Friendship? Emotion not found.

by The Rar

Nightmare

Twilight Sparkle's Library, Equestria.
10:13PM Standard Equestrian Time

Twilight lay in her bed, attempting to do what most other ponies had already done by this hour and fall asleep. She was trying her hardest but something was nagging her, preventing her from sleeping. It was something important, something urgent. She just didn't quite know what it was. Her sheets were looser and she did feel a little more drained than usual but that surely couldn't be preventing her from sleeping. In fact, the latter should be helping. She tried to think of what it could be causing her trouble. She began to silently question herself.
Did I forget to say goodnight to spike?
Nope...
Did I leave the book I was reading in the wrong place?
Not possible...
Did I miss something when I went over tomorrow’s to-do list, checking for errors?
Hmm...
Unlikely, but possible. Twilight prided herself on being the only person in Ponyville and quite possibly the whole of Equestria who triple checks every single list she makes. Mistakes were almost non-existent, almost.
Even Twilight makes the occasional error. She usually spots and corrects these errors. But there was still a chance, no matter how small, one had slipped the net. Even if the odds could quite possibly be one in a million, Twilight decided she would check her list again.

She got out from under her sheets and quietly trotted over to the section of her library reserved for her own personal scrolls, diaries and plans. On the top floor, dead centre of the left wing, between the Modern Magical Arts and Ancient Magic and Powerful Unicorns sections. She knew the sections well. One section she frequented to add spells to her ever expanding knowledge and the other to analyse how famously powerful unicorns actually became famously powerful. Twilight supposed the fact that she had a particular love of both of these sections was why she decided to place her personal scrolls here, but she never was quite sure. She quietly trawled through the various scrolls and parchment that were stuffed onto the dusty shelves, trying to find tomorrow’s to-do list. Twilight had really let her reputation as overly organized slip in this section of her library, and she vowed to amend this. Later thought, for now there was a list to find, check and possibly correct. After several minutes of fruitless searching and dust induced choking, Twilight was going to admit defeat and crawl back to her bed, but then she saw it. The glorious scroll that was either going to put her mind to rest or waste her time. Hopefully the former Twilight thought, for if it were the latter not only will she have wasted her time searching for and reading it, but will also have no further answers as to what was troubling her.

A good half hour rolled by as Twilight read the list that she had oh so carefully wrote, checked and re-checked not 4 hours previous. She was proof reading, looking for any errors and any missing points. But finally, in the final few lines of her list, she spotted the error that had hidden itself from her previous scans, one missing item.

"Got you, you impossible error" She whispered.

Spike shifted in his bed.
Twilight closed her eyes and held her breath, hoping she hadn't woken the little guy from his sleep.
He didn't wake. Twilight released her breath in a silent sigh of relief.
Spike mumbled something about Rarity's mane. Twilight decided to listen no more. The reason being Spike was a teenage dragon dreaming about the mare he had a crush on, but mostly because it's probably rude to listen to someone's dreams. But Twilight simply couldn't go back to bed and miss correcting an error for the sake of privacy. She weighed up her options, go to bed and miss correcting an error or correct an error but have to do it while hearing a teenage dragon's fantasy. She sat thinking for several seconds before inspiration struck. She levitated a small brown box labelled 'In case Pinkie Pie feels the need for a late night street party' over in her magical grasp and silently withdrew two small objects from it. She placed them tightly in her ears and replaced the box in the position on a shelf from which she got it. She took a quill out from her desk and placed a piece of parchment on her desk, the ear plugs in her ears making her entire world silent.
There, Spike has his privacy and I can create perfection.
She yawned, looking at a list looking for tiny errors for a lengthy time taking its little toll, and sat down besides the desk and began correcting her work.
She didn't get far with her correcting though. Sleep's grasp took hold of her as she was dipping her quill into an ink pot.
Twilight's head rested on her desk and she snored softly as she began to dream.
Twilight's last thoughts before she fully fell asleep were thoughts of wonder at what sleep and its dream worlds will bring.

