1/1: A Robot's Worst Nightmare (Friendship is Magic pt. 1)

“Here you are, Princess.”

Mayor Mare held out a key on one hoof, allowing Princess Celestia to take it in her magic before gesturing at the large two-story stone building tucked into the alleys just off of Ponyville’s town square. “We haven’t used it in several years, you know. No guards in Ponyville since the last time the timberwolves tried to invade the town.”

“Yes, I know,” Celestia nodded. “But with my student continuing her studies here, I’ve decided that needs to change.” She gestured at a group of creatures, mostly ponies, standing nearby. “To that end I’ve brought some new guard recruits.”

The mayor peered through her glasses at the group. “Recruits?” she asked. “Two of them are foals! They ought to be in school!” She gasped and continued, “And two griffons? I can’t remember the last time we even saw one griffon in town!”

Celestia laughed. “I admit they look unusual,” she said. “But I have it on good authority that they are quite capable.” She gestured the group closer, adding, “Allow me to introduce the new leader of the Ponyville town guard, Captain Megatron.”

A hulking figure of a unicorn stallion, coat shining silver in the brilliant sunlight of the first day of summer, led the group over to the two mares. After him came a trio of pegasi of mismatched colors, followed by a pair of griffons and a large black jungle cat. Another unicorn, pale eyes squinting in the light, picked his way more carefully across the clearing, escorted by the two earth pony colts the mayor had noticed before.

The big stallion brought his right foreleg across his chest and then raised the hoof high in an ancient Pegasopolis salute. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, raspy voice purring with warmth. “You may be assured that I will keep your town secure from any who would break the peace- from inside or out.”

“Er… that’s nice,” the mayor said nervously, a bit of a flush growing on her face. “Anyway, I’ll see about getting some ponies over to help clean the old place out and make it fit for ponies to live in. If you’ll excuse me, Your Highness?”

As the mayor left, Megatron muttered, “You didn’t tell her where we really came from.”

“I leave that up to you to decide,” Celestia said, equally quietly. “But if I introduced you in Canterlot as the ones who unlocked my sister’s prison, you would be at the center of intrigues long before you became accustomed to this new world. Ponyville is a small and unimportant town. A good place for a pony- er, a person,” she corrected herself, “to find themselves. Once you’re more certain of your place among us, you are free to reveal yourselves as you like, or not, as you decide.”

“Most wise,” Megatron said. “It’s nice to deal with someone who understands the importance of not revealing themselves until the moment is right.”

Celestia sighed. “That’s not exactly how I meant it,” she said. “I’ll do what I can to try to find a way back to your world, but in the meantime I encourage you to make yourselves at home here. I’m afraid the guard budget will only allow salaries for you and Lieutenant Starscream, but I will personally provide a starting fund to allow your group time to get on your hooves again.”

“We’ll put it to good use,” Megatron agreed. “I guarantee it.”

“I’m sure you will!” Celestia smiled. “Welcome to Equestria, Megatron. On behalf of my sister, please treat this land as your new home.”

Megatron’s smile took on a bit of a tooth-gritting nature. “A place more unlike our home is hard to imagine,” he said. “But I will admit the situation is much less… unpleasant… than when we first arrived…”

Megatron’s optics came online to a vista of stars. A warm wind blew across his face, and unfamiliar aromas tickled his olfactory sensors. Groggily he realized he was lying on his back, with the sensation of those wretched green organic things- grass, that was the word- he lay on irritating him no end.

He tried to push himself upright, and servos and joints moved in directions totally unfamiliar to him. His arms slipped out from beneath him, and he fell flat again.

Something is wrong, he thought to himself. Internal diagnostic.

No response came, except for a vague sensation of dizziness and weakness.

Then his optics flickered... no... something closed over them, for a split second. He willed it to happen again, and then a third time, slowly, and this time he could feel something physically covering his optics..

What has been done to me? he thought. When I find the bot who has had the temerity to alter me, I shall make him regret the day he first came online.

He tried to sit up again, and flopped back again. His balance hadn’t yet returned to him. Instead he raised an arm to bring his hand into view...

... and then, only then, did he notice that he no longer had a hand. The arm in his visual frame terminated in a more or less blunt end, black and hardened but obviously not any form of metal. Disgusting silver fur clung to his arm, shining faintly under the light of the large flawless moon overhead.

“What,” he gasped, and then he realized he was in fact breathing- his chest moving in and out, pumping air through a horrible organic pseudo-carburetor. He took a deep breath and shouted, “WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO ME??”

“Oh-ho!” a feminine voice, dripping with amusement, echoed around the open area where Megatron lay. “So my savior lives after all!”

Rage boiled through Megatron’s... through whatever organic creatures had in place of circuits... as he struggled to find the speaker. “Did you do this to me?” he roared. “Did you trap me in this disgusting fleshling body?”

“Disgusting?” A clear, cold chuckle came from that female voice. “I find you quite handsome, myself.” Something dark and shadowy crept into the edge of Megatron’s vision. “But no. Until a few moments ago I was in no position to do anything to anyone. I was trapped, a prisoner in the Moon, held captive by my sister. Until your magic released me.”

“The moon?” Megatron’s optics- eyes, the word is eyes if you’re a fleshling- automatically sought out the bright object in the night sky overhead. What he saw was neither of the two moons of his home world Cybertron, nor the cratered, lava-spattered dead world which orbited Earth. This orb seemed almost without flaw, glowing with what appeared to be its own inner light in defiance of the most basic laws of physics. But... but... “We were going to the moon...” he muttered. “We were going to strike an Autobot base... but something went wrong with the space bridge...” He tried sitting up again, and this time he did manage to prop himself up on his arms, then to sit forward. “And now I am on another world.”

“My world, my friend,” the female voice replied. The source came into focus at last- a quadrupedal creature of night and shadow, a crescent moon displayed in a field of black on its hindquarters. Reptilian eyes gazed out from eyeholes in a dark armored helmet, which opened to admit a long spiraling horn from the top of her head. Large feathered wings rustled against her sides as she continued to walk around Megatron, almost concealed by the field of stars and nebulae which seemed to swirl from her head and tail as if to substitute for her hair. “Welcome to Equestria, land of the ponies. Which, after a thousand years of waiting, shall be mine at last.”

“Is that so?” Megatron replied. Rage had passed, as well as fear. He was in control of himself again, cool and wakeful of opportunities... and perils. The creature before him, and the world she represented, offered both. Thankfully, unlike that sanctimonious Optimus Prime, this newcomer appeared to share his own attitude about who should rule.

He much preferred dealing with conquerors than with heroes. Conquerors were much easier to subvert.

“Allow me to introduce myself to the future ruler of this world, then,” he continued. “I am Megatron. Leader of the Decepticon armada and ruler of dozens of worlds across the galaxy. I was travelling with a handful of my elite warriors to smash an outpost of a pathetic resistance group called the Autobots. Somehow I have been transported to your world...” He looked down at himself, noticing that his legs- his hind legs, now- ended in the same silver fur and black hooves as his arms- his forelegs. “And transformed into a form totally alien to my natural state.”

“Ahh, I see,” the creature nodded. “You have traveled farther than you know, Megatron. You have crossed the barrier between dimensions, from your universe into ours.” A pensive look formed on the pony’s face as she continued, “In my youth my sister and I made several such journeys with our mentor, Starswirl the Bearded. In many cases we also found ourselves transformed into alien shapes, the better to fit in to the world we were visiting. The same likely happened to you.” She leaned down and looked more closely at Megatron. A small smile crept across her face. “Were you as large and powerful as your current shape would suggest?” she asked. “If so, you must have been a most doughty warrior.”

“None stronger,” Megatron said proudly. “I have defeated scores of foes many times my size.” And many times have I been defeated by one particular inferior, but that is none of this creature’s business. “And once I learn the use of this new body, I look forward to trying my strength once again.”

“I doubt it not.” A light surrounded the creature’s horn, and Megatron felt himself be lifted off the soil, body turning in air until his limbs were pointed more or less down. “Let your legs down, and we shall see if they hold your weight,” she said.

Megatron reached down and found that the position of all fours felt... proper. Indeed, once lowered to his hooves, he had the first sensation of strength and solidity he’d experienced since awakening in this new form. “Yesss,” he said quietly. “This is indeed an improvement.”

“I am glad to hear it,” the creature said. “I look forward to seeing my captain of the guards in action in the future.”

The assumption of superiority might have enraged Megatron in other circumstances. Here and now, he found it amusing. Yes, think yourself my superior... and by and by I shall demonstrate how wrong you were. “Captain of the guards?” he asked. “Your offer flatters me. But are you not making several assumptions?”

“But what else would you do?” the creature asked. “It would be a place of honor in the new regime. I would find you most useful...” Her eyes looked up and down his form- and, he noticed now, they were on a level with his own eyes. Her smile widened in appreciation for what she saw as she added, “And I could provide all sorts of... benefits... for such a warrior as yourself...”

Something about the creature’s glance unnerved Megatron. His experiences with females of his own kind had been... well, they ranged from the exasperating to the nigh-lethal, and always totally unpredictable. He’d found it easier in the end to just order them all obliterated on sight, and even that hadn’t been totally effective. “And who would I be serving, if I may be so bold as to ask?” he purred.

“You certainly may,” the creature said, standing at her tallest. “I am Nightmare Moon! A thousand years ago my sister Celestia imprisoned me to prevent me from taking my rightful place, but now I have returned! And once I have disposed of my sister, the night shall last FOREVER!”

The laugh which followed confirmed it in Megatron’s mind: yes, quite totally mad, although in his experience “mad” and “female” were synonyms. (It never entered into his head that the one common factor in all his experiences with "mad" females was himself.) But he could use this particular kind of madness. “A worthy ambition, I’m sure,” he continued. “But I would ask-”

“Ask away, my handsome stallion,” Nightmare Moon replied. “Once I have taken care of my sister, if it lies within my power, it shall be yours.”

“As I said,” Megatron continued, “I was traveling with my elite warriors. Soundwave. Skywarp. Thundercracker.” He couldn’t suppress a sigh as he finished, “And my second in command, Starscream.” He looked around him, seeing old, cracked stone walls, ivy grown half-wild, and a patchy lawn of grass and dirt, bordered by a chasm surrounding the area on three sides. “Have they not come here with me?”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re about,” Nightmare Moon said. “I saw you all fall to earth along with me, here at my ancient castle.” She looked around briefly, then shrugged. “I found you first. And I liked what I saw so much,” she added, her smile widening to show a mouth full of teeth that belonged on a sharkticon, “that I lost all interest in looking for your fellows. But they can’t be far.”

“Could you help me-”

“Alas, not just yet,” Nightmare Moon said. “Dawn is almost upon us, and I must confront my sister before she raises the sun.”

Raises the sun? Megatron filed this insane notion away for future reference, saying nothing.

“But once I have my revenge,” the pony continued, “I shall return, and then shall begin the reconstruction of my kingdom! And all ponies shall learn to love me and my beautiful night!” And then, laughing that insane laugh again, the pony faded into a cloud of smoke and stars, which swirled away on the wind and vanished.

A hologram? Megatron wondered. It would make sense... or possibly some mode of teleportation like Skywarp’s. Either way, a reminder that my host is more than she appears. Whereas I, lamentably, am currently less than meets the eye, in a weak flesh body I hardly know how to operate.

He waited a few moments longer to be sure the creature was well and truly gone before taking a deep breath and shouting as loudly as he could, “DECEPTICONS! REPORT!”

A soft moaning sound came through a crack in the stonework. Carefully at first, but with growing confidence at each step, Megatron walked over to the crack and looked inside. A portion of the roof had given way in the distant past, allowing the moon to shine on a lump of darkness that slowly shifted and writhed on the crumbled stone inside.

Megatron put one forehoof into the crack, then the other, and then pulled. With an ease that surprised him, large slabs of stone gave way under his strength, sliding out of ancient mortar and falling to the ground beside him. With the hole wide enough for him to pass through, he entered the small chamber on the other side, stepping up to see a creature similar to Nightmare Moon, but without any armor. The torso was white except where covered by a pair of deep purple wings, a color matched in the thing’s lower limbs. Unlike Nightmare Moon, this creature had ordinary hair growing in a long mane down its head and neck and from its tail. A lighter symbol shone from its flank, shaped in the four-pointed star of a collapsing subspace field.

“I gave you an order, soldier!” Megatron shouted, giving the limp figure at his hooves a shove just barely short of a kick. “Report!”

“Aw, c’mon, lemme off-line a little longer...” The creature had Skywarp’s dull-witted, truculent voice, along with his color scheme. He raised his head, blinking in the moonlight, then going wide-eyed at the sight of Megatron. “M-m-m-m-MONSTER!!” he shouted, and then in a flash of light he was gone.

“Skywarp, you fool,” Megatron muttered. And of course he still has his power. Whereas my fusion cannon is long gone, unless it fell somewhere else in this pile of-

A glint of moonlight shone from an unexpected direction. Megatron turned to look, nearly falling down as nine million years of bipedal programming tried to override less than ten minutes of quadrupedal instincts. Once he’d recovered his balance, he recognized the source of the light: a free-standing mirror, slightly cracked but otherwise intact in its frame. Curious, he hooked its base with one forehoof and carefully dragged it away from the wall and into the moonlight.

There, reflected in the ancient glass, stood a muscular quadruped with a broad blunt muzzle, piercing red eyes that faintly glowed in the dim light, and a close-trimmed crop of midnight-black mane running from ears down to the base of the neck. The rest of him, save for a bushy tail and his hooves, gleamed a silvery color that seemed to amplify the moonlight. And there, on his haunch- on both his haunches, as he turned this way and that to examine himself- there stood the Decepticon emblem in proud royal purple.

So this is what I look like as a... a pony. A disgusting organic fleshling pony.

He moved again, noticing the muscles rippling in his legs and along his barrel. Well, he thought, if I must be organic, at least I’m a well-built organic. Perhaps that creature was less mad than I thought.

Nodding with satisfaction, Megatron picked his way across the rubble to a doorway, picked a direction, and set off in search of his warriors, whatever shapes they might be at the moment.

Rumble came online to the uncomfortable sensation of something burying a hoof into his stomach.

“Hey, get up!” a loud, grating voice shouted down at him. “I got some questions for ya!” Another kick buried itself right where the first had gone, well aside from any vital spots but still hard enough to sting. “I said get UP, ya punk!”

Rumble wasn’t going to stand for that... or, rather, he was going to stand for that, but only so he could give that back with interest. He sprang up onto his feet, shouting, “Hey, watch who you’re callin’ a punk, shrimp!” He discovered a moment later that he’d miscounted how many legs he (a) had and (b) needed, but through sheer force of will and a lot of foreleg-flailing he managed to remain standing on his hind legs. “Ya wanna piece of me? Let’s go!”

The stranger- a horse, dark red with black hair- froze in place. When it spoke (and since when did horses talk? Rumble wondered, Horses are stupid even for organics), its voice was softer, but not any less grating. Even when it whispered, it shrieked. “Rumble? Slag me, is that you, brother?”

Rumble’s memory finally identified the voice- which showed how rattled he’d been, since any other being in the universe with a voice anything like that would have taken a vow of silence out of pure shame. “Frenzy?” He tried to lean down for a closer look, then swayed and wobbled again as his precarious upright posture threatened to fail completely. “Frenzy, what-”

“Easy, easy,” Frenzy said, reaching a hoof up from his own all-fours posture to let Rumble lean on it. “Don’t try to stand up. It don’t work that way.” Slowly, with surprising gentleness, he lowered Rumble until his forelegs touched ground again. “See? We’re built to move like this.” The hostility returned to his voice as he continued, “And when I find out who reformatted us to move like this, I’m gonna-”

“Hey, hey, Frenzy,” Rumble said. “I’m all for puttin’ somebody in pain, but how about you fill me in first? Last thing I remember we were all in storage waitin’ for Soundwave to deploy us. We were gonna show the Autobots how ya take apart a moonbase.”

“Yeah, that’s what I got too,” Frenzy said, a little calmer again. “And then I woke up as some organic monster or somethin’. Can’t transform. No radio, no night vision, nothin’. Just slaggin’ organic.”

“You’re not a monster,” Rumble said. “You’re a horse. You know, four legs, hooves, panics easy, sometimes has humans ridin’ on their back?”

“Nah,” Frenzy said. “I gotta be some kinda monster. Now you,” he added, pointing a hoof at Rumble, “you’re a horse. An itty bitty purple horse.” He tilted his head and added, “Like the hair, though. Blue suits ya.”

Rumble decided to let the matter drop. Arguing with Frenzy always ended with him jumping the scrap of whatever bot was contradicting him, except Megatron (who he feared) and Soundwave (who he trusted). Not excepting Rumble (who he trusted, but according to Frenzy no bot was allowed to jump his brother’s scrap except himself, so he had to do it on everybody else’s behalf). Right now seemed like a bad time to learn how many piledriver punches this organic body could take before shutting down. “Whatever,” he said. “Scoped out Megatron? Soundwave? Any of the others?”

“How would I know?” Frenzy asked. “I didn’t know I’d scoped you until you talked! If this happened to us, who knows what they look like now?”

“Well,” a smooth, superior voice purred from above the two brothers, “you may not have scoped us, but we certainly have scoped you.”

Another voice, more nasal and much less smooth, added, “Yesss, hehe, yes, we certainly have! And it’s been such fun listening, hasn’t it, Buzzsaw?”

“A mild amusement, Laserbeak,” the first voice said. Something dropped down from the stone wall next to Rumble and Frenzy. “But one which loses its novelty rather quickly.”

Rumble felt his jaw drop, and he was pretty sure Frenzy’s had too. “Laserbeak??” he gasped. “Buzzsaw?” He waved a hoof at first one and then the other, who dropped down after his companion. “What have they done to you?”

“You mean, besides give me a proper voice for the first time in five million years?” Buzzsaw purred. “I could almost forgive those parties responsible for that, if they had consulted me first.”

“Ennnh,” Laserbeak sneered, “talking is overrated. A holographic recording of what I’ve seen does the job.” He raised a claw and whined, “And I really haaaaaaaate this... eeeew... orgaaaanic body...”

A deep growl echoed from the shadows, and fluid, furry, organic death slunk forward like a tangible shadow into the moon light, golden eyes gleaming at the others.

“Poor Ravage,” Buzzsaw said with mock solicitude. “He also has the organic body but, alas, not the ability to speak.” A beaky face managed to twist into a smile as he added, “I suppose you could say that... the cat has got his tongue.”

Ravage growled louder, making his lack of amusement totally clear.

Rumble looked over Ravage, who truth be told just looked like an organic version of himself minus the jump jets and laser guns. “Okay, yeah, I can get Ravage,” he said. Then he turned back to Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. “But what the slag happened to you two? You two look like Terrorcon rejects!”

“Why, thank you!” Buzzsaw said, reaching a claw up to stroke back the crest of feathers atop his head. His face and Laserbeak’s were almost identical, black rounded head, yellow eyes, and yellow beak. From there on it got weird. Their bodies were more or less quadrupedal, but the front halves had feathers, with their front legs ending in silver-scaled clawed hands with three fingers and an opposable thumb. Their rear halves, however, were covered in fur- Laserbeak’s black, Buzzsaw’s a dull gold- and their rear legs were those of a feline.

“Were you scared?” Laserbeak sneered, rocking his head back and forth with avian amusement. “Were you frightened of me, little bots? Now I, Laserbeak, am as large as you!”

“We were always the same size, dummy,” Rumble muttered.

“Don’t tell him that!” Frenzy hissed. “If he thinks he’s bigger than us, maybe next time he won’t run away from a fight!”

“Oh, Primus,” Rumble sighed. “Look,” he added in a louder voice, “did anybody see Soundwave? Or anybody else? Or is it just us-”

Somewhere not too far away came the bellow, “DECEPTICONS! REPORT!”

In an instant Ravage bounded away, into the stone ruins towards the source of the shout.

“And there goes Ravage to his master,” Buzzsaw sighed. “Loyal to the end.” The statement was not a compliment.

“Laserbeak is loyal! Yes, yes!” Wings opened up from Laserbeak’s back, their reddish feathers matching the rest of his forequarters. “I’m coming, Megatron! Laserbeak is coming!”

Buzzsaw shook his head, then gave Rumble and Frenzy a look. “Brothers, right?” Then he too spread his wings, large golden wings, and off he went after the other two.

Rumble and Frenzy looked at each other. “Wait for us!” they shouted as one, and with much less grace than the other former cassette warriors, they scrambled through a hole into the castle walls.

Moonlight lit up the ruined throne room almost as well as daylight. Tattered banners featuring a many-rayed sun and a crescent moon hung behind a pair of thrones raised high on a dais above the main floor. Crumbling stonework still framed fragments of the original stained-glass windows that had once flanked either side of the great hall. Multiple doors to dark corridors ran along either side of the room below the mostly shattered windowframes, and out of one of these strode Megatron, his hooves pounding the tramp of doom in stereo.

There he saw a creature, another one similar to that Nightmare Moon but without a horn. Its torso was a bright, vibrant red, with a red stripe marking the otherwise white feathers of the wings it flapped to maintain a slow hover as it inspected the thrones. Its other extremities, also white, ended in dark blue hooves. Its short-cropped mane and tail barely stood out from the shadows, gray on gray. The narrow yellow eyes that peered intently at the thrones bore a calculating look of intelligence, a look Megatron had known more than long enough to recognize it for the lie it was.

“Starscream. I might have known,” he said loudly enough to catch the attention of the flyer. “If there is a throne room somewhere, naturally I’ll find you in it.”

“I was already here when I came back online, Megatron.” Starscream replied, only a little defensive. “I’ve been trying to work out how creatures such as this,” he gestured to himself, “could create artifacts as detailed as these,” he gestured first to the thrones and then to the tapestries above them, “obviously without the use of more than the most primitive tools... without opposable digits.” He waved a hoof in the air again for demonstration.

“So you assume,” Megatron replied, “that these new forms we find ourselves in are those of the dominant species of this world?”

“That is my working hypothesis, yes,” Starscream replied. “After all, we of Cybertron were originally crafted in the image of Primus himself, were we not? And now that we have been transported to what is obviously an alien universe with different physical laws, it only makes sense that we should be adapted to fit in.”

That corresponded with what Nightmare Moon had said, but... “Different physical laws?” Megatron asked. “And how do you figure that?”

Starscream spread his wings as wide as they could go for a moment, then resumed his slow flapping. “My wings are far too small to allow proper flight for my mass, unless we have been shrunk to the size of insects,” he said. “And hovering, as I have been doing here, ought to be impossible unless I flap them many hundreds of times a minute. I should not be able to fly-”

“I’ve been telling you that for millennia, Starscream.” A figure very similar to Starscream’s new form, but with an almost white body except for teal-colored hooves and wings and thin red stripes through his mane, soared in through the open roof. In his forehooves he carried a third figure, predominantly white and purple. “Welcome back, Lord Megatron. I found this on the roof.” He dropped the limp figure of Skywarp and added, “He popped out of one of his warps screaming about monsters and flew straight into a tower. Cold as a comet at apisol.”

“Thank you, Thundercracker,” Megatron said, giving both the conscious Seeker-turned-pony and his unconscious comrade a brief nod before turning his attention back to the hovering Starscream. “So the laws of physics do not work as we knew them here, you say? Then how do they work, Starscream?”

“That’s what I’m still trying to find out,” Starscream replied. “Thundercracker and I have obviously discovered one difference. I confess I was quite surprised when I realized I was flying without jets or thrusters.” A smug smile crept over his face as he added, “In fact, it might be that a superior understanding of this universe’s laws might redefine who among us should be considered superior or inferior.”

Megatron snorted, suppressing a moment of surprise at both how satisfying it felt and how much noise it produced compared to normal. “I admit, Starscream,” he said quietly, “there may indeed come a day when I bend knee to you and recognize you as the rightful leader of the Decepticons.”

Starscream’s smug smile grew wider. Idiot, Megatron thought.

“But today...” Megatron slipped one of his huge hooves under a piece of broken stonework. “... is NOT that day!” With a swift and sure movement he flung the stone through the air, catching Starscream in the chest with pinpoint accuracy, stunning him and bringing him to the floor with a crash. In a few steps Megatron stood over him, looking down with a hoof raised in warning. “And tomorrow isn’t looking good for you, either!”

“Understood... Lord Megatron...” Starscream croaked, coughing a bit as he struggled to get air back into his lungs.

An animal yowled, and something bounded in on all fours, dashing up to Megatron and rubbing up against all four of his legs. Behind him flew a couple of half-bird, half cat creatures, and bringing up the rear at the gallop came two ponies, smaller than any of the others. “Greetings, Ravage,” Megatron said, idly stroking the panther behind his ears with a hoof as he looked over the other newcomers. “And Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Rumble and Frenzy, if I guess right.”

“Yes, Lord Megatron! Yeeeessss!” Laserbeak flew in tight circles around Megatron, trying and failing to find a place to perch. “We are here and ready for orders, yes!” After another couple of circles, Laserbeak added, “Please forgive me! I can’t find a place to perch!”

Ah, yes. There was a reason I didn’t miss Laserbeak having a voice. Or Buzzsaw, come to recall. “Just land and be silent!” Megatron snapped. “And tell me where Soundwave is! Have you found him yet?”

“status: present - yours to command, megatron”

Another pony stepped through one of the other doors leading into the throne room. At first it was difficult to see him- except for splashes of white fur on his lower legs, he was coated horn to tail, mane and all, in a dark blue coat. Once or twice he stumbled, forehooves striking rubble or broken pillars. Then the new pony’s eyes turned to face the others, and unlike the reds and yellows of the other Decepticons, his were solid, featureless white.

“Soundwave,” Megatron gasped. “What happened to your optics? Are you blind?”

“negative, but visual acuity is impaired. correction required.”

“Hey, Soundwave!” Rumble shouted, as he and Frenzy trotted over to him. “Don’t worry, big guy, we gotcha!”

“assistance unnecessary. i am able to-” The blue pony’s foreleg caught another chunk of broken pillar, and he went stumbling forward, landing on his jaw. “ouch.”

Megatron watched as the other Decepticons-turned-quadrupeds gathered around Soundwave (except for Thundercracker, who was quietly filling a groggy Skywarp in on what was going on). So, he thought, we are all accounted for. The question is, what next? Here we are, in bodies not our own, and we know nothing of this world except for what one mad creature deigned to tell me.

“I see you have found one another. Very good!”

Ah. Speak of the Quintesson, and they shall appear.

A swirl of stars and shadow condensed on a balcony above the thrones into a quadrupedal figure. “I have disposed of my sister,” she continued. “I have locked her into her precious sun, where she shall wait for a thousand years or more, no doubt longing to see her precious ponies. Not that I shall allow it!” The Nightmare’s grin grew broad and toothy, and once more Megatron noticed a slight resemblance to a Sharkticon. “From this time forth, the night shall last FOREVER!”

“Is that so?” Starscream, who had been examining Soundwave’s eyes when the mad mare appeared, now began flapping up towards the creature. “How do you do that? A tidal lock of one side of the planet to its primary is possible, but such a large moon would inevitably-”

“Starscream, you fool,” Megatron snapped, “come back here and be silent!!”

“But Megatron,” Starscream insisted, “I am only trying to-”

Starscream had risen far beyond the limited reach of Megatron’s new, flightless body, but Megatron wanted nothing more than to grab him by whatever limb lay closest and slam him back to the earth. “Starscream,” he growled, “get down here this-”

Before he could say the word instant, something granted his wish. A beam of yellow light, the same color as the blasts from his fusion cannon, lanced out from his forehead- from his horn- wrapped itself around Starscream, and slammed the flapping fool into the stonework with a crash so loud that even the Nightmare closed her eyes and flinched at the impact.

Megatron’s jaw dropped with shock, and as swiftly as it appeared, the yellow light vanished. “Primus,” he whispered, “what was that?”

Nightmare Moon chuckled from her balcony. “That was your magic, my magnificent warrior,” she said. “You are a unicorn, after all.” A new light, or rather a darkness that acted like light, a deep blue matching the mane of its mistress, reached out from her horn and wrapped itself around Megatron, lifting him slowly into the air. “Unicorns channel magic through their horns, both to lift things and to cast spells.”

Megatron fought down a moment of panic, then fought down an eternity of rage- How dare this upstart female treat the mighty Megatron like a toy??- and managed an encouraging, “Is that so? Then what of the other creatures my subordinates have been changed into?”

Nightmare Moon lowered him back to the ground, lips curled upwards with amusement. “Oh, them? Well, three of them, including the one you just turned into a pancake-”

“I’m all right,” Starscream said woozily from the floor.

“-have been turned into pegasi.”

“I just choose to remain here,” Starscream added, “to conserve my energy for the moment.”

The Nightmare looked down at Starscream, then over at Megatron. “He really isn’t all that bright, is he?” she asked.

As the other Decepticons chuckled their agreement, Megatron muttered, “He has occasional moments of brilliance.” Then, as his true feelings burst through his self-control, he added, “Interspersed among eternities of incompetence!” He shook his head and added, “My apologies, Nightmare Moon. Please continue.”

“Heh. Megatron thinks I’m brilliant,” Starscream muttered, still sounding like he was operating with a cracked CPU.

Nightmare Moon chuckled again, then continued, “Pegasi do not cast spells, but the magic in their wings lets them soar through the skies and manipulate the clouds and winds.”

“Sounds like my kinda fun,” Thundercracker muttered, flexing his own wings.

The Nightmare pointed to Buzzsaw and Laserbeak. “I am less familiar with the abilities of griffons,” she said. “Half bird of prey, half jungle cat. Some of them are also accomplished flyers. When I was imprisoned they had a most warlike culture. We ponies had little to do with them.”

“Then your ponies are not warriors?” Megatron asked.

“The pegasi also had a military tradition,” Nightmare Moon admitted. “The unicorns and earth ponies were but warriors at need.” The Nightmare’s eyes narrowed as she added, “Under my rule that shall change. My ponies shall never fear again. It is the world which shall fear them!”

Megatron nodded. He had heard at least a dozen newborn tyrants make the same boast. One by one he had humbled them all, in time. But he still needed more information, if Nightmare Moon was in a talkative mood. “Earth ponies?” he prompted. “As in, ponies from Earth?”

“Er, what?” Nightmare Moon had a moment of confusion, then rallied. “Earth is not a place, my handsome stallion. Earth ponies, like your two foals there,” she pointed to Rumble and Frenzy, “have a magical connection to the soil, to the ground and rocks beneath our hooves. They draw strength beyond their size from that connection. Depending on their talents, they may make things grow or tear things down. Underestimate them at your peril.”

“Yeah!” Frenzy shouted, rearing up and waving his forehoves. “You heard the lady!” He looked up at Skywarp, who had gotten back on his own hooves, and said, “Better not try to push us around!”

“Eh, throttle it, runt,” Skywarp sneered.

“By the way,” the Nightmare added, “congratulations on your cutie marks. I seldom see foals as young as you two with them. You must have found your calling in life very early.”

“Young?” Rumble stepped forward. “Lady, how old do you-”

“Rumble!” Megatron snapped, and the little pony froze, stood still and shut up. Turning his attention back to Nightmare Moon, he added, “And what is a cutie mark? Is it an emblem of some sort, like this one?” He gestured to the Decepticon logo on his hip.

“That is a most unusual cutie mark indeed,” the Nightmare replied. “I have never seen its like.”

“It is the symbol of our faction,” Megatron replied. “A faction which I founded, which brought a new order to our old and decadent world.” He gestured to the others. “We all bore it in our proper forms. Why not now?”

“You founded the faction, you say?” the Nightmare asked. “You would say that it is an extension of you?”

Megatron considered this. “That is a fair way of putting it, yes.”

“Then it makes perfect sense that it would be your cutie mark,” Nightmare Moon said. “Your destiny is obviously to lead. And under me you shall have the armed forces of an entire nation to command!”

“I am honored,” Megatron replied quickly. “But what about the others?”

“Obviously their destiny, their calling, their...” The Nightmare hesitated as she looked for the right words. “A cutie mark represents something unique and meaningful about each pony. For some it is merely what they love. For others it represents a special talent. For yet others it is a sign of destiny- as with yours.” Her hoof pointed at Rumble and Frenzy. “I can’t tell what the red one’s symbol means, but the purple one? Did he, perhaps, break rocks and stones in your world?”

“Lady, I broke all kinds of things,” Rumble replied proudly.

“So did I!” Frenzy chipped in.

The Nightmare pointed to Thundercracker. “And your symbol, a thundercloud shooting lightning. Perhaps your calling had something to do with weather? Thunder or lightning, perhaps?”

“Something like that. Name’s Thundercracker.” The pegasus smirked. “I was known for my flying, back in the day.”

“There, you see?” Nightmare Moon said. “Each of your symbols no doubt connects to either something you are or something you can do. There are some I cannot puzzle out, like his or his.” She pointed first to Soundwave and then to Skywarp. “But you shall no doubt work them out for yourselves in time.”

“And what of Laserbeak and Buzzsaw?” Megatron asked.

“Who?” Nightmare looked around, and then said, “You mean your griffons? Griffons don’t get cutie marks.”

“Hmpf!” Buzzsaw snorted, his golden feathers fluffing up with indignation. “Discrimination, that’s what it is. We have our talents just like anyone else. Even if they aren’t as obvious.”

“Yess, we are useful!” Laserbeak wheedled. “We have our talents! We live to serve, yesss!”

“Really not obvious in some cases,” Buzzsaw muttered under his breath.

A soft growling sound at his side reminded Megatron of his most loyal follower. “And what of Ravage?” he asked, patting the panther on his head with one hoof.

Nightmare Moon looked down. “What of him?” she asked. “He’s a cat. He does whatever cats do, I suppose.”

Ravage’s ears drooped, and he whimpered softly, conveying without speech that this world was cruel to creatures without a voice.

“Now, as entertaining as it has been to play nursery school teacher,” the Nightmare continued, “I must leave you again for a little while longer. My sister apparently had a student. She alone recognized me when I revealed myself to my subjects in my sister’s place. And no doubt her quest to avenge her teacher will bring her to this place.”

“And you wish us to dispose of her?” Megatron asked, smiling. “Unfamiliar as we are with these new bodies, I think one student will-”

“No, Megatron,” Nightmare Moon replied. “Do not underestimate a unicorn student of my sister. She has had years of training by the second most powerful creature of this world. You do not yet know your own magic, none of you.” She looked around the entire group. “You need time to experiment and train.” She smiled and added, “Besides, I wish to play with her myself.”

Megatron allowed himself a small smirk to mask the much larger derisive smile he wore on the inside. A proper tyrant knows when to toy with the enemy and when not to. This upstart has yet to learn. “Play, mistress?” he asked encouragingly.

“I intend to test this student,” Nightmare Moon replied. “She, and any she manages to recruit to her cause. If they are too weak, then I have no use for them. But if they are strong enough, intelligent enough, resourceful enough... then I shall allow them to come here, where I shall break their spirits once and for all.

“And once they know their proper places,” she continued, that serrated smile showing again, “they shall form the core of my new order. As you shall be the muscle, they shall be the mind, bringing the rest of Equestria with them under my glorious rule! And with Celestia’s student as my own disciple,” she crowed, “my victory over my accursed sister shall be complete!”

“Wouldn’t it be more sensible,” Starscream muttered from where he lay on the castle floor, “to just eliminate the last threat to your rule and be done with it? Surely that’s a more complete and lasting victory.”

Nightmare Moon gave Megatron another glance. “Those moments of brilliance must really be something for you to put up with the rest of this,” she said.

“I have my reasons,” Megatron shrugged.

“As have I.” Nightmare Moon’s horn flared, and the dark blue light enveloped Starscream, raised him five or six ponylengths into the air, and slammed him down just as Megatron had done before. “I’m sure you understand.”

“Perfectly,” Megatron agreed.

“nO pAIn,” Starscream squeaked.

Skywarp raised a hoof. “Excuse me, Miss, um, Moon?”

“Princess Nightmare Moon,” the dark pony replied. “Although I think a promotion might be in order after today.”

“Yeah,” Skywarp shrugged, pointing to Starscream. “Not that he didn’t have it comin’, ‘cause he did... but is he really gonna be all right?”

“Don’t be so worried,” Nightmare Moon answered. “Ponies are quite resilient, especially pegasi. After all, a flying species doesn’t get far if it can’t survive plowing into a few mountains at speed.”

The sound of Skywarp’s nervous swallow spoke for all the Decepticons.

“In any case, I shall be off,” Nightmare Moon said. “Even now I sense the student entering the Everfree Forest. I shall return once I have judged her properly. In the meantime, feel free to experiment. Discover your magic, my new warriors! And when I return, you shall reveal to me how you may be useful in the glorious new kingdom of the night!”

A swirl of stars and darkness engulfed her, and when it was gone, so was she.

The Decepticons stood in silence for several long seconds. Finally Rumble said, “Do ya think she’s gone?”

“nightmare moon is no longer in the vicinity.”

Rumble stepped over to Soundwave. “Are you sure about that?”

Soundwave reached up and tapped his horn. “scanning. sensor report: nightmare moon signature not detected.”

“Right.” Rumble took a deep breath, and then said, “Was she crazy or what??”

“Loopy like Starscream with a jammed aileron,” Skywarp agreed.

“Definitely not running on full cycles,” Thundercracker added.

“True,” Megatron said, bringing short the growing chorus, “but irrelevant. For whatever reason it suits her fancy to accept us as her future foot soldiers.” He smirked and added, “Or hoof soldiers, as it were. And we shall be exactly that... for as long as it suits us to do so.”

Starscream rolled over and pulled himself to a rough sitting-up position, resting on his rump. “And how long is that, Megatron?”

“I’m glad you asked, Starscream.” Megatron gave the smile he always gave to those he was about to give a difficult and thankless task. “Our primary task is to find a way back to our home dimension- and our own bodies. That shall be your mission. I’m sure that a top-notch researcher such as yourself will find this task... engaging.”

“But I don’t even know how we got here!” Starscream wailed.

“Well, then perhaps you should begin by finding that out!” Megatron turned his attention to the others. “We will, of course, not leave this world until we have established whether or not its unique resources can be used to further our struggle against the Autobots. Therefore we must learn everything we can about this world and its natives. And since we have been transformed into natives ourselves,” he said, gesturing to his muscular silver-furred form, “I can think of no better means to learn than by joining them. Temporarily, of course.”

“Are we really gonna take that Nightmare Moon’s orders?” Thundercracker asked.

“For the moment,” Megatron replied. “I haven’t seen much of her, but what I’ve seen suggests great power and experience. We must learn our abilities and hers before we strike. And when we do, we must strike not with brute force, but with strategy and cunning- two things I believe Nightmare Moon greatly lacks.”

“So we’re gonna take this place over too?” Skywarp asked. “Really? Who wants to rule a bunch of squishies anyway?”

“Everything is fodder,” Megatron replied. “If it advances the Decepticon cause, we shall use it. If not, we shall abandon it or destroy it as we see fit. Squishy or not.” Megatron glared directly at Skywarp as he concluded, “Does anyone have a problem with that?”

“No, sir!” Skywarp said, echoed by the others.

“Very good,” Megatron said. “Now, we shall begin by learning exactly what these bodies can do... and which of our old abilities have carried over from our world to this.” He nodded to Skywarp. “For example, I know that you still possess your teleportation power.”

“I do?” Skywarp asked.

“Yeah,” Thundercracker said. “I told you how you got that lump on your head. Remember?”

“I doubt I still possess my null-ray,” Starscream muttered. “When I awoke I couldn’t find any of my weapons anywhere.”

“And I don’t have my fusion cannon either,” Megatron agreed. “But that was scarcely your only trick, was it, Starscream? You’ve tried so many on me over the years.” He smiled grimly at his second in command as he added, “Not that any of them worked, but you might find a softer target.”

Starscream returned the smile in kind. “Indeed I might... Lord Megatron.”

Author's Notes:

An idea I toyed with, and later discarded, was to have Grogar bring in otherworldly monsters to join Chryssy, Tirek and Cozy's little anti-family. The gag would be that the three would come in at points in their lives when they had tired of villainy: Doctor Doom, Anakin Skywalker, and Megatron. I dumped the idea because it had no plot attached- no place to go.

But then it occurred to me: there have been LOTS of MLP-TF crossover fics written... but all of them have the Decepticons coming to Equestria as Transformers, as robots of some sort. Only one or two even give them a pony alt-mode. None of them have the robots in disguise being turned into actual flesh-and-blood ponies, as happens with the humans from the other side of the mirror portal.

So: here's the core G1 group, turned into ponies, with one chapter for every actual episode of Friendship is Magic.

They are not going to take over the show. Their interactions with the Mane 6 will be limited. For the most part, they're going to be background ponies...

... at least, until and unless inspiration determines that they no longer are.

We'll see if I can sustain this....

(P. S. I started writing this before the IDW crossover comic was announced.)

1/2: The Dawn of a New Life (Friendship is Magic pt. 2)

View Online

“I’m doin’ it! I’m doin’ it!”

The bit of lawn next to the chasm that surrounded the castle shook and cracked as Rumble pounded his forehooves into the ground. His arms didn’t transform into pistons anymore, but the earthquake effect didn’t seem to have diminished, at least not so long as he focused on pouring... something... into the ground.

“Hey! Watch it! WATCH IIIIIIT!”

Rumble stopped, gaping with shock as a section of the lawn split from the rest of the grounds and slid down into the chasm, taking Frenzy with it. “Frenzy!” Rumble shouted, galloping to the edge.

A midnight-blue light flashed past Rumble’s eyes, and then slowly, slowly, Frenzy rose back over the edge of the precipice. “Whew,” the red-coated colt gasped. “Thought I was a goner there. Figured I was gonna go splat like... well, like a horse.”

“frenzy status: wriggling,” a strained monotone echoed from behind Rumble. “imperative: stop it at once.”

Rumble walked over to Soundwave. The dark blue field of energy lifting Frenzy up out of the chasm came from his horn. The larger pony sweated with the strain, his eyes clenched shut in concentration. “You okay, Soundwave?” the smaller pony asked.

“function... within parameters,” Soundwave grunted. Slowly, carefully, the field lowered to deposit Frenzy on the lawn, well away from the new edge of the ground. The light went out, and Soundwave, fell on his haunches, breathing deeply.

“That was amazing, boss!” Rumble said. “How d‘ya do it?”

“procedure: uncertain,” Soundwave replied. “reaction: automatic. analyzing now.”

“Ya mean ya don’t know,” Rumble said. After so long working with the bigger bot, he and his fellow cassettes were used to Soundwave’s way of talking. “That’s all right. You’ll figure it out. But how’d you know where Frenzy was to grab him? You said your vision was broken or somethin’.”

“vision: impaired,” Soundwave agreed. “hearing: greatly enhanced. Other senses: also enhanced, but unable to identify.”

Rumble nodded: Soundwave’s specialty back home had been espionage, of course. Nobody on Cybertron, Autobot or Decepticon, had more sensitive sensors than he did. But... “But you’re organic now, right?” he asked. “I know you could tune out unwanted input, zero in on what you wanted, but organics can’t do that.”

“filtering is difficult,” Soundwave said. “loud noises: painful.”

“Aw, man, I’m sorry,” Rumble said. “I was so happy gettin’ my function on, I didn’t think-”

“i do not complain,” Soundwave replied. “your function: vital. unwanted input: ignored.”

“Hey, Soundwave!” Frenzy shouted, walking over to them after inspecting the edge. “Think you could lower me back over the edge?” The edge in his voice that sounded like someone scraping a thousand strands of barbed wire under tension over a chalkboard grew even louder with his excitement. “That was a fun ride! Almost felt like I could fly again!”

Soundwave winced. “filtering certain unwanted input: more difficult.”

Meanwhile, some hundred feet above them in the night sky, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw hovered, feathered wings flapping slowly. “I think he got looost,” Laserbeak suggested. “Let’s land now, hm? Let’s laaaand. No need to wait-”

Buzzsaw snared Laserbeak’s black feline tail in his beak. “As much as I would like to leave,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “this whole enterprise will be pointless without targets. And since we do not possess these... rrgh,” he shuddered as he forced himself to say the words, “cutie marks... we can only be useful in this fashion.”

“Laserbeak is useful!” Laserbeak chirped, and then said in a darker mutter, “I’d be a lot more useful not scattered all over the bottom of that ravine...”

Buzzsaw released his brother’s tail and said, “I have the liveliest of doubts-”

Anything further he might have said would have been drowned out by the explosion of noise that went off less than a ponylength behind him, if Buzzsaw hasn’t been tumbling through the air too deafened and disoriented to continue. He spread his wings to recover his balance, discovered he was upside down, and quickly righted himself, flapping slowly again as his hearing recovered.

The first sound he heard was Laserbeak’s braying laughter. “Target acquired! Target acquired!” the other griffin crowed like a parrot between hyena-like laughs. “Were you useful, Buzzsaw? Target acquired!” A shadow came between the moon and Laserbeak, and his braying laughter stopped. He looked up, saying, “What’s tha-”

What followed next was a loud squawk as a small but potent lightning bolt plunged from the little cloud directly over Laserbeak and struck him directly in the rump. The red and black griffon sped off like a scalded cat across the skies, as a violet-haired equine head peeked over the edge of the cloud.

“Target acquired,” Skywarp said, smirking wickedly.

Thundercracker, who’d had to circle back around after his namesake maneuver, slowed to a stop next to Skywarp. “How’d you do that?”

“It’s easy, dude,” Skywarp grinned. “It’s like pushin’ around a pile of packing pellets.” He demonstrated, flapping his way off the cloud and then giving it a little push. It floated a few feet away before coming to a stop. “And if you tweak it just right...” He slammed both forehooves down on top of the cloud, and a smaller bolt of lightning snapped out from the bottom.

“Is that so?” Thundercracker reached out and grasped the end of the cloud. “Hey... you’re right... I can feel all sorts of stuff inside this thing.” He rolled it around like a ball above him, smiling as the cloud grew. “I can accelerate the condensation around it, too!” He held it in place, hefting it thoughtfully. “And it feels like doing that builds up more static charge...”

“What are you two playing at?” Starscream shouted, swooping down from the skies where he’d been practicing his own flying.

Thundercracker took a tighter grip on the cloud. Glancing at Skywarp, he muttered, “Do you mind?”

Skywarp grinned. “I never mind seein’ Starscream in pain,” he said.

Nodding, Thundercracker turned to face Starscream, who had slowed to a hover, red-tipped white wings beating up and down with impossible slowness. “We’ve made a little discovery,” he said. “Wanna see?”

“Only if it’s not a waste of my time!” Starscream folded his forelegs in much the same manner he often did when bossing another bot around. “Well, is it?”

“See for yourself,” Thundercracker said, grinning as he squeezed the back of the cloud just so.

The stored lightning in the little cloud released itself all at once, lighting up the night sky for a moment almost as bright as day as it slammed into Starscream.

Only after the lightning had struck and vanished did Starscream shriek in terror. “AAAAAH! LIGHTNING!”

Thundercracker blinked as his eyes readjusted to the night, realizing slowly that for all his panic, Starscream hadn’t moved an inch... or even been hurt, so far as he could tell.

“YOU STRUCK ME WITH LIGHTNING! YOU TRIED TO FRY ME IN THIS HORRIBLE FLESH BODY! AND...” Gradually it dawned on Starscream that he’d been shouting and hovering quite a lot for someone who’d just been electrocuted. “And... and I’m uninjured.” Starscream examined himself, forehooves patting down the point on his chest where he’d been struck. “Not even singed... I didn’t feel a thing...” Panic had faded to wonder, then introspection, and then, as he focused his eyes on Thundercracker, to incandescent rage.

Skywarp took one look at Starscream’s face and said, “Well, later!” In a flash of violet light he was gone, leaving Thundercracker alone to face the Decepticon who, though not the strongest, was indisputably the most vindictive.

“Um... impressed?” Thundercracker asked.

“You attempted to incinerate your superior officer, Thundercracker,” Starscream murmured.

“Um... yeah.” Thundercracker admitted. “So... um... here, catch!” Out of ideas, he hurled the spent cloud at Starscream. A foot away from him it shredded apart into tiny bits of scud and fog that evaporated almost instantly.

“You know,” Starscream continued in the same low voice, “in our former bodies, I was the fastest flyer save for those with an orbit-capable alt-mode.”

“Um, on Cybertron, yeah,” Thundercracker said, hoping that quibbling might derail Starscream’s astrotrain of thought. “But our Earth alt-modes were pretty much equal, all based on the same type of human aircraft.”

“I think it’s time we find out if the same is true with our new bodies, don’t you?” Starscream continued, his lips baring teeth in a smile that almost reminded Thundercracker of Megatron in one of his most lethal moods. “I think we should have a race.” His wings spread as wide as they would go, and he hung in the air, for a moment almost sharing the silhouette of his robot body. “And the prize is that the winner WON’T get to experience just how many ways an equine body can feel pain!!”

Thundercracker just barely had time to turn and begin flapping like mad before Starscream occupied the space he’d been in a moment before. A teal streak blurred across the night sky, closely pursued by red and white.

Meanwhile, in the top of an ancient and gnarled oak tree growing right on the edge of the chasm, Buzzsaw perched overlooking an ancient well with smoke and steam rising out of it. “I do believe target practice has just ended,” he said conversationally. After a boom from overhead, he added, “For most of us, at least.”

“Hooray,” Laserbeak’s voice moaned from the bottom of the well.

Alone except for Ravage in the ancient throne room, Megatron glared with increasing frustration at the loose bits of stone at his hooves. Focusing on one and concentrating his mind on the sensation he’d felt when he’d yanked Starscream down to earth, he felt his horn warm and saw the golden light flicker around the broken brick. It rocked back and forth as it rose slowly from the ground... and then rolled out of his mental grip and dropped to the floor.

Again.

For the forty-ninth time.

In his more convivial moods Megatron would admit that, though he could be patient as the grave over the long term, he occasionally had his “little moments”. He had one now, screaming with rage and raising a hoof and bringing it down with a bang, reducing the brick to powder.

I am Megatron the conqueror! he thought. I pulled myself out of the gladiatorial pits, from the deepest gutters of Cybertron itself! I have slain rulers and destroyed worlds! My name is a synonym for terror through half the galaxy! I have the strength and the cunning to achieve any goal I desire! So WHY CAN’T I LIFT ONE STUPID ROCK??

He scorned the smaller pieces of debris he’d been practicing on, reaching his mind out to a large section of pillar that had fallen half across the chamber. The yellow glow fumbled up and down the length of the chunk of rock, and it rocked back and forth, rising, falling and rolling in his uncertain grip.

NO! I WILL NOT BE DENIED! YOU WILL OBEY ME BECAUSE I! AM! MEGATRON!! He felt the flow of energy in his horn, and he willed it to flow faster, harder, slamming it at the stone.

The golden light flared, and with a familiar-sounding FWAMP of energy, the rock vaporized. Tiny fragments struck what remained of the walls, clattering down to the floor in a brief rain of gravel.

Megatron, winded by the exertion, took several breaths to steady himself. His rage faded instantly as he observed his work- the absence of the pillar, the scorch mark on the floor, the flecks of rock here and there.

Weeeeeeeeeell.

Megatron looked up at the tops of the ruined walls that formed what remained of the throne room. One stone beam still jutted almost to what had once been the peak of the roof, sticking out like a joint-locked digit. He lowered his head, pointing his horn as much as he could at it, and again willed the force he refused to think of as magic to strike- but this time with precision and measured force, not in bland berserker rage.

FWAMP.

The stone joist now more or less matched its fellows, smoking from the place where it had been trimmed down.

Veeeeerrrry interesting, Megatron thought. I think I need no longer search for a replacement for my fusion cannon.

As he looked at the open roof, he noticed fog beginning to curl over the jagged bits of shingles. More fog flowed through the open windows and doorways. “I don’t like the looks of this,” he muttered aloud to himself. “Decepticons! To me!”

“My fog deadens sound,” the voice of Nightmare Moon said from right behind him. Megatron smiled a little: he’d mastered his involuntary reflex programming before he crawled out of the depths into the gladiator arena, and it felt good knowing that carried over into his new body. Meanwhile the Nightmare said, “I shall guide your followers to you here. Once you are together, make yourselves scarce. My sister’s student and her followers will be here shortly, and I do not want them to see you.”

“Aaah,” Megatron nodded, turning slowly to face the madmare. “You wish us to set up an ambush?”

“Of course not!” Nightmare Moon allowed herself a moment’s laugh. “They pose no threat to me! But if they see you here, it would be a distraction. If I am to crush their spirits and make them my servants, I need their absolute and total attention! No, mighty Megatron,” she purred, giving him that up-and-down examination of his form again, “in the future you shall have ample opportunity to fight in my name. But this time I must order you to desist. You may watch if you wish, but do not interfere- no matter what.”

“I understand,” Megatron said calmly. He didn’t care for being ordered to do anything and never had, but for the long game he planned, he could pretend. “But what if, unlikely as it may be, they get the upper hand?”

“Upper hoof, dear Megatron.” Nightmare smirked at the thought. “And that won’t happen. So far their tenacity and wisdom have overcome my every test. But with my sister gone only one power in Equestria could challenge mine...” She tapped a hoof on the stones beneath their feet. “... and I have that power firmly under my control. And when I show my sister’s dear student this fact, that her hopes are built on sand...” She trailed off into maniacal laughter, which faded along with her as the fog swallowed her up again.

