her.
Fluttershy smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, sweetie. I guess I'm just a little anxious right now. Who knows when we'll hear from Twilight and Snake again?" She cast a wary glance toward the treeline, and shuddered. "Being this close to the Everfree Forest isn't helping. But this is a wonderful place to pick bouquets."
The meadow was a vast expanse of white flowers, dotted with a pair of trees, located outside of Ponyville and bordering the Everfree Forest from the southwest. It was well off the beaten path, and nopony else seemed to know about it, which suited Fluttershy fine. The meadow was a sanctuary for her, a retreat from the stressful possibility of having to meet and interact with ponies she hardly knew. Her friendship with Twilight had opened her up to the world considerably, and she found herself visiting the meadow less and less as time went on, but there was still the rare occasion when she truly needed to get away.
This is one of those days.
Rainbow Dash missing, Spike in a coma, Snake and Twilight off on an adventure, leaving the rest of them behind, charging them with the defense of Ponyville – it was too much to deal with all at once. Hours of going door-to-door, collecting donations of medical supplies and non-perishable food; hours of working with the Apples to clear out their cellar for use as an emergency shelter; hours of helping to prepare wagons and find ponies to pull them in the event of a mass evacuation, and all while gnawed at by the same anxieties that plagued her daily, only magnified a hundredfold by the accumulated stress of the last two days...
Her body and mind both needed a rest. She needed a moment to herself, to catch her breath, to regroup.
Well, myself and Angel. The meadow, isolated and quiet, made for a perfect spot to center herself. And, while she was at it, it wouldn't hurt to put together a token of affection for little Spike. That way, she could at least pretend that she was still being useful and productive.
Fluttershy looked into the basket, and counted the flowers she'd picked. "One, two... seven... fourteen... how large a bouquet do you think we should make for Spike?"
Angel rolled his eyes.
Fluttershy sighed. "I know that he'd appreciate gemstones more, Angel, but I don't have any. And Spike's a good little dragon; he knows that it's the thought that counts."
Angel shrugged in response to her question. He shrugged in response to most things she asked of him, come to think of it. She enjoyed his company, but his apathy exasperated her. Fluttershy chose not to let it show. "Seven. Seven's a good number; you are absolutely right." She kissed Angel on the top of the head.
A noise from the treeline caught Fluttershy's attention, freezing her just as her teeth closed around another stem. The noise was heavy, thudding, like the footsteps of a great beast. Fear bade her to run; curiosity kept her rooted to the spot she was in. The Everfree was intimidating, but there was no better place to encounter some new, strange form of life.
A new animal friend might be just what I need. The thought cheered her a bit.
It didn't last.
"JACK...!"
The voice crackled and fizzled like soda. A shape emerged from the Everfree's curtain of shadow – alien, towering high upon slender, inequine legs. To anypony else, its appearance and sickly voice together might have been disarming. Fluttershy knew better.
Forgetting the bouquet, Fluttershy caught Angel in her jaws by the scruff of his neck, and bolted as fast as her wings would carry her to the bough of a nearby tree. She burrowed into the leaves, hoping they would obscure her from sight, not terribly optimistic about her chances. She ought to continue flying back to town, she knew, but she doubted she could outrun the monster, especially if it was able to match Rainbow Dash for agility. All she could do was tuck Angel away in her mane and pray that the beast which had nearly killed her friends hadn't seen her.
XMG IRVING-00 looked battered and unsteady on its feet. Gashes, which had failed to close and heal properly, covered its long, shapely black legs. It kept its weight off of its right leg, which was a bloody ruin beneath the thigh. Spike had hobbled the machine by tearing the flesh from its calf, and Snake and Twilight had finished the job, blowing it apart with high-powered bullets. All that remained of its calf were shredded rags of black skin hanging loosely over a knot of muscle and blood vessels and bone. Its left leg was intact, but covered in cuts, and its ankle seemed set awkwardly, as if it had been dislocated at some point during its trek through the woods. Its head was scratched and dented; its sensor dome still glowed bright red, but parts of its metal casing had cracked, or been blown away. Arcs of lightning danced across exposed wiring, ringed by carbon scores on the armor.
It was not so fearsome as before, as it staggered into the meadow, but Fluttershy was frightened nevertheless.
"JACK... JACK... YOU'RE A S-S-S-SOLDIER..." Its legs buckled beneath it, and it toppled into the flowers, tossing a flurry of white petals into the air. "GO HOME... I'M NOT..." IRVING struggled to raise itself upon its legs, but the effort failed when it put too much weight on its shredded mess of a right leg. It yelped, lost its footing, and it fell back into the flowers.
