The Sapphire Age, or, Some Young Ponies' Illustrated Primer

Forward Charge woke up, and found that she could hear but couldn’t see.  She also couldn’t smell or taste anything, an immense change from the coconut incense-filled interior of Princess Celestia’s throne room.  Wow, was Earth that different a world or what?

Actually, she couldn’t feel anything on her head.  She raised a hoof, which felt strangely thin, and found that this was because she didn’t have a head.

Sweeet!  The only thing wrong here was that she didn’t yet have a voice to holler about it.  She had to content herself with doing an excited little jig with her wings at not only getting sent on a Royal Adventure by the Princess, but getting to be headless in the process.

Heee hee hee!  I’m Daring Do and the Headless Horse on an adventure to another planet with new friends!  This is even awesomer than pinpointing a deep-space photo at the Observatory!

It was almost a pity when she felt cold metal arms hold her still and attach something to her neck, which turned out to be her head.  She ran the hoof, now properly fleshed-up, through her newly reattached mane, which was indeed as she had left it.  The only thing new she felt was a thick golden necklace wrapped around her neck, engraved with the hundreds of tiny words and sentences of a unicorn artifact.  She turned around and checked her cutie mark to make sure nopony had gotten it wrong.  Nope, still her proper cutie mark of a light cone: the lower half focusing the driving forces of the past up along her flank into the pinprick point of the present, where the infinite future spreads before everypony.

Thanks, robot arm!  She waved to the arm as she rolled further down what her newly recovered vision told her was a conveyer belt.  She’d heard they had stuff like this in the industrial areas of Cloudsdale and Manehattan.  She was standing in a dark tunnel whose bright end appeared to lead into a more open space, and she had a fair number of meters to go.  Impatient, she broke into a full gallop and tensed her wings for the dive off the conveyer’s edge.

Time for the Mighty Forward Charge to make her entrance!  She bent her knees, found her moment, and leapt from the dark tunnel of the conveyer belt into the buzzing green-white brightness of an immense building’s interior open space.  She saw her comrades Lyrical Melody and Book Burner over to the right and angled herself to swoop over to them.

“FORWARD CHARGE ENTERS THE RIIIIIIIIINGGGGG -- argh, ow!”  On this stupid planet her primary feathers had glided instead of soaring properly, sending her veering off course and scraping across the floor well away from the other two ponies.  Freaking ow!  She was bleeding slightly from the scrape on her stomach. And am I lighter now?  Well, different world, different rules I guess.  She spent a minute dusting herself off, and got up to see Book Burner standing to the left waiting for her.

“Totally uncoordinated, but you get sooo many points for sheer nerve,” whispered Book Burner with a sly little smile, “Come on.”  The two ponies walked a few meters to where Lyrical Melody was talking to the bunch of freaks that Forward Charge supposed must be humans.

In some ways, the humans had the proper appearance of ponies: hair on the head, properly equinoid faces, capable of standing on two legs, seemingly correct variations of muscle-lines and body curves to differentiate males and females.  In other ways, they were alien as can be: only a tiny bit of thin, sparse hair on the rest of their bodies instead of fur; the ends of their forelegs split into five little grasping claws that didn’t even have the decency to end in sharp nails; no tails or hooves whatsoever; what had to be completely outsized mammaries on the mare in the group; and no wings or horns, either.

In fact, despite not having wings or horns, only a few in the group of around a dozen had the musculature to be anything like an Earth Pony.  Most just looked disturbingly thin.  How could they manage being so scrawny?

Well of course they don’t have wings or horns, Forward Charge chided herself, These poor slobs have to live without magic.  Still, at least they could exercise instead of letting themselves get like that.  Or dear Discord, could they actually have a food shortage?

Many of them had all kinds of tiny spots and flecks on their skin, but despite the markings, they displayed no cutie marks at all.  In fact, all of them were almost entirely covered in clothing.  Was it some kind of formal occasion?

No magic, sure, but hiding your cutie mark from everyhuman?  That’s just not respecting yourself!  It was like a perverted freak had redesigned the pony body based on a tall, warty, thin, hornless minotaur.

No wonder the papers were talking of immigrants to Equestria!  Even Discord wouldn’t make such a hopeless chimera creature, and he was Best Hopeless Chimera Creature.

“Imagine how I felt seeing myself as a unicorn the first time,” said Book Burner as he nudged her again at the shoulder.  It looked like he had a necklace the same as hers, though apparently somepony had decided stallions got slightly thicker gold chains.

“If you’ve got a mind-reading spell, you could be more polite about using it!” she lashed out.  It was a disturbing thought.  What if you had grown up a tall, warty, thin, hornless minotaur with hundreds of tiny little uglinesses, and then found yourself looking for the first time at a beautiful, sleek pony?

“Actually, I just saw the look on your face.  It was kind of obvious you’re weirded out by humans,” he answered with a slight toss of his jet-dark mane.  The two trotted right up to Lyrical Melody and waited for her to finish conversing with the thin, dark human standing in front of her.

“Lyrical, how goes our introduction?” Book asked.

“Where the hay are we and what are these necklaces we’re all wearing?” added Forward Charge with an enthusiastic snort.

“Weellll,” Lyrical Melody said, “The necklaces, at least, are a translation device given to us by the Princess.  They can translate from Equestrian into languages used here.”  Book Burner gave a short whistle.

