Synthetic

Chapters

Ch1: Memories
Ch2: Back In Black
Ch3: Wake up. See this. Wat do?
Ch4: I'm Sorry
Ch5: To The Secret Lab!
Ch6: You Ever Wonder Why We're Here?
Ch7. Spaaaaaaaace!
Ch8: Androids On A Plane
Ch9: Dead Man Walking Part 1

Ch1: Memories

Nothing

If one were to ask him later what these first few “moments" were like. It would be absolutely nothing. No smell, no sound, no point of reference. Nothing… Just a white void. He couldn't even form a thought. He began struggling to form any type of coherent thought, thrashing about like a rabid animal in a cage, but all that came out was something that resembled static. He finally gave up and resigned himself to his fate.

He started to think, “Maybe I'm dead, or in purgatory, or……. Wait.”

He could think
.

He could think!

He felt everything rushing back that could be classified as general knowledge: The Alphabet, words, numbers, equations. Just common things one might learn at school. Then he felt a gentle breeze flow over……FELT! He could feel his senses coming back to him!

First was his sense of touch. After the breeze, he felt a softness underneath him.

“Probably a bed”, he thought.

He could also feel the temperature in the room. Nothing special, just room temperature, if a little nippy. Perhaps a window was open? He also noticed a slight tooth ache in his furthermost right back molar. He decided to ignore it for now.

Next was his sense of smell. This almost overwhelmed him as an array of scents assaulted his nasal cavities. He smelled things such as wood polish, laundry detergent, musty paper, and……..Cinnamon? Yes, cinnamon. Perhaps the open window was leaking the scent of a nearby bakery, or there are some tasty treats sitting on a windowsill, cooling off in light of a recent trip from the oven.

Third, came his sense of sound. While not as brutal as the smells, there was still a lot to document and analyze. He could clearly hear the drone of a crowd, confirming his suspicion of the open window. Along with this he could hear a very distinct voice coming from the opposite direction. It was feminine in pitch and sounded like a women in her early to mid twenties. This was all clear to him even though she was a couple of rooms away, making sure he did not know what she was saying.

Then, his sense of taste came back to him. Nothing really special, except the slightly acidic taste of his own saliva along with something else. It tasted……chalky. Almost like a taste someone would have if they didn’t swallow an aspirin right away and it dissolved on the tongue. Nasty right? It was slight and then promptly disappeared. He wondered what it could be, but decided to file it away for now.

Last, but certainly not least, was his one of his species' most prized possessions…..His sight. He slowly flickered open his eyelids, fighting back the crust one normally accumulates during long periods of sleep. As he opened his eyes fully, he saw he was lying on a bed in a room of some kind. Furnished with a nightstand that held a lamp, an empty glass of water, a pair of eyeglasses, and a book in some unknown language, a chest of drawers, a large bookshelf that seemed to be carved into the wall, a medium sized bed with white sheets and a blue comforter, and a dark blue rug adorned with the visage of a crescent moon surrounded by what appeared to be a dark cloud woven into the stitching.

He took all of this in within the span of about half a minute before something really interesting happened.

He was suddenly launched into his sub-conscious, facing what appeared to be a screen before something started to play. For the next two minutes, he relived his entire life up to the “present” time. His birth, his life leading up to his 32nd birthday, the portal, his first day…here. His first day in Eq…Eques…Equestr…something…Equestria! That's it! Equestria was the name of the country he was in now!

After that little revelation he continued to watch the screen, showing his first day here, the rocky and slightly awkward meeting of the mane six as he liked to call them, helping around town, Twilight’s study sessions, Rainbow Dash’s brutal exercise regimes, Pinkie Pie’s parties at regular intervals, and so much more.

Then came the Grand Galloping Gala.

“What a disaster that was.”, he thought with a mental chuckle.

Being the only member of your species in a foreign country apparently made you an ambassador to that country, so evidently that got an invite. It was there that he met…

Her.

The absolute most beautiful, graceful, and powerful creature he had ever laid eyes on. The only thing more stunning than her body, were her eyes. They seemed to carry this aura about them that spoke of thousands of years worth of experience, but at the same time held no discernible emotion. But that was the allure of them. It was a feeling that made you crave to see emotion in those eyes, whether it be happiness, laughter, or anything for that matter. To see the physical emotion of happiness through her eyes was like watching the change from night to day through sunset, absolutely beautiful and something you just want to see for the rest of your life. Those endless pools of teal that he could stare into for hours on end. It was love at first sight. He was, of course, talking about, Princess Luna.

Though he only saw her once the entire time, during that time, the world seemed to narrow. The sounds of ponies conversing in the background and the distant cry of Rarity saying, “Afraid to get DIRTY?!” seemed to fade away, focusing only on her and what she was doing.

Which was nothing, she only stepped out to see what all the yelling and commotion was. She took one look at what was happening and promptly walked back to her room. After she closed the door everything came back to him. The Gala was a mess and it was generally chaotic as all Hell. He decided to slip out and onto the next train to Ponyville to avoid any of the nobles blaming the whole thing on the “weird monkey looking thing”.

On the way back all he could think about was her. The way she carried herself with such confidence and poise, the way her mane seemed to have a universe all its own, swirling with stars and constellations, the way her jewelry seemed to glint with a divine light.

Everything was just perfect.

The “film” seemed to speed up again showing images of painful months spent admiring from afar. Taking every chance given to go to Canterlot just to catch a glimpse of her, thanking whatever cosmic deity was watching over him by blessing him with a natural resistance to magic, allowing him to dream of her without her snooping around in his head while he slept, then slowed down again to show him one of the greatest nights of his life.

Nightmare Night.

It started off innocently enough, not counting the alarming similarity to his own worlds Halloween, with activities including apple-bobbing, hay rides(why they would sit on food and ride around in a wooden cart he'll never know) ,dancing, a type of spider toss thing, and the main event of the night…

"TRICK-OR-TREATING SON!"

Oh and a ghost story of Nightmare Moon or something. He preferred to not let his loves’ past get in the way of how he viewed her now. She was perfect now and that's all that mattered. He himself went as the infamous Slenderman known as Slendermane around there. With a few commissions from Rarity, he had what resembled a white morph suit, his black suit with the red tie from the Gala, and fingernail extensions to give his hands a sort of subtle, claw-like quality to them. Suffice to say he scared the piss outta some ponies that day.

But all that absolutely paled in comparison to what happened next.

For the lulz, he decided to join the little ones and Zecora to the statue of Nightmare Moon. After the story of why Nightmare Night came to exist, almost on cue, the sky suddenly opened up in a swirling torrent of wind, light, and debris. Out of the clouds came a chariot that was pulled be some very visceral looking ponies. He could have sworn he heard the words “Gotta go fast!” somewhere, but dropped it as soon as he laid eyes on who was in the chariot.

It was her.

It was Luna!

He couldn't believe it was actually happening! She was coming to him rather than him going to Canterlot to talk to her and chickening out at the last second. Hundreds of bits spent and hundreds of pep talks wasted as soon as he saw the imposing castle up close.

Now was his chance!

...

Unfortunately not everything went as planned. As soon as she landed, everypony instantly bowed as low as they could go while simultaneously being scared shitless. After the less than stellar introduction involving a clown, she stormed off somewhere else while he was left standing there, his usually long patience fuse beginning to lessen at a very scary pace.

"How dare they treat her that way! How dare they treat her like a goddamned monster", he thought, his mind swirling with violent thoughts and very choice words. It was eerily reminiscent of his first arrival as well; just replace the bowing with six angry ponies wearing pieces of jewelry.

He then vowed to make everything better for her, to give her a proper Ponyville welcome! Like it should be!

But as it is said before, not everything goes according to plan. At every turn he would either lose her, Twilight would get to her first, she would run off, or the situation just resolved itself. By the end of the festivities, he was exhausted, having spent the entire night running, asking where Luna was, or pushing past crowds of ponies. In other words it was not a fun night at all. In the end he found himself slumped against a tree in the park, on top of a lone hill overlooking a lake, mask off, and his eyes slightly misty.

“This was supposed to be the night of my life”, he thought with a sniff. “I was supposed to meet the girl of my dreams, make her feel welcome, and have fun all night long.” “But instead I've run myself ragged trying to impress her and just had an all around crappy night.” He however, engrossed in his own thoughts, did not hear the hoofsteps coming up to him.

“We do not know the meaning of this word “crappy”, but we infer from thy tone of speech, it must mean thou hast had a less than satisfactory night.”

He froze.

It was then that he had two thoughts total running through his thick little head. One: He must've been thinking out loud again. Two: There's only one pony in this entire world who still talks in those old, enchanting, archaic speech patterns.

Princess Luna.

She was standing right in front of him, and she heard everything he was saying… Shit.

Immediately he got up, only to drop to one knee before her, face red from embarrassment.

She frowned slightly and said, ”Please, rise. We have had enough respect paid to us to last several lifetimes. We just want to know why thou hast been running thyself “ragged” instead of having fun like the rest of our subjects.”

“Good, she doesn't know it was her I was talking about”, he thought with a mental sigh of relief.

Sitting back against the tree he began. “Well, Princess, tonight was the night I thought I could impress somepony I've had my eye on for quite a while”, he said sighing. “But at every turn, every time I would find her, she would slip away at the last second, or get stolen away. So for the whole night, I just ran from place to place, asking where she was, if anypony saw her, and berating myself whenever she would slip away.” He said his vision becoming blurry again. “Now I fear she might be leaving and not coming back for a very long time.”

Luna saw he was getting upset again and spoke up “Wait, she does not live here?”

He shook his head saying “No, she was just visiting friends here in Ponyville; she has to go back to her family tonight.” He had decided at this point to keep his feelings for her anonymous. Ignorance is bliss after all.

At this, Luna got a thoughtful look on her face, mentally going through several solutions on how to fix this stallio-mans’ dilemma.

Then he spoke up trying to change the subject “You know? It doesn't matter now. She's going home and I've had my chance. I'll live.”

She only nodded in response, a sad look on her face. “What? Why was she sad for me? I literally just met her!”

Then he spoke again, “Well, there's my reason, I think talking about it helped a lot, thank you.” At that, she smiled “There it is!” he thought. He could see the happiness wash across her eyes like a tide washes over a beach to reveal a perfect, pearl white shell. It was like uncovering treasure and he soaked in every second with an enthusiasm he had never thought possible.

As the night drug on she told her entourage to go home as she would fly back herself. They talked all night long into the wee hours of the morning ranging from personal lives, to gossip, all the way to pony morals and philosophy versus human. At the end they had a silent, mutual agreement to just lay back and stargaze. At one point during this activity, Luna turned her head to ask something of him, but stopped when she saw his eyes.

At a distance one might assume he had simple brown eyes. Such was not the case, as he had a set of rather soft and welcoming greenish-brown hazel eyes that spoke of unmatched kindness and patience. She felt like she could get lost in them… And she did. She felt herself melt on the spot. Never before has a member of the opposite sex gazed at her so lovingly, so…

Wait…

Gazed?!

LOVINGLY?!

Then she suddenly came back to reality to find he was staring right back at her! She turned away quickly with what he could have sworn was a light blush. Then she spoke up saying that this has been a very interesting and very fun night, but she had to go back to her sister before she started to worry. She then spread her wings and took off into the night. Before she got out of sight over the tree line, she waved at him. He waved back as he was getting up to go back home. That night really had been the best night of his life and then some.

The movie sped up again showing the following months. Things had relatively returned to normal, save for the random bouts of randomness that seemed to pop up every now and then.

Such was the Ponyville life.

But after that night, he started getting visits during the late hours from a certain princess, not that he minded of course, and he always stayed up extra late just in case she came by. At one point she took up her sisters’ advice to learn about the new world and new speech patterns, so what better way to learn about it than from her favorite human!

Well….only human, so her favorite by default but that doesn't change a thing!

The visits became a nightly thing from then on. Later he learned that hardly anypony came to her night court, so she spent that time with him! A very saddening thought that nopony cared enough to go to her court or were too scared to come face to face with “Nightmare Moon”, and a very happy thought that she would shirk her royal duties to see and learn from him! In return, he would learn about Equestria as a whole, including political standing in the world, the laissez faire-like economy, and even a few royal secrets that nopony really knows about yet. It made him smile that she trusted him enough with these secrets. Of course he would always make a Dead Space style Pinkie promise and keep it.

The movie then showed him finally working up the courage to ask her out. It was a nerve-racking experience because even though he kept telling himself the worst thing she can say is no, he was playing out scenario after scenario in his head that ranged from him never seeing her again, to being sent to the freaking moon! Of all things! All in all it went fairly well. She was hesitant at first, but then she reflected on the time they spent together and found he really was a wonderful person to be around. They have a lot of the same interests; he is more than bearable company. Not even mentioning that he had taught her so many new things!

So she said yes.

Words could not describe the relief that she didn't say no, fear that he had no idea what he was doing, and downright elation and sheer joy he felt at that point because she said YES!

The movie sped through several dates, dances, and rocky moments, finally leading up to him proposing to her. In his sub-conscious, he could feel tears of joy coming from his eyes as he saw her tears of joy when he said those famous words “marry me?” and she said “Yes”, but it was really more like “YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES!”

The emotions running through their minds at that point were so jumbled that the only think they could do at that point was kiss. It was just such a magical moment, he felt himself get lost in this mare. The movie, much to his chagrin, sped through the wedding prep, the evil glares of other stallions wanting her as soon as the “bucking monkey” got her, the wedding itself, the honeymoon, the best 20 years of his life, countless nights of passion.

…

Then, the worst possible thing to plague a human happened. Due to ponies being around Celestia so often for so long, they formed an adaptive defense against the small amounts of natural solar radiation she constantly emits over time, a defense that, unfortunately, he did not have time to build up. That's right. He got the scourge to man, women, and child alike…

Cancer.

The doctors only gave him a year. A year he spent with great joy, with his family.

The movie then sped to his deathbed. He had to look away from the screen with great floods of tears that matched his families’ as the “camera” showed him saying goodbye to Luna, Celestia, Twilight in her new princess gear, Cadence and Shiny, and the rest of the castle staff. Sharing his last kiss with Luna, and then, finally, his last words. He still chuckled at his attempt to get her to smile, even in his last moments by saying “Keep that mane short.” before expiring.

That's when the movie ended and he was thrown back into the real world. He found that he had been crying in his sleep, probably a product of the…

Memory? Dream? Maybe a vision of the future?

He didn't know.

He really hoped it was a memory! Something that vivid and detailed cannot be fabricated. But the one thing he did know was that he was going to find out what the fuck was going on!

As a last parting gift, the movie spit one last piece of information into his skull.

A name.

His name.

Jacob LeBlanc.

That is his name.

As Jacob looked around at what he now recognized as his old guest bedroom at Twilights’, and heard what he now recognized as Twilight in the next room over, probably reading out loud again, he set out to the door at the far left of the room.

“Time to get some answers.”, he said with a determined look on as he opened the door.

Ch2: Back In Black

Only to close it seconds later with an embarrassed blush when he realized he only had his boxers on. He decided on a whim what to wear that day. Walking over to the chest of drawers, he picked out his attire for the day: a pair of dark blue jeans, a plain white t-shirt, a faux leather belt, and his boots. On the way out he grabbed his signature Cold war era West German army coat with the fur lining detached for warmer weather. This thing had been with him for ages, ever since he was in 8th grade and the coat almost touched the ground and the sleeves went past his hands by about half a foot. It was worn, battered, and torn in some places, but that’s nothing Rarity can't fix right?

Wrong.

Because she “Simply will not waste my talent on such a horrendous piece of filth!”…that is until she got a royal edict from Luna saying “FIX THIS DAMNABLE PIECE OF CLOTHING! HE WON'T STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT IT!”

Chuckling at the memory/dream he went into the main library from where the guest bedroom connected to it. He took a moment to marvel at the amount of books that had accumulated on the shelves in the years the library has been open, before resting his eyes on the lavender unicorn laying on a cushion in the corner of the room reading a book out loud... again.

“Twilight?” he called out to her only just now noticing that she was a unicorn and not an alicorn.

For some odd reason the thought disappeared as soon as it was formed.

When she heard her name she turned around to address the one who called her. She smiled widely at the sight of her human friend and responded “Oh! Jacob! You're awake!”