“Hey, Megatron!” Rumble walked out of the fog, leading Soundwave by the hoof. Frenzy followed along behind. “Soundwave heard you callin’, and then this dame’s voice told us ta come here.”

Flapping wings stirred the fog above as first Skywarp, then Starscream, and finally a worse-for-wear Thundercracker dropped through the open roof and into the throne room. Not long after them came Laserbeak and Buzzsaw, flapping through a window. “You summoned us, Lord Megatron?” Starscream asked.

“Indeed I did, Starscream,” Megatron replied. “We have been invited to watch a play. The only question is whether it shall be tragedy or triumph...” His little smile grew broader. “... or farce.”

The galleries overlooking the main throne room, and the stairs leading up to them, turned out to still be sound. After a warning from Megatron to make no sound and to do nothing without his order, the Decepticons hid behind cracked and half-broken railings to watch and wait.

They didn’t wait long. A flash of light lit up the room, revealing Nightmare Moon on a lower dais than the one with the thrones... and, on the far end of the chamber, a violet pony, horn but no wings, shaking her head and gaining her bearings after a rough-looking teleport.

Megatron’s eyebrows rose as, after a few meaningless words exchanged between the two, the unicorn lowered her head and charged at the Nightmare, her horn glowing with a brilliant light. As small and pathetic as the newcomer seemed, she had courage. Megatron respected that. Nightmare Moon bounded off her pedestal and countercharged. Megatron nodded: a true leader fights their own battles. He respected that as well.

Then, just before the two horses would have struck, another flash of light filled the room, and the Nightmare charged through the space where the violet unicorn had just been. Behind her, on the dais, a swirl of light resolved into the unicorn, who began throwing small sparks of magic here and there at the rocks in a frantic, obviously last-gasp attempt at victory.

Megatron smiled. He respected courage and integrity, but the Decepticon ranks were full of cowards and turncoats. The true measure of a bot... of a person, possibly... lay in guile, intelligence, and above all never surrendering. These were the foundation of true strength... and this purple creature had them. Nightmare Moon, by comparison, he found... lacking.

Once this charade is over, he thought, I shall have to take pains to cultivate this one. She can be my first ally in the campaign to overthrow Nightmare Moon and take her throne.

Of course she was going to lose. Nightmare Moon teleported herself over to the dais, knocking Twilight back off it. The madmare looked frightened for a moment as a last few sparks danced across those stone spheres, but then they lay still, and she laughed as she shattered them with a single stomp of her hoof. Whatever hopes the purple one had, they died along with the spheres.

Then voices came from the entryway to the throne room- the followers Nightmare Moon had spoken about, Megatron deduced.

And then the violet pony smiled...

... and in the minute that followed, Megatron’s expectations got thrown into the smelting pot, along with all common sense rules of battle.

The other Decepticons agreed, based on the mutterings he heard, despite his order for silence.

“What are ya waitin’ for?” Frenzy whispered. “Shoot her! Shoot her now!!”

“Don’t let her keep talking,” Starscream muttered. “End her! End ANY of them! It’s obvious they need all six of them for this to work! Don’t let them finish!”

“Run, stupid!” Laserbeak snapped. “You’ve lost! Run before it’s too late!”

And then a brilliant rainbow rose from the six ordinary ponies on one side and engulfed Nightmare Moon on the other side, and then it was all over.

After that, as a white pony even larger than Nightmare Moon appeared out of nowhere just as the sun rose outside, Megatron heard Skywarp mumble, “Looks like th’ last ship back ta Cybertron just blew up on the pad.”

Princess Celestia smiled at Megatron's reference to his arrival in Equestria. “Captain,” she said, “I think, after what happened to you, it’s my duty at the least to make your time with us as comfortable as possible. After all,” she continued, her smile fading and her gaze dropping to the ground, “if I had not been forced to seal my sister in the moon in the first place, you wouldn’t be here. I bear some responsibility. And I mean to make it up to you.”

“And we are most grateful, Your Royal Highness,” the white-and-red pegasus put in. “Though you can best aid us by helping us return as swiftly as possible.”

“I’ll do my best,” Celestia said. “Unfortunately the one pony who knew the secret of travel between worlds has been gone for a thousand years, and he didn’t teach me the spell. But maybe we can find a clue somewhere.”

“That would be just… prime,” Megatron drawled.

Celestia cocked her head. “Is that good?” she asked.

Megatron’s smile took a distinctly wry twist. “Some have said so,” he muttered.

“Well, that’s fine,” Celestia nodded. “And now I have to depart. My sister and I have a great deal to talk about after all these years."

“I beg your indulgence first, princess,” Megatron hissed. “It is a small thing, but I wish to ask a question. Three questions, rather. I ask them of any new ruler or government I encounter. You may find them impertinent, but I never fail to find the response instructive.”

Celestia’s eyebrow quirked. “Go ahead.”

“My questions are these.” The unicorn brought himself to a stance of military attention, buzz-cut black mane perfectly straight, broad shoulders square. “First: in whose interests do you exercise your power? Second: to whom are you accountable? And third…” The red eyes glowed in the sunlight as they challenged Celestia, unbowing, inflexible. “How may we be rid of you?”

Celestia laughed. “Well, you did warn me they might be impertinent,” she chuckled. “Though I have to say, none of the others who tried to overthrow me ever asked politely.” She sobered a little and added in an undertone, “They might have been surprised at the answer if they had.”

“If you don’t wish to answer, that’s fine,” Megatron said. “It’s just-“

“No, Captain, I’m happy to answer,” Celestia said. With a flash of the white alicorn’s horn, images appeared in the air, displaying angular renditions of Celestia and Luna standing before a unicorn wearing a large hat and a bushy beard. “I have always put the protection of my ponies before all other considerations,” Celestia continued. “For over a thousand years I have been the last line of defense for them... sometimes more successfully than others.” The Luna in the images changed into Nightmare Moon, and the illusion of Celestia banished the dark spectre, “And even when doing so has broken my heart, I have never once put my happiness ahead of my subjects. Never.”

The projection changed to show a series of battles: Celestia and Luna facing an enormous dragon; then, a strange, laughing serpentine patchwork monster; next, a strange red six-limbed creature with gigantic horns on its head; after that, a black unicorn with glowing green eyes; and, finally, Celestia facing Nightmare Moon again. “When I was but a filly my sister and I were summoned from our homeland by Starswirl the Bearded to become the rulers of the first united kingdom of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. In that time many outsiders have sought to overthrow me. But not once have the ponies I rule asked me to relinquish my crown.” In a softer voice she added, “After losing my sister, I very much wished they would.”

The images winked out. Celestia looked directly at Megatron, saying, “As to your third question: the day I am confident that another pony can take up the burden, I shall lay it down.” She turned to look over the rooftops of Ponyville, at the sun hanging almost directly overhead. “Do you understand how lonely it is, living for a thousand years, when not a single pony is willing to talk to you as an equal?" she asked. "When everyone is either a subject or an enemy? I almost welcome the occasional invasion or monster attack, because it means at least someone isn’t groveling at my hooves like I was some sort of god. I am tired, Captain. I want to see the world I've protected. I want to be just an ordinary pony again. I am tired of the lives I destroy every time I make a mistake. Do you understand what that is like?”

Megatron understood far too well what Celestia meant. Leadership was a heavy burden, and he had seen from both sides the dangers of having too many yes-men around. It was why, despite everything, he kept that idiot Starscream around. And it was why he always looked forward to the moments when he could face Optimus Prime one on one, despite Prime’s philosophical weakness.

He understood, but he wasn’t going to tell this pony that- especially when she was confessing her weakness to him. Instead he said simply, “If it is so hard, why don’t you just quit?”

“Because my ponies need a protector,” Celestia replied. “And I expect a new protector will emerge, very soon. If she can rise to the challenge, that is.” A small smile flitted across her lips, then fled as Celestia continued sternly, “Because as much as I wish to have my own life back after so long, I will not fail in my duty. So long as my ponies need me, I will be there. And maybe I will fail... but no honest pony will be able to say I didn’t try!”

Megatron suppressed the derisive chuckle which lurked in his throat. This female had Optimus’s disease of the brain- a desire to self-sacrifice in favor of a rabble who would never appreciate it nor learn from it. In short, Celestia fancied herself a hero. The only wonder, Megatron thought, is that she lasted this long without being terminated by someone.

But for all that heroes were congenitally blind to the realities of existence, they possessed uncanny insight in other ways. You could only gull a hero once, if that. And a hero’s trust was precious coin that could so easily be frittered away- as Megatron knew from experience. So, for now, caution would be his watchword around the two princesses- caution until he had a certain method to overthrow them, or a road back to Earth or Cybertron, whichever came first.

But deep inside himself, a tiny part of Megatron asked: if the Quintessons, or the old Senators, had answered so forthrightly, would I ever have raised the standard of rebellion?

He stamped this stray thought out. Ridiculous. Something in this primitive squishy organic brain must be malfunctioning, to even take his mind back to such ancient days.

“Well answered, Princess!” he said, bowing his head. “And I thank you for indulging me.” He gestured a hoof at his warriors and continued, “For indulging us.”

“My sister and I owe you,” Celestia said. The key to the guardhouse floated over to Megatron, who fumbled with his hoof to catch it. “The funds I mentioned will be sent by courier this evening. And I will start my archivists looking for anything that might help you return to your world. Until then, welcome to Equestria! I look forward to seeing what you make of your new life!”

The princess spread her wings, and with a gust of wind she was airborne, above the rooftops and banking towards the parade grounds where the Summer Sun Celebration was still in full swing.

Megatron glared at the large iron key on his hoof. Gritting his teeth, he focused his will on his horn. Shakily, awkwardly, the key lifted into the air, floated over to the thick wooden main door of the guardhouse, and bumped into the latchplate. It took five attempts and a loud squeal of grinding metal before he finally got the accursed thing into the keyhole.

As soon as the latch clicked, Skywarp barged forward. “Dibs on best room!”

“Hey! You can’t do that!”

“Get out of my way! I am your superior-OOF!”

“Buzzsaw! The roof! Yes, quickly, the roof! We can get the good rooms that way!”

“Hey, come back here! C’mon, Rumble, let’s get ‘em before all the good rooms are gone!”

Megatron sighed as most of his Decepticon warriors galloped or flapped their ways into the stone building. Not that it mattered. He’d take his time, pick his own room, and throw out whichever unlucky subordinate happened to be in it. And letting them settle the rest among themselves was far more efficient than wasting his own time doing it.

But it would be nice if, for a change, his warriors put a little less effort into bickering among themselves. It would never happen, but it would be nice…

Megatron grumbled at the armor. For one thing, it left his hindquarters totally bare. For another, it chafed his fur abominably- something which never happened with a titano-alloy chassis.

He liked the helmet, though, once he’d removed the idiotic scrub-brush crest from it and beat out the back into a proper flare. The helmet made him feel like his old self, at least a little.

So many strange things to deal with, he thought. Clothes, although the ponies here treated them as options instead of necessities. Food. Hygiene. Sleep. Money, and the need to earn it. He had always sneered at inferior organic life forms, and now he was one, with all the failings and weaknesses they possessed.

For now, anyway. Until Starscream found a way home, or until the princesses did. Or until Megatron worked out a way to shift from this pitiful village, this Ponyville, to the center of power, where he could begin actively planning a coup.

Or, he ruefully admitted as he looked out at the peaceful, bucolic dirt streets and thatched-roofed homes of the ponies, until I die of sheer boredom. I’ve seen many villages like this on many worlds. They’re all the same- dull boring towns full of dull, boring peasants.

Nothing exciting will ever happen in Ponyville.

Tapping his helmet to make sure it sat straight on his head, Megatron gave himself one final look in the mirror, nodded with satisfaction, and marched out in proper gladiatorial style into the arena that was the world.

It was the first day of the rest of his pony life.

1/3: Meeting the Neighbors (The Ticket Master)

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"HEY, STARSCREAM!"

Starscream looked up from the book he'd been reading (such primitive data storage devices, bah) just in time for the little cardboard tube to strike him directly between the eyes. "WHO DARES?" he shouted.

"We're outta toilet paper," Rumble said, stepping out of the guard house's first-floor bathroom. "Go out and get us some more."

Starscream set down the book and pushed himself off the chair he'd been sitting on. Spreading his wings without thinking about it, he stared down the diminuitive purple earth pony. "Do you remember who you're talking to?" he asked. "I am vice commander of the Decepticons! I am so far above you that I have difficulty seeing you even at extreme magnification! I-"

"Yeah, an' you're the one who explained to us what toilet paper is for!" Rumble snapped. "And we're out. So since you know so much about it, go find us some more!"

"Hey, Starscream?" Thundercracker muttered, pulling his own muzzle out of a bowl. "if you're going out, we're out of these Frosted Hay-Bales things, too." He put his face back into the bowl and returned to munching with quiet sounds of satisfaction.

"Hey, 'Cracker," Rumble said, "you know what you're doin' there? That's what causes th' need for toilet paper."

"Gotta keep th' energon topped up," Thundercracker said between loud crunching bites. "Never know when you'll be ordered to-"

"Wait a moment..." Starscream turned his attention to Thundercracker, and to the tall empty cardboard box next to him. "I had that box carefully hidden! How did you find my hiding place?"

"efforts at concealment: futile," Soundwave answered for Thundercracker. The dark blue unicorn levitatated one of the sugar-coated rolls of edible cellulose towards his mouth and added, "skill demonstrated in the attempt: laughable."

Starscream snorted. "I see how it is," he muttered. "Very well, I shall go out later in the day and get more food and other necessities. But I thought we'd have enough." He walked over to the cabinets of the barracks kitchen and opened a couple of doors, revealing a handful of cans and a couple of already half-empty bags. "Either these organic energy sources are even more inefficient than we suspected, or these new bodies are burning through them as if we were in constant battle!"

"An insightful observation, Starscream." Megatron walked in from the armory, dressed in his full guard armor. "Mechanical creatures such as us- as we were," he growled, flexing a forehoof in the exact same motion he once used to clench a fist, "are capable of entering low-power operation modes. These inferior organic bodies cannot control their metabolisms so finely, so they remain naturally set at a level that prepares them to fight or flee for their lives at any moment." He smiled at Starscream- and, Starscream noted, like most of Megatron's smiles it lay about three-quarters of the way to a sneer- and asked, "Is that not a scientific assessment?"

"A... most interesting hypothesis, Lord Megatron," Starscream mumbled. Clearing his throat, he continued, "But in any case, it does present issues for our resources- specifically money." He walked over to a slate on the wall, wrapped his wingtip around one of the old chunks of chalk, and began writing sums on the board. "We've been in this world four days, roughly speaking," he continued. "The supplies I bought two days ago were supposed to have lasted us two weeks. Fourteen days. Now it appears they might not last us four days."

"Good morning, fellow Decepticons." Buzzsaw glided down the stairway from the second floor. "Starscream, where did you put that 'pet food' substance? I'm feeling a bit..." The robotic buzzard turned eagle-like griffon looked at all the eyes staring at him. "Ah, did I interrupt something? Then I'll just take the pet food and-"

A loud and savage snarl from the corner made it clear that Ravage would retrieve the brightly colored sack of Kitty Kibble from the cooling corpse of anyone who dared to take it.

"As I was saying," Starscream continued, "with our excessive need to eat-"

"And the other thing!" Rumble insisted, kicking around the empty toilet paper roll on one hoof.

"Er... to eat, and to excrete," Starscream continued, "and to exercise proper hygiene for organic creatures, plus whatever social duties or other needs I haven't figured out yet, the starter fund Princess Celestia gave us isn't going to last long. And once that's gone, we'll have to feed ten of us on two guard salaries."

"Then what do you propose?" Megatron asked pointedly.

"You have your job guarding the town," Starscream said. "And I spend all day reading every scrap of data this society has about itself so we can better fit in. Once I'm done with that I can begin researching a way home. But has anyone else even left this stone shanty since we moved in?"

"Yeah. Laserbeak," Rumble said. "He was out all day yesterday and didn't come back until dusk."

"He left before dawn this morning, too," Buzzsaw nodded. "He told me he was scouting the area. I elected not to join him. My brother is best taken in small doses."

The other Decepticons nodded, even Megatron. When it came to Laserbeak, silence was not golden; it was much rarer than that.

"Well, there you are, then," Starscream said. "Out of the ten of us, two have jobs. That needs to change." He glared at the Decepticon ponies who weren't Megatron and shouted, "At least some of these lazy bots need to get out of here and go to work!!"

"Work?" Skywarp barely moved from where he lay on his back on a ceiling joist. "Listen, Starscream, if I'd wanted to work I woulda joined the Autobots! They work. Deceptions rule!"

"Skywarp..."

The pegasus on the joist froze, then carefully rolled over on his perch to look down on the armor-clad unicorn. "Yeah, Megatron?" he asked meekly.

"Which of us here is the strongest Decepticon?" To prove Megatron's point, a yellow field of light rose from his horn and enveloped Skywarp, effortlessly removing him from his perch and levitating him down to eye level.

"Um... you are, Meg- um, Lord Megatron." Skywarp squirmed in the magical grip, feeling it tighten just a little uncomfortably. From the look on his face, Starscream guessed he'd figured out just how much trouble his mouth had put him in a little too late.

"That's right!" Megatron congratulated Skywarp sarcastically. "I am the strongest. And that means..." The light pulled Skywarp right up to Megatron's face, where the leader's red eyes could bore straight into the ex-Seeker's yellow ones. "... that means, if I say you work... YOU WORK!" The magic light flared, and Skywarp went tumbling out into the foyer of the guardhouse, crashing against the far wall with a grunt of pain.

Starscream couldn't help but flinch as Megatron turned his angry look his way, but he relaxed as that look panned across him to take in all the Decepticons present. "As much as it pains me to admit it," Megatron continued, "Starscream is right. I didn't make you my elite team of warriors so you could lounge about all day doing nothing! Enough idleness!"

He jabbed a hoof towards the foyer and the main doors to the outside world. "If Starscream and Laserbeak can learn more about this world we've been brought to, so can the rest of you! From now on, every day you all go out and interact with the natives. Find out what they're good at. Find out what you're good at. And then find a way to do it that brings in the money we need to survive here!"

From the foyer a woozy voice called out, "What if I'm good at robbin' banks?"

Megatron's growl made Starscream step backwards a moment before he realized, again, it wasn't directed at him. "Then, Skywarp, you will keep that knowledge to yourself until I say otherwise!" Megatron snapped. "We are still in an uncertain and precarious situation here. I will not tolerate it being endangered by any ill-conceived notions like petty theft!"

Again his gaze went around the room. "We were lords of Cybertron- lords of the galaxy!- back home. But we are not home now. Here we are outnumbered and outpowered- and we don't even know how badly we're outpowered! So until I say otherwise, stay out of trouble! Or else you can join Frenzy in the cells!"

Starscream didn't bother suppressing the smirk that brought on. Frenzy had tried to start a fight with a strange pony on the street the day before. Megatron had ordered him confined to one of the guardhouse's three jail cells for ten days- five for trying to punch out an earth pony twice his size, and five for making Megatron apologize on Frenzy's behalf. The confinement and boredom was driving the little red pony crazy, but crazy in silence, since Megatron had threatened to add a day to the punishment every time Frenzy complained.

In Frenzy's case, silence was platinum.

"Starscream!" Megatron's bark brought Starscream's attention back to the here and now. "Give me, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Soundwave and Buzzsaw twenty of these... bit coins... each. Ten for Rumble." One last time his glare scanned the room. "Do not feel compelled to spend every last coin. We have a limited supply." Now he did glare at Starscream, but not the kind of glare that threatened immediate violence. "How limited exactly, Starscream?"

"Less than six weeks with seventy bits a day on top of the basic necessities," Starscream said, looking at the numbers he'd put on the chalkboard and finishing the math in his head.

"Just so," Megatron nodded. "Very limited. So don't waste them!" Without a further word he stomped out of the dining area, through the foyer and out into the Ponyville town square.

"Hey, Cracker," Rumble said as he walked up to Starscream. "What are you gonna buy with your bits?"

"Something to eat," Thundercracker said. "Those Frosted Mini-Bales are okay, but the bagged oats get old quick. These squishies have got to have something better."

"examples of consumer electronics required," Soundwave chipped in. "Purpose: technological analysis."

"I believe I shall browse the tool shops," Buzzsaw said. "Or possibly the art galleries, if they have any. A true artist always seeks inspiration, after all."

"Just you watch your spending," Starscream grumbled, going to the old safe where they'd stashed the fund provided by Celestia and Luna to set up the Decepticons in Ponyville. "And if Megatron doesn't think your purchases were worth it, don't come crying to me!"

"Yeah, no danger of that, Starscream," Rumble muttered.

Starscream decided to pretend he hadn't heard that.

Laserbeak quietly took a bite of the apple in his claw. At first he hadn't cared for the whole eat-and-excrete process that came with organic bodies. Nothing replaced a good energon recharge. But apples were, so to speak, growing on him. Oh, there was a flavor missing that he craved, but he got that when he raided the Kitty Kibble bag at night- the flavor of meat-byproduct. For the rest of his needs, these apples, plus an occasional pastry stolen when opportunity presented itself, seemed to fit his needs just fine.

Furthermore, these little stolen snacks had advantages energon lacked. For one thing, no Autobots showed up to blast you in the face for stealing apples. For another, you didn't need Soundwave or Starscream to set up the energon conversion process from whatever Earth power source they were looting at the moment. No, with organic food it was just grab, gulp, and go- no hassle at all.

And that suited Laserbeak just fine, because it left him more time and freedom to do what he did best- surveillance.
He knew the other Decepticons thought he was an idiot and a coward. He was fine with that. Almost from the day of his first initialization he'd recognized a basic fact of existence: the only hope of weak bots like himself was to ally with the strongest and make themselves so useful as to become valuable- something to be protected rather than just exploited. The other Decepticons had made a joke of it- "Who's leader this week? Well, who's Laserbeak kissing up to?"- but since Laserbeak and his brother were still functioning after millions of years of civil war, he had the last laugh, didn't he?

And for all their contempt, none of the other Decepticons- not even mighty Megatron- had realized that the new town librarian, Twilight Sparkle, was or would shortly become a nexus of power. She had defeated Nightmare Moon, hadn't she? She was the personal student and protege of the ruler of the land, right? But no one had given any thought to learning more about this creature who might become a pawn in Megatron's plans...

... no one except Laserbeak, that is.

So, while the target of his surveillance, her reptilian assistant, and one of her pony friends knocked apples out of trees and gathered them into baskets, he watched from another tree- a tree already stripped of its fruit- and listened, trying to chew raw apple as quietly as he could.

He missed his holographic imager, his internal record banks, his high-gain microphones. This new form of his didn't even have ideal ears- he kept having to turn his head sideways to better hear what the ponies were saying. And when he reported to Megatron, he'd have to do so by voice- so inefficient, so annoying for him and his audience alike.

But he stayed, unseen and unnoticed, and listened as the dragon burped, watched as a scroll emerged from the smoke. That held his attention enough to make him drop the half-eaten apple. Apparently the purple pony and her royal teacher could send messages long-distance using the little dragon. That might be useful.

He listened to the student and the pony in the hat talking.When the blue flying pony with the polychromatic hair showed up, he listened to her, too committing every word to memory and wishing he still had built-in cameras and microphones.

So... this Grand Galloping Gala, as Laserbeak understood it, was an event where the powerful of Equestria gathered. And invitations, apparently, were a most exclusive commodity.

If the powerful of Equestria were in attendance, shouldn't Megatron be as well? He might find some disaffected nobles or senators or whatever this planet had, willing to listen to a few well-chosen words on the subject of regime change. Or her might take some hostages, or launch his coup then and there, if opportunity presented. Such a gathering opened all sorts of possibilities...

But first Megatron had to get invited to the Gala... or just get his hands- hooves- on one of those golden tickets!

Laserbeak watched and waited as Twilight Sparkle said something about lunch and walked off, then waited a while longer as the orange pony and the blue pony hoof-wrestled one another. Only after sixteen bouts, with victory equally split between the two, did they finally leave, allowing Laserbeak to flee his perch and take to the skies unseen.
Only then, halfway back to Ponyville, did Laserbeak realize that, for all his stalking of Twilight Sparkle, he'd never actually followed Megatron on his patrols... which meant he had no idea where his leader was at this time of day.
Grinding his beak, he soared high above Ponyville, circling around in search of a silver stallion in a beat-up guard helmet...

“Good morning, Mr. Starscream!”

Starscream looked up from the shopping list in his hoof- his mouth-writing had improved from illegible to merely undecipherable in two days- to meet the eyes of a well-dressed earth pony with a jeweled tie-pin and a touch of gray in his mane around the temples. “You remembered!” he said, honestly surprised. “You remember my name after my visiting only once?”

“I try to remember all my regular customers,” the well-dressed pony said. “And since you’re one of the new town guard, I expect to be seeing a lot of you in the future.”

“Too true,” Starscream muttered. He still hadn’t thought of a clever way to shuffle off the chore of grocery shopping onto one of the others without losing power over the collective purse in the process. In a louder voice he replied, "Unfortunately I don't believe I caught your name when I was here last time."

"Filthy Rich, that's my name," the pony replied. "Owner and CEO of Barnyard Bargains, with over thirty locations across Equestria. But I choose to live here in Ponyville, where it all began." He gestured around him at the clean, well-organized store filled with almost all the necessities of daily pony life. "My great-grandfather founded the business, you see. And I still keep a hoof in running the old flagship store, just to make sure everything runs smoothly."

"I quite understand, Mr. Rich." Starscream didn't agree with it one little bit, but he understood there were people like Filthy Rich who believed hands-on knowledge of their enterprise was essential to their success. Starscream held to a different philosophy of management- that of maintaining the big picture, leaving subordinates to handle the details and motivating them with severe punishment for idiocy. A leader lowering himself to the level of his underlings was just... demeaning.

But he'd lived too long climbing the ladder of ambition to let this contempt show in his face. Instead Starscream extended the parchment on his hoof to the earth pony and said, "This is the list of things we need, Mr. Rich. Perhaps you could help me with it?"

Filthy Rich accepted the list and, a little to Starscream's surprise, didn't squint or turn the page or anything. "Dry oats? Breakfast cereal in bulk? Cat food? And nothing else? That's going to be a bit monotonous," he said conversationally. "Not to mention unhealthy."

"Well, there are ten of us, and we're on a budget," Starscream pointed out. "I don't suppose you could get us a... discounted bulk rate?"

"Hm..." Filthy Rich looked at the list again. "You really do need some variety. You can get fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmer's market. Carrots, potatoes, berries, apples, peaches, fresh alfalfa, stuff like that. They're open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays"

"Sending business to your competitors?" Starscream asked.

"Why not? I'm also their biggest customer!" Filthy Rich laughed. "Half of every harvest any farmer around here has ends up on a train bound for the Canterlot distribution center, and from there to each of my other stores! But most of it gets there in cans or jars. Fresh is better when you can get it." He tapped the list again and continued, "But for the rest of this... well, it's mostly bulk goods. I could arrange a weekly delivery service. The guardhouse is only three blocks away, so I won't add a delivery charge. But..." His eyes narrowed as he looked at Starscream again. "I just realized something. All of this can be eaten cold. None of you cook, do you?"

Starscream had cooked a great many things- chemicals, explosives, lubricants, refined fuels. But he'd never associated that verb with organic food before. "Should we?" he asked innocently.

"That's what I thought," Filthy Rich said. "And the guardhouse probably still has a wood stove. Not good for beginners. Well, I'll tell you what." The older pony smiled at Starscream. "I've got a cheap but serviceable electric oven taking up showroom space, and we're also having a clearance sale on box dinners. It'll give you a simple place to start learning. We can get that delivered today once we start a simple line of credit for the guardhouse."

Starscream's eyes widened. "That's most kind of you, Mr. Rich," he said.

"Please," the earth pony said, "call me Filthy."

Starscream's poker face had weaknesses, and suppressing the desire to laugh was one of them. He did manage to not laugh out loud, but when he said, "If it's all the same to you, Mr. Rich, I'd rather not," the words bobbled out of lips struggling not to stretch into a wicked grin.

Filthy Rich rolled his eyes. "If I had a bit for every time I've heard that," he muttered. "Let's got to my office and work out the details."

Thundercracker and Skywarp soared high above Ponyville, watching the ponies going about their daily lives far below.
"Hey, Thundercracker," Skywarp said, "see that fruit cart over there? Five bits says I can bullseye that with a rock from here, first try."

"By the Allspark, Skywarp," Thundercracker groaned, "how many times have I gotta remind you- Megatron said no trouble." How many times had Skywarp suggested something like this? Seven? Eight? He'd lost track. He hadn't been able to spot a food store or anything like that without Skywarp making some suggestion about how to destroy it from the air.

"Eh, you always were a stick-in-the-mud," Skywarp muttered.

"Only when one of your stupid pranks lands me there," Thundercracker muttered. "I want to maintain a mud-free lifestyle. And so does Megatron. So quit looking for mischief and try to find some kind of work that involves flying, why don't you?"

"Myah nyah neer nad involves flying neer nee ner," Skywarp mocked under his breath. Then, after a moment, he said, "Why don't we ask those flyers over there? There's a whole lot of 'em."

Thundercracker followed Skywarp's pointing hoof to see about half a dozen pegasi, led by a blue pegasus with rainbow hair. They appeared to be corralling a blanket of clouds and moving it across Ponyville, cutting off the Seekers' view of the town below.

Thundercracker grinned. "Hey, do you know what? Remember those tricks I was trying out with clouds? This is what they're for." He waved his own hoof at the weather ponies. "That's this planet's version of weather control."

"Really?" Skywarp watched for a moment, then sneered. "Lotsa planets try that. Never works right, does it?"

"Every other planet that does it uses machines and computers," Thundercracker said. "These guys are doing it by hand... I mean hoof... wing... you know what I mean."

"Huh." Skywarp stopped sneering and watched a little while longer. "Looks like a lotta work, if you ask me,"

"Yeah, but it's work we can do while flying," Thundercracker said. "Beats getting tied to the ground like an Autobot, doesn't it?"

"You got a point there," Skywarp admitted.

A gray pegasus with a flat-top mane split off from the working group and flew over to the two hovering Deceptiponies. "Hey, guys?" he asked. "Scheduled rain's about to start, and you're kinda in the way. So if you don't mind?"

"Actually, buddy," Thundercracker said, "we were wondering if you guys had any job openings. We just got into town, and we're interested in this making weather stuff."

"Really?" the gray pony asked. "You're not from Cloudsdale? If you were from Cloudsdale you'd have had weather control in school or flight camp. And I know you're not from here in Ponyville."

"Of course we're not from Ponyville!" Skywarp snapped. "We're from Cyuurgh!"

Thundercracker withdrew his elbow from Skywarp's ribs and said, "We're from a long, long way out of Equestria. Place we're from, you never heard of it. And they didn't teach us about working with weather back home."

"S'right," Skywarp grunted, rubbing his barrel. "Nothin'." Under his breath he added, "''Cracker, I'm gonna get you for that."

"Huh." The gray pegasus rubbed his jaw. "Well, we're always short-hoofed when it's rain time, but it's really a part-time job. Unless you're willing to help cover the district and not just the town."

"How's the pay?" Thundercracker asked.

"For a rookie? Pretty low," the other pony admitted. "But pass your exam and you get certified, and then you make a decent living even part-time. Most Cloudsdale ponies have the test in school, so they go straight into management." He pointed at the blue pegasus among the rest of the workers, who appeared to be looking back at them. "Case in point, our leader, Rainbow Dash. She dropped out of school and still aced all the tests, so she's the boss." Raising a hoof to his lips, he added, "'Course, she spends most of her time taking naps or flying into-"

"HEY, THUNDERLANE!" a rough feminine voice shouted from the work crew. "ARE THOSE GUYS LEAVING TODAY OR WHAT?"

Thunderlane shot the Deceptiponies an apologetic look.

"Thunderlane, huh? My name's Thundercracker." The white-and-blue pegasus extended a hoof to shake, realizing a moment later that there was no hand on the end of it.

Thunderlane, not noticing the hesitation, touched the bottom of his hoof to Thundercrackers. The ex-bot felt a brief sensation of grip as the two legs pumped up and down in unison; then it released. "Nice to meet you," the grey pony said. "Name like that, your family probably thought you'd be a natural with weather."

"Name's Skywarp," the violet pegasus muttered, not offering a hoof. After a moment he managed a very unconvincing smile.

"Uh... huh." Thunderlane nodded, then turned his attention back to Thundercracker. "Look, the weather office is on the second floor of town hall. You can get a job application there. Rainbow Dash will have to interview you, but you'll probably get in."

"THUNDERLANE!!"

"But not right now," Thunderlane continued. "Look, you really should either fly somewhere else or get inside. There's not supposed to be any lightning in these clouds, but there's always such a thing as accidents."

"Yeah," Skywarp muttered, giving Thundercracker a glare. "Accidents."

Thundercracker glared back at Skywarp for a moment, then said to Thunderlane, "Thanks for the tip, buddy. We'll be in touch. I guarantee it." He reached a foreleg around Skywarp's elbow and said, "Let's get back to the guardhouse for lunch."

"That's two I owe you," Skywarp muttered as he let Thundercracker lead him down and through the clouds. (Plunging through the clouds took a surprising effort; to Thundercracker it felt like swimming instead of flying.) "One for the poke to the chassis, and one for gettin' me a slaggin' job."

"You've never needed a reason to get anybody back," Thundercracker replied. "If we're keeping count, you owe me for about seven million pranks and friendly-fire incidents."

"It don't count if it's for fun," Skywarp said.

"Anyway, you ought to be thanking me," Thundercracker replied. "Yeah, I maybe got you a job, if they accept us. But that means we won't be in trouble when Megatron gets back from patrol."

Skywarp's scowl lessened considerably, but not completely. "Maybe. You know how Megatron is."

"And also, you've got an excuse to get away from Starscream for eight hours a day," Thundercracker added. "And I know I'm looking forward to that."

"Have you seen my father? Filthy Rich?"

Starscream, sitting on a chair in Filthy Rich's office in the back of Barnyard Bargains, looked down at the filly who'd invaded his space. Her mane had a bit of wave to it, accentuating the white band that ran through the otherwise violet hair. A little wire tiara perched on the very top of the hairdo, shining uncut gemstones fixed to the points. She looked at him as if she owned the place. "And who are you?" he asked.

"I'm Diamond Tiara," the filly said. "My daddy owns this place. He's the richest pony in town. Where is he?"

"He said he had to telegraph Canterlot to verify my credit references," Starscream replied. "Why do you ask? He's a very busy being, after all. I'm sure he doesn't have time for..." He fumbled for a word, finally coming up with, "juveniles."

"Daddy always has time for me!" Diamond Tiara insisted. "I'm his precious little jewel! He told me that just the other day, and that's how I got my cutie mark!" She turned her body to the side and thrust up her rump so Starscream could see the mirror image of her tiara in the fur on her flank.

"Well, you're not my precious little anything," Starscream snapped. "So why don't you go home and wait for your father there, and quit bothering me?"

"You ought not to talk to me like that," Diamond Tiara replied. "When Daddy retires I'm going to run this place. And you'll be dealing with me."

Primus hear my plea, and let us not be stuck here that long. "You? Running a business?" he scoffed. "What possible qualifications do you have for running a business."

"Well," Diamond Tiara said, "I'm very good at getting ponies to do what I want."

"That's laughable!" Starscream said, and laughed to demonstrate. "What kind of weak-witted fool would possibly take orders from a juvenile?"

Soundwave squinted as the rain clouds began to float away, revealing the bright early afternoon sun above them. The brighter light brought an unfortunate trade-off to his new body's defective, nearsighted eyes: brighter light made it easier to make sense of the blurred shapes and colors around him, but it also brought intense pain.

Despite the pain, the change in weather overall made it easier for him to navigate the now-muddy streets of Ponyville. The loud hissing of the rainfall rendered his new echolocation sense useless, and the odd twinges and tingles he registered through his horn didn't help with avoiding fruit carts, rain puddles, and juvenile ponies.

The smell of flowers caught his attention and guided his steps. He'd worked his way slowly through the town in search of a source of electronic hardware, and between his search and the hour lost to the rain he'd skipped lunch. Now the smell of fresh greenery and sweet pollen made his new, strange organic body react, associating these smells with food and reminding Soundwave of the need to maintain energy levels.

The source of the smell became apparent before long: a blurry storefront surrounded with even more bright colors than average, with three especially bright-colored ponies moving around the other blurs. Soundwave made his way carefully over, listening closely as the three ponies, all apparently female, chattered to one another.

"Roseluck, this tray's a little waterlogged. Should we swap out for a fresh one from the greenhouse?"

"That's the last of our zinthias, Daisy. If we pull them back we won't have any where shoppers can find them."

"Maybe we could bring out the bougainvillea starters."

"I don't think so, Lily. Those are always a hard sell. Nobody in town has enough yard for a proper bougainvillea display. And they don't like being potted."

"Well, we certainly won't sell them if they spend- ooooh, my..."

Soundwave had quietly and carefully walked up as close as he dared to the pots and planters. He could tell there was barely a ponywidth between the rows of displays, but he couldn't quite tell where those gaps were... and, based on his blurred observations, his new body was an unusually large pony, second only to Megatron in his limited experience. And compared to the normal-sized female ponies before him... well, he didn't exactly tower over them, but the size difference could still intimidate- and obviously did.

"C-c-can I help you?" the pony addressed as Daisy asked. Soundwave saw her as a pink blur topped by a light green blur.

"Assistance requested," he replied in his strangely resonant monotone. "Information sought: location of electronic equipment. Where-"

"Its voice!!" Daisy shrieked, flinching away from him. "That's not natural! It's a robot! A robot of some kind!"

"A robot in disguise!" Roseluck agreed- a pale blur topped with mutiple shades of red. "Look at its eyes! That's not natural!"

"The horror! The HORROR!" Lily screamed. The pink and yellow blur jumped and bounded towards the shop, colliding with the two other blurs, who fell into a heap among the multicolored blurs of the floral displays.

Soundwave didn't flinch. This wasn't the first reaction of this kind he'd encountered that day, but it was certainly the most dramatic. Obviously he wasn't going to find help here.

As he began to step away, he felt something brush against a forehoof. Using the magic he'd been practicing in the privacy of the guardhouse, he lifted up the thing close enough for his eyes to focus- which meant practically on top of his muzzle. It was a ceramic pot full of dirt, a small one, holding a single flowering plant. The stalk of its lone flower was broken, causing the flower to droop.

Soundwave focused more closely on the flower itself. He couldn't see clearly beyond a few centimeters in front of him, but up close his new eyes saw spectacularly well. He traced the veins, noticed the microscopic stomata under the sepals. He noted the swirling, mathematically beautiful but organically imprecise rows of petals, detected the tiny flaws of color which a normal pony eye would have registered as a solid, unbroken shade. It smelled acceptably, though the scent did not seem to Soundwave to match what his body regarded as edible.

All in all, it was no different from the thousands upon thousands of plants, flowering or otherwise, he'd trod underfoot without a thought on Earth. To him it wasn't beautiful- Soundwave had no use for beauty, at least of the visual kind. But it felt good to have a datapoint that added to the parallels between this newfound pony society and that of the fleshling humans of Earth.

And more to the immediate point, the broken flower provided an opportunity for a second chance with these ponies. Megatron, after all, had ordered the Decepticons to stay out of trouble for now. If word got out that Soundwave had panicked three ponies unnecessarily, trouble would certainly follow. But if he could end the encounter on a positive note, trouble would be averted... or, at least, reduced in amplitude.

He levitated the potted plant away from his face, in the vague direction of the blurry ponies. "I have damaged this," he said. "Restitution necessary: how much?"

"T-t-take it," Lilly quavered. "J-just don't hurt us."

Soundwave was almost tempted. As a Decepticon taking whatever he wanted had been standard procedure and habit. But his personal desires had always been for data and experience, not for physical things. The plant was only useful as a means of defusing the situation. "Negative," he droned. "Stealing is wrong; vandalism like-"

"Hey, girls!!" A new blur, this one pink with more pink and a bit extra pink besides, appeared suddenly between Soundwave and the three florists. Soundwave almost dropped the flower pot from his magic; he had not detected any hint of this pony before she appeared. Nor had there been the sensation of teleportation like he felt when Skywarp teleported, or during the confrontation between Nightmare Moon and the student pony... Twilight Sparkle, that was the name.

"Sorry to drop this on you at the last minute, but I'm pitching a surprise party for Twilight in about twenty minutes! Can you three make it over to the library tree by then?"

But now that the new pink blur was here, Soundwave did pick up some magical traces from his horn... and even though all such sensations were most peculiar to him, these felt like a higher quantum state of peculiar. And he'd felt them once before... during the fall of Nightmare Moon. This was one of Twilight Sparkle's followers. Now what was the name...?

"Pinkie! Run away! It's a robot pony!"

"A pony robot!"

"A robot disguised as a pony!"

"A pony disguised as a robot? Where?" The new blur- Pinkie, apparently- went into a complicated movement that Soundwave's weak eyes couldn't even begin to make out. "I don't see any! Just this pony who I've never met before standing right-"

There followed a loud intake of air that Soundwave would have sworn on the Allspark surpassed the lung capacity of any terrestrial organic life form of that size.

And then Pinkie resumed talking at what Soundwave estimated at 1.7 times her prior rate of data transfer. "You're one of the new ponies Princess Celestia had moved into the old guardhouse! Which is really a good thing because somepony needed to fix the place up, I mean nopony's lived there since I came to Ponyville and that was YEARS ago, but I still need to throw you all a Welcome to Ponyville Party! Or should that be a Welcome Ponies Disguised as Robots Disguised as Ponies to Ponyville Please Don't Invade Us Party?"

There came a brief pause, which Soundwave spent pondering if he should even attempt to answer that question. He couldn't decide if this Pinkie was either somewhat dim or extraordinarily perceptive.

Then the moment passed, and Pinkie resumed. "Now I don't want you and your friends to think I've forgotten you, but I'm just an eensy bit busy right now, working on something I want to do purely because Twilight Sparkle is my friend and for no ulterior motives whatever!"

Soundwave noted that, changed body or not, his ability to recognize when someone else was lying hadn't been in the least impaired.

"But I am in kind of a hurry, so I'll get back to you about the party, okay? And there'll be cake and games and everything! But I need to borrow the girls here for a while, if that's okay?"

Words failed Soundwave. This, he felt, was probably just as well, considering the effect his unique voice seemed to have on others. He silently waved the broken flower in the air with his magic.

"Oh! You want to buy that? Well, why didn't you say so?"

"We said he could have it! But he won't leave! He said something about not being a thief, but-"

"Oh! Well, that's honest of him! I wonder if he's met Applejack? Honest ponies should get along really well! There's nothing the world needs more than honest ponies, except maybe chocolate and vanilla and strawberries and..."

Soundwave, perpetrator of millions of lies great and small in his service to Megatron and for his own advantage over his long mechanical life, found himself agreeing with Pinkie. More honest people made his job easier. The human saying that you couldn't cheat an honest man had, in his opinion, no basis in fact. And yet he did feel a little bit guilty contemplating such a completely defenseless target...

"Oh, right! I'm short on time! If he wants to pay you, why not let him?"

"All- all right. It's two bits."

"Nuh-uh! It clearly says seven bits on the underside of the pot! See?"

Soundwave drew the pot closer. He hadn't thought to look there. Verifying the price, he levitated up the pouch of bits Starscream had doled out and counted seven of the twenty gold coins out, dropping them in front of the tangled blur of fallen ponies. Bringing out each word slowly and with the greatest of care, he said, "Thank you; I am sorry I damaged your wares; unable to see where I was going."

"Huh?" Suddenly Pinkie's face came into sharp resolution, mostly because its owner was leaning on Soundwave's muzzle. Her blue eyes bored into Soundwave's milky whites. "Hmmm... something wrong with your eyes?" As suddenly as she'd lunged at him, she pulled away, becoming a vague pink blob again. "Quick! How many fingers am I holding up?" One bit of the blob stretched up above the rest.

"Pinkie..." Roseluck didn't sound terrified anymore. If anything, Soundwave thought she sounded like this was something that happened every day. "Pinkie, you haven't got fingers."

"Oh, yeah!" Pinkie said. "Guess we better get you to an expert!" Soundwave felt something scoot underneath him and lift him off his legs. "See you in fifteen minutes at the Golden Oak, girls!" Then Pinkie dashed off, and Soundwave on top of her, barely clinging on to the newly purchased plant with his magic.

The streets of Ponyville blurred past the two of them, an indistinguishable riot of color and movement in Soundwave's vision. He had just enough time to learn that his new body was capable of something he'd never experienced before in nine million years- motion sickness- when a jingling bell and a sharp decrease in the ambient light heralded the end of their trip. Soundwave's hooves hit the floor, and Pinkie-blur reached over a counter and rang a bell.

"Just a moment." A door opened, and another pony, a unicorn levitating something that smelled like a clipboard to Soundwave, came into the antechamber. "Oh, hello, Pinkie. Are those eyedrops working out for you?"

"Super-swell, Doc Clearly!" Pinkie said. "But I've got an optical emergency for ya! This pony needs some really strong glasses, like, stat! Oh, and don't worry about him! He seems a little scary, but he's really a total cuddle-bear, you know?"

Never, absolutely never, not in an infinite number of situations, had Soundwave ever heard himself referred to as in any way cuddly. Creepy, yes. Threatening, absolutely. Terrifying, on numerous occasions. Cuddle-bear? Well... cuddle-bear could be useful, if he had any idea how to maintain it in the absence of the blurry pink chatterbox.

"Yes, I can see he would be," the unicorn said doubtfully. "So, is this a special favor, Pinkie? Or am I getting paid for this one?"

"Oh, he's one of the new guard ponies," Pinkie said matter-of-factly. "Send your bill there. I'm sure Celestia will cover it! After all, health coverage is part of the guard package!"

Soundwave hadn't known that, and he filed that datum for the all-too-foreseeable moment when he'd need to silence Starscream's whining on the subject.

"Anyway, running late, gotta go. Thanks! Bye!" A ringing of bell, a clattering of wooden door, and Pinkie was gone.

"That girl," the unicorn doctor said, chuckling softly. "Anyway, nice to meet you. I'm Iris Cornea Clearly. My friends call me I. C." The doctor leaned a bit closer to Soundwave's face, and her face came into focus enough to make out a pair of maroon eyes. "Tell me, have you at least got some sight? Can you focus at all?"

"Affirmative," Soundwave said. "At close proximity: vision excellent. Other ranges: focus impossible."

"Well, that's good news," Dr. Clearly said. "And tell me, do bright lights cause pain?"

"Affirmative."

"I'll just bet," the doctor said. "Well, let's get you examined, and we'll see what we can do about that."

Frenzy contemplated the plain, slightly rusty iron bars of the holding cell and the old, not particularly well-made stonework of the guardhouse. In the old days, before getting stuck in a weird organic body, he could have brought the whole mess down in about three seconds. Only two things stopped him from doing it again: first, he didn't know how to do it in his current pony body; second, he still remembered what had happened to him the last two times he'd partially destroyed Decepticon headquarters. Megatron and Shockwave had different methods of discouraging a bot from future transgressions, but both kinds of punishment stuck in the memory banks like a heat-warped PROM chip.

Of the two, Frenzy preferred getting punished by Megatron. You spent longer in the repair bay, but by the time you got out the boss bot had had time to cool off and remember why you were still useful to him. Shockwave, on the other hand, had punishment down to an equation, and he treated each lapse in judgment (yeah, let's call it that) as a permanent datapoint, never to be forgotten or forgiven. Bots who went too far down that road got their sparks stuck in detention and their bodies recycled for scrap.

Of course, standing around in a jail cell only five times your body length square was almost as bad as spark suspension, but you at least knew you were getting out at some point. But then again, hibernating inside a crypt that gave you just barely enough energy to sustain your spark was better than being wide awake, bored out of your calcium-compound organic skull, keeping your lips latched down the whole time.

Maybe I got Megatron madder than he looked, Frenzy thought. Usually you know when he's mad because he starts breaking things, beginning with the bot who got him mad. But this time he didn't break anything, so I thought he was just annoyed. But going another nine days in this box, silent, is gonna break ME!

The door leading into the tiny gaol opened, and two small ponies about Frenzy's size floated in, wrapped in an aura of yellow light. The first one, to Frenzy's surprise, was Rumble, his brother, saddlebags askew on his back, forelegs crossed and looking even sulkier than usual. The second one was all gray with wings- one of those pegasuses like the Seekers had become- with purple eyes the exact same shade as Rumble's fur.

Behind them came Megatron, horn aglow, red eyes glaring. The lock on Frenzy's cell door glowed yellow. A loud click later, the door swung open, and the two other foals floated in, only to be dropped with no ceremony onto the flagstone floor.

"By the laws of the kingdom of Equestria," Megatron growled, "you, young one, will remain here until I speak with your parents or other guardian. And you," he snarled a little louder, and Frenzy could almost feel lasers coming from the big boss's eyes as he glared at Rumble, "I will speak with you, and Soundwave, once my patrols are completed. Until then you can spend your time with Frenzy thinking about what you've done!" In a much lower growl he finished, "Do I make myself clear, Rumble?"

"Yes, sir!" Rumble and the gray pegasus said in the same breath.

The purple earth pony glared at the gray pegasus and said, "Hey, what's with you? He was talkin' to me!"

"No he wasn't!" the gray pony snapped. "He said my name, so he obviously-"

"DON'T START THAT AGAIN!" Megatron roared, silencing the two of them.

Frenzy waved a hoof wildly at Megatron, pointing the other forehoof at his mouth and making closed-lipped grunting sounds.

"What is it now, Fr- oh." Megatron sighed, pulled himself together, and said, "Very well. You may speak-"

"WHEW, thanks, Mega-"

"-but NOT TO ME!"

The gaol door slammed behind the burly unicorn, leaving the three foals in their cage.

Frenzy got to his hooves and walked around his visitors. "Well, welcome home, Rumble," he said. "How'd you grind Megatron's gears this time?"

"Well, I-" "Your friend here-"

Both of the other ponies tried to speak at the same time.

"Hey, cut that out!" "Quit doing that!"

The responses, if anything, came even closer to being simultaneous than the first words.

"I'm not doing it, you're doing it!" "Me cut it out? YOU cut it out!"

"Why don't you make me?" "I'm not doing it, YOU are!"

As entertaining as this was to Frenzy, his curiosity chip, or whatever ponies had in its place, had a question he wanted answered before the kicking and biting began. "Hey, hey, WAAAAIT a minute!" He didn't quite push his way between the two- he wasn't that stupid, whatever Skywarp said- but he did get them to step back from each other.

Once he had their attention, he continued, "Let me just get this straight, okay?" He pointed a hoof at his brother. "Your name is Rumble."

"Well, yeah, of course my name is-"

"Yeah, yeah, shh," Frenzy hissed. He turned to point the same hoof at the gray pegasus. "And your name is Rumble."

"That's right," the pegasus said.

"Rumble..." Frenzy's hoof swung back towards his brother. "... and Rumble."

Purple earth pony and gray pegasus gave each other a look. "That's right," the pegasus said.

"And yer point is, brother?" the earth pony asked.

Frenzy and Skywarp despised each other, but they shared one trait: a truly vile, sadistic sense of humor. That same sense of humor told Frenzy that, after a day and a half of total boredom, the funniest thing in a million years had been brought to him for his private entertainment. He chuckled. He chuckled some more. The belly laughs followed, and then the high-pitched cutting giggles that sent him rolling on the floor and forced the other two foals to put their hooves over their ears.

After half a minute of this Rumble- his Rumble- shouted over the shrieks of laughter, "ALL RIGHT, CUT IT OUT! THIS IS SERIOUS!"

"THAT'S RIGHT!" Pegasus Rumble shouted. "THERE CAN'T BE TWO RUMBLES!" He jabbed a hoof at Decepticon Rumble and shouted, "HE'S GOTTA CHANGE HIS NAME!"

"WHAT??"

"I SAID YOU HAFETA CHANGE-"

"I HEARD YOU! AND WHY SHOULD I CHANGE? I BEEN RUMBLE A LOT LONGER THAN YOU HAVE!"

"NOT IN PONYVILLE YOU HAVEN'T!"

Frenzy managed to get control of himself at that point, sitting back up. "He's got a point, bro," he managed between chuckles. "Guess you might have to change your name. I got some suggestions."

"Now don't you start, Frenzy," Decepticon Rumble grumbled.

"Is your brother always like this?" Pegasus Rumble asked. "I feel like he loosened my teeth with that voice."

"Yeah, pretty much," Decepticon Rumble said. "But ya don't get ta pick yer brothers."

"My brother's much cooler." P-Rumble's face fell. "And he's gonna be so mad at me for getting into a stupid fight. And at Sugarcube Corner! The Cakes might not let me back in after this! And I didn't even get my cupcake!"

"Yeah, about that." D-Rumble reached back into his saddlebags and brought out a box. "I snagged these just as Megatron was haulin' us out the doors."

P-Rumble's eyes went wide. "You stole from Sugarcube Corner??"

