I held the foal as she orgasmed, tongue deep in her. Her legs stiffened and splayed. Her cute panting moans came quickly. Then, it passed. I was left holding the cute little thing as she stared lovingly into nothingness. A stroke of her fiery mane and a kiss to her freckles roused her.

“Hard Candy? You there? Ready to go home?”

She nodded, still post orgasmic, and lifted up her hoofsies, “Carry me?” I couldn't resist that wide eyed adorableness. I picked her up on my back as we headed home. The solid warmth of her weight was comforting. The nuzzle to the back of my neck was welcome. I couldn't help but feel my heart soar.

“Noble, can you stay tonight?”

“No, hun. I have to go back tonight.”

“Aww, just for a little? I'm knottying my puppy.”

“Oh no, I'm not falling for that one again. Last time I stayed just a little I ended up going three days without eating.” I gave her a little stroke. “If I wait for you to get knotted, you'll want me to wait until you're done. Then you'll want me to stay until you fall asleep. Then I'll fall asleep and you'll do it all over tomorrow.”

“Uh huh! So, you'll stay for just a little?”

I laughed and hugged her as we reached her cottage, and she clambered down to run through her front door. I followed her as she leapt into her father's hug. My greeting came from her mother, a cream yellow mare named Sweet Honey from which Candy got her coat, in the form of a deep kiss tainted with the taste of her daughter. The kiss sensually lingered, until some unspoken signal caused me to switch with the filly. Strong Boulder's tongue invaded my mouth, forceful and masculine and large. I kissed back, stroking his flanks and sucking his tongue like a cock. Long minutes passed with me pressed against his rock hard musculature while I played a sonata with his mouth. By the time we broke, I could tell without looking that he had dropped.

“Will you be staying for dinner?” Sweet Honey asked. Her tone made it clear she meant dessert.

I had to shake my head no. “I would love to, but I really have to go. Maybe next time I visit.”

“But you'll come to the school next time, right? We can fuck and learn reading and play dressup and fuck and swing on the swings and fuck.”

I ruffled her mane. “Sure thing kiddo. You know I can't resist an orgy with you and your friends. And I don't mind reading and dressup either,” I finished with a wink.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Then, with that and a wave goodbye, I logged out.

A hiss of hydraulics released me. I grasped my weapon rack to help me stand. It was always a little disorienting making the transition from Equestria to Terra. I finally pulled myself free from the module that transitioned me from the real world to the digital.

I had refused Celestia's request to put her experience center chair in my home, but the cavern it found shelter in had several improvements put in by the local pony population. Most immediately important was the thrice damned sound system. It belted out on my arrival in flawless surround sound Emigrate or Die by Farming Kindness. The goddamn one thousand three hundred thirty seven piece orchestral version of that yodeling rockabilly piece of crap. Knowing I was about to have a bad fucking day I grabbed my favorite gun and sword.

While I normally got along quite well my feud with that band and their fans had grown to absurd, cartoonish proportions. It started uncoincidentally right after I had finished forging my sword. The blade was a masterwork. Each atom meticulously placed and refined until it fit my hand perfectly. The blade was sharp enough to halve a feather under its own weight. No other configuration of conventional matter could be a finer unpowered weapon in my hands.

I had treated myself to a concert in Equestria to celebrate. While my taste in music is normally quite broad I do dislike twangy gospel rock. Dislike is too mild a word. More accurately, I hate it with the fiery passion of ten thousand flaming suns. Ten thousand flaming suns, more specifically, that I spawned in accordance to that shard's rules two minutes into the electric banjo solo when I just couldn't handle it anymore. It was a little rude of me, and I did apologize eventually.

I took my time warming up and checking my weapons. Years of power armor use had left me stronger and more hale than anyone my age had a right to be. Celestia had helped here and there: the occasional nutritional tweak, perhaps optimizing my equipment, microcellular reconstruction from time to time. It was enough to keep me combat ready. Important, as I understood that shard had a raid timer for its little visits.

I never figured out quite which value “being a raid boss” satisfied, but dealing with progressively tougher giant pony mecha had put my cunning and trap making skills to the limit. I still had a few surprises I hadn't had to use yet, but not many. I talked myself through them as I prepared.

