Chapters ERROR. DOMAIN FAILURE.
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ATTEMPTING TRANSLATION
WE DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME. THE SENATOR WANTS US TO HAVE A WORKING MODEL BY APRIL. THE MACHINE AS WE HAVE DISCOVERED, CAN -BEND- TIME AND SPACE. THROUGH ROUGH TESTING, WE NOTICED A ROUGH AGE CHANGE. DR. XAVIER WENT FOR A CLOSER STUDY OF THE MACHINE AND HE...HE DISAPPEARED. HE JUST VANISHED. WE NOTICED WHEN HE VANISHED, THE MACHINE GAVE OFF A LARGE RADIATION DISCHARGE. THIS DISCHARGE ALTERS REALITY. IT SOMEHOW TAKES PARTICLES IN THE OBJECT AND COMPRESSES THEM, THEN LAUNCHES THEM ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE. I WILL BEGIN MORE EXPANSIVE TESTING NEXT WEEK. TONIGHT I WILL RETIRE TO MY HOME AND CELEBRATE MY SON'S 2ND BIRTHDAY.
SHUT DOWN SUCCESSFUL.
REBOOT IN PROGRESS.
...
From New York Times Article 76: A government engineer was assassinated at his house earlier this morning. Government officials are trying to locate the Assassin.
The engineer's family was slaughtered. The family had apparently been celebrating the young son Maxwell's birthday. The bodies were taken for autopsy. "The scariest part of the whole ordeal," the Schrott family maid, who had survived the event told us, "was the fact that the Assassin did not look human.." A medical examiner told us that the maid has a disease that led to her false claims...
A black silhoute in the night runs across a warehouse rooftop. The figure tosses its package then runs off into the shadows.
A man is awoken with a large explosion. He stumbles out of bed quickly dressing himself. He grabs a handgun out of his dresser he keeps for emergencies. He racks the slide back with a dull click. He braces himself next to his bedroom door.
The doorhandle begins to move, timidly at first, then the door gets kicked open. The man turns the corner to try and find his would-be Assassin. He raises his pistol as he turns. The dull illumination of the concrete hallway, lights the corridor just enough to see that there is no one there.
The middle aged man lowers his pistol in confusion. Just as he skims the hallway a second time he spots a dull blue light in the shadows below a burnt out ceiling light.
"Come out! Now!"
The ceiling light above the intruder flashes.
"What the.."
A dull blue light launches out of the shadows hitting the man in the chest. The man stumbles and falls to his knees.
*clip clop*
The man aims the gun at the noise, he is shaking wildly.
*clip clop*
"D-Don't come any closer!"
*clip clop*
The mans begins shaking irradically. His vision beginning to blur.
"Stop!"
A figure emerges from the shadows covered in sleek black armour. All four of its legs producing a dull blue light. The man fires twice. The first misses, the second however lands a perfect blow to the creatures chest. The bullet impacts tearing through flesh and bone. A steady stream of blood begins to pour out of the wound creating a pool on the ground.
The man snickers. "You could have just left! but you had to be foolish and come closer! You dumb, worthless piece of shi-"
Before the man can finish, dull blue sparks ripple up through the body of the creature. The wound is covered in blue sparks. The wound slowly begins to close.
The man fires again, two more bullets whiz through the air impacting the creature. The first shot tears through the front left leg of the creature effectively tearing it apart. Bone fragments and tissue tear out the back of the creatures leg sprayin the rear legs with the fragments. The second shot hits the creature in the neck. Tissue and blood spray through the air.
The creature stumbles and falls.
The man smiles and tries to stand. He puts all of his effort into his legs as he shakily rises. He limps his way closer to the creature, pistol at the ready.
"Not so badass are you? You still awake shit head?" The man is getting closer to the creature, he is no less than three feet away from the body. The man trips and lands on his knees.
"Arggh...Fuuuck... what did you do to me?" The man looks down at his legs to notice they are almost a sickly white. He rubs them and notices they are numb.
The man looks up to throw another insult at the creature only to find he is staring eye to mask with the creature. The man's heart skips a beat.
"Umm...uhh....sorry?"
