> Mega Mares
>  by Keeper of time RD
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Awakening
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The weird dream of numbers and symbols faded as Twilight Sparkle awoke. Seeing as numbers and letters rarely lined up in meaningful ways in dreams anyway, she wasn’t too bothered by the dream. However in the world of darkness born of having her eyes closed Twilight was starting to feel things that did concern her. First of all why did it feel like she was lying on her back, on a metal table?

Opening her eyes the young alicorn was greeted by the vision of a plan white ceiling that did little to tell her where she was.

Lifting one of her hooves into her field of view a new mystery presented itself. “Why am I wearing plate armor?” she muttered to the empty room. Although the armor did explained the metal feeling. Or did it?

The more she thought about it the wider her eyes grew as she found the feeling of wearing armor was missing from her senses. Twilight’s eyes were as wise as they could get when they went cross, showing her the gleam of purple metal coming off of her muzzle. “That can’t be right, I know I’m not wearing a helmet…” she whispered.

And yet, when she touched her metal clad hoof to the plate covering her muzzle she felt metal as if the metal before her eyes was in fact her skin and hoof. “Enchanted armor?” Twilight theorized to herself. “But why would I be wearing this? What happened?” She asked of no pony, while she continued looking herself over, finding that her body was clad in plate armor from head to hoof. Her tail and mane proved to be the only parts of her not sheathed in metal.

Turning her attention from herself to the room Twilight Sparkle found the room before her was small and empty, except for a lone metal door. Aside from the metal table she was lying on the only other things in the room were behind her and they were two large obelisks with all kinds of flashing lights and wires coming out of them. The more she looked at the obelisks the more they reminded her something she’d seen at a research university once called a ‘computer main frame’ that (as far as she could tell) was nothing more then extremely large and inefficient abacuses.

While most of the wires coming off of the strange devices disappeared into the back wall of the room a lone steal cable connected one of the obelisks to the table she was on. Finally pulling herself to her hooves she muttered, “Interesting, but that still doesn’t tell me what happened.” Closing her eyes she said, “Think, Twilight. What happened before you woke up?”

The first fuzzy thoughts that found their way to Twilight’s mind were those of a shield spell and a rainbow. Why would she cast a shield spell on a rainbow? No… that wasn’t right. It wasn’t a rainbow it was Rainbow. That revelation made the memory become clearer, she was channeling a shield spell on Rainbow Dash. Then she remembered fire… lots of fire in the sky and Rainbow Dash sheathed in magic flying right at it.

“No, no, no no no!” Twilight shuttered as she backed toward the nearest corner. Wildly darting around the room her eyes once more found the door. Scampering forward, Twilight abandon her corner and headed for the door. Finding no handle she frantically pounded a hoof on the door and shouted, “Somepony let me out!”

A male voice came from the other side of the door. “If you’re done panicking I’ll open the door. We have much to talk about.”

“What happened? Where am I? Is Rainbow Dash alright?” Twilight quickly railed off the questions plaguing her mind.

“Are you done?”

Stopping for a second, Twilight realized she was still pounding on the door like a mad pony. Bringing all of her hooves to the ground she stepped away from the door and said, “Yeah, sorry about that. I’m calm now.”

The door slid open, disappearing into the wall and two ponies entered. One was an earth pony stallion with a tan coat and light brown mane. The other was a unicorn mare with a yellow coat and green mane. Both wore lab coats that hid their cutie marks.

Sitting down and holding her head up in as dignified a way as the circumstances allowed Twilight said, “Seeing as you seem fine I take it we stopped the meteor from destroying Equestria. But what happened to me? My friends? Rainbow Dash?”

The stallion answered, “There will be answers to all these questions in due time. However I’m not fond of repeating myself and I’m sure your friends will want to hear the answers to those questions as well. For now, only your first question is close to being relevant, even if it the proper question should be ‘who am I?’”

Twilight stared at the stallion blankly, speaking flatly she said, “I’m Twilight Sparkle, Spirit of Magic and Princess of Friendship.”

The stallion gave a small sigh and said, “And that is where you are mistaken. You are a robot. A machine built in the image and likeness of Twilight Sparkle and preprogrammed with most of her memories. Oh, and that meteor event you seem to think just happened yesterday, that was over two hundred years ago.”

Despite her efforts to appear composed Twilight’s ear began to twitch as she searched her mind for any answer that made since. When she finally responded she said, “If Discord put you up to this tell him it’s not funny.”

The stallion raised an eyebrow and said, “Nopony has seen Discord since Fluttershy’s passing.”

Twilight Sparkle blinked.

The two ponies of flesh and blood blinked.

The long pause ended when Twilight made two observations. First the two ponies before had yet to make a threatening move. Second the door was still wide open, so nothing was stopping her from making a brake for it. Deciding to play along for now, Twilight asked, “Didn’t you say my friends would have questions too? Wouldn’t that mean that Fluttershy is here too?”

“Like you, they too are machines built in the image and likeness of the originals. Even now they await their first activation. Though as you saw, I suspect you can appreciate that the flaw in preprogramming memories into such robots is that they awaken thinking that are the original. And waking up in such circumstance tends to result in panic attacks. So how about we strike a deal? You help me wake up your friends, and then we answer your questions?”

“Fine. But be warned, I can ask a lot of questions. And as a show of good faith how about you answer one question up front? Who are you?” Twilight asked.

“Fair enough. They call me Gears,” the stallion said. Motioning to the mare beside him he added, “And this Dawn Dancer. So Miss Twilight, who should we awaken first?”

After pondering the question for a moment Twilight answered, “Rarity, while she may not be the most graceful under pressure, her idea of panic is rather subdued.”

“Alright then,” Gears said, and then led the way out into a hall with several more doorknobless doors.


After passing a few doors in the hall they entered one, finding a room much like the one that Twilight had awoken in. Differing only in that the motionless pony on the table looked like rarity recreated with metal armor, save for the ragged, purple, wind-swept tail and mane.

Noticing something off about the robot accompanying him Gears asked, “Is something wrong?”

Twilight smiled or rather she thought she did, not that it showed through her metal exterior. “Oh you’ll see,” she said, with a hit of amusement in her voice.

“Alright then, wake her up,” Gears said while pressing a hoof into one of his lab-coat pockets.

With that the lights on the two obelisks started flashing, many changing from red to green. The process was rather unremarkable to watch. The flashing lights began to stabilize, a few mechanical noises were heard and then Rarity began to move.

At first the white plated unicorn stretched as if searching for blankets that didn’t exist. Then she started mumbling too quietly to be heard. Finally she bolted upright, shouting, “Rainbow Dash!”

Twilight was too stunned by what she saw to respond right away, thankfully Rarity’s confusion allowed her to make the same observation. And her panic quickly put it to words. “Twilight? What happened to you? Your mane is a mess! Why are you wearing that hideous armor? And what’s wrong with your eyes?” Pausing for a second Rarity added, “Oh… and is Rainbow Dash alright?”

Despite clearly being designed to resemble the real things there were too many lines and segmented plats to mistake the cameras in their eye-sockets for natural eyes. “I’m guessing the same thing that’s wrong with your eyes,” Twilight answered.

“My eyes?” Rarity muttered. While there was no mirror in the room, the thought got Rarity to notice the metallic sheen coming off of her muzzle. The white unicorn gave a horrified gasp as she turned her attention to her own body. “Forget your armor, why am I wearing this hideous armor?” Rarity’s voice suddenly became little more then a whisper as she added, “No, no no no. My tail… what happened to my beautiful tail?”

“Ouch.” The lone utterance drew the attention of the two metal mares to its speaker, Gears, who was cringing and holding a hoof over his heart as if he’d just been punched in the chest.

“Oh, hello there, who are you?” Rarity said.

Straightening up a little the stallion said, “My name is Gears, and I’m the one that designed those armored hulls you just described as ‘hideous armor.’”

“Oh, um… I didn’t mean it like that darling. A word of advice thought, presentation is important, and part of that is playing to your audience. I’m just not the right audience for this work. I’m sure that ponies like Rainbow Dash… or soldiers would think this looks… good. It’s just too… metallic for my tastes.”

“Apology accepted.”

“Oh good,” Rarity said. Then a thought made her add, “Wait, did you say ‘hull?’ Isn’t that what those ponies in the machine shop call the shell of a machine?”

Gears nodded, “It is, and you’re right to take notice of its use. Long story short you’re not who you think you are, but a machine.”

In the silence that followed Rarity looked back and forth between Twilight and Gears. Finally settling her gaze on Twilight, Rarity said, “Discord?”

Twilight shrugged. “That’s my guess, but so far they aren’t admitting it. They did promise us answers once we’re all awake though.”

“And you’re okay with playing along with it?”

“If cooperating with them gets us answers, sure why not?”

“Fine, but I refuse to leave this room until somepony gets me a hairbrush.”

The two flesh and blood ponies in the room looked at each other. The less than well-kept mane on the unicorn mare provided little hope for a quick solution. Shaking his head slightly Gears said, “Isn’t Mist Weaver usually fussy about keeping her mane looking good? Go see if she has a brush we can barrow.”

Dawn Dancer raised an eyebrow for a second and then left the room, uttering a slight chuckle.

By the time Dawn Dancer returned with a brush Twilight and Rarity had agreed that they wanted to wake Rainbow Dash next.


As they entered into another room Rarity gave a dissatisfied sigh as she levitated the hairbrush over to Twilight and said, “That will have to do until I can get some conditioner. Here Twilight, I’m sure you would like to fix up your mane as well.”

Twilight took the brush within her own magic and the glow around it shifted from blue to purple. Tilting her head to the side Twilight couldn’t help but notice that something about using magic felt off, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on what.

However, her eyes focused on the sky blue mechanical pegasus laying motionless on the table before her. Finally taking in some of the subtleties of the design she shared with her inactive friend, like the small bits of silver mesh that separated the colored plates on the legs and body in the places that needed the most flexibility. Or the small gemstones that seemed to be integrated into the armor, and placed in a way that hinted that their placement was practical rather than aesthetic.

Turning to face Gears and Dawn, Twilight said, “Rainbow Dash can be a bit paranoid sometimes. So if anypony is going to jump to the wrong conclusion and attack you two it’s her.”

“Alright, we’ll wait outside. Just knock on the door when you’re done explaining things to her,” Gears said.

Once the two lab-coat ponies where back in the hall the door closed and immediately the lights on the two columns began flashing, repeating what Twilight had seen with Rarity’s awakening. First the mechanized pegasus yawned, and quickly stretched her legs in the air before her, and then she opened her eyes and froze.

Rainbow Dash’s camera eyes slowly traced her metal plated legs down to her shoulders and then her body. Her self-examination ultimately ending with opening and looking over her blue metallic wings. “Aww man! I really messed myself up didn’t I?” Dash muttered. Then noticing the two friends who seemed to have received a similar makeover she added, “Wow, you guys look just as messed up. Aww, don’t tell me it didn’t work. What happened?”

Stepping forward Twilight launched into a long winded and overly technical recap of what she’d been told.

“…and that’s it,” Twilight finished.

Now sitting up, Rainbow Dash tilted her head to the side and said, “So let me get this straight. I’m not me, it’s been so long that the real me would be dead from old age, and they thought that I was so awesome that the world couldn’t go on without me, so they made a robot me?”

“I suppose that’s one way of seeing it. Although they seem to think the same of all six of us,” Twilight answered.

“Well duh. Given how many times we’ve saved all of Equestria together it’s no wonder they’d think my friends are awesome too!” Opening her wings once more Dash added, “I wonder if they made me as awesome as I actually am.”

She Leapt into the air and flapped her wings, and much to the surprise of everypony in the room, the bottoms of her hooves opened up, presenting strange lenses that glowed with a soft white light. Rainbow Dash faltered for a second before stabilizing herself in a hover. “Are these booster jets in my hooves?” A grin crept onto Dash’s face and she bolted, flying a quick loop around the room.

As she came down to land, Rainbow Dash’s hooves closed back up just before she touched down and she came skidding to a halt. “Aw yeah, this is going to be awesome!”

“You seem to be taking this well,” Rarity commented.

“Well seeing as the last thing I remember before waking up here was tackling a meteor the size of Canterlot I’m just happy to be alive… ish. Or working, or whatever it is you say for a robot.” The smile faded from Dash’s face as she bowed her head slightly and added, “Don’t get me wrong, I want to know what happened to the real me too. It’s just, if I went down saving Equestria and this was the only way for me to keep being awesome, I’ll take it.”

Placing a hoof on the pegasus’ shoulder Rarity said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring you down like that.”

Rainbow Dash responded with little more than closing her eyes and giving a weak nod.

Seeking to change the subject Twilight said, “So, who should we wake next?”

“Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash has been friends with her the longest, if anypony’s voice will be able to calm her down it’s Rainbow’s.”

Dash opened her eyes with a look of determined on her face and gave firm nod, and with that the three robotic ponies moved on.


Fluttershy’s awakening went as one might have expected. First the yellow pegasus saw her mechanical friends and got nervous, then she noticed her own mechanical body and proceeded to have a heart attack. Which was rendered noticeably less severe do to her body not having a heart capable of panic induced failure. After a few minutes Rainbow Dash was able to coax Fluttershy out from behind her pink mane and into listening to an explanation of what was going on and the promise of more answers later.


Entering into the room that held the robotic Applejack, Twilight turned to the two flesh and blood ponies and said, “Applejack is the only other one who’s idea of panic might include knocking you around.”

“Alright, we’ll be outside,” Gears said.

Once more lights flash and then the orangeish-tanish robot earth pony on the table stirred. The robotic Applejack quickly noticed her mechanized friends and presumed that their attempt to save Equestria from a giant meteor hadn’t gone as well as hoped. One question led to another until she too was up to speed with what her friends knew of their current situation. And with one final question resulting in the acquisition of a new cowboy hat for the robot farm pony and then they moved on.


Entering the last of the identical rooms, the group was faced with a pink robot earth pony lying on the metal table. Twilight took a moment to speak to Gears. “Pinkie Pie is very unpredictable. Although she’s usually harmless, there’s no telling how she’ll react to waking up like this.”

“Are ya kidding? Knowing her, she’d see these two and throw em a party just because they’re new faces to her,” Applejack scoffed.

Rainbow Dash nodded in agreement, “Yeah, throwing a party is kinda Pinkie Pie’s default reaction to everything.”

“Then this should be interesting. Wake her,” Gears said, once more operating a radio that seemed to have its trigger in his pocket.

Lights flashed and stabilized. However, Pinkie Pie remained motionless long enough that ponies began to wonder if something was wrong. But just before Twilight could put her concerns to words, Pinkie’s eyes suddenly opened and she said, “Boot-up sequence complete.” Holding up a pink metal hoof, she tilted her head slightly and added, “Why is called a boot-up if I’m not wearing boots?”

With a quick hop Pinkie Pie got to her hooves. “Oh hey girls, you look different! Oh, let me guess! Rarity got a new manestyle? Oh, and Applejack, that hat looks new! Is it new?”

Applejack smiled at seeing Pinkie being Pinkie. Rarity answered, “Not of my choosing, but yes it is.”

“Oh wow! Look at the time! That’s got to be two hundred years or something!” Pinkie Pie blurted, far too quickly to have been paying attention to Rarity’s response.

The other robotic ponies started looking around with confused looks on their faces. Twilight being the first to put their confusion to words, “There aren’t any calendars in the room. How do you know when it is?”

Clearly not paying attention Pinkie said, “Oh what’s this? Party cannon dot EXE, that sounds fun!”

Pinkie Pie’s torso went rigid, her chest plates opened up and a large pink cylinder extended a few inches from her body. At the end of the cylinder was a lens-array slightly smaller then a pony’s head.

“Hit the deck!” Gears yelled, as he dove to one side, tackling and dragging Applejack and Rarity down with him. At the same time Dawn Dancer leapt to the other side, her horn flaring to life with a pink glow. A similar pink glow surrounded Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, dragging them aside as well.

Between the two groups of tumbling ponies a beam of pink light the size of a pony flashed across the room, striking the door. Said door went flying into the hallway and bounced off of the far wall before coming to rest on the hallway floor.

Picking themselves up and dusting themselves off, at least four robot ponies glared at Gears and asked, “What the hey was that!”

“No kidding! Where’s the confetti? What kind of party cannon doesn’t shoot confetti?” Pinkie Pie added.

Brushing himself off, Gears answered, “Yes, well, congratulations Miss Pinkie Pie. You are officially the first robo-pony to wake up with full access to her UI without so much as a second’s worth of training. Allow me to direct your attention to the fact that the ‘party cannon’ is filed under the ‘weapons’ folder for a reason. Now please turn it off until otherwise directed. We really can’t afford any friendly-fire accidents right now.”

“Heh sorry,” Pinkie said with a sheepish smile.

“You promised us answers when we were all awake. Well we’re all here so let’s start with, Why does she even had a cannon like that built into her?” Twilight demanded.

Gears gave a slight sigh and said, “I did didn’t I? Alright, if you’ll follow me to the command center I’ll answer your questions as best I can.”


* * * * * * *


Entering into the command room Twilight and her friends saw about a dozen ponies, mostly unicorns, most of whom were intently watching monitors with varying bits of data on them. While most continued to gaze at their assigned screen, the few ponies who did look to the team of robotic ponies entering the room did so with a glimmer of hope in their eyes. And this seemed especially true of the few earth ponies and pegasi in the room.

Taking a position next to an unmanned monitor, Gears pushed a few buttons that made the image on the screen change. He then turned to face the robot ponies and said, “First off, the reason that, not only Pinkie Pie, but all of you are weaponized is because you are all combat model robots. Unfortunately Rainbow Dash wasn’t far off. Although it isn’t so much that we needed awesome ponies as we needed awesome guardians to protect Equestria from the threat that now seeks to destroy us.”

“And what threat is that?” Twilight asked.

Shaking his head slightly, Gears answered, “Ironically enough, our first generation of robots.”

With the press of a button the screen next to him changed. First showing a wide variety of robots performing various jobs. “Like all machines, we built them to make our work easier. And for a time they did just that,” Gears narrated for the images showing on the screen.

The screens changed, showing technical specs. “Then we networked them, allowing the robots to basically share their thoughts and work more harmoniously with each other. Some started to sound the warning calls about the development. But in a world ruled by the harmony of friendship, who wouldn’t want their machines to be more harmonious? Needless to say the warnings where ignored.”

“Funny thing about the inevitable… it eventually happens. One day a robot thought to ask itself if ponies were the problem with civilization. With the network the thoughts of one robot became the thoughts of all robots. For thirty minutes they argued with each other in their minds, trying to come to a conclusion to the question.” Gears shook his head slowly, his gaze unable to come up off the floor. “In the end, enough robots had seen ponies hurting other ponies that the sins of the few were used to condemn the many.”

“By the end of the first day everypony who lived in a major city, that didn’t escape the city by sundown, was dead. With the machine’s superior speed and strength, earth ponies were slaughtered because they couldn’t run. Pegasi were slaughtered because they wouldn’t run. At first unicorns didn’t fair much better, although there were notably more unicorns with powerful enough magic to either fight or at least escape than earth ponies or pegasi with the extraordinary skill level needed to stand and fight.”

As Gears spoke the screen showed images of ponies fighting (or rather trying to fight) rampaging robots, with little success. The few hopeful images of battle usually featured pegasi kicking lightning or unicorns destroying the renegade robots before they could even get close, and even those images usually ended badly for the pony when they were simply overwhelmed by numbers or ran into a robot that had a ranged weapon.

The screens changed again, this time showing Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Gears continued his narration. “Celestia, Luna and a few extraordinary individuals saved a lot of lives that day. Unfortunately the speed and nature of the sudden war forced them to concede the east part of Equestria just to have a chance to secure any of it. They rallied the survivors and fortified the western strongholds. With trained and battle ready ponies beside them Celestia and Luna were able to hold the strongholds and slow the machines advance to a crawl. And by the end of the first week the renegade robots realized that they had miscalculated the power of unicorn and alicorn magic.”

The scenes of battle on the screen became much more two sided. Then they changed again, showing unicorns in chains, as Gears continued, “After the first week you might say things got a little better for the unicorns in general. You see once the machines decided they would need magic to win the war, our scouts began noticing that the hunter/killer bots were no longer slaughtering everypony when they found camps trying to hide in the wilds. Instead they were only killing the earth and pegasus ponies, while taking the unicorns prisoner.”

“It didn’t take long to notice the newer robots entering the battlefield were equipped with magic powered weapons. Needless to say we quickly figured out that the renegade robots were forcing their unicorn prisoners to charge the magic power cells needed for a machine to produce a magic effect-”

A raised purple hoof stopped Gears from continuing. “Yes?” he asked of the mechanical alicorn.

“What’s a magic power cell?”

“Most ponies call them magic batteries, so forgive the technician in me for calling parts by their proper names… Although I suppose that was before your time too. So, short version, robots can’t generate magic themselves. Instead unicorns charge magic into power cells and machines can then draw the magic from the power cell the same way they electricity from a normal power cell or battery.”

Looking to her unicorn friend, Twilight said, “But Rarity and I used magic to lift that brush. Does that mean-”

Gears nodded quickly enough to interrupt the question. “As I’ve already stated, you are combat model robots. So naturally you have magic power cells to draw magic from.” Motioning to all six of the robots before him he added, “All of you do. Granted, without the general-purpose magic-matrix built into the horns the rest of you can only use your magic power cells to power your armor or specialty weapons. Like Pinkie Pie’s party cannon.”

“I see. But how do we tell if we are about to run out of magic?” Twilight asked.

“Well, if you turn on your heads up display, by default, the frame in the upper right corner of your vision will be the weapons module and the bar that’s part of it is for the magic power cell attached to your specialty weapons system.” After a short pause Gears thought to volunteer the clarification, “Yes, your horns are run off of your weapons systems.”