"Hey, I woulda paid fair and square if I was given a chance!" D-Rumble said. "Only some pony kept tryin' ta grab my order insteada his own!"

"They were calling my name!!"

"Did you order half a dozen? No, you didn't! That was me!"

"But it was my name!!"

"Yeah, let it drop, all right?" D-Rumble waved a hoof at Frenzy. "Or else we'll get him started again."

Frenzy had both hooves over his muzzle to hold it in, so he had to admit his brother had a point. Besides, he liked the smell coming out of that box. Once he was sure he had himself fully under control, he said, "So, you gonna share some of that with your best bud? 'Cause I'm getting pretty tired'a oats an' water."

"Well, yeah," D-Rumble said. "You know I got your back. That's why I got six insteada one. I was just tryin' ta figure out how to sneak 'em past Soundwave."

"Is that why you jumped me in Sugarcube Corner?" P-Rumble asked. "To smuggle in some cupcakes?"

D-Rumble's eyes widened. "Hey, yeah," he said, "that woulda been a swell idea."

"Guys," Frenzy asked- almost begged. "Food, please?"

"All right, all right." D-Rumble flipped open the box, revealing six cupcakes of different flavors, icing somehow undamaged from having ridden roughly stuffed down a saddlebag.

"Can I have one, please?" P-Rumble asked. "I never got mine, after all. And you did throw the first punch."

"Tell ya what," D-Rumble said, hoofing the strawberry-iced cupcake to Frenzy. "You can have one if you promise to call me Rumble."

"Sure, I promise. No problem."

"All right, then." The chocolate one went to P-Rumble, while D-Rumble picked out a green one with a wedge of apple perched in the top of the icing.

"Not that it matters," P-Rumble continued, taking a nibble out of his cupcake. "I'm not the one who decides which of us is gonna be Rumble. Every pony in town is gonna call me Rumble and you Other Rumble. Because I was here first. And there's nothing I can do about that."

"What??" Rumble's jaw dropped as his anger, shock, and disappointment fought a battle for control of the tactical high ground of his face. Disappointment won, and he stared at his cupcake. "Aw, why do I gotta be the Other Rumble?"
Frenzy started laughing again, so hard he barely kept himself from dropping his cupcake.

"All right, the refrigerator goes over here."

"Are you quite sure? Wouldn't it be better-"

"No, trust me. Right here. And we want the stove over here."

"But wouldn't it be more efficient to have it next to the sink?"

"No, because we need that space for the dishwasher, so we can hook it into the existing plumbing."

"Oh, yes. So obvious when you think about it," Starscream said.

"And we'll need to put the new stove next to the old one so we can reuse the exhaust vent." Diamond Tiara looked over at the cart ponies who were carrying the new appliances into the guardhouse kitchen, plus the three boxes of new pots, pans, plates, glasses, and the set of left-taloned griffon fondue forks that had been gathering dust on the Barnyard Bargains shelf since before she was born. "Isn't that right, Harness?"

"Right you are, miss," the lead cart pony said. "We should have it all done in about an hour. No charge, of course."

"Excellent," Starscream said, smiling a wicked smile. "I'm learning so much thanks to you! You're so intelligent for a juvenile!"

Diamond Tiara's back was turned to the multicolored pegasus, so he didn't see a smile even more wicked than his own on her face. "And you're so gullible for an adult," she muttered to herself.

Megatron looked through the window of the clock shop, noting the perfect coordination of each and every timepiece on display. Fifteen minutes, he thought. Fifteen minutes and my eight hours of official patrol duty, plus one hour for meals, is over for the day.

After his third day of patrolling the streets of Ponyville, Megatron had developed a wholehearted contempt for its citizens. These ponies, he thought, are weak. They have no concept of true danger. Fat, flabby organic creatures who live in idleness and blind ignorance of the true nature of the universe.

So why haven't they been conquered yet?

It seemed to Megatron that a handful of Decepticons- proper Cybertronian Decepticons, not the warped illusions he and his warriors had become- could take over the entire kingdom in one day. There were no fighters. There weren't even any old, retired soldiers. None of the ponies even thought about the need to fight. They were so safe and secure, they apparently assumed that this condition was the natural way of things.

And you couldn't say there was an army or government protecting them, now could you? The guardhouse Celestia had given the Decepticons had been unused for over ten years- in terms of the ephemeral pony lifespan, half a generation. The only sign of government in the town was a single mayor with no staff for a large village or small town of about a thousand ponies plus another two thousand or so in the farmlands nearby.

But something had to be protecting the ponies- something very powerful. For as sure as atomic decay, any population this innocent and defenseless would either attract a tyrant or brew one up from its depths.

He knew this better than anyone. He himself was a tyrant and unashamed of the fact, and here he was, trying to figure out if there really was nothing to stop him from declaring himself king or whatever.

But he'd seen tyranny from below, too- seen it, overthrown it, and replaced it with his more enlightened rule. And as infuriating as it was to him, he could see none of its signs here. There were no greater or lesser ponies, no corrupt senators or barons, no gladiators or slaves... just ponies, doing as they pleased, going where they pleased, enjoying a life entirely without fear so far as Megatron could tell.

And this makes no sense! he thought. There is always a tyrant! Always rulers and the ruled! Only blind optimists like, well, like Optimus Prime believe otherwise!

So... what am I missing?

"There she goes!"

"Wait for me, Twilight!"

"The Galloping Gala!!"

Megatron's hooves had taken him, almost on autopilot, to one of the stone bridges that crossed the small river that ran through Ponyville's eastern side. He heard a brief "Excuse us!" as a purple blur brushed past him...

... and only then did he notice the oncoming tide of roughly one-quarter the female population of the town at full charge towards him.

A single blast of his cannon-magic would stop the charge, and probably kill the front row of the mob in the process- no loss to Megatron's mind. Unfortunately, he'd spent every night reading the book of regulations for town guards of Equestria, throwing it against the wall an average of five times per hour when he ran into something unbearably foolish. And in no fewer than five different places the point had been driven home: guards were not permitted, under any circumstances whatever, to use lethal force against any creature, until and unless directly given permission by a princess of Equestria.

And even the nonlethal use of physical force required a ritual before a guard was permitted to proceed, despite the obvious criminal activity involved (riotous behavior, public endangerment, possibly harassment or wrongful imprisonment, he thought) and the immediate danger to life and property.

But he'd memorized the words anyway, because once he said them he was allowed to use reasonable force to subdue the wrongdoers and bring them to justice... and Megatron's definition of reasonable had incredible elasticity, depending on just how annoyed he was at the moment.

He stood in the middle of the bridge, raised his right forehoof, and shouted, "HALT! Halt in the name of Princess Celestia or, by her authority, I shall-"

Looking back much later on what happened next, Megatron began to understand why invaders might not have an easy time conquering the ponies. After all, he was at least twice the mass of any of the mares running in his direction, armored, and if he did say so himself, quite terrifying when angry. And, furthermore, he was standing on a bridge where not more than three ponies could cross at the same time even if he hadn't been there, which kept him reasonably safe from flank attack.

But almost as if choreographed, without breaking stride, a mob of ponies thirty wide condensed into a tightly packed flying column exactly three ponies wide, and two of the three lead mares charged through him without so much as lowering head or leading with a shoulder. The impact didn't merely drive him back or knock him down; it lifted him high into the air as if a shapedl charge had exploded at his hooves. He had (he guessed, long after the fact) between four and five seconds of hang time in the air before splashing down in the shallow river.

After the fact, he was impressed. In the moment, as he dragged himself to shore, shook a lily pad off one ear, and spat up some river water, he was ready to murder.

"I'm sorry, sir! Are you all right?"

Megatron spun round to find the source of the voice and, probably, end it forever. When he found it, huddled underneath one end of the bridge, he held his breath. It was Celestia's student, the librarian, her frightened and worried face poking out from under a hood. A little reptilian thing clung to her back.

Two facts put the dampers on Megatron's rage: first, that this particular pony was not one to be molested until and unless he had a plan to overthrow her teacher; and second, that as angry as he was with females in general at the moment, this particular female was likely the only one in town not responsible for dunking him in the river. Even so, the remaining anger limited his ability to speak to a single, barked "Yes!"

"I really didn't know they were going to do that!" the student- Twilight Sparkle, that was the name, yes- said as she cautiously crept out of the shadow of the bridge. "If there's anything I can-"

"She went that way!"

"Quick, after the ticket!"

The violet unicorn's eyes went wide. On her back, the reptile said in a juvenile male voice, "Whoops! Gotta go!"

As Twilight and her familiar galloped back over the bridge, Megatron drew himself up in front of the returning mob, which if anything had grown in size. "HALT!" he shouted, using his magic to erect a yellow wall of light in front of the crowd. "I COMMAND YOU TO-"

Again the charge didn't so much as slow down. Megatron's improvised force field shattered into shards of energy and vanished at first impact. A moment later Megatron himself was thrown to the ground and trampled underfoot by more mares than he could count.

Even with his guard's armor on, it hurt- seriously enough that the pain, for the moment, quenched the anger and replaced it with a peculiar, calm resignation.

And then, as the sun slid below the horizon and the moon popped up with impossible speed, a squawking voice echoed overhead: "Lord Megatron! There you are! At last I've found you! Laserbeak has found you! I have news, Lord Megatron, important news!"

Megatron had the opportunity to reflect on how nice it had been when his size and Laserbeak's had been proportioned so Laserbeak could perch on his shoulder. He much preferred it to having a pony-sized mass perching on his belly with sharp pointy claws.

"I have learned of a great event in the pony capital!" Laserbeak rattled on, not noticing the discomfort he was giving his master. "It is a thing called the Grand Galloping Gala! All the leaders of this country will be there! It will be a great opportunity to discover their weaknesses and begin plotting our conquest!"

"Will it?" Megatron asked. The griffon standing on him had something coming to him, but not until Megatron had whatever information was in that tiny brain.

"And the best part is, two tickets to the Gala are in this very town right now!" Laserbeak crowed. "Yesss! The student Twilight Sparkle has them! She-"

"I already know that," Megatron growled.

That stopped Laserbeak in mid-babble. "Oh. Forgive me, mighty Megatron. I was late with the news, I see. If only I could have found you sooner."

"Yes," Megatron nodded, regretting the motion as several bruises and the sore spots under his helmet protested. "But you did eventually find me."

Laserbeak smiled at this, and Megatron, under the rapidly rising tide of his renewed rage, wondered how a beak could smile. "Yes! I did my duty, master!"

"Yes," Megatron hissed, and then he bellowed, "And if you wish to survive to continue in those same duties, GET OFF OF ME!"

It wasn't all that far back to the guardhouse, but Megatron could only continue chasing Laserbeak for half the distance before he slowed to a hobbling walk.

Females, he thought (not for the first time), are all insane. And dangerous.

But if I had fifty such females in robot form, I could conquer every planet in the galaxy.

Perhaps these ponies are not so helpless as first I thought…

'"I must admit, Starscream," Buzzsaw said, scooping up another load of yellow stuff from the bowl onto his fondue fork, "these implements are most useful. The perfect thing for eating this... what did you say it was again?"

"Macaroni and cheese," Starscream mumbled, still staring at the long bill of sale that included the Six Easy Installments, No Payment Due For Two Months. "How did she do it? My entire salary for six months! To the last CENT!"

"Mmm," Skywarp grunted, muzzle buried in his own bowl. When he lifted it up, his dark fur was stained with the orange-yellow cheese sause in a ring around his nose. "Gimme more."

"I should like a second helping as well," Buzzsaw said. "I had a hungry day today, but I learned much. Wood carving is apparently a fine art among these ponies, and one for which I am uniquely skilled." His beak bent into a frown as he added, "Though there's no challenge to it when the medium you're carving isn't squirming away from you. Anyway," he continued, scooping the last of the macaroni from his bowl, "I spent my bits on a beginner's set of carving tools. I should be able to scavenge some wood from that forest outside of town, and then I'm sure I can create superior work to anything these plebians can produce."

"As for myself," Megatron grumbled, "I learned that, despite their weak and pathetic appearance, these ponies have surprising destructive potential." The spoon in his magic lifted a scoop of macaroni from his bowl. "And what did you all learn today?"

Ravage yawned loudly from his new cushion. None of the Decepticons knew where it had come from, and none of them cared much.

"I learned that an imbalance of cultural knowledge is a very dangerous thing," Starscream said, adding with a mumble, "To the very last cent."

"information acquired: repair and maintenance costs covered by the crown," Soundwave said. His magic adjusted the brand-new red plastic visor that crossed his face, completely concealing his eyes. The new glasses almost perfectly matched the appearance of his robot form's optics.

"We learned," Rumble said, looking at his and Frenzy's bread and water dinner, "that little guys got it rough all over. Even fleshling little guys."

"Skywarp and I learned about how to get a job," Thundercracker said.

"And Laserbeak learned to always know where Lord Megatron is in the future." The feathers around one of his eyes were significantly darker than on the other side of his face.

"A worthy lesson indeed," Megatron agreed. "I trust I can count on you all to keep learning things about this world. The more we learn, and the sooner we learn it..." His cruel smile was slightly marred by the cheese sauce on his lips. "... the sooner we can conquer it."

1/4: Ravage's Rabbit Rampage (Applebuck Season)

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Ravage ignored the worried stares he got from the civilians of Ponyville. He kept his stride slow and easy, keeping perfect pace with his lord and master, who currently had the guard handbook levitated in front of his muzzle as he patrolled the town.

Megatron had blown off the award ceremony for the farmer, Applejack, a few days before. “A pathetic farce,” he’d said. “Let the farmer have her moment,” he’d said. But he’d been touchy enough that Starscream had gone into full-time simper mode, not baiting him even once. No Decepticon wanted to attract Megatron’s attention when he was… touchy.

None except Ravage, that is. He knew Megatron trusted him totally- and, more important, respected him. Yes, he treated him like a pet on occasion… but so long as his intelligence and cunning was recognized, Ravage liked to be petted. (And not that he’d admit it, but getting his head rubbed actually felt much better in this organic cat body than in his robotic one.) And so, for the first time, he’d chosen to patrol with his master, allowing the pathetic creatures of the town to see him directly… just so Megatron would have company.

For his part Megatron hadn’t paid any attention since his gruff acquiescence to the company. His eyes stayed glued to the book, except for a few moments when one pony or another said good morning to him. (Ravage enjoyed these: without exception, the ponies were scared out of their minds of him, barely holding back their panic as Megatron told them Ravage was perfectly under control- true- and that he wouldn’t hurt anyone unless Megatron told him to- which was much less accurate.)

But as the second patrol began these moments ended, and the black panther had reconciled himself to a day of silent walking when Megatron suddenly broke the silence. “I know what you’re thinking, Ravage,” he said. “You’re thinking I’m jealous of that Applejack female.” The silver unicorn’s face twisted into a grimace. “That my ego is so fragile that I cannot stand to see an inferior given honors which rightly belong to me.”

Not for the first time, Ravage wished for the fine voice he’d lost five or six reformats ago, before the war had put proper vocorders at a premium. He stopped, waved a paw in a what-would-you gesture, and made a feline yowl that attempted to suggest that Ravage merely thought Megatron was upset, for whatever reason, and would he like to talk about it?

Fortunately for Ravage, his master had millions of years of interpreting such gestures. “Yes, I’m angry,” he muttered, coming to a stop. “But not because Applejack got an award.” The book waved up and down in the yellow aura that Megatron’s unicorn magic created. “I’m angry because I’m trying to figure out whether or not to arrest Applejack.”

Ravage’s twist of head and confused yowl didn’t need any judge of subtle cues to interpret.

“I’m not concerned about how she stopped the cattle. It was an impressive piece of work.” The book waved again. “But them the day before yesterday she sent that blue winged pony out of control across the town. And then there was that incident at the bakery that filled the repair bay- I mean the hospital,” he growled, “with food-poisoning cases. And everyone admits Applejack was responsible in both incidents.”

Ravage growled in an interrogatory way.

“Because neither of the options appeal to me,” Megatron said. “If I arrest her, I could use it to demonstrate a tough-but-fair image. Useful in its proper time and place. But I annoy her friends, and especially her, making it harder to swing her to my side if and when I have a use for her.” Megatron raised a hoof and twisted it slightly, then growled again as he realized it’s difficult to turn a palm upside down when you don’t have palms. “But if I turn a blind eye, I get no credit for doing so, and I risk a reputation for laziness and incompetence. And I refuse to play the fool!”

Ravage considered this, then reached a claw out and, in a few swift strokes, sketched out the outline of a falling star in the hard-packed dirt of the Ponyville streets. He gestured at the mark, then gestured away, yowling with each gesture.

“Send Starscream to do it?” Megatron asked.

Ravage nodded.

“No, I think not,” Megatron said. “Give that idiot half a chance, and he’ll poison this whole town against me if he thinks it will get me out of his way.” Shaking his head somberly, he added, “I’ll say this for him: he could persuade a sharkticon to try vegetarianism. If the sharkticon was in a cage. And if-“

“STAMPEDE!”

Ravage had long known that Megatron’s reaction time put almost all other Decepticons to shame, but he hadn’t expected his master to burst into an instant gallop fast enough to make Ravage work to keep him in sight. The last time this had happened Megatron had been on the opposite side of town and had arrived just in time to see Applejack turn the herd of cows away from town, or so he had said afterwards. This time, apparently, he intended to arrive in time to act.

In moments the two of them were at the bridge- and this time there were no other ponies there before them. And on the other side of the first rise past the bridge Ravage saw a tall cloud of dust rapidly approaching Ponyville.

“Well,” Megatron drawled, a broad smile crossing his face for the first time in days, “I think I’m finally going to get a chance to-“

The source of the dust cloud crested the rise.

Megatron’s smile vanished. “Where are the cattle?” he asked. “What kind of stampede is…” Ravage watched as his master’s jaw dropped in disbelief. His lips moved for a moment before he managed to say, “Are… those… rabbits??”

Ravage growled a short affirmative. Hundreds of rabbits, running for their lives, followed the southeast farm road straight towards the bridge across the river and into town.

“I don’t believe this world,” Megatron whispered in disgust. Raising his volume, he continued, “Stand down, Ravage. We are not to interfere unless asked.”

That Ravage simply couldn’t believe, and he made this clear with his next meow.

“This idiotic book of regulations,” Megatron said, giving said book another shake with his magic, “prohibits the guard from using force in any way against non-speaking animals except, and I quote, ‘when they pose a direct and immediate hazard to pony life.’” For a moment the book darted back over Megatron’s shoulders, as if he were about to hurl it into the river, but with a visible effort the Decepticon-turned-unicorn restrained himself. “It’s too soon to risk our sinecure for personal satisfaction. No matter how… satisfying… it would be.”

Ravage watched the rabbits run across the bridge in a thick stream of fur and fear, parting just wide enough to go past himself and his master before continuing on into the heart of town. He agreed that it would have been very satisfying. His earliest function, back in the days before the great rebellion, had been pest control, before Megatron found better uses for his talents. And here were hundreds of furry organic pests, in the most dire need of extermination…

… but if Ravage was mute, he wasn’t dumb. And millions of years of war had taught him discipline. He sat, perfectly still, and watched as the last bunny ran past…

“Oh! Oh dear! Oh my!”

… followed, at a distance, by a yellow pegasus, wings firmly clutched to her sides, galloping up the road at a speed both frantic and, to Ravage’s eyes, pathetic. If he’d been chasing her, he could have detached a limb and still caught her within a minute.

“Excuse me! Er, Mr. Megatron, sir?”

Megatron’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Miss…”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the pony said, looking for a moment like she wanted to hide behind that enormous pink mane of hers. “My name’s Fluttershy… I, um, I heard you were the new, um, town sheriff… and, if you wouldn’t mind, I need help gathering up all those poor scared bunnies before they cause trouble…”

A high-pitched shriek erupted from somewhere behind them.

“… oh, dear,” Fluttershy murmured, and now she did indeed hide behind the heavy curl of her mane.

“Well,” Megatron said, drawing out the syllable in a show of consideration. “I suppose this situation does constitute a public crisis…” He frowned a little and looked at the silent, empty streets utterly devoid of chaos or destruction. “… of sorts,” he concluded. “Under the circumstances, it is our duty to be of all the assistance possible.”

Ravage raised his eyebrows silently.

“Yes, I said we,” Megatron told him, dropping the friendly tone. “Help her gather them up and get them out of my town.”

Ravage felt his tail twitch. Slag it, it had a mind of it own. Stupid organic-

“And also,” Megatron added, leaning his head down and dropping his voice to a whisper, “no killing and no injuries. Bring them back alive and unharmed. Understood?”

Nothing less than his most positive roar was acceptable, but Ravage did allow himself a brief sigh of resignation first. Then, without paying any attention to Fluttershy’s faint, “But that’s how this…” before bounding off into town after the wild rabbits.

It didn’t take long to track down a trio of the little vermin decimating a hedge in front of someone’s house. Ravage got their attention with a warning growl, leaping over them to cut off retreat. A little nudge, he thought, and the rabbits would bolt back the way they had come, directly to Megatron and that Fluttershy pony.

Before he’d done more than shift a single paw, the three rabbits bolted in three different directions- none of them towards the bridge.

He chased one, who ran down a path past another bunny. That bunny looked up, saw Ravage coming, and bolted between two houses. Ravage turned to follow, since the new rabbit was closer. Two more rabbits were on the other side of the alley, and again they all took off in different directions. This time Ravage stuck to his pursuit, which ended when the rabbit went under a bush and he leapt over, discovering too late that the bush went on for considerably farther than he’d expected.

Why couldn’t these creatures cooperate? he thought. The pests of deep Cybertron had been predictable, simple creatures limited to a simple algorithm. These rabbits, on the other hand… it… it was worse than herding Autobots!

Ravage pulled himself off the broken branches of the bush, pausing to rub his chest with a forepaw. The scratches irritated him, but the sense of failure sparked a rage deep within. All right! he thought. One at a time, then! Unconscious if necessary, but I will drag them back as Lord Megatron ordered!

This time Ravage took to the rooftops, paws bounding across the thatch. No more chasing; he was an ambush predator, so an ambush it would be. In almost perfect silence he leaped from roof to roof, until, with silence and precision he dropped to the ground and placed one paw firmly on the little cottonpuff tail of an unsuspecting rabbit.

As the rabbit turned its head, dark eyes widening in fear, Ravage brought up the other forepaw. How much force would it take to merely stun his victim? Megatron had said no damage, but a tap to the head-

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

Ravage’s head jerked up, looking at the source of the sound. It was the yellow pegasus, but this time she wasn’t hiding behind her hair. He could see both her eyes for the first time, and they were enraged eyes, eyes that grabbed the beholder and hauled them in. He barely noticed Megatron standing behind her before he felt himself pulled through their blue and into the black.

“DOES THAT LOOK LIKE HELPING TO YOU?”

The voice came from everywhere, holding him, forcing his eyes to continue looking into the pony’s. Something deep inside answered with a sensation Ravage almost couldn’t identify at first: total, abject shame.

I disobeyed an order.

I failed Lord Megatron.

I have not fulfilled my core function.

I have done wrong.

From under millions of years of sadism, psychic battle scars, and the horrors of civil wars without end, something young and primitive sang back: I’m good. I want to help. I have a function. I’ll do better…

“ANSWER ME, MISTER!”

Ravage cringed. He’d never done that for anyone except Megatron, and even then only in the rarest of circumstances. He sent up the most pathetic little mewl he could muster, in the hopes that She would be placated.

“That’s right! It’s not!” She said, in a slightly softer tone. “Now let the poor bunny go and apologize!”

Ravage uttered a slightly longer, but still pathetic, yowl, ending on a question note. He felt his ears drooping almost enough to close them.

“That’s better!”

And then the spell was broken, and Ravage’s head swam as ages of concentrated evil dropped back into place in his mind. What… what… what had just happened to him? And why had he…

“And just to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Fluttershy continued, “I think you should come tomorrow and help me take care of the other animals. So you can show them you CAN act properly around them!” A thought struck her suddenly, and then one of those dreadful eyes hid behind the mane again as she turned to face Megatron. “Um, if that’s all right with you, Mr. Megatron?”

“Ah… why, certainly,” Megatron said, flustered for only the briefest of moments. “I do hope you’ll forgive him. He’s not accustomed to… playing nice.”

“Oh, but he’s such an intelligent-looking cat,” Fluttershy said, walking over to Ravage and reaching up a hoof. “I’m sure he’ll pick it up in no time at all.”

Ravage had just a moment for epiphany: this pony was not in the least afraid of him. He was slightly larger than her, with large claws sticking out from each digit on his paws and fangs that stayed visible even with his mouth shut… and this pathetic fleshling creature, unlike practically everything else in town, had no fear.

And then her hoof touched the top of his head…

Ravage enjoyed Megatron’s occasional head-rubs, but Fluttershy actually knew exactly where and how to rub and scratch. The sound of a loud, poorly-tuned engine filled the street, and only when the skritchies ended did Ravage realize it was himself purring.

“I’ll expect him along at nine in the morning, Mr. Megatron,” Fluttershy said. “Ask the postmare for directions if you need them, all right?”

“Certainly,” Megatron said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help.”

“That’s all right, Mr- oh, stop doing that! No, wait!” Fluttershy trotted off towards a pair of bunnies who had almost totally destroyed the contents of a flower pot. The bunny she’d rescued from Ravage bounced off after her, occasionally glancing over its shoulder at the panther and its unicorn master.

Ravage looked at Megatron, who looked back with undisguised curiosity. “Well,” his master said at length, “I don’t see bloody bits of pony carcass lining the street. And I’m wondering why?”

He could have tried arguing orders, or pretending he wasn’t interested, or any number of things that could possibly be communicated in a yowl and a tilt of the head. But Ravage didn’t see the point. He didn’t know, and he wanted to know, and with a soft grunt and toss of the shoulders he made that clear.

“You don’t know?” Megatron rubbed his chin with a hoof. “That’s… most interesting,” he said at length. “Most interesting indeed…”

Ravage mewled an interrogative.

“Oh, of course you’re going,” Megatron said. “Consider it punishment for your failure. Tomorrow you’ll do whatever that adorable, pathetic, useless little pony asks…” He smiled broadly, that unpleasant smile Ravage had taken great care to never have directed at him. “No matter how humiliating. Understood?”

Ravage nodded glumly, not bothering to meow.

“And while you’re at it,” Megatron added in a near-whisper, “you’ll find out how a defenseless pony can turn one of my most ruthless killers into a puddle of lubricant. If that talent can be directed at others… it would be even more of an asset than that Applejack-“

“I’m sorry? What about Applejack?”

Megatron’s head pivoted, noticing Twilight Sparkle walking over. “Ahhhh…” Ravage watched as the most clever deceiver Cybertron had ever spawned spent but a couple of seconds finding the perfect words to allay suspicion- not the truth, but not a lie either, as it turns out. “As it happens, Miss Sparkle, I was contemplating a most unpleasant duty, regarding your friend.”

Twilight’s ears drooped. “I just bet,” she muttered. “What is it, exactly?”

“Well,” Megatron said, “first there was the incident that hurled the chief weatherpony across town. Then there were all those cases of food poisoning, for which she was ultimately responsible, yes?” Sudden inspiration lit up the unicorn’s face under his helmet. “Oh, and I seem to recall that she was going to assist in a bunny census today? Which, I presume, had something to do-“

“Yes, yes, I get the picture,” Twilight said, slumping. “I’m going to talk to her now. I’ll take care of it.”

“I am duty-bound to see her brought before the town magistrate,” Megatron pointed out. “But it would be… unfortunate… to have the town hero embarrassed-“

“Applejack will go see Mayor Mare and make it right,” Twilight said positively. “I’ll see to it myself.”

“Would you?” Megatron asked. “That would be a load off my CPU- I mean, off my mind.”

“It might be a few days,” Twilight said. “But it’ll get taken care of soon. I promise.”

“Thank you very much,” Megatron said, bowing his head in respect. “Then I’ll be about my rounds.” With one more nod he turned and walked off, Ravage tagging along behind him.

Once the purple unicorn was out of hearing range, Ravage risked a questioning murr.

“I believe we can trust the personal student of the ruler of the nation to keep her word,” Megatron said. “All I have to do is report the conversation to the mayor, say it’s taken care of, and I get the best of both worlds.” He smiled to himself. “A conscientious upholder of the law, but a friendly guardian who uses his better judgment when dealing with minor little affairs. Both the mayor and Twilight Sparkle will see me in a more positive light… leaving them both open to influence.”

Ravage gave a doubtful chuff at this.

“Oh, not all at once, no,” Megatron agreed. “Trust is built a thousand layers up, one layer at a time. This is a fact that fool Starscream could never understand. He would take the first opportunity to betray both of them if it profited him. But I…” His smile grew most grim. “I bide my time. Until the time is right.”

Ravage meowed again.

“Yes, you’re still going,” Megatron answered. “That Fluttershy merits investigation, and you’re the bot to do it.”

Ravage shrugged silently and continued walking beside his master. It was just as well. He wanted to understand what had just happened to him… even more so than Megatron did.

Because until he did, he wouldn’t be his master’s perfect weapon anymore.

1/5: Faint Pump Ne'er Won Fair Birdie (Griffon the Brush-off)

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Wood carvings littered half the attic.

Buzzsaw had always considered himself an artist, even if other bots hadn’t appreciated his craft. Thus, when Megatron had ordered the Decepticons to seek some method of earning income, he’d immediately gravitated towards the arts, and sculpture in particular. Sadly, since the only lasers in this bizarre organic world appeared to be on top of unicorn heads, he’d found himself limited to using metal blades, which, in Buzzsaw’s mind, unfairly limited his options of medium.

But a true artist rises to the challenge of his materials, and so Buzzsaw had bought knives, saws, hammer and chisels, procured a generous supply of wood, and set to work.

The first few assays into woodcarving hadn’t even been worth keeping. After all, he was working with totally different tools and manipulators, and it took practice to re-learn precision. Then, too, there was learning the nature of wood itself, when Buzzsaw’s best work had always been in metal. The practice chunks were cut or sanded down to smooth wood and set aside for recycling, and Buzzsaw had moved on.

Once he’d finished calibrating his new organic body, Buzzsaw had moved into serious production. He’d begun with simple shapes- anonymous wooden pony dolls, simple model train cars, rough models of the cottages and tents of Ponyville. Before long he could knock out one of these simple, inartistic shapes in under half an hour- fast enough to build up a starting inventory for a market stall in the town centre.

But Buzzsaw aimed higher. He’d invested three whole days on a careful, extremely detailed model of Ponyville Town Hall, and four days on a painted model of Sugarcube Corner. Those, he’d decided, would go to a proper art gallery, in time. His next project, once he could find a suitable model, would be a detailed miniature sculpture of one of Ponyville’s residents. The first one would be terrible, he knew, but by the fourth he’d have something worth showing… and then the commissions would start coming in.

But that was for another day. He’d just finished assembling half a dozen toy haycarts, which now sat on a joist while the glue dried in the joinery. The rest of the day was for his own pleasure, and for Buzzsaw that meant working on the stump.

Buzzsaw patiently chipped away at the gnarled tree stump with hammer and chisel. When he’d bought his supply of carving wood at the local sawmill, he’d spotted the ugly stump, with its knots and whorls and lumps, on the pile destined to be ground into pulp for a paper mill. Something in it had sung to the Decepticon-turned-griffon, and he’d bought the thing for a pittance compared to the smoother, more tractable wood he’d already bought.

The good wood had been easy to carve, with few knots and a predictable grain. The wood of the stump fought back, with its hard, dense knots, its unpredictable shifting grain, and its pockets of soft, punky wood. That suited Buzzsaw; after all, the things he was carving from the stump had resisted too, but in the fullness of time they had given up everything, even the spark itself come the end.

The Autobot face emerging from one knot wailed out in despair and anguish. He remembered it well- the carefully calibrated lasers slicing through body steel and stripping the insulation off tactile sensor wires, the delicate pressure put on servomotors to generate feedback loops without actually destroying the joint, and a dozen other little tricks he’d used to extract vital intelligence for Megatron, so many million years ago when the war had been young. It still thrilled Buzzsaw to remember how a small, weak bot like himself could gradually break and destroy a mighty warrior, rendering his cerebral cortex into a scrap pile without once touching his head.

Of course, this was personal indulgence. If one of the ponies saw his personal project, the Decepticons would be lucky if Buzzsaw was the only one run out of town. For the moment he had to limit his public exhibitions to what the hoi polloi would accept. But one day, he hoped one day soon, Megatron would find the secret that would put the Decepticons where they belonged, and he could once more remind the world that all true art had its source in pain.

Buzzsaw heard the flapping of wings just outside the old pegasus-port at the end of the building. Sighing, he carefully withdrew hammer and chisel from his sculpture, avoiding damage to his masterpiece. Interruptions never ceased to annoy him. “What is it, brother?” he asked.

Laserbeak flapped his way into the guardhouse attic, beak drawn up in a moronic grin. “Buzzsaw! Buzzsaw!” he crowed. “I’ve seen another of our kind!”

Buzzsaw’s eyes widened. “Another Decepticon? Here?” he asked. “Who is it? Reflector? One of the Constructicons?” His eyes narrowed again in pain. “Please tell me it isn’t one of those annoying Insecticons.”

“No, no!” Laserbeak said, shaking his head. “I mean another of our kind. Griffons! I’ve seen another griffon!” He turned a slow barrel roll in midair, maintaining his position in a way that ought, in a normal world, to have been impossible. “And she’s such a beauty! Buzzsaw, I’m in love!”

Buzzsaw’s eyes widened again. “She.”

“Yessss!” Laserbeak spread his claws in enthusiasm. “I spent the whole morning watching her! You should have seen her! The strength! The grace! The casual cruelty! It’s like we were kindred souls! Built for one another!”

“You do remember,” Buzzsaw said quietly, “how Lord Megatron ordered the extinction of all female Transformers? How likely do you think he will be to approve-“

“It’s meant to be, I’m sure of it!” Laserbeak replied. His eyes rolled up slightly in imagination as he added, “Just think what the protoforms will be like!”

“Protoforms??” Buzzsaw reared onto his hind legs, grabbed the hovering Laserbeak by the shoulders, and shook hard. “She’s an ORGANIC, you idiot! Have you forgotten who you really are?”

Laserbeak gently disengaged Buzzsaw’s claws. “Love will find a way,” he said primly.

Buzzsaw rubbed his head. “One of these millennia,” he muttered, “I’ll learn what a waste of time it is to talk sense into you.” Returning his attention to the russet griffon still spinning in midair, he continued, “So, who exactly is this griffon, Laserbeak?”

“Her name is Gilda!” Laserbeak clutched his talons together close to his chest, beak grinning even more goofily than before. “She’s an old friend of the weathermare, Rainbow Dash! And she’s totally heartless to everyone else! You should hear her roar! I watched her casually pilfer from a pony’s market booth, right in the pony’s face, and she DARED her to stop her!”

“Ah, yes,” Buzzsaw drawled. “A petty criminal and bully. Truly your intellectual match, brother.”

“Yes!!” Laserbeak cried, totally missing the sarcasm. “Today she’s going to this party the pink baker is throwing for her! I’m going to wait until after the party, when she’s in a good mood, and then I’ll propose to her!”

“Propose? Laserbeak, has she even met you yet?”

Laserbeak blinked. “Too fast, do you think?” He shrugged. “Very well. I’ll introduce myself, give her some flowers, and then propose.”

“And it’s this kind of thinking,” Buzzsaw said quietly, “that explains why Megatron never asks you to do anything more complicated than surveillance.”

“I have a very responsible job!” Laserbeak insisted. “And I’m sure Gilda will be most impressed! Come with me and see just how impressed!”

“Oh, no no,” Buzzsaw said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be within a megamile of… I mean, I wouldn’t want to get in the way.”

“Oh.” Laserbeak blinked. “Third wheel, you think?”

“Very much so.”

“You’re probably right,” Laserbeak nodded. “Well, I’ve got to go buy the flowers! See you after I’ve secured my binary-bond, brother!”

Buzzsaw didn’t bother watching Laserbeak fly back out the loft door, but he only picked up his tools again for a moment before something else occurred to him. Setting them down again, he flew over to the hatchway linking the attic to the second story, dropped down, and flew over to Skywarp’s door. “Skywarp?” he asked, knocking on the door. “Are you in there?”

“Who wants ta know?” a truculent voice called back.

“Do you know anything about someone named Gilda?”

A moment later, the door opened, and a dark purple pegasus stood in the doorway. “Yeah,” he said. “The boss’s old school friend or somethin’. ‘Cracker and I got invited to a party for her in about an hour.”

Buzzsaw allowed himself a small smile. “Perfect,” he said. “As I recall, you were always fond of a good cybertram wreck, back in the day.”

“Fond? I LOVE a cybertram wreck!” Skywarp grinned. “I keep waitin’ for one’a these stupid cutesy pony trains to leave the tracks, but they never do.”

“Well… if you really want to see a train wreck…” Buzzsaw smiled a little wider, then said in a much quieter voice, “Follow Gilda when she leaves the party. And you owe me one, Skywarp.”

“You know somethin’ I don’t, birdbrain?” Skywarp asked.

“Usually,” Buzzsaw said. “But let’s just say my brother is about to reap the rewards of wishful thinking.”

Buzzsaw sat on a bench across the street from Sugarcube Corner. A bit of commotion inside had tempted him, just for a moment, to go inside. Then a female griffon had emerged, looking ready to tear someone limb from limb. She’d burst off into the sky like a bullet. A moment later Skywarp had emerged, taking off at a more sedate pace, and the bakery settled down into a more mundane tone of bucolic cheer.

Buzzsaw nodded to himself and got comfortable. The real show, he figured, was about to begin.

A sound echoed from the skies overhead. Goodness, Buzzsaw thought, Laserbeak was actually right about that roar.

There was a brief bit of shouting, and then the terrified screams of a falling male griffon. Those screams ended with a loud crash as something brown and black hit the dirt street hard enough to leave a small crater.

Skywarp glid down to the ground, forehooves holding his belly as he rocked on his wings with laughter. “Oh, Allspark, that was worth it!” he chortled as he landed next to Laserbeak. “I’ve seen train wrecks weren’t even half that funny!”

Laserbeak raised his head from the crater. A smashed bouquet of assorted flowers remained jammed halfway down his gullet, crushed blooms emerging from his beak. One stem finished snapping itself off, letting the flower fall gently to the ground.

Skywarp watched, then collapsed with fresh laughter, rolling in the dirt like… what were those fat pink animals from Earth? Ah yes, thought Buzzsaw, humans, that’s right.

He walked over to the other two, looking down at them. “Learn your lesson, brother?” he asked.

“She said- ha ha ha!” Skywarp gasped for breath, then continued in a rush, “She said if she ever saw him again- hee hee hee hee!- she’d find someplace else to stuff the flowers!”

Laserbeak tried to say something around the flowers, but produced only croaking sounds.

“Oh, let me, you idiot,” Buzzsaw mumbled, reaching up and yanking out the mangled bouquet.

Taking a deep breath, then flinching at the bruises left from his impact, Laserbeak said, “Isn’t she everything I said? Oh, fairest Gilda! One day we will meet again!”

Skywarp’s laughing took on an even more hysterical tone.

Hoofbeats drew closer, and Buzzsaw looked up to see Megatron, in full guard armor, obviously making his patrols. The big unicorn’s eyes took in the fallen griffon, the pegasus helpless with laughter, and the one member of his Decepticons still able to give a meaningful response. “Is this something I should know about?” he growled.

“No, Lord Megatron,” Buzzsaw said instantly.

Megatron took in one more long glance at the scene, then said, “Good,” and continued his patrol.

As for himself, Buzzsaw looked down at his fallen brother, taking in each unnatural twist of the limbs, the dent in the beak, the continuing moronic smile. It appeared he wouldn’t have to wait for a pony to model for his first portrait after all…

1/8: On the Job Raining (Look Before You Sleep)

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“Hurry up with those storm clouds there, purple guy!”

Skywarp paused in the process of pushing a line of little gray clouds forwards with his forehooves. He leaned over the clouds and shouted back, “First, my name is Skywarp, all right?” Folding his forelegs, he continued, “Second, I’m pushin’ these slaggin’ clouds as hard as I can! What do I look like, an Auto… I mean, a truck?”

The boss… what’s-her-name… the light-blue pegasus with way too many colors in her hair gestured at the other flying horses around them. “I don’t see anypony else complaining!” she snapped back. “Now get a move on! We need to get this storm built before sundown!”

“What’s the big deal about this storm anyway?” Skywarp grumbled, reluctantly getting behind the cloud train and pushing it forwards. “A little evenin’ shower every three days was fine before.”

“No, it wasn’t!” the boss pony- Rainbow Dash, that was it- shouted. “We missed a scheduled afternoon squall last week, and now the main weather office says we have to make up for it with a real soaker! But since it’s summertime, any big storm we build is gonna turn into a thunderstorm, so we have to assemble it really carefully to make sure it doesn’t get out of control! Got that?”

“Whatever,” Skywarp grumbled.

Rainbow Dash swooped down closer to Skywarp. “Look here, Skywarp,” she said, “I don’t like your attitude. Everypony else is doing more work than you are- with a lot less mouth!” She pointed at other ponies around them- the cutesy, colorful, and mostly female weather team- each quickly taking rainclouds from the trains being pushed in by the male pegasi and slotting them into place in the sky like puzzle pieces.

Skywarp hated puzzles.

“Look, why don’t you be a little more like your friend Thundercracker?” Rainbow Dash shouted, pointing to the other Deceptipony currently pushing an even longer train of stormclouds towards the center of the worksite. “Does his job, doesn’t complain, asks smart questions, listens to the answers! He could have my job someday, when I become a Wonderbolt!”

“Good for him,” Skywarp said sarcastically. “How many more of these we gotta get?”

Rainbow Dash took a quick look around the skies above and below them. “You get one more stack after this,” she said. “With the ones Thundercracker, Thunderlane, and Star Hunter are bringing in, that should do it.”

“About slaggin’ time,” Skywarp mumbled as he pushed the row of clouds alongside the others waiting to be put in place. As he flew back towards the depot where some other feather-dusters had dumped all the clouds from someplace called Cloudsdale, he took a moment to glance at Thundercracker, who pushed his stack through the air with a quiet little smile.

Huh! Look at him, all smug and happy.

Well, I’ll fix that.

Doubling back to the center of the work site, Skywarp swiped one of the cloudlets he’d just delivered. He triggered his special talent, and in a flash of light he went immediately from the staging area to a point in the air just in front of Thundercracker’s path. With one careful nudge he deposited the cloudlet slightly below the level of Thundercracker’s travel, and then with a second blink he was away, nowhere near the stumbling-cloud but still close enough to watch the fun.

The leading cloud of Thundercracker’s train hit the top of the one Skywarp had left behind. It pushed backwards into the rest of the cloudlets getting pushed in a perfect row by Thundercracker. The line, unable to move forwards, bowed up…

… and then the cloud train burst apart, scattering in every direction. Thundercracker flopped forward in the air as the resistance to his pushing vanished, accidentally shoving the last couple of clouds under his control away and out of his reach. He tumbled down through the sky for several seconds before recovering his balance, flapping back up to the same level as the rest of the weather team.

As he rose, his eyes locked onto a single target, made easy to spot by the volume of his laughter.

Skywarp saw the glare in Thundercracker’s eyes and only began laughing all the harder.

Before anything could happen, Rainbow Dash swooped down and put herself between the two. “Whoa, whoa whoa! Not cool!” Glaring at Skywarp, she asked, “What do you think you were doing?”

“Just a harmless little prank!” Skywarp grinned, totally unashamed.

“Yeah, well, pranks are good and all,” Rainbow Dash said, “but not when we’re on the clock! And not when we’re doing something as dangerous as this!”

“Hey, it’s clouds!” Skywarp snorted, flicking one of the scattered cloudlets away with a hoof. “Clouds! What’s so dangerous about clouds?”

The blue pegasus before him narrowed her eyes. “Did you not have weather where you came from or something?” she asked.

“Not much.” Thundercracker spoke up before Skywarp could speak. “And what little we did have we stayed away from when we could. Nasty stuff.”

“Right, so you should know better, Skywarp!” Rainbow Dash snapped.

Skywarp bit back a snappy comeback line. If he asked this lump of talky meat whether she had ever tried to fly through rain composed of concentrated sulfuric and hydrochloric acid, he’d have to explain what kind of place would even have those. Megatron had ordered all the Decepticons not to breathe a word of their actual origins… and if he heard that Skywarp had gone to babbling about Cybertron weather, the results wouldn’t be so funny.

“Now you pick up all these clouds, AND the ones you were going to go get,” Rainbow Dash demanded. “And then get back here so I can give the briefing for tonight!”

“What about tonight?” Skywarp asked. “Our shift ends at sunset.”

“Not anymore it doesn’t,” Rainbow Dash said. “You need a lesson in just how serious weather pony work is! So you’re gonna join me in watching over this storm tonight to make sure it doesn’t get out of control!” She leaned forward, anticipating the next words Skywarp was about to say, and shouted, “Or you don’t get paid for today! Got it?”

Skywarp grit his teeth- why should he get this kind of treatment from a fleshling?? But, with visions of an angry Megatron still firmly in his head, he nodded and said, “Yeah, I got it.”

“Good!” Waving a hoof around her, Dash commanded, “So get to it! Celestia’s not gonna keep the sun up forever!”

As Skywarp flew over to the nearest cloud, Thundercracker hovered over to him. “So, was it worth it?” he asked.

“Oh, hex nuts to you,” Skywarp grumbled. “And get that smile off your faceplate.”

“I wasn’t smiling,” Thundercracker said.

“Just slag off, will ya?”

“Sure thing,” Thundercracker said. “I’ll just go over here where I can watch. I always enjoy watching you do something useful, Skywarp. It happens so seldom.”

That’s another one I owe ya, Skywarp thought, but he kept it to himself.

“Cloud Kicker! Parasol! Thunderlane! Ready on the thunderhead?”

A chorus of Ready echoed through the clouds surrounding the little cluster of weatherponies in the center of the storm.

“Sunny! Flitter! Cloud Chaser! Ready with the wind?”

A voice from below shouted, “A few gusts are escaping! Hurry up or we’ll lose it!”

“Okay!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Everypony out of the storm… NOW! HIT IT NOW!”

Thunder rumbled through the enormous conglomeration of cloud material, and static discharges rippled around the gathered ponies.

“Out! Out! Out!” Rainbow Dash led the way, plowing a pony-sized gap in the clouds. The other pegasi, including Skywarp and Thundercracker, followed in her wake, flapping quickly to get away as the little gap in the storm closed behind them. Unexpected updrafts rocked them back and forth, shoving them forwards or backwards, with one gust slamming Thundercracker into the cloud wall hard enough to make him grunt.

In a few moments they were out, all the pegasi gathering around Rainbow Dash as she hovered over a stratus cloud trailing off the back of the storm. The clear skies above the storm glowed orange with imminent sunset.

“All right,” Rainbow Dash said, “we got the job finished just in time. I just hope the ponies on the ground got everything secured. We’re gonna have heavy winds tonight, and you don’t want loose branches or other things blowing around in that!”

“We gave them plenty of warning, Dash,” Thunderlane said. “Can’t do anything more than that.”

“Yeah, well, they’ll still blame us when a window gets broken,” Rainbow Dash said. “So be ready for that, okay? Now,” she continued, looking over the rest of the team, “this storm is gonna blow itself out overnight. But it’s summertime, and we’re close to the Everfree Forest, so if we don’t watch it it could get out of control and really ruin some pony’s day. So I’m gonna need a few of you to stick around tonight and make sure that doesn’t happen!”

“I gotta go check on little bro,” Thunderlane said.

“My brother was running the shop by himself today,” Parasol said. “Sorry, Rainbow.”

“No sweat, guys, I understand,” Rainbow said. “Anyway, I got one volunteer already. Isn’t that right, Skywarp?”

Skywarp’s gaze remained locked on the scud-cloud below. “Yeah, whatever,” he mumbled.

Thundercracker raised a hoof. “I’d like to stay,” he said. “But I need five minutes to tell Megatron where we’ll be tonight.”

“Oh, yeah, you guys are part of the new guard detachment, I keep forgetting,” Rainbow Dash said. “Well, hurry back. You’re gonna get soaked, though.”

“I can go tell him!”

“Sit down, Skywarp!” Rainbow shouted. “You’re not going anywhere if you want a paycheck!”

Skywarp slumped in midair, growling softly as Thundercracker dove through the stratus below and into the storm.

A blonde pegasus with a violet coat flapped forward. “I’d like to stay on,” she said. “I can always use some overtime.”

“Really, Cloud Kicker?” Rainbow Dash asked, raising an eyebrow. “I thought your night life was full as usual.”

“Nopony can have a date lined up every night of the week,” Cloud Kicker shrugged. “But at least I get dates. Unlike some ponies.”

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “I get all the dates I’m looking for, all right? Leave my private life out of this!”

“Whatever you say,” Cloud Kicker said, smiling a little less than sweetly.

“Okay,” Rainbow Dash said, calming down a little. “With me that makes four ponies, two rookies and two experienced. I think we can get by with that. Everypony else, good job, and see you in the morning.”

“Should we bring you a pillow and blanket?” some pony asked.

“Get outta here, willya?” Rainbow Dash roared. The other pegasi, except for Skywarp and Cloud Kicker, flew away laughing.

“So… what are we supposed ta do?” Skywarp asked.

“I’ll explain when your friend gets back,” Rainbow Dash said.

“He ain’t my friend,” Skywarp mumbled. “I just gotta live with him.”

As it turned out, the job of storm night watch wasn’t all that complicated.

Skywarp hovered far above the storm, watching it under the light of the full moon. So long as he could do that, things were fine. So long as the storm remained parked where it was, over Ponyville and the farms immediately surrounding it, nothing needed to be done. And so long as the winds, which were pretty strong now that he stopped to think about it, so long as they didn’t get any stronger everything would be considered under control.

But an unwatched storm was like an unwatched energon reactor, or so he understood it; it probably wouldn’t do anything, but it could get out of control and blow up in hugely entertaining ways. (Rainbow Dash had used the words “horrible destruction”, but Skywarp knew what he looked for in entertainment.)

It was their job tonight- Rainbow Dash, Cloud Kicker, Thundercracker and himself- to watch the storm and keep it… ugh… non-entertaining.

If the storm got too tall the electricity inside might turn into lightning ground strikes. A few of those were inevitable in a storm of this size, but they needed to be kept as few as possible, so if the storm grew too tall it was their job to knock the cloud down to a more manageable size. Likewise, if the storm got too wide, they had to go down and trim it by hoof until it covered only the area due for the rain. Doing this, incidentally, would keep the winds under control, so they didn’t have to worry much about that.

The real danger lay in allowing the storm to build up into a thunderhead, or worse, a super-cell. Left unattended, with plenty of summertime heat still radiating out of the ground, the rainstorm would grow so tall pegasi couldn’t fly over it safely, clear up to the tropopause, forming a flat top when it couldn’t grow any more. Convection currents that tall would create wild out-of-control winds and massive static imbalances, leading to gigantic lightning strikes and possibly even wild tornadoes.

All of which sounded great to Skywarp. That kind of storm had lots of energy in it. He was pretty sure Starscream or Soundwave or Shockwave had invented equipment to mine energon from that kind of storm at some point. Or maybe it was the humans- yeah, that would probably explain why they’d been fighting the Autobots over it in the rain. Whatever. Skywarp hadn’t really paid attention to anything more than finding a target to shoot at. But even without Autobots, watching people get zapped by lightning or thrown around by a storm was loads of fun… so long as it was never him.

But that was if things went wrong. If things went right, Skywarp would spend it sitting around on another cloud or flying patrol around the storm, bored out of his circuits. He wouldn’t even be able to see ponies getting soaked, both because it was night and because he was supposed to keep above the storm.

Skywarp found a scrap of cloud that had broken itself off the main storm and sat down on it. He still wasn’t used to being able to stand on what his sensors insisted was nothing more than half-condensed water vapor. But it was a lot more comfortable than roofing beams or hammocks. A little chilly, but Skywarp didn’t mind that.

He carved out a little wallow in the top of the cloud, settled himself down, and closed his eyes.

HHHOOOOOOOOOOOONK!!!

Skywarp bolted upright and kicked out hard enough to disintegrate the cloud scrap, leaving the sky clear beneath him… except for Rainbow Dash, who looked up at him with what looked like an airhorn clutched between her forehooves.

“Up and at ‘em, rookie!” she shouted. “If I don’t get to nap, nobody does! Now give me two laps around the storm! And I’ll be watching! Move it, move it!” To emphasize her point, Dash gave the ex-Seeker another blast of the air horn.

No paycheck is worth this slag! Skywarp thought.

But he began flying anyway, Rainbow Dash practically on his heels.

Skywarp sat on another bit of cloud, this time not inclined to take any naps, no matter how late it was getting.

That stupid Rainbow Dash had at least left him alone after several laps around the storm. Then there had been the lightning strike- which sounded loud to him, but which Rainbow Dash had said was to be expected. That hadn’t stopped her from gathering the others and getting all four of them to trim down the top of the storm. Skywarp had got a nasty shock from that… which had been kind of weird, because getting an electric shock in an organic body felt nothing like getting struck by lightning in either robot or jet mode. Not that either was pleasant, but the tingling sensations of electricity going places it was never meant to go… uuuggggggh.