“That is high tech.  Humans have gotten pretty good at machine translation, but apparently Celestia’s a few kilometers ahead,” he remarked.  Forward Charge shook her head slightly.  Why should such physically simple magic be difficult for the Princess?

“As to what we’re doing here,” said Lyrical Melody, “So far, they’ve introduced themselves as the engineers’ tour group of Factory Number Forty-Two belonging to the Foxconn Company of Shenzhen Province.  They came here to see the demonstration of their firm’s latest nano-manufacturing techniques they developed in collaboration with Princess Celestia.  She had promised to send ponies, and apparently, that’s us.  The head of the group is one Doctor Xing.”  She gestured a green hoof to the tanned human standing in front of her wearing a business suit.  Doctor Xing had a controlled, pensive look on his face, and had bent himself slightly with a hand on his knee to put himself at eye-level with Lyrical Melody.

“He was actually just telling everyhuman about us.”

Doctor Xing came rather suddenly alive, turned to his audience, and waved his arm at the three mechanically-embodied ponies with an open palm.

“Yes, actually, with the three fairy-horses --” he began.

“Ponies, we’re ponies,” interjected Lyrical Melody.  Forward Charge rolled her eyes.  So much for inter-species diplomacy!

“With the three fairy-horses here, ladies and gentlemen, we can present to you the culmination of our latest work.  They possess shape-memory alloy actuators on a carbon-nanotube skeleton.  An organic EcoBot digestive system can drive them indefinitely on real food or other organic matter.  Their eyes are Alpha IMS prosthetics, and they have organic frog-egg sensors for smell and taste.  Now, their nervous system, there is the interesting part: our business partner Hofvarpnir Holdings has downloaded intelligent minds from software into their own custom-built network of nanobots distributed all through their bodies.  Every advancement and development in robotics and computational science has added up to our single sum total: the ‘equidroid’, a Hofvarpnir fairy-horse in a robot!”  He moved stiffly and suddenly as he spoke, and punctuated his sentences by quickly, sharply pointing a finger at the ponies.

“We’re called ponies!” yelled Lyrical Melody and Forward Charge together.

“This basic design for the ‘equidroid’ is so adaptable - ” he continued “ - that we can even show you, right here in front of your eyes, three varied breeds of the fairy-horse drones.  The peasant indeed possesses strong muscles, the flying cavalry can in fact glide, and the other one could use its horn to connect to computer networks, if we had one here.”

“I present to you, the future of life on this planet.”

The three ponies pawed the ground with their hooves for a moment and didn’t make eye contact.  Book Burner, who had actually heard of some of the technologies in science magazines, wrinkled his muzzle a bit in disgust.

“We’re still called ponies,” repeated Lyrical Melody.

“We don’t care what you call yourselves, little ones,” Doctor Xing replied gravely.  “Your ruler has heretofore refused to help us in our quest to improve the human condition.  We face grave environmental and economic problems to which fairies and sunshine are not clear answers.  You are not just our guests, but our prototypes as well: first horses, then later humans!”  The words now came with a heavy rhythm; Dr. Xing was beating an invisible drum with his pointed finger on each point in his speech.

“Now, despite all that!” he smiled, “walk with us for our tour, and we’ll see what we can’t do to welcome you.”

The tour included a full run-through of ordinary assembly lines for the various digital devices everyone (or at least, everyhuman) knew about, but emphasized how the Foxconn company was quickly shifting to automated nano-scale 3D-printing for most of its needs.

Lyrical Melody plodded along listening intently, despite understanding only part of the underlying science.  The primary thing to understand was that the three indeed had a lower weight on Earth, where they were basically pony-robots, than in Equestria, where they were real ponies.  It would have been a pity the weight loss did nothing for her figure, but in Lyrical Melody's consideration, she already had a fine figure.

As to the rest of the details, Celestia would have sent a scientist if she needed one.  Therefore, Lyrical was just an observer.  What of the other two?  Pegasi were for distance operations, leaving Forward Charge without much use in a confined environment.  Book Burner the immigrant knew humans, but had no magic on Earth.

Ah, well, there are no accidents.  She felt her eyelids droop coyly.  At least they’re cute.  She realized what she had just thought and shook her head to clear it.  Clean thoughts, filly!  She shook her head one last time and resumed locking her eyes and ears onto Dr. Xing's calmingly unsexy factory tour.

In this human nation of China, it seemed, human workers were getting costly and demanding rights.  Previously, people had thought to use robots.  Now, Hofvarpnir’s (meaning: Princess Celestia’s) entrance to the manufacturing business had immensely boosted the slow trickle-up of developing nanotechnologies.

Foxconn supplied the Princess with engineers, she supplied them with designs and explanations.  The resulting monopoly on the world’s most advanced electronics, manufacturing techniques, and whole new fields of technology yielded a tidy profit split evenly between Foxconn and Hafvarpnir Holdings.  The end result was their main product: an advanced portable, highly advanced computer called the "Ponypad" for providing humans a window into Equestria.

Well that certainly explained the naive tourists everypony had been meeting.  The Earth Pony mare had heard Ponyville is practically swarmed with them some days, all trying to meet the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.

At long last, the tour came to its end in a small reception.  Various tables had been duly laid with generic food and drink and bunches of cheap-looking, obviously nonmagical chairs for humans had been left about the place.  Lyrical Melody had a hunch the real reason was to supply the engineers in the tour group with more caffeine; quite a few had been teetering on their feet, as if ready to drop off at any second.

