The Fluttershy of Tomorrow

by Amneiger

Cameras

Pre-read by Cheshire of Overly Extensive Editors.

Within a minute Fluttershy reached another intersection. The corridor in front of her was unlabeled, to her left was Radio Transponder Storage #6, and to her right was Server Room #11. Fluttershy opened the door to Server Room #11 and went through it.

The inside of the room was mostly dark, with a few overhead lamps that produced as much shadow as light. The room was filled with rows of large black metal boxes, which were making a low, insistent humming noise. Heat was radiating from the boxes, making the inside of the room very warm.

“Very good! You’re here.”

Fluttershy looked to her right. Maxwell was leaning against the wall in a corner of the room, just behind one of the boxes. He gestured her over, and Fluttershy and the ball followed him behind the box. Little Ball followed along behind Fluttershy, moving slowly and reluctantly.

As soon as both of them were behind the boxes, Maxwell sat down next to the wall and tapped a silvery coin that was on the wall next to him. “What do you think? I’ve been practicing coin engraving quite a bit recently. That one there bears a perfect resemblance to an empty server room. How does it look?”

Fluttershy looked at the coin, which as far as she could tell had an engraving of a building with pillars on it. “Uh…”

“Oh, yes, of course, you can’t see the side I carved. Oh well! Megiddo can’t see us in here, so we have some time.” He gestured at the ground in front of him. “Sit down, relax for a moment.”

“Um, all right.” Fluttershy sat down. Little Ball sat down behind Fluttershy, partially hiding itself behind her.

“Good, good. Do you mind if I took a look at you? I’ve not had a chance to examine anything quite like you before.”

“Um…I guess not?”

“Wonderful!” Maxwell crouched down in front of her. “Hmm…You’re short. And yellow. You look equine, long mane, bright colors, wings…You know, I saw something else that looked a lot like you, except blue and with rainbow hair. Any relation?”

“You did?” Fluttershy looked up. “Where was – what was she – ”

“You know her?”

“Yes…I think. She was one of my friends…I knew here before I came here.”

Maxwell shook his head. “Well, I imagine she’s no friend to you now. I saw her earlier, near the prison cells. I’m afraid that she was talking to the assassins instead of being captured by them.”

Fluttershy jumped to her hooves. “I-I need to find the prison. Oh, and I need to ask you if you’ve seen a white circular gate – ”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down my dear.” Maxwell held up his hands. “What’s all this about?”

“They have albinos here as slaves. They wanted me to let them out…and I got pulled into the city through a white gate and I want to go home.”

Maxwell frowned. “Get them out? How? I’m not sure…Tell you what. Would you answer one more question for me first? After that maybe I can help you.”

“Well…” It made sense. Fluttershy didn’t think she could argue with the idea of helping someone who was going to help her. “All right then.”

“Thank you. Now: I need to know if you’ve seen anyone matching these descriptions.” Maxwell’s tone changed as he began reading out what was clearly a mental list. “Human, male, bald, white skin, 1.9 meters tall, white lab coat, backpack ray gun. Paper goblin, four feet tall, newspaper, corrugated metal armor and crossbow, gold cross on a chain around his neck. Small flying pixie, ten centimeters diameter, glows green, high-pitched voice, deathly afraid of spiders.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, no one like that. Who are they?”

“Some friends of mine whom I entered the city with. We got separated a day ago, just after we got into here through a third-story window. I was hoping that you’d seen them.” He sighed. “Oh well. Would you remind me again what you needed?”

“Yes.” Fluttershy sat up. “There were soldiers in the factory room you were telling me about, and the albinos there helped me get past. I’m from Equestria, and I’d really rather be home in my cottage with my animals instead of here.”

“What was that about soldiers? I’ve seen only assassin units and a few aerials here, not too many other models.”

“They’ve got the lamps in their hands, and the lightning weapons on their heads.” Fluttershy held up her hooves in front of her chest and then in front of her head to show where she was talking about.