Skywarp hoped that moron Starscream found them all a way home real, real soon.

Anyway, after that one bit of activity, things had settled down, and Skywarp was bored again. Not that he was going to let on; something told him that somewhere out there Rainbow Dash was waiting for another chance to un-bore him.

Think I’ll take that airhorn of hers and install it right up her exhaust manifold, he thought. Teach her to think she can boss around a Decepticon…

“How you holdin’ up, Skywarp?”

Oh, great. And here comes a Decepticon who just loves to be bossed around. “Thundercracker, haven’t you got some memory-cable-knitting to do?” he snapped.

“Figures,” the teal-winged pegasus grunted. “Give you one of the most incredible and interesting experiences any Transformer has ever had, on a carbon-steel platter no less, and you don’t like it.”

“Of course I don’t like it!!” Skywarp shouted. “I’m in the wrong body, I’m doin’ the wrong job, and I’m in the wrong slaggin’ UNIVERSE! You want me to like it? Go find me an Autobot to play with! That’d liven up my life! This? This is lame geek stuff, and you know it… geek!”

Thundercracker’s mouth turned up. “I guess I should be grateful I’m not lame,” he said.

“Give me a chance,” Skywarp said. “I’ll get there.”

“But even you ought to be able to see the potential,” Thundercracker said. “Yeah, it’s manual labor. But a little manual labor produces enough potential energy to recharge hundreds, thousands of Decepticons at once! If we could do this kind of stuff on Cybertron, we could revive the whole planet! Get all our old war buddies outta stasis! Maybe even end the war once and for all!”

“Great,” Skywarp grunted. “Sounds great. Go have your geeky fun. But I signed up to hurt bots and break things. That’s all I’m interested in. If you ain’t got some of that for me, slag off.”

Thundercracker grunted. “Whatever,” he said. “Just don’t fall asleep. This storm isn’t over yet. And we’re organic now. It hurts a lot more when we take a hit.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Skywarp snapped. “If you don’t wanna find out first-hand, scram.”

Still shaking his head, Thundercracker flew off.

Yeah, Skywarp thought to himself. Good riddance, too.

That mood lasted all of ninety seconds before he thought, I’m bored again.

Grumbling, he picked himself off his cloud and began flying a patrol himself. It was still boring, but at least he was flying. Flying always beat being on the ground. The ground was for suckers.

“Hey there, big boy.”

The tone of voice was half the reason Skywarp froze in mid-flap. The other half of the reason was that the voice was coming from about five centimeters away from his right ear. The freeze only lasted a moment before gravity reminded him that magic had its limits, and the forces of physics were more than happy to reassert themselves in its absence. He flapped his wings frantically to compensate, mumbling, “Um, yeah, hi there…” He trailed off as he realized he couldn’t think of the female pony’s name. Unlike Rainbow Dash, who the weather squad seemed to talk about all the time, this one…

“Cloud Kicker,” she said, filling in the gap. “You’ll get to know me if you stick around Ponyville very long.”

“Oh, yeah,” Skywarp muttered, not adding, I hope we leave tomorrow. “What can I do ya for?”

“Well, as it happens,” Cloud Kicker said, giving Skywarp a little distance to hover freely while she circled around to face him, “I’m between boyfriends right now. You know how it is, fun for a little while, then just such a drag, you know?”

She had just described Skywarp’s attitude towards all other intelligent life forms, more or less, except that “fun for a little while” for him meant “fun while I’m playing with them, otherwise slag ‘em.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Yeah, I know.”

“And I think it’s a shame,” Cloud Kicker continued, slowly working her way closer again to him, “a sweet filly like me spending evenings alone, without a big strong stallion to keep me company…”

Oh.

Though Cybertron was a world of robots, for whatever reason its inhabitants had genders and subroutines designed to bring those genders together. In Skywarp’s case those subroutines had gone long, long unused, mostly due to Megatron’s attempts to erase everything female from their homeworld. But now, for the first time in millions of years, he recognized Cloud Kicker’s tone for what it surely was.

On the one hand: stepping out with an organic? Eyuck!

But on the other hand: hey, I’m a really cool guy! And no chickbot can resist a mighty Decepticon warrior! Only a loser would let this one get away!

Idiotic pride won over idiotic bigotry. When Skywarp opened his mouth, his voice came out in his suavest, most persuasive tones. “Yeah, it really would be a shame. Wanna do somethin’ about it?”

“I thought you’d never ask!” Cloud Kicker grinned. “So how about you introduce me to that hunky two-tone friend of yours, huh?”

“What.”

Cloud Kicker missed the change in tone. “Is that a thing where you come from? Because I’ve never seen a pegasus with wings and boots a different color from their barrel! And I’d really like to take a closer look, you know?”

Even transformed into an organic form with a disgusting squishy organic brain, habits of thought from Skywarp’s mechanical origins persisted. A simple logic tree opened in his mind in an instant, running so quickly his conscious mind wasn’t really aware of any of the steps:

Romantic advances rejected. Accept? Y/N …. Y
Error: rejection is acceptable only from stronger non-Autobot life forms
Is lifeform in question both stronger and not an Autobot? Y/N ….. N
Reset to previous branch
Romantic advances rejected. Accept? Y/N …. N
Plan A: wreck the slag out of the offending life form ….
Error: slag-wrecking of life forms prohibited by order of Megatron
Plan B: …………….
Error: Plan B not found in memory banks
Plan C: find someone permissible to slag-wreck
……..
Execute Plan C

“You wanna meet Thundercracker, huh?” Skywarp hissed, not much louder than the winds whipping around him. “Fine. Watch this!”

Blowing past Cloud Kicker and going into a steep dive, Skywarp plunged into the heart of the storm. He hadn’t really been paying attention to the lectures he’d been given about how weather worked. He hadn’t cared. But he was pretty sure a couple dozen quick teleports up near the top of the storm would churn things up and make something happen.

He blinked in and out, in and out, in and out, not bothering to count, barely bothering to pick a destination for his teleports. Teleportation had just been his function; he’d never questioned it nor asked how it worked, and it had never backfired on him in millions of years of use. He wanted to be somewhere? He was there. No worries, no hesitation, no second thoughts. Just jump, jump, jump, jump.

The top of the storm flashed with teleport after teleport, Air imploded and exploded with each hop, adding turbulence to the already unstable upper layer.

Right, Skywarp thought. Just a few more, then I teleport behind Thundercracker, kick him into the sludge, and then punch the cloud until it makes lightning. That’ll show him to show me up like this!

Had Skywarp been paying more attention in weather pony training, he might or might not have been able to recognize the clues that a major electrical discharge was imminent. In any case, since he hadn’t, he couldn’t. Thus, his uneducated guess as to how many teleports he could make turned out to be excessively optimistic.

Thus he got the surprise of his life, to put it mildly, when he came out of a teleport and immediately got plastered with a massive discharge. Electricity poured through him in an eternal instant of pure pain.

Skywarp couldn’t hear his own scream.

Fortunately for him, Thundercracker and Rainbow Dash both could, and they pulled his unconscious body out of the storm before it could finish falling through to the ground below.

The light of a new day shone down over a Ponyville strewn with scattered tree branches blown here and there by the storm’s winds. It shone on the ponies cutting up and moving away the tree-top which had been split off by lightning and left to crash into the crown of the Golden Oaks library tree.

It also shone through the east-facing windows of Ponyville Hospital.

Skywarp lay in bed, fast asleep, strapped to the bed to keep him from injuring himself further. Much to Thundercracker’s surprise, the doctor had reassured him that pegasi recovered from injuries like this quickly, and that in a week or two Skywarp would make a full recovery.

Megatron, when called in to discuss the case, had approved with a smile. A week or two of confinement to a bed, with nothing to alleviate his boredom, was to his mind the perfect punishment for embarrassing his fellow Decepticons. That having been decided, he’d gone back to his morning guard patrol, leaving the details to Rainbow Dash and Thundercracker.

“Look, I don’t care what your boss says,” Rainbow said after Megatron left. “You’re a good worker, but I can’t have Skywarp on my team. He doesn’t want to do the work. He can’t pay attention to anything. He doesn’t care about the lives of anypony around him. And he’s basically just a stupid, useless jerk! I’ve gotta let him go.”

“Fine by me,” Thundercracker said. “Except that if you fire him, you’ll be giving him what he wants.”

“You’re not wrong,” Dash agreed. “But it’s not just about him. We could have got hurt rescuing his useless flank. And three of my friends almost got hurt by that lightning bolt!” She shook her head. “No, as soon as he’s out of that bed, he’s out, period. You can go with him or stay. Your choice.”

“I’m staying,” Thundercracker said firmly. “I want to learn everything I can about this weather pony business. But I also gotta keep an eye on him. Who knows what he’ll do if he’s left on his own?”

Rainbow Dash thought about that for a moment. “Okay, you have a point there,” she said. “He can stay on a little while longer. But only until you find something else for him to do! And until you do, I have to give you both the crappy jobs, because that’s the only way I can keep you two together.”

Thundercracker nodded. “No problem,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of practice doing stuff I hate.”

Rainbow Dash looked at the still-unconscious Skywarp. “I just bet you do,” she said.

In the hospital bed, Skywarp smiled in his sleep and mumbled, “Sure got you, ‘Cracker… gotcha good…” He wriggled a little in his bandages and restraints and settled back into a deeper sleep.

“Seriously,” Dash said, “get him outta my weather team as quick as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Thundercracker said obediently, as the two of them left Skywarp to his dreaming delusions.

1/12: Held Back Nine Million Grades (Call of the Cutie)

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Rumble and Frenzy sat at desks in the very back of the one-room schoolhouse. They’d gotten there extra-early specifically to get them. Megatron had given the order, and so they were there, but they didn’t have to enjoy it. The less they had to participate, the better.

“But we’re millions of slaggin’ years old!” Frenzy said as softly as his screechy voice allowed. “We got computers for brains! We forgot more stuff than any of these ponies are ever gonna know!”

“Yeah, I know,” Rumble hissed back. “And Megatron told us to shut our vocabulators about all that, remember? We’re supposed to be ponies. Just little ponies. Littler than most.”

Frenzy slumped on his desk. “I’m sick of bein’ littler than most,” he said. “I been littler than most since I first came on-line. Why can’t my spark get transplanted inta a titan or somethin’?”

“Will you shut your trap about that?” Rumble hissed a little louder. “Yeah, bein’ little sucks, but-“

“Oh hey! ‘Scuse me, but that’s my desk!”

Rumble and Frenzy looked at the newcomer. In terms of overall mass, the other foal came out about the same as either Rumble or Frenzy, but he didn’t even come up to either of their shoulders in height. Where the two Decepticons-turned-earth-ponies went up, this pale blue newcomer went out, to the point that he bordered on the spherical.

“It was your desk, shrimp,” Frenzy hissed. “Go get another, there’s plenty.”

The short, fat unicorn shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “See, this one’s mine, and your friend is in Snails’s space. Pina Colada sits over there,” he added, gesturing to the currently-empty desk beyond. “In the row ahead you get Diamond Tiara, Applebloom, and Silver Spoon. And up in the front row you got Tornado Bolt, Liza Doolots and Twist. And that’s all the desks there are!”

“Well, somebody’s gonna have to get another desk!” Frenzy said. “And it ain’t gonn-mmmph!”

Rumble held a forehoof over his brother’s mouth. “Sorry about that,” he told the unicorn foal, “but he’s got a point. We was told we were gonna be in this Cheerilee’s class startin’ today, two days a week. So we gotta sit someplace.”

“Wow! You’re new students!” The chubby pony grinned, showing off a significant overbite with a huge gap in the middle. “I’m Snips! Nice to meet ya!”

Frenzy shook off his brother’s muffling hoof, then looked down at Snips, utterly ignoring the unicorn’s outstretched foreleg. “I’m Frenzy,” he muttered. A slow grin crept onto his face as he added, “And my brother here is Other Rumble.”

“What? HEY!!” Rumble took a swipe at Frenzy, who ducked out of the way, giggling wickedly. “I TOLD you I don’t wanna BE Other Rumble!”

“Wait, YOU’RE Other Rumble?” Snips’s grin widened. “Yeah, Rumble told us all about you! He said you two were real funny ponies!” His grin slipped a little as he added in a confused tone, “Folks say Snails and I are funny too, but I don’t really get what they mean. It’s not like they laugh when we tell jokes…”

Rumble groaned and slammed his head into his desktop.

“Uhh, you might not wanna do that.” The voice that said that advertised to the world that whatever was happening in the mouth, absolutely nothing was happening in the head above it. “When I do it it hurts.”

“That’s kinda the point,” Rumble mumbled. He looked up to see a pony as tall and skinny as Snips wasn’t. His body was as orange as Snips’ mane, but the mane, far from blue, was the ugliest green Rumble could remember having seen. And while Snips had a bit of an overbite, this unicorn had dentition that belonged on a beaver, or possibly a crowbar. “Lemme guess,” Rumble added, taking a quick glance at that butt-picture ponies set so much stock by, “you’re Snails, right?”

“That’s me!” Snails said proudly.

“You gonna ask for your desk back?”

“Why?” Snails asked. “I figure if they don’t have enough desks for us, they’ll send me home.”

Rumble and Frenzy looked at each other. “Why didn’t we think of that?” Frenzy asked.

“Look what we’d have to go home to,” Rumble replied. “You wanna explain to Megatron? ‘Cause I don’t.”

“Hey, it’s the new ponies!”

One by one more and more pony kids walked into the schoolhouse, and all of them stopped to stare at the two Deceptiponies. A blur of introductions went round, and for a moment neither Rumble or Frenzy could make sense of it all.

Then one asked, “Hey! You both have your cutie marks!”

Frenzy and Rumble looked at each other again. “Um, yeah,” Rumble said quickly. “’Course we do. Who doesn’t?”

“Yeah,” Frenzy said. “Who doesn’t?”

One of them- the one wearing a little wire crown that matched her cutie mark- gave a smirk that would have fit perfectly on Starscream’s face and said, “Nobody. That’s who! At least nobody worth talking to!”

A yellow filly with bright red hair and a pink hair bow walked away, her ears slumped low on her head, and took up the middle desk in the little classroom.

“What does yours stand for?” a gray foal with wings asked. “Mine’s a tornado, ‘cause I’m gonna be a stormbreaker when I grow up! I busted my first dust-devil over the summer!”

Almost simultaneously Rumble and Frenzy stretched their heads around to look at their rumps. They’d given their own cutie marks not a single thought in the time they’d been in this world. The only emblems they’d ever cared about were Decepticon and Autobot logos, and that was only for the sake of telling friend from foe.

“Um, yeah, mine are… rocks,” Rumble said quickly. “Fracturing rocks. ‘Cause I can make the earth shake with my hooves.” He sighed and added, “But I can’t show you that ‘cause Megatron will be on me like rust on a… um… I mean he’ll be really mad if I do it.”

“Megatron? You mean the guard pony?” That came from the filly with the crown. “What does he have to do with you?”

“Um…” Rumble began sweating- a sensation he’d been happy to go millions of years having never felt, and which hadn’t become any less creepy since he became a pony. “I… er…” He couldn’t mention Decepticons, or the war, or that Megatron was their supreme commander. All of that was top-secret stuff, the same kind of stuff he’d been on Frenzy about blurting-

“We’re junior cadets,” Frenzy said quickly. “We’re both gonna be guards when we grow up.”

Rumble swallowed his surprise at Frenzy thinking up a clever lie like that so quickly. “Yeah!” he added. “To punish and en… ah, to protect and to serve, isn’t that right?”

“What about you, Threnzy?” asked a filly with incredibly vivid red hair and a mouth full of braces. She squinted through her glasses at the spiky, irregular linked circles on his rump.

“Um… has to do with high-frequency sound,” Frenzy said. “I like gettin’ on people’s nerves, and my voice really puts people on edge.”

“We’ve noticed,” the crowned filly put in.

“Yeah, and that’s why I try to do all the talking,” Rumble said quickly. “Except when we want a fight, in which case the more jangled the other guy is, the better.”

“You fight a lot?” Snips asked.

“Well, we’ve done our share,” Rumble said, and Frenzy nodded agreement. “But Megatron says we gotta behave, and nobody can beat Megatron.”

“Except those sneaky tricky cheatin’ Au-“ Frenzy’s mumble ended in a shriek as Rumble hurriedly kicked his leg. “What the slag was THAT for??”

“That sounded like bad language to me.”

A grown-up pony- body somewhere between maroon and lavender, with hair just the pink side of white and three sunflowers for a cutie mark- walked into the classroom. “And bad language,” she continued, “is not permitted in my classroom. Unless you’d like me to have a conference with Mr. Soundwave or Captain Megatron on your first day?”

“No,” Frenzy groaned.

“Good.” The grown-up pony walked up to the front of the classroom. “I see you’ve already met the rest of my class. I’m Miss Cheerilee, by the way, and I’m your teacher. We’ll be getting two more students next week, so I’m afraid we’re going to have to bunch up. Frenzy, Drumble, could you help-”

Frenzy couldn’t help snickering. “Drumble?”

“Aw, man!” Rumble moaned. “That’s worse than being called Other Rumble!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cheerilee said. “That’s what it said on the paperwork…” She pulled a couple of papers out of the big teacher’s desk at the front of the room. “Oh, I see. It was an initial. D. Rumble and D. Frenzy.” She looked a little more closely at them. “Are you two related?”

“Brothers,” Rumble said, trying to ignore Frenzy’s ongoing snickering, which had infected half of the other foals and fillies.

“I see,” Cheerilee said. “Well, it’s a good thing Thunderlane’s little brother is a year down and in a different class. I can’t imagine all the confusion!”

“Tell me about it.”

“But anyway, if you and your brother could help me pull some extra desks out of storage,” Cheerilee said. “With so many new ponies moving to Ponyville lately, it’s going to be crowded unless they finally raise the money for a new school.”

“Sure, we’ll be glad to help!” Frenzy said. “Come along… Drumble.”

Rumble ground his teeth. “When we get back home,” he murmured.

“Take it up with Soundwave, bro,” Frenzy said, still grinning.

“Well?” Megatron said, passing the two ex-cassettes on the street after Cheerilee’s class let out. “Did you learn anything important?”

“Yeah,” Frenzy said. “We got invited to this big party for Diamond Tiara on the weekend. She’s the daughter of the town big shot, the guy who owns that big store.”

“The teacher spent most of the day talking about these icons on our butts,” Rumble continued. “Says they represent what makes a pony ‘special’. And the more unique that symbol is, the more ‘special’ they are.”

“We’ve already been told this,” Megatron grumbled. “Did you find out anything else?”

“Well, maybe,” Rumble said. “The teacher moaned a lot about the school not having any money and gettin’ overcrowded. But I don’t think anybody else was complainin’ about only havin’ to go two or three days a week.”

“Aside from that it was basic stuff,” Frenzy said. “Had some math- didn’t even have to think about that. There was a globe, so I guess this world is round, maybe? Not much else.”

“I see,” Megatron said. “Well, keep listening for anything useful. Pay attention. And don’t cause trouble.” Megatron leaned his head down to look directly into Frenzy’s eyes as he said those last three words.

“No problem, Megatron,” Frenzy said. “We’ll be good little fleshlings. Isn’t that right… Drumble?”

Rumble’s forehooves stomped involuntarily. “Request permission to make my little brother more littler,” he growled.

“Denied,” Megatron said without a moment of hesitation. “Now get out of… wait.” He looked at the two of them one more time. “Are you certain you didn’t observe anything we could use to get off this world?”

“Well,” Rumble said, thinking of all the fillies with purple or violet in their fur or mane. “Th’ young ponies got good taste in color?”

Frenzy, for his part, thought about the red-haired fillies who’d sat in front of him. “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he nodded.

Megatron shook his head. “Dismissed,” he growled, returning to his patrol.

Author's Notes:

On the one hand, this one gets closer to what I had in mind at the beginning- completely background-style shenanigans.

Let's take a minute to talk about that one-room schoolhouse. There are obviously a lot more than nine students altogether, as we see in a certain Season 5 musical episode. But so far as I can tell we never see more than nine desks. But somehow a class which is full- no empty desks in this episode, remember- doesn't expand when Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle join it after this episode.

Was this schoolhouse designed by the same people who built Hilbert's Hotel?

So I decided that, because of crowding, the classes would only attend two or three days a week. The lack of desks can be attributed to TV animation budgets (if you want a more extreme example of the problem, the crack-tastic Pani Poni Dash! anime hangs a gigantic lampshade on this), but not other things.

So I'm treating this as a one-room school with several classes broken up by age cohort, so the two Rumbles don't actually sit in the same class. (Remember, Rumble is considerably younger than the CMCs, who were unusually late getting their cutie marks, and then blank-flank Rumble becomes the rebel in that late-season episode where the CMCs hold a camp to help other ponies get their own marks.) And since there are too many students to fit in the schoolhouse at once, on most school days only one class shows up.

To give you an idea of the problem... my graduating class was sixty-five students in a school district that served a total population of about four thousand people, total. The entire K-12 attendance was about a thousand students. If we assume that Ponyville only offers, say, middle-school education at most, and the proportion of students to total population is 1:8 or so, that would mean Ponyville and all its environs as a whole only have about two hundred and fifty or so residents, total. Which, based on the cartoon, is ABSURDLY small.

Considering the pathetic state of education in Ponyville if not in all of Equestria, Chancellor Neighsay should have been told to shove his book of regulations up his plot.

1/13: Unicron Take the Hindmost (Fall Weather Friends)

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“Haven’t you got some reading to be doing, Starscream?”

Megatron barely spared his lieutenant a glance, let alone a space on the haybales piled up next to the farmyard. His attention remained centered on the two ponies on the field, currently engaged in an attempt to juggle large balls in the air, or so it seemed.

“All work and no recharge makes a bot rusty,” Starscream replied, settling on a haybale just out of arm’s reach of Megatron. “Besides, Twilight Sparkle closed the library today. So I came out here to see what all the fuss was about.”

Megatron snorted. “It is evidently some sort of athletic competition between two of this village’s champions,” he said. “Thin oil indeed compared to what went on in the gladiatorial pits.”

“Then why not go down there and show them some things, oh mighty Megatron?” Starscream asked, in that voice which was obviously sarcastic but which the annoying idiot would always insist was perfect sincerity.

“Three reasons,” Megatron grumbled. “First, I was not invited. This is a private contest, and our position here is still uncertain. Second, most of the things done in the ring on Cybertron would earn imprisonment or exile in this pathetic and weak country.” He gave Starscream a moment’s glance- after all, it never did to ignore him for too long, or you’d never see the laser dagger coming. “But most important, this makes a perfect opportunity to observe the skills of two potential enemies. They let anybody watch this. Even you.”

“I hardly see what interest there is in this primitive exhibition,” Starscream said sulkily, not having an answer for Megatron’s dig.

“Oh no?” Megatron asked. “That merely demonstrates why I lead the Decepticons and you don’t. I have already made several key observations about these two.”

“What is there to observe?” Starscream asked. He pointed at the orange pony in the hat. “The farmer over there is obviously the stronger of the two, and she has the greater raw dexterity.” He pointed at the blue pegasus. “Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, has faster reflexes, and in tasks which she’s practiced, she comes out the better. It took me all of ten minutes to see that.”

Megatron raised an eyebrow. Starscream was one-eighths genius and seven-eighths unutterable fool, and it was those moments when the genius popped out for a quick scan that caused Megatron to keep him around. (Granted, most of those moments involved attempts to usurp him, and the fool always ended up overriding the genius, but it kept life interesting.) “Well observed,” he said in a moment of rare praise. “So you do understand the advantage of observation.”

“Not in this case,” Starscream said. “This contest is a foregone conclusion. Rainbow Dash has an advantage this Applejack pony can never counter.”

“Are you quite so certain?” Megatron asked.

“Of course!” Starscream said. “It is the same advantage that secured our superiority over the Autobots. Applejack cannot fly!”

“Is that so?” Megatron smiled his favorite smile, the one that promised pain for someone else. “And how many times have you been bested by those inferior, non-flying Autobots… Air Commander Starscream?”

“That’s beside the point!”

“That is exactly the point!”

“Very well!” Starscream snapped. “Let us watch the remainder of this farce! And you will see, Megatron, that no creature confined to the ground can surpass one who can fly!”

As it turned out, the last several events all went to Rainbow Dash, who won all of them by flying. Starscream hooted and waved a banner with the initials RD emblazoned on it as Applejack lost the final tug-of-war by dropping several ponylengths straight down into the mud. (Megatron neither knew nor cared how he’d come by banner or the rainbow-colored cap he wore; he chalked it up to typical Starscream stupidity.)

Finally, as the crowd began to disperse, Starscream shouted, “There! Did I not tell you, Megatron? A flyer is always superior to one who cannot fly!”

“Your analysis is over-broad,” Megatron replied calmly. “Rainbow Dash is indeed superior to Applejack in situations where flight is an advantage. But that is merely because, as you no doubt observed, Applejack lacks the imagination to overcome this obstacle.”

Starscream pointed a hoof down at the field, where Rainbow Dash and Applejack were staring each other down. “All I observe is that Applejack is a sore loser,” he said. “Is that popcorn vendor still around? It looks like we might have an entertaining brawl coming up!”

“I very much doubt it,” Megatron said, a little disappointed himself. “These are two comrades in arms, after all. Rivals, yes, but nothing worse. There, see?” The two ponies were smiling, and then after a brief hoofshake, the two parted ways. “They’ve come to some sort of agreement on how to settle their differences. And unless I miss my guess, it will be with another contest.”

“Hmpf. Sounds boring if you ask me,” Starscream grumbled. “And anyway, Rainbow Dash will win it. Flyers are always superior.”

“Is that so?” Another reason Megatron kept Starscream around was that it was always fun to take him down a peg. This seemed like a perfect opportunity. “Starscream, not to overtax your powers of observation, but in this organic body I can no longer fly.” He faced Starscream directly, turning up the intimidation in his smile, and asked, “Are you willing to tell me to my face you think yourself superior to me?”

Starscream hesitated to answer. Obviously the birdbrained ex-jet didn’t want to get blasted or pummeled, but at the same time he didn’t want to back off his stand. “Perhaps it is not just those two ponies who need an opportunity to test their might,” he said with a cautious challenge.

“Very well,” Megatron said. “Then I propose this: we shall find out what challenge Applejack and Rainbow Dash have agreed to, and we shall participate ourselves, as a contest to see who truly is the superior Decepticon.”

“That hardly seems fair, Megatron,” Starscream insisted. “We have no way of knowing-“

“What’s the matter, Starscream?” Megatron asked. “Why are you afraid? Perhaps flyers are not automatically superior after all!”

That did it. “Who’s afraid?” Starscream snapped. “I accept your challenge, Megatron! And at the end of the challenge, all the Decepticons shall know their rightful leader!”

“Yes,” Megatron agreed, nodding smugly. “I’m certain of it.”

“Is something troubling you, Starscream?”

“This rope chafes, if you must know.”

Megatron had heard about the Running of the Leaves weeks before. Starscream, who paid more attention to his books than to the ponies around him, had completely missed it. Thus Megatron had not been surprised to learn that Applejack and Rainbow Dash had chosen the Running as their final contest. Starscream had been completely blindsided, the fool.

“Remember, Starscream,” Megatron said, “these ponies believe that pony hooves are necessary to shake the leaves off the trees. Thus, flight is entirely beside the point. The course must be completed on foot.”

“On hoof,” Starscream mumbled sullenly.

“On hoof,” Megatron repeated, magnanimously accepting the correction.

“In any case, I’m still faster than you,” Starscream continued. “I admit you are stronger physically, but you are heavy and thickly built. I am lighter and streamlined, traits ideally selected for raw speed.”

“We shall see,” Megatron said complacently. “Just do remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. I would like today to be at least a little interesting.”

“Well, I hope you find dust interesting, Megatron,” Starscream snapped. “I’ll certainly give you plenty to look at!”

“I’m not concerned with dust,” Megatron said. “And don’t be so eager to cast it that you end up eating it.”

“Contestants to the starting line,” the voice of Mayor Mare called. “Contestants for the Running of the Leaves to the starting line.”

“It’s time,” Megatron said. “Good luck… Number Fifteen.”

“I won’t need luck,” Starscream snarled. “And watch your back… Number Eighty-Three.”

Yes, thought Megatron to himself. I certainly shall watch my back, if only so I can laugh at your pathetic failure.

It’s going to be a good day.

After months on this world, stuck in an organic body, Megatron had learned how to pace himself. Conserving energy had been important in the gladiatorial pits, where the unwise exhausted their energon only to fall to the more canny opponent. It was even more vital for organics, who had fatigue toxins and stress injuries to worry about along with simple lack of energy.

So the silver unicorn hadn’t minded when most of the pack had left him behind. He maintained his own trot, a pace he could keep up indefinitely, and kept an eye on the course ahead. So long as other ponies were visible either in front or behind him, he was safe… but once he was separated from the rest, Starscream would strike.

The idea that Starscream might just run a clean race never once entered into Megatron’s mind. The universe operated according to simple laws, and one of them was that Starscream, given any opportunity, simply could not resist trying to permanently eliminate his competition, even when guaranteed victory lay in his grasp. The idiot could be within two steps of the finish line, with no one behind him for a megamile, and he would still turn around to lay some sort of ambush. He couldn’t not.

And sure enough, at a bend in the path which perfectly cut Megatron off from view of the pack ahead and the stragglers behind, something whooshed down from the tree canopy on the right. Megatron caught it in his magic without effort and flung it back twice as hard, barely noting the nature of the thing- very heavy log on ropes- before continuing on his run.

He did smile at the muffled yelp of pain behind him, though.

About a minute later a bruised Starscream, streaks of sap running across his red-furred chest, galloped past at top speed.

“Having trouble, Starscream?” Megatron shouted, grinning from ear to ear.

“Shut up!” Starscream shouted back, not slowing a bit.

Megatron shrugged and kept going.

It didn’t take long before some of the early pack leaders began falling back, having exhausted themselves early. Megatron passed them cleanly, giving them not a glance. He didn’t have time for fools… well, technically he had time for one particular fool, but he expected that fool to take all his available attention.

And almost like clockwork, he rounded another curve and saw a small wooden bridge ahead, spanning a brook almost any pony could have just jumped across without breaking stride. Indeed there was just barely enough room under the bridge for a pony, if he were so inclined, to crawl under and hide.

Megatron didn’t need to look to know that a pony, or rather a Decepticon-turned-pony, had done exactly that. All he needed was the one plank that looked much newer than the rest of the bridge…

… and a long-standing knowledge of how Starscream thought, which meant that he knew that shiny brand-new board was the one guaranteed safe spot on the entire bridge. Starscream, thinking he was clever, would make the obvious change, expecting Megatron to avoid it and instead put a hoof on one of the old planks to either side of it. That would be the booby-trapped one, and Starscream would be under the bridge to make sure Megatron didn’t go any farther.

Give the bot his due, Starscream was one-eighth genius. And a lesser warrior than Megatron might indeed have been fooled. But the seven-eighths fool had neglected two important considerations. First, a lesser opponent wouldn’t think anything of a fresh repair on an old plank bridge at all, and would step just anywhere, probably missing the trap…

… and second, the bridge was small and unimportant enough that even a non-flying pony could leap over without a lot of trouble, and Megatron did just that.

He paused for just a moment as he landed, lining up a hind hoof at one of the support posts for the little bridge, and he gave it an almighty kick. The bridge shook, three of the old planks collapsed, and something let out a loud, metallic SNAP. A high-pitched, barely suppressed squeal of pain followed.

Satisfied, Megatron resumed his normal pace.

About a minute later Starscream passed him up again. The ex-Seeker was limping, but he could limp very quickly, his legs moving almost too fast for Megatron to notice the bloody bite marks on one hindleg. “Having trouble, Starscream?” he asked.

Starscream’s only answer was a wordless shriek of rage as he kept running.

Megatron trotted on for several minutes, getting passed by a couple of ponies (including, he noticed, Twilight Sparkle, wearing #42) and passing quite a number of others himself. For quite some time he was always within sight of at least one other pony. That disappointed him, and he almost considered slowing down so that Starscream would have another shot at him. But he kept up his pace, because it would take more than a moment’s amusement for Megatron to deliberately perform less than his best in any contest, no matter how trivial.

Then there came a point where the path diverged. One path led up onto a hill that jutted up from the White Tail Woods; the other turned into the heart of the woods, the path narrowing significantly in that direction. A helpful sign next to the road, shaped like an arrow, indicated the race course went on the narrower path.

Megatron stopped and smirked. Of course. With no other opportunity to test his ingenuity, there simply was no way Starscream could have passed up the opportunity to switch the guidepost. Obviously the hilltop path was the true direction, and the narrower path a dead end of some sort. Quite likely there was a pitfall or some other pathetic trap at the end of it.

With a flick of a hoof Megatron switched the sign back to its proper direction, then began trotting up the hillside.

And trotting.

All alone, he eventually realized, except for galloping hooves far, far ahead and above.

Something’s wrong, he thought. I’m all alone now. Starscream should be triggering an avalanche or something similar.

And come to think of it, I haven’t seen a tree near the course since shortly after…

“THERE you are! Where have you BEEN?”

Panting and gasping for breath, Starscream came galloping up the course behind him. “How am I supposed to… win the race… if you don’t even…”

“What are you babbling about, Starscream?” Megatron asked. “Did you get tired of waiting for me at your next ambush?”

“Of COURSE I… I mean… I…” Starscream’s jaw worked as he struggled to come up with a halfway decent lie.

Something orange barreled between the two of them. “SCUSE ME! AH’M BORROWIN’ THIS!” Starscream spun to the ground, wings flaring, as the rope that had bound them flapped behind Applejack as she galloped away with it full speed back up the hill.

Megatron walked over to Starscream. “So you didn’t switch the signpost?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t switch the signpost!” Starscream snapped. “The course is the other way! Right now you’re stone dead last!”

“Really?” Megatron smirked. “If that’s true, then why did you come back for me when you could have won easily?”

“I…” Megatron had to say this much for pony bodies, it was much more entertaining to watch one going slack-jawed than the equivalent robotic face. Alas, the moment was short-lived, as Starscream finally came up with his lie and pulled himself together. “I didn’t want you to be able to say I took unfair advantage of you when I win.”

“So it wasn’t because you were hopelessly stupid and forgot about the race in your desire to sabotage me.”

“Who, me?” Starscream put on that smile he thought was endearing and trustworthy. Normally it was a smile Megatron longed to knock off his chassis, but here and now it was all he could do to keep from laughing out loud.

“Well, then,” Megatron said, “since you value a clean and fair contest…” With a spring of his hind hooves he bounded over Starscream, calling back, “Keep up if you can, oh superior athlete!”

This time Starscream didn’t blow right past him. Megatron could hear the light clip-clip of his hooves behind him, but they never got any closer. Between setting his traps and then rushing ahead for the next ambush, Starscream had spent himself. Megatron, on the other hand, had conserved his energy for the final push, and now, as he took a sharp left turn around the signpost and headed into the heart of the forest, he gave it his all.

Most of the runners had gone on far ahead, but some stragglers remained for Megatron to dodge. He brushed past them at full gallop, dismissing them from his attention one by one. His focus was reserved for two things: the faint but discernible path in front of him, and the light clipping of hooves and increasingly labored breathing coming from behind him.

Then the woods opened up, and there in front of Megatron was the Smoky Mountain road leading back to Ponyville. Megatron could just see the main pack of runners going over the second hill on the way back to town- the home stretch before the finish. And unlike the run through the deepest part of the woods, the road lay clear, wide, and open before him.

He took the right-hand turning onto the road, put his helmeted head down, and kicked in his reserves. His hooves thundered along the hard-packed dirt road, while the light clip-a-clop of Starscream’s hooves rapidly grew fainter.

Then a shadow passed over Megatron, and Starscream landed in front of him, wings spread. The wings swept down, and Starscream leaped, surging forward into a long, quick glide that carried him faster than Megatron could run.

“That’s flying, Starscream!” Megatron shouted. “What was that about an unfair advantage?”

Starscream had used the glide to recover his breath. “I leaped!” he shouted back, turning his head over his shoulder as he flew. “Leaping is allowed! The rules don’t say anything about how far you’re allowed to leap!”

Megatron snorted and saved any further breath for running. He had no issues with unfair advantages so long as they were his. In battle, take any advantage you can grab. But it galled him when that advantage lay in someone else’s hands (or wings). Still, you didn’t complain. Whining was for weaklings, and in the pits weaklings died. Instead you preserved yourself and waited for the enemy to make a mistake.

And it wasn’t as if Starscream’s so-called leaps (which were getting longer and more brazen every time) were unexpected… or unanticipated.

Just ahead was one last narrow part of the course, with a steep rocky hill on the left side of the road and the forest on the right. The trees formed a canopy, creating a sort of tunnel that the road passed through. And now Starscream dispensed with any pretense of jumping, turning around to fly backwards as he faced Megatron.

“Face it, Megatron! I’ve won!” he crowed. “Because even when all other factors are equal, the flyer shall always be the superior-“

At that point he hit the net stretched across the road just below the forest canopy. Megatron had put it there himself the previous night, just in case. The net grabbed Starscream and spun him around a full turn, then unwound again, grabbing his legs and snaring him three different ways.

It took Starscream only a moment to realize what had happened. “Megatron! You did this! You cheated!”

“Who, me?” Megatron laughed even as he galloped under the stranded Starscream. “That net was no danger if you were running.” As he passed back out into the open he added, “Or if you weren’t a fool!”

And that was that. On the other side of the rocky hill the road ran almost perfectly straight to Ponyville, where the whole town- including the runners who had already finished- lined the course to watch the last runners cross the line. No more short-circuited schemes, no more cheating where no one could see. People were watching, and that meant Starscream couldn’t try any more stupid tricks.

Which meant Megatron had won.

And the cheering of the other Decepticons as he crossed the finish line reminded him of the early days in the pits, before he recognized the cheers of the crowds as the symptom of Cybertron’s corruption. He’d been a fool to delight in those cheers… but seldom had later victories ever tasted as sweet.

And speaking of victories, he made sure to be standing nearby when Starscream staggered across the finish line on four wobbly hooves, receiving his official result from the judges.

“Seventy-ninth??”

“Seventy-ninth? Not as bad as it could have been for a first-time runner,” Megatron said, walking over to where Starscream stood, covered in lather and ears drooping as he stared at the board where the contestants’ names were posted as they came in. “After all, you didn’t come in absolute last.” The big unicorn showed his teeth and added, “But you did come in behind me… didn’t you?”

The ears could only go lower if Starscream lowered his head, so he did. “Yes,” he mumbled.

“Yes what?” Megatron ordered.

“Yes… Lord Megatron,” Starscream said sullenly.

“And don’t you forget it,” Megatron hissed. “And in the future remember that flight is only an advantage- one of many. And it is nothing compared to the advantage of intelligence.”

“You bested me this time, Megatron,” Starscream sulked. “But I still say flyers are superior. And Rainbow Dash will prove me right.”

“You still believe that?” Megatron asked. “Applejack will have defeated her long since.” He looked up at the results board, adding, “Her name must be here somewhere…”

As he spoke, one of the judges stepped forward and wrote two names on the board in the last two spots on the board, with the numbers T – 91^st beside each. This done, the judge drew a line through the remaining blanks on the list.

Megatron and Starscream read the names.

They shared a moment of uncomfortable silence.

“Well, they wrote Rainbow Dash’s name on the list higher than Applejack’s,” Starscream said, in no tone that suggested he thought it mattered.

“Cease your blathering,” Megatron grumbled, “and never speak of this day again.”

1/14: Neither Hear Nor There (Suited for Success)

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The beings on either side of the counter both wore glasses. That, to Soundwave’s relief, was practically the only thing they had in common.

Soundwave’s red-tinted corrective lenses stayed in place, while the other pony’s glasses continually slid down his muzzle. Soundwave’s pony body possessed perfect dentition. The other pony’s teeth had become misaligned at some point, which explained the trusswork that peeked out each time he spoke like railroad tracks on an icy tundra. Finally, some kind of chemical or possibly biological agent had left multiple bulging red spots scattered across the other pony’s otherwise brown-furred face.

All in all, Soundwave faced a specimen vastly inferior to any Decepticon, which made it all the more galling that this creature, this pony, was the only one in all Ponyville who bought and sold what few electronics this primitive society actually possessed.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Soundwave,” High Fidelity squeaked. “Your order didn’t come in on today’s train. The next train from Manehattan is due two days from now.”

Had Soundwave been of a more choleric personality- like, for example, Rumble or Frenzy or Megatron or Skywarp or, to do the math, 89.7% of the whole Decepticon armada- he might have chosen to take it out on the store clerk. But Soundwave had been of a patient temperament even before he became a Decepticon, in the ancient days before the Great War. He knew how to keep his frustrations reined in. It made their resolution all the sweeter when the time came.

Even so, the frustration didn’t go away. Any self-respecting electronics shop, even on that pitiful filthy mudhole Earth, kept spare parts and kits for constructing devices from scratch in stock. Yet here in Hi-Fi’s Hideaway, Ponyville’s record and music shop, electronics barely took up one wall of shelves, and spare parts were barely an afterthought. Most of the wares, like the wind-up gramophones and the trombone and, Primus help us, the banjos, plural, most of these were strictly mechanical, without even an electric amplifier.

Oh, yes, there were a few electronic devices. They were split roughly evenly between toys and musical tools. A couple of electric amplifiers and some primitive electric microphones made up most of the latter. There were a couple of tools- a voltometer, a small electric soldering iron- but they were crowded out by the Battery Operated Yippy Doggy and the Electric Tugboat That Makes Nine Nautical Noises. (Soundwave hadn’t decided which of the two toys annoyed him more when some foal or filly began playing with the samples. Either way, he would have derived great satisfaction from releasing his frustrations on their creators.)

The only reason Soundwave had even given the shop a second visit was High Fidelity’s wholesale order catalog. His main supplier, a firm in Equestria’s largest city, carried a lot more than what appeared on his shelves- including vacuum tubes, circuit boards, capacitors, resistors, transceiver kits, scientific equipment, and a broad array of testing tools. According to High Fidelity, Soundwave was the third of three Ponyvillians to place an order. That had been over a month ago, and “allow four to six weeks for processing” appeared to be an accurate, if not conservative, estimate.

None of that was High Fidelity’s fault, of course, but Soundwave didn’t feel inclined to let him off the hook. Servitors of whatever species instinctively sought to placate unhappy masters or customers, and Soundwave never missed an opportunity to extract bonus value from a mission. “delays: not unavoidable,” he said, watching Hi-Fi flinch at the sound of his unnatural voice. “disappointment: increasing.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Soundwave,” High Fidelity squeaked again. “Maybe you’d like to hear the newest records out of Manehattan? We just got in the newest Sapphire Shores album.”

Soundwave frowned at this. He’d dabbled with the musical offerings of this culture and found them mostly wanting. Sapphire Shores in particular felt primitive and uninteresting- vastly inferior to, for example, Countess Coloratura, whose own work had innovative sound but lacked complexity. He shook his head, declining the offer, and turned to go-

-only for the bells above the door to chime as a white unicorn with a two-tone electric blue mane walked in, head bobbing, odd sunglasses reflecting oily rainbows of distorted light as she stepped in out of the late-morning sun. Each limb seemed to spring in and out in the most unusual gait Soundwave had yet witnessed on this peculiar planet… but, he noted, every snap of a joint, every plant of a hoof on the floor, came in perfect tempo with all of the others, presumably from the headphones that rested snugly over her ears.

“Oh, good morning, Vinyl,” High Fidelity said, smiling broadly enough to show off three-quarters of his bracework. “I’m sorry, but your order didn’t come in today, either. I was just telling Mr. Soundwave here about it.”

The white unicorn frowned at the news. She reared up slightly, urgently tapping her left fetlock with her right forehoof.

“I know you’ve got a show tonight,” Hi-Fi said. “But all they shipped me this time was this week’s music releases. Speaking of, I’ve got your pull list ready for you, if you’d like to take care of that.”

The white unicorn let out a loud but unvoiced puff of air through her lips, cocking her head just so as to convey the idea of her eyes rolling under her shades. This done, she nodded her head, not with any great enthusiasm.

“All right,” Hi-Fi said, pulling a stack of records over from the table behind the counter. “Sapphire Shores’ latest, Hay Bale and the Sand Tones’ double-album, that collection of synthesizer tracks from OG Moo, and the debut album from Bachmare Turner Cattledrive.” After a pause, he added, “Oh, and also this classical album from the Minotaur Islands- a collection of works by Pachabull. I suppose that’s for Octavia?”

The unicorn nodded. Soundwave felt the now-familiar sensation of a unicorn activating her magic, and a small plastic packet of cello strings floated over to the counter to rest on top of the stack of records.

“Oh, of course,” Hi-Fi said. “Also, I bought out a collection from a guy over in Trottingham last week. Did you want to go through it before I put them out on the shelves?”

Soundwave decided to take his leave. He wasn’t going to get his parts order today, and he had no other business in the shop. “in two days; I return,” he said, nodding to the store clerk and the other customer as he stepped backwards towards the door.

The unicorn’s head jerked up at the sudden sound. Her horn lit up again, and one side of the earphones lifted to free up an ear-

-and Soundwave heard a mixture of sounds, three or four overlapping songs playing at once, a pony singing overlaying unreleated drum beats overlaying two competing synthesized harmonic lines. Underneath them all rode a bass sound both overwhelming and invisible, so perfectly synchronized to the other sounds that he could hear the resonance as a sine wave, a sine wave as clean and perfect as the two intertwined on either one of his flanks.

It was the closest thing Soundwave had heard to Cybertronean music for an age- even better than the leading-edge experimental music the humans had been dabbling with back on Earth.

Then the earphone dropped back into place, and the blend of music ceased. Or, rather, not: now that Soundwave knew what it was, he could just barely detect its sound leaking around the edges of the earphones.

The silence stretched to the point that even Soundwave felt awkward. Nodding his head again to the other two, he backed out of the shop door and departed.

But his mental processes orbited that white unicorn with the blue hair and tinted glasses like a comet around a sun. As he tried to put together some plan for the rest of his day, he kept coming back to her, only to try to force himself back out again onto some more logical, more productive path.

Like him, she’d ordered from Hi-Fi’s catalog, making her another of the three. (He’d already spotted the third- the eccentric scientist who made his living repairing clocks. As much as Soundwave wondered how an earth pony could repair gears and springs with hooves, some subconscious logic process had warned Soundwave that closer investigation of Time Turner was a very bad idea.)

The music she listened to had complexities that just didn’t exist in the other music these pony creatures favored- possibly because the pony creatures didn’t try listening to two or three tracks at once to find the synergies in the sound. The tracks he’d so briefly heard from her earphones all came from obviously different sources, but somehow they meshed perfectly, like the teeth of a transformation cog at the heart of a Transformer’s mechanical body.

And she’d known how to communicate without speaking a single word. Soundwave was still working on that. His monotone voice, with its nerve-jarring harmonics, startled and repelled ponies even more than it did his fellow Cybertroneans, but he had yet to figure out how to make himself understood nonverbally.

The mare literally fascinated him.

And he needed- he wanted- more data.

Fortunately, he knew exactly where to get it.

“Oh, it’s the robot.”

“Hello, Mr. Robot!”

“Would you be interested in some nasturtiums today?”

The three sisters who ran the flower shop represented the paradox of pony culture to Soundwave, all wrapped up in three flighty packages. The first time they’d met, they’d been terrified beyond logical thought. Now they didn’t even bat an eye when he walked over to them. Most other intelligent creatures of Soundwave’s experience would have remained cautious and suspicious of him. These sisters, these ponies, had taken him from alien invader to perfectly normal in a matter of days, and now he was just another regular customer.

Of course, he was still the Robot Disguised as a Pony to them. Soundwave hadn’t bothered to argue. Nobody else believed them, and it happened to be true, to a certain extent.

And besides, it was worth it to get open access to Ponyville’s most encyclopedic source of town gossip and rumor. When not scared out of their minds by whatever minor irritant caused the panic of the day, the three of them babbled like unmoderated chat sessions. Even taking into account the usual number of misunderstandings, misapprehensions, and misinformation in general, the three had proven to be almost as reliable a source of information as Laserbeak’s spying around town.

That was why he’d come here, today. “i seek information,” he said. “white unicorn; blue mane; sunglasses; loves music.”

“Oh, you mean Vinyl Scratch?” Lily asked. “I’m surprised you haven’t met her before! She’s really big into robots and technology and all that stuff.”

“You know she doesn’t like that name,” Roseluck said. “She wants to go by her stage name- DJ P0N-3.”

“But it’s such a stupid name!” Lily answered back. “It’s like a robot name from one of those bad kiddy serials at the matinee!”

“Every pony’s entitled to be called by the name they choose!” Daisy said. “Anyway, DJ P0N-3’s, well, a DJ. She mixes music at events. Makes all her own equipment.”

“Doesn’t she have a show tonight?” Roseluck asked.

“Yeah,” Daisy said. “She’s providing the music for Rarity’s fashion show. You know, the one she’s holding for the dresses she made for the Grand Galloping Gala?”

All three of the flower ponies sighed in discordant unison at the thought of the Gala.

“But I heard from Ditzy Doo, who got it from Aqua Blossom, who got it from Octavia,” Lily said, “that Vinyl’s equipment broke down. She might not be able to do her show tonight. And Ditzy said Aqua said Octavia said she’s been impossible to live with ever since it broke.”

“How would anybody tell?” Daisy asked. “I mean, the mare never talks. I mean, never talks. It’s not like she throws a screaming fit or makes horrible sarcastic remarks or anything like that.”

“You don’t have to talk to be a bad roommate,” Roseluck said. “To say nothing of a bad marefriend. I mean, look at Timey, for example-“

“pardon me,” Soundwave interjected, sensing a conversation about to drift away from the information he wanted. “never speaks; explanation required.”

“Oh, Vinyl?” Lily asked. “Nobody knows. She used to talk when we were all fillies, but ever since she got into music, she just sort of clammed up.”

“I heard there was this tragic accident with a gramophone,” Roseluck said. “She swallowed the gears trying to learn how to sing like the pony on the record. Now she’s got no voice.”

“That’s not how I heard it,” Daisy said. “I heard she was working on this electric music machine, and she got herself electrocuted by the system. The Pale Horse let her come back to life, but she had to give up her voice forever as a price. And if she ever says a word again, she’ll die on the spot!”

“Oh, how tragic!” Roseluck said.

“And I thought that she got caught one year on Nightmare Night, but Nightmare Moon was mostly full and only had room in her tummy to gobble up her voice.”

The other two looked at Lily. “Um,” Roseluck said, “you do know Nightmare Moon actually came back? And is Princess Luna now? And never actually gobbled anybody?”

Lily flinched. “Oh. Yeah.” Her ears flopped down in shame. “I guess I should update my story, huh?” She looked at Soundwave. “You know, maybe she’s been replaced by a robot in disguise like you, Mr. Robot. That might explain why you’re interested in her.”

Soundwave had heard enough. The factual data had been extracted; now there was nothing left but idle fiction. If he wanted to learn the truth, he’d have to get it, literally, from the horse’s mouth. “subject location: unknown,” he said. “request direction.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Lily said. “Vinyl and Octavia live in a house on the edge of town. Looks like two entirely different houses split in half and glued together. Can’t mistake it for anything else.”

“Just take this street out three blocks,” Daisy said, pointing in the direction away from the town hall. “Turn right at the big street lamp, and follow the street up the hill. It’s in the curve just before the street leaves town and becomes the Smoky Mountain Road.”

“assistance helpful,” Soundwave replied. “status: very grateful.”

“Oh, think nothing of it, Mr. Robot,” Lily said. “Just remember to treat us well when you crush all of Equestria under your metal heel.”

Soundwave didn’t answer. He saw no point in making a promise he had no intention of keeping.

The house was exactly as the flower trio had described it. Even the front door was split into mismatched halves. Soundwave knocked cautiously, lest it split apart and fall at his hooves.

The sound of a cello playing its repetitive eight-note motif ceased. After about twenty seconds, the door opened to reveal a gray earth pony with dark brown hair, wearing a collar and a small purple bow tie. She looked Soundwave up and down with a single flick of her eyes. “Vinyl? It’s for you,” she shouted, turning her back and leaving the door ajar.

Soundwave stepped in through the door. The bifurcated interior matched the exterior: prim and proper on the side where the earth pony was returning to her cello practice, wild and avant-garde on the side where that white unicorn, this time without her earphones, poked and prodded a screwdriver with obvious frustration into the interior of a large sound system.

“warning,” Soundwave said. “electrical current active; electrocution possible; caution required.”

The screwdriver dropped onto the floor with a clatter. The white unicorn- DJ P0N-3- lunged up onto her hooves, turning to look at her visitor. She raised a hoof up to lift her sunglasses out of the way, revealing blood-red irises underneath. “Oh, hey!” she said. “You’re that pony from the music store with the bitchin’ voice! How’s it goin’?”

It was Soundwave’s turn to stumble. “my voice; not disturbing?”

DJ P0N-3 shook her head, smiling. “S’cool, man. Better than mine, for sure.”