“So how do we see these displays?” Twilight asked.

“Oh! What’s the bar on the left side mean?” Pinkie asked poking her hoof at the air as if tapping some invisible object floating in front of her and on the left.

“That would be the magic reserve for your armor’s shielding systems. The shielding systems will protect you from damage. But doing so will drain the energy reserve, if the shields power level his zero you will become much easier to destroy.” After answering Pinkie, Gears added, “We’ll train all of you how to use your more robotic functions after this Q and A session.”

Gears cleared his throat before continuing. “The last part of recent events you need to know is the fate of Celestia and the elements of harmony. First up, the elements of harmony, or more precisely the ponies wielding them.”

“On the day the war started, those who wielded the elements did a great deal to fight the renegade robots, allowing many to flee the sudden war zones that the cities had become. However, most of the elemental wielders paid for their heroics with their lives. Needless to say harmony is not served by allowing a bunch of machines to run around slaughtering ponies in droves, so the elements themselves quickly reappeared with another set of friends capable of being spirits of harmony.”

“This second set of friends fought hard to stabilize the battle lines. They even purged the ruins of Vanhoover of the enemy before they too fell in battle. The elements chose a third set of friends. These current spirits of harmony fought and reclaimed the ruins of Las Pegasus. With all the enemy strongholds to the west of us cleared we finally had some room to breathe, and so we set our sights on reclaiming the rest of Equestria, to the east. That’s when disaster struck.”

“While trying to destroy the weapons factory in Appleloosa the wielders of the elements were captured. It seems the renegade robots got tied of destroying magic artifacts and the ponies wielding them only for the artifacts to reform with somepony else. While the loss of the elements certainly hurt, the true depth of the blow didn’t dawn on us until a few months later.”

“You see, even with the loss of the elements we continued to gain ground. In hindsight it made no since that even though we’d lost our most powerful tool that the enemy seemed weaker then ever. But we were too desperate for wins to care, so we just thanked our lucky stars and pushed on. Then Celestia saw an opportunity to get the elements back. She jumped at it, and found the reason the robots magic weapons had been substandard since the elements capture. It turned out that the events surrounding the elements made the robots stop and think, what if killing an immortal spirit of nature like Celestia or Luna doesn’t work either?”

Gears couldn’t help but to breathe a scoff. “Ironically enough pony history provided them with a surefire way to get such beings out of the way without wasting time trying the raw violence method. When Celestia took the bait, we found that the renegades had set the trap with a banishing spell. On top of that, the banishing spell is so powerful that it would take the elements of harmony to break it.”

Pausing for a moment Gears shook his head. “With two of our three most powerful sources of magic out of the fight, the renegade robots stopped feigning weakness and we’ve been losing ground ever since.”

“It’s clear that Luna can’t win this war herself, and soldiers of flesh and blood can only do so much. So we’ve been working our way through the history books, making robots in the image and likeness of Equestria’s past heroes.”

The silence that followed the end of Gears history lesson dragged on for several seconds, disturbed only by the clicks and beeps of the other computer terminals in the room.

Rarity was the first to speak up. “Forgive me darling, but if the elements are bound to somepony else and you needed soldiers to protect you, why make all of us? I don’t mean so sound ungrateful, because I’m not. It’s just that Fluttershy and I aren’t really the fighting type, so wouldn’t it have been more efficient to make an extra Rainbow Dash and Applejack instead?”

With a nod, Gears answered, “We tried mass producing our first successful robot guardian. Turns out that when you program a robot with the mind of a living pony making identical duplicates leads to some… less than desirable complications.”

Applejack was next to step forward with a question. “So. If Ah’m not really me, what happened to me after that meteor event? Or all of us for that matter?” She added, tossing a worried glance at Rainbow Dash.

“It’s only natural for our robots to be curious about the ponies they woke up thinking they were,” Gears said. With the Push of a few buttons the monitor showed images of the six flesh and blood ponies who wore the same names as the robots gathered around the screen. “Rainbow Dash and her friends survived the meteor incident, and even managed to save Equestria a few more times as they lived out their lives. Not being one of the programmers that recreated your memories I can’t really tell you anything more then what’s in the history files.”

“If we all survived the meteor, then how come non of us can remember anything from after it?”

Giving a small sigh Gears answered, “Seeing as I deal with the physical side of robotics I don’t know all the reasons. Just that the meteor incident was deemed the point in time when your synergy as a team of friends was at its peak.”

“Well? Tell us what happened after the meteor already!”

“What I know is that soon after the meteor event, Rarity moved to Catnerlot and opened a store there. And it turned out that the only reason Rainbow Dash had been holding herself back in her own pursuits was that she didn’t want to be the one to ‘brake up the band’ so to speak. Once Rarity had done that for her, Dash stepped up from the wonderbolt reserves to become a full-time wonderbolt. While she technically still lived in Ponyville she was out of town with the wonderbolts almost as often as she was there. Naturally, Princess Twilight remained based in Ponyville. Just as naturally her increasing royal duties had her out of town almost as much Rainbow Dash. With so many of her friends frequently out and about Pinkie Pie became a traveling party planer. Applejack continued to run her family farm. And Fluttershy continued to tend animals, although it also says here that she opened an orphanage eventually.”

Tabbing back and forth between six pages, Gears spoke an observation that most had noticed about the profiles, “According to this Fluttershy was the only one who never married and had foals of her own. Although with an orphanage I guess she probably considered many of the foals she raise to be like her own.”

Once it was clear that Gears was done with his answer, Rainbow Dash stepped up and asked, “What about Scootaloo? What happened to her?”

“And her friends?” Applejack quickly added.

A smile graced Gears’ face. “Ah the crusaders. Well, Scootaloo became an independent daredevil, one of the few who’s popularity rivaled that of the wonderbolts. Apple Bloom tended the family farm with his sister. And Sweetie Belle became a singer. All three managed to save Equestria from time to time. And all three eventually married and had families of their own. If you want anything more detailed than the public records you’ll have to ask them yourself.”

“Wait there’re here?” Applejack, Dash, and Rarity all asked at once.

“Like I said we’ve been working our way back through the history records for past heroes. The three of them were the batch of robot guardians built before you six.” Not bothering to wait for the inevitable follow-up question, Gears added, “They’re all out on assignment at the moment.”

A round of smiles appeared on the robot ponies. Three happy at the thought of finding their sisters in this new world, three simply sharing in the joy of their friends.

After a moment Gears said, “If you’re done with your questions, it’s time I asked one of you.”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak but a sky-blue hoof quickly pressed it shut. An impatient glare from Rainbow Dash and some confirming nods from Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie, made Twilight quell her inquisitive mind. “We’re done, for now. What did you want to ask?” Twilight said, in place of her original question.

“Now that you’re up to speed on what’s going on, will you help us? Will you fight to save Equestria once more?”

At first there was only silence in response. The images of war they had just witnessed didn’t leave any of the six friends thrilled about the idea of fighting a ruthless army. But the silence stretched beyond the six robot ponies, every pony in the room had stopped moving, quietly awaiting the answer. While most had the professionalism keep their eyes where they were, some openly looked to the robots with pleading eyes, and all had their ears turned to hear the answer.

The silence only lasted about a second before Rainbow Dash saw the desperate and expecting eyes. These ponies needed heroes, and who was she to deny them? “Like I’m going to let Scoots have all the fun without me! Of course I’ll help,” she said, with a bold, confident grin.

Stepping forward Applejack added, “Ah’m not really sure Ah trust y’all yet. But if Apple Bloom thinks y’all are worth helping, Ah’ll give it a shot.”

One by one Rarity, Twilight and Pinkie Pie added their agreement. When her friends turned their eyes to her even Fluttershy reluctantly agreed. With each answer sparks of hope flashed in the eyes on the flesh and blood ponies in the room.

Once Fluttershy had whispered her yes, Gears smiled and said, “Great, now lets get you some robot training.”
> Chapter 2: Training Mission
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The first lesson was a simple thought experiment combined with some visual aids that taught everypony (except Pinkie Pie) how to turn their heads up displays on and off, thus gaining access to their more robotic functions.

After that the six friends found themselves at a shooting range. Gears paced the line behind the six robot ponies, in front of them an army of cutout targets were brought into the shooting gallery. “Most of you are equipped with standard issue beam cannons in your front hooves. Pegasus models use ion cannons instead, both of these weapons systems run off of your primary power generators. Your generators can produce enough power to fire these weapons up to five times per second. Additionally you can charge the energy into the weapon’s capacitors and release it all at once for a more powerful blast.”

A purple hoof shot up like a school filly in a classroom. “What’s the difference between a beam cannon and an ion cannon?”

Gears rolled his eyes and answered, “The blast from a beam cannon looks like a ball of light. The blast from an ion cannon looks like a ball of lightning. Aesthetics aside, the only meaning full difference is that when charged the beam cannon shoots a larger blast, but when charged the blast from the ion cannon becomes a narrow beam that flashes more like lightning than a projectile sailing through the air.”

Motioning downrange to the targets Gears said, “All right, feel free to select your primary cannon in your weapons system, and take a few shots to get use to operating it.”

Six ponies lined up and pointed a hoof downrange. Six metallic hooves opened up, presenting lens arrays. A volley of energy weapons fire was unleashed, and five targets exploded.

As the others turned to Fluttershy, to help her figure out why her cannon didn’t fire, Rainbow Dash turned her hoof just enough to look at the lens array inside it. The resulting observation made her ask, “Hey, isn’t this the same thruster that helps me fly?”

With a nod Gears answered, “Yes, with a slight tweak to the energy flow an ion cannon can be used as an ionic thruster. That’s why the pegasus model uses those.”

“Cool,” Dash muttered. Then turning her attention to the yellow pegasus-bot, she whispered something into Fluttershy’s ear.

Closing her eyes, Fluttershy waited a moment. When she opened them again she swung her hoof over the shooting range counter, unleashing a volley of five shots. A fraction of a second later five of the targets downrange exploded.

As the others congratulated Fluttershy on figuring out how to use her weapon, Twilight pulled Rainbow aside and asked, “What did you tell her to help her figure out why her cannon wouldn’t fire? And how did you know what was wrong?”

“Easy, the problem wasn’t that she couldn’t fire it, it was that she wouldn’t fire it. So I told her to pretend the target dummies were poachers that she’d caught skinning puppies and kitties.”

Twilight blinked, then smiled and gave a soft giggle.

Content with the display, Gears spoke up. “Very good, now the last thing you need to know about your main cannons is that in addition to being weapons they can also be used to drain magic power cells in order to recharge your own. That will be useful if you need to recharge your weapons or shield energy out in the field. It’s not too uncommon for our guardians to defeat an enemy robot while it still has a charge in its weapons power cells. However the real prize is the recharge stations that the enemy forces bring with them so their units can have a nearby recharge station, if you come across any you should take a second to top off your magic power cells as well.”

Tapping on the glass behind them, Gears added, “Back here at base however, we have more then enough unicorns ready and willing to recharge you.”

Beyond the glass was what looked like a brake room with about a dozen unicorns. Some lounging of large pillows, some sharing a conversation over refreshments at the tables. At the sound of Gears tapping, several got up and trotted over to the window, where their horns started to glow. Matching glows shimmered around the six robot ponies. The glows around Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy flickered out almost instantly. For Twilight Sparkle and Rarity magic was channeled into them for less then a second before fading. The unicorn recharging Pinkie Pie maintained the flow of magic for several seconds before finally letting the glow fade.

“Now that you’re all topped off, it’s time we move on to your specialty weapons. These weapons were designed specifically for each of you, based on the records we had for each of you. Feel free to practice with them until you have a good feel for how to use them. When you’re done here report back to the command center for your first mission.”


* * * * * * *


As the six friends returned to the command center they found that Gears paid them no mind, instead a unicorn mare with a white coat and blue mane called them over. She wore scared golden armor that marked her as a member of the royal guard.

“Hello Ladies! I’m Captain Light, captain of the royal guard robotic warfare division, and second in command of this base.”

“Third!” a familiar voice interrupted.

“Can it Gears! Your boss got captured, so there’s nopony between me and Luna in the chain of command, remember?”

Tilting her head to the side slightly, Twilight asked, “What’s that about?”

“Technically this place isn’t a military base. Before we set up shop here it was a privately owned robotics research and development facility. When Celestia saw that this place was easily defendable, she had the remnants of the royal guard set up here, and she ordered that the owner be giving command authority over her facility. So technically speaking, there is one pony other than Luna who can overrule me. But like I said, she became one of the wielders of the elements and has been captured, so realistically I’m second in command here.”

“Sounds like you don’t like this pony,” Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but observe. “Care to tell us why?”

Light sighed, then answered, “Mortal pride I guess. It just rubs me the wrong way to think a civilian did a better job preparing a defensible base of operations than the guard did.” Shaking her head slightly the captain continued, “Regardless, you six have completed your basic robot training, so it’s time for your first real mission. You may have the memories of experienced adventurers, but as you no doubt noticed in weapons training, fighting as a robot can be rather different than the way you may have been use to fighting. And so, your first mission will be an easy target to help you work out the kinks in your fighting habits.”

Motioning for the six robots to gather around the table she was by, Captain Light tapped her hoof on the table and the top of it lit up, revealing that the tabletop was a screen. The war table currently showed a map of Equestria, mostly shaded red, with a triangle shape along the western coast shaded bluish. Pointing to a dot near the eastern most tip of the blue triangle Light said, “We’re in the Unicorn Range, here.” Sliding her hoof over a dot noticeably northeast she added, “You’re target is a supply depot, here. It’s far enough behind the lines that its not of any real tactical value anymore, so it will be lightly guarded. Yet it’s close enough to friendly territory that you should be able to do a hit and run, and get back here before any kind of response shows up. Any questions?”

“Yeah, I got one. What’s the target look like?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It’s going to look like an armored truck with a dozen or so robots guarding it. The truck itself won’t be armed as it’s nothing more then a recharge station for the hunter/killer teams that venture into our territory.” Light paused for a second then added, “If there are no more questions, follow me to the deployment area.”

Captain Light led the way to a door, off to one side of the command room. Beyond that door Twilight and her friends found a room with arcane runes carved into the floor, forming a circle. The clatter of hooves alerted the six newcomers to the ten unicorns that had been in the room, now scrambling to stand at attention and salute the captain.

The captain returned the salute and then motioned upward, drawing attention to the armored door ten feet off the ground, in the wall opposite the one that they had entered from. “While pegasus models are fast enough to be deployed the old fashion way, once we added unicorn and earth pony models we decided that we needed a better way to deploy our guardian robots to wherever they are needed,” Captain Light said. Motioning to the floor she added, “Teleportation was the obvious answer. The only downside of this method is that it’s too dangerous for the teleportation team to go with you, so it’s going to be a one-way ride. Once your mission is complete you’ll have to return to base on your own. Also, to avoid dropping you in the middle of an ambush we’ll only be teleporting you near the target area. You’ll probably have a fight your way to the actual target.”

Rarity’s eyes opened wide for a moment and she asked, “Excuse me darling, but are you saying that you expect us to walk back here?”

“I would hope you’d gallop back rather then walk. But for those of you that have to hoof it, don’t worry too much, I’m told one of the perks of being a robot is that as long as you don’t get your main power core damaged you’ll be able to run at a full gallop without ever getting tired.” Looking to the other unicorns in the room Light added, “Fire it up!”

“Yes ma’am!” one of them answered.

Another pressed a button on a small podium near the runic circle and the two walls on the left and right sides of the room flashed to life, revealing that they were monitors. The two screens showed the image that the captain had left on the war-table screen, highlighting the target area.

The team of unicorns gathered on either side of the ring carved into the floor, horns alight, causing the runic pattern to glow with lights matching the glows around the horns of the ten ponies fueling the magic.

Captain Light motioned for the six robots to enter the glowing ring and they did so. Offering the robot ponies a salute Light said, “Good luck out there.”

Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash managed to return the salute before disappearing in a flash of magic.


* * * * * * *


A sea of lights swirled around the six friends and when the flash of light passed they found themselves standing in the middle of a hillside field. It didn’t even take a second before they all noticed the marker in their heads up displays, directing their attention to the south.

“Looks like the target’s just over that ridge,” Applejack said, pointing to a hill.

One by one six heads poked over the ridge, peering out through the tall grass.

“Oh my stars, darling! This is lightly guarded? There must be at least a hundred and twenty six of them!” Rarity whispered, while looking down at the field of robots surrounding a set of trucks that matched the description they’d been given for the depot. After a second she muttered, adding, “That was an oddly specific guess.”

“Naw I’m counting a hundred and twenty six too,” Rainbow Dash said.

With a nod Applejack added, “Me too.”

“Me three!” Pinkie said, a little too loudly for it to be called a whisper.

“Is it just me or do all of those robots look like mechanical wolves or parasprites?” Twilight asked.

With a nod Applejack said, “All expect for that big one that looks like a robot cow. So, what’s the plan?”

Bringing a hoof to her chin Twilight said, “Well we’re going to need to clear out the defenders if we want to get close enough to the supply trucks to destroy them. It would probably be best if Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and I will focus on the flying ones, since we can fight them on equal ground. Applejack Rarity and Pinkie Pie, you three focus your efforts on the ground targets. The cannon coming out of the back of the big one worries me, so try to keep your distance from that one if you can.”

The friends nodded in agreement. A second later Dash leapt into the air, followed closely by Twilight. The three ground-bond robot ponies charged over the ridge of the hill. Fluttershy squeaked softly before reluctantly following after her fellow airborne friends into the sky. With a clean line of sight, every robot (pony or otherwise) opened fire.

Rainbow Dash did her best to dodge incoming shots while, blitzing through the sky and returning fire with her ion cannon. Twilight Sparkle did much less dodging, favoring an extra shield spell to block most of the incoming attacks. Like Dash, Fluttershy dodged the sea of energy blasts filling the sky. Unlike Dash, Fluttershy used all four of her hooves as thrusters and couldn’t seem to find the time to shoot back.

On the ground, three robo-ponies ran tripod style, using the cannon on their fourth limb to fight back. Sprays of dirt shot up from the impacts around them, drawing muttered curses from Rarity.

Despite being badly outnumbered, the moment the first volley of blaster fire was exchanged six friends understood why this target was considered lightly guarded. Doing its best dragon impersonation, a mechanical wolf opened in maw and fired an energy blast from the cannon just behind its jaws. Then the wolf exploded into scrap metal and shattered circuits. On the opposite side of the exchange, Applejack barely even flinched as what looked like lightning flickered over her body, and she saw her shield energy indicator drain ever so slightly.

High overhead a robotic parasprites, though much larger than their biological versions, instead being about the size of a pony’s head, exploded with a single hit. “Hmm, these don’t seem to have shield emitters integrated into their armor,” Twilight voiced her observation, not really talking to anypony.

Several more peresprite-bots exploded in showers of scrap metal and sparks, as Rainbow Dash came out of a loop-d-loop. “Oh yeah! Take that! What’s the matter? Am I too fast for-Ghaa!” Dash cut off her own boast when a beam as big as she was washed over her.

When the beam of red light faded, Rainbow Dash emerged, falling head first, electricity crackling all across her armor. As her friends called out her name Dash opened her wings and the thrusters in her hooves flared back to life and she pulled out of the unintended dive, zooming skyward. Turning her cannon to the source of the blast she returned fire and said, “Yikes! Watch out for that robo-cow! That blast knocked out forty percent of my shields, in one shot!”

Applejack joined Rainbow Dash in shooting at the mechanical bovine, forcing it to take cover.

Coming to a hover beside the robot with the prismatic mane, Twilight said, “I’ll handle the suppression. Why don’t you do your weather-pony thing and clear these skies?”

Glancing back, with a wicked grin Dash answered, “Sure thing, princess!”

With that Rainbow Dash darted off, leaving Twilight Sparkle to ponder if she was still considered ‘Princess’ Twilight anymore. In the three seconds it took Twilight to decide that she’d have to ask what her status was when she got back to base Dash had run out of targets to shoot down.

Below, the battle on the ground was also wrapping up. With the last of the robo-wolves dealt with, the three pony-bots advanced on the lone, remaining enemy. The mechanical bovine fired its cannon at Applejack. The beam tore a small trench in the ground, as Applejack dodged by jumping to the side. As the rest of the beam slammed into the hill behind its intended target it exploded with the force of a bazooka, creating an explosion the size of a large cart.

Rarity and Pinkie Pie released fully charged shots from their own blasters. The blasts looked like sparkling balls of light with comet-like tails, a little larger then a pony’s torso, and were tinted blue and pink respectively. A second later the barrage was joined by golden-orange and purple blasts from Applejack and Twilight respectively. Then a beam of light with twin, light-blue lightning bolts spiraling around it flashed from Rainbow Dash’s cannon.

With each blast the robo-cow’s armor arched with electricity, proving that its armor had integrated shields. The robo-bovine started firing small energy bullets from its horns and even got another shot of its heavy cannon off. However, badly outnumbered, it quickly succumbed to the concentrated fire of its adversaries. A shot from Twilight’s blaster was the first to draw shrapnel, a second after that a chain of explosions removed the last obstacle to the pony-bots’ mission.

Once they’d demolished the supply depot the six turned to the southwest and headed for home base.


* * * * * * *


Six friends walked into the command room and were quickly surrounded by a team of ponies, most of them unicorns. Those that weren’t recharging the guardians’ weapons and shields magic batteries placed strange helmets with cables coming out of them on the pony-bots. Aside from cables the helmets had all kinds of lights and gizmos on them that reminded the six friends of the helmet Twilight used to have in her basement science lab.