She trotted over to the bookshelf and slid the book back into place before turning to him once more. “I thought I would let you sleep in late today to make sure you had enough energy for tonight.”

Wat?

What was tonight? He decided to voice his thoughts to her.

To that, she got a confused look on her face saying “Don't tell me you've already forgotten?! Tonight’s the Grand Galloping Gala, the first one i get to attend with my friends!”

Puzzled could not even begin to describe what he felt. “Now wait just a cotton pickin’ minute! Tonight is the Gala? But that already happened! That’s where I met Luna!”

At this thought he immediately said “Twilight. Where is Luna?”

She got an even more confused look on her face after that. “You meant Princess Luna? No she doesn't visit small villages like this. We're a self sustaining community and we don't need much interference with the government.”

He furrowed his brow at this response. Where was his wife? Why was he at Twilights’ instead of his room at the castle? What is going on?

“Twilight” he said cautiously. “Where is Luna? Where is my wife?” He finished with a small amount of concern and anger. He was normally a very patient and rational man, but when his family is put in potential danger, you can bet he will show why the human race evolved from predators.

Albeit very brief, Twilight had a small bit of worry painted on her face before reverting to an incredulous and “this guy belongs in a nut-house” look. “Jacob, I don't know what kind of dream you had, but Princess Luna is not your wife.”

He paused. Then his face contorted into complete and utter rage! He could feel the anger welling up inside of him like a dam that has been backed up and the reservoir is flowing over! She had the gall to renounce his marriage?! As if it never happened?! SHE WAS A BRIDES MAID FOR FUCKS SAKE!

“Well then how do you explain th-...”

He stopped, dead, mid sentence as he gazed upon his left ring finger.

It was gone…

His wedding ring was gone!

The beautiful onyx, obsidian, and diamond ring he had to represent his love was gone!

She could see him start to hyperventilate and put a hoof onto his shoulder. “Jacob! Calm down, it was just a dream. A very real and vivid dream and nothing more” she spoke in a calming, soothing voice. His anger suddenly died down to a withering ember.

“Perhaps it was all just a dream” he thought with a depressed sigh. “Perhaps I didn't find the love of my life and live happily ever after.”

Seeing the look on his face and the forming tears in his eyes she offered more soothing words, flowing like cooling aloe vera lotion onto a bad burn. “I know; I get those dreams sometimes too. But you know what always helps me?” He shook his head. “Comfort food!” She trotted toward the kitchen. “And luckily for you, I stopped buy Sugercube Corner and got cinnamon rolls!”

That little devil, she knew he couldn't resist Pinkies’ cinnamon rolls!

His spirits lifted slightly, he followed Twilight into the kitchen with hope in his heart. New, exciting thoughts began to roll around in his head. “Perhaps I could relive it all again! Perhaps I could make this dream a reality! Perhaps I could-...”

He stopped mid thought at the sight of something very peculiar. Sitting there, on the wall, like it owned the goddamned place... Was an electrical outlet.

Now anyplace else, this wouldn't have caught his attention. But this was Ponyville, and from what he had experienced thus far, Ponyville was essentially an Equestrian equivalent to his worlds Amish settlements, with little to no technology to be seen outside of the magically powered devices used by his friends. Only places like Canterlot or Manehatten had an electrical grid. This confused him thoroughly and got him wondering how that outlet got there. He kept that thought in his mind as he walked into the kitchen intent on asking Twilight about it.

That is, until he laid eyes on the succulent, sweet, warm, moist gifts from God Himself sitting on the table.

Sugercube Corner brand cinnamon rolls.

After that, all thoughts about the electrical outlet left his mind, replaced with images of just how he was going to ravage those rolls like the naughty little treats they were. He practically jumped into the custom made chair, designed for a bipedal such as himself, and tore into the rolls like a turkey vulture vying for a piece of carrion. “She was right; this did help with the bad dream! I can't even remember what it was about!” he thought still absolutely destroying the frosting covered pieces of dough.

After Jacob was finished, he let out a large belch that would put Rainbow to shame and slumped into his chair, utterly satisfied.

“I take it you enjoyed that?” she said with a know-it-all smirk.

He grunted in response, his thoughts clouded and muddled.

He then suddenly became focused and alert, as if something had just decided to clear his mind of the effect the rolls seemed to have on him. His thoughts went back to the outlet in the other room and the visions of the "dream" came back to him.

“Hey Twi?” he asked, getting her attention.

“Why is there an electrical outlet in the other room?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Her reaction was at first, very shocked at... something, as if she had just seen a ghost, then switched to a flash of anger, then went to a bad innocent and confused expression.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” She said with an extremely forced smile, eyes darting left to right. “She's trying to hide something” he thought, his eyes narrowing in increasing suspicion.

His mind went back to when he woke up and started to piece together all the strange things that happened this last hour in chronological order. First his senses coming back to him one by one, as if switched on, the chalky, aspirin-like, taste in his mouth, the seemingly real "dream"/memory, the electrical outlet, and finally the drug-like effects the cinnamon rolls seemed to have on him.

Something was going on here. “Twi? What's going on? I don't lie to you, now do I?” She shook her head in a defeated manner. “Good, now tell me the truth.” he said in an imploring manner.

Before she could open her mouth, a sound blared throughout the library that sounded something like a klaxon alarm.

“All personnel, building security has been compromised on floors one, two, five, eleven, and twenty-six. Threat assessment level: Red. Hostiles confirmed armed and dangerous. Please proceed to the nearest exit. All personnel,-” a disembodied voice rung out everywhere. Jacob swung his head around in total shock at what is happening around him.

“Twi?” he said in an extremely concerned and frightened tone, slowly turning his head back to where she was sitting.

Only to find she just bolted out the door leading to the backyard. He followed her outside, only to discover it was not outside, or Ponyville for that matter.

He looked around what appeared to be a movie set with a replica Golden Oaks Library in the middle. Ponies were scrambling about trying to escape the threat previously mentioned, some getting lightly trampled. Other ponies were rushing out the door wearing what he believed to be ballistic vests and helmets, carrying rifles and handguns.

Well hoofguns anyway.

He was about to go and see what the threat was when an all too familiar voice rung out behind him. “Command override 2254-Bravo-86-Mike-Sierra-Tango, Password: I love you.” Before he could even turn around to greet her, his muscles seized up and he turned around, not of his own accord, with a sharp and crisp salute.

“Awaiting orders Princess Luna” he said in an emotionless, flat, and slightly distorted voice.

It was then that he got a good look at her.

She was taller.

Much taller.

She looked like a blue version of Celestia, standing eye level with him. Her mane was no longer a swirling mass of stars one might see in the night sky. It was now a moving picture of something you might find in NASA Hubble Telescope files. A moving mass of nebulae, stars in arrangements he couldn't even fathom, the occasional meteor streaking across, and soooooooo many colors. Colors he didn't even recognize!

She was older.

The reason why eluded him in the heat of the moment. “Move through the building and eliminate any hostiles with extreme prejudice starting from the top floor. Salazar, mark friendlies and hostiles on his HUD.. And shut down your sub-conscious, I don't want you to have to see any of this before you are ready. I'll be with you soon to explain all of this when you come out, love. Dismissed” She then kissed him on the cheek as he started to fade into some kind of induced pseudo-sleep.

The last thing he saw before drifting off was an all too familiar tear-stained face.

...

Jacob came back to reality instantly, like someone switched on a TV.

The first thing he noticed was that there was a changeling impaled in some kind of sword thing coming from his left palm.

The second thing he noticed were the copious amounts of blood, gore, shell casings, and bodies of various species native to Equus, littering what looked like it used to be a fairly big lobby of a rich company.

He shook the corpse off of his hand...thing and looked for anything that might point him to where he was and how in the hell he got there.

Then he turned around after hearing a ding noise, and found Luna and Twilight stepping out of what looked like an elevator. They didn't seem at all phased by the carnage surrounding them and on Jacob himself.

Luna picked up the pace slowly until she was galloping full speed at him, then as soon as she was within distance; she tacked him to the ground and locked lips with him.

"This feels sooooo good!", she thought still attacking his face with hers. After centuries upon centuries upon centuries of being lonely, and depraved, and unloved, and neglected, and more sad words, she felt like she was on top of the fucking world! Every day, going to the laboratory and seeing what they were creating, perverting his image with deadly weaponry and dangerous prototypes.

She didn't want him to be this way, but it was the only way to get her husband back and sate Celestias’ wishes.

After a few minutes of this, they broke apart. Jacob felt like the kiss wasn't as tender and loving as the others he had experienced. This one had a…desperate quality to it, like she had been deprived of a drug for a long time and just got her hooves on a fresh batch. He wondered what could make her act this way before Twilight spoke up and provided the answer.

“Jacob,” she said, her voice filled with worry and anxiety. “Welcome to the future!” followed by a nervous, wide smile.

...

He passed the hell out.

Ch3: Wake up. See this. Wat do?

From the outside, a passerby going on a moonlit walk through uptown-Canterlot might describe the building seen here to be silent, empty, and dark. Such was not the case as Twilight Sparkle Cybernetics was still very much alive and well, bustling with various activities. Such being the late night employees who had overworked themselves and fallen asleep at their station, various nano and serv bots cleaning up the floors and lobby after the recent “incident”, and the soft whirs of machinery or beep of electronics.

But none rose above the noises coming from the penthouse on the top floor.

What noises you ask? Why, it's the sound of four mares, arguing bitterly with each other. Who are these mares? I'll tell you. One of them is Princess Celestia, Regent of the Sun, first diarch of the Equus System, and owner of Celestial Power and Light, the only source of free energy in the whole system. The second is Princess Luna, Regent of the Moon, second diarch of the Equus System, and president and CEO of Lunar Munitions, the biggest provider of military arms and ammunition ever. The third is Princess Mi Amore “Cadence” Cadenza, Regent of Love, and the commander of the Equus System Colonization Fleet, now preparing to head beyond Pluto to other systems. The fourth being is Princess Twilight Sparkle, Regent of Magic, and CEO of TS Cybernetics, the biggest, richest, and most influential company to rise up since Sweet Apple & Co. I think you can already tell what they make. Now there was a fifth being in there too, but lets not worry about him, he's unconscious!

“…and I thought I told you this before we were going to wake him up! I am NOT keeping secrets from my husband, especially one as big as THAT!”

“And I thought I explicitly told you NOT to activate his memory bank fully so soon little sister! We were going to introduce him to the idea of the future slowly and carefully, but you had to go and FUCK IT UP DIDN'T YOU!”

“Auntie I have to agree with Luna on this one. Marriage is a very delicate and demanding relationship. Keeping secrets as big as that one and for how long we were going to keep up the charade is bound to end up nasty. We've all seen how angry Jacob can get when put in the right situation.”

“Cadence how can you possibly think it was a good idea to reintroduce him so soon? The future shock could have effectively fried his processing unit from how fast he would be circulating information! All my work could have been for nothing!”

On the lavish couch, a large form stirred as the four mares began increasing their argument's volume.

“You think this is still all about your little project? This agreement is all in equal parts! I wanted my husband back, Cadence couldn't stand to see me depressed anymore, Twilight wanted to use her new technologies on something, and Celestia needed a super spy assassin!” Luna yelled, on one side of the coffee table with Cadence, both seething in anger.

“You should be more grateful for the gifts you have! We could've resurrected anypony we wanted to, WE COULD HAVE RAISED A FORMER ELEMENT OF HARMONY! But no, I took the time and consideration to allow you to use your dead husband, a being with no magical prowess whatsoever and no combat skills, to be used in my plan to battle one of the greatest threats I've seen since Chrysalis came back!” Celestia bellowed on the other side with Twilight, bordering on Royal Canterlot Voice.

“No combat skills? No Magic? Auntie did you see what he was doing to those attackers a few hours ago? He was quite literally slicing them in half one minute and burning them to a crisp with the AMPS the next!” Cadence retorted.

“That was only because he was under the influence of the command override code I gave to Luna! Under normal conditions he would not know a single thing about combat or magic! He would be completely useless for both my testing, and Celestia's’ Special Forces!” Twilight threw back, defending her longtime friend and former mentor.

The figure's optical sensors flickered to life to see his family arguing with one another over him.

“This is exactly why I believe we need to terminate his coding and use the shell on somepony else.” Celestia stated in a no-nonsense tone.

“WHAT?” Luna and Cadence both shouted in unison.

“You can't do that!” Luna blurted out tears streaming from her eyes.

“I can and I will, you had been hoarding what basically amounts to his brain in your head for five-thousand fucking years and now that it's clear, it's time you grew up and got over it. I need a trained infiltrator, not a whimpering, inexperienced, little monkey.” Celestia said attempting to put the argument down.

“I fucking hate you!”

*smack*

…

“Luna, I'm so sorr-GAK!” *crash*

Before she could finish her sentence a dark green and blue blur tackled Celestia off the couch and onto the floor, wrapping its hands around her neck and banging her head against the floor.

“I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE MY SISTER-IN-LAW! YOU DON'T TOUCH MY WIFE LIKE THAT EVER!” Jacob screamed, the last word distorting dangerously and his normally calm and comforting hazel eyes burning with an intense scarlet red as both he and Celestia continued wrestling on the floor.

Luna instantly shot off of the couch and threw Jacob to the floor, getting on top of him.

“Stop!” she pleaded “Stop this right now!” she pleaded again, eyes bloodshot from her earlier crying.

“Must… Kill!” he stuttered, flailing about as Luna pinned his arms and legs to the ground with her hooves. “Must… Destroy… Burn… KILL HER!”

She continued pleading and begging. “Stop this, this isn't you!” She looked into his furious red eyes and said “Where is the calm, collected, rational thinking man I fell in love with? Where is the man I agreed to marry? Where is the man that I spent countless nights in bed with? Because you are certainly not him!” He stopped thrashing about and opened his eyes to look at hers.

“Where is my love monkey?” she said in a breaking voice, new tears flowing in droves onto Jacob's face.

His eyes slowly changed in color from red back to their original hazel, becoming watery in the process. He always hated that petname.

“Luna?”

“It’s me, I’m here, it’s OK.” She said in an empathetic voice. She knew what it was like to wake up from a fit of rage all too well. So she knew what was coming next.

He suddenly shot up, wrapped his arms around her, squeezed tight, and buried his head into her shoulder.

Everything from the past half-day came rushing back in one big heap. Finding out he died, Twilight lying about his memories, unconsciously slaughtering an entire strike force, waking up to find his sister-in-law striking his wife, the ensuing fight, all leading up to this point.

He let it all out.

It was too much for him to handle and he let it all out. Even some repressed emotions from when he left his home world came rushing out onto Luna’s shoulder. She just sat there and held him, letting him cry and wail to his hearts content while she shushed him and told him everything is going to be alright.

Celestia, realizing her grievous mistake walked out of the room.

The penthouse floors of TSC were always a sight to see. Built in the old-style Canterlot Castle it gave off a sense of comfort and safety. The stain glass windows showed scenes of victory, friendship, and happiness from ages past instilled a sense of awe. The white-washed walls and ceiling gleaming with a soft glow told of good maintenance and quality workers. The holographic guards in golden armor that patrolled the hallways, day and night with no rest whatsoever, commanded a sense of respect and provided a feeling of safety from outside dangers, ready to alert the building should something go awry. The soft, red carpet threw some casualty to it, breaking the prim and proper vibe the the floors emanated, as intended.

None of these things calmed Celestia in any way as she ran to her room on the other side of the hall.

Sprinting through the long hallways of the penthouse floor, she began to think over what what happened back in Twilight's suite..

She had just struck her sister in anger.

She had just disregarded the fact that Jacob was a living, sentient being and had- No. deserved rights!

She had just struck her sister.

She had even agreed to train him after he got adjusted!

...struck her little sister.

She made her little brother have a breakdown.

Sister...

Brother...

The doors to Celestia's suite burst open widely to allow entry to the sniffling alicorn. She didn't even bother to reach the couch before flopping on the floor on her side and magicking the doors closed, typing in the lock code on the panel next to the light switch. She continued crying and sobbing on the floor occasionally whispering the word:

"Why?" she asked herself again, and again, and again.