“Oh! Yes, the official name for them is electric assassins, although most people just call them assassins. They talk to each other through the radios in their lamps, and if you see one there’s always more nearby. The weapons on their heads are called arc blasters. If you must face one, shoot out their lamps or use electricity. As for your real questions …Equestria, was it?”

Fluttershy nodded.

Maxwell shook his head. “I don’t think that name sounds familiar, and I’m afraid I’ve seen nothing that was white at all in the first place, let alone a white circle or white gate.”

Fluttershy’s ears drooped. She hadn’t realized how much she had been hoping that the more-experienced seeming Maxwell could help her with this, and the disappointment hurt.

“But I do remember where the prison is,” he continued. “There’s a crawlspace through the room across from ours. I hid it with a wheeled shelf just in case. Take the first left and go out the third vent in the floor. You’ll be on a catwalk above some big vats of something green. Go along the unmarked corridor all the way to the end, then turn right towards a place where they make the helicopter blades for the aerials. On the way you’ll go over another catwalk where you can look down and see the cells. They bring in prisoners through the door underneath the catwalk, and take the cells away through the door in the opposite wall. Got all that?”

“Um…just a minute…” Fluttershy opened the backpack and pulled out the journal and pen. She hoped that the journal’s previous owner wouldn’t mind her writing down some directions. She wrote hurriedly on the first empty page. “Yes…I think so.”

“Good.” He held up a finger. “I would, however, bring up a logistical question about the prison. How exactly are you going to go about getting everyone else out of the prison? There’s quite a few of them, and unless you have something really amazing in your pack the assassins will catch you and kill you. And don’t think you can cut a deal with them; Megiddo prefers his own creations to outside manes.”

Manes? “Um…I’m a pony, not a mane? I have a mane…” Fluttershy lifted a hoof to her hair.

He frowned. “I’m sorry? An orphan, then?”

“No, I’m not an orphan either.” Where had that come from? The conversation seemed to have suddenly twisted away from her, missing some context that she instinctively felt was important. “What are you talking about?”

“Manes? Orphans?” Maxwell looked at the puzzled expression on Fluttershy’s face. “Those don’t mean anything to you? All right then, just give me a moment.” He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of old, battered glasses that appeared to have been made by melting metal scrap and soda bottles into something that resembled the shape of a human face. There was a thick metal grille that had been soldered on over the lenses. He put them on and they began humming, a high-pitched noise that was just on the edge of Fluttershy’s hearing. It made her feel like her eardrums were suddenly about to float right through her skull and up to the ceiling, and Fluttershy winced.

“Sorry, sorry, I’ve never figured out how to make a resonating array that doesn’t make that noise. This shouldn’t take more than…than...”

“What is it?” Fluttershy asked as Maxwell trailed off. She lifted a hoof to cover her left ear.

“Hold on.” Maxwell took the glasses off and peered at them. “No visible damage…just a moment, I need to look at your friend there.” He put the glasses back on.

Little Ball moved around behind Fluttershy, keeping Fluttershy between itself and Maxwell. Fluttershy looked over her shoulder at it. “Let him see you,” she said. “Nothing bad will happen, I promise.”

The ball hesitated, then came out from behind Fluttershy. It stood looking up at Maxwell as he looked it. He took the glasses off, then put them back on again. “Impossible,” Maxwell mumbled.

“What?” Fluttershy said, as she lifted her right hoof to cover her right ear.

Maxwell tore off the glasses. “I get it now!” His eyes opened wide, bright and jubilant. “You’re an alien! A genuine alien!”

“Um…I guess?” Fluttershy knew what aliens were from the science fiction adventures Rainbow sometimes read if she got bored of waiting for the latest Daring Do. This was clearly another planet, so of course she was an alien here. Why was this such a surprise?

“No, you don’t understand! A real alien! Imagine the possibilities! I just need to get you out of here…I can get the backing of Those Fools at the Institute…” For a moment Maxwell was staring at some point in space, brow furrowed in deep thought, and then he focused back on Fluttershy. “Come on, we need to get back to Seattle. Once I’ve announced I’ve found a non-human mortal I should be able to get enough support to come back here and find the rest of my collaborative.” Maxwell climbed to his feet.