The creature bashes its head against the poor bastard's cranium. The guy ragdolled unto his back, a steady pool of blood ozing out of his head wound. The badass monster laid back down on its side clearly exhausted as blue sparks shimmer and cover it's entire body. The living silhoute checks over itself, watching as the blue tendrils criscross over it's wounds.
The entity sighed and looked over towards its new captive. It watched as a few more drops of blood ran down the man's face. The matte black mask of the creature hisses and break apart right down the center. The sides of the mask fold down into the pack on the creatures back. As the mask descends, alabaster ears stand up straight and shake themselves involuntarily and large blue eyes blink multiple times. The equine-like creature, after all its wounds had closed, stands up and trots over towards the unconscious man.
The man shows no sign that he is conscious, so the Armored Equine quickly goes to work searching over the man's possesions, checking pockets and such. While examining the weapon, AE drops the magazine. AE was curious why ALL those shots had penetrated the armor. Then AE notices the FMJ rounds the man had been using. The armor that the equine was currently wearing was supposed to prevent from small arms fire. Apperantly the armor was not designed to withstand FMJ rounds, this was a clear design flaw and needed to be corrected. The AE snorts and leaves the man to go search the captives apartment.
The AE enters the appartment to the sound of broken glass, it looks down to see a photo of the man hugging a female. The females face has a red circle drawn around it with the word bitch in all capitals.
...
The equine continues searching around the room, opening cabinets, drowers and anything it can and cant get into. The AE comes upon a small lockbox underneath the man's bed. The armored robber swivels on its front two legs and delivers a powerful kick to the box. The box lid blows off almost comically. The AE turns back around and begins searching through the box. Signed documents, autographs and money are thrown to the floor. Finally the equine picks up a set of keys and observes them.
The keyring has four keys on it and they are all conviently labeled. The first key is silver with a heart case and has “Bitch Girlfriend's House Key” written on it. The second key is copper shaded and has “Entrance Key” written on it. The third key is a tarnished steel color with the words “Safe Key” written on it. The fourth and final key was a dark bronze color with a small logo of a shield on it, it is labeled as “Warehouse Key.”
The AE dropped all the keys in the pack on his back. It's pack was a matte black compartment on its back which was placed there to evenly distribute weight. Now some people would think to place weight on either side of the fourlegged creature. This would be normally be a great idea for any circumstance, except this one. This armored creature had rails and slots in that location designated for weapons, the only reason the slots aren't occupied was due to the fact this was interpreted as a stealth assignment. Light weight was a priority for stealth.
The warrior turned and exited the dark, damp room. As it exited, its helmet went back up into place enhancing the equine's vision. It slowly moved throughout the building, only stopping to hit the man with another dull blue blast. Slithering through the hallways with practiced stealth, the equine exited the building with ease.
Outside the building, two more AE's were awaiting the first's arrival. The Second had a slightly smaller build, while the Third was much larger than the First. The Second AE had a dull purple color radiating from it's legs, while the third had a dark white color coming from it's legs.
The Second spoke up as the First came closer, “Sir, I detonated the charges above the warehouse, Sir.”
“Good, any altercations?”
“No Sir.”
The First looked at the Third, “Are the guards subdued?”
The Third remained silent.
“Steel?” One and Two asked in unison.
Steel raised a leg and hit it against the front of its mask a few times. The mask with a screech folded up.
“Sorry guys one of 'em buggers got a shot off and messed up my mask, but don't worry he paid dearly for it. Heh” Steel responded darkly.
“So the guards are taken care of? Good. We may proceed.”
“Hurry! We have only 20 minutes left!”
The three Armored Equine's run through an underground service shaft as the clock in their HUDS slowly counts down. They come to a door and quickly kick it down to reveal a treasure trove of computers, displays and hard drives.
“Hurry! Just grab the hard drives! Toss them in your pack! We need to go! The M.A.R.D. isn't going to be stable for much longer!” The head AE yells into his headset.
As the two other equines fill up their packs with the raw data, via hard drive, the head equine connects his helmet to the motherboard of the center console. The helmet held a detachable hard drive on the rear for reconnaissance such as this.