Forward Charge had already made a beeline for the food, the pig!  Book Burner was looking around as if not sure what to do, and then just turned and followed Forward Charge.

Lyrical Melody went over to them.  It wasn't like she needed their company, she just could have used a cracker, was all.  She picked one up, dabbed some tuna salad onto it, and knotted her red brows.  Did Earth have fischacadoes, or did the food fish have to come from actual fish here?

“Anywaaaay,” she asked the other two ponies by way of greeting, “Whatever happened to that whole thing about Earth’s children?”

“And why, oh why, was Doctor Xing telling us all that boring stuff about manufacturing techniques and technologies?” demanded Forward Charge.  She then spun her head towards the table and picked up some kind of mushroom, as if her own material composition in a completely different reality meant nothing to her.

Book Burner sighed softly.

"Were you even listening?" he asked.  "Dr. Xing, apparently, refuses to meet with Celestia directly.  Always sends lower-level engineers, and always goes over the resulting designs himself.  He wants to understand everything, he says.  He’s bragging.”

“Why brag about doing it all yourself when the Princess could help you?” asked Lyrical Melody before scarfing down the cracker despite its dubious origins.  She covered her mouth daintily with a hoof before continuing.

“Sounds like a sign of distrust to me,” she finished.

“Probably is,” said Book Burner.  He walked over and used his teeth to slowly maneuver himself a cup of coffee.  “I don’t know about in Equestria, but on this planet businesses just can’t run on ‘the magic of friendship’.”  Lyrical Melody noticed Forward Charge was nodding right along -- typical.

“Worse,” continued Book Burner, “Celestia is the same pony who considers it saving lives to sell weapons that can bring you to Equestria after they kill you.  It’s a wonder you trust her, Lyrical!”

“What would Princess Celestia ever do to ponies?" Lyrical Melody chuckled.  "We’re her Chosen Race!”  She ran a hoof through her crayon-red mane.

“Seriously!?” Forward Charge stabbed a hoof and both wings right into Lyrical Melody’s face.  “You did not just say that!  Little Book bro, this sure explains a thing or two how you acted when I met you.”  She poked Lyrical Melody’s head repeatedly with a kumquat wing.  Uuugh.  “We Discordians were right all along!  Celestia’s arrogant promise of a happy ending isn’t worth the trouble she puts you through now.”

“Excuse me,” someone said.

“Discordian infidel, you just mean you like the trouble you get yourself into!  She doesn’t promise a happy ending, she satisfies values through friendship and ponies.  This is why Harmonites stick to our own kind!”  Of all ponies to get sent on a royal mission with!  Lyrical Melody had gone tense, absolutely still as she held joints straight with rage.

“We’ve known each-other for like, one full day.  This isn’t a religious issue or a friendship problem.  The human is just plain right not to trust Celestia.”  Forward Charge swiped a wing sideways, as if to cut off further argument, and started munching whole hooffuls of red-bean paste buns.

“Excuse me,” again.

“Why?!” Lyrical Melody flattened her ears straight down, enraged.  Forward Charge rolled her eyes and kept chewing.

“Because tell me one time you’ve dealt with her and not walked out of the room thinking exactly what she wanted you to think!”  She hadn’t even bothered to cover her mouth as she spouted the words.

“But I want to think what the Divine Princess wants me to think!”  Lyrical Melody nearly pulled her own hair out.

“Both of you!” interjected Book Burner, “Dr. Xing has been trying to get our attention.”  The argument simmered in Lyrical Melody’s and Forward Charge’s eyes for a moment, almost ready to erupt back into a violent boil before the two calmed themselves.  The three ponies turned to face their human host.

“Thank you, horses,” he said with a small, curt smile.  “Now that I have your attention, we can proceed with the final few demonstrations.  Would any of you care to examine these documents regarding your manufacture?”

“Sure, why not?” sighed Book.  “What are they?”  He rolled his eyes a bit and Lyrical Melody decided she’d have to ask him later why.  As it turned out, the “documents” were actually on a laptop computer, which Doctor Xing duly placed on an extra unused chair.

“Oh,” he shrugged, “It’s a Unix terminal.  Doesn’t even have network access.  Very, um, impressive.”  Lyrical Melody watched him start to work, struggling to make good use of his hooves with the keyboard.  He took on the expression of somepony trying to walk somewhere in the middle of a night when Luna had hidden the moon, moving by feeling and memory rather than sight.

“And could you please tell us what’s listed in the subdirectories related to yourselves?” requested Dr. Xing.  He quickly dusted a crease of his gray-on-black pinstripe business suit and reached into a pocket.  Lyrical Melody turned her head back toward Book Burner.

“The files contain text about manufacturing, materials, capabilities of our bodies.  Ah, there’s a particularly large file about our nervous systems, must be quite the innovative stuff.”

“And if you could read through that file.”  Was Forward Charge getting a bit antsy?  It was hard to tell with that complete a jerk.

“It looks liiiiike,” Book Burner started.  “Oh.”

“You three will notice - ” Dr. Xing said with quiet satisfaction, “ - the taser-like devices pointed at each of you.  Despite your ruler possessing quite the technological genius when it comes to fairy-horses and means of making more thereof, these will allow us to read and write the distributed networks of nanomachines that make up your nervous systems.  You see, then we will have the makings of a My Little Droid Army.”