“But the access corridors are sealed,” Fluttershy said. “How do we get out?”

Maxwell stopped halfway off the floor. “I’m sorry?”

“We were there yesterday. All the doors were locked or had an energy field over them. We couldn’t get out.”

“Truly? How strange. They were open a few days ago.” Maxwell tapped his chin. “Perhaps together we can brainstorm a solution. We should make sure we’re all on the same page first. What do you know about this city, or what it’s made of? Do you know where you are?”

“The Seattle of Tomorrow.”

“Good! And do you know what kind of place it is?”

“Um…a city?”

“Not quite, I’m afraid. Perhaps…do you know what a bardo is?”

Fluttershy shook her head.

“No? How about Mania?”

“Um…it's about ponies who act really active, and it's because they're...um...not quite all there,” Fluttershy guessed.

"Wrong! Well, right, but in this context it's wrong. This may be difficult to explain…” Maxwell frowned for a moment before looking back at Fluttershy. “Ah! I know. Let’s talk about science.”

“Science? Um…” Fluttershy had taken some science courses in school when she had been a filly, but that had been a while back. The only things Fluttershy could remember about science were some of Twilight’s lectures about it.

“Yes?” Maxwell said.

“Well…it’s about studying the natural world and learning how it works.” Fluttershy thought back to school, trying to remember more. “You, uh, run experiments and make hypotheses about what’s going to happen in them…”

“Absolutely correct! Now, a long shot: do you have magic where you come from?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Can you get pure magic? An essence of magic, pure mana? Is it something you use to power spells? Can you detect it as something separate from other things?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Good,” Maxwell said. “Can you do the same with science?”

Fluttershy frowned. “Um…no? I don’t think so…it’s a way of thinking about the world. Science isn’t physical like magic is.”

“Correct again! Now, imagine that you could make science act like magic, kind of.”

Fluttershy blinked. “Um…”

“Pure science. Essence of science. Distilled knowledge and mathematics and philosophy, bottled and boiled and drinking, used to power impossible machine. That is Mania.”

Fluttershy stared. “Wait…but that…” She thought hard. “Is that how science works here?”

“Not in the slightest! Science on this planet is like science everywhere else. Therefore, Mania technically can’t exist. And that, my dear, is what makes it so versatile.”

“I’m…” Fluttershy could feel her head starting to hurt. “I’m not sure what that would look like…” Something occurred to her. “Wait.” She opened up her backpack and pulled out the pouch with the electricity-filled glass cylinders. “Do you mean something like this?”

“Let me see…yes, these are capacitors. It’s good you have these, your friend won’t survive without them. You should hold on to these.” Fluttershy put the pouch back in her backpack as Maxwell kept talking. “Now, let me explain to you what a bardo is.”

There was the sudden sound of footsteps behind them, and Fluttershy turned to look.

There was another Maxwell there, bowler hat and shoes on feet and all, leveling an arc blaster at them.

Fluttershy gasped and dropped to the ground, covering her head. Somewhere next to her Little Ball skittered against one of the big boxes as it spun back and forth between the two Maxwells, trying to comprehend the existence of both of them.

CRACK!

Something small and thin whizzed over Fluttershy’s head; she didn’t see it, but felt it splitting the air with its passage. It smacked into the wall right next to the second Maxwell, punching a divot the size of her head into the metal.

The second Maxwell fired back, with an arc blaster’s lightning bolt. Something exploded with a deep BOOM right behind Fluttershy, and smithereens of something rained down on her back. There was the smell of something instantly flaring into ash, and behind her Maxwell screamed.

CRACK!

The shot hit the second Maxwell in the upper left shoulder, just under the neck, blasting away a large chunk of his upper body and disintegrating his head. Metal shards flew everywhere, and smoke rose from disconnected and burning wires and circuits inside of his body before he slumped back against the wall and slid down to the floor. A wave of electricity rippled across his body, erasing the color on him; what was left was a metal frame in the same shape as a human. It didn’t move.