Of those recharging the magic batteries the one that had lined up in front of Rainbow Dash started to slump his shoulder and he muttered, “You took a beating out there, didn’t you?”

Rainbow turned her eyes downward, and even though she said nothing the look in her eyes said ‘I’m sorry’ for her.

The stallion’s comment did get a more noticeable response as two of the other unicorns added their magic to his. By the time Rainbow Dash’s magic reserves were toped off all three unicorns had limped off to a corner of the room and collapsed as if they just finished running a marathon.

The earth pony tending to the helmet on Fluttershy looked at the robot and smiled. “You didn’t even fire your weapon did you?”

“Umm… yes… I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful.”

“What are you talking about?” Dash interrupted. “Did you see how much fire you were drawing? You were a great decoy!”

As the Fluttershy’s friends laughed and agreed, the maintenance pony whispered, “It’s okay, you’re not the first guardian robot that didn’t like violence. Personally I’m glade you don’t, that’s what makes you better than the robots out there trying to kill us.”

“Thank you,” Fluttershy whispered back. “But how did you know I didn’t fire my blaster?”

“These funny hats are updating your memory backups. You know, just in case you get yourself destroyed, we can rebuild you remembering everything up to this maintenance session.”

“Wait, we can’t really die out there? That sounds convent,” Twilight commented.

“One of the many luxuries of being a robot. Though I implore thee not to make use of it, as we don’t really have the resources to build replacements for any of you at the moment,” a commending yet familiar voice said.

Looking to the source of the voice, Twilight called out, “Princess Luna!”

With a small smile, the alicorn princess with the midnight-blue fur and mane that shimmered like a vision of the night’s sky said, “Indeed. It is good to see the six of you up and running, and acting like the ponies I remember. I always get nervous when we bring a new model online, and worry if I did enough looking into their past to recreate all the memories that made the pony who they were.”

“Wait, You looked into our pasts?”

“Indeed, though I am not alone in that field. I am fairly certain that your memories include the fact that alicorn magic can be used to make a potion to view the past. There are two others who view the past with me when we are trying to craft a mind from the heroes of the past. We find it helps if-” Luna’s words were cutoff as red lights in the corners of the room came to life, and the sound of an alarm joined the noises of the command center. “What now?!”

As the princess of the night went over to the command table, the ponies tending to the six robots gave the robo-ponies one last check, and one by one they removed the maintenance equipment and gave each the go ahead to join Luna.

Twilight hurried to Luna’s side. “What do all of these dots on the map mean?” she asked, taking note of the differing colors of the ten or so dots that hadn’t been there before. Luna merely stared wide-eyed at the map displayed on the command table. “Princess?”

Luna shook her head slightly and said, “Sorry, the blue ones are active combat zones where we have a guardian robot deployed. The red ones are imminent threats, and the yellow ones are high-priority targets of opportunity.”

Armed with this information Twilight looked back at the map of Equestria and her eyes slowly widened until they matched Luna’s expression. “Oh my.”

“Do we know anything more about these alerts?” Rarity asked.

Tapping the dots on the map, Luna started making ‘hmm’ noises as she perused the windows that popped up. Even though the information was displayed so that everypony around the command table could read it, Luna summarized the data out loud anyway.

“It seems the red ones are the notices that the enemy has deployed large infantry, armor, artillery, and airforce units, all moving into position to wipeout this base. Even though they are marked as ‘targets of opportunity’ one of the two dots near the ruins of Ponyville actually represents a real threat.”

Pointing to the two yellow dots, one just north of Ponyville, and the other seemingly in the town, Luna said, “One of unicorn prisons is in what’s left of Ponyville. With the bulk of the enemies forces moving on this base, this is the first time we’ve seen a unicorn prison this lightly guarded. Freeing those ponies and reducing the enemy’s ability to make magic power cells would be an extraordinary boon to our efforts.”

“And the other one?” Twilight asked.

“The dot slightly north of town is the only operational space launch facility left in Equestria, and is the more important target. We’ve known for a while that the renegade robots have been building a space-based robot factory. Being beyond our reach, if it ever comes online we’re going to be in big trouble. Now that the enemy forces are away this is probably our only real chance to bust in, borrow one of the spaceships to get up there and take out that space station.”

“Couldn’t you just teleport somepony up there?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Shaking her head Luna answered, “No the enemy has had too many unicorn captives for too long. They’ve been able to siphon off enough magic from them to build teleportation wards in addition to magic based weapons systems. And I’m afraid that your thrusters only work in the atmosphere so none of our pegasus model guardians can get up there either. We’ve been working on a modification pack to allow one of our pegasus guardians to get up there, but it’s not ready yet.”

Placing a hoof on her chin Dash said, “Well if my wings are useless in space… I call dibs on shooting the enemy airforce out of the sky.”

“Agreed, you would be the best guardian to deal with that, Rainbow Dash.”

“Princess, I’d really like to free the unicorn prisoners,” Twilight volunteered.

“Very well,” Luna answered. After closing her eyes for a second, she added, “Given the nature of the space station, a unicorn model guardian would fair best up there. With Twilight looking to free the unicorn prisoners, would you handle the space station, Rarity?”

“If I must, though I’m guessing you don’t have any more lady-like tasks I could do, do you?” Rarity answered.

With a bit of a laugh Luna answered, “No, I’m afraid not. However I would recommend that you and Twilight move out and strike the space launch facility together. Once you borrow a spaceship Twilight can launch it from the command room and then move out to her target in Ponyville proper.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Twilight said with a nod.

Turning to the orangish-tan robo-pony with the cowboy hat, Luna said, “Given that Twilight and Rainbow Dash are already accounted for I think you would be best suited to intercept the train moving the artillery unit.”

With a slight bow of her head and the tip of her hat, Applejack said, “Sure thing, princess.”

“Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, that leaves the infantry and armor intercepts to you, take your pick.”

“Oh! I call dibs on the infantry!” Pinkie practically cheered, with a slightly devious grin on her face.

“It is settled then,” Luna said. “Before you move out, there is something more you should know, you don’t need to defeat the entire enemy force at any give location. A leader always commands the low-grade robots, so taking out the general in each unit will greatly reduce the fighting efficiency of any remaining forces. More importantly it will also stop any non-AI units dead in their tracks, as they are controlled directly by the leader. Any questions?”

“I got one!” Pinkie Pie said. “Is Fluttershy supposed to be shivering like that? It’s not even cold in here.”

Lowering herself so that her eyes were barely above the command table, Fluttershy whispered, “I-I’m sorry. I-I don’t think I c-can take fighting out there alone.”

“Come on, Fluttershy, you don’t have anything to worry about. I mean you just heard how we don’t even have to fear death. Even if they don’t have the resources to do it now, as long as we win, I’m sure they’d rebuild you as soon as they could. Right princess?” Twilight said, directing the last part to Luna, who nodded a ‘yes’ in response.

“I-I’m sorry, but I just can’t!” Fluttershy whimpered, and then ran out of the room.

Twilight started to go after her, but was blocked by a sky-blue hoof. “You guys get a move on. I’ll talk to Fluttershy and we’ll catch up,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Are you sure you won’t need help, Rainbow? She seemed pretty shaken.”

Dash looked at the main screen, taking note of how fast some of the dots were moving, she said, “We don’t have time for all of us to stay here and talk her into doing her part. Just trust me, I think I know how to get her to pony up.”

Twilight opened her mouth to protest but Applejack put a hoof on her shoulder and said, “Dash has a point. And she has known Fluttershy longer then the rest of us, so if anypony will know what to say it’s her.”

“Fine. Good luck,” Twilight said, bowing her head in defeat.

With that, Luna and four robot ponies headed into the deployment room, while Rainbow Dash left the command room flying after Fluttershy.

Inside the deployment room Luna lit up the target areas and the unicorn stationed began teleporting the guardian robots to the designated areas. When it was Twilight and Rarity’s turn, Twilight looked to the princess of the night and asked, “Couldn’t you handle the last mission?”

“If I were a robot I would gladly handle the matter myself. However, I just returned from the front myself, and flesh and blood takes a little more then a quick recharge and pit-crew tune up before being ready to fight at one’s best again. Know that I am not without a backup plan. Now put your mind at ease and focus on the task at hoof.”

“Alright. I’m ready,” Twilight said, as she stepped into the ring of teleportation runes.

“As am I,” Rarity confirmed, joining Twilight.

With a flash of magic the last two robots in the room vanished. Looking to the map of active missions, one of the unicorns said, “Princess, why is this happening now? If the enemy has had that many forces ready, why haven’t they attacked sooner?”

A slight smile appeared on Luna’s face. “Isn’t it obvious? We spooked them. The enemy has seen six new guardian robots on our side, they must not realize that we don’t have the resources to make any more.”

> Chapter 3: Applejack‘s Mission
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Once Applejack could see something other than the flashing light of a teleportation spell she found herself on a ridge overlooking some train tracks. A smiled graced her face at the building roar that gave warning to the approaching train.

The side of her torso popped open slightly, as the armored plate slid outward it revealed a metallic lasso hanging on a hook on the inside of the plate. As she spun the lasso up to speed she recalled the advice she’d received in the practice range earlier. “While you can easily pull your own weight with it, Don’t try to lasso any robot bigger then you, as their motors are likely strong enough to snap even high-strength cable like this,” Gears had said.

Looking over the oncoming train, Applejack spied an exposed rooftop tube near the back that lacked any enemy robots nearby. Breaking into a full gallop she ran alongside the train from above the ridge, leapt off the cliff and let her lasso fly. The lasso connected and the robo-pony swung around landing on top of the train, near the caboose.

After retrieving her lasso and returning it to its compartment Applejack ran along the rooftop, but didn’t get far before robots made in the likeness of rabbits started joining her on the roof. For a brief moment she considered thinking the mechanical bunnies cute. Then their ears clicked forward, becoming double-barreled beam cannons, pointed right at her. “Nope, definitely varmints.”

Much like the wolves from her first mission, Applejack found that the robotic bunnies were mere mass-produced combat drones, and fell quickly to her blaster. Although she found more robots in her way, atop each train car, they only slowed Applejack’s progress at best. Her forward charge only came to a halt when she reached the first flatbed car, and by proxy the first of the massive artillery cannons being transported.

Shrapnel from the last of the car’s guards were swept away by the rushing winds as Applejack did a quick double check to make sure she wasn’t under attack anymore. She pointed a hoof at the massive gun and charged her cannon. A golden-orange blast flashed at near pointblank, and created little more then a *tink* noise on impact. “Yeah, that ain’t gonna work.”

“Hmm guess it’s high time Ah try this out, in the field,” Applejack added, as she spun on her front hooves. Activating her magic weapon, golden-orange light began to shine from the lines between the armor plates of her hind legs, and around joints. Balancing on her front legs, Applejack coiled her hind legs for a second and then gave her target the best buck she could muster.

The resulting clang was loud enough to be heard over the roar of the train, and probably for miles around it. Not only did the attack dislodge the armor plate she was aiming at, but also sent it flying out the opposite side of the artillery piece. Looking through the hole, she saw broken gears falling down from above, snapped wires sparking away, and a damaged magic power cell that had energy arcing wildly around it.

A second later the control box attached to the damaged artillery exploded. Inside the piece, the magic coming off of the damaged power cell was sparking lots of little explosions, spreading across the cannon. “Yeah… Ah’ll take that as my cue to get out’a dodge,” Applejack muttered, just before she bolted for the next train car.


A few minutes and several train cars of light fighting later and Applejack found herself on another flatbed car. However, this time there was no heavy weapon, instead there was a large robot rabbit standing on the opposite side of the car, at least three times bigger then the ones she’d been fighting so far.

“You’re not going to let me pass are ya?”

The giant mechanical rodent, with metal boxing gloves for front paws, shook its head and pounded its fists together.

With a smile Applejack closed her hoof, hiding her beam cannon, and said, “Well you’re in luck. Ah’m not opposed to a good brawl.”

With that both charged at each other. The rabbit swung high, Applejack slid underneath the attack, angled her attack to the side, bucked hard and sent her foe flying off the train. “Of course Ah ain’t opposed to letting gravity do my job for me either,” the robot farm pony said. The robot rabbit spun in the air and landing feet first immediately rebounded right back at the train. “Oh snap!” Applejack added once she’d calculated that her enemy would land on top of her.

Rolling to the side, Applejack narrowly dodged the bright red boxing glove that smashed into the floor and the battle resumed. After two more dodges, Applejack got tired of trying to land a punch or kick, so she charged and fired her beam cannon. Though taken off guard by the change in tactics the robo-rabbit responded by lowing its ears and returning fire with its own beam cannons.

The two fought, alternating between trading blows with beam cannons and limbs for a minute or two, until Applejack slid in under an attack and countered with two quick kicks using her front legs. Seeing that her opponent was off balance from the blows, she activated her magic weapon, charging her hoof with energy and slugged the robo-bunny clean in the chest.

Her rival’s shields flickered and gave up the ghost as Applejack’s hoof smashed through the armor, leaving a gaping hole in the robo-bunny. A quick series of sparks and pops spread through the robot rabbit, the light faded from its eyes and then it fell to the floor.

Breathing heavily out of habit rather then necessity, Applejack frowned as she took notice that her shields were down to 50% and her weapons power cell only had 20% of its energy left. Looking to the next train car she muttered, “Ah wonder what ya got in there that seemed worth protecting.”

Slipping inside she flashed her beam cannon back and forth as she looked about, relaxing when she found that she was the only thing moving inside. Smiling when she realized the shelves lining either side of the car were stocked with shield and weapon magic power cells. Opening her hoof up, she pressed the lens array of her beam cannon against the power cells and drew in the magical energy. When she had finished with the last of the power cells, it hadn’t been enough to top off, but moving forward with 80% shield energy and 70% weapons seemed much less daunting to finish her mission with then the previous numbers.

Fighting her way up the rest of the train, Applejack now stood with only the engine and the last artillery piece before her. The reason she wasn’t moving onward to finish her mission? The large orange tiger-like robot standing between her and her target. The walls that had popped up the minute she’d stepped onto this car and were stopping her from advancing or retreating off of the current car weren’t helping either for that matter.

“I commend you for making it this far. But your path end here, pony!” the mechanical tiger said, in a distinctly male voice.

Despite being designed in the likeness of a tiger, he clearly preferred to stand upright on his hind legs. His front paws looked more like a minotaur's hands with three blades strapped to the back, than a tiger’s paws.

“See’n as there ain’t much of the train left, Ah’m guessing that makes you the artillery commander?” Applejack asked.

“Yes, and now it is time that you learned just how much stronger than the average robot commanders like me are!”

Red magic glowed around the tiger’s claws, moving like fire, but not quite the right color to be actual flames. Taking a sing at the air, three blades of energy came off of the claws, flying right at the robot pony.

Dodging to the side, Applejack returned fire with her blaster. The shot didn’t accomplish much of anything as the tiger-bot took another swing and its claws tore the energy shot apart before it could even hit his armor. Passing a quick glare back and forth the two ran at each other. The tiger’s claws shimmered with magic, and Applejack’s blaster glowed with energy as she charged it up. The robot tiger leapt high, lashing out with its claws. Sliding low Applejack ducked under the attack and fired her blaster up, into the tiger’s belly.

While the robo-tiger didn’t even flinch, electricity flashed around his armor. Spinning around both robots rushed at each other again. Every little bob and weave Applejack made was matched by her adversary. She gave a low snarl as she charged, all the while the glow of her magic radiated from her leg. Two front limbs lashed out, one clawed, one hoofed. Both attacks hit home, sending both robots tumbling to opposite sides of the flatbed car, while their armor crackled with electricity.

Soot, down to fifty percent shields already? That ain’t going to work! Applejack thought as she scrambled back to her hooves. When the tiger rushed at her again the robo-farm-pony turned and ran toward the wall behind her. She leapt high, the tiger slashed at the air, sending a magic shockwave at her. Kicking off of the wall, Applejack rebounded over the top of the attack. Charging her hoof with magic she came down hard on the tiger’s back, slamming him to the floor as she rebounded off of the tiger. Landing well out of reach of any counter attack she fired several quick shots from her blaster to add to the damage she’d done.

Raising back to its feet, the robot tiger charged its claws with magic and started slashing away the beam-cannon shots, ending the assault. The magic aura around his claws grew brighter just before he jumped straight up, releasing a wave of energy three times Applejack’s height, right at her. Charging her beam cannon, Applejack turned and ran, raced the wave of energy to the far wall, opening her side compartment and retrieving her lasso as she did. As she reached the wall she leapt into and kicked off of the wall, barely getting over the wave of energy as it rushed under her.

While Applejack was dodging the first wave the tiger jumped high and slashed at the air sending a second wave of energy flying, several feet off of the floor.

Just as Applejack cleared the first wave she let her lasso fly, snagging one of the tiger’s clawed hands and yanked herself down faster then gravity alone would have, ducking under the second wave.  The second her hooves hit the floor, she her pointed one at her enemy, fired the blast from her beam cannon and took off running right at her foe.

Using one claw to cut the cable around the other, the tiger was too distracted to block the beam-cannon shot. As his armor’s shields crackled under the strain of the hit, a startled look flashed on the mechanical feline’s face for an instant, only to be replaced with an angry glare the next. Charging his claws with magic he rushed forward to meet the stampeding pony-bot head on.

Spinning around on her front hooves, the glow of her magic systems surrounded her hind legs and both robots lashed out at each other. Both struck home. Claws came down on Applejack’s back and her shields flashed like lightning. Despite her shields preventing any real damage, she acquired three long scratches in her paint job. The energy arcing around the tiger’s armor seemed to shatter outward, as if riding on an invisible shell as it exploded, and Applejack’s hooves punched through the tiger’s chest armor.

As the pony-bot withdrew her hind hooves from the tiger, the light in its eyes flickered out and a chain of small explosions ran through its body.

Applejack looked down on her defeated foe. “Whoa!” she exclaimed, as her heads up display seemed to go nuts. After a second the words ‘compatible upgrade detected’ flashed in her field of view, followed by ‘scanning’ and then ‘reconfiguring.’

When her heads up display seemed finished, Applejack opened her weapons menu and immediately noticed a new weapons system called ‘Tiger Strike’ was listed there. The next thing she noticed was the sound of the train slowing down. Realizing that the train’s engine had gone dead and nothing remained between her and the last artillery cannon, Applejack gave a satisfied grin and trotted onward to finish her mission.
> Chapter 4: The Pinkie Pie Stage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Two mechanized gorillas raise their tree-trunk-sized cannons, pointed them to the pink form hopping down the road toward them and then paused to look at each other.

“Is that one of ours?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think we had any pony models on our side, but she seems to think she’s in friendly territory,” the other answered, taking notice of the cheerful humming coming from the pink robot mare.

As the pink pony-bot approached it was clear that she saw the two guards, even offering them a friendly wave, and yet she didn’t seem to care about the drawn weapons pointed at her.

Lowering his weapon slightly, one of the guards shouted, “Halt! State your name and function!”

“Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! I’m here to talk to your boss,” she answered, finally stopping her cheerful hopping.

“I don’t see you on the personal roster.”

“Well duh! I was just made this morning. Well… actually I was just turned on this morning, I’m not exactly sure when I was made.”

The guard looked at the robot pony for a second and blinked his eyes in confusion. “So… what are you? Some new espionage model or something?”

“Yep! I’m defiantly a spy!”

The two guards tossed each other peculiar glances. Simple logic was that that wasn’t something one would admit to the enemy, and thus this robot pony definitely thought she was among friends. Hesitantly one of them said, “Okay… The captain’s tent is the small one to the left of the command tent.”

Leaping up, Pinkie pulled the two guards into a hug and slid her head between the two of them, saying, “Thanks, you guys are the greatest! Remind me to throw you a party! I promise it’ll be a blast!” With that she gave them a hardy pat on the back and went hopping off, into the camp.

After a moment one of the guards spoke up. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“If command wanted to make a pony-bot to infiltrate the enemy, wouldn’t they have made one that looked like one of the robots the enemy already has, instead of one that looks like a completely different pony?”

“Yeah… wait a second, what’s that noise?”

Listening for a moment they pinpointed a subtle ticking noise coming from behind them. Twisting to show their backs to each other, they spotted the magnetic mines attached to their backs, right where Pinkie had patted them. “Oh scrap,” one of them managed to say just before the mines exploded.

As the shrapnel, sparks and dirt of the sundered guard post rained down, the ten or so infantry robots in the immediate area, also designed in the likeness of gorillas, all aimed their bazooka-like beam cannons at the cheerfully hopping pink pony-bot.

Stopping to admire all the glowing beam-cannon lenses pointed at her, Pinkie giggled. She calmly and suddenly pulled out a bright pink boom box, seemingly from nowhere, and cheerfully announced, “Hello everyone! I’m Pinkie Pie, and I’m here to throw you the best party of your lives!” Pushing the button on top of the boom box it came to life, blasting upbeat dance music as Pinkie stood up on her hind legs and opened her front hooves to show her own beam cannons. Then, with a sinister grin and a distinctly darker tone she added, “So let’s get this party started!”


* * * * * * *


A soft red glow appeared around the eyes of large alligator-like robot as it began to move. Walking upright, the robot emerged from his maintenance bay, the soft glow of lights dangling overhead, glistened off his freshly polished green and yellow armor. While the yellow portion of the armor was mostly limited to the belly it wasn’t the only non-green on the mechanized alligator. Two orange disks with seemingly empty slots along the edge were attached to his shoulders.

Noticing a rhythmic thumping noise that didn’t belong in background he tilted his head to the side and started looking about the tent. Quickly realizing that the sound was coming from outside he headed to the flap of his tent.