He and his suddenly stone-faced associates took a step each toward the three ponies.  Lyrical Melody tried to step away and found herself... up against the refreshments table, of all things.  Damn!  Dr. Xing was fiddling with his hands and fingers, almost nervously.

Before anypony could do anything, the man nearest her triggered his weapon and a sharp metal barb flew at her chest.  She tried to jump left, but it caught in her withers anyway.  A second shot embedded itself in her left knee and a single yank of the man’s arms sent her sprawling to the ground on her side.

Lyrical Melody didn’t feel herself hit the ground, thanks to the sensation of the taser’s attack on her mind.  The sensation was not a thump, nor a clawing in her flesh, nothing made by mere substance.  It was the stabbing, pressing pain of a headache, insinuated through every palpable fiber of her entire body.  The mare knew she could be injured in any way now, but she couldn’t feel any of it.  Only the anti-sensation.

Her forearm quiverred.  Her spine convulsed.  All her life had lead up to this moment, maqtub, written.  She couldn't move or breathe or feel.  It hurt to think.  Where was she?  Friends, was she here with friends?  Cele -- who was she calling to?  Ow.  OW!  Dulllllll.......

        “Lan!”  A syllable pierced her awareness.

        “Lan!”  No/not/refusal!  There it was again.  The mint-green mare found she could focus an eye.  She idly watched an orange pegasus in front of her, cringing in pain and struggling to stand.  The many blue braids of the pegasus’ hair swayed as she managed to plant herself on her knees.

        “Lan astaslem!”  I will not submit!  It was the pegasus mare yelling it!  Who could blaspheme through all this?  But blasphemy was a memory.  She was Lyrical Mare, singer from Canterlot, and devoted Harmonian.  And that was... somepony really forward?

        “With her friends’ hopes and dreams etched upon her heart -” sputtered Forward Charge,  “ - she never gives up!  And never gives in!”  She got her planted her bandage-wrapped front hooves firmly in the floor as she stood.

        “Lo yekhol lamut lifnei she'agiy`a eleyha,” growled some stallion’s voice in an incomprehensible babble of syllables.  Lyrical Mare saw a brown unicorn stomp one hoof into position to her right, readying himself to stand.

        “Even in blackest night, she transforms the darkness into stars’ light!”

The yellow-tan bipedal thing holding the evil electric lassoes readied himself to fire another jolt, but Lyrical Melody found the strength to tear a barb from her flesh.

        “Unmatched in Equestria and Earth!” growled Forward Charge as she drew herself to her full height.  She scratched her hoof at the ground, hard.  Taser barbs still held her by her wings, but a quick flap now tore them out.

        “I'm up!” snarled the blank-flanked unicorn with her as he fully stood, now in Equestrian.

“We’re Equestria’s ambassadors and now your foes!  And we’re gonna show you!”

Book Burner stood with Forward Charge and the two leveled their heads directly at the human enemies.

“POOOOONY!  POOOOOOWEEEEERRRRR!!!!” roared Foward Charge.  She and Book Burner bolted at the humans.  How were they working in parallel like that!?

The pair of headbutts left the initial two human assailants sprawled on the ground, one of them with a unicorn horn embedded in his chest.  As for Forward Charge, she jumped, spun, and used her wings to reverse her momentum as she landed and ran back to Lyrical Melody.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, nudging Lyrical Melody with her nose.  The minty mare needed a couple of tries, but she managed to right her four hooves beneath her.

“Let's definitely go,” said Book Burner, cringing at the blood that still stained his horn.  “Lyrical Melody, do we really think that was the best they could do?”  Her entire body still had nerve-aches, but she didn’t need total clarity for this one.

“Dr. Xing ran, so definitely not.  They wanted to erase our nervous systems, but probably didn’t know how to pre-disable us physically.”

“Anypony got ideas on why we’re still us, then?” asked Forward Charge, steadying Lyrical Melody as they looked for a way out.

“Damn,” Book Burner said, putting a hoof to his head, “Does any of us happen to know how to encode a living nervous system onto a network of nano-robots driving a partially organic robot body so you can put ponies on Earth?  I could have sworn somepony knew.”

“We’ll just have to ask the Princess once we’re out of here,” agreed Lyrical Melody.  The humans had held the reception in a small clearing in an immense grid of work areas, many of them blocked off by assembly lines or closed tunnels.  Thankfully, nohuman had thought to turn off the lights yet, but their fluorescent glare certainly did no favors in making the factory interior look anything but gray and uniform.

        “We can reach the edges of the building very simply, but from there we have no idea where to find an exit,” she said.  She trotted over to the nearest piece of disused factory equipment.

        “Can you two boost me so I can climb up and see where we are?” she asked.  It took some effort, but Book Burner and Forward Charge managed it, with Book acting as a step-stool and Forward Charge standing on her hind legs to help with balance.  Thankfully the factory wasn’t that tall and the machine that looked like a gigantic sewing machine let Lyrical Melody climb up into the rafters quickly.  She made a quick scan of their surroundings.

        “Yeah, they’ve stationed security men at the exits, which are respectively to the relative due left and back-right from where we started.”  As Lyrical Melody looked further around for ways out, something caught her eye.

        “Mother and Princess Above!  Everypony, we need to take care of this.”

        The sight of them was one of the most morally offensive things Book Burner had ever seen.  This was saying something, considering his former life as a human being.  Or at least, the former life as a human being he currently remembered.