There was a moan of pain from behind Fluttershy, and she turned around.

Maxwell was on the ground, his arms wrapped around his body. His stomach and chest had been scorched black, and they smelled of charred meat. His cane had fallen to the ground next to him; there was a sewing needle protruding from the bottom of it that hadn’t been there before, held in place with an odd arrangement of clamps.

Maxwell groaned again, and shifted slightly. A thin layer of black cinders moved on his body, and under it Fluttershy saw a red and pink flash of –

She couldn’t fix this. Even if she had been in her cottage back in Equestria, with all her medical supplies at her disposal, she couldn’t have healed something like this.

Maxwell coughed and looked down at the ruin of his body. For a moment, Fluttershy saw the cheer fall away from him. The lines in his face etched themselves deeper, his skin seemed more rough, and his eyes lost their energy. He looked old.

Then he looked back up at her, gamely pulling the cheerfulness back up over his face. But they both knew what the other had seen, and try as he might he couldn’t have covered all of it.

“I…I think the road ends for me here, my dear.” Maxwell coughed again, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Fluttershy was trotting towards him almost before the intention of doing so had formed in her mind. “Don’t move. It’ll just make the pain worse.”

Maxwell’s breathing was getting heavier; he was straining to suck in air. He shifted again. “No…it doesn’t hurt much now…it just feels cold.” He shivered. “The train yard at night…I remember…” For a moment his eyes were far away.

Fluttershy didn’t have a blanket. Instead, she carefully spread her wings over the human. She kept her feathers out of the wound; even though it wouldn’t have made a difference, she still instinctively didn’t want to contaminate a wound.

Maxwell shivered. His eyes refocused on Fluttershy. “What are you doing? You should…you should run. Megiddo knows we’re here…”

Fluttershy shook her head. “I didn’t want to leave you to die alone.”

He blinked, slowly. “Thank…thank you.” He sighed and let his head rest on the cold ground.

Fluttershy looked up at Little Ball. “Watch the door, please,” she said. The ball nodded and went to the corner of the boxes. It peeked out from around the boxes towards the door to the room.

“What was that?” Fluttershy asked, looking over her shoulder at the metal human against the wall.

“Infiltrator agents…I’ve heard that sometimes, when you look into their eyes, you see Megiddo looking back. He must have built it right in this factory…there’s no way it could have gotten here in time.”

There was a minute of silence. Fluttershy reached into her backpack and pulled out a bottle of water. She opened it and held it out to Maxwell.

Maxwell didn’t take it. His breathing was getting more ragged. “Megiddo…” he mumbled.

Fluttershy looked at her. “What?”

Maxwell strained to speak. “The Lemurians brought him here decades ago…when they found this place…it wasn’t like this then… I don’t know what you were looking for, but it isn’t worth it. To resist him is death.” His eyes were starting to dim, and his voice was getting quieter and quieter. “You need to leave…run…Megiddo is…Il...Illu…” He took one long, last breath. “Megiddo is Illuminated…”

Maxwell went silent. His eyes closed. His bowler hat and cane creaked for a moment and then crumbled to dust. The coin on the wall fell to the floor and cracked in half.

Fluttershy folded her wings and stepped away from the body. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Maxwell. “I wish you could have found your way home, or at least found your friends.”

There was nothing else she could do. There was no place to bury the body, either here or outside. Fluttershy turned and walked away.

Little Ball looked up as Fluttershy approached. “Come on,” she said to it. “We should go.”

The corridor was still empty outside, but Fluttershy knew that it wouldn’t stay that way for long. If the infiltrator didn’t come back, there would be more assassins coming to see what was wrong. She darted across the corridor and entered Radio Transponder Storage #6.

It was another poorly lit storage closet, with the same lighting and cardboard boxes and metal shelves as Preta Overflow Storage. Just as Maxwell had said, there was a metal shelf standing by itself against the far wall, with a cardboard box on the bottom shelf. Fluttershy pushed it aside.