She's done this twice now. Both times presented with a heated argument over something and both times handling the situation so poorly that they both ended in tears and anger. A 100% percent failure rate two times is still a 100% failure rate. She always does this; thinks of the practical uses before the feelings of others around her; especially her family. She also should have remembered alicorns are extremely possessive by nature, so of course she should have predicted that Luna would put her husband's memories into her head in an attempt to revive him later.

She couldn't have moved on and forgotten all those years ago because she wasn't physically able to. His preserved thoughts were a part of hers and she literally could not forget him. When the opportunity presented itself for a fully sentient android to be created, she jumped at the chance to use it to bring him back, told the rest of them what she had done and asked if the android shell could contain the dead humans' personality. Twilight explained that it was very possible but very dangerous. You didn't just explain to a previously dead being "Hey, you're alive again, congrats!". Hence the future shock time line charade that Twilight performed and Luna sabotaged. But really, if Luna hadn't cleared the effects the cinnamon rolls had on him, he would have sat there in a drug induced stupor and the gang would have gotten what they wanted, whatever it was.

Really she should have thanked Luna for her brash actions.

But the attack on the complex had just pushed her over the edge and convinced her that fixing the problem was greater than choosing the correct solution.

So instead, she struck her sister and attempted to essentially kill her brother.

Sister...

Brother...

Fresh tears entered Celestia's eyes as she was reminded of just who was across the hall. She could hear him clearly crying at the other end of the building it was so loud.

She didn't want to think about how they got into this situation, she wanted to think about how the was going to say something as simple as "I'm sorry" without sounding half-hearted or forced. She thought back to all the times he and Luna got into arguments and made up in the end. How did they say sorry to each other to show how much they really meant it?

Suddenly, an idea popped into her head and she trotted over to a nearby bookcase. Pulling out a cookbook she mentally made a list of things to get at the twenty-four hour grocery store.

She had one hell of an apology to cook...

After he was done with his meltdown, Luna asked Twilight if she could take her room tonight. Jacob really wasn't in any condition or mood to move very far. Twilight obliged, telling her she can stay as long as is needed. She walked out of the suite, off to Luna's room, followed by Cadence going to her own room, wishing the two a good night.

"We can talk about all of this in the morning, right now we need to get some sleep and recollect ourselves. That sound okay?" Luna spoke in a comforting manner.

Jacob only nodded into her shoulder as she carried him on her back to the bedroom. When she laid him on the bed, she remembered a couple of things she wanted to show him when he woke up.

"Wait here, I'll be right back." she said backing out of the room, eager to get the gifts for him. He nodded again and waited patiently for her to return to the bed.

She came back thirty seconds later holding a jewelry box. Without saying a word she opened it and took out two onyx, obsidian, and diamond rings, placing one on his finger and the other on her horn.

"I kept these all these years, just for this moment." she said with a wide smile.

Jacob could only stare in awe at the gift she had presented him with. It was his most prized possession and having it not on him earlier made him feel naked in a sense.

"Thank you, Luna." he whispered in a hoarse voice, overused a few minutes ago on sobbing and shouting,

"I have one more thing for you." she said with an even wider smile. She then did something she liked to call "powering down". It's when alicorns essentially stop feeding magic into their forms and lose the ethereal flow of their hair. Twilight and Cadence never seemed to like using it because it made them feel weird. He wasn't one to jud-

He stopped mid-thought at the sight of something truly and utterly beautiful. All he could do to express his elation and joy at this wondrous act was pull her onto the bed and suck on her muzzle like there was no tomorrow.

She kept it short…

Ch4: I'm Sorry

Deep within the confines of his subconsciousness, Jacob was dreaming. Dreaming of the past. Dreaming of times spent with Luna, spent with Celestia, spent with Cadence, and spent with Twilight.

They were happy times. Simple times. Times when he didn’t have to worry about who was arguing with who and his very existence wasn’t called into question.

“...fried his processing unit…”

“...command override…”

“...terminate his coding…”

“...with the AMPS the…”

“...Welcome to the future…”

Suddenly, his peaceful sleep was interrupted by horrid and nightmarish visions of all kinds. Images of Canterlot burning. Of evil tyrants and violent conquest. Of vile monsters, bent on destroying the world.

But none, absolutely terrified him more than one.

It was a nightmare that he had for several weeks after he and Luna got engaged.

One that robbed him of sleep every night he had it.

It was of Luna, turning down his offer for marriage.

She would always stand on the balcony he proposed on with a scowl on her face, staring him down from an intimidating height, while he was left kneeling there, ring in had, confused and frightened.

“What?” she would always say with a disgusted sneer.

“Exactly what I said! Will you marry me?” he would reply before she started to laugh her head off.

Literally.

Her head would physically come off, float down to him, and laugh in his face while circling him like a predator waiting for the perfect time to strike at its prey.

“You think that I, a moon goddess, would step so low, as to be wed to a mortal? And an ape no less? HAHAHAHAHAHA!” her floating head would continue to laugh mockingly through the whole dream.

Then, like clockwork, the heads of Celestia, Cadence, and Twilight would join in on the “fun” and laugh at his increasing sadness. He would always end up a sobbing mess on the floor by then, vainly willing the horrible visions away from him.

Only this time, something other than him waking up in tears and a cold sweat happened..

Out of the blood red cloud cover, shone an extremely bright light. The taunting heads screamed out in surprise and pain before crumbling to dust. The crimson overcast slowly cleared away to show a bright blue sky and a shining sun. He stayed there in the fetal position until a heavenly voice rang out to him from above in a comforting tone.

“Jacob. Are you okay?” it said. He raised his head up slowly to find four piles of ash and a voice speaking from above.

“Who are you?” he asked in response.

“Can you not recognize my voice Jacob? It is me. It is Luna.” the voice said with a hint of sadness, perhaps hoping that its mate would recognize it.

“Luna?” he thought with a physical gasp in the dream world. “She was never able to access my dreams! I’m magic resistant!”

“I assure you, this is no magic. Though it was through an original action using magic that led up to this, this is something else entirely. Something I’m afraid I do not even have knowledge of, but am ever grateful of.” the being, now recognized as Luna, explained with a heavy sigh.

“When I wake up Twilight, you are going to have a truckload of shit to answer for.” he said with a well practiced anger management technique taught to him by Cadence.

“As she should. But for now it is time for both of us to awaken.” she said as the dream started to slip away. As he entered the space between awareness and unconsciousness, he saw a figure emerge from the ground and begin to type on walls upon walls of binary…

“Okay. Just one more egg and-” *sniff* *sniff* “Son of a bitch! Not again!”

“Need some help there auntie?”

“Cadence? Yes, help me! Please I have no idea what I'm doing!”

“Okay, calm down, I’ve done breakfasts like this before. What you need to do is-”

Behind a set of lavender doors in Twilight's suite, a pair of creatures on an over-sized queen bed, stirred from their slumber. Ones eyes flickered open and the others’ optical lenses began to have power fed to them. Jacob turned over on his right side to find that Luna was already to her hooves and shaking out the rather sexy bed-head she had on her short mane.

“So beautiful.” he thought with a wistful smile. He didn’t even know if she got the reference or if she actually thought he wanted her to have a short mane. Either way she couldn’t be any more alluring. He never knew he liked short hair until now.

“Ugh, I'll never get used to talking like that in the dream world. Always makes me feel older than I already am.” she said searching for a t-shirt to put on.. “Talking like I’m some wizened old god or something. 'instills a sense of respect and awe!’” *ttttppppppffffff* she blew a raspberry.

He closed his eyes and smiled wider while she continued searching for a shirt. He swore she was like a teenager in an adult body, disregarding the rules and doing generally anything she wants. When she needs to be an adult she can be a real fuckin’ adult, however. Right now, seeing her act normally in the face of all this shit gave him some reassurance. Her body language seemed to be telling him “Nothing has changed between us, it's going to be fine.”

“Eh screw it, you don’t think Twi will mind if I use one of her shirts, do you?” she asked him putting on a red t-shirt from a chest of drawers that said ‘Buy me things’.

Shaken out of his daydreaming, he replied “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“Yeah. Hey, you go ahead and use Twi’s shower this morning. Now I know she won’t mind that. I’m going to mine because it has all of my stuff in it. Then I’m gonna go to the kitchen to grab some food. It’s three doors down and to the right if you want any after your shower.” she explained, already trotting toward the door.

“Okay, see you in a few.” he said to her, giving her a quick peck on the lips as she left.

“Love you!” she called out from the living room.

“Love you too!” he called back.

Turning his attention over to the door on the far left of the lavender room he walked over to it and opened the door.

“I thought you said you knew how to do this!”

“I’ve never used sub-bacon for this though! Just hay-bacon! How in the hell do we cook this?”

“You two are both imbeciles.”

“TWILIGHT?”

“Can you help us with this? Please, it's for Jacob.”

...

“I guess I could spare the time. Okay, first you have to microwave it, then-”

As Jacob exited the shower, he went over his mental schedule for the day again. He was going to get breakfast, ask Twilight a shit-ton of questions, then have Luna give him a tour of this new future world. He shuddered in delight at the potential wonders that awaited him outside, beckoning him to them like a siren song. Even though he knew that he himself was one of these wonders, he was well on the way to understanding and accepting that. He needed reassurance from his family that he is real and not some fabricated A.I. first and foremost.

“I’m not sure Luna would enjoy having sex with an A.I. though.” he thought with a loud laugh.

…

But before he did any of that he needed to do something vitally important first.

Apologize to Cadence, Twilight, Luna...

...

And Celestia- especially Celestia!

He really should have kept his emotions in check that night. He should have apologized right then and there instead of bawling his eyes out while she stormed off! It was completely out of character, and just the wrong answer to the situation. What should have happened is he should have let her finish her apology, ask what was the argument about, resolve it, comfort Luna, bed, the end.

But instead he tried to kill the only sister he had ever known…

He even called her...In-law…

He shivered in the warm, steam filled room as the offending words crawled their way across his mind like a pair of writhing, dirty maggots. If there was anything, almost anyone he ever knew, could say about Jacob, it was that he loathed the use of the word In-law. It only told him that he and Celestia were not blood relatives. But they might as well be. Luna may act like a teenager, bless her heart, but Celestia was always the responsible adult of the group. Always the acting like the sister he never had. She completed him in a way no other could possibly imagine. His cool and collected personality matched perfectly with hers. He told himself once that if he wasn’t so sure he and Luna were soul mates, he would have gone for Celestia. Whenever he wasn’t with Luna or the others, he was with Celestia, doing things a brother and a sister would do. Tag-team prank wars with the other three, movies that sometimes he would fall asleep in but would politely listen afterwards as she would ramble on and on and-

He stopped himself. She couldn’t possibly forgive him for the things he did. No matter how many times he apologized, she would probably never him as family ever again.

He would be just as alien to her as the day they met.

His silent tears mixed with the water on his face while he continued to air dry. Everything he had built up the last twenty years of his life would come tumbling down over one. Little. Mistake.

This is why he needed to apologize…

He clung to the firm belief that if there was anyway he could salvage, even a small percentage, of the wonderful things he had been blessed with, he would give his own two arms for such a thing.

With this thought firmly in mind, he turned his attention to the bathroom mirror. In the reflection stood a man with a fair, even complexion, shoulder length straight, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a bit of an angular jaw-line.

The man in the reflection was a complete stranger to Jacob.

It seemed the gang had made him to look like he was thirty-two or thirty-three again. Not quite when he looked his best but they couldn’t have known that, he came to them when he was thirty-two. It was also the age he fell in love with Luna in so if it made her comfortable then he was just gonna suck it up. Yet despite all this he felt like he was twenty-five and fresh out of college again.

“I bet it's all the shit Twi put in me.” he thought.

Taking one of the many hair elastics from the counter, he pulled back his locks into a ponytail with his bangs in a side-part so it was out of his face and still covered up his forehead. On his face, he wore a short, rough beard. Twilight had actually suggested it and the thing just seemed to click with the rest of his look.

Deeming himself presentable, he set course back to the bedroom where he donned his previously worn clothes after giving them the “not too horrible” rating, sans his coat, He could do without that for now. He was quite sure that it was also the original one from… a long time ago due to the faded German on the tag.

“How long was I done for?” he thought

Adding another question to the long list of "ask Twilight questions", he began the trek to the previously mentioned kitchen that Luna told him about.

“Okay, does anypony know what his favorite pancake flavor is?”

…

“Seriously? Nopony?”

“Blueberry.”

…

“Luna, I-”

“No. I’m going first this time. Before you say anything, I forgive you and I’m sorry for causing all this drama and grief. What I did was selfish and-.”

“Stop stop stop no no no. Everything you just said is wrong. You did not cause any grief or drama whatsoever. I think I can safely say, we all forgive you and are so very sorry as well. Especially me. Because of your actions, we have the void in the family filled again and I personally can't thank you enough.”

“Celest-”

“shh. No talkie, more helpie. We need to get this right if he is going to forgive us. Now come help us!”

…

*sniff* “Right behind you.”

Walking through the halls of the building he was in, following the heavenly smell of breakfast, Jacob momentary forgot when and where he was. For a moment, he was in Canterlot Castle, walking by the stoic guards and colorful tapestries. He was snapped out of his daydream, however, when he walked straight through a guard as if he weren't there. The guard only flickered for a second before returning to his patrol. Suddenly very aware of where he was, he continued to follow the smell of something vaguely familiar. He reached for the door indicated by Luna. Was it raspberry? Cranberry? or-

…

Qwat?

Laid out on the long table was a veritable treasure trove of morning meal items. There were eggs of all kinds, muffins, bagels, cherrychangas, blueberry muthatruckin’ pancakes, four smiling alicorns, and…

“Bacon! Sweet mother of-”

…

...

Wait…

He slowly turned his gaze up to the four beaming alicorns standing off to the side.

He had no words.

Celestia was the first to walk up to him and embrace the human in a bear-hug that would have killed a lesser man.

None needed to be spoken.

Quickly, the other three ran up to the duo and made a big Pony vs. Human feels-pile.

So he just let the silence sing…

Ch5: To The Secret Lab!

“Okay what is this?”

Everypony sitting at the table stared at him like he had just grown a second head and said head had started to speak in Japanese backwards.

“Jacob. That’s bacon” Twilight answered him slowly like she was talking to a small child.

“No it is not. I can tell you this because of two things. One: you were all disgusted by the prospect of me eating meat at one point before you all got over it, so why would you cook it and two: I can see a little window in the corner of my eye that tells me that what I am currently eating, has the nutritional value of a celery stick.” Jacob deadpanned.

“Okay it’s substitute bacon, or “sub-bacon” for short. It has all the flavor and texture of real bacon, without all the nasty fats and calories. Plus-” she took a bite out of the strip he was holding “-It’s vegetarian friendly!” She finished with a big smile.

Luna, seeing his confusion, explained “It’s actually a really funny historical moment. A couple thousand years ago, two drunk ponies dared their friend to go to a gryphon restaurant and order a meat dish. Turns out he, and a lot of others, loved the stuff. Word got out and soon ponies were divided on whether it was ethical to slaughter animals for tasty treats or to stay vegetarians and pacifists.”

Celestia finished for her “We eventually made up a substitute that doesn’t use any meat and has a higher nutrient count. Although we mostly still stick to hay-bacon, it’s nice to have a change of pace every once-in-awhile.” She emphasized her point by finishing the half strip he was still holding.

Noticing his pilfered non-meat he slammed his hands on the table in a mock-angry fashion while the others laughed at his horrible, horrible misfortune. (Cue dramatic swoon.)

This was basically the whole morning.

After the plethora of apologies, forgiveness, and tears, they settled down for the best fucking breakfast he ever dun’ had, made even better once he found out it was a collaborative effort by his family to try and soften the rather hard blow he had been dealt.

He decided he might possibly, maybe, have a small chance, to the tiniest decimal, that he would live.

Maybe...

So ensued a breakfast of bacon, witty remarks, catching up, bacon, pancakes, a little bit of explanation that could be done then and there, and bacon.

"Bacon…"

Although he still wanted answers, he could wait a little longer to do so to satisfy his family. After all they were the best thing to happen to him since his birth. They had obviously been enduring a long time without him, so why not enjoy the simple things now instead of mucking everything up later.