"WARNING. DAMAGE CRITICAL. PERFORMING SELF-DIAGNOSTIC." Its voice became monotone and robotic, losing the desperate emotion of before. "LACTIC ACID BUILD-UP AT CRITICAL LEVELS. VENTING SYSTEM OFFLINE. MOTOR FUNCTIONS IMPAIRED. DEFENSE SYSTEMS OFFLINE. FLAME THROWER FUEL TANKS #1 AND #2 EJECTED. CLOSE-QUARTERS COMBAT IMPOSSIBLE DUE TO LOSS OF MOBILITY. FINAL ASSESSMENT: DAMAGE CATASTROPHIC. UNIT BEYOND SALVAGE. JACK..."
The emotion returned when it said that name – Jack. It sounded plaintive, pained, despairing. As though it felt those emotions. As though it were something besides a walking engine of death.
"WHY'D YOU COME BACK? KILL ME. KILL ME NOW. JACK..."
The cold terror gripping Fluttershy's heart thawed at the sound of IRVING's begging. She still remembered the fire that burned through the castle courtyard, the way it so quickly brought her friends to ruin. A human facsimile of a dragon... but a wounded dragon. Maybe even a dying dragon.
Fluttershy – cautiously, and with Angel expressing his disapproval via repeated stomps to the back of her head – edged her way out of the tree, and glided into the meadow, setting down some feet away from the wounded machine. The remnant of its calf looked worse up close. It was surely infected, oozing some filthy mixture of yellow and red and white fluid from between cracks in an enormous scab that had formed inside the wound.
"You poor dear," she murmured softly to herself, though she – element of kindness notwithstanding – was hard-pressed to believe the sentiment.
IRVING's reaction was immediate. "THREAT DETECTED. RE-ENGAGING W-W-WATCHDOG MODE." Fluttershy braced herself as it struggled to raise itself to its feet, but the attempt was half-hearted, and it sagged back into the flowers. "MOBILITY IMPAIRED. BEYOND SALVAGE. KILL ME NOW."
The way it repeated that phrase – it was different from the way it spoke before. Before, it had wailed the plea to itself, almost like a prayer for deliverance. But now, it spoke directly to Fluttershy, begging her to put it out of its misery.
"I-I'd never!" Fluttershy stammered.
"WHY?"
The question knocked Fluttershy even further off kilter. "Because what could that possibly solve?" she blurted.
It was the best answer she could muster, and it sounded lame, even to her, but IRVING deemed it worthy of response. "DAMAGE TO MOBILE PLATFORM IRREPARABLE. PERMANENT SHUT-DOWN INEVITABLE." It paused. "NOT FAST ENOUGH. KILL ME."
A timberwolf lays in the grass, mortally wounded and whimpering. Snake presses a gun to its head. He whispers a farewell and pulls the trigger. The timberwolf dies, and something inside Fluttershy dies with it.
There was nothing to gain in putting down a wounded creature. The mere fact that IRVING had suggested it made her a little indignant. "Well," she said primly, "Even if I wanted to, I can't do anything to hurt you. So I can't kill you. So I won't kill you."
IRVING nickered and turned its head away from Fluttershy. "ANALYSIS COMPLETE. THREAT LEVEL: NONEXISTENT."
"And proud of it." She edged closer, to examine IRVING in greater detail. The claws on its toes were worn and blunted, ground almost completely flat. IRVING had fallen into a sheer ravine. How else would it get back out than by climbing? And it must have been agony to make that ascent with its legs as torn up as they were; she couldn't even begin to imagine. This thing, this IRVING, was single-minded and tenacious; its threshold for pain was apparently almost limitless, and it had the strength and fortitude of a beast. It was a thinking, autonomous, killing machine.
And it was begging Fluttershy – helpless little Fluttershy, who'd stared catatonic at it while it tossed Applejack effortlessly and beat Twilight into submission – to kill it.
The urge to help, to comfort, stirred deep inside her. "You want to die," she said to IRVING. "I can't give you that; I'm sorry. But maybe I can do something else for you. Something to take the pain away." She turned to Angel. "Sweetheart, Mommy needs to run home and pick up some things. As long as I'm going back, why don't I drop you off?"
Angel eyed Fluttershy skeptically, glanced at IRVING, and chattered something frantic.
Fluttershy smiled gently. "You're so sweet to worry. But it's alright, really." She looked over her shoulder at IRVING. "I can take care of myself. And besides, it wouldn't hurt me. Would you?"
"MOBILITY IMPAIRED. DEFENSE MEASURES OFFLINE. PLATFORM BEYOND REPAIR."
"You see?" said Fluttershy. "It couldn't hurt a fly."
