Roadside Assistance

Chapters

Chapter 1: "Total Reboot"
Chapter 2: "C:\\ren *.pony name.pony"
Chapter 3: "Culture Shock"

Chapter 1: "Total Reboot"

Roadside Assistance Ch.1: “Total Reboot”

My head was racing for some reason when I began to recognize I was awake. Of course, that came with the realization I was somehow chained to a wall.

“Why do I keep getting restrained against things?” I muttered, memories of the horrors I was usually subjected to in this kind of situation coming to mind, especially notable as they’d only happened a few months apart. The loss of my right eye to MECH and then my own stupidity leaving me defenseless against that glitch Airachnid who gleefully took the chance to evic-

Wait. If she eviscerated me, an event I unfortunately remembered with precise clarity, then that means I died. But if I died, then how was I still alive? Well, best not question that now and look a gift horse in the mouth, even though I’d never seen a horse and if luck went my way, for once, I’d never need to see one.

I tested the strength of my bonds. The chains wrapped around my arms and legs were pretty strong, but the surface they were tied too creaked and gave ever so slightly, suggesting my back was to a wall made of some weak material. Wood, maybe? I knew the humans had used it as a construction material despite it being pathetically weak for those purposes. Further resistance on my part indicated that if I worked just a bit harder, the wooden wall would break and cause the chains to fall off, allowing me to break free.

But a quick survey of my surroundings didn’t seem to mesh with the idea my new captors had the technology to somehow perfectly recreate my spark. Or, as I quickly realized, make a perfect recreation of my right eye. Namely; I was in a freaking barn. While it explained the wood wall I was chained too, surely these people had a better way to hide me from the general public than a barn which clearly was normally used for the upkeep of a human farm. Even MECH had been able to erect some kind of base inside a tunnel when they had captured me.

I chuckled. They put all that effort into resurrecting me…but this was the best they could do in keeping me secure? Screw that. I was probably in deep enough trouble with Megatron again for letting myself get…well, killed isn’t quite the appropriate term, evidently, but whatever happened I’d still get off easy as Knock Out still needed me as his assistant.

As I had predicted, it didn’t take that much force to rip the chains out of the wood, and within seconds I was a free Decepticon. No doubt they would have a guard keeping watch on the barn, but I wasn’t sticking around to see what their response would be. Plus, I really needed to stretch my servos and burn some rubber.

With a mere thought, my body broke apart and the parts started to rearrange themselves until my form became that of an Earth vehicle. I’d chosen this particular form because it was large, powerful, and mean, much like me in a way. I throttled my accelerator, driving straight into the barn doors. They exploded into a shower of splinters as I raced out of the building…

…and right into the most unrealistic environment I’ve ever seen. Now, I’ve been on many worlds, which before the Decepticons razed everything to the ground had all been unique in their look and geographical composition. But this place? The only word I could use to describe it was ‘artificial’. Seriously, it was so bright and colorful in every way it was making me sick. The sky was a pure light blue with white, fluffy clouds dotting the sky. I was now driving through what seemed to be an endless sea of trees, all of them bursting with bright red and green dots. The ground itself was a rich green, grass as far as the eye could see. Compared to the part of Earth I last recalled before my termination, it was like somebody had turned the sun to its ‘maximum brightness’ setting. Then, just over the hilly terrain and beyond the far fence outlining what I guess was an actual agricultural facility, was the first sign of human civilization I’d seen in a long while.

I only caught a glimpse of the town, though, as I quickly realized I was speeding right towards some kind of creature that was kicking trees with its hind legs. Maybe in some kind of misguided attempt of harvesting whatever those things in the trees were?

As I made a hard turn to the right to avoid roadkill splatter (I’d never hear the end of it from Knock Out if I got back covered in Earth creature blood and guts), I got a good look at the beast. Just like everything else so far, it made no sense to me. It was a miniature horse, orange in coat color but blonde in its mane and tail hairs. However, the proportions were so disturbingly wrong that I had to assume it was some kind of genetic freak conceived by its human masters, as what little I knew of Earth equines did not have them with giant eyes placed in the front of their face like a predator. The humans must have really wanted to humiliate their creation, too, as both its mane and tail were done up in loose bundles tied off at the ends, it was wearing a giant cowboy hat for whatever reason, and upon its butt was what looked like a two-color slave brand made up of three red blobs with little green lines at the top of each blob. My experience with humans, limited as it was, had not prepared me for how depraved they clearly were if they had-

“What in tarnation? The thing’s loose!”

Holy Primus, it could talk, too? Humans really were sadistic bastards if they wanted the poor freak to be able to vocalize its torment. But, I wasn’t going to hang around and wait for it to bring its masters, which I was now sure were the same as those who had fully repaired me and chained me in a barn. As quickly as I had escaped the barn, I smashed through a fence on the perimeter and was driving down a narrow dirt road into the forest. I’d need to find cover to hide from the humans and whatever mutant pets they brought to look for me, at least long enough until I could contact the Nemesisand arrange a pick up.

“Ah, this should do nicely…” I said to myself as I looked into the cave in front of me. I’d had to transform back into robot form about an hour ago, as even my vehicle mode eventually had become too big for the path I’d been following. Forced to go at a slower pace on foot, it had been a reminder why I wasn’t a fan of deeply forested organic regions as my large frame had difficulty navigating the tight spaces created by the local flora. But I’d easily outpaced any pursuers and could afford to take a quick rest, along with trying to contact the Nemesis.

Making sure nobody was coming, I leaned back on the cave wall, just inside the entrance and activated my communicator to radio the ship. The sooner I got out of this weird place the better.

“Nemesis, this is Breakdown, I am in need of extraction, do you read me?”

Static.

“Come in, Nemesis, this is Breakdown, do you read me?”

More static.

Now I was getting angry, shouting into the receiver. “Soundwave, I swear to Primus if you’re screwing with me I am going to-“

I could only presume the response was yet more static, for my attention was now fully diverted to the loud, raspy breathing right behind me. Turning my head slowly, I learned the cave had evidently been the residence of another strange mutant beast, one I had probably just woken up with my voice. Unlike the tiny horse things, though, the cave had concealed a massive bear which was easily twice my height. Its outward appearance suggested it was actually a piece of the night sky ripped off and turned into this creature, even though the white star on its forehead set off its yellow and red eyes, and as it roared into my face I could see its insides were very real and that it was really ticked off.

Too bad it didn’t know I was only too eager for a brawl.

“You wanna fight, beast?” I taunted, assuming a stance and transforming my right forearm to replace the hand with my hammer. He may have been bigger, but he was only a simple creature that fought when it needed to.

I, on the other hand, usually have problems finding an excuse to start a fight. To illustrate to this bear that I was more than equal to him, I swung my hammer-arm over my head and slammed it on the ground, the resulting impact echoing through the cave as was my scream of “THEN BRING IT!”

With all honesty, I think we both underestimated each other. The bear certainly didn’t seem to understand why its claws and sharp teeth did nothing to damage my armor, while I certainly was impressed with its endurance as it took several hammer blows all over but it just kept coming. I’d fought the Autobots for thousands of years, but for as long as I’d had the hammer for my primary weapon never before had I encountered an Autobot who could take as many hits as this bear. Not even my arch-rival Bulkhead had lasted as long as this bear.

Of course, the fact we were more evenly matched just made it that much more fun. This is what I lived for, the joy of combat, the challenge of defeating an opponent through raw power. My mouth certainly had to have been forming a near-unhinged smile, while in comparison the bear just got angrier.