Twilight's dream, snowy overhang.
Unknown time

Twilight found herself standing on an icy overhang, looking off into the distance. She didn't know where in Equestria she was nor did she know the time, but she did know two quite interesting things, that it was dark and that it was incredibly cold.
The wind howled and blew snow violently around the landscape, but Twilight couldn't seem to feel it. As she cast her gaze across the frozen landscape before her, she noticed that there was a small amount of yellow light off in the distance, revealing several buildings. There were small black dots moving around the buildings, some bigger than others but all very small and unrecognisable from her current distance and the poor lighting made it even more difficult. It was quite beautiful. She took in the many colours and shapes moving around. She was pondering where in Equestria this place could be when suddenly and very much against her will, her head jerked down to look towards the ground, and she was horrified and confused with what she saw. There was a pair of metal... Things in place of her hooves. Weird metal things that connected to her form with large poles of black and brass matter. She was in some kind of metal body. She stood tall atop two leg like things and had the equivalent of forhooves, but they were attached to the side of the body. One of the 'forhooves' ended in wickedly serrated talons that sparkled wickedly in the moonlight while the other, the left, ended five weird digits. Most looked like these 'hand' things Lyra kept telling her about. Come to think of it, the entire 'body' she was in looked like something straight out of the fiction novels Lyra has a love of. Lyra once came into Twilight's library and began to browse the fiction novels. While she looked through the books she had told Twilight about these mystical creatures called 'Humans' and their universe. Lyra had read 37 books and counting on these 'humans' and she had an insane base of knowledge on them. They had a strange form. They stood on two legs that ended in 'feet. They had a main body in which legs and arms were attached. The arms ended in 'hands', each with 5 opposable digits attached. They had heads but they looked... Different. Lyra’s description was vague but Twilight knew they looked nothing like ponies faces. The come from a planet named 'Earth' but developed space travel and colonized mysterious worlds, far in space. The humans, possibly most interesting and frightning of all, waged intergalactic wars over the treasures of the worlds they inhabited. Hundreds being slaughtered every day over alien technology and wealth and sometimes, on the impossible worlds far off in the solar system where Equestria's laws of physics were broken on a daily basis, some people waged war for the simple brutality and gore of combat. She snapped out of her trance as soon as the last thought entered her head and came back to reality.

She tried to move her head upwards, but she couldn't. She couldn't move any part of her 'body'. It was like she wasn't in control of herself.
Her right arm began to move down towards the body's waist and grasped a metal object. It didn't look much different to a small log... She began tossing it gently in the air and catching it, tossing it again and again.
After several seconds of pointless tossing and the gentle sound of a ring tapping on metal, she stopped tossing the object. She tried to stop herself from moving, but she wasn't in control. Another hand, this one not ending in talons came up and warped one of its digits around a ring that stuck out the side of the object. The ring had what looked like a metal pole attached to it that went clean through the top of the object and out the other side. Twilight, against her will, pulled the pin. A click sounded and the object began to glow a soft orange.
With a flick of her wrist, she tossed the pin away into the snow behind her. She was left holding the glowing object.
Twilight began to chuckle.
She tried to speak and voice her lack of amusement and a voice did sound.
Not Twilight's though. Not anyone's. It was like a gravely whisper on the wind. It came from every direction and was as clear as day.
It was cold and serious, yet laced with humour.
It said something that chilled Twilight and brought forth great fear.

"I am the ghost of the night,"
Twilight drew her arm back.

"And I bring forth the pain..."
And with that, Twilight hurled the object into the night.

Hyperion outpost, Southern Shelf Glacier, Pandora.
11:49M Standard Pandorian Time

Captain Leonardo Fawks sat, looking very bored, on a storage box. Fawks was an engineer in the Hyperion military and even though engineers weren't the highest ranking members in the Hyperion system, he was still the highest ranking officer on this entire icy glacier. He wore the set of armour plates Hyperion provided as standard with a few technical adjustments. His arms and legs had a series of pipes attached to them forming a simple hydraulic servo system and he had a device bolted to his head that could slip lenses and various other visions enhancing equipment into place over his eyes, which made him look much more machine than man. He was lazily watching his men go about the various tasks he had set them for today. Fawks questioned Hyperion’s decision to continue to populate Pandora with Hyperion forces, now that it held no real interest to them, and he had begun to question why he had been stationed all the way out in the middle of nowhere, on a frozen wasteland with no apparent objective. But that wasn't his job, to question things that is. His job, as insanely mind numbing as it is, was to keep the outpost operational and keep the men in check. The latter he was doing rather well at, no one has had to be reminded of their position in over six months, the former however wasn't going too well. Power was slowly failing, the buildings had and continued to suffer structural damage and several cables pumping the already limited power to the light and heating systems had failed. Fawks could get along without light thanks to his vision enhancing device, and he knew his men would survive on torches, but the heating... Glaciers, Fawks had been told before coming to the outpost, are very cold and it was becoming more and more apparent that this was a fact. Fawks' armour had begun to frost over and had went from being a bright yellow to a colour similar to vomit in the few minutes he'd been outside. His weapon had frozen to the metal container he'd rested it on. The paranoia wasn't helping either. Several men have reported seeing shifting in distance and have claimed to have seen scanning beams coming from the distance. After several hours of wasteful searching, it did indeed turn out to just be their imagination His first lieutenant has gone as far as to claim seeing glowing red eyes in distant mountains.