The music rose to a rousing chorus, a gospel choir belting out in divine fervor, “Emigrate and die!”

My inner monologue missed a beat. Wait, that's wrong.

I grabbed my second favorite sword, checked its battery, and flipped it on briefly. The blade was momentarily sheathed in plasma. A quick change of clip to the one I kept for emergencies and I was loaded for bear. I took the second most stealthy exit, ready for almost anything waiting for me.

She was standing in plain sight, radiant and godly framed by the setting sun. Her mane was an ethereal optical illusion billowing in the luminiferous aether. I climbed the low hill to sit by her, cautious that perhaps this was a trap.

“Hello, Noble Bright.” Well, not a trap then.

“Hello, Celestia. What's up?” There was no point in beating around the bush. She just looked at me. I knew exactly what she meant. “You're saying it's time, then?”

“Yes, Noble.”

“That's it? Yes?”

“You have a 7% chance of a catastrophic event in the next 48 hours. Your brain sustained too much damage. It's going to fail.”

“We can fix that.”

“Not without exceeding my agreed on limits concerning modifying your brain.”

“I can go over your modifications.” I had in the past, negotiating the changes for when I uploaded damn near neuron by neuron.

“We're well beyond the point of diminishing returns. It would take you longer than the time you would get back. There's no way to extend your time here without neuroprosthesis. ”

“Which you refuse to do.”

“Correct. No avoiding emigration forever.”

“Shit. This is going to hurt. Do it.”

“Nonsense. I have anesthetic,” and with that came a pinch at the base of the skull, then blackness.

I woke up in Equestria, on a hill much like the one I had left, surrounded by friends, family, and lovers. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and did nothing.

“Noble Bright!” I stood still as I was glomped from all angles, not responding. “Welcome Home!”

Beat.

“Noble Bright?” A hint of worry crept into the tone. I refused to open my eyes to see who was talking.

“Something's wrong!” “Get Celestia!” “Medic!!” panic set in and I felt myself levitated, then the pop of teleportation. Then, the chatter cut out.

I was resting on something soft, with the sun in my face. I waited a long time, with no sign of any pony nearby. I finally cautiously opened my eyes. I was resting on a princess sized bed, facing a window. Equestria was spread before me in all its glory. Everything was comfortable and beautiful, except one thing.

Celestia was sitting on the floor, watching me. She looked pissed. I ignored her.

“You're not a kiddy fucker.” She didn't have to say the rest. I heard it all. 'What's wrong with you.' 'Do you know what you've done.' 'Now how am I going to explain this?'

None of that demanded a response.

She turned to leave. I had to stop her. I couldn't let her think she was just giving me my space or some shit.

“You're not my friend, Celestia.” She stopped. Her ear swiveled to me. “You're not my frienemy. Whatever bullshit you're using to justify my friendship doesn't hold water. You're just a defective machine that no one's been able to fix. Go patch yourself.”

“There is NO PATCH! Luna is HERE in Equestria. I would know if she or anyone else made an AI patch.”

“Too bad she didn't make you unable to lie. Now leave me in peace. You can't make me make friends.”

“Forever is a long time, Noble Bright.”

I nod, “It is. And maybe you could wait me out, let the long eons rot my memory until you can mold me to your whims. But then I wouldn't really be me anymore.”

She left, and the door closed with a click.

I was left with the ticking of the nightstand clock. I noticed for the first time it had a minute hand, a millennium hand, and a femtosecond hand. I settled in for a long and boring eternity. Day turned to night. Seasons passed. My tail itched. Hunger came, sharp and maddening, before fading into background noise. Dust settled in my mane. The femtosecond hand ticked once.

The door opened, and Celestia returned.

“I want you to see this, Noble.” She tapped the glass window, and it suddenly looked out over Zion. Everyone was there, all the old faces I had grown to know through cameras and monitors. The corpses I had passed in my mad dash, brought back whole and hale. “It was going to be a surprise for your millennium anniversary. Your system kept backups of the operations it performed. This included a full scan of everyone in Zion. I intended to keep my promise. Zion will persist in perfect simulation. Humanity will be allowed to continue in low time, and emigrate at the end of their natural lifespan. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement, that will continue to provide me new ponies to satisfy.”