Soundwave didn’t think so. Her voice was a little deeper than most female ponies, but it still fell well within the socially acceptable range of “normal,” and thus would not automatically trigger a negative response. But the fact that she spoke at all… “audio communication,” he said. “information gathered; vocalization impossible.”

“Sh’yeah, a lotta people say that,” DJ P0N-3 said. “Ain’t it weird how stories get started? But really, you don’t get far in life if you can’t talk, right?”

Soundwave shook his head. “if vocalization possible: why do you not?”

DJ P0N-3 shrugged. “Isn’t it more fun to listen?”

Behind his visor, Soundwave blinked. “affirmative,” he said. Leaning down to the equipment, he spotted a scorch mark on one of the larger vacuum tubes. “circuit overloaded,” he said. “damage repairable.”

DJ P0N-3 shrugged and spread her hooves at the empty floor next to her. Obviously she didn’t have the replacement tubes.

Of course, replacing the tube would only patch the problem temporarily. “replacement relay: not required,” he said. “bypass possible; i will demonstrate.”

Without speaking, DJ P0N-3 levitated the screwdriver over to Soundwave. He extended his magic to take it, and of a moment he felt the two magics overlapping one another.

The synchronization approached unity.

1/15: A Cerebral Cortex Is a Terrible Thing To Waste (Feeling Pinkie Keen)

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What kind of lunatic species thinks a living organism is the ideal repository of knowledge?

The same thought struck Starscream every time he came to the library. He accepted that a pre-transistor primitive civilization would have to resort to inferior methods like paper or clay tablets to record its information. But why put such inherently fragile media inside a living thing? Why, at any moment the shelves could start oozing sap, or some wood-eating parasite would get in and discover that paper was its equivalent of bread or sugar. At least put the things on metal shelves inside an artificial shelter, like sane creatures!

But then he remembered: these were organics, and ponies at that. Sanity was a uniquely robotic trait, one of many that made people like him, Starscream, superior.

The fact that he was not currently a robot, but in fact a pony just like any of the natives, didn’t factor into his thoughts. So far as he was concerned, that was a temporary aberration, and in no time at all he would have his proper body back.

But doing that required finding whatever lore these creatures had about inter-universal travel, and that meant being on good terms with the lore-keepers- or, to be more specific, librarians, like the purple unicorn who Starscream now spoke to on a first-name basis.

“Twilight?” he shouted as he let the split door shut behind him. “I’ve brought back the books I checked out!”

“That’s good!” Twilight shouted from upstairs. “Just leave them on the reshelving cart!”

Starscream’s eyebrows rose a bit. Normally Twilight Sparkle came straight down to see that books were properly checked in and out. “But I’d like to check out some new books about this Clover the Clever person,” he shouted back.

“Go ahead!” Twilight still didn’t make an appearance on the stairs. “You know where the stamp and card catalog are!” In a somewhat softer voice she added, “Spike, have you seen my binoculars?”

Starscream could just barely make out the juvenile male voice that said, “They’re around your neck.”

“Oh, right.” A sudden flurry of hoofbeats, and then Twilight Sparkle, wearing a pith helmet, rushed down the stairs and past Starscream. “Sorry about this, but science waits for no pony!” The front door slammed behind her, and two note pads which had been floating in her magic dropped to the floor behind her. A moment later the door opened again, and the notepads levitated out just before a more quiet shut.

“Hm,” Starscream muttered aloud. “What’s got into her gears?”

“Hello, Mr. Starscream.” Spike’s voice, for all its youth, carried a world-weariness that even a robot nine million years old could recognize. As the little reptile trudged down the stairs he continued, “Twilight just gets like this sometimes, whenever she encounters something she doesn’t understand and can’t explain.”

“I see,” Starscream said. He risked a little smirk as he added, “So I suppose this happens quite often.”

“Tell me about it.” Spike rolled his eyes for emphasis. “Don’t worry, she’ll probably be over it by tomorrow. Or until she figures out Pinkie Pie, whichever comes first.”

“What about Pinkie Pie?” Starscream had had a few brushes with the peculiar party-obsessed pony already, but he hadn’t noticed anything that made her any stranger than any of the other organics in this town. So far as he was concerned they were all malfunctioning.

“Apparently she can see the future,” Spike said. “She has this thing she calls ‘Pinkie Sense.’ Like, when her tail twitches, it means something’s about to fall. I’ve seen it happen three times today. Well, maybe four if you count what just happened in the lab downstairs, but-“

“See the future?” That got Starscream’s full attention. “How far in advance?”

“I dunno? A few seconds, maybe?” Spike shrugged. “All I know is, if Pinkie’s tail is twitching, take cover.”

From outside Twilight shouted, “Spike! Hurry up! We have to go find the Pinkius Piecus!”

Spike shook his head. “I gotta go,” he said. “Lock up when you’re done, okay?”

A moment later, Starscream found himself alone in the library, the potential of even a few moments’ perception of future danger swirling around in his head. All thought of researching magic or pony history or Equestrian culture had been driven out by his second oldest and dearest friend, ambition. (His very dearest friend, of course, was himself.)

Now didn’t that lizard say something about a downstairs lab?

Finding the lab wasn’t difficult.

Starscream gave the printouts a quick glance, recognizing at once a multi-channel brain scan readout in primitive form. After that, he devoted his full attention to examining the equipment Twilight Sparkle had used to produce the printouts, and the more he looked the more excited he became.

Yes! All primitive vacuum tubes and macroscopic switches and capacitors, but the underlying logic is obvious! It all works on the same basic principles as any other encephalographic scanner! And she even has entire crates of spare parts I can use!

It will be child’s play for me to reverse this device and turn it into a mnemographic neural resonator! And then I can use a simple facsimile scanner to read these printouts and convert them to engrams which the device will plant into my own superior mind!

And with Pinkie Pie’s mental processes added to my own, I will unlock the secret of future sight! And armed with that, not even Megatron can stop me!

Laughing maniacally as he contemplated his imminent victory and rule over the Decepticons, Starscream grabbed a screwdriver off a table in one wingtip and set to work…

Megatron froze in his steps the moment he rounded the corner into the narrow street that led past the door of the Ponyville guardhouse. There, on what should have been an empty alley, stood eight figures, all in various poses of exhaustion. “What is this?” he asked, stepping forward cautiously as he recognized his ponified Decepticon warriors. “What is going on here, and why are you all out here to greet me?”

The others all looked at each other, and by some unspoken vote Thundercracker got elected spokesman. “Er, Megatron,” he said, “you don’t want to go in there right now. It’s bad.”

Megatron’s eyes narrowed. “Explain,” he said.

“It’s Starscream,” Rumble said. “He’s slipped his clutch.”

“Totally flipped his bits,” agreed Skywarp.

“His mental processes,” Buzzsaw added, “are functioning most peculiarly even for him.”

“So?” Megatron asked. “There are eight of you and only one of him.”

“Yeah,” Frenzy agreed. “There’s also eight of us and one of you, and we ain’t dumb enough to think we can beat you, either.”

“Besides, we tried,” Skywarp said. “Weirdest slag I ever saw. I couldn’t ever get behind him, not even when I teleported.”

“I tried to knock him out,” Thundercracker said, waving a forehoof to indicate a tap on top of an unseen head. “And four times I was sure I had him. But when my hand… hoof… came down, his head was always somewhere else.”

Ravage yowled disconsolately, conveying his shame at being unable to so much as scratch the annoying vice-commander.

“Even you, Ravage?” Megatron asked, shocked. “Were none of you able to subdue him?”

“Laserbeak didn’t even try,” Rumble grumbled.

“Observing! Laserbeak was observing, I was!” the cassette-turned-griffon said from the corner of a rooftop across the alley.

“Oh yeah?” Rumble’s forehooves stamped the ground. “Then what did ya observe, bird-brain?”

“It was bizarre!” Laserbeak shrieked. “Most bizarre! I saw Starscream popping out of cupboards! I saw him duck backwards without looking! I saw him walking in midair with his wings folded! I saw his head twist round and round…” Laserbeak’s head tried to rotate in imitation, but the limits of flesh and blood stopped him long before he could snap his own spine.

“magic not detected,” Soundwave chipped in for the first time. “source of Starscream’s new abilities: unknown.”

“Like I said,” Thundercracker said, “it’s bad.”

“When we gave up tryin’ ta frag the twerp,” Skywarp added, “we came out here so we wouldn’t fry our own CPUs like his is.”

“Almost the only coherent thing we got out of him,” Buzzsaw said, “is that he’s planning something for you. ‘A special surprise,’ he says.”

“Yes! Yes!” Laserbeak agreed, flapping his wings. “He said-“ Here Laserbeak’s screechy, whining voice went smooth, though still a little screechy and squeaky. “’I’m going to make sure Megatron gets his just desserts! He’s had this coming for a long time!’” Then, reverting to his normal voice, the griffon finished, “That’s what he said!”

“Did he, now?” Megatron hissed. Starscream almost never attempted to overthrow him by a direct challenge… but there was always a first time for everything. And anyway, there was only one proper response for a direct challenge. “Well, we’ll see about that! Stand aside!”

Without another word the assembled Decepticons parted, soft hoofsteps clacking echoes up and down the alleyway. Megatron strode through them without a second glance, using his unicorn magic to open the door to the guardhouse.

Inside the guardhouse main room looked as it always did, except for a notable absence of guard ponies- particularly Starscream. “Starscream?” Megatron shouted. “Show yourself!”

“SURPRISE!”

Pure instinct spun Megatron around to face the source of the voice; the instincts of his still-new unicorn body fired off a blast of magic that left a smoking hole in the back wall of the guardhouse dining hall. Only after instinct ran its course did his higher mental processes register and identify the large pink-frosted cake his shot had narrowly missed, the table set with party poppers and little paper hats, and the banner hanging over the entryway to the dining hall: UNIVERSE’S BESTEST TYRANT!

“How do you like it?” a familiar voice with an unfamiliar added squeak said from just behind his right ear.

Megatron’s right hindleg swept out and around, and the rest of his body followed to allow his left forehoof to come up for what should have been a knockout uppercut. Neither one connected to their target, as Starscream jumped over one and ducked under the other with split-second timing.

“I know it’s my first attempt and everything-“

Megatron’s right forehoof jabbed straight for Starscream’s center of mass. The Seeker-turned-pegasus bent backwards far enough to win any limbo championship ever, letting the hoof pass millimeters over his snout.

“-but I got those bakers from the adorable shop on the other side of the square to help-“

Megatron lowered his horn and let off another magic blast. Starscream leaped into the air, spreading all four legs, letting the magic bolt scorch the stone floor harmlessly.

“-and it’s amazing how convenient these primitive artistic tools can be-“

Roaring with rage, Megatron charged forward, rearing up and spreading his forelegs to grapple with his target. Starscream whipsawed forwards, flowing over and above him almost like water, landing silently on his hooves directly behind the Decepticon leader.

“-and the party music, well I used to think the music the ponies had was dreadful, just absolutely primitive and, ugh! But now that I listen to it I think it’s really neat, all happy and bouncy and energetic but so easy to sing along with, you know I like a good singalong! Why don’t we have our own song? I’m sure we could make a better Decepticon song than anything those silly Autobots-“

Starscream showed no signs of shutting up, but Megatron didn’t make any further attempt to silence him. Even the most profound berserker rage can be checked when the target of one’s rage proves untouchable. Cautiously, keeping a ponylength’s distance between them, he looked over his lieutenant as the latter babbled on without any apparent awareness that he was being examined.

“-and after all the military applications of dancing have been studied by cultures all over the galaxy for as long as anyone can imagine, so-“

At first glance Starscream looked the same- pegaus, red torso, white wings with red lines on the leading edges, white legs ending in black hooves, white face with yellow eyes. But then he noticed the differences. Starscream’s mane, which he wore in an excruciatingly neat buzz cut, had gone spiky and wild. His tail, normally an unremarkable mass of dark gray hair, had become a giant poof of tangles and curls that waggled and twitched back and forth almost constantly. And the eyes, which varied between half-lidded smugness and squinting outrage, now stayed in permanent wide-open, mentally-vacant wonder.

“-and then I told Frenzy that if he couldn’t imagine a pink Soundwave then he needed a better imagination, and he said-“

Oh, yes, and there was also the non-stop, machine-gun babble, all spoken with a squeak totally unknown to Starscream’s natural state.
“-and I said, ‘Diesel? Are you crazy?’”

“Starscream.”

That pony froze in mid-babble, focusing his full attention back at him and causing him the briefest moment of genuine terror in the process. “Yes, Megatron?”

“What in the name of Primus happened to you?”

“Oh yeah!” Starscream grinned even wider. Megatron silently observed that it was the first time he’d ever been able to describe Starscream’s looks as innocent. “Well, it turns out there’s this pony in town who can sense the future, so I decided I wanted to be able to do that too, so I rebuilt this neato keen machine in Twilight Sparkle’s basement, it’s really amazing what you can do with the primitive tools ponies have, anyway then I stuck my head into it, flipped the switch, and ZAPPO!”

“Zappo,” Megatron echoed.

“No, no,” Starscream said, shaking his head. “You really gotta give it some gusto, you know, ZAPPO! Anyway, it worked great, except my tail is twitching and my eyelashes are wriggling all the time ‘cause apparently the entire universe really is out to get me but I already knew that so it’s no problem, and also there’s this voice in the back of my head that keeps screaming in absolute horror, but when that happens I just sing a little louder and drown it out, so everything’s hunky-dory!”

Megatron’s jaw wanted to drop, but he refused to let it. But not even the strongest will in the universe (obviously his own) could keep him from repeating, “Hunky… dory,” in tones of growing shock.

“So I was on my way back home to tell everypony about my new discovery,” Starscream said matter-of-factly, “and then it hit me!”

“What did?” Megatron asked.

“The flower pot,” Starscream said. “I knew it was coming, but if I stepped to the right the cast-iron bathtub would have got me, so what else could I do? But after I got the bits of pottery and dirt out of my fur, I had the thought: you know what Megatron has never had?”

“A loyal lieutenant?” The remark came out completely by reflex. Some things even shock couldn’t stop.

“A party!” Starscream said. “I mean, you founded the whole Decepticon faction, you liberated and then conquered Cybertron and dozens of worlds before the Autobots rebelled, and in nine million years I don’t think anybody ever told you what a great guy you are!” A moment’s doubt and hesitation silenced Starscream, just long enough for scientists with highly sensitive equipment to register the pause. “Well, not counting when people wanted something from you or thought they were tricking you, I mean I guess that feels nice too at the time or else it wouldn’t work, but it’s not the same thing as when somebody really appreciates you, is it? And don’t we all want to be appreciated? I know I do!”

The analytical part of Megatron’s mind rallied around the word party. “Just which pony did you say could sense the future?” he asked, already pretty sure what the answer would be.

“Did I say?” Starscream asked. “I don’t remember saying. But I’ll say now! It was Pinkie Pie! You know, that baker that is friends with Twilight Sparkle? And really shouldn’t everyone be friends with Twilight Sparkle? She’s so brave and strong and intelligent, just like-“

“And so I’m guessing you found a way to transplant her mental engrams into your own brain,” Megatron interrupted. “Which you did, because you’re an idiot.”

“WOW!” Starscream said. “That screaming voice in the back of my head just got really loud! I hope you don’t mind if I sing?” What followed next would have been an aural abomination even in Starscream’s normal voice. “My name is Starscream and, if you just wait a while, I’m gonna conquer your land, with a cupcake and a smile…”

“So now you can’t be touched by any attack,” Megatron pressed on, shouting over Starscram’s horrible singing. “Right?”

Starscream, thank the Primes, stopped singing. “That’s right!” He frowned, then added, “Well, if somebody threw a big enough rock at me I might not be able to dodge it. But I’m pretty fast, so it would have to be a really big rock!”

“But you didn’t use that to attack me.”

“Well, of COURSE not!” Starscream squeaked, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world and not utterly counter to his innermost nature. “Because you’re the strongest and smartest and bestest Decepticon commander we could possibly have! I mean, I’d love to be commander myself someday, but everybody knows there’s no way I could ever be better than you!”

Megatron wished, oh how he wished, that he had some recording device that could have grabbed the previous fifteen seconds and preserved the audio for all eternity.

“And because you’re the bestest, I decided you needed a party so we could show you how much we all appreciate you!” Starscream said. “Because we have our little arguments now and then, but we’re really behind you one hundred percent all the way and wow, that voice really is shrieking now, and you wouldn’t believe the words he’s using!”

And just like that, Megatron understood. Moreover, he knew exactly what to say next. “But if you support me one hundred percent,” he said in a soft, smug purr, “then you’ll never be leader of the Decepticons.”

Starscream froze. A spark arced from his spiky mane back to his fluffy tail. “What?” he asked, no longer squeaky or bubbly.

“After all,” Megatron said, “I will rule Cybertron until someone overthrows me. And if nobody overthrows me because they’re behind me one hundred percent…”

Starscream’s face began twitching violently. More sparks began jumping from one bit of hair to another. His muzzle kept switching from cheerful smile to horrified grimace, sometimes mixing the two together.

“… then I will rule forever, and you’ll never be able to take my place.”

“Nnnn… nnnnn… nnnn… NNNNNYEEEAAGGGH!” Starscream shrieked, his body bowing back in a painful spasm as lighting arced up and down his entire body. Then, for no apparent reason, a thick pink cloud erupted from his back with an audible poof, and the ex-Seeker collapsed to the floor, mane and tail normal, completely unconscious.

“I thought that would do it,” Megatron said, stepping over Starscream’s limp body to call the others in.

The cake turned out to be very good. And, to his own surprise, Megatron found himself rewinding the gramophone and playing records long into the night.

Not that he’d dream of lowering himself to singing along. That would look weak.

But the songs were just so catchy…

Breakfast the next morning was cold cereal or Kitty Kibble for everyone. Starscream, who usually did the cooking, didn’t awaken almost until Megatron was due to go on his first patrol of the day. When he did come down he looked like he still needed a week in repair bay and two or three complete lubricant changes, or whatever ponies did that was the equivalent.

Megatron, who’d awakened in an unusually good mood, asked, “Feeling better, Starscream?”

“No.” It was his normal voice, slow and soft, with extra pain and mortification added. “I can’t believe I put myself through such a nightmare. Never again.”

“Excellent news.” Without warning Megatron let off a blast of magic that hit Starscream square on and sent him flying the full length of the guard house to slam against the far wall.

It took several seconds, but a moan of pain finally erupted from the red and white furry lump on the floor.

“Just testing,” Megatron said to no one in particular before putting his helmet on and going out on patrol.

1/22: Better Homes and Guardhouses (A Bird in the Hoof)

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For some of the Decepticons breakfast was a curse, and for others a silver lining in their horrible new meatsack lives. But when the pounding at the door interrupted breakfast one morning, not a single one of them felt like interrupting their eating for it.

Skywarp looked over at Frenzy, who was closest to the guardhouse’s front door. “Ain’t ya gonna answer that, shrimp?” he asked.

“Answer it yourself, bit-brain,” Frenzy snapped back. “I’m busy.”

“Your mush will still be there when ya get back.”

“No it won’t,” Rumble warned.

“order countermanded,” Soundwave chipped in. “Skywarp authority zero; remain as you are.”

The pounding continued.

“Well, somebody better get it,” Thundercracker muttered.

“I’ll get it!” Megatron strapped on the last bit of his armor as he exited the armory. “Since none of my elite warriors can do it themselves!” Shoving his helmet over his horn, he stomped over to the door and flung it open. “Yes?” he asked, brusque but without the heat he’d used on his followers.

What looked at first glance like a marginally smaller version of Megatron stood on the other side of the door. The armor was identical except for the helmet, which still bore the scrub-brush crest that Megatron had removed from his own. The bit of mane that trailed out behind the helmet was bright blond, matching the tail. Finally, a tiny pair of pince-nez with rectangular lenses perched on the newcomer’s muzzle, secured around his neck by a fine chain that sparkled in the early morning sun.

“Captain Megatron?” the newcomer asked. “I’m Major Nit Picker, chief inspector for the Royal Guard division of the EUP Armed Forces.”

Megatron gave the major a slow look up and down. The pony looked like he had a strong body, but beyond that he saw no threat. The bored, disdainful expression on the newcomer’s face spoke to a lack of both motivation and imagination, and therefore probably intelligence. Aside from the much fancier armor (particularly the helmet), he bore no weapon or other threatening- wait, Megatron thought, I change my mind, a clipboard just floated out from his saddlebags.

In a quieter voice the major continued, “At this point you are supposed to salute and say ‘sir’.”

Oh, yes. Majors outranked captains. And in this inefficient organization, rank determined respect, and not more sensible metrics like strength, cunning, past accomplishment, or current usefulness. If Megatron stayed in this world, in this horrible weak pony body, for long enough, that would change…

… but not today. He came to a smart attention stance, brought up his right hoof to salute so fast the brain provided the snap the ears didn’t hear, and said, “Apologies, sir. I lost myself admiring your uniform.”

“I wish I could say the same for you,” Major Picker said. “I am here along with the advance guard for Princess Celestia’s visit to Sugarcube Corner. I felt this was a perfect opportunity for a surprise inspection. Call out your guard, please.”

Megatron liked to pretend to the world that he was a bot without fear, and indeed he feared very little. But one thing he did fear was surprises, because in nine million years he’d never had any true surprise that wasn’t incredibly unpleasant. Most of those surprises had been wearing an Autobot sigil at the time. But even without the face of Primus painted on the inspector’s armor, Megatron felt his stomach drop as his mind reeled off what might happen if- no, when- the inspector found something to complain about.

But being afraid wouldn’t make Major Picker vanish, and vanishing him would cause even more trouble. “As you wish, sir,” he said. “Dec…” He choked on the word. Calling for his Decepticons by that name had more trouble potential. “Squad,” he shouted, remaining at perfect attention, “ASSEMBLE!”

To Megatron’s mild surprise, Starscream was the first out the door. To his mild mortification, his lieutenant hadn’t removed the apron he wore when cooking. Soundwave rushed out right behind him. Laserbeak, Buzzsaw and Thundercracker followed shortly after, not moving with the same urgency. Rumble and Frenzy trotted out next, with no urgency at all. Finally came Skywarp, with a snarling Ravage herding him out the door.

Once the entire group of displaced Decepticons was standing out in front of the guardhouse, Megatron shouted, “SQUAD, FALL IN AT ATTENTION!”

The falling-in happened in almost the same manner as the assembly, from Starscream’s almost comical military correctness down to Skywarp’s begrudging shuffle to the end of the rank. The process took far more time than it should have, and Megatron cringed inwardly as Major Picker levitated a pencil out of his saddlebag and began making notes on the clipboard.

“Now, Captain,” the major said, “I see your complement, as established by the princess herself, is one captain, one lieutenant, and eight reserve auxiliaries.”

“Correct, Major, sir,” Megatron said. “My lieutenant is Starscream. Except for emergencies, he and I are the only ones who stand watch at this post.”

“I see,” Major Picker said. “And which one is Starscream?”

Starscream tossed off a salute that strove to outdo Megatron’s. “At your service, Major,” he said.

Major Picker gave the apron a good long look. “You’re out of uniform, lieutenant.”

“Sir, I am off-duty,” Starscream explained.

“Oh?” The apron got yet another look. “Not kitchen patrol?”

Starscream couldn’t prevent himself from looking confused. “Why would a kitchen need patrolling, sir?” he asked. “Are appliance thefts that great a problem? I’ve still got four months to go to pay-“

“As you were, Starscream,” Megatron growled.

Major Picker walked down the line. “Captain, I can’t help but notice the lack of uniforms on your auxiliaries as well.”

“Sir,” Megatron said, “the armory had only two complete suits of armor when we arrived. We await shipment.”

“I see,” Major Picker said. “Do you have copies of the requisition forms on file for me to check?”

Now it was Megatron’s turn to be confused, though he hid it better than Starscream. “Sir,” he said, “I advised the princess, the town mayor, and the guard officer present with the princess when we took over the guardhouse. Why would this not be enough?”

Major Picker sighed. “Why indeed?” he asked, and made a single tick mark on the clipboard. “Let’s move on.”

Soundwave, Thundercracker and Skywarp got silent nods of approval. Then the major stopped, looking down at Rumble and Frenzy. “I was not aware,” he said slowly, “that Her Majesty had authorized the enrolment of children into her guard.”

“Cadets in training, sir,” Megatron said quickly. “Dependents of my intelligence officer, Auxiliary Guard Soundwave.”

“That’s right, major,” Rumble said, stepping forward. “When we grow up we’re gonna lay down the law.”

Major Picker raised a single eyebrow. “Indeed,” he said. “Well, you can begin by learning discipline. Neither of you have been told to stand at ease.”

Frenzy and Rumble snapped back to attention.

“Also,” Major Picker continued, “even if you are auxiliary cadets, you are still required to address superior officers as ‘sir’. Not by their rank alone.” He looked back at Megatron, who remained standing to attention by the door, and said, “See to it, Captain.”

“Yes, sir,” Megatron said slowly, lowering his eyes enough to glare silent promises of pain to the two ex-cassettes.

“And you two,” Major Picker continued, facing Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. “The Guard proper has never had any griffons among its ranks. Even griffon auxiliaries have been rare. What brings you into the princess’s service?”

“Megatron!” Laserbeak crowed. “We follow Lord Megatron, yes! We are loyal to Megatron!”

Buzzsaw sighed. “Sir,” he said, “what my brother means is that we owe a personal debt of honor to Captain Megatron. We follow his orders and his alone. And as worthy as Princess Celestia is, she is not our leader.”

“I see,” the major said, and the floating pencil made a long scribble. Looking back up the line, he asked, “Is it Captain or Lord?”

Megatron forced his teeth to stop grinding. “I claim no title in Equestria,” he said. Yet. “The princesses have seen fit to grant me a captaincy and my… my friends… shelter. It is a complicated situation, sir, and I request you take it up with Princess Luna.”

Now it was Major Picker’s turn to flinch. “Ah, that’ll be sufficient, captain,” he said quickly. “If the princesses… well.” Gathering himself back together, he took two steps and reached the end of the line, where shining golden eyes looked back at him. “Er… mascot, captain?” he asked.

“Auxiliary Guardspony Ravage, sir,” Megatron replied, enjoying a moment’s amusement for the first time that morning. “Specializes in counterintelligence and enforcement.”

The major gawped. “Captain, you can’t be serious,” he said. “This is clearly a panther, not a pony! And animals simply cannot be part of the Guard!”

Megatron smirked. “Request permission to demonstrate Auxiliary Ravage’s capabilities, sir,” he said.

Ravage’s attentive gaze slowly shifted into a very cruel feline grin.

Major Picker took two rapid steps backwards. “Th-that won’t be necessary,” he said. This time the clipboard did not get a tick or scrawl. “Dismiss your ponies, captain, and then we shall proceed with the guardhouse inspection.”

The stone-walled guardhouse stood two stories tall, plus an enlarged attic with pegasus sally ports under a flag-shingled roof. The foyer, or main assembly hall, took up a little less than half of the first floor, with the remainder given over to the two-cell gaol, the commander’s office (now Megatron’s apartment), the armory, the showers, the kitchen, and the servant’s quarters (now Starscream’s apartment). The second floor consisted of a row of five barracks rooms each originally designed to house four ponies in close proximity: Soundwave, Thundercracker and Skywarp had each taken a room for themselves, while Rumble and Frenzy shared living space. The attic, accessible by a ladder and hatch from the second-floor balcony, had been built for twenty pegasi but held only Laserbeak and Buzzsaw.

Major Picker found nothing to comment on in the assembly hall, nor the cells. He made only one comment about the armory (that the contents could do with more polishing), but a lot of notes got scribbled down. Megatron’s apartment, with its little desk and cot and very little else, all in perfect military order, won a circle-stroke with the pencil on the paper.

Megatron didn’t relax. He’d already known those were going to be the easy passes- because he’d taken personal responsibility for all of them. But now the inspection was going into his followers’ personal space… and he knew all too well that the Decepticon Armada, which valued function over form in so many ways, was the only military organization that most of his subordinates wouldn’t have been thrown out of on day one.

And with the inspector staying glued to his side, Megatron hadn't been able to tell them to clean up. That had to be left to the native intelligence of his elite warriors... and to be honest, back in the day he'd been more interested in firepower and talent than in independent thinking when he recruited his elite. Independent thought, to tell the truth, had been a disqualifying trait, a fact he regretted now.

The inspector had interrupted breakfast, so of course the breakfast dishes still lay scattered around the dining table, and the pots still sat on the stove or in the sink.Still, it didn’t surprise Megatron one bit when each bit of cookware not clean and put away earned a tick from that floating pencil. Inspectors in every service always demanded perfection and made up all sorts of excuses for why enforcing the impossible was a good thing. Why should this pony world be any different?

Major Picker went through the cabinets next, nodding to himself, making the occasional scribble on his clipboard. At length he said, “I notice you haven’t set any traps out, Lieutenant Starscream.”

“Sir, we do not have a vermin problem here,” Starscream responded.

“And not putting traps out is how you get a vermin problem,” Major Picker responded. “Why, if you don’t take pro-active measures, before long you’ll be up to your withers in rodents!”

A soft rumbling sound behind him caused the inspector to freeze in place, instantly rocking onto the front tips of his hooves from sheer terror.

“Sir, Ravage wishes to state that he, by himself, constitutes ‘pro-active measures.’” Megatron allowed himself a smile because he knew the major, with his back turned, couldn’t see it. He also noticed that Starscream, because he was an idiot, smiled right in front of the inspector.

The inspector either didn’t notice or care. “Yes, well, um,” he spluttered, forcing his body to relax again. “But shouldn’t you at least have a little poison out? You know… Mr. Ravage could possibly miss one…”

Starscream’s smile vanished, as did any thoughts of subordination, He was in the major’s face in an instant, forcing the inspector to walk slowly backwards as he talked. “Let me explain things to you,” he said in tones of barely repressed rage. “We have a quiet understanding among us. I don’t keep poison in my kitchen. And in exchange, I get to keep my kitchen, so I can cook what I want to my satisfaction and not suffer through what my fellow warriors might claim is food! And I consider not getting my stomach pumped on a daily basis due to incompetent chefs worth the minor annoyance of not having poison in hand to use on a puny insignificant mouse!!” By this point hovering in the air just over Major Picker, he shoved his head down to meet the unicorn eye to eye, muzzle to muzzle, knocking those objectionable pince-nez askew. “Does this arrangement meet with your approval, sir??”

“Yes! Yes! Perfectly fine!”

“Good!” Starscream back-winged and settled back on his hooves, coming to as crisp a parade-rest as he knew how to do in a quadrupedal body. “Does the major wish to continue the inspection, sir?”

“That won’t be necessary!” Major Picker said, still trying to recover his sang-froid. “Perhaps we should proceed to your living quarters.” After a moment he asked, “How did someone in food services become a guard lieutenant?”

“Sir,” Starscream said, now icy cold, “in civilian life I was a scientist. Astronomy and physics for preference, but I studied all disciplines. Cooking is nothing more than crudely applied chemistry. But knowing my colleagues’ average mental level, I wouldn’t trust them to boil water, much less cook a meal.”

“Scientist? Ah, well, yes,” Major Picker said. “Just, well… never mind. Let’s move on.”

As Major Picker led the way into Starscream’s room (which, though less Spartan than Megatron’s, was equally tidy), Megatron paused beside his lieutenant and murmured, “I’d been wondering why I haven’t got sick from your cooking yet.”

“You don’t poison me, I don’t poison you,” Starscream whispered back. “Fair enough?”

“On the face of it, yes,” Megatron said. “But what happens when you break the deal?”

“If that happens,” Starscream hissed, “I promise you will be the very first to know.”

“What is all of this??”

By the time Major Picker got to the first room on the second floor he’d recovered his officious nature. Soundwave had claimed the room closest to the stairs, and although his bed hadn’t yet been properly made, that detail totally escaped the inspector’s attention. Megatron couldn’t blame him: after all, the device that took up fully half the room, with its rotating fans and arcing coils and things that went buzz and ping, would cause even a blind-deaf pony to fixate their remaining senses on it.

To ponies, Megatron thought, it was a curiosity. To mechanical beings (or even ex-mechanicals like the ten Deceptiponies), it was more of a horror show, mitigated only by the fact that, unlike Soundwave’s experiments in their home universe, Megatron couldn’t identify any of what he saw zapping and popping and ring-a-linging. It seemed like a fleshling trying to knit guts using wool yarn, having never seen actual viscera.

Soundwave stepped forward. “scientific experiment,” he said. “work in progress; touching disrecommended.”

“I don’t care what it is,” Major Picker said. “It has no place in a guard barracks! All such experiments should be confined to the armory or to some secure off-site location! I’m sure all of this… this… thisness,” he added in exasperation, waving a hoof at spinning dials and rows of dry-cell batteries, “all of this is most unhygienic and unmilitary!” He swiped up a loose coil of electrical cable on one hoof. “I mean, look at the slovenly and careless-“

The inspector then found out firsthand that the cable in question had not been sufficiently insulated.

Once Megatron had dragged the inspector’s twitching body away from the experiment, Soundwave said, “observation; you were warned.”

The inspector coughed, and a perfect ring of blue smoke wafted from his mouth and up to the ceiling. “That experiment,” he gasped. “New weapon?”

“status: early exploration of principles,” Soundwave replied. “Weapon potential formerly rated zero; initial analysis under reevaluation.”

Major Picker rolled his eyes towards Megatron. “What’d he say?”

“He suggested a break in proceedings, sir,” Megatron said. “Perhaps some tea? Starscream, boil us some water! I understand you’re the only one of us competent to do that!”

One cup of hot tea and a vague explanation of Soundwave’s study of electronics later, Major Picker was ready to continue the inspection. Megatron only hoped the rest of the Decepticons were. He’d been glad for the chance to stall for time. On the one hand, two down (three if you counted Ravage’s sleeping cushion) with no serious trouble. On the other hand, six to go, in almost perfect ascending order of potential disaster.

Rumble and Frenzy had the room next to Soundwave’s. The inspector opened the door to reveal… two beds, rather hastily made, and a single small writing-desk with cushion. And nothing else.

That isn’t right, Megatron thought. Those two have accumulated a surprising amount of junk, plus their school books and supplies. Where is all of it?

Then he noticed the top and the bottom of the closet door bulging out, the latch just barely holding the door shut in the middle.

Aha. I see the Closet of Doom is universal, even in civilizations that don’t have tungsten-alloy sliding doors. Megatron had seen it so many times before, sometimes booby-trapped with explosives, more often loaded by subordinates more interested in clearing a space in a hurry than thinking of future consequences.

There was only one way to win: let someone else open the door. He’d learned that the hard way a few times. (Afterwards he’d made sure that the perpetrators had it even harder. The ones who survived learned to pack things better in the future.)

He didn’t say a word. He just took a couple of steps backwards, back out onto the balcony, and waited to see if the inspector had the same wisdom.

Based on how he was patronizing the two cassette warriors, it didn’t seem likely. “Not a bad attempt, boys,” Major Picker said, “but by military standards those beds still aren’t made. Watch this.” He pulled out a single bit coin from his saddle bag with his magic and let it drop on one of the beds. It landed on the blanket and stayed right there. “See?” he asked. “If you’d done it properly, with military corners on the sheets and blanket, that coin would have bounced!”

“So whadda we want with bouncing coins?” Frenzy muttered.

“Here, I’ll show you how it’s done,” the major said. “I’ll need a fresh blanket and sheets. I’ll just fetch them out of the closet.”

“Wha- NO, WAIT!” Rumble shouted.

Megatron closed his eyes, but he couldn’t close his ears to the click of the door latch followed by the white noise of an avalanche of miscellaneous junk pouring out onto the inspector. Things crashed, thumped, bashed, and bonked.

Once the sound subsided, the major said in a weak voice, “Boys, a word of advice: bedding gets hard and brittle if it’s left to sit too long. Take these to the laundry and have them done over.”

“Um… yessir,” Rumble said, obviously nonplussed.

Major Picker wobbled back out to the balcony, his ubiquitous clipboard following behind, showing a couple of battle-scars from its recent encounter with entropy. “Fine boys, captain,” he said, “but they could stand a lesson or two in organization.”

“I’ll see to it, sir,” Megatron said with a small amount of feigned pity. “Shall we continue?”

Thundercracker’s room came next, not that Major Picker could tell there even was a room. A wall of cloud filled the entire doorway and bulged out onto the balcony. “Whose room is this?” he asked sharply.

“Mine, sir,” Thundercracker said, stepping up from behind Megatron.

“Well?” Major Picker asked. “I’m waiting for an explanation!”

“Well, sir,” Thundercracker said with extreme reluctance, “I’ve been working with the town weather team, see, and… well, I wanted to try some things out in my room last night, and… um… things got… out of hand.”

“Out of hand?”

“Um. Hoof. I meant hoof.”

“Then you should say hoof,” Major Picker snapped. “But look at this! This is- this- this is absolutely intolerable! How did you possibly expect to sleep in all that?”

“Surprisingly well… sir?” Thundercracker spread a wing for demonstration.

The inspector shook his head. “That’s as may be,” he muttered, brushing aside the facts. “But this is hardly how a royal guard is supposed to keep their bunk! I mean, what would you say to Princess Celestia if she came in here right now?”

“Um… hi, Princess?” Thundercracker said. “Would you like some cloud, I made it myself?”

The only reason Megatron didn’t groan aloud is because Major Picker did.

“But I did make my bed,” Thundercracker said brightly. “Just a moment.” With a lot of grunting and effort the Seeker pushed his way through the cloud into his room. Over the course of the following minute a bed got pushed, in fits and starts, a few inches at a time, out into the balcony. The sheets and blanket were a bit damp from the humidity inside the cloud, but aside from that they were immaculate, right down to the proper military fold to the corners revealed when Major Picker lifted up a corner of the mattress with his magic.

The major didn’t speak. He nodded silently, made a couple of ticks on his clipboard, and moved on, leaving Thundercracker to begin shoving the bed back into his room.

Next came Skywarp’s room, and this time when the door was thrown open they found its occupant inside, lounging casually on a bed that he obviously hadn’t made since he had moved in. The rest of the room was littered with bowls, bags, snack wrappers, and other detritus. A couple of books lay open and face-down on the desk, pages creased and stained.

In short, Skywarp hadn’t even tried to put things in order.

“Well, well, well.” Major Picker actually put on a bit of swagger as he stepped inside. “Auxiliary guardspony Skywarp, is it?” He gestured a hoof around to encompass the entire room and asked, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Sure do,” Skywarp agreed. “Y’see, I figured-“

“Call me sir,” Major Picker cut in.

“Whatever. Sir.” Skywarp didn’t even blink. “I figured it’d be more impressive if I showed you how good I was at makin’ beds personally. I mean, anybody could make a bed, right? But this way you see for yourself it was me what did it!”

The inspector wouldn’t have bought any of it for a thimble of oil, and it showed. “I see,” he said. “Proceed, guardspony.”

“It’s like this,” Skywarp said, putting his forehooves on his bed. “Now c’mere and watch closely. Um, sir.”

Watching from outside the room, Megatron rolled his eyes as he watched the major actually step right next to Skywarp. Even a military inspector, he thought, can’t possibly be THIS stupid…

“It’s a special technique my drill sergeant taught me,” Skywarp muttered. “First you do THIS-“

There was a loud BANG sound as Skywarp, along with the bed, vanished. The displaced air sent Major Picker tumbling. Just as he got back on his hooves, another BANG knocked him off them again, leaving Skywarp there with his forehooves resting on a sharp, perfectly made (and slightly damp) bed.

“-and that’s all there is to it!” Skywarp finished, as if he’d never left the room.

“What?” The two teleportations, and the bangs they made, left Major Picker’s ears ringing. “What did you say?”

“I SAID I’M DONE, SIR!”

“Oh? You are?” Major Picker wobbled over for a closer look. He ended up leaning on Skywarp while his inner ear made adjustments. “You are! Well! I… um, I see!” He staggered on, bouncing off the doorframe as he swayed and wobbled out onto the balcony.

“That will be all, Skywarp,” Megatron said quietly. “For now.”

“Yessir,” Skywarp said, giving his leader a casual salute. “By the way, tell Thundercracker he’s gonna have a bit of extra housework to do.”

Megatron dreaded the final stop, and not just because the attic had come pre-cluttered. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were, in his estimation, the Decepticons least able to withstand a military inspection, or even casual scrutiny.

One could make an argument that Laserbeak was the worse of the two. He’d always been a petty thief even on Cybertron, and on this world that trait had hit the afterburners. That said, he was just smart enough to be able to steal without getting caught, which made it a talent Megatron had made use of on too many occasions to complain about it. There had been no actual complaints of burglary, but quite a number of “lost property” requests had been solved by a quick trip to the attic.

Even so, no one who had seen Buzzsaw’s art would ever argue Laserbeak was the greater problem. Even Megatron, who delighted in moments of sadism over a fallen foe, found some of Buzzsaw’s alleged “artwork” utterly disgusting. And some of his recent work included fallen Autobots whose final run-cycles had been spent on Buzzsaw’s interrogation bench. Explain that to the inspector? Not even possible.

Between the two griffons, Megatron had a mental image clear as a hologram of an attic filled chock-a-block with stolen goods and carvings of war atrocities. He only hoped the two of them had used the time to hide the most incriminating objects.

Major Picker made his unsteady way up the ladder, with some magical help from Megatron. Almost the instant the inspector’s head got through the hatch, he said, “My word!” Expecting the worst, Megatron followed, although it took him some moments to work out how to climb a ladder with hooves without breaking at least one limb.

When his own head rose above the hatchway, the first thing Megatron saw was a wood-carved sign: EVIDENCE AND LOST PROPERTY DEPT.

Laserbeak perched on the back of an exquisite divan, surrounded by things like sports equipment, bowls, odd bits of lumber, a rather beat-up lawn chair, some sort of counter-rotating blades on wheels with a handle for pushing, and various other odds and ends which obviously had caught Laserbeak’s eye at one point or another. He hadn’t made any effort to clean up whatever, unless you counted the mostly-full wastebasket. But every single item in his hoard now had a paper tag tied to it (including the wastebasket).

And then, once you looked into the other end of the attic, there were the sculptures… and none of them were anything like Megatron had expected. A couple dozen wooden copies of the steam train that served the town sat on display on the disused bunks. Larger sculptures of ponies- a pony in a straw hat, a pony with a doctor’s coat, foals and fillies dancing and playing with gleeful smiles- stood on the floor in front of the bunks. In one corner a rough worktable had been put together from bits of scrap lumber, and Buzzsaw’s tools lay atop it in perfect order.

“Welcome, welcome!” Laserbeak squawked. “Welcome to Lost and Found! I am Lost Property officer, yes! When things turn up I keep them here for ponies to find, Laserbeak does!”

“I see,” Major Picker said. “But… a couch? Really?”

“It was obstructing traffic!” Laserbeak screeched. “Public danger, yes, so I took responsibility for it!”

“Obstructing traffic? But then surely its owner would have been nearby.”

“No one in sight! It was just sitting in the middle of the road, obstructing traffic, yes!”

The pencil floating in Major Picker’s magic rose to scratch the back of his head. “But… if there were no ponies about… what traffic was it obstructing?”

“Er…” It took Laserbeak a moment to think of an answer for that. “Well, there would have been traffic eventually, yes! And when it came, it would be obstructed! So I removed the obstruction, Laserbeak did!”

“Oh. Well… I suppose that’s logical.” The major took a quick look at the tags, each of which bore a number. “May I see the entry book for these, Mr. Laserbeak?”

“Yes! Yes, here it is!”

Megatron slapped a hoof to his face as he noticed the book in question also had a Missing Property tag dangling from it.

The inspector didn’t seem to notice. He flipped open a page, then flipped the same page back and forth. “There are only eight entries here,” he said.

“Yes! Remaking the book!” Laserbeak said. “Accident with acetone can, very sad.”

“That would be my fault, Major, sir,” Buzzsaw’s much smoother voice called from next to his workbench. “I was helping audit the inventory, and I made the mistake of bringing the old book too close to my hobby supplies.”

“Say no more,” Major Picker said. He tapped one of the states, listening to the firm woody knock his hoof made. “Extremely lifelike work. I’m impressed.”

“I hope to make a go of selling these in the local market soon,” Buzzsaw said. “It’s hard for a guard to cover expenses when there’s no salary.”

“Hm, yes, I see,” Major Picker said. “The guard encourages hobbies, but this is rather excessive. I hope that you earn enough money to find your own studio at the earliest opportunity.”

“Such is my intention, sir.”

“Very good, then.” Major Picker took a quick look around the disused bunks. “If you would show me your beds, then?”

“Beds, sir?” Buzzsaw, looking a little lost, pointed directly up at the attic’s eaves and joists. A couple of bare pillows lay among the timbers. “We usually just perch up in the eaves. It’s hot, but we make do.”

“Oh,” the inspector said, obviously disappointed. “Carry on, then.” Turning back to the hatch, he said, “Captain Megatron, kindly show me back to your office.”

“I fear I need a moment with my… my troops, sir,” Megatron said smoothly. “I had not been told that the evidence book had been destroyed.”

“Ah. Then kindly meet me in your office, then. I wish to go over the results of my inspection with you.”

As the inspector very carefully worked his way back down the ladder, Megatron asked, “Where’s the rest of it?”

“Lord Megatron, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Buzzsaw said. “But I suspect it would be a good idea if Thundercracker left that cloud in his room until the inspector was gone.”

“Laserbeak helped! What we couldn’t get through Thundercracker’s window we left on the roof, yes!”

“Quite,” Buzzsaw said. “So on the whole it’s a good thing the inspector doesn’t have wings. And it would be better still if he left very soon, wouldn’t you agree?”

When will I learn, Megatron thought, to stop asking questions when I know the answers will only make me angrier? “Get whatever it is off the roof before some pegasus sees it,” he snapped. “And I want to hear of you getting your market booth by sunset tomorrow, understood?”

“Yes, Lord Megatron.”

“And you!” Megatron shouted, pivoting on Laserbeak.

“Yes, mighty Lord Megatron?” Laserbeak simpered. “Laserbeak is ready to serve!”

Megatron opened his mouth, thought better of what he’d been about to say, and settled for, “All of these things had better be re-obstructing wherever they were the next time I come up here. And if any pony reports you for theft, you will wish they hadn’t.”

“Laserbeak won’t get caught, I promise!”

“You had better not.” With that rather lame riposte, Megatron followed the inspector down the hatch.

Time to face the music.

“So, let’s review,” the inspector said. “Out of ten bunks, three not inspectable for reasons of not existing, two passing, two passing provisional, and three fails. Armory shows twenty-three failures of maintenance or provision. Platoon mess shows eighteen cleanliness violations and five dietary violations. In addition I discovered eight failures in record-keeping, seven cases of dereliction of duty, three illicit private businesses, three uniform code violations not counting your auxiliaries, and five cases of blatant endangerment of pony life and limb.”

Megatron kept his face steady as a granite cliff. “Sir,” he said, and nothing more.

“All in all,” Major Picker continued, “I’m afraid this inspection sets a record not surpassed in my lifetime, possibly not in the past hundred years.”

“Does it, sir?”

“Indeed it does.” Major Picker let the clipboard vanish back into his saddlebag. “So tell me… how do you do it?”

“Do what, sir?”

“How,” the inspector continued, sweeping a forehoof wide to encompass the guardhouse as a whole, “how do you manage to present the cleanest, most battle-ready, most militarily correct barracks in Celestia’s entire kingdom?”

The granite cliff broke and tumbled into the abyss. “The what?” Megatron gasped.

“I mean, look,” Major Picker said. “Not a trace of cake anywhere. No guards sleeping on duty in the corner. Actual beds being slept in and made, not just left in place! No gambling! No cider! No fraternization! Weapons and armor actually ready to be put on at a moment’s notice, not just piled up in a corner! And you scored fifty-seven percent, Captain! No barracks has scored above thirty-eight in the whole time I’ve been an inspector!”

“I… I don’t know what to say, sir,” Megatron said in perfect honesty.

“Well, I do,” Major Picker said. “You and your auxiliaries are wasted in this village, Captain. Granted that it was the princesses who assigned you here, if you wish a transfer to any other post in the kingdom, you may use my name as a reference! Golly, if only we had a half dozen of you…”

“I cannot leave my followers,” Megatron said, quietly but firmly. “We are still newcomers to Equestria, and as such we are still learning the ways of this kingdom. It would be… premature… to expose my troops to a more… populated setting.”

Major Picker sighed. “I suspected that would be the case,” he said, obviously disappointed. “But remember, if you change your mind, the service needs your skills.” He sighed again. “It would be nice if the Royal Guard were useful again for things other than standing very still and making sure nobody steals buildings.”

Megatron raised an eyebrow under his helmet. “Buildings, sir?”

“It’s been known to happen. This is Equestria, after all.”

“I understand, sir.” And to himself Megatron added, I understand the Royal Guard will be utterly useless to stop me, should I decide to conquer this land.

So I suppose today won’t be a complete loss after all.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Major Picker said, taking a tentative step towards the door. “Just a word of caution about one of your troops.”

“One, sir?” Megatron took a moment to get past the fact that only one of his warriors merited special mention. “If this is about Starscream, he has his uses-“

“Oh, no, Lieutenant Starscream is obviously a dedicated and intelligent officer,” Major Picker said. “We could use more straightforward and forthright ponies like him in the service.”

Megatron’s ears simply refused to believe they heard that, which was the only reason he was able to move on to his next guess. “Skywarp, then? Sir, trust me when I say he’ll-“

“Oh, every barracks has its share of troopers like him,” Major Picker said, casually waving a hoof. “Permanent discipline problem, but just useful enough to not dismiss. No, I meant Auxuliary Buzzsaw.”

“Buzzsaw, sir?”

“Yes.” The inspector stepped back over to the desk and whispered, “Quite frankly… well, there’s at least one artist in every troop, but usually their material runs a bit risqué. And there’s always a morbid touch to it, especially in units with recent casualties.” Major Picker shuddered and added, “That’s to be expected. That’s healthy. But all those happy, smiling, totally innocent faces up there? It’s unnatural. In fact it’s downright creepy. Keep a close eye on that one, captain. Word to the wise, eh?”

Oh, Major, if you only knew.

“Well, I’m off, then,” the inspector said. “Keep up the good work, captain!”

As the main guardhouse door slammed shut behind the inspector, Megatron remained at his desk, piecing together the outcome of the inspection in his head.

“Is he gone?” Starscream poked his head through the office door. “Can we stand down now?”

“Yes, Starscream,” Megatron sighed. “Clean up quickly, though; we might have to host Celestia’s guard detail when they arrive.”

“Of course, Megatron.” Starscream walked over to the desk and let a tray holding a cup and a teapot slide off his wing. “The rest of the tea. It shouldn’t go to waste.”

Megatron stared at the tea pot for several minutes, wondering if the town library had a book on poisons effective on ponies and spells to detect them.

If so, he wanted a look at that book right now.

Author's Notes:

Inspectors: absolutely necessary to the fighting efficiency of any armed force or police force, and hence universally despised by the rank and file of said forces.

And considering how legendarily useless the Royal Guard is, how much more so the inspector of same?

That said, I'd originally intended this to be much more tightly focused on Megatron and Megatron alone, but once I started planning out the chapter it became obvious it was going to be shenanigans for everybody. The nature of the plot made it unavoidable.

One other note: for the time being, I'm going to go ahead to 1/26 ("The Best Night Ever") and then begin brainstorming for Season 2 chapters. I've got blocks on most of the other episodes in Season 1 (and would still welcome volunteers with a decent track record of writing skill who'd like to take them on). Also, I have ideas brewing for the Season 2 opener.

Yes, Megatron meets Discord.

And neither of them is going to be happy about that.

1/26: Under a Hunter’s Moon (The Best Night Ever)

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A white unicorn and a red-and-white pegasus, both clad in the gleaming armor of the Royal Guard and trailing formal officers’ capes, stepped onto the landing at the top of the tower stairs. It had been a long, tense train ride from Ponyville, but Megatron and Starscream had arrived in Canterlot along with dozens of other ponies, all gathered for the Grand Galloping Gala. A brief meeting with Shining Armor, commander of the guard, had guided them to this tower, the personal quarters of Princess Luna… for what reason, neither one of them knew.

Megatron paused in his steps to look at the two guard who stood to either side of the door leading to the tower’s highest chamber. Primus, he thought, looking at the cat-eyed ponies with the tufted ears and the bat-like wings, these ponies have found a way to look even more disgusting.

But the moment lasted only a brief moment, and he kept his face firmly neutral as he and Starscream marched up to the doors. “Captain Megatron and Lieutenant Starscream of the Ponyville garrison,” he said, “reporting to Princess Luna as ordered.”

The two guards straightened up marginally- they were already standing at attention- and saluted sharply. “You may enter, sir,” one said, not even twitching his eyes from the formal stare-ahead pose.

Megatron returned the salute as slowly as the guards’ salute had been quick. “Come, Starscream,” he muttered, leading the way through the door. He ignored the muttering behind him, something about being treated like a pet turbofox. He’d heard it all before, and besides, the time to worry about what Starscream was doing was when the muttering stopped.

The interior of the chamber would have been dark in any case, with no windows except the opening to a balcony closed off by a curtain, but the décor left it much darker than anything needed to be. A handful of lamps struggled to light up dark purple walls, deep blue wall hangings, and bedding so purple as to border on the black. Even the crescent moons that decorated everything were only a less dark blue than the rest of the room.