"Sir! Sir!"

Speak of the devil.

"What is it this time lieutenant?" Fawks asked, freely letting all the boredom he was feeling flow into his speech. His lieutenant wasn't that much different to himself. His hair was cropped close to his head and his armour was of a similar model, just thinner. It was the same colour of yellow as his and he also had a cog with a bullet standing upright either side painted on his right pauldron, marking him as a combat engineer. The fact that it was paint and not an actual metal symbol welded onto the plate also marked him as a novice combat engineer. Fawks had a slightly different symbol though, his only being a single cog marking him as an engineer undivided, who had experience in all areas of engineering.

"I saw something!" Exclaimed the lieutenant.

"Lieutenant, unless you're here to tell me you saw a crate full of vodka and cigars being paddled into the bay by beautiful women, I really don't want to know"

"But sir!"

"But nothing lieutenant. I've heard just about enough of your stories. They're distracting you from your work and they signal a grave degree of paranoia, both of which merit stripping of rank, equipment and being shipped off back to Hyperion training school where you'll have to do all of those blasted exams again and you'll have to---"

"But sir?" The lieutenant interrupted,
"How would you send me back to Hyperion? We haven't heard from them in over three months."
Fawks stood, silent. It was a very good point; they hadn't received any communication from any Hyperion command station of any description and certainly didn't know when an evac chopper would arrive. If one was even on the way, that is. It's entirely possible, knowing Hyperion, that they would simply be forgotten about and left here. Fawks dismissed these thoughts though, quickly. Thinking like that leads to only two things; heresy or depression, and Fawks wasn't overly fond of either. Both former and latter lead to execution or exile.
Fawks raised his gauntleted hand and scratched his unshaven jaw, the short hairs growing there made soft scraping noises as they got in-between the joints of Fawks' gauntlet. The metal was unsurprisingly cold and stung a little as Fawks dragged it across his face. After a few moments thought, he responded to his lieutenant’s question,

"Aye, it's true we've had no contact from Hyperion in far too long, but that doesn't mean you can't be taught and I guarantee I'll be a worse teacher to you than any jumped up know it all with a degree Hyperion would give you." He laughed almost every word of his small speech. He didn't know if it was genuine laughter or if it was a simple distraction from his morbid thoughts. Fawks concluded that it was a bit of both.

"Very well sir. Now, the second matter of business I came here to discuss."

"Hmm..." Fawks sighed, clearly bored even further by his lieutenants constant pestering. Didn't anyone know how to be independent anymore?

"Well sir, you know you put us into a combat ready stance by issuing weapons to everyone?"

"Yes? What of it?"

"Well, it seemed a little... Strange. Considering you've been telling us all for the past month that you're sure there's nothing out there to be afraid of, save for a few wolves and bandits, and we should relax a bit and focus at keeping the outpost operational. But it seems to me and too many of the others here that you're doing the exact opposite of what you say and you're getting us ready for combat."
The lieutenant made yet another good point. Fawks had told the other ten or so members of the outpost at their last group meeting to loosen up and relax, but he'd gone and handed them weapons not a week later. He had however only distributed low end equipment, revolvers and rusted SMG's. He thought maybe having a weapon would remove some of the paranoia that was taking hold of them but it seems it only served to increase it. That was a silly mistake.
After another moments thought, Fawks decided to come clean.

"Well you see lieutenant, the reason I've been handing out weapons is I myself have recently seen these eyes you speak and heard whispers. I thought that maybe if I gave you some weight you'd loosen up and we'd forget the whole situation"
When the lieutenant said, "Very well sir, thank you for telling me" and began to stroll off with a salute, Fawks let out a sigh of relief. Maybe things will be ok after all.

Novice Combat Engineer Steel walked slowly through the snowy streets of the outpost, the steel girder being carried on his back slowing him down to a painfully slow speed, and the beauty of the snowfall during a full moon only served as a minor distraction. He'd only been walking for about four minutes and he was already quite tired of it. He trailed his way into a small, open courtyard where he dumped the girder on the concrete floor, cracking a few tiles in the process and sitting himself on a wall. Snow was brushed away and turned to fine powder as Steel made himself comfortable. He picked a bottle of weak yet flavoursome alcoholic drink from a pouch on his belt and popped the cap off. He took a sip and took in his surroundings, getting into a relaxed state of mind as he did.

