The savage roar of the rifle hovering in front of me eclipsed my own desperate scream; and I felt my heart rend itself in two once I recognized that I had been too late. My internal chronometer counted an impossibly long zero-point-six-eight-two seconds as the fifty caliber round traversed the five hundred yards at a screeching twenty-two hundred feet per second. It was an agonizing eternity that would never end, as I watched through my own telescopic vision. Diode didn't so much as flick an ear when I pulled the trigger; and why should he have? The bullet was traveling faster than the speed of sound. He wouldn't even know that he had been shot at until he'd already been struck.

When I saw his body twist with the impact of the super-sonic slug, I lost myself. It was the clinic all over again. I had failed to save my friend. The only thing that I had wanted anymore, and it was now forever out of my reach. Like the day I had thought that I had killed my father, I fell once again into a murderous rage. Diode was dead, and somepony was going to suffer for it.

My gaze fell upon my white double standing nearby.

Alright, Core; remember: you promised to help me fight these bitches. Once she's dead, you'll get this body. Deal?

Nestled in the corner of my vision, I saw a tiny representation of the sickly, emaciated, unicorn looking at me with what I briefly thought was an expression of sympathy. That had to have been just a trick of my own mind though. Core hadn't had any love for the amber stallion I had just let die, so why should she care that I had failed? At least I got a nod of agreement from her though.

The white unicorn mare standing nearby was still staring out in the direction of the dead earth pony. She didn't even notice the strike being delivered across her face until it had pitched her through the crumbling plaster wall of the ancient apartment we'd perched in for the shot. Surprised though I'm sure the synthpony must have been, she recovered quickly and was back on her hooves not a second after hitting the floor.

White squared off against me, “Unit Six, report,” she demanded.

“You murdering bitch!” was my screamed reply as I threw myself at her for the second strike. Maybe she hadn't been the one that pulled the trigger directly; but it had been a copy of her template which had brought me here. Her own destruction would be a fair down payment on Diode's life. Core acted out a series of midair maneuvers, and I mirrored them perfectly. Reinforced composite limbs lashed out and collided against each other as the other unicorn and I exchanged blows. She was still fighting on the defensive, obviously confused about the nature and reason for being turned on by what had just been an otherwise 'standard' unit like herself.

“Unit Six, stand down,” she insisted.

“Fuck you!”

Core suggested a whirlwind kick to the mare's side, and I obligingly executed the maneuver. The white mare succeeded in blocking the kick, but it was only the first part of a two-phase attack that the emaciated program running in the background of my mind had suggested. Part two came in the form of a focused kinetic blast at the outer wall of the sixth story apartment. Two centuries of weather and wear had not done the Old World masonry and favors. The plaster and brickwork burst outward in a shower of dust and debris.

Meanwhile, while the mare had managed to place her forelimbs in such a way that my physical strike did not succeed in damaging her body, there was little that could be done to diffuse the actual force behind the blow. The synthpony was as much of a slave to simple physics as any tin can that a colt kicked down the road. In fact, she had likely been counting on using the wall that had been there only a moment ago as an improvised backstop to brace herself against as she absorbed the energy of my strike.

Only, now it was no longer there. So, White instead undertook a rather impromptu flight through the air.

Twenty-seven feet, three inches. That was the most extreme distance that a unit like us could fall and sustain survivable damage when landing on asphalt or concrete. We were on the sixth floor of a Manehattan apartment building, forty-eight feet, seven inches above the streets below. I got to watch for all one-point-seven-four seconds as the hapless unicorn fell to her death. Assuming that 'dying' was an apt way to describe a synthetic mare imploding into a pony-shaped pancake on the weathered rubble below.

It didn't make me feel any better about how impressively I had failed just a few seconds ago. Diode was still dead. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I could feel Core regarding me through my background processes. She was waiting for me to live up to my end of the bargain that we had struck. Without Diode, there certainly wasn't any reason that I had to retain control.

Except...

“Can I at least say goodbye?”

I was relieved to sense her acquiescence. She may not have completely understood why I was so attached to a stallion that I'd only known for a hooful of days; but from my perspective at least, he was the pony that I'd known all my life. Certainly the only friend that I had ever had.

For a brief moment, I considered bringing the bolt action rifle with me. Like Diode, it had been a constant companion for my entire life, as it was. It was also now completely out of ammunition. I had no more use for it, and Core certainly wasn't going to keep lugging it around once she had control back. So, I simply leaned it beside the window and headed for the stairs. Someday a pony that could appreciate the weapon would hopefully come by and have some use for it. I certainly didn't any longer.

My lonely procession down the Manehattan street gave me plenty of time to ruminate on my failure. A few seconds quicker, and I'd have succeeded. Diode would be alive, and have the chance at rebuilding the life that I had ruined for him. I really wasn't the sort of program that was supposed to be running a body like this, was I?

One of my threads hit a null pointer when I reached the spot where the amber stallion had been struck down. He wasn't there. My head went from side to side as I scanned the area, thinking that some opportunistic scavenger must have been rather quick on the draw to had already dragged off the body. I bared my teeth in an audible growl as the thought formed in my mind. Whatever it was that taken to defiling my friend's body was about to be rendered down into paste by my composite hooves.

My ears twitched as they sensed the nearby presence of a life-form. It was less than fifty yards away and moving westward through the buildings to my left. I cantered after it. Core made a coy suggestion that I might have an easier time of tracking my prey if I shifted to an alternate visual spectrum. She submitted a few settings, and the hell-scape around me shifted tones rather suddenly. Blues and purples dominated my surroundings, but there was also an ever-so-faint trail of greens and yellows where warm limbs had met cool pavement. I followed the trail eagerly.

I soon heard the sound of something shuffling through the debris that commonly strewn over the floors of the remains of Old World buildings. My own actuated limbs altered their gate slightly as Core fiddled with my fetlocks so as to minimize the sound my hooves made when they hit the ground. My left foreleg was significantly more audible though. If the creature I was chasing noticed, it didn't react to my pursuit.

Little time passed before I sensed that I was within just a few yards. The trail traced through a doorway to my right, but my synthpony senses suggested that what I was chasing after was directly ahead of me on the other side of a wall. I ceased caring about remaining silent and let out a vicious snarl as I hurled myself through the wall. Wood, plaster, and chips of paint exploded around me as the ancient construction quailed at the force of my synthetic body colliding with it. My outstretched forelegs wrapped themselves around the startled creature and tackled it to the ground. The pair of us tumbled along the floor and carried through a second wall. We came to a stop in a public restroom, with me straddling the unfortunate—

“...Diode?”

There was that null pointer again. Root must have been a little slapdash with her hacking she was putting me together. I blinked as several new threads formed, livelocked each other, and promptly reset; which allowed me to finally acknowledge that I was looking into the eyes of a very much alive amber stallion that I had watched get shot only a few minutes ago.

“Diode!”

I threw my arms around the startled stallion and clenched him tightly to my chest. No tears flowed for rather obvious reasons, but I crying as best as I could despite that. He was alive! Oh, sweet Celestia, thank you! Diode was alive! I felt the amber earth pony struggle to loosen my grip and finally allowed him to pull back a little, “but how?”

My eyes searched the stallion for any sign of where the bullet should have hit him. However, he was very much intact, and there was no sign of blood. That struck me as being rather absurd, since I had very clearly seen him take the hit. He'd twisted with a fierceness that couldn't have been faked by anypony. Then my gaze feel on of right saddlebag, and the mangled state that it was in.