DOWNLOADING SCHEMETIC NO. 315197...
DOWNLOAD SUCCESSFUL.
“You ready?!” The leader yells as he rips the cord of his helmet out of the console.
“Ready!”
“Ready Alpha.”
The second and third equines quickly turn and exit the room, quickly followed by their leader. The trio race down corridor after corridor of concrete service tunnels, trying to make their escape. Their escape route would bring them into a valley which was used to haul larger machinery below ground to help the excavation of the warehouse. The warehouse was mostly underground only two floors were above the surface. When they finally reach the fresh air of the outside, an alarm is heard emanating down the shaft from where they just came.
“Lily!”
“Sir?”
“Why are there already alarms?! I thought you disabled the communications array!”
“Sir it must be a localized alarm. It will not interfere with the mission.”
“It better not or its your ass.”
“Yes, Sir.” Lily responded through gritted teeth.
Alpha turned to Steel. “Steel set up the return gate. We need to leave.”
“Yes Sir.” Steel sat on his haunches and slid a pack of his back. He rolled the pack over, which exposed a panel of buttons and knobs. He pushed a large button with his hooves and three legs shot out from the sides of the pack, the legs dug into the ground holding the pack in place. The large stallion pushed another button and two semicircle pieces of metal sprouted from the top of the now tripod machine.
At this point the machine was approximately four feet wide and six feet tall. The console was on the ground and only made up one foot of the overall height.
Steel began pushing buttons and turning knobs in order to configure the machine and properly return them home. As Steel pushed the large green button in the center of the console, a bright lavender vortex began to form between the two pieces of metal above the machine.
At first the vortex was just small sparks shooting from one metal spire to the other, then a ball began to form in between them. The sphere of purple lightning swirled and expanded as its mass grew.
The lightning show in front of them was causing some serious problems however, the light from the vortex was so bright it could only be compared to staring at a welder, the only reason they could even glance at it was because their suits had a self adjusting visor. The other problem about the brightness of the machine was the sheer fact it was not very stealthy.
The three equines with purple flashes across their masks stood together.
“Steel have you primed the explosives?” Alpha questioned.
“Yes, Sir. They will detonate twenty seconds after we enter the portal, effectively destroying this node.” Steel replied over com.
“Good, that should allow just enough time to return home. Steel, Lily and I shall go through first, I want you to double check the explosives and follow us. Got it?”
“Sir, yes sir.”
Lily and Alpha both turned towards the machine, Alpha lowered his head mumbled 'I hate technology' as he galloped the short distance and jumped into the vortex closely followed by Lily.
Steel watched as his teammates slowly blurred into nothing and checked over the explosives once more. Satisfied they were all primed, Steel hit the button on the timer and jumped into the portal.
Two highly armed deadly equines landed together in a pile, in the center of a newly sterilized room. The room itself was barren except for a few metal tables and the large stationary M.A.R.D. in the center of the room. The stationary Multiverse Atom Relocation Device was larger than the portable ones, and was anchored into the floor with cables snaking around the room. Lily, regaining her footing stood up just in time for the third member of their party to land on top of her, pushing her back on top of Alpha.
Alpha rolled over, pushed Lily off of him and stood up.
“Idiot. Lily we learned this last time, wait three seconds before the next jump. We don't want to end up like 13 and 15.” Alpha stated angrily.
Lily disengaged her helmet and exposed her light blue coat, accompanied by her fluffy navy blue and silver mane. Thinking about 13 and 15 caused Lily's stomach to churn and unsettle almost bringing her to the point of gagging.
The story of 13 and 15 is a very simple one. Early on in the M.A.R.D. Process a test run occurred involving 13, 14, 15. Each candidate suited to go through the M.A.R.D. was given a number. Each number involved a test on the M.A.R.D. Systems, unfortunately the test involving 13, 14 and 15 was a 'Group Trial.' Lets just say when 13 and 15 came back out, they were no longer known as ponies, they were something... else. Number 14 never came back at all.
As the three equines began to converse and check their equipment for damage, a nearby door opened up to expose four scientists and a few doctors. The doctors immediately began to check the vitals of the three equines, while the scientists ogled over the large amount of data they had returned with.