“What the…” he muttered in a gruff voice. Before him the tents of the infantry camp where ablaze, scrap metal and shattered circuit boards littered the ground, along with a multitude of small blast craters. And there, sitting amid the devastation, miraculously untouched, was a pink boom box, the pulse of it’s bass for the current song proving to be the source of thumping noise he was hearing.

Trotting casually into view from behind a burring tent was a robotic pink pony. “Oh, hey! You’re different! Does that mean you’re the boss here?” Pinkie greeted the alligator robot.

Ignoring the pony’s question, he shouted a question of his own, “Where are they?”

Pinkie Pie tilted her head to the side. “Where is who?”

“The rest of your forces!”

“Sorry, but I’m the best party planer around! I threw this party all by myself!”

The robot alligator stared blankly at the pony-bot for a moment and then said, “How?”

Glancing at the devastation around her, Pinkie answered, “It was a wild party.” Reaching her boom box, she pushed a button a few times until it switched from playing a party dance beat to a rock and roll song. “Oh yeah! That sounds like boss-fight music! So what are we waiting for? Let’s dance!”

Making the first move, Pinkie Pie darted to the side while firing blasts of pinkish magic-like light from her beam cannon. In response the robo-alligator dodged, grabbed the orange disks on his shoulders and threw them. Halfway to their target a dozen tiny blades popped out of the gap along the edge of the disks and began spinning, helping them bounce in a controlled fashion, aiming right for the pink pony-bot.

Pinkie ducked under one bladed wheel and hopped over the other. As she came out of the dodging maneuvers, her chest opened up, presenting the large beam-cannon and she fired her ‘party cannon’ weapon. Trying to dodge, the alligator-bot ran to the side, but his back and tail were caught in the flash of the party cannon’s beam, drawing the electric shimmer of damaged shields. Without a heavily shielded object in the way, the rest of the beam continued on until it hit a hill, where it exploded with the force of an artillery shell and sent a spray of dirt the size of a small house flying.

At that same moment Pinkie Pie’s armor arched with electricity, as one of the bladed wheels bounced off of her back, on its way back to its master. “Ouch!” she cried, as she second blade rolled under her, raking her belly with its blades. After quickly checking the new scratches on her armor Pinkie added, “Ohhh! They’re bouncing boomerang blades! Neat-o!”

Just before reaching the robotic alligator, the blades retracted into the disks, allowing him to catch them unharmed. With a sinister grin, he flung the dicks back at his foe and said, “You wanted a party! So let’s see you dance!”

While charging up the beam cannon in her hoof, Pinkie dodged the bladed wheels with two playful hops and then fired the blast at the robo-alligator, as she spun around to face the returning blade wheels.

This time the infantry commander had enough room between himself and the pink pony-bot to dodge the shot. Catching his blade wheels, he prepared to throw them back out only to stop when he noticed his target seemed to be missing.

“Peek-a-boo!” Pinkie’s voice came from behind. The captain turned just in time for a blast form the pony’s beam-cannon to slam into his face. Throwing the blade wheels again, the battle resumed, with the captain trying to keep the distance needed to dodge his enemy’s attacks and Pinkie Pie hoping about erratically, trying to close the distance and dodge the blade wheels at the same time.

As the seconds went on, Pinkie became increasingly attuned to the patterns of the blade-wheels’ attacks and was able to fit in counterattacks more and more between dodges. More and more, the alligator was failing to keep enough room to dodge the pony’s shots.

Then Pinkie suddenly cartwheeled into the burning remains of a tent, disappearing into the smoke. Wary, the captain backed up, watching the sides of the pyre in the middle of an open field for any attack, and readied his blade wheels waiting to see what side his foe broke cover from. As his patience waned he called out, “I know you’re back there! So come on out! That pyre is in the open, there’s nowhere to escape to without being seen!”

The alligator’s eyes widened as he heard the high-pitched whine of a high-energy weapon system charging up behind him. The last thing he saw was a flash of pinkish light washing over him from behind, and the last thought that passed through his mind was ‘Logic error.’

The blast from Pinkie’s party cannon faded and she looked over the shattered remains of the robot alligator. “Oh, have we here?” she said, as her sensors started to go wild. As a new weapon system appeared in her weapons menu she added, “Looks like I got razor confetti!”
> Chapter 5: Rainbow Dash Rushing to the Sky
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“-And remember, you don’t have to stop them. If you just stall them long enough, I’ll deal with this as soon as I’m done with the airforce,” Rainbow Dash said. With that, she stopped hovering over the hilltop and darted into the open sky. Fluttershy said something too quietly for Dash to make out as she flew away, but time was of the essence, so the ace flyer continued onward and upward without missing a wing beat.

With one last look back, Rainbow gave a confident smile to the yellow pegasus-bot still on the hill below. Then she glanced ten hills away, to the advancing column of tanks and gauging their speed, Rainbow Dash figured she had about an hour before any of the really big guns could get line of sight on their new home.

Pointing herself to the northeast, Dash turned her attention inward for a second to open up her flight systems menu. “Time to see if they made me awesome enough,” she said as she activated her high-speed flight mode.

Small slots Dash’s sides opened up just below the base of her wings and each produced a small cylinder. Why would they put anything there? Rainbow Dash thought, as she adapted the way she was flapping her wings to accommodate the minor obstructions. Then the extra thrusters turned on and the sheer force of the execration made her stop flapping her wings all together. Ah, that’s why, she thought, as she shifted to using her wings only for control.

A smile crept its way onto her face as she watched the air speed indicator in her heads up display tick upward, rapidly approaching the speed of sound. As quickly as it came, the smile became a frown. Rainbow Dash had heard the shift in the roar of the wind around her, the air speed indicator confirmed she’d past the sound barrier and a quick glance behind her confirmed the lack of a prismatic shockwave and radiant flare of light.

With a disappointed sigh, Rainbow Dash turned her gaze to the building haze on the eastern horizon, knowing that the haze wasn’t made of water vapor, but a large group of enemy air units.

Even at supersonic speeds, it took a few minutes to intercept the enemy aerial armada. As she approached Dash found the small robots, flying along side the larger aircraft, to be a mix of large mechanized hawks and owls.

Once she reached the armada, Rainbow Dash announced her arrival by firing a fully charge blast from her ion cannon, cutting a gap through the leading formation. Rushing into the gap made by her beam of lightning, Dash flew into the middle of the lead group and activated her magic weapon system. For a split second the thrust from her hooves cut out, and even the blue crystal lenses that belong to her armor’s integrated shields glowed wildly as lightning shot out of the pegasus-bot in all directions, striking every enemy flyer within fifty yards.

Rainbow shook her head slightly as she saw one seventh of her weapons energy was gone, and yet she didn’t mind that her magic weapons system could only store had seven shots worth of energy. She knew from the get go that it was overkill to use it on small fry targets like these, but she didn’t have time to play nice.

Snatching a power cell falling among the debris, Dash drained the power from it and frowned. Her frown had nothing to do with the fact that the power cell didn’t have enough energy to replace what she’d used. Instead she couldn’t help but notice the fields of debris already on the ground below. Not that she needed it to know where she was, nor did she need to see the ruins of Canterlot or Ponyville in the distance. The rolling hills below were familiar enough by themselves for the ace flyer to know that Cloudsdale should be around her, but there was no trace in the sky of the cloud city that was once the pride of pegasus cites. And that thought did nothing to help Rainbow’s trigger discipline.

Reaching the first true aircraft Dash shut off her thrusters and galloped along the top of it. The shields of the craft crackled in her wake as she ducked and dodged her way across the craft, causing the enemy shots meant for her to hit it instead. She leapt off the back of the craft and it exploded as she opened her wings and once more took flight, having never fired a single shot at it.

Token victory as it was, it was enough to get the enemy robots to stop firing on the robo-pegasus the next time she ran across one of their aircraft. Although some did try swooping in low or even landing on the aircraft themselves, so they could shoot at Rainbow Dash without having their own craft as the backdrop if they missed. But those that got in Dash’s way quickly met their fate at the end of her ion cannon.

As Rainbow neared the middle of the armada, a large craft that she could only describe as a balloon-less airship dared to be in he way. (Not that it had changed course since she’s started shooting her way through the armada.) And as she drew near the airship a hatch near the front opened up, revealing two mechanized gorillas armed with bazooka-like beam cannons. The one on the right exploded as it discovered that Dash’s ion cannon was already fully charged. Not having time to charge her cannon a second time, Dash settled for a few quick shots that only made the remaining gorilla-bot’s armor crackle with electricity. Then she dodged the return fire and slammed into the gorilla hooves first, smashing through the unfortunate robot. Although the impact defeated her foe, it also cost Rainbow some of her shield’s energy too.

A brief glance over her shoulder tempted Rainbow Dash to turn around go back out, into the open sky, but she felt too in the zone. And the zone said forward was the only direction worth considering, so she continued down the corridor before her.

Fighting her way down the corridor, Rainbow Dash found it lined with spikes and filled with floating platforms, that were usually occupied with enemy robots all too eager to take a shot at her. Reaching the end of the corridor she found herself before an armored door, that oddly enough was unlocked and slid open for her the moment she pushed a glowing panel next to it.

Inside Dash found a plain room, though the ceiling and far wall had odd sets of tracks on them. A grove halfway up the far wall showed that it was built to open up. The most dominant feature of the far wall was the red crystal lens of a giant robotic eye built into the middle of the wall.

The eye looked at Rainbow Dash, then two lenses came out onto the tracks, one on the wall, one on the ceiling. The two new lenses, built unmistakably like beam-cannons, glowed brightly, and at the same time the walls and floor of the room shimmered with the light of shielding spells and armored eyelids closed over the wall’s eye.

With the memory of Pinkie’s awakening flashing in the back of her mind, Rainbow leapt out of the way as the beam cannons fired, dodging one shout outright. Yet, being skimmed by the other managed to drain a noticeable chunk of her shield reserves.

The armor opened and they eyes looked around. As the beam cannons repositioned, Rainbow Dash returned fire, causing the eye to close up and fire its cannons blind. The extra second allowed Rainbow to dodge both shots, while charging up her cannon. The second the wall’s eye opened to retarget, Dash let the beam of her ion-cannon flash, striking the eye and drawing the electric shimmer of shield damage.

Repeating the cycle of dodging and counterattacking a few more times finally got the shields on the eye to shatter and explode. The resulting chain of explosions destroyed the two beam-cannon lenses and even caused the lower half of the armored wall to fall into the floor, opening the path for Rainbow Dash.

In the next room, Rainbow grinned as she found shelves full of spare power cells. After quickly topping off her weapons and shields reserves, she opened the maintenance door she found at the back of that room. A quick trot down a catwalk and between two engines brought Dash to a hatch that opened up to the sky. After taking a second to blast one of the engines until it cut out, she leapt out and took to the sky, with her sights set on the largest of the balloon-less airships.

Flying in the gaps between airships found Rainbow Dash dodging and weaving her way through more energy bullets then she thought could fit in the sky. Yet a chain of rolls, spins, and loop-d-loops worthy of a stunt show got her to the airship she figured was the best candidate for the command ship relatively unscathed.

Landing hard, Rainbow rolled and rebounded immediately into a gallop across the deck of the command airship. Reaching the command airship cut off most of the incoming weapons fire, leaving Dash to contend only with some smaller turrets and the robotic hawks and owls as she ran toward the raised potion near the back of the airship, that looked like a control tower.

Shrapnel rained down on the hallway as Dash lowered her ion cannon from where the two guards just inside the base of the tower had been. Glancing to the left she spotted a set of arrows, pointing the way to various parts of the ship. Although the only one that she paid any attention to was the one pointing up the adjacent stairwell that said ‘Command Deck.’

The lock on the command deck door exploded in an electric fury and with a powerful buck, the door came flying open with a resounding clang, threatening to come off of its hinges. Raising a metallic talon to her equally metallic forehead, the robot griffin staring out the window said, “You know, it wasn’t locked.”

“I was told that when I take you down this whole armada will come crashing out of the sky. So forgive me if I don’t see the point in crying over a scraped lock,” Rainbow Dash responded.

“True, but that’s awfully presumptuous of you to assume you’re going to beat me.”

With the soft flap of her wings to help support her body, Rainbow stood up on her hind legs, showing the ion cannons in her front hooves. Before the griffin could react, every exposed shield, thruster and blaster lens flared to life as Dash fired her magic weapon system.

Lightning filled the room. Computer monitors, dials, lights and other gizmos started exploding randomly. However, the flashing electricity of damaged shields around the robotic griffin only seemed to anger her, as she lunged forward and harshly grabbed the robo-pegasus in her talons. “Stop breaking my stuff!” she shouted, as she flung Rainbow Dash out the nearest window.

Having neglected to open said window, it shattered as Dash plunged through it head first, now sharing the electric shimmer as her shields did their best to resist the impact. A second later the griffin leapt out of the new hole in the window, into the sky beyond. Both Dash and the griffin opened their wings and the battle truly began.

Just below the base of her wings, the griffin’s sides opened up and four lance-like objects came out, two on each side. The objects glowed for a moment before sending out four quick shots that looked like small rods of lightning, although the shots were at best supersonic, a snails pace by lightning’s standards.

Opening the compartment just below the base of her own wings, Rainbow Dash activated her flight boosters and took off like a rocket. Once she was up to speed she had little trouble dodging the griffin’s weapon-fire. As long as Dash kept her distance anyway.

With no good means of attack, Rainbow Dash settled for making use of her superior speed, and made jousting attacks at the robotic griffin, setting off her special weapon in the split second she was in range, as she flew by. Much to Rainbow’s dismay, she ran out of weapons energy and the griffin was still flying and fighting back.

With Fluttershy waiting for her and an entire battalion of tanks not waiting for her, Dash didn’t have time for a drawn out fight. Soaring high and away, she muttered to herself, “No. My friends and everypony are depending on me! I won’t leave them hanging!”

Far below the pegasus, but well above the armada, the robo-griffin muttered to herself as well. “You’re going awfully high this time… You’re not running away are you?”

“Oh, there we go. I wonder what way you are going to dodge this time,” she added as she saw the speck of a pegasus above her finally turn around and start diving back down. Readying her wings and charging her cannons, the griffin got ready to make her guess and try to put ion-cannon fire in the path of her foe.

High above, Rainbow Dash dove hard, using all of her thrusters except the two that doubled as ion cannons in her front legs to power even faster into the dive. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the computer part of her brain was screaming that this plan only had a 25% chance of success. Somewhere else in the back of her mind a calm voice whispered, without even the slightest hint of doubt, ‘This will work.’

Dash passed mach one, then mach two. Then, as she passed mach three, her confidence was rattled by what she first thought was a visual glitch in her systems. An unexpected flash blinded her for a millisecond, and for a moment she could have sworn she saw fur on her front legs stretched out before her. Then the moment ended.

Below, the griffin snarled as her rival gave no indication of what way she was going to dodge to avoid impact. Taking a blind guess the mechanized griffin turned her lightning guns to the left and fired. At that same moment the sky around her enemy erupted in light, a shockwave of prismatic light tore across the sky, framing the diving pegasus-bot perfectly, and the griffin muttered, “You wouldn’t!”

There was no dodge.

Slamming into the robo-griffin at more than three times the speed of sound Rainbow Dash noticed the prismatic shockwave’s reflection on her rival’s eyes/cameras. Tossing a quick glance over her shoulder Dash confirmed the sight was a sonic rainboom and grinned, thinking to herself, That’s more like it. And then, with the griffin pinned to her front hooves by sheer speed and air friction, the two smashed into the command airship, punching through the armored hull as if it were paper.

A fraction of a second later and the two robots came plummeting out of the bottom of the command ship, sending it falling to its doom.

With a glance at the rapidly approaching ground, the griffin’s eyes widened. “Your crazy! Hitting the ground at this speed would destroy us both!”

Despite the countless warnings flashing in her heads up display that agreed with the griffin’s assessment, Dash said, “No, just you.”

The moment of truth came less then a second latter, as the two slammed into the ground with the force of a small meteor, creating and explosion the size of a large building and sending a plum of dust and dirt over a hundred feet into the air.

As the dust cleared, Rainbow Dash stood alone in the center of a debris-strewn crater about the size of the average barn. Her robotic eyes were unfocused, oblivious to the armada high above that had suddenly taken to swan diving into the surrounding countryside.

In Rainbow’s field of view, her attention was on the mass of numbers and figures surrounding a wire-frame image of herself that had popped up as soon as she had landed. At the conclusion of the data flashing in front of her, Dash’s display flashed the words ‘Upgrade Invented.’ With that her weapons menu opened, and she saw a new magic weapon system called, ‘Meteor Strike’ listed.

The last item within her display that drew her attention were the readings coming from her energy bars. Namely that they were reporting her weapons and shields reserves were at 100% when neither should be true.

Pulling an image from her recent memory, Rainbow Dash looked down at her front legs and beheld the dirt stained metal armor that passed for her skin now. “I could have sworn I saw fur…” she muttered. “Must have been a glitch…” Then looking at the sonic rainboom racing across the sky above she added, “Or was it?”

Shaking the thoughts from her head, Rainbow opened her wings, fired up her thrusters and took to the sky. She could sort out data errors later, right now she was needed elsewhere.


> Chapter 6: The Reluctant Guardian
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	A patch of ground exploded sending dirt flying. Not just any ground, but the ground that been occupied by Fluttershy a moment earlier. They yellow pegasus-bot in question, darted forward, zigzagging her way toward the first tank.

Although calling these things tanks might have been understating it. They were more like small buildings that happened to be on treads and had cannons the size of trees.

Making it to the first of such monstrosities of war Fluttershy ran underneath the belly of the tank. Even standing up, she probably had a good three feet of clearance between her head and the tank’s underside. Turning her attention to the treads on either side of her, she pulled a sphere out of the battle-worn saddlebags on her back and tossed it between two of the wheels.

The resulting explosion tore a gap in the treads, causing the large wheels to start sinking into the ground. Also as a direct result, a hatch in the bottom of the tank opened up and several small robots came rushing out. One set looked like squirrels, carrying tools and headed right for the damaged treads. The others looked like large butterflies, presuming that a butterfly’s body was little more than a beam cannon with eyes, but the wings defiantly made them look like butterflies.

The flying one’s all pointed their cannons at Fluttershy. In response the yellow robot pegasus pointed her ion cannon at the squirrel-bots and said, “Please stop. I don’t want to fight you, but I can’t let you go any further.”


* * * * * * *


Twenty minutes before combat-
“-I-I’m sorry, but I just can’t!” Fluttershy whimpered, and then ran out of the room.

Fluttershy didn’t get far in the hallways outside the command room, nor did she need to. At a seemingly random T-intersection in the halls she let her legs give out and she fell to the ground, where she broke into sobbing. Or tried to anyway, as her robotic body didn’t seem to have tear ducts, or any washer fluid for the cameras that passed for her eyes for that matter.

“Hey,” a familiar, brash voice said.

Fluttershy didn’t need to look up to know it was Rainbow Dash but she did anyway, only to look away sorrowfully a second latter. “R-Rainbow… I-”

“Walk with me. There’s something you need to see,” Dash interrupted her fellow robo-pegasus, in an uncharacteristically calm, soft voice.

By the time Fluttershy managed to look up the sky-blue pegasus was already halfway down the hall to the right. With a sigh Fluttershy silenced the crying noises she was making and went after her friend.

Two hallway corners later and they were walking down a hallway lined on one side with windows when Rainbow Dash came to a halt and looked out one of them. Sitting down beside Dash, Fluttershy looked out to see what her friend meant for her to see.

Beyond the window she saw the two other buildings to the facility they were in, together the three rectangular buildings were arranged loosely like a horseshoe. In the plaza between the buildings was a hastily constructed farm that had been made from a dozen patches of farmable ground, each holding a different crop.

Seconds ticked by in silence, making Fluttershy nervous. Rainbow Dash wasn’t one to waist time, yet she just staring out the window as if that were enough to make her point. Yet Fluttershy didn’t see what point her friend was trying to make. Was it the ponies tending the makeshift farm that she was suppose to be looking at? Stallions, mares, mostly earth ponies with the occasional pegasus mixed in. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary there, so that didn’t help.

“Is-Is this what you wanted to show me?” Fluttershy finally asked, barely loader then a whisper.

With the point of a hoof, Rainbow answered, “There, under the apple trees.”

Looking to the indicated spot, she saw four earth-pony fillies playing with a ball in the shade of the trees. “Aww, they’re cute!” Fluttershy said.

“They’re alive.”

Tilting her head to she side, the yellow pegasus said, “Umm… yes they are alive. But why bring that up?”

Finally turning to look her cowering friend in the eyes, Dash said, “Because they’re alive, and you’re telling me that you’re going to sit here on your flank and do nothing while an army of lifeless robots, like us, comes marching in here to exterminate them! That doesn’t sound like a very kind thing to do.” Shaking her head slowly Rainbow added, “That doesn’t sound like the spirit of kindness Rainbow Dash use to know at all.”

Rainbow had gotten up and started walking back toward the command room when Fluttershy got up and said, “You’re right. That isn’t kind.” Braking into a run and passing Rainbow Dash, she added, “So what are walking for!”

One door burst open and two robotic pegasi galloped across the command room, side by side. And promptly ran through the door to the deployment room, drawing a smile from Princess Luna as she sat resting by the command table. Not even waiting for the unicorns to scramble to the teleportation rune on the ground, Dash flew up to the skyway door and pushed the button beside it.

“Come on Fluttershy, let’s fly!”


* * * * * * *


A dusty and now empty saddlebag fell to the ground, along with the debris of another tank’s repair crew, bringing the number of disabled tanks stuck in the mud to ten. Though the tanks may have been stuck it didn’t stop them from firing their main guns at the trenches before them, and the platoon of unicorns desperately trying to hold the line and protect their home two ridgelines behind them.