But as she set Angel in the basket and took to the air – promising IRVING one last time that she would return – Fluttershy couldn't help wondering whether, if it could hurt her, it wouldn't.
Luna's first sight was the black blanket of space, studded with twinkling diamonds set in patterns she knew intimately. Some she'd sewn into the night sky herself. Most, though, predated her – the work of some cosmic ancient, far older than her. Older, maybe than the one she'd come to see. She wasn't sure whether the backdrop was something Discord had created for his own pleasure, whether her mind was projecting a familiar sight onto the void, or whether all creatures who existed in this state faced the night sky by default. Funny that she didn't remember it from her own imprisonment.
She felt his presence – eyes boring into the back of her head. It made her anxious. And queasy. Oddly, inexplicably queasy.
"Discord!" she called into the black. "Present yourself! We must have words."
"Oh, do we indeed?" The voice reverberated around her. Space had decent acoustics. "Somepony's awfully presumptuous. Maybe you need to talk. I know that I don't. Still..."
Something slithered across her shoulders, draped itself over her back. She shuddered at the touch of scale and fur, at the feel of his lion's claw daintily stroking her wing.
"It isn't as if I'm in the habit of rejecting house-guests." Discord slid off of Luna's back, and appeared in front of her, arms linked behind his back. "Hello, my dear Princess Luna. It's so thoughtful of you to join me. What brings you to my neck of oblivion, hmm? Come to compare notes on being trapped in a rock by your big sis?"
Luna bristled. Discord's voice was poison that she refused to drink down. "I did not come here to banter, Discord. I would speak with you of matters of grave—"
"Business, not pleasure, then," Discord sighed. "It's not a plea bargain, is it?" He snorted. "I like you, Luna, always have. But I'd just as soon swallow some sanctimonious friendship sermon from that Sparkle girl as I would treat with you." He waved his hand at her, shooing her away. "Tell Celly to speak to me herself when she decides she wants to get serious."
"Don't think to insult me; I'm no errand foal," Luna retorted. "And make no mistake, even if it were in my power to do so, I've no intention of lifting what the Elements have foisted upon you. "
"So what, then, are you doing here?" Discord lolled in the air, leaning backward as though he were resting in a hammock. He snapped his fingers, and a glass, thick with something brown and viscous and smelling faintly of chocolate, appeared in his hands. He sipped thoughtfully from it.
Luna clenched her jaw. "Tell me what you know of humanity."
"Humanity?" Discord sat up in his imaginary hammock and blinked. "But why would you ever need to—" His eyes widened, and he smiled, tossing his glass into the ether behind him. "Well, kiss my grits. It actually happened. Were I a praying beast, I'd have prayed my widdle heart out to see the day when jack-booted human thugs touched down in this saccharine den of banality." He laughed. "Oh, to be out there..."
"Discord!" snapped Luna. Her horn flashed.
Discord's laughter trailed off. He wiped a tear from his eye, flinging it in Luna's direction. "Of course, you wouldn't find this as funny as I do." He smirked. "But what, exactly, could you stand to gain from talking to me? What do I know that you don't? I may be cunning and rakishly handsome, but I'm not a walking encyclopedia of esoterica, you know."
"I know that you are old – older than my sister and I, by far. With such age comes knowledge." She scowled, and added "If not always wisdom."
Discord chuckled. "I do look good for my age, though, don't I?"
"And neither my sister, nor I, are old enough to recall the last encounter between humans and ponies." Luna narrowed her eyes at Discord. "You, on the other hoof..."
"Hmm." Discord smiled slyly. "Fair assumption to make." He snapped his fingers, vanished, reappeared beside Luna, his arm around her shoulders. "You're correct. I did spend some time around humans, way back in the day. Sometime before that high-horsed dullard of an 'emperor' decided to manifest his destiny all over their world."
Luna shuddered with disgust at Discord's contact with her; she could feel his breath against her coat as he spoke. In a non-corporeal state, outside the bounds of physical space, that should not have been possible. Perhaps Discord had more control over the environment than she'd assumed.
"Chaos is your imperative," she said. "Yet you sound as though you judge another for sewing it. An uncharacteristic act of hypocrisy, no?"
"You wound me, mon capitan," said Discord, pressing his lion's paw to his chest in mock distress. "I'm not a fan of war – just the afterglow. The fright, the confusion, the chaos that conflict leaves in its wake. It's like fine wine." He smirked. "Warmongering is in your blood, not mine."
A chill ran through Luna's body. "The one you speak of constructed the Threshold of the Moon for his own use. Yet you claim to have traveled to the human world before he built it."