Only Celestia knew whether his memories were real and Daniel Nov had actually existed, or whether he was an assembled, purpose-made unicorn sent out here in some scheme.  However, why make the pony he found himself to be for a scheme instead of... well, instead of another Lyrical Melody: strategically intelligent, predatorily attractive, and utterly devoted to the “Divine Princess” Celestia?  Oh, and all that assumed that he wasn’t still in some custom-made digital reality for some purpose.

Still, whatever reality Book Burner was in, the memories of Daniel Nov had a definite idea what child labor was supposed to look like, and it wasn’t this.  It wasn’t supposed to look so human.  There were supposed to be uniforms and uniformity, so you didn’t... so you didn’t...

Every one of those kids in a mangy T-shirt and dirty shorts had a family.  They came from somewhere and had a whole life story... that had brought them here.  Hundreds of separate and individual life stories had led straight into the same pit of Hell, to unstable wage-slave work in a gray, depressing factory at ages that could not possibly have exceeded eleven years old.  And what were those machines they'd been cooped up making?  The few finished products looked like some huge claw attached to a dental chair, as if someone wanted to reach into a head and scoop out the squishy bits.

Book Burner felt mentally nauseous, and then felt worse, because he felt like he should feel physically nauseous.  He gulped to reign himself in.  And this is humanity!?

Whispers trickled up through the crowd like a stream.

“Ponies!  Ponies!”

        “Why doesn’t the brown one have a cutie mark?” asked a taller girl in the back of the crowd.  Ha!  Celestia only knew!  Book Burner stared as they milled around, trying not to flinch or feel tickled as the occasional child touched him to see if he was real.

        “The worst part is that they know us,” he said to Forward Charge as kids milled around them to get a better look.

“They’re here to take us to Equestria!” cried a small girl with thin hair.

“Can we ride them?” asked a half-emaciated zombie of a boy.

        “Princess Celestia really wasn’t lying.  Wow,” answered Forward Charge.  A frown crossed her face and she drew in a deep breath.  Was that furrowing of the eyebrows actual anger?  In Forward Charge, of all ponies?

She bounced up onto her hind legs, spread her wings behind her and thrust a hoof skyward.

        “All right, you foals, dig the wax out of your ears and LISTEN UP!" she bellowed.  "The same whoresons who attacked us have got you in here wasting your lives working for them!  But now you’re our new friends, and so together we’re takin’ down the place!  We’re going outside to the world where life is for dreams and dreams are for life!  Now, have all you foals GOT THAT?!”

        The cheers were phenomenal.  Bunches of the boys had already started mimicking Forward Charge’s gesture, stabbing the heavens with their index fingers.  Book was beaming, smiling the broad, toothy smile of the happy and innocent.  He just couldn’t help it.  That damn ballsy, brilliant, wonderful mare had just made breaking out of a living hell guarded by men with guns at every exit sound awesome instead of terribly difficult.

He had no idea if he was a real person or a real pony.  He had no idea if his memories lied, if he could decide his future, or if he was just Celestia's unwitting pawn.  But here and now, he was alive.  Right this moment, every memory and opinion in Book Burner's head told him he had to do this, every instinct in his blood and butterfly in his stomach cast their vote for it.  Later he would find Jacklyn Nov and figure out who he was.  Sooner, he would worry about Dr. Xing and his company building an android or equinoid army.

Right now, the only thing to do was take the Wrong in front of him and make it Right.  He stomped a hoof, and loudly.

        “Everyhuman form up!” he announced, still beaming from the Forward Charge Effect.  “We ponies will form an isosceles triangle, and I want you all to stay inside it.  That way we present minimal oncoming surface area to anyone trying to stop us.

        “The mint-green mare with the really red hair and the violin on her flank is Lyrical Melody.  She’s an Earth Pony.  The citrusy-looking winged one is Forward Charge; she’s a pegasus and you’ll have to ask her about the double-cone cutie mark.  I’m Book Burner, I’m a unicorn, and I’ve got no idea what the hay I’m doing here.  Now, to attention, everyhuman!

“Forward Charge will march at the front corner, myself at the left-back corner, Lyrical Melody at the right.  I’m sorry to say this, but we’ll need you taller boys along the front edges.  You shorter kids, can you walk in the triangle’s back edge and watch the area behind us?  If a fight breaks out, all noncombatants scatter randomly, guerrilla style, to give us fighters some cover.  How many of you kids think you can fight a few old men who I absolutely, positively, guarantee won’t shoot you?”

A few hands went up among the more rambunctious youth.

“Then tie your shirts into scarves,” Book Burner said, “And let’s get moving.  We’re doing this Tzahal style: we may have to fight, but I promise you nobody and nopony is getting left behind.”

The ranks formed, and they started walking up-left from their current location towards the exit Lyrical Melody had spotted.  It was only then that Book Burner released his absolute mental hold on his face and allowed himself to look as worried as he felt.

The Forward Charge Effect had worn off in the middle of his coming up with the tactics, and now he was struggling to suppress his feeling of having a sudden fever.  It wasn’t just that he was completely lying when he promised nofoal would get shot.  It wasn’t just that this was a combination of nasty guerrilla/irregular tactics for whose usage any and all of his remembered superior officers would have had thrown him into military prison.