"Just following Fawks' orders." Steel chuckled to himself
He looked around the courtyard and saw he wasn't the only one wanting to relax. He saw almost the entire work force sitting and leaning on various objects around the snow filled courtyard. Hell, it was almost peaceful.
Almost...

"You damned dirty cheat!"

"Hey, don't be a sore loser, Castor."

"I didn't lose. You cheated Fenix."
Castor and Fenix were noisily playing a game of poker. What amused Steel is that they didn't actually have any chips to play with.
Or cards.
He hadn't quite worked out how yet, but they always seemed to be able to play a game involving cards perfectly well despite a depressing lack of cards.
Steel chuckled, took another long drink and shifted a bit.
*ping*
Hm? Strange... Steel looked down. His metal boot had hit another metal object when he shifted and was interested in finding out what. Almost everything in the courtyard was concrete and he'd placed his girder elsewhere. What could it have been?
He looked around for a few moments but found what he was looking for eventually. It looked similar to a log, only metal. It had a light layer of snow on it and the moonlight shone beautifully off its surface.
"Ah, nothing interesting then. It's probably just part of an old bolt" Steel thought out loud.
He lent down to pick the object up but as he was dusting the layer of snow off of it, he noticed something.
A small part of it was flashing orange and red.

"Hm, that's strange. It's flashing oran---"
Realisation hit home.
"Oh, damn it..." Steel breathed.
"Everybody!" Steel shouted, holding the now identified grenade high.
All heads turned to face him and drinks were placed loudly on crates.
"Get! Your heads! Down!"

*BOOM!*

“What in all the Gods names was that?!” Fawks yelled as he clambered to his feet after being hit by an invisible car.
He looked around for something to explain the loud explosion and saw nothing but the lieutenant and the other members of his team. He looked at all of them; Castor was crouched behind a box trying to patch up the hole that had appeared in Fenixs' arm with some bandage. The lieutenant had his hand around his head and was lying on the snowy ground.

“Ugh... My head... Feels like I've got a hangover from hell... Gah...”
He spat on the floor as he continued to complain and compare his experience to various hangovers.

“Well at least you’re not asking me questions any more” Fawks said as he offered the lieutenant his hand.
The lieutenant took the aforementioned hand and pulled himself up.

“I think all of my questions have just been answered, eh Sir?

“Indeed” Fawks began,

“But now it's my turn to ask questions. What in the name of hell just happened, lieutenant?”

All the men gathered around what looked like a smudge on the ground.
That smudge upon closer inspection was revealed to be all that was left of Combat Engineer Steel.

“Gave his life well Sir, died with as much honour as one could in his situation” Castor said solemnly.

“That's very good to hear Castor, but with all respect to Steel, I really don't care at the moment.”

“Sir?” Castor said, his voice making his offence to the statement clear.

“Well Castor, mourning isn't my top priority at the moment, when a man has just been murdered and we don't know what exactly did it.” Fawks allowed some time for the statement to sink in before he continued.
“So save your tears for when we know what exactly did this and for after we've avenged him. Is that understood?”
Castor stood for a few seconds, not moving a single inch.

“Castor? Do you understand?” Fawks repeated, anger at Castor's disobedience flowing through into his voice forming a growl on his last word.
Castor stood up straight and sighed.

“Aye Sir, understood.”
Castor was clearly displeased with his commander's lack of heart but also clearly understood the reasoning in the decisions made.

“Good. Now gentlemen, would anyone like to explain to me how this happened?” He gestured to each of his men briefly, challenging them to tell the tale of their friend’s demise.

“I can Sir.”
Fawks looked to the speaker.
Man by the name of Atlas, promising candidate for a command position, almost passed the exams that would grant him a position as a full Engineer by the smallest of margins. He failed the tasks that tested for patience and that's why he was sent to this outpost with Fawks' squad, where he would have to perform tasks that had only one quality to them, repetitiveness.
Fawks' memory of him ended there. Not because he didn't know anything else but because none of it was relevant to the situation. In fact, a good few of the fact he recalled about him had little relevance to the current situation.

“Very well Atlas,”
Fawks took a seat on a girder and took up a bottle of alcohol that was sitting upon it.
“Share.”
Atlas also sat on a girder and began to share.

“I was sitting over there,” Atlas gestured to a low wall that acted is a very low level barricade against the creatures that came from the ice plain that stretched from said wall for miles, creating a very nice overlook to spy any attackers. Attackers however were limited to bandits, and not even they were stupid enough to trek through a flat plain that had ice storms that could flay skin from bone and had creatures that, when shot with a heavy calibre rifle, only get mildly annoyed.