“Come on, we’re just getting started!” I declared, retracting my hammer in favor of my hand and soon it was an all-out wrestling match between me and the bear. It was a short lived match, as despite its size it actually wasn’t that heavy, which it learned with shock as it found itself lifted over my head, then with some difficulty I threw it against the cliff side to the left of the cave entrance. The bear tried to get up, but collapsed in a heap as its world spun in circles.

“Breakdown: 1, Bear: 0. Flawless Victory.” I chuckled, dusting my hands off. Nothing like a good fight to make sure all the joints were working right. Then the ground began to shake as another bear, evidently woken up from the fight, emerged from the cave.

This one was significantly larger, as in ‘there were buildings back home on Cybertron that weren’t as tall as this bear’ larger. Its outer surface was similar to the first bear except more pink in coloration, the setting sun to the first bear’s total night (when did I get so artistic in describing things?) in addition to being covered in little specs that better portrayed the idea this was a bear made of pure space. Its jaw was also probably large enough to swallow me whole and its claws were easily as long as I was tall.

That part I said earlier about how I’m always looking for reasons to fight? Well, just because I am always in the mood to fight doesn’t mean I’m not smart enough to realize when fighting with little provocation is going to get me killed. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t since that’s how that spider-heli-whatever Airachnid was ended up getting the better of me, but I knew better now and I was not about to become a metal pancake under that bear’s foot.

So, of course, I started running as fast as I could in no particular direction other than away from the giant bear, my hand to my communicator as I screamed into it for assistance.

“Mayday! Mayday! Breakdown to Nemesis! I’m under attack from a mutant beWHA-“

Of course, I’d been too preoccupied looking behind me at the angry bear chasing me (seriously, how did something that big ever fit in that damn cave? The entrance only goes as high as its knees!) and so never saw the sudden drop-off that I pitched over at full speed and right into the rushing river. And then I realized I could do nothing at that point but go over the approaching waterfall and the probable sharp drop of doom.

“Oh, scraaaaaaaaaaaaap!” was all I could say as I was thrown from the waterfall to make a very painful landing at the bottom of the riverbed below.

By the time the moon had risen, I’d probably taken shelter for hours under what seemed like a railroad bridge. By some miracle I actually hadn’t died again from the fall, but I’d landed at a bad angle on my right knee and so had limped my way under the conveniently nearby structure. I hadn’t known it was a railroad bridge until I heard the whistle which was followed by the rumbling and the jets of pressurized steam emerging from both sides. I had briefly reflected on what the presence of steam power could mean, since I’d had Knock Out briefly explain it to me after I once tried to scan a steam engine as my alt. mode without realizing the thing needed rails to run on.

But then I’d felt a sharp burst of pain in my leg, redirecting my attention to my injury. Determining my status to be safe enough, I willed my fingers to turn into repair devices so my left hand was a five-digit tool kit, then after I removed my kneecap I got to work. Being a bruiser was what I loved and was of course my job specialty. Hanging around the best medic in the Decepticons because he’s your best friend, however, has its benefits in that I’d learned to be a rather gifted field medic under his tutelage of having to constantly fix me up. Considering my assignments usually consisted of me going on solo recon missions prior to being recalled to Earth, the fact I could repair myself was an invaluable skill.

Especially now, since I’d long since given up trying to contact the Nemesis. I couldn’t get a signal from the ship, or a GPS satellite the humans used, for spark’s sake there wasn’t even a single radio signal I could tune into just to break the silence! I’d even have settled for one of those crazy human “televangelists”, or, Primus help me, that horrible “Friday” song with the tone-deaf human girl, even if prior experience indicated I just murdered anything within range while that song was playing. And I was in no position to murder anything.

Thankfully, my knee injury only ended up being some dislodged load-bearing hardpoints, so I was back to full physical capability in relatively no time. After a day involving chains, crashing, angry bears that made Megatron look downright harmless, and no doubt humans still trying to track me down, I was thankful for small blessings.

I emerged from my shelter, testing out my repaired knee. Once it checked out, I just rested my hand on the side of the bridge and looked up into the night sky. I had to admit, nightwatching wasn’t something I did, but for whatever reason the night was especially beautiful. It’s funny, when you’re actually in space and traveling through it, it’s all black aside from the occasional object reflecting light from some local star unless it’s being blown up because Megatron was angry at it for whatever reason. But planetside? The sky is lit up, much like that bear from earlier, only the night isn’t trying to crush you into dust. That way, you can focus on the beauty of all the stars, the subtle brilliance of the moon, and the growing rainbow even though it didn’t seem to mesh with the night sky at-

The humans have sent the flying variety of their mutant horse things to find me I thought as I registered what was creating the out of place rainbow. It was another one of those equine freaks, only this time instead of being done up to look vaguely human, this sky blue one had a full spectrum of color for its mane and tail colors (it must have been gestated during one of those human ‘bring your snobby little brat offspring to work’ days) and, more importantly, functional wings. However, it wasn’t too bright as it was heading straight towards me. Which gave me an idea.

I swung my arm back, hiding my hand from view as I brought out my hammer.

“Hey, horse-face!” I taunted at the approaching form, “When you get back to your masters, tell them I would prefer they send things that aren’t farting out freakin’ rainbows!”

Now, the plan was that when I swung my hammer forward, it would hit the horse-fly and, provided it didn’t immediately explode in a cloud of blood (Knock Out would never know, I’d just wash it off in this river if any landed on me) would be sent rocketing over the horizon. My timing was perfect, it was just that the rainbow thing somehow made a course correction at speeds that even a land-based ‘Con like me knew should be liquefying her insides and then did the impossible by breaking the visible light spectrum seconds before I felt a monumental surge of raw force slam right into me. It was shortly followed in turn by me blacking out, my hammer never having made contact.

When I came too, I found I was once again tied down with chains, although this time to actual trees that were not going to break as easily as the wooden wall. At least it wasn’t inside a stupid barn this time and unlike that one incident with MECH there weren’t dissection tools around me, and my hammer was still deployed.

What was around me, however, were a number of the horse things. I immediately recognized the orange hat one and the sky blue rainbow one, but the others seemed different. Several of them were around the perimeter; perfectly identical white winged equines wearing gold armor with matching tail and helmet plumes of white and blue. I guessed they were guards as only a few shot curious glances at me but otherwise had their backs turned to me.

Of far more interest were the ponies directly in front of me. Along with the two horse freaks I’d encountered earlier, there were four others. The most “normal” of the lot was pink colored with a slightly darker tinted mane, my gut telling me she was anything but normal but I couldn’t place it, maybe it was the balloon slave brand on her rear quarters? A yellow winged one with brighter pink hair was next to the all-pink one, although the winged creature seemed to be hiding behind her hair like some kind of shield, her trio of butterflies as her mark.

But the other two, a fabulous looking light gray one with two-color violet hair (Knock Out would have insisted on taking it as a pet, I was sure of it, if only because of the three diamonds on her rear) and a darker purple one with a smart-looking mane style and a collection of stars as her slave mark, made it clear I was either totally delusional or this whole thing was one elaborate joke, because they had single corkscrewed spikes coming out of their foreheads. The humans, from what I remembered reading about their various legends online in trying to track down Iacon Relics, referred to these creatures as “unicorns” and that they were capable of magic. I immediately had to scoff at thinking these were legit unicorns, rather they looked like the other horse things except with the horns glued on to their foreheads. In contrast, the historical images I’d seen suggested “real” unicorns were slightly more like Earth ‘lions’ in having tails with puffed ends and what had been identified in the Wikipedia article as ‘hedine gruff’.