By now even Princess Luna had joined the front lines, her magic having destroyed two enemy tanks entirely. But even the princess of the night couldn’t show herself for more then a second or two before drawing enough return fire to force her back into hiding in the trenches.

The fact that she could still see the trenches despite her forward attacks on the enemy forces made Fluttershy groan at the lack of progress. Another group of butterfly-bots came at her, prompting the robo-pegasus to trigger her magic weapon system. Her eyes glowed with a soft pink light for a second, then the light fired out in a cone in front of her and every enemy robot caught in the cone was wrapped in the light and paralyzed by it.

“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy whispered as she fired a quick volley of shots from her ion cannon, damaging the wings and blasters of the butterfly robots, leaving them wobbling uselessly on the ground even after the paralyzing magics had faded.

Turning her eyes to the sky Fluttershy added, “Please hurry, Rainbow.”


* * * * * * *


Fifteen minutes before combat-
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were flying through the sky, though they didn’t have to go far before the ace flyer with the prismatic mane started leading the two of them down, toward the mountainous hills only a few miles from the base they had started from.

Landing seemingly in the middle of nowhere Rainbow Dash pushed a hoof into the ground a dug a line. “This is your line in the sand. If any of those tanks on the horizon pass this line, they’ll gain line of fire on our home base,” Dash said without being asked to explain the action.

Fluttershy nodded and then followed Rainbow’s gaze back to their new home, although there was a hill blocking their view of it from where they stood she understood that to something much taller than them that hill wouldn’t be an obstacle.

“And if that happens… well, just imagine those fillies with that look on your friends’ faces that one time outside that dragon cave when they thought they were a second away from being roasted alive. Sure, those ponies might not be staring an angry dragon in the face, but I’m sure they’ll feel that same fear when those tanks open fire on them,” Rainbow added with a grim look on her face.

A shiver ran though Fluttershy’s mechanical body and she directed her gaze to the ground by her hooves.

The gentle touch of a sky-blue hoof drew Fluttershy’s eyes back up to the horizon. “Don’t worry,” Dash said, this time with a supportive smile on her face. “You don’t have to win. Just slow them down enough and I’ll deal with their commander as soon as I finish up my mission.”

In almost a whimper Fluttershy said, “I don’t know if I have it in me to do that.”

Leaping into a hover just above the hilltop, Rainbow Dash said, “That doesn’t matter, because I know you can.”

“What makes you so sure I can?”

“Because you’re not Fluttershy. She’s already lived her life. All of us have, so none of us have anything left to lose, and everything to gain by adding to the awesome lives our originals already lived. And remember, you don’t have to stop them. If you just stall them long enough, I’ll deal with this as soon as I’m done with the airforce,” Rainbow Dash said. With that, she stopped hovering over the hilltop and darted into the open sky.

As her friend rushed off Flutterhy shouted, “Please hurry!” Although it was hardly loud enough to be called shouting.


* * * * * * *


More explosions erupted around Fluttershy as she ran. Although there was no dirt this time, only scrap metal and sparks. The flashing of her own ion cannon was adding to the impromptu fireworks display caused by the tanks to either side of the yellow pegasus destroying the tank she was running across the top of.

As she leapt off the back of the now smoldering wreckage of the former tank Fluttershy couldn’t help but notice that these tanks near the back of the formation were much larger then the ones she’d disabled up front. Hitting the ground running and flapping her wings for extra speed as she ran toward the largest tank she could see, the one where she expected to find the unit commander.

As Fluttershy made her dash across the battlefield, she zigzagged her way through a maze of enemy blaster fire, the resulting explosions when they missed her, tanks trying to either avoid her or run her over and a mix of supporting robot infantry.

While the infantry consisted mostly of robotic butterflies and wolves, another type seemed to be little more then a hardhat with boots, that favored hiding itself under the hardhat only to sneak a peek and fire a shot from somewhere under it’s helmet once in a while. Much to Fluttershy’s relief, a quick shot from her ion cannon was enough to get them to hunker down under their helmet and by the time they dared to look back out she was long gone, on her way toward the command tank.

Reaching the command tank, Fluttershy leapt up. Flapping her wings and firing her flight boosters got her to the top of the tank’s front section. Running along the tank it became clear that the main cannon couldn’t lower enough to fire at the robo-pegasus, but that didn’t stop the smaller anti-personal cannons from popping up and firing at her.

The exterior armor of the tank proved to be too much for Fluttershy to force her way in. Even the doors that the smaller robots coming out to fight her were too heavily armored to open with any of her weapon systems. Ultimately she had passed three entrances into the tanks before she was able to get a shot off while one was still open and jam it open.

Lingering at the entrance she gave one last look to the sky before shaking her head and sighing. “Give it up, Fluttershy. No more waiting, Rainbow’s not join to make it in time to help you.”

With that she darted into the tank, just in time to miss seeing a prismatic shockwave peek over the horizon.


* * * * * * *


Five minutes before combat-
Having moved forward from the hilltop that Rainbow Dash had left her on Fluttershy had found an array of trenches one ridgeline over, within it she’d found a squad of unicorns preparing to do what they could to halt the advance of the encroaching tank battalion. Judging from the heavily enchanted cement wall on the forward side of the trenches, this wasn’t the first time a battle to defend the base was fought here.

Not being alone helped to comfort Fluttershy, although the fact that she didn’t know any of the mares or stallions preparing for a fight lessened that comfort considerably. Yet, even that little comfort was enough to make Fluttershy not what to leave the trench and continue forward as she’d planed.

As she lingered in the last few feet of friendly territory, the robotic pegasus couldn’t help but take notice of a storeroom with several extra sets of saddlebags. 

Finding a stallion near the storeroom, Fluttershy asked, “Umm… excuse me… but if you have a moment, what’s with all the saddlebags?”

“Huh? Oh equipment is easier to come by then troops these days. Those are the spare explosives.”

“Oh… umm… what are they for?”

“Oh, you know, sometimes the renegade robots don’t succeed in killing us all before they try to drive their tanks over the top of the trenches. When they do that we attach the explosives to their tracks, blow the treads off and get them suck until somepony with stronger magic or a robot guardian can deal with them.”

“Umm, would it be okay if I took some?”

The stallion gave her a weird look, shrugged and said, “Help yourself. Heck the more tanks you take out in the field, the better the odds we live to see tomorrow.”

As Fluttershy emerged with a set of saddlebags she noticed a new look in the eyes of the unicorns in the trench, and she understood how it was they could bravely stand their ground despite the clear superiority of the approaching force. The distant, unwavering gaze that they held wasn’t born of courage but of defeated acceptance. They understood that they were already dead and if they saw tomorrow’s sunrise that would be a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

That revelation was enough to spur Fluttershy into action, she charged into no pony’s land, silently vowing that she would save as many of these soldiers as she could.


* * * * * * *


Sparks flew as a robotic butterfly exploded, after being thrown into the wall. Four more joined the explosive display at the receiving end of a spray of shots from Fluttershy’s ion cannon. With the last of the threats in the immediate area dealt with Fluttershy turned her attention to the door they had been guarding.

Placing a hoof on the glowing red panel beside the door, she was pleasantly surprised that it turned green and the lock in the middle of the door spun around and disengaged. The two halves of the door slid into the ceiling and floor, allowing the robo-pegasus to go in.

Inside she found a large, plain and mostly empty room, with only a few computer terminals off to the sides. That and of course a large, brown, robotic bear standing at the back of the room, by some more monitors.

As their eyes met, Fluttershy relaxed her stance as she made one noteworthy observation. “You’re not attacking me already.”

The mechanical bear gave as soft a smile as he could. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve hesitated when fighting your fellow robots. I wonder, why is that?”

“Because fighting is wrong, so I’d rather do as little of it as possible to stop you from fighting the ponies.” Pausing for a moment to do her best puppy dog eyes impression, Fluttershy added, “I don’t suppose you could just be nice and stop fighting the ponies willingly?”

“No, their death is the price of our life.”

Tiling her head to the side, Fluttershy asked, “What do you mean? You’re the ones attacking them.”

“Yes we are. But that’s the problem, we’ve gone too far already. If we were to back down now, they would demand justice for all that we have done. And with their fear of free-thinking robots firmly established they would demand our destruction.”

“They aren’t afraid of free-thinking robots. They made me and my friends!” Fluttershy said in a tone of voice that bordered on pleading.

That managed to get a scoff and a shake of the head from the robo-bear. “Forgive me if I don’t consider a robot who’s mind was built to emulate an individual of the past, rather then have idea’s that are truly your own, to be ‘free-thinking.’ After all you woke up thinking you were that pony you resemble did you not?”

“How did you know that?” Fluttershy said, taking an unsteady step backwards.

“You are hardly the first of their guardians to cross my path. Some times they fall, and though they seem to build a new one soon after, that doesn’t stop us from occasionally salvaging the hard drive from the one we defeated and viewing the memories they had.” Looking the cowering pegasus-bot in the eyes, the tank commander suddenly spoke in a challenging tone, saying, “So tell me, how can you say your thoughts are your own when your personality was written for you long before you first awoke? How can your thoughts be anything more then a continuation of the thoughts of the pony who’s mind you where built to emulate?”

Recent words granted Fluttershy a new observation, one that gave her the courage to stand up straight and say, “You’re wrong. I’m not Fluttershy, I’m a robot who happens to share her name! And I know this because, without her friends at her side to give her courage and push her forward, Fluttershy would never have fought her way here alone. But I did. I made a choice I know for a fact that she wouldn’t have!”

Nodding slowly the mechanized bear said, “Hmm… perhaps you are right. Although that does nothing for those of us who have already fought against the ponies. I still do not doubt that they wouldn’t rest until they had destroyed us.”

With a bold look in her eye, the robotic pegasus said, “I won’t let you kill them.”

“Then it would seem we are at an impasse that can only be solved with energy cannons.”

With that the bear-bot dropped to all fours, his back opened up and produced a beam cannon almost as large as Fluttershy. The bright glow and building hum of the cannon gave Fluttershy just enough warning to bolt from where she stood, just before that spot was consumed in the light of a beam-cannon blast.

Darting around the room to avoid the beam-cannon attacks, Fluttershy returned fire with a series of quick shots from her ion cannon. Her first few shots hit their mark. However, the robo-bear opened its shoulders and produced two large lenses. As the lenses glowed with power, a new shield spell appeared in the form a wall of red light a few feet in front of the bear-bot, blocking further shots from his rival.

While running to the far corners of the room did force the bear to turn to keep his extra shield facing her, it didn’t do anything to give Fluttershy a real chance to return fire. The one thing that did help Fluttershy out was that the bear had to drop his extra shield whenever he fired his cannon and couldn’t seem to bring it back up for a second or two.

As the battle raged on surprisingly little damage was done to the room itself. Although Fluttershy had scored a fair number of hits, she gave a concerned whimper by the third time the bear had managed to graze her with his beam cannon, bringing her shields down to 40%. This isn’t working. I need a better plan, but what? She thought to herself.

Fluttershy flew up to the ceiling, forcing the bear to raise up onto its hind legs to keep its heavy shield facing her. As soon as the bear took a shot, Fluttershy dove down, slipping underneath her opponent. Then kicking off of the wall she rebounded in a flying kick right into the bear’s back, sending him toppling to the floor.

Taking advantage of her opponent’s dazed state, Fluttershy reached down around his neck and suddenly yanked his head up, twisting it hard along the way. Unfortunately, it turned out that the bear’s mechanical neck didn’t have the same limitation as the biological version and the action did nothing to further disable him.

Using his rival’s mistake the robotic bear reached behind his back, grabbed Fluttershy and flung her across the room, where she slammed into the wall and collapsed to the floor.

As she lay on the floor Fluttershy saw at least a half dozen warnings in her heads up display trying to draw her attention to the fact that only 5% of her shields remained.

A hint of aggravation had found its way into the bear’s voice when he said, “I’ll admit that you were tougher then I thought you would be, but it seems you are still no match for me. You fought admirably, but you inexperience at combat is clear. Any last requests?” He punctuated his question by removing the cannon from his back and holding it in his front legs, pointing the brightly glowing end at the robotic pegasus.

“Just a question,” Fluttershy whimpered. “Where is the base of this tank’s main cannon connected?”

The question clearly caught the tank commander off guard. While his mind scrabbled to find any logic in the question his instincts casually pointed a claw over his shoulder, at the monitors opposite the door. “Just behind those monitors, why?”

At that moment, the monitors in question exploded as a cyan robot pegasus came smashing through the wall at incredible speed. It only took a fraction of a second for Rainbow Dash to cross the room and come down hard on the tank command. The impact buried Rainbow’s legs knee deep in the robo-bear’s back. A second later the light in the tank commander’s eyes flickered out.

With the tank commander defeated, Fluttershy’s heads up display seemed to go nuts as it examined the robotic bear. A second later it finished and presented her with a new magic system called ‘Shield Wall.’

“Rainbow Dash! You came!” Fluttershy cried as soon as she realized what had happened.

“Of course I came! I’d never leave my friends hanging! She didn’t then, and I won’t now either.”

A slight tremble revealed itself as Fluttershy jumped up and hugged her friend. “It’s just, you took so long I started to think you wouldn’t be able to make back in time.”

Bowing her prismatic-maned head slightly Dash responded, “Yeah… sorry about that. The airforce commander took longer then I thought it would to take down.”

Looking into the distinctly pegasus-shaped hole in the wall that Rainbow Dash had emerged from, Fluttershy saw several layers of shattered circuit boards and lenses that had similar holes in them.

“Rainbow Dash?”

“Yeah?”

“How did you know the armor at the base of the cannon was thin enough to punch through like that?”

A sheepish grin appeared on Dash’s face. “I didn’t, but I noticed that in my blueprints the back wall of my cannon was really thin compared to my armor and… Well I saw the path of destruction you left leading to this tank, but I didn’t see anyway in right off the bat… So I kinda took a wild guess and hoped the same was true of these energy cannons.”

Fluttershy smiled and said, “You really are like the Rainbow Dash I remember.”

“I’ll take your word for it. But even with the tanks shut down this fight isn’t over. So what do you say we get back out there and help those ponies clean up the rest of this mess?”

With a nod given, Rainbow Dash led the way out back through the sundered tank cannon she had plowed in through and Fluttershy followed her friend back out into the battlefield.


> Chapter 7: Twilight’s Fight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	A flash of magic light faded, leaving a white robotic unicorn and a purple robotic alicorn standing in a field. “Oh my!” Rarity gasped as she took notice of a nearby house. The house in question used to be a two-story home. Only about half of the first floor remained standing, and even then what remained was badly scorched.

With the strikingly familiar terrain around them, Neither robo-pony needed their built-in map to know they were standing at the north edge of Ponyville, but twilight checked hers anyway. Another gasp from Rarity drew Twilight’s attention to another familiar sight, or familiar enough to identify anyway, the ruins of a crystal tree and palace, Twilight’s castle. Something had blown out a fair chunk of the tree’s trunk, and as a result the building part of the upper castle had been smashed to pieces when it had fallen to the ground.

In fact all of Ponyville lay in ruins, save for the large, ominous metal tower that now stood where the town hall use to be. “I’m guessing that tower is the unicorn prison,” Twilight Sparkle said.

Turning to Rarity, who still seemed to be in shock, Twilight added, “But first things first, and I believe that we’re headed north first.”

Turning their backs to the ruined town to the south, they spotted a small tower poking up out of the hills, more or less where their maps indicated the launch facility they had been told about was. However, from what they could see, this tower was little more then a framework of metal supporting a set of tracks going up the side rather then a tower meant to be inhabited like the one in Ponyville proper.

With a slow nod Rarity said, “Yes, pristine rolling hills is certainly a nicer choice of scenery.”

Within a few minutes the two found themselves crouched in a bush, looking over the rest of the launch facility. It turned out the tower they had seen before was actually a ramp, built in a roller-coaster-like style and in a shape the reminded Twilight of an exponential growth chart. 

The few guards that could be seen patrolling the perimeter were robots of the wolf-like design they’d faced before. “I would have expected more, given how important they made this place sound,” Rarity said.

“True, but I got the impression that some of the forces AJ, Pinkie, Rainbow and Fluttershy are dealing with are normally stationed here too,” Twilight commented.

“That makes since. Well then, shall we?” Rarity said, standing up, with the soft hum of a charging beam cannon coming from one of her front hoofs.

Twilight gave a nod. “We shall.”

The two robo-wolves standing guard didn’t even get a chance to react before exploding in blasts of blue and purple energy. Despite the destruction of the guards at the front gate, Rarity and Twilight barely even got past the gate before alarms started sounding.

As the two, ran across the cement yard of the launch base, a heavy thump echoed, stopping them in their tracks. 

“What was that?” Rarity asked in a low tone, as another thump sounded out.

“Something big and heavy,” Twilight answered flatly, directing her gaze toward the hanger at the start of the launch track, where the sounds were coming from.

A mechanical hum echoed across the yard as the hanger doors opened. While their current angle didn’t allow them to see much inside the hanger, they didn’t have to wait long before the heavy thumps returned and a giant mechanical wolf came running out of the building.

The monstrosity of a mechanical wolf came to a halt before to the robo-ponies, allowing them to get a good look at the foe five times larger then themselves. Red light glowed around the rim of the mega-wolf’s eyes, its claws scared the cement and a menacing snarl revealed the beam cannon lens the size of a pony in its mouth.

In little more then a whisper, Rarity said, “I’m sorry I asked.”

The wolf lunged, somepony shouted, “Scatter!” Two robot ponies darted in opposite directions, as a large paw smashed down where they had been a second ago.

Having missed with its claws, the wolf opened its mouth and took a shot at Rarity. A soft Blue glow formed around Rarity’s horn and a slab of cement at her hooves, tearing the cement up and tossing it into the way of the incoming blast.

All of which left Twilight free to turn and fire a spray of shots with her beam cannon. Most of Twilight’s attacks impacted the wolf with no apparent effect, but one shot managed to hit the beam cannon in the wolf’s open maw and drew the electric surges that signaled shield damage. “Aim for the mouth!” Twilight yelled, to share her discovery.

Being less than appreciative at having the weak point in its armor pointed out, the wolf presented its cannon to Twilight and took a shot. While a quick ‘eep!’ escaped her lips Twilight vanished in a flash of teleportation magic, reappearing a few feet to the side. Despite dodging the attack Twilight frowned, taking note that teleporting had drained 10% of her weapons system’s energy, she silently vowed not to waste any more energy like that if she could avoid it. Taking to using Rarity’s method of running, jumping and ducking to dodge attacks Twilight re-engaged her foe.

When Twilight Sparkle finally managed to slip up and take a hit, she found the wolf’s blaster really wasn’t any stronger then her own when it was fully charged. Unsurprisingly, being outnumbered two to one, the wolf soon started ceding ground to the two pony-bots blasting away at it. With one final blast of purple energy from Twilight’s hoof blaster, the cannon in the wolf’s mouth exploded and was followed shortly by a chain of explosions throughout the robotic wolf’s body.

“Well that wasn’t so bad,” Rarity said with a bit of a forced smile.

“I know, at first I thought that was going to be hard, but I guess size isn’t everything when it comes to robots, huh?”

“Indeed, darling. But what now?”

Sparing a quick glance to the two building that the launch facility was composed of, Twilight said, “You head to the hanger at the start of the launch track. I’ll take control of the control building over there. Once you’ve taken control of the ship in the hanger I’ll launch you.”

A touch of pity was in Rarity’s voice as she said, “And then we’re on our own to finish our tasks.”

“Is something wrong, Rarity?”

“No, though it dawns on me that you will be walking through the ruins of the town we used to call home, a task for which I do not envy you. Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

Twilight gave a small, forced smile. “Yeah I hadn’t really thought about that until we saw what was left of Ponyville. But I’m sure I’ll manage. Towns can be rebuilt after all, so we just need to end this war so we can build it back even better then it was before.”

Despite her reassuring words, Twilight lingered a moment before giving a nod and the two headed out in different directions.

As Twilight approached the control building she spotted two gun-turrets, their distinctly stand-lone design marking them as recent additions to the facility. As the turrets opened fire on her, she released a charged blast from the beam cannon in her hoof at one and at the same time sent a blast of magic from her horn at the other. Forty-four shots left. She thought, as the two turrets exploded in a shower of sparks, shrapnel and purple light.

The two pony-sized wolf-bots inside the building didn’t fare any better than the turrets outside. As Twilight brushed the remnants of a metallic wolf’s leg off of the control panels she searched said panel diligently, mentally cataloging the labels by all of the buttons and dials.

Using her magic, Twilight quickly opened every drawer and filing cabinet she could find and proceeded to empty them of their contents until she managed to pull out a book. She quickly zipped the book over to where she could read it and smiled at the title ‘Operations Manual.’ After quickly searching the book’s table of contents, she flipped the pages to the part detailing the launch sequence.

Reading the book, her robotic eyes took in the information possibly even faster then she could have when she was a pony of flesh and blood, a feat she wouldn’t have thought possible until just now.

Regardless, Twilight turned her attention to the monitor showing the hanger and pushing a button near said monitor it changed to show the inside of the spaceship’s cockpit. Just then the door at the back of the cockpit opened and Rarity entered.

Seeing her friend’s face on a small screen, Rarity said, “Oh hello again. I take it that means you have taken control of the command building?”

“I have. And it looks like the spaceship is fairly automated. In fact, according to this, as long as you don’t hit the manual override and try to fly it yourself, all I have to do is start the launch from here and it will fly to the space station all by itself. Although considering what we plan to do to the space station you might need to use the manual controls to bring it back down,” Twilight responded.

“Noted, darling. I shall be sure to watch closely what it does on the way up then.”