Jacob always held family in insanely high regard as a value one should practice all the time. ‘Put others before yourself' they would always tell him in Sunday school. Unlike some of the others in the same class, Jacob actually took the lesson to heart and practiced it throughout his adulthood and into his time in Equestria. It wasn’t like he had a horrid childhood and now had to go on some white-knight crusade to give others the family he never had or anything, it’s just… him.

So here he was, enjoying an uber-nice breakfast with his awesome family instead of grilling them with severe questions.

Unfortunately, Twilight noticed this and said “We actually have a lot of leftovers now, let’s finish up and then we can answer anything you want once we get to the lab.”

Resounding ‘sounds good to me’ and ‘sure’s rang out through the kitchen as they all started to head toward the mess they made. Several failed attempts had been strewn across the counter, floor, and the island from when Celestia tried to do it on her own. Burnt eggs, burnt toast, burnt juice (?), and burnt pancakes had covered almost every surface. They were so engrossed in their breakfast, however, that they didn’t notice the silent work of the nano machines and arm-bots after they settled down.

Seeing the mess was done and done, the four alicorns and single human shrugged and made their way out of the kitchen, into the hallway.

The group was silent for most of the walk, each member engrossed in their own thoughts. Although the thoughts were mostly about the same thing, at least one sentence crossed each of their minds at one point.

“This is going to be a shitstorm”

Or clusterfuck, whichever you prefer. They could only stay in their bacon induced fantasy-land for so long before reality would come to bite them in the ass and drag them to the lab where Jacob’s shell was created.

Soon they were at the elevator across from the common room. They all walked in as Twilight spoke a command to the elevator to take them to the twenty-fifth floor. All the while, Jacob was shaking like a leaf that was pissing itself. Luna, noticing this, nuzzled his neck for the seventh time that day. She didn’t mind, she could only imagine the things that were going through his central processor. The self-doubt and the despair of the truth of what he could be. His usually rock hard composure slipping at a likely alarming rate. She could not find any words to comfort him, no words to assuage his fears. But she honestly didn’t need to, just her mere presence and her actions served to calm him just a bit.

Soon the elevator reached the twenty-fifth floor - The Prototype Floor - as Twilight called it. As the doors opened, his ears were assaulted with a variety of sounds. The sounds of welding, power drills, whirring machinery, electronic beeps, and conversing ponies came out of the elevator doors. The room was a stark white and absolutely huge with a large table spanning the middle where pieces of machinery and electric components rested, waiting to be used. Clear glass cabinets lay above other tables on the outside of the room with other science-ey objects contained inside them. The room was illuminated by soft blue L.E.D. lights from the ceiling and personal lamps on the tables. Lining the room were other smaller rooms, presumably used for personal experimentation, along with two rooms on the far end, marked floor manager and vice floor manager. The smell of the place was thick with the metallic smell of… well metal and smoke coming off of soldering irons and welding torches.

As soon as the group walked out of the elevator, everything went silent and all eyes turned to Jacob. The silence dragged for a few minutes but felt like hours to Luna. She knew nothing in this room could hurt him. What she was worried about was what was going through his head. The thoughts he could be thinking, the actions he could be considering.

Completely unpredictable.

That is how he had explained human nature. Completely unpredictable. The human mind is a fickle thing, thinking about how much you could love pears one minute, plotting the downfall of your enemy the next, then trying to learn how to play the trumpet the next. That is why it could be a dangerous thing as well. She knew that he most likely would not do violent things, she knew him too well. But he was in a completely new situation, thrust into a world he did not understand, twice. The first week he was in Equestria he acted out-of-character and raised as much hell as possible trying to get home. The next he apologized and calmed down, a total one-eighty from the week before.

A fickle thing indeed.

That’s why she was so worried. She thought he might react badly to the scenario put in front of him at that moment. What she didn’t realize, however, is that one: He had loved ones beside him this time around and two: He got all of that stuff out the night before. So it was there that he did something none of the group expected.

“Hi” he said with complete confidence.

Immediately, all of the ponies in the room burst into cheers and whistling. They were jumping around on the tables, dancing, throwing hats into the air where applicable, even a couple making out in the background for some reason. Although the reaction was lost to Jacob, the rest knew exactly why. The ponies here had worked long hours for almost two years on what Twilight called “The biggest thing to be created since the computer.” and to see it come alive and do something like this, was a miracle in-an-of itself.

Luna smiled widely at this, she never expected Jacob to react so well and the response to be as it was. She had a feeling everything was going to be just fine.

The group walked the back of the room as the occupants got to work on the things they were doing before they walked in. Twilight walked up to the door labeled “Floor Manager” and knocked.

“Solder! Get out here!” She spoke into the two-way speaker beside the door.

A couple of seconds later, a smoke colored Earth Pony with a mane that seemed to shine like liquid silver, and copper eyes walked out of the room.

“Yeah boss? What do you need?” The pony identified as Solder, spoke in a gravelly voice.

“Look up and see what you have created” She said pointing up to the pale bipedal standing not two inches away.

Solder indeed, did look up and see the fruits of his and his workers labors. When he saw something he created: Living, breathing, looking at him with intelligent eyes that held emotion. Emotion. Not just complete obedience and submissiveness, he felt an immense sense of accomplishment and pride for his hard workers. He smiled up at Jacob, held out his hoof and said.

“Mr. LeBlanc. It is an honor to finally meet you.”

Jacob returned the smile and shook the offered hoof. “Solder I assume. It is apparently an honor to meet you as well. From what I have gathered in the last ten seconds: you are the one who built me.” he said with a hint of snark.

Getting the gist of what his boss wanted him to do, Solder began to walk toward one of the bigger rooms off to the side where all of the augmentation modules were held.

Now that he was in full view, Jacob could get a look at his cutie-mark without looking like a creep. It looked like a circuit board having a wire soldered to it with a smoking soldering iron. Obviously the pony was well versed in electronics and wiring. How else do you get your own office and your own floor?

“Well, I wouldn’t say I was the only one who made your shell. We have a dedicated team of scientists, technicians, and mechanical engineers at our disposal here in Protoville. I think all of us were pretty excited about this new project when Ms. Sparkle sent down the order so we all contributed a little bit.” He explained with no small amount of pride in his voice.

Jacob looked a Twilight with a confused expression.

“Some here have taken to calling this floor ‘Protoville’ because this is where all of our experimental research gets done” She quickly explained as she and the others followed Solder.

When they got to the room labeled ‘Electronics’, Jacob looked around in awe at the massive display of electronics and other do-hickeys. Spanning the walls at least one story up on all sides, were clear glass cabinets like the ones in the main room, each with their own label. Solder turned his attention to a large holopad next to the door. While he was typing in various words and numbers, a large robotic arm came down from the ceiling and began to collect objects from certain cabinets and then place them down on a raised table in the middle of the room.

When the robotic arm seemed like it was done, it rose back up into a hole in the ceiling, leaving eleven items on the table. Four of them looked like medium-size computer chips. One looked like a small car battery. One looked like a small, wrist size ring. One looked like a large cylinder the size of his forearm. One looked like… a tooth? Yet another looked like a bone made out of some sort of black material. Next to it was a strip of a flexible looking white material. The last of the items was a wicked looking scythe thing, vaguely familiar looking to the one he saw in his hand yesterday…

“Now before we get into any hardware, are there any burning questions that you just have to have answered?” Solder asked, looking in Jacob’s direction.

“Oh so many” he thought with a mental sigh. After about two seconds of thinking he decided on the one that would answer most of his questions at once.

Jacob turned to Twilight and said “Am I real? Was I ever alive? I know you’re going to say yes but I need it to hear it.”

Twilight knew the question was coming and had already prepared two responses.

“Jacob, the fact that you can even question whether or not you are real, just goes to show that you are and were. We program all of our A.I. with coding that tells them that they are A.I. right from the start so they don’t go rampant with identity crisis.” She said, taking a deep breath for the next part.

“And another thing, why would we go through so much trouble for this? Why would we be arguing so badly over an A.I.? Why would Celestia spend all night out at the store getting food to cook for an A.I.? Why would we be sitting here explaining this to an A.I., and not immediately sending it out into the world to fix our problems for us?” She paused as she got up in his face, which was not hard considering she was eye level with him.

“Because you’re not an A.I.” She spoke to him softly. “You may have coding in you that we use to make A.I., but you are most certainly not one. You lived an amazing life, with amazing love, and from what you told us, amazing family. Stuff like that, memories, we just cannot program, it’s impossible.” She finished with a nuzzle to his neck.

Luna walked up to him and offered a nuzzle of her own. “We love you Jacob. We always have and always will.”

Jacob closed his eyes and fought back the tears that were assaulting his eyes. He needed to hear that so bad it almost hurt. He took a moment to compose himself before preparing his next question.

“I think my next question would be: Why? Why go through all this trouble? Why did you bring me back?” He asked with his arms crossed.

Celestia spoke up before any could open their mouth “That is actually something you and I are going to have to discuss later. But something I can tell you now is that there has been a void in the family for quite a long time. It took us a while to figure it out, but it was you. You were the one filling the space.” After she finished she got a look on her face as if she just remembered something then she… wait… started to tear up?

“We also *sniff* figured out what *sob* killed you.” She managed to stammer out.

His instincts kicking in, he immediately went over to comfort her, not really knowing what was making her act this way.

Twilight had also anticipated this and had memorized where they kept the Geiger pin-pointers. She levitated the small device to Jacob.

“This device is something similar to your Geiger counter, but it has been fine tuned to pinpoint the source of the radiation and over-clocked. If you use it, it might answer your question.” She said with no small amount of sorrow. He took the device from the lavender aura and pulled the trigger-like device on the grip. Immediately the thing exploded into beeps and crackles. He waved it around the room, unknowing of what Twilight was trying to prove. When he moved in the direction of Celestia, however, the device sped up. Closer and closer he got as Celestia’s sobs got louder and louder.

Celestia seemed to be emitting some sort of radiatio- “wait… radiation… radiation causes… ” His central processor fed the information into his A.I. container, where it allowed his body to react accordingly.

“No” He thought, his face adopting one of shock. “It can’t be”

His artificial mind combined with his natural rational thinking, quickly took over his uprising emotions and evaluated the situation. There wasn’t really much to evaluate though as it was just Celestia, crying on the floor, emitting a rather large amount of radiation by human standards. His mind told him that she was clearly extremely upset about the radiation she seemingly had no control over. That sealed the deal as he extinguished his anger with a tidal wave of sympathy and went in for an embrace.

“You couldn’t have known.” He whispered to her.

“I kill- ill -ill -illed you!” She countered, not caring that she was screaming and sobbing on his shoulder.

“Stop. You couldn't have known.” He said again, tearing up a little bit himself.

“I killed you!” She repeated a little less loud.

He didn’t say anything that time, it was probably the best decision for her to let it out.

“I killed you.” She repeated, barely above a whisper, like a broken record. “I killed- kill- you.”

“Would it help if I said I forgive you?” He asked.

Quickly, she brought her head up to stare at him in shock. “How could you forgive me after I did something like this?”

“Let me answer your question with two questions. Do you have any control over what your body does?” She shook her head. “Did you have any knowledge of what was going to happen to me?” She shook her head again. “Then you didn’t kill me. It wasn't your fault- hell nothing actually killed me! I just died like any normal mortal.”

He looked at her bloodshot eyes with sympathetic ones. “So I take back my earlier statement. I don’t forgive you because there is nothing to forgive. You can’t apologize for your body’s natural functions. That’s like saying ‘Oh I have to use the bathroom, can you find it in your heart to forgive me?’” He said with his biggest puppy dog eyes. Which actually weren't that big because humans… have small… ya get it? Aww fuck you. That managed to get her to giggle just a bit.

“There’s a smile. Now can we stop the drama? This isn't a damn soap opera.” He addressed to the whole group, who was in the process of tear cleaning and also gave a light chuckle.

“Unless you have anymore questions that might spring up more, yes, we can stop the drama.” Twilight said with a smirk while helping Celestia up.

“Just two more guys I promise. Yesterday I heard Luna say something that sounded like a command-override sequence. Is that still active?” He asked, looking around nervously.

“I can answer this for you quite easily actually.” Twilight responded going into ‘Lecture Mode’. “We did originally have certain vocal command passwords in the beginning when we weren't sure everything would go as smoothly as it did with the first impressions. Now getting onto another topic that will tie into this later, we can’t actually program emotions. Again, like memories, it is impossible to do without the subject potentially going rampant. Because these binary sequences don’t technically exist, most computers don’t know what to make of them and scrap them. What we did to your computer, however, is ‘tweak’ it a little. Basically what is does is, when it sees a code from the A.I. container or 'A.I.C', that is unfamiliar or translates to what amounts to gibberish, it doesn't scrap it, but lets it travel back to the A.I.C. to be decoded and made into electrical signals, which act as nerve endings to deliver messages to the rest of the body.” She took a deep breath before continuing.

“A little bit before we ‘woke’ you up, I put in some passive sequences in your coding. These passive sequences were supposed to read three of the ‘emotion binary algorithms’, then, once they had been read, erase all data concerning you and all override sequences from any of the computer terminals in the Four Alicorns Business Complex, and set up a ‘no-pony-gets-in’ firewall. What that means is that when a new code tries to make its way to you from an outside terminal, it immediately gets erased and tracked to the source.” She took another deep breath as she looked Jacob square in the eyes.

“I know this is a lot of hard science, but what I am trying to say is: You are your own being now. Nopony can control you or manipulate you in any way. If they did, they would be dealing with some very harsh charges from the rulers of the system themselves.” she finished with a glance to Luna and Celestia, who were looking on with determined faces.

“Nopony even attempts to touch you, ever” Luna spoke with conviction.

Jacob looked back at Twilight. “Well I never expected such a detailed answer but it’s a good answer nonetheless.” He said with a shrug and a smile. “Now for my last question: How did you do it? I’m dying to know.”

Twilight walked over to him and said. “You wouldn’t mind if I went on another rant would you?”

He looked at Twilight and gave her a reassuring hug. “Absolutely not Twilight, I always feel like I learn something new every time you really get into your zone. It’s inspiring and I wish you would do it more often.” He finished with a squeeze to her neck.

She blushed slightly from the complement. “Well if you insist.” She cleared her throat, preparing another informative lecture.

“Before we get into how we managed to get all the memories from Luna translated to binary, we need to go through a little recent magic history.” She teleported a white-board from her room to where they were.

“Think of magic like sound.” She punctuated this by drawing symbols that looked like sound waves.

“It travels in waves like sound, except not distorting the air like sound does, but distorting the ‘Static Background Aura’, an immaterial plane of mana that does not move unless magic is used. A flat line will indicate no magic being used and the S.B.A. is still.” She drew a flat, static line on the board.

“A small, constant frequency will be produced by an Earth pony using its strength or a Pegasus pony flying or standing on a cloud.” She drew a slight wave under the flat line.

“A frequency with a slightly larger amplitude will be present when a unicorn or alicorn lights up its horn.” She drew a slightly larger wave than the last two under the previous drawing.

“When a spell is cast, the frequency will have a large amplitude spike in the middle called a ‘Mana Spike’. Higher level spells are actually several smaller spells that have been smashed together to create the desired effect, creating overlapping spikes and frequencies.” She drew the slightly larger frequency with a large spike that suddenly goes up then slowly dies back down to the normal frequency, then several spikes overlapping each other on another.

“The higher level the spell, the more frequencies are created and recorded. You got that?” He nodded in confirmation. “Good. Which brings me to Luna.” She looked over to Luna, who perked up at the sound of her name.

“Just before you died, Luna used a well known spell called ‘In Loving Memory’, commonly used to preserve a little bit of a loved one's memory inside of the casters mind so they won’t forget them with time. Luna over-clocked the spell with a large amount of mana to preserve everything about you: Your memories, thoughts, emotions, everything and anything. If anypony else were to do this, their brain would have overloaded with the extra information and sent them into a seizure. Luna, being an alicorn with a mind basically built for this, was able to contain all of your everything in her brain. Even with brains like ours, containing another's life is still a very impressive feat.” Luna blushed slightly at the offhanded comment.