Meanwhile, as a side effect of my sudden vocal reaction, the main six in front of me all took a step back as if in fear and the guards all stiffened. Were they afraid of me? Well, obviously they were, they’d somehow chained me to trees and were now waiting for their human masters to deal with me.

“We need to do somethin’ about this thing, he ripped apart that barn like it was nothin’!” said the orange one with the hat.

“Yeah, hopefully he won’t break free this time, although he wouldn’t have if I’d put a restraining spell on him like I did this time and not relied on somepony’s old barn to hold him down,” complained the purple one to the orange one. I made a mental note that she had probably referred to the orange one as a “pony”, so I should also refer to these creatures as ‘ponies’ too.

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“It would have hurt him. Like I told you before, he’s a life form of a completely non-biological nature, possibly the first one to ever visit our world, and for the sake of scientific research I can’t let him be hurt as much as possible.”

I narrowed my eyes and bared my teeth. The last time I’d been treated as a specimen ‘for science’ I’d lost my right eye and nearly died had it not been for an unexpected surprise rescue from the last ‘bot I’d expected. I wasn’t about to go through that nonsense again, a stance I intended to make perfectly clear to these four legged freaks.

The yellow pony seemed to think so, too. “Um, Twi? I think you made it mad…” Oh, Primus, her voice was so sweet sounding, it was like sugar. I didn’t like sugar, I accidentally got some in my fuel tank several centuries ago and had the worst case of indigestion any lifeform, biological or mechanical, ever had. I also was not going to stand to be treated by candy colored pony things the same way MECH had treated me.

So I spoke up for the first time to something that could answer back. “I would prefer not to be called ‘it’ thank you very much. I am a ‘he’.”

I might as well have threatened to give them all to Knock Out for experimentation with how they all reacted in shock.

“Oh my Celestia, it talks!” wailed the fabulous one, rearing up only to execute some elaborate fainting maneuver none of the other ponies paid attention to. She must have done that regularly.

The purple unicorn, however, crouched as if readying to attack, the horn-thing on her forehead lighting up as if it was actually some kind of light-casting device. “Well, this is a surprise, isn’t it?” she commented through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what kind of monster you are, but after what you’ve done to Ponyville, don’t expect us to let you off easily!”

I didn’t know what the hell this “Ponyville” place was, probably that town I saw earlier, and I had no memory of attacking anything other than that bear which had not been in “Ponyville” so already I was being accused of several things I didn’t know if I’d done. But no matter how long clearing this whole mess was going to take, I wasn’t going to be called a monster by things I could consider monsters themselves. True, I was on the side of the Great War which had destroyed not only our own home planet but countless other civilizations and their planets, but I did have some pride in having a degree of honor and morality, which was a lot considering the majority of my fellow Decepticons didn’t carry those self-restrictions and would stab each other in the back if they could gain anything from it.

“Okay, look, ‘Starbutt’,” I answered back, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I just want to make it clear that I am not a monster. I am a Cybertronian aligned with the Decepticons, my name is Breakdown, and that is basically all I know to be true because nothing else I’ve seen all day has made any Primusdamn sense! You want to see monsters? Go look at the humans who made you!”

The unicorn seemed confused. “Humans? What are those?”

I couldn’t believe it. I’d been sure these ponies had been human-created freaks, but despite the similarities of their culture I’d seen so far (which was admittedly almost nothing besides the fact they had agriculture, urban development, and some level of advanced technology through the use of condensed water pressure) they apparently had never heard of them before.

But then I realized that not only did these ponies not have a clue what humans were, they knew even less as to what I was, and that I barely knew anything about them or the world I was seemingly marooned on. As far as I knew, I was the only Cybertronian on the planet, if not left in existence, and I was at the mercy of the dominant species of mutant freak horses with little pictures of random shit on their asses. I had to wonder if death actually was preferable at this point.

Chapter 2: "C:\\ren *.pony name.pony"

Chapter 2: "C:\ren *.pony name.pony"

Roadside Assistance Ch.2: "C:\ren *.pony name.pony"

As I stood there – okay, not so much “stood” as “remained chained to giant trees” – wondering just what was going on, I didn’t notice the ponies below me also reacting to my declaration that I was not in fact some kind of horrible monster. I only snapped out of my stupefied state in time to listen in at some point after they had started to converse with themselves.

“-about Iron Will!” said Orange Hat Pony, “he’s got two of those ‘hand’ things, while this guy only has one which looks more like a claw!”

“Applejack, he’s not a minotaur like Iron Will. His leg structure alone is unlike anything anypony has ever seen before. Although where he got the giant hammer to replace his other claw, I don’t know.”

I glanced over at my right arm, hammer still stuck in deployed mode, but a quick internal systems check confirmed my right hand was, in fact, still very much attached as it had been a few hours ago.

Rainbow Pony seemed to be of the same mind, “Yeah, Twi? When I found him earlier, he still had both hands. But then he swung his right arm back and when he brought it forward his claw had become the hammer.”

Lavender Unicorn Pony a.k.a. “Twi” seemed to think about it, and then turned to me as if she actually remembered I’d been there the whole time. “You, mechanical creature-”

“The name is Breakdown,” I snarled, “And if the question you’re going to ask is if I have my other hand – that’s what my manipulators are called, they’re not ‘claws’ - the answer is yes. However, thanks to these chains, I can’t prove this because there’s a chain wrapped around the hammer shaft and thus immobilizing it.” Indeed, one of the chains had been wrapped two or so times around where the shaft joined the two-side headpiece, holding it down and preventing it from being retracted into my arm so I could bring my hand out.

“So, you’re saying that if we unchained you-“ began Twi,before she was cut off by Diamond Butt.

“Are you crazy?! Anytime this beast has been let free, he’s gone and done damage to something! First he arrives like some kind of monster and destroys part of Ponyville, then he ruins one of the Apple Family’s barns and a good bit of the farm itself in his escape until Dash took him down on her own!”

“Whoa whoa whoa, I did what now?” I had to ask. “I did what to Whoville? And then I did something else where?” They had mentioned this stuff before, but it had been drowned out with all the ‘I’m not a filthy monster’ arguing, so now I guess we were getting to revisit this other, fun topic. “Look, I’m going to be honest with you…’ponies’, as you seem to call yourselves; I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about or what you think I did.”

“A likely story!” accused Rainbow Pony, flying up to put herself right in front of my face as if trying to be intimidating (it didn’t quite work considering she was half the size of my head), “You came out of the Everfree Forest-” Where? “-and lit up with purple lights-” What? “-screaming something about ‘Energon’ or something-” Does she even know what that is? “-even though your mouth was some kind of horrific…multi-piece monster-like mouth-” My mouth was what now? “-with some kind of tentacle out of it-” Primusdamn you Knock Out for showing me those human horror films, the ones giving me a disturbing image of what she’s talking about “-Then you stomped through town, wrecking everything in sight, before the girls and I had to put you down!”

I think my mouth was slightly agape as I looked at the hovering pony like she’d just told me Megatron’s favorite song involved the promotion of friendship and kindness.

“Don’t give me that look!” she threatened, although I couldn’t help but make a drawn out “uh” noise simply to irritate her simply for amusement.

I did the noise for a few seconds before I gave a solid response, “Look, Rainbow Horse-“

“It’s Rainbow Dash,” she snapped back.