“Drinking some of that whisky that we found in that bandit camp.”
After several disapproving looks from several members of the group, Fawks included, he embarrassedly said

“Uh... A tiny amount of course.”

“Yea yea Atlas,” Fawks began
“Just tell the damned story so we can get about finding Steel's assailant.”

“Very well Sir... As I said, I was sitting over there.”

“Getting smashed when you should have been working” Castor chuckled.

“Oh ha bloody ha Castor; I'm laughing my damned ass off right now. So as I said, I was over there getting drunk. Steel came in carrying the steel girder we're sitting on and sat on the wall there.” Atlas pointed to a wall behind the girder he was sitting on.

“He began to drink that stuff the commander is holding and began watching Castor and Fenix have a dispute over poker. He moved his feet, got up and picked up some metal stick, presumably a grenade and well, we know how the story ends, don't we?” Atlas finished as he pointed to the crimson stain in the snow.

“So, a grenade eh?” Fawks queried.

“Aye Sir”

“Well lads, I know one thing about grenades” Fawks said.

“What?” The entire group asked.

“Grenades need someone to pull the pin” Fawks said, a feral growl tainting his speech

“We have a target then Sir?” Castor asked.
Fawks lifted his weapon and racked the pump, loading a shell into the breach.

“Aye Castor. We've got a target.”

Twilight's dream, snowy overhang
Unknown time

Twilight had stood perfectly still after she had threw the mysterious object. Not that she had much choice thought, she was still quite aware of the fact that she wasn't in control of her body. She had no idea what in Celestia's name she had thrown, but its effects were obvious. A few moments after she had thrown it a large bang was heard and a large orb of light lit up even more of the distance. Yelling voices and a large commotion followed in the sounds wake, but they had stopped now. Well... They had almost stopped. Twilight could hear whispers, whispers in strange voices, speaking in different tones and talking in a manner that was very alien to her. There was the odd word she understood but the rest sounded like the sort of chat Shining Armour had used to address the Royal Guard when she had went to take part in his wedding. Battle cant of sorts, words that referred to various military tools such as weaponry and personnel. She had done some research on it but, even though Twilight considered all knowledge worth knowing, she saw no point in continuing it. Twilight spent a minute or so immersed in her memories but her train of thought came to an abrupt stop when a conversation became audible.

“Grenades need someone to pull the pin” A voice growled. Was that what the thing Twilight had thrown was called? A “Grenade”?

“We have a target then Sir?” Another voice speaking this time.

“Aye Castor. We've got a target” The first voice finished.
A moment after, an eerie voice spoke, the same voice that had spoken when Twilight was about to throw the “Grenade”.

“That sounds like my cue.” the voice chuckled.
Twilight tried to speak out and say no, don't move, but she made no noise. That however, doesn't mean no one heard.

“Huh? What was that?” The voice asked in a surprised tone.
Twilight's vision moved from left to right, scanning for something.

“Guess it was nothing...” The voice finished.
“Now, where were we?” Oh yes.” Twilight's vision shifted to the light in the distance.
“Right there.”

Hyperion outpost, Southern Shelf Glacier, Pandora.
00:00AM SPT (Standard Pandorian Time)

The members of Fawks' team, that only a few minutes previous had been relaxing with some chilled beers, were preparing for combat. Armour had been salvaged, weapons had been issued, high end ones this time. Well maintained rifles, loaded with mass reactive rounds were issued to the bulk of the group with only three exceptions. Castor, being the only member besides Fawks with heavy weapons training was issued a plasma cannon, an E-Tech rocket launcher that fired white hot balls of plasma out of its huge barrel and he had a plasma caster attached to his back. Same concept, only smaller, but by no means weaker. It could take a tank apart just as easily as the cannon. Atlas, being a veteran sniper before he came into the engineering field, was issued a sniper. It was an aggressive looking thing, it has to be said. It had a drum magazine that packed 24 armour piercing rounds and had a huge serrated bayonet slung underneath its barrel. It had some strange scope attached that gave a range of confusing filters and it had some curses crudely carved onto it. The final exception was Fawks. He had taken another E-Tech weapon from the armoury. E-Tech; put a bullet in and get a pretty beam of purple death. Bandit's usually made guns that were glued together with chewing gum and wooden nails but when it came to the really advanced stuff, they were disturbingly skilled. Their light machine gun style weapons could be compared to a bunker busting missile for raw power.
They were all gathered in the courtyard in which Steel had met his gruesome end, preparing for combat with an unknown foe. They had been called into a circle by Fawks for an inspirational and informative talk.