“Which brings me back to the mana waves. We recently discovered that every Mana Spike has a pattern to it. That pattern can be put into binary and that binary, amazingly enough, can be translated into a word, letter, or phrase. When Luna told us that she casted the over-clocked In Loving Memory spell, we were able to sit down, allow her to repeat the spell, record the sine waves, and translate them to binary, which in-turn, make up your coding.” She teleported away the white-board.

“More hard science I know, but hopefully this time I don’t have to water it down for you.” She said taking several deep breaths from the two lectures and a history lesson that she just dished out.

“No no, that was actually very understandable. How you managed to do all of this-” he gestured to himself, then seemingly all of the building. “- amazes me. You are truly a remarkable pony to come up with a system like that. And you have my personal thanks for doing this.” He finished his statement with a great big hug.

“Well like Solder said: All of us contributed in some way, whether it be carrying the data itself,-” she gestured to a sheepish looking Luna. “- providing the funding-” She pointed to Celestia, who looked like she had recovered from her earlier episode. “- ,or even offering useful advice and refreshments whenever they were so desperately needed during the all nighters-” She pointed to an oddly quiet and now flustered Cadence, who had not spoken a word since they got here. “- ,we all contributed in some way.” She said to him, sporting the biggest smile she could muster.

Jacob had actually started to tear up during the whole ‘Team-Effort’ spiel. “You guys are just the best. Ever.” He said while trying to regain his composure.

“So that it then?” Solder asked the rest of the group. When they they nodded he suddenly got very ecstatic. “Great! All this talk of software was starting to put me to sleep. There’s nothing for you to work with in software, it’s all algorithms and numbers. I need to get my hooves on something and work with it! Thats why we’re going into my favorite part of this job.” He paused for dramatic effect with an almost creepy smile following it.

“Hardware.”

Author's Note

Well here I go again. Posting chapters in the middle of the night again. At least it's not four in the morning this time... :ajbemused:
Hope yall' enjoy this one. I ran into a little bit of writers block with Celestias reaction to him forgiving her so easily but I thought it turned out pretty good.
Going to go into some more science in the next chapter so be ready for lots of 'Lolwut?'
Night everypony!
Not Luna.

Ch6: You Ever Wonder Why We're Here?

"Let's get down to business shall we?"

The group turned their attention to the objects on the table once more, having the lengthy talk about magic sciences out of the way. Jacob never thought he could take in a magic lesson like that in one sitting, let alone understand it. It was almost as if he just heard everything, and then pushed it around in his skull, and it came out sounding perfectly understandable. Honesty it was a little creepy, and awesome at the same time.

"Now since all of these are currently inside of you, I'll let you pick which one you want me to explain first." Solder waved a hoof over the metallic and silicone objects on the table.

Instantly, Jacob's finger went to the large blade that was attached to a small electric motor at the end.

"That one eh?" Solder raised an eyebrow at the quick suggestion. "Well it is the big nine inch blade standing among small metallic cubes and a tooth." he shrugged as he used that weird electro-magnetic force thing everypony has on their hooves: allows them to grip objects as if the had a hand to do it. Still, nothing came close to the dexterity of fingers, especially the long, slender ones of a human and not fat or sharp ones like a diamond dogs' or a dragons'.

He brought the object over to Jacob and motioned for him to hold it.

"This little piece of work is a nine inch, titanium alloy blade that can be mounted on almost everything: from traps, to rifles, and under the fore-legs of covert-ops agents. For this, we managed to mount it in the middle of your left arm. It's wired to your nerves, making it feel like an extra muscle. Just flex and out it comes, relax and it goes back in. The skin in the palm is designed to separate whenever the signal is sent for a flex, then fuse together when the blade it back in. Just feel around for it, you'll get it in time." Solder explained while Jacob was examining the blade in his hands. He was wondering where that blade had gone after he re-activated in the lobby with the changeling corpse.

Feeling around the synthetic muscles in his arm he felt something... off. Like a foreign object had lodged itself into his arm but he felt no discomfort. It felt like it belonged there if that makes any sense. Finding what he was looking for he sent a flex signal to the new object and not a second later he heard a *shling* sound come from his left. Looking over he found the same blade in his right hand coming out of his left palm. He was getting a very Dead Space-ey feel from this thing. It was sleek, sharp, and looked deadly with that tapered point. It was designed as a killing instrument that was for sure. It made him wonder what that thing Celestia wanted him for was...

"Alright, Jacob got first pick so one of you will choose the next." Solder pointed to the silent group off to the side. Well mostly silent, Twilight was making loud, mocking snoring sounds and her head was drooping comically.

Cadence spoke out before the rest could open their mouths. "That one!" She pointed a hoof at the cylinder.

"That one? Oooh that's a good pick." he praised while picking up the metallic tube. "This is one of my greatest feats of engineering. This beauty is a relay that is connected to a super-computer that would rival navigation systems on most modern star ships. The computer is in the basement of the Four Alicorns Market district and I managed to get a solid signal on in any climate, at any altitude, anywhere with this thing. Trust me it was not easy to get a civilian-grade relay to connect to a TS super-computer. I had to pack so much crap in here you'd think was meant for a bowel transplant. This is located in front of the base of your spine where it meets the pelvis. Twilight will show you how to tap into the network later. After all she's the author of the Operating System."

Twilight had long since 'woken up' at the mention of her personal super-computer in the basement of the whole complex. "It's the latest version of SOS 7." she said proudly, despite Luna's faux shock.

"Twilight you already bricked my phone with that crap! You want to brick Jacob too?" They all shared a good laugh at the jab at Twilight... except for Jacob who expressed a face of horror at the thought of being 'bricked'.

Twilight seemed to notice this and quickly explained that it was just a friendly jab at her new operating system. Since it came out it had ruined quite a few devices updating from the old version. Lost music, deleted pictures, contacts erased, etc. 7.0.1 was supposed to fix that in the near future.

With Jacob's fears knocked out with a large mental bat, the group continued to point a random object, to which Solder would explain its function.

The four chips turned out to be the active-modules in his cerebral processor. One was a 'Banshee' cloaking mod that bends light around the user when activated. One was a 'Ghost' noise dampener, designed to magically produce an invisible 'Cone Of Silence' bubble around the wearer to block outgoing air distortions. The next was an old model of a 'Sombra' overdrive switch: made for use in juggernaut suits and mechs but adapted for use in Jacob's shell, diverting emergency power to the muscles and skeleton to make a quick getaway or win a losing battle. Prolonged use could result in torn muscles and skeletal servo damage. The last one was a decryption module aptly called 'The Pick-lock'.

All these led up to Solder's rant about how Jacob is not a super soldier. He is not designed for frontal assault or multi-foe combat. His shell is an infiltrator, a spy, and an assassin designed for Intel-grabs, sabotage, and assassinations. Solder went on for about twenty minutes about that before diving back into the hardware.

The white material was simple synthetic muscle used in muscle transplants and in other androids. The bones that make up his skeleton were made of a lightweight aluminum alloy covered in a carbon-fiber mesh for added strength and durability.

The small ring was the most interesting out of them all, despite its size. It was what Twilight called an 'Artificial Magic Particle Shifter' or 'AMPS' for short. It could use mana taken from an external pool and utilize it for non-magic users in four ways: It could accelerate the movement of atoms around the hand, heating them up, then launching them for a superheated wave attack, slow down the atoms around the same hand and launch them in a freezing wave, collect a large amount of electrons in the surrounding area and release them in a controlled lightning bolt, or shift the polarization of atoms in an object, making the atoms around it repel them forming a sort of crude telekinesis. All in all a very useful tool and an even deadlier weapon only issued to the best of the best of the Special Forces.

All of the above devices drained power from the fifteen-swirl mana battery, about the same mana capacity of the average unicorn. It could take in ambient magic at a rate of one swirl per-hour or supercharged with a unicorn's or alicorn's magic feeding it. This thing also powered the rest of his body, so he had to be careful with his new toys, lest he shut himself down due to a power shortage.

The tooth was the only thing that didn't drain power at a rate of more than the recharge/time. It was just a simple comms relay, just bite down and it opens the network.

When all was said and done, Solder stood back to gauge the humans' response to all the wonders he had installed inside him.

Jacob felt... something. He wasn't sure what it was but it was at least something. It seemed to be a combination of awe, self-confidence, and a feeling of temporary invincibility.

Could this be what most other described as power?

Power.

Yes... that's what he felt.

It felt good.

His primal human desire for power had overcome his natural dissent for having power over others. It usually made him sick to his stomach knowing that others out there were weaker than him and he could easily bend them to his will, knowing that somewhere out there, somepony was scared of him, terrified of the lone human and his royal status.

Not this time though.

This time he reveled in the increased power. He felt like he could take on the whole fucking world!

Something inside him seemed to snap him back to reality in an instant. With his mind clear and focused he came back to the original thought he had before his human nature started to show.

"Celestia? I think it's time we had that discussion about why I am a walking weapon." he said staring directly into his sister's' eyes.

Celestia, without missing a beat, only nodded her head and jerked her head back slightly, motioning for him to follow her. "Girls, could you give us some space? This is something we need to discuss alone." she said looking toward the remaining group. They all nodded their heads in response, knowing that this was between Jacob and Celestia. "Let's walk and talk." she said as they both began the trek out the door to Celestia's' own building complex.

Twilight, sensing that the little 'Show-and-Tell' session was over turned to Solder. "Solder, thank you for your time today, I really appreciate it." she smiled a small smile of thanks.

"Anytime boss, if you'll excuse me however, I have to get back to watching my workers so they don't hurt themselves." he said returning the the gesture in full before a small explosion rocked the floor.

"Damnit not again!" he exclaimed before running out to address the problem.

Cadence turned to Twilight a few seconds after the explosion. "Twilight why don't we take our lunch early today, I need to talk to you about something important." She silently gave Twilight a look that conveyed the feeling of 'you don't have a choice'.

Taking a little surprise from the pink mares' forwardness, Twilight could only nod her head and follow her out the door to the little hole-in-the-wall that was their favorite lunch spot.

This left Luna with the role of being the sole occupant of the room. Sighing softly she slowly removed the wedding ring she held so dear from her horn. She cradled it gingerly with one hoof for a couple of minutes before bringing it close to her chest, as if to bring it closer to her heart, and closing her eyes.

"Please be safe."

With that simple request, she blinked out of the room, back to her own. The buildings' A.I., sensing the electronics room had no more life signatures, slowly, one-by-one, turned off the overhead lights until the last one –the spot where Luna had been standing previously– switched off as well, blanketing the room in a soft darkness.

The sliding doors to the TS Cybernetics headquarters slid open as two figures strolled out of them: a white Alicorn mare and a slender human android. Together they walked amiably through the Four Alicorns Market District square to the Celestial Power and Light headquarters. It was truly a magnificent building: a large white dome with a space elevator going up to sub-orbital altitudes where the Solar Station for Terra was located. The whole thing was perpendicular to the planet as not to shroud any one place in darkness.

"I think it's best if we start this off with a little bit of current events." Celestia offered as they got close to the dome. Jacob could see shapes moving up and down the long cord that seemed to stretch into the sky and beyond. He nodded his head as a sign for her to continue.

"Let's start from the beginning then. Around seven years ago, a drug trafficking ring sprouted up on Jupiter's innermost moon Io. The group known as 'Nirvana' used the natural sulfur on Io along with imported sodium to create Sodium Sulfide, more commonly known by its street name 'Egg Salt', to sell on the black market." she began lecturing him as they cleared the security checkpoint into the building.

They got into the normal elevator while Celestia spoke a command to take them to her office at the apex of the dome. "When the news of how fast Nirvana was spreading got out, an old, retired police chief named Intervention deemed the drug ring dangerous enough to band together a small army on the internet. It started out simple; with Distributed Denial of Service attacks on the ring's websites in the deep web, to protests outside my own doorstep to allow Terra to step in and prevent the impending war on Egg Salt. In the end, Intervention gathered his followers and resources to make a fighting force against Nirvana. These vigilantes call themselves 'The White Knights', after their leaders’ pure white coat. This action sprouted up what we call today 'The Egg Salt Gang Wars'. For five years the two groups have been at each others necks. The war had spread from planted to planet, moon to moon with our police forces doing everything they could to contain it. It had been this way up until recent developments." by the time she had reached that point, they were already in her office and they were getting comfortable to jump into the reason as to why he was made as a weapon.

"Around two years ago, Terra had been minding its own business when, right out of the fucking blue, a firefight sprouts up in the middle of Manehatten! It seemed at that point, the gang war had reached the inner system. This was not too much of a problem. Terrain marines are some of the best in the system and can beat back any attacks from ill equipped gang members... except they weren't ill equipped." She punctuated her statement by slamming down two items on her desk: a medium sized module and a large, navy blue, machine gun.

"They breezed right through our customs checkpoints and set up bases in my city. Battles are won for the streets every month or so and members are arrested on both sides but our citizens still live in fear of those hiding in the shadows." She really hates seeing her subjects in fear of something she can't control. "These items are what allowed this war to go on as long as it has, as well as where they had come from." She levitated the chip to eye level for examination. "This is a TS Military-grade Sombra overdrive switch found on a White Knight juggernaut. And this-" she put the mod down and picked up the MG. "- is a Lunar Munitions R260 LMG, found on the same juggernaut. I would like to emphasize that these items are not available to the general public and are only issued to military personnel. This leads us to why this is such a huge concern, enough to create a fully sentient android to tackle this problem."

"But what is the concern? What would warrant such brash actions as creating... me?" Jacob spoke his first words since coming along with her and hearing the story.

Celestia sighed as she looked out the window to her shining home city, knowing full well that underneath the chrome and silver, an evil lurked, waiting for its' next unsuspecting target.

"The concern Jacob, is that the only way these could be used by the White Knights en masse, is because they were sold, which means... we have a mole." she turned toward him, the look in her eyes told of despair and weariness not seen since her sisters banishment all those years ago.

"Jacob, there is a traitor among us."

"Why did you lie to him?"

Twilight sputtered and almost choked on her butternut squash soup as soon as the offending question left Cadence's mouth.

"What?" *cough* *cough*

"You know what. Why did you lie to him?" she repeated with the same neutral voice as the first time.

While she was recovering from her soup-induced coughing fit she recalled all the times she had to lie in the past week. None came up that were too major except for–

"You know I had to! What other choice was there?" She slammed her hoof on the table, drawing the attention of others trying to enjoy their lunch in peace.

Cadence was not threatened by her friend's display and shot the patrons a cold look, not usually seen from the princess of love. "You could have told him the truth."

"That wasn't an option!" She lowered her voice as not to give away any info to prying ears. "You can't just tell somepony 'Hey, we have complete and total control of you, but that's fine because we would never use it.'!"

"You know he trusts us almost to the point of blind faith. He would accept anything you say as fact if you told him the truth. Or you could really put up that fire-wall you said you had."

"Now even you have to admit that is not an option. We need that subtle power over him. You saw the look in his eye when Solder told him everything! His human instincts are coming back to him for some reason and we need to be able to keep an eye on him for further developments."

"And Luna?"

"She can't know. As soon as we tell her anything she is going to go blab to Jacob about it and that will drive a huge wedge in this family as well as ruin everything this project has built up. I don't want a repeat of last night.."

Cadence seemed lost in thought while Twilight started silently panicking.

"Cadence you can't tell him or Luna about this. I need you to promise me. Trust me please!"

Her face scrunched up in concentration before grimacing, as if she just tasted something unpleasant.

"Alright. I really don't like it, but I won't tell either of them."

Twilight visibly relaxed. "Thank you Cadence, you have no idea what this means to me." *Brzzzzzt* "Oh, that's twelve-fifty, we need to get back before we're late again.

Cadence nodded before managing to force a smile at her filly hood friend.

They both paid the check and began to walk back to the FAMD to restart the day.

Ch7. Spaaaaaaaace!

“--ou see the look on his face? I swear he was going to piss himself!” Luna got out between heavy breathing and bellowing laughter.

“Maybe if you hadn't looked at him the way you did, he wouldn’t have locked up like that.” Even though he was chastising her for laughing at the buscolt like she did, Jacob was having a hard time fighting back a grin himself. His human nature told him that it was okay to indulge in a little bit of schadenfreude.

They both had been at another lunch date when a young colt had slipped and fallen while carrying a rather large assortment of plates, bowls, and the like. He swore he could recognize those derpy looking eyes, but couldn’t put a finger on it.