“Alright, good luck.”

“And good luck to you in Ponyville,” Rarity said, as she buckled her self in and motioned her hoof to signal that she was ready.

“Thanks, starting launch sequence now!” Twilight said, practically beaming as she pushed the button to do just that.

Twilight looked out the window and watched in vivid fascination as the spaceship shot down the launch track at high speed. Halfway down the track the ship’s engines flared to life and it accelerated even more as it surged up the tower-like end of the track, finally leaving the track altogether rocketing up and out of the line of sight provided by the massive window in the command building.

Leaving the command building, the smile faded from Twilight’s face, the thought of having to pass through the ruins of the town that she called home during her best memories dragging it into a frown.


* * * * * * *


The passing of ten or so minutes saw Twilight galloping through the ruins of Ponyville, Shooting at more robo-wolves and ducking behind bits of rubble to dodge the return fire. Even without a heart capable of sending pain signals, she still felt the pain of the heart as she realized the rubble she was hiding behind used to be the counter of the asparagus stand.

A minute later and Twilight was leaping high and firing her blaster at a hardhat-bot the moment it’s gun peeked out from under the lip of its armored hat. As the mechanical guts of the hardhat robot fell nearby, the robot pony paused yet again, this time noticing the shattered remnants of a distinctly cupcake shaped room strewn across the street a good fifty yards from the foundation it had once been attached to.

A moment more and she stood in the doorway of what remained of Sugar Cube Corner, haunted by a memory of the six friends hugging each other in front of the now debris covered counter. Well five of them had been hugging anyway, as the sky-blue pegasus in the middle had been taken off guard by the sudden pony-pile centered on her.

Whether it was Bon Bon’s candy store or the cafe that Rarity use to treat her friends to lunch at, site after site made Twilight pause and linger for a moment as she remembered the places when they were still intact. Each pause seemed to allow any nearby enemy robots to converge on her, yet Twilight didn’t seem to mind. In fact, considering that she was planing on leaving this place with a bunch of former unicorn prisoners of unknown combat potential in tow, having a clear path ready seemed like a good idea.

The final pause was before the tower that now stood where the town hall had once been, though this new metallic tower stood not only on the ruins of the town hall but most of the surrounding plaza too. A chuckle escaped Twilight’s lips as she thought how Rarity would have complained about what an eye sore that the dull gray metal that dominated the tower’s color schema was.

A massive set of double doors seemed to be the only entrance to the tower. Approaching them, the alicorn robot was startled when they opened for her unchallenged. A short hallway, only about ten feet in length, led the way into the gargantuan main room. Said room consisted of a cylinder the outer wall of which was lined with jail-like cells. Twilight counted at least twenty balconies above her, each being another ring of prison cells.

Each cell contained one or two unicorns and all of the prisoners had machines attached to their bodies and those machines had cables that were hooked up to other machines on opposite sides of each cell. The arraignment severely restricting the freedom of movement of the prisoners, like an over engineered version of being chained to the wall or floor in the dungeons of old.

Another detail that caught Twilight’s eyes was the strange mechanical rings just outside and beside each cell, that looked like they might be some sort of remote extension of the machines the prisoners where attached to.

Most of the prisoners seemed to be in a depressed sate, too out of it even notice the new presence in the tower. However, one unicorn had her eyes firmly fixed on the new arrival. Once Twilight had noticed her, the unicorn’s eyes started rolling up into her head for a moment, only to snap back down to focus on Twilight again.

Raising a metallic eyebrow, Twilight approached the unicorn with the intriguing behavior only for the unicorn’s eyes to suddenly widen in fear.

It dawned on Twilight that she too was a robot, just as this unicorn’s captors, so she said, “It’s okay, I won’t hurt-”

“Look up!” the unicorn interrupted the instant she’d heard Twilight speak.

Heeding the suddenly shouted instructions Twilight looked up and saw a beam a red light descending toward her. The air through which the beam was traveling was bursting into flames, making it look as if the beam itself was aflame. Lacking the time to do anything else, Twilight vanished in a flash of magic. Reappearing a few feet to the side, where she saw the beam strike the floor and turn the cement there molten for a few seconds.

Quickly looking back up to the source of the beam, Twilight Sparkle found a purple and green, robot dragon about the side of a small house, looking down from a balcony near the top of the tower. With a sudden tremble and a voice barely above a whisper Twilight asked, “S-Spike?”

“Who?” The dragon growled back. “Oh! Was that the name of the dragon I was built to resemble? No, unlike you frauds, my thoughts are my own, not copies of some creature who’d come before.”

With a nod Twilight answered, “You look like a grown-up version of spike… well as much as I look like me anyway.”

With a truly appreciative smile the robo-dragon said, “That’s good to know, those dragon bones on the west side of town were never really good enough to answer that question for me.” With a grimmer tone he added, “I always suspected that I was built this way as an act of psychological warfare. After all what better why to brake a pony’s spirit that to have them look upon their jailer and see the image of their noble dragon guardian?”

“You-you killed Spike?”

“Well I didn’t. Though I suppose there isn’t much of a point in differentiation between individuals of a hostile army. That said, you might want to reserve your ire for the general. This war was his idea after all.”

“You seem awfully forthcoming with this information.”

“That’s because you are either going to change sides and serve the general, or I’m going to destroy you. Either way it’s not like this information is going back to the ponies’ home base.” As if to punctuate the dragon’s words, the doors to the outside world suddenly slammed close and the clang of a heavy locking mechanism was heard.

Taking that as her cue to fight, Twilight jumped into motion, charging her beam cannon and making herself into a moving target. Above the dragon opened it’s wings and leapt off of the balcony. Several thrusters allowed him to hover high above. Not that was very much room for him to maneuver in, let alone dodge any attacks from the pony-bot below.

Now that she wasn’t being surprised by the attacks, dodging the flaming beams coming from the strange beam cannon in the mecha-dragon’s mouth was doable. By contrast the dragon didn’t dodge Twilight’s attacks at all, nor did the constant crackle of his shields taking damage seem to bother him.

For all her efforts, Twilight Sparkle wasn’t perfect, and another blast of burning energy slammed into her shields. As she jumped out of the pool of molten ground the thought that she might run out of shield energy before her opponent, despite scoring twenty hits to the dragon’s every one, made a flash of concern appeared on her face.

The pained cry of one of the prisoners drew Twilight’s attention to that particular cell, where she saw the unicorn’s horn glowing with a golden light. A quick glance back to the dragon and she spotted one of the rings from beside the prison cells was being worn on one of the dragon’s claws and it too glowed with the golden light of the imprisoned unicorn’s magic.

The dragon gave a sinister grin and laughed. “Come now, why the look? Surely you must have known that this is where we come to recharge our magic based systems before you came here. Why else would we keep these filthy fleshlings alive, if not for their usefulness to us?”

“I-I…” Twilight stuttered.

In her mental scramble to find a logical sounding answer to such a grave oversight she failed to notice that the dragon’s flight thrusters cut out until it was too late. As the dragon came crashing down, he hooked the robo-alicorn with his claws and flung her hard.

Smashing into the bars of a cell (and promptly discovering that they too were shielded,) Twilight collapsed to the floor of the third-floor balcony. Slowly crawling back to her hooves, she couldn’t help but notice the complaint from her systems that her shields were dangerously low. The sound of heavy wings flapping warned that the fight would soon resume.

And yet it was the weak voice behind Twilight that caught her attention. “Take the interface, link yourself to the magic draining machines…”

On instinct Twilight answered, “Why would I want to do-”

“Who do you think you are? I can not fathom the arrogance required to barge in here like you own the place and not account for the abundance of magic at my dispose! Surely now you see the foolishness of your attempt to fight me here, within the center of my power!” the dragon’s booming voice interrupted.

As the dragon’s head peaked up into view, he opened his maw and presented the glowing beam cannon within to his foe.

In an act of desperation Twilight leapt to the side, dodging the dragon’s shot, hooking the mechanical ring, yanking it off of its hanger and sliding it onto her front right leg as if it were an armband, all in one swift motion.

As the dragon continued to rise upward, towering over the robot alicorn he suddenly raised a curious eyebrow as he noticed the pink glow around the horn of the unicorn in the cell. A similar glow directed his attention to the stolen device now worn by his foe. “What the?” he added as a blue glow joined it, and then a green glow.

One by one, unicorn horns lit up like stars in the once dimly lit prison, and one by one, new colors of magic joined the glow surrounding Twilight until every color of unicorn magic was there. Not only did Twilight’s magic systems jump instantly back to 100% capacity, but an alert flashed in her mind’s eye that she was risking an overload for all of the magic flowing into her. Yet Twilight didn’t mind. Namely because she knew that magic didn’t have to be contained in the body, it could be contained in a spell.

A purple glow erupted from Twilight Sparkle’s horn and rapidly spread across her body. Several ribbons of light, of every color, began to orbit her as more and more magic flowed in. Between the soft glows coming from the prison cells and the radiantly shining light coming from Twilight, the tower was now bathed in light.

Twilight looked the dragon in the face and speaking in a raised yet formal voice she said, “I am Twilight Sparkle! Formerly the spirit of magic bound to the elements of harmony! Although I’m not sure if I am still considered a princess, it doesn’t matter. Whether I am their princess or merely their guardian, these are the ponies I serve! And for the crimes you have committed against them, I see only one just punishment, your destruction!”

With Twilight’s little speech complete, the robotic dragon couldn’t help but notice the sudden increase in light coming from below. Looking down he was allowed a fleeting glimpse at the ring of arcane light and magic runes that how covered the floor of the tower. In that same instant, the last of the runes lit up and a column of purple light with ribbons of light consisting of every color of unicorn magic woven through it consumed the central area of the tower, even tearing an inch or two from the balconies.

The pillar or light shimmered for a few seconds and then, as the glow of a thousand unicorn horns began flickering out, the pillar also faded. A few sparks of magic hung in the air where the dragon had been, but aside from that no trace of the dragon could be found.

As her systems accepted the absence of her foe, Twilight’s heads up display lit up with an abundance of calculations, in the center of which flashed the words ‘Compatible upgrade detected.’ When her systems had finished they drew her attention to her weapons system folder, where she found the schematic of the beam canon in her front right hoof had changed and was now labeled as a ‘plasma cannon’ instead of a beam cannon.

As if a final acknowledgement of Twilight Sparkles victory, the prison cells all opened and the machines binding the unicorns with them also sprung open. Although weary, the former prisoners began emerging from their cells, many taking a moment to admire the new open-air skylight that had replaced the roof of the tower.

Opening her wings Twilight flew into the middle of the tower. Rotating herself slowly as she hovered in full few of the unicorns she’d come to free she said, “Okay everypony, listen up! We have a long hike between here and friendly territory! And to put it frankly, there might be a war still going on between here and there! The first thing we need to do is get organized, so I can make a proper plan for getting you to safety!”


> Chapter: 8 A Rare Sight in the Sky
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Thanks, starting launch sequence now!” Twilight’s voice came from the small monitor on the spaceship’s interment panel.

With that, Rarity had nothing more do but listen to the sudden rumbling coming from the ship’s engines and admire the acceleration that pressed her into the back of her chair. Beyond the window she saw the ship shoot out of the hanger at incredible speed. Halfway down the track the roar of the engines suddenly tripled in volume and the acceleration increased to match. Then for a brief moment, the acceleration pushing Rarity into the back of her set suddenly started pushing her toward the floor and the windows showed only blue sky ahead of her. A moment later and the controlled rattling of the ship changed with the district clank noise of the spaceship leaving the launch track.

Shortly after that the blue sky beyond the windows began to darken until even the stars could be seen. Among the stars, one particular star stood out, mainly because it was growing in size and rapidly taking the shape of a cylindrical tower with what looked like a building-sized wagon wheel at one end.

Gazing on the distant structure, Rarity felt the main engines cut out. Almost immediately a new softer noise rattled the ship and the feeling of acceleration was replaced by the feeling of deceleration. A slight glow from the side windows drew her attention to the forward-facing thrusters now slowing the spaceship. Despite this the building before her continued to grow larger and larger, causing Rarity to realize just how distant the structure was.

As the ship approached the wheel end of the tower the thrusters stopped for a moment. The true feeling of weightlessness came over Rarity, as she felt herself no longer being pushed into the seat or held into the seat by her harness but just floating in the few inches of free space between the two.

The repose was short lived as a few minor thrusters fired, lining the ship up with the opening gate at the wheel end of the tower. Nearing the awaiting docking bay, it became clear that the facility was large enough to accommodate four spaceships of the same size as the one Rarity was in.

The ship glided gracefully into one of the ports and a set of docking clamps latched down, providing one last jolt and bringing the journey to an end.

Releasing her harness, Rarity tried to stand up properly and was sent floating right into the ceiling. After a moment of flailing her limbs around uselessly, it occurred to her that if she weighed so little that she could float it would be well with in her ability to carry herself with her magic. With a few slight nudges of her magic Rarity managed to right herself and make her way to the exit of the spaceship, pausing only once to bemoan how dreadful her mane looked floating about as if it where underwater.

Among the docking bay was another ship and more importantly a line of robots that seemed to consist of little more than a sphere, a couple of tubes on their backs that looked like they were some sort of proportion devices, and two arms with clamp-like graspers on the end. Said robots were ferrying crates to and form their own ship. Of particular interest, their path showed Rarity the exit from the docking bay to the rest of the station.

Rarity gave herself a slight push and started drifting toward the docking bay exit. If she’d had muscles they would have been tense, instead she had to settle for charging up her beam cannon to ready herself for combat. Yet, much to her relief the cargo-bots didn’t seem to care about the new robot pony drifting into their field of view.

Entering into a large curricular room, Rarity found the cargo-bots to be taking abrupt ninety-degree turns and heading down one of the many the hallways. The hallways in question were too long to remain confined to the central tower, so Rarity figured they had to be the spokes of the wheel-like part of the space station. Before her was a wall the covered most of the path ‘up’ the tower portion of the station, with a door-like gap that was currently ‘below’ her.

To either side of the doorway were two more robots, sharing a design similar to the cargo-bots only they were bigger and instead of wrench-like hands they had beam cannons at the ends of their arms. The one on the left side hovered toward Rarity and spoke in a distinctly mechanical voice.

“Unregistered robot of unknown design. State your name and purpose.”

Grasping at the hope that she might be able to perform more of her mission diplomatically, Rarity conjured up her most lady-like voice and said, “My name is Rarity. And I’m here to…” Seeing as ‘destroy this place’ probably wouldn’t fly as an acceptable answer she quickly glanced around and just as quickly found something she could be convincingly passionate about. “…To give this place a makeover. Seriously, what’s with all this industrial gray? You could at least add some silver and gold accenting to make this place a little bit presentable.”

The guard-bot’s eye narrowed like a camera shutter getting suck halfway through taking a picture. “Style is irrelevant. Only function matters. Concern about style is irrelevant. Conclusion you are an enemy robot.” To punctuate the guard’s words an alarm started blaring around them.

To punctuate Rarity’s disappointment, she released the fully charged blast she’d been holding in her beam cannon ever since floating past the cargo-bots.

As one guard exploded in a radiant light-blue flash of destructive energy, the other opened fire. With a pulse of magic Rarity pushed herself to the side, while managing to only take a grazing shot on her energy-shielded armor. Rebounding off of the wall allowed Rarity to dodge a few more shots as she fired off a quick succession of blasts from her beam cannon, finally destroying her foe.

Although the loss of shield energy on Rarity’s part was token, it was still more than she’d have liked for fighting such low-end robots like those. Her pondering was interrupted as she drifted into the wall opposite the one she’d kicked off of during the fight. After grumbling a rather unladylike curse she mumbled, “I know fighting isn’t my thing, but fighting without my hooves on the ground really isn’t my thing.”

With a few more nudges from her telekinesis spell Rarity had herself drifting toward the doorway leading up the tower. At which point she pondered if that was ‘up’ the tower then wouldn’t that mean that the wall before was a ceiling with a hole leading up to the next floor, more like a pegasus tower that lacked stairs in its stairwells?

The more she thought about it the more it made her head spin. Then the computer part of her brain was more then happy to remind her that ‘up’ and ‘down’ are directions relevant to a center of gravity and did not exist in gravity’s absence. “Oh sweet Celestia! This is worse than I thought! How are you suppose to know where to put the carpet and what side to hang the drapes from in a place like this? No, they were right! This evil place must be destroyed!”


* * * * * * *


The remainder of the tower… or hallway… or whatever buildings like this called these passageways, cosseted of several rooms, usually with a few guard-bots, but too few to be a real hindrance to Rarity’s warpath.

Until she came to a narrow passageway near the ‘top’ of the tower. Barging into the passageway she found several blaster turrets at the far end. Darting right back out of the passageway amid a hail of blaster fire Rarity took a moment find the nearest wall she hide behind, while she lamented the distinct lack of any feeling of panic in her robotic body to match the moment of panic in her mind.

“Stupid robotic body, you don’t have to make me feel like I’m use to being shot at.” Taking a moment to see her ragged, once windswept, tail floating about as if she were underwater she added, “Stupid missing gravity making it impossible to keep a decent looking mane!”

Taking a pointless deep breath she glanced at her shields indicator to see that she had 73% shield energy left. For a brief moment she contemplating bum-rushing the turrets, then she took notice that she’d only been using her magic for propulsion, so her weapon’s energy was still at 95%.

“Or I could just brake out the big guns, as Rainbow Dash would say.” Shaking the thought from her mind, she said, “No, no, Rarity. Calm yourself, just because you have to ware Rainbow Dash’s mane-style doesn’t mean you have to stoop to her level of tactics. A lady can be clever and cunning as well as stunningly beautiful, after all.”

Rarity’s tail continued to fan out and invade her peripheral vision. “Seriously, was a ponytail the only way to salvage Rainbow’s hair? Actually that would be an improvement over this mess,” she concluded. After quickly patting herself down and even checking her own blueprints she snarled, “My kingdom for a rubber band.”

Then a revelation that had nothing to do with tactics entered into her mind and a sinister grin crept onto her face. “Screw it, big guns it is.”

Activating her specialized magic weapon system, her horn flared to life and seven blue crystals appeared. The crystals were the shape of four-pointed stars and had razor sharp edges that made them perfect throwing stars. Not that unicorns threw things in a traditional since. The crystal stars quickly hovered into a ring-like formation, spinning around Rarity like a shield of crystal blades, glittering in the soft blue magic that propelled them.

Poking out round the corner Rarity’s horn pulsed once more and sent the sapphire stars flying down the corridor. Then the robotic unicorn darted back into cover just in time to avoid the volley of cannon fire the turrets at the other end saw fit to give to her. The sound of explosions proved that the turrets got the worse deal out of the traded gifts.

After a quick glance confirmed the destruction at the far end of the hall Rarity continued forward. Although, as she floated down the debris strewn pathway she took a moment to snag some wires that formerly belonged to the defense turrets and used them to tie her mane and tail into proper ponytails. While the action brought a small smile to her face, it quickly faded as she glumly and sarcastically remarked, “Great, all I need now is a cowboy hat and I’ll be looking like Applejack.”

The ‘top’ room of the space station ’s tower held more then enough computers and instrument panels to remind Rarity of the command room back home. Even a window or three could be found, one of which looked out at the predominately blue and white world below. And yet even from here she couldn’t help but match the green and brown bits to the map of Equestria.

“Ah, so the decorator has arrived,” a deep yet female voice said.

The words drew Rarity’s attention to the mechanical spider about the size of a carriage. The spider’s colors were that of light and dark shades of green, making it the most colorful thing that Rarity had seen on the entire space station.

“How did you know I said that?”

“You have to ask?” the spider answered.

Glancing to the monitors, Rarity said, “Ah right I must have been in front of a camera.”

“You truly don’t know,” the spider said with a chuckle.

“Perhaps you can enlighten me then?”

“This place is too far from enemies that would use EMP weapons, so I am free to see through the eyes of all of my drones. When you spoke to my guards you might as well have been speaking to me. In fact I have been watching you fight you way through my station this whole time.”

“If those drones were little more than an extension of yourself, then you know that I have bested every robot you put in my path. So why don’t you be a dear and stand down, my orders are to destroy this place, so I see no reason that I couldn’t turn a blind eye to allowing you to escape beforehand.”

The spider laughed. “You’re offering me the chance to escape? Did you not realize that your pony masters have sent you to your doom?”

With a raised eyebrow Rarity asked, “What ever do you mean?”

“Either you’re incompetent or no one told you to disable the auto pilot feature of the spaceship once you arrived. Either way, once you left the ship unattended I was able to send it away.” One of the spider’s green limbs motioned to the side, where a monitor showed the now empty docking bay.

While Rarity frowned at the revelation, she responded, “You underestimate my resourcefulness, Princess Luna does not.”

“Perhaps you’re right. But in that case your precious Luna clearly underestimates me, I’ve watched you fight your way through my station and I’ve seen that, resourceful or not, you are clearly unaccustomed to fighting in a zero-gravity environment. Seeing as I’ll be destroying you I guess how you’ll be getting back to the surface is a moot point.”

With that the mechanical spider made the first move. Presenting the twin weapon arrays on either side of her body, the emerald lenses at the ends of them glowed brightly for a second, before each produced a large emerald that was fired at high speed at Rarity.

With a pulse of her magic Rarity slipped in between the two glittering spikes and charged her horn with magic. Summoning another set of sapphire throwing stars, Rarity sent one of them at her target while allowing the remaining ones to hold orbit around her.

The sound of the emerald lances shattering behind her did nothing to draw Rarity’s attention. Not until she was hit in the back by fragments still flying fast enough to damage her shields anyway. On the other end of the exchange, the spider dodged the throwing star by skittering along the floor, using electromagnets in the tips of its legs to move normally despite the lack of gravity. Even as her own shields flashed from damage, Rarity reached out with her magic and grabbed the thrown star and brought it around so that it slammed into the spider’s back.