It’s amazing how easily they are giving me their names, provided I can remember them I thought. Not letting my thoughts show, I continued regardless; “Okay, Rainbow Dash, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The purple unicorn seemed to be getting frustrated at the constant exchange. “This is getting us nowhere!” She trotted up to as close she could get so we could have eye contact, “Mr…Breakdown, is that correct?” I gave her a slight nod, relieved at least one of them got my name right, prompting her to continue, “since you’re obviously somepony-” I’m not a pony, for starters “-much different than my friends and I, it’s possible you don’t see things the same way we do-” And Starscream said I was slow to pick up on things “-Perhaps this is all a big misunderstanding-“

“Twilight, he had a tentacle-like thing coming out of his mouth when we first saw him!” complained Butt Stallion (wait, that wasn’t what I called her earlier…), making her stance clear as to how much she was willing to trust me.

“Do I have a ‘tentacle-like thing’ coming out of me now?” I challenged back, a smug smile on my lips when she couldn’t come up with a quick response.

“Look, we’re getting off track!” interrupted the purple unicorn, “I’m sure you don’t like being chained to that tree, quite frankly none of us want to be out here in the Everfree at all, either, but you kind of didn’t give us a choice when you ran off from the barn. That said, I can’t say I wouldn’t have tried to escape such a situation myself if I were in your position.”

“Believe me, the barn thing was the third time I’d been tied up like that within recent memory, though I’d rather not go into detail about the previous two.”

“Oh, um, okay…” said the unicorn, flustered, “but on the subject of memory, maybe you can at least tell us what you remember before, um, waking up in the barn?”

I just shook my head and chuckled, although there wasn’t much humor. “Well, if you must know, the last thing I remember before the barn was the second time I was bound.”

“Are you sure?” suddenly piped up Pink Pony, “Maybe you are just remembering how we chained you up in the barn and all those other times in the wrong way because, hey, if it happened to you a lot which I hope isn’t the case because I wouldn’t wish that on anypony but between-“

Okay, now I understood what my earlier gut feeling in regards to the pink pony was about. And I was going to have to end it.

“No, I am certain I remember events correctly, and that I have no idea what any of you are talking about with me attacking some town. Because my last memory before waking up in the barn? It was when I died.”

Yep, that got all of them to shut up.

The next morning, I found myself waking up in the exact same barn that I had the previous day. Only difference was that the back wall had several giant holes in it, the front doors were noticeably newer than the rest of the front wall, and I wasn’t waking up to find myself chained to anything for the first time in what felt like forever.

After revealing the circumstances of my situation, namely the whole “I don’t know what you’re talking about with my mouth being a rip off of something from a human horror film” thing, the ponies had become slightly more lenient in the way they treated me. It had been enough for me to negotiate them releasing me from bondage, in return for me promising not to go around stomping around ‘Equestria’, which I had to guess was the name of the continent or, more likely, country I was in. Personally, I thought it was a decent name since it implied the presence of things that were vaguely like horses, much better in comparison to how “United States of America” didn’t at all imply humans were the dominant species, or any other human country for that matter.

Then I deeply sighed as I remembered the other end of the deal I had agreed to. The purple unicorn, whose name I’d learned was “Twilight Sparkle”, had turned out to be effectively a nerd who loved books. In retrospect, her name sounded like something I’d come across in regards to some human book series, only it had generally been panned. Something about shiny, pale humans who sometimes needed to suck blood, I didn’t really care about it then or now as reading hadn’t been one of my strong suits since, well, ever. But the little book horse wanted to know everything I could tell her about the ‘hoo-mahns’ I’d kept talking about along with everything I could tell her of my own origins.

I wondered how she’d take the part where I told her my boss had been the guy who killed our own home planet. Or that I’d directly helped him when he had corrupted its core. Maybe it would be better not to mention those parts, not yet at least.

“Yeah, c’mon, it’s in here!” suddenly came a young voice I’d not yet heard, muffled from the outside of the barn. The orange hat pony, “Applejack”, had insisted that I remain in the barn until something could be decided of my situation, since she apparently hadn’t told the rest of her family which I came to learn consisted of a “Granny Smith” elder figure, her brother unit “Big Macintosh”, and a little sister unit “Applebloom”. Going off of the tone of the voice, I had to assume it was the little sister.

Then I heard two distinctly different voices, both seemingly as young as the first. I had no reason to assume Applejack had been lying when she said she only had a little sister, but at the same time the two others with the presumed Applebloom couldn’t have known of me. Of course, it was obvious Applebloom did know something was in this barn, that something being me, and was going to show it to her friends.

Thinking fast, I dropped to the ground and let my tires take the blow of landing, my chassis bouncing slightly on its suspension. My timing was quick enough that when the doors opened to reveal three tiny pony creatures, all they saw was a giant blue armored vehicle with a large turret on the top.

“Uh, Applebloom?” said one of the mini ponies I did not recognize; it was orange and had wings, although its mane and tail were somewhat similar to that of Rainbow Dash, “what is that?”

“Ah dunno, Scoot,” replied the yellow, regular looking pony with crimson hair and a big bow, presumably the Applebloom of whom I’d been informed of. The voice matched that of the first one I’d heard, anyway, “Mah sister and her friends were hangin’ around this barn late last night with some of the guards, and Ah know it had somethin’ to do with that monster from a little while back.”

Great, so she at least knows the thing I apparently did but don’t remember, I thought, simultaneously reflecting on how “Scoot” was one of the most nonsensical names I’d ever heard.

“Maybe Twilight cast some transmorgifier spell on the monster and turned it into this…thing here?” said the third pony; a pale gray unicorn with a mane of both pink and purple curls, “I mean, it sort of looks like a steam engine, only it doesn’t need rails.”

“Ah can’t say Ah’ve ever seen anythin’ like it…” replied Applebloom, who seemed to be the leader of the trio as they walked closer. I made no move to reveal my true nature. Sure, a “steam engine that doesn’t need rails” wasn’t exactly what my alternate vehicle form was, but if it kept them off of figuring out what I truly was then so be it.

“Is it a parade float?” asked Scoot, coming around on my right side, “It sort of looks like one, only with less wheels and no tender. And is that some kind of party cannon mounted on top of it?” I didn’t know what she was talking about with that “party cannon” business, but whatever it was or did, it couldn’t have been the same as my alt mode’s roof mounted homing-rocket launcher.

“It’s got some weird designs on it, too. Is that supposed to be a bird face made of triangles or something on the doors?” said the as-of-yet unnamed unicorn, although I was now more concerned with what she was talking about. In a vague way, it sounded like she was describing the insignia of the Decepticons, which Megatron had created at the time of when the Great War had begun with inspiration from Soundwave’s general head shape. Then again, Soundwave’s alt mode was some kind of reconnaissance drone thing that sorta looked like a bird, so maybe the unicorn had a point. Still didn’t change the fact I was only now learning I was wearing a Decepticon insignia on my doors, a strange detail I didn’t remember namely because I know I didn’t have insignias on my alt mode doors…of course, I’d also “known” until recently I’d been missing an eye and was also dead.

“How do you even get in this thing?” the orange one said, oddly deciding to try and climb up to the door handle which was too high for even normal humans and required the use of sidebar steps. I resisted the urge to laugh, which would have given my cover away, but humor quickly was replaced with shock when she opened it up after a few tries.