In any case, they had just gotten back from their fifth lunch date that week. ‘Making up for lost time.’ Luna had said. She was laughing so hard at one point; Jacob actually had to carry her through the crowded streets. Maybe it was the advanced hydraulics talking, but he could not remember a time when she was so light.

Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember a lot of things. His distant past was fine; it was the recent things that were getting to him. At first it was innocent enough; a missing face here, a forgotten place there. Then it started to get worse. After a while he was losing entire days of his memory! Things like that don’t just happen. He brought it to Twilight and she told him it might have been some kind of glitch or something. Just another thing to chalk up to being an android of a man that technically died thousands of years ago he guessed. Said android apparently had a lot of bugs as well, like every once in a while, he would get strange cravings to do certain things: Walking down the street, ‘Hey! I could go for a good fifty mile run right about now!’. Things like that.

It was an odd five weeks.

The oddness, however, was offset by the return to normalcy with Luna and training with Celestia. Due to the computer-like nature of Jacob’s shell, he was able to pick up everything Celestia was putting down while simultaneously cross referencing it with videos and guides on the net. What was once A Diamond Dog’s Guide to Stealth and Special Ops Execution became the former human’s reference material for the coming storm.

Sometimes, being a walking supercomputer/weapon had its advantages. Sometimes it had had its disadvantages. Sometimes you just had to deal with it. All a part of living in the long run.

“Living.” Jacob thought for what seemed to be the seventh time that day as he carried Luna to elevator leading up to the factory floor of the Lunar Munitions HQ. Every time he thought of that one word, he automatically called up the scientific definition of sentience. “The ability to feel, perceive, or to experience subjectivity” it said, and although he felt as if he had all those things he couldn’t help but feel… something wrong. Almost like the memory loss and odd cravings were fighting against something else inside him. Like something was trying to get out and it’s being repressed.

“There I go being all philosophical during internal monologues again.” Jacob said to himself, actually going so far as to give a physical eye roll.

“Okay, okay, I think I’m good. *snrk* You can let me down now.” Luna managed to squeak out as they ascended in the elevator. As he set her down, the elevator dinged and opened up to the assembly floor of the Lunar Munitions factory. It was your typical factory setting: Lots of ponies doing lots of jobs with lots of robotic assistance. Assembly lines for guns and ammo, anti-grav rooms for vehicles and large weapon systems, and a dry-dock for assembling small to medium size ships, both water bound and space bound.

Luna trotted over to the row of lockers next to the floor managers office, opened a seemingly random one and pulled out its contents. She donned a welder’s apron, some custom protective neck padding, and a welder's helmet before trotting back over to Jacob.

“I'll see you later alright hun?” She asked turning her head to the side.

Giving her a quick peck on the cheek he answered. “Later.” As she walked away she heard him shout something. “Try not to get any third degree burns today!”

Funny thing about Luna and her company, she actually likes to work with her employees and help assemble the products. She says it ensures quality products, but in all honesty, she just likes the work.

“Hey Matte! Let’s get that Trophy System on the T-233B today!”

With his arms and mind no longer occupied by his giggling wife, Jacob’s thoughts turned inwards once again as he made his way to Celestia’s office for another day of ‘class’. What would be the lesson? Silent takedowns? Moving with the shadows? Back flip tomahawk throwing?

As he got into the elevator going to the top floor, nerve nodes began to flare up within his cranial cavity.

“Another one? That’s the fifth time this week!” Jacob thought to himself as he slid down the wall of the elevator to sit on the floor and let it pass. Luckily, nopony else entered to find him sitting there. That would have been just a bit awkward. The headaches were not bad per se, just annoying. They would get in the way of a train of thought or a conversation. Just annoying.

“Ugh! Not again!”

Deep within the confines of TS Cybernetics, a smallish alicorn typed away feverishly at a keyboard while staring at a large screen. Another damn glitch she had to deal with. Jacob’s data files in the container had become corrupted again! She knew the A.I. container installed in him was… strange, but to constantly become corrupted? Maybe he had a virus? She would have to look into it when he went to sleep again. Until then, she just restored the files to their previous state before he got into the elevator.

“Damnit! Lost it again!”

Another train of thought bites the dust. He couldn’t remember what he was thinking about before he got the headache. Just a blank gap. It didn’t matter anyway, he had arrived. As the door to Celestia’s personal elevator slid open, he noticed that it was dark and quiet, with the only light being the minute slivers that passed through the shutters, bathing the room in a half-light, half-dark Don’s office aura. She had done this before; making the whole room dark, then, when he least expects it, she jumps from the shadows and he has to fight her off. He’s gotten better at it since he first lost to her.

Muscles tensed, he crept his way into the office with the utmost care, remembering to cloak once he made it beyond the threshold of the door. The Ghost module sprang to life and began its process, magically bending light around Jacob’s skin and clothes by way of microscopic, contained, negative gravity wells. In only one-point-five seconds, he was completely invisible to the naked eye. Not even UV goggles could detect him. If one were to really search, one could find he is completely invisible on thermals too, as he had no core body temperature, much like a cold blooded animal.

Running a quick bio-scan of the room, he found that, oddly, Celestia was not in the room. Feeling confident enough to drop the cloak, he began roaming the empty space for some type of clue to lead him to her. As he approached the desk, his answer came to him in the form of a small note and a card.

Head to the space elevator in town. Once you’re up, use the card to get to gate 5B.

We will talk more there.

-Celly

“Wonder what she wants to talk about. At a space port no less!”

He knew that the space elevator in town led to one of Equestria’s only space ports. It was one of the first stops on Luna's tour of the ‘City of Tomorrow!’. He just couldn’t figure out what Celestia planned to do with him once he was up there.

“Only one way to find out.”

Luna gazed longingly out the window of her top floor executive office at the city-scape below. In the distance, she could make out a thin, black sliver against the backdrop of the Equestrian sky. A conglomeration of violets, oranges, reds, and dark blues meshed together like a great melting pot atop the gray and chrome tops of the skyscrapers and the dimming semi-circle of the setting sun. From the horizon of one of the taller buildings, a small, black dot began to ascend the thin sliver, slowly gaining speed as it jealously rose higher and higher above its ground-bound cousins. As the dot disappeared from the skyline, Luna sighed and lovingly caressed the small rock wrapped around her horn.

“I’ll see you soon love.”

Her attention switched to her phone on the desk, from which a message shined brightly in the pre-dark twilight. She had received it not five minutes before, choosing instead to ‘see’ him off before responding. As she picked it up, she read the bright white words on the screen one more time.

You ready 2 go?

Entering the pass code without a second thought, she typed a response.

Yea

Not wanting to wait any longer, she picked up her travel bag, packed with everything she might need for a couple of weeks on a transit shuttle, and a one way ticket to the Pluto station, courtesy of the Equus System Colonization Fleet. As the double doors closed for what would be, undoubtedly, a long time, a stray beam of light, reflecting off a seemingly random window outside, shone through the office and illuminated a small slip of paper and a note.

I, Princess Luna, CEO of Lunar Munitions, hereby resign my post as leader of this great company. I leave my position, office, and all personal company assets to factory floor manager Matte Black. Furthermore--

The Equestrian Interplanetary Space Port was abuzz with activity. Creatures from all walks of life ran, walked, trotted, and flew too and from various places. The only thing that was seemingly stagnant in the beehive of a station was the long line of changelings in front of the coffee shop, waiting for a cup with a shot of synthetic emotion energy. But, even the unmoving changelings had to part the line and move to make way for the strange creature that walked among them.

Jacob was having trouble moving through the crowded station. Not only was there no elbow room, he was gaining lots of unwanted attention as well. Stares and dropped jaws followed him wherever he went.

It dredged up some unpleasant memories from a long time ago. Still, he only had a little ways to go before he reached gate 5B. As he pushed through a particularly thick crowd, he saw it. It was very unassuming, looking like any TSA checkpoint in an airport on Earth. Just with ponies. Oddly enough there was no line, just a bored looking officer standing at a podium. Jacob walked up to him with some trepidation, not knowing if he should just go, or wait for others so he could--

“I.D. please.”

He was torn from his thoughts by the voice of the officer.

“I.D. sir. I haven't got all day.”

“Just as grating as TSA officers I see. Some things never change.”

Pulling his I.D. and the card he found in Celestia’s office, he handed them over to the impatient pony. The officer went through the motions, looking for discrepancies, black lighting the card for legitimacy, and swiping it through the scanner.

“You're clear. Go on through Mr. LeBlanc.”

“Thank you.”

Retrieving the cards from the pony, he walked through the gate threshold and security and sat down in a random seat, waiting for Celestia to talk to him, like the note said.

“Good to see you got the note. I’m sure you want answers now.”

Already desensitized to her way of just silently popping up next to you, he turned to his sister, sitting in the seat next to him and wearing a ridiculous looking overcoat and fedora.

“First question: What the hell are you wearing?”

She looked at him questioningly. “It’s a disguise. I can’t go out in public without one being me, can I?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering why she didn’t just use a cloak spell or an appearance illusion. In the end, he came to the conclusion that Celly can be an airhead sometimes. He cracked a small smile of amusement.

“Okay, question two: What did you want to see me about?”

She sadly sighed, the pep talk she gave herself an hour before beginning to crumble around her. She levitated a slip of paper, upon which the letters ‘Boarding Pass’ were printed.

“What is this? Why are you giving me a boarding pass?”

She just gazed sadly into his eyes, knowing full well that what she was about to do, might hold the possibility of him not coming back.

“It’s time”

He tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow. “Time for what?”

“To put everything I have taught you to the test.”

Suddenly, all the pieces fell together; the pass, the space port, and the phrase ‘It was time’.

“It’s time for me to go then huh?”

“Yes. Everypony already knows you are leaving and probably not coming back for a considerable time. It breaks my heart to have to send you away so soon after you just arrived, but the violence has reached a critical level. We need to send you in or risk more innocent civilians.”

This was it. The ultimatum. A few feet away stood the final gateway to whatever fresh Hell awaited him on Io. He turned over the thin piece of paper in his hands, contemplating that he could just walk away. Celestia would never know if he just cloaked and left.

Faded into the shadows.

He knew full well, however, that he would never do something so dastardly, so cruel to her. After all, it was him that had said that first day in her office: “You don’t have to worry anymore sis, I’ve got you.”.

“Okay. Can I get one last hug before I go?”

She smiled for the first time that day; big, bright, and full of love.

“Of course you can, come here.”

They stayed like that for a good five minutes before a voice broke the comfortable silence.

“All passengers on flight 258, direct to Io station, are to begin boarding.”

“Guess that's me.”

He pried himself from her and began a slow saunter to the gate. As the flight pony scanned his pass, he chanced one last look back to Celestia, only to find that she had disappeared. “Probably to escape any prying eyes.” He mused.

“Clear to board sir. Have a nice day!”

He mumbled a quick ‘Thank you’ and made his way to the docked space craft.

His thoughts were surprisingly blank as he climbed aboard the craft and took a random seat next to a window. He settled into the chair and prepared to take a nap to pass the time before the ship was out of Equus’s gravity well. He thought of his family. Everything he was leaving behind in order to solve a problem that really should not have been there in the first place. He didn’t even get to say goodbye to Luna.

But he steeled himself, promising to make it back to her in time for dinner, to finally settle down with his beloved forever.

As he drifted off into blissful unconsciousness, an errant thought skipped its way into his CPU.

“I’m ready for Mr. Bone’s wild ride.”

Author's Note

H-hey there Fimficton! L-l-long time no see eh? Please don't hurt me!

Okay, in all seriousness, I'm really, really, REALLY sorry it took so much time to update this crap. I've been so caught up with school, combined with me being a lazy ass in general, it just didn't get done until today. The lack of blog updates probably didn't help either.

I'm going to try to adhere to some semblance of a schedule from now on. If I don't update at least once every two weeks, I want you guys to pester me so I don't forget. It would help a lot!

Happy late Valentine's Day!
-Not Luna

Ch8: Androids On A Plane

Space

Cold, empty, dead space.
No heat, no sound, and no life.

It surrounds us from all sides; imposing and seemingly infinite, with only the distant stars, so far out of reach, to keep us company in the vast expanse. But even then the volatile balls of gas offered little in the ways of comfort in the face of the soul crushing loneliness. It was a wonder how the first beings to go into space, the griffins, were able to survive without interaction besides themselves for so many months. Perhaps it was just because griffins are not as sensitive to friendship magic as other beings are. Perhaps it was because these particular griffins were just more jaded among their kin. It just goes to show that when ponies made it to space, there was a lot of crying and begging, just a few minutes after leaving the atmosphere. But, instinctual pony pride demanded they make it without the pilots canceling halfway through. So, they picked the most jaded, desensitized, and distant pony they could find to perform the first mission to the moon on her own.

Princess Luna.

It is said in history books and stories, that her face didn't even twitch from the annoyed scowl she wore earlier that day. She didn't say a word aside from the required responses from base. When she got there, she only said a few words, before taking pictures, collecting samples, and returning home: “Up here, in the cold of space-- even on my beloved satellite. I truly am alone aren't I?”

Even the unmovable herald of the moon and succumbed to the loneliness of the great unknown. It wasn't until a few years later, that the problem was solved, thanks to the ingenious and stupidly simple idea of Bubble Berry, the great-grandson of the the once-Element of Laughter. “Just have a party in space! That way, all the ponies up there wouldn't be so scared and lonely!”

At it’s core, the idea was silly and simple. Friendship magic is itself, a manifestation of camaraderie, used to naturally keep ponies in a perpetual state of optimism and good spirits. Parties had, in the past, proven themselves many times over to be great sources of friendship magics. So in light of this new idea, early star-bound ponies were sent up with pre-packaged party-MREs of a sort, complete with balloons, dehydrated cake, and powdered punch. It was a success and the practice of parties in space continued to live up into the distant future.

Which is why Jacob was so confused as to why all of the ponies had gotten up from their seats and moved to the lower deck to have a party as soon as the passenger craft took off. He took some time to look it up on the internet and learned that the ponies aboard any craft need to have a party in order to keep from contracting something akin to manic depression. A strange, but necessary practice. However, as much as he appreciated a good get-together, he could not bring himself to join them in the merriment. He felt as if his melancholy mood would bring everything down. He didn’t want to risk the other’s health so he stayed in his seat.

He contented himself to mindlessly sift through popular culture on the holographic display on his wrist while his thoughts drifted elsewhere. He thought of his family, the past, and of the trials ahead. He had been told time and time again about how dangerous this mission was, how there would be a fifty-fifty chance of him not coming back. He had been told that if he used all his skills, both from training and human instinct, that the chance of return would increase dramatically. He had been told that if this was done correctly, it would send a message to all others looking to start trouble, and he could return home.

He was told all this would happen. But he doubted. He still questioned whether he would make it back, questioned whether any of the skills he had would make a difference, and questioned whether any of this would prevent a future event. He wondered if it was even worth--

“Hey!”

“Gah!”

Momentarily startled, Jacob whipped his head around at lightning speeds to face the voice. He saw a griffin had taken the seat next to him and had gotten really close to his face.

“Where ya headed bud?”

“...”

Now that Jacob had a moment to calm down, he could take in more of the griffin’s form. He was dressed in some normal street clothing for a griffin: just a pair of pants to cover the no-no zone and shirtless for easy wing access.

“How ‘bout some names first! Mine’s Gull! Or was it Lou? I don’t know, just call me Gull! What’s your name?”

“... Jacob.”

Jesus Christo did his breath smell something awful.

“Well that’s a weird name! You wouldn’t happen to be one of them experimental new species made in test tube would ya?”

“What? Who is this guy?” Jacob thought as his CPU tried it’s hardest to compute all the sensory input it was receiving. Eventually, he noticed some defining features of the griffins face, more notably the completely bloodshot eyes he had.

“Dude, are you high?”

He snicked a bit before bursting out into full blown laughter.

Yup. Definitely high.

“AHAHAHA! O hohoh, man, the only thing I’m high on right now is the knowledge I posses.”

Jacob’s face morphed into an unamused stare. He had met people like this before; idiots on drugs who boasted that they had the answer to life and everything, only to wake six hours later up in a ditch next to a dilapidated stretch of road in south-eastern Kansas.