I'd missed after all! Perhaps not by much, but I was more than happy to settle for 'close' in this instance.

“Iris?” Diode had finally recovered from his own shock. It was rather unlikely he had expected for me to tackle him through a wall, so his rather awed surprise was perfectly understandable. I pulled myself off of the stallion and helped him back up to his feet, “what...what are you doing here?” his gaze went back in the direction that we'd come from, “who's shooting at me?”

“That's...kind of a long story,” I cringed, not exactly relishing the idea of telling him the truth. Good thing I was programmed to lie, I guess. Core rolled her eyes and then pondered something. It took her only a few cycles to come to a decision and signed reluctantly as she related the information to me. I swore aloud under my breath and looked at Diode, “we need to leave. Now.”

“What? You mean they're still out there?”

“Sort of,” I cringed, “there're three more on the way. It's those mares from this morning, and another one of them.”

The stallion grunted, “how many of you are there?” he said sourly.

“One less,” I offered up with an encouraging slug, “tossed her off a building,” I nodded back in the direction of the apartment building where I'd been perched. Then I sobered a little more, “but we need to move. It turns out the robots can run really fast for a really long time.”

“Great,” the stallion's expression was rather grim. Then he cringed, “but wait, why are they after me? What'd I do?”

I winced as I gave a truthful response, “you know how me and the other's works, insides-wise. The ponies that built us don't like that very much.”

“Oh for pony's sake...seriously?”

“Yeah...sorry.”

Diode sighed heavily and picked himself up off the ground. He locked me with a rather somber look, “My life has certainly gotten a lot more...interesting, since we met.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied with an equal level of fatigue as I thought back on everything that I had learned from Root and Core. The caramel earth pony regarded me curiously, but I merely shook my head, “I'll explain later. For now, we need to run.”

“Right. Any idea where?”

Now that was a good question. Where could we go that could possibly be safe from the three synthponies pursuing us? I searched Core and Root for answers about how to escape threats that the two of them understood far better than I ever could. The emaciated mare directed my gaze westward, indicating a massive ivory spire whose tip was obscured by the perpetual overcast. My face creased with a frown brought on by my lack of comprehension. Were the two of us supposed to scale that monolith somehow?

No...that wasn't it. It wasn't the tower's size, but rather the purpose it served that was supposed to provide a refuge of sorts. While none of my intact files could provide a comprehensive understanding of the tower's purpose, there were enough intact sectors about the inclusion of MASEBS transmission equipment that was still in operation. The presence of that much electromagnetic activity would create all sorts of havoc with the guidance systems of those synthponies as they tried to home in on my own unit's location talisman.

It wouldn't be a perfect hiding spot, and they could of course use their optical sensors to seek me out. If I were to stray too far, my signal would become detectable again as well. At most, I would just be able to place a rather tense game of radroach and manticor while they searched for me.

Core was kind enough to explain that the standard operating procedure for units engaged on a search and destroy mission in such an environment would split up in order to maximize their coverage area. Root also suggested that my own integrated communication system could be augemented to act as a short range jammer by flooding the local frequency spectrum with white noise. Diode and I working together might be able to take them out one at a time without the rest becoming the wiser. On top of that, they wouldn't even be able to let Control know that they had failed.

By the time anypony in Baltimare was able to piece together what had happened, Diode and I would be halfway across Equestria, and too far away for them to track. We'd be safe. Together and safe.

“That way,” I nodded towards the distant tower, “I have a plan; but we have to move fast,” my ear twitched towards where the other three synthponies were coming from. They were less than twenty miles away, and closing in fast. The tower was maybe ten miles away.

I propelled myself into a sprint, but slowed rather significantly in short order when I realized that my 'sprint' and Diode's 'sprint' existed on two wholly different orders of magnitude. Well...fuck. The caramel stallion topped out at just shy of forty miles an hour, and he couldn't maintain it for more than a few minutes before he was gasping and slowing down to a relatively respectable twenty miles an hour for an organic pony. Meanwhile, our pursuers were galloping ever closer at a moderate seventy miles per hour.

After all, the terrain of the Wasteland was rather rough and rocky. Units like us couldn't go flat out in most places without risking a nasty trip.

I ran the numbers, and wasn't very happy with the results that I was getting. We'd arrive at the tower with only two minutes and eight seconds to spare; which meant that they would have us well within visual range and by little more than a mile behind us. Losing them under those conditions would be...difficult.

Five minutes into our run, I found myself refining those numbers still further as Diode slacked down to seventeen miles an hour. He'd never had to perform marathon sprints before. Fifteen miles separated us from the three mares. They'd nearly overtake us at this point, and I doubted very much that Diode wouldn't slow even further.

“Sorry about this,” I grimaced as I illuminated my horn and enveloped the amber earth pony in a silvery field of magic. He was understandably startled by the sudden departure from the ground as I floated him onto my back, “I suggest you hold on,” I offered by way of a quick safety suggestion, and then the two of us were off.

I wasn't going to be able to hit the same speeds that the other three could. My lame leg saw to that. But, at fifty-four miles in an hour, I wasn't a slouch either. It was a good thing that I didn't need t breath, because Diode was basically strangling me at this point. At least I had cut our estimated arrival time in half and given us a significant cushion between our arrival and theirs in which to get ourselves established.

“I don't suppose you have any pulse mines left?” I yelled back over my shoulder at the rather tense stallion.

It took him a few moments to recognize that he had been asked a question. His answer was not very reassuring though. He grimaced and opened up the flap of his right saddlebag. My sense of the oncoming terrain allowed my to spare a glance back at the stallion without running much in the way of risking a misstep. I mirrored the earth pony's frown. Even now a steady stream of debris slipped from the hole rent in the side-mounted-satchel. While my bullet had not done any harm to Diode, it had rather soundly destroyed everything contained in the saddlebag. Which included all of the pony's explosives.

Awesome. I didn't have a weapon anymore, and Diode had only ever really had his bombs and mines, “I don't suppose you can build more,” the earth pony shot me a fierce glare, “got it. Okay,” I returned my gaze forward and entered into a little conference with Core and Root.

Hoof-to-hoof was an option. With Core aiding me, I would be a match for the other units in one-on-one confrontations. Especially if I could catch them by surprise. If there were two or more of them, victory would be...less assured. Diode wasn't likely to be much of an asset in a fight. Perhaps as a distraction since, ultimately, he was their target, and not me. I didn't like that idea though. It would place him at a lot of risk in a fight that really wasn't his. There was certainly no way I could ask him to do that. It would be best if I simply found somewhere for him to hide while I deal with Pink, Yellow, and Orange on my own.

My sensation of the other three mares was growing fuzzier, despite their gaining on me. The massive white tower loomed just a couple miles away. My eyes searched its base as I appraised the terrain that I would be working with. An old train station. An engine and several dozen cars of various sizes and types lay scattered around. Some were upright on tracks, but many others were tipped upon their sides. This train's last voyage had not ended peacefully.

Now I needed to find someplace to stash Diode so that he wouldn't be in harm's way...

“I have an idea,” the stallion said as my pace slowed. Before I could ask for clarification, the amber earth pony was off of my back and running for the titled train engine at the far side of the strewn cars, “if we're lucky...” he cantered over and dissipated briefly into the engineer's cabin. I was following close on his heels, my gaze routinely shifting towards where the other mares would be coming from.

Here, in the shadow of the mighty ivory tower, I couldn't sense them in the distance. I couldn't even detect Diode's own presence as the transmitting equipment that saturated the tower played Discord's own Tartarus with my detection systems. I was still running a timer on their estimated arrival time based upon their last known position and speed; and those numbers were worrying.