Apparently, in my rush to transform, I’d forgotten to lock my own doors. To force them closed and locked now would certainly be a bad idea, along with possibly hurting the tiny orange pony, which wouldn’t win me any points with the ponies from earlier. But how did she even get the door open? She had hooves, which I’m no expert on but from what I-

Okay. I’m in a place populated with sentient ponies, a third of which can fly and another third make those extrusions on their heads glow like headlights. They can talk. They can do a bunch of other weird things. And I’m getting caught up on a minor fact tied to the primary truth that they are not like regular horses. Get it together, Breakdown, keep your priorities straight!

Of course, that was easier said than done, what with three midget ponies now having gotten inside me and poking and prodding everything in sight. Thankfully, even though my alt. mode had been some advanced design that had push-button ignition (humans had used primitive ‘keys’ to start their vehicles for decades until they invented the obvious), I could feign being an inoperable machine by simply not responding to the button if it was pushed. Or really any of the vehicle controls they tried to use. Heck, I could lock them in now and keep them inside me, completely under my control. But I wasn’t going to do that because just the idea of little organics getting physical with a purely superfluous part of my alt mode disguise annoyed me, the fact they were doing just that annoyed me even more. The Autobots back in human territory had willingly let their human partners ride inside them, how they managed to stand it is beyond me.

“Hey, I think this turns it on!” said one of them, the identity unknown as I was generally trying to ignore them. That quickly became impossible when I felt something hard jab the ignition button. Then again. And again. The period of time between presses instantly disappeared as the button was mashed at ridiculous speed. It didn’t hurt, obviously, rather it was more like an itch. An aggravating, idiotic itch in the one place a ’bot just can’t scratch but the need to scratch it just keeps getting bigger and bigger until a way to meet the need presents itself.

Fortunately, I happened to remember humans also had security devices called “car alarms’” which my alt mode had come with.

Without warning, the three fillies in my cab reacted with shock as the “vehicle” erupted into a chaotic sound generator. My horn blaring in constant rhythm, all the running lights flashing at once, it was a function that served to do the exact opposite of the intention of my alt. mode as it attracted attention, not helped me blend in. It also got the trio screaming in fright, trying to open the doors but failing to grasp the handle. Of course, being the gentlebot that I am, I opened it myself. The three spilled out onto the ground, whereupon I closed the door, silenced the alarm, and then locked the doors so they couldn’t regain entry.

“Wha…what just happened?” asked the unicorn.

“Sweetie Belle…” started Applebloom (great, now I learn the unicorn’s name), “…Ah don’t think it liked the button being pressed too fast.” Truer words had never been spoken.

Just then, Twilight and Applejack came rushing in. Curiously, despite both of them being horses, Twilight seemed to be much more out of breath than Applejack.

“What in tarnation is goin’ on here?” demanded Applejack, probably none too happy to have come across the scene in front of her.

“We were just tryin’ to find out what you and your friends were doin’ in the barn last night and found this large float and then Scootaloo managed to open it so we got inside and started pressin’ buttons and then we all started pressin’ one button really, really hard and it started to make loud noises and then-“ sputtered Applebloom, stopping only to take a deep breath before continuing, “-we got scared and tried to get one of the doors open and we did but we fell out onto the ground and the float stopped makin’ noises and then you showed up.”

Applejack seemed to take a few moments in order to process everything Applebloom had said, then a few more in trying to decide in what to say.

“Alright, let’s get somethin’ straight. Why did you three decide to investigate what was in this barn?”

“Uh…” the three smaller ponies uttered in unison.

“Ah thought so. Y’all know the girls and Ah are ‘specially equipped to deal with ‘special’ cases, plus what with the farm havin’ so many large barns that are just storage these days, we decided to put this broken down-” Was that a pun on my name? “-hunk of junk-” Slag you, too, Applejack “-in here until we could figure out a more permanent place for it.“

“But…what is it?” asked Scoot.

“It’s something that could change everything we know about the universe!” interjected the recovered Twilight, “But…we kind of need to examine it over time, so we’re trying to keep it a secret in here. So, promise you can do that?”

“Yeah!” the three said in unison, before taking the hint they should leave after a brief period of dead silence. Soon, it was just me, Twilight, and Applejack in the barn, closed off from the world when the doors glowed the same way as Twilight’s horn.

“How did you do that? Magnets or something?” I asked. Neither pony jumped, namely because I’d already demonstrated to them my ability to talk in vehicle mode the previous night.

“Um, no, it’s just magic, nothing special,” replied Twilight with a raised eyebrow. Magic? The human legends said unicorns were basically magic mutant horses, but actual, non-scientific, physics-breaking magic?

I’m pretty sure in my situation anybody else would be arguing against the mere idea that magic existed. Me? The idea magic existed actually explained a lot, or at least gave some justification for how some things I’ve witnessed so far, like what Rainbow Dash did to make that color spectrum explosion thing last night. Unfortunately, I immediately realized that by not continuing the conversation, Twilight was going to go on some kind of tirade about why magic was important or something. She had that look on her face, it was similar to the expression Knock Out had when Starscream questioned his choice of alt mode being a snazzy sports coupe one too many times.

Luckily, Applejack had something else on her mind. “Ah reckon we got about a day before those three spill the beans about ya bein’ here, Breakdown.”

“So, should I expect angry mobs with pitchforks and torches?” I joked.

“Wha?”

“It’s something humans did, nothing really important.”

“It shouldn’t be that bad,” said Twilight, “I mean, it will probably blow down much like how the town feared Zecora until my friends and I got the townsfolk to realize she was friendly and not a danger.” I didn’t know who Zecora was, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a 20 foot tall mechanical lifeform whose hobbies included smashing things with a hammer and had killed hundreds of its own kind in a planet-wide civil war. “Besides, I’ve already written a letter to Princess Celestia and Luna, who due to their current disposition wish for only the best treatment of you, so long as you don’t try to present any danger. Should you try to attack anypony, though, my friends and I have been given auth-“

“Whoa whoa whoa, back up there. So you’re not going to do the whole ‘take me to your lead-um, nevermind, that’s another human thing.”

“You seem to know a lot of human sayings.”

“Yeah, I don’t actually remember picking up any of them, either, but that’s besides the point. Your illustrious leaders can’t see me right now because…?”

“They’re busy dealing with a state affair involving our dragon neighbors-” great, those exist in this world, too? “-and are indisposed of dealing with you for at least another week.”

“Well, I hope you have a plan of letting me out of here, because I don’t intend to stay cooped up in a barn for the next week.”

“We’re working on it.”

“That’s not good enough for me.” To illustrate my point, I transformed back into my robot form, “Just because I turn into, simply put, a box on wheels, doesn’t mean I am perfectly fine keeping myself in that form.”

“Does it hurt to do that, um, ‘transforming’ thing for long periods?” asked Twilight, apparently having gained more interest and ignoring the actual problem.

“Twilight…” interrupted Applejack, “Ah think he’s talkin’ about just wantin’ to be up and walkin’ around and stuff. Frankly, Ah can’t really blame him, this barn probably feels like some kinda prison.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” I snarked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder to indicate the hastily patched rear wall. The spots where I’d ripped out the chains from the wall the previous day were still very distinct even though they’d been boarded up.

“Oh, yes, that,” replied Twilight, apparently trying to find an answer that worked for me. “The thing is, I don’t know where you could just up and walk, run, or do anything without freaking somepony out, Breakdown.”

“Um, isn’t this a farm we’re on?” I pointed out, “isn’t there some kind of secluded, private part of the farm where I could just to stretches or something?”