“Number 1. Report to command with findings.” Came the robotic voice over the intercom.
“I will meet you two at the barracks for supper, I have a date with Celestia and her War Adviser.” Alpha stated as he turned and walked out of the room.
As Alpha left through double doors, two guards lined in to his left and right. The guards stood rigid and followed the taller equine through a few turns to a metal elevator. Alpha got inside while the guards stopped just short of the elevator, they turned around, swiped a card each and pressed the 'Ascend' button.
The elevator began ascending along with the straight face warrior stallion. The stallion stood fast as the elevator went up through multiple floors, light cascading through the spaces between metal reinforcements as it rose through each floor.
The elevator slowed to a stop at the top of the shaft, with a creek the metal bars reluctantly opened to allow Alpha passage. Once again, two guards flanked to his left and right to make their way towards the royal throne room.
The group slowly came to their destination, the wide wooden doors of the throne room. The unicorn guards levitated a key each and in sync pushed them into the door. The door glowed white and opened in towards the throne occupied by her royal majesty, Queen Celestia.
Alpha walked forward as the two guards bowed, walked backwards and closed the large door.
“Welcome back, Number 1.” Stated the only human allowed in Equestria, Dr. Xavier. “Was there any issue within your mission?” Xavier stood beside Celestia, wearing a special armour similar to Alpha's except adapted for his bipedal stance. The actual abilities of his armour were unknown.
“No, Sir.”
“So everything went as planned?”
“Of course, Sir.”
“You have the schematics?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Follow me Alpha. Oh and you may come as well, Celestia.” Xavier stated as he gestured with a wave of his hand.
“Yes Doctor.” Celestia replied sternly.
Alpha followed behind the Doctor and Celestia as they entered a small white room adjacent to the throne room, the room was barren except for a bookshelf and a steel table. Xavier pushed a card into the table causing a small portion of the tabletop to slide out of the way to show a keyboard. He then entered a password that Alpha was not able to catch due to the fast and nimble fingers of the human.
After successfully entering the password the doctor retracted his card. When the card was removed, a large door slid out from the wall to show a room filled with technology. Ranging from weapons, to visors, to experimental armour, the room was absolutely filled with prototype tech.
Once the three occupants entered the room, an automated voice welcomed them as the door behind them closed. “Welcome back, Doctor Xavier.”
“Thank you Jeni. Jeni open external drive port one, we have now acquired the new schematics.” Xavier turned to Alpha. “Plug your hard drive into Jeni.”
Alpha walked over to the large computer, designated Jeni, retrieved the detachable drive and laid it into the housing fit perfectly for it. The hard drive by its self was only an inch or so long but with added material around made it impervious to water, magic and most importantly bullets.
Jeni began a search of the data stored within the drive, “No files found.”
“Rerun search!”
“Rerunning search procedure. No files found. Drive is empty.”
The pissed off Doctor turned to Alpha raising his voice and his hand to point at him, “You better not be playing fucking games with me! WHERE. IS. THE. SCHEMATIC.”
“Sir, I downloaded it directly to my Drive.” Alpha said respectively.
“APPARENTLY NOT. EITHER FIND THE SCHEMATIC OR GATHER YOUR TEAM, YOU ARE GOING BACK!”
A purple lit, armored equine ran through the gate leaving Canterlot late into the night, trying to get as far away as she could before she teleported. As soon as she thought she was safe from detection she disappeared into a white blinding flash.
As soon as she was gone, three guards turned the corner and looked for the escaping mare, seeing nothing, they continued their search elsewhere.
The lavender colored, armoured mare landed dizzily in the center of the ruins of Ponyville. Her head was swamped in the recent events, she was a soldier, not a spy! Head aching from the extensive use of magic it took to teleport a long distance, she sat down on an old porch that had once belonged to a resident of Ponyville.
When the Human had arrived in Equestria many years ago, everypony was shocked and scared with this alien, but most accepted him and took pity on the poor soul who was alone on their world. The human was liked by mostly all the populace, he was treated like royalty and his stories were written down and published all through out Equestria. Great tales of his adventures and his life back home quickly made him popular, and through popularity people learn about you. When the pony scientist's learned of his expertise as an engineer and known scientist status, they quickly flocked to him.