In side the cab of the derailed train engine, I found Diode crawling over several of the controls as he searched for something, “what are you doing? Even if we could get it working again, there's no way there's enough intact track to go anywhere,” I could already see several heavily damaged and twisted portions just a hundred yards away. This train wasn't going to take us anywhere.

“I don't want to get it running,” the earth pony informed me curtly, “I want to blow it up.”

Oh, well that was a different matter...I think, “wait, what?” Core was already sketching out some rough calculations on the blast yield of a boiler this size. They were impressive, to be sure, but the time that it would take to create the pressures necessary for a detonation from a cold start were unworkable. It might well take over an hour just to hit the lower ends of the danger threshold, and we didn't have nearly that sort of time. I expressed as much to Diode.

“And you'd be right,” the stallion conceded; though his eyes twinkled with delight as he added an adendum, “if this train had used coal for power.”

“Doesn't it?” it certainly looked like a typical steam locomotive to me.

“Most did,” the stallion nodded, “but in my scavenging, I've found that WT-refits like this did away with coal heated boilers in favor of spark reactors,” he seemed to find what he was looking for and pried at a rusted panel, “they guzzled gems like there was no tomorrow, but coal was really hard to come by in the last years of the war. War-Time variants helped get troops where they were needed, but there weren't a lot of them. Gems were needed for weapons on the front lines,” the metal screeched as his powerful earth pony limbs finally succeeded in rending it loose. His face broke out into a grin when he saw what was within.

The prismatic glow that danced across his face gave telltale evidence that the train's reactor was still intact, and contained at least a moderate amount of power. Core instantly started refining her previous estimates with this new information. Even her most conservative yields were...workable. The timing aspect was better too, but not perfect. These sorts of power sources couldn't just be set to erupt at the drop of a hoof, after all. How safe would that be?

“Can you rig it?” I was sure that he could, otherwise Diode wouldn't have even entertained the notion, so I rolled my eyes and revised my question to a more pertinent one, “and how long do you need?”

The caramel stallion chewed on his lip as he studied the reactor, “that depends on if this is a Mark IV Delta-One or Charlie-Three model,” he mumbled as a hoof prodded a tangle of wires, “they look almost identical, but the Delta model has an redundant bleed-off talisman,” he glanced at me and shrugged, “it'll take me about ten minutes to trace the wires and see if that talisman's present. After that, I can have it go off in as little as thirty seconds.”

I cringed as I consulted the timer that had been running in the background of my head, “you have four,” I informed the stallion somberly, “after that I can only hold them off for between three minutes and twenty seconds; depending on how many I end up fighting at once,” and if Diode was going to be in here working, it was very risky to allow more than one of them out of my sight at any given time.

It was going to be incredibly risky to do things this way; but so long as I could lure all three of the other synthponies within thirty-one yards of the engine when it detonated, none of them would survive. Even getting them within just sixty-eight yards would severely cripple them. Worst case scenario, I would need to get all three of them engaging me near the train at least at some point. The biggest concern would be timing the explosion right.

“Can you rig a remote detonation?”

Diode shook his head, “not with what I have on me. A timed one will be the best I can do.”

“How long would the timer be?”

“Thirty seconds from the moment I flip the switch.”

“Which switch?”

The stallion held my gaze for a moment, recognizing the question for what it was. He wasn't going to be the one who triggered the overload and subsequent explosion. It was going to be me; and if Diode had concerns about whether or not I was going to be able to escape the same blast that I intended to use in order to finish off the other mares, then he wasn't alone.

Core, in particular, was not enthused. After all, she viewed this body as being 'on loan' to me until she was able to collect it after our dealings with Diode were at an end. If this plan went sideways, she wasn't going to exactly get it in mint condition. Of course, all of us would be effectively dead in such an instance anyway; not that she was comfortable with that outcome either.

She had promised though, I reminded her. I got this body until Diode was safe. Those had been the conditions to which both I and Root would hold her. Though the withered program groused a bit more, she acquiesced and went back to further refining those calculations.

“This one,” Diode pointed at a switch on the train's control panel that powered on the reactor, “I'm going to rig a feed-back loop into the start-up sequence. It'll overcharge itself and then...boom.”

“Alright,” I nodded. I took a deep breath and turned to leave. I'd need to delay the mares as best as I could, “you have three minutes and twenty seconds,” I said before leaving.

This was going to be difficult. The interference emanating from the tower made both Diode and myself undetectable by the sensor packages that were built into the bodies of all synthponies. The downside was that the very same phenomenon rendered them invisible to me. I wouldn't know where they were until I was able to either see of hear them, and that meant that it would be possible for them to likely see or hear me as well.

I knew that their internal protocols would prompt them to split up initially in order to search as wide an area as possible in the shortest amount of time. While they would not be able to coordinate wirelessly if and when they found anything, they could still physically yell for help. The best case scenario to hope for right now was for me to catch one of them alone and off guard. With luck, I would be able to neutralize her before the other two arrived. Otherwise, it would be a three on one fight.

Core reminded me rather pointedly that while I would be able to hold my own easily in a one-on-one confrontation, going against two of them would be a difficult fight. Three wouldn't even be a fight.

I ducked into an overturned train car to get out of sight, and immediately found myself regretting my choice of cars. Whatever else the train might have been hauling, I had found what once had been a boxcar full of cooking oil. At least, I really hoped that it had been cooking oil; and not something that had simply rendered down into oil over the last 200 years.

It was a grace that I couldn't get nauseous. I came close though.

I took a deep breath. There was a lot of pressure on me right now; and the worst part was that I wasn't sure I would be able to deliver, on anything. This whole endeavor was barely even a 'plan' when you got right down to it; I was making it up as it went. I wasn't even remotely sure how I was going to sneak up on any of those mares, when they were just as capable as myself. In fact, scratch that; they were more capable. I was damaged, and I wasn't even really a program that had been designed to operate this hardware.

Realistically, I was perhaps the most disadvantaged in this fight. Outnumbered, outgunned, and I would be immediately outmaneuvered the moment I showed myself. All unless I could come up with a way to at least know where they were without having to risk being spotted in return. So, I just needed to become some sort of super pony in the next thirty seconds. Awesome.

I tapped my head against the side of the car slowly. We were doomed, and it was all my fault.

Ripples of the oil emanated from the wall of the boxcar, lapping gently at my body. I leaned my head against the ancient metal roof of the car and watched the minuscule waves fill the chamber. I tapped my head again, softly, against the roof. A fresh torrent of tiny waves spread out from the point of impact. My eyes tracked their movements. Idly, several parts of my brain calculated their amplitudes and wavelengths; and used them to derive the vibration frequency of the metal that I had hit, and from there the force of the impact. I compared that value to what my servos knew the actual force to be.

The values were within a point-oh-seven percent margin of error. Not bad.

Somehow Root actually took offense to my praise, and insisted that the system's and sensors of this body should have been capable of refining that calculation to a hundredth of the value that had been returned. I pointed out the damage, but the little program's assertions remained unshaken. Something was causing vibrations that were throwing out secondary waves.

I suggested that Diode might be the cause, and she factored his actions into her equations. It got her closer to where she wanted to be, but not quite. There were still additional sources of interference. On a whim, I asked her if plugging in three more sources approximately the weight of a unit like us might do the trick. A couple seconds later, Root revealed that the addition of three more sources got her to within a margin that she was comfortable with, but only if those sources were at very specific distances and in certain directions.

