Meaningless Murder Pony Portal Pals

I was quickly led to the hanger, where my transport was waiting. My guard put a hoof on my shoulder.

“There’s somepony to see you, Sentinel.”

One of Maneframe’s observer robots was behind him, waiting patiently.

“What do you want?” I asked it haughtily. I was very disappointed in her right then.

Maneframe’s voice echoed in my head, and the light’s on the robot’s face lit up. “I’m coming with you.”

I laughed. “No, you’re not.”

“If you have a problem with me, I would much rather you tell me directly instead of just ignoring me.” Maneframe said. “Then, I can work to improve myself.”

“You were already perfect.” I said. “And you turned yourself into a petty god, and me into your mouthpiece. Find yourself another transport.”

“You know I can help, and you have never been one to sabotage your own chances of success.”

I sighed. She had me there.

“Just be silent.” I said, pushing the robot forward.

I had no sooner boarded the bulky transport helibird then it engaged it’s engines. I found my seat between armored and equipped doctors at the same time we lifted off the hanger floor. I felt the helibird push forward, into the launch shaft, and ascend straight upwards at a great speed. H.A.R.M. was very deep underground, and so it was quite some time before our movement translated to the horizontal.

I looked around, and was that every one of the ponies in the bird with me was scrutinizing me with slackjawed awe. I guessed many of them subscribed to Maneframe’s bullshit religion.

“My name is Twilight Sparkle, the first leader of H.A.R.M.” I said. “I don’t want any of you getting distracted or acting heroic on my behalf. You do what we came to do, and that is to save C.A.R.E. I’m your commander right now, not a god or a prophet or whatever the hell you believe. Got that?”

I received a trickle of ‘Yes Ma’am’. It would have to do. The robot in the corner was watching me stoicly.

The helibird arrived at Canterlot very quickly. The technicians deserved laudation for the advances in aviation since my time.

A crackle of static as the pilot announced something into the cabin. “C.A.R.E. aren’t responding to our hails. The silo doors are still closed.”

The old wings on my back shifted nervously as I came to a plan.

“You pegasi, with me.” I pointed to two soldiers and a technician. “The rest of you remain here.”

The four of us proceeded to the back cargo door of the Helibird, which was opening with methodical slowness. Inch by inch, the world beyond was revealed to me for the first time in hundreds of years.

It was… an awful sight. The landscape looked as though a foal had spilled yellow and red paint across the hills and mountains I had known, and then beaten it with a bat. Massive craters pockmarked the land as far as the eye could see, interrupted by the occasional rocky outcropping like the one beneath us.

The grand mountain Canterlot had once alighted on was reduced to a burnt nub, but all across the foothills were the signs of the urban sprawl that had defined the city in its twilight years. The charred husks and broken skeletons of buildings and towers were at once beautiful and horrible to behold.

“Not quite how you left it, huh?” The soldier pegasus to my right was encapsulated in armor.

I could have almost laughed. It was one thing to think about the end of the world, anticipate it, to plan for it like a societal or statistical construct, but another to witness it. Everything I had known was gone, but then again, they had been gone for years before my sleep. Their end had been an inevitability.

I gained reassurance from a reminder that while I had not saved Equestria, I had saved many of her ponies. Everyone I held dear was in the deepest depths of H.A.R.M, waiting for the return of a bright and beautiful Equestria. Seeing this disgusting land before me, I doubted a million years would heal the wounds.

“Follow me.” I dived off the helibird.

The rushing reignited a forgotten part of me. The danger, adrenaline, the fury and emotion, I was reminded of what it was to feel. And right then, I felt awesome.

I unfurled my wings, and they snapped open on their own accord. I could glide. I ripped my wings downward, propelling me into a mid-air somersault. I could fly.

The pegasi were close behind me now, so I pulled a sharp turn and plunged towards the ground. The helibird was hovering directly above the massive blast doors of C.A.R.E.’s hanger silo. The interlocking metal door was blackened by fire and slightly corroded by age, but clearly still impervious to even the most intense firepower.

I pulled up from my drop and landed on the door, my hooves sending out a quartet of metallic clangs. The three pegasi joined me a moment later.

“The exits of this arcology can be powered by a backup generator, including these blast doors.”

While H.A.R.M. had been my personal project, it was not the only bunker city I had designed. C.A.R.E. was designed as a massive archive, holding the sum of all pony knowledge. The population was meant to be less than half of H.A.R.M.’s, comprised mostly of scholars and magicians. It had been expected, though, that the social distribution would mellow over successive generations. It was originally intended that the different arcologies would allow free transfer between them, so that ponies could reside in the one that complemented their talent.

I had learned that such things had almost never actually occurred, with the only transfers being done only to refresh the gene pools.

I closed my eyes. Disintegrating that gun in the Board room was a reasonable warmup, and by now I felt that all of my former magic had returned to me. I may have not had practice in a very long time, but what I had planned was nothing complicated, at least by my standards.

I teleported the four of us twenty feet straight downwards. We were in the hanger silo in an encompassing darkness, beaten back by the light off the soldiers’ electronic armor. We hovered in place, the metal walls of the silo extending infinitely downwards into the inky black.

“The generator switch will be in the hanger control room.” I said, before letting myself plummet.

Something wasn’t right. The closer we got to C.A.R.E, the more I noticed the complete lack for ponies. In H.A.R.M. I had felt thousands of ponies, albeit sleeping, but here I saw struggling to find more than twenty.

If the missing ponies were dead, it was not because of the power failure: It would be a week at least before the air became unbreathable. No doubt it was due to the most glaring absence, Celestia.

“Be ready for anything!’ I called to the pegasi around me.

We pulled out of our drop as the stark silo walls opened out into a wide hanger. The multi-tiered structures around us were unlit, but I knew where to find the control room.

We flew directly their, landing on it’s roof. Pulling the hatch open, I dropped inside. There was nopony there, but since the nearest I could feel was hundreds of feet deeper I was unsurprised. By the time all four of us were in I had found the generator switch.

I flipped it. Several lights came on in the room, but otherwise nothing changed. Miles above us, the blast doors were sliding open to allow our Helibird access.

“It’s a ghost town.” One of the soldiers breathed. “No life signs of my scanners.”

“Mine neither.” The other soldier said. “This ain’t good.”

That armor probably have had a pretty sophisticated sensory suite, but not quite so far reaching as my magic.

“See if you can redirect some of the power to hanger lights.” I told the tech. “I’m going to have a look around while we wait on the others.”

Every Helibird in the hangar was in it’s place, in pristine repair, and entirely unoccupied. If the ponies hadn’t left that way. I began to fear the worst.

It was not long before the bird that brought me here descended in from the silo, spotlights sweeping across the abandoned space. It landed, and I reached it as the cargo door opened completely.

“We need to get the main reactor running again AQAP!” I yelled over the engines. “Five of you escort the technicians down there! The rest are with me!”