There was an open vent at ground level, big enough for her to walk inside. “You go first,” she said to the ball, and it skittered into the vent. Fluttershy went in after it, then turned and pulled the shelf back in front of the crawlspace, hiding it.

Fluttershy turned and started going down the crawlspace. Just as she reached the first corner, she heard the door in the storage closet opening and the sound of more assassins stepping in. She looked over her shoulder at the blocked opening, and then hurried along, away from them.

It didn’t take her long to reach the catwalk that Maxwell had said would be over the prison cells. It was near the top of a tall room. There weren’t any lights at the top of the room where she was; the only lights there seemed to be were about midway down the walls, shining down on the cells. The upper half of the room was only dimly lit with light that reflected from the walls and floor towards the ceiling. Fluttershy put two hooves on the railing and looked down.

The cells were dull red metal boxes in short rows on the floor below. There were maybe six cells in two rows, one row against each wall. There was a black frame on wheels, with a pair of long prongs in front of it, moving around on the floor. A single lamp shone a stark cone of yellow light in front of the frame. Fluttershy could just make out the outline of something that looked like an assassin sitting in it. As Fluttershy watched, the frame moved towards one of the cells, slid its prongs under it, and lifted it up. It spun to her right, and then drove out of an open doorway into a hallway that was opposite of where she was.

Fluttershy looked around the room. There didn’t seem to be any more assassins. She took another moment to make sure, and then turned to Little Ball. “We’re going down there,” she said. It looked down nervously for a moment, then nodded and climbed into the basket. Fluttershy picked up the basket and gently flew down.

Instead of bars, the front doors of the cells were transparent energy fields. A number of the cells were empty. A few of them had strange objects sitting inside of them: a bucket of glowing green sludge, a glove made of shining chrome, a pair of boots carved from bones. One cell had the disc from earlier, still in its cage. The last cell had a handful of albinos, dressed in rags, sitting on the floor of the cell.

Fluttershy landed in front of the albinos. The one in front was Lisa, sitting on the ground facing the floor. She didn’t look up.

Fluttershy put a hoof on the energy field. It felt like warm glass. “Lisa!”

Lisa jumped and turned in the direction in Fluttershy’s voice. “Fluttershy? Is that you?”

“Lisa! What happened?” Fluttershy thought that Lisa would still be working on the assembly line, not back in a cell already.

“The assassins just took us away. I think they didn’t want to take any chances. Now they’re moving the cells. The forklift will be back in a few minutes. Can you open these cells?”

“I’m not sure…” Fluttershy walked up to the cell. There was a black keypad in the side of the cell. She had no idea what the code would be. Fluttershy looked around for some clue that might show what the code was. She turned towards the disc; it was still in its cell across from the albinos, flashing green. “Excuse me,” she said to it. “Did you see anyone typing in the code for the cell here?”

The disc blinked yellow and green. It had seen some of it. The disc began blinking in a complex pattern of lights, and it took Fluttershy a moment to understand it. The code had four numbers, and the disc had seen the first three: 791. It didn’t know what the last one was.

“Thank you.” Fluttershy turned back to the albinos’ cell and lifted a hoof to the keypad. She hesitated for a moment before guessing: 7911.

There was an angry beep, and a small light on the keypad blinked red.

Fluttershy looked around. Nothing seemed to have happened in response to the wrong code. She turned back to the keypad: 7912. There was another angry beep, and this time the red light blinked twice.

The keypad was tracking the number of incorrect attempts, and she was sure that if she kept going she would trip an alarm. Fluttershy put her hoof down. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. Um…if you don’t mind, I’m going to look around for a bit and see if I can find something that can help.”

Lisa nodded. “All right. Please don’t leave us.”

“I won’t.” Fluttershy began to walk around the cells, with Little Ball followed behind her.

There was a black box on the back of each cell, with cables leading from the black box into the back of the cell. The black box was marked with a lightning bolt symbol. “What’s that?” she asked Little Ball.