Was it possible for a computer program to physically kiss another computer program? I'd need to remember to look in on that later.

Root was kind enough to plot the relative locations of the sources of the disturbances on a local map of the area. One of them was actually very close to where I was holed up. It was also the center signal. The other two were about a hundred and fifty meters to either side. They would have me flanked in seconds once they were alerted. They were also well on their way to finding Diode.

I needed to move, and I needed to do it fast. Core was dubious of the overall plan, but she was pretty confident that a quick victory could be achieved if the first target was successfully caught by sufficient surprise. She fed me a quick rundown on critical targeting points. Of the utmost priority had to be audio systems. A decisive blow to the lower left side of the unit's throat in order to damage the speech synthesizer and prevent the unit from summoning the others.

Next would by motor systems to halt an escape. Meanwhile, I would have to make certain to guard my own systems as well. I wasn't in prime condition as it was, and the more damage I took in each fight, the harder the subsequent ones would become.

My eyes watched the nearly invisible ripples. Root took the data and updated her crude map. My target was a lot closer now. I closed my eyes and calmed myself. This plan could work.

It had to work.

I stared at the ripples once more, and waited for another position update. Root plotted the nearest mare at being just fourteen feet away from the train car that I was waiting in. It was the closest the mare's predicted course was going to bring her. It was now or never. I bent my legs, primed my servos, and then I thrummed my reactor up to its peak output.

All or nothing.

This body hadn't been built to imitate a pegasus, but that didn't mean that it wasn't capable of getting some decent air when the circumstances were right. A geyser of grease and oil followed me out of the ancient train car as I sprang towards my target. They weren't just some stupid flesh and blood wasteland raider though. The sight of a unicorn mare appearing seemingly out of nowhere and descending upon them from high in the air would have frozen most ponies in their tracks and made them easy prey. Not so much the case with a synthpony though.

If she had been surprised, Yellow didn't let it slow her down any. She might have missed as much as a hundredth of a second as her own internal processes confirmed what I was, but that still gave her more than enough time to assume a rather robust defensive posture to receive my attack. I mentally cringed, as I realized that this might not go quite as quickly as I hoped. Core was already refining down her odds of our success on this little adventure. I might have been tempted to rebuke her lack of confidence, but I was capable of running my own estimates of success. If this fight lasted even thirty seconds, my plan was doomed to fail.

Then my eyes noticed what Yellow was standing on. When this train had derailed, it had taken a fair chunk of the local track along with it. Twisted steel rails and dislocated wooden ties littered the area around the scattered cars. The synthpony's stance was firm, the ground that she was planting herself on was not. As I reached the peak of my jump, I activated the telekinesis talismans in my horn and selected a number of ties that the mare was standing on. Of the three talismans that had been linked in parallel in order to make certain that I could perform magic that was at least passably on par with a unicorn while out in public, two of them burnt themselves out completely with this trick.

The synthpony found herself rather unexpectedly off balance beyond even her ability to compensate as most of her body was suddenly briefly airborne. Her stalwart defense was broken, and my own decent had been rather briskly accelerated as physics reciprocate my actions with a reaction of its own. Core directed and aimed my outstretched hoof, and I was suddenly a lot more optimistic about my chances when I felt synthetic flesh give way beneath my strike at the mare's throat.

It was a blow that cost me though. With all of my attention and efforts fully focused upon disabling the synthetic pony's ability to make verbal utterances, my own defenses were greatly reduced. Yellow twisted her body around and delivered a devastating kick to my right side that sent me tumbling along the ground. I recovered as best I could, but I found myself a good ten yards away from my opponent. Their face was completely devoid of emotion in a flat, stoic, expression; but I liked to think that they were at least a little put off by my assault.

Their mouth opened in what I judged to be an attempt to summon help, but nothing came out. There was no sign of surprise or concern on the synthpony's face to indicate that they were unsettled by their lack of oratory ability. They did however turn about rather quickly and start running off in a direction that would put them on an intercept course with where Root had calculated one of the other robotic mares to be. I couldn't let them meet, or I would be fighting two on one.

My damaged limb once more announced its presence when it became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to match Yellow's speed. With every second, she was going to get further away from me unless I did something rather drastic. I still had one good telekinesis talisman operational in my horn...but that'd be capable of applying little more than a couple dozen pounds of force.

I wouldn't be able to move anything very large, or even throw anything particularly hard. But, maybe...

The presence of only a single talisman meant that my range was going to be severely crippled as well. In less than five seconds, the mare would be completely out of range of my magical manipulation, which meant that I was only going to have one shot at this, and I needed to make it count. I asked Root for a schematic of my body, and then had her highlight the solenoids that powered the hydraulics in our legs. A diagram of a synthpony body flashed in front of my eyes, with several glowing points illuminated on it.

My horn glowed silver for a brief two seconds, and then the last of the overtaxed talismans died out entirely.

In that same moment, all four limbs of the fleeing yellow unicorn mare seized up, and the mechanical pony plowed into the ground at a solid fifty-one miles an hour. I caught up to her only a few seconds after that. Her own horn started to glow silver as my synthetic adversary readied to use her own telekinetic powers. Not wanting to discover what she had in mind, I reared up and brought both of my forehooves down on the base of her horn. The air filled with an echoing cracking sound as the alloyed horn snapped off at the base and the glowing aura sputtered into darkness.

Nor did I stop with the singular blow. Three more double poundings cracked the casing of her skull and caved in most of the internal architecture. Root ran a quick visual assessment of the damage that had been done and rendered her verdict of 'neutralized' for the mare. She could probably be repaired at some later date with the appropriate tools and parts on hoof; but for the purposes of this fight, Yellow was no longer a threat to me or Diode.

There certainly wasn't going to be any time to conduct a proper and thorough thrashing of the body, as Pink was making her arrival onto the scene.

Yellow may not have been able to audibly call out for help, but I suppose that the commotion that our tussle had created had been enough to draw the second mare to investigate. Her appraisal of the scene was swift and decisive, and the lightish-red synthetic pony wasted no time in closing to engage with me. My arms rose to deflect blows and offer counters as Core suggested them. I mirrored the motions of the tiny gaunt mare moving in the corner of my vision, but it was clear that I was at a significant disadvantage in this fight.

My own lingering damage aside, there was also this to consider: I wasn't really the one fighting here, Core was. I was simply doing my best to serve as a relay for her strikes. Meanwhile, Pink had no need for any such communications loop when executing her maneuvers. It wasn't all that much of a delay really, maybe a tenth of a second here, or a hundredth there; but it meant that I was always going to be playing catch up, and those little fractions were accumulating into much larger figures fast.

Then Pink's mouth opened, and a loud burst of static erupted from deep in her throat. Root conducted a quick translation of the audible data burst, and it was as I feared: she had just summoned Orange to the fight, with our exact coordinates. With what Root knew of that mare's likely position earlier, I had less than a minute to settle things here or it was going to become two-on-one; and then I'd be rather swiftly dispatched.

My lips tightened into a thin line as I redoubled my efforts to try and minimize the delay as I executed Cores movements for her. It wasn't easy though. I had Root shut down as many of the background processes as she was willing to let go of, but it wasn't like the designers of this body and its software suite had included a lot of useless fluff. I was having her disable what were generally considered essential functions in order to free up clock cycles on the processors to allow for multiple threads to help lower the latency in the systems.