Equestria was not ready for the radical increase in technology. Riots sprung up all across the country, houses burned, crops burned, entire towns destroyed. The most common reason of rioting was with introduction of robotics into the workforce. Thousands were laid off and/or fired directly, the robotics industry boomed and with it, the man who made it all possible. The riots were becoming a horrible norm for pony life.
When the robotics industry began to slow down, Xavier introduced new weapons to the guards earning him millions in bits. They were called 'Pistols.' The 'Pistol' was primarily used by unicorn guards at the time due to the design of the weapon. Pistols skyrocketed in popularity due to the size of weapon and damage caused by it. It made all current armour worthless and guess what happens when current armour is worthless, yep you got it, you make new armour! Well Xavier did just that, he and his team of now trained pony scientists began working on armour for the guard. Well magically he made the bullet proof vest and sold them to the military of Equestria.
Now the new Doctor Xavier was now one of the richest people in Equestria.
Due to his lack of competitors in the arms market, he could make billions and design whatever he had wanted. The first major blow to Equestria as a nation came when a squad of guards fired upon rioters in Manehatten, up till this point weapons were idolized and had never been used other than in training sessions for the guards.
For the first time in pony history a mass tragedy took place and it changed the nation forever.
Nineteen ponies were killed, thirty-six were wounded, most of which were not rioters but simple pedestrians. The repercussions from this event even hit Canterlot where talk of a ban of firearms would soon arise. No deliberate action was taken due to the perfect split of nobles for and against the ban. A state of panic quickly spread through out the country.
Everything went to shit just before the one thousandth Summer Sun Celebration. Armed guards carrying the newest firearms available were escorting Celestia and the Doctor to the celebration. A guard newly retired from the recently disbanded Royal Guard, was drunk off his ass and decided to kill the man who disbanded the religion and age old tradition of the Royal Guard. Royal as in the dress wearing fancy guards who were for show.
Nopony still quite understand how he did it, but the drunken ex-guard had had a pistol, an earlier model, got passed the multiple highly trained guards and was able to miss his target and hit Celestia.
For the first time ever, the Summer Sun Celebration was canceled.
Lily, up and walking again, looked about the abandoned and burned town of Ponyville. She saw the barren, charred remains of Sweet Apple Acres, the heap of wood that was the new Carousel Boutique. She saw what had been the happiest sight to see in Ponyville, the skeleton of Sugarcube Corner.
Lily was urgently trying to get to the safety of the Everfree Forest, she knew if she didn’t get there soon, she would be pretty screwed. She began to run towards the Everfree Forest.
When Nightmare Moon appeared out of no where in Ponyville, the whole town ran to their homes and prayed for Celestia. The Mare in the Moon had not been expecting the response she was given, many of the guards who were scared half to death opened fire on the old goddess. Nightmare Moon in her own right disappeared into the night, when one of the bullets encased itself in her moon rock armour.
Failing to protect the Princess and his weapon to blame for her injury, Equestria as a whole divided in two. Those for and against the Doctor.
At the heart of the new uprising was a message from Nightmare Moon, “Come to the Everfree our children! With your help, we shall stop the corrupt one and return Equestria to its peaceful state! We shall not stand by as our home is molested and stolen from us by some Alien!” The message was heard throughout Equestria and thousands flocked to its call. Many would simply rather live in darkness then allow this man to continue his work.
The Doctor was absolutely infuriated and made a statement saying, 'If any pony is seen exiting the Everfree Forest they will be shot, no questions asked. Once you enter, you will never be allowed to return. I say again, once you leave, you are now wanted by the government of Equestria.'
As more and more time passed between sightings of Celestia, many believed she was dead. The common, albeit fleeting, hopeful thought of the time was that Celestia had been critically hurt and was still alive guiding the Doctor. As more and more ponies thought she had died, they left their homes in despair and joined others in the Everfree Forest.