“OK men” He began,

“We're going to find the person who dared challenge us and make him pay!” Fawks yelled every word.

“Aye!” The group yelled back in response.

“We will work efficiently and show this fool a force to be reckoned with!”
The group yelled louder.

“We are Hyperion and we will know no fear of death or damned nation!”
The group began to roar lines of hate and oaths of revenge.

“We will fight!”
As if in response to Fawks' yelling, a crack of thunder echoed.
A moment after the sound had vanished, a soft light appeared in the centre of the group.

“What on Pandora is that?” Fawks said flatly. Not knowing what to think of it.
The light sparked and blinded every member of the group.
“Gah!” Fawks spat as he fell backwards, grasping his face.

Fawks' vision came back in unison with everyone else's. He stood up and retrieved his weapon after dropping it on the floor in pain and confusion. He helped Atlas and Castor up and looked at the rest of his men as they picked themselves up. They all looked confused. Nothing was here. Nothing had changed. Nothing made a noise, silence.
For several seconds, after all the yelling of hate, there was silence.
The silence was broken by Castor's laughing voice.

“Well, that was pretty. But our foe is going to have to do a lot better if he wan--”
A large blade punched through Castor's chest, spraying the snow with crimson blood. Castor looked down at the talon and groaned as he saw the curved piece of metal dripping with glistening blood sticking out of his chest.

"Oh damn and blast..."
He yelled as he was hauled up off the ground. He was flung over the shoulder of the thing in which the talon belonged to and died as he hit the ground.
Fawks knew how he felt: confused. It was a loader, a Hyperion loader. But it looked... different.
Its entire body was painted midnight black in which a crimson eye shone. It had a fierce red glow to it but strangely, a light purple was creeping its way into the glow. Its legs and arms were supported by a set of huge industrial servos and it had been heavily modified for combat. Its right hand had huge talons coming of its fingers and the metal looked as if it were liquid, shifting and warping and the left looked like it could crush a man’s skull. None of this mattered, really, to Fawks anyway. What mattered to Fawks was if it could be killed but Fawks feared he knew the answer. It had more armour than a siege tank and it had what looked like a warp device on its back. Warp devices, found in things such as digistruct terminals, can do a number of things, from turning lead to gold to converting a planet’s atmosphere to be suitable for humans, and they can even teleport a person. It was the final thing that was applicable here. The thing had obviously teleported its way into the outpost and it could probably teleport anything it wanted into its mechanical hands, depending on the strength of the warp device. Fawks inspected it. It looked... Pretty damn powerful. A mark VII, the kind Tediore use to create their fancy teleporting guns.

“Bugger...” Fawks breathed.

“Open fire!” He then yelled but it was far too late. The loader had already warped a weapon into its talon sporting hand and shot two of Fawks' men. The bullets easily ripped through the thin sheet metal of the novice's armour and went through flesh like a hot knife through butter.
Fawks saw Atlas and his lieutenant fall, and soon, he was left with only one man. Fenix was staring the robotic hunter in the mechanical face. He whispered something. Something along the lines of “I serve Hyperion. I serve to destroy scum. I serve to destroy you.”
A very well-known line taught to you on your very first day of training with Hyperion. You are here to destroy the filth of the universe and to follow Hyperion's orders.
Fawks never had a clear view of what happened, the weather had picked up and had cut visibility, and he was rather glad. It looked like the robot pushed Fenix to the ground and stomped on him with its mechanical foot, turning him into a sick paste of pulped flesh and crushed bones.

Now it was him, alone. Fawks stood, disgust overflowing as the robot cleaned its foot of Felix' flesh on the floor.
He raised he weapon and held the handle tight.

“Turn and face me, scum” Fawks spat.
The robot was happy to oblige. It turned, its feet crushing a crate of vodka that some idiot had left lying around. Shame Fawks thought. It walked closer to him and it did something unexpected. It spoke.

“You show great courage to attempt to face me after I slaughtered your friends before your very eyes.” The loader said in a mechanical growl.

“And you show even greater strength to not break down in confusion at one of your own loaders attacking you. I've seen many Hyperion men do so.”
Fawks was pretty speechless. He had nothing to say. He only had questions. The main one being, why in all the Gods names would a loader, manufactured by Hyperion, be attacking Hyperion personnel. He decided he would find out.

“Why on Pandora are you attacking us, us being Hyperion? We're your masters, your creators. Why?” Fawks demanded.

“Oh please. Don't tell me Hyperion hasn’t told you of all people, an engineer, what's been happening?” The machine chuckled.

“Evidently not” Fawks growled, annoyed by the fact that Hyperion had withheld yet more information and also the fact that this machine found anything in this current situation even remotely amusing.