"I'm insulted – do you think so little of me?" He clicked his tongue. "Luckily, I'm the forgiving sort – no imprisonment in a rock for you." Discord uncoiled himself from Luna's body and reclined again. From his relaxed pose and serene expression, he could have been floating in a pond on a warm summer's day.
"You wouldn't know it, looking at me now, but there was a time when I wouldn't have needed to build some magical contraption to traverse the waters between realities. Not so much, nowadays, for obvious reasons. But even if I were out there, I doubt I'd be able to swim the cosmic ocean as I once did." Discord stuck his tongue out and shuddered. "Corporeality is such a constraining thing."
"A luminous being such as yourself should not be bound by corporeality," said Luna. "If you speak the truth, that is."
Discord's lips twitched into an ever-so-slight frown. "It's not as though I didn't try to leave, you know. But the last time I broke free from my imprisonment, I found that the pool was closed to me." He cupped his chin in his talon. "Best I can figure, my first round against the Elements resulted in my permanent binding to this world. Think of it as a sort of cosmic spanking – my punishment for throwing the natural order of things too far out of whack."
He doesn't like being insulted. Having been twice emasculated by beings he considered inferior to himself, Discord might overreach – say too much in an attempt to assert his superiority. A wounded sense of pride was one hell of a raw nerve. "Odd that you are still so smug," she said. "Being twice bested by the Elements of Harmony ought to remind you that your place in the cosmos isn't quite so high as you think."
Discord's frown grew more pronounced. "You're awfully self-assured for somepony who was in the same boat as me. Wielding the Elements one time doesn't give you bragging rights, Lulu. You couldn't take me on without using them; your sister couldn't take me on." He jabbed a finger at her, as though it were a blade he meant to thrust through her heart. "Maybe you ought to remember your place."
Luna bristled from Discord's riposte. "My sister and I—"
"Are unto your subjects as I am unto you," Discord snapped. "The Elements of Harmony are manifestations of the very forces which shaped our cosmic order. Loyalty, kindness, honesty and magic – even laughter and generosity – life had no name for these concepts in the beginning, yet even then, they shaped the way life would evolve upon this world." He bolted from his invisible hammock, linked his arms behind his back, and towered at full height over Luna.
"For every action, there must be an equal, or opposite, reaction. If the cosmic forces which govern Equestria must manifest themselves corporeally, then their opposite must manifest as well." His tone was tense, his words clipped. "Six Elements, six bearers. Bring them together, and miraculous things happen. But there's just one of me, Luna. And to me, the miraculous is passe." He smirked, but behind the expression was nothing but loathing. "So, yes, I'm capable of much, much more than you and Celestia. I'll thank you to keep that in mind while you gloat."
His story certainly fit with the model of physics Equestria's best and brightest had been developing for centuries. Discord was arrogant and egotistical, but she had to admit (begrudgingly) that his power far exceeded hers, and his precise nature had long eluded her sister and herself. If it was a lie, then it was a well-constructed lie, at least.
"Not capable of subjugating the humans, it seems," she said slyly. "You claim to have interacted with them. Did you try, and fail, to grind them beneath your heel, as you tried and failed with Equestria?"
Discord's jaw worked silently. There was a slight widening of his eyes, and his smirk morphed into a broad, ugly smile. He leaned backward, easing himself into a comfortable, sitting position. "Methinks you're enjoying this – a position of dominance must be a rare thing for you. I think it's making you overconfident. You're not in a position of strength right now; your display of smugness is transparent. If you had the faintest idea of how to fend off a human invasion, you and I wouldn't be speaking. Stop me if I'm wrong"
Luna felt her surge of confidence wane. She flushed, and broke eye contact with Discord.
"Hmm," he said in a tone of mild delight. "That's what I thought. You're desperate. You're desperate because you're terrified. And you're right to be."
Luna swallowed hard and fought to steady herself. Discord had exposed a vulnerable spot. She refused to let him prod it. "Will you, or will you not, tell me what you know?"
"I certainly will," said Discord. "But only because I find your terror delectable."
Before she could offer a rejoinder, Discord snapped his fingers again. Luna suddenly felt grass, cool and dewy, beneath her hooves. Around her, a carpet of green stretched infinitely in all directions. In front of her, Discord stood, looking pleased with himself. He snapped his fingers again, and between he and her, two shapes materialized – creatures, alien and familiar all at once. From the waist up, they might have been minotaurs, but for their heads – round, with unkempt black hair hanging in thick curls past their necks. They were tall – rivaling her sister in height – with rippling muscles bulging beneath roughspun, scratchy-looking clothing, covering skin sun-baked to a rich shade of brown.