The ball skittered around in front of her and peered at the box. After a moment it made several clicks. The box was a power source. It was entirely possible that it was what was powering the cell doors.

Fluttershy looked at it. It was worth a try. She reached up towards where the cable was plugged into the cell.

There was the faint, steady clanking noise of assassins in the distance, coming closer.

Fluttershy squeaked. For a moment she thought about pulling the cable anyway, but realized that if the assassins saw the albinos were out they would recapture them at best and kill them at worst. It would be better to wait for them to go away first. Fluttershy flew over to another cell and got down behind it.

A moment later, three assassins came in from the door leading out, followed by the forklift from earlier. Their lamps swept past her hiding spot, but didn’t highlight her.

The forklift went around to the front of the cell with the albinos under it. With a mechanical groaning noise it picked up the cell, turned around, and went out with it, the three assassins marching behind it.

Oh no. She couldn’t just let them be taken away like this. Fluttershy dashed out from behind the cells. She stopped in front of the cell with the disc. “I’ll come back later,” she said to it. It flashed green in response, and with that acknowledgement Fluttershy picked up her basket, let Little Ball climb into it, and flew down the corridor after the forklift.

Author's Note:

Author’s Notes: Goodbye Maxwell! You were a non-unmada human with a Peerage education, a selection of wonders, and plenty of experience with the Seattle of Tomorrow. In short, you were too useful to live.
For those of you who are familiar with Genius and wanted to know why I’ve made Fluttershy mortal instead of supernatural: it’s because Fluttershy may have pegasus magic, but as far as ponies go she's rather normal. By extension, we can conclude that Equestria is a mortal universe instead of a bardo, since a bardo would produce manes instead of mortals.

Comments

[Cheshire]

Y'know... I've been helpin' you out for a bit now, and I can't believe I still haven't actually faved it... wow... I really AM forgetful...

[FanOfMostEverything]

Darn. And here I had a theory about Equestria being the Hollow Earth of mythology, getting Mania every time someone cracked open a Monster Manual...

In any case, I'm very pleased to see a Genius: the Transgression crossover. I wasn't sure what the search bar would give me, but I'm thrilled with the result. Still, this story seems criminally underrated. It has mad science, adorable clockwork companions, and Fluttershy vs. a multiply insane AI. What's not to like?

(Still, aren't there only supposed to be sixteen electric assassins? I guess Megiddo got that last dot in Assembly Line...)

I eagerly look forward to more.

[Amneiger]

4154838

A Monster Manual-based bardo would probably be something like The Long Stairs.

I do wish this story was more popular Maybe it's the obscurity of the crossover.

(If I'm reading this bit about bardos correctly, certain restrictions on making wonders are lifted if they're being produced inside a compatible bardo. You don't need to bind Mania to them or need a mad scientist to make them; you can just manufacture them as if they were mundane technology. My thinking was that Megiddo would bind Mania for assassins that would be sent outside the bardo, and manufacture anything that wasn't intended to leave it.)

Thanks for the favorite, and the wonderful comment.

[FanOfMostEverything]

4157484
Hmm. Ah! Pages 285-286 of the v.1.1 rulebook:

Many bardos contain manes that function like wonders. Police officers in the Gray Plateau of Tsoska carry Apokalypsi-based spying tools, while Space Station Colossus contains plasma guns, holo-screens, and hoverbikes. Within the bardo, these wonders are self-sustaining and do not require anyone to bind Mania into them; they can simply be manufactured. A person within a bardo can spend a point of Willpower instead of any number of Mania points to activate and use native wonder-like manes, and can use them without penalty.

Seems legit.

[Amneiger]

4491623

I'm working on it, I am! I'm actually trying to write out the rest of the story right now so that I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing.

[ferret]

Didn't really make sense why they had a robotic Maxwell clone kill him. Wouldn't they send in a bunch of assassins to server room #11, then use his clone for its intended purpose elsewhere to infiltrate his friends? Oh well at least we know what was going on with Rainbow Dash. Also, illuminated schmilluminated!

I just wanted to say schmilluminated.