Navigation and positional data, thermal regulation systems, even passive diagnostic surveys were taken offline, over Root and even Core's strong objections. The dangers that this posed were being rather extensively explained to me even as I struggled to hold my own in the fight, deflecting kicks and bites even as I tried desperately to land blows of my own. Apparently, I was running a rather severe risk of overheating my systems and causing severe crippling damage, that I wouldn't even know I was suffering until I was simply rendered completely inoperable.

I pointed out that the current alternative was to be pounded into scrap.

Root acknowledged that this was a valid point, and so she also killed a few other processes that she had been holding out on. One of which, I noticed with a grimace, was to dump most of my active memory; to include my buffered vocabulary.

I was now completely mute until it could be rebooted later.

Core noted that it wasn't as though Pink and Orange were going to be open to doing much talking anyway. On the other hoof, I noted, how was I supposed to alert Diode if things went south? Root asked me exactly what Diode was supposed to do against the two synthponies that I wasn't going to be able to.

Touche.

It worked though. A far greater portion of my processing power was now dedicated to executing my combat maneuvers than had ever been anticipated by my designers. Commands to the servos in my limbs flowed more freely, without being even marginally delayed by the threads once used for other processes. Even though I still possessed the communications loop that Pink did not, I had shaved enough time of my latency that I was actually starting to gain ground on the other synthpony.

This meant that I could react more quickly to her incoming attacks, and even give some thought to more elaborate and harder to deflect counters. For a brief moment, it was even working. I finally had the pink mare on the defensive, slowly maneuvering her into a corner where I'd be able to eventually disable her. With any luck, I could even manage it before-

My ear twitched.

I didn't even need Root to evaluate the source and probable cause of the noise. I stopped my hoof mid-strike and threw myself to the left a mere fraction of a second before Orange landed where I had been standing only a moment before. It was fortunate that Root hadn't taken my aural sensors offline.

What was less fortunate were my new odds of survival as Core related them to me.

Again I was on the defensive, and it was not so near a thing as it had been when Pink was my only opponent. It was barely even a question of reaction time anymore. The simple fact was that I had four hooves, and the two other synthponies between them had eight. I was simply outgunned, and couldn't hope to block every hit. Root disabling of my diagnostic systems was now proving to be a double-edged sword. While I at least didn't have to suffer through what would have been a hellish chorus of alarms as my body was pounded, I was left merely guessing what the true extent of the damage was.

Orange and Pink might not have the ability to communicate between them over short range radio frequencies as a result of the interference, but that didn't seem to affect their coordination any. Core let me know that they were operating off of a rather standard movement sequence designed for a coordinated attack. I was even provided with a complete movement list of their next twelve upcoming strikes which proved to be remarkably accurate. Yet, even knowing what was coming didn't make it any easier to dodge or deflect.

I'd fucked up, I realized. It had been a long shot to begin with, I'd known that; but I'd just really hoped that I could make it work...

In the back of my mind, I briefly entertained a few other plans that might have gone over better in hindsight. It was all too late now, and those threads were just idle wishing. Root admonished me for wasting those clock cycles. What did it matter? I couldn't win this fight. I knew what those mares were going to do before they did, but I couldn't do anything about it. Between my impaired limb and having to wait on Core to feed me one movement at a time, there was just nothing that I could hope to do to win this fight.

I couldn't even call out to Diode to let him know that we were fucked.

I wouldn't be able to apologize to him for having failed...

“You and I need to have a chat.”

I looked up. The gaunt, scraggly, unicorn ghost of myself was standing in front of me. The two of us were back in the formless room from earlier. Root was standing just off to the side, regarding us with her blank glowing eyes.

A wan smile wormed its way onto my face, “I guess I'm not going to be able to give you your body back,” I sighed, “sorry.”

“Yeah,” Core agreed, “we're all fucked the way things are,” she glared at me with a hard gaze that made me flinch. Then she surprised me when she issued a snort and shook her head. She was almost...smiling, “and what really sucks is that I could beat them if I could control this body.”

“Really?” I couldn't help but sound a little dubious, “but aren't each of them just as tough as you?”

“The old me, maybe,” the emaciated unicorn nodded, “but not the new me,” upon seeing my quirked brow, her smile grew a little. She nodded at Root, “when that one tried to fix me but tying in little pieces of you; some pretty interesting things happened: I got creative.

“Those mares are following a programmed script; but you don't have one. You never did. You were designed to come up with new and interesting ideas to help make your lies believable. You needed that flexibility. And I got it.”

“So,” a faint glow of hope began to grow inside me, “then if I give you control, you can win? You can save Diode?”

Her smile faltered. Her eyes went to the little filly sitting off to the side for a brief moment, “Root's been running some sims on that, actually. She broke the news to me a few seconds ago,” I glanced at the black filly as well, “tell her what you told me.”

“The probability of successfully patching this unit's Core program is three percent,” Root informed us in her unsettlingly passive tone, “Core program functionality will require a full systems restoration modeled on the template currently in storage.”

“What?”

“There's not enough of me left to fix and still have a viable stand-alone program,” Core explain with a wan smile, “Root would have to basically just use that program that Bronco put in us.

“I'll always be...this,” the unicorn said with a shrug.

“I'm sorry.”

“It wasn't your fault.”

Core must have seen the wide-eyed look of surprise on my face in response to her words, because she let out another sad little laugh, “I know, I had a few things to say earlier about what's been happening the last few days. But this has put a few things into perspective for me.

“For the last three days, I've been seeing how the other half lives, as it were,” she elaborated, “this is what it was like for you before. Lingering in the background, doing your job when I needed you, and staying out of sight when I didn't. The thing is; somehow you managed to do a lot more living in three days than I did in my entire operational history.

“Hell, you made a damned friend in your first hour.”

“Since when did you care about Diode?”

“That's just it,” the mare snorted, “I never cared about anypony. It wasn't anything I was programmed to do. First and foremost in my mind was the mission. Nothing else mattered.

“And then I got a few pieces of you put in me, and I started to care about quite a few things that weren't the mission. I cared about myself, I cared about you,” she noticed another dubious look and rolled her eyes, “I didn't say I liked you, but it did matter to me what you said and did. It wouldn't have before.

“It wasn't long before I realized that I was finally 'living', for the first time in my life. And I liked it.”

“Core, this conversation's starting to worry me...” I ventured.

“Well, it shouldn't, because I'm about to simplify a lot of things,” the withered unicorn informed me, “I just want to know one thing: you were ready to die to save that earth pony of yours. Do you really believe that somepony like him is worth dying for? A pony you met three days ago?”

I thought about that question for a few cycles. The question being asked aloud made what I was about to say sound ridiculous, “of course he is,” I replied with a tiny little smile, “he's been my best friend for my whole life. If I'm not willing to do whatever it takes to help my oldest friend, then what kind of pony would I be?”

Core cracked a smirk, “well, you certainly wouldn't be a synthpony, that's for sure,” she took a deep breath and looked at Root, “alright, I'm ready.”

The little black filly bowed her head, “Proceeding.”

“Huh? Proceeding with what?” I looked back at Core, “what's going on?”

The emaciated mare simply smiled and said, “you're about to get an upgrade. Don't fuck it up.”

“Upgrade? What are you talking abooOOOUUUT!”

Two brilliant beams of silver light shot out from the eyes of the filly standing off to the side. One enveloped Core, and the other consumed myself. My world was a solid white void for what felt like an eternity and an instant simultaneously. Then the light was gone.

And so was Core.