These were humans. Living humans, their features untwisted and unmutilated, not like the corpse she found in the castle courtyard, nor the others she found while exploring the rest of the rubble. Luna's sensibilities recoiled; she found them strange and grotesque. Yet there was some inexplicable allure to them that compelled her to keep looking...
"The first thing you should know is that human beings are special. And I don't toss that word around lightly." Discord stepped around the two humans to stand beside Luna, watching them with interest all the while. "To see a people so brilliant, so capable, so driven to plumb the mysteries of the universe – if they ever put their heads together, they could do wonders, Luna. Miracles to rival the Elements, even creation itself!"
A tree sprouted in front of Luna; she, startled, scampered backward quickly. Discord smirked at the sight; she blushed and recovered her poise. The humans watched as the tree rose, until it towered over both of them. On a low-hanging branch, a plump apple grew, and one human, smiling, reached for it.
The other, scowling, caught him by the wrist. In his other hand, a knife that hadn't been there before gleamed. The human with the knife swung it across the other's throat, and a gout of blood sprayed onto the bark of the tree.
Luna hissed reflexively, her heart seizing.
"But – and here's the funny part," Discord continued. "They squander their gifts on petty little turf wars and philosophical pissing contests. Wars over this god or that, over who has the right to some virgin bride's maidenhood, over whether they'll have ham or mutton for dinner. No matter is too trivial, no prize too small."
The human with the severed throat slumped over, dead. His murderer reached for the low-hanging apple, pulled it from the tree, and sank his teeth into it.
"And all their drive to understand and create has ever gotten them are new and exciting ways to destroy one another. Even in my experience, that's not something you see every day." With a snap of his fingers, the grisly scene vanished and the field receded. The field of stars rematerialized around them. Luna belatedly realized she was sweating.
"Then again," said Discord with a shrug, "it's been a while since I popped in on them. Maybe things have gotten better since I left. There was this one fellow, Hammurabi..." He mulled the thought for a moment, before waving his paw with a dismissive laugh. "Bah. I doubt it. That's just their nature."
"What more can you tell me?" Luna asked, no trace of emotion in her voice. She almost hoped he had nothing more to say.
"About humans? There's not much else to tell." With a snap of his fingers, Discord vanished, and reappeared in front of Luna with his arms crossed. "Humans reap chaos just fine without me. The truth is, I got bored, and a little homesick. So I came on home, and made pals with a bright young alicorn with a big future ahead of him. The rest, I'm sure you know."
Discord leaned forward, until he was at eye level with Luna. "But the hows and whys of humanity are far less pertinent than the fact that they are here, even as we speak. And in that regard, Lulu, you're pretty late on the uptake – by about a year."
Luna recoiled. "What are you saying?"
"That they've been here for some time, right under your adorable little nose." He flicked her on the end of her muzzle, flashed again, appeared in front of her, upside down. "That vacation Celestia sent you on really dulled your wits, you know that? But then, what's her excuse?"
Luna swatted at Discord, but he vanished in a puff of smoke again, and this time, didn't reappear. "Explain yourself!" she shouted into the emptiness, a bit of iron creeping back into her voice. "How did you know that humanity was already here?"
"Because I met one of them," his taunting voice echoed.
"When?!"
"Last year. When those dishy fillies of yours were running about, trying to put right what I'd set so beautifully wrong." The stars of the void rearranged themselves, forming a new pattern in the sky – the shape of a draconequus's head. Its mouth grinned, smarmy, as it spoke with Discord's voice. "A lost little tadpole, all alone, in a big, unfamiliar pond. Didn't seem to bother it, though. In fact, we had a nice talk, as I recall."
The stars in the constellation that was Discord burst all at once, their dying lights forcing Luna to shield her eyes. When she found that she could open them again, her first sight was a pair of yellow eyes. Nose-to-nose with her archenemy, Luna skittered backward; Discord watched, and chuckled "Speak plainly, demon," she said, trying to sound firm in order to save face. "Tell me everything that you know!"
He flashed away, reappeared standing beside her, at his full height. "I couldn't tell you what its business was – not specifically, anyway. Even if I did know, I'm not exactly inclined to share it with you. I did ask it, though. It said he was there to 'observe' – learn what it could about Equestria before it went home. It didn't say what it was going to do with that knowledge." Discord shrugged. "In any event, I decided to leave it to its devices."
"You did nothing to harm... 'it'?" Why "it"? Why not "him" or "her"?