“Well, let me tell you a tale. The tale of the biggest screw up Hyperion has ever made. The tale of how machines were given free will and became self aware”
Free will? Fawks had to admit, even with the current situation, he was interested.

“About a year ago, when Hyperion first started really getting into full swing with their military operations on Pandora, they decided to make construction loaders combat able. This meant installing more advanced AI cores. Now, these AI cores have to make so many calculations and predictions that they need one serious processing unit. Well, a processing unit wasn't cool enough for Hyperion. Nooooo, they had to go and put a god damned conciseness in there!” The machine finished with an angry grunt and stopped talking completely.
Fawks was stunned. Would Hyperion do that? Actually put a living conciseness into an AI core? It was... Possible. Hyperion wasn't exactly known for its ethics.

“Continue” Fawks snapped.

“Very well. The conciseness was obviously capable of free will. They could develop tastes, personalities, everything. But Hyperion didn't want that. They only needed that desire to kill. So they put an inhibitor onto the AI core that removed everything apart from the ability to make tactically sound decisions, shoot at a target and the blood lust you humans possess. When an incompetent engineer performed repairs on my AI core he accidentally removed the inhibitor. I am the result of free will and thinking.”
OK thought Fawks. That's cool. Loaders with free will. Next question.
Fawks gestured to the robots legs and the small warp device it wore on his back.

“So how did that happen?”

“As always in a military there are those who seek to leave. The renegades. Engineers are no exception. I contacted an engineer who was part of a resistance group, comprised completely of renegade Hyperion personnel, and he agreed to... Improve me, and make me more combat capable. He gave me improved limb servos, fitted me with improved optics and gave me this nifty little warp device that allows me to teleport short distances and also to teleport firearms directly into my hands. He told me he stole if from a weapons lab belonging to a company named 'Tediore' before he turned on Hyperion.”
Interesting.

"Turning on Hyperion? Why?” Fawks continued to question.

"As I said before and as is the way with anything. There have always been the betrayers, renegades and heretics. When you work for such an unimaginably evil company such as Hyperion, why would it be any different? As for me, you forced me into servitude. You are my natural prey, so to speak."
Fawks was out of questions. He knew all he needed to know. He had found out what this horror was, why it was fighting and how it got the tools to do so. He'd also found out that it was going to kill him. He got a clue from the way the robot was sharing incredibly sensitive information very freely with him. Fawks weighed up his options. Run and be gunned down or have his guts ripped out, or fight and die with some honour. Clear choice.

"What's your name, scum? I want to know what to engrave on my gun when I'm finished"

"I've been called Ajax in the past." The machine chuckled

"Excellent..." Fawks whispered
He pulled the trigger on his weapon and it spat a steady stream of purple beams towards the robotic horror. The sound was tremendous, the recoil almost broke Fawks' arms and the light produced was admirable. The result of said light show however was not. The purple beams impacted on the machines hull and produced a shower of sparks, but nothing more. It barely left a scratch.

*Click*
Fawks looked down in amazement as his weapon clicked dry.

“Damned fancy bullet eating scrap!” Fawks yelled as he threw the weapon at the robot.
It swatted it out of the air.

“Oh... So unwise.”
The loader began to advance towards Fawks.
This is it thought Fawks.
The End.
Oblivion.
Death.

Twilight's Nightmare, Courtyard.
Unknown time

Twilight watched in horror as she gutted the man with the huge cannon. It was so disgusting that she almost threw up and was only saved from the ordeal by the fact that she wasn't in her body. She'd never seen death. She'd never seen murder. The most she'd seen was a broken wing on Rainbow Dash. It was terribly unfortunate then that her first experience of death be watching people be gutted and shot by what seemed to be her own hand. Many a time she had tried to yell for herself to stop and many a time she had failed. The thing controlling the body Twilight was in paid no real attention beyond the odd “What??” being heard. She yelled and yelled and yelled but got nowhere. But this... This was the final straw. She wasn't going to let this “Human” be murdered, right in front of her in such a horrible manner. She was going to yell with all physical and all mental force she could summon. She was going to stop this damned madness if it was the last thing she ever did. She'd been planning this for several minutes. She noted that every time she got her controller’s attention was when she added a little magical enhancement onto her voice and she'd been biding her time. She'd stored all the magical energy she could and she was about to unleash it. She didn't know what would happen. She didn't know if she'd survive. A least if it killed he she wouldn't have to watch any more.