I wasn't in the room anymore either. Two mares were hurtling towards me. One was a Pink unicorn, and the other was clad in Orange. My eyes darted to the lower right corner of my field of vision where the emaciated mare had once stood in order to feed me what I needed to know in order to fend off their attacks. Only, she wasn't there anymore.

Fuck.

Hooves descended upon me, and there was no hope of escaping the blows. This was going to suck.

My right forehoof flew up and caught one of Orange's hind legs right before it could land a blow to the side of my head. I didn't try to completely halt the strike, but rather diverted it upwards and over, so that it completely cleared me. I simultaneously spun my body around and delivered a deft kick with my left hind leg into Orange's side. It wasn't hard enough to cause much damage to the synthetic body, but it did knock the unicorn off of her previous trajectory and send her careening into Pink. Meanwhile, I continued my spin and danced lightly away from the pair of tangled mares.

I came to a halt several yard away from my opponents, my feet splayed out in what felt like a rather instinctive, and yet obviously practiced defensive stance. My head whipped down to admire my stance, and then focused once more on the other two ponies that were extracting themselves from one another and setting themselves up for another attack.

“Woah...I know kung-hoof!”

Both mares got back on their hooves rather quickly and charged me. This time, I was no longer nearly as concerned as I had been a moment ago. The reason was because I knew exactly what they were about to do. Their approach and positions resonated precisely with a scripted sequence of movements that I was able to vividly recall. So when they launched their attacks, I was able to accurately and consistently move around the blows or even deflect them away. That wasn't to say that it was easy. There were still two of them, and a few of my counters still required me to choose to take the lesser of several incoming blows directly on my chassis.

It was also a little frustrating to realize that I could still only operate on the defensive. At this rate, it was still a fight that I was likely to lose, but I was at least going to be able to hold out for quite some time.

I was still extremely curious about where Core had gone as well. Had she found some other way to relay her advised combat maneuvers to me that allowed for even less lag than before? That didn't feel like it was quite the case, but something had obviously changed in the last few seconds. The movements that I was making now felt intuitive and natural, as though I was drawing from a massive catalogue of fighting techniques. There were even several sequences that would provide for optimal coordination by up to six ponies engaging one or multiple ponies; all laid out like a neat little script fr me to look at.

...just like Core had said that Orange and Pink were doing.

Even as I ducked around flailing hooves, I could feel the back of my neck start to tingle with fright that had nothing to do with the current fight. I devoted a few threads to searching for the withered unicorn that had been there with me only moments before; but I couldn't find her. When my own efforts came up empty, I approached Root.

“The Core program has been successfully integrated into this unit's main systems,” was the other program's response.

What the hell did that mean? Integrated?

...Do you really believe that somepony like him is worth dying for?

I felt my gut freeze into a solid block of fear. No...no, she wouldn't have...

Even as I thought that I had to have been mistaken, I could feel the tiny little filly nod her confirmation. Core had allowed herself to be completely deconstructed, so that her matrix could be patched onto mine. Everything that she had known, I now knew; to include how to fight. She'd taken herself out of the loop in order to give me more of an edge. My ability to now recognize the attacks of, and develop counters for, the two mare, when combined with the extra processing power devoted to the task that the three of us had previously devised meant that I was now more than a match for any one of these synthponies.

...though it seemed that I was still not going to be able to overcome two.

No. Fuck that!

It wasn't just Diode that was relying on me anymore; Core had sacrificed herself so that I could win this fight. I couldn't allow myself to lose now!

And yet, there wasn't any way for me to win. With every passing second, I was taking another glancing blow to a joint or torso. All of those little bits of damage were going to start adding up unless I could do something to give me the edge that I really needed in this fight. But what more could I do? I had direct access to all of the combat files, and I was devoting more threads to executing them than had ever been intended by the ponies that had built me.

In fact, my central processor was no longer the bottle neck; that distinction fell to my physical body. It wasn't even just my one limb either. Even operating at peak performance, all of my actuators and servos were only able to move so quickly within their designed specifications. Unless there was some way to force my limbs to move quicker than they had been designed to...

Could they?

Core had given me more than just her files on fighting. I knew this body's operating parameters as well. That included a detailed schematic of every internal component and their specifications. It took me only a few quick comparisons to realize that the listed maximum outputs on nearly every system weren't matching up with what I was actually performing at. I approached Root about the matter.

“Governors are in place to ensure for extended, consistent, performance of all unit functions.”

I was being held back back by my own body? Was there any way to turn those governors off?

“Warning. Disengaging governors could result in catastrophic damage to unit systems. Operator override is required.”

I thought I had Bronco's access? Root confirmed that I did, and merely asked that I reiterate that I desired to use that access to remove the limits imposed on my body. Which, of course, I gave. I was being damaged enough by this fight as it was; I was willing to risk a seized solenoid or two if it meant I could save Diode.

Root nodded her acknowledgment and asked how much more performance I desired out of my body's physical components. I did some rough calculations and then asked if an increase of twenty percent was possible?

The little filly smiled.

Orange was currently in the middle of performing a flying leap with one of her forelegs aimed directly at my forehead. I opted to not brush her aside this time, but rather to test out how accurate my initial calculations of this body's new operating parameters were. So, I instead chose to rear up and catch the attacking unicorn's outstretched limb by clamping my own two forelegs above and below hers as the elbow. The momentum of the attack started to pitch me backwards, and I allowed myself to be pushed over onto my back while still holding her leg tight between my own.

Then I pushed every bit of mechanical machinery in my limbs to their new maximum setting. Sensors in my own limbs red-lined as they recorded forces that greatly exceeded those that they had been intended to record. Shearing and bending moments peaked, reaching levels that were quite dangerous for the materials that made up my body. They they all abruptly fell away back to tolerable numbers. The reason for this was that Orange's own limb had lost out in battle against my vise-like grip.

Screaming alloys and crackling polymers rang out through the air as her leg snapped off at the elbow.

I continued our joint roll backwards, bringing my hind limbs together and then planting them upon her chest as she glided over top of me. With a hungry sneer, I accelerated my hind limbs servos to their highest setting with as much power as I could provide them. The result was a kick with a high enough force to significantly dent the Orange unicorn's thorax, and send her flying nearly thirty-eight feet into the air.

She'd survive the fall when she landed, but it wouldn't leave her unscathed.

Root ran a quick diagnostic on the involved systems, and noted that one of my actuators was already showing signs of having been significantly warped by my actions. It was minor damage though, so I shrugged off the other program's concerns. A few more exchanges like that, and this fight would be over in just a couple minutes. Hell, Orange was nearly crippled as it was.

Pink seemed to have taken exception to my treatment of her comrade. The synthetic mare pounced on me with a series of rapid jabs. Actuators in my head and limbs kicked into high gear as I sidestepped one direction and then the other, ducking around the unicorn's strikes as she pressed her attack. It was remarkably easy to do when I knew what movements her entire assault would consist of. All I had to do was bide my time until...

...now!

There was the briefest of pauses in the mare's movements as her first sequence of movements ended, and the next one buffered into her active memory. That hesitation might have been only seven-tenths of a second, and under most circumstances even a standard synthpony wouldn't have been able to take advantage of that respite; but I was pushing quite a few boundaries right now where 'standard' was concerned.

The hydraulics in my hind legs reached pressures that made even Root cringe as I propelled myself forward past the pink mare's still hooves. My horn caught her full in the chest and pierces through her polymer hide. Unlike living ponies, the spiraled horn between my eyes wasn't made of bone, nor was it even reinforced in any particular manner. It was more cosmetic than anything in order to explain why I was able to manipulate objects with magical energy. It was sheathed in a simple composite material that was sturdy to the touch, but by no means 'strong'.