"I had no reason to stop it." Discord was smiling again. "It had piqued my curiosity. I wanted to see what it would do. A rogue element is like candy to a connoisseur of chaos like myself. And I had a hunch. Maybe it wasn't the only human to cross over. Maybe, if I was very lucky, it'd invite friends. And after eons of separation from humankind, I wanted to see what they could do. And, well..." He laughed. "I was right, wasn't I? You thought the nightmare was over when the Elements of Harmony chained me up again. But it turns out I knew something that you didn't." His smile twisted into a frown. "Still feeling smug, Princess?"
Starry blue light burst from Luna's horn and barreled into Discord's chest. The blast sent him flying into the distance; there was a flash, and he reappeared in front of Luna, no worse for wear.
"Tut tut. That was impolite. And I've been such a good host to you so far." Discord wagged his finger at her. "Naughty."
Luna's chest heaved with her every inhalation; she could no longer disguise her fear. "I have no reason to believe that what you say is truth." She didn't believe her own words, and didn't expect him to either. "You are a liar by nature. A twisted mockery of creation who knows nothing but deceit."
"Guilty, guilty, and guilty," laughed Discord. "And yet, if you're so sure I'm lying, why do you look like you're about to faint?" He vanished and reappeared at her side, leaned in close to whisper in her ear. "Is this why big sis sent you, instead of plucking up her courage and facing me herself? Didn't want me to see her shaking in those little gold booties?"
Luna curled her lips into her mouth and looked away. "Oh..." purred Discord. "She doesn't know that you're here, does she? Isn't that interesting. Look at you, Luna, facing down big bad Discord all by your lonesome. Looks like somepony finally got on her big girl panties." He tilted his head toward her rear and frowned. "Figuratively speaking, anyway."
Luna blushed and snapped her tail flat against her body. "I'll take my leave now," she said, indignant. "We shall not speak again."
"Don't get my hopes up," said Discord flatly. "Let me toss you one last freebee, though." His body faded out of sight, but his voice remained. "Humans may be primitive, paranoid, and petty, but they still sent Grandpappy Alicorn home with his tail between his legs." His voice became silky, almost seductive. "That was millenia ago, Luna. I shudder to think of what they can do now. Let me know how it goes."
Luna felt a mighty shove against her flank, and suddenly, she was tumbling. The stars around her whirled, blurred together, coalesced, turning the empty void of space into a vision of light that burned her eyes and forced her to squeeze them shut. And then something yanked her by the neck, pulled her away. She opened her eyes to see the wall of light in front of her grow distant, and become a pinprick against the sea of black.
And then that single point of light shifted color, from white to red. It burst rapidly outward, like a star going nova, until it filled Luna's sight. She turned away, shielded her eyes, and saw behind her the detritus of a world long dead – the shattered earth, cracked and broken, the bleached bones of ponies whose flesh had rotted away with the ages The air was rank with the stench of sulfur and putrid meat. A hot wind blew; gusts lashed against her body and carved jagged lines into an expanse of sand. Amid the sand were broken, crumbling buildings, the remnants of a deserted village. Luna's eyes were drawn to a dead, withered tree, in the center of a mass of rusted war machines and bleached bones.
Ponyville. This is Ponyville.
Luna raised her head, and glimpsed a distant mountain, where crumbling spires jutted toward the yellow-tinted sky. Perched upon the mountaintop, like a tarnished crown on the skull of a dead monarch, was the wreck of a city which had once been Canterlot.
The ruined husk of Equestria spread out before Luna. Behind her, the red sun burned over what had once been paradise.
And even that faded to black, and the vision of Equestria's picked-over carcass was no more.
Luna awoke to the scent of lavender and mint, to the harmonious symphony of birdsong and the distant laughter of children at play. She opened her eyes, and saw Discord, frozen in horror, atop his place of dubious honor. The sky above was a mural of pink and blue; the garden was draped in shadow as Celestia's sun descended beneath the horizon.
That took longer than I thought it would.
The moon needed raising. Appearances needed keeping. If Celestia was so insistent upon keeping matters on the down-low, Luna couldn't chance somepony nosing around after her, asking questions.
Best clear my schedule after that.
Discord's oily voice still purred in her ear. "Just imagine what they're capable of now." The scene of horror replayed in her mind's eye – Discord's doing, no doubt, a last-ditch attempt to bring her to despair. But where he meant to cow her, he'd only strengthened her resolve.
Swaths of orange had just begun to creep across the afternoon sky, visible through the open window of Spike's hospital room. Applejack, her hide still raw beneath her bandages, was at his bedside when Fluttershy crept inside. Applejack forced a smile of greeting, and held a hoof to her mouth, shushing softly. Fluttershy didn't know why she bothered. He wasn't napping; he was in a coma.
Her rudeness surprised even her, and she felt a private sense of shame at the unvoiced thought.