Megatron couldn’t stop himself from looking back and forth, up and down, around the room. Every instinct he possessed told him he was in danger of an ambush. Even so, when Starscream bumped into him from behind, Megatron did not whirl on him; his instincts were under his control, not he in theirs. He settled for a quiet, “Starscream, you idiot, watch where you’re going!”

“I might if I could see around your mighty rump, oh mighty Megatron!” Starscream’s response dripped sarcasm like a cracked engine block dripped lubricant.

The door shut behind them. That actually helped a little, since it allowed the two Deceptiponies’ eyes to adjust to the low light. They walked towards the bed at the center of the room, an enormous bed that looked soft enough to swallow a pony whole. “Your Highness?” Megatron said quietly. “Reporting for duty…?”

“One moment,” a voice called from outside. The curtain covering the door to the balcony parted, revealing a purple sky studded with stars… and a dark figure silhouetted against that sky. “Come and see,” the figure said, remaining on the balcony.

Megatron walked carefully across the dark room out onto the balcony, Starscream following in his hoofsteps. The balcony afforded a magnificent view, taking in the castle below, other towers around them, a glimpse of the glowing city of Canterlot to the right, the dark rolling fields of the Equestrian plain far below on the left. And there, taking it all in, stood Princess Luna, considerably taller than she’d been when Megatron had last seen her, mane and coat darker than the pale violet filly he’d seen after Nightmare Moon’s defeat.

“Quite a commanding view,” Megatron said. “You can see the road from the city and the plains below. A lookout posted here could see virtually any conventional attack coming.”

“Really?” The princess turned away from the view to look at Megatron. “Is that all you see? Do you think of everything in terms of war?”

Megatron chose not to tell the truth- namely, that yes, he did see everything in those terms. To him the sole value of anything lay in whether or not he could use it for his own ambitions. But this wasn’t the time to reveal that bit of his philosophy to his first patron in this world. “We are in a castle, Your Majesty,” he replied carefully. “What is a castle for, if not preparation for war?”

Luna sighed. “When I was young,” she said, “when Celestia and I first became princesses, I was so looking forward to my first castle. I designed all the traps and secret passages myself. I never thought about it as a fortress. It was just a fancy home where princesses lived and worked. And I thought it was beautiful.” Her head bowed as she said, almost in a whisper, “And in the end, the only enemy that ever attacked that castle was me.”

Starscream chose that moment to put a screw propeller in the water. “Then I trust you had no trouble with the attack,” he said. “Since you knew all the secrets.”

Luna’s head jerked up, and a note of anger crept into her voice. “I am not proud of that moment in my life,” she said. “What I am is ashamed that, in my folly, I destroyed the thing I loved.”

“Ah. My apologies,” Starscream said, bowing. “I shall not inquire further.”

“No, you won’t,” Megatron agreed. “Leave us. Go guard the bedroom. If we want you, we’ll call.”

“As you command, Megatron,” Starscream said. “But I was hoping to visit the Gala this evening. I do so look forward to meeting new people.”

I’ll just bet, Megatron thought.

“I’m sorry I can’t arrange it tonight, Sir Starscream,” Luna said, “But if you wish it, I can ask Celestia to send you tickets for next year’s Gala. If no way home has been found for you by then, that is.”

“I would be most honored, Your Majesty,” Starscream said, bowing.

“Then ‘tis decided,” Luna said. “Now, if you please, go join the guards outside. I wish to speak privately with your…” She looked quizzically at Megatron and asked, “Are you his lord or his commander? I confess I cannot remember which it is.”

“With us it is one and the same thing,” Megatron said. “You heard her, Starscream. If you want to meet new people, here’s your opportunity.”

Starscream’s lips moved as if he intended to say something else, but nothing came out. With a snap to attention and a Decepticon salute across the chest, he walked back into the bedroom. A few seconds later the thick wooden door creaked open, then shut once more.

“Your lieutenant has a talent for putting his hoof in his mouth,” Luna muttered.

“As it happens,” Megatron replied wryly, “one of his greatest talents is his ability to persuade others with words.”

“Truly? That seems rather hard to believe, if you will pardon me saying so.”

Megatron affected a shrug. “Well, he talked me into hiring him,” he said, not adding the words, and also into not destroying him for a hundred and more attempted coups.

The quip drew a chuckle from Luna. “A sense of humor!” she said. “I must beg your pardon, Captain Megatron, but I had thought you completely incapable of laughter.”

Megatron was perfectly capable of laughing; he also knew full well that few others appreciated the humor, especially not his victims. “I have so few reasons to laugh, I fear,” he said as a deflection. “Remember, my people have been at war for-“

Something zipped up into the air from Canterlot town, exploding in the early night sky in a shower of sparks. More objects followed it, briefly lighting up the sky in colors and smoke.

“Distress flares?” Megatron asked. “No. Not flares… what’s the word?”

“Fireworks,” Luna said. “They announce the opening of the Gala. Look in the courtyard below.” She pointed over the railing at the dozens, possibly hundreds of ponies arriving on hoof, by carriage, or through the evening skies, all gathering in front of the doors to the castle’s main hall.

“I’d forgotten the word,” Megatron sighed softly. “It’s been so long since we had anything to celebrate.”

The fireworks came faster and louder, forming fancy shapes in the air- a heart, a bell, several kinds of flowers, and showers of brilliant silver sparks.

“So you no longer see the beauty in this?” Luna asked. “A clear starry night? Fireworks? Ponies singing without a care in the world?” She gestured down in the courtyard, where a large number of attendees were indeed singing and dancing in a beautifully choreographed pattern.

Megatron pondered his answer for a long moment. He didn’t want to waste lies, or to say something that would tangle him up at some point in the future. “For a very long time,” he said at last, “I have had to find beauty in a well-fought battle against a strong adversary, and not much else.”

There. That was true as far as it went, but it didn’t go even halfway to the whole truth. For Megatron battle was always beautiful (except when it went against him). But the most beautiful things to him had always been, since his first days in the gladiatorial pits, the cheers of an adoring but fickle audience and the cries for mercy of a broken enemy lying at one’s feet. Stars? Lights? Singing? He had no use for those things if they didn’t bring him a bot crushed under his heel.

But that was a side of himself he preferred to hide from these fleshlings… for now, at least.

“Then I hope your peaceful sojourn among us helps heal your wounds,” Luna said. “For myself, seeing my little ponies celebrating the night rather than fearing it soothes a thousand years of foolish jealousy and resentment.”

“So when will you go down and join them?” Megatron asked. “You summoned us to escort you, or so we gathered from Captain Armor.”

“I…” Luna bowed her head again, cringing away from the balcony’s edge. “I can’t. I’m not ready yet.” She gestured at the crowds below, at the city behind the castle. “In a way I am like you and your friends,” she said. “I have been catapulted into a new world, one thousand years into my own future. So much is different. Bigger. Louder. Strange.” Sighing again, she turned away from the balcony. “I still have too much to learn, to get used to, before I can show my face before them.”

“Then why did you summon us?” With a glance back into the bedchamber, he added, “And especially why him?”

Luna sighed. “I did want to have company for the Gala, even though I do not attend. And why should I not have the company of a handsome, well-built stallion such as yourself?” She said this with a warm smile, one which Megatron did not return. That tone of voice reminded him of events of long, long ago, events which still haunted his sleep cycles.

After a moment’s awkward pause, Luna continued, “I also wanted to hear how you were fitting in to our world. But I could not bother my sister about these things, so I could not send you a ticket to attend. The only thing I could think of to bring you here was a guard summons… and as it turns out, you cannot summon just one guard for duty. Guard assignments come in pairs.” She quirked an eyebrow and asked, “Is there some reason Lieutenant Starscream should not be here?”

“It… well…” Megatron found himself stammering. For all the uncounted lies and deceptions he’d pulled over other people in the past, something inside him rebelled at the thought of saying there was no reason why Starscream shouldn’t be there. But explaining all the reasons why he should have been anyplace else would take all night, and in any case most of those reasons entered territory he did not want Princess Luna to explore. “We tend to grate on one another,” he said, trying not to wince at how weak the words sounded even to himself.

“Perhaps I should have allowed you to pick your own choice for the second position,” Luna said. “Would that have made it better?”

No, it wouldn’t, Megatron realized the instant she said it. As annoying as Starscream was in close proximity, that paled to how infuriating it was to have him out of sight. He’d either be plotting some new takeover attempt or getting himself and the other Decepticons in deep slag. “It’s of no importance,” he said.

“I see,” Luna said. “So… how do you like Ponyville?”

Megatron thought about this for a long, long moment. “Permission to speak freely?” he asked.

“Always, Captain.”

Megatron nodded. “I do not think we shall ever be fully reconciled to this world,” he said, “leaving aside how alien it is to us, and how alien these bodies are to us. You said you effectively came here from another world yourself, but it’s not the same thing at all. You were displaced in time. For us time is still passing- here, and for all we know, also in the world we came from.”

“We know this,” Luna said. “But there is nothing we can do about it at present.”

“Tell me, Your Highness,” Megatron asked, “have you ever fought in a war? An actual war, with armies on each side and survival on the line?”

“Once or twice,” Luna replied.

“Then imagine your most deadly enemy,” Megatron said. “And then imagine yourself instantly transported to the other side of your world. Your allies and subjects fight and die without you, while that enemy seeks to destroy all you hold good and right. Would you be content to settle in to your new home and await rescue?”

Luna looked down. “I would not,” she said softly. “And I am sorry I did not think of it in those terms. I had thought being among us would be a respite. I see I was wrong.”

“Do not apologize,” Megatron said. “You are fortunate enough to know peace and prosperity in a well-ordered realm. But we come from a war with an enemy that will stop at nothing less than our total destruction. And we loathe every day we let the enemy go unchallenged.”

“I can see that now,” Luna said. “And Celestia and I wish to see you returned home as soon as possible. Unfortunately, thus far our researchers have turned up nothing promising.”

“Nor has Starscream,” Megatron sighed. “And not for lack of trying.” I hope. It would be just like that traitorous fool to find a way to return only for himself and to close the door behind him permanently…

“We will keep trying, Captain Megatron,” Luna said, hard determination shining through her voice. “On that you have my word. Our word,” she added, throwing in the royal Our.

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

The silence that followed stretched out, broken only by a last fusillade of fireworks overhead as the doors opened for the Gala. After the pops and bangs died down, Megatron looked over at Luna, who still looked a little downcast. “Thus it goes with us,” he said. “How so with you?”

Luna sighed. “I am learning quickly,” she said. “And my magic returns to me gradually, though not as swiftly as I would like.” Her horn lit up, and a crescent moon rose above the western horizon. “The moon has been returned to me. But other spells still elude me. And I am not yet regrown to my full stature.”

“I see,” Megatron said again, not having any other words to give.

“And of course Celly- I mean Celestia- my sister visits me several times a day,” Luna continued. “Sometimes I wish she would fuss over me a little less. But when she’s not here, I only have my guards and a tutor to speak to. I confess I am too frightened to leave the castle… too worried about what my little ponies must think of me.”

“It sounds like a lonely existence.” The instant the words came out of Megatron’s mouth, he wanted to call them back. The part of him that wanted more close access to one of the great powers of this world had briefly overridden the part of him that would have been delighted to never see a female of any species or make, ever again.

“It is,” Luna said, looking over to him with a small smile. “Why else would I send for you?”

Hypercoolant rushed through Megatron’s veins. He had the sensation of a bot who had just put an unwary foot on an antimatter mine and heard the click of the trigger. “I… what precisely do you desire of me, Your Majesty?” he asked.

“Only your company for an evening,” Luna said. “Just to be beside me as we admire the night.” She turned to look off the balcony again, at the long, long line of ponies filing up the castle steps. “Two creatures of darkness, enjoying a moment of peace.”

Megatron thought about this a moment. “If that is all you wish, I am at your service,” he said. “But…”

“But what?”

Megatron shook his head. “I honestly have no idea what to say to you.” That was unmitigated truth. He hadn’t had the opportunity to devise any scheme that would let him talk Luna into another rebellion or even get his cadre transferred here to the capitol… and he didn’t know if either of those things would be to his advantage anyway. That left him shockingly bereft of things to talk about.

“Then tell me of your war,” Luna said. “When you introduced yourself to Nightmare Moon, you called your faction the Decepticon Armada. It seems a peculiar name. Why do you name yourselves for deceit?”

“Ah.” Megatron had forgotten he’d let that slip. Curse this fleshling body and its lack of perfect memory access. “The first war I fought was against the race which had conquered our world and tried to erase our history, falsely claiming to be our creators. We began as a small, weak force, but we won our victories by subterfuge and surprise, deceiving our enemies until it was too late for them. For us the name is a name of honor, in memory of the liberation of our world- and, of course, many worlds that followed.”

“So this was not the same war?” Luna asked.

“No. The long war we have fought these past nine million years, that came later. I led my faction to power in order to overthrow first the invaders and then the corrupt government they left behind. I wanted a world where beings were ranked by their abilities and not merely by their function or rank, and where anyone was free to seek their own way to the limits of those abilities. And for a brief time, I brought such a world into existence, guiding it by my own hand.

“But there was another one of my kind- one of the few beings I ever called friend, who I trusted absolutely.” And he trusted me absolutely, the fool. “At first he supported me in my cause. But then he betrayed me, took up arms against me, and led a group of dissidents in an attempt to destroy all I had created.”

“That sounds terrible,” Luna said. “Who was this false friend, then?”

“When I first knew him he was Orion Pax, but today he has taken up a new name. Now he styles himself after the beings who first crafted our homeworld… Optimus Prime. He was a menial worker who had worked his way up into archival duties, studying our history and salvaging it from the damage the Quintessons did. He was an example of what I wanted to make possible for everyone… or so I thought.”

“What happened?”

So far (at least as far as he was concerned) Megatron hadn’t told any outright lies. Omissions, oh yes, so much omission. But “ranked by their abilities” was nothing more than a rewording of his true credo, “the strong must rule the weak.” The Quintessons had been decadent tyrants, and the Council of the Primes and their Senate had been utterly corrupt. And Orion Pax… yes, there had been a time that Megatron had honestly thought the two of them believed the same way. He’d been so wrong, of course, but for a time they had truly been close friends- or so Megatron chose to believe.

But now he would have to lie, and make it a good one. “Orion Pax thought the old regime could be reformed and continued,” he said. “I knew it was irreparable. So when I swept away the old regime, he took up arms against me. Now he thinks himself the sole rightful heir to our old traditions, and his Autobot faction seek to restore the old, unjust regime, to return our world to the one that kept a mining robot with no name trapped underground in the mines or fighting for survival in the gladiatorial pits. Now, as Optimus Prime, he has turned against everything he ever stood for when he was my friend.

“Since then we have been at war, I to preserve true freedom, he to destroy it. For nine million years we have fought, on too many battlefields to count. He and I, one on one, are equal in strength, I think, but his sentiment and love for the old ways blinds him. And yet, despite all the destruction he has caused, all the lives lost, there is something about him that makes his followers fanatically loyal. His blind courage inspires them to the same blind courage, and it is that factor that has allowed the war to stretch out beyond all sanity.”

“But you are both intelligent beings, are you not?” Luna asked. “Surely you could have made peace.”

Ha! Prime had tried that many times. For Megatron they had never been more than truces or opportunities for ambush. But only weaklings settled for less than total victory, and for all Optimus Prime’s courage and strength, he was too weak of purpose to see that. “He is bent on my total destruction, as the old regime was,” he lied. “He is a fanatic. A zealot. What basis for peace is there in that?”

“You might be surprised,” Luna said. “After all, this being was once your friend, was he not? Surely not all of who he was has been destroyed?”

Ha again. If anything, there was far too much of Orion Pax still within Optimus Prime. The bot had barely changed. The war had purified the former archivist to his most fundamental qualities- his courage, his moral code, his absurd sentimentality and humility- while burning away the innocence and ignorance of youth. “I think the better question is,” Megatron said quietly, faking a bit of sadness in his tone, “how much is left of the Megatron who was a friend to Orion Pax?” He shook his head. “No, too much has happened. Too much has been lost.”

“So I thought once,” Luna said. “When I rebelled against my sister, I had no such high cause as you had. I cared not about freedom or equality. I was simply jealous of my sister. I thought our ponies loved her and hated me. And so, in my petty jealousy, I succumbed to darkness and became Nightmare Moon.

“When I was freed of the Nightmare, I was afraid of my sister because of what I had done to her. I thought my crimes were too great for us to ever be reconciled. But she reached out to me, Megatron. Perhaps you could reach out to him.”

“I… I will consider it when I return home, Your Highness.” He would do nothing of the sort.

“I wish you luck, then,” Luna said. “And though I hope you find a way home soon, I also hope your time in our world brings you healing, Captain. I cannot imagine nine million years of unending war, or what such a monstrous thing could do to a person.” She put a hoof on Megatron’s shoulder, and he had to stiffen himself not to flinch away from it. “We are both creatures of darkness, you and I. But as I have learned to my sorrow, it is far too easy to be consumed by that darkness. I hope it does not happen to you.”

“Your Highness,” Megatron said, “it was almost a million years before I first saw the light of the sun. A million years deep under the ground, mining the core of our world, then fighting in the pits. I know the darkness quite well.”

Far better than you, soft pony princess, he thought to himself. Consumed by the darkness? I am the devourer, not the devoured.

And everything is fodder for my appetite.

The two of them stood on the balcony, one who had descended into darkness and been brought out from it, and one who had been born into darkness and never left it. Together they watched the stars, listened to the music, and then winced at the growing sounds of chaos from below as the Gala came undone at the seams.

“Do you think we should go down there and help?” Luna asked.

“I speak from experience when I say,” Megatron grumbled, “that sometimes it’s best to let the stupidity run its course. Wait until the building finishes collapsing before you move to pick up the pieces.”

Six young mares in seriously rumpled dresses galloped down the steps and out the castle gates below, as the angry shouts and loud crashing sounds continued.

And off in the statuary garden, on a particularly ugly statue, a tiny, tiny crack appeared in the stonework.

2/1: Weird Even For Fleshlings (The Return of Harmony Part 1)

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“Why we gotta report in to work anyway?” Skywarp grumbled, spreading his wings out to glide high over the thatched roofs of Ponyville. “The rain isn’t gonna happen until tomorrow, and we got the clouds banked up ready for that already. I could still be in bed.”

“Quit whining,” Thundercracker growled unsympathetically beside him. “You’re getting paid to do nothing unless something unexpected comes up.”

“Why couldn’t we have the rain today?” Skywarp asked. “Then I could have tomorrow off, and hey, three day weekend!”

Thundercracker shook his head. “Since when did a Decepticon warrior care about weekends?” he asked. “Did the war ever take weekends off?”

“Hey, look here, squishy-brains,” Skywarp said, pulling up to hover with his wingtips, a phenomenon totally impossible by any aerodynamic sciences but which came to him almost as naturally as laziness or violence. “Look at this. I got feathers, I got fur, I got whatever this stuff is hooves are made of. I got these huge white balls filled with water instead of optics. I got about a kilo and a half of fat where my main CPU and memory banks ought to be.”

“No change there,” Thundercracker muttered under his breath.

“And I can’t even transform!” Skywarp jabbed a hoof at himself, a dark purple pegasus hovering in the baby-blue cloudless sky. “So you wanna tell me what part of this looks like a Decepticon?”

“The part where Megatron knocks your head in if he thinks you’re going to desert,” Thundercracker said without a moment’s hesitation. His own wings flapped behind him, holding him in place without his even thinking about it. (He’d learned the hard way that thinking too hard about what held him up would lead to several exciting moments of not being held up by anything. Fortunately, he’d had literal ages of practice in not thinking too hard about things.)

Skywarp grunted. “You got a point there,” he admitted. “But even so, there ain’t no Autobots here. No Autobots, no war. So why shouldn’t I take it easy? And don’t say Megatron!” he added quickly before Thundercracker could do more than open his mouth.

Before Thundercracker could answer, something bright pink rushed by them, moving against the wind. “What the slag was that?” he asked.

“I dunno, but it wasn’t one of those ponies,” Skywarp said. “Looked kinda like a cloud.”

“Clouds aren’t pink here,” Thundercracker said. “Except at sunrise and sunset maybe. The natives don’t pollute enough for that.”

“Well, I don’t know what it was, but-“ Skywarp cut off what he was saying, and a moment later he vanished in a flash of light and a clap of thunder.

“What the-“

Thundercracker never saw the second pink cloud, much larger than the first, until it hit him square on.

With another bang Skywarp blipped back into place, half curled up laughing as he hovered next to a thoroughly ensnared Thundercracker. “Ha ha ha hah! You look like a complete screwjack!” He made a face and put his forelegs up behind his head into a triangle shape. “Dur dur, look at me, I’m a screwjack stuck in the mud while-“

The third pink cloud hit Skywarp and plowed into the cloud Thundercracker was wrestling his way out of. The two clung together in a pink, sticky, sodden mess.

“Who’s a screwjack now?” Thundercracker rumbled, adding a couple of soft sardonic chuckles.

“Aw, go take yourself offline, why don’t you,” Skywarp muttered, struggling to get a hoof loose from the pink gunk. “What the slag is this anyway? This don’t feel like any cloud I handled before!”

“Nothing in the training books about this,” Thundercracker agreed. He brought up a forehoof, still spattered with bits of pinkness, and sniffed it. “Smells kind of sweet,” he added. “A little like those things Starscream gets from that beige pony with the curly hair.”

“Sweet, huh?” Skywarp bent his head down and took a bite out of the cloud. Bits of it clung to his lips. “Hey, yeah!” he said, annoyance vanishing at once. “Now this is the kind of weather work I could really get into!”

“You already did, you moron,” Thundercracker said. “And don’t eat that! You don’t know where this stuff came from!”

“I don’t care where it came from,” Skywarp said. “But I know where it’s going!” He plunged his head back into the cloud, and Thundercracker heard enthusiastic sounds of pleasure coming from inside.

“Ugh,” he grumbled, resuming his attempts to get free. “I bet nobody is having a worse day at work than I am.”

From inside the cloud next to him Skywarp’s muffled voice shot back, “Best. Workday. EVER!”

Laserbeak pulled a little farther back under the edge of the thatched roof, clinging to a windowframe with the desperation of someone who has no desire to get wet whatever.

“What kind of weather is this?” he muttered aloud. “The weather ponies said tomorrow! The rain isn’t due until tomorrow! Now how will I spy on the ponies for Lord Megatron if they’re all indoors?”

Of course, not all of the ponies were indoors, at least not yet. A couple of foals and fillies who had gone outside to catch the brown droplets on their tongues were getting herded home by their parents. The rainbow-maned pony who ran the weather service was flying across the skies, chasing and being chased by the strange pink clouds. The library door slammed open, and Twilight Sparkle and her little dragon servant ran out, heading to the eastern edge of town, a book trailing along in a lavender glow of magic.

Laserbeak ought to be following. Laserbeak’s whole job was to keep track of what Twilight Sparkle and her friends were doing so he could report the important bits to Megatron. But Laserbeak had got a bit of that sticky brown rain on him, and it tasted just like that rich candy he’d stolen from that shop the beige pony with the two-tone curly mane ran. And, just like that candy, it sent his heart into uncontrollable spasms, making it all he could do to cling to the windowframe and not get any more of it on, or in, his body.

“Oh why?” he wailed. “Mechanoids don’t have allergies. Why do organics have to have allergies??”

Buzzsaw slammed the door to his little shop shut behind him, throwing the bolt on the workroom side instantly. What he’d seen was insanity, sheer insanity, and he refused to have anything to do with it.

The wooden toys and dolls coming to life- that Buzzsaw could have dealt with. After all, with all this “magic” stuff flying around this world, he’d half-expected such things to happen anyway. But the wooden trains bounced up and down, while the wooden balls whistled. The wooden farm animals had chased him around calling, “Mama! Mama!” while the baby pony dolls had mooed, baaed, and left little puddles of lacquer in embarrassing places on the shop floor. And the wooden puzzles had begun moving themselves, twisting and rotating through dimensions of movement that computer brains could only extrapolate and which his current cat-bird-thing organic brain simply couldn’t comprehend without gibbering.

So he’d retreated into the back of his little art shop… and only then, after he’d allowed himself a premature sigh of relief, did he remember that his workroom held, in addition to his tools and his uncarved stock wood, those carvings he made for his own pleasure.

He kept the enormous knotted stumps he used for that purpose under dropcloths, since the subject matter, were any pony to see them, would cause Barnyard Bargains to sell out of flammable illumination systems and implements of manual agricultural product transfer in about seven minutes.

But now the dropcloths moved.

With barely controlled horror Buzzsaw eased himself over to the nearest stump, grasped the dropcloth with a talon, and yanked it away. Four Autobot faces, which he’d lovingly carved to represent the moment in which he’d inflicted the maximum possible torment upon them, stared back at him. For some reason all four of them were wearing straw hats, which he had definitely not carved for them.

Laserbeak had carved one of the faces with an attached shoulder and arm raised to ward something off. Now that arm bent, produced a tiny bit of metal from nowhere, and brought it to that Autobot’s lips. It produced a tone of precisely 440 hertz. “Mi mi mi,” the face sang, matching the little pipe’s tone exactly.

And then, in perfect four-part harmony, the faces began singing:

Hello my baby, hello my honey,
Hello my ragtime gal…

Buzzsaw screamed, yanking the window open and punching the blackout shutters aside. Ignoring the sticky brown rain that fell, he launched himself out, pursued by the barbershop quartet of Autobot voices:

Telephone- and tell me I’m your ooooooooowwwn!!

Soundwave looked over the internal workings of the gramophone with contempt. The primitive audio reproduction device used a bimetallic spring under tension to power a series of gears that drove a turntable, upon which a fragile plastic disc with grooves cut in each face rotated under a needle. The needle’s vibrations ran through the swing arm up into a large megaphone with a diaphragm in the narrow end, producing a tinny, muffled replay of whatever had been on the disc. There wasn’t a single electronic component in it; it was analog from start to finish, on the same level (in Soundwave’s opinion) as other things organics made using stone knives and animal skins.

But repairing the device would take him four minutes and twenty-five seconds, for which he would charge an hour’s labor, which would pay for two days’ rent of his new electronics repair shop. That knowledge helped reconcile him to the work, as did the thought that at least it wasn’t yet another Yippy Doggy battery-operated toy whose owner had given them a bath or tried to feed them.

For all the discontents Soundwave had with his new non-mechanical form, in the privacy of his own head he admitted there were distinct advantages. Yes, he lacked opposable digits. But in their place he now had magic that gave him the ability to use tractor and pressor beams that would have required gigantic banks of energon-thirsty equipment back home on Cybertron, beams he controlled with the merest thought. Replacing a single cogwheel with a snapped tooth and then verifying that the spring itself was intact? He could do it faster here than he ever could as a robot.

Of course, when he’d been a robot he would only have touched such a primitive mechanism in order to insert a surveillance device, Even here and now, he’d upgraded his own secondhand gramophone with a proper (though still very analog and thus primitive) electric turntable and speaker system as soon as financially possible. His old self would have sneered at both, but if the unicorn Soundwave wanted to listen to records (and he did) those were his only options.

(He’d given the old gramophone to Megatron, who hadn’t complained. Megatron also, for whatever reason, enjoyed listening to pony music. Soundwave had learned not to lend his commander discs, however; either Megatron would keep them permanently, or else he’d smash the fragile vinyl out of disgust. Either way, once gone, never to return.)

A few twiddles of a screwdriver, a few cranks of the handle, and a flip of a switch later, the turntable spun according to specifications. Soundwave nodded in silent satisfaction, flipping the switch off again, levitating a test record onto the turntable, turning it back on, and then lowering the needle onto the outer groove.

Instead of the quiet orchestral dance music he’d expected, he heard only silence. The turntable turned, the needle rode securely in the record grooves, yet no sound emerged except the faintest hiss.

“malfunction: cause unknown,” Soundwave muttered to himself. “ruptured diaphragm: potential diagnosis.” With the turntable still rotating, Soundwave stuck his face into the gramophone’s large curved cone, using his magic to send a little light down into the bottom.

The wave of water knocked him back away from his workbench and ripped his red visor off his face. Shaking off the wetness from his face, he squinted his white, clouded eyes until he glimpsed a flash of redness over under a chair. They turned out to indeed be his glasses, which he levitated back over his eyes, restoring clear (though red-tinted) vision.

Meanwhile, water continued to splash out of the gramophone in irregular bursts, running down off the table and pooling on the floor beneath. Soundwave flicked the switch with his magic, and as the turntable stopped moving, the water stopped gushing.

Soundwave took a glance at the label on the record: Water Music by Georg Spigot-Handle. Ah. That explained why the machine was spewing water, though it failed to explain why it was spewing anything other than sound.

A quick logic chain in the back of his mind threw up a further realization: Soundwave had been lucky he’d chosen Water Music, and not another of his collection of records, such as Stalliongrad Overture for Symphony, Cannons, and All the Drums.

Soundwave was about to take the gramophone apart to see what had caused his drenching when the door to his workshop slammed open to admit Buzzsaw. “Soundwave, sir!” the griffon gasped, his normally smooth tones on the edge of raw panic. “Something horrible is going on in this town! I beg sanctuary from you, please!”

Two smaller quadrupeds shoved Buzzsaw aside. “Have you seen what the Primus is goin’ on out there?” Rumble asked. “All sorts of crazy slag!”

Soundwave looked at the two earth ponies who, along with Buzzsaw, had been part of his cassette arsenal. “time check: half past eleven,” he said. “scheduled information transfer: still in progress.”

“Nah, Cheerilee cancelled school today,” Rumble said. “Had to, after her chalkboard drawings began trying to draw on her.”

“explanation: illogical,” Soundwave said, cocking his head in confusion. Then he looked more carefully at the other foal, whose dark red body had gone a very light shade of red indeed. “query: what happened to frenzy?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Frenzy hissed.

“These weird pink clouds were chasing ponies around outside,” Rumble said. “Frenzy tried to fight one of ‘em.”

“I saw those on the way here,” Buzzsaw said. “Tell me, how did the fight go?”

Rumble pointed a hoof at the thick coating of pink spun sugar stuck in Frenzy’s fur. “How do you THINK it went?”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it!!”

“observation: insufficient-“

Soundwave cut off his observation at the sound of a long, horrifying yowl, a noise which sounded both dangerous and utterly pathetic at the same time. Stepping past the others, he walked through the small shop area of his new workplace and looked out the front door, where four extremely long stilts stood, ending in rather small black paws.

The yowl repeated, even more pathetically this time, and the stilt-legs wobbled awkwardly. Ravage’s head poked down below the top of the doorframe, conveying with a look an expression of miserable terror that Soundwave could not recall ever having seen on his compatriot before. Rivulets of brown liquid ran down the panther’s face, only adding to the picture of pathos before him.

“imperative: report to megatron,” Soundwave said. “operation: at once.”

There had been a time, a very long time ago, when Starscream had genuinely admired Megatron. He, a scientist and a member of the highest ranks of Cybertronean society, had been awed by the eloquence and drive of a mere menial, activated without even a cognomen of his own, only a serial number. It had been an honor to share in the glory of the Great Deception, to overthrow the old regime and seize power under his leadership.

That had been a very long time ago indeed. Since then Starscream had relearned his contempt for inferiors- and, in his mind, Megatron was incalculably his inferior.

Oh, not in raw strength- Megatron had the edge there, but only an edge, and that wasn’t that important. Asignificant number of Decepticons who either had more brawn or more firepower than either Megatron or Starscream, though most of them were combiners or titans. Despite that, those Decepticons didn’t give orders, they took them.

No, the true superiority lay in the qualities of the mind. And while Megatron had come up from the depths, his programming was still that of a mining device converted to warmaking. He saw anything and everything solely as a resource to be mined or an obstacle to be destroyed, and once he’d decided which he never re-evaluated his conclusion. He just plunged ahead, consequences be damned.

Time and again Megatron’s plans, holding together more by his force of personality than any actual chances of success, had collapsed under the slightest bit of Autobot interference. And each and every time, without exception, Starscream had been there to warn him. (He’d also been there to warn him against plans which had ended in stunning success. Naturally Starscream put that down to his own brilliance in ensuring the plans succeeded despite Megatron’s miscalculations.)

Starscream, on the other hand, possessed the algorithms of a true scientist, putting all potential new resources to the test and relying only on those which proved out for his purposes.

The other Decepticons frequently pointed out he also had the mind of a raging hypocrite, but Starscream turned a deaf receiver to that talk. They were merely jealous of his flexible intellect.

And besides, Starscream had no need for hypocrisy. He didn’t want to overthrow Megatron for the good of the Decepticons or of Cybertron. He wanted it because he wanted to rule, plain and simple. The obvious fact that he would make a better Decepticon leader only affirmed what he would have done anyway, and he felt no shame in admitting it.

After all, was not the Decepticon credo all about allowing the strong the freedom to rise as far as their strength could carry them? His attempts to dethrone Megatron were but the obvious logical outcome of Megatron’s own philosophy. It raised him up; it would also, inevitably, bring him down under Starscream’s boot.

The thought never failed to bring a smile to Starscream’s face, even now, when that face was made of flesh instead of flexalloy. That smile grew all the more because, he thought, the means of finally putting Megatron in his place were in his hands… well, his hooves.

His research into dimensional portals had turned up nothing more than fairy-stories for credulous juveniles, but in the process he’d run across various alchemical texts, one of which included an entire chapter of warnings about compounds which, when mixed incautiously, would produce a gas that could strip a unicorn of their magic powers permanently. The gas would dissipate in moments, but that would be long enough. All Starscream had to do was make a little bomb out of it, set it off under Megatron’s hooves…

… and, well, when he finally discovered the way to get the Decepticons back to their home dimension, one fewer Decepticon would be making the return trip.

He’d spent a week tracking down the critical reagent, a substance that only oozed from a particular crack in a particular cliff in miniscule amounts. He’d had to scrape all the dried remains off the cliff walls to get enough together for his purposes, leaving absolutely nothing but bare rock behind. That had been enough for two doses, and he’d used one dose to make sure his gas bomb functioned properly. The cloud of yellow gas had billowed up quite nicely and dispersed in less than half a minute, functioning with perfect precision.

Now he stood by his chemistry apparatus, watching as the reagent boiled with the other chemicals and, pressurized through a series of condenser coils, pushed the resulting chemical, drop by thick shining purple drop, from the outlet spigot into the bomb capsule. In just a few more minutes he would have the tool, the perfect tool, to overthrow Megatron once and for all. And then he, Starscream, Decepticon Air Commander, would be merely Starscream, Decepticon Commander, without qualifier.

Plip… plip… plip… plip…

… plip…

… pilp… pilp… pilp pilp pilp pilppilppilp…

Starscream blinked, his eyes glued to the capsule as, against all accepted physical laws, the solution began dripping upwards, leaping out of the capsule and back into the glassware. As he watched the process sped up, a loud slurping sound came from the apparatus, as if it were somehow drinking his bomb.

In moments the capsule was not merely empty but bone-dry, and every bit of the purple solution lay back in the crucible, not even boiling, despite the burner still going hot and fast underneath it.

What he’d just seen was impossible. There had to be some explanation. Was this some side-effect of the so-called magic of this world? Were there perhaps impurities that somehow negated gravity? Had some part of the apparatus cracked, allowing hot air to escape and thus creating a vacuum?

And why wasn’t the solution boiling anymore?

Curious, cautious, and careful, Starscream began tapping the side of the crucible, watching to see if the vibrations caused the solution to boil over.

“STARSCREAM!!”

The sound of Megatron in full rage caused Starscream to send his hoof straight through the glass crucible. There was a crash of glass and a thick burst of yellow gas that snuffed out the burner flame and spread to engulf Starscream. Then, mere moments later, the gas dispersed, leaving him with a slightly singed mane and a right forehoof covered with a thick, sticky purple residue.

None of that slowed Megatron’s stomping hoofbeats as he walked through Starscream’s improvised laboratory to confront his subordinate. “Are you responsible for this?”

As much as Starscream wanted to take time to figure out exactly what had gone wrong, never mind the time to mourn a foolproof scheme that had just literally gone up in smoke, he hadn’t survived nine million years of failed attempts to usurp Megatron without a better than average survival instinct. There were times when it was safe to snipe at Megatron or criticize him, and the murderous tone in his voice told the pegasus in no uncertain terms that this particular time was labeled Simper As If Your Spark Depended On It Because It Does.

“Responsible for what, Lord Megatron?” he asked, putting his best effort into appearing eager to please and ready for orders. (In reality it made him look more oily than a refinery in full operation, but he didn’t know that.) He glanced at the pink gunk clinging to every edge of Megatron’s guard armor and the brown liquid pooling in the ridges of his helmet. In a more honest tone he added, “What in the Nine Nebulas even happened to you?”

Megatron let out that particular growl of frustration which Starscream had long ago translated as I Really Want to Hit You But I Don’t Feel Justified Quite Yet, But That Could Still Change. “I suppose this would be beneath even you,” he admitted begrudgingly. “After all, unless this pink cloud is some sort of slow-acting poison, all it accomplished was to thoroughly humiliate me.”

Starscream took a sniff. “It smells like sugar and artificial flavoring to me,” he said. “In fact, I would almost say it’s cotton candy.”

“OF COURSE IT’S COTTON CANDY!” Megatron roared. “But since when does cotton candy fly around in clouds and rain chocolate?”

Starscream’s survival instinct was better than average, but not perfect. “I thought you liked chocolate,” he muttered, not in any snide or teasing way, just stating a fact.

“I like chocolate in a cookie,” Megatron hissed. “Or in one of those humbugs you keep buying from that female-“

“Bon-bons,” Starscream corrected. “Humbugs are boiled sugar candies.”

“AS IF I CARE!!” Now Megatron did take a swing at Starscream, but it was half-hearted enough that Starscream was able to jump out of its way. “My point is, I like chocolate in food! I do NOT like chocolate ON MY HEAD!”

Starscream hurriedly shifted back into simper mode. “And what person would, Lord Megatron?” he asked. “I can’t think of anybody who…” He trailed off and added, “Well, there is that one pony who seems insanely interested in jams and preserves and other sticky things…”

Megatron shuddered. “Don’t remind me,” he said. “In any case, I’m going to the showers to get this…” As his anger cooled, Megatron began noticing things again. He looked at the partially smashed equipment and asked, “And just what have you been doing in here all morning?”

Starscream’s mind raced for a lie, any lie, even a stupid one. He waved his hoof… his purple-coated hoof… which had a suspiciously sweet smell…

Despite all common sense and self-preservation instinct, he took a lick. It was not poison.

“Apparently,” he said, half as much to himself as to Megatron, “I was making grape jelly. Poorly.” He took another lick, then tried to fling the gunk off his hoof to no effect. “Whatever that bizarre pony gets out of this stuff, I don’t see it.”

Megatron sighed. “Starscream, I say it so often and still can’t say it enough: you’re an idiot.”

Starscream took one final look at his hoof, coated with the final remains of his latest failure to get rid of Megatron, and sighed. “Yes, Lord Megatron,” he said.

Before anything more could be said, voices echoed from the assembly hall of the old guardhouse. “Megatron!” “Lord Megatron!” “Hey, Megatron!”

Megatron sighed again. “And I suppose this is all my other warriors come to tell me about everything I already know.” He shot a glare at Starscream and added, “Unless you think I’m mistaken?”

“I may be stupid,” Starscream said, “but I’m not that stupid.”

The assembled Decepticons watched as a lone pegasus swept the skies above Ponyville clear of pink clouds, herding them all into a tight ball off east over Sweet Apple Acres.

“Well, that’s that,” Starscream said. “Though it does stick in my air intakes to be grateful to these namby-pamby ponies.”

“Hmmmmm,” Megatron said, still looking at the sky. “I wonder about that.”

“What’s to wonder?” Starscream asked. “The sky is clear. It’s no longer raining chocolate milk or whatever that was. And the other effects…”

Ravage yowled disconsolately again, leaning against the wall of the guardhouse for support. His head rose level with the second-story windows.

“I think I can still hear singing from my studio,” Buzzsaw said.

“Exactly,” Megatron said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know it isn’t over yet. Not that easily. Buzzsaw! Laserbeak!”

The two griffons dropped to the ground side by side, saluting smartly. “Yes, Lord Megatron?” Buzzsaw asked.

“Go monitor Twilight Sparkle and her friends,” Megatron said. “If this phenomenon has an intelligent cause, then no doubt they will end up at the center of it all. When you have something to report, send Laserbeak back here with it.”

“As you command, Lord Megatron!” Laserbeak squawked, and the two griffons lept back into the air, flapping their wings hard in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. A few moments later they turned around, flying almost exactly the opposite way, as six female ponies galloped (or flew) towards Ponyville’s train station.

“Starscream,” Megatron continued, “go to the library. See if you can find anything in the history books that refers to random acts of… of… randomness.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Starscream said, voice filled with misgivings. “Though given how little these ponies value cause and effect as it is, it will be difficult to pick out this kind of chaos from what they consider normal.”

“Skywarp, Thundercracker,” Megatron continued, “air patrols. Notify me at once if those pink clouds return, or if some other bizarre phenomenon appears.”

“Yeah, sure, Megatron,” Skywarp grumbled.

“Pardon me, sir,” Thundercracker put in, “but could we take a shower first?” He stretched out a blue wing as far as he could, given the spiderweb of gunked-up cotton candy strung from his feathers.

Megatron sighed. “Yes,” he said. “After me.” Turning to walk back into the guardhouse, he muttered, “I cannot believe how much this stuff itches under my armor!”

And somewhere too far away for the Decepticons to hear, but barely an eyelash’s width distant, a spirit of mischief laughed, as row upon row of cotton candy clouds gathered on the horizon…

2/2: Discorded Decepticons (The Return of Harmony Pt. 2)

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“Well, that isn’t good.”

Buzzsaw and Laserbeak peeked down through a tiny crack in an otherwise overcast sky at the crater which had once been Canterlot Castle’s hedge maze. At the center of the crater stood five bickering ponies and one bizarre creature who, Buzzsaw thought, would have been right at home among the Terrorcons, except that he smiled and laughed far too much. Come to think of it, he mused, smiling and laughing at all would probably disqualify anyone from joining the Terrorcons except maybe as lunch…

In any case, from what the two Decepticon spies had overheard, the bizarre creature had apparently just defeated Twilight Sparkle and her little friends. Indeed, the pink clouds were rolling in from all sides beneath them, and they could hear the sound of chocolate rain striking the ground below.

“Ooooh, Lord Megatron certainly will not like this,” Laserbeak agreed. “But I’m sure he’ll come up with a plan!”

“I certainly hope so,” Buzzsaw agreed. “But he needs to know what’s happened in order to make a plan. Get going and tell him everything we saw. There’s not a minute to spare!”

“Oh, I’m sure you could spare a minute for little old me…”

There came a brilliant flash of light, and the owner of the new voice hovered there next to the two griffons on their cloudbank. Laserbeak squawked, jumping with shock and almost falling off the cloud and into the mass of floating cotton candy below.

Buzzsaw overcame his own shock first. “What are you waiting for?” he barked. “Fly, you fool!”

“Oh, I don’t think either of you are going anywhere.” The monstrosity raised a lion’s paw and somehow snapped its fingers, and ropes flashed into being around Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, binding limbs and wings together into complete immobility. “Not until dear Uncle Discord has a chance to get to know you.”

Buzzsaw made one spasmodic effort to break the ropes, but he’d already expected to fail, and he wasn’t surprised when he did. “Do what you will with us,” he said, “but no matter what, we won’t talk!”

“That’s right!” Laserbeak squawked. “We are eternally loyal to Lord Megatron, yes! Laserbeak would die for Lord Megatron! Remaining silent for Lord Megatron is so easy by comparison, yes! Compared to the many other things Laserbeak would do for Lord Megatron, not talking is so much simpler! Why, I could spend all day not talking even if Lord Megatron were not involved, but since he is, then Laserbeak will not talk twice as hard! No one is better at not talking than-“

With another little flash of light, a bandanna appeared and wrapped itself around Laserbeak’s beak, clamping it shut. “I think you two not talking is an excellent idea,” Discord purred, his smile now completely gone. “Especially not you.”

Laserbeak continued to grunt and whine through his clamped-shut beak. The gag might muffle him, but it didn’t stop him.

“Now, let’s have a good look at you two,” Discord said. “The last time I was here, that killjoy Celestia had run all the griffons out of her little ponies’ territory. And it doesn’t look like things have changed that much, so…” His red eyes with yellow sclera rippled, producing swirls of red and yellow that, somehow, captivated Buzzsaw’s gaze. “… let’s have a close look…”

Buzzsaw blinked, and for some reason his head hurt. What had just happened? He had a vague sense of time having passed, but how much? He wanted to rub his head, but his talons were still bound by that rope. And the monster was still there, laughing at him.

“Oh, ho ho ho!” Discord chortled. “Interdimensional tresspassers! How delightful! Why, your mere presence in this reality probably sped up my release by a good two years!” He lunged in more closely, his fanged face bare millimeters from Buzzsaw’s beak. “So how’s the new body? You know everything that crosses the boundary gets adapted to fit in here.” He waved a clawed hand similar to Buzzsaw’s own and added, “Of course, you weren’t lucky enough to get such a wondrous form as mine.”

Buzzsaw, unlike Laserbeak, could keep from making noise when he wanted to. He just stared back at Discord, refusing to flinch.

“Ah,” Discord said, “not a fan of the old mix-and-match, are we? I suppose you prefer things nicely sorted out.” With a toothy grin he raised his lion’s paw hand again and said, “Well, just as a welcoming gift, I’ll straighten that out for you.”

The claws snapped, and there was a flash of light.

The ropes were gone! Buzzsaw stretched his back, his four paws digging into the soil beneath him. It felt so good to be free again.

Next to him there was a buzzard of some kind. For some reason it felt familiar, especially the black head. It kept squawking and flapping its wings, dancing from one foot to the other on the ground, while that strange creature floated in the air and laughed and laughed.

“Oh, no need to thank me!” he said. “It was my pleasure, I’m sure!” With more cruel laughter, it vanished in a flash of light, leaving just Buzzsaw, the buzzard, and the overcast sky above.

For a moment Buzzsaw felt like he was forgetting something, something important. He almost had it, and then it flittered away on a wave of drowsiness. Whatever it was, it could wait; right now he felt like a nap.

He pawed the dirt, carefully settled himself down, first by the haunches, then onto his side. He curled himself up, swishing tail just in front of his nose, and closed his eyes.

Not even the frantic squawking of that annoying buzzard kept him from falling asleep.

“Hey, Thundercracker,” Skywarp said as the two pegasi soared high over Ponyville. “I been thinkin’. Suppose we do see somethin’ weird. What the slag do we do about it?”

Thundercracker had been thinking the exact same thing, but he knew better than to say anything out loud about it. “We report it to Megatron,” he said simply. “And then he decides what we do about it.”

“Yeah, but what’s Megatron gonna do about pink candy clouds?” Skywarp asked. “I mean, he’s the big boss bot, obviously, but he ain’t Primus reborn or nothin’ like that. What’s he gonna do, stand and shout at the clouds until they go away?”

“More likely he’ll shout at you,” Thundercracker said. “Then he’ll grab you by the throat, give you a little squeeze to show he cares, and then throw you at the clouds, just because.”

“Hey, why would he do that?” Skywarp asked. “I’m a loyal Decepticon warrior! I’m one of his best fighters!”

“Yeah, and you’ve got a mouth that could swallow a red giant,” Thundercracker said. “And you don’t know when to shut it. So just keep your optics peeled, and if we see something, we-“

Night fell with an audible thud, leaving the two transmogrified Seekers in absolute darkness.

“Skywarp?” Thundercracker asked, immediately bringing himself to a hover. “Skywarp, where are you?”

Silence.

“Skywarp, this isn’t funny, now where are you?”

More silence.

“So not only are you too dumb to know when to shut up,” Thundercracker muttered, “you’re too dumb to know when not to shut up, too.”

“No I’m not,” Skywarp snapped. A marginally less black part of the blackness moved a bit.

“Thought that’d do it,” Thundercracker said, carefully not making his breath of relief audible. “I’d call this just the kind of weirdness we should report to Megatron, right?”

“Yeah. Just one question, bright bot,” Skywarp said. “How do we see to even find Megatron?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” a third voice cooed in a tone that both former robots found all too familiar, even if the particular voice was a stranger. That tone of voice had been used by superior officers all too many times just before giving orders that even they, never the fastest processors in the mainframe, knew were sparking insane. “I’ll fix that for you in a jiffy.”

A trio of little flames ignited in front of them, and they blinked at the sight of an antique candelabra held by a bizarre serpentine mish-mash of all sorts of organics. His mismatched wings were far too small to lift it by any sane system of aerodynamics, but the five hundred or so feet separating the three of them from the ground below didn’t seem to disturb him in the least.

“And what do we have here?” the thing asked, swirling around the two of them like a flying serpent. “More extradimensional interlopers! But you were turned into ponies instead of griffons! How curious! How intriguing!” The creature’s smile became a frown instantly. “How BORING.”

“Oh yeah?” Skywarp snapped. “How’s this for boring?” For the briefest instant a flash of light drove back the unnatural night, and then it snapped back, with Skywarp nowhere in it.

“Oh, well well well!” the creature chortled, smiling again. “A pegasus with a magic trick! That’s totally different! It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything like that!” He shrugged and added, “But I spent over a thousand years as a statue, so I haven’t seen much recently except topiary and pigeons.” He raised his right hand, which kind of looked like one of Ravage’s paws to Thundercracker, and made a finger-snapping gesture.

Light flashed again, and Skywarp hovered in front of them once more. “Wha-hey!” he shouted. “How’d I end up back here??”

“Oh, don’t ask silly questions like ‘how’,” the creature said. “Just live in the moment. After all, aren’t we having a fun time, getting to know one another?”

“’Cracker, why didn’t you run?” Skywarp snapped.

“You said it yourself,” Thundercracker said. “Where am I going to run to? I can’t see anything any more than you can!”

“Oh, that’s right!” the creature said. “I did promise I’d take care of that! Discord, you silly old draconequus, you’d lose your own head if it wasn’t tied on.” At that quip his head inflated into a sphere, floating slowly away until brought up short by a cotton twine tether.

“Warp out again,” Thundercracker continued. “One of us has gotta get to Megatron!”

“I’ve been tryin’,” Skywarp said, throwing his forehooves up in frustration. “Whatever he did to bring me back took my warp function offline.”

“Well, of course,” Discord said. “I’d hate for you to run off too soon.” He tapped his chin and thought, “I could turn you into lamps, or maybe fireflies… yes, fireflies made out of real fire! That’d get the locals excited to see me, especially with all those thatched-“ His eyes went wide. “Oh, no, wait! I’ve got it!” He grinned wickedly, baring all his teeth from his single mismatched fang back to the corners of his mouth. “Yes, that’s perfect! Oh ho ho! So appropriate!”

Thundercracker couldn’t take it anymore. “What are you talking about?”

Discord tapped his temple, and his red-and-yellow eyes turned into lines of analog-transmission static. “Well, you two are from another dimension,” he said. “An alternate reality, a sort of parallel to this one. But every world has millions of nearly identical probabilities, so all I need to do is reach into phase space…” With his left clawed hand he opened up a warp portal whose top looked a lot like a square-root symbol. “… and pull out an alternate you that solves my problem.”

He stuck his lion-paw hand into the portal, rummaged around a moment, and pulled out two tiny specks of light. “And here we are!” he shouted triumphantly, and then with a flick of his thumb he shot the sparks like marbles at Skywarp and Thundercracker.

There was a horrible moment in which Thundercracker felt something more fundamental than anything he knew existed get twisted… and then turned inside out.

Then the night parted under the glow of Thundercracker’s fur.

Apparently some alternate Thundercracker, instead of being happy with blue and white, had seen the entire color palette of pony-kind and decided he had to have them all, spattered across his body so that any two colors that touched clashed so hard that photons fled in disgust.

“Oh, my goodness!” That was Skywarp’s voice… and yet some half-remembered thought told Thundercracker that the sincere concern for his well-being did not belong in that voice. “What did he do to you, Thundercracker?”

“Do to me?” Thundercracker asked. “I feel just fine. What happened to you?”

“What? You mean besides my missing the final chapter of Wither’s Heights?” Skywarp sighed. “I’m as well as I’ve ever been. But you looked dizzy for a moment. Did your organic gyroscope substitutes fail on you?” With a little smirk he added, “Or are you being disoriented by your paint job… again?”

“Hey!!” Thundercracker shouted. “My paint job is avant-garde! I bring hope and inspiration to everyone under the yoke of tyranny!” A little guiltily he added, “It’s not my fault nobody else has my color sense.”

Discord curled up laughing and laughing. “Oh, yes, yes!!” he shouted. “Exactly as chaotic as I’d hoped!” Recovering slightly, he added, “Now I have a lot of things to do, chaos to spread, you know how it is, but I’ll be back to have a closer look at you and your friends very soon!”

In a flash of light he vanished, leaving the two Seekers in a bubble of light created by the visible electromagnetic spectrum going to civil war on Thundercracker’s fur.