“Yeah, there is, Ah’ll show it to you a bit later.”

Within slightly over twenty four hours, I’d managed to get myself from being restrained against my will – twice – to having some degree of freedom on this farm; Sweet Apple Acres or some name involving those ‘apple’ fruits that were growing on the trees. While it certainly wasn’t something as major as a giant military victory or, Primus willing, a way back to rejoining the main Decepticon contingent on the Nemesis, I would take what I could get. Especially since I needed to stay on the good side of these ponies, but I wasn’t too worried for as long as I didn’t reveal the true nature of the Decepticons, I was nothing more than a displaced individual to these ponies. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them… right?

Chapter 3: "Culture Shock"

Roadside Assistance Chapter 3; “Culture Shock”

I don’t know how Applejack was going to pull it off. Sure, she’d directed me to someplace far in the back on the farm’s land, some kind of private grove type place with a lake, but it was still in plain view of the residential structure she and the rest of her family lived in. The family that, to my knowledge, somehow didn’t know about the blue mechanical thing who had been put in some old barn. But, she’d said I could walk around in my regular form so I could stretch and stuff, and I really needed to, so there I was.

Of course, having actual peace and quiet was out of the question, because Twilight simply needed to interrogate me about everything I knew that she didn’t.

“So, what is this ‘Nemesis’ that you keep referring to?” she asked, her horn’s…’magic’…illuminating both her forehead’s glowstick and a feather which was leaving marks on some kind of thin, sheet-like material that I could only assume was for recording information. Highly inefficient compared to visual recording and data logging, but considering how primitive this pony race seemed to be overall, it was to be expected.

“The Nemesis is the flagship of the Decepticon Space Navy, serving as Megatron’s personal vessel towards the end of the Great Exodus to chase after Optimus Prime and his contingent in their Ark. That was millions of years ago, though, and while the Nemesis is still one of the finest warships ever built, she’s more of a mobile base for Decepticon operations on Earth these days.”

“So…it’s like your home, since the war you keep talking about destroyed your home planet? Cybertronia, was it?”

“Cybertron. No ‘-ia’ at the end. But…” I stopped massaging my shoulder rotator joint as I thought about my answer. “…yeah, in a way, I guess you could say the Nemesis is a home of sorts, although I’m not a fan of the purple mood lighting Megatron insists be all over the ship.”

“I see…” said Twilight, the glowing piece of bird carcass rubbing the non-plumed end on the sheet, periodically moving over to a small container full of black stuff (remote spectral analysis indicated it wasn’t oil, but instead some kind of solvent composition of water, dissolved charcoal, some kind of naturally sticky residue such as beeswax, and a touch of turpentine), which seemed to be what was being applied to the sheet as residual markings. “And who, exactly, is this ‘Megatron’ character?’

I had to chuckle at what I was perceiving to be her probable reaction to what I was going to say. “Megatron, well…he’s basically my boss, although he prefers grand titles like “Supreme Emperor of Destruction” and “Lord of the Decepticons” and such.”

“Okay, um…is he a good boss?”

“Come again?” I had to raise an eyebrow in confusion, how in the world could she think-oh, right, she only knows the name.

“Is he a nice guy to work for?”

She jumped when I burst out laughing. “Megatron? A nice guy to work for?! AHAHAHAHAHA!” It took a few minutes for me to recollect myself before I could talk to the startled pony, “Sorry, but ‘Megatron’ and ‘nice’ are two things that are polar opposites.”

“So…you don’t like him?”

“Not really. I mean, in terms of capability he’s a decent leader, I guess, even if some of his more grandiose plans usually go south. Personality wise he’s actually pretty demanding, since he doesn’t tolerate failure very well and he’s got quite a temper. But, at the very least, he’s sometimes quite witty and can be entertaining to watch, unlike that absolute bore Optimus Prime and his equally boring Autobots.”

“Those are the guys you’ve been fighting for millions of years, right?”

“Yeah. Megatron formed the Decepticons initially as a political party of the common Cybertronian to combat the rampant class inequality status quo which the Autobots enforced. If the rumors were true, Optimus used to be some datahead who basically did nothing but sort files in the data archives –“

“The where?” asked Twilight.

“Data Archives, it was a place where all kinds of information was stored for reference by anybody, really.”
“You’re saying that ‘Optimus’ guy was essentially a librarian, like me?”

“Uh…sure, let’s go with that.” I had no idea what a ‘librarian’ was, but if there was any kind of similarity I was willing to roll with it. “Anyway, he’d been known as ‘Orion Pax’ back then, and through countless cycles or ‘months’ in your own time measurement units he came to the conclusion that class inequality was bad.”

Twilight frowned. “But you said that the class inequality could be found all over the place, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Yep. It took him months to realize the same thing he would have known in an instant had he just gone outside and visited anything not directly supported by the Autobot Senate. Still, after figuring out the obvious, he somehow became good buddies with Megatron, at least up until the day Megatron proposed his vision of a better future for Cybertronian society.”

“What happened?”

“I actually don’t know the specifics, only that the Senate rejected Megatron’s ideals, yet when Orion supported Megatron by simply regurgitating Megatron’s supporting points, the Senate decided to give the plucky archivist the honor of being the first ‘Prime’ since the Golden Age ended, even though at the time it literally was nothing but an empty title they used to buy off Orion and bury Megatron’s opposition to their corruption.”

“Is that the commonly known story, or what Megatron says the story was?

“Megatron actually didn’t like talking about it, and what I’ve told you is the general summary of what I’ve heard from both Autobots and Decepticons alike. I doubt anybody alive other than Megatron and his former ally Orion – who later took the name ‘Optimus Prime’, the pompous piece of slag – even remembers that’s where the war began.”

“The war that destroyed your home planet?”

“Yeah, it’s a funny story about that, actually. You see-“ Whatever I was going to say, I immediately forgot as my full attention went to the rather sizable boulder suddenly impacting my head. The actual, physical damage was minimal, a super small dent at worst, but the inertia caused me to shift off my center of gravity, and one bad step to the side on the edge of the pond quickly led into me falling into the pool face first.

“You’re going to pay what you did to mom, you freak!” came a voice I did not recognize, further distorted by my hearing sensors being submerged in water. Quickly rectifying this by pushing myself back upright and rotating 180 degrees on my waist transformation joint, I immediately saw my assailant.

She was a unicorn, not quite as big as what Twilight’s height measured out to be (assuming she was a full grown unicorn), her fur some color between purple and pink and her mane made up of two darker shades of violet. I couldn’t tell her cutie mark due to the angle, but I could tell she was pissed off at me for something that I also didn’t remember doing. I also noticed there was a smaller pony, similar to the three from earlier, this one also a unicorn but colored a light purple-gray and was blonde. Any further observations was interrupted by a giant rock bathed in some kind of transparent mulberry trying to merge with my head. That quickly ended when I easily snatched the boulder from the air with a quick movement of my wrist, whatever force controlling it now trying to remove it from my grip in vain.

“Sparkler, Dinky, what are you two doing here?” inquired Twilight, concern on her face.

“That thing hurt mom!” exclaimed the smaller of the two angry unicorns, “he’s gonna pay!”

I sighed. Normally, I would have loved to have taken the challenge and beaten the snot out of anybody who had a problem with me, but simply using my hammer to reduce my new enemies into a red, sticky paste of organic guts wouldn’t win me any points with the ponies as a whole. Plus, it wouldn’t have been worth the effort as there was nothing they could do to me that I couldn’t shrug off anyway.