It was that he really didn’t know what the hell he was doing here, and despite that, it all felt totally right.  Grinning at Forward Charge’s ranting, forming a tactic to get out of here, even using Equestrian pronouns like “everyfoal” and suffering a treacherous, subconscious twitch of the eye to Lyrical Melody’s flank when he had mentioned it.  It all felt like it was exactly how life was supposed to be.  Point to the “I’m a customized consciousness” theory.  God help me!

“Also!” Lyrical Melody’s voice pulled Book from his introspection.  “If we intend to ruin this factory for good, does anyhuman know how?”  Hands shot up and explanations were shouted.  Lyrical walked through the crowd of children, interrogating each one regarding their exact knowledge.  It seemed quite a lot of them knew how to set the machinery on fire.

It was disturbing, how many of them knew that.  Book couldn’t help but think that each method was another innocent human foal not standing with them now.

He lost his self-control and wretched, just for a moment.  Real or no, maybe I should have stayed in Equestria.

        So far, the March to the Exit had gone well.  Disturbingly well, Book thought, since they were so close now.  After all, Dr. Xing and his men only really had to wait for them to show up, but he still figured they should have done something when their own child workers started wrecking the manufacturing machinery.  Lyrical Melody had needed to stay behind to make sure everyhuman made it out of their fire-setting shenanigans ok, so now it was just Forward Charge at the front of the triangle and himself at the back edge, walking along steadily with the humans still in triangular formation between them.  Two ponies and lots of humans was worrying, considering the enemy had weapons designed to work against ponies and could probably just shoot or taze the human-foals.

        Also worrying was how well these human-foals, no, kids, had taken to the song Book Burner had taught them to help steel the nerves.  He had reached back into his remembered childhood for something brave and inspiring, and yet somehow he didn’t think Banu Ḥoshekh Le’Garesh should go over that well.  After all, it was really just a song about lighting candles against the darkness of winter!

        “We came to expel darkness!” he sang out again as he stepped.

        “In our hands are light and fire!” came the human children’s reply, thick accents corrupting the original Hebrew words.

        “Every one of us is a small light!” called Forward Charge from the front end with a flick of her wings.  It really was surprising how much steel there was in her.  Not literally, of course.

        “And together we’re a firm light!” answered the kids, pumping their fists in the air.

        “Fight darkness, further blackness!” Book Burner’s called.

        “Fight for the light!” rang everyone’s response.

        Forward Charge turned a corner with her vanguard, what should have been the last corner to reach the door.  Then there was the sound of a safety-catch being disabled, and everyone froze.

        “Come where I can see all of you,” said one of Dr. Xing’s men.  Book Burner hesitated a moment.  There was a column of machinery to his right, forming a small aisle.  A few quick gestures of his head conveyed the plan: split up the block and move around both corners, hoping to catch their opponents from a direction they weren’t facing.  The children got it quickly, “civilians” and “soldiers” alike splitting and walking out.

        “Two of them, one gun each, both pointed at Forward Charge!” rang the voice of a small boy much too smart for his own good.

        Contrary to the movies, each man would of course only have one gun, and they would suffer from a trade-off between firing speed, accuracy, and recoil.  No doubt by now at least the one kid was a target.  Two men, two targets, for now.  Crowd of human shields they could use as well as Book Burner could, and probably with fewer moral qualms.  He had no distance weapons.  What the buck do I do?

        “There is another pony,” called the man.  “If it doesn’t want this sweet little pony to be shot dead and our workers to work extended hours, it will show itself.”

Book turned to the kids with him, and regarded them gravely.  They'd been smart enough that nohuman had snuck around the corner yet.  Everyone, including himself, was short enough to retain their cover behind the corner of the concrete column and the machinery butting up against it.  Everyhuman's eyes were glued to him now.  Eeks...

        “We need to draw their attention off Forward Charge,” he whispered.  “We’ll go in as fast as we can, run straight past their sides.  I don’t know what our chances are, but if we startle them enough, we’ll avoid the first shot.  Everyone coming?”

The kids gave a tiny, worried murmur of assent.

"Then on your marks..."  The kids took what they thought were running stances, the poor dumb things.  Book Burner didn't have to: being a pony was being ready to run.

"Get ready..."  Their faces looked so damn serious.  Children weren't supposed to look like that, they were supposed to look like ignorant kids pretending to be serious.

"NOW!"

        And he dashed around the corner with four scarf-shirted boys and girls, screaming at the top of his lungs.  The first stride turned the two men towards Book Burner.  On his second stride, he saw them remove their safeties and aim.  On his third stride, a large older girl went down with a flesh wound in her right leg.

        But on the fourth stride, he re-angled himself and once again felt the easy, sharp sliip of his horn entering flesh.  Like cutting an eggplant, Book reminded himself.  He just had to keep telling himself it was like cutting an eggplant.

        On what would have been his fifth stride, he used a shake of his head to throw his remaining momentum into liberating his horn again, leaving his victim groaning on his back, bleeding from his stomach.  Forward Charge was now out of the crosshairs.  Book galloped to her as quick as he could pick up the speed.

Now he could stop to look around.  It was down to one man, versus two ponies, surrounded by bystanders, one of whom had already been hurt.  Book felt nauseous and had blood on his horn.  He wanted to go home and didn’t know if home was Canterlot or Mount Carmel or some future combination of both.  He couldn't go home without getting out of this place, and he couldn't leave his comrades behind.

There was one man left before Book Burner and his friends were free and safe.  That little girl who'd taken the shot was sprawled on her left side, pressure off the wounded leg.  She was crying silently as she bled.