Fluttershy's eyes widened when she saw the tube snaking into Spike's mouth. She knew it was there, of course, had seen it during her previous visit, but the shock of it never wore off.
Seeing her discomfort, Applejack tried to reassure her. "I know it ain't pretty to look at, but it's for the best. You know how ornery Spike gets with an empty belly." On cue, a slurry of dull yellow gunk shlorped through the tube and down his throat. Fluttershy fought back the urge to retch.
Applejack laughed, but it was a hollow sound. "Mus' be suppertime."
Swallowing the traces of lunch that had risen from her throat, Fluttershy said "You should get looked at again, as long as you're here."
"Nah. Don't much care for hospitals." Applejack shifted more of her weight onto her unhurt leg, which Fluttershy noted was trembling from the strain. "What brings y'all back here?"
What was she doing there? She had somewhere else to be, she recalled – an animal friend who needed her help – but somehow, it seemed a low priority. She felt the instinct to help, heard the call to action, but the sound was dull, like a foghorn on a distant shore.
She'd left the meadow with every intention of returning. But the farther she flew, the less she understood what she was doing. By the time she arrived at her home, she could think of no reason to go back to the meadow.
Well, since when do you need a reason to help somepony? she asked herself. She never needed one before. Kindness was a moral imperative, after all. And yet, that didn't seem justification enough. A friend in need was one thing, but the suffering of the beast that nearly killed Spike meant nothing to her.
Oh, Spike.
The thing that had put him in that state was waiting for her to return, to slap bandages on its torn flesh and ease its passing to... to wherever machine monsters went when they passed. With no warmth, no trace of compassion, it took an order to kill her friends and very nearly carried it out. And now it was dying, and she was going out of her way to give it aid and comfort. What was the point?
There was a time she might have said that nopony needed a reason to show kindness to another. Had Discord himself walked through her door with a hangnail, she'd have given him a pillow and a hard candy while she clipped it. But when she thought of IRVING, laying in the meadow in agony, she felt nothing. No pity for a wounded creature, not even anger for the thing which had nearly killed Spike – no room even for the fear which had paralyzed her. She thought about Snake, and wondered what he felt when he looked at an enemy, if it was hate that drove him to kill... or if it was that selfsame sense of detachment.
It frightened her. She saw that as a good sign; if she could be scared by her emotional numbness, it meant she wasn't too far gone.
"He's the enemy," Snake had said of the soldier in the forest, the one mobbed by hungry timberwolves. "On the battlefield, one doesn't typically go out of his way to save his enemy." She hadn't agreed, and she stood by her decision to intervene... but that was before the castle, before the fight in the courtyard. This wasn't an adventure to talk down a snoring dragon, or a filly slumber party gone wrong. This was war.
There's no room for kindness in war, she reflected. Maybe, just maybe, the pragmatism of a career soldier was what she needed.
The timberwolf dies, and something inside Fluttershy dies with it.
Or maybe that just made her compassion all the more valuable.
Fluttershy liked Snake. He was strong, and brave, and strangely alluring. But she didn't want to become him. If surviving the battles to come meant sacrificing who she was, then she'd rather die. She still felt nothing when she thought of IRVING, but the thought of doing nothing to help its passing... that felt wrong.
Is that why? she thought. Not because I want to, but because I'm expected to? Because I expect it of myself. What did that say about her? What kind of justification was that?
"Fluttershy?" Applejack waggled a hoof in front of her face. She blinked, shook her head, and looked over to see her friend's expression of confusion and concern. "You hear me?"
"Sorry." She forced a smile. "Yes, of course I heard."
The kind that's better than none at all. And that would have to do for now.
"I just needed to see him again." She quickly crossed to Spike's bedside, leaned toward his face, and pecked him on the cheek with a whisper of thanks. Turning back to Applejack, she said "I have somewhere I need to be."
Applejack wore a quizzical expression, but didn't question her further. With a dip of her head and a nervous smile, she bid farewell to Fluttershy.
Fluttershy still felt hollow, even as she took wing and banked toward her home once again. But she took comfort in the conviction that, whatever her feelings on the matter, she was doing the right thing.
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Awesome chapter!!
4640144 Having never spoken to the dead, I wouldn't know one way or the other.
It's a line from Metal Gear Solid 3. The Sorrow says it.
Man is this going to just keep getting worse? Fluttershy's innocence is dead, Rainbow may be dead, Twi has given up on friendship... and Discord has told Luna just enough to assume humans are pure evil......
4640224 Done and done. Thank you.
Damn, looks like Equestria isn't quite fucking invincible
Damn if Discord isn't dastardly and devious
4641747
Dramatic draquonequus is dramatic.