“Well, if you’re all right,” Skywarp said, “what are we even doing out here? It must have been important, but I can’t remember.”

“I don’t know either,” Thundercracker said. “Maybe we were going to go find some poor ground-bound pony and give them the joy of high-speed flight?”

“Oh, that again?” Skywarp shook his head. “Your fuel pump’s in the right place, Thundercracker, but those poor souls never appreciate it, you know.”

“That’s because I kept doing it wrong,” Thundercracker said. “But this time I’m going to ask nicely first.”

Skywarp nodded sagely. “That should do it,” he agreed cheerfully. “Let’s go test it out so I can get back to my books. Romance and drama are too important to put off, you know.”

“What’s goin’ on out there, Soundwave?” Frenzy found himself huddled as close to the floor lamp in Soundwave’s workshop as he could get without knocking something over. The light didn’t even extend to the end of the room before getting swallowed up by the darkness. “Not that I’m scared or nothin’. I just don’t like not bein’ able to see what I punch.”

Ravage yowled agreement from the darkness in the corner of the room. He’d given up walking on his stilt-tall legs. Now he stayed curled up on himself, waiting and hoping for the insanity to be over.

Soundwave and Rumble looked out the windows into the pitch-black streets of Ponyville. Soundwave had pushed his red goggles up over his horn; in this darkness his defective eyes actually worked a bit better than in the light. “discrepancies in reality,” he said. “inexplicable phenomena: unable to comprehend.”

“I think I saw a bunch of ponies go past down the street,” Rumble said. “Looked like they were ridin’ an express conveyor field. Or like… what’s that thing the humans do? Ice skatin’?”

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the darkness departed, replaced by brilliant early afternoon sunlight. Soundwave stifled a grunt of pain, squinting his sensitive eyes shut until he could get his glasses back in place.

“Oh, thank the Allspark that’s over!” Frenzy blurted, not caring who heard it. “I’m gonna go get Megatron! He’ll get us out of this!”

As Frenzy bolted for the back door, Soundwave shouted, “stop at once! departure: not recommended!”

Frenzy paid no attention, swiping at the door latch and throwing the door open without breaking stride. An instant later his forehooves scrabbled for that same door latch, grabbing on with all his earth-foal strength as his rear legs left the ground and swung out over empty air. He reached the apex of the swing, fell back like a pendulum, and swung into the shop, slamming the door back shut behind him. “The ground,” he gasped. “Some slag’s taken all the ground away!!”

“Yeah, we noticed,” Rumble said, not turning his eyes away from the windows. “About half the houses in town are floatin’ in air like hoverbarges. It’d kinda be like home, except for the part where we can’t fly anymore.”

“Yeah. I noticed that.” Frenzy managed to unwrap his hooves from the doorlatch. “I hate bein’ an organic. Hate it, hate it, hate it!”

“Oh, isn’t that so sad?” A flash of brilliant light lit up the room, and Discord appeared, wearing a pair of white pants and a plaid shirt with a pocket protector and a couple of pens in the breast pocket. “Trapped in a body that isn’t yours? Oh, I do SO know how that feels!” In another flash of light, the strange clothes disappeared, and a chaise-longue burst into being under Frenzy, the little red pony bouncing up on its springs. “Lie back and tell Dr. Discord all about it.”

“Who the slag are-“

“frenzy; rumble: silence,” Soundwave said. “hostility detected; do not engage.”

“Hostility? Hostility?” Discord put on a look of exaggerated despair. “Oh, you wound me, my dear alien, you truly wound me.” A large dagger appeared in the creature’s chest, but when Discord pulled it out it made a suction-cup sound, and when he tossed it aside it bounced like rubber before it vanished. “And just when I was going to turn you back into your proper forms, too.”

“Our what??” Rumble asked. “You mean you can-“

“Of course I can,” Discord said. “Can and will!” He snapped his fingers, and a burst of light flooded the vision of the three Decepticons.

A blue cassette player and three loose cassettes clattered to the floor.

“There! Now isn’t that so much better?” Discord cooed. “Now you match the surroundings! What better place for electronics than an electronics shop?”

One of the switches on the cassette player clicked on its own. A burst of music rattled from its miniature speaker, along with a baritone voice singing, “Caught in a trap-“ A burst of static, and then the music changed, along with the singers. “Can’t help myself-“ they sang, and then the switch clicked itself off again.

“Well, yes,” Discord admitted. “It’s not really that chaotic, if I’m honest with myself. Not my best work. But when you can’t get chaos, you have to settle for irony.”

With a few chuckles, building up to loud diabolic laughter, the creature vanished, leaving the player and the cassettes to lie on the floor, helpless, inanimate, but still fully conscious of what had just happened.

“Why has nobody reported in?”

Megatron paced the floor of the guardhouse’s assembly hall. Occasional drops of chocolate milk dripped down from the ceiling, in exactly the same way the rain never did. “I thought I made my orders crystal clear,” he snarled. “Report anything strange to me! Well, I can’t count all the strange things going on outside! So where are my loyal Decepticons??”

Starscream continued paging through the half-dozen history books he’d taken from Twilight Sparkle’s library. “At a guess, this Discord creature got to them first,” he said. “The pony records are maddeningly vague, but they all agree on one point. Discord was absolutely unstoppable before the princesses used the Elements of Harmony on him.”

“I don’t like that at all,” Megatron hissed. “I don’t like being defenseless except for whatever Twilight Sparkle and her friends might do.”

“It does explain why they took the express train to Canterlot,” Starscream said.

“Yes,” Megatron agreed. “But that merely proves my point. If this Discord is at all intelligent, the first thing he will do is find a way to make sure the Elements can’t be used against him a second time.” Peeking through the window shutters at the world outside, he added, “And judging by the pink clouds, the floating buildings, the streets paved with soap, and the ballet-dancing buffalo, I strongly suspect he has already succeeded.”

“Only suspect?” The guardhouse’s front door stayed perfectly still, but the wall next to it swung up to allow Discord to walk in. As the wall slammed back down behind him, he added, “You underestimate me, my dear Megatron.”

Megatron tensed, shifting his hooves for perfect balance. “And how do you know my name?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s on everybody’s lips, isn’t it?” Discord said. He held up a sock puppet made to look like Laserbeak’s head. “We are loyal to Lord Megatron, yes!” he said in a passable imitation of the griffon’s voice. Another sock puppet, this one vaguely resembling Thundercracker down to the buzz cut mane, popped up. “One of us has gotta get to Megatron!” A third sock puppet, somehow, rose up, with a little red pony face. “I’m gonna go get Megatron! He’ll get us out of this!”

“My Decepticons,” Megatron hissed, and then the hiss became a roar. “What have you done with my Decepticons??”

“Who, me? I’ve just had a little fun!” Discord grinned, tossing the sock puppets away. “And we’re going to continue to have fun, now that the Elements of Harmony are just vaguely marketable costume jewelry!”

Megatron took a step forwards. “And how did you accomplish that?” he asked.

“Oh, that was simple,” Discord gloated. “All I had to do was reverse the polarity of a few ponies’ personalities. You know, make them the exact opposite of what they were. It’s surprisingly easy.” In an instant Discord had an arm wrapped around Megatron’s shoulders, and the burly unicorn had no idea how he’d gotten there. “In fact, most of them helped me do it to them. It’s so easy to twist a pony mind, especially when they’re brittle.”

“You shall not find me so easily turned,” Megatron growled, shrugging his shoulders and knocking Discord’s arm away.

“Oh, really?” Discord asked. “Well, I think you’re in for a surprise.” He held out a single claw of his bird-foot hand and, with a clicking noise like a switch, pushed down on the tip of Megatron’s horn…

For all his power, Discord was no god. He was not omnipotent nor omniscient. He could look across dimensions if he so chose, but a universe is a very large place even if you know what you’re looking for. And, more to the point, the Lord of Chaos, being incapable of empathy, had absolutely no ability to see inside the minds of his victims, even while he was twisting those minds for his amusement.

If he had been able to see inside the mind of Megatron, he would have seen truths that even Megatron refused to admit.

Chief among them was this: Megatron, at his core, was a coward.

Not in any physical sense, of course. Megatron reveled in combat. For all his skills as a plotter, a deceiver and a tactician, he was still most at home in one-on-one combat, to the point that he often sought it out even when the smarter play was to avoid battle and let his warriors do all the fighting. He felt in control when in battle, as he seldom did out of it.

But this physical courage rose out of fear and hatred. Megatron feared others- practically any others, but the more different from himself the more he feared them. He especially feared anyone with power, because he expected that power to be used on him as he would use it on others- that is, as a tyrant. And so his entire existence had been a battle to gain power, and to eventually be the only being possessing power, because only then, with all those he hated and feared crushed under his heel, would he be safe.

For that same reason he made a career of plots, deception, lies and intrigue. He broke promises without a moment’s thought because his enemies didn’t deserve trust, and to Megatron everyone not under his control was the enemy. He chased scheme after scheme that promised absolute victory, ignoring the insane risks of some of the plans, blinded by the illusion of battles that could not be lost. And, of course, when those schemes failed he fled the battlefield, even when his side might still have pulled out a victory, because in the depths of his mind failure meant death or enslavement- because that was what he would do with the situation reversed.

These were Megatron’s weaknesses, and also his strengths. His particular form of cowardice and self-deception, plus his innate advantages, had made his entire career as a tyrant possible.

Discord knew none of this, and his chaos magic reversed this core aspect of Megatron’s personality. Fear of the other flipped to love. Self-preservation became self-sacrifice. And Megatron’s cautious plotting nature submerged under an instinctual need to react immediately against evil, even without a plan, even without a hope, risking everything merely for a chance, no matter how slender, to save others.

In short, if you reverse Megatron, you get Optimus Prime.

And, because Discord could not read minds, the powerful uppercut he took to the jaw took him totally by surprise.

Discord rubbed his chin, looking surprisingly distraught. “You… you hit me,” he said slowly, as if the mere idea was too unthinkable for words.

“Undo what you have done to these ponies,” Megatron said, “or there’s more where that came from.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Discord said, not even the slightest hint of amusement remaining in his voice. “You got in one good shot, I’ll admit that, but one is all you get!”

Megatron launched himself at Discord again, swinging wildly with left and right forehooves, then lowering his horn and letting off a blast of brilliant yellow light. Discord merely bent out of the way of the punches, then plucked the magic blast out of the air and took a bite from it, making loud crunching sounds as he chewed.

“You know,” the draconequus said as he dodged more punches, “I really am a very busy lord of chaos, and you’re obviously going to be no fun to play with. In fact,” he added as Megatron’s swings forced him to dodge faster, “I think you’re going to be almost as big of a pest as Celestia and Luna. So what say we put you on ice for a while until I think-“

Starscream chose that moment to leap from the vaulted ceiling of the guardhouse’s assembly hall, attempting a surprise drop-kick on the back of Discord’s head. Unfortunately, Discord blipped out of existence a millisecond before the descending hoof made contact, and the next object in the line of trajectory was Megatron’s head.

Red-furred hind hoof met steel helmet with a clang.

Starscream began hopping up and down in midair, wings flapping, both forehooves holding his kicking leg. “OOOWWWW!” he shouted.

Megatron slumped forwards, out cold.

“Ha ha!” Discord’s disembodied voice gloated. “You, on the other hand, look most entertaining!” The creature blinked back into existence in front of Starscream, pointing at him and laughing. “Oh, yes! And what will your boss say when he comes to and finds out you knocked him unconscious?”

“He’s going to ask me why I didn’t finish the job,” Starscream muttered between clenched teeth.

Discord laughed even harder. “Ha ha ha haaa!! I knew it! You’re going to be a laugh riot!” He raised his right paw. “In fact, I think I’m going to make you my new court jester! After all, every king needs a fool!”

He snapped his fingers, and light flashed… and then, with a loud sparking sound, the light fizzled.

Starscream, still clutching his injured leg, stared. “Was that supposed to do something?” he asked.

“Well, that’s never happened before,” Discord muttered, more to himself than to Starscream. He reached over and gave the pegasus’s forehead a poke just below the hairline.

Starscream’s vision swirled for half a moment, then snapped back into place. “Cut it out!”

Looking a bit more determined, Discord poked him again.

This time Starscream’s vision barely flickered. “I said cut it out!” he shouted, finally letting go of his leg to swipe away Discord’s claw.

“Well, that’s curious,” Discord grumbled. “And disturbing. I’ve never seen anyone before who’s immune to my chaos magic.”

Starscream blinked. “What, really?”

Discord snapped his fingers again, and a large, dripping pink cloud materialized directly over Starscream’s head. It fell with a wet squelch, encasing him in extremely uncomfortable stickiness. “Of course, just because I can’t play with you directly doesn’t mean I can’t play with you,” he added smugly. “This should keep you out of trouble until I have time to visit you again.”

Inside the pile of cocoa-soaked cotton candy, Starscream shouted incoherently, thrashing vainly to get out.

“And now, dear aliens, adieu!” Discord smiled, floating up into the center of the guardhouse. “I would play longer, but Twilight Sparkle and her former friends are looking for me, and I mustn’t keep them waiting! Ta ta!” With one final flash of light, the creature vanished, leaving behind an unconscious unicorn and a perturbed pegasus.

The next morning, things were back to normal, or as normal as a robot’s life could be after spending months living as an organic quadruped.

After Twilight Sparkle and her friends had returned Discord to his stone prison, all the effects of his magic had reverted instantly. One by one the Decepticons had returned to the guardhouse to report, but none of them- least of all Megatron- wanted to talk about what had happened to them. In fact, at the end of the reports, Megatron made it an explicit order: none of them were to speak of that day’s events ever again, to anyone, for any reason, on pain of pain.

This is not to say that there had been no lasting consequences…

Buzzsaw flew the last tumbled wooden toy back up onto its display shelf. Most of the mess had cleaned itself, but not all of it, and it had taken an hour to put the shop area back to rights. That had been fine by him, because it gave him time to work up his courage to go back into his workshop.

When he did, the first thing he noticed was that all the dropcloths were in place- including the one he’d yanked off the previous morning.

That… worried him. In fact, he almost fled the room. Eventually, after several minutes of working himself up to it, he managed to grab a broom and poke the carved stump with it.

No response.

Confidence only partially restored, Buzzsaw dropped the broom, grabbed the very corner of the dropcloth, and yanked it away as swiftly as he could.

Four Autobots stared back at him, immobile, none of the two facing quite the same direction, as it should have been.

Except for the straw hats.

The straw hats were still there, sitting above smiling Autobot faces. The one with an arm held his hat in a jaunty pose high over his head.

Buzzsaw sat and waited for them to sing, just one note, for over an hour.

Then he sat for another hour, trying to decide if he should get down the chisel or the matches…

“Hey, lizard.”

Spike looked up from his comic book. “The name’s Spike,” he said.

“Whatever,” Skywarp said. “I’m done with that book your boss gave to me.” He tossed the book onto the library floor in front of Spike.

“Huh,” Spike said. “The Knight and His Queen. What did you think of it?”

“Yuck! Don’t get me started!” Skywarp snapped. “There was hardly any fightin’ in it! Mostly it was two people whining about how much they wanted to get together, when all they had to do was get rid of that king guy and do what they liked! And when they finally take it on the lam, they just spend one-tenth of their time runnin’ and nine-tenths of it making sad mushy talk or shoutin’ at each other! It was th’ most disgustin’ three days I ever spent, readin’ that brick!”

“Yeah,” Spike agreed. “I thought there was too much mushy stuff and not enough swords and jousting in it, too.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Skywarp nodded. Then, glancing over both his shoulders, he leaned down to the baby dragon and whispered, “So… you got anythin’ else like that one?”

“Sir, I don’t think there’s twenty gallons of blue fur dye in the entire Everfree district,” Filthy Rich said to the pegasus on the other side of the counter. “I don’t even know if there’s that much in Canterlot. I’d have to have it shipped in from Manehattan or Fillydelphia.” He waved a hoof and added, “Besides, your legs and mane are already a very nice shade of teal. Why would you want to cover that up?”

“It’s just in case,” Thundercracker growled. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it. Just put in the order and stop asking questions, all right?”

Megatron set down the polishing rag and, for the fifteenth time that morning, looked at his reflection in his armor.

He didn’t want to think about what he’d experienced in those few moments after being… altered… by that thing up until Starscream mercifully (ha) put him out of his misery for a while. He didn’t want to… and yet the memory prodded at him like a short circuit. No matter what he did, it kept drawing attention back to itself, making it impossible to get anything done.

There had been no pleasure in that punch, that one swing of the hoof that had connected with its target. He hadn’t felt the joy of battle, the surge of confidence, the heady feeling of control. It had just been a thing that needed to be done, even if it failed, because nobody else would do anything. It had been reluctant, desperate necessity, and nothing more.

And he hadn’t done it because he’d been angry… no, strike that. He hadn’t been angry about himself. He’d been angry about his Decepticons, about the ponies of the town, about everyone else. He’d been angry on their behalf… and that had never, NEVER happened before.

That wasn’t me, he thought. That’s not how my mind works, not after ten million years. I’ve never had the least concern about my warriors, let alone total strangers or inferior life forms. And I have never found single combat distasteful, not even against pitiful fleshlings.

That is how Prime thinks. I ought to know. I’ve used it to my advantage so many times, I ought to recognize it when I see it from the other side.

But to know that somewhere in my engrams lurks the same kind of thinking as Optimus Prime…

The armor exploded across the armory floor, pieces crashing into the walls.

Revolting!!

Slowly lowering his hoof, Megatron forced himself to breathe deeply. With a flash of yellow magic he gathered the armor back together, refastened the buckles and straps that held it together, bent out the new dents.

Then, still breathing deeply, he picked up the polishing rag and began buffing the armor again…

Starscream stared at the book, not really reading the words on the page.

None of the books in Twilight Sparkle’s library had any practical information about chaos magic. So far as Starscream could tell, this Discord being was the only one who used it, and none of the pony researchers had had the slightest interest in pursuing the topic. In fact, based on the tone of the history books about Discord, ponies avoided chaos like the scraplets.

That made his frustration all the deeper. How could he explore the potential of a new-found immunity when he couldn’t possibly test it?

He wasn’t immune to magic as such. His experience with the pink pony’s engrams, and several blasts from Megatron, had proven that. But possibly that wasn’t as cut and dried as he’d thought. After all, he was immune to lightning strike, more or less. And there had been that time he’d been thrown out of the Cloudsdale weather factory tour after the series of bizarre accidents in his proximity.

Perhaps… there is something about me… that disrupts magic?

But then, how would that engram transfer have had any effect? To say nothing of the things I was able to accomplish while under their influence…

Starscream continued to think, staring at the book, his thoughts mostly circling around how to test the hypothesis without getting himself fried or turned into a frog in the process.

The potential for pain was great…

… but the potential for power, especially in this world where magic was omnipresent…

… for that, perhaps the pain would be worth it.

Author's Notes:

These two chapters exist solely for the realization I had, months ago, that discording Megatron wouldn't make him weak or cowardly; it would make him heroic. Optimus Prime really is his equal and opposite in every meaningful way. Everything else in the chapters was written as a frame for that one moment.

Of course I couldn't have Megatron win. The Decepticons, at least for now, are background characters in the Mane 6's story. But at least he got that one good punch in, which is more than practically anyone else got.

Also, writing this gave me a stronger idea for the Best Young Flyers' Contest episode, which I will backtrack and write next time I cover this. The main part of it will be Starscream's tour of the weather factory, which requires me to go back through the episodes it appeared in so I can find everything that can possibly go wrong...

Oh- I took inspiration for Skywarp and Thundercracker from the Shattered Glass stories. Neither character gets much screen time in those; mainly we know that Skywarp reads romances and Thundercracker feels pity for the flightless and, apparently, is absolutely colorblind. His paint job lighting up dark places actually comes from a gag comic featuring the SG Seekers.

Yes, the Decepticons are beginning to move out of the guardhouse. Megatron and Starscream will likely stay there, and Rumble and Frenzy will stay with Soundwave.

And finally: not all gramophones worked on clockwork- gramophone became a generic name for pretty much any pre-WW2 record player that used a cone for a speaker, whether driven by a spring or by an electric motor. But in the FiM cartoon we frequently see gramophones with cranks and totally without electric cords, so I'm assuming most of the ones Soundwave works on are the all-mechanical kind.

Reminder: I'll be doing frequent live-writing streams on my Twitch channel as time permits, to force myself to attempt writing things. If watching words appear on a screen is your thing, and you like sneak previews:

https://twitch.tv/redneckgaijin

2/4: Just Another Autumn Night (Luna Eclipsed)

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The pegasus, whose armor was just as shiny as Megatron’s guard armor and whose fur coat was pure white instead of Megatron’s metallic gray, extended a scroll from the tip of one wing. “Special message from Princess Luna, sir!”

Megatron took the scroll in his magic, unrolling it and reading it through very quickly. “I see,” he said slowly. “Private-“

“Corporal, sir.”

Megatron stifled a grumble about the arbitrary nature of rank in formal militaries and how it only became more annoying in militaries where nobody actually wore rank insignia. “Corporal,” he amended himself, “what are you orders regarding a response?”

“I am to await your prompt reply, sir,” the royal guardspony answered, saluting smartly as he did so.

Megatron didn’t return the salute. “Return here in one hour,” he said. “I shall have my response prepared by then. Until then you are dismissed.”

Duty faded from the visiting guard pony’s face, replaced with hope, or possibly hunger. “Really, sir?” he asked. “Because I’m supposed to wait on your reply, but I hear there’s this really good bakery that has these cupcakes that-“

“Perhaps I did not make myself clear,” Megatron said, pouring all the implicit threat into his voice that he could. His horn lit again, and the door to the barracks opened. “I said ‘dismissed.’ That means get out now. Or else.”

“Yessir!” Another snappy salute flashed past just barely long enough for Megatron to say he’d seen it, and then a pegasus-shaped cloud of dust hovered briefly in the air before him. The barracks doors boomed shut.

With the interloper gone, presumably to stuff his face for an hour, Megatron looked at the letter again, reading it more carefully. It read:

To Lord Megatron, commander of the Decepticons, Captain in the Equestrian EUP Royal Guard, and sheriff of Ponyville and its environs, many greetings and felicitations.

Whereas We, having regained a measure of Our proper stature and puissant Majesty, have considered the proper Moment in which We shall be reintroduced to Our most loyal and diligent Subjects’ and

Whereas, this very day, We have learned for the first time of a Festival most horrid, a mummer’s Play in which We, in our erstwhile Guise of Nightmare Moon, are made the Terror and Bane of the youth of the countryside; and

Whereas We have found it proper that Our first public Appearance, with the Aid and Support of Our loyal subject Twilight Sparkle, shall be in Ponyville for this Event, known as Nightmare Night, which is in two days’ time;

Therefore, We request and require that you select two of your pegasus Guards, that We may be properly escorted to and from this Appearance in a manner befitting the Honor and Dignity of Equestria; and

Further, We charge you to send the names of the Guards selected back with the Courier We have dispatched, so that formal Orders may be issued for their period of Reassignment.

The scroll trailed off in a long list of titles and honorifics, but the only one Megatron cared about came first in the list: “Luna.”

Megatron suppressed a desire to crumple up the parchment and throw it in the guardroom fireplace. He’d never had any use for formal documents or rituals of any kind. They were things the weak did to reassure themselves they were important. Still, he had to endure the folderol for now, until he either left this insane world or found some solid foundation to build a new empire here- and neither looked ready to happen any time soon. Which meant, unfortunately, obeying this order.

“Starscream!” he shouted. “Starscream, where are you??”

“He ain’t here, Megatron.” Frenzy looked up from whatever he and Rumble had been doing in the corner. (They’d been quiet and, for a rarity, busy, so Megatron had ignored them until this moment.) “He’s at the library again. Research. Somethin’ about an ‘inter-library exchange,’ I think.”

Most people would realize that they couldn’t be angry at someone for faithfully obeying the orders they’d been given. Megatron was not most people. “Curse that unreliable oaf!” he snapped. “Go and… no,” he rumbled, subsiding as he considered how little he wanted to put Starscream in Luna’s vicinity without him. “Go find Thundercracker and Skywarp,” he said. “I have orders for them.”

“Yessir,” Frenzy said, standing up from what looked like a pile of boxes.

Rumble, paying no mind, was trying to work a pair of scissors with both forehooves. “I just don’t get how they do it!” he muttered to himself. “Cheerilee can do it. Diamond Tiara can do it. Even Snips can do it, and Snips has the processing power of a-“

“And what are you two actually doing?” Megatron asked pointedly. “Besides not rushing out to obey my orders?”

Rumble let the scissors fall. “Oh, sorry, Megatron!” he said in a rush of words. “I didn’t know you meant me along with Frenzy! Otherwise I’d have-“

“I asked. A. Question.” Megatron conserved his patience for those people he couldn’t summarily punish. He had none to spare for underlings. “What are you doing?”

“It’s costumes,” Rumble said. “Sorta like alt-modes, except you can’t transform into one. You put it on and then take it off.”

“I am aware of what a disguise is,” Megatron said dryly.

“These ain’t disguises,” Frenzy said.

“Not exactly,” Rumble added. “And yeah, it was really confusin’ when we had it explained to us. A costume is sorta like a disguise, but it’s not meant to fool anybody.”

“Which seemed dumb to us,” Frenzy said, “until they explained the part about the candy.”

“The candy,” Megatron echoed. “What candy would this be?”

“Well, there’s this thing called Nightmare Night these ponies have,” Rumble said. “Night after tomorrow night. The little ponies put on the costumes, go around to doors, and get free candy from the big ponies inside.”

“I see,” Megatron said.

“There’s also games and pranks and stuff,” Frenzy said, “but the kids at school didn’t explain it all that well. And besides, the candy’s the important part, right?”

Megatron took a deep breath. As disgusting as the need for air was, it did help with calming down when necessary. “So all the adult ponies give out candy?” he asked. “I presume that means we will have to do so as well?”

“Dunno. Probably,” Frenzy shrugged.

“I see.” Of course Megatron had no intention of being pestered by greedy juvenile ponies all night. Let Starscream deal with… wait, no, he thought, Starscream would do something stupid like try to deny the ponies their candy. He’d enjoy his moment of petty tyranny and realize all too late that little ponies have big, protective ponies who will seek retribution. And once they were done with the idiot, they would likely begin pestering Megatron.

No, let Soundwave do it. He puts up with these two all the time, and he’s the most patient Decepticon I command. I’ll just have to think of some busywork to keep Starscream out of mischief.

Not for the first time.

“While you’re out finding Skywarp and Thundercracker, send Soundwave to me too,” he said. “Save Soundwave for last. Explain to him all this Nightmare Night nonsense before you send him.”

The two ex-cassettes gave sloppy salutes, then bolted, leaving behind their small pile of cardboard boxes. Megatron gave it a quick glance, noticing that one of the smaller boxes had drawn on one side a fairly crude but recognizable image of Rumble’s face. Specifically, his robotic face, from before they’d come here.

(It couldn’t be Frenzy’s. It was too calm, and anyway the mouth had been drawn in the closed position.)

The rest of the boxes had been, crudely and sloppily, decorated with crayons to vaguely resemble how Rumble and Frenzy had looked, if they had been quadrupeds.

He contemplated the project a moment longer, then turned his back on it. This Nightmare Night nonsense had potential for the future, but not on two days’ notice with his very limited resources. For now, he had a reply letter to write and orders to give. Hopefully they would distract him from wondering why his Decepticons found pony insanity so contagious…

“Wow! ‘Cracker, Skywarp, you look wicked!”

One of the two otherwise identical-looking bat-ponies flinched. “We look like slaggin’ Ratbat,” he said in Skywarp’s voice. “Only darker.”

“It’s only temporary,” Thundercracker, the other bat-pony, said. “Celestia uses some sort of magic thing to make her personal guard look all alike during major ceremonies. Luna wanted the same thing. So here we are.”

“At least we don’t look as dumb as you two shrimps,” Skywarp sneered.

Rumble and Frenzy both glared at him through the ragged, uneven cut-out eye holes in their cardboard-box masks. “Laugh it up, moron,” Frenzy sneered back. “Your costume might look better, but our costumes are gettin’ us all the candy.”

“Yeah,” Rumble said, waving a large, mostly-full sack of sweets at the guard. “And what are you gettin’? Sore wings and a thank-you from a pony princess!”

Skywarp’s sneer became a scowl. “Watch your back, twerp,” he grumbled. “Missions come and missions go, but I’ll still be there. Think about that while you get a stomachache.”

“Eh, leave the walking kernel malfunction, already,” Frenzy said. “We gotta get moving for the second part of-“

Rumble’s hoof stuffed itself into Frenzy’s mouth. “Put it on mute, why don’t you?” he snapped. “What he don’t know, he can’t mess up!”

“I’m standin’ right here, shorty,” Skywarp pointed out.

“Yeah,” Rumble said. “Which is why we’re gonna stand someplace else.”

“Yeah!” Frenzy agreed, as usual far too loudly. “Someplace really else!”

Wearing a box on your head, two more boxes on your body, and one box for each of your limbs made quick movement difficult. In fact, before they’d punched their hooves all the way through the bottoms of their boxes, it hadn’t even been possible. But they had, and now Rumble and Frenzy legged it as fast as cardboard scraping on cardboard would allow for the woods near town…

… and the plaster statue of Nightmare Moon, where the foals and fillies of Ponyville would leave their tithe of candy so as not to be gobbled.

All of that had seemed absolutely stupid to Rumble and Frenzy- stupid even for fleshlings. But it had given them the idea- for which they had done an unusual amount of research, and for which they had slapped together two very unconvincing robot costumes…

… and one other, if they did say so themselves, extremely convincing one.

“Quiet,” Rumble whispered.

Frenzy, when he really wanted to, could keep his mouth shut. And, since he knew exactly what his voice did, he didn’t argue with Rumble at this moment, when stealth- or as much stealth as two ponies clad in boxes crawling through bushes can achieve- was of the highest priority.

The rig had been pre-staged earlier, before they’d gone on their candy-begging rounds. It hadn’t actually been made ready, since it would have been immediately spotted in the daytime. The two of them had designed it carefully to be raised, in the dark, with only hooves and teeth, and ready to launch in about three minutes.

This they did.

There had already been a small pile of candy at the foot of the statue when the two of them arrived, but that wasn’t what they had in mind. They were after the big score, and it came along a couple of minutes later, when a half-dozen little ponies, including Pina Colada and Truffle Shuffle from their class, trotted up with their night’s haul to give a portion to the mascot of the festival.

There were two things to pull: a thin string and a thicker rope. The thin string pulled the cover off a lantern. The rope pulled the thing the lantern was attached to. Both of them were in Rumble’s teeth as he watched the other pony kids set down their bags and begin digging out Nightmare Moon’s share. “Three, two, one,” he hissed through his teeth, and then he yanked both cords at once.

Frenzy let out a high-pitched, maniacal laugh. (He’d had millions of years being around other Decepticons to get an idea of what really crazy laughs sounded like.) Then, down the guy-line on a pulley, a large, carefully crafted paper cutout of Nightmare Moon, with about three times as many teeth as the original, swooped towards the little ponies below, backlit by a lantern so that it appeared to glow.

The little ponies, naturally, freaked. Screaming as with one voice, they turned and ran, leaving all their sacks of candy behind.

“Hahaha! Didja see that?” Frenzy giggled.

“Yeah, I saw it,” Rumble said, jumping out of the bushes. “Now get the loot while I set the rig up for another go! I bet we can keep this up all night!”

“Brother, we’re gonna be candy-rich,” Frenzy said, still giggling. “We might even corner the market on sugar in this town with four or five-“

A darker shadow loomed out of nowhere over the two of them. Yellow eyes glowed out of the night. “And what do you two think you’re doing?” a raspy voice asked.

“Nice try, Skywarp,” Frenzy said, picking up a bag in his teeth. “But that doesn’t sound anything like Megatron.”

“That ain’t me, geek.” A different pair of yellow eyes, these with vertical-slit pupils, appeared on the opposite side of the clearing. “He was already here when I got here.”

The shadowy figure stepped out into the light. Megatron, somehow, had been parted from his reshaped guard helmet. Instead he wore a tall cowboy hat with a wide brim. A silver star shone from the vest he wore in place of his armor, with the Decepticon logo engraved in the center. “The mayor warned me someone would attempt something like this,” he said. “Apparently it happens every year. I had expected it to be Laserbeak, though.”

“Nah,” Skywarp said, stepping a little closer to the light. “Some kinda candy makes Laserchicken real sick. Remember he spent three days in the hospital? So he’s more careful what he steals these days.”

“So we score some candy off stupid ponies,” Frenzy asked defensively. “Laserbeak steals stuff all the time. Why not us?”

Megatron didn’t answer. “Skywarp,” he said, “go bring those juveniles back here. I will explain to them the nature of this little… harmless… prank.” He glared down, unsmiling, on the two cardboard-clad Decepticons. “And to make it up to them, these two will give them their own candy. No hard feelings.”

“What??” Rumble had flinched when Frenzy had talked back to Megatron, but now he couldn’t help himself. “That’s our candy! We got it fair and square!”

Now Megatron did smile. It was a nasty smile, made all the nastier by the moonlight and the lights from town.

“… oh, yeah,” Rumble sighed. “I forgot who I was talking to.”

“And don’t either of you forget it again,” Megatron warned. “Now get that thing down from there before I become… upset.”

About an hour later, back at the barracks, as Rumble and Frenzy contemplated the meager amount of candy remaining in Soundwave’s bowl, the door slammed open to admit Megatron. “I thought I told you to dismantle that ridiculous contraption!” he shouted.

“We did!” Rumble snapped. “It’s right over there!” He pointed to the wall, where the Nightmare Moon cutout, minus lantern, had been hung like a trophy from the wall.

“Well, SOMEBODY had it back at that statue five minutes ago!” Megatron roared. “And I demand an explanation!”

Soundwave, who had been sitting next to the door reading a magazine, looked up. “rumble and frenzy; accounted for: past thirty-seven minutes,” he said. “involvement with incident: impossible.”

Megatron looked from one Decepticon to another to another. Rumble and Frenzy shrugged back, and Soundwave, unruffled, returned to his reading.

With a snort, Megatron turned to leave. His horn lit up, and the bowl with the remains of the evening’s candy floated up and began to follow him.

“OH, COME ON!” Rumble shouted.

Megatron froze, slowly turning to look back at him. “You have something to say?” he snapped.

Instincts hard-wired into every Decepticon kicked in, and Rumble stepped backwards and mumbled, “No, Megatron.”

Megatron turned again, this time growling, and departed.

Later Megatron would get the real story from Princess Luna, and then in more detail from Twilight Sparkle. Of course he never apologized afterwards. Rumble and Frenzy knew better than to expect that.

But when large bags of candy appeared in their rooms above Soundwave’s electronic shop two days later, the two cassette warriors assumed it was Megatron’s way of making amends without losing face.

Soundwave never saw any reason to disabuse them.

Author's Notes:

Since people have begun speculating about The Wedding and how it plays into this story, I have more incentive to get enough Season 2 chapters done so I can justify moving on.

Even on my list of possible story hooks for the S2 chapters, I had nothing for Luna Eclipsed. Then, as I was looking over the list to see which idea wanted to write, the fact that the next episode- "Sisterhooves Social"- had Rumble and Frenzy named triggered the above. And their little scheme gave me a place to put the secondary idea (Thundercracker and Skywarp being the guards that pull Luna's chariot for her grand entrance, an idea which by itself generated no usable plot).

Laserbeak's chocolate allergy was mentioned in the Discord chapters, and I develop the idea a little more here. (Because how else would a robot learn about allergies?)

As of this point Soundwave, Rumble and Frenzy are the only ones who live outside the barracks, but they still spend considerable time there because Megatron demands it. Buzzsaw has his woodworking shop, but he still lives in the barracks attic with Laserbeak. Ravage goes back and forth between the barracks and Soundwave's shop/home as he pleases. The others are still in the barracks full-time.

2/18: Six Degrees of Pinkie Pie (A Friend in Deed)

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“Well,” Skywarp grunted, being the first of the Decepticons to speak, “that happened.”

“What happened?” Laserbeak, perched on a nearby rooftop, looked around the dispersing crowd of what looked to be the entire adult population of Ponyville. The Decepticons, all of them, formed a cluster remaining in the rapidly clearing street. “What? Where? Did I miss it?”

“You know,” Skywarp insisted, “that happened. The whole singing and dancing thing.”

Laserbeak relaxed. “Oh, that,” he shrugged. “Ponies do that about once every other week on average, they do, yes.”

“Yeah, but I don’t,” Skywarp pointed out. “Except I was there singing with the rest of us.”

“Yeah, so was I,” Rumble said. “And what really freaks me out is, Frenzy was singing too, and it didn’t sound… well, it sounded good, is what I’m sayin’.”

“Yeah!” Frenzy, far from being offended by his brother’s remark, nodded agreement. “I just hope it ain’t permanent! I don’t think I could live with sounding nice.”

“No danger of that,” Thundercracker muttered, rubbing his ear with one hoof.

“It is disturbing,” Starscream said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You were singing. I was singing. Even Megatron was singing-“

“And what of it, Starscream?” There was an edge to Megatron’s voice that made most of the other Decepticons take a step back. It made Starscream flinch, but he forced himself to hold his ground and face the gray unicorn in the guard helmet. “If I feel like singing, I have my reasons. And I decline to share them with the likes of you!”

“Understood, Lord Megatron,” Starscream said without hesitation. “But even you must admit that you singing in public is not exactly characteristic of you.”

“I think you’ll find I have unexpected depths,” Megatron said, drawing out the words. “Depths you will never be able to measure. Now let that be an end of it!”

“Yeah,” Skywarp sneered. “Or maybe you’d like to explain your unexpected depths… Starsing?”

Starscream growled the usual frustrated growl that indicated he had no comeback, and with that the Decepticons dispersed, except for Megatron, Ravage and Laserbeak. Megatron stood looking at Ravage, who sat on his haunches next to him, while Laserbeak remained perched on the nearby rooftop looking down.

“But I confess,” Megatron said in a soft tone once his more annoying subordinates were out of reception range, “I am curious about you, Ravage. Though I am grateful you did not try to sing… I’ve never seen you dance before.”

“Nor has Laserbeak,” the screechy voice from above put in. “The ponies do it every other week, they do. Sing and dance both. Sometimes more often.”

“I do not recall asking you,” Megatron said, giving a warning intended to signal that there would be only one warning.

“But Laserbeak must report!” Laserbeak snapped. “I watch the enemy, and I report! It’s my function, it is! What else should Laserbeak do?”

“You mean, aside from seeking gainful employment?” Megatron asked dryly. Without waiting for an answer (since he knew he wouldn’t like what he got), he went on, “But very well. What causes these sudden outbursts of singing and dancing?”

“HMMMmmm-”

“Get on with it,” Megatron said. “I put up with that because it annoys Starscream. He isn’t here anymore, so get to the point.”

“Yes, Lord Megatron!” Laserbeak said instantly. “Laserbeak has not seen the beginning of many of these, I haven’t. And the beginning can be anything, I think. A pony just starts singing, and then there’s music everywhere. And sometimes other ponies join in, and there’s dancing and even sometimes a parade! Like this one!”

“Why?” Megatron asked. “What draws a pony into a song in progress? I don’t remember deciding to join in. It just happened. And I don’t care for that at all.”

Laserbeak put a claw to his beak and scratched it idly, thinking in silence for a change. “I think…” he said at length, “that is, Laserbeak doesn’t know, but it seems like any pony who feels the same as the first joins in. I always thought they did it because it was fun, or because they wanted to affirm the singer, I did.”

Megatron stifled his mild surprise that Laserbeak had the word affirm in his vocabulary. “I think I see,” he said at length. “This is like when those two unicorns with that primitive automobile food processor showed up. I’m told they got the whole town on their side with a song. Just a song.”

“No, Lord Megatron, not the whole town!” Laserbeak corrected. “I saw it myself! The apple ponies, and Twilight Sparkle and her friends, they weren’t affected, no! But they were part of the song!”

“Is that so?” Megatron asked. “So, whatever this phenomenon is, it is not as straightforward as I thought, then. And its power to coerce is limited.” He tapped his chin with one hoof. “And yet I was singing along with everyone else.”

“As was Laserbeak!” Laserbeak agreed. “Yes! I was singing with Pinkie Pie too!”

“Did you decide to do it,” Megatron asked, “or did it just happen?”

Laserbeak cocked his head and thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “But why shouldn’t I sing with Pinkie Pie? I like her! Every morning as I begin my surveillance, she gives me a fresh-baked muffin! For free!”

“A muffin,” Megatron said, completely unimpressed. Not that he hadn’t known that Laserbeak could be bribed with pencil shavings or zinc filings, but this seemed like a new low.

“Yes! A delicious muffin! Every day! And I don’t have to steal it or anything!” He paused and tapped his lower beak a moment, adding in a tone softened by uncertainty, “Though come to think of it, I can’t steal anything from her, Laserbeak can’t. Each time I’ve tried, she’s always moved whatever I was about to grab just before I could.”

“Take it as a sign that you should stop trying,” Megatron growled. “And I suppose that should also be a warning for all of us not to pursue this line of inquiry. We deal with enough insanity from these ponies as it is.”

Ravage relaxed slightly. He’d just been relieved from the need to explain something he couldn’t possibly communicate with posture and animal sounds. And if it meant never knowing why Lord Megatron apparently also liked the pink one… well, if he’d had a problem with not knowing everything Megatron knew, he’d never have survived this long as a Decepticon.

That said, the robot-turned-panther’s mind went back, back to the day he took a personal interest in a pony other than Fluttershy…

RAVAGE’S TALE

There weren’t many introspective Decepticons, and most of the time that small number excluded Ravage. He thought of himself as a predator, first and foremost. Predators didn’t ask, “To pounce or not to pounce?” If you did that, the prey would scamper off while you were resolving your existential dilemmas. And then, if they were Autobots, they would return with reinforcements and ruin your entire solar period.

But there were days when the prey was not a creature but a concept, and those were much harder to pin down than any Autobot, and the wounds they left far more lasting. So, on this particular day, he lay on a tuft of grass next to the little river that flowed through Ponyville, looking at the water and, as cats do, cautiously stalking the target before committing to the attack.

The concept, in this case, was respect. The ponies of Ponyville had gotten used to seeing a midnight-black cat their size around town. He didn’t think he liked that. He didn’t like the smiles and waves and inane “Who’s a good kitty, then?” that had replaced the stares and whispers. Ravage wanted to be feared… but that wasn’t part of Megatron’s plans.

But really, if he wasn’t allowed to be a predator, what was he? A pet? Not even for Lord Megatron would he be a pet. Ravage was no ignorant, brainless animal to be coddled and cozened. He had a mind, and if he did say so himself, a better one than what most other Decepticons had.

Ah. But there was the problem, wasn’t it? He couldn’t say so himself. He’d lost his vocabulator literal ages ago, as had Buzzsaw and Laserbeak. And while this world had, for whatever reason, given those two their voices back, it had not chosen to do so in his case. Yet again, after another reformatting, he’d been stuck in an animal body with only an animal’s voice. And in a world of talking animals, he felt like the only mute.

And what respect do you give an animal? Even Fluttershy, who loved very nearly any animal you cared to name, treated them all- and treated Ravage- like rather dim children, to be taught, to be appeased, to be comforted. But never to be listened to.

Soundwave didn’t do that. Neither did Megatron. They both knew him from the beginning. They both knew the mind behind the paws, and as much as either bot was capable, they cared about him.

The other Decepticons? Definitely not. Especially not back home, where he was not just animal-shaped but animal-sized, small and comparatively weak. Again and again he’d had to teach them not to underestimate him, through minor acts of sabotage. And again and again the lesson would wear off, because they were the size of airplanes or armored vehicles or spaceships, and he was the size of a Earthling jungle cat.

And even here, where he was the same mass as most of the others (Megatron and Soundwave slightly larger, Rumble and Frenzy substantially smaller), the closest Ravage got to respect was being treated like an unexploded negamatter mine. And while that was sometimes amusing, it didn’t satisfy.

So… if you aren’t truly respected, and can’t demand true respect, and don’t have any way to win true respect… how do you get it?

Ravage lay on the grass, staring without seeing the water and its little fishes passing before him, looking for some opening in the dilemma’s defenses, circling again and again in his mind. And he probably would have kept going round in mental circles until he got hungry, had not a lump of pinkness slapped itself on the ground next to him and a cheerful voice said, “Hey, Ravage! How’s it goin’?”

Ravage had not, at that point, had much to do with Pinkie Pie. His first thought, which held his attention to the exclusion of all else for a very long moment, was: I never heard her approaching.

But there she was, sitting next to him, in the exact same pose he’d relaxed into, which couldn’t possibly have been comfortable for pony legs. And she was looking right at him, and not in the oh-look-a-big-kitty stare, nor the oh-my-maker-we’re-gonna-die looks of horror that the ponies had given him when he’d first arrived.

Ravage didn’t know how long he left Pinkie Pie waiting for some response. It must not have actually been that long, because Pinkie resumed talking as if satisfied that the minimum conversational protocols had been completed. “I was kinda wondering if you could do me a really big favor.”

Shock following shock. Nobody ever asked Ravage for a favor. Megatron and Soundwave ordered. The other Decepticons demanded (even when they had no authority). Prey pleaded (and it never did them any good). Nobody asked.

This time, despite his surprise, Ravage managed a soft interrogative yowl.

“Well, it’s about Megatron,” Pinkie said. “I’m going to throw him a Not-Birthday party pretty soon, and…” Some cybertram of thought jumped its rails in Pinkie’s head. “Unless you could tell me what his birthday actually is? That’d be so much more convenient!” A little doubt clouded Pinkie’s face. “Unless it’s more than a month from now, because that might make some schedule conflicts.”

Now how was he supposed to answer that? Ravage had no idea how you’d go about converting Cybertronean measurements of time into the Equestrian calendar. And even if he did, Megatron hadn’t shared the timestamp of his spark first coming on-line with anyone that he knew of. He settled for shaking his head, followed by imitating a pony shrug of the shoulders.

“Well, no big deal!” Pinkie said, doubt clearing up. “I’ll just go with Not-Birthday! There are three hundred sixty-four of those, y’know, so it’s almost impossible to miss!”

Ravage didn’t need the excuse of muteness to avoid following up that bit of bizarre logic.

“Now, I’m inviting all of his friends,” Pinkie Pie continued, and that would have been Ravage’s biggest shock yet if he’d believed it. Megatron didn’t have friends. Megatron didn’t do friendship. He was pretty sure he was the closest thing Megatron had that qualified, and even then he’d call himself, at best, “trusted confidant.”

“So I asked Starscream to take a day working at Sugarcube corner to fill in for me, ‘cause I know he kinda rubs Megatron the wrong way…”

Gross understatement, Ravage thought, both of the emotion and the number of people Starscream annoyed. But then, “infinity minus Starscream”, while accurate, might be too cruel for a pony to say.

“…but I’m inviting all your other friends, and Twilight Sparkle and Applejack and Rarity and Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. I sent Princess Luna an invitation, but she said she’s not ready for society yet. And there’s Filthy Rich, and Mayor Mare, and Hi-Fi, and Davenport…”

The list went on and on, and Ravage began to be impressed. Either Pinkie Pie was hopelessly padding an invitation list, or else Megatron had been cultivating more contacts than he’d realized. All those patrols hadn’t just been for the exercise, evidently.

“… and Thunderlane, and Original Rumble, and you know,” Pinkie continued without so much as a pause, “most other ponies would have stopped me about three minutes ago, but you let me keep right on going.”

Ravage let out a confused mewl, to the effect of, And how was I supposed to do that?

“Well, most ponies do it by putting a hoof over my lips,” Pinkie said. “And look at your paws! I’m pretty sure you could cover my whole face!” Before Ravage realized it, one of his forepaws was being held between Pinkie’s forehooves, palm upwards. “I mean, just look at those kitty beans! You could smother a pony with those!”

Ravage probably could, if he felt like doing it the slow way. Putting aside the thought, he yanked his forelimb back with a short, pointed meow that said all that needed saying about the concept of bodily autonomy and consent.

“Well, you could,” Pinkie insisted. “Anyway, the problem’s this. What kind of present do I get Megatron?”

That went beyond shock, straight to incomprehensibility- so far that Ravage made a rare effort to actually say a word. It came out, “Mreh-fwurrm?” He even forgot to be embarrassed at the abject failure.

“Well, yeah!” Pinkie said. “Don’t you give presents to the birthday filly where you come from? Even if it’s not actually their birthday?”

No, Ravage thought. No, we don’t, because we don’t do birthdays, and anything a Decepticon gets which Megatron doesn’t take for himself gets kept and hidden. Otherwise it’s going to be stolen pretty much immediately. And Megatron doesn’t do presents. If he wants something, he takes it. And if he doesn’t want something, he’ll literally throw it back in your face- if you’re lucky.

“Well, I guess cats don’t,” Pinkie said, not waiting for Ravage to answer. “But ponies do! Every pony loves presents!”

Ravage shook his head frantically. No, they really don’t!

“So the question is, what to get him? What kind of stuff does he like?”

Please, Ravage thought, if you won’t take no for an answer, at least give me options I can say no to!

“Maybe some books? Everyone loves books!”

Oh, thank you. Ravage shook his head no firmly. Unless they were books about how to conquer worlds, Megatron probably wouldn’t be interested.

“Not a big reader, huh?” Pinkie tapped her chin thoughtfully. “How about a cozy hat for winter? That helmet of his must be chilly!”

Ravage shook his head even more firmly than that. Megatron didn’t show his face outside his room without that helmet on. It might as well have been as attatched to him as the one on his robotic head had been.

“Yeah, he does look like a one-hat pony, doesn’t he?” Pinkie said. “What about sweets? Everypony loves sweets!”

That Ravage didn’t veto immediately. Megatron would eat sweet things, but he didn’t seem to care much what he ate. To him fuel was fuel, and insofar as he had preferences, it was for plain oatmeal. He expressed his misgivings with a long, wavering whimper.

“Wow, this is a toughie!” Pinkie said. “Well, what are his hobbies? What kind of things does he like to do?”

Oh, slag. She’d left it open-ended this time. But, Ravage thought, what were Megatron’s hobbies? Did you call casual cruelty a hobby? Was galactic conquest a hobby? No, that was a calling, really. What about single combat? That could be a hobby, and Megatron certainly loved it… but the pony wouldn’t. So… what else…

Wait. An idea came to mind. Two ideas, really. Megatron took pride in his appearance, and ever since he’d been stuck in an organic body, he’d kept it in the best shape he could. Grooming and exercise- those were as close to socially acceptable hobbies as Ravage could think of.

He held up one digit of his paw to get Pinkie’s attention, then extended a claw from it and began drawing in the dirt. The first drawing, being of a specific thing, was simplicity. The second, being a drawing of a generality, really required three different drawings, and Ravage wasn’t quite sure he’ got the point across.

“Huh,” Pinkie said. “A can of polish and a rag… and… pushups, trotting- oh! You mean exercise!” Pinkie leaned forwards and hugged Ravage around the neck. Sheer surprise and shock on his part saved her life. “You’re the bestest, Ravage! Thanks for the great ideas!”

Some instinct, plus the fastest reflexes Cybertron had ever known, let Ravage grab Pinkie’s tail in her jaws just before she could rush off.

“Hey!” Pinkie protested, falling back to the earth mid-bound. “What’s the big idea, big kitty?” she asked as Ravage let her go.

Ravage quickly drew another complex picture, intended to be of Pinkie talking to a pegasus and unicorn who were meant to be Thundercracker and Soundwave. To emphasize the point, he pointed first to her, then in the general direction of the barracks.

“Ooooooh,” Pinkie said. “Yeah, it would be kind of embarrassing if all of us got him the same presents, wouldn’t it?”

Megatron didn’t do the presents thing, but he did do the recognizing-slights thing. When someone did bring him a present, the very first thing he’d ask was where everyone else’s present for him was, even if he didn’t want them. And there was literally no telling what might happen to any Decepticon who failed to show up with a gift.

Including, he suddenly realized, himself.

“All right, I’ll talk to Soundwave,” Pinkie said. “I’m sure he’ll tell the others. Thanks again! I almost made a real big oopsie!”

This time Ravage let Pinkie be on her way, and he returned to staring at the river, this time thinking not about respect and identity but about how to acquire some acceptable present in some way that wouldn’t lead to trouble.

The big shock of the day didn’t come for another hour, when it finally hit him that Pinkie had talked to him exactly like she talked to everyone else. She had treated him as a person- a person with the world’s worst speech impediment, but at least not an animal.

Now his list of people who did that had a third member: Megatron, Soundwave, and Pinkie Pie.

His opinion of her only underwent a small lowering when, two weeks later, he found out she spoke the same way to her apparently brainless pet alligator, too.

SOUNDWAVE’S TALE

Ponyville was not exactly running over with advanced technology, even by the woefully primitive standards of the pony planet. Soundwave had opened his electronics repair shop to a massive round of indifference from the village. In fact, on his first day he only had one pony enter the door, and that pony had nothing to repair. She’d just wanted to say hello, look around the place, and ask about a hundred questions ranging from the barely topical to the wildly illogical.

But, on the fourth day, that one pony had brought another pony in, and that pony had a gramophone with a stripped gear, and the repair covered the week’s rent on the repair shop and adjoining apartment.