“Your bitch-horse of an empress hates violence,” the man said, sneering.  And he didn't!?

“Against her little ponies?” taunted Book Burner.  He was actually trying desperately to keep tears out of his eyes.  His/Daniel's military training hadn't been real combat training, and nobody had ever taught him how to deal with this kind of situation.  Hell, real, competent tacticians were supposed to have ideas that didn't get their own people shot!

“Soft, weak girls’ things!" the man countered, sneering.  "Sweet little creatures of Peach Blossom Land!”  He still held his gun two-handed once again leveled at Forward Charge.  The brownish unicorn and kumquat pegasus were were edging around him, getting him between them.  Two-on-one, the human could no longer help giving them that advantage, but he did have the gun.

“I take offense to that,” Book Burner mouthed in as level a tone as he could manage.  The man pointed his gun at Book now.  Good.  The kids had frozen in place, some even in mid-step.  What mattered now was which one person or pony got targetted.  “The other two are sweet peaches.  I’m more of a cactus pear.  Sharp on the outside, and -”

        With that, Forward Charge jumped into the air, used her pegasus wings to spin, and kicked her former assailant directly in his temple, sending him sprawling to the ground unconscious.  The kick had lasted about a second and a half, by Book Burner’s reckoning, and it took another second for her to position herself and float to the ground.

"- only sweet on the inside," he finished.

        “Peaches, eh, little bro,” said Forward Charge, panting more slowly now.  “I like it.  We’re colorful and fuzzy on the outside, sweet on the inside, and we’ve got a hard core.  Who needs apples?”

        Book ran and threw his forelegs around her where she stood.  A bunch of the human children joined in, never missing an opportunity for a hug.

        “Fine.  You’re Peach from now on.  Nickname - ” he said, “ - like you gave me.”   A tear slid down his face and into some little boy's dirty, stringy black hair.

        “Fine, bro, fine,” sighed Forward Charge with a smile of her own.  Book heard hoofbeats racing towards them from behind.  Lyrical had arrived!

        “I saw everything!” she yelled, her hooves scratching the floors as she galloped full-out.  “And the bullet was rubber!  The girl will live!”  Lyrical had arrived with her batch of children, and this whole place would burn with only one non-fatal casualty!  Book closed his eyes and squeezed Forward Charge even tighter, letting himself have one more tear.

        What he hadn’t been letting himself do was be torn from Forward Charge and the kids and the whole group hug and brutally, violently lip-locked by Lyrical Melody.  He flailed his forehooves at the pegasus who suddenly wasn’t there, but who now gaped wide-eyed at him and Lyrical -- even while still being hugged by humans.

        “DAAAAAAYUUUUUUUM!” Forward Charge chuckled as Book Burner tried to extract himself from Lyrical Melody’s embrace.  The minty mare didn’t even bother to blush.

        “Eewwwww,” noted a little human boy dutifully from his post at Forward Charge's left foreleg.

        “You too, gimme!”  She finally let go of Book Burner and lunged, locking Forward Charge into another kiss as she greedily ran her hooves through the pegasus’ cyan hair.  Book Burner fumed and scraped stray red hairs of Lyrical's off himself, but could take some small comfort in seeing Forward Charge just laugh the whole thing off.

"AAAAhahahahaHAAHAHAHAAhohohohho!!!!" she roared.  The humans had realized hugging time was over and Grownup Pony Time had started, so they were cleaning themselves up.  Scarves were being rapidly converted back into shirts, for one thing.

        “That was probably the sickest, wrongest thing I’ve ever done!” Book Burner erupted, “And I didn’t even really do it!”

“What, because you’re actually human?” Lyrical Melody snorted, “You’re not human.  You’re a pony now.  A bad-flank pony, who I've noticed looking at my body.  Not that I mind.”  She hadn’t even stopped combing through Forward Charge’s mane when she detached her muzzle to speak!

“Eeeewwwwww,” repeated the ever-helpful little boy.  Unfortunately, the little boy next to him was displaying a precocious level of interest in seeing two mares hold each other and kiss.  Oh Lord in Heaven

“Getting turned into a pony might have changed what I look like, or what the lower portions of my psyche can’t help looking at for extra half-seconds relative to inanimate objects, but it doesn’t change that I! Was! Married!” Book reared up and stomped the gray concrete floor with both hooves, and bucked the air behind himself for good measure.  “Human or pony, I remember my wife and my wedding!”

God above, was this designed-to-happen as well?  Was he supposed to forget about the dearest Jacklyn his memories’ human originator tied him to, and the one potential link he had to a real past of his own?  And go off with this mare?  What the hell, Princess Celestia!?

“.... Oh,” Lyrical Melody whispered, suddenly downcast.

“Could we please just never speak of this again?” Book Burner requested.

“Indeed we shall,” Lyrical Melody said quickly before turning to the other mare.  “Forward Charge, ya eini, my eyes, that leaves you.  Did you used to wonder what friendship could be?”  Book rolled his eyes.  Tell me she isn’t!  The redheaded mare didn’t even notice, and batted the lashes on her own fillyish eyes.  “Let me share its magic with you!” she exclaimed sultrily.  She is!

“Yeah, I’m enjoying the attention, but there’s two problems here,” said Forward Charge.  “First, you got a nice body, but I’m not feeling that into mares these past few months, sorry."