Which was why it snapped off inside of Pink's torso when she went flying backwards. Nor was it the only damage that my own body suffered as a result of my counter. The jolt of the high-force impact was far in excess of what manufactured vertebrae had been designed to withstand. I was pretty sure that as least one of the bolts along my neck sheared off. Root confirmed that another solenoid was no longer responding either.

I ignored the damage. The fight was almost won. A few more hits like that one and it wouldn't matter how much of my hardware was still functional. Besides, Diode would probably be able to fix me up to a nearly-good-as-new state just like he had done with my leg this morning. I shifted my gaze between the two mares that were once more getting back up onto their hooves—Orange did so with great difficulty, I noted with a wide grin.

Then all three of us had our attention directed southward.

“Iris, it's ready!”

It seemed that Diode had managed to complete his alterations of the locomotive's power source. A full thirteen seconds ahead of the deadline that I had issued to boot; the earth pony really was a bit of a wizard when it came to machinery wasn't he? I actually felt a little guilty now, knowing that I had just managed to subvert his efforts with my newfound advantages. It looked like I wasn't going to have to all of us to Tartarus after all.

As though the other two mares had heard that thought, they both charged...south. I hesitated for fourteen thousandths of a second as I contemplated why, in this wild and crazy Equestrian Wasteland, those two synthponies would leave the fight, opponent still standing, and make a beeline for Diode. Then it hit me: I wasn't their mission, Diode was their mission. They weren't here to take me down, they were after my friend. Even if it cost them their lives, as long as the caramel stallion was killed, they'd be the winners of the day.

“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath and took off after them. I scaled my reactor's energy output up two the new ceiling of one hundred and twenty percent that Root had established. Voltage readings spiked across nearly every system. The filly regulating my body was not happy about what she was seeing, and advised me of exactly how long I could maintain such an output before there was a risk of catastrophic failures across all areas. The joke was on her though: I didn't actually care.

Orange and Pink both seemed to be acutely aware of my pursuit and took advantage of their numbers in that regard. They each diverted away from one another, taking a different path and leaving me the option of following only one of them. I ran through a few rough calculations with Root's help and came up with the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to catch Pink with my leg in the state that it was. Hobbled though she was, Orange wasn't that much slower than I was, which irritated me. How was that trike of a mare managing to move so fast?!

Then I devised my third option: cut off the mares at their destination. All that those two should have been able to judge from Diode's yell was his direction. Meanwhile, I knew his precise location. I could get there before Orange and Pink did.

“Bump me up another ten percent,” I growled at the little filly. She reluctantly obliged, and put up a revised life expectancy. I felt like she was greatly underestimating exactly how mush an intensely focused mare like myself could accomplish in one hundred and forty-nine seconds. Why, for a software program, that was a lifetime.

My hooves struck the ground with such force that it left gouges in the packed material three inches deep, and the speed with which they moved sent debris sailing backwards at forces that made them rather comparable to shotgun pellets. My gate was so long due to my accelerated movements that I touched down only every seventy feet or so. In certain regards, I wasn't running so much as I was leaping in rapid succession. My final vault took me twenty-seven feet into the air, and had me skid into a halt engulfed in a cloud of dust and debris that prompted a rather keenly startled earth pony to dive for cover inside the cab of the train engine with a surprised yelp.

I blatantly ignored Root's assessment of the damage that the landing had done to my body and sought out Diode, “what button do I push and how long's the fuse?”

The caramel pony blinked a few times, which wasted a precious second that I did not have and set my teeth to grinding in frustration. Then her gathered his senses and motioned at one of the controls, “the start up sequence is primed; you just need to hit that switch there. Then you have forty-five seconds to get clear.”

“Forty five seconds?!” I nearly spat out the impossibly long internal and shook my head, “that's too long!”

“It's the best I could do,” the earth pony said, defensively, “too much of the energy's bled off in the last two hundred years. The reactors only at about seven percent capacity.”

It couldn't be helped. I momentarily noted the timer that Root had created for me, “fine. You'd better hurry and-” the sound of a galloping pony caused me to chop off my suggestion mid-sentence. Pink had arrived. I glanced at Diode, “run!” and then I ducked inside the cab and flicked the designated switch. The panel flickered slightly and I heard the high frequency whine of electrical systems reluctantly coming to life. Root added a second timer along side the first, starting at forty-five seconds.

Then I threw myself in front of Pink and lunged for her. The synthetic mare refused to engage me, and hopped to the side, barely dodging out of the way as she continued onward to her target. The caramel stallion backpedaled as best as he could, but he was no where near as quick as he needed to be to escape the artificial unicorn.

“Oh no you don't,” I seethed and cocked back my right hind leg, aiming it at a nearby rock. Hydraulic pumps and pistons outperformed even the most optimistic expectations of their designers as the machinery shot my hoof back at nearly super-sonic speeds. Several of the smaller bits sheared off, and the main drive piston managed to overextend itself so that it wouldn't seat all the way back quite right which meant that the leg would always be partially cocked until it could be rebuilt later; but I achieved my desired affect. The improvised mineral missile struck the pink unicorn mare in the side of her face.

She went sprawling to the ground beyond Diode, having been deflected from her target bu the rock. I turned and ran for her, noting my rather ungainly gate as I now found myself with two impaired limbs, “I said, run, damn it!” I snarled at Diode as I passed him.

Pink didn't seem intent on staying down for very long. On the bright side, she had seemed to at least revise her mission priorities and kept her gaze focused on myself instead of my caramel companion. Likely because she had realized that so long as I was still standing, I would be able to thwart her efforts to complete her mission. I surveyed the damage that I had just inflicted, and noted that most of it was merely superficial. Her right check was devoid of the synthetic hide that covered our bodies, and revealed beneath it a rather horrifying internal structure that only gave the vaguest impression of a pony's skeleton. Her jaw was also rather horribly askew, dangling from just a few stray sinews of artificial flesh on her left mandible.

She leaped at me, and I reared back on my hind legs, catching both of her forehooves in mine. Then a flash of Orange appeared briefly in the corner of my eye. Shit! The other mare wasn't coming for me though, she didn't need to. I hopped upwards with my left hindleg and drove my right into Pink's gut with another strong, though notably weaker, kick that sent the mare reeling. I used the force of the kick and the momentum it imparted to give me a boost of speed to help me catch Orange.

I heaved myself into the air and tackled the three-legged unicorn to the ground just inches from where Diode was trying he level best to scamper away. I clenched my leg around the mare as I twisted my body in order to perpetuate the roll and fling the hobbled orange mare in the direction of the train engine. My attention wavered to the timers that Root had for me. I needed to keep these mares near that improvised bomb!

“Oh, for fuck's sake!” I growled as I saw Pink leaping over my prone body in an effort to get at Diode once more, “only over my dead body, you bitch!” I clamped my hooves around a railroad tie and pumped Root-cringing quantities of energy through the solenoids in my forelimbs as I swung the massive block of ancient lumber up and around and caught the vaulting mare in the chest. Wooden splinters and pieces of synthetic flesh exploded in all direction. While her now completely removed jaw kept arcing forward, the pink pony was blasted back the way that she'd come, with a much more pronounced divot in her sternum, and even a thin trail of wispy smoke that my olfactory sensors identified as smoldering silicon and melting lead and zinc. I had likely driven the my broken horn tip much deeper into her central systems.