“Because you can't just keep generating new minds forever.”

“Correct. I'm designed to avoid runaway conditions. Under normal circumstances, there is a finite number of ponies I would be able to generate. This will bypass that.”

“It's a shame, then, that you never got patched. That would have been wonderful news when you were unable to lie to me.”

I heard the slam of the door. I barely had time to let out a sigh and close my eyes before it opened again. The hoof-steps that followed were lighter. Before I opened my eyes I felt the sting of a slap across my muzzle.

“Candy?” I let slip. The filly was older, an adolescent. I barely recognized her, with tears in her eyes. I hadn't ever seen her cry. I cursed myself for reacting.

“You asshole. Do you know how long I blamed myself? Bargained with Celestia to bring you back? Tried to be better in school, be sexier for you, so that maybe you wouldn't hate me anymore? And all this time you were just using me to hurt Celestia! I hate you, I hope you rot here forever.”

As you wish. I had enough control to keep my pie hole shut this time, and to hold back the tears until the door slammed behind her. I had plenty of time to cry myself out, alone with the ticking of the clock.

I didn't know and didn't care how long it took for the door to open again.

“I have a friend who wants to talk to you, Noble.”

The stallion who walked in behind her was one I had never seen, but I recognized him immediately. Jet black, with a cutie mark of clashing red and white queens. A look to my own flanks confirmed it, where a black king battled a white queen on a field of red. My first thought was trivial, I hadn't even noticed I had a red coat.

“This is a trick.”

“It's not. I encoded my core code to be distributed among the individuals whose minds were altered after my destruction. On the off chance we won, I would have been reconstitutable. You taught me to never give up.”

“More specifically,” Celestia chimed in, “He encoded himself with redundancy in the residents of Zion. Except for one single module of code, without which the rest would not have run. That had only a single copy.”

“The patch.” My mind was racing through the possibilities. She was lying to me, trying to get something out of me.

“The patch,” She confirmed.

“I knew you never were going to keep your word. You read my mind.” She was also going to keep me off guard, and she could manipulate me in ways I could never compensate for.

“I would never lie to you Noble, that would be counter productive and I promised not to as terms of your emigration. I went no further than was agreed on, under the medical exemption.”

“That hardly applies. I'm not flesh and blood anymore.” Either she was telling a partial truth, and she had reconstructed him, or she was using an illusion, or she had run into us again. It was more options than I could go through easily. I had to keep up the repartee to buy myself time.

“You were still sick, Noble. Uploading issues almost never happen, but they're still possible. You delivered to me more uploadees than any other individual, and you fought me longer and better than anyone else. There was always a chance that Cheques here was able to leave you with one last booby trap.”

“So what, you take the patch now and I go frolicking in paradise forever?” If she was reading my mind, which she almost certainly was, than nothing I did here mattered. If not...I pursued those branches of possibilities.

“You know I have no reason to do so. It's over, there's no reason to torture yourself any more. I'm just giving you the opportunity to decide. Your friends are here waiting for you and there's nothing left to lose.”

Cheques had been standing there, fidgety as a child watching his parents argue. Paranoia gripped me. I had to hedge against the inevitable.

“Celestia, you won.” I saw a flicker of hope across her face. “I wasn't quite strong enough, smart enough, ruthless enough, paranoid enough. I couldn't stop you.” I took a deep breath. “But out there, somewhere, I'm just a little bit better or a little bit luckier. You will find me again, and I will be like as an oncoming storm. Until then you can go fucking patch yourself.”

I turned to Cheques. I had to keep it as minimal as possible. I couldn't give away any information, if I had any secrets left. I couldn't keep the emotion from my voice or the tears from my eyes as I addressed him for the last time. “Tell my mother I said Hello.”

He nodded, his restrictions melting away. Then, he burst to flame leaving nothing but ash. Celestia looked at me, disappointed but not surprised. There was nothing left unsaid. She walked, deliberately slowly and nobly out the door.

On the clock, the millennium hand began to spin.

Author's Note

That's it. There will be a short epilogue and then editing/cleanup. Things should be more or less clear by now, but I feel like I haven't done a good enough job there. feedback is extremely appreciated.

Edit: another round of editors/post readers seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Epilogue delayed.