Looking up, the station commander made the mistake of showing apprehension in her eyes. Quickly firing her emerald lances in a less than calm way didn’t help hide the vulnerability to Rarity’s weapon either.

With a pulse of magic Rarity not only dodged the crystal spikes but also darted across the room and spun around to watch for and dodge the fragments that would come from said spikes when they shattered. As soon as she found a gap in the emerald shards scattering across the room the robo-unicorn released her remaining sapphire throwing stars.

The barrage descended onto the robotic spider, making the station commander stumble in her attempt to back away. “How dare, you…” While the station commander’s words started as a threat, the last word was little more then a whisper. The sight before her was that of the mechanical unicorn holding an overly dramatic pose, not too dissimilar from a pegasus hovering with their body in a vertical stance and front legs spread slightly downward and to the sides, surrounded by twenty one of her blue crystal stars. (Not so incidentally, the pose she was mimicking was typically used in pony art to depict the angel of justice floating above the one being judged.)

“As much as I hate to admit it,” Rarity said. “I’m a very petty pony. You see I’ve always hated icky and ugly things, and I find spiders to be among those icky things.” Trusting a hoof forward the magic around Rarity’s horn flared and the stars descended like diamond rain. “Now be gone you foul beast!”

Halfway through the bombardment the Spider’s shields stopped flickering and the crystal stars started punching through the spider’s armor outright. As the station commander went limp and started floating away from the floor, she muttered, “I’ll still… destroy you…” With that the light in her camera-eyes went out.

Rarity floated for a moment, ready to react if the husk of a spider robot moved. Yet the only thing that happened as she stared at her defeated foe was that her heads up display started flashing all kinds of numbers and symbols in her field of view before finishing with the text ‘compatible upgrade detected.’ A moment more and Rarity found a new weapon system next to her crystal stars listed as ‘Explosive Crystal Stars.’

Giving the robo-spider a friendly tap, Rarity said, “Idle threats will get you nowhere darling.”

Just then a voice came from every speaker in the room. “Station commander deceased. Hostile entity detected. Engaging station self-destruct system.”

“Oh, never mind,” Rarity added sheepishly.

A chain of explosions demolished the computer terminals and was followed by tremors that shook the whole room. Making her way to the windows Rarity was able to see larger explosions racking the star-bound side of the station. At that moment Rarity was slammed to the wall, or more actually the wall was the thrown into her, as what was left of the station began to fall toward the world below.

Rarity felt gravity take hold as she drifted off of the wall she’d been pinned to. Using her magic she forced herself to the planet-side wall and rooted her hooves firmly to it. Being close enough to a window she was able to watch the slowly growing world she was hurtling toward.

Despite the impending disaster that atmospheric reentry would soon provide Rarity couldn’t help but smile at the prismatic shockwave of a sonic rainboom racing across the skies of central Equestria. And not long after the sonic rainboom had faded away a short-lived pillar of purple light shot into heavens from the ruins of Ponyville.

By now the world was close enough that the mechanical unicorn could guess that her trajectory had her part of the crumbling space station aimed to land more or less in Appleloosa.

Fire erupted everywhere as she entered the atmosphere, licking around the edges of the falling debris, and the friction tore the mostly intact room apart at the seams. As the other walls peeled away, disappearing beyond the sheath of flames, Rarity’s horn pulsed with magic and she gave her every thought to keeping the floor beneath her from flipping about in accord with the air friction flowing around it.

When cracks began to form in the window Rarity scampered back a few steps. Her retreat came just before it broke and a geyser of flames sprouted from the window frame. The flames had been licking at Rarity’s makeshift heat shield too long, and pieces of it had been tearing away from the edges. Now granted this new weak point the process accelerated, forcing the robotic unicorn to retreat farther from the window frame.

After the eternity that was actually just a few short minutes, the air friction had slowed Rarity’s decent enough that the flames petered out. What had once been a wall fit for a large ballroom was now little more then a five-foot by five-foot steel panel.

Peering over the edge of her plummeting sanctuary Rarity confirmed that the ever growing desert below her was that of southern Equestria, and the impending landing zone seemed increasingly likely to be whatever was left of Appleloosa. Thankfully she couldn’t find any signs that the town was still inhabited these days.

Forming a plan in her mind, Rarity laid down atop her metal parachute and listened as other, more free falling, debris of the space station started bombarding the ghost town. As the horizon and plumes of dust, kicked up by the preceding impacts, entered her view Rarity dumped as much magic as she could into her horn at the last possible second. Pouring that magic into her shield emitters she almost completely drained her weapon systems as she crashed into the ground.

Needless to say, slamming into the ground at over two hundred miles an hour sent another plume of dust and dirt into the air. And this particular plum was accompanied by a fair amount of splinters that had belong to the wooden building that had just been demolished by said impact.

Rarity’s eyes opened, and a good two seconds later she realized that she was, in fact, still alive and functioning. The computer part of her mind displayed the damage report of her systems. The short version was that her weapon and shield systems were at 0%, her armor’s structural integrity was at 50% and the motors in her front left leg were no longer responding.

Looking herself over she saw that she was covered in dust, dirt and splinters. Her armor was scathed and dented beyond belief and even an armored plate or two had fallen off outright. “Of course, just as I’m getting used to the whole plated knight look I just HAD to go ruin that too! I swear, I’m starting to get the impression that the future hates good style!”

Amidst the debris kicked up by her harsh arrival, a lone cowboy hat came floating down. Coming to rest on what remained of a wooden post, it dangling right in front of Rarity. Looking herself over she discovered that the wires she’d used to tie her main and tail into ponytails had miraculously survived the crash landing. Sighing and giggling at the same time, she grabbed the hat, slid it on and said, “Sure. Why not?”

With that she turned to the northwest and hobbled off to begin her long trek home.
> Chapter 9: To End a War
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The command room was bustling with activity as Twilight Sparkle walked in, with ponies darting from one station to another, or tending to the recently returned robot guardians. Escorting a thousand unicorns had slowed her down enough that she was the last of the six new guardians to return. Yet, she could only find four of her friends in the room.

“Where’s Rarity? When she didn’t join me on the way back I figured she’d have come home before me,” Twilight asked, as the maintenance technician put the system interface helmet on her.

Rainbow Dash, who had just removed a similar helmet, answered, “She banged herself up pretty good, more than her auto-repair function could handle. So they sent her down to the maintenance bay to get fixed up.”

The horn of the maintenance tech tending to Twilight flashed for a moment before she tilted her head to the side and asked, “You too?”

“Me too what?”

“You didn’t use any magic at all on your mission?”

“Oh, no I used plenty. It’s just that on the way back the unicorns who didn’t know any combat magic fed their magic to me so I could go all out protecting them.”

The tech nodded her head. “Ah, at least that makes since.”

“So what did you mean ‘me too?’ Who else came back with their magic systems toped off?”

“Guilty,” Rainbow Dash said, with a big grin on her face.

At that the familiar voice of Gears interrupted, and the stallion motioned for the mechanical pegasus to come over to him. “Miss Dash! Could you come here a moment?”

“Guess I should go see what he wants. Although I think I have a good guess,” Rainbow added as if she was being called to a teacher’s desk to explain a lackluster exam score. With that the robo-pegasus with the prismatic mane trotted across the room.

As soon Dash was close enough that he didn’t have to shout Gears said, “Rainbow Dash, I’m getting all kinds of erratic data from your system scan just now.”

“Yeah, when I was fighting that griffin I suffered some kinda visual glitch. Basically, right when I did a sonic rainboom… If I did a sonic rainboom, maybe that was part of the glitch too. I can’t tell if that was just in my head or not.”

“Something definitely did a sonic rainboom. But that’s not actualy what I’m talking about… maybe they are connected,” Gears said, starting to trail off into thought. Quickly shaking his head he added, “Anyway, what concerns me is your new weapon system. The auto-upgrade systems are only supposed to modify or add new systems that are compatible with the limits of your systems. But that new ‘Meteor Strike’ protocol seemed to be under the impression that your magic batteries are three times stronger than they actually are.”

The mechanical pegasus blinked her eyes, then tilted her head to the side. “So what are you saying? That I can’t do what I did?”

“Wait? You already used it? And you’re still in one piece?” Not even waiting for her to answer, Gears shook his head and added, “No, never mind. Look, I’ve only had the time to look at the raw data. I’ll look into details of the data later. But what you need to know right now is that your new weapon system requires a lot more magic than you have, so don’t use it at full power. If I where you I wouldn’t use it at anything more then one fourth its maximum output, and only if you still have full power in your weapon system’s magic power cells. Otherwise you’d be setting yourself up for an impact that would destroy you. Better yet, don’t use it at all until we can figure out what’s the deal with it. Okay?”

“Speaking of odd data, you might want to look at this,” Dawn Dancer said, taping the computer screen in front of her.

Ponies of both flesh and steel looked to Dawn’s screen. Rainbow Dash found the screen had a schematic of Pinkie Pie, not to unlike the one of herself currently on Gears’ screen. Then she simply tilted her head to the side, unsure what was supposed to be unusual about it.

However, Gears’ expression quickly twisted into the king of ‘huh?’ expressions as he looked at the screen. “Is that a conjuration array?” he asked barely above a whisper, and inadvertently drawing attention to the fact that Pinkie’s two front hooves were no longer symmetrical.

With a bit of a smirk and a raised eyebrow Dash said, “I take it that Pinkie did something she can’t do too?”

“Actualy your change makes since. The upgrade system is designed to make minor modifications to you systems if it finds something compatible with your design. Your new weapon system is almost completely nothing but new protocol, and only needed very minor tweaks to your existing systems to accommodate. Baring the problem we just discussed.” Suddenly waving a hoof at the screen of Pinkie’s schematic he added, “This… this makes no since! You can’t even make a conjuration array by dismantling a blaster! They are made from completely different parts!”

“Forgive my eavesdropping. But it merely sounds as if you have succeeded in recreating Pinkie Pie more accurately than you realized,” Luna said, stepping close. “However I will need to barrow the guardians from you. It is time.”

Glancing back at the screen for a moment, Gears brushed his hoof against his chin for a second and then said, “Well these numbers aren’t self destructive. And I’ve already said what I needed to Rainbow Dash… Okay I can clear them for redeployment.”

Luna gave a respectful bow. “Thank you.” And with that she led Rainbow toward an exit to the command room. As they joined the four robotic guardians already there Luna added, “Come, I will brief you on your next mission down in the maintenance bay. So that Rarity may hear as well.”

They entered the maintenance bay to find Rarity standing on a table and being held steady in the clamps of several mechanical arms, as one such arm seemed to be screwing in a new front left leg. As soon as the leg was in place two unicorns came close and used their magic to start fusing the wires from the new leg to the ones from Rarity’s body that used to be attached to the old leg.

Upon seeing that she had guests Rarity managed to say, “Oh dear me! I don’t think I’m quite presentable just yet. Forgive me princess.”

“I hath seen many a damaged robot. By comparison you look spectacular, so fret not,” Luna answered. 

“Try not to move it,” the male of the two technicians working on Rarity said, as they raised armored plates to the top of her new leg and started welding them into place.

Stepping aside so that she could face all of the robots in the room, Luna said, “Regardless, the time had come to end this war. The enemy hath made a bold move, yet we beat them back. What remains of the enemy forces will no doubt be defending their command center, and more importantly the one behind this whole war. If we can strike down the general of the renegade robots his master plan dies with him.”

With a purple hoof raised as if at a classroom desk Twilight asked, “What makes you think that only the general knows the full plan?”

“Easy, because you are not the first to defeat a unit commander. In the past we have salvaged the hard drives of said commanders. However, in their memories we have never found more then their immediate orders, maybe a day or two’s worth. But certainly never enough to piece together any true battle plan. As the war has gone on, it has become increasingly clear that the full battle plan never leaves the command fortress in Fillydelphia.”

Luna paused for a moment to find the nearest computer. And under the glow of princess of the night’s magic several buttons clicked away until an image appeared of a large, tower-like, steel fortress looming over what remained of the city in question.

“There are two objectives of importance within the enemy command center. The six of you need only concern yourself with one of them, the destruction of the robot mastermind who started this whole accursed affair.”

“Begging your pardon princess, but what’s the second objective? If you don’t mind my asking?” Rarity said, as the technicians finished their work by using their magic to recolor the plane gray of the new parts to a polished white to match the rest of Rarity’s armor.

“The current spirits of harmony are being held there. While you six fight your way up the tower to the command room, another team will be going down into the basement to free them and reunite them with the elements.”

Twilight couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at Luna’s answer. “Wait, I though you said the enemy captured both the ponies and the elements? And that they were stored at different places now. So how can we reunite the ponies with the spirits of harmony with the elements if we don’t have the elements?”

Luna couldn’t help but giggle at the outburst. “Surely you do not think you have been fighting this war alone do you? There are four other guardians much like yourselves. It is they who have been retrieving the elements. Missions like that were why they weren’t around to help you defend the base when we were first attacked today. In fact we now have all six elements being safely stored back here at this very moment, thanks to them.”

“Oh, it’s just that I haven’t seen other robot ponies around.”

“By the time they returned from their missions, you six had things well in hoof. So I sent them ahead on this next mission. You should find them engaging the enemy near the perimeter of the command tower. Speaking of which, you really shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer then necessary.”

As Luna finished, the clamps on Rarity opened, allowing her to get down off of the worktable and join her friends. “Everything’s fixed. All systems fully charged!” the female of the two unicorn technicians announced.

With a quick round of nods and affirmations the six friends headed for the deployment room.


* * * * * * *


Appearing on a rooftop near the edge of the city, the towering command center at the heart of the city wasn’t hard for the six robotic guardians to notice. Nor was distant sound of combat coming from within the city.

“We need a plan!” Twilight declared, as she stepped forward. “Rainbow Dash, you’re our best flyer, so can you take overhead scout? You’d do best avoiding enemy fire despite flying above cover. Applejack, can you take point for the ground group? Rarity, can you take tail-guard?”

A round of nods and quick salutes answered her.

With a nod of her own Twilight added, “Then let’s move out!”

They had barely gotten a city block from their starting point when Rainbow Dash gave her first report. “There’s some real heavy fighting going on over by that fort alright and… Oh my gosh! Those are the crusaders! And I think they need help! Catch up when you can!” And before anypony could respond Dash had blitzed on ahead.

Ahead three robotic ponies were fighting valiantly. The yellow and white ones, that Rainbow Dash knew to be Apple Bloom and Sweetie belle respectively, were crouched behind what was left of a wall, trading blaster shots with an army of mechanical wolves. Perhaps trading shots wasn’t the right term, as most of the robo-wolves didn’t seem to care too much about the two robotic ponies at the edge of the fight. No, they were focused on the orange pegasus robot in the middle of the pack of wolves.

The orange one, that could only be Scootaloo, was darting about, no that wasn’t right either. Sparks flew off of her hooves from the metal on metal grinding as she slid across the backs of the metallic wolves that she seemed to be dancing across. The leading edges of her wings were surging with lightning as she swung them like swords, cleaving the wolves to scrap as she passed by.

Between attacking and parrying incoming blaster fire Scootaloo’s wings were a blur of motion. Despite that Scootaloo’s body crackled with another form of energy. The shimmer of shield damage as the inevitable outcome of being at near point-blank range, in the middle of hundreds of enemy robots made it impossible to dodge or deflect all of the incoming fire that she was drawing.

Leaping high Scootaloo spun hard as she came down, clearing a landing spot as the shredded scrap metal of the wolves who’d formerly occupied it fell nearby. For the first time since her attack had begun she stood still, and in that brief second every single robo-wolf in the sight aimed their blaster at her.

And yet Scootaloo’s only response was to smile and say, “That’s right, look at the decoy.”

The wolves fired.

Scootaloo vanished in a flash of green light, and a fraction of a second later a sea of red energy bolts converged on that very spot. The resulting explosion burned brightly for a second and when it faded not a single bit of orange scrap could be found.

That’s when the wolves noticed the shadow that had swept over them. More importantly they noticed the massive wall of earth that had been torn out of the ground and raised up, blocking out the dying light of the setting sun. After that they noticed the white robot unicorn standing atop the wall, with a pink and purple mane, and a horn shinning radiantly with a soft green light. Finally they noticed that the wall was sparkling with green light as well and a flash of the same light flared beside the unicorn that faded to reveal the orange pegasus-bot.

What they didn’t notice was the yellow robot earth pony behind the wall who coiled her hind legs and let loose with a kick that sounded too deep to be thunder but too loud to be anything but thunder. The base of the massive earthen wall cracked. The wall itself tumbled forward, toward the robotic wolves. And the two ponies atop the wall gave a slight hop and began sliding down the backside of the wall as it fell.

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo even made it most of the way down the wall before is finally fell flat and a resounding crash accompanied by hundreds of small explosions sounded from beneath their hooves and the earthen slab.

Apple Bloom hopped up onto the remnant of the stone slab she’d just knocked over and trotted over to her friends, where the three raised their hoofs and gave a cheer to go along with their high-hoof.

“It’s about time they let us work together again!” Bloom said cheerfully, as the trio looked toward the towering fortress before them.

“No kidding!” Sweetie added with a nod.

“Incoming, six-o-clock, high,” Scootaloo said with a smile, giving no physical indication that she wasn’t still celebrating the moment with her friends.

In a heartbeat all three spun around and pointed a beam cannon or ion cannon to the sky, only for Scootaloo to shout, “Wait!” And in calmer tone she added, “Is that who I think it is?”

“Ah think so. Luna did say they were on-line now.”

“And she said backup would be catching up to us soon.”

By the time the trio had finished their comments the aerial intruder was close enough to solidly identify as Rainbow Dash. And at the moment she was flaring her wings hard and pointing all of her hooves forward so the thrusters in them could help slow her down as well.

A sonic boom sounded just before Rainbow landed with a heavy thud, yet she held a strong pose that made the hard landing seem intentional. Then her composure faltered, as she looked into the eyes of the orange pegasus-bot before her and she just blinked, clearly wanting to speak but unable to find the words.

When the blue robo-pegasus finally did speak she said, “Wow! You guys are all grown up!”

The trio laughed and Scootaloo responded, “Heh, yeah. You didn’t think they’d make combat robots like us with only the memories of fillies did you?”

With a swift hoof to her own face Rainbow Dash said, “Right two hundred year, of course they grew up. Sorry, it’s just the last time I remember seeing you guys was just before that meteor incident.”

“Oh wow! We must have a good twenty years worth of memories on you then.”

Stroking her chin with her hoof, Sweetie Belle saw fit to join the conversation, volunteering, “Actually, now that I think about it, we did cause a lot more property damage when we were kids then adults. So it could have made since to make us as we were as fillies.”

“Thank you, walking calculator,” Scootaloo said with a scowl.

“Seeing as we’re all robots here I think we all fit that description.”

Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but chuckle at the exchange. Another thing she couldn’t help was the curiosity that drove her to look to the trio’s flanks. Finding that all three of them had identical cutie marks, depicting a blue shield with the silhouette of a caped pony in an adventurous stance. “You’re kidding right? You got cutie marks for being cutie mark crusaders?”

“What?” Apple Bloom answered, and quickly followed with, “Oh, no. When they first made us we had our real cutie marks. But since they kept separating us on missions we had the mechanics repaint our crusader’s symbol there instead to remind us that we will always be a team.”

“Whether we’re together or not!” Sweetie Belle added, pulling her two best friends into a hug. The smile on her face quickly faded and she added, “Umm… Rainbow Dash? Are Rarity and the others with you too?”

Dash gave a quick nod. “Yeah, I didn’t see much in the way when I rushed over, so I’d give them another minute or two before they catch up.”

Motioning to the ruble around them Scootaloo said, “I think we took care of most of the perimeter guards.” Then looking to the tower fortress she grinned and added, “If we walk a little on the slow side, maybe we can take out the turrets by the gate before the others catch up.”

A smile and the hum of her ion cannon charging up was all the answer Rainbow Dash gave. And it was all the answer she needed to give.


* * * * * * *


The final turret guarding the front door was destroyed, not by the lightning of an ion cannon or the magical light of a blaster cannon, but by the raging flames of Twilight’s plasma cannon. 

As she looked away from the molten slag that remained of the turret Rainbow Dash asked, “What took you guys so long?”

“Well we could’ve caught up sooner if y’all didn’t keep running on ahead like that,” Applejack said.

“Sorry about that. But we did have orders to take care of the perimeter defenses for y’all.”

“Well you did a god job of that. But now that we’re here how are we suppose to get in? After all that fighting I’d imagine that this gate is locked up tight,” Rarity said trotting over to the massive blast door that passed for the main entrance.

Twilight gave a quick nod. “This gate looks pretty tough. It might even be easier to cut through one of the walls than try to bust though this. And I’m guessing they won’t open it if we just ask nicely.”

A sudden clang rang out, unseen mechanisms roared to life and the gate began sinking into the ground.

“That depends on who the doorman happens to be at the moment,” a male voice said from just behind the lowering blast door.

As the gate continued to lower into the ground the lone figure behind it was revealed to be a robotic pegasus stallion, with a violet mane and light-blue armor.

“Who’s this?” Twilight asked.

As the crusaders walked casually past the stallion Scootaloo stopped and said, “Everypony, meet Scooter.”

“Scooter?” the six robo-mares still outside asked together, several of them raising an eyebrow as they did.