That was a weird Spring Break.

“Dude, if you knew what I knew, you’d be havin’ to pick your brains up from the floor from how much it blew your mind!”

“I’m sure I would.” Jacob responded calmly, wiping spittle off of his face. “What exactly do you ‘know’?” Deciding he would humor the crazed griffin, he egged him on. Better than sitting alone sulking in his chair, he mused.

“The government man! They’re everywhere! They have cameras and microphones and spies all over the damn system man! It’s domestic surveillance!”

Now Jacob’s interest was actually piqued. The government happened to be his immediate family. Now he felt obligated to listen to the blazed griffin, if only to glean what he felt like was the average citizen’s view on the government. That last bit caught him though…

“Domestic surveillance? I don’t think I’ve heard anything about that.”

The griffin snickered, “Dude, you been livin’ under a rock er’ somethin’? It’s all over the news! The governments' been setting up all kinds of secret agencies the track our every move! You can’t even get on the internet without feeling like yer’ bein’ watched. Only way to avoid it is to cut yourself off. But who can live without the internet ya know?”

Now Gull had Jacob’s undivided attention. How had he never heard of this? Surely Celestia trusted him with information like this? This had to be a hoax or some druggies ramblings. He momentarily stopped time in the equivalent of his mind’s eye to check something. Bringing up several news articles with the key-word ‘surveillance’, he found that the griffin was not lying. Almost all of the news was taken up with stories about spying agencies and such things. Why was he not told about this?

He would need to speak with Celestia about it later at length. The short range comm embedded in his jaw could only reach so far and there was no guarantee that she would read any of his emails in time. Running a company and a solar system tended to take up a lot of time. He would just have to file it away for a later date.

He let his CPU come down from over-clock and turned to address the still way-too-close griffin.

“Thank you, you have been… Most helpful.”

“Yer welcome! Always there to help a citizen in need! If you’ll excuse me Jeremiah, I’m gonna go down to the party!”

As Gull bolted from the seat, Jacob didn't even bother to correct him. His mind was still trying to compute what he had heard. There was absolutely no reason why Celestia would need to keep secrets from him. They were thicker than thieves in almost every aspect! Perhaps it was just a scenario of ‘Didn't ask, didn't tell’. He went with that for the moment, it was the only logical explanation to the conundrum besides ‘Celestia didn't trust him’.

“Like that’s actually an option.”

Deciding not to dwell on it for too long, Jacob began the routine of letting everything go into sleep mode in preparation for another extended period of dormancy.

...That is until he heard the gunshots from the party deck.

“Everypony on the floor now!”

“You idiot! Did you just fire a gun in a spaceship?”

“They’re blanks dude! I’m not stupid!”

“Both of you shut up and get the zip-ties! Take the hostages to the the cockpit! Everypony does as we say, and nopony has to get hurt!”

Jacob immediately went into a battle trance, blocking out all internal stimuli and concentrating on the environment around him and everything in it.

Using his enhanced hearing, Jacob counted three voices, but that didn't necessarily mean there weren't more. The rapid succession of shots denoted that the hijackers had automatic weapons, making any Marshall aboard the craft defenseless. That left him, the only being aboard that had the ability fight with uneven odds, to fight. Taking responsibility into his own hands, he unclasped his seat belt, and crept into the aisle. As he stepped out from his row, he cloaked in to remain unseen by other passengers. A little bar popped up in the top left corner of his vision, showing him how much time the computer allotted for cloaking before it had to shut down, lest he draw power from vital systems.

“Three minutes. More than enough time.”

The craft he had been aboard was a simple three deck Doeing 868. There was the luggage deck at the bottom, the party deck in the middle, and the passenger deck at the top, with the cockpit at the front, and the engine room at the back. It wouldn't take long to move to the party deck, asses the situation, and hastily come up with a plan to save the craft and land on Io as expected.

Time to go to work.

Gull was having a very-- wait… was it Lou? He couldn’t for the life of him remember. Probably due to that amazing hash he had not a few minutes before the flight to Io. The perfect mixture of dank with the perfect golden brow--

He shook his head violently to get his thoughts back on track. “Concentrate Gull! This is not the time to drift off!”

He was again reminded of his situation by the butt of a machine gun being introduced to the side of his beak.

“Quit movin’!”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah you better be bud.”

Gull was having a very bad day. After he had talked to the weird monkey thing up in the passenger deck, he had gone down to the party for some good times. Although good times did not entail a passenger craft being hijacked by White Knights, it was certainly not out of the range of possibilities when it came to the amount of violence being created in the recent months. Many in his conspiracy group even speculated that it would happen eventually, the opposing groups getting so desperate for a flaw in the other’s armor that they would endanger the very beings they were protecting/selling to.

“No skin off their noses if we all die, as long as they get a blow directly on the compound.”

Gull knew where they were taking them. They either intended to use the hostages as bargaining chips for the surrender of information or prisoners, or they were going to crash the thing into a building wholesale. That last thought sent a cold chill down his spine.

“I don’t wanna die!”

There was a lull in activity as the excitement calmed down and Gull took his first good look at the White Knights that has imprisoned him and his fellow party-goers. They were a White Knight Cloaker squad. A good portion of them were decked out in casual civilian clothing with mundane arms, probably plants to boost the numbers when the attack started, causing distractions, relaying movement, and blocking exits while the real team moved in. When he got his first look at the real deal, he was absolutely stunned. They were geared up in some of the most advanced looking armor he had ever seen. Servos whirred, face-plates shone like the midday sun, and lethal looking weaponry stood poised and ready to fire at a moments notice. He could tell there were more than meets the eye though. Every once in a while, the air would shimmer slightly and give a faint outline of a creature that was faintly quadrupedal.

If his buddies could see this now, they would shit themselves. This was a known vigilante militia made up of civilians, waving high tech weaponry and tactics only a military genius could come up with around like a chick waves a rattle around. It was a contradiction that only a conspiracy theorist with a philosophical boost like his could comprehend.

“The government.” Gull thought with a mental snarl.

While Gull was brooding he noticed that the Knights in armor had taken ‘High Value Individuals’ to the front of the ship for holding, leaving the rest to lay awkwardly on the floor with the non-armored ones, one of which was fidgeting rather intensely and sweating buckets.

“Dude, I gotta bleed the lizard!”

The pony that was next to him reared back and pointed to the lavatory at the back end of the room.

“I didn’t need to know that! Just go! You’re a big pony!”

The pony in question mumbled a thank you and bolted for the door. As it started to close, it suddenly stopped in its tracks for a few moments then swung all the way shut. From inside you could hear the satisfied sigh come from the pony. He must've been holding it a long time because you could hear it for a good twenty seconds. Gull heard some shuffling, then a flush--

“Gak!”

It was small, but noticeable to hypersensitive griffin ears. The noise of the toilet flushing mostly muted the sound of surprise.

Then silence.

“Hey dude! You okay in there?”

More silence.

“This isn’t funny man! Come on out!

Only the faint roar of the engines and murmuring of the prisoners greeted him.

“Alright that’s it! I’m dragging you out of there!”

The pony that formerly stood next to his companion stomped angrily toward the door, now seemingly twenty times more imposing to Gull than before.

Using his obvious Earth Pony strength, the pony wrenched open the door to drag--

“Sweet Celesti-- Gak!”

His sentence was cut off prematurely, courtesy of the nine inch blade that shoved it’s way out the back of his throat.

The whole thing went to shit right then and there. The plane exploded into chaos, shots being fired, civilians screaming and trying to get out of the way, the sounds of pain and gunshots and sizzling flesh and--

Wait…

Sizzling flesh?!

Gull forced himself to look up from his fetal position to locate the source of the burning flesh. All around him he saw the bodies of his former captors, some eviscerated, organs spilled everywhere. Some were decapitated, and some were just hastily stabbed through the neck. He did see the one body that was burned black as charcoal near the front entrance. The few hostages that were left were the ones like him, curled up in protective positions on the floor or behind tables. Snacks and punch and bullet holes were everywhere. Miraculously, none of the bullets hit anything vital like wires, pipes, or windows. Just a lot of cosmetic damage.

He was just getting his bearings to help the others when something brushed past his leg.

Gull jumped up and eagle shrieked at the top of his lungs in a very un-manly manner. His nerves were already frayed from the hijack, he didn’t need one of those spooks coming back to clean up the mess.

He waited for a bullet to the head from nowhere, but got nothing. The only sound that greeted him was the whimpering of the ones that didn’t flee, and the continued drone of the engines.

Whatever brushed past his leg, was cloaked, the savior of the craft, and definitely not a White Knight.

He only hoped it was benevolent.

Jacob watched from plain sight as Gull gathered up the remaining hostages and started escorting them to the luggage deck. The events had probably sobered the griffin up enough that he was able to comprehend the severity of the situation and let his instincts take over, moving and protecting those that were too weak to protect themselves.

“Probably for the best.” he thought as his battle trance calmed down and he assessed the situation again. Those ones in the fancy armor were still holding some of the passengers and the crew in the cockpit and he needed them out on the party deck. The cockpit was too small and linear to fight effectively in, and the wide open party deck made the perfect battlefield. Only problem was that the armor they had on was on-par with his own ability, making the fighting of them a more difficult prospect than hunting dazed and under-equipped red shirts.

Glancing at the amount of time he had left, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the initial attack had only taken one minute.

As Gull escorted the final civilian away, Jacob let his cloak drop, conserving power for the upcoming battle. Striding over to the doors to the back, he locked them, intending to release them after they landed. Turning his attention to the room, he began the process of creating defensive positions with tables and chairs in the large, open room. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. He worked quickly, as chatter came over one of the corpses comms, sounding panicked. As he finished up, Jacob caught one phrase over the radio that signaled the beginning: “--gunshots, coming to investigate.”

Taking that as his cue to get into position, he activated his cloak again and pressed his back to the wall next to the front door. It didn’t take long before he heard the hoofsteps coming from the stairwell. He ,once again, slipped into the battle trance as a polarized dome poked out of the threshold of the door and gasped.

“What the hell happened-- Hey!”

The pony was quickly silenced by a hyper-vibrating blade that cut through the thin cloaking armor like wet paper. Unceremoniously dropping the limp body on the floor, he grabbed the pony's Kriss Vector T-3 and dove behind the nearby table for the incoming shitstorm. Of course, the rapid action of the kill and the dive broke the cloak he had going. Seeing the large blur take out their squad-mate, take his gun, and dive behind a table inspired the rest of the nine hijackers still in the stairwell to take action.

“Open fire!”

The bullets rained down on Jacob’s light cover like a hailstorm. By the holes they were making in the far wall and the sound they made, he discerned that they were all using SMG’s for mobility and close quarters combat. Unfortunately for them, they were still lightly trained civies, and didn’t know the meaning of cover fire. As soon as the lull came in, Jacob dolphin dived from one table to another strategically placed table, popped his head up, and opened fire himself.

His firearm training with Luna paid off, as unprepared combatants were assaulted with .40 S&W. Two were dropped with short bursts before they got the idea and cloaked. Knowing he had no chance if he wasted his ammo, Jacob cloaked himself and crept to another table farther up in the front and laid low. When the ponies finished reloading and made swiss cheese of the table he was at, it was too late. With their concentration on the wrong table, he gripped the Kriss in one hand, prepped a super chilled blast in the other, and popped up once again. He capped two more as he let out the chilled air toward its target, freezing servos and firing mechanisms until the strain of exerting them caused them to break. The armor on at least three had been made immobile and useless, rendering them incapacitated.

Seven down, three to go.

At least, that was his mentality before he heard the sickening crack from behind him. A stray bullet from one of the Cloakers that had reappeared next to him had missed and flown straight into the window where cracks were slowly becoming bigger.

“Hull damage detected. Hermetically sealing doors to party deck now.”

The ship’s pre-recorded message played like a funeral song in Jacob’s audio receptors. The cracks became bigger, and bigger, and bigger until…

“I fucking hate you all.”

The starboard side wall burst outward from the pressurized cabin in a deafening explosion, making a hole large enough to let in a bulldozer. The remaining three ponies, Jacob, and debris were all sucked out into the void. As per regulation, the ship had stopped it’s trek to Io on account of hull damage, and awaited instruction from crews that had been notified.

“This is where it ends.” he thought as he waited for the blackness of space to kill him.

And waited…

...And waited.

“Hold on.” Jacob took a look around and saw the others in a similar state. The suits must have been rated for space walking.

“Duh, android!” he let out a silent bark of laughter as the vibrations in his jaw allowed him to hear his own voice.

He had held tightly onto the SMG throughout the whole ordeal. This sparked an idea in him. Orienting himself facing away from the craft, he let off two short shots that pushed him back toward the ship. He felt something crash into the side of the gun and saw the hijackers had regained their bearings as well and had opened fire. Jacob didn't dare return, lest he alter his own course and fly into the engine heat-sink or something. The hijackers had noticed how stupid they were in firing upon him as they drifted away, orienting around with well placed shots and drifting back.

By then Jacob had already gotten back to the artificial gravity of the ship and planted his feet on solid carpet. Ending the ponies who were drifting back was like shooting fish in a barrel. As the kinetic energy in the bullets shot them back into the void of space, Jacob let himself drift out of the battle trance and look around.

There were no more life forms to be seen, just the gaping hole in the side of the ship.

He sat down, hard and let it all sink in.

He had to end at least seventeen lives in less than five minutes. Those ponies probably had families somewhere, waiting to see if their father or husband came home! They knew they could die in the line of duty but that made Jacob no less remorseful about what he had become. What he had to become for the good of others. Perhaps it would be easier to end the lives of drug trafficking scum than ponies who took matters into their own hooves to protect themselves. They had good intentions; it’s just when you go and endanger innocents, the line blurs just a bit.

“It’s easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield.”

He went inside and hid behind some free-floating tables as tow-ships came in to take it to the Io space port. Off to the side, Jacob could clearly see the majesty of the gas giant Jupiter in all his glory. Swirling winds up to several hundred miles-per-hour raged within, writhing about with clouds in a big, ever churning stew of chaotic activity. The small rings paled in comparison to Saturn’s but they were magnificent in their own way, the backdrop being what it was. In the distance, he could make out a yellowish moon that was steadily growing bigger with each passing minute.

He could hear some muffled vibrations through the floor, picking up the message-- even without sound to carry it to his ears. He set his jaw and stared at the approaching moon intensely. His skills had been used in a real world situation and he was now confident he would make it out alive and get back. Luna and Celestia and Cadence and Twilight and Solder and Matte and all the others were counting on him! Any that got in his way would be pushed aside or dealt with accordingly. The sounds from the ship played multiple times in his head like a marching cadence, steeling his nerves for the impending test he was going to endure for the whole system.

“Now approaching your final destination: Io.”

Author's Note

See any problems? You know what to do.
Extra long chapter and a fight scene with more to come, so pepper your angus.

Not Luna

Ch9: Dead Man Walking Part 1

The passenger vessel and the ship-towers gently touched down on Iotian soil, more specifically, the Io dry dock, five miles outside of town. A crowd had already gathered around the barriers set up by official personnel. Reporters, friends and family, and general onlookers gazed intently at the battered and broken ship. The entire right side of the second deck had come off, leaving a gaping hole where bloodstains were clearly visible. The officials confirmed a hijacking when bullet holes were discovered with the stains. Everypony assumed that the hijackers had slaughtered the whole population for an unknown reason.

I wasn't until they removed the hermetic seal to the engine room that they discovered the bloodstains weren't from the passengers.

Everyone was accounted for, crew as well once they got to the cockpit. It was discerned that the hijackers were the ones that decorated the party deck. Only problem was that the marshals denied any action against the terrorists, there were too many of them to do anything without becoming Swiss cheese. Some unknown aboard had saved them. The only piece of evidence available was the questionable testimony of a griffin who was confirmed to be under the influence, and a single missing passenger.

They might have found him, if anyone cared to turn around and spot the bipedal figure striding toward the looming dome of the city.