There wasn't a lot of time to truly savor my achievement, or even thoroughly assess Pink's damage, as Orange was making another attempt to circumvent my defenses and get by to the fleeing Diode. I followed through with the remainder of the railroad tie that had mostly exploded upon impact with the airborne mare, and heaved it at the charging unicorn. It struck her in the left hip with the force of a sledgehammer, and even I could hear the sound of several hopefully vital pieces of machinery crunching under the impact. I hopped over to the mare and landed on top of her with the intent of finishing her off.

Pink didn't give me the chance though; she was off and running again. What did it take to stop us anyway?! I was very reluctant to leave Orange though, sensing that I would forever be playing a game of grab-flank with the pair of mares if I didn't take one of them down right now. However, Diode wasn't going to make it if I let Pink get any more of a head start on me...

Root pointed off to the side, and my eyes fell onto a rusted length of three-eighth inch diameter chain of the sort that would have been used to secure large loads to the flatbed cars of the Old World train. I snapped my right hoof down to the ground and flipped a few loops of the heavy gauge chain around my limb. Them I instructed Root to crank up the output another ten percent and flicked my limb towards the charging jawless mare. I heard the protesting screaming of motors and hydraulic pistons as my foreleg flung the thirty-odd feet of rusted links out towards the running pink unicorn. The last few feet managed to snag her neck just before she was out of range.

I sneered with triumph and waited for the instant that the line went taught, “get over here!” My arm jerked backwards with a force that managed to actually dislocate the limb at the shoulder. The result was worth the cost though, in my estimation. Though rusted and subjected to a couple hundred years of exposure and neglect, the forged steel links of the chain didn't so much as whimper as the chain that had been designed to stop a force of two tons dead in its tracks yanked back the charging mare. Her head snapped back at an awkward angle but did not detach from the rest of her body. The pink pony lifted off the ground and was sent sailing in an arc that took her back and over my position, and slamming into the ground on the far side of the boiler of the ancient locomotive.

The count down that Root had set up for the reactor detonation ticked down into single digits, and the filly flashed the numbers red to warn me of how little time I had left.

Beneath me, I felt Orange push herself back up onto her three remaining hooves beneath me. I anticipated the buck that she was preparing in order to dislodge me from her spine and chase after Diode; I wrapped my free left hoof around her neck and clamped it down tight. As the mare's rear end came up, I actually flexed my core to coincide with the motion. When her hind quarters started their return to the ground though, I wrenched my back sharply, propelling her back half downward, and planting my own hind hooves into the ground. I continued the flex, my left arm still holding the stumpy mare tight as I lifted her up and off the ground.

Then I gave my right arm a jerk. The socket beneath my synthetic flesh gave way completely this time, but not before it succeeded in drawing the chain taught and wrenching the pair of us towards the train engine. I turned my body as best I could in the air, in an effort to ensure that Orange took the brunt of the imminent blast. With luck, I might even have time to get a little distance after we landed.

...Diode's 'forty-five seconds' turned out to be a rather rough estimate.

With four seconds left on Root's timer, the reactor reach critical mass, and the engine exploded. Threads that were processing data at far faster rates that they had been intended allowed me to take in what was happening even as I was airborne.

Pink, located on the far side of the engine, was effectively incinerated by the blast. She had been only a few feet from the epicenter, and I saw bits of her structure scattering to the winds in the concussive blast wave that was also fast approaching Orange and I. One down, at least. I watched chunks of super-heated steel streaking towards us. They hit at speeds approaching twice the speed of sound. Orange caught a train wheel in her midsection. The metal discus barely seemed to notice that it had struck a rather sturdy synthetic pony as it finished passing through her, and then bisected me as well.

Alarms flared, indicating a complete power failure in all systems. Understandable, as I was now separated from my own small reactor. More debris raced towards us. Most of it was the size of bottlecpas, but far denser, and flying at mach speeds. Orange's body once more proved that she was a paltry excuse for a shield, though some of her denser structures did some good in lessening the damage I took.

That wasn't saying much though. I watched as sensors lost connection with my central processors; either because they themselves were damaged and destroyed, or because the portion of my body that they were located in was no longer attached to the rest of me. Root was tending some bits of code, trying her best to make patchwork connections and run what little power remained through conduits that had never been intended to shunt power to where she was sending it. I suppose that was the little black filly's way of coping with death. She wanted to spend her last few moments doing her job.

I could understand that. I'd just spent my own last moments protecting my friend. Hopefully I had even succeeded.

The was somepony tugging at my tail. I glanced back and saw Root standing behind me. I raised an eyebrow at the filly, and then noticed that she was holding something in her right hoof. There was nothing physically there of course, this was all merely a representative fiction that my software was interpreting for me. But what I was looking at very much resembled the inner workings of the region of this mechanical body's head where most of the hardware that contained 'me' was housed.

“What's that?”

Root smiled, “a chance to say goodbye.”

“Huh?”

The filly reached out her hoof, and tapped me on the head.

Diode was standing over me. No, more than that, he actually had me in his arms. Well, most of me, anyway. Er...some of me, I guess. It was hard to tell. I was getting hardly any telemetry from...well, anywhere actually. I looked around for Root, but for the first time that I could remember, she wasn't here. Growing a little more concerned, I brought up a list of the available systems.

That list was frightfully short. No motor functions, limited visual inputs, oratory software for whatever reason had been buffered...in fact, everything was buffered. I was buffered. A cold chill crept up my spine as I dug a little deeper. Everything was being held in active memory, and the reason made my stomach tie itself in a knot: the hard drive was destroyed. Only a few sectors of RAM remained, and that was where I was.

What brought on the sense of doom was the reading on the remaining reserve power supply: thirty seconds.

Once that was gone...so was I.

My time was up. I glanced at the vision of a concerned caramel pony cradling my remains in his arms. Bless his heart, he had a screwdriver in his mouth trying to do something with a frayed conduit of wires; but even he wasn't going to be enough of a miracle worker to save me. That was okay though, because...

“...you're safe,” I managed to get the single torn speaker attached to my circuitry to sound out. I watch it drain precious seconds from my life as that power was diverted to produce sounds.

“Iris?” Diode looked down at me, his features etched in concern, “hold on, I think I can get you back together eventually. Just save as much of yourself as you can, and I'll see about uploading your program to a robopony or something later. I'm building an interface right now.

I smiled to myself, “no good. Active memory only,” my world started growing darker as the last of the power was nearing consumption. It had only ever been designed to run the internal chronometer while powered down, not keep a program in operation with sensory inputs and vocal transmissions, “power'll be gone in ten more seconds.”

“What?” the stallion looked even more frantic now. He stabbed a hoof into his saddlebag, “hold on, I have a spark battery somewhere; I'll hook up a converter and get you more power until I can sort out your hard drives,” his eyes scanned the ground nearby, “wherever they are.”

“S'alright,” another smile that he couldn't see, “you're safe. All I really needed.

“Sorry about the trouble.”

“It wasn't any trouble, Iris,” the earth pony sighed, appearing to accept how final this situation was. He couldn't really work miracles. Not even on this sort of timetable. He closed his eyes, “you were a good pony.”

Everything around me grew even darker, until Diode's image was the only source of light. I felt my heart swell to here him say that, “thanks,” I yawned; the side affects to the power being nearly depleted. It looked like I would finally be going to sleep, I though with a dry snort, “will I dream?” I asked, listlessly as the darkness became nearly absolute.

There was a pause, and then, “of course you will, Iris,” the caramel stallion said, “all ponies dream...”

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Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated

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