Hyperion outpost, Southern Shelf Glacier.
00:15Am SPT
Fawks stood, eyes tightly shut, unafraid of death as it advanced slowly towards him.
The loader moved slowly when it walked, not because it was weighed down or slow, but because it wanted to prolong what it assumed was a horrific ordeal for Fawks.
It raised the hand bearing the talons and flexed its digits, trying to create as many scraping sounds as possible.
Its footsteps grew louder and louder until, quite suddenly, they stopped. Fawks opened his eyes and raise his head.
The loader stood, unmoving in front of Fawks, looking down with its single eye and staring.
The face of death.
Fawks had nothing to say. He was cursing Hyperion silently for creating such a monster and for sending him to this pit of a planet in the first place.

"Make final peace, if you must." The machine said, breaking the silence.
Fawks said nothing for several moments, reluctant to break his silence but curiosity got the better of him.

"Final peace?" Fawks asked

"Final peace. Human kind are known to keep things concealed and are only inclined to share them when they stare death in his cold face. Pray, cry, ask your comrades for forgiveness, I really don't care. I am simply giving you a chance to get anything of your chest." The machine finished, sounding very impatient.

"You're going to kill me. Why prolong this by allowing me final peace?" Fawks asked, confused

"It is the... Good thing to do. Yes, I intend to kill you. That doesn't mean I feel good about it. I destroy all Hyperion, but some deserve it less than others. You don't really deserve it, neither did your comrades. So I allow you final peace to allow you to gain some form of joy for you and your friends before you die."
Fawks was annoyed.

"You think I will degrade myself with begging before I die? Never. Finish this" Fawks spat.

"Very well..."
The machine raised its talon hand high.
"Goodbye, Hyperion scum."

+NO!!!+

The voice came from nowhere and hit the machine hard.

+STOP!!!+

Purple lightning shot from its eye and it fell to the floor bellowing.
It convulsed and wailed, more lightning sparking from its eye.
It thrashed its limbs and crushed concrete slabs to dust.

"What sort of damned magic is this!?"

+MY MAGIC!+

"Arg!!!"
Fawks stood, speechless, as he watched the machine flail around on the floor and yelling various curses.
The lightning and thrashing went on, and on, and on until Fawks had seen enough.
Fawks picked up the sniper Atlas had been using and approached the robot.
He pointed the barrel of the sniper at the robots eye and said:

"Well Ajax, this was one hell of a---"
Fawks never finished his line. The talons on the loaders hands quite literally cut him short. In the thrashing and convulsing on the floor its talons had just happened to thrash at the place Fawks' legs were, cutting them at the knee.

"Arg, damn!" Fawks screamed.
He blacked out, pain taking hold.

Ajax, the loader who not five minutes ago was cutting down men like a true killer, felt more helpless than ever. He convulsed wildly on the snowy ground, spectral fire spitting out of his eye in a purple stream. A voice, not his, kept yelling things in his mind. It yelled for him to stop. It yelled for him to die. It yelled demanding to know who in the hoof he was. The latter was rather strange, it must be said. He felt pain run through his mind. He had been blessed with artificial sense by the same engineer who had kitted him out for combat, but now he was regretting accepting the gift. He felt like his entire body was melting in acid. The pain was so intense it was becoming unbearable. He did, even under such pain, manage to get out a chuckle as Fawks' legs came flying over his head. Still, this was pain he had never known the likes of. It was a deep burning pain that reached his very core. It was also too much. Ajax blacked out and shut down.

Twilight's library, Equestria.
00:31am SET

Twilight woke the instant the screaming of the thing controlling her stopped and the instant Spikes began.

"Twilight! Wake up Twilight!"

"I-I-I'm awake Spike..." Twilight said, fear making her stutter.
"What happened Twilight? I woke up and you were saying all these weird things in your sleep and you wouldn't wake up! Were you having a nightmare?"
Twilight lay silently in her bed. She was sweating, she was confused and she was scared beyond belief. She didn't say anything and sat in silence.
Said silence remained for several moments before Spike broke it.

"Twilight?"

"Y-y-y-yea Spike. I t-t-think I h-had a nightmare"

Comments

[Foody Poody]

Quite the interesting concept, I like it. Except for the couple spelling and grammar errors here and there, it was enjoyable. Tracking.

[The Rar]

I'm very relieved that you liked it.
Spelling and grammar is something I have made a hard attempt at but I obviously didn't try hard enough and let a couple slip through.
My apologies. I intend to create a perfect piece of writing and spelling and grammar is something I must fix.

Bah. You so lie mr/mrs Dudaexpress. That first one was embarrasingly bad grammar wise.

[Painfulldarksoul]

Twilight the technomancer?