Io City. Not the cleanest or the safest when compared to Canterlot, but one might discern that any city is inferior in comparison to it’s nation's capital. The sad fact, however, is because that is a gross understatement. It used to be one of the better cities in the system before the drug trade and subsequent vigilantes moved in. It also happened to be a border town along the ‘wild’ lands as well, making it prime territory for drug traders, thugs, and White Knights alike. Evidence of such things were shown in the graffiti, the horseshoes hung up on light poles and power lines, and the population itself. The very few citizens that roamed the streets carried an air of caution and distrust, a far cry from the cheery atmosphere of Canterlot. All these factors contributed to Io City being dubbed one of the most dangerous cities since Manehatten took the title back in 35’ A.N.

The oppressive air seemed to seep into Jacob while he aimlessly wandered the streets, trying to find something to help him along in his quest. He didn't exactly have any leads to go off of, so he decided to try and run into something along the way. Not the best plan, he thought, but better than nothing.

The streets of obsolete concrete were cracked in several places. Cigarette butts and general trash lined the curbs of closed up shops and struggling businesses, the last of the high paying ones having left long ago. Even in the bright, artificial light of the dome lamps overhead, it gave off the feel of an all but abandoned city, not unlike his home town of Detroit before he moved to Breckenridge Colorado.

The thought of his home world brought a small smile to his face. He had grown up in a moderately good part of town, where the neighborhood watch was very active and kids were seen as the key to getting Detroit up off it’s ass instead of gang members in the making. He had seen many a good friend from other parts of town get mixed up in all sorts of crap, he even attended a couple of funerals for them. He was never mad at them though, just disappointed, and he voiced as much during the service. It was always what happened after the funeral that made him furious. After he would leave, some sketchy ass looking guys would come up, claim to know Jacob through said deceased friend, and offer him their place, as if his friend didn’t just pass away! He would always decline them calmly, knowing if he got uppity about it, there might be a scene.

Never know when someone might be packing.

They always gave him some address to ‘hang out’ in if he ever changed his mind too. He would crumple it up because, every single time, it would lead to some broken ass, decrepit, abandoned, house in…

“...the suburbs.” Jacob mumbled to himself as he stood in front of a house of said description. A simple two story with the same layout as the others around it, looking like something out of a 1950’s planned community gone horribly wrong. With his enhanced senses, he could clearly see that the house was used recently, despite the eviction notice still taped to the front door. The tagging and the familiar smell of unwashed thug were clear giveaways to anyone who bothered to look carefully. If there was anything he learned about the inner-machinations of drug trade from Celestia that could apply to the situation, it would be that small-time gangs usually got their product from some higher power, commonly a cartel.

“A good place as any to start I gue-- Oh god.”

Jacob doubled over in the empty street. The fiasco that had been the ride over had started to take it’s toll. His internal clock read that he had been awake for a total of nineteen hours, and needed a rest cycle to properly cool down the CPU and sort the myriad of data collected. He opted for a cheap hotel so as not to seem like he spent too much of the mission cash, and there was nothing closer.

Finding the pony version of a Super 8 wasn't very hard in the part of the city he was in, and soon he found himself standing in a spartan room for one. Collapsing on the bed wasn't hard either.

Sleep didn't want to come as easily. He was alone with his thoughts again, and his mind kept wandering back to what Gull had said to him back on the shuttle. He tossed and turned in the stiff bed, mind buzzing with activity. Why did Celestia not tell him about that? Why would she need to keep secrets like that? Did she not trust him?

He churned in the bed for a good hour before he managed to calm his thoughts.

“Of course she trusts me, why would she trust me to do such an important mission if she didn't?”

He decided she probably had her reasons for doing what she did, and finally managed to stay still.

With stillness came silence, and silence came sleep.

Unbeknownst to him, however, with sleep came a ‘corrupted’ file restoration and cleaning.

Jacob awoke gradually the next morning, refreshed, his internal clock rousing him gently from his hibernation state. He felt markedly better than the night before, his thoughts were clear and a comfortable cool had settled itself in his noggin. Best of all, his clothes didn't even smell! He probably didn't need to take a shower though, but the familiarity of it put a sense of even greater calm over him. For a moment, he forgot where he was again, just like at Twilight’s place.

He was snapped out of his daydream by way of moaning and banging from the bathroom wall. He took that as his cue to leave.

Some things change, some things stay the same. Like hookers!

Jimmies slightly rustled, he checked out and stepped back into the dilapidated city.

His first thought was to head back to the house and see what he could find. It was likely that the small-fry that operate out of abandoned buildings were careless like the ones back home and left correspondences lying around for the world to see.

In no time at all he was back at the same house from the day before, this time in the stark blackness of the artificial night. One of the unnoticed benefits of sleeping during the day. He would have a much better time sneaking around there than in a cramped, well-lit transit shuttle.

He would try the direct approach first, knocking on the door and being let in will beat Solid Snaking your way in any day. He was trained to take every opportunity and exploit it, so no sense in letting a perfectly good one go to waste. If he was caught or turned away, he could just go to plan B or C.

That is if they would answer! He knocked on the door again in the same fashion, using his fist as a substitute for hooves. Bang twice, jiggle the knob, bang on door in alternating spaces on top and bottom, and finish with a soft tap…

Nothing.

“Must be empty tonight.”

That means he has free reign over it until they get back. If they come back. Sometimes gangs migrated, settled in new places, like birds! He started to examine the door in more detail, running a diagnostic scan over it. A thin blue line made it’s way up and down the door several times before data began streaming to Jacob’s HUD.

It was a newer model built by a dying company that goes by the name of Lock n’ Key Security Solutions. Constructed in 4085 A.N., the door was a model 22538 third generation homestead barrier, serial number 1055-3.

Clearly not many were built, leading Jacob to believe that it was poorly made and not well received, contributing to the status of the company’s near bankruptcy.

“Breaking and entering should be a piece of cake then.”

It was. A simple decryption bug later, and he found himself in the surprisingly clean looking foyer. Nano machines still kept the place clean, even after the previous occupants were ousted.

That’s determination right there.

He decided to check the upstairs first. It was an easily defensible position in the house should one get caught with the second-story windows serving as good escape routes.

He almost immediately stepped on a hypodermic needle at the top of the stairs. He looked down at the crushed piece of plastic with barely restrained fury, knowing it was the object that indirectly killed, tore apart families, and sowed danger in a once fair city. He knew he shouldn't place so much hate on an inanimate object, but it made some unpleasant memories resurface. A long time ago, a needle of similar design nearly tore apart his own family. It would have succeeded too, had Jacob and his father not stepped in and confronted his little brother about the bundle of heroin they found in his gym bag. It was the whole reason they moved to Breckenridge where drug usage is heavily regulated due to legalized marijuana.

He snapped out of his trip down memory lane and left the flattened needle to it’s business. If he were to stop any more misery caused by that damn needle, he needed to get moving and find any evidence connecting the local gang to Nirvana. He began to search the house earnestly, hoping for something to be left behind.

A dark figure stepped out of the police station into the streets. It had just undergone some questioning about the recent flight from Equus that had been hijacked. The figure had requested to be anonymous during said questioning, and using a particular set of skills acquired over a very long career, revealed no evidence they hadn't already heard.

The figure had been a passenger aboard the shuttle. It hadn't counted on the delays of being found and taken into custody like the others. It figured it would just slip away into the darkness of the domescrapers and shadow it’s charge. Now it was behind on schedule and needed to work quickly to meet the time frame.

It pulled out a foreleg-mounted computer and checked the local map. A small ping was sent out from the center of the map, it being the current position of the computer. Nothing else of note was present, so the figure used a hoof to expand the search range to several miles in every direction. Another ping went out, this time with a small dot lighting up in a northeasterly direction.

In the Io City suburbs.

“There you are.”

The figure moved swiftly, knowing a great deal was at stake should the HVI slip away again. Mistakes could not be made and actions needed to be fast.

The figure knew that better than anyone else in the system.

Nothing. Not a single piece of written evidence or otherwise any where! He searched high, low, the middle, even the empty trash cans, for anything relating to Nirvana. The only things he found were more discarded needles, trash, and used condoms.

Either they were not literate, very, very lucky, or they were just more thorough in their practices. He sighed and resigned to the fact that it was probably the last option. Gang violence was relatively new anyway, so it most likely hadn’t gotten to the level of sloppiness that humans were at when he left. He knew there had been activity though. He scanned one of the needles a while back and found out that even though they destroy STDs and DNA traces, they still had some residual body heat on them. He estimated that he had missed them by less than a day, maybe even as close as a few hours.

Talk about shitty luck.

In any case, he knew at least one member frequented the house often. That was enough to convince him to perform a stake-out.

He felt like the vents were a good enough place, though they would be a death trap to him should he alert any to his presence.

“So don’t get caught then dingus!”

He internally rolled his eyes. He was already doing so well, how could he get caught now?

A bullet whizzed by and struck a brick wall where the thing’s head used to be.

“There! In the alley!”

The small group that had been chasing it all tumbled into the narrow alley, searching for the weird thing in the vents back at the place.

Double Edge and his group stalked around the alley, looking behind dumpsters and in trash cans for the thing that was eavesdropping on them while they were getting ready to have a party with a couple of hookers they picked up. It was just sitting there in the air vents, waiting! Probably some weird attempt by the police to finally do something about them. It didn’t work though, and they found the monkey-shaped robot. Then they chased it all over town, while firing at it to make sure it sent the message that the Trips were not to be trifled with.

They continued their search until it got boring. They figured it ran back to the station to relay what it saw to the officers there.

Satisfied that it didn’t hear anything too incriminating, they set off back to the house.

Jacob uncloaked from atop a dumpster as the last of the gang members disappeared around the corner.

“Well that plan went to shit fast.”

He probably should have known that a pile of assorted drugs was in the vent with him. It’s what he would do.

Suffice to say, when they went up to retrieve the stash, they saw him. He ran from that house at a dead sprint, activating the Overdrive halfway through when he felt a bullet graze his arm. Now that he had a moment to himself, he could recall what that one pegasus said, almost as a passing comment, at the house.

“Dude, I hate that place. I don’t care if it’s the best Egg Salt in the entire damn system, a pegasus does not belong underground!”

Key word there was ‘underground’. That narrowed down all possible bases for Nirvana to caves out in the Wild Lands.

He knew exactly where to look now.

“Now where can I find a hovercraft store?”

His GPS read that as a command and told him where. He set out to the city’s more touristy part of town, toward the edge of the dome.

A fair distance away, atop a tall domescraper, a dark figure lowered it’s binoculars and nodded it’s head in silent admiration.

*Dingalingaling*

“Hello? Anyone here?” Jacob called out to the empty shop as he shut the door behind him.

“Just a sec, I’ll be right out!” Came the muffled reply behind the office door at the counter. Jacob took that as his cue to browse.

In Luna’s tour of ‘The City of Tomorrow!’ not even a week after his initial arrival, she had shown him the wonders of the hovercraft. A very fine machine that looked like the beautiful offspring of a fighter jet and a crotch-rocket. However, the craft he saw hanging on racks in the shop were more like white-water rafts, obviously for a family oriented experience. The ones Luna showed him were more likely the expensive single rider ones, like jet skis.

“None of these will do. I need something fast.”

“Something fast you say? Why I have a fine selection of-- Judas!”

“Oh fuck.” There was only one being in this entire system who knew his name and still screwed it up.

Jacob turned around slowly and grimaced at the widely smiling griffin.

Gull saw this-- Yes his name is actually Gull-- and his full smile turned very bemused.

“Yeah yeah I get it ‘Oh, it’s that griffin again.’ I've heard it all before. I’ll have you know I am very sober now and am able to take any completely reasonable request you may have.” He said with a dramatic roll of his emerald eyes. His other features also came out now that they were in a more quiet setting. His caramel fur and feathers blended so perfectly you couldn’t tell where which one ended and which one started if you didn’t look closely. The feathers of his head were tipped with a white hue and messy, like he had just rolled out of bed.

Jacob was actually rather surprised by his change in attitude. On the shuttle he was loud, obnoxious, and invaded personal space often. Sober however, he was a changed bird; very professional. You would never be able to guess that the hovercraft store owner in Io City was a stoner.

Jacob didn’t actually have many problems with marijuana. With the legalization in Breckenridge, he had several friends who were stoners. They were very cool people and you had to do a lot to make them mad. His real problem was with the hardcore stuff.

Back to the shop.

“Hey Gull, I need an Io caves map and something really fast.”

Gull seemed to pick up on Jacob’s decreased hostility and reached underneath the counter. His claw reemerged with a small disk and tossed it in Jacob’s direction.

“Go ahead and copy the files from that to whatever you're using. It’s a little outdated so sorry about that. When you're finished, I've got the fast stuff in the back.”

With that, he disappeared behind another door and left Jacob to his own devices. He mind melded with the small device and copied the files into his own drive. What he saw didn’t really surprise him. The entirety of Io was covered in cave systems, but only three of them were candidates suitably large enough for a base and far away from civilization to not be found. But that’s not saying that all of them aren't bases.

He let that thought drift around while he placed the disk back on the counter and made his way into the back room.

“Ah there you are! Now I have all the single-rider ones right here. Pick one and you can be on your way, with the right amount of dosh that is.”

Jacob looked at the selection before him and silently scanned them. They were all very old models, and probably didn’t even hit 150 before plateauing. He needed something even faster, something that could hit at least 250, like the ones Luna had. He needed…

“What’s that?” He said, pointing to the suspiciously craft-shaped piece of cloth in the corner of the room, surrounded by discarded tools.

“Huh?-- Oh, that one!” Gull strutted over to the sheet and whipped it off, showcasing a…

“No way.” Jacob gawked.

“Yes way! This here is a gen-ew-ine Lunar Munitions SV-29 ‘Dust Devil’ Diamond Dog variant. This thing plateaus at about 550, turns on a bit, and is durable as all Hell. I fixed ‘er up when I found ‘er out in the desert a few years back. Added in some nitro too, because fuck it, right?” Gull chuckled and rubbed his chest with a claw, looking smug.

Jacob continued to gawk, seeing that Gull had every right to be smug.

“Right… Fuck it.”

“Mmm I see you eyen’ ‘er. Now normally I wouldn't do this, seeing as how she’s been my little pet project since 29’, but I’ll cut you a deal, cause’ we’re ‘Dire Situation Brothers’. I’ll let you have 'er for forty-five thousand if you promise to have as much fun as you can on ‘er. Okay?”

Jacob was speechless. Gull was offering him one of the fastest military hoverbikes to date for a fourth of what it costs LM to build one, on a promise.

It even had nitro!

Nitro!

“Gull, I don’t know what to say man… I.”

“Then don’t say anything. Think of it as a ‘thank you’ discount for saving all those passengers on the shuttle, Mr. Android.”

Jacob immediately turned around to confront Gull.

“Wait! How did you--!”

“What the Hell did I just say? Don’t say anything. Your secret’s safe with me. Remember? Dire Situation Bros?”

At first he was suspicious of the griffin. He knew a secret that could be potentially leaked to the general populace. That was not something Jacob wanted floating out there. When government secrets are involved, there is only one thing that can solidify a promise like that.

“Pinkie Promise you won't tell?”

“Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” As he finished, he pushed out a clenched claw.

That's… not a Pinkie Promise, but it’ll do just as well.

Clenching his own appendage, they made contact, forever solidifying the eternal bond of the Dead Space Pinkie Promise and the initiating the ancient rites and sacred rituals of the bro code.

“Alright, I’ll ring ya’ up. Follow me.”

The dark figure watched as the military bike carrying the HVI sped out of the hovercraft shop toward the airlock at the base of the city dome. Said airlock opened it’s rusty and unused doors to welcome the outgoing bike into the harsh sulfur desert.

The figure locked it’s dark helmet down, started it’s own hoverbike, and sped out toward the same airlock.

The figure would not lose him a second time

Author's Note

So yeah, first part of a two part chapter involving Jacob's escapades on Io.
Next we see his trials in the Nirvana cartel base.
Who is this mysterious figure?!
Does Twilight know what she is actually doing?!
Will Jacob use the nitro in a violent getaway next chapter?!
Most likely!
Next time on Dragonz Ballz Pee!

So another note to add in. I probably made a mistake posting this at the time of night that I did and now it's faded into obscurity, but them's the brakes. I wrote something new and today is double update Easter for me. So new chapter for this abomination as well: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/179792/sunder
I think it's going to be great, so check it out.

Peace!
Not Luna.