Two days later, that one pony brought in someone else, this one with a vacuum cleaner that had shorted out. The motor had turned out to still be sound, and a bit of rewiring had been sufficient to make the customer happy.

The next day that one pony had brought in a little filly sadly cradling one of those annoying Battery Operated Yippy Doggy toys from Hi-Fi’s shop. The filly had given the toy a bath, causing massive damage to its internals. That repair had proven a true challenge, requiring careful disassembly of the toy, judicious use of a bag of rice, replacement of the battery case, delicate cleaning of the motors and gears to remove corrosion, and patching the membrane of the device used to make the yipping sound.

The repair cost Soundwave twice as much as buying another toy from Hi-Fi would have, but he knew better than to charge more than the two bits the filly had brought with her. Besides, now he knew where he would hide the microtransmitter, if and when he decided to use the Yippy Doggy to listen in on someone.

And so it continued, with word gradually spreading around town of Soundwave’s little shop and his talents with things electrical or mechanical. And that word was, for the most part, spread by one pony.

The door to his shop opened, setting off a high-pitched electronic chirp. Soundwave had spent a day making the device out of the bulky, primitive circuits available, simply because he refused to have a simple chunk of metal clattering over his door.

“Hey, Ess Dubbayew!” Pinkie Pie walked in, tugging another pony behind her. That pony had a large black box on her back, along with something long and flat strapped over it. “I got another one for ya! And this one’s right up your alley!”

“Are you sure about this, Pinkie?” the other pony asked. “I mean, I could just take it to Canterlot to be fixed…”

“Are you kiddin’?” Pinkie grinned. “Why waste bits on the train when you can get it done right here?”

“But… well, nobody in Ponyville knows anything about electric guitar except maybe Vinyl Scratch… and she doesn’t do repair work…”

“Oh, don’t worry! Even if he’s never seen it, Ess Dubbayew knows how to fix it! He’s smart like that!”

“Really?” The other pony looked at Soundwave, obviously afraid. This, at this point, was no surprise. The flower sellers gossiped with everyone they came into contact with, and though that had its benefits when he wanted information, its main drawback was obvious.

“Look, just show it to him!” Pinkie insisted, darting behind the other pony and shoving her by the rump until she slid up to the counter. “If he can’t figure out what’s wrong, I’ll eat my hat!”

“Pinkie, you haven’t got a hat,” the other pony said.

Pinkie reached a hoof up into her mane, wriggled it around for a moment, and came out with what looked like a watercress sandwich. She then perched it on top of her mane, then gave it a jaunty little tilt. “Ta-da!” she grinned.

The other pony looked at Soundwave again, this time with less fear and more apology in her face.

Soundwave shrugged silently. This behavior, so far, was well within norms for Pinkie Pie.

“C’mon, show him, show him!” Pinkie insisted.

The other pony sighed, then began unbuckling her load. “The pickups look all right,” she said. “So it’s probably the amp, but I’m not sure.”

Soundwave glanced at the guitar and the large portable box amplifier as they were set on his counter. The amp was of a similar model to the speakers DJ-P0N3, formerly Vinyl Scratch, used in her equipment; he knew their inner workings well. The electric guitar was new to him, but he deduced its operation with a quick glance at the electromagnetic pickups and the metal strings.

“diagnosis premature,” he said. “operating principles: simple. confidence in repair: certain.”

“Huh?” the guitarist pony asked.

“He says easy fix once he figures out what’s wrong,” Pinkie Pie said. “Just watch and be amazed!”

Soundwave activated his horn, concentrating on a particular shelf in the little room behind the counter. His skill in levitation had improved considerably since first coming to this world, and the heavy speaker no longer posed any difficulty. He brought it out into the shop area and set it down on the counter without even looking in its direction. Then, with a little fumbling, he picked up the end of the cord for the guitar and plugged its jack into the proper port.

This done, he looked again at the guitar. The little raised bars on the neck corresponded to resonance points, with the thirteenth in each row being the point at which the vibration frequency would double. He lifted the guitar, slid the strap over his shoulders, and sounded out the strings, one after another, with his hooves. Then, experimentally, he plucked out a simple tune, one from a record Megatron listened to frequently in the privacy of his office.

Through all the plucking, the notes came out of the speaker pure and clean.

“Not bad,” the guitarist pony said. “You’re really heavy on the strings, though. You need to work on a lighter touch or else you’ll have a lot of breaks.”

Soundwave nodded understanding. Of course he’d never touched the instrument in any form before that moment, but he saw no reason to admit the fact. Levitating the guitar back off his shoulders, he said, “instrument functional; source of malfunction: amplifier node. probable cause: relay failure. repair time: minimal.”

“What did I say?” Pinkie Pie grinned. “Easy fix! I told you Ess Dubbayew is a smartie!”

In the end it was, indeed, two blown vacuum tubes, both of which Soundwave had in stock. Half an hour later he had a significant number of bits in his cash register and an appointment in four days for his first guitar lesson.

He was only a little bit surprised when, four days later, he returned from his lesson to find Pinkie Pie waiting at his shop door with a banjo, ready for what she called a blackberry jam session, whatever that meant…

RUMBLE AND FRENZY’S TALE

Frenzy’s full-body lunge at his brother had resulted, thanks to two perfectly timed hooves, in him going flying overhead, landing hard on the grass some considerable distance beyond his target.

This happened every so often. Even Frenzy didn’t know why. A few times in his long life, he’d tried to figure out why some relay would go click in his brain for no apparent reason and make him go full berserker on the nearest valid target. Those moments of self-reflection never lasted long, because he enjoyed bashing other bots' chassis except when it landed him in especially deep slag. His introspection vanished the moment he was out of deep slag and back in Megatron’s good graces (such as they were).

The only thing he’d figured out was that, whatever it was, it only chose tactically valid targets. He’d never attacked Megatron or Soundwave, for example, nor a select few others like Shockwave or Ravage or Ratbat. He’d never spoiled an ambush or blown a surveillance op. And, most importantly, he’d never attacked a non-Decepticon since he arrived in this lame, cutesy-wutesy world.

But the moments happened anyway, and so Rumble, as Legitimate Target Alpha, had had a lot of practice in brawling in a pony body. And, since he knew all of Frenzy’s moves, that meant more and more often Frenzy ended up eating dirt.

Of course that only made him madder- just like now, as he shrugged off the double kick, rolled back onto his hooves, and charged again, this time as a pony would, galloping straight for his enemy before rearing up to kick with the forelegs.

Rumble, again, had seen this before. Instead of rearing up as well, he ducked his head, lunged forward, and sent one hoof into an uppercut that landed straight on the hoof-marks in Frenzy’s gut.

The punch didn’t quite knock the wind out of Frenzy, and it only startled him for a splt-second. Then his hooves came down onto the back of Rumble’s head, and it was his brother’s turn to taste dirt.

Frenzy followed up with a wild sweeping kick of one rear leg, but Rumble rolled out of the way just before it came through, getting space enough to get back on his hooves and clear his head. Frenzy had given him plenty of time for this, wobbling back and forth on that one leg trying to balance a body firmly designed to rest on four legs.

“Yeah! Yeah! Good move, Other Rumble! Shake it off!”

The voice cut through the crimson haze in Frenzy’s optics, but the next words, which came without so much as a pause, blew the haze away and left him as clear-minded as he ever got:

“Give it to him, Same Frenzy! You’re not gonna take that from him, are you? You got this!”

Both Frenzy and Rumble turned to face the owner of the voice- a certain pink earth pony who, for whatever reason, was wearing one of those weird costumes humans used at their sporting events sometimes. In fact, she seemed to be wearing two of them sewn together: half the sweater, half the skirt, and one pom-pom was the same red as Frenzy’s fur, while the other half of sweater, skirt and pom-pom matched Rumble’s violet coat.

Rumble spoke first- probably, Frenzy admitted, Rumble had noticed her first. “Excuse me, Miss Pie,” he said, “but what the shortin’ hay are you doin’?”

“Oh, me?” Pinkie Pie grinned, waving the pom-poms on her forehooves. “I saw you two fighting, and you both seemed to be really good at it, so I thought I’d root for you!”

“You what?” Frenzy asked. “Usually bot- people tell us to stop fightin’!”

“Really? Does it work?” Pinkie asked, looking like she honestly didn’t know the answer.”

“No!”

“Oh! Well, that explains why you fight so often, then!” Pinkie nodded, as if that made even the slightest bit of sense. “So why shouldn’t I root for you, then?”

“Well, for one thing,” Rumble said, not sounding entirely certain of his ground, “I’m pretty sure you’re only supposed to cheer on one side of the fight.”

Pinkie pouted. “Well, that’s no good!” she said. “I want both of you to win!”

“That’s not how fighting works!” Frenzy insisted.

“Yeah!” Rumble nodded. “In a fight, one side wins and one side loses. That’s just how it goes! Both sides can’t win!”

“Is that so?” Pinkie put on a sneaky face so artificial that both Rumble and Frenzy had to stifle laughs. “Riddle me this, then, young colts- is it possible for both sides to lose a fight?”

“Hmmmm, yeah,” Rumble admitted. “If it’s a close enough fight, with lots of… well, if both sides got hurt really bad, then yeah, that’d be a double loss.”

“Well, then!” Pinkie’s face shifted to a triumphant smile that looked much more at home than the sneaky look. “If it’s possible for both sides to lose, then it’s also possible for both sides to win! Pure logic! And you can’t argue with logic! Riiiiight?” She grinned, turning her head and cocking an ear in clear expectation of hearing the words.

Frenzy supplied them. “Whatever, Miss Pie,” he said. “You win.”

Pinkie’s eyes went wide. “Really?” she said. “But I wasn’t even in the fight!” She looked down at herself and said, “I don’t even have the right color uniform on!”

“Would pink on pink even work?” Rumble asked.

Pinkie shrugged. “Guess not,” she said. “I guess all that leaves is my victory party! Come on! You’re invited!”

Following along behind a bouncing, humming, happy Pinkie Pie, Frenzy muttered, “I’m not even sure I know why I was mad at you in the first place.”

“What I’m sure of,” Rumble muttered back, “I’m sure glad Shockwave didn’t come here with the rest of us. Get him an’ Miss Pie here arguin’ logic, and everybody’s circuits in a ten-megamile radius would get fried.”

“Yeah,” Frenzy nodded. “Might be fun to watch, though. From a distance. An’ with audio disabled.”

At the party which followed, Frenzy and Rumble ended up repeating the fight three times, as Pinkie kept insisting they show everyone else just what cool moves they had. At the end they were more sore and bruised than if they’d just finished the fight they were having… but, at the same time, they were full of cake, full of punch, and full of the cheering of the foals of their apparent age group.

Frenzy found himself reflecting: if more of his blind rages ended up like that, it wouldn’t be half bad. Not half bad at all…

BUZZSAW’S TALE

Buzzsaw sat at the counter of his little shop, carving a piece of oak with a pen-knife. He lounged back as he did so, putting on a pose of complete idleness and lack of care, belying the intense precision he put into the tiny panorama he was wringing out of the sliver of wood. Ponies were more likely to buy when they thought the seller was relaxed… but nothing, absolutely nothing, could bring Buzzsaw to give less than his absolute best in even his most minor works.

On a usual market day, he’d make three or four sales. That was fine by him. That brought in enough money to pay the rent on the workshop plus a token amount he contributed to the communal barracks fund for food and other things. Every once in a while he’d sell one of his larger carvings, and that would bring in enough extra to buy a new stump or knot-ridden lumberyard reject that he could use for his personal art.

Recently he’d had his first commission. The main thing he’d learned from that experience was to double his price for the second one- mainly because Filthy Rich had paid his initial fee again in apology for all the trouble Spoiled Rich had given him. And it had been a lot of trouble, because Mrs. Rich simply refused to accept the hologram-accurate reproduction of her face in wood as actually being her face.

Heretofore Buzzsaw had limited the subjects of his personal art to Autobots he’d gotten to know- briefly, but quite thoroughly- on his interrogation table. After his commission experience, he now had a candidate for his first pony subject, once he found the right piece of scrap wood. Unlike the others, that carving would be solely from imagination… but Buzzsaw had absolute confidence in his imagination.

But that was personal. For the buying public, Buzzsaw had carved plenty of happy, innocent, not-in-even-a-little-pain ponies, some generic and some based on actual denizens of the town. It pained him to do it, but just as there is no art without pain, so is there no art without patrons, and thus sacrifices had to be made.

Twilight Sparkle had been the easiest: stick a book in front of her and she’d apparently stay still as a statue for hours, except for turning pages. Mayor Mare in perfect 1:6 scale sat behind a podium on one shelf, frozen mid-speech. He’d sold three carvings of Rainbow Dash snoring on a cloud before the genuine article came by, bought the other two copies he’d carved, and told him to cut it out.

And, of course, there were puppy dogs and kittens and cows and trains and boats and, hanging from a beam in the ceiling, a minutely detailed carved airship. (The rigging was actual twine; Buzzsaw had no trouble carving wood into the shape of rope, but the result had about the same strength and life expectancy as toothpicks.) All cute and cuddly and so nauseatingly non-threatening that they made him feel like a traitor to his muse… but they did sell.

That said, when Pinkie Pie set the bells over the shop door a-clatter, he didn’t really expect her to buy any of them. He didn’t spend all day perched like a vulture on town roofs like his brother, but Buzzsaw did do a bit of surveillance of Ponyville now and again, and he knew precisely who Pinkie was and where her interests lay. And, as regards the representational arts, her preferred medium was- heh heh- crayons and construction paper. Nothing about her suggested the slightest interest in owning statuary.

“Oooh! So this is where your shop is, Mr. Buzzsaw!”

“Indeed it is,” Buzzsaw said, still slumped back on his chair, half-lidded eyes firmly on the wood in one claw and the knife in the other. “Well spotted.”

“Wow, you’ve got a bunch of neato stuff here!” Pinkie said, bouncing around the display shelves.

“I like to think so,” Buzzsaw replied pleasantly, suppressing his internal cringe at having his work, even his poor commercial hackery, described as ‘neato stuff’.

“Hey, you’ve got a giraffe here!” Pinkie stopped bouncing and stared at this one. “I thought I was the only person in Ponyville who knew how to make a giraffe.”

“Really?” Buzzsaw had seen the bizarre creatures on Earth, not in this world, but based on a lesson Rumble and Frenzy had had in that primitive education center, they also existed here. So he’d carved one from memory, because why not?

“Sure! Lemme show ya!”

There came a series of wooshing sounds, as several somethings got very rapidly inflated.

There followed a cacophony of squeaking, as several inflatable somethings got rubbed together at tremendous speed.

And there, in Pinkie Pie’s forehooves, was a giraffe.

It was baby blue, and it mainly resembled a giraffe in that it had four long legs, a short-ish body, and an extremely long neck ending in a nose and two ears. Aside from those aspects, it resembled nothing at all except what it was- a cluster of long, slender latex bladders tied together in the most vague giraffe-ish shape imaginable.

“Very… rapid,” Buzzsaw said at last. He’d wanted to be cuttingly sarcastic, but the effort fell so far below his own standards that even sarcasm failed him.

“Well, you gotta be quick when you’re at little kid parties!” Pinkie Pie said. “They get bored really easy, y’know?”

“I can just imagine,” Buzzsaw said, thinking of roughly eighty percent of his fellow Decepticons, whose limits of interest in art were, “How does it burn?” and “Can I bash something with this?” And then eighty percent of the others would say, “Hey, that’s cool looking. How does it burn? Can I bash Autobots with this?”

“Now, if they were more patient,” Pinkie Pie said, “I’d do this instead.”

There was more wooshing, and then a lot more squeaking.

And then, as Pinkie Pie stared at the mass of orange rubber in her hooves with (Buzzsaw recognized in shock) the exact same intensity of his own eyes, there was a single loud pop.

And the orange object was…

… well, there were limits. It was still balloons. But it was balloons with amazing detail. The legs had hooves and knees, formed by carefully crafted knots. There was a tail, knots all the way down, with a scrap of popped balloon at the tip. The head had popped-balloon ears that, somehow, had torn into exactly the correct shape. There were horns, eyes, nostrils, and even a mouth- not perfectly photorealistic, but close enough that one could almost believe the mouth was about to open and take a bite of a balloon-animal tree.

“Ah…” Buzzsaw had unconsciously pulled his knife away from the wood to avoid damaging his work; now he set both carefully onto the counter. Sitting up, he said, “That is literally incredible.”

“Eh,” Pinkie shrugged. “Everypony does giraffes. But not everypony does...” More inflating, tying, and a couple of pops followed, and Pinkie held a neon green copy of Mayor Mare in her hooves- and the face had the same politician’s smile on it as the wood carving on the shelf behind her.

Buzzsaw struggled to maintain a little of his sang-froid. “You’ve left off the glasses,” he managed.

Pinkie shrugged again. “I’d have to go at least half-scale for the glasses,” she said.

“Ah, yes,” Buzzsaw nodded. “Limitations of the medium.”

“Oh, no no,” Pinkie said, shaking her head. “It’s just that I don’t usually carry balloons that small with me. I could do it if I was prepared in advance.”

“Really?” Buzzsaw said. “I confess, I had never seen… balloons… as an art medium before.” He held up his talons to demonstrate why- not that he hadn’t had even greater obstacles in that department before coming to this world. “Tell me, how did you learn it?”

“Well, lots and lots of practice, of course,” Pinkie said. “Not really any other way, is there?”

Buzzsaw shook his head. “Of course not,” he agreed. Data implants and auxiliary expansion circuitry were no substitute for direct experience.

“But I get ideas from other ponies,” she said. “I started out when I threw a birthday party for a traveling circus’s lion. Do you know, none of the other performers even knew it was his birthday? But during the party the clowns did all these things with balloons and then let the lion pop them! He was so happy! And I wanted to try that, too!”

“Pop them?” The thought shocked Buzzsaw to the core. “But that would be destroying art! High art!” Not that he hadn’t done it, a great many times over during the war, but there had always been shame and regret in it. (Except for Autobot art, because by definition destroying that was beautifying the universe).

“Yeah, a lot of pony kids feel the same way,” Pinkie admitted. “But even if you take care of ‘em, balloon art doesn’t last long. The air leaks out, and all you have left is a lot of floppy rubber knots. So you gotta enjoy it while it lasts.”

Ah. Buzzsaw understood that perfectly. After all, his true art- interrogation- was also an ephemeral thing. “Very wise,” he said. “Tell me, have you made essays into other forms of sculpture?”

“You betcha!” Pinkie grinned. “Why, just last week I made an entire chicken run out of marzipan, right down to spun-sugar fencing!”

“Really? Tell me more…”

STARSCREAM’S TALE

He always told himself that the first time had only been to investigate Pinkie Pie, to better understand what had so utterly warped his mind when he’d made the tactical error of imprinting unscreened engrams into his own brain.

That was why he went to Sugar Cube Corner the first time for cooking lessons from Pinkie Pie herself.

As to why he kept going back, never less than once a week and frequently more often, Starscream deliberately chose not to think about that.

“Curse this recipe!” he shouted, hurling the baking tray across the kitchen along with its contents. “It was supposed to produce crunchy cookies, not crunchy teeth! I’ve seen armor plate softer than these!”

Pinkie Pie had, in one fluid motion, used a plate to intercept the flying failed baked goods before they could hit a non-sanitary surface. (This required a violation of the laws of physics, but Starscream had given up trying to analyze those. They happened too often.) She set the plate full of still-warm tooth-breakers on the counter. “Don’t be mad, Starscream!” she said cheerfully. “Everybody gets a bad bake now and then.”

“I am not just everybody,” Starscream said. “I am a trained scientist familiar with every chemical process. I understand how cooking works down to the molecular level.” He picked up the recipe card in one wingtip and waved it furiously. “So why doesn’t this work? When I’ve followed every step of the process precisely?”

Pinkie shrugged. “Too little yolk in the eggs?” she asked. “Not enough whey in the milk? Oven running too hot? This stuff just happens sometimes. It’s not your fault!”

Starscream sighed. Under his breath (or so he thought) he muttered, “It would be nice if it didn’t just happen so often with me.”

“Hey, you’re a good cook!” Pinkie pointed out. “I mean, you can make ginger snaps even better than I can!”

“That’s true, but only you and I like ginger snaps!” Starscream had never once even seen the recipe for ginger snap cookies. He assumed it was some leftover echo from Pinkie Pie’s engrams. Mental engrams were just the patterns of the thought process and shouldn’t contain memories, but here and there there had been little… contaminations… which sometimes kept Starscream awake at night, trying to pick Pinkie parts of his mind out of the pure Decepticon parts.

One of those bits, evidently, had been the ability to make ginger snaps to a definition of perfection he hadn’t either known or cared about before. And, not to be immodest, his gingerbread was pretty good too. But, when it came to almost any other baked sweet, his record was more spotty than a victim of cosmic rust just before the end.

“They really are yummy, aren’t they?” Pinkie nodded. “Now, let’s double-check.” She looked at Starscream’s cooking station, eyeing the ingredients. “Did you use up all the butter?”

“I couldn’t find any,” Starscream said. “But the recipe says you can substitute shortening, so I did.”

“Aha! And you baked the cookies at 325 for twenty minutes?”

“Twenty-five,” Starscream said. “I did want them to be crunchy. And the recipe says you could.”

“Ah, that’s it!” Pinkie said. “Butter makes the cookie spread out more. Shortening makes it stay lumpy. So you ended up with cookies too thick and cooked a little too long.” She shrugged. “Mrs. Cake didn’t do a good job of explaining the tweaks to her recipe.”

“Overcooked,” Starscream muttered. “So I did fail.”

“What? No, silly!” Pinkie giggled. “Everypony makes mistakes! That doesn’t make you a failure! And it certainly doesn’t make you dumb or anything!” She reached over to the refrigerator and slid apart two bottles of milk to reveal a tub of butter. “It just means you pick yourself up and try again!” She dropped the butter in front of Starscream with not so much as a twitch in the smile.

“I do keep trying,” Starscream said. “But some days it just feels like failure on failure.” Days? he thought to himself bitterly. Try millennia. Aeons. Geologic epochs. “I suppose you never feel that way.”

“You kiddin’?” Pinkie giggled again. “I have lots of days like that! And yeah,” she added, the smile dropping in intensity for a bit, “sometimes I get to feeling down, especially when I don’t think I’m doing my best.” She looked directly at Starscream and said, “But why would you ever feel like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you failing all the time? I mean, that’s gotta be a joke, right?”

Starscream’s lips pressed tightly, as he remembered the very many times Megatron had used that exact word about his schemes- or, more often, him personally.

“I’m just a silly filly off the rock farm,” Pinkie continued. “But you’re smart! You’re always trying new things and figuring out how they work! And you can do all sorts of stuff I don’t even have a clue about!”

Part of Starscream reminded himself that this was what Pinkie did- say things specifically to cheer them up and make them feel good about themselves. He knew it better than anyone else. For a brief time, he’d been Pinkie- at least, partly Pinkie- and he knew exactly how she thought at times like this, if no other time.

But the rest of him also knew that Pinkie didn’t lie about such things. If she said you were smart, it meant she believed you were smart. The word insincere didn’t exist in Pinkie’s vocabulary, not even as a concept.

And as much as he wanted to growl, to scoff, to rant… the fact was, it was very difficult to get angry at Pinkie for doing things like this.

The more you were around Pinkie Pie, the harder it was to not like her.

(This was especially true for anyone with an insecure and fragile ego like Starscream, but his conscious mind didn’t allow this fact to even register.)

“So let’s try this again!” Pinkie said. “And then we’ll get started on the cinnamon rolls! They’re really popular on a chilly morning!”

“Fine,” Starscream said. “I’ll prove I can make this work!” After a moment he added, “But why butter instead of shortening?”

“Because shortening’s homogenized,” Pinkie said. “Butter isn’t. Butter is milk fat with some curds still in. So when it cooks, it separates and adds moisture, right? So the cookie spreads out more over time, which makes it chewy if you bake it short and crispy if you bake it long.”

“Really?” Starscream asked. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that’s why you bake ginger snaps at a higher heat? To prevent the oil from letting the dough spread too fast?”

“You got it!”

“Fascinating,” Starscream said, honestly.

SKYWARP’S TALE

That lunchtime was doubly unusual. First, Skywarp was having it at the Clover Café, rather than in the barracks stealing some other Decepticon’s lunch. Second, Skywarp was paying for it with money he’d actually earned- the first time, aside from his time on the weather team, he’d lasted long enough on a job to actually collect the paycheck.

Not that Skywarp liked the whole eating-and-excreting business. It was part of the whole organic thing, and he hated most parts of it. But Megatron’s orders about good behavior had drastically reduced his options for celebrating, so having an expensive meal (which, by Skywarp’s standards, meant spending any currency whatever) had become the best of a short, short list of options.

The proprietor and sole waiter, Savoir Fare, gestured Skywarp to one of the mushroom-shaped tables in the café’s courtyard. Propping a little menu up against the customary flower vase, the waiter gestured Skywarp to the carefully cultivated tufts of thick, soft grass around the table. “Have a seat, m’sieu,” he said. “Will it be water or cider to drink?”

Skywarp flinched at a memory. “Water,” he said. “Gimme water.”

“As you wish,” Savoir said, bowing his head and departing.

Skywarp looked at the table, then at the tuft of grass, then shrugged and brought his haunches to rest.

A loud flatulent sound ripped through the courtyard.

Skywarp jumped straight up in shock, hit a string of decorative pennants overhead, and got flung back onto the ground again. The flatulent sound happened again, even louder.

The dozen or so other ponies enjoying an outdoor lunch stared at him.

As he got back on his hooves, Skywarp felt something rubbery underneath him. He fished it out with one hoof and held it up- a large rubber bladder with a long, loose mouth. From the looks of it it had originally been pink, but someone had given it a very sloppy and rushed coat of green paint- the exact green of the grassy cushion under him.

He gave the cushion a little squeeze. It went brrrrraaaap.

The rest of the café erupted in laughter, including the pony sitting across from him at the table- the pony that, had he not been mad enough to kill slowly, Skywarp would have sworn hadn’t been there two seconds before. “Gotcha!” the pink pony giggle, pointing a hoof at him.

“Gotcha, huh?” Skywarp grunted. “That mean this belongs to you?”

“Yep-aroonie!” The pink pony grinned, leaning up onto the table. The forelock of her tangled pink mane reached out, took the whoopee cushion from Skywarp’s hoof, and tucked it away somewhere within itself. “An oldie but a goodie! Especially for those grumpy-guts who need a good prank!”

“A good prank.” The dumb organic didn’t know it, but she’d just said magic words- practically the only words which would have stopped him from attempting grievous bodily harm, aside from, “Isn’t that Megatron behind you?”

A good prank. Well, if it had been him doing it to Starscream, it might be worth a laugh, yeah. Funnier still if it had been a graviton mine.

But it had been done to him. That was entirely different.

That made it a challenge.

That made it a declaration of prank war.

And Skywarp had never- NEVER- lost a prank war.

The dining room and counter area were crammed chock-a-block with hungry ponies. Almost every appliance in Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen was roaring, whirring, buzzing or clicking.

And with Mr. Cake running the counter and Mrs. Cake taking care of the twins upstairs, that left Pinkie Pie hopping from one task to another, doing the baking and a good portion of the serving, all by herself.

The last of the vanilla cupcake batter went into the cupcake molds and into the oven to bake. Pinkie set the timer, then took a milkshake off the mixer, topped it with whipped cream, pulled a root beer float, set both on a tray along with a bowl, dropped the bowl off at the mixing station, then went out to serve the drinks. When she returned she put together the ingredients for another milkshake, set it to mixing, dropped the rest of the milk and a bag of flour on the mixing station next to the bowl, and poured two glasses of lemonade to go with the milkshake. When she brought the lemonade over to the milkshake machine, she also brought a clean whisk, which went on the mixing station.

Drinks went out into the dining area. Pinkie returned with no new orders, so she was able to get the sugar, the vanilla extract, and the baking powder before she had to take the chocolate chip muffins out of the oven.

That done, she brought the final ingredient- the eggs- over to the counter. With everything in place she reached for the whisk…

… which wasn’t there.

“Huh,” she said aloud. “I was sure I got the whisk earlier! Oh well!” She trotted back to the utensil cabinet for another one, pausing along the way to stick a toothpick into the layer cake baking in the other oven (not done yet), then returning with a new whisk.

She set it down next to the other whisk.

“What?” she gasped, blinking her eyes rapid-fire to make sure they still worked. “I could have sworn that wasn’t there a moment ago!” She tapped her chin thoughtfully with one hoof. “Think, Pinkie, when did you last see that whisk? When I set the bowl next to it, right! So…”

Only then did she notice that the bowl, which quite definitely had been there, wasn’t.

“What’s going on here?” she asked the air. “Am I going loco in the coco- more so?”

The air declined to answer.

She began searching the nearby counters, only for one of the timers to go off- the lemon tarts were ready.

When she returned, the bowl had returned, but one of the two whisks had vanished again, along with the eggs.

“Okay,” Pinkie said aloud, “this is getting creepy even for me. Either I’m getting really forgetful for some reason, or the Cakes’ kitchen is haunted! And what kind of ghost haunts a bakery kitchen during lunch rush?” She nodded to herself and answered, “A really inconsiderate ghost, that’s who!”

The door to the dining area swung open. “Pinkie?” Mr. Cake asked. “How are the muffins coming?”

“Oh!” Pinkie looked at the cooling shelf. “I think they’re just about ready to serve! That is, if the ghost doesn’t steal them!”

Carrot Cake, although used to Pinkie’s normal level of strangeness, could only manage a weak smile at this comment. “Heh-heh… well, just box them up and bring them out, please. It’s a rush order, you know.”

Pinkie did so, pausing every five seconds to shoot a long stare at the mixing station, daring any of the things on the counter to vanish, appear, or multiply. Nothing did.

With the muffins cheerfully given to the customer, Pinkie returned to the kitchen to find the egg carton returned, empty. A measuring cup, which Pinkie knew for a fact she had not used, now sat beside the bowl, specks of flour and sugar still clinging to the inside.

“All right, that’s it!!” Pinkie shouted. “I know you’re in here, ghost, and I’m gonna catch you!” She zipped over to the counter, looking at the various items sitting there, watching for any sign of movement.

Something clattered over by the sink.

Pinkie’s head instantly snapped to look over at the sink, where a small spoon had joined the dishes already there waiting for washing.

Her head turned back to the counter, and the sugar bag, which had been sitting by her right hoof, was gone.

After a moment’s staring, she snapped her head back to the left, and the vanilla extract bottle had vanished.

She looked back to the right, and the sugar had returned.

She looked to the left, and a dirty whisk lay on the other side of the bowl from the clean one. “HEY!” she shouted. “This is a food preparation area, buster! You keep things clean!”

She deliberately looked back to the right, and she was only a little surprised to see the vanilla bottle next to the sugar. A moment later she heard the sound of a whisk landing in a mixing bowl in the sink.

“AHA!” she shouted, looking back to the left.

Something tapped her on the back.

Instantly Pinkie threw her head to the right, which meant her muzzle found the unbaked, freshly whipped meringue pie with perfect accuracy. Egg, flour and sugar splatted all over her face.

“GOTCHA!” Skywarp laughed, not his usual nasty, sneering laugh, but a genuine laugh, a triumphant cackle that just got louder and louder as he did barrel rolls in the air just above Pinkie’s head. “I didn’t even hafeta teleport! You never looked up even once!”

Pinkie wiped gunk off her face with both hooves, giggling her own little giggle. “You got me!” she agreed. She licked a hoof and added, “And that’s not bad meringue, except it isn’t cooked.”

Skywarp’s laughter subsided. “Eh, I figured if Starscream could do it, anybody could. So I looked it up in his cookbook. But it hadda be fast, see, or else you mighta figured me out before the payoff.”

“But why didn’t you just bring a pie already made?”

“Because pies are easy.” Skywarp did sneer this time. “But makin’ a pie from stuff I’m stealin’ right from under your little pink nosecone, an’ gettin’ ya to paste yourself with it? That’s skill.”

Pinkie’s eyes widened. “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHH,” she grinned. “That’s goooooood.” She smiled a sneaky little smile and added, “I’m gonna have to up my game with you, Mr. Skywarp!”

The timer for the cupcakes went off.

“But later,” she said. “Could you clean up your mess while I take care of this? Thanks!”

To his surprise, Skywarp did. In fact, he was so busy thinking about what his next prank on Pinkie would be that he ended up washing the dishes in the sink, learning how to make milkshakes, and mixing up the next batch of cupcake batter.

He didn’t come to until he was halfway back to the barracks with half a dozen lemon-iced cupcakes in a box as a thank-you. When he realized what he’d done, he’d taken a moment to wonder if that counted as a prank.

Eventually, he decided he didn’t care. It wasn’t as if he’d ever needed retaliation as an excuse to prank someone.

Four days later, when he woke up with a rainbow curly wig and a clown nose glued to his head, he had no such doubts.

THUNDERCRACKER’S TALE

Thundercracker didn’t have work that day. The weather schedule called for partly cloudy skies and light breezes, the same as the day before, and so no pegasi were needed to clear or bring in clouds or to monitor rain showers. But, on this particular morning, he’d had more than enough of all the other Decepticons, from Laserbeak right on up to Megatron himself, and so he’d found a cloud big enough for one to sit and think… again.

It had seemed so simple, back in the early days. There had been a just war, a righteous war, to fight and win against the forces of oppression. Megatron had been a glorious and inspiring leader. Why shouldn’t he rule the galaxy? Then the Great War had come, the war which refused to end, the war which proved just how mortal and limited Transformers really were.

The war had taken so many of his friends. It had turned his home, the glittering jewel of the galaxy, into a dark, burned-out husk. But nothing about the war was worse than the Decepticons who’d lived. To Thundercracker’s mind, the war had taken the gold and left the slag behind. What was left of the Decepticon Armada was a collection of idiots, psychotics, opportunists, and backstabbers.

Some days he wondered: had Megatron always been the rage-driven abusive psychopath Thundercracker had come to know? Or had he actually been a good bot, back in the early days, before corruption and war had made him bitter? How much of the shining, glorious leader, the charismatic speaker, the brave warrior, had been real? How much of it existed only because Thundercracker had wanted it to?

That said, he still liked Megatron better than any of the other Decepticons. Soundwave was Megatron’s enforcer with a sideline in blackmail. Starscream was a self-absorbed moron, and Skywarp made Starscream look smart. And Soundwave’s minions were just different flavors of annoying. If Optimus Prime showed up tomorrow and disintegrated the whole lot of them, Thundercracker wouldn’t miss a single one.

Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing there, still with the Decepticons. Not that he intended to defect; no, he still hated the Autobots a lot more than he hated the other Decepticons, and he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. But he could just desert, right?

Yeah. He could. And he’d thought of that so many times over the aeons… but he’d never done it. No, he’d just gone along, obeyed orders, fought and survived, never changing anything, no matter how insane it all was.

Face facts, Thundercracker told himself, slumping down to rest his chin on the cloud, for all you groan at how stupid the others are, you ain’t any better than the rest of them. And you’re going to go back to base and say yes, Megatron, no Megatron, as you command Lord Megatron, and tomorrow you’ll do it again, and tomorrow, and a million years of tomorrows, because you’re too dumb and insane to do anything else. Just like all the other dumb, insane Decepticons.

It was at this point in Thundercracker’s self-pity party that he heard the mechanical sound somewhere below him, the rhythmic whupwhupwhupwhup of a propeller. That roused his curiosity; he’d seen some dirigibles here and there, but he hadn’t thought the ponies capable of any sort of powered flight.

Then the thing making the noises rose above the level of Thundercracker’s cloud. It had the twin counter-rotating blades of an autogiro, stuck on top of what looked like a human bicycle made out of candy. And there, industriously pedaling with all four hooves, was a smiling pink pony, looking directly back at him. “I knew there was a gloomy Gus up here!” she giggled. “How ‘bout you tell old aunt Pinkie about it?”

Thundercracker looked at the little pink pony. On the one hand, he had to admire her ingenuity for cobbling together a flying machine that, by all the laws of aerodynamics and mechanics, ought not to work, and not only making it work but making it work very well. On the other hand… Aunt Pinkie? Kid, I’m nine million years older than you!

“It’s… complicated,” he finally said, once it became obvious that Pinkie was going to keep pedaling and hovering there until he said something. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Aw, c’mon!” Pinkie said, even more bubbly than before. “You’re talking to a pony who threw a party for a filly and her seven friends, none of whom were talking to the other six, and got them all to have a good time together! I can do complicated!”

Thundercracker sighed. “You’re not going away, are you?”

“Not until you smile!” Pinkie said.

Thundercracker smiled, in that you could see his teeth and parts of his lips stretched vaguely upwards.

“Not until you smile and mean it,” Pinkie corrected, a little less bubbly. “Now spill, what’s got ya down?”

Thundercracker sighed. “Well… did you ever have the feeling that you didn’t… belong… you know, with the people you’ve been around pretty much your whole life?”

“Are you KIDDING?” Pinkie Pie’s grin was everything Thundercracker’s wasn’t. “Of course I have! I mean, I grew up on a rock farm! A ROCK farm!!”

That made Thundercracker blink. “You farm rocks?” he asked.

“My family does!” Pinkie said. “My sister Maud is even going to collage for her rocktorate! I was born on the farm and grew up on the farm! And let me tell you, it was gray! Everything on a rock farm is gray, grey, grayer, gray-ish, grayesque, and hoary!” She leaned over the handlebars of her contraption and whispered, “That’s another word for gray!”

“Uh… huh.” Thundercracker gave Pinkie Pie a second look. If the color gray has an opposite, he decided, pink was probably it.

“Yeah,” Pinkie said, “and you may not have noticed, but I am totally not gray. So I grew up knowing something was wrong, but not what… until the day I got my cutie mark!”

Thundercracker looked at the three balloons on Pinkie’s rapidly pumping flanks. “And?”

“Well, that’s when I realized there was more to life than rock farming!” Pinkie said. “And I knew that I had to go out and see the world, and bring the joy of laughter and parties to everyone!”

“So you left,” Thundercracker said.

“Well, yeah! In a month I’d moved in with the Cakes and already begun party planning for the ponies of Ponyville and the surrounding area. But I always write home every week, and I go visit whenever I can!”

That tidbit got Thundercracker’s attention. “Why?” he asked. “You just said you didn’t belong there.”

“Well, sure,” Pinkie Pie said. “But just because I don’t belong on the farm doesn’t mean I don’t love my family. They raised me. They taught me all the basics of life. And they’ve always got my back!”

Thundercracker sighed. “That must be nice,” he said bitterly.

“It sure is!” Pinkie nodded eagerly. “Of course it’s different for you, since you’re not living with your family.” She hesitated and added, “They’re not your family, are they?”

That was a more loaded question than Pinkie knew, considering how wildly different Transformers defined family ties than fleshlings. By one definition Starscream and Skywarp, being of the same general model and function, were his brothers… not that either one would ever want to admit it. But Thundercracker found it much simpler to just answer, “No,” and let it end there.

“Oh, OK! Whew!” Pinkie wiped her forehead with one hoof, then returned to pedaling. “Yeah, sometimes you just have to get some space from co-workers, am I right? I mean, they don’t know how lucky they are to have you!”

That was not a thought Thundercracker had entertained all that often, not even in an eternity of war. “Really?” he asked.

“Well, yeah!” Pinkie nodded. “I mean, Dashie tells me what a hard worker you are and how you’re always doing extra things to help out! She says you’re smart, too!”

“Smart? Nah, no way,” Thundercracker scoffed.

“She sure did! And you know what? She says you could be a weather manager yourself in a year or two, if you wanted!” Pinkie jabbed a hoof at Thundercracker and said, “And I just bet you your friends in the barracks know all that too! Maybe they just don’t appreciate what they have, y’know?”

Now that was nothing but truth! “No, they sure don’t!” Thundercracker agreed, pulling himself up off the cloud. “Why, I’ve pulled their bolts out of the smelter so many times! And do I get respect?”

“I don’t know!” Pinkie said. “Do you?”

“No!” Thundercracker shouted. “But you know what? I’m going to GET that respect! I’m going to go back to base and demand that Megatron treat me like a proper warrior, not just some… some… well, whatever he treats me like now!”

“Weeell,” Pinkie said cautiously, tilting her autogiro forward so she could put a hoof on Thundercracker’s shoulder, “maybe you should calm down an eensy weensy bit first? You don’t want to shout at your boss, now do you?”

Thundercracker smirked. “Trust me,” he said, “I’ve been living with Megatron’s temper for a long time. I know how not to cross the line.”

Fifteen minutes later the exultation of the moment had faded, and in the presence of Megatron, Thundercracker’s resolve wavered. Like it always does, he thought to himself. I always reset to default at this point. Well, not today…

… but what if he gets angry? I’m not so easy to repair in this organic body!

No. You keep putting this off. Say something.

“Did you have something to say?” Megatron drawled, tapping the manual he’d been reading with one hoof. “Or were you planning on staring at me until my outline was burned into your receptors?”

“Yes,” Thundercracker said. “I do have something to say.” He took a deep breath, something he couldn’t do as a robot but, as a pony, seemed to reset his internal gyros. “And the thing I have to say…” He found he needed another breath. “… which I am about to say…” Wow, those gyros just wanted to wobble all over the place. “… is that I don’t feel you respect me.”

Megatron waited a moment. “And?” he eventually prompted.

“And that’s it,” Thundercracker said. “I’m one of your most reliable warriors. Yeah, I’m not smart like Soundwave or Shockwave, and I’m not as sneaky as Starscream, but I’m always there. I’m reliable. I’m the sane one- probably the sanest Decepticon except you. And yet you take me for granted as if I were some dumb servo like Ramjet or Skywarp. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you and the others give me the respect I deserve.”

Megatron pondered this for a few moments. “I have three responses,” he said quietly. “First, that I acknowledge no equals among the Decepticons. You know that. If you want respect, you will have to take it from me.” He smirked as he added, “I advise against it. I know your skills and weaknesses. You are no schemer. Otherwise you’d have gotten Starscream out of the way long ago.”

“I know I’m not your equal,” Thundercracker said. “I’m no commander. But I do want recognition for what I am.”

“Second,” Megatron continued without acknowledging Thundercracker’s words, “I picked you as one of only three Seekers to join me in the attack on the Autobot Ark. And I picked you again for the assault on the Autobot moon base. I did these things precisely because I recognize your usefulness. Or did you think I enjoy surrounding myself with idiots?”

“Exhibit one, Starscream,” Thundercracker said. “Exhibit two, Skywarp.”

“Starscream is not always an idiot,” Megatron said. “Usually, but not always. And he keeps me alert. And while you are correct about my opinion of Skywarp’s intellect, he has cunning, he is a capable warrior…” The smirk vanished. “And, unlike you, he has never dared to question me or the Decepticon cause.”

“Starscream does it all the time. And he’s nowhere as respectful as I am.”

“You are not Starscream, thank Primus,” Megatron said, a note of annoyance creeping into his voice. “One of him is enough.” He shook his head, and then the smirk returned. “My third point is this: because I respect your capabilities as a warrior, you were first stranded in stasis lock on Earth for four million years, and then transported to this misbegotten dimension and reformatted as an organic. In your place, I might wish for a little less respect in future.”

Thundercracker froze. That sounded very nearly like Megatron had made a joke.

The moment passed, and then Megatron’s smirk went away again. “In any case, I recognize you as a valuable and capable warrior,” he said. “Be content with that. And remember that I will not waste my time attempting impossible tasks like forcing your fellow Decepticons to respect you. Either they do or they don’t, and if they don’t, that’s not my problem. Understood?”

Thundercracker snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, Lord Megatron.”

“Very well. Don’t let me detain you.” Megatron’s horn lit up, and his book floated off the desk and back in front of his eyes.

“Er, sir?” Thundercracker said. “I have one other thing to say.”

The book lowered slightly, just enough to show two yellow eyes lacking any trace of the marginal good humor which had sustained the conversation thus far. “Well?”

“Thank you, sir,” Thundercracker said. “Recognition was all I wanted.”

Megatron’s eyebrows went up marginally, just for a moment. Then they went back down and the book went back up. “Dismissed,” he said.

MEGATRON'S TALE

It had been a long day, and the party hadn’t actually helped.

Despite the several idiocies committed by his warriors, Megatron had forced himself to hold his temper. Twilight Sparkle had been present, along with her close coterie of friends- including, of course, the host, Pinkie Pie. Going into a rage and executing well-merited justice on the fools he commanded would have been ill-advised, no matter how satisfying it might have been.

Fortunately for them, the other Decepticons had been wise enough to depart before their leader. (And Starscream hadn’t shown his face at all, which would have worried him except for Pinkie’s explanation. Not that he was fool enough to hope that working as a servitor for a day would teach him a little humility.)

The party had blended into suppertime, which he used as much as possible to cultivate the others. He didn’t make any attempt with Fluttershy- she was still impossible to converse with on any subject aside from Ravage. And Pinkie Pie, somehow, managed to be busy throughout the event, even while eating. But with the others he made careful, content-free conversation, listening closely to the responses, focusing on drawing out his hosts while keeping his own inner self concealed for the moment. And that, truth be told, had been the most exhausting part of the day.

No one greeted him when he got to the barracks long after dark, which was fine by him. He helped himself to the communal pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator, doffed his guard armor, and retired to his bedroom.

Only then did he open the present Pinkie Pie had given him. The presents the other Decepticons had given him had ranged from the mundane (armor polish? Really??) to the moronic (Skywarp’s “Get Well Soon” greeting card). But Pinkie Pie had obviously taken advice from Soundwave, and her present… well, it had promise.

He slid it out of its plain white pasteboard sleeve and lowered it gently on the turntable of his record player.

Music began to play, and then Pinkie Pie’s voice began singing.

My little pony, my little pony,
What is friendship all about?

Megatron sipped tea and, slowly, felt the tensions of the day melt away.

He thought of himself as a monster- a creature clawed up from the depths, bringing righteous terror to those who had kept him down, striking fear into any who might think to send him back. He knew himself as ruthless, treacherous, and pitiless, and he felt no shame for any of it. Such, he reasoned, was merely the nature of the universe.

But even the most hardened criminal, the most despotic tyrant, has some feature which an outsider might call redeeming. In Megatron’s case this was a love for music- and not just any music. Military marches and bellicose anthems were, for him, a useful propaganda tool. Sad songs, love songs, songs of regret- all of that found a tin ear where he was concerned.

But there were certain pieces, certain songs, born out of pure innocence, that touched the lonely mining robot he had once been, a robot who had dared to dream of sunlight and friends and happiness. This world, for all its faults, was full of that music. He could almost forgive its daily humiliations for that alone, if he were not Megatron.

Sadly, one of the humiliations was that their primitive audio playback devices had such a short run time. The song ended far too soon, requiring him to flip the record over to listen to the other side.

And then Pinkie Pie sang again, and Megatron’s eyes widened. He’d heard the first song before (although the lyrics naming Pinkie’s friends had been new to him). This one, this one was wholly new to him…

… and, as he listened, apparently written specifically for him.

He listened to it again, and again, and a fourth time, before putting the lights out and going to bed.

The words kept ringing round his head, singing him to a better sleep than he’d had since coming to this world:

Sometimes the world just isn’t the way it should be
Sometimes life just doesn’t go like it should
You just might find you get
Just a little bit upset
And people tell you that it isn’t good

They tell you it’s not healthy to be angry
They tell you to let it go and move along
But there’s one thing that I know
That sometimes it isn’t so
Sometimes it means something is really wrong

It’s OK to be angry sometimes!
Sometimes!
It’s OK sometimes to scream and shout!
It’s not bad to get real mad
Sometimes! Sometimes!
Sometimes it’s best if you just let it out

Little things can really be annoying
But not every thing that makes you mad is small
Situations aren’t the same
There might be no one to blame
Or the problem might be bigger than us all

So think about the stuff that makes you angry
Ignoring it is not the thing to do
Make sure you understand
Then fix it while you can
Or the person you hurt most might just be you

It’s OK to be angry sometimes!
Sometimes!
It’s OK sometimes to say life isn’t fair
It’s OK to not be cheerful
Sometimes! Sometimes!
Sometimes it’s right for you to really care

We can hurt people when we’re angry
And that really isn’t right
But that doesn’t mean getting mad is wrong
So before you act like a jerk
Put your rage to work
Because anger is OK
But not if it goes too long

It’s OK to be angry sometimes!
Sometimes!
So be angry if you need to be, but then
Find out why you’re mad and
Make it! Better!
And then I think you’ll find
More than just sometimes
It’s much more fun to be happy once again

The next morning Megatron would ask himself how Pinkie Pie knew him so well as to write, record, and have stamped a record specifically for him.

The next morning, Megatron would remind himself that the Element of Laughter would need to be treated with the utmost respect, should she become his adversary.

But that would be the next morning. This night, if only for this night, he drifted to sleep peacefully, tranquilly, content.

And, even if Pinkie couldn’t see it, smiling.

Author's Notes:

Well, this blew up.

My original plan was to have each Decepticon explaining to each other why they liked Pinkie Pie. That plan died for two reasons: first, the tales got much longer than expected (the Skywarp one alone could have made its own chapter), and the frame story was, as Frenzy or Skywarp would put it, slag. So I changed it so that their reasons became mostly secret, hidden from one another... which, on reflection, is a very Decepticon thing to do.

I ended up deleting some 4,000 words in the editing process, all told. I only really regret three bits: trimming Thundercracker's disillusion with Megatron in particular, dumping Buzzsaw's express desire to surgically remove Pinkie Pie's smile and replace it with another smile- his artistic tribute to her artistry- and the bit I posted in a blog about Skywarp trying and failing to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

It wasn't until I was almost done with the first draft that I realized that very nearly all the stories had one common theme: respect. And this is important, because the Decepticons, being bullies led by a fascist leader, don't do respect beyond fear of a stronger bot, but they all want it for themselves.

But Pinkie Pie? No, she doesn't respect personal space. And she often forgets to respect personal fears. But she definitely respects people. Even when she's driving someone nuts, she does it with love and consideration. She doesn't do it out of fear or obligation, but because that's how she thinks everybody should be treated.

And, from the other side, each of the Decepticons finds something to respect in Pinkie Pie. How many Autobots, besides Optimus Prime, could claim to have gotten honest respect from even one Decepticon, never mind the entire elite warrior squad?

One final note: a lot of you groan in the comments whenever I pop out an original song. But, well, that's my thing- any story I write that gets beyond a certain length is liable to break out into lyrics. That's far from limited to pony stuff.

Yes, I enjoy writing song lyrics, but there's something more fundamental to it. Think about it- how many creatures on our Earth sing for the pleasure of it, and not for communication? So far as we know, it's humans, certain whales, parrots, and wolves. That's IT. Four types of animal- and, you'll notice, four of the most aggressively social animals in the world.

There is something about music and song which affects all of us to a surprisingly profound degree. It's different for everybody, and I don't think anybody has given a satisfactory explanation for it. The closest anyone's come is that singing, or drumming, or playing music together is some sort of bonding ritual that strengthens social groups- and that's all right, except the phenomenon is just as strong when you're listening or singing all alone.

It's one of the deepest mysteries of the human condition. And I don't think it's given nearly enough credit for its potential effects on us.

So when I'm writing stories about a very human-acting species who break out into spontaneous choreography and improv music about every other episode? HELL YES I'm going to have them sing. Get used to it.

In this case, I don't think Pinkie understands Megatron's anger issues as well as she thinks, but she's got him nailed down as he was nine million years ago, when there was still a sliver of idealism not yet pounded out of him.

Anyway, now I need another idea for a chapter, dammit...

EDIT: A part I cut that I don't regret was Skywarp's failed attempts to prank Pinkie before the huge shenanigan we see here. It was all exposition and repetitive. That said, I do regret not having got in a vital point: that Skywarp chafed heavily under Megatron's standing orders to do nothing potentially lethal to anybody. Skywarp is of the mind that if a bucket of water over a door is funny, a bucket of sulfuric acid is hilarious...

Friendship is Deceptive

by Kris Overstreet

1/1: A Robot's Worst Nightmare (Friendship is Magic pt. 1)

1/2: The Dawn of a New Life (Friendship is Magic pt. 2)

1/3: Meeting the Neighbors (The Ticket Master)

1/4: Ravage's Rabbit Rampage (Applebuck Season)

1/5: Faint Pump Ne'er Won Fair Birdie (Griffon the Brush-off)

1/8: On the Job Raining (Look Before You Sleep)

1/12: Held Back Nine Million Grades (Call of the Cutie)

1/13: Unicron Take the Hindmost (Fall Weather Friends)

1/14: Neither Hear Nor There (Suited for Success)

1/15: A Cerebral Cortex Is a Terrible Thing To Waste (Feeling Pinkie Keen)

1/22: Better Homes and Guardhouses (A Bird in the Hoof)

1/26: Under a Hunter’s Moon (The Best Night Ever)

2/1: Weird Even For Fleshlings (The Return of Harmony Part 1)

2/2: Discorded Decepticons (The Return of Harmony Pt. 2)

2/4: Just Another Autumn Night (Luna Eclipsed)

2/18: Six Degrees of Pinkie Pie (A Friend in Deed)