“Look, I know this sounds crazy, but…” I began, crushing the boulder into tiny bits of gravel with a single squeeze in my hand, “…can’t we just talk this over?”

Back on the Nemesis, I’d heard stories of how individual Cybertronians, regardless of alignment or any physical attributes, could experience ‘overclocking’ if they consumed too much Energon, the primary form of sustenance Cybertronians lived on, at once. Their behavior protocols would become severely weakened to the point where behavior turned unpredictable and random, such as when Knock Out knocked back one too many and decided he needed to remodel himself to look like some kind of scaled lizard with large jaws. Subsequently, they would over-exert their systems and go into a short term stasis, having a massive headache and no memory of what happened during their overclocking (Knock Out was horrified when he saw what he’d done to himself and spent a long cycle locked in his lab restoring himself while forever swearing vengeance on Earth crocodiles, whatever those were).

At this point, it felt like I was going through that post-overclocking period myself, only differences being that I clearly remembered going offline and that the headache was coming after I’d woken up. It was a good hour after my little Q&A with Twilight had been interrupted by the ponies “Sparkler” and “Dinky”, whose reasoning for having thrown a giant boulder at my head was so complicated that I needed to hear their backstory even though I really couldn’t have cared less.

According to Twilight, Dinky and Sparkler were the adoptive daughters of some other pony named “Derpy Hooves” or something of a similar, inane-sounding nature. Their birth parents had been unicorns who had specialized in non-weaponized pyrotechnics called ‘fireworks’, allegedly some kind of entertainment used for large celebrations or public displays. However, due to constant drinking and they generally just being total jerks to everybody else, their children had suffered abuse and neglect for several years until Derpy had taken action and had the pony legal system transfer the rights of parentage to her.

In all reality, most of it flew past me as I didn’t really see the significance outside of explaining why their mother wasn’t their natural mother. All the wordiness was excessive in that all I needed to hear was basically “their birth parents were not fit to raise them so they were dumped onto some other pony by that pony’s own volition”. The part that didn’t fly past me, however, was when one of the unicorns (I wasn’t paying enough attention to discern the speaker) mentioned Dinky was not expected to grow bigger. The exact cause made no sense to me, it involved the chemicals found in alcohol that ponies drunk for some weird reason reacting to the developing pre-baby phase pony in the mother, but the idea it stunted her growth had a small impact on my initial impressions. I didn’t voice it, but I actually could empathize with Dinky in being perpetually smaller, for I had been in that position millions of years ago, before the war.

“Breakdown, are you paying attention?”

“Wha-I, uh, yeah! Totally paying attention!” I lied.

“Ugh. You should have let me keep beating him with the rock, Twilight,” complained Sparkler. Dinky hadn’t said a word to me since Twilight convinced them both to not try to kill me, she just glared angrily at me. “Besides, if you’re on first-name basis with him now, I would have figured you would have let him know how much he’s screwed the town over by taking out Ponyville’s mail carrier.”

“Whoa, did you just say ‘mail carrier’? Like, comparable to a courier or such?”

Sparkler raised an eyebrow at that. “Um, yeah? Mom’s basically a one-mare mail service for the town, which you’ve literally crippled thanks to your little assault on the town.”

Damnit, now I had a vested interest. At the same time, perhaps a way to improve my standing in the eyes of these ponies, too.

“Tell me, Sparkler, is your mother the only one who got hurt during my little ‘incident’?” I asked.

“What’s with the sudden interest, red-face?” she snapped back

“I am curious, myself,” said Twilight, “although thankfully, Derpy was the only casualty in your onslaught.”

“Well, that’s a relief, then.” I said, “Would it be possible to go apologize to her, then?”

“Why?” shouted Dinky in response, “What makes you want to apologize to her now, after all this time?”

“It’s…for reasons of personal integrity.” They’d learn my reasoning soon enough.

Sparkler and Dinky were unmoved, but I thought I caught a slight smile on Twilight’s muzzle. Possibly she thought that I was better than her impressions suggested, but of course those had been under less than preferable conditions.
“I’m sure she’d appreciate that, Breakdown,” she replied as she got up onto her four hooves.

“You’re not serious, Twilight!” said a shocked Sparkler, “You can’t even take this guy through town, it’s going to be just like before all over again!”

“Not if I teleport us all. Derpy is back home, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, she is, but you’ve never teleported anything like him before, have you?”

“Nope!” she replied a little too cheerily for my own comfort, “But I think I’m strong enough for such a task.”

“Uh, maybe I should mention that I’m-“ I started, but Twilight’s horn flashed and suddenly I felt myself being ripped apart at the molecular level only to be reassembled…right in the middle of town with my mouth finishing my sentence; “-heavier than I look?”

“Yeah, that probably would have been better to have known beforehand.” Said Twilight, who seemed tired. Evidently her magic hadn’t been strong enough to take us all the way to Derpy’s house. It had been enough to land our group of three unicorns of various sizes and a large Cybertronian like me right in the middle of Ponyville. And every single pony else within sight had frozen with their eyes locked onto me.

At least until they all simultaneously freaked out and made themselves scarce.

Twilight stayed behind to comfort the town, evidently she’d had to do this multiple times over the years. However, that left two antagonistic unicorns to accompany me as direction givers.

“Wheeeeee!” said Dinky, riding on my left shoulder as I made a brisk walking pace. Evidently, being angry at the alien who injured your mother could, in her mind, take a backseat to that same alien giving free rides.

“Take a left turn here.” The same could not be said of Sparkler, atop my right shoulder, even though she’d moved from being angry to just being sullen. “The post office will be the building with the sign shaped like a letter hanging on the front.”

The building was easy to find with the sign, although I had to wonder why the post office was situated so far from the town as I knelled down to the ground to let off the ponies.

“Wait here,” curtly stated Sparkler, who went into the building along with Dinky, leaving me alone outside and giving me a chance to evaluate the structure. At first glance, it looked too big to be a residence, but then I remembered it was the post office as well as the residence for a single mother and her two adopted kids.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” I was startled, not having expected to hear Twilight’s voice again so soon.

“So, is the town back in order or something? You did that really, really quickly.”

“Yeah, as bad as your incident was, the town has suffered worse.”

I stared down at the pony, slackjawed. “Considering how often you ponies keep bringing up how ‘horrible’ it was when I apparently just went around destroying everything in sight, the only thing that could possibly be worse is something that actually did level the entire town!”

“Well, that is what happened with the parasprites, truth be told…” she sheepishly replied. I had to wonder if her sudden change in demeanor implied she’d had a hand, er, rather a ‘hoof’ in the matter. I had no idea what ‘parasprites’ were, though, and she picked up on my cluelessness. “Parasprites are little round bug like creatures who are like black holes for food and can instantly reproduce by vomiting. At least until the one time I tried to make them eat less, only for them to suddenly start eating everything that wasn’t organic like clothes and buildings.”