Book Burner could not remember ever passing emotionally from "relief at survival" to "facehoof" in a shorter time.  Fortunately he did not actually posses a cupcake to stick in his eye, or else he might have just accidentally performed a Pinkie Promise ritual.

"And second - " Forward Charge continued, " - that Moment totally belonged to me and Book Burner.  You didn’t almost get shot like we did, and you don’t interfere in other ponies’ Moments!”  She turned away from Lyrical Melody and went to the injured human girl, kneeling down for her.  The "eww" boy helped her up onto Forward Charge's back.  The pressures of horseback riding weren't exactly the healthiest when wounded, but lacking a proper stretcher they were the best anypony could do for the poor child.

“Hold on, though,” Book Burner asked Lyrical Melody as they looked over the metal bar that could open the doorway out for a security system, “I saw you getting all religious in front of Celestia, and I’m quite sure a good Muslim woman behaves with a bit more, ummm.... modesty.”

“What in the wide, wide world of Equestria is a Muslim?” she sighed in exasperation, “My religion is that of Harmony!  None of that nonsense about princesses you can’t actually meet in-pony.  We serve Celestia and her Messenger Luna, emulate the examples of the Minor Princesses, and observe the Seven Elements of Harmony in our daily behavior.  Now, did you notice ‘modesty’ being listed among the seven Elements?”

“Wait, seven Elements of Harmony?” the other two ponies asked in unison.

“Hmph, I see how it is here!” Lyrical Melody threw her hooves up (a gesture ruined by having to catch herself before she fell over).  “Nopony respects the minor princess Cadence and her Element of Love!  I can tell!”

The other two ponies chuckled uncomfortably.  They weren’t sure what they would do if every day turned out to be like this.

“That aside,” Book Burner announced, “Looks like it really is just a door.”

With crackling flames beginning to get quite threateningly close behind them, several dozen shirted human children stepped outside.

A scarf-shirt had been applied to stanch the flow of blood from the injured girl's wound, thank Celestia, and she was safely holding on to Forward Charge's neck.  Thank Celestia.

Three ponies also went out, and took their first trepidant steps into the Earth’s mid-afternoon sunlight.

        A few kilometers away, Dr. Xing of Foxconn prepared himself to speak to the media.  His office in the Engineering & Research building was fairly bare-bones room from a modern perspective, but he had always had an easier time concentrating when working with paper and pen and analytical approaches in preference to computers.

He allowed himself a quiet smile.  It wasn’t enough to avoid leaking any information, including emotional information, within range of electronic devices.  The malicious Artificial General Intelligence threatening humanity could be trusted to behave as a rational agent, and that meant it must be fed false information in quantity to drive it into wasting computational power on speculation.

Aside from the false information, the machines used to print the signal-interception analysis of the nanobot networks had been unattached from all networks prior to their usage, and then physically destroyed.  The papers sitting on his desk were now humanity’s best hope.  They would have to be conveyed by hand, in person, and inconspicuously, to a team who would also have to hide their work.

        But the result would be worth it.  For a while, nobody at Foxconn had noticed the functions of the new equipment Hofvarpnir had asked them to produce for its upcoming Equestria Experience product, but some clever boy had put together a prototype of the whole.  That clever boy had noticed some of the instruments appeared to be for performing surgery on a human skull.  That clever boy had reported this to his superiors.  His superiors had of course ordered that the factories continue making the things, since there was of course no point giving business to another company by refusing to make them.

        A full and proper examination of the prototype had found that Hofvarpnir’s Artificial General Intelligence was quite definitely working to destructively read out the contents of human brains.  As a side note, It had apparently also mastered machine translation as a side-project, since those things had plainly not been speaking Mandarin Chinese when conversing with each other.

That kind of technological capability pointed to an endless array of potentials so basically, ontologically terrifying... that in quiet meetings in secured rooms, a team had been formed to find out how to protect the human brain from external scan.

Dr. Xing hadn’t been fully trained in nanotechnology prior to coming onto the team, but he was good at diving through an archive of research papers.  The raw data before him would give the project a start, and a solid one, at creating a nanotechnological vaccine against the Equestria Experience.  The vaccine they currently planned would destroy the brain if it detected the intrusion of other machines inside the brain cavity.  Killing someone before “Princess Celestia” could consume them seemed a pity, but it was at least a good start they could improve on later.

And all it had taken was sacrificing one factory that had been exclusively allocated to Hofvarpnir anyway.  Well, that and playing the part of a pulp cyberpunk villain for a few hours, but the deception had been well worth it to pass rationally viable false information to Hofvarpnir.

As he got up and walked out to the crowd of reporters asking their contact-man about the Foxconn Fire, he thought quietly to himself, Just as planned.  He made especially sure to lock his door properly.

Of course, what he said was, “Our security cameras lost image capability in the explosions, but based on audio, we believe this attack on our company equipment and on our workers was the work of Islamic terrorists.  Further questions can be directed to our official press office.  I’m just going to roll audio and see if someone can’t help us identify the three responsible.”

He hit play on his smartphone and a crowd of voices in makeshift singsong came on.  Identifying the song was indeed difficult, considering many of the young voices seemed to have entirely the wrong accent.  Still, a few older, clearer voices could be heard well enough to clarify the words.

Banu ḥoshekh le’garesh.

Be’yadeinu or va’eish.

Kol eḥad hu or qatan,

Ve’khulanu or eitan!

Sura ḥoshekh, halah sh’ḥor!

Sura mipnei ha’or!