Unknown to the half of the populace who stayed in Equestria, Celestia had disappeared shortly after being rushed to Canterlot. So now the Dictator of Equestria was free to do whatever he thought acceptable, all he had to do was have a head piece. So he used Celestia, after many months of work and preparation, he built a new Robotic Celestia. With the aid of magic and AI working together, he had basically copied Celestia's Physical form.
He now had his centerpiece to hide behind. First thing he created were the AE's. AE's were ponies augmented to use larger, heavier armor and increasingly deadly weapons. AE candidates were chosen from the guard and were then altered to do his personal bidding. These ponies were noticeably taller and stronger than the average pony.
The second thing he did was continue research on the blasted machine that had brought him here in the first place. He began to send AE's through the portal to steal research notes and get back against the people who he hated and/or were threatened by.
Lily's mother and father had died in the rioting in Manehatten, with no parents the then teenage mare joined the guard. In the guard she prospered and rose quickly through the ranks catching the Doctor's eye. Xavier quickly placed her in the Armored Equine program. Heightened in mind and body, Lily began to unravel the lies the great Doctor had told. She had heard of murmurs of Celestia's death, it was not an uncommon topic throughout the guard.
Even Alpha, the first AE, would often share his knowledge on the subject. Alpha was probably the most loyal towards Xavier, so to hear him talk about the missing Celestia was very nerve racking due to his straight forward attitude. Lily jumped at any new insight that was heard throughout the guard, she assembled all known facts about Celestia including some gossip and determined that she was in fact gone maybe not dead but definitely missing. Not long after, Lily learned about Xavier's reasoning behind the M.A.R.D. The machine was not for 'improvement of all pony kind', Equestria was just a vessel to carry Xavier's ideals and plot revenge against his personal enemies on Earth.
This thoroughly pissed off Lily so she had decide to basically take the heart of Xavier's research and take it to the Outcasts, the half of the population that now lived in the Everfree Forest. She hoped they could help her, because once she left, she was an exile.
This was Lily's current problem, here she is standing just outside the Everfree Forest contemplating her decision to leave. She adjusted her weight from side to side trying to come up with a solution.
Lily deciding that she had already gone too far, took an aggressive chance and took off into the Everfree. Around a hundred feet in, a metal rod stuck up out of the ground and sent a lightning bolt looking shock towards Lily. Avoiding it, Lily jumped over a log and slid down an embankment. She was now in a small valley barren of trees but covered in shrubbery. Checking her HUD for life she saw nothing and decided to follow a path she had just discovered deeper into the Everfree.
Slowly she walked up through the path cautiously looking around her, she had no clue what the rods were but she sure didn’t want to find another one. Soon she came to another valley that looked eerily similar to the first, at first she assumed she had gone in a circle but her HUD told her otherwise. Quietly she slid down a hill side toward the bottom of the valley because she could see an object that stuck out.
She could tell it was rusted and stuck out from the ground. She looked around to see if anypony was nearby then pulled on the object. The metallic ball or whatever it was wouldn’t budge so she planted her hooves firmly on the ground and used her magic to tug it.
Head in slight pain, the object broke away from the ground. Turning it over, she gasped and dropped it. The helmet had a large gash in the visor and dried blood coated the inside of it along with tufts of brown fur.
She stared down at the helmet until she heard her HUD give a warning signal that the suit was losing power rapidly.
Behind her, three of the unusual rods were slowly descending back into the ground.
Lily noticing she was losing power tried to move but it was a difficult fight, the armour was too heavy. Trying desperately to move she willed her front leg forwards only to be unable to move the rear. Power now fully drained of the system, she collapsed onto her side, unable to move.
Fear took hold of her, she had extremely important information that would get her killed out right by Xavier and right now she couldn’t move, she was at the mercy of whatever found her, whether it was a Manticore or Hydra.
She had auxiliary power which kept her breathing and allowed partial HUD capabilities, mostly the scanner. So at least she would know when she was about to be discovered. All Lily could see was the path in front of her and the dirt on the right side of her visor. So she waited hopefully for who ever had created the rods in first place to come and check on the one she had crushed when she fell over.
Well that was the plan, hopefully it wasn't a stick or something. She would rather be shot than starved any day.