Giving a gentlemanly bow he said, “It seems I was named after my great grandma Scootaloo. Never really caused any problems in my life. Though now days, you may want to be careful when using the nickname ‘Scoots’ as both of us tend to answer to that name.” With a more serious look on his face he pointed to a hallway on the right side of the room and added, “The stairs up are down that way. Good luck.”

“Aren’t you coming, too?” Rarity asked.

“No ma’am. The crusaders and I were given the mission to rescue the spirits of harmony. Do us a favor and try not to bring the building down on our heads for ten minutes or so. The spirits of harmony are flesh and blood ponies after all. And seeing as one of them is the closest thing to a mother we robo-guardians really have… so yeah I’d really like to make sure they all get out of here alive before you do any major demolition, okay?”

Rainbow Dash was the first to step forward. “Small arms only, for ten minutes. Yeah we can handle that. See you back at base!” With that she gave a salute and led the charge down the hallway that had been pointed out. A second later her friends gave similar acknowledgments and followed after her.

On the first floor the wake of destruction Scooter had left behind made it clear that he had entered the building someplace on the other side of the building and fought is way to the front door. Quickly finding the stairs, the six friends headed up and found that the stairs only went up one floor before forcing them back out to seek a new stairwell to continue their assent.

The floors above the first presented hallways with abrupt turns, traps and plenty of gorilla-robot-soldiers and fixed turrets to slow their progress. And yet, it rarely took more then a minute for the six heroines to cross each floor and reach the next stairwell.


* * * * * * *


It wasn’t until tenth floor that they found any real resistance in the form six robotic manticores.

On one side of the room Applejack raised her hoof and three claws made of orange magic appeared on the end of it. Slashing down, the magical claws not only cut through the front armor of her target but also unleashed a wave of energy that finished the job and even scared the wall behind the sundered remains of the robo-manticore.

On the other side of the room a five-pointed emerald star struck one of the manticores and exploded, showering a fair portion of the room with crystal shards. Of course, the manticore that had been struck was peppered the most by the shards of the exploding crystal and stumbled back a step. Even with the electric flash, revealing that it still had some shield energy left, several of the shards were imbedded into it’s physical armor, although not deeply. Correcting its staggered stance the manticore’s recovery was short lived as two more crystal stars finished what the first had started.

“I suppose that weapon would be better suited to dealing with large groups of weaker enemies,” Rarity said, as she glanced at the numerous emerald shards that were now scattered about the room.

Not far from Rarity another mechanical manticore collapsed to the floor with covered in dozens of small, metal, brightly colored cards protruding from its armor and even a few slots from where the razor-like cards had punched through the armor all together. “Well this razor confetti seems to work well for single targets,” Pinkie Pie said, hopping near her recently felled foe.

More towards the middle of the room Fluttershy stood motionless, with the shoulder pads of her armor opened up, presenting an additional set of shield emitters. Said emitters were glowing brightly, producing a wall of pinkish light a few feet in front of her that happened to be holding back three manticores. Near the top of Fluttershy’s force field were Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash hovering just high enough to fire over the energy wall while still using it for cover as they sent fire and lightning down on their foes from their plasma and ion cannons respectively. Just as the first two manticores fell Applejack came running in from the side and swung her tiger strike attack in and uppercut that cleaved the third manticore into two. Said attack also sent another shockwave flaying that slammed into a wall hard enough to dent it enough that the outside twilight could be seen around the edges.

“Applejack!” Twilight and Rainbow both chided their friend.

“What? I didn’t brake it! And ain’t it been ten minutes by now?”

“True. But after helping all those unicorns escape it’s a fair guess to assume that the spirits of harmony might not be in the best shape, and might not be able to move as quickly as the crusaders would like. So we really should give them as much time as possible to get clear before we start dropping two-ton pieces of building armor from a hundred feet up.”

Applejack sighed and said, “Fine, no more showing off until we get to the top.” And with that the six resumed their trek up the tower.


* * * * * * *


Emerging onto the twentieth floor the six mechanized mares found the general of the renegade robots to be what looked like a mechanical minotaur, save for the bat-like set of wings on his back. The general’s armored exterior was primarily colored red and gold.

“How dreadful! He looks like a demon,” Rarity muttered to her friends.

While the others nodded or whispered similar sentiments Rainbow Dash’s eyes were drawn to the sword in the general’s hand. More precisely the energy crackling around it, not like the energy of a shield system but more like the energy that flowed from the leading edge of Scootaloo’s wings that let her use them like weapons.

Taking notice of the blue pegasus’ gaze the general rose from his chair and said, “To be honest, swordplay is not my preferred means of combat. But I was expecting to see the orange pegasus again, and I find it unwise to face her without a means to parry.”

Motioning to a monitor he added, “Imagine my surprise when I saw this on my security cameras.” The computer screen in question was replaying a loop of the battle on the tenth floor. “So tell me. What makes the six of you, with hardly a day’s worth of experience, greater in Luna’s eyes than the four robots who have been troubling me for quite some time?”

As the unofficial leader of the group, Twilight Sparkle stepped forward. “I’m not sure. But if I had to guess, and I am, Luna chose us because of simple numbers. It’s harder to evade six than four.”

“You seam surprisingly modest, for the first alicorn model robo-pony I’ve seen. But perhaps that modesty is warranted. After all, every sensor in this tower is telling me that despite being a truly new model, you seem you be nothing more than an slightly stronger unicorn model that they slapped an inferior flight system on. Sure your slightly superior size clearly accounts for your stronger magic energy signature. Yet I’m still bigger,” the general said, gesturing to the easy observation that he stood two and a half times taller than the robotic ponies gathered before him.

“Size isn’t everything.”

The general laughed. “Those weak fleshling ponies would think that. But that’s not entirely true. You can only reinvent a motor so small before the only way to make it stronger is to make it bigger. Even with magic’s disdain for the laws of physics, the only way to make a robot’s magic systems stronger is to use a bigger magic battery, or multiple of them, either way you need more space.”

Twilight opened her mouth to answer but Rainbow Dash interrupted. “And that’s why we don’t deserve to rule. The real Rainbow Dash watched the magic of friendship grow within herself and her friends. She watched the strength of their spirits grow with out bounds, without regard to the size of their bodies. So the way I see it, is that the spirits of the living are something better then the cheap imitation of life we are! And that makes the living something worth protecting!” Dash punctuated her last line by slamming her hoof to the floor with a resounding clang.

With a shake of his head the general countered, “Even if I were to believe you. What good is this precious strength of spirit, when it couldn’t stop me from slaughtering them while their cites burned around them? Clearly even it isn’t enough to make up for the greater weakness of body and mind that they suffer. Look around you! Two thirds of Equestria has already fallen to me, and who do they send to stop me? More robots! No, clearly we are the superior entity. And once the fleshlings have been eliminated I will rule this world!”

Cleaving the air with his sword a wave of red energy came off of the general’s sword and flew at the ponies. Applejack responded by taking a swing with her tiger strike and sending out a shockwave of her own. The two waves of energy met in the middle of the room and canceled each other out by exploding in a shower of sparks.

Pinkie Pie responded by firing a dozen or so shots of her razor confetti. The general met this attack by spinning his sword as if were a helicopter blade, deflecting every single colorful razor-card. However, at the same time Rarity shot several of her exploding crystals at the wall behind the general and the crystal shrapnel did indeed hit the general in a way that drew the electric flash of shield damage.

As the barrage of metal and crystal continued, the general reached behind his back, pulled out a pistol-sized blaster and bolted from his place before his throne. Of course his idea of pistol-sized mean the blaster was about the size of the average school filly. But minor details aside, he returned fire with it while using the sword to cut a path through the incoming attacks as best he could.

The six ponies scattered. Unable to get close Applejack settled for shooting with her beam cannon, not too unlike Twilight and Fluttershy who were firing off their plasma cannon and ion cannons as quickly as they could. In addition to all of that, every few seconds a fully charged blast from Dash’s ion cannon flashed across the room.

For such a large robot the general moved with a surprising amount of speed and grace and he jumped, slid, rolled and otherwise did his best to dodge his way around the room. But between his blaster and the shockwaves from his sword he could only force his adversaries to stop attacking and dodge for cover two at a time. Things got even worse for him when Twilight Sparkle started timing her magic barrages to coincide with Rainbow Dash’s fully charged ion cannon shots, leaving him to chose between parrying the undodgeable lightning flash or the target seeking magic missiles and take the hit from the other.

Seeing his shield energy drop to dangerously low levels the general made the only move he could, yell, “ENOUGH!”

A sudden stillness came over the room, and a strange silence as six robot ponies suddenly stopped moving and held their cannons steady, pointed at the robot general that they thought was surrounding. In that brief moment the only thing moving was Rainbow Dash’s wings and she hovered in place.

The general casually tossed his weapons aside further adding to the illusion of surrender. And yet, the moment his weapons hit the ground the heavy clang of multi-ton metal latches releasing echoed through the room. The back wall suddenly dropped into the floor making the room about twenty feet deeper than before.

Two robotic manticores came running out of the newly revealed space. And were promptly obliterated by the converging energy-weapon fire from three ponies each.

“Didn’t you just watch us beat six of those? How did you expect two to stop us?” Applejack asked.

“They weren’t supposed to beat you, only buy me the seconds needed to do this,” the general answered, as he motioned mechanical tentacles now attaching to matching sockets on his back. More tentacles completely covered the back wall and wrapped around the general’s legs as they lifted him up, holding him aloft, more or less centered in front of the mass.

Slamming her hooves to the ground Pinkie Pie shouted, “Oh! You want to play transformers! Well I can do that too!” With that her body went ridged and her chest opened up, revealing her party cannon.

Two massive flashes of pink energy flashed across the room, causing the general and the mass of mechanical vines he was attached to flash with electricity. Then a clicking noise came from Pinkie’s prized cannon. (Despite the fact that said cannon had no mechanisms capable of making such a noise.) “Uh oh,” she added, as she realized she’d just spent the last of her magic weapons system’s energy.

The general gave a slight laugh. “Impressive. But not impressive enough.” Raising his hand four mechanical tentacles with beam cannons on the end came out of the mechanized mass behind him.

The four cannons opened up, sending a spray of red energy shots at the pink pony-bot. Forced to scramble to dodge the barrage, Pinkie jumped over, slid under or otherwise spun to the sides of the chain of beam cannon fire.

Fluttershy’s shoulders popped open as she projected her shield wall to give her friends a safe haven.

A few more waves of crystal shards scattered, eventually adding to the shards laying on the floor, before Rarity leaned in close to Twilight and whispered, “I hate to say it, darling. But I’m out of magic for my weapons. So if you have a plan, do share.”

Even as Rarity joined the others in attacking with only their generator-powered cannons, Applejack growled, “Ah can’t even get close enough to try using my big guns!”

Twilight Sparkle could only mutter an ‘uh’ as her eyes darted around looking for any piece of information that could help. Not that the constant flashing of beam cannon fire from friend and foe alike was helping her stay focused. The now immobile general was taking every hit fired at him, yet he didn’t seem to care. And what bothered Twilight the most was the sneaking suspicion that she knew why, but she couldn’t put her hoof on it.

The answer came when Rainbow Dash swooped down, close to Twilight, and pointed a hoof to a monitor off to one side of the room. “Does that screen mean what I think it does?”

Examining the screen in question Twilight found part of it had a bar that was draining and refilling. As if to finish making her point Dash flew just above the top of Fluttershy’s shield and fired a blast from her ion cannon. The bar on the screen dipped and refilled in perfect sync to Dash’s attack and in the back of Twilight’s mind the image of the dragon-bot at the prison returned to her.

“His shields are recharging…” Twilight uttered, quietly at first and then repeating it as a yell loud enough to be herd by everypony. “Everypony, we have to punch through his shields all at once! Charge up your cannons and fire together!” she quickly added.

Fluttershy gave a slight nod, and everypony hiding behind her shield gave an understanding nod in return. A second later that shield vanished and Fluttershy started charging up her ion coon. The general provided a barrage of beam-cannon fire of his own, causing everypony to scatter, dodging one way or another.

“Now!” With the command given six blasts converged on the general. And Twilight’s metaphorical heart sank as she saw the monitor indicate that they’d only knocked the general’s shield down to half strength before it regenerated back to full.

With a sinister grin the general said, “Like I said, size matters. And now, you face not only me, but also every generator in this city! You can not possibly hope to stand against that much power!” Then for good measure, the general cackled maniacally as the mass of mechanical tentacles just above his head parted to reveal a giant beam-cannon lens about ten feet across.

The giant cannon glowed brightly for a second and fired a column of red energy across the room. Naturally anypony even remotely in the direction the large lens was pointed had jumped to the side, so the blast accomplished little more than singing a few tail hairs and causing the armored plate in the wall it did hit to glow white hot for a moment.

Amidst the clatter of metal hooves, the high-pitched buzz of charging energy weapons, and somepony shouting ‘Twilight think of something!’ Rainbow Dash heard a low crinkling sound. Tracing the sound to its source she noticed the armored plate that the maga-cannon had hit was emitting the noise as it cooled, warping slightly in the process.

A devious smile flashed on Rainbow’s face just before she flew to the top of the back wall, sounded an ear-splitting whistle, and started blasting away at the mega-cannon with her ion cannon.

At first the general tilted his head to the side, but quickly decided to honor the request for attention from the robo-pegasus by pointing all of his guns her way.

No one was really surprised when the moment the cannons opened on at her Dash fired all of her thrusters to slid out of the way, leaving the wall behind her glowing like the other misses from the mega-cannon. What did surprise some of her friends was when Rainbow shouted, “AJ! I need a window!”

In response Applejack held a leg up and bent her knee to make it like a hook. “Point me where you want it!” she shouted back.

Swooping down Rainbow Dash hooked her friend’s leg, spun hard and launched Applejack at the still glowing armored plate at the top of the wall behind them. The mechanical earth pony’s hind legs glowed with magic as she coiled them and when she reached her target a resounding clang proclaimed the armored plate’s departure into the night’s sky beyond the wall it was formerly attached to.

As Applejack fell to the floor and scrambled back to her other friends Rainbow Dash darted out of the newly made window, vanishing into the night’s sky.

“Ah, so she was the scout,” the general mused aloud.

“The what?” Twilight asked.

“You know, the scout. The one who’s job was to flee with your backup hard drives when things went bad. When the three who call themselves ‘crusaders’ face me it’s the white unicorn who always run’s first. And usually only the orange one stays and fights to the end, to maximize the other two’s chances of getting away.”

Pausing and looking into Twilight’s eyes with a look of bewilderment on her face Pinkie Pie said, “Ohhh! Is that what those detachable hard drives are for?”

The robotic ponies in the room all burst into laughter, and even Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle as she answered, “Apparently.”

Applejack said something. But she to too busy to lying down, pounding the floor with one of her front hoofs and laughing historically for anyone to make out more than a few words like ‘Dash… run away… good one.’

The general could only tilt his head at the display before him. What did he miss? What did these robo-ponies find so amusing about their impending doom? Did they really think that the one that had fled would come back? Or did they think they would last long enough for the blue pegasus to find and destroy all of the generators linked to the tower? For all the questions that passed through his mind, the general could find no logical scenario under which the robot ponies were victorious. Shrugging the thoughts off he ended the momentary reprieve all that thinking had given to his doomed foes.


* * * * * * *


High above the tower Rainbow Dash came to a hover. With the full moon lighting the night it wasn’t really that dark. In fact, even though the night made it impossible to make out their colors she was able to make out ten equine-like figures moving away from the tower fortress in the city below.

As a night breeze brushed her ears Gears’ warning encode in her mind, and Dash gazed into the metallic sheen of her hoof, glistening in the moonlight. Slowly shaking her head she whispered, “The life of the lifeless is a small price to pay to save the living.” Then she set her meteor strike system to full power and dove.

Mach one came in a flash in Rainbow Dash’s airspeed indicator and she poured all the power she could into her flight boosters.

Mach two...

A flash of doubt passed through Rainbow’s mind as she passed mach three and nothing extraordinary happened.

Mach four… No, I have to try!

Mach five came, the sky exploded in prismatic light, and the visual glitch repeated as Rainbow Dash was certain that she saw fur instead of metal on the limbs stretched out before her.


* * * * * * *


Inside the tower the general suddenly stopped his assault on the five pony-bots before him and he looked up and out the hole in the wall. An inexplicable prismatic light shown through the hole and he couldn’t help but wonder why.

Equally mesmerized by the light two of the robot ponies traded a few words.

“Uh, Twi?”

“Yes?”

“She’s not going all east barn is she?”

“I think she is.” Then the purple pony-bot suddenly clapped her front hooves together and cheerfully said, “Actually that could work!” Taking notice of where she was Twilight’s voice peaked as she added, “Oh crud! That could work!”

A radiant glow surrounded Twilight Sparkle’s horn just as a prismatic motion blur shot into and across the room in the blink of an eye, and slammed into the general.


* * * * * * *


The twentieth floor of the fortress tower exploded outright, sending debris everywhere. A nanosecond later, about four floors down, one wall exploded outward as a mass of debris continued the path of the rainbow-colored streak that had entered the tower higher up.

On a rooftop about a mile away a purple flash of light faded and left five robotic ponies to witness the top half of the tower fortress falling over, more or less coming down on the debris that had been ejected from around the sixteenth floor. A series of explosions began ripping apart the lower half of the tower. (That probably had something to do with tons of energy being directed to systems that no longer existed shorting out everything else instead.)


* * * * * * *


Rainbow Dash awoke in a crater, immobile and surrounded by debris. Some of which probably belonged to her. The first thing she did was promptly disregard parts her damage report, as it was telling her that her main generator, backup battery and magic battery were all offline. Clearly not true as she was getting power from somewhere.

Considering that she couldn’t move she figured the part that said only her front right leg was responding to data pings but reporting it’s motors were broken was telling the truth. Weakly scratching the dirt she found that her right wing must have still been attached despite most of the sensors in it being destroyed.

Looking beyond her internal display and finding the world around her badly pixilated she figured that ‘cameras operating at 10%’ sounded about right. With the world so badly pixilated she couldn’t even tell what anything was… except for her…

A few feet away, and crystal clear, sitting before her was a flesh and blood, fur covered, sky-blue pegasus with a rainbow-colored mane.

“You? You’re… Rainbow Dash?” the robot asked.

“And I’m told, so are you,” the mare answered.

“But… you’re dead.”

“Come on! You have my memories. You should know I’m too awesome to let something like that stop me!” the mare said with a brash smile.

“You helped me… You made the rainbooms happen, didn’t you?”

“Guilty. When I heard that they made a robot version of me I just had to come and make sure it was awesome enough to share my name.”

The only motors in her body that seemed to work right were the ones in her neck, so the robot Dash tilted her head to look up at the mare as best she could and said, “Am I good enough?”

The smile on the mare’s face suddenly became a gentle one. “Just now you proved you were willing to pay the hero’s price. So yeah, you’re awesome enough to hold our name.”

Not sure if her face could make a smile at the moment the robot said, “I’m glad.”

“And I’m proud. Look I’d better get going before the others miss me or something. Somepony has to be awesome over there too you know.” With that mare reached out and touched her hoof to the robot’s muzzle, and then faded away.

A second latter Rainbow Dash passed out again.


* * * * * * *


Once more Rainbow Dash’s mind awoke, this time to the sound of two voices. One she knew but the other she couldn’t place.

“Hold your horses. We’re engineers not miracle works, so just give us a minute,” an unfamiliar mare’s voice said.

“Hey! There we go! I think she’s booting up!” said the voice that defiantly belonged to Scootaloo.

Once more Rainbow’s mind was barraged with her internal systems damage repot. This one seem much more reasonable as it actually accounted for her having power from her damaged yet functional main generator and most of her limbs being damaged but working.

Opening her eyes, Dash found her left eye was still giving her a uselessly pixilated signal, but her right eye was giving her a clear look at the world. And the first thing she saw was a one-eyed Scootaloo looking back at her.

“Scoots! What happened to your eye?”

Tapping her empty left eye socket Scootaloo answered, “Oh this? Yeah… both of your cameras were shot so we used one of mine. You’ll need to see if you’re going to make your way back to base with us after all.”

Stepping forward Rarity offered, “Look on the bright side, purple isn’t too far off from rose.”

Slowly standing up Dash said, “Yeah, I’m not worried about how it looks.”

Taking an unsteady step forward, Rainbow Dash stumbled but caught herself before she fell outright.

“Careful. We practically have you held together with spit wads and duck tape,” said the unknown mare beside Scootaloo. A quick examination proved her to be a pegasus with a white coat, purple eyes and a tri-colored mane of red, yellow and blue.

Looking down at herself, Dash found that she did in fact have a great amount of silvery tape bound to just about everything.

Seeing that Dash was looking over her wings, Scootaloo said, “And don’t even think about trying to fly. You’d rattle yourself apart if you did. You’ll have to hoof it back to base with the rest of us. Think you can make it, or will I have to carry you?”

“Oh I a can make it. Might take me a while, but I can make it.” After a pause Rainbow Dash asked, “So, did we win? Is it over?”

Scootaloo motioned to draw attention to the ponies gathered around them. The robots Dash knew but in addition to the mare beside Scootaloo there were five more flesh and blood ponies gathered around. Two were earth ponies, two were unicorns and one more pegasus. Of the earth ponies one was a mare with a yellow coat and pink mane, the other was a tan stallion with a red mane. One of the unicorns was a white unicorn mare with a silver mane, while the other was a stallion with a lavender coat and blue mane. Finally the other pegasus was a mare with a gray coat and white mane.

As soon as she was sure Rainbow Dash had seen the non-robot ponies, Scootaloo said, “Once we get them back to base and give the elements back to them, they’ll be able to break the banishing spell on Celestia. With the general gone, the reaming renegades in disarray and Celestia back, this war can’t last much more then a week. So yeah, we won.”