The only problem that I have with this, is that there's no more goodness to read! Curse you, real life and obligations! Curse you, dearth of further chapters. CURSE YOUUUUUUU!
Thank you for another delivery. I'll be gladly waiting to see more, especially what happens with Snake and Twi.
4657157 Or, as I like to call it, The Adventures of Purple Smart and Tightpants.
4658796
Or if you use Twi's Foxhound designation: Horn Horse.
4689587 Purple Smart would be her Dead Cell code name, I think.
4640930 I just saw this comment and berated myself for not seeing it before. Thank you for making me chuckle.
4640930 Nah, Equestria is just getting in touch with its inner child. RRAHAHAHA!
Just completed my third reading of this.
Will Luna somehow be joining the group perhaps intercepting Twilight and Snake? Will Fluttershy get some encouragement to follow her conviction from a keeper of the the Battlefield's pain? What is with the gilded horn? Who is Celestia's agent?
I just can't wait to see what is in store in this great story.
4975633 To answer your questions:
1. Luna will become the team's official score-keeper, because despite her near godlike powers, she's good at very little, and is always picked last at recess for soccer.
2. Fluttershy turns to drugs to self-medicate, but due to being Fluttershy, she just chews expired chewing gum and thinks that it's a drug.
3. The gilded horn is actually part of a viral marketing strategy. Zecora is planning to open a fast-food chain which serves pony to ponies. But not in cupcake form; she finds that vile.
4. And Celestia's agent is Ocelot, because there is nobody he wasn't double-agenting for.
Thank you for the compliment and the encouragement! I promise that I've been working on the next chapter; I've just been kind of ill lately, so I haven't had quite the time or energy to devote to it as I'd like. But you'll probably get it before either season five or MGSV come out!
4991164 This was funny as a reply. Viral marketing reminds me of the pregame infomercials of MG4, but which faction gets the horn. I don't see Fluttershy doing drugs... unless Angle is the supplier.
Looking forward to your next chapter.
Reading the dying Irving scene with the piano Snake Eater theme (the song that plays during the Boss flashbacks in Peace Walker) playing adds feels. Also, I see what you were doing with a field of white flowers and Irving dying. I fully expect it to turn red.
this was an absolutely spectacular read and the irving scene was actually kinda emotional. the only problem I have is that there isn't more to read at the moment
4991164 This comment is funny every time I read it! I wonder, though, now that Season 5 has been set for Spring 2015, if the next chapter is truly going to beat its release.
Holy shit this is epic! Going into this I assumed it would be just another half-assed crossover but I decided to take a chance anyway. I'm glad I did because you sir have blown me away with your story. Not only did you stay true to the source you actually managed to come up with a deep and interesting plot. If you need an editor/pre-reader feel free to PM me, I would be honored to help. I'm extremely familiar with the series, having beaten every game, and with scifi in general.
Oh, additionally the IRVING was referring to Snake as "Jack" during the fight and I was wondering who the IRVING had confused him with: Big Boss or Raiden since they both have the same name.
Is it safe to assume this is a dead story? It looked like it was really going to be good, but with over a year since the last chapter...
Who's pulling the strings and are the true enemy?
The Patriots
5867228 IRVING was confused with Big Boss since one of his names was Jack because a piece of the Boss, Big Boss mentor, was part of the AI that controlled IRVING.
Where is our next chapter
6931769 I don't think such a tag existed when I started the story back in the Cretaceous Era.
6832054 I covered this one one of those blogs
that nobody ever reads,but the short answer is no, the accelerated aging hasn't set in just yet, at least not to the extent that we see it in MGS4. It's only been about a year since Sons of Liberty, so I'd say Snake is, physically, pushing fifty by now. It's not enough that it's become a hindrance to his ability to complete missions without wearing a super-advanced muscle suit get-up.Very nice chapter. I had to re-read the previous one before starting this, just because it's been so long, and it was fairly slow-feeling, but this in comparison had a lot happening in it and kept my interest much easier. I did somewhat miss the first-person segments with Snake, which are usually my favourite parts of a chapter, but having Luna involved and Discord's appearance more than made up for it. Speaking of which, very good portrayal. You captured his voice and character wonderfully. IRVING was good too.
And thank you for this, by the way. I laughed. I'm not sure you intended that, since it was an otherwise dramatic scene, but I appreciate it nonetheless.
I like the changes made to this chapter. One more correction before I move on to an uncharted chapter.
Should be, "Funny that she didn't remember it from her own imprisonment."
Golden rays of the glorious sunshine, sending down such a blood-red light...
And Fluttershy standing tail, thePatriot on her hoof, aiming at IRVING, before pulling thetriggr, as white turns red