“Ah! So they’re like organic scrapulets?” Now the positions were switched, with her giving me a funny look due to not knowing what scrapulets were. “They’re kind of the same thing as your parasprites, at least the use of ‘little’ and ‘round’ to describe them. Stick a swarm of scrapulets into a sealed room with anything made of metal, that object’s lifespan will be reduced to miliseconds. Why, this one time, back in the cybertronian city of Kaon, some of my then-teammates and I-“ I barely caught myself in the nick of time, “Um, actually, I’d rather not go into detail about that story, it wouldn’t make any sense to somebody who wasn’t there.” To the contrary, I fully expected Twilight to know what the term ‘torture’ meant, since I had almost described a method used to ‘interrogate’ Autobot prisoners by suspending them above a pit full of those little scrapulet bastards. Regardless of whether or not the prisoner talked or not (the success rate was about fifty-fifty either way), the unlucky Autobot was always dropped into the pit. My old teammate Wildrider had described it as ‘Quentession Justice’, although to this day I never figured out what a ‘Quentession’ actually was outside of something with a rather perverse sense of actual justice. But Twilight didn’t need to know any of that, at least not if I didn’t want to meet my end a second time through being subjected to those parasprite things she talked about.

“I think you already did, since I can’t exactly imagine anything good coming out of something that apparently could eat somepony like you within a minute.”

Slag, she was sharp. I needed to make a save and fast. “Okay, fine, if you must know, we had a pit of the things located at all the bases, with large magnets to keep them at the bottom for safety. We used them to dispose of dead Autobots who offlined while in captivity while waiting to be interrogated.”

She was, as expected, rather horrified. “You just threw the bodies away like that?!”

I rolled my optics. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand, namely because you’re looking at this from the viewpoint of a biological race, whereas my race is non-organic. It’s not like the Autobots didn’t do the same things we did (although probably without the torture-interrogation) during the war, or even before the Decepticons came to be. It was standard practice for offlined Cybertronians whose bodies were in such poor condition that salvage was impossible. Otherwise, most cadavers were taken to the smelting pools where they were stripped of all functioning parts for later re-use on newly assembled cybertronians, then their hollow remains dumped in the smelters to become raw material to form body frames for new Cybertronians. Unless you were one of those pompous Autobot Senate members, then when you died your body wasn’t going to be mixed in to become part of a lower class worker. Noooo, you got to have your body preserved so the lesser classes could stare at your greatness for all of eternity, then-“

“AHEM” Sparkler cleared her throat, having returned to the outside world, “While I find that discussion interesting, which by that I mean I couldn’t care less, that’s not the reason you’re here, remember?” As if on cue, Dinky pushed out the pony I presumed was their mother; Derpy. She was bound to a chair on wheels, with about half of her body bruised pretty badly, wrappings covering one of her wings and a cast on her right leg…er, hindleg, her right foreleg looked to be in good enough of a state.

“Miss Derpy Hooves, I presume?” If I was the one responsible for her condition (in which case she must have been really durable for her size as there was no other way to explain how she could have suffered non-lethal injuries from one of my strength), then I was already trying to make up ground in leaving a good impression. Granted, I usually didn’t give a damn about leaving good impressions, but this was a unique circumstance.

“Yes, that’s me.” She replied. Her voice was slightly shaky, most likely due to my presence and/or her injuries, but she seemed to show no outward reaction of fear to me. Twilight, Sparkler, and Dinky also seemed to notice the wounded pegasus being rather nonchalant towards me.

“I, uh, have been told that I was the one who injured you such that-“

“You don’t remember?” she interrupted. Any lingering doubts about her being scared in my presence immediately disappeared as she looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. It was then I finally noticed her eyes weren’t in line with each other, as she did too with her unusually quick ability to read what I was thinking despite my face not sharing any possible similarities to that of these ponies. “Don’t worry about my eyes, I’ve had strabismus since birth, so it’s not from your doing.”

Did I just hear that right? A cross-eyed pony who was born with a crippling eye defect was in charge of delivering the mail for the entire town?“Wait a sec…you’re the town’s designated mail carrier…but you can’t see straight? How does-“

“Royal Crown Decree on the Subject of Handicapped Workers. I can’t do any kind of mail delivery across long distances between towns, but I can handle the mail in Ponyville just fine.”

“Or she used to, no thanks to a certain somepony,” nickered Sparkler, clearly not willing to budge from her dislike of me.

“Sparkler!” chided Derpy, turning to look at her older daughter, “if this…individual, is willing to come and apologize for what he did, you should have the courtesy to be just as polite towards him.”

“But apologies won’t make up for the fact you aren’t in any condition to work, Mom!” the unicorn argued back.

“Actually, that’s something else I need to talk about.” I said, kneeling down on one knee, “I know it’s going to sound weird, but out of professional courtesy and respect, I’ll take on your courier job until you fully recover.”

“Wait, what?” piped up Twilight, “How in Equestria are you going to do that? From what you’ve said, you’re no mailpony!”

I smirked, “You got the part where I’m not a pony right, but you forget…” I quickly assumed vehicle form, stunning Derpy and her daughters although the pegasus seemed intrigued by my ability, moreso when I quickly resumed my bipedal form. “There’s also the fact that, before Cybertron was ripped apart by the Great War, I was an information courtier myself. So, in respect to both my old job and to another employed in the same role who I have prevented from doing her job, I will shoulder the burden in her place.”

Twilight was moved, or at least I think she was. I wasn’t that good at reading subtle expressions from these ponies. “Wow, that’s…that’s really nice of you, Mr. Breakdown.”

“However, I must ask that I get something in return.” I continued, “while I am not organic like you ponies, I do require a form of sustenance to continue living. As it stands, I highly doubt this planet has any Energon reserves, but luckily I have been outfitted in ways that allow me to use alternative fuel sources. Fortunately, the fact there is technology on the level of steam engine transport implies an abundance of oil, which is a suitable fuel source for me.”

“So, you’re saying that in return for doing Derpy’s mail job, you want to be paid in oil?”

“If you wish for me to continue functioning long enough to meet your leaders, then yes.”

“I’d say do it, Twilight.” Said Derpy, all of a sudden, “He’s clearly a good guy at heart, even in light of what he did before, and there’s probably more alternatives he can have other than oil for sustenance if it’s just energy he needs.” She then turned to me, “As for you, um, ‘Breakdown’ right? I do greatly appreciate what you’re doing, not many ponies understand how important the mail service is and just take it for granted.”

“Believe me, I know exactly what you’re talking about,” I answered. To be truthful, I probably knew more about it than she did, but it wasn’t important to mention that.

“But you probably don’t know the town at all, which can be difficult as most of the homes do tend to look the same.”

“Just give me a map, I’ll be fine.”

“I can do better than that, Mr. Breakdown.” She smiled with a gleam in her eye. I frowned, as every single time any individual who did that in similar contexts usually implied not so good things in my future. “Why don’t you take my daughters along on the runs? I’m sure you won’t hurt them and they know the town inside and out. Plus, their presence should help ease the town into accepting you going around in my place for the forseeable future.”

“Yay!” chirped Dinky, bouncing up and down, “Rides rides rides rides!”

“I’m sure we can make it work, can’t we…Mr. Breakdown?” said Sparkler, clearly intending to exploit our new partnership in every way that would make me uncomfortable.

Twilight, unsurprisingly, was totally oblivious to all of it. “Well, I guess it’s a workable arrangement, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “It’s fine with me.” In reality it was anything but fine. Sure, I had further secured my continued existence with a job I was originally built for, but having to cart around a hyperactive child and her sister who clearly still had it out for me, through a town that still feared me that probably would be full of out-of-towners wanting to see the big blue monster delivering the mail…somehow I’d managed to turn my situation into being an attention-grabbing spectacle. I could only hope that this arrangement was well over by the time somebody from Cybertron came to rescue me…if anybody ever came to rescue me at all from